Mark Bell's Power Project - Rolling the Dice in Training: When to Push, When to Pump the Brakes

Episode Date: January 17, 2026

In this episode, Mark unpacks one of the most important lessons in training and in life: just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. He explains why always pushing harder isn’t always smarter, how “training smart” can sometimes become a disguise for avoiding discomfort, and where the real line is between growth and self-sabotage. Drawing from decades of powerlifting, coaching, sprinting, and personal experience, Mark breaks down how to think about risk, recovery, ego, intuition, and long-term progress so you can keep improving without burning yourself into the ground.He shares stories about Donny Thompson, Louie Simmons, Stan Efferding, Ryan Spencer, and others to illustrate how strength really works, why it’s driven by the nervous system as much as the muscles, and why stimulation beats annihilation if you want to stay strong, fast, and healthy for the long run. This is a conversation about developing better judgment in your training, knowing when to push, when to pull back, and how to build a body that performs well not just this year, but for decades to come.Special perks for our listeners below!🥩 HIGH QUALITY PROTEIN! 🍖 ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWER to save 20% off site wide, or code POWERPROJECT to save an additional 5% off your Build a Box Subscription!🩸 Get your BLOODWORK/TRT/PEPTIDES! 🩸 ➢ https://marekhealth.com and use code "POWERPROJECT" for 10% off Self-Service Labs and Guided Optimization®.🧠 Methylene Blue: Better Focus, Sleep and Mood 🧠 Use Code POWER10 for 10% off!➢https://troscriptions.com?utm_source=affiliate&ut-m_medium=podcast&ut-m_campaign=MarkBel-I_podcastBest 5 Finger Barefoot Shoes! 👟 ➢ https://Peluva.com/PowerProject Code POWERPROJECT15 to save 15% off Peluva Shoes!Self Explanatory 🍆 ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM?si=JZN09-FakTjoJuaW🚨 The Best Red Light Therapy Devices and Blue Blocking Glasses On The Market! 😎➢https://emr-tek.com/Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your order!👟 BEST LOOKING AND FUNCTIONING BAREFOOT SHOES 🦶➢https://vivobarefoot.com/powerproject🥶 The Best Cold Plunge Money Can Buy 🥶 ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!➢ https://withinyoubrand.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off supplements!➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off all gear and apparel!

Just because you can doesn't mean you should. One of the things sometimes people don't realize about strength, that strength is electrical. Being precise in your training and hitting the amount of volume and the intensity that you need is more important than you just haphazardly rolling the dice. It's not about what you're capable of. It's about what you're willing to do.

Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Training hard is not necessarily always the smartest thing, but training smart sometimes can be a cop-and-a-com. out as well. Sometimes somebody will use their programming or use their spreadsheet as an excuse to not do the tough things or to just say, hey, I got to really stick to this program. So I don't think, you know, just always sticking to the program and or, you know, being constrained to either just going towards the chaos of training, which is like just, just, say an effort and doing an extra 50 pounds on a set after you did your three by three for the day.

You're just like, I feel strong. So I'm just going to go for it. I don't think, you know, too much of your training should be that way. I also don't think that so much your training should be like so precise and so exact all the time. Sometimes if you're newer, then maybe that's appropriate. You know, if you're newer and you're following a program and you're enjoying it and you're having fun and you're getting better, then there's really no reason to listen to some of exactly what I'm going to. say here, but for the most part, I think that we have good intuition when we're working out,

when we're exercising. Now, if you're newer to something, it's harder to know what your limit is. So for me, recently with sprinting, it's been much harder for me to identify what's my sort of limit, right? It's been harder for me to figure out what's rolling the dice. What's rolling the dice with sprinting for me. Well, I don't really know. I could go, I could actually sprint fairly slowly and still hurt myself because what I think is still not that fast is fairly fast for me. Or it's fast for me or it's either a high intensity or high duration or a combination of the two. There's other factors. There's when something's novel, when something's new. Is this exercise I'm going to do new.

If it's new, then we got to go way down. We got to back way up and we got to really go ultra-safe. So when I was powerlifting, a movement that I really love doing was an ultra-wide sumo deadlift. I also liked changing my foot position

when I was squatting. I liked changing my stance, going wider, going a little closer every once in a while. Going closer was really not that problematic, but what I found was going wider, going wider and then going for a max was not a good idea. So on some max effort days, we might, you know, handle a little bit more weight. So then I decided, hey, if I'm going to go a little wider, that's only going to be on the dynamic day.

That's only going to be on a day where I am trying to move the weight quickly, but I'm using sub-maximal weights. And we started calling them optimal weights rather than sub-maximal or rather than maximal weights. we started to get in tune with the weight so much that we found optimal weights. Now that can be difficult to find. It could be hard to kind of find those things. But what I found was just by increasing the width of my legs, by say a half inch on each side, we're talking about one inch difference.

That could lead to a catastrophic setback because it was such a large change for me, how precise everything had to be for the weights I was lifting at that particular time. So we started to kind of develop this idea and we got this from Donnie Thompson actually. I remember Donnie Thompson came to our gym and he spent a few months with us actually lifting with us, which is amazing. Donnie Thompson is Mr. 3,000, the first guy to 3,000 pound total. But Donnie said just because he can doesn't mean you should. And he's probably not the first person to say it, but I never heard somebody apply it to powerlifting before.

And then I started kind of taking that into my own training. Like, okay, I'm doing these heavy good mornings. I just did 500 with, you know, for a set of three with some chains on the bar. This is max effort work. You're supposed to blow your face out. You're supposed to like, you know, nearly die when you do these sets, like according to Louis and according to Dave Tate, you should see stars and you should just be like totally messed up. Well, I started to learn how messed up I could get within a given workout. I started to learn, I started to learn the feel, the right feel.

And the right feel wasn't that I was like obliterated. The right feel wasn't that I was annihilated. The right feel was that I was stimulated. Stimulation, not a lot, not annihilation. And that was said by the famous Lee Haney, who won multiple Mr. Olympia contest. I think he still has a record at like eight in a row or something like that. one of the things that sometimes people don't, I'm getting a little sidetracked here,

but one of the things sometimes people don't realize about strength, it's that strength is electrical. Speed is electrical. It's an electrical impulse. It's your central nervous system. This is why there's some individuals that weigh, there's some girls that weigh 123 pounds. And they can, you know, handle, you know, a 400-pound deadlift.

It's really kind of unbelievable. You know, there's male athletes that are easily benching double body weight, sometimes even more, sometimes like 2.5 times their body weight. It's because, and there's people that, obviously the deadlift's a great example of this and a squat, but the deadlift, especially, there are guys and girls just hammering huge deadlifts that don't weigh a whole lot. And also some huge squats. And how are they able to do? Okay, yeah, of course they have their muscles are on board with what they're doing. That's obvious, right? Their tendons or ligaments, their joints, everything.

But their nervous system has to be like primed to be able to do these things. And the reason why I'm bringing up the nervous system is because the nervous system is the one that's going to end up with the improper input, the improper feedback if you just are always going for broke. your muscular system, your central nervous system, both these things, they definitely cross paths a lot. They definitely cross over each other. So it's not like you're working one without the other. They definitely work in concert. They work with each other.

But being precise in your training and hitting the amount of volume and the intensity that you need is more important than you just haphazardly rolling the dice. Now, rolling the dice, every once in a while can be great for your mindset, can be great for your brain. We used to talk a lot about brushing up,

like just brush up against it. And then as I got older, I learned like you brush up against successful people and you become successful as well. You don't have to be up their ass all day. You don't have to hang out with only successful people. You don't have to get rid of your buddies because they're not pulling in, you know, $300,000 a year.

Like, I always hang out with people that make this amount of money. and I'm only to do that. You don't have to do anything weird like that. It's just you got the same friends, same circle, the people that you're good with, the people that are good with you. But then you just brush up against some people,

rub elbows, as they say, with people that are successful. You do the same thing in the gym. You just kind of brush up against that, brush up against some of those weights gently. Oh, man, I've never benched 500 before. And so after you did, your max effort, let's say bench press where you benched off of two boards, smoked 455.

You know, you're pumped. The whole team's pumped. Everyone's pumped. I was like, dude, that was a sick. You know, let's say it's a PR, right? PRs are kind of strange, man, because your best bet from a PR is to understand that the next move that you make is probably going to be a step backwards from an all-time PR. You have done board presses for a long time.

You were pumped when you did 405. More recently you did, you know, 435. And then you just, on this one day, you hit 455. But you smoked it. You smashed it, right? Everyone's fired up. Now you've got to be careful because you're starting to get closer to that 500 pound mark. And it's like, who doesn't want to do are 495?

Who doesn't want to do five plates? Like everybody wants to do five plates. Everybody wants to do the next plate, right? but you cannot go from 455 to 495. You're going to totally kill yourself and you're probably going to get very, very injured. We haven't had surprises like that over the years when we were doing a lot of max effort stuff

and we were doing a lot of just heavy lifting. There was only like one time that I can recall us being like shocked and not knowing what number to call out next. And that was with Ryan Spencer. Ryan Spencer Very, very strong competed at a pretty high level In the USAPL

IPF Which I don't even think they have the USAPL anymore But yeah He did some lifting back in the day And the drug tested federation Raw And Ryan is somebody I actually had the opportunity to train with

For a while Not just like old school super training But when I was training For my bodybuilding show he was my best bet because he trains really hard. I don't know why, but he just settled on like doing this like four sets of six thing and then an am wrap afterwards. And so that was perfect for my bodybuilding show to like push some heavy weight

and then to get in an am rep. But you could see some of him, you know, setting up for some of these deadlifts back in the day. Yeah, so this was the day. You actually found the day. He just. Yeah. Ryan, he did a great job finding that.

That's the actual day right there where we just had no clue. We're like, well, where's this end? You know, and that 660 that he just lifted right there, if you could play it again, he kind of does it like, he still does it pretty easy. And you could see, he doesn't, like, he doesn't understand kind of what's going on. I think we had another day that was like that,

a little similar to that too, maybe as well, with him, again, on a sumo deadlift. But what happened was is he was always training he was always training conventional He was pulling these big ways conventional conventional conventional conventional And then one day he's like

I want to switch it up and do some sumo And he pulled sumo and he pulled 600 And we're all like looking at each other like huh Like that was really fast And I think that Ryan's pulled probably 650 either way I cannot remember I wish I could remember his numbers a little bit better

But um very very strong in the dead especially given the fact that he weighed like you know 165 170 but because he was training conventional so much and because he was on you know we're doing our squats and stuff we were doing things like box squats he's just murdering these weights what a savage he's always good at reps in a deadlift too he was great at that but because we were doing like box squats and things of that nature um his hips got strong and so kind of sort of without him knowing it he had this tremendous amount of strength. I don't even know how many times they just did 605. I don't know what's going on with this guy.

But he was building up a tremendous amount of strength without us even really knowing it. And then so that was the big surprise. But normally that doesn't happen. Normally that doesn't happen. And so with him, you know, we had to kind of go for it. But I stopped him when he did that 660, I think, on that day. I was like, hey, there's other days, you know, where we get to go for 675 and 700 and so on. I don't remember where he ended up with his strength on a deadlift. But you have to just be cautious when you get a PR. Yeah, 1741 total. He's freaking total B.

633 squat. Now this is an equipped lift, but he still smoked. He smoked that weight. That's actually kind of funny because I don't really remember Ryan doing a lot of equipped lifting. I remember him doing a lot of, I definitely remember him doing it.

But he was just a good lifter period. so don't matter. But in your training, yeah, you're going to have to be really careful and really cautious on when you do roll the dice. A lot of times it's not worth it. And that's what sometimes people are talking about with these low reps when people are like,

oh, you know, doing singles and triples and sets of five and stuff can be really dangerous. It can be. But you can still keep those weights, you could still do those weights in a reasonable fashion. It doesn't have to be that just because you're doing a single, it doesn't have to be an absolute one-rep max. And so when you're doing your training,

you can train hard. It's good to train hard. It's good to have that input of stuff being hard. But a lot of times, a lot of times you're sort of retarding the system. It's the only way I can really put it because the body only wants to receive so much information. those of you that have ever been to a seminar

you ever been to like a multiple day seminar especially if it's a seminar that you don't even want to really be at like if it's like work related seminar and it's not like you know it's not like a seminar on lifting and you love lifting it's like a seminar on something that you don't really love but you're supposed to learn about it well man that input could be way too much and it's hard to gather hard to get everything you need from the seminar all the way to the point and even if it is stuff that you enjoy

you go out to grab like a cup of coffee or whatever and you step out of the room where they're you know somebody's blabbing on and on and on forever two day three day seminar whatever the heck it is and you go to get a cup of coffee or some fruit or something like that that they have set up there and you see like 10 other people and everyone's dying everyone's like totally dying because it's so much to learn in a given weekend that it it ends up being you know very stressful very strenuous Our nervous system is the same way. It's going to like vomit up the extra stuff that you're trying to give it, the extra lifting that you're trying to do. It's going to be like repulsed by it. And where that shows up is in your form and technique a lot of times. The form and technique will, your body will say like, we don't want to do this anymore and your form and technique will be thrown way off.

And so, you know, you're better off training with some. some sort of precision, but just because you have precision doesn't necessarily mean that you have to have an exact plan. Because sometimes having an exact plan can be annoying if you're somebody that's not going to compete in something. If you are someone that's going to compete in something, your best served and your best bet is to try to follow some rules that have historically been followed by others that have gotten them results. And luckily, when it comes to sprinting, when it comes to running, when it comes to jumping, when it comes to doing pull-ups,

when it comes to doing body weight exercises, calisthenics, power lifting, weightlifting, cross-fit, high rocks. When it comes to these things, even though some of those things I mentioned are a little newer, it's great that we've had so many people have so much experience in these fields that they already know how to do it.

Going out and just trying to run as hard as you possibly can, I would imagine that that, would actually be a technique that could actually work, but you would have to figure it out systematically. So therefore, you would still have to have a plan to do that. So if you told me, like if you said, hey, I, you know, I want to get better at my mile time. And I said, okay, what's your strategy? What you got going on? And you're like, well, I just, when I run, I run as fast as I can.

And I'd say, holy shit. Like, I might think for a second, like, no way is that going to work. but then if you said I do that every 10 days and I mix up how far I go or I mix up how long I run I might be like hmm

because now you have something that sounds like it might kind of work because we don't know if something works until someone discovers it or until someone does it I was talking to Graham Tuttle last night the barefoot sprinter we were talking a bunch about

there was an old coach that he kept referring to that the guy only like to use time. Time was the only measure. So imagine, imagine measuring stuff with just one metric rather than like a bunch of metrics, right? He was not looking at pace. He was not looking at distance. So if you look at distance and time, then you're, you're sometimes trapped in this little box because you're trying to do something in a certain amount of time. And that's been the conjecture against CrossFit over the years

is that because it has so much so many time domains attached to the workouts and because people were in a rush or in a race to do an Olympic lift and a kipping pull-up could have disastrous impact and disastrous effects on

people because they could end up kind of rushing through those exercises and hurting themselves and so but if you if you have a time domain on something in this case with running and in this case in particular this was distance running so this guy was like hey you run 30 minutes 45 minutes 60 minutes 90 minutes you know he had he had other options I'm sure but like that was about what he had people do um and I'm sure he had ways to

coach his athletes and say hey I would like for you to be breathing like this on this particular day or you know go out there if you feel good because it's only 30 minutes you can go a little faster. Stuff like that. But I thought that that was really fascinating because I'm like, you know what? He's putting like a limit on it, but he's also not telling anybody

how fast or slow to run, which is really, really interesting and very counterintuitive to what people are doing nowadays where the Inger Britson brothers, they're pricking their finger. I'll have to get that coach on here. The dad that coaches those guys.

They'll prick their finger and see their lactate threshold. as they come off the treadmill, which is another interesting thing because they train on a treadmill. And that's unheard of. People haven't really trained on a treadmill. There's probably other folks that have trained on a treadmill,

but like these guys are making it more popular. And I'm not saying they only train on a treadmill. And obviously they have years past of a history of like going to the track and so on, right? But that's just really interesting. Then they prick the finger, they checked their lactate threshold, and then they have a very specific workout

designed within the confines of being able to like build up that much I don't even know if I'm saying half the stuff right but you get my idea get the idea that they're using that lactic the millimolers of lactic acid in their blood as a as a thing they're utilizing to pick the style of training that they're going to do for that particular day because they probably want that lactic acid to be in a certain zone. Now, as far as zones go, heart rate a lot of times is a great thing to utilize, but it does involve extra stuff. You need a heart rate monitor strap. If you use your watch, your watch isn't usually as accurate. My own experience with that is that it's like at least 10 beats

off almost all the time. So, and it's 10 beats off like in either direction, so then it's like 20 beats off. You know what I mean? Like it's sometimes 10 beats too high, sometimes 10 beats too low. And you don't really know what the hell's happening. So if you're looking for more accuracy in your training, then you would be using like a heart rate monitor. If we're going back to lifting, you know, how do you know like when to go for it? How do you know, you know, you know, because we're talking about just because you can, doesn't mean that you should, but you probably should sometimes do it. right to prove to yourself that you can do it to prove to your teammates or the people that train with you your training partner to prove that you had that capability to do it i think is

important and it's important for self-mastery and for self-confidence it's massively important that you feel like and you know in your heart that you can smash that weight but that's why if you go back to what i said earlier about brushing up against those weights or getting near those weights. So let's go back to that example of the 455 on the two board bench press. Okay, you smoke 455, you and your teammates are pumped, you got a PR. When you get a lifetime PR, you get a big PR like that. Again, usually the best thing to do is some assistance work and get out of there.

You didn't get hurt. So that's great. And you lifted more weight than you ever lifted before and your goal is to get as strong as possible on some of these lifts. and you did it. You accomplished it. You accomplished exactly what you wanted to do. And so you could even just technically you could like leave the gym right then and there if you wanted to. But it's a lot of times it's good to get the back offsets and get extra work in and get some extra volume because that will assist in getting stronger. It's not like you can't still continue to get stronger for the day or work on getting stronger for the day.

But you get my point is that you could be, you could run into potential injury or something catastrophic that sets you back to. far. So after you do the 455, that's where you might want to discuss, like, hey, maybe I'll throw on a slingshot and handle 475 off a two board. And if it's clean, maybe I'll do a double. And then I'll go 495, you know, and then if you hit all that stuff and that's still going smooth, maybe you hit 515 and you finish with like just the most epic bench workout ever, you know, or, you know, instead of going up.

with the 455, you instead go for a rep PR. Or you choose something that you really haven't tried before because that, remember, that's the only way to get a PR every single time you step foot in the gym is to do something you've never done before. So if you say I'm going to do 315 off a two board for as many reps as I can, well, there we go. We now have another great stimulus that's going to get you to work hard. going to get you to work your triceps, going to get you to really try to blast through those weights.

And it's something that you're having fun for. You are going for it. You are getting after it. But you're also not going so heavy that you could potentially, you know, cause yourself some further harm. So it gets to be really hard to figure this out in your training. But what I have found is that a lot of times when we're talking about fitness in general, A lot of times people, when they're supposed to take it easy, they go a little bit too easy.

When they're supposed to go hard, they go a little bit too hard. And sometimes when people are talking about this kind of David Goggins mentality of, and the fuck your elbow mentality, right, of like, I'm just going to get in there and I'm just going to, I don't care if something hurts. I'm just going to get after it with everything I have. Those are like, it's a cool mantra. It's fun to be in that zone. It's fun to feel that way.

It's fun to play in that area, but you just don't want to play in that area too much. The mindset is good. The mindset of like, I'm not giving up. I'm going to work through this. I'm going to work. The difference between working hard and working intelligently or working intelligently versus working stupid, working stupid is something that is not recoverable. You can't really recover from it well.

or if you do it just takes forever. And my point is, is there's not always a lot of good reasons to do that. If it's a competition or if it's you training your brain for your competition, again, sometimes it's good to go there. Just the other day I was doing some leg presses and it wasn't very heavy, but it had like three plates on there. I think it's on my Instagram if you want to try to find it. If you scroll on the last Instagram post that I did,

it's like a triple drop set that I did and instead of doing I did 10 reps 10 reps and I was supposed to do 10 reps in the last one instead of doing 10 I went in deeper and I did 20 so I did 40 reps of leg press and that was more of a just go all the way to the top

and click on the running one and then slide through that one and it's got a slider thing yep and that was more of a mental thing and I got in my my own head intentionally and I was like okay think about that 400 meters that you want to do think about the last 150 meters of that run you're going to have to you know give it everything that you got

and so I was just thinking like this leg burn this kind of stuff is going to this kind of stuff is going to serve me for me to have my mind connected the right way during this particular movement I'm in no I'm in no danger of of any injury. However, does cut into my recovery because of what we said earlier. Like sometimes you're doing something that's a little stupid. And this could be, this could classify as being something a little stupid, but it also might be something that gives me the edge because I'm willing to go there. Remember, it's not about what you're capable of. It's about what you're willing to do. It's not what you're capable of. It's what you're willing to do. And sometimes, sometimes the hardest thing of what you're willing to do is to actually train in percentages that are optimal.

Like, believe it or not, that's actually like, it's harder. It's worse. To do a nasal breathing session on the bike is worse. Trust me, it's worse. It sucks. It's like so annoying. Can't talk. You, uh, you have to focus.

And it's like it's a sustained focus. Like I like the focus of I'm going to go blast this weight and then I'm going to talk trash with my friends and we're going to have a good time. I love that. I can hone in. Boom. Laser focused. Hone in on the set. This set's going to take at the longest amount of time, you know, a particular set normally might take 30 to 40 seconds.

A strength, a set where you're going, you know, a little bit more for strength is going to be way faster than that. So the concentration is low. You know, he can concentrate for five to ten seconds. and you're good. But you really got to, you know, when you're doing things that are longer duration, you've got to really learn to sit in it and you got to have your, you got to have your mind kind of wrapped around that. And when you're doing something like a nasal breathing session on an assault bike

and you're trying to crank out 250 watts for 30 minutes straight, that concentration is going to be really important. And if you're somebody doing anything that is requiring any sort of endurance or any sort of, yeah, any sort of endurance, just guts, guts when you're tired, you know, when you're feeling fatigued, the ability to kind of continue to go and continue to, continue to push while you're fatigued. But that style of training, in my opinion, it's harder for me to do. I'd rather I'd rather someone say Hey grab the 100 pound dumbbells and just go nuts with them

Rather than somebody saying Hey let's do the 65 pound dumbbells Let's do them really strict Let's do them slow Let's do four seconds on the way down Four seconds on the way up We do 12 reps And we're going to do a bunch of different angles

On the incline bench And you're going to go every minute on the minute You know I'd rather I'd rather, you know, both, both are kind of fun, both are kind of challenging, but I legitimately would rather do the heavier weight and just go in bonkers on that one set, because it's easier for me. And probably for most of you, I'm imagining that for most of you. That's what makes the training smarter more difficult, though, is because it's not, it's not as pleasurable. 315 for four sets of four on a deadlift

where you're making all of them look fairly easy all of them are really clean isn't that fun it's more fun to do 315 for a single or a double than to do 335 for a single and then they'd be like all right I'm going for 365 and you nail 365 and then you're like shit man I look like I might be getting ready for 400

this is cool and maybe you know take few weeks later and you try it or whatever like that's it's fun that's a lot of fun that's exciting and that is a way to train but the way that you're going to get to that 400 the way that you're going to break through that next barrier is to take things and to go slow and steady you need almost like a combination of the two and that's why louis simmons was such a great mentor and and such an amazing, just such an amazing person and super creative as he took two concepts and spread them out over the course of a week.

There's really some more concepts in there, but he really took two main concepts, max effort work, working as heavy as possible, and he blended it with dynamic effort work. And to put it super simple, as Jim Wendler once said, you have one day where you go like this, and you have another day where you go but one day where you're moving fast and you're trying to move those weights with some good speed. You're trying to develop, you know,

some good rate of force development. You're trying to be explosive. On the other day, you're just working on that kind of maximal strength. And the two, the two have synergy to assist you. Now the fun part about that was, because that became a competition.

You know, Ryan, if you can bring up some like speed bench workouts, maybe check out a couple from Westside or a couple that I did, you know, with super training. That became the competition. The competition was not, it had nothing to do with the weight on the bar. It had to do with how fast you can move it. And I remember being in groups with people that were stronger than me and they would take some weight off because maybe they were using 225 in a band and I was using like 185.

But what I was excited about, I didn't care that I lifted less than them. I was pumped that I moved the weight faster than they did. And that was, you know, that kind of stuff. You can see a 410 pound bench I just hit with a lot of speed. It's because I developed a lot of speed. I worked on a lot of speed. It's a skill set. Working on your speed is a particular skill set.

Working on your strength is a particular skill set. But people don't, I think a lot of times, again, I mentioned this earlier. People don't understand it's electrical. And again, that's why someone doesn't have to necessarily look like a whole lot, but they can jack up some serious weights because their nervous system is in tune with what they're doing. Yeah, and you see a good example of, I'm doing some floor presses here.

And this is a lot of weight, you know, to try to move on a speed day. But I started to learn and refine my lifting over like a long period of time. So I started to be able to use a pretty decent amount of weight, a pretty heavy amount of weight. And you can see I'm even doing it with a slingshot and still explode. The whole thing was really reliant on that concentric. The eccentric is important too because you've got to be able to kind of lower it fast and chuck the weight back up. But this is exactly what I'm talking about. This is a great example that Ryan pulled up of brushing up against the heavy ship because this is 420.

But that's like 200 pounds of band tension or something wild. like that, maybe 100, maybe 100 pounds of band tension at the top. I just remember it's wild, because we have a mini band, but it's like quad it up. So it's like, it's on there pretty, pretty damn stiff, you know, to the point where even just the bar, even the bar itself is hard, is hard. But to put it into words on how hard we worked on these days, I mean, I feel like we worked harder on these days. I think we worked harder on the speed days because they kind of hurt. The max effort days, believe it or not, they didn't, you didn't have the same, like, sensitivity to them. They didn't, they didn't, because you're trying to, like, rev your body and move so damn quick,

um, it's sort of hurt in comparison to, like, just working up to, like, a heavy box squat. And there's a little less equipment on the upper body, too, like lower body. And you could see, by the way, we should mention this. See my legs, how red they are. Um, if you go back and you watch some of the old. old videos of me at Super Training Gym. I had like the bottom of my leg, had a lot of pooling of blood,

which is extremely unhealthy. You know, your heart, your heart pumps blood, you know, through your body. Your heart, it turns out it's not actually like a pump. It's like a vortex, but that's a long story. I need to know. And learn more about that at some other point to be able to inform you guys on it.

But anyway, your heart, basically pushes blood through your body, your veins and so forth, and blood goes all the way down to your feet and supposedly comes all the way back up and goes back into your heart. But when you get big and fat the way I was, and I don't recall being like diabetic or anything, but that's usually like a diabetic thing. You end up with like a diabetic neuropathy. My blood was thick. My blood was sledgey. And I knew that from getting blood work. And fortunately, at that time, I met Stan Efforting. And Stan taught me a lot about blood work. And he's like, man, your red blood cell counts through the roof. Your blood pressure's high. Like, if you're, if anyone that's doing gear, like,

please get your blood work done. This is a side track from exactly what I'm talking about. But man, people are dying. Like, man, people are dying left and right right now. in the bodybuilding community and we recently had that strong man guy who just passed um it's pretty brutal but i some of those people probably did get some of their blood work done so i don't want to say blood work is going to like you know save everybody's life uh because sometimes sometimes stuff just happens too right and it's it's not always it's not always so black and white on exactly what happen but anyway a lot of people are dying and i think it can be preventable uh if you are getting your blood work done i think that's going to assist going to help a lot uh and your blood pressure

like guys if you're getting big and your blood pressure's real high i mean i i you know i i can't really talk i can't really say hey make some changes because like obviously i didn't i didn't make some changes back then but i i'm making changes now right and um hopefully for some of you you can still chase your dreams down with everything you got but try to do so in a safe manner and again i was lucky because i had to stand efforting in my corner and he's like bigs your legs are all red you know i had um uh what do they call that uh edema it's called pitted edema so if you push if you push in on your leg you know if you're to push on someone's uh shin let's say

Well, nothing happens, right? But if you push on someone's shin that has pitted edema, then there'll be a dent in their leg for hours sometimes. So that's why a lot of those older folks and stuff like that will wear compression socks is to try to get that pressure, get everything flowing back up to the heart. And it's a good strategy, but you don't want to be in that position to have to wear that kind of stuff. especially, you know, at the age I was here, which is, this is probably like a decade ago, so probably, you know, getting close to 40 years old or something like that.

It's too young to have that shit happening to you. So anyway, side track, side note, you know, use Merrick Health, utilize their strategies that they have. Get your blood work done. Get with a health care provider, you know, because Merrick Health, the thing that's awesome about them is they're going to actually go over the blood work with you. And that's what I had with Stan years ago. And that's what I have now with Merrick. I use Merrick Health all the time.

But back then, there wasn't all these TRT clinics and stuff. There was the Rhino. There was Stan Efforting who, you know, would talk me through it. And then every time I got blood work done, it was like, hey, let's try this supplement. Hey, let's try this lifestyle change. Hey, let's try this. Hey, do you think after competition you could not be so. fat, you know, can you be less fat? Can you lose a little bit of weight? And so I would do that and I'd go

back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And this falls directly in line with just because you can doesn't mean you should. Just because you can, you know, get yourself up to 400 pounds and squat that, squat a thousand pounds. I got myself up to around 330. Just because he can do that doesn't mean that it's a great idea. And just because you have that capacity, it was something I was willing to do, was something I was willing to go there. And no regerts, as they say. I did what I did. And I'm proud of it, happy about it.

But also, I'm here to share my experience with you. And hopefully, some of you guys don't fall into the same pitfalls. And you might say, well, hey, well, you seem fine. Well, yeah, I seem fine. But I seem fine until I'm not fine, right? So. And I'm 49. So it's not like I'm, it's not like I'm 79.

You know what I mean? Like it, so we, we don't know. We don't know. Like I, have I paid all my debts yet? We don't know. And I'm okay. I'm okay with, I'm okay with whatever the hell comes next. I'm doing my best to unwind some of that.

But I was reckless with performance enhancing drugs for many years. And many of you know that. It's not like some big. surprise. And yeah, anyway, moving on. So, you know, as I'm kind of talking to you guys through some of this, you know, just in your own training, just like, it's, again, it's great to have this mindset of being a little bit unreasonable, you know, and you can be a little unreasonable with your goals. You can have these lofty goals, these lofty dreams. I did. But I didn't have lofty goals and lofty dreams. I didn't have dreams of squatting a thousand pounds until I squatted like

800. Squatted 800 and I knew other people that squatted 1,000 and I was like, hmm, I didn't think I could squat 800 that long ago. When I squatted 600, I never really thought about 800. I didn't think about 800 until I squatted 700. And I squatted 700 pretty easy. So it just kind of kept happening that way. And it kept reassuring myself like, oh shit, like you could, wait a second.

those guys aren't really that much different than you, you could probably do something similar if you just work at it, just take your time and you don't get hurt. So while we do see some of the risks, some of the rolling of the dice I did with my lifestyle, and you do see some of the risks I did in the gym, I rarely got hurt in the gym. I had owies and bumps and bruises. I've had zero surgeries still to this day. I've never had never tore something at the point where I had to have a surgery. I did tear my pack a couple times.

A few times it was sort of more on the minor side. And one time in particular, it was worse. One time it was like, you know, pretty dang bad. It took me like four months to come back from that one. I tore my bicep. But in general, power lifting for as many years as I did, you know, I power lifted since the time I was a kid. was on and off somewhere in between that range and then between, you know, 25 and 40,

I power lifted my face off. And again, just was able to make it through through. The training wasn't always super intelligent, but it was thoughtful. It was thought about. You know, you see the heavy zurchers, you see the heavy good morning. and you see the, like those were all selected and chosen for very specific reasons. It was, it was to help me to fix my issue with my squat. I kept rounding over on the squat.

And so I needed an intervention that was going to make my back super strong. So then I implement this, you know, change suspended good morning torture that I did for many years. and it eventually it did lead to a stronger back. It did lead to a thousand 80 squat but it also led to my spine being as stiff as it is these days and you can see like I'd get down in there pretty damn low and do those like that that weight is

my shoulders are lower than my hips. Now it wasn't always from that exact height but I did a lot of variations on that same theme I think variations is another great way that you guys can get your rocks off without destroying yourself. You know, you can do a lot of variation, a lot of various movements. Just when you're doing these various movements, realize that if a movement is new, you just have to be really, really cautious with it. If a movement's new, be really cautious with it. In fact, a new movement sometimes, and I mentioned this many times in the past, a new movement,

oftentimes the best place for that is, oftentimes the best place for that is like post workout. When you're done with your workout, you know, tell your friends, hey, I wanted to do this really low chain suspended, good morning. Let's set the thing up and, you know, let's just do like a, just a couple movements with it so we can kind of see how it feels. You know, those are the kind of things. And you wouldn't work out. Like you wouldn't actually do it to the point.

where you're like hurting yourself or going really heavy, you would actually just do the movement with maybe the bar. Like it was just like practice. And we did that a bunch. You know, you always just kind of like, it's like you're sizing up the movement, right? And then the next time around we would get in there.

But kind of back to that idea of like brushing up against the heavier weights. Like there's so many ways of doing that. There's so many ways of mimicking that. You have a reverse band squat. You have a reverse band deadlift. You have bench pressing. with a slingshot. You have like all these other mimickers of

of things that can of things that can allow you to do particular movements in ways that you otherwise wouldn't be able to unless you had like a machine or a piece of equipment and now that machine or piece of equipment like reverse band deadlift's very encouraging. You know, because a deadlift sucks off the floor. It just, it just does.

It just sucks. So set up a barbell in a rack with, you know, some bands. I used to use the green bands, but they don't have like a color. They don't have a straight color pathway anymore because other companies made bands. They made them different colors for some reason. They've screwed it all up. But I used to use the green bands. Elite FTS probably still sells them in a coordination of colors that matches their strength.

But I would use the green bands for reverse band deadlift. I would choke it from the top of the rack and then put the barbell. in there. And you put the bar bill in there and 225 is depending on how you have it set up, depending on how high your rack is, 225 is almost floating off the ground. So then you're thinking, man, this is kind of a joke. 225 is like, you know, almost zero. But dude, it gets to be so heavy. And it's safer than a rack pull because a rack pull, excuse me, a rack pull where you're pulling from, you know, a pin, they call it a pin pull as well, you have to like all the sudden have that strength.

Whereas in this case, when you're doing a reverse band deadlift, you get to sort of rev into your strength. So you can kind of think of it as like a head start. Like imagine running 400 meters and somebody said, rather than like just starting out of the blocks, you get to run, you know, 10 yards and then go, right? Or if you down 100 meters or 50 meters or something, like it'd be feel easier.

It'd feel, yes, you have to go a couple steps further, but you already got momentum. And that's the way that that reverse band feels and the way that reverse band works is it kind of allows you to get momentum. And then all of a sudden, all that weight kind of hits you at the top.

You can see Rhino. He just did 765 for a couple. He was a big boy. Just did 765 for a few reps there pretty, pretty easily. Um, last but not least on this topic is, it is fun. It is fun to just, it's fun to just go for it. But there's a big difference between your hard training, uh, versus training a little bit more smart. And if you think about, um, some of your favorite people, they've been through these experiences before.

Um, I'm trying to think of, uh, there's a couple runners that I know that spent like, they spent a few years running and they made absolutely no progress. In fact, they went backwards because every time they went to go run, they would run like a little too hard. And it sounds dumb to say it. Like now I'm saying out loud, it just sounds dumb. You know, imagine, you know, you go to the gym and you're really not making progress on some of your lifts. I'm not saying that you always need to make progress on your lifts, by the way. And if you like to train hard and you like to kind of like overdo it a little bit,

you don't care about the numbers and stuff, then I think that that might be fine. It just might need to be cautious of your joints a little bit here and there and stuff like that. But if you have sides, you know, if you have side effects, basically, of some of your lifting, then that's when you have to really start to listen a little bit more

to what I'm sharing with you guys here today and pay attention a little bit more because you can do this stuff without getting messed up. You know, I said the other day that, I said the other day that if you were to ask me before I went to do before, so there's some injuries that hit me that I didn't know about that snuck up. But if you were to ask me before I did a particular lift, usually it was like bench.

If it was going to be sketchy that was going to tear my peck, I would have said yes. I mean, obviously wouldn't want to answer that question before a lift. but I kind of knew I knew they were there and that's lifting stupidly that's lifting like an idiot that's not smart to do the problem for me at that point was the real thing to do is to take about a month off of any sort of bench pressing and I felt like a lot of times I felt like I couldn't afford it because I was competing but a lot of you aren't competing so don't feel that same pressure that I was feeling. There's no reason for you to have that pressure. And you could say there's no reason for me to have felt that pressure either. And I don't disagree. But I was competing. Your

ass is on the line. And so you're thinking like, I need to hit these lifts. But think about it, you get hurt. You're down to zero. You know, you go from being able to bench 315 for a few reps. You feel awesome. And now you slightly tear your peck or your tricep or something. And now you're benching the bar. You know, good luck with that. You're benching the bar. you're doing it for a few weeks sometimes a few sometimes longer and we've seen people at super training because they were trying to hang with other people or they were just just doing too much doing way too much and they would uh their intensity was too high their volume was too high the weights were weights for uh weights for it was like done too frequently like it was just a mess

with some people they just wanted to go heavy heavy heavy all the time and they're like they were kind of missing the fact that like, no, hey, dude, this is like a speed day. And they're like, yeah, but you worked up a little bit on your speed day, but I'm like, yeah, but when I worked up on my speed day, my reps were still relatively fast at the end. You're like, you know, you're looking like you're going to die when you're doing some of your reps. So you want those reps and sets to be clean. You don't always need everything to be absolutely perfect. But Nick Bear was coming to mind was the person I was thinking of that spent like two or three years running with making no progress.

And he shared that before. And he, I don't know if he had a coach at that time and just was getting like not great coaching, but he ended up getting a good coach. And so he got the coach and he changed everything right away. Everything improved a ton for him, including he lost a lot of weight. You know, Nick got down to 170 something pounds to achieve some of his goals. with marathon running. And he just,

he kind of just went after it with everything he had, much the way I gamified power lifting and just weighed as much as I could. He just got himself as light as he could and ended up, you know, having a great amount,

tremendous amount of success to be able to maintain, maintain a fast pace. I want to say he did like a 2.45 or something like that, marathon. Something along those lines. He's hauling ass. He ain't no joke.

But like even for him, so he's I mean he's unbelievable right even for him he'd realize like it's a good idea for me to not weigh 200 pounds while I'm running like this and I'm just going to be better more effective if I'm lighter and maybe he didn't even want to get lighter but maybe from all the activity and stuff maybe that was kind of a byproduct but it's going to be easier to move yourself through space when you're lighter um the other thing I wanted to bring up is just kind of taking care of yourself and and bringing up your capacity, you know, bringing up some of your work capacity with things like sled work and also, you know, forward drags, backward drags. We have the tank these days.

I saw found my fitness. I saw Rhonda Patrick utilizing some sled training the other day. She's also doing a lot of other great training. If you're not following her, you know, make sure you give her a follower. She's doing some cool stuff. But man, guys, how long have I been talking about pulling a sled for? And why do you pull a sled? You know, you might think, man, it's kind of a waste of time. Well, sometimes that might be all that you do is pull the sled. Like, that might be your workout for the day.

Because it's something you can recover from fairly easy. Even if you pull the sled and you pull like you put quite a bit of weight on there. Now, if you're going to go and sprint with a sled, that's a totally different thing. That is not what I'm talking about. That would be a different podcast. talking about sprinting with sleds. But if you're, if you're doing, you know, walking with sleds, walking forward, backwards, and just trying to put a good amount of force.

This is a killer workout, by the way. I should steal this workout. All these like pull-ups and curls and all these different movements that she's doing. She's done a great job, too. I think she's really done a good job of, like, recomping her body. You can see she's working on some explosive stuff. This is all stuff I've been talking about for a while as well. that kind of stuff is hard.

I suck at that kind of stuff. I don't know about you guys, but working on some explosiveness and working on some speed. And then when you do your sled work, you get to work your ass off. So I'm not sitting here trying to preach to you guys not to train hard. My point is, though, that you should have a capacity

to where stuff doesn't feel or look that hard. That's the main thing you should be taken home from this. things should not look that difficult and they really shouldn't be that difficult because the strongest people I've ever met they always do the weights effortlessly Stan Efforting was somebody I saw miss like one lift

he missed one lift I mean he didn't train for us for that long but he was with it for like six months and all the max effort work that we did I saw him miss one lift one time that's pretty nuts if you think about it he didn't even miss lifts in the meat, you know, that I really recall. He probably missed one or two now that I think about it, maybe like a deadlift or something.

But the contest is where you're supposed to miss stuff, right? I think in training he ended up missing like a 600 pound bench, which I remember I didn't want him to go for a 600 pound bench in training. And he missed it. And I was like, man, that might hamper our chances of him hitting a 600 pound bench in competition. But luckily it didn't. Luckily, it worked out. He still hit 606 a couple weeks after he missed that, uh, that 600 pound bench. It's just a absolute monster. Going so slow on the way down all the time. I don't know what he was doing. Taking his sweet ass time. Anyway,

just because you can. Doesn't always mean that you should. We'll just end on watching a rhino bench is 600 pounds because this is a pretty dang legit. Stand in Rino. Effort. If you guys don't know, he's got the vertical meals, the vertical diet. It's all stuff you should check out. The vertical meals are made by the people over at Icon, Todd Abrams. There are some great people, great products, great food. Watch this thing. Boom.

Oh, there's a miss. So maybe he did miss it in competition. I don't know if he gets it here. I can't remember. Now it's suspenseful. I do know that he's credited with 606. bench at one point. But he might have made this one.

If I remember correctly, like my mind's a little fuzzy on some of this, but I think that he chalked up his like armpits. And so for some reason he thought that that was going to help because he thought that his shirt would like stick to itself in the bottom by tucking his elbows. He did tuck his elbows better there, by the way. I do remember that happening because I remember him coming back to me and he's like, Biggs. He's like tucking the elbows actually works. I was like, you idiot. I've been telling you

that forever. What a monster. All right. Strength is never a week. This week. This never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.