Mark Bell's Power Project - Why Pure Strength Training Eventually Fails You

Episode Date: February 4, 2026

It’s not about what you’re doing in the decade you’re in, it’s about what those habits turn into in the next one. In this conversation we get into why we’re leaning harder into relative strength and athletic movement (high-volume calisthenics, hangs, pull-ups, push-up variations, sandbags, sled work, reaction drills, rope flow, tennis balls, and even bouldering) without abandoning the basics of strength training. We talk about how coordination is trainable, why expanding your “movement vocabulary” can carry over into sport and everyday life, and how staying capable as you age comes down to building skills that keep you confident, reactive, and durable. Plus: insane feats of strength and speed making the rounds online, strongman grip madness, and why the goal isn’t just being strong once, but being strong, mobile, and useful for decades.Special perks for our listeners below!🥩 HIGH QUALITY PROTEIN! 🍖 ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWER to save 20% off site wide, or code POWERPROJECT to save an additional 5% off your Build a Box Subscription!🩸 Get your BLOODWORK/TRT/PEPTIDES! 🩸 ➢ https://marekhealth.com and use code "POWERPROJECT" for 10% off Self-Service Labs and Guided Optimization®.🧠 Methylene Blue: Better Focus, Sleep and Mood 🧠 Use Code POWER10 for 10% off!➢https://troscriptions.com?utm_source=affiliate&ut-m_medium=podcast&ut-m_campaign=MarkBel-I_podcastBest 5 Finger Barefoot Shoes! 👟 ➢ https://Peluva.com/PowerProject Code POWERPROJECT15 to save 15% off Peluva Shoes!Self Explanatory 🍆 ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM?si=JZN09-FakTjoJuaW🚨 The Best Red Light Therapy Devices and Blue Blocking Glasses On The Market! 😎➢https://emr-tek.com/Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your order!👟 BEST LOOKING AND FUNCTIONING BAREFOOT SHOES 🦶➢https://vivobarefoot.com/powerproject🥶 The Best Cold Plunge Money Can Buy 🥶 ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!➢ https://withinyoubrand.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off supplements!➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off all gear and apparel!

It's not about what you're doing in the current decade that you're in. It's about the results that you end up with the following decade. My focus is my relative strength. So I'm really working on like high volume calisthenic strength, hangs, pull-ups, different types of push-ups in different positions. I want people to understand, like, we're not abandoning strength. We're just practicing some new stuff. I still squat. I still bench.

I still do deadlift. People get older, they become clumsier. When it comes to having to grab something or bends to do something, there's a level of apprehension before having to do it. People forget that coordination is trainable and building coordination outside of your sport can actually give you ideas and different movement that you can resort to within your sport.

Hey, you know what? Before we start talking about athleticism and movement and all this cool stuff that we're working on and being able to like react to stuff, we should talk a little bit about strength for just a moment because I think that's what the show is based on, right? Ryan, wasn't there a crazy video? of like some guy doing some

deadlift thing was it this guy you sent this video yeah this guy this guy does some wild stuff yeah 225 pound knee jaw yeah this guy does some really crazy stuff

with lifting and sprinting and stuff he just broke an apple in half with his finger strong finger and then he's running like I don't know 23 or something miles an hour 25 miles an hour. It's pretty nuts. Wow. To be able to have some wheels like that. Yeah. Um, this guy grabbed my attention from, he's obviously wearing like a slingshot type thing. A slingshot knockoff. Yeah. Um,

this guy caught my attention because he ran a hundred meters and he did like a 10 something. Like, he did like under 11 seconds. That's impressive. And I was like, what the, like, who is this dude? So I don't understand what's going on here. What's the guy's name? Quinn Stott. Yeah. I am Quinn Stott on Instagram. This is going on all over the place on the internet. And it's just,

it's interesting, right? You got these people that can do these. He's Brad Castleberry, but with real weights. Incredible feats of strength, incredible feats of speed. Four,

four, wow. And, you know, I guess like before guys like this, all we had was, really was Larry Wheels, kind of like the first guy.

Like, Harry doesn't do like, he's not like on a unicycle like Carlin Martin too. Yeah, Mary and Bradley were Yeah, Bradley does also does the athletic stuff. Yeah, yeah, he can jump. He jumps over shit and all kinds of stuff like that. Um, I saw hap Thor too. He's getting all fired up and he's getting ready to pull some big weight. Um, you know, my son was asking me about the deadlift record and he's like, I wonder what the capacity is for deadlift. And he was like, it's kind of weird that you can. can deadlift more than you can squat. And I said that's, it's interesting, but you, you only kind of can because the deadlifts that haphthor does and that the strong man guys do

are usually with straps. We haven't really seen anybody lift the kind of weights that these guys are lifting without straps, although there are a couple sumo pullers that are starting to pull a thousand 30 a thousand plus and even in competition I think we had uh griggs or bigs or riggs or riggs well maybe whose name was dan griggs dan griggs okay there we go dan griggs i think he did like a thousand forty one or something um sumo pole um anyway it is it's just interesting um and hap thori he's getting all ready for another legendary world record deadlift. And he recently did like a 500 pound deadlift where he was lifting the shit. What's that thing?

It's on it's on Instagram. He's lifting to the left. Yeah, this lift right here. This is pretty. Oh, maybe it's not that. He did a rolling thunder. Oh, yeah. He did a rolling thunder with like 500 pounds.

So that's just a single hand. that he picked up. I'm just ridiculous. Anyway, what I wanted to ask you was, um, what, what amount or percentage would you say of your training is still devoted to strength? I want people to understand like, we're not abandoning strength. We're just practicing some new stuff. And I know you do the sandbags and stuff.

And like, I'm still, I still squat. I still bench. I still do deadlift. I just do various versions of them normally than what you may have seen me do previously. but like what's going on with you? Yeah, yeah. This, I guess when it comes to this part of my training arc, my focus is my relative strength.

So I'm really working on like high volume calisthenic strength, hangs, pull ups, different types of push-ups in different positions, being able to like handle my own body weight in a high-level way. Seems like you've gotten a lot better at that. Yeah. Handling your own body weight. Even just watching you do like pogo hops and stuff, you just look way more comfortable. Yeah, yeah, it's getting better. Like Ryan will see right there, like, you know, I think actually even that second video is not a bad example or the first video, whichever. But like, you know, I'll use the clubs. I'll use the sled. I'll use, I'll touch the sandbag. And if I want to do like power type movements, I'll just do like fast sandbag cleans. And I'll treat that as my power type movement because I feel like it also does transition well to the type of positions you have to get your body in as a grappler. I also like that with the sandbag. Because

because the way you organize your body will be a little bit different from rep to rep because the bag shifts around a bit. But my big goal as far as like resistance is being able to just like handle my body weight in a much easier way. I want to do like some of that high level calisthenic stuff, but it, dude, it progresses so slowly.

It's the one frustrating thing about it. Like if I was just focusing on increasing weight on the barbell or machine stuff, that stuff can increase so quickly. Yeah, you singularly focus on it for like 12 weeks, maybe eat a little bit more food, and it goes up. Absolutely.

I mean, it's not always that simple, especially when you get to the real high levels, but that's the gist of it. Yeah, yeah. But my relative strength, and I was actually, I was looking at a, just maybe even seeing if I can get a membership

at like pipeworks or something and add in a little bit of bouldering into kind of like my practice, just because it's, I sent you that video where I don't know if you, you watched it. But you'll notice like that guy, I don't know if his name is,

is it Magnus Mitbo or whatever on YouTube? Magnus Anything is great, by the way. Magnus Anything is a strong human being. But there's this guy on YouTube. He has, yeah, I think it's Magnus Mythbo. You'll see him go against and do like strength feats with guys like Larry Wheels with other individuals. And there's this other guy who went into a strongman competition onto the grip side

of things and dig like, I think he was able to beat all the other, like a majority of those guys, even though he was much lighter. Because the nature of what they do and bouldering and climbing. has you leveraging your body against grips that challenge your hands in many different ways that a barbell just doesn't challenge. When you're lifting a barbell or dumbbells or machines, you have these perfect grips, very symmetrical.

But when you're having to climb, the amount of stress you're putting on different aspects of your hands and fingers develops this level of strength and tendon strength that can transfer well to so many things, including like grappling. But I want to try to improve that strength strength at my body weight.

What an interesting thing too, because I realize, you know, you go to a rock climbing gym and there's only so many walls or whatever, only so many configurations probably. And they probably can switch them around or something that I'm not aware of. But it's probably a little similar to Jiu-Jitsu where you need to be a couple moves ahead, right? Because if you start climbing this way, you might start climbing like up and back and trying to do some maneuver that you're not even ready for or capable of. So you've got to kind of look above and look around. and pay attention like, oh, I can go for that one.

Okay, this one's going to lead me to that one. And then all the different shapes and stuff, uh, people that climb rocks, man, are, are insanely strong. Yeah. The,

the endurance that it takes. So like you go to a rock climbing gym and you're like on a wall, right? Mm-hmm. You're just like there, which is cool. But normally you're like packing in, you know,

you're hauling some, some stuff with you because you probably have equipment. you probably have water so you're driving somewhere or not driving somewhere walking somewhere for probably several miles just to get there and then the way back there's a little bit of a hall too so very interesting sport and a lot of times you observe what great strength to weight ratios these people have so for people that have kids you know rock climbing would be a really good sport, gymnastics, ballet, any sort of dance or ice skating, figure skating, all those kinds of things where you really have to, you know, use your body could be really good practices.

I think the other sports, unfortunately, like when it comes to anybody that has young children, when it comes to like basketball or when it comes to baseball, they're not skilled enough to actually play the sport yet. Like the ball just goes flying and, and then the kid just like runs the bases and like no one really learns much of anything. And same thing with basketball or dribble off their foot or they go the wrong way. It's all cute and stuff. But they're not really getting in like work. And I think that it's important to put your child in something that they care about,

something that they like. But if you have the opportunity when they're really young, kind of force them like kick their butt into trying some of these other things. Because I think this would be a, this would be great. How cool would it be to have a little base of gymnastics and a little base. of rock climbing from the time you're two or three. Dude, absolutely. Absolutely.

And again, again, it's just like, I mean, in this sense, you know, you kind of need the environment, you need a bouldering club or whatever to be able to go do that. But again, it's just like it's you and rocks, right? Or, you know, if you're just getting into like a lot of the calisthenics stuff, could be you in the ground or you in a hanging bar, but there's so much there.

And I mean, admittedly, like I'm too, So this is gonna it it gets that much harder because there's I'm heavy at this. So I'm not expecting to be at like Magnus's level and of course he spent a lot of his life doing this. So like that's but I I know that the proficiency that I'm gonna continue to build with my relative strength will play a big role in my in improving myself as a grappler and improving my strength as I age and you know the barbell is don't get me wrong. The barbell is great, but it's not, there's, what I'm going to get from it isn't going to be anything compared to what I'm going to get from these types of skills. You still grab like a, I don't know, say like a heavy kettlebell or, or wait and try to like, you know, press it overhead, like just see, hey, I have a little proficiency to do this, you know, six or eight times. Yeah, like if I ever have the opportunity like in here and the bench, I'll just like, I just hop on

the bench. Oh, yeah. You just did that. I mean, I just did that right now too, right? I have the trap bar at my place too, so at least maybe once a week or maybe once every week and a half, I'll put on some low, maybe 400 plus pounds on there and just like get it up a few times just to send myself the signal of like neurologically push this. Yeah.

Right? And I still have like the heavy sandbags are still there. So those things are still heavy. But having the capacity to do it, although it's like it's not the, it's not the thing I'm progressing. Let's pull up a video. I saw John Heck pick up the 350. Did you see that? Oh yeah, yeah, the 350 pound sandbag?

Yep, yep, I saw that. Bring that clip up for a second just because he's a monster. And what I liked about it was the way that he was afterwards. Like, it's like he got into a fight. Yeah. You know, it's like he got into a grappling match, you know. The other John Hack. The, oh, yeah.

Hack. Yeah, although that John could do a 350 pound bag as well. Yeah. Yeah. It's really cool to learn some of these different things. Just trying to figure out how to like manage that bad boy. The bag is so dang big. Shit, he's strong the way he.

Yeah, got underneath it. He just like he just lifted that. Like there was no. He didn't really do anything crazy to pick it up. Yeah. Something I wanted to mention that's not, well, maybe it's a little bit more impressive. than what John Heck just did is what I just did, which is I just walked around the block with a 20 pound weighted vest, but the entire time I did not let my heel touch the ground. I was on my toes. Oh, there you go. Yeah. So just another way to like get yourself. I'm kidding, obviously, about that part. But like just something like, I'm like, well, this is kind of strength in my calves. And then by the time I got done, my feet were kind of tired.

No, again, I think, well, that's one of the cool things about like this stuff. You can give yourself easy inputs whenever. And having a way to invest like that, again, if somebody takes that and they do that maybe on a daily basis along with some other things, how much stronger are those feet going to get? You know what I mean? So, yeah, that's sick. We got some videos we want to share with you guys is showing you some different

variations of stuff that you can do. I don't know, just to get your reaction time better. like we've talked about this many times on this podcast about how the gym, typically when you're dealing with most of the stuff in the gym, there's not a lot of reaction to much of anything. And there's coordination. There's coordination for sure. But it's different than... It's limited.

It's limited. Yeah, there's some limited. So you were telling me you follow this girl and what is she got going on here? Yeah, yeah. So like you can see her, you know, we were just talking about not doing any. anything that forces you to react, but tennis balls, shout out to Ido Portel when he came here, tennis balls are an easy tool that you can use to like improve that. And I think especially, again, you don't even have, I don't think this is just important for athletes, but just for human

beings, people get older, they become clumsier. They lose the ability to react to things quickly. When it comes to having to grab something or bends to do something, there's a level of apprehension before having to do it. Or not reacting at all, which, I mean, when you think, think about it if you're going to slip and potentially fall, if you have better reaction speed, how much quicker are you going to be to organize your body in a way that's going to be to handle that ground impact better, right? We don't have to worry about that now, though, because they make a device that will react to the ground in seconds flat.

We ever seen it? No. So is it a device you wear? Yeah, it's like a wearable. It's like clothing. Oh my God. And which is great for elderly folks that maybe already got hurt, right? It's like an airbag.

That's what it's for, but it looks funny. Yeah. I don't know if you can try to. find it, Ryan. But it's, yeah, it's like an air. It's like airbag clothing for like the elderly, I guess. And maybe you'd find it on, might be able to find it on YouTube. Honestly, that's a, I saw this guy like kind of messing with it. He kept like falling and he'd stand up and he'd fall and you just like almost bounce right back up. Have you seen the Nike's that actually will walk faster from there like motorized and shoes or whatever? That's pretty badass. Let's let's see this

real quick. Ryan's pretty dead on with pulling stuff up. I don't know how he does it. Oh my goodness. Oh yeah, it has like a little helmet then. He's like, oh no. Yeah, yeah, there it is. Wait, can you rewind and play that again, please? Oh, I need to see this. By the way, we're not making fun of old people. This smart vest utilizes airbag technology

to protect seniors from hip, head, neck, and shoulders fractures and other injuries caused by falls. Seniors, fuck, I want that. Well, are they going to have to walk the rest of home like that? All bubbled up. Yeah. They're trying to like push it back down. So I'm like not all embarrassed.

Yeah, yeah. No, that's actually amazing. You're walking back like you're in like a little costume. But before you need, you know, the bubble bag, uh, doing, doing things that will like improve your abilities. Bubble bag. That's a great name. Your ability to like to react to stuff.

And those tennis balls are a quick and easy thing. Like one thing we were doing it earlier today. One thing I like to do at home is in between stuff. I'll literally just throw the ball at the wall with my right hand, throw ball at the wall with my left hand, having to pay attention to the balls with my eyes, pay attention to where it's going, react to those types of things. You'd be surprised with where you are now versus where you are in a few months if you just add that into your movement practice. They talk a lot about, you know, Alzheimer's and these different things that we can run into

that are super unfortunate as you age and maybe as you read less and maybe as you do things less. So you're not practicing stuff as much. Maybe you don't feel good. Maybe so you're, you know, on the couch and you're not doing as much as you used to, and you have degeneration of all kinds of stuff, your hips, your back, your eyes, everything starts to maybe go a little bit. It's nice to know that there's a wide variety of things to do. I hear people talk often about like crossword puzzles. I hear people talking about doing puzzles. I hear people talk about just reading, you know, reading a book and getting into some sunlight and stuff. And I'm like, shit, man, those are all things that I don't really like to do for me, right?

but what are things that I like to do? There is some science. There is some research showing that, you know, when you go from the left side of your body, the right side of your body, that you're getting these coordination. So like I like the rope flow. I like messing around with juggling.

Probably going to take me a minute to learn how to juggle, but I'm throwing the balls up in the air and I'm catching them and I'm rotating them one way. Then I'm rotating them the other way. I can see where the deficiencies are. Like sometimes in my left, it just feels really weird. Even what we're doing today, like throwing with my left, you're like, okay, well, that just feels so

on coordinate, so bad and so weird. But it's unpracticed. But also within that even small bit of us doing it, you were feeling and noticing improvement. You were improving, like while doing it. Yeah, and it feels great and it feels rewarding. And then you start to find other stuff that's fun to do. So that's why we explore all these things is so that you can land on something. Maybe for some of you listening, maybe you like crosswords.

And maybe that's something you'll, you'll mess with. And I've actually been thinking about it. I'm like, you know, next time I travel, that's what I should do is just get a bunch of crossword puzzles because they have them at the airport. Or you can put an app on your phone unless you don't want to use your phone for it. That's true. There's tons of those. Tons of ways to do some of this stuff. Yeah.

There's a video of Victor Wenbin Yama. It's, yeah, let's play this one. So, by the way, this coach is Chong Shea, secret of athleticism. One thing about Chong that I'm just like, is he, you know, he talks about fashion-driven athletes. And he's very anti- Resistance training with the focus on muscle building, which I think is like just too, it goes too far in one direction. Because I think he even used Chris Bumstead as an example showing like, look at this. This is what muscle focus training where it gets you. But it's like, it gets you to be multi-millionaire and you have energy drinks at 7-11.

Doesn't sound like a bad gig to me. Yeah, but it's just like he has a point when you take it too far because you see, you kind of see what happens to people that that's the only focus. But then you also see people that manage to, you know, do it along with the other stuff in their athletics. And it doesn't seem to be of detriment. So it's one of those things where just be mindful. because he has a lot of great stuff. I've learned stuff from his content,

but I do think that he's deep in the fascia and demonizing muscle for, I don't know. Well, maybe some people are giving up some things when they work on training their muscles, you know, maybe myself, maybe Bumstead, maybe Matt Wenning, you know, but when I hear Matt Wenning talk about, he's kind of like sometimes he'll mention who's still lifting hard,

who's still pushing hard, who still has the ability to push hard. And when I think about that, I'm like, man, he's got a good point because I know how many lifters there were at Westside. I saw all those other guys. And a lot of them aren't participating in really much of anything anymore, much less, you know, doing some of the same things they were doing before. But the list is really short.

I can think, okay, there's Matt Wenning. He's still training and still doing it and still doing it at a pretty high level. I do realize we can say, okay, well, maybe Matt Wenning's not the most mobile person in the world. but I don't know if that's something that he's really that interested in. I don't know if he really likes it. Stan Efforting is another person that comes to mind. Stan is still very capable. I know he's making fun of himself because he's like,

I don't think I can bench 405 anymore, which by the way, he could still bench 405. It's just a matter of him practicing it a little bit. He would bench 405. But that's something that we have to keep in mind. We can't always just like pass judgment on somebody and say, oh, look at this person. They're not able to do this thing.

Maybe they don't give a shit. about that. Like maybe for them in the moment that they're in their life, they just don't really care. Now, if it's leading to heart disease, if it's leading to diabetes or something like that, that's when you can say, okay, well, I think what this person's doing is just unsafe, not smart. They keep getting injured and they just keep participating in the same thing over and over again. It's probably time, you know, maybe they should try to find something else that that has that same crossover of something that interests them, but something that's maybe healthier, Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. It should become a football player. At 7 feet 4, Wambi is juggling the ball like he is one of the Brazilian footballers. But we all know what Wambi's foot looks like. He has the special hyperarca structure with the prominence of anterior tibiotid tendons and the flexure tendons. What this means is the foot to glute connection is extremely strong. It doesn't matter if the individual possess big muscles or not.

or not, when you develop this type of foot to glues connection, you can control the body in a coordinated way. Think of tensegrity as strains and struts. If you don't have a necessary tension built into your body through the fascia chain, you're not going to be able to coordinate the movement well. Just like an instrument, like a violin or piano, you need to be finely tuned. Same as our body. If you want to be better at moving in a coordinated fashion and pain free, you have to look at. look into fashion you have to train barefoot one be you know uh cream Abdul Jabbar is somebody that also uh embraced a lot of this uh he he was somebody that was doing a lot of things outside of basketball

he was doing martial arts I don't know how much training he did with Bruce Lee but um there's a lot of photos of them together they did movies together and stuff like that and I know that he trained in martial arts and worked on like these high kicks and all these different things and so You know, I would say with someone like Wembeñana, who's just like so insanely tall, that no one in the world has any clue what it's like to be him, other than maybe somebody like Kareem Abdul's Riber. Yeah. So he's just trying, I bet you that, you know, he's just trying to figure out ways of like

just managing a body that's that big and that tall. You know, but at the same time, managing, yes, but I don't think, I don't think you've seen many bigs that have. have been as like limber. No. As Wemnon Yama. I've never seen that before, I don't think. You know what I mean?

Like, I mean, shoot. Kareem was an amazing. He was actually a, he was an amazing mover too. But it's cool that Wembe's like embraces these different skills. Because like you'll see Wembe. There's a video of him in one of,

after you got injured, I believe last year. You saw videos of him in like China doing some stuff with like Chinese martial artists, right? You see them doing just a bunch of different things. And I think that, The big thing to take away is that Wembe seems to be like strengthening his movement vocabulary. You know, like maybe he played soccer when he was a kid and he already knew how to juggle.

Who knows? Maybe, maybe not. But he does seem to be developing different skills and different aspects of coordination. I think we, like, people forget, especially within the fitness crowd, people forget that like coordination is trainable and building coordination outside of your sport can actually. actually give you ideas and different, different movement that you can resort to within your sport. Because you've got to realize within basketball, if you're just a, if you're a basketball player, within grappling, or if you're a soccer player, there's certain movements that most people are going

to be doing within their sport and you won't touch other ranges or types of movement. So if you want to become someone who moves better, which means that within your sport, you're going to have more options if the demand is there, you might have to do different practices to give yourself that that stimulus right right so it's like it's one of those things um i think we even saw wemby like he kicked a basketball out of a hoop and you know we have a guy who we know who's done that before too to your point you know uh some of the movements that he was doing right there where he was like blocking the shots from the other person when he was doing martial arts he kept having to take one leg and put it back behind him and that's the exact

position that all of the modern day, all the modern day, uh, Achilles tears happen in is when somebody has to do that quick step back with their foot. Uh, and so like he, as you, you pointed it out really well, that he's practicing something in another sport, uh, that is, that is he can take over into basketball and utilize. And then plus it looks like he's having fun. Yeah, man. I think it's like where he's blocking uh in the beginning of this when he's blocking the shots from the other guy you'll probably see it there i think it's the other video oh yeah yeah it might be a different video got you going back and forth on a lot of different videos one time yeah see that back leg see how he has to keep kind of pushing that leg back like that that's the exact same thing that happened

to kiddle this weekend where he tore his Achilles yeah obviously he had another football player tackling him at the same time which isn't helpful but you're going to build strong ligament and tendons and you're learning a new skill set. So maybe it's nice that he knows how to handle himself. I mean, there's fights on the court sometimes and who the hell knows what could happen. So the reason why I think this is like cool for people to think about is because let's say that you're not a women yaman, but you're not a pro basketball player, but you're someone who, you know, you want to enjoy movement as you get older, right? As you know, as you learn new patterns of movement. We do know that you do neuro patterns in the brain increase. Like you,

you'll develop different patterning because you learn different things. And for some reason, within sports training, you always hear coaches say, okay, you know, if you want, and I get it, coaches like athletes have limited time. I think athletes have more time than these coaches give them credit for. But it's like your sport and your training. And that should be what you do if you really want to be a complete athlete. But like, let's think about this. The athlete has learned their sport well, they're going to keep training their sport. It's, it's like we act like people cannot learn more than what their specific thing is, right? It's one of those things like, for example, juggling or aspects of dance if somebody wants to do that, or when yama going to

fucking train with monks and learning different movement patterns there, how's that going to affect him now when he moves on to the court and he's having to play against somebody? What now different movement options as he have with the body of another human being because of what he managed to learn there, right? It's one of those things that athletes will can get smarter and do get smarter when they're exposed to different things. I'd love to see him play. That thing right there, kicking the ball out of the hoop. Kadorziani, right? Kadorziani did a lot of that. I think the cool thing is when you, if you guys, if you knew our podcast, maybe you haven't seen the video we did with Kadorziani, who was like the first professional dunker, he can still do that. He can still

dunk, I think, right now. You see him right there doing some of these seven postures movements with Odell Beckham Jr. He, he, uh, the ground is a big part of his movement practice. So you'll see in the video we did with him and then his content, like a lot of the movements are based off of using the ground as something to help the body get into positions that it currently can't handle. I've never seen a foot move like Cador's foot. Mm-hmm. The way that, I mean, that's the way your foot is supposed to move. Should. He's got full capacity, but it was really unbelievable. And a lot of it comes from the stretching on the floor. Absolutely.

But not even just the static aspects of the distraction. It's the moving in and out of those positions with a level of control. So now it's not like you can just passively get there, but you can get out of there. And let's just say, you know, you see the flexibility of Wembe in that video where he was doing the squat and he was moving in and out of that. Let's say that he finds himself in a compromised position in a game. Let's say he goes up for a dunk and somebody pushes him and then he lands weird and he lands in like a long position.

he has like that position he has control over it he doesn't just tweak or injure something there or maybe something that would be a huge injury for something else is a minor tweak for him because he's exposed his body to that position and he has a level of control over it that's why this stuff can and for everybody the floor is a great place to be comfortable and build a level of proficiency yeah these athletes you know they're going to extreme lengths to try to, you know, make sure that their career lasts longer. But for yourself, you know, for people just listening, you have a career as well, you know, whether it's your career as a dad or a mom or whether it's your career in terms of just like

your lifting career. You might not think much of your lifting career. You might not think like you're a pro or something like that. But it still is something that you enjoy doing and you want to try to keep, you know, full capacity of that for as long as possible. And I'm not saying that you have to do like calisthenics and plios and you have to do all these things in order to be able to go and enjoy most of the stuff that's at the gym. But I think that you'll come out the other side. You know, it's not about like what we're doing really in our, it's not about what you're doing in the current decade that you're in.

It's about the results that you end up with the following decade. So whatever you're doing in your 30s is going to start to show up in your 40s. Whatever you're doing in your 40s. You start to show up in your 50s and so on. And those things they do carry through as well, you know, so stuff you did from your 20s will still show up in your 50s. But if you were being irresponsible, if you were drinking, if you were doing like A, B, and C, that wasn't the most optimal thing.

If you're onto it now, then you're unraveling and you're undoing some of those things and you're giving yourself a better shot to be better in the upcoming years and in the next generation that you get to. Because everyone can kind of say like, oh, that sounds like it's a little harder. like we can agree that from 30 to 40, someone who turns 40, you're like, oh yeah, I bet you it is maybe a little bit more difficult when you turn 40. And for me, you know, having gone through my 40s, I didn't really think it was that big of a thing. But I'm like, oh, yeah, I wonder.

Like for me, I'm like 10 years from now. I'm thinking like, man, my 60s, that sounds like it might start to get pretty challenging because to try to spin all these plates for so long. and to try to keep all these things going for a long time. I mean, it doesn't feel like they're unnatural to me. They feel like they're fun. They're exciting, especially some of the stuff that I've been discovering more recently.

And it feels like stuff that is fulfilling. It feels like I'm having fun along the way with getting better. But as I age, certain things that are more like just in your day-to-day, they become amplified and they're more important. So I never really thought about, I never really thought about like getting out of the car, right? But now you got to, you know, I'm not necessarily there at this moment.

Like I get out of the car fine. But I don't want to ever have that be something that I'm really thinking about. So I want to keep my legs strong. I want to keep my mobility good enough to get in and out of a car, good enough to do the things that I like to do. And I would like to improve it a little bit because there are certain things in a day that are, they take me longer than I would like or there's certain, like I'd like to be able

just to be able to get on the ground at any time and get back up very easily. I can do that most of the time but sometimes I'm very sore and I'm like, oh, that's good, you know, I don't want to get on the ground. I don't want to do some of the things that we see Cador doing in the video.

So every year that passes, that shit can get harder and harder. It's going to get worse and worse if you're not doing anything about it. Yeah. And that's the way I see it. So I'm personally for myself, I'm trying to just stay ahead of it all.

And for those of you who might be in like a similar boat with like the ground where it's like, oh God, it's like it takes a bit to want to get down there and do anything. That's why I think it's good at having tools that are kind of close to the ground that will allow you to do some things like like having a sandbag. Even though a sandbag is something you could lift. It's also something that you can like sit on. It's something you can put your knee on and like sit in somewhat if a seza position. Rather than being all the way on the ground and being on top of your knees,

Can you put your shin on the sandbag and then sit down, sit back on the knee and then come up from those positions, right? You can regress these positions onto something slightly higher. So it doesn't end up being so such, such an investment, right? Higher or softer. You got the go mat from Rogue Fitness. You have bolsters that they utilize in yoga, yoga mats. And then I recently have bought these things. They're kind of like more for your kitchen.

There's these like little like runner type things and they're just like, I don't know, like rubbery. Do we have anything here that's like that? Maybe. Oh yeah, maybe these like these mats right here. It's like that, but it's a lot much longer. Yeah. And then like I actually stretch on that while I'm watching TV and it's just always there.

It's actually like almost it's behind my couch. Yeah. Then I also bought something. I haven't blown it up yet, but it's, I think it's called an airsoft. an airsoft mattress or something like that and that one I'm putting in my home gym for stretching and mobility and movement so it's supposed to be something that

when I hit up Corey Slesinger about I was like you know is there something that's like soft that encourages like stretching and moving he goes oh yeah he's like get the air soft and whatever the hell it was called is it like it's a tool that's specifically for that or is it a tool that he said that he said he travels

with it and then you just blow the thing up and he says his players like the second that they get on it they like start jumping around they start moving around i'm like that's exactly what i'm looking for something that kind of encouraged i have a trampoline you know but something that encourages you to like jump and want to move around and roll around on it you know something super soft like these jihitsu mats and stuff those are cool but they're even a little hard yeah yeah they can be they can yeah um that's actually you know it's it's it's funny you mentioned the i the rebounder the trampoline I like to like, because I'll usually have that sitting there while I'm working, so I like to sit on that when I work too. I probably feels good, kind of almost like a stretch.

Because it's almost like kind of sitting on the ground, except it has a little bit of give. So I'll sit in different positions on top of the rebounder. And it's just one of those things. If you have the opportunity to try to get, I'll say this, I think it can be simple for a majority of people to have a goal of doing maybe five minutes. And it doesn't mean you have to do movements and work and pushups, et cetera. Just spend five minutes on the ground if you can. And then if it's more than that, it's more than that. But I think a lot of people can start to add that in and then increase that time over time.

Because like Cador's a lot of what Cador does in the sub-impostures, it's literally your body and the ground. Just try to lay down on the ground instead of the couch. Just try that here and there. It's not going to feel good. You know, the first couple times you do it, it's not going to feel good. but you get used to it. And over time, you get more and more proficient out. And you can get a lot of great mobility work in just while you're,

you're not even trying to get mobility work. And I'm not even saying, like, sit there and stretch while you're watching TV, which is something you could also do. Yeah. But you're literally just relaxing. And you're relaxing in positions that are going to help you to become more mobile over time. And shout out to the hunkering stool. Another tool that, like, will allow you to kind of sit in a deep,

like in a squat type position, knees bend, et cetera. But over time, like you can sit in Sesa on that thing, Sase being your knees underneath you. It's a really versatile tool, which I think is something that can like, again, improve your ability to get closer and closer to the ground while not making it feel and seem like something impossible. I have my hunger and stool against the wall.

And it's perfect for me there because then I can kind of, and I can move myself into a bunch of different positions from there too, which is nice. Yeah. These things make a difference. And it's like, it's one of those things. Really take it seriously to start building it now because if you don't, it's one of those things where it's just going to get harder and harder to want to build that habit. And then you're one of those older individuals who like the ground is scary.

It's like it's far away from you. Yeah. And it's it's like a scary thing. You don't want that to be the case. When bignana, he's been injured here and there, right? He got injured once. It was a blood clot actually. I think there was a blood clot in his shoulder the season last season.

I think yeah yeah last season there was a blood con on his shoulder that took him out for that happened early in the early in the season I think it was a little bit of a gnaughty angular I told you so a moment I think he got hurt like earlier this season and he's been hurt a little bit but I think that like injuries in sport are massively high especially for like basketball and football right yeah and we could say hey look I think some of the guys are being trained improperly it's probably true right probably Fair conjecture, right? But with basketball, you end up with like, it's not even necessarily like you tore your Achilles. Like that does happen. People tear ACLs and all this stuff happens, right? Yeah. But you don't have any pads on. You're just getting like elbowed and like they just get like completely messed up here and there.

So they miss some games here and there. And I think Wembe has missed some games with various injuries. and then people like, oh, see, he's hypermobile. You know, he's got too much of a capacity to move, which again, sounds fair. Like, yeah, somebody maybe moves a little too much. Their body is a little bit too supple. But at the same time, like I mentioned earlier,

who else knows about playing basketball at 7 foot 6? Really nobody. Like he's the only guy, like, like this is a, This is an experiment almost. And he's still growing, like my understanding. And maybe Ryan, you can look it up. But I think he's grown since he's been in the NBA, like a couple inches. So he hasn't even like fully grown into it.

And he kind of looks that way. When he's on the court, he moves in an interesting way that sort of looks, looks almost slow, looks almost like uncoordinated, but then still is somehow way ahead everybody. Then he scores. And you're like, I wasn't expecting that. It just looks so different because he's a foot taller than everybody.

Yeah. His leg's his wingspan is something ridiculous. His height is something ridiculous. It's literally watching an alien play the sport. That's why his nickname I think is the alien. I'm not sure. But I think it's like something around there. It says rookie season.

He was listed at 7.3 and he's currently 7.5. And some people even believe he's taller than that. I think he could be as tall as 7 foot 7. I have to see one of this guy's games. I have to go to a game at Wembe Nyaman's in. I was like, I've gone to some basketball games recently, and like those guys are monsters, you know. Is he from France or something? Yeah, he's from France.

He's France. But I mean, he's, I think his ethnicity is Congolese. So his family's from Congo, but he was raised in France. What's his, any idea of like his, like, how did he like basketball in France? I don't really hear about that a lot. Oh, basketball in France is like, it's a popular. Big deal. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Basketball and France is popular. So I think Kobe was what, in Italy? Italy. In Europe in general, I guess, it's pretty popular. Oh, yeah, European basketball is super popular. Shoot, you guys. Yokic, Donchich, a lot of people come out of there. But, you know, the conjecture around his injuries, it's, I mean, I think we were just talking about it, man.

Like, athletes in sport, athletes in sport put their bodies through a lot. You know what I mean? It's some things, yeah, some things could be the fascia and some things could be he's too, too flexible. But then again, like these dudes are putting their body through hard training, hard competition, like having to have their bodies act against other people who you don't know how they're going to, you know what they're going to do or how dirty they might be in a specific game. You know what I mean? So constantly things are happening to these athletes where it's a flux, which is why like I think it's just kind of, I don't know, it's great for people to make conjecture. But when, when coaches try to make these absolute statements, like it's this, it's that. It's like, I. Dog, yeah, come on. He's over seven feet tall. The guy he's playing against is seven feet tall. People wing spans and arms and legs are flying around all over the place as they're like diving for a ball.

Yeah. It's like kind of hard to tell exactly what the issue is. I guess, you know, something that does make sense to me is like, okay, he seems like he's thin. You know, he, for his structure, for how, for how big he is and stuff. stuff, his legs. You think he's like thin? I mean, I get what you're saying, but he's like for the length of those bones, just cut some muscle.

Yeah, yeah. But my point just being like, as somebody that loves to lift, somebody that loves strength training, I'm like thinking in my head, maybe, and I have no idea, I don't train athletes like that, maybe some just traditional lifting would maybe put a little bit of size on the structure. I don't know if that would be a mistake because maybe he'd be super heavy, but maybe if he just did some traditional lifting, maybe his body would stiffen up a little bit and thicken up a little bit and maybe that would make him more robust. But that's just like a hypothesis. Yeah, I mean, maybe. That's the thing. I think that's one of the cool things about

a sport like basketball is you see a lot of different types of bodies. You know, like I think Dennis Froder, who's on the Kings, is 6-1, but he looks quite jacked. But the thing is, to do what these guys do in terms of how high you need to be able to jump, how spring you need to be able to be, there is, if you're going to put on that type of muscle, right, you also need to be able to have the power to project it, right? Because the heavier you get, the harder it is going to be to jump high. and the more ground reaction force you have to be able to handle when you hit the ground.

So it's one of those things where, you know, and being that heavy, or not being that heavy, but being that tall for him, it's one of those things where like, if you puts on more muscle, it just has to do it slowly and make sure that his movement ability is maintained as it's done.

Because that's one of the reasons why I think a lot of people are kind of wary on just like putting on muscle. Yeah, what does he weigh right now? Any idea? Shoot, I don't know. Let's look it up. But like, so if he,

you know, I agree with you, like him just weighing more, like might not be a great idea because he just has more shit to deal with even, you know, and then he'll have to be stronger to be able to deal with being heavier. But there is a way to do it. 236. Yeah. So like maybe him weighing 256, maybe it's not a great idea, especially if he did it fairly quickly.

It looks like a lot, you know, he looks like he does a lot of exercises and activities to really keep himself feeling good. And with strength coaches and stuff, I mean, that's a big part of their, because he's using a skier, but he can barely like use it because he's way too tall for it. But that's their job is to assist these guys and help these guys to feel good, not just them have like an awesome workout that's like leading to them getting stronger, but it's about them feeling good for the season. They have an 82 game season if they don't make the playoffs.

And they could have, you know, closer to 100 games in a season. if they make the playoffs. So a lot of activity and there's not a ton of time to like really make giant changes in the off season and stuff. Yeah, and the only the only time where you're going to be able to put on like extra mass is going to be in your off season, especially if you're this caliber of player.

And some of it's going to come off during the season every time. Yep, yep. But maybe you gain a little bit of weight intentionally. I don't know. I just love thinking about being fat, maybe. Yeah. Maybe that's just me. Yeah.

But that's the thing. It's like I do, I do get it. I do agree with Chong. Like even even like for myself, you know, I think that I think that like my peak, I guess my peak ability to jump and the fastest that I would be would be me at like 220, 225, right? But I'm 250 and no matter how little I eat or if I eat more, I just gain weight. It's like this is my weight until age starts kicking in. You know what I mean? And I'm kind of excited for that to happen. But I do think that there definitely can be a detriment to over-indexing on hypertrophy

for if your intent is being a sport athlete, meaning not a lifting athlete, but an athlete that's doing grappling or an athlete that's doing, you know, field sport or whatever. Over-indexing on hypertrophy is that being a singular goal? There can be detriment to it. But that's why, again, I think it's just be, I think it's as important as all these other things. It's as important as coordination. It's as important as your ability to be fairly mobile and have ownership over different bodily positions. I think all these things are equally important.

But on the strength side, we, we just think about hypertrophy as like, hypertrophy and like, you know, strength as being like the two biggest vectors. Well, hypertrophy and like one of the issues with strength. is like it's usually referred to as strength in the weight room. Yes. And then we're like, well, yeah, I don't know. Like, it definitely is useful, but useful for what? And what are you, what's the goal? Like, what are you trying to do?

You know, I was having a, so I'm once the Rockets game and I'm friends, like, turns out with one of their players, Stephen Adams. And after the game, he was talking to me about how, like, sometimes he could feel players when he's, like, in the key. And I was talking about push hands. And then you was talking about when he's in the, he having to put his hand against people. Like he can feel their tension.

So like sometimes he'll put his hand right right underneath their armpit softly so they don't think it's a threat. And then once he needs to move them, he can find wherever they are and then he can like move them very quickly. But he says it's so much easier to like move the guys who like tend to over like, you know, they tend because that's just kind of how they operate when they're lifting and in a bunch of other areas that like it's easy to move tense people. And I've noticed it in grappling.

It's easy to move grapplers that tend to be very, very tense. And sometimes, sometimes that tension can come from like the over-focusing too much on force and being tense to create force that now when you need to do something that requires level of fluidity and force, you can't access that fluidity as well. So that's one of the things that's like it's you got to find, if you're an athlete, you got to find that happy medium between being tension when you need to be tense, but being kind of gumpy and fluid and like able to move well when you need that capacity. You know, they're equally as important.

But if you're so tense all the time, that that will tire you out because you're using a lot of muscular like effort. And you're just an easier, you're easy to deal with in a way. I think a lot of, I think some of this can be learned from some jumping, just from some simple jumping, not like jumping is going to make you like crazy strong or anything, but it could definitely make you stronger. But by practicing some, you know, some jumping and then practicing how you're landing and what direction you're facing.

You know, like, so you can jump up on something and that's great. And you can jump down for something. That's great. But you can also, like, as you're coming down, you can start to face a different direction. Or as you go to jump back up, you can face another direction. Or you can jump and try like a 360 and then land and squat. Jump and land on one foot. Exactly.

And these, these coordinations, they make you figure out a way to be experienced. explosive and strong and soft and supple all kind of rolled into one. Yes. And when you sprint, that's something that I really like about sprinting is, yeah, I could probably go out and like just muscle out a sprint. And if I don't get hurt,

I could probably like, I don't know, run decently fast and people be like, hey, but I'm not trying to like just run fast one time. I'm trying to make myself faster over time. And I want to be able to relax in the sprint. And it's going to take time.

It's going to take a long time because for me in my head, what my body's connected to is, okay, if you want to run faster, then we need to like just switch it into another gear, right? And I, at the moment, that gear is just using like all like power. It's not it's not using any grace. It's not using any fluidity. It's not using any of the other components that are responsible for speed. Speed is, there is a lot of strength, a lot of power, there's a lot of force development. that's involved in it.

But if you think about, you watch, you know, some of the high-level sprinters, it looks like they go pretty fucking crazy. But in the beginning, it's in the beginning of the race, right? When they're in acceleration, their arms are going crazy, like, their whole body's going pretty crazy. And then it just looks like they just coast the rest of the way. Like they turn the engine on. They got the RPM sky high and now there's funneling that energy through.

Just keep it going smoothly. They have an amazing and beautiful way. even Shikari Richardson with the way that she's able like she's able to somehow she's kind of tense through like her arms there's like a chain of tension somewhere but then she's like totally relaxed somewhere

in other places of her body is just really amazing to watch yeah yeah that's the thing it's like finding that mix if you're interested in it but understanding that it's not you know it's not it's not mythical it's like it is a capacity

that you can build and its capacity that you can get worse at if you focus on certain forms of training as your only form of training. You know what I mean? Exactly. So. You ever seen some of those videos of Shikari Richardson

when she's young when she's like a little kid? Nothing when she was younger. Oh, dude. Yeah, Ryan will find a couple shots. She's like training. She's like six, seven years old. Flying. Oh my gosh.

Absolutely flying. she's like yeah must have started it must have started pretty young I'd be able to find like a little montage this is her in high school oh cool see how far ahead

she's gonna be from all these other kids oh there she is oh shit there she is okay yeah other girl started out really well too yeah but then they all got completely dusted finishing 10 seconds behind her wow yeah no

that's the thing man Are you doing some stuff with some sprints? Yeah, still do. And you have like a hill that's not too far from your, like a field that you go to, right? Yeah, it's close. And something I actually just started doing too, a few weeks back. And so I tweaked my back, but I'm going to get back to it. There's a, there's my house.

And then there's kind of a round about that my goal is just to keep, keep running it under 57 seconds. right so um i think it might be close to 400 if it's not close to 400 but my goal is just to slowly have that that that that time just get slower and slower and slower that's a great practice by the way just running for 45 seconds to like a minute yeah yeah yeah yeah nasty yeah it can be real nasty yeah so like yeah no it's not it's not a track but it's like it is around that like seems like it's going to be either close to 400 and my goal is just to make that run feel feel easy like I'm putting an effort but I want it just to feel easy and I want to get a bit faster over time and it's a good distance like I like I like running that distance so yeah that's her right yeah this is her

oh that's her yeah oh my goodness dude wasn't that nuts I mean I don't know how old she is in that video but she's like a little girl she's running with a little parish on her back. That's so cute. Be like, oh, you're so cute and then she's like,

boom. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh my goodness. That's awesome. I've never run with the parachute before.

That looks like it's fun. Me neither. I've run with a sled behind me. That feels pretty good. Sprinting with a sled feels neat. That's dumb. Oh, my God.

That's dumb. That's got to feel good to like. She's about to be a boy. To be, yeah, I mean, I don't want to take away from her how much she's worked because you see her working like at such a young age

but to like be like a quote unquote phenom like that's got to feel awesome. Like everybody knows who you are and you're 10 and you're just destroying everybody and then you go out and you destroy everybody again and again in the Olympics in the world championships. Amazing athlete. Yeah.

But I think one thing to know is because I think that some of the sometimes this stuff gets people super excited to like sprint, et cetera. But just just realize like your body, especially if you haven't done much of this stuff, her body is like supremely developed to handle high ground reaction force. Because one reason why these athletes are so fast is because they can strike the ground hard as fuck and funnel that energy through their body. Yeah. Because their bones are developed, their tendons are developed. So you realize like you can't just do this quickly. You know what I mean? Like, You have to get used to those stresses and your body has to adapt and make tissues to be able to handle more and more stress.

So that's important. Yeah, I went to the track a couple days ago and did some sprints and it felt pretty good. But just the flat surface is hard for me. It's just, I have to be careful. I could hurt myself so easily. You know, it feels like I'm strong enough to just like contract my hamstrings or something and just like blow them off. you know but so it's like there's one area of me that's like strong and there's another area of me like that i'm like weak and basically when it comes to sprinting right yeah um and so for me i have to

basically like be on a hill a little bit more you know that's what i kind of learned over the past couple weeks is like because when i got hurt on the treadmill i slightly pulled a hamstring on the treadmill that was at a lower level two we're only on like level three or something in terms of the uh grade and i was going 14 miles an hour and that just that got me a little bit. We did a lot of sprints that day too, so I think fatigue might have got me. But yeah,

going to the track the other day, I was like, this feels pretty good, but I still don't feel like I'm fully ready to do a lot of workouts flat on the track. So I sprinted on the beach the other day, but that was more like running.

Like I wasn't really, I wasn't able to really pick up a lot of speed. So instead I worked on like fundamentals. I just worked on trying to drive the knees up, pick the feet up, just little stuff like that. And so then when I run, it's going to look clunkier because I'm not running fast enough for it to look maybe the same way

as people may have seen me run so far on the treadmill because you're running like we run slower it's just going to look a little different and I'm trying to like you know drive my arms and drive my knees and stuff like that so yeah but it's it's fun you know I probably did about six or seven of these for the day and it's a it's a decent distance um it's probably a good 60 70 yards something like that. It felt good. Good stuff. Barefoot on the sand.

Yeah. Getting the sun. All of it. All right. Strength is never a week. This week. This is never strength. Catch you guys later.

Bye.