Massenomics Podcast - Ep. 348: Mike Bartos of MBPowerCenter

Episode Date: December 5, 2022

Mike Bartos is the inventor of the Stone of Steel and several other cool pieces of training equipment. He also deadlifted 700 pounds at the age of 17! We dig into these topics, and try to get to the bottom of if Ohio is really in the Midwest or not. Juggernaut AI: juggernautai.app and use code MASSENOMICS to save 10% The Strength Co: https://www.thestrength.co/ BearFoot Shoes: https://bearfoot.store/ and use code MASSENOMICS to save 10% Swiss Link: https://www.swisslink.com and use code MASS to save 15% Spud Inc: https://www.spud-inc-straps.com/ Texas Power Bars: https://www.texaspowerbars.com/

Thanks for what you do with your podcasts and all the rest. You're doing a great job. I 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! side everything massonomics howdy everyone we're back for episode 348 of the massonomics podcast the lifting podcast about nothing recorded live from western northeast south dakota my name is tanner and my name is tommy well tommy some weather we've been having, isn't it? It certainly is weather. It's pretty cold. It's been a really cold snap.

It has been. But we've been in a bit of a snap. Actually, Thanksgiving. I was going to say 4th of July. That was the wrong holiday. Thanksgiving was pretty damn nice. Yeah. But caught up to us.

And then old man winter rears his ugly head and says, eh, not so fast, western northeast South Dakota. It's that wind. Yeah. If you look at the thing, it says 18. It's not that bad. Then you go outside, and it's terrible. Yeah, gust tonight is supposed to be in the 40 miles per hour.

It's going to be a breezy one. It's that Dakota breeze that will get you. It's that unassuming Dakota breeze. one it's going to be it's that dakota breeze that'll get you it's that on assuming it is the dakota breeze it's always the dakota breeze yeah get yourself some dakota breeze at massonomics.com it's our new limited edition uh collaboration scent with obsidian ammonia that are smelling salts ammonia that we did this year dakota breeze nose freshener oof starting to hit hit homes uh just today i think a lot of people were getting their dakota breeze i saw you guys pass that around for thanksgiving we did do that we'll get to that but first i would like to tell everyone about do you have any preferences of what

i tell everyone about i my preference is whatever you want to do first okay i'm gonna hit us hit us all with a little audio right here can i do that or can't i do that all right let's do it is the strength oh let me do it now this is the strength company we've set out to build a better barbell plate on american soil we ended up here at wisconsin's legendary Wapaka Foundry. With over 60 years of ironworking experience, the foundry had the knowledge, technology, and processes to build our weights to our exact specifications. The strength company plates are slim but rugged, smooth but easy to grip,

and electro-coated for durability and to look great in your gym. This is the next generation of American Iron. Only available from The Strength Company. The Strength Company just wrapped up their Black Friday sale also. I think they sold a whole pile of American iron in that sale. Hopefully you got in on that. If you didn't, I don't know. You could try to buy some more from them,

but we'll see what they've even got left after the deals that were that hot. They're cleared out. Yeah, we'll see. I think they still got something around. So if you are still hankering for some iron grip, jump over there to the Strength Co. Let them know Mastanomics sent you. Yeah. Thank you, the Strength Co. uh are still hankering for some iron grip jump over there to the strength co let them let them know massonomics sent you yeah yeah thank you the strength co should i read one oh i don't know why we wouldn't oh god we're splitting ad duties here huh

i thought you were i thought this was the week you were taking a mallet in her oh boy that's a lot of pressure i haven't read the tex Power Bar ad for a long time. You actually haven't, have you? No, I'd be a little rusty, unlike a Texas Power Bar, because they're maintenance-free. They are maintenance-free. I do remember that much. This episode is also brought to you by Barefoot Shoes. Most shoes harm your mobility by over-restricting your foot's natural movement.

Barefoot shoes are designed with minimal restrictions so your feet can move the way they're supposed to, move with more strength and confidence in every step. Barefoot shoes was founded by Chris Duffin, who attributes proper foot biomechanics as foundational to his success in squatting and deadlifting over 1000 pounds for reps. He helped create the company to provide a minimalist shoe that can be worn for him for anything from deadlifts to walking your dog. Go to www.barefoot.shoes to check out the best minimalist shoes available. Tanner, how many weeks in a row have we worn barefoot shoes now? I have rarely ever even taken them off my feet.

I've been considering sleeping in them. Well, if you're going to live the minimalist lifestyle, you might as well go all in. You don't have to go that far, but if you just want to wear something good to the gym that would be the sweet spot we would highly recommend barefoot shoes and if you think you're in the market for some of these yeah make sure to use code massonomics to save 10 on your order you can do that at www.barefoot.shoes excellent Excellent. Thank you, Barefoot. Someone asked in the Discord, I saw something about it. They asked in South Dakota if outdoor construction and road work

pretty much comes to a halt in the winter. And yes, it does for the most part because it is usually so cold that there's no other option. The ground becomes frozen very, very deeply down, which is one problem. And also it just becomes like almost unbearable to even consider to work outdoors when it gets like that so yeah there's

unless you're larry legend well that's i mean even larry at a certain point they don't do very much and larry is like the king of working long hours all throughout the year and at a certain point there's not too much that they can do yeah i always know uh i usually get the report on how the frost is because you hear larry saying oh yeah the frost is out of the ground now so we're yeah back to whatever the hell they're digging up 24 7 yeah the frost will get real deep here pretty soon so it comes to a pretty much a halt but you brought up the dakota breeze we passed the bottle around at thanksgiving which this is the second year we've gotten to do that over the holiday season

and had some new takers this year. And it doesn't get old seeing that reaction from people. I really enjoyed Jack's response. He looks just like completely shell-shocked. Like he almost didn't even have a reaction. Other than the initial like, you know, jolt, it was like he was like glossed over like he didn't know what had just happened to him when he was the most he insisted that we do it he was

very gung-ho on it because he remembered from last year how we kind of did this and he didn't really take a good you know i can tell get the proper i can watch someone and if they kind of do it and you can tell based on their reaction did they really get it or did they just like, Ooh, that's stinky. Yeah. Like, Oh damn, my world just got robbed. Yeah. And you could tell in last year he did this. So he's never really taken a full.

So he had a way, way too close to his face after I told him he doesn't need to do that. And he got like a real shot of it there. And then that's what happened. And it was like, he has a face of just immediate regret oh my god oh no what is that yeah yeah it was it was a look of horror in his face that he had made a terrible mistake and several comments from people like oh it's not like smelling so it's not like you're just smelling something you know it's not a scent that you're only it's not just a scent here yeah you're

not like oh i need to smell what this smells like no it's a sensation it's uh it's way beyond one of the senses you know the sense of the sense of smell it goes far beyond that it's much more of a feeling that you get like yeah it's turning on the the flight or fight yeah what it's doing yeah so the dakota breeze get some for yourself. It looked like the rest of the family had a pretty good reaction to it. And I was just loving it. It was just so funny to see people try it. I think we'll do it at Christmas with a new batch of people again.

Some more unassuming victims. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we basically did just watch when we were at the Arnold. That's essentially what Travis did for three straight days. That would be fun. He was across from us, and he's like, okay, here you go. And just see all day long because it makes me

laugh like every time to see especially someone that is unfamiliar when you're so caught off guard. Yeah, it's not so much like if I watch you do it, it's not going to make me laugh that much because I already know, you know, like what there's no there's no like my world's not being turned right out. I know where I'm going with it.

But when people get it for the first time, it's like, oh. It is funny to think about, though. The first time we ever used smelling salts was at our first powerlifting meet. And it's before you're about to go on the platform. So you're in a very different mindset then. To think if your first time was sitting around a living room or a dinner table, you'd be so caught off guard if that was the case that would be a much much different experience yeah yes it would be so that was the holidays

uh and we did finish up our black friday sale it wrapped up here monday i guess cyber monday is kind of the official close of that and then we're just last day of november maybe that's the unofficial official close of it and uh went really well we sold a lot of stuff and uh so first of all thank you to everyone that supported us over that point in time thank you so much big shout out to everyone that bought something we did a whole bunch of customers whole bunch of repeat customers that we know and love a whole bunch of new customers that got on the site and ordered something for the first time so that's super cool we sold a lot of sweatshirts a lot of the new teas a lot of the ammonia there is some of that stuff left if you still want to get on on it you can still get dakota breeze ammonia that's limited to the 100 um but there is stock available of that

still sweatshirts are gonna start to be pretty hit or miss depending on size yeah is a little all over the place right yeah there is not a great selection left so if you do want a sweatshirt this would almost be like your last call to try and get something there and then tees there's a decent selection of tees we sold a lot of our cheap tees though the 12 dollar tees got hammered pretty good yeah most of those are down to just one or one to three items you better need to be a weird size to be able to get in on some of those

yeah you and your weird sized body oddly sized proportions so thanks everyone again that ordered it's always really cool and I got everything packed up and everything is shipped out and everything's is shipped out like everything was shipped out pretty much like you should all have it by now if you ordered

over normally in years past we've had to talk about how it's just this battle of you fighting orders but you're such a weathered veteran at this point now that it's just well and i pretty much just know that i need to work on it all the time or else i'm going to get way behind on it you know so i had very separate like pretty much every night i worked on packing orders uh pretty like for me late into the night you know if i usually go to bed at nine or ten staying up till like midnight packing orders is really late that's a lot of orders yeah so that's much later than and like uh it's funny the dms i get from people when they get an order fulfillment notification at like 1130 at night, like the amount of people that will message and be like, geez, what are you doing?

Well, if I actually, if I don't do it now, it doesn't happen. Yeah, it doesn't. I'm like, it's not like Monday morning hits and it's like, okay, I'll get to the order. It's like Monday morning. It's like, okay, I'll go back to work. And then like the whole cycle starts over again and it's like uh yep just a whole other delay a whole other day delay basically honestly the thing that probably the the biggest factor that makes sure we get because not all companies of our similar size

get them out as quickly as we do that's a fact yeah like well not all companies of almost any size that's true it's not just our size. Some I feel like it's just if you're of a certain size, like if you're moving 10 times the volume of us, a you should be have the labor to help with it. But still, then, you know, you're paid labor and paid labor doesn't care as much as an owner and stuff like that. So I get it. When you're of a certain size, it's going to just maybe won't be quite as fast if you're in like a certain area but for others of more similar size to us in a more similar position when it is usually the owners doing that sometimes what i think they don't have going for them is the

anxiety that i get of of being behind because like because i get so much anxiety from being behind i almost can't allow it to happen like i will do almost whatever it takes to not get that far behind because a pile of orders good i'm just gonna do them right right it's like uh it's like i'm not gonna sleep good anyways so i might as well just work on these for a long time and get a lot of them done dump a hundred more on me i don't care i won't go to sleep yeah yeah so did you have to did you load up the truck and or were they all pickup items oh well uh in the past you've kind of backed up a truck to the post office haven't you yeah no i have a i and it's part of the speed is having got better systems down over the year i mean that's a joke but also kind of true like it is like, I know what to prepare and what to spend my time on when and stuff like that,

just because of the multiple years of doing it and going through like this sale. But it was all pickup outside of UPS. So I started, some of you may notice at times we utilize UPS now for some packages, which we never used to. And it's just honestly a cost thing there's certain weighted or sized packages to certain parts of the United States that are just so much cheaper to go UPS than USPS like an actual like more than just a dollar or two yeah it could be like four dollars cheaper on a single package so and UPS at this point won't pick up from my home so we do have to take ups there so you know there was maybe like 50 packages to deliver there you know it's just a but it's the same thing there you can basically just dump them and go yeah i it's all

ready to go when it gets there um some of the employees like there's one employee at the ups store that is very grumpy really very grumpy she could put some of the usps uh people to shame to say the truth that our usps people that do the delivery route to our house the normal one and the like backups are awesome are they yeah they're they are great and that's actually important with what we do to have someone that like we trust oh for sure like sure. Like that it's like. You can count on that they're actually going to get the packages. Yeah, and they are really good. So I would, you know, I've joked about USPS employees before on here, but to be fair, the ones that come to my house to pick up mass atomic stuff

are like A plus. Top tier. Yeah, they are top tier. I would give, they deserve a raise if you ask me. Good. But yeah, everything's shipped out. Awesome. I guess even like we're recording on Wednesday night,

as long as you ordered by Tuesday, all of that's shipped out right now. Slam us with more orders, I guess. Bring them on. Bring them on. Now your Black Friday shopping is done. Now it's time for Christmas shopping. That's true.

So get after it. Yeah, black Friday shopping is done. Now it's time for Christmas shopping. That's true. So get after it. Yeah. So you could still, or if you, if you realistically, if you want to get something Christmas gift, you definitely have time to get it ordered still. And we'll get it to you before Christmas.

Shipping. I can actually, USPS is going to get a little bit more behind, no doubt right now, but we'll do our part. That's what we can always guarantee is we'll count on us. Yeah. We'll get it into the mail system as quickly as possible.

So, yeah, come back. Get the last few items if you want to. We still got some stuff left. Well, and we don't want to get too ahead of ourselves, but just because Black Friday is done doesn't mean the year of releases is done. That's true. There's one more thing coming in December. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So you got that to look forward to. Yep. And it's a fun thing too. And do look forward to it. Do look forward to it indeed. You know what else you can look forward to? Well, I'm incredibly thirsty right now. Can we do that?

Let's look forward to a can. I don't know if I made like these turkey bacon sandwiches tonight and I ate a lot of bacon. I think just the salt. I just can't. I can't get enough liquid. Oh, we got the koozies. Yeah. The rest of the koozies have been packed up.

I thought we were out of koozies. Oh, no. You are going to need to put out a lot of koozies, too, because free koozies with every order shipped out hundreds and hundreds of koozies. Everyone listening should have a koozie in hand. Maybe a few stickers here or there, too. Lots of stickers, too. This is a what's in the can,

because I'm quite certain we have never done this one before. Man overboard. Should I go traditional mode or ship, or switch this to Wumbo? Some people were saying I switch it to Wumbo. I'm going to switch it to Wumbo. W people were saying I switch it to Wumbo. I'm going to switch it to Wumbo. Wumbo is an upside down M. It's for W for Wumbo.

Oh, I thought it was Wassonomics. I think Wumbo is an old Spongebob joke. Is it? Yep. Okay, I'm going to steal your koozie here. All right. There is your can. There we go.

Okay, I can confirm it's a can. Is it cold? Or is it so hot that it feels cold? Oh, that's just the crack on that alone was refreshing. Yeah. Oh, what is that? Okay. It smells sweet.

I definitely get a sweet aroma from it without even taking a sip. Mmm. I can already tell you it's good. What is this flavor? What is that flavor? What is that flavor? I'm almost leaning towards the old classic, when I don't know, it's, you know what,

it tastes a little cherry-like. Really? Really? That's what you're picking up here, huh? But I don't think that's right. What is that flavor? I don don't know is it like green apple it's like a sweet fruity flavor and I don't know if I'm gonna be able it tastes good I do like this let me try one more. What is that? I cannot think. Would you say it's on the tip of your tongue?

Yeah. I don't know. Is it pear? Am I getting something pear? Is it strawberry kiwi? Okay. Now you're just guessing. I'm going to go cherry. I'm just for the sake of it because I don't know. I'm going to go cherry. Okay. Now you're just guessing. I'm going to go.

I'm just for the sake of it because I don't know. I'm going to go cherry. Okay. Why don't you take a look here? We have a Waterloo. Peach. Oh, yeah. There's peach.

Yeah. You were getting very close with pear. Now I think it's super obvious probably. It is. Definitely. It's peach um it does it does it tastes like a peach oh it was just that was a situation where i just couldn't peg that flavor like right well and i was laughing in my head because what was it two weeks ago we had

uh it was some ridiculous like mango cherry or mango kiwi and you basically guessed it yeah which i don't know how the hell you got that one yeah so this is a what kind of peach a waterloo peach this is good strawberry mango yeah and you said like some type of like citrus mango or something i think the words you used um this is this is tasty it is pretty good i don't think we've had this before no i don? No, I don't think so. I'm going straight to a four. I think it's a four, too. This is a four. And if you're a peach person, like, this is maybe even more than a four. Yeah.

I don't mind peach stuff, but this is pretty good. Do you like peach-os, though? They're fine. I would prefer a chocolate candy of some kind if I had to. Yeah, yeah. But peach-os, those are tasty. Yeah. I would give this a four.

Yeah, it's pretty good. Do you like actual peaches those were those were tasty yeah i would give this a four yeah it's pretty good you like actual peaches you don't really like fruit i couldn't even tell you the last time last time i had peaches was probably some peaches in a can like eight years ago peaches come from a can they were put there by a man in a factory downtown billions of peaches uh is that peaches for free states of america yeah i think so yeah yeah peaches for yeah that's right um we get peaches we get all the peach oh they don't hear peachos they say peach rings isn't it peach isn't it what's that brand called trolley trolley i think so maybe i made up peachos but did it ring a bell to you when i said that oh 100 okay yeah look up uh google yeah peachios they're peachios trolley t-r-l-t-r-o-l-l-i's. That is... I don't know if that's a Midwest thing,

but that's the brand around here. Yeah. Peachy O's. I like a peach, but peach is one of those fruits that ripeness is key in order for success. I believe that. Pear is also in that same boat.

Yeah. There's the picture right there. There they are. Peachy O's. Those look good. I would eat's those look good i would eat one of those i need a couple of those if i had those i feel like uh gotta make my tongue bleed in the process yeah yeah those are like a tongue bleeder sort of thing it's all that sugar and sweetness yeah this is great can though four i give it a four yeah i've been a while since we've

been there on something new it's been a hot minute that's for sure uh did you hear that uh did you hear the big news in the lifting world today it's what shook shook the lifting world took us all by storm i'm just still recovering from all the shaking that's been going on uh liver king has been exposed he is is apparently not Natty. Who would have seen that coming? Crazy, isn't it? Wow, yeah. Turns out it was all a great big lie this whole time. Yep, it was a lie the whole time. And it is big news in the lifting.

I mean, it's kind of what everyone's talking about right now. All the posting is all about Liver King. It came out, more plates, more dates, busted the story. busted the blew the case wide open and you said you watched the it was an hour-long video i basically put it on the background like a podcast and i was very impressed and entertained i thought they almost treated like a documentary i thought they did a great job i don't really ever watch his stuff more plates more dates but i was thoroughly impressed to the point where i now pay more attention to his things because i thought they did such a good job with that um yeah so i've never followed the liver king thing very close because for the longest time i actually thought it was like a joke that some people were debating him being natty or not i

didn't think it was a serious conversation until i saw enough of it going around that i'm like oh damn people are actually debating if this is serious or not like like there's anything to debate there like it's clearly obvious what's going on there's no this guy hasn't figured out one secret to life that no one else has ever figured out that's why the whole thing is kind of funny to me because everyone that i know obviously knows he was on like i mean like it's not something we you would well it's like when someone's like oh did you know that ronnie coleman was on steroids you're like yeah so you you're telling me up until just recently you believed he wasn't or like didn't understand that get how these things work like you know that every bodybuilder ifbb pro bodybuilders on steroids

right and like but there are people that don't know that yeah or like oh you mean the world's strongest man does steroids like it's like yeah everyone out there all on steroids there's lots of them yeah you get there right um some of them don't like to talk about it much right but that's how you get there that's just right what comes with the territory i wonder who the last world's strongest man finalist was to that was not that was not on steroids that's a good question how who it was and how i wonder what year what what's people's guess hit us in the comment section because what do you or ever i mean yeah it's probably happened before or do you think it's never happened that a world's strongest man a natural world's strongest man finalist has

existed i don't know that's a good question i'm not sure do you think there's ever been one finalist like what like yeah like make the finals like the top yeah i would say top 10 top 10 whatever the number is yeah boy i don't know that's hard to believe i could it's maybe possible there could be somebody there but it could it could i believe it could have happened. I don't know that it could happen today. And that's why I say like at some point, I don't know how it could,

I don't know how the hell you would recover from that training ever. If you were right. Enhanced. Well, you just can't be like the competition is too deep. Just too good. Yeah. Right.

Um, yeah, but that's all that to say that like yes obviously liver king yeah that's that is what actually shocked me the most is the number of people that were having debates and it doesn't help when you have people like mark bell that were interviewing him and kind of being just not pressing him on it at all like oh people say you do these oh no i don't touch it he's like oh so you've never done it no never oh okay and then like even someone i think mark bill even had a thing it's like oh i asked him and he uh he said he didn't so i have no reason to not believe him it's like i mean do you take everyone at face value like is that how

i don't know if that's how you should be treating that so i guess like the morality question of it is he owns like what a supplement brand and he's probably made a yeah and i didn't realize that either is that he owns this uh um actually i knew that somewhat recently is this ancestral supplements because also the supplement thing still this is why i can't even relate i know it's just so far we're in like we talk about all the time we just can't relate to like about 90 of what's in our industry because almost anything in the supplement world is gimmicks. We've actually talked to people that have been in the supplement industry. We believe in basic supplements. We believe in protein, creatine.

We won't say names. We've talked to people that have had supplements and been like, now we had to quit because unless you have gimmicky dumb shit, the base is already covered. And if you have a somewhat intelligent audience, they don't need gimmicky dumb shit. We talked to people who said, we were trying to just sell

just the most basic supplements that just are proven to work, but we really couldn't do that competitively. You really can't. Because then you're just selling to the relatively highly educated consumer. And we don't have a problem with companies selling pre-workout.

I mean, we used to have supplements with companies selling like pre-workout. Right. I mean, we used to have a, but they sold pre-workout protein, whey protein, creatine. And like,

yeah, those are proven to work. And if someone wants to do their own flavor of pre or pre-workout, like sure, that's fine. I don't think that's gimmicky or dumb. Like it's just some caffeine that's flavored a different way. That's fine. Right.

But it's all this other stuff. That's like, I've never, ever met someone in my life that the reason that they were not achieving their goals was because they didn't have the right vitamin d calcium mix going or whatever the hell they think they need to liver uh pill capsules bone marrow capsule whatever the hell it is like i've never met anyone they're like that's the reason i'm not achieving my goals yeah not saying that that person doesn't exist there's probably

one of those people out there that was extremely deficient in something but uh that's one of those people that's not enough to justify these things being like tens of millions of dollars or hundreds of however much he was making it doesn't make any sense that people fall for this shit still to this day well and um so like the question to me is like the morality of it like so he's lying about being natty and then selling the supplements to people who so people think he got that way because well yeah we don't have any problem with people doing steroids like there's right like you want to do steroids you do you like we don't care that's right like lots of people do them whatever sure but it's when you lie about what you have achieved living a certain lifestyle

yeah but and then promoting your lifestyle to promote your brand but then also the results you got were not an effect of we're not a byproduct of your lifestyle they were a byproduct of you doing steroids and like uh my one other note on that not to defend him but just from from my take of it i almost don't care that much that he's doing that because in my mind i know the whole i don't care if he's saying he's natty i know he's not i don't you know like it's not like but i guess it is tricking some other people and that's why i'm like okay well i'm gonna be an informed consumer and know that like that like i can't be that gullible that i i can't believe everything everyone tells me i'm not gonna buy every 1200 vacuum that a guy walks up to my house and tells me it sucks better than every

other but you know i'm like i'm not gonna like i don't it's on me a little bit as a consumer not to be duped by every and that is the annoying thing about it is that there's still like grown adults that are that dumb the the where i give it more of a pass is definitely in high school like you didn't did not right even even in my early 20s i did not get what was going on right um and i think unless you've been around for maybe a while or have seen enough things that you you probably or if you're not paying enough attention you might not get what's going on yeah um and so that and that is the the general population for sure so there in that case you are duping the general population with all this which is uh feels a little morally unethical right right no it is it is and i don't like i don't uh i don't want to defend him for it but i do just kind of go back to like well come on you know like it is like how dumb are you and also like why does seeing that

guy's physique be like okay now i need his supplements like that's what i mean like again it's so like how do you think that the missing piece in your whole puzzle is the supplements. Yeah. Yeah. Like there's like 30 things that should be addressed before you get to bone marrow capsules or whatever the hell he is. Right. But I guess what the, the whole way this, that he was supposedly found out was some people, I believe as a bodybuilding coach had received emails from him and liver King

went very in depth on his goals, what he was trying to achieve. Um, apparently he was taking like 12 grand, like $12,000 worth of $12,000 a month worth of HGH, which damn, that's an expensive hobby, man.

That's like super expensive. I guess it's basically a business write off when, uh, well marketing, right? I guess, you know, I guess it is though, actually. Well, that's the reason he was right? I guess. You know, I guess it is, though, actually.

I mean, well, that's the reason he was doing it. Like, he even said in one of the emails, like, hey, I haven't started my social media yet, but our goal is to be at a million followers by this date. And they got there before the date. Like, so he had this whole, this thing was all. That's kind of impressive. It is. Like, it was very, it was very premeditated, very calculated. And they did what they said they were going to do.

it was very premeditated, very calculated. And they, they did what they said they were going to do. Yeah. It just shows out like this thing wasn't like some exit, like this guy wasn't just eating meat one day and it got popular. It was like,

no, there was a whole team behind this. There was video guys, creative people, like all these strategy people. Even for me, I'd love to know how much they spent to like make that happen. You know,

but part of it was hugely organic too, though. Like, you know, once he started getting out there, it was just, everyone was like, yep, got to get him on the podcast,

got to get him on the podcast, get him so crazy, and see what he has to say. And man, the guy, I didn't, because I didn't follow any of his stuff. Hearing some of the things he talked about,

I'm like, man, you are just, you like sound like the snake oil salesman. Like all of the, like, does your life suck? Let me save you.

It's like, okay, when someone starts leading with that, the whole of your life sucks i can help you it's like all right instantly right there like every red flag should be going off as soon as you hear that phrasing in some variation true i honestly you know i've been aware of them throughout most of this ride but like i've never listened to him any of his stuff he says until this came out i was just curious if he had like issued any form of like rebuttal or statement like that i haven't looked well though i know he hadn't i looked on his instagram page

and he hadn't yet at least i was like yesterday but like that was the first time because i watched a couple of videos and i even had the thought to myself i'm like this is the first time because I watched a couple of videos and I even had the thought to myself. I'm like, this is the first time I've actually listened to him speak because I've seen all this stuff and like never listened to any of it before. Because, you know, it's not like it just doesn't really cross. Right. It's just so out there as far as being gimmicky and stupid. But maybe we can get more plates, more dates. I think it'd be cool. I think I was I was impressed with with the quality of his content but i i don't know how we've been bouncing around so much

basically though liver king sent out some emails to us the supposed bodybuilding coach detailing everything that he was trying to do and what he was taking what he wanted to start taking all this stuff and uh in this more plates more dates video he breaks down he goes through all the stuff he has like the guy's blood work it goes on and on and on and then he goes back through his emails from like a year and a half ago and actually finds that he had received a similar email from liver king himself wanting to hire him as a bodybuilding coach yeah at the time and he's discussing that he was going to start you know doing these other steroids this other gear and he goes oh it could also be great content for your channel. So he took a very different approach in time

from wanting to almost openly discuss his stack of what he has going on to denying it very enthusiastically. But the next level hypothesis to the whole thing, and I see them talking about in the Discord now, is they had this plan from the beginning is this part of the plan for the beginning because is this bad is this even bad pr for him well for him no because like he doesn't exactly i mean like like he's just gonna keep doing what he's doing and now like there's probably hundreds of thousands of his that are aware of him.

His name actually probably got Googled. Right. Like they're probably pulling the analytics and being like, your name, as popular as it was, just got Googled a hundred more or a thousand more times than it was before. Right. And you're being featured in all these things. And then it's just up to people to decide like, okay, are you fine with people being like frauds and phonies? Right. And like just running, like just you're literally just a number for them to make

more money um and a lot of people are fine with that they're like no i'm gladly spend a thousand dollars a month on dumbass supplements um but we're not like that that's why i just can't relate to any of this it does bring up a good point though what i've realized through this i've realized sometimes it's not what you know, it's who you know. Ain't that the truth as a callback to last week. So that's the liver King. Yeah. Yeah.

If you want a way more in-depth look at that, like an hour in-depth look, check out the more plates, more dates video. He does a really good job going into all the specifics of it way better than we ever could here but also yeah don't be a dummy for supplements uh that's that's not what's holding you back so more plates more dates his name's derek is that right i think i think like in the process of trying to get once we try to get him on the pot a lot of times when you try to get people on the podcast what what i said earlier didn't make any sense but what does make sense now is it's not what you know it's who you know in that case yes that makes sense though doesn't it i think is he out of canada too maybe oh really i think so and we

pretty much are in tight with the canadian we have a lot of canadian friends we have a lot of pull in that way so we'll be like oh you're canadian you'll be very interested everyone's like oh yes we all know him we're all canadian yeah a very quick uh supporting our supporting members last week was like our longest ever supporting our supporting member segment rightfully so yeah we were due for one this week much shorter and i don't know if it's because i've uh the holiday been yeah it's probably because the holiday is actually a good thing uh uh and this is a segment each week where we give back to our supporting members they choose to support us and we choose to give back to them and this is one of the ways other ways they get a discount code they get access to our discord community get to watch

the podcast live every week like they are right now if they want to a whole bunch of other perks we've actually been talking about a future perk you know in the past we've sent out uh say a membership card for our supporting members we've got something in the works now it's too early to talk about it whatsoever but uh if you're considering joining i would say now would be the time now's the time to do it because we're working on like a second thing it's not a membership card we've done that before but there's a little something more the wheels are turning on something else so um come get joined up and also you can make it in supporting our supporting members when i'm it's more so something i missed from last week big tyler

also competed in the garage gym competition and he did a 370 pound open bar open trap bar jefferson deadlift oh yeah really yeah wow and then okay this is breaking news oh wait those no okay i see what he's saying uh big nate is still working on the massonomics bingo i don't think that that's ready to roll out yet but i've seen some stuff on that and massonomics bingo is going to be super cool and that wasn't the thing i was just we were just alluding to but massonomics bingo is in the works is going to be very cool for everyone to play along with um one other thing everyone's been wanting to know about the meat we've been talking about the meat we're going we can't say for yet if it's for sure happening for sure not what we

can tell you is probably by the end of this week that we're recording we'll probably know that we're on the hunt for some venues at the moment yeah we're going to go in venue shopping tomorrow so if things played out correctly then we just need to cross the i's and dot the T's. Dot the T's. Dot the lowercase T's. Yeah. And dot the J's. So that could happen. We could be looking at putting out that date. Who knows? Maybe next week by the time we record, we could put that out of when the mass dynamics. We could have a formal announcement.

RSVPs could be going out in the mail. That's correct. So we got a lot of exciting gears in motion right now on various things. We could say we have a lot of balls in the air. We do. Just trying to catch all these balls in our mouths. Naturally. Yeah.

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It is. And check it out at spud-sink-desktraps.com. It's well-priced. It would ship for free because all orders over 75 that sputting ship for free go get a baller's bar uh get a bow tie get a little bit of everything from sputting tell them massonomics let them know we sent you and this episode is also brought to you by swiss link in 1995 maurice bigmo huffman founded swiss link he had a partner based in switzerland and their mission was to bring authentic

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There we are. Got him. Hey, what's going on guys how are you hey mike is that you yes sir yes sir how you guys doing we're good you're on with uh tanner and tommy what's up mike wonderful wonderful thank you guys for having me on hey we're excited to get you on here you're bringing the energy right away we like like this. A lot of caffeine. Locked and loaded. Yes, sir. Always. All right, good. No, we're excited to talk to you. We got a lot of stuff to ask you about. And so for

anyone that doesn't know, what would you give for your quick little that's not familiar with Mike Bartos or MB Power Center, what would you tell them quick about why we'd be wanting to have you on here you know what what you're up to in the strength strength training world okay so uh you know we're we're business we're located in in youngstown ohio and uh and you know like like a lot of businesses that cater to strongman and powerlifting you know somewhat of a niche business right now um you, we really cater to the population of people that I've been around basically my entire life through strength

sports. Uh, you know, uh, people that are very serious about what they do, whether it be power lifting, strong man, uh, training for a specific sport. And, uh, and those are just kind of the, the people I've gravitated to and the thing I've loved my entire life. And so the whole business is really built around, you know, serving the people that kind of have the same interest that I do. Yeah, for sure. And you, uh, make some really cool equipment, obviously, which we want to, we were kind of equipment junkies. So we, we love it. We love talking about equipment and, uh, we'll get to some of that stuff for sure. And also you've been training yourself at a high level for a very long time. Um, and you know, just are straight up very strong yourself. Like when did

you, uh, when did you start get it? When did you get serious into lifting or like, when did you, when would you have said I'm a power lifter? How old were you? Well, I did my first power lifting when I was 15. Okay. And so it was, uh, February of 2003. And, uh, and so I'm going to be turning 35 in March. So just about 20 years of, you know, really serious, dedicated strength training. I started a year, a few years before that I was a really overweight kid growing up. And, uh, so I actually started off like the whole exercise thing by losing almost a hundred pounds as a young kid. And, uh, you know, then just kind of gravitated to, I went to a school where football was really a big thing. You know, you show up in the weight room and you're a young kid and you're the weakest one there. And obviously you want to correct that as a,

a 14 year old boy. Yeah. And, um, did you get strong right away? You know, I mean, obviously I think you've gotten to the, you've, you know, you've deadlifted, I think was an eight Oh five for a double or something like that. I know, I know you've gotten very, very, you know, a high level of strength. Like, did that come to you quickly? Like when you started lifting when you were 14, 15, was that, uh, something that you got, like, you could tell right away you were like born to get strong or what has it been a long, you know, has it been a 20 year journey to get that strong? Well, it's been a 20 year journey. You know, it's, it's, it's kind of interesting because when I first started, I don't know if it was because I had just lost so much weight,

but like my first few experiences with weights, I was incredibly weak. You know, so like the high school I went to, you know, you're typical, you know, great people, but you walk in on day one and it's like right before the season's ready to start, you're a young kid. We need to find what your maxes are, you know? And so even as a young kid, you know, pretty much like bottom of the barrel, starting out as a young kid, high school aged, you know, really thin after the weight loss and whatnot. But I did, I mean, over the course of those younger years, you know, I think actually the first time we did like a max squat and deadlift when I was a young boy, uh, I remember I missed a one 85 deadlift at 14 years

old. And, um, and I, I had squatted a plate. I hit one 35, you know, when I was 14, just starting out. And then as a young kid, uh, I pulled my first 700 pound deadlift when I was 17. That's pretty crazy. But I'll tell you what, you know, like, honestly, like I don't consider myself a very gifted person. Like I've never really been the best athlete on any team that I've been on or anything like that. Um, even as a young kid, like my brother played, you know, college football at a high level and whatnot. My dad played college football at a high level. I'm really not that athletic.

I'm really not that gifted. I just kind of have a tendency to get obsessed with things and just stay very persistent with it. And that seems to be the formula that worked for me. Well, I was going to say like to, to see that progress over that amount, like you must have been like very focused though. Like you said, like, I mean, were you ever missing workouts over the course of that four years? It's amazing. They didn't think something was wrong with me, but it was like, it was like kind of the beginning of the internet era. And so I would spend a lot of time just sitting on the computer at home, you know, reading elite FTS, reading West side articles and whatnot. And also,

uh, it actually was kind of a blessing, but when I was a young kid, my first meet I did when I was 15, it was just a small local meet. I won best lifter. And the prize at that meet was a year subscription to powerlifting USA. And so like I had for me, like, you know, you get that magazine and you would just read and then reread over and over again and just kind of got really obsessed as a young kid with it, but there was no missing training or anything like that. And, you know, to be honest with you, even when I was a young kid, I always did well in school, but like most of my day was pretty much like putting lifting things inside my school books and kind of daydreaming about, about training as a young kid and then scrambling a couple of nights before

the test to make sure I knew enough to, to at least get a B on it. Yep. Yep. So thinking about like 2005 ish, uh, Ohio powerlifting. So it was like Louie Simmons and the West side barbell. Was that like your strongest influence then at that point in time, would you say? Yeah. I mean, that was especially that beginning era there when I first started, you know, like no one even knew what raw, like raw wasn't even a word, right. You know? And so it was basically, if you went to a meet, uh, you know know if you went to like a us apl or ipf meet you wore single ply if you went to another federation you just wore whatever you wanted and so that was definitely a huge influence so i never trained regularly at west side um you know that wasn't like a thing that i was there all the time or whatnot but when i was

a young kid uh you know louie invited me down as a teenager and I was there maybe four or five times over the course of a year. But, uh, I tell you like what an unbelievable influence as a young person, you know, because I always say this, like, I like to learn lessons from people. Sometimes the best lessons you really don't even realize you learned until like 10 or 15 years later. But I always say like, even the first interaction with him, you know, as a young kid, I, I just pulled a 700 at 17. And then I did a full meet shortly after. And, um, I think it was seven 15 that I missed. I pulled six 85 and missed seven 15. So he invited me to come down and train. And I walk in and like, he asked me like, you know, how do you train your deadlift?

And he let me speak like a child for about like 10 minutes straight. And he listened to me, nodded my head, nodded his head back and forth, said a few things. And at the time, like, I didn't think anything of that. And then, you know, maybe 10 years later or so, I was like, I kind of thought back on that interaction. And I thought like this old guy that had been around forever that knew like a thousand times more than me, like actually gave me the opportunity to speak. Like, you know, I'm assuming with his personality, he was probably trying to see, was there something he could do? You know, could he pick out anything that would help him or help his lifters or whatnot? Right. would help him or help his lifters or whatnot. And, um, you know, and, and, and so I think, you know, Louie is definitely, you know, was, uh, uh, uh, unbelievably confident guy, uh, you know, especially with the way he presented himself and the way that he spoke and whatnot. But I always

look back at that interaction and I try and model that. Like I still, I don't do any paid coaching anymore. We actually sold our gym and, and, uh, last year, but I still go to a high school school a couple days a week and run the strength program for their football team. And, like, I actually get input from the kids. Like, I listen to them when they speak to me. And that was a lesson I learned as a young kid. Like, listen how the kids feel and listen what they're experiencing. And, you know, even though they might not know as much about training as you do, you can get positive feedback that will help the programming. Yeah, that's really cool. that is that's super cool and so you talked about the gym there and then obviously the equipment something we want to talk about too so what what what of those was first what

did you do first own a location or or start to make equipment first? The gym was first. So I started saving up. I knew I wanted to have a gym as a young kid, just like a typical young kid, you know, you get Christmas money and stuff like that. Like I started dishing money away pretty early in life with the intention of opening a gym up. And then just, I've always been a, like a busy person working, you know, even when I was college age, I was age, I was a strength coach for two different high schools simultaneously for their football teams, waiting tables, doing odd jobs and stuff like that. So I was able to, when I was 23, open up our gym. It was really a small location and really basic, but that came about four and a half years before we opened up the equipment business.

And that came about four and a half years before we opened up the equipment business. And, yeah, I really enjoy the coaching side of things. And it was basically, I would say 95% of the client base were junior high and high school age boys, you know, that were training for football and training for sports. And so that's an age where the kids are really impressionable. And when they come in, like I say, my goal with every kid when they walk to the door was making them want to train for the rest of their life. And so it's pretty cool. You know, a lot of these kids now are they weren't much younger than me at the time. You know, they're approaching 30 years old and I'll still get text on a regular basis. You know, them in their basement lifting at five o'clock before they go to work in the morning.

And, and that's a, that's a pretty cool experience. Yeah, for sure. So you, you, uh, had the gym for over a decade. Then you say you just got out of it recently. What, uh, what led you to make that decision then? It was that tough. It was, it was really a timing thing, you know, uh, as far as just how much time I could allot to certain things.

you know uh as far as just how much time i could allot to certain things and i felt like i mean to be a good coach i'll tell you what i have a tremendous amount of respect for gym owners especially gym owners that are coaching a lot during the week because there is a lot of back end work to coach well um just the mental side of it like of creating really good programs and putting a lot of thought into things and and, and we started getting, you know, so busy with the equipment side and I was dedicating so much time to that. I just felt like I really couldn't give the same time and effort as I used to. And rather than going in and half-assing it, uh, you know, we decided to move on from that and just focus solely on the equipment business. So is that your full-time position? You know, what you do full-time is the equipment business?

Okay, cool. Youngstown, Ohio. Is that on the eastern edge of Ohio? Where's that at? Yeah, so it's northeast Ohio. You're going to be just about 50 or 60 miles south of Cleveland. Okay. Yeah, not far.

And then in reference to how east we go, we're, and then in reference to like, you know, how East we go, we're, we're just about 20 minutes away from Pennsylvania. Okay. We like to, uh, we like to talk a lot of silly geography stuff on the show. Sometimes we, we're from what we call Western Northeast, South Dakota. All right. I'm, I'm confused already. That's the goal. So we're the, the the just kind of the northeast corner of south dakota but on the western edge of it so that's that's where we're located and uh us and our listeners we have a lot of discussion over the years about the midwest um we we consider ourselves to be on in the midwest but on the western edge where you live uh being a native ohioan yourself and where you're at

are you in the midwest yeah we're in the midwest because there seems to be some debate about ohio as the midwest there's a lot of debate about that i i think so because wasn't that kind of like that terminology wasn't it made like before i think it was made before like a lot of the Western country, part of the country was even considered states yet, I believe. And so I think that's how it got its name, right? We have seen so many different theories on this over the years, the people we talked to. But that's kind of what makes sense to me that, you know, if at you're lived on in new york city and you're like yeah oh yeah right right it's midwest you know it's halfway west yeah yeah i mean i think i i pretty much everyone i've ever spoken to that's ever used that reference about ohio is always called at the midwest okay but

really what you are probably more specifically is you're in the rust belt right yeah that's kind of the the theme in the area you know old uh steel mills that went down and and whatnot and so youngstown youngstown's a really great area to be in uh it's kind of funny you know people people that live here say negative things about it but that's every but i think that's the entire, especially the Midwest in general. I think people, it's that self-deprecating thing. Yeah, they like to dog on it. Yeah, it's strange to me because I'm like, it's a really good place to be. I mean, most people here are pretty solid people.

They go to work. They work hard every day. They care about their families. And that seems to be really the thing that holds most people together in this area. And I'll tell you, the cost of living in Youngstown is not bad at all. And it's a good place to be, but yet, probably three quarters of the people you talk to call it a shithole. I call it home and i love it so i kind of feel like you just described south dakota too right that's okay there we go it applies

universally though like people do that everywhere i think it's right yeah but i don't know why i don't know why that is i mean even like you know we have youngstown state here and you know like i have kids who go to youngstown state and i'll be like you know do you decide where you're going to college and they'll go yeah i'm just going to youngstown State and I'll be like, do you decide where you're going to college? And they'll go, yeah, I'm just going to Youngstown State. And I'm like, Youngstown's a good school. There's a book there and there's a professor and you could learn. Yeah, I've never been one to do that. I don't do that thing where you're like, oh, this is where I live.

I hate it here. I'm like, move. Yeah, you know you can leave if that's what you really think. Yeah, you're not chained to the location. Right, move. Yeah, you know you can leave. Like, if that's what you really think. Yeah, you're not chained to the location. Right, right. Yeah. That's a good take on that, I think. Yeah.

And you know what? And honestly, I'm a, excuse me, I'm a, you know, a people person. I like being around people. And this area, I mean, I've even noticed as we travel around the country, especially when you get into bigger cities. I mean, I'm not saying that people aren't good people in big cities, but it's different the way people interact with each other. You know, like when we've traveled to really large metropolitan areas, you know, even just like the small talk, you're standing in line at the grocery store. A lot of people have conversations with each other. Uh, you know, you'll walk past somebody and like, if you make eye contact, you say, hello, how are you? And as we traveled to some bigger cities,

you know, just for, for business and whatnot, it's like, everything is super fast pace. You know, like you say hello to somebody on the streets and some of these bigger metropolitan cities and they kind of look at you like you're crazy. Yeah. What are you, what are you trying to sell me or what are you, what's your problem? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's definitely true. Uh, we've got, uh, thinking about talking about equipment yet. We've got massonomics gym. It's our kind of little club gym here in Western Northeast South Dakota. And we've got ourselves a stone of steel there. We've got one of your loadable circus dumbbells. I was trying to think if we've got anything else.

Those are the two-piece equipment for sure that come to mind, a couple of the big ones of yours that we've got. What was the – and obviously the stone of steel, a very cool piece of equipment, and i want to talk about that was that your first major piece of equipment that you made and started selling or what was the first so that that was the first piece that we started the business with okay uh and and i kind of was a a tinkerer for a few years before that and uh a bunch of things, not necessarily stone related, but just gym things that, you know, they kind of came in and went out and I really wasn't crazy about them.

And really the whole, the whole need, you know, was, or the whole reason that I started making things is I just wanted some stuff for my own gym. And, you know, so I would just, if we wanted a certain kind of pull down bar or a certain kind of attachment or something so I would just, if we wanted a certain kind of pull-down bar or a certain kind of attachment or something, I would just, just go have it made, but the stone, you know, that was the first thing that we decided to actually take to market, and, you know, a big part of the reason in the beginning was, was just, it financially just couldn't make one of them, you know, I mean, we did prototypes or whatnot, but, yeah, but I really, I loved the idea and really for a few years became obsessed with the idea of making it.

And that was the thing that started it pretty much all for us. Do you remember, what was the first time you were like, like, do you remember the day it hit you then when you thought- Like I'm onto something here. Yeah, where you thought, oh shit, if we could make one out of metal and load it

to whatever weight we wanted to, like did that day, or was it, what did you have? Were you sitting on the toilet and, uh, something hit you in the head and you thought stone of steel. That's exactly how it happened. So I was on the toilet and, uh, no, so we were actually, I was training with a kid at the time and, uh, named Blake. And, and so we had two, two, you know, pretty big gap in between the stones that we had

there. Like there was like an 18 inch that weighed two 40. And then I forget what the next diameter up that we had, it was a 20 inch, but had some weight in it. It went up to like maybe three 70 or somewhere around there. Yeah. You know, he was lifting the two the 240 easily but couldn't budge the bigger one and i just kind of said to him i was like hey wouldn't it be nice if we just had

something we could open up and just throw some plates in it and then i just kind of i went to the 20 inch and i like i i knew the diameter of a plate but i just wanted to see so i kind of like set a plate on top of it i was like that would fit in there and then i just you know thought about the idea of two hemis and you know it really it wasn't like a complete idea all at all at once but conceptually uh you know it was just we were just training in the gym and thought it would be a cool thing to pursue yeah that's cool so how many prototypes did you go through until you got like what is considered the finished product? We went through, well, there were probably five or six, you know, different sets of hemispheres that came into play.

You know, but then we would like if we didn't like something, we would cut stuff out and, you know, kind of redesign it and salvage what we could because I'll tell you what when we were making prototypes when you're buying low quantities of hemispheres you know we were paying like like between eleven hundred and fifteen hundred dollars a half so you know you bring in two hemis to do a prototype on and you're already three thousand in and so I was trying to be very careful when we were actually designing these things so we probably went through like maybe 10 or 12 hemispheres, but nowhere that, that actually produced these hemispheres had the sizes we needed. So we kind of, we played around with like, I believe like some 60,

like some companies have like 16 inches that they could form. Other companies had like, I think it was maybe 22 or 23 inches. So conceptually we didn't have the exact size that we wanted but i knew that if we could make it work in those size that we'd be able to just you know get to the point where half the size that we wanted we could we could make it function the same yeah and i guess for anyone that's listening that maybe if you're more into power lifting you're not as into strongman or whatever for anyone that doesn't know the stone of steel is a loadable uh steel atlas stone is you know it looks just like on the surface it looks just like an atlas stone

but it's made out of metal and you can take it apart and load weight to whatever weight you want to so it's it's i mean really in the world of strongman it's probably like the craziest new product that i mean not it's not new anymore, but like just like just on the surface seems like the most innovative. Yeah, it's like the wildest product that you couldn't have imagined that it's one of those things after the fact.

It's like, oh yeah, that makes a lot of sense now when I see it that it exists, that someone else went through everything, but the fact of someone coming up with it seems hard to believe. Well, I'll tell you, do you know what I actually love the most about the stone when it comes to actually the competitive side of strong man.

So the first year, um, that the stone was in the Arnold classic and the amateur strong man show, it was on, you know, main stage at the amateur world championship finals, you know, with 10 competitors left. And I believe it was on you know main stage at the amateur world championship finals you know with 10 competitors left and i believe it was loaded uh it was like 365 or 385 and it was a new implement like nobody had touched it nobody had trained on it and a lot of people really struggled with it

uh zach hadge ended up being the only one that lifted it on the main stage. And I believe 385 pounds, which, you know, for the top 10 amateurs in the world, 385 isn't all that heavy. And, uh, so a lot of people really struggled with it. And I think, I think mentally going in, uh, not knowing what to expect and whatnot was kind of, you know, I think maybe like a mental barrier for them. Uh, we had had a couple experiences along the way. We were out in Anaheim at one of the Odehagen shows we were sponsoring. And, you know, just I really I like observing people, especially people that are great at what they do. And Martins Lisi, this was long before he won the, you know, World's Strongest Man and all these big events.

Again, at this show, some people were struggling with it. And one guy got really frustrated like i think he attempted 400 pounds on and couldn't get it and you know he was just motherfucking and he like spit and everything you know and then that was the end of it he was the last guy to go and i will never forget martineins walked up to it and, you know, he wasn't competing. He was helping there all day and, you know, goes down, picks it, sets it on his lap, you know, kind of feels around, touches it a little bit, throws it over the bar pretty easily. Goes, push it back. Does it again? Push it back. Does it again? he does three reps and he looks at me and goes so all you do is lift it you know and i was like i tell you what and i actually told my wife that day i was like

martinez is going to win world's strongest man yeah he is a mental giant yeah and uh you know but like as you watch the progression of things so it went from there and then down the road at america's strongest man a few years later you had you had Trey Mitchell, who's an absolute animal. Wesley Claiborne, another guy that's just a savage. Eric Dawson, who owns Titan Barbell out on the East Coast. Those guys, they were all lifting 500 for reps at America's strongest man. And to see that progression in a short period of time, like to watch actually high level competitors adapt to a new implement in that period of time and to perform that much better on it was actually really incredible for me to see. What what product of yours that you've that you make, do you do you personally use the most? use the most? I, I, I'll tell you, I love our, our PR platform. Uh, you know, especially being a young, young guy that like grew up in this area, actually Dick Hartzell, the inventor of

jump stretch was, you know, right up the street from us. So I was exposed to band stuff as a very young person. I actually worked out at Dick's gym for a long time when I was a teenager. And, uh, you know, so our PR platform, it's, you know, know i i'm almost sure you guys are familiar with the product but yep it's built like a power rack you know where you could do pools from you know pin pulls from like 11 up to 24 inches and um you know but there's a series of band pegs there's band pegs on the ground there's four on each uprights uh a front band peg and so i use that thing a lot for my deadlift training, but I also use it for tons of accessory movements. And so that gets used quite a bit. You know, there's the small

things like we have, you know, different series of like pull down bars and things that are really heavy grip emphasis. Those get used quite often. You know, I'm actually down in my basement and we have the gym now looking around, but, uh, our dead sled gets used constantly. Our wheelbarrow gets used constantly, you know, and that's kind of the cool thing is most of the stuff that we sell, you know, throughout the week, I'm using a lot of this stuff in my own training on a very regular basis. And, uh, yeah, so it's cool to sell it, but it's also cool that, that I actually enjoy it and then a big contributor to my own training.

For sure. Is there anything you make that, uh, I don't know that you don't use like not cause it's not, not because it's not useful, but just so it doesn't fit into your training really regularly. Yeah. I'll tell you what my, my elbows are so beat up. I really can't overhead press that well anymore. So a lot of things like the logs and the

dumbbells and whatnot, we do have some down around that. I really like using the fatter hand or dumbbell for, for like heavier one arm rows where there's a little bit more of a grimp emphasis. So we'll, I'll throw that in, but, uh, any overhead pressing, especially heavy overhead pressing just beats my elbows up. And that kind of carries over to everything where it's hard to put a squat bar on my back. It's hard to hold onto a bar to deadlift. And, you know, at this point, uh, you know, training is, is I always enjoy training and it's fun, but it's not as fun with, you know, swollen elbows and you can't put your hands on a bar. So I just try and avoid the things for the time being that are, that are beating me up. But I would say like the overhead implements would

mostly be the things that I'm not using all that often for sure where do you think uh most of the people that are buying your stuff is it ending up in uh you know commercial gyms strongman gyms powerlifting gyms or do you sell more to uh to home gym users or what what do you do you have any idea what the percentage is of, where most of it goes? It's actually, it's, it's split just about down the middle. Uh, so really I'll tell you like the really, uh, gyms that have, that cater to strength are becoming more and more, you know, more and more common throughout the country. And, you know, fortunately, uh, we've been blessed that a lot of these gyms have found our equipment valuable enough that they're investing in it for their athletes that train there.

In the beginning stages of things, I would say it was more for the home user. And it was also for people that were competing in these events that were actually using our equipment because we were sponsoring all these events. So a lot of the people that were competitors were purchasing and training at their house their house or whatnot but i would say it's it's pretty much split right down the middle right now okay that makes sense have uh um do you got anything different that you're working on right now are you always working on new stuff or anything in particular that you're working on now or maybe nothing you want to talk about yet? Well, I always have a couple of things that I'm messing around with.

You know, right now, nothing that is ready to be sold yet, but without going into too much detail, I have a really nice chat-supported row machine that does a couple of things that other chat-supp supported rows don't do on the market and uh and just trying to find out the correct angles and hand positions and whatnot on that and messing around with prototypes but for a while i'll tell you it was kind of a crazy period in the steel industry just because not only did steel prices go through the roof but you know

availability went down labor force was a little bit low where you know everything kind of got backed up for a little while so for a while there it was pretty much just head down trying to fill orders and keep up with everything and it kind of cut into the the actual prototyping time but we're getting back to position in 2023 where uh the plan is for you know the bulk of our most popular products uh to have most of them in stock if you're going to get black on them and two weeks or less on a color option. And then that'll give us an opportunity

with a lot of this stuff in inventory to be able to dedicate a little bit more time to prototyping and new equipment. Yeah, where do you see... I don't know. Here's how I'd say it. Some equipment companies out there are positioned differently. You know, Titan Fitness, right, would be a commonly understood one

that they're selling cheaper products, and they're also selling, like, cheaper-made, you know, like a lower-grade product in a lot of cases. Maybe play the volume game a little bit. Right, right, whereas I would say your stuff is pretty well known for being you know very high quality like is that uh i mean is that kind of the position you see yourself in in comparison to other equipment manufacturers yeah and so i mean you know there's a lot of great manufacturers out there and we just my thought process is so like we have a home gym in our basement and, you

know, fortunately we live in a home that like the basement is just a big, giant open rectangle. So when we closed the gym, we put some turf down here, rubber flooring, and then we brought in all the equipment that I wanted for, you know, for the training for me and my training partners. And, and when we invested in the equipment down here, my thought process was, is I'm, I'm 34 years old. I don't plan on stopping this unless I absolutely have to one day. So hopefully this is going to be a 40 plus year endeavor from where I currently am right now.

So when I purchase equipment, I'm okay buying things that are a little bit more expensive because they are higher quality. But I know I'm going to have this thing forever. And so that's the position that we take is, you know, kind of serving the people that think the same way as us. And, you know, when you buy a PR platform off of us, you know, I want you to hit a deadlift PR now and also 25 years from now. So, you know, quality is a big, a big emphasis for us. Um, because if you're serious about what you do and you're planning on doing it for a long time, in my mind, that's really the only option. And, uh, yeah, so we've been, we've been fortunate. I mean, that is the, you know, we build a solid reputation in that. And as we build new products, that's definitely

on the forefront of our minds. Is there anything that's frustrating being the owner of an equipment company, anything that kind of grinds your gears over the years that you can think of? I mean, honestly, I love, I love this stuff. You know, I mean, there's, it's, I mean, you guys have a business, it's any business you have, there's going to be ups and downs and frustrating periods and whatnot. But as far as actually, you know have a business. It's any business you have, there's going to be ups and downs and frustrating periods and whatnot. But as far as actually, you know, on the end of serving customers and building equipment and whatnot, there's really nothing that frustrates me to the point where it bleeds over for long periods of time. We've been pretty fortunate. I'll tell you, especially in the strength community, a lot of our customers take training very seriously and they're very strong people themselves. And then on the backend of that, you see these people that are like monsters,

but they're like, you know, really like they really are thoughtful people and nice, good people. And I think that really resonates. That's a thing that goes throughout the whole, permeates through the whole strength community. So, you know, those are the people that we're serving. So on a customer side, you know, every now and then you'll run into some type of issue, but I would say all in all, you know, that even with customers, you know, we're dealing with people that are serious about their strength. I could relate to them on a personal level and i've had a lot of really excellent experiences with that yeah yeah we've had um tanner you prick maybe can think of someone i'm missing here but so we've had dave tate from elite fts on the podcast we've had the guys over at stray dog on the podcast obviously rogue is out of ohio you're out of ohio why do so many equipment manufacturers

exist in ohio how does how does ohio have that going on for it i mean i i mean in this area i will say i i look at other states you know like uh you know i mean like texas has great lifting it and a lot of other states have great lifting. I think, I think strength here is, I think because football is so big, you know, like pretty much every teenage boy is going to spend bare minimum four years in a weight room. on and that's just something that stays with them for the rest of their lives. So I think that would be the explanation of why, you know, strength is a thing that's pretty prevalent here. There's a lot of really strong people in this state. You know, as far as why people getting into the manufacturing side of things, I guess it may just be the spillover of the people that have been exposed to it.

There's just more exposure. So there's more people that want to make it their life. And, you know, and so they dedicate more time and effort into it, try and decide to make it a business. But I guess that would probably be my best explanation, but I mean, it really is. It's, it's kind of crazy in one state. Uh, there's a lot of manufacturers, there's a lot of great gyms, a lot of great lifters, the Arnold sports festival. Yeah, the Arnold. I mean, like in our hometown, you know, we have like a couple guys

that pull like into the eights, into the mid to high eights, just in our hometown. You know, there's several guys that, you know, you see their stuff on social media that are squatting into the sevens. One of my training partners, he squatted 854, weighing 227 when he was 23 raw.

And so you get guys like that that he doesn't have a career in strength, but he started lifting when he was 14 years old, and he's turning 30 pretty soon, and he's still in my basement with me 5 a.m. four days a week training before work. old and he's turning 30 pretty soon. And he's still, he's in my basement with me 5 AM four days a week, you know, training before work. So it's just kind of something that seems like a lot of people gravitate to in this area. Yeah. Have you ever, uh, have you ever had a booth at the Arnold sports festival before for MB power center? We did not, we did not have a booth. So we sponsored the amateur world championships for a very long time so i think it

was we did four or five years of the amateur world championships so during those periods uh you know we would bring all the equipment down and then we would also volunteer in the field so we would actually be like loading plates and doing all that stuff and everything the entire time we were down there so we never actually had a physical booth but uh it's uh it's crazy down there yeah it is crazy i mean it is yeah i mean the the people like you know i went there as a kid like i told you as a young guy uh you know being powerlifting obsessed like for me the wpo finals that was the super bowl and so only being two and a half hours away from columbus you know my dad and mom are awesome, but my dad would take me down there. We'd get a hotel and I'd watch both days. And, uh, you know, and so being a young kid, getting exposed to that, like when you're young, I guess you might not be really that aware of your

surroundings. But the first time I was down there as an adult, like I remember we were standing there and like, I had to kind of just step out into the crowd so I could get in line to go to the bathroom. It's like you, like you take a half step out and then you go back in, you take a half step out and you go back in and it is crazy. It's, it's amazing. I mean, it really is the, the amount of people that show up and, you know, pretty much from every corner of the world. It's wild. Yeah. It's something everyone should experience once at least for sure. I think. Yeah. And we've been like like we sponsored a lot of those big events we did uh we did the uh there was a a disabled strongman exhibition that were all um wounded military veterans and it was on

stage uh as part of the bodybuilding show and it was like kind of like a an exhibition that took you on in between posers and uh that was a really cool thing to be part of when we were down there and and even that was i mean we weren't like in the same room where we were having a one-on-one conversation with him but you know arnold's a larger-than-life figure and so we were we were in the same room with him for maybe like 20 or 25 minutes. And, you know, just besides like high and handshake, there really wasn't much conversation, but being, being around him, you could see like why he is a magnet for people, even just the way he carries himself. And he says something nice to every single person he talks to, you know, like I'm watching him, like, you know, like he shakes someone's hands and like man look

at those arms how long have you been there and i'm like like you're not impressed with my arms and arnold knows that like uh for any guys like any of us that have been lifting for a really long time you know if arnold says that to you whether it's a little bit of him uh you're like i just want to believe it's yeah it's like i don't care. You're like, I just want to believe it's real. It's like, I don't care that you're like, you won't forget that for your entire life. You'd be like, yes, Arnold said that to me,

you know, can I, can I take my phone out and take a video? Could you say it again? Say it slower. Mike, we've got this, we've got this game we play with everyone that comes on the show called

overrated, underrated, and we've got a special set of overrated underrated topics, just handpicked for you. And we'll read them off to you. We'll go one by one. And it's just your job to decide if each one's overrated underrated. But the most important thing is,

well, first of all, you can elaborate on it as much or as little as you want, but you can't ride the line. You have to ultimately decide if each one is over or underrated all right so if you're if you're strapped in and ready to play we'll get to it let's do it okay overrated or underrated heavy swings underrated so tell us about heavy swings all right so if you do a heavy swing correctly you can get a lot out of a heavy swing. I think the accumulation of volume on an exercise that is relatively easy to recover from is just a winning combination.

light loaded handle to be able to do swings with. And it kind of the way it happened was, is I tore my hamstring. I attempted an 840 pound deadlift, tore my hamstring, couldn't lift for a while. And I was just trying to find anything that didn't aggravate it. So I started swinging a little 25 pound kettlebell I had in the gym. It didn't hurt that bad. You know, every few days I would grab something that was five pounds heavier. Eventually we ran out of kettlebells. So we made our first power pin. And I tell you what, like I wasn't able to deadlift heavy, but I just pounded tons of volume on the swings. And I noticed my conditioning improved. My grip improved. I started putting size on in my hamstrings and my glutes and even in my upper back. And, uh, we actually, I was doing like a lot of 10 by tens on the minute. Uh, I like to do a couple of different kinds of swings. I like if

you're, if it's more hypertrophy oriented, I like to actually attach a band to an anchor point behind me and then attach the band around my waist. Um, just so there's a little bit more incentive for full hip extension and get the glutes involved. But then for power development, I really like attaching a band onto the power pin. And that's going to do a couple of things. So it's actually going to pull that pin down, speed up the center, create a stronger stretch reflex. And, you know, with the stronger stretch reflex, you're going to be able to have a more powerful eccentric. And then also having that attached to the pin, there is that incentive there. It's accommodating resistance. It's getting heavier as it goes further away from your center of mass. So you really can't perform lazy reps, but I guess make a long story short,

I had never done swings and I started doing them, uh, you know, fairly often. And then after they got pretty heavy, it was twice a week, but I didn't deadlift from the end of October until three weeks out from the Arnold. It would have been 2020, the COVID year, but I hammered tons of swings, backwards sled drags with our dead sled to build up my quads, a bunch of upper back grip and ab work. And the first time I pulled, I worked up to like a pretty conservative 585. A week later, pulled 770 with 100 pounds of chain on the bar. And then ended up going to Arnold and pulling 840. And I hadn't touched anything heavier than that 770. And, you know, I kind of said, well, I think maybe there's something to this. But, you know, depending on what your specific goal is, there's a lot of ways to be able to manipulate you know the the training variables but i definitely think if more people involved uh swings in their training they could

be more well conditioned they could definitely put more muscle on and uh and even from the side of power development you know they could they can go a long way what's like a coaching cue or what's what's something someone does wrong if they don't know how to do have do swings correctly like is there something you you would if you're teaching someone you commonly common mistakes yeah right so i see a lot of people on the internet like they don't finish with their with their actually with their hip extensors so you see them and it's like if you're really squeezing your glutes hard and contracting like your glutes and hamstrings hard and bracing in your torso it's going to be really hard to hyperextend your lower back. Uh, just like, even if you're just standing there and you squeeze your glutes and hamstrings as hard as you can and

try and hyperextend your back, like there's an irritating effect. Like if you squeeze your glutes hard, like the muscles around your lumbar spine are going to get really tight and rigid all the way up. And so I see a lot of people, you know, they finish up hyper extended in the low back. They're really not bringing their glutes into play. And they're basically just letting the kettlebell swing them rather than, you know, or the power pin, whatever they're using, swing them rather than them actually controlling the pin. So when I coach that, I always like to think it's almost like when you pull down on the pin, you know, and it's coming down on the centric, you know, you want to actually pull the pin towards you. You know, whether you have a band on it or not, create force on the way down. And then so you pull the pin towards you.

And then when you extend back up, I like to think I always do swings with bare feet. And I like to think about digging my feet into the ground, like pushing my big toe down, almost like I'm gripping the rubber floor. And when I stand up, I'm going to pull the ground towards me. And as I'm pulling the ground towards me, that's going to get more hamstrings and more glutes involved, you know, really incentivize a hard hip extension. And I think just being conscious of that, you know, it's kind of hard to coach over the phone, but I could see people do that in properly. And then like, we talk about like gripping the floor, pulling it towards you. And like, they're like, okay, you know, most people that do that, even just standing there, they go, okay, I feel this now, but you know, swings, like, that's why I said, if you do the

swing properly, you know, you can get a lot out of it, but it's like any exercise, uh, you know, if you're doing like a swing, you want to build up your hamstrings and you build up your glutes. If you're not in the right position, like you're just going to keep making the problem worse. Uh, you know, so it's, it's just an exercise, but you know, it has to be performed properly, but yeah, so it's pull the pin down. And then as the pin is extending back out with the hips, pull the ground towards you, you know, and you really, at each rep, you want to stand like fully erect, brace your torso, squeeze your butt. And you're never going to stop that pin obviously up top, but like at the top, I almost think like it's a standing plank yeah you know the whole be rigid the whole body

should be contracted as hard as you possibly can all right good stuff yep overrated or underrated waking up early like waking up pre-5 a.m if you guys dug into my life we did a little research a little all right so i wake up at two every day uh and so i would say waking up early may be overrated uh i think it's it's a necessity if you have to so like really the only time i can get productive training in during the day is about 5 a.m and if i wake up at 4 a.m., then I don't have time to eat and get myself ready and do all the stuff that I have to do. So generally what I do is I'll wake up around 2, spend the first hour and a half of my day really just organizing my day, getting some paperwork stuff done and everything like that, drink some coffee, get to the point

where I feel alert, eat a pre-training meal at 3.30, take a, start warming up and then come down into the basement and get my training done. So I can leave for work shortly afterwards. Two is really early. So what time do you go to bed at? We got to be keeping you up late, much later than normal right now. Yeah. So I'm like, I'm not an exciting person. Uh, I usually, I'm usually pretty tired most nights by about 7.30 or 7.45, and most nights I'm sleeping by 8 p.m. So you're still getting some sleep. That's not crazy early, though. I don't get up most days until 6, and I'm usually still tired by 8 p.m. It's not the truth anyways.

Yeah, and it's like even throughout uh i mean throughout the day like obviously optimally i would be getting a little bit more rest than that but it's like i'll tell you what i think you could adapt to a lot of things and every now and then i'll get like like i had a little adductor strain when i was squatting today uh i think some of those things would be avoidable but it's like virtually no one in the world does this professionally you know as far as lifting weights go like that's such a select few people that just have a combination of unbelievable genetics paired with unbelievable drive you know like you really have to be a special person to be able to make it to where lifting weights is your full-time job. And so for me, social media following. Yeah. Yeah. I mean,

absolutely. It's like a multifaceted thing because there's a lot of people out there that are super strong and super dedicated to still go to work 40 or 50 hours a week. And they're performing at a really high level, but it's almost like, I think if you could just, you can get used to it. And then at the same time, when you are low on sleep, like some days you're just going to realize it's not going to happen. You know, it's from a training perspective. And this is really hard for me because I really enjoy training. Like, you know, pretty much during the day. I mean, it's anyone that's listening to this has done, you know, business with us. Like usually I respond to emails like immediately as soon as they come in. I don't like to think, let things sit. So my phone's on me, I feel a buzz and I just instantly respond.

So the morning training is really like the only time of day I could train where I could put my phone on do not disturb and not feel like anxious about not being on top of things. And so it's a little bit of a trade-off, but some days I come down and like, you know, I'll pick up 405 and my training partner, Zach, who's been around me for a long time, he'll kind of look at me and go, uh, do you want to come back tomorrow and do this? And I'm like, I think that's a good idea, you know? And, uh, so luckily I also have some people around me that'll put a leash on if they have to all right well that is early yes yeah and i mean it's it's but you know on the back end of things you know there's still a

decent amount of sleep there's right tons of people out there that go to bed at midnight and wake up at six for work every day so yeah and it's relative what kind of sleep are you getting to like when you get like are you go you know are you sleeping actually like if you're sleeping for that whole time you're in there whereas some people go and lay in bed and like have kids waking right yeah so it's it's usually like i'm i'm pretty adamant about once it hits eight o'clock i just put the phone on do not disturb uh you know and anything that pops in but like for a while my sleep was really really bad uh and a lot of it was just the, like, I mean, even I think just from like talking about the lifting pass and everything like that,

like when I get into something, I really get into it. And there's almost a feeling for me, like our businesses ran on the internet, it's ran on my phone. So I constantly needed to be on it. And I would find myself waking up in the middle of the night and like walking over to the dresser and checking emails and checking instagram and stuff like that and after a while i was like this is not good like no nobody nobody in the world sends you a message at three o'clock in your morning in your time you know if they're on the west coast and they send you a message they know it's 3am like no person expects you to respond it's 3am you do expect you to they're crazy so right yeah and it's like but for a while like i like i like that was the expectation i put on myself i definitely get that feeling sometimes though too i can totally relate to that uh that

feeling and even not even just it just gets addicting when i know like i want to know what's happening next i gotta know what's going on like it it's. Yeah. And I'll tell you, and a big driving thing for us was like, even in the start of our business, it, you know, and it's not unique to us. This is an experience that a lot of business owners go through. You know, you start a business and you put out pretty much all the capital that you've saved for, you know, maybe six, seven, eight years, and you put that all out and then you just start from scratch all over again. And so the first few years of owning a business are pretty terrifying. It's like, there's a lot of trying to figure out how you're going to make ends meet and whatnot. And so I tell you, as humbly as I could possibly say it, when somebody orders something off of us,

there's an extreme amount of gratitude. Because one thing I always try and do is I always try and remind myself, like, hey, we started in a pretty crazy place. We put everything we had out, and there was nothing left and whatnot. And so it's really when someone buys something off of you, especially in an industry that is as saturated as, it's as saturated as strength and conditioning, because there's a lot of people out there that are selling weightlifting equipment. You know, I really appreciate it. And so there's almost a part of me where I feel bad not being right on top of things. But again, it comes back to, you know, 3am almost virtually everyone that I communicate with is pretty happy getting an email at 7 a.m. the following day yeah no that's that's true okay overrated or underrated concrete atlas stones traditional atlas stones okay so I'm gonna probably give you the answer that uh that you

wouldn't expect me to give and so I'd say, I don't know if overrated underrated, maybe the way I'm looking at it, but I don't think they're overrated. I would say, uh, so I would have to say underrated, even though it would probably be somewhere in the middle in all actuality, but I say underrated. I mean, it's, it's a thing that, uh, I mean, it's a training implement that's been around for ever You know, I mean, you know, picking up stones and whatnot is thousands of years old. So I'm not somebody that like when we came in and did this, like I had no intention of making Atlas, you know, like concrete Atlas stones obsolete. You know, I just thought like, hey, this is an excellent training tool. you know i just thought like hey this is a excellent training tool and if you're in a gym that's tight on space if you're a home gym owner that you know home gym owners are always tight on

space uh if you want to be able to really program in an interesting way because with our stone you can you know like progressive overload is like the premise of every single barbell training program and so like if you want to be able to make five pound jumps or 10 pound jumps and do that over a long period of time it's a really really useful tool and so uh yeah i think i mean i think they both have their place and uh you know it's really hard to say that that one should be the dominant one and the other one shouldn't be is uh using tacky on a stone of steel kind of a mortal sin uh well i'll tell you know what works really good well first of all if you put tacky on that powder coat it really sticks yeah like like crazy sticks like uh like i've had customers i actually had a customer uh out in uh new jersey he had us he had us put a a high

gloss clear coat on his and he like that would not be the optimal thing to lift with if you weren't using tacky obviously yeah for sure but he he uses tacky on that and he loves it and uh he's like everything you touch sticks on it but what works really good are just like the uh like the tacky towels yeah whether they're gorilla grip i think is one of the brands or you know basically you see like the football players you know use them on their hands or whatnot and golfers but uh like even back we we touched on earlier all those guys at america's strongest man that were hitting 500 plus you know they didn't actually have tacky on, but they just had the tacky towels. And I'll tell you, the big thing we get from a lot of gym owners too is, you know, it's really hard to have a gym that

caters to powerlifting and strongman only. You know, especially if you're in a market where you have like an eight or 10,000 square foot building and just tons of overhead, you know, you can't really just say, I'm only going to take these people. And, uh, you know, there'll be a lot of general population. And so even just the cleanliness side of things, a lot of gym owners, like, you know, using a tacky towel, there's not going to be like, no matter how neat you try to be with tacky everywhere you go. Yeah. You's a problem wait till that tacky comes out oh god i mean i see even some of the gym owners that like they'll post videos or post pictures on instagram of just like the sinks and the walls in their bathroom yeah the sinks yeah and it's like and it's like you know i mean i'm sure that was not

the intention to leave it that way but it's kind of hard not to. Yeah, true. Okay, last one. And this is just a particularly timely topic that came up here and you just happen to be on this week. So it's going to be a fun one for you to answer. Overrated or underrated? Liver King. Oh, man. All right.

So I was looking at a little bit of this stuff yesterday i mean like i think if you've been around for a while everyone knew that right i mean the guy i mean like you know you didn't even have to be around that long yeah like like in a while i meant like you know like you started early 2022 you know yes i mean come on i mean now the guy i didn't really honestly know all that much about him uh you know obviously i see is he has a huge social media presence and i would instantly know who he was if i saw him you know but uh so i don't it's not like he was you know not in my mind at all but it sounds like you're probably about the same boat you us. You're actually almost the same,

exactly what we said earlier in this episode. Yeah, and it's interesting because, I mean, to be honest with you, I really don't care. I think, so he told people for a very long time he wasn't on anything. And if you just take some just tell people right you know i mean it's like it's not the i mean this is like power lifting strong man it's

not like you know or even for him you know i guess ranging into i guess he's a lot more general population though you know more so than that but i don't know i think being honest about what you do would be good and i think there is the side of not like, of trying to lead people on thinking that if they live a particular lifestyle, that the same thing is going to happen for them. Uh, you know, but I mean, on a personal level, I mean, what anyone wants to do in their life is completely up to them. But yeah, I guess when I really think about it, uh, telling everybody that eating bull testicles is going to make you look like that is kind of fucked up. Yeah. I won't be doing that anytime soon. So you won't be telling people that or you won't be having the bull testicles yourself?

I will not be telling people that and I will not be eating bull testicles. See, I've been trying these bull testicles for like the last year and it doesn't seem to be doing anything. It's been couple days for tanner because he's rethinking all the time his whole life decision of the last year now it's yeah i've been lied to all this work he's put in if you had an opportunity to talk to anybody yet hopefully hopefully you have yeah uh so i feel like it kind of sounds like you're leaning towards overrated or i would say i would say overrated but i'll tell you what like it's crazy i saw a video i mean i don't know if this is true

or not but i saw a video yesterday that popped up just like a little you know minute long instagram video the guy said he's making a hundred million dollars a year that's wild it's insane is is it all supplements is that i don't i don't know how i i don't know a person that's purchased one of his supplements you know i just don't know like who's buying the supplements i guess but i don't know well i'll tell you what he was really popular when i was training high school kids virtually every one of my high school kids asked me coach have you ever seen liver king and so i think like he really appeals to like the young kind of like the younger generation of kids yeah yeah and i suppose it's easier to pull that illusion off on younger people that haven't been

around as much right absolutely you know i mean not like to put names out there but like i've had kids ask me before like you know do you think this person that's won several mr olympias uses steroids we literally had this exact conversation i'm like and okay and i'm like i'm like listen buddy let's have a talk for a second i'm like that man works his ass off right okay i was like he lives he lives a lifestyle that most people cannot even comprehend okay of just like pain and discomfort and discipline. And this is kind of like what I would tell these kids. This person, it's not like they take a drug and then all of a sudden they become that.

Oh, look at all those guys before they did anything and they were already like the freaks of the freaks. Right, right. Oh, my God. Yeah, they were already checking the 10 out of 10 boxes. Have you guys ever seen what Ronnie Coleman looked like? That is the perfect example of, you would look like that when you were that age? How was that?

I tell you, and genetics are crazy. I got a guy that I played high school football with. He just won. He does not bodybuilding, but he did men's physique. And he was a running back at university Akron. And he's like, he has no reason to lie to me. Cause I know what he looked like when he was in high school. He's told me I don't take anything. And, uh, but like when he was in high school, he was a kid that, you know, grew up like in a, I mean, I'm not knocking him. He says it

himself all the time. Like he grew up dirt poor with nothing he was not eating he was not eating well he was just eating whatever he can get his hands on most days and even when he was high school age you know like six foot like 215 and jacked you know just kind of like working out in the high school weight room three days a week and so he went he actually won his his pro card in men's, uh, men's physique in his second show. And, you know, you look at him and he's a guy that you look at him and you're like, he has to be on tons of stuff. And like, he has no reason to lie to me. And I know what he looked like when he was 15 or 16 years old. Right. So like even, even the genetics that are out there are incredible. So, I mean, at the high level, you look at those bodybuilders, again, it comes back to

the combination of genetics and drive and all that other stuff too. But I try to explain to these kids, like, it's not just that, like, it's not like if you do that, you become that thing. And, uh, yeah, but it's, uh, that's a crazy thing. I'll tell you, I actually, like, actually have no desire to compete in bodybuilding, but bodybuilding is fascinating to me. I mean, it's even just the, again, it's almost like the monk lifestyle. Oh, it's like all-consuming everything.

If you just want to get strong, you can. I mean, as long as you're putting calories in and your programming is not totally stupid, you, for the most part, can get strong if you're showing up and putting in the work. But, oh, you watch the videos of these guys, bodybuilding, and it is just all consuming. It's hard to comprehend even. Oh yeah. And I have tons of respect for him. I mean, I've listened to some podcasts, like, like I listened to a Dorian Yates podcast that, you know, I think, I think of me, he might've been on Joe Rogan when I listened to it, you know, it just, I listened to like

the replay of it a couple of years ago. years ago and you know you talk about him and and he i can't remember the exact thing so i'm probably going to butcher some of this but like you know he was like yeah so like i didn't stay out past 8 p.m for nine years you know and like every every meal like when i would go to like a movie theater with someone like if it was six o'clock like it was a meal time so i had like my fish and eggs in a container. I would open it up and it would stink and everyone would be staring at me, you know? And I was like, well, I bet after they saw him, they probably turned their heads quickly and pretended like they weren't staring at him. But that's an extreme lifestyle.

And even for powerlifting, like I've lost a lot of weight recently. You know, I was up to almost consistently, I was in the mid 290s, but I had a little period there where I hit like 305 or 307 and decided to lean out. And I've actually had a lot of fun really manipulating my diet over time. It's been like, it's been like building inertia. So like I just started off basically just like eating cleaner foods, not weighing or measuring or anything. And then over a period of time, just like implementing, not even really intentionally, it just kind of happened this way, like implementing one more

thing and then one more thing and then one more thing. And then like two years goes by and I'm weighing and measuring everything and everything's cooked in advance and all that. And, you know, I've lost a lot of weight and I've maintained a lot of strength while I have, and a lot of things I'm actually stronger, but I feel a hell of a lot better. But even when I was bigger, you know, you talk about having a little bit more of a flexible lifestyle when strength is the only goal. Like, I'm not like a, I'm not a drinker, like by any means, but like, I can remember like, you know, if me and my wife would go out to dinner, you know, drinking like, you know, a tall beer with my steak and then like going through Dairy Queen afterwards.

And then I'd like wake up the next morning and feel like so bloated and strong. And, but when you get into the bodybuilding lifestyle, I mean, that's just completely off the table unless, you know, you're six months out from a show. Right. Right. Yeah, that's good news. It looks like you passed overrated, underrated, too. Perfect. Big, big news there to pass.

Well, wonderful. And that's kind of, you know, since you passed, we will decide to air this episode. If you would have failed, it would have probably had to go down the toilet. But since you did good, we're going to run with it. Well, I'll be able to sleep well for two hours and 40 minutes tonight. I was going to cry all night if I didn't pass.

Now I just wasted half of my night of sleep and it's not, they're not going to use it. I can get an excellent two hours now. Well, we actually did try and plan this on a day when I don't have to lift in the morning. So I could get a little bit more rest tomorrow. Well, that's perfect. We do really enjoy you coming on and taking the time.

I think this is really fun and people will be excited to listen to it. Well, thank you guys. I appreciate you having me. Awesome. Thanks, Mike. Thanks. Yep, absolutely. Have a great night, guys.

You too. Thanks, Mike. Thanks. Yep, absolutely. Have a great night, guys. You too. Thanks, Mike. And I guess, I don't know, we didn't specifically say it or tell him to say that then, but it'd be MB Power Center. Oh, yeah. Yeah. We should have let him give the rundown on that. But yeah, MB Power Center. You can find all this stuff on there.

I follow him on. We followed him. Yeah. What's his actual handle? It's MB Power Center on Instagram is his handle his name shows up there Mike Bartos but then his website I think is just

it's mbpowercenter.com he's got a really good looking website too if you listen to Massanomics you're not a dummy you know how to run a computer usually if you want to find out about the person we had on you type their name on google and you'll find all that stuff yes yeah i uh he we have several pieces of his stuff it's all super high quality uh i don't think you'll be disappointed with anything from him if you decide to make i was looking at his site uh in preparation

we have the log too don't we where we don't have oh we don't have okay logs i couldn't remember if we had we got a few different logs but we don't have one of his one thing they he does have that for years i thought about buying and i don't know i kind of forgot that i beam yeah that i be a cable attachment and i keep thinking about buying even just the novelty of it because it just looks cool it does just look cool doesn't it it's kind of a grip pull and i'm like oh i kind of like that let me we have a lot of items like that in the gym but it's one of those like weird kind of smaller. I mean, like it's just,

I like those things. Put it on the wall. And it's one of those things people walk in and be like, what is that? And you try it and you're like, Oh, I get it. Like that really.

So that's, he does. There's a lot of different stuff like that. So check out all their stuff. Uh, good stuff. We didn't do, um,

has he seen it yet? So we've got to do that before we wrap up today for sure tommy but before we get to that i did uh we talked a lot of training there it reminded me of juggernaut ai juggernaut ai is did you see their post they had today yeah a good call yeah man it was a test if you like maybe for today's ad actually Actually, there you go, yes. So do we have sound there? The spokesman, the top notch. Yeah, that's a really good idea you have there.

We'll do something a little bit different for today's Juggernaut AI ad. If we can make this work. And I'm Tommy of the Massanomics podcast and Massanomics gym right here in western northeast South Dakota. We've both been using Juggernaut for quite a while now. You said you're almost at a year? About six months. And I'm getting close to a year myself and right here at the gym we've had over ten people using the Juggernaut AI now and more starting all the time too. And great success. People hitting PRs just within the middle of

the program even at this point and these aren't people that are not all brand new to training. They've been training for years and now just months into Juggernaut AI they're hitting prs and i do think juggernaut's been a resource for us over the years in a number of ways videos articles everything else and now being able to put that right in our hands with juggernaut ai it's become a really powerful tool for all of us here yeah and it's helped people not only the guys that have been here for a while but it's also been really helpful for some of the newer guys too it's been a great way for them to keep accountable, keep track of their lifts, and watch their progression as the weeks go on. And really, in a nutshell, they've been able to get strong, stay strong, and ultimately use their strength. And when you're in western northeast South Dakota, that's what it's all about.

That is a well-crafted answer. Well said, well said. And I said guys. It's not just for guys. It's for girls, too. Guys and gals, both. Guys, sometimes we use that as a universal term though, don't we? Yes.

I don't want anyone to feel excluded there. And use code MASSANOMICS at the website. Use your web browser. Go to juggernautai.app. Use code MASSANOMICS and that'll save you 10%. Gets it down to about $30 a month at prices like that. Keyword is you have to go to the website. Do not do it through the app.

Go to the website. Right, for sure. Code Massonomics. Hook you up. Yeah. We can just play that every week now. There's an ad right in our pocket. I like it.

All right. Last but not least. Certainly not least. Is this ad from our friends at Texas Power Bars. Buddy Caps first started lifting weights in the late 60s and began powerlifting in the mid-70s. At the time, he was working for Image Barbell, building gym equipment. Around 1976, a local machine shop started making Olympic bars

for them, calling it the Image Bar. In 1977, Image Barbell became Champion Barbell. It was then that Buddy started looking at the bars with an intent of changing them for the better. Do you think buddy knew there would be a lot of equipment companies in ohio one day when he was first starting out probably not not back when he was i mean he was uh he was kind of ahead of the time back in the 70s he's probably thinking texas is going to be the hub not ohio here yeah i think everyone uh knew that buddy had the market cornered in texas that's actually us you have to go somewhere farther away. Yes, yep.

So they're like, we need to go much farther east to the Midwest in Ohio. And that brings you to 1979 when Buddy bought his first lathe to begin addressing the known issues. In 1980, his passion, drive, and purpose now had a greater mission. 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 and early and was maintenance free hundreds of state national international and world powerlifting records have been and continue to be set and broken on the texas power bar to learn more about texas power bars and buy thanks you tpd tommy do you remember how to play has he seen it i think i do do you have any guess as to what year we're on uh is it 96 run to 1997 oh 97 wow we've played this more than I thought. 1997 this week. And for anyone that's new to Has He Seen It,

it's a relatively quickly growing segment of the podcast where we go one year a week. We find out a list of movies for that week. Has Tommy seen them? The most obscure movies from the year. Yes. And this week we're on 1997. And we're going to do eight this week. Last week 1997 and we're gonna do eight this week last last week uh tommy got five out of eight i think i'm gonna get five again this week i think yep okay and we're the

ones we're taking off the table every week i like to do this now just take a couple straight off the table right off the bat the assumed we're taking off austin powers international mystery obviously yeah and then we're taking off beverly hills ninja too that we've talked about very many times on the podcast we it's established you've seen those movies oh it's actually funny when i think uh flipping through the channels it was not that long ago and beverly hills ninja was on tv and i was sitting there with my wife and i'm like oh you gotta have you ever seen this she's like no I've never seen it. And she likes kind of some dumb ones. And it was at the beginning and I was laughing so hard because it was even

dumber than I remembered. And she just goes, this isn't funny. I'm like, really? This is where you think it's not funny. Beverly Hills Ninja is where you draw the line. Beverly Hills Ninja seems older to me than Austin Powers.

Yes. Yes. I was a good five years older actually shocked when you said that because i would have 100 said the same thing like 1992 yeah early 90s for sure and i also always think austin powers seems later than 97 too right whatever reason but right okay those two are off the table we know you've seen those so 1997 first one very popular movie. But I don't know where you could be either way on this one.

I almost lean towards maybe you haven't seen it. But has he seen it, Good Will Hunting? I have relatively recently. I would have probably guessed you hadn't seen Good Will Hunting. I had not seen it until it was a few years back was the first time I saw it. And it's a good movie. I really like Good. Yeah. Okay. And it's a good movie. I really like Good Will Hunting. It is. It's a good movie.

Yeah. It's, I don't know if I'm going to say it's one of my favorite movies, but I really like Good Will Hunting. I mean, if someone said it's their favorite movie, I'd say, I understand that. Right. Right. You could have much worse choices there. Okay.

It's a good movie. You're off to a good start. You having seen that, like, that was definitely one of those coin flip ones. All right. So you haven't seen that you're setting yourself up for a good score already just one into it i think i think you've seen this one i think i know we've talked about it i know you're aware of it but i don't know if you actually have ever seen oh boy not also an iconic movie in its own right. Have you seen it? Liar, liar.

Oh yes. Yes. Okay. Yes. Uh, any, for the most part, anything comedy,

Jim Carrey, the cable guy wasn't really a comedy movie, was it? Cause I hadn't seen the cable guy. Yeah. I mean, I think it's a comedy, but it's a different,

it's like a way different, darker. No, no, no, it's not a, where it's not quite the Jim Carrey years old.. When you're eight years old, liar, liar. Oh, that guy's hilarious.

There's a divorce and stuff. I don't really follow that. But this guy's goofy. But he like yells stuff. Yeah, he yells stuff. And he beat himself up in the bathroom. Oh, yeah. I've seen liar, liar many times.

While speeding. Two for two. Okay, let's get a little trickier now have you seen it the fifth element i have seen the fifth oh if you've even seen the fifth element this could be your your year 1997 and when i was a kid i was well i still am i just don't watch movies but uh i was really into the whole sci-fi you know i loved the original Star Wars as a kid. Those were my favorite movies. And so anything that was kind of sci-fi out there, I was all about. So yeah, Fifth Element.

Colby, Colby, my man. What the hell's his name? But yeah, such an out there movie. Like so crazy. I kind of guess that that could be a no. Been a long time since I've seen that movie though. Yeah. So you're three for three right here.

Riding high. This next one,'re three for three right here. Right. And I, this next one's proud to be Ferris is the most, many of these on the list are usually none of them are too obscure. This one's probably the most obscure. So probably most likely you haven't seen this one. Okay. So I can do this. We're looking pretty good.

Have you seen it? Nothing to lose. No, I don't. It's not even Martin short or not, I don't. It's not even. Martin Short or not. Not Martin Short.

Tim Robbins. I got to see this. The tall white guy is Tim Robbins from Shawshank Redemption. Is that his name? Tim Robbins. Okay. This movie cover looks maybe kind of familiar. And Martin Lawrence. Yeah yeah is his counterpart and it's like it's like almost i think there's like a heist element to it i've seen it it's been quite a while since i saw it but there's a few quotable lines in this movie which really

made me think about it but uh martin lawrence is kind of funny to me. Like some of his, like these 90s movies of his, like I enjoyed some of his over-the-top personality and some of the lines that he had. Boy, yeah, I'm looking through, and this is not anything in here ringing a bell. Okay. You could have just made this up, and I'm following your jokes. Yeah, that's what I was saying,

that it's the most obscure of this list. I don't know that one. There's a really, for anyone that has seen Nothing to Lose, list. I don't know that one. For anyone that has seen Nothing to Lose, there's this really funny scene that I loved at the time where Martin Lawrence pretends, like he has to sneak into a building, so he pretends to be a pizza delivery man.

And I think he's wearing fake teeth and glasses and stuff, and it's just so really over the top that as a kid, I just used to think it was so funny. Nothing to Lose. So three or four. I kind of thought that one would be no but it just i was like yes it's one of my favorite movies yeah i would have been like damn okay three or four i have to feel like you've seen this but you never know have you seen it men in black oh yeah okay yeah i yeah that whole sci-fi thing i thought that

was like the coolest movie have you seen all the men in blacks when i asked that i don't even know what all the men in black yeah because i think there's been i remember seeing men in black too yeah it's just after two i start to get i guess to me one or two would be like is yeah i feel like all the men and the relevant men in blacks i remember when i was a kid really thinking that the what's it um what do they call the thing where they erase your mind yeah i don't know just really thinking like okay if someone did that to me would i remember it but it's like but you wouldn't remember because of the whole things you can't like so it could happen to me it could happen every day for the last to

wrap my head around that was so mind-blowing as a kid uh yeah was, that was funny when we started talking about it. Now, the first thing I think about with that movie is that thing. Yeah. And then the, the gun, was it the cricket, the little tiny one that, oh yeah. That wasn't that noisy cricket. I think that's what it was. Yeah. Let's see.

Will Smith in that you think is good. You know, that's funny. He's funny. He's good. I thought the, when I was a a kid i thought it was hilarious i'm actually very curious to know how that would hold up now because it's been so long since i've seen okay men in black men in black two was in 2002 men in black three in 2012 men in black international in 2019 yeah a lot of men in black i probably i've only seen one and two okay there's no way i've

seen number three so you're four of five so far this week this next one it's funny earlier in the discord tonight i saw someone post a nicholas cage thing where he says i could eat a peach for it's a nicholas cage quote where he says like i could eat a peach for days or i could eat a peach for hours or something some weird pervy quote and I think it's from this movie. I've seen this movie, and I remember that quote, and I don't know if I put them together or not, but have you seen it face-off? I have not seen it, no.

Okay, face-off is Nick Cage and the guy from Grease. John Travolta. John Travolta, John Travolta. And from what I have seen this, but it's probably been since like 1998. I do remember this movie poster. That's what that meme is from, that fate, when he's doing, can you see him? Yeah. Yeah.

I never knew what that one was from. Because it's super creepy movie. Or this one too. Yeah. So many memes that this is what it's from. Like cut each other. They cut like one of them. They cut their faces.

John Travolta now looks like Nicolas Cage, and Nicolas Cage now looks like John Travolta, and they have to switch roles. But it's because they actually think they have surgically put their faces on each other's body. I don't remember. It's been way too long but i know the in the end of it like one of them is a family man and the other one's like a horrible

person kind of like a bit the bad guy and like so he's then with uh nicholas cage's wife and she thinks it's nicholas cage that's really john travolta the bad guy so that's the old switcheroo yeah his faces in this are it's just iconic that's all they are they are they're in so many memes so you haven't seen face off but you're you're pretty aware of face off you think or a little bit i remember seeing this movie poster and uh these stills i mean these are memes i think you run into on a weekly basis yeah yeah so you're four for six right now i wasn't sure about face off i could have seen that going either way this next one i don't know i would guess maybe you haven't

seen it but i'm not sure have you seen it vegas vacation yeah that's a vacation yeah many times okay it ends with them all winning cars yeah spoiler alert i put a dollar and i want a car i put a dollar and i want a car i put a dollar and i want a car i put a dollar and i want a car i put a dollar and i want a car i put a dollar and i want a car then what did they drive away in uh was it a viper or was it a viper yeah wasn't there a hummer too i think there was a hummer a hummer a viper i want to know this like one of the cars wasn't cool i'm pretty sure that's what i thought let's see um here we go maybe it was a corvette instead of a viper but i could have sworn there was a red viper yeah it looks like a yeah uh a white geo metro yeah a geo metro really the

mustang from that time which wasn't very cool right and then uh black hummer all right there but the white geo metro that's embarrassing that you put back here i want a viper and a geometro really oh i got it poor audrey had to drive the geometro i think if uh i think uh i think the dad drove away in the hummer probably or did he take the viper probably yeah uh yeah good movie i think it's kind of the last of those movies probably too probably actually 97 i wouldn't have guessed that's when this is from i like that movie i like it yeah that's a good one okay five of seven last one this could be a new pr if you've seen it and you know historically sometimes we like to end with an arnold movie right historically we do yeah historically we also don't sometimes sometimes

we don't this week we're going to have you seen it we've talked about this as of recent even have you seen it batman and robin oh uh i don't think i've seen batman and robin arnold is mr freeze right oh oh okay that one's batman and robin i think that's bad this is why i can't keep those damn names straight um i have seen that one yeah wait and uma thurman's uh poison ivy right i think so unless i'm way off but yeah i think that that uh 1997 batman and robin okay yes yeah uma thurman's poison ivy yeah alicia silverstone is batgirl yes i have seen that one i actually believe i went to that in the theaters as a child okay so you'd have seen it six for eight this. Yeah.

For 1997. Then Batman and Robin. Is it a good movie? We've talked about this before. I don't think it is. Is it? No, I don't think it is.

I think it's a bad Batman. I never in my mind. I always think this is Batman forever is for what? I don't know why in my head. That's what that movie is called. Not Batman and Robin, but yeah, that's the george clooney batman right this one batman and robin it's a bad one i know that yeah george yeah yep

see george clooney just isn't batman to me no no i don't care what you how you try and spice it up that's not batman nope he ain't you can't polish that turd into batman if you ask me robert swenson is bane he's pretty big so bane was in batman and robin yeah apparently who's robert swenson i don't know looks pretty big though he looks a lot bigger than uh tom hardy yeah tom hardy yeah let's see also i think liver king side note is like five five five. I think he, in his emails says I'm five, seven. And I think if he says five, seven,

he started that. Yes. If that's what he's owning up to, then yeah, it's definitely less than that. Cause if you're that height, you're probably lying about it a little bit. So you're stretching the truth a little bit.

Well, historically you lie about a whole bunch of stuff. You're probably also lying about how tall you are i mean yeah he's made much more significant and hurtful lies so i don't think is i don't think it put it past him to lie about his height a little bit well what was i six for eight six for eight new pr all right er or pr that's right especially when it comes to movies that's what we say around here hitting my stride i just you know i was a little too young for those first ones i didn't those weren't exactly a lot of those movies weren't exactly high on the um

you know uh movie history priority list so i think i skipped a few of those and i'm getting right into my groove here i can even tell from from my own sake that we're more into the groove in the sense that when I go through, it's like, damn, it's hard to pick out just like seven or eight because so many of these movies are like... Feel too obvious. Right, yeah.

Right. Because there's just so many that would be like, oh yeah, of course that would be one to pick. Whereas in 1991, I didn't have that feeling. Because it'd be tough because it's like, oh man, it's either going to be the ultimate gotcha that would be one to pick. Whereas in 1991, that wasn't, I didn't have that feeling. Because it'd be tough

because it's like, oh man, it's either going to be the ultimate gotcha because you didn't see this thing or it's going to be the worst segment because I picked

the most easiest movie. Right. And I don't like it to be like a, like it's not fun to me if I'm like, oh yeah, I could pick eight movies

that of course you haven't seen because nobody watches them. But like, that's not fun. It's more fun to see like, have you seen like this list of movies that probably a lot of people have seen you know so that's have you seen it and today the short answer is yes he's seen it yeah yep it's been

seen all right what else do we have this week tommy anything that we need to get to or should we add some other things i don't know if we need to talk about them yet though we might just have to bring her on in for uh yeah no nothing's uh nothing's a priority here so okay there's always next week in the podcast game right that is all right now that we got the pre-show done with should we just dive right into this one yeah uh oh two hours and six minutes yeah uh let Let's dive into this episode. In the next five to 10 minutes, we are ready to get started. Let's do this. Okay. Tommy, where do they find you?

Well, there's actually a lot to unpack here. So we got to get to unpacking first, don't we? Unpacking to do. You can find me at Tomahawk underscore D. You can follow me at Tanner underscore Baird. Just remember it's science, it's Masonomics. And follow us at Mastonomics. See you.

That's a throwback thing. Very throwback.