Massenomics Podcast - Ep. 391: Joel Dircks

Episode Date: October 2, 2023

Big Joel Dircks joins us for this one to talk about crazy grip feats of strength, Minnesota strength culture, and his experience trying to eat 10 McDonalds cheeseburgers and 50 chicken nuggets! Did you know Minnesota has more shoreline that California, Florida, and Hawaii combined? Build Fast Formula Use code MASSENOMICS to save 10% on your first order! BearFoot Shoes Use code MASS for a free pair of AWEsome wraps! Juggernaut AI Use code MASSENOMICS to save 10%! The Strength Co Get some Go-To Plates! Swiss Link Use code MASS to save 15%! Texas Power Bars Get the Barbell that changed the game!

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

If you don't follow Massanomics, y'all do it. Social media, website, everything. Massanomics! Welcome everyone to episode 391 of the Massanomics podcast. We are the lifting podcast about nothing, formerly known as World's Strongest Podcast. A podcast you listen to with your ears. This is a podcast that you listen to with both of your ears and it's also you know that was originally the the tagline it later became a podcast you watch with your eyes if you you know subscribe to our youtube channel so you can do a little bit of both not a podcast that you wear on your head though that's a different no no do not

and don't buy it uh don't buy a podcast that you wear for your head. My name is Tanner. And my name is Tommy. Welcome. This is a special one, Tommy, because of the whole 391 thing, you know, of course. Yep. You know, you add all of them together, 391, that's 13. And then you divide by three, which doesn't work out perfectly.

But it's pretty damn close. And then if you reverse them, it's actually 193. So one times nine is not three, but it's pretty close again. Yeah, that's some Illuminati type shit right there. There's something there. We do have a special episode this week. We've got a special big guest coming up later, and we've got important announcements about a trip we're taking. We've got a big special big guest coming up later and we've got important

announcements about a trip we're taking. We've got some follow-up road trip. Yeah maybe a few of classic segments that we bring back again for this episode so that's going to be pretty fun. But first before we get into that any of that really I want to tell you about Juggernaut AI. Juggernaut AI first and foremost is the training that Tommy and I have been known to use we've got several other friends and acquaintances and gym members that also use it so enemies as well

yeah keep your friends close and your enemies on our growing list of enemies just keep going on juggernaut AI there are enemies but we still not so much our enemies that we don't want to see them get strong so we still have them use juggernaut ai we're actually talking about some programming in our massonomics discord community just today it was you know there's a good conversation about that and focus point of

the takeaway on that i think is that uh a lot of people like any training any good training let me say it this way any decent programming is a step beyond what most people are doing and when I say most people I'm not necessarily saying most people as in the listeners to this podcast or discount cord community those aren't most people I'm saying your average people that aren't even listening to the massomics podcast that aren't most people. I'm saying your average people that aren't even listening to the MathSomics podcast, that aren't as serious about training, they could benefit from any decent programming if they could just stay consistent and do almost any programming.

I do think Juggernaut AI is a few steps ahead of that, but that still is kind of my central theme on part of why Juggernaut AI works so well because you get a little skin in the game with this programming. It's a little, I think you have an additional level of skin in the game, A, because you pay a little bit of money.

You end up with discount code Mastonomics, you pay about 30 bucks per month. So that does make you more accountable, at least for a lot of people when they're just spending a little bit of money on it. And then B, just by the way that the app is and that the tracking is, I think it does more to keep people more accountable within their day, within their training of each training day,

and then also within just like the cycles of staying consistent with it. So that's one perk of Juggernaut AI, staying more consistent. I mentioned the other major perk, discount code MASSANOMICS, when you go to juggernautai.app and get signed up. Today's episode is also brought to you by Barefoot Shoes and the MASSANOMICS collaboration, the Ursanomics. That's right. The first ever MASSANOMICS slash Barefoot collaboration

is live for pre-order right now. It is a genetic splicing of suede and canvas, something they've never done before. We got the black, we got the red, we got the massonomics logo, and it is incredible. And Tanner is just teasing it into screen so slowly.

Oh, it's a thing of beauty. These, these babies are on pre-order, but they're going to be shipping soon. We're less than a month out from these things shipping. I don't know. They could ship in the next couple of weeks for all I know. And this thing is amazing. We started with 250 pairs. It is significantly lower than that. Pairs are selling out. So if you think you're interested, make sure you go get a pair right now because once they're gone,

they're gone and you're going to want to be a part of this piece of history. And if you're ready to buy a pair, go to www.barefoot.store and pick yours up today. And while you're there, make sure to use code MASS and throw a pair of the Barefoot Awesome Wraps into your cart, and you'll get those wraps for free so one more time add the awesome wraps to your cart use code mass get the wraps for free go to barefoot.store add the ursonomics massonomics collaboration to your cart you're gonna love them thank you barefoot shoes thank you barefoot my the barefoot as my new favorite part of the podcast every time because i do silly things you have the live every time. Cause I do silly things. You have the live prop back there.

I do do things with the prop as you, as you do it. That's just an ad bonus. If you watch us on YouTube, you get to see, so you get to see the interpretive shoe dances. I do very, I like to pull out a new,

new thing that I do with the shoe each week. So I'm just excited for what I think of next week. What will he do next? You don't want to see where I'm going to put that shoe next. He's crazy. Okay, this week, a lot of stuff to get to. First thing, what everyone's been warning about, the stereo at Mass Anomics Gym.

Everyone, I think, has been clamoring for an update. What's been going on here? I just see this posted and I'm very concerned. Yeah, so we've had that Bluetooth. First of all, the Massanomics stereo has a storied history that goes back. It does. It has many chapters to it. It does. It has some peaks and

valleys, some highlights, some crushing lowlights. Don't know if we actually have time to get into the full history of the Mastodon X Gym stereo and the various evolutions. It does have ups and downs. It is a rich history, though. Yeah, but it is much like the elevator business with its ups and its downs. There's certainly some lowlights in the history of the Mastodon X stereo.

Right now, I think we're on the precipice of a really uh a high period oh where we're we're out of a valley we're out of the pit of despair here and we're back into was there a stage of despair actually yeah we're at lowest of lows at the gym stereo the old amp the old amp it just you mean the amp that's like two years old that's like four over four years old we had the we had that still when the gym was only one side that amp we did yeah oh yeah the bluetooth one i thought we got that towards the end of oh you know we okay i thought that amp could come into existence until we got the second room over there no it was towards but we've had the second room for like almost four years now too so that actually actually is shocking. Yeah. Yeah.

So this new amp, I'll call it the Bluetooth amp because the pre this amp, it was the non-Bluetooth amp. It was the older amp, but actually more powerful. Older, but more powerful amp. Oh, it was. It was replaced with this newer, maybe some bells and whistles, but not necessarily a better quality amp. I'm not an expert on sound equipment. And when you say better quality, you're talking about really the, when we're talking quality here, the main concern is how much power it can sustain. That's I think, yeah, the power this, this new amp doesn't have near the power of that old amp. Although the old amp being many,

many years older, but the new amp it's just been cutting out and i whether i had bluetooth wired anything yeah it wasn't the wires i actually ultimately determined every time you could oh yeah could you push on a spot yeah i could i found the perfect spot on the top of it that i could push down on the casing which is funny because there was nothing underneath where i would push out down you know because the casing on an amp is usually, it's just empty space. It's a hollow box. Isn't it more just for airflow than anything? I suppose so because there's, you know, it's like a five inch gap and then you get to the actual electronical components that are right on. Yeah. I assumed a lot of it was for airflow because it generated a lot of heat when you're pushing those things. That would make

sense. But I, I found this perfect spot i would call it fonzing the stereo where because people were always hitting it and doing all the stuff and janging the cables and one day i really because you could tell there was something going on that would fix the stereo but i i threw a lot of trial and error i found the perfect spot where i'm like you just press right here firmly and it fixes you could hear an audible click even that it though it would go click and then it would be working again. Sometimes that would only last for like three seconds and you have to go do it again. It lasts for four seconds. You go do it again, two seconds.

By like the fifth time you do it, it clicks and it's like, it's good for the rest of the day. It's like an invisible button that only you. Yes, because I could not get everyone on the same page of understanding the system. Jesus is getting the shit beat out of it. People were beating the shit out of it. I was sending out snaps. You know they're going in. It's become similar to the fax or the copy machine in office space.

It's like a mortal enemy. Yes. or the copy machine in office space. Yes. We're like, Oh, it's a mortal enemy. Yes. And,

uh, you know, I'd come in and all the speaker wires were all, people were like fucking with all the speaker wires and shit everywhere. And I was like, ah, damn it. This,

and it's getting worse and worse all the time. Like the amp is past its prime, unfortunately. So what we did in true mass dynamics, Jim fashion, Larry is our audio guy for anyone that doesn't know Larry legend is our primary audio guy. We brought the old amp out of retirement. We fixed it. Well, it was not working properly. So he had it fixed back, you know,

four years ago when he took, cause it was, it's a quality piece of audio equipment still kind of, you know, four years ago when he took, cause it was, it's a quality piece of audio equipment still kind of, it was worth fixing. So he had it fixed for like, say a hundred dollars into it. So he brought that back. We set it up and we're like, we also did all new speaker wire too. Cause the gauge of the speaker wire on the old stuff was actually crap for the length that we were running. So we're kind of thought maybe there was some issue there with speaker wire. So replaced all new speaker wire and ran the speaker wire through the wall. Oh, so it's not just tucked into the edge of the floor. You know where it's duct taped to the floor?

Not anymore. It's pretty high class now. But then we got it. We're going, did all this stuff. You know, Larry especially spent like a couple hours doing all this stuff, got the new amp, and like 20 minutes after he walked out the door, new amp started cutting out like it used to back in the day. Did some,

he talked to some guys, did maybe some searching. It's like, ah, it's probably the real issue with that is there's a speaker that's bad. And the bad speaker is causing the amp to do that. So then we had to go through each speak. So we're like, well, what do we do here?

We got the four speakers, and within each speaker, there's like three speakers. Yeah, true. So it's like a trial and error. So we started with the main four speakers, just not having one of them hooked up. And then we just let it play for a while to see what would happen. Yeah, yeah.

And then we finally got to, of course the fourth one unhook that it's like i think it's working now so what speaker was this one then one of the wood ones and it was the wood one that was in the party side of the gym you know the business in front party in the back it was in the party party in the back back so we back by the squat? No, not that one. One of the wood ones right next to the. Right by the door? Right, right by the door. So what we did was now we have the wood ones both centered, but we put the bad one that's actually not even plugged in.

That's in the business side of the gym and the party side. So the party side has two working speakers. The business side only has one. But this new amp, even with just the three-speaker setup, is much louder than... Oh, it is. It is noisier. I was like, holy shit, I forgot how loud this is. So did you have to update the sign for the volume number now?

Well, the old amp actually has a piece of tape that I had put in there. I assume it used to be a note next to the... It's like a very permanent piece of tape like a slash right on the dial and i know that that the point of that slash is like don't go above this line yeah but i still i still have to do some more modification because mass dynamics gym is a place of many signs of giving you directions of what to do because of there not being anyone that's permanently working there supervision Yeah, when there's no supervision, you got to... Yeah, I rely on a lot of signage so that if multiple people are there,

if rules are being broken, you probably at the very least feel like a rule breaker because you're like, ah, yes, we can all clearly see what the sign says. Right, right. So it works. It's almost better than ever right now at the moment. It seems to be working very well. Although by switching back to the old amp, we lost our Bluetooth capability. Yeah, I can see how that might.

Well, you can get a Bluetooth adapter. The good news is the Bluetooth adapter showed up in the mail that day. So I got to take that and hook it up and then i have a bluetooth adapter and uh at the end of the day i think we're gonna be in like i said peak peak so will there uh will there be a new speaker so that the other or is one just because the other side is going to be rocking with one well in theory there would eventually be a new speaker i wouldn't say i it's funny how much i cherish the gym equipment and how much effort and time and money i put into the gym equipment and how much i neglect the gym stereo yeah in the grand scheme of it uh that's kind of like part of the thing to me that i start to think it's funny

about because everyone freaks out if the stereo is like yeah it is there's uh not everyone's like not many things that can get people in an uproar more. Oh, God. I think, like, three squat racks could be broken, and there might be less of a concern. Oh, as long as the stereo works. Yeah. So I almost got a kick out of it.

I wasn't sending you, but all the gym numbers that I had on Snapchat, I was sending them all these very, very long, detailed stereo updates about everything, almost kind of a joke. Like, here, I'll keep everyone very abreast on the most recent stereo updates about everything almost like almost kind of a joke like like here i'll keep everyone very abreast on the most recent stereo updates um so yeah no i'm not in a rushed by the new speaker because mostly because it's working right now and the whole system is a house of cards right and i just if it's working if it's working i'm just not gonna not gonna monkey with that

makes sense yeah yeah but that would be the next step is a new but also speakers are freaking expensive yeah so actually i don't know if i ever talked about it i had someone quote to come in and um one of the local sound people to completely just like speaker city it was a guy named Vince. No, no, that would be better though. But I had him like give me this legit quote of a pretty sweet setup. And it would be very sweet, but it was like almost $5,000. And I'm like, yeah, I'm not going to spend five grand on this. Like that's so much equipment that I can buy. That's a lot to leave guys unsupervised with this thing.

Oh, that's the other thing. That was the biggest thing. I'm like, no, it'll be ruined. Because people are like, yeah. Turn it up. This goes as loud as a concert. Let's do it. All right.

Yeah, that makes sense. End stereo update. Do you have a can over there? I do. And I'm thirsty. All right. I saw you dipping into something a little special last week so oh we had to do it too

go a little matchy matchy pamplemousse baby that pamplemousse you had last week looks so damn good oh yeah and it's still good that hits every time it's like the first time isn't it that's tasty

oh one of the all-time great hot diggity dog that's good isn't it though just a classic in every set it's not doing too much no it's just right just right it just knows what it's supposed to be doing right i don't know if there's much that fits better in a mass dynamic drink spotter than a lacroix pump and it looks good in there too it does the aluminum of the drink spotter really complements the aluminum of the can yeah that's a good beverage i give it a four all day that's a solid four almost i almost trick myself into forgetting how good a pamamp you know just a simple pump pample mousses it's great stuff uh we have uh matching shirts on tonight tanner i don't probably i actually did not know i never noticed that well because i sit it went my my actual

recording on youtube you can see more of my torso where the way that the webcam works you can only see about my neck up but we have the same shirt on which is always funny to me when that happens because there's about a one in 55 what oh i think we have way more shirts than that i'm just saying ones although i don't have a rotation yeah yeah about a one in 50 ish chance that we have the same shirt on and it seems to happen somewhat regularly the odds have to be like we need us to you know statistics guy to figure this but say say if i have 20 masonomic shirts in my rotation and you have 20 masonomic shirts but they're not the same 20 right say only only 10 of them are the same

but we each have 20 in our rotation what are the odds and we record once a week i don't know if that's even relevant yeah because the chances wouldn't be one in ten then no it'd be way less than one in ten you know um even if we even if we each just have 20 and we have the exact same 20 it's still way less odds than 1 and 20 that we would wear the same one right probably because for us to both wear the same one on the same day i get what you're saying i get what you're saying i just don't know numbers enough to say whether what you're uh yeah i just want to throw the word exponential out there and it's i think someone uh you know if someone that's into that sort of thing would

probably would be able to figure this relatively easily i think there's definitely some guys in the discord that will give us some follow-up when this episode comes out i know the way that this works uh this is episode 391 it's not my first rodeo here's the math problem that i want the answer to tommy has 20 massonomic shirts in his regular rotation i have 20 massonomic shirts in my regular rotation of the 20 we each have 10 are crossover we have 10 that are the same we record the massonomics podcast once a week i don't think i don't know if that's relevant to this particular word problem but what are the odds that we wear the same shirt for the podcast night with having no other you know no other knowledge of what the people want to know someone figure that out for

them they want to know yeah all right but uh nice shirt i guess what i'm trying to say um signs i do have sign follow-up uh not the movie signs in case you're wondering not with mel gibson i was not going there not going there zwing away the we were talking about tanner's colorful signs that he saw in canada what by colorful signs it wasn't like a gay pride thing either no it's not it's the very large i don't know eight by eight black sign that has bright neon letters in the slats on it cut out of usually something like now open or special going on today made it on like somebody's mom made it on their cricket at home yeah uh and i and at first you were describing them i couldn't figure out what the hell you were talking about and then someone posted a picture and i thought oh i see those

things all the time i've seen those things a lot. I know exactly what that is. Okay. Driving around Sioux Falls this week. Those damn signs are everywhere. My brain just doesn't even see them. Do not even recognize them at all. Big Colton. Was it Big Colton that posted one this week?

Yeah, that one's actually on the way to my house. Drive by that one twice a day. Actually, four times a day if I'm taking the kids to and from daycare. So they are all over Crewe Falls. You go down 41st, which is the main busy road in Sioux Falls, you'll probably see over 50 of them. Easy. They're all over.

So it's western, northeast, south Dakota that really must have a... Moratorium on them. They say, get them out of here. Yeah, those things are everywhere in Sioux Falls. There's so much signage and shit everywhere, you't even see them it's right just blend in with all the other crap well they're right on the ground and they are right on the ground but there's just so much stuff on the boulevards everyone there's just so much signage on these busy streets that you don't even see anything like you look at that one right next to it is a sign

for the taco bell drive-thru there's another sign for construction right there there's that that one sign has two signs one to the left i suppose maybe that's why the theory of some cities saying no we're not we're gonna have rules on these signs because we want the signs that do exist to be to mean something right yeah right if everyone's shouting the only way to sound out is just shout even louder i guess well and then it becomes the sign off where it's like there's just so many signs so they're around they're here you just gotta open your eyes to what's right in front of you i guess yeah all right well that's good crew falls update too everyone always wants to know about crew what's going on with Crew Falls. It's a very vibrant community down here. I'll let you pick.

We probably have time for one of the other of these now and the other one maybe we do after our guests. Do you want to talk about our Ohio trip this week, or do you want to play Who Weighs More? Whichever one we don't do now, we can do later. I think we need to give people a preview of the Ohio trip this week before we get too far into this. That's probably a good idea. So we're recording on a monday night this week a special monday night recording because we have a special trip this week on uh thursday we'll

be in well what is the itinerary we're gonna be in uh flying into dayton ohio on thursday we should touch down. What was it? 11 a.m. Ish 1030 a.m. Something like that. Touchdown. Something the Colorado Deion Sanders team didn't know much about this week. Am I right?

The Broncos, even for that matter, if you see that game. Yes. Like 70 points with the Dolphins. Was it 70 to 20 or something? That was a quick sports segment. Yeah, so we touched down in Dayton, Ohio, Thursday morning,

just a few short days from now. And then we got to hightail it over to London to see Dave. And we got a pretty action-packed schedule there. We're going to be podcasting table talk which i'm couldn't possibly be more excited for that i don't think man that's that one is gonna be a trip that's uh gonna kind of feel like a little bit of a surreal experience honestly being in that seat and doing this there it's gonna be weird keep i keep gotta be i gotta i can't get it through my mind that we don't need to come with a

list of a hundred questions because I've already written down a ton isn't that funny though that's not I can't not I keep doing it and having all these questions in my mind I'm gonna write him like well but that's not really people don't want us to go on Dave's podcast and then we're on Dave's podcast and we're asking him questions right don't they want to Dave to direct us and lead this thing? I think so, but I can't help it. Also like it's, uh, if you, uh, having done almost 400 of these, that's a problem. I, I have even the last somebody else's eyes on was Rob vintage weights, PGH. I was on guest on his podcast and I can't help, but I've already thought of all the questions I think he's going to ask me so like I you know I have answers for like I want to give him these answers before he even asked me the question because I just I think about it from this introduce me I'll take it from

here man right right it's like I already know the questions you're going to ask I'll give you all the answers you know which isn't necessarily true but that's the way I'm out and then and then that's the other thing it's always like well I have i have questions for you like that's that's what we're doing here right but it's really not so i don't that will be it is hard to do that i know i gotta just i just have to constantly remind myself no no that's not that's not our job on this trip our trip is to be interviewed not be the interviewers yeah there is also though it is nice to get it's always funny because uh at the end of almost every table talk episode he goes was there anything you we you wanted to cover that we haven't talked about and i just think in my mind

how much time do you got dave that's we could that's why i do think we'll have a good opportunity then to hit him with some of someomics you know, goosery. Obviously we're going to make them play over-under. Of course. You can't get out without playing that one. Yes. I'd have some other fun games to introduce to them while we're there as well. Yes. Possibly a can

of some kind. Yes. I'm just making more notes right now even just as we That's what I can't help but make all the notes for the podcast. We're going to be the guests. Maybe, you know, I'm trying to think. Was it on the Dan Bell episode, Dave mentioned that he doesn't like sparkling water at all?

I think so. And Dan Bell said, oh, you got to talk to Massanomics. Maybe we need to bring a flight, a flight of sparkling water. That's what we need, like, four. Just be like, all right, okay, we're going to take you through the, yeah, we're going to make you try all these and he's just going to think they're all awful.

That would be fun. We should do that. If we have just a little bit of time, we could even like pop into a little sea store and make that happen on the way there. So then we get there, we do table talk. I mean, that'll probably take several hours and hopefully while we're there, we can maybe shoot a that'll probably take several hours and uh hopefully while

we're there we can maybe shoot a little youtube stuff also we'll be youtube vlogging a little bit of everything along the way if as much as possible probably on the trip yeah we'll for sure do a travel vlog and then um like to get at least a dedicated video out of elite fts it's just hard to say with how the time works out but get a dedicated video while we're there at some point. And then we'll get another dedicated video or possibly to the next day. But yeah, first day though, we land, go straight to London, Ohio, and we have no idea. We'll get there probably, what do we figure, one-ish? Well, we think we're going to hopefully start recording at one. So hopefully we'll get there probably what we figure one ish well we think we're gonna hopefully start recording at one so hopefully we get there by like 12 12 30 yeah yeah 12 30 would be a two-hour trip to get there

which it shouldn't you know it's like an hour drive but we got to rent a car and do all that crap so um yeah and then we could be there for a very long i mean i assume whenever we get done when we get done we'll pretty much be like all right let's get in the car and drive to detroit and get to the hotel yes so that's the next thing we're doing which if you don't know much about the far far eastern part of the midwest midwest exactly saying driving from ohio to detroit seems like that'd be a long ways but it's actually not whatever three hours i think yeah yeah for us that's a hop that just that takes you from western northeast south dakota to eastern southeast south dakota you

haven't hardly covered any ground at that point so no we get to go up to detroit we get there that night and then probably be extremely tired go to bed and then we get to start the next day by going to dr mike's house dr mike's in the morning the morning, which we hope it's not like some elaborate ruse to kidnap us or like... It's just we get there and we're in the... We actually didn't look at the address ahead of time. We haven't actually Googled it. We just get there and it's the middle

of a Waffle House parking lot and there's a van waiting to take us. Yes. It's been set up this whole time. So we'll get there and we're going to record an episode of our podcast with dr mike there with him and then not exactly sure we have a we're up against a time buffer of some sorts on friday afternoon evening that we got to get to the airport to fly back so we'll see what we have time for but hopefully we also maybe get uh a youtube video out of that or something too one or two there possibly it just it just depends i guess on the

timing yeah well for sure yeah we're for sure doing a podcast but yeah it's it's how much more can we sneak out i you know mike is good for so many sound bites and so many funny reactions that right we talked about it we could sit with him for a day and throw out so many dumb scenarios where get him to react to this what's his opinion on this let's get make a list of this i mean we could make so many videos but uh when you're limited for time you just got to do what you can so we'll just see what we have time for and then of course we'll be eating at places along you know we get a few meals in here and that's probably the most one of the funnest parts about travel vlogging is like

uh what what eateries are we going to check out along the way lots of options there yeah yes you know chili applebee's options are almost limitless yeah tgi fridays little tgi fridays flies under the radar sometimes i think i in that mix I've actually never been to a TGI Fridays before. Really? As far as I know, unless I went there on accident one time and didn't realize it. Unless you went there one time and just it was a Chili's and you didn't pay attention to the sign out front. I quickly realized I'd made the wrong decision. And then we get back.

We fly back Friday evening, back into Crew Falls. And that's it it bada bing bada boom quick one two three actually i might even we get back friday night i might be going to bed friday night and heading to western northeast south dakota saturday morning even just because i can't get up right up here i just have to see both extremes of the midwest the farthest east and almost the farthest west you can go yeah the farthest northwest so i might my trip might be just starting when we get back friday night well that's mine too i also have to come i think friday night i'm probably gonna i'm gonna just

haul back here because if we get back at a decent time i'm like i'll get home at midnight i talked about it i think i'm gonna be so tired that i would just rather wake up at 6 a.m than uh yeah and you'll also be at your house of my own beds here so that makes right it's really not exciting to drive three hours get somewhere at one o'clock to not stay in somebody else's bed because me i'm like if i power through this drive my reward is being home and waking up waking up home yeah i get i get penalized for driving late. Right. That is a far different scenario, actually.

Yeah, I'll take the early bedtime and just get up. Actually, possibly my normal time. At my house, we call that earning EBT. Early bedtime. Certain actions can earn you EBT. And by earn, sometimes it's not what people want, but like myself and my wife would love to earn EBT, but my kids on the other hand, sometimes their actions can earn them EBT when they would prefer to not be earning EBT.

Lately, I'd be happy to even earn, I'd be happy to earn late bedtime, actually the way my life's going at the moment. So I just take just any, I just take any BT at this point. Life's been on a stretch of her, uh, basically not getting home from work until one 32 in the morning. And it has been brutal to say the least. You want,

you want to know what my secret is? I'm always tired. Just don't sleep. You don't have to worry about getting woken up. It's starting to be my philosophy on how this whole thing works. That's the way that this is the way someone saved me. So damn tired. So tired.

That's my secret. I'm always tired. Yeah. So, so you wouldn't mind if someone made you earn some EBT. Oh God. I'd probably have like a panic attack. I wouldn't know what to do. See, that'll be like when we do these trips and stuff, that is part of the thing.

When you go in the hotel, like when you and I have to go on trips, it's like, oh, it's just so quiet in here. It's just weird. It's like, what am I supposed to do? There's not all these people yelling and running around and needing things. It's a little too quiet. It is. No, it's not.

It's actually really good. It's unsettling. There's too much quietness in the air. Yes. You want to hear a little supporting our supporting members this week? Let's do it. So this is a relatively new segment to the podcast. We have supporting members.

You could choose to become a supporting member if you would like to. We would love to have you. It means a lot every time someone signs up. We really appreciate everyone that's signed up over the years. Go on to our website. It's massonomics.com slash join. We've got multiple supporting levels that you can choose to sign up at there. We'd love to have you at any of them. Choose a level that works right for you and your budget. You get a whole bunch of perks. It's basically Perk City population new when you

get signed up. You get things like a discount code that's exclusive to a supporting member. You get things like early access to new drops. You get the first dibs on stuff like that. You get to know about stuff that's coming out before other people know about it. You get online access to our very active Discord community. We've talked about that quite a bit in that Discord community. It's a bunch of like-minded individuals. You get to get on there. You get to listen to the podcast live.

We've got a group of them listening live right now so that's an option for you once you become a supporting member we send out these random periodic free uh kind of crew gifts uh that's part of the one of the cooler features also and then also the supporting our supporting member segment you could find yourself getting a shout out here for doing something cool like this week. Big Ryan Imbach. What is it? Is Ryan from Wisconsin?

I think Big Ryan's from Wisconsin. Friend of Big Tim. Anyways, he was at the Illinois State Championship Strongman Competition where he got second place out of the heavies. That included a very speedy 675-pound deadlift that he had there. Nice. So nice job, Big Ryan. Then we had Big Sam Brown, former guest of the podcast, also a supporting member. He was at WRPF Nationals lifting a quip there.

He did a 727 squat, a 507 bench, a 639 deadlift for an 1873 total. Nice, that's awesome. Yeah. So great job, Big Sam. Always good to see that. Big Bryce from Crew Falls was in a Steinholding competition. He said it was hard, but he held it for 3 minutes and 33 seconds. Did he say where that placed him in the competition?

I don't think he said. I don't know what he said. I'll assume he got first then. Yeah, when you're crew, you're first. That's what they say. No matter what place you get, if you're crew, you're a winner. And then Big Katie also

did a Steinholding competition. She wasn't sure of her time, but she won. You don't need to know your time if you won. When we have a placing and no time. Take that as you will. But thank you to our supporting members. We appreciate it.

We'd love to have you sign up if you'd be interested in coming aboard the supporting member family, become an unpaid intern. We'd love to have you. Very nice. Have you seen, Tommy, have you seen the strength co's bumpers they're for sale officially now you can go to the website at the time of this recording i think as of today you can go to the strength the strength.co and you can now purchase bumpers they're ready to ship even i think too they're live orders are coming in so you can buy those uh strength. bumpers in 45s, 25s, and 10s,

and those are made-in-America bumpers. One of your very few, if not like only, made-in-America bumper choices. Don't quote me on that, but I think that that's kind of the case. One of the very few made-in-America bumper options. So if you've enjoyed supporting the Strength Co. in the past and you've been thinking about getting bumpers now they have made in america reasonably priced affordably priced bumpers as an option to go which pair awesome with their uh iron plates that you've come to know and love at the strength co i'm gonna call the founder tomorrow really get to the bottom

of what what he was thinking with this whole creation of these crazy bumper plates. Makes me wonder, well, what the heck is this guy going to do next? He really is the buddy caps of our generation. Like, what is going to slow this guy down? He's crazy over there. Can't stop, won't stop. So, is Massanomics Gym going to have a pair of these, a set of them, next time I show up there? I haven't ordered any yet.

I just don't. I'm more inclined to buy more iron plates before i which is funny because we have so many but i just uh um but it would look so cool to have a set next to all the other ones yeah we will have a set uh probably just because i just want a pair that says the strength co on it um yeah we will get a set. I mean, I'll get a pair of each of the sizes, I think, and that that'll probably do me. But I'm actually I'm more so wanting to buy a few more iron plates. The more I've looked at the racks, I'm like, if I had one more pair of tens on each rack and one more 45 set on this, you know, it's just like to fill out the plates that are there just to make it look more aesthetically pleasing. 160 pound set, 350 bucks. bucks not bad at all just throw that in the car afford not to get that can you almost can't afford not

to our guest is here right now should i get him in here or he's been waiting a little while actually yeah we should we boot everyone out yeah i'll start uh let him hop in i'll start kicking him here maybe while you're doing that should i read one one more? Yeah. Why don't you? Okay. Are you tired of supplements that just don't work? I thought you were just asking if I was tired, Tanner. I was going to say yes. We've established. Yes. We are both very tired. Are you tired? Yes, we are tired. Thank you for asking. That's done. Tired of supplements that just don't work. You take them a few minutes later, maybe an hour or two,

and you feel absolutely jack diddly poo poo. Most supplements are underdosed, contain fillers, cost cutting compounds, and proprietary blends, which all confuse an inconvenient truth. They just do not work. Maybe it's not your fault you keep bombing those PR attempts, have low

energy. Maybe your supplements suck. Well, thank you, our fellow South Dakotans at Build Fast Formula. They are making high-quality product formulas that contain clinically-dosed, research-backed compounds with no unnecessary fillers so you can build towards your goals faster and finally feel a difference in the gym, like this Vaso Blitz right here from Build Fast Formula. Massonomics listeners can snag their first formula at 10% off.

That's buildfastformula.com, and use discount code MASSONOMICS when you check out. And if you want to save even more moolah, upgrade your order to a subscription to save an additional 10%. That's 10 plus 10. That's like 50% off. Again, discount code MASSONOMICS, 10% off. BuildFastFormula.com

Vassal Blitz. Should we get our guest in here? Let's do it. Big Joel. Yes. Joel. Is that you? This is it. It's the one and only. Yeah. We're excited to get you on. Can you hear us okay?

Yeah, things are good. Awesome. All right, we're just going to get going. We got so much good stuff to say we don't want to waste it with not recording on the podcast. You got it. All right. So we got big Joel Dirks joining us this week.

Joel is, well, you're known for all kinds of things. Some of the things I would say is a strongman competitor over the years at a high level. More recently, you do a whole bunch of cool grip stuff on the internet. You know, that's what we've seen more recently is just grip strength stuff and almost like just kind of just crazy grip strength plate flipping things that just come across really cool on what Instagram and TikTok and stuff is like now. It's stuff that looks cool because normal people can't do it. And then one of our favorite accolades of yours is you're a Minnesota Midwest guy. So that's like one of

our favorite parts about you. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I'm here in Minnesota, so not too far from you guys, probably like five hours. Yeah, about five. You're just north of... Yeah, because you're just north... Yeah, Tommy, you're even closer than I actually am. I'm in Sioux Falls, so yeah. So you're a Minnesota guy, and a little bit about your background. Did you play football for Minnesota State Mankato?

You're a Maverick? So actually, so this will make sense to you guys. I went to university of Sioux Falls first. Oh, really? I went to university of Sioux Falls out of, uh, uh, to play football out of high school. Okay. Yeah. So I graduated in 2001. So I'll probably, okay. I graduated in 2005. So yeah. Okay. Okay. So I probably just missed you. I was there for Cougars. Yeah. Go Cougars missed you. So I was there for. Go Cougars. Yeah, go Cougars, right? So I was there for my first two years.

I did football on track. And then I transferred to Mankato. I transferred to Mankato. And I just did track there. Okay. Okay. So was that the Kalen DeBoer years still at USF? No, you would have been the coach before that, wouldn't you?

So Bob Young was the head coach at that time. Okay. Yeah. And Kalen DeBoer was an assistant coach. Yeah, so he was the head coach that recruited me when I went to play there. Okay. So I don't know how many years.

I don't know. Bob Young had not been. I remember being there, and there was pictures of Bob Young all over the place because he was close to retiring, kind of an older guy, and must have had a really great career there and that sort of thing that's i don't remember a lot about it but yeah so you played at the university of sioux falls yeah so we we actually had a really good football team so we at that time we were naia right before they went to division two and that's where my redshirt freshman year we went to the national championship and lost.

And then the next year we got to the game before the national championship and lost. So very good teams. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They won a national championship the year I quit. So it must've been,

I was one, you know, as the problem, you were the reason. Yeah. Yeah. But now they're division two. Yeah. So were you there when dusty Havorka was there? Like one of their big players the reason. Yeah. But now they're Division II.

Yeah. So were you there when Dusty Havorka was there, like one of their big players? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was funny, before I forget, we have a gym member, Tommy, I don't know if you know, but Jason Yurkovich, he was a USF guy, but he's older than you. He played wide receiver there, but it would have been like in the – He played with Kalen. Yeah, he played with – they were wide receivers together on the team got it yeah that's uh that's funny so you how how many years did you live in Sioux Falls for them so just like just

a year and a half so okay I got injured my redshirt freshman year when we had like uh spring ball and I got injured or whatever and long story short I came back in the fall and like still had like the injury and then they finally figured out went to a different doctor got a second opinion had surgery and then came home after the surgery okay so then you went to Mankato after Sioux Falls you got it yep okay another kind of coincidence my sister threw at University of South Dakota. She was a thrower. Okay.

And then after that, she went to Mankato. She was a competitive thrower at USD, but she didn't stay in track at Mankato, but she's the same age as you two, so she would have been there at the same time as you also. But she didn't throw anymore. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. All kinds of six degrees of separation. That's the Midwest for you, though, right? Everyone's connected anymore. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. All kinds of six degrees of separation.

That's the Midwest for you, though, right? Everyone's connected somehow. Yeah, you're just coming off. This isn't, I mean, this is probably the most prestigious podcast you've been on lately, but not a bad second fiddle. You just came off of uh you're out with in colorado with brian it looked like yeah so we we have a lot of things going together right now and we'll get into that but uh i flew out there for the whole week and we did a couple videos so

like two of the videos have come out so far where we did like the the mcdonald's thing and then uh we went outside the stadium and had people try to lift the dumbbells and then we did like the McDonald's thing. And then we went outside the stadium and had people try to lift their dumbbells. And then we did the podcast. And then the other video we did is we went and bought a 350 pound like globe dumbbell and tried to lift that. So people have to see that'll come out soon and see if Brian or I are able to kind of lift it.

So who had the globe dumbbell? Where did this come from? So as you kind of know, like there's a very small niche group of like on facebook the vintage weights page and stuff like that so i follow that and there's this guy in kansas city kansas he kind of collects some old weights and has some from when like stuff he still uses but he got this 350 pound globe dumbbell it's from jim uh easily's gym in kansas city kansas from like the 70s and 80s jim owned the gym uh and the the story goes he got this dumbbell from someone else they were going to throw it away and he saved it and if anyone could lift it with one hand they would give him a free gym membership obviously no one lifted it and uh they told us no one has ever lifted it like off the

ground so we went to go see if that was doable so what's the diameter of the handle um i want to say it's like maybe just a smidge on a two-inch diameter handle. Okay. So it's not like the Thomas inch dumbbell handle. No. Yeah. The Thomas inch, like two or three-eighths, there's like no way, obviously, right? Right. But with the smaller diameter handle, like we thought maybe there's a chance. So we had to go check it out.

Okay. But you're not giving any spoilers yet? Not yet. Because I don't know when this is coming out, and they haven't posted the video yet. Okay. I'd be curious. Yeah, I'm excited to see that. That'll be fun to watch.

I did catch some of the McDonald's video. Can you explain what you guys set out to eat there in that video? So the challenge was 95 chicken nuggets and 10 cheeseburgers, and it was supposed to be six sodas, but we only got three each. But essentially, we both kind of finished right around like half of our food. Brian thinks he ate more, but that's not what happened. He ate more chicken nuggets. But, yeah, I ended up having like eight and a third cheeseburgers and like 27 chicken nuggets and three large Cokes.

Could you have gone anymore or were you at your limit or like what? cokes could you have gone anymore or were you at your limit or like what uh like if they're like say like i just had to finish that one cheeseburger to be done yeah that like that would have been it but like when we were like there wasn't much time left i was like this like i'm not trying to force you anymore because i'm not even close not even halfway right that's yeah that's just a lot that's always been we've had this long-running joke on the show going back many years that someone's gonna sit need 100 big nuggets at once but uh yeah that's just that's a lot of you eat 100 mcnuggets at once you think could you do that if it was just mcnuggets that's tough obviously you you want to say yes right like i feel like 75

like you would probably be like all right i'm doing okay and then the last 25 would just be awful yeah i think after a while the texture would just get to be a lot right so that's where like the dipping sauce and the pop comes in huge because just that same taste then they're gonna start getting cold and they're not very good cold yeah yeah that's true okay yeah that that's good so why so is it store is the story is that lizzo like is that she ever ate all that because i'm not i know i'm not buying that right no so i think it was kind of more to shame her a little bit oh okay okay yeah so people have put that out on the internet there was this i would probably say it's more of like a meme thing that

was going around gotcha yeah okay okay i was just saying because that is a lot like there's probably a few people out there that can eat that but not any average humans no no that was that was ridiculous okay so uh you know obviously we're talking about the grip strength stuff which is you got a lot of a lot of different grip strength stuff that you did but like uh how long have you been you know because you were doing strongman for quite a while obviously strongman's a part or a grip grip training uh grip events are a part of strongman but how long have you really been like really into grip strength and grip training stuff sure so 2015 um i was done competing strongman had back surgery and then i had to figure out a way i tried to get back into strongman but my back said no and

i kind of right around maybe 2018 started to get like really into where i did like i just just had heard about king kong showed up to an event like had not trained any of the stuff showed up and just jumped in and did it and from there i was like i don't i don't i don't want to say what place i got because i forget but it was it was in the top 20 right somewhere in there i forget i don't want to say because people say no you didn't but um from there i was man what, man, what could I do if I actually, like, trained for this, right? Like, if I knew what these events, like, were a couple months ahead of time and trained. So then I got into that for a while with that.

But then, like, I didn't want to do the same implement over and over and over again. So, like, I started messing with plates and then blobs and inch dumbbells. So it just kind of sparked from just that one contest yeah and you've obviously you know gone whole hog into it since then um what's your favorite grips feet of strength that you've done or like what do you think is the coolest thing that you've done in grip strength because there's such a variety of uh grip grip uh grip tools and exercises and lifts and uh it's almost limitless of what you could possibly do once you really start getting to but what's what's like one of the coolest things you think that you're most proud of of being able to do man um

so when i went out and visited sornex um i got to try some different plates i've never you know had opportunity to lift and so in front of richard soren i took a york deep dish uh one of the old ones from 60s or 70s or york deep dish plate and went from the rim threw it up and caught the hub i don't to my knowledge no one else has ever done that and then just to see the smile and reaction on richard's face um i mean it tops anything else i've ever done something like that is a good example it obviously takes grip strength but there's a coordination and a timing and a skill of doing something like that that's like beyond grip strength too yeah so there's there's a lot of finger dexterity i i hang coordination a lot of stuff going into it you got to catch it just right man because you hit a spoke it's not happening so yeah it's a lot of timing the stars kind of

have to align so yeah and for anyone that's listening it's it maybe it's hard to put this into perspective if you haven't ever like messed with any of that stuff, but like picking up off any 45 by the hub, like, you know, I know there's different hubs and like some are harder and easier than others and everything like that. But like a 45 is a lot of weight for most people to pick up by any, you know, by your fingertips essentially is what you're doing on those hub lifts. absolutely and so think you know like even to like take it by like the rim and put it up on the bar right is it easy let alone by the hub and put it up on there right uh who do you think has the strongest grip ever like is it is there do people universally say like yeah this dude like has the best grip that anyone's ever seen. Is there anyone like that?

So this is just my opinion. I think it probably goes between Brian Shaw, Mike Burke. Are you guys familiar with who Mike Burke was? Yeah. Did Brian and Mike train together at one point in time or world's strongest man competitor. And wasn't he like a, was he like a construction worker or something at the time or something too? Yeah.

Yep. Yeah. So those, those two are, are probably at the very top. I think Carl Myers cough. What's so tough about grip is like, there's so many different events,

different things. Like if you have long fingers, you're a lot better at like thick handled stuff. you have like medium-sized hands like for me like hubs are a lot easier different things like that um or if you have short fingers you know a lot of stuff is a lot more difficult so what is your hand size like you're are you saying you're like middle of the road or i mean when you say that are your hands still probably bigger than most people's hands? How tall are you? 6'1". Okay.

Yeah. So say from the bottom of your wrist to the top of the finger, I'm at 7 1⁄2. So finger length, I'm probably pretty average. But in terms of thickness and meat, yeah, it's like a lot more meatier. But my opinion is like the meat kind of hurts you. So like say like a bar is going to sit in here. This extra meat is kind of in the way for a thick bar. So it kind of makes it more difficult.

So do you think based on what you're saying there, would overly long fingers be a disadvantage for something like hub lifting or not necessarily or would they be yes i think if like if you have really long fingers really long thumbs like you're not able to get like the strong part of my thumb like to that knuckle like in a good position versus it'll be a lot lower on their thumb so it makes it harder. Okay. Does that make sense? Like, yeah, I can get down on the hub. Right. Right. No,

that makes sense. That, uh, that makes sense. And, you know, talking about these different plates and weights and stuff like that, and even mentioned it there,

but it's like grip training and vintage weights. You almost can't be into one and not the other. I mean, that's kind of the case, right? Like if you're into grip training, you're sort of into vintage weights too almost can't be into one and not the other i mean that's kind of the case right like if you're into grip training you're sort of into vintage weights too right yeah i think like roundheads have really brought that group of people into it because what they saw well a lot of them probably saw like dollar signs hey if i take this dumbbell and cut it up now it's worth

twice as much right and then then they start messing with it or they'll keep one end and they'll sell the other and they start messing with it it's just kind of fun because everyone can try right so do you have a i mean you you've got a little bit of everything when it comes i mean you've got blobs and what do they call it if it's the half of a hex dumbbell is that them but dumbbell is that still blob? You call it a hex blob or what is that? Yeah, it's called like a hex blob, which I think are cool because so much easier to find, plus a lot cheaper, right? So it's a great way to start. The only thing with the hex blobs is there's such a variation in thickness. Some are real thin, kind of skinny, and then others are really wide. So the hex dumbbells really vary in difficulty by the thickness of the head.

Isn't with blobs, York blobs, isn't there even a difference between USA stamped and non-USA stamped? There's a little bit of a difference, right? Even though the heads don't look much different, what is the difference? So, yes. So the pre-USA are going to be a little bit thicker, a little bit more rounded. So it's a little bit more difficult. So the original Fat Man blob with no stamp on the bottom, the pre-USA, that one's more difficult than a pre-USA stamped half a hundred.

Yeah. So how have you collected all that? Like, where have you gotten all that stuff? Because I know I'm in, we're in western northeast South Dakota, and I've been working on my round headset. I'm in, we're in Western Northeast, South Dakota, and I've been working on my round headset and, you know, I kind of have to beg, borrow and steal from every possible scenario that comes up. You have access to it. Yeah.

So, and you're kind of in the same boat, so. I get lucky in the sense of like in the cities here, there are people who will have them and sell them. A great story is in this small little town next to me, this lady, the only thing she had was a pair of nine-pound roundhead dumbbells. With the rarest ones, yeah, right. There is, and she just has those randomly, puts them on Facebook Marketplace for $15.

How long ago? You're talking like two months ago? Because that just happened like a little bit ago. Yeah. A couple of like, maybe like a month and a half. You got those. I tried to buy, I offer, I said the second I saw it, I figured, uh, you know, I'm like, someone's snatching these up and I'm like, maybe I can convince her with a lot. You know, I'm like, I'll give you a hundred dollars for those, right. You know, I'll give you a hundred dollars right away. You know, they're someone who might pay 500 might pay 500 but uh so you got those because i tried to get those yeah i ended

up with them i had a buddy my buddy tony lives in that town was like maybe a few blocks away from i was like hey can you go over there now and get him and he went over there just give her 20 bucks and say, thank you. Yeah, because pairs of those nines have been going for like $600 on eBay this year. It's crazy. So, yeah, I just had assumed like when I started like my roundhead collection, like I just wasn't going to have nines, right? I'm not going to spend $600 on a pair of nines because I'm like barely ever going to use, right? Right. Or literally never use probably, right? Right. Well, now I do just because they're here and i know the value but otherwise like i just assume i'm never

going to have those and like i the only thing is i'm missing is 12s and those aren't too bad you can probably 100 150 but i just because like i said i won't use them like if i find a deal like i did on the nines absolutely let me know if when you get tired of those nines, I'll, I'll keep track of them for you. I'll give you a 30 bucks. You can double your money. Yeah, there we go. That's funny because I did try to buy those same, that same pair of dumbbells. Tanner's got to cast a really wide net to find.

Yes. Yeah. I just, I just last month I got a pair of hundreds that came out of the cities that were for sale there for a while. They're in St. Paul. Yeah, they're

you cut out for a second. They're painted. They've been repainted very shiny black, which I'm not Yeah. It's terrible i tried tried my hardest to get them as well you guys are competitors now we're fighting over the same roundheads over here well that was such a good deal yeah so that's i had thought someone else got them because then there was another pair posted for like 600 bucks oh no what did i spend on him uh because i don't

know which pair it was but i did not spend i think i spent did you buy much what was that did you buy he had a whole bunch of stuff for sale right the first guy no mine were just hundreds i just got hundreds at least from when i when i got him that all the all that he had was hundreds because that's the other thing too every time you buy something from someone you're like oh do you happen to have anything else for sale like that lady it's like you happen to have some 12 sitting there and some other stuff too because i'll buy that while i'm here yes but his was just the hundreds uh what about on the deep dish plates do you have a variety of deep dish plates then too yeah so that's not that's my favorite thing to collect because I use them a lot more. Like my biggest thing is like me and my buddy Jeff talk about this is like so many people

collect like old vintage stuff and it's just art, right? And I want to like actually use it. So like I collect, I have a whole bunch of like single plates, like a Marcy 45, which those are kind of like more rare, expensive, like, you know, 200 some bucks a plate. They call it Canadian bullseye plates. It's got like a bullseye on the back of it, a bend plate, a whole bunch of different variety of different hubs. And it's cool because I'll put them out and we'll see, you know,

somewhere like a Marcy is very easy. That would be like the beginner level of like lifting a 45 pound plate and then some of them obviously you work up to like a york mill back would be probably the most difficult yeah a york mill back the hub is like that tall and like that big around yeah it's yeah it's i would say it's kind of the gold standard of public okay so can you do a york milled back easily like is that is that challenging for you or like because i mean that seems i didn't even know like that's insane like hub lifting that thing uh so like just hub it is fine yeah to pick it up um what i've done lately is like i'll take it by the the lip flip it catch it at the middle i've done

that for double there is nothing to grab onto i mean like the lip is how how you might even know i mean is the lip even an inch or like it's it's tiny i think it's a little over uh a quarter inch maybe somewhere closer to like a like i don't know what you what's between a quarter whatever right it's like three eights or something like that like but literally like for anyone that you know if you haven't seen york milled i mean these aren't deep dish plates these are hubs that just there is almost not a hub there you know there's very little to grab onto yeah the shallow hubs is what we call them yeah it's and it's a wider hub too so it spreads you

out a little bit more right right, right. We have a lot of strength co-plates in our gym. Not a vintage plate, but kind of a cool American-made plate. Have you ever been around a strength co-plate? Have you ever hub-lifted one before? I guess I don't know what they look like. They look

they're four-spoke plates. They're like shiny black E-coated, but they look a lot they look similar sort of similar to the milled york i would say they're they're machined on the outside edge and okay machine machined on the inside hub but uh we might have to we're we're uh there's their sponsor of the podcast we might have to talk to him i think you need a set of uh you need a set of strength co 45s to be uh doing some hub lifting on that because i haven't seen many people do it so yeah that'd be super

cool see what i can do with them yeah yeah that's what that's what we got to try out i think do you have a favorite piece of equipment then like a favorite uh set of plates or a favorite anything um so for a while there i was really looking for these jack o'lain 50 pound plates so they got kind of a cool big round hub uh but what's cool is they're 50 pounds versus the 45 so that one was kind of special because i just randomly found that at a plate against sports for a dollar a pound and they're selling online for hundreds of dollars a plate so that was that was special because i was looking for it and then it just kind of found me yeah you ever uh you ever crossed paths with jeff dave before in minnesota so it's funny because he lives like just like a town away from me yeah probably like

15 minutes from my house but i've never met Okay, and for anyone that's listening that doesn't know, I mean, just Google Jeff Dabes, D-A-B-E. He is an arm wrestler. He's from Minnesota also, and he has enormous arms and, like, enormous hands on him. And not just, like, he works out and has enormous arms. Like, there's something. No, something, like, different. He was born works out and has enormous arms like there's something like no something like different about he was born with like enormous arms

you know I don't know what I don't even know I don't know what it's called or what the what it is but you have to see a picture of him and you be like yeah this guy's arms are big and he's got like some of the biggest hands probably in the world and he's used that to his advantage and he's been a very competitive arm wrestler but has he done grip stuff before do you know or i think just like messing around with juji but i the reason i think we've never crossed paths is he's not into like lifting weights or working out from my understanding okay comments that like you know he doesn't really lift he just kind of arm wrestles that's it i wish he would try some grip stuff yeah it'd be cool

it'd be very cool i would speaking of that 350 pound dumbbell i would love to see what his hand size could do with that yeah yeah there would be certain things with like dumbbells where it's like i don't even know his hands might not even almost like fit into uh certain oh yeah yeah yeah yeah the width actually yeah so like so say like a thomas inch dumbbells like a four inch handle what's cool the 350 dumbbells like a five inch hand okay yeah yeah okay he would fit in there well it would be interesting to see with his hand size and strength just what he could do if he a little bit off the ground or not yeah he needs to get over at your place and uh see what he can do with some of that stuff off the ground or not yeah he needs to get over at your place and

uh see what he can do with some of that stuff i'd be curious to see how how it plays out right that'd be really cool yeah um as a minnesota guy us as south dakota guys on this podcast we get called out a lot for uh we say certain words kind of funny. Sure. And I don't know if you pick up on it with listening to us or not, but a lot of other people, especially that aren't from the Midwest, they pick up on it. Does anyone ever, I can't really tell in your voice. I don't know if I noticed it or not, but does anyone ever, when you go, when you go out of the region, does anyone ever call you out on that?

No, not so much me. My wife for sure. She has like a big Minnesota accent versus i feel like i don't as much yeah i don't i don't pick up anything i mean you to me you sound like people from the area but i don't like not in a way that you have a a noticeable accent i don't pick up on that from you much no okay i've got a test for you. I've got to remember the three words that they are. So the top of your house, the thing that covers your house, what do you call that, or any building?

The roof. The roof, right. The roof. Not the roof. Not the roof. Yeah, so you said the same. I had to even think about that again. So you say the same thing as us.

The roof. Yeah. What about the bottom of a horse's foot? Like the shoe? Well, not the shoe, but like, uh, or any animal like that, like the hoof. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. That's right. And what was the third one, Tommy? Hoof. Oh, oh, i know um yeah it's uh trees on a tree the thing that grows and that grows out in the ground that uh well no like down under the ground that holds yeah what do you say? Roots. Yeah, roots, not roots. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so you're the same as us on all those. Here's the other one that we've been catching a lot of heat for lately. What's that thing called that's red, white, and blue and it blows in the wind?

Plague? Yeah. And I can't even pick. I still don't even know the people say we say f-l-e-g you know that we pronounce it flag flag i guess and it's supposed to be what is it so i still can't even say what it's supposed to be i can't say it differently flag i i don't know like it just sounds wrong whatever i'm trying to say there i don't but, but that's one. That's when we've been, Oh, that.

And also, okay. You go to the grocery store. What did they put your groceries in when you leave? In a bag. Yes. That's the one that gets a lot of people. Or like,

what was that? I think button. I think people say funny too. Sometimes button. Oh, okay. That that's probably a new, we'll probably get called

out on that one this week now that you said that yes button versus button button see i say button button it's button button yeah minnesota okay which which of these states has the most shoreline california florida hawaii or minnesota a shoreline yeah i would assume california but it's probably a trick yeah it's a trick the answer is minnesota has more shoreline than california florida and hawaii combined when you when you can count in lakes that That land of 10,000 lakes. Yeah. Like the shoreline of the lakes, it does actually, the math is Minnesota has more shoreline

than all three of those combined when you figure in the lakes. The only one that has Minnesota beat is Alaska. Yeah. Well, then we have the only part of the continental, the lower 48 that doesn't touch the 48 up in that very top part of Minnesota is touching Canada. And it's water between Minnesota and there.

And then Canada is right above. Oh, I never knew there was water that actually separated that. Yeah. Now you have to look at a map. Very, very. Okay. So it's not really, it's almost not lower 48 right there in that part then kind of in a way kind of in a way because it's connected to canada it's not connected to minnesota oh i see okay i've okay i just pulled it up i never realized that's how that actually looked wow yeah it's it's it actually is just a piece of Canada that has Minnesota stamped on it.

That's weird. Yeah, I don't know. I don't remember why, but something happened that we got in the United States. Huh, that is, wow. Looking at a map, that doesn't even make sense. That's crazy. Yeah. Okay, so this is talking about not so much grip strength here,

but just general strength. This is something we've been talking to with several of our most recent guests. It's a question we've asked everyone to see what their opinion is. And with your, with your history and strong man and everything else, I'd be curious to get your answer. But if someone walked into your gym, we're going to train with you for the first time ever.

You've never seen this person lift at all before. You don't know how strong they are. And the mission here is to be able to just watch them do one lift and hopefully you're able to most accurately gauge their overall strength by just watching them perform this one lift. What lift would you choose to have them do for you to hopefully be able to most accurately gauge overall how strong they are? Man, I'm guessing most people probably pick deadlift.

Is that right? That's certainly come up a lot. That is one of them. We both tended to shy away from the deadlift, but that's certainly. What I think, I think I would pick, in my opinion, what I would like, I think front squats. I like that a lot. It's a little bit more athletic.

It's a more difficult lift in terms of just being able to control the weight, how you hold it, all that kind of stuff. That way you can see how they hold it too. Yeah, I think front squats are a great answer. We've had that one come up a few times, not a ton. And it depends on who we talk to. If we talk to someone with more of a powerlifting background you know they they go towards squat and deadlift more and when we talk to the strong people that have more of a strongman background that's when we get a way

wider variety of answers and that's uh mauser his take was uh was his uh a high handled farmer's carry okay and i'm like i can see the logic in that too you know if someone's able to pick up and carry a you know the a they got the hand strength to hold on to it but well this is a question for you too my one hole in that sometimes is it are are some people just uh naturally grip freaks too i mean if you have big hand like do you run across people that are just like yeah this person is just excellent at it or or not i mean does it just at that level does it take uh training to be there um obviously i think there's always freaks like it's always crazy because you can bring on a blob or an inch dumbbell and if you find the

right guy they'll pick up the first time like i mean i guess i never trained grip specifically but like the first time i tried him i picked him up yeah right and buddy who does construction just kind of lifts regularly and when he came over one time picked up the the blob no problem um so similar question now related to grip then. So if you could only watch a person perform one grip lift and you wanted to overall best gauge how strong their grip is, what grip lift are you going to have them do? One grip lift. And it's weird too because there's such a variety in the different types of grip and stuff.

So if you could only watch them do one thing, what would you pick to hopefully gauge best where they're at where they stand i think pinching two plates so if they could do 225s 235s 245s something like that or two big bumper plates that would give me a real good gauge of where their hand strength is yeah that's a good one yeah Yeah. Yeah. The plate pinches. Yeah. That's another, you know, that's why grip strength is so interesting. Cause there's so many, so much variety of there, what you can do, like how many, um, do you ever do like tens or isn't that a test to like how many, how many dimes you can pinch together and hold that sort of thing? Yep. So like I've done, uh uh five in each hand at the same time six is like

the best people can do just because you have to have real long fingers because it spreads you up because the diameter so yeah that would be one where i suppose like someone like brian might have an advantage of hand size just because like he can get his hands around six i suppose or you got it yep exactly and then it's the other the trickiest part is finding five or six tens that are exactly the same right yeah because you go to somebody at such a variety of different plates and trying to line them up and get them in so that's that's part of it too yeah uh coming up in your strongman training is it right you trained with uh dave uh oslind or oslind I don't know how he says his last name for sure. But didn't you come up training with him a little bit?

fanboying in a sense but also like so excited to get into strongman but to learn from dave was like priceless right like you're learning from one of the best and in my opinion probably one of the smartest strongman because dave would take so much time and figuring out um just to mimic what's going to be at the contest like the imp implements, the handle, the handle height, the handle thickness. What's the best way I can maneuver my body to move this object. He was such like a scientist and figuring out how to like mimic things and to just what, what way can he use his body to best move this object? Another Minnesota guy, obviously does he train i mean does he still uh lift he's still training but yeah nothing competitive just kind of he's still got him garage with all this

stuff and does that but nothing competitive he's got four kids now so he's super busy but we we get together once in a while we talk you know a couple times a month so that's cool what about did you ever cross paths ever cross paths with any of the Gillinghams much over the years? Yeah, so Carl, we would train to Carl's once in a while, Carl Gillinghams. And we competed against Carl many times, like, at North America's Strongest Man and different contests like that, competing against Carl.

So Carl's a good friend. Wade, I've met a few times that, like, just to expose when he's doing the GNC grip gauntlet, I've actually never met Brad. So, but they're, they're all like Southern Minnesota and I was more up by the cities. Right. Yeah. They're Marshall. Right. Tommy, is that right? Yeah. That's what, yeah, we got to, I had a roommate in college that trained with Brad in powerlifting. He'd like a junior, junior nationals at the time. And he was back one weekend and conned him into letting us go train with those guys. Like 10 years ago, we went and trained at Jackals with Brad. It was really cool.

And that was, that was really before it's felt like everyone had a garage gym or their own gym too. So, you know, going in there, that was definitely that old school environment where it was a lot of homemade stuff and it was it was a it was a whole different scene in there from what we were used to oh yeah those guys were big pioneers of like the home gym like carl had his turned his whole like second garage into a big gym had all the strongman stuff and then obviously dave kind of mimicked that and created his own, but yeah, the Gillinghams for this area really were a big, big start to strength sports.

Yeah, for sure. Are you, so do you, is your gym, is it a garage gym? Is that where you train out of then your, your place there or what?

So like, if you see my old videos, like I took a room in the basement, painted black and had inserted this just like, almost like a, like a skinny hallway type room. And then now the basement, painted black, and inserted this skinny hallway-type room. And then now, we have a second garage that's detached from the house that's out in the yard. We have a big two-acre lot. And I finally got my wife to let me turn it into a gym.

And so now I park outside so I can put some stuff in the the regular house garage but yeah it's probably like it's uh probably good right around like a two car two car garage size garage and now we got everything in here and i even have like a contest in here now so it's getting a lot of good use yeah that's cool that's cool um we've got this little game we like to play with everyone that we got that we get on here called overrated under cool. We've got this little game we like to play with everyone that we get on here called Overrated Underrated. And we've got a special Big Joel set of topics here. So if you're ready, we'll play.

All you've got to remember is you can't ride the line. We'll give you a topic, and you have to decide if it's over or under. You can't waffle on it. So you've got to choose a side. This first one, actually, I had really liked at the time, but now it's not quite as good knowing that you played at USF instead, but I'll still say it because you might be familiar. So overrated or underrated, the NSIC, the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference

is the D2 conference with all the Minnesota schools and the South Dakotaota schools and everything the one prior to not the new one right it's it's what it is now so it would be what like mancato's in now and uh so over okay because what was it the ncc is one when i was there and then do that that's when like usd sdsu ndsu und were all in the ncc and like that was that was the real deal that was probably the best one of the best division two conferences okay so you said overrated on nsic yes so we were uh when you were in track at So we were, uh, when you were in track at then, did you, uh, did you ever make it to North? Were you ever at Northern either for football or tracker? Did you ever go to Aberdeen for anything? Yeah.

We had outdoor conference at Aberdeen when I was coaching at Mankato. Okay. So you have been to Western Northeast South Dakota before we went went to the Pizza Ranch even. Oh, excellent choice. We got the full experience. Yeah. Good choice. About what year was this roughly? Man, so probably like 2007, 8, 9, somewhere in there. Okay. Okay. That's going way back. Do you know, this is a topic that's come up on the podcast a

few times before you know you having your your throwing history and you would know about this so can anyone that wants to i mean i've determined the answer is yes but it still seems odd to me but anyone you don't have to be in college you can compete at a collegiate track meet if you compete unattached you can just show up and sign up and uh be in it is that right so any age so like when i was doing track there would be some older guys who were trying to like advance uh like if we went to like a big track meet some guys who are trying to get in olympics and sometimes like a high school kid who's really good too they might run unattached as well so any age so what about me just some dumb ass that goes to the gym and i'm like yeah

i just i want to go throw the shot and see how far i can throw it in competition you can just go do that you would yeah you would essentially you'd have to show up with your own 16 pound shot put but yeah right yep so how often did you encounter that though i mean would it happen multiple times a season or was this like every couple years you saw it? So I'll give you two answers. So to see like other people unattached, not very regularly. What's kind of cool is to say like

when I registered fresh in my first year, I can practice with the team, but I can go throw at the meet and travel. Yeah, that's cool. That's cool. So there'd be a lot of you unattached, but they were like redshirt freshmen, stuff like that so but regular people i think i only counted the high school kid once that was like i think it was a girl running i don't know she was running sprints

and then if i was at like a big meet maybe there would be uh in the throws not very too often but there would be some times where there's a really good athlete that trains in that city at that college that is going to compete unattached. Okay. All right. Overrated or underrated, the captains of Crush Grippers? I think all Grippers are overrated. Yeah. So no.

Oh, say that again. No offense directly to captain crush i think they're all kind of overrated okay so for anyone that doesn't know is is for the hardest captains of crush is that the hardest one four is yeah four is like the gold standard i think like what four people five people carl myers kopf just got certified on it so okay and then there is a there's a three and a half and a three then yeah so three is like like the really hard one that most people try to obtain a three and a half is like another huge step and then the four is just ridiculous yeah so have you done you've done the three before uh yeah and i'm not making excuses the only the only one i have is a three is the heaviest one i have is a three i can do that i've

done it for like a double but that's like maximum okay um have you done like ju use juji's grippers too like do you i have three of them that i just like randomly got um i think uh two three and four so nothing crazy like those are pretty easy but like i i grip people are gonna hate this but i don't train grippers ever yeah okay and so why don't you like grippers this is just my opinion i think grippers only make you better at grippers yeah i can see can see that. Like it's, I mean, I don't have a good grip, but the little bit that I've used grippers in the gym, it just, some of the guys are so good at it and it's like, they get the technique down and they go and it just boom, like it's automatic for them. Yeah. So there's, there's some technique to it, how you

set it in your hands and then hand size also, because your hand's too short you can't get it you know to start it's so open so far or if your fingers are really long you have nowhere to squeeze around like it's like you hit kind of a point where you can't squeeze anymore because your fingers are so long so it's also i mean everything in grip is hand size dependent but that one really affects it okay do you have the juji mufu uh big pp i did i got it as a birthday present that's everyone must have that grip tool yeah i have the original one not the new resin one okay we have the resin one so what's the original one what was it what was it made like it's more like like a real hard uh hard texture okay i don't know what it's made out of okay just a real hard pp

okay overrated or underrated brass shot puts i think overrated. What did you throw with? Just like a regular steel one. I like a bigger size one. I feel like just for whatever reason, you can put more into it. I think if you have smaller hands, like absolutely like spend the fortune to buy a brass one.

But I think physics would tell you you'd want like a bigger object to press into i think yeah it's so that's that i guess for anyone that's hasn't been around shot but those are i don't know if anyone if they make any shot puts out anything other than the two but they're either you know the regular metal shot put or then sometimes you see people that have the brass shots and they're smaller around they're either, you know, the regular metal shot put, or then sometimes you see people that have the brass shots and they're smaller around, they're shiny. And usually they end up getting dented up because it's like softer than, you know, it's like a softer metal.

And they got a little dimpling to them after a while. But so you did like at collegiate level, was anyone using those? Or, I mean, is it some of both? I don't remember seeing them too much because i was we all have like the same uh indoor ones where they're pretty much always a big one and so i get used to that i got used to that bigger size so to switch to that smaller one i think it would have messed with me and maybe like other people and just changed how you threw it and how it sits in your hand so i don't think i've seen it very

often high school yeah do you have any shot puts now have you ever done like is like shot put juggling is that like a grip thing at all does anyone do that sort of stuff um so the thing with the shopper would be was like especially the indoor one if you could pick up the 16 pound with one hand straight up okay palmette basically yeah basically. Palm it and get it off the ground, yes. So that was a little bit of a grip, but in terms of juggling, I don't have that skills. You need to work on that and be able to juggle shot puts. Yeah.

Upside down, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you could do that. I bet you could do that, yeah. Okay. yeah yeah yeah you could do you i bet you could do that yeah okay uh last one here had a few different ones i'm i'm gonna go with this overrated or underrated caribou coffee overrated i'm not a coffee guy i don't drink coffee yeah are you anyone that doesn't know it's a very minnesota i mean yeah what about cat do you like a pre-workout guy so yeah just before my workouts otherwise like normally like i don't wake up half caffeine i don't drink like energy drinks regularly whenever i drink an energy drink it's like to go

work out and part of it might just be like psychology and like uh part of my routine right is like having that pre-workout and then going to work out so yeah so you're not a big minute because caribou coffee is a minnesota thing for anyone that doesn't know and uh i don't know it's infiltrated over to south dakota i think people like it right tommy is it good or what is i mean yeah they're all they're all over here i I mean, Aberdeen's got two of them now, so it's making moves. Yeah. Yeah, I think my wife just stops at whatever one's closer. Yeah.

Okay. We'll audible for one more Minnesota topic then. So overrated, underrated, Prince. Underrated. I think when he did the Super Bowl halftime, that was awesome. That is so good. That is every once in a while,

I got to go back and watch that. And it just blows my mind how good that thing is. Like what year do you think that was? Oh, was it 2003 or four, maybe? I'd hate to guess. I'll find it right now. We'll get an answer. There you go.

Would it have been like uh denver bronco super bowl like early late 90s it was oh 2007 oh so that was uh colts dealers and uh uh card uh give me the rest here oh bears, Bears? No. It just says Colts won on the Colts website. I think the Bears. I think it was probably against the Chicago Bears. I would believe that. Yep. That's my guess.

It doesn't say where at, location. Nope. Both of these just say, oh, yeah, here we go. Dolphin Stadium. Yeah, so that's Miami, right. Yep, it started raining like three-quarters of the way through it. Yeah. Was it purple rain?

Basically, it was. They had like purple lights going. That was amazing. That was probably the best halftime show ever. Okay, Big Joel, good news. Looks like you passed overrated, under underrated so that's a pretty big accomplishment until yes you should it's right up there with closing a number three captains yeah very good yeah well it's like sir we certify you just like when you close the three and a half

and the four and stuff like that so yeah you're you're you've made it now. You're on the list. Yes. Do you guys like grippers? So we've got like all the we've got captains that crush up to three because we've had a few guys that were closing the two and a half and

I had told them, you know, once you can close the two and I'm not buying the next one until you can close this one. So that was a reward once I closed the two and a half. And nobody at the gym yet has closed the three. I am not that good at it. I can close the two. And that's it. You know, I can mess with the two and a half.

I suppose if I worked on it long enough, maybe I could close the two and a half. But I am not good at it at all. Yeah, so what people don't realize is is the with grippers they vary so much so like your number three and my number three can be two different like light years apart and easiness so you have to like send it to this guy to like get measured to make sure it's in range of where it's supposed to be so like the numbers on grippers actually like have no like real meaning so they that makes sense yeah you know what i've always thought on the grippers too like so some of these grippers we've had for like 10 years and it's in a gym with not a ton of

members but we got people in there messing with them and stuff i'm like say this thing's been squeezed a thousand times does that spring at some point lose a certain amount of uh whatever it's you know tension or whatever that it's just becomes easier over time yeah that recoil is not there like it used to be right yeah that makes sense though so okay so then what are the what are the blobs that are in the gym we've got uh we've got up to half a half hunt we've got what is the half hundred called we've got uh so that, so that's just like, we just call it the blob. That is the blob. Right. Yeah. So we've got that like ours are, we've got a set of five that I randomly got used from someone like 10 years ago. I barely even knew what it was at the time. I was just buying gym equipment and I'm like,

I knew what York was. I'm like, these look cool. I guess it's some sort of grip thing, but they're all huge. Like I can do like the first one. And sometimes the second one, these like are half hundred, like nobody, I didn't, you know, the big ones we have, like, they just sit there and collect dust because nobody can pick them up. It's fun. You know, and strength sports are kind of like this with a lot of things, but the grip, especially where you'll find one, you'll start at the easiest.

You'd be like, oh, this is easy. You go up a step, this is easy. You're like, this isn't too bad. And then you go to the next one, it doesn't even move. It humbles you so fast on grip stuff. Yeah. We always say it's easy until it's not, right? Right.

And you're like, well, there's not even an in-between ground here. How do I even train this? It goes from having it to nothing. So has anyone gotten your half hundred? I know. Nope. Nobody ever has. Yeah. I mean, there again, it's another one, you know, in our gym, we've got all these dusty corners of random stuff in there. So some stuff I'll see, you know, I won't see even even touch it for a few months. And then like, it's like guys get in, uh, start busting it out. And then like a group, we'll all get in on it on a Saturday months and then like it's like guys get in uh start busting it out and then like a group will all get in on it on a saturday and starts getting used more often but uh the blobs

i really haven't seen the blobs getting used that much lately but no uh we don't have anyone that's like particularly awesome at the blobs that i've ever seen you know the the uh our lighter couple got a whole bunch of chalk on them when you go to the uh the blob it's pretty clean because it's not getting uh even getting tested all that often some what you can also do with your round hands is see how heavy you can go with it like standing up picking it by the head like the actual dumbbell that's kind of cool yeah yeah yeah if you're if you're feeling good you can try to do a transfer from the head potentially with the other hand um so how heavy of a round head can you pick up uh like that like can you do like 30s 40s or like what can you do there i think my best by the head is a full 65

that's crazy yeah yeah i don't want people and don't give anyone in in my gym any ideas on the roundheads throwing them around just show up next week tanner every one of them is bent and broken well the saying goes you can't really break it it just turns into a blob that's true that is that is true but we got enough blobs yeah uh that's good yeah we we've got a we kind of got a variety of grip stuff that we picked up over the years one thing i've always kind of enjoyed training on is the dinny stone rings you ever mess with that sort of stuff at all a little bit so there was a guy at one of the local gyms messing with it and i just tried it one time um so that's like a different type of grip where it's more like a pain tolerance right

it is that's yeah that's i've i i don't have particular i have kind of smaller hands and that's what i found i can do decently at like because it is just like if i'm okay with this feeling like it's literally like tearing through the skin in my fingers you can kind of keep going yep that's exactly it how much pain can you handle um but i do think it's such a cool feat of strength to lift that much weight and hold it whatever but yeah it's so it's such a different grip type event yeah and uh for anyone that doesn't know like a big reason it's different it's because the diameter we're talking a lot of this stuff we're talking about large diameter you You know, it's like, that's the test. Like the diameter is getting bigger and bigger.

Can you pick it up? And this is tiny diameter. So all that pressure is like on, you know, just hitting your fingers or hand, just in like that tiny little area. Yeah. And then the big thing is not to rip those calluses with that. Right. Right. Yeah.

The one gripper that I remember seeing our grip tool that i remember seeing get used a lot and now it's been a while maybe you've seen it more recently tanner would be the rolling thunder got used quite a bit for a while there yeah that still gets busted out that's the same where like on a saturday or sunday morning if someone gets any of the grip stuff if someone gets it out and there's some other people around everyone's doing it and you know it's just like as long as you're gonna load it and get it out i'll do some other people around, everyone's doing it. And, you know, it's just like, oh, as long as you're going to load it and get it out, I'll do it too. You know? That's what I love about it.

Cause then you're like, well, Hey, you tried this. You tried it. Right. Yeah. And it's fun because some of it, you know, at least to an extent, it's kind of like low impact stuff. So like, I can go like max out my rolling thunder and you know, I'm going to live to do whatever I want to the next day. You know, it's not going to like, it's not like I'm being like, Oh, deadlift.

Let me try that and see how much I can do just for the hell of it today. Right. Exactly. And that's what's, it's so cool about grip stuff is like anyone can try it. It's not going to tax your body. And, uh, like anyone can try it it's not going to tax your body and uh it's not essentially you're the the risk of getting hurt is so low yeah yeah now that is what's cool about it that's i like that uh we we want to at some point in time in the not too distant future i mentioned this to you but we want to we want to plan a little we're going to do a little minnesota trip and we'd love to come over there and have you run us through some grip stuff and we do some video and uh check out

the gym and stuff like that and we're gonna i'm gonna see if we can't look up uh big jeff dave when we're there and get get him and maybe we can get something going together be kind of fun so yeah absolutely man be super cool to get you guys here but it's always cool what i love about going to like other gyms is like seeing what kind of plates they have and see if you can hub them or just all the different unique stuff that every gym has yeah absolutely yeah we want to check yours out that'd be cool yeah um where do uh where do you want people to look you up and find you and stuff is it uh you know go through instagram tiktok that sort of thing is there something else you want to direct people to what's the yeah those are my biggest tiktok and instagram tiktok obviously it's gets

gets a lot of action on there so it's just at joel dirks d-i-r-c-k-s for both accounts it's just that's the best way to find me message me whatever you guys need yeah how'd that go did you randomly uh did you post like what was what was on tiktok what did you post first that like went kind of viral because some of your plate flipping stuff and uh really gets going on there the first ever video that went crazy was like you know i'll put like uh make sure to put your plates away like i picked a 45 off yeah and put it back on the on the weight tree and then that just exploded and then from there then all these big gym fail nation uh what are the other ones they all started reposting my videos

and then from there then just the followers came that is a good one too and it's like make sure to put your plates away when you're done and you just uplifting it up onto the rack that is good yeah i do like that okay yeah well we really appreciate having you on this is a a lot of fun and like i said hopefully uh sometime not too long we'll get a hold you and uh uh we can come and wreck your place and do all the stuff out and yeah get over everything yeah yep yep exactly no all right we really appreciate it thanks again thanks a lot all right see you later oh that was fun tanner did you give him his cool beans? I gave him his cool beans. There must have been some setting.

It was any time we would both talk at the same time, it would cut it out. So if you were listening, there was definitely a lot of times where it might have sounded like one of us weren't reacting. If you're watching, you can see there was tons of times we were both talking to each other, and it was not coming across, which was kind of annoying. and everything was really good it was just like i think there's a

setting on zoom where it might try to like mute extra sounds or something okay so if if he you know if we're talking and our sound is coming through his speakers and then he's trying to talk zoom is probably trying to process that out in some way that's my best guess for what's happening because he didn't have airpods in or. That's what I wondered. Did he have AirPods in or not? I didn't think he did. AirPods sometimes do funky things like that too. A lot of times AirPods have a delay but this was actually cutting out

any crosstalk. I tried to pay attention to that and then not because it'd be like if you get him stopped and then we both try to say something at the same time then his would almost be like if you get him stopped and then we both try to say something at the same time then then his would almost be like muted yeah you go oh thanks and you're like yep thanks a lot and then he's talking more and it's already cutting him off it's like at the end of that it might might sound like he wasn't saying like thanks or bye like i promise he was it's just like it was

so yeah that that's been an unusual one we haven't really had that happen no as far as zoom goes but um yeah that was really cool actually has me very excited you had mentioned making a road trip doing a minnesota trip it's got me very excited for this minnesota trip i think it'd be a ton of fun that's i think what we try and if we could arrange the minnesota trip we stop and lift get a lift in with brad gillingham awesome which that would be a long time coming as anything on the massomics podcast is get all right you know getting him on back to our roots right yeah back to our ritzy no back to our roots back to our roots the original for anyone that's if you've been around if you've been listening the massomics podcast back in like 2016 2017 i think brad's what we would have considered the original

friend of the podcast is what we used to say friend of the podcast brad gillingham i forgot about that yeah before there were supporting members that workout yes that workout before before there was actual things uh the workout at jackals predates massonomics gym even i like to think that maybe that had a maybe an impetus as to making the gym happen yeah the oh yeah i mean i think you could draw some parallels of the way that their gym looks for you know massonomics is certainly uniquely its own thing but like that's definitely an influence on i remember leaving there thinking like yeah that's i'm like that is like 100 i was like man if we had a place like that to lift at holy shit would that be a game changer but it was though because you realize

until until and that was you know we all there was still a group of i mean the original group of guys we all lifted at the y together we all knew what it was like to lift with each other but when you're in an actual like real gym setting it's different and the first time you actually get to experience that you realize i kind of haven't been lifting all this time i've been doing something that's lifting adjacent but but now now i know what lifting was and that totally changed the path of everything the x-wing it was like oh we've been, we've been doing diet lifting this whole time. We want the full thing, all the calories, all the sugar. Well, that was what it was like when we were in Jackal's gym

and they put on Highway to Hell and we're all squatting, rotating out of the squat stands. What was there, six of us rotating out of one stand together? Yeah. Like one guy, it's going from one guy guy me in the mid threes at the time to other guys that are over five repping out over five and then our heights are also crazy different we're all on the yeah the squat they're adjusting them you tell the guy what your weight needs to be your stand they put it in you go then the next guy goes and then you're spotting from

the side behind it was so awesome it was so much fun and i would say you know massonomics gym now is of course it's nicer than it's ever been before and we have like all the best stuff and like there's nothing else you would want for but to be fair there was like the first two or three years of massonomics gym there was something uniquely special about kind of having shittier stuff and like having a more limited amount of stuff you did you you would you did not i don't i can't really honestly think of many times in those first two years where i actually squatted alone where i wasn't squatting with someone never you for sure you always benched with someone because oh we always all bench together so we always bench you'd have guys i mean there was days with together. Every time. You'd have guys.

We would bench with like six people. You would. You'd have guys that their working weight would be in, I don't know, 150-ish. And then you'd also be on the bench and your working weight would be in the high threes. It'd be so, or maybe even more. It might have even been 400. Like it was so all over the place. And that was what made it so much fun.

What's funny for me to think though is just like, did we all just go at the same time every day at the exact same time it was just like what's even was it just like okay we're starting bench now or was it like no i'm on my first set i'm on my fourth set that's actually a good question because i know i would go with ryan ryan would always be there with me so we'd be on the same time speed but i'm trying to think because there'll also be guys like Matt, you know, he'd show up and people would come in and he kind of just rotate in wherever you're at. I think you would filter in and out of it.

Yeah. I think you would, you'd get, if you were behind, you'd just get your warmup a little faster. And it'd be like, no, we need to strip down to a plate.

I'm warming up like no big deal. Like we'd, that was all like, there was always plates. Oh, like all over on leaning on the ground because it's up against the bench up against the wall behind it all around you and you just knew what to throw on all the time yeah that's what that is a unique uh you know that almost with like how much bigger

and how much nicer our gym got that you almost can't recreate because you did that out of necessity and then as we got in it was this was a slow process as we slowly got more equipment, slowly got more space. It's just like, and it was that thing we hinted at last week. We had some guys that were in college. Most guys were either single or didn't have kids. So your time commitments were so much different. You could show up at the gym. You just knew, all right, it's Monday night. I'm going to show up to the gym tonight about 5 30 everyone else is gonna get here between 5 15 and 550 and at some point we're all gonna be benching over the court from six to seven we're all gonna be benching at some time in there and some guys

will peel off earlier because they'll have less sets some guys will be here longer and then we're all kind of go do accessories and just laugh about a bunch of stuff. And it was a different vibe then. It was different. And it was like, say if you weren't there, everyone would be like, where's Tommy tonight? It'd be like, how is he not at the gym at six? Like, where could he be? Is he doing check?

You know, that's what it was like. It was like, oh, no, these same group of people are here every night. This accountability group. What's going on right now? There's only five of us on this bench. What's going on? Yeah.

Yeah. But that was definitely Jackal's gym, Brad Gillingham inspired, because we went from there and I was like, yeah, that's the secret sauce. It was such a life force a secret sauce you saw it once and you realize this is how going to the gym is supposed to be especially original massonomics gym really kind of probably felt a little bit like jackals with the way that that's you know that was even that was dirty jet that was like grungy jet grunge version of jack we have this room that's basically an oversized bedroom with like 10 guys in it.

Like with almost a dirt floor. Very close to a dirt floor. Uh-huh. Yeah, it only takes once though. You do that once and you realize what is possible. So yes, I guess I would love to make that trip back to there someday. Yeah, to get back to the Minnesota trip, then I think we do Brad Gillingham, big Joel Dirks.

It would be really fun to go do drip stuff, and I would love to be able to get a hold of Jeff Dave and go do, I don't know, have him show us some arm wrestling stuff or even bring him to Joel's and do grip stuff. It would be really fun. It would be hilarious just to see his hand wrapped around different sized dumbbells because it wouldn't make any sense.

You could picture all the YouTube thumbnails they write themselves. Yes, that would be awesome. There's probably some other ones, but that could make for a really fun trip that I think we could probably line up in know in a reasonable amount of time here you know right down the road yep good stuff there um got a little game do you want to play a little game here a little uh who weighs more

oh we got more we got more do we got time yeah we got time i want Weighs More? Do we got time? Yeah, we got time. You know what I want one of the listeners to do is write a little who slash what weighs more little ditty that I can hit. Oh, a little jingle, a little theme song. Yeah, a little jingle. I want a little jingle. You would think. Like a little five-second, you know,

a little three- to eight-second little jingle. You'd think with the this probably exists i've just never looked into it with the advances in ai i mean you could definitely tell gpt to write a song for it but i can't i'm at i mean you got to think that there's programs out there that would just you can say uh rock beat for commercial for this and it puts something together and then you tell it to do some ai generated vocals you drop them in you got a whole song made it's got to be a thing how long until that gets so good that like they could just write hits that's but that's what they wasn't it not that long ago someone put out a drake song that was basically it had learned off of drake voices and drake lyrics and it came out with a

song and it just sounded like this is like any other drake song that comes out right i thought that wasn't that long ago. That was a thing. Okay. So it already is a thing. There, the bigger problem is the artists could probably see their future disappearing because, oh, all right, they got what they need from me, and then the label's like, ah, we're rich.

We're going to have to pay someone. Right. More AI taking over the world. Okay. But for now, we don't have a catchy jingle until one of the brave listeners either. You know, we got several instrument trials. Yeah.

It'll be Battle of the Bands, but it'll just be for our intro. If you want to write a little jingly intro for any of our segments, feel free to try it. I can't guarantee we'll use it but if it's good we'll probably use it for anything that we because i want more little jingly intros to play every time we want this to sound long we don't want to sound like a local radio ad yes just the most obnoxious songs constantly coming on yeah you can do it in any any style you want to say you're heavy metal you can write us a heavy

metal intro say you're want it to be corny cheesy jingle do that barbershop quartet go for it yeah you can do that yeah no we just want some jingling in their segments okay so tommy what weighs more the rogue rhino belt squat or a 450 cc dirt bike oh you're gonna say 450 pound weight which made it really easy because i know exactly how much that weighs then the rogue rhino 450 cc dirt bike you said that right yeah that uh what'd you say did you say a 450 cc dirt bike yeah that'd be like the common size of like a good size motocross yeah i was gonna say that seems like that stuff that's a full-size dirt bike was yeah that's a big that's not a small yeah that's a big that's a man's dirt bike yeah um and you've seen the rogue rhino belt yes i have i've stood on it

even before i've touched it. There's a lot of metal there. The dirt bike, you know, there's tires and rims and plastic pieces. Well, okay, does the dirt bike have a full tank of fuel or not? Yeah, we'll say it does. Okay, it's been topped off with gasoline it does okay it's been topped off with gasoline yeah it's been topped off of fuel fuel and oil is full full full fluid levels uh god this rhino we'll say the right belt the rogue rhino does not have a belt it does not include the

belt is not on there the uh sputnik belt is there a thousand pounds of weight loaded onto the no weight okay no weight on the troll. No weight on the trolley. No weight on it either. Okay, that's changing my gut. I was assuming it was loaded with like 500 pounds. And no belt squat belt. And no belt squat belt. Yeah, that actually could play a factor too.

I think I'm going to say the dirt bike weighs more. That is not correct. I liked your reasoning earlier when you were saying the dirt bike has a lot of plastic and tires and stuff like that. But what got me thinking, I'm like, well, the Rogue Rhino looks so big because it's just got a big metal platform.

And I didn't put the thing together. So I'm like, well, this is just really a platform with sort of an arm and a cable. So maybe that's deceiving how heavy that actually is yeah i could see that too no the rope the the the dirt bike weighs 260 pounds okay the rogue right which is that's almost a little lighter than what i would see my guess would have been in my guess was in the threes for a dirt bike yeah never. Never actually ridden a dirt bike, so I didn't know, but I would have guessed in the threes. And then the Rogue Rhino Belt Scott comes in at a whopping 530 pounds. Really?

Wow. Yeah. And I wouldn't have guessed that much there either. It's heavy. Yeah. No, she's heavy. Huh. Okay.

Next one. What weighs more, Heather Connor or or one million dollars in 50 bills and 50 bills so we're talking roughly 100 pounds here i really want the 50 and 100 bills to be the thing from what's the dodgeball or whatever they open the briefcase, and he's like, well, you've never seen a million dollars, and it just fills up like a quarter of a briefcase. Yes.

I want to say Heather Connor weighs more. A hundred pounds worth of paper seems like a lot of, I shouldn't just say paper, money. It seems like a lot of money, a hundred pounds worth of money. But it is a million dollars. I know, and it is in 50s. I'm still going to say Heather Conner. Okay, it depends.

Has Heather Conner had a full meal? She's topped off also. She's topped off. I'm going to go Heather Conner on this one. You are correct. Heather Conner, yeah, approximately 100 pounds versus $1 million and $50 bills, 44 pounds. So not even close.

Nope, not even close. A trickier one would have been a 45-pound strength co-plate. A strength co-plate or that one would have really had me thinking. I probably would have picked the money at that point, that's what I should have done in hindsight. I probably would have picked the money at that point, and I would have been wrong because you said it's 44? 44. Yeah.

Yeah. $1 million and $50 bills. But at the same time, a million dollars just seems like that should be a lot. Yeah, it's just a number. Yeah, right, right, right. Okay, last one this week. John Hack. what weighs more? John Hack or 300 Costco chicken bakes?

So like a week's supply of Costco chicken bakes. 300 of them. John Hack or 300 Costco chicken bakes? Okay. hack or 300 costco chicken bakes okay as much as much we've talked about costco chicken bakes i don't remember ever seeing the number for how many ounces those damn things actually weigh so it puts me at a bit of a disadvantage here but 300 of them i don't think they weigh a pound each a pound of food in those bad boys so this was as i made this think they weigh a pound each i don't think there's a pound of food in those bad boys so this was as i made this one i was like how would i uh play this one out and that was the first thing i would say is in my mind i'm like you'd think 300 of them do they weigh a pound

and you'd say they probably don't weigh a pound if they're eight ounces each right that's 150 but that doesn't seem like enough for getting 52 grams of protein i've only have an eight ounce of food there so you say well do they weigh three quarters of a pound and then i'm about two twelve ounces though is it costco chicken bake 12 ounces my mind a costco chicken bake probably weighs about 10 ounces and if it weighs 10 ounces you said 300 of them yes 300 but John Hack actually I've got to rethink here yeah do you know how much he weighs no i have to rethink what he weighs does he really uh analyze that half yeah does he weigh 220 ish in that his

last few meets have been at 198 haven't they you're not really allowed to answer yeah yeah but okay are we talking about John Hack competition weight or John Hack on a normal not competition weight? We'll say competition weight. Okay. So we're saying about 200 pounds for John Hack, 300 chicken bakes. I think I'm going to go John hack on this one.

You are correct. Oh, John hack weighs more. John hack. I put them at two Oh five. Cause that was his last comp. Okay. Two Oh five.

Um, what's chicken, what's chicken bake way. I actually, he's an ads. We were reading or as you were analyzing, I had to relook up because I'm worried that the weight I've got of the Costco chicken bake is the frozen one. Because what they're saying, when you Google quick, it says 227 grams, which is basically half a pound.

So if you're saying they're half a pound, 300 chicken bakes weighs 150 pounds. But then as you were talking, I was just wondering, like, do I have the food court Costco chicken bake? Yeah, because that's kind of the – Because I've done quite a bit of Googling of chicken bakes in the past, and a lot of times you can get caught up between the – but they are fairly similar calories, so I'm going to say the weight is fairly similar still. And we were giving – John Hack did have a 55-pound cushion, And we were giving, John Hack did have a 55-pound cushion,

so I'm fairly confident in saying that John Hack still is heavier than even 150 food court chicken bakes. Okay, yeah, because I just looked the food court one. Well, okay, what did you say, what did you have for the food court one? 227 grams. Which is how many ounces is that? Eight, right? It's half a pound. Well, this might make things a little more confusing because I have,

I found the nutrition, the image for the food court nutrition facts. Yeah, what do you got there? And this has the chicken bake serving size as 12.45 ounces. So that's three quarters of a pound, right? Yes. So. Slightly over three quarters of a pound even yeah so in that case the costco chicken bake 300 costco chicken bakes weighs more so really the question is is was i talking about the frozen or the food court and really we're never talking about the frozen costco chicken

bake honestly all right so did i retroactively lose that one then? Yeah. In hindsight, we did send that one to the booth for the review. The refs had it wrong. Someone from the crowd challenged it. They threw the flag. And it does turn out that 300 Costco chicken bakes way more than John Hack. I did lose.

Yeah, this says 353 grams. 353? Yep. Yeah. Yeah, that's a little over three-quarters of a pound, yeah. So that's to give you the final figure here on 300 of those. 233 pounds so i think that's probably heavier than john hack even at maybe his heaviest walking around weights uh-huh god it is just hilarious looking at this that a slice of cheese pizza 41 grams of protein a slice of pepperoni 34 the cheese pizza has

seven more grams of protein than the pizza with the meat on it. Amazing. Also, the Costco food court chicken bake is 50% larger than the frozen Costco chicken bake. They ain't messing around. That's something to think about. But the calories aren't that much different 840 calories

in the food court one 840 and what's the frozen uh let's see it says 540 calories oh Oh, okay. Now that checks out then. 35 grams of protein. Still not bad, though. Not terrible macros in the frozen, but we want that. It's all about that fresh Costco chicken bake. So it turns out this week, you went one right and two wrong? Well, yeah, yeah.

Sorry. Yes, I forgot. I got tricked. I got duped, yeah, yeah. Sorry, yes. I forgot. I got tricked. I got duped. Yes. Okay. Still pretty good. You had them all right last week,

so overall your average, still batting a pretty good average on who weighs more. Still winning. Want to hit us with a little Texas Power Bar talk? Oh, one of those old things? I should probably hit you with two of them since you got two back-to-back. Maybe a double whammy.

Today's show is also brought to you by Texas Power Bars. Buddy Caps first started lifting weights in the late 60s and began powerlifting in the mid-70s. At the time, he was working for Image Barbell, building gym equipment. Around 1976, a local machine shop started making Olympic bars for them, calling it the Image Bar. In 1977, Image Barbell became Champion Barbell. It was then that Buddy started looking at the bars with an intent of changing them for the better. Fast forward to today, and Buddy has taken all of his years of experience and knowledge and has now released the 29 millimeter Texas Power

Bar. It is strong as a house with the best knurling, and it is maintenance-free. Hundreds of state, national, international, and world powerlifting records have been and continue to be set and broken on the Texas Power Bar. To learn more about Texas Power Bars and buy one of their legendary bars, visit TexasPowerBars.com. And today's episode is also brought to you by Swiss Link. In 1995, Maurice Bigmo Huffman founded Swiss Link with the mission to bring authentic Swiss Army goods

to the United States and into the hands of those yearning for quality gear at uncompromised prices. Over the years, that mission expanded to nations across Europe and beyond. Not only does Bigmo find authentic military clothing for Swiss Link, he brings in everything you can imagine from Swiss bayonets to Czech microscopes. Swisslink.com is also home to the Swiss Link Classic Wool Blankets. They're an ideal mix of 80% wool and 20% recycled fibers. It's that special blend that provides a soft, luxurious feel

while maintaining all the benefits of wool. Wish you could wear your wool blankets around all the time? Well, no need to wish. You can now make that a reality with the Swiss Link wool pants. That's right, wool pants. Lanolin, like sheep's wool? That's an Anchorman reference. That's definitely an Anchorman reference. Swiss Link's exceptional collection and dedication to quality customer service distinguishes them from the rest. Enjoy a 15% discount at SwissLink.com by entering code MASS at checkout. That's M-A-S-S, SwissLink.com, save you 15%.

On the lines of Anchorman, Tanner, that did get me thinking. There were several people in the Discord mentioning that they do not find Will ferrell funny at all first it started with anchorman they don't find anchorman funny at all then several people said they don't find will ferrell funny at all which i can i can understand if someone doesn't like anchorman i think you're wrong but i can understand if you don't like anchorman yeah but when people don't like will farrell at all that i again i can understand that but what really throws me for a loop is you like massonomics related stuff but but will farrell is too dumb or something and i think some of our humor is so dumb and outlandish it's in that same vein of will farrell stuff isn't it well yeah for sure uh you know what's a really underrated Will Ferrell movie

as this whole discussion has evolved over weeks here? You know what I really think? And this isn't like an unpopular movie, so I'm not saying I'm making a bold outlandish statement here. Okay, let me get some guesses. Night at the Roxbury. No, that's not what I'm thinking, but I just want to see

what I said if I feel like that's true. I don't know that that's that underrated. I mean, I like Night at the Roxbury, and that's not what I'm thinking about. I just want to see what I said if I feel like that's true. I don't know that that's that underrated. I mean, I like Night at the Roxbury, and that's a classic because it's so old and early. That basically is a long Saturday Night Live skit. I like Night at the Roxbury, of course, but I don't even know if that movie is good or not. If I watched it now, it's been so long, I'd have to watch it.

So long, yeah. But that movie is good or not like if I watched it now it's been so long I'd have to watch it so long but like that certainly is a classic okay don't think you're gonna say old school because I think we touched on old school yeah that's just really good old school is really good also like I if you said I don't like Will Ferrell movies but you said I don't like old school I'd be like now what

about old school could you not like and think that's funny that's definitely one of those categories that I'm like, that is just a good movie. I totally agree with you. It doesn't rely on Will Ferrell crazy humor either. That is just like, that is straight up a good movie. But I was going to say, do you want my take? Yeah, let's get your take.

Let's get your take here. I was going to say Step Brothers I think is really good. I think it's hilarious. That's another one I'm like, how is that? Like, how could you not like Step Brothers? I don't think Step Brothers is that. Yes, on the scale of stupidity, Anchorman is dumber than Step Brothers. Oh, yeah.

Do you think it's that much dumber, though? I mean, the premise of it. I kind of think it is. I guess the premise of it is just the premise of it is, you know, step sons living with their parents, which on its own isn't an odd premise. Right. But it's odd because how insanely over the top they are. Yeah.

But that's also you could kind of say the same thing about Anchorman. Well, the premise of it, it's about some news anchors yeah true about anything but what makes it dumb is how insanely over the top it is true i kind i guess i get what you're saying on that but i still feel like there is some definitely separation between stepbrothers and anchorman i'm not sure i don't even know how i would because i agree with what you're saying, but I don't know. In my mind there's still like a level of separation there. Maybe because in Step Brothers some of the characters are

rooted in reality. Right. Where in Anchorman no one essentially is. Like the parents are, you know, mostly normal people. And a fair number of the other characters are kind of normal too. Right. Where Anchorman everyone is is just in la-la land. Right.

I really think Step Brothers is a really great movie though. Oh, it's amazing. It's great. That's why I just like. Almost just as quotable to me as Anchorman in a way too. Oh, for sure. Totally. Yeah.

I mean, Anchorman has more meme moments. Yeah. It's probably still more recordable too, because I think almost every line of the entire movie is like a meme or a quote. They're all just like, there's very few lines of the whole. That's what I mean. There's hardly any conversations that ever take place. It's just people exchange lines that almost don't even matter to what the

previous person just said. Especially when it's like the news crew like around in like the office. I'm like, it's literally just like Paul Rudd saying something ridiculous and then Will Ferrell saying something ridiculous. The whole time, nothing in that scene really advanced the plot of the movie in any way at all.

And there was all these guys talking and also none of their conversations had anything to do with each other either. No, I really like, just to bring this all back to Anchorman, And there was all these guys talking and also none of their conversations had anything to do with each other either. No. I really like, just to bring this all back to Anchorman, when Paul Rudd's character with the cologne, you know, when he comes out and like when people in the office are freaking out and it's like, oh, it smells like Bigfoot's dick. It's like burnt hair out of whatever they're saying. I can't remember.

Yes, yes. dick it's like burnt hair on whatever they're saying i can't remember yes yes um my original point was that step brothers uh i think step brothers in old school those are two that i'm like i don't know could you not like like could you like comedies of that era and not like those films what do you think well according to our discord we'll find out would say yes but i yeah i disagree because to me those are high watermarks those were both ones that i really resonate with me one one person that doesn't come up much in this conversation of saturnite there was so much conversation with saturnite live in the discord a fair amount talking about who liked people from what era and it is always the the discussion of well my era was the best or the era that was like,

right. No one ever says the era that was like after they turned 18 was the best. I was like, Oh yeah. Once I turned 20, then the guys that came like four years later with like, no one ever says that. But never,

I don't think I saw anyone bring up in there. Even mentioned the Andy Samberg era, which to me was amazing. I loved that, but that was also when I was in college, so maybe that was prime time. That doesn't really get brought up very much, honestly. I think Andy Samberg is so funny. I think he is hilarious.

I didn't see him get brought up at all. What were there? He has some really funny SNL stuff. He has some hilarious SNL stuff, and he has when he was hilarious snl stuff and then he had the whole lonely island thing i mean you could argue that that might be as far as the numbers go one of the probably the biggest thing that ever happened with snl with uh i just had sex and i'm on a boat and all that those things were crazy in what 2010 ish yeah also this might be the tipping point here out of all these people

who is on the mathonomics podcast every week oh yeah exactly yes i'm thinking gino no cool cool beans cool cool beans that is is. That time, man, there was, when I Just Had Sex came out, you knew every bar, every college party bar, when it got to be that time of the night, that song was coming on and people were going to lose their shit and it was going to be so much fun. So I was surprised his name never came up.

The other name I was surprised that never really got brought up was Mike Myers because I was always a huge Mike Myers fan. And no one ever really, I didn't see his name really come up in the Discord, which surprised me. That's true. Mike Myers also some really good SNL stuff, too. Good SNL stuff. And crushed the movies, too.

Yeah, and he had some of the biggest movies at the time. I mean, more Austin Powers than anything, but that was just so big. It was just so big. It was just so big. Wayne's World? Wayne's World. Wayne's World was probably my favorite movie from the time I was in about fourth grade to eighth grade. It's just almost like that was so early. That was almost slightly a different era than like Austin Powers.

You know, it feels like to me. It was. And that might be. I don't have off the top of my head all the SNL movies down, but you have to say Wayne's World might be one of the best SNL movies ever made. Right.

I would pick Wayne's World over Night at the Roxbury for sure. Right. Because you're saying what actually developed what was an SNL skit that became a movie? Yes, if you're looking at, I just had to type it in, Superstar, Night at the Roxbury, Coneheads, MacGruber. See, that's what I was going to say, though, too,

is like some people that really like the really old stuff, they'll always have to bring up, you know, like the original, that I'm like, maybe they'd say cone heads or what, I don't know. What are some of the, Oh, blues brothers though. Is that SNL or not? I think, yes, it is. And I, that was before I see, that's what I'm saying. Like any of those, those ones don't even,

those ones don't even resonate with me even, but when people say brothers would have to be on that list, I bet like they put that up there. Hi, it would. And when people say Dan Aykroyd, right. SNL, that's not even a thing to me. I don't know i could tell you a dan akroyd skit blues brothers i suppose yeah but even that i don't i don't i don't i actually don't i never watched that i watched uh i did watch the uh because growing up i did watch on comedy central they had a lot of snl on all the time and i did watch a lot of the Adam Sandler, Chris Farley,

like the stuff that was on in like the early 90s. I did see, even though that would have been really technically before my era of when I should have been watching it, like I watched those in syndication a lot. Those were on a lot. And that was also around the time when you could get, this could sound so old to some people, you could go to certain video stores

and they would have the best of Adam Sandler, the best of- Best of Will Ferrell. Best of Chris Rock or whoever it is, Chris Farley. And they would have these tapes for them and you could watch the basically highlight reel of their SNL skits. Do you think Dana Carvey is funny?

I think he's funny. He probably gets less cred than a lot of the members. I don't think his name comes up as much, but I've always thought he was funny. Dude, Master of Disguise, did you ever watch that movie? No. I would actually love to watch that movie again now because I remember genuinely thinking that movie

was very funny when I was younger. He just does, he's the master of disguise. He just does a lot's the master of disguise. He just does a lot of movies, essentially him in situations where he has to be do different bits where he's dressed up as a different thing. And I thought it was crazy funny when I was in middle school. I'd love to know how that holds up now. I don't know if,

uh, just thinking of people that really crushed it though. It just, it seems like Adam Sandler from what he was to like what he was able to take himself to now like he seems like he like nobody took a launching pad like that hardly you know all the a bunch of these people were talking about obviously became famous movie stars but i think part of it he was so young on snl too it's like oh you took this kid singing stupid songs i mean that were actually very funny i'm

saying they're stupid but like hilarious and now he's like you know i mean he obviously crushed it with his comedies but he's kind of like i don't know yeah that's that's a really hard one to say because when i type in you know biggest snl stars right you know the names you see are chris rock eddie murphy chris rock yeah bill murray and depending on who you are you could say i could see how any of those people how any person could make an argument like no bill murray is the biggest name of all time to come out of there or something that's i can see that i could that'd be hard to argue against that too but see i don't i don't think of him that much of snl because i didn't watch that i don't either that's just my own thing you could say no he was never on it'd be like uh maybe i don't think of him that much of SNL because I didn't watch that. I don't either. That's just my own thing. You could say,

no, he was never on. I'd be like, maybe I don't even know. I don't even, I didn't watch those episodes. So I'm not sure. Right.

Right. And I don't know if they would be funny in hindsight to me or not. You know, I, yeah, I wouldn't get like if they're roasting, uh, right.

Whatever pro athlete that you kind of know about at the time or some politician from somewhere that you also yeah i just wouldn't get it anyways that'd be my probably my limiter but always my favorite skits were always just the ones where people were just acting like insane crazy people and yeah will ferrell did that great uh you know adam sandler did that amazing in a lot of them and also all the ones that had like singing too were always so funny too anytime they could incorporate music and do it and things like that yeah chris farley is he was just the insane person he just go into a situation and then elevate it escalate whatever was going on times a thousand and that was his whole thing over and over like the yelling and screaming is insane If you just look up like a YouTube clip

of like Chris Farley yelling because I was pulling clips of stuff, I'm like, it's insane how much screaming, like how much over the top stuff he was doing. Yeah, he was. That was all of it. Yeah. So what's the point, I guess?

Oh, I think we were just, I think I started originally that. I was sort of, it sort of surprises me that people in the Discord are somewhat particular about their comedy, but also do find Masonomics funny. Because in my mind, any of those people that people are saying aren't funny are a thousand times funnier or at the very least more entertaining than us. Right. So maybe that means something that we're more entertaining right so i maybe maybe there's that

means something that we're more entertaining to some of these people than will ferrell i my brain's trying to wrap my head around that one still yeah yeah something to think about oh you know who else is really good really good as a more modern member fred armisen f Fred Armisen is so good. He is hilarious. He gets good credit, though, I think, for that, too, right? I think he does. Yeah.

You know what's really bad, though, now, and maybe this is what people have always said, is the current cast of Saturday Night Live. I'm like, none of these people are going to be like. I don't watch it, so I can't even say if they're good or bad. I've watched some on and off and stuff, and I'm like, nobody here is uh and i'll we've talked about this too and it is like the death of the movie that's part of the problem like none of these people are gonna

go on to other careers anything you know like keenan's gonna like run saturday live but or uh you know but even him like i'm is he in any movies uh maybe i don't know maybe they don't know if he's particularly funny actually it just depends you get him in the right situation i've he's had some yeah i can't actually think of something he's had skits where I think he's super funny, but I don't even see anything. It used to be all the time when I think back to being college age. SNL skits, they'd be put on YouTube or whatever online. People would put them on Facebook.

They'd be on different websites, and you would see them, and you'd share them and all that. I can't even tell you the last time I ran across an SNL skit online. I don't know if they even put them online anymore. I can't even tell you the last time I ran across an SNL skit online. I don't know if they even put them online anymore. The only SNL skits that ever I see come across online are political ones where it's like where people are impersonating political personalities. And I'm like, is that the only like that's like the lowest hanging fruit way to do it's like you make something funny that's not having to be like Joe Biden or Donald Trump? Right, the commentary of the day. Yes, I think any modern comedy thing like SNL, to not do the politic thing at all would probably be a little weird

because that's always been a part of it. Right, it always is. Very deep-rooted. I want to see so much of just the dumb, crazy skits off the wall characters. You know, again, comedy, it's a break from the politics because everywhere you go in your life, you're surrounded by it. And you're like, oh, I got to go to the comedy show. That's also all politics to draw. You're like, I just kill me.

I can't get away from this damn stuff. Yes, that's that's kind of my take on that too but snl now and this is probably what old people always say forever though that snl now sucks but if you were in the 90s and you took a someone that was 45 they probably said oh man this group really sucks compared to what i watched when i you know like when i was 25 and it's like to me i'm like the 90s that produced like some of the greatest uh comedians of all time you know out of those casts but they probably old people then probably thought i'm genuinely curious though are people are people still hyped on saturday night

live do people still like it? And we're just, I'm just, I'm just that far out of touch. Like I would, I have nothing against it. I'd love to sit down and watch an episode. I just don't watch anything. I don't, I,

if, if I was to be watching TV, it's something I would watch, even though, even if I don't particularly like it that much, I would still just like it just because I like the history of Saturday night live and they do callbacks of things and they get, you know,

like to me, it relies on uh will ferrell to use an example of relevant example him coming in and then him not even hosting the show but like they get him on and do celebrity jeopardy or whatever it's like a callback to all these uh now that was funny also the celebrity jeopardy celebrity jeopardy on snl was all-time classic uh skits to me too yep like that was good wasn't norm burt reynolds uh norm mcdonald yeah he would do that reynolds yeah he always had like a big hat on and yes and uh will farrell was um alex trebek right uh-huh and then who was sean connery and he was like second trebek yeah what is that guy is it daryl hammond is that was that who that was that could be yeah yeah those are good really good skits yeah there's a lot of a lot of funny stuff out there man i don't even know what this conversation is.

Just reminiscing at this point. That's all it is. It's just sitting around being like, now that was a good skit. Now those were funny skits. This is actually, all right, this is the hot take. Going against the grain on this. A lot of people in the Discord,

it's actually really popular, I think, nowadays to hate on Jimmy Fallon. I thought Jimmy Fallon had a lot of really funny skits on snl the knock people have against him no he laughs too much he's always laughing he he's breaking character too much breaking character but as a kid growing up i thought hey that guy's having the most fun out of everyone out there that's why i always liked it i would need to see like what i would need to really be reminded of what some of his uh better skits were like no i don't know if i really think he's all that good or all that bad or whatever i just none of it's like super memorable to me but it's probably a point in

time where i wasn't watching quite as like i had periods in time where i was or wasn't watching quite as much and i just don't don't have as much of him that sticks out in my memory either way. Yeah. But people do dog on him a lot. Yeah, people do dog on him, and in my mind, there's so many people that are just not even memorable. They don't even come up because they're not memorable. Jimmy Fallon is at least memorable.

Some people apparently think for the wrong reasons, but I've never had that much of a problem with him. I don't watch his show. I don't watch the late of a problem with him. I don't watch his show. I don't watch the late show, which can be found because I don't watch any late shows, but he was on weekend update forever. I know he's not the original weekend update guy and there's a lot better ones,

but I always thought him and Tina Fey were entertaining on the weekend update. I think Tina Fey is a really good NS SNL cast member. Actually. I think she was pretty good. She is. People love Eddie Murphy she was pretty good. She's, um, people love Eddie Murphy when you go into older ones too,

but that, see, that's again before that's too, too far back. So, uh, that whole era with Jimmy Fallon, Horatio Sands,

Chris Catan, like that, they had so much goofy stuff there. Um, Eddie Murphy has some really good movies though. He really, he really crushed it in terms of movies too. Like he's up there

with some of the biggest movie stars that came out of that too. He is. Where is it when it's like them sitting around the dinner where Eddie Murphy plays like all the people in the movie? What is that called? The Doolittle. Is that what it was? Yeah. Was that the Dr. Doolittle movies? Is that where he played everyone?

Is that where they're like around the dinner table and he's like every single character? I think I'm wrong. It's like Hercules, Hercules. I'm wrong. That's... Why are you asking me? I'm the nutty professor.

There you go. The nutty professor. There you go. I'm thinking professor, doctor. Have you seen The nutty professor? I did. I saw it when I was much younger. It's been so long now that I,

I couldn't even tell you what it's about. Do you remember at all? Not much. I mean, no, I should just say no. Miraculous weight loss solution. Okay.

I knew there was some chemistry thing then i was wondering if maybe i'm thinking of austin powers mojo i couldn't uh it's getting it all mixed up but yeah they've got bill hater ranked really high on this list i think bill hater's super funny too yeah i'm just surprised that uh he's above his i'm just looking at a random list and he's just very high he's the one that sticks out to me of where they have him. He's another guy that makes really, really goofy characters between Stefan and the one. Did you ever see the ones where he'd always have the puppets?

He'd have the puppets and it would be like the one puppet would be like this war-torn Vietnam vet that would go on about things. Yeah, he just had a bunch of really good ones. Yeah. So who's your favorite SNL cast member of all time? Of all time? Oh, boy. I don't know if I could answer that question off the top of my head.

I'd probably have to give some thought there. Because it's a challenge because of the eras, and it's all different through time. Adam Sandler is for sure up there. Adam Sandler is for sure up there. Will Ferrell is for sure up there. Those are my top first two that I think about. I'm like, yeah, it's probably between those ones for my era. To me, Andy Samberg is up there.

I think he's so funny. Yep. I'm trying to think of who else belongs up there. Mike Myers. I don't know purely SNL I don't really place him that high I can't think of enough of his skits that were just I'm sure Bill Murray you could make a case but I'm just I don't know

I just don't know enough I'm like pretty much Adam Sandler Will Ferrell I think honestly I don't know on my oh Chris Farley it's pretty there's some pretty pretty ridiculous iconic skits

there from Chris Farley still I don't think the sample size is quite as quite as big as some of the other ones yeah I'd have to do more thinking on this one really relive my childhood to be continued we'll follow up next week where we think about this more out loud anything else we need to touch on this week that's probably it damn this all of a sudden got two and a half hours in that came out of nowhere bring this in for a landing until we talk about just just reminiscing about the old days i wonder how many weeks we're going to keep on this uh i think it started with anchorman and well we relived

anchorman dumb and dumber and it just it just it just keeps snowballing into this further uh uh somewhat classic comedy conversation. Has anyone said yet that they don't like Austin Powers? Has that come up yet in the Discord? Well, we'll put in a challenge out there for who wants to make the hot take of not liking Austin Powers. Because I like Austin. I think as a trilogy, it kicked ass too. With all these comedies too i can always

understand when someone says a certain comedy like isn't their style right there's a big difference between like being like no it's not my style or i think it's actually bad so i'm curious if people actually think austin powers is bad i'd love that is like that is an important distinguishing thing too if someone's saying that's not my style because you can that's very easy to wrap your head around or do people just say the same it's kind of like the classic overrated underrated thing are people are they people say they think it sucks are they really saying that's not my style like is there is there a difference there or not an important distinction yeah yeah more next week more to come when we say next week we mean closer to like two weeks

or so but more in the following months as we continue to tear apart these same comedy movies over and over and over again have you ever listened to any of the Lonely Island albums Tanner? No no I haven't Andy Samberg's band.

It's the guys from Hot Rod. They're so funny. They're so funny. Those things are hilarious. So there's multiple albums. They have two for sure. I'm trying to remember if they have three. Oh, I bought every time those would come out.

I'm sure I'd like it. Every time those would come out, I'd buy it the second it'd come out and just listen to it a thousand times. I thought they were so good. Put that on your homework list. I bought every time those would come out. I'm sure I'd like it. Every time those would come out, I'd buy it the second it'd come out and just listen to it a thousand times. I thought they were so good. Put that on your homework list. Maybe they could write us a little jingle.

Tanner, you can buy it on iTunes and listen to it on the plane when we go on our travels. I do not buy things on iTunes. I know. No one buys things on iTunes. They will not dupe me into spending perfectly good money on things on iTunes. Not this time. iTunes dude.

Dick in a box. Just. Oh yeah. Yeah. Mother lover. I just had sex. I'm on a boat. Dick in a box is a very,

yeah. Yeah. Many of the, yeah, I guess if you're saying I've listened to the album the answer is no but like have i heard like all of those i feel like the answer is yes almost you know it's so funny because rappers would always say no homo in their songs yeah and they had one where they just keep saying the gayest thing they possibly can but then say no homo and they

make it sound like the toughest oh yeah yeah oh man oh so much there's just a lot of classics there like a boss yeah everything it was like rick ross or whoever would always have like a boss and so they would just eventually it's shit on my desk like a boss like cry cry to my mom like a boss and it just keeps going on and on and on yeah just take it to the extreme okay and you can all take it to the extreme by going to massnomics.com and purchasing things like a drink spotter or some t-shirts or a supporting

membership that we talked about earlier. While you're at it, head over to iTunes and leave us a five-star review of the podcast. We'd love to have your reviews over there. Check out our YouTube channel. Make sure you're subscribing. New YouTube videos every week-ish. So stay tuned for more from our escapades

to the eastern reaches of the Midwest. Tommy, where do they find you at? You can find me at tomahawk underscore d. You can follow me at tainter underscore bear. Just make sure to follow Massonomics at Massonomics. See ya.