Mark Bell's Power Project - Will EGO LIFTING Catch Up To Us All? || MBPP Ep. 980

Episode Date: September 6, 2023

In Episode 980, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about "ego lifting" and discuss the training methods of Sam Sulek   Official Power Project Website: https://powerproject.live Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw   Special perks for our listeners below! ➢ https://Peluva.com/PowerProject Code POWERPROJECT15 to save 15% off Peluva Shoes!   ➢https://drinkag1.com/powerproject Receive a year supply of Vitamin D3+K2 & 5 Travel Packs!   ➢ https://withinyoubrand.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off supplements!   ➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off all gear and apparel!   ➢ https://mindbullet.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off Mind Bullet!   ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save up to 25% off your Build a Box   ➢ Better Fed Beef: https://betterfedbeef.com/pages/powerproject   ➢ https://hostagetape.com/powerproject to receive a year supply of Hostage Tape and Nose Strips for less than $1 a night!   ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!   ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM   ➢ https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/powerproject to save 15% off Vivo Barefoot shoes!   ➢ https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order at Vuori!   ➢ https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro at 8 Sleep!   ➢ https://marekhealth.com/PowerProject to receive 10% off our Panel, Check Up Panel or any custom panel!   ➢ Piedmontese Beef: https://www.CPBeef.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150   Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://www.PowerProject.live ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject   FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell   Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en   Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz   #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast #markbellspowerproject

You guys probably heard of Mr. Sam Sulek. He's trying to destroy his chest. Maybe he's just going with what feels good. Maybe he's basing it off of the last couple of years and the size that he's put on. In a few years, is he still gonna be able to lift in this way if he keeps pushing it so quickly? I hope so.

You wanna be doing it eight years from now. So if you want to be, you gotta be kind of careful with the way you lift. Training in a lot of ways is like a really awesome tool for mental health. But I also think there's a lot of people in fitness that are mentally sick. But getting bigger and more jack can help a lot of shit. And lifting a little bit more than you did a month ago feels pretty damn nice. Some people lift with a level of aggressiveness over years and they just seem to be just fine.

I don't know if they're fine. I do love to lift. I do love to train. But I am nowadays, I'm really cautious of like, well, what is this going to cost me? And what am I doing? What am I doing this for? You can go lift all the time, right? Still do it.

Yeah. No, I think I'm cured, man. Cured? Yeah, I think so. Do you think it's a sickness? Yeah, I do. I think people are afflicted with it. I think people are addicted to with it i think people are

addicted to fitness yeah i actually think uh you know uh i think that um training in a lot of ways is like a really awesome tool for mental health but i also think there's a lot of people in fitness that are mentally sick mentally ill and it's like it fills in a gap for them and i don't know if they ever get to really scratch the itch that they're looking for. And it's probably a deeper conversation. But I think that a lot of people are probably trying to fulfill something. And I don't think it's necessarily going to get fulfilled 100% by just making yourself bigger and more jacked. That's true. But getting bigger and more jacked can help's true. But getting bigger and more jacked

can help a lot of shit. It makes a lot of things a little bit easier. And lifting a little bit more than you did a month ago feels pretty damn nice. I think people get really attached to it. They get attached to the feel. There's definitely a certain feel, especially the heavier weights. The pump.

There's a feel to the pump. Oh yeah. Sounds like you're missing it i would like to get one right now really would it does feel good it does feel really good but the pump doesn't necessarily have well i mean can you ego lift to get a pump though of course yeah even though like a lighter weight you could probably do more reps and get a better pump yeah you can go a little crazy with getting a pump though. Of course. Yeah, even though like a lighter weight, you could probably do more reps and get a better pump. Yeah, you can go a little crazy with getting a pump. Yeah.

Yeah, we've done it a bunch of times with like bodybuilding stuff. The intensity can still be high. The weights can still be kind of heavy. But I think people get so attached to these things and it becomes such a part of them that sometimes it's a negative. I think sometimes it's working against you. I mean, I don't really know what everyone's deal is with fitness, but I think there's some underlying thing about health in there somewhere. Oh, yeah.

You know, somewhere in there, whether it's just like managing body weight, like that's a part of health. Maybe for someone older, like their doctor told them like your blood pressure's high you should go do something about it maybe people listen to peter itea and they heard that it's good for bone density and good for uh good to fight against like diabetes and it's a good thing to kind of like push off disease but i think a lot of people got into fitness just because maybe they were into sports and then they just kind of wandered into the gym one day and it's like something else to do it gives you like you're training for soccer

you're training for football and uh for me when i was young i did a bunch of different sports and i was always like training for something and that was uh that was a good beard because lifting lifting was always my bitch hanging around in the background. It was calling to me all the time. It was always there. And I knew it would rear its ugly head again. I loved it from day one. I always liked it, but I wanted to be more than that.

I wanted to be like a football player. I wanted to be able to get a scholarship in track or something like that. But it wasn't in the cards. I was a power lifter from the jump. ship and track or something you know something like that but it wasn't in the cards i was a power lifter from the jump remember when big jay came and he oh boy the way that he was having me lift that shit like i was just like am i gonna get injured while doing this because we were doing those rows and he was like for the whole stack and then he filled the whole stack he was just like you know just moving his whole body was going with the row and when i did that i was like jay how are you not fucked up i was really curious but i do think that there are some individuals who just hold a level of maybe pain tolerance and or resilience to their bodies where like they can do because

some people lift in a certain way just i'm not call it, I won't call it dumb or anything, but just aggressive with a level of aggressiveness over years. And they just seem to be just fine. And I never, I don't know, I could never do that type of shit and last. I don't know if they're fine. I don't know if they're fine. I think they're pretty stiff. You know, I think their bodies are pretty tight. And I think if they, if they could figure out something that they like to do that helped make them feel better, I think they would do it. But I think their bodies are pretty tight, and I think if they could figure out something they'd like to do that helped make them feel better, I think they would do it. But I think they also are just – and I'm in the same boat still. I mean I'm still working my way through a lot of this stuff.

My body is still stiffer than I'd like it to be. I'm still working through this process. But fortunately for me, I competed in powerlifting, and I felt like I lifted what I needed to lift. So I got a lot of that out. And then bodybuilding, I never really felt like a bodybuilder. I like to train like a bodybuilder, but I didn't really love the process. So I'm not like in love with chasing down bodybuilding or interested enough to continue to pursue that. But I do love to lift. I do love to train. But I am nowadays, I'm really cautious of like, well, what is this going to cost me? And what am I doing? Like, what am I doing this for? to go on something like a seated row, I'll still do that movement. I'll still do an exercise like that. Uh, rather than loading up the stack, I might put on like 80 pounds and just let me get like full range of motion. Let me stretch, let me get into positions that you're not supposed to get into, throw my shoulders forward, round my upper back and just try to explore and try to, um, you know, not just lift a certain amount of weight that i'm going to film for instagram or not just get attached to uh who i am or who i think people think that i am and then try to hold

this you know thing up on like a fucking platter like i'm always going to be this to you and i gotta serve it up to everybody all the time like no i'm just i like doing different shit so i'm going to serve up different stuff all the time. Yeah. And I would say like the, the ego side, when it starts to take over, it like suppresses the, like, whatever you want to say is functional. But like, I'm just remembering when I'm, when I'm first like going to a gym, like I didn't want to mess with the kettlebells, um, you know, because like doing a kettlebell swing

didn't look as cool as like doing a dumbbell bench or a regular bench press and when it came to the lat you know pull down uh i was swinging that thing as hard as i could because it felt cool that i could move more weight but in actuality it's like oh if i did maybe a quarter of like the weight at that time that i was using i would have gotten better results but i wanted to like look cool you know because there's other people there this is what jay color does right yeah jay color does lat pull down seated row like i'm gonna do all those things those guys look awesome ouch yeah but i was just saying like it prevented me from like actually building a really good base and being like a healthier person you know because i wasn't even

moving like any like legitimate weight, but I was already getting stiff all over because it was doing just like traditional barbell stuff. I think maybe I start to kind of gravitate towards stuff that like looks like it's more like in your wheelhouse or things that you just thought were cool, you know? So it's like kettlebell swing, you're like, I don't know what that's about.

And then plus it's like, how heavy is it? What weight is the guy using? Exactly. 36 pounds? That doesn't seem like that's that much. Swing and wait between his legs? What the fuck is this? Yeah, that's very weird.

We're going to pull up that video that got us here. Yeah, here we go. You guys probably heard of Mr. Sam Sulik. He's been going crazy. Everybody talking about him. Everybody talking about him. He's too big. He shouldn't be on so much shit.

Here we go. Let's get this. It's very large. See if I can make the timing right. Sam Sulik, he's infamous for promoting eagle lifting in the gym. And as you can see on the pec deck, he's doing partial range of motion. He's trying to destroy his chest i've rarely seen anyone do this many sets to failure and beyond he seems

destined to get an ifbb pro card but it should not be a race you know what's interesting you know this sam sulk he was a former gymnast right? So he has a lot of strength before he started lifting. He probably has the ability, more endurance than most people who start lifting, right? So he can probably handle more volume than most people. So I don't know. Maybe all the partial range of motion stuff isn't beneficial for most people. But this is a guy who has a better connection to his body and probably a better mind muscle connection than most athletes who get into lifting. So there's probably going to be things that he can do and maybe get away with that just most can't.

Maybe he's just going with what feels good. Like as he's going through the motions, maybe, you know, maybe he doesn't feel like it's necessarily for something else or for his own ego. Maybe he just feels like it's in his best interest. And maybe he's basing it off of the last couple of years and the size that he's put on. I mean, he looks amazing. Like that muscle density. Yeah. I don't really – I can't really recall like the last time I saw someone with like density like that at such a young age.

He's only like 22 or 23 or something. Something that maybe younger dude he might be like 21 i mean he he looks he looks crazy like it's just like uh what the fuck's going on here when you see him and i think that's the attraction but i also think that um the gymnastics played into it massively huge huge because um former powerlifter laura Phelps was a gymnast as well. And she was, you know, female powerlifter squatting freaking like 800 pounds and shit like that, breaking all-time world records. So that gymnastics background is definitely going to prepare you. Like lifting weights after doing gymnastics is very easy in a lot of ways. And gymnasts, like they have peak control over every aspect of

movement and calisthenics of their body i'm not sure what you know um what events that he did but if he had that type of calisthenic control then i'm not surprised that like his ability to i guess build this type of muscle at this point i even move the way he does it's comical he's gonna get so big i mean he's already huge yeah but like we know that the next four to six years he's gonna get like so much bigger it's gonna be ridiculous yeah quick google search says that he's 21 years old that's so dumb that's so stupid yeah like uh i don't know what his like diet regimen is i don't i haven't followed a ton of different stuff from this guy but i think greg made a video and it's a apparently

to greg and some other people it's pretty uh horrible because he eats like eats a lot and eats whatever but look he's got like uh serratus muscles just kind of hanging out in there like why he's he doesn't look like he's uh necessarily shredded for a show it looks like he's kind of just chilling and he's just got done with a good workout. He's like flexing and looks insane. This is the thing. I'm pumped for the guy because what he's doing is working for him. But I can understand where I guess there's another video.

Actually, Andrew, you have that video from Mike Isretel? I do. I do. Push that one real quick. Wish me luck. Oh, man. What Sam is doing here is what I would just call colloquially moving weight around. It's fun to be young and jacked and strong as f*** and just like bully the weights.

It's dope. And it's effective, too. But the ratio of stimulus to fatigue and the ratio of stimulus to injury probability isn't ideal. Not so close to ideal. This is good. It's okay. But it can be done better. Sam Sulek, we need you on the show.

Please come here to Sacramento. Let's interview you. Let's get to the bottom of some of this stuff. Yeah. I actually watched Mike's video on it because he did say some very interesting things. Like the dude's young, right? so he's been a lifelong athlete he's apparently he's not doesn't have any injuries or anything so it works for him there's two things one if somebody's new and they're watching his stuff it's very motivational i could imagine being 19 20 years old and coming

across him i'd see that that that should be like, let's fucking go. That would get me pumped for the gym. But if I didn't necessarily have the athletic background that he has and I tried to like mimic aspects of the way he lifts, he has superior body control to 99 percent of people because he's single arm rowing it he can there are aspects of that that he can control better than the novice athlete who's only been lifting for a year and is new to all this gym stuff and they're trying to do the same thing they just don't have that ability so i can see where like it can be problematic for some people and i can see why greg and mike are grilling him but then the other thing is is like in a few years is he still going to be able to lift in this way if he keeps pushing it so quickly? I hope so.

I truly do hope so. I don't want anyone to get injured. But there's an aspect of longevity to this where you do want to be lifting with a full range of motion. You do not want to use too much momentum all the time because like are you going to be able to do that eight years from now? You want to be doing it eight years from now. if you want to be you got to be kind of careful with the way you lift we talked to countless professionals on the podcast about the importance of having strong feet and chances are that wearing narrow toe box shoes has weakened your feet and your toes don't function the way they should sucks bro yeah that's why we've partnered with

palooza and they're the first casual wide toe-toe box, five-finger shoe that you can wear running, in the gym, literally anywhere. But the benefit of these shoes is that as you stick your feet in and your little toesy-woesy start to get a little bit of spacey-wasey, your feet will start to function the way they should because your toes will slowly start to widen out, and your feet will no longer be this blubby little cast that they probably are right now. Andrew, how can we get them? Yeah, time to spread them cheeks i mean toes uh head over to paluva.com slash power project that's p-e-l-u-v-a.com slash power project now check out enter promo code power project 15 to save 15 off again that's at paluva.com slash power project links in the description as well as the podcast show notes they They got tons of them. Check them out. There's a lot of stuff in there. You know, I think, you know, Ronnie Coleman said it so plainly when they were like, why don't you lock out your reps when you're doing dumbbells? He's like, because it hurts my elbows. And I think a lot of these guys are just intuitive.

And I think a lot of these guys are just intuitive. And people that try to science the body, I think we're making a big mistake when we try to oversimplify and overscience the human body. There's too much different shit going on. You know, maybe with this particular guy, we don't really know his full routine. We don't know his practices. We don't know what he was doing beforehand. Partial range of motion is amazing. It's been used forever.

It's very, very useful. It's very helpful. People have been doing rack, you know, out of the rack deadlift where the weight is, you know, resting in the rack and you do a partial range of motion. People have been doing board presses for bench press or just or half squats or, I mean, the list goes on and on of partial range of motion movements that people have utilized. And in addition to that, when it comes to bodybuilding, I mean, there's some old school things that have been around forever. Something like 21s where you do a little partial range of motion and then you do some full range of motion. So this guy, who knows, maybe all his warmup sets are always full range or, you know or maybe he just found something that – again, it just looks like it's working for him. We could sit here and try to rack our brain about like what's optimal.

But this is like the fastest that we've really seen someone get this jacked. I know that there's other bodybuilders in the history of bodybuilding. You look at like Lee Priest when Lee Priest was young. That was pretty just grotesque how big he got at a young age. But this guy's right up there with some of the best doing it at such a young age. Everything about this kid, it's so intriguing. Let's see. So almost 500,000 followers and he has four posts.

Right. I understand he could just put some up and take them down or whatever, but his YouTube channel, it exploded and it's so basic. Right. It's just him like lifting. Stream of consciousness for 40 minutes. Dude, it's like it just this guy interests the hell out of me. Like I want to figure out like what's going on here.

Like how did he. I mean, you know how much we talk about YouTube and trying to like optimize everything. And then this kid just comes and says, no, I don't need to worry about it. Yeah, we're trying to talk to experts. Yeah, and he's just like, let me just hit upload, no edit, and boom. It's just everywhere. It's like, I want to talk to this guy.

You know what, though? To an extent, like, you know, I have to be careful with this. He is an expert because he's been an athlete all his life. There's an aspect to that where, like, people can go to school and try to learn certain things in terms of, and they have that type of knowledge. But then there's a knowledge of, like, he knows how to use his body better than a majority of people in fitness because he's been a true athlete. fitness because he's been a true athlete, which means that like an aspect of bodybuilding is truly being able to connect your mind to every single muscle in your body and have those things activate on command. That's how more experienced bodybuilders can get away with using lighter weight and have a better level of muscle activation than a newer lifter who's lifting

heavier weight and trying to do the same thing because they don't have that level of connection. But someone like him who's been doing this all his life, not necessarily bodybuilding, but gymnastics, right? He has the ability to use these, do these movements and have a superior muscle activation to most people because most people haven't been doing that, right? So he is an expert when it comes to that. So there are things that when you watch him train, if you're paying attention to what he's doing,

maybe there are things that you can pull away for yourself. But there are things that when you watch him train, if you're, if you're paying attention to what he's doing, maybe there are things that you can pull away for yourself, but there are things you got to be careful with because there are certain things he does that just most people are not ready for. Their body does not have the capacity to do safely. That's it. Yep. And if you look at, you know, check out videos of Ronnie, check out videos of Jay Cutler, like they all use, they all use different ranges of motion. They use different ranges of motion. They don't always subscribe to full range all the time. There is always a thing on a squat. I don't really know what makes a squat unique where everyone feels like you got to bury those all the time.

Yeah. It's kind of interesting. But on all the other movements, people have been utilizing full partial range of motion forever. Yeah. And also what's wrong with like the last couple reps there that he did on this like incline bench he just tried to push a couple up and they didn't really go anywhere i don't see anything wrong with that i think that's i think that's fine i think uh we make too much about the uh the science of lifting and um this guy is he seems like

he's got a good hold of it yeah it seems like he's figuring stuff out really well. For himself. It's like, okay, so for example, the failure thing, right? Some people, once they hit failure, it's like every other single set goes to shit. But again, athletes who have a larger capacity for volume, they can hit failure on a certain set. And within like maybe a few minutes minutes they can recover well enough to have a few more good sets so sam's the type of athlete who can probably go to failure multiple times in a workout but because he's just so not i won't i don't want to use the word gifted because he's

been an athlete his whole life but because he has such a good capacity he can still have a really good workout after having multiple sets of failure whereas Whereas most people go on a failure too often, their, their volume is going to be shit for the rest of the workout. Like they won't be able to push much. Right. But it is good to like, probably one of the reasons he's able to do that is also cause he's been

doing that for a while. You know, an athlete who doesn't, who trains to failure for the first time on a muscle group. He's easily been training for a decade. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Even though he's young, he's been, you know, he probably started when he was 10 or 12 or some shit like that and with the gymnastics background i mean that's basically like a form of lifting right off the bat 100 yeah definitely athlete this is something super minor but i mean i wasn't even in the gym at 21 but like you can say like this is a uh like an right? Like his mobility maybe isn't good enough. But I personally have never seen anybody put – he has collars on the machine so he can get into the machine.

And when he lifts off, the collars fall off so then he gets full range of motion. That's not a normal thing that a 21-year-old will do. This guy has a lot of experience just moving stuff around and just also being around so much gym equipment that he can figure shit out like that he's probably like if i get in there you know under normal circumstances it hurts my shoulder so let me boost this thing up a little bit and i mean yeah it's really again it's just uh intuitive but also like so if this guy didn't if this guy doesn't do any ego lifting then we we never see him. We never know about him. We don't ever know about Sam Sulek.

We don't ever know about Greg Doucette. We don't ever know about any of the people that we follow. If there's not some sort of confidence booster or something that might be viewed by other people as an ego lift. Didn't Greg do like 405 for 50 or some shit for the death lift? Greg Doucette is a fucking monster, yeah. He's got world records. Something like that, right? Yeah.

An ego lift. He benched over 500 pounds too uh weighing like under 200 pounds i think or maybe right around 200 pounds that's crazy craziness is that an eagle lift i need a bunch 500 pounds yeah i don't know i don't really uh i mean i get it i know what people are talking about um i would say in my opinion i'll give my rough definition of an e of an ego lift an ego lift would be somebody that is inexperienced trying to lift way too much weight and not doing it properly yeah yes doing a partial range of motion when you know how to fucking lift has nothing to do with ego lifting in my opinion. That is you just throwing together more stuff and just lifting and choosing to lift a particular way is different than being forced to lift a particular way. If somebody has 275 pounds on the bar and they're trying to do squats and they're shaking and their knees are caving in and they can't get down much at all then you're like well what the hell is that like why why is someone

doing that not that exercise is worthless but you're just thinking to yourself my god i'd love to see that guy put on 185 and do the do the lift properly because he's not engaging anything he's not doing anything but that is not what i'm seeing from Sam Sulek or any other bodybuilders or power lifters that choose to do things with a slightly different range of motion. Yeah. No, that, that was actually that definition. Ain't anything to add there. It's like, you can tell, you can tell when someone's handling weight, they shouldn't be handling. There's not a good muscle contraction. It looks super forced. There's just, it's not, it's not good. And he's doing a great job with everything we're currently seeing. Right. So it's not it's not good and he's doing a great job with

everything we're currently seeing right so it's it's when again somebody tries to maybe mimic it and they're not getting nearly the same type of contraction they're not feeling it where they're trying to feel it and it's just it's all types of wonky so yeah even here like he's doing a drop set and look at the weights it's's not even to the bigger part of the stack. Right. And it seems like pretty much every set he goes until his reps get kind of shitty and then he goes a little bit more until they get a little shittier and then he's like, all right, call it.

Well, dog crap training that was made popular by Dante Trudell is, you know, it's five sets basically done at one time. Trudell is, you know, it's five sets basically done at one time. It's five sets with five breaths in between each, in between like each set of repetitions. And sometimes you can like drop the weight or keep the same weight. It's just like little mini breaks in between. It's also referred to as a rest pause method. Oh, yeah. I mean, this guy is doing like almost something similar, just with a longer break in between.

He goes to failure, and then he chills, and he goes to failure, and then he chills, and he goes to failure. He goes stripping. I don't know how many overall sets he does, and I haven't really heard a lot of commentary on his actual workouts. This is making me uncomfortable. Why is he slowly unbuttoning his shirt like that? I don't know.

Why are we watching a 21-year-old slowly unbut don't know. He's got gray sweatpants, too. And then the tie from his sweatpants is undone. I'm getting a little hot and bothered. You're 46 years old watching a 21-year-old boy unbutton his shirt. You say you're getting hot and bothered? It's legal. Just snip that part of the

podcast right there and edit that shit. Edit that shit into a reel? Oh, yeah. This is the most excited I've been a long time just came back from your anniversary trip with your wife bro oh yeah oh yeah what's her face man this guy looks good bodybuilding is no more erotic dog oh yeah yeah totally look how hard his nipples are are this he's fucking huge though it's like it's insane it's 21 dude it's like maybe an idea how much he weighs and stuff like 250 i'm pretty sure he's 250 and i'm he's not six something maybe he's like five eight i gotta get this guy here have him lift with kenny

to be a match made in heaven yeah kenny's 250 sam's 250 how about kenny hitting those squats uh with rhino you guys see that i didn't see it they were both uh they both went up to like 585 600 ish what rhino did rhino did a nice double out of nowhere because he's rhino and uh our boy kenny without like really a lot of i haven't seen kenny really pushing heavy on squats, although he trains his legs very hard. He did 585 very easy too. What? So the old Google just says 511, you know, whatever. Again, this is just like a quick search and 240.

Yeah, I had him say he's 250 recently. Yeah. That might be accurate. Was Kenny and Rhino on YouTube or was that? It's on Stan's Instagram. Yeah. First post. Stan's out here, 80 years old, still moving weight like that. Yeah, 80 years old.

Fucking shit. Yeah, man. Wow. It's great because he looks 70. 80 years young. TRT, it's a popular topic. A lot of guys are hopping on it. It's something that we've talked about a lot.

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power project at checkout links in the description as well as the podcast show notes yeah i think uh just you know like again i think just too much is made of like the full range of motion stuff i think when you're trying to do like an official squat bench or deadlift they should be done uh to a certain standard. I think that makes sense. Some of the other lifts in the gym, that's a good squat. Rhyno's getting down in there.

Still moving those weights. Look at those nice calves. I know. He's got some calves. Kenny! He tries to say that they're soccer legs, but then you... Wait, you played soccer. Your legs don't look like that. Oh, Kenny, look at that. Clean.

Dude, he fucking sunk that shit. I haven't seen Kenny squat at all either. Like he does hack squat stuff, but he just went in there and because Stan was there, he's like, all right, I'll push this shit with you. Kenny's a freak, bro. Yeah. Yeah, I think one of the first times I saw Kenny like starting to push his squat when we were having him like a power lift.

And he was interested in power lifting and doing like box squats and stuff. I was like, holy shit. I was like, I think I can get this kid to squat like 800 pounds. I know that. Well, I know that he could do it. It would just, you know, it just takes a different style of training to do stuff like that. See if he's going to because he sunk it. Dude.

And he kept position. He has no belt either. He has zero mobility issues. You ever see him, the shit he does with his feet? You guys ever see that? He can take one foot and point it all the way in. And then he takes the other foot and points it in. And his two feet are stacked together against each other.

And then he could squat down like that. It's freaking crazy looking. I'm like, you're going to totally hurt yourself. He's a monster. Oh, he did seven 65 the other day. Yeah.

And the trap bar deadlift. Damn. Our boy, Kenny Williams, anabolic activities, bam, smashing those reps. Jeez.

What are your actual thoughts, Nsema, on heavy lifting to build size? Is that, for yourself, is that something that you need to do at some point? Well, I mean, I can't say I did it and it helped me get big. So I couldn't say if it's like you have to do it, although I know people who aren't powerlifters,

who haven't lifted super heavy, who are natural athletes and also got big, big just because they pushed hypertrophy. So I think it can definitely, it helped me get stronger and help me move more weight. Do I think I needed it? I don't think I absolutely needed to lift heavy to get big. No,

I don't. But I enjoyed it. So I don't do it much anymore. I don't lift that heavy anymore. I do bodybuilding work. But yeah. You don't need that kind of – you don't necessarily need that extra stimulus of the weight being like over 75 percent or 80 percent. It just needs to be a certain weight. It needs to be controlled. You need a certain amount of work and that's – I'm not saying even for you. I'm i'm just saying like in general yeah that's what it seems like what the deal is with hypertrophy in general exactly with hypertrophy it's just you're working in a specific rep range let's just say somewhere between 6 and 20 and you're making sure to to get to the end of that rep

range or whatever it is and maybe have like one or two reps left in the tank right you're trying to lift close to your threshold with every single set you do and even up to failure right with maybe 20 15 whatever reps and if you can push that type of intensity over time you'll get bigger right you don't have to lift super heavy but the thing is is like i do think and this is just totally anecdotal but i do think that that heavy lifting that I've done definitely helped with certain aspects of maybe the thickness of aspects of my physique. I don't know if I would have been able to develop that, but we will never know. I know other people who have without heavy

lifting, but for me, I don't know. I did it though. So yeah, I would say like, yeah, I'm conflicted on it because like, um, look at likerew herbert like he was lifting heavy and he is one of the freakiest bodybuilders i can think of now um there's him even like joe sullivan who's still just like pursuing heavy lifting but he's freaking jacked yeah and there's so many other examples of power lifters that have like all right let me dabble over here or fucking jeremy avila like yeah i mean dan green no one's gonna question those two guys on like if they're jacked or not but like it wouldn't seem i just said you know um uh 3d mj godfather um jeff alberts jeff alberts right like i mean he lifts heavy but he's not like he's not

powerlifting he's not exactly thank you there's that and then the stuff i learned from doug brignoli like yeah like you can get there without this like without putting a lot of uh stress on your body it seems like so I think yeah it can be either way yeah I think uh ultimately when it comes to like hypertrophy there's so many different ways to go about doing it but they everything is approximately the same whether you're training for hypertrophy training for strength or even training for endurance to, whether you're training for hypertrophy, training for strength, or even training for endurance to some degree. You're all trying,

in every case, you're trying to induce some sort of fatigue and then get yourself to a point where you're kind of fucked, where you can't handle anymore. You can't necessarily do another clean rep. You can't necessarily do another clean set because if we go in the gym right now and we

do four sets of 10 of bench press and it's just one after another and we pick a good weight four sets of 10 very controlled like we'll get a crazy pump just from that and you can get really great workouts from that maybe maybe it might take more sets because there's three of us because the rest in between will be you know maybe too long too long. But if you do every minute on the minute or so with kind of just a challenging weight, by the time you get to your third set, when you're doing four sets, by the time you get your third set, rep seven, eight, nine, ten, a little challenging. The next set, even more challenging. And that's what all those other sets were for in the first place.

So there's that way of doing it. Then there's also a way of doing it where you do like a drop set. You start heavier. You induce fatigue. All right, I just want all this shit to just like fatigue out. You could do low reps and tremendously like a ton of fucking weight and then reduce the weight and do higher reps. But again, all you're trying to do is get your body into some sort of situation where you're kind of screwed and you can't do any more reps cleanly. It's like not any harder than that. Yeah.

You know the one thing I do think though, like, and this is why like over the years I'm happy that I did really focus on trying to lift a lot of things with a longer range of motion. You can build muscle without lifting with a crazy long range of motion. But I do think that by doing that, by increasing the range of motion of your movements and lowering the weight in tandem, because you're going to have to lower the weight to do that, I think it can help you continually move better or have great joint mobility or have just good mobility overall. Because that weight, let's say you're doing a row and you're going all the way out here,

coming all the way in. When you are stretched out, that weight is also helping you literally stretch to that position. And then when you're pulling back, you're pulling back from that high stretch position all the way in rather than going right here. You notice that the people who always stay within these very limited ranges, when they literally move around, it's also in very limited ranges. But you notice people who do take things to a longer range of motion, they tend to move better. Their fluidity of movement is much better.

So you can still build a lot of muscle. But I do think a longer range of motion is going to help you be able to do it for a long period of time with less pain and move better. And I think moving better is something that people start to think about as they get older and their movement starts to become more and more encumbered and they start to have pain everywhere. They're like, Oh fuck, what's wrong with me? And then they start trying to pay attention to that. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Moving the weight better rather than just lifting more weight all the time. Yeah. It's kind of like what, um, what you're saying is what we were talking about with the Kevin Hart thing. Maybe if he had been moving in these ranges,

he wouldn't have popped all his shit or whatever it was, right? So it's just like what you're saying, right? If you're not allowing your shoulder to get further than that short cable row, the second that you throw a punch or something, your shoulder pops out. You're just like, oh, it's game over for me. Here's where a little bit of that, though, is a little fucked up. On something, you fuck it, your shoulder pops out. It was like, Oh, that's game over for me. Oh,

here's where a little bit of that though is a little fucked up. Like on something like a deadlift, like a debt, see like a deadlift is an interesting thing. A squat's kind of an interesting thing too, but I would say a deadlift is who the fuck knows why a 45 pound plate is a 45 pound plate. Like, I don't even like,

why is it a 45 pound plate? I understand it's like 20 kilos approximately. So it's supposed to be a 44pound plate. Like I don't even – like why is it a 45-pound plate? I understand it's like 20 kilos approximately. So it's supposed to be a 44-pound plate. But we don't even really know like what's the height for. Like why is it that height? So a deadlift is not a full range of motion movement. You might look at it and say, yeah, that guy did it full range of motion the way they do it in powerlifting meet. And it's like but that's not full range of motion of your body.

It's not even close. I're you're way the fuck off you're going down like you're going down what it's not that taxing right it's not that hard most people can bend down and grab a barbell yeah without any trouble if the barbell had no plates on it and was resting on the floor well now the weight is like is kind of right next to your toes. And now we have a Jefferson deadlift situation or something like that. Can you type in Atlas Power Shrugged on Instagram, please? Did you see what this man has done recently? I didn't see.

No, I know he's done some crazy stuff, though. Yeah. Guy's unbelievable. He's been working with Range of Strength and Range of Strength. Lucas Aaron has been programming this, helping him program his fucking Jefferson, Jefferson deadlift.

Andrew, the first video, second video, second video, second video. Is it right here? No, no, no. Oh, sorry. Go down. 315 straight leg zurcher. Oh. Play this bitch, bro.

Hello. Now, he's a funny dude. But look at this. He's passionate. Yeah, he's passionate. That's very passionate. 315. Look at that.

But he built up to that over time. If you guys have a chance, you should go check out his page and read his post about it. But I would say that's full range of motion of your hamstrings and your back and your spine. And it's beyond that, too. Most people can't even mimic something similar. So it'd be good if you can just figure out something that you could do that would be full range of motion for you at first, which could be just simply deadlifting depending on your mobility. But, you know, I always thought as a kid, I always thought like, if I, you know, say like use it or lose it, you know, and if you

keep your range of motion that you're always going to be mobile and stuff. I don't really find that to be true. I mean, especially when it comes to like bench pressing, like a bench press, you're moving your shoulder back. But maybe I needed to move my shoulder in like more planes and more directions. And maybe I needed to, you know, looking back at it now, I could say, OK, if I stayed connected to other sports, I would probably would be able to keep some of those abilities that I had when I was younger to be able to throw a football or things like that. But it got tight over the years from actually lifting, but not only lifting, but lifting and trying to practice what I felt was full range of motion. I hate to sound like a broken record, but your sleep quality most likely sucks. It's one of the biggest things that we talked about on the podcast.

likely sucks. It's one of the biggest things that we talked about on the podcast. So many guests have come on and talked about how sleep can help you stick to your diet, stick to your workout plan, lose body fat, gain muscle, all the good things that you're trying to do. But it's hard to do because you might be snoring. And if you're snoring, that's why we've partnered with hostage tape, which is mouth tape that you can put over your nose, your mouth when you're asleep to help you stop snoring and breathe through your nose. But if you haven't been breathing through your nose this whole time while you've been sleeping, it's going to be a little bit difficult to get air through there. That's also why hostage tape has nose strips to help open up your nasal airways and make it easier to breathe through your nose when you're asleep. Now your partner won't be having a fuck with you when you're asleep because

you'll be actually breathing through your nose. Andrew, how can they get it? Yes, that's over at hostage tape dot com slash power project where you guys will receive an entire year supply of nasal strips and mouth tape all for less than a dollar a night. Again, that's a hostage tape dot com slash power project links in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Do you think also the well, you know, you did a bunch of other types of presses when you were powerlifting. But do you think that there was just like too much repeated motion in some of those same exact planes? Yeah, it could be that. I think it just repeated what you said. It could be that to like off balance, you know, stronger in the front than in the back of the shoulder.

And then also, you know, performance enhancing drugs could play into that too. Like most of the time, like when people are on performance enhancing drugs, they get hurt a little easier. Like they tear stuff a little easier, which you wouldn't think that that would be. You would think if someone's going to get hurt, it'd be the guy that's not taking anything. But there's something with the muscles that are just like, it's just different. Don't the tendons, like don't like tendons, ligaments, and they don't catch up to the rate of growth as far as like muscle tissue. I believe that's true, yeah. So like they're able to put more force through that muscle tissue, but those tendons haven't caught up to how strong your muscle is.

It happens pretty often. People get like all excited when they take stuff and they get all pumped up and then they're like, they go in the gym and, you know, it's their first time benching four plates and they smoke that and they're like, holy shit, and they want to go to like four 25 and four 55 or whatever. And that's usually how people get hurt. But even aside from that, it just,

I think it just makes your muscles like tonic. It makes them kind of constantly, um, angry. Yeah. It makes them like, they have feedback. Like if you push on a muscle,

like my, like I, my muscles don't even feel that way anymore. Like some of them do. Some of them are still like tight and stiff, but I remember when I was on stuff, you push on a muscle like my like i my muscles don't even feel that way anymore like that some of them do some of them are still like tight and stiff but i remember when i was on stuff like my muscles would feel like this fucking desk you know and they would like if you pushed on them they would push you back a little bit get off they don't do that anymore now if you push into them they you can sink into them a little bit more you're all natty now man very natty that was part of the the goal though right to tighten everything up so that way you can

reverse out of it easier trying to tighten up that pussy i guess so yeah right i mean technically i don't know if i think it tight that's what i think of yeah i think the same thing butthole maybe i don't think the same thing? Butthole, maybe? I don't know. How do I speak your language? How do I get you excited? You got to talk to Sam. That would get me excited. Put that on my mic over here.

I love this thing. That giant penis. That thing's getting all dirty. It it's pretty disgusting it's pretty disgusting thank you ali gilbert again fell off the table that's all right what do you guys think man people are like you know uh concerned about this guy sam solek and they're like man he shouldn't be blasting so much stuff. I mean, I don't think anybody wants to see anybody get hurt and no one wants to see anybody have things happen worse to them than that, like we've seen with a lot of bodybuilders and stuff. But at the same time, fucking pursue your shit, man, with everything you got, I think. Hopefully he's safe.

Hopefully he's paying attention. But, like, I don't know his life. I have no idea. I think a lot of people are just guessing. It's clear that he takes steroids, but I think everyone's just kind of guessing on how much and maybe how reckless he may be. This is what he wants to push. And the cat's out of the bag for really young cats taking steroids and shit now. I don't think it's ideal for most young guys,

but the thing is this guy knows what he wants to do. Kind of just him and Kenny are very similar. Kenny's 21 years old too, and I don't think he's turned 22, but he knew he's like, I want to be a pro bodybuilder. So this is what I'd like, a pro NPC bodybuilder, because yeah, you can be a WNBF pro or whatever. You can be a natural pro bodybuilder. But let's be real.

Like there's – I'm a pro in fucking two or three federations. But like most natural bodybuilders, it doesn't do anything for you in your career, right? Like it can for some who do – like who progress correctly. But like it doesn't do much. But an NPC level pro bodybuilder, there's a lot of things that can open up. And it's the more popular route now so if that's what you know you want to do you're never going to tell a 21 year old to take drugs but at the same time you can't tell them not to because a bunch of guys are now teenagers having sex and doing drugs it's like yeah that's been going on forever pretty much

right yeah i'm curious like uh obviously yes i would i want him to stay healthy as healthy as possible as healthy as you can be taking steroids but like mentally like it's pretty interesting and i apologize because i don't follow the trend twins so i don't know if they're still like they've never taken trend that's just uh oh really yeah they just call themselves the trend twins. They've never actually taken trend. Trend twins exposed. What? No, no. My whole life is a freaking lie.

I was mistaken too. I thought the trend twins took trend because they're the trend twins. I want to shut this podcast down. That's false advertising. Yeah. Like you can't call yourself the trend twins anymore. Call yourself the test twins. At least do a shot each.

At least. Fuck, I'd kill you. Just for the label. You fucking made a whole video on the dangers of trend and you say this shit it's not gonna kill you what else it could fuck your brain up yeah what i was getting at is like i don't i don't really see how like them around social media anymore like in the stuff because like they made it into my feeds right and like i don't follow them they're not in my feeds anymore so i'm curious like are they still popular like how is that

affecting them as being you know young individuals so with sam solik i'm just curious if by this time next year if he's not as popular is it like could that lead to him pushing more shit you know like you know i mean like that's what i'm like concerned with right now because he is so young hopefully he has somebody there guiding him or just i mean he seems he, bro. Like he seems like very level headed. He seems like he knows what the hell he's doing, but this is, I'm just, you know,

putting it out there. Like this is explaining like this is another side of it that, uh, I feel like not too many people can even think about because everybody's tied to like, Oh, he's on hell of gear. Like who,

hopefully he stays healthy, but it's like, man, yeah, some of that, sometimes that gear can really mess with your head. And then also you got Greg, doette with 2 million subscribers talking about you. You got us talking about you.

Hopefully that puts some ding on his radar too. And then if it goes away, is he still going to remain passionate? I believe he will. But, again, maybe it might do something to his psyche that makes him do some more shit. Yeah. Yeah, look at Larry Wheels. I think navigated it pretty well. maybe it might do something to his psyche that makes him do something more, some more shit. Yeah. Yeah. Look at, uh,

you know, Larry wheels, I think navigated it pretty well. Like he had a lot of different things happen over the years. He got tore a bunch of stuff, but I think ultimately, you know, um,

hopefully you don't have, you know, such a catastrophic thing that you learn, you know, you get hurt, you, uh, you run into some illness here and there. You run into some

hiccups, not even performance enhancement aside, just trying to go 100 miles an hour with anything. You're going to run into problems and they're going to humble you. They're going to steer you back in the right direction. And hopefully, if or when any of those things happen, hopefully they allow him to kind of reexamine and look at what he's doing and to continue to ask questions and to see if he still wants to do it. I think that's a critical thing. No, it's so cool, though. I just realized this, too. The whole gymnast thing that we were talking about, gymnasts also have extremely strong tendons and ligaments. Oh, yeah.

like strong tendons and ligaments oh yeah it's like if there's anybody who can hop on roids and like just fucking drink that shit up and then have honestly maybe no problem it's gonna be a gymnast because they're so set up to be just so fucking strong like his elbows everything right because they what's that fucking thing called iron cross all these long range things that these individuals do because like for example when you do a when you do any type like cable like bicycle or whatever and you go to that full range that tendon is getting trained in that range too so someone like him who's built his body up so strong like there is like gymnasts are so strong yeah that the muscle up is a joke for them. They're like, that's the start of a routine.

What are we... You just did one of those? Oh, man. That's where we start. We're a joke to gymnasts. Gymnasts are like, hmm, fitness. Yeah, right? I know. They're unbelievable.

Yeah, man. This is going to be fine. Standing on your toes like that, too? You ever see one of them do that? That shit looks like it hurts. How do they do that that I don't know freaks of nature dog alright let us know

what you think of Sam Sulek strength is never a weakness weakness is never strength catch you guys later bye