Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Project EP. 17 - Live Q&A

Episode Date: March 9, 2018

Mark Bell answers your questions during this live Q&A session on Mark Bell's Power Project. Watch the live stream here: https://youtu.be/FmcThO3g6BI ➢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/user-921692324 ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell

Oh man, I got poop. You want to get that out? No, no, no, no way. This would be messy. We are live now? Oh my god. Holy shit, this is a lot of pressure. I'm actually making people aware of this on Twitter right now. I'm tweeting. Live Q&A starting now.

Okay, and then link, whabam. Boom. Awesome. Alright, welcome to another power project today, ladies and gentlemen, we're going to do things a little different today and we are going to do a live Q and A. And I wanted to do this today just to kind of see how this goes. We need to work on scaling up our interwebs, our internet. And I want to make sure that I'm not like freezing all over the place. Make sure our stream is working pretty good and make sure everything is crisp and sound. Last episode that aired live, the first one that we did was about the carnivore diet, the war on carbs. I went through that very thoroughly. I saw a lot of questions coming in,

couldn't answer quite all of them, but one of the other questions that popped up, and a frequently asked question just with diet in general is about diet soda. And if you remember in the last episode when I was talking about the website rule.me, which has a lot of stuff about a lot of different recipes and stuff to keep you on a ketogenic diet. Remember, you know, the main goal, whenever we're trying to seek greater health, in my opinion, and if we're fat, if we're overweight, the main goal is to lose weight. And so some of the question that we need to ask ourselves is, will diet sodas impede our ability to lose weight? And it probably

really won't impede our ability to lose weight that much, but it potentially can. And so what I would say is you can have diet sodas, you can mix them in here and there, you can have crystal light and some of these other things. But in my opinion, real athletes drink water. If you want to be the most efficient, if you want to try to do the best you possibly can, then you're going to start to remove a lot of different drinks and beverages as I'm drinking a coffee here. I don't really think there's a huge problem with coffee,

but I probably drink too much of it. I have, you know, the way that things are going nowadays, everything's so concentrated, I guess is the word, uh, your, your fruit juices, uh, your coffees. Um, it's not enough just to have like a cup of coffee or to get a tall from like, when's the last time anybody ordered a tall from Starbucks? You always get, uh, a venti or even, even sometimes bigger. So, um, you want to be cautious with some of these things that you're doing, having five, six, and seven, uh, diet sodas a day, probably not a great idea. You're spiking yourself with, uh, some heaps of caffeine throughout the day, as well as, uh,

just, there's this stuff, there's this junk in soda and soda typically is just black. And it's just kind of a weird thing to be pouring into your system. So, uh, probably not the, probably not the best idea. And I would just say that if you're going to have soda and maybe just have it a couple of times, a couple of times a week, uh, reduce the amount of times that you have it per week. And obviously, uh, a diet soda, I'm not going to say it's healthier than a regular soda. Um, I would just say that it, you know, calorie wise and towards your goal, which is losing weight, um, that, uh, it probably won't hurt you to have it here and there. Um, you know, when it comes to, when it comes to any of these kinds of, uh, uh, diet things, you just want to be careful that you're not using as a crutch.

You're not relying on it too much, whether it's protein bars or whether it's diet soda or, um, or any of these things. Another thing that always pops up, people ask a lot about alcohol, like what's the deal with alcohol. And we didn't really dive into that too much yesterday, but alcohol is not really part of any, uh, sound nutrition. It's not really part of any sort of sound health protocol. However, I like to drink. I like to have some wine here and there. And so therefore I do it. Just make sure that these are conscious decisions that you're making because you want to and not just because you're celebrating something else. You're not just celebrating randomly something that somebody else is celebrating.

You're not just randomly just celebrating somebody's birthday or the fact that it's St. Patrick's Day. It's literally something that you want to do because you feel like enjoying some alcohol. That is a situation that we get thrown into when it comes to nutrition, when it comes to health. You start to think about, once we start to really learn about our health and nutrition, once we start

to learn all these different things surrounding it, things start to get really complicated. And we could just lock ourselves in our house all day long and not come out and not eat anything that we think is harmful. But even then, there's still going to be things that are harmful. The environment is polluted. Our foods have different shit on them all are harmful. The environment is polluted. Our foods have different shit on them all the time. Our vegetables, our fruits, you have to wash them. And even with washing them, they still have stuff on them. Our cattle are being fed hormones and they have all

kinds of different things, antibiotics and other things going on with them. So there's really nowhere to run. It seems like there's nowhere to hide when it comes to some of these things. You shouldn't be having things that are in styrofoam. You shouldn't be having things that are in plastic. You shouldn't be having things that are wrapped or stored in any sort of plastic. When you start to really think about it, these things can all be harmful to our body, but we do have to live our lives. We do have to be social and we have to be functioning human beings. We have to be social. And we have to be functioning human beings.

We have to be able to communicate and have a fucking good time. You know, after a while, you start to become so weird that it's a turnoff to everybody around you. You can't, you know, you can't badger little kids that are around you that are in your family for eating a certain way. You can't, you know, there's certain people that think Wi-Fi is really frying our brain and really messing with us. And that could be true. But how do we get away from not using the internet? So these are all things to consider. We have to still live our lives and you're going to have to figure out where is that balance and what is it you're looking for? A key thing to keep in mind is if we can figure out, if we're heavy, if we're overweight,

if we can figure out ways of losing weight, then we are going to win. We are going to feel better about ourselves and we are going in the long run to probably be healthier. So those are the things that we're looking to do. This question comes in from Daniel Chavez. What is your take on eating too much meat? I've been feeling great eating mostly meat,

but I've gotten lots of weird concerned people looking at me weird. So yeah, when it comes to eating too much in general, let's just kind of back things up a little bit. Eating too much is not normally under most circumstances, not a great idea. Our liver, our kidneys, our bodies are, they're kind of sensitive to these kinds of things. So you do, you know, you may want to, you may want to dive into some food, but you're going to find that probably one of the worst things that we do to ourselves on a consistent basis is just eat too much.

And if you really looked at what our problem is, our problem isn't necessarily carbs. Our problem isn't necessarily protein. Our problem isn't necessarily fats. Our problem is just that we eat too much. We stuff ourselves too much. Think about how many times. We stuff ourselves too much. Think about how many times, I mean, if you sat there and just think about it a little bit,

think about it. If you sit there and think about it a little bit, you start to realize how often you overeat. And it starts to be a little bit of a skill that you need to learn. We need to be in tune with what we're doing. That's why a lot of times I'll recommend not eating in front of a screen of any sort. So if you're eating and you're sitting down and watching TV, if you're eating in the movie theater, a lot of times, not only are you eating more than you thought you're, you're just not paying attention to your food, but you're also probably not chewing your food up properly. You're supposed to chew your food until it becomes a liquid and then you're supposed to swallow it. But we're probably too excited. The foods that we're eating are probably, they probably taste

too good. You got pizza, French fries, and all these different things that as soon as they, as soon as they go inside your mouth, you're so excited about it. You just want to freaking down it and you're not paying attention to actually chewing it. And that's when we end up with gas and we end up with all other kinds of problems. So you got to really make sure you're not paying attention to actually chewing it. And that's when we end up with gas and we end up with all other kinds of problems. So you got to really make sure you're properly chewing your food. And when it comes to meat in particular, if we go back to what I said originally

about the meats being contaminated and most of our foods being contaminated, it would be a reasonable thing to think that we can certainly overdo even the meats that we eat. When you look at Dr. Sean Baker, the guy who's promoting the carnivore diet, he's having outstanding results. And so are a lot of other people that are experiencing the diet as well. A lot of other people are having tremendous results with the diet. But can you overdo it? I think we have

enough history. We have enough information that shows us that, yeah, you can overdo it. You can overdo fruit. You can overdo spinach. You can overdo avocado. You can overdo any of these things, any food that anyone's ever claimed to be super healthy. You could definitely overdo and you can definitely end up with stomach problems and definitely end up with a list of a long list of issues. Now, one thing that I saw within that question, though, you said that you're feeling really good. So when we take that into consideration, that is something that I don't take lightly. When somebody tells me that something's going well for them and they feel good, then we want to stay right there. We don't want to really make a lot of changes. We are still always in search of what's optimal. We're still always in

search of what's the best. But we want to kind of ride in that pocket and figure out like if something's feeling good, something's feeling right, and you're still making progress, you're still, whether it's losing weight or gaining strength in the gym, if you're still heading towards all that, then I wouldn't really change too much. I saw you had another question up there, but I think you a beginning power lifter. How long should he train and prepare before I compete for my first meet? So he wants to know how long should he train for his first meet? A lot of times it's just important just to get your feet wet. You know, the good thing about competing in your first competition is that it is your first competition and that everything's going to be a PR. Everything

that you do for that particular day is going to be a PR. In your first powerlifting meet, it's my opinion that you should make all your lifts. If you're to have fun, you're going to make most of your lifts for the day. So I would suggest that you try to go nine for nine should be the main goal of the day. Hitting the same numbers that you hit in the gym, you need to understand that that's possible that that doesn't happen. It's definitely possible that that does not happen. So you have to, the weights that you select in competition in front of three judges is going to be way different than the weights that you take in the gym. The deadlifts that you're not locking out, the squats that you're not squatting to depth, and the bench presses that you're bouncing off your chest are no longer going to be effective

come game day. So in a competition, my opinion, the best way to do it is you want to start the competition out with a weight that you can do for a triple. That would be attempt number one. Just in case you haven't been following along, in case you don't know how powerlifting meet goes, the first thing that we start off with is the squat. You have three attempts in the squat. You cannot go back down and wait. So whatever weight you selected,

if you selected 200 pounds, you can take 200 pounds three times if you need to, but you can't go down and wait. You can't take 180 pounds once you've missed your first attempt. So you got to squat first, then we progress onto the bench press, and then we finish off the meet with a deadlift. You have three attempts at each one, and you're being judged by three judges on all three of your lifts,

on all three of your attempts. And there's commands that you have to follow, and those commands are going to make you lift less weight than you're used to. Plus it's kind of nerve wracking and you want to really make sure you make the lifts easy. So attempt number one should be something that you can perform in the gym for three to four reps fairly easy. Something that you can perform in the gym for three or four reps fairly easy. Your second attempt is going to be something that you can do for two to three reps in a competition or in the gym. And your third attempt, your last attempt could be something where if you really just want to have fun, you want to go for broke and you want to try for that 300 pound mark, that 400 pound mark, 500 pound mark, whatever your goal was,

you can kind of go for it, but make sure you make those first two lifts. So you actually earn the opportunity, earn the right to kind of go for broke on your third. Again, in my opinion, these should all be lifts that you already made. I would have, I would double check and try to figure out what the rules are for the competition. You can check with people that have competed locally before. You can check some different websites and make sure you understand what the rules are. Make sure you're going over those rules in your training. That's going to be number one. Make sure you're hitting depth in your squat. Make sure you're holding on your deadlifts at the top and make sure you're pausing those bench presses and locking them out with authority.

We have a deadlift contest at Powerhouse Gym when we're in Columbus, Ohio. I will get you the address of that in a second, or we'll put it somewhere in the description somewhere. That's with Quest Nutrition. And I'm really excited about that because it gives me an opportunity to get in front of everybody and speak. And so it's not just going to be a deadlift competition. It's not just going to be a deadlift contest where It's not just going to be a deadlift contest where we're giving out tons of great prizes. It's also going to be an opportunity for me to get in front of you guys

and to just share some of the shit that I've learned over the years. I always tell you, if I'm going to teach you how to lift, I'm going to teach you how to live. So we're going to go over a bunch of stuff like that. And you'll get to meet me, take a picture with me if you want, have me autograph something if you'd like, or you can just tell me that I suck either way. Got the book War on Carbs coming out March 2nd on markbellslingshot.com.

In addition to that, we have the Slingshot Push-Up also coming out March 2nd. Let's see, coming out March 2nd. Let's see. This question is from Evan. He says, how do you change your path in life? Oh, my God. Let me take a drink for that. Holy shit.

He says he's in college. College doesn't, oh, he says college doesn't seem like it's for him. Any advice on finding something new? So a big part of this is you're going to have to explore. You're going to have to see, you know, what are some different things that you like to do? If it doesn't seem like you like to do anything, there's no reason to really rush into anything. But I would advise you to try things that are challenging. Things that you don't want to do are going to make you stronger. Things that you don't want to do are going to make you better.

Everybody in their life has had some shit job that they didn't really love. Or at least most of the people I know that are successful had some crap job. Or they had to do some stuff for other people that they didn't really enjoy doing. And so for yourself, those are some things that you're going to need to figure out. People talk oftentimes about passion and it's hard to like, it's hard to really narrow that down. But think about, you know, from the time you've been a kid, what is something you've been excited about? Or what is something exciting now that you almost act like a little kid about whether it's going to movies or whether it's whether it's a particular hobby maybe it's fishing maybe it's hunting maybe it's mountain climbing it could be anything you know you want to try to find something that

you're passionate about and the reason why everyone spits that out all the time and I think what goes unexplained is the fact that if you're passionate about. And the reason why everyone spits that out all the time. And I think what goes unexplained is the fact that if you're passionate about something, you're just going to want to really, you're going to want to do it often. And you're going to want to do it for a long time. This podcast has been going on for the last four years and, or maybe even longer. I don't even know. Power Magazine does Slingshot, Super Training Gym for 11 years. And before all that came along, um, I was doing all this stuff anyway. Um, the candle is not, uh, burning out. It's burning brighter than ever. Uh, things are getting stronger. Things are feeling better all the time.

I feel better with the things I'm doing. I feel I'm able to get a more powerful message out to more people all the time. So all that is growing on top of itself. But I think a really key factor with some of the young people out there is you're going to have to experiment. You're going to have to have some different jobs. Try to think about the people that you know. I think that a lot of times we don't understand how many people we truly know and how many people can actually help us. So if you make people aware of some of your goals, some people will think that you're crazy and some people will think that you're weird. But try to make people aware of what it is you want to do.

And when you start to think about it, you might know somebody at church. You might know somebody at school that's in one of your classes that knows how to do this. Or you might have an uncle or somebody. There's going to be somebody in your list of people that you can find who's going to be able to help you inch towards your goal. None of us are doing this completely on our own. So don't ever let anyone sell you on that because that is a line of bullshit. We need, in order to be successful, we need other people. We have to rely on other people. This is from Bart. He said, I just started doing box squats and he squats twice a week. What is a good frequency to add them in? Um, I like to box squat, um, it, you know, at least once a week that the advantage of a box squat is that you can add it in quite often because a box

squat doesn't make you as sore as a regular squat. And I know all the comments on Instagram all the time are always like, why are you doing a box squat? People get all bent out of shape every single time you do one, but I actually prefer a box squat over a regular squat. And even if I was training for a raw competition, I would predominantly use box squats over regular squats just because you could do them more often. So I would do probably box squats. I would do like two to one and a two to one ratio with a regular squats. Um, I think that a lot of times, uh, the other thing that's cool about a, um, a box squat is a box squat can kind of replace a deadlift as well. You can pause on

the box for a little bit and you can kind of duplicate in some way the way that the deadlift feels coming off the ground if you pause for a three or four count at the bottom of some of those squats. So I highly recommend messing around with box squats. The way I've always used it, you can go once a week with a box squat and once a week with a regular squat,

and you can kind of just, you can have one day a week be one way and the other day a week be another. Um, and you can rotate them back and forth on which one's heavy and which one's more for speed. We got any more questions firing in? We're running low. That's all right. We just started this shit. So that's the way it's, that's the way it's going to go down. I'm going to share some of you guys anyway since we're here. How's the live feed looking? Is it going okay?

Cool. I just got a thumbs up. I guess we're doing pretty good. Yeah, everything's looking good, dude. I'm about to get my blood work done. We've been talking a lot about the carnivore diet. I'm going to get my blood work done sometime next week. Um, and I'm gonna get that checked out and just kind of, just kind of see, see where we're at with some of that. But I, I, I'm expecting it to be,

to be, to be okay, but you never know. You never know. Really excited to, uh, I'm going to be doing some stuff with, uh, Chuck Liddell coming up March 8th. I'll be down in Los Angeles doing some podcasting with him. I'm really fired up and excited for that. That should be super cool. I'm trying to look for my notes from yesterday. Here we go. Okay, here's what I want to talk about.

All right, I don't want to get too deep into this, but here we go. I'm just trying to make sure that I don't go on for an hour and a half because this could be long. So you guys have heard, you know, the, the most, the most recent, uh, post that I made on my Instagram. And, uh, you know, I came out from the curtain and had the wrestling, had the Terminator 2 music. We had the, uh, smoke going and everything. We got all amped up in here and we got, we got a little out of hand. Um, either you're in or you're in the way. I've told this story before. Um, super training gym has been around for 11 years. Super training. Oh, six.

It started in 2006. I've told the story of super training many times. I'm not going to get too deep into that. Um, but with super training be around for more than a decade, I think what a lot of people forget is that before super training was around, I was obsessed about building and making something like super training for a minimum of five years, maybe even a little bit longer. I actually recall in high school, I used to always tell my friends all the time that I was going to build a gym. And I've

just, I had this stupid thing where I would just say, I'm going to build a gym over here and I'm going to build a gym over there. And I would just like point to like the corner of the, of the room and just say like, I was going to set one up over there, set one up over here. Just kind of like, I don't know. I just kind of had the idea that I wanted to have, uh, some sort of training thing somewhere, you know, anywhere really. And so as I got older and as I was trying to figure out what the fuck I'm going to do with myself, what the hell I'm going to do with the rest of my life, I started to kind of think about, okay, the only thing I really know is lifting. I don't know much else. I tried pro wrestling at the time.

Pro wrestling was no longer working out for me. As a young kid, I loved professional football and I was given that all I had. And becoming a pro football player was starting to diminish. That was becoming more and more evident as I got around great athletes. I played at Santa Monica City College with Chad Ochocinco

and with future Hall of Famer Steve Smith. And just being around some of these stud athletes, it was more and more obvious to me, like, oh shit, man, you ain't ever going to make it in the NFL. You're not good enough. You're not fast enough. You're not strong enough. You're not tall. You're not anything enough to be a good enough football player to make it to a division one school and then be able to survive in a division one school and then be able to progress on to professional football. So from that point, I got into professional wrestling and I kind of made an agreement with myself that I was going to wrestle for about five years and I was going to

see where I was at the end of that road. Now, as I mentioned earlier, it's really crucial that you're passionate about stuff because otherwise your flame will burn out. That's what happened to me with professional wrestling. I loved watching professional wrestling as a kid and I still love watching. I still catch Monday Night Raw here and there. I still will watch a pay-per-view here and there. I still love watching wrestling. I'll always be a wrestling fan. But as I got to that five-year point, I was doing pretty good, but I really wasn't making any more progress. I kind of stopped I really wasn't making any more progress. I kind of stopped. I wasn't getting any better.

And in my opinion, if you're not getting better, you're getting worse. And so at that point, I made a decision. You know what? I'm going to forget about this. I'm going to move on. Well, now what am I left with? I wanted to play football. I wanted to be a pro wrestler.

I don't have an education. I don't have any sort of cert't have an education. Um, I don't have, uh, any sort of certifications for training people or I got, I got nothing. Uh, the only thing I had was a work ethic. I wanted to work hard and I did love training. I read about training all the time, but I was always scared to really dive into any of these, uh, these, uh, tests, um, for, you know, personal training to, to get a, a personal training certificate because I always did so poorly in school. I'm like, oh, great. Another fucking test. I'm really gonna get rocked by that and I'm not going to do very well. So I avoided that like the plague. And I just kind of kept popping around at different gyms, finally finding a gym that

would hire me without a certification. And I was able to start to learn and I was able to start to develop some of my skill there. From that time period, I started pretty much on a daily basis. I would just sit there and dream about one day having my own gym. And I'd start to visualize what that would look like. As I started to get back into powerlifting, I was a powerlifter as a kid. And I halted that for several years while I was wrestling and stuff. I did train at Westside Barbell, but I was not competing in powerlifting. As I shifted into my latter years, I started to get back into powerlifting. I started to get fired up about it all over again. And I always knew that powerlifting would come back. Powerlifting

is like, it's part of my DNA. I feel like, I feel like it's really strongly connected to me as an individual. It's really part of who I am. And I always knew that, that, that that would come back at some point. And so I started getting more and more into powerlifting and weekend and week out and day in and day out. And every hour that would go by, I would think about powerlifting. I would think about box squats and bench presses and deadlifts. And I think about, you know, getting in powerlifting gear. And I think about doing all these crazy things. And more so even than that, I kept thinking about having my own gym. It's just something that was really connected to me very strongly. And when I would drive by certain places, I would drive by some of these buildings

where they'd said, you know, space available. And I'd be like, oh my God, it'd be a great place to have a gym. And I'd see this place and that place and all these different spots and I'd be so fired up and excited about it. But I never did anything about it. I was kind of a loser in a sense.

I had a bouncing job when I moved here to Northern California because I knew I needed to make some sort of money. I needed to make some sort of dough. I had a wife and about two kids, one and a half kids at least at the time. And I think we were kind of working on Quinn at the time. But I just was a little bit lost. I didn't know exactly what I was going to do or how I was going to ever really make it happen. And so I kept thinking about it, thinking about it, thinking about it.

And then something kind of overpowered me and kind of took over. And it just kind of made me think, you know what, man? You've been talking about this for an awful long time. And what's your life going to be like if you just sit around and keep talking about it? what's your life going to be like if you just sit around and keep talking about it? I remember hearing in a speech, somebody said, cowards talk about what they'll never do. And that really, that really hit me hard. I was like, I'm a, I'm a fucking coward. That's what I am. I'm a coward because I'm not doing anything that I want to do. I keep talking about it. I keep, I was at the time, I was even like telling other people about it. I was like, I'm going to have a gym someday and I want to do this and that. I think

my parents thought I was crazy. I think my wife was even beginning to think I was a little bit crazy and everybody around me was doubting me quite a bit. And I was doubting myself and, and they, they should doubt me. Cause I was not in a good spot to like, really, I didn't have a plan. And so you guys know people, you have dreamers in your corner, you got dreamers, uh, around your house and in your family and you know what it's like to hear them. They say something, you're like, you ain't fucking doing that. You kidding me? You're a worthless piece of shit. You ain't going anywhere. So I know, I know that, um, because I lived it. I was kind of in those shoes.

But again, if we go back, I did always at least have some work ethic. I always had heart. I always wanted to try to make myself better and make things better. I didn't have a lot of confidence in myself because I thought that my learning disability, I thought it was a real handicap.

And it really wasn't. It never was. It actually just seemed like it was, it was something, uh, it was never told to me that I couldn't do certain things. Um, I told it to myself, I made up that lie probably to protect myself so I wouldn't go out too far and, uh, and hurt, potentially hurt myself. I guess I was scared to do certain things. And I think a lot of other people are guilty of doing things like that. And so for me, I finally just decided, you know what? I don't, I don't fucking care anymore. The gravitational pull towards powerlifting is way too fucking strong. You need to have your own powerlifting gym. You're sitting here and you're talking about being one of the best powerlifters in the world. You know what needs to happen next. You know 100% in your heart

that you're not going to be the powerlifter that you want to be unless you have your own spot. So I travel every weekend to Diablo Barbell Club up near my buddy Jesse Burdick. And I train up there every weekend. And this is, again, this is a year or two after, probably a year after coming from Westside Barbell. And I knew the environment of Westside Barbell. And that's what put the thought in my head. You ain't gonna make it on your own, man.

You need a fucking, you need an entire room full of gorillas and savages if you're gonna try to make it to the next level. And so that's what I started to think about every single day. I was like, you know what? You need to have a gym. And I always felt that powerlifting was going to be cool. I always felt that powerlifting was going to be in the spot that it is today. And then some, I think powerlifting can still even be greater and have twice the amount of people involved in it as it does now.

And I just, it was something that I really dreamt all the time and something I thought about all the time until finally there was just a breaking point where I was like, you know what? I need to have my own fucking spot. And as I started to get out there and as I started to lift at places like Diablo Barbell and as I started to meet other lifters in the area, I went to Steve Zaretsky's garage. That's where I quickly met Jim McD and Scott Cartwright and people that were part of the original Super Training Gym. And I started meeting more lifters and I started going to competitions and I started seeing how competitive it was. And I was like, holy shit, man, there's some really good lifters in this area.

If I'm going to be anything, I need to start keeping track of who these guys are. And I need to start figuring out a way to be able to beat them. And I actually physically made a list and I wish I still had it with me, but I list. It was like a fucking hit list. If your name was on there, that means I was fucking gunning for you and I was coming for you and I was going to kick your ass in a powerlifting meet one way or the other. So just holding on to this dream with everything that I had. Again, I would look at all these different spaces

and it started to get real. I started calling up like real estate people and they would show me a spot and they're like, well, what kind of, you know, what kind of rent do you think you can afford? This place has been empty for three or four years. They would say, you know, it starts at like 2000 bucks a month. And I was like, I could do like 200 bucks a month. They'd laugh in my face and that would be that. And I'd go on my way and I would lick my wounds and I would try to figure out, uh, you know, what, what, what I was going to try to do next.

So then I started meeting more powerlifters. I started becoming more popular. I already had a little bit of a name for myself because I was at Westside Barbell, because I did stuff with Elite Fitness. And so I already had a reputation going. I already had some what of a following. And so because of that, I was able to, I was able to decide, you know what, I'm just going to open up a place. It's going to be a few hundred bucks a week. The spot that I got was about 825 bucks a month. And I was like, all I need is like seven or 10

lifters at about 125 bucks a pop. And I can open up a gym and I can get underway with my mission to beat all these people that I have that's on this list. So super training gym was originally built 100% out of me being selfish. I wanted to be the best and I knew I couldn't be the best by myself. I knew I needed teammates. I knew I needed a group of people around me that were hungry, that wanted to get better just like myself. So I started super training gym and we started off pretty much immediately with about 10 lifters. And we were able to scrape by, handle the rent. I was then able to get an investment from Big Roy, who was our, who ended up benching 900 pounds faster than you can get up off a couch. Big Roy was every bit of about 500 pounds, huge man with a big heart. He had a heating and air conditioning business.

And he and I talked one day and he said that he, you know, that he's doing really well. And I was like, well, fuck man. I said, the gym's kind of hurting. I said, would you ever be open to investing? And again, this is important that you guys are paying attention because you don't know who's in your inner circle and 500 bucks to you could be really fucking steep. 500 bucks to somebody else doesn't mean anything or a thousand bucks or 2000 bucks. There's people that just don't care about 20,000 bucks or 200,000 bucks. There's people that make a lot of fucking money. And those amounts are relatively small to them as they're not, it's not a huge deal. It doesn't compromise their lifestyle for them to give away some of that money. So Roy and I got talking and Roy offered

to give me, I think it was about five grand. He's like, this should help with equipment. This should help you get more members. This should help with ABC. And so boom, we were off the races and I had the conversation with him. I said, Hey, you know what, this is your, what you're buying into is this. And, and that's it. And so I basically said, you know, this is not an investment in like future super training or anything. This is, uh, only to, uh, pay for like a lifetime membership. And anytime we get shirts or hats or any of those things, uh, I'll provide that to you and I'm going to help you bench 900 pounds. Cause he was a shirted lifter. Uh, I was already pretty strong at the time. And so that's,

that's where our focus was. Our focus was just on being strong. It was on anything else. And Roy was like, sure, man, I don't care. He's like, I don't need, he's like, I don't even, I don't even need you to pay me back. And so we were kind of off and running there. But my point is as we go back to either you're in or you're in the way. During that time, during that search and during me, you know, looking for these buildings and during that time of me trying to figure out who the fuck I am, there was nobody else in my corner. It was just the guy that you see here right now or in front of you. It was just me. It was me by myself. And so I'm not saying that I did everything by myself because I've had a lot of

help along the way. Guys like Big Roy, guys like my wife, of course, guys like my brothers, guys like my parents, people like my parents. I've had a lot of help along the way, of course. That's part of it for sure. But either you're in or you're in the way, you're either part of what I'm doing or you're not. And so that's the mantra that I had to carry on forever with Super Training Gym. It will be the first quote that goes on the wall here at Super Training. And the quote originally came from a roommate of mine

who was a nutcase, a chain smoker, a bodybuilder, and an Italian guy who was super abrasive. And at the time I was dating some different girls and stuff like that. And he came over to my house. He and I are in conversation and he uses his hands a lot and he's yelling and he's swearing all the time. And he's like, you know what, Mark? He's like, I don't understand it, man. You know, you're going out with this girl and that girl and you're complaining. He's like, you know what's fucking cool? He's like, you don't understand it, man. You know, you're going out with this girl and that girl, and you're complaining. He's like, you know, it was fucking cool. He's like, you know, it was cool. Fucking Andy. He's like, Andy's cool. He goes, you know why? He's like, I got a saying,

and it goes like this, either you're in or you're in the fucking way. He goes, and Andy, she's in. He's like, so that's what you got to do. He's like, you got to call her up. And, and, and that was that. And we're, uh, you know, I don't know how many fucking years later, 18 years later of marriage and, uh, two babies, super training gym, slingshot and all that good shit. Anyway, I better get to train. And that's all the time we got. Thank you for, uh, sending in some of those questions. Be on the lookout, man. We're going to do a lot more of this. You can find this podcast on this YouTube channel, Mark Bell's Power Project. You can also find us on iTunes, on Stitcher, and on Google Play. You're going to see us everywhere all the time. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never a strength. I'm out of here. Later.