Massenomics Podcast - Ep. 382: Lift Hard Live Easy Classic Recap

Episode Date: July 31, 2023

The Lift Hard Live Easy Classic event weekend has came and gone, and we lived to tell the tale. This powerlifting meet/party went better than we ever could have imagined. There are so many people to thank for the success, and we tried to mention as many as possible. The only thing left to figure out… how can we make next year even better? Juggernaut AI: juggernautai.app and use code MASSENOMICS to save 10% The Strength Co: https://store.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% Texas Power Bars: https://www.texaspowerbars.com/

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

If you don't follow Massanomics, y'all do it. Social media, website, everything. Massanomics! side and everything. Massonomics. Welcome everyone for a very special episode, 382 of the Massonomics podcast, the lifting podcast about our powerlifting meet. Welcome. My name is Tanner. And my name is Tommy. Man, you summed that up really good right there, Tanner. Yeah, so this episode you're going to hear the full rundown of a wild and crazy weekend of Massanomics. Maybe, Tommy, was it the wildest and craziest weekend

of Massanomics weekend ever? I think so. I mean, the only thing that would come close to maybe be like the arnold but that's kind of a different thing too so that's kind of a different thing so i'm i'm marking it wild and craziest massonomics it's in the books it's official ever uh but first before we talk about all that i want to tell you a little bit i want to tell all you all of you a little bit about juggernaut ai uh juggernaut Training Systems is the leader in strength, having helped thousands of athletes from beginners to world champions maximize their results and reach their

goals. They use principle-based coaching through cutting-edge technology to help the lifters get the best results of their life. Those best results of their life. We had a whole bunch of lifters competing this weekend in our Lift Hard, Live Easy Classic Powerlifting meet that used Juggernaut AI to get themselves there. A whole bunch of them. I'm just going to pick a couple off the top of my hat that I know we're using it. Justin Lindner uses Juggernaut AI,

and he had an awesome meet. Numbers across the the board he has pumped about all of them and he's been using that through his strength and peaking here. Big Jen she was using Juggernaut AI I believe too unless I'm wrong but I'm pretty positive

she had a great meet. Big Tyler from Massanomics Gym she used Juggernaut AI and had a pretty sweet meet herself. So that's just three. I just basically picked three random lifters out of the hat. Ryan, Larry, Caden. Yeah.

The list goes on and on. Ross. Yeah. Ross. The list goes on, really. But, oh, actually, Big Matt. I think he was using Juggernaut AI, too. I remember one of the Big Mats.

I think so, yes. Yep. So all kinds of the big Matt's. So all kinds of them that just crush in numbers, making the proof be inside of the pudding this weekend at the Mastonomics Powerlifting Meet. Putting it in that pudding. Oh, discount code is Mastonomics. Best part of the whole thing. Saves you 10% for the lifetime of that membership at Juggernaut AI. Use discount code Mastonomics. Sign up that uh membership at juggernaut ai use discount

code massonomics sign up on the website juggernautai.app and today's show is also brought to you by texas power bars and their brand spanking new sharpest in all the land 29 millimeter power bar tanner i saw that thing getting passed around uh went through a field test at the gym this weekend yeah people did that game well yeah it's like a baseball bat where you end up on the top it looked like people were just loving that bar whoever gets it last is the shaft master uh-huh it was there some some high praise going to that thing oh yeah uh high praise even from uh texas natives themselves you know the big i mean we call him the president of north dakota he's actually from texas big dylan coats he even

said yep yep this is a texas bar it gets the and he would know and big bob from texas was there too and he said yep i give this my texas seal of approval and so we literally had two texans there to tell us is this in fact a Texas power bar? Is it good? Does it meet your standards? And yes, clear cut across the board. They loved it.

And in case you weren't sure if we love Texas power bars, we also made sure to use Texas squat bars and Texas deadlift bars at the meet. So it was a very, it was a very Texas power bars kind of weekend for us. It was. And if you'd like to get a Texas Power Bar of yourself, make sure to go to TexasPowerBars.com.

Thanks, Texas Power Bars. Oh, man. This is a little unorthodox, but maybe I could start this episode with us supporting our supporting members segment. Maybe. Just get it out there. Yeah. Like I said, this is with a supporting our supporting members segment. Maybe just get it out there. Yeah. This is,

like I said, this is a little bit unorthodox. You know, this usually comes around the midpoint of the show. This might just take us to the midpoint of the show. I do want to formally, so supporting our supporting members, what this is,

this is a segment of the podcast, relatively new and growing segment, growing as you'll notice by all the people I need to shout out this is. This is a segment of the podcast. Relatively new and growing segment. Growing, as you'll notice, by all the people I need to shout out this week. Where our people that have chose to support Mastonomics through our supporting membership, we like to give back to them each week. One of the ways we do that,

actually the main way we do that each week, is through this segment. But there is other perks to becoming a supporting member. There's a discount code out there that you can use. You get access to our Discord community community which people are using that this weekend forever you know for it was kruber man we say that we say there's an active community in there on normal days have a meat weekend and then and then you'll really know what an active community is then it really gets active um but no i'm, I just want to support some of the crew that was here and lifting this weekend.

So Big Jen, thank you. Great meet from Big Jen. Thanks for coming out of Iowa, of course. Let's see, then we've got Big Murph, made the trip from D.C., had a great meet. Actually, I think, well, we'll get to some more of this. I'm just going to rattle them off, crew, at first. Big Melissa came in from Montana.

Great job, Melissa. Big Susan made the trip from South Carolina. Great meet, Big Susan. Big Rachel was willing to leave her goats at home and come to the meet, so great job, Big Rachel. They would be proud, though, right? Yeah, yeah, she made her goats very proud. Made sure to tell her goats at home and come to the meet. So great job, Big Rachel. They would be proud, though, right? Yeah, yeah. She made her goats very proud.

Made sure to tell her that. Big Nathan, just not too far down the road from Watertown. Good job, Big Nathan. Big Grayson. Grayson's Anatomy out of Sioux Falls. Big Chris, former member of Judd Who's, of course. Big Chris out of Rapid City. Big Jake.

Do we have a doctor in the house? Yes, we do. It's Big Dr. Jake. From State Farm. From State Farm. Big Ryan Bridenthal came down from North Dakota to compete in the meet. Big Ryan Johnson, Jacked and Ginger, got out of shooting the next season to the Righteous Gemstones and was able to make it to the meet.

Scantz. There's a writer's strike right now. I'm not sure if you're aware, Tanner. Oh, okay. So, yeah, he's probably had free time anyways then. Scantz just needs no further introduction, right? I mean, if you don't know, he was in the Aberdeen Insider, so, yes, he sort of was the mole again.

They featured an article where it was titled, He was in the Aberdeen Insider, so yes, he sort of was the mole again. They featured an article where it was titled, something titled about Canadian tank driver comes to Aberdeen. I got a couple copies of it. I'm going to get one framed for the gym. It's a catchy headline, that's for sure. There is basically no gym wall space left at this point in time, but I will find it somewhere to put that. Big Waffle Iron Jim, of course, Big Steve,

came in with his Hawaiian shirt, best shirt of the meet. Big Dylan, I just mentioned him earlier, flew up from Texas. They flew from down in Texas there. He and his wife made the trip. Big Mostly Squat Videos, Matt, came for her. He really lifted hard and lived easy. He did both really well.

There's not many people that did both harder than him. Yes, I'll give him that. Big Matt Sesney. This says Lockport. I was announcing him as from Niagara Falls. He's right next to it. Niagara Falls sounded a lot more fun. It does.

People know what that and then uh big lee of course also left his his goats you know i think rachel has some goats and lee has some goats they each had to part with some of their goats man there's a lot of supporting members i'm not even done you're gonna say you're yeah there's no way you're done yet big jake the snake heinreich member, competed in the meet. Big Bob from Texas. You know, Bob is one of those guys I had no face with the name whatsoever. Me either.

Until this weekend. No clue. And now I'll forever know, like, exactly who that is and, you know, have this connection now. And that he enjoyed Chislic and Storybook Land. Yeah. Like many people on this trip did. Big Paul Foss came up from Sioux Falls. Finally, and I had no clue who he was.

And now if you ever run into him, yeah. And, you know, a lot of these guys had great style, you know, with their long hair and beards. I mean, these people knew how. There's something in the water there. Let's see. Big Chris, Chris Daminger was, uh, in attendance with his wife, of course. So that was great to see big, big, uh, big Chris come out of, uh, come out of New Jersey there.

I'm just double-checking something. Jonathan Oldham, of course. He probably needs no further introduction. Keith Honeycutt, one of the secret Davids, made the trip all the way from Rochester, New York. So that was pretty cool, obviously. Keith had an awesome meet as well. He did.

Mostly all these people did, for that matter uh big lou nutter up from omaha lived very easy big justin linder out of massonomics gym let's see okay that's what i want to check. Okay, Alec Lee out of Mastinomics Gym. Flyin' Ryan out of Aberdeen. Matthew Sundling recently joined the Discord and competed this weekend. Lifted easy. J-Roy, John Roy out of Aberdeen, supporting member, competed. Caden Johnson, of course, Big Caden, recently heard on Unpaid and Underrated. Yeah, that's how I learned about him was the Unpaid and Underrated podcast.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Big Ben Bile out of Pierre. First time I, now I know, now I know, really know who Big Ben is. Big Riley Dawson out of Pierre also. Now I know who that is. Big Emmett. Yep. From Ohio, made the trip. Big Masonomics from Aberdeen.

Big Bryce Woolman, our perfect little sweetie himself. Yeah. And last, of course, not least, Big Eddie competed this weekend. Yes. Making the trip from Leola, PA. And then there are still some additional members. Of course, Big Dave. Yeah, they weren't competing, but.

Who put on the meet. Big Dave, meet director. Big Zach, singer extraordinaire. Sang the national anthem, crushed it, as a matter of fact. He did awesome. He did. That was a great start to the day. He's got some pipes on him, doesn't he? He does.

How about the spotters and loaders but if you you know i know that uh big tommy big tom big james those three are all supporting members yeah you weren't saying the same person twice there no there's just a lot of tommies and toms yeah yeah it was like a tom convention yeah it was like a tom ryan matt convention oh my god tom ryan or matt every time i meet someone i'm like okay it's either my name or my brother's name so i guess we're good there's like seven people in the neat meet named ryan i'm pretty sure every other person was ryan i think there was actually a point where i just i said who's that again and you said oh that's ryan and i just like i was thinking if i don't know someone their name's ryan their name

is just ryan at this event yeah then other crew that made the trip big joey and big steve drove down from canada big ryan big ryan uh iowa drove up in his honda civic big derrick big derrick rode the triumph from virginia beach uh who else is a Virginia Beach. Who else? The Traveler. It's hard to keep track of the Travelers. Yeah, that's why I was... On lifters, I could rely on my list right here. Yeah, we're definitely forgetting someone,

but that's a pretty good list. So that was quite the supporting our supporting members. So thank you, every supporting crew member that played a part in making this weekend possible. Yes, thank you, and there was a lot of you. We got to bump those numbers up though, right? Those are rookie numbers. There's only like 50 of them here.

We got to bump those up. Maybe before we dive right in, maybe we should enjoy a quick beverage. I 100% agree. And this is... Speaking of supporting members. Yep, Big Joey. I assume we had to like smuggle these across the border

in some way we don't want to know how. This is the President's Choice Root Beer Sparkling Water. I'm excited for this. President's Choice root beer sparkling water. I'm excited for this. President's Choice is good. Oh, it just smells like it right off the first crack. Well, I judge a lot by its crack. I will judge a book by its cover. You know, actually, before I say anything, I'm going to let you get to it.

I'm just going to do Huck Finn's mating call first. Uh-huh. Okay. Oh, yeah, that popped. It actually popped. I don't even know if it cracked. It popped. Oh, that's good. It is really good. I do enjoy

root beer. And this, it's just a touch off, but I could totally handle this knowing that, like if someone gave this to me, I'd be like, there's something wrong with the root beer. Right, well, because it's not actually root beer. It doesn't have that sugary taste at the end, but knowing this is sparkling water,

I could totally handle that. Like if I had to make do with something. Yeah. Oh, good catch big zach big mo was there uh well actually here okay yeah wait a second yeah big mo yep was there and he was uh with beef logic he was handing out beef jerky for everyone supporting the member big mo come up came up from the southeast of south dak. Big Grant and Big D and Big Connor. Yeah.

All supporting members from the Strength Co., of course, that were there. So there was four more supporting members just right there that we had actually already forgotten. So I know there's probably seven more that we're still forgetting. Easily, for sure. Yep. Just give it time. Give it time.

We'll get most of them. So what do you give? This is really good, though. I still give this a four. Joey brought it with him. Yeah, I still think I'd give this a four. It give it time. Give it time. We'll get most of them. So what do you give? This is really good, though. I still give this. Joey brought it with him. Yeah, I still think I'd give this a four. It's really good. I would give it a four also.

Big Joey and Big Steve brought us several beverages from Canada for us to get through. They did. Big Jen also gave us both a sixer of something to try. We figured maybe we should take a break from drinking for at least a day or two. I don't need a brewski right now, honestly. This is good. I'm actually curious if we've had any flavor that's not a fruit flavor

get a four. You probably gave that birthday cake a four way back in the day, the ugly water. I do like uglies. I miss R.I.P ugly water gone forever well didn't they have what else other flavors did they have their cherry cherry cherry oh they had a doctor they had a dr pepper one too like that was uh yeah and that was good also yeah i just remember the cherry cola was game was changing the game when we had that one.

Oh, yeah. Oh, I missed that. I could go for one of those right now, let me tell you. I like the blue can. Yeah, no, this is really good. President's Choice, I think, doesn't miss very often. No, they do not. Okay, should we start talking about the weekend?

The timeline of events? It's the freaking weekend. I'm about to have me some fun okay r kelly slow it down over there uh yeah where do we start the beginning on this thing it was yeah i think so cliff notes it was quite the journey yeah i was gonna say that my weekend started earlier than yours but i actually think they probably started in the same time because while i was getting a jump start on travel on wednesday night you were getting a jump start on packing the booth on wednesday night yeah right yeah i got uh yeah i was uh getting our inventory ready which the the massomics booth is a monster

you know like uh getting the booth because all the the thing is all the inventory that goes to the booth is inventory that normally is what's stocking the shelves of our online store. So anything that goes to the booth has to come out of the store, you know, physically and but more so like in a virtual sense. Like the numbers have to come out. Otherwise, that can cause panic and dismay and confusion and delay yeah so that's a biatch that's a real biatch that would that's like the biggest thing that would like prevent me from wanting to do if we did like an in-person event every month almost have to have a different system a couple times a year it's manageable yeah but i know well then we talk about because we wouldn't necessarily we've talked about this before we wouldn't necessarily have to take them out of inventory

because we can do a pos system with our thing right but we also give away a lot of stuff to people over there which also presents a problem um and yes we could and then also we weren't the ones running the booth either it was other people so then to introduce this new system for them also seemed like it would be added complexity. So we have yet to cross that bridge. But yeah, until then, it's just never an easy process. And even that aside, it is an enormous amount of work. Actually, a lot of the stuff we're going to talk about

is documented in part one of the YouTube video. You should go watch that right now if you haven't. Oh, I love the YouTube video. Oh, man man isn't that great one it's it's like eight or nine minutes of just i just even just skipping around like the weekend was so fun and i when i watched that video i'm like i already missed this weekend i can't tell you how many times i've watched that video between editing it you know you take all the footage so i'm breaking it down into two parts and part one just goes from the initial planning up into you know the night right before the meet

and so there's so much stuff you got to edit down down down down down and then you get it to about eight nine minutes and you say okay this is the right amount and then you go back through and you do some little tweaks here and there and on and on you get you just end up watching the whole thing 10 times and then you export it and you're like okay i should probably watch it again just to make sure nothing happened weird and then you upload it to youtube and you say okay i better watch it again just to see how it looks on youtube and then it runs across your feed on like the tv i'm like i gotta know what this looks like on the tv so i'm like i've watched this damn video like 30 times and i still laugh every time too it is great it's so many of the crew members getting

in there uh just does make it so much fun and there will be way more of the crew in part two between the meat and the zoo specifically i tried to get almost everyone that went to the zoo involved so did you just carry your camera the whole time at the zoo i didn't put it down once it was in my hand the only time i put it down was if i was buying a drink i'd set it on the counter to get my wallet out of my pocket other than that it was in my and i didn't have this i was going to bring the strap you know like everyone puts the neck strap on their camera i forgot to bring it so i held it in my hand the entire time and if i would have dropped it it probably would have broke but i held that thing for like five straight hours in my hand, which is insane.

Yeah, I don't even remember you having it. Oh, I did. And yeah, I did. And I actually have not even looked at hardly any of that footage. And I think I'm going to be because I don't hardly remember it either. I mean, I drink a lot at that point, too. And like when you're first starting, you know, even when I'm recording, I'm hyper aware that I have a camera in people's face and it's awkward for me. And I know it's awkward for them.

But by the time you're at the zoo and everyone's drinking, they're like, oh, it's just the camera again. And I know there was a ton of just goofy stuff people were saying. So that video should be should be funny. That'll be exciting. So, yeah, is that what we do? We just got we're going through the timeline though i think so right or do you yeah or do i like i would say if i could rate this you know just so people get a flavor and don't have to wait for the entire end if i had to rate it this was a smashing success oh

i think it exceeded our expectations in every way right like it smashed our sick i mean we had expectations for attendance, sales, just people that would show up, how smooth the day would go, like everything. And it blew, it blew it out of the water in every way.

Didn't it? I'm actually like as much as anything, most concerned how anything we ever did again could even live up to it. Oh, the bar is so high for us. It's going to be very hard to one up this. Like it will take an enormous amount of work to ever beat this. Yeah, yeah.

And we can put a bow on it towards the end, too, in the conversation a little bit. But, yeah, so, yeah, Wednesday. So you drove to western Northeast South Dakota on Wednesday. Yeah, I got there Wednesday night, like, 1030-ish and went pretty much straight to bed. And I actually, out of the entire trip, Wednesday was the night where I'm like thinking, go, what have we got ourselves into? Like we have, there's definitely something we're going to mess

up. Uh, there's definitely something we got wrong. Something, something like that was the first time I was having doubts about the whole thing, which, which is funny. That was the only time in the process that happened. But yeah, it was Wednesday night. I was really, I had trouble sleeping that night because I'm just thinking there's something, there's something that's not going to work out right here. Yeah. But that wasn't the case. No, no, we, so we, we didn't do anything on Wednesday though. Like we didn't get together yet until Thursday. No, no, no. We didn't see each other at all. It was Thursday morning then. Um, you and um you and me we got together well I stopped by your house and uh I think you were just finishing up loading the trailer and then we decided to shoot that

last minute Aberdeen tour video which feels like that was a month ago now doesn't it that does feel like a really really long time ago doesn't it yes yes so we shot that that was actually a really fun video to make though we shot that tour video it was just we had no plans it was all right let's just grab the dumb meat itinerary we made and just follow the steps on here and we went to the 10 locations whatever it was had a dumb one-liner at each one of them we got that edited together all right we got that shot. We stopped at taco John's of course, two for a lunch break. And we got that shot. And then you said, okay, there's people at the gym that can help load up weights right now. I got to get them. And so you

went there. I ran home or to where I was staying. I ran to the in-laws edited the video for like an hour, got it uploaded to YouTube. I called you and you're like, yep, we're all done. We're good. Just go to the ice arena. And I met you there. And then we started building the booth then. Yeah, because we had already unloaded the booth supplies from my trailer and pickup earlier. So then I was able to go load up all the strength co-plates,

barbells, weight trees. It's a lot of plates man to fill up a three platform weight uh warm-up room it's a lot of plates that you got to take there you know that uh maybe i underestimated what what the amount of equipment that actually needs to get moved how many sets of 45s was it uh i think we brought uh 17 sets 17 enough for like and they were all maybe it was overdone a little bit but i just was like i don't want the big boys warming up to be using three racks and not have enough plates you know like it was enough to put like 600 pounds plus each warm-up rack at the same time you know but and they were all straight coat they were all strength coat plates

too right there was a couple rogue in there that i just had to supplement that i that were a last second add-in that i'm just like let's just grab a couple more caution i don't want any like i don't want anyone do i don't want this to be a thing at the meet where like someone says oh it's really good i just wish like we had a couple more plates in the warm-up room you know so i'm like grab a couple more plates so that doesn't come up but yeah we got those uh who helped me it was big big brody also supporting member he helped a few times over the weekend he helped load that up and then uh was it big uh anthony i'd help load and i believe so i thought you said him yeah and i can't uh oh big ryan johnson oh jackton jackton ginger helped load up. He has actually, that's right. Warm up. Yeah. You got to warm up any up me and load up, helped us load up plates.

Yeah. So we got that unloaded and that's when we met you there and we started setting up the booth and the booth set up takes a long time. Well, Dave, Dave rolled in right about that same time then too. Yeah. So Dave was getting set up then. Yeah. And I just, it could never get it through my head that the booth just

always takes like two plus hours of set up, no matter what. Like, we know exactly what needs to happen now. Like, there used to be guesswork. There's no guesswork now. We know what needs to happen, and it still takes two hours, you know. Yeah. But actually, that is a lot better. Our first time setting it up ever probably took five or six hours.

So we are getting way better at that, but it still just is a ton of work. It is. We got that finished set up. it looked awesome uh dave was getting pretty well set up and then big ryan from nebraska came up and was helping with the oh there we go right big ryan from nebraska another supporting member didn't mention him in the for he uh oh yes yes yep he judged all weekend and uh was around all all you know at everything too so there's another supporting member that i forgot to mention already also has a trx that he He judged all weekend and was around at everything too. So there's another supporting member that I forgot to mention already.

Also has a TRX that he let me launch a couple times, so that was pretty cool too. He also got the most foul-smelling beer I've ever smelled in my life. Yeah, you were saying that in the Discord. I didn't hear about that at all. Oh, it was like, I'm pretty sure like a mouse died in the ke i didn't i didn't hear about that at all oh it was like i'm pretty sure like a mouse died in the keg or something it wasn't like it wasn't like oh someone left this beer in the sun for a while it smells really bad it was like oh there's like a dead animal oh like i mean it was

it was horrific like he's like oh i smell this and it looked like a perfectly normal beer he's like hey smell this beer and i'm like whoa that is bad weird i was like you got to tell the bartender and the bartender went and like got that beer out of the tap and smelled it and immediately closed that this one's done yeah he and like had a bad look on his face you know so there's something wrong with that um but that was that was quite i was like woof and i think he took a drink of that too god yeah icky yeah um but not to derail i'm just gonna keep continually get derailed here that's what the whole weekend was just like a just a constant derailment yeah yeah so yeah we got done setting up the booth

what did we do after that oh then i think we were both thinking oh is that it for the night we both said oh we don't really have plans we'll see what happens and we both went home and then i get it well you would you would kind of ask me i think you really pop the idea in my head where you're like oh are you gonna do anything then and in my mind i'm like no i don't want to do anything i'm just i'm already shot, and it's Thursday. You can't even see on the video you posted today where it's just like, oh, I don't know, what's next? Or I'm already shot.

But then people were really using the Discord. They were, which is great. Can you imagine having this weekend and not having the Discord? No. It worked. It worked. That was a really valuable tool. And I joked around calling it, it's like if someone needed an if that was a really valuable tool and like i joked around

with calling it it's like if someone needed a ride just use kruber and people actually did that too like if you needed a ride you just put it out in the discord there was so much of that in there yeah hey i'm going here and here and people yep i'm in or i'll pick you up or i'll meet you there but uh you could tell like as we were getting caught up on messages that they were all at a bunch of them were at pounders. And I didn't really see that. I just got a message from you and it was like,

I'm going to pounders. And then right then I opened up the discord and I see, and I'm like, Oh yeah, I will be there too. No doubt about that. And I had like taken my socks and shirt off and was about ready to take a shower.

And I was like, you know what? I do not like some of them are probably going to leave any second because it's getting late. And I'm like, I'm not even going to shower. I don't even care. I was like, actually, why would I care? I don't care.

So I'm just like, I'm going to go right away and got there. And luckily I didn't miss very many of them, I don't think. And then you showed up a little bit later. And then like other crew just kept filtering in and out. And that yeah and uh that was a fun night oh and i wasn't expecting that i know i wasn't sure if people like oh i can't go out multiple nights in a row i have a meet coming up but then i then thinking back it's like well that was stupid of course people want to go out as much as possible they made the trip here your money's worth but yeah and so yeah we like we closed pounders down basically there was like two people at the bar when we left and i think the those living easiest on thursday night were matt chris and chris yeah they were living the easiest on uh i think they made the

comment that they had had one of every beer on the menu yeah and they closed their tab and then they went back again and got more beer which is really funny oh that was a fun night though it was just a lot of fun that was just sitting there just sitting there chatting that was a great time and yeah we got done that night went back next morning was weigh-ins right away and you got there weigh-ins were at eight i'm. I'm like, I'm not weighing in. I think I showed up at 8.10 thinking, well, I'll still probably, weigh-ins are what, two or three hours? And we're thinking 8.10,

I'm probably still going to be early. And boy, I felt like I was the last person in town that was there. Yeah, yep. People were waiting to get in the door when I got there. Which is hilarious. So yeah, there was a ton. So so we had there was two weigh-ins so

i mean yeah we didn't know how many would show up at each one but of the 60 people in the meet what do we think there was 40 some of them that came to the first weigh-in yeah i came into the early morning weigh-in so that just turned into a big morning get together because weighing in takes two seconds and everyone just hung out for the next three hours just about yeah well and it's nice we had the booth set up because a lot of the crew wanted to get in on the new stuff early. Yeah. Which actually that's worth mentioning too. We have a new, our, so everything, we released all this new stuff at the meet.

And now it actually, as we're recording, it's tomorrow, Thursday, we're going to drop all of that new stuff so that anything we didn't sell out of there, which some of it's kind of limited, but we are going to give everyone online a chance to get their hands on it. So the first thing is the meat tea, right? Mm-hmm. Which is the Lift Hard, Live Easy Classic Tea, which we don't have a lot of.

We do, and actually sizing has worked out decent. We don't have a lot of. We do, and actually sizing has worked out decent. We don't have a large volume of that left, but we do have most of the sizes available still. So you could get your hands on one of those if you act fast. Yeah, I think the only thing we're out of is extra small and small, right? I think we have a little bit of everything left. Not a ton, but there is a little bit of everything else left.

Right. So that is your chance at a piece of history right left. Not a ton, but there is a little bit of everything else left. Right. So that is your chance at a piece of history right there. Same with the Silly Pint, the Lift Hard Live Easy Classic Silly Pint. We don't have a ton of those left, but there are a few left of those, so you could get your hands on one of those also. And the Silly Pint, even like a whole bunch of the crew that maybe haven't had one before, when you get your hands on the Silly Pint in person, you're like, oh, that's what that is. I want that.

The number of people, even when I was at the booth that grabbed the cup, were holding it, looking at it. And then you could tell then they squeezed it and they go, oh, like, you know, when they finally get what the texture of that thing is. And that's what the Silly Pint's all about. The Silly Pint. We've got the Fanny Pack, which was a brand new, never before seen, which we still have available and will be for sale online for the first time tomorrow. The Fanny Pack. A lot of people used the Fanny Pack this weekend.

I saw a lot of Fanny Packs around. My wife was rocking it all weekend. She loved it. Okay. What else do we have we have the jorts yep the denim jorts are restocked yep denim jorts are restocked yes finally and then the camo jorts and denim is up to 4x we do and we still as of right now have three we've never before had 3X and 4X. We right now have 3X and 4X available. And we had some big boys who were rocking the 4X. So, I mean, you're going to have to be pretty damn big

to not be able to wear the 4X shirt. I'm not just saying that. You really do got to be really big, like maybe bigger than anyone we've ever met in our lives. Right. And I guess point being there that we cover a lot of range now on those denim jorts and then you were talking about the camo jorts yes so that's the new one uh we took the jorts denim jorts that you know and love and we put camo on them and those are finally ready to go to i got i wore mine to dinner the other night with the strength

co i got to meet up with grant and d and uh i wore mine to dinner and i felt like a class act in those things i love the camo i do too i might even like him better than the denim i wasn't gonna say it i wasn't gonna pick favorites but if you really made me i might actually pick the camo over the regular denim i also always like everything that's new, so that's probably maybe what I'm leaning towards. Yeah, that's the shiny new thing. The camo ones, just for reference, if you have the other ones,

the camo ones maybe are just like slightly snugger than the, they're still just as stretchy, but they're like just slightly. Yeah, I think if you were before, if you were buying the jorts, the regular jorts, and you thought maybe I'm between sizes, then for sure in the camo ones, you're going to be between sizes. Like go with the size bigger if you're in doubt on camo. In the camo ones. Yeah.

Yeah. And then we also have some of the meat posters available. Actually, we're selling those for like five bucks. You could order one of those. meat posters uh available actually we're selling those for like five bucks you could order one of those or while supplies last we don't have that many of them but while supplies last if you order over 75 you know in this when we release this drop we're going to include one of those for free with your order and also here's the deal if you order any of like the meat stuff you know like the meat tea or the silly pint or anything also we'll throw,

we've got a few extra programs. Oh, there's a few left. Awesome. Yeah. The programs are awesome. We'll include a commemorative program along in there too. If you order like something with this logo on it,

there you go. So yeah, you can get the poster and there's one other thing, right? Collars. The collars. Yeah. The red massonomics Strength Co. Collar Collab.

Not a lot of those left either. Those are pretty popular at the meet, but we do have some. I would not wait. If you want one of those, you know, there's a good chance those don't ever come back. So this is kind of, I mean, would call those uh limited edition or you know whatever you want to say about it like this is your chance to get those there's not a lot of pairs left yeah and if you're not familiar with those you'll have to take the pictures take a look at the pictures yeah they they clamp on a little different than your standard yeah your standard

that's what everyone was using in the warm-up room at the meet yeah they do look really cool though they look they really pop yep is that everything then in the drop that's the drop okay i sidetracked to the drop yeah and so that was all for sale at the booth and we did sell a lot of all that stuff but uh we had a feeling we would so we did order quite a bit so luckily there's a little extra for the people that weren't there they can hopefully get in on some of the action here and then yeah that was friday after morning weigh-ins what did we afternoon weigh-ins yeah what did we do i don't think i did i'm trying to think of what i did during the day on friday and i couldn't even tell you now do you remember um i guess i came back for a while and we were getting set up we i was getting set up for the friday night party oh yeah you yes i think i think i went home for a little bit too

and then because then we came back for afternoon weigh-ins yep yep then yeah i came back for afternoon weigh-ins it was a much slower day than the it was a much slower session in the morning since two-thirds of the people had already weighed was this much slower session in the morning since two thirds of the people had already weighed in. Yeah. Hung out in the afternoon a little bit. And then after that it was getting ready for party time because the backyard meat party of the century was happening in at your house.

Yeah. So yeah, I got home and by basically by the time I got home from, I had time to shower. I got home and took a shower and then got home from, I had time to shower. I got home and took a shower and then I got out of the shower and dressed and people were showing up for the party. So it was party time. By the time we showed up, I don't know, we said the party started at 7.30, I think. I want to say we probably showed up like 7.45-ish and the cars were lined up and down the street for an hour you know over not

well over an hour since then yeah it was i parked in the driveway because i knew no one else would which made like oh nobody parked in the driveway no one was parked in the driveway and i'm just thinking oh yeah no one's no one can't believe nobody did no there was not a single vehicle there and uh so yeah we parked up there but i was surprised when i got in the backyard there was probably over 50 people there when i showed up, and I was not that late. Yeah, there was a lot of people there. That's the most people I've ever had in my yard, that's for sure. And, I mean, everyone was there.

Everyone made it, got to meet up with, I mean, catch up with everyone, talk about all types of stuff. We had beers. We had sparkling waters. We talk about all types of stuff. We had beers. We had sparkling waters. We had snacks. We had pizza. We had wings. We had everything.

No one was expecting food. You didn't tell anyone there was going to be food. And so you definitely surprised everyone by having the. And it's funny, you know, like people hadn't planned on food, I don't think. We had like 10 pizzas, 5 pounds of wings, and many pounds of pulled pork. And it was all gone.

And like several pans of like big scotch roux pans. And people had apparently eaten before they showed up. Oh, and there was calzones and all this stuff. And like it was all gone. Yeah. Yeah. And the food was good, though was that was awesome it was good i think the friday night party was really good i maybe underestimated how much fun that would be

and like that's a part of making this you know this weekend wasn't just a meet it was a lot of stuff around the meat too and that's one of those things the friday night party was really fun where it's just like everyone gets this chance to hang out before the meet even and also like people are on different schedules some people had a little extra time to hang out prior to meet some people had a little extra time to hang out after meet yes it was really good having a friday evening like oh without the friday there's a ton of people i wouldn't have got a chance to catch up with right just because either we didn't cross paths as much on saturday night or they were gone so i'm super glad we did the friday thing that was perfect yeah the friday night was really

really fun we got a couple like good group pictures i know some people were already got you know we missed uh certain people in the groups and stuff but that was fun just the hanging out and you know i don't even know, there was just not near enough time to talk to everyone. It's not too often. You have to maybe go back to college to where you can go to a house party and say, I know everyone here.

And I mean, here you would. You're like, okay, I'm done talking to these five guys. Just turn around. Oh, I know all five of these guys. I can talk to them. Okay, I know all four of these guys. I can talk like there was never anywhere you could go and be like i don't know who these people are so i can't talk to them and if you didn't know who they are you just talk to them and then realize oh i actually do know who you are so we're actually our buddies

too aren't we yeah we've actually had a lot of exchanges online and not even known it yeah right so that was super it didn't go that late i think we wrapped that up by like 10 and actually i was uh i had parked my car at my brother-in-law's which is like three or four blocks down or my pickup down there earlier in the day just so like it'd be one less car on the street here for more people to park too i think people were parked all the way down there anyways actually but it was like 10 o'clock and me and my daughter were walking down the street to go get it was i mean it's dark out but you know very dark and my daughter were walking down the street to go get it. I mean, it was dark out, but, you know, very dark out by this time. Walking down the street in our socks to go get my pickup and bring it home.

So I'd be there in the morning because it was going to be an early morning. And then two carloads of people. I'm like, oh, these people are definitely looking for like our house or something like that. And it was the spotter and loader crew. They had just got in town. Oh, they did. Yeah. And they're like, oh, looks like we missed the party.

I'm like, yeah. Like we just, just the last of them just left. And they're like, well, do you think we can get in at the event center, you know, to go check out? We just want to like scope out the area and make our plans for the next day. And I'm like, yeah, go in there, check it out. Uh, we just want to like scope out the area and make our plans for the next day. And I'm like, yeah, go in there,

check it out. So they all went at like 10 or 11 at night, went to the OD to, uh, make their, yeah, to make their plan on the spotting and loading. Oh,

that's crazy for the next day. Yeah. I knew they said they got there that night, but I didn't realize that you actually saw them and they went to the, went to the venue. Yeah. It was the Minnesota department of lifter safety. And that, and they know their stuff. It's not just, they all got, we stood right on the venue. Yeah, it was the Minnesota Department of Lifter Safety. And

they know their stuff. We stood right on the street. They all got crawled out of their cars and I met them all right there, right in the middle of the street. That's good. That's good. So, yeah, for that wrapped up Friday night, Saturday morning was the big meet.

Got there. Meet started at what, nine? That's where part one of the YouTube video ends. Yeah, and that is where part one of the youtube video ends so this is now spoiler land for anyone else that's i guess so stop this and if you want the youtube video to be your first exposure yeah we haven't kicked people out of the discord yet so maybe they'll just get the full taste of things but um yeah saturday the meet started and you know, it never even crossed my mind who was going to announce it. Cause we never really said that for sure. And Dave was just fired up and ready to go first thing in the morning. And that worked perfect. That worked so good. And he does a really good job. You can tell, yeah, you can tell he does a lot of meets because yeah, he keeps the

energy going. He knows what to say. Yeah. Dave did awesome on the, I I've never heard him. I don't know. Did he, he didn't announce that we went did we i don't i don't think so no i think he had someone else yeah and so i didn't even know he did that at all and and i saw him doing it i'm like damn dave you're rocking it man this is great yeah and uh we started on time we we were scrambling a little bit to get the live stream up and going yeah i mean ultimately i think we got it like just in time that nothing got delayed delayed there uh but so the live stream that video the live stream is also available in our it'll live on our youtube channel you can check that out if you click on live yeah you have to click on the live tab on youtube to see that but it is there one thing to

note because it was either brought up or people don't know what the deal is but if you go and watch it there is no sound and you say well why didn't you record sound didn't realize this until dave brought it up beforehand but you can't record an event where there's music playing in the background or youtube's going to hit you with copyright violations so really the only way around that in in the setup we were using was just to say, okay, we just won't do sound. And so that's how, but you had the overlays for all of the OpenLifter data is on there. So you can see the attempts and what people are going for. But yeah, you just don't have sound.

And that is why, is because of the copyright thing. Yeah, it would be really fun to have someone announcing the live stream for next year if we can figure out a way to do that. I mean, people do it. You know, like Anthony Fortino, they live stream. I mean, it's commonly done, so it certainly can be done. That would be one thing I can think of right off the bat that we could really improve next year is making the live stream announced. Because there was, you know, it was watched by over a thousand you know coming and going but

there's over a thousand people that popped on there uh to check it out so maybe you would have kept eyes on longer too if there's something even though you could see the name and then weights and everything like that if there's just somebody saying something that's probably keeps attention for a little bit longer definitely yeah yeah that would absolutely be a thing that we could do to to yeah pick up the production quality a little bit one of the few things i should say right um but yeah i mean lifting started and after it kind of felt like the day was just on autopilot a whirlwind after that i mean we we specifically i don't think we really had to put out any fires

did we it was just the day they took off and it was kind of out of our hands then wasn't it yeah not really i mean i was getting tools for people getting extension cords you know eventually you know the food truck showed up and i'm getting them open and set up and make sure they got their outlet and stuff like that it's just nothing just little stuff yeah i mean that was all pretty smooth though like for the most part yeah things we kind of expected it wasn't like oh my god the power went down over here no i was worried about that actually happening because we had so much stuff plugged in all over the place i was like i hope we don't blow like some main uh yeah fuse break or something up to big ryan does have a good point the only oopsie on

the day was when deadlift started which we're getting slightly ahead of ourselves we realized we didn't have the deadlift jacks but that is what someone ran and got them yeah that's so i think maybe the women's flight the first flight they didn't have deadlift jacks to warm up with possibly yep and that's not as big of it i mean they're not working up to 600 pounds so it's not as big of a deal either but yeah by the time the guys or the second flight got to deadlifts they had their jacks and that's one of the benefits of the gym being five minutes away you can run there grab that stuff and no one knows so that that was a good save having that yeah i'm just thinking another thing you know our wives were running the booth on meet day so we didn't really have to you know i jumped in there out occasionally to help out if it was busy and stuff like that but we weren't we weren't running we weren't manning

the booth which is awesome to not have to be tied to that oh yes that made life a lot easier and even leah said this is kind of fun selling stuff and it's like oh you think this is fun wait till you get to the arnold and then it goes from it's being fun to this is just too much right right right it is fun and the booth is fun too because you get to meet all these people because they want you know they're gonna come up and talk to you so like you're it's like these forced interactions almost where you get get these all these opportunities to meet people but I enjoyed it because I when I wasn't busy with other stuff could just you know say hi to a whole bunch of people quick and you know just get to a whole bunch of people quick

and you know just get a chance to thank people for coming and stuff like that it was that part of or like check in with the lifters and just see how it's going or stand in the warm-up room for a little I like hanging out by like the on deck circle too and just like you know slapping backs and uh you know just yelling and watching and stuff that's just fun like i've always enjoyed that if i'm not doing a beat or even if i am i love being right in uh that's just fun being right in on the action when other people are going it's just i don't know that's that's about as good as it gets actually at a meet as being right there when people are walking out because everyone's so into it yeah in that moment, and people are just focused and fired up and ready to go.

And then when people are hitting meets, everyone's getting jacked up then. Yes. Yeah, that's all awesome. And you actually got in on some announcing. Oh, yeah, I did do some announcing. I didn't do that much in the squats. I think I maybe rounded out like the last flight of squats or something like that. And that was fun. I've never done that before so there was a moment when i've you know i hadn't paid i i told dave you know what if he wants to break at any point in time i'm i'll figure it out

you know i'm not too worried about it but it wasn't until like i wasn't until like you pick up the microphone and then you're like well wait what do you say like you take it for granted what other people are doing when they do that you know you're just like oh yeah they're doing a great job he's just saying what how much weight it is and their name and stuff but then you're like well what actually are they saying and when are they saying it and you know um so it took me a few times through and then I'm like, okay, I feel like I kind of understand a flow that I can have for myself on that at least, you know? Yes. Oh, and then you had it down.

Well, and it's the benefit of it being all massonomics people is, you know, where people are from, you know, their nicknames or made up nicknames and you know, a little bit about their lifts. So that makes it like, you have like the, the insider's playbook to, to what to say. I do like at our meet, you know, me announcing our meet,book to what to say about that. At our meet, me announcing our meet, I have something to say about every single person. There's already 15 guys that you lift with every day, so you know their entire lifting history right there.

And then the rest of them are supporting members, so I kind of know, at least at the very least, know where they're from or maybe know some fact about them. Ryan goes up and I can announce that he is in HBO's star show, hit show, Righteous Gemstones. And the, you know, the crowd likes, you know, you can announce that Lou's a chiropractor or Jake's a doctor or, or just all that stuff.

And people, people like it because you're adding some commentary, but also it is stuff you know. You wouldn't know this if you were any other announcer. When our crowd in Aberdeen, I could tell they were excited just announcing we're all... Whenever someone was from a long ways away, I tried to throw that in on occasion just because that is interesting. And there's always like this, huh, came from New Jersey, huh?

It's just like you could kind of hear that reaction sometimes from people my favorite though was probably i started calling bryce woolman uh the beast from the southeast that is the best that was my favorite thing i love that i can't i can't ever not think of that now that's just in my head is yeah the beast from the southeast i love it and the first time he did it it was right before it must have been right before his like third attempt squat was he's going for like a 700 pound squat and he's like right next on deck and he's looking right at me while i do it and i call him and he's like laugh you know he's like and i remember because you said that and i'm just thinking i go oh tanner do you think he heard that because i bet he'd think it's really funny and you go yeah he looked at me i know he

heard it and then i saw him afterwards like oh did you hear what Tanner called you he goes yeah I was walking out it was hard not to laugh that was my favorite and then so I you know I reserved that for every one of his heavy attempts is make sure to call him the beast from the southeast and it was fun

your brother Ryan he attempted a 666 deadlift so i got to say the uh mark of the mark of the beast yep that was good too those thing yeah yeah no i think you i think you rocked it for having your first meet announcing this was like the perfect thing to ease into announcing wasn't it it would be i wouldn't i don't know that i even want i mean i could give could give it a shot. Like it just, so this was fun, I guess. Like, I don't know if another, no other one would ever be this fun because it's just like, well, all of a sudden I have to look at something like where someone's from. Yeah. Can you imagine having to do that for a whole list of like 50 lifters that you have no idea

who they are? That, that would actually get kind of old, but right, right now this was just so much fun. Although my one, uh, you know, the thing that was getting me is my voice was just starting to go and go and go throughout the weekend. It's not even fully recovered now on like Wednesday. It is better than it was, what, Sunday night when I heard you. My voice can't handle these like four-day hangouts.

Well, and it's not just it's four days of hanging out. It's four days of basically out it's four days of basically being in environments where you yell the entire time and constantly talking because there's all of these people you want to talk to well because and you're in a bar setting or a party setting or i don't know you're at the meet where there's music you're just always yelling you're never talking you're yelling the entire time and i remember gino when we had him on the podcast he said you know you use the microphone to your advantage you know and i'm like i couldn't have had it any closer to my mouth like that's what i you know i i was eating the microphone trying to get it to pick up my voice but he did talk about that too it's like conserving your voice a little

bit which right before i remember thinking like really and now i totally get that after doing the arnold a few times and and that is the flow of the meat too we talked about that with them benches benches just slightly it toned down you know by the third attempt end of squats things get pretty lit at a meet and then bench it really it really uh tones down down a notch the occasional third attempt that gets people going but it is that's what i was gonna say even like i particularly pick up on it when i was doing the announcing is like when third attempts come that's when it's exciting like really the first attempt is it's really just so it's still another warm-up almost like yeah people are coming out it's just you you can't be yelling about every single attempt

that someone comes up. You're like, oh, get real excited for this guy's first attempt. He's going to do 150 pounds more than this in a couple minutes. You know, like it just. 60 lifters, nine attempts total. Yeah, yeah. Let's get people fired up for 500-plus attempts all day long. That's just not how it works.

So you've got to pick and choose some spots there. but bench in particular just we we've talked about it but like the lack of visibility on the bench the lower weights the fact that the person's laying down and not facing the crowd all of that stuff just makes it a little less interesting i think honestly it's it's it's perfect that's during the middle of the day people People can eat lunch while they're watching that. And luckily for us, the food truck showed up about 11. I think the beer stand opened about 11. So people had their concessions and drinks waiting for them, ready to go. And there was people getting food from the food truck

and beer from the beer vendor all day, the whole rest of the day. And the meat kept rolling so fast largely in part well largely in part to dave and what he's doing of course but then also the spotter and loader crew and i don't know if he specifically highlighted on the podcast but they are so good the number of i mean that the most compliments i heard the entire weekend was for them like people oh yeah just yeah even people that had no idea what was going on knew that they were on top of it that's my mom and my aunt you know not power lifters obviously you know just like people that a bunch

of people that have never been to a power lifting meet before and just like and wow those people that are like changing out the weights and and doing that stuff they are just crazy impressive and it is a sight to be seen honestly they are they're just they're just a machine that it's all working they're all on the same page they're just cranking stuff out all day long i think that they cut like two hours off of the meat time i don't think that's a crazy statement at all i think that's yeah pretty accurate yeah yeah because we got done lifting was totally done at what like 5 10 5 15 oh 3 30 i think oh shit yeah yeah yeah sorry sorry i'm thinking yes i'm thinking actually when we i

think we were out of there by 5 30 weren't we yeah yeah yeah yeah 3 30 um Yeah, for 60 lifters going all day. Yeah, 4.15-ish. We talked about the very first meet we ever did. I don't think we left the gym until 9.30 at night, right? And do you think there was any more than 60 lifters? Oh, my God. No, I mean, you could pull up and open powerlifting. If you told me to guess, I'd say there was like 45 lifters.

Yeah, we were there until like, you're not even joking. No, I remember thinking like oh my god i didn't realize what went into a power in there for like 12 hours that that time weren't we yeah i'm looking oh it was 53 lifters but less than this yeah less than this that we just i mean we were there till we it was like i'm not we're not exaggerating it might have been like 10 until yeah at least 9 p.m like 9 p.m would be the very earliest that we were we were done by but i do i do think it was more than that even yeah uh after bench of course deadlifts rolled around and deadlifts are the funnest part of whether you're yeah whether deadlift is your least favorite event or your most favorite event

like from a spectating standpoint it's's just there's nothing in the way. There's no equipment there to get in the way. It's just a person standing there picking something off the floor like everyone gets it. The spotters are kind of out of there. Yeah, it's very obvious if you get the lift or not. There's not room for interpretation like the other lifts. And boy, do you get to see some deadlift battles too.

There was so many people where they just have these. Grinding it out. I know. Yeah, those were crazy. battles too there was so many people where they just have these grinding out i know yeah those were crazy i mean you expect to see a couple of those but yeah the number of people that i'm just thinking about i can't i can't hang on to a deadlift like that and just keep fighting and grinding and people did it yeah that's it's different out of meat too you know like people do just have a a sixth gear out of meet that they just, you can't normally go to, or you won't normally go to where you're just like, nope, I am going to continue to do this.

Like it's like, it will have to be ripped out of my hands to not get this. And it like saw that like seven times where people just like push to the to the red line which is it's fun to watch uh you know jake jake like passed out after his last deadlift yeah it was uh and uh jonathan hit the floor hit the dirt on his last deadlift he did there was some there were some cool moments there definitely some cool ones the crowd was good too oh yeah yeah and that was i mean we had our numbers like do we i don't know if we had an official final count but i think we estimated over 250 people by yeah i think there's probably more like 300 spectators something like that it didn't we're in a very big place so people it

didn't look like it was yeah we had full we had full floor seating, and then we had, what, 10, 15 rows of bleachers for people, too. So they could spread out a little bit. And then on top of that, the number of people that always just want to stand anyways. Yeah, there was a lot of people that just stood all weekend down on the floor. Yeah, there's not a lot of sporting events you go to, and you can just stand kind of anywhere you want. But yeah, people were spread out. People were spread out everywhere. And there's not a lot of powerlifting meets you can go to

where you can say there was 300 people in attendance at all, you know? Yeah, and that's 300 people in attendance. That's not talking about the 100 other people that were there. So at times there's... Yeah, the 100 other people between competitors, sponsors, people with booths, judges, all that stuff. I mean, it's sponsors, people with booths, judges, all that stuff. I mean, it's another 100 people easy. Yeah, so booth-wise, of course, we had ours,

and the Strength Co. was set up there next to us. There's a lot of their red Lift Hard Live Easy hats for sale, and I do know that they still have some of those left. So if you want to get one of those, check out their site to get one of those. There was a lot of those hats walking around in that building on that day, though. There was a lot. And then even at the zoo that night, there was a lot of those hats, too. Barefoot shoes was set up there.

Then Big Mo had his beef jerky that he was slinging for Beef Logic, of course. And then Big Nathan and Big Abby. Build Fast. Build Fast Formula was set up there on the other side of the arena. So we kind of had the booze sponsors wrapping the ends of the crowd almost. I don't know how to describe it but just kind of shielding off the unused space of the arena yep yep oh maybe we should read some ads before we get too far oh yeah yeah i guess you're i guess you're probably right

well let me uh let me tell you about the strength co the strength co as seen this weekend at the lift hard live easy classic i I loaded over to their site. Our warm-up room was plumb full of Strength Co. go-to plates. The number of times I heard people comment between being in the warm-up room and loading these plates up and everything about how smooth yet easy to grip that these plates were, I couldn't hear that joke enough this weekend, to tell you the truth. All the made in

america smooth yet easy to grip uh it's funny at one point in time i'm in the back of my pickup this is right when the meat ends and there's an assembly line of people and uh you know grant is one of the people handing me his go-to plates and he's like oh did you ever notice how smooth but yet easy to grip these are you know and i'm like sweats roll just roaring off of me and like working the hardest i've worked all day but i still had time to laugh at like the uh the humor of that moment even then was not lost at me that grant the maker of these plates is in aberdeen in our meet, handing me over the bed of my pickup to take back to my gym. Yeah. And I'm like,

yep, these are smooth yet easy to grip. Aren't they? So yeah, check out their plates. I do believe that they're the best plates and that's not just a sales pitch. That's not just a clever sales pitch. They are the best plates.

If you're looking to outfit a gym, your home gym, anything like that, I would recommend to anyone to buy these plates everyone that can't checked out massonomics gym this weekend there's just there's a wow factor when you see our red racks and they're just lined with these black strength co plates just there's nothing that looks better than that in a gym i don't think so check those out check out uh their Lift Hard Live Easy hats.

They've still got some of those left. And then check out the Strength Co. Massonomics Collar Collab that we've got on our site. Thank you, the Strength Co. Thanks for coming to the meet. It was a very fun weekend with Grant and Vicky, obviously, too. I'm so glad they made the trip. Yeah, we got to, and Connor, and Ron.

You know, honestly, like, I got to hang out with Connor a lot, too. We all, all four of us lifted together on Monday morning after the meet, and that alone was a lot of fun. Also, check out the Strength Co. Make sure you subscribe to their YouTube channel. They've had already put out at least one video from this weekend, and there's more to come. They got to do some Atlas stone training at the gym.

And Scantz was giving everyone pointers. I think Megan was there giving them pointers. It's a lot of fun. And then the next morning, we did this deadlift workout. There'll be video of all that stuff out there. So make sure you're subscribed to their YouTube channel too. And today's episode is also brought to you by Barefoot Shoes, who was also at the meet slinging gear.

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make sure to use code MASSANOMICS for a little something special on your next order. That's code MASSANOMICS at barefoot.shoes. So we kind of did, there was something special going on at the meet with Barefoot Shoes. I don't know if we're fully letting the cat out of the bag to everyone formally yet, but we did get to show something off for the first time there that was very cool and i would just say stay tuned from us maybe more on that even when we record next week we'll officially yeah we'll have details yeah in the next week or

two on that but we do got some very exciting things coming up with barefoot so yeah you're not going to want to miss out on that it's going to be great is there anything else about the meat specifically i mean we could honestly talk about it forever a lot of good performances yeah a lot of strong performances uh i mean it was just it was so awesome like a lot of people working hard. Yes, look for the YouTube video. I have just, I was running around all day shooting probably way more footage than I should have, but I'll have lots of, if you want to see performances,

like Tanner was saying, go to YouTube and click that live tab and you can see the full six hours of the meet played back. And the results are in open powerlifting. Yes, and the results are in open powerlifting. But if you want more of just the running around, seeing guys having a good time, guys and gals, I should say then.

Yeah. Check out the YouTube video. That'll be out. Well, this will come out on Monday. The YouTube video will be out later in the week. That'll round out the rest of the meat. And then like,

like the second the meat was done, like in true fashion of the way everything ran and went, it was like time for awards. Like, you know, part of that thing you talked about, like our first meet we did back in like 2015, I swear we waited for like an hour.

I think they had to calculate them out by hand for an hour. We're open power. Busted out the abacus to figure out who gets what award. Half of them were wrong. You know, like I remember that still, like everyone was like, Oh, that's not right. just. Half of them were wrong, you know, like I remember that still. Like everyone was like, oh, that's not right. I wasn't in that class, you know.

No, now I'm pretty sure I was supposed to. I think you just hit the done button in open powerlifting and they go, here's the list. Like there's nothing to really even figure out, you know. Like I was trying to load up the equipment. I was like, I figured I had like, you know, 10 minutes to get that done quick. And I was like, oh, no, no, we need to hand out the award so i i really enjoyed we got to hand out of all the awards you know it was so

fun which essentially meant we handed out something to everyone in the meet yeah not everyone got to win a award unfortunately because there was some classes some of the weight classes were yeah were much more populated deep yeah but a lot of people got to win and a lot of people with there were so many awards at our power lifting meet it was just it was insanity but even though everything felt so fun even the award ceremony i'm i've said this many times about it but i'm i'm so biased on all of it like take anything i say with a grain of salt but everything i think was so fun and like even the award ceremony i'm'm like, I don't know, this is all just fun. People are doing wacky stuff.

Oh, every person that would come up that we knew had something dumb they were doing or some act they were putting on. And we had like Big Emmett wanted to do the prom picture. You know, Big Lou takes a fireball shot. Scantz is pretending he's really old running up to the platform. And if it wasn't that we made we made sure to have a like a one-liner in our back pocket like every person to you know like yeah and and that was the other thing of you know nick nick uh took photos and video for people that signed up for those packages and nick does great work and he took photos of all of us with all the people for

the awards which was also awesome we have all of those now they're just yeah so many things like that that worked out great and i enjoyed we got to give our way you know we had all the traditional awards we had the best lifter awards which you know david got these awesome championship belts made so jonathan won male uh megan won female and then you know like they got to wear their belts out at the after party and everything like that. So that was really cool. But I really enjoyed getting to give away our five special Masonomics. Wooden plate awards. Yeah, that was a lot of fun. And you probably could have, one of those things,

you could have made cases for some other people being worthy of winning. We debated it for a while while the meet was going on. We had our front runners and we're like, okay, we'll see what happens if anything changes. And for a few of them, some things did change at the end. But yeah, we took that seriously. Yeah, we didn't just like have someone in mind. We watched what was going on. We actually did not have, we never pre-said who we think should win any of these awards.

It wasn't until like the meat was like two-thirds over that we discussed it for the first time yep i think i think bench was about done and we were yeah we had consensus i better talk about this a little bit in case we don't uh in case we don't get a chance again but which is good we did we would have ran out of time and on the spot that would have been very hard uh it would have yes yes i'm glad we did that and it just is how funny it was for the awards so there was medals which the medals looked amazing and very cool yeah so there was a lot of medals given out there was our special wooden plate awards that were given out there was belts like wrestling belts that were given out to best lifters there's also banners that were given out

so you have one behind you yeah attention uh mostly squat videos matt uh i think i had my eye on this banner uh you know i was like i would really like to be the best male submasters lifter because that is also my class and uh it's going to cost him quite a pretty penny to get this back he's the rightful owner of this but he couldn't take it with him on the plane. I think I'm going to be the Obama meddling himself now and I'm now officially the best submasters lifter from the meet.

It's going to cost a pretty penny to get that thing shipped. Luckily, he, like a lot of the crew, gives us pretty pennies. Maybe he will get it back. Yeah, so we got done with all the uh all the awards and i cannot believe how fast teardown went and we had that place you know you had a ton of people to help well first of all it makes the day so much easier when you can drive trucks right to the weight so it's oh it turns into 10 steps yeah the amount of time you spend at the

arnold just walking back and forth is is yeah insane so to just drive it right there load the stuff like you were like trailers loaded and i'm thinking awards got done i think actually five minutes ago you had the trailer loaded so fast yeah and so you said yeah just do what you can to get the booth packed up and i had i'm just trying to think it was me mary leah amy your mom your aunt right is that yeah um there was like two or three other people like we had like nine ripping nine people that were and they were not there to chat they all wanted to go to so they were just getting that booth whipped out. I mean, there was nothing left of it. At the Arnold, that is just a huge project

to get that thing put away. And we had that thing tore apart so fast. When you showed back up, it was done. You know, everything was packed up, which I didn't think that was going to happen. And so, yeah, you pulled right back in. We loaded everything up again. And at that point, we just kind of tidied up a few things

and we were done in the place like i could not believe how fast that went yeah we were out of there i think by 5 30 like pre-pre-place was empty yes clean dave getting loaded his stuff all loaded up at the same point you know dave his wife ryan all the people that were you know the refs and judges that were all helping him, they were all getting loaded up. So we were kind of all done like at the same time. Yeah. And I mean, before the meet, we were fully prepared to go back on Sunday and do some cleaning and putting away and all that.

And that was not necessary at all, which made life so much better. It's really funny. If you would have been a spectator that would have just been in there watching deadlifts at 3 p.m., say you would have been a spectator that would have just been in there watching deadlifts at 3. PM. Say you would have fell asleep and woke, you know, woke up at five 30 PM and been like, what happened?

It's like, it was an empty ice rink again. There was just, right. There was just the little holders for the chairs. And that, that was all that was left in there. That was it.

Like, Oh my God, how did this happen? Like what went on here? It was exactly how we found it um so other other things i forgot to mention from the meat just random thoughts quick the spotters and loaders all had the same uniform on which was the jorts with the competition and that looked amazing that looks so good that was clutch i love that they had that that was clutch for sure that

was uh that was a key that that was uh and also like what did seem like a uniform then it looked very intentional because it was you knew that was they were the spotters and loaders i mean not that there wasn't other people wearing that same thing but it was just very obvious who they were then yeah uh god i'm trying to think there's anything else from the meat i i know we could think of things forever but i think we hit all the high points that were worth discussing there uh as far as the meat you know we've talked about what one of the because like we want to be critical of ourselves because if this happens again you know we want it to be better improved and and better. And, you know, the number one thing, obviously we were in a built building that was not a seed and it was, it was, it was hot in there.

And we had been aware that that was going to be a thing. So we had like several big fans going to try and do what we could about that. Yeah. Like we were having the door open early in the day and in the evening and stuff when we could to try and cool it up, like keep it as cool as possible. But by the time the end of the day came around, it was not cool in there. No, it was like up until noon. It was it was pretty good until noon. Yeah.

I mean, it definitely got warmer, like right away in the morning. It was fine. No, no big deal. Yeah. By noon, it was starting to get warm because you had to shut the garage door because it was getting hot outside. And so then that last couple hours hours it was getting pretty toasty uh luckily we did have those big fans if you were near a fan and the air was moving because that's crazy that building doesn't have any type of fans or anything in it which seems insane that they don't have that at all but if you were where

there was air movement it was pretty tolerable it really wasn't bad it was just if you were in a dead zone where you didn't have a fan on you and you were running around doing stuff then it got pretty warm but like we were talking to you know our buddy chris he was in the stands watching and he goes honestly i was just sitting there doing nothing i i didn't even really think about it until someone came over and said how hot they were and then i realized oh yeah i guess it is warm but he goes when you're sitting there doing nothing it's not too bad right right that's yeah for like us we're when you're constantly like uh running back and forth yeah chasing after things yeah seeing what people run in a booth and you know you're like oh you're announcing so you're walking all over and i'm getting camera shots so i'm bending over and crawling on the

floor and running to the other side and that shit's hot or if you're lifting you know that's hot yeah so that would bet that honestly that was the biggest thing that we knew we could have improved on the entire day with just yeah finding another looking into what more options exist for right like that's the number one like if anyone had a critique that's usually the thing that uh they said you know also if we could add audio or sound announcing on the live stream that would have been nice um i don't know i'd honestly be curious to hear what other people's uh what what could have been better like the meat i believe ran so smoothly you have to try hard to come up with something i mean there's probably other things but you're probably really searching. You're nitpicking at that point if you're finding

something that needs to be improved. Right. Yeah. The meet ran really well and I think it was just a lot of fun too. I think lifters had a lot of fun at that meet. So we shut it down and we told everyone

the official after party starts at the zoo bar at what did we say 7 30 7 30 yeah 7 30 or 8 i don't think i got there until god it was probably 8 45 i think when i finally got there and it was great i i mean you forget that no one goes to the zoo it's the bar that no one goes to until 11 o'clock at night so it works perfect for us when we got there at 8 45 i i counted there was only one table in the entire bar that i did not know i knew every single person in that bar besides that which was great just everywhere you walk to i know you i know you and we're at the bar we're having a great time it was it was so much fun i think i got there just right after like about like 7 45 and there was already probably like 75 mass you know i bet everyone must have got there by like 6 30 because there was already you know i wasn't one of the early ones i think there was i

mean there was over 100 people there that were associated with the meat wasn't there oh i think easily yeah by the time you consider uh you know, refs, spotters, loaders, competitors, all their plus ones, everyone that's sort of Massanomics adjacent. Yeah, I bet there was over 100, or there was 100. I think that's a fair estimate. It was fun. All the TVs in there had the Massanomics Lift Hard,

Leave Easy logo on it, and the owners were there and stuff. That was really cool oh and everyone was it's after you have a meat like there's very few times where you're in as good of a mood as you are after you get done with a meat even if it doesn't go the way you expect you're still just no it's just like a feeling of accomplishment you did something and god everyone was in the best mood everyone's being so goofy it was oh it was so much fun i could have i could have stayed there all night and i almost did stay there all night i think i stayed till uh 12 45 12 50 ish and then my wife was like maybe we should go now and i also did realize at that point i had said goodbye to a lot of people and the bar had really at that point taken the shift from

mass economics people to locals and people I don't know so our numbers had gotten significantly smaller at that point too yeah it really there was a shift like around midnight someone pointed over to me and there was just a flood of people in there you know just flooding it you know not our people and I I so I made it past you did he passed, uh, when you left at the bar, I think you beat me by a few minutes. Yeah. And then, uh, what happened to me as the same feeling, I, I mean, I haven't had this in a long time, but when I'm out at a bar, I, and I, and I start to feel like there's just way more people that I don't know that I do. And I just like, I get stuck around some people I don't know. I get like anxiety and I'm like, yeah, I just don't want to be here.

Like, I just like, I don't like this. I don't like all these people I don't know. And I want out of here. But when like the first four hours, that was like, I can't imagine anything more fun than that. Like having a bar with you and a hundred people that all just finished a powerlifting meet together and like you know all these people one way or another like that was so fun i just it couldn't have there's just not enough out there's not enough time to really appreciate it all even yeah the maybe the biggest bummer i see chris just mentioned this in the discord was that the number of people that were flying out sunday morning six in the morning, which means you need to get up about four in the morning. There was a lot. So a lot of people did have to bail out somewhat early and I do not blame them one bit, but in a perfect world, a few hours. Oh, they did. They did. Yes. Yes. In a perfect

world, those flights would all be Sunday night, Monday morning. And you'd be like, we're partying the night away and everyone's just there having a great time. And that's just me being selfish and wanting people to stick around. Right. And some people just by nature, they're not going to stay out until 2 a.m. Yeah. But some people did. Some of the people – I was with, I think towards the end of the night,

I was with Paul Foss and Bryce Wollman and Justin Lindner, and I know Scantz was there late, and Big Murph. the end of the night i was with like paul foss and bryce woolman and justin linder and uh i know scantz was there late and big murph big murph was living easy uh on saturday night at the zoo too there was there was definitely a good crowd of people that lived easy pretty late into that night you know i know mason and a bunch of people stuck out, stuck, stuck around pretty late. Grant, Grant and D and Connor and Ron. They were all, we were back. Yeah.

We were back with all the strength people out on the, out on the patio for so long with them. And it was, it was late, late. And like the, I think the last people I talked to before I left was Paul, Bryce and his dad. I think we were all out. His before I left was Paul, Bryce, and his dad. I think we were all out of the game. Bryce's dad was living easy. Oh, God, he totally was living easy.

Yes, every time I saw him, he was getting beers for all these people. And Leah had to laugh because her and Bryce do work at the same place, so now they always joke that they're coworkers that get lunch together all the time. They've never seen each other at work before. No, never. I thought that that was a joke joke but just that was funny uh and everyone was like wearing their medals all night and at the bar and jonathan and lou had their speedos on yeah did they have their speedos on in the zoo they did that for a while yes okay yeah that they yeah lou was living easy yeah totally looked like they did not have pants on.

I didn't make it out to the patio for the first time until probably almost midnight. That was about how I was, too. It was probably 1130. All the spotters and loaders were out partying. Yes, yep, they were all out. Did you see the pictures of the spotters and loaders with the drink spotter sign throughout the weekend

where they're all like... Did you give them that sign or did they have it already? They won that in a contest. I'm glad they brought that with them. I'm glad they brought the props. And, uh, they were staying in an Airbnb, like above the circus, you know, that where they were above revive there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I, yeah, they showed us the pictures and it was insane what that looked like. I don't get, I don't get what that actually was there was like a giant group shower right that used to be an apartment up there right i would assume yeah yeah that is a handy spot though if you're if that is a good spot if you're of that age where you're coming to town to party there's not there's not

a much better spot to stay than main street no that's awesome that uh a big derrick from the of riding the triumph he was there pretty pretty late i think oh yes chris big chris of judd hoose oh yeah chats with him at the bar about the glory days his old judd who's uh glory days at the zoo yeah that was fun boy that was fun the professor the professor and mr stone both had yeah long extended appearances there i wonder if uh in the vlog i hope to see it in oh there's a we have we have i remember we've got the band back together i haven't looked at the footage yet but i specifically remember having a clip of all of us together and being like oh people will think this is hilarious the original four horsemen we all got back together and being like, oh, people will think this is hilarious. The original four horsemen, we all got back together.

Yeah, Tyler's buddy, supporting member. Oh, here's another supporting member I haven't mentioned yet. Big John. Yes, Big John. He made the trip. I can't remember what state he lives in even. Virginia? Yeah, something like that.

Yeah, so there's another supporting member that made the trip that i didn't there's another supporting member that i did that made the trip that i didn't uh didn't think and then uh big andy of uh the conspiracy randy podcast they also there was also the conspiracy randy podcast reunion there that night with tyler and andy uh i was having so much fun like i was just loving hanging out with all of everyone there it was just so much fun i can can't. And then like our wives, you know, my wife,

even how many times you've been to a bar in your life where everyone at the bar, my mom was at the zoo. Oh yeah. Yes. Like we're both there. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. My mom and my aunt both, uh, uh, we're at the zoo pretty late. It was a lot of fun. Like they're getting to talk to big Eddie and, uh,

you know, all kinds of people. So when I walked in scans is talking and I'm like, scants, what's up? fun like they're getting to talk to big eddie and uh you know all kinds of people so yeah when i walked in scantz is talking and i'm like scantz what's up and your mom's back was to me and he's like not now tommy i'm talking to tanner's mom and winked at me just laughing which is so funny because the joke is like he's gonna get your mom you know it's so fun that's good yeah yeah but how many times in your life do you go to a location where you're drinking and you think, I'm nothing but excited to talk to every person here?

There's not like a group, a table, an individual I need to avoid. Yeah. I'm just excited for every single person here. It's hard to even know where to divide your time, though, because you can just like walk, take three more steps and be like, oh, I want to talk to you now. Sometimes you'd be talking to a group of people, and someone else pops in, and they start telling a story, and then the groups just start changing and morphing while you're going.

It was so fun. Yeah, we got some cool presents and stuff from crew. Big Derek gave us some stuff. We won't spill all the beans on that, but we got some really cool giveaway stuff that he made for us to give away, and that will come up later. There could have been prizes for the meat, but we just thought there were so many prizes already,

we're going to save that for later. He also gave us a couple of books for our books and sports segment. So we'll have to read those books eventually. My book reading has gone out damn near out the window with this meet because everything is getting ready for this. Life has been very... Well, I left Sioux Falls Wednesday. And Sunday we were just a mix of hungover doing other stuff it was six

o'clock at night and I thought we were gonna go back and my wife is just like really you think we're gonna go back we haven't even packed all of our shit up yet and so we decided to stay another night so I left Sioux Falls Wednesday I was gone Wednesday night Thursday night Friday night Saturday night Sunday night I was gone for five days for this meet yeah that's almost like the arnold right there it is i mean it is this is way more than the arnold for us like this is a way bigger i mean obviously we're running the show so it's gonna be like that there's even little things like friday friday during the day at mass dynamics gym that like i went in there at one point there was like 35 people in there I forgot about that like people had cracked out the brewskis at mass comics gym in the afternoon that's where I was in between

weigh-ins kind of a while too it's like there was everyone was there it was just like a party inside the gym and then Sunday morning same way there when I showed up Sunday morning there was probably like 25 people inside the gym like training and and that happened that happened to you on monday again with grant you know and then monday me and the the strength co crew went and got a lift in and i remember seeing that i had to run into town to grab something and i i saw the video of all you guys at the gym and this was a while later so i thought i'll just drive by see if there's any cars there while i'm driving by the door swings open and about 20 people pile out. So I pulled over, talked to them for a while. But it was just anywhere you went in town,

it felt like you were running into Massanomics people. I have never seen that many, even close to that many people inside Massanomics gym before. It was wild how many people were in there. It was really cool. And yeah, talking about seeing crew around town, the number of like locals I've had tell me over the last couple of days, like,

yeah, I was at uh 322 or pounders or uh target and somebody walked in and i'm like oh what is this group of people yeah right right there's just all these it's weird it actually like you know people joked about this but this weekend no doubt had like some sort of impact on the local economy here yeah you know it actually did oh the restaurants for sure a few restaurants got hit hard by right by all of us but and hotels too you know like yeah and it's a game of poker it was uh i'm trying to think there's anything else i got to extend my fun by by almost one more night because so you had

you had the strength co in the morning on monday we went to sioux falls monday night and grant dropped off grant and d dropped connor off at the airport but they didn't fly out till the next day so leah and i and and d and grant all got to go hit up dinner that night and i thought we we met him at it was like seven o'clock and we're thinking like oh we'll get dinner you know have like a drink and go home i think by the time we finally shut it down it was 11 30 11 45 so i did not plan on talking to them for almost another five hours but it was we're having so much fun it did it just felt like we didn't want the weekend to end you know that's when like with all the people that were here and the time they took and to get here

it's just like i just want to soak every bit of everything in from this like i don't care how tired i am that's that's how i felt the whole time like you'd love to spread this out over seven months if you could and just enjoy it but it's like no you got it we're getting it all in in like three days here so you're like you just got to go balls to the walls like sleep like it is like the sleep when i'm dead sort of thing. And just be like, no, it's just, I'll worry about resting when it's over. A hundred percent. It was just a weekend.

You didn't want to end. It just, it was too good. And there was no, there was never even any, I remember thinking ahead of my, at the time, you know, and this weekend, you know, there's, there's almost a hundred people in the mix. There's bound to be drama at some point in some way, whether that's someone getting upset with something at the meet or someone getting upset at a restaurant or going out or a fight or something like that's

gotta happen at some point, right? No, it never did. It never did. It was never a thing. Just everyone was in the best mood the entire time. That's, I don't think anything at anything like that happened, but that's gotta happen at some point, right? No, it never did. It never did. It was never a thing. Just everyone was in the best mood the entire time. That's, I don't think anything, anything like that happened, but that's, yeah, I don't think

it did. But I mean, the biggest question at the end of the whole weekend is, are we going to do it again? And, you know, that's what every, you know, every, the entire conversation Saturday night is like, Oh my God, when's the next one? I think we were still at the, at the fr freaking ice arena and people were already asking about it but yeah at the zoo i mean i i think that was i don't even know if i'd been at the zoo five minutes and i was already getting that question yes that's what everyone wants to know and really the takeaway from is it

is it's it almost it it was uh so much work like i can't't even overstate how much work it was, but also so rewarding at the same time. It would have been nicer. Here's what a nice scenario would have been. Maybe if it would have went kind of shitty. It was so much work and it went kind of shitty and we're like, yeah, fuck it. We know we don't got to do that again.

That's not worth it. Oh, here's another scenario. Someone else has this company that we're big fans of and we just show up and have a good time. Yes, right. We just go show up and have a good time, yeah. But it went, I honestly think it went so well, we almost can't not do it.

Like I don't even, I don't know if not doing it is an option. I don't think it is. It's almost like, it is like not, and that's the comment everyone said. They're like, well, you can't not do it. Yeah, it's not. We had we had never even discussed next year because we were just trying as hard as we could to get through this year. And we our conversation to start like, well, do we do it?

It was just like, well, I mean, we both just had this mutual understanding that, well, people expect this from now on. Right. Right. So we're we've already talking about it of course you know it's like could use a break from it actually but it's not i mean the turnaround time it's weird though like we almost have to start talking about it because last year did we announce it in november december probably yeah something like that yeah i think it was maybe november like we knew it well before the arnold that we were doing it yeah

and that's already that's only three months away it well before the Arnold that we were doing it. Yeah. And that's already, that's only three months away. And last year it felt like we were announcing it late. So that means in the next few months we'd have to announce it again. Right. So this isn't the official announcement, but yeah, you can be aware we are talking about it. And we're also talking about, you know, send us your suggestions of what we're not going to do. Probably every half the things you say are going to be cockamamie plans that can't be executed. But I would still like to hear what your suggestions are and how to make it better.

But we're talking about different things. You know, can we make it a two platform meet? And that way we can incorporate more lifters and also get it done faster, too, and get it done faster. You know, could there be a strong man? Could we could we do things on multiple days you know there's a lot of things but there's a lot of channel everything there's like challenges that go along with it and there's pros and cons you know multiple days sounds fun because you incorporate more people but then is there just burnout on people like do people really

want multiple days to event where there's multiple days and the the attitudes are not the same for both days right it's 100 sure so we got a lot of things to consider there do we have a live band that plays for five hours straight while everyone's going out there that's there is a number of things and but uh you know the uh yeah we wanted if we're going to do it again we wanted to be good and if we're going to do it again, we want it to be good. And if we're going to do it again, we want it to be even better, but it's just tough because it was really, really good and really fun. I do think here, here's another thing that I'll, I'll tell people the number of people that have messaged me in the last three, three, four days that have said, how, what's the requirement?

Like people that weren't here that have just been seeing this all over the internet that have said how do you get to be in on that like i how do like is there a requirement to sign up for that like how can i do that like you have to have a qualifying total we send out invites and that's why i'm like no there was there couldn't have been a wider range of experience and strength levels at this meet. And I can't emphasize enough how unimportant that was. It was sort of like the fifth priority on the list of things to do this weekend. Everyone's priority.

It's so weird how everyone was on the same page of they're like, no, we are coming here and we are having fun. I want to do well i want to lift a lot and a lot of people did lift a lot but like the number one priority here was to have fun and like there was no like oh i only squat 200 pounds well and i squat 700 pounds like so i'm better than you you know like i could couldn't say enough times and we've not even a thing i mean if you've done a few meets everyone's been to a meet where there's the guy that lifts a lot and wants everyone to know about it and makes a really big deal about it and that was just that that did not exist that was not a thing no so

so first of all don't worry if you don't think you're strong enough that does not couldn't couldn't apply here even less that's irrelevant but what i'm telling people is we're gonna do the same thing you know assuming this all plays out and we've got to do the same thing again, where mass dynamics gym members and crew member crew get first choice. They just get first dibs and that's the way that's going to be. So what I've told other people that they're like, well, I don't want, I want to sign up for that. And I'm like, become a supporting member. I don't know if you're going to get signed up for this if you're not a gym member. Even if we open it up to a two-platform meet.

This is how it'll go, is your chances of getting on the list if you're not a crew member or a gym member are so small that you probably, the five, 10 people that do get on there, they have some in where they already know ahead of time. And then what will happen is you'll get on a waiting list, and then you're just playing the waiting game.

You don't know if you're going to do a meet or not, which is not a fun spot to be in either. No, if you, this isn't, this is legit 100% real. If you really want to get on on the next one, you've got to become a supporting member. Like that is, and also, for as fun as this meet is, if that's what it takes to get in on it, I would tell you it is 100% worth it.

That alone, even if you got nothing else out of the supporting membership. There's two things here. One is it's a couple dollars a month. So it's actually doesn't cost you anything in the scheme of things. And then also you're going to know everyone in the Discord and it's going to make you have even more fun at the meet because you know who you're actually competing with. It will.

It is. And, like, then you're in on this chat that's all about the meet. Like, you can always find information and other people that are doing it talking about it. Like, it centralizes the communication stream on, like, literally at the meet and also in preparation and post-meet. So, yeah, if you want to do it,

that's your number one thing, but I don't even know then like it could be the demand. Even if you're a sporty member, like it's gonna, it's gonna, you know, it's going to fill up. Like I think the demand for a 2024 one after the way this went is going to be

high. And granted, the demand for a 2024 one after the way this went is going to be high and granted not every single person that made the trip is going to be able to do that every year so you know there will be able to be some rotation in and out of there but i think a lot of them that did it are going to want to do it again there was a lot of travel that said i will 100 be there next year we all i'll say another thing there was some lifters there that were very experienced power lifters that have done, you know, five,

10, 15, 25 meets that were like, yeah, man, I got to tell you, this is probably still like easily the best meet we've ever done before. You know,

like we've never had a time like this. And I guess that is just tooting our own horn, but I, well, and it's not even just tooting our own horn but i well and it's not even just tooting our own horn it's a tooting our own our horn dave's horn the spotter and loaders and really at the end of the day it's the people doing the meat that are making it fun like we do all this stuff and if the people that are lifting and stuff aren't fun well it's still not going to be fun there There's so many things though. That is also what's scary is you think,

God, did we capture lightning in a bottle? Did all the stars align? Because there's so many things in that puzzle that could break or go slightly off and totally change the outcome of the weekend. It's like, no, they all aligned perfectly. How does that happen? Yeah. It's fun when we're at the zoo,

even the people that, like the reporters that wrote Scant's article, came to the zoo to get a beer with everyone. Just all these funny things over the weekend. I just couldn't even be impossible to think of all the little individual things. But, yeah, if you want a chance at next year, you've got to be a supporting member. And the other wild card is, you other wild card don't live here tanner the other wild card do we get to tip our hats into the ring next year because man that would be that looks so much fun didn't it oh god i don't know did you see i put something on it like even actually leading

up to this uh meet on my own personal instagram i kept being a little coy like like it was meat prep and i was kind of doing that screwed around, but several people kept asking like, Oh, are you actually going to lift? And I was kind of like, Oh, I don't know.

We'll see. And I, I knew I wasn't for this one, but I think, um, it could be doable that we do. I think so. Especially after doing one and we saw,

you know, we, we sort of know what needs to be in place, but man, when I was taking videos back by right when guys are about to go out, I'm like, ah, this is the funnest spot to be when everyone's just like,

yeah, let's do this. That is the, there's a, that is like in life. Standing at that spot when people are going out to that power lift, like to the platform is a fun, there is a,

like a, almost you can physically feel the energy of that uh location at a power lifting meet yeah and there's not much that beats that no it's not much that especially when you're doing it with friends and because we've done that both ways and when you're with people you know god it makes it so fun. Oh God. And if we both did the meet, that would, uh, I, I don't, I mean, it would be a special edition for us, especially, I mean, that just might ruin powerlifting forever. Like, it's just like, all right, I've never, ever, I'm not doing any other ones. Actually, like that's the, probably the biggest downside of this meet that a lot of the lifters said is like, well, thanks.

You just ruined every other meet for me for the rest of my life. Like now the rest of them are not fun and which isn't necessarily true but like it's kind of a joke but sort of still also kind of true but if we did the meat that would be that would kick it up another notch you know meat day even even this meat day we're probably okay to do it it's literally just like we would be pretty you're it's not going to be an ideal lifting situation because you and i are going to be very stressed the day oh yeah and i would go into this meet thinking that i'm setting all time prs it's just right i'm going to go have the best time lifting that i've ever had in my life right right it's

actually just like what we described about everyone else so you just have to get yourself in that same mentality because we're going to be very busy leading up to and even the day of like it's not going to be your perfect warm-up and all this because we probably will have to take care of something else quick here and there and you know between flights like there's going to be a list of a few things that all right we're done squatting now now we gotta someone so needed this and this and this and right that but ah yeah it would be really fun to do. It would be fun. And is it really the Mastonomics Lift Hard, Leave Easy Classic?

We don't ever get in on it. I don't know. We've got to see what it's all about. See if it's all it's cracked up to be. We're just getting it all secondhand. That could be a fun addition for next year, too, if we did something there something there too i agree oh so that's the lift hard live easy classic that is the meat that's what it's all really was

it really was classic wasn't it an instant classic it was an instant classic it was incredible yeah um yeah yeah it was uh they were talking about the ac and the i was reading this card they're talking about yeah so there is no ac that they're only the only thing there is in there is there's in floor uh you know in floor um piping that keeps the keeps the cold, but it's not on, you know, they, they do not utilize that. They're new this part of the year. So there's no,

there isn't anything for us to use there. That's something we talked about too, is venue ideas. There is potentially like there's legitimately, there's potentially one other possible venue that we could do what we would want to do there. We don't know yet if it's if it would work or not but there is one other possible venue this venue worked out really well the only thing was just the not climbing not being able to climate control that was it that was the only

thing but there is one other venue that we could maybe get all of this plus that maybe so we're scheming over here yeah yeah we're scheming over here. Yeah. Yeah. We're scheming. We'll be scheming for the next few months to figure out what we can do. That's all we do, right? We scheme. That's all we do. We scheme.

We're schemers. So I just would really thank everyone that was involved. Yes. Thank everyone. I mean, we've said it a thousand times now, but refs, spotters, loaders, competitors, spectators, just anyone, volunteers. There's a ton of people that volunteered. Sponsors.

Yeah, whether you just helped us pick up a plate and move it or even if you just came up and said like, hey, what can I help with? There's several people I'm like, well, almost nothing right now, but it's just to know there's people around that are willing to help. People like you are ready to help is helpful in itself. And it's necessary because it does take a village to do something like that. And it is a lot of stress because even if you don't lay your hands on everything,

you're like laying your mind on everything. You know what I mean? You're also just assuming people are going to do what they say they're going to do. And we were lucky enough that everyone that said they were going to do something, did something, but that's not how it normally works.

A lot of times people say they're going to do stuff and that doesn't happen. Doesn't get that. Yeah. Yeah. So, but yeah, big thanks to everyone involved and for everyone that, you know,

made a crazy trip to get here. We know that that's not like an easy undertaking to get here for a lot of you. And for everyone that made a crazy trip to get here, we know that that's not an easy undertaking to get here for a lot of you, and it's a big deal. Keith had like 18 hours worth of layovers or something. That's insane. Right. But so many people had that trip, and still, I mean, from a lot of them,

I hear the comments like, oh, yeah, I'm going to be the first to sign up next year. And that's what I want it to be like. It's like, no, even if this travel here sucks, we want to make it so good that you can't afford not to do it. Yeah, I cannot afford to miss this. I'm busy about it too much. Right.

Plus next year it gets that thing of, you know, after you do something once you have the routine of like, well, we do this and this and this, and then it starts to really live into the legend of it all, you know? Yeah. And I think like must keeps in things. We must keep in a Friday night party.

You've got to, you've got to do that. Yeah. And the Saturday night party, you got to do that. I actually think like to add it in, maybe they're lesser, but I think,

uh, what you do is like a Thursday evening. Like we did like, no, we're going to have a, we're going to pre have a designated Thursday meeting Thursday night evening. Like maybe we have to talk to one of the restaurants and be like,

yeah, I don't know. We're going to get like 20 to 40 people in here. Yes. That was, that was the thing. We didn't even know if anyone would want to do stuff. And now that we know that Thursday night's a thing too.

Yeah. Let's just have a spot. And then I think the other thing would be whether it's probably, this is probably a Sunday thing. So some people won't be here yet, but you know, just like this, maybe you're not here by the Thursday thing.

Well, that's fine. Friday night's a bigger deal. Saturday night's an even bigger deal. And then, or maybe you're not a brunch. Well, that's what I think Sunday is like a,

a gym. Cause there needs to be a specific gym meetup time because everyone wants to get in the gym and everyone's meeting there. And you can go whenever you want. So maybe Sunday, from 10 to noon, is like, yep, we're all meeting at the gym. And anyone that wants to is training. Or if not, you're just hanging out.

And that'd be really fun, too, if everyone knows there's one designated time. Right. So I think that that's like really, really fine-tuning that schedule and giving people more. Because I think everyone really liked the designated because it puts everyone in the same place that wants to be there. Yeah, and you don't have to send 50 messages on the Discord,

round everyone up, wait 30 minutes for this guy and an hour for this guy. Yeah. So I think that's like turning Thursday, giving someone an option for Thursday evening and Sunday early giving people an option that are still there. I think that's something we can do to improve it. It turns it into this

event. It's not just a power lifting meet. It's really not just a power lifting meet. Then there really is a full weekend itinerary at that point. Right. It's like you're going on a cruise and you're getting the schedule schedule of events yeah yeah that's that is what that is more the way i see it but that i think that creates a value for people and they're like well i'm willing to make this trip because it's not just powerlifting and if you don't know it's like yeah if you don't

know people that well and you're just you have that many scheduled events to meet up with people and chat i mean you can't can't walk out of that not having friends. And if we could get testimonials from crew members this year that they didn't know people before this, and they came and they're like, I just made like 25 new best friends. Legitimately, that's what it really is. Maybe you're in the crew, but you consider yourself a bit of a a loner but i promise you're going to find a group of people

that you can relate to in a big way at uh like this like there is no doubt in my mind yeah it was it was really cool beans yeah it was amazing uh is there anything else to even say about it i mean we could go on for another couple hours but no i didn't really prepare an overrated underrated but maybe we could do like uh maybe we could do uh on the fly over under for the weekend almost you know it's like uh so i don't know if you if you have any that come to your mind but i would kick off with this one so uh overrated or underrated since a lot of people really got to give it a go this weekend for the first time

overrated or underrated taco johns i genuinely couldn't tell if some people thought that we think it's the world's best mexican restaurant or where or where they thought we aligned on it i think as i think as a fast food taco place it's underrated you know yeah it doesn't exist in a ton of places if you're comparing it to the the greater spectrum of mexican cuisine i mean we're talking fast food here so you got to have your expectations in line but i think taco john's is still underrated yeah i think so i mean we gotta we've gotta say i ate it twice this weekend i couldn't tell you last time i actually obligated i couldn't tell you last

time i had taco john's twice in four days in my life right overrated or underrated uh pyrotechnics at a power oh we forgot to talk about that yeah dave had a fire out damn that really that really steps the whole uh production value up in a hurry doesn't it that's a must isn't it like there's like no way of not having that kind of surprising you don't see more pyrotechnics at just events in general that's true that's true but they are they are underrated those were those are great those were an awesome addition yeah okay um overrated or underrated since we talked about it pounders it's an aberdeen uh hot spot that we hit up a little bit i think pounders and underrated they just they do bar food really good the service is always good the the beer selection is on point it's got a vibe to it you know there's yeah you feel like you're walking

into somewhere that there's actually some thought and effort put into so i i think it was underrated there's a reason people magically gravitate towards there when they come to town and they've never been anywhere and we didn't make the suggestion because yeah it's got a vibe you know like a lot almost everyone ended up there at least once probably and yeah everyone did and i'm like yeah that was a good spot to stop and i think most people would agree that. Yeah, it was a. They're good. It's good stuff.

OK, here's the last one I have overrated or underrated. The Frogger drink at the zoo. You ever had the frog? I didn't have it. No. Did you have it? OK, no. But a bunch of people are like, oh, yeah, that's a must have.

I've never heard of it. Oh, yeah. It's a green drink. Oh. I'm looking up what the what's in a Frogger cocktail, actually. I didn't even know that was a thing at all there. Yeah, I think it's a zoo staple, I guess. It wasn't even just like a special for the day or something.

It's like, you know, you go to the zoo and you have a Frogger, I guess. Wow. Times have really changed. Yeah. I don't know what exactly is in the frogger and i didn't know then well i found some ingredients here but i feel like they were not pouring these ingredients at the zoo but it looks very green boy i don't know to be continued on that one. We'll find out by the 2024. Get more info on that one.

Okay. I don't know what's really in the Frogger cocktail. I don't know what they're putting in the water at the zoo bar. It's just Mountain Dew and vodka. I don't know what they're putting in the water at the zoo, but people seem to have a really good time there. Maybe it was the alcohol that they were putting in. They're doing something there.

I'm not sure what it is. Big Matt did give me some of his bourbon to try on Friday night. And, yep, I was like, yeah, I think this is going to taste good this time. I tried it and I'm like, nope, it doesn't taste good. Still not the right mindset for it. Yeah, I'm like, I was really going into it thinking. I like their smoking stogies and stuff, though, too. They were.

I never even saw that in person. I only saw that, like, on the video. Oh and stuff though too they were i i never even saw that in person i only saw that like on the video oh you did where i was yeah i saw them have those and i asked dylan he got those in town and he goes oh the the i think it was up in smoke he goes oh that was a great store i think really you're even giving a praise okay there must be something to it never been there i don't know i'm not a smoker so i have no idea but bunch of good bunch of uh stogie smokers in the crew there was a lot of them living living easy that's just fun that's just fun stuff it looks like you passed overrated underrated even though we still don't know what a frogger drink is good good i was worried that this was going to be the episode we broke the streak yeah so i guess we have to air this one now should we what do we got uh swiss i got a little something for you here

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Thank you, Swiss Link. Thanks, Swiss Link. Yeah, if you're here this weekend, you know we don't really need the wool blankets from Swiss Link in July in South Dakota, but a few. Yeah, if you're here this weekend, you know we don't really need the wool blankets from Swiss Link in July in South Dakota, but a few months here, if you come to visit us, you'll want one of those Swiss Link wool blankets. You'll want a blanket or two.

You'll definitely want a blanket or two. Yeah, make sure to check out the items from the drop that by the time you listen to this, it's all been dropped. It's all the meat stuff. You know, every lifter got a meat tea. They got their commemorative Aberdeen, South Dakota map and program schedule. They got their actual program.

They got a bottle of Obsidian Ammonia Lift Hard Live Easy Classic Ammonia. That stuff was floating around like candy in the warm-up room. Oh, my God. It was everywhere. You could get a second-hand contact high from Am like candy in the warm-up room. Oh, my God. It was everywhere. You could get a second-hand contact high from ammonia in the warm-up room. And then also they got a bottle of Old West barbecue sauce, of course. So our lifters were, in addition to all the awards they got, they were not going home empty-handed, none of them.

Ew. They had lots of good stuff. And buy some stuff from the meet. We'll include a program there if you're buying meat stuff while those supplies last. If you order over $75, we'll include a meat poster with it also while those supplies last. Some of the stuff is pretty limited. We don't have a large inventory left because people were eating it up. Sales were great in Aberdeen.

It was fun. We got to sell a lot of stuff there. We always like that. But we do have some items still available. So please support us by checking those out. Also support us by becoming a supporting member. We need your help

so we can keep the funds rolling in and hopefully turn this 2024 meet into even a bigger and better and wilder and easier living success than it was this year. Is that it about all? Is that a bit it about everything?

So we don't have to, we're not going to talk about this ever again. Yeah. We can check the box on this one. It's done. Never to be mentioned again. That's I'd say that's it for this week. I have a feeling that's all you hear about it off it for this week i have a feeling you'll probably hear about it

off and on for the next several months yeah that's exactly right uh thanks everyone for listening tommy where do they find you at you can find me at tomahawk underscore d you can follow me at uh tanner underscore baird but please just make sure to follow massonomics at Mastonomics. See you.