Mark Bell's Power Project - Why Most Weightlifters Break Down Too Early (And How to Avoid It) || MBPP Ep. 1120

Episode Date: January 6, 2025

Purchase Sean Waxman's book here: https://amzn.to/420V6JG   In Episode 1120, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza sit down with legendary weightlifting coach Sean Waxman to uncover the secrets to staying strong, healthy, and injury-free for the long haul. Sean shares invaluable tips on training smarter, balancing strength and mobility, optimizing nutrition, and building the mindset needed for success. Whether you're a lifter or just looking to improve your health and fitness, this episode is packed with insights to keep you progressing for years to come.   Follow Sean on IG: https://www.instagram.com/the_sean_waxman/   Official Power Project Website: https://powerproject.live Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw   Special perks for our listeners below!   🥜 Protect Your Nuts With Organic Underwear 🥜 ➢https://nadsunder.com/ Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 15% off your order!   🍆  Natural Sexual Performance Booster 🍆 ➢https://usejoymode.com/discount/POWERPROJECT Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your order!   🚨 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   🥩 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 Done! 🩸 ➢ https://marekhealth.com/PowerProject to receive 10% off our Panel, Check Up Panel or any custom panel, and use code POWERPROJECT for 10% off any lab!   Sleep Better and TAPE YOUR MOUTH (Comfortable Mouth Tape) 🤐 ➢ https://hostagetape.com/powerproject to receive a year supply of Hostage Tape and Nose Strips for less than $1 a night!   🥶 The Best Cold Plunge Money Can Buy 🥶 ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!   Self Explanatory 🍆 ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained:      ➢ https://withinyoubrand.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off supplements!   ➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off all gear and apparel!   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 ➢ Become a Stronger Human - https://thestrongerhuman.store ➢ UNTAPPED Program - https://shor.by/JoinUNTAPPED ➢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 ➢ Podcast Courses and Free Guides: https://pursuepodcasting.com/iamandrewz ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz/ ➢ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@iamandrewz   #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast #markbellspowerproject

In our preparation periods, it would not be uncommon to do 700 reps in a day, counting 60% and above, training nine times a week. That's super high frequency. To get the most out of it, you probably want to break it into two sessions. The most important training day is the next day. I feel that the diet and the movement are the key to longevity. If you have a better health habits while you're doing a sport, when you leave the sport, you'll have better health habits.

What are some things that Russian lifters were doing back in the day? What are some things that you think are true that they may have been doing to be so advanced? When you have 100% control over your people, you could do amazing things in sport. If you guys have been enjoying the content we've been bringing here on The Power Project,

consider leaving us a review on Spotify and Apple. We've had podcasts with people from Functional Patterns, to Ben Patrick, to Jack Cruz, who roasted us on air, but we did that for you, to bring you some of the best information in fitness. We're learning along with you, and leaving a review with how you dig the podcast is really going to be something that helps the podcast move forward. So if you can leave us

a review there and enjoy the rest of the show. Fat is fat you know. Those are fatties. My god. Yeah you were 310 pounds. Yeah in that picture. And you met Macho Man Randy Savage and Hulk Hogan on the same day. Same day. That Gold's Gym was pretty nuts. There's a lot of famous people in there. None more famous in my eyes than those two. That was the- Iconic. One of the highlights of my career is meeting those two guys.

I mean, they're like comic book characters, right? How often do you get to meet your real comic book character? It's wild. It's a wild, wild place to be. What was it like? I used to be 330 pounds myself. What was it like for you lugging around the extra weight? Was it beneficial or fun in any way

or did it just totally suck? If I could make a list of 500 words, fun wouldn't have made that list of what it's like to be that kind of weight. You know, it's funny, like I would break furniture as my thing. You know? Wait, wait, when you were this age or a kid?

No, when I was that weight, like there wasn't furniture, the world isn't built for somebody that big and strong. It's just not. Like you grab handles sometimes and you pull a handle and you break the handle off. So not on purpose. I thought you were over here breaking furniture. I wasn't a dick about it. I'm just saying.

You know, like you go to eat like an outdoor, like in California, you have like the outdoor seating and they have those plastic... Oh, those things are done. So you get in and you can't move the table, right? So you got to move. So you try to scoop it in and you break the back legs. You go back, you kick, you go ass over teakettle. You know, you kick the table up in the air. I can't tell you how many times that fucking happened.

And you're used to falling from being an Olympic lifter. Right, yeah, exactly. You're gonna fall on your butt, you gotta kinda roll away, right? Oh my God, yeah, no, it's a miserable, all you do is eat and train and suffer. Like, it's just, it's terrible. This you do is eat and train and suffer. Like, it's just terrible. This is the thing though.

You know, some people are actually very curious on how do you get that big? And everyone's always like, okay, drugs. But, I mean, you didn't. I couldn't take drugs back then. So how did you get to 310? Because you were not that dude. It takes a commitment.

Eating is like training, right? You have to show up every day. You have to plan it. You gotta, I mean, it's part of the thing. How many meals did you eat a day, you think? Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I didn't eat any less than five or 6,000 calories. Most of the time it was more,

but I got to the point where I couldn't, I couldn't put any more weight on. I was asleep with a sandwich on my, on my, like my night table. And I would always wake up at night sweating because I get like night sweats. So, you know, I would get up, I would go, I go to the bathroom, I would change my shirt,

like wash off, go back, eat my sandwich, and then go back to bed. What kind of sandwich are we talking here? So yeah, I like, so I have ham, and mayonnaise, white bread, or tuna. So great, keeping tuna out all night is fucking smart idea. But I get that point-

Make you more resilient. You don't care. But yeah, that was like, I mean, probably not every night, but I would say, you know, four, three, four nights a week. It's a little premature, but I think that that's the greatest quote in the history of the Power Project. Is that you had a sandwich next to your bed at night.

Gotta do what you gotta do. We'll have to rank it with some of the power project is that you had a sandwich next to your bed at night. Got to do what you got to do. We'll have to rank it with some of the other quotes, but I think that one takes, it definitely takes the cake for the year. I honestly think so. Good way to finish the year. You got to stay in positive, positive nitrogen balance, right?

When you, you don't really hear anybody talk about that anymore. When you were lifting, did it have some good, uh, was it helpful performance wise to weigh 300 to 90? Was there a sweet spot? Yeah, it's interesting because I, in retrospect, I think it was a mistake to go up. I was started as a heavyweight, then they changed the weight classes. They lowered the, they went from 110 kilos, 242 to 108, which was 236, then to 105, 232.

And I, in retrospect, I was never a super in shape as a heavyweight, like I had some room to lose some body fat and I just didn't have the discipline to do that. So I have to discuss it with my coach. He's like, why don't you just go up? So it was, I went, I did go up, but in retrospect, I actually, so I wound up lifting almost as much as a heavyweight weighing 235 as I did weighing 305.

I see. So now part of it was because I went from heavyweight to super heavyweight, then went back down. So when I came back down, my numbers were about the same. So I don't know if, I think that just I was more efficient, probably technically I learned a lot,

but I think I would have been able to lift the same if I stayed. An Olympic lifter gets a tremendous amount of work done in a relatively short period of time. It seems like if you watch any of those old training hall videos where the coaches are in the background, they're not really paying any attention to their lifters that are on the platform,

but you'll see a guy do like a front squat, he'll do a back squat, he'll do some cleans. And it's just this one guy on the platform just changing weights in and out, very efficiently, probably getting through, I don't know, maybe like, so it seems like 12 working sets of work in a very condensed period of time. So you have to be, it's helpful to be in shape.

100%, I mean, like anything else, the better shape you are, the better you recover. I mean, it's about recovery and work capacity. It's, you know, we would do in our most, in our preparation periods, it would not be uncommon to do 700 reps in a day, counting 60% and above. Now that's not including bodybuilding, like what doesn't is in a scientific percentage,

but you know, snatches, clean and jerks, squats, pulls. You mean you would do bodybuilding kind of on top of everything, just accessory work. Accessory work, and not including accessory work, but upwards, not all the time, but in the heaviest periods of preparation, upwards of 700 reps, training nine times a week. Training nine times a week.

So then that's something interesting for, you know, I think a lot of people that listen to powerlifters, that's super high frequency. So why such high frequency and why having certain days be double days? So at a certain rep amount per session, because of energy reserve and testosterone levels, it behooves you to break it up into doubles. So the sweet spot is right around 130 reps, The sweet spot is right around 130 reps, give or take. I mean, it's not a hard number, but after that,

to get the most out of it, you probably wanna break it into two sessions. So that's the rationale behind breaking it up. You don't always do it, but if you can, and you don't have to, I don't train my guys with that kind of volume. I just don't, I think at some point, it's diminishing returns.

I'd rather have my guys fresher, moving better on a daily basis. Like one of my philosophies is the most important training day is the next day. Right, so like if you, I don't want to do anything in any particular day to screw up the next day. Now it doesn't mean you don't push and you're not sore and you're not, but like if you, I don't want to do anything in any particular day to screw up the next day. Now it doesn't mean you don't push and you're not sore and you're not, but like if they come in, especially with weightlifting,

the precision and the speed of the movement, even in strength and conditioning, like I don't need my guys hobbling around, you know, beating them up so bad in the weight room that they can't perform on the field. Cause at the end of the day they gotta run. Oh, that's after my career. Yeah, I'm in my, I'm in my-

I wanna mention something briefly. First of all, great usage of the word behooves. We have to give that some props. But secondly, you know, some people might be like, oh, it's kind of foolish to, you know, go after like weighing so, you know, weighing so much, it's so unhealthy and this and that, but we've got to keep in mind like who your idols are,

and who some of the people are that came before you in the sport of Olympic lifting, and sort of what a lot of those guys looked like. And for me with power lifting, same thing, back 15, 20 years ago, there was just like all those West Side Barbell guys were massive, everyone was 300 pounds pretty much. And I'm a huge Ed Cohn fan as well.

And Ed Cohn, he's always stayed in shape. And I think the heaviest he competed was like 242. But he was a little like block of granite and stuff. And so something I observed when I went to the WPO finals just as a fan and went to check it out, I saw Chuck Vogelpool and all these great people. Goggins did the first 1100 pound squat, 1102 squat weighing like 260 or whatever.

But what I noticed from most of the athletes were, was that they were just a lot bigger than me. There's also like just the fact that I just didn't come into my own yet in terms of my strength. I was still not anywhere near the strength that those guys were that were on the platform, but I was just kind of looking at it and I'm like, I owe it to myself to see what happens

if I kind of start to weigh as much as some of these guys. Cause at that time I probably weighed 220 or 230. I was like, I wonder what things would be like if I was 250 or 260. And then it just kind of morphed into that. But you were probably looking at people like Alexiev. You see that old school singlet and he's got that giant belly.

And these were people that we loved when we were kids. Yeah, yeah. You know, I think that, you have a visual of what it should be in your mind. But I think what people get twisted is health and performance are not the same. What we did is not because we wanted to be healthy. We wanted to lift as much weight as we could.

And you do whatever you gotta do to make that happen. And a lot of times, doesn't mean that you ignore health, which I probably did more than I should have. Maybe put it aside here and there for a second. Your decision-making matrix isn't about, okay, is this gonna be, right. Unbelievable. Is this gonna be healthy for me?

You know, that's not the first question you ask. You know, is this gonna make me lift more weight? You know, this discussion is always like super interesting to me and it makes me kind of wonder, I know these are different sports, right? But you see someone like a LeBron and everyone's like, oh there's only one LeBron, LeBron has great genetics, blah blah blah. He's like 40 something, he's been in the league for so long, he's putting up, I mean I think he recently had his fourth triple double game in a row, which he's never done in his career. He's never done that in his career.

So he's done four triple double games in a row. And you see that, you see how he takes care of himself. And it kind of makes me wonder, like, can't we marry health and performance? Like, if we have, like, if we're an athlete and we're like, we wanna keep doing this when we're 40, potentially, right? Is there a way we can train that won't take us out of the game too soon?

You know, it's funny you say that. And I, my thinking now, when I work with my athletes, that is a big part of what I talk to them about. And how the easy way to do that for me is through diet, right? So like if your diet is buttoned up, if it's a low inflammatory diet, and obviously the sleep and the other stuff,

assuming all that stuff is, to me the thing that I look back on, and again, you know, I don't have a ton of regrets, but I would have paid more attention to the quality of what I was putting in my body. Now at some point, I mean, I don't know, Mark, if you experienced this too, but at some point, you need the calories, right?

Like you can't just eat fucking broccoli and chicken breast. Like you just, you can't get enough. So you have to do all this. But there's other ways of doing it. Like, ghee is a lot better option than... No ghee. Than, right? No ghee.

I see what you did there. There's good options that are high-core, dense. Grass-fed. Well, back then, I mean, I didn't have a pot to piss in, so I was taking whatever I could, right? But how do you marry health and performance? I think a lot of it has to do with diet.

I think that being mindful of diet and sleep and recovery, walking, I think cardio, like I didn't do any, like cardio for me was running to the bathroom to take a dump. So walking at the very least. That's what they need after. You know, it's things that aren't going to negatively affect your output,

but are gonna greatly affect in a positive way, your overall health. And nowadays you're a coach, you wrote this book, Suffer Smarter, I can't wait to dive into some of that. But being a coach and hoping that your athlete does A through Z, we know that they're not, you and I didn't do it. I'm sure you experienced that. You know, we might fall in love with like A through E

and then that's our wheelhouse and we stay there. But maybe for some athletes, they're doing other things on the side that are dumb. Maybe they're smoking too much weed, drinking too much alcohol. I think, you know, having some ice cream or burrito or something like that here and there and being like slightly off plan on the diet is one thing,

but then also maybe not taking particular things that you're supposed to do, whether it be stretching or plyos or in particular, whatever the coach says, the coach might have, the coach might say, hey, finish up every workout with 30 minutes of forward and backward sled dragging. And that might be you and the guys kind of laughing being like, I don't know, doing that.

Because you kind of develop, you start to fall into the things that you really enjoy and the things that you're good at. And some of the things that you don't wanna do, you tend to like push off. Did you do some of that? And then when you have athletes that aren't following through on all this stuff,

how do you get them to sort of, I guess, have a bigger buy-in? Yeah, so as an athlete, I was very, I was dialed in with my training. Like when I was training, I was dialed in and I did a great job with that. I also did a really good job with certain recovery modalities. Like I was really a chiropractor,

massaged twice a week, I swam, at least, well, I wouldn't call it swimming, I'd call it just getting into the pool, just to kind of unload my joints. I did sauna. So I did a lot of those things. Again, where I failed was in just nutrition. I drank a lot.

My hours, I mean, I was a bouncer. So just those hours are terrible. A lot of alcohol. And I didn't do a great job with that. So fast forward, the lessons that I learned with my weightlifting athletes, I select a certain personality type. So I don't have to deal with the bullshit

that I put my coach through. You know, they gotta be, I'm not going to hold their hand outside of the gym. You got to take care of your shit or you got to find someone else to coach you. Like, I'm just not going to deal with it. The high school kids is a whole other, I mean, that's like juggling cats.

So, you know, I just gave him a nutrition presentation. It was funny. I use like, I looked at Jim I looked at what Jim Wendler wrote about how his nutrition talked to his high school guys. And I just gave that. It's real simple. You know, two fists of protein, three palms of carbs.

You know, just, you couldn't get any simpler. And you feel like you're talking to a monkey. You know, I love my kids and I'll do anything for them. And you know, if you get two or three to help, you know, you help two or three out great. But like, I just don't, I don't like, when I was 16, I actually was on top of my die, learned how to cook. One of my first presents I remember for Hanukkah,

my parents gave me was a Betty Crocker cookbook for kids. It had a picture, I'll never forget it. That's great. It was a yellow book. It had a picture of a meatloaf football. It was a half of like a half a football and had pimento laces. And I'll never forget it. I mean, I can remember like it was yesterday.

And they got me that book and I learned it was one of the greatest gifts they ever gave me because it got me interested in cooking. So like we ate pretty well as a kid like we ate normal I sat at the table. Your parents thought that that was important for you for athletics perhaps like is that kind of what they got? I don't know like I was I started training when I was 13. I got my dad. Was it your mom's way of saying hey I was important for you for athletics, perhaps? Like, is that kind of what they got the idea? You know, I don't know. Like, I was, I started training when I was 13. My dad-

Was it your mom's way of saying, hey, I ain't cooking for you now, you eat too much. My dad was the big cook, my mom not so much. But I probably was, you know, it's a good question. I'm gonna ask my parents, what the fuck did you get me that book? It seems super supportive of like, oh, my son's like, he's into lifting and he's gonna need to eat more.

I would kind of wonder what he's gonna do. But I was younger than before. I wasn't lifting at the time. So like, I don't know, that's a good, I'm gonna ask my parents that when I get on. They just didn't wanna cook for you. It's a great thing for kids to learn is to cook. It's huge.

So I told my kids, I'm like, look, I'm gonna give them some general basic recipes. And I said, look, I will help you learn cause this is something that you need to do. But so with the high school kids, I give them, you know, we have standards, here are the standards, either meet them or you don't. If you don't meet them, there's consequences

as far as the training goes. As far as the outside stuff, I give them guidelines. Like, you know, follow these guidelines. And I can't hop on it. They either do it or they don't. And if they want help, I will never tell them no. It's hard. So when I went back to high school strength and conditioning,

I had come from professional athletes, Olympic athletes, and where like you just show up and you plan, you know, you organize the training, you know, you organize the training, you know, you guide them through, like you don't have to do a lot. It's a lot, it's a giant job, but you're not putting out fires. Yeah.

So when I go back to the high school, I'm like, all I'm doing is putting out fires. You know, the training is not, it is very important, but it's not complicated. It's not complicated. What's complicated is building culture and keeping them on the rails. And I just wasn't equipped for that. But I went back in, I was like,

I haven't done this kind of work. So I'm learning, I'm getting better. I'll get there, I'll get there, but it's different work. I want to ask both of you guys this real quick. And it pertains to diet. And it's an interesting thing you mentioned in terms of an athlete being able to have longevity, you know, paying attention to diet.

Because, you know, we've had multiple conversations where there's some really good coaches out there who mention how, you know, a great athlete's diet isn't really a big deal, you know, cause they'll talk about like, you know, I've heard John Donahue who coaches some of the, he's worked with George St. Pierre and coached some of the best grapplers in the world.

He's mentioned that he's never seen a diet make a difference between an athlete being great. You'll see, and I mean, obviously, when you look at certain sports like sprinting and basketball, some of these athletes just need a lot of calories. So they do eat some shit in their diet, right? To get those-

Some of them eat Skittles and that's it. Right? It's crazy. But the thing is, you mentioning that, why, what can both of you tell me about that in terms of diet actually being good for longevity? Because I believe it and I know it. But when other great coaches are saying

that it's not a huge deal, why would somebody wanna listen? You wanna take that first? I agree with some of what's been said out there, from Donna Her and from some other people. It does seem like the nutrition maybe doesn't matter as much for each individual. Maybe it would matter more

if someone's like really out of shape and they need to get in shape for football camp or whatever it might be. Because then you're talking about like a mathematical equation of like their body weight. But I think if someone is the correct body weight and they're conditioned well, I don't really know how much more there is to talk about.

Because in terms of, I think that we would love, we love this idea of like ketones or creatine or carbs are gonna like really fuel this like basketball intensive practice that I'm going to do. And they certainly can and they certainly will, but I'm not sure if it matters what type of carbohydrate it is. Maybe it matters more so in the long run.

When you got someone like LeBron who's playing for so long, maybe that's where it starts to make more sense. But I think these guys that are 20, 25, and still even under 30 years old, I think they're just able to get away with stuff for the interim. So you mentioned, we talk a lot about LeBron James. It'd be interesting to see 20 years from now

how LeBron James is feeling. Like he'd probably be still feeling really good because it seems like he played his cards really well, but I think maybe to some of your point is like these high level sports are fucking dangerous and they're not necessarily healthy almost no matter how you try to negotiate them. Like there's definitely a way you can ride the line

of it being healthier, but professional football being healthy, it's like there's just not a possibility. No, I agree with everything you said. One of my friends, multiple time Olympian, West Barnett, he works for Thorne now, he's one of their guys. And we had a conversation once and he said, before you're 40, your body takes care of you,

after you're 40, you have to take care of your body. And, you know, I- Say that again, please. Yeah, so this is Wes Barnett, this is not my quote. Wes said, before you're 40, your body takes care of you. After 40, you have to take care of your body. And I think that as far as diet goes, I really think what you hit on the head,

I think diet really matters when you're unhealthy because of the food choices you make. It matters less when you're healthy. So once you become healthy and you have, absent some kind of disease that you have that food can help with, but if you're normal and you have a normal diet and your blood work is good, diet isn't going to give you standard deviations

of improvement in health. If you're eating Cheetos all day and you fix your diet, you'll have standard deviations of improvement. So I think that once you're there, there's not a lot of nutritional interventions that are gonna move the needle any more than it's already being moved. Now, as far as longevity goes, like for me,

and partially I have to thank you guys, with your journey, paying attention to how I eat, especially what's really, I feel has been most beneficial to me and moving the knee. My body fat is low now as it's been since I'm in college. Wow. And a lot of that has to do with not carnivore diet,

like strict, but it's meat, it's eggs, it's milk, it's fruit. It's, I use oat milk on occasion because of my cholesterol. It's sourdough bread. Andrew's with you on the sourdough bread. Oh, I got that from the vertical diet. Yeah. He talks about, he talks the sourdough bread. Oh, I got that from the vertical diet. Yeah. You know, he talks about, he talks about sourdough bread. I love, I fucking love bread. So this gives me like a little bit of a,

it keeps me, you know, keeps me from shaking, right? I get a little bit of bread, but... You have some at the bedside too? No, no, no, no. And I eat less. Those days are over. Those days are over. And I eat less. Those days are over. Those days are over. And I eat less. I don't think people need as much protein as they say,

if the protein sources are good. So I'm just eating less. And from a longevity perspective, like I don't take any anti-inflammatories. Like I don't take any drugs.inflammatories. Like I don't take any drugs. I have some supplementation that I take every day, vitamin D and things like that, but I feel great. Now I'm moving more, but I really think the diet,

because it was so bad. Like when I had my gym in, because it was so bad, like when I had my gym in California, it was so bad that changing it really, I feel it. And as we get on, I'm 55, so, you know, and I got fucking miles. And I feel that the diet and the movement are the key to longevity. I feel that the diet and the movement are the key to longevity.

And any movement, like if you're not moving at all, put your shoes on, walk outside and come back. Do that for 30 days. That's all you do, just do that. And then form the habit, like that mindfulness of cleaving out a small part of your day to move and eat is a game changer for longevity, I think. I think, you know, better is always gonna be better, you know, so always have a better outcome.

If you have a better health habits while you're doing a sport, when you leave the sport If you have a better health habits while you're doing a sport, when you leave the sport, you'll have better health habits. That's one of the biggest problems that we see is that athletes leave the sport and then they really start to gain a lot of weight. And sometimes they don't even really gain that much. They just get like puffy.

They just get like kind of bloated. They're an extra 20 pounds heavier than they were. They just don't look the same. At the same time, I do think there's people where everything kind of matters a little bit less. Like with Bo Jackson, like no one had to probably ever show him how to jump. I'm just assuming, maybe they did.

Maybe someone showed him a little bit about long jump or something, but I know that he went into a competition. I mean, these are kind of fairy tales at this point, but who knows? You know, supposedly he went into a decathlon with no experience on how to use a pole vault because his school didn't have one and he'd like beat everybody. And then he won the state championship and he like actually did the pretty proficient

pole vault. So some things are going to just matter less to people. Just the same, same thing in school. Sometimes people are like, I didn't even study and they, you know, they smoke right through the test. Those kids. Where somebody else has to really work hard just to get a 70 or something on the test. So I don't think that food though, like,

again, I think that we wanna think that something magical is gonna happen when you put the right food in, when you do something like an 800 meter, that it's really gonna matter. It's really gonna matter a ton when we do this MMA fight. It's like, who really promotes that? And it's like people that coach people for MMA.

So they got, you know, I mean, they kind of have to believe in that. I like to believe in it personally, but I also know that it's not true. Like I've seen it not be true too many times. What is, so like you're, and I don't mean this in a bad way, you're over the fucking top when it comes to nutrition,

at least what you show to the world. Like I don't know what you do behind closed doors. But why? Why is it to that extreme? I love it. Is it a control thing? Like do you feel like that's something you can control? I love a lot of the discipline of it

and also I was out of control, for many years gaining all that weight. And that was a very difficult thing to kind of like unwind. I was like, oh, I'm just getting bigger for this. And it was like a thing until it became like out of control to where it was very difficult to go back against the grain. At first it was like, I weighed 230, 240. I weighed 240 from the time I was 16.

So being 240 wasn't like crazy. Then like, you know, 270 and 290 and stuff like that. And that felt good and I was lifting very heavy, but I got used to the taste of some of these, you know, highly processed foods and I was hooked and I was pretty much stuck. And then after most competitions, because of people like Ed Kohn,

I would take care of myself, I would drop weight, I would try to drop a lot of that like bloat and all the other bullshits. I'm like, I'm not competing for a little while, there's no reason for me to walk around dangerously, you know, this heavy and fat and everything else. And so I'd lose some weight. But then the mission to like really start to drop weight

just became more and more apparent, you know, when I left the sport of powerlifting. And it was because, did you not feel good or you just, like I said, you like, you felt like you were out of control and needed something to control. Like what was the, like, how do you go 180 degrees? I've always loved this stuff. You know, I've been, I've been lifting since I was a kid.

And the first time I ever tried a ketogenic diet, it was like 1995, you know? Oh, no way. Yeah, I was like in high school still, 1994. Who turned you on to that? It was like a- My brother, my brother, because my brother went and lifted with Ron Fedco. I don't know if you ever run into Ron Fedco.

Ron Fedco, a PhD in applied physics or some shit like that. Super smart. He actually went on to win an Academy Award because he figured out like some... He figured out how to like, I guess... What's the word I'm looking for? Digitally special effect water in movies. Like he did it for like Jurassic Park and shit. Fucking wild.

That's how smart the guy was, but the guy was a powerlifter and he taught us a lot of things about powerlifting, but also taught us about nutrition. And he told my brother, he's like, you're too fat. You need to drop weight because you're pretty strong, but you're not really strong enough to be 242. You should go down to 220 class.

It'd be perfect for your height and everything. And so my brother went on pretty much a no carb diet. He said, just eat meat and water. And if you don't feel good, eat an apple or some olives here and there. And that will help your blood sugar out. Well, so you guys have been at this for a long time. I didn't realize that.

Yeah, we've been messing with it for a long time. I always just liked it. I always just kinda, once I started getting into lifting and drinking the protein shakes, the Metrex drinks and all that shit, back in the day, I just became like super fascinated by it. Yeah, that's, yeah, I like it. I have to be, I miss pasta.

I'll eat it every so often. Like I can't, I don't want, not that I can't, I can do anything I wanna do, but I just don't wanna be that strict. To me, my blood work dictates my decision making. Like my blood work keeps on improving and if I wanna fucking hot dog, I'm gonna have a goddamn hot dog every Sunday.

I wanna really just add in here, because like I'm still in a stage of athletics where I compete, but I've been fortunate enough to be around people like yourself around this podcast and get so much information to put things into practice. Right? And the thing is, is like, there is a difference that I feel when eating shitty

as an athlete versus eating well. But the thing is, is when I was eating shitty as an athlete, I still did okay. And when you're doing okay and you're eating kind of shitty, you're gonna be like, I'm good. And everyone around is gonna be like, it doesn't matter. You're doing great, right? So you usually have no reason to try to clean anything up.

It takes extra time, it's not as tasty. It doesn't bring you as much mouth feeling pleasure. So why do it if you're already doing okay? But the thing is, is like, if an athlete were, and when I say eat clean, I'm not meaning eat chicken breast and rice and vegetables and fiber and don't get any calories in. I just mean mainly eat whole foods.

So ain't nothing wrong with an athlete eating pasta, you're gonna use that shit as energy, right? But if you mainly eat whole foods and you get some of the crap you might overeat out of your diet, I truly think that all athletes would probably notice how much better they feel, although they've never given them the chance,

they've never given themselves the chance to actually feel that. All really high level athletes have something that they're dealing with. Something in the fucking ankle, something in the back, something in the shoulder. But they're still high level athletes despite that. And they never really give themselves the shot because, you know, as an athlete, you're always focused on competing, training, all this other shit. Nutrition is just like, well, I'm working, it's working.

So why shift? Right. So that's why, like when I, I'm working. It's working, so why shift, right? So that's why when people say that shit, that's not a big deal, it kind of just emboldens the athletes, be like, yeah, it doesn't matter. I'm a fucking boss, right? What I think is true here for sure is that if you kind of reverse engineer the whole thing

and you think about recovery, it's not really debatable that we need sleep. Exactly how much sleep, you know, who knows? I don't know, some people say eight hours, but I just think everybody's a little bit different on how much sleep they need. So if you start to eat in a way that negatively impacts your sleep,

you're already screwing yourself over. And then what about this? How many times have we heard this? I've heard this about almost every single athlete. Oh my God, that guy blasts caffeine all day. You know, that guy's, that guy's got energy drinks. That guy's got this, that guy's got that. Oh my God, that guy smokes so much weed. That guy does this or that. And they're doing that for a particular reason. It's to mitigate something. Oh man, he's got tons of anxiety. So he needs to smoke

weed to go to bed. Well, there's potential if he just cleaned up his diet and was on a good diet that potentially he'd have less anxiety. It's not gonna make you worse. How about that? Yeah, right, right. It's not gonna, yeah, it's not gonna inflame the problem any further.

It's not gonna make it worse. And so if you kind of think about it from that standpoint and it might make only just a small little change over time, but that small little change over time is something that I think is really cool. And that's why I continue to like pursue it. And I know like it's easy to just have a confirmation bias and just be like, oh, this guy, this guy, and this guy,

they just eat pasta before, you know, and they eat pasta and meatballs with cheese all over it before they fight and they destroy everybody. And you're like, well, okay, but there's also a handful of guys that don't do that that are, you know, trying to win as well. So you can't always just look at the main guy because the main guy might not have really run into

other complications from the way that he's eating, but at some point he's going to. You're trying to get healthier and you're probably eating chicken for every meal or the same beef cuts for every meal. And trust me, I know how good some cuts can be. You can make anything taste good, but Good Life Protein is the place that you want to go

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Yeah, you know, I think you bring up some good points. I think a couple of things. We know that people who are world class are world class in everything, including their physiology. Right, so I think that that is a truth. I think the other truth is that everything matters. To what degree it depends, but you can't, you know, you can't do, nothing you do exists in a vacuum,

especially around performance or athletics or even life. Right, so if you're, just because your outcome is good, and this is, I deal with this in strength and conditioning a lot because in weightlifting, you know you're coaching well if your athletes perform well, there's a number, right? You hit the number, you don't hit the number. Very binary. Strength and conditioning is not so binary because what we do in the weight room

isn't the thing that they're doing, it's their performance on the field. I say that a strength coach doesn't have a huge, especially with talented athletes, doesn't have a huge, especially with talented athletes, doesn't have a huge impact on performance for the more talented an athlete is. So then you start looking at other metrics like soft tissue non-contact injuries,

time lost to injury, things like that. They're a little bit more measurable, even then. So what it really boils down to, it's not outcome, it's process. So we know that certain process will lead to a particular outcome. So if you eat high processed food, regardless of your outcome, that process is fucked up. And because everything matters, that is gonna start to matter at a higher degree at some point, even if the outcome isn't affected just yet.

So with traffic conditioning, it's the same thing. It's like, well, we know what the process, there's a process that is good, then now there's leeway in that. That's what the focus has to be, because you don't have control over the outcome all the time. There's other factors that are involved in that outcome. But to me, even if you're feeling good,

like we hear these stories of guys just eating candy. Like when I was working with the Clippers. DK Metcalf? Yeah. Like when I was working with the Clippers. D.K. Metcalf? Yeah. When I was working with the Clippers, I was part of the team that did their exercise testing back in the day when Lamar Odom was on the Clippers. All he would do was eat candy and smoke weed.

Well... That was it. Are we surprised? No. Now, he... He could have been probably one of the best basketball players that ever existed. I mean, a 6'10 guy that had all the skills.

He didn't care about any of that stuff. Now, did it affect his mentality? He kind of went off the deep end a little bit towards the end. He got hurt. Did the diet and the weed and all the other stuff affect that? Maybe, maybe not. But if the process was better, I'm gonna argue that the outcome would have been better.

Especially if it's, like, you gotta be, imagine the damage you gotta do to yourself to ruin that career. That guy, I mean, I was one of the most amazing athletes I've ever seen. I, it's just fine and unfortunate. The first off, he was amazing, but I type in Lamar Odom on Google. First thing that pops up- The Kardashians?

Nah, the little yes, Lamar Odom admits to purchasing Khloe Kardashian's sex doll. This is like a, this is new news. It's such an unfortunate thing. It's a downfall, bro. Such an unfortunate thing. Yeah, just eat a steak, you wouldn't buy that. Now, if he ate better, does it mean that all that would have been different?

I don't know, but you know, to me, there's a... It's a code. It's a championship mindset. There's a mindset, there's a mentality that comes with doing... Like some of my guys, like my high school guys, they're so talented. And what I preach to them is being on time, being prepared, do the job right. And things that have nothing to do with playing football necessarily.

But if you're on time, if you prioritize being on time, think about what has to happen in order for you to be on time all the time. And understand that even if you do everything right and you're still late, sometimes you're late. It's just the way, there's a consequence. Right, even if you try to do the right thing and it doesn't, and it's like,

it's like all these things I try to, it's a process, like I try to teach them a process-oriented life. Even if the outcome doesn't work out. Right, because the process is the only thing you can control. And, you know, this is, I think with being, with eating, is it gonna make you score 40 points?

Maybe not. But the mindset, like we talked about Kobe earlier on. Right, like talk about mindset and live in that code 24-7. Was he gonna be one of the greatest players of all time anyway? Maybe. Like, so I know Jordan's, the strength coach for the Bulls early on was Al Vermeel and Mike Atone, who was the head of weightlifting. He's like the head coach of USA weightlifting.

So he was one of the assistant coaches on that team. And Alvin Meehl was one of my idols. And I asked him early on, we had long talks about strength and conditioning. And he said to me, and I've used this since, what's the difference between training like Michael Jordan type athletes and everybody else? And he said, the strength and conditioning won't increase, like didn't make Michael Jordan,

Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant, Kobe Bryant. It didn't like make them jump higher or move faster or do any of that stuff. You see what it does is it slows down the decline over the course of a game, season and career. That's what strength and conditioning does for the elite. And so it's not about, so if you think about that, it's not like, well, strength and conditioning

equals more points. It just means you can do what you do longer. That also does mean more points. Which does, yes. But it's not measurable. I got you. I got you. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. It's not measurable. Yeah. So that stuck with me. And he said the opposite is true with less talented athletes. There's a direct correlation between the strength and conditioning and their ability to perform. So- So they still need it. You still need it.

Yeah. But the outcome is gonna be a little bit different. You know, you're gonna experience the outcome a little bit differently. We've pulled up a quote on this podcast from Barry Sanders. It was a few episodes ago, but Barry Sanders has been quoted saying that his strength conditioning routine where he would be squatting three, four, five, right, from Barry Sanders, it was a few episodes ago, but Barry Sanders has been quoted saying that

the strength conditioning routine where he would be squatting three, four, five, right, was the thing that allowed him to play in the NFL and be injury free. Because I think, Mark, you said he's only had like a rib injury? Yeah, I think he mixed like half a game or a game, maybe his whole career.

He was on, I used to get this magazine, Bigger Stronger Faster, not the title, your brother's movie. The VHS tapes, yeah. So it was a quarterly magazine, and they're actually a company in Salt Lake, and they would put out, make equipment, but they had this training system that was great. So my first training system,

it kind of introduced me to periodization. But every quarter, they would send out these magazines, and mostly high school kids. I remember one of the magazines was Barry Sanders in high school. He was like squatting. And he was like one of their, you know, Bigger Stronger Faster All Americans or whatever.

So he was at it from the get go. If you guys had, oh, I can't think of his name. Anyway, it'll come to me. But like Saquon Barkley. Unbelievable. I mean, 400 pound clean. That recent highlight where he jumped over backwards.

That's just stupid. That's insanity. So like you're not, I straight up didn't do that for him, right? He was touched. So, like, you know, I, Stratum Conditioning didn't do that for him. Right? He was touched. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, this is bigger, faster, stronger than magazine. Mm-hmm. That got me into period...

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Yeah, I remember that magazine. It was amazing. You know, it was the only, you know, back then, it was one of the only magazines that you could see that wasn't bodybuilding. Yeah, I wouldn't be where I am now without weights. it was one of the only magazines that you could see that wasn't bodybuilding. It is. Yeah, I wouldn't be where I am now without weights. They made me, Angie, can you read the rest? Oh, man.

They made me feel fast and quick with a bigger body weight. Also, I've never been hurt. Barry Sanders. That's like ridiculous. So like my guys this year for football, the season didn't end the way I wanted it to end, but we had zero non-contact soft tissue injuries, zero. I credit the fact that they were training.

Hardening their minds too. And how do we know like, you know, from doing your program, maybe that kid is just a half step in the right spot at the right time, rather than being in the wrong spot at the right time. And just turning the head around just ever so slightly to see that someone's about to, you know, smash into him just because of some drills he's doing.

It could be a number of different things, you know, but the fact is that, you know, that to that, to me, that's the most important. I look at a program and I wanna see those numbers. I don't give a fuck about the record board. We have some freaks on my team that a six, seven-hundred pound squad is without even having to do much. So it doesn't make me, that doesn't mean I'm a good coach.

Right, but like little things like that are important. I think that that's why we train. Not to put numbers on the record board, but like for those other things to make sure that, you know, if my kids are missing time, if your athletes are missing time due to these kinds of injuries that are preventable, then that's on you. That's on the coach.

Something I think that's important to mention as we were talking about the diet and just having a more disciplined athlete. It really was bodybuilding show that I did a couple of years ago, probably five years ago now. You were in incredible shape, holy shit. That changed my mindset forever.

How? Well, when I did the contest, once I started getting into the diet and I was maybe about three weeks in, and I wasn't even on any sort of real, I was on a strict plan, but it wasn't like some major calorie restriction or anything like that.

But as I got a couple of weeks into it, I was like, holy shit, man. When it came to powerlifting and doing every single thing that I was supposed to do, I was probably only about 70% in, and I thought I was 100. Interesting. Bodybuilding made me realize that

because of all the extra shit that you have to do. I mean, depending on, you know, for me, I was a little bit of a rushed preparation and stuff like that, so it was a little different for me, I was a little bit of a rushed preparation and stuff like that. So it was a little different for me than maybe somebody else's experience. But yeah, that changed my outlook on a lot of things because bodybuilding is 24 seven.

The diet, you know, you were saying, we were saying like, well, the process versus the actual game itself, it's kind of hard to tell. But the game itself in bodybuilding. Andrew, could you rewind that a little bit real quick? It seems I want to see my ass again. No, no, no, rewind it. Rewind it, you gotta see that dumpy when he walks by.

Oh yeah. He has to, what the fuck, bro? Can't get rid of that squat button, no matter how much you die it down. That's something else. That's dumpy. That's something else. Dump truck.

All right, keep it going. That's great. Well, what were the girls that were spraying you and all that stuff talking about the whole time? Oh my God. They were just asking, what do you do for your butt? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Squat a thousand pounds.

Yeah. Yeah, that was, yeah, so I went into, that was a room where- That is quite an ass shot. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This just takes over the show. But yeah, so I went into, that was a room where... That is quite an ass shot. This just takes over the show. I went into a room because I needed like some other type of stuff on me. I don't even know what, you know, they were like, oh, you need this on you to like go on.

I have no idea what's going on. Yeah, yeah. I go into this room and it's all women and they just go, oh my God, they're like, look at your ass. They're like, your ass is amazing. They're like, your ass is amazing. They're like, so I just turned like beat red. It's so funny because I've never had something like, quite like that happen before. I was just like, oh my God.

I was like, now I'm part of the Me Too movement. Well, I mean, you're certainly in a crowd that appreciates a good ass. Right, exactly. And you get judged on it too. So how come, oh, that was the pre, is that the pre-judge? Well, I did different.

Oh, okay. Yeah, I did like, you know, whatever the hell the board short thing is or whatever. Physique. Physique, there you go. Oh man. Switching gears here a little bit. What are some things,

cause I always find this to be interesting, these things are kind of forever locked into like folklore, these like myths or whatever they might be. What are some things that Russian lifters were doing back in the day to, you know, we saw the video of Alexey earlier, like, I don't know, what are some things that you think are true that they may have been doing to be so advanced in Olympic lifting? know it's not so many. These are my friends. So, you got to understand something, especially the old Soviet Union. And China's a lot like that now. When you have 100% control over your people, you could do amazing things in sport.

I always say, I always want to coach in a communist country. Because I don't worry about shit. So with Russia, they weren't, people talk about drugs, they weren't doing anything more than anybody else was doing. You gotta understand, they had hundreds of thousands of weightlifters, you know, they, so each town

has its own weightlifting team. And then they would, they had coached, all the coaches are trained under the same educational process. So there's different sports schools in Russia. And when you go to want to be a coach, you go, you know, undergrad, and it's all math science. Then you take a test, which is the equivalent of our like GRE. And it's all math

science. And that test is the same entrance gateway to either go to medical school or coaching school. So that's the level of science education that they have. So if you go into the coaching school, it's, I think it's two years of general coaching, and then you specialize in your sport. Now everybody's reading off the same script, like the curriculum is the same. So now these coaches, they disperse all through that giant landmass. And so you have the town, you have regional coaches. So the best lifters in the town are then put up to the regional and then up the ladder. So by the time they're on the national team, so I think back in the day, there was, I don't

know how many hundreds of thousands of athletes the Russians would start back in the day, there was, I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of athletes the Russians would start with in the beginning of the quad, the quadrennium. Let's try to stay a little bit closer. Beginning of the quadrennium. What is the quadrennium? The four year Olympic cycle. Oh, wow.

They would be probably 50 that are national team. be probably 50 that are national team. So these are the, and the coaches are, the coaching is great. I mean, everything is just dialed in. So people think that there's some magic behind, and China is doing the same thing now. And it's the other thing culturally in places like Russia, old Soviet Union,

Iran currently, all the Central Asian countries, China. As a man, I mean, women weightlifting too, but not in all those countries, being strong is important culturally. So historically the strongest man in the world is the man who clean and jerks the most. So in Iran, that's a big deal. So they have great supers

because the supers is gonna lift the most weight. So culturally it's important as a man, strength, heavy athletics. That's why like all those Central Asian countries, Dagestan and those fighters are coming out. It's an expression of manliness to be able to be strong or to be able to fight to be, we don't have that here.

It's not that we don't have good weightlifters, but our women are the best weightlifters, not our men. Our women are, our men are, I mean, it's not that they're not good, it's just competitive. They're not competitive relative, not all of them. Some of them like Hampton Morris and some of these guys, but relatively speaking, especially our bigger men. Well, they're playing other sports.

Well, I mean, all our great big weightlifters are playing football. That's just the way it is. The Russians also, my understanding is like, they just tested a lot of stuff, right? Didn't they kind of like- Well, they start, well, the Nazis started sports science, but the Russians took it to another level.

They would study like how much milk the guy had before a workout and how well that would work. It's incredible. I have all that, not all of it, but I have a ton of that Russian research. We can't skip over this Nazi thing. They would try milk before the workout, after the workout, they would test and see what was better. The Nazis, so the Nazis just like the Russians, so the Nazis used sport as a way to show dominance. This is what's going on with Russia after World War II, it was called 1948, right? 50% of the Russian men between 18 and 24 were dead

on the battlefield. So they had to rebuild their country. And one of the ways that they wanted to instill pride back into mother Russia was they decided that sport was gonna be the vehicle. So we were killing the Russians in the 40s and 50s in weightlifting. They identified, you know, weightlifting was an important part of that, of that part of that rebuild. Like we want to be the biggest, strongest guys. So if you fast forward 18 years,

or 40, 50, 1960, so which is the, I think the Mexico games, all of a sudden now, the tide is starting to shift because they had 18 years of throwing all that, a ton of money into sports science and developing this Olympic program. And then by 64, 68, 72, all of a sudden, things started to change because now they had their first crop, their first and second crop of kids born

after the fall, after World War II. Wow. So those countries use sport as a way to show their dominance. Masculinity means something very different in these. Now I'm saying, you know, talk about toxic mask and all that stuff. I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but being big and strong is never toxic. You know, it should be meaningful for men to be big and strong. We've lost that a little bit here, not in this room, thankfully, but outside of this room a little bit. But they

haven't lost that in those other countries. So that's a little history. If you're someone that's taking supplements or vitamins or anything to help move the needle in terms of your health, how do you know you really need them? And the reason why I'm asking you how do you know is because many people don't know their levels of their testosterone, their vitamin D, all these other labs like their thyroid and they're taking these supplements to help them function at peak performance. But that's why we've partnered with Merrick Health for such a long time now because you can get yourself different lab panels like the Power Project Panel which

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Links in the description as well as the podcast show notes. What do you got brewing over there, Andrew? So I mean, kind of going back really quick about like the nutrition and the longevity thing. I always point to the one story I heard about Chris Weber. He would have 40 chicken nuggets before every meal for McDonald's. Oh, that sounds great.

And it's like, oh, but like that was his thing. So like without that, would he be who he was? But then there's always the argument of like, well, what would he have been able to do without that? He had a lot of- Maybe he wouldn't call a timeout when they had no more timeouts. Well, yeah, that was when he was younger.

Oh, never, never got over that. At Michigan, yeah. Yeah, to the very end of his career, people would still yell that out. But he had a lot of bad knee injuries that took him out of the game. Does the inflammation from those chicken nuggets, did that add to, like, yeah, I mean, process, right?

Like, bad process. Yeah. And then it's like, it is tough to, because like somebody will always weasel in an argument for or against whatever. But as far as like what Donaher was saying with like GSP, GSP stopped fighting very early, in my opinion, right? He was still, he still had many years left in the tank. Why? I'm not sure why he... I honestly don't know why he... But he took care of himself. He did, he did, yeah.

But when Donoher saying that like, oh, it doesn't matter, because look at him, it's like, well, he did stop early. If maybe he prolonged his career a little bit longer, or stayed in longer, maybe he would have had to address it. Ooh, something on the GSP thing. Don't forget what you're about to say. Don't forget the other, right? GSP was on Lex Friedman podcast talking about fasting.

This was after his career. And he was like, I wish I fasted before fights because it makes me feel virile and hungrier. And I feel like I would have fought better. He said that's Lex Friedman posts, all that. So, okay. Just want to say.

Yeah, no. So what I was going to get at is like, eventually it becomes the thing that you can't ignore. So I used to be a really diehard Kings fan. So the other player that I always point to is Pajic Dejakovic, who he had a great career on the Kings, but as he got older, it was like, oh yeah, I'm going to give it another shot, but this time we're going to start paying attention to my diet. And when you hear that, you're like, wait, you're a pro athlete.

How do you not pay attention to your diet? It's like, well, this thing happens, they play for several years, and then eventually they have to start addressing all the things that they were ignoring at one point. So it's of my opinion that sure, you can get by, but imagine how much better you could be, but also eventually you have no choice.

You're gonna have to eventually address that or improve that area of your overall performance because you can't ignore it forever. But how are you gonna get a 22 year old multi-millionaire who's doing their thing to say, wait a second, what you're doing, now you gotta do it different. Like, motherfucker, did you see my Lamborghini?

Why would I listen to you? And that's what you gotta deal with. That's hard. It's hard. Think about, I don't know what it's like. I don't remember what it's like to be 22. But if I was that, like, if I was that guy, would I listen? What's my motivation?

You're gonna tell me in 10 years, it's gonna matter? What the fuck? It's funny, I didn't think, and my friends didn't think that I was gonna live until 30. I won a $500 bet when I turned 30, because no one thought I was gonna turn it there. So why the fuck would I think about that at 22? That's why I think think these days are pretty cool

because we see the effect on specific guys. I mentioned LeBron and there are always people who are gonna be like, oh, he's the best. I can point to other people, Tom Brady as well. I mean, there's Tom Brady. He is interesting because he really turned it around. He's a really good example because, you know, Tom Brady ran a 5.040, I think, like recently.

And he looks like he fell off a bar stool during the combine. Right, right, exactly. And so he had to actually, he paid attention to his diet, but I would imagine that going into the combine, he probably wasn't. Thank you. Thank you for mentioning Tom Brady.

Why? One of you. Watch the joke. Oh, I get it. I was like, why are you laughing so hard now? I gotcha. I was mentioning to LeBron, and then Marv was like, you can bet you're Tom Brady.

And you're totally right. Totally right. Exactly. We got guys that are Tom Brady. Are you Tom Brady guy? Not really. Not necessarily, but he's white. So.

Yeah. He is. But great white hope. But that's the thing. I think like athletes, cause I very much look up to LeBron James, even though I'm not a basketball player. And the main reason is because I know that

I started my specific sport late. I started at 23 for Jiu-Jitsu, right? Yeah. And I know that for me to get to the level that I want to be at and compete at, I have more years and I need to be able to last. And there's a guy who's been doing that at the highest level for 20 years.

So it's like, you just need to take care of yourself. You need to do the things to take care of your body so that in your late 30s and 40s, you can reach the level that you're trying to get to. And most athletes that are competing want to do this shit till they're older. They obviously want to be great, but most athletes want to keep it up. But they just haven't seen people that have shown it's possible until kind of now. Whereas like Tom Brady's still doing great.

LeBron's still doing great. The examples we've had in the past, like Jordan's always been great, but towards the end of his career, like he wasn't putting up the same numbers. He was still Jordan though. Like I think he had like a one game that was pretty crazy. He had a 40 point, he had a 40 point game with the Wizards.

Yeah, yeah, but you typically see the downward trend. So you always have this belief that when I get there, it's gonna be downward. You're not seeing that with LeBron and Brady. The problem is youth, right? How do you convince somebody at that age and look in the crystal ball and say, look, here's what's gonna happen?

They ought to convince themselves. But how many people have that maturity? I didn't have that maturity at that age. Yeah. Like I can't imagine that I'm an outlier. It's not everybody can be Dan Gable, right? Not everybody can be that guy who gets it right from the start.

Jerry Rice comes to mind, you know, cause he was impeccable with his preparation and his nutrition, Roger Craig as well. I mean, there's a lot of football players that, and just- Romanowski is another one. Romanowski. You know, he does a little nuts,

but he's a guy that knew it was important. A lot of professional athletes that, you know, not only have the talent, but they also take it to the next level with paying attention to everything. But I could see, especially nowadays, I mean, part of the reason why Nick Saban left college football was like, he can't really mentor anybody anymore.

It's like these guys make a lot of money and it's just not the same. No, it's, yeah, it's definitely not the same. It's hard. The things that were important, were not important anymore. This is the last one I mentioned, because it just hit me. Mijayin Lopez, in the last Olympics, 42 years old,

got his, I think, fifth gold for Cuba. Another person who just literally got gold in one of the hardest sports on your body, right at 42 Right. We know we we know can be done and again, like let's not throw up our hands and just say genetics We do know that these athletes have great genetics, right? But the thing is what the fuck are they doing? They're doing something which we can do We can do I'm with you. I got you don't with you. You preach it to the choir. It's just how do you reach those guys at an early age?

Yeah, I could see where you could say, give examples of Jerry Rice and LeBron and- Peyton. And all these great athletes that came before, but they could also be like, well, I'm never gonna be them anyway, so what's the difference? Look at David Wells. Like I'm really good, but maybe I'll never be that good.

I mean, it's always gonna be an example of the opposite, of the wrong thing. But that, to me, with technique, with teaching weightlifting, like you can watch some of these people setting world records and they're doing some crazy shit. And I'm like, well, if you're gonna learn, learn the textbook technique, right? Learn what it's like if you would draw it up, learn that.

And then, you know, as you develop, if you wanna change some things, let's change things, but you gotta start somewhere, where's your base? The base is what we know, a known process that works. And then as you get to know yourself better and things change, then you can start making adjustments. But let's, everybody start off the same script. And some of these athletes are leaving the sport

and I don't know what their problems are behind the scenes, but it's seemingly without a scratch on them, some of them. And I think maybe you could point to some of those guys and say, Hey, this guy's a commentator. He now has had, you know, Troy Aikman or someone like that has now had a job for the last 15 years in broadcasting. And maybe he, I don't even really know what his regimen was, but like maybe he played his cards right. And maybe for some of these young guys coming up, it's like, what about when you leave the

game? Like that could be three years from now, or it could be 15 years from now. If you play your cards right, it could be 15 years from now. And on top of it, you could leave the sport without- And you can make more money, right? If money's your driver, you play longer, you make more money. Right.

You know, it's just, I get you. I just, I don't know. I'm working on the secret sauce to try to get young guys to understand the future. I have a question real quick. Because you know, you were mentioning all this stuff in terms of getting young, a lot guys to fall in line, right? Do you, you work with so many young people, and this makes me really curious

how you instill belief into them. Because for me, I was fortunate to have a parent, a mom, that like, I have a tattoo on my hand that says limit and it has a line through it. Because the one thing that she drilled into me is that you do not have a limit. People would always say the sky's the limit. She actually like, when I was six,

I remember her telling me there is no limit. The sky's the limit is the stupidest saying ever. Go right to the clouds. Right? So the thing is, is I've always had like a level of belief that I know people think it's ridiculous. How do you instill that into someone younger? Because like a lot,

I noticed so many people are so pessimistic in terms of the things that they think that they can do. They have no level of good belief and it's tough to convince them of any of it. It's a great point. And I don't have an answer yet. What I try to do, and I understand the question, I just don't have a good answer.

That's okay. But what I try to do is I try to be, live by an example. I try to be consistent, right? To be the consistent thing in their life. And I don't lie to them. You know, I try, I think what I'm trying to do is work around the edges

because I don't know if there's a way to do what you're saying, at least I haven't thought of it. But I think that what those, boy working around the edges, being consistent and being present and all these things will allow them to trust you. So I think that them to trust you. So I think that once they trust you,

you can help guide that belief. But I don't think there's an A equals B here. I don't think there's a direct path to that. I think it's just a, I think it's those things. It's all those other things. Develop trust and then you help guide them. I was telling my guys this the other day. Some of the most, I've been coaching for 33 years. Got my first job in 1994.

So give or take, 31 years. The most rewarding things that happened to me to this day is I'll get a call or a message, you know, from an athlete that I coached 20, 25 years ago. And it's, you know, coach, because I've preached the same things, you know, those lessons that you taught us about being on time and things like that.

I thought you were crazy, but now as a father, it's made me a better father, it's made me a better husband, it's made me a better boss, it's made me, that's when I know that I'm doing good, something good. So I, so to your point, I think that the, the, the rewards of that, are you doing the right thing?

Are you helping in that way? You don't know until much later. And you have to, again, you have to trust the process right now because in down the road, it's going to work. Not for everybody. But you know, when the student is ready, the lesson, they'll learn the lesson. I don't know, I butchered that, whatever that fucking-

The master will come? The master will come or whatever. And when the master comes, you gotta be ready for it. And then when you're ready for it, you take the lessons. Now the lessons might not work right then and there, but if you're paying attention to the lessons, they're gonna work. They're gonna work.

So I think it's a long-term project. I think you gotta ask a lot of questions. You gotta say, are you receptive at getting better at this? And hopefully they'll say yes. And you kinda go back and forth, but you might have to do some of that one-on-one. You're not gonna be able to impact everybody. So maybe that conversation out of the 40 kids

that are in the room, it's saved for the two or three that you saw sweating in the gym, working their ass off already, they already have some sort of level of buy-in and maybe you can tell them, you could say, hey, here's what I think could be really awesome. If you guys do this, I think a lot of the team will follow. Not everybody, but I think a lot of,

some of the more talented guys will follow and so on. Because you hear that, you know, in building cultures with a lot of professional teams, and they'll say, oh, they brought in this journeyman quarterback, mainly just because he works his ass off. He's fun, he's like a locker room guy, but it's someone that kind of drives everybody else that maybe had a career previously.

And so I think if you can communicate with the athlete and say, and still you're not gonna always get that same buy-in from them even after having conversation. But if you talk to them and you do have this conversation, you can always go back to that conversation and say, hey, I know doing these 400s right now is breaking you down. But remember the conversation we had, you said you wanted to be the best.

And if you wanna be the best, then this is- Takes what it takes. Yeah, are you in agreement that what we're doing, and then they might be in disagreement on the program, or they might be in disagreement, but maybe there's some flexibility there to have more conversation. But to find that person is a diamond in the rough.

It's not easy to find. Sometimes it's even just like luck. Like I got very lucky that Stan Efferding came to Super Training Gym. I've coached so many different athletes, but it was hard to get, it was hard to really get an all time world record holder. You can't make something out of nothing.

If somebody doesn't have quite a bit to work with in the beginning, it doesn't matter what kind of coach you are. Obviously you can't make chicken salad out of chicken shit. You just can't. You can't. Someone that weighs 300 pounds, that squats 300, it's gonna be very hard to turn them into an all time world record holder.

Not impossible, guys. Not impossible. Not impossible. Doesn't mean you shouldn't do, it's the journey, right? Like go on a journey. It also doesn't mean you can't, it also means it doesn't mean you can't get them to squat 600 or 700, but the likelihood to get them,

it just might take a really long ass time too. Which some people aren't afraid to take their time with stuff. No, and I think that's missing, you know, with a lot of P. I had a, I did a podcast, Finding Mastery, Michael Gervais, and we talked about, he asked me like, what's mastery? Different things, but one of the things it takes is time.

The willingness, I mean, you know this nine years, which in the scheme of things, there's a tremendous amount of time, but no, nine years to achieve a black belt in something that you work at, I'm sure every day. You know, nine years is a, if you just look at what nine years, it's a long fucking time.

Who's willing to dedicate themselves time every day for nine years or to be great at something. It's a large percentage of your youthful years, you know what I mean? Maybe it's only 10% of your life if you live to be 100, but it's a larger percentage of like between, you know, the ages of 20 and 50. Right, and I would argue in one of the things is, you spend this time and you, I said that mastery is the things that are in between the lines, right? So you can have a sheet of music and you could play the notes

but you're not gonna be Jimi Hendrix, right? So the information in between the notes reveals itself from spending the time, paying attention, immersing yourself in that quest. But the big thing, I think the reason why people stop is because they don't want to spend the time. They don't understand that it's not just this short attention, 30 second clip.

You know, it's a different mindset. And that time is the big thing. If you spend enough time and pay attention It's, that time is the big thing. If you spend enough time to pay attention to something long enough, it's gonna change you. I mean, you've had an incredible evolution, you know, from where you started. Yeah, you've known me for over 20 years. Yeah, I mean, we met at Gold's in Venice

and, you know, we're both very different people. We've taken similar, you You have taken similar paths, we're in a similar pool, but we didn't get here by mistake and it wasn't haphazard, right? We both paid attention to something and kept our attention on it for a long time and we learned along the way. And I think that that's a dying skillset.

And it's unfortunate because patience is definitely a virtue. I don't know if it's hard. I, with these kids, I always talk about kids now. And I said, man, I would never wanna be a kid now. It's so hard. We had our struggles, but it's not the same. Like, at least we had a opportunity to hide. Oh yeah.

Right? You know, like to get, just to not be. Yeah, you would hear, I mean, when I was a kid, you would hear about someone in another town, but you didn't have to like see it. No, you didn't know what they were doing. Now you go on social media and you see all these like lifts and all these cool things that other kids are doing,

and you're maybe in the same sport and you're just probably not feeling so great about yourself sometimes. No, comparing, you know, the comparison, it's just your whole life is on display. You know, like I just, to me, that would have killed me. You know, cause I was an only child and you know, I spent a lot of time by myself and it,

and I couldn't imagine sharing that time with somebody else, you know, that I don't want to know what's going on during that time. I'm curious, man. This conversation is going all over the place. But from what you just said right there, we were just talking with Nick Best about this because you are right.

I think it is harder, especially a kid who's like into physical culture these days because you go online, you see all these Jack people. That's why you got these youngins just wanting to hop on some shit when they're 18, 19. 15, 16 years old, running trend. And they see their idols doing it. Like, you know, they see the guy,

like Alex Eubank is one of the hot ones right now, right? And he just got on TRT because he wants to be bigger. And he's like 20, early 20s. But the other side of it is this. You also got the crazy young ones that are deadlifting 800 and 900 because they see people doing it. So they're like, oh, you can deadlift 900 pounds?

And then you got a fucking 19 year old deadlifting 900 pounds because he sees it's possible. So it's like, ah. Look, there's always a dark side to everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, like, you know, it doesn't mean it's, I'm not making a judgment good or bad. I'm just saying it's difficult. It is difficult. It you know, it's it doesn't mean it's not making a judgment good or bad. I'm just saying it's difficult.

It is difficult. It is very, it's much more difficult. So there's a lot of benefits to it. To your point, like, well, I didn't know that's possible. Well, I'm going to do it. It's like the four minute mile thing, right? But there's the dark side to that. You know, it's, well, I'm trying, I'm doing all this shit.

I don't look like that. They like, you know, the, the value system is a little weird. And now you're depressed, right? To your point, like guy in another town doing something, you don't know what he's doing, but now you know everything. And you're like, well, I wanna be that guy. And then you start making bad decisions.

I want muscle and I need it now. So, but again, it's the young mind is fragile, right? And it doesn't always make the right decision. Sometimes it does and you get a kid, you know, deadlift at 900 pounds, and then you get a kid who hangs himself, you know? So it's, you know, it's like anything else, you know, you can't judge it as good or bad all the time.

It's just, it's just different. Long time competitive Olympic lifter. I believe you're part of Olympic lifting committee as well. Yeah, I'm on the, I just got reelected to the board of directors, which I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. Why are you disappointed? I was on it before. What does this entail?

What do we gotta do? Well, you help kind of guide the direction of the sport, which the reason I ran again is because I felt the direction was not the best direction. So instead of bitching and complaining, I want to get involved again. So I do it because weightlifting saved my life. How did it save your life? Yeah, so I am 100% convinced

that if I didn't have weightlifting in my early 20s, I'd be in jail or dead. It gave me a place to spend my energy. It gave me a profession, right? It gave me skillset to be able to coach. It provided me with lifelong relationships and I owe a debt to weightlifting that I couldn't repay in two lifetimes.

So if I can give back and help Stuart, guide the sport, make it better when I'm gone, then I feel it's my obligation. That's the only reason I do it. Otherwise, I mean, it's a fucking pain in the ass and it's gonna cause me problems and it's gonna cause me relationships and it's gonna cause me relationships But I don't give a shit. I don't give a fuck what people think about me

You know unless if I shed blood or sweat with you outside of that, I don't give a fuck what you think of me so and I Think that it's it needs help. I needs help from people like me I'm not I think that it needs help, it needs help from people like me. It's not an egotistical thing, it's just, if I'm in a position to help, I'm gonna help. What does Olympic lifting do? Like what's the sales pitch, you know,

for the young kid listening? We need to hire you as the CEO is what we need to do. There is none. Like that's the one thing that we suck. What's it good for though? Like for an athlete, like what's Olympic lifting good for? Well as far as a training modality? Yeah.

Yeah, so I think, you know, we have an explosive bucket in training, right? The strength bucket, there's an explosive bucket, there's these few different buckets. I believe that the power clean, some of the variations of the weightlifting movements are the best way to teach and enhance explosiveness. Is it the only way?

No, like we have Fred Duncan on, right? So, you know, it's funny, like if you pull back 5,000 feet, we're saying the same exact thing, right? It just, we have a, I don't appreciate the way he talks about weightlifting, but I'm biased, 100% biased. I think- He probably feels it's easier to teach people in track because that's what he's more efficient at, right?

Yeah, absolutely, like, you know, but I said, at the end of the day, he's a good coach, because, you know, we're using the same buckets. Now, I think that with young athletes, young developing athletes, so middle school, high school, and college, I think the weightlifting movements are great to, for a number of reasons, not just for the explosiveness,

but it's to teach, I think, the way it trains the torso, teaches them how to absorb an opposing force. It works on the nervous system that's specific to repeated exposure. There's a lot of different things other than you can get exposed to this by jumping. Absolutely. Great mobility and then also like the mobility

and then also mobility through what seems like very compromising positions. Yes. Like the bottom of a snatch seems wild. Absolutely. So you can look at the fitness qualities that the Olympic lifts develop individually and say, we can use this exercise for this fitness quality,

this exercise for this fitness quality, and so forth and so on. To me, as if I have 45 minutes with somebody, I need something that's gonna hit all the fitness qualities. So to me, weightlifting checks a lot of those boxes. It does a lot of fitness qualities. I don't have to do individual things.

Now, for professional, like when I was working with professional athletes, very rarely would I do Olympic lifts with them if they didn't have a history with it or if they're banged up, right? They're there for a reason. Olympic lifting isn't gonna make the difference if they don't already have it.

I worked with Audra Gracie. Oh, nice. Um, for one of his fights. He learned, he knew Olympic lifts. So I asked him when I sat down, like, what are the things that you know that are comfortable with doing that you could do with high output?

And he said, yeah, I can do Olympic lifting. I'm like, great, we'll put it in. If he told me not a way, I wouldn't have forced it on him. So I think it's an incredible he told me not a weight, I wouldn't have forced it on him. So I think it's an incredible, and especially for young kids, the coordination that's involved, just so many benefits.

About how young? You know, it depends. It's more of a biological age or chronological age, because it comes down to attention span. Like if they can't sit still for 10 minutes, I'm not teaching them fucking weightlifting. It's high skill. It's just, yeah, because it's just,

so if they can hold their attention for a half hour, 40 minutes, then I'll spend that much time during the week teaching them something, teaching them power clean or something like that. If they don't have that attention span, then I won't. There's plenty of other stuff. Like if they can't do pull-ups and push-ups and dips

and animal walks, I'm not worried about the barbell. You know, let's get them- A base. Just, that's the base. So like my first, like when I work with the middle school kids at the school and I got a lot of pushback from this from the parents because they would come in before I took over the program

and they're benching and squatting and doing clean, all terrible. And I'm thinking to myself, these kids can't even do a fucking pull-up. Like what the hell, who cares? So I took over the program, we're in the gym, we're doing bear crawls and do a fucking pull-up. Like, what the hell? Who cares? So I took over the program. We're in the gym, we're doing bear crawls, and we're doing pull-ups,

and the parents are like, well, they're not lifting weights. And the head coach, thankfully, had my back. He's like, look, he said, I got your back, you do what you do. So we're gonna lose a bunch of kids, but eventually they'll come back around. So, you know, people have a bear,

you're an Olympic lifting guy, and you're gonna throw, I don't throw it down everybody's throat. It's an appropriate time for everything. But I really think it's an important part of the developmental process for young kids. That's my take and Fred will disagree, but that's okay. What do you think of, I think it was Max,

I ate his coach who said lift it perfectly or lift it whatever way you can. Yeah, that was Abhijayev. So, you gotta understand, Ivan Abhijayev was the national head coach of the Bulgarian weightlifting team. So he wasn't a guy that was developing technique, he was just managing the training.

It depends, right? You look at people lifting world records and they do it in all kinds of crazy ways. So here's a story about Abhijayev. So my coach, my coach was there for this. So it was, I think the world championships probably in the eighties, somewhere in the eighties, my coach was the coach for the women's team.

And one of Abhijayev's lifters went out, lifted, broke the world record, comes back. And he wasn't technically, like, you wouldn't look at him and say, oh man, I'm gonna emulate that technique. It was rough. So he comes in the back room. One of the coach for the other countries comes up to Abhijayev and says, hey, do you think that if his technique was better,

he would lift my weight? And Abhijayev looked at him and he says, well, he just set the world record. His technique is fine. But that's what I'm saying. But I wouldn't teach that to a young kid. Right, right. But if you're doing it at that level,

I mean, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Right, I guess it's the way it is. So people get, I was one of those guys, like I was a movement Nazi, I like, it has to be perfect, it has to be perfect, I'm like, as I was a movement Nazi. I like, it has to be perfect, has to be perfect, has to be perfect. I'm like, as I'd gotten older, I'm like, well, does it have to be perfect? Like what's the gray area?

And especially when I work with these kids, like those kids are not gonna lift like my weight lifters, but the amount of time that I spent perfecting the movement with my weight lifters, they'll never achieve that kind. So then if that's the case, if it's not gonna be perfect, what's the acceptable range? And you're really just trying to get a particular stimulus.

Right. Like you have them do the lift proficiently enough to where they're getting some of the, I don't know, you would call it plyometric effect. Whatever the benefits are, do they, is it, so for, is it safe? And you, are you developing the fitness qualities that you wanna develop?

That's your range. And if it falls within that range, then it's good. Doesn't might not be perfect, but it's good enough. I remember talking with Max and he said, I asked him about squat every day. I was like, there's a lot of people squatting every day. This is years ago when he had them on the podcast. I'm like, what do you think of this? He's like, what do you want to know about it? I've been doing it for 12 years. I was like, that's

disgusting. John bros is another one. Yeah. Yeah. It's just like, I would never do that. That sounds insane. I did that for a six, you know, I did that for many years to some capacity because there's some sort of squat involved in most of the Olympic. Well, I'm talking about squatting, not only just snatch, but I'm talking about squatting. What's that like, squatting every day?

And then like, talking about like, sometimes you just do like two plates, or you're probably talking about a real workout. Oh yeah, no, I mean, I hadn't squat like you, but I had a 300 not in squat like you but you mean I had a you know I have a three out of three on kilo squat 661 yeah, so I mean and a lot of 80% to that is a lot of fucking weight Yeah, a lot of and then then you got a snatch clean sure so it's not like you're just squatting So it's just it's a crucible of pain and suffering

Love the words you're using that it's it's just, it's a crucible of pain and suffering. Crucible. Love the words you're using, man. It's just, but I would trade it for, I mean, it's the best. I look back on those days and I'm like, man, what a great time. Like, so lucky to have that experience of that suffering. Tuna sandwich on the dresser, I can't stop thinking about it.

Hey, it works, man. I'm gonna try it tonight. It was all great, except for the night sweats. Old smell is coming back. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, next time I see you, it'll be 300 pounds. I like the sandwiches. I'm really curious about this, man.

As someone who doesn't watch a crazy amount of Olympic weightlifting, when I do watch it, I do notice that the Chinese lifters just seem to move differently. If you look at, so there's a couple of things going on. Unlike the Russians back in the day, so the Russian, if you look at the continent, it's such a genetically diverse continent, right?

Because you have, you know, you could have people from all different genetic pools in Russia. So, but if you look at the Russia, like I believe in the, I teach a Russian kind of style technique. Gotcha. And if the top level Russians will all kind of lift similarly, timing, rhythm, even if there were different heights and things like that.

If you look at the Chinese, they're very homogeneous. So what, as far as their anthropometrics and there's not a lot of diversity in the gene pool. And even the way that he does his, Lou does his clean and snatch is like different than what most people do, right? Well, he jerks with that squat jerk, which isn't what I would ever teach.

But it certainly, you know, it's worked for him most of the time. He hasn't, his percentage of makes in the jerk are a lot less than some of his other teammates because it's just a less reliable style. So because of a lot of the Chinese lifters being a little bit similar in terms of the ratio between the length of their spine, their femur and so on,

they could be taught very similarly. So they can all lift very similar fashion. 100%, that's correct. That makes managing stuff so much easier, right? As opposed to, if you're coaching like a basketball player, you said you worked with Lamar Odom, the discrepancy of having him do like a box squat or something is gonna be way different

than someone that's six foot one or two. 100%. I got you. And the other thing too is, by the time they get to this level, again, the same kind of system that the Russians did, they start small town and kind of go on the web. They are just the super freaks of super freaks.

And they have great coaching as far as the way the coaches are taught. And they select them. And they're selecting them. And they're three, four deep in each weight class. So if you can't do it, they'll just bring next to that up. So it is just remarkable. It's funny, one of my friends has a company here,

but he works with Chinese Olympic Federation. How low he's getting. Up until recently, those guys didn't do any recovery methods outside of traditional Chinese medicine. Wait, who, the Chinese lifters? Yes. The Chinese athletes. The Chinese athletes.

The weightlifters too. Put two and two together. So my friend was the first person to introduce a foam roller to them. If it wasn't like acupuncture or cupping or things like that, they didn't have anything. They didn't know. They do have some like physical massage. Yes, physical massage, but like all these other tools. Here's a crazy story. So I think it's the Beijing, I don't know if it's Beijing Training Center, but anyway, wherever the weightlifting is, so weightlifting is here, right across the hall, like here's the hallway, it was gymnastics.

So gymnastics wanted to learn how to lift weights, because they didn't lift any weights. So they wouldn't go across the hallway to the weightlifting. They called my buddy in America, and they paid him a shit ton of money to come out to China and teach them how to lift weights. Like their culture's weird.

Wow. So like, I don't know what's going on over there, but this is many years ago, so I don't know if things have changed, but they're different. They're different. Is being bow-legged an advantage? I've seen a lot of lifters.

Yeah, you know, Kolkhoff is bow-legged. Very much so, yeah. So, you know, I don't have the facts off the top of my head, but I remember reading some research many years ago that talked about the benefit of being bow-legged. So I don't think you can select for it, because I can't imagine there's a high percentage of the population.

But there was something that, there was a benefit. What I think it is, is it allows you to keep the bar closer to the body because when you're in a squat and you're bow legged, there's less of an inclination of the shin. So it allows you to keep the bar closer to your center of gravity. Because when you squat, especially in the snatch,

because your hip is lower, your shin's gonna be further forward, bars further away from your center of gravity. So if you're bow-legged, keep it close. It keeps it closer. What about some of this conjecture against weightlifting about the feet pointing out?

Well, so that's not- Sometimes you've heard the go-to guys and stuff like that we've had on the show. I mean, I don't, I'll reserve my, it's a family show, it's a family show. There's no basis in reality to any of that. There are different factors that go into to the angle of the foot.

One of which is the shape and size of your femoral head and how it articulates into the acetabulum, into the hip. Right, some people's, the way it's shaped doesn't allow for a straight ahead foot and still be able to get good range and good activation. You'll have to pop the weight up and then shift their foot out a little bit. Yeah, it just doesn't make,

so in weightlifting, that's never a discussion in the sport of weightlifting. You leave the platform and as you leave, because you might start to lift with your feet straight-ish, I'd imagine. Yeah, in the clean, your feet are straighter because the hip, the starting position of the hip is higher. In the snatch, because you wanna, the starting position of the hip is higher. In the snatch, because you want to get the shins

out of the way, right? Starting with the feet out somewhat allows the shin to go out instead of forward. But, you know, moreover in the reception of the bar, a slight outward inclination of the foot opens up the hip a little bit. It allows for a deeper position. It helps the spine to be able to round if it needs to.

Yes. So there's some, now does that mean that some people can't have their foot straight ahead all the time? Of course not, of course. But just because the absence of straight feet doesn't say that there's something wrong. Now, if somebody is overly rotated. And the knee's caving in.

That's a problem. You know, we see that at the high school level. That's a problem, so you fix it. But to me, you fix it by actually squatting with your feet straighter. Even if it's, if somebody is overly rotated, I'll have them have shoes and grab onto the rack or I tell them to go home, grab onto a chair.

Keep your feet, I do this as a stretch. I'll set up my feet perfectly straight. I'll grab onto the squat rack and I'll just squat and I'll stay down there and I'll move and I'll readjust my feet, make sure that, because my toes want to turn out a little bit. And when you pin the feet, and as long as there's no knee pain, right, the thing that has to move is the hip.

So a couple of that with some internal rotation activation, like 90 90s, things like that to get the hip. But yeah, it's a problem if it's a problem. If it's not a problem, it ain't a problem. with some internal rotation activation like 1990s, things like that to get the hip. But yeah, it's a problem if it's a problem. If it's not a problem, it ain't a problem. Right, like let's not make problems where they don't exist. So people that say, you just wanna, we talked about this earlier,

like anybody who says always and never, I got a problem with in most cases. Right, you should never, you know, do some things, but in training world, there's not a lot of that. So when you hear you should always keep your feet straight, you should never turn, because it's wrong. That's, we can have a disagreement about that. It's a red flag, man.

It's a red flag for me. It's a red flag for me too. Because there's more, there's, it's not, like I said, there's more to it than that. So yeah, I don't buy that. I think it's a bunch of bullshit. That's as civil as I've ever been on that topic ever. Damn, I love it.

After you said bullshit, I'm like, is there more? You must have been. No, don't, I, I, I there more? It's not like you've been through a transformation. 100%. Tell us about your book. Speaking of transformations, yeah, Suffer Smarter. A lot of the themes that we talked about, you know, as far as transformation and... If you can get on mic too. Get on the mic front. Oh, yeah. Stand on mic. There you go. Yeah. So for me, this journey started about seven years ago.

I just was... I felt... Man, I felt bad. I was going 100 miles an hour on my business, trying to get the business going, maintaining the business, growing the business, you know, maintaining the business, growing the business, to the point where 16, 20 hours a day, he wound up in the hospital twice. 2014. Like panic attack type thing? I was just working, wasn't sleeping.

I wasn't doing anything. I went to bed and coughed up blood. And I went to the hospital. It's funny, like the first time and the second time was the same, actually the same doctor, same emergency room. It happened in 14, I think it happened in 17. I went there and the guy was a CrossFitter, a local CrossFitter. So he knew me, because I did a lot of work

in the CrossFit community in LA. And he had just attended, I had just done a seminar. I had all the Russians at my gym, Kolkoff and Ilya and all these guys to do a seminar. And I was so sick during that time. I don't even remember. The only my memories of some of the videos that I have. So after it was all said and done that night,

I was still sleeping. It's crazy. So I had a house across the street from my gym that stayed vacant for years. Like I slept in my gym because I just wanted to be uncomfortable. Like I didn't want any comforts. I wanted to be so uncomfortable that I just kept focusing on the mission. And there's a cost to that. I didn't have a kitchen. For a while I didn't have a shower. Like I was just, you know, and hot'm hot water. Like I was just really,

I wanted to put myself in this, in this Spartan situation. So keep me sharp. I thought it would keep me sharp. I didn't have the discipline to take a breath. So anyway, 2014, after that event, I was, went to sleep and I started coughing up blood. I said, well, this isn't good. And I rushed myself to the hospital and the doctor knew me

and he had attended that seminar. And he says, look, there's nothing in your blood work that tells you there's nothing that's wrong with you. Like you don't have a disease. He says, when was the last time you actually had a couple of good nights sleep in a row? Then I said, I don't remember. He says, okay, I want you to take your dog out

because he knows I love my dog. He said, find a hotel and just stay there for a couple of days. Don't leave your phone, don't do anything. So I got booked a room at the Four Seasons in Pasadena. And lo and behold, two days later, I felt great. And so, you know, and I wasn't, like I wasn't physically suffering. Like I wasn't training.

I was still squatting 500 pounds, but that's not suffering to me, that's easy. I can do that any day, it's not hard for me mentally. And I just, I was in pain, I couldn't walk upstairs without pain or being out of breath. I was fat, really fat, 30. So I don't know what my highest was, but I was about 37% body fat, because I had a dexascan done.

So I was fat. I was just not happy. And I, right before the pandemic, I knew I needed to do something different. So I set up the prowler. I had a big gym with three big bay doors and I set up a prowler and I set it right by one of the bay doors. And I said, okay, tomorrow I'm gonna push this thing. And at the time I had messed with jujitsu

and I had stopped jujitsu because I was getting hurt. And I started, it was the first introduction to the change my path. When I would get mounted and be out of breath, I got lost in my breath, I started to panic. And then, you know, I had a moment when it happened, I had a moment of clarity and said, yeah, that's what I need.

So I didn't know like that feeling of fight, flight, fear, all these things. And I used to get it through training like I used to train, but I haven't been, it was missing from my life. I stopped doing jujitsu and set up that power. And for months and months and months, it stayed there without moving. Pandemic hit and I finally had some time like to just,

cause everything stopped in California, right? So I was on a, it was like a Wednesday, you know, 11 o'clock sun's out and I'm sitting on my porch and I finally had, I don't remember the last time that ever happened. And I had some moment of clarity and I had time to think about, what the fuck am I doing to myself? I called up my buddy Adam, who's a chef, had a restaurant in Hollywood and Vine.

His restaurant was closed too. And we both were kind of in a similar situation working ourselves to death, not really paying attention to the important things. And I said, Adam, meet me 6 a.m. We're gonna push this fucking prowler. And 6 a.m. came, walked in, threw my keys on the jerk boxes and opened the door.

I'm gonna get fucking emotional, let me say. And, and, and start pushing Prowler. And did defer I don't know how long it was, whatever. And I started to cry. I'm doing now. Because I was like, Oh, my God, this God, this is it. This is how I need to feel. Like this is what's missing. This is it. I knew like as soon as, hit me like a fucking bolt of lightning. And I started to realize like, I'm lost the suffering,

the physical suffering from my life. I used to get it from training when I was just very tired at 31. I didn to get it from training when I retired at 31. I didn't know anything but training for sport. And I had, it was such a high intensity that it took care, it checked that suffering box for me. But when it was done for the next 16, 17, 18 years, it didn't have it in my life anymore.

And I was a worse human for it. I was a worse person for it. I was just not who I wanted to be. And I just couldn't figure it out until that moment. I probably went 20 feet before it was like, yes, yes. So from that moment on, I realized that I needed to make changes. I was writing a book at the time,

but it was a training book. It was like a weightlifting book or something like that. And I said, no, no, no. I said, this is gonna be the thing that's gonna change my life. And I said, no, no, no. I said, this is gonna be the thing that's gonna change my life. And I know I'm not alone. I know there's guys like me that are fucking struggling. They just, they don't know, like they feel bad.

They don't know why. Maybe they're ex athletes like we were and they lost it. Or maybe they've never done anything in their life. So that's what I wanna write about. So, you know, Suffer Smarter is about, how do you introduce productive discomfort back into your life?

And how does it change you? How do you do it? You know, it's not a training book. There's very little training in there. It's like a little bit at the end, just a basic like how I train. But it's about the why, why you need to do it. How do you do, how do you start?

You know, like I talked earlier about, put your shoes on. Like if you're not doing, like for me, it started with making my fucking bed and brushing my teeth. Like, I wasn't doing those things because I get up and my brain was like, I gotta do this, I gotta do that.

But I didn't have, I wasn't mindful enough to just take care of myself. You know, spend, you know, balance is bullshit. Like, nobody has balance, 50-50. You know, and when we're busy, maybe it's 90, 10. You know, like if you have 3% of time to spend with your kids, that 3% is you gotta be all in focused on that task.

You know, fitness is the same thing. I don't have 50% of my time to train. If I have 10% of my time, it's gotta be mindful. I've gotta be all in. I've gotta be present. How do you create that? How do you prioritize it? How do you get it back?

How do you, for me, like I said, it was just the being, spending a part of your day outside of the big things that you always do. You know, make my bed, brush my teeth. Make my bed, brush my teeth. and spending a part of your day outside of the big things that you always do. You know, make my bed, brush my teeth, make my bed, brush my teeth, put on my shoes, stand in my hallway with my fucking shoes on. And I'm like, I don't want to describe it as fear,

but it's like, I had to force myself to go outside and just move. I forced myself to go outside and just move. So how do you, I, and this is a pie in the sky. I believe, especially with men, I can't speak for women because I'm not a woman. But for men, a man that is strong, that goes on that pursuit of strength, whatever that looks like,

is a man that's gonna be happy, healthy, and more productive in society. You know, I've been on both ends. I've been a strong man physically and done all the things to be strong. I've been a weak man, being immersed in just work and not at all in touch with my physicality.

And I've once again been a strong man. And I can tell you unequivocally that being mindful about being strong and fit will change your whole life and the people around you. And I think this book helps get people there. Do you think there was, in that moment where you got really upset after pushing a priority, do you think there was a moment

where you were just thinking like, I've really neglected, you know, I'm trying to do all these other things. I'm trying to be great, trying to run this business, but I sort of neglected myself. Yeah, it's just, I got, first it was anger. Like what the fuck did I let this happen? I would never accept this from my athletes. How the fuck did I let this happen to myself?

And then, you know, I started to, you know, that was also an evolution for me about being kind to myself. I was so hard on myself and rigid. If I couldn't do these things and I'm not gonna fucking do it. If I can't, I'm supposed to squat, I used to write down all my training plan. I'm supposed to squat today, I'm supposed to squat 500 pounds for a double.

And I get in there, I'm like, it's not fucking, why am I squatting 500 pounds? I'm supposed to squat, I'm supposed to squat. I'm supposed to squat, I'm supposed to squat. I'm supposed to squat, I'm supposed to squat. I'm supposed to squat, I'm supposed to squat, I used to write down all my training plan, I'm supposed to squat today, I'm supposed to squat 500 pounds for a double, and I get in there, I'm like, there's no fucking way I'm squatting 500 pounds for a double, I can't even get out of fucking bed today.

So what do I do? Nothing. Now I give myself some grace. It's how to find, you have to figure, you have to judge yourself on different metrics. Like for me, I'm on the 50 year cycle, right? So if you're on a 50 year cycle, what you do in any given day is not that important.

It's only you do something, right? So sometimes it's walking, that's it. Sometimes it's something harder. You know, I have a path, a path is wide, right? But as long as you still stay on that path and you're heading in the right direction, you're gonna be okay. As an athlete, it's a little bit of a different,

it's some more different factors involved. But we're not athletes. You're an athlete. I'm not an athlete. And for me, I measure my blood work. That's my metric. You know, is my visceral fat, do I have visceral fat or do I not have visceral fat, right? Is my body fat a certain percentage or is it not?

You know, how is my other things? That's what I train for. This is a great marker for a lot of people. It has to be. Yeah. For health and fitness, it's not about how much, right? It's about what's going on inside. And once you have some of these things wrapped up

and you go through, you know, something like Merrick Health and you get your blood checked and you go over with a doctor the things that you can change and make better. And after you get some of these things better, maybe that's when you start to think about, oh, it's been a long time since I really practiced jumping and maybe at that time you're just jumping rope,

but it starts to give you an idea to push a little further and a little harder and so on. It allows you to. And now you have multiple metrics. Well, so this is the thing, if you feel better, you'll be more willing to move. Now we know the benefits of movement, especially with kids, right?

You know, when kids move cognitively, they're better. You know, we stick them in a fucking classroom for eight hours a day, which is crazy to me. But movement, there's this huge downstream and broad downstream effect from moving. It's not just physical. Feeling more capable as a man, I believe, makes you make better decisions.

Like, you know, and this is, I don't, I hesitate to say this, but there's truth in this. Like you look at these kids that are doing mass shootings, how many jacked fucking kids? Now, it's definitely not a correlation of course. I'm just saying Like those kids they're not physically minded Right a lot and not them saying the kids who are trained are in good shape don't have problems I'm just saying that they have different problems

i'm saying Get if you're if you're not moving, move. Doesn't matter what you do. This is, you know, we talked about this before. It's like before I was like, well, if you're not doing this, this and this, it's bullshit. In fitness, in movement, moving is better than not moving. You know, we talked about like the, you know,

David Weck, like the rope flow. You know, I think he's a little bit of a kook, but I get, like when we had this conversation, we had you showed me and you kind of described it to me and the benefit and I'm like, okay, I get it. Now, am I gonna have my weightlifters do it? The problem, maybe not. But I'm going out there moving around, I'm moving.

The fuck do I care what it is? Right, it's something different. And I tell people, like in a book, I say, here's, I come through, I looked at the world through the lens of a barbell. That's what I'm most comfortable with. But I mean, I don't, I do more non-barbell stuff in my training

than I do barbell stuff. And I would tell people, if pickleball is your jam, if that's what blows your hair back, fucking play pickleball, what the hell do I care? But it's better than sitting on a couch watching porn. You know, like it just do something. So I think, you know, if I can, the goal of Suffer Smarter first was to get, to write down my thoughts on this process.

And then it's like, okay, this can help. You know, this can help. If I, you know, I'm paying fucking 400 bucks a month for health insurance because there's so many guys people have metabolic disease and I gotta pay for it. I don't have metabolic disease, I'm making good choices. I wanna pay $200 a month for insurance. So if I get more people healthy,

maybe I'll spend $200 a month instead of fucking $400 a month. Anyway, I'm gonna get off my soap box. I think it'd be good to talk a little bit about Kobe Bryant here for a minute, because I think that was a pretty cool time when we were, when you and I first met at Gold's Gym, we'd see Kobe come in and train sometimes,

and there's a lot of celebrities that came through there, but when he was in there, he was training with a friend of ours, and he was doing some box squats, and lifting with chains, and doing some reverse hypers. Like he was in there training pretty hard. Yeah, so one of my good friends, Joe Carbone, one of the best strength coaches that I've ever seen,

he was Kobe's strength coach from the time he was in high school. So he knew his dad. And so when they were, so Joe was the head strength coach for the 76ers at the time. And Kobe, Joe would bring Kobe down and Kobe would practice with 76ers in high school. It's crazy.

He's like 16, 17 years old. Yeah, it's just nuts. And then they developed a relationship and then Joe trained him when he was 15, 16 years old. And when Kobe got drafted by the Lakers, he brought Joe and Chrissy, his wife, out to LA. And he was working with Kobe still. he brought Joe and Chrissy, his wife, out to LA. And he was working with Kobe still.

And then Joe became the head strength coach of the Lakers. Wow. Yeah, so he was working with the entire Laker team. But, you know, the interesting thing about Kobe is that during the 98, we've talked about this before, during the 98 lockout, you know, they had no place to train. At the time, I was a strength coach

at College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita, California. And Joe and I were teammates, Joe was a weightlifter. So we arranged it to where Kobe would do his training during the lockout at College of the Canyons. So he did all his lifting and his basketball stuff. So I got a chance to, you know, for the whole lockout, watch him do his thing. And it looked like good basic strength and conditioning,

power cleans, squats, dead lifts, bench press, RDLs, like just nothing fancy. And, you know, Kobe had said that, and during that time he transformed. Like that was the year before, he was when he made all those air balls, he was kind of a skinny kind of a kid. And then after the-

I think it was his rookie season, he's like fucking 18 years old. Yeah, I mean, he was definitely young. Yeah, yeah. But during that time of dedicated training, he just came to the next season, he was a man. And he credits that time of just being able to train. And he's a gift to me, he's world-class in everything.

So his physiology is world-class too. So he just put on muscle like a beef cattle. And working on his, he would be upstairs working on his game, I'd got the chance to watch that. He would run through my entire basketball team. But to see him do his thing was really incredible. And Joe did such a great job managing his training and Kobe was bought in.

Let's go. Bought in. Like you didn't have to, I mean, you didn't have to say anything twice to him. You know, he was like a missile. You point him in a fucking direction, he's going to blow it up. He was, it was amazing to watch. And I think, I think like if everybody that talented had that drive outside of their sport, you know, we would be talking about other people in the same light. had that drive outside of their sport, you know, we would be talking about other people

in the same light. We talk about Kobe Bryant, because, you know, he's at that level, everybody's talented. I mean, no one gets there because they're not talented. Like what separates a guy like Kobe Bryant, and then, you know, like Michael Jordan, although Michael didn't train all that much,

he did something, is this other stuff. And Kobe had the other stuff, man. Holy shit, I'd never seen anything like it before. But yeah, it was a pleasure to watch him develop. Taught me a lot about what's possible. Where can people find out more information about you? Where can people find the book? So the book is gonna be released November 29th.

SeanWaxman.com, I have a, I put all this together myself, folks, so I mean, it's almost like a gorilla trying to, I want to say a monkey fucking a football. That's me in a computer. I didn't want to hire anybody to do it. I wanted to do it myself because I'm crazy like that. It's so good. A monkey fucking a football, never heard that before.

Yeah, so it's shawnawaxman.com. You can- And that looks good.com, you can... That looks good. What are you talking about? Well, cause you don't understand what it took. And you can read the first chapter for free. And I said it's gonna be available on Amazon November 29th.

And I think, you know, it's, if you're struggling, the book will help. If you know somebody that's struggling, get it for them. I'm gonna have, at some point, I'm gonna have a forum for, to talk about, especially really targeted towards men. Not that women are excluded, they're not excluded,

but I think about training. So I'm gonna share my training. Not that it's anything fancy, but it's just a kind of an accountability thing. So at some point we're gonna go in that direction. But in the meantime, yeah, SeanWaxman.com, I'm on Instagram. The fuck is my Instagram handle?

The underscore Sean, S-E-A-N, underscore Waxman. And I don't, it's just a bit, I don't do anything really personal on there. It's just, I put stuff on my weightlifters, on my high school guys guys and on my own training I got some videos and it's all related towards This not vanity Although we all have it ego

But it's more for Hopefully sent out a message give people Fired up about moving everybody. Make sure you at least give it a try. Try a sandwich next to your bed. Don't knock it until you try it. Don't knock it, man. I mean, give it a shot. You sourdough, it'll be better for you.

That's the key. Strength is never a weakness, weakness is never a strength. Catch you guys later, bye.