Massenomics Podcast - Ep. 414: 2024 Arnold Recap

Episode Date: March 11, 2024

Our full recap of the whirlwind that was the 2024 Arnold Classic. Big throwback on this one as we record on the road from the vehicle. First time doing that in 5 years! Build Fast Formula Use code MASSENOMICS to save 10% on every order! BearFoot Shoes Use code MASSENOMICS to save 10% on every order! 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 for episode 414 of the Masanomics podcast, the lifting podcast about nothing, about nothing, and driving 1,000 miles across the Midwest after a successful 2024 Arnold trip my name is Tanner and my name is Tommy and if you're just listening audio only you might not recognize this episode as being particularly different than normal but if you're watching on YouTube you are in you know Tanner got a haircut that's's right. That's why this episode is

special. I did get a haircut. I did. I did actually get a haircut and I guess we can touch more on that but why this episode is particularly special is we're going back to our roots on this one. We haven't recorded a car talk episode in quite some time. It's probably been what three years. It's been a while actually. I don't have the stained button in front of me. Otherwise, cue the stained button. It's been a while. So we are here in the car. We're somewhere rural Iowa right now.

I think we're just west of Des Moines at the moment. We took a slightly different route on the way back. We may have been talking and not paying attention to directions. Big massonomics planning sessions as we got wrapped up and zigged when we should have zagged. And it is the Monday after the Arnold we packed up last night, got on the road, crashed in a hotel, and here we are Monday morning on our way back to South Dakota. And first of all,

I want to make sure everyone knows that this episode is brought to you by Juggernaut AI. Juggernaut AI is like having one of the world's greatest powerlifting coaches right in the palm of your hand, right in your pocket, or right wherever it is you keep your phone. Talked to several crew members and people that just came up to the booth this weekend at the Arnold that know that we're Juggernaut AI supporters. They came up and said, gave us many success stories about the pounds that they have gained on their lifts while using Juggernaut AI. One of those supporting member, Big Kevin, mentioned I think he's put on over 300 pounds

to his total. Damn, Kevin, slow down, man. Yeah, so you can use discount code MASSANOMICS if you choose to sign up. Just make sure when you do that you sign up through the browser. You can't go through the app. You go through the browser, use discount code MASSANOMICS, save yourself 10%, juggernautai.app. And this episode is also brought to you by Barefoot Shoes. We had the privilege of attending the Arnold with the good folks from Barefoot Shoes. Ryan, Shelby, and Blake all made it.

And they had a rocking display. They had lots of people stopping by, trying the Barefoot Revolution, seeing what it's all about. From speaking to them, it sounds like they had an awesome Arnold weekend as well. But Barefoot Shoes have been our favorite footwear to wear in the gym and also out of the gym lately. Especially, we're coming through the wintertime, they have their excellent Bruin boots. Full grain leather really holds up to the elements of South Dakota. So, if you are in the market for a pair of barefoot shoes, or maybe you're not in the market, maybe you just need a pair of barefoot shoes, make sure you head over to www.barefoot.store and while you're there make sure to use code

massonomics to save 10 on your next order thank you barefoot shoes we got to even hear some stuff secret stuff from their r&d department that we can't share, but just like top secret stuff that only we know. So this is going to be like the Arnold recap, right? Then we're going to go through everything that happened. Yep. I do have a voice. If you're listening, it might sound slightly different than normal. It's because my voice is just hanging on by a few threads this year. I'm done with three days of yelling at the expo, plus roughly hours of talking about Mastanomics pre-Expo and now many, many hours of talking about Mastanomics post-Expo. So I'd probably do more talking in the first week of March than I do in the first entire quarter of the year. Yeah, no kidding.

So are we going to go through the timeline a little bit? Should we start at the beginning for the rundown? Yeah. Do we prepare this rundown fully here? Yeah. And then eventually we'll hit a little supporting our supporting members. We'll do a few more ad reads. Obviously we're not going to have a guest this week.

We didn't pack any of the crew members in the backseat of the pickup here. It would be a real awesome reveal, though, 45 minutes in, someone pops up out of the backseat and they're the guest on the episode. So they can see the trailer and stuff out there, can't they? Yeah, they should be able to see that, yep. Okay. Also, kind of a cool look for us, the wide-angle car talk. Yeah.

Should we review this F-150? Oh, yeah. We have a little, on the 2014 Ford F-150 extended cab STX edition. This one's sitting a little lower. There's a few extra items in it that we came to the hour of. But yeah, we'll get more to that one later. So I left Tuesday night from western northeast South Dakota to travel to Tommy's house in eastern southeast South Dakota. Did a podcast on the road. We recorded Lestrrenko's OK podcast,

so make sure to give that a listen. We listened to it earlier this morning. It was a lot of fun. Also, you can check out Let's Get Stupid. Did a carnal preview with them as well, so you can listen to both of those this week. Wait, did you record that one on the road too? That one was the night before I left or something like that.

God, you did three road podcasts in the course of a week? Yeah, no, just two, but I've done like three or four Arnold podcasts in the course of a week. You're a bit of a subject matter expert at this point. I'm becoming one at least. I'm really good at talking about it anyways. But got to Tommy's house late. All we did was crash, then get up really early Wednesday morning to get on the road. Did we get up at 4.30? Is that what it was? Yes.

4.30 on the road shortly after 5. The trip started pretty uneventful. Actually, the whole trip, spoiler, was fairly uneventful. Right. Knock on wood. I don't have any fake wood grains. Driving though, actually the first event of the trip was Cedar Rapids. Met with Big Ryan. Got to have a little Jersey Mike sub experience. Iowa Ryan Jersey, my first Jersey Mike sub experience

actually. It was quite good. Got to catch up with Ryan, get all the details on what's been happening in Iowa these days. Last year we ate at a Wendy's in Cedar Rapids. Ryan tried to find us later. Of course we were gone. So this year we did make the plans ahead of time to meet up. It worked out great. It was a nice little pit stop. And then we hit the road again. Jersey Mike's was better than, much better than Subway, of course. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Of course. Much better than Subway. Much better than Jimmy John's. Much better than Jimmy John's. Not even close. And I've had Firehouse subs, and that was good. I don't know. Maybe people like Jersey Mike's better, but they're kind of on par to me from my one experience at least. It's been enough years.

It's been a while for me since I've had Firehouse Sub, so I can't give an accurate comparison. But there's one by my house. Maybe for research purposes I should head there. Strictly for research purposes. Yeah, I would get zero enjoyment out of it. Just purely for research for the podcast. And we hit the road again. Where did we go to?

I don't even know if we really honestly made a stop again until that night, did we? No significant stop, at least until we got to Indiana where we met up with Big Bob. Oh, yes, that's right. Indianapolis. Indianapolis. Just on the other side of Indianapolis. East side of Indianapolis. Tanner had a transaction that needed to take place. Yeah, so we met up with Big Bob. Also, we went to like 17 Love's truck stops on this trip. But met Big Bob from Indiana just on the east side of Indianapolis to load up. What did I get

from Big Bob? I got a couple pairs of roundhead dumbbells from my vintage collection. He had my 90s and 95s. And that collection is getting dangerously close to being done. Yeah, dangerously close. He had those and then he also had just some York milled plates and I've got some York milled plates that the weight tree could have each had one more plate on it. So I bought two pairs. Symmetry of course. Yeah, symmetry. So I bought two pairs of milled York plates from him also.

of course. Yeah, symmetry. So I bought two pairs of Mille D'Or plates from them also. And I was watching this maneuver happen in front of us here. I was like, do not make that lane change. Watch the trailer sideswipe into a bathalon

while we have a guy driving over here. Some interesting things happening right now. There has been you're going to get some of that stuff in car talk episodes. You know, that's part, that's a. The play-by-play commentary. Rural Iowa.

But we picked that up. It was a really quick transaction. Big Bob was a good guy. He said he's now following along on YouTube and stuff. I like the fact that we got a text from Bob this morning. Yep. Saying he found the, what was it? What video did he watch again?

The restoration where they restored the round head. Yeah, the round head restoration video, and he was a big fan. Good to know we could make a fan, make a person of interest along the way, too. And then we just continued on and made it until Dayton that night, right? Yeah, I got to Dayton, so I think, was it 9 o'clock or so? We rolled into Dayton, and also, working out in our favor we were directly across the street from a texas roadhouse and oh yeah we ate like kings that night i don't i i do think maybe i've been to texas roadhouse once in my life but it was like when i was in high school

almost so i think i know i cannot remember if i'd been there many many years ago but right i'd recently gone about a month or two ago. I thought it was pretty good. As far as chain restaurants go that you're going to order a steak at, I would never in a million years order a steak at a chain restaurant. This one I did, and I was happy with it. It was really good. And same thing. We went in here.

We went in late. I had a loaf of bread there. Tanner, I watched Tanner eat a loaf. I was really hungry that night. Tanner ate a loaf worth of buns. I don't know if we didn't eat. Well, we had Jersey Mike's at like 11. Yeah, we didn't eat well we had jersey mike's at like 11 and then yeah we didn't eat again until about nine o'clock at night so tanner put down a whole

lot of bread we had steak we had ribs we had the sides a couple of brewskis and it was a good experience enough enough to put it in your belly and pass your rate out we walked across street back home but then i woke up at about two and thought i am so uncomfortably full right now that sleeping is somewhat difficult i would note i remember this from like i think it was probably an arnold recap episode from years past and someone made the comment like oh came into this with thinking it's it's an Arnold recap, and they talked for like 30 minutes about the drive and the food. Yeah, we haven't even gotten to the expo yet. They're just recapping their trip for an hour, just literally explaining two guys driving in a vehicle together. Hey, we got nothing else to do, so you're stuck with us.

But we did wake up the next morning dating to columbus about an hour drive so really quick we were one of the first people like a smaller booth like us to roll into the there were the big ones there that were already set up like earlier but they get they get more of a head start on us we rolled right up to the loading dock there was no one there almost to the point where it seemed like are we even allowed to be here because we were there so early? It was. Is this a trap? I think by the time we unloaded the car, got everything to the loading dock, and you parked the vehicle for a little bit. Or got everything to our booth.

You had the vehicle parked and we were in there. I think it was 9 o'clock. Yeah. And I remember looking. It was 10 o'clock. And the booth was basically done at that point. Yeah. I mean, if they would have told us to go home at that point, we could have, and we would have been fine the next day.

But then people started showing up, so we started, you know, Big Minnie and his wife and our fiancé, I believe is the correct term to use there. And then, did Eddie show up yet that morning? I can't remember. He must have, he was working on the, he was working on the, Oh, yeah, that's right, yes,

yeah. That big platform project. It basically went off without a hitch. Yeah, so we got our booth set together really fast. It went smooth, no surprises. It was 10 o'clock, we were mostly done, we were kind of messing with some things for a little bit. By that point, Grant was there, they were working on their project. Unfortunately unfortunately for them someone forgot to bring the board stretcher so that presented some problems for their woodwork woodshop project they had going on classic mistake of forgetting the board stretcher it's like i always say you measure twice and cut once and if you're gonna cut incorrectly you have the board stretcher still yes just in case that's a real safe safe. But we got ours done pretty early.

Made our way over to the North Market, right? Yeah, there's a crew of us that went over to the North. Yeah, the Strength Co., some of the Strength Co. group, and then, like, I know Minnie came, and was Eddie there, too? Eddie was there, too. Eddie was there, too. We all got to go to the North Market, hit up the infamous Hubert's Polish Kitchen. It wouldn't be an Arnold trip. It honestly would not feel like an Arnold trip if we didn't go to Hubert's Polish Kitchen. It wouldn't be an Arnold trip.

It honestly would not feel like an Arnold trip if we didn't go to Hubert's Polish Kitchen. That's what really signifies you've arrived in Columbus is when you have some Hubert's. It was just as good as always, I would say. Having that once a year is such a treat. We've maybe honed our experience even knowing we get it better and better.

You can't go too much on the... You can't overdo the pierogies. You just can do unlimited pierogies. we lean into the pierogies harder and harder every year yeah so it's like well why am i only getting like one or two of the thing that's really like i'm let me just really capitalize on the most of tasty things we're going all in on that yeah so everyone everyone had a good time there after that we walked back to the expo and that was when we kind of started bugging people a little more. We were basically done with our thing, so it just turned into us harassing other people, supervising other projects.

And I think we sat at the expo for about five or six hours. We were there a long time. Yes. Yeah. We actually kind of met several people that we hadn't talked to before then. Maybe most notably as we were standing in the aisle, I think over by the Strength Co. booth or somewhere around there. And who walks in, none other than the one and only Greek freak himself, the Grizzly. The Grizzly, yes.

Yeah. And the Grizzly's translator, his handler translator, said he's a big fan of Masonomics, so he stopped to talk to us. said he's a big fan of Masonomics so he stopped to talk to us the translator is a big fan of Masonomics who subsequently I didn't understand this, he's got a following himself he's a does the Stronger by Science podcast right now right?

yeah he like is maybe even like a part owner of Stronger by Science or he's like heavily involved he's a exercise scientist yeah he's a exercise scientist yeah he's a PhD and so sorry for forgetting your name yeah I mean he's definitely a candidate as someone after meeting him and talking to him in person he'd probably be a really fun guy to have on the podcast so I think that'll happen at some point in time but I interrupted yeah he was he

who was Grizzly's interpreter for the weekend, we found out was a listener of the show and a fan of Masonomics, which was kind of a cool thing. So we got to have a little interaction there with Grizzly. We did, yep. Got to shake the Grizzly's hand. Although he speaks no English. But you could tell there was mutual respect. We both understood each other. Real recognized real, for sure. And that's kind of most of what we did that evening until we went out in eight, right? I think so. And we went out with the Huck Finn barbell crew.

Yeah, we went up to the Huck Finn hotel room. We got invited right into the hotel room. The classic, you haven't really hung out with the Huck Finn barbell crew until you. It's a rite of passage for anyone that's hung out with them over the years. I know we have several listeners that have. To get invited to the hotel room. To go to their hotel room. Do a little pre-game. Yeah, you pre-game in the Huck Finn Barbell hotel room. And that was a lot of fun. And it was fun. We won't share them, but just swapping a lot of insider

stories with Finn. Years of experience yes getting some of finn's best stories that he maybe isn't able to share to the general public all the time that was a lot of fun yeah there's always a lot of inside scoops you get at these things yeah where did we even eat that night we went to that i don't know our across the street. I can't remember what it's called either. Right across the street from the expo. Okay. And, yeah, just drank a bunch of beers, ate a bunch of food, and then it was time to go home. Yeah.

I mean, of course, we had some great stories. Right. There was great stories along the way. But, yeah, headed home. Next day, expo time. And, wait, wait, wait. One detail, though. When did we meet Mitch Hooper?

Was that the night before? I think that was that night when we were setting up. Because Trey Mitchell had come over and we were talking to him. Yeah, so that was Thursday night. Yeah, that was a good story. Yeah, so Trey Mitchell came by, which, yes, great. But we keep in touch with Trey, so we kind of know what's going on there. And we had planned for him to do a meet and greet at the booth on Sunday and so we were just catching

up and while we were standing there Mitch Hooper we see him walking down the aisle because he is enormous and there wasn't many people there and he came over in his uh confusing accent that I still can't put your finger on exactly and uh he And he goes, oh, Massanomics, I love you guys. He said, you know, I was listening to the podcast on the way here. Yeah. What is it? Northern, Southern, West Dakota. Yeah.

Yes, he gets the joke. That's awesome. And then he's like, and we were talking about getting him on the podcast. He's all game for it. And maybe he's listening to this even. He had made the comment of if, maybe like if we think he'll pass overrated underrated he got the overrated underrated yeah he was we got to come up with this that'd be right up there with world's strongest man title yeah yeah we said i told him we have to put that on the same shelf

as the world's strongest man title and that's that's where trey keeps his is right next to his like shaw classic uh win trophies and everything so everything. And then he had his film guy there filming the whole thing too, so that was cool. I think we were maybe in the background of a YouTube video. Oh, and also along the lines of that, setting up the booth, ABC Channel 6 News asked if they could interview us. So I did have an appearance on ABC 6 News Columbus. Huck Finn made it on Channel 4 News. We are 50% better than that, though, so that's why. Yeah, so we made it on Channel 4 News. We are 50% better than them though. So we made it on Channel 6 News. True story actually. So if you look around on the ABC

6 News website there is actually a clip of me out there speaking briefly about the Massanomics booth. I haven't really tracked that one down but someone did put a little piece of it in the Discord. So we know what's out there. Otherwise the expo did start the next day got there bright and early got set up and the crowd for a friday morning we were we were blown away how many people were there it did feel like it was a different art world experience right off the bat had a lot of people coming up to the booth uh we could tell you about every interaction we could tell you about a thousand interactions that happened but

that would just turn into a super long time. So we'll try to remember the things. Lots of people brought us things of interest. Yeah. I forget his name. I think from New York. Yeah. Was it Long Island or somewhere in New York? Yeah. He brought us the actual Coors Light Twins cups. He bought them on eBay. Yes. The ones we were actually talking about on eBay. And it says, catch the twins in Scary Movie 3. So we got those cups, which was amazing. Lots of sparkling waters were brought our way.

We had a few different what's in the cans. Beers brought our way. We had a lot of energy drinks that were brought our way as well. So lots of goodies arrived at our booth. And the first day, was there anything special about the first day? Besides meeting all the people that came up?

Besides everything. Yes, besides everything. Was there anything special? Yeah. I can't even, I don't know. No, there's too much, really. It's hard to pinpoint certain things, but there was just a lot. And then who did we go out with that night?

Us. I think it was, was that the, no, the first, did we go to the Stranko that night? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we went to the Stranko, went to the Chicken Place. Right. Right? We walked all the way.

Were we family style? Yes, we walked all the way to the Chicken Place, had a little family style dinner. I was, had been looking forward to it all year to sit next to big Grant and just catch up. And Grant decided to lose his voice that night. Like completely, he couldn't speak. Couldn't speak. So I had to talk to everyone else, which is still great. Yeah. But Grant and I had talked specifically about how we were going to catch up and there wasn't a whole lot of catching up that we were able to do, but I did get to catch up with big Connor, big D, Big Ryan sat next to me as well.

Big Eric was there. We got to meet Big Eric and Eric's family. So it was still a very nice dinner, but Grant's voice was in rough shape. Yeah. And you got to sit at a different table. Yeah, we sat at a different spot. So I sat next to Big Emmett and then Big Trey and Big Jeff from the OK Podcast. As heard on the OK Podcast, Jeff's wife and Top was there too from the Strength Club.

And a lot of our evening was, I got to, Big Emmett has been a supporting member for quite a while. And he's come to the Lift Hardly V Classic. He was at the booth last year for just a little bit. But this year he really helped out. Emmett was a rock star helping out. He's a top candidate for MVP this weekend. He's definitely like most improved player this year. Like all the help that he provided us this year.

Yeah, Emmett was a rock star this weekend. And Emmett has just some of the best stories too. He does. We decided at our table that he's Forrest Gump because he's been there. He's seen it all. Yeah. So I got to hear a lot of stuff from Emmett which was really fun that night. That was cool. And then a lot of the strength club people took off a little early but we stuck around because we're seasoned vets. We can stay up

late. I stayed up through anything and everything this year you know there was no uh no leaving early uh on my behalf this year and who was it it was me you trey eddie emmett trey over that that was it right i think that was it yeah and we stayed around and told scar stories for a few more hours. But that was good because I hadn't met Trey. Well, none of us had met Trey until this weekend. But just getting to talk with him, we had lots of fun, a lot of good stories. And we kept that going for quite a while. I don't know, until probably after, probably getting close to midnight, I suppose.

Yeah, I think so, yeah. Then we shut her down. The next day, back to the Arnold. I think this was the day you and me ran around and filmed a little more content. Yeah, we got a few interviews. And also, Big Kevin showed up. Big Kevin showed up, supporting member. Yeah, so Friday, a lot more guys started showing up.

So, yeah. Saturday, yeah. Or Saturday. God, yes, you're right. Saturday. So, Big Kevin came bearing gifts. He brought the Ohio Pie Co. treats. Yes, which're right, Saturday. So Big Kevin came bearing gifts. He brought the Ohio Pie Co. treats. Yes, which was clutch.

Kevin reached out to, you know, if you've been listening for a long time, you know we're buddies with Nick at Live Large and also of the Ohio Pie Co. But the problem with the Ohio Pie Co., his pizza shop is there close to two hours away from, closer to Cleveland, right? Isn't that where they're at? Yeah, yeah. So they're closer to Cleveland. It's not super convenient to bring pizza from there especially when nick's coming down a day or two before but kevin orchestrated with nick to bring some pizza

down on his way they worked out the the how it was going to work i think what did kevin bring down eight pizzas yeah and so kevin showed up at 10, 11 in the morning with just a fat stack of pizzas. Yes. A little bit of everything. And so we had Ohio pie to snack on all day. It was awesome. It was so good. It does live up to the hype. Yeah, we had several different varieties, but I got to say the best is the pepperoni. That's what Nick says is the most important. You got got to be good on cheese and pepperoni. He said a good pizza shop has to have a good cheese, a good pepperoni. Everything else can be fun, but that's how you really judge them on a cheese and pepperoni. And his pepperoni. It lived up to the hype. It was amazing. So we ate a lot of that. Kevin showed up. Joey and

Steve and Steve's wife, our resident sister podcast host and goalie showed up. Steve's title and the name badge was he was the goalie. They showed up as well. Who else? I think there's a lot of other people. Nate showed up. Yeah, big Nate. The technical guy.

The Minnesota Department of Lifter Safety was there spotting and loading all weekend for the USAPL meet. And I was thinking, like, it's very possible that I met 40, 50 crew because there was also big Tyler Thompson was there competing. Yes. Big Andrew Montoya was there competing. The man with two first names, Tom Ryan, which also aligns with me and my brother. Yes. Also, Big Daniel. And then Big Noah, who we found out looks exactly like Flying Ryan in many ways.

Like, he is his doppelganger, right? Very, very close. Like, he walked up and you were like... I did a double and triple take because I thought Big Noah was Ryan. I was so confused. They're of similar size, similar height, similar fashion sense, same haircut, same sunglasses, same glasses, same shoe choice, same facial hair. And he had just gotten a brand new tattoo. Which is something my brother says a lot when you see him in person. So way too many coincidences there. It was a little creepy. I'm still not sure how I feel about that whole situation.

There's a lot of resemblances there. But Andrew Montoya also, he was competing in weightlifting, and he brought a pair of, I was purchasing from him, a pair of vintage York 100-pound double-sided plates. What was sweet is I just let him know where my pickup was at the hotel. He just dropped them off there. Popped them in the back. And also Big Eddie by way of Big Waffle Iron brought my pair of 80 pound York. Yes. I can't even remember where I got those exactly where we were at.

Did you do the transaction or did Eddie take care of it for you? Did he bring them in here? No they never came into the convention. Oh. Do I have those? Yeah, I have those. Those are in the back. I got them at some point. I just don't remember when.

Speaking of that, it did remind me of one detail we overlooked on Friday. I believe it was Friday. We had a quick one pulled on us with the West Virginia contingency. Oh, yeah. So that was good. Yeah, because I explained that one. So our buddies from West Virginia, Travis and Stu. Owners of the Lift Hard Gym in West Virginia.

Yes, over at the Lift Hard Gym if you're in the area, definitely check them out. But Travis and Stu came out for Crew Falls. Got a semi pulling over on the side of the road here. They flew out from West Virginia to Crew Falls, December to remember, a moment that we'll all remember for the rest of the road here. They flew out from West Virginia to Crew Falls, December to remember. A moment that we'll all remember for the rest of our lives. We had a great time. We lifted.

We drank beers. We ate food. We made memories. And they also came out to the Arnold. And they were burying a special gift. They were coming with gift standard. This is a little more special gift because this gift played into the Texas Power Bars ad read timeline.

They had a champion barbell, not an image barbell. It was then that image barbell became champion barbell, and Buddy started looking at the bars with intent of changing them for the better. And part of the timeline they had was the champion barbell. So they brought that. So we now have, it's in the back of the pickup right now, an actual authentic Champion barbell. It says Champion on the end cap.

And what also, not only did the Champion barbell make their visit memorable, but they pulled a quick one on us. So Travis, and who we assumed was Stu, Travis and Stu showed up to the booth and like what's up guys and we're chatting for you just hung out with these guys for a weekend a couple months ago we're chatting having a good time and just you know nothing seems different and then all of a sudden Stu is also to my right holding a barbell and I'm like another. And I'm going left. Another Stu walks up.

Yes, I'm going left. I'm going right. I'm going left. And what is going on here? It's the twins. The twins got us again. And we totally forgot that Stu has a twin brother, Spencer, right? Yeah, that sounds right.

I believe it was Spencer. So they tricked us. Spencer was parading around as Stu. Yeah, yeah. And then they got us with that one. And it was very tricky. I actually thought maybe there was something wrong with my head. Am then they got us with that one, and it was very tricky. I actually thought maybe there was something wrong with my head. Am I having a stroke at the moment?

There was this split second of like, what's happening? And actually, Travis has a twin too, which is kind of the craziest part. Right, that would have made it even crazier. They would have both come. So they pulled a quick one on us, but they brought the gift. It was a ton of fun i think this is a good segue though to read some ads tanner yeah and maybe i'll start it out with reading the uh texas power bars ad being that we did just receive another piece of the texas power

bars timeline like we said the image barbell i can't recite the whole timeline from memory but I would say it was sometime in the 1970s that Buddy Capps first started working for image barbell building gym equipment. Around a few years slightly after that image barbell became champion barbell. It was then that Buddy started looking at the bars with intent of changing them for the better. In sometime in the 80s Buddy bought his first lathe. It was then that he began addressing the known issues. His passion drive and purpose now had a greater mission.

Buddy set out on his own to make what he believed was the greatest bar he'd ever seen and trained with, and the Texas Power Bar was born. It was strong as a house with the best knurling and was maintenance-free. Hundreds of state, world, international, and massonomics powerlifting records have been and continue to be set on the Texas Power Bar. To buy one of your own. To learn more. To learn more and have one of your own.

Visit TexasPowerBars.com. TexasPowerBars.com. Yeah. Also check out a recent YouTube video we posted, our most recent as a recording, where we go through our full collection of Texas Power Bars. We kind of have this full collection. We didn't have the Champion barbell now, so now we have even another step in the history.

It keeps growing. Yes, it does. So also, as long as we're at it, make sure to check out Build Fast Formula. Build Fast Formula, our neighbors just kind of actually right smack dab between Tommy and I in Watertown, South Dakota. They've got a cool variety of supplements there. My personal favorite is the 80-20 protein and chocolate flavor. It's kind of the blend they came up with that they think is the ideal blend. 80% casein, 20%

whey. They've also got the Veso Blitz pump supplement and then they've got their caffeinated pre-workouts also. Check them all out. Most important part, make sure you use discount code MASSANOMICS. That'll save you 10% off everything there. If you sign up for a subscription on any of the products, you can save an additional 20 or additional 10% making the total savings 20%. Also be on the lookout for them. If you're coming to the 2024 Lift Hard WZ Classic, they will be there in a booth representing. Thank you, Built Fast Formula. All right, let's pick up.

Should I do a supporting our sporting members? Oh, yes, yes, if you can. And also we have some rainfall coming down at the moment. So if you're picking up static, it's not our mics. There is rain. Okay. So obviously shout out to everyone that, well, if anyone doesn't know, this is a little segment. It's called Supporting Our Supporting Members. We do it every week on the show, even when we're on the road.

It's no exception. Is this guy getting over, Tanner? Not on my watch. Nope. Okay. He's going to wait his turn. I'm a trucker, too, damn it. Don't you see this trailer here? We're all hauling valuable materials. So we do this segment every month or every week on the podcast. We like to give back to our supporting members. This is one of the ways we do it also.

We give everyone an opportunity to listen live to the podcast. And it's the only way, if you become a supporting member, that's the only way that you can sign up for our exclusive Discord community. Also, we do occasional mailings where we do surprise items. Those should be getting mailed out this week as we speak. You might even have yours by now. Yeah, it's very possible you could have yours. Those will be coming soon, so be on the lookout for a very cool fun surprise. And if you'd like to sign up, just check out massanomics.com slash join. That's where you can sign up. But a few supporting members we want to shout out. In addition to everyone we've already mentioned,

Big Bryce was nominated for the Golden Heart Award at work. Congratulations, Big Bryce. Very prestigious. Big Abby Thomas was a finalist for the Top 4 Under 40 program in Watertown. Big Dean competed in his first powerlifting meet in four years. He had a 496 squat, 352 bench, and a 507 deadlift. Then we've got Big Matt Sundling. He had a 446 squat,

276 bench, 551 deadlift for a 12.37 pound total PR. Then I've missed a bunch this week. Just being at the Arnold, it's hard to keep up. There's no service in there. But I know Big Jen competed in a powerlifting meet. Congratulations to her. Big Ryan from Iowa was also there to cheer her on. There was other stuff, but I just... Big Big Daniel. Big Big Daniel competing at...

He did a 1760 total PR total in the XPC meet. Big Sam Brown. Big Sam Brown, a 2,000 pound total in Good call on Sam Brown. Big Andrew Montoya competed in weightlifting and, uh, did like a 185 kilogram, kilogram clean and jerk over 400 pounds. Big Tyler Thompson competing in the, uh, amateur strongman event there. Um, a bunch more, honestly, like, so it really is hard to keep track of it all because there's so many people that have things going on or that helped out in some way so uh good job everyone yeah you did it so where are we at saturday evening of the arnold did we talk about uh well i guess the one thing to note is saturday saturday afternoon at the arnold we were able to sneak away from the booth a little bit thanks to the crew member yes members running the booth yeah we got to

shoot a few interviews with different people you'll see those coming out we were able to do maybe like a massonomics tour of the Arnold yeah that'll be part of the of the vlog video so that would be like that one too yeah just a bunch of random shots talking to a bunch of random people throughout, just quick sound bites. So, yeah, that video is a lot of fun. I think people are going to enjoy that one when that comes out, too. Saturday night, we... That's when we went out with the crew.

Oh, yeah, that's right. Big Joey, Big Steve, his wife, Emmett, Eddie, Nate, his buddy that he came with, the Barefoot crew came with as well. Am I forgetting anyone there? There's a whole group of crew members. Mini Action, no, Big Mini didn't come with us that night. And we went to Boston's Pizza, followed by a rendezvous, a classic Saturday night at the Arnold Rendezvous at Brothers Bar. And Brothers, for anyone that hasn't been to Brothers, but has been to the Zoo Bar, feels a lot like the Zoo Bar. Very similar.

Very similar. The Zoo Bar right there in western northeast South Dakota. Brothers is just like a little bit bigger. Yeah, it's bigger. Well, actually, the Zoo has an outdoor section now, too. Brothers has the like a little bit bigger. Yeah, it's bigger and it has, well, actually the zoo has an outdoor section now too. Brothers has the garage doors that open. Right. Give it, you know, that open floor plan that everyone's looking for. And it was nice enough. Like the weather was pretty decent. When we left South Dakota, it was zero degrees.

And on our way back now, well, it's cooling off a little bit. It's still 45-ish right now, so it's still nice right we also did see i okay so brothers we ran into a few people we know like we always do uh one other thing of interest when you went to canada this past summer and witnessed a deadlift competition yeah the guy that was doing that deadlift competition we saw him at the end he was like hey i'm that guy and like the gym owner so it was in saint malo in canada and that's where i just happened to be driving by with my family and we're like hey what's this and we stopped uh stopped to look those people were there and they came up to the massonomics booth and introduced themselves

so that was kind of a really funny fun coincidence and then they were also at brothers that night rocking uh massonomic shirts from the first people we saw they had the gear on so yeah we stayed pretty late missed a few people turns out a few people showed up midnight ish or later the department of lifter safety minnesota department of safety speaking specifically of you guys yes yeah uh just missed them though and that brings us to sunday also i guess we got to meet ct fletcher oh yes that was on sat guess we got to meet CT Fletcher. Oh yes. That was on Saturday. Yes.

That was very cool. We haven't met before. He was at the strength co booth. Yep. Had an enormous line for him. So people still, still got the respect for him, which is great to see.

Yeah. Uh, super nice though. He just, yeah, can talk to everyone that comes in. He had a good one. Very probable that we have him on the mass economics podcast.

Yeah. Love to see that happen. He said, Oh, how do I get hair like you guys one. I think it's very probable that we have him on the Massanomics podcast. Yeah, I'd love to see that happen. He said, oh, how do I get hair like you guys? And I think you told him, you just got to tell it I command you to grow. You have to command it to grow. I got C.T. Fletcher. And he was like, my motherfucker. I don't know if that's what he said. You know he was thinking it, though.

Yeah, that's what he was thinking. So that was really cool. And the Stringco had a cool set where they had like the C.T. Fletcher audio track playing the whole time. Yes, that was good. Like the C.T. remix over the 90s Compton beats. It was really cool. What else happened? The other thing, just in general, the cage was set up this year.

Oh, yeah. And it was really good to see that back up and going. I happened to walk by at one point when John Hack was doing his 915-pound deadlift, I believe. Yeah. So I got to see that. That was really cool. Yeah, so there's a bunch of big lifts in there. You know, Hunter Henderson squatted 650 for a triple.

I think Big Juliusius bench 740. a big td smash was in there and uh yeah someone else had a little big ken uh uh ginger ginger killies yes uh he is a 2 000 pound total,200 pound total in like a minute or something. And we shot the shit with him a couple times. And he is enormous. So muscular. He's also high on the list of people that will probably be on the podcast soon. Yes, he will be coming soon as well. That's definitely one that will be happening soon. Especially he gets, he's in on the joke a little bit.

So that will be a fun one. But to God, that guy is huge. Also, well, if we're getting to sunday big bobby came over and did a meet and greet and i think i made this comment is sometimes i forget how big some of these people are until you see them in person because the internet doesn't really do it justice well and they're always around guys that are also their size right and then like bobby walks up and i'm like my god I forgot how big your upper body is. God, there's traps. He's incredibly wide across his shoulders. But also the

thickness and the height of the traps is just incredible. So Sunday I guess that's kind of towards the beginning of the day. But Big Bobby did a meet and greet. It was a lot of fun. A bunch of people got to come over and get his autograph and stuff like that um also just as far as the strongman pro strongman hooper won it everyone would know that by now but uh thor had a very impressive showing i maybe the world's easiest thousand pound deadlift that's everyone was talking about on friday and my phone would never load it wasn't until fr Friday night when we were in our hotel room that I finally got to watch it, and I was like, oh, my God.

That was my actual reaction. It's like, oh, my God, how is that possible? I think he ultimately faltered some on the other events and came down the pack quite a ways. But Hooper won. Wouldn't be a huge surprise, I guess. I'm sure he's one of the favorites for sure going into it. So not a surprise there. Sunday, Trey also, big Trey Mitchell also did a meet and greet at the booth,

which is fun because we've gotten to know Trey more and more over the years. So that just gets more and more fun. And he's building a really cool home gym right now. He's got to hear about his home gym plans. He's got some pretty cool things in the works there. He's got some really cool equipment coming there, which we won't spoil the surprises. He made a few comments, though, of like, it's got to be better than Brian's. Right, right.

He's competing with not Massanomics Brian, but Brian Shaw he's talking about. I get confused. Also, a lot of people came up this year with, well, I don't know what the biggest Massanomics joke comments were this year. You know, it's definitely not the lift shorts anymore. That still comes up. But this year it was the twins. Twins was popular.

The chicken bake, which we sold out of the chicken bake shirt. So a lot of chicken bake comments. What were we just talking about? A lot of people regarding Tango Charlie had some strong feelings. Tango Charlie came up a lot. Tango Charlie has really soiled their reputation these last few months. Actually, some somewhat real talk is we found out a lot more. I hadn't expected to find out so much inside baseball about Tango Charlie over this trip.

But for as much as I bad-mouthed them before, I was only bad-mouthing them. It all stands. Yeah. Now even I'm like, oh, you guys are even bigger pieces of shit. We found out they're not actually veteran owned the reason they say veteran founded is because they were veteran founded but they got sold so now they just are veteran founded because of basically the company that like it sounds like the original owners of tango charlie were good dudes or dude or whatever it was actually how much is that and how much was i saying but we found out that there was a marketing company

that was doing, this is the story we heard. The marketing for them. Yeah, the marketing company was doing the story for the, or doing the marketing for them regarding their,

especially their lift heavy pet dogs. Right. And they realized how much money they were making so they bought out the company and they were just like, we'll just run the company based solely around this

lift heavy pet dogs shirt. And that's who runs the company now. Just some random faceless marketing company that's just now at this point ripping people off and doing whatever they can to try and make a buck proudly advertised veteran founded which isn't inaccurate but that's like a really weird thing grasping at straws to market your company. Right. Like, here's my company. I know a veteran. We're actually partially veteran. You could actually say Massonomics might be totally veteran-founded, but we're half veteran-owned, and we still don't use that,

and that has more weight than your veteran-founded thing for a long time. You're not benefiting a veteran at this point. Right, exactly. And we've heard various other stories about them from a few other people

that maybe had less than positive things to say about them. Very less. A lot of other people. We actually even had Karen Finn, Huck Finn's wife,

brought a guy over that said he worked for Tango Charlie and he did try to justify and say that the lift shirts were totally different. And she was backing him in a corner.

And then got him into a corner and they said, well, everyone rips off everyone. It's all the same now. Which is like, man, when you're getting to that point, you're really. She was really putting the squeeze on for me. It got a little awkward.

And we also, also, we caught that guy taking a picture of us down the aisle. I'm like, I go, Tanner, do you see that guy down there? He's like, yeah, who is that? Because I could tell he was taking a picture of our movie. I'm like, that is the Tango Charlie guy. He was taking a picture of us from far away. So weird. Yeah.

Yeah. And the best Tango Charlie story, though, we were on the lookout for someone wearing a Tango Charlie shirt because we had a little plan if we could execute. And it came together perfectly. So this guy walked by, a pretty big dude, a red-haired guy forget I don't know his handle or who it was but he was wearing a Tango Charlie shirt so I wasn't going to do it because I was like backing out at the last second then I'm like ah screw it I'll go ask him so I just said hey I see you're wearing that Tango Charlie shirt we just kind of have this Tango Charlie thing going on right now it's a big long story I'll spare you some of the details, but I'll just ask you, do you know who Huck Finn

Barbell is? He's like, oh yeah, of course. I love Huck Finn. Yeah, and I'm like, okay, great. I think you're going to like this. We're all on the same page here. If we have Huck Finn destroy that shirt and rip it off your body and give you a new shirt in return, a Massanomics shirt, would you be down for that? And he's like, oh, sounds awesome. I would love to. So we did this whole, you know, Huck Finn shreds it off his body, rips it off and spits on it. Yeah, throws a pound of stumps on it and spits on it. It was hilarious. Like, F-Tango Charlie, we only like

Massanomics. And then where did it go from there? And then after that Huck Finn decided, no, we don't like Masonomics. So then he rips the Masonomics shirt off the guy and then puts a Huck Finn barbell shirt on him. The guy's loving it. And shortly after that, Huck Finn decides, no, we don't like Huck Finn barbell either. Rips the Huck Finn barbell shirt off of him and puts a Live Large shirt on him. So this guy got three shirts ripped off of him in the course of five minutes. And I'd like to think he loved every second of it. And it also probably made his Arnold weekend. Because there was no way he was expecting something like that.

And Huck had, like, the Marines were across from us. And they had a gladiator mask replica on. And he was wearing that during it. And it was a ridiculous scene. And it was a lot of fun. People were all watching, like, whoa, what's going on? It was fun. But still, we learned, nobody there was like,

actually, you know, guys, Tango Charlie is not that bad. No one had anything to be like, oh, lay off on them. Everyone's like, ah, no, they deserve it. But the number of people that came up and also, it was shocking the number of people that came up and also, it was shocking the number of people that came up and also had like a story about this Tango Charlie company. A company I essentially didn't know about at all. Or had said, yeah, I tried to leave a comment and they blocked me. The number of people that said they got blocked by Tango Charlie, like people that we don't even really know.

Like, yeah, I saw they ripped you guys off and that's shitty of them. So I left a bad comment and they blocked me. Or, oh, I saw that they turned off all their comments because they knew that they were ripping you off and they didn't want to get caught so they blocked me or they blocked comments on that one. So people are very aware of the space of the shady shit they're doing. So back to Sunday, anything else wild and crazy that went down Sunday? I did acquire something. I'm trying to think if there's anything else on Sunday, though, that is worth. I mean, Tanner got a haircut at the Swing Co.

Oh, yeah, I got my first haircut in over four years. Okay, the funny story about that, Grant wanted to do it on their platform stage that they had built, which was fun. And Big D, his wife, is a haircutter, so she was doing the actual hair cutting when we were there. We set up on the stage, and it's right across from the SBD, big elevated SBD area. And at the time, Big Z and Mateusz were up there.

And once my haircut was kind of done, Grant gave me the microphone for the PA system, and I yelled that up until they got it. Before it actually even started oh yeah yeah ladies and gentlemen and Arnold first yeah Tanner will be getting a haircut and a crowd instantly starts for forming around because they see this guy come up with long hair like you're saying they had to think I was gonna get my head shaved and then Dee comes out and she's brushing out your hair and just just trimming up the ends of it and it had to be the most anticlimactic scene people start to just dissipate everyone that walks by is looking like what like everyone's interested and intrigued at

what's going on here i think in just long enough until they deduce that i am just getting a little haircut and they're like okay you're wasting time. In a room full of extraordinary things. This is not one of them. But, yeah, to go back, though, while you were getting your haircut, the SBD booth was right there. And I was sitting there and yelling at Big Z and Mateusz and Pete from SBD. And it took a while to get their attention, but finally they did. On the PA.

Tanner, you're on the PA. I'm sitting there in my barber chair on the PA, like, I don't know, 50 feet away from him, whatever that is. And I'm like, Big Z, Big Z. And I'm, like, motioning. I'm like, do you like my new haircut? And, like, giving him, like, do you like it? And he kind of, it took him a minute. And then he's, like, laughed.

And he was like, oh, gave me the thumbs up. And then Mateusz had been, like, turned the other direction. So I'm, like, yelling at him. And I don't know if it's, like, Mateusz speaks some English for at him and i don't know if it's like mateo speaks some english for sure but i don't know if it's an interpreter it wasn't quite getting what you were trying to say and they had to explain it and we're doing hand motions of the haircut and then he finally he was you could tell he's confused and he finally got it and then like laughed and gave me the thumbs up and i'm like and we got it all in video too yeah so my uh

my haircut was approved by big strong man Strongman approved. Yes. And Sunday I guess the other point. Huck Finn played Country Roads Take Me Home probably 10,000 times. For maybe two hours straight while we were tearing down. Country Roads. The one maybe exciting announcement is I have started to dip my toes into the process of the home gym work. Yes, that was a lot of people. I had made the comment. I said, you know, there's a chance I feel like I could walk away with some gym equipment this year. Now that I do have a, a house once again,

to put stuff into that, maybe if the right opportunity prevent presents itself, I could, I could enter into that world. And, uh at Bells of Steel had made some comments to us. They came over to the booth and had said some things. And they already had a smoking hot deal at the Arnold. Yeah, for anyone that wanted to. Yeah, anyone there, 50% off whatever they had at their booth. And so full disclosure, I went over and got the 50% off and a little more, which makes things pretty sweet.

And I've talked to you about this several times, Tanner, where I'd always said, you know, if I got a rack in my house. So I went, spoiler, I ended up getting a rack, got a rack. And I'd made the comment several times that I liked the half rack you had. I believe the road collegiate half rack. And I like just the smaller footprint because if I got a rack, I didn't want to go crazy. I didn't want to turn a whole third stall of my garage into this gym. I do need some space for kids things and other things. It would replace my total gym experience.

It would just be in addition to something that I would have, something that would work out. And they had a four- post rack with the did i say 30 inch yeah yeah so a little more compact which that one really spoke to me when i saw that three by three five ace inch holes kind of hit all the requirements for what i was looking for in a rack and a pretty sweet price to to boot on top of that so i ended up getting a bells of steel rack. We got it loaded up in the trailer here. Yep. And we also have a buddy that runs a company called the strength co and may have heard of them. You may have heard of them. I ended up picking up a bar from grant, got the change plates, got a weight tree, deadlift jack, collars. Yes. I forgot about i forgot about all those uh the only downside is we're sitting a little heavy like we said earlier you picked up some 45s you picked up some hundreds you picked up

some roundheads the trailer and the truck were starting to squat a little bit in the trailer yeah so the idea of bringing home uh 400 plus pounds worth of 45s just was really pushing it. And like bringing a pair of 45s doesn't get me anything. Right. Even two 45s doesn't really get me anything either. So we'll get the rest of that worked out later. But the main thing is I have now made the investment in the initial stages of a home gym. Be a real surprise for my wife.

We'll see what she thinks of this one. I'd never even mentioned this concept to her at any point earlier. So I'll be very curious to know, to hear what my wife thinks of this whole thing. Yeah, we're going to find out really soon. Yeah, so there will be more content coming on that in, I don't know, next couple months. I'm not in a huge, I'm not going home today and like setting this thing up first thing. It'll take a little bit of time. I don't have 45 pound plates. Right, yeah, I can't really work out. You've got most of the, like you've got a vast majority of what you need. Basically, I could

do workouts as soon as I get the 45s and I could do even more workouts as soon as I get a bench. Right, right. So that will be coming. That will be coming at some point here. There will be definitely some content built around that. So be on the lookout. So we always talk about coming home with equipment from the Arnold and this year was no exception. Yeah. We got just as, we have as, like a lot of mine is just, I mean all my stuff is just vintage stuff that I had arranged. Pre-arranged kind of. But overall we probably have as much equipment in trailer

in tow now than we have definitely more weight yeah on the way home than we did on the way back or the way there uh was there anything else sunday though of interest i guess you know what we're missing one one very important part of the story here do you know what that is no the arnold bathrooms oh the arnold bathrooms We didn't even touch on the Arnold bathrooms. We did not even touch on it. This seems to be a whole segment actually. We're not getting close to anywhere where we turn. Let me do just a quick look in here. So we had the Arnold bathroom sticker this year. The I survived the Arnold bathroom sticker. We're 10 miles out from 880 West. 880 West. That's where we get off. Looks like exit 27. 27 is the magic number. We'll keep an eye

on that. We had the I Survived Arnold bathroom stickers and we found out we did not bring enough of those because by the end of it, people were coming up to the booth just wondering if this is where they could get the I Survived Arnold bathroom stickers. Everyone was looking for those things. The bathrooms did not disappoint. I had a few people early in the weekend that were like, I didn't think they're that bad. And we became the de facto place to report your bathroom experience to. Everyone wanted to come tell us what they experienced. Yes.

And you heard a lot of horror stories. Yes, we heard a lot of horror stories. We saw a lot of horror stories. But you know you're off to a great start when the expo has not even started. And the closest bathroom to us already has multiple stalls that are out of order, which is just a great sign. They're living up to the name right off the bat. Other notes, like there was rarely soap in any of the soap dispensers. Soap was always gone.

Which is gross. I'm like, why? Like someone needs to be filling the soap. The joke was two years ago we couldn't have the arnold because of coveted germs and here we are we're two years removed and it's like they don't even so it doesn't even matter anymore you know what we've moved on from germs so fast like the first year came back up we were like do we need to have like hand sanitizer at the at the table we didn't know if we needed to have masks like we didn't know what the rules were

and this year like now they don't even provide soap in the bathrooms. Mm-hmm. Like. Yes. So there's always that. Several, though. Just, actually, there was one. I, at one point, went to a bathroom far away.

I have a secret little bathroom. Yeah. It's a little bit of a walk. A bit of bathroom experts. It's off the beaten path, so you can count on it being the cleanest. It always is the cleanest. And I go in, and even the one that's the cleanest, the first stall I open, there's no toilet paper because you do a pre-check. Okay, so I go to the next stall.

The toilet seat is just ripped off of it, which is always an amazing scene. Because is someone sliding in so hot that they're ripping it off? Or does someone get done and they're just like, rah and they grab it and rip so no toilet seat so then the third one is finally the the lucky stall but uh you you would witness some some good things along the lines as well i mean just severe carnage also just the floors just as wet as all ever the amount of piss on them like you're in there and you know you're inhaling a certain amount of piss fumes whenever you're in there. The one evening it was really bad. And it was just me and some guy that was obviously a bodybuilder in there.

And he had gone to the bathroom and then both of us were going to the sinks at the same time. And we're checking for soap and none of them have soap. And one of the sinks we both get to in the middle at the same time to find out checking for soap and none of them have soap and one of the sink we both get to in the middle at the same time to find out it doesn't have soap is plumb full of liquid and it looked like someone either shit diarrhea or puked and it was plumb full like it was like three gallons in there and it was just like stale swirling and the guy was so angry and he just goes like he didn't say it too like he said it out loud but like sort of he couldn't contain his thoughts it was just like it was just his thoughts out loud and he's like god and he was it wasn't trying to be funny or anything but

like i almost burst out laughing he goes god this place is fucking disgusting. And just the way he said it, I almost burst out laughing. Like, because he was, like, it was one of those moments when you're like, that moment makes what the Arno. That's it. I'm done. I can't take it. That is stereotypically what I think of as the Arno bathrooms.

It's not like that all the time. But there's always some times when he's just like, God, this, like he was so mad. He was just, God, this place is fucking disgusting. I enjoyed at the one right by us at some point, you know, you walk in and to the left is a pot of urinals. It's three and three on the opposite walls. And there's the baby changer koala care in the middle. And all I can think of is like, God help the soul of the man who had to change a child in here but for whatever reason the koala care baby changer was flipped down and it was down all week it was never back up and I didn't have it in me to check to put that up but you don't want to touch it you don't want to touch it but that thing was down the rest of the weekend and the sticker the big koala care sticker was on the floor the rest of the time I had some some good bathroom sightings, though. One night I ran into Martin Ford in the bathroom.

He was walking out. Yesterday. I was in there with Jerry Pritchett. Yesterday I was walking and I hear, come on, join the club. Come on in. Come on in. And it's Lee Priest welcoming people into the bathroom, which was great, too. Because that's just, that's a character to see.

Going into the bathroom. We did see a couple stalls. There was one night when I was going to the urinal, and it looked like an actual crime scene. There was, like, police tape over it. And there had to have been, like, an explosion of some kind because there was, like, black smoke on the urinal. It was just in this state of complete disarray and damage.

And then I always like it, too, when you see the body bags over the urinal. They have to. They have to mark it up. Just the police tape isn't enough. People are going to keep pissing in this thing. Just the police tape isn't enough to stop someone from pissing on it. They have to totally body bag the whole thing.

And that's the only way to stop urine from being splashed all over this thing. But we did hear tons of bathroom scar stories. The Minnesota Department of Lifter Safety, they did relay a story to me that someone they know, a woman in the woman's bathroom,

she was in a stall and the stall next to her, someone just shit on the floor and she could see it. She could see the shit appear on the floor out of nowhere. Yeah, yeah.

A lot of wild stuff happening in there. The memes, the stickers, it all, it lived up to the hype yes it absolutely did um do we have anything else from an i know i know we're missing a ton of things there's just too much stuff that happens we've been to juji got to have a good conversation with juji juji ran up and gave me a hug and he's another guy that i guess i just forget how jacked

he is how jacked he is when he grabbed me'm like, are you going to split me in half? And how much, like, we love him, but we love a lot of people. We don't know how much that bleeds out into the greater population. And he had a massive line for him all weekend, too. People were just chasing him everywhere. Yes, and we did a little interview with Omar at Rascal. We tried to bury the hatchet. Yes, we did the best we could.

You guys will have to watch and see if the hatchet is fully buried or not. We got to put a lot of hands in the old vice this weekend. Shook a lot of hands this weekend. I shook Grant's hand probably 100 times. That's not an exaggeration, I don't know. No, no. I don't know if there was an interaction I had with Grant where I didn't shake his hand at least three times. Speaking of Grant, if you didn't know by now,

we are sponsored by The Strength Co., our good friends over at The Strength Co. You can check them out at places like the Arnold Sports Festival, like we just did. You can find them at the Lift Hard, Live Easy Classic. Their plates and barbells, I can personally attest, they stand up to just about anything. The beating that they take at the Arnold, people getting deadlifted just 24-7. Take a licking and keep on ticking. Durability tested, absolutely, the Strength Co. I was watching that Strength Co. group spot and load those plates.

It almost looked effortless, them being as smooth and easy to grip as they are. Also those plates not a bit of wear after a weekend of just getting pounded repeatedly. So durable plates over there. They really are, I got to see every plate that is made this weekend is there at the Arnold in one way or another. And the Strength Co. plates are the nicest looking plates hands down yeah so check them out at thestrength.co and this episode is also brought to you by the fine folks at swiss link now if we planned a little better and we're a little smarter we would have hopped over to

swisslink.com and pots bought something like a military gas mask a world war ii gas mask what about an authentic czech bedpan we can use that instead of the bathroom that would have been good maybe some type of uh what they probably saw multiple things we could have used to help us out yes some type of hazmat suit from the chernobyl area era perhaps a geiger counter would maybe know if you're safe to enter the bathrooms or not. If any of these things sound interesting to you, you can find this great selection and more at SwissLink.com. They're home to all of those amazing things and the collection is updating all of the time. You know what else could have been pretty gangster from SwissLink? If we would have

showed up with all those stainless, instead of like totes like everyone else, we just have a pile of these stainless steel containers that they sell. Like all our shirts are packed in like these really fancy stainless steel. That would have been making a statement. We bring our waters in wavy and fuel cans. Wavy and fuel cans. If any of these items do sound of interest to you though, make sure to hop over to SwissLink.com and use code TannerMassonomics? Mass? Mass. Use code Mass to save 15%. Miles had to correct me on that last time. I think it's Mass. On your first order. SwissLink.com. Code Mass will save you 15%. Thank you, SwissLink. Excellent.

will save you 15%. Thank you, SwissLink. Excellent. Oh, let's see. Anything else we need to wrap up on this one? The Arnold review of 2024? We sold a lot of shirts. Okay, yes. We sold a lot of shirts.

Would have liked to sell more. We would have liked to sell more. The crowd was up, so just being real. The Arnold is always great. It's always worth it to us. The crowd. And meeting the people and everything, of course. Yes, meeting people. There's so many intangibles. There's like an un's always worth it to us. The crowd. And meeting the people and everything, of course. Yes, meeting people.

There's so many intangibles. There's an unmeasurable value to that. Like all the crew members. Getting to meet the crew members in person. Yes, there's so many amazing things about the Arnold. There's so many crew members we didn't mention here that we still met there that we don't get to meet otherwise if we don't show up. The crowds were up at the Arnold. It felt like in a pretty sizable way.

Yeah. Which got you really hopeful that sales would be up in proportion. They were not up in proportion. It was still good. It's still the Arnold. But the sales did not correlate. It felt like the Arnold was 50% busier. It wasn't a 50% better sales year. Still good.

Still worth it. But that was just something of interest for us. There was one point Friday morning where we're like, oh my God, this is going to be wild. And it just stayed steady the whole time. It never got to be that just, what just happened this week? Like it never got there. I don't think we love our spot anymore. No, we also talked about this might be,

we might be had enough on our spot, especially this year, the booths we were around. Too many non- not just conducive to yes like we had huck finn which is great fit butters i don't want to yeah we had peanut butter companies we had the marines pickles a lot of just empty ones and that doesn't get us it's good to have booths that also draw a crowd and get those people in there we didn't have that advantage this year so there's a good chance you will find us in a different spot next year. We'll be communicating with a lot of other booths.

Expect us maybe to do a better job of coordinating with booths like Huck Finn, Barefoot, Meg Squats, Jujimufu, in the Rascal area. like expect us to be probably more in anyone that's been there before in that general area just to like I think it's worth a try of something different and I do believe it is that that thing of a rising tide raises all ships like we all just feed off each other yes when we when we can bring that crowd in together because we do have so much carryover and customers I don't honestly think we compete that much like everyone wants to support everyone. No, I don't. And it just honestly makes us easier to find.

It probably makes it easier for the customer too. Like people just won't miss us because they are going to go to that area and then they'll catch all of us at once. So that was a major takeaway for us. Another one too, we talked about this. We hate to say, I hate to use this word, but we're like, maybe we're getting jaded. Like it used to be, we'll still never forget in 2019 when we didn't think anyone know who we were for someone to come up and be like i've seen this before that was mind-blowing for us to have to just see the strong men walk by we

talked about was the craziest thing we'd ever witnessed in our lives like they're right there we can almost touch them now they're coming over and talking to us right and saying to listen to our stuff so i'm like that's pretty cool but also it didn't totally change our life to the weekend. We have met these people now enough. We're in communication with them. So it's less of the starstruck and more of we think of these people more as peers and friends and less of an online celebrity that was like inaccessible before. So that's changed over the years and that comes with experience and us maturing.

That just makes things a little different. And then what I think maybe the most valuable lesson we got from the Arnold this weekend is it made us that much more appreciative for the Lift Hard, Live Easy Classic. Like how special that actually is. Because that gives us a whole weekend to connect hang lift and party with the people we love most in the mass economics world there's nothing we do that's better than the lift hardly no and with this we get yes the crew members the supporters you get to see a lot of crew members they get to stop by and it's awesome but we're also kind of working

a booth right we're kind of we're kind of working the entire day yes we have a kind of working a booth. We're kind of, you know. We're kind of working the entire day. Yes, we have a lot of stuff going on and we also don't have the room to accommodate hanging out with dozens of people. And we can't facilitate them having a good spot to hang out with each other very well, like we can in Aberdeen. And that was, we walked away from this

and we realized, wow, the Liptar Libby Z Classic really is that special of an event because the amount of time everyone gets to connect and hang and bond is just on another level. So if you're listening to this and you're on the fence about competing, you're kind of out of luck. But if you're on the fence about attending the Littard Livesey Classic, man, it's just, we are so looking forward to it. It's going to be an amazing year. It's going to be a great time. You're going to make some friendships that, quite honestly, could last you a lifetime.

Right. Yes. I agree with that completely. One other thing you brought up that reminded me that I thought was, like, I don't recall really hearing this phrase that much in the past. Oh, yes. Well, people would come up and be, or, like, I would just meet them on a hallway, and they would just be like, oh, hey, man, big fan. And I never remember people just, like, you know, like, non-crew members, like, just, like, just not even a conversation.

In the past, we've gotten, like, oh, I love you guys. You're doing cool stuff. But we, every day, we had multiple people we know or, like, randoms. We'd be like, huge fan. And that's awesome. But we start thinking about what does that mean does that mean they like the podcast right does that mean they like instagram does that mean they like uh youtube what does that mean maybe it's a little bit of all of it

right right but it was it was really cool the number of people that said that this year yeah um anything else uh so uh just one overrated underrated so overrated overrated or underrated the Arnold bathrooms that's an interesting one actually it is an interesting one because what does it even mean at this point do you want them to be better do you want them to be they are they are underrated in the way that yes they do live up to the hype of like you're always going to be in for a surprise they really might be as bad as they are they might actually even be worse than what they're hyped up to be yeah uh but they are overrated in the way of you got to use that facility and uh yeah you don't want to be

you don't want to be using that facility because it it is it is a little shitty no pun intended very shitty i don't know is that riding the? Oh, you can't ride the line. Did I play the game wrong? I guess I gave it two different scenarios, so I'm going to give myself a pass this time and say I did it correctly. All right. Well, we make up the rules, so we can break them if we want to. Make sure to check out the Massanomics YouTube channel.

We'll have several videos coming up soon from the Arnold. And it's not going to be following a regular schedule. We'll have a vlog, tour video, the whole thing. But then we're going to have some, we did a few interview videos and we're going to pepper those in just so we're not doing Arnold content a month and a half from now.

So make sure to be subscribing on YouTube if you're not already. And also we have at least one new YouTube video every week in addition to this podcast. So please subscribe if you don't. Leave us a five-star review of the podcast on Apple Podcasts if you're a new listener. If you met us at the Arnold and you're checking it out,

leave us a review if you could. That helps us out a little bit. And then like us on Instagram, all those usual places. Buy us shirts if you'd like sometime or a drink spotter. We had some new items at the Arnold that we're going to be releasing later this month on the website. First of all, I've got to get this trailer home and unloaded. And things counted, so that's going to be a process. So to be continued on that timeline.

Tommy, where do they find you at? You can find me at Tomahawk underscore D. You can follow me at Tanner underscore Baird. But of course, just make sure to follow Massanomics at Massanomics. Oh, wait, we forgot to ask the people. Let us know if you like the car format. Maybe we need to do more car podcasts. Maybe that's what's missing from our formula.

I'll just drive down to Sioux Falls like once a week and we can just drive around. We'll just aimlessly drive around town pulling a trailer doing podcasts. One person, final note, there was one person at the Arnold that came up and said he would really like more C10 pickup talk. Oh, yes, there was. And I told him, thank you. That is all the confirmation I need to talk about more C10. So stay tuned. You know, that one guy, you're gonna be in for something

special in future weeks here. All right, did we say where they find us at already? Ah, yeah, I think, just in case, you can find me at Tomahawk underscore D. You can follow me at Tanner underscore Barrett, just make sure to follow Mastanomics at Mastanomics. See ya. you