Mark Bell's Power Project - Strong, Stiff, and Always Hurt? Here’s Why (w/ Rob Wilson)

Episode Date: December 22, 2025

What if you treated your body like a high performance vehicle… and actually ran a function check before things break?In this episode, Rob Wilson (author of Check Engine Light) breaks down how movement quality, strength, conditioning, and recovery actually fit together, especially for athletes who train hard and want to stay in the game. We get into yoga (the real version 😅), why “perfect symmetry” is a myth, how to use simple daily movement as a monitoring system, and why the truth in training is usually found in the messy middle: context + nuance.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!

If you have one PSI difference between the right and left tire, it might not make a difference. But if you got five and you're at maximum speed, the wheels might fly off. The medium that we communicate in is forcing us to have less nuanced conversations. If you get on Instagram for 10 seconds and you're like, hot take, kettle bells are stupid. You get 9 million likes. You guys do a function check for your rifle, right? Yeah, of course.

Do you have a function check for your body? No, you just assume pain is a communication. system. If you also always ignore it, more and more things will break until you can't do this thing that you like anymore. You can only go as fast as you can stop. Right. So if you have a Ferrari engine, but you got Toyota Corolla brakes, it's not so good. Not everything that's important can be measured. What's the number of love you have for your wife? All right. So in your book, Check Engine Light, you talk a lot about movement. How did you start getting into like different practices of like not just like lifting and not just

athletics but really learning how to move better um well i mean it's been an obsession of mine just as a an individual for a long time i grew up doing martial arts um did judo as a kid kundo studied jikundo so bruce lee was a you managed to find a place to do jikundo on the east coast yes so frank kuchi who is a retired seal was a student of dan in asanto and um chai serasut who chai basically brought moitai to the united states so i did judo from about seven until 13 and i wrestled a little bit in that time as well and then when i was 13 i was what what influenced that what was it movies or something some movies some because um i was like a temperamental kid i got big early my mom was like you need to be with some dudes who can kick your

ass it worked it like you learn where your pecking order is and like wrestling like martial arts and stuff you figure out really fast like what's what these older kids will slow you down a little bit older kids and then you know when i was in my teens and i was 13 i started training at a place at the time it was called fdc now it's lynx that was owned by a retired seal frank coochie and uh frank was teaching gundo concepts Filipino martial arts so stick a knife and then moitai that was our like core curriculum and then later this would have been like 94 95 he was one of the very very early adopters of Brazilian jiu jitsu on the on the east coast for sure so he was got his black belt under pedro sour who's one of hickson's guys right so that's

his it's not my lineage frank didn't train me in jiu jutsu but i was just in that environment and with martial arts tends to be not just capacity driven but movement quality driven so you find the martial arts communities tend to be very interested

in like what improves feel flow coordination so I was always I was like taking that in and then I also grew up in a strengthening facility my parents were competitive athletes and so I was around lifters

power lifters bodybuilders a lot so I was always seeing what are they doing to improve range of motion for things like posing or getting into people don't realize like really if you really have into the science of posing like as a real practice yeah if you can't touch certain ranges it's really hard to show certain musculature well right so I would see those guys like you know stretching each other with towels and stuff so I was always really curious I was around a lot it was in the environment and then later i dropped out of college because i hated what i was studying at the time and uh got into massage therapy so that was actually the earliest thing i did in my career i was manual therapy um pain relief stuff and i was like man some of these problems

are because people don't move very well and i got to learn how to teach them how to stretch and And what exercises can help them help their joints and muscles work a little bit better. And so I just got really obsessed with things like Felden Christ's method and Pilates and yoga. I had a long period of time where I gave up lifting where I didn't lift probably for like five years. Whoa. How old are you at that point do you think? What was that? Maybe I was like 20.

It might have been a little bit less than that. But it was at least four where I was just doing yoga. I was like deep into yoga, really studying it, doing a lot of flow type practices. Well, quick question before we continue moving on, because like, obviously what you've done is evolved because of all these experiences and the, applying it to like thousands of people at this point. But what did you learn from yoga? Because yoga is something that within strength and conditioning and people trying to get stronger, yoga's kind of really looked down upon as being something that builds too much flexibility. too much weakness, et cetera. So what benefit could that have for people?

I mean, the actual benefit of yoga is self-awareness. Okay. Right. So the poses, the postures, the asanas that people do in practice, in the states, the surface of that practice is what the shapes you're making with your body. But the root of it is I develop a deeper relationship with myself and my place. in my community and my culture and in life. That's actually the primary benefit of studying yoga.

Now, on the physical level, some things that you can learn is that if you perform the asanas in a standardized way, they can become a monitoring system. So one of the things that I picked up from that was sun salutation. And so I've probably done sun salutation. This is where you pull your pants down and open your butt hole to the sun. exactly right wait hold on let me finish exactly wrong oh um i got all excited no no no no that's a whole different practice get it whole it seems to acts embarrassed but he's he knows what's mark don't bring me in on your bullshit no so sun salutation the real version is a series of eight

postures repeated in a specific sequence right you stand with your feet hip width apart you reach up and inhale exhale touch your toes or fold forward lunge down dog up dog down dog again lunge the other side forward fold reach up that's the basic sequence what's that supposed to represent or do well one you know saluting the sun is starting the day so i'm starting the day with paying attention to how my body is working and what's going on with me internally how's my breath responding to everything that's happened up to this point what i have come to use it for especially over the course of almost 25 years of daily use of sun citation is it's a very effective monitoring system for my body not only is it kind of like this man gets it this man gets it

actually and the light you're in the light yeah well i mean what i when i i actually talk about this with seals a lot and the way i presented to that community is as a function check all right so i'm like hey you guys do a function check for your rifle right yeah of course right oh when do you do it uh before we go to the range or before mission time like oh you guys don't wait until you're in the moment to know if your shit works no why how come well because we want things to work how they're supposed to work when you want them to work i'm like do you have a function check for your body no, you just assume it's going to work how it's supposed to work when it's supposed to work that way because the body's so adaptable until it's not until it fails. So something like

sun salutation, which is a very simple movement practice, doesn't encapsulate all that yoga has to offer or even all that human movement has to offer. But it is an easy movement practice that anybody could start with little space, no equipment, little time. You don't have to be an expert on exercise to do it. And I actually have a whole section in the book that teaches you how to do it and helps you form an experiment. So you can go, hey, I'm going to try this. How do I try it? And what can I learn? But that's been a cornerstone of movement. I think if you use it in the context of strength and conditioning and it's to try to

improve some arbitrary standard of flexibility for a group of people, then that's silly, right? But if you're using it to help athletes stay in better touch with how they're functioning and maybe under the right conditions to help their tissues heal more effectively, then it can be a great tool in the toolbox. um but just like you know some of the things we're talking about with breath work i'm careful with

how it's introduced culturally into performance environments but i learned a lot about how my body moved what what asymmetries i had because there's so much standardization and i learned that some asymmetries that i have are because i'm just an organic structural being that i'm never going to be symmetrical but i can tell like when the fork in the road has gotten too wide and I got to bring it back in a little bit tighter, right? So I kind of know where my bandwidth is, but I know forever, 25 years I've been doing it, my left hit flexor, it's always more stiff.

My right hamstring, it's always more stiff. It's just how big is the gap. So, you know, even this morning, I woke up 15 minutes earlier before I got on my flight to come here so I could do it, right? So I think it's that essential. I was watching a video on Usain Bolt the other day, and they were saying, you know, he's the most beautiful looking runner ever, right?

Like, it's just unbelievable. The posture that he's able to hold, the speed he's able to do it. They talked about the asymmetries that he has, and they talked about asymmetries that a lot of other sprinters and stuff like that have. It's just part of being human. We have like favorites, you know, or we favor one side, or there's some people have a longer leg than another. Some people have more tightness in a hip or more tightness in a hamstring.

It's very normal. on. I think a lot of people are trying to figure out ways to almost get rid of these things. But it sounds like what you're saying is maybe just try to make sure that they stay under control. Yeah, you have to know what acceptable ranges of asymmetry are. It's also not just like carte blanche. Like it doesn't matter, right? If you have one arm that you can only raise to shoulder height and you have another arm that you can raise all the way over your head and you're a competitive swimmer,

you're probably going to have a problem. right but if you have one inch difference in flexion between right and left arm how much of a factor is that and how much time and energy do you want to spend quote unquote correcting it i'm not sure that's a worthwhile endeavor sprinting you know and i'm not an expert on sprinting but it's has acceptable bandwidths of asymmetry at maximum speed you know if you have one PSI difference between the right and left tire might not make a difference but if you got five

and you're at maximum speed it might the wheels might fly off yeah right so experts in sprinting tend to know with what those those bandwidths are in there for sure in all sports like hard liners that are like

this is the structure that a human works at most efficient efficiently but then as you get you look closer and closer as you zoom in you're like there's actually some range here. And you have to pay attention to outliers like Hussein Bolt who basically defies all odds, right?

And it's probably still one of the fastest human beings on Earth. I'm sure if he went and competed today, you could still crush it. You know, when it comes to a lot of training, the functional training or what people call functional training has been getting very, very popular. I mean, it's always been popular, but it has a bit of resurgence.

And then there are people on the traditional side of training who think functional training is absolute BS because of like tools like kettlebells, et cetera, I can't build muscle. What I like about you is that you've, you use many different tools to achieve whatever specific goal an athlete is looking for.

So my question there is like, you know, let's actually talk about the function of jujitsu, right? Or the sport of jiu-jitsu. do you think that traditional type of implements are inherently better than kettlebells and more functional type of implements or how do you look at the uses of these things because people want to pick aside they want people to pick a side but how do you look at that I mean for me everything is always about what's in service of the athlete that I'm dealing with yeah right and so that's always number one I don't put a tool first I don't pick a I don't

pick the rules and then shove the athlete into what I like. I think about the athlete or some generalizations of the population. And then I pick the tools. So the tools always serve the outcome. Never, never the opposite. So when it comes to kettlebells, I always think, or barbells or whatever, for whom, for what and when. now if you have a young developmental athlete who's 16 who wants to be a grappler and they have a long-term plan to become good and they've never done any strength training and i want them to become as strong as they can be the most efficient way to do that is a barbell right we're going to be deadlifted right now what stance we'll probably do some different ones probably do squat stance we'll probably do sumo stance we'll probably do traditional we'll probably pull from the knee. We'll probably do some trap bar. If this athlete gets a little bit beat up, my back's tight, maybe we'll pull from, we'll use a trap bar forever, right? If it's a really tall kid, maybe just trap bar feels better because they can be more upright. But they're going to

pull heavyweight off the ground or near the ground as much as they can tolerate and recover from because we know that will make you strong faster than anything else. And I have to do to prove that is see what the strongest people on earth do and it's that so if that's your goal and you have access to a barbell you should do that there's a cascade of other things that will happen too when that athlete goes from being able to deadlift 185 to potentially 275 they're going to put on some muscle mass and they'll be able to handle themselves quite differently well and their joint structure is going to change right they're going to be able to handle force better regardless of if they're generating it or if it's imposed upon them their tissues will just be used to force right

but if you have an elite jujitsu athlete who's 30 and has been strength training for 15 years it's really expensive for them to lift maximally how much benefit is it going to have for that athlete will it take away from the skill development that will actually move the needle in whether they win or lose so we just have to ask different sets of questions depending on who who are we working with so all the what camp are you in you can't build muscle with kettlebells and then the kettlebell people go well you can if you use a heavy enough kettlebell and it's like well all your body knows is tension it doesn't know there's only force is the only language it doesn't know if it's a kettlebell or a dumbbell or a barbell,

it just knows how much force. That's it. Right. So if you're forced training, then you have to produce force. Now, will swinging a 55 pound kettlebell for reps put muscle on a developed person?

Like if Insema called me up and was like, hey, I want to put on a little bit more mass again, I don't think he would swing. a 55 pound kettle bell that's silly because it's not going to produce a high enough for stimulus you're going to go lift heavy weights again because that's what you require to get that outcome so these conversations that we have that have lack of nuance are supported by the medium in which we have the conversation right i've ever heard of uh that quote by uh marshall mccluhan right which is the medium is the message the medium that we communicate in is

forcing us to have less nuanced conversations yeah and putting us into camps and it happens happens in every domain because if you're get on the instagram for 10 seconds and you're like hot take kettle bells are fucking stupid you get 9 million likes but if you're like hey listen it depends on the situation people are like yeah t l d r next right because but actually most of the truth is in the nuance right And then people were like, well, this guy said in his TikTok that kettlebells build muscle. And I tried it and it didn't work. And so he's an idiot. And it's like, well, how much of it did you do?

What was your experience prior to that? Did you eat in a way that supports it? What was your sleep like? Right. Are you, are you an experienced lifter? Do you know how to do the lift properly in a way that will generate enough tension to get the stimulus? There's a bunch of questions underneath there that are unanswered. that are important if you actually want to have a discussion.

Yeah. But if you just want to hold a flag up and go, we're the red team and we're the blue team. Personally, I'm not interested in that tomfoolery. People who, if that's what they want to engage in, then go for it. I don't think that serves them. I don't think it serves the people who rely on them.

But it will get you a lot of attention. but that's just like a toddler who throws a fit in the airport. It will get you a lot of attention, but it's not a good way to act. Follow up question on that. Now, again, I know that you first look at what the athlete needs, then give them the prescription for that need, depending on what they like to do.

Maybe they don't like to squat, so you figure out ways for them to do that, whatever. What other capacities, and I would say particularly for, because there's so many different types of athletes, but particularly combat athletes because they're movement-focused athletes. I think one thing that I notice

is that there's certain people think only about creating force when it comes to the training of these athletes. Force, force, force, muscle, muscle. And that's important and it's good. But for you, what other capacities do you think are important for an athlete to have

and to potentially build? And I know depending on the athletes, Some athletes need more force and more muscles. Some athletes need other stuff. But what would some of the other stuff be that would be important to potentially investigate? So first of all, like force is important. Absolutely. Right?

If you can't produce a decent amount of force, you probably will suck compared to your peers regardless of the sport, right? Most really elite athletes can are strong. Yeah. How strong are they compared to each other changes, but they're strong. You put an elite sprinter. and you'd have them do a loaded step up, they're going to smoke most people.

They're strong, right? I think the reason we tend to lean on capacity so much is because it's easy to measure. It's easy for the athlete and the coach to feel good about what they're doing because they can see numbers change. But not everything that's important can be measured. What's the number of love you have for your wife?

tell me the number of love you have for your kids not everything that's important can be measured measurement helps us manage things but there's also things like coordination rhythm tempo timing all of those contribute to game intelligence can i be in the right place at the right time it's not just about force it's about the right force at the right time in the right place right i mean a classic easy low-hanging fruit example of that is Tom Brady probably the best quarterback ever is it because he jumps the highest or because he has the best bench press

is his mentality and his game intelligence those tend to be major differentiators especially at elite levels but as far as general capacities are concerned you do need force capacity but also are you strong in the ranges so if we talk about jiu jitsu specifically i mean with a lot of jiu jitsu athletes as a general rule we're doing overcoming isometrics in sports specific shapes what would some of those shapes be uh split stance right so whether a b stance or like a long lunch right um like uh i don't know if this has been's thing or not but it's like a

a reference lunch you guys ever heard of like a reference split split squat so you use the wall as a reference you put your back foot into the wall okay your front foot is out as far as you can maintain stability and you drive both into the floor and the wall at the same time so you create a lot of isometric pressure that way so that's high force but low motion right so you get massive benefit from that including improvements in force production right but also tissue robustness neurological upregulation, if tissues are healing, right, which they almost always are, especially in combat sports, that's the signal for the direction for the tissues to heal. So we try to do a lot, and that's like, you can look at Dr. Keith Barr's work, right,

isometrics, you know, let healing tissues know what direction collagen should organize. So isometrics are really important. but then also high force but high velocity, right? So throwing, like how many athletes throw, right? So we need to be able to throw. We need to be able to catch. We also need to be able to stop, right? So can you decelerate?

Can you handle momentum? Right? Those are things that are specific to athletic performance that are important, harder to measure. When you say can you handle momentum, that is important. How would one think about implementing handling momentum? I mean, probably the way that I'm most biased to right now is reflexive eccentric, right?

Which is, that's Dr. Matt Jordan and Stu McMillan's. They're the primary sort of like stakeholders and subject matter experts in that work. But what they found, and I believe specifically it was in their work with the Canadian Olympic bobsled team in the 90s, was that the biggest differentiator in athleticism wasn't concentric force production, but it was eccentric braking who can stop force, right? So those kind of moments of surprise deceleration are mechanisms for injury, but also, you know, you can only go as fast as you can stop, right? So if you have a Ferrari engine, but you got Toyota Corolla brakes, it's not so good,

right so it's very hard to express the force you're capable of unless you can control the direction it goes right so those kind of things are are really important and coordinated capacities that we were messing around with the flow rope earlier and another sort of bifurcating controversial figure is mr weck right so people people either love that dude and everything he says is like gold falling from the sky or some people hate him I mean, you can't argue with how it feels to move that rope around. It just feels good. It feels good. And you have to coordinate yourself differently in order to keep it moving. It's just a fact if you watch it and do it. Now, does it mean you need to become the rope-flowness dude on earth to be the jujitsu champion? No.

No. Is it a viable tool for improving athlete coordination and maybe recovery? Yeah. So for me, it's something I'm going to explore for my own. interest but also like man this might be a good tool for athletes I work with because it's inexpensive it's fun it forces them to move in different force vectors get your ass outside be outside use it as a check engine light tool exactly so there's a lot of things that are that are built into it so I'm always looking at all of those different factors at the same time yeah um and then

conditioning is a weapon, especially in combat sports. So you have to be well-conditioned. That means fit, but also conditioned. Now, if you're training, if your skill training is organized properly, you're going to be well-conditioned, especially, you know, I work with Greg Sauter's pretty exclusively, so his athletes are all conditioned. So what we focus on more is like aerobic base

so that they can handle the workload that they're under. and recover appropriately. But that's not the case for all of the athletes I work with, in which case we'll do more energy system testing and then see where they're deficient and work from there. And that's honestly,

that's just like pretty like normal strength and conditioning. Like if you're in the professional strength and conditioning world and you work in athletics, you do a needs analysis for the sport, for the athlete, you have metrics that you test. and then you go, okay, based on these things,

here is my next best guess for what we can do. I'm going to run that for this amount of time. Does the athlete get better? Are they the same? Are they worse? What can I change? You change something and you do it again. And that's forever until you're no longer in contact with that athlete.

Yeah. Right. So, you know, when I'm deciding what capacities deserve what weight, that's what I do. Now, sometimes I get it wrong, though. And that's when you have to be willing to change course quickly, especially if there's something on the line. All right.

You mentioned years ago that you stopped lifting for a while and you were exploring yoga. What returned you back to lifting? And what are some of the advantages that you have noticed having lifting be part of your life while doing Jiu-Jitsu? Well, so when I, so in my 20s I got back to lifting because I had lifted all through my teens. And I like how I look better. So that's just the first, like, most honest thing. Like, I like being more muscular, right? Feels good, right?

You like a t-shirt, put it a little tighter, you know? I mean, now I'm old and bald and married. And 235. Yeah, and I'm 235 now. But I was as light as like probably 185, 190, which is too skinny for me. Okay, yeah. Right, that's too skinny. I didn't feel as good.

I didn't feel as energetic. feel as robust, but I made a commitment to explore something deeply. So I did. And then what I didn't want when I went back to lifting is stiffness. I wanted strength, but I didn't want the stiffness, right? Because I spent that time in yoga developing a pretty reasonable flexibility, especially for a guy my size. And I'm like, well, I don't want to undo the last four or five years of work and flexibility that I've done. How can I work through larger ranges of motion that will help me preserve this capacity as well as possible, but be strong in it. That's one of the things that actually attracted me to CrossFit. You know, not wasn't the intensity part.

It was, oh man, there are exercises on rings. There's Olympic lifts, right? Oh, overhead squatting. oh that's cool you have to have a lot of range of motion and be strong to do that cleans and then all the assistance exercises that come along with those that's what got me down the road of lifting again and then i went deep into it and was lifting you know quite heavy like doing two a days probably in my late 20s early 30s but that's really expensive right it's like it takes a lot of energy takes a lot of focus tired a lot you got to eat i don't tell you guys right you got to eat like eating was like my job and i think probably i was close to 260 at my heaviest that was big but 260 while doing crossfit yeah so my my claim to fame is at 257 13 ring muscle ups damn so it's pretty good

what was your body composition like at that lean i was lean 260 still had a grabs at 260. Dude, what? But could not. That's crazy. But if you were like, hey, the emergency is five kilometers away, I'd be like, where your car at? You know?

So I couldn't, you know, I was very strong and I was big. But on the tail end of that, I was starting to get a bit lighter again. I was probably 245 or so, 248. That's when I started getting into Jiu-Jitsu. and I quickly realized like the extra quad meat helped me zero right I felt good about it I was like bam all shorts are tight what's up yeah right but it doesn't it just makes me more tired right so I I let that go and I've gone back and forth to some degree I did I can't remember his name right now but the functional bodybuilding Marcus Philly

yeah Marcus right so I did functional bodybuilding for a couple years And even doing that, I was, I felt too heavy. You know, I was in the mid-240s. And it's a great program. Like I really liked it. You felt too heavy or you felt too stiff, too heavy? I felt too heavy. Heavy.

Yeah, I didn't, I just didn't have the kind of, and maybe it's a combination of heaviness and stiffness. But there's a dexterity that I was looking for that I didn't find. And it's not, doesn't mean that that program can't do that. It just means it didn't do it for me. Yeah. Right. um i tend to get stiff very easily right i get stiff and i put on muscle mass easily and flexibility will go away pretty quickly if i don't if i don't manage it just some of that's just a genetic

predisposition i think so i have to manage those things intelligently and for jiu jitsu dexterity was way more of a priority for me than being 245 now i don't feel any less capable like my strength isn't deficient where I am now compared to 245 but my conditioning and my dexterity is far better so it's just where I put put value specific hypertrophy is like an interesting thing you know like work in your arms or working your legs and then you know maybe you maybe over the course of your lifespan you get interested in something different and now maybe you know all this bulk that you developed on your arm maybe isn't great for volleyball whatever the sport is that you pick up later on and i've kind of found the same thing with running

where like i you know i i sound like a dick but i don't really train my legs hardly at all just some sprins i do some sled stuff i will do squats here and there but i'm not like doing i'm not trying to do any sort of hypertrophy just trying to keep them like uh kind of strong but they're still like big and cumbersome and it's a lot like lug them around yeah well and tired like you said Yeah, it does. But the thing is, I wouldn't trade front-loading muscle mass for anything else. I think it's even just from a longevity perspective. Yeah.

I would have much. I like that I front-loaded muscle mass early in life. And then I have this bandwidth. You have a lot to lose. Yeah. Yeah, I have some space. Yeah, if someone's 35 and they're your height and they're 185 and they're trying to like put on bulk while doing jujitsu, it's going to be. It's hard.

That's hard, very difficult. It's hard. Yeah. especially if you got other life shit going on and one of the other things too with doing hypertrophy work especially if you're doing anything like near failure is you're sore right you get sore a lot like you basically just live in some range of like four to seven doms all the time and that feels like shit when you have people smashing into your body right it's like you're like oh man my quad is sore and this guy's trying to pin my leg and it's like I I feel a reluctance

to react in the right way because of how it feels. And I don't like that, right? If it's my priority, if your priority is to be, you know, a big ass honk and muscular dude and you do jujitsu as second, then it's second. I will never go to a doctor ever again about my general health. All they want to do is put you on pills. Really well said there by Dana White. Couldn't agree with them more.

A lot of us are trying to get jacked and tan. A lot of us just want to look good, feel good. and a lot of the symptoms that we might acquire as we get older, some of the things that we might have high cholesterol or these various things, it's amazing to have somebody looking at your blood work as you're going through the process, as you're trying to become a better athlete,

somebody that knows what they're doing, they can look at your cholesterol, they can look at the various markers that you have, and they can kind of see where you're at, and they can help guide you through that. And there's a few aspects too where it's like, yes, I mean, no, no shades, to doctors, but a lot of times they do want to just stick you on medication. A lot of times

there is supplementation that can help with this. Merrick Health, these patient care coronators are going to also look at the way you're living your lifestyle because there's a lot of things you might be doing that if you just adjust that, boom, you could be at the right levels, including working with your testosterone. And there's so many people that I know that are looking for, they're like, hey, should I do that? They're very curious. And they think that testosterone is going all of a sudden kind of turn them into the Hulk. But that's not really what happens. It can be something that can be really great for your health because you can just basically live your life a little stronger, just like you were maybe in your 20s and 30s. And this is the last thing to

keep in mind, guys, when you get your blood work done at a hospital, they're just looking at like these minimum levels. At Merrick Health, they try to bring you up to ideal levels for everything you're working with. Whereas if you go into a hospital and you have 300 nanograms, per deciliter of test. You're good, bro. Even though you're probably feeling like shit. At Merrick Health, they're going to try to figure out what things you can do in terms of your lifestyle. And if you're a candidate, potentially TRT. So these are things to pay attention to get you to your best self. And what I love about it is a little bit of the back and forth that you get with the patient care coordinator. They're dissecting your blood work. It's not like if you just

get this email back and it's just like, hey, try these five things. Somebody's actually on the phone with you going over every step and what you should do. Sometimes it's supplementation, sometimes it's TRT, and sometimes it's simply just some lifestyle habit changes. All right, guys, if you want to get your blood work checked and also get professional help from people who are going to be able to get you towards your best levels, heads to Merichhealth.com and use code power project for 10% off any panel of your choice. But for me, it's first. So if it's first, I got to treat it like it's first. And that means something else got to go. Living in Dom sounds like another book. It does live in a...

Sounds since it's a terrible place to live. Could be a lot of different subjects too. It could be. Curious about this. Your time, you know, you literally, I think you spent a lot of years learning and focusing on manual therapy. How does that come into your practice now? Let me, let me ask this instead. Because for the person listening, Um, why, where would manual therapy be something beneficial for them? Ooh.

I mean, there's a lot of. Yeah, it's a broad question. Yeah, it's a broad question. But so I'll try to keep it simple, right? Yeah. One is, it's just another force input into the system. It's very low magnitude, but it can also help, um, organize tissue healing, right? It can help you relax.

if you take away all the other claims of manual therapy and you just get like Swedish style massage a couple times a month and that helps you relax and get access to better movement or it's part of your recovery plan that's great on top of that

there are very specific modalities like PNF right strain, counter-strain, myofascial release techniques that can help athletes or anybody gain access to movement they've lost at a faster pace than they might otherwise do, right?

Because it's more targeted, right? So you can be very, very specific and precise with the input, whereas when you're doing more general movement than the input is general and your body will self-organize around the outcome, right whereas if you're laying on a table and you're being more passive a manual therapist can use their hand to target a very specific sort of vector of motion or a very specific area of tissue so it's just you know where does it live one of the biggest lessons for me doing that was um two things

one almost everybody is nervous when they're naked a hundred percent and I'll tell you what because I did spa work first because you have to right and more to make a living I worked in a spa for a long time and it's like man you boil people down to humanity real quick and you realize almost everybody even the most fit people are self-conscious about how their body looks people people relationship with touch is very widespread some people are very very comfortable being touched some people don't ever get it that's probably one of the sadder things i experienced you realize especially like some older people who i would work with that they hadn't been touched in a while

which you know it's kind of a bummer right um so you realize how much touch and vulnerability there is so there were some things i learned as like a communicator in the profession that were i don't think I could have learned otherwise because the person that you're in that room with is basically in their most vulnerable state. They're in a room with a person they don't know and they're naked. So I was realized quickly like, wow, this is a huge responsibility for me to communicate with this person effectively for me to safeguard their health. So that affected my framework. But more specifically to physiology and training, I also realized that even though there are some general anatomical similarities for all human beings and we're all aware of what

they are right the way people's bodies adapted to those inputs could vary quite significantly like what their tissues felt like where things were taught where tendons got stiff where injuries were how their body how that person's body had changed from the same ACL tear as another athlete where their adductor got tight because of how they walked or because they had a full leg cast on for a while or when they broke their collar bone or like you get to actually feel those tissues and the amount of information that you get from putting your hands on is unlike anything else. I encourage a lot of coaches that I work with, like do a palpation lab. I have a question on top of this then.

You know, we've had many people that have come onto the show and talked about myofasional work and tissue work. If somebody is doing self-myofast release and they're noticing that there are areas that just aren't supple, right? What does that potentially tell somebody? if they can't handle pressure in a certain area without having it seize up and hold their breath or if like they just have a

they just feel that their tissues are very very tense what does that tell you about somebody further investigation as required okay if if somebody at a generally light touch is withdrawing because of tenderness that's that's probably right there's probably something going on it might be that

hey they're really sore because they worked out but it could also be like man this tissue like are you always sore on your forearm like that oh shit you are and that tissue's not healing very well from whatever inputs you're giving it right um i think we have to be careful about what conclusions the the types of definitive conclusions we draw if an area is like not supple um i'm gonna repeat this story even though I'm uncertain if it's completely accurate, please fact check me everyone on YouTube. I heard this story

once. It was about Dion Sanders, right? Which was that PT thought that his hamstrings were too tight. And so they did PNF stretching on him and loosened his hamstrings and he ran slower

and then that person was precipitously fired because if you're the fastest man on the planet at the time probably your hamstrings will be tight because they're so responsive right they have to be taught in order for force to move through them at that rate right so he's not a Cirque de Soleil performer this is the best football player alive and his job is to run fast and for no one to ever touch

him yeah so shit's gonna be tight right dancing as he's catching the punt return and then brings it back probably one of the best athletes ever lived yeah right probably one the best athletes ever live bo jackson right same thing probably one of the best athletes ever so powerful he destroyed his own hip right that's a dude so powerful he he ripped his own hip that's a powerful human but anyway when we're one of the mistakes that's made manual therapy a lot is is manual therapist, and I have been guilty of this too. We ascribe to these ideas like, oh, this is taught. It's not supposed to be taught.

I'm going to make it loose. Instead of examining the context in which it is taught. Is it taught? Is it always taught? Do I know what other questions can I ask this athlete? Is it appropriate? Does it hurt? How can I help it heal better?

But if you put your hands on an Olympic lifter, who's the national champion for the last, five years their IT band feels different than you know the average person yes and so to think that their quad needs to be looser is not the answer the question is do all those tissues have enough um blood flow do all those tissues coordinate properly do those do those tissues and joints move through the ranges that are necessary for them to express their potential are they in pain is there something you can do about that um will massaging their legs or teaching them to self massage their legs um reduce the like the leg buzz you get from lifting so that they can fall asleep

more easily right so it has to be reinserted back into a big picture always and that's sort of like i know that's sort of like the drum that i beat with everything and i just i think that that that kind of nuances is important so to kind of tie a bow on all that as far as mechanically improving movement probably the best thing that all manual therapy does is makes movement more available so there's a movement I wanted that's available my body is saying no right now I've decided that I want more here I'm going to use some input lacrosse ball foam roller um supernova yoga tune up whatever the tool is because i want access to a motion that i don't have access to right now yeah that's it that's like sort of the bottom line do the guys that jujitsu do they

listen to you like you have a wealth and knowledge with like strength training conditioning uh at this length like my mild facial release and all this stuff and like i just know sometimes when you're in super close proximity to some people there's you know maybe you're doing some of your stuff before the session and maybe other people aren't paying attention or like a lot of the guys like bought into what you do some are some are some more than others um if they are it's because i don't try to push it on them like i don't come in and be like hi i'm rob wilson i'm strength coach and i go on podcast sometimes so you guys should do shit i say i'm more just like try to be an example and hopefully they notice that i'm older than most of them yeah i'm mostly not hurt i i

probably the least time off the mat I stay in good shape all year round I can leave out of town and come back and I'm still conditioned because I did cardio on travel right like so I try to be an example of what I think it should be and then if they have questions then I'm open to them though so the only exception to that is sometimes I'll be like hey you guys want to do some breath work after training like let's let's do some breath work and we just will downshift after training for like two three minutes especially after like a really hard day we'll all just bring it down

and then like cool thanks for training just to kind of like before everybody goes to work and we've all been like fighting with each other for an hour sometimes it's good to just bring systems back to normal before you go back out into the world I'm curious about this

an idea when it comes to very high level athletics. You know, there are some people that think that if you're going to be an elite level athlete, there's going to be no way that you'll have no pain, right? Because there's a lot of hard training one has to do to be at that level. Do you think that that's just a compromise that athletes, if they want to get to a high level that athletes need to make, that there's just a level of physical pain or discomfort that might come with that? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, if you don't want things to ever hurt or or to feel hurt or get hurt the only 100% successful

contraceptive for that is to do nothing dangerous but if you want to do things where there's risk involved then that means sometimes stuff might hurt or you might you might get hurt however chronic sustained pain is a sign that that's more so what I'm talking about. Something is a miss that you should handle, right? That's a signal from your body that it's not healing, right? But, I mean, some days I have medial right knee pain and I step a little weird and it goes, dang. And then it hurts for like an hour.

And I'm like, let me pay attention to this. And if it's gone by the end of the day, I'm like, well, that's getting heel hooked for 10 years, right? however if it hurts for three days I'm like oh we no one's going to be on my legs I'm gonna let this thing rest and I'm gonna do what I need to do so that I can get it back to its baseline

I won't just go well let me just pull this jujitsu knee sleeve over top of it and act like this shit isn't happening right because that's that's like you know to use the check engine light analogy like there are times where it's appropriate to ignore the chick engine light on your dashboard right but if you always ignore it and if more and

more lights light up eventually your vehicle will fail yeah and usually at point of least convenience so pain is a communication system if you stop every time you feel something uncomfortable or painful probably won't do very much that's very meaningful especially not in sport or elite sport yeah right um but if you also always ignore it more and more things will break until you can't do this thing that you like anymore what are some things you do for yourself for conditioning so you've mentioned you know you might be rolling with people that are 10 20 years younger than yourself so what do you like to do to stay in shape for the mats i mean the thing that i'm on top of right now is I'm on the Concept 2 bike.

Like, if I could be on it more days a week than I have time for, I would be. Concept 2 bike? Yeah, so there's a Concept 2 bike erg. They have a new thing out too. I don't know if you've seen this new thing that has like a little bench press thing in it. You know, years ago I saw this thing at a trade show

and then the thing disappeared. I never saw it again. It was like 15 years ago. I contacted them and said, hey, did I dream this? or did you actually make something that you can like push you can bench press it you can leg press it and i think you can row it yeah normal too and they're like no they're and then and they were all excited because they're like oh yeah no one ever talks about that that's the things like stored away

in some like shed but they're like we're thinking about bringing it back yeah and uh now they brought this thing back yeah it's the the strength erg so they're using this at the tactical games look at this is cool it looks brutal i haven't used it yet but everything they make uh works great and sucks um yeah is this the thing you're talking about yeah that's dope isn't it what the wait so let me ask you this so you know i i do list assault bike conditioning do you think that this could replace that but also be better overall for other stuff too or should i keep doing the assault bike they're just different they're just different to bike is a little different yeah so that's the that's the concept two bike yeah and that's what i have

One of the large advantages of Concept 2 is the wattage measurements transfer over between modalities. So, for example, in crew, when athletes are injured, like when they're doing land-based training, they put them on the Concept 2 bike because the power outputs are transferable. Whereas you can't compare an Echo bike to an assault bike to a Concept 2 bike, right?

Can you compete on these things too, right? Like because the concept two rower has like competition and you can oh yeah right and so you can compete on the bike as well right and there's like hundreds of thousands of people that concept two does great they have a whole like global so you can be competitive on there and seem which I think it's kind of cool makes it fun you see what he's trying to rope you into right now well I know how fired up he gets for something so Mark bell could sell ice to an Eskimo but again I want to ask one you don't think it would be worth it for me to replace my current assault bike with the content Concept 2, Bykerg. No. But I could change my mind if they're looking for a spokesman. I'm just kidding. No, but so my main tool for conditioning right now is the concept two bike erg, and I use Morpheus to do it.

So I measure my HRV every morning. Explain Morpheus to us a little bit. We know about it, but explain. So Morpheus is Joel Jameson's company. Joel has been training some of the best athletes in combat sports for many, many years. he's demetrius johnson's uh strength and conditioning coach and if anybody knows anything about dj first of all he's probably one of if not the best to ever do it like if you're just talking about m ms he's an insane athlete right and super his mindset is incredible somebody i really respect from from that

game a lot um joel was his coach for a long time and they did a lot of heart rate zone training And so Morpheus is basically it's a chest strap, right, like a polar H-10, right? You put a chest strap on, you lay down on the morning, it measures your HRV, you do a little sleep report. And then based on the data that they get from the chest strap, it recommends training zones. Like, okay, this week you need to hit this zone one, zone two, zone three. I rarely do zone three work because I do CLA. And I, you know, I'm doing intense jiu-jitsu training. So I just, that covers my high intensity.

Yeah. But I'm mostly zone two on the bike and then I get my zone work walking or weighted, weighted walking. Like rucking? A vest right now. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, the bike, I get on the bike for between 20 and 40 minutes, depends on how much time I have.

Usually at the end of my training. Is that kind of a nasal breathing, like easier session or is it, you're going pretty hard? almost always nasal for me unless I'm at the threshold of of my like zone two intervals if it's long then sometimes I'll have to dump a little bit of extra CO2 but I try to keep it consistent and mellow I don't do it to like any specific time cadence but I try to keep it slow smooth even controlled you try to produce a certain amount of watts are you watching your RPMs or anything I watch wattage primarily, but then RPM to wattage relationships and triangulate that with my heart rate. So if I'm in like true zone two for extended periods of time, like right now, what I'm trying to do is be above 250 for 30 minutes.

So can I just hold that threshold? That's what's right for me. I'd like to be in the 300 range, but it's just I just don't have time. to be on the bike in the place that has it. We'll see if I can get if I can get Mama to make some space in the house for a concept too at some point. But I work out at Virginia High Performance where I teach this check engine light class. It's literally 100 meters from the front door in my house, like a world class human performance facility with everything.

So your wife's like, why do you have to move equipment into our house again? Exactly. Wow. You sound just like her. She's like, why don't you just walk 90 seconds to the gym and do it there? No, it's better. It's like right there next to the TV. No one will even notice it.

That's exactly. I'm like, I can put it on the. You can let her know that you have friends that do have their equipment right there too. I have the equipment in the in the house. We have it overpouring everywhere, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I have therapy device in your, buy your TV. Yeah, I have kettlebells in the kitchen on the front porch, dumbbells in my office.

I've got like the like the Python coiler. like that's those are hanging around like i have shit everywhere she's like do great i really that's what i really want is for guests to come over or me to come home from work and our beautiful restored three season room is to have a fucking echo bike on the porch like a rogue squat rack right there and everything that's what i would that's what i would do but the truth is our house is much nicer because of her not because of me because it would basically i would live in a yurt with a mattress on the floor with like weights and rings and shit sprinkled around it but life is better with a yeah if it wasn't for women we definitely would

have the mattress on the floor that's for sure i yeah i did forever yeah my wife's like can we get a bed frame she was like you're like why why why how old are you at that point i was probably 35 yeah oh you still that's so great yeah i mean i had a bed frame and then i didn't i was like oh let's keep it i was like and i tried to justify it i had this great rationalization i'm like you the Japanese have very healthy hips. They do, actually. Because they turn and they have to squat every day. And my wife is the most uncomfortably direct human being I've ever met in my life.

She would come in here and roast every single person in this room. She's amazing. And she essentially told me to go fuck myself, right? Like her favorite phrase is kick rocks. So she'd just be like kick rocks, pal, like, you're not, get me a bed frame. We're going today. We're going to get a bed frame. So this place looks civilized.

I'm like, okay. savage sleeping on the ground like that i know i sleep on the ground i would throw a non-fitted sheet over top of it whatever yeah yeah i'm curious about this again i know you don't give blanket prescriptions to athletes um one thing that i think mark and i have found makes things easier for ourselves is to have certain inputs around so that even if they're not in our time of working out. These things are touched and the movement, like if I'm feeling something, I can do this thing that's right there and bam, okay, that thing's gone, right?

I have these different signals around my environment that give me movement in certain areas that lead to improvement even though it's not in my direct workout. And it's very easy to do, very small amount of time. So is that something that you suggest to people? depends on the person, but how would you have people think about this? And I think about setting it up in their own lives. Yes. So that's something that's constant.

What the thing is changes, but I, I'm always, so that's like Pavel, grease the groove. Yeah. Right. Or Corey Schlesinger talks about microdosing, right? So this is not, every people have been talking about this forever. It's something that I will, with certain athletes, use strategically to introduce a new concept in like a non, sort of like a non-threatening. Oh, I have my shoulders.

I'll just hang from the pull-up bar like 10 seconds every time you walk through the doorway, right? So it is just like a small input, but also you can build some volume, right? So it's a nice way to train. I've been helping my younger sister get, you know, sort of like reclaim her health. And she's had some issues with chronic pain. And we just, I was like, get a light kettlebell. What do you feel comfortable with? Just put it by your door.

and every time I showed her how to do kettlebell swing I was like every time you walk through this doorway just do like 10 and it takes like 8 seconds to do 10 kettlebell swings right and then before you know it you're doing 100 swings a day and then you're doing 100 swings a day

you're like well I can do 10 that doesn't take long what if I do 20 and the next thing you know you're doing 200 you do 200 kettlebell swings a day you probably get stronger and they're like damn well I feel pretty good you're like oh great well then let's do them at the gym and let's do them with a little bit more weight

or do it with a time on it. But by then, she's practiced so many times that's not intimidating anymore. So it's kind of like a way to introduce a new movement. But also for me, I just have toys everywhere. So like the spring coil thing, like one thing I do now is any day that I train jujitsu

and I don't do strength and conditioning, quote unquote, I don't go to and do a specific number count sets and reps. I'm taking breaks and I have the coiler out and I'm doing you know rotational movements and breathing and I'll go in the backyard on break and swing a mace and I'll be like I'm just going to do a hundred because it's right there like I said I have kettlebell that I keep in my kitchen just there all the time 28 kilo kettlebell that just sits in the corner and sometimes I'll just walk in

and I'm going to do 15 swings I have a question for you that that's along with this something I've mentioned to Mark before, too, but there's something that I've seen from a few strength conditioning coaches. It's this phrase low stem inputs do not yield high stem outputs. Low stimulus inputs do not yield high stimulus outputs. And as much as I understand it, when I, even when I hear what you mentioned right there at the example of your sister in the kettlebell, it started low stimulus. It built into something that the 200 swings is probably easy for her now, but initially, if she were to try that, that would have been a high stem output.

But it built into a high stem output from low stem inputs. And I wonder, what are your, just, I don't want to influence your response to that, but what is your thoughts on the idea that low stimulus inputs do not yield high stimulus outputs? Well, I mean, most technically,

that's true. If I want somebody to run fast and I just have them run slow, they probably won't run fast like okay i mean think that's logic is easy to follow but all of that exists and with other contextual components influencing each other so none of that shit matters if the person won't do the thing so if i go well i want my sister to get stronger she truly probably needs to swing a 35 or 45 pound kettlebell to produce power changes but It doesn't matter if the person's afraid to do it.

So, okay, what can I do now that will lead her to being comfortable with high stem output? So there's a bunch of assumptions that are built into high stem input, high stem output or high output, right? Which is that this human being is already comfortable doing this. And if you're dealing with elite athletics or even collegiate athletics, you know, even collegiate athletics they probably are and it's a fine rule if you're dealing with gen pop you better have some tricks up your sleeve yeah right and i don't know like i think one of the things when i when i look at that statement i understand it in the way you're mentioning but like one thing that you see or one thing i notice with a lot of high level athletes is like there are there are things that

minimize their ability to do what they want to do at a continuous high level whether it's doing certain things too much or not having these not having uh beneficial ways of recovering so that they can continue to do the task right so there are certain low stem things that can help them continue to do those high stem things longer so when i think about that i'm like contextually these low stimulus i've seen these low stimulus inputs yield high stem outputs because it allows these athletes to perform this at a continuously high level so that's why i that's why i just i don't like that logic. Well, because it, it disregards the other factors that make one plus one is two possible. Right. Right. So when we're talking about whether it's gen pop like I just mentioned or elite performance,

it's like, okay, high output, but is the person skilled enough at this movement to output high? So if you've ever taught somebody how to do a back squat before, some people don't. don't know how to do it well enough to push as hard as they can push. People are uncomfortable with that level of effort. They don't know what it feels like to express that much power and effort. So sometimes lower stem is so that they're comfortable, they become comfortable doing it. And then they develop enough skill and enough comfort that they can actually push hard enough.

Some of that's like neuropsychological mess that's in the mix. But yeah, if you have an elite sprinter and you want them to run faster, then they're going to have to run really fast. And there's just, okay, yes, I think we get that. But also what else in their life is happening?

Maybe if this sprinter has a nagging hamstring injury, having them run high output is impossible and if you deal with that it'll just take the brakes off enough that they have high output right so there's a lot of factors that are that are always at play but I get that

you know if you want to be national champion in Olympic weightlifting you can't never lift heavy you're going to have to lift heavy you're going to have to know what those loads feel like you're going to have to condition your nervous system and your joints and all your sinews to deal with those inputs. Okay, I think we get that.

But it's like, I mean, you also have to make technical improvements and those things contribute to output that can't be argued against. Yeah. I think we know a lot about like lifting. You know, we know a lot about the gym. We know a lot about other studies

been done on, you know, dead lifts and kettlebells and barbells and all these different things over the years. But I think maybe something that's not studied, but probably more observed, is like farm boy strength, you know, this or someone who has a manual labor job. They're doing hundreds, if not thousands, of repetitions. We had someone on the show, I think, recently too. Maybe it was Ida Bortel who was talking about this, but he was talking about how, or somebody on the show was talking about how they were used these grippers sometimes. and they just kind of realized the grippers were not really that great of a tool.

It was you know, yeah. It was him, right? And he was mentioning how these mechanics were just like wrenching stuff down all the time. And they were using various tools to wrench things down. But they just had this like insane grip. They had closed the grippers with no problem. And when it comes to that kind of strength, it's interesting because they're not really maxing. I mean, there wouldn't be a case.

In fact, there's like there's, you know, the word never is pretty strong. but you're not really ever lifting a max weight when you're doing like farm work, yard work, or at least it would be in your best interest not to. You totally devastate yourself. But even on like construction sites and stuff, they try to make sure that everything on the site only weighs X amount.

Obviously there's going to be things that are going to be way heavier, but those are not going to be moved by humans. They're going to be moved by machines. And so we might end up with some of this low stimulus stuff, but it's done for hundreds of thousands of rep, you know, carrying water or carrying various things can build tremendous amounts of strength. Now, is it going to, can you know, you know, move around sheet rock and have a hammer, nail, and a ladder and all these different things? And deadlifted

600 pounds completely out of nowhere. Most likely that would be very doubtful that that would happen unless it's just extraordinarily huge human being, right? Like maybe there is, couple guys i could figure that out but you're not going to have that nervous system you're not going to be able to like tap into that that same way but tremendous amounts of strength and skill can be built with uh doing things that are very very light uh over and over again yeah i mean the strongest the people with the strongest hands that i know are carpenters you know a buddy of mine that i uh have known for a long time 15 20 years and he he used to carry around sheets of plywood and his hand you know he could pinch grip

you know eight by four sheets of plywood and pick him up was he in jiu jitterium no I mean his hands are toast now but he was like when we did CrossFit together back in the day anything with grip you know we used to have the high temp

bumper plates remember how thick those things were they're like three and the 45s were like three inches thick he could easily pick those things up and just walk indefinitely it was just nothing because he just was using tools all day so his hands were really really strong um and he was just generally strong you know there's that there is that farm strength where people you know they never deadlifted but they've been throwing

50 pound bales a hay for forever this is a couple of guys i do jujitsu with now they grew up on a on a farm where all they did was chop wood after school every day chop wood one and one of them had a mall one of them had an axe every day holidays chopping wood right and they're you do told me like uh you know shout out west told me his dad would be like they'd be like dad why don't you get a wood splitter because they would sell cords of wood and he'd be like why do i need a wood splitter when i got two sons right now go outside and cut some wood and these two dudes these two brothers that i train with are the most miserable people to roll with because they're so strong i mean if you want to tap them you got to win

yeah because they're just so so strong pound for pound and it's just i mean they lift too but they're farm work you know they're just farm boys and it's miserable it's miserable if they get a hold of you let me ask you this does does that anecdote make you um wonder about different ways of training outside of like what we do in gyms or can does what we do in gyms can we just recreate that i think it it makes it makes it more predictable it makes the outcomes more predictable in the gym work yeah yes right the environment's more controlled right you can do it on a schedule it's easier to organize the stress yes in order to get what you want whereas you know if you're just swinging them all you're carrying wood you're going to get strong but you won't you it's not measurable

measurable yeah it's not as measurable right so it takes some of the science out of it doesn't mean it's not worthwhile it just that's just the fact of it right but there are lessons that can be learned and i think there are that's why tools like maces and clubs have existed forever because people go well if you put a weight at the end of a long stick there's a lot of leverage that you have in momentum that you have to control and it makes you strong in a different way nothing's made my grip strength in jujitsu better than swinging a mace a truly heavy mace you know 25 pounds are heavier yeah that's what made the biggest improvement question well okay you know why is that um why is that how would you explain that because again those are tools that some people use some people

think are useless so why is it potentially useful i mean without you know being able to cite some particular study I can tell you what my experience was my one man anecdote and I think one of the things is that because the directions that the mace is traveling you're never just holding it as tight as you can it's not static right so you do something like a farmer's carry you squeeze it as hard as you can and you walk and just keep squeezing it yeah a mace you're always opening slightly and closing right so it's like repetitions now what I did learn was you can overdo it yeah and you can blow your you can get some pretty nasty like golfers elbow tennis elbow yeah I had months of just cooked because I was I got super into it yeah so I was like swinging a mace all the time were you

doing one hand with that or two hand I was doing twos I was doing like twos to ones I was doing um like low pendulums behind the head pendulums like any way that I could swing it plus the mace that I have a friend of mine who's a welder made it custom for me so it's a steel rod with a ball on the end and then the actual weight is about 18 inches and it's empty and it has sand in it and then it's closed with a bolt so it's like a dead blow hammer so you know dead blow hammer is basically has a bit of sand so when you hit something the sand goes so whatever direction so as you swing my mace and you start like uh you know a wolf brigade right they call it the holster you see in front right and so the sand

is settled over top of the handle but as soon as you start to point it out the sand falls yeah and as you swing it it drops to the bottom so as you swing it the sand the sand is moving inside of that head so you have to deal with not just the momentum of the ball yeah but the sand is moving independently right so you're always like breaking loosening breaking loosening in a different in a way that's even different than other maces that I've used. So it's really cool tool to have around, but I was doing like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of reps. Like daily.

Yeah. And I just smoked my elbow. And this makes me curious because, you know, you mentioned your carpenter friend who now his hands are fried. My assumption is just overwork with that. I mean, he's been a carpenter for, you know, 30 years. Exactly. So my question is this. You know, I share some videos, you know, doing sandbag throws violently. And some people are like, well, why don't you just go on a construction site? And my things is like, okay, because I don't want to go on a construction site and work. But also, I want to control the amount of repetitions I get in with this so I can build it over time, paying attention to the signals of my body. People are really lucky that you're such a nice man.

and people have no idea how much more fit and athletic and strong than almost everyone you probably are like hey motherfucker why don't you come down here and throw this with me and if you can beat me at this right then you can earn an opinion until then why don't you shut the fuck up since i'm elite at like three things that you've never done maybe you should keep your dumbass opinion to yourself just a just a gentle reminder to everyone out there who's done nothing, but knows everything. Well, this competed at the elite level in three sports. All right, Mark, you're getting leaner and leaner,

but you always enjoy the food you're eating. So how are you doing it? I got a secret, man. It's called Good Life Protein. Okay, tell me about that. I've been doing some Good Life Protein. You know, we've been talking on the show for a really long time of certified Piedmontese beef,

and you can get that under the umbrella of Good Life Proteins, which also has chicken breast, chicken thighs, sausage, shrimps, scallops, all kinds of different fish, salmon, tilapia. The website has nearly any kind of meat that you can think of lamb. There's another one that comes in mind. And so I've been utilizing and kind of using some different strategy, kind of depending on the way that I'm eating. So if I'm doing a keto diet, I'll eat more fat,

and that's where I might get the sausage and I might get their 80-20, grass-fed, grass-finish, ground beef. I might get bacon. And there's other days where I kind of do a little bit more bodybuilder style, where the fat is, you know, might be like 40 grams or something like that. And then I'll have some of the leaner cuts of the certified Piedmontese beef. This is one of the reasons why, like, neither of us find it hard to stay in shape because we're always enjoying the food we're eating.

And protein, you talk about protein leverage it all the time. It's satiating and helps you feel full. I look forward to every meal. And I can surf and turf, you know. I could cook up some, you know, chicken thighs or something like that and have some shrimp with it. Or I could have some steak. I would say, you know, the steak, it keeps going back and forth for me on my favorite. So it's hard for me to lock one down.

But I really love the bovette steaks. Yeah. And then I also love the rib-eyes as well. You can't go wrong with the rib-ies. So, guys, if you guys want to get your hands on some really good meat pot, you can have to Good Life Proteins.com and use code power for 20% off any purchases made on the web, website or you can use code Power Project to get an extra 5% off if you subscribe and save to any meats that are a recurring purchase. This is the best meet in the world. And one, why don't

you get a job at a construction site? Fuck off. There is nothing else that needs to be said other than that. What a ridiculous thing. That's just some troll shit to say to you. It's the internet. Why? Because I'm not a construction worker. Yeah. And so, Sandbags offer a convenient way for me. Hey, everybody just want to let everybody know I took your advice. I'm a construction worker and I'm going to be doing this type of training over the next couple weeks. So join me in my journey.

That's so dumb. For the next 60 days. I hope you don't answer these idiots. No, no, I just laugh at it. But, you know, the thing is, is like, your book, the check engine light, you teach people how to pay attention to signals that their body gives them. Like, you know, you had that thing happen to your elbow from swinging the maze too much. So, you know, as people are trying to develop all of this different strength, what is the, what are some things, some signals from their body that you think should, that people should try to pay attention to, to know, okay, you know, I might need to slow down. I might need to back off a little bit. Because sometimes, and I've gone too far with certain things where it's just like, oh, oh, sometimes that's the way that you know. It's just very hard to know where the limit is until you, until you reach it. I think sometimes people want this.

guarantee that things will always go well if they just do the right stuff and we just don't have that much control over life i'd rather pay the price of being fit and strong than get hurt being weak like just as a general heading yeah i'd rather pay the price of getting strong and fit and staying fit that's that's me maybe that's just a stupid meathead bias that i have i don't know but there's no free lunches in this thing. And so, I don't know, man. I'd rather hurt my back being strong as fuck than hurt my back getting off the couch because I needed more potato chips.

True. I'm just, that's just a baseline honest opinion. Yeah. However, and I mean that like, you know, it sounds a little salty, but I mean that honestly, like when I work with people in a rehabilitative setting, they're like, oh man, I just, you know, I don't know if this pain's ever going to go away. And I'm like, I don't know either. but if you're going to hurt for the rest of your life

wouldn't you rather hurt and be strong as hell because I don't have a magic wand that takes people's pain away I'm like I can't promise you that that's a lie but what I can tell you is if you do this stuff you'll get way stronger so do you want your back to hurt and be able to lift up 200 pounds or do you want your back to hurt because you lifted up 10 pounds because we can make that difference that I can promise you

so I can't choose for you right Now, with that said, I think if you have chronicity in pain, chronicity? Yeah, long-term chronic pain. Ah, okay. So if you have chronic pain in a specific area, especially if you can clearly relate it to some kind of activity, then you have to decide if it's worth it to keep doing it that much. Now, for me, I, like you guys, have a lifetime history of lifting weights and trying different exercises. So I'm a little bit more attuned to how far I can go before ship gets irreversible, right?

Because I've pushed other stuff too much. So now I go, okay, I can't do chin-ups without my elbow burning ever. It doesn't matter what volume. If I keep doing this and keep making my elbow this hot, I'm going to tear it. Yeah, I'm going to tear it. So I'm going to take this much grip work away. way until first I can do chin-ups again. I need to be able to do like four by 10 pain-free, which I'm back to that now,

four-by-10, no problem, pain-free, pick the mace back up. But I know the limit. I'm like, okay, I'm not going to go out here and try to do 3,000 reps a week. I'm going to do, I'm going to just touch. Okay, I'm going to do 100 reps just because it feels good and I'm going to move on. but I did learn some things from that that will help me help other people I'm not saying this is what I recommend right

tighten it until it breaks and then back off half a turn right that's the old mechanics rule yeah but only each of us can decide if it's worth it right and I think some people want to go well how do I know if it's worth it I'm like man I don't know what to tell you some people don't want kids because they it's a pain in the ass for me I wouldn't take it back

my daughter is the best thing that ever happened to me right she's the thing I'm most proud of yeah she's amazing she's amazing she's an adult now she's amazing human being but kids are a pain in the ass but kids but they are a pain in the ass it's not easy it's not easy

you always have to put them first doesn't matter what you want to do if your kids need something you have to stop what you're doing you have to deal with it right that's just life but is it worth it it was for me and I haven't met very many parents who would say different

right so but I can't tell somebody else if it's worth it for them or not right so you have to try things and pay attention and again I'll go back to this idea I mentioned earlier which is a safe to fail experiment just to give a little bit more literal of an answer which is try something you think you can sustain that is least likely to hurt you

if you're not sure well that's what professionals are actually for right when you work with a subject matter expert what we do is help you refine your goal and go okay hold on where what's your background all right maybe the first mace you ever swing shouldn't weigh 30 pounds maybe we should do this like fiber and just feel it and get the flow of it and then teach you how to progress right and that's what happens with every domain we go hold on where you what did you do before okay this is actually your starting place so if you decide to work with a professional that's what they actually do not

everybody has access to the kind of experience we do or we have and i realize that so if you decide to seek help then get somebody who can help you identify your goal how to measure it and then can help you seek a path towards that that won't hurt and might help and then you go oh well i mean that was all pretty easy i don't think that's a good zone i don't think all pretty easy is a good zone i think like 60 to 70% that was hard is a much better zone 110%

it always hurts I'm beat up all the time I don't think that's necessarily good at least not sustained right but if it's always easy how long how long can you do that and get something out of it

you know so this is a balancing act but that is what professionals are for really you said you like to write how do you make time to write and like where do you kind of fit that into your life you know after writing this book and have you written

other stuff before? Yeah so I've always enjoyed it I just if there was a project in school it was the only thing I really liked other than PE like his language stuff so I've always liked writing to some degree I started holding myself to a standard of writing

probably like five years ago I decided I'm going to post on Instagram every day for 19 months so I posted on my original account which is prepared to perform and that turned from like me talking about like a few breathing topics into like short essay poetry artwork so that's like more of a creative outlet and I realize like oh I have a real internal drive to do this I wrote for some periodicals like simply faster. So I did a half dozen articles for simply faster all on using breathing and like strengthening or health performance environments. And then I have a regular writing practice. So are you guys familiar with Julia Cameron, the artist's way that book? I'm not. Nope. It's a great book all about sort of like how to develop tools.

that organize creativity and one of the main tools in there is morning pages and morning pages is every day in the morning I wake up I handwrite three pages I don't do always do three sometimes I just do one why handwrite it's supposed to do something different for your brain and there's probably some stuff to it I think it's it's easier to maintain flow when you're handwriting and I don't I don't necessarily mean like the flow state I mean like literally it's easier just to keep writing. Yeah. So you write in cursive, right?

Single space. Don't care about punctuation, spelling, there's no editing. You write whatever comes out for that whole time and sort of just like clears the cobwebs out of your brain. It doesn't have to be cathartic. You know, I winked at Sally yesterday and she didn't wink back. Now I'm sad, right? It doesn't have to be that kind of dear diary, but it can be.

and you just see what comes out so I've had that practice for for some time does it have to make any sense no not at all sometimes my stuff has been like a third of the page is just me bitching about doing

the thing like I don't want to do this today like I'm just coming to me for writing yeah like I've definitely had pages where it was like blah blah blah blah like I'm literally writing the words blah blah blah blah blah blah you know it's just nonsense and then

it's funny what happens is it just starts to something else is like oh i didn't want to i don't want to do this isn't that dumb that i'm writing this how many of our thoughts are disorganized and then you realize like some organized thought starts to appear out of it um so that's an interesting practice um i've written other you know some other some other articles for some old school training sites and stuff and then of course the book was probably that was the biggest challenge and and and writing accomplishment so far does this give you a place to just kind of tell your clients like you just kind of beat him over beat him over the head with your book um i try not to um because it's like

the principles that are in there are in everything that i they've been exposed to a lot yeah they've been exposed to it but um it's a great reference so if people want to go back and the thing i tried to do with this book in particular was what is it like to to what would it be like to have a coach, a knowledgeable coach, in your own brain? Like, what kind of questions do we ask people? What things do we give them to think about? So in the book, there's a lot of self-reflection. So you can go through a section, and then there will be, you know, three to five questions

that will just ask you to think about what it is that you just read. And I think that's more important. I think a lot of times we're in such a like input stage in our culture, where it's just like in, in, in, in. we don't really digest what it is that we're taking in it's just who's read more who's read more stuff who's got the coolest bookshelf but not like what did I really get so when I write I try to think about like what's the value proposition if I'm writing it for a reader if it's not something that's just for me I try to craft a book like this that's a subject matter book around okay

when the person who reads this sits with this material is this going to help them develop their their skills and health in a meaningful way or is it just Rob Wilson said some shit later thanks for the 20 bucks you know and so there's a lot of interaction because that's I think you know we're social right so a lot of the value we get like we're here today it's not just the podcast timer it's the time in the gym it's the time in between, we're talking to each other, oh, hey, what about this? Have you heard of this thing? And that flow of thought and conversation and sharing is where there's a lot of hidden value, right? In a book, you don't get that interaction. So I tried to build that in to the way that I wrote the book, the way that I talked to the reader. I try to use the same kind of language that I would use just speaking normally to anybody and then stop and have a question where they would think about what was the conversation that we had so try to generate an internal conversation rather than just like shotgun my words at people until they're done

and they put it on a shelf forever yeah a lot of people haven't experienced like a lot of coaching they haven't they haven't been coached a lot yeah but if you have played sports then you've been coached a lot and I think you know it's uh it's helpful I was listening to uh Adam Carolla he was on Joe Rogan recently and he was talking about how you know all do all growing up he was playing different sports and he's like I was just always getting like yelled at you know but it was yelled that by like a coach you know somebody that had his best interest in mind yelling at him to do better or to be in a better position or whatever it might be um I just found it to be really interesting I'm like hmm I never really thought about that but I had so many coaches I had so many

mentors. And I think that's why books like this are so successful is because people are kind of seeking that out in some way. They want direction. Yeah, I agree. And that was very formative for me. I feel lucky now. I feel really fortunate that I've had so many coaches and mentors. It's helped make me coachable. I want feedback. And because of, you know, I don't want to sound like an old codger, but I think social media does tend to create these echo chambers for all of us. And I think it's important that we have ways to audit our own habits and our own thinking, right? Like another cool thing for me about coming here is like, oh, here's some guys who are doing all kinds of movement stuff and have a lot of experience training and competing. You guys think about things differently than I do.

What tools are you using? Why did you pick that? instead of like oh i'm a kettlebell guy you're not a kettlebell guy fuck off it's like hold on a second these guys have done something right what can i learn oh man what's this oh two trainer i never tried that before let's try it you know like let me see what's going on like that kind of of willingness to learn but that's the start if somebody's not been exposed to that can they develop that kind of skill right and

Our podcasts, when we talked about breathing, I'm going to butcher this quote, but you mentioned how one's psychology can affect their perception of stress. There's something along those lines. Now, I was actually curious, outside of, you know, what you're doing with how you're breathing, how else, what other things can we do when we're doing hard work? what other things can do you think can be employed that can help it feel easier it can help us perceive it as not being extremely stressful think of those things as being for you okay right so i'm i'm doing this hard thing for me right it's not it's not against me and i don't have to right i get to this

is the cost of developing myself right like no no fire no blade right like you have to have some hammering some fire some ice in order to forge a tool right right to forge a blade and i think sometimes we think of stress and this has happened with like the stress management culture it's like this thing that's bad that we're supposed to have over there but stress is a constant it's like i wrote an article uh recently called the gravity of stress um and i i liken stress to a force like gravity like you can't do anything about the fact that it's affecting you if you're on earth it's a force we all have to deal with and it's present always stress is the same in fact gravity is stress on structure so stress is

always present. Things are always trying to push you, pull you, deform the way you operate internally, externally. What makes humans different is we can choose the way we interact with it, right? My dog is never going to pick up a Zen meditation practice so he's less angry about squirrels, right? He's just going to be pissed off every day forever until he dies. Yeah. Right. And so whether that's good, bad, or otherwise, that's neither here nor there, but we can choose how we interact with those forces because we're aware of them. If we try to push them away,

then we're arguing with the nature of the universe, which is an impossible task. But if you accept like, okay, this is something that I must deal with and I can shape myself so I'm better at dealing with it. That's actually what all training is. Yeah. All training is just

I'm better at dealing with stress. curious on your thoughts on this what what are your thoughts on facial expression during exercise combat etc what are your thoughts on that I mean like should people grimace when they're expressing effort not even should not even should just you know I'll give an example because I don't want to I don't want to again put forward what I do but you know we had even boss written on the show he was talking about the times when he was doing really really hard cardio when he was trying to build his conditioning he actually uh first off he did the thing you were mentioning where he was like he would say this is i love this this is good for me i love this

even in the heart i said he actually helped him start to enjoy it but he also mentioned that he would laugh sometimes yeah which changed again shifted his perception on it right boss a little different yeah yeah it is a little different yeah yeah but you what are your thoughts on like the face and in general when it comes to that? I mean, there is definitely some like physiological validity to like trigeminal nerve responses to autonomic states.

So trigeminal nerve controls your facial muscles. Okay. Right? And so the faces that you make in response to stress can change, can affect that that feedback loop, right? There's a lot of nuance to what's what, but I think laughing is a good is a good response it's definitely if you're fighting someone and they start laughing

that's a response that I have uh as like uh intensity yeah it's higher and higher in training as I start to smile as I start to smile I have that sometimes with like manual therapy someone digging into your calf it just hurts so ridiculously bad that all I could do is laugh about exactly you get to the point of uh recognizing the absurdity it's like hysterical yeah it's like first of all I choose this like what I'm so weird and twisted because the work it gets the more I like it right it's stupid and that's like bosses like that right like yeah just this is oh this is the worst you've got for me yeah I love it right um but I think um there are definitely some things that you can play with as far as keeping a relaxed face yeah right um you have to be

a little bit careful I've had I have it on good authority um that under stress I get dead faced too yeah right relationship dead face i've been told this you know rob's not home anymore um and so that's also a response like okay i'm checking out yeah from stress so it's something to play with though to see if okay i'm going to do my conditioning i'm going to keep my face relaxed or i'm rolling i'm going to keep my expressions i'm going to keep it expressionless what do jocko has He's like robot face or something. He has some kind of name that he called it when he told his kids. Like you got to keep, you got to keep robo face.

It might even be dead face. It's something like that. He had like a moniker for it. Yeah. For when his kids were doing jiu-jitsu, like be expressionless. The first place I learned that was Sturrette's supple leopard when he was talking about not having a pain face when doing something. Yes.

Angry horse eye. Yeah. And then I took that into jiu-gitsu. And like that's what I didn't want to ask. I didn't want to tell you what. phrase right yeah horse what's it called angry horse face angry horse yeah well you oh okay yeah yeah I didn't want to necessarily influence what risk it there yeah but it for me anecdotally it's made a huge difference um and have you have you read the book of five rings of course okay do you remember

when he mentions don't wrinkle your brow I don't remember that okay so he mentions he mentions in combat don't have a wrinkle in the brow um and he also mentions an aspect on relaxed breathing. And I found that really interesting. I just found that really interesting that like, because you think about it, don't have a wrinkle in your brow. What's, what's that mean? You know? I definitely look for when I'm doing jiu-jitsu. I look for signs of effort. And I try to keep my demeanor as relaxed as possible because I know it's a psychological weapon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. And this is, you know, if we go back to our other conversation on breathing, when you talk about field sports or combat sports, if one team or one opponent is going and their hands are on their knees I don't care what the research says about pectoral involvement and assisted breathing that's a hands on the knee study

that they really did if one team is looking exhausted and the other team is walking around looking loose and you've been fighting it out that has an effect has the effect on the mentality of both sides.

right you listen to any ufc commentary right rogan's like look at this guy his mouthpiece is about to fall out man this guy's got to be careful he can still be dangerous you never know who's going to win yeah but then the other guy's looking fresh mouths closed breathing relaxed you know i mean an easy example that is this past weekend right i didn't see the fight this week oh man well fortunately it's good yeah wrestling one again where can people find your book check engine light the check engine light book dot com awesome having you on the show today appreciate it strength is never weakness week this week never strength catch you guys later bye that was awesome