Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Project EP. 160 Live - End of the Year Wrap Up

Episode Date: December 28, 2018

This is it for Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast in 2018. Mark and Andrew will take a look back at the year that was and some of their favorite moments this year. Let us know some of your favorite moments! Thank you to all the fans that have stuck with us this year, we haven't made it super easy to find us, but you did and we are extremely grateful for it. Next year will be even Bigger, STronger and Faster. Peace! ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots ➢Subscribe Rate & Review on iTunes at: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-bells-power-project/id1341346059?mt=2 ➢Listen on Stitcher Here: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/mark-bells-power-project?refid=stpr ➢Listen on Google Play here: https://play.google.com/music/m/Izf6a3gudzyn66kf364qx34cctq?t=Mark_Bells_Power_Project ➢Listen on SoundCloud Here: https://soundcloud.com/markbellspowerproject FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell Follow The Power Project Podcast ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MarkBellsPowerProject Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz

I might be a little bit gassy. You might be a little bit gassy? Mm-hmm. Or you're going to be a lot of it gassy. Or maybe I should just say I'm gassy. That's what happens around the holidays when you start going off your diet, man. All hell breaks loose. Yeah.

Your stomach starts going crazy. I think it was maybe two days ago. Like, I ate good the whole day. I fasted. I kind of had a plan going into it and I knew I was going to eat some of my dad's. Uh, my dad makes a, uh, calls it Eskimo pie. It's basically what happened was, is on one Christmas, uh, in particular, my dad, uh, he, we all forgot dessert and like, we didn't have anything for dessert. And my dad's like,

ah, he's like, I'll go out and get something. We're like, everything's closed. And he's like, nah, I'll get it. Something will be open. He couldn't find anything open. And so he actually ended up finding a gas station that was open and he went in the gas station and he bought like, just like, I don't know, 30 ice cream sandwiches. And then he bought, bought um i think he got some vanilla ice cream and maybe some like cool whip or something like that i can't remember what the other thing was and chocolate syrup and so he made this he laid down uh the the ice cream sandwiches in a pan and they put ice cream on top of it and they put cool whip on top of that and he put the chocolate syrup on top and then we had a bunch of cookies there because it's christmas time

everyone always has cookies around he smashed up some cookies and threw that on top and and then he cut it up and he like you know served it up and it was amazing and so you know for from that point on we we had that eskimo pie served up to us. And so I've been a big fan of that and I knew I was going to eat that. And I knew I was going to be maybe a little reckless with some other stuff, but man, I pay the price the next day, my toilet paid the price. Like we got to figure out a way to reinforce that bad boy that, I mean, it's your stomach just gets killed. And when you're not used to it, back a few years ago or maybe you know pretty actually pretty long time ago for me but like maybe in well in the middle of my powerlifting

career like i ate a lot of whatever i wanted and i i guess i just didn't even really notice as much or maybe it just because the foods weren't so foreign to me i was probably more used to them and now you know andrew and i were talking earlier about how we're kind of screwed. Like this is a blessing and a curse to be in this fitness space and to be fired up about fitness and to kind of live under this code of honor. And you get these kind of like rules going for yourself. Like I'm going to train more days than I'm not. I'm going to eat really healthy.

I'm going to try to, you know, have 90%, 95% of my meals be like what I feel is, is the healthiest and best option for me now. And, uh, yeah, occasionally I'll let her rip, you know, once a month, once every other week, um, holiday, birthday, something, right. You got to kind of just, you may as well, somebody makes something special. right you got to kind of just you may as well somebody makes something special your aunt makes some special brownies every year or somebody makes uh tamales for example you're welcome by the way yeah those were delicious and so you kind of just you want to you want to do it you want to enjoy stuff with other people that's part of the celebration like let's face it the food is part

of the celebration it's definitely part of the entire thing. And so therefore, you know, you got to do it. But then there's also like a price to pay, right? Yeah, well, like what I was telling you earlier, it's sort of like we set the bar so high for ourselves, you know, for our mind and our body. So we train every day and now we're, you know, it's the analogy I gave you is like, if we take our kids to like Chuck E. Cheese every day, every night, right know it's it's uh the analogy i gave you is like if we take our kids to

like chucky cheese every day every night right like that's the standard and then it's like hey no we're gonna uh we're gonna make food at home tonight they're just like what yeah why right you dropped the ball on that one dad so yeah we're gonna have we're gonna have chicken vegetables and rice kids gonna be like what yeah yeah so so for us when it's like, okay, I'm going to eat good, whatever, for, I don't know, whatever, the whole summer, whatever it is. I just now eat good. That's what I do. I eat healthy. And then the one day that we go off and we drop the ball and, you know, the bar gets reset down low and it's like, oh dude, I feel terrible. Um, and the

conversation started up because over, uh, on Christmas, I didn't do anything. We just, we, Stephanie and I just stayed at home and kicked it. And I felt so bad yesterday. My back, my back was feeling worse than it's ever felt. And it was just, it was, it was depressing. It was, uh, it physically, it hurt. And it was all because I took one day off. People are really loving this topic. The, uh, people are all fired up in the messages over here. One guy mentioned balance. Another guy mentioned consistency. And, uh, both the guys are very there. You're right. I mean, if there's got to be kind of a balance between you trying to be a badass, you trying to be fit, you trying to be in shape, you trying to be strong. And you definitely need a lot.

You need to string together. Unfortunately, you need to string together quite a bit of consistency. I would say that maybe genetics can factor in there a little bit, but like you kind of you better be on point, you know, 85, 90% of the time for us to really start to see anything in somebody, if you're on point and you're training pretty hard and you're eating pretty good, but on a scale of one to 10, you're like a seven or six might not really see much progress. Like you might not, you might not really look like you lift like it sucks, but, uh, you know, I know a lot of high level powerlifters even that just because they haven't paid specific attention to their aesthetics and specific attention to their diet, some of them don't even really necessarily look like they lift. And to an untrained eye, to somebody that hasn't been lifting for a long time, or to, let's say, a little kid, the person might just look fat.

They might not have any cuts or definition they might not look like what that person's used to seeing when they see a leaner person yeah and somebody just had commented on the uh the ig live stream just saying like one cheat meal won't derail your progress and that's 100 true absolutely you know that's something i had to keep telling myself, which was kind of can though. Right. So it's a trap. I had to keep telling myself like, dude, okay, the last two days does not erase the whatever year of training and eating right has done. But it could have easily put me back on my ass again for the third day in a row and then ate bad for a third day in a row. And then, you know, who knows where that was going to lead. So it's like they say, it's a slippery slope. Yep, it's the old banana peel, right? And by the way, has anybody actually fallen and slipped on a banana peel, or is that just in the cartoons? For sure, in Mario Kart, it's devastating.

Yeah, I know I've tried it before, and it actually is slippery because you've got to try things out when you're a kid, just like you see Ric Flair giving somebody a figure four leg lock. And then next thing you know, your brother's horking you in the figure four leg lock or the camel clutch. And you got to see how painful it is. Yeah. But I don't know anybody that's actually like really wiped out. That's funny.

Be like, hey man, did you hear about so-and-so? I'm like, no, dude, what happened? Like, yeah, like Filipino Thunder, man. He came in here today but somebody like they didn't throw out the trash the right way and he slipped on a banana peel and he hasn't been in here for a month yeah he strained both or his uh groin yeah his groin is yeah just yeah he might not be back yeah he might not be back for a while damn r.i.p but uh you know on that topic of balance and and on this topic of this cheat meal

stuff. So I think that that at balancing things out is is a decent way to look at things. I like to use the word harmony, though, because I think that things should they should go in conjunction with each other. Things should align with each other a little bit better. So balance would maybe balance would imply, in my opinion, it would apply that things are like 50, 50 or 60, 40 here and there, and then they level back out again. Um, but in the case of fitness, in the case of being healthy, being healthy and being strong as a full-time job and being in the shape that you want to be in as a full-time job. And if you don't think so, try finding people that are happy with the physique that they have. Try finding people that are happy with the strength that they have. And I realize a lot of things go into that.

And a lot of people are just mentally kind of screwed up when it comes to that. But think about that. Think about your own journey. Think about how long you've been training for. And are you happy with your physique? Um, I myself just more recently, you know, going through that bodybuilding show and, and even kind of leveling out to like where I'm at now more recently have been more comfortable with my physique, more comfortable with my body. And I've actually, I actually am happy, uh, with, with my physique, but I just like everybody else, I still want to get better. I still want to be in better shape. I still like to be a leaner, healthier, stronger. I mean, who doesn't want these things,

right? We do want these things, but I think balance might not be a great way to look at it because we've tried to use balance as a marker in the past and say, yeah, you need a balanced diet. But it just has not worked. It has not been very been very effective now some people can have balance but i think it's very easy that when you once you implement some sort of balance once you implement some kind of carbohydrates and you say yes you can have this for a lot of people and i'm not saying everybody but for a lot of people once you say yes you can have carbs then it leads the person to have bread it leads the person to have this. It leads the person to have this, it leads the person to have that. And let's back things up a little bit. Bread is not a problem. Rice is not a problem. Um, potatoes are not a problem, but a lot of times these things are

transport systems for a lot more calories. Then we start blending, uh, fats and carbohydrates together. Fats and carbohydrates together do not magically make you fatter, but man, that's a dense caloric load to take in. I said load. That's a direct, that's a dense caloric load to handle for your body. Um, and shit, does it taste good? Now we got carbs and fat. That's ice cream. That's pizza. Like these are the, these are the best things, uh, that this planet pretty much has to offer. Cheeseburger with a real bun god damn those things are really good right you know the things that i actually i didn't take advantage of like i didn't fall completely off the rails i didn't have it uh like a hamburger with fries with the bread i didn't have pizza but what ended up happening and i think it's just as bad as like oh yeah i can have chicken and rice. Like, okay, cool. So I can have rice.

Oh, cool. So I can have a bunch of tamales. Okay, cool. I can follow it up with some cookies. Oh, okay. Well, I got a bunch of chocolates for Christmas. I'll just have a couple here and there. And it's like, by the end of the day, I'm like, oh my gosh, I had so much garbage today.

This attitude comes from performance. You know, you want to like, it's a real easy sell to yourself it's easy to like upsell yourself and say okay well yeah you had a sandwich and that was kind of off the diet but you didn't put that much mayonnaise on it you know you didn't put that much bullshit on it and so it wasn't that bad for you now you might as well have the uh with dinner because you're going to bench tomorrow. And then you got deadlifts later in the week and you might as well just go, you might as well just like, you know, it'd be, it wouldn't hurt you to have extra protein, extra fat, a little extra carbs.

I mean, it's not going to, so you just keep having this conversation with yourself. You're like Fred Flintstone back in the day in the, in the cartoons when he had, you know, the, uh, the angel on one side and the devil on the other, and the devil always outweighed all the thoughts because those were the easier things to do. Those were the more appealing things to do. And that's what happens to us. Next thing you know, we're knee deep in pizza

or chocolate or cookies or whatever it might be. And that's how I okayed it also. I was like, oh, well, we're gonna probably do some benching tomorrow. Like, no, I'm fine. I can eat a little bit more right now. And then it's like, ah, well, my weight's kind of going up. Let's see what happens if I keep doing this.

Keep this up. But, no, it just wasn't a good move. And, you know, one of the guys commenting about balance, you know, in his defense, you know, what he's trying to say, and he commented he commented on, on Instagram over here. Appreciate you guys commenting by the way, this, this really helps. Um, but he's, he's basically saying, you know, balance is subjective to the person and find something that is in balance with, uh, some of your goals and in balance with, uh, some of the things that you're trying to do that will allow you to build some consistency. And that I definitely agree with.

And that's why I kind of like the word harmony. I like the word align. I like things to align with your goals. I think, um, I think balance is a weird thing. People talk about like the work life balance and a work life balance is, is a, is a weird thing because, um, you could have, you could, you could not have any work to do and your work-life balance could be out of whack because if you don't have work,

you could be stressed that you don't have work and that could cause a lot of problems in your household. It could be pulling away from other things. So I personally just, I got this from listening to something from Jeff Bezos and I thought it was, I thought it was dynamite. I thought, you know, using the word harmony, kind of replacing the word balance was, was a good thing. Cause I don't think it's all that realistic for us to work towards.

Um, we were trying to, we're, you know, a normal, a normal job, a normal full-time job is 40 hours a week minimum. And I think in this day and age, I think that it's a safe bet to say that probably all of us work more than that, you know? So that's a lot of hours away from the family. And then how do you have balance with that? Um, that's where things get to be hard, hard. But if you kind of think about it, you want everything to kind of be in sync with each other. That's a little bit different because when Andrew's daughter is going, is getting education and when my kids are getting education, I'm here.

But when my kids get home, I'm home. It's not simultaneously all the time, but on the weekends, we try to work out a little bit earlier, get the workouts done. We're home by noon. The kids slept till 10, 11. It's not a big deal. Then we spend the whole rest of the day together maybe we all go see a movie maybe we all go to this maybe all go do that but

those are just some of the things that i i'm kind of uh starting to recognize and how do you have harmony during the holidays with your diet and with your fitness it's uh it's tough man i gotta say i've been like almost like just pissed at myself um kind of depressed in a way of of the just a simple just not even doing it just a thought of waking up at like seven on a day versus you know my normal routine of me waking up at like 3 45 or 4 15 or somewhere in there it pisses me off and like i, I didn't, I didn't do it today. I didn't wake up early today. I didn't wake up early yesterday. Christmas day was kind of the same thing. And it's like, it's so frustrating to me, but there's the other side

of me that says, dude, look, man, you're going to make yourself sick. If you don't get the proper, you went to bed later. So that's a rule that I have. If I go to bed later, I wake up later. I'm not going to force the 4am thing just to take a picture and post it on Instagram and act like that's an everyday thing. I wake up at 4am and I feel like I'm launched out of a cannon probably three or four days a week. It's not something that I have to do, but it's something that I like to do. And so that is something that's important for me to understand. I don't have to do it. I like to do it because if I feel like it helps me get ahead.

I wake up at about four. I usually have a cup of coffee or some water. I go in my hot tub. I get out of the hot tub. I usually go down to Starbucks for a little while. I hang out. I work. I come back.

I cook some breakfast for my kids. And that's my routine and that's what I like and that's what feels good to me. But there's also got to be another side to you that realizes like, look, man, all this stuff's not going to be possible to do all the time every day. There's going to be a point where you got to pump the brakes a little bit. You do need to relax. You do need to have time with your family. You do need to have some times where you're not really doing anything. Andrew mentioned to me that he just had a chill weekend and he got to spend some time with his fiance. That's awesome.

That's what the holidays are for. Yeah, it was really cool because, you know, unfortunately she kind of got a little sick. So we had some plans on Christmas Day. Just two gigantic Mexican families. We started Christmas on the 23rd so we had you know one Christmas that day and then Christmas Eve we had multiple Christmases and then we had another one on actual Christmas day and she just was she just was not feeling it so I'm just like babe like it's okay let's like when was the last time we just did nothing for a

day like you know let's just let's get you feeling better and let's like when was the last time we just did nothing for a day like you know let's just let's get you feeling better and let's chill out watch netflix hung out it was great and i was like oh this is gonna be so cool because i'm gonna be so rested i'm gonna probably pull like a big deadlift at the end of the week like this is gonna be amazing and then i woke up yesterday and i just like i told you i felt like I had a gigantic balloon like just inflated in my back. Like I couldn't move without being in it. It's spinal. It was terrible. Broke my back. Yeah, and I just, I got super depressed because I'm like, man, I did this to myself. You know, all I had to do was just move around, and I didn't even do that.

Now, who knows how long this is going to last, but a great bench session kind of got my mind right again. Moving around a little bit got my back right again, and today I feel way better. Thank goodness. Right. But, yeah, dude, just one freaking day of just chilling did so much. It was so detrimental.

It was terrible. It just kind of sets you off in the right in in the wrong motion you know sets you off in the wrong direction sometimes and then i think it's just a matter of okay like next time that situation comes up which would be new year's eve maybe maybe you guys celebrate and maybe you want to do something fun maybe you're like okay well i'm gonna allow i'm gonna give myself some slack, but I'm just gonna give myself a little bit less slack. I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna, you know, still train in the morning, or I'm gonna go for a walk, or I'm gonna go for a run, or, you know, maybe, you know, maybe you and Stephanie do something together workout-wise

that looks different than, you know, us coming in here and killing ourselves. It's something that you guys can do together. It's still fun. It's still a challenge. And you both benefit from it. And then you can spend the rest of the day doing nothing. Spend the rest of the day kind of dicking around because dicking around is important.

It's important to have time where you're not doing a whole lot. I've talked about that a bunch of different times on this podcast about how I'm not a big believer in quality time. I'm more, and obviously like I do believe in quality time. It's important, but I think it's quantity time, especially when it comes to family. Like you just have to be around each other.

A lot of times you'll hear, I don't want to be sexist, but a lot of times this does come from the female population to the males. And so they'll say, you're just not around enough. I want you around more. And guys are confused and like, huh? Like they don't, they don't get it. They don't understand.

And really what a lot of women are looking for is just for you to be there more. And they could say like, yeah, just want you here more. And you, you're kind of thinking to yourself in your head, like we don't even like some of the same TV shows. So like, what's the difference if I'm here or not? Cause we might be in different rooms, but that's not what matters. What matters is that you're there. Like they just want you to be there. And some, and that, I mean, I'm sure that could be said, uh, from male to female as well, but, uh, that's just my, my own personal, uh, my own personal experience. And that's a lot of times what these holidays are for. These holidays are to enjoy each other.

And I think for a lot of us, the food, the alcohol is a part of us all enjoying each other. But I just think that there does have to be a governor put on it a little bit. You do have to try to think about it like, okay, I'm going to encapsulate this moment. I'm going to be there from four to 6 PM at this party. And I'm going to just prepare yourself going into it. You know, my, uh, you know, me and my brother kind of talked about like which day we were going to eat, you know, uh, desserts or whatever, you know, and we were like,

well, let's not do it on this day. But like, let's not skip the holidays altogether. That would be rotten. Like that wouldn't be any fun. So Christmas Eve, we didn't eat anything bad. Christmas day, we ate some bad stuff. Yeah. Keep it simple. Try to find a slot. Try to find a space to where you can enjoy everything that everybody else is doing. But maybe just kind of, you know, keep a little bit of a lid on it so that you, your back doesn't hurt the next day or so that you don't feel like shit or say you don't not like me, like ended up on the toilet for four hours. Yeah. And I want to go back to what you're saying about, uh, quantity time over quality.

It's not that you're saying like, oh, just whatever, spend whatever time I can start out the window. But I mean, how, how many of us have tried to build that quality time where we we build this huge day up and this has happened to me where like one small thing will go wrong and the day's kind of ruined and then it's just like ah like shit like what was the point man like i took time off i spent all this money on this and that and now it's ruined we build so much pressure on trying to make the perfect day instead of just spending time with each other. You know, it's like if I took the effort to spread that out through like an entire month instead of one day, it's like one of those days is going to be way better than the one day that I tried to plan to make the, you know, the epic day of the year. Yeah, right. So it's like, let's spread it out and let's, like you said, spend more quantity over quality.

And chances are the quantity is going to end up being better than the actual quality day. Right. Like you might set up a trip to go to an amusement park or something. It's like, well, yeah, that's great. But that doesn't make up for not being there monday you know monday through monday every single every single week right and so that's the kind of stuff i'm talking about it's important just to like be around and kids are pretty simple like hey you

want to throw a ball around yeah okay like they all of a sudden they get pumped so that doesn't require really anything special that doesn't require really anything special that doesn't really require anything uh financial requires some time requires a little bit of thought um you know and they get fired up they get excited from that hey you want to go outside and like you know do something or hey you want to let me take you downtown somewhere and we'll we'll go for a walk or we'll go you know we'll go to a couple stores and you can buy some crap or whatever like you just think of something that you get out of the house and and do something take them to a movie or whatever but it doesn't have to be this like crazy fantastic uh this fantastic thing

there's a lot of people saying that they're pooping right now on the live stream yeah and i don't blame them don't blame them that's i mean if i if i had a toilet right here you know uh i would be i would be doing the same thing. That's fine. I'm trying to find it. Somebody had asked if queso dips helps build their triceps. I saw that, yeah. And I'd like to say that I have queso tattooed on my hand, and I work my triceps every day.

And so I think there is some correlation there. You got cheese permanently on your hands? Permanently, yes. That's amazing. Yeah, well. Now you're making me hungry. Well, it's because I'm a photographer. So instead of putting smile or cheese on there, I wrote it in Spanish because I'm Mexican.

Queso. Yeah, and I've never seen anybody else do that. So, yeah. I like it. Yeah. How was Christmas, though? Yeah, Christmas was great. You know, being able to give my dad that car was pretty awesome.

I bought him the previous car that he had. But that car, you know, that car lasted for a little while. But then it had just, I think it had like a transmission problem and had something else going on. So, it was going to be really expensive. And he was kind of stressed out. And he was talking about it a lot. And then the night before uh we have all this on video so i'll release a video of it the night before uh we had santa claus he came he stopped in at my uh my at my in-law's house and uh on yeah christmas eve and he asked the uh he asked santa claus for a

transmission and uh he was like yeah my car blew up he was asked santa claus for a transmission and uh he was like yeah my car blew up he was telling santa claus and everything um and then anyway so my wife went and bought the car and uh it was a big surprise and my dad didn't know you know anything about any of this so we we went for a 10 minute walk with him on christmas morning um at around seven o'clock and i actually took him past the car that we gave him and he goes wow he's like that's a nice car he's like that looks like a mini version of your car and i was like yeah it does right and we just kind of kept walking because it was like my wife parked it like on our block but kind of down the street from us and then um you know we came back around and and and, uh, then my

wife parked it in the, in his driveway while we were coming around the corner. And, um, then he saw the car and he just, you know, flipped out my mom was flipping out and it was, it was really, it was really cool. Um, it's just, I mean, it's amazing to be able to do that. Everyone, you know, that has parents that have been there for everything knows how special that is to be able to do something like that so my parents say they don't require me to do anything like that obviously like that's you know um just something that i that i wanted to do and uh there's something that makes me feel good i like to give back i like to give and uh you know that was a good opportunity to do that dude that's awesome. Congrats on being able to get your papa something cool like that.

Yeah, it was awesome. And then, you know, my kids on, I think maybe about two days before Christmas, my wife and my kids and myself all went over to my parents' house and my brother. And my parents just spoil us with with gifts they give us so much stuff even me to this day you know i'm 42 years old they still buy me tons of stuff they bought chris tons of stuff and my kids just like i mean i i swear they probably opened up they probably opened up at least 10 presents each just from them too and i'm like man like christmas is still a few days away and like yeah you know these kids are gonna get bombarded with so much stuff but my parents they love making

making uh things special they love making like a big occasion of it and like not every every gift is this uh you know huge huge gift it's it's a lot of smaller stuff but they they're they're smart they know that that kids just kind of like know the numbers you know they they know like oh these presents are really stacking up yeah yeah because if they get one big box full of everything it's just i got one present this year and they're really they're all about like making things fair so they they gave quinn this stuff and jake that stuff and they gave quinn more stuff than jake and so the last present they gave to Jake was a, was a tree that had money on it. Oh,

cool. And they're like this, you know, the, this, uh, the money on the tree is because we spent more money on Quinn stuff.

So that's the kind of leftover, you know, they had to balance it out. Yeah. Yeah. It was just, it was just crazy, but yeah,

everything was, everything was super cool that, you know, I always, I always love the holidays. I always love Christmas holidays. I always love Christmas. And unfortunately I don't really buy a lot of stuff for people like physically, physically, I don't really get a chance to, um, go out and, and buy stuff for everybody, but

I've been doing better every year. So I'm, uh, I'm, I'm happy that, uh, you know, my, I'm happy that I'm, I guess, lucky more so is probably the way to put it i'm lucky that my wife does a lot of that for me so yeah i don't have to uh put that much thought into it yeah this year was cool i was able to uh i mean together for for the for the first time since we've been together this is the first christmas that wasn't on credit there you go so that was really big for us yeah you know not having to you know look back and be like shit we're still paying off last year's christmas right so that was huge you know and we were able to give like all my nephews a bunch of reebok shoes which was really

cool because i mean i know kids they want toys they want like video games and stuff they want stuff they can like play with but what they actually needed was like shoes you know and so we were able to give all of my nephews like dope shoes like that's great got my little little nephew he's i don't even know how old but got a little size four rebot classics so dope yeah it was really cool and then got my parents like an old school record player oh that's awesome they had no idea i was just hey do you guys still have your old records and yeah we have tons oh can you get a box out i want to check out see what you guys have and then when they opened it up they were just like what the heck and they were so stoked so it was cool man it was really fun that's that's great it's it's great to uh it's great to be able

to surprise people with stuff that they weren't expecting yeah and it's uh it's it's just you know the holidays are all about kids, you know? And I think a lot of times adults are trying to plan like what they're going to do. And they're like, oh, you know, we're going to have this for dinner and we're going to drink this. And it's like, and then they just make a frozen pizza for the kids or something. It's like, well, why don't you think of something a little bit more special for the kids? And why the hell would you just feed them frozen pizza?

If everybody else is eating something healthier, they're eating something better, that tastes better. I mean, I don't know about how your kid is, but my kids, like, they'll eat a lot of the same things. They won't eat everything that we eat. But for the most part, they'll make a good attempt towards it. They're not, you know, they don't flip the table over and say, I need mac and cheese. You know, because we don't allow them to do that. Yeah, we're trying to break some bad habits. It's tough because we do share her time with her.

But for the most part, I mean, she eats way better than I ate when I was a kid. Like way better. She loves salad, but she does love ranch. Yeah, well, who doesn't? Yeah, right? There's got to be some give and take, right, with kids? Yeah, the only time we really run into problems is if there's another kid there eating something. You know, like this kid got mac and cheese.

Well, I want mac and cheese. Like, well, no, you need more than that. That's the only time where it's really an issue. But other than that, she eats exactly what we eat. She loves Monster Mash. She loves steak. So it's going pretty's it's uh it's doing it's going pretty good yeah that's that's great uh anyway we're gonna talk about uh you

know some of the things that have kind of happened this year some of the things have transpired on mark bell's power project uh talk about some of the different places we ended up and we're gonna talk about our first guest can you guys guess who our first guest was here? We'll see. On the Power Project. Yeah. And it was, it's funny because if you're on the Power Project channel right now, it's not even there.

So that's, so yeah, right now I think the first guest on this channel is One-Legged Monster. What's his name? I can't think of it. Casey Mitchell. Casey Mitchell. Sorry. So let's see. I don't know.

I'll give people a chance. People are saying Stan. It was two people, but one was kind of like a guest host, and the other person was the actual guest. Mm-hmm. Five, four. No one's going to guess. Three, two.

It was Jen Widerstrom and Matt vincent yep someone said doug trump yeah that would have been cool yeah yeah jen widerstrom and uh what an awesome way to kind of kick things off having her on the show and having our buddy matt vincent on the show as well and he was kind of helping you know know, ask questions. We actually had a really good, I thought it was a good, uh, conversation. We, we, we talked a lot about, um, like sexual harassment and stuff and just, and the reason why we, I mean, first of all, that was a really hot topic at the moment, but also, um, Jen being the professional, she is being in the fitness space. Um, there's a lot of men in the space. Obviously there's a lot of females as well. Uh, but I wanted to get her take on it. I mean, sometimes it's just great to get a different perspective, uh, sometimes from a different race or different sex. Like how,

how are they seeing it? Like what's their point of view? Because I don't know what it's like to be black. I don't know what it's like to be Mexican. I know what it's like to be white. And that's about it. I don't know what it's like to be a girl. I don't know. I don't know the different things that these different people face. And I love hearing from them because then I'll be like, I'll feel so stupid, but I'll be like, oh, shit. Like I didn't understand that. Well, now I can be more understanding. Now I can be more sympathetic. Now I can be more human towards your reactions rather than just being like, that's stupid. Why would anybody act that way? Or why would anybody think that way? And just kind of go about my own way all the time. It's like, well, what kind of way is that to live? Why not try to understand people a little bit better?

Yeah. And what was cool about that is like the actual podcast itself, like, uh, we had no equipment. We just had this empty room. Uh, we used like our cameras that we use to film out in the gym. So like the audio was like it was pretty bad uh it was it was the best worst thing that could happen to me because i had the worst thing to try to correct in in post and so it was uh it was an experience but it was cool because you know jen was so great and everybody i mean everybody likes jen widerstrom so she's awesome it didn't matter how bad it sounded people were you know they were stoked about it and then after her so this is just like in february we had one miss andy bell on the podcast oh my god yeah we need to get andy bell

on the podcast again that was fun yeah because it was just cool because uh you had smoky on with you but uh just hearing you know how you and cena worked together at the same place and you know smoky was like so you had a choice between cena or mark and but come to find out it wasn't at the exact same time but uh no it was cool just hearing everything how you had student loans that you didn't even want to pay for. You had zero credit or bad credit. And she's just like, well, hold on. Like, no, we need to fix this. And you're like, no, it'll be fine.

She's like, no, it's not going to be fine. So that was a lot of fun. Turns out I was right. It's totally fine. Yeah, it all worked out. Let's see. Also in February, so this is towards the end of the month. Let's see. We had our first live stream. This podcast was not live before we got our, well, before I

got my hands on it, but it was something that Mark had wanted to do since day one and didn't really know what the hell I was doing. But our buddy Krusty Kev, he helped me out and, um, we figured it out and we got this damn thing live and we've been shooting from the hip ever since. Um, and it's, it's one of, like I've said it before, it's one of the best like parts of my day is like interacting with the people on the live chats, uh, taking questions from them. You know, we got the, the people's coach and then I'll say like, the people's voice because I get to ask questions for everybody. It just makes everything so much more fun that it's live. Yeah, it's great to have it

be interactive. That's something that I wanted from the beginning and now we got that ability. It's great to get feedback from people. It's great to see people at, you know, all these different shows and stuff that we go to, um, the Arnold classic, you know, we have the, uh, super training classic coming up. We have, um, uh, Los Angeles fit expo coming up and we'll be there. And, um, you know, it's great to see all these people and see all these fans, but it's great to get the instant feedback from Instagram, from Facebook, from YouTube, and to see the comments and to hear what you guys are into

and hear what you guys like and everything like that. So all that stuff makes a big difference. Yeah. stuff makes it makes a big difference yeah and then uh so also another uh a uh another request of mark's or another goal for us was we also wanted to be mobile uh we wanted to kind of be able to hey so and so can do the podcast but we have to do it at their place like okay let's make this thing mobile so the first uh trip that we took was to Chuck Liddell's house. Oh, yeah. So that was, I mean, I can't even explain what it felt like to get the text message from Mark saying, like, dude, we got the Iceman.

It's like, hold on. Like, what do you mean? It was actually a conversation because you were like like who is your favorite mma fighter of all time and i was like uh and you're like think old school i'm like oh well ice man he's like that's who we're working on like we're gonna get him yeah and then i got the text and i was like oh my god dude like this is amazing and like we're going to his house like interesting all right we get there and his wife is like who are you like and you know he he told nobody that we were going to be there but we did it you know we set up in his living room

and it was sick just being able to communicate just to talk to somebody like that it was wild somebody said uh did ice man have a good poop story a good poop story? I don't know if we went there with him. No. You had to be careful. He kind of looked like he was ready to just... He moved around a lot. A lot. He was ready to throw some punches at us.

Yeah, that was... Man, Iceman. That's amazing, dude. You know who did have a good poop story, though? Steph Cohen. Yeah, she did. She came loaded with a poop story. Yeah, she was loaded for

sure yeah uh she had talked about how she pooped at the uh their new gym which at the time didn't have a bathroom so she had to do it out back and that may or may not be coming soon in animation form animated poop story animated poop stories yeah I gotta say that, uh, you know, having our relationship, uh, you know, move forward with Hayden and Steph has been like probably one of the better things, you know, in terms of our, our friendships and our, um, uh, the people that we, you know, collaborate with, that was probably one of the better things that happened in, in, uh, 2018 along with, um, and I, and I just, and this kind of took me by surprise, but I, I, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, but Jay Cutler was amazing. Yeah.

Having Jay Cutler here at super training was really, really cool. And, um, it's just something, that's something I'll never forget. Like he was awesome. He was just in every way, shape or form. He was awesome. He, he, he came full circle as a person i'm sure at one point he was so into bodybuilding that he was probably uh you know too busy for people or or or too one way to be sensitive towards anything else anybody else needed or wanted or whatever and i'm sure that he tried his best not to be an asshole then but he probably ended up being one just because he just didn't have the time he was trying to be the best in the world and I think at some point he kind of realized that he kind of calmed down a little bit he's retired from

bodybuilding he can chill a little bit more and he's just fun to be around yeah he's I mean that's in the category of episode of the year guest of the year he's number one for me um a couple reasons one of course like somebody just mentioned uh his name's papa clutch mentioned his poop story that was the absolute best poop story we've had this year by far it was amazing yeah not that the other ones aren't bad but just it was so amazing but um it's one thing to like come here and be like, oh, like Andrew, like nice meeting you, blah, blah, blah. Like we had, you know, great conversation. But outside of the podcast, he was so nice to me. I seen him at the San Jose Fit Expo.

His booth was the biggest by far. Yeah. In a crowd of hundreds of people, he just kind of catches eyes with me and he's like, oh, hey. And he flags me down. He tells me to come over here. And he talks to me in front of everybody and he's just like, oh, so how's it going, man?

Just genuinely having a conversation with me. And I'm just like, does he not remember that I'm just me? He didn't care that I was just the producer of the show. He didn't care that I'm just me like you know like he didn't care that I was like just the producer of the show he didn't care that like I'm just a photographer he's just like no that's my buddy from you know Mark Bell's Power Project and then you know he's of course he asked about you and you know we decided we were going to work on some other things together but like to me he just genuinely is a good person and that's why I feel like he's probably my favorite guest of the year.

Yeah, he was he was freaking he was he was freaking awesome. I know that I want to have, you know, Andy back on the podcast again. I'd love to have my dad back on the podcast again. It's always fun to have family on. We obviously had my brother on a lot this year. We always have Jesse Bur. I, we, we obviously had my brother on a lot this year. Um, we always have, uh,

Jesse Burdick, Matt Vincent. Those are people that we probably need to re up again. Yeah. Bring them back on and see what they got going on in their lives. See what they got to say. Speaking of Jesse Burdick, I got a phone call from Jesse Burdick yesterday and he's like,

what are you doing Saturday? I was like, I think I'll be in bodega. He's like, do you want to go to the fights? I was like, yeah, I do want to go to the fights. So I'm going to LA and going to see Bonesy Jones. Hell yeah. Dude, that's amazing.

Yeah, I'm so pumped for it. And it's tickets through Jeff Nowitzki, who we've had on the podcast before. And I think he was on rogan's podcast this morning yeah golden snitch yeah talking about uh you know bones jones's uh positive um results or whatever it was uh but uh yeah i'm super excited to go see it i'm really interested to see what the hell will happen with that fight it's crazy they switched it from you know it's in vegas and they switched it to uh los angeles because it like uh they couldn't get it sanctioned in in vegas because of bones jones's uh test or whatever but i guess the whole thing's all weird because he he tested positive for the same thing he tested positive for before but it wasn't long enough time period

for me to get tested for it again so it have been, he still has like another month and a half of it, I guess, officially being out of the system in the first place. So they should have even known better than to even bother testing him because that stuff stays in your system for like 18 months or something. I don't even know. It gets to be confusing. But, you know, first of all, I'd say like hats off to Alexander Gustafson for not caring. Like, how cool is that?

Like you would think like if you're the opponent and they get something shady is going on with your, the guy that you're going to fight, you'd be like, Hey, you know what? Like, you know, I have to get tested on the same rules he gets tested on. And, uh, my test was fine and his isn't. So I don't, I don't want to fight him like you figure he'd bitch or whatever like but he's like no screw it man i'll you know i'm i'm game and so they kept the uh they kept the fight going but uh you know it's who the hell knows what really happens behind closed doors you know who knows what the real issue is maybe it's that maybe it's something bigger and they're not saying, like, because Bones Jones,

I think, has gotten popped before for cocaine. You know, maybe that popped up again and they just don't want to talk about it. Who the hell knows? You know, you never really know the real story. Yeah, and I'm sure Gustafson is probably just thinking,

like, well, yeah, this is kind of what I signed up for anyway. Yeah, maybe the first time I fought him, maybe he wasn't clean anyway. Right. It's interesting in, you know, we know some people that are in a circle, in Bones Jones'. Right. It's interesting in, you know, we know some people are in a circle, in Bones Jones' circle,

and it's interesting, you know, to hear their commentary on some of these things where they just don't think there's any possible way that he's even aware of some of this stuff, which sounds, you know, you hear that story from some athletes and you're like, that sounds ridiculous. You know, how could the guy not know? But know maybe i don't i don't know but uh also with bones jones it's

interesting too that um you know he he's somebody that trains hard when he trains but then he got his own way of training where he might not show up on a certain day he might show up super late he's not as like focused as you would think uh you know an all-time great would be but maybe that's uh maybe that like sometimes the people that are the greatest sometimes they show you a new way you know michael jordan did things a certain way kobe did things a certain way um shack did things a certain like shack made it seem easy right yeah and that was why him and kobe always had beef kobe beef uh because kobe would be busting his ass every single day and then shack would just kind of just hang out and still kill everybody

still destroy you yeah and you got the um you know you got the brett farve and you have the uh peyton manning right like brett farve seemed like like i would want to be brett farve or i'd want to hang out with brett farve pe Peyton Manning, I mean, on the commercials and stuff, he's funny, but to be a teammate of his, it seemed like it might suck. He might yell at you all the time, right? You're not doing something the right way. You didn't run the right route or whatever.

Whereas with Favre, he seems more like, fuck it, man. Don't worry about it. We'll get him next time. The old gunslinger. He seemed like he just had maybe a better attitude. But anyway, I'm fired up to go to those fights. That's cool, man. I'm happy for you.

I didn't know you even told me about that. I think there's a lot of good fights coming up on that card, too. I'll check it out. But finally, so they didn't ask the exact question I was hoping for, but Mike Mumford asked what size shirt you're wearing. And I don't really care about that. I just care about the shirt itself. That is amazing. Power. It's a power bear shirt. I've been talking about power bears forever. So like where some, where some of

this came up, came about was, uh, I mean, through a lot of different weird ways, but there's, there's, uh, first of all in northern california this bear represents like a logo for norcal right the bear right and uh also in power lifting there's a group of people called power bears and we used to kid around about it a lot when i used to train at uh when i used to train with jesse burdick um we we heard of this group of lifters that were power bears, that were like, they're all lifted together, right? And then somebody else said, hey, like, you know about the power bears? And we're like, yeah, we know about the power bears.

Like, Jesse used to train one of the main guys for the power bears. And then somebody's like, oh, he's like, you don't know about the power bears. And we're like, well, what's the deal with the Power Bears? And we're like, you know, we don't know what you're talking about. Like, well, they're homosexual. And we're like, oh, Power Bears. And Jesse's like, I kept wondering why the guy kept talking about my beard and stuff and how I'd fit in perfectly. I didn't know what that meant.

I was like, well, I guess I didn't know what that meant. I was like, well, I guess now we do know what it means. And I guess I'm not growing out of beer. Yeah. So then we just, you know, we'd always tease each other about that.

We'd talk about power bears. Now we made a shirt for it. The power bear shirt. Love it. There we go. That's what that's. Miscommunication. Don't,

don't look it up. Don't, don't go on YouTube and don't look it up. Definitely do not. That's miscommunication, Tara. Don't look it up. Don't go on YouTube and don't look it up. Definitely do not. Because you might find big dudes in flannel shirts blowing cigar smoke in each other's faces. Yeah. So going back to the year that was, we had Ron Penna on. I just wanted to kind of highlight him because I don't think he's done anything almost ever. And he's the CEO or founder of

Quest Nutrition. That guy was so interesting. He's a ninja. Essentially, yeah. He's a ninja. The stories off air were amazing is all I'm going to say. Ron Penna, he could figure out the iCloud and he could also dispose of a human body and have no one ever find out about yeah i mean that's a very versatile person he could also do a split he can also lift like a maniac he lifted heavier than i did when we were training together. He was going nuts in there. With better form. With better form.

He's just a beast. Intellectually, he's a beast. Physically, he's a beast. He's got a real strict everything. Strict diet. He's strict about his sleep. He's strict about it. It doesn't compute with him. He doesn't understand

why you wouldn't try to do everything the best possible way. And it makes sense because he's had a lot of success that way. He's come out on top that way. And maybe for other people, they're like, yeah, the effort to try to be the best all the time is, is, uh, killing me. And maybe you don't get the same results, but this guy is one of the few that you've seen the effort that he puts in. He, he absolutely gets

a lot out of it and so that he he likes that reward and that's what he lives for i mean he it doesn't matter what it is it could it could be um it could be just having a certain routine with sleep all the way from having a certain routine with his food or whatever the hell it is this guy's gonna do it um meditating stretching all this stuff he he figures out a way to maximize all of it even with mobility stuff he said you know it's not about like stretching and he showed me and uh ben greenfield ben greenfield another guest that we had on the show that was great but he showed ben greenfield and i he showed us these stretches that he does that are not really they they're not really traditional stretches.

He just said, all you got to do is do this like, you know, a couple of times a day and then you're going to be able to do like a split. But it was just like, you know, it was more like it was, it was, I guess in some way it was a stretch, but it was more strength than it was anything. So, you know, you'd get like a split position and you would like resist the ground. And then you would go out wider and you resist against the ground. You go out wider, resist against. So it's like, basically it's called PNF stretching. But anyway, you know, Ron is going to find like the loophole. He's going to find a thing that's going to get you better faster in every single thing that he does. You know?

Yeah. And then in the same month, we had a phone call with Eddie Hall. Eddie Hall had a poop story. He had an amazing poop story. He was laughing his ass off. He's like, do I have poop stories? Ha, ha, ha, ha. Remember how hard he was laughing?

Yeah. It was such a bummer. Still, we're trying to figure stuff out. So the phone sounded terrible. But we fought through it. We had a weird click going on. Yeah, yeah. There's like

some pops and clicks every time someone stopped talking no one cared though no it was so good great yeah it was awesome yeah and then uh also that month we had uh we filmed at uh chris bell's house and we had uh drew logan on and i'm bringing him up because while we kind of turned into vegetables over the christmas day we actually watched the show that he was on uh called strong on netflix cool spoiler alert he doesn't win but it was cool because uh stephanie was like oh yeah i found this it's like a they they work out and they try to have the best transformation and they do all these challenges so it's called strong and you know it's really interesting you should check it out and i was like oh i know somebody on there like just casually she's like what i was like yeah yeah drew logan's on there like he's my buddy he's like really

well i mean we're not like besties or nothing but yeah i know the guy there he is right there yeah yeah and that's what happened and she's like no way like yeah he's freaking cool i told her about uh lucky the dog how he has to you, he senses his cortisol levels, right? Yeah. Yeah. So, anyway, I just wanted to bring that up because it was, like, topical for us right now because we just finally saw the show. And stuff was wild with the dog and everything like that. Yeah.

It was really cool. Yeah. But other than him, we had someone named Stan Efferding in April also. Rhino. And that was one of the most popular episodes because that was really... Why does everything seem like it was so long ago? That's not that long ago.

No, yeah, I mean, that was around my birthday. So it was like... It was at a time where the vertical diet was really picking up steam. So when he came on here, it just, I mean, it skyrocketed everything into the atmosphere with vertical diet. He owes us a lot of money. A lot. When he came on here, it just, I mean, it skyrocketed everything into the atmosphere with Vertical Diet.

He owes us a lot of money. A lot. That's what you're trying to say. I'm saying without us, nobody would even know what. The least the guy could do is pay for our crank. If you guys seen that piece of shit on Instagram, you know how tough it is to get this thing started. We're running this entire show off of that thing. Yeah.

It is terrible. It's rough around here. Yeah. But anyway, and then shortly after that, we move into May. We have Ed Cohn. And that was another super popular episode

because we had, you know, the goat was here. Ed Cohn is, you know, Ed Cohn is amazing for so many different reasons. He taught so many of you guys

how to squat and how to deadlift uh via our youtube channel um but you know the things i've learned from ed just just seeing how he interacts with people he really he just cares yeah you know he'd come in here and he would he'd ask you some questions about your training and then whatever you said to him he'd remember it the next time right he's like hey Andrew, you still having a hard time with that deadlift? Or, you know, the technique and stuff help. And he'll, like, remember a bunch of shit about you. He'll remember your fiancé's name and shit like that.

He's a remarkable person. Yeah, no, he slid into my DMs not too long ago. And he just kept reaching out and telling me a couple things here and there. And then we were working on a uh a project um ryan soper he's working on a personal project where i had to actually call him for like a phone interview and we spent like 15 minutes just talking about me lifting and i'm like holy like dude ed cone's telling he's telling, he's, you know, he's like, I see everything. He's like, I see your progress. He's like, you know, you're doing what I used to do, which is like power building.

You start looking around. You're like, you see everything? You saw me picking my nose? Yeah. I was like, oops, I didn't think it was like, can you not tell anybody what I was doing from this time to this time? One of the best things that Ed, there's a few things that he shared with me that are just, just ridiculous and amazing. But, you know, years ago,

I was having trouble with one of the members of Super Training Gym. And the guy was actually a friend and stuff too. And it was, it was like becoming problematic. I mean, it was affecting my training and it was affecting the gym. And it was just, it just sucked. It was just murky. I'm sure everyone's been through that before in their lives where there's just, you know, a little bad blood and bad blood ends up in the air. And it's just, you know, everyone can kind of sniff it out. Right. But, uh, what Ed told me is, you know, he said, listen, man, he goes, just keep it real simple, you know, be nice and be good to those

who are good to you and don't do anything else. And I was like, I let that sink in. I was like, okay, you know, by my standards, I don't think this person being very good to me. Um, so I like, what am I going to do about it? I I'm just going to only be good to the people that are good to me. Like, you know, and, and yeah, sometimes you do have to confront somebody. Sometimes you do have to like, you know, tell somebody, Hey, look, I don't like the way you're treating me or I don't like this or that or whatever. But what I've learned is by being good to the people that are good to you and focusing in on that and not chasing after people that don't want to be part of your life, not chasing after people that don't care about you, is that you save a lot of time. You save a lot of energy. is that you you save a lot of time you save a lot of energy and on top of that and you know a lot of people aren't going to believe this but shit just seems to work out it really does like it just it

will just work out i've never had to kick anyone out of this gym they kick themselves out something will happen they'll show their true colors and they're just not welcome here anymore they they will it just works out that way to where they end up wearing out their welcome or they end up breaking the rules, you know, several times. And then that they end up working their way out of it. Cause look, the rules are black and white. This is, this is what we do here. And this is what we don't do here.

And that's it. And you go back to that, be good to those who are good to you. Well, what about, you know, YouTube comments? What about Instagram comments? What about, well, why don't I, why don't I just focus on the people that are being good to me? Hey, Mark, I love this stuff. to you well what about you know youtube comments what about instagram comments what about well why don't i why don't i just focus on the people that are being good to me hey mark i love the stuff you put out hey man thank congrats thank you so much for watching you're awesome thanks have a great day why not concentrate on that rather than the person who's like you know steroids or whatever

you know whatever negativity they want to spin or you know whatever whatever, you still look fat or Larry Wheels is stronger or this guy got leaner or whatever the hell. The comments that you guys face on a daily basis, think about that statement. Be good to those who are good to you and don't do anything else. And it can really, really save you a lot of stress. Yeah. else and it can really really save you a lot of stress yeah um this is pretty crazy when we're talking about like dude that seems like so long ago but it wasn't that long ago at all but you were at body power uh the expo in the uk the uk and you hung out with half thor and you got him uh you record a little podcast just on your phone, right? Yeah. And you know what? That hurt

my shoulder because he's like, he's like 8,000 feet tall. Yeah. And that guy, you know, that guy surprised me too. Um, you know, all, all, all I know of strong man is, is I know Brian Shaw and I don't know, you know, anybody else in the community. So, um, and we know Alan Thrall, he's here in Sacramento as well. So like, we, we got some friends in the sport, but we don't really like know people that closely. And, uh, you know, I didn't, I never really talked to Hapthor before. So, you know, sometimes he just thinks that somebody is going to be an asshole, you know, for some random reason.

And, uh, who knows why I kind of thought he was going to have a chip on his shoulder. Maybe I thought that because, you know, Brian is with us, he's with slingshot and then they have a rivalry and stuff, but no, you know, there was none of that going on at all. I mean, I'm sure that, you know, there's animosity built up between the two because they're so highly competitive against each other, but he didn't care. You know, I was communicating with, with him and he was like, yeah, man, you know, come over to the booth and come, uh, uh, you can, we can talk for however long you want. Like he was super cool. And I went over there and, you know, held my camera up over my head, trying to, uh, you know, film him the whole time and, or get the audio piece from him anyway. And, uh, we had one of our guys step in, um, the guys out in uk chris right yeah our boy chris

uh he stepped up and he was able to actually film it and we're able to get you know some a really good commentary from from him and and we learned a lot about him we learned a lot we learned a lot you know there's these big strong guys that that everyone is always uh fascinated with like we're big softies, man. When you break us down, we all got, we got feelings and we get depressed and we get upset just like everybody else. And I was really thankful for Hapthor sharing that with us

because I don't think that you, that anybody, I think a lot of people would be surprised to understand how many people that are second and third and they're not quite coming out on top how depressed and how upset they really are and also maybe that's a time period of their life that maybe they wouldn't be second or third if they could fix some other things in their life straighten some other things in their life out so they're not as stressed out if they could figure out a way to mitigate some of that they could probably take the steps forward that are necessary to become number one

just like he did and it was great to see him come out on top and you know we love uh we love brian shaw over here we're always going to be uh loyal to the shaw family but at the same time it was remarkable to watch uh hapthor come out on top and, you know, we just, I appreciate the time he spent with us. And then he also spent time with us, uh, later on in, uh, Malibu. Yeah. Uh, right after that, when you got back from, uh, the UK, um, it was just a cool podcast moment. It was one of the, uh, the things that probably no one's even going to recognize, but, um, you know, we came in, we trained, we killed ourselves. We, uh, we podcasted um you know we came in we trained we killed ourselves we uh we podcasted you know we did like a q a thing with the fans and then right as we

shut everything down we're we're talking and we're like all right cool man it was a great day like we we got everything in we're we already said bye you stopped me you're like hey uh ct fletcher's out of the hospital and he said he can talk to us right now i'm like let's do it so you know we were you know the high and low of whatever of like you know training and then podcasting and then like cool we're done for the day like let's go home and it's like oh wait no let's let's climb this other mountain and let's get shit done and we did it and you know it was cool hearing from CT. And that was the first time that he had spoken to anybody since basically dying a couple of times, you know, and then coming back from the dead to be who he is now. Um, it was huge. And it was a, uh, it, it got me

so fired up for doing this podcast just because we just did more of it and it just felt better you know we we killed ourselves the entire day and then we just like signed up for more yeah and we're just like oh my god like i think for me personally i think that's where like i really turned the corner of not seeing it necessarily as like a job or whatever it was just like um i mean it's just i can't or whatever. It was just like, um, I mean, it's just, I can't even explain what, what it feels like,

but I just know that was the day where I was like, dude, like this, this is what I'm supposed to be doing now. CT Fletcher. There's no other way to put it. He's great. Yeah.

And it definitely didn't suck that it was CT, you know? Yeah. He, he's great. And he's got great perspective on things. He has a um i'm really looking forward to get to spend more time with him again too and get him on the podcast again he's just he's a

wonderful person i think he's one of those few people that can really break down some barriers for a lot of people um in terms of like fitness and in terms of race and stuff i think he just has a way about him like he's he's he's been on he's been on every which side you can think of he's been abused um he he's been somebody that has had to persevere over all kinds of different things even just his own just you know we don't know how hard it is to battle against ourselves. You know, he, and he has some traits that, uh, he definitely was not proud of. He's, um,

he's somebody who's not afraid to make fun of himself a lot. And I think people find that to be, uh, really, um, inspiring as well. But, you know,

now to see him out of the hospital and to see him training as hard as he is, and he's like riding his bike and like, did you see him run and just crash and burn on the pavement yeah yeah oh man that made me i was genuinely like sad like i saw that and i was like oh no pops like ah but you know he's just like like you know he used different words but like screw it i'm gonna get back up and keep going because this is what i do yeah i heard somebody else tell a similar story and and uh you know getting you know, getting old is, is, uh, you know, I'm, I'm getting older, but I'm not 70, you know, and I'm not 80. And, um, somebody was telling me this story about someone that like,

they just kept wanting to walk and they kept hurting themselves. And then finally the person said to him, like, well, look, man, like, like you know just why don't you just stop walking and like well if i stop moving i'm gonna die you know i want i want to be able to keep moving and so if i if i fall down then i'll just fake i'll just try to keep figuring out a way to get up and if it gets to a point where i can't get up anymore then then that's it and it's like shit man well that makes that actually kind of makes some sense. It sounds irrational in a way, but it also makes a lot of sense because,

um, being alive isn't enough. You have to live, you have to like really live your life and, and something more has to come of it. So, you know, it's,

it's definitely something that, you know, like you don't want to see T C C T Fletcher fall on his face like that. But same time, it's all about getting back up and then now he's like riding his bike and he's i think he benched he benched 225 for a couple reps or something on a smith machine they cheated a little bit um no maybe he did a rig i don't remember now no i can't remember but like i know that he benched like 225 for some reps or something he look man that guy you, we talk about being made of something different.

That guy is made of something different. Did we do Chad Mendez? Was that? So, yeah, I mean, he's somewhere in here. I have a bunch of stuff. One guess I didn't want to overlook because you guys were really close in the short time that you guys had with each other. But in June brought us Jason Harrison, your brother from another mother from another mother basically and unfortunately he's no longer with us but um it was we've had a couple people where it's like oh my gosh the similarities between you two is crazy

but i remember you know we we faded to black so i don't even know if it made it on to the show but you know he's just like oh my gosh you're like the brother i you know i didn't know i had i was just like oh my gosh like that's crazy and then, but you know, he's just like, oh my gosh, you're like the brother. I, you know, I didn't know I had, I was just like, oh my gosh, like, that's crazy. And then, you know, to hear that he's no longer with us, it was just like, whoa, dude, like that, that hit pretty hard, you know? Yeah. It was like, um, you know, a lot of these things are, they're, they're confusing. Like you don't understand, you know, you try to make sense of some of it and then you're like, well,

why was that person like, like, how did he come into my life for such a flash? You know, and then he was out. Um, but a really interesting thing happened with Jason. Um, Jason Harrison, he's the owner of Harrison is the, was the owner of a Kuyu and he and he built up another brand called Sitka. He built that brand up, he sold it, and then he built up Kuyu, and Kuyu is just down the street from us in Dixon, California. We're in West Sacramento. He's not very far away. As soon as he and I connected, yeah, we did find tons and tons of similarities.

Jason and I were trying to communicate with each other a lot. I didn't understand who Jason was exactly. And I didn't I didn't know. I didn't know how popular he was. I didn't know. I didn't know if he was way busier than me. I know his business was a lot more successful. I didn't know what was going on.

But all I knew is that I was communicating with a friend of his that that I thought was like a publicist or something. And it ended up being Patrick, who's just like his buddy and his wingman but was i guess ended up being like his assistant in some way and uh so i was just trying to arrange some time to see jason and i was like man what how can i not connect with this guy i don't understand like you know he's here in town he's got this great business all i want to do is showcase his business. But maybe he doesn't understand, yes, this is a podcast run by a powerlifter, but it's not all powerlifters all the time. We do other things. We want to find fascinating, inspiring people.

We have CEOs. We have world record powerlifters. We have Mr. Olympia champions. I mean, we've got all kinds of strongman champions. We've got all kinds of people that are just champions in a bunch of different fields. We had the owner of Stevia on here, or Zevia, rather. I mean, we've got all kinds of different people,

and they may not be extraordinary when it comes to performance. So I was just like, man, how come I can't get this guy on the show? And so Casey, who works, he is our shipping and receiving guy here at slingshot he um has a connection to jason and we're still trying to figure it all out and uh i don't know just it just wasn't working out we just couldn't figure it out and uh finally patrick and i connected we started to work out some times and then through knowing jason so here's something weird to happen because because i only knew him for just a handful of months as andrew mentioned uh before he ended

up tragically taking his own life he had uh some uh i guess you'd say uh mental uh disorders from as a result of playing football and so he he, you know, just hit his head many times, all the concussions, however you want to say it, and he suffered from some severe depression. Anyway, so he comes here, we do the podcast, we hit it off, and I mean, yeah, it does

seem like we're cousins or brothers or something. I mean, we were relating on every possible level. The only difference is he's tall and skinny and I'm not. But everything else was was so identifiable. You know, he was he was, you know, really big into football and he reached a high level with football and he was a pro in that. And then he switched gears and turned his passion for sports and turned his passion for hunting into a multimillion dollar juggernaut business.

And he's just kind of been off the races ever since that point. But a weird thing that happened kind of along the way, you know, he lives and he lived in Dixon because his wife was in Dixon. I live in Davis because my wife's from Davis. He had, he had a, his wife had a Range Rover. My wife has a range. Like it just, those are just some of the small stuff. But as we kept going down the road, it was like, oh my God.

Okay. He had two children. He had a boy and a girl. I have a boy and a girl. Like it was just, it just kept going on and on and on forever where a couple things seemed like oh it's just normal coincidence like yeah we're similar age and like all these things make sense but then it started getting weird you know as it started like everything started like really getting so similar and i'm like man this and when patrick would describe how jason was to us we And we were like, oh, that sounds familiar.

Yeah. Like, man, this is really going to be strange. Yeah. But one of the things that happened that was really interesting, and maybe this is a reason why he was around, was Scott Fuller, who we went and filmed for the War on Carbs commercial that we shot. carbs, uh, uh, commercial that we shot. Um, uh, Scott Fuller is a, uh, is a doctor. Um, and, uh, he's a high level professional. He had a lot of success on the war on carbs diet. So we wanted to document that. And so we went and we, we filmed some stuff with him. He lost about 60 pounds from, from being on a diet, but we reconnected Scott Fuller as a family member, but we re I reconnected

with Scott Fuller and connected back to him and got him on this diet in the first place from hanging out with Jason. Cause Jason used to be his roommate when they played football together for UC Davis. And so I was hanging out with Jason and he and I were shooting the shit. And, and, uh, I somehow said, I said, Hey, you know what? I said, do you know Scott Fuller? He goes, Oh yeah. He goes, I know Scott Fuller. He goes, Dr. Death. And I was like, what? He goes, yeah. He goes, he's Dr. Death. He's like, at least that's what he used to call himself when we played football.

I was like, Oh, he called himself that. And so I, I screwed with him and I texted Scott and I had them both in a text thread. And I was like, what's up? Self-proclaimed Dr. Death. I'm hanging out with your old roommate. And Scott wrote back. He's like, screw him. He's like, he's like, I didn't make up that nickname. And we were just like giving each other shit.

And it kind of just, uh, kind of sparked everyone being all fired up. And we were just having a lot of fun with each other. But that conversation with Scott that reunited he and I, then he fell going down the stairs that one day, tore his like meniscus, tore his ACL, tore parts of his quad and had a major setback, ended up gaining lots of weight, ended up being severely depressed because he and I reconnected. He reached out. It's like, man, I got to do something. We got him on the Warren Carbs diet. We got him fired up to start training and he lost 60 pounds so it's like you know as as weird as it might be like maybe he was just kind of in maybe he was inserted into my life for a period of time for

some of that maybe he was into my life for a period of time just to get me fired up and to make sure everything here keeps uh keeps chugging along theging along the way that we think is best. And, like, you know, who knows? But, like, a lot of good came from it, and it sucks that he's not here anymore. But that guy, when I went to his funeral, it was insane to watch, you know, all the different places he's been, all the different people he's impacted. Donald Trump Jr. was at his funeralald trump jr was at his funeral james hetfield was at his funeral there's professional baseball players there the entire

uc davis football team that he played football with was there the speeches that were given it was insane and i was like okay i'm like this dude is like he's only four years older than i am like i got a lot of work to do man i'm like you know i i'm thinking man like this is a a story of somebody that what would have been like 90 you know like he just did so much in such a short period of time so it did suck that uh you know things ended up the way that they did but that guy really lived his life to the fullest and it made me just think to myself, like, man, like, uh, not only do I need to work harder, but man, I really need to enjoy, I really need to enjoy the moments because, uh, you never know what's coming your way really. Yeah. And I mean, for just to, I know you just said there's so many

crazy similarities, but like Dixon and Davis are like, what? Five minutes apart. Yeah. You know? And it's just like, that's crazy. And when you talk about like him playing football, it's like, yeah,

he played for the 49ers, you know, like he didn't just play football, you know what I mean? Yeah. So yeah, I just, that's how crazy,

that's how crazy his story is. So they didn't even mention that he played in the NFL. Yeah. I mean, it was, uh, I was, I was kind of scrolling through some news articles and stuff,

and I didn't even want to click on it because I didn't want to read if they spun it towards CTE or something. Just because I knew him personally, I didn't want any bad thoughts going through my head. But there was an article talking about a former 49er linebacker committing suicide right but um that was the most i had seen coming out of the 49ers from you know him passing but um yeah so i mean you said it when we found out like you know once somebody's on the podcast

they're part of our crew and so it was a it was a when we lost him. Yep. We got some good memories from it. At least we got some video, got some pictures with the guy. And I'm just glad that he was, even though it was a short period of time, I'm just glad he was, you know, part of our lives. Yeah. You know, for the moment that we had him. All right. Moving forward.

Same month is when Hany Rambad had you commit to doing a bodybuilding show on the podcast. Yeah. Yeah. And so I ended up being pretty crazy too because then i saw jason like maybe two months later and he's like what the hell he's like so we were at uh smoking i went out to colorado to a trade show that jason invited us to and um yeah i was just shredded like veins just kind of popping out of everywhere he's like

what the fuck's going on he's like what are you doing because jason was all into being jack too and he was like holy shit yeah so honey uh called me out on the podcast itself and i'd have to say you know out of all the years of podcasting that that has to be uh the biggest and most impactful moment uh that's ever really happened because what else could top that you know so um i mean that led to a lot of things it let it you know as weird as some of this sounds that led to me having kind of a new audience of fans a new it led to us on the podcast having a new audience of fans who um like that kind of stuff that are into bodybuilding or that just are into the personal journey of getting yourself in shape and, and for, and forever. I mean, think about how crazy that is forever. I have those photographs of me hitting the stage like that. And, um,

that's awesome. I mean, I have that moment, you know, encapsulated in time to where I could say, Hey, look, you know what? I, I did it. Like I, you know, when it comes to getting in shape, like I was able to do it, I, I did a good job of it. And I was able to get up on a stage and do something that like under normal circumstances, I would never, I'd never want to do anything like that, you know? So, uh, that was cool that he, uh, he called me out, got me out of my comfort zone, got me to try a little something different. And I got, you you know i got something different that i'm going to try coming up to which i'm excited about and i'll share with you guys about it but i think i'm going to get a little deeper into it before i go bringing it up before i go talking about shit that i don't know anything now i'm getting nervous

to figure out what that is don't worry it doesn't involve anal well well i mean it can't i mean i can it then i should rephrase that so initially it doesn't but um so anyway that that led to i don't know if it was just coincidence or we kind of started staring that way but we started kind of reaching out to more bodybuilding type people um so right after that that's when we had jay cutler we just got done talking about him but then right after that in july is when we hung out in malibu for an entire month well you hung out there for an entire month i hung out there for a little while and you just had just a bunch of interesting guests out there at the the beach house and the beach house itself i mean we can take a moment uh it was funny while i was down there

the second time stephanie texted me a picture She was watching Spanglish, and she froze the... Yeah, there's a lot of movies and TV shows from down that way. Yeah, she was like, oh my gosh, there's the house. And I'm like, no way. And I'm like, oh, sick. So yeah, we were hanging out at a pretty popular spot. But yeah, you had all kinds of cool people down there. You had Hafthor on again.

You had Stone Cold. My God, Stone Cold. We got to get Stone Cold here in studio. That's it. You know what, people? I'm going to start pressing them. And maybe you guys can help me. Maybe you guys can help me on Instagram.

Maybe you can start smashing them and tell them, hey, get your ass over to Sacramento. He rolls through here every once in a while because Cause he goes to, uh, he goes from LA to Reno, uh, here and there. So we, we got to get them, you know, in house here, but hijack them there. I've, I've been on his podcast a couple of times. He's been on mine a few times and I just, you know, it's always, it's always amazing. He's an amazing person. It's always so cool when you meet high level people and, uh, they're not just high level in their profession, but they're just high level people in general. And you're like, damn, like this guy operates at a really, at a different level than a lot of other people. And, uh, he almost like with Stone Cold,

it's really interesting too, because like you hear him talk about the rock or you hear him talk about John Cena and he's like, man man my hat goes off to those guys he's like they just work their ass off you know and i he's like i don't understand how they can do that but here's stone cold working his ass off having his own his own hustle but also too he's smart enough stone cold smart enough to realize like um in terms of like filming movies and that kind of it's just not he doesn't he doesn't really love that he doesn't love being away he doesn't love the travel and all the stuff that he's had to do in the past he's kind of uh he's happy with doing his tv show he's happy with doing his podcast and you know that's how he uh he keeps himself happy and motivated

yeah and that was the first time we had big Doug, Doug Fruchet on the podcast. Our boy, Big Doug. Bodybuilding. Yeah. So, again, more bodybuilding. Justin and Stephanie Lovato, which were a really cool couple to have on. And then out of the bunch, Mike Catherwood was great also. We got to get him down here too.

Justin and Stephanie are really good. People should go back and listen to that. People that are into fitness, that are couples should definitely listen to that together because they just had some interesting takes on how they care for one another and how they make things work. They both have a business in fitness as well. So that might be something that might interest you guys quite a bit. Yeah.

Our boy Bobby Ray just mentioned Hunter McIntyre. Oh, my God. that guy's an animal hunter mcintyre we have to have hunter mcintyre here again yeah yeah and then out of the bunch uh no disrespect to all of the uh awesome guests that came out but uh tito raymond hearing his story i mean just when you think that like, you've heard somebody's, like, comeback story and you're just, like, getting fired up, you hear his story and it's just like, oh, my gosh, I'm so lazy. I've done nothing with my, the awesome hand that I've been given, you know? And it's like, so, you know, especially, like, you know, as a parent now, it's like hearing his story and seeing where he's taking his kids. And it's like, dude, that, that's somebody that I look up to. Sometimes you have to hear a worse story,

you know, a bad story from somebody else to realize how good you have it. Right. As, as, uh, it might not seem like that makes sense, but that's just the truth of it. When you hear someone's heart, hardship and, uh, sorrow and all the different things they had to go through you're like okay man like I got things pretty good yeah yeah and I mean that's definitely the case with with him and it just like I said man his his episode is so motivating if you want to feel basically if you want to feel lazy and you need, you know, someone to light a fire under your ass. Hard work and soul bitch. Yeah, that's the episode. And then moving forward to August, again, more bodybuilding.

We had Branch Warren here. Guy is crazy. Yeah, Branch Warren was awesome. It was a great experience to train with him. Yeah. Really intense. And it's like, you know what? Listen, man, that guy had no business, you know business being as awesome as he was as a bodybuilder,

but he wasn't going to take no for an answer. He was a lot shorter than a lot of the other athletes, even though bodybuilders are short anyway. He's very short. And he wasn't going to let his height dictate anything. He got big enough. He got lean enough. He was able to win the Arnold Classic, I believe.

I think he finished second in the Olympia. I mean, the guy was an absolute beast and then also too this is something i've said on this podcast many times over is that you don't want to be known like what is branch warren known for is he known for being an ifbb pro kinda you know what he's actually really known for he's known for being a savage yeah he's known for just putting it down he's known for just working his ass off and that's what you want to be known for that's who you want that's what that's how you're going to get recognition in the first place and that's how people are attracted to that success is attracted to that when you work hard success is going to come your way you don't have to go towards it yeah and just hearing his stories about umflex, how there's basically a tornado rolling through the gym.

And he's just like, I'm just going to keep working out because where else am I going to go? It's leg day, bro. Yeah. Like, oh, my gosh. Come on. But then he hooked us up with Wicked Cuts Jerky. And that stuff was amazing. I don't know if you had any, but it was so good.

And that's the jerky that he's selling yeah yeah yeah i remember he had he had some i had some while he was here but i couldn't like indulge because uh it's on that bodybuilding kick yeah yeah and that was the uh that was the month of your bodybuilding show so and then we had um you mentioned quickly uh mike catherwood which is amazing because mike catherwood's on tv all the time and And so like every time my kids are tired of hearing about it. Cause I tell him, I'm like, Oh,

there he is. Like, yeah, he was like, he was at the house. Remember? And they're like, Hey,

we heard you say it 5,000 times. And then Jake messes with me. He's like, Oh dad. He's like, is that the guy that was came on your podcast? I'm like, yeah.

Yeah. Now he has, you guys have so many different things you can connect on, you know, football, certain supplements and whatnot. But yeah, so I'm excited to get him here. Yeah. I think that'll be really cool. Yeah, he's down too. So I need to, I need to hit him up.

Like, I think we got to, we got to do some podcast stuff, but I really want to do stuff on the main YouTube channel with him. Yeah. Because he has a character where he pretends to be like a super cholo from East LA. It's so funny. Oh, that'd be cool. Yeah. And then we had Shaw here in the house for a little while. He was here for a couple days, but we recorded a podcast with him. That was another huge episode.

recorded a podcast with him. That was another huge episode. One of the things he said that really stood out to me was, he's like, you know, I faced everybody at the top of their game while I've been hurt. He's like, so right now if I have a great buildup, there's no way I can lose. And it's like because I just, I'm invested now in Brian Shaw. I've been to his house multiple times.

The first time anybody heard my voice on this podcast've been to his house multiple times. The first time anybody heard my voice on this podcast was actually in his garage in Colorado. You know, I know his family. So when I hear stuff like that, that gets me really fired up. And, you know, no disrespect to Half Thor or anybody or any of the other competitors, but it's like, dude, that's my boy. I want him to win. You know, if I get a chance to meet Half-Thor, I'll be grateful and very respectful. But at the end of the day, I want Shaw to be number one. And so having him here,

hearing that his spirit hasn't been broken at all, not that he's going to admit it or anything or even show it, I guess, but believing it and seeing it in his eyes that he still has the fire, that was huge. He's fired up. Yeah, it was really cool to see him again.

Hell yeah. Everybody loves Brian Shaw. In October, we had a cool guest. I'll just really run through it real quick, but Jessica Smith, Fertile Female. Oh yeah, the fertile one. Yeah, it was cool hearing her background. Ladies and gentlemen, still single, by the way.

So if you want to call, you can call the number down below, 555-5555. Extension 555. 555. Yeah, at Jessica Smith on Instagram. We had her, but we also had who I think was the most uh uh informational guest i guess i'll say uh i think informative informative is that okay i don't spread informational and probably not bad though but i think informative probably makes more sense first i don't know english is my second language slang being the first one uh. William Davis Wheat belly Yeah

He was great He lit us all on fire Yeah You know It's great when you have someone Like Stan has done this many times Every time Stan comes into town We immediately start adopting

You know more things that Stan's doing And Some things come and some things go But like I don't know about you But a lot of things Stan has said or taught taught us, they're still in my head. When I go to do something or like Stan has said, the things that we do for ourself are always going to impact us way more than the things that we have done to ourselves. So like you taking care of injuries before they happen and you warming up properly is better than you going and getting massage therapy.

They're both good, but something that you do for yourselves can be better than something you have done to yourself. And William Davis was, he shared a lot of things that stuck with me as well. The vitamin K, the vitamin D, the fish oil, some of the things you can do to help with your cholesterol and, and some of the, uh, um, kind of falsehood surrounding cholesterol and some of the, you know, some of the things he shared about, uh, your, I think your dad's situation. Yeah. And, you know, he was like, okay, well, you know, we got to make sense of this. Your dad already has some unnatural things going on because he's had some surgeries. And so he's like, he's got to kind of follow what the doctor says at this point yeah to some to some extent

maybe not so much with the food but uh with the medications you know you sometimes and that's great to have someone come in here that has that much experience explain that to us that way and um he he just really broke down you know the diet stuff uh very easy um he wasn't crazy about anything but he was just saying hey look man we got to cut back on grains and sugar he just kept hitting it over the head hitting over the head grains and sugar grains and sugar yeah kept smashing it and it's like you know that was really helpful he had a lot of great advice yeah and you hit it right on the head because he talks about how, I don't want to burp in so much.

The kratom's coming up. Oh, yeah, those burps are great, aren't they? Oh, dude, you can taste it. It kind of makes me feel like it's working twice as hard. But how he questioned the medical field and why are they doing this, why are they doing that, and then everything he was saying where it's like i not that i set him up on purpose but it was like hey well this happened what do you have to say about that and he's like oh well well no because your dad has had surgery he needs to keep taking the medication that the doctors are prescribing but then he gave

us some tips on some other things that we need to be doing. But he wasn't just like so far on one side to just be like, it's got to be this way. My way is the right way. They're all wrong. And then it's like, what about this? Okay, well, they're right there, but, you know, we can meet in the middle on that one. So it was just cool knowing that he was saying what was right in his mind,

not just something to be outlandish and get attention for, you know, whatever, 15 minutes of fame. Right. So that was huge. In the same month, we had the IPF stuff kind of happen. Oh, yeah. IPF approval. Yeah, we kind of, we announced it here. Talked about the ex-sleeves and all that stuff.

Yeah, yeah. And then all of a sudden, everything got, well, not everything, the X-leaves got overturned. And so we mentioned it here first before we talked about it on the main YouTube channel and before we mentioned stuff on Instagrams and whatnot. So for people following this podcast, watching it live, you get to hear a lot of cool stuff here first, which is nice. I got a lot of feedback, and this is just because our listeners are a bunch of perverts, but I got a lot of feedback from Gabrielle Lyon being on the podcast. Yeah. I got, like, people would message me and be like, yeah, what's her deal, man? And it's like, what do you mean?

What's her deal? Like, what do you mean? Like, what is her deal? I don't know. Like, no one's ever asked that about anybody else we were having the show yeah i thought that was kind of interesting yeah around that same time we had our boy uh gavin murphy yeah he was great dude he's just like i said he's one of those guys like where i'm just like so fortunate to be you know in this

business to where i get to mean interact with people people. But talking to him, he's like, man, I struggled my whole life just to weigh 170 pounds. I'm like, dude, that's where I'm at right now. And then he's just like, he's a nice guy. Like, you know, we'll, we'll have conversations every now and again. But, um, how good was his food when you were down in Malibu? Oh man, it was great. Yeah. He cooked for the wifey and I, and, uh, yeah, he, he, he's a chef.

So, I mean, he knows, he knows what's up and he does like catering for some really high level um actors and actresses and stuff so that guy knows his way around the kitchen that's for sure yeah in the uh category of surprise guests of the year that's an actual category this guy's gonna get a big old trophy sent to him in the mail. Just because I had no idea. I had no anything about him. But Anthony Jay. Oh, yeah. The guy that freaked us all out with plastics and all the estrogen and the water and everything.

It's funny because so, I mean, everybody here meal preps. We use basically whatever, you know, we can containers we can get. As soon as he left, everybody here meal preps. We use basically whatever, you know, we can, containers we can get. As soon as he left, everybody switched over to glass. Everyone's like, we're going to die. Yeah. One of the most newest employees, Alexa, was like, hey, like, I noticed everybody uses glass around here. And I was like, we had a guest. It's a thing.

Yeah, you need to get glass containers from now on or else. Else you're going to grow bread. Yeah, I know. Wait. You're going to, yeah. Anyway, the plastics and stuff like that, they act as estrogen in your body, but they're harmful to your body and they're negative. So, yeah, you can avoid it by simply just switching up the type of plastic that you

have. And, and there's a bunch of different things that he suggested on that show. Yeah. Um, and we also had, uh, Miranda and Julian Alcarez.

Oh yeah. They were just really cool people and they kicked our ass. Yeah. Workout was great. CrossFit workout that murdered us. We almost died. I think I did die a little bit. Mm hmm. Yeah. And then rounding out the year, uh, we had the, uh, the great debate, CrossFit workout that murdered us. You almost died. I think I did die a little bit.

Yeah. Then rounding out the year, we had the great debate. Oh, yeah. The great debate. Lane Norton versus Sean Baker. So, you know, carnivore versus what's it called again? Flexible. Flexible dieting. I can remember it.

If it fits your flexibility. Yeah. I mean, dude. If it fits your flexibility. Yeah. That was, I mean, dude, how cool was that? Like we had so many people on the live stream. That was the first time I couldn't keep up. That was awesome. It was good to hear both sides of the story. And it was also interesting to see when you put the two people in a room together, how much alike they are rather than how far apart they are.

Right. They still had a lot of different views. Um, but I think each guy's correct. I think if you follow a lot of the advice from Lane Norton, you're probably going to be healthy and lean. If you follow a lot of the advice from Dr. Sean Baker,

you're gonna be healthy and lean. And speaking of that, January is coming up and it's world carnivore month and I'm jumping all in. Yeah. I'm excited because I mentioned it on my Instagram yesterday. I feel better

when I'm eating a bunch of ribeyes as opposed to chicken breast. You mentioned that before too even with keto. Committing to eating a lot less carbs and stuff like that. I just feel better. We also had our boy Jason Kalipa on. We had him on a bunch of that. Yeah, I just feel better. We also had our boy Jason Kalipa on. Yeah, we had him on a bunch of times.

Round out the year, though. And then we also had Kobe on there, right? Kobe? Kobe. What the hell is his last name? Kobe Lopez, a.k.a. Seth Rollins. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the reason why I didn't put that on the list

is because those aren't available yet. Oh, my God, but they will be. oh my god i know right yeah they will be and then also i mean another episode that didn't necessarily come out because it turned into a big youtube conversation was uh we went to hang out with phil heath um down in his right well not his gym but the gym he trains in in colorado and that was another cool conversation because it was right before the olympia he didn't end up winning like you know was kind of expected almost by everybody but we have another winner that we eventually will be talking to soon so that's pretty cool too but yeah i mean we've had so many guests if i listed them all out it would be we'd be here forever it would be here forever what we're trying to say is we have because when there's a big stream that's going and there's like a lot of

people commenting they're just you always have two sides of the field it's like you guys need to get back to just talking about power lifting and then the other side is all you guys ever do is talk to the same four people it's like buddy, buddy, like, dude, we talk to anybody. Like, it's just, we're always going to bring great information, great conversations. We're going to have a lot of fun doing it. Right. Usually talk a lot about poop. I know, but.

A lot of poop stories. That's part of fitness. 2019, we're going to talk to some fans. So get ready for that. Yeah. Yeah. Who wants to talk to Mark Bell? Hell yeah.

I mean, I got to pee really bad. So we got to, we got to park this that. Yeah. Yeah. Who wants to talk to Mark Bell? Hell yeah. I mean, I got to pee really bad. So we got to, we got to park this bitch. Yeah. All right, peeps. We got the, uh, super training classic coming up February 9th and 10th. I expect all of you to be there. It's here in Sacramento, California. We will, uh, post a link for it.

I think below we can do that. Yeah, I can do that. And, uh, you can sign up for it. It's a push pull contest. You can do a regular raw bench press, or you can wear a slinger and, uh, and there'll be some dead lifting going on.

Male, female. There'll be some great, uh, power lifters there. There'll be some, not such great power lifters there. There'll be some people that are lifting for their first time.

There'll be some people that are lifting there for their four thousands time or whatever it might be. Uh, strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later.