Mark Bell's Power Project - Why You’re Not Improving.. The Truth You’re Afraid to Hear

Episode Date: December 10, 2025

In today’s Saturday School, Mark Bell breaks down one of the most important lessons in training and in life:You’re going to look awkward before you ever get good.You’re going to feel insecure. You’re going to try new things and suck at them.And that’s exactly how progress works.From nasal breathing and weighted vests to rope flow, maces, dead hangs, lunges and everything in between — Mark shares why staying open-minded is the ONLY way to keep improving, stay athletic, and break out of the stiffness that heavy lifting alone can create.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 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!🧠 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!

Most of the things I'm doing, I think are revolutionary. The real people, the real followers. They know who I am and they know what I'm about. I understand we all care about what other people think about us. And so if you're walking around these insecurities, it's understandable. But man, that sounds really paralyzing. I do believe I'm one of the first influencers and I do believe I had a big impact on the industry and showed a lot of people how to power lift, how to strength train.

Do your best to just be on your own path, your own way. When you first get acquainted with something, you're going to suck. at it you're not going to enjoy it but what happens when you gain that skill all right everybody happy motherfucking birthday to me i'm 49 years old December 10th and uh i just figured i'd let a rip on this video here today just kind of letting people know like i am who i am obviously i care what people think of me like who doesn't what kind of maniac doesn't care what people think about them um but i also have never been afraid or scared to do things that maybe are unconventional do things that maybe other people aren't doing and to just try to figure out what being yourself

even means in the first place and so i'd like to start this out and hopefully this doesn't get me canceled or hopefully it does get me canceled because i am the leader of the race to zero followers So I'll start out by saying that I voted for Donald Trump more than once, and hopefully that will kick this thing off the right way, give you a little kick in the balls. But I think that even just on that topic, I think that things like that shouldn't put people so strongly on one side versus another. I mean, half the country votes on the president-ish, right? I know there's like more to it than just that, but right? So there's half the country likes a particular person and they become president or more than half, sorry, and the person becomes president. And then it shifts back and forth.

Recently, I was in a conversation with my son about a bunch of different, different, like heavy topics. You know, things like abortion. I'll think of some of the other ones in a second. But he, oh, the death penalty. And he's like, what are your thoughts on a death penalty? My wife is like more like, she just. She'll just say stuff and she stays on the side and she just, she's more like, she's quicker. For me, I like to think about stuff.

I said, you know what? I'm actually happy that we live in a country where it can be different in different states. It can be voted on differently in different areas and things like abortion, things like the death penalty. They flip-flop back and forth and people are always trying to figure out whether we should have these things or whether we shouldn't. have these things. But again, even if someone is for abortion against abortion, even if someone is for the death penalty against the death penalty, I think that we would be better off inner society in general. And I'm going to get to fitness in a minute. You know, a lot of this does have to do with fitness, but these other topics that I see like day to day people getting charged up

about. And then I'm just going to kind of relate this to how I see you guys sometimes getting charged up about me picking a side when it comes to me talking about functional patterns. Like I barely talk about functional patterns about people getting mad or about people saying like, now Di Aguilar is an asshole, which is to me it's like not necessarily relevant. What I'm trying to find and discover is like what's valuable, what's, you know, what's, what's going to be able to move the needle forward for me and what are things that I can share with other people that will move the needle forward for them? These other practices that I've gotten involved with like Gota.

You know, you do something like Gota and then people are like, oh, you don't think functional patterns works. I was like, well, I never said that. I've just like utilizing different strategies. I like trying different things. Oh, how come you abandon powerlifting? How come you turned your back on powerlifting? I love powerlifting.

I'll do powerlifting like movements for the rest of my life. I'll utilize powerlifting strategies for the rest of my life. I'll use some versions of progressive overload probably forever. Whenever I find a new exercise that I like, I'll probably try to figure out how to load that exercise. And I'll try to figure out how to load it progressively over time in a safe fashion that goes towards my goals. So I think that sometimes I maybe get misunderstood.

Sometimes it's my own fault. I can see that. I don't have a blind spot there. I know that because sometimes I will completely like troll you guys and you guys troll me back, which I appreciate. Somebody recently called me Liver King with a twist, and I had, I DM the person, and I said that was really good. So when somebody gets me with someone that I think is kind of funny and kind of good,

because I think Liver King and I think are way different, another topic probably for another day, but I just thought that was, I just thought that was kind of funny. Yeah, and so the idea here for today is just to kind of like let it roll and to give you guys some of my information on some of the things I've discovered over the last couple years and how I believe that almost everybody is going to gravitate towards these things. And none of these things are things that I invented or created.

These are things I stumbled upon over a period of time. And I think that everyone will stumble upon some versions of these things. a lot of people will probably a lot of people that listen to this a lot of people that are into fitness a lot of people that lift they'll probably go along doing their lifting

until it just no longer works for them and then they're going to switch to a different program they may not switch to something I'm doing specifically now but I do think over time most people will because

trying to manage athleticism I think is a way to manage aging. Trying to manage hand-eye coordination in catching a football or in hitting a speed bag or a jumping rope. I think that a lot of these things are controllable that you can train and Seema has been talking a bunch about juggling lately. Well, how annoying is it to try to juggle? It's really annoying. But how amazing is it to have the skill of juggling? It's kind of awesome. I was just talking to my wife about this the other day, you know, to develop the skill to be, able to like power lift to be able to handle good enough amount of weight to where you feel good

and don't feel like you're going to hurt yourself and um or my wife is a swimmer how good does it feel to develop a skill set with swimming to where you know you're at a lake somewhere with some friends and and you just want to dive in and and uh you know not only just you know swim but you want to like you know see if you could swim to the buoy down there and back to the dock or something like that's to me that's kind of cool when you're able to build those kind of capacities. But I think that for a lot of people, they see what I do now and they're like, oh, he's rich and he's bored. And he's like just trying to make shit up. He's just trying to make another sale. I am always trying to sell you guys on things. That's not, that's not anything I ever try to

hide. I am trying to sell you guys on concepts, ideas. And a lot of times it's a product. And And sometimes it's just because I think a product is really useful. I think a product is really helpful. Most of the things that you're going to see on Instagram and most of the things you're going to see from most people, there's usually some sort of sale involved. They're usually showing you. And it's not always an intentional sale. They might just be even showing you or sharing a strategy with you.

But even then, there's usually like an up sale to that, you know? So I think that it's not only me. I think most people are trying to figure out a way to like monetize. stuff. But one thing you guys have to remember about me is I'm the first one to really do that. If you really just look back, I'm not saying I'm the first influencer ever, but I kind of am the first influencer ever. I recently put that on my Instagram. It's on my Instagram handle. I think I'm one of the first. I think I'm one of the first to monetize and to put together and package things together in a specific way to be able to.

able to sell products to people. And it, none of it was deliberate. It all just sort of happened. I just was filming powerlifting because I felt that that was something that I needed to show people and I felt that people would be drawn to it. And I felt that people would enjoy it. And I was right. And then years later, I helped make powerlifting more popular and a lot of other people started powerlifting. I left powerlifting fairly long time ago. And I think some people first, forget that. Some of my biggest lifts are they were done 15, 12, 15, 16, 17 years ago. Anywhere between around 2008 and 2000 and maybe 14 was probably like my strongest and and my biggest from what I recall. But yeah, 2014, guess what? That was a long time ago.

That was, you know, that was 10 years ago. So I'm moving on to other things, not bigger and better things, just moving on to other things. And I think that we're going to see a lot of other people move into these areas as well. I was watching something recently where this guy was saying that he said, I don't work out, and I don't think you should either. And he went on to explain basically how he kind of microdoses exercise into his day to day. And he views it as a practice. And that's what we're doing when we're in the gym, we're practicing.

But I wrote about this in my book, Jackton Tan, which I think came out in like 2018 or something like that. And I've had this idea in my head for a really long time since I was a young lad, a wee lad, powerlifting. I've always known that there's a side of fitness that is a practice. And as I've gotten older, I recognize, oh, the whole thing is a practice. I thought like practice was like take the bar and squat it for, you know, set to 10, take take the bar, you know, for sets of 10 on a bench press and a deadlift and learn how to execute them the right way. I felt like that was practice. But as I got into this more and more, I recognized the whole thing as a practice. And when you kind of view it that way, and you pause for a second

and realize that you don't need a two-hour workout in order to have an effective workout, when you realize that you can do things intermittently throughout the day for 20 minutes here, 30 minutes there, that won't work with everyone's schedule. You know, we have to realize the hippie guy that's by the tree probably doesn't really have a conventional job. So for those of us that, those of you that do have a conventional job,

you may have to do things a little bit differently. You might have to wake up at five in order to get to the gym at six in order to get the hell out of the gym at 7.15, 7.30, in order to be at work at 8.30 or 9 o'clock. And that might have, that you might need that routine in there and without that routine you might find that things

fall apart for you but imagine starting to understand that you could have a rope at your house you could have a weighted vest at your house you could have a speed bag at your house you could have a jump rope near your back door you know you can have some of these things around to where you're like i'm just going to grab that for 10 minutes today you know you wake up a little bit late you weren't able to hit the gym and you're like ah only got like 20 minutes imagine going outside you throw the weck vest on and you hop around with that thing for 20 minutes and then you hop in the shower and you had to work and you you missed your you missed your gym workout for the day but you did something different did something slightly different so I think that a lot of people are going to

start to gravitate towards a lot of the a lot of the things that I'm doing because I think that who doesn't want to restore athleticism or have athleticism maybe for their first time as they start getting into their 50s and 60s who wouldn't like to have more mobility who wouldn't like to move better who wouldn't like to get in and out of their car easier who wouldn't like to keep up not only with their own kids

but keep up with their grandkids and have energy for those things you know you sit down on the couch and you get that at the end of the day we're like man i just feels good to sit down you finally got some food maybe you're watching some tv and your kid needs your attention you know how many times have you been like man i'm too whooped to really like do anything with them i'm gonna like wait until i'm done eating and then you know then maybe i'll half-heartedly go outside with them and do something right i think a lot of parents have been there before and it's not a great

feeling because you want to be able to kind of you know play with your kids almost as much as much as they want to so that way that you're you're teaching them good habits and they're seeing you're leading by example but they're they're also you're also doing activities with them right and they're they're getting the activity they need because kids need activity if kids doesn't have activity he's going to be or he or she is going to be like driving you up a wall because they're going to have so much energy. And so I think, you know, when it comes to fitness, power lifting is a great base. Bodybuilding is a great base. Going to the gym for an hour, hour and a half is awesome. But not everyone's always going to have the time for that. And I think that for a lot of people, you're going to end up

kind of shifting and changing what you do. And the reason why I'm explaining some of this to you guys is I'm trying to explain some of the transitions, if you will, that I've gone through. I'm not still going to like power lift and, you know, pull 500 pounds off the ground for sets of six or something like that. Just so I can make some posts, just so I can squeak out a horribly done, 600 pound deadlift or something like that. I'm not going to still try to be the person that I was in the past. I want to always change. I want to always improve. I want to always get better.

And for me, for right now, this is the way that I'm improving. This is the way I'm getting better. I feel like my fitness is much better than it's been in the past. I feel like body composition wise, I'm better or similar to where I've been in the past. Strength wise, yeah, I've lost some strength when it comes. People ask like, oh, you know, how much strength did you lose like in the bench or in the squat or something?

And well, it's like, shit, I don't know. I, you know, bench 578 raw in a meet. And I think right now I can probably bench, I'd have to probably even work at it to be able to do 378. So I might be able to do, I might be able to do like 365 or something or 350 right now somewhere in that range. And that might even be kind of hard. And then some people will think like, oh man, well, that's a huge decline. like but you have to remember I'm not really focused on trying to have a huge bench at the

moment I have other things I'm focused on and other things I'm honed in on the bench is kind of like an accessory thing the bench is kind of like something I'm doing in addition to doing other activities and other things I've also lost a lot of weight so it's kind of you know 578 bench I probably weighed on that day I probably weighed like 290 when I'm I did that bench. And now, I mean, the strength doesn't equate. I'd still have to be stronger in order to be on par with that strength because that was pretty damn strong. Like I weighed in at 275 for that meat, I think. But yeah, your strength is going to go down, you know, but my capacity is a lot higher. I'm squatting with, you know, sandbags and doing, you know, 20 reps of pop.

Just the other day I was doing minute intervals with like walking overhead. presses and walking dumbbell curls doing minute, minute walking while pressing and while curling these movements. These are movements I've done for a long time. I used to do those years ago when I first started to lose weight at the old super training gym. I used to call it a gunwalk and I would do curls as I was like walking and I do overhead presses. And so I implemented some of those more recently to go along with some of my other goals, which is just to increase my cardiovascular health But I think as you continue with your career, you're going to want to make some shifts and some changes. And so these changes that I make, I understand that people are sometimes going to leave.

You know, my Instagram maybe like two years ago was like completely on fire. And it was increasing a lot. But sometimes that my Instagram is increasing a lot or sometimes the views and the likes and the comments and stuff. Sometimes they're going good because I'm spoon feeding people stuff that they like. and I feel like I'm trying to spoon feed like an old fart, some soup, you know, and I'm trying to make sure it like gets in your mouth and I got a little napkin there, like wipe it up. And I don't want to do that.

I don't, I'm not anyone's cheerleader. I don't want to curate content that is like specifically necessarily for you. The content is actually for me. That's the way I authentically have made the best content. I think is when the content is for my curiosity, when the content is, obviously like you have an audience in mind, I would like for you to be able to find these things easily. I'd like you to be able to, but sometimes you can't because I have more content on the internet than anybody in the history of the fitness industry.

It's just not even close. There's just thousands of videos. If you go back to the several different YouTube channels that we have and, you know, I've had spent tremendous amount of money over the years on having a team because it is stuff that I wanted documented for you guys. I wanted you guys to be able to see how I authentically was doing certain things, how I was doing a speed deadlift or speed bench or a box squat or a floor press or whatever the exercise might be. I wanted you guys to authentically see that. And nowadays, I want you to authentically see some of the things I'm doing.

doing that maybe are different than what you've seen in the past. And if you feel like they're too different and you're like, I don't vibe with this guy anymore, I'm going to go somewhere else, then I think that's fine. Like I don't have, I'm not sad about that. There's some people that go to my channel and like, look what happened to this guy. What's going on with him? Well, of course, I'm not going to walk around at 280 pounds being ready to bench press 500 pounds for 30, 40 years. it's just like doesn't make any sense to me. I don't know why I don't know why I would do that. You know,

my interest change and your interest will change. You might be so fired up and so excited about one thing right now, but eventually it will change for you. And what hasn't changed for me is my obsession with fitness. I have been so excited and pumped about this stuff for so long. I remember, you know, reading some of the stuff from Charles, Pauliquin years ago and being super excited to implement some of that. And then I got like way into West Side Barbell. And West Side Barbell like took over my life for like 20 years maybe or maybe

maybe like 10, 15 years. And I was always thinking about a box spot. I was always thinking about the deadlift technique. I was always thinking about bands. I was always thinking about chains. My mind was like really bent around that whole thing. And I just thought about it nonstop. And that's how I came up with the slingshot. The slingshot was born from a lot of those things. But now, you know, I'll probably have different innovations. I'll have different ideas around some of the things I'm working on now. And the main thing that I'm working on now is just to have like really good conditioning.

So I did a like a Norwegian style V-O-2 max workout the other day where you do four minutes hard, three minutes light, four minutes hard, back and forth until you've done four times four by four basically and it was you know to me it felt like it was way harder than it should have been um i feel like i should be a little bit more advanced when it comes to my cardiovascular training but in addition to that i've been doing some nasal breathing stuff and when i'm doing the nasal breathing stuff i'm keeping the i'm usually on a bike i was on the assault bike the other day and I was keeping the watts above 200 and I think I might even kept him around 250 that shit was really that was really really hard between 200 and 250 the entire time for 20 minutes next time I'm going to try like 30 minutes and I've done a couple workouts like that

now and some people might look at that and be like oh you know he's talking about cardio so I'm out nasal breathing and they might think some of it's stupid but the most of the things I'm doing I think are not only do I not think they're stupid I think they're revolutionary in a lot of ways and again they're not revolutionary because I came up with them people been talking about nasal breathing type stuff for a while now I'm not the inventor or creator of any of that I just am trying to draw attention to these things that I think have a lot of value and I'm not saying that you do all your workouts nasal breathing because the VO2 max workout I did of course that wasn't nasal breathing it's too hard you got to breathe differently but what i found was

by doing those two workouts and by getting some consistency with those two as i toggle back and forth between the two the days where i'm breathing in and out of the nose on the bike are just going to get easier and easier one because i'm getting an adaptation to the bike two i'm getting an adaptation to nasal breathing and then three i have that other day that's requiring requiring me uh to breathe a lot harder a lot heavier there's some other things i've been doing recently like like walking around with a weighted vest i got a weighted vest on right now i went to a um i went to a parade the other day and i wore this weighted vest underneath my jacket it's weighs six pounds it doesn't really weigh much. I have another weighted vest that's like 12 pounds. And I wear that one frequently too because

it actually in the wintertime, it's just warm. It helps kind of block out the cold. But why would I, why am I walking around wearing a weighted vest frequently? Well, it works on your, it works on your zone one cardio, you know, and it just makes your walking a little bit more challenging. Why not have a form of advanced walking because walking really we've got to face the facts about walking once you get yourself walking and once yourself get yourself doing a couple miles you really have to make it more challenging than just that you do i think that's the honest truth of it like if you're looking for like real fitness and real um longevity and strength and all these things i don't think you're going to get it with just walking on a flat surface i think you either need hills or you need like either

weight in your hands or weight around your shoulders and a weighted vest is a great way to get it done um recently you guys have been seeing me doing some doing some stuff with uh the weck vest and see me hopping around and doing these different things and you see me you know uh just doing things that are unconventional that you haven't seen me do before and you also might see me doing and trying things where i look on coordinated or silly or weird but again i i want you guys to understand that that is not anything that bothers me i was talking to a friend the other day and he said he has a buddy that wouldn't that used to like not like going to the commercial gym with him at certain times because there's other people there and he feels awkward

it's like holy shit really again i understand we all care about what other people think about us like that's part of life i mean how could you not um how could you not feel like you're being judged and then if you feel like you look weird or you feel like you look fat or you feel like you're short or whatever these things that you feel um whether they're how true they are really doesn't matter how true they are to you matters a lot and so if you're walking around these insecurities it's understandable but man that sounds really paralyzing that sounds really disabling to be in that kind of position and i've heard women say that a bunch before too, and it's a little bit more understandable because

let's kind of face it, women are getting like gawked at a lot of times. And then we also, there's the other side of that. Sometimes women are wearing interesting outfits in the gym and maybe they're not, maybe those, maybe what they're wearing is like highlighting things a little too much and getting the guys to stare. But I can understand a female feeling a little bit more awkward sometimes in the gym but even that it's like we got to get over this stuff and if there's more girls and there's more people at the gym that maybe aren't shredded and don't you know look like a magazine cover then everybody should be able to get over it most of the time the gym doesn't really look that way anyway um most of my experience in gyms from the time i was a young

a wee lad again um you know was that people aren't really paying too much attention to you they're really like into their own workout and while you might be judged for your workout and somebody might kind of catch you doing an exercise awkwardly or something I don't think that really changes anything I don't think the person's going to come over there and like bash you with a dumbbell or I don't think anyone's going to like yell at you or think that you're a bad person um I think think that they might just think like oh man i kind of wonder where that guy picked that up from that's a little that's a little weird but yeah people laughing at you people making fun of you you know maybe i you know i grew up with two older brothers so i just had so much of that that uh i was always like

well i'm gonna get made fun of anyway so i'm also just go do this thing and so for me it wasn't uh it wasn't as hard to get used to it and i'm now hearing the same thing about the rope the rope flow the weck vests too loud oh it jiggles it makes noise you know it's loud i mean i don't know when we're you know like what age do you need to be to kind of like get over these different things um all you're trying to do is exercise if somebody's like making fun of you or teasing you for you know trying to exercise and they just don't understand your goals and that's okay you know as i said earlier i don't care if people leave if you know The race to zero followers is something I started years ago, just kind of messing around.

And I even made a jersey of it. I have a jersey that says zero followers on the back. It's just something I made up around, you know, I think it was also around the time of COVID. You know, and I had strong opinions about COVID. I had a lot of researchers on the podcast, a lot of people on the podcast speaking on one particular side. about COVID and I couldn't even find anybody that was on the other side and I swear to God to you that's the truth I found people who were like this thing is well way overblown this thing is bullshit and I couldn't find I was trying to find opposition and I could not even find opposition this is really really

really super duper pooper super super super over super early on and that whole situation is still annoying to me the way that the United States handled that the way that we handled that I thought suck because we just kind of followed what everybody else was doing, which is kind of rare. The United States doesn't usually do that. We usually kind of blaze our own trail. We, a lot of times, do things our own way. And in that case, we didn't.

And then so therefore, we all look stupid, wearing masks and doing a bunch of things that didn't work, that were completely ineffective that I also had people on my podcast talking about, and they talked about how those things are ineffective, and those things were already researched many times over throughout history that they don't work and they still were things that were they still were things that were utilized but a lot of the conclusions and a lot of the things that i and i'm not even saying that those i'm not even saying necessarily that those guys were 100% right the people that i had in my show or even my own thoughts

whether they were 100% right um but these are these are just things that i have discovered and these are things that I have uh like glanced over reviewed these are things that I am putting into my own brain trying to make sense of them as I'm doing so and the same thing is true of all these different movements and all these different things that I've been learning over the years um whether we've had what you know whether I went out to natty Aguilar in Vegas or whether we had some functional patterns people here on the podcast. We had Edo Portel in the podcast. We've had Kelly Sturret in the podcast. We've had

knees over toes, Ben Patrick on the podcast. We've had the go to people here more than once. You know, we've talked to a lot of these people. And again, I'm not going to say like one guy is like super right over another. I think a lot of them have a lot of great information. And I just take that information and I try to utilize it and take advantage of it for myself. Just because you may not see me do some of those same things all the time doesn't mean I completely abandon those ideas. I still utilize a lot of the principles of a lot of these different movements that I've learned and there are things that I'm going to continue to filter through and see because some of it's just about what you like to do is.

well right not everything's about it being effective sometimes shit is about being effective but sometimes it's also just about um do you like doing it if you don't like doing it then that makes it really hard to have it be something that you're doing with a great deal of frequency there's something that i've sucked at for a really long time and that is pull-ups i've been working on pull-ups i lost some weight and stuff like that so that made the pull-ups little easy easier. But I've been also just because I suck at pull-ups, I've been working on some like dead hangs. I'm not good at a dead hang. I'm not that great at it, but I'm getting better at it. One of my friends that I had doing some dead hangs with me the other day, you know, he was able to

hang for, you know, 10 seconds at a time. And another friend is able to hang for 20 seconds at a time. I was able to hang for 30 seconds at a time. We did a bunch of sets that way. And my best hold, I think I've done 90 seconds so far. So it's something I'm working on. But when you first get acquainted with something, you're going to suck at it. It's going to look awkward. It's going to be uncomfortable.

You're not going to enjoy it. But what happens when you gain that skill? What happens when you gain that skill and you can hang on to a bar for three minutes straight? Well, if you can hang on to a bar for three minutes straight, you could in between your exercise as a bench press for the day do some leg raises while you're holding you know you're holding the bar and you're doing some leg raises or maybe you're doing a like toes to bar exercise in between

your bench presses for the day and now you develop a whole new skill set you're you're working on your bench you're working on your core in between but you're also working your grip you know so as you start to as you start to as you start to gain some of these fitness movements as you start to gain some of these skills you get to add these into your day-to-day regimen to make everything a little easier or more simple to get to or even just make the act of getting a workout in more simple as the guy was pointing out he doesn't really view his exercise as workouts so again learning how to use a mace okay learn how to use a mace maybe it looks weird maybe you look funky maybe you've hit yourself with it a couple

times and you just you're like damn this this is the worst right well once you develop that skill you can go outside at any time or whatever area you can find in your home or whatever to twirl these things around as long you're not going to knock over a lampshade um and that's another activity that you have and you can do that in between jump and rope and now you have a great workout for the day. What about, you know, having some proficiency with pushups? Maybe you suck at push-ups. Maybe you have to use a slingshot. Slingshot, don't forget, it's going to help you with push-ups, bench, dips, those kinds of things. You throw in some slingshot push-ups, maybe in between a slingshot push-ups, you're jumping rope, and maybe in

between that, you're twirling around a mace. And you do five rounds of that. And each round is eight minutes or something like that. You just did a workout that took you, that took you like 45 minutes or so maybe with a warm up maybe it took you an hour but you got through like a diverse amount of movement it's like that's kind of a sick workout if you really think about it so like that's the stuff that I'm continuously working on there's there's even just small stuff like lunges and stuff like that step ups I'm like man I'm not that good at those but that's dumb you know I'm thinking to myself I'm like that's kind of dumb I've been training forever I squat a thousand pounds and a lunge like isn't that easy for me to do. I'm like that's kind of

stupid. Like they're not hard for me to do. I can probably do a couple hundred lunges. I could probably lunge, you know, the length of a football field and back probably or something like that and not not completely die from it. But I still just, I'm not that great at them. I'm off balance and but why am I that way? It's because I don't use, I don't do them that much. So recently I've been working on a little bit more. And now that I have that WEC vest, I'm going to try to incorporate doing some lunges because I found that like with the

wet vest, if I stay in like a lunge position, I could do some like ISOs and I can do some various movements where I'm kind of holding like a low position and I can really work my knees. And for me, it works my back knee a lot because the back knee is way

over the toe and that positioning is a little uncomfortable. And you can even see Ryan playing a clip of me doing some of these kind of alternating lunges back and forth, higher and lower, and you know, I get off balance a little bit here and there. So I'd like to be just more proficient

with that, I'd like to be better at that. But in the meantime, I'm going to look like a fool doing it. I'm going to look a little stupid when I do some of these things. Over time, I'll get better at them. So for some of you out there that are kind of worried about what people are saying

or worried about, you know, what's somebody going to, what's somebody going to think if I, you know, or start twirling around this rope or what's someone going to think if I'm wearing this vest that's making noise, just don't worry about it. Do your best to, like, not worry about it. Do your best to just be on your own path, your own way. When I run with the weck vest on and people kind of look at me a little bit, they're not like up in arms over it. I mean, it's, they hear the noise for maybe five seconds, you know, three seconds. You know, three seconds. I don't know, however long it takes me to, like, run past them and get far enough away to where they don't really hear it.

It's not super loud. The only thing that I've noticed with it that can be something you should be a little cautious with is just be cautious with it with dogs. Because, like, someone's walking their dog. So sometimes if somebody's walking their dog, depending on the kind of dog, I might stop. I might just, like, walk past that person just because I'm like, I don't want, you know, the dog will get like, it'll get all crazy. get all crazy over the uh over the noise you're making but other than that um it's just it's just in your own head a lot of times these things are in our own head about what we think other people

are thinking about us and it's really not worth it i think with the amount of content the amount of information um that i put out over the years i think that the real people the real followers they know who I am and they know what I'm about. There's been a lot of people that have come to my gym over the years. Super Training Gym was open to the public for 10 years. It was free. Open to the public for 10 years and it was free. And I spent so much time with a lot of people

who came from all over the world to Super Training Gym. And those people know me better than, you know, just the people that pop in and out of my Instagram. So you have to realize that, like, a lot of people, they don't know anything about you. These people that might say some of these negative things or these people that might, these people that, you know, might think what you're doing is dumb.

But, like, the way I look at it, you know, when I think about some of the things in fitness, I just have recognized that some of the things don't really work as well as we kind of thought they would or they don't sometimes some of these things like just because you're lifting heavy it doesn't take care of everything for you lifting heavy is great it has a lot of utility it's going to chew up a lot of glucose it's going to help build muscle mass it's going to help your central nervous system it's going to help a lot of things but it's not going to do everything for you and so when other people have conjecture towards heavy lifting and heavy lifting

making you stiff, again, I don't, I don't get, I think a lot of people get mad. They get like angry. And I'm going to do another, another podcast talking about anger because I just think that anger, I think anger can be a huge weakness for a lot of people. And I think especially a lot of men. And I don't, I don't think it's a great trait to have. A little anger can probably, can sometimes probably be a motivator. It could probably be something that, um, leads,

you to maybe take action um but i i think it also depends on uh where you aim that anger and how you yeah how what that anger kind of turns into um within you as a person but for me you know i i i'm rarely angry i'm pretty happy i like sharing information i like sharing stuff with people and uh yes it can be annoying when i make posts and take time to share you stuff with people because I could otherwise just be doing the stuff on my own I like doing it I like doing it and I do so much of this stuff on my own I mean what you guys see even though this stuff is filmed at an insane rate um you don't see like 80% of what I do you don't see like there's so much other shit that I do um and even my own friends that work out with me and stuff they don't see all

the other stuff that I do because I work out like multiple times a day I'm doing stuff like I'm My activity level is high. So not even my wife sees it. Like I'm the only one that sees it all. Yesterday, I told you I did that V-O-2 max workout. I did that V-O-2 max workout in the morning. And then the evening, I lifted with my friends. And we did some crazy, halacious circuits that were brutal.

And so, like, I'm constantly moving. I'm constantly working on, getting better. I just love this stuff. I love this shit so much. I love to train. I love the way it feels. I love, I love being kind of backed into a corner, not really sure if I'm able to do another rep. Not really sure if I'm going to be able to take another breath. I don't really love that part of it. I don't love getting myself that, that, uh, breathing that hard to where you're like, oh shit, I may have overdone it. But I have gotten myself to that point before and I do kind of like it. There is a side to me that kind of likes it. But it's a little it's a little on the riskier

side. But for yourself you know you're going to have to just find the things that you enjoy find the things you're gravitating towards and keep doing them kind of regardless of regardless of what other people are thinking regardless of what other people are saying about you or to you. Um, what I, what I have found is that by being, by being open-minded and hearing someone say almost something the opposite of what I thought has really been really helpful to me. Now, I'll give you a prime example of it.

I always felt that if I did full range of motion squats, which I pretty much have done full range of motion squats for most of my life, until more recently I don't really do, probably the last five, six years I don't really squat nearly as low except for occasionally with a lighter kettlebell or with my own body weight. It's not even occasionally.

I guess I do it more than I think. But anyway, I don't really do as many full range of motion squats as I used to. But even when I was doing full range of motion squats, guess what? I lost a lot of range of motion.

You know, and people say use it or lose it, but I found that's not true. I'm using it. I'm using everything I got every day. I'm using every body part every day and I got stiffer over time and for me it was from the heavy lifting

as it was part of it and I don't even know that for sure because it could just be my body could just be my genetics and I mentioned to you guys many times before I'm not a mobile person anyway and I never really was a mobile mobile person I also don't think

and I know that your mindset can kind of shift you a particular way but I also don't think I'll ever be a mobile person I can be more mobile than I am now of course I could work on it and I could be better and I can get better and I will get better because it is something I am working on but no matter how much focus on it I mean unless I changed everything unless I started changing my testosterone shots for estrogen like I'm not going to get that much more flexy and bendy I think that's just kind of the truth of it and I'm not I'm not willing to head in that direction to make something like that happen. But you have to understand, I spent all these years doing this heavy lifting a particular way.

In the back of my mind, I knew that there was these other truths going on simultaneously while I was lifting these heavy weights. And even as much of a proponent of power of thing as I am and as I was, I knew that by listening to some of the criticism, from people like the people at Gota and from the people at functional patterns and even in communicating with Kelly Sturrette who didn't really have negative critiques of powerlifting, he was more like, well, if that's what you want to do, let me show you how to, you know, get your RPM's way up

but not, you know, blow everything out. And I appreciated that from Sturrette because he's like, this is what you love to do, so I'm not going to interfere. I just want to help enhance. And he did. I went from a 943 squat to a 1,080 squat I'll say that again

I went from a 943 squat to a 1,080 squat from a guy that teaches people how to stretch and Kelly hates that but that's what he is he's a bendy flexy guy that teaches people how to stretch

or at least he was now he's a lot more than that I give him his due he's amazing but think about that that's interesting right I worked with Louis Simmons I worked you know

I was trained and mentored by the greatest power of thing coach there ever was, probably on this planet. And Kelly Sturrette is the one that helped put an extra over 100 pounds on my squat after I was already squatting, already squatting proficiently with a heavy ass weight. But that's only because I was open-minded to listen to him because I knew what he was saying was true. He was like, you got to open your hips up. You got to get your hamstring, your hips, your glutes. These things got to open up a little bit. And so I started doing some of his stretches with a distraction of the band. And now you see some people sharing that on Instagram and stuff as if it's new.

And it's been around for probably almost 20 years at this point. But those movements, those were profound. And they helped me so much that I remember in one meet. I didn't really do any, any warm-ups. I just, I did some of the, they're kind of like active stretches, I guess you'd say. I did some of the active stretches that Kelly showed me, which were a lot of hamstring, hip, dominant-type stretches

with a band against, you know, on a rack. And then my first squat attempt was 500 in a warm-up room. I did 500, 700, and then I went to the platform and did like 900, and then I went to like a thousand 80 and I think that was my best squad ever. So I wouldn't have been able to do anything like that without without that open-mindedness to learn from someone like Kelly because I could have easily been like, well, he does all that stupid CrossFit shit. I could have said that, right?

I could have said, oh, he's all in like, everyone's all in like cardio and stuff and Olympic lifts and those are dumb. Those are stupid. it always got all this rain you know but he was telling me like hey look you know your range of motion is like too limited and he's like you probably want some limited range of motion but you don't want it to be so much that it uh that is to your detriment and then fast forward a few years later and you know i'm i'm listening to some stuff from these other groups and these other parties talking about lifting, making people stiff, maybe leading to them getting uncoordinated and

things like that when they're not doing it in collaboration with other things. I think that's a critical piece there too. And also it's important to note that what's happened to me is not going to necessarily happen to everybody. It's just, it's my own personal experiences that have gone this way for me. And I don't even really view my tightness as really being a problem. I feel really good in my day to day. I'm not banged up, beat up. I am sore often because I train hard. But I feel awesome every single day.

I feel really good. But I do have tightness that is annoying. Like when I go to tie my shoes, my body's pretty tight. Recently tearing my hamstring, it made it like nearly impossible to get my shoes on because I already have limited range of motion and, you know, I tore my hamstring so it made it, it made it ten times worse.

That hammy's healing up, by the way. If, for those of you that know, then you know, and if you have a pet kangaroo and it needs to recover from a hamstring tear, you can give it BPC-157, TB 500, and the copper peptide. And you can have at it with that. And you can look up from,

someone else other than me the dosing of that but uh man that that that healed up by kangaroos hamstring super fast so for those you that have kangaroos out there here's to you um but yeah you know without having open mind and without being someone that's willing to take some bullets on instagram and youtube with showing people weird and different stuff then I never meet the guys at human garage. I never meet the functional patterns, guys. I mean, look at the human garage guys when they were here having us do the twisty stuff

and you're pushing your tongue, you're twisting your head one way, pushing your tongue in the other. It can't look any more ridiculous. And don't think that I don't know that. I know how ridiculous it looks. But I'm willing to entertain it because what if it's something that works?

What if it's something that can be effective? maybe some of the things that some influencers say maybe they're bullshit you know whether it be Ben Greenfield or Dave Asprey or Mark Bell or whoever maybe it's bullshit right but maybe sometimes maybe when you hear something from you should listen up because maybe it's something that has value and maybe it's something that's going to help you out later on maybe it's something that's going to help you out like maybe you don't have a particular problem right now um but maybe your uncle does and maybe some of the information might be useful so it's it's good to keep an open mind i think it's good to also have a have your bullshit meter on i think it's good to also say hmm i don't

know man you know with some of these things let them be out for a while let them be around for a while Am I going to be as excited about rope flow five years from now? Probably not. I probably won't be. Will I be as happy and as fired up about Maces five years from now? No. I probably won't be. I'll just be totally honestly.

I probably won't be. I'll probably be on to messing around with something else. Am I going to be as excited about sandbags? Nope. Will I still be using them and incorporating those things into my workout? I would say 100% yes, but I don't really know, but I believe so. There are some things, there are some things I don't really like that I've never adapted to.

And, like, I like med balls and all that stuff too. And I like all the different machines and I like, obviously, I like compound movements. Who doesn't like those? Those are great. But they can come and go for me a little bit, but I always do like overhead presses. I always do Ben Overrose. I always do some fashion or some variation of a deadlift. I always do some variation of a bench press.

I always do some variation of a squat. But the one thing that I haven't really liked that a lot of people swear by that they really like is a kettlebell. And it just for whatever reason, it doesn't work great with my body for some reason. I still use them. I still utilize them because I recognize that it's probably a good practice for me to utilize a kettlebell here and there.

but yeah every time i go to especially with my left side whenever i go to do presses my left side i always hit myself in the form or wrist i try to watch the technique and stuff i cannot pick up what i'm doing wrong on that side versus the other side and they're annoying so i'm like oh you know what i'm just going to use the dumbbell uh but more recently i got into using the thompson fat bell i don't if you guys seen that one i got to just do a video on that because that donnie thompson makes great inventions The tempering tools that he has, those are amazing. You guys have seen me kind of show some documentation and stuff of the of the tempering tools.

The Thompson Fat Bell is something, everyone should own some Thompson Fat Bells. They're awesome. The hard part is to figure out like, you know, what sizes to get, what weights to get for those. But an absolutely incredible piece of equipment. It's a dumbbell that you basically put your hand in. into and it gives you like a Hulk smash hand and I can't say enough great things about them they just they just feel awesome they feel amazing um and yeah more recently I got into the maces because the mobility and when you see me doing the mace you know it's going to be different than you watching

someone who's 25 years old move around a mace um I don't move around like I'm 25 I move around probably more like I'm the age time that I am. And so these are all things, they're all practices, they're all things I'm working on. But when I heard a few people years ago talking about how they feel that weights sometimes do more harm than good when it comes to athleticism and stuff like that, I was like, my ears just popped right open. Because I'm like, this is really interesting and fascinating to me. how true is this

and how could this be this seems like man this seems like bullshit but let me just think about that for a minute how is it that Jesse Owens or even like and they went back 100 years and they showed they showed a guy

you know Usain Bolt I think he ran a 9-5-7 I think he ran a 9-57 I think he ran. I think it's the fastest 100 meter ever. If you go back 100 years from then, 100 years from now, I think the difference in time is only like 0.7 seconds. Something ridiculous like that. Maybe you could look it up. I think Jesse Owens ran like a 10 something. I think. Jesse Owens ran like a 10 something. I don't think he ran

under 10 seconds. Yeah, Jesse Owens' 100 meter time in the 1936 Berlin Olympics was 10.3. His personal best is 10.2. So 10.3, and then what's bolts?

Bolt is a 9. Probably nine. 9.58, and that was in 2009. So basically, between those two, there's 0.8 seconds. Okay? There's 0.8 seconds.

Now, somebody might say, okay, well, the distance is 100 meters. It's very short. I don't know what kind of blocks Jesse Owens had access to, but maybe you rewind that, Ryan. Maybe we can kind of see. But supposedly, they used to dig holes in the dirt. the most most track people would tell you flat out that a track people think that a track a nice track makes a like almost a 10% difference in speed a good track versus like running on something shitty

whatever the case is we can't really exactly identify or completely see what they're running off of back then um Jesse Owens is flying man he's quite ahead of the pack oh that other guy came on strong at the end yeah it looks like they got little holes dug in the ground yeah yeah it does it does right yeah so so they don't have blocks they don't have super shoe they don't have a carbon fiber footplate okay um and they don't have the proper track again people think the track makes a 10% difference um i'm not good with numbers and percentages and stuff like that um but 10% is a big deal and we're talking about 0.7 seconds, I mean, Jesse Owens would already, he would already be running 10% faster if he just had a faster track. Now, picture that he also has spikes that

have the carbon fiber footplate technology as well. Maybe that gives him another 5%. So without any training, without any knowledge of Usain Bolt, without any, he doesn't, you know, and I know bolt like lifted and stuff but i i think i think if you were to ask maybe if you were to ask bolt's coach you know how much of a difference did lifting make he might think it makes a lot because maybe that guy trained him with weights and feels it was super important uh but it's interesting could he run a similar speed without i mean i don't think there's any reason to really get into that debate necessarily, but the fact that the fact that lifting in some cases can make some people less athletic or have little to no bearing, and that's my main point,

because I don't think Jesse Owens lifted. Jesse Owens obviously trained a lot. I'm not saying there's not a lot of training going on, but when the idea of can strength training be more harmful than we think I think 100% the answer is a thousand percent yes it can be way more harmful than we think and we just need to think about it more it doesn't mean that we can't do it it just means that we need to think about a little bit more if you want to lose athleticism and you want to have a body that gets tighter and tighter over time then you probably just never really address things like sprints, things like, you know, jumping, things like, you know, box jumps and depth jumps and rotational work. Probably just don't really ever work on any of that or think about it

because who cares, right? You just want to lift and be big and you don't really care about the stiffness. Then I think that's fine to each their own. You're allowed to enjoy that. You're allowed to like that and you don't have to work on anything else but i'm just thinking most of my buddies who like to redline and kind of have music cranked up and and they they like to lift real heavy and or they like to bodybuild and they love kind of being in this like routine i think as they get older they're going to start to look for some other things to do um not again not that they're going to leave lifting completely but they're going to understand and come to the same conclusion I did is that yes this stuff can make you stiff and yes

you should be thinking or considering maybe some other ways of doing things maybe even just slightly changing the way that you exercise so you know what if um you know what if instead of like deadlifting all the time what if you now are doing like stiff leg deadlifts and you're doing them with a little bit lighter weight and you're doing them more for the practice of range of motion you're doing them almost maybe more like a Jefferson curl or something like that. To me, that makes some sense. That sounds reasonable. Instead of, you know, doing a Bulgarian split squat with 80 pound dumbbells in your hand

to like try to, you know, maximize the muscle growth and gets a lot of size and thickness on your hamstrings and your quads, maybe you just got like 40 in each hand because you're working on the range of motion a little bit better. And maybe you're holding a little bit more of an ISO because you are trying to positively impact the health of the connective tissue in the knee because we know you can have some like collagen resynthesis and stuff like that with some isos which is also really interesting and what if you what if you what if you do pair that with like peptides and you pair that with the copper peptide and you pair that with uh drinking and consuming some collagen peptides like i don't know

might be might be some really good benefit in that but again if we don't have an open mind you don't you don't get access to any of that stuff. And so for the people who've given me shit over the last couple of weeks, months, years, I gladly accept it. It's part of the territory. It's part of what I do. And I do believe I'm one of the first influencers

and I do believe I had a big impact on the industry and showed a lot of people how to power lift, how to strength train. And some of the stuff that I'm showing now, think will be as popular as those other things. I think that more people are going to want to move towards some of these other types of movement because they're just going to realize that they're not necessarily more valuable than going to the gym, but they're on par.

They're very valuable to jump, to rotate, and to figure out ways to get in movement that are different than just like a bench squat and deadlift, I think is extremely important. and like I said I'm accepting of the of the criticism because I understand what happened to a lot of you guys a lot of you guys were following me because you thought that um you know I was I was delivering a message about powerlifting at a time when really not no one else was doing that there's a couple other people kind of getting into the mix back then maybe a Chris Duffin a little bit here and there and some some other folks um but for the most part It was me sharing out the majority of content at the time. And then now my interests of shift, I'm no longer a power lifter. I don't compete in powerlifting anymore. I don't do a lot of those things anymore.

I'm working on breathing techniques. I am a fan of like, I'm a fan of red light therapy. You see me wearing these freak show glasses every once in a while to block out blue light. I am somebody who has embraced. these ideas and concepts of like, hey, we should be conscious of the amount of EMF that's around us. We should be conscious of the chemicals that are around us. I'm not completely nutso and crazy

about it. I don't try to pick over everything with a fine tooth comb, but I do my best to, you know, have my phone in the other room. I don't sleep with my, my phone's not in my room. I don't like the extra EMF being around. Whether that makes a big difference or not these are just things that again i've looked at i reviewed i'm open to it i'm open to it and i'm like you know what it's not hard it's not hard for me to have the practice of just putting my phone in a different room and shut and shutting it off for the evening like there's nothing difficult about that and so these are just some things that i've kind of adopted and they're here until i find you know better means or find other things

to do and the criticism is not only welcome but i think is warranted because they think some people that give criticism are smarter than people want to give them credit for the criticism is understandable it's because i made a change people are uncomfortable with change and they're uncomfortable when somebody else makes a change people are also uncomfortable with somebody having success in something or people are also uncomfortable with someone being right about something people are also uncomfortable

with saying that they're wrong about certain things and I've been wrong about certain things like I've been wrong in a bunch of different ways but it's weird because I can't come out necessarily and say hey guys I was wrong about this this and this because I still don't really know. Like there's some things with like keto

and there's some things with different styles of diet where I'm like that actually, some of those ideologies actually might be a little bit harmful. But I'm like, but only to a subset of people. It doesn't seem like they're harmful to everybody. So it's interesting,

you know, having this ability to be able to influence people and to be able to share content with people and to tell people certain things. Sometimes I do want to tell everyone to just go fuck themselves. And other times I'm like, why would I do that? Why would I build an audience and get a crowd around me just to tell everyone to go fuck themselves?

It doesn't really make any sense. But sometimes it's just out of frustration because sometimes I think I'm being misunderstood. So hopefully you guys, through this podcast here today, hopefully you guys can see and better understand um the reasons why i kind of have gone down the path that i've gone down and hopefully as i mentioned in the beginning i voted for trump i voted for him more than once what i'm hoping is that you guys can have the sense to not have that make you mad because it there's really not a reason for you for for it to make you mad when we live in a free country and there was only two people to vote for in the first place uh who i support or who you

support or what you support it's up to you i'm not going to get mad at you for it and i hope that you don't get mad at me for it i can understand uh frustration i can understand kidding around i can understand a little bit this and that but to actually get angry over it to me doesn't personally make any sense maybe it makes more sense to you than it does to me strength is never week this week this never strength catch you guys later bye