Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Project EP. 31 - Steroids and Squats

Episode Date: April 6, 2018

Mark Bell speaks on "The Evidence of WFN" video and admits he gave it a "Like" on youtube. He and Steven Smokey Granzella talked about some epic new world record squats and other current events. Re-Watch the Live Stream Here:https://youtu.be/80ttDuSEcYY ➢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

I like to go one off usually, but now I have both on. How do you do one off? Just usually like this. For a podcast or for. Yeah. Now I can hear the room. I don't know why that's important. This is kind of tripping me out.

I feel like I'm in a. I feel like I'm on Joe Rogan. When I'm on an airplane, I have those noise counseling headphones. And so every time the stewardess comes by asking for like a drink, I feel like I'm always screaming at her because I can't hear myself. That's a big problem with noise canceling headphones. But what I found out the hard way is that your noise canceling headphones do not cancel out bodily function noises that come from yourself and they don't self vaporize the farts that I'm unleashing. So like sometimes, at Starbucks, I'll be sitting there and I'll be, like, working on something. Or at, you know, a coffee shop, I'll be, like, working and I'm like, oh, I got to let one out.

And it's like, oh, you won't hear it. Yeah. And I'll be like, and I'm like, oh, my God. Not only could everybody else hear it, but now they're going to have to deal with smelling it. Yeah. And they know it came from the fucking big guy with the protein shaker cup and all the coffee. Yeah. We need to get a better pair.

We need to get, yeah, we need to get some. Step it up, Bose. Yeah, we need to get some Bose headphones that like suck in, you know, the air or something. I don't know how it works. Blow it away. A constant running fan by you. Yeah. I don't know how that works.

But yeah, I was just like, oh my God. It doesn't, it doesn't work out for me quite the way that I thought. You know, I've had a bunch work out for me quite the way that I thought, you know, I've had a bunch of, uh, embarrassing moments that have happened like that when I'm, uh, with my son, Jake, um, he and I go for walks all the time. And, uh, I was telling Quinn, I was like, oh, me and Jake didn't go on a walk. And she's like, she's like, good for you. And I was like, I was like, oh, well, do you want to come with us?

You know, she's always like real feisty, you know, she likes to mess with me a lot. And, uh, she's like, good for you. And I was like, oh, well, do you want to come with us? You know, she's always like real feisty, you know, she likes to mess with me a lot. And she's like, no way. She's like, I'm not going on that fart walk with you. I was like, fart walk? I was like, why would it be a fart walk? And she's like, well, because you're walking and you're probably farting the whole time. Then so we go outside and we start walking and I start letting out a couple of farts. Jake's like, every time we start on these 10 minute walks, you're always

letting loose. I'm like, well, it's always right after dinner. It's after a long day and you know, just I'm relaxed. Things are moving. I'm with the family. When's an appropriate time or inappropriate time? I don't think there ever is an appropriate time. What about in the gym? Sometimes guys let loose in the gym and it just kind of

bogs down. I was getting called out pretty bad last night for letting it go. Cause I hopped on that Mark Bell, uh, Instagram post diet for three days, do a little, uh, cleanse,

just ate nothing but meat. And, you had a lot of, a lot of meat in your stomach and you were three, a couple of GHR reps. See, I think, uh,

you know what I'd have to say during a rep, it's okay. You know, during a rep, it's okay. You know, like it's fine. Because you're so tense. Like people know you're doing everything you can. In your defense, and this is what you can use forever, Smokey. You can rely on this forever. I have hurt my back before from holding in a fart on a deadlift.

No way. I was like about 16, and I was deadlifting at Mid-Hudson bodybuilding in Poughkeepsie, New York. Shout out to one of the first gyms I ever walked into, one of the first commercial gyms I ever walked into. And I was pulling on some weight. Can't remember what it was, probably three, four plates, something like that at the time. Maybe 600.

Yeah. Maybe I wasn't that strong, especially at the deadlift or squat at a young age. But anyway, yeah, I'm pulling on some weight. And I was like, oh, man, like this is not going to be good because at that time I didn't really know a lot about nutrition. But I was like, oh, you got to get protein shakes and this and that. And I didn't really realize how problematic lactose was for me. I was just like, this is normal. I'm going to bodybuild and power lift.

So I should be farting and shitting my pants all the time and so i was just going for it and i had this big old i'd have big old metric shake before i'd hit the gym mixed in with some ultimate orange and this is what like 25 years ago this is a million before current times this stuff so people that people that are of similar age they'll be able to relate when you used to put your metrics in your um blender and you know they didn't have like a fucking crazy ninja blender and all the crazy stuff they have now that sounds like a fucking jet airplane taking off they had shitty blenders back then but the metrics would break your blender and it would just go so it would he would go so crazy your blender would be so mad and your blender would actually get like hot like sometimes it would smoke motors because yeah even when you had a lot of water in there the metrics would be like bro and then when you were done and you hit the off button you'd see

like that little bubble trickle up and you're like this is gonna be thick so that stuff used to just wreak havoc on my on my stomach and i'm in the gym one day and i'm like well you know we fart in here a little bit but i don't want to be like blowing ass all over the place and being gross so i tried to hold in a fart on like rep three or four of a deadlift totally blew out my back so okay i'll use that i don't i don't want to get injured so i just gotta let it out that's the story of my herniated disc spinal you gotta let that fucking air out, Smokey. Yeah.

Well, you know me. I make a lot of noises letting my air out before I hit the set. I do think that it's inappropriate in the gym, though, under most circumstances. I'd say go for a good fart walk. Yeah. Walk it outside. Try to scrape it off. You know, you got to kind of wave it off.

You know, you got to get the hand on the shorts and kind of shuffle it out of there. Maybe it's just the people you're around. Like, if I'm in front of people I like and care about, I'll take the time. But if I just have no respect for anybody and I hate everybody, then it just doesn't matter at that point. What about girls? Does it not matter because you're married? Yeah, married. I think it's actually, it helps me.

It's like a deterrent. Right? Like, it's like, oh, if I just keep farting all the time around girls, like, no one will. Oh, you don't have to worry about them chasing you home. Is that a problem as it is now? Oh, it's a a deterrent right like it's like oh if i just keep farting all the time around girls like no one will oh you don't have to worry about them chasing you home is that a problem as it is now oh it's a huge problem yeah it's a big it's a big issue ladies and guys it's probably the uh it's the beard for the guys it's probably the bulky biceps you know i posted that picture of you deadlifting the other day on my instagram people got all excited yeah like smoky's looking jacked and i was like oh great now i gotta now got to hear about this for I don't know how long. Right, Andrew?

I didn't bring it up once today. Well, now it's because you fart around me all the time. Oh, I don't want you to fall in love. Actually, thank you. What if he was just like, what if it got him excited? You never know. There's some freaks in this place. Yeah.

There's going to be someone that's, this is going to be the thing that gets them going. I mean, Andy will say something to me and, or I'll say something to her. And she was like, you're so gross. She's like, I'm going to punch you. I'm like, any contact, any contact will be good. Just any of it. I'll take all of it. Yeah.

She's like, you're a sick bastard. I was like, you don't even understand how, how much of a sick bastard. Keep talking. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, I'm getting hard right now. It's just getting warmed up. Yeah. She doesn't even understand how how much of a keep bastard keep talking yeah yeah i'm like i'm getting hard right now this is just getting warmed up yeah she doesn't even understand how gross does your wife understand how gross you are yeah we've been together for 11 years so she knows she knows a lot of how gross i am she knows you're disgusting yeah she's pretty good about it though how's it

worked out uh you uh not being on the train anymore does that help yeah it helps a lot um i mean of course you got to say yes because you're here at slingshot now from like a timing perspective. Yeah. From a time perspective. Uh, yeah, there were about 18 hour days cause I had an hour each way commute and I was gone. So four days a week, uh, you know, MIA up, you know, one 30 in the morning home at like seven or eight and just trying to go back to bed. So, um, I didn't for four years, I did that. And it was kind of crazy to think a weekdays you could get things done because four days a week, you didn't get anything done. You can't go to the bank, the dentist, any of these like things that you have to take

care of the DMV or just anything. It's like a big thing. Right. And then you got to, now I can get off work and like go to dinner with my wife or cook something. Like it's a whole nother thing. To be honest, it's why I brought it up. It's hard to get this guy to work.

And so I figured we just bring it out in the air live. Just call me out. Might as well just air out his dirty drawers on live internet. I hope not. No, I'm kidding. I hope not. No, I'm kidding. Was it, uh, you look back at that time and is it kind of, uh, are you, you kind of almost shocked at, uh, you're able to still be really productive lift from a lifting perspective? Because now if you get sidetracked, even just a little bit, or we just have a long day in here, you must kind of sometimes be like, how did I travel an hour and a half and then still go in and have enthusiasm to

lift like a goddamn maniac? Yeah. Now you're traveling 10 feet from your office to the. It's kind of a trip. I don't think my train, my train is obviously better. I'm around the team, which is awesome. Cause I was training by myself when I was. He's paid to say it by the way.

Yeah. Using all my slingshot products. But it is different because I had a split shift. So I literally had like an eight hour break during the day. So I would work super early, have an eight hour break during the day and have it go back to work and then drive home. So I had, it was like the only thing I was looking forward to.

Maybe that's the thing. I had like one thing to look forward to in those four days. And that was it. That was to train. So you had to like really prioritize a schedule otherwise you weren't going to be able did you bring food with you and stuff when you're doing train stuff yeah so the first part the first few years we actually had a per diem at the hotel we stayed at um which was pretty cool um you definitely gained some weight the first year and then kind of

realized all right i can't just eat like an asshole i'm gonna tone it down just do like hamburger patties and stuff like that and then uh, uh, that got, they got rid of that. So I started bringing my own food and had a new, had a gym membership, like a whole separate gym membership to place up there and all that stuff. Yeah. I get a lot of people that ask me questions, people that are, uh, you know, police officers, firemen, people that, you know, they'll sometimes work two, three days in a row and then they'll have a, you know, a shift off and they ask, you know, how they, how they can kind of mix it up.

How did you work it out? Um, so I, you know, how they, how they can kind of mix it up. How did you work it out? Um, so I, I trained here still Saturday, Sunday. And so, um, I had, I worked for four tens, so it varied Monday through Friday. So if I was here Tuesday, Thursday, I would train with the team. And then I trade pretty consistently, you know, 95 plus percent of the time on Saturday, Sunday with the team. So I just did whatever I couldn't do here. So I would watch you guys on YouTube and check in with the podcast

and all this stuff that's going on, having definitely a fear of what? FOMO, fear of missing out. I still get that, by the way. When I travel somewhere and I'll see you and David Webb and some other guys lift, and I'm like, oh, fuck. I know for a fact you get that. I'm like, I need to go back to Sacramento. I hate leaving this place. I know you get that. And then at, I need to go back to Sacramento. I hate leaving this place.

I know you get that. And then at the LA Fit Expo, you weren't able to make it this year. And I remember you were like, damn it. Why did I not go? I was like, because you couldn't make it. Like, well, we need to figure this out next year. I did have a lot of things going on around that time. Yeah.

It is great to, you know, I guess some of my point in bringing some of this up is like, regardless of your situation, you have to kind of create your own, create your own bubble, you know, and not let other shit or other people get inside that bubble. So you can do the things that you want to do, do the things that you love doing. What was something, what's something that keeps you motivated? Cause you know, some people, you know know they get motivated by music or some people are just they've always been motivated from the time they're young they're like a mentor anybody in your life or anything that's happened where you're just you know super excited to go train

your face off every day yeah so motivation in the gym um i like i like arms i like bison i like feeling jacked i guess i guess that's the thing. So whether I am, I genuinely enjoy it. And I, and I like, and that's why I kind of like doing arms. Cause I can, I can do bodybuilding movements, hypertrophy. And I, I literally feel like I worked out. Sometimes as we get closer to a meet, you're doing singles, you're doing things. Of course, those, those sets are extremely difficult, but after the fact, you're not feeling like, holy crap, I'm so drained.

But when I do hypertrophy and doing those things, so I just, I just genuinely enjoy it. And I, I actually really enjoy training with people I like. That's, that's probably the key thing. I mean, if you find a person or two. Yeah. A lot of times I see you grabbing somebody new, you know, you'll grab ahold of someone new or somebody that hasn't maybe trained with you in a while. That's actually funny you bring that up. I really enjoy that. I'll see someone that's not really training with the team or they're here for the day or just visiting for the week. Like you're doing shoulders and biceps with me.

Yeah, I'm like, what are you doing? They're like, I'm doing squats. I'm like, all right, now you're doing back. And I'll just grab them and I'll say, follow me, and we'll just go through a workout. I did something similar with Andrew a couple days ago. He probably hates you for it. Yeah, it was Sunday.

It was great. I loved it, actually. Yeah, it was Sunday. We hit great. I loved it actually. Yeah. It was Sunday. We hit up podcasts. We talked to the Sacramento Kings, uh, strength coach Ramsey. Couldn't find anyone today to get on the podcast. So we're just doing what we can.

Yeah. As you guys can see, this is not going so well as it is. If you tune out, I totally, I 100% understand. Uh, but yeah, I grabbed ahold of Andrew and said, Hey, let's, uh, hit up some bench. The main reason why I did that though was selfish. I didn't want to lift, you know, and that's, and that's, what's important. I think some of you guys listen to this, that maybe you don't have a training partner. Maybe you don't want to hang, you know, to train with people all the time, but you know,

it's, it sounds kind of funny to say it this way, but use people, you know, cause it's mutual. You're using because it's mutual. You're using each other and you're both getting a benefit from it. Encourage each other and that energy is going to have you produce something that you otherwise wouldn't have been able to produce on your own. Yeah. It's win-win. Just going back to the training, I was one of the people that had a gym membership and I ended up getting most of the staff to get gym memberships because our shifts our shifts fluctuate. And I was like, Hey, let's go to the gym today. And so I finally got to bring more and more people. And it was honestly, yeah, for selfish reasons.

What's going on with your, uh, what's going on with your boyfriend, Lauren? You guys used to work on the train together. Yeah. So Lauren, I met in college, um, Lauren with a L O R E N male Lauren. He's very, very handsome guy. He's so handsome. He's 6'3". He's jacked, and he has the most feminine name. It's like rough.

Super nice guy, though. Too nice. Possibly too nice. I have a couple stories where it went off on me, but I have a tendency to push people's buttons. He's got very large arms. He did. He's got some huge pipes. Oh, yeah.

Well, he blew out a bicep, and he lost a lot of weight. Yeah. Can't lose weight. Half the man he used to be. Yeah. But he's good. He's got some huge pipes. Oh, yeah. Well, he blew out a bicep and he lost a lot of weight. Yeah. Can't lose weight. Half the man he used to be. Yeah. But he's good. He's working. He made it with, he went to the police academy.

He's working for a local police department. So it's really good to see him transition. But yeah, him and I used to work on the train together. You guys have like something going on, like special, right? It's different. He was the stand-in best man at my wedding. I mean, how awesome is that opportunity? And does your wife know about,

you know, extracurriculars that you have going on with him? Uh, she knows she just kind of rubs it off. Like it's not a big thing, but I, deep down, it probably gets to her.

It probably, but a little, probably some, uh, jealousy. Yeah. Hey, what do you think about this fucking Uber thing?

This, uh, self-driving vehicle that it, it fucking killed somebody. Yeah. Someone was crossing the street and I think the self-driving vehicle that it fucking killed somebody. Yeah. Someone was crossing the street and I think the self-driving car smashed in and killed him. I fucking can't believe that.

It was just some girl on a bike or something, right? Yeah. I'm not, it, I saw an image of kind of the layout of the map and it looked like she might have been like jaywalking. Like, so it wasn't across from what I could see. It wasn't a crosswalk. It wasn't like at a light. It was just like, like someone would be an idiot and like running across the street type situation, you know, paying attention.

The car obviously can't react, I guess the same. You know, it's a, it's one thing if there's an injury, right. You know, really no harm, no foul. You know, someone gets a little jacked up and, you know, lawsuit and everybody just kind of looks the other way and moves on. Right. But, you know, somebody lost their fucking life because there's a self-driving vehicle. Now they passed. So they just allowed these recently.

They passed a law that allowed these into the market. Right. Yeah. I think they've been doing it for a few years or testing. I think they've been testing it for a few years or testing i think they've been testing it for a while which makes sense right um but the self-driving vehicle has a driver still and this car this car did have one yeah it had someone behind the wheel but i don't know what the fuck they were doing yeah so on the report i read it that mentioned how many uh miles i guess they've done testing on and there was like 63 incidents and a ton where the,

the driver that was in the passenger seat had to take control of the vehicle, which in the scheme of things was, is such a minute amount. Right. But again, that's 63 opportunities where those are lives. And I wonder, it's not something you can come back from.

Yeah. I wonder in this case, like if the person was able to react quick enough, I wonder how well that whole system works and being if the person was able to react quick enough, I wonder how well that whole system works and being able to take the car back over or if there's some sort of like other thing involved, you know? Yeah. It's the same thing.

Kind of like if you're on your phone, you can't react or you're not paying attention or changing the radio or eating or. That's what I was thinking. I was immediately thinking about the phone, you know, um, Uber drivers in general, they're kind of on their phone a bunch. Like they're trying to poke in the address and they're kind of on their phone a bunch. Like they're trying to poke in the address and they're trying to hustle to the next thing. Or using multiple Uber and Lyft.

Like they're doing both at the same time. They sometimes. Maximize. Yeah. They sometimes seem like they have, you know, multiple phones and stuff. I mean, it just seems like they're distracted. Yeah. You know, and in this case, I mean, this this is a huge this is a huge tragedy but what came to my mind immediately i was just kind of thinking like man like you know some of these

people that are in technology um you know like jeff bezos and some of these other guys that are elon musk they must kind of be like just shaking their heads like why the fuck did uber ever even have self-driving vehicles like uber uber is a fucking app and it's an idea. I know the guy, you know, I don't know the guy personally, but I know that the guy that started it, uh, he's got some technology background, but I think it's like kind of more internet based, but it's not some sort of tech, technological juggernaut. Why is it going in this direction? I think as people, like we just won't stop moving forward. Yeah. And moving forward is replacing humans in a lot of jobs, you know, whether it's the kiosk or the register at McDonald's, you know, being no one operates other than the machine. Now, Amazon has all these trucks now, I think. Right.

And I don't know what the deal is going on with those, but those are, they bought like a shit ton of them. Yeah. The fuck's going to happen with that? It's. It's interesting it's interesting, you know, cause one minute we'll be complaining, right?

That people are getting hurt and people are getting killed. And this is a, this is a huge thing for somebody to fucking lose their life. However, there's going to be a time where we push a button and something shows up even faster than it already does now. And we're going to love it. Or it's cheaper.

We're going to love it. Or we'll be complaining about it. That didn't come faster. It wasn't. Yeah. Yeah. When're going to love it or we'll be complaining about it. That didn't come faster. Yeah. It wasn't. Yeah. Yeah. When it gets to be cheaper, we'll no longer probably be bitching about it as much.

Yeah. When you affect the wallet, it changes everything. You start to, uh, you start to reap the reward, the reward of it and it changes everything. Just like Amazon fresh, like everybody complains about like not having like the mom and pop shop or whatever, but you get on Amazon fresh, it's cheaper. And you just walk outside and it's right at your door. How are you going to argue with that? We just ordered stuff. Yes.

Last night, you know, we had my buddy Phil Stevens over and, and, and he's like, what do you want to do for dinner? I was like, let's just do,

you know, they have some kids and let's do hot dogs, hamburgers be easy. And she's like, okay. Pops on Amazon orders, Amazon fresh. I mean, it was at the door just, youurgers, be easy. And she's like, okay. Pops on Amazon, orders Amazon fresh. I mean, it was at the door just, you know, several hours later.

Yeah. Just sitting there. I'm like, how, how the fuck? How does that work? Yeah. Who the hell? Where, where is this coming from? Who the hell, you know, who the hell dropped, dropped this shit off?

We got to keep a better eye on them. They're just across the street. Yeah, they are from the gym. We have a big, we have a big. We got to get some binoculars or something and take a look at what the fuck's going on over there. Yeah. Would you hear about this fucking bombing thing? This bomber with the, he's had these exploding packages that had like nails and sharp shit in it.

Yep. In the Austin, Texas area. It's fucking insane, man. It's really sad. A handful of people have been killed. People have been injured. And then finally they had got the suspect. uh, any like blew himself up today. Yeah.

It it's, uh, you know, there's a lot of wild shit going on out there. And even just like, um, just, just the other day, I mean, we were talking about how much the fitness industry has grown and the different things that are going on with the fitness industry. And I'm kind of almost like, you know, is it going to run out? Because are we going to be, are our worries going to change a lot, you know, and like a third world country or some of these countries where they've,

they've been at war for hundreds of years or 50 plus years or whatever. You know, a lot of the people that live there, they're not thinking about going to train their biceps or triceps. They got, they got like, they have real legitimate problems and they have, I mean, they're worried about their life. They're worried about the safety of their children. They're worried about the direction of the country.

All these things, I mean, they keep happening over and over again. Is it going to get to a point where shit just gets so out of control where we don't have some of the things that we enjoy anymore? Yeah, that's very true. I think it's hard until you actually experience it. And fortunately enough, I haven't experienced a tragedy like that, but I mean the fires and, you know, LA that consumed homes and people, we have had fires up here or then the bombings or mass shootings. I mean, until you kind of are affected by it, it's kind of hard to say what you do. And, you know, people talk a lot about, like, gun control,

you know, but this fucking guy is just, you know, you can make a bomb out of just about anything. Yeah, we had Tony here a couple weeks ago, and he was mentioning, like, okay, you control guns, then what's someone to get in a vehicle and just mow down a bunch of people, which we've seen in France. I mean, if there's a will, there's a way.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you want to have it done, yeah. You know, what I always wonder is, you know, would halting reporting on this help? So it seems like we're inundated by everything that goes on in the internet. Like it's, it appears that we're influenced heavily by the internet, right? Yeah. But I still think TV is fucking huge. internet like it's it appears that we're influenced heavily by the internet right yeah um but i still think tv is fucking huge and i and i wonder if a lot of these networks would just have a stance

where they didn't report about it i i wonder i wonder how positive that would be or negative almost like uh we're not gonna report on negative things you're not gonna get any uh any news story or any traffic about it i i think that, uh, there's some people out there that are hurting, you know, mentally, physically, and they want to hurt other people and they want to, you know, quote unquote, go out with a bang. Yeah. They want to go out and they want to, you know, I don't, I mean, I don't know. I don't know what goes into the, into the mind of some of these people. I've never, uh, I've never had, uh, you know, whatever the mind of some of these people. I've never, uh, I've never had, uh,

you know, whatever mental situation these guys have going on, but it's, uh, it's, it's getting to be, it's going to be crazy. The school shootings,

you know, there's another shooting in Maryland recently. Um, you know, I asked my son, I was like, are you, you know,

are you scared to go to school? He's like, nah, that's kind of the way you think though. Right. You're like, I ain't going to happen here as a parent. Are you scared? Yeah. Totally scared's like nah that's kind of the way you think though right you're like that ain't gonna happen here as a parent are you scared yeah totally scared yeah that's definitely uh scary because uh it just seems like you don't have any control over it you know i mean i doubt that

uh you know hopefully none of these schools get targeted um but you just you just don't know you don't know um and and it looks like to me uh, we're not really figuring out any real solutions to anything yet. I don't know. I don't know what action or actions have been taken. Um, but you know, they do fire drills at school and they, you know, so hopefully, hopefully there's, uh, there are more things to have people aware. I know, you know, stuff that I've shared with my children, you know, if something looks

weird, it's weird. Like just, I don't care how embarrassed or strange you think something might be. Uh, somebody says something, does something, or you, you know, see somebody with a gun and you ain't sure. It's always good just to point it out. Someone might be like, oh, that's Mr. So-and-so he's an undercover cop or like whatever, like, okay, well we got to point it out. Someone might be like, oh, that's Mr. So-and-so. He's an undercover cop or whatever. Like, okay, well, we got to figure it out. You know, it's not just some maniac running around, you know.

It's crazy, though, looking back. Like, I don't, I mean, we have a little, we have an age gap, but there's stuff I did as a kid that I'm sure that it was, well, you know, it looked terrible. Or what I said, you know, could have been misconstrued or. Oh, my God. As a kid, you always talk about, about like killing yourself and running away from home. But nowadays though, it's kind of gone, you know, it's like, it's, they're two extremes, but it's like, unfortunately you have to say something to, to prevent it. As a kid, you know, I was like a teenager, you know, you get angry at a friend or something and you know, I mean, I don't really recall, but I'm sure that I've said, oh, I want to

kill that kid. Sure. You know? Yeah. And I use the word kill all the time. Like I say it all, like I got killed, you know, people are like, you, I mean, I, I don't really recall, but I'm sure that I've said, oh, I want to kill that kid. Sure. You know? Yeah. And I use the word kill all the time. Like I say it, like I got killed, you know,

people are like, he died. You say it to us a lot. Yeah. I got killed or this guy got killed. You say it to the staff a lot. It's just, yeah.

Yeah. It's, it's kind of just, I guess a little bit part of my, my lingo, but yeah, you can see how things could get misconstrued and stuff. And uh, my lingo, but yeah, you can see how things could get, um,

misconstrued and stuff. And they, there's just a lot of, there's a lot of weird shit to be worried about these days. Yeah. Cyber bullying, you know, kids getting text messages and, uh,

my daughter is only 10 and, uh, I'm sure Andrew can relate to this too. We're already seeing like, I mean, it happened even at a much younger age at like six, you know, there was,

there's kind of clicks within the school and there's. Girls are the worst too. Yeah. And some of them being pretty mean to each other, calling each other names and just, I mean, more than just, you know, more than just name calling, like really being like legitimately mean to each other. Do you think it's worse than when you were a kid or do you think you're just as a parent because it's your child or it's affected, like you see it differently? I try not to make a big, I try not to make a big deal of it because, you know, hey, look, you know, we're all going to get made fun of. And some people will say, oh, you got to block out the noise or whatever.

But I think, you know, I think listen to the noise and let it register and let it turn into something, but let it turn into something positive. You know, if people are calling you something, if people are calling you dumb, people calling you fat, people calling you gay or whatever these things are. Every word you've just said I heard was called to me, was said to me at training yesterday. Last night, every word you just said, I think I was directed at me at some point. You can use those things as positive fuel. I mean, we shouldn't have to go through a lot of stuff uh like that but um

that is life we're going to be judged by other people it's just kind of the way it goes and i just think it's easier nowadays you know with social media apps and whatnot text it or tweet it or yeah like there's apps now that you can send to people without like showing who you are and that's like one of the leading like uh how do i how do I get that? Yeah. Yeah. So the kids are using that for cyber bullying now. Oh, and yeah, that, that's what I,

you know, kind of came to the conclusion. Like, I feel like it is more apparent now because it's just easier. It's not face to face. I try to have my kids interact in person a little bit more too. You know, that's what I've been teaching them from a young age is like,

there's, there's not a lot of, not, there's not a lot of good things that can come from you guys texting people. No, you know, there's a lot of personal traits you're going to lose. At this, at this point, you know, um, somebody when you're, I mean, even at our age, uh, something on social media, something somebody says to us can, it can really hurt our feelings. Think about it when your mind is developing and you're 12 or you're 11. Uh, maybe you are heavier than you want to be.

Maybe you do have a lot of zits. Maybe you, you know, maybe you're not a good athlete. Like maybe there's, maybe there's some truth to some of the things that people say and then they say it and it fucking hurts 10 times worse. Yeah. And it's like, well, what do you, you know, how do you control some of that? I've tried to explain to my kids, like, you know, it's not, it's not just kids that have a problem with social media. Oh, you know, adults, adults can't even handle it. So with an adult, you could say, Hey, you know what? There's a certain age for drinking,

you know, and then people decide whether they want to drink or smoke. And there's certain things that adults do that, you know, when you get older, you can make a decision to do some of those things, but there's, and adults seem like they can handle it. And if you were 10 and you had some drinks, like maybe, you know, maybe, maybe, maybe wouldn't understand how to handle that. I mean, we all know that everyone can struggle with drugs or alcohol and all that kind of stuff, but you get to an older age and you can make a decision on your own on what you're doing. But when it comes to social media, it doesn't seem like anybody handles it all that well. No. It seems like everyone's got a fucking problem with it, you know?

Yeah. I think it's just so easy to react. It's, it's when you're confronted with somebody face to face, it's a little bit more difficult. You gotta be like more methodical in what you're going to say versus, you know, behind a keyboard,

you just let it go. Yeah. And with social media, like it's not whether it's like drinking or driving, whatever, it's brand new to literally everybody. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Kids.

That's true. That's true. It's very, that's the thing you forget. You forget that it's so new. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I was talking with, uh, um, uh, Austin, Austin Baumgartner the other day. And he's like, man, he's like, how do you deal with it?

You sometimes, you know, you got so many people. It's like some people kind of spend like their whole day trying to like bring you down. And I'm like, well, first of all, I don't really think that way. My brain doesn't work that way. But, you know, I just try to remain positive. I try to focus in on the fun and cool, positive stuff that I have going on. And I can't really, you know, get caught up in that stuff too much, but you are going to, a lot of times you are going to look at the negative.

Yeah. It was, it's kind of a trip the last, uh, like last month, it seems like things have been a little bit, a little bit negative on some of the social media things. And then we went to the Arnold and I was absolutely blown away by the increase of people that wanted to see you and the increase of just, you know, you talk a lot about diet lately and some people want the big fat mark. They want the three 30, you know, bench and 600 pound mark. But the, the, the general public, you know, was just pumped to see you and to walk around the Arnold or just be around town. It was, it was absolutely amazing to see people, you know, and get a signed copy of your book and they, you know, lost a hundred pounds or 50 pounds or 10 even.

Yeah. You know, the only thing that remains the same is change. Right. And I always think you got to keep sticking and moving. You know, I think you have to change. I don't, I don't think it's a good idea, uh, to sit in the same spot. And I think a lot of these companies, a lot of these other people that are social media presence, uh, now, and, uh, their, uh, presence in the fitness industry, they ain't going to be around much longer. You know, they're going to come and they're going to

imagine five more years. Yeah. A lot of them, a lot of them will come and a lot of them will go. Um, the audience that we have has grown with us. And I appreciate that people, you know, the people that are accepting to some of the changes, because I do understand it is a big change, but fuck man, I couldn't lift that way and be that big for, you know, that long. And so, of course, everything I do and everything that surrounds all that's going to change a lot.

You know, when you're, you throw on a 4X t-shirt and you're bucking fucking fat the only thing you feel great about is throwing around some heavy weight that's kind of your main focus you're like oh this is what i'm good at this is what i'm gonna do i got a family i could throw around some heavy shit so we're gonna crank up some music we're not gonna worry about how high our blood pressure is and we're gonna fucking what shade of purple you're getting today yeah yeah yeah turn gray like not even purple but that's but get that gray dark thing on. I've seen it on you a few times.

That's when I knew I was getting really strong. Yeah, there's a few sets I've seen. I'm like, oh, man, Mark looks like death. My buddy said it last night. He said, you know, he said, right now, he goes, I'm very strong, but I don't feel good. And I was like, that's interesting. Yeah, that is kind that's interesting. Yeah.

That, that is kind of the way it works. So yeah. When, so before I tore my bicep, I plumped up to 198. I like that. I plumped. And I felt terrible. Like I, I physically felt terrible. I walking around pants, everything, but I felt strong.

Those things, those things kind of sounds funny, but those things, they do, they do chew at you. You know, they do, they do kind of nab at your psyche. There's nothing worse than when you go to a store.

I mean, a lot of us were dudes, so we don't go shopping very often, but even the occasional time that you do go shopping and you try something on, you try on this, you try on that. And you're like, that looks bad.

That doesn't fit. That looks worse. That doesn't fit. That looks worse. That doesn't fit. That looks terrible. And then you're kind of like blaming whatever store you're at. You're like, why don't they make stuff a little bigger? Or like, why do they make pants this way? Or like, you're all cut.

Yeah, yeah. It's a cut. And you're like, ah, you're all frustrated, and you couldn't figure out anything to buy. But when you're in shape and you throw something on, you're like, oh, it's perfect. You feel confident. Yeah.

Yeah. You feel a lot, a lot better about yourself. And that's the whole point on why we do a lot of this stuff. Speaking of, a couple of people in the chat room. What's up? They're saying that Smokey looks jacked. Dang. He does.

This must be a good camera angle. He does. How big are those pipes? You've measured them before, right? I try to measure them only once a day. So I've only, I haven't measured them today, but'm i try to measure them only once a day so uh i've only i haven't measured them today but yesterday they were like 17 ish i gotta say something here i don't know who poured this water for me does it taste weird but it well it it does taste a little

bit weird but my main problem is i think somebody is trying to sneak some carbohydrates in here. Uh-oh. Okay, so. It has a purpley, grape-ish kind of thing going on. It just hit me. So, I filled up my liter and a half with some aminos. And so, I think when I filled up my bottle, actually looking back, this is exactly what I did. I had a hint of it and I just poured us both some water. Oh, so there might be. So, you're looking out for me.

You're not trying to sabotage. That's different. No, no. It's some. Buddy. Non. Oh, hug? might be, so you're looking out for me. You're not trying to sabotage. That's different. No, no. It's some, uh, buddy. Non, a hug. Yeah, bring it in. You sure it's not a tainted supplement? I don't think he put his taint in there.

The water was pretty high. It'd be easier to get to. Yeah, that would be inadvertent carbs. That would be amazing if he just snuck in like, uh, I didn't know there was pizza on this 25 grams of straight glucose in the fucking drink try to own her just be like it's like oh hey let's let's film doing a strip mike buried me with that what was that uh mike was making his

breakfast shake or whatever post-workout meal and uh he had scoops of like just straight carbs i don't know exactly what it was it was like first form this and then like a bunch of other random like just weird ingredients and he made one for mark and he's like i promise i'm only doing one scoop and he throws two in there oh and yeah it was just straight carbs and it like hit me like in the side of my head and i was like ah my head was floating around the room. I was like, oh my God, what the fuck was in that thing? He's like, we're going to make, what do you say? We're going to make babies. And he dumped in a bunch of wheat germ.

I don't know what that was about. That doesn't sound appealing. I don't know if he meant that he and I were going to make, I mean, I was excited. Yeah. But then. You're easily excitable. Yeah. Cause he had.

Not much happened though. Yeah. He was talking about like, he might be like interested in making a baby. So he's taking all this wheat germ or whatever. so he threw it just a ton in mark's shake but not his own uh probably his own yeah it just was funny that i love when people are like this is so good for you like so i'm not gonna take it you should take actually really funny he had me make his shake and then he made my shake it was yours was like avocado and steak it was yeah it was it was kind of uh it was kind of weird but uh you know we blended his up right there on the

spot and uh you know he when i'm scooping it out he's like hey hey hey he's like you got to go really deep with that scooper he's like we he's we need some big gains he's like that's a he's like that's just a level scoop he's like like, who does that? He was so mad. He was like, you gotta get, you gotta get in there. The whole thing. Yeah.

He's like, you gotta get it like really, uh, really full. It was actually really funny, but then, then he takes his and just boom downs it. And then he's like,

okay, you're up. And he's just said, you got to slam it. That's the only way he does it. A full shaker. Yeah. That's a lot.

What was it? Like, I don't know, 25, 30 ounces of liquid. I think a shaker is like 24. Boom. We filmed it and I have don't know. 25, 30 ounces of liquid. Yeah, I think a shaker is like 24. Boom. We filmed it and I have pictures of it too, but yeah.

I had to take a sip of it first because I knew it was going to be sweet. And then he's like, oh, you didn't chug it. And he's like, you ruined the whole thing. Start over. I don't know. You can't taste it. You can't figure out what's inside. You got to just chug it.

Mike's one of those guys where you hang around with them long enough and you you just start to like want to know everything you're like what i what how does he how's he doing any of this you're just like well i don't get it you know just everything he does whether in and in and outside of the gym too yeah just just i mean he's he's a good athlete he's a good looking guy i know people you know where he's talking about the steroid thing people are wondering what he's on if he's on anything at all because he's said that he's been he said he's natural he's talking about the steroid thing. People are wondering what he's on, if he's on anything at all. Cause he's, he's said that he's been, he said he's natural. He's been saying that for a long time.

People are just confused. The guy's six, two or six, three. He's a 50, two, he's, he's yeah.

Right now I'd say he's probably about two 50. Um, it's interesting, man. He, he just has, he has a lot of muscle mass on him. Yeah.

You know, so all I'm looking, all I can see right now is his forearm. I'm like, what is that? man. He, he just has, he has a lot of muscle mass on him. Yeah. You know, so. Well, I'm looking, all I can see right now is his forearm. Yeah. How do you get those veins? He's very,

he's just very influential. You hang out with the guy for a little while and you're just, I'm really excited for people to see the video that we have, uh, coming up. Andrew, uh, got to,

uh, witness it firsthand, but I think people are going to be, it's, it's going to change a lot of people's minds. People that maybe previously didn't like the dude or just think he's fucking pompous or whatever. They're going to watch it.

And at the very least, they're just going to appreciate him a lot more. Oh, that's cool. Dedicated motherfucker, man. That guy has been going at it hard for a long time. And,

uh, you know, I don't appreciate people lying about, you know, whether they take stuff or don time. And, uh, you know, I don't appreciate people lying about, you know, whether they take stuff or don't take stuff, but, you know, uh, uh, company motto, uh, you know, company wide for slingshot is always, how does it help? How does it hurt? That's what we always talk about. That's what we say often. Uh, how does it help any for, for him to, to go out and say that he does it, you know, how does it help? How does it hurt?

Now you can also look at it from the flip side. If he is taking it and he's lying about it, well then maybe, maybe, maybe some people are losing because they have this hope that he's natural and that they can get that big and maybe they can't, but still people are chasing down a dream. Maybe it's not the first 10 or 20 years of his career.

And then at this point it's been going on so long that no one, no one would care. Yeah. I mean, whether he takes stuff or doesn't take stuff, he's, he's competed and lifted, uh,

with many, many people that have taken stuff. Dang preacher curl. And Jack though, like it doesn't make sense. It doesn't really make sense. Like, like,

uh, I think a lot of this stuff doesn't really do it justice on how big and jacked he is. I think that, uh, when he comes up here, I think he's supposed to come up here in may. Yep.

Uh, when he comes up here, you'll really see, cause then you'll see him next to me. You'll see him next to the other guys. And he's just fucking, he's just big. Yeah.

Fucking big and jacked. I hate him. That son of a, that son of a, that son of a bitch. You were talking about sneaking in your carbs on me over here. Yeah. No, just some aminos.

It made me think of John Anderson. John Anderson has a great quote of, he said, those sneaky little bastards are everywhere. The carbs. That's his quote about carbs. John, you talk about a war on carbs. He's really had a war on carbs for a long time. For a long, long time. His traps are-

Yeah, we don't know what's going on with his traps. A little elevated. O'Hearn does a lot of keto style stuff too. Oh, really? He'll pop some carbs here and there after workouts, but he'll do keto diets. He utilizes intermittent fasting, regular forms of fasting. He trains at like 4 a.m so i i mean imagine not getting up at two or three to eat he's got a pretty good schedule so he the the

early training is is kind of wild but he feels uh for him that it uh is something that separates him apart and it's what i mean i get it you know it's uh something that keeps momentum for him and keeps his spirits high and keeps him feeling like he's kicking everybody's ass. When really we know it doesn't really matter when you work out, you work out, you work out. Venice Golds, I can't imagine going at noon or five o'clock is going to be impossible, especially, you know, being who he is.

So I would imagine going at four is kind of necessary. There's a, there's definitely just something period, flat out to having discipline and adhering to that discipline of doing something repetitively, the same way, the same time, all the time, day in, day out. He gets there four days a week.

I believe he said four days a week at 4 a.m. So when we got there at four, he showed up a little bit later. He showed up about 4.m. So when we got there at 4, he showed up a little bit later. He showed up about 4.15. We did an hour of tricep work and then about an hour of bicep work. That sounds amazing. We were just kind of going

from one thing to the next. He doesn't get tired. He did like over 60 reps of 3.15 reverse grip bench. He did like five sets of 12 reps. Wow. And, you know, he just, the entire time, once you kind of see him training,

and just pulling up some really cool pictures of him, once you see him training and once you kind of recognize what he's doing, every set and every rep that he does and at the end of every set and the transition to the next exercise and stuff, he's really trying to like kick the shit out of himself. You know, he's really trying to step it up a notch. So

for example, on the dips, you know, he did like two sets with like one plate hanging between his legs. He did, uh, you know, one set with two hang and he was like, all right, time to finish it up. This was a good, great training session. And on the last set, we were doing sets of 15 on the dips and the last set, he doing sets of 15 on the dips and the last set he's got three plates and uh it was the only time during the entire workout where he even really struggled a little bit but he you know still locked still got them all in there he's just an animal yeah it seems i know if you've commented before that you rarely hear hear him make a sound even or like he doesn't show like he's struggling doesn't show like he's

really trying but you can see him. He'll ask you, he'll be like, why are you making that face? And what are you doing? I'll be like, what are you doing? You're like,

well, it fucking hurts. Yeah. The reverse grip was really hard for me because, uh, it's hard for me to get my hands under that way. Yeah. I bet it's probably something if you do it for the next three,

four months regularly, we do a lot of things that, you know, we, we get stuck in these waves where we're doing the same style or same pan positioning or whatever. Yeah. And the second we change it, it feels terrible. You know, he, he did, uh, he, he did, you know, just kind of bare bones stuff.

There was nothing complicated. We had Ben Pekulski here too. Um, he, it was the same thing. Basic. Yeah. You know, you don't need to complicate. He had a little bit of flair on some stuff. Yeah.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Because Ben. Or his scientific aspects. Well, and Mike is similar. You know, Mike, he's got these angles and stuff. Yeah. He wants to hit things a certain way.

I mean, ideally for him, it's all stuff that's his way to showcase him better. Sure. Which you get that idea once you start doing some of these movements. You're like, oh, that's what suits him best. So that's what we're rolling with. But it was, it was, it was a really cool experience. But my point is, is that you're, you're lifting your exercises. They don't have to be fancy.

They don't have to be super dangerous or super crazy. If you want to get the benefits of getting uh, getting a good pump, um, you know, you can super set back and forth between stuff that can work. Um, but I've tried a lot of stuff like that sometimes. And sometimes it feels like you can't, like, you're like, where's that pump? I can't get the same pump that I want. And what we did, uh, when I was training with Mike is we just, we just fucking hit it hard. That's all it was. There was, there was a good amount of intensity to it. We had four people and we kept rotating. We're lifting with my brother and lifting with his training partner as well.

And we just kind of kept, we kept going in the rotation. It wasn't a lot of breaks, but we weren't at some crazy speed either. So it was just like, it was a good hard work. It was a good training session. And I really, once I saw that from him and then I saw that from Ben as well, it just reminded me like, you know what? Sometimes you're just trying to confuse this shit too much. And maybe you should just stick to a little bit more basic protocol. And I love getting around these people.

It gets me fired up, gets me excited because now I can share that information with you guys. Yeah. You know, I, when I was working with Rosemary the other day on her deadlift yesterday, I was like, let's keep it simple. Fucking stay here. You know, she wants, she's like, oh, I want to, I want to burn fat. I want to take, okay, that makes sense. But that's not what we're doing right now. We're going to work on strength. Strength is going to help give you an opportunity to be able to handle more weight more often. And because you can handle more weight more often, you build,

build muscle. And because you're building muscle, you'll be able to burn off those extra calories that you want to burn off. So let's focus in on that. When you're done, if you want to have a finisher that just fucking burns out some calories or change, uh,

trains a different energy system. And we can focus on that, but we can't focus in on three things at once. Yeah. Sometimes I get personally, I get a little, like I envision what I'm going to do for that day. And sometimes you'll throw a wrench and be like, I don't know. We're doing this. And in my head, I'm like, fuck, like I can't like, no, I'm not supposed to do that. I need to do five sets of five or I need to do whatever it is. You're like, no, we're gonna do eights or whatever. I'm like, no, I'm not supposed to do, I need to do five sets of five or I need to do whatever it is. You're like, no, we're gonna do eights or whatever.

I'm like, no, it's impossible. From that, from a mental side, that's where things get to be great. And that's where we go back to that four, that 4am training session. You know, I was just encouraging my brother. I was like, you should train with him at 4am. He's like, fuck man. He's like, that's early. I was like, yeah, but it's just, it's just kind of cool.

Now he goes, he, when he comes home, he eats and he goes to sleep. Oh, it takes a nap. Yeah. He goes to sleep for like two hours. He's like, he's like, no one's doing shit at like eight or nine o'clock in the morning. He's like, all they're doing is getting to work. Yeah. All they're doing is getting to work.

They're just taking a shower or whatever. So he's like, I go to bed then. And then he phone calls or any other things I need to do for the day. I guess the whole rest of the day, he goes to bed at like seven though. Yeah. I was like, fuck. That's pretty. I mean, I wake up early. That's, that's lights on or that's uh sun's up i wake

up early but i'm not training that early um i don't know as i get older i'm sure i'll fucking lose my mind more and probably train earlier i'm looking forward to that you know you never know man i don't know what's going on in fucking powerlifting. That's the thing. The question of the fucking day is, did you see that 11-13 squat? Yes. Vlad, I can't even, I'm not even going to butcher his last name. Al something? Yeah, Al. Al.

Al. Vlad, strong as shit. So yeah, he did a 1,250 pound squat years ago. A decade ago. It was fucking 2008. It was 10 years ago. I can't believe that. 10 years ago. A decade ago. It was fucking. It was 10 years ago. I can't believe that. 10 years ago.

So he did this in a, in a, in a multi-ply, uh, lifting. He did a multi-ply suit. Yep. And, uh, you know, when you can wear a multi-ply suit, just so people kind of understand the suit is very, very supportive. Um, he had a wide stance. He's got some knee wraps cranked on. And multi-plies. He's got briefs under that.

He's got multiple layers of briefs as well. And at the time, things were starting to get kind of out of hand. Actually, at that time, things weren't too crazy. Things weren't too out of hand. But back in the day when they had the WPO finals and some of these things, these guys were wearing three, four, five. It got to a point where no one cared. They were just like, Hey, you know what you wear, if you want to wear and I'll see you on the platform, we'll figure it out afterwards, you know?

So I don't know what he was wearing exactly in, uh, in that case, but yeah, I'm sure he was definitely wearing a pair of briefs. Uh, he was in that old, that old school Inzer,zer uh canvas suit that was just you know things bulletproof yeah i was never able to use that thing do you have one here i feel like i've seen the white oh yeah we have them yeah we have them here i was never able to use it personally i just never i don't think i ever got the right fit or whatever it was kind of hard to figure out for me but um yeah it was amazing seeing him do that squat so long ago and i think he at some point he disappeared now that guy deadlifts 900 pounds too oh i did not know that that's insane i don't know where his bench is at but he he thought that's all that matters yeah yeah so oh oh a he does 1250

and then what last week at pro raw i believe it is and then so he he disappeared he literally disappeared for a long time from the lifting uh community i didn't see anything from when he did this 1250 at the time he was training with um i believe he was training west side barbell i know he did some training with them a little bit here and there and uh this is his 925 dead Jesus Christ when when was this same meet okay this is after he squatted 1250. Oh, Jesus. That was amazing. So the only hard part was that last inch.

Yeah, he really, that's what she said. He really just ripped it off the ground. I mean, this guy has been on fire for a long time, but he kind of disappeared and didn't know what happened. And then I heard that he like broke both his legs or fucking tore both quad muscles or something crazy. Needed. It's a long time to rehab. Jesus. But you know,

while he was at West side, they said they never seen anything like it. You know, they've had, you know, Chuck Vogel pool and some really successful lifters. There are some people who've done by the way, ladies and gentlemen,

we will have Chuck Vogel pool on this fucking podcast. So that, that'll come. It's going to take a little bit of time to figure out how to get him here he doesn't like all this stuff he doesn't like all the cameras and stuff he's like smelly he kind of looked around he was all nervous

he's like I'll do it for you and he like didn't even want to say it but he said it anyway I was like oh man that took a lot of courage even for him just to spit that out maybe we'll remove some of the cameras and get rid of some lights and film it from a phone. Yeah.

Just so it's low key. You know, it's an interesting thing because the guy certainly loves attention. We all do. Sure. You know, somebody that wears a beanie that has fucking flames on it. Yeah. And smashes their head into the bar and screams is somebody that's, yeah, obviously, uh, you know, I do, I've did the same thing in my lifting career.

I'd like to make some noise cause I'd like to, to kind of say, all right, well, I got these 10 seconds to fucking showcase myself. Hopefully these people are excited and hopefully I can get some people making some noise for me. So it'll, it'll make it feel better. You know, I'm kind of fired up. Yeah. Trying to figure out a way to talk myself into lifting weights that I probably shouldn't

be lifting in the first place. But yeah, so Vlad disappears from the sport for a long time, comes back, comes out of nowhere. It's not like we've seen huge lifts popping up from him on Instagram or I haven't seen anything like that. He disappeared for a long time. He comes flying up out of nowhere. He disappeared for a long time. He comes flying up out of nowhere. And in Australia, he squats 11.13 without the suit on.

No suit. And just knee wraps. Knee wraps, yeah. And fucking Ed Cohn was there and he filmed it. Pretty cool, huh? Yeah, I thought that video was awesome. Ed Cohn has seen every lift imaginable. And he remembers a lot of lifts too.

I've overheard him speaking to people and they bring up oh i was at this meet or saw this and he'll bring up the numbers and you know what happened what attempt it was all that is this the first 1100 pound squat or someone else snuck one in there first right i think someone else somebody else nailed like 1102 kind of recently i love that it's 1113 too it's just like that's so much more weight point 1113.33 maybe or something like that 505 kgs man this is an insane lift uh for those of you who are not watching on youtube we're playing the video right now and uh he's got a real wide stance and he just pushes back into it much like the way he lifted in his suit there's a lot of different angles of it on the internet. The main thing about this particular squat is as he comes back up, it looks like he has a hard time kind of standing up all the way, but then he kind of

balances it before he puts it in a rack. It looked like a very legitimate squat to me. It doesn't look questionable at all. Depth-wise, it looked like he put it where he needed to put it. It's so hard to judge some of these guys, too. These guys have huge legs. And, you know, you'll have those people that are kind of like, ah, it's 11-13, just give it to them. We don't want to get in situations where we're lowering the standards too much.

But at the same time, it's very difficult for a judge to call it properly because the judges are all fans. Yeah. Or former lifters or current lifters. And they're excited. it's too much but at the same time it's very difficult for a judge to call it properly because the judges are all fans yeah former lifters are current lifters and they're excited and you're part of it yeah you're part of it you can't help but hear the crowd and all that stuff and everyone's getting all fun and then you're gonna be the guy that red light oh yeah it's fucking beautiful squat well and then you have at the arnold festival you got ray fucking ray williams the guy's indestructible squatting 1069 in sleeves yeah ray williams um you know he's a young guy but

he's uh he's starting to really accumulate some longevity which i i gotta be honest i didn't think it was gonna happen the way the way that he lifts he lifts very very heavy very often uh he brings it to every fucking meet but when you look at his training he doesn't train his weights are always crazy cause he's a big guy and he's strong as shit um

but it's just it's unbelievable the amount of weight he's been able to squat I mean how many thousand plus pound squats has he had? Oh dozens? I mean I don. I mean, how many thousand plus pound squats he had? Oh, dozens. I mean, I don't, I mean, how often did he hit that? Yeah. I mean, he's probably hitting a thousand pound squat at least, you know,

once or twice in every meet now. And then from here on out, if he continues to get stronger, he'll squat a thousand pounds or more, probably every meet. I think Vlad, when he did his 11-13, I think he opened up with something pretty light from what I've heard. That was nine something? It was like, I mean, when I say light, I mean like relatively. Yeah, relatively light. Compared to the weight that he ended up hitting, you know, that's always a tough thing to play

when you're trying to figure out those things. But what I find fascinating, first of all, the difference between Vlad squat from 10 years ago, I mean, that's just fucking awesome longevity. I don't think the guy was young when he did his 1250 either. Um, the difference between 1250 and 1115 is 137 pounds, which really truthfully, I don't think is that much weight. Um, when you consider that, that he had a, that he has squat suit on, I think that my squat suit, my best, uh, raw squat, and this was a gym squat that by no means would get past anywhere. Uh, my best gym squat was 700

pounds and my best squat in a meet, uh, was, uh, a thousand eighty. Yeah. So there's a wild discrepancy. Almost 400 pounds. That's a lot. That's a lot of extra kickback that I got from that suit. Now I also, I also never tried my heaviest squat when I was my biggest, my strongest raw.

Yeah. The stories of you in gear, it sounds like, I mean, it sounds like there are times you literally load up four plates and start in your suit. Yeah. Like you wouldn't even. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't, I didn't do a lot of raw training then.

Um, I do recall, uh, there was a time when Donnie Thompson was like, ah, you need to get out of that suit and not mess with that weight. You know, not mess with that thing all the time. And, uh, I recall doing seven plates for a couple reps. Um, I don't even know if I had knee reps. I think we were like squatting off a box or something like that. So either way though, uh, the most weight I'm going to scum, the most weight I'd ever, uh, think that I was capable of doing might be seven 50. Like that would be, you know, uh, raw, you know?

And so, uh, that's a huge discrepancy for him, you know, all these years later, he gets 10 years older. He takes off his gear. He had multiple injuries along the way, and he's still able to, and then he's able to still squat an all-time world record under different conditions. It's insane. It's fucking crazy. I mean, one of the only other people I know to do anything like that was Matt Wenning. Yeah.

Matt Wenning did a, uh, 1197 squat, uh, in multi-ply gear. And he did like an 865 squat somewhere in that neighborhood, 865 squat, uh, in just a pair of knee sleeves. And at the time it was a world record for that weight class. I can't remember if he was like raw. He must've been, yeah, he must've been a 308. Unbelievable though. I mean, it's just crazy. And then the discrepancy between, or the difference in weight between Ray Williams and Vlad is, is only 44 pounds. What lift do you think is more impressive?

Uh, I mean, raising knee sleeves, that alone is a huge thing. He walked it out. That's another factor. Um, and it was us, uh, APL, which I mean, the rules and regulations are a lot steeper. And then also, uh, I'm not trying to take away from Vlad's whatsoever.

He's going to be pissed. I'm sure he will track you down. But I mean, that's just, that's just beyond impressive. And he, and he absolutely murdered it too. Like it wasn't shaky.

Yeah. I, I, I had the pleasure of seeing Ray Williams lift in person multiple times and it's, it's a thing, you know, it's a thing to watch him go lift. Like anybody that, anybody that ever gets a chance, uh, anybody that's anywhere near, uh, where this dude's gonna, um, that where this dude's going to party and hit up a lift, you got to go see it, man, because he's not only lifting these big weights, but he's also a showman. He loves getting the crowd hyped up and amped up, and he's super happy and super positive. He'll hit up these big lifts, and then somebody will ask him how he did it, and he'll just be

like, I got to thank Jesus, man. Jesus was with me. Like he's, he's very, very religious and people would just scratch in their head. They're like, they're like,

man, that's, that's a lot of weight to move. Even if you do have God on your side, you know, just a unbelievable lifter, somebody who's really positive. And who knows,

you know, some of these, maybe some of these lifts will, uh, you know, draw attention to powerlifting and, and help, help kind of move it along.

Yeah. I know some of the chicks are blowing up some big weights too. We talk about that quite a bit, but we talked about getting a Steffi Cohen out here. Yeah. Been talking to her, talk to her a little bit today. She's going to get her out here pretty soon.

Hopefully in the next couple of months. God damn. How come they're so strong? I don't know. we doing wrong everything oh my god you're gonna train today i trained this morning remember i texted you i was concerned for you because you weren't there oh oh you oh you hit up pizza for breakfast i did yeah we did a little did you just turn it into a bicep workout uh knowing that we're benching tomorrow i didn't do any upper body you'd be proud you're one of those guys i planned yeah you're worried about the next day to be honest when after i tore my bicep i it really it kind of how is the bicep going it's good yeah i think

it's gonna be it's gonna be a little bit more until it's finally healed or i don't maybe what i got going is what it is but um i can pretty much do everything. You've lifted in a knee wraps and knee sleeves before. What's the, what's the difference in strength for you? You think? Um, well, my best, uh, knee wrap, um, squat is 529 and then sleeves is a measly 491. So it's only like 30 something, 40 pounds. Yeah. Um, lots of difference between these guys.

This 1113 squat and this 1069 is 44 pounds. Look at that. Oh my God. The similarities. Yeah. A lot of times, I think for a lot of lifters, they get about 50 pounds, you know, 50 pound boost out of their knee sleeves, but there's some guys that really crank them down and they swear they get a hundred, 150 out of them, which I don't know. Well, when I did the 529, I honestly, it was a couple years ago. I bet you my sleeve squat was probably in the low fours. I probably got close to 7,500 pounds out of it. What do you like better?

I mean, sleeves. I mean, they're just, you put them on, you leave them on. You don't have to, the biggest issue for me is A, it hurts, but that's fine. I can get over that. But having someone to wrap them. Right. Because if I wrap, by the time you're done wrapping them your your hands are on fire you're done so it used to be really it used to be really a common practice to just wrap your knees like people well a lot

of people uh just well that uh even for power lifting yeah people would wrap their own knees and then bodybuilders power lifters people that just wanted to train for strength and wanted to, you know, get after it and hit a little bit more weight. They just wrapped their knees every training session. Yeah. So before squatting, I actually used knee wraps a lot for leg press. Yeah. Before I came to ST, I didn't really squat much. It was like, load that puppy up, get the three meter and go.

Jessica Smith thinks this is really. Attacking my integrity she's laughing about the knee wraps it might have been a three and a half meter we had some we had lauren aka lolo and i had some stupid wrap that felt like it was the size of the room just wrapped your knees forever and just tried to load up as much as you could and And I was always leg press. You think about it though. It makes sense to wrap stuff up. I think, you know, some of those old school guys,

I think they had a point. I think you can wrap your shit too much. Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure. Yeah. But a knee, a knee wrap is just so much more specific than an actual knee sleeve.

You know, honey, you can just put the pressure on just the right spot. You can even change out the stiffer ones. Yeah. When I was, when I was a kid and I was getting into all this, I mean, I used to, every training session, I'd wrap for the last couple sets. And my coach at the time, he always wanted me to squat deeper to get more out of the knee wrap. So I would just squat kind of normal.

And then when I put the knee wraps on and I got specific weights on there, I would take them a little deeper because you have that kind of compression sitting there. We got, uh, you know, my buddy, uh, Austin Baumgarten, he's, uh, coming off that knee injury. He's been wrapping a lot lately. I forgot about, I forgot about that, but yeah, it makes sense. He's been wrapping most of his squats. Yeah. So he and I had a discussion and I said, you know, you probably, you probably shouldn't be wrapping your knee, um, because it can allow you to squat lower. And he's like, oh, that's what's been happening. I've been squatting lower, but then I now have knee pain. I was like, yeah, cause you can squat while you're doing the squat.

It doesn't hurt. But afterwards, cause your range of motion isn't there yet. It's, uh, it's just allowing you to do something that you otherwise couldn't normally do. And so for him coming off that injury, uh, it's a big deal. Yeah. We're actually seeing a lot. Some of our athletes are reaching out and we're seeing more on social media.

People starting to use wraps, you know, go back to wraps last couple of years. Sleeves have been huge and powerlifting that people are realizing, wait, I can get more out of my squat. I put on some wraps. So more and more.

Austin Baumgartner is also the guy that, uh, showed me this steroid video from this guy's name? John Bravo. I've never heard of him before. Have you heard of this guy before? I never really heard of him before, but I thought

the video was really good. I mean, he spent a lot of time putting this thing together. Oh, who's that? The Bell Brothers. Dang, Look at Chris. Hey, we're always going to be involved in something like this, right? Yeah. Wait, it's power lift for one word or two words. I don't know. I don't think we ever, I don't think we ever figured it out.

I know steroid is one word and you can't spell it and you can't spell without ST in it. Right. That's very true. No, I saw this report, you know, and the guy you know talked about how it's important for him to be accurate and a lot of these different things i don't really know what the benefit of the video was i know that he was uh trying to uh trying to nail down you know roman reigns and then in the end he didn't really have anything that was substantial to nail him down so it was a weird, but I never got a phone call. Never got an email.

He never tried to hit me up. He's just trying to get one side of the story. I guess. I'm not sure. That's kind of how the case is with most things. Yeah. But yeah, I think the guy was calling from prison. Yeah.

Yeah. I had that. Doing the interview in prison. That's pretty crazy. And I've, I've, uh, I've actually heard those before. I've heard those noises before. Oh. Talking to my brother back in the day.

You're like, oh, my God. This just got so real. I can't believe it. Anyway, you know, there's always going to be things like this that circulate. And, you know, for me, you know, I get stuff prescribed by a doctor. That's the way I do it. It's the only way I should be doing it anyway at this point. I'm old.

I'm falling apart. And, you know, this whole thing with Richard Rodriguez, you know, he was claiming to be a doctor. So a lot of people were going to him and then he started an affiliate program the way that a lot of other people do via, you know, a lot of supplement companies use stuff like that. And he was doing the same thing. And so some people were kind of off the races with promoting it. I never did anything like that. I did make people aware of it because of the movie Bigger, Stronger, Faster. People ask me about steroids all the time.

So I've told people about it before and stuff like that. But I always just tell people, yeah, go hit up somebody else. Don't be bugging me about it. Anyway, I thought it was a good video. Yeah, it was filmed very well. I gave it a like on YouTube. Did you? I did.

You gave it a thumbs up. I did. Well, that's good. Yeah, I gave it a thumbs up. You got to put that in the comments. I think I should. Anything else? No, that's about it.

All right. Well, I think that's it. Andrew, anything else? Any questions flying in from these fatties? Not too much. Just Scott said he joined the war on carbs. He's down 15 pounds. Wow.

Yeah. 15 pounds. That's great. A couple more people talking about Smokey. Oh, my God. Are they positive or negative? Positive. So I forgot to mention.

Must be my wife. they positive or negative positive so uh i forgot to mention uh you know i posted it posted on my uh instagrammers um that i lost 100 pounds down 100 pounds my absolute fattest was 330 i think i actually was like a little bit more than 330 but i don't want to talk about it well people asking for poop stories so now that you're down 100 hundred pounds, anything new? Oh yeah. How is it? How does it all function? The same? Uh, great question. So the main, like seriously, I mean, that's, that's crazy.

So, so the main thing is, um, uh, before some of you guys came around, you, you might've been around for some of the beginning parts of this, you know, I used to always talk about and I would think talking about blowing things up. Isn't like great thing to talk about anymore. Cause people are actually blowing things up, but I used to go, I used to always talk about, and I would think talking about blowing things up, isn't like great thing to talk about anymore. Cause people are actually blowing things up, but I used to blow up the toilet at Starbucks all the time. Yes. I was very well aware of that. Yeah. I'd make references to it on Facebook and I, and then I was just blowing up bathrooms left and right, kind of like wherever I'd go, I would call it going public and I would like write about

it on Facebook and I'd talk about it in a bunch of different ways. And then at one point I got like so into it that I was going to like make a book. I'm like, I need to make a book that tells people that rates the different toilets like in the area. So when I travel, you know, if you go to Columbus and I hit up this gas station, don't go there. The fucking bathroom's gross. It sounds like a star system or a toilet system, right? Yeah. Yelp for toilets. Yeah, and people were- That has to exist. People were asking about,

I mean, that's kind of how the poop story started on the podcast in the first place. It all originated from my ass in the very beginning phases of it. But, yeah,

my shits used to just be horrific. I'd be in there forever just blasting it out. And now, not all my shits are tapered, but they're getting closer to that point. That's good. A few more pounds, you think? It's a lot, it's a lot, uh, neater, a lot easier, a lot easier to get back there. That's what, so that was actually one of my main questions.

Yeah. No, I mean, you're not, I know for a fact you're, you're not flexible. Nope. And then you add an extra six inches on each side of your body. How are you getting back there? Or are you a back to front? Mm-hmm. You're a back to fronter.

I don't know. No. Towards my balls? Yeah. No, no, no. I'm towards my balls. I'm worried about that. I would be too, yeah.

I don't want to get poop on my nuts. That'd be disgusting. It's like a permanent tan. Yeah, it'd be disgusting like a permanent tan yeah it'd be disgusting you know i at this point at this point you know with my special toilet lid i don't even have to wipe my yeah you probably been wiped in like two years well so sometimes i gotta wipe and i'm so frustrated about it like i had to wipe before i came here because i pooped at phil's so maybe you need it some things never change design a portable bidet so that's what i was thinking

that you uh like so like i could picture myself i'm like getting on the airplane and i got my headphones on with me i got my water bottle i got my uh backpack on and i got my fucking toilet yeah that's that's kind of like wrapped around my arm you know and i sit next to the guy what if it's one that like uh can connect to any faucet? Oh, yeah. Oh, so you shit right in the sink. Well, no, you shit in the bathroom, but then you go into the main area and that's where you wipe up or that's where you hose off. This is a brilliant idea.

We're getting a lot of good ideas. It needs to be thought out a little bit more, though. I don't know. Does it? Stina and I had an idea a long time ago for the clear toilet and uh we're still still in production with that then we decided we need a clear floor and it's just the money you know the money side of things yeah got a little out of hand but he and i both have a lot more money now from the time we talked about it i mean back then we

had the idea he was just eating expired protein so So for free, right? Yeah. Yeah. I hope so. I hope it was for, uh, for free. Yep. Yep. So down a hundred pounds feeling good. Um, uh, health wise, I feel really good. I feel like I got a lot of energy. I feel better than I ever, ever have before. Uh, now the next thing to figure out is, uh, how to continue to get healthier and how to continue to get stronger. So I don't really have a desire to really continue to lose much body weight, although that may happen. And if it does, I'll just like let it take its natural course. Um, but, uh, yeah, I guess if I'm trying to make sense of some of this, so carnivore diet, a lot of things fall into place really well with the carnivore diet because you've gotten rid of a lot of other things, a lot of other foods. You removed a lot of other foods.

And so therefore, what your body's trying to do and some of the vitamins and minerals and stuff like that, they don't matter as much because vitamin C and a lot of these vitamins and minerals that we thought were really crucial. They've only been tested on people that are already kind of quote unquote sick or people that are already kind of have a poor diet. And it's not like you don't need vitamin C, but there is vitamin C in beef. There's so anyway, once you,

once you start to get, if you're going to do the carnivore diet, you kind of have to be all in. It doesn't make sense to really bubble around it too much. Although I've had some success recently mixing in a little bit, a little bit of stuff here and there, but the next goal is to bring down the amount of fat that I take in a little bit and replace a little bit of that with carbohydrates. And what I'm hoping is that I'll get a nice mix of, uh, being stronger and having better performance in the gym. Um, and maybe, maybe even putting on like a little bit of size and maybe even putting on like a little bit of a muscle because, you know, somewhere along

the line, when you're trying to, you know, get like a better, when you're trying to look better aesthetically, you're thinking, oh, I'll just weigh less. Well, that's not the only way to do it. You can also build some muscle. So I feel like I did a good job of, of stripping the weight off. And, uh, not that I necessarily, I'm going to try to intentionally gain some weight, uh, but I'm going to be eating sweet potatoes. If you never tried a Japanese sweet potato, you have to try it because it's fucking unbelievable. Uh, I'm going to be mixing in some oranges and some cranberry juice. The cranberry juice has iodine in it. It also has a little bit of, uh, potassium in it. And I think, you know, bringing some of these things in, I think will, will, uh, will help me a lot. I get a lot of questions about fiber. Um, I, I haven't ever really noticed a big difference with fiber, but I also am not somebody that's ever really taken in large amounts of it.

I don't think I ever gave vegetables enough of a chance for me to ever figure out how to digest them all that well. Never gave them a chance. Yeah.'t eat i mean i eat them but i don't eat them regularly um i do the carrot thing the carrot you eat a salad like you get yeah some meat on yeah so some of that stuff sometimes is to be is almost to be a little bit more social and just to kind of like uh in the club soda when you're out versus yeah and water there you go there you go yeah just uh sometimes it's just to have food in front of you go. There you go. Yeah. Just, uh, sometimes it's just to have food in front of you because everyone else, you know, ordered an appetizer or whatever,

uh, whatever it might be. But what I've learned, you know, going through this whole process is that it takes a really long time. And I was going to make this kind of long ass post on Instagram, but I just, I was like,

yeah, I'll save that for some other time and try to explain it better some other way. But it's, it's not that the, um, it's not that the dieting is hard. It just takes a really long time. And so that's where the difficulty comes in. Because if I'm, if I'm working with Smokey, Smokey and I have worked before on him dropping some LVs and I say, hey, here's the 15 foods that you're allowed to eat over the next two weeks or whatever. And he does it strict and he starts getting all fired up, coming to the gym, training every day,

doing a little bit of cardiovascular training as well. And at the end of 14 days, he's like, I haven't lost one fucking pound. And so that's where it starts to get to be hard. Then, then, then the next week,

maybe we make some alterations and then you lose like two pounds and you're like, I've been on a diet for three weeks and I lost two pounds. Yeah. Then we make some more alterations and maybe you lose another two. Right. But then two weeks later, you gain two again. Or a week after that, you go on vacation or something.

You get injured. Something. You tweak something. And now it's like we got resistance stacked upon resistance, stacked upon resistance. And we end up in a tough spot and we end up losing motivation. We end up losing the drive and the very goal that we set out to do that we talked about doing. It's no longer getting done anymore because fatigue destroys everybody. Fatigue makes cowards of us all. And at some point, you'll just, you'll fucking run out of energy. going from three 30 down to two 30. It wasn't something that happened in a real short period of time.

It's been many years. I've been working on this for many years and the lowest I've gotten in recent years is probably about two 40 to two 45, somewhere in there for the BSN shoot that I did a while back. But, you know, trying to, trying to think that it's going to happen in like six months, we're trying to think that something's going to happen in even, you know, trying to think that it's going to happen in like six months or trying to think that something's going to happen in even, you know, a couple weeks or even a year or two, it's going to take you a really long time. You know, when you're trying to really make changes, I feel that I've made changes in all aspects of my life and I feel better in everything that I'm doing. So it's not, the diet is like a side thing. And I think that sometimes in the fitness community,

sometimes people can start to view you as like, Oh fuck. He's like, we lost him. You know, like where, where is he going? Now he talks about diet every day. Now it's, it's not so much the diet. It's really what I've fallen in love with is the discipline of it and what it's teaching me, uh, out outside of that. Cause I'm what I'm excited about is I get to share that with other people now. Yeah. I get to show them, show them what, what I think works.

Cause a lot of different diets can work, but if you don't have the discipline to follow them, you're kind of fucked. Yeah. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never a strength. I'm out of here. That was pretty good.