Massenomics Podcast - Ep. 268: Dave Tate

Episode Date: May 24, 2021

Dave Tate joins us to discuss what it’s like owning EliteFTS and managing through the 2020 shit show. We also talk social media, podcasting, and a lucrative Fleshlight sponsorship offer. The Strength Co: https://www.thestrength.co/ Fusion Sports Performance: https://www.fusionsp.net/ MASS to save 20% on all FSP supplements 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 on 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! upside everything. Masanomics! Welcome back everyone to episode 268 of the Masanomics podcast. I was just double checking that right as we were going and I got to it got to the number just in time. The lifting podcast about nothing. My name is Tanner and my name is Tommy Tommy we're back in the studio here in western northeast south Dakota and we're excited for another one we got a cool episode here another we were just

talking we got got it's like every week we're chalking off another uh bucket list another legend off yeah so we really are and so we've got Dave Tate this week that'll be exciting got a few other things to get to too but but first our sponsors for today's show. Today's show is 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 when everything is on the line. Check them out online at spud-inc-straps.com. And this episode is also brought to you by 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 to the Ground Lock Deadlift Slipper, and they are always in stock and ready to ship. Massonomics listeners can save 20% on all Lifting Large branded products by using our discount code mass 20 at checkout. Today's show is also brought to you by the strength co the strength co makes premium made in America barbell equipment and crew including their machined and E coded plates. I just busted out some more some of the 25s and oh, I squatted with him yesterday and they are great. Those those plates never disappoint, do they? They do not. No, those plates have become the go-to choice for all of us at Massanomics Gym. Check out their plates and all

the other Made in America equipment online at thestrengthco.com. That's thestrengthco.com. This episode is also brought to you by Texas Power Bars. A 1980 buddy cap set 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, and world powerlifting records have been and continue to be set and broken on the Texas Power Bar. To learn more, visit them at TexasPowerBars.com. And this episode is brought to you by Fusion Sports Performance Supplements. Do you know what's in your supplements? If you use Fusion Sports Performance, you always will.

Fusion SP prides itself on being fully transparent, never using proprietary blends, and always providing its customers with the top quality products. Every Fusion SP product comes fully backed with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Go to FusionSP.net and use code M m-a-s-s that'll save you 20 a huge 20 on your order a massive 20 enormous 20 those are our sponsors for today's show uh we're recording at an odd time today this is a really this actually would be the first podcast we massonomics podcast we've recorded um on a weekday in the middle of the day yeah is it is it really ever or like it's

gotta can you think of a time where we did one during the weekday in the middle that i mean it would have never happened we've in the past had jobs where i mean we both have jobs but i guess i guess we should say there's some congratulations in order you are now a dad again i am a third time's a charm that's what that is what they say yeah we uh had a baby what day is today it's kind of it's wednesday today you know how it goes it's kind of a little bit of a blur uh so if i if i look more tired or uh my hair is more unkept than normal it's actually not really different I don't really ever do anything there, but no, it,

we, so we had a baby on Saturday. Yeah. Saturday. And now it's Wednesday. So yeah, it's been Sunday, Monday,

Tuesday, Wednesday. Crazy that it's only been four days, but it is, it has been a little hard to keep track of time over that. Yeah. Over that period. The,

the, the standards of time like completely disappeared. Yeah. So we, we did hit a family size pr uh-huh five now a new family a new family pr uh yeah we had a girl and everything's going really good it's just uh having a kid is always just a crazy crazy experience it is yeah i mean i i can speak from experience one yeah multiple not multiple times. But I can imagine adding more into the mix just makes it even crazier.

Yeah, it is crazier. And it is funny how you forget what things are like. You're like, oh, I forget what that's like. But then it does come back. Stuff is almost like riding a bike. It's like, oh, yeah, okay. Here we are again. Yeah, it's like, oh, now I get it.

Now that I'm doing it, it kind of all makes sense to me again. But it is a lot of fun. It is a lot of fun. For as exciting as something like in the gym could be or something like that, it really doesn't hold a candle, does it? No, no. There's different levels of importance in life, that's for sure. Yes, there is.

There is something when you see a human, you know, a tiny human that you created or at least helped create you know suppose the woman doesn't work in the process but where you're like huh that is absolutely insane yeah yeah i always go through like this every once in a while like when i see my boy laying there i go through like this mind trip where i'm like that's like what i looked like in my baby pictures though but i'm here but is that me and it's like it messes with your brain it is it's a weird thing your son does your son look quite a bit like you yeah if you look at our baby pictures yeah we look a lot alike yeah that's also a different and i don't know that any of my kids in particular necessarily look like me you know so that's also a little different too yeah

but yeah that is a really weird thought and you're also this reminds me so last time what did we talk about the the um what was the theme when we were talking about plates and just like peak plate like will it ever be oh like that like just like the bigger concept standing out the lifetime like they never go away yeah and just like they outlive you and just like everything how you don't really own anything yep and how it's just what was the phrase you use from the it's just your turn it's just, what was the phrase you used from the- It's just your turn. It's just your turn.

It's your turn with it. Someone asked, whoa, did you guys start on the grassonomics a little early there? Like with the heavy thoughts. So that's the segment is heavy thoughts. Yeah. I think, you know, heavy thoughts. I like that. And someone asked if we were, if the grassonomics started early.

No, no, we're just, it's just our heavy thoughts segment. It is. So what was my, so what were we talking about exactly um the your kids looking like you yeah um it was kind of trippy so you know yeah yeah and i guess maybe that in general is just kind of the heavy thought for this uh yeah for this episode where it is it is like you are like wow that is insane yeah no i won't forget the first time like my brain really did that it was we he was probably like a month old and i got up in the morning to shower and it must have been while i was in the shower my wife got him i think

he must have been crying you know put him in the bedroom on my pillow and i walked out and was like what that's me when i was a baby and like my brain did this really weird thing yeah yeah it's like it goes full circle it does go full circle and it does go by really fast oh yeah and you're like i could swear i just was a little kid but it is wild how fast time goes like that yeah yeah it really is especially the older you get i think it just goes oh it absolutely does it absolutely does it's like there's routinely weeks just even on a weekly basis there's routinely weeks where like thursday hits i'm like thursday what yeah i i told my wife it's like i feel like a lot of days a lot of weeks i wake up on monday i open my eyes and then it's friday and i'm like

what where did the week go like yeah there's just literally not enough time in a day. It just disappears. And when you're, say, in grade school, junior high, high school, a year? Even in high school, a year is such a big deal. When you're talking like a freshman, a sophomore, a junior, a senior, they're all very distinct. Oh, I was thinking about this the other day. We have Masonomics stuff planned out for the next nine months. I mean, we have Masonomics stuff stuff planned out for like the next nine months. Yeah.

Like, I mean, we probably have, we have massonomic stuff for sure planned out for the next year, but pretty concrete the next nine months. Yeah. And it's like, that's going to go by in a flash.

And I'm thinking nine months used to be an entire school year, which was essentially like felt like five years of your life, you know, it did. And like, if you played sports, you know, I put it in terms of that because that's really a season is what?

Yeah. Three months, which is nothing. And you're like, like, uh, like like uh when you're a junior year's over and it ends however it ends you're like well that's okay there's we still got next year and it's like it's one year that'll be like that just like zips by in just a flash of a second like high school football like the regular season is what eight games and you gotta buy so it's nine weeks yeah nine weeks that's like two months yeah i know how do you do anything or get good at anything in two months that is a good question yeah and you just do it for a few years and then you're done yeah and like

summer summer weight training you'd be like yeah to lift oh i'm gonna get so strong this summer you do that for like 10 weeks yeah like 10 weeks yeah that's you can get better but that's also like no time at all. No, it's not. Wow. All right, Tanner. That's heavy thoughts. That's probably enough from romanticizing the past for now.

Yeah, we really don't do that very much. No, we don't. Well, we still even there, we're not like, ah, we are so good at high school football. Ah, the good old days, yeah. But Tanner, there is something we should talk about. And that is these amazing tank tops we have on right now. If you haven't noticed by now, it's because you're listening to the show and not watching it on youtube yeah and we have i have this is a little sneak peek to the release coming out this week yes the week this comes out the

we'll have so this is coming out the last week of may these will be coming out we usually like to do our drops on thursday so this will be coming out as a thursday drop yep uh there's gonna be four pieces to it so this is just half the drop this is just half so you're only getting a sneak peek but tanner has the uh amazing lift shit t on yes it's actually sorry not tank tank tank and it's in that same uh it's the same od green od green color with the black print on it and it looks good it does it's super cool and i have for the first time ever yeah after years of being a great seller, the Don't Curl In Me is now in a tank top. If that doesn't scream like summertime tank top.

And this is a slightly different shade of yellow, but this is the summertime tank top right here. Now that tank top, you know what that tank top does? This tank top certainly does pop. There's no doubt about that. Like the word pop was invented for that tank top i'm i'm like you don't walk into a you don't walk into a barbecue in that tank top and people not go oh what's that this guy must like to party over here that looks like fun yeah uh so this is this is just two of the four tanner two other ones we have two other ones those are going to be the

surprise and those have never been on tank tops before correct also brand new brand new tank tops never been done never been done before and uh some brand new colorways of things you've never seen before it's just super they're i don't know which i don't you know we've talked about it before where we don't know which what's going to be more popular and what's going to be less popular it's really hard to no idea i have no idea and tank tops are a seasonal thing we're not artificially limiting them but it just doesn't make sense to have tank tops in the fall or winter so if we sold every single one like in a hurry we might get them we might get a restock going but for the most part tank tops have usually been we get them in and then you know we're in the summer room and we don't need to reorder them

towards the end of summer so i would get on these things just in case uh because a reorder is not guaranteed on them right but tanner there's one other problem and um you look way more jacked in your tank top than i do right now it's the od green yeah it's not that you're prepping for a meter anything right now no i'm the heavy you know we were just talking about that saying how how fat I feel right now, actually. And yeah, so we've talked about it before. I've mentioned that I'm going to meet. Yeah, you have a meet coming up. Meet doing the end of June, June 26th. And so I've been purposely trying to gain weight, eating a lot.

And I'm not going to lie, I feel very fat. And what you said you're weighing right now, about 270? Yeah, but I'm a solid 270 at this point like where i'm officially when i get on the scale it's above 270 guaranteed now like so i'm creeping up to the 275 and i'm planning on doing the 275 weight class so that's been my goal is to get up to 275 and i have been doing a lot of uh force feeding to get there is what I would say. And also like, um, kind of like, uh, cutting loose on everything goes,

you know, I usually, I'm not saying I stick to a strict diet, but I essentially don't eat dessert. Yeah. I just eat just regular old food, you know, meat,

meat, carbs, and vegetables is kind of my usual thing. And, uh, right now I'm not hesitating to eat scotch roux bars and stuff like that it's all fair game yeah yeah but now it's like i still so what is as we're recording it's getting closer to the end of may so i have a little over a month left but

i'm almost also almost like oh i don't want to get too much over because i don't know anything you don't want it you don't want it to be a thing where, damn it, I'm now consistently five pounds over. Right. Honestly, I don't want to get to like 277 because I don't like my knowledge of cutting weight or my confidence in cutting weight is so bad that I'm like, I don't want to try to cut two pounds. I want to just weigh 275. So like now I have to kind of watch that a little more closely, but I want to be as close to 275 as possible because I certainly am my strongest then. And I way stronger and we were just talking you feel like your bench is literally getting better my bench is just it's like that's the tip to any bench program gain weight yes yes should be the first page of any yeah i'm pretty pretty positive i'll

be able to hit a bench pr now and um that's been a long time coming and really is there any other pr that even matters honestly well not to me because it's the one i'm pretty sure i can get right now and then i'm squatting down and actually to to the truth of that the one pr that really should matter is your total and i'm pretty sure i can get a pr total which will be like five years in the making so yeah it is fun to think like five years later, I can be now probably hitting a PR total. It's that average to savage life we're all living. It is. We started average.

We're not quite savage yet, but we're in the middle phase right now on the way to savage. Yeah. It's a long road. It is a long road. Every day we get a little bit more savage. A little more savage, a little less average. Tanner, I was actually, this would almost fit under heavy thoughts. I was thinking about something the other day. We're back to heavy thoughts. This would kind of fit

there. So we, as of, as of recently have a supplement sponsor. We do. We did something pretty incredible in the world of supplement sponsors we got a supplement sponsor without being on steroids that's that's true that's pretty rare isn't it like there's nothing wrong with michael hearn there's nothing yeah there's nothing wrong with that yeah but statistically most people get the supplement sponsorship because of what they did prior route than most people though too most people don't get the supplement sponsorship based off of content. Right, right. We certainly took a much different route than that.

You could say maybe even the harder route there. Yeah, probably the much harder route. We certainly played the long game. We did. And it is fun. Just as a note about our sponsors in general, the fact that we have sponsors that are you know legitimately interested in massonomics and like listen to the podcast oh yeah it's you know grant grant uh is that whenever we're talking

about the strength co he's sharing it on his uh uh strength co's instagram uh meredith fusion sports performance he's uh you know big fan of the show that's how that started and that makes it much more interesting for us i think that uh when we have a looking at sponsors and they're like oh yes they get massonomics like they're oh it makes it way more rewarding for us ink uh gets massonomics and has been uh following along with us for a long time and that's just um lifting large in the ground lock deadlift slipper yeah all of those you know the buddy cap story it just is uh it's just fun fits for us absolutely yeah should we should we hop into a can here oh yeah we better do a can so this is this is a what's in the can tanner oh this is so i need you

to uh don protective gear yeah you need to get equipped for this case the can is like morphed into something where sharp projectiles fly out when i try to open you never know all right tanner has the customary headband on he is ready to go yep let's do it can is being passed tanner the can is waiting for you. Okay. It's cold. It is cold. Also, we're recording this in my basement, and it's cold down here right now, Tanner. Yeah. These tank tops are very cold. What's colder than cold?

Ice cold. It's smelly. Is there flavor? There's flavor. we're on a trip to flavor town so what do we got a bubbly i'm feeling bubbly he's making that assumption based off of the tab yeah you're feeling the tab the tab and the fruity flavorfulness of this one. The essence. The essence. So what flavors does bubbly come in?

It's a fruity flavor. I'm leaning hard towards strawberry, but also under the pretense that I could be way off. But I'm going to say it's a strawberry bubbly. Okay. I would say right now that's not a terrible guess, Tanner, but you are wrong. Okay.

It is a watermelon bubbly. Oh, watermelon. And now it's probably going to be really obvious. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. Watermelon for sure. You know, I'm mixed on this because the other day i had it and i was like yeah i don't know if i care for this and now i find it kind of refreshing but

it also might be because i just got done drinking a bunch of coffee and this is such a light light fruity flavor compared to coffee right right um that's pretty good it's not my favorite ever but i certainly would have no problem drinking these yeah in feeling i'd feel comfortable giving that a three and a half a three and a half cool beans or three and a half jd powers yeah the watermelon is apparent now that when i know that too i kind of i didn't feel confident about the strawberry so i'm not too surprised good good sparkling water though delicious should we uh should we hop into some podcast reviews it's been a long yeah been a long time since yes and we need to really you know it

is kind of a life goal of mine to someday get caught up on those um i haven't been able to do it been kind of slacking on reading them it takes a while to always curate them and know for sure where i'm at and but here i've got a few prepared this week this first one is from hd peterson 19 250 episodes in two months that right there already yes wow and these are back from in january so keep that in mind if something seems it's like okay that's weird that you're saying that right now okay the hardest hitting nothing podcast about lifting from western, east, north, south Dakota, hosted by Beavis and Diet Juju.

I am Beavis. I am Beavis. That was a thing for a while. I was like, who is Beavis? Yeah, that's me. I've always been Beavis. I'm Beavis. Always has been. Which one is Beavis? Yeah, that's me. I've always been Beavis. I'm Beavis. Always has been. Which one is Beavis?

And then I'm the guy. Or wait, am I the astronaut there? Or am I the guy behind him? I think you're all of them. It's me and all of them. Your face is the world. You're also all the astronauts. You just don't know.'s just subconscious always has the meme that makes no sense but makes total sense at the same time uh the they elaborate

on a variety of throwaway topics from ejaculoid to scalding hot soda water reviews these guys will keep you on the edge of your seat every week as you finesse your very own druthers as you try to follow along with their unpredictable segments each week. Stay strong, boys, and remember to lift harder than you live easier. I don't know. It's kind of a balance, though. It's a balancing act. There is a balance.

Yeah. Okay, next one is from Strongman Farm D. Top podcast. Easily in the top 10 Midwestern podcasts on weather, sparkling beverages, cool beans, and lifting. That's good. Life essentials. Yes.

This one's titled Cool Beans from Vader6505. In honor of J.D. Power and his associates, I have decided to leave my five-star Mastodonomics review. These gentlemen located in western northeast South Dakota have the market cornered on lifting hard and living easy since purchasing and wearing their fantastic fitness apparel. My lifts have all increased exponentially. And coincidentally,

I am now a resident of easy street because I am living so easily. The Joneses are trying to keep up with me. Ha! They'll never be able to afford a pair of Royal Blue Lift shorts. Once the Mastanomics guys decide to release a triple digit best friend of the podcast, Mastanomics podcast supporting membership, I will gladly sign up. Should we pause the podcast right now and get on that?

So he's saying a $100 per month supporting membership. Until then, I'll settle for yelling at people for curling in the squat rack. Very good. Last one, certainly not least, Cool Beans. I just here for the throwaway culture. I just here for the throwaway culture. Perfect. We just here for that too.

So good reviews. That's what we had for reviews on today's docket very good reviews but keep the reviews coming we're i mean it's not going to be long until we're on that road to 400 and i want that damn 400 billboard i really want it we it's our 400 podcast it's funny that the billboard is like unquestionably tied the billboards are unquestionably tied to the number of podcast reviews it has to be right that became the thing like that's that's just the metric for like the success of a podcast out of all the different things that's what actually we tie tie it to the number of five-star reviews on apple podcasts yeah okay tanner we're cruising through stuff

partly because we're really excited for our guests. That's true. But we're still not quite there yet. So there was one thing I was thinking about the other day, and this is a segment we used to have back a while ago. It's been a while since we've had it. We used to have, I can't remember what we actually called it. It was like best Instagram comment of the week. Yeah. Remember?

Yeah, oh, yeah. That's kind of died out a little bit. That has. That's unfortunate. And I don't know, is it because of lack of comments or because it seems like we don't quit quite as many stupid ones i don't know if you remember right uh that was kind of a sarcastic it was a sarcastic one like it was always when we said best comment it was the best worst comment right right right and gosh it doesn't feel like we get as many of those. It felt like for a while we were getting a bunch of those.

Yeah. And I don't know if people just see it and are like, I can't even get involved in this mess. This is too much for me. I wonder if they're like, oh, I saw what happened to the last guy that made a comment about this. Like, I don't want to get. Or maybe it's also like it's at the point where we just don't pay any attention to those anymore. Did you have one in mind when you said? Oh, okay. point where we just don't pay any attention to those anymore yeah did you have one in mind when you said oh okay i was just thinking about it the other day because engagement is still crazy high on posts people are always leaving tons of comments but i was trying to remember like when was last

time we got just a really dumb comment and it feels like it's been a long time here's a here's a good comment and it's just this one's just fresh in my mind. Yesterday we posted... Like good good? Yeah, this necessarily doesn't qualify for the sarcastic best comment of the week, but we posted the Andy Dufresne from Shawshank Redemption listening to the Mathematics record. And Mostly Squat Videos Matt said, To this day, I have no idea what those two Midwesterns were singing about. Truth is, I don't want to know. Some things are left best unsaid.

Which is, if you're familiar with Shawshank Redemption, which is a great, great quote there. Good movie, too. I give it two cool beans. Two cool beans. Yeah. Do you like Shawshank Redemption? Would you give it?

I'm going to. This is insulting. And this is the second time this has came up in the past three weeks. I've never seen it. It's in its entirety. Great movie. And then the next question was, well,

what about the green mile? And I said the same thing, never seen either one in their entirety. The green mile is not as good. Yeah. Shawshank is, I feel like is the one that everyone puts up, you know,

up there is one of the best of all time. Yeah. Yeah. Do you like the sum of all fears with Ben Affleck? I've never seen that. And Morgan, also Morgan Freeman. I've never seen that. No. One degree of all fears with ben affleck i've never seen that and uh morgan for also morgan i've never seen that no yeah my degree of separation there with morgan freeman pretty good movie tom clancy uh it's a jack ryan yeah yeah yeah i've never seen that one but who's jack

ryan now isn't it's jim from the office oh yeah that's right which is hard yeah my brain has a hard time making that jump and i'm sure if you're into that it's not it's normal you know because i think it's good from what i understand probably but but if you're a big office fan that's just a hard one for me to make is i almost can't it took me can't it took me a really long time like along those same lines uh what's his name uh captain america yeah to me forever he was the guy from not another teen movie like the dumb jock like the job when he yeah when he's trying to impress the girlfriend he has the I forgot about that has the whipped cream bikini on and she goes plus I don't like sundays and he goes it's not a sunday it's a banana split and turns around he's got the banana up his butt just so dumb like to me that's

who that guy is and it took me a long time to to accept that no that that's captain america not not the really dumb jock from not another teen movie right right because that's how i that's the guy i grew up with tanner that's true we thought that movie was hilarious not my captain america that's not my captain america my captain america is an animated form not a real person right captain planet now that was a captain there there's a real captain there although that show was not that good i don't know if you ever watched it i didn't actually like captain i actually don't remember the episodes that well i know i i definitely remember watching it but that was one that came out to me really captain planet this kind of sucks

yeah that one just doesn't stick out to me much at all. But it is iconic in its own way. It is. We've made memes about it before. Yeah, great meme. Great meme possibilities there, yeah. All the little kids with their rings summoning this man. Yes. Should we get the show on the road?

We might as well hop into our ads. Get into the grand finale? Yes. But by grand finale we meant ads yes today's show is brought to you by lifting large since 2004 lifting large has been providing lifters across the world with power lifting gear from titan support systems lifting large has the largest in socks in stock supply on titan wrist and knee wraps in the world home of the ground lock deadlift slipper they are always in stock and always ready to ship. They also have ER competition combo racks ready to

go too. They're the only powerlifting supplier with live website chat support available during the weekdays, and you can get email replies to your questions in hours, not days like some of the other guys. They are now accepting Amazon Pay and Stripe for a quick and simple checkout, and once your checkout is complete, your order will ship fast with same-day shipping on most orders. Massanomics customers can use code MASS20, that's M-A-S-S-2-0, to get 20% off Lifting Large branded products and also receive an additional 50 rewards points added to your Lifting Large account. 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. This episode of the Mathnomics Podcast is also brought to you by Spud Ink and the Axle Straps. The most trusted name in

wrist straps brings to you the Axle Deadlift Wrist Strap. with 30 inches of axle gripping strength the x the sputting axle strap will give you maximum hold even on that big three inch axle deadlift they're available in a variety of art sorry they're backed with a lifetime warranty and custom strap lengths are available just give them a call or email them to place your custom order. They're 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 guarantee they'll come through in competition. Check out the Spud Inc. Axle Wrist Straps online at spud-inc-straps.com. Today's show is also brought to you by the strength co the strength co operates starting

strength affiliate gyms out of southern california they have a staff of experienced starting strength coaches that know the best way to develop strength through the barbell movements grant the owner of the strength co is a marine and he is passionate about obtaining quality products and labor for all aspects of his business the strength co makes premium made in america barbell equipment including their machined and E-coated plates. These plates are functional, easy to handle, accurate, and made to last a lifetime. The Strength Co. plates have become the go-to choice for all members at Massanomics Gym. Check out their plates and all their other made-in-America equipment online at thestrengthco.com.

That's thestrengthco.com. Episode is also brought to you by Fusion Sports Performance. Do you know what's in your supplements? Oh, yes, I do. If you use Fusion Sports Performance, you always will. Fusion SP prides itself on being fully transparent, never using proprietary blends, and always providing its customers with top quality products.

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zero fat, and low or no carb options, depending on the flavor. It doesn't contain any soy or gluten, and it won't cause any stomach discomfort. Available in vanilla ice cream, chocolate fudge, and frosted cinnamon roll flavors. Most orders are shipped within one business day and every Fusion Sports Performance product comes fully backed with a 30-day money back guarantee. Go to FusionSP.net and use code MASS, that's M-A-S-S, to save a massive 20% on your order. And last but not least, today's show is brought to you by texas power bars tanner bunch and why don't you settle on in i'm going to tell you a little story here buddy caps first started lifting weights in the late 60s and became bn powerlifting in the mid

70s 70s at the time he was working 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 Texas Power Bars and buy one of their legendary bars, visit texaspowerbars.com. You know what would be funny? A timeline, you know, like in history books when there's the timeline and it's, you know, points to this, like, Autumn E. Beale was invented.

Yep. The buddy caps timeline. You know, I like to think that their headquarters has that timeline right there. Like, it's in the hallway. It is. You walk in and you follow it right back to the production area. Ah, Image Barbell then became Champion Barbell.

It's like you can tell this is the 70s because Buddy Caps has a fun mustache and short shorts on. There's also a disco ball in the gym for some reason. T-Cal on the wall. Yeah, that's great. Okay, should we get our guest on the line? I think we should. All right. It's that time.

Here we go. This is Dave. Hey, Dave. You're on the Mastodonics Podcast with Tanner and Tommy. Hello. What's up, Dave? Yeah, we can hear you. Yeah. You got me? Yeah, we can hear you. Yeah.

You got me? Yep. Can you hear us? I got you now. Yeah. All right. Perfect. This is Tanner and Tommy.

We're excited to get you on here. Yeah. It's been a long time trying. We were saying this has been many, many months in the making. You're kind of one of our bucket list guys that we've been after for a while, so we're pretty jacked for it. Yeah, we've been courting for a while. Did you just crack an energy drink over there to get started?

Yeah, a little bit. We'll have more on that with questions for you later. But we were talking, you know, you're a guy that we could honestly you know there's been enough segments of your uh lifting career and then your business business and everything we could probably have like four or five different podcasts with with you so what we're gonna maybe kind of focus on and want to ask you a few more questions about is uh elite FTS uh kind of what you've done there, and then also some of what you see the future is like. And we might not get a chance to talk

quite as much about some of your past training and your Westside days and that sort of stuff, but it's mostly just because we don't want to try to take six hours of your life today. Yeah, that's fine. I don't care, man. I've been talking about those days. Those were like 20 years ago. They are fairly well documented too. I mean, if you know how to use Google, you can get an answer to a lot of those questions. So I don't think we need to spend a ton of time going over that part of it. Right. Right. I retired powerlifting in 2004. Right. And it's like, this shit still keeps creeping back on it yeah yeah yeah it is crazy okay so one of the first things we were talking about is all the content that you

produce uh at elite fts and even i suppose prior to that you're you had started to uh do a lot of that and so we're talking and it's not just content like, hey, I make content. I post on Instagram a few times a week. Like we're talking massive, massive articles and the volume of them is something that you can't really get your head wrapped around. You know, we were just looking, doing a little research before the podcast here. You do have some articles on your site that mentioned the number of articles and posts and all these things you have made. I'm sure those numbers are probably not even up to date now. It's probably grown even more, but yeah, it's just impressive the amount of content you guys have been able to produce over the years.

Well, it started that way, right? The company was, let me say, kind of, it kind of started that way. So in 90, like 98, so I'm going to age myself here a little bit my my brother gave me a computer for christmas i didn't know shit you know i didn't have a computer i except for in college you know you have a little floppy drive because you got to write an article or whatever it was yeah and so he was an it guy he built a computer so i log on to the internet right so we're going way back to where I had to dial up. And I'm reading the training information. And being at Westside at the time, there was a site out there called deepsquadder.com.

And Jason Brunel was answering some questions in regard to Westside. And I don't want to say he was necessarily wrong in what he was saying, but it really wasn't what we were doing either. And so I started going down all these rabbit holes like everybody does and they well i i'm gonna age myself like everybody did back then when you found the internet and so through collaborating and reaching out with him i started doing a q a for his website deepsquadder.com and this is going way back into social media wasn't around so he would email me the questions and he would have to put him in html and in a front page which was the program at the time to be able to load it up so it was a very time-consuming process probably more for him

than for me because i'm just answering the questions but i'm dyslexic and you know all kinds of other stuff so my spelling's horrendous and all this other shit. So it was that that started essentially the Q&A. Right. And then I was also doing seminars at the time and consulting at the time. And so seminar in regards to the strength and conditioning world. So at one of the seminars, I met somebody that had a friend that just started a beta site, or it was a Q&A site. And the premise behind the site was to not be a forum, because the issue

that was going on with forums at the time is kind of like you see a lot with social media now. You get somebody that makes a post, and there's a hundred posts underneath it that are just trolls. And, you know, I respect the art of trolling. So I'm not going to say, you know, it was it was it was better back then. I will say that. But that could just be the old guy talking about, you know, back in the day. But this what the premise behind what this was going to be was going to be one question, one answer done. premise behind what this was going to be was going to be one question one answer done and i saw that as being this really really cool solution to what i was trying to do on this deep squatter thing that wasn't going to take a month for things to be uploaded or to be updated it could happen in

real time so i jumped on that and that was how the site started was the Q&A and then it was through the Q&A and answering the questions there that I kept getting questions in regards to where do I get these for these books on these Russian training manuals where do I get chains where you get bands where you get stuff like that and then that kind of coincided with you know a conversation my wife had with louis in the gym she trained in the night crew i was in the morning crew and he was getting very very frustrated with the accessory items he was selling safety squat bars weight releasers um man array devices stuff like that he just wanted to sell his big equipment and the videos. He didn't want to deal with the other shit because you had to take it to

a post office. You had to do all this. She basically said, well, we'll do it. Louis gave us what he had on consignment. Let's put it this way. It wasn't a lot, but it was a lot back then. A couple thousand dollars of product

on consignment, that makes a big difference. back then yeah you know a couple thousand dollars of product on consignment you know that that makes a big difference and so that's kind of how it started because then it was just getting back a hold of the guy that created the q a and say hey do you think you can create a shopping cart i was like i don't know let's find out and and and so that's kind of how it that's how it collided so what i'm going at is it started with the the q a right so it started with the education to where that's kind of where it falls into the primary aim of this live learn pass on thing um with with that though a lot of people get too caught up in the pass on and they forget the living and learning part but so i knew moving forward with that there always

had to be this education component now and i also knew back then i did not want to try to monetize that because it was never monetized i mean i have i have a college education in this so yes i did pay for education but all my best education was just basically handed down to me from people I trained with. You know, just people that just wanted to see it continue and just keep going on. So I didn't want to go down that route. So the Q&A, that's where the education came in and that's why it's been in. That's why it stays in. It's just it's managing the education, which becomes the bigger the bigger obstacle because there's so much.

Now there's, I think, 7,000 articles. Yeah, the social media kind of killed our Q&A, which is fine. But before we had to disband the Q&A, I believe there's like 1.5 million questions that were answered. And that's the archive. You can still find it. It's just a very small link at the bottom of our page. You know, the training logs are on there. Social media kind of killed the training logs too. So then, you know, as we've moved forward, you know, now we're beginning to start to lean into you know youtube instagram and some of those platforms a little heavier and i'm split on that i like it and i don't like it um i don't like it not for the reasons people think i don't like it because i'm giving my

content to somebody else who can remove it at any time they want right right so i mean even even even with the podcast right so you're doing the podcast wherever you're hosting that at any given time they can just rip them all down and say fuck it you're done and you're like oh shit do we have a backup copy of three years of podcast you don't you know and if you do you got a billion hard drives laying around you know so that's the part i don't like because that's that's uncomfortable you're not oh you know i'm saying so but there's a balance so for many many years we just use youtube and we use the social media just to post on and not even give a shit about it and then pull the embedded code just stick it in one of our articles you know so so

we're so we are still getting the traffic to the site because the the other issue you know a lot of content creators run into now is now they're all leaning into and trying to build their mailing list right because the mailing list is everything i got a mailing list you know i'm saying that's all i've been doing since day one is creating the mailing list um so it's grass is always greener it's you know since i'm here like man i want the youtube following to at least pay for my staff you know and so that's that's kind of where it is there's a lot of content yeah hell of a lot do you ever with as many articles you've written as much as you put out is there any do you ever write anything and

and not think to yourself, shit, it feels like I've done this already. Like what already like 10 times, right? Like, is there any, like, do you, do you have thoughts that you're like, wow, I've never put this into words before. This is a, this is completely new, you know? No, it's not possible almost. You know, it's, it's not possible. Almost. You know, it's not because it's I mean, there's so much. Right. So I basically I have to change the means to where I'm actually doing the posting of the content that's there. And it's I still, you know, I'm infatuated with this whole training thing. So I'm still learning things all the time. But when it comes to content, the person receiving the content is not the same person today as it was three years ago.

So while I may have written this concept, whatever I'm writing about, a hundred times, it's the first time most people have seen it. So it's more a matter of changing the context in which it's delivered to fit who's receiving it. Because if I was to write it the way I was writing it 15 years, even 5, 10 years ago, it's not going to be received the same way. But there are times it's like, how many times can I say this? It's not so much that. It's like, how in the hell can I say this differently than I already have? And the cool thing is sometimes it's like, well, I don't have to, let's just go see how I've said it before. Copy and paste, you know, cause it's already out

there. Yeah. And one of the things you're saying is like how, how things are received. And I know, you know, we're on a much smaller level than you, but whether it's, you know, memes, Instagram posts, podcasts, shirts, you're, you're always making stuff. You're putting stuff out there, seeing how it goes. And there's always things that go over really, really well that we would have never guessed. Like why, why is that the thing that resonates with people? Like, is there a few things through the years that come to your mind that for you, it was just totally average or it felt blah and it really went over well for people? Yeah, it's the same thing. I mean yeah it's the same thing i mean it's

the same thing what you're talking about is i would probably say and this is probably this is being optimistic right like not five percent of the stuff goes over well if that like 95 of the stuff just sucks you know and and it's not that it sucks. I mean, it could be really, really good content, really good stuff, but it just doesn't do. It doesn't have the metrics that you want it to have because I still got to pay for all this. You know, that's the one thing that everybody seems to forget is when you have all this content, you got a staff of six or seven people. They still need to get paid. It's not free for me, you know, and it's free for the people receiving it, but it costs an ass load of money to put it out there. So you have

to be able to have a return on that investment, you know, and it's always running a deficit, you know, so it's, you can't afford to keep it always running at a deficit. So, but there are some things like you're saying there's, if it's a shirt design or if it's, it's a product or there's some things you're just like, what, what the hell? Like why? Right.

And sometimes, sometimes it's the shit you put like no effort and no time into, but you got to remember all those mistakes before that also count as the effort and time i suppose but it is man makes your head spin yeah that's true what what talking about the different content forms and exactly what you're talking about there how you know there's a cost to everything you're doing what about podcasting specifically uh table talk i know that went away you were doing that it went away for a while you've brought it back you know how do you feel about the podcast format what what are your thoughts on that it's you know i hate to speak monetization but everything comes down to monetization right

it's true um when when covid hit i mean even being in the industry we were not on the big receiving end of the industry like everybody thinks we were. We were on a different end because we're retail, right? So we have suppliers that go direct to market. We just get left hanging the bag, holding the bag. So we had a lot of issues going on, a lot of pivoting that we had to do, which forced us to really have to look at this content expense. Because when it's as high as what it is and on the other end they got people complaining about shipping rates and we're small business our shipping rates can't match other

people's shipping rates so i got to find a way to absorb it right so the only way i could see to absorb it is to reduce the content dramatically because it wasn't making a difference as far as the sales right so and when all your revenue all your advertising revenue is going into that it's not a good thing so it was more along the lines of well if i took all this is an extreme if i took all my content revenue all of it and just absorbed shipping cost you, the freight shipping for the equipment, stuff like that. I could have free shipping on everything that we've sold for the past year with that expense. Now, what's going to attract the customer more, free freight or an article and some Instagram posts and YouTube and a podcast? Simple answer.

So what I had to do is to pivot that down a lot. Right. So I could take some of that capital and eat a lot of that shipping cost. Right. So that's kind of one of the one of the pivots that we had to do to get through last year was to greatly reduce that expense because it wasn't showing that return that was needed so while that was so that's where the podcast comes in right because the podcast is it's a big expense because it's also going on youtube right so i got it was it was crazy it was something like nine or ten staff hours into each podcast so you start adding those staff hours up, you know, and how much that costs. And then what's it directly making us?

You know, well, the podcast is zero, right? They're zero. Now I've learned you can't put ad, you know, ads on them. You know, that's, I never gave a shit about this stuff before. I understand it now way better than I did at the time. And we had enough downloads that we could have been doing pretty well just with the ad revenue, but never bothered to look at it. So that's why it scaled down is because of that. So to make a long story short, that pivot that we had to do, it's not going to scale.

So as the business continues to grow, I can't keep absorbing half my shipping costs, right? Because where's the money going to come from? Sales keep going up. It worked for the short term. So as we're starting to bring these things back online again, the podcast, for example, we're way more meticulous now on where it's being posted, how it's being posted, what's the potential ad revenue that we can end up getting from this. Not that I want to profit on this because I don't think we will. I just want to absorb the cost of a couple staff members, you know, and that's YouTube as well, you know, so and none of this stuff I gave a shit about before. It was just an afterthought, so it kind of falls back on me.

I should have been paying attention because a lot of these things could have, you know, paid for several staff, you know, through the whole thing. We now have ads on our articles, which I didn't have before, which it absorbs. It's pain for people is what I'm trying to do. It's paying for people is what I'm trying to do. That's why the podcast went away, because I couldn't justify the number of staff hours that were going into that, because it's not only the expense of that, but it's the opportunity cost of that. Those staff hours can be going to something else that's actually going to help sales. You see what I'm saying?

So what we may end up doing now that we've brought it back is because we're finding once again, this is a hell of a lot of staff hours. And where's the back end of this? And we may end up going with seasons. So it's not going to be like a full blown year. Because it's, I mean, just we have two podcasts this week. So there's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. It's going to be like 15, 20 staff hours just this week, you know, for two podcasts. See people, this is what I'm saying.

This is the part you'll understand it because you do a podcast, right? Yeah. You know, most of the people listening are like, Hey man, I just listened to the podcast. It's like an hour long. Yeah. It takes some real work. Yeah. You just sit down in a room and talk for an hour and you're done, right? Just a bunch of dudes sitting down talking.

It's like, oh, man, it's a little bit more than that. Well, I kind of have to explain it to my wife every week when she's like, the podcast is like an hour long. Why were you gone for four? Well, also, this week we talked for two. We had to plan for an hour. After you get done, there's an hour of other stuff you got to talk about. Then that's not even talking about production of any kind.

Oh, yeah. It's like the YouTube videos. It's like, oh, it's only a 15-minute video. I'm like, oh, my God. You have no idea. Yeah. Or the articles the same way. It's like, you know, somebody has to edit the article.

Somebody's got to format it. Somebody's got to post it. You know, there's a lot of shit that goes into all this stuff. And on the receiving end, it's like, oh, okay. It's cool. It's free. It's like, yeah, the amount of time it takes to uh to digest or consume something is nowhere near uh what goes into it yeah the time that goes into it no what what about your your instagram and uh

specifically your personal instagram have you changed over the years how you view that or what you utilize it for or don't utilize it for i I pulled off of that in March entirely and I hadn't been back on. So there are several reasons for that is I was pushing it kind of hard for a while. And I don't know if I got sucked down the rabbit hole or what it was, but I have internal policy. So my brain works a little weird sometimes. I had to answer every DM. So what was happening is I would spend like 25 hours a week on Instagram just answering. Between answering DMs, it was crazy. And that's not even following people.

That's just answering the DMs, making my feed posts. Then I was doing a Q&A on Friday for the Q&A. And it's like this insane amount of hours. And again, you know, when I was auditing everything back in March, it's like, okay, now what's the return on these 22 hours? Because I got a lot of other shit I got to do right now. I got to find new suppliers. You know, I got to do all this other stuff.

Is this, what's the, how can I justify the time? And I couldn't. And it's like, okay, well, we still got the elite FTS one. This is actually working. This is actually doing something. You know, I can say, you know, look, we had these bars come in and boom, you know, we can sell the bar. So, so that, that I could see more so then than now. I mean, it's because as you know, Instagram is very hard to be able to tell if it's really monetizing or selling product or not. You just can't tell.

You could. I could. Last year, I could because, you know, the supply was so low on everything that as soon as you put something up, there was and it's like, OK, we didn't post this anywhere else. So this is because of Instagram. So we knew. So that became more and more the time management as well. So shifting over to there. Now, I have an ass load of followers, but, you know,

and I don't know what I'm going to do with that moving forward, you know, into the future because it seems like a whole lot of followers that are just sitting there, you know, really doing nothing. But it's the time thing. You if i i already know what the outcome was before you know there's result outcome result you know effort result or effort outcome effort result outcome right well what's that going to be compared to if i actually use that same amount of time that did the podcast you see what i'm saying or used my time and did something for the youtube because this that's now my you see what i'm saying that's now my personal time and i gotta wear a lot

of hats where i this my staff can take care of the elite fts one they can take care of a lot of this other content all this other kind of stuff when it comes to my own personal stuff it's like okay you know the podcast is you know two hours, but I still got to research the person. That's another hour, sometimes hour and a half, two hours. It depends on the person. This is the other stuff people don't know when you have a podcast, right? You got to look and see what the person's up to. There's more going on than just picking up the phone.

just picking up the phone. So what if I was to say, if I was to go the way my brain works, if I go back on Instagram, well, then what do I'm not going to do? Am I not going to do the YouTube videos that I'm personally doing? Am I not going to do the collaboration videos I'm doing on YouTube with people? Am I not going to do the podcast? Where's the time going to come from? And then how do I, how do I validate it? Because time is a limited resource and you got a lot of things to do. Yeah. I mean, I think we make those, we have to, just like Tommy said, on a smaller scale, we have to make those same decisions all the time. And the tricky part is just like what you're talking about is some of those tasks are directly tied to monetization that you

say, well, yes, that's a no brainer. That's got to be done. But so many of those, especially related to content, it's not directly tied to it, but yet you think maybe it is down the road. It's a cumulative thing altogether. It's doing something, but it's hard to say like, yep, this is the one thing that's making me money right now. Right. Yes, exactly. And I'm not saying, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying those things don't generate revenue, even if they're not trackable, they can. Right. But here's another thing too, that I don't want people to misunderstand when I'm talking revenue as an outcome, right? That's, that's the same thing as saying followers as an outcome, right? That's the same thing as saying followers is an outcome or the number of people that see the post is an outcome or the number of people you've reached is an outcome, right?

Revenue is just a metric that's also associated with those numbers, right? So if the revenue is not there, you can reach tons and tons and tons of people, right? And if the revenue is not there, are you really reaching them? Because if they're not supporting you, then they're not really liking the content you're putting out there, no matter what the algorithms or the likes say. I'm not saying everybody's going to buy your stuff. You get what I'm saying?

I'm saying there's going to be some metrics. I've had to track content my entire life. And there's going to be a certain amount of content that you know it's not going to have any kind of revenue coming back in maybe for years you know it could be 10 years go by 15 years go by and then somebody's out putting their gym because it's something they saw 10 years it happens all the time so i'm not naive to that fact what i'm saying is it's a metric to be able to determine if your content is even any good at all. Right? Yes. Because you can't, I don't trust like likes. I don't trust subscribers. I don't trust all these metrics. They're good to follow. They kind of help

you a little bit, but how do you know how they're really being established? Nobody knows the algorithm, no matter what anybody says. I had Juju out here on a podcast last night. He said something about, let's say YouTube has 450 people and they're all working on their algorithm. You think any of those people even know how it works? There's 450 of them. No, and it's to the point where there's machines doing it now. Even the people in charge of it don't even really know how it works. The machine does it. It really is almost magic now.

Yeah, so you have to go on what you're seeing coming in because the last thing you want to do is put a lot of content out there that nobody cares about. See, then that's a waste of time for you and a disservice for the people who are receiving it. Yeah, absolutely. You talked about 2020, the COVID situation, how it affected your business. And maybe it's not all sunshine and roses like some people might think.

You know, being in a spot as a retailer, there's just as many challenges or maybe the most challenges you had to deal with. What do you think now that we're maybe somewhat on the tail end of all that? Taylor, there's just as many challenges or maybe the most challenges you had to deal with. What do you think now that we're maybe somewhat on the tail end of all that and you've probably done a lot of the pivoting that you need to do overall? Was it for the company a good thing or a bad thing? Or isn't that a black and white answer? Well, we grew pretty much the same amount we were growing years leading up to it, a year prior. We've outfitted a lot of gyms, so I know a lot of people have gone out of business, just wrecked. So I'm not going to sit here and complain because we grew, you know what I'm saying, when a lot of people I know are no longer in business. So I'm not going to complain about that. The most important thing with a lot of the pivots is, you know,

it exposed a lot of relationships that I thought we had that were good that really weren't. Exposed a lot of our own weaknesses that probably wouldn't have been exposed otherwise. So it wasn't so much pivoting. That was definitely part of it. You know, it's kind of stopping the bleeding. That's another part of it. And it's fixing a lot of systems that you really don't know what your system is until it's strained and broke. April last year, we had, yes, we had an influx of sales. That was insane, right? So that broke a lot of systems.

And it's like, oh, shit, you know, we've got to figure this out, you know, and figure the inventory out. I mean, you guys sell apparel. Jesus Christ, everything. You know, you can't find black T-shirts. Are you kidding? Yeah, that's just insanity. Isn't there an infinite number of those in the world? Yeah, it's black.. Isn't there an infinite number of those in the world? Yeah, it's black. You know what I'm saying?

Everybody sells like 90% black T-shirts, and nobody can get black T-shirts. Like what? How do you? But it was everything. And so you end up creating all these systems, and then you have backups to begin with, but then it tests the backups. And you don't, unless you, I don't't know this is one of the big things i learned you can have backups for everything and you know some kind of strategy plan for disaster and chaos and all this other stuff which we have but unless you actually use those backups you don't know what they do right right you know it's like okay you got this plan

and this is what we're going to do if this happens and that's great we're cool let's go on to the next thing it's like shit, this plan sucks. Yeah, that sounded good on paper when it didn't really matter and now it's like, oh shit, that doesn't work at all. In practice, it's a different thing. Yeah, it's like one of those exercises that you do because a business

consultant had you do it and you're like, okay, no, we're not going to burn down. Plus, who's going to create a system where the whole freaking world shuts down yeah yeah that's right like that's not gonna happen yeah the joke i've always said is as a retailer i'm like oh man there's no problem i work with like 17 different or no i work with 13 different countries 35 different states i'm like we're cool man one state One state shuts down, there's another 34. One country, whatever.

I don't know. A whole goddamn war. It's like, boom, boom, boom. Are you kidding me? Yeah. No kidding. What about product-wise? We've got a lot of lead FTF stuff. We have a little club, Masonomics Gym. We've got

benches and multi-grip bars and SS Yoke and uh bands all that kind of stuff is there any product and i guess i we probably have our own biases i know what i'm thinking in my head i'm curious if it might be your your answer if there's anything you've uh produced sold any of that that you're particularly uh proud of or that you just uh loved as a product? Anything that sticks out to you over the years? Oh, man.

Most of the stuff is the strength equipment things. Just like the Monster Mondo Hack Squad. These are things that nobody's really going to give a shit about because they really don't sell that much. A lot of the things that we put out were because i couldn't find any of these machines that i liked like the say the hack squad that's just an example this is

not the number one item but it always fucked my knees up wherever i went i'm like well what if i wanted to actually do this to work my sumo deadlift in it So just the changing the things with a wider base, you know, changing angles and stuff like that. I like that. I like probably the, those types of things the most because they're in my gym and I'll never let them go. I have the first one,

you know, the first one's out there because, you know, I fricking love them. If there's one that I probably helped the, the, I would say I'm probably the most proud of. It would probably be our yoke bar.

That's what I was going to say. Yeah. That's what would be what I would lean towards. Well, that, that, that came about because my shoulder needs replaced. I mean,

you can go down the injury rabbit hole, but you don't need to do that. I'm just fucked up. So it needs replaced. So I can't grab a bar anymore. And I'm like, that's fine. You know, I can just use a safety squat bar.

And so I'm only using that for a long period of time. I'm like, my back is trashed all the time. Like this, this is not supposed to be wrecking my back worse than a barbell, but I can't hold a barbell. And I'm like, what the hell? And so what I realized was most of the safety squat bars to have that it's a shorter pad right and so i wanted a longer pad so the weight would be displaced across my entire upper back just not that five inches over my spine let's like a barbell let's spread it out further so we need to make the pad wider and then that ended up making a

difference but not enough so that's okay we need two different types of foam because i want the one layer to deform around my shoulder so the bar sits well but then i want the other layer to actually be harder so the bar doesn't tear through the pad and all this other kind of crap so there's a lot that went into it but it went into it just so i could still squat every week you know so i gotta find a way to where i can still squat every week you know so i gotta find a way to where i can still squat all the time because in the past most people would not even probably today with most people they're only going to use a safety squat bar here and there some people maybe once a month maybe for a three-week phase here and that's all i can use is like that or a spider

bar and you know i can't use a straight bar so it took a very long time to figure out how to do this just to work for me i'm like well if it works for me then it's probably going to help a lot of other people that have the same issues and then go from there but it also becomes this little weird caveat where the pad ism you know I'm allowed to swear on this thing. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, the pad is a motherfucker. I mean, it's, it's,

it's, it's, I don't want to say impossible, but we do it, but finding people to make it, finding people to make it right. Finding people to make it consistently. Right.

I mean, it's just, Oh my God. Like, how is this, this difficult? And then to do it at a decent price, you know,

I can easily just take a fucking swimming noodle and put it on there with a piece of naga hide and knock it out you know but that's not going to work so that would be the one that i because yeah that would be that now there's there's still things i can do on it to make it better you know i can probably make the finish better than just, oh, shit, texture coat. We're basically just powder coating the bar. So I can make the finish better. But I have this, and it's a bad thing, which is why I'm trying to keep people hired around me that see things differently than I do. If your bar is scratched, to me, that's a good thing.

Right. That's kind of what it is kind of signs of a life well lived we have a lot of a lot of cool equipment in our gym a lot of different bars and stuff like that and i personally never been one to uh you know i've i've never been one to worry too much when things get dinged up a little bit and stuff it's like that's what happens here like shit gets used it's being used like it's like well you know the paint stripping off the sleeve where you put the plates and you know i'm like personally like rolling my eyes you know yeah i can change it but you're gonna pay more right it's a trade-off for sure too

that's the thing yeah and i but i get you know i get it right because people now have home gyms and it's a different way more home gyms and it's it home gyms, and it's a different – way more home gyms. And it's different. It's a different type of gym user than what you're normally used to. And I get it, man. If you've got a nice house and you have people over, it's like, hey, look at my gym. You don't want bars with shit flaking off of them because you're bragging. You're like status bragging.

I get it. I don't have to like it, but I get it. It's part of the market. I like things to look beat up. I like my bars with rust on them. I'm like old school. But this is a different market. Yeah.

You said a lot of work went into that bar and a lot of personal. You knew what needed to be done because you used it and you needed it and uh so i mean legitimately a lot of a lot did i imagine a lot of trial and error you worked with a lot of different people you're talking about the pad how do you feel and and ultimately you did you created an amazing product i think that's almost like came from a place of necessity right and it's like problem and took care of it it's universally regarded as a great product, I think. Like,

I've never heard anyone say, like, ah, that bar, that's a piece of shit. You know, like, everyone kind of agrees,

like, that's a great tool and a great thing that most humans have. It does feel like one of the few unanimous picks in the general world.

Right, right. And so, how do you feel if someone comes out and attempts to make a rip-off of that? They already have. It's the industry.

I don't want to say I don't care. You just have to find a way to respond. Their pad is completely different because I've had the bar. The angle of the bar is different. There's differences. Are people who squat under 400 pounds going to care? No. But that's the industry. What am I going to do, sit here and bitch about it? I'm sitting in my office looking at a dry erase board with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10,

like 25 things on an R&D list. I've got to focus more on that. And I got to focus on this other shit because as soon as something goes up there, somebody else is just going to, you know, rip it off, make it better. But a lot of those things also, they do help the industry, right? Because that forces us to look at, you know, what's the pricing, you know, how do we justify the pricing, you know, so things become more competitive. And sometimes it means, you know what, fuck it, we can't sell it anymore. You know, it's done, you know, so things become more competitive. And sometimes it means, you know, fuck it. We can't sell it anymore.

You know, it's it's done. You know, if you don't have anything else in the back burner for that, that's what it is. You know, it's we were one of the first companies to put band pegs on things. You know, I can look back and say, well, fuck, I should have patented that. Yeah, but I can't, you know, or the monkey chin bar. I can't back and say, well, fuck, I should have patented that. Yeah, but I can't. Or the monkey chin bar. I can't. Who cares?

You see what I'm saying? Who cares? I think people get too caught up into that because if that's all you care. You think, here's the other thing. You think the yolk bar is going to be our number one seller two years from now? Because if you do, if I thought that, then I'm making a huge business mistake right you know you just can't you can't do that it just it shit happens man it's just whatever i'm out so i know other people in the industry just get freaking pissed off yeah there's yeah you you can't i mean what are you going to do to change it i can't control that

you know and let's say i could change it with a you know by filing the patent and then you know the legal fees behind all that shit and then you got to go send a cease and desist you got to do all the other legal work behind that that becomes almost unaffordable well and it's time that you could be spent doing things that could make you more money in the future or doing new things that's right at the end of the day, you go through all that, and maybe it works, and you fight it, and you quote-unquote win. But did you win? At what cost did you win? You never win.

I've been involved in enough of these legal issues to know the only people that win are the attorneys. Normally what happens is it never goes to court it's always settled outside of court both parties are pretty much like fuck then you know nobody's really happy because there's no winner it's always a compromise and then you look at what the end legal bill is you're like son of a bitch yep so you know over your time you know, you have a ton of experience between the platform, owning a business, running a company, having employees, all this. If someone were to say, Dave Tate, what is your best piece of business advice? What would that be? My first reaction is don't do it. I think my first reaction is don't do it that's the honest truth because I kind of a side thing that I've been doing for many many years I do consulting with people and it's with coaches for the training and with the business and all

that and that's the first question I that's what I try to talk people out of it if they want to start a business it's an honest discussion where i'm going to sit down and i'm going to press them and i'm going to give them examples of the shit they're going to have to deal with you guys have been in business for a while you there's a lot of shit you got to deal with you need to be committed to this at a level most people don't know and they actually get in it and then after they're in it they're like fuck i didn't know this but i'm already in it so i guess i'm in it you know and i try to give them a realistic perspective of this isn't what you see on instagram and if it is and it does work that way for you

good for you but it's a it's not many um so that i guess my now, that all assumed to say you're already in it. I'm on a, hold on a second. Look in the weight room on my iPad. Okay, if they're already in it. To understand that balance doesn't exist right everybody are you still there because i'm sorry i'm sorry no no problem but um but everybody tries to find this balance right so the balance isn't what people think it is the balance might be you know during those listening if they're i'm trying to i relate everything to training i'm sorry but

if it's like block periodization right yep you're going to have a certain block that's geared towards just maximal strength another block that might be geared towards explosive strength another block that's geared towards conditioning or whatever it's going to be that's kind of the balance right so if if you're if your company say say your company for example say fourth quarter is the biggest quarter of the year you're probably not going to have family work-life balance during november and december you know it's just not so you. So you got to understand that, but that doesn't mean you can't overcompensate for that in the summer when things slow down.

Right. So people are trying to figure this balance thing out on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis, and it doesn't work that way. So that would be the first thing. And then to take those things that you're trying to balance and form the best communication with those entities you possibly can. So if it's a significant other, do they know why you're doing what you're doing? And because they're the ones they, they, if it's a business,

they sacrifice, you don't. You see, so the power lifters always talking about how much they sacrifice. It's like, really you're sacrificing. You like to go train in the gym. You get to do what you want to do all the time. It's your family and everyone that never like to go train in the gym you get to do

what you want to do all the time it's your family and everyone that never sees you and doesn't know who you are they're the ones suffering yeah yeah so if you got everybody on that same page and then you have a very small group of people friends or advisors that you can kind of trust that are on that page too those things are vital you know so if it's like the analogy of a squat, like if you're doing a maximal squat, you gotta, you gotta have spotters, right? So who, who, who are the people that are going to be on the platform with you? Right. Those are the things that you kind of have to have those conversations with. They need to understand kind of how this whole balance game kind of works and then let the judges make the calls based upon what they see,

because who gives a fuck, right? Because they're're the judges aren't going to get up and take the weight off your back right so yep absolutely that makes a lot of sense uh we've got this game we play with every guest dave we call it overrated underrated um we've got a series of topics for you handpicked for dave tate and you it's just your job to decide whether it's overrated underrated. The important thing to remember is you can't ride the line in between. And this is probably the most important part of the podcast. This is where shit gets pretty serious. So okay.

Overrated or underrated energy drinks underrated energy drinks? Underrated. And do you have one go-to, like this is the one I always have to have? Right now it's this purple monster thing, but I'm weird like that, man, because before this it was the red amp drink. And it would probably still be that if they still sold the things. And then before that, it was the Lemonade Rockstar.

So I don't know why it kind of falls in this. Like, I just gravitate. And this is the crazy thing is most of them taste like shit to me. It's just that one. This purple monster is good. If they quit making them, they'd be like, well, fuck, I guess I'm not drinking energy drinks anymore. Do you have to regulate it?

Yeah. You could go hog wild on them if you really felt like it, though. The funny thing is people think I'm drinking them all day long, and I kind of do, but I only drink two and a half or three a day so like people see me with all the time because i'm sipping on it all day long um so it's now i think i kind of purposely just make them drag out all day long they're like you're drinking 12 of those a day i'm like yeah

okay whatever but if i go over three and i and i've done that it starts to fuck up my digestive system a little bit so i know what i know i know what the threshold is which is a bad thing yeah okay um overrated or underrated cut off hoodies what do you mean by cut off well where you got the sleeves cut off you know on you know yeah underrated man your elbow sleeves man you gotta put you if your elbows you know what i'm saying if you got to take your elbow sleeves on and off having the freaking full sleeve sweatshirt what a pain in the ass that is yeah easy access that's a good that's a good tip actually yeah so the other thing is i wear a hoodie even

in the summer when i train because i cannot stand having sweat in my eyes it's been that way since a kid the hoodie is like a sweat band without being a sweat band you know so so the cutting the sleeves off also is warmth because you're opening your wrists up right and if it gets too hot then i wear a hat right but anything to keep the freaking sweat in my eye, I hate it. That's a good tip, though. Overrated or underrated? Gas station sushi. I've never had it, so I would say that's

overrated. Where I live, we don't have sushi in gas stations. We got like barbecue chips and hot dogs that's a go to then overrated or underrated T Nation underrated

I'm going to say that because in full transparency I probably haven't been on there for a couple years to be able to see what it is i'm giving it that mark because the archives they go back they go back about as far as we do so i further because they were around they helped me you know in the very beginning but the cool thing is i mean they were publishing my articles. And I remember talking to TC when he first wanted me to write and I'm,

my writing skills are not good. And so I'm trying to like tell him my writing skills are not good without looking like a complete idiot. He's like, I don't care if you write this shit on a napkin and send it to me, we'll make it work. I'm like, okay, that's cool. We'll do this. And so they gave me a shot pretty much when a lot of other people weren't going to so there's that but they've been around so probably 96 i don't want to don't fact check me on that right but it's so the archives look at the people that have written for them and if you dig in their archives like if you're digging our article archives there's so much gold on there so even if everything that printed in the last three or four years people don't like go back and look it's the shit that was being

posted before there's absolute gold on there for free you know so yeah that that's a resource certainly when i maybe not when i very first started lifting because it was almost more when I started to like actually yeah like let's do some of this like where there's actually some benefit or so I can reach some goals here and like t-nation is one of those big things like your articles Wendler's uh just a lot of them on there at the time like it was a super valuable resource and I guess I honestly don't even know what it's like so much anymore. Same way I don't really look at it. I don't either.

I mean, they, like a lot of other sites, this is going to be biased, right? Because we bet our content really, really hard. So there's a lot of stuff that we turn down that I know we could put up that would get way more views. But they're a very, very large site. Very large site. Their traffic is insanely high. So you have to have a bullshit detector when reading a lot of their stuff. So it's good and bad, right?

So this is, you know, to to break your rules it does kind of walk the line a little bit but i'm not one of those people that i don't believe there's this information overload and that people that are receiving the content are too stupid to figure out what's bullshit and what's not right most people are smart enough to kind of see that okay this this is a little far-fetched. And to think that they're not, I get most humans may not be as smart as what we think they are, but you've got to give them a little more credit, especially if they're going down these rabbit holes. It's not.

Most people can filter out at least the top 90% of bullshit real quick. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, this last topic, when we said we were going to have you on and do our overrated, underrated, everyone insisted we ask you this one. This is by far number one, what everyone wanted to know your opinion on. Overrated or underrated?

Fleshlights. Let's see. Underrated, I guess. You know, that's a funny story, man. When I was still posting on Instagram, you know, I started posting this exercise that I do, which, oddly enough, Juju just came out here to do yesterday, which is kind of funny. This reverse band high box

spider bar bullshit, right? And I can explain a million reasons on why I do it. I just like to lift heavy shit. It's the safest way for me to do it. It is what it is, right? But if it looks like there's a thousand pounds on there, maybe there's a thousand pounds on there maybe there's a thousand pounds on there but it's not a thousand pounds you know there's a reverb there's a shit ton of reverse bands on there and um so anyhow i mean this this lift is just like

specifically like made for trolling without being made so and i know i never posted it just because it's something i like to do for the reasons that i do it right and somebody else posted it and i know i never posted it just because it's something i like to do for the reasons that i do it right and somebody else posted it and i was like oh shit you know i think they posted it on on the elite fts instagram it's like oh shit you know this is getting blasted of course it's getting blasted for obvious reasons and so then i started posting it on my own instagram and i was trolling myself it's like these trolls suck. I mean, I come from the old school days of forums where the trolling was classic. I mean, there was some like it was like some shit that it would piss you off, but you still have respect for the person.

That was good. Yeah. Right. And now it's just like, man, you're just an idiot. But so I'm writing these posts. Right. It's like fat dad functional training. but um so i'm writing these posts right it's like fat dad functional training and i'm i'm spending all this time going to see what other influencers are writing and their things so i can like troll

them in my thing and these posts are taking me like half a day you know to be able to write and then i would thank my sponsors trojan condoms and fleshlight bmw rolex and all these stupid things right i'm doing this like every week for a while and then i get this dm from fleshlight it's like what exactly are we sponsoring i'm like oh wow this is a weird fucking position they actually so they actually did dm you then yes they did and then I'm sitting there like, well, wait a minute here. Like, what? What can we do with this? So I DM back and I'm like, look, man, I don't know really.

I tell them I'm just messing around. Maybe there's something we can do here. Maybe I can do like a giveaway or something just to make this even funnier. And then a week later, I get a box of these things. I'm like, okay, cool. I asked my media team at the time, maybe we can do this giveaway. They look at me like, are you out of your fucking mind? Giving away a fleshlight?

I'm like, yeah, why not? Just give away. What if it goes to a teenage kid and their parents find out? Oh, shit, we can't do this now i got this box of fleshlights and lube and like dildos and all this others and i'm like what the hell am i going to do with this stuff and well i know what you're supposed to do with it right i don't need a whole box of them so i'm sitting there looking at this thing i'm kind thing. I'm kind of like amazed and bewildered, right? I'm like, people stick their dick in this.

I mean, I'm looking at it and I'm like, why? Then I open it up and I'm like, no, wait a minute. Then somebody came in and I'm like, look at this thing, because it looked like this crown. It looked like a sword. However, I don't know. It looked like the handle of a sword. Yeah.

I'm like, look at this. It was Joe Jordan, one of my multi-fly sponsors at the time. He comes in, and he unscrews the bottom of it. I'm like, what the fuck did you just do? I didn't know the bottom of it unscrewed. I'm like, what the hell is that for? And it's like the reservoir. just do like i didn't know the bottom of it unscrewed like what the hell is that for and it's like the reservoir i guess that's where you drain the shit where you clean it you know what and then i saw that reservoir now wait wait wait a minute what if we stuck ammonia capsules in there or if we stuck if we stuck the the smelling salts you

know that you take them out of a little bottle, stick them in that reservoir, screw it back up there. And then when you stick your nose in the fleshlight, you're not going to know when it's going to hit you. You know, like when you open the smelling salts, you kind of know when it's going to hit you. Right. You stick your nose in a fleshlight. You don't know if you're going to get it immediately. A second delay, two second delay. You don't know. I'm like, this is going to be interesting so i try it and it blew my freaking head off because you don't know when it's coming right and coming literally coming right yeah yeah so then it became this thing where i have to have everybody do it like here try this

i'm like i don't have anything i'm like stick your nose deep in there. Then boom, it blows the hair off. This is the best ammonia container of all time. So that's the story with the Fleshlight, where it went from there. Now, oddly enough, I don't know where any of them went. They just disappeared. Yeah, I'm saying underrated because as far as the ammonia thing it's the greatest thing in the world that is awesome yeah

no that kind of wraps up some of the stuff we wanted to talk to you Dave like we said before we could probably you know we could talk for another hour about your training and your history and then us you know go two hours longer than that but we just kind of want to be respectful of your time here too.

We do really appreciate getting to have you on. You're someone that we've been looking forward to to talk to on here for a long time, so we're excited about it. No, I appreciate being on, and I apologize for the time it took to be able to hook up and get together. We worked it out, so I'm happy we were able to work it out. That's awesome. Well, thank you, Dave. We really appreciate it. Thanks a lot, Dave. We worked it out. So I'm happy we were able to work it out. That's awesome. Well, thank you, Dave. We really appreciate it. Thanks a lot, Dave. We'll see ya.

Wow. Tanner. I think we know, I think we know the answer here. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Do I have to push the right button or not? Dave definitely gets two cool beans. He delivered the cool beans, didn't he? I love the fleshlight story. That was good. I never knew that fleshlight reached out to him. That's the crazy part is that they actually were like, what are we sponsoring?

We're not saying we're not, but what is it? Yeah. Wow, that was a good, that was really cool, Tanner. That is really cool. And we're not just saying that. We kind of had to be selective of what areas or what topics well and it's also the crazy thing is I mean we talked to him for an hour and we we didn't talk about training no right no and I mean we could still go we could go easily another hour or two we'd still not talk about probably missed a lot

of things that some people wish we would have asked them there's just there's only so much time that was the thing that's right and you know hopefully we'll be able to do something else with them someday and if we get him to come on a podcast and then take two hours of his time he's gonna be back yeah yeah i gotta put the warning out i'm not gonna deal with you fucking guys again like that was enough the last time yeah uh what else do we have today is there anything special that we needed to talk about um i think we probably got most of that taken care of. I guess be on the lookout for the tank tops. These two, the lift shit and the don't curl in me, and then the two mystery ones.

Whatever the two other mystery ones are. Yeah, and that should be the week you're hearing it. It should come out hopefully Thursday would be our rough plan. So stay on the lookout. Pay attention on Instagram. Make sure you are on our email list because we always send those out. People on the email list usually have a sooner heads up than the general public for that's true for the actual release itself that is a great reason to sign up for the email list is that is usually a lot of people a lot of

people were uh pretty upset they didn't get in on the shorts well if you were on the email list you would have had at least a fighting chance whether you check your email that frequently or not that's like a notification yeah but you did have but you did have a fair chance. And you can sign up for the email by just going to our website, and I think it'll pop up. Yeah, it's on the bottom of the homepage. I think it's on the bottom of every page. It's on the bottom of the homepage,

and also it'll just pop up too once you go to some pages. Otherwise, buy something, and you can sign up there too. That would be like the best way. That's the preferable way. It's like I signed up for this email list, and all it cost me was $30. And if you don't know what to buy you can buy a supporting membership you're like oh i like all these shirts so much i don't know which one to pick today

for in the meantime you can just buy a supporting membership you can do that we've got a level for every every budget every budget there's something there for you. The only wrong level is not buying a level at all. That's the only wrong choice you can make. I do like to hear it that way. That is the only wrong choice. Make sure to subscribe on our YouTube. Watch on our YouTube. You can see these new tank tops.

If you're only listening, you're missing out on seeing these new tank tops. Subscribe on there. Ring the bell, I guess. Like us on Facebook. Let me tell you about today's sponsors one more time. Today's show was brought to you by Fusion Sports Supplements. Do you know what's in your supplements? If you use Fusion Sports Performance, you always will. Fusion SP prides itself on being fully transparent, never using proprietary blends, and always providing

its customers with top quality products. Every Fusion Sports Performance product comes fully backed with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Go to fusionsp.net. When you're there, use code MASS. I have talked to a couple. Was it Big Eric? I think Big, who was it now? I'm going to forget. Big Eric said, because of our ad ad he bought some fusion sports performance supplements

and also what else did he get he brought bought the strength co plates oh wow because of our our ads he bought the strength co plates and fusion sports performance i guess be like eric huh maybe eric maybe big eric i don't remember now i actually told him i'm like i'm gonna use that and i just remembered it right now and i completely forgot who it was. But if it was Eric, thanks. If it wasn't you, if it was someone else, also thanks to you. This episode is also brought to you by Texas Power Bars. A 1980 buddy cap set on its own to make what he believed was the greatest bar he'd ever seen and trained with.

And the Texas Power Bar was born. See more on that story on the timeline on the walls at Texas power bars, Inc in Texas. You can see the full timeline with, uh, period specific pictures of buddy caps. I think the history channel has an ancient alien segment coming out about it. Uh,

to learn more about the timeline and everything else by their bars, visit Texas power bars.com. Today's show is also brought to you by the strength co the strength co makes premium made in America America barbell equipment, including their machined and e-coated plates. These plates are functional, easy to handle, accurate, and made to last a lifetime. I would say they're like the premium plates on the market that you could get, especially in the machined plate world.

Check out their plates and all the other Made in America equipment online at thestrengthco.com. That's thestrengthco.com. And today's show is brought to you by Lifting Large. Lifting Large has set a new standard for customer service within the strength world. They have moved, I see, and officially got into their new location. I think they even have a discount going right now in celebrating that move. So go check that out. Oh, code MAS?

I think it's code Mass 20 at checkout, and it'll save you 20% on all lifting large branded products. Today's show 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 when everything is on the line. Check them out online at spud-ink-straps.com Tommy, where do they find you on Instagram? You can find me at Tomahawk underscore D. You can find me at Tanner underscore Baird, but just make sure to follow Mastodonics at Mastodonics. See ya.