Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Project EP. 159 - Christmas Episode

Episode Date: December 21, 2018

Mark Bell is giving you some advice heading into Christmas. From not cheating on your diet, to cheating right on your diet, training and family advice. Link to sign up for the ST Classic: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/super-training-classic-2019-tickets-53251741392 ➢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

Hello, hello. Welcome to Mark Bell's... Welcome to Mark Bell's PowerCast. Right? No. No. Not anymore. Welcome to Mark Bell's Power... Project. Projectile. Projectile. That Double Dragon. You know about Double Dragon? The Nintendo game? That game was sick. That was Dragon. You know about Double Dragon? The Nintendo game? That game was sick.

That was great. You could actually throw the guy. Yeah. You remember that? Everybody looked like Beavis and Butthead. They did. They had big heads. Being able to throw the guy was great.

Like, you could punch and kick, and then you could grab the guy, and you could chuck him. That was my favorite. And you could throw him into another guy. And you can pick up bats and just, like, whack. Like, they all had the exact same swing each time you know i'm old i'll admit it but like they don't make them like they used to man like yeah those games were sick they're really hard too they are really hard you know what's the hardest thing ever is arcade games though they're impossible they're just trying to rip you off and get all those quarters exactly like game especially so you just said arcade games but like arcade like

nba jam like there's no way he's on fire like the computer would get so fast so quick like as soon as you break away for like five points they just steal the ball from you hit threes from all over the court it's like dude what's like come on how do you i want to get those power-ups like it's like a glitch or something something Something's broken. Yeah. Yeah, they're just quarter-stealers. The double dragon I was referring to is when you have to take a dump and throw up at the same time. That's double dragon. Yeah. Yeah, double dragon that ass.

Yeah. So then do you go toilet to ass, trash can to face? Yeah, I think that's the logical step. For me, I just go in the shower. I like this is even better i'm just gonna hang out in the shower i'm just gonna like you know if things spray out from one end and you know just clean it up i got a detachable shower head we can we can go we can go nuts in here just hose you right down yeah speaking of hose wait what there's some hose oh that's right that was type of hose this is Wait, what? There's some hoes in here. Ho, ho, ho. Oh, that's right. Those type of hoes.

This is our Christmas. Yeah. What were you thinking about? The chocolate pastries. Oh, ho, ho. Son of a. The slutty brownie. Yeah.

The old slutty brownie. Joey's good at making those slutty brownies. I haven't tried them yet, but Jasmine likes them. Yeah. They're really. Oh, she's had them. Yeah. At the, like the, basically the Christmas party we had

last year with everybody here. Or maybe it wasn't Christmas. Just the ST party. Hanukkah? Holiday? I gotta call it holiday. Yeah, it was during holiday last year. We don't want some people's Stephen to be offended. Right? Yeah.

I don't know if Josh celebrates that kind of stuff either. Does he? I think he does Kwanzaa. He's always grumpy about something. Him and Smokey, they're rubbing off on each other. Like literally. They're,

they're morphing into the same person. Yeah. That's going to be weird. Yeah. A little Jewish Asian guy with a beard. Yeah. That's going to get to be really strange. Yeah.

Like, especially cause I don't know. I mean josh has like zero body hair hey did you get serious for a minute we have a podcast to do here and you're interrupting my bad very being being very disruptive today i didn't know we started i clicked start but i didn't know we got to get that thing hey if you guys are listening if you know anybody with some dough like i i got some money but i don't have the kind of money that we need to fix this podcast thing that we, I will take a picture of it today. Okay. We're going to post it up and show you guys. There's not much left to it, but things from like the sixties, which makes it hard because no one knew, even know what a podcast was in the sixties.

It's impossible to find parts for it now because it's so old. everybody switched over to something new and we thought we were getting a good deal but now we understand why it was so cheap yeah we're sorry about the 1080p or the 720 720 yeah yeah 720 sorry about the 720 i were lucky if we have 720 we're shooting this thing on a potato yeah with potato potato starch and potato extract yeah So that's why sometimes the lenses get a little greasy because it's from the, you know, the oil from trying to fry the potato, trying to get it to work, but it ain't working. We're getting trans fatty acids going here. Yeah. Welcome to Mark Bell's Power Project, everybody. Appreciate you guys tuning in. If you liked this episode, find this episode helpful, please share it with some other people. That's the cost of admission to come here on the

Power Project. I've had the Power Project for a very, very long time. I had a different version of this podcast going on for a while. But before that, I was doing Power Project stuff just with my phone, doing a selfie, and spitting out some information for you guys um i am a long time power lifter started power when i was 12 i'm 42 now and uh i love every minute of i love training i love getting strong and i love working on the business i created a product called the slingshot it's a supportive upper body device for bench press push-ups and dips allows you to handle more weight it allows you to get in a better position with your bench presses so that you don't get hurt elbows are tucked into the side just as they should be and then based off of that product i helped create a

lot of other products that have really been products to lower the barrier of entry into training training is training hurts if you're training intensely, it hurts, causes a lot of pain. So we created knee sleeves, wrist wraps, elbow sleeves, slingshots, knee wraps, singlets, deadlift socks, shin savers. We created all kinds of things that have all sorts of functions and allow you to train through and around your injury. So if you want to check any of that out, it's over at markbellslingshot.com. Still love powerlifting to this day and have a goal nowadays to hit up a 500-pound bench at 220. Might be doing it at the Slingshot Classic, which is February 9th and 10th.

Sorry, the Super Training Classic, if I said that correctly. The Super Training Classic, February 9th and 10th, I'm sorry, the Super Training Classic, if I said that correctly. The Super Training Classic, February 9th and 10th, which will be here in Sacramento. I believe on February 10th we have a special guest coming in by the names of Jay Cutler. He'll be there. We also got Matt Vincent will be coming in, my boy Jesse Burdick.

We got a lot of other. We'll have a star-studded lineup for sure. There'll be more and more people uh, we got, we'll have a star studded lineup for sure. There'll be more and more people that are going to want to attend, but you can sign up for it. And, uh, where can people sign up for it? We have a signup place yet. We have to, I just don't know exactly where that is. I'll figure it out though.

We'll figure it out. We'll attach a link or something to this podcast. Yeah, absolutely. And down in the show notes, um um and on youtube right now on the live stream i'll figure it out and you guys can check there as well we'll get that uh we'll get that part sorted out anyway um yeah that's the goal for now i want to bench over 500 pounds weighing in at 220 and a lot of other goals that i have but having these goals gives me responsibility uh the responsibility to uh make myself better in the gym is something that I

live off of. I gain energy off of, and it helps with every other aspect of my life. And it's something I've noticed and recognized from a lot of other people. The more purpose, the more intent that you have, the better off that everything else is. We got my boy Andrew Zaragoza over there. He is the host of our podcast. I had an event here years ago at Super Training Gym. Andrew came in and was snapping some pictures. I thought he was just some weird pervert. Turns out he was.

And the rest is history. He gave me his card, and I needed a photographer. And then Andrew came in, did photography. He did videos, and he did hustle mania. And now he does, now he's our podcast engineer. Yeah. It's been a crazy year. And we were talking about right now having our Christmas episode. It's really only been a half year for us in terms of our podcast. Yeah. I mean, and you hate to say like, oh man, like, like it's been, it feels like way longer just because like that's just kind of like a weird thing to say for some reason but it it is like a blink of an eye

that this podcast is already now gonna hit 160 or i think today's officially 150 uh because of the stuff that we haven't produced with um kalipa and seth rollins so we had to go back a couple numbers here oh man but um it it just seems like uh like even a week ago was like six months ago because we've we film and we record so much we've done so like we've traveled like we're flying around flying with uh hanging with chuck liddell phil heath i mean you name it like we've been there and it's you're right it all started just like you know a handful of months ago and there and it's, you're right, it all started just like, you know, a handful of months ago. And it's something that we're passionate about, excited about. And so here we go.

Today's our Christmas special. We're going to be talking to you a just help, you know, help mitigate some of this, uh, some of these fattening foods that you might be, uh, might be thrown your way on this day. So what I'd like everyone to do is, uh, have some mental prep going into all this, have some mental prep into the family members that you're going to run into, have some mental prep into the foods that you're going to run into. In terms of your family members, you know, I talk about this very often on this podcast. You pretty much know where you're going to be every single day. You got a good idea of that. You have a good understanding of like, I'm going to work, you know, this hour to this hour,

approximately. You have at least some concept of that. Well, you at least have some concept of when the Christmas parties are and where they're going to be and whom you're going to run into. So what I would like to suggest, I'm big on family, and I think family is really important. And I think that we have a tendency to kind of undersell the importance of family. We have a tendency to limit family to only the people that live inside our home. And, you know, family is oftentimes much bigger than that. And what I want to try to suggest to everybody, and I know it's not easy, but I'd like for everybody to do the best they can and try to suck it up. Especially for this year, we're going to we're going to have a little exercise to do here.

In addition to actually exercising, I'm going to give you guys some homework to do. And maybe this is something that you should plan on trying. And this is something you can do at any party. It doesn't have to be around Christmas time. But you pretty much know where you're going to go. You know you're going to go to your mom's house or your grandma's house or your aunt's house. Like there's these family traditions that we have every year that we continue to go to go to. Right. So think about that uncle, that aunt, that somebody that maybe it's not your favorite

thing every year to get in full conversation with them. And I want you to try to think about, first of all, first of all, embrace people for who they are. If this person's been the same person for the last two years, the last three years, First of all, embrace people for who they are. If this person's been the same person for the last two years, the last three years, the last five years, the last eight years, the last ten years, then that is just who they are. And to try to impose your will on them and try to impose maybe your thoughts on politics or religion or your thoughts on lifting or your thoughts on fitness and your thoughts on food. Maybe to think that they want everything out of life that you want. Maybe that's not a great idea. But instead, let's try to do something a little different. Let's think about something that they may want to talk about and be prepared. Think about the different people you're going to

run into. Be a little bit prepared ahead of time to talk to your uncle, who may be the only thing he loves to talk about is hunting or be prepared to talk to your aunt and her favorite thing is to talk about art or whatever it is. Maybe that little bit of preparation will allow you to handle them better. I don't know about you guys. The reason why I'm bringing this up is because I am socially awkward and I, I, I kind of, it's weird because you know, when I'm inside super training gym and, and, uh, get me in front of a camera, then, uh, you know, lights camera action and I can go and I can talk and do all those things, but I'm actually pretty shy and pretty reserved. And I don't really usually want to talk to people that much in the past. This kind of stuff has been things that have helped me to get over some of that. I don't really usually want to talk to people that much in the past. This kind of stuff has been things that have helped me to get over some of that.

I don't really have like crazy social anxiety or anything, but I just, um, you know, if I had my own choice, I probably just wouldn't say a whole lot is the truth of it. But I've learned that that's not great because as an adult, people interpret that as me being pissed off when I'm not, I just, you know, sometimes choose not to really say a whole lot, just choose to listen and absorb what other people are talking about, what other people are saying. So that would be my advice for this year, that you know where you're going to be, you know who you're going to run into.

Maybe have some stuff prepared. Maybe talk about football or talk about something on TV or talk about just have something uh kind of preset and ready to ready to rock that's what i was gonna say because i haven't been following football basically at all this year and i mean who who uh who has an uncle that's you know gonna talk about football like we all have that or a cousin or something so that's kind of what i'm thinking I might have to actually do. How about those L.A. Rams?

Yeah, see, I didn't even know they were in L.A. I think they're in L.A. They are. When you said it, I'm like, damn, are they? But yeah, no, they are. That's right.

That's how disconnected I am. There's two L.A. teams and they're both doing really good. L.A. Rams and L.A. Chargers. That's right. The Rams are in first place right now, I think. Yeah, and the Chargers

are doing really well. Do you guys see what I just did there? I pretended to know that the Rams were in first place. I don't know if they actually are. I know. They were for a little bit, but this time of year gets tricky. People accumulate some losses pretty quickly this time of year. Yeah, I do know the Niners spoiled the Seahawks this Sunday. I do know that much because my mom texts me. That's how I know.

Your mom let you know, huh? Yeah, it's cool. They still watch the Niners every single day or every week. We have a white elephant party tomorrow. That should be pretty cool. I don't know if you guys play any of that at home, but it's basically just everyone purchases a gift, everyone that at home um but uh it's basically just just everyone purchases a gift everyone that wants to be in on it and uh it's uh anonymous on who's where the gift came

from i guess people can tell you later on on where it came from but it's a way to prevent from like having to buy a million presents for everybody in your office so yeah that's what we did it's cool i'm still very much unprepared for that. I have no idea what to get. Yeah. I'm, I'm in the same boat. Yeah. I was going to,

uh, get like a, a gift card for slingshot for, for, uh, yeah, for slingshot gear. See what happens.

See who wins that. That'd be great. If you got stuck with it, stick a war on carbs book in there or something. Yeah. People be like, this is the worst. Um,

you know, and then also to like, prepare, prepare yourself for like, what's going to go on for the next couple of days. Start to think about where you're going to be. Do you have access to any weights or do you have access to any form of exercise? What's the food going to look like? What's the food going to be? You might be thinking, oh, I'm not going to meal prep. Cause I'm just going to eat whatever. But are you going to eat whatever for the next two weeks? You know, because New Year's is like a week after Christmas and you're just going to let all that stuff kind of go into the following year. Again, as we talk

about all the time on this podcast, there's no reason to be a real maniac about it, but you got to set down some rules and boundaries. If you're somebody that wants to be a savage, if you want to have goals, if you want to be in better shape, if you want to be better than you were yesterday, the only way to do that is to be prepared and you'll have to be prepped for the different things that are coming. So if you know on the 25th of December that you have a big family dinner and on the 24th, you know that you have a big family like brunch or lunch or whatever it might be, maybe there's some preparation going into that. And then you could say, okay, well, what does that preparation look like? Um, maybe you eat a lot less food, uh, the days before, if you can handle that, maybe you try some fasting. Um, maybe you try to exercise a little bit more. Maybe you're like, you know what? I don't really care what I eat at all. I'm going to use a little bit of

intermittent fasting and I'm going to do some cardio and that's going to mask whatever the hell I eat. Maybe it won't mask everything, but not a bad strategy. And you eat kind of whatever you'd like for a day or two. Yeah. How many, how much time do you think people should give themselves? I mean, I know we're cutting it close here, but like, let's say someone started tomorrow with like a intermittent fasting or they're just saying, I'm going to avoid the lame office potluck and bring my own food. And then over the weekend, control it. And then come Monday, Tuesday, that's when like the sweets and everything starts coming out. Is that enough time for somebody to really take advantage of basically kind of prepping? Absolutely. Friday, Saturday, Sunday,

you can start to mess around with some fasting. And each day you can pick a certain amount of hours that you want to fast, 12 hours, 14 hours, 16 hours. They say some of the magical benefits, quote unquote magical, benefits of fasting start to happen in that 16 to 20 hour range. And so that's I choose to kind of stick it out a little bit longer. But if you've never done any fasting before, 12 hours is a good start. And fasting is just going to be a way to manipulate your calories. And by fasting, I mean you're not ingesting anything other than water and coffee. There are things that are called a liquid fast and you can mess with that as well

where you have water, coffee, bone broth, maybe add some salt, maybe have coffee with a little bit of butter in it so there's some other options that you can choose that that have at least some calories in it if you're worried about like just blacking out and not feeling very good from not eating you can mess around with some different things but uh yeah there's enough time to mess around with some fasting. I mean, you know, it's we're on Thursday right now and you got tomorrow, you got Saturday, you got Sunday and you got Christmas Eve and you have Christmas Day. So you can toy around with some fasting. I personally don't like to fast every single day. I think it's a little bit much.

So I'll fast. I'll fast. I'll do intermittent fasting for 16 hours on say like a Monday and like a Tuesday. And then Wednesday will be a break from fasting. And then I'll go Thursday with fasting and I'll eat again on Fridays, things like that. You know, so I try to mix it up. So I'm not fasting every single day.

I might fast pretty hard or pretty tough four to five times a week, but I think it's a little stressful to do it every single day. So that's why I try to, I try to mix it up. But if you're somebody looking for some ideas, you can cut way back on your carbs. Like you don't have to cut anything out. You don't have to try anything really drastic. If you're used to cutting out carbs and maybe you should cut them out, but if you're not used to cutting out carbs, maybe you just cut them way back and say, you know what? The second half of the day, I'm not going to eat hardly any carbohydrates, or I'm only going to eat them, uh, the second half of the day or however you want to sort it out. Um, you can even just say, Hey, you know what?

For the next three days in a row or four days in a row, I'm going to do some cardio training, or I'm going to make sure I go for a good, strong, brisk walk and try to, you know, walk maybe a little faster than normal and try to burn off a little bit more. But you want to be prepped going into it and you want to try to think about it. And if you don't really want to have a whole lot of guidelines in terms of your diet, intermittent fasting is great because then you have the opportunity to eat almost whatever you want when you start to eat. The other thing is too that you could do if you want to even have less regard towards what you eat is you can just train really, really hard, you know, for the next couple of days and maybe even on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, you still make sure that you get in a walk. You still make

sure you do something. You can say, I'm going to do 200 push-ups and 200 squats. And you can go back and forth and back and forth and back and forth on that. I've always loved the tradition of, you know, doing stuff on Christmas Day. And I'll probably just, this year, probably just be a walk. It probably won't be anything much more than that. But other years I have gone to the gym and I've worked out and I put in a good strong workout for like an hour.

I mean, most people say, oh, oh you know you're busy on christmas but i mean you know no one's well sometimes your kids are up really early when you have when you have children but once they open up their presence there really ain't shit to do so you you can sneak out for a little bit probably get something done uh whether it be something that you do outside or at a gym or you can probably sneak away for at least a little bit and do something. But the point is, is be prepared for that. Be mentally ready for that. Be ready for the fact that there's going to be an office party and there's going to be all this candy there.

And people are going to make stuff for you. And how are you going to react to that? You know, you're going to throw away everything that someone made for you. I think you should probably at least try some of it, at least have some of it. I think it's kind of common courtesy. And it's not going to kill you to go off your diet a little bit. It's not going to kill you to go off your plan a little bit. But what I'm trying to say is make sure you still have a plan. Because the further you get away from your plan, the harder it's going to be to get back to it.

And that's what I don't want to see. I don't want to hear people saying, oh man, you know, Christmas Eve came and I was, you know, I had to travel to San Jose and then Christmas day, I was back here in Sacramento and I just ate whatever. And, you know, now it's hard for me to get back in the routine and I haven't lifted in five days and I've been eating like shit for the last three days. And now there's all these bowl games on, there's all these football games on, there's this on, there's that, that's on, uh, there's all these different things to enjoy and all these different things to do. And, uh, I'll, I'll get back in the gym, you know, January one, and I'll start my

diet January one. And then you look at January one and you're like, oh man, like the gym, you know, January 1, and I'll start my diet January 1. And then you look at January 1, and you're like, oh, man, like, that's, you know, New Year's Day, and I'm going to be hung over from New Year's Eve activities. And plus it's on a Tuesday. So if I start on a Tuesday, then it's going to throw off the whole routine because I'm supposed to start on Monday because that's chest day, So I can't push that to Tuesday because then I'm going to mess up my leg day. Like, okay, so international chest day, international chest day. So I'm going

to miss that. I'm not, I can't miss chest day. So I got to wait till the next week. Right. You know, cause I got to start it off right. And you hear that all the time and people want to try to just keep pushing off and pushing off and pushing off and you push off your your hopes, you push off your dreams, you push off these things that you really wanted to do. And that's how we get, you know, everyone being so negative about New Year's resolutions, which I don't think I don't think a New Year's resolution is a bad idea at all. I do think that, you know, everything that we nearly everything that we do is made up, you know, like even the day itself is, is sort of made up. It's obvious that the sun comes up and the sun goes down. Uh, but this, this, uh, you know, this clock that we follow this AM PM rhythm that we follow. And some of these things are all kind of like made up for us to be able to schedule our day properly, you know?

And so, and these holidays and I mean, everything is, uh, is, is kind of, is kind of made up, you know, and, um, I think it's, it's up to you to kind of make your decision on how you want to react to it. You know, what do you want to do about it? You want to just, you know, fold up shop for the next two weeks and say, I'm just going to eat whatever I want and do whatever I want. That's a bad, that's a really bad idea. You're going to lose a lot of the progress you've made. You probably already have come pretty far. And, uh, this idea of a new year's resolution, I think it's, I think it's positive. I don't think, I don't think there's really anything negative. I do. I do have a, have a problem with talking about stuff that you're never going to do.

I do have a problem with talking about stuff that you're never going to do. And so for that reason, I would think when it comes to a New Year's resolution, think of something that's rational. You know, be a rational being. Be someone who has good conscious thought into what you're doing. Don't talk about things that are never going to happen. Cowards talk about what they will never do. Remember that. Have that quote pop up in your head

when somebody tells you that they're going to do something. You're like, you know what? That fucking guy is full of shit. He ain't ever going to do that. You know what I mean. You guys have heard that before. You've heard people say something like,

man, that was outlandish. That guy ain't ever going to do that. That guy never put two and two together. And that's just the way, the way things are. You're going to, you're going to see and hear a lot of people talk about some weird stuff for their new year's resolution, but for yourself, just make sure it's rational. Make sure it's a plan that you can align a lot of the other things that you want in your life. You know, I was listening to something the other day and the guy said,

you know, in the beginning of the school year, this is freaking fantastic stuff that I heard the other day, but he said in the beginning of the school year that they should sit you down and they should say, write down your grades. And the guy interviewing him said, that's ridiculous. Why would you do that? Everyone's just going to put down an A. He goes, well, here's why. So you write down what grades you want for each subject. And everybody writes down an A. Well, now you start to go over it with them.

And so that's what you want. You want an A? Okay. Well, an A is perfect. Are you willing to work for perfection? Are you willing to align your thoughts, your mind, your spirit, everything you do? Are you willing to align everything with being perfect, with being the best, with being one of the smartest students in the class? Are you willing to align yourself with that and the responsibility of that? Then one kid might kind of get scared and go, well, Jesus, okay. Now that you put it that way, maybe I'm more like a B, right? You go to the next kid and say, hey man, to get an A, it's going to take a lot of reading. It's going to take a lot of time. I know that you love to play basketball. I know you love hanging out with your girlfriend on the weekend.

And then the kid might be like, okay, I'm kind of cool with a B, right? And that's how you start to get to logical and rational answers rather than somebody saying, no, no, I'm going to be an A. And somebody who's rational and reasonable and somebody who wants to be a go-getter, they're saying, you know what? I still want that A. I still want to have the best grade in the class. That's my goal. And I want to do it in math. I want to do it in science. And you're going to have a lot of people like that. But it's also good for people to understand it's okay to have other things that you want to be But it's also good for people to understand it's okay to have other things that you want to be involved in. If you want to be popular in school and you want

to play football and you want to be on the wrestling team and you want to do all these different things, it might be, it's not that it's impossible, but it might not be the most rational thing to have straight A's and everything. And when you think about your new year's resolutions, that's what you want to put down on paper. You want to start to think about what do I want? What do I want from this year? Not do I want, what do I want forever? What do I want for this year? Like for this upcoming year, maybe it's your goal to meet somebody that you have a good time with. That's, you know, that's, um, somebody that could potentially be a partner of yours down the road. Right. But maybe you're not looking for someone to get married because maybe you're not currently

in a relationship. Maybe that's too much of a stretch. Maybe your goal in, uh, 2019 is, is to not necessarily become a millionaire because you're not within range of any of that. It doesn't really make sense. You don't have an invention in your back pocket. You don't have a book that you wrote. You don't have a lottery ticket. You don't have something that makes sense for you to do that. But you just say, I want to work my way towards financial freedom in 2019.

I want to not worry about 300 bucks. I want to not worry about if my car breaks down, it's going to be a huge hit to me and my family. Those are things that you're probably, you know, you're, that are probably well within range that you can have as a goal. And then also too, what about more, what about more general goals? more, what about more general goals? 2019, I want to be better at this. And then also aligning things to go along with that. 2019, I want to be a better communicator. In 2019, I want to, you know what? I didn't read any books last year and I promised myself I would. So now

I'm going to commit. I want to read, set the bar really low so that you knock it out of the park. Give yourself that underhand pitch so you can knock that son of a bitch out of the park. Say, I want to read three books next year. And when you read three books in one month, then you can celebrate and be like, wow, okay, I got to change my New Year's resolution. You can already have done it early in the year. I want to lose 10 pounds. Last year, I was unsuccessful with this. Stack it up against things you've early in the year. I want to lose 10 pounds. Last year, I was unsuccessful with this. Stack it up against things you've done in the past. Stack it up against your failure.

Stack it up against things that you've missed in the past. And say, one of my things I want to do is I want to make sure that I don't do that again. I want to make sure that I'm better than that, than I was last time when that came around came around last year I wasn't able to increase my deadlift at all so this year I want to try to increase my deadlift by 10 pounds there's so many different things that you can kind of run through but it all kind of starts around and it's not even Christmas time it's part of the part of the reason why I made Operation Get Less Fatter and I started it way back around Halloweenlloween that's when the cascade of problems start to uh start to happen is because everyone's mind starts to drift you're like oh

halloween's here and as we know when halloween's coming that candy's coming out and we know the turkeys are coming out we know thanksgiving's going to happen and we know what follows that we got thanksgiving we got christmas got new year's this giant trap. A lot of people end up, end up gaining four, five, six, seven pounds every year. They might lose two or three because it might be some water weight or something, but sometimes they end up holding onto that body weight and it happens year after year after year. And you end up spinning your tires and you end up in the same spot as you have before. You guys heard me talk about cutting corners. You keep cutting a corner, cutting a corner, cutting a corner, cutting a corner, and you have a lot of activity. You have a lot of movement, but without any productivity,

you didn't actually accomplish anything. You didn't actually do anything. You went in a circle so many times that you're dizzy from it. And all you can do is sit down and relax. What's a good example of an unhealthy resolution or something that someone, you know, when you say, uh, people talk about what they're not going to do. Yeah. And that would just be things that are just, just too much of a reach 2019. I'm going to lose a hundred pounds, you know, like, yes, you can lose 100 pounds in a year, but it's not wise to put yourself through that much stress. Maybe in the back of your mind, you're still thinking big. You're still thinking that you want to do something big.

But I think these are things that you want to have happen for sure. These are a little different than dreams and goals. This is stuff that you're kind of promising to yourself and you want to make sure that it happens. And so I think the most reassuring thing is to pick stuff that's very reasonable, that's well within reach. And you can say, you know, here's what I'd like. I'd like to be able to lose, you know, 25 pounds in 2019. And that doesn't mean that you can't lose more. I would like to, uh, you know, I'd like to increase my salary by, you know, by 20 grand, by 10 grand. It doesn't mean that you can't do more than that. It just means that that's part

of your New Year's resolution that you want to at least do that. And so I think that that would be a good place to start and to try to make sure that these are things that are, um, there are things that you can do. Remember, I just talked about the grade that you want. If you start thinking about what do you want? Okay. That's cool that you want that, but then you need to ask yourself, do you have what it takes to get it? Do you really truly have what it takes to get it? Because that's where you're going to get hurt. And that's where you're going to get messed up is when you can't figure out how to get it. So do you have a history of at least showing that you could align a series of segments, a series of thoughts, a series of feelings towards

achieving this particular thing? You have a goal in 2019. You want to get on a bodybuilding stage. Have you ever once shown that you can drop 10 pounds? You've ever shown one time that you could be physically fit, that you could be in good shape. Have you ever showed some of these things before? If you've never shown some of these things before, if you've never shown that you possess the ability to get better in this way, then maybe you're not going to be able to hold on to that. Maybe that's not going to be something that's going to actually happen for you in that year. And I like what you've said in the past,

and this is like a true gem. I don't even really want to admit that we do this, but if you do have a goal of, let's say it's 50 pounds that you want to lose next year, and you just start doing it without telling anybody, and somebody asks, and they're just like, man like man you look great what have you been doing oh you know just what i'm working on this uh get less fatterest and then now i'm reading the war on carbs and you just start you you start just putting stuff in motion like oh well what are your goals like oh you know i'm gonna probably aim for about losing 20 pounds this year we'll

see how it goes and then all of a sudden you you just break right through 20 pounds. Right. And it's because you were already doing, you were already aiming that way before you told anybody. And so by the time they figure it out, it's already too late. Like you're, you're, you're already a different person by then. And then they're looking at you like, what the heck did you do? And you know, it, it kind of, for me, I think it gets rid of some of those negative thoughts you have in your head. Like if you were to tell somebody, yeah, I plan on losing 50 pounds this year, you already start thinking like, oh, they're going to, they're going to doubt me or no one's going to believe me. They're going to make fun of me. But if you just start doing it, you kind of take the power away from them, uh, from, you know, doubting you. And then the next

thing you know, it's like you already accomplished and you're just, you shocked the world. Yeah. They're like, they're like, wait, you wait. They're like, when did you start the diet? And you're like, I started like about four months ago. Yeah. Like, and you already lost 20 pounds. They're like confused. Like, wait, what, what happened? Where was I? Yeah. Hey man, I don't know where you were, but it happened. Yeah. Well, I mean, you say we were probably going to maybe do something for new year's like, yeah, I don't know where you were, but it happened. Yeah. Well, I mean, you say we were probably going to maybe do something for New Year's. Like, yeah, I started in October. You know, and I know that's like, if you didn't start back then, it's kind of like, well, what am I going to do now?

It's like, well, you can say like, I don't know, come summertime, you're going to be, I don't know, you're just going to be a healthier person. Right. And chances are the people who you're going to surprise, they're not going to get started because it's hard, right? Like if you want to do something great, you got to work hard for it. Yeah, right. And a lot of people can relate to this. Like, have you ever read something and maybe it didn't affect you that much the first time you read it? Or have you ever listened to an audio book or listened to a speech from somebody?

Maybe somebody shares a speech with you and you listen to it and you're like, oh, that was pretty cool. And then maybe like three months go by and you're like, oh, I think somebody said that in that speech that one time. Let me go back and look at that. And you watch it again and something just knocks you in the brain the right way and your brain's just humming. And it's like, wow, why is it so different this time around?

It's not because you found, so people will say, oh man, when I reread that book, I found all this new stuff. That's actually not true. And this is actually the reason why people like my dad read the Bible until the day they die. It's because you continue to change the person. So you continue to see things differently it's not that there's new material in there all of a sudden it's not like you're reading a different version of the

bible out of nowhere you're not reading version 2.0 or whatever it's um it's because you became a different person you have different perspective on things and now these things have really popped up something i heard the other day too about education and and this man like how sweet would this be if on you know maybe not even day one of school but every day of day one of school from the time that you're uh from the time you're in kindergarten to the time you leave school they should tell you this and have you repeat this forever, basically. Education comes from a Latin word, educo, which means to come from within. And so this entire time, I've been getting shit taught to me that doesn't come from within, and I've been resistant to it, and I thought I was stupid, and I thought I was dumb. And it's like, well, if this is a definition

of education that is supposed to come from within, then how else am I ever supposed to learn it unless I find out for myself what I like to even learn? So it's like, I don't really know how the education would change, the education system would change based off of that. But wouldn't that be a really cool thing to know as a really young child? I don't think that, no one's ever told me that before.

I've never learned that before. Imagine if they tell you in first grade, they tell you in second grade, they tell you in third grade, fourth grade comes around and you're starting to finally figure things out for yourself. And now you're like, oh, OK, so that's why I don't like science that much. But I love history. Yeah, you know what, Mark? That is cool that you love history. Maybe you should pick a couple things that go along with learning more about history so you can kind of pursue some of that and you can kind of angle your education towards

some of the things that come from within, some of the things that are actually hitting you, some of the things that are actually making sense to you, because a lot of this other stuff just isn't adding up. And I just thought to myself, I was like, wow, that's really powerful. And then when I thought about nutrition and when I thought about training, I'm like, okay, now I get it. I'm preaching to people and I'm trying to educate people about a topic that's not coming from within. It's not coming from within them. So how do I make them feel it? Well, the way I make them feel it is by having a free gym,

by having free content, by having free information, by being inviting, by not being a dick, by trying to tell you, hey man, come to Super Training Gym, 855 Riverside Parkway, every Saturday and Sunday, West Sacramento, California, every Saturday and Sunday, we take people in for free. You can come in here and train. We're open from like around nine o'clock until about one. Every Saturday and Sunday, the gym is free. All that we ask you to do is to hit us up in the DM or email us. It's at supertraininggym on Instagram. Let us know that you want to come.

Don't be a coward. Don't sit in the parking lot and then leave. Actually come inside the doors and come meet us and come actually train with us and start to become part of the system, which is going to ultimately come from you. It's ultimately going to come from within. It's not going to come necessarily from something I say

or from something Andrew says. It has to ultimately come from you. It's ultimately going to come from within. It's not going to come necessarily from something I say or from something Andrew says. It has to ultimately come from you. And when it starts to come from you, that's when you're going to do exactly what Andrew said. You're going to be ahead of the curve. You're going to already have lost 20 pounds because you sought out the information yourself. You read that book yourself. You read that book from Mark Sisson or The War on Carbs from Me or whoever's book that you picked up about diet. You related to that. You absorbed that information. You understood it.

And you went out there and you actually applied it. Educo. That's pretty cool. I didn't know that either. I was never told that. School is stupid. Yeah. School is pretty dumb.

Man, wouldn't that have been nice to know that? You know, and I there's something I know that, you know, and I, there's something I learned in, um, you know, the weird shit I've learned in professional wrestling could be a book, but, uh,

so there was a match and, uh, here we go this way. Yeah. Uh, man. So there's a match and, uh,

this is back in the, uh, hardcore wrestling days, the WWE for a time period. So, man, I got to go way back. Okay, so here we go. All right, all right. I got myself straight.

I'm getting excited because I love all this stuff. But like, so Seth Rollins came on here and he talked about backyard wrestling. Backyard wrestling gained popularity and it was already kind of happening and coinciding with ECW, which happened in, uh, in, uh, Philadelphia, um, in the Philadelphia area. And, uh, it's was started by a guy named Paul Heyman, who we saw Paul Heyman on Monday night

raw. And we saw what a talent he was and how creative he is on the microphone. He was absolutely fantastic. How much better he was on the microphone than everybody else was absolutely insane. Absolutely ridiculous. This guy knows how to get a following. This guy knows how to get people fired up for wrestling. So he started what was called ECW extreme, uh, extreme professional wrestling, uh, or I'm sorry, extreme championship, ECW. So now some 25 years later, when Paul Heyman goes to speak, uh, at a WWE event, the crowd yells ECW, ECW, ECW every single time.

Uh, this extreme championship wrestling kind of spawned people to whack each other over the head with chairs to, uh, light tables on fire and put themselves through the table or put each other through the table or put each other through the table hit each other with two by fours have matches that were hardcore matches the WWE at the time actually tried to rival what ECW was doing because it was impacting the reviews because ECW was on TV as well and Vince McMahon introduced the hardcore title. And the hardcore title can be won or lost anywhere at any time. So Seth Rollins was talking about traveling around with the briefcase for the money in the bank thing.

The hardcore title was won at gas stations. It was won in the mall. It was won in the mall. It was one in the airport. Like there was one guy like waiting for his luggage. And you know, the luggage comes down that chute. Well, another wrestler came down that chute and attacked the guy with the belt and pinned him and like won the belt like in the airport and all this stuff. So people are hitting each other with all these things. And that influence and impact impacted a lot of wrestling and it impacted the wrestling that i was involved with so

uh at the shows that i did a lot of guys would get involved with hitting hitting each other with chairs and they would do these huge stunts to try to get fans excited because well now you know the ante was upped a ton you couldn't just uh go in there and uh put somebody in a sharpshooter and and hope the crowd got excited over that they're they just weren't excited by that anymore you had to whack somebody over the head with a chair or or do something crazy and so there was a match in the upw ultimate pro wrestling where i met this guy not jesus christ but john, where my brother and I got him involved in wrestling.

And there was this match going on, and one guy, like, there's stuff by the ringside to hit each other with. But you don't hit each other with everything. You only hit each other with shit that you can actually hit each other with. And if anybody knows anything about wrestling, when somebody goes to hit you with something that you can't be hit with, you have to block them from doing so. So if somebody was to run at me with like an office chair, I would kick them in the stomach because, and I would actually kick them in the stomach because maybe they don't understand that they, they, they're not supposed to hit me with that. They're just in the moment. If they're green and they

don't know what they're doing, they might think it's okay oh i've seen you get i've seen people get hit with chairs on tv before we can just use any old chair no you need a folding chair to do that and it makes a loud noise and yes it does hurt but it it makes a louder noise uh than anything you know and so anyway in this match that was going on in upw, a guy picked up a really long light bulb and whacked the other guy over the head with it in the ring. And so now there's shattered glass everywhere. And they pin each other and he gets on top of the other guy. And now both of them have shards of glass in them. There's shards of glass everywhere, all around ringside.

There's shards of glass everywhere all around ringside there's shards of glass uh in the ring and i remember when they got backstage and they started fighting about it and everyone started getting all aggressive and like it almost made the whole locker room fight which is actually really funny one of the guys who was a senior wrestler at the time he said hey look you don't you only know something you know like these guys aren't stupid they, you only know something. These guys aren't stupid. You only know something when you're taught it. And that was a huge lesson for me. I was like, wow, that is so true.

As dumb as that was, that's actually a true statement. You don't know anything until someone teaches it to you. So a lot of times when we're trying to promote fitness and we're trying to say, hey, you should abstain from these certain foods, or you should work out this way. We kind of take it for granted and just think like you should know it, but you only know the things that you've been taught. And this idea of educo and, uh, having education come from within was something that I just recently learned. And I figured I was like, man, there's no question. I'm going to share that on the podcast because that makes a lot of sense. And I, I need to, uh, share that with a lot of other people.

And so, you know, back to this kind of topic of, uh, Christmas, you know, some of you guys are, are watching, uh, on, uh, YouTube and some of you guys are watching on Instagram. Give us some comments on some things that you guys face during the holidays that are too hard to handle, whether it's, uh, you know, worthless family members or whether it's, uh, you know, trying to figure out how to abstain from, uh, all these, uh, yummy foods that are going to be around. We can give you some advice. We already threw out a little bit of advice, but, um, you know, what I think is a good idea is to try to figure out when are you going to cash in on some of these cheats. I just think it's something that you should, if you just think about it ahead of time, you could probably make some sense of it. You don't have to go crazy for the next 10 days.

You can go crazy on Christmas Day and maybe you can go crazy on New Year's Eve. Just be reasonable. Be be reasonable you're drinking and you know this is going to sound like a corny message but you know there's so many there's there's uber there's so many things do not you know do not drink and do not i mean it's just we're if you have to leave your car somewhere it just it just makes so much like nowadays there's absolutely no excuse. You can, you can Uber your way home and you can Uber your ass back to your car in the morning when you're sober. Yeah. Very well said.

What was, uh, Christmas like when you were a kid as far as like any traditions? Like, do you guys go to a certain place? So for, uh, Thanksgiving, you know, every year we always, uh, we always all got together as a big family and played football and we had the Turkey and I talked about the Turkey bowl and some of that stuff. And you guys seen my, uh, that video was made about mad dog. He made that trophy and the trophy was for the loser, which was pretty funny. But when it came to Christmas, um, it was a little similar to Thanksgiving where we didn't play football necessarily. Cause in New York, it was,

it was way too cold at that point to do much of anything but um my parents grew up down the street from each other so we would go to my grandmother's house um on my mom's side of the family first and then we would go to and that's their last name is Finch and then we would go to my dad's side of the family uh which their last name is Bell and uh we'd hang to my dad's side of the family, uh, which their last name is bell. And, we'd hang out over there. And so it was amazing because my mom grew up in a huge family. Um,

and so did my dad, my, my mom's family. Uh, I think they had nine children and I think my dad's family had nine children as well. So I had tons of aunts and uncles and then my aunts and uncles all had kids. And so there's just tons of kids running around and just, it was just, uh, man, you want to talk about getting loaded up with presents. It was absolutely insane.

I'd go to my mom's, my mom's, I'd go to my grandmother's house on my mom's side of the family and they would, uh, load me up with Christmas presents, but also my birthday is the 10th. And so like my birthday's like strategically just in the right spot to where I can't get shafted with, hey, you know, I gave you a Christmas, you know, they still had to give me two separate ones because they were far enough apart. But a lot of family members wouldn't give me the present until I saw them at Christmas.

So they say, yeah, here's your birthday present. Here's your Christmas present. So now, um, you know, seeing my aunt and I'm seeing my uncle and I'm seeing this person, that person and my grandma and this person, and we're just like loading up and loading up and loading up. Like we need like semi trucks to come, you know, with all these damn, you know, gifts that are, uh, uh, coming my way. Plus on top of that, I was the youngest person in the entire family for like 10, 15 years or something like that until my cousin Kyle came along who has actually come here and lifted with us,

which was pretty cool. But yeah, until he came along, I was the youngest. So like I always got spoiled. I got just so much, my brothers were always like making fun of me and my brothers, I think both my brothers always thought i was gonna become a big pussy because i was always so coddled and always so um and i i was uh i mean i i could i could cry at the

drop of a hat pretty much but uh you know i i got a lot of gifts uh thrown my way i just remember being a lot of fun too i remember going to um both sides of the family were a lot of fun but i remember going to my dad's uh my grandfather and and grandmother's house on my dad's side and uh them having the fireplace on and we were always outside trying to do something but late december in new york it was just really really freaking cold and uh we'd all come in with tons of snot running off her face because you know for some reason little kids have like endless supply of snot yeah and like just totally oblivious that it's there it's like you want to get that please

because i it's almost on me at this point yeah it's all over like it's all around your nose and it's all stuff like dripping out of your, and your nose stuff is dripping into your mouth. It's all, this is, like, one disgusting. That gave me the chills. So everyone would get so sick, too. Like, every year, somebody would get, like, violently ill because one little kid was sick, and it just set everybody else off. But it was fun, and I remember my grandparents' house, they had the fire going and it was all warm in there. And I'd come in and you'd take some of your stuff off from outside and you'd be just drenched in sweat.

Yeah. Because you're so loaded up with wearing so much crap outside and you were getting warm out there because you were playing and making snowmen and like doing all, throwing, you know, snowballs at each other and shit like that. Doing all kinds of crazy stuff. And then by the time you come in, it's like 5,000 degrees in my grandmother's house and you're just dying. Part of the reason why I wear shorts this day is like all growing up anywhere you go in New York. Yes.

It's, it's absolutely freezing outside, but anytime you went inside somewhere, it's so hot. It's like well beyond room temperature. It's like 75, 80 degrees. And you're like, man, I'm dying over here. Yeah. We don't have that experience here in California because most houses do have fireplaces. But unfortunately, most of them are like gas or whatever.

And they don't put out like actual heat, like a real fireplace. How about that family member's house that you go to that you know is a million degrees that you have to like prep yourself for? You're like, oh, man, this can be a long one. Yeah. For us, it was the opposite because my dad never turned on the heater so everyone that's your house is really cold that's rough my house my house is always really cold and like i it's funny because it's not anything about like being cheap but like i don't really love the way the heat feels i don't the air conditioning i'll crank that thing all day but i don't really love the way the heat feels kind of dries me out and stuff like that so so it's on but it's like it's got to be like sub-zero in there it's freezing in there sometimes yeah no you like it cold i'm always

like why and i'm i'm questioning it but i'm the one that's like messing with the thermostat all the time like why in the fuck is it so cold in here yeah for us we used to just like um during the daytime it was always i mean being mexican we have cousins forever right so there was always like a good amount of that was racist well shit i lived it so i can say it you know we were all about this can say it nowadays i think it was still racist that's true i offended a lot of people you offended yourself god i'm gonna have to write myself a letter see tell me tell myself how offended i am of myself tell yourself that you can't uh speak on the academy awards right yeah uh kevin hart come on but anyway a couple

gay jokes right yeah i don't even want to bother but no we would play football in the street all day long until it got dark and then we'd play madden on on play like playstation we'd have tournaments these gigantic tournaments like we're out in the street you were randy moss and then when you got inside you were randy moss essentially yeah it was it was so much fun but i mean it's just remember randy moss and Culpepper? Totally unstoppable in Madden football. Were you around for that era? Yeah, no, absolutely. I'm just trying to think who was...

You could just roll out with Dante Culpepper all day and throw bombs. I mean, you just couldn't cover Randy Moss. Yeah, I was almost always the Buccaneers, though. Mike Allstott, work done. Oh, yeah. Yeah, and then that defense was insane. Rondé Barber, John Lynch. Brooks, Derek

Brooks. I believe they had... Warren Sapp. Yeah, they had Sapp and... No, yeah, that's who it was. I was going to say Simeon Rice, but they might have even had him. I don't remember. I know that there's a story about Warren Sapp when he was playing high school football. He was just killing everybody

like he was just an absolute mutant and he was faster than everybody he was bigger than everybody no one could stop him no one could block him no one could do anything something happened in a game and he probably played both ways maybe it was a tight end he went to catch the ball and he just got lit up he just got he got killed and not only to get killed but. He went to catch the ball and he just got lit up. He got killed. And not only did he get killed, but the ball flew up in the air and the guy that smashed him caught the ball and then ran it back for a touchdown. And he's like,

who in the fuck is that guy? And it was Derek Brooks who later became his teammate on the Buccaneers. But that guy was a savage. That guy doesn't get enough... Derek Brooks doesn't get enough credit. I remember when he was at Florida State that he, in the beginning of the year, Florida State was so dominant

that he had more points. He had more touchdowns than a lot of the opponents that they played against. By himself. Yeah, by himself. He would score, even if he took away all the other points a lot of the opponents that they played against, you know, it's like he by himself. Yeah. Yeah. By himself. Like he, he would score like, even if you took away all the other points that the Florida state scored,

um, they would still beat him with the amount of points that their linebacker put up, which doesn't make any sense. Yeah. But it was a mutant. It was a trip, man. Cause like,

I remember when we were kids, like all the aunts and uncles got together and it was usually at our house i don't i i just think it was more central but and then just as like it just kept happening it just kind of became like a little bit more tiring each time and then of course the family kept growing then it's like you know the kids have kids and shit now some kids kids have kids and it's like fuck you know it's a sad thing to deal with is when is when somebody dies or when like both people die uh of of the family who were the like elders of the family and and they're not there anymore and then it's like well where do we go now yeah like it's such tradition to go to this one spot you know you go to your grandma's house or

whatever it is and that's where you go every year for a decade or two decades and then maybe grandma gets sick and grandpa or whatever the scenario is now you can't go there anymore maybe because there's only one of them or maybe one of them's too old or too ill to really have everyone at the house or whatever happens and it's like well shit man now yeah now what do we do you got to try to re-figure that out and it's uh that happened in my family it was really hard to figure out you know my my grandfather uh my dad's dad was just like a rock star you know he's like five two if he's lucky but uh he was awesome to be around my grandmother was like the most amazing host ever she'd uh get you cookies and ice cream.

And like, she was just ridiculous. She'd be like, Mark, honey, you want a grilled cheese sandwich? Or you want, you want me to, uh, you know, she would just like, it was ridiculous. She'd make you anything at any time. And you didn't understand like, how, like, how are you able to do this? You got nine of your own kids. There's 5,000 grandkids running around here. This doesn't make any sense.

She's like, oh any sense she's like oh and she's like cooking meatballs on the stove and doing something else and she's like i could whip you up some pancakes real quick i'm like pancakes aren't real quick grandma like right don't sweat it don't worry about i'll have a cup of milk okay like but she would still go ahead and like make it for you and put it in front of you of course you'd smash it and it would be the best thing you've ever had yeah it'd be amazing yeah grandmothers do that i don't know how they have that skill they got that full court press going yeah because they always have like 13 things going on at once they're gonna hit you with something eventually like hey remember when i had 85 things going on and you

kind of mentioned you were hungry and i made you those pancakes. Now you have to help me out. Yeah. No, but they're going to get you for something. They're going to make you eat something. I don't know what that is. Right? Yeah, yeah. They're going to force feed something down your face no matter what you do.

Any memorable gifts from your childhood? Yeah, you know, I remember getting more like video games than anything. I got to get the video game lifestyle back somehow. I got to regain. We got that N64 here. We got to get that set up. That's a New Year's resolution for me to play more video games.

Hey, that's a great resolution. Another resolution that I have is really funny because it's the opposite of what you should do. But I told Andy the other day, I'm like, you know what? I'm just going to stop telling people when I'm coming to the gym and she's like well why not she's like why don't you come from at it from a different angle and just say like that you're gonna be on time and i was like because that's i was like that's way too i can't i can't figure that out oh man it's gonna be a fun year oh man she was laughing at me so hard she's like that's the funniest thing i've ever heard yeah she's like why don't you just commit to being on time i'm like i don't know

if i could figure that out some parts of it i can figure out but it just depends like if i have a day where i have to like there's days where i work on a bunch of different stuff and it's i could i could probably do a better job of organizing that. That would probably help. But I just go through, like, I'll work on like podcast stuff and then I'll work on like slingshot stuff. I might think about my own workout. I might think about your workout. I might think about helping my dad or somebody I've been texting back and forth that I'm helping, or it could be a million different things going on.

Sometimes it's the videos we shoot in here. Sometimes it's material for this podcast or guests for the podcast. By the time, a lot of times what happens is I'll go through this process of going over some of these things, but a lot of this stuff is also, uh, there's a creativity factor to it. And I've learned that you cannot, well, maybe you can, but it's not a wise move for me to put a time cap on creativity or to put anything on creativity. Like creativity is like, it could be just completely wild and irrational thoughts. And I'll try to get them

down on paper and I'll try to look at them and I'll try to make sense of them. You know, like, I'll try to get them down on paper and I'll try to look at them and I'll try to make sense of them. You know, like maybe I think of like, hey, what if I joined forces with this person? Or what if I met up with this person? Or what if what if I had this person fly to super training gym? Or what if we did something cool for a guest or a friend that we've had here in the past? Or what if we did something really cool for the fans or like? And so those things, unfortunately, they just, they take a lot of time. And, uh, in talking to my brother today, uh, about, you know, our movie stuff that we have going on, he's like, man, he's like, sometimes I'll be working on that thing for hours.

And you know what? He's like, I won't get much done. And I'm like, that's okay though. That's, that's the creative process is that way. Um, sometimes nothing comes out. You just are thinking and thinking and like nothing that great comes out. The weird thing is that the second that you go to do something else is when your mind kicks back up and you're like, oh man, this is perfect for this.

We got to do it this way. And so, um, and for, for a lot of those reasons, you have to kind of like do some other shit to get your brain to kind of kick in the right direction yeah and then you kind of think like oh I should have just did this you know two hours ago but you might not have been able to actually reach that point unless you kind of did drag through the mud for a little while

so that way when you did switch over your brain you know kind of clicked you gotta drag your fat little feet I'd love to get like a regular nintendo system just like you know i just want to i just want to play some freaking punch out and shit like yeah like i love that stuff yeah man we can probably mario brothers we can build one i know they have like the the mini nes systems and stuff but i don't i don't know if they're any good i'm just gonna go to go buy one. That's it. Today, I'm going to go buy one. We're going to figure it out

because we got to at least play some video games in here. I did get Worms, the video game. You had it coming. I'll get you. God, I love that game. It's so much fun. I still got to bring it in. Maybe I'll bring it in Friday.

Yeah, that was a great game. I love a strategy game like that is fantastic. But going back to some memories and stuff, I remember we'd play games and stuff like that. What I remember the most from the holidays is just hearing people just laugh. My family getting together. And just like any other family, you know, like my family getting together and like, just like any other family, like there's always like, you know, there's something always happens. There's always some sort of controversy or, you know, you guys know my brother's past. So like

a lot of his shit was like kind of part of our holiday stuff as well. Um, and we have other family members that have had, you know, uh, multiple issues or whatever. There's always like family drama, right? But aside from that, I just remember like, you know, somebody telling a joke and then just everyone's laughing their ass off or, um, you know, one of the kids, uh, you know, is into football or one of the kids is into this or into that and they share something with everybody and everybody gets a real kick out of it. So, I mean, I, I was really, I feel like really blessed that I was, uh, part of the family that got together, you know, and, and I don't know, I don't know who the driving force behind that was, but that was always really cool that we all got together that way. And I'm still very fortunate because we, like, I, it's fun to, like, get together in smaller groups from time to time.

But it's really wonderful to have, you know, 30, 40, 50 people get together. It's amazing. And maybe that way you don't get to maybe share as much time with everybody. But there is something that's kind of cool about it when it's, like, your, you know, second cousin, your aunt, and your, like, all these people that you just normally don't see come out of the woodwork for that one day and you get to see everybody. It's kind of cool. Yeah. And just especially now with like what I've been up to lately, it would be pretty cool. But I, man, we have, you know, multiple families, multiple houses to get to. So like, and we celebrate on Christmas Eve, you know, we kind of get it over with. And then Christmas Day, everyone just kind of chills at home. So it's always a mad dash to get to everyone's house.

And we never really have time for everything. So it's a little different. It's tough. But we make it work. I talked to a guy at Phil's yesterday. He said he had five different parties to go to. yesterday he said he had five different parties to go to because his his like biological dad remarried twice and he has like three moms something wild like that and then his his uh girlfriend's situation is similar so they had to pop all over this all these other spots i was like

wow thankfully we're not that bad but it but it's a bummer that everyone's not close. So we have a 40-minute drive in between each house. So half the day is spent in the car, which is a bummer. That was cool about going to my grandparents' house when I was a kid, is that they were

40 minutes away, but they lived down the street from each other. So we had to drive where I grew up, was about 40 minutes away but they lived down the street from each other so like we had to drive where my where i grew up was about 40 minutes away from where my grandparents both my both sets of my grandparents lived but then my mom and dad they grew up down the street from each other because my dad winked at my mom on the bus when she was like 13 and he was like 15 or whatever and there you go and sheldon with the moves i was gonna say dang got all the game i know just a just a quick little wink yeah anyway uh you know like i said we're at 855 riverside parkway we're suite number 10 we have a store in here so you can come check

out our store we got slingshots. We got protein powder. We got Keto Pro. We got the War on Carbs book. We got knee sleeves. We got wrist wraps. We got everything that you see at markbellslingshot.com and more. We have it all here at our store. In addition to that, we got some stuff coming up.

Don't we, Andrew? We got the LA Fit. When's LA Fit Expo? Are you going to that? I don't know if I'm going to that. You shouldn't be invited. If I am invited, I just got uninvited. We got to start uninviting you to stuff. Hey, I mean, whatever. You do what you got to do. Your bench press is getting too big. We got to start to slow you down somehow. We got to figure out a way to contain all this. We're going to do a five by five today, buddy. I'm pretty excited for that. I'm actually

going to stick to it too. A lot of times I say that and we don't do a 5x5, but we're going to do a 5x5. Yeah, so LA Fit Expo is on January 11th. No, wait. Hold on. Is that right? No, that can't be right. It's a shipping deadline. No, that's not it.

My bad. Sorry, it's on the 26th of January. So that's a ways out. Yeah, so we're going to be at the LA Fit Expo January 26th and 27th. Hopefully this year I'll be there both days. Last year I wasn't able to commit to being there both days. We're working on some stuff with the podcast. We're working on Jocko Willink.

If you guys got some contacts towards him, that would be cool. We have some hookups, so hopefully we can make some contact with him. We're working on doing something with Christian Guzman, who I know a lot of you are aware of because he's very famous in the fitness industry. Working on doing more stuff with Team Fristella out there at First Form Nutrition. Just putting the pieces of the puzzle together. And I'm super excited. We're about eight weeks out from the Super Training Classic, which is February 9th and 10th. On the 10th, I believe we'll have Jay Cutler. I apologize that this has not been officially confirmed yet.

We've been working on his schedule. He's got a very taxing schedule, so we are doing our best to work on that. I've also been in communication with Ed Milet, who some of you may know. He's real popular on Instagram. A lot of great motivational information along with business information. I've also been communicating with a lot of other people that you guys are going to be super pumped about. So I'm just I'm really fired up and excited about that. And the super training classic, you know, I think it's going to be a lot of fun.

I'm going to I'm going to lift in the meet right now. It kind of looks like I'm just going to bench press, but I guess we'll see. I feel healthy enough to do to enough to deadlift as well. My worry is that I'll get excited and want to go too heavy and then totally fuck myself up. So I may bench and deadlift just so that Andrew bench and deadlifts as well. But we'll kind of see. I mean, I might as well just commit to it and do both.

But bench strength is feeling good. In my head, I'm thinking I might as well just commit to it and do both, but, um, bench strength is feeling good. Um, in my head, I'm thinking, you know, I might need all three attempts to figure out how to bench 500 pounds. Cause that's a short window. Um, if the 500 pounds is there, then that's cool. And, uh, if I am able to do it on a second attempt, then I might throw a slingshot on and get another bench in. There you go. So we'll kind of, we'll kind of of see um andrew has benched 225 in the gym i think it'd be really cool if you're able to do about 235 on the platform with a pause

that would be that would be huge yeah that would be huge and even if you could walk away with uh really anything about anything above uh 220 pounds or so would be huge with the paws in a meet. Never done one before, so that'd be sick. Yeah. I'm just thinking, like, logistically, how is it going to work for me? We got to take photos, and then I think we're doing some podcasting too. You'll be fine. Because people keep asking me, and I'm like, you know, I haven't figured it out yet.

Yeah. You'll be fine. I think we may have nixed some of the podcast stuff. Okay. I think I've seen you do more. you'll be fine i think we may have nixed some of the podcast stuff okay i think i think uh yeah i i've seen you do i've seen you do more you know if i if i haven't seen you do it before then i'd be like oh man i don't know how andrew's gonna survive that but andrew has this weird ability of being in two places at once he hasn't shared it with everybody yet because he's kind of

got like a proprietary thing going i think he's gonna wait till he's got any he's kind of got like a proprietary thing going. I think he's going to wait till he's got any, he's got some side stuff going on with Elon Musk that I was not supposed to say anything. Waiting for the patent before we can say anything. And even then, I probably won't be able to. I apologize for letting the bag out of the cat. Ah, you know, we won't get into what PETA just recently said. They don't want people to use

like animal like whatever that saying just was oh they like don't oh the cat out of the bag yeah like and don't beat a dead horse they say don't feed a fed horse oh yeah yeah yeah it's so stupid yeah uh but i don't mean to beat a dead what a weird i just what a weird what like what i was thinking is a lot of these sayings are really weird anyway but i would think that they would totally co-sign with don't beat a dead horse because the horse is already dead you don't need to be more cruel to it yeah so i think they missed the yeah i was trying to figure out another saying anyway yeah i'd be pretty stoked to try to test the strength on the platform i was yeah somebody had reached out i'm like you know i gotta figure out

like because there's one thing to be like a little nervous and excited uh to just go to the event to take pictures and podcasts or you know interview people whatever but it's like i gotta do that and then figure out how to test my strength on the platform it It's like a couple things got to fall into place, but at the same time, maybe that takes some of the pressure off of actually hitting the platform. That's true. Also, when you're opening up those gifts,

if you end up getting a Slingshot gift, you end up getting something from markbellslingshot.com, tag me, at Mark Smelly Bell on Instagram, throw it up on your IG story and I'm going to share that on my Instagram so that would be kind of cool I already got some people that

that sent me some stuff and they're super pumped and like that's just a weird some of the stuff sometimes it's like these weird things that I never imagined or thought but like the fact that a slingshot is going to be underneath

somebody's Christmas tree and it's going to make somebody pumped and excited and it's going to help underneath somebody's Christmas tree and it's going to make somebody pumped and excited and it's going to help their bench press for 2019 and years to come gets me fired up and excited. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later.