Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Project EP. 174 - Ryan Winther

Episode Date: January 30, 2019

NBC Sports' Ryan Winther is the 2012 World Long Drive World Champion, holds multiple Guinness World Records, and is the Creator and Host of the Driven Golf Show on NBC Sports. Ryan hasn’t competed in a long time, but has made an immediate and dramatic impact on the sport, drawing everyone’s attention with a 469-grid record drive at the 2010 RE/MAX Last Chance Qualifier on the Mesquite Championship grid, and then following by breaking world records for club-head and ball-speeds at the 2011 PGA Show in Orlando. Link to sign up for the ST Classic: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/super-training-classic-2019-tickets-53251741392 ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Find the Podcast on all platforms: ➢Subscribe Rate & Review on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-bells-power-project/id1341346059?mt=2 ➢Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4YQE02jPOboQrltVoAD8bp ➢Listen on Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/mark-bells-power-project?refid=stpr ➢Listen on Google Play: https://play.google.com/music/m/Izf6a3gudzyn66kf364qx34cctq?t=Mark_Bells_Power_Project ➢Listen on SoundCloud: 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

you know, my, uh, let me, let me know when we're rolling. Oh, good. Oh, there we go. And then, uh, you got the script and then you sent that over to Ryan, right? And Ryan, you read the script last night. Oh yeah. Yeah. I'm good to go. Okay, good. You know, uh, it's really rare that we have someone on that, um, can do some cool stuff with a golf ball, you know, but normally, normally we just got some meat heads on that, uh, can't really hit a golf ball more than like 10 feet. You always think like the big guys can really whack the crap out of the ball, but not always the case, especially when we went to top golf, right? Yeah.

Oh, watching more. I tried coaching Mark through it. Just a simple golf swing. It was tough, man. Yeah. But I mean, eventually we got you hitting fairly straight. Yeah. Yeah.

And Marcus was pretty good. Marcus was really good, yeah. We got Filipino Thunder over here. He's about three bills. He was whacking the ball pretty good. Andrew was pretty good. But there's a lot of technique. You know, there's a lot of technique to golf.

My only thing with golf, like my only experience with golf, I've actually never played a game of golf in my life, so that showed up pretty good when we're at top golf the only golf i have experience with is mini golf and uh my favorite thing about golf is from the movie falling down when they the old guy is wearing you know the typical kind of golf pants and uh the the uh the guy who plays the leading role in the movie he he steals the guy's golf cart. And he like, or maybe he's just like pushes it down a hill or something. It crashes into a tree.

And the old guy has a heart attack. And the guy says, now you're going to die in those stupid fucking pants. And he just walks away. That's the only thing I know about golf. They wear weird funny hats and they wear weird pants. Yeah, they do wear weird pants. What's the deal with the pants? Do you wear weird pants?

Well, I don't. No, usually people who wear that kind of attire are compensating for some skill on the scoreboard. So it happens. It happens. You'll see that. And usually when you're in that type of attire, you're not the best golfer. I guess old school golf, though, they kind of had like those cropped pants or shorts, right? It was normal back then.

And some guys still wear that. I have some friends who wear that kind of stuff as a kind of a throwback, as an appreciation. But yeah, typically you shouldn't see that on the golf course anymore. So man, you're really whacking the crap out of the ball. We saw a clip of you on Joe Rogan and our buddy Charlie Zamora connected us. I had no idea that you lived here in town. I've heard your name kicked around before, but you have a Guinness Book of World Record, right?

I have three of them. Oh, geez. Three of them, yeah. So we have the Guinness World Record for longest carry drive on a golf course, which is from tee to where it lands at 430 yards. I also said at elevation, we did it in Park City, Utah. It was 495 yards carry.

And then I did the Guinness world record for ball speed, which is just how fast the ball's coming off your club. When we actually broke it again for a fourth record, but we had some kind of technical glitches. So we, we didn't accept that one. So we set four world records, three of them currently. You don't really look like a golfer. I mean, what, how tall are you? How much you weigh? I'm six, four, about 277 right now. He's 287. These big guys, they get a little shy when they're, when their weight starts to creep up, they start getting shy in the other direction. You know, it's kind of like a smaller guy, you know, throws an extra, you throw an extra five pounds on, right? Yeah. All the time. Yeah. What do you weigh? Oh, 190. Yeah. Right. I'm 185 ish, you know, currently. Yeah. Throw, throw a couple

LBs on it. The bigger guys are trying to be smaller, you know, currently. Yeah. Throw, throw a couple LBs on it. The bigger guys are trying to be smaller, you know, but I mean, there's a lot of, um, you know, you're not a traditional golfer. Did you grow up playing a lot of golf? You know what? I never did ever. I didn't pick up a golf club till I was 25 years old. And that's why I kind of, the story's, it's a little weird, but I was a baseball player growing up. So basically played baseball year round, grew up on a farm, kind of picking up rocks, hitting the sticks. That's a, weird, but I was a baseball player growing up. So basically played baseball year-round, grew up on a farm,

kind of picking up rocks, hitting sticks. That's cheating right there. There's a cheat code growing up on a farm. Yeah. We had about three channels, so it was either watch Bob Ross paint in the magic clouds or go out and chase animals and have them chase you and pick up rocks and hit them. It looks like your style is quite a bit different

than kind of the range of motion that you see for most guys. Because you're a bigger guy, how does that play into your advantage? Well, it's crazy if you think about it because Titus Performance Institute, which basically is the leader in the golf fitness side of it, I kind of broke every single mold they have with my thoracic turn. So normal PGA players around 42 degrees of separation in the thoracic spine where some long drivers like James Zalowski, they get up around 80 degrees and I'm

at 16 degrees, which is so according to their mold, I should be swinging 80 miles an hour. I don't, I swing in the high one fifties. So I don't, I really represent the normal golfer because I'm not that flexible in my golf swing, but I just know how to use the power efficiently from the ground up. And so, I mean, you're able, uh, what is it? You're able to generate a tremendous amount of force in a short period of time. Is that kind of what we're talking about? It's about, it's, it's like ground reaction time. So a ground reaction force. So basically it's like how an NBA basketball player

in a dunk contest or when he's dunking in a game, he loads up and then he springs up. So I'm just very efficient at loading and using the ground to apply to the golf ball. And it's not as difficult or as crazy as it sounds. I just had to learn it giving my specific body type because I am a bigger guy. You know, I've had some really bad injuries in the past. And so it's just about tweaking my body to be the most efficient that I can. What's weird about it and what's

quite different than like, let's say, you know, bench pressing or squatting, or in your example of, uh, even, uh, uh, you know even dunking a basketball. When you dunk a basketball and when you're doing like a squat or something, I mean, a squat, you have the weight of the bar and whatever weight you have on there. And same thing with a bench press. You got the weight that's on there and that gets stored in the body as kinetic energy.

Now, I might start to speak a little out of balance here because I'm not a science guy. I'm not a physics guy by any stretch of the imagination. But I guess my point here being that when you dunk a basketball, you know, you take like a hop step or so, and you're able to generate force downward into the ground, and then you're able to push yourself back up. So you took a X percentage of your body weight and you lowered yourself a certain amount of degrees with, by bending the knees and then you extend your whole body as hard as you

possibly can, but you kind of are using almost like your fallen body weight, especially if you dribbled and kind of ran up there and dunk the ball. Now in golf, I mean, you're just kind of turning from your, from your torso. So it's like, I guess that's why it doesn't make any sense to be able to hit the ball so far. Is that kind of correct? Yeah. And it's, we have a kinematic sequence in golf. So it's about a coil.

So we coil up with the upper body, the hips, then the legs, and that creates the pressure on the ground. And a couple of years ago, which is interesting. And cause you see a lot of really good golfers, like, you know, people who can hit the ball, Dustin Johnson, they pick up that foot to help them coil a little better. Well, my feet stay on the ground, which again goes against. Both are flat. Both are flat, which is bizarre because no, there's some great long drivers in the history of our sport and all of them lift that foot up.

Joe Miller, a good friend of mine, big guy as well. I mean, he lifts that foot all the way up. There's some guys that lift my foot stays on the ground, which should slow me down even more. But if I start lifting my foot up i actually slow down so a couple years ago joe miller and i we were in orlando and they have these force plates which measure the amount of force that's on the ground and so at 250 pounds at the time if let's say a normal golfer who's 180 pounds they'll be lucky if they can watching a couple clips of you whacking the ball and it's hard not to laugh

because of the, like, it's just, it just looks crazy. Yeah. See how my feet stay on the ground throughout until, you know, obviously the ball's gone, my feet will come up. But anyway, so the force plates, you know, if you're 180 pounds and you can put down 300 pounds

of pressure, that's, that's awesome. That's a lot. Obviously amateur golfers are probably nowhere near that. Well, at 250 pounds, I tripled my weight. So I put 750 pounds of force on the ground, which is about 300 pounds higher than ever recorded. So more than any long driver in the history of the sport, I use the ground because my body, I'm, I don't have the body. I don't have the flexibility to do what a lot of guys can.

What is this, uh, kind of force production doing the real, real world? You ever beat someone's ass? You ever get in any fights? No, I, I, so, you know, being in the army, I was, I've been ready to fight. I just haven't, I don't know. Maybe it's my, it's probably cause you're six, four. Yeah. That definitely gets me out of some fights being big and strong, but, um, yeah, I know. What about other sports when you were young? Did you play other sports? So I trained as an athlete at a young age, and I know we've talked about this before. I developed athletically at a young age, but I was a baseball player. I never played football. And the only reason I didn't play football, because our high school, our coach was one of the top coaches in the country, Terry Logue and um i was so big in high school i mean i was six to 200 pounds as a freshman and i didn't play football just to piss him off so it's probably why i never played any

other sport just to make people mad and i i guess i got everyone in school is probably like why don't you don't play football you're like nope no i played baseball so i just i loved baseball i was really good at it and that was my passion and, all my free time went to practicing, which I know a lot of people don't like doing these days. So I just, I practice, practice, practice, but it was baseball year round. So have they, like what other studies have they done on you? Have they, have they measured like the amount of force that you have, like in your rotation? You're saying, you're saying this is like a spring, you're loading things up. Right. rotation, uh, you're saying, you're saying this is like a spring, you're loading things up. Have they measured the pressure of you, uh, swinging the club back, uh, and not necessarily

just swinging it forward? No, the biggest thing it's, it's, it's about speed and efficiency. Um, and that's why you're starting to see more golfers gain a little more weight. Cause they have this massive amount of torque with very little mass to support it. And that's a recipe for disaster. So exactly. they hurt their backs. Exactly. And Rory McIlroy did that when he started, you know, his swing is so violent. His separation is three times mine, but he was so thin

and the mass wasn't able to support it. And before I get to your points, that's why I'm gaining so much weight. I love gaining weight. I'm kind of addicted to the muscle gain, but the stronger I get, the healthier I get in golf. So, which is, the golf world's not used to that.

And that's what we're trying to break. This mold is that it's okay to be big and strong. You will be a better, healthier golfer. But as far as measurements, a lot of it's that ground reaction about how much pressure you're putting down. And I also have the fastest hands ever recorded. They were moving like just under 3000 degrees per second from the top to the ball. So there's all these variations and there's, I've been plugged in and TPI and they've studied my swing, but it's just about measuring. Just leaves them confused. Unfortunately. Yes.

Yeah. They, uh, Greg Rose who runs TPI is a good friend of mine. I've kind of broke their mold. So now they're, when you do like some power courses in TPI, you study my swing because, but which is good for normal golfers because I represent the typical golfer. Not very flexible. Don't swing. My swing barely gets to parallel, but I've become the longest hitter on the planet. So I'm sure there's things that you do now that are kind of a quote unquote par for the course with your training to kind of match up with some of the things that you want to do and to help, uh, uh, to help put a punctuation mark on the things that you do make, refine things, make things a little

bit better. But do you think that, you know, you can kind of teach or coach somebody to do some of the things that you're doing without the background that you have? Like, do you feel at that background? Like, you know, growing up on a farm, you know, it's like, how do, how do we replace that? Like Brock Lesnar grew up on a farm and he becomes UFC heavyweight champion and he's a mutant.

He went out and played a professional football for a little, I mean, the guy's just, he's a freak, right? Can, can we replace some of that with, with just pure training and skill and stuff like that? Or do you need that body of work almost? Everyone can get better no matter what. And you've seen that in your gym here, but you will be limited by your potential. Now, if you raise your potential at a young age, that bar is going to be much higher for the rest of your life.

So no, we're all limited. And as we develop that fuel at such a young age, we have a lot more potential for growth down the line. But what I was able to develop as a kid, I would not be able to do now. I mean, if you were, even if you were 18 years old, you would, if you were not developed at, you know, seven, eight years old, the ligaments, the tendons, how rubbery and pliable they are, you're not going to get it at that age. So we can work and make you more efficient, given your body. But if someone were to develop at a young age, they're going to be more successful athletically at an older age. And you said you were in the Army.

Why did you transition out of the Army? What happened there? So I got very few offers to play baseball at a school. But the Army was somewhere I can go and play baseball. And I love computers. So I went as a field artillery computer system specialist. And I was going to play baseball during the season. And got through training in AIT, which is the advanced individual training that you get

after bootcamp. Um, I actually got a stress fracture in my L5. So like my L5 cracked on both sides and started sliding forward against my spinal cord, which was causing, you know, tons of pain paralysis, you know, about once a week I was spending about 12 hours in the hospital, just decompressing, getting medicine through. So, um, they kind of gave me, I wasn't able to play baseball and they said, you know, I would have to change my MOS and go into like a desk job basically at 18, 19 years old. And I didn't want to do that. So I got an honorable discharge, took my MGI bill, went back to school and continued playing baseball for about the next seven years. And then when you went, when you went back to baseball, I mean, you were rehabbed enough to.

Yeah. So, which is crazy, you know, my story in golf, but as far as baseball goes, my back very, it limited me. I mean, I threw gas, I threw a hundred miles an hour, I hit bombs, but I couldn't be healthy. My back would constantly pull me down. Just doing the stressful exercises of baseball. Just it, it didn't work with my back. I try, I do very well. Then I would get cut. And then I'm going back to school and kind of got cut, played, cut, cut, played.

Just couldn't stay healthy long enough. When you got hurt, was it accumulation or was it like something just happened one particular day? It's like a week. The L5 was a week. It was a weak link. So stuff that it would attach to just, you know, it would, it would fail. Basically it was my weak link.

So something, or the back spasms. But even when you heard it originally though, like it was just a cumulative from stuff in the army mainly. Yeah. And my doctor, just having a weak spine growing up and a lack of mobility just genetically is what caused it. Was there a potential future with baseball to where it was like, man, if I can just stay healthy for a little bit longer, the phone's going to start ringing? I was really good. I was a top prospect coming out of high school. But I lived in a town where nobody came to. Very small, very small school.

It was kind of basically a farm town. I mean, I love where I grew up, but we were off the beaten path for sure. You hit a ball 235 miles an hour. I did. I actually, so at crank golf, um, the company that I use for drivers, I hit 239 miles an hour down there. So 239 is my officially fastest ever. And then like, I think, uh, when you're watching tennis, what are they hitting that ball

at? Like 160 or something like that? I think so. Yeah. Golf is definitely the fastest projectile in sports. So it's moving. I know the shuttlecock, which is the badminton that goes a little faster, but it's only measured within like the first four or five inches. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I actually was a badass in some shuttlecocking basically. If that's a term. It looks like the golf club is like bending as you're swinging that thing back. Is that kind of what's happening? It definitely, it'll definitely arch for sure.

Even though that's slow, I'm taking that back really fast. And then that's swinging 160 miles on the way down. The club head is moving 160 miles an hour. And then the ball coming off there is at that time, I was 225. What kind of training are you doing for this kind of explosive movement? Well, I do a couple different things. Obviously, I do the power lifting for strength, right? I love the strength. That's the mass that supports the torque. You deadlift and stuff too? I don't do as much deadlifting or even squats because of my

spine so i have to really make sure my o5 is under control and you know pertaining to golf i my back hasn't hurt in 10 years of playing golf which is the weirdest thing right and that's why we're trying to help these these golfers and we really want to come see you is that you know people that get hurt during golf and they think they can't golf but but my back, I haven't had one spasm in 11 years now. So I like the strength stuff like this. Um, yeah, 585 and a mad dog slingshot here. You know, and obviously I'm kind of doing a modified, um, cause I had to be careful with it, but you know, it's funny how we were talking about, I, I wanted to do bench. I knew I was getting really strong. I was doing 200 pound dumbbells and I was like, man, I really want to bench, but I don't want to get hurt. So that's why everyone was like, well, you need to talk to Mark, get a

slingshot. So I got the slingshot and we just, my goal was 500 pounds. That's my buddy Andrew and I, my goal was 500 pounds and it just kept going up and up and, you know, obviously modified and I don't want to go down to my chest cause that'll put too much stress on my shoulders, but just 90 degrees. And with that slingshot, I put up 5 85. Well, you know, and the thing too, is like, sometimes people will watch stuff like that and they'll be like, Oh, why isn't he going all the way down? Even though you're explaining it, you know, what I always try to explain to people is like, sometimes there's people that perform at a really high level and they don't really like, you don't need a lot of science on, on, on why you're doing something. You just do it kind of intuitively.

And you've been doing some of these things for a while. So you understand like, Hey, if I get a little support on my elbows, when I'm doing overhead presses, I actually prefer that even though you probably could do sets, uh, you could use a little bit less weight and not have a spot, but it's just keeping your tendons and ligaments together, right? It's, it's being safe. So I, I, I hit golf balls for a living. So if I hurt myself doing something other than that, then you're just being a jackass.

So it's like, I'd rather be safe than sorry. You know, the 90 degrees, the modified lifts, the support. Yeah, you know, I could do it without it. But man, if that weight starts to tumble, then I'm in big trouble. And that's why I love the slingshot because I just have the confidence that, you know, I'm not going to, my shoulder's not going to hurt, my elbows stay there. So I'm very excited about using that. Do you do any barbell stuff without the slingshot on, or do you mainly just use the slingshot?

Now, now it's a slingshot before I didn't, but that's why I stayed away from a lot of those exercises because of the confidence. I didn't have enough confidence to do that much weight. So when I was doing like, you know, the squats, I would just do little golfer weight. And then I'm sure people that are watching right now are probably like, well, what the hell does a bench press have to do with swinging a golf club? You know, we, we go back. Strength is an amazing thing to have. Power is an amazing thing to have using those together. Cause they are different. You know, you can be the strongest guy in the world, but not hit a golf ball far, thing to have. Power is an amazing thing to have. Using those together, because they are different, you know, you can be the strongest guy in the world, but not hit a golf ball far, as you were telling me some of the guys you had. Or you can get a guy who probably weighs 150 pounds, that

kills it. So if you can have both of those, it's very powerful. And that's what I do. I've been able to use both of those together to create a career for myself. I want to get, uh, Kaler Woolum out here. He's a deadlifts 940 pounds, 937 pounds, weighs about 220, 230, somewhere in that range. And, uh, he could whack the hell out of a golf ball. I can't remember exactly how far he said he could hit it, but it'd be great to see you guys work together. That'd be a fun project for you. You'd be like, oh man, be licking your chops. Like I can turn this kid into a monster.

Right. Matter if we can get them to gain some weight. Yeah. You were, uh, kind of mentioning, um, you know uh kind of mentioning um you know being heavier now you know i know that uh kind of before tiger woods or around tiger woods's time when tiger was in pretty good shape and when he was dominant uh you saw a lot of other golfers starting to exercise more starting to pay more attention to their strength training um and there was less and less guys that were kind of like John Daly, but is a golf a little bit like powerlifting in a sense of like,

you know, kind of mask and help move mass period. Doesn't really matter if you got a little, a little extra fluff on you. No, I mean, you're exactly right. And that's what we've talked about before is that now we are learning.

You can't refute science and facts, right? It's the more mass you have, the better your body will be able to support it as far as an athletic movement. So football players, basketball players, look at Usain Bolt. He's a big, huge runner, but he stays healthy, right? The guys who get hurt are the marathon runners that don't have any mass. Their bodies literally fall apart. So nowadays you want to build mass to support the torque, especially in golf. There are so much torque. I mean, these guys are 40 years old and their careers are done

because their bodies just fall apart. So by having some mass there supports the torque. It's actually interesting. Cause now that I'm thinking about it, like what I hear about golf most is I hear so much about the lower back and, um, it's amazing. Cause in powerlifting, it's not like there's no lower back injuries of course there's many um but a lot of powerlifters like the lower back is usually kind of like the last thing to go a lot of i hear a lot of elbows a lot of hips a lot of knees so it's almost opposite of what you think because right all you're doing is swinging a golf club there's actually how how much the golf club weigh just a couple pounds yeah 300 grams

maybe yeah it doesn't doesn't weigh a whole lot so it's interesting but because you don't have any weight you're able to move your body so fast that i guess your body's going to have to figure out a way to almost like you're talking about winding up well now we wound up now we got to figure out a way to unwind right we got to figure out a way to unwind, right? We got to figure out a way to like decelerate. Do you do anything specific for that or are you just golf? No, acceleration and deceleration is the most important thing in golf because we have to be able to use the power to build it up and then to apply it, which is like that efficient power. It's like a fighter. When he goes to throw a punch, his left side is deceling so his right side can move through.

Same with powerlifting. So it's very important. Now, you can't necessarily work on that. You can do over under speed training. That'll help with that kind of stuff. But what's going to help with the decel is having enough strength and power to control the acceleration. So you cannot accelerate without deceleration involved in the golf swing. So the mass, the strength will help support the acceleration. It will make you better, period. How much have you like studied this? Like how deep down this rabbit hole have you gone?

Have you gone as far like study physics or communicate with a lot of doctors and stuff like that? I've never, I've always, I always told myself if I was the smartest person in the room, I am in the wrong room. So I didn't have the passion to learn all this, but I surrounded myself with. These smartest people in the fields. And like I mentioned, I'm, I was, I am, and have been addicted to getting better, bigger, faster, stronger, healthier. I'm addicted to it.

And it's like, you know, it helps in a lot. It hurts in a lot of things. Cause even if I'm hurt, if I have a little injury come up, I'm, I try to push through it, which is not always the best thing, but I'd always talk to the top minds. And because of what my swing has unlocked, I've been able to talk to some of the greatest people, including yourself. I mean, this is the kind of stuff I love because now I will take what we talk about here and apply it. And then it makes me even better. It's a, it's a great message. I love your story. You know, the fact that you, uh, you're in the army, you get hurt, you try your, hit your baseball player most of your life.

Uh, couldn't quite make the baseball workout the way that you wanted. Highly competitive. You said you ended up being a pitcher for a while. Is that right? Right. Right. And, uh, do you think a lot of that background with pitching is kind of what developed the speed and power through the hips?

Absolutely. Shoulders, your glutes and shoulders are probably the fastest things in your body relative to, you know, acceleration. So it's kind of- You got booty, you got peach. Yeah, you want that butt. The glutes and what my trainer always harps on me about, because I have a weak, my glutes are very strong, but connectively my left one is weak.

So we work on that a lot to activate that, to support that torque a little better because so I have a broken back. I still have a crack in my back, but I haven't had back lower back pain in 11 years, but it's because my hips are very strong. Now my hips will get, now if I can, I can golf 36 holes a day and never get sore, but doing long drive, when you're pushing your body to limits where it's not supposed to go, then you get a little sore and stiff. Like my hips get tight. My SI joint flares up a little bit, but that's just because of the sport, but my back doesn't hurt your lower back should not hurt in golf. If it is, you're doing something wrong. And that's why we want them to talk to people like you so they can get fixed, get right. And then they can play golf into their eighties. I'd love to have you do

some stuff here at super training. Like I don't know how much of the stuff you've seen that I put out, but like recently I've been using the weight releasers a little bit more and that's something you put on the side of the bar. I've seen it stays on the bar, you know, for the lowering portion of the lift, you can use it on squats and you can use it on bench and then it comes off, you know, it comes off like right at the bottom of the lift. And it's, you know, like I did a bench the other day with four 55, then plus 66 pounds of these weight releasers. So it's 521 pounds on the way down. And then it's

four 55 on my chest. You can see the video playing here as they snap off, boom. And then I press. So it's, it's a lot of what you're talking about where, you know, I'm winding up, I'm coiling up and I, and not only am I coiling up, but I'm coiling up with weights that aren't even going to be on the, on the bar anymore for when I go to press back into it. So in theory, I'm putting like more force into it than you normally could kind of like, uh, you know, like if, if you were to do, if you were to swing the golf club or if you were to just hit the ball without swinging backwards first, uh, it wouldn't go as far as if you swung back first.

Right. And same thing with like dunking a basketball. Like it's a lot easier if you have a step or two in there to be able to, to, to dunk it. So it'd be interesting to kind of have you do, uh, some of these training methods. Have you ever trained with bands or chains or anything like that? A lot bands, especially, um, my trainer loves doing that.

And that's a great way for golf and like to the exercise. Who's your trainer? Greg Johnson. So Greg Johnson, um, I mean, I can talk about home all day. He's great. I've been working with him a long time. Without him, I would definitely not be here. So he kind of took all my madness and chaos and turned it into order.

So he's awesome. What were you doing before that? Almost like bodybuilding? No. Obviously, you can say, like, in my fewer years, I didn't do much. I kind of lifted, but I didn't know as much as I do now. Everything I have is to a point. So when I first started some of these older videos, I don't look like I do now because I was just young and

dumb, but I realized I'm like, Oh man, I can actually be good at this. I want to get big, strong and fast. So everything I do relative to lifting power, strength, speed is to golf itself. So, you know, I'd like to do some of more of the heavyweights, but I build my body for golf. So, cause you can see, I'm not the most flexible guy in the world. I just swing the golf club faster than anyone ever has. It's, I don't know. It's just, it just happens. But now that I have it, I'm addicted to make it even better.

Have you and your trainer done some stuff and then you've gone back to him and said like, Hey man, like, uh, you know, uh, kind of slowing down a little bit or, or I was too tight the other day or whatever. All the time. A lot of feedback, right? All the time. But that's how we grow dynamically is that we're. The sign of a good coach.

It's a product. Oh my, yeah, you'll love him. He's great. He's a big fan of yours. Oh, cool. But this is a product, right? So it's me as a person, but I'm also a product. So if that product starts to slide or not where we want it to go, we make it better.

So it's a, it's a product and he's obsessed with making me better as much as I am. That's a huge sign of a great coach because a lot of coaches, they just want to influence you with what they know. And they're not, they're not obsessed with influencing what's best for you because it might go against something that they have. But you know, when you work with someone that's going to set like a world record or you work

with someone who's kind of like knocking on that door, the rules are always a little different. We had a guy here named Eric Spoto who ended up benching 722 pounds raw. This is an absolute monster. I mean, he just unbelievable strength, but Eric missed it the first time, uh, in training. And I helped him, I helped prep for that contest and I helped prep him for the next time he went out too. And he did end up breaking the world record. But what I told him in his training for the second time around, I said, you know what, here's the truth, man. Nobody knows anything about this. This is uncharted territory. You know, so I can give you a lot of guidance. I can give you a lot of advice, but I need a lot of your feedback. Cause

I don't, I don't know what, I have no clue what it feels like to bench 722 pounds, you know? So you get into uncharted territory and all hell breaks loose. So when I went down to TPI, cause a lot of the people around me and some outside people were telling Greg Rose, like, Hey, you got to check this guy, Ryan Winthrop. He's a freak. He's doing this. And Greg's like, you know, almost like, I don't think so. That doesn't work. That the body doesn't work that way. So eventually enough people bugged him.

He invited me down and I was warming up. And when I started stepping on the gas, I mean, you're talking the number one golf guru. He invited me down and I was warming up. And when I started stepping on the gas, I mean, you're talking the number one golf guru. He's a doctor. I mean, he's just looking at me like, what the hell, like, what is that? So then I started going down like every week, like going down to LA or Oceanside. And he was just studying me and studying me and studying me. And because like I said, I broke every mold that they came up with. So now, but which is a huge honor for me, they started adjusting some of their power levels. So you will literally study my swing when you take some TPI courses, which is really cool for me. Cause now I'm influencing some of the best minds in the world because you're right.

It's uncharted territory. No one has ever swung a golf club like me, you know, as fast as I have. And it's, it's like a freaky, it's a freaky kind of birth defect, I guess. When you, when you go to, uh, you know, some of these events and you're swinging a club and stuff, I mean, uh, I'd imagine you get invited like all over the place, all over the world and things like that. And it's probably a spectacle every time you go out there because it's different. Yeah. And so one of my favorite places I go every year is Japan. Um, and I was actually, they wanted me to play in the support open, which is an actual golf event, you know, a tour event.

Because I play good golf too. And I was playing in front of Ryo Ishikawa, who's Japan's like, he's huge over there. He's probably making $100 million a year. He's massive. And when they're announcing me, I'm playing in the group in front of them. We probably had 2,000 fans out there. And I hit the ball. And I should have probably 1,900 of. As I started walking down and followed me. So you have Japan's

best golfer or second best golfer with a hundred people watching him. I had about 1900 people follow me. So it's weird to see it is a, it's, it's fun. It's a privilege, but it's weird to see for normal people. It's still kind of a niche thing, especially to be able to hit the ball the way that you do. So it's not quite the same as, uh, you know, being the best golfer in the world, but it must be, it must feel really good when you get recognized. Cause when you do get recognized, it's probably by like a real loyal fan. Right. And they probably flip out. Yeah. And I'm like, and you know, I'm not, I'm definitely not an ego guy, but it's like, you know, a lot of people know who I am. They just don't remember my name.

And they're like, you're that guy who hits it really far. And I was in Sweden, believe it or not. And there was a guy over there. I had a custom shaft made, you know, with my name on it, a golf shaft. And there was a guy at a driving range we went to hitting it. That was kind of like an aha moment for me where I'm in Scandinavia at a random driving range. And there was a guy there hitting my golf clubs. That was pretty fun.

Yeah, that is awesome. What other types of things are you doing in your training? I mean, are you working on your mobility and stuff like that too? Yeah, mobility, flexibility. Like, we don't want to change my thoracic too much because that's how I get a lot of my power. But mobility, stability. We do a lot of hands-on work because I am big and I get tight. So, you know, my trainer, he, he has me dialed in.

So basically I just tell, he tells me what to do and I do it. Um, cause he hasn't led me astray yet. So you guys actually get to train together or he's, he kind of leading you. We do twice a week. So I work out Monday through Friday at the gym at home doing my strength, my strength training. And then we also work out Mondays and Tuesdays with him. So usually we'll do a lot of hands-on and speed training one day, and then more of a rigorous high intensity training. And then we also work out Mondays and Tuesdays with him. So usually we'll do a lot of hands-on and speed training one day, and then more of a rigorous high intensity training. And the speed stuff, we got deflected a little bit for a second because I threw in another

question, but with the bands and chains, how are you guys using that? Just a lot of activation, like core and glutes. So I do a lot of my dynamic warmups with bands and then chains are good because they're progressive. Kind of like we were talking about your, you know, weight releasers. releasers yeah yeah because you're it's a dynamic movement so your body is having to adjust mid movement which is what golf is all about so as i'm have all my speed and power going backwards now i have to go the other way so my body has to activate my core activates just like when you're doing this your core is probably getting a tremendous workout because it has to adjust it has to stabilize to push up the less weight, the changing weight, the dynamic weight. So we'll do a lot of

stuff like this just because you want to change. You want to, you know, disrupt your body. So it's not making a static movement. Louis Simmons has kind of famously been quoted as saying, uh, you know, that you just, you just lift, you just lift heavy and you lift fast and you don't necessarily do sports-specific stuff. Are you guys, like, you know, getting a golf club and attaching a cable to it or anything weird like that? No, you're right. It used to be golf-specific,

and that's why nobody was getting really better. Or they were getting hurt. Everyone's getting hurt. It seems like it makes sense. Like, hey, let me try this movement and let me try to, to like add weight to it or figure out something that looks similar, but it doesn't actually really work very well.

Horrible idea. Yeah. I don't recommend that at all. I, you know, it's, it's bad to do that. One reason, and I'll explain it a little bit. One reason why it's not a great idea is that bench pressing, squatting, deadlifting, bent over rows and overhead presses, they are exercises. And especially like the weights that we go to use at the gym.

These are all things that are meant for us to lift. Like we have dumbbells, we got barbells, we got, we even have a specific bars for certain occasions and certain reasons. We got specific machines for certain things and certain occasions. And they're all kind of meant, they all have like a place in what we're doing and they all allow you to handle a certain amount of weight. Um, when you go and do something like a bench press, like it's very common for a lot of guys to be able to handle, uh, you know, 250, 300 pounds. Like that's very, that's a very normal, uh, bench press, but a little above average, but very normal. Right. And, you know, try to find other exercises where you're gonna be able to handle that kind of weight. And what you're talking about is the stability of the movement and so yeah you could

do one-legged lunges and you can do some those other movements have a tremendous value too but think about the amount of weight that you're going to be able to use when you do that like you might have a 40 in each hand you know or if you're strong you might be able to do more but you're really overall not going to have that much weight as if you were to do a squat, as if you were to do a bench, as if you were to do like a deadlift. How do you avoid, in your case, how do you avoid like overdoing? I know you have like a trainer. How do you guys work on that together? You just, you have to listen.

Because I'm a professional athlete, you have to listen to your body, you know? And it's like, I started having some shoulder pain a few months ago. And, you know, Greg's working on it and we're figuring it out and and it was because i was sleeping different i was sleeping on it like i was sleeping with my arm above my head and it was correct you know started sleep with your butt in the air probably like andrew he said you weren't gonna tell anybody oh sorry man yeah but you know he was telling me about it he's like dude you gotta try this and he's been sucking his thumb a lot. Well, it helps with the snoring.

So, I mean, you guys make fun of me now, but you'll see. Exactly. Well, it's about listening to your body, which I think is what people just don't do anymore. I mean, you're talking about the guys are getting thinner. They're getting leaner. I mean, we want these guys to be big and strong. You listen to your body. And there's more science out there.

We're in a day and age where people don't really care about facts anymore, right? It's just kind of whatever I say goes, my opinion is the only thing that matters. Well, it's not, you just, you base everything on facts. You listen to your body, you adjust accordingly. So you'd never want to overload your training. It's always safe for it to go under just to be safe, especially as a top athlete. So a lot of people, you know, they share that the same, uh, the same rules you're talking about here with, you know, listen to your body. And I think maybe even take it a step further and tap into some, uh, Chinese medicine and some yoga and things like that, where, and, uh, even martial arts where it's not even, not even just listening to your body. It's asking your body like, Hey, what do we need today? It sounds ridiculous.

And it sounds like, Hey man, like, okay, that's kind of, now you're, now you're getting out there, Mark Bell. Like, what are you talking about? But, but I'm dead serious on, on this notion of, uh, kind of almost like accepting what you're about to do. Right. Like, like I'm, I'm my body. I'm going to, I want to make sure my body is going to be accepting of what we're going

to do today. Because if you and I go in here and we, and we have a workout and we just both see who can kill each other, even if you don't get injured and even if we don't get hurt, it's still going to hurt both of us. It's not going to. And so people have this idea of, oh, you know, I'm doing these workouts and they're working great. I'm not getting hurt. And it's like, but you're not making progress. Right. That's the'm not getting hurt. And it's like, but you're not making progress. Right. That's the same as being hurt.

Like it's, you know, okay. You're not injured and you're not capacitated. It's not like you can't do anything. Right. But you are, you are in trouble because you're not making the progress that you want to make. And so I think people need to kind of reevaluate what it is they're doing. And they do need to be open to, you know, what's this next training session going to look like on top of that?

What's the next training session after that going to look like? How are you going to recover from these workouts? Right. I think, um, one of the most important things about golf and people who are sitting on the couch, and that's why I'm trying to share my story and what we were talking about is that we want you to get off the couch and go work out. Now that's really scary for a lot of people do to take that jump, whether they're golfers or fitness, take the jump, but listen,

now listen to your body and don't expect to go to the gym for two weeks and see results. You're not going to walk in the gym one day and come out of bodybuilders. It's just not going to work. Trust the process, stay consistent and listen to your body. It's going to, it's going to take, yeah, it's going to take, yeah, it's going to take a long time. What about other methods of recovery for you? Are you taking supplements and sleeping and vitamins? And like, does your coach have you kind of on a whole regimen

with a nutrition plan and all this kind of stuff? Sure, yeah. And obviously my nutrition, you know, that's something that, you know, we're always trying to work with because I do love sweets. But as far as I do a lot of hands-on therapy with my trainer, a lot of the myofascial release with massages, um, I've experimented with cupping, which I've actually really started. Like I did the cryotherapy for the first time. I've only done it once. So I don't want to be too judgmental on it so far, but I think I liked it. Right. But, um, what works best for me is when my trainer digs his,

you know, releases my bands. Because if I do get like a stiff hip or whatever, which can kind of pull on your back, my QL might act up a little bit. He just grinds on it. We have those therapy guns. Yeah, those things work great, don't they? So, I mean, they hurt. Yeah. They, you know, when you put them on your, you know, bands, I mean, it's crazy.

You know, you feel like you're going to pee your pants. But that's probably my favorite. That's the stuff that works instantaneously. And then I can go out and have a killer workout. And then we close up with the same. Um, I think nearly everybody's tight through those areas, like for like the area and it's all very sensitive, but the area kind of like from like your belly button down to like, uh, the top of your quads, it's just like, it's all very dangerous, uh, area to be working. Uh, but, but you can get a lot of, uh, quote unquote relief out of it. If you can release some of the tension through there, but you're right, man.

It pulls on your back. I've even kind of dug around kind of close to, uh, like where your belly button is. Like some people say, so as, or what, it doesn't really matter what you're, what, what you're, what you're hitting, but man, you feel, you kind of feel it all the way through your back. You feel all the way through the other side, like, holy shit, man. So when we release my psoas, well, it'll relieve my QL in my back. And I have pictures where I'm on the table where my QL swollen. I mean, I have a hump in my back and, but by we don't, you know, you can kind of release it release it and you know get the inflammation to go down but that's caused by my hip so if we're working on my hips or my psoas

it'll release that that back strain that i do have so i think that's the most important thing yeah sometimes it's very uncomfortable it hurts like crazy and especially using that gun um but that's instant relief for me instant relief what about a upper body you do anything for upper body like mobility or anything like that or is it okay for your upper body to stay kind of tight? I think you want your shoulders loose. You want your core tight. You want, you know, your forearms tight. You want your wrists loose. So it's kind of like, um, mobility, stability, mobility, stability. So there is a reason for the madness. So everything with our workouts, we're very specific. You want some parts very stable, very still.

Then you want other parts. Is that maybe part of the reason why you don't have wrist wraps on when you're bench pressing? Or you just don't have wrist wraps? No, that's just me being a dummy. Right. So like I was talking about there, it's like the sling. So I wanted to do the bench press and I wanted it. And I was like, I'm just going to do it.

But I wanted to use the slingshot because of the confidence it gave me. And I'm telling you, like I said, my goal was 500 pounds. And I hit 500 pounds like four times with the slingshot. I was like, I can do it. And then we kept going up and up and up and we hit 585. And I was like, okay, I'll try 600 later. But that gave me the confidence. So those wrist wraps will change my life.

It'll make a big difference. I'm going to use those because these are my moneymakers. That's the last in the kinematic sequences that release. So if I hurt my wrist, I'm out. Right. You know, I'm either, I'm either done for a year or it jeopardizes my career and whole. So. Yeah. It's sometimes hard for me to, you know, explain the slingshot to everybody because I am the inventor of it. And so everyone's just like, oh, well, he's monetizing it and he's got a product to sell. And

people that have tried it and people that have used it, they know, you know, they, they know the powers of it and they know how it feels. But I think, I think we're just scratching the surface of what the product can really do. I've been using it a lot over the last couple of weeks and my bench has been flying. There's other reasons too. I've been really consistent with the heavy training. I stopped squatting. I stopped deadlifting as much as I have in the past. And so I am putting a little bit more, uh, more attention on the bench press, but it allows me to handle weights that I normally wouldn't handle.

It allows me to hold, you know, if you think about sometimes people will think, oh, this, this piece of equipment hasn't been around before. So we don't know what to do with it. Well, it's actually not true. These methods have been around forever. People have been statically holding heavy weights for, for a long time. And so if you think about when it comes to something like a bench press, if you're to handle, you normally handle 300 pounds in a workout, and now you're handling 405, even just the simple act of holding the weight, that's a method that people were using 20, 30, 40 years. People have been doing stuff like that for a long time. Now you don't have to just hold it though.

You can move it. Slingshot will allow you to move it. So for a guy like yourself, maybe a couple of years ago, before you knew about the slingshot, all you could really do is hold it or do a partial range of motion. Well, now you can bring the weight down further. You can get some of that elasticity and support from the slingshot and then blast the weight back up. Right. And you got a lot of golf is about stability, right?

Core stability. So farmer walks where you're literally just holding the weight. And, but by doing that, your core is stabilized and everything is stabilized in order to do that weight. And you and I share a bond over the fitness, but where we're polar opposite is what we, I'm a golfer. Right. this, but where we're polar opposite is what we, I'm a golfer. Right. And the slingshot for me on top of everything that you know, that it does for me, golf is about confidence.

If you are confident in your game, you will score better. Like he was the close. If you look better, you will play better. It is, it's proven science, right? I mean, you know, it's just, it's, it's what works. So golf is all about confidence. And if you hear tour players or Tiger Woods talk about after winning, he's real confident with his putter.

You can make anything. What the slingshot did for me, I wanted to do these weights. I wanted to try some excessive. What's the point of putting all this muscle if you're not going to try to use it sometime? I've been busting my ass trying to get big and strong, but I was too scared to do certain workouts. I bought the slingshot. I tried it. to do certain workouts. So I bought the slingshot. I tried it.

It gave me confidence. Never, you know, I wasn't going into it to try to up my I was going into it because I'm a golfer. I didn't want to get hurt by putting the slingshot on gave me a hundred percent confidence that I can do that exercise without hurting myself. So it opened up a whole new area of what the slingshot maybe was originally intended for, or all these benefits are rolling into this one product. So for me and for my fans, it's about confidence that we can do these fun type of workouts and not get hurt.

That's huge. You know, do you think some people have a hard time understanding like the bench press, like why the bench press for golf? Like, is it important that I build up strong pecs and triceps and shoulders for golfing? Sure. Well, shoulders. Yes, absolutely. Shoulders, glutes. Like we talked about, I do a lot of incline work, like incline dumbbells, because it involves a lot of the shoulders and the pulling down of the club from the top. But it's even just being strong period, right? I mean, cause a bench press, like, you know, you and I have been around for a long time. We've been lifting for a long time.

So we understand that, you know, bench press is not just working our chest. Right. It's working our entire body. So that's kind of more of what it's about. And the core, right. It, when I, you know, when I bench, I make sure I, you know, I'm setting my core, my, my, I'm stable. My core hurts after I bench.

So obviously it's working more than that, which is fantastic. Um, but like I said, it's just the confidence of it. I mean, I want to do bench. It's, they say it's dangerous working out. Well, it's dangerous being weak. So I don't, I grew up, I'm a cord fed guy. I grew up on a farm and I'm on TV. I want to be big and strong. I don't want to be weak. I just don't, it's more dangerous than not working out. So now I have the confidence to do something that I have a lot of fun doing. I wanted to do bench, but I was too scared. Do you do sprints or jumps or pushups or something like that? Like for speed too? I, yeah, I don't do a lot of pushups, but running, sprinting, jumping. Yeah. I have a, that's maybe what I should have said. You guys, I have a, I have a pretty high vertical for being a guy who's, you know, 280 pounds

or 277 pounds. So, excuse me. So jumping is that explosive, right? It's that building the ground, jumping up. So jumping, running, sprinting, shuttle run, stuff like that is so important to develop as an athlete. Other golfers like listen to this right now. I'm like, man, I don't know if I want to, I want to be sprinting.

Um, but it's obviously provided a tremendous, tremendous, uh, value. How has this TV show happened? Because you were, you and I met at a Starbucks and we got a chance to sit down and talk for a little while. And I was really blown away, uh, at your persistence and how you've been able to, cause man, it's, it is tough, tough work, uh, to try to, it's so competitive, so competitive to get something on TV. So, uh, first of all, congratulations on that, but how did this happen? So when I was doing a lot of work with TPI, I was doing a lot of shows

with them and golf channel, and they wanted to kind of bring up the like, Hey, we'd like, we want you to do like a four or five minute segment on all our episodes. I'm like, oh my God, I'm going to be on TV. And I didn't have to do anything. It was great. Um, but then I kind of got to think, I was like, well, maybe I just, maybe I do my own show. Maybe I have all these great ideas and I get to travel the world. Oh, look, shuttlecock right there. Yeah.

That's just a big ass racket right there. So, um, I had all these great ideas. I mean, dude, like, you know, we get to travel the world, having fun, who doesn't want to, you know, film that. So I had an idea. I, Lee, the director of Comcast at the time was a friend of mine. I did a lot of their shows. We went out golfing and we were doing the Oakland A's at Roundhill Country Club. And there's my trainer right there. That's great. Oh, okay. Um, and so I, I asked him i asked him i said hey and this was as a friend i wasn't asking as business i said hey what do you think about having a tv show and he's like well

what do you mean he's like what do you want it to be about i said i don't know like just golf and fun and traveling and fitness just doing some i don't know just traveling the world getting in trouble and filming it and he goes well i kind of like that idea why don't you come in tomorrow so i went down to the headquarters which is now now NBC Sports. It was Comcast Sports. And where is that at? In San Francisco. Yeah, that's their home base here. So I did the Jim Cozumore show. We went on live. I went back in the green room and Lee came in there and he's like, all right, pitch me your show. So I didn't, I wasn't really prepared for that. You know, as far as like

a pitch goes. so I just told him what I wanted to do we probably made it about 30 feet outside the green room and he goes okay let's do it how fast can you get a pilot and I show you not I didn't even know what a pilot was and I was like 30 days and then I like I kind of looked at him you know I had a couple buddies like who's gonna fly this plane yeah exactly he just gave me a you know the keys to a plane and told me to fly and I said sure yeah but you know at that, like we talked about, it's like, if someone offers you something, say yes. And you figure out how to do it. So I said 30 days. Okay. That's good. He's like, all right. And they gave me a date for my airtime. And I was like, oh shit. Like I didn't even know

what I got myself into. I was so in trouble. So I did, I went home, I Googled a pilot and I was like, oh man, I got to do an episode. Okay. So we figured I was hoping to have a year. You usually have a year to plan and coordinate and produce. So we, um, we called some resources, we pulled some strings and we went to Canada and shot our first two episodes, our first pilot and like two weeks later. So it just happened so quick, but you know, it was like kind of the, I got led in there through the golf and ability. And so I went in there with a resume and, you know, I'm just, they just liked me a lot. And it was, it was kind of magic. And how long has it been on the air for?

Three years. So we just started filming our fourth season. That's great. I mean, that means people like it. I mean, they don't, you know, look, you said you had a friend on the inside, but that they don't keep your show on if it's not working. So the negative thoughts that were running through my head, I was like, maybe he's just being nice to me. Right. And it was like, okay, you know, I just won worlds.

You know, I won a world championship. I have all these world records, but he, he's like, all right, good luck. And I, and I, she, you know, I never talked to him again from that day. So he threw me to the wolves, but I think, I think they did that on purpose and I fought my way through it. And a lot of things happen, hard things happen, but I just, I didn't give up. I didn't take no. And I just pushed it on them. And now, you know, four years later and I still have years more to do it. So, you know, here we are. Is this show like meticulously planned out or is it more like a kind of by the seat of your pants type thing? It's that. So it's, it's, that. So it's really almost like a vlogging thing.

We're running guns. Sometimes we'll have big productions. We'll have a 10-man crew out there. Sometimes we have one guy. And it's hard. When we're in Japan, like this episode playing was, it's like we go over the world, and sometimes we just start filming.

So it's a run and gun. We tried to be more meticulous and plan it, and people didn't like that because it was like too sage. It was too fake. So what people want to see is real. They want to be able to relate to you and laugh at you. And you, they want to see you laugh at yourself and make fun of yourself and pick yourself up and, and be persistent, like you said. So we, we've transitioned our show to what people actually want to see maybe it's almost like

maybe it's almost like a like a tv version of like instagram where you're giving people a lot of different snippets of your life you're showing eating right like you know people love that when you show your food on instagram people get all pumped up whether it's something really healthy or whether it's something really bad they uh they usually get excited usually get excited about it. And then kind of same thing. You're going to show, uh, you swing in a golf club. They're going to show you're going to show a bad-ass lift here and there. I'm going to show, uh, you being happy and hanging out with some of your buddies. Right.

I mean, that's, so that's kind of what it ends up being, right? Yes. I mean, for golf is the center of it, I guess. And then everything else kind of trickles out from there. And we've done episodes where I've never picked up a golf club. So it's really a golf, golf reality show where I haven't golfed a lot on it. So we did surfing, we did skiing on one episode and it's just, you know, I've been, I have really good fans.

I've been lucky enough to gain up a huge base of followers, family, friends, and people just watch this show, I guess, cause the show's real, right? We don't script it. We never written a script. Um, we just go We don't script it. We've never written a script. We just go. We just do it. And we relate to people and have fun. We get them better.

We make them laugh. We get to travel the world, show them really cool things they might not be able to see on their own. And we just have fun and we film it. It makes a lot of sense because golf is a hobby for most people, right? And so they maybe don't want to be smashed over the head with golf for, you know, the whole entire show, right? Yeah, and it's like, we can always circle back. Sometimes we'll have, you know, episodes

that are heavily favored towards training and golf, but then they get over that. Then we show them something else. And, you know, driving cars or shooting guns or just having fun. And, you know, and people like that. People like when you're real. And that's what, because I'm a real person in real life.

And we didn't want to be like fake for the show because then it wouldn't have lasted. I probably wouldn't one year and out. So we just kind of, we do it. We get to do some crazy, fortunate things. And people like seeing that. Are a lot of the other golfers asking you a lot of questions are like, dude, like what's going on with you? How come you're so big and jacked yeah it's you know my old co-host who's now retired was 6'8 350 so i was i looked small compared to him so when we'd go out in public and people would see me like oh

shit you're a lot bigger than we thought we were or then then you look on tv but now that you know that's why i like hanging around with charlie i'm bigger than him. So now I look bigger on TV. So it's okay. But it's fun when you get to go around and people, you know, it's, and you know how it is. It's hard work, especially you and your diet is so on point. You're so shredded right now. People don't realize how hard that is. It's 24 hours.

It's 24 hours. So I'm like on a 16 hour route. So, you know, but when people appreciate that, it makes it all worth it, it makes the hard work worth it. So. You do anything in particular with your nutrition? You said you had got some, uh, issues with some sweets. Yeah. It's hard. You know, I get to doing all this traveling and going out with people and then buying you dinners. It's just like when I'm home, I eat very, I eat very good.

But sometimes if I get hurt, you know, I'm a normal person. So, right. I mean, I want to be cut like you and, but you know, it's. You look like you're in good shape. I mean, so, I mean, if, and if you're whacking the golf ball the way that you need to. Yeah, no. And I mean, my body fat still compared to normal people, it's still really low, you know, and I'm strong and fast and, but you know, I'm, I, you know,

it's, I'm not 5% body fat. Oh yeah. You know, it's hard. Diet, dieting is a, is a, is kind of a constant battle, but I think the good news is I think most people that get into nutrition and start to really dive into it, it's kind of ever evolving thing, just like your training, right? Like the way that you're training now is quite different than the way you used to. And there's specific reasons for it.

And the more seasoned you get with it, uh, the more, the more weird tricks you can throw at yourself. Like I utilize a lot of fasting, the guy that just walked in the room and SEMA, uh, he does a lot of fasting as well. And it's like, you're probably not going to start there. You know what I mean? Like it's probably, it could be a place where start there. You know what I mean? Like it's probably, it could be a place where some people start,

but, uh, most likely someone's going to fast for like 16 hours and they're probably going to eat the rest of their calories in an eight hour window that, that could last them the rest of the week. Right. You know, they might,

they might kind of go overboard. So as you go along, you can kind of throw in, uh, more, more things, but I can give you some, some easy tips,

some easy advice to where I think the key is, is whenever I've helped somebody lose weight, the feedback that I get, they almost always say, Hey, you know what? It's not even that hard. Right. I think that's the key. And I think that that's, if you really listen to what people are saying and you know, everyone's fighting over this diet and that diet, I think none of that really matters. I think if you can help somebody gain control over their diet and you can help somebody with some of their cravings some of their hunger and they can come back to you and say hey you know what that diet's not actually that hard now now we're okay now we're on the right track okay you're used to the food you like the food and then we can kind of adjust like you said with your coach

you go back and forth a lot i'm sure you you got to tell him, Hey man, like whatever we did for back the other day or whatever we did for legs the other day, like I can't, I can't do that. And then go on tour. Yeah. Blew me, blew me up. Yeah. And it's like, you know, you're exactly right. And I, when I'm home, I eat very healthy, you know, and I, I, I know you're not supposed

to count your food, but I, I, I monitor everything I eat. Then the problem is if I go golfing or training and I get hungry, that's when I get screwed. That's the hard part for me is like, I don't know enough about it where I get these cravings. I'm like, I gotta eat, I gotta eat something. So, you know, I eat like a, you know, I don't eat fast food and stuff like that. But, you know, I'll eat more than I should have at that time before my next meal. So that's where I struggle with just because of lack of knowledge. It's not because I'm, I'm very dedicated and

I can do anything I put my mind to, but I'm not educated enough to my body. Like see, to get faster, stronger, healthy, I know how to do that for my golf game. For my, for my diet, I don't, I don't do it as well. So where I struggle is I know what I'm supposed to eat.

I do it, but when I get hungry, I'm screwed. Right. And that's, that's, that's where my lack of education. That's good to know. Or knowledge from this subject comes in. That's a good thing to know. Cause then you can kind of figure out, you know, how do I mitigate being hungry? Yeah. And for some people it might be carrying around snacks and for other people it might be, Hey, let's try fasting. Cause what I've learned is it's actually a lot easier to eat nothing than it is to eat a little. Yeah. You eat a little.

You're screwed. It makes your hunger ferocious. So. It's really hard to overcome that. That's, you know, and I did do some research into the fasting. I know Terry Crews, he did that kind of like 16 hour fasting, then you eat in eight hours. That's the first thing I read upon it. And what I would do is maybe I wasn't fasting, but I'd have my meals and I'd nibble on something.

Right. And then like 10 minutes later, I'm eating my root, you know, eating my walls. I'm like, Oh my God, I'm so hungry.

But if I, then I'd go eight hours and not eat anything and I'm not hungry. And then I take one little damn bite. Yeah. And then all of a sudden, like shit, I just ate everything. Hunger comes and comes and goes.

I mean, it's hunger and cravings are, they're very similar. They're kind of the same thing, but the, the hunger hormone hits you and you're like oh like holy shit like i am i'm hungry and then it gets to a point sometimes where you can't think about anything else other than food but then if you can ride that out if you can hold on to that for just a minute and be busy or do something then usually you're fine again and they they actually will show like, you know, people that fast for two or three days, which starts to sound absurd, starts to sound crazy. People that fast for two or three days, but once you get past

like 18 hours, you literally start to not care anymore. And they said, the deeper you go into it, the less you care. They have to even kind of convince people once they start fasting for three days, Hey man, like this is not a great idea if you really go beyond, beyond where you're at now. So it sounds insane. It doesn't make any sense when you're a big guy and when you're hungry all the time, but it really does truly work that way. And so it could be something to,

uh, to play with. But I would, first thing I'd do with you is just get used to the food. I'd get used to different foods and I'd work on having to try to meal prep a little bit. That way you can kind of, you can safeguard yourself against all the junk that's out there.

And that's, and that's, you said exactly right. That's my problem is like, I'll eat perfect. And I eat exactly what I'm supposed to. My body feels great. I'm performing at a high level, both in the gym and the golf course, because I eat to perform. So I'm eating my proteins. I eat my chicken.

I love steak, but I try and only eat it a couple of times a week. And I know there's, you know, some information out there, you shouldn't eat it or you should eat it, whatever. But, um, it's those cravings that I get, man, I get, I feel like I could eat, you know, my countertop. I, and it, but then if I just try and avoid it, it gets worse. Well, hanging out with Charlie's not great. I've never seen anybody eat faster than that guy.

He's terrible. Yeah. Well, so yeah. And I eat fast too. And I know that cause when i was in the army right we had seconds to eat so time right yeah i tried even having a smaller spoon i saw some bodybuilders who you know when they get really hungry they use like a baby spoon to eat so it makes their thing anymore well i threw that sucker on the ground i just started using my hand so i can't help but that's that's my fault that but that's where i'm eager to learn especially from someone like you or you meaning like i as a professional athlete a guy gets to

travel the world that's a fault of mine and it's huge um and that's what i it's a challenge for me i'm just waiting to tackle it so yeah i'm excited about it i fasted today and when you walked in i was like busting ass on that treadmill and then uh like in sema who's in the room now he he uh does a lot of jiu-jitsu and comes in here and lifts and stuff and he fasts pretty much the whole day you know it just seems like when somebody tells you that at first you're kind of like you're just a weird person man there's no way anyone else could do that but once you start to try it once you start to experiment with it and you you're like okay i'm gonna try a 10 hour fast which is not hard because most people sleep seven or eight hours try 11 12 you try a couple out and it's not really that bad got anything andrew i was just gonna say and you it um

you get a lot more tasks done too when you're fasting because you don't have to worry about you know even here just like running to the microwave or yeah whatever it is but you could set it up with your schedule especially with your golf game like when you're probably out on a course for probably a long period of time yeah and for travel it would be huge because then you're not gonna like oh i i have to eat because i'm hungry so oh there's only like there was the video of you eating jack-in-the-box which the tacos looked amazing but you know you can jack-in-the-box yeah you can avoid that kind of thing i know yeah that was like two years ago that was the old two years ago. I want to share something real quick. So what you said, I've actually never heard anyone say that. And it's, it hit me. I'm like, oh shit.

Like that little nugget right there, I think is huge. So I can fat, I can go out to the golf course and train for 12 hours and not even think about food. The minute I come home and snack on something, the floodgates open. And I don't think people know that. No, seriously. I don't think people know that because that is my number one struggle. I can fast. You know, that guy's jacked. I probably can't do what he can. Not what you guys can, but I can go 12 hours. I can golf all day. I can play 36 holes. I can go to the gym. I can train and I'm not hungry. We decided he doesn't count because he's Nigerian. Oh, yeah. So it's like just unfair. Yeah.

So. But I think that's. We blame it on that. We need to share that with more people is that if you are hungry like that, don't nibble because it opens the floodgates. With me, that's all my story. Nothing else needs to be said about that. That's what I do.

I open the floodgates. It's game over. I think most people make a huge mistake with snacking. game over. I think, I think most people make a huge mistake with snacking. You know, I think like if we could eliminate a couple things,

snacking and, uh, fried food, I'd be, you know, snacking, fried food and, calories in your drinks. Yeah.

I think, I think most of America probably wouldn't even really need a diet if they just did that from the time they were kids. But how do we not do that there's so many you know so many yummy foods and so many little snacks for kids and everything else that's the one thing i've gone for me i don't have any calories from drinks so and i i couldn't tell you the last time i did other than probably a cocktail you know right occasionally that's it but it's the snacking damn it that gets me i me. I'm telling you, I can all day. One little, and so what, I'll eat it. Just think about it this way.

Snacking is just not productive. It's horrible. It's not productive towards being big and jacked. It's not enough fuel to really do what you're trying to do. Right. So it really doesn't make any sense. So it doesn't matter anyways. It's taking up space of something that could be of quality.

So you're really, in a way, you're robbing yourself. Kind of think of it that way. It's a up space, uh, of something that could be of quality. So you're really, you're in a way you're robbing yourself. Kind of think of it that way. It's a gateway. It's a gateway. Now that's easier said than done because this shit tastes so good. Yeah. So it's still easy to, you know, reach for some chips or, or, or get a sandwich and some, uh, Doritos or something.

Right. It fricking tastes amazing. So it's hard to avoid that. And you know, and my wife, you know, she's got food around the house that she tries to hide. And sometimes I find it, sometimes I don't, but I try to have these healthy fig bars, right? So it's healthier than eating a Snickers bar or something like that. So I'll eat a fig bar and I'm like, okay, good. And then like 10 minutes later, I ate 10 of them. I'm like 800 calories and 200 carbs and I'm still hungry just because I had one. So. Well, i know a lot of times too people will say uh they're like

oh man it's hard for me to eat enough you know and it's nine times out of ten when you talk to those people those are people that snack you're like man you're really you're screwing yourself over you could really be uh filling your body with more nutrition more more nutritious options you know rather than just filling yourself with bread or whatever it might be now how often i just want to ask you a question. How often do you actually talk about that? Because for how much I talk about fitness and golf and food, how come I've never heard anyone say that? Seriously.

Yeah. I talk about this, like, I mean, every show pretty much. We talk about it. I, I'm trying to like, just, you know, I talk about all kinds of different nutrition stuff a lot. Right. But it's. Especially as of late, more and more. Right.

Because this is what you're, how do we get that for regular, like just your average person who's sitting on the couch, that's who needs to know this because those are the people who suffer from this. It just goes back to what we talked about at Starbucks, buddy. Let's get it going.

God. NBC, here we come. We can make a billion dollars off that and how stupid and tedious that might sound, that's my weak point. That's crazy. I've never heard that. You're off the team.

And you didn't even lift here yet. And you already got kicked out. What do you have coming up? Another season of Driven Golf. Yeah. So we officially just started filming last week. We're not going to start airing probably till early May. So we have a couple months.

We're doing the logistics now. Setting up, getting partners, strategic partners. We've been meeting with a lot of people. We have meetings today, three tomorrow. So it's been a couple months. We're doing the logistics now, setting up, getting partners, strategic partners. We've been meeting with a lot of people. We have meetings today, three tomorrow. So it's been a little busy. And you know Charlie, he won't slow down. So I'm just trying to hold on to him and get it done. And he's been a blessing to have here because I'm the athlete.

I love producing. It's harder for me to get out on the front. And that's why my social media is really far behind. I needed someone like Charlie to facilitate my ideas for me and get them out there, so it's been really nice. So we're just working on that, and I'm still training every day, starting to hit a lot more balls, and nothing crazy planned too much. I'm kind of in the off-season right now.

Okay, cool. Anything else? Yeah. Lots of traveling, lots of unfortunate, bad eating. Do you have any crazy traveling poop stories? Oh yeah.

Poop story time. Yeah. Oh, poop story time. Um, ate something weird, traveling. Yeah.

In Japan, you probably had some weird food. Well, not on this trip. Uh huh. I think it was the year after, it was last year when I went to Japan. Bubble guts. And you probably had some weird food. Well, Japan. Not on this trip. I think it was the year after. It was last year when I went to Japan.

Bubble guts. Japan Airlines is great. Super nice people, but their bathroom, and even, I'm in business class. Their bathrooms are really small. Uh-oh.

So I only had to go to the bathroom, but I should have only been in there like a minute. But because the bathrooms are small, I had to you know, shit got out of hand for lack of a better

term. So, believe it or not, one of the stewards came in there and helped me. So, 280 pounds, I don't fit in that seat. You had to like shit with the door open? Your knees were hitting the door, they wouldn't shut? Yeah, I just, it's when you're a big guy with a smaller toy, it's harder to aim.

So, yeah. Yeah. You went upper deck. Yeah, exactly. That's a good, that's a good reference to that. That's what I did. And the worst part is she came in and cleaned it up for me. I was like, I felt so bad.

Damn Americans. I felt honored and bad at the same time. You know, it's a great move? A great move is when you come out of the bathroom and be like, I don't know what someone did in there, but it is awful in there. Don't go in there. No, she, I was going in there. They're on it. They're always going to blame the biggest guy too.

I know. You're eight feet taller than everybody else in here. We know it was you. Yeah. Quit trying to blame any of them. I saw you with a giant protein shake. No, there was one guy actually when I did

come out, I don't think anyone knew what happened, but there was a commotion, right? A couple of girls had run in there

and I'm sitting down looking like an idiot in my seat and this guy's, this Japanese guy is looking at me like this, just side-eyed me

and I look at him and I'm just like, and he looks up because when I go to, I mean, when you go to Japan, I'm a big guy over there so when we're going

through fish markets, people are grabbing you. I mean, it's funny over there so to Japan, I'm a big guy over there. So when we're going through fish markets, people are grabbing you. I mean, it's, it's funny over there. So it's, I'm vanilla Zillow over there. So it's fun, but that was a pretty, that was a weird experience for sure. Awesome, man. Great having you on the show. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength.

Catch you guys later.