Massenomics Podcast - Ep. 235: John Haack

Episode Date: October 5, 2020

John Haack is fresh off his world record 2,066 pound total and his big win from The Showdown Meet.  We grilled him about sparkling waters, Danny DeVito, and competing in strongman. Hybrid Performance Method: https://hybridperformancemethod.com/ and use code MASS to save 5% on all programs Lifting Large: https://www.liftinglarge.com/ and use code MASS20 to save on Lifting Large branded products Spud Inc.: https://www.spud-inc-straps.com/ Texas Power Bars: https://www.texaspowerbars.com/

You know, thanks for what you do with your podcasts and all the rest. You're doing a great job. Hope everybody keeps tuning in. You get a lot of good info, a lot of insights, understandings of how to get strong, how to stay strong, how to use your strength. You do a great job, dude. You make things better than they are in real life, I think.

If you don't follow Massanomics, y'all do it. Social media, website, everything. Massanomics! Massanomics! Science and everything. Mastanomics. Welcome back, everyone, to the Mastanomics podcast. My name's Tanner.

And my name is Tommy. And this is, of course, the lifting podcast about nothing. Did I say 235 yet? You did not say 235. Okay, this is episode 235 of the lifting podcast about nothing. On the post four and a half year hangover. We had a big party to celebrate that last week. It was a big party. And here we're back for more.

We've got another exciting guest this week. This week we're going to be joined by Bilbo Swaggins, John Hack, just coming fresh off of his showdown meet win with a big total there. So that'll be exciting to hear from him how timely of a guest this is we are on it i have heard a lot of people complaining though we're really contradicting ourselves this is supposed to be the show about nothing and we're not holding up to that very well are we we're really like not staying true to our roots by having all these good guests yeah well we can really tank it like these last few months probably. Right, yeah. We're going to have to like to equal out. Yeah, even it out, yeah.

Because when you have so much something to get back to nothing you have to have a lot of nothing. Yeah. So far this one's off to a good start with that being the goal. Well, there's a lot of time to change that though. That's true. First though, this is definitely not nothing. This is as something as it gets.

It's our sponsors. Maybe the reason everyone came here. Yes here yes our sponsors of course today's show is brought to you by texas power bars in 1980 buddy cap set out on his own to make what he believed was the greatest bar he had ever seen and trained with and the texas power bar was born it was strong as a house with the best knurling and it was maintenance free hundreds of state national international world and massonomics powerlifting records have been and continue to be set and broken on the Texas Power Bar. Learn more and check them out at TexasPowerBars.com. Today's show is also brought to you by our good friends over at Lifting Large.

Lifting Large has set a new standard for customer service within the strength world. They have live website chat support and speedy email responses. Lifting Large is home of the Ground Lock Deadlift Slipper, and they're always in stock and ready to ship. Massanomics listeners can save 20% on all Lifting Large branded products by using discount code MASS20 at checkout. Today's episode is also brought to you by Spud Inc. The goal of Spud Inc. Straps is to make products that support

sports performance and help everyone achieve their training goals. They make products that last forever, won't bust your budget, and most importantly, leave no doubt about success zero doubt about success when everything is online check them out online at spud dash ink dash straps and last but of course not least is hybrid performance method your one-stop shop for fitness and coaching and i'm gonna for their portion of the ad today, I'm going to just read a piece of listener mail. So this is kind of going rogue. I'm really excited for this. Yeah, it's going rogue.

And this is from Alex. I mentioned him last time that he had signed up. Yep. Signed up and he followed up. He was excited that we had mentioned that on the podcast. He said, look, mom, I made it on the Massanomics podcast. Thanks for the shout out this week. You know, with everything going on,

it was a pleasant surprise. Oh man, that was only last week that we were saying that, huh? The hybrid team got me squared away. Uh, and the mass code is in effect. So he's talking about the discount code on their site. It's M A S S and all caps. And that'll save you 5% off training or nutrition memberships. Um, he said, hopefully they can help me be less fat so I can get strong, stay dot, dot, dot. Well, you know, the rest, I assume stay strong. You got to assume, fingers crossed for an eight bit weightlifting shirt in the October drop. Also, I've got a Tom Brady joke in the hopper for the next order notes. That's good. You're planning on your order notes already.

notes that's good you're planning on your order notes already i like that uh from alex aka the president of ontario but then he says got to get stronger so scant's one can't kick my ass and take the title of president of ontario scant's one uh being dad for anyone that follows masonomics that would be that would be dad from the most recent video contest. Yes, yes. What was the contest criteria again? I'm blanking a little bit. What were we? What was everyone having to do?

Astronomic stimulus. How they get stimulus. Yeah, stimulated. So that would be dad. Also, perennial top three finisher of first comment on the YouTube channel. Yep, yes. But that was from Alexlex and that was for uh a lot of things in there i'm curious about the tom brady joke i really want to know what i do too

and he said fingers crossed for an eight bit weightlifting shirt in the october drop that's not exactly correct of what's exactly going to happen, but... You'll have to wait and see. Yeah, yeah. That's right, that's right. Right. He was off a little. Spoiler alert. You'll have to wait and see. Yeah.

Spoiler alert. We're not spoiling it yet. What we do have, as far as our drop coming, we have been hard. We have been legitimately hard at it. Wouldn't you say? Yeah, like we are like sending emails

and having phone calls with our suppliers like daily because we got so much shit we're trying to get figured out like uh the number of times we have to talk on the phone during the day tanner has gone up so much in the last week even yeah uh i think it's gonna pay off with the the how cool of designs and the drops that we have coming over the course of the rest of 2020, I think we're getting the things in place so that things are going to be really cool for that. And it's not just like, there's a lot of, I see what you guys did there, but there's also a lot of like, damn, that's cool. Yes, I think so.

Almost to the point of beyond what we've done up to this point. It takes a lot to one-up what we've done, but we might have one-upped what we've done previously. I think some of it, it's part of us taking a next step. I think it is. I think it is, yeah. To not make a joke for just one second on this podcast, I do think it's legitimately as some,

something of us being able to take a next step of what we got. That next step of taking more money from people, right? Yeah, I knew it had to be actually be a joke, but we have been working really hard at it. It's just crazy to me how much time it's taking anymore where it's like, damn,

and take it all. It's a lot of work to run a real business on the side an actual business on the side which is becoming less and less on the side um although i would much prefer this over the alternative it was a lot less work when it wasn't a good business at all funny how that works right uh and you still just gotta laugh at the people like a t-shirt business it's a it's a like a set it and forget it business and i want to be like whoever says that clearly has never ran one and if you do it's a shitty one because you're either offs off or offloading the entire thing to someone else or you're not doing anything yeah like right because i get it like we don't print our own t-shirts but we do all of our own marketing like the designs all that

stuff like you've got to work through tons of stuff to get that happen like right and just coming up with new ideas all the time is yeah and even though we don't just if all we had to do was just come up with ideas we did nothing besides come up with ideas that's still a lot of work to come up with new ideas that's true to actually to have good new ideas and not just the same idea you've had like repackaged 50 different ways over and over again like legitimately new ideas and even though we're not printing on ourselves there's a lot of work that goes into making sure that that process is working properly even if we're not printing oh yeah and there's there's a thousand steps in it especially with everything going on this year with all the stuff going on uh the truth and that is damn it is getting hard to get

blanks for apparel even to just get a black t-shirt apparel is starting to just be sold out it's like hey that that t-shirt you know and love oh yeah maybe we'll have it next week and that's not like just a vendor that's like a nationwide shortage of that t-shirt that's probably our biggest challenge over the next like say six months is just hopefully hoping that we can even get what we need to get to be able to print on to to be able to sell yeah it is and it's like the biggest unknown and thing that we can't control whatsoever yeah there is no control over it because i mean we could just start jumping to brands we've totally never used but right also that's kind of annoying because people have come to expect a certain t-shirt from us and we have ones that we know work good and not just t-shirts but sweatshirts and shorts

and all that stuff like there are ones we want to be printing on and they're getting increasingly hard to get. They are. So that's, so now that you guys got the insides of, uh, the inner workings, the apparel business, did we talk about this last week at all?

The end of the billboard? No, we didn't. It's the end of an era. It is the end of an era. It's a, it's really sad. Like there was part of me that just kept thinking like,

is it just going to stay there forever? Like how long will long will this be here like can it just finish the year because it was all of june all of july all of august and half of september yeah so we got three and a half months on it we got our money's worth oh we got a great deal i mean actually if it just stayed up what it was supposed to stay we got our money's worth but it stayed up so so many more months longer than it was supposed to um the first i saw about it was a snap that someone had sent me and i was like oh damn that's that sucks i love driving by and looking at it you know yeah that was uh and it got replaced by um like a nursing home yeah centers of some kind that is not half as funny and they didn't even have an

inside joke as to the billboard that was there before no no they totally blew that opportunity makes me want us to just like rebuy that spot again and be like ha this is our spot sorry for letting those losers have the billboard last or whatever you know yeah just making a meta joke about the billboard i think that has to that of course won't be our last billboard i don't think so yeah it's too fun doing stuff like that what if could there be a billboard you know we took some pictures of uh like us in front of this billboard could the next billboard be the picture of us in front of the last one we probably should yeah this picture hey everyone look at this picture of our billboard something like that yeah that could work yeah we got to think of something to for it to be a little

more or we can do that that thing that uh that middle class fancy had it was it'll be like it'll be a text message from you hey tommy we need to come up with an idea for the billboard it's like what should what should it be about uh massonomics and the apparel got it and like we'll just screenshot and that'll be the billboard i do think that that's pretty funny just telling people to go to massonomics.com and buy apparel yeah yeah okay and like that's the billboard yes that could be the next one i like that idea too doesn't have as much community engagement you know no northeast south dakota president of north dakota references that sort of thing maybe it'll be another podcast review

maybe we'll straight up run a podcast review contest and to like really take us past that 300 mark and say you've got a two-month window to get your podcast review in and we're picking the best and you are getting billboard yeah we could have so many different billboards yeah they could make a movie well wasn't there a movie like three billboards or something do you remember that a couple years ago no it's about this lady that bought billboards uh i think about like the murder of someone she's trying to call someone out but we could do something like that but it'd be a lot more light-hearted and less murder less murder more funny not maybe no murder, but less murder. Just less murder in general, yeah.

More laughs, though. We should have a can. All right, good. Spoiler, Tanner, again, spoiler. We've had this flavor before. So am I really guessing? No. Okay.

It's not a guessing game. No guessing game here. No guessing. I had to watch Borat the other night again, Tanner. It's a Borat. It had been a long time. And you know what spurred me to watch it? I mean, it is a great movie.

Yeah. But there was rumors, and I believe they've been confirmed now, that there is a Borat sequel coming out. Really? And I think I saw that Amazon is releasing it on like October 25th or something. So we're very close. So I had to watch Borat again and still holds up, man. Still funny. Amazon Prime, how it, uh, Amazon Video, I guess.

I don't know. Is it, what do you, I think it's the same thing. Yeah. How it might have a decent selection. I believe it does have a decent selection. Their interface is poo-poo. Oh, hot garbage. That it makes me not want to click on it.

Just, we have it even. It feels like I'm in the. guard that it makes me not want to click on it just we have it even and i'm like you make it too hard for me to yeah and it's like it just feels like i'm in the walmart bargain bin like like you put the bargain bin and dumped it on a screen and like somehow that's what i'm using to right so we're talking amazon are they the are they now the are they the i mean they have no shortage yeah right. Yeah, right. No shortage of money. Yes. Can't they do better? Can't they just straight up copy Netflix?

Like, why is Netflix the only one that's like really good? HBO's is pretty good. Okay, yeah, theirs isn't too bad. HBO's. Hulu's kind of sucks. Hulu's is kind of sucky, but better than Amazon, I think. Yeah, it's not... The thing that I have no problem with it,

but I just think of Hulu is that their indicators for where you're at are not super obvious. And I think old people have to have so much trouble figuring out where the hell they're at because they just have a very faint little underline when you're selecting something. What I think they need to do, every one of them, the first thing that comes up on all of them is your, no matter what, it should always be your recently watched. That would make a lot of sense. Why is it ever just not, I hate when I open it up and it's not showing me first my recently watched

because i'm almost 90 of the time i'm continuing to watch something that i was already watching i think they probably want you to add stuff like to your favorites list or something but i don't think anyone i don't know anyone that does that or your watch list or whatever whatever psychopaths are out there that do that yeah so borat still holds up i recommend that i mean i probably am more of a bruno guy to me that might be one of the funniest movies ever made it's very very funny but um i am excited to see if there could be a what year did borat come out yeah i think it said 2009 i think that sounds about right yeah and it's funny actually 2009 so i okay i have spotify and every once in a while spotify will pop up with like a notification like hop in your time capsule and we'll take you back to i don't know if it's like they just play music i don't know

if it's like actually music catered to me or music that i played or from different eras like whatever but so i yeah i'll listen to that i'll go on that ride today spotify and it was bringing up a lot of these songs from 2010 give or take a couple years and it's reminding me of being in college and yeah and and house parties and yeah i was telling my wife about this it's like remember back then we're like you know when people didn't have phones like the oh like you didn't have social media with you right it was such a weird time like you'd go to parties and like literally if someone's on their phone it was just like because they just text a lot that person just likes to text yeah that was the only reason people and everyone had point and shoot cameras with them

all the time yeah like people just taking pictures all the time yeah that's such a funny camera yeah just digital cameras i had one but yeah i said everyone had a digital camera like it wasn't weird to be somewhere and someone pulls out a digital camera and you take a lot of pictures at parties yeah and that's what it was and it's like man the times have really changed in like yeah people still take a lot of pictures but uh the context and what they're taking them is not like oh yeah i gotta get this poster right away right now people gotta see yeah it's just like we won them is not like oh yeah I gotta get this poster right away or like yeah people gotta see this it's like oh this is funny let's take a picture like oh tomorrow I'm gonna post this

maybe post it on Facebook and it'll be really funny in my phone album oh and it's an album that's the other thing too it's always it was an album it was like summer 07 with the sun you know like Halloween 2008 and no emojis emoticons yeah yeah yeah um but it

was an album because that's how you because the process was different you weren't just taking a picture and putting on which you could have if you wanted to but yeah everyone was like oh yeah here was the party from here's parties from the last month dump all the photos in or yeah have you seen the social dilemma um actually so i started watching that um started watching it two nights ago and my wife said this is making me too mad you have to turn this she uh she turned off i feel like i pay fairly close attention to most of that world um most of those things in there i'm very aware of and yeah it's just it shows you and yeah it is disgusting everything but um like i I think people should watch it. I do think people, however you feel about it,

you should be aware of what these companies are doing. And like last year I was like, whew, I was digging in on that stuff hard like a year ago. So my God, my phone's taking too much of my time. And so like I turned off all notifications. So the only thing that ever pops up on my phone screen is if someone texts me or calls me i don't get any other notice because it was like it'd be like 9 a.m and it's like oh

so-and-so posts on an instagram like i don't want this and like i feel like i've turned this off a thousand times and it keeps popping up so like i haven't had facebook on my phone i have a facebook account i do think it is helpful for my business to have a facebook account so i have that but i can only go on facebook on a computer um instagram all that stuff it doesn't matter if you're sending me dms messages all that i will not see it until i open the app and i have all notifications turned off so for me it's just it's just a dumb little icon that doesn't do anything yeah and like i went in i turned off all prior all location tracking the new thing in the new ios you can tell it to like not see any of the photos in your photo album

unless you give it permission to explicit photos. So that Instagram doesn't have permission to see all your stuff. And I think that that made a difference because then it was like, like they hint onto it as like, they kind of do this like fake behind the scenes thing of, oh, Johnny hasn't looked at his phone.

Let's send him a little nudge to get him on the network. I mean, that's basically how these little machines are working behind the scenes right and i noticed that it'd be like oh yeah oh i haven't got an instagram for three hours well it doesn't i don't have to remember because instagram will remind me i haven't been there so yeah you turn all that stuff off and then eventually if you have a busy day or you're doing shit you can be like oh damn i haven't got on any social media networks in eight hours, and I didn't even think about it because it can't get into your brain. So that's one little thing I did. But I think people should be aware of it, though.

Like, you can lose a massive amount of time to, because all the company, all apps by default is to have all notifications, like, pretty much turned on. So they have complete control of you. They all want to get you on there as long as possible it is yeah yep and then like the whole infinity scroll thing is a total very slippery slope yeah you just start once you once you're a guy that invented the infinity scroll is one of the yeah they had him on there yep yep so yeah there's a lot of a lot of dangerous things in there so be aware people be aware yep as long as we're drinking a sparkling beverage oh yes i don't know what we had talked about on the podcast specifically before but you and i

had talked about this that it would be fun to get someone on as a guest from a sparkling water company and see if they're interested in, you know, potentially sponsoring the podcast or maybe just sponsoring an episode or maybe even just coming on so we could talk to them about sparkling water. Talk shop. Yeah. It would just be fun. So I started, you know, I was like, Oh, maybe put out a few feelers and see what we can do. And my thought process was, what if these companies are a little bit smaller and not owned by like Pepsi or Coca-Cola? Massive conglomerates that have 10,000 people in the ladder. Right. So Waterloo, I think, is out of Texas, maybe Austin, Texas.

I might be wrong, but that's what I thought it was. And I'm like, eh, maybe that's an avenue. We've've had a watermelon Waterloo in this podcast and I bet we rated it fairly highly. Right. And apparently that wasn't good enough for them because do you want to hear what they said? I do want to hear. So I reached out to them, you know, sent them an email and kind of a funny email saying how we'd like to have them on the guest and have them on and everything we, you know, we would plan on doing. And they said, hello,

thank you for reaching out and your interest in working with Waterloo sparkling water already being very passive. Yes. It's just real. Yeah. At this time we've streamlined our marketing efforts and are continuing to work with only our existing 2020 partners and current relationships involving the brand and at this point tanner you're saying i work in an office when an email

has the word streamline in it i know what you're trying to say yes if future opportunities arise that our team feels you could be a good fit for we'll be sure to reach out to discuss further ways of working together what future opportunities do you think are going to rise that their team feels like mass would be a good fit for like oh we're keeping massonomics we're keeping you guys on a radar and like okay when that opportunity arises we're gonna imagine what i want to think is that they have like a marketing room and there's like an ideas board and then there's like this crazy board and says the wild card board and there's like two ideas on it and we're like the third idea to go on it yeah uh so like yeah there's the wild card board and it like the first

idea is poo flavored sparkling water like another one is like just a really bad endorsement deal and then the third one says massonomics that's us and so they said no shot us down shot us down not even to like be a long-time sponsor but even just to come on and talk to us about just like just like um no we won't do that we will not talk about a product we prefer to not tell people about right so i was a little surprised by that and i mean we didn't even ask for like the founder of the company we just said like literally can someone at your company talk that's exactly what i said do you have any representative that could come on i said you know we kind of have a humorous show we talk talk a lot about uh strength the strength sports you know specifically some real softball questions make your company seem really good but no they waterloo could have had the

direct path to be like just with that one meeting i bet we would have really we would have gotten more waterloo and talked more Waterloo. I guarantee it. I mean, for sure. It for sure cost them some sales. I'm not sure how many, but it did cost them some sales.

They missed the boat right there. I'm a little bit soured. So for the next sparkling water company, you don't want to lose out on any sales or else still wait, get us on or else. What I'm still hoping for is that someone out there listening has a connection to someone that works for one of these companies somewhere some pull in the sparkling water industry although i feel like they would have announced that to us at this point in

time but you would think you would think but it could happen i you can never give up right gotta keep on keeping i'm kind of giving up on waterloo though well yeah yeah we can give up on them yeah because of that rude email the word streamlined in it but streamline you you bitches but this podcast is not going away so no there's more where that came from i hope we outlast waterloo oh we're gonna we're gonna outlast waterloo they'll be bought out we might not really outlast and those get bought out yeah they'll get bought out for 50 million dollars but we'll have the last laugh independent over here yep that's right well tanner what else do we got i think we had like one more thing we i know

we've also got podcast reviews here today that we maybe to get to. Maybe that's what it was. Because we're back on the podcast reviews. We are reading those when you submit them, and we had a little catch-up to do. So we're going to try and do a couple of these every episode as long as we have time. And the main goal for us to get to 300 reviews before we get to 300 episodes. That is, they say, one of the most important metrics in any growing business. Right. You got to have your review to podcast ratio

has to be correct. Over one to one, yeah. Yeah, or it can look really, really bad. Yeah, exactly. First one, World's Strongest Podcast. Five out of five stars. This is the only podcast to listen to when you're roasting a nice LaCroix

over a campfire during hashtag crispy boy summer. Y'all keep doing at it. And that's from B3134. Next one is from Soundaholic and he says, best Dakota. Masonomics, where do you get off? First, you have a power lifting gym in Aberdeen. You have the audacity to make lifting shirts and shorts that no South Dakota can afford except for Christy Noem. And you have the best, least informative lifting podcast. Asterisk asterisk fair market range on Kelly blue book.

And that was from Chris of Jud judd who's ah very nice if we do a show in town we will lift and buy you some beers at the zoo awesome we'll take you up on that i mean it might be tough for this year with everything going on but well yeah but i'm sure they would love like an intermission at their show and the people at the bar would too like amazing like we're taking a break and they're like all right these guys are gonna come out and just talk to all you drunk people for 15 minutes about maybe a little bit it's not a comedy act or anything they're just gonna talk and you guys will have to deal with it and be able to start booing you guys don't know them you've maybe seen them in town before yeah trust me you're not

gonna care what they're saying but next one is from john wisconsin and he said number one podcast for sports if you are an industry wonk and need to keep abreast of the latest trends in sports apparel and sparkling water. This is a must listen podcast. Jarringly, the hosts often veer off topic into subjects such as powerlifting. A must listen. I like that. Off topic into powerlifting.

So those were our reviews for this week. That's good. But I think that was about just about everything on our docket, wasn't it? I think that covers most of it. Yeah. It was an extensive docket. This is the last call, Tanner.

Otherwise, I've got to go into ads, and then the show's out of our hands then. That's true. No, I think that's what we should do, and we'll see if we can summon John Hack. We'll get this ad train rolling. Today's show is brought to you by Lifting Large. Lifting Large sets the new standard for customer service within the strength world. Get email responses in hours and not days. They now have live website chat support available during the weekdays so you can get advice from a real power lifter with actual platform experience. The Lifting Large team wants to help you achieve new PRs in the gym and on the competition stage. When you're ready to try single ply and make your

way to the dark side, give them a call. Lifting Large is home of the Ground Lock Deadlift Slipper and it's always in stock and always ready to ship. Massanomics listeners can save 20% on all Lifting Large branded products by using discount code MASS20 at checkout. That's M-A-S-S-2-0 to save 20% on all Lifting Large branded items. Place your orders at liftinglarge.com, and you can follow them on Instagram at liftinglarge.com. That's at liftinglarge, D-O-T-C-O-M. Tanner, don't let me forget, as soon as I'm done with the podcast,

or as soon as I'm done with these ads, we have to talk about inside massonomics jokes, okay? Don't forget, don't forget. So are we going to do that before John? Yeah, before him really quick. Yeah, just because it'll only take two seconds oh yes i wanted to talk about it so bad okay all right the massonomics podcast forgot what you said the massonomics podcast is also brought to you by spud ink and the spud ink axle straps the spud ink axle wrist straps come in at

30 inches in length which is plenty to wrap around even the largest of axle deadlift bars designed with the strongman in mind the axle wrist straps are built from their signature woven nylon to give you the best hold possible and the guarantee they'll come through in competition their straps straps are backed with a lifetime warranty and custom strap links are also available check out the spud inc axle straps online at spud-inc-straps.com. This episode is also brought to you by Hybrid Performance Method. If you've been training without a coach and have been looking for a competitive edge, remember to check out hybridperformancemethod.com.

Hybrid has 15 different strength and fitness programs covering everything from powerlifting and strongman to gymnastics and general fitness, all included in one training membership. That's not all. Hybrid also offers one-on-one personalized nutrition coaching that uses lifestyle habits and a flexible approach to shape your nutrition plan around your current lifestyle instead of turning your lifestyle upside down in order to support unsustainable habits that only work in the short run the way most programs do. If you're ready to take your training, nutrition, or both to the next level, use code MASS, that's M-A-S-S, in all caps, for 5% off membership to all programs for the life of your membership.

Tanner, I just realized there that while I was looking at the paper, my eyes were not moving at all, and I was still reading the ad because I got these things down. You know, you're just going on. You're looking at the first sentence, and all of a sudden you look you know you're just going on yeah you're looking at the first sentence and all of a sudden you look down yeah you're at the bottom sentence yeah today's show is also brought to you by texas power bars i do have to look at this one because there's some key dates that i don't want to forget 1980 that is a very important date in the texas

power bar story buddy caps first started lifting weights in the late 60s and began power lifting in the mid 70s at the time he worked for mid-70s. At the time, he worked for Image Barbell, building gym equipment. Around 1976, a local machine shop started making Olympic bars for them, calling it the Image Bar. In 1977, Image Barbell became Champion Barbell. It was then that Buddy started looking at the bars with an intent of changing them for the better. In 1979, Buddy bought his first lathe to begin addressing the known issues. In 1980, his passion, drive, and purpose now had a greater mission. Buddy set out on his own to make what he believed was the greatest bar he'd ever seen and trained with, and the Texas Power

Bar was born. It was strong as a house with the best knurling and was maintenance-free. Hundreds of state, national, international, world, and massonomics powerlifting records have been and continue to be set and broken on the Texas Power Bar. To learn more about their legendary bars and buy one of your own, visit TexasPowerBars.com. Okay, inside joke. This actually made me laugh very hard. I just have to, like, pull up the exact thing. So there is the long-running joke of people comment.

Not my lift shorts. Yeah, the hashtag NotMyLiftShorts that people comment. Yeah. The hashtag not my lift shorts that people comment on other companies, any, any posts that another company has about shorts, people are always doing hashtag not my lift shorts. Some of the companies delete those comments. So I have to be when you, you know, a lot of people will tag at mass economics, hashtag not my lift shorts. So if I don't, and I like to screenshot it and then post it in our story and we would like it to be known we never asked for people to do this i don't think do we even were we the first to make that hashtag we might have done it don't know on something but we never like we're going out of other people's posts ever like this was something that people

completely took into their own hands yeah and uh this one the other day made me laugh very hard so it was uh a7 international a power lifting brand which is kind of funny because there's not a ton of those popping up but um a7 had a picture of a guy's quads wearing a pair of a7 shorts and their caption says give your workouts the boost they need introducing the a7 center stretch squat shorts and uh mills.85 says at mills.85 says does the royal blue color cost more and that when i first saw that okay that is that is hilarious that is the ultimate setup and so what's so funny is if you didn't know we we had a limited edition pair of royal blue lift shorts and we charged a $1 more for them because they're limited edition.

They have to cost more. Right. So mills. 85. So hard. Does the Royal blue color cost more? They have like, they're probably like,

no, why would it? Oh, someone's interested in the shorts. Okay. And a seven international says at mills. 85. Thanks for asking.

It does not. They are all the same price and mills mills 85 says hashtag not my lift shorts at massanomics that is really so good like when i saw that one made me laugh pretty hard when i saw that i'm like damn you took it i think I shared that and said just took it to the next level because that was my exact thought I'm like you just took the whole game to another level well no that's next level hashtag not setting up the company to get them to respond to what looks like an honest question it's like turning into an actual setup like like instead of just putting the punchline out there, like you set up the joke. That's so funny. And just,

it's just such a gotcha. Yeah. Yeah. And like whoever has it. Okay. So either two things happen. The person that runs that account was like, this makes no sense to me. Or like,

God damn it. Yeah. Yeah. These people are still doing it. Right. That's just, I know like that 10,000 company, they delete that comment a lot because they get it a lot.

So I think they probably are. That's why they're getting it so much. Cause they advert, cause it's coming across these people's feed that don't even follow them. It's coming across as an advertisement. So they're like, yeah, I don't follow them.

I get stuff for them all the time. Yeah. They're dumping in the advertising dollars. It must be working. I guess when you sell shorts for like 70 bucks a pair, I guess you got to... They don't pay for themselves, do they? That's right. That is right.

All right. Should we get this show on the road? Yeah. Should we try and call our friend of the podcast, Mr. Hack? I think we should. Okay. Let's see if hopefully it didn't block our number. Preemptively blocked it.

Yeah. Hello? Hello, is this John? It is. John, you are on the Massanomics podcast live with Tanner and Tommy. How are you doing? Doing well. How about yourself?

We're doing pretty good, John. We're excited to have you on. Of course, you just came off the big showdown meet win, so I think the big thing everyone wants to know is what is your favorite flavor of sparkling water oh I don't like sparkling water I hate it

with a passion to be honest have you tried LaCroix yeah terrible I don't know where we can really go from here now maybe we just need to call it quits cut our losses

if you like LaCroix it tells me more everything I need to know about a person well we'll try and look past that and keep going here so you did just come off the showdown meet. As of the time of recording this, we're like three or four days out. So how are you feeling after the big lifts?

Physically, I'm feeling good. I wasn't really beat up. But a little pissed about how squats went. But, you know, you live by missing your second and going up on your third you die by it and and which did not pay off this well right and the last meet i think you did the same thing and it did pay off right um so my last one was in wisconsin that one i hit all three okay on my spot but the tribute the, yeah. I missed my opening two and then went up each time and hit it on my third.

Gotcha. So you put up the 2067 total. I think it was probably a PR deadlift, almost 850. And then the craziest thing, I think, to a lot of people is your benching at this point. Was it 562 or whatever it was is that was that your third yes correct and what the hell like it's still yeah I mean honestly I debated about like going up because 562 is the plan going into it I kind of had some wiggle room that like, Oh, if I'm feeling bad,

I'll drop it down two and a half, five kilos. If I'm feeling good, maybe I'll bump it up. But, um, I was feeling really good after my second and I really considered bumping it up. I knew if I missed this,

I'm going to be really pissed after squats. So I'm just going to play it safe and get a win. And then I'm about moving super well. I was very surprised. Yeah. Yeah. So, like, I mean, it looks like someday you're going to be benching 600 pounds while weighing about 200 pounds. It just seems insane.

That's the goal. Yeah. So you beat Dan then, didn't you? Yeah. We haven't seen Dan for a little while. Has his beard covered his eyeballs yet? It's getting up there. I think there's a few little whiskers

up there. The last stand of skin hanging on. He's got a little peach fuzz growing on his pupils. On his pupils. Teen wolf.

No, see, was it by Wilkes then? Was that the what they use or do they use it? Yeah, actually it was supposed to be dots, like going all prep. It was my understanding it was supposed to be dots, like going all prep. It was my understanding it was going to be dots. And then like a week out, they're like, oh, we're actually going to do Wilks.

And I'm like, that really, that kind of makes it a little bit tougher for me because dots definitely favors the middleweight classes versus Wilks kind of is a little bit more skewed towards the big boys. Yeah, they got to be one of the last competitions still using Wilks then, aren't they? I know the US Open current is going to do it again next year as well. The reasoning they went with Wilks was because Wilks was what they used for the qualifying totals. Wilks was what they used for the qualifying totals. They were kind of like, that doesn't make sense to use a different formula from qualifying versus what we use

to give out the prize money. Yeah, makes sense. So this was kind of the first year of the official showdown meet. And you've done the tribute showdown. You've done a majority of the tribute showdown uh have you done the u.s you've done you've done a majority of these big uh a-list meets how did this one fit in and how does it compare to all of them going forward and uh just how was the meet do you think they're going to keep doing

that would you do it again that sort of thing yeah for sure i think it was ran very well um um jp price from uh strong barbell strong barbell he did a phenomenal job i've had always heard really great things of how he ran his meets and um he's definitely a meat director that is he wants the liquors to do well but at a strict standard and so he was like the whole day he was kind of making sure in the warm-up room like hey you guys are having enough time to warm up like i don't want to rush you guys we can take a couple minutes in between the uh flights if we need to whereas like especially with uh my weight class or my flight we only had eight people so my flight, we only had eight people. We were kind of like, we're not rushed to warm up, so let's just go.

Especially like me, I warm up quick and I also don't like waiting around, especially during meets. I was kind of like, let's go. Let's not wait around because I'm just going to be sitting here thinking about the weight too much um but yeah everything the equipment was great um the warm-up room benches they were like a little bit slick and then i was really worried going into bench but the pad on the actual meat bench was probably one of the best pads I've ever benched on. Awesome. Do you get worried at all though with JP?

He's gotten so fit and skinny. It's like, what are you trying to prove? Like looking so good. I know. He kept his arms. Apparently he started hitting the bicep curls. He's going to go for that strict bar curl

world record. Ah, yeah. Go against Larry Wales and everyone else on that. Yeah, yeah. Beg it on Nick's strength and power for that. So you competed at 198. What's your game plan

weight-wise, even even long-term future do you see yourself continuing to go up the weight classes you know almost like the the eddie cone thing would be a comparison over his career do you picture yourself going that same route over time and continuing to get larger and just put up bigger and bigger totals over the heavier weight classes or would you picture yourself staying around this weight i think i'm gonna stay at least around this weight for another year or two at least um i would maybe go up to 220 i don't see myself ever going to a 242 weight class unless it was like a Yuri Belkin where I walk around like 224 and just don't cut. And if I'm within the record, maybe I'd go for that.

But I don't think I would physically feel good at 240. Yeah, that's gaining some weight for sure from where you're at. Yeah, yes. If you would have hit, say, that third squat, you would have had like a 2130 total, something like that. Is that right? Yeah, so I went in with a plan to... My goal was 738 was my original like

all right if i'm feeling good this is the number it was like 733 738 um so i wanted to go 21 43 i think is the number and then because that would set me up to being, I think, like 30 kilos away from 1,000 kilo total, and then I can hit like 2 1⁄2. I think that math is right. I don't remember. It was like where I would just have to make like 2 1⁄2 kilo PRs on each lift for like three meets in a row to hit the 1,000 kilo total. Right on.

Okay. So one thing we were talking about beforehand here and pretty curious about is, you know, you're right up there with the short list of guys that you'd say are the best powerlifters out there right now. You know, you, yourself, Dan, Uri Belkin, that group. So you three walk into any meet, any of the big prize money meet, there's a good chance you two, three, four guys are competing for the big prize and making

the big money at that meet. And then you also have a, the significant social media following, you know, you got a whole hundred and thousand and some followers on social media with you being one of the best power lifters and having one of the best audiences, can you turn that into a full-time career or do you have to have a full-time job? How does that work? I do have a full-time job. I could probably make a living off of just sponsorship and coaching. I don't think I would want to because I feel like once you're done and you're like, I don't know, 35, 40,

it's definitely going to be harder to, you're probably not going to have the sponsorship money coming in still. money coming in still and you're depending on how you progress as a coach you might not have as many people hitting you up for coaching as well um you could probably make a living kind of like donnie thompson where he invented different uh implements or whatnot, but it's, there's not as much growth if you were to only do power lifting. I think you definitely need some type of side job. Like I, I enjoy having my side job or my actual job and just having power lifting as kind of like a side thing where like i i haven't spent

any of the money i make from power powerlifting really it's all just it's in my savings account so that's kind of how i treat it so you can do something really crazy with it after you win a few more competitions here then exactly isn't that the gronkowski method didn't he didn't he save every game check? So you're basically Rob Gronkowski. The Rob Gronkowski powerlifter. We're pretty much the same. Go to Miami every weekend, do some ollie.

Just partying nonstop. Yeah. Catch me in fist bumping at the club. So where do you live? Do you live in California now? I do live in California, yes. We are fellow Midwesterners. We live in South Dakota. Yes.

What's the what do you miss most about the Midwest moving to California? It's very hot here. I know that sucks. I saw I miss like, I definitely feel like I'm gonna miss winter a little bit. And then just the people as well. Like, I feel like I don't have as many like, friends here that are from Californiaia you can almost like tell the difference between someone who grew up here versus who moved here just i kind of like the personality of a midwestern

um it's it's almost like hard to explain but you just you just kind of notice it i think i know what you're talking about though like yeah that that makes sense to me um like there's nothing wrong with it it's just like that's what i grew up with so yeah i like it yeah that's my type of personality yeah no i think that's because are you born and raised wisconsin then yes okay yeah yeah we know what you're talking about then in Northeast South Dakota. So what about Strongman? I saw you posted you're qualified for the Strongman Games. I can't remember what that exactly is called. And I know you've done maybe one before or something like that. What do you see there?

Are you going to compete in that? Or do you see, is that just something to try out a little bit, or would you ever get more serious about that, do you think? Yeah. I've done a few competitions. I did the Chicago Fit Expo Strongman, and then I did a couple smaller ones in Wisconsin. I was going to do one kind of close to a powerlifting meet.

I like to, just because I'm already peaked. And like a smaller one, I feel like I'm strong enough where I don't have to be great at the movements. I can kind of take like a week or two to learn them and I'll do well enough where I'm satisfied with my placing. and I'll do well enough where I'm satisfied with my placing. And then, so, official Strongman games, they ran a promotion thing with, because of COVID, since they can't have competitions as much, where it was body weight, clean and press, and deadlifts. I was like, well, I hope those kind of fit me well.

I know I don't think there's any strongman that can conventionally outpull me. So I ended up signing up to well-qualified and it kind of got me thinking like, oh, maybe I'll give it a try. It'd be nice to add another accolade onto my resume. Strawman's just a lot more fun, personally. I mean, I was at

the meet this past weekend. I'm competing, and I was like, I'm bored right now. Yeah. There is something about a powerlifting meet that's just... No matter how fast it goes, it's still kind of just a long day. Yeah. There is something about a powerlifting meet. That's just like, no matter how fast it goes, it's still kind of just a long day. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I definitely, I look, look forward to, you know,

actually putting some focus into it and seeing if I can win. How do you, do you feel, um, a hundred percent from your past meets, uh, strongman events that you've done, or maybe even just through Instagram and stuff. Do you, do you feel, um, a hundred percent from your past meets, uh, strongman events that you've done, or maybe even just through Instagram and stuff. Do you, do you feel welcomed by the strongman community or is there ever anything like anyone that's like, who's this power lifter guy that wants to just come over and, uh, do a, you know, just try one, one event here and beat all our asses. Like, do you ever, have you ever heard anything negative from anyone about it? Yeah, definitely.

Not directly to me, but I've seen some comments of people thinking he thinks he's just going to jump in and do well. I don't know, maybe. I was going to say, also kind of.

Sort of, yeah. I wouldn't be able to jump into the world's strongest man under 90 kilo world championship and do well, but I feel like a smaller one like this, I can at least do well and then spend a better half of a year training for it. a better half of a year, you know, kind of training for it.

And it's not like, um, like if you're strong enough, learning the movement is almost the easier part, I think. Right. I mean, brute strength can do a lot for sure. Yeah, exactly. That's what I mean. Yeah, for sure. Um, the last thing that we're going to do today, we want you to play our overrated, underrated game with us, and we'll get into that in a second. But before we do that, I just want to touch on it one more time.

Like your bench press, what the hell is the... I mean, you're a muscular guy, and you're a pretty low body fat guy, and obviously you are one of the strongest guys in the world, but like, I don't think your average gym bro off the street, like if they ask you what, does anyone ever ask you what you bench?

And they're like, no, that's bullshit. You're lying. You know, like, does that come up ever? Like the people that don't know you?

I used to bounce back in Wisconsin. it was kind of funny because like if if you got asked how much you bench like if i said like 275 people be like holy shit man like yeah it's always kind of funny because like guys be like oh i bet you get like all the girls if you go to the gym or something along those lines like no like a girl like they don't understand the difference between like squatting like 365 405 and like 800 pounds it's like you don't know how the gym works man yeah now i get guys coming up to me yeah if i go to a commercial yeah yeah exactly only dudes yeah your bench does seem particularly crazy though I mean like I as I've talked to a few people about it over the last few days and everyone's like yeah but it's fucking bench like what the hell is what is the deal uh what do you think you you because it doesn't look like you're particularly like proportioned in a way that that

um sets you up like overly great like you don't have t-rex arms no no no and i mean um do you think it's anything in particular you do with your training or i mean it's just always been a great lift for you um especially since switching to the untested side, it's been very good for me. Um, like, I don't know why that one was the one that increased as much as it did. Yeah. It's like, I was actually thinking about this the other day. I'm like, huh. I wonder if like Brett Gibbs, cause he had a better bench than me when I was in the IPF.

I wonder if he got on, if he would have a 600-pound bench. Did you call him and tell him to maybe try it out? I should. Is there anything you could do to entice and lure him to the dark side? I don't know. I don't think New Zealand looks as fondly as the USA does. That's a good point. Does any part of you ever wish

that you would have stayed tested USAPL IPF and just kept running with that and see how many times you could win an IPF World Championship or do you not care? I don't care too much much my girlfriend actually asked me this the other day that like if if the usa pl if like the sheffield was around when i was in the ipf

and they had like big money meets but i stuck around and i said um i would probably just maybe done like a couple more years in the ipf but but it was always my plan to switch to the untested side because I just wanted to beat everyone. I didn't want to just be an IPF champ. So that really was the plan the whole time, or was it like, ah, I got kind of tired of this and I wanted to go to bigger and better things maybe? No, it was always the plan. I probably just would have, if the,

if there was like money in the untested or the tested side, I probably was stuck with it a couple more years before switching. Making that paper. Yeah. Like even going into worlds in 2016, I told Joey that like if I won, I think I would be switching. And then after that happened, I was kind of like, Oh, I don't know if I like want to switch yet. And then so did USA field nationals in 2016.

And then they introduced the first us open. It was like 250 K cash. And I was like, Oh yeah, I'm switching. That's real money. Yeah. Who,

who is the IPF world champion? What would be your body weight if you were still doing that? Uh, I don't know. One at 93. I know Ellis know who won it in 93. I know Ellis McClain has won it a couple times. I can't remember who won it

this past year. Do you think you could be racking in world championships if you were doing that? Yeah, I think I probably wouldn't be up to 205. I think I'd still be in 83 because definitely getting on has put on a lot of the weight that I have put on.

Yeah. So yeah, I like to think at least like. Is Russ Swole 83? Yes. So would you be able to beat him? I think so. Do you feel like you have any,

do you have a rivalry with him at all in any way, even though you don't, don't compete against each other directly like, like that? Yeah. Yeah. I think like it's, it's like a friendly competition kind of thing.

Um, I think he would agree with it where it's, it's like tough to act or actively compete with him since we are in different divisions but um you know like every time i see him hit like a big squad it kind of kind of makes me want to go in and hit a big squad yeah right on all right all right tommy what do you think should we jump into overrated underrated i? I think we need some overrated, underrated. Okay, John. So the rules of this are pretty simple. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but basically we hand selected a few topics specifically for you. And you just have to decide if they are underrated or overrated. You can't ride the line in between.

You've got to go one side or the other. and you have your druthers to elaborate as much or as little as you want to you can just give us an answer or you can explain it out if you'd like so are you down ready to go these are all extremely serious uh topics here no no no no joking around either this is we got the fun out of the way this is all business now yes perfect okay topic number one overrated or underrated? It's always sunny in Philadelphia. Oh, damn. Sorry, I started hard.

That's what she said. I'm going to go underrated to the general public. Okay. Are you a sunny fan? Yes, Are you a Sonny fan? Yes, I'm a big Sonny fan. What would you say is like your favorite episode? The Charity McDonough

ones are up there. The one big other water park is definitely up there for me. Yeah. What about the reboot or, you know, the new new ones what do you think of those um oh i like the new seasons yeah yeah yeah um i don't think there's like i'd have to look at the episodes but i feel like there aren't any episodes that like super stand

out to me right as being like all time greats, but they're, they're good. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's fair. What's the story on the Danny DeVito cutout that you have? Where did that come from? Okay. So do you know who Froggy Fresh is? He's a rapper by chance. I don't, I would defer to Tommy. Froggy Fresh. Yeah. Or a Krispy Kreme.

No, I don't. He was like a rapper. He was on like Tosh.0. But he kind of had like funny songs. And one of them was him rapping about what he wants for Christmas. And it's all like John Cena stuff. So as a joke, I sent it to my whole family. I'm like, this is what I want for Christmas. And sure enough, they all got me a John Cena thing.

And my brother got me a life-size cutout of John Cena. So the next year, I decided he's a big Batman fan. So I bought him a life-size cutout of Adam West. Oh, nice. Original OG Batman. Yes. size cutout of Adam West. Oh, nice. Original OG Batman.

Yes. And then so because of that, all of my suggestions on Amazon were life size cutouts of celebrities. And one of them was Danny DeVito and I thought that was hilarious. So I bought it. For a second, I thought you were going to say he's a big Batman fan

so you got him Danny DeVito as the Penguin from Batman. And I was like, that is an amazingly specific cutout. Now I'm going to have to look and see if I have that. Danny DeVito as the Penguin is really creepy, though. It's like you got your kind of, sort of, not totally

evil Frank, and then you have the evil Penguin. The ying and the yang yeah yeah it's funny too because of my side spotters yeah the danny devito cutout should not cut cost as much as the others because it's like half the size of a material well it was funny because they have like a two foot tall version for like $20 or something like that. The life size was like $40. I was like, oh my god.

What's the height difference? Talking like a foot and a half total difference here? It was like $40. That's cheap. You said It's Always Sunny is underrated. Yes. Topic two, over sunny is underrated. Yes.

Okay. Topic two, overrated or underrated crop tops, crop tops for guys. Okay. Definitely, definitely underrated. Okay. Is there any performance and hat enhancing aspects to them we should know about? If you're on like a low carb day and your abs are showing well, definitely a performance enhancer. Makes sense. uh if you're on like a low carb day and your abs are showing well definitely a performance yeah makes sense it's kind of uh like when i've when i in high school football that was a big

thing you know it was like the first iteration of it it reminds me of or like almost like the the the mid 90s thing like dudes and football pads were always wearing like crop top shirts and then i didn't kind of forgot about that actually yeah yeah i remember like so i'm a big wisconsin football fan and my girlfriend went to ohio state and i remember we played them in like it was the big 10 championship game and ezekiel elliott just like i didn't know who he was until that game and And I was like, who is this guy in a crop top? Just making our defense look like children. He can pull it off. He did.

He did. And he went to the draft with that crop top suit. And I was like, that's a baller move. Crop tops are probably better in football, though, when the jerseys were the big baggy mesh, the large hole mesh ones. Yeah, the jersey style. When they swayed around, you literally saw the jerseys were the big baggy mesh, you know, the large hole mesh ones. Yeah, the jersey styles changed a lot. When they swayed around, you literally saw the entire crop top underneath the shirt.

That was probably better. I was trying to find my old football practice jersey so I could make that into a crop top and left it there, but couldn't find it. Well, have your parents look in your closet better. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Overrated or underrated? Well, have your parents look in your closet better.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. Overrated or underrated? Wisconsin cheese. Damn. Underrated. It's great. Cheese is amazing. I actually got, my girlfriend got annoyed because I kept talking about it, but I

ordered 20-year-old cheese and it was like $200 a pound. It was great. I don't know if I'd get it again, but it was kind of like, I just wanted it. It was like the last Wisconsin thing I bought before I watched.

Is Wisconsin cheese better than other cheese? Yes, 100%. Is there like a certain thing I bought before. Is Wisconsin cheese better than other cheese? Yes. 100%. Is there a certain style, a certain type of cheese that you think is the best? I like a sharp cheddar. Sharp cheddar. I feel like that's a classic. Yeah.

Underrated on Wisconsin cheese. Last one, and this one's a hard hitter here, so I hope you're buckled in. Underrated or overrated? The DC comic universe. Overrated. Thought maybe you would go that way. I'm a more Marvel fan, but I do like DC. I hope they get their shit together with the movies, Yeah. I'm a more Marvel fan. Right. But I do like DC.

I hope they get their shit together with the movies because, I mean, if they're both doing well, then we get more movies, like good movies. And the Batman, that new Batman trailer looks really good. I haven't seen it yet. I mean, if they do enough Batman, it's only a matter of time before Danny DeVito's cast again, right? Until he's actually eventually Batman. I want a Batman movie where Danny DeVito's cast again, right? Until he's actually eventually Batman. I want a Batman movie

where Danny DeVito plays every character. Like Catwoman. Danny DeVito. Joker Danny DeVito. This new Batman, is it Ben Affleck again then or is it somebody new now? No, it's Robert Pattinson.

Oh yeah, that's right yeah i forgot about that okay yeah what would your answer have been if the question would have been the marvel comic universe over overrated or underrated um it's not the question but we're just wondering what your answer would have been if it was the question. Yeah. That just sounds like another question. I think I would say, God, that's, I think from the general public, it is underrated. I think from like comic book movie fans and comic book fans,

it's overrated. Where it's like a nice nice it's a fun movie but it's not like an emmy award-winning movie yeah yeah like i'm i don't think there's been a marvel movie that i haven't enjoyed going to but yeah i mean that's the whole problem right just entertainment you know yeah it's not like Schindler's List. I'm not going there. Yeah. Right.

That makes sense. John, we got one more bonus question for you here. As a former, you're a, well, you're still a Wisconsinite at heart, I'm sure, but overrated or underrated, making a murderer? Oh. Ooh. Man of Manitowoc. Overrated. I mean, actually, it was like kind of seeing a girl.

Did you know Stephen Avery then? Were you two friends? No. Wait, wait, wait. So you did go to high school with Stephen? Brendan Dassey. Were you did go to high school with Steven or with Brendan? Were you and Brendan classmates? Oh, I don't know.

No, because like, I don't know, at least everyone I know from Manitowoc is like, like, oh yeah, he 100% did it. I feel like it was just, they did their damn hardest to make it interesting when it was pretty straightforward from what I've read. So that's your Wisconsin insider scoop right here, as heard on the Massanomics podcast. Yeah, there you go. Do you have any other fun stories about Brendan that you can share with us? I do not. Okay. I didn't hang out with him often.

Seems like a fun guy, though. He liked wrestling. Don't you like cats? Cats? No. Oh, okay. I thought maybe there was a cat thing. Oh, okay.

Wasn't that Brendan's thing that he missed his cats? He was in jail for life and he was just kind of worried about his cats at home. I don't remember. I watched that so long ago. We like to bring things up about 5-10 years after they're popular. Not so much that it's retro

but also it's retro but like also it's not new it's just kind of like not popular anymore it's just not yeah nobody cares that that sweet like two three years old period yeah yeah it's just like oh it's almost like lame to like talk about yeah like oh yeah we're kind of over that now man that's where we live like five years in the past then you're like oh man that brings back memories bringing it back yeah that guy's bringing it back yeah all right john well we appreciate having you on um that's that's about all we had for you i was gonna let you know dan bell does listen to the podcast pretty regularly is there

any shit you might want to talk or anything like that? Send a message his way. Now's your chance. We always like to encourage shit. Well, okay. I just want him to know that I am going to be ready with another ice next time I see him. I did ice him with a 40-ouncer

of Smirnoff Green Apple after the meet. Oh, where they have to take a knee and what's that? Yeah. Yeah. They make Smirnoffs in 40-ouncers? Yeah. I saw it at a couple shitty gas stations,

and before we went to the after party of the meet, we went to a shitty gas station like this is definitely a place that would have 40 ounces of smear off ice sounds like a pretty sure enough yeah i was like sure enough it did they didn't have the original but they had the green apple so wow i was like i'm i bought two and i was like who at this party would actually do it. Oh yeah. Garrett, Garrett fear and Dan Bell. And they did. Next time you should get Dan with a 40 ounce LaCroix. I don't want to do that.

No one deserves that. All right. Thanks, John. We appreciate having you on. We'll be on the lookout for you to uh break some more big totals and everything in the future and and awesome and make a good splash and strong man thank you thanks for having me on thanks john see you later see ya yeah

wow tommy i've got an important follow-up question to that interview to ask you i don't know if you're going to know what it is, but if you had to give that interview, if you had to sum up that entire interview in, I don't know, two words, what two words would you use? Tanner, I want to flip the script on you. I'm going to answer your question with another question. What would you say?

Oh, damn. I never thought about it in the context of how I would. Flip it around. I always think of, I always frame it in my mind as how would Tommy. Yeah, yeah. See, that's the problem is you're like, how would Tammy respond? How would Tommy summarize it in two words? So if you're just giving me two words, if I'm limited to that, that makes a difference.

You know, if it's two, I too i would honestly i'd say cool beans you would huh yeah it was cool beans i think actually i would say it was cool beans i still think you're not doing something quite right there tanner okay i think it needs to be a little more like uh something like that maybe oh or or maybe like. Maybe more like that. One more time. How long have you had those on there? A few hours.

Yeah. You just went on my to-do list a while. I've been kind of busy. Did you know that this was going to be the time to bust it out? That it was going to be a good time. You just knew that I was going to be able to resist. I had a hunch. You'd say something about cool beans.

Yeah. I had to laugh. I had a phone call with someone this week and they said cool beans on the phone call. They said it all wrong though, but they didn't say it like you believe the number of dms we get that said that someone says someone just said cool beans or said cool beans in an email to me or like you know like in work settings and these other places and everyone's and the one guy i actually wish i could find it or remember who it was he said this kind of elaborate thing and said ah and I was like he said cool beans to me and I wanted to be like I didn't know you listened to the mass podcast also and then and he's like do you think that he does listen to the mass podcast or do you think that you guys bringing back cool beans has transcended so many people

that everyone's saying cool beans now definitely transcended yeah cool beans but his his immediate first thought was you listen to the mass economics podcast like it's like the insider code right right like they said cool beans cool beans i like that that's good there's a there's a lot of clips in there that you're like oh i only want to grab like two seconds yeah it's hard to narrow it down right i like that let's play the good excellent uh very good very good um it it's it was funny on the, oh, Huck Finn and Tom Callis' podcast, Let's Get Stupid podcast. They have Dan Bell laughing that they pipe in. And I'm like, that is funny.

That is really funny. Yeah. That makes me laugh hard just thinking about that. I guess we didn't recap the meet at all, but a lot of good performances. Dan had a really good meet, of course, too. And it's just a guarantee whenever he lifts, he's going to lift a whole bunch of weight how was he not going to squat 900 and bench high fives and deadlift close to nine like yep just he's gonna do it like every time yep it's just uh it's a it's like a certainty that he's gonna do

something like that it's just whether or not he's gonna like re-break a world record that day or not you know and then uh big james swim hack he had a little bit of a pec injury i think he ended up not really really bruised bad he said it's not as bad as what the picture maybe looks like but it sure looks pretty doesn't look good i mean he's not on the full um scott mendelsohn no who wears his whole body yeah his whole body has not turned purple yet but yeah his chest does have some discoloration in it yeah so i think that obviously and that's limited way not cool beans no that's not cool beans at all so hopefully that uh is as minor as possible and and the

recovery is as fast as possible joe sullivan had a good meet He broke the squat record for 220. Yeah. What was like eight? It's like 887 or something. Or 820. Yeah, I think it's like 820 something. 830 maybe somewhere in there. Yeah. John obviously broke that bench record and the total record. Yeah, big lifts.

Yeah, big lifts. Very big lifts. That's about it on that. Do we have anything else we need to cover or do we just need to bring it on our end we probably just need to bring it on so the things that people should do for us subscribe to our youtube channel we could always use more subscribers on the youtube channel and big thing there is one of these weeks, you know, not in the far so distant future,

we're going to have some upgrades to our premium video content. Very premium. So you're going to want to subscribe on there. We have our email subscriber lists on our website. Sign up there. If we have been sending out more emails all the time, there's important stuff to catch there. And then my favorite thing is our podcast supporting memberships.

And that is on our shop and our website. It's about halfway down the page. You go to our shop. You'll see a picture, a drawing of Tommy and myself. Looks much slimmer to the way we look right now sitting here. It was drawn by an actual person that does photorealistic drawings. So if you think it's a picture, you're like, I didn't see a drawing, I just saw a picture.

Like, well, that's why. You're close. Yeah, just go to that. But it is a drawing of us. It is a drawing of us. You'll see that drawing of us sitting here in our podcasting positions, assuming the positions. Click on that.

Once you click on that, it'll take you to the subsequent page where you can sign up to become a massonomics podcast supporting member or as i like to call it a close friend of the podcast and the higher level you select because there is multiple levels there's 99 cent level three level three dollar level six dollar level and the twenty dollar level and you can actually bundle them together too that's a lot of people yeah actually this is pretty genius on our end grand slam it is pretty genius on our end a lot of people most companies you bundle and save well for us you bundle the exact opposite you bundle to spend more right so we do encourage that and the more you spend on your level the closer of a friend

yeah yeah yeah like they say money can't buy happiness well this is the next best thing the more you spend the closer we consider you as a personal friend like you're all friends of the podcast if you're some people are better friends right yes we just like some of you more

yeah Tommy Instagram I suppose I should follow you can find me at tomahawk underscore D you can follow me at Tanner underscore Baird far more importantly make sure to follow massonomics at Mastonomics.