Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Project EP. 94 - Tito Raymond

Episode Date: August 15, 2018

Another staple at Gold's Gym Venice, Tito Raymond. Mark Bell and Tito have been friends for years but never got around to podcasting together until now. Tito started bodybuilding in 1993 and his first 1st place win came in the 1997 Musclemania competition. Tito is still one of the top trainers at Gold's Gym. ➢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

All right, man, I'm really excited about this. Finally here with Tito Raymond, a longtime friend, a longtime trainer at Gold's. And according to Michael Hearn, the greatest training partner he's ever had. And I think that that has a lot of value and holds a lot of weight because I've seen Michael Hearn train with probably like a few hundred people since the time I've known him. Right. He's really put people through the ringer and then people stay the hell away from him for a long time.

Yeah, they do. I mean, i say the same thing about mike you know it's a really close battle between mike and my brother as my training partners but um you know jose knows that i i put in some good time good eight years with mike yeah and um you know i put in probably 20 with my brother but uh are you still throwing around some weights like that, or are you training a little different nowadays? I train a lot differently. I still try to touch those heavy weights frequently just to make sure that I can do it. Right.

And if I do anything, I like to do more volume with it. So I'll push my weight for like 10 reps. I like to see what i can do for 10 reps right like now my my big goal was uh 405 for 10 you know and i i just hit that a couple weeks ago on overhead press right and i'm trying to do that on the squat but i want to keep my volume up i don't i'm not so concerned with like a three rep max or one rep max gotcha yeah you want to still have some strength right of course yeah and then you you dabbled in some crossfit for a while i did for about four years um i was getting bored it's tough man crossfit it's hard right and i wish it was around 20 years ago yeah you know because that's a young man's

game it's a you know 20 something year old you know they can handle the recovery from the training right um i love all a lot of the concepts of it i still use it regularly myself and my training and i also train my clients that way now you and your brother have uh an interesting situation you guys were adopted right yeah we were adopted when i was uh 14 almost 15 years old um but that's kind of rare too right to be like who who wants to who wants to take on a bunch of teenagers? Right? Two kids, two older kids. Well, the family that we were adopted by, we were temporary with them when I was younger,

from when I was five until I was about eight. Oh, okay. And so Jose was a couple weeks old until he was about three. And then our parents won us back, my biological parents. And we were with them for three years. And then the state took us back away. And it took a couple years to get back to Wakefield, to a family that we lived with prior.

And we got back probably when I was about 11 or 12. And the legal adoption went through by the time I was 15. So I was a freshman in high school when I got adopted. And you and your brother always stayed together pretty much or no? We were separated after. It's crazy because my parents, biologically, they were alcoholics. And they had three young children, my brother, my sister, and I. And my mother attempted suicide several times.

Wow. So after her last attempt, the state decided they were going to take us away permanently. And my parents kidnapped us and took us to Chicago. Shit. And we were in Chicago for about two years. And then how old are you during this period nine ten eleven and you in that area you don't really know um what's going on or you kind of know that mom and dad are very mature from my nine ten eleven you know yeah you tend to have

intuition when older people are doing something that's not right when you're a kid yeah oh yeah i mean my parents they they fought each other my mother was a little crazy she beat the hell out of us yeah and uh and you know when they would come and visit they they'd send somebody to foster i mean a social worker or something to the house to check on us and they see us with bruises whatever and they were like okay this is not a good situation for these kids right and uh i remember the day that uh they had police undercover police officers that came and pulled my father over in chicago when they kidnapped us and brought us to chicago and they pulled him over for a driving thing and right just to find

out to see if that was the the family that they were looking for and the very next day there were 10 police officers at my school coming to pick me up. Was it just you and your brother? Me, my brother, and my sister. Oh, wow. Yeah. So that must have been a confusing childhood to try to make sense of that. But the whole time you're involved in sports and doing other things too?

Not yet. Not yet. All that was, I wasn't involved with sports until I was about 12. The home was too busted up and broken for you too like busted up and yeah we were living in the ghetto we were uh what do you call those people that live in broken down buildings squatters yeah yeah we were squatters we were living there we you know parents on welfare and uh food stamps and all that um i remember all that clearly you know even though i was pretty young, Jose wouldn't remember that because he was like under five. Right.

Yeah. Did you have to grow up fast? Yeah. You had to kind of take care of him? And is your sister older or younger? She's in between us. Okay. Directly in between us.

So you were... Her story was different. Like the family that adopted us in Wakefield in Massachusetts, 20 minutes from Boston. They couldn't adopt. They were going to adopt my sister as well, but they had another child that was the same age, and they didn't get along. So another family had adopted my sister, but they didn't want her to have contact with us and to know any of our other biological siblings. Sounds like this is a book. It's crazy. I mean, there's a movie out there right now in the movie theater called Three Identical Twins.

Have you heard about it? No. Yeah, it's really popular. It's taken off. It just got released a couple days ago. I don't know the exact story, but I would imagine that it probably sounds a little something like this.

Yeah, I mean... You know, where the kids get shifted around a lot. I think these children didn't even know about each other. That's how crazy this story is. Oh, they were all separated and didn't even know about each other. That's how crazy this story is. Oh, they were all separated and they didn't know about each other at all. They were all separated at a very young age and they started finding out one by one about each other. They're like, oh, you got a twin. They're like, no, actually you're triplets.

Wow, that's awesome. I'd go see it. Yeah, pretty wild, right? Yeah, I think it's in the theaters now. I mean, there's a lot that you must have learned to try to like deflect like you and your brother like and your sister are you guys like covering up with humor are you guys

like figuring out ways of like messing around or are you getting in trouble or you know what when we were younger we our outlet was sports right and I know for myself that my outlet was sports and at 12 years for myself that my outlet was sports. And at 12 years old, I started in the iron game. I was too small to play football. They wanted me in eighth grade to play with sixth

and seventh graders. Probably because you were fast and fairly athletic, but you weren't strong enough. I was 85 pounds. And you had to be 100 pounds to play on the A team. And so my parents had to sign liability waivers and release them from anything happen. And that winter, I got my first weight set. And I made a gym in my basement and watched every Rocky movie. And after every movie, I went down in the basement and hit the weights and hit the heavy bag. And at that point, is this your foster parents or your biological parents? This was at the time. This was my foster family.

Right. They were my foster family that eventually adopted us. And were they supportive of some of the stuff you guys were trying to do? You know, at that time, they were, especially when we were into sports. And if it wasn't for them, I would have never probably gotten to the Iron Game. So if I was living somewhere else and maybe they didn't think that it was a priority to get me a weight set. But that's the one thing they did. Unfortunately, a year after they legally adopted us, they divorced.

And that's when all the shit hit the fan then because I was a sophomore in high school and my parents were divorced and my mother decided she was going to start a new life. And so we didn't have any parental upbringing. So all that stuff happened when you were young, right? And now you're an adult and you have to figure out how do i not carry all that weird baggage with me how do i live my life you have

your own wife you get your own kids now and you got to be an adult you got to be you're you got to be a good citizen right you have a lot of responsibilities you're training people coaching people inspiring people um how do you kind of let go like how did was there a point where you sort of let go of all that shit or have you always just been like driven from it you know i've always been driven from it i think and i think having a mental fortitude and staying mentally strong um and and i remember as early as 11 years old, I think I lived with a foster family in between my parents and the family that adopted me in Boston. This was a transitioning phase, but it was about two years. I think it was fourth and fifth grade.

I lived with a family that was from Georgia. It was an African-American family. I was the only non-African-American person in the neighborhood. And I remember wanting to leave and running away. And I attempted to run away one night. I left. I remember it was dark out. And I went just down the block.

When you're that age, you got big plans until you get down the street. I got down the street, and I climbed the tree. And then I sat up in the tree for about two hours, three hours. And I remember I was going to sleep in the tree. And then I started thinking about squirrels coming and biting me while I was falling asleep, or me falling out of the tree. And so I went back to the house. And I remember in that time was, you know, a good amount of time that I had to think

about what's going on now in my life and where I want to be. I remember just wanting to be with my family. Right. And after about three hours, I came down off the tree and went back home and took the beating. Right. Because it wasn't like a beating from my biological parents. It was like a discipline beating. Like, I deserve that.

I was hit with a switch. Right, right. And the family that I lived with was really good to me. And it was, like I said, it was two years. And then I went back to Wakefield. Man, that is wild to have to deal with all that stuff at such a young age, to have to deal with like, it almost sounds like you were going through your own form of therapy as you were going through it.

Are you religious? You know, I don't know anybody else that has been baptized three times, but I have. A lot of it is because I was, you know, Puerto Rican family. They baptize you, right, when you're born. Then when I was with that family in Wakefield temporarily as a five to eight-year-old, I was baptized then. And then again, when I was with a family from Georgia, they were Southern Baptists. So I got baptized again, and that was a different way.

That was just dunking in a tank. And I used to go to church with that family religiously, once, twice a week. My biological father, he was a guy,, volunteer at the church, very religious. We had pictures and crosses all around the house from a young age. But as an adult, I had a bad instance in high school, freshman year in high school. When you get confirmed, I don't know if you've got confirmed or not, but that's when it happens, like at 14 years old. The priest that was at my church, he wanted to punish me because on Halloween night, we all skipped CCD, right? And I had

perfect attendance going up to this point. And the priest wanted to make an example out of me, so he prevented me from getting confirmed. And to me, it was like a graduation, and he was preventing me from graduating, because he thought I was the leader of my friends, and if I was there, they would have all come. Right? And it's like, it's Halloween. Yeah. You know, a 14-year-old is a 14-year-old.

Yeah, we want to have some fun. No matter who's leading. You know? You want to get some candy. And so after that point just i stopped going to church um i didn't stop believing i still believe i have i have strong beliefs um i'm very spiritual right um i don't know if i would say i'm super religious but i'm very spiritual i feel i'm the same way like do unto others they would do unto you 100 be good to people that are good to you

and like there's no reason to sit around and boil up a bunch of animosity and hate people and run around like a lunatic. It's wasted energy. Yeah. It's just a lot of, a lot of negative energy. You know, what I always share on this podcast, and I've been sharing this for the last five years since I've had this podcast, you know, people ask me questions all the time about, you know, success because they see the nice cars, they

see I'm staying here in Malibu, and I've acquired some financial success and definitely acquired some success in the powerlifting community and things of that nature. But what I always tell people, what I always share with them is like, keep in mind that this is advice coming from me, and I didn't start where you started. I didn't start where you started i didn't start where you started i didn't start where some of the people that are listening started so it's all perspective like you had you had to overcome a lot of these things but what i also share with people it doesn't matter if your mom died when you were eight it doesn't matter if your parents were abusive it doesn't

matter if they were alcoholics it's an unfortunate thing to say but it doesn't matter if they were alcoholics. It's an unfortunate thing to say, but it doesn't matter. When you're an adult, you still have to behave the correct way, and you still have to try to get on a path that leads you to happiness. Because if you sat around mad all day about your parents, you just told me that you call your mom, you talk to your brother every day, it seems like the family is still, even though there was a lot of dysfunction early on, it still seems like there's some good communication nowadays. Yeah, for sure.

And that train of thought, that way of thinking, I feel like I've had that since I was 10 years old. That's crazy. I think I had to grow up a lot faster. And we talk about this all the time is, you know, we have two young boys, 12 and 13 and nine. And, you know, we shelter them a little bit from stuff. But we're also like, my kids are going to grow up street smart, you know, and that street smart is going to kind of help them in school as well. And I think I was very street smart from a young age, and that that really helped me to absorb knowledge and information.

I was a sponge and I just wanted, you know, other than what I had. Also too, like that. I know, you know, I'm from the East coast as well.

And I know you could have some knucklehead friends that go down the wrong path. You must've saw a lot of that. I have, I had a couple of them and, and they, and they turn their, you know,

there's act around um but and even and even some of those guys they grow up they grow up with a nice house they grow up with a nice family mom and dad take them to baseball they go to every baseball game every practice they have everything they need and then there they are you know selling marijuana and selling god knows what. Doing heroin. Yeah, raising hell and getting in trouble. PCP. Yeah.

Cocaine, addictions. Yeah. I've had a lot of my friends coming up that had issues with it. And I'm glad to say that the good friends of mine that had the issues with that, they overcame them. And they're on the other side of that. This is something that we have to talk about because this is probably the highlight of your career,

at least in my opinion, it's the highlight of your career. You are married to Amy Fodley. Yes, I am. A fitness model who everybody knows about. Anybody who saw the magazines, what, early 2000s probably, maybe late 90s, somewhere in that category. Yeah, she was solid for about 10 years i think she was the the it girl and uh she we met um i was under contract with a supplement company from uh from budapest hungary called scitech nutrition they're

still they're here now in the states and um we had a big like two-week shooting yeah commercial shooting you know print stuff and they were doing a big video and they needed a couple other models and i had actually requested because i had never worked with amy and i had worked with all the other girls that i'd never worked with amy and i wanted to work with her um some of the stuff that i knew about her i'd heard about her was seemed really interesting. She's super smart. She was from Texas. She loved animals. Cool. And so the day that we shot, we shot here in Malibu.

Oh, there you go. Right? It was awesome. It was at Zuma Beach, right down the street. Yeah, we were just there yesterday. It was at Zuma Beach, right down the street. Yeah, we were just there yesterday. And I sat down, laid down next to where she was getting her hair and makeup done. And that's an hour process. So I could spy on her and listen to what was going on.

And she was so funny. She's such a woman's woman. Right. Very empowering to other women. She's beautiful and she's funny and uh still in great shape she's still jacked oh yeah yeah she's still jacked and tanned absolutely and uh and she's she's been uh you know just a natural athlete her whole life she rode horses growing up um her upbringing and my upbringing, totally opposite. And so for us to make the connection and to be married and have our own family is wonderful.

You guys must help each other out a lot, right? Because some of the struggles that you had and maybe some of the things that she grew up with, it must really help a lot with raising the children, right? Absolutely. I mean, it's like yin and yang. We balance each other out completely. Now, do you want to coddle the kids more or does she want to coddle the kids more? Who's in trouble in that area? You know what?

I have to be, that's my role is to be the bad guy. Okay. She's with them so much. She is really the boss and the kids will tell you that right um i don't know whose household with a with a wife isn't the boss yeah i don't know what's going on oh my kids they could care less if i get mad that's you know but but it's rare for me to get mad so then you know something's wrong you know yeah i have to get mad at them right you know it's a it is a bigger deal but my wife she's got got these looks. She'll just look at the kids, and the kids are like, okay, I'm done.

Mine's the same. I'm done doing what I was doing. I don't know how women get that, but yeah, they straighten up quick. Yeah, my kids realize that. And it's the way that my brother and I look at Amy and the way we grew up looking at her in the magazines and knowing who she is, a strong woman, beautiful woman. My kids, their reality of women, they're going to be a little warped.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Because not every woman is like this. Yeah, or even you and your brother. I mean, your brother is on the Mr. Olympia stage every single year. I mean, there must have been a conversation between you and your brother about, hey, you know that fitness girl that you see on the cover of all the magazines like i'm with her now you know what that day that we met my brother was there with me okay and i think that that had a lot to do with it because uh we were together the whole time that through with the sci-tech thing and um

he was actually uh painfully he holding the reflector oh you know on the girls so the sun shined properly on them. And I think that anybody who knows me knows how close me and my brother are. And for me to have a relationship and to be able to go forward with a girl, she'd have to really make that good connection with my brother. Right.

And it was hilarious because them two are very similar and uh that's cool in the night that we hung out it was like the two of them were just going back and forth with each other and i was sitting back watching it all happen and like this is laying down some good groundwork i like where this is going really good yeah your brother is uh what 240 or 250 pounds yeah he's 230 right now i I think. He's only about six weeks, seven weeks from the Olympia. Okay, but he'll get up to maybe 250 or something? Yeah, in the off season, he'll get up there. He's five foot three, 200 and...

I've seen him up at 255. Who's taller? You got him by a few... I'm taller. I got him taller. I got like four inches almost on him. You can dunk on his ass. I had four inches on him.

You can dunk on him, right? I think I was uh the tallest i think i was was about five seven and five eighths and i must have had shoes on because uh because i got that's a pr for you yeah that is a pr i think most people don't have prs with their height i've been shrinking you've been shrinking well maybe it's uh all those squats all those years i mean you were moving around some big weights. What kind of weight were you hitting? Well, when I was training with Mike, I think we really hit our peak. And I was doing 500 for 10, you know, with nobody squatting me.

And I think your brother tells the story about one day him seeing me do 500 pounds. And he was in total shock. Well, rock bottom, too, squats. I mean, you guys are not doing no bullshit squat. You guys are doing a real squat. A lot of times with no belt, too. Yeah, and at that time, too, I was out of the rack. I was fully confident that I didn't need a spot.

I didn't need to. I wasn't going to bail. No knee wraps or anything, right? No knee wraps or belt, no. But back then, I was 205 pounds, 210 pounds. That was the heaviest I ever got. I didn't like it. Anybody who knows me knows that I've always...

Were you still kind of lean then or no? No, no. I mean, I had abs, but I was bloated. I don't really remember seeing you not lean, but I probably started coming into the picture maybe a little bit later when I started coming out here maybe. Yeah. I'm trying to think when that was but i think it was probably 2001 okay 2002 i was trying i took a year off from competing i took the one year off of the usas and i wanted

to try to put on some muscle and so we put on a lot of weight and uh i was unable to like do my normal hiking and you know walk up a flight of stairs. I was out of breath. I didn't feel comfortable. I didn't feel healthy. And so that was the only time that I ever went up that high in my weight. But it was obvious, massive strength gains. Right.

You like to do a lot of different things. We mentioned a little bit about CrossFit. You showed me a crazy video where you were swinging on these bars down in Venice. You like to go in the ocean. You like to swim. You like to hike. What are you more than anything else if there is one thing overpowering anything? Would you say it because you told me you competed in bodybuilding like 60 times or something.

Yeah. Would you say that that's kind of the base of everything even though you power lifted and did some other things too? I'm going to go back to when I was 12 to 17 years old. I was just an athlete wanting to be better you know um and and back then there wasn't a whole lot of resources and there wasn't a whole lot of ways but i researched i went out and i found out what the pros were doing you know um pushing cars running up hills um old school that's that's what i and i just wanted to be better at track and field, at baseball, at football. I wanted to dunk and at five, seven, you know, that was a near impossibility. I could dunk a

tennis ball. I just, you know, and those things I really wanted to achieve. And I worked hard to try to do that. And as a result I think I started bodybuilding when I was 19 years old. Isn't that crazy? Like I remember like training for stuff like that started bodybuilding when I was 19 years old. Isn't that crazy? Like, I remember, like, training for stuff like that, too. Like, when I saw, you know, other people dunk, I was like, I want to figure that out. And I tried to, like, train for it. I'd, like, do sprints and bounding. And, you know, there was obviously no, like, cell phones and video games weren't as big of a thing.

Right. And you just, you know, I'd go to the track with a friend. And there might have been like five or six of us. Oh, yeah. And training the same way I train today, kind of. Doing all this crazy stuff just to try to improve upon stuff. Just to improve yourself, yeah. That I don't even know what it's for.

Right, right. Because no one really cares, right? No one gives a shit if you dunk a basketball or anything. No. In high school, one thing that from the benefit from being adopted and being able to grow up in 20 minutes outside of boston in a town called wakefield was um pride um that was something that they instilled in me at an early age um so this is a certain set of parents that they're done it's the community the community the school the football

coach the coaching staff um was like uh i hear the same kind of thing coming from like Mark Wahlberg. I hear the same kind of thing coming from John Cena. You know, John and his brothers too. Like they all train and they all have like just a particular way about them where they're going to be consistent. They're going to figure out ways of getting stuff done. So it's kind of that. And even the Patriots carry that on. It shows. I mean, that one word right there, right there pride having pride what you do on a daily basis

you know having pride um and the outcome of what you're doing and how it affects everybody else around you um and and have an accountability for it as well you know um what do you have a shirt on it for our football team that said uh tough times don't last tough people do yeah and uh and i still have that shirt that's awesome you know and uh and then in the name of our football camp but you know the during the double sessions you know that they would that would be called pride pride football camp right yeah have pride in what you're doing and always try to hustle and always always realize that people are always watching you yeah you never want to kind of let off that uh gas pedal yeah

what do you think was uh the highlight of your bodybuilding career um after competing i gotta tell you that there were several um you know i i've been a um drug-free athlete my whole life um i competed in a show that was called the Team Universe. It's still out now. But it was the only drug-tested event that was national. And I just wanted to go as far as I could. And I thought... Did you ever mess with steroids?

Never. Or did you ever think about them? Or they just, for you, they just weren't something that you were really interested in? I was never really interested in it i i i looked at the stigma of it and i didn't feel prideful of it um i um i knew some guys from the gym they were complete idiots they were on you know and they were like the bad role you didn't like the way they acted but i mean some of these guys too that take stuff i think everybody thinks you're just going to take stuff and you're going to be have this wonderful build right no guys are built like shit because they don't they're not putting the

training in the right way exactly eating correct exactly and that was my when i was 15 years old you know joined my first gym and that those are the kind of things that i saw and um and we had we had one or two guys on our football team that over the summer blew up, but they were injured. They never played. And they weren't an asset to our team. They might have been the biggest dude on the team and could squat and bench press the most, but it didn't have no effect on our team. And so, again, I thought that was a failure in my eyes. And so I really didn't have a desire to go there.

And you know what? On top of it is I was fully confident and, you know, mentally strong and feeling like I could do without it. Right. You know? You feel like you can get stronger and better without it. Was there always a drive to do better than other people, especially training with like mike o'hearn regardless of what somebody did or how big they were because mike is a big big boy mike mike is the is is the biggest and strongest guy at gold's gym at any given day in any era yeah and how long i mean 30 years right

in any era i'm talking you go back to the 60s 70s 80s 90s whatever okay yeah and in the future mike is a rare breed he's a unicorn i was thinking about that actually today when we got done with our training session i was like because we had a 25 year old kid come in and train with us and mike's attitude was a little different today and i think it was smother this kid pounding ground like just get him on the ground and pound the shit out of him and like just don't even give him a second to breathe don't give him a second breathe so mike starts curling you know i think 425s on each side whatever the hell amount of weight that is i mean he's cheating it's a cheat curl right yeah but he gets into that quick he's not really warming up

right you know he does his singles and he's right but he's there before that kid can like turn his head around right kid's trying to warm up his elbows or whatever it's awesome to watch yeah and he's just he's piling weights on and then it was boom boom boom on to the next thing and we must have done 10 or 12 sets of a bunch of different exercise we just stayed there and kept going and kept going and i you know in my head i was kind of thinking like maybe he's like maybe he's a little off today like maybe he's like grumpy but then as we went through it and i thought about it more i was like ah it's because that kid's here yeah he's trying to like shovel he's trying to shovel dirt on top of this oh yeah he wants to bury him and let him know i'm twice your age pal don't even think that you're in my league yeah he absolutely absolutely uh he

absolutely dismantled this kid but i also was thinking like he's mike is 50 or something right he's close to it he won't tell you it's a mystery right it's a mystery he likes having those mysteries the duck eggs and the other weird things that surround him the the frog thing and people are always talking about him taking stuff or whatever but what i thought was uh was really cool about today is just how he just jumped on that kid right away. And he does that to us in the training sessions too. And every once in a while, you know because you train with him a long time, you'll catch him and you'll see him down a little bit. But two days later, you know he got his sleep.

You know he got his food in. And then he's hard to mess with after that. Oh, yeah. I mean even you can break him down it could be you know he's mentally tough and i think that's a um a big plus it and you look at mike and all you do is see is physical good looking built like a goddess right god like but mentally tough that's why he's there that's why he's there at 50 years old. Yeah, and the other thing I was thinking was like, man, I wonder if like five years, like eight years, ten years? No.

He's only going to get better. Like he really, I mean, it would be a different thing if he had two kids. Right. It would be a different thing. Like you and I know this feeling. We're on a different highway, right? Mike is still down in the highway with those young 20-somethings, you know, thinking that they got something, right? And then it's awesome that they have Mike to put them in their place.

Well, those guys aren't going to prep the way he's prepping because he's taking each training session as if he's stepping onto the Mr. Olympia stage, right? Dude, he's been doing it for 30 years. Like, I'm telling you, what he does now, he's been doing it forever 30 years not like i'm telling you what he does now he's been doing it forever i've been even trying to think of like some animals i'm like oh i could throw this guy his way and i could throw this and i'm like i'm like that really won't work that well you know i mean i've challenged mike in different ways and this is why i think mike will says you know that we he was the best training partner he had, besides the fact that he was 100 pounds heavier than me. He looks at it like, if he's doing that, then I have to do this.

And I would drive him. On every set, I would drive him. I see these partners now, and they're too tired to give him a hard time. And I was on Mike like, Mike, what are you wrestling for? Let's go. Well, he'll do stuff to you that's funny because he'll say like, you know, leg extensions, right? We warm up with leg extensions before he squat or something.

And you might be in the middle of doing some reps and you're just trying to get your knees warm. And you just saw him get off there. He did like six reps. He's like 20 reps. Yeah. And you're like, you're just, okay, I'm training with him. It's his rules. Okay, whatever.

And you bang out three sets of 20 by the time you get over. I mean, he wouldn't have kicked his ass in the squat rack anyway. Anyways, right, right. But he's fatiguing the crap out of you. He's trying to take every little advantage he can. It's hilarious. That Gold's gym is amazing, though, because I think Will Harris is like 60 years old, isn't he? He's close to it.

55, 60 years old. That's a mystery, too, buddy. And he's massive. You got Robbie Robinson. I heard he's in his 70s robbie's awesome he looks he looks and uh you know what i came out to gold's gym venice i visited a couple times in 93 94 and then i'd come back out every year and i stay a little bit longer every time and then then finally in 98, I was like, why am I going back to Boston? Like, this is where I want to be. You know, I was a personal trainer, you know, for six years out of college, started, you know, my own training business. And

it was really good for six months of the year. And then the other six months, everybody would hibernate. And so for me to have a future and to be able to save and to be able to be successful, I needed to be year-round. And so I wanted to wait for my brother to graduate college before I moved out and came out to Cal State. Because you guys were hanging out. We were tight. I would come visit him at school all the time.

That's interesting. I moved out here because of my brother. My brother moved here, and he and I were super close, and we trained together all the time. I was like, you can't leave me. What are you doing? He's like, I'm going to film school. I got to get an education.

He had gone to Dean Junior College, and then he went into Plymouth State. At Plymouth State, he walked on the football team and became the captain of the team by his senior year. He also jumped into the wrestling team and was a starting wrestler, one of the best wrestlers. Do you have a wrestling background too? I did in middle school, junior high, in high school. You got a thick neck. I should have.

That's one regret. I wish I did play. Because I love the game of basketball. Very athletic game. I just didn't have the height for it. But to me, even then, I was like, I don't care. I don't need the height. I'll school you at six foot three, just like I'll school anybody.

But I wasn't built for that. Everybody's forcing me, trying to force me to play, to wrestle. And then I just said, you know what? Football's my sport sport i want to do everything that's going to make me better at football so i ran track instead of playing basketball or wrestling i ran indoor track and outdoor track kids don't have that today you know like the nfl has such a bad stigma about it uh sports have also been tarnished by drugs and a lot of the guys getting in trouble and just there's i don't know

there's just been a lot of things swirling around sports in general where i don't think it's the same as when we were kids and you hear so many people uh their weight training was masked by i'm gonna train because i'm doing because i want to do this which is way different than i'm gonna train just because I want bigger arms. Like you're just not going to convince as many people of saying, Hey, you know, if you do these exercises for the next 10 years, you'll start to like not look half bad. You know, it's like, it's not a good sales pitch, especially to your son. Who's like 13 to my son.

Who's 15. Um, this is going to make you healthier. It's like, they don't care about any of that like there's they're you know my son's pretty active and obviously your son's very active he's like a junior lifeguard or something like that yeah yeah but you know the kids aren't getting the same uh physical education as they used to you're right it's a shame you're right you know you think about it back then like we had pe every day yeah every day and then it was i don't know 10 years after high school like that they started taking the programs away in arts and music and what's going on like these are the most important

parts of school yeah right of physical education um and it still is it It's pathetic. Like, I think my kids, we go to El Segundo School District versus L.A. School District, and they have P.E. like two or three days a week, and it's just basically go out and play. It's like recess. I think when they get in high school, I think it's a little bit more aggressive. I think that because I've been in the industry as a trainer for 27 years,

and I train from 14-year-olds to 75-year-olds, and what we do is for everybody. Yeah. I don't think people realize that yeah i don't think people understand like we we had one of the guys that's filming the movie that my brother and i are working on our nutrition movie um he just recently got into training he's never done anything and i said hey look at how awesome today was you did everything that we did i was like think about like put that in perspective you did every single thing that michael hearn did today yeah and he's been training since he was 12 and he's almost 50 years

old right that's wild yeah but like you said there there's a there's something for everybody in there and sometimes you may show somebody an exercise and they're like hey man like that hurts my knee or that hurts my hip yeah well what do you do you just find another exercise call an audible there's a lot of right yeah absolutely i mean uh like i said doing it for 27 years i've i've i've come to see everything and be able to you know if you can't do this there is something that you can do i'll find something that you can do that will give you the same effect that i'm trying to get out of using this other exercise. You know, I used to say, people say, are you a bodybuilder? Well, if I lift weights, yeah,

I'm building my body. You know, everybody that steps into this gym is a bodybuilder. You know, whether you're at a high level bodybuilding or you're just beginning or somewhere in the middle, you're bodybuilding. You're trying to do something for yourself and for your body that is going to affect you physically and mentally that was joe weeder's mentality and that's part of the reason why he was so successful he was like anybody anybody that steps because they were like oh bodybuilding is like niche and he's like no anybody that comes into the gym is building their body just like you said yeah And all those people became like customers, clients of his magazines and supplements. Absolutely. And the list of things that that guy did goes on and on.

I think that we were a byproduct of Weider principles. Yeah. Because that's the only thing that we had. I remember being 15 years old and going to the magazine store, waiting for them to put the new issue of Muscle & Fitness out. Oh, absolutely. And then the guy was like, oh, it didn't come in today. It'll be in tomorrow. And I'd come back the next day, you know, waiting for my issue of Muscle & Fitness.

And that was the only resource that I had. You know, because like you said, I didn't have a computer. There was nothing out there we could. And so every month I would be looking for the next issue. And of the time I may not even been able to buy it. I would just spend two hours in the magazine store reading it. Now you ended up being in these magazines, right? Yeah. Did you get on the cover of some of them?

I did. I did. That's amazing. Back to when you asked me about my highlights of bodybuilding. Well, one of them was definitely the cover of Muscle & Fitness, July 2007. I don't care about all the other magazines. As great as they are, all that mattered to me was Muscle & Fitness. It just told you the backstory of it, that I would wait 30 days for the magazine to come and run out there.

For me to be able to be on the cover of it, it was a huge accomplishment of mine that I always wanted to do. Marrying my wife is right up there. I should say that that's probably number one. But for bodybuilding accomplishments, I've been able to travel the world to compete in the world championships because of the Team Universe. I won the Team Universe three times. And after the third time, even some of the guys at work, they're like, why you even doing the show? Why you keep doing it?

You've won it every time. And I'm like, no, I didn't win it every time. I did it 11 times and I won it three times. And the first eight times, I didn't win it. And so I was coming back and then it was the only event that was tested, right? And so I would compete in the USAs that wasn't tested. And the best that I came was second place. And I felt like, you know, if I could win the team universe, then I could win the USAs.

Yeah. But winning the team universe three times, that was definitely a highlight. Going to the world championships and representing the US, the closest thing that we could do is for Olympics. It felt like it was the Olympics, especially when we went to the world championships or the world games in Japan. We got to travel to Bratislava slovakia to compete in the in the world championships um osaka japan and in osaka it was like it was treated like the olympics we had other sports that were there and we had a parade of of champions where we all came out with our you know usa uniforms and walked in a parade it was and that that was right up there with the highlights.

There's so much involved in bodybuilding. You know, you got the food prep. You have to figure out, you know, when to sleep. Most people utilize traditional cardio. Not every guy uses cardio. And the training, the tanning, and then there's even like specific tanning, like things that you put on for the actual show itself painting yourself you're figuring it out now right yeah

yeah i'm not even figuring it out i'm going through it i guess let's say i'm working working through the process you know there's there's so much uh detail involved in it and i you know after years and years of power lifting obviously as a power lifter you do nothing but make fun of bodybuilding this is your stance and as a power lifter you throw stones at everybody because that's just what we do because we we rest for 10 minutes in between sets and we got nothing better to do with our time than hate on crossfitters and people that are skinnier and prettier than us right and so we just talk a bunch of trash basically but you know after going through this process i mean holy shit is it difficult like it's so time consuming yeah did you step away from bodybuilding

a little bit to make more room for your business practices and also uh family time 100 you can't even if you're getting ready for a show you can't even really eat out with your family you can't like even just enjoy a dinner somewhere you can drink iced tea or something i i started at 19 i learned and it was two weeks before my 20th birthday and the guys at the gym were like you know i'm training getting ready for football and i'm in college and going in my freshman sophomore year in college and i'm hardcore doing 40 yard sprints you know a guy at the gym says, oh, there's a show this weekend. You should do it. And I'm like, what show?

It's up at Old Orchard Beach in Maine, right? And I'm like, what do I have to do? They're like, oh, you just got to do these poses, this pose, and you got to come up with a 60-second routine to music. And I'm like, you know what? Why not? It was eight days away or something. And I'm like, I could do it. Just, you know, got a shave and go up there. And, and I did it and I came in second

place. And, and, and, and I got to tell you that that not winning that was really frustrating. And even though I only prepped, you know, eight days for it, um, I was really pissed off. Yeah. Cause of all the training because you were still training a lot i was trained but the training i was going to do either way you know and then changing the training for for bodybuilding it had to be a change specific specific change and i didn't really know that yet and didn't make it but competing in that and coming in second place was was good for me because then i came back and the next time that i was going to do it, I was going to do it full on. And I was really lucky because I was going to Springfield College where John Cena went. And we had a great weightlifting coach. He was a

former AAU Mr. Universe. What's his name? Damn it. Jeff. Jeff King. I don't know if you remember Jeff King. If anybody looked out there and looked at Jeff King, Jeff King should have been a Mr. Olympia. He was a great body, known for his legs, arms. But he was our weightlifting coach, football team weightlifting. And he put me on a six-week diet because I asked him. I knew he was a competitor. And he put me on a six-week diet, you know, because I asked him. I knew he was a competitor. And he put me on a six-week diet. It was basically white rice, broccoli, and chicken. And for six weeks, I went on it. And I won the Miss Massachusetts in the Berkshire Classic in Massachusetts. And the feeling of winning that show after, like, you know, six weeks of preparation and all I was thinking about.

It was like I'm used to playing football. We prep one week for a team. This was six weeks for one game. And it was a lot that was involved in that. And the high that I got from it obviously went on for another 20 years. Six weeks is a long time when it, when it's every, when it's every moment of every day. Exactly.

That's what people are, may not understand that are listening is that it's every single meal and it's the preparation of even just go, if you're going to a movie, right. That becomes like an event. Of course. You're coming here for the day that becomes an, I need to bring my chicken. I need to bring my, you know, and even though you're not like competing, you still have the mindset and you're still bringing healthy foods with you wherever you go. Even though you're not weight training, you know, you still got to be, am I exerting too

much energy? You know what I mean? Are these calories accounted for? Can I go to this wedding? What kind of food is going to be, can I bring my food to the wedding? It makes you nervous. Like I'm going to sweat a lot. Yeah, I'm going to sweat.

Yeah. Am I going to have to cut out of here early? I mean, it really, it takes over your whole life. And in 2003, when I stepped away from competing, there were several things that made that happen. Losing to my brother for the first time, that was a big one. That was like I wanted to pass off the torch. Yeah.

You guys competed against each other. Yeah, we did. We competed a couple events, a couple times, because he had just been smashing the lightweight classes and then bumping up every category until he became a middleweight and was in my category. And then I think it was 2003 or 2000. Yeah, 2003.

Did you in some way feel good about that? I mean, obviously you don't want your brother to beat you, but at the same time. No, no, no. I you also i had 20 years in already you know what i mean and so for me we're close to it 20 years well also too i mean he he obviously you have an you have amazing genetics and obviously uh when you're a pro bodybuilder there's some other things involved but with him he has a mr olymp Olympia body, which is kind of different, right? Yeah, because I'm a little taller. Right.

And he's a little shorter and thicker. Like, he's built to be one of the actual best in the world every single year. Oh, he's been one of the best in the world for 10 years. That's insane. You know, and he's been in the top three at the Olympia consistently. What's his name on Instagram? Boston Mass. The Boston Mass. Yeah, the Boston Mass. Yeah, I mean, he's just in the top three at the Olympia consistently. What's his name on Instagram? Boston Mass. The Boston Mass.

Yeah, the Boston Mass. Yeah, I mean, he's just freaky big. Yeah, and he was always like that. I mean, when he was five years old, we called him Bear. He had paws that were thick, hands huge. He was jacked when he was a little kid. He was jacked when he was five years old. He used to make money for us.

People wouldn't believe that he could do, five years old, he could do pull-ups off the doorway sills. And he would scale up the doorway, clamp onto the top of the doorway, and bang out pull-ups. Holy shit. And we'd be making money. Other of it's, oh, you can't go down there.

Somebody would throw down like 10 silver dollars in the deep end of the pool. And let's see if you can get all 10 of them and bring them back up. If you can do that, you can have it. And we were like, done. Yeah, like we like done yeah hold that breath for about three minutes picking up every dollar and come back up i was at gold's a couple days ago and you were training somebody and i noticed something that i thought was really cool and unique and special and uh you know no one

really gives a crap in there like it not no i shouldn't say no one gives a crap a lot of people don't give a crap like they don't understand they're on like sacred ground this is the mecca yeah you know and it should be treated with respect and the people that train in there um they should be doing the best job they can to help keep the place clean help keep the place nice put weights away be respectful to other people buy some stuff from the store in the front every once in a while like it'll be a cheap ass don't be trying to sneak in there for free from the store in the front every once in a while like it'll be a cheap ass don't be trying to sneak in there for free all the time oh yeah little things not a big deal just try to if you don't want to put money towards it just try to help out in some way

respect respect respect yeah and take pride as you were saying earlier yeah but i saw your client was was doing some stuff and i noticed you coaching every rep, which I think is awesome. You're right there on top of the guy, and then he gets done, and you take a paper towel, and you're wiping it down. And I have not seen one person wipe down anything in there since I've been in there for this whole month. And then there's a bunch of dumbbells scattered on the ground because it looked like you guys were doing some supersets or you guys were doing various exercises. Your client, boom, he hustles. he's grabbing the dumbbells and he's stacking them back in the rack and then he comes back over and he's he's helping wipe down the bench as well yeah that's part of teaching them you know um like i said like my job is to teach

give you the skills right and to teach you and and to really show that i'm doing my job we got to watch you do it on yourself on your own right right because if you can't do it on your own like i'm not doing my job right and so that's what i try to instill in my in my people that i train is that like yeah i don't want you to depend on me right i want to teach you and give you the skills so that you can then turn and teach somebody else. Yeah. What if that same person takes their brother or their uncle or their mom to the gym and says, hey, this is what my trainer showed me. They take them through an exercise and say, yeah, when you leave a mess behind, you always clean it up. You clean up after yourself.

You always put it back so that way it's set for the next person. Right. It's routine. And you know what? Everybody that I work with, they don't know any different. That's how they know. That's the etiquette. And what? Everybody that I work with, they don't know any different. That's how they know. That's the etiquette. And this is something that since day one, since I've been at Gold's Gym Venice, that I think that everybody should be handed a gym etiquette book. Yeah. Right? You're going to have to write one.

Because common sense is not common sense anymore. No, it's not. You know? Unfortunately, that's the reality of our world. it's you know unfortunately that's the reality of our world you know common sense and just things uh like consistency those things are they become spectacular yeah and they really they kind of shouldn't be right right but uh like hey man like you're you're doing so good you show up on time all the time it's like that's not a big deal it shouldn't be yeah right yeah you you work hard every time you're here it's like wow yeah yeah i mean come on that's how it's supposed to be yeah you should you should be

working hard uh also in gold to gym there's a lot of trainers in there there's a lot of different people and you probably won't allow me to give you credit for it but just in talking to a lot of the people in there um i know know, just from hearing different people say different things, I've heard many, many people in there say, Tito Raymond's the guy. Like if you want to go and you want to, you want to get in shape, you want to train hard and you want to be shown what's up and you want to be shown, you know, how it's done, then he's the best trainer. How have you developed a reputation like that? I think it's just the way i i i lead my life um and i've i've not known it any other way than to you know lead by example um you know live your life the way that you like we talked earlier you know treat others the way

you want to be treated and um it means a lot to me that my peers, you know, and my peers say those things. And, you know, the one thing that I say is, you know, success can be measured in many different ways. I have never been one where, you know, monetarily means is a success for me. That doesn't mean anything. You can be a billionaire and still be really poor and other things. Yeah, you can still be a prick. Right? And that's not success. What kind of success is that?

You have all the money in the world and then you die and somebody else inherits that money, whatever. But the success is like the feelings that you leave behind in people and how they feel about you. Right. Because we're not going to be here forever. And our memories and our you know what we've done and how we treated people and the respect that that is i feel that's how i want to measure my success you know uh and you've been a trainer in there for

20 plus years yeah going on coming on 20 now doing it day in and day out is there are there times where you lose a little zip or lose a little motivation or has there ever been a time where you lose a little bit like maybe when you first had your kids or something like were you tired or like never never you love it i can honestly tell you i never i just it's just i've never seen it but i always see you high energy yeah i i you know what i was lucky to be able to go to springfield college is a big physical education school um i got to pick and choose what i was going to be able to go to Springfield College. It's a big physical education school. I got to pick and choose what I was going to do for the rest of my life.

I got to see through all my younger years people with different occupations. I was a demolition. I had every job that you can think of. I was a dishwasher at 13. I had a paper route at 12. I had two of them. I had a paper route at 12. I had two of them. I had a good work ethic from an early age. Paper route means you're waking up super early.

Yeah, delivering 58 papers, holding the newspaper bag over my forehead. And that's how I think I got my neck. From 12 years old, holding 58 papers on my head with only both hands on the handle the handlebars yeah you know the newspaper bag on my phone and in massachusetts it's probably freezing oh yeah early in the morning i but from that i got to do a lot of shoveling jobs where like if we had a snow day i could easily go out and make 400 dollars yeah cash you know shoveling driveways in the summer i'd mow people's lawns on the deal when you're a kid to be able to make that kind of cash. I would rake leaves. I would do whatever I needed to do to get means.

Right. And what were we talking about? We were just talking about some of the history you have with kind of building some of this discipline. But let's move on anyway. So I think one of the things that's important about you is that you lead by example. You're always in shape.

You're always strong. You're always able to do these weird, crazy things. Now, you like to go on the ocean, but not too long ago, you got stuck out there. I did. And you ended up, for lack of a better term, you ended up in some deep water. I had to get rescued.

I had to get rescued by two lifeguards and a jet ski. It was like an undertow rip current. And I was totally chilled and relaxed and just floating out in the water. And I'm a pretty good swimmer. I feel like I'm a pretty good swimmer. I've been swimming my whole life and we live a mile from the ocean. So I was out there just chilling. I didn't have to worry about my kids.

They were on the beach with my wife. So I was floating and hanging out with surfers. All of a sudden, I'm like, wow, I'm way out here. And I'm watching this old Hawaiian dude teach this girl how to surf. And then I was like, after about three or four of her attempts to take a wave, I said, okay, I'm going to swim back in. I tried to come in, got hammered by a wave got pushed under and pulled back out tried again then i'm like what's going on let me take back

let me sit back and and observe from a distance what's going on reevaluate maybe i need to swim a different direction exactly so then i backed out and at that time they had already seen me attempt to come in so they already started sending lifeguards out to me. I go over to the old Hawaiian dude, and I'm like, hey, buddy, can I borrow your surfboard? He's like, yeah, man. He pulls it over to me, and we're just having a conversation and talking. I look up, and I see everybody on the beach is looking at me. In the lifeguard, he gets to me, and he has me let go of the surfboard.

I'm like, I'm totally cool and calm. It was just one of those things. Like, if their lifeguards weren't there, I was going to chill out, observe the situation, and take a different approach, and I would have came in. But it was too late. These guys were already on their way. Let them do their job. So the guy calls in the jet ski, because it was pretty bad.

And the jet ski comes over. He turns around, has me hop on a little board behind him. And then the lifeguard jumps on top of me, right? And then he goes, go. And then right when he went to go, it was too heavy in the back. And the wave lifted. And the jet ski and the me and the two lifeguards

underneath got dumped under. The whole thing flipped under. And then, so then he had to do it again. And then this time, yeah, the jet ski had to come to come around right and i'm holding on to the little lifeguard thing um and then the this time the jet ski guy comes over and goes let him get on by himself and then i hopped on by my own and he pulled me in and you know what i it might have been scary from the beach looking at me but i was never in a panic mode. I was like, again, I was really mentally strong, relaxing, taking, you know,

observed the whole area. But you were a little bit like, how's this gonna pan out? Yeah, yeah, how's it gonna pan out? And you know what? And if it, like I said, if the lifeguards went there, I would have been recognized, you know,

okay, I need to go out and swim around this rip current. But it was embarrassing. My wife got it all on film. She's like, you thought you were a good swimmer, huh? Yeah, she's making fun of you. Yeah, you know, muscle mother nature. If the guy surfing wasn't there, then it might have been.

That would have been a different story. If I didn't get a chance to rest, yeah. Because I train myself a lot. I do a lot of hit circuits. And where I get to that point to where I'm physically exhausted and I train myself a lot. I do a lot of hit circuits and where I get to that point to where I'm physically exhausted and I still have to continue. And you just relax, take an inventory, right? Yeah. Am I okay? Am I okay? Yeah. Why do you train yourself to that point?

I don't know. I think that it's not until I get to that point where I get my endorphin release, you know, it's a great feeling. Um, and, and I can translate that into something else. You're right. For instance, not panicking in a rip current. Yeah. I think, I think it helps tremendously too with, uh, coping skills. I think it, it, uh, helps tremendously with with uh coping skills i think it it uh helps tremendously with um being able to decipher just crap information from other people you know sometimes somebody will tell you something they'll say uh it just it helps you kind of pick out like what's good and what's shitty right like it just makes things easier because you know like you know how hard you go and you know the intensity that isn't that it uh takes to get up on a bodybuilding stage and so you know how hard you go, and you know the intensity that it takes

to get up on a bodybuilding stage. And so you know a good bodybuilding coach when you see one. You know a good bodybuilder when you see one. You know a good football player when you see one. You know when somebody is a good person when you see one because they have just a certain way about them that is reflective of a lot of the things that you've already been talking about. And it's hard to get to those things without a lot of discipline. And I think the

training and the food, as meathead as it sounds, without those things, sometimes it's hard to find the discipline in other areas of your life for it to make sense, unless it's... I think that being physical, I think, needs to be part of everybody's life in some way. Yeah, absolutely. And like you said, there's so many ways where what we do in the gym can translate over into a normal life. You can't really get there any other way.

No. There's not a drug, there's not a thing that you can take. No. To where you're like, oh, this feels like the way I feel when I did 150 reps of body weight squats in a row or something yeah when i thought i couldn't do anymore yeah and and and my friend my trainer my whoever made me keep going you know and you that's a wild spot to be in when you literally think you have nothing left and you do a few more and then sometimes it is like kind of a

bad idea you're like you end up in a really bad oh you up in a really bad spot, and you're like, oh, okay, that was a little too much. Yeah. Yesterday, we're doing box jumps, and we're doing box jumps in a 30-inch box after exhausting ourselves with single-arm snatches, dumbbell snatches, and then kettlebell swings. So you know the heart rate's up there. And so I kept yelling at my boys, training with two guys. I kept telling them, relax, relax. Take your time.

Don't rush. Don't rush. Like, you know, we're doing 10 reps. I want you to do them, but I want you to do one at a time. You know, and then when you're at nine, you take an extra breath. You finish it off. No injuries. It was a success.

Right? Get your feet up as high as you can, even though the box is 30 inches, jump 34 inches. Same guy that I was with yesterday. A couple years ago, we were doing a similar workout. He doesn't take his time. He rushes. He hits his shins and bleeding, but it didn't stop him.

He kept going. Because he's a savage. You've got to get it done. You've got to get it done, yeah. So you also have being athletic and being able to move around and do some of these crazy things. You got two artificial hips now. Yeah. This August will be two years from my first hip replacement.

And then December will be from the second hip replacement. You're like my brother. You're walking around like a robot. You know what? Your brother had a lot to do with my success having watched him go through what he went through and he went through way more than i i did mine was very simple mine was also you know what 10 years later than his yeah and um so the technology was way more accurate um the science and methodology behind it. And I think I had an anterior approach where they opened it.

I don't know where your brother's was, he was in front of the back. But they didn't hit any tissue, right? So if you think about it, they just replaced parts, right? They didn't cut any of my muscle, they didn't cut any tendons, they didn't cut it. They just moved and stretched it and irritated it for a couple of days. I mean, I was walking. In order

to get out of the hospital, you had to be able to walk up and downstairs. But I tell you that whatever they told me to do, I did it. They told me to do it one or two times a day. I was doing it four to five times a day, right? They told that you know want you to be able to walk a mile work up to walking a mile i i doubled it and went to walking two miles you know um and then still to this day i i do all my my routine that i was doing for rehab for my hips because it's um you know you take you take it for granted until it's taken away and i mean you use your hips for everything demoral granted until it's taken away. And I mean, you use your hips for everything. It's demoralizing when it's taken away.

Absolutely. It's like, holy shit, I'm getting old. Like what's happening? I'm falling apart. Yeah. I mean, to be able to look down at my leg and not be able to flex my quad or to see how much my ass shrunk. And to build my ass took years you know squatting and deadlifting and

lunging atrophy because they're not atrophy they just disappeared you put on a pair of jeans that used to be tight and they're sliding down yeah it was i mean i lost two inches off my leg and i don't know how much off my ass but i assume about two inches off my ass too and uh it took about a year to be able to build up to doing good weight that would actually build for me. You know what I mean? Right. And because I've had the experience of doing it the first time, I just had to be more patient with the recovery.

And what took 20 years just took me two years to get back up to, like I said, my goal was to get to be able to do 400 pounds. And I'm getting closer to that on the squat. The deadlift has always been my big lift. So that's really coming along nice. I'm probably close to 500 now. I haven't attempted it. And I don't know if I will attempt ever 500 again.

But I will try 400 for 15. Are you in pain nowadays? I have no pain. I have no pain. I've, you know, the one thing that I think that I, that led to my success is that I was very thorough in all my workouts and my training. And, you know, I always had a warmup.

I always stretched. I always, you know. Oh, Hern's really smart with his workouts. You know, I don't think he gets enough credit for that i think you know a lot of times people just think that he just trains balls to the wall all the time but they don't really understand a lot of the stuff that he does is uh like there's a lot of extra range of motion to some of the movements that he does right and uh when you look at it as an outsider you're like yeah that's a dumb exercise because you're gonna get injured but if you just use the appropriate weight,

it actually ends up being like, he'll do a lateral raise. Well, rather than just going up to like the ear, he'll come all the way over his head. But it's like, Hey, if that hurts,

just use 10 pounds. Yeah. And now you have a nice range of motion. You're, you're, you're moving your arms there. They were meant to move that way. Right.

You know? Yeah. And I think that full range of motion uh type of stuff is something that can really save a lot of people that a lot of stuff that you did yeah always always full range always um really controlling both parts of the lift yeah you know the descent and you know explosion um on a deadlift uh on a bench press, the descent and the explosion. Controlling it, like time under tension. And I think that was just something that me as a 12-year-old down in my basement, that's something that I started doing back then, you know,

just to show dominance of it. And I still tell my clients now when we're training, dominate the rep, right? Yeah, show off. Show me what's up. Go for it. Right, in both directions. That way you're not overusing anything. Right.

So nowadays you're a dad. Is this the hardest thing that you've had to do? It's the best thing that I've had to it's the best thing that i had to do yeah you know what i'm proud of my boys uh um you know you get out of it what you put into it and that's just like everything in life um and um you know having being a dad is the the best thing in the world it's tough to make time for everything though right because you got your own training you have a lot of clients. And these clients,

they're probably texting you and emailing you. And there's probably a lot of communication because they're trying to diet and they're trying to be better and you're trying to motivate. And so it's gotta be hard to figure out when do I put down the phone and hang out with the kids.

Or you might be wanting to stretch your foam roll or do whatever and your kids are in a different room reading and you're with the kids, or you might be wanting to stretch or foam roll or do whatever, and your kids are in a different room reading, and you're kind of thinking, oh, shit, we should probably all be hanging out, right? Yeah, absolutely. And it's just cognitive. You got to really be there mentally. You got to be present and aware.

And just what you said is exactly right. You know, people who don't succeed in parenting, it's going to affect all of us. You know, we're seeing that now with the millennials. Like, I think those were failed parenting, you know? And I see it now with having children. And even when my kids were super little, I'm super aware of everything.

And I think that that's just from my upbringing, you know? Yeah. Being aware of my surroundings, like peripheral vision. And that's just from my upbringing you know being aware of my surroundings like peripheral vision and that's why it helped me as an athlete being at the playground and being aware of every person that's at that playground and then not only being aware of every person at that playground are they with children

are they without children are they exactly I mean no tolerance for creepers right and um and i i noticed that not everybody parents the same and uh you know our kids will come home and they're you know my friend you know gets to play video games every day and i'm like do you want to go live with them right right or do you want to stay here right this is the way we do things well there's also

a lot of there's a lot of time later on for all that stuff you know as the kids get older and they they uh start venturing off and doing some of their own things or they are they're out of the house even right yeah like do whatever you want when you're older you know i mean so we tell them when you're 18 you can make kind of those decisions yeah when you're in our house let's just have you try to do something more productive and you know what happens too is like you know people that are listening to this right now that have a hard time with their kids with electronics and tablets and phones and things like that you don't have to be a maniac about it but at the same time pull these things away from

your kids it's the best thing you can do for them pull pull some of the junk food away from them exactly it doesn't have to be all the time it doesn't have to be you know you might have different principles or ideas of how that looks for your child right and there's i would say there's there isn't really a right and wrong right but you'll notice that when you pull these electronics away from them what do they end up doing they end up playing playing talking conversing they go outside and maybe they beat the hell out of each other and one kid's crying or whatever so what right and i think that's the problem right now with with parents is that they they just want to give it to their kids because it's easy because that's what the kids want because the kids are easier on the parents right i see their parents on the phone too much too and that's something that my

wife and i try to concentrate on too is like this is not a good message they're they're asking us for stuff you know they're they're you know i my son you know like he'll he might not do good in school or like there might be a situation and i'll just sit down with him i'll say what do you need you you got me i'm here what do you need how can i how can i did you know was i not around enough was i like working too much like how do we how do we flatten this all out how do we straighten this out or you're just not doing your homework because you fucking hate school like every other kid right i mean the thing right there he says communication just you asking your child what what do you need you know it's communicating and i think that you know that there's a lot less of it you're because of

your youngest throws a pencil across the room and it hits your oldest in the face it's like he obviously is like looking for somebody to say something to him right yeah exactly maybe you're down texting or whatever you're doing yeah it's like okay now what are you guys doing you don't normally act like that like what's going on right and just being aware and uh you know having boys boys, the boys need a physical. And because we were boys, we know. Yeah. We need a physical outlet. Whatever physicality it is, whether it's wrestling, climbing, swimming, running, lifting weights, whatever it is, they need an outlet.

They need something like that. Your kids are in the water a lot, right? Yeah, my kids are in the water. They're on swim team. They're doing your lifeguard program. Your kid could save your life next time you're stuck out there. Yeah, I believe my 13-year-old could. Being a lifeguard is no joke.

No joke. And this program that they're in is the best program in the world. Swimming in the ocean is brutal. Australia is second. And there's junior lifeguard program in LA County. They continue this program. They can become county lifeguards where they get really good benefits.

They get really good salary. And if they wanted to, they could just do the summers. And this is prepping from after high school when they go to college. And then they come home and they have a job to do you know that we're there in the summer that they can make 15 20 grand and then go back off to college right that's such good money when you're when you're so young you know at uh he's 13 right yeah at 13 will he have some opportunities to make some money

or is it like kind of a freebie thing until? Not yet. You have to finish the program, and I think it's from 13 to 17. I mean, my youngest is nine, and he's in the program, and so he's going to be in it a lot longer than my older one is. But I think it ends at 16. Okay. And then after 16, you become a cadet. Right. And then after the cadet, then you can become a lifeguard.

Yeah. That's pretty cool. It's really cool. And especially because we live here. We have a pool. And when both my boys were born, they were in the pool in the backyard within months of when they were born. And because my oldest was born in July, he was in the pool earlier. And Cruz was born in December.

So we waited a little longer before we got him in the pool earlier. And Cruz was born in December, so we waited a little longer before we got him in the pool. But both of them, the main priority was just to get him relaxed and comfortable in the water. Right. Do you guys travel much as a family? You get a chance to go on vacations or do anything like that? I mean, some people do and some people don't. Yeah, because of our kids. It's all about our kids and their schooling.

And because we just got into a new school district, we don't want them to miss any school days. So the opportunities that we may get are maybe three-day vacations and then maybe one for a week, a year. And we love Hawaii. That's where we were married. And we've been back there probably 10 times since we've been married. We're going on our 16th wedding anniversary.

And our kids know Hawaii very well. And again, that's a lot of reason that we want to make sure that they're really good swimmers. Yeah. Yeah, so they can enjoy those beaches out there. Yeah. And I mean, the waves out there are a lot stronger than they are here. Oh, my God.

Yeah, they're huge. Yeah, my wife and I, we get a pretty good opportunity for vacations now that both kids are a little older. My oldest is 15, and my daughter is 10. And it just makes it easier. They're more portable now. When they were young, and they were crapping their pants. You had to bring a portable crib.

You had to bring two strollers. You had to bring car seats. It wasn had to bring two strollers. You had to bring car seats. It wasn't easy. I was a pack mule. And now we really live for the vacations. I mean, not that I live for time off, because I don't ever really have time off anyway, because I always mix work together.

Right, you can work when you want, yeah. And I think that that's a decent way to marry all these things together is to be inclusive. I love for people to meet the people that I know, and not only meet the people I know, and part of the reason for this podcast and part of the reason for my gym and some of these things is so that people can not only know the people that I know, but they can know them the way that I know them. So this is a good introduction to you and your family and all the things that you overcame to become who you are. And it gives people better perspective because if it's just me talking about what I'm doing, it's not as exciting. But I also like to include my family on a lot of this. So that way, let's

just say hypothetically that two months from now, you're like, hey, you got this event going on, I'm kicking off this thing with my business, why don't you come down to LA? Well, now I'll say, hey, remember Tito and his wife and his kids that came over? Remember that? I'm gonna go down to LA for a day, I'm gonna be back.

And now it's more inclusive. Now everybody understands. There's not anything weird going on. There's no side thing going on. This is what's happening. You already met these people. You're already comfortable with them. You liked them when they came over, and this is how it goes.

It's communication, right? Right. And it's, you know, you're an open book. Right. And that's how we all should be, you know. My kids know all about it, and they give me a hard time about being on my phone which because i'm at work most of the time and then when they do see me you know it's very little amount of time not as much as i would like but they you know and i have you know answer text

messages or emails or you know or post something and so we have a basket right in the front door right when you front them with the front door and we a basket right in the front door, right when you front door, and we put our phone in the basket. And especially during dinner time, this is the time where we're going to be talking to each other and there's not going to be any distractions because I think that's what these tech devices are, the distraction from a reality.

They are. Who's more important than who's in your house? Yeah, nobody. But at the same time, it's hard because somebody might say, hey, I got to cancel that 5 o'clock appointment tomorrow. And if you miss that text and you woke up at 3 to get there at 5 and you need to be there until 8, then it's really disheartening, right? So it's hard to kind of – it's hard to organize it all. It's hard to make sense of it. But something that I learned that really has helped me is just that these things are are just not that urgent and so that has helped a lot like you know what just

just relax like you don't need to communicate back to somebody within three minutes right it could be four hours or six hours it's okay and some things are more pressing than others but yeah don't flip out exactly you don't sweat the small stuff. The big stuff is right in front of you. And what happened to your children that day that may affect them for the rest of their life. So you want to know everything that happens to them. And one of my questions to my kids is,

how was your day? Right. And another one was, what was your best part of your day? I don't know. Then I try to really get details. I'm like, well, what did you do? What did you learn today?

Who'd you play with today? You know what works for me with my son is to get him engaged in something active. And then he'll talk. So I learned that if we like hey man let's go for a walk and we'll go for a walk and you know just dudes like sometimes guys don't talk that much right like i don't know about how your conversations are on the phone but like if i talk to my dad especially like years ago now it's better you know because you have a better understanding

of your parents and stuff as you get older uh but like i would talk to my mom for like 30 minutes you know and i'd talk to my dad and he'd be like how's it going i'd be like good and he's like all right i love you i was like i love you too dad and boom that's over right and never really there was never deep conversations with him at all he's an amazing dad but there was never deep conversations and with my son i noticed kind of the same pattern so i was kind of thinking like i don't yeah how do i get it get him to like just talk i don't i don't expect him to share like hey man i tried a cigarette today like i don't expect that kind of stuff or whatever the hell he's doing or up to but uh i noticed that

just by going on a walk we'll just go on a walk around the neighborhood. We might walk for 15 minutes, 30 minutes. All of a sudden, man, halfway through, he'll just, he's just going. Like, I can't stop him. I'm almost like, man, this is a mistake. He's unloading on me now, you know what I mean? Yeah, that's awesome. I love it.

My kid's the same way. And, you know, that's what we're here for. You know, we're changing the cycle of you know we're using what we had growing up and what we thought was accurate and correct and and making adjustments accordingly you know because um you know our kids aren't going to be exactly like us right you know we had different um times and environment and you know isn't all that funny? Like, hey, man, are they lifting? Like your friends, right? You're like, dude, that's the last thing I care.

I mean, sure, it'd be fun if they did, right? Yeah. I kept telling people, you know, like when he's 18, 16, 17, if he wants, he knows where to go. He knows, you know, it's just out in the garage. We have a gym, you know. He came in one time to the gym, and he loved it. He had a good time.

I brought him through a circuit. And it just hasn't been something he wanted to do again. Like, man, his heart's beating. He's breathing. He's happy. He's active anyways. He's learning shit. Yeah, he's got so much on his plate.

He's a musician. He's an artist. That's awesome. He reads 700-page books like it's nothing he came in with a giant book and he'll read that within two days like he he is you know and i'm i'm not gonna push something on him that i wanted you know what i mean um son you need bigger traps look man you gotta get in there you gotta start doing your shrugs now what are you doing the one thing that i i i did want him to do was I wanted him to compete in something.

Compete. I just wanted him to compete. That makes sense. Unfortunately, everything I got in life, I had to really work hard for. My son, basically, he doesn't have to work hard for anything because I want to give him everything. He's not

living with as much shit going on either exactly but he understands and you it's because of his his parents we let him know you know the value of a dollar you know he knows the value of a dollar so my oldest he doesn't ask for anything you know we give him everything my little one he's he wants things my kids are the same way right um but my daughter will pick out something that's 180 bucks and my son will pick out like a nerf football exactly yeah exactly and uh but as long as they they understand and you teach them you know um values like that you know and i think like again we talk about, I think that we lose a lot of those skills from lack of parenting. I mean, the values you get from your parents, right?

They teach you right from wrong, right? And then some people who may not have parents around at that early age, they may have a neighbor, a coach, a teacher, somebody else who's going to teach them those values and teach them right from wrong. And that's all. Like I said earlier, I measure my success through what I leave behind. And a lot of that's going to be my two kids. That's awesome. And are they good people?

Are they an asset to society? That's my goal with my kids. I'm like, just don't be a dick. Just don't be an asshole, right? That's it. Be a good human. Doesn't have to be any more difficult than that. Right.

People that are listening to this right now that have gone through some hard times, that have really struggled, maybe there's some younger guy listening to this right now that's depressed and had a hard time as a kid growing up. What's something that they can maybe hang on to? Like, how are you able to survive? I think that, you know, what's in between your ears, you know, and in your head, nobody can take that from you. You know, having mental fortitude.

It's your own safe spot. You know, being mentally tough and, you know, taking yourself to some other place, a happy place. mentally tough and, you know, taking yourself to some other place, a happy place. And, you know, if you need to let it out, go to the gym, you know, and you will see that, you know, everything's going to be okay. You know, I was fortunate that I had a lot of things that, you know, from young childhood, a lot of the things that I had, I had the of things that, you know, from a young childhood, a lot of the things that I had, I had the outlet of sports and the weight room. And I didn't need a partner. I didn't need

anybody there to go down in my basement and hit the heavy bag. You were fired up as it was. Yeah. I mean, a lot of the times, whenever there was a time where I could lose it and something happened, something bad happened, I would just go down in the basement and pound on the heavy bag and bench press. And then after about an hour or two of doing that, I come out of it and I realized I'm much calmer now. Now, that was bothering me and aggravating me earlier. It didn't mean anything. I tell a story. I told a story to my wife wife I'm in foster care my parents adopted me and we had relatives come over

for the holiday, Christmas and they forgot about me they brought presents for everybody I was 11 years old very sad, I was aggravated and I could have been angry but instead of being angry I went down to the basement

and i lifted and i made sense of it you know what i mean in my head i had conversations i'm like well you know what i always felt like you don't know the whole story maybe maybe they just forgot about you i mean it's it's a you know what i mean it can happen life's not always fair as things always work out exactly and so it's not a big deal in the big picture of everything it's not always fair. Things don't always work out. Exactly. And so it's not a big deal. In the big picture of everything, it's not a big deal. That's all the time we got. Strength is never a weakness.

Weakness is never a strength. Where can people find you? Tito Raymond Instagram. There we go. I'm kind of old school. I don't have Facebook. But on Instagram, it's at Tito Raymond. All right, guys.

See you later.