Mark Bell's Power Project - We Changed Our Minds: Fitness Edition || MBPP Ep. 879

Episode Date: February 1, 2023

In this Podcast Episode, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about some of the things they've changed their mind on and admit they might have made a mistake in their old ways. New Power Project Website: https://powerproject.live Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the new Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw Special perks for our listeners below! ➢https://hostagetape.com/powerproject Free shipping and free bedside tin! ➢https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!! ➢Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM ➢https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/powerproject to save 15% off Vivo Barefoot shoes! ➢https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off site wide including Within You supplements! ➢https://mindbullet.com/ Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://bubsnaturals.com Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% of your next order! ➢https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order at Vuori! ➢https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro at 8 Sleep! ➢https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off ALL LABS at Marek Health! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://www.PowerProject.live ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en  Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast #markbellspowerproject

See if you can hear. I actually just try to listen to what's going on rather than just blasting it. Dude, yeah. That's why I don't use AirPods anymore because they're just so deep in there that I was like, this can't be good for my future. This is so new. Think about how new that is. I know.

I think the wires are supposed to be better and stuff too because of the fucking whatever. EMFs and all that. Yeah. Whenever my daughter has her AirPods in, it's like, dude, I can hear everything you're listening to, but I'm like on the other side of the house. It's probably not good. Hey, okay.

It's just like putting your head in like a microwave. Guys, are we going right now? Yeah. All right, Andrew, can you please, I don't know if you'll be able to pull this up, but on Hooberman's page, Instagram? Instagram.

On his Instagram page, he has video um where he's talking about yeah i think it's his it's literally if you go to his feed and then you go to the his face is right in the middle it's like second row down face in the middle my mom when i was a kid right she would always scold me and say insima yeah yeah but wait insima take your phone out of your pocket take it out huh do you want to ruin do you want to have babies do you want to have cancer i was like mom it's not gonna do anything it's not gonna do anything it's not a big deal play this video it's gonna do something that's for this video mom fucking knew oh she knew i've heard that carrying your phone in your pocket can reduce your testosterone levels and sperm count

and guess what? That is true. The data contained within this meta-analysis and other meta-analyses clearly point out that it can reduce sperm count and maybe testosterone levels significantly, but certainly sperm count and motility significantly. It reduces sperm quality. So should you avoid putting your phone in your pocket? Certainly your front pocket.

I would suggest yes. Right. If you are somebody who is seeking to conceive, right? I'm not somebody who is going to stop using my smartphone. I don't expect anyone's going to stop using their smartphone. The question is, should you carry it in your front pocket? If you're a male, I think to be on the safe side, the answer is probably avoid doing that too much of the time. Ideally don't do it at all. Then people will say, well, what if I turn off the Wi-Fi or I turn off the cellular access? Then is it still a problem? Well, it's a problem due to the heat-related effects. And then people say, well, I don't actually feel the heat of the phone.

It doesn't get that warm. But the temperature effects of the phone, it turns out, are enough even under conditions in which people don't report it to be uncomfortably warm that it can change the temperature milieu of the testicle in ways that can diminish sperm quality. How much and how that relates to fertility and healthy pregnancy, not clear. But since we're talking about things to avoid, if your goal is to have a healthy fertilization in pregnancy, well then, by all means, just don't carry it in your front pocket. You might – It's time to get Dr. Batar back on the show again. Yeah. Yeah, all the 5G and all that stuff.

It is interesting. I just think – I think it's good for people to be open-minded that everything that we do, there's a price to pay. it's good for people to be open-minded that everything that we do, there's a price to pay. And even with me, I drive an electric car, but I'm not naive to the fact that there's a price to pay for that. It seems like it's supposed to be a good thing. It seems like it's supposed to be great for the environment and better, but better for what? Better for now maybe, and maybe not better forever. I don't know. Have you heard of like a potential danger of driving electric cars that we have heard about?

Well, there's one major danger, is that somebody else could potentially take control over it. Oh, yeah. Elon Musk can just decide that he wants everyone to drive off a cliff if he wanted to. I don't even know if that's true, but I would imagine they can program anything

into the system, or it could potentially be hacked, I don't know, by spies or something. I have no idea, but it would certainly be easier to hack that than it would be uh someone's old chevy pickup truck right yeah that's a black mirror episode right right and uh but but i do think that a tesla has a lot of batteries like the entire car is batteries is my understanding like the underneath it is lots and lots of batteries and it's like well what do we do with that waste how long do those batteries last from what i've heard it's not good what we do with that waste from what i've heard it's not good what we do with uh even solar like solar lasts x amount of time and then you get rid of the solar panels and where do they go

supposedly they dump them off in some village in in Africa and they'll put them in these places where they think that they can get like a resale value for them as if we're like giving somebody technology that they can do something with. But it's that may be the case on the front end. But the back end is they end up with a ton of trash. Yeah. Like I remember when the Prius, the Toyota Prius got super popular. One, because it was pretty damn ugly. But they were like, oh, it's good for the environment. it was pretty damn ugly but they were like oh it's good for the environment and somebody broke it down and they were like okay like over like a

span of i don't know how many years a long time like a hummer will have a less a smaller carbon footprint than a prius just because the batteries will just you can't get rid of them like they'll never go away but like this um you know kind of prehistoric-looking thing, you know, will eventually kind of go away or you can recycle it and use it for other things. You can't really use those dead batteries for anything. Right. So, yeah. I think it's just good to have open mind and stuff like this.

And that video that Huberman put out, do we have, like, tons and tons of proof, you know, that that's going to make your balls shrink and stuff? I don't know what one person might say. Yeah, there's enough evidence to where I would say there's good proof of that. I would just say, hey, that sounds simple. I can avoid putting my phone in my front pocket. Is there maybe a phone covering or case that I could put my phone in that could potentially block some harmful stuff from it. Cause that doesn't sound like that bad of a solution.

So like water, I think it's same thing with fitness and same thing with anything we're doing. It's good to be open-minded. It's also good to be realistic. Like what can we actually, what changes can I actually make? How can I actually help or contribute in doing this on a daily basis?

Or is this some like outlandish thing that I'll never do? Mm-hmm. Yeah. But for now, I'm just going to keep using that fanny pack. But then where do you have your fanny pack? Do you have it across body or right on top of your dick? Well, it has multiple pockets, so it has multiple layers away from my dick

rather than being in my pocket right next to my dick. Remember when you told me to reach into your fanny pack? That was a nasty trick. I was like, what is that? It was warm. I was like, what is that? Holy shit, what is that, man? His fanny was warm.

Yeah, warm and moist. Either way. I know, I didn't keep my hands out of there, I guess. But hey, you know, we managed to change around. At least I've changed my mind on that now, and my mom is probably fucking fists up in the air because she's told me that since I was like a teenager. But there's been a lot of shit, a lot of stuff as far as like this stuff that I think we've changed our mind about. I saw Lane made a video about that recently and I was like, huh, well, we've changed our mind a lot, a lot of shit too.

Yeah, we have. Did you have an opportunity to watch Lane's video? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was pretty good. He changed his mind on LDL cholesterol, BCAAs. Because I remember I got into BCAAs because I saw Lane Norton talking about them when I was in my early 20s. But now he's like, actually, it's really not that big of a deal. It doesn't make that much of a difference. 16-8 intermittent fasting he's changed his mind on in the fact that it doesn't have that big of an effect on gaining muscle.

We need to have Eric Serrano on the podcast. I know he's doing a little bit of stuff with Merrick Health, I believe. And Eric is one of the guys that brought fish oil to the market. He brought it to Charles Poliquin. Charles Poliquin helped make it famous. He also brought branched-chain amino acids. A lot of this stuff just comes from people just kicking up studies and finding information and then trying with athletes and then having good benefits. And then my understanding is it shifted from BCAAs to essential amino acids

and now people are saying that maybe even those aren't super effective. But I want to touch upon this just for a moment because I think this is a value. When you go to try something, it may or may not work great. When you go to try something, like let's just take the amino acid example. You might drink a bunch of amino acids during your workout. You might think that they're disgusting or it might hurt your stomach.

You end up on the toilet or something, right? You just kind of find out like, I did that two or three times, hurt my stomach every time and I can't do it. Somebody else might have some results where they tried it. They don't notice a difference in muscle mass gain or loss. They didn't really notice a difference in their training. Or maybe you get somewhere in between like where I've landed on. I've been messing around with intra-workout carbohydrates and intra-workout formulas for a really, really long time. Branched chain amino acids, essential amino acids.

I remember me and John Cena going to Muscle Mag in Venice Beach and buying up tons of bottles of capsules of BCAAs. And then we were trying to figure out how to take the recommended amount because you're supposed to take like 30 or 40 grams of it god dang but we couldn't take the amount because you'd end up like we would be like training we're like doing leg presses going back and forth and we would burp and when we would burp powder powder would come out of our face like a fucking gust of chalk you know and john's like this ain't working i don't think i'm like i don't think it's working either i'm like but i feel good you know but anyway long story short is where i ended up landing on some of this stuff is that

having some form of liquid that tastes better than water during a training session can be effective because it can help you stay hydrated so when i run i either have my uh hydration product in in the water and or i'll have some some essential amino acids in there as well and it's not because i'm like all hyped up on this idea that the fucking amino acids are going to cross the blood-brain barrier and make me jacked or whatever the science is saying, I've found it to be beneficial just to encourage me to drink water during my training session. And through that process, I noticed that I get a little kickback

20, 30 minutes into the workout. I can work out a little bit harder. I can get in a couple extra reps, a couple extra sets. I don't feel fatigued. And I don't know if it has anything to do with the amino acids. I think it just has to do with staying hydrated. I hope you guys are enjoying this episode. Now, the podcast has brought value to your life. Mark told me to tell you that if you don't give us a five-star rating on iTunes or Spotify or wherever you listen to the podcast, that I should choke you out, which I would never do, but he suggested that. So please, if you enjoy the podcast, we're trying to grow, go ahead and give us a star rating on iTunes and Spotify.

Enjoy the episode. Absolutely. I mean, I do a lot of electrolytes. That's what I choose to do. But BCAAs, I use them every now and then, but I never really – I've always used them very sporadically because I never noticed much. But that was one other thing he changed his mind on. And then I think one other thing he said he changed his mind on was fast cardio. He used to say it was really beneficial.

Now he has cited research and it's not that beneficial in his mind. So, yeah, I thought that was pretty cool. There was one other thing, but I forgot what it was. What about the power of a, like, what about the power of a coach? You know, your coach says, coach says, Andrew, you know, I want you to do this photo shoot. It's going to be bad-ass. And you're like, okay, what are the things I need to do? And the first thing he rattles off is like, you're going to do fasted cardio. It's going to work amazing. It's going to strip body fat off you quick. You're like, all right, you know, and you go and do it. You believe in the coach. Maybe it's Nsema that tells you, you're like all right you know and you go and do it you believe in the coach maybe it's in sema that tells you like fucking in sema is in great

shape i'll try that out you go and try it out and because you believe in it maybe it has exponential little bit more of an effect on you than it might on someone who's like i don't know about the science on that you work harder on the cardio because of that i think that coaches hold a lot of power in that sense that you know one thing is if you're a coach i would i would stir away from like speaking in too harsh absolutes against like maybe something that the client's thinking uh just because like if you're like oh no you can't do that or that's bad for you or and something sometimes certain things might actually be dangerous or stupid and i get that but if your client's interested in, I don't know,

adding some fasting into what they do or adding something into their diet that they didn't have before, just maybe try not to speak in too harsh absolutes. I'm like, this is why this is not going to work for you. This is bad for you. Especially if it's something that's like, there are some people that do it

and there are some people that don't. Kind of, I don't know. Kind of, I don't know. Don't, I don't know. You have a lot of influence over somebody when you're a coach. Yeah, Dan Garner, who's helping me with my marathon prep, I had to kind of like flip the script on him a little bit. He was like, I don't want you running every day. So I called him and we talked about it and I said,

I want you just to reframe how you think about running every day. And so I called him and we talked about it and I said, I want you just to reframe how you think about running every day. Let's just make it, let's just make it a positive. Like, let's just, let's just say that a new study showed that when you run every day, it causes exponential growth and it works out great. And he's like, ah, I didn't really think of it that way. I was like, so I'm not getting rid of it. I'm not getting rid of it. Like I'm going to run every. And he's like, I didn't really think of it that way. I was like, so I'm not getting rid of it. Like I'm going to run every day. It's like part of what I'm doing right now. So I was like, just think of it as an advantage.

And he was like, got it. Okay. So he's implementing it. Like he'll give me days where the running is way, way backed off. There might be a day where the running is crazy. And there might be another day where the running is way backed off. But still get to do what i want to do which is to run every day i have a question do you think because dan garter is super intelligent yes he is do you think do you think anybody else could have said that to him and he would have been like huh because i'm like

i picture just a client saying that's like dan, Dan, I want you to reframe. Reframe what you think about Ryan Avery. He'd probably be like, fuck you, I don't need you as a client. You know what I mean? I don't know, though. I could be wrong. You know, I think that he's probably going to,

he'd probably, in some cases, just push back with the information that he currently has. And if he was, like, let's say he was working with a fighter and let's say a fighter lost his last fight and the fighter's not in a good spot, you know, he Dan Garner works with Andy Galpin and they have a business together where they help a lot of professionals. And so, you know, if you have things where you're like, Hey, you know,

you already had an opportunity to try that and it didn't really work great for you. So let's maybe move on. So yeah, he might have given more pushback to some other people. But with me, it's really cool because he knows a lot about me. He's been following our podcast for a long time. He's been following a lot of this stuff for a while. And he knows I know quite a bit about training so we go back and forth on different ideas whether i'm pushing too hard or pushing

too little or um but the cool thing is that he's open-minded and so when i make a suggestion to him um he's like yeah he's like that's not the way i did it that's not the way i would recommend everyone to do it but he's like i don't know maybe if maybe this will work amazing for you no that's that's that's really awesome that he's that open-minded about that and i mean one thing that you mentioned that he said to you is that he's very surprised at your recovery because you what is today for you as far as running every day do you know what today's number is i think i'm getting in like the 160s or so 160 something days of running and obviously you know

some days are harder than others but he mentioned to you that your recovery is something wild in terms of like how fast you're being and how you're handling this mileage too it's like i wonder why that is for you why you're able to handle so much volume well i mean it has to be part of partly your recovery but that is pretty pretty crazy are you speculating I'm on performance enhancing drugs? I don't know what other stuff you're on other than whatever you mentioned you're on. What's going on with this show? This show used to be great. Remember that, Andrew?

We're trying to out you. It can't all be that, though. Your years of training, you've done a lot of shit. It can't all be that, though. Your years of training, you've done a lot of shit. No, I think in training and in trying to make yourself better, you have to be really honest with the stuff that you're doing, and you have to learn how to feel stuff.

And it takes a while to even learn how to feel something properly. So for me, there could be, there could be some part of, uh, of being a little naive to running since I'm still new to it. Like maybe there's certain things that like, I just, uh, maybe there's things I'm just kind of accepting to feel a certain way like, Oh, this is going to be kind of difficult. My legs are going to get kind of tired. My calves are going to get pretty pumped, but maybe, uh, somebody else that hasn't had maybe as much training, even though I'm not really trained in running, maybe they would stop earlier. Or maybe they would be afraid to stop. I'm not afraid to stop.

When I was running today, I found that the days that are calmed down are actually harder than the intense days. It would be like if I told you to act sad if i told you to cry you could cry but if i told you to be yourself it would be it would be more difficult right like you told me to be myself yeah if i told you hey we're gonna do this scene and you got to be yourself you'd be like i don't know where to fucking start with that yeah actually i'd be pretty hard it would be like more difficult so i found like the more like hype that you need for something the easier it is for me because i feel like i can express that pretty good like if i need to run faster i can put more force in the ground i can run faster but if i'm supposed to do something

kind of calmly and real chill and just like hey go do you go run whatever speed you end up running at just stay at that. And I'm like, I don't know what that means. So you got to spend a lot of time doing these things. And then you start to learn, okay, when I'm running hard, this is the speed I run at. When I am running at a real moderate pace, this is where I'm going at. And you can learn that through lifting and you can learn that. I just, I think at this point, I know a lot about my body and I know about how much recovery I need. I think I have a good idea of how things should work. And the smallest things are like unacceptable to me.

Like I had my pinky toe when I did the 20 miles the other day. It was bothering me a lot. I kept looking at it and I'm trying to like, I'm like putting readers on and shit. And I'm like trying to examine it. And he's like, what are you doing? I'm like,

I think there's something wrong with my pinky toe. She's like, Oh, it's a little red. I'm like, is there anything else going on? Is there something wrong with the nail or whatever? It's like,

nah, it's just red. I'm like, okay. And then something happened to the other pinky toe the other day and the same thing i was just kind of like looking at it and i'm like did i fuck something up because i don't want to be on a run and i don't want something like being in my head i don't want something uh that could have been controllable for me i could have maybe clipped my toenail i could have maybe took a little fucking file I could have

put a bandaid on it I could have wore different socks I could have done something ahead of time to manage that and same thing with like a calf or something if I'm running I'm like oh there's something in the calf today oh shit you know I heard my friend

talk about how he hurt his Achilles and he was only a couple weeks out from competition. All right. Well, there's not much I can do about it now. It doesn't hurt bad. I'm not going to hurt my, I gotta be honest with myself. I'm going to hurt myself. Then I need to fucking probably stop. Right. But I feel good. I'm going to be calm and I'm just going to, I'm going to get through this workout, but I'm going to go home and I'm going to check on this fucking thing and see what's going on. I'm gonna do myofascial release. I'm just going to, I'm going to get through this workout, but I'm going to go home and I'm going to check on this fucking thing and see what's going on. I'm going to do myofascial release. I'm going to call up my buddy Oscar and see if Oscar can help me work on my feet and work on my calves and get all these different things worked out. Let's find the root cause of it. Hey,

Pat Browder family, shut your fucking mouth. No, not, not really, but kind of, you should keep your mouth shut when you're asleep. Now on the podcast, we've been talking about the importance of nasal breathing for years. And we've been talking about using mouth tape during your sleep for years, as it's going to help your sleep quality because you're going to be breathing through your nose. We had James Nestor, author of Why We Sleep. Actually, that was Matthew Walker, but James Nestor, author of Breathe. We had Patch McEwen. We've had so many people talk about the importance of taping your mouth and breathing through your nose when you sleep for your sleep quality, which helps your recovery, which helps every aspect of your health and fitness.

So hostage tape. If you want to get some of this to help you sleep better and it also stays on your face if you're a bearded man, which is one of the big problems with mouth tape, head to hostage tape dot com slash power project. And there you can actually get the power project annual deal, which will give you a year supply of hostage tape. Fifty five cents a day for tape, pretty much. And you'll be able to save $150 along with getting two tins, a year supply of tape, and a blindfold. That is going to be something that you want to get your hands on. Links in the description along with the podcast show notes. Shut your f***ing mouth.

So in the past, because I think this is something that we've all kind of adjusted the way that we look at it in the past and not necessarily chronic pain so chronic pain being like having back issues for years me having knee issues for years right but pain in and of itself have you changed the way that you look at the signal of pain when it happens like in the past would you be just going to be what do you have just signal of pain when it happens? Like in the past, would you have just kind of worked through it and been like, huh, I can deal with this and just squat or still bench or still whatever and be like, ah, let me slap something on this and wait for it to go away. Have you adjusted that or what do you think's changed at the way you look at just the signal of pain? I think everything's changed in terms of pain management because I used to just lift really heavy.

Like that was the thing I did in powerlifting, you know, heavy squats, bench deadlift. I was just like, yeah, those exercises, they kind of hurt. You know, there's pain. And anytime I would do a squat for 20 years, it would hurt. Unless I was completely set up to squat. If I was like 100% prepared to squat, it wouldn't hurt. So if I had the right power lifting gear on, if I had the right stance, if I unracked the weight the right way, if I was in the right position, if I took my air in properly, that I could do the lift and I would be like, oh, my God, there was no pain on that. But I didn't know how to manage the pain in between.

And that's something I really wish I knew how to do because I would go in the gym and I would do these workouts and they would be awesome. I would perform pretty well. pretty well. But I probably kind of just, to be honest, kind of got lucky due to like my weight, due to my strength levels, due to genetics, due to drugs, due to a combination of a bunch of things, maybe some proper training, maybe some decent rest protocols. But also I would throw luck in the mix too, because I'm lucky that I didn't get hurt worse in my powerlifting career. I'm lucky that I didn't end up with some debilitating injury because I didn't know how to manage the pain when I was done with my workouts and when I would go home. And now I feel like I have a recipe to fix myself all the time to the point where right now

I'm smashing my feet on this ball. When I'm at home, I was showing some of the people I had over yesterday for the 49ers game. I was showing some people just all these different things I'm at home. I was showing some of the people I had over yesterday for the 49ers game. I was showing some people just all these different things I have at my house to like, you know, rub on here. Or I'm like, oh, I'll take this Kelly Sturette voodoo floss band and I'll wrap my calf for a little while and I'll move my foot around. Just while I'm watching TV. And they're like, Andy, does that drive you nuts? She's like, eh. She's like, he's always doing that.

So she's like, no, it doesn't bother me. But now I know that I have control over this pain. And you mentioned chronic pain. And I think people would be shocked at how much they can do for their own chronic pain. I ran into somebody recently that I, a couple people actually recently, where I just did the thing like, hey, take off your shoes. Put your foot on this rock or put your foot on this ball i can try try this and they're like they're like what is that i'm like i don't know it's a fucking devil inside your body but people will find these adhesions all over their body so how does that register in your brain

how does that register when you bend over to pick something up? Do you, do you think that when you bend over to pick something up that your body doesn't know that your shin is all fucked up or that your hamstrings all jacked up? I think it does. I think maybe you don't feel it at the moment or maybe you don't get that sensation because they say that when it's a muscle that's jacked up, your brain can recognize where it hurts.

But when it's your fascia, your brain's like, something ain't right down there. I don't know where, but something's fucked up, so we're going to move in a different way. And so having Chris Kadowski here along with a bunch of other people who have taught us these things, this has been revolutionary for my training. And I, it was part of the reason why I talk about it a lot. Being able to manage your own pain is probably the most powerful thing that you can do because your training is only as good as your recovery. And if you go to train and you overdo something, which is very likely that you're going to push a little bit and you're going to end up with a little something in your leg or your calf or your shin or whatever, you're going to have to figure out a way to be able to manage that. And I didn't know. Kelly Stratton would talk about mashing and I've been in seminars with him and me and Jesse would do it to each other and we'd kill each other with it. And I understood some of it, but I didn't

understand the power of it. And I didn't know that you need a hygiene and a routine with it very, very often. It sucks that you can't just do something once, right? Like you just like you, you do it once. Huh? That didn't do much.

Right. And it sucks that you have to continue to do it to really, really get the benefit out of it. You can't even find the right spot. A lot of times, right? You have to do, you have to go all over, you know, you have have to you have to find those little spots that are a

little bit uncomfortable and lean into those a little bit i feel like you're about to say something no i mean to me it reminds me of like when you're trying to chase like a like a itch on your back and you kind of get it and then it starts moving around it's like where is this little fucker but that's kind of like what it is with these adhesions and you know with my back i've always thought like oh someone needs to like really dig in right where it hurts and like adjust something. And then Chris Godowski comes in. He's like, oh, yeah, roll out your neck and your shoulder just on the left side because that side's a little high and it's kind of pulling a little bit. And then roll out like the top of your back.

And then if you want to, you can go down to the lower side with focus more on the left side. It's like, this is interesting. Okay. I did it for like two months. And then I'm like, I'm feeling pretty good. And then, you know, as you said, Mark, like the rest of my body, it's like, damn, what else do I need to address? My hips, my freaking quads, like everything is so painful to the touch. You know, now it's a lot better, but it's, you know, it's like everything is so painful to the touch you know now it's a lot better but it's you know

it's still there and continuously like smashing all these random spots like daily my back's been feeling pretty damn good you know so it's like i wanted so bad to have the answer just be like oh you need to go to the chiropractor and have them pop you this way. Not a full-on habit shift. Exactly. I did want a quick answer, but I also wanted it to be something that I can just go and hit a switch, not like a whole body-smashing, contouring type thing. And you're right, Mark. It's a hygiene thing.

It's got to be done daily. You know what's funny? I find myself like I love bending to pick things up. I really love just like bending and not hip hinching, just bending forcefully with my back and picking things up from the ground. That's a nice ask. I like it too. Nice hamstrings back there too. I don't mind watching.

That glute tie-in? But no, the reason is I've found that like now I've been starting to reach into ranges that used to be quite uncomfortable, used to be a little bit tight. And I'm just making sure that my body continuously understands that you can pick that up without feeling any type of discomfort. You can bend with your knees without there being any type of discomfort. Because for years I had a meniscus surgery and I had osteoarthritis on both my knees. So for years I wasn't running or doing any of that because I kind of felt, oh, I'm just going to have this knee pain. And there are just certain things that I shouldn't do. One of those things being like normal running. Maybe I could sprint, but I told myself, okay, running, maybe not your thing because I was

avoiding doing things with my knees. But boom, what happens when Ben Patrick came, started doing a lot of that stuff? It was difficult initially and the progression was very, very slow. But over time, by just loading my knees, literally putting pressure into my knees, very uncomfortable initially, but they started to get stronger. And then now I can do a bunch of shit with a deep knee bending and not feel any type of pain or any type of discomfort. But the fact is to be able to get there, I had to lean into that pain, right? That discomfort and slowly take the time for it to progress. And if I stopped because of how weak it was at the time or how much, how uncomfortable it was at the time, I definitely wouldn't be where I am now with my ability to move.

I think people need to be, you know, it's really helpful when you're open-minded. I know we talk about it all the time. So people probably get sick of hearing it. And then there's probably examples of people who are like,'s really helpful when you're open-minded. I know we talk about it all the time, so people probably get sick of hearing it. And then there's probably examples of people who are like, well, you guys aren't open-minded with A, B, and C. And you're probably correct. We're probably not doing a good job of being open-minded across the board. There's plenty of blind spots that I have, I know for sure. But in watching Ben Patrick's stuff and checking out some of the stuff from Functional Patterns and in learning and knowing Kelly Sturette for so long, in talking with Jesse Burdick and JL Holdsworth and Matt Winning and talking to all these people, what you'll recognize is these things, they keep coming back around.

It's a circular thing. I think I've told Andrew this before because I used to tell everybody in the company. thing i think i've told andrew this before because i used to tell everybody in the company i was like we're going to meet people and like all kinds of different things going to happen but we're going to notice is everything's going to happen in a fucking giant circle we're going to like meet somebody and be like oh that guy's dope he's got good information and then the guy's going to disappear for a while no one's going to talk about him for a while and then he's going to come back around and he'll be popular again like it just it's the way it's just kind of the way that all this stuff works.

Kettlebells fall out of favor, then they're in favor. Running falls out of favor, then it's in favor. Lifting falls out of favor. You know, this, the pendulum keeps swinging kind of back and forth and back and forth. And you have to be open-minded to stuff because what if you could catch something the first time it swings your way rather than like waiting for that motherfucker to come back two three years later it'd be nice if you could catch it the first time at least absorb some of it then you have a better understanding you got an idea of like this could be really helpful some of the mobility stuff that i learned from stirret years ago it was helpful for me

within the given workouts so i would do some of the band distraction and some of the stuff before a workout, and then I would get in a better position for a squat. But foolishly, and I can admit it, I discontinued doing that because I started lifting in a different way. And I just, I didn't need the same ranges of motion. I didn't necessarily for a lot of my lifting, a lot of my lifting is in ranges that are pretty safe for me when they're loaded. When the things are unloaded, it's normally my own body weight. It's just something that I've shifted towards and shifted to, um, kind of more recently, but it feels good. It kind of seems like it's working, But had I kept some of that stuff in, the band distraction stuff before squats

and before some movements, not only would I, the reason why I got rid of it because I was like, this is kind of only helping me for this workout, which was kind of true because I had to do it every time I went to the gym. It wasn't like I did it on Monday for squats

and then the next Monday I came in again and didn't need to do it again. So I'd have to do the whole setup over again every time. But what happens when you squat pain-free and you squat with better efficiency and you squat slightly deeper and you're not mashing and smashing yourself into position just because the weight is carrying you into that position? You're in a stronger, better position. Your body got to that position by itself. How does that register in the body? How does that register in the central nervous system?

How does it make the body feel? So those are all things that, you know, now I was just the other day playing around with some distractions, some hip stuff. And I'm like, this is just so dumb. You know, there are so many different things that we have on our plate. We got a lot of different things going on at once. But if something's going to help, why not fucking keep it in or just keep some dosage of it in there? Just some, just maybe a little bit. Dude, you know what's so funny?

I have the copy of Kelly Sturette's book ready to run that he gave you i have it at home because i've been reading it right uh and that was written in 2014 and i'm going through that book i'm just like oh wow neat the way you walk oh mashing all the things that we've been talking about that people are like oh wow this is so wild kelly's been talking about probably for he had the book in 2014 which means he probably knew about this shit in the mid 2000s. Like in the early 2000s. It's just like, Kelly's known. Kelly's like, oh, y'all are finally catching up to what I've been talking about for more than a decade.

I wonder what that feels like. Like, oh, you guys are getting popular talking about stuff I was talking about over a decade ago. I wrote a book on this. Well, that's how he works with some of the best people in the world. True. I don't want to rattle off names because I don't know what he's allowed to talk about and not allowed to talk about. But he literally works with some of the best people and some of the best athletes in the world that are competing right now. And they're competing at a really high level.

And a lot of it has to do with him sharing this information with them. Him taking a ban and saying hey wrap this up really really tight and you're like well what does that do like you just all of a sudden lose a ton of blood flow to the area you're like that doesn't seem like it's going to work well yeah but again when we had ben patrick here this is how circular everything is ben patrick is the second coming of a kelly's turret That's why we had them on together. Because I'm like, this guy's on fire the same way that Kelly was on fire. And so much of their concepts, they overlap a lot.

They're said differently. A lot of different shit going on there. They both have their own concepts. But I was like, man, this is great the way that they match up together. So make sure you go back and listen to that podcast because I think it's incredible to have those two guys on at the same time. But Ben Patrick talking about walking with the sled backwards, what is he trying to promote? What is he talking about there? He's talking about a crazy amount of blood flow. He said, I want you to walk so much with the sled that you have a pump to the point where you can barely take another step. He mentioned he wanted you to have such a pump that you feel like you can't

hurt yourself and what he meant by that is your legs get like numb and it feels like you you wouldn't be able to hurt yourself if you tried because you couldn't produce any force because so much blood flow in those legs it's the same goddamn thing that happens when you wrap uh with the voodoo floss might not be the same scientifically but it's very similar in a lot of ways that you're trying to rush a lot of blood to the area. Let me ask you this. Carbs, right? Now, you've been talking about carbs for a while. There's a period, you know, you wrote a book called The War on Carbs, right? Now, I think I've also had a stage where I've eaten way less carbohydrates or eaten no carbohydrates. But has anything in your mind potentially changed about the use of carbs or eating or anything around carbohydrates?

I think a lot of things have changed for me about eating in general. My main shift was to, was just a protein, focusing on eating a lot of protein. And I've had that, you know, I've been doing that for a while since I found out about kind of the one gram per pound of body weight type stuff. But in terms of like body weight management and stuff, it was important for me

to distance myself from carbohydrates, not because there was anything wrong with carbohydrates. I just had a shitty interpretation of carbohydrates. My version of carbohydrates. And even now when I say carbs, I'm thinking pizza, ice cream, donuts. I'm thinking of all that stuff.

And Lane Norton pointed this out and he said, there's more fat calories in the stuff that you're thinking about than there are carbohydrate calories. And I was like, oh, yeah, really good point. Because it might, like a donut, I don't know, I'm going to make it up and say donut has 10 grams of fat or something. That's a healthy-ass donut. Donuts are healthy. If we think of like a Krispy Kreme glazed donut. Let's look it up.

Yeah, let's look up Krispy Kreme glazed. I bet you that there's maybe 30 grams of fat. Oh, that's awesome. I would feel as if there maybe 30 grams of fat. Oh, that's awesome. I would feel as if there's 30 grams of fat, but I could be totally off. Might be more. You still on that sausage McMuffin diet? Dude, you know what's the problem? Okay.

So I decided last night, I'm not going to, I'm not going to go on too long about this, but I decided to get, get a bottle of Simply Lemonade. But I only got one. You're back on the juice? No, just one bottle. Just one bottle. So like Sam, like when, when it came through DoorDash, because we DoorDash groceries, Sam saw and she's like, Nseema, not again.

She's like, you can't do this to yourself again. I'm like, Sam, it's just one bottle of juice. Come on now. And it's one of the big like 52 ounce ones, but I'm done. Yeah. The first one that comes up is a little suspect in my opinion. It says 15 grams of fat and 31 grams of carbs. Maybe.

Okay. Okay. opinion it says 15 grams of fat and 31 grams of uh carbs yeah okay so that's that's but anyway the the calories for fat are it's 15 times nine so there would be more fat calories in there proving proving the point yes i could make this fit my macros so uh for me i i actually wasn't a person that thought that i couldn't eat carbs i wasn't i wasn't in that category i wasn't a person that thought that I couldn't eat carbs. I wasn't in that category. I wasn't like, I got bad genetics. I don't handle carbs very well. I never thought that. I just thought that I needed to get myself to a certain body fat percentage level, I guess, to be able to have more wiggle room with carbohydrates, which I still kind of think is true. I don't necessarily, I don't disagree with that.

I get what you're saying. But at this point, I mean, my body fat levels are great. So I don't need, I don't have a worry with even just carbohydrates. But anyway, my whole thing is nowadays is to just fuel myself so that the workouts feel really good. I want good performance with my workouts. If I don't feel like working out on a particular day, I don't look at that necessarily as a motivation problem.

My question is, did you eat enough yesterday? What was yesterday's workout like? If you don't feel like lifting, how much running have you been doing in the last four or five days? Okay, well, you ran fucking 20 miles the other day. Maybe that's why I don't feel like lifting. Like how much running have you been doing in the last four or five days? Okay. Well you ran fucking 20 miles the other day. Maybe that's why I don't feel like lifting. What's the fuel like? What's the sleep like? So that's where I usually look and that's where I'll say, okay, let me, let me up the carbohydrates a bit. But nowadays I eat a lot of fruit. I eat rice. I eat potatoes. I'll eat dark chocolate.

I'll have nuts here and there. But I still, for me, I still need to like pay attention to the types of foods that I eat because the food choices still can lead me down to a path of me overeating. And at this point, it's not necessarily about body composition, but it's about my own body weight. Like for April, I would like to weigh probably between 210, 215 for the race. And right now I'm around 225 most mornings. So I still have, we'll see where I end up. 215 would be between 215 and 220 would even be fine

because I don't need to lose like a ton of weight anytime rapidly. But just the sheer body weight that you're lugging around during these runs can be impactful. So that's what I'm kind of looking to do. But yeah, I have changed the way that I think about food in general.

Again, I've said this many times on the show, but I think this is really useful for people. Look at carbohydrates and fats as energy sources for the body and look at protein as a building block of the body. I would go as far as to say that protein is free. Fiber is free. Fruit is free. Vegetables are free. What I mean by free, eat as much of them as you fucking want like eat a fucking crazy amount of those things uh if you're new to dieting and you

never tried it before don't even bother to really mess around with fasting just eat a ton of what i just said yeah for maybe a week or two like be a little patient with it over time you're going to probably find yourself eating less and starting to lose some weight. Dude, what was your body? Like how much did you weigh during your bodybuilding show? Because you were like 220, right, on stage? But obviously your body composition was different.

You might have been holding a bit more muscle. But you were 220 on stage, right? I think the day of the show, because of like the carb up and everything, I think I was like 230. So you might be, well, you said 215 or 220, but you might be down to like 210 for the Boston Marathon. That's wild. That is wild. I don't think I've ever had this low of actual body fat on my body before.

Oh, just holding and chilling, right? Yeah. I think again, during the bodybuilding show, my body fat percentage may have been better because I may have had a little bit more muscle, but I don't think I've ever had this low. Cause I can kind of, cause like, because I was so big before, um, I have a little bit of loose skin in certain spots. Um, and I never really saw that before. I think again, the bodybuilding show, I think I held on to enough muscle to where that was a little less noticeable. Not that it's noticeable or bugs me at all. It's just something I observed. But I think I have less body fat on me now than I ever have before. That's sick. Yeah. When it comes to carbohydrates,

there was a point when I was younger and I was like tracking macros to be able to grow. I'd be eating 300, 400, some days like I think at max maybe 450 grams of carbs a day. And my fats would probably be around 50 or 60. But I was eating a lot of carbs because one of my things is I thought like you needed to do that to gain muscle. I haven't thought that in a while. I don't necessarily agree with that. But one thing that I've done more now is that sometimes people ask, oh, how much do you eat each day or what are your calories each day? I don't have a calorie amount each day. The main thing that I'm super rigid on is making sure I get enough protein. But as far as energy calories, carbs and fats, I eat how much I feel like I need to eat on any specific day to be able to perform the next day. So like certain days I'm feeling a little bit more tired. I will eat a lot. It could be like 3000, 4000 calories, right? It could be, it could be around

that amount. But the next day, if I don't feel the need to eat a lot of food, I might eat like, I eat 1800 calories or something the next day because it ranges from the day to day. So my food is not extremely consistent each day, but my performance is consistent because I know like, I can feel how much I need to eat now. And I know it sounds so fucking vague,

but I think one of the ways I got there has been just eating to perform for years. So now I kind of know, okay, this is how much I need to eat or this is what I should eat today. And then I don't eat necessarily now to feel extremely full. I eat until I'm good, like I'm satiated, and then I'm done. And what that's done for me is for the past few years, my body weight has been pretty much every single morning. I've been 250 for upwards of three or four or five years now. Like I can't remember the last time I touched 260 or I was low as in the low 240s.

It's just been the same weight, but body composition has continually gotten a bit better. So that's, I guess, a mindset shift that I've had as far as food. It doesn't need to be the same thing every day. You just need to eat what you need to eat so that you can perform well. And if your performance is dipping,

maybe you might need to eat a little bit more or maybe you need to hydrate better. There's tons of things, but when it comes to food, it's kind of how I look at it. Yeah, I think when you have performance as your main marker, it's really nice

because a lot of other things will fall in place. If your training feels good, if you're somebody that wants to body build and you're trying to get pumps during a workout, it's, you know, that's a good marker. Like,

are you getting good pumps? Are you able to handle some weight? I do recommend that people go all in on some of these things. Like, like go, go all, go all in, like go all in,

like fucking take a journal, write down your reps and sets. Like, get nerdy with it. You know, fucking spreadsheet. Like, whatever, however nerdy that you can handle. Yeah. Because I think it's good to have the information. I'm not a huge fan of counting calories.

But what are you going to do when you're someone like Kenny, Kenny Williams, right? Kenny Williams, yeah. When you're someone like Kenny Williams, who's a young guy who's hungry, that wants, he's literally hungry. Who's a young guy who's hungry, who wants to kick ass and bodybuilding. It's like, well, fucking man, maybe you should track your shit. Maybe you should pay attention to exactly what you're eating. Maybe you should do what Kenny's doing, where you get a coach and you have somebody that's looking over it and they give you your macros. And you, I think it's a really wise decision to go all in and to look at it because then you're able to learn. And then Kenny, for the rest of his life, he can go back and forth.

You and I have had coaches. We've had people that have helped us. We've had mentors. And it's really, really valuable just to learn these things. Otherwise, you're guessing a lot. And Seema, these days, how much fat do you think you're getting in? Because you said you're eating about, what, 50 grams when you were eating? When I was having all those carbs, yeah.

Yeah, lots of carbs. These days, what do you think it's at? Minimum 80. Okay. Minimum 80. So still not very high, though. Well, 80 for a lot of people is like, I'm having minimum 80. So that means some days it could be 100 and something.

But like I'm never going to – 80 is not a low amount of fat for even a guy my size. It's not. So, yeah. Really? I don't know. I was expecting like 100 grams. 100 grams of fat, 900 calories. Some days – that's why I said minimum 80 because some days it's

probably going to be more than that, but it never goes lower than that. You probably don't really eat stuff that has a lot of fat in it, right? Occasionally you might have some kind of... I'll use butter. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'll use butter. Butter, eggs? Eggs, but I always eat ribeyes. Whenever we get

Piedmontese stuff, I always choose the fattier cuts of meat because I like fat in my meat. I don't usually – I'll have some of the leaner stuff sometimes, but I'll always get higher fat. I use quite a bit of butter. When I eat chicken, when I choose to eat chicken, it's always fucking wings or thighs, but it's usually wings and I don't get rid of skin at all. Yeah, I buy a lot of – like for for example there's this meat called ox tail um i use that in soup but like yeah it also has like this fucking like inside of the meat is fat but on the outer edge it's like this chunky fat i'll need that too like i make sure that i keep fat in my

diet right um it never that that's something that i'll never go low on again you uh you probably it would probably be like extremely rare for you to have like less than like a pound of meat in that that's something that I'll never go long on again. You, uh, you probably, it would probably be like extremely rare for you to have like less than like a pound of meat in a day. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I heard Alex Hermosi gave a really awesome and interesting tip, uh,

to where he just said, like, if you weigh a hundred pounds, have a, uh, weigh a hundred pounds, have one pound, one pound of protein every day.

You weigh one 50, have 1.5. If you weigh 200 have two pounds. And actually the math works out pretty good. So that's a decent thing to kind of reference. And then also you've got other forms of protein in there too. You might have eggs. You might have protein shakes and stuff. So you can reduce a little bit from there.

But I think, again, like just when you start to write this stuff down, you start to track your reps and your sets. You start to track everything that you're doing. You get to kind of see like how much fuel do you really need? Like do you, you know, how many fat calories do you really need? How many carbohydrates do you really need? It's not always a great idea to look up ancestral stuff because we just live in such a different time. You can door dash stuff and you can get stuff really easy and it's awesome. It's amazing to be able to do that.

But there used to be a cost to getting food. It used to cost you calories to go get something, to go get food. So how many carbohydrates do you need in a given day? Well, I guess it would depend on what you're doing. Trying to run a marathon, maybe you need like a decent amount. Trying to be a pro bodybuilder or just trying to be a bodybuilder and get big, maybe it'd be a good idea to fill out that protein pretty damn high. Eat maybe like double your body weight in carbohydrates, right? Somewhere in that category. maybe like double your body weight and carbohydrates, right? Somewhere in that category. But if you're your average person and you're getting some exercise in here and there, you can afford to do maybe an hour a day,

100 to 200 grams of carbs should have you covered. I think 100 to 200 grams of carbs, you should be pretty covered. The liver stores some carbohydrates. The bloodstream stores some carbohydrates. But it's not tremendous amounts, but it's plenty for you to have stored. You're not going to all of a sudden just have this crazy dip in energy because your carbohydrates are modest. Also, I'm just going to reiterate this, and this is kind of an aside, but make sure you get fucking electrolytes in every single day. Hydration is something.

It's not like I've changed my mind on it or it's not like we've changed our mind on it, but I am so consistent with hydration just because of the sheer, I mean, you were talking about, we were talking about this recently, the sheer amount of sweat we sweat with the things we do. Like after jujitsu, Mikey's disgusting. Like I know I've lost a ton of weight, right? And after your runs, you mentioned like, well, you lost how many pounds on one of your runs? Like 11 pounds. Right?

And that's a controllable thing, right? So I was like, I'm not going to allow that to happen again. So I think when I ran 20 miles the other day, I lost like three pounds. I'm like, that's acceptable. That's fine. You know what I mean? But 11 pounds, that's fucking ridiculous. That was with drinking a lot of water even.

I still lost 11 pounds. I down a good amount of water with electrolytes every single morning. I don't miss that because like whether I'm going to go take a run or I think I just read it in Kelly's book. Like you want to make sure that your tissues are hydrated, right? But if you just like you drink a little bit of water and then you warm yourself up and you go do something and you're not hydrated well, you're looking for a harder time than you need to have. You get hurt. You can easily get hurt you can easily get hurt i've never sweat this much before like my gi and my gi pants they're both just soaked

i'm like how the fuck like i'm not even like it's you're not paying attention but um yeah like when i come here and i'm not hydrated my lips get all dry i'm just like i'm hurting it's like i've already down some water and i need to go get some more because that's been crucial. Because the days where I'm not hydrated, I can tell. Like the performance is just not there. It sucks. This has been kind of a longer thing for me. But something I've changed my perspective on a lot is just being more open to, I guess, just different people doing different shit.

You know, I always kind of like, whatever I do, I'm a huge fan of. And then when someone else wasn't doing something the same thing or the same way or living their life a similar way. Why aren't you benching? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that kind of shit, you know. Or even something like Kratom or marijuana or alcohol or any of these things.

I just, you know, you try to learn to just let people enjoy what they want to enjoy and be open-minded to the fact that maybe some of these things could be not such a bad idea for you. Maybe it could help you loosen up. Maybe it could help you come to a realization. Mushrooms and things like that I it's a touchy subject and there's reason. These are really powerful. These are powerful, powerful things. So you want to be cautious with these things. But I mean, just what if some of these ideas or what if some of these concepts or even a drug or a mushroom or something like that,

what if it changes your life forever? What if it's something that gets you to open your mind towards something that you maybe previously were closed-minded to? Yeah. I, you know, one thing that I see a lot is like when some people see new things and even when I used to see new things when I was younger, I'd be like, what's this new fad? Like this thing's going to die out soon. Right. Whereas now there's so fucking hell the ropes that david weck introduced us to right when i was younger i'd probably look at those and be like what kind of stupid looking bad is this why are we training arms looking at right like looking at somebody fucking putting ropes over their body and going like that i'd be like you're there's a word i would have used a

while back years ago that i'm just not gonna use use, but I'm just like, what the fuck? But, but now I won't use that word because it's not okay to use. It's not a good word. But also, um, at the same time, after doing some of that stuff, I can see, wow, this is really beneficial for the way your body moves for getting some spinal movement in. It makes a lot of sense. So generally just being open-minded to that type of stuff. And one thing that I, you know, I love lifting and bodybuilding is what got me into the gym. Um, but one thing I think is that you can definitely overdo isolation work, you know, like the whole goal of bodybuilding is to build specific, like build muscles so that you have off, big muscles, but you also have an aesthetic frame. And a lot of stuff, a lot of isolation work is used to do that. But what tends to happen when

you overdo like bicep curls and tricep pushdowns and all these different movements is you can lose the ability for your body to know how to like work together on things, which is why like, I think isolation work is good. I'm never going to stop bicep curling and doing other movements. But in the back of my mind, I'm trying to also figure out how can I incorporate, how can I make sure that I keep movement, right? Overall body movement, a part of what I do so that that ability isn't lost. Luckily, I do have jujitsu, which is something that has your whole body work together. But I also figure out ways to get as long of a range and get as much of my body potentially working towards that movement to help me just keep that integrity. Because when you look at high-level bodybuilders move, they might be flexible. But then when you see them walk or you even see them try to run, they look like little mini robots.

And long-term, you don't want to move that way. So that's one thing I've kind of adjusted or changed my mind on. Like I think bodybuilding is cool, but how can you make sure to – and bodybuilding is good for everybody. It's almost good for every sport. You know what I mean? But how can you make sure that you keep the integrity of the way your body moves top of mind as your triceps are getting bigger right and you can mix the two right you can do like walking lunges and you could do box jumps and you can have that mixed in with drop sets of leg press and things like that right

absolutely you you can do all of that and you can also make sure that like, you know, if you're doing something like, I mean, we were doing this today, but I was doing some squats and there's a benefit in spinal compression. A lot of people have talked about how that's beneficial in terms of bone density over time. And, but one of the things that happens when you're squatting is that your spine, as it should be during your squat, your spine is stiff. And when you get out of underneath the barbell, your spine feels stiff. So while barbell squatting, I was going and I was doing a cable, like a cable Jefferson curl to help decompress because I'm going from compression that I can go to decompression. And you just try to figure that with other movements you're doing. Instead of doing a bicep curl with a really short range, how can you increase that range of that bicep curl?

Because now when I do bicep curls, I don't only feel it on my bicep. But when I'm doing – when I'm sitting, I'm doing incline bicep curls and my arms out here. I feel a deep stretch throughout this whole line. And that's what I kind of want to feel. My bicep is still working. But everything else is – it's not taking away from my ability to move. So that's something I think is kind of adjusted in the way I look at the way I lift and the way I bodybuild because I'm never going to stop bodybuilding. Power Project family, your normal shoes are making you weak.

This is why I partner with Vivo Barefoot Shoes because they have a wide toe box, they're flat, and they're flexible. wide toe box they're flat and they're flexible so with every single step you're taking if you're taking a 10 minute walk outside or when you're working out in the gym your feet are able to do what they're supposed to do in this shoe they have tons of options for hiking running training in the gym chilling and relaxing casual shoes if you're out on a date you need to check them out and andrew how can they get it yes that's over at vivobarefoot.com slash powerproject. And you guys will receive 15% off your order automatically. Again, vivobarefoot.com slash powerproject. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Yeah, I think getting in just a variation of movements, thinking about the movements and thinking about like how they can keep you mobile and what are you doing the

movements for you know I think that's kind of like put that first and foremost you know are you are you doing an exercise because you're trying to have like a bigger chest well maybe there's maybe there's a couple different ways you can go about doing it that you're not currently thinking of right now could you you know get your legs to be bigger, but also while you're getting your legs to be bigger, can you keep your range of motion? Can you keep your mobility? Can you increase your bench press, but keep your shoulders mobile? Would there be a way for you to maybe finish some workouts with some dips where you get good range of motion or something, you know, just being really thoughtful, just trying to think about what is this exercise for?

What is it doing? How do you want to perform the exercise? Something like a squat. Like if you're trying to squat and you're trying to get, like the main mission of the squat is I want to have a beautiful looking squat. I want to do full range of motion squats and I want it to be something that's shared on Squat University. I want to do these awesome full range of motion squats and I want it to be something that's shared on squat university I want to do

these awesome full range of motion squats well you probably don't need a lot of weight to do that and and you might not even need a barbell on your back maybe you just start with like a goblet squat to get you there first maybe you need maybe you need a slant board and a kettlebell to do a goblet squat off of the slant board because that's going to get you nice and low that's going to get your hamstrings resting on your calves you just have to kind of give some thought to like what am i doing this for uh am i just trying to make an instagram post of me doing the same old thing again like a 405 squat is that really a 405 box squat is that really something that if you really want to do it and you really like it, then that's fine.

Then do it. But if it's to have like some sort of desired result and to have you head in a particular direction, just I think it's important that you review. Do you have two or three reasons behind it that you think are actually going to progress you in that direction? Because if you don't have two or three good reasons behind it that are going to progress you in that direction, then it's probably not going to help. So I see people do a lot of movements in the gym or they talk about a lot of things. And I'm like, well, somebody might say that they have just limited range of motion. It's always a thing that comes to mind. They have a limited range of motion with something. And then my follow-up is usually like, what are you doing for that?

And then they're usually not doing much for it. They might say, oh, well, I do some stiff leg deadlifts here and there. Well, doing stiff leg deadlifts here and there, obviously it's not really working because you just mentioned how you have this. Do you want to improve that or not? If you do want to improve it, then let's look at a bunch of things that we might need to do that maybe you don't actually really want to do, but they're going to get you towards that goal. I just feel like people don't, obviously people don't have patience, myself included, but it just seems like with some of that stuff, like let's say somebody's chasing a, let's say a 500 pound squat. Like that's a huge PR for them. a let's say a 500 pound squat like that's a huge PR for them they're at foreign change but they can't get they're they're very close right I mean we'll just whatever number you can think of in your head that they're very close and then Mark is telling them like let's step off the gas a

little bit and go around this way instead of banging your head against this brick wall over here try going around the other way. It's very hard to let go because they are very close. So in your opinion, I mean, like, how long would it take for somebody to kind of like, like for yourself, like when you went from nine something to over a thousand, like what was that like time period where you had to start listening to Kelly and some of the things that he had been recommending? Man, everyone's going to be so different on this.

Yeah. You know, I talked with Mark Sisson today, and he was talking about some marathon running. And he said, I don't advise for people. He's run a ton of marathons. He's very proficient, a high-level triathlete for many, many years. Mark is like 68 years old and shredded. Looks amazing. He said,

you know, look, I don't advise that people run marathons, but if you're going to run marathons, I'm going to allow you to run one marathon. Get a time. See what that looks like. And then your next marathon you need to get under three hours. If you don't get under three hours, stop doing it because you're not a runner. Find something else to do.

Now, that's very harsh, you know. But it does give you the concept of, like, if you like doing something, that's different than if you want to be really good at something. You want to kick ass and be competitive at something? It's kind of a different thing. And so for me with powerlifting, that was what I was good at. And so the moment I squatted 905, what was on the radar right away was a thousand pounds. Like, you know, I squatted 859 and I meet, and I remember thinking like, oh wow, like a thousand pounds is a lot closer than I think. 140 pounds, like a, you know, 135 pounds, 140 pounds on a bar is just one plate on the bar. Everyone does that.

You get fired up to do that one plate when you're a kid, when you start lifting, right? And that's something that you get kind of excited about. So I was pumped. I was like, wow, I'm literally just that far away from a thousand pounds. So it didn't take long. And when I met Kelly and Kelly started talking about some of the ideas that I kind of had in my head, but he worded it better to me and he encouraged it more. So like some of these ideas I had of like keeping my feet straight when I squatted, I would actually keep my feet really straight when I squatted in training. really straight when I squatted in training. And then when I went to the meet, I'd point them out just a little bit, just to give me a little freedom in the hips.

But when Kelly came around and we talked about like trying to screw your feet into the ground and really get this like pressure and trying to like spread the toes and kind of like claw at the ground with your toes and all this stuff. I just went all in on that stuff and really worked on it and did a lot of his mobility stuff with the hip to try to get the hip to open up so that the knees could track outward to, uh, where my ankles were. Kind of get like getting somebody in my guard or something like that, right? Try to shove those knees way out, shove those knees way, way out. And I got better at that, more proficient at that and stronger at that. And as I got better at that, I could sit into the pocket of a squat a lot easier and the proficiency just got better and

better. So I squatted, I think nine, like not like nine 50 or something like that, maybe in the gym or maybe in a meet. I don't remember. Um, and it was like maybe six months later, I squatted a thousand pounds. It didn't take long. And then I went right from that 1,000 to 1,041 and then right to 1,080. It all happened in a really short time span because I was proficient at what I was doing. But then I met somebody that knew a lot about mechanics of the body. And I remember, too, like being really cautious with Kelly, like kind of like not listening to him all the way. I would like kind of listen to him at a far. And then

when I met him in person and we started talking more, I was like, Oh, I think I can trust this guy. Like he knows what he's talking about. And then he said something that opened my ears. And this is a really valuable thing for people. if you want people to listen to your message if you want people to try what you're talking about you're going to have to say stuff that's really convincing for them to actually buy into what you're doing if you don't care and you just are trying to share information and you don't give a fuck if anybody tries it that's different i guess but i think most of us we would love it if somebody tried to exercise that we're, you know, proposing to somebody or whatever. But yeah, Kelly said, I don't know anything about powerlifting, but I know a lot about human movement. And I was like, boom, done. I'm in. Like he didn't have to say that. Like that doesn't, it doesn't mean that he doesn't know

anything about powerlifting. It doesn't mean that he knows, doesn't know anything about strength, but it empowered me because he's like, I don't know your sport, dude, but I know a lot about how people are supposed to move. And I was like, now he's got my attention because he respects what I'm doing. I got respect for what he's doing. I'm just going to fucking go all in on what he said. Yeah. Kelly's known forever. He's got it down.

Yeah. It's pretty funny. Cool. But, you know, I had to be open-minded to that. Why would I just listen to some crazy doctor who started a mobility wad, a mobility wad, you know, video stuff on the internet where he's, like, teaching flight attendants and stuff on planes how to like do a couch stretch so their hips don't get tight so their back doesn't hurt.

You know, you're gonna, you're not, you don't know where you're gonna find this information from. What about this stuff? Hostage tape. This is dumb, right? Like tape your mouth shut to go to sleep. Remember when we first heard about it? Right? We were like, so bizarre. Yeah. Yeah. Ron was telling us about taping his mouth. Remember when we first heard about it? Right? It seemed so bizarre.

Yeah. Yeah. Ron was telling us about taping his mouth. You guys don't know about tape. And we're like, oh, my God. I, you know, I don't want to sleep without this anymore. Like I was running low at my house and I'm like, oh, my God, I think I have one. Like I'm feverishly looking in my drawer and stuff.

I'm like, I think I got one more left. But it makes a big difference. These things that, I don't know, maybe we otherwise didn't think about as much or didn't believe in as much. They've made a big difference. Yeah. One thing for sure, recently, and this came from Encima and a couple other guests that talked about breathing, but like the bracing for everything, for literally everything. guest that talked about breathing but like the bracing for everything for literally everything reading Stuart McGill's book Back Mechanic about like when I do go to pick something up basically act like I'm gonna go do a you know squat PR and get real tight and go for it and be like man oh

that hurt my back but I'm okay because I'm not like debilitated now because I got through it and then Nsema one day was like what happens if you just like bend down and you know touch, touch your shoes or whatever and be like, oh, I just do it. I was like, but it's funny because if I went to go pick up something off this chair, I'd have to brace and it'd be painful. So kind of letting go of that and going more with the flow of things is something that I've changed recently. And it's been huge. Like from, I mean, I'm trying to do it in jujitsu and that's i think part part of why like my ribs were so jacked up because i'm bracing and i got internal pressure and the pressure of someone smashing me and it's just like you know popped something you know so it's a little bit

too much so now trying to get in rolling with the flow literally is something that i have been trying to get used to lately that's such such an interesting concept, dude. I know. Because like when you think of a deadlift or a squat or any of these movements, you generally, you know, you create that intra-abdominal pressure, you brace and then you handle the load, especially as it gets heavier. But when you think of something like jujitsu, you're not supposed to be bracing whenever you do multiple movements. Like there's a level of stability your body will have, but you don't need to keep your core super tight because you can't keep your core tight if you want to move around and move well.

Right. So when it comes to picking up something off the ground or doing these things, you don't want to have to feel like I have to brace before I do it because that's longterm. That's not, that doesn't seem like an ideal way to move. Yeah. Or I'd always be looking for a counter to brace my hand on to kind of cheat my way through it.

And it just – it wasn't working. It's working better now. Yeah, it's nice not to have to think. And that's probably where you should be with tasks that you're just doing throughout the day. You probably shouldn't have to think about them too much. You probably shouldn't have to think about them too much. But something I did find to be helpful for me was to think about opposite sides of the body or just try to think about things differently. So I've talked before about like raising your right arm up as high as you can.

You can put your right arm up high and you can try to push your – shove your shoulder like towards your ear and stuff like that. It's like how do you get that to be higher? Well, you get it to be a lot higher by dropping your left shoulder a lot. You drop your left shoulder a lot. Bring your left shoulder down as much as you can. Maybe even bend your left leg. Right leg is straight. And now your middle finger of your right hand couldn't be any further away from like your toes as you do that, right? Like it stretches,

it stretches higher. And in terms of like bending down to pick something up, if you use the front lines of your body, which I think people are always thinking about the back lines of their body, but if you use the front lines of your body and you flex your stomach downward, like you're doing a, um, uh,

like a, um, like a cable crunch, like a cable, like a cable crunch type maneuver. Um, you'll find that picking stuff up will become a lot easier you can try it right now if you want let's fucking stand up for a

second and just flex your stomach and your quads flex your quads and your hip flexors as if your feet are like in sand and just pull yourself right down to the ground that's great yeah try try to go down further like go to like just touch your toes just like pull yourself down like kind of not fast but kind of quick yep yeah there you go that's why that's weird it just it just shifts the focus you know like i don't know how great i don't know how great it works necessarily but it just shifts the focus like it's dumb that's an amrap mentality. Our boy Jason Kalipa. Holy fuck, my foot is killing me during this run. And he's like, let me focus in on my breathing. You know, how is breathing like this? Like when your fucking foot hurts, how is that helpful?

It's probably making things worse. So, you know, trying to concentrate on something slightly different. Yeah. And I know you didn't change your mind in SEMA with like jujitsu, but like how did you look at combat sports or martial arts before you started? You know, I didn't pay as much of attention as most people. I watched a little bit of UFC here and there, but it's not like I was like some fucking, I knew what the fuck they were doing when they were fighting. Right? Yeah.

I bring that up because for me personally, I didn't think I'd ever really be able to do jujitsu. Like whether it be physically, I wasn't able to, but I also didn't know if I'd be comfortable. Like I had mentioned, like with another dude just sweating on top of me. And now I have some like really close friends that do jujitsu.

And it's like, I, it's kind of consumed me, you know, it's like taking over everything. And I had no idea that it would impact me the way it did. I thought like, maybe it might be kind of like a CrossFit thing where it's like, I have my like group of guys that I go train with and then that's it.

But like, no, now I'm like, it's literally my whole life has gone like straight down that path. And like I said before, like I didn't, I would have never assumed or guessed that it would have been anything like that. There we go. Yeah. It's been great. Yeah.

That's why people get addicted to it, man. Yeah. I can see. It's fucking awesome. We mentioned some running earlier and I would just say like just flat out that I just didn't know anything about running. So I don't even know if I was wrong about running because I just didn't – I never thought of it. I was too fat. Never thought of it as like really like an option.

But I do – I guess my beliefs right now would be that I think the more things that you have options to do, probably the better. So if you have just a little bit of proficiency with swimming, I think that's a great thing to be able to do. If you had got a little bit of proficiency with being able to do a rope climb, I think that's a great thing to do. A little bit of proficiency with running, that's awesome. It's going to be tough. It's going to be tough to be good at like a lot of different things. But if you are good at like a rope climb and you're good at like a squat, I mean, you, you probably have really high strength to weight ratio. Your,

your grip has got to be strong. Your hands got to be strong. It's like, that's not an easy thing. That's not a, that's not an easy thing to like figure out, you know, they're,

they're, they're, they kind of oppose each other in a way. But I think on a more simplistic note, being able to just use the assault bike here and there at the gym at the end of a workout where that is your workout for the day. If you're someone that really likes weights and you're someone that really likes the power lift,

what's wrong with just saying, you know what? I don't know much about this endurance stuff, but I'm just going to give the assault bike hell for three minutes. I'm going to try to stay on there and produce a decent amount of force for three minutes straight. Find yourself in a whole lot of trouble after 30 seconds. You'll be like, holy shit. That takes a level of resolve.

That takes a level of commitment. You're going to find that when you're able to do those workouts with more proficiency, that your other workouts will improve. Your rest between sets will be easier for you to recover from one set to the next. It will also be easier for you to recover from one rep to the next. And it also be easier for you to recover from one workout to the next. So trying to build these skill sets I think is tremendously valuable. And I've been talking a lot about how having skill sets can really help you to develop some immunity to stress in your life. The more skill sets that you have, let's say you have a really good skill set with reading well maybe your go-to uh for problems that come into your life is just to go read a book on particular subject

you're having a problem with your marriage and you're like oh i want to go read a book about it and you can read really fucking fast because you learned from tim ferris because you've been in a growth space growth uh long time. That would be a great skill set to have. But without these skill sets, you don't get the ability to defend yourself against a lot of life stresses. They just take you down and beat the shit out of you. Want to take us on out of here, Andrew?

Sure thing. Everybody, drop those comments down below. And thank you for checking out today's episode. For all things podcast related, head over to powerproject.live. Follow the podcast at mbpowerpro on instagram tiktok and twitter my instagram tiktok and twitter is at i am andrew z and zima where you at a lot of y'all have been digging the podcast right but if you can and you're listening go ahead and rate and review us if you're listening on spotify apple or whatever podcast platform

rate because it helps the podcast grow. It helps us reach more people. Add and see me on YouTube. Add and see me on TikTok and Twitter. Discord is below. Mark. I'm at Mark Smelly Bell. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength.

Catch you guys later. Bye.