Massenomics Podcast - Ep. 296: Brian Carroll

Episode Date: December 6, 2021

Big Brian Carroll joined us for this one to talk about writing books, 1,306 pound squats, and back health. We also try to get him to talk a little smack about internet commenters. The Strength Co: https://www.thestrength.co/ Hybrid Performance Method: https://www.hybridperformancemethod.com/ MASS to save 5% on all training & nutrition Fusion Sports Performance: https://www.fusionsp.net/ MASS to save 20% on all FSP supplements 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! Welcome everyone for episode 296 of the Masanomics podcast. Tommy, I feel like you're looking at something. I'm sitting here, the vibe is off, and I look up and the damn light's on! The wrong one! So I'm going to turn that off once you start reading the ad here. here okay we left the overhead light on um we'll get that corrected though this is episode 296 recorded

live from western northeast south dakota got a big rundown today but first i want to run down a little advertisement for you all today's show is brought to you by texas power bars buddy cats first started lifting weights in the late 60s and getting power lifting in the mid 70s at that 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,

but he 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 darling, and it was maintenance free hundreds of state national, international, and world power lifting records have been and continue to be set and broken on the Texas power bar.

Check them out at Texas power bars.com. Yeah. Yeah. Lighting feels a lot better now. It is. It's all coming together. Uh, Tanner,

how about this weather? Huh? How about this weather? We've been having 60 degrees today. Yeah. I think it was 60 plus today. I December in my short lifetime. I don't know how many 60 degree days have existed in

december western northeast south dakota more likely to see 60 below than 60 above that would make more sense yeah with windchill absolutely like that would be much more uh par for the course here is it was great i mean it was no coat weather it's weird like it's playing tricks with your brain i'm fearful that it's all like oh we're gonna pay for it yeah like this is the way you don't come out ahead no those games where you will lose at some point so yeah when we're talking on this podcast how it's uh the first week of may and we have two feet of snow we'll know why because right we talked about in december how it's 60 degrees it is nice like the farther and farther we make it here oh it's like well it just shortens

the window yeah like now even when you're like in december like i can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel like winter starts to feel yeah i mean winter's long but it does still like start to feel shorter kind of as time goes on more bearable maybe well some say the seasons uh go by long but the days go by slow uh wise man once said that uh and something about penciling it out too i think no when you actually pencil it out that's okay yeah it's you sit down with pad and pencil and yeah it all shakes out well you also if you look at it from a full 10 000 foot view beforehand and get the full landscape um it's different that way yeah i those all do make sense though especially when you add them up in some it really yeah absolutely um so it was thanksgiving this past weekend tanner that's right

that's right can you remember back that far it seemed it's it was it's been a blur i'm not joking when i say it's been a blur because we had our, after Thanksgiving, of course, comes Black Friday. After Black Friday, of course, comes Small Business Saturday. I'm not sure if Sunday is a thing. Yeah, we should look into that. Is Sunday a thing? Why don't they make Sunday into a thing? And then, of course, Monday, Cyber Monday.

And boy, what a stretch it was for Massanomics. It was a doozyzy as they say in the business it was it was it was it was awesome though i mean it was great and first of all i would just like to say thanks to everyone that uh supported us everyone the sports is ever but everyone that supported us particular over that period of time it was uh pretty wild and crazy we the new stuff all went awesome we sold a lot of that winter merch yeah yeah it was it was uh pretty wild and crazy we the new stuff all went awesome we sold a lot of that winter merch yeah yeah it was it was record record days weeks and months for us like and it wasn't even just a little bit it was like just killing it november this november shattered our best month

ever by far yeah yeah absolutely shattered it uh you know drink spotter being in there was certainly played a part in that. We've been selling a lot of Drink Spotters. We are. Which, yeah, we did say Drink Spotters are probably gone. Five aces gone and the one inch, there's about, actually by the time this is out, probably less than 10 left.

We're working on getting more. So if you want a Drink Spotter, just go on our website and go on that product and sign up for a back in stock email notification. That way when we do get them, you can have first chance at that um but yeah things were crazy things were actually were literally crazy they were it was um you you probably felt this even more than me tanner but it got really addicting to not just sit and hit refresh on my email every 20 minutes yeah it was constantly checking like you know

thanksgiving is a day of family and all that and for the most part thanksgiving it what we didn't have the stuff out like if you're in the discord the fine folks in the discord know this they got a little inside uh tip that the we're gonna launch it thursday night for them so they could get on it and they got after in a hurry which was exciting but then once friday hit it was so damn hard to just not have my phone permanently in my hand with my email app pulling down yeah non-stop because every time you do it goes and just things are popping in you know and it was really fun to watch that it was it was super cool and everything's been shipped out uh anyone that ordered something hopefully with minimal errors i know it's just that many and for

how like when i sit down and i do it like all day and night there's gonna be some mistakes because it just gets really monotonous and like it just like the longer you do something like that the more was that a one was that a two maybe it was a 12 yeah and it was like did i put in the blue bench heavy shirt or the white one and it's like i think i did it right you know it's like uh that that definitely happens sometimes so there'll be a few people out there that incur you know find a couple things that they weren't maybe got some more goodies yeah well sometimes that's usually how it works too you know i don't if we mess up that's on us and we make it right so someone acts against a a hundred dollar bill just made its way into their package.

Yeah, we were accidentally letting Lyft shorts fall into the packages. They ordered one sticker, and we actually put pairs of them. We gave away a shitload of koozies and stickers, so there should be a lot of stickers floating in the lifting sphere that weren't there before. That's always good. We like stickers getting out there in the world. Yep.

sphere that weren't there before which that's always good yeah stickers getting out there in the world yep and believe it or not we're already having to work on our next stop like it's just like the it is non-stop it doesn't end yep so we're already working on our next idea believe it or not we're not packing up shop we're not done no we'll just continue on for another month and another one after that and another one after that i I guess. And what's that, the DJ Khaled? Another one. Yeah, okay. I did have, you know, thinking about it actually now, one of the great things about Thanksgiving, you know, is you get to spend time with family. That's a good part, too.

I mean, the Masonomic stuff is important, but the family stuff is all right, too. Well, I'm getting there, Tanner. I'm getting there. Thank you. It all comes back. masonomic stuff is important but the family stuff is all right i'm getting there i'm getting there so thank you uh we had some we had some family come to town that's uh not from my side of the family be from my wife's side of the family and the old in-laws yep but uh some of her extended family and at some point you know the thing comes up of tommy tell them about your masonomics thing right and it's always like ah how far do i go with this is that and you you you

kind of have to judge is this a person that really would kind of understand masonomics and really wants to know about it or is it someone that because maybe you tell them like a really high level because i always i always test the waters you go ah me and a buddy we have this thing and we sell t-shirts to kind of people in the gym space yeah and then if they're interested they might ask a question and then when someone says oh but there's a podcast too and then you got to talk about the podcast thing yeah and like everyone kind of keeps throwing little things in there yeah like god i've been talking about this like 20 straight minutes yeah and then when it gets to the point of like trying to show memes and explain the inside jokes

then you're like i've probably gone too far like when looking at their face like yes i lost when your mother-in-law goes i don't get any of it yeah and i'm trying to explain this to these like yeah so i always catch myself going probably way too far down the rabbit hole trying to explain what massonomics is and i'm like i'm probably going way over people's heads here but it is always a lot of fun when it does come up. And I get to try to explain it to someone that, yeah, this is actually a real thing. You usually tell like some people like gloss over and after like the first couple of things, you're like, okay, we'll end up there. It helps when you're at your house and you can be like, look, I can go to my closet.

Yeah, I have all these things. He's a teacher. Oh, that's cool. That's cool. That helps it a little bit. There's real things here. Here, helps it a little bit there's real things here here this is a real website i even showed in the drink spotter video yes yeah so there was so there were some people that got the full massadomics rundown the crash course you

could say right right so did they say they're going to become supporting members um you know what i didn't actually i did i think i did talk about supporting members but i think they were interested in buying some stuff. They want to get some, get some stuff. They said, Oh, and then that,

that's a question that always comes up. Oh, is it here at your house right now? And then I got to explain, no, it's at a different guy's house. You can order on the website. Yeah.

And then it's like, I gets again into, Oh, well that's not really, that's not for me right now. So then it kind of falls out. But yeah. So yeah,

you always get to deal with that fun stuff. Yeah. Black, Black Friday equipment deals. We didn't buy, really didn't buy any equipment this year over the Black Friday deals. that falls out but yeah so yeah you always get to deal with that fun stuff yeah black black friday equipment deals we didn't buy really didn't buy any equipment this year over the black friday deals yeah there just wasn't a lot of deals to be had was there some out there you know uh you could get a good deal on strength coat plates get some money off that was a good deal uh texas power bars i think they were running 50 off her bars and stuff and And there's some decent stuff like that.

But I don't know. It's changed a little bit, you know, with supply chain issues. Yeah. So that's the old thing. It's the supply chain. Yeah. You know, with everything going on. Yeah, with everything going on.

With everything going on with the supply chain these days. I mean, I do think that that does, like, things are still, like, every industry is still affected by stuff. I mean, have you tried to that does is like things are like every industry is still affected by. I mean, have you tried to buy a PS5 lately, Tanner? I haven't tried to buy a PS anything since I bought a PS1 in probably two. Let's see. 1997. I bought.

What about a PS1? That's probably about the time. Let's see. It wasn't. Let's see. It wasn't. What's the NBA game now? NBA 2K? No, it wasn't that.

NBA Live 97 on a PS1. I remember having a PS1, playing it. Well, PS1 or a PlayStation 1 because there was a difference. Oh, PlayStation. Yeah, they redesigned the PlayStation 1 as a PS1. No, the original PlayStation. You know, the old light gray PlayStation with, uh, you know,

the flip up lid disc and playing Madden and having an uncle walk in the room and be like, wow, I thought that that was real at first. And if you look at like Madden, get your eyes checked, old man, are you allowed to drive?

That's really funny. Well, I haven't bought a PlayStation since I got a PlayStation 2 when I was probably sixth or seventh grade, I guess. We haven't talked about this. I recently jumped back into gaming here, though, Tanner. I have an Xbox Series S now. I don't know what that means basically white basically all i do is just play uh forza i just like to drive cars around you know

at the end of the long day guys just gotta hop in his car put on his uh leather driving gloves just turn the tunes on and feel the wind in your hair yeah no it's i'm uh i'm the most uh probably casual gamer there is i probably i like i feel like a casual gamer is almost not a thing that exists anymore i doesn't feel like it it used to exist when i actually went to when i actually bought my xbox series s i made some comment and i'm like uh the guy said something about me wanting to buy something like nah i'm gonna be pretty casual. He's like, casual. And I'm like, no, I mean, on a good week,

I'll probably play this four or five hours on a good week. And that's like three of those will come Saturday night after everyone goes to bed. Right, right. And that's basically how it's worked out for me since I've had it. But yeah, casual, I feel like you don't just say, oh, I like to play video games

because you're like, no one just likes to play video games. Like you play war zone for four hours a night, at least if you even want to be considered a game. Maybe some benders where you play it for like 12 hours. Yeah. And then like on Friday night, you're going to play from like, assume you don't go out from like 7 PM until four in the morning. Yeah.

That's what being a gamer is now. Right. At least with some of the people we know, that's what it is. No, it is. It's funny because it used to feel like everyone, I don't know, maybe it's a difference in my age and stuff. It used to feel like everyone had an Xbox or a PlayStation

and like literally everyone had one. They played it a little bit at least. And there were some people that played it a lot more than others, but like everyone had one and they played it a little bit. Now I do feel like there is, it's just, there's's no middle ground there it's uh and i don't know if they become more expensive or just more advanced or like just the barrier to entry is higher

like before the barrier to entry was like plugging it in yeah like it just like starting i don't know the barrier it's pretty low too now it's not that expensive still right it's fairly cheap like now you pay like 10 bucks like i paid 10 bucks a month and you get like 300 games which is like that's cool and you just plug it in and play but yeah there are a shit ton of games where you don't just say oh i'm just gonna try this game out it's like no you gotta go through an hour tutorial watch 30 minutes of cut scenes and all this just to get to the part where you play the game and then and then you decide if you and then a couple of more hours and you decide if you even like playing it so yeah there's elements to it to me that are more over or overwhelming now yeah or especially like the online play and stuff like that i don't do any of that either but the other thing is so

many people stream like tons of people now that i would never expect to play games in any way like watch me stream on twitch like i'm going i'm i would never expect to play games in any way like watch me stream on twitch like i'm going i'm streaming on twitch like come play with me and that's like a whole audience in itself too yeah you know yeah what happened the days when people just talk to people on a discord channel right that's right what's wrong with a good old podcast i see big jeff is talking about the sega dreamcast i actually actually had a Sega Dreamcast as well back in the day, Big Jeff. So I was one of those people. You had a Sega Dreamcast?

I actually won my Sega Dreamcast. Our local video rental store had a prize drawing, and I won the prize drawing for a Sega Dreamcast. I think I was the only person that ever knew that had a Sega Dreamcast. I remember playing one a couple times and just not liking it at all. I had a lot. We just played a ton of fighting games like Street Fighter. And there was Marvel vs. Capcom, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Capcom vs. SNK.

We had Resident Evil 2. There were these two really good games, Power Stone 1 and Power Stone 2, were kind of like Smash Brothers. Those were really cool. They had some really weird stuff, too, for that back. They had this one game called Seaman where you like had a tank of fish. Seaman? Yeah, but the fish had a human face on it

and you would like, the game had a microphone. You would talk to the fish. It was very weird stuff, but Dreamcast had some wacky things back in the day. The original Xbox, was that parallel to PlayStation 1 and Dreamcast or was that PlayStation 2? That would have been PlayStation 2, Xbox

were at the same time. Okay, sobox hadn't gotten in on that uh no that was first round yep that was still coming still cooking yeah so gaming that's our gaming tips for the most we ever talked about gaming on this show um i'm gonna read us an ad tanner all right great this episode is brought to you by the strength co grant brogy was born in the late 80s, nearly two decades after buddy caps began lifting. In the late 90s, Grant's brother Jordan bought him the new encyclopedia of modern bodybuilding by Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Grant's love for weightlifting began. In 2001, Grant joined the local YMCA and began training with weights. In 2009, Grant discovered the book Starting Strength

and in 2012, as a lieutenant in the Marine Corps, he began teaching Marines this method. In 2017, Grant opened his first gym in Costa Mesa, California and the Strength Co. was born. In 2020, during a major iron shortage, Grant sought to bring back quality manufacturing of Olympic barbell plates to America. Hisica his innovation adaptation and can-do attitude brought about the greatest plates made in decades the plates were accurate anti-fragile and instantly became the go-to plates of hundreds of lifters at massonomics gym you can check out the strength co plates online at the strength co.com thank you strength, I am parched right now. I was,

I was couldn't read that. Adam's thirsty. Bet you brought it up. Um, I'm gonna need you to throw your blindfold on here. Oh, okay. And I full disclaimer,

I'm not sure if we've done this one before or not, Tanner. Okay. So it could be brand new to the podcast. It could be never before. I hope it's not nervous being on the podcast for the first time. All right. Are you ready?

I'm as ready as I'm ever going to be. Here you are. Oh. Oh. Oh. We got a bottle. Oh, do I need a bottle? A bottle that's a cap that's going to rape my.

I think we need a bottle opener, and I don't have one, but let's see if I can make this a little makeshift. I do have a tape measure here. Maybe I can make this work. Did you make it work? I'm still blindfolded, so I don't know what's going on. All I hear is noises and grunting. You don't have one of the Masonomics bottle openers around, do you?

Well, I have one upstairs in my... with all my other bottle opener devices. I could hit them with... I could kill some time. Okay, I'll go open these. Okay. Just wait, though.

Let me clear the room. Someone in the Discord has a bottle opener. That will not do us much good right now. Do you guys all 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. They offer two pre-workout options with Super Soldier pre-workout and Mad Titan high-stim pre-workout. Both have proven ingredients at their full clinical doses to maximize performance, increase muscular endurance, improve focus, and get you that much sought-after pump. Both are favorites among strength sport athletes. Healing Factor Post-Workout combines BCAAs and a full serving of creatine, monohydrate, and other great ingredients to help maximize your efforts in the gym, build muscle, and recover fast.

Fusion's whey protein isolate not only tastes great, has 27 grams of protein per scoop, zero fat, and lower no carbs. Also great flavors on the protein. Vanilla ice cream, frosted cinnamon roll, and of course, chocolate of some sort. Most of Fusion's orders are shipped within one business day, which is very fast,

and every Fusion Sports Performance product comes fully backed with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Go to FusionSP.net, and of course, use code, say it with us, MAS,

to save a massive 20% on your order. So use code MAS at checkout there. All right, Tanner. Back to blindfolded mode. I'm back with my handy-dandy Massonomics bottle opener. Oh, okay, great. And now I will use it like so. Do you know how to use one of those things?

It's almost too easy. Okay, there you are. All right. Well, it's in a bottle. I guess I knew that part already. It is in a bottle. Fizzy. Yes, it is. Long neck bottle.

And also, you can't see Tanner but these koozies are the new massonomics koozies oh okay and they look great no I didn't know that it felt good I should have known it's really fizzy yeah it is gosh I don't know if there's a flavor

the fizz is so intense why is it fizz so Gosh, I don't know if there's a flavor. The fizz is so intense. Why is it fizz? It makes like a funny noise every time I take a drink. That's what I thought too. I didn't know if I was... I really like it. I don't know. Is this a Topo Chico?

I'm not really sure what this is. Or what else? I can't remember what fizzy waters come in bottles. So that's what I'm going to say. Go ahead and take a look, Tanner. Okay. You are correct. It is a Topo. Well, go ahead and take a look, Tanner. Okay. You are correct. It is a Topo Chico.

And I do like Topo Chico. Have we had this before? Yeah, I brought it before. I couldn't remember for sure if we had it or if I had it at Ryan's house. No, I brought them before. All right. This was the special guest Masonomics. Oh, Big Mason.

The big fella from masonomics gym big fella aka big mason aka masonomics yeah masonomics isn't that a great that is a great nickname and i didn't realize that uh big fella was on his license plate on his car which is awesome i love that big fella yeah i saw saw that uh one day in the parking lot and i had to get it on Instagram. I saw it. It was this last, because I usually get to the gym before him. And it was just the last time I was walking in. I saw a car that said big fella. I'm like, that has to be Mason's car.

There's no way it's not his car. Isn't that wildly fizzy? Like a weird. Yeah, it is, isn't it? I can hear it hit my teeth. Yeah. Does this feel flavorless to you? There's no flavor here, is there?

No, I don't think there is. But to me, it almost feels slightly flavorless. Maybe it's just the bubbles imitate flavor. I really like these, though. I think these are great. I do, too too they're enjoyable topo chico thanks masonomics yeah i'd give that uh i don't know as far as unflavored water goes that's a easy four as far as unflavored i think so yeah yeah so you're comparing it to lacroroix Piers and I suppose just a water. Just flat.

Yeah, I would give this a four also. Yeah, it's quite enjoyable. This is a tasty little treat. How about those koozies though, Tanner? Oh, you got the Feel the Burn and I've got the Lift Shit here. Both great choices. feel the burn and i've got the lift shit here look great choices tommy did you see the spotify year wrap-ups coming through today i did which we were kind of saying does that always start the first day of december like doesn't that feel a little early well doesn't

december count apparently not not in this equation here. Why would they do it at the beginning of the year? Why is the year wrap up on December 1st? I guess I could maybe see them being, oh, Christmas to New Year's is too busy. But then wouldn't you just say, we'll just do it the first week in January? Right.

Or maybe just like right before Christmas. How's that work then? Do you think it's resetting like is the december to january never getting or like are they putting that in the other is their year from december 1st to november 30th maybe that's what it is i haven't done my rap for the year yet so i don't know yeah i don't listen to podcasts on my Spotify. So my, no podcasts are going to show up in mine, but yeah, I'm curious what my, what my music comes up for. Yeah.

And someone said that their financial year, but I'm curious, do you think is, is Spotify actually running on a December 1st to November 30th year? And I guess they could be. Yeah, they could, they could be, but I'm wondering, or is it just a thing that they purely do for their, yeah. Or do they just give you, you get it for those 12 months. But no matter what, it's interesting to say

you're in review on December 1st for what you listen to. Yeah, I know. Yeah. But there was a lot of Masonomics stuff. First impressions though, and I'm sure we're going to see more of these over the next couple of days. Some people listen to a lot of massonomics this year, like a lot.

Yes. Like to the tune of tens of thousands of minutes. I think the highest I saw was big Chris. I don't know if he's listening live tonight or not. Big Chris. He had over 20,000 minutes. It doesn't seem possible which what the math is pretty wild on that i did it earlier today 20 000 divided by 60 that's 333 hours

and it's uh you divide that by 24 that would be like 14 straight days of never turning it off in a year oh that's so much or uh let me let me look at it from another perspective i said it's 333 hours i guess you know so he's like an hour a day oh yeah pretty much which that doesn't seem that much then does it it doesn't but also every day for an hour though right is a lot too but i don't know i guess if you stick with it yeah i guess every single day which means you miss a couple days and you do a three or four someone says omar martinez was over 21 000 so maybe that uh omar martinez was the number one wow that's a lot big chris says that's basically what it was hour into work our way home um but i suppose that requires you listening to the full library in one year, right?

You would think. Because we're coming up on, what did we say? This is 296. We're coming up on 300 here soon. And the average run time of all of them is probably a little more than an hour. Yeah. Especially lately. I don't know if we've done.

There really hasn't been anything under an hour. It's usually closer to an They're pretty much all over an hour, 15 lately. It's usually closer to an hour and a half, I would say, this year. Yeah. That's good. I like seeing... It's fun to post all those on the story, and it's funny when... Also seeing the ones that we're with. Right.

It's Joe Rogan experience. Yeah. When you see ones with other like fitness based things you think okay it makes sense but then when it's some random murder mystery something else like five four four of them you've never heard of golf ones i saw on there and then massonomics yeah it is funny to see uh what people listen to and oh these people have other hobbies besides massonomics what's wrong with them yeah so but we made it top five in

western northeast South Dakota for sure the president of North Dakota wasn't wrong when he put that on a billboard he knew what was going on Tanner last week I had to I also got a new computer recently oh yeah you got all kinds look at all your gadgets

Xboxes and computers and stuff all over here phones yeah phones too yeah apple's got someone on the discord this week asked what the phone we had and that's how much you've already moved on is that yeah that i that i already forgot i'm like i think it's 13 but he said 14 so it's 14 out yeah you said i'm just gonna defer to tommy but they said something about 14 they said i meant to write 13 oh okay because that when that really extra threw me off though that i'm like gosh did they already come out with another one is that possible because i'm pretty sure this was like the new the week that i bought it yeah yeah no but no i honestly did i wasn't even joking like i didn't know what the answer was yeah so we had to mention that a little bit but i was all jacked for this computer and i've been using a mac laptops or a mac computer since

2007 now so you know over a decade almost 15 years into these things i feel like i and i sit on it all day every day for like eight hours like it's a real part of who i am and what i do and the one i had i hated a lot for a lot of reasons and they were all pretty well documented with keyboard issues and things like that so when apple announced these new computers if you're into the world they had these revolutionary new computers and i was so jacked for it and i finally got it last week after you know they were back orders you had to wait like a month it finally came in the mail supply chain it's not too often you order something and the shipping originates out of china like that's how with these like it said yep sitting in shanghai china waiting and that's

just where the fedex number was for like two weeks and then boom it was here yep but finally got here and i'm thinking oh the podcast i'm just gonna get this thing edited so fast now it's gonna be amazing because for us to an hour and a half podcast like my old computer it would take pretty much real time to export at least an hour and a half. Okay. Maybe sometimes even a little longer. So, you know, pretty much a one-to-one comparison. So I'm thinking, oh, this new thing is going to set the record.

It's going to be amazing. It's going to go so fast. And I'm going to be able to work on other things. My computer is not going to be like, the fans are going crazy. Everything is bugging out. Like I always would have to time that up. Like I'd have to do it at the end of the day or at lunchtime when you're not planning on yeah they're not gonna be at it yeah and i did it and i'm like 25 minutes what that was there i'm like that's like four times

faster this is great so i'm like life is good so then i come down and the video's done and i was you know gotta look through it quick before i put it on youtube because youtube takes a little time too and i look and i'm like watching like something's not right here and i can't because it seems like we're good i'm looking at us it seems like we're good and we start like moving our heads and it gets that weird artifacting you know like when it looks like a low quality youtube video yeah like what the hell's going on and this was on my last this is i was about to go down and enjoy my video games for the night this is like last friday after all the thanksgiving festivities had ended thinking oh i'm gonna go just hang out for like an hour go to bed early i end up being up for like two and a half hours messing with the goddamn video turns out that there's like

there's a known bug it took me for i was like editing video on both computers because i thought i thought we actually recorded the footage wrong because i'm like there's i can't figure out what's going on here it has to have been we recorded it wrong but it didn't look wrong before it was exported and so then i actually took the video i put it on the old computer and was editing our exporting just tiny chunks of it and they were coming out perfect so now at this point i'm like well now i know it's not the footage it It's the new computer. Right. And when you go to export, you know, you've exported some videos. There's only 10,000 switches you can pick.

Yeah. Like there's not like you don't just hit like save as there are 10,000 switches. Yeah. What dial? And it kind of like I got to a point where I was kind of like, I have a hunch it could be these ones that wasn't making a difference. So eventually I go in and start Googling some things. And there was a couple people that were having the exact same problem and they had a list of like five different solutions none of those worked for me i got to the very bottom of the list the last solution check that one that solved the problem what was it so it was when it exports

the video it can export in two different ways as a variable bit rate or a continuous bit rate. So as in like it's keeping the same quality the whole way through or like if there's not much going on, maybe it can dip the quality down because it doesn't need as much quality.

So variable will move up and down. The default is always variable, variable bit rate always. And there's just one tiny little checkbox to say keep a continuous bit rate. When you do that, all of a sudden,

everything's perfect, which that makes no sense. It is like a bug. it has to be um took me like two and a half hours to figure out now i know it so i guess going forward it's the bit rate it gets them every time it is the bit rate it'll get you every time you should have just called me you know i know yeah you know i figured you're too busy packing orders so i didn't want to burden you yeah yeah and tommy do anything now i gotta explain the whole bit rate thing to him again oh god here we go yeah so it went from being what i thought would be one of the quickest videos ever to almost the most time i've ever spent editing a podcast video yeah yeah let's see do we want to get our guest on the horn

or go over some podcast reviews? Let's get our guest. Almost 33 minutes. Should we say goodbye to the Discord community? Oh, the Discord. I suppose. Bye, Discord. Goodbye, Discord.

Boom. They're gone. Thank God. I'm glad you remember that because especially after last week where we let them stay on the whole time, I kind of forget to turn them off. Now we can finally talk shit about them. Let's see.

Is there a cord there? The cord was right in front of my own eyes. If it was a snake, it would have bit you right there. You don't watch Yellowstone, do you? I don't, but it was brought up several times. Okay, I was just saying, it appears as if everyone watches Yellowstone. Is that true?

So have you watched it then? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, like I've seen some of the new season. I've seen the other rest of it, and I've seen some of this new season that's out, and just the snake bite thing. Also, it's just that show is wild like all like uh all the how extreme they make take ranching like they take

like i'm like all the murderings it's like the weekly murder murderings in uh and explode bombings and stuff that are going on in uh rural uh wyoming montana right right um it's just wild and also like when western south dakota is kind of similar because you go like i've been out there and you want to try to find someone like right right it's work to find another person let alone find another person and have enough beef with them to do something. And that's TV, you know? Yeah. That's like fictional TV is what it's like. I think some people want to believe

that this is what ranching is like, you know? In a constant state of conflict. If you're not at war with everyone, you're not doing that. Well, yeah, it is actually war. All right. Should we try and get Big Brian on the phone? What time period is that set in even?

Modern day. Oh, it is modern day. Okay. Yeah. 2021. So they could talk shit on social media. But now there is a spinoff coming of like, so John Dutton is Kevin, or I think it's John, whatever.

The main Dutton is Kevin Costner i think it's john whatever the main dutton is kevin costner you know he's the main actor it's his grandpa it's i think it's called like 1886 or something like that who is this is the spinoff is played by tim mcgraw oh really yeah oh yeah is he an actor i think so oh i mean or am i saying is is it Tim McGraw? Isn't he a country singer? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's Tim McGraw. But he does acting too? Yeah. Yeah.

I'm pretty sure it's Tim McGraw or some other country singer actor, but I'm pretty sure it's Tim McGraw. Hmm. Yeah. I guess I'll keep an eye out for it. Yeah. A spinoff of the show though. Interesting.

All right. All right. That's enough of me not knowing your yellow stone all that well hello big brian is this you how's it going it's brian all right what's happening here on the massomics podcast with tanner and tommy what's up brian how's it going good to meet you guys good do you have that uh whiskey ready like you promised yeah yeah i went to uh dinner with some friends so i drank some earlier and uh so now i'm just uh chilling out man uh are we live now yeah we're doing it we like to catch you right from the beginning just in case you say something So now I'm just chilling out, man. Are we live now? Yeah, we are live.

We're doing it. We like to catch you right from the beginning just in case you say something nasty. That way we've got it right on camera right away. Say something to get me and my little following canceled. We always try to get someone to say something incriminating or say something bad about someone else. someone to say something incriminating or you know say something yeah say something bad about someone else that way we can uh and even we're not afraid of like taking it out of context we can just get a little sound bite from you that's part of something bigger and just post that like on instagram out of context and use it that way if we have to nice so a legitimate media outlet. You know,

I never thought of it that way, but yeah, yeah. Yeah. We're more legitimate than we even thought, aren't we? That's true. That's a,

that's a good way of looking at that. Well, let's see if we can make our way, uh, work our way towards talking about some people later. Let's start off, let's start off nice. And then maybe we could throw a couple of punches.

Yeah, no, we, we are, uh, are excited to, uh, get to talk to you here. And we've got a whole of punches yeah no we we are uh are excited to get to talk to you here and we got a whole bunch of questions to ask you about um you know you've got a lot going on in the world of strength you know we we often talk to power lifters and strong

men and you know people that own companies in the in the space and stuff like that and uh you're someone that come you know we look at it that comes from the old school world of powerlifting where you're very heavily involved for in multi-ply powerlifting for a number of years. And then, um, you know, your work with Stu McGill, uh, all the back stuff, your books that you've written, and we kind of want to talk to you about all that stuff. Yeah. Sounds good. So, uh, yeah, looking forward to it. Okay to it okay and what maybe i guess i gave a little bit of rundown but if if uh we got anyone listening that's not familiar with you you know maybe some of your highlights are different than what i just said right there but you know we you've got the had the have the all-time record squat and uh what else do you

got going on well currently my uh truck is smogged out and a state trooper pulled up next to me, so that's what currently we have going on. But anyway, so going back, so ask me that again. Sorry, I was slightly distracted. I do have my marijuana card though, so it's technically all good,

but you never want to attract attention. What state are you in? Florida, right? Florida, yeah. Is Florida medical only? but you never want to attract attention so what what state are you in florida right florida okay yeah so do you is that is uh florida medical uh only okay yeah so recreational isn't allowed but isn't medical pretty easy to get in florida too yeah yeah it's it's reasonably easy and then that's a good thing about it um yeah it's it's not too bad as long as you have something i mean really if it came down to it i'm i'm assuming you guys may have like seen my imaging or whatever before and after, but I could just literally show the doctor before and after my back or just the before back and be good. So yeah, I think it's better than, uh, taking a lot of the stuff that

you see people lose their minds on and, and, and to for instance xanax comes to mind you know that's when it kills people when they come off of it so i think it's for a lot of people it's a good alternative but it's not for everyone just like any other supplement or drug or even multiply power lifting it's not for everybody you know what i mean right well i think that's a good way of looking and i can agree with that it's funny because in south dakota we're going through that right now where um medical is got voted to go through and they are getting the kinks worked out of that and that is going to happen and we actually also voted for recreational marijuana to be legal and it passed but then the supreme court just recently decided like that that's a no-go because of some

technicalities on the way it was voted on so So that'll have to eventually probably go back through the voting process again. But medical is going to happen. But as I understand it, it's going to be pretty strict on them handing out. You have to have something that's basically debilitating in order to – I think it's generally going to be more strict than what it's like in some other states, maybe like what Florida's like now. Yeah, and it started off like that in Florida. I mean, I don't want to really get into politics, I don't really care, but Hey, you're in the right place. Our Florida governor

is a well-liked person in Florida and around the country they're starting to see that he got a lot of things right. Not to go into details, but nonetheless, when he became governor in late 2018, one of the first things he did, because it passed for medical in 2016, and then it didn to push medical marijuana in the state. The dumbest thing I've ever seen is for you to limit the types of ways people can take it. So I'm uplifting or I'm removing the burn ban because you didn't have flour. That was the only thing you couldn't have in Florida. You couldn't burn flour. He's like, look, I'm not necessarily on this weed myself, but this is the dumbest law I've ever seen. I'm superseding it.

I'm writing it in. All marijuana is legal as long as you have a card. Makes it easy. Yeah. It just only makes sense to do it that way right yeah well you know so then do you have your chicken but you can't fry it yeah right right so you sell CBD products then also right I do I do so I got into that a while back and i started uh messing around with the formula one of my girl one of my friends who wasn't a girlfriend but a girlfriend that i luckily was nice to in high school she ended up getting into cannabis early on you know like late 2010s i'm sorry uh early 2010s before everyone got into it like they are now. And so she developed a really nice CBD formula only using the isolates. And I'll go into a couple of details just briefly in a second about why

isolates important, but she had a nice formula and we just made it a little more beefy for me and you know, guys that need a little extra recovery and milligrams and stuff. So we've got some good products that I sell power, X strength, CBD.com. And I have testing that shows it's 100% CBD, no other cannabinoids in it, no other ones that could

potentially be beneficial and no other ones that could potentially make you fail a drug test. You're allowed to have 0.3% THC in your CBD federally. You can have that much, but don't really want to take a chance. So that way I miss out on law enforcement and army and military or military and police and stuff. So I, a lot of my customers, customers are people that could fail a drug test for marijuana. So they trust me for that, but that's, I wanted to do a good product and I wouldn't put my name on it. If it was, uh, you know, if it wasn't a good product, didn't believe in it. I worked too hard to, to get my name, to be reputable, to sell some LM shit or, you know, hose everyone over, you know, is there a lot? So CBD has obviously become much more popular over the last five years here.

Do you think, is there a lot of stuff out there that is shit? Yes, because you know, the FDA doesn't really regulate it. So, you know, They'll pop into some places and check to see how they're doing things and whatnot, but as far as from my bottle to someone's body, they don't check to see what's in it. a drug test. And a lot of them are full or broad spectrum, which have other potentially beneficial cannabinoids in it, like CBN and CBG, but we don't know enough about them. So in my opinion, in my experience, those end up just being fillers in the CBD. And so you're only getting a little bit of actually CBD in it, but they call it full spectrum, broad spectrum, because it's a legality term that doesn't mean you're getting the most, you know what I mean? It's like a multivitamin. And you're like, we got, you know, 50 milligrams of vitamin C and you're like, well, that is completely worthless. And you take that by the gram. So that's kind of the same thing. I look

at the CBD and there's a lot of good, there's a lot of good brands out there, but not, not a lot of them are transparent and uh you know put the put the certificate of analysis out and stand behind their product so yeah i i enjoy doing that and i used it for a long time and then rolled it out at the beginning of this year cool i i'm kind of ignorant when it comes to it so if you're someone that you know doesn't you know say you have a medical card or whatever, so you can have THC, you can have as much of that as you need to or want to. Is there still reasons to use a CBD product in conjunction with that?

Yes, because for one, some people aren't going to tolerate the THC. Well, like I was saying earlier, some people that are prone to schizophrenia and other mental illnesses, that it can trigger them potentially, just like someone doing mushrooms or ketamine therapy, you know, these therapies they do now.

They could be beneficial, but they could also trigger someone, you know. There's an 80% succession rate for smoking with mushrooms, but that other 20% have very bad experiences, and it might give them PTSD. So these drugs aren't for everyone, including THC. experiences and it might give them PTSD. So it's, these drugs aren't for everyone, including THC. So CBD can be an alternative for people that it helps them heal up. It helps them recover and rest without the THC that might make them wig out a little bit. But to be honest with you, the best way to do it is about two or three parts of CBD to one part THC. So in a perfect world, that's what I'd have you do. If you're in a legal state where you could take THC and CBD, it'd be two or three parts to one THC. And that way it helps, you know,

take the edge off of any weirdness you might get from the THC. And then you get the healing and recovery properties of the CBD and you get the, you know, the, the, the relaxing effect of the THC and, you know know whatever you want to call it falling into the bed and all that good stuff all right so we got the golden ratio here yeah we're all set the perfect cocktail um so a lot of people i guess i'm trying to think you know tanner neither or not neither one of us are multi-ply guys we've we've competed in power lifting off and on for a while now but neither one of us has completed multi-ply guys. We've competed in powerlifting off and on for a while now, but neither one of us has completed multi-ply.

So there's some things in the multi-ply world we're ignorant to or don't know much about. And like when I think back, probably the first time your name really popped up in front of me and really was like, oh, this is a person that's doing a lot of stuff was when you had some of your books coming out with Stuart McGill. And I think that's probably safe to say that's probably how you reached a lot of people, I would guess, was through him, isn't it? Yeah, that was a catapult for me. But, you know, I was writing for Elite FDS from 09 to 14.

So that's where a lot of people in the strength and conditioning industry knew me before. Just because Elite FDS is still such a big site. And they gave us a lot of exposure. Dave Tate and i have been close for a long time and uh so the the mcgill the mcgill helped propelled me a lot and the lead putting the stuff out on elite fds like i did and then build my own site afterward that helped me a lot and just being around since 99 i think was uh was a big uh you know just being around since 99, I think was, uh, was a big, uh, you know, just being around for a long time and just getting, you know, I got decent reach in Google because my pictures go back from old, you know, forums and stuff and articles back when, you know, the internet wasn't even close to what it is now. So, right. Miguel, Miguel definitely helped me in multiple ways there. Propel, for sure. And Elite FTS was a big part of it, too, and just being around forever.

Yeah, yeah. And so I, as someone that has struggled with some back pain myself over the years, I think that's where I was more drawn to some of the Stuart McGill stuff. And I guess, how did you, you know, I kind of know the story a little bit of you guys, but how did you ever get first introduced to him even? I initially reached out to him through email and it was one of those things that I just kind of, I didn't have a contact with him. I just reached out to him straight up and he got back to me and we kind of hit it off. And he told me how much it was going to cost me to go up there. And within a week I was up there in his lab clinic training center and we were getting

down to what the hell was going on with my back and and all that good stuff. So at that point, were you just kind of doing some research for people that like back rehab experts or how did you find him? I found him. I'm sorry about this guys. Um, I found, I found him just from back research. Uh, you know, I, of course I looked into surgery quite a bit. I looked literally everywhere. I would, I saw a neurosurgeon to start with the pedics. I went to physical therapy. I went into pain management. I got the injections, epidural nerve root block for set injection, injections, epidural nerve root block, facet injection, I had consults for surgery. I did all of it. And I started talking with him and we did a couple of calls and he's like, come up and surgery is not going to help you because you have multiple pain generators, meaning I had multiple

injuries on different levels. So when they go in and do a surgery, they're not likely to go in and cut all your pain triggers out. If there's one main one or something and they can identify it and prove it, that's why some people do get a successful surgery for a disc bulge or something. But someone like me that had multiple pain generators, and what I mean by that is compression hurt me, having a bar on my back hurt me, walking, standing hurt me, flexion, which is bending forward, of course, extension, which is bending backwards. Any type of pressure on my spine hurt, caused me pain, and it bled over into my day-to-day activities. And so he wanted me to come up and do an assessment. And so we started off doing the assessment and we spent about five hours together and he showed me my injury mechanisms,

how I needed to move to let my back heal and not going into flexion extension and standing for too long and lifting for a bit. And at the end of the session, he said, well, here's what I think. You know, I'll give you more details in the email, but I think that you're really jacked up. And if you're my son, I'd urge you to quit powerlifting because you got nothing left and you're really jacked up. And if you're my son, I'd urge you to quit powerlifting because you got nothing left and you're done. I think there's a chance for you out of pain. And I think I can do that. But anything more than that could really cost you a big time for your future health. And so I said, well, you did say you could help get me out of pain just to let you know, I am going to powerlift again when i get out of pain yeah so we went back and forth for a minute and he goes okay fine we get you out of

pain who knows maybe you're right maybe we end up writing a book about it so that was our first meeting in may 1st 2013 and uh so did you guys literally say maybe we write a book like was that a discussion at the time or something that was thrown out there? On my daughter's lives. That's first. It was the first, uh, you know, it was five hours in or so, but it was one of the first, you know, main interaction and back and forth that we had concerning my future. And, uh, that was what we came to.

So like, okay, first things first, get out of pain. And that, that ends up eventually being the gift of injury. That is what a lot of that book is made up of then, right? Yeah, it's the whole book. It's a story of my path and then me trying to figure things out on my own and failing and going to see Dr. and rebuilding and then coming back and winning the Arnold two more times and setting the biggest squad of all time, regardless of weight class, even, you know, post injury. Right. So you said you got along really well with Stu then too, from the outside looking in, it almost seems like it could be kind of like the odd couple because you got

this little guy with a white hair, you know, and a mustache and then this 308 power lifter, you know, squatting over a,000 pounds, but that wasn't the case. You did get along really well. Oh, yeah. We got along really well. We're a lot alike in different ways,

and we're in different phases of our life, too. He's 63, and I'm 40, so we met eight and a half years ago or so. So definitely, if we had been both the same age, we may not have got along very well just because we're a lot alike, but it was, uh, it was a good match right away. And I think that's why, you know, not just because, uh, we had a successful outcome. I think that's also why we ended up writing the book together too, you know, cause you could have one, you could have the successful outcome, but he's like, you know, it could have been like, I'm just done. but he's like you know it could have been like i'm just done you know i want to write a book that's a lot for me and i got a lot going on but he kept his word and i held him to it and uh we released it in october of 2017 that writing a book thing tommy and i even talked about that we're before before we talked today we're talking about you know if anyone actually makes it through to the end and getting a book out there and having it published and having it for sale in legitimate places and everything like in our estimations that takes a pretty big commitment and like some

actual work and it doesn't happen by accident you know how was that process doing that the first time uh would you if someone said yeah i'm kind of interested in making a book would you be like good luck buddy or or would you be like yeah you can make it happen it's reasonable well yeah i'd encourage them just to start writing because generally they'll ask me like how how do you write a book or like what do i need to do and i'm like just make a giant blog post and and keep writing about the different things you want to write about and then worry about connecting them and condensing them and you'll rewrite some stuff but that's what i suggest people to do just open up a word document and write for 30 minutes first thing every day first thing when you're fresh after

you answer your emails and do all the things that just wear you out you know after dealing with people all day first thing in the morning when you're the most creative you know maybe some caffeine or whatever that's your thing and uh just write and it does take a lot man because you know you got to get things you got to get things sorted out in the books, you know, typos and such, and the structure of the book and the format and, uh, you know, fts and amazon in 2013 and then 1020 life the first edition was the uh was an e-book only and it did really really well and uh that released in it was done in september of 13 but it didn't release until october of 2014 and then um i i sat on that for a little bit and then just basically rewrote the book and added a bunch of stuff to it and re-released that three years later in uh march of 2017 and then by then

we were knee deep into writing gift of injury stew and i had been working on it for almost a year or so you know just actually writing the book not just just making notes. And we rolled that out in October of 2017. And I got a couple other books in the works too, that are like halfway completed. I've revised Cutting Weight. So it took the last five years or so when I went back down to 242 and learned some more tricks to cut from 270, did another 10 meets or so post-injury. So I have a lot more to add to that book but um i got a power building book that i'm working on so it's kind of like the philosophy of 10 20 life for power building with more reps and volume for looks and aesthetics more than just strength but still some strength so writing a book it's hard man getting published and dealing with the publishers

and you know getting pushed around you know a little bit and jerked around and people dropping the ball. It's tough to do, you know, but you just got to stick with it and just be ready to be a little bit flexible with the process because it's not an easy one. Yeah. It just seems like such a like crazy dated process. Like, oh, I feel like you just sit in meetings and talk to people and yeah at the end if you're lucky someone hits print and a book magically shows up at some point yeah and then you gotta yeah exactly you gotta hope that people want to buy it then right yeah right that's the thing you can get you can get a book put out there but if no one wants to buy it no one's interested it's worthless yeah yeah yeah yeah it's worthless one one of the topics in at least in the back mechanic that

for me that was maybe one of the most enlightening things was the like the concept of spinal hygiene and like being aware of what you're doing to your back throughout the day uh could you explain that to people like that maybe aren't familiar with that term what what they're referring to there yeah so one thing i work on it was a great deal of my recovery was the way I move day to day. And we talk about it in gift of injury. There's 168 hours in a week. What you do in the gym, maybe 10, 15, 20 hours or whatever it might be per week. So you're out of the gym 140 plus hours. And if you aren't taking care of yourself, like you do in the gym with proper form and such And you're abusing your body whether it be your knees or your hips or your shoulders or your pecs or your back

Eventually, especially with the it's a little bit different. It's not a ball and socket joint. So Too much bending and too much poor movement, especially if you're a bigger guy that's Built their spine they've tuned their spine To be stable. It's it's like an oak tree it's supposed to be rigid it can bear load but it's not good at bending so if you're mixing a lot of spinal loading with strongman or power lifting and you're still doing a bunch of bending an example like stretching or a lot of bending over at the waist doing yard work ann annulus, the ring around the disc is called the annulus, and it's made up of collagen, and it's adaptable. So you can either make it very stiff or very bendable.

So when you try to do both, especially on a bigger person, you end up getting neither, and you end up getting a disc bulge. So people that have poor spine hygiene that have a disc bulge or are prone to one that's going to be one of the first things they need to clean up and unfortunately teaching people to move and avoid their pain triggers by squatting lunging moving in ways that don't provoke your pain for example of bending forward under load and such they're not going to teach them this physical therapy and such unfortunately and spine hygiene is one of the biggest things that trip people up. They'll do their good core work, their stop lifting, they'll go for their walks,

but they move poorly all the time and they wonder why they can't get their back, you know, wound down and the pain's still there, even when they're doing all these other things. I mean, the spine hygiene is like 50 to 70% of it for some people, even more, just not recreating their injury over and over and over. So the spine hygiene is huge. And that's a, it's a term Dr. McGill uses for moving well and not provoking the pain triggers in your spine if you have

them. Yeah. And so for me, my issue is always flexion. Like that's where I get into trouble is inflection. And what's so hard about the spine hygiene thing, like when I look at, you know, if you're in the gym and you need someone to critique your form, you're going to go do a lift. You can record that 30 seconds and someone can critique it. The hard thing about spine hygiene is it's your life all day, every day. And you can't just have someone watch your whole life. Like you have to be self-aware. And what's so hard about that is in my mind, I'm like, okay, yep, I'm doing this right,

this right, this right. And then you go and you bend over and pick up the clothes back like you always do. And that one time, like you feel that flexion and that snap and you're like, all right, yep. That was the one of the spots where I was not, I didn't have good spine hygiene and I didn't even realize it. So to me, that's the hardest part of that is like you just have to be able to take that step back and really evaluate everything and it's hard to do mark mark bell could do it mark bell always has a camera on him you know what finally we got to talking about other people talking shit about that's my problem not mark bell i like that that's what i've known mark for a long time i know him even before uh he made his uh his uh cameo and bigger faster stronger and all that stuff but mark's mark's a good dude but that just came to mind when like thinking about someone

in the powerlifting industry that always has a camera on them and they follow him around and his food and everything so so you're saying the slingshot could help back hygiene then? The hip circle. There we go. Both at the same time. What's the name of the beef that they promote? What is it called?

Shit. I can never remember. Piedmontese. Piedmontese. Gotcha. The is it? Piedmontese. Piedmontese. Gotcha. The cows that eat whatever they need to eat for the beef to taste the best. They eat Tren. Tren pellets.

Yes. All right. Another, you know, Tommy talked about that, the back hygiene. Something else, you know, kind of a phrase I've seen you use in a few places, especially I relate this to lifters, I think, but I want to hear your interpretation of it. But availability supersedes ability. And could you kind of explain that a little bit?

Because I think that's kind of something that maybe a lot of people that are serious into powerlifting aren't thinking about or don't want to think about maybe yeah yeah so uh yeah that's a term that's been around for for quite a while you know um i've heard it used in football especially because you know if you guys watch the nfl at all there's injuries like it's a league of opportunity because yeah everyone gets hurt you know and people come in you know getting calls when they're been cut 15 times and they're starting quarterback next week so um availability the ability to be able to compete and not be

injured and on the shelf supersedes your ability when you're too beat up to play so you got you can have the let's use the nfl still you have the best running back like leonard furnette with the jaguars In his second season You have the best running back in the nfl or one of the best and if he's hurt it does not matter how good he is But you'd rather in that case you'd rather have someone more dependable that maybe doesn't have the talent That leonard furnette has But someone that's going to be able to show up and at least run the ball and give you a chance to put it in The end zone or whatever it may be

So the same thing goes for power lifting so it's about thinking being cerebral with power lifting and you're planning your heavy lifts you know asking yourself you know is this why am i doing this exercise a lot of people especially if they're new to power lifting if you to walk up to them and ask them hey why are you doing those rounded back good mornings you know with bands and chains and all this goofy stuff they wouldn't be able to tell you like oh well you know this person does it well you need to be able to assess your weak points or have someone assess them for you and you build your assistance work to uh to bolster those weak points so So having smart programming and erring on the side of caution and training, you're more likely to be available, not pushing hard all the time, not doing stupid

stuff in and outside of the gym. So deloading, you know, that's a big topic that people were talking about a few years ago. And having, you know, backing off before you're absolutely forced to back off and you're injured because availability supersedes ability. So do you want to risk coming into a meet 99% Pete, or you might fall on your face and be, you know, only 25% or do you want to do the sure thing and lift smart and be 90% ready for the meet? And you're going to have more of a successful outcome most times. 90% ready for the meet and you're going to have more of a successful outcome most times. So basically it doesn't matter how strong you are, if you're beat up and you can't showcase your talent. Yep. Makes a lot of sense to me. Well, we kind of live that to a certain point too. You know, once we've, uh, we're both like in our mid thirties have kind of lifted for a lot,

quite a while now and, you know, very intermediate lifters and stuff like that and we see it a lot in our gym and for a lot of people it you know the the health or the just the beat ability to be able to continue to do the lifts is the biggest limiting factor on progress yeah with the guys that are around the longness it's just like who can stay healthy the longest right yeah yeah and uh you know i up through last year was my 22nd year competing every year. And, uh, you know, it becomes harder and harder as you get older to stay available and stay in one piece because you can have the best programming, you can have the best consultants, you can have the best nutrition supplements, everything, rest, all that stuff. But eventually you lift in heavy were repeated over and over and over

and over. These are going to eventually start to crack, break, loosen up, twist, and they're going to fold. It's just how it works. You can't just do it forever. You know, Ed Cohn doesn't look like he did when he was a 35 anymore. It's just how it goes.

You know, I don't look the same as I did when I was 25 either. You know, I'm 40 now. So, you know, look what dave tate has to do just to lift yeah right now you know what i mean like he makes jokes about it but you know he's got two two artificial hips and uh you know put some bands on there and has to squat off a high box so he's had to make those adjustments you know to be able to lift and you mentioned it just a second ago about the things you have to do to lift or people that can't lift anymore. And you got to make all these crazy modifications because your, your athleticism is finite. And I think that if the younger generation of people could, could understand that a little bit more and not turn their nose up of wisdom and people that have,

you know, been there and done that, you know, for a long time and just think that the high volume high frequency high intensity training is the best way to do it because it does work it can get people very strong very fast but it's not sustainable benching two three four times a week squatting two three four times a week deadlifts in two three four times a week they end up being a lot of my back clients these people that get really strong doing this high frequency high volume no deload training they get really strong and then after a year or two they start breaking apart and it's usually their backs from uh a schedule of of something

silly like monday bench and squat tuesday deadlift wednesday off, so my, my, to be honest with you, you know, the whole availability supersedes ability and my, my approach, it is, uh, pretty boring and it's very conservative compared to a way a lot of people train or want to train because you're not getting in the gym all the time. You're not lifting heavy all the time. So it's kind of a turnoff to a lot of younger people when they see people always lifting heavy and they're always hitting big numbers. But again, all that matters is what you hit in the meet. If you're a competitive powerlifter, if you're just a gym hero or gym rat and you just like doing circus lifts and stuff, that's different. You're going to have to do some dumb shit. My training when I was competing up until last year was only focused on being the strongest on meet day and equipped powerlifting and the squat, the bench, and the deadlift.

That's all I focused on. We touched on it a couple times. You managed through the back pain, came back to powerlifting, and you eventually squatted the 1306 all-time heaviest lift in competition of any kind honest i guess of any lift um and i assume i mean was that the goal the 1300 plus like had that been a goal for a long time no it hadn't at all it wasn't even on my radar okay so when i came back back when i came back from my back injury my body didn't like being over. I was like 295 plus when I got hurt or, you know, started rehabbing and I lost weight, came back at 242, beat all few times at 242 after I recovered and went back. And so I lifted at 42 for like five years and then took a little bit of time off to restore my fertility. So I came off of all the supplements and such.

We got pregnant, you know, after seven months, twin girls. And then I got back on and started pushing again. And, you know, I wasn't 265, 270 anymore. I ballooned up over 300 but my back felt good so i was like okay you know maybe we compete at 275 or 308 or whatever and it just you know over the next year or so as i was getting back into shape it uh my strength came back even greater putting on some body weight doing a lot of raw squatting, belt squatting with the squat max. And the cycle was going really, really well going into that last meet.

But I tore my bicep about five weeks out from the meet. And so I had to end up going to squat only. And I knew that my squat was strong and I figured I could hold on to the bar. So I tested it out the next couple of weeks and then, uh, decided to put all my efforts last five weeks or so into squatting like twice a week, once heavy on the, uh, with the barbell and once like with a lot of volume at the belt squat and just focused on trying to hit the biggest squat that I could. I knew I could do in the twelves, but 13 wasn't even on my radar. But as we got closer to the meet i'm like dude

everything feels good if i if i can hit you know take a crack at that all-time world record at 12 80 something and if i hit that and i still have something in me let's load 1300 on there and see what happens so i didn't i didn't have a plan you know my biggest squat ever for a pre-injury was actually 1185 and so i i was kind of wondering if i'd ever squat over 1200 again so as i was coming back after getting back on and having the babies i just wanted to crack 1200 then i'd be good you know what i mean like i'd be good for a bit i got over that 1200 not many people have done 1200 800 and 800 equipped in me it's only like a handful of us but so that was the goal and i got lucky and exceeded it by a bit and thought it was kind of a

good time to walk away before i go to the well too many times so what who's the guy that uh i wrote his name down here so i wouldn't forget tractor yeah nathan baptist yeah he weighs 525 pounds seriously 525 i weighed in at 303 weighed in at 525 holy shit i did not know okay did you hear did you hear what they had to do to weigh them in no dude literally they had to go to this uh salt lake city utah truck stop and they had to use one of those scales there that's why they call them tractor i guess i'm just kidding i don't want no part of someone's 500 pounds uh so does that okay so that is obviously a pretty big difference there but so it was a 1311 squat is there any part of you that that makes you want uh to beat that you know is there any of it that's like yeah fuck it i could do it one

more time we'll you know yeah but the juice isn't worth the squeeze okay um if it was at 308 and it got beat right away but he was in super heavy weight and outweighed me by 222 pounds i'm just like you're not you can have it did you ever think that maybe going up to 500 would be the answer a little bit of a bulk for sure yeah dirty bulk oh god bless him man being almost i mean he's already working with 525 i'm only working with 30 You got to come up with that just on your own. So, you know, whatever. Yeah. Good for him.

That's wild. So the 1306 squat, do you look at any of the comments on that sort of stuff, like on YouTube? Yeah. And I have for a long time, but I don't let it bother me okay that's what i wanted what you how yeah what you feel on it so i hit my first all-time world record in 06 when the internet was just kind of getting going with the powerlifting forums and facebook really wasn't a thing and myspace was just kind of getting going and you know i got beat up a little bit on youtube and stuff and because you know youtube was around just kind of back then.

So I have a video up of that squat from 06. And, you know, people are still losing their mind on GoHeavy.com and those forums. People out there listening will probably remember GoHeavy. It was a USAPL forum, you know, about 15 years ago or so. But, yeah, people are losing their mind and they've always lost their mind over equipped squats. You know, when I squatted 1185 for the all-time world record, everyone lost their mind. You know, people lost their mind with the 1280 and then the 1306,

and I don't let it bother me. It's just people can say whatever they want. You know, if I had, like, a tragedy in my family and people were saying that type of stuff that they do on the news, the local news stations and stuff when they're talking shit on Facebook or Instagram about someone getting splattered with the car or something like that, that would be something that bothered me. But just me fucking lifting. I just, I don't care. Yeah. It doesn't bother me.

I think it's funny and I'll troll myself better than anybody so they can't they can't they can't hurt me with it because I'll just say something even more ruthless about the squad or it doesn't it doesn't matter to me now if someone wanted to talk shit to my face and like have like a trash talking session or like uh if we wanted to kind of uh you know raz each other or whatever, then yeah, definitely. I'm up for that for sure. Has anyone ever really

talked shit to your face about it? Ever? Other than a buddy screwing around with you or something? No. I don't really pay attention, man. If it's a good comment, like funny, I don't care if it's mean or not. it's funny yeah or like uh makes me laugh dude i'll

i'll share it or take a screenshot and repost it or something um you know what i mean but as far as what one thing i don't i don't really care about is when people start talking about integrity you know integrity with lifting and integrity you know especially a lot of the raw lifters they talk about integrity integrity, but Just about all these same lifters that talk about integrity been a part of beats that were total debacles And but when their boys are in the meet or they're commentating the meat they don't say shit But when they're far away and they're and then someone that's their opponent

Does a big lift and like oh that meat was just passing. It's the same thing in multiply. It's raw, raw with knee sleeves, raw with wraps, whatever else that they're doing. So it's just, there's never, the meat that I did is always stricter judging is what everyone always says. Oh man, it was so strict there. It was so strict. You know, so I don't get caught up in judging. I go and list. If they're giving me a little bit more on that day

Then I go down until i'm caught up by my training partner But I never say hey, let's just chop this squad or hey, let's try to you know, get over It's just whatever they're calling that day. I just try to get the lift past I don't try to get a bonus What's that? Yeah, I don't try to get bonus points and i don't uh i don't try to appease the even the audience or like the people that are my peers or whatever i do i do it for me and that's the thing like i uh i don't really care about that stuff i want to get the lift passing no more that my job isn't to uh you know make the squat look good or the bench look

good or the deadlift look good from any angle in the room on a video. It's just if the judge thinks it's good enough, that's good enough for me. Yeah, I mean, that makes sense. That's like the only way you can have, like, could, if you didn't have that mentality, could you, do you think you could have competed for 20 years? No. It's a silly, it's a silly, it's a silly, like, comparison when people are talking about, like, oh, you know, not a silly comparison when people are talking about, not a silly comparison, but it's a silly idea when people are like, Ben, you should have done this, you should have done that.

It's been with raw lifts, high squats being passed. I've seen a bunch of them where people lose their mind, quips and all that stuff. Oh, we lost him for a second. Jeez, that doesn't happen too often. It's actually shocking that doesn't happen too often it's actually shocking that doesn't happen more than what it does good connection with him we'll try him back can't end on there no it's a cliffhanger uh dude i don't know what happened we lost you for a second no that's you know talking about the shit talking and you know we mentioned a lot of time i i in i don't know if it is but in my mind i picture people saying that stuff it is probably a it's a lot of raw lifters saying that sort of

thing in the multi-ply community world are is one multi-player multi-ply lifter a ever talking shit about multi-ply lifter b's depth like is it within the two that they're complaining about that do you ever see that absolutely okay absolutely okay i didn't know if everyone's like yeah everyone's like yeah fuck it they're all good or like if people bitch about it back and forth or okay no it's it's fractured just like the other yeah disciplines or variations of powerlifting are it's just like you got the one group that doesn't lift here and the other group that doesn't lift there and they don't like this person because they used to train with them it's the same thing you know a lot of the time it's just it's jealousy or people getting angry because their records get broke or whatever

so yeah you just i've been a part of it for so long now in 06 07 even 10 and 11 i'm like what the fuck man like what is this like why are people so ridiculous but then after a while the last 10 years i'm like I should expect this. And so this last one, when I even talked about on Dave Tate's podcast about six months before, that I don't go around talking about that I squat deep. I squat for lights and I always have been. So you know what? I'm going to continue to squat for lights like I have my whole career.

And I bombed out on the squat four times. My whole lifting career, I bombed out on the squat four times my whole lifting career i've been on the bench like six times i've bombed out 10 times in 22 years but it's been mostly not being able to touch a stupid bench press so squat depth is uh it's it's a funny one to talk about because people uh definitely like to uh get pats on the back for squatting for deep but they don't hold their benches on their chest forever, and they don't hold their deadlifts forever. If they wanted points, they should do that, too. I don't get that.

Squat depth is the funny one, isn't it? You don't see people make a big deal. It's such a badge of honor. It's virtue signaling, is what it is. Look at me. I don't squat high like Brian or Dave Hoff does, but look at me. I'm squat high like brian or dave hoff does but me i'm taking 315 and my

butt touched my calves it's like who cares like literally who cares what about raw lifting where did you ever have any interest in that or just not something you care about or not something that uh would work for you or what what's your thoughts on it first bench press meet i did in 99 was raw and so was the second one okay now raw lifting didn't exist back then the only thing that was raw was people benching or deadlifting that couldn't wear a bench shirt or deadlift suit so everyone wore a squat suit or briefs or knee wraps or whatever the raw stuff kicked out kicked off kind of 06 with the new england record breakers and that's when it really started picking up some steam and then around 2010 11 it really took off and started crushing

a quiff lifting and people kind of lost interest in it and you know kind of just it kind of just died but by the time raw lifting became big you know 2010 or so starting in 06 i was already i'd already been multiplied power lifting for so long that i wasn't just going to jump off the wagon and try something else. And I just, what I've always done is equip powerlifting and, uh, you know, I train raw in the off season, but I knew that as many miles as I had on my body, it was not going to hold up if I transitioned over to raw. So I think it was a smart move on my end and not just go and demolish my body even worse, just to,

just to do it. You know, I've been lifting raw in the gym for 20 some years and it just, I never competed raw except for when I was younger, but I just didn't, didn't have a desire. That's not where I was brought up. When you competed,

you put on knee wraps, you put on a suit. And then when you didn't wear knee wraps in a suit or a gym wraps, you know, when you competed, you wore the, or that's just wear gym wraps. When you competed, you wore the ear. That's just how it was back then. No, that makes perfect sense. It's all logical.

Something else I wanted to ask you. Your website and your name, it's Power Rack Strength. Yeah. Why wasn't it Monolith Strength? I don't know, but I think I dropped the ball on that one. That's a good one yeah you know what monoliths are uh they're nice man and you can put the straps on there so people aren't dumping bars on people yep you know what i mean you put the straps on there to help save some fingers and such but um yeah monoliths are nice especially when you're over a thousand pounds you know

blaine sumner's you know ray williams walking out you know 1080 raw just insane yeah and also blaine sumner's is always looks a little dangerous though too you know like it's always a little like uh seems like any second away from something uh tragic happening too well he had his wrist wrist cut his hand off. That's all right. Right. Yeah, it actually did happen. Yeah. Blaine is a strong human and a lot of the time he's training by himself.

Yeah. Or his wife's pulling the pin for him or handing off a thousand pound bench. Yep. Brian, we've got this little game we like to play with everyone that comes on here and we've got it set up for you. It's called Overrated, Underrated. And we just hit you with a little series of topics that we picked for you.

And all you've got to do is decide if they're overrated or underrated. You can elaborate on it as much or as little as you want to. You just can't ride the line in between. You've got to finish with either overrated or underrated. Uh-oh. Okay. and it's all politics good okay um overrated or underrated vans uh underrated has that always been your go-to lifting shoe of choice or what's the story with that changed they've changed because i used to i used to wear some adidas but then they got the whatever they're doing with the soles change they become really soft they're probably made in china or something

and uh you know the quality went down and then the chucks changed they weren't the same for a bit so i kind of had trouble finding some shoes for a bit and dave hoff actually recommended bands and he squats big so i uh i went with that but i actually have a pair of squat shoes from rudy now and they're got an epoxy bottom and they're flat and the the side of the shoe doesn't give it all they're a badass shoe but um i like the idea of having a shoe like that overkill shoe that you're not gonna have to change out every year. You know, if you do two meets a year and you're lifting heavy in them, you squat, you know, and bench in them or something, they're not going to last very long. Then you got to find another pair.

So unfortunately, you still wear the Vans out. But those Adidas and Chucks for a bit, I was wearing out just immediately, just not made the same. So I think Vans is one of the Vans are one of the most uh reliable ones now with the other ones kind of getting weak and soft to squat in yeah okay um overrated or underrated grip strength underrated we heard that you're kind of a grip that you've got an impressive grip strength is that right who told you that uh we heard it on our i heard it actually have you picked up the thomas inch dumbbell before yeah i picked up that with both hands okay yeah we heard it on we've got a discord group for our podcast and some we had mentioned

earlier this week that we were going to have you on and they're talking about maybe you and uh shane uh hallsworth is that how you say the last name? Maybe going back and forth on grip strength or something one time. I couldn't remember the exact story, but I remember picking up from it that you could pick up the Thomas Inch dumbbell. Yeah, I grabbed it from both hands. My friend was training

for a grip competition, and he had the Thomas Inch with him at Elite FTS. And so I grabbed it and picked it up with each hand, and I just didn't know how hard it was supposed to be so i think that's beginner's luck you know what i mean yeah so do you have you trained grip over your career or why no no and my grip's actually not it's hit or miss sometimes depending but um, um, when I would train my grip to make sure I could hold on to 800 plus or whatever, I,

uh, I like doing double overhand shrugs and double overhand deadlifts, not hooking the grip, hooking the thumbs in grip, but just holding on to that thing and working the extensors really hard and, uh, holding on to double over overhand shrugs and whatnot. But as far as doing a bunch of pinching and crushing and stuff,

I never really did a ton of that. I think I, like I said, I think I just got lucky picking up the inch dumbbell and just, I don't know. I just got, I got lucky and just having grip strength from holding a barbell for the last ever since 1995. Would you say,

would you say you have big hands or just have average size hands? Average size hands, but they're super thick. I worked as a massage therapist for 10 years. So my hand muscles developed in my thumb and taking a bunch of growth hormone, allegedly. My hands may have grown a little bit. They're not like Ed Cohen's hand. They're probably close to his hand size. My fingers aren't as long,

but I'm 5'10", and he's 5'5", or 5'6". You know what I mean? He has giant hands for someone 5'5". He has enormous hands. Yeah. They feel good on your cock, too. Actually, I'm not... Isn't there an issue there? You don't actually want the hands to be

that big because then it uh it makes it look bad yeah the ratios right right didn't you just ask me how important grip strength is well that's true that's that's a good point find a guy with a better grip pound for pound than that guy well that's true hard to argue with this is going to be aaron in the middle of the night right so i don't have to worry about getting uh blackballed by my more conservative uh followers and such right middle of the night three 3 a.m to 4 15 yeah yeah that's what we'll say only available in the middle of the night yeah three o'clock somewhere yeah we were talking about whiskey earlier um we were thinking of a couple

different whiskeys but we're gonna go overrated underrated jack daniels uh overrated yeah we kind of agree with that do we you know yeah are there are there people that are just hyped for jack daniels when they can't get anything else and they're like 17 probably yeah that's what we said yeah when you're 18 years old like does the brand exist outside it's such an iconic looking brand and you know everything too but i'm like i don't really know a lot of adults that really enjoy jack daniels all that well when jack and honey came out whenever that was 10 years ago so i was drinking that on the rocks it was good uh jack and honey the splash of coke but as far as the regular jack daniels i could leave that shit yeah i think what's what would be your go-to drink uh an old-fashioned okay and then what's your what's your whiskey preference i'm not dude i'm

not like a big uh not like a big uh whiskey snob or anything i just my friends that i train with will get some good bottles and they'll bring me some or they'll we'll trade or whatever i got a few bottles for my birthday i think i got something called jefferson and is it hayden basil or basil hayden sure either yeah yes okay whichever that second one is my favorite that's moderately priced and it's it's good and i i typically i don't drink a bunch of whiskey but whenever i have allergies or start to get sick i'll make some you know some lemon juice and a big cup of whiskey and a little bit of honey in there and i'll just sip on that all day helps helps clear you up a little bit yep that's a work hack i guess you just said

allergies got to drink my whiskey hot toddy well. Well, I work for myself, man. Yep. Tanner works in an office. Yeah, I'm going to try it. I'm going to bring it with tomorrow. It's okay. You guys wearing a mask? No.

No, we're in South Dakota. That's where it's pretty. Pretty lax. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Well, I was just wondering if you guys wear the mask while you're doing the podcast. Oh, why? It's audio only or what no never mind it was just a dumb dude people are driving in their car still wearing masks at night and stuff it's weird

oh yeah there's not a whole lot of that activity around here honestly it's uh it's where no one else lives around i mean you don't see people all that often so it's not an issue you don't get it you don't get in breathing distance of other people very very frequently well don't know once the coronavirus die because it's so freaking cold because it is it affected by coldness at all i don't know but it's hot here right now yeah it's actually 60 degrees here today and we said uh December, it's more likely to be negative 60 in South Dakota. But we got, for some reason, it's crazy warm for us right now. Gloved on warmed up, man.

That's right. Climate change. Dude, it's like 50 here. So we're colder than Florida. That is messed up. We're just living the life. Yeah, that is messed up. That's why I have to drink those hot toddies

because our weather is whack too, man. It'll be 30 and then it'll be 80. That is kind of messed up that in December it was probably warmer here than it was in Florida. Even if it was the same, that still doesn't make any sense. So you guys are going to get blasted soon. That's exactly what we said.

We're going to pay for this out the ass here soon where it's going to like four feet of snow at once. And yeah, it's going to be tough soon. Yeah. Well, good luck with that. We'll send you pictures. Okay, so this last overrated, underrated topic, we kind of merged two of your big things.

So we know you power lifted for 20-some years, and you're kind of merge two of your big things. So we know you power lifted for 20 some years and you're kind of the bat guy. The bat guy? Yeah, you're kind of the bat guy. You know, you're one of the bat guys. Oh, the bat guy. I thought you said bat guy. No, you're the bat man.

Yeah. What do you think about that new movie coming out next year? So who'sman or what is the robert patterson yeah i haven't honestly paid much attention i usually don't even pay much attention until movies come out now i'll tell you what no batman will ever stand up to me to the um uh what's his name the guy that christian bale christian bale you know like them like those those the uh those are gonna be tough those those christian bale christian bale you know like them like those those those are gonna be

tough those those christian bale batman movies are my favorite you know superhero movies or what you know those are just good ass movies i think yeah and like the one came out like when i was in college and there was like that was like dudes in college would just watch that on repeat like that was like a life with the joker yeah with the joker yeah yeah yes so yeah that is going to be hard to beat but i don't know i have an open mind i'm i'm curious to see what happens yeah i mean it's really dark it's a lot more violent and uh dark than uh the previous uh batman series he's like going through some some anger issues and stuff but the uh the thing that sucked about the dark knight and dark knight rises the christian bell series with christopher nolan yep is you know the joker was supposed to be in the third one too

you're right right and that sucks imagine imagine the movie that could have been at that point crazy yeah because people were so hot high on heath ledger you know his performance in there yeah i'd have been interested to see the joker and bane interact two different type of uh criminals you know yeah you know i know some people think the bane voice and stuff was maybe a little over the top and everything but i don't know i i liked it i think it was it's superhero yeah exactly there's such a thing as over the top right they um they went and redubbed it because when it released like on on sneak previews or whatever you call it with the VIPs, the sound didn't sound good in the theaters. They fucked it up.

So they went back in and redubbed the whole movie and made it sound more like Darth Vader because you couldn't hear him before. Yeah, they messed it up. Yeah. They had one job. What's Hardy? What's Tom Hardy? How big is he? Is he actually big in real life or is he not even actually big is he i could that's my only other thing is like get a really big dude you know i could have swore he was like 220 or 240 for that but he's at the time he seemed

like a jacked person right i think he was he was only like 5'9", 195. Oh, is that how he was? Which is hilarious, especially when you're deep in sports like powerlifting and strongman and stuff. It's like we're used to seeing 300-plus pounds jack dudes. That's not an uncommon thing. They should have had Dan Bell be Bane. He just laughs the whole time. It doesn't matter who you are. Let him take his CPAP as his mask.

Dan does listen to the podcast sometimes, so I'm hoping he catches this part. I like Dan. He's a good's good you don't live in the same part of florida as him do you about an hour and a half away or so okay so you haven't you haven't really trained with him then or anything some yeah we actually uh 2020 he came up and we trained and we both put over 1100 in squat briefs okay at my gym yeah we haven't trained a whole a whole bunch man i had the babies born right when he was moving up so that has been like a big uh you know obviously life changed for me yeah yes overrated no i'm just kidding no we we both have kids we know yeah no it's been great man it's a good reason for me to get out of power lifting and

work on helping more people instead of destroying myself yeah i like how you say it was a good reason for me to get out of power lifting and work on helping more people instead of destroying myself. Yeah. I like how you say it was a reason, like it gave you a choice. Right. Okay. So the last one was overrated or underrated back in black by ACDC. Maybe one of the most,

most heard songs in gyms around the country. Do you like it? Well, the question is yours remind me what songs are on that album oh i mean we can just go with the song yeah yeah uh okay yeah that okay that's the other question whether it's the full album or the song but uh i i do like the idea better of the full full album but i don't know which ones are all on i couldn't tell you what's all on the album yeah i don't know for sure yeah i like uh i like listening to acdc i don't uh i mean i'd recognize the song but i know a lot of their songs but i don't know exactly what would be on that album but anything acdc to listen to while you train is great so uh i don't i don't know if it'd be overrated so let's just say it's underrated because it's

a lot better than this mumble rap that people younger kids are listening to in their dorky beat headphones while they're lifting by themselves mumble mumble rap where people say the same thing over and over and it doesn't make any sense. And if it does make sense, it's destructive. I'm also not a big fan of headphones. I'm not a big fan of headphones in general while lifting. It'd be really hard for me to go back to that. Yeah. I mean, there could be a time and place for it, but I'm more making fun of the lifting dorks. I mean, there could be a time and place for it, but I'm more making fun of the lifting dorks. Yeah.

So you're talking the, the USAPL lifter that, uh, uh, how would you, how would you describe that guy more in more detail? Uh, every, every piece of, uh, singlet that gives you 15, 20 pounds that the IPF gets paid enough to pass, even though it's spandex, even though it provides carryovers and they weigh it, weigh it, wear them three times as small. Then you got the dorks wearing the SPD knee sleeves and, uh, elbow sleeves, of course. And then the $500 belt they wear with that. Elbow sleeves, of course. And then the $500 belt they wear with that. And yeah, they're just trying to lift the most they can, quote unquote raw, but they're getting the most carryover out of anything they can. The sleeves, they have to take a freaking ratchet strap to put on.

It is funny because even being in that world and you know it's doing it witnessing it yeah exactly it is funny too especially when you compare it to you know most raw people don't are like yeah you know screw multi you know or at the very least like yeah that's not really for me i won't don't want to wear all that stuff i want to see what what someone say i want to see what i can actually squat or you know something like that but then it is funny but like but with me still wearing all these things just not those things i only want yeah they have like a grippy shirt we don't even do that they're benching in that grippy shirt they put the bar on the back with that was it called a7 yeah a7 bar grip yep yep did they sponsor you guys or

anything no no no we got uh texas power bars as a sponsor you have probably used some texas power bars in your day yeah i got i got like seven of them in my gym yep uh yeah texas yeah that a7 stuff is for dorks yeah i don't own any a7 stuff i don't think at all i just wanted i wouldn't put anyone on blast unnecessarily that like sponsor you guys or whatever i don't have anything against the the company but we're just like cutting up and like being loose i mean it's kind of goofy the raw lifters where you know use sticky stuff on their shirts and wear knee sleeves to give them 50 pounds you know what i mean they want to say oh i'm you know i'm raw but i'm wearing a singlet that I can't get parallel in because it gives me a slingshot out of the bottom. What's the singlet company that people kind of almost definitively say that almost…

Oh, is there one? Well, yeah, there's one that people… I know I've seen Brandon Campbell and Johnny Candido both. I don't know if it's Titan that makes… Inzer. Or Inzer. Okay, so is it the Inzer one that... Like people... Power.

Yeah, people agree that it actually has... There's more to it than your average singlet. Absolutely. It's called the Inzer Power Singlet. Okay. And it somehow got approved by the USAPL and IPF, but I've had dozens of them come through my hands, given the amount of people I've sponsored

when I was with Inzer. And I'd have 210 pound 220 pound guys wear a large or a medium you know what i mean and it's skin tight and he can't get down in it really wow yeah absolutely i kind of that's that's where the more we talk about those i i want one of those uh for the skin it's like a very very very loose pair of briefs yeah i'm like i never came across this yeah uh ends are power singlet but you know i'm all for people lifting the most weight possible in the safest way and i'm just kind of tongue-in-cheek making fun of the what i call lifting dorks but i think it's cool that the power lifting has gotten so

big but it's kind of hard hard to look at some of these people that take themselves so seriously with the numbers that they have and the 200 squat and all this stuff with all their gear, you know what I mean? Their bags, their belts, and all this stuff. So we give it out to the multiply guys too, to the raw people.

Well, I think that's fair. It's a two-way street street and we're kind of fortunate. We get to have people on here from basically all sides of the, from every angle possible. You know, we, we've, uh,

even just this year gotten to have more mall. We historically have not had all that many multiply guys on, but relatively recently we've, we've had you and, uh, Dave Tate and, uh, um, triggerate Stay Hated podcast. Anthony recently had him on and Big Poppy.

Greg Panora. Greg Panora and a few more. Oh, Greg. Greg is one of the guys that came up a little bit after I did. Yeah. We've said it before on the other ones. We haven't had a single multi-ply guy on that hasn't been really interesting and fun to talk to. Well, we yet have character, man.

And that's the thing. I respect all different types of lifting, even the so-called lifting dorks. If you're lifting on a barbell and you compete, you've got my respect. 100%. I respect the people doing these weights like Dan Bell and knee wraps going over 2,600 and all this stuff Dan Green did for so long. He's competing this weekend again, too. Interesting to see.

Yeah, he's making a comeback. Yeah, the guys like Kevin Oak and Ray Williams and Blaine Sumner, the guys that lift raw and multi, Dennis Cornelius, these guys lift, you know, single ply raw. Andre Melancho lifts a single ply for a long time before he even went raw. So I respect anyone that competes. And it's super impressive to see the guys do it raw and semi raw and wraps and single ply and then of course multiply is where we kind of put all the the the you know put everything at stake and try to lift the absolute most as possible and it's just a little it's just different but that's just the way i come up but i respect every everybody's way they

choose to lift and if they compete and what i don't respect is people who don't compete and run their mouth you know what i mean yeah i don't care like i was joking about like oh 200 pound squat lifts and dork but the the people that get to me is the people that talk so much and and are too scared to compete and i've met so many people like that people that think that oh i could beat that record but no it's it's not about that's why they have the game yeah you know what i mean you go and you do it under the rules you might completely suck under the lights yeah but we've also seen the people that show up and just blossom under the lights and just hit shit you're like where did that come from so that's why you have any given sunday that's why you have the meat because there's been a lot of times they shouldn't have

meats according to the experts and then totally be turned upside down by who shows up and wins yeah we witnessed that even on a small local level you know a lot of people think that and then totally be turned upside down by who shows up and wins. Yeah, we witnessed that even on a small local level. A lot of people think that this is the record. I can do that. Maybe I can do that in the gym and stuff. It's a little different when you actually – That extra 30 pounds will be there on me. Yeah, and when you show up, do all three lifts on the same day

on not just your perfect day, warming up your perfect way in the gym you know like doing it all under someone else's time standard and not your perfect warm-up scenario yeah the tempo is the big one it's way different doing a meet for you know for people that haven't done it before yeah and some people crumble and just can't they can do it in their own gym in their cozy basement or you know their local powerhouse but then when it's time to lift all three on the same day and do it under pressure they can't do it but anyone that competes has has my respect right on oh uh yeah where where does everyone pass over oh shoot yes great news you did pass overrated underrated and i passed it yeah you passed and it is a it's a pass or fail sort of thing so you did

pass and uh since you passed that means we are going to publish this episode nice yeah so kudos to you on that good work thank you but now no i was going to tell you um your website and everywhere anyone can find any of your stuff, get all that stuff out there. Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, first of all, thanks for having me on. I've written the book, Gifts of Injury. It's about my story coming back from back injury and getting back to 100% pain-free life and then going back and competing for another eight years or so after the injury, pain-free.

years or so after the injury pain-free 10 20 life is my strength training philosophy and i break out you know a very concise philosophy of off-season and how to pick your weak points and form cues and all that good stuff when to deload so that's my book 10 20 life and you can find that as well as my cbd at powerxshrink. And those that want to email me, you can find me, or you can contact me at Brian at power, X, strength.com P O W E R R A C K strength. S T R E N G T H.com. And,

uh, on Instagram, I'm Brian Carroll, 1306. And, uh, I think that's about it. And my books are on Amazon.

You can find them there, but, anyone that has back pain that's run into a dead end, you can reach out to me. I advise you read Back Mechanic. Like we mentioned earlier, it's a great book that I think everyone should read if they do lift any type of heavy weight or work with athletes. And then Gift of Injury shows how we applied the principles in Back Mechanic to my specific needs and rebuilt me. So those books, of course, I make money off of them, but I want to encourage people that have struggled to get back under the

bar from a back injury to read these books, the $70 investment, and they could change your life. You're going and you're paying a hundred plus bucks to see a doctor when he refers you elsewhere. This would be a much better investment. If, uh, if you're having trouble with the typical American medicine, uh, cycle of referring you out and then,

you know, send you somewhere else. That's good stuff. Uh, that's, that's all good. We really appreciate having you on. This is good stuff.

Yeah. Anytime you guys want to come on and chat late at night that, uh, I like it, you know, I typically do the more, uh, direct, you know, uh, podcast during the day that are a little bit more, uh, what's the word? Like concise to the programming, you know what I mean? They want to know the details, nuance and stuff. That's nice to be able to do and just kind of have a good conversation. So yeah, it was like to shoot the shit.

Yeah. It was excellent to meet you too and anytime you want me to be back on, just hit me up. You got my number now. Perfect. Awesome. Thanks, Brian. Alright. Have a great night, guys. Thank you. See ya. Tanner, we know what to do. Cool beans.

Cool beans. He gets the double cool beans beans that old son of a bitch that was that was really good yeah it was i like that he's a good guy yeah had didn't uh i mean we had an idea of what to expect but uh yeah he was fun oh it's good good stuff guy that's seen some stuff in his day has seen some stuff and some shit tanner i think i should read an ad before we get sidetracked here uh we don't have any sponsors that he that brian directly poo-pooed on did he not yet no we could probably get him back on the line and see though i bet i have a feeling if if i was a betting man that uh brian likes spud ink i i bet i'd bet good money that one would actually really surprise me i bet he i bet if I was a betting man that Brian likes Spud Inc. I would be shocked if he didn't.

That one would actually really surprise me. I bet he's probably friends with Spud, as a matter of fact. Either that or enemies. There's no in-between on this. He's either very warm or very cold on Spud Inc. Okay, today's episode

of the Mastonomics Podcast is brought to you by Spud Inc. and the Super Pro Series 3-ply belt. There were some guys that were really hoping you were going to go with the hooker straps. It's been a while. Maybe I'll get those in the lineup next week. The Spud Inc. Pro Series belt is next-level upgrade of their best-selling Pro Series belt. What separates the Pro Series from other belts is the ratchet system on their flexible nylon belt material and if you know spud ink you know that they know

flexible nylon we know that they know that we know that they know this enables the lifter to quickly get the tightness down to whatever level desired in most belts it's a prong or level lever system where precise tightness is difficult for uh for you to get in there just right. The ratchet system changes that to a perfect tightness level for you personally. With the Spud Ink Pro Series, they eliminate all of those problems that you have with those old belts. The flexible 3-ply material is designed to fit and contour to the individual body type, but provide the compression of any 10 or 13-millimeter belt. Order yours today at spud- ink dash straps dot com i just saw a woman that shared a woman her top podcast at least the name is sarah I'm making assumptions here, I suppose. But good to see that.

It's probably just a bot. A bot that's so in tune with the world. It's such an advanced bot. One, it has a Spotify account. Two, it has an Instagram account. Three, it makes snapshots. And then four, it knows how to post and tag us. That'll probably be a day one i can't imagine i

believe there's people out there that think that that's all is happening though you know i've uh i mean it's not totally crazy but like in this case like it doesn't make sense for a brand like this no right right right but i like yeah it's a lot of stuff. People should be much more skeptical to what they read and see online. I think so. But not me. I trust everything I read online. You know, it is really funny. And I open all attachments

and I do not hover over the link. That's a strict policy. Zip file? I want all of them. Nay, I refuse to hover over a link. I trust everything from anyone. People call me the unzipper. And yes, they also call me the cookie monster

because I want all the cookies. That's good. You know what I wanted to do, Tommy? What? Go over a couple of five-star podcast reviews. And you know why I want to go over it? Because we are on the road. We are straight.

We're on the road. And we are cruising at cruising speed on the road to 400. You know the road is the road to 400. Yeah, like we're almost speeding on the road. Yeah, so anyone that doesn't know, we're on the road to 400 five-star Apple podcast reviews. Like we busted out of the traffic jam a couple weeks ago. We're out leading the pack. Yeah. You want to know what number we're on the road to 400 five-star uh like we busted out of the podcast no we're weeks ago we're out in the leading the pack yeah uh you want to know what number we're at three nine is that next number nine it's 390 it's like the price is right

three seven no six and they're like like are you really trusting like who are you looking at here make your own decision um 390 390 390 so we're only 10 out from 400 and i've said it before we'll say it again there's this this thing once we get close people know it people sense it that's why this last week and that's why And NASCAR, they call it drafting. You get in there and you start going faster. Yeah, and the draft is on because this last week we clicked up like 10, and I think this next 10 could go real fast. Would you say slingshot engaged?

Slingshot is going to be engaged, but we can only do that with your support. So if you're listening right now, please get out there and hit us with that five-star review. Because once we get to 400 for anyone that doesn't know, we always do something big, something big is going to happen every hundred Mark. We do something real big and we got some big things we were just talking

about and can't exactly say yet what they are. What we could tell you about it is that they're big. That's that is the takeaway. Yeah. So help us get there leave us a five-star review a five-star review something like these if you need like inspiration or something to model your review after yeah there's a good spot to start uh this is from adonis the lion he says cool beans been listening on spotify for a while now had to come here just to say thanks fellas i always laugh a lot and learn a little cheers i wonder what his spotify rap i

don't know that's a good point though if you're regularly a spotify listener is there a review process on spotify uh i don't know i know and i that's not kind of our gold standard at this point so what we would ask is not even the regular yeah it's nobody's standard i don't think what what we're asking you if you are a spotify listener come over to apple podcast just to give us that five-star review because that's uh what apparently maybe that's what makes us the happiest yeah next one is from medium kyle he calls us life-changing came to get the. Stayed for the seltzer recommendations. 5 JD powers out of 5. Last one here for today is from Beastaman93, titled, I Own Lift Shorts.

Whether you want to hear the soothing tone of Tanner's soft and gentle voice or listen to Tommy talk about the goat of all bars, this is the podcast for you. You really start to understand the mentality of how to get strong, how to stay strong, and how to use your strength. Note, highly recommend drinking a piping hot LaCroix while listening for optimal listening experience. Amen to all of that, right? Oh, yeah. All about that.

Okay, good stuff there. And as long as we're talking about things, I want to talk about one more thing. I wanted to talk about hybrid performance method and the hybrid nutrition. If you really want a shredded physique that performs as well as it looks, then combining hybrid training and nutrition is the answer to your prayers to the iron gods. It's like having the best strength and nutrition coaches at your fingertips. You get a personalized roadmap to Shredsville

and a dedicated coach by your side when you work with a hybrid nutrition coach. So if you're ready to get seriously strong and seriously shredded, join Team Hybrid today. Visit hybridperformancemethod.com and make sure, please make sure, to use our discount code MASS. That's M-A-S-S at checkout

and it'll save you a 5% to use our discount code MASS. That's M-A-S-S at checkout, and it'll save you a 5% on any of these nutrition coaching, training coaching, or their app. You get 5% off there for the whole life of all of that. It doesn't just end like a month into it. It outlives you. Yeah, you get the 5% off

for as long as you are alive and using it. Yeah, as long as they can alive and using it. Yeah. As long as they can still charge your credit card. Yes. So for some people, you know, if you're like 20 and you're going to live to 90, you could save 5% off for 70 years.

And at that point you pencil it out. No, seriously, sit down with a pad and pencil, old fashioned, no calculator, even do long addition and subtraction. Probably like a yellow legal pad.

Yeah, yellow legal pad for sure. And not a mechanical pencil. A number two. Number two. Sharpen that bad boy up. Yes. And not with a battery-powered sharpener. No, no, no, no.

With a crank on the wall sharpener. You definitely have a crank one on the wall. And that's what you sharpen it with. And then you can start to pencil it out and see that the savings are unreal. I don't really like pencil shavings. That's kind of gross to me. I couldn't tell you the last time I used a wooden pencil. Like, remember having to, like, open those and dump them out?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That and even, like, chalk dust. Does chalk dust exist anymore? You know, blackboards, I don't think. Well, at Mathonomics Gym, yeah, yeah. That and even like chalk dust. Does chalk dust exist anymore? You know, blackboards, I don't think. Well, at Masonomics Gym, we have them. Oh, yeah, true. There it does. But actually, there's a lot of chalk dust there.

You know what's grosser than any of that stuff, though? Band-Aids. I thought you were going to say poop. Well, yeah. I mean, that's an obvious one, though. Actually, kind of on that topic, my dog was puking this morning. That's always when you're sleeping, you hear, that, like, will jolt you awake in an instant.

We had different food for my dog this last week, and he literally shit the, not our, he doesn't sleep in our bed. He shit his bed. And, you know, that's not a normal thing. It was kind of all over the bed, and there's probably a way you could clean it and stuff and i'm like we are throwing this away we're going to walmart and just getting a new one yeah like i'm not cleaning that or like that's not going like in our washing machine or anything you know isn't it wild how dogs can eat like anything and then you change up their food and that's like a different thing that looks exactly the same it probably has like 90 the same ingredients you drink out of a

puddle that had like moss and mold growing in it on the side of the road and you did it like no problem and then we give you a different type of food and that's what your downfall is yeah dogs huh it's a rough life yes it is uh tommy i guess go buy our stuff you know we still have all the new drop stuff out there we have still available are the zip hoodie the raw power hoodie in some sizes the zip hoodie has like a couple in each size the raw power uh crew neck is completely out of several sizes but there's a few out there joggers still at least like one in every size so you could still get joggers in your size if you want to the nice rack tee is available probably in most sizes but some of those are just a couple

that is sold well uh the kind of fit kind of fat last ever re-release that has like one size left so maybe if that's if you're lucky medium or large yeah that's all that's left there uh what i'd like to recommend everyone buys and i uh it's funny i should have talked about this more but the our feel the burn hot sauce scented ammonia oh yeah uh i busted one of those out were you feeling the burn well i busted it out for when we had like 22 people over at our house for, uh, uh, one of the Thanksgiving days,

or it was like Saturday or something. We had baptisms and stuff. We had 20, 20 some people over and I busted it out and we passed it around. Like all the grandmas tried it and everyone tried it. And I was meant I, in my mind, I was like,

yeah, I'm going to record all these, but sometimes it's just like, yeah, you don't get to live in the moment i know i know like i can't have my phone out all the time people do a lot of people especially older people that aren't used to phones act way different when a phone's out that's true like they can't be themselves at all and it was just fun we were having fun and i'm like i don't want to mess with my phone to i like i just want to like watch it through the lens of my eyes it's tough to do yeah um but very funny some really funny reactions and a few people like my mom barely reacted to it really uh someone else's uh my brother-in-law's father barely

uh didn't really register uh barely but then other people you know like the typical experience you know getting their face yeah right right so i don't know that's funny i wouldn't say no reaction but just like a lot you know not like i and i tried it first and i gave me the old uh and to me that's an involuntary reaction i like i don't think i cannot like when it like yeah because you do this thing where you like slowly like i don't smell anything i don't smell anything then it's like when your hand touches a hot pan you don't have to think about pulling it away it just pulls it right and i don't know if i can not do that when it comes to ammonia and it was funny for me to watch people and not do that i'm like how are you not jumping back from that what's going on made me want to grab it and be like nah let me see you must have

not been doing right and then it's like nope oh still does it yeah everyone's wired a little different i guess that's true uh but my point being by there's still uh feel the burn hot sauce scented ammonia available spicy air and it's got there's hot it is hot sauce scented it's not just uh clever marketing it is clever marketing it is fun it is just clever marketing that is real yes it is also there's the product behind it get some of that was that most of the new stuff i think so uh still if you own a one inch rack there's a might be a couple drink spotters left for you otherwise we're working on a reorder if you want one of those as a christmas gift buy it now yeah otherwise make sure to sign up for

in-stock notifications because we are working on another order. There will be some coming. Just, you know, with everything going on these days, steel is a little tricky to track down. Don't even get me started on supply chain issues. Don't even. I don't even want to say the word supply chain.

There's one thing I can say. You do not get Tanner started on a few things in life. And supply chain issues. Yeah. Like there's a thing i can say you do not get tanner started on a few things in life and supply chain issues yeah don't like there's a real hot button issue tanner's office has the picture of the word start and there's a line through it it says do not start him on on supply and then the number one bullet is supply chain issues don't start me on it do not oh once i get going on supply chain issues it's game over yeah no one has a chance then and what get going on supply chain issues. It's game over. No one has a chance then.

And what a year for supply chain issues it's been. But I promised I wouldn't get started. Okay, well, we won't start then. We'll save that for next episode. We'll get more into supply chain issues. Maybe we need more vertical integration along the supply chain and then the issues are no one else's but our own. That could be it, could be it actually. Maybe that is the,

maybe the problem was us all along. Nope. It's other people have to blame other people. That's a safer bet. I insist on blaming others and not looking at ourselves. Tommy, where do they find you? You can find me at Tomahawk underscore D.

You can follow me at Tanner underscore bear. Just make sure to follow massonomics at massonomics