Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Project EP. 63 - Holly Baxter, Layne Norton and Andres Vargas

Episode Date: June 1, 2018

Just after having Layne Norton on, we invited his girlfriend Holly Baxter and Powerlifting coach Andres Vargas onto the show. Holly Baxter is a physique coach, fitness model, and IFBB competitor claiming 2x world championship level wins in 2015 for Natural Fitness modeling. Holly obtained her MS in Dietetics. Rewatch the live stream: https://youtu.be/VuQBwxXV2Dw ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots ➢Subscribe Rate & Review on iTunes at: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-bells-power-project/id1341346059?mt=2 ➢Listen on Stitcher Here: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/mark-bells-power-project?refid=stpr ➢Listen on Google Play here: https://play.google.com/music/m/Izf6a3gudzyn66kf364qx34cctq?t=Mark_Bells_Power_Project ➢Listen on SoundCloud Here: https://soundcloud.com/markbellspowerproject FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell Follow The Power Project Podcast ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MarkBellsPowerProject Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz

switch. Yep. Because chickens, like chicken breasts, since chickens don't fly, they don't use that muscle. Right. And so when a muscle is completely disused, all the fibers become glycolytic. Right. Why are they so lean? Because you don't store fat really in glycolytic tissue like that.

Whereas like red, so red fibers can do oxidative phosphorylation. They can do, they can metabolize fats for energy. They've got beta-oxidation and use the Krebs cycle. So glycolytic, when you're only burning glucose, when fibers are only glycolytic, they're only using the glycolysis method of getting energy. So red fibers get oxygen, can metabolize fats, and so the muscle starts to store fat intramuscularly,

and that's why it gives it... Well, the hemoglobin is what gives it the red color. But actually, the processing of the meat when they inject it... He's kind of a nerd, isn't he? Yeah, we're doing real good. You've now spoken 100% of the whole time. Shit, did we already start? Yep, we started.

Fuck me. This is how it goes. He says he's not going to talk, and then... I didn't know we started! I'll just walk out. We're just going to do round two with him only. I'm just going to stick this in my mouth, and I'll shut up and let Mark start. That's what she said.

Hey, there we go. You've learned well, my son. I only had to spend one day with him to start learning. So we're here with Lane Norton's entourage. We got Andres. What's the last name? Sorry, I don't know the last name. Vargas.

Vargas. And we have Holly Baxter. Did I get that right? You did. I'm doing pretty good so far. Two for two. And Andres is Lane's powerlifting coach. Correct.

You're the guy that makes him do all these crazy-ass workouts, right? That's true. Or at least he used to do crazy-ass workouts. I think he's recovering right now. So that was actually a different coach. That was my coach, Ben Escrow. Oh, right? That's true. Or at least he used to do crazy ass workouts. I think he's recovering right now. So that was actually a different coach. That was my coach, Ben Escrow. I'm not talking, so I don't. But so Andres is actually somebody I hired and I love Ben. Ben was an awesome programmer. I set a squat world record with Ben. But I found that

that kind of training was just beating me up too much. And so I kind of wanted a fresh perspective. So Andres, we got back up to within 13 pounds of my best squat, doing much, much, much less squatting than I did previously. So I'm sure you've talked about that at some point. Yeah, I think I remember you saying when you were looking for a new coach, you were like, when was I at my best? This is right when I was fresh, just coming out of PhD.

You were on the ball, on the game, and I think kind of Andres ticked a few of the boxes for you. Yeah, what I liked about him was, you know, for me, obviously somebody who has an educational background is important because I value that. But also I wanted somebody who had practical application of competing themselves and coaching clients. And I thought about, like Holly said, when was I at my best?

Well, it was when I was, had just finished grad school so I could totally focus on coaching and I was competing myself. I had clients who were competing and I was just totally immersed in that. Yeah. And all that, all this knowledge, all that knowledge was still real fresh. So I was like him. And, uh, yeah, very happy. That probably helped that, uh, you were on my thesis committee too. So we had some interaction, uh, with, very happy. That probably helped that, uh,

you were on my thesis committee too. So we had some interaction, uh, with that, but I appreciate that. And, uh, I mean,

you know, he's rehabbing right now, uh, but I'm really excited for where he's going to go with his training. Um, cool story with us too. Cause it's kind of full circle. He came to a camp I did in 2014 after I'd won raw nationals and he was learning from myself.

Was it terrible? Uh, yeah, it was awful. I got nothing 2014 after I'd won Raw Nationals, and he was learning from myself. Was it terrible? Yeah, it was awful. I got nothing out of it. I imagine. No, it was great. He actually suggested I go to Florida to USF to work with Dr. Bill Campbell, and that's what I ended up doing. He ruined your life. That's what you're trying to tell me.

If you want to put it that way, I guess so. A little message. Yeah. How was it training and super training today? Did you have a good time? I loved it. Yeah, I guess so. A little message. Yeah. How was it training and super training today? You have a good time? I loved it. Yeah. I love the facility.

It's great. You guys have more equipment there than I've ever even seen in my life. Awesome. And I was able to hit a heavy box squat today. There you go. Holly, you're getting ready for a powerlifting meet. It's tomorrow. It is tomorrow.

I'm very nervous, but very excited. Oh, my God. Lane, you're going to have to give her a rub down before and after. If she'll let me. Oh, my God. I, you're going to have to give her a rubdown before and after. If she'll let me. Oh, my God. I'm so embarrassed already. Yeah. Yeah, this is my first powerlifting meet.

I can't say I ever imagined I would do powerlifting. Like, this is probably going back four years ago. I had not even, I wasn't really lifting weights, period. Oh, wow. I was Energizer Bunny track athlete background and doing a lot of like hit high intensity functional workouts, I guess. Have you always been in pretty good shape? I guess I've tried to, but as a requirement as the sport, you know, you want to have maximal power output ratio. So you don't want to be carrying too much excess body fat.

But yeah, I'm very excited. I'm learning that powerlifting is a very refined art, and the skill certainly takes a lot of mental integrity and focus as the physical side of things. You can have a lot higher body fat. That's the blessing of powerlifting. Yeah, it really is. And you can just rest in between sets. You can sit down or lay down or fart or do whatever you want.

I used to say to Elaine, I was doing a bodybuilding show when I first came over to the USA and I'm running around doing all my sets and I come over to Elaine and it's been an hour and I'm like, babe, you done? You finished shit? And he's like, oh, I'm just in my it's been an hour. I'm like, babe, you done? You finished shit? And he's like, oh, I'm just in my first working set of squats. I'm like, it's been an hour. Are you serious? I've just done like all my exercise. I'm nearly done. I had to poop like five times in between there. Yeah, the lord of the toilet. What is the deal with the poop? Does that scare you? The amount of times this guy poops? I don't know where it comes from, but you eat so much right? It's Bumble.

It comes from his ass. Trickble. It comes from his ass. Trick question. It comes from his ass. It's pretty simple. I've never met someone that can eat so much food before they exercise, honestly. I'm someone that prefers to train probably on an empty stomach if I had to make a choice, empty or full. Yeah, I know where it comes from. That volume.

I like being fully fueled before I go in but yeah it's just for squats when I start squatting you guys were here the first time I was super training everybody was like

why does Lane keep leaving the gym and going to the bathroom well we were trying to record a workout and we're like this guy has disappeared in the toilet

this is our main subject this is our feature we're trying to didn't want to pull Ed Cohn you know I've yet to shit myself while squatting

so I may push a lot but at least I don't have that level of embarrassment on me. Are you doing her programming? I am, yes. I'm coaching her into this meat. And so I think when I, like she was saying earlier, when I first showed her her program, she probably thought, what the hell?

This is going to be easy. I was like, I've got four exercises for this whole workout hot day. She learned in short order what it takes to lift heavy weights and the kind of toll it takes. What do you do with someone? I mean, she's obviously not a stranger to fitness and a stranger to lifting, but what do you do with somebody that's new? Well, I transition them a little bit. I mean, you know, I think for her, she likes to keep a little bit of bodybuilding, you know, in her routine, which I have no problem with. And actually, I think it's very beneficial for powerlifters up to a certain point until you're going to start peaking. I love the bodybuilding stuff, getting the pump,

chasing that pump. Absolutely. Um, you know, so, you know, I'm not even a closet bodybuilder. I'm out of the closet. When I, when I first started, when we first started working together, you know, I kind of took into consideration what her previous training was like and asked her what kind of exercises she likes and what she doesn't like., you know, put in the powerlifting movements, but also kept some accessory work. I even would give her some days where she could just do whatever she wanted in a bodybuilding accessory day. But of course, the last couple of blocks, it's been a lot more specific to powerlifting. And so I think she mentioned earlier, she feels like she hasn't done any accessory work in months. Yeah.

I was like, look at my atrophy body. Yeah. She feels atrophied. Although she's still there. Are you trying to, are you trying to teach her as she's going through, or is it more like, uh, you just kind of give her to the workouts and she's just kind of following? Um, yeah. So what I like to do is I kind of like to see where each of my athletes kind of responds with what I give them up front and then kind of learn, we kind of learn each other. Right. So, um, you know, it's, I try

to do my best to assess people up front. You know, it's a little hard not to, when you're not in person, um, you know, when you're doing remote coaching, there's a little bit lost in translation. We're down in Florida here in Phoenix. Yeah. And Phoenix is a little different, you know, and I, of course, you know, I meet with them sometimes. I'll go to Florida or whatever. But, you know, I kind of let the user, so to speak, inform, give me the data

so that I can make better decisions. And so, you know, I think Lane knows that I'm big on data. I try to get a lot of data from my clients. Yeah, you need a lot of feedback. Right. So I try to get a lot of data from my clients. Yeah, you need a lot of feedback. Right. So try to get a lot of feedback. He tracks more metrics than anybody.

Yeah, that was the first thing I really noticed with Andres was the amount of information that he collects as far as your recovery, your sleep, your mental health as well, which really does have a huge impact and can vary your training so significantly, I think. So, yeah, I was very interested in that. How are you collecting that data? Just text messages or is there a program or something? No, so I do all my programming through Excel, well, specifically Google Sheets. Nerd alert. Right. Well, we can go down a rabbit hole with that stuff, but that's a different podcast, I think.

So I kind of create a recovery sheet for each client and a training sheet. So I deliver my programs through the training sheet, and then I have them fill out a recovery sheet. And there's a bunch of calculations that go in. I try to make it as easy as possible where they just input a number, and then the calculations happen behind the scenes. make it as easy as possible where they just input a number and then the calculations happen behind the scenes. And I have some metrics and some thresholds that I use to look at whether they're doing well with recovery, whether they're in the red zone. If they're in the red zone, we try to back off a little bit. I try to have a deeper conversation as to why. Sometimes it's stuff outside of the gym. It's not just because they're training hard. Sometimes, you know, stress is happening for one reason or another, or their nutrition isn't on point like it should be or something like that.

I feel like the Lane vegetable conversation needs to be brought back into this. Yeah. The Lane vegetable conversation. I do very well on Greek yogurt and popcorn before a workout. So, you know, you just take your comments and stick them where the vegetables go how about that that's right but i mean you don't think about how like i used to think i was invincible and i should be able to train the same way regardless of where i was how much traveling i had done you know that sort of thing and and i think when i

was younger i was a little bit more resilient but as you get older you find that like You know, that sort of thing. And, and I think when I was younger, I was a little bit more resilient, but as you get older, you find that like consistency and like replication is really important. Right. Like setting yourself up for, uh, prioritizing training. And one of the things I realized, like next time I compete, I'm not doing travel in eight weeks from, from me. Like if I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it.

You know, I'm not going to try and have to do it. And I think that's one of the things I, like, I look back at my career in powerlifting and think about, well, how much better could I have done if I wasn't trying to do manage everything and had really focused a little bit more and not done so much traveling and whatnot. Holly, did you change your diet at all for powerlifting? Are you like eating more or are you just kind of eating the same or? Uh, It wasn't intentionally, but I actually have. So when I first did my first training block with powerlifting as the focus, I was just coming off the end of a contest prep diet. So my calories were incredibly low. So I actually did the first

two or three training blocks, I think, on pretty restricted intakes. I'm going to say like around 25 kilocalories per kilo lean body mass. It was not fun. Um, so that translates to about 1400 calories for her. Yeah. So very, quite, quite low. Um, but I still managed to see some pretty good strength improvements, um, even during that block. So, um, during this reverse diet that I'm, um, currently pursuing and really chasing the tail ready for another show at the end of the year. Yeah, it's, I feel so much better. Like I just feel alive when I'm in the gym now, which is great. And yeah, for my next powerlifting meet, it will be great to see what, what I can actually bring on, you know, a good solid three or four months of good intakes.

You have a gluten allergy? Yeah, I have celiac disease. What is that? What the hell is celiac disease? Basically... Does that mean that she's weird? Yeah, I'm really weird. She's weird.

I'm the annoying person in the restaurant that asks, like, oh, can I not have this? Can I have this? It's so gay. Careful, somebody's going to chew on that. I've definitely had my meal spit in a few times, I swear. Um, no, basically what happens is it is an autoimmune, um, response where your body, um, tries to, uh, attack itself.

So you, when you digest foods that contain gluten, um, it's a protein gliadin, uh, which your body basically does not digest correctly. So in response to that, the villi, which are tiny little spores, I guess, on your intestinal lining, they atrophy and they become less receptive to the micronutrients that we take in from food. So usually one of the common presenting features of somebody that has celiacs is that they become really malnourished. They lose weight. That's pretty common to be honest. But I guess with the amount of food going around these days and that everybody seems to be obese, it's actually less prevalent. Like it used to be, that was how people would be, you know, diagnosed was, oh, hey, I'm losing weight. I can't gain weight. What's wrong with me? Oh, hey, you have this gluten intolerance.

But yeah, so basically it is avoiding all foods containing gluten. It's not something that is at the moment. You cannot change it. It's gluten-free for life. But it's not a gluten intolerance, correct? No, no. It is a, it's an actual. Allergy?

No, it's not an allergy. It is. It's just a clinical condition. Yeah. You just cannot eat it anymore. Gluten disease? No, it's not an allergy. It is... It's just a clinical condition. Yeah. You just cannot eat it anymore. Gluten disease? Yeah, it's a gluten disease.

Yeah. So that's real fun. Didn't know I had it for a while. Yeah. So you didn't know you had it. Were there any adverse... Like, were there adverse effects that you were wondering about? Or did you get some sort of test?

Like, how did you discover that you had it? It's interesting because a lot of the work I do as a dietician was with gastroenterology, a lot of GI disorders and food intolerances. But more commonly I would be working with things like Crohn's, IBS, irritable bowel syndrome, and a lot of the trigger foods or things that people have these intolerances to. I just assumed that that's what I had. I was getting some symptoms, but I was like, oh, Jesus, this is starting to get real annoying.

And they are typically like distended guts, pain, like lots of discomfort when you eat. And I went and had a few of those tests. There's a hydrogen breath test that you can have, which helps you indicate whether you have lactose intolerance. Basically, they give you the equivalent of drinking a liter of milk for the lactose intolerance test. Oh, yeah, it's not pleasant, but I wasn't.

What a horrible test. Yeah, I know. It's like when you drink a milkshake and then you feel a bit funny. You've got to collect your farts to see how intolerant you really are. They're literally collecting your farts. Oh, these are bad. They're collecting your farts. Well, the thing is, if that hydrogen is showing up in your breath, that's how it's diagnosed.

Yeah, because obviously if you're thinking about the process. I got something in my breath. I got a terrible breath. No, that's not hydrogen. It's just shit. Hydrogen is poop. Yeah, but basically the microflora in your bowel actually use this and ferment that. And then it actually crosses back over the intestinal lumen and then it gets back into circulation.

You breathe it out. So if you're intolerant to some of these chemicals in foods, that's how they determine it. So I had some of those, just thought that that was what it was, and then went and had an actual gastroscope, and they take some of your stomach, snip it out, put it under a microscope, and bam. You told me the process for, like, the diagnosing celiac is actually pretty brutal too, right? Like you had to go off gluten and then like, didn't you have to, they made you eat it? You have to do a glucose challenge.

So I had been like unknowingly like avoiding those foods because I didn't want the symptoms. And that's why I felt better. I was like avoiding gluten. But then when you actually have to go in for a test and a lot of people will get positive, sorry, false negatives because they haven't been eating anything. So that actually gives the stomach time to repair and the villi in the stomach actually start to kind of form little fingers again. It won't show up. It won't show up. So you get a false negative.

So you have to actually do like a six-week gluten challenge where you're eating equivalent to like six slices of bread every day for six weeks and you feel beautiful. So, yeah, that wasn't a fun time. Gluten challenge. Andrew likes French fries. He could do a French fry challenge. Yeah.

It's gluten free though, right? With the right oils. I'm just thinking about how miserable you must have been. Because I know like if she has like, there's a couple of times, like we talked about a little bit on the last episode, how you don't have an off switch with food. But like if there's just like, she won't even think about it sometimes. There's a box, like we talked about a little bit on the last episode, how you don't have an off switch with food. But like, if there's just like, she won't even think about it sometimes. There's a box of crackers out. She just grabbed one, put it in her mouth. And there's been times where I'd be like, spit it out.

Cause I know it has food in it. I just like the smoke and it's like. But if she just has it. We got to show the video on how to stop overeating. She's just not, you're just like, don't think about it. You just grab. No, I just, I'm in my own head sometimes. But if she even has like a little bit,

like she'll like, Oh yeah. And very quickly, very quickly. And just be totally uncomfortable. Yeah. So the six weeks is fun, but that's how they diagnose it. A lot of people say,

oh, I had the blood test and they test for some antibodies, but that's been proven now that it provides a lot of. So the testing that people are getting done through things like 23andMe where they're doing this genetic testing and they find out they have a gluten allergy may not be all that accurate? Well, no, the genetic testing, that's actually relatively new. And I believe there is some evidence to support the genetic testing.

So you can go and find out if you are predisposed to having gluten or celiac disease, not gluten sensitivity or anything like that. Yeah. Gluten intolerance is still up for debate in terms of is that an actual thing? Some people have said you're either celiac or you're not. It actually comes back down to the, like if you avoid a particular food for a long time and then you bring it back in, it's like the microflora in your guts. Like, you know, that can change. So when you try and reintroduce it again, then you start to get symptomatic. Mark, did you ever have that with like, sorry, not to be the interviewer, but.

Oh, that's okay. Have you ever had, oh, this is how to stop overeating. So we made this video of like, basically. She's so tan. She's got that black tan. So I was like, she finished. This happens with her all the time. She'll finish her macros by like noon or something.

Oh no. And so this video, she's like at 9am finished her macros. She's like, babe, stop me from overeating the rest of the day. So my whole goal the rest of the day is to stop her from overeating. You're just everywhere. So yeah. So I'm just, there comes my hand. That's rude.

Who had to clean up that popcorn? Oh, this took us like four or five hours to film, I think. So I hear she was supposed to take the kids, one of the Easter bunnies, comes back with it and decides she's going to eat it. But this is, it's, it's funny that like we make fun of this right but actually like we talked about she has a hard time having an off switch so if that stuff is available to her she would just eat it not even think about it what are some things that you do to control some of that i mean obviously not having it helps um but when things are around uh what are some things you try to just stuff your face

with something else or what do you do um there's actually a lot of research going into this right now um and it's something that i would like to kind of focus my attention on. Chocolate bunny. Yeah. There's creepy old Lane sneaking out. Snapped it out of my hand. Creeper. At the moment I can firsthand say for anyone that is actually suffering or has

a hard time like with food control, look at your caloric intakes. And a lot of the time, some of these issues can just be resolved by increasing your calories. So reverse diet, best thing for this. If you have increased flexibility with your foods, then a lot of the problems can kind of dissipate just naturally because you don't have to think so much.

Maybe just because your body's getting some more of the nutrients that it needs maybe there's less cravings going on in her case and i don't speak too much for it she was at 1400 calories a day which there's no flexibility with that if you overeat a little bit you're done you know now she's if you're trying to maintain she's been able to reverse up to over 2000 calories now it hasn't gained basically any weight so now you just you were commenting the other day you just have so much inflexibility like you had something earlier in the day that you would consider a treat and you get to the evening and you still got food left over yeah so that would be like the main thing but there's also um like having layers of barriers to entry

so um like as simple as just not having things like in arm's reach so instead of just being in like when you open your pantry having stuff there put it on the top shelf or put it away or like in the back fridge or somewhere you guys have a lock yeah we have a lock box damn it great dream yeah and now the kids actually have started to like realize that the treats are in this big old green box so like they'll go up, Robert's like, just puts his hand on the green box and looks at Lane and I'm like, no, we're not opening that around me. But yeah, certainly layers to entry, even like packaging, like having something that isn't like just, you can keep mooring at it.

Like you have to open an individual wrapper. Like there's a lot of reasons. And maybe just not having the diet just too restrictive too. Like, you know, allow yourself some, some things that are sweet and some things that are salty and have some variety. So that way you're not eyeballing all these other things, right? Yeah, absolutely. I think having a flexible dieting approach is certainly able to combat a lot of those problems. I think the idea that you have to eat, you know, um from whole food sources all the time um it's

very restrictive and there's only so many you know um so much what's the word i'm looking for like denying yourself yeah you only have so much willpower so you know once you get to a certain threshold you're going to snap and then that's probably the first thing that you're going to go for so yeah when we try to rely on willpower, it's not enough. It's not enough. Lane, would you say that, you know, eating a good amount of vegetables to fill you up

would help with that a little bit? Oh, absolutely. We talked about this in the last PowerCast. Fillers. A couple of ways to easily stop overeating besides having your own personal lane

who smacks food out of your hand. Yeah, slaps it right out of your mouth. You know, that's actually, it's funny. Cause like I can say to her, I'm like, like if she's grabbing something like pretty high density, I'm like, can you, uh, can you fit that? Not as I don't want you to get fat, but as I know that sometimes she will just mindlessly grab food. Yeah.

And she's told me, she's like, just stop me. Just stop me. Slap it out of my mouth, babe. Um, but you know, decreasing the size of your plate and increasing the density of very bulky foods can help with that. Even colors. So we were presenting at USF two weekends ago now and Sienna. Sana. Sana.

I can incorrectly say her name. She's actually doing some investigations into these kind of strategies to reduce your intake at a main meal. And like even color of your plates, like where there's big contrast of the plate and the actual color of your food versus non-contrasting. Like those things all like make a difference. It looks more satisfying or something. Yeah. Yeah. If you have red food on a red plate, it's hard to see the contrast. They eat more. If you have red food on a red plate, it's hard to see the contrast.

They eat more. Red food on a white plate, you see the contrast. Right. Yeah. Yeah. The barriers of entry make a lot of sense because, you know, there's almost that side of your brain that always talks you out of, yeah, that's just too much for paying the ass. I don't feel like doing that right now. Like even just going to the gym.

Right. doing that right now. Like even just going to the gym, right? Like, eh, maybe you're thinking I went this morning or I'm going to be there tomorrow anyway. And I don't feel like getting my socks and

shoes and like doing all this stuff. Uh, same concept as if you had like a refrigerator in your bedroom, you know, like probably not, probably wouldn't be a great idea. Cause.

Like Jabba the Hutt. Yeah. Maybe you're just going to be eating, you know, while you're sitting there watching TV or whatever. Well, it also depends on what, you know know we talked about what causes obesity or what causes people to overeat and oh it's okay because it's his podcast um what caused people to overeat for

her like usually if she overeats it's not a it's not because she's hungry it's because she's stressed and that's like a stress response yeah so people So people would say like, just for her, if you take a certain trigger food and just put it outside, like it's 10, 20 feet away, but she won't go get it. Like just because... I'm not lazy. I wouldn't say though.

Yeah, but you usually... Yeah, but if it's a stress response, if you're not actually hungry or actually trying to fit it to your macros, it's just kind of one of those things. You just, it's like something that happens mindlessly when it's accessible. I do think that's the hard part is that if you are obese and you're trying to lose weight, um, you know, losing some weight is, is not, is not the hardest thing, but you do at some point have to talk yourself into eating less food. And you do have to have this conversation with

yourself. Like you're not hungry. Like you're not as hungry as you don't, you don't really need food. You ate enough today. Everything's all good. You should probably just go to bed. But there's that, those cravings, they hit people really hard. You know, they hit people really hard and you have a tendency to, you know, every time you're in front of a screen, you know,

a computer screen or in front of a TV, that's when you want to kind of chow down. You want to eat something. It's hard to go to a movie. You guys go to movies together, I'm sure. It's hard to go to a movie and really enjoy the movie without having the popcorn. She just sleeps. Actually, this is so true. Somebody always does.

You know, there's always somebody in a relationship that sleeps through movies and it's me in my relationship with my wife. If we were friends, we just shouldn't go to the movies. Yeah, we'd just be snoozing the whole time. Hey, let's go take a nap together at the movies. Yeah, people would be like, man, those people are snoring big time. Yeah, if she makes it through the entire movie, then I know she really liked it. She won't remember any of it because she has a really bad memory. Wow, that's frustrating.

So what did you say earlier in the car? Like, what movie did you watch that you thought Patrick Swayze was in? Oh, Aquaman. Oh, I love that. I love when people get like the wrong, I love that. Because she met the cast from Aquaman was training in the gym she used to be in in Australia. And she was like, yeah, there's this one actor. His name was Patrick, really well known, Patrick Swayze.

And I'm like. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's not. He's dead. Are you sure? Yeah. You're like, that's kind of impossible. Miracle of science. Yeah.

And then I called Amber Heard. So she's in that movie as well, Aquaman. And I was like, oh, Nicole Heard. Because I'd just seen Nicole Hidman earlier that day. And I'm like, yeah, that's it that's it. It wasn't Nicole. It's Nicole heard. No, wrong. The best is when you're, when you're like that, just to be all in on it and just be like, you know, I got it right. Just go with it. Yeah. Just go with the flow. What did we talk about? Another thing you, you brought it up. I guess they said that like,

they would like a prank show kind of like dress people. What was it? So people will, uh, on YouTube, you can look it up, I think, people will dress a normal person up as if they're a celebrity. Not make them look like anybody in particular. Just fancy glasses.

Just fancy clothes and glasses and they'll have people follow them around like they're their bodyguards or their honorage. That's fucking great. I gotta watch this.

We should try this. They'll go up to people and they'll be like, oh, hey, do you know this guy? And he's a nobody. But people will follow along. They'll be like, oh, hey, do you know this guy? And he's a nobody. But people will follow along. They'll be like, oh, yeah, I think I just saw his album or some on TV the other day.

I think he was great. I go to this coffee shop almost every day, Phil's Coffee in Davis. And Davis is not a big town. It's not a big city. And the one day. It's cool. The one day that I go to San Francisco to meet with the owner of Phil's, Michael Fassbender goes to the Davis one. Oh, no shit.

And I was just thinking to myself, I'm like, would I even recognize him at all? You know, like he's kind of tall. He's a very good looking guy and stuff like that. But I don't, unless he was wearing something like fancy. You might not know. Yeah, I might not put too, or if i didn't hear his voice because he got an accent right like i'm just thinking would i even recognize it we've had we've had that we're like we've seen someone like we know that they're we know them from somewhere so they must be like well known but we just don't know where it is but i actually was in ohio like at the la fitness there

we were training and somebody comes to me like has anybody ever told you you look a lot like Lane Norton? And I was like, I get that all the time. God. Yeah, I remember that. He was so embarrassed that guy as well.

He was like, oh my God, it's actually you. Like that guy's a dick. Yep, exactly. PhD. Pretty huge dick. So you compete

in fitness and figure or bodybuilding? Yes. Fitness and figure. No, usually a little bit of both. What's the difference between the two? Well, I think it's actually different in the U.S. and depending on what federation. But I competed for the IMBA, or the PMBA, which is the natural bodybuilding federation that's most prominent in Australia.

Is she all natty or half natty i'm all natty all natty i'd like to think i'm all natty unless someone's been spiking my monsters i guess that that's 1000 milligrams of caffeine a day does that hold me to natty that wouldn't pass you saw it adam that's a lot it is we we calculated this like there's we we did an average and i probably have about that every day you're having grams of caffeine every day our next our next uh funny video i think is going to be us just like sitting in the office who can win and camille will just film us and it's just every time one of us has a caffeinated drink just gonna ding and put up the the caffeine number in total for the day and we'll just see where it ends up at you sleep okay i do i like i was just joking around

earlier with you guys. I said one night, I remember going out to the fridge and I was like, oh, I really, I probably want to get a good night's sleep tonight. I'll just take a Unisom just to knock me off a little bit. And I actually cracked a monster out of the fridge to drink my, to take the tablet. And I just laughed at myself. I'm like, here I am having a sleeping tablet and I'm putting myself to bed with a monster. Something's wrong. But even without it, she could'm putting myself to bed with a monster. Something's wrong. But even without it, she could have a cup of coffee or a monster and go right to bed. Yeah.

Some people metabolize caffeine better than others, right? Yeah, there's actually quadrants. I actually saw this talk when I was in graduate school. A guy came and talked, I think, from the University of Toronto. People kind of fall into one of four categories and different levels of each. But basically, fast metabolizer, non-sensitive, fast metabolizer, sensitive, slow metabolizer, non-sensitive, slow metabolizer, sensitive. What's interesting is people who are fast metabolizers who are non-sensitive, caffeine has a protective effect on heart disease but for people who are slow metabolizers and sensitive it's like almost the same risk factor as cigarettes

yeah so so that's again like how different people can be what kind of uh what kind of implications would that then have for like these companies that have um high caffeine beverages which are available to the general pop like well i mean this I mean, this exists and, you know, it can be a problem for somebody. Like, how do we say, Hey, no. Well, we don't really know unless everybody's going to go get out and get tested for polymorphisms on their genes, you know, in cytochrome P450. We all need to come up with some kind of gene test for that. You hear that Mark?

You just got roped into this. You're part of a new company. You in bro? I'm in. But I mean, at the end of the day, would that really change people's habits? You know, some people know cigarettes are going to kill them and they drink it, they drink it. There's a lot of research showing that, uh, you

know, caffeine, alcohol, um, marijuana, that they have a huge negative impact on your sleep and it doesn't change anybody's, uh, you know, it doesn't change what people are doing. And even just, there's a lot of research showing that, you know, getting proper amounts of sleep is, is really beneficial, but still, you know, there's going to be things that people point out. We all know, you know, healthy eating is going to, you know,

help us, you know, go in a certain direction and some of these things and you're right. It's not going to always change. But it's hard to do everything. Yeah. Like if you want to be the healthiest person ever, you know, that's going to be a full-time job. Well, and even in your effort to be the healthiest person ever, you know, that's going to be a full-time job.

Well, and even in your effort to be the healthiest person ever, you might be creating other problems. Yeah. You're avoiding your family. Yeah. Yeah. There's some, well, there's some people that

have, uh, there's some people that have, um, uh, I won't, proven's not the right word. There's some people that have shown that recycling is completely like a waste of time. Interesting. You know, because the amount of effort and the amount of. There's some people that have shown that recycling is completely like a waste of time. Interesting. You know, because the amount of effort and the amount of. That it takes to recycle it actually produces more energy. Yeah, right, right, right.

We call those unintended consequences. Yeah, so when you're trying to be healthy, you might be like, okay, here's what I'm going to eat. And that's why it's so dangerous to kind of label something as this. Hey, this chicken breast is going to be the best thing if you have chicken breasts you're going to be super healthy and it's like well i don't know yeah that's a roll of the dice right yeah but i mean you can go too far with that too i mean there was an australian uh fitness competitor who actually died she had a inborn error of protein metabolism in the urea cycle she was I believe she was missing one of the enzymes for urea.

So basically, if she was on a low-protein diet, nothing would have really happened. But by eating a high-protein diet, and to be clear, everybody out there, this is a very rare genetic disorder. It was like less than 2% of the population. How much? It was less than 3% of the population, I think. I imagine it's less than that even.

But it allows ammonia to basically build up in your bloodstream. And ammonia is toxic. Urea is non-toxic. So your body usually takes the nitrogen from protein and converts it to urea because it's non-toxic. But when you're missing some of those urea cycle enzymes or one of them, you can start to build up ammonia in your bloodstream and end up killing this gal. But, of course, the Australian media took that and said, see, protein powder is going to kill you. Or bodybuilding is bad is kind of the overall message I think it kind of said, which is

frustrating. Yeah. I mean, that's like saying a person who was born with a BRCA gene, which is basically if you have the BRCA gene, you're going to 99% get breast cancer. You need to get your tits cut off. Yeah, you got to get your boobs cut off. But that's like saying, oh, well, they did this thing when they were alive and that killed them.

Well, no, they were going to get breast cancer regardless. So yeah, it's very difficult to label, like I said, with the caffeine example, how do you as a government make regulations when if you say, well, caffeine is bad for this subset of people, so we're going to tell people don't have it. But actually you're placing a certain subset at risk by doing that. Right. But then if you tell people, hey, it's okay to have, you're also placing another subset at risk. Yeah. That's why when I talk about stuff, I try to put everything in context because I think if you paint things with a broad brush, you're going to get yourself in trouble.

Yeah. I mean, we could say to get yourself in trouble. Yeah. I mean, we could say the same thing about food. You know, we're talking about vegetables. Maybe there's certain vegetables that are harmful to him and some vegetables, those same vegetables are really good for you. Right. I mean, if it's that way with caffeine, why wouldn't it be that way? Kind of across the board on a lot of things.

Right. Yeah. Too much veggies can be bad for you. Yeah. It can, uh, it can cause malabsorption of vitamins and minerals. It can cause really bad GI discomfort. Right. Um,

we both have had clients who thought that the more vegetables they ate, the healthier they were. And I had one person who was eating like literally pounds of broccoli a day. You couldn't figure out why they were backed up gassy and felt sluggish. And I'm like, cause they were on really high calories too right i'm like go eat some pizza and and cut down your uh to hit those calories and cut down your your fiber intake they lost like four pounds in three days because they were literally full of shit yeah we've had

this conversation many times lane i think i've worked with a couple of bodybuilders who had their calorie intakes would have been in excess of five or 6,000, probably, probably even higher to be honest. And, uh, yeah, one of them was having around 80 or 85 grams of fiber every day. And, uh,

I did a quick, I would bro style. 85 grams. Yeah. It's, it's high. Like they're eating, they just like colon blow.

Right. And then they're like describing their symptoms. Like they were getting nauseous, vomiting, um, like tremors. And when I did a food diary analysis and checked all of their micronutrients on this wonderful Australian program that I had on my computer, which I no longer have access to, but it actually pulled out. They were taking in toxic levels of some of the micronutrients and trace elements. And the side effects of that were the things that are experiencing like you need to eat some sugar man like stop trying to do

everything from clean you know how do you know how much is too much because me included but there's people listening right now they're probably like oh yeah that's me i eat way too much veggie so i need to calm down you know like because they're they probably just don't like veggies me included yeah but like how does somebody know like okay i had whatever x amount and i do feel kind of my stomach's hurting a little bit is that just like the marker just how they feel uh well you can certainly go and have bloods done like you can get a blood analysis to tell you whether you're frank deficient but you can also find on the other end of the spectrum, okay, you're over the recommended intakes. But yeah, it's really difficult to determine this because we have these set micronutrient requirements.

You have like an EA and then an AI. So when they cannot actually determine whether something is safe or not, they just say, well, stuff it. We'll just have an average intake. And that's kind of where you should sit because you can't really go out for ethical reasons and say, let's test what the toxic limit is for this particular micronutrient. So it's hard, but I think when you're starting to get up to those higher intakes, especially for bodybuilders and competitors with crazy calorie intakes, yeah, I think you probably just need to be realistic about it and err on the side of caution. You know, studies are like, I mean, I don't know, like you can't always rely on every, every study that there is. There's some pretty big studies

that have been done. You know, when it, when it comes to, you know, how things are protective for the heart. I'm not recalling the name of it right now at the moment, but there's been a study that's been done. It's was a 14 year study. It was on vegetables, meat, fruit. And it showed that in this study, I gotta always kind of say that, right? That fruit had some protective properties of the heart. Now I don't even know how they were measuring that. And that's where somebody like you can come in and kind of look at the data. It showed that vegetables were like neutral. Like they didn't, weren't really positive. They weren't necessarily negative and had everybody all up in arms. And it showed that vegetables were like neutral. Like they didn't, weren't really positive. They weren't necessarily negative and had everybody all up in arms. And it showed that, uh, saturated fat, um,

was, uh, was actually protective of the heart and made people start to kind of think about how, uh, you know, saturated fat can be, um, you know, beneficial to us where before we were kind of putting our arms up being like, you got to stay away from saturated fat. So a lot of the things that we, we think, you know, they're constantly changing. There's new research kind of pointing in different directions, but it gets to be complicated because this study says this over here, and then there's this one over here, and we have a tendency to like bounce, right? Like, oh shit.

You know, like what I got from that study, because I don't love vegetables. I'm like, I don't need to eat vegetables. You know, and I jump on that train, right? But for myself, for my own health, I try to just go back to everything kind of tends to swing to the middle. You know, we can go as far crazy over here and we can have a war on carbs.

We can say we're going to go all keto and go all in and go crazy, you know, but does it make some sense for me to have some fruit? Does it make some sense for me to have some fruit? Does it make some sense for me to have some vegetables? Does it make some sense for me to not eat three pounds of steak every day? You know, does it make, you know, just some of these things you start to, uh, you start to think about, right. And it, it just, if you can kind of trust your intuition and trust, uh, some of the knowledge that you've taken over the years and start to put it towards what you feel is

effective for you, I think you'll be on the right track. Well, I think that, uh, you know, you can, it's like you're saying you could be, you could do too much of anything. You can drink too much water. You die. Uh, you can try to be too healthy with your diet, eat nothing but lean meats and vegetables, and you can get rabbit starvation. Um, you can, uh, you know, exercise too much. Uh, you know, there's all, everything has to be in moderation, like you're saying. And the other thing is, I think, you know, people will take these studies, um, and obviously try to confirm their own biases by what they say. Yeah.

That's, and they don't want to, they don't want to trust somebody like a coach or, or somebody like that to be able to analyze the studies because they have the background and being able to, you know, disseminate whether their quality, what, what, what kind of research methods that they had, um, you know, like you were saying, vegetables might not be protective of the heart. And some people might see that and be like, oh, then that means they're not, they're not good for health at all because they're not protective of the heart. That means, you know, then that means they're not protective for cancer or the brain or anything like that. Um, and I, so I think, uh, it's like you're saying some people might enjoy a little bit more carbs or a little bit

less carbs. And as a coach, especially you have to be adaptable and you have to individualize everything for that client. I think one of the other things we're probably missing on and people don't want to admit this kind of stuff is that there may be some things that are protective for cancer that are bad for heart disease. Absolutely. Yeah. And you may be just getting in this area where if you go one way, you know, you're, you're picking, you're, you're swinging one way versus the other. Right.

Cause it's like, I mean, it's like anything. I just want to do Holly's diet. I just, anytime I see something, I just want to grab it and eat it. I think she's got the best method at the table there. Yeah. But, you know, it's like training, right? Like if you, you can't be the best at everything. If you want to be the best powerlifter in the world, guess what?

You're not running a marathon, right? If you want to be the best marathon runner in the world, guess what? You're not doing a whole lot of sprinting. I think Ray Williams could run a marathon. Well, look at this. I mean, I would never doubt that guy with it. He would just eat, uh, he would just eat everybody that's going to do the race and then walk it. You know, what's funny is actually, um, the most viral video I've ever done on my Facebook was I held my, when Ray first hit the first thousand pound squat in USAPL history. What an animal.

An animal. Uh, I had, I was just recording my laptop cause I was watching from home, recording my laptop and like commenting, like, come on Ray, like fuck this shit up. You know, like that got reached like 3 million people on Facebook. That's crazy. But what triggers that, that algorithm, you know, like that got reached like 3 million people on Facebook. That's crazy. But what triggers that, that algorithm, you know, Facebook. Anyway, somebody was like hating on Ray. Like this guy isn't an athlete.

I bet he couldn't even do a pull-up and he was just being, everybody's going in and crushing him. And we're like, dude, here's a video of him doing like 10 pull-ups with 80 pounds of chains. Yeah. And the guy was still like, no, no, he's not an athlete. I'm like, he doesn't look like it. Well, but he is an athlete. He'm like, he doesn't look like it. Well, but he is an athlete.

He played college football. Like Ray is an athlete. If you've ever been around, yeah, he's got some body fat on, but that motherfucker is big. Yeah. Like when he turns around and does his, after he hits a big squat, he is like literally as wide as the squat rack. Wow.

He is an animal. He has the most, uh, him and, and Donnie Thompson, uh, most muscle mass I've ever seen on a human being period. Huge. Um, I remember Ray, uh, took a shirt off when he was at our gym. I made some like custom shirts for him and stuff. And, uh, just looking at his back, I was just like, holy, I never seen anything like that before. He's going to squat 500 kilos. Raw. He's going to do it. Is that 1100 pounds? 1100 pounds. 1102 or something.

1102. Well, he was close at the, uh. He did 1080. Yeah. 1080 in Ohio. That's incredible. People don't, that's, and people, oh, he can't possibly be natty and this and that.

I'm like, you ever seen Ray when he was younger? He's always been big, dude. Always. Some people are just freaks, man. People get this like idea of what an athlete is in their head, and they don't want to like, they just have those parameters set. They're very narrow-minded. Everybody thinks that, oh, LeBron James is the prototypical athlete,

and if you can't do it, or anybody else, a CrossFit Games competitor or whatever, and you see somebody who's just incredibly strong like that and maybe has a little bit more body fat, they think, yeah, that's not enough. You have a world record in the squat. Do you feel that you have a. Huh?

Former. Oh, someone else took it? Yeah. That's son of a. Dave Ricks. Stupid Superman. Oh, and he was older than you too. Isn't he like 70 years old?

That's right. He's 58. It means I got 23 years to catch him. There you go. He went out there with a cane and like just totally fucked it up. Dude, he's just a beast. Like, what are you going to do?

Like Dave Ricks is a legend in powerlifting, you know? But do you feel that you have any sort of, uh, genetic talent towards that? I mean, obviously you've worked very hard for it. It's been a long time.

Of course. I mean, I've got to have something, you know, like I'm not, I think I'm probably not as gifted as some people. Like my, I'm definitely,

I mean, Dr. McGill commented, he's like, you are definitely not how I would drop a great squatter, but he's like, man, you got the most out of your mechanics. That was the first thing he said to me. And you know, people out there would say, well, lane squats too bent over or this and that he's, and he said, he's like, you would not, based on the way your acetabulum is shaped and your femur sits in your hip socket,

you can't go wider. You wouldn't get any more power out of going wider. You squat exactly, you know, there were some little things we could tweak and like prehab, rehab, make my core more fatigue resistant, stronger. But he's like, you got, the way you squat, that's how you got the most out of your frame. Now, you know, like, so my frame probably isn't built to power lift. Most guys who are great squatters are built like a Bryce Lewis. Right.

You know what I mean? Completely upright, short little piston style squat. Chubby little legs. Yeah. Chubby little legs. But, you know, I have other advantages like, um, I, you know, up until now I was pretty injury resistant or I was very resilient when I would have an injury. Paul used to call me Wolverine.

Well, maybe you also, uh, adapted to the training really well to where you're able to do a lot of work, right? And you were able to get a lot from that work. I mean, you saw me in here when I was in 2015, like I did a bone crushing, soul sucking amount of work. Like I'm, I'm, I don't want to brag too much, but I'm pretty sure.

No, but I've never in my life had been able to do anything remotely close to that. Like I can do a couple sets, you know, but I can't, you know, sit there for three hours squatting. Yeah. Most people, I bury people in the gym. Yeah.

You know, I was just saying, if my, if my body matched my will, I'd be multiple time world champion, but you got to work with what you're given. Now, like I've always had, like, for example, one of the advantages I have is I've always had high testosterone. Even when I was a teenager, I was like, even when I was a teenager, I would test i was a teenager i would test this man right now on the spot i've always run high cholesterol i've always had high uh testosterone i don't know if there's a relationship there there is um you produce steroids from testosterone or from cholesterol yeah but it's not like a you know more cholesterol equals more it's not a one-to-one i

got you right um but it certainly seems to show that maybe there's an increased sterile production from everyone. Everyone's just loading up on cholesterol right now. They just heard that. It doesn't work that way, guys. We've been jumping

all over the place. People have been changing their diet like five years. Yeah, they're like watching and they're like, oh no, Lane's got a, runs a thousand.

Look, just go back to Holly's diet and you'll be fine. Eat whatever you want. It's interesting. Like Lane, you talk about the soul crushing workouts that you did. And I feel like a lot of people who get into working out, they feel like that's what they, that's what you have to do in order to get better. That's a great point.

You know, they have to, if you're not crushing yourself every day, that means you're not working hard enough. You're not going to get good. And you mentioned many times that, you know, the volume I put you on going into your last Raw Nationals was so much, it was so much less than what you were used to. However, you hit a PR on deadlift, right? Yeah. And that's with injuries and all kinds of stuff. I mean, you know, volume is a very important thing, but I've kind of come back the middle on it.

Like we did way less deadlifting than I had done previously, you know, and I ended up setting a deadlift PR, you know, how does that work? It's just hard to know all these things too, because like maybe, well, maybe some of all the previous work you did led you to this being more effective now. Right. I certainly think that Lane's bodybuilding, like how many years did you bodybuild before you started really powerlifting? 10, 15. So you did 10 to 15 years of structural work where you laid the foundation to build that strength. Right. And then you got to a point where maybe your structure and your strength didn't match up as well.

And you had a lot of fatigue and you had a lot of stress in your life. And some injuries started to pile up. You have really high resiliency. That's not really your issue. The injuries piled up because he doesn't know how to squat properly. It's because of that good morning. You know, I think, uh, yeah, I'm unaware of any, uh, my response is always, I'm unaware of any good morning where the hips go below the knee joints. I actually, uh, would say that, uh, people make a mistake when they're watching your squat and they'll, you know, they, you're leaning forward, but you're not rounding.

Right. Right. If, if you were rounding, then you would be putting yourself at great risk, which sometimes happens with heavier weights. It's just, it's bound to happen, but, but it's the, it's the rounding of the lower back. That's a real problem. And even on your, your world record squat, I don't think your back even rounded.

You were just leaning forward, which is way different. What I tell people is I'm like, well, do you think a conventional deadlift is inherently dangerous? Because by the, by my squat, I'm basically in a conventional deadlift position. Yeah. But my back is straight. Right. And one thing like of all the form critiques I've had from really respected powerlifting

coaches, nobody's ever said, just squat more upright. Right. Because they'll take one look at me and go. Yeah, you're feeling better. You can't squat more upright. Well, Ed Cohn actually squatted in a very similar, similar way. It's just that he's not., just squat more upright. Because they'll take one look at me and go. Yeah, you're feeling better. You can't squat more upright. Well, Ed Cohn actually squatted in a very similar way. It's just that he's not.

Steve Goggins. He's just not as tall as you. So you didn't. Right. People didn't notice how far forward he was going. Well, I mean, you can only, you're, you know, it's biomechanics.

The bar has to stay over your midfoot. Otherwise you fall forward or fall backwards. And for me to get to parallel, I have such a long femur. I have to clear that femur out of the way to get to parallel. Well, if I am going to stay more upright, I'm not going to get parallel. Yeah. There's a lot of females that are that way too.

Yeah. I've found that exact thing. Like I'm very forward leaning in my squat. Yeah. Longer legs and a short torso. My femurs are almost the same length as Lane and I'm half the size of you. Who has sexier legs? Her for sure.

Yeah? Her for sure. What about glutes? I actually reckon Lane has probably got the best glutes out of the two of us. He has a nice ass? He's got a booty, yeah.

You're making him blush over there. Look at that. That usually doesn't happen. Usually it's the other way around. I think if we both walk through a crowd, I think I know... I've noticed this too. happen usually it's the other way around right i think if we uh both walk through a crowd i think i know women i've noticed this too like so many women come up to her and they're like we were on

the beach women are inspired by girls with muscle oh they're like a lot of times they're like they're like like we were just walking out in our neighborhood the other day and a car stopped and they were like i just want i've got to tell you are so beautiful there's another woman and holly's just like i was like oh my god i'm so embarrassed that doesn't happen very much in australia i think we have a different uh approach to you know it's uh as a guy you can't really say anything though it's kind of weird because like uh i saw a woman at phil's coffee the other, totally jacked. I feel like I know everybody in town because it's a small town. And I just went up to her and I said, you got some awesome arms.

Like, I don't know, you've been bodybuilding, powerlifting. I said, you look jacked. And I mean, she was super nice. And I just left it at that. And I don't know if I made her feel weird and creeped out or if I made her feel good. No, I think that would solidifyify, like you, you train hard. I respect somebody that says that. It's kind of rare.

You know, it's rare to see anybody jacked first of all, but to see a woman who's jacked, you're like, holy shit. What I've discovered from being around her is I've learned this chicks don't check out guys. They check out other chicks. So all you dudes like getting yourself all done up and everything, thinking girls are going to. No, listen. Just hire a hot girl to stand next to if you want attention from women.

Because at least they'll come around you then. Here's how you get chicks. You just build up your bench press. Just continue working that bench press. When your bench is, you know, over a certain amount of weight, the girls will just start come flocking to you. Just flock to you. That's the way it works, right? Yeah.

You ever see that? You ever see that meme? When you were fat, you must have just had so many bitches. Oh, just, yeah, just coming out of the woodwork. You ever see that meme that shows like reality

versus what the guy thinks? Yes, yes. And it's got the guy like bench pressing and it shows like a bunch of chicks around him. He's all jacked. And it's like,

here's reality and it's a bunch of dudes like yelling at him while he's on the bench. Yeah, you do all this work to try to get more attention from the ladies. And all you get is guys asking you,

how did you get that way? Yes, exactly. How'd you get your glutes like that? We're walking down the beach in Thailand. We went to Thailand last month and she had so many women come. So, Oh my God,

you have such an incredible body, this and that. So by the end, I'm like, cause you know, I'm like in all right shape. So they come with like, your body is amazing. I'm like, thank you. know, I'm in all right shape. So they come up like, your body is amazing.

I'm like, thank you. Yeah, Lane would just totally take over the comment. It's about time. And then we were walking down and some might toot their horn. And Lane decided by the end of it, he'd just strike this muscular pose. That sounds like Lane. I can kind of picture someone's complimenting her and you start kind of flexing. Yeah, yeah.

What about me? You're going through. You've got to make it about him, you know. Yeah. What do you think about me? When did you move to the States? Well, May last year I came over. I had to go back for a little while to organize my visa.

So I went back for just over a month, I think it was. And yeah, I officially kind of got back over here in October, I'm going to say. September. And you lived in Australia your whole life? I have. Yeah. What's the transition been like? Oh, awful.

I must say. Fat Americans. You know what? The biggest change, I think, is just the age of the country. I feel like I've dated maybe 10 years when I moved to Florida. It's very, I feel like, very old-fashioned. There's a lot of old dagginess going on. I think Australia is so progressive and new. The infrastructure, the buildings, it's so different. I used to love traveling.

I still do love traveling, but I do have a lot of, I don't know. Are you saying you feel that there's old tradition in Australia or more old tradition here? Here, old tradition. Gotcha. I feel like it's just behind. Yeah. Does that have to do with where you guys live perhaps? Oh, pardon of it.

Land O'Lakes ain't exactly a bustling metropolis. I think, like, it's not a massive city. Right down there by John Cena. Yeah.

Yeah. It's very cruisy there. Actually, like, very close now that I think of it. Yeah. Yeah. I'm used to cities.

Well, I grew up, actually, in a very small place of the world, in Tasmania. You guys need to check out his gym. It's awesome. What does he know?

I've been there before. Is he in Ocala? I used to coach Matt. Oh, okay, cool. Does he have an Ocala? No, he's in Newport Ritchie, I think, right? Oh, now he's in New... Okay. I believe gym. It's awesome. I've been there before. Is he in Ocala? I used to coach Matt. Oh, okay, cool. Is he up in Ocala? No, he's in Newport Ritchie, I think, right? Oh, now he's in Newport. Okay.

I believe so. Who's that? John Cena. John Cena. Oh, yeah, I don't know where he moved. Actually, I'm pretty sure we live across the lake from him right now. Wow. Oh, yeah, he was telling me about this.

He has one of the massive houses there. Interesting. But yeah, it's just a, I think more so what she's referring to is like, just like everything over there, like if you go to the cities, everything's very modern. And clean. They don't have old buildings and whatnot. just it's just a i think more so what she's referring to is like just like everything over there like if you go to the cities everything's very modern and they don't have old buildings and whatnot and whereas over you know we have more we have buildings that are 50 60 years old homes are older you know everything over there is very modern like we were we were founded really in 1901 like that's kind of when shit started to happen in Australia. So it's just new.

And like all of the, you know, communities have congregated into small areas and lots of high rises. Like the cities are very nice and new. So that's, that's,

yeah. It's kind of funny because I feel like Americans will go to Europe so we can see old stuff, right? We go, we go over there,

we're like, oh, we're so new because Europe is so old. Yeah. Or even being here in California, you go to the East Coast.

Yeah, exactly. It's like a couple hundred years older yeah yeah you go to philadelphia or something you can see stuff from 250 years ago right right i love big personalities here though like everybody just seems to be very like outspoken and like everybody's like mark everyone's very reserved in australia they kind of it's hard to get austral is, uh, it seems like, um, well, at least in terms of powerlifting, but maybe fitness as well. Is it, is it growing there? Oh, absolutely. Yes, definitely. Yeah. Just in the last five years, I suppose, well, my interests have kind of swayed more towards it in the last five years, but you can see the progression. Um, and, uh, it's pretty cool.

I wonder kind of like what, like what's responsible for some of that. Maybe just, um, I think CrossFit definitely had a huge influence, especially, especially on females, you know, exercising more, but I would say the social media is probably huge. I've heard someone the other day, they made a comment. They're like, there's not a one, one Instagram chick that I follow. That's not lifting. You know, that's all. It's a part of the big, you know what?

I think women getting the lifting, that's the difference. And that's what it was for powerlifting too. Yeah. Like people wonder what the explosion of powerlifting was. It was women getting interested in it. Because now you go to meets and there's tons of women. Back when you were doing it and I started, there might have been one chick at a meet. No.

And she looked like a dude. Yeah. And guys, of course, are going to love that. Yeah. Yeah. So exactly. Like there's more females coming in. The guys, the women and women are more social.

They like to share with other people and like men are kind of keep it closer to the chest, I guess. So if they're power lifting, they're not necessarily posting pictures all over the place and videos of it back then. Now they do. But I think when women started making it more mainstream, I guess. Actually, that's a good point too, because a lot of guys, when I was posting stuff a long time ago, they were like, ah, idiot, idiot, what are you, why are you posting all this shit all the time? Attention seeker. Yeah, yeah. What are you, a girl?

Yeah, yeah. And for women, it's a little bit more commonplace, right? They're just sharing, sharing their experience. They're not viewed as maybe like, in that sense, they're not viewed as like peacocking unless they're showing their butts. But you know what I mean? Yeah. It's guys just want to look at it more. Yeah.

Well, I think part of it too is like a powerlifting, like any sport, when it starts in the underground, like it's like that hipster mentality, right? Like you only like it when nobody else likes it. Sure.

Like, you know, oh, well I liked it when it was cool or when it was, or before it got cool. Do you think Lane, that that's kind of some of the reason why you get so much hate sometimes is because you were a power lifter

and you kind of tried to make it more mainstream? You shared your life. I think I get a lot of hate just because I'm open and I'm passionate and I'll tell you exactly how I feel about stuff. And sometimes I don't mince very many words. And I think if you're going to, you know, my mom gave me advice one time and like, I probably, I'm not going to sit here and say people, when they say negative things, it doesn't bother me.

Of course it bothers me here and there. Like, I'm not, I'm not going to lie to you about that. But you know, mom gave me some great advice one time and mom's like, honey, some people are going to hate you just for existing, just for breathing and being who you are. So you might as well just do what you love and, and not try not to worry about it as much as you can. Cause the only way I think Aristotle said this, you know, the only way to avoid criticism is to say, say nothing, do nothing, be nothing. Right. That sounds like a pretty miserable.

Yeah. I mean, yeah. If you want to be reserved and kind of be vapor and go about your day and not make a change, but a great line is actually from a video game, ironically. But it said, if you want to make enemies, try to try to change something. Right. That's and that's if you're going to be outspoken and you're going to do stuff and you're going to have an opinion, you're going to piss people off. That's not a bad thing. When and how did you get into power?

Well, funny enough, when I was like 18 years old, I was obese. I was like over 300 pounds. I lost a lot of weight. Yeah. Uh, I lost. Or in carbs? No, you know what? I didn't know anything back then.

So all I ate was fast food when I was in pretty much growing up. And, um, you know, as soon as I was able to go into high school and stuff, uh, all I ate was fast food. And so basically I just switched to like more whole foods, some through some fruit and vegetables. And I remember eating a lot of granola bars because for some reason I thought that was like the healthiest thing to eat. And I lost a lot of weight. You know, it's probably better than what you're eating. It was better than, yeah. I mean, of course it was, it was better than what I was eating and I lost weight. Of course I started exercising. You made me so hungry.

That smelly at heart. You know, I got into lifting a little bit and, uh, somewhere along the way, you know, I was like searching for a better way to diet. Cause I was tired of, uh, just plain old meal plans that you get out of flex magazine. And, uh, I stumbled across like bodybuilding.com and flexible dieting and lane stuff. And I was, at first I was like, this isn't possible. Uh, there's no way you can eat this stuff and, and still, you know,

look okay. And, and perform like pop tart diet. Yeah. I never got that far. Cause I don't really enjoy pop tarts. Me neither. Ironically.

They're not that great. Yeah. No, I don't even know. I mean, they're okay. I'll eat one. You've had a Tim Tam?

My God. So anyways, uh, you know, through following lane more and more, of course he started powerlifting. And so I started trying my hand at trying to do some powerlifting and did a meet. And then I was like, through this whole process, I got really interested in the deeper science of exercise science and exercise physiology.

And I wanted to study that and try to make a career out of that. And so I'm not the best power lifter in the world by any means. Uh, but I, I'd like to think I can understand it on a deeper level. Um, and that's why, what I try to bring to them. So you went to school for exercise science? Yeah. Yeah. I got, I've got a degree in exercise, a master's degree in exercise science. And I want to get a PhD. Um, just trying to find out where I can study what I want to study, which is more on the sports science side of things. So like we were saying earlier that I take a lot of data metrics. And so I think one thing I noticed with powerlifting is

that it's, I feel like it's a little bit simplistic in the programming sometimes in that people don't, people only want to give exercise and they don't want to think about the lifestyle and like everything that goes on behind the scenes. I think that that's really important, uh, to the overall success of somebody. You know, if you're, if you're a coach and you're not really like checking in on what your client is doing in their own life and like, how are they being fulfilled by their job or, you know, do they have a family? Maybe they left out the fact that they, you know, had somebody in their own life and like, how are they being fulfilled by their job? Or, you know, do they have a family? Maybe they left out the fact that they, you know, had somebody in their family die recently,

or they have a desire to lose 15 pounds. And it's like, well, shit, we didn't, we didn't account for that. We need to know some information here. You know, and so, um, you know, I think that's really important, uh, to have those conversations with, with your, with the people that you coach. And, um, it's not just about exercise and it's not just about macros, I don't think. I think you have to go deeper than that sometimes. Yeah, that's what we were talking about with obesity too.

It's like just a multi-layered thing that can turn into being complex. And it's not, hey, just don't eat over 200 grams of carbs and don't eat over 100 grams of fat. It doesn't turn into just that. And the same thing is true with it. I feel like, I feel like prescribing the, like writing the program and calculating macros is the easiest part of my job. It's the other stuff that goes on behind the scenes that I'm,

you know, that's what I'm really interested in. Yeah. I mean, even in so far as, you know, he was tracking my HRV, heart rate variability,

sleep. Joel Jamison talks a lot, a lot about that yeah i love joel yeah you listen to a lot of his stuff because he tracks a lot of stuff so he had this is when i was a very stressful time in my life uh as we had discussed in the previous podcast and um he would have metrics of like overall kind of life stress and and how you were doing mentally and i was consistently scoring in the red. I remember the first day I had like a yellow, the first day I had like a yellow. You're off the charts. Yeah. It was bad.

Well, that's even another point to bring up. Cause actually ever since then I've refined what I do with that metric in that, you know, some people are just always going to score red if you, if you have one scale for everybody. Cause you know, you're a, you're a much busier guy than somebody else might be and so and you're going to have maybe a little bit more stress in your life than a normal person so now you're kind of rating it like he's just kind of associating a number to it or something yeah so i have like a likert scale of one to five of various uh different happy face sad. Yeah. And so based on the score, I actually, now I compare your acute score

to your chronic score. So that way I'm comparing everybody to themselves. Kind of like your HRV compares your acute score. There's not one score that's ideal. It's looking at what your average is and then comparing it. And so that way, you know, if there's something red,

then that really means that you're not recovering or you're more stressed out compared to yourself, not just compared to a, you know, a blanket average. Well, one of the other things I learned, you asked me what I learned in the last two years. One of the other things I learned is everything affects everything. Yep. Right? Like you can't just say, well, you know, okay, well, let's say you want to be the best powerlifter in the world. You want to set a world record, but the rest of your life's in disarray. It's going to affect the way you train. It's going to affect the way you eat. just basically go to shambles in pursuit of this PR or in pursuit of this plastic trophy or whatever the case may be. And so, you know, what is life if all you have is this PR, but the rest of your life is awful and you, you know, the only time you're actually happy is when you're in the gym.

That's, you know, that's the kind of stuff you need to work on. Yeah, it makes it makes a big difference. Holly, what is something that's the kind of stuff you need to work on. Yeah. It makes, it makes a big difference. Uh, Holly, what, what is, uh, something that you really like about power lifting? I know that some women find it to be, or even just lifting weights in general, some women kind of find it to be empowering in some ways. Have you found that? Or is there anything else in particular that you like about lifting? I really love that you have like immediate gratification from your session sometimes well okay yeah you're gonna have immediate feedback yes that more to the point um yeah

i guess with bodybuilding um immediate frustration yeah like just having a tantrum walking out um no i think that it is for somebody that has been um so competitive as competitive from a young age in sport and having team sports, I'm just a generally competitive person. I love bodybuilding, but the fact that you have to go and train for extended periods of time, 12 weeks, 16 weeks, to get ready for this show. There's not really any goals other than, hey, look at my body. And then you're being subjectively judged at the end by somebody to tell you how you look. It's not necessarily a quote unquote real thing, right? No, there's no measurable thing during the process other than your body composition coming down. So for me, I really found it enjoyable seeing that progress.

I really found it enjoyable seeing that progress. Like, okay, today I'm going in for my squats, and I'm going to be working on my PR for three rep max. And you hit that, and it's like, wow, this is so good. Like, wow. And then the next time you're really motivated. I just love that it just gives you a little bit more because it is a competitive sport. What has the feedback been like with you doing some powerlifting?

I'm sure you post some stuff on your Instagram. Um, are you getting a lot of comments from other women that are like, Oh man, I want to try that. Yeah. I think, um, the general conception and I still don't understand how this still exists, but like so many women just felt like, Oh, but if I do that kind of training, Oh, I'm, I must be going to get really big and bulky. I'm like, do I look big and bulky? It may be more to some people, but, you know, no. Like, you can have the same outcome from doing bodybuilding and from powerlifting, particularly if you're training to failure, of course, for powerlifting. That's amazing.

That's still a thing amongst women. Yeah, it's incredible. So many women. Dog must sticks around. Have we advanced past that? Yeah. It's incredible, isn't it? So many women. Dog moustaches around.

Have we advanced past that? Yeah. One of my favorite quotes is the myth that women shouldn't lift weights is perpetuated by women who fear work and men who fear women. Yeah. It's funny. If you ask a lot of men, I mean, most would say that they think a little bit of muscle is sexy, right? I mean, a little bit. Sometimes.

We get a little bit skewed in this industry, like we're, we're around it. So. Oh, I know plenty of guys that like skinny women. Yeah. But some dudes don't like it. Well. I think a lot of that, it comes down to.

Confidence in yourself. Confidence. Yeah. Like if you're, if you're not confident in your own physique and now you got this woman who has a banging bod, like some men don't want to go. You would, I can imagine as a male, you'd feel

incredibly in superior. Like. I've known dudes who would be like, I don't want to go i can imagine as a male you'd feel incredibly in superior like i've known dudes who would be like i don't want to date a 10 i want to date nate because at least and i feel like you know i don't feel so scared you know like these guys you know that have a choice between an 8 and a 10 well these are the ones that complain about the ones that are you know right right yeah i i know you know, I think it probably depends too. Like it depends on, you know, what the person looks like and how they carry themselves and stuff.

Because I've sometimes heard, have heard women say, oh man, that's like, that's way too much. The guy's way too big or he's got way too many veins or he's too lean. I think one thing we need to keep in mind

is like, who cares what you think about it? Right, right. What it should be about is how it makes that person feel. Yeah, exactly. Like I hate, I hate it. I abhor it when somebody goes on somebody else's social media and says, well, don't you think you're getting too big?

Or don't you think you're this? Or don't you think you're that? You know what? If it makes them happy, how about you just shut the fuck up and let them do what they like to do and what makes them happy? Like I don't understand who would want to look like, um, like females that want to look like a female bodybuilder, but I'm not in a position to judge them. Like if that makes them happy, then who am I to judge? Right. And it's not your place to go

in and say what makes them happy. It's like when you're going through your injuries, I think you get a lot of people on your Instagram are like, well, why are you doing that to yourself? Why would you put yourself through that? Why are you squatting? You're not going to, you're going to be in a wheelchair. You're not going to be able to pick up your kids or something like that. And it's like, well, this brings him happiness to be in the gym. It's not your, it's not your, it's not your place to clip other people's wings. You know what I mean? And one of the things, listen, if I had gone to, the other thing is too, if I'd gone to Dr. McGill and he said, listen, you're, you're really, you're on the edge of no return in terms of your body,

you need to think about this, then I probably would have had a very... What he said to me was, you have a bulging disc. It's going to resolve itself. And I have not had anybody in this position who didn't do exactly what we asked them, who did not get back to full strength. So hearing that, he basically said,

you have an acute injury. If you take care of it, if you take the time off, you do the rehab, you're going to get back to full strength. So why would I quit doing something I love? I think some people are really scared of pain and they're really scared of injuries. And that freezes them. That perspective is great because it gives you insight into other people. When you see someone who's obese, wolfing down a cheeseburger, right?

And you can say, well, maybe that's just, maybe they just like doing that. You see somebody drinking and they get drunk all the time. I mean, it's just, you know, I, I've, I've said this before. I've got no problem with somebody who's obese. I've got no problem with it. If, if they're a happy person, as long as they don't say the following phrase, oh, I wish I could lose weight. And then I see the behavior and the behavior doesn't line up with it. Then it's kind of like, all right, but if you're, if you're obese and you're happy and you have no problems with that, who am I to judge what makes you happy? You know, like I think that that's, now you could argue that the burden on the healthcare system and we all have to pay for

it and that sort of stuff. And I get that, but you know, for the most part, like what I see on Instagram that drives me nuts is somebody, Oh, somebody comments on her page one time. They're like, well, you'd be more attractive if you didn't do this. And I wanted to be like, well, fortunately she ain't doing it for you, bro. And I don't think she really cares what you think about her physique. What you got? I just wanted to ask, are you still implementing Stuart McGill's big three? Yeah. Yeah. So I do, uh, in fact,

Holly and I both do that. The biggest things are we do multiple short walks every day. That's a big thing from McGill. Uh, so we do 10, 20 minute walks two, three times a day. And then we do,

uh, we do bird dogs, uh, McGill curl ups and side planks, uh, two to three times a day. Yeah. And,

uh, yeah, I mean, that's, you know, he told me, he's like, we've just got to, he's like, you have in plate fractures, which is normal in people who lift weights

and you have a bulging disc. He said, overall, your back is actually in great health. You don't have scoliosis going on. Your shape of your back is great. You know, he's like, you're going to recover. And if you do these things, I ask, you're going to be in a really good position to go back and really get strong again. He said, but you got to remember with powerlifting, you're not just breaking down muscle,

you're breaking down bone, you know, and you've got to rebuild that bone tissue as well. And, uh, you know, if you're doing really high frequency squatting, you don't have time for that bone to recover. So, um, yeah, so I haven't squatted, uh, for six months until this past week, where I did 95 pounds. And then some people were saying, some people were saying, well, that's not going to do anything. You know, you're not going to get an adaptation to get stronger from that. You know, Andres and Brian Carroll kind of went in and said, well, it's not about the strength.

It's about getting him back and relearning how to do the movement in a way that's not going to reignite that pain. Well, and also how do they know? I mean, you really, you really don't, we really don't know a lot. The hamstrings were actually tight the next day. Yeah. Like after squatting 95 pounds. Well, if you look at, um, you know, you look at CrossFitters, there's, uh, like Matt Frazier,

you know, he's won the last two CrossFit games, probably dominate again. He's just been crushing everybody so far this year as well. Or, uh, Rich Froning, who's won four in a row. These guys are very, very strong. And the training that they did, when a strength coach would look at the training that they did, they'd be like, what the fuck are you doing? Like, these are terrible workouts.

You're not going to get stronger this way. Meanwhile, these guys are getting stronger time and time again. They're deadlifting close to 600 pounds or they're squatting well over 400 pounds. Now, they don't have the strength of a power because it's not a singular focus. Strength and endurance. But sometimes, I mean, there was a girl two years ago, they ran like a 5K or something like that. And then she did a deadlift ladder where you deadlift progressively heavier on each deadlift.

And I don't remember the breakdown of the lifts, but on her like her 10th deadlift. She pulled 400 pounds Wow, just ran a fucking 5k. I mean these people are tremendously strong and I think that we don't even really know We don't I mean we know some stuff about what gets you stronger But we may not still we still made them not ever found out the most optimal way who knows it Like maybe if we did 50 reps sets I mean we show that there's a lot of breakdown on stuff like that but if but who's really trying it who's done 20 sets of 50 to know right it it it's probably going to depend on the person like everybody's you know just like everybody has a certain a certain maintenance calories some people can maintain on higher calories some people

maintain on lower calories some people probably have a higher requirement for, uh, sets and reps in terms of dosage than other people. You know, some people can get really, really strong off one set of a squat per week, but that doesn't mean that everybody's going to be that way. Right. And so tailoring it is important. People will, it's going back to what we were saying about how people will read the science and just kind of like take that and just like, it has to be this way. This is the only way, because this is what this study said. But well, if you look at a study, we had 20 people in that study that were participants. Yeah.

The average might've showed that, you know, higher volume is better, but for some of those people, they actually got worse. And for some of those people, they got really a lot better. got worse and for some of those people they got really a lot better and so then the average somewhere is somewhere you know in the middle where they for most people quote unquote they get they get better but not for everybody holly are you just itching to do some bodybuilding stuff or has it been still part of your program uh i am starting to get a little uh excited to do some more isolation work but um yeah actually our film guy Kabira put up a video from um a few months back when I was still doing bodybuilding training and um yeah they were some of my best sessions from last year and I'm very excited to to kind of do it again but I think

as soon as you start a contest prep you're just gonna like it's not a pleasant experience for like the last little bit so how many competitions have you done um god probably 15 in title but on like a an international level i've won two world championships in the natural bodybuilding um federations but um yeah i don't know whether I'll continue to do this. I want to teach. I just want people to be able to experience what I've been able to experience as far as like that kind of achievement and be able to put their bodies through, you know, that process, but safely and, you know, enjoy it.

Like I want to help other people do that like um yeah that's kind of my i feel the same way about powerlifting i feel like uh and and since 2006 and it's part of the reason for all the videos part of the reason for all the podcasts and books and any other thing that i do i i want people to experience it the way i experienced it that's why i'm so passionate about it and i might get a little out of hand here and there, but I just love it. And I want to bring other people in. That's why the gym's free. I want to bring other people in and say, Hey, check this shit out. This shit's fun. I think that's like, we do a lot of free content as well. I think we, we just really enjoy coaching. Like I probably enjoy coaching just as much as I like doing skits too. Yeah. And we're apparently

now actors. That's great. That's great. I mean, you gotta, there's gotta be, you gotta show people the fun side of it. So speaking of fun, and since this is super training, I think my body must think it's squat day. Cause can I have a two minute reprieve? Oh yeah. Poop break. And you guys, you guys keep going. You guys keep going and I'll, I'll just duck right back in.

Yeah. Cause my body must think I'm squatting. Let's run a clock on this and see how long this poop takes. And go. Three, two, one, go. Over under a four and a half minutes. It's 1251. Time is ticking.

Yeah. Yeah. Who knows what's going to happen in there. Oh, I'm falling. When, so I went to Australia probably like a decade ago or so. And like as soon as I landed, I started

talking to these guys that picked me up from the airport. They're like, okay, you don't want to see kangaroos. I'm like, okay. They're like, no, just trust us. They're fucking stupid. They're everywhere. You don't want to see kangaroos. Yeah, they're aggressive. Are they really everywhere?

It was pretty funny. They thought that was going to be my first. I didn't even say anything yet but it's like just trust me you don't want to i ended up seeing them and they were they were pretty cool but it was just funny that it's like uh it's you know so uncommon here you know to you guys it's probably as common as like a deer yeah would be here and you're and it was just funny the way that they kind of presented it no well i actually it's funny we had we have visitors and people, we would billet people and athletes like when I was a kid still living at home. And I think we convinced the fair majority of people that, you know,

if you come to Australia, oh, we used to ride a kangaroo to school, you know. Like we didn't, oh, mom didn't need to take us in the car. Like you just jump on a kangaroo's back and they'd be like, really? Or you get in their pouch. Yes, yeah, you just climb right in, they let you. But a funny story about. That doesn't seem safe. Yeah, you just climb right in. They let you. But a funny story about. That doesn't seem safe. Yeah, no, not the most safe mode of transport.

But so my parents' house, my dad, he's a metal worker and he had this beautiful big fence at the front of our house and property. And he'd put all these new like shrubs in our front lawn. And he had, he hated kangaroos because they'd come in and they love all of the the flower so one day my sister and I like looking out the window and I was like dad have you what what is the spear over there in the side of the garden he's like oh that's for the kangaroos Holly I was like what really you're gonna you're gonna spear the kangaroos so I think he just did it as like a I don't know try to scare. But one day he had to go out and he saw these, the kangaroos like eating his flowers.

And instead of using the spear, because we were watching, he grabbed this kangaroo by the back of its tail and did like a big alley-oop up and over the fence and its butt got, no, it got stuck in the fence actually. And it was trying to get through. So that's why he had to throw it over. But yeah, they're everywhere. so I have plenty of close up

experiences with kangaroos. You mentioned you know maybe the at least your experience some methods being kind of old school here. What else have you noticed from the United States positive or negative like what other kind of like hurdles have you kind of run into since you've only been here for what, a few months, right? Yeah. I actually think that the people here are really, really friendly. I know we're certainly in a quieter area in Florida and it's a lot more relaxed, but for the most part, I find the American society like very supportive of one another. I think the culture in Australia is,

you know, no one wants to let anyone get too big. And if you do get too big, then you're kind of frowned upon and you're an outcast. Like the total poppy syndrome. Like I remember my mom was like, you know, don't say anything that will get you in trouble or, you know, don't basically don't have an opinion. And I'm like, well, uh, yeah, nah. So I, I really find that I have adapted to the, the outgoingness of the US. Individuality, huh? Yeah. And that independence, I think, um, it's, it's very different to the Australians. It's, um, you know, if you're doing really well in Australia, you're probably, you know,

people try to put you down and, uh, they, you know, they don't want to support your, probably, you know, people try to put you down and, uh, they, you know, they don't want to support your, your cause. So, um, yeah, I think that is something that I found really, really awesome. Yeah. It's been a big change. What about the food? I hate the food. Yeah.

A lot of, a lot of food. Terrible here. Is it easier or harder having Celiac's here or in Australia? It's actually much harder. I found it really difficult to find fresh foods. I think we're very spoiled back home because of the diversity of cultures. There's a lot of fresh food here. I feel like there's a lot of... He's back! He's back! And we're back! It was four minutes.

He's a little sweaty. Now I can put more fluid down now because I haven't pulled it in. No, but to answer your question, I think, yeah, the food culture here is probably not quite to the standard of Australia. We just don't do the fried food thing. Where do you live in Australia? I've lived in multiple places. I grew up in Tasmania for 18 years of my life or 17 years. Tasmania?

Yeah. Sounds so cool. It is or 17 years. Tasmania. Yeah. It sounds so cool. The little, it is cool. Beautiful. But four seasons. And then for university, I was in Melbourne, Victoria for seven years studying. And then I got tired of the cold weather there. I love the hot weather, hence probably why I'm in Florida now.

I was up in Queensland in Surfers Paradise, just south of Brisbane, the capital. My friend lived in Tasmania for about 10 years, but it was because he was incarcerated. His name is Nathan Jones. He was a former strongman competitor. He's actually in the movie Troy. He's that giant that gets slayed by Brad Pitt in the movie. I have seen that movie. Yeah, he robbed some banks and did some crazy shit, but he's 6'10".

I'm like, robbing banks at 6'10"? You can't blend in. Can't blend into society. Let's have a lineup here. All right. The fucking huge one. He did it. It's that giant guy in the middle.

Oh, man. Do you think having celiacs helped or hurt your strength gains for powerlifting? Because it kind of pigeonholes you in a certain area. You've got to eat a certain way. You do. It really does. Yeah. I find it very hard to get into a good training groove just because of my

dietary choices. Like, it really affects my energy levels and, like, comfort. Like, you're trying to train and you're in pain. Like, it's not an ideal situation. So it's frustrating because. You're still in pain even with getting rid of the gluten? Yeah. But the thing is, like, there are so many foods that are products that are incorrectly labeled that have trace.

If you wanted to be true adherence, you would just have to eat fresh foods and cook everything yourself. And that's just not a reasonable expectation in today's age. Especially because she's an entrepreneur, owns her own business as well. So it's like both of us trying to balance out the chores with doing our reports. Have you ever tried anything just totally different food-wise to try to get a better result with how you feel? You know what, I would be interested to see, obviously there obviously there's a lot of, well, there is clear research

to support like a gluten-free diet, but I don't know enough about this, but I've certainly seen with some of the like common allergens, so like seafood allergies and peanut allergies, the new method, or they're certainly in testing phase, like to try and get rid of some of these is to actually introduce very small trace amounts of those. Oh, yeah, they do that with lactose. Yeah, or for anaphylaxis, they're trying to now give kids of a really young age, hey, have some nuts in controlled portions to try and dull that sensitivity to the immune response. know that sensitivity to those um to those kind of immune response and that's the difference between those like an intolerance or a sensitivity versus like a celiac because actually the more

you consume gluten the worse it gets yeah um because it chops down your villi so that that glitty and that protein that she mentioned your body attacks that like a foreign invader and the inflammation just like if your villi are kind of fingers that stick out your small intestine that absorb nutrients they just they get chopped down you can't absorb anything rob wolf has a book called get wired and i think some of rob wolf's approaches are pretty good um one of the things he does is just kind of cuts out certain foods for for a while and he just kind of goes around and cuts out various things. Something like that might be a worthy try. Even something like a carnivore diet, which doesn't sound like it makes any sense at all.

I've tried it and I like it. That would work just fine for me because there's no gluten. Yeah, we do a lot of elimination diets with carbs that have intolerances. Yeah, that's what Rob Wolf's kind of pointing out out like just getting rid of like all these different things even though maybe rice doesn't have uh gluten in it but maybe there's still something triggering something else right oh yeah there's a lot of unknowns but um yeah i think uh it would be pretty cool to go and do some more research into that it's just like when you have there's so many interests that i would love to be involved in, but you kind of have to narrow it down a little bit because there's not so much time in a day. So, yeah, right now, like focusing on our nutrition work is definitely priority number one. What do you think makes the food better in Australia?

I just think that not everything is fried. There's a lot of fresh. Oh, it's like even if you go to a restaurant. Yeah, I just, their food presentation is amazing. Like, there's a lot of, you know, effort put into it. Don't worry, because we'll go over there and we'll ruin it. Right, okay. You know, we're probably about 10 years off from probably totally ruining the entire world with our food.

Australia is. They have a great cafe culture. Yeah, we don't have that here. There's no cafe culture here. Well, there is, but it's in downtown areas. What do you mean by cafe? There's just street cafes everywhere.

Street cafes everywhere. Seating on the outside is usually pretty common. Breakfast, going out for breakfast is probably... Some of these guys just need to move.

There's cities, man. Where the fuck do you live? I don't know. Off US Highway 41? Yeah. Terrible. No, I've noticed like bigger cities here definitely have the food culture. Manhattan.

Go to Manhattan. Someone take me there. There's some crazy food there. Show me the America's. But it is fucking expensive. Hint, hint. It is expensive. Yeah, well, that's the thing.

Manhattan's expensive. Australia is very expensive too. yeah well that's the thing is australia is great you've got the well that's the thing and you've got this great food presentation all the stuff you pay for it yeah like you pay for like i was talking to her about like some of her costs over them like how do people save money over there and she's like oh unless you're rich nobody really saves money you just make enough to where you can live well i was like because i'm i'm a i'm a saver i like to be able to save you know i'm just like how do you yeah you know it just it's very very different culture you know

it's kind of more consumerist like even more so than us like spend everything you make but at least you have nice things that's kind of the the way they do it yeah when i was in paris i mean i noticed like uh first of all i noticed that so many people smoke. Oh, my God. There was just a lot of smoking going on. And I also noticed that people really don't eat. Like when I was in England, I noticed that a lot of the people were heavy. When I went to France, I noticed that there was a lot less people that were heavy.

But I also noticed that when people were at, there's kind of cafes, like you're describing, like there's outdoor seating and you would see, you know, 50 people at each restaurant that you walked by and there would be an entire street full of restaurants. It would be really rare to see anybody with any food. It was just alcohol and cigarettes. It's like, holy shit. Great. Well, I mean, nicotine is a powerful appetite suppressant. Yeah, I've heard. You see people who stop smoking. Yeah, they gain 20 pounds. A lot of weight. There's multiple reasons for that, but one is oral fixation.

You know, instead of having a cigarette to put on their mouth, they're eating food or snacks. The other thing is, again, is nicotine is an extremely powerful appetite suppressant. Yeah. In fact, it's funny. I knew a natural bodybuilder who was like, had this big moral stand against steroids, but then he would smoke during contest prep because it helped dull his hunger down. I'm like, don't you see like a little cognitive dissonance there? Steroids are unhealthy, but cigarettes are fine.

Holly, how'd you get into lifting? That's a really good question. How did I, um, so, uh, when I was living in, uh, Melbourne, I was studying and, um, one of my jobs, I had quite a few actually during my university career, uh, was personal training. So I just really enjoyed fitness. Obviously I don't have a background in sports. So I wanted to keep with something that I was familiar with. But I had a gym at one point in Melbourne, and that was probably more in line with fitness, endurance. You owned a gym? Yeah. I don't know.

Yeah. And yeah, I guess I kind of stepped away from that for a little while. And I don't know. I guess I just wanted stepped away from that for a little while and I don't know. I guess I just wanted something to do. I enjoyed fitness. I wanted to do some kind of training, but the thing with most individual sports was like athletics. I couldn't really do it when, um, that kind of fit the rest of my lifestyle trying to

study. So like to go down to the running track and train with a group for athletics, it just wasn't an option for me. So I found like going to the gym, I could still exercise and keep fit, but I didn't have to do it on someone else's clock. So I think that's probably what, um, When you were running, did you, uh, did you lift then or no? Oh, we did some work. Um, but it was a lot more plyometric, um, stuff if, if any. Um, and I was a lot younger too. So, um, um yeah to be a good sprinter you just sprint a

lot i found but yes it's definitely an explosive component who would uh win in a race i reckon i would i had a quick i had a quick pr for my 100 meter sprint i did 11 7 11 7 7 that's fast yeah i was it was good i competed for australia so that was way way back. That's really fast. Really fast. Yeah. Damn. Yeah. Not anymore.

I'd probably, I struggled to run across our highway to get out of the way of cars. Probably not going to be very good at sprinting right now. But I mean, naturally I have a lot of faster. This is a perishable skill. Yes. No, I mean, she, she went from pretty much not lifting weights to being like natural world champion in like a year. Yeah. So she has good genetics.

The naughty titties. And actually, we were sitting down. Eric Helms was with us, and we were all talking about something. Oh, yeah. Eric was, yeah, they might have been, everybody might have been a little bit inebriated and a little bit more liable to say what they thought. Eric now hates me. Eric's kind of a hard gainer. And Eric was just mentioning about,

he's like, well, you know, I just have such a hard time putting on muscle and Holly's Holly's sitting over there thinking hard to put on muscle. I have to stop myself from putting on muscle. I think I said to him, I was like,

I only have to look at a weight, Eric. And I gained muscle on my shoulders. Like, what do you do? You're doing it all wrong. She's like, well,

if you just let yourself gain some more weight and Eric's like, well, I tried that. I just, I get fat. And she's, well, if you just let yourself gain some more weight. And Eric's like, well, I tried that. I just, I get fat. And she's like, what if you just let yourself gain muscle? Like Eric's like preventing himself from gaining muscle. And I'm like, it's nay on the open stay, you know? And yeah, she, finally, I think she kind of got the hit.

But Eric was like trying to convince her to go do WNBF Worlds. like holly just like because he's looking at like her structure he's like just go win wmbf worlds it was like or go do w like not to say that she would win if she did it but like she's got a great physique and she was obviously like we talked about everybody has certain gifts that they have you know she's always been able to to to put on muscle like yeah but i'm a terrible deadlifter. My arms are like a Tyrannosaurus Rex. I am not cut to do that. I am nervous as heck for my deadlift tomorrow.

Sumo, conventional? I sumo, but just deadlifting does not agree. Although bench pressing, I should be really good at that because my arms are about the length of my- Yeah, I think you said she does like 170, 165, something like that. Yeah, I think she's going to be somewhere in that range. We'll see. It's our first meet, so our goal is to go, 170, 165, something like that? Yeah, I think she's going to be somewhere in that range. Yeah. We'll see. Yeah.

It's her first meet, so our goal is to go, I think the goal is to go nine for nine. Where's that squat at? Squat is currently, I have not actually tested my squat for an RPE 10 yet, but I did a 265 the other day and an RPE 8, so. Nice. Yeah, I don't know. That's not good, by all means. Deadlift?

Deadlift, I've pulled 310 for's not good by all means. Deadlift. Deadlift. I've pulled three 10 for a single, but that was like way back. I don't know where I met. She's had a little bit of a nagging injury. That's been keeping her from deadlifting to her full potential. Yeah. We'll see.

So this is an odd concept in the training. You're not going 110% all the time. No, not. That's amazing. And you're still getting results. Still getting results. It's really weird.

Sometimes you just have to adapt to the person, like I was saying earlier. Most of the times we want to hit those big max, max lifts on game day, on the platform, right? Yeah, there's no sense in her hitting PRs in the gym if her goal is to hit PRs on the platform, right? Yeah. There's no sense in, in her hitting PRs in the gym. If her goal is to hit PRs on the platform, right? How do you prep somebody for a powerlifting meet? Like, um, obviously there's quite a bit of training leading up to it, but let's just say maybe the last two weeks, like what, like whatever, or maybe three

weeks, what are we doing going into this competition? Uh, so for me, what I like to do is, uh, you know, I try to get a sense of something heavy, like about two weeks out, I'll have them do something a lot, like pretty heavy, but still not all out, uh, PR attempt just to get an eight, you know, eight or nine, just something that I can, um, assess and put into my head of what I think they can hit on meat day, especially given, you know, the atmosphere. And then from there, it's a, it's really about getting them, you know, their fatigue is high because they've just been doing, you know, hellish training for the last few weeks. So what I need to do is get their fatigue down and let their fitness shine through. And so when the fatigue comes down like that,

then they're able to manifest that training into, you know, PRs on the platform, if we do it correctly. So basically the volume comes down, we hit, we touch on the intensity a little bit, we get them more rest, you know, I give them some pointers on what they could do to recover better and all that stuff. And then...

Kind of talk about reducing the sets all that stuff. And, and then, uh. Kind of talk about reducing the sets and the reps. Yeah. Yeah. So we'll. But the weight may, may go up a little bit. It may go up. It may go up. It's all depending on how they're feeling and, you know, what their body is.

Previous history, I'm sure. Absolutely. Is a factor, right? Um, you know, like as an example with Lane going into Raw Nationals, uh, he, you know, he was getting banged up and so we couldn't really touch anything that was super heavy for him. Um, you know, on an absolute scale, but I had to get him to touch at least something that was relatively heavy for what he could do on that day.

And, uh, you know, that ended up working out for him pretty well. Yeah. I mean, one of the things he said to me was you got to try not to judge the process. Yes. Like, you know what, what this is, what it is.

Cause a week out, I was supposed to hit a six, 10 squat for reps. I grinded out a single and then I missed five 85 on a deadlift. And then I went back and got pissed off and got it, but it was not smooth. Did not feel good, felt terrible.

And so. A lot of that doesn't mean, doesn't mean a lot. But it's hard to get out of your own head when you're a lifter. You know, you think if you, well, I hit a 700 something deadlift, I should be able to do that any day. And it's just not a reasonable expectation. So I borrow, I borrow on the, on the Philadelphia 76ers phrase, trust the process.

Just trust the process. We're just sandbagging every week until the meet, you know. But, you know, yeah, I was, I think, I think I, I texted Holly this, um, a week or two ago and I said, if you go in the gym and you have a bad session and you didn't lift more than you did last week, don't feel bad about it. I don't really expect you to hit a PR right now. And if you go backwards a step, that's just data for me to use. So don't, don't judge yourself because you weren't

stronger on that day just do what you can for that day and be happy with it and then you know we'll get you in the place you need interesting like lift lifting and sprinting are actually very similar like you don't go out and sprint no full blast to get to get faster right not always no it's a lot of different distances a lot of different intensities um working on a lot of different distances, a lot of different intensities. Working on a lot of different things, working on drills, working on your start and all these things, right? Yeah. God, it seems like a mile ago that I actually did sprinting, but yes, it's the same kind of principle. You're not going out especially the lead up two weeks, more so the last week. You have a full week of taper almost for a sprint meet. For sprinting

did you just not do anything the week of the time for a sprint meet but um for sprinting did you just like not do anything the week the week uh we would but like okay three or four weeks out of like a competition day or a schedule you'd be doing maybe three or four or four training sessions a week and then in the last week you might have a hit out on like two days before but you just do like four run-throughs like you know accelerations where you're starting at 30%, you finish at 90%, and that's your training. Or you might do a couple of block starts five or six days out, and that's it. Really easy stuff. Maybe a little mental prep while you're doing some of that.

Yeah, a lot of mental prep. Yeah, so I guess this is very similar in that sense. What's interesting is all of our kind of tapering data that we have that we apply to powerlifting is just from sprinting. Nobody's actually ever studied what is an optimal taper for powerlifting. If I went back and did a master's in exercise science, this is what I want to study. What is actually a good taper? Because I can tell you what they say is, okay, we'll maintain intensity, but taper volume by 50%.

It's kind of the standard. I can tell you the week before in nationals, I would not have been able to maintain my intensity. Um, I, in fact, Andra said, so I had that session I talked about that was a week out. That was garbage. I was feeling pretty bad after that. I'm like, how the hell am I going to pull, you know, anywhere close to anything I've done before. And then he said, okay, well, this week you're not going to touch that. Are you, I want you to go into an RPE seven. I think it was like Tuesday or Wednesday and then go out. And I was warming up on squats.

I got to four 65, which I usually do for a single on the warmup, did the rep. And I go, fuck, that was an RPE seven. I texted Andres. He goes, walk out of the gym. Yep. So, and then I went up, I got to four 95 on deadlift RPE seven. Walked out of the gym. And I just, I just, you know, he was up, I got to 495 on deadlift, RPE seven, walked out of the gym. And I just, I just, you know, he was like, you need to rest as much as possible this week.

So we actually, we got to Orlando early. Um, I think it was left on Wednesday and, uh, my parents came down, everybody came down and I just literally, how long did I sit in that hot tub at the pool? You pretty much just lived in that all day. I just sat there and I just relaxed as much as I could. And I had a pec tweak, which is what ended up really limiting me. And one of the reasons I didn't place better than seventh, but I was still happy with seventh considering everything that had happened.

And, uh, but I, you know, I missed the 655 squat in terms of getting two to one red to white. It was going back, checking the tape. It was good. But again, that's not disrespectful to the referees or anything like that. Actually, there was a mess up on that too, because it was supposed to be 650. We had called for 650 and they actually misloaded one side. Oh, shit.

And people got all pissed off about that. But like the guy who misloaded actually came up to me after the meet was like, I'm so sorry. I was like, hey, man, it wasn't the reason I missed the lift. I missed it because of depth, you know, which was really close. But I thought I had it. I think, looking at the tape, it looks like I had it. But, you know, shit. You win some, you lose some.

Like, I was at the Arnold in 2015. And I got a press command that I jumped. And I got two to one, white to red. There was my pittance right there. You know, like, I got one and I lost one. So, but then heading to deadlift, I mean, I was telling Andres, people were like, what do you think you're going to pull? I'm like, I got no idea.

I have no idea what I'm going to pull. And we started very conservatively. I think we opened up at like 622, which is the lightest I've ever opened. Yeah. I mean, I took really big jumps with you, which I don't normally like to do, but it's just what we had to do. We went 622 and then like 689 for my second attempt. And, uh, but then, you know, we got there and we knew we weren't,

I wasn't going to win, but he was like, he's like, you want to try for a PR? And I said, well, do you think I've, do you think I've got it in me? And he said, yep, it's going to be tough, but yeah, you can do it. So I just, you know, that was where I just recently by, uh, not by my own, uh, decision had been, uh, had gotten out of a company that was, uh, something I'd helped start. And it was very stressful time for me. I was involved in some legal stuff,

uh, with regards to that. And, uh, I just remember thinking, putting everything in that lift and thinking we're fucking going home happy today. Like I'm going to hit a fuck.

I'm going to put everything I got into this PR. And actually Holly took a video and Andres is like, I'm like, I want you to slap me. Like, I want you to give it to me. And he just like, like. Yeah. Nailed me. It still wasn't hard enough apparently.

Yeah. Nailed me like a few different times. But yeah, I ended up pulling it. It was pretty smooth too. What was it? 716. So 325 deadlifts. So all the reds, you know?

And yeah, afterwards she was like, if you told me, she was like, how the hell did you do that? Like, if you told me a week ago that you were going to, I would have said you were crazy, you know? But it just goes to show like when you dissipate fatigue, especially with me, I get a lot out of meat day. You never know what you can actually do on meat day if you dissipate that fatigue. So the preparation before all that in the beginning of training is probably to bring up that fitness level. Yes. And then in short, beat the fucking shit out of

somebody. So they're fatigued and they're, they've done a lot of work and you reduce the fatigue, the fitness, as you said, shine through. Right. Yes, absolutely. So like not to get too. Fitness or just basically saying like, you know,

work capacity, ability, strength. Yeah. All those. Right. So we spend that time building up his work capacity or his fitness, um, and that's steadily climbing. And as the things get heavier, it's still climbing. Um, but all of that volume is building a lot of fatigue. And then, uh, you know, by the time you get to those heavier lifts, your fatigue is accumulated to a point where now, even though you're on lower volume,

the hit to your nervous system from doing heavy squats or heavy deadlifting, especially is making that fatigue climb even higher. And so you get to a point where your overall performance looks bad because your fatigue is dampening you so much. And then once you relieve that, you see the true, you know. It's almost within, it's almost like within a training session, um, in the beginning of the workout is where you're the strongest. The end of the workout is where you're weakest is because, uh, you've already fatigued yourself. Yep. You know, you go to try to heavy deadlift at the end of a workout where you did a bunch of back stuff, you did a bunch of other things.

Yep. It's going to be very hard to lift, lift that weight up off the ground. And this is a similar principle, just stretched out over. Stretched out. Yeah. So what do you do? You go home, you get a good night's rest. And then the next day or the next week after you've, you know,

taken a week off of that lift or something, or a few days, you're stronger. Do you guys take almost the whole week off of training or is it just like a little bit of stuff in there? So I kind of, again, like with Lane, I'd had to adjust things. Normally you'd want so i'd want somebody to go in like on monday if their meet is on saturday and touch something relatively you know heavy maybe like uh you know a single at an eight uh like an opener kind of thing um with lane he was so far down the hole that i told him you can't do that you're gonna have to go lighter we're gonna going to have to just rest.

Uh, with Holly, I was able to have her do something a little heavier. Um, and you know, so everything is a little bit, you got to adapt, you know. And that's way different than you were training before, because I remember when you said, whenever you traveled somewhere, you were like, you know, crazy about finding a gym.

And even when you traveled to meets, like you would lift, uh, on like Thursday or something like you would lift uh on like thursday or something like that and the contest was saturday or something before worlds the wednesday before worlds i did uh four sets of five with 520 you know one squat yeah and that was easy for me at that point you know because it just kind of goes to show you like different methods work different methods can work and and you know like not i'm I'm not poo pooing that because I got really strong that way. Like I will never, people,

oh, you must regret the weight. Not, I'm not trying to, to toot my own horn too much, but I'm not a guy who looks like a great swatter. Right. If you,

if you walking around at IPF worlds backstage with me and you're taking bets on who's going to squat the most, I'm going to be the last guy. Yeah. Right. In fact, I should have got, I should have done some hustling back there. That's going to squat the most, I'm going to be the last guy. Right. In fact, I should have got, I should have done some hustling back there. That's right.

But, um, you know, I was able to set a world record at IPF. I know the world record gets thrown around a lot in powerlifting and it wasn't an all time world record or anything like that, but the IPF world is the biggest meet in powerlifting. And it's,

there's one way. That's totally fair statement yeah there's one way to get there win nationals to win nationals i had to beat 150 other dudes all right that's the only way you get an automatic invite there and when you get there and you realize hey by the way these 20 guys you're competing against all won the national title in their country yeah you start to realize like that that's you can actually get pretty intimidated and realize that's a pretty big fricking deal. Um, so for me to be able to do that, you know, no, I don't regret a damn thing. If I broke both my femurs, I wouldn't have regretted a damn thing because that's, I can always say, and I don't want to live in the past, but I can always say, Hey man,

I did that. And I'm very, very proud of that. I'm not afraid to say that I'm proud of that. I think that's like, like frowned upon. Like people don't want to say that you're like proud of something you've done. Like I'm proud of my PhD. I'm proud of my, that squat world record. I said, I don't see anything wrong with that. If that makes me arrogant, then so be it. You know, but people say that I'm like, well, you should go get a PhD. I have one. It's great. How'd you guys meet? Uh, I was on a seminar tour. So, uh, just, you know, you don't come across somebody who's like... You got both these guys from a seminar tour.

Yeah, no kidding. I actually knew... So Iron Tanks is our sponsor. And Sam, the owner of Iron Tanks, actually went to the same university as I did. I actually worked with him for a little while at school.

And yeah, he actually invited me down to the Australian Arnoldian arnold expo to help out on the day and just talked to people uh obviously having a science and nutrition background uh helped his decision with that and lane was actually there and i'd only just kind of started to look out for external influences i guess in my own learnings and had come across lane and sam was like oh yeah by the way, Dr. Norton's going to be there. I'm like, wow, this is cool.

I just watched a podcast. I just listened to a podcast a few days ago. So yeah, I was going to interview Lane and yeah, I met him at the Arnold's in Melbourne. Got more she bargained for without him. Yeah, I was going to say, what a hell of an interview. Sorry about that. Yeah, no, it was, you know, you just hell of an interview. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry about that. Oops. Yeah.

No, it was, you know, you just don't meet somebody who's like, you know, same values into the same kind of stuff you're into, hard worker, you know, that kind of stuff. So, yeah, like it's cool to work alongside because, you know, we're partners, but we're also business partners. Yeah. Like we're, so we're working together pretty much every day coming up with stuff. And it's a pretty rewarding feeling. It's frustrating sometimes, you know, but it's a pretty rewarding feeling too.

Yeah, it's funny. Like if we would try to go out for dinner and we're like, okay, let's not talk about work tonight. Oh, you guys set a timer. Yeah. It's like, okay, we stuffed up. Well, it's funny because like. And take notes. It's funny because I've been doing kind of the entrepreneur thing a little bit longer

than she has. So, uh, I think I'm able to kind of shut it down like when I need to, when it's time to, to, to go now, I still have a problem with being on my phone. Like that's, I've gotten better about it, but I still have a problem with that. Um, but I'm able to kind of shut it down. Whereas if she has like emails in her inbox or if she has a client plan that she needs to get done, like she can't relax. I'm the crazy one that's sitting there at 2 AM in the morning. Like, Oh, I've still got an email, babe. I'll come in soon. Yeah. It's tough, but you have to

like, you have to put limits on it. Cause otherwise, like, and I'm like, even Paul said the same thing. He's like, you know, Lane is just work, you know, because I enjoy my work. And like, I like to occupy my time. So, but it's also, again, like one of those things where you realize you have limited time and you have to devote time towards personal relationships, friendships, all that sort of stuff. Like you have to make decisions. that sort of stuff like it you have to make decisions yeah for my wife and i mean we're we'll literally kind of set a timer and say you know if we go out to eat for sushi or something like that we're like all right well because we have to talk about business because because uh i mean we don't have to have to we could talk about it at home that's what you're passionate

about well we're passionate about it but we also don't get five seconds to talk to each other because we have kids and there's a lot of other things going on so we sit down it's always like okay i'm gonna say going to say my piece about, you know, this, this, and this, and then, and then you go, you know, and we got 15 minutes and boom, it's done. Have some drinks, have some fun. That Lane Norton. Yeah.

That's right. Lane Norton. You know what? Isn't that guy an asshole? He's an asshole. Absolutely. He's an asshole. It always comes back to that for some reason every single time.

Things about me. But then other things will pop up, you know, as we get in conversation about the kids or family, you know, it'll sneak back in there. Then what we try to do

is just kind of take notes on it. Just, just if something like an idea pops up or, hey, we should do this, just make a note of it and then just keep cranking, keep moving through

and keep moving on, you know? Yeah. It's tough when you're passionate about something, you know, all three of us are entrepreneurs here, you know, who have worked together in some capacity like Andres is. So the workout builder on the site that I talked about last time, shameless plug, on biolane.com, Andres helped build a lot of that, you know, so he's been involved with

us as well. We've got more collaborations coming up in the future, but, you know, I'm sure it's the same thing. Like when you're trying to build something, it's really hard because what's the sexy thing for an entrepreneur right now? It's the, and I love Gary Vaynerchuk stuff, but I think he also does a good job of pointing it out. It's like, you know, if you want to be like the best husband or father or all that, like it's going to take away from your entrepreneur stuff. Yeah. There's no balance. Balance does not exist, like it's going to take away from your entrepreneur stuff. Like balance does not exist.

Like it's a tangible. Yeah. He said that he has an agreement, you know, he has an agreement like with his family and with his wife and stuff that he's just not always going to be there, you know? And,

uh, you know, maybe, maybe he'll regret it later on, but that's what he's doing. That's, that's what he decided to do. Yeah.

I actually, uh, something Aaron Singerman said to me one time, he's the owner of Redcon1, friend of mine. And he's like, he loves kids. He loves his kids. But he's like, what I'm putting in now in terms of time wise, we could have 50 kids. This is what I can devote. At first when I heard that, I'm like, that's kind of a jerk thing to say.

But now I get it more. It's like, no, if you're going to do everything as a choice. And if you're going to do one thing, it's taken away from another thing. And it doesn't, you just got to decide where you're going to put your time and energy. And sometimes business has got to come first. Sometimes family's got to come first, you know, but obviously like things change and you got to kind of fly by the seat of your pants. Sometimes if something comes up, you know, one of your kids is sick or something like that now. Okay. Well now we've got to focus on the kids regardless of what we had going on for business. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Like I had food poisoning the other week and oh my God. And I was like, well, sorry, babe, you're gonna listen to

me whine all day, you know? Yeah. Killing you, right? Yeah. It's just, you know, but you have to understand that everything's a choice. Yeah. I think the biggest thing for me has been like as somebody that has kind of gone through adulthood, very independent, very like business minded and driven. And I've had the ability to kind of do things at my leisure. Yeah, now moving to the US, like just being in a relationship, that's one that's one big thing that's different. But also like having the kids, that has been such a big like eye-opener. Like my respect for parents and how you split up your time in the day. Like it is incredibly difficult, especially as an entrepreneur. And a lot of things, you've got to do some things by yourself. So if you're working late, then you're working late.

If you want to have time for all those things. That's why I like to wake up early, you know, and everyone's a little different on, on their schedule. Some people like to work a little bit later. And, you know, for me, I'll wake up at four o'clock just to, you know, try to get ahead of the day. And, uh, you know, when I leave here, I'm just going to be hanging with my kids and hanging with my wife and get your work done early. And i get i get it all done and and uh you know the same the same thing goes with like my food or any of it like if i'm going to eat like i utilize intermittent fasting here and there i'm going to fast it's going to be you know i guess what i'm trying to say is like the morning through mid-afternoon late afternoon i try to make it like difficult it It's work related. It's diet related. It's all those things. I go home, it's time to eat dinner. It's time to hang out with the kids and shut everything down. And, uh, then I, I work towards trying to get it to bed on time,

which is like a fight. Like you have to, you have to, you have to, um, respect that time. That's an important time. But that's the thing is like, again, if you are going to, okay, we say we need to get sleep. Sleep's really important. You need to be a great entrepreneur. That's an important time. But that's the thing is like, again, if you are going to, okay, we say we need to get sleep. Sleep's really important. You need to be a great entrepreneur. That's really important. You need to be a good dad. Well, something's got to give somewhere. You know what I mean? And that's, you know, Arnold had a famous speech. He's like,

you know, you say you need eight hours of sleep a night. I say sleep faster. Six hours of sleep a night and you have two more hours to do something that somebody else can't do. Sorry, that's my really bad Arnold voice. But, okay, well now you're shortchanging yourself on sleep,

maybe jeopardizing your health a little bit, your recovery, that sort of thing. So where is that thing that's going to give? Because at some point something's got to give and I think you've, I mean, you've built a much bigger business than I ever have, but delegating, that've, you've, I mean, you've built a much bigger business than I ever have, but delegating that's, you know, and they find that I think studies have shown people are happier when they pay for services that allow them to have more time as opposed to paying for things. You know what I mean? So like, you know, I could cut my own lawn,

but I don't do it because I'd rather spend that time putting towards other things. Right. You know, I don't clean my pool because. Yeah. And if you're going to, and if you're going to delegate, you have to like legitimately do it too. You know, you have to like legitimately say, I'm going to put this off on you. And then you're not going to like check up on him every five seconds. If he's doing something for the site, something you guys are working on together, then that's the way it has to be. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. I think, I mean, I don't have kids. I just got married, uh, a month and a half ago, but, uh, um, I think a lot of people, like you're saying, uh, we know what's healthy for us. We should get enough sleep. We should eat a certain way. We should exercise a little bit. And, and, uh, there's sometimes there's not enough time in the day to accommodate the

perfect lifestyle by the book on everything. And so then you have to figure out what, what are your priorities and live by those priorities and be happy with it. You'd have to spread it out. Just like you talked about spreading out the training. Well, like if you wanted to go back and let's

say you got an itch again, I want to be the best powerlifter I possibly could be. Well, now you, now, now it might be a little bit different because you've gotten the framework in position, but it's still going to take away from your business, right? Or your family, one of the two or both, right? So it's going to be a conversation. Okay, am I willing to accommodate less business or less money or less things getting done in order to pursue this goal of mine?

So the next time I go back for powerlifting, I've got to sit here and say, all right, well, I've got to understand that. Okay. I've got to be okay with less clients, less money, less time in business. Right. Because I would, I would, I don't want to sacrifice any more time with my kids. It's not any different than removing myself from it either. I have to be okay with lifting less weight.

Yeah. I have to be okay with like, this doesn't define me anymore. I'm going to move on to other things. I feel like that's a really hard thing for a lot of people to get over. Yeah. Luckily for me, luckily for me, I've never, I've never been, uh, egotistical in that way. I could lift with people and they can lift more than me and it's never bothered me. I just don't, I don't care. Um, you know, lifting in this environment for so long, you know, people will try to beat me on a fucking lap pull down. They don't care what it is. I'll try to sneak

one and get one over on me wherever I can. You know, I did my numbers on the platform and I started competing when I was like 12 years old. So I just, I feel comfortable with those. And if somebody's, you know, wants to squat 500 for reps while I'm squatting 225. It doesn't, luckily, you know, luckily it doesn't really, it's not like hurting my ego. I'm not like, you know, forcing myself to try to lift what they're lifting. And I'm really, really thankful for that because, uh, even lifting this morning, you know, I was lifting Ryan Spencer. He was 170 pounds. He's lifting more weight than me, but I'm, you know, I just, I have an understanding of like, this is where I'm at. I used to be in a different spot. This is where I'm at now. And I'm okay with this. This is what

I'm doing. You feel like, um, I feel like sometimes people just, they don't have fulfillment anywhere else other than the gym. Right. So if you're not fulfilled anywhere, then you're just defining yourself by what you can do on the, on the platform or, and yeah, you're going to get pissed off when other people are beating you in the gym. Cause that's all you've got. Right. You got to be well-rounded. I think it's important to specialize, but I think it's important to have more than one thing that defines you. Sure.

You know, that's, that's cause if you only got one thing that defines you, if that, if that thing goes away, you're pretty, I mean, like I said, like Brian Carroll talked about in the gift of injury, like he was contemplating suicide, um, because he was so devastated that he couldn't lift heavy. Yeah. I know so many power lifters like that. Yeah. Yeah. All they got is their strength. And then when it's, you know, when it's gone, I guess it's going to go at some point.

Yeah. It happens because you are so obsessed about it. You're not paying attention to anything else. That's where your focus is. Yeah. so obsessed about it, you're not paying attention to anything else. That's where your focus is. Yeah. I think, um, but prioritization is something that I've, I've learned that has to be really like writing down, okay, what are my goals actually? And in order of importance, what are my goals?

And then I need to make my actions to reflect those. Cause if my actions don't reflect those, then they're not actually my right priorities. Right. You'll start to feel like if you're making the wrong decisions and they're not in line with your priorities, you're going to start to be unhappy with the way things are turning out in your life, I think. Yeah. You got a couple of questions over there, Andrew?

I was just curious because we've started podcasting before this podcast and Lane is on his third monster. I think he had a few though before that. Really? I think he's probably had about four or five today. Well, this one's only half empty. Well, half empty. Three and a few though before that. Really? I think he's probably had about four or five today. Well, this one's only half empty. Well, half empty. Three and a half.

But yeah. No, I just know that people are going to be like, you know, he's a doctor, but he's having all this stuff going on. Like, are those monsters okay? No one ever said he's smart. Well, if I look at this, I mean, you're looking at, you know. I mean, because it says zero everything. So what the hell's in there? So you got vitamin B's, which vitamin B is not going to hurt you.

You just piss it out if you drink too much of it. And then you've got some other stuff like L-carnitine, caffeine, sucralose. I mean. He's only looking at all the good stuff. I mean, we talked about artificial sweeteners earlier. Yeah. That's why I brought it up again. Yeah.

I mean. Now, if you have too much caffeine, like there an ld50 for caffeine it's really high you have to have a lot of monsters to get there but i mean too much of anything is a bad thing but based on what i've seen the data i've seen like is it me is it better or as good as me drinking water? Probably not, but I like the taste of it. And I don't mind getting a little caffeine, so I'm alert. Also, that's what you're doing for the moment. I don't sit here and try to pretend that, you know, this is like bodybuilders who want to pretend they do everything for optimal health. I mean, this is my favorite thing is the bodybuilder who has, you know, some kind of crazy water filtration system because they

don't want the fluoride in the water because they think it's bad for them. But they're cool with doing three grams a test a week. Right, right, right, right. Okay. Yeah. And what's in their amino acids and all this other stuff they're taking too, right? Yeah. So, I mean, is it the best thing I could possibly do?

Probably not. But is it going to hurt me? I don't know. The data doesn't seem to suggest that. Cool. So, and if it was going to hurt me, it would probably hurt me by now. I feel like there's a lot of times two different camps, right? So maybe the data, like we were saying earlier, the data on average might show that there is no ill effects of whatever's in the monster.

And for some people, actually, maybe it would have a negative effect on them. We talked about that with the people who have polymorphisms. Caffeine. Right. So for some people, it might. and for some people it might not. And so I feel like you get the people who are either on the one extreme where they're like, well, you might as well just cut it out of your life completely because it might kill you faster.

And then you have people on the other side who are like, well, yeah, maybe it will take off a week of my life, but I enjoy drinking this Diet Coke or this Monster. And I mean, that's just what I'm going to do. And I'm happy with the result. Things are like packaged differently. Like a Monster, there's going to be some people who are like, oh, it's got, you know, cancer or whatever, promoting agents or whatever somebody is going to make up about it, right? Or say about it. And maybe they can reference a study.

But how different is that than your protein shake that you have? Like we really do. We just don't know. Like some of the ingredients that go into that might be the same ingredients that go into your pre-workout, which we are going to associate with health.

Cause it's like, oh, I have that before I exercise. So it's clearly healthy. Yeah. That's my ever favorite thing is the pro bodybuilders who like don't have any artificial sweeteners. Yeah.

Except for the ones that are in my supplement that I'm sponsored by. There you go. Come on guys. How about the correlation with like a caffeine and raising cortisol levels? You probably can speak to that a little bit better. I think that's probably pretty divergent and probably there's a threshold for that. Yeah. I mean, can caffeine maybe raise your cortisol

levels a little bit because it's stimulating you and it's kind of making you nervous or jittery? It's possible. Does that affect acute or chronic? Are you having like chronic, chronically high cortisol that's going to probably have some effect on your health? Or are you having like an acute reaction to that?

And then, you know, most times of the day. Yeah, because training increases cortisol too. Absolutely. My concern with caffeine would, would mainly just be about sleep. Yeah. Are you able to, are you able to get to bed on time? And then the other concern is dehydration. For me, it'll, it'll dehydrate me if I have, if I have too much, but that's also because

I don't eat carbs. I'm on a low-carb diet, and so I'm not going to be as hydrated. Well, actually, there's research now that has shown that caffeine is a very mild diuretic. And you're actually much more hydrated after a cup of coffee than you are before it. Yeah, because of the amount of liquid that you drink. You may not be quite as hydrated as you would get with just pure water, but you're still more hydrated than you would be by not drinking anything. Right. So the amount, I think the amount of liquid that goes into your body is more than the amount that you would pee out extra from the diuretic effect.

Basically, in short, we're saying Monster's totally healthy for you. Well, it's. I like it. And it's also. You're going to be jacked and tan the more you drink it. It just tastes so good. So good. If you think about anything that could be potentially bad for you, right?

You know, something, a little bit of a bad thing makes you stronger, right? Training is actually bad for your body in terms of breaking down your muscle and stuff. It's, you have an adaptation to get better and more resilient. Training is like a vaccine. Think about it. When you're taking a vaccine, you're taking a weakened or dead virus, which your body has to respond to that stressor by accommodating for it and adjusting. Training, if you told somebody who didn't know anything about resistance training, or they just knew about what was quote unquote healthy, and you said,

I'm going to have you do something that increases your cortisol, increases your inflammatory response, increases your reactive oxygen species, raises your heart rate and raises your blood pressure. What would you say? Is that good for you? No, hell no. Right. But that's exactly what exercise does, but you're getting a controlled dose of a stressor that your body adapts to, and then is better able to fight off those stressors in the future. Just like a vaccine. Yeah. I mean, you exercise and for a period of 24 hours or so, you're immunosuppressed. So you're at a greater risk for infection. But then in the long term, you actually, your immunity goes up. You're actually more resistant to infection because you exercise.

We have a client once that went in to have some blood work. It was almost immediately post a resistance train session. And he came back and the doctors were complaining about his, you know, his high levels of inflammatory markers. So CRP was really elevated. I had a client. My C-reactive protein was like off the charts. That'll be off the charts.

Yeah, absolutely. So I had a client who his mother called me, and this is, I have great deal deal respect for the medical profession for mds and dos except but sometimes um when they get so focused on not treating a patient as what the individual in their life is and just looking at numbers on a sheet okay so mcgill talks about this with mris like they don't know if it's an 80 year old woman or a 20 year old athlete that they're looking at mri and contacts matters so this this, I've been working with him for about four years. His name was Connor and his mom called me and she's like, Connor, they say he's been diagnosed with

rhabdomyolysis. So immediately my bullshit detector goes off because it is very difficult. Rhabdo is basically for those that don't know, uh, when you break down enough muscle tissue, the waste products, if it's such a massive breakdown of muscle tissue, the waste products, your kidney cannot excrete them fast enough and it causes you to go into renal failure. And normally it's something you can actually see with your eyes a lot of times. Yeah. So, and also, so it is very hard for trained people to have rhabdo unless it's somebody who's like they train powerlifting and all of a sudden they decide to go out and run a marathon, right? Or they run a marathon and they decide to crossfit.

Like, it has to be something that's a completely new stressor that's off the charts. Crossfit, you see it a lot. I've seen it a couple of times in some competitors who have, you know, their own ridiculously low calories

and their training is ridiculous. There's an area that's irritated that'll make it fucking blow up like crazy. It's insane looking. Usually rhabdo happens in people who formerly exercised, who have been, who have been detrained for a long period of time, who go back in and try to hit it really hard their first session back and their body's not accommodated for it. And that happens.

So, so, but this guy had been training consistently for years and I'm like, so I started, I talked to him. I said, well, can I talk to Connor? And she's like, yeah. It's like, well, what did they, what did they use to diagnose it? Well, his creatine kinase was elevated. Well, duh. Creatine kinase gets elevated when you have a workout. And it was modestly elevated above the normal level.

Right. And I said, you know, are you, are you running a fever? Like, are you having like, do you feel ill? You know, are you having like any like generalized pain or anything like that? And he said he had some, he had some stomach pain that that's what they were using the diagnosis. He had stomach pain and, um, his creatine kind of is a little bit high. I said, well, did you do like a crazy leg workout or anything different? He's like, no, I just did my normal training.

Yeah. Well, I went down the rabbit hole and what I found was he had recently switched to taking a probiotic. And I was like, dude, you have gas. You got gas. Yeah. Because you've got different bacteria. And literally what happened was he farted a few times over the next 24 hours and then was like, I feel better and left the ER. And you're like, that's 250 bucks.

Thank you. But I mean, that's, if you just look at numbers on a page and you, like I talked about that, I have a partnership with a company called SteadyMD. That's my friend, Dr. Spencer Nadolski is part of that. And one of the appeals to that is basically like they offer concierge medicine with doctors who left. Yeah, I've heard of that. Right? So it's like 99 bucks a month but you got like text access to any doctor who can write you a script can do anything but

you know so many times how many of you out there you know this like your liver enzymes are elevated a little bit or your creatine or your bu in or anything like that and the doctor says oh my god your kidneys are failing or your liver's in trouble or something. Those are all normal reactions to people who lift weights and need a higher protein diet. It doesn't make them dangerous. You know,

and it's again, the chicken or the egg argument. People who are in liver failure and kidney failure, 100% have those enzymes elevated. But just because those are elevated does not mean you're in kidney or liver failure.

In fact, usually you're not. So it's, again, there are some really, really good doctors out there. So I don't want to make it sound like this is every single one of them, but some just kind of look at numbers on a sheet and don't actually take the full patient into account. Well, blood work is kind of like a snapshot in time, right? That could be, that could be very, really variable depending on what they did the day before or what they've been doing the last couple of weeks. And so we want to use it obviously to try to give informed decisions on, you know, like

what's happening chronically. But if you don't actually have that conversation with a person and like try to figure out if they have any symptoms and then look at the blood work and say, okay, yeah, that makes sense that they're having these symptoms because this is off the charts. You know, you're kind of, I feel like it's almost backwards that way. You're just looking at the numbers and then assuming what they're feeling like. Yep. Cool.

I got one more. Holly and Lane, you guys work together. You live together. You guys are around each other 24-7 basically. How do we not kill each other? Yeah. How do you guys stay happy? How about that?

How do you guys keep each other happy? There you go? I think I'm going to start with this one. Is that okay? Yeah, sure. I always talk first. Um, so one is knowing yourself and knowing your partner. And we, I think we, we listened to a really good book that helped us a lot. And it was called, uh, your brain on love by Stan Tatkin. Fantastic book. And it basically like, when you read this book or listen to this book, you will not only understand your partner better and why they are the way they are, but you understand yourself better. So this is a guy who studies attachment theory with children and adults. And finds a lot of the ways that you interact with your partner came about because of the way you and your parents interacted. And like she's an island. So when she gets stressed, she just like completely retracts into herself and doesn't speak

right I have a hard time speaking anyway yeah she wants when she's stressed she wants to be alone she needs alone time I'm not that way

like I'm more of a way where I feel better being around people talking doing that very feminine trait there but if we had well the other thing too is if you're around somebody

if you're like an island but you're around somebody who's more of an Island than you, you'll become more like a wave because you're adapting to them. So, but understanding from the perspective of most people are not trying to intentionally hurt somebody else when they do, they are just reacting to stressors and stimuli in their life. And so like knowing this information, we kind of looked at, oh shit, well that's why you do that. And that's why I do that. And that's, so now it's like, okay, if she gets in that place, I know sometimes I need to walk out of the room and just give some space. And she also knows that sometimes she needs me to come up and just give me a

hug, even though that wouldn't do anything for her. She needs, like sometimes I need that. Yeah. It's similar to like the, the love languages. I'm not sure if the guys listening have heard of that, but, um, yeah, everybody, uh, requires different things in their relationship to, to have fulfillment. Right. So, um, yeah, knowing the other person that you live with, what, what that is for them

is super important. If you just kept doing what you thought was best for you, that could be completely different for the other person that you live with, what that is for them is super important. If you just kept doing what you thought was best for you, that could be completely different for the other person. So like in our relationship, I think like I'm somebody that like acts of service is probably one of the things because I'm a business entrepreneur. I work, I'm really busy. So something that means a lot for me is, hey, could you do a chore? Because I don't want to do the chore.

I want to work too. I got stuff to do so that's what you know if Lane can do that for me like I'm super happy and that's like if he does that for me

I know like he's he's doing something nice so I do that and I make sure she knows about it he's like hey Holly I just did the dishes I'm like thanks babe but like for me

and this is what's hard for her is like what is it called affirmation affirmation words Affirmation. Words of affirmation. That's something that's like physical touch, words of affirmation is important for me.

So I probably, because I was bullied a lot as a kid and told I wasn't worth my whole lot, I really like it when somebody gives me a compliment, which she hates compliments. I tell her she's beautiful. And I'm an island, so I'm also really terrible at giving them as well. I tend to keep my mouth shut most of the time.

But she's gotten better. And I think the other thing too, like the really important thing that a lot of people miss in a relationship and i i learned this also from my my therapist is like uh and tom bilo had a podcast where he he said this and i thought it was like giving the person the keys to the kingdom which is basically tell them what makes you happy so many people just don't even do that in a relationship yeah they just either one expect them to understand right read your mind a tough conversation too if you've been with somebody for a long time yeah oh it'd be very intimidating yeah it's so just like okay like i have to like

i get frustrated sometimes because if she you know she is very sensitive to her environment like even yesterday she's like oh i'm, I'm really depressed today because it was cloudy. And I'm like, you mean like eight months out of the year for some people? Like, but that's just cause I don't understand it. And that doesn't happen for me. Like I have to appreciate why she's feeling that way. So it's, yeah, it's, you know, relationships that you said it, relationships are complicated. But I think the biggest thing is just being upfront with your, like, what is a no-go for you? What really bothers you? What really gets on your nerves? So if the person can correct that, that's important.

Well, you have to be really careful business-wise. Well, just relationship-wise too. But it can happen really easy in business where, you know, maybe you take a little jab at him. But those jabs, they add up to a lot. That's why people throw a jab in the first place. It turns in, it turns into so much more. And so rather than like, you know, anybody throwing a jab at anybody, you know, Hey, like, you know, you were supposed to do this. I'm upset that it didn't get done because of A, B, and C let's work together get it done and then we can move on to the next thing it's like hard to have those conversations but they're important well one of those things that she had to tell me was like

i'm a very chatty person i like to talk she needs like silence when she's working you know and so i sometimes i just have to be like okay i know you want to talk about this thing but shut up shut up shut up you know and i probably still talk more than she'd like, but it's, yeah, it's just kind of like. Anyone else that is around us, my attitude towards Blaine probably comes off as very rude, but like, unless I do that, like Fort Kabir must be like, she is such a bitch sometimes to him. Like, I don't get it, but like, we, we know how we work. And I like, we just kind of like, yeah, Blaine, shut up. Put your bloody phone on, like, put it on your ear.

Stop talking out loud on loudspeaker while I'm trying to work in the office. Like, okay, leave. So, yeah, we have a bit of like a mutual respect for that. But I think not losing yourself. Like, when you work together, you wake up together, you're in the same room. Like, I've had that in a previous relationship, but we also didn't, our values didn't really align. Like, Blaine and I, we both have the same kind of goals. We have the same drive.

We have the same values. And in a previous relationship where, you know, I thought this is what I wanted. We had some interests with the same, but not all the same. And we just butt heads because we were doing everything together. Important for you two was, um, like you really value being like having someone who can accommodate a strong, independent woman who's, you know, looking to do something. There's a lot of men who, and this was the case, like you said, your former boyfriend, he just, he wanted to be your boss. Like he wanted to be the head honcho.

He had no interest in me being in his equal when I probably was more educated about many things, but that was meant to be his domain, you know, that's his area. So yeah, I think having someone that's supportive of that has made a massive difference in how we roll. So yeah, but basically like, you know, one of the, sorry Mark, one more thing the book said that was very interesting. It was like, you know, one of the, sorry, Mark, one more thing the book said that was very interesting. It was like, you know, people want to, people, they always say, well, I want somebody who's lower maintenance.

I want to, there is no such thing as a low maintenance human being. Another human being is the biggest pain in the ass that you will ever deal with. Like, in fact, when you take your vows, it should say, I take you to be my pain in the ass. But there are some people who are a little bit more low maintenance than others. You just have to decide what is what makes you happy? What is the most important thing for you? And then is that person willing to accommodate those needs and compromise and meet you halfway? Awesome. I appreciate you guys taking the time to be on the show. Thank you guys so much. Thanks for having us. I always enjoy it. You actually got her to speak.

That's impressive. They're both actually islands, by the way. Yeah. I'm not usually the talker. We're good at riding. A hell of a car ride, huh? Yeah. Could you see how much I was like biting my tongue?

Yeah. Let them speak. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mark, for having us on. Yeah, we really appreciate it. Yeah, Andrew said something like, honest to God, actually, before this, I'm going to put you on blast. Okay. Andrew said something like, I, I like honest to God, actually before this, I'm going to put you on blast. Okay.

Andrew was like, yesterday, I'm just like, so what should I, what's Mark like? What should I expect from Mark? I'm like, you know,

cause I've heard this, you know, I'm like a lot of people say negative things about Mark. I have always had very bastards. I have always had very positive interactions with Mark. Um, but Mark is very, uh, sarcastic, direct.

You know, I'm like, and some people don't dig that. But I can tell you that he's always treated me very well. Every time I've come here, you guys have always treated me great. And every time I do this podcast, I enjoy it very much because I feel like I get to be myself. And it's just a really warm, friendly environment. You guys always take care of us. So as much as you guys have enjoyed having me, I really enjoy coming here. Great.

Thank you so much. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never strength. See you later.