Massenomics Podcast - Ep. 419: Building a Home Gym with Basement Brandon

Episode Date: April 15, 2024

Big Basement Brandon (Diamond) joins us for this one to discuss his epic basement gym, and he weighs in on the beginnings of Tommy’s new garage gym build. Don’t miss the BIG thing we have coming this Thursday 4/18/24! 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!

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

If you don't follow Massanomics, y'all do it. Social media, website, everything. Massanomics! everything massonomics tommy don't even start a podcast intro to me until i've had my morning coffee that was going to be my very first question that said you had your morning coffee yet? Well, just wait. Wait a second. There goes the first sip. Okay. Now we can talk. Now we can podcast. I've had at least the start of my morning coffee.

Here we go. So it's official. We can get going here. This is unplanned. We both came with coffee mugs, though. That's right. It's just going to be an episode of us sipping coffee. Just lots of sips back and forth going,

mm, mm. Mm. Ah, yes. Uh, as special episode, we are recording in the AM.

It is AM here in local Western Northeast, South Dakota. This is almost as rare as an eclipse occurrence right now. And are those rare? To a certain specification. They are. I don't, I don't follow it enough, but yes, they are to a certain extent. I'm just't i don't follow it enough but yes they are to a

certain extent i'm just not sure what extent that is yeah they always seem less rare than uh what they're hyped to be it's like there wasn't there one like last month i was there's not one again until the year 2076 and then it's all of a sudden it's 2025 and like yeah there's two this year actually our math was off there's two more eclipses. This is episode 419 of the Mastodonomics podcast, the lifting podcast about nothing. We have a lot of topics today. And we're probably just not even going to get to them all today.

We have a lot, which means we're not going to cover them. Actually, this week we do have a lot because last week we did a call-in show, which meant we didn't cover any of our items. So we sort of have two, almost three weeks of backlog that we're sitting on. So there is a lot to cover this week. And I don't want to say what it is, but this episode comes out. So this episode will air on, just checking dates, the 15th, 14th, 15th of April, coming April 18th, which would the thursday that this comes out we have our uh very big drop coming and so we're not going to release anything of of this but we're releasing a product that will uh change the game so our lips are sealed

you'll have to be on the lookout playing this one pretty pretty close. But it's if I was to use one singular word to describe it, it's going to be big. Hashtag Justin Timberlake. It's going to be big. Breaking news, though, Tommy. The juice is no longer loose. Did you see OJ Simpson just died? Really? I just got a notification on my phone.

Really? Wow. This is not loose. Did you see OJ Simpson just died? Really? I just got a notification on my phone. Really? Wow. Juice is not loose. That was breaking news right as we're recording. I got to check this out. Wow. 76, cancer. Cancer.

I had no idea. 76. I also didn't realize he was that old, but yeah, I mean, kind of makes sense. Wow. Quite the life that man lived. I won't make any more comments on it than that, wow quite the life that man lived i won't make any more comments on it than that but quite the life not to get too political tommy but oj simpson innocent or guilty well he wrote a book called if i did it so very odd very odd choice of a title. Yeah.

Yeah, so no more OJ Simpson, whatever that means. Okay, have you ever seen the, I don't know if it's a 30 for 30 or what it is, but there's actually a documentary. It's like a three-part thing about OJ and him coming into popular culture. Okay, that is really well done. I totally honest didn't know much about oj other than he played football and murdered someone or something like that was and then he was in like

some funny movies when i was a kid right the naked gun movies that was my extent of oj growing up or my knowledge of him and watching that documentary it was uh that's a good documentary people should watch that one i think also at the time he was maybe the best running back that there had been, too, at least to a certain point in time. You know, he was up there with, I suppose, Jim Brown and stuff. But, like, he was kind of, you know, it's easy to lose sight of that now. If you're, like, our age, all you remember of O.J. Simpson really is, like. The murder trial.

That's all I ever. Right. Yeah. But he was, it would be like if, I don't, yeah, I don't know. I mean, just any big name person now. But now it's different because there's so many big name sports people. Right. He was one of the first people to really cross over into movies and pop culture and all of that.

Right. Who would be a good example, though? Like, would it be like if they were now like they murdered someone tomorrow and were on the news all of the time? Well, I'm trying to remember the oldest example. It has to be someone that's been retired for a bit, too. Yeah. Yeah.

And I'm like, because I think of like running backs that have been retired for a little bit that were really good, but none of them are like famous enough. No, people don't like. Well, that's the problem. If it's like LaDainian Tomlinson murdered someone, most people would be like, who is LaDainian Tomlinson or someone, most people would be like, who is LaDainian Tomlinson?

Although he was exceptionally good at the running back position. But even someone, you could say Adrian Peterson or something too, but they never crossed over into pop culture

the way that OJ did. So he is in a unique position there. I don't know, Aaron Rodgers maybe? Right, right, right. Someone that sort of crosses over? Yeah, yeah.

That seems almost somewhat believable. Yeah. That seems a little too believable, maybe. Yeah, a little too close. You heard it here first. Yeah. We do have an exciting episode. We're going to get old friend of the podcast, Basement Brandon,

is going to be coming on this week. So that'll be interesting. That'll be fun. Is there anywhere you wanted to start? I want to start with the OJ. I wanted to start with our morning coffee, of course. We should probably also start with a little message from our sponsors.

Oh, my God. I don't even know what I'm talking about anymore. You're right. First, I want to tell everyone that this episode is brought to you by our good friends over at Build Fast Formula. I want to lead with the exciting part this week on Build Fast Formula. You can use discount code MASSANOMICS on their site, and it'll save 10% on literally anything you want to buy from them.

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that ad i would have the uh you had a lot of other stuff i had a lot of stuff to do like make sure a lot of oj simpson stuff going through your mind like was he innocent or still thinking about him in the naked gun movies i just yeah i just can't get over it uh this episode is also brought to you by barefoot shoes most shoes harm your mobility by over restricting your foot's natural movement but barefoot shoes are designed with minimal restrictions so your feet can move the way they're supposed to move with more strength and confidence in every step barefoot shoes was also founded by chris duffin who was mentioned in the previous ad read kind of a big chris duffin podcast over here and chris duffin attributes proper foot biomechanics as foundational to his success in squatting and deadlifting

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without thinking about it for more than like just like two seconds what year do you think oj simpson was born well i mean it'd have to be like in the 40ies, wouldn't it? Yeah. 1947. Yeah. Okay. He was born just like shortly at the end of world war two, which is wild. That that's, yeah, but that seems so old, but at the same time, isn't that how old Nick Saban is? And he just quit coaching. Oh, probably. Yeah.

Yeah. Probably. Which is also insane that someone can be that old and hold up to the stresses of college football year after year. Yeah, that's true. That's true. I guess he couldn't hold up i'm getting too old couldn't even win a national championship this year

uh hang it up old man yeah uh all right what do we want to talk about first you made you had a little trip that you took yeah okay maybe maybe i'll talk about that for a minute. Yes. So I won't go super in depth on all the details because we do have a video about this coming, but with a YouTube video on our YouTube channel, YouTube video, a big grant owner of the strength co his barbell manufacturer is out of Minnesota. And it just happens to be just down the road from me here.

And we had talked for a while that he wanted some updated new photos of his barbells to go on his website. And it seemed a lot easier for me to just make the quick little drive over there than it would be to ship all of those at my house and then have all of these barbells sitting here and figuring out what the hell I'm going to do with them. So I made the trip over and I won't, I won't go too much into the behind the scenes talk of who's who and all that. But great people over there. Who's who? They were awesome and they were familiar with Masonomics, which makes it cool.

And you got a lot of fun inside. Oh, I got so much insight because this company just does white labeling. They make barbells for there's a good chance any gym you've been to in America, you've probably held their barbells before. And so just hearing the inside scoop, these guys have been involved in so many things in the industry for so long. Actually, the founder of the company invented PowerBlock in the early nineties. So the dad of the group, he has so much industry knowledge and experience. So it was so cool getting to hear all their stories and connections. And they work with several other influencers in the industry. I got to see their warehousing. I just got so much behind the scenes look at all this stuff.

It was really cool. But then finally, I did get to tour their actual barbell manufacturing facility. And I never- Where the magic happens. Where the magic actually happens. And I never really understood how it worked. I mean, I get it at a high level. You know, you get a piece of metal and you put it in a thing. A stork. The barbell stork comes and brings it to the barbells. You're ready to go lift. But yeah, so to see how actually the shaft comes in and the knurling goes on

and the collars and the sleeves are all put together and talking about the coating process. It was really, really cool to see it all. Like I said, we will have, they actually convinced them into doing a little tour of their barbell facility for us. So we get the behind the scenes look, this will go on the massonomics YouTube where they give us a high level overview of how the barbell process actually works and then how it's assembled. All of that. They were cautious a few times, like, ah, I i don't know we probably don't want to give away too much of the secret sauce and they're like uh if someone's stupid to do it stupid enough to do this i guess that's their problem that's a funny thought yeah like who's gonna be like ah yeah now i can like open up an enormous

factory yes i'm gonna open up an industrial shop buy many cnc machines lathes get the crews to work on this around the clock figure out how to source the steel do this whole thing figure out my coatings do all that and then at the end of the day uh find some clients to sell them to yeah they're like yeah if you're stupid enough to think that you want to do that then yeah we can't stop you that that's your problem but is it at all like uh touring the hot dog factory how now you never want to touch a barbell again? Actually, if anything, it made me appreciate them even more. It was like fine art appreciation.

At first, you're like, ah, these things are cool, whatever. But then once you really know the ins and outs, now you really appreciate it. Yeah, that seems fair. Yeah, so it was a good trip. I had a lot of fun. They even mentioned that the owners, there's a good chance they'll be at Home Gym Con. So we might run into them there.

You might actually get to meet them too, Tanner. What town are they from? Owatonna. Did you see that? This is completely unnecessary to be on the podcast, but I have forgotten about it until just now. Did you see that order came in this week that had a weird order? Okay. That was you, right? Not me. Yeah. It was one of the guys. Yes. It was one of the guys. Oh, it was one of the guys. Well, I'm assuming it was one of the

employees because he made the note, like, I missed you when you were here. Love what you do. I could have included something in there or something maybe, but. Yeah. Okay. I figured, I totally, I did see that one come in and I was going to message you about it. I totally forgot. But yeah, the impression I got there was, cause that wasn't anyone I met. I figured I totally, I did see that one come in. I was going to message you about it. I totally forgot. But yeah, the impression I got there was, because that wasn't anyone I met. I got the impression that was an employee that works there. They didn't happen to be there on the day we got there. But they knew Masonomics.

They knew Masonomics. So they were, yeah. But the other guys all knew Masonomics too, which was cool to walk into somewhere and be like, hey, we kind of all know each other. We're on the same page right off the bat here. yeah that is pretty cool then huh yeah so that video probably becoming i mean the content pipeline is just so jammed packed right now we're probably a month out before that video appears um you're kind of that's like you said that like a joke but it's also kind

of true we have it's very true we have have a lot of YouTube content to get out. We did, what did we post last week on YouTube? What was last week's video? Was that the gym tour? Oh, yeah, it was the gym tour, wasn't it? Gym tour, yeah. Gym tour. Great video.

Make sure to go check out the Massanomics gym tour. That one's as good as ever, of course. And then at the time this comes out, you should be able to check out, uh, Tommy's home gym tour. That's the next one coming out here. So yeah, don't miss that one. Got a, got a quick turnaround. You got to get this podcast wrapped up so I can film that one today.

Yes. Yes. Uh, yes. Okay. Oh, I wanted to mention Leroy Jenkinsenkins oh yeah what's going on with that i uh posted you know i there's this leader jenkins meme that i this is the second time i posted it where it's uh it's the leroy jenkins clip and the caption i put over it's just like hey um what is the caption i use it's me when i'm not planning on maxing out deadlifts today, but then I do max out dead,

whatever, you know, it's a more concise way of saying that. And it's basically just like him screaming Leroy Jenkins. And you're saying, ah, fuck it. I'm maxing out.

Yup. Um, and that one goes pretty viral every time. This time it particularly did. I don't know. Did it really? Oh, I never,

I never, I mean, I caught, I always catch it right away and I never go back and look, I guess I would be somewhat curious. It's, it's so far back now. It takes a while to even find where it is,

but it's still one of the number one things showing up in my notifications right now. Yeah, so it's got 870,000 views. Wow. You know, 125,000, whatever. It's got just about a million views. That one will probably go over a million. But the 125,000 likes, that is a lot. Wow. 243 comments too. But the thing about that is I did not know this. I was like, not today, years old. I also don't

like that saying in particular, but like I was like a month ago, years old when I learned that, and you might already know this. didn't know this or maybe this will be new news to you that was staged oh it was that was staged that was paid for by some company really yes so it was it was old internet viral marketing yes it was and did you know that that was state a staged clip no i thought you're gonna thought you were going to say, I didn't realize this, but that's from the video game World of Warcraft. I was going to be like, whoa, Tanner. Where have you been?

That almost could be something I would say. I don't think I'd make that big. I could see me not knowing that, but I wouldn't make such a big scene. It's actually not a movie. It's from a game. Okay. No, I did not know that that was that was staged that's news to me so then the the sub rumor was that oh no it did original it it happened organically once and it was so good that then they had to recreate it but i think it came out that that was false interesting that it never it is is just like, and I'm like, damn, that's pretty well done that back then that they,

that's a, that goes down and as a real piece of early internet lore and viral marketing, then I never realized that. Yeah. Leroy Jenkins. Oh, I just wanted to touch on the Leroy Jenkins thing.

Cause it was, was particularly uh I was just like that kind of blew my mind that that wasn't real like it feels real you kind of sort of did the Santa Claus thing where all of a sudden yeah I had this yeah it's kind of ruined this thing you ruined it for me it does ruin it a little bit yeah it does I think unfortunately I'd be careful who you tell that to going forward. Yeah. I do have a coffee hot take. I don't know if we want to get to that now.

I'm curious what you wrote. You wrote five by three in there, and I'm very curious what that is. Okay. Well, get into your coffee hot take, and then I'll do my five by three, unless you want to flip that order. I'm pretty curious about what the five by three is so i have been all right my coffee hot take a goat could be discussed okay five by three so this is actually i was just talking about grant uh this is related i've been catching up on some episodes of the okay podcast okay and i i know

i could ask grant directly and get this answer in two seconds but i was curious how knowledgeable you are on this subject so i'll be the first to admit, I'm not a starting strength guy. I don't know much about starting strength other than hearing people talk about it. I believe you've read the book though. I've read the blue book. Yeah, definitely. I've read the blue book cover to cover. I mean, it's been with the, it's been a while. Like, I mean, it's been over 10 years ago. Haven't you? it's been a while like i mean it's been over 10 years ago haven't you probably yeah and i have i've looked at the blue book i've referenced it for certain things before or i've i have a copy of it at the gym and like some people that start all uh you know having the book because it does a good job at least explaining a way to do the lifts yes that's like fairly concise and fairly

easy to understand so there's some certain benefits to that, especially for people that are just starting out. Yes, correct. Okay. What I didn't understand, and maybe it's where Grant and Trey are at in their training, but I heard them mentioned multiple times on a recent episode, five by three for squats.

Is that what it is for starting strength or is it five by five? I always thought starting strength was five sets of five, everything, or is it five sets of three or they just in a more advanced spot in the programming? I don't know how to answer that for sure. I,

what I, what I mean when I say I don't know how to answer that is I don't know the answer to the question actually. Okay. But do you get what I'm asking? Yeah. Yeah. I don't know why in my head,

I know like the whole thing and like to where people laugh about starting strength is like, okay but do you get what i'm asking yeah yeah i don't know why in my head fives in my head yeah i know like the whole thing and like to where people laugh about starting strength is like the answer is just always fives okay let's do your fives it's fives big jeff has done starting strength before and he said three sets of five wow okay i always thought starting strength's whole thing was five sets of five i thought that that was like the built-in rep scheme was five sets of five um well and i think it gets confusing because who anyone i don't know if anyone listening knows but mark ripto's coach was he pulled a lot he pulled i don't he pulled some of what he does from him and he has other programming and some people merge the two between uh uh rips coach okay okay but but based off of what jeff is

saying here what i heard grant say he's saying three sets of five so the default it sounds like then the default kind of rep scheme and starting strength is like three sets of five but you said five by three no i was sorry sorry sorry yeah sorry i meant three. No, I was, sorry, sorry, sorry. Yeah, sorry, I meant three sets of five. I was trying to say three sets of five reps. Okay, so you're saying three sets of five. Yes, three sets of five. That actually brings up a subtopic, is sometimes people lift,

we've probably talked about this. I think we have. How do you say that? I just rewrote it differently. So this is what you mean, right? Three by, three X five. Three sets of five reps. five, three sets of reps. Yeah.

Three sets of five reps. That's did I put five X three in the, in a song? Okay. That's just me writing really quick on my phone while I'm trying to do something. But some people do write it that way. No, you always do. The sets number goes first. You go general to specific.

Yes. You go. That's right. Right. Yes. Five sets of threes, five by three. You don't say, you don't say five sets of three, but put it as three by five. No, that's not correct.

That's not correct. You and I certainly agree on that. I think that there's no question in our mind, but I think some other people say that differently. So when some people say three by five. I think some people write that the other way, which I think is wrong. Yeah, I agree.

Okay, but anyways, I guess my takeaway is what I was so shocked by because all of my life, I've always thought this, the, the default rep scheme was five sets of five was starting strength. So when I saw three sets of five, I heard those guys talking about three sets of five. There's nothing wrong with that rep scheme like that. I encounter that occasionally in my training but what shocked me is that that volume seems so low that's what surprised me i was just i i do think though that you're squatting like every day that you come into the gym so you do squat weekly the weekly the weekly volume isn't low because i think and here again i just don't know i don't remember the

i never really liked it that much for the programming. Yeah. I just liked the, I like it for the explanation of the lifts and stuff like that, you know, and like the, so I don't know, I don't have a handle on the actual programming that well, but I think you're squatting like three times a week. Okay. But that's not that unusual though. Like most programs will have you squatting at least twice a week.

Yeah, that's, that's, uh, that's true too. But you are specifically doing the, you are doing a low bar back squat three times, a low bar barbell back squat three times a week. So if you were, you know, in a week, you would be doing nine sets of five, I think. Yeah, but you're talking 45 total reps, which isn't. Right, right.

No, it's not crazy. So that is what surprised me though, because I always think. But if you're only squatting once a week and doing only three sets of five yeah that's not very much for a beginner that wouldn't be very but even though but deadlift okay that's probably fine bench though that doesn't seem but maybe i guess press covers some of that too though i but that was my that was what surprised me though is i was when i think of beginners i think you have a capacity for a lot of volume in the beginning because your intensity, your load is so low that I just always assumed that the volume was much

higher than that. I thought you were getting at least 25 reps in a session. So then to learn that potentially I've been thinking about this wrong, it's 15 reps. That just surprised me. I was, there's nothing wrong with it. It just caught me off guard. My mental model of what it was has been wrong for many, many years now. But I do think where the confusion is where I would have that same similar confusion where I'm like, is it five by five or three by five? But I think there's a lot of comparable programming that's very similar to starting strength and even has like similar lineage or roots, but is five by five. And I know there's like mad cow five by five

and some other things too. And I think there, well, they said a lot of them are strong lifts and I've never done that one. Yeah. And I, but I just think a lot of them come from a similar place to,

you know, where they're all like, like to us, they maybe become interchangeable at a certain point where we can't even tell what's one and what's the other. Right. Right. Well,

yeah, that was, that was my revelation. Yeah. I, I, yeah. Cause yeah,

I would think of it. I would, if you would have probably asked me, I would usually think of it as five by five, probably to what I always thought I always did. Yeah. So I learned something. Yeah. And what Jeff, Jeff has done it before so he said alternate bench and overhead press i think every time you come to the gym you do one or the other i think deadlifts is only two days a week

have one sets of five volume seems so low to me i would say the jackals that we all did for a long time was a two by five and that was two by five and to be honest that was too low a volume for me when my deadlift started to go up is when i started to get more volume in because two sets of five just wasn't enough right um i there was i mean we had all manipulated jackals so much well because i had manipulated jackals in the way that like yeah that, that's all, that was what I did for my set deadlifts. But then I did an accessory deadlift after that. And the other day of the week I did a different access. So I'm like, it's funny though, because

it was like manipulating it for more deadlift volume, but still kind of doing it, you know? Yes, it absolutely was. And it's funny is because we all ran that enough. It was similar. Like I'm going to say in the way of starting strength is that it's a relatively simple program yeah and we ran it in eight week waves enough for like years on end that you start to realize what does and doesn't work or you start to see what gets stuck and you're like well something's stuck here i clearly need to do more work to address that and that's why we all ended up doing extra deadlift volume extra deadlift and then it's funny because it kind of gets you into some of the spots where juggernaut wants you to be at anyways that's which is right because really we were actually doing like two or three variations of deadlifts a week and we were

doing benching you know two or three basically basically yep you were basically benching you're benching at least twice a week you could make it you're always squatting at least twice a week yep you were you're doing a competition squat and then you were doing like a front squat variation or a safety squat bar variation. So even though the program on its face might not look like that, it kind of like became that for basically everyone. That's what I still laugh about now is my juggernaut is set up for three days a week, and I look at how many of the bones are so similar to that jackal's program

and what it's trying to achieve. Where juggernaut I think differs the most is that juggernaut is built the program really is built to want you to be on like a six-month program right you know where you can do a real phasic structure with actual volume work that's into strength work into real peaking work that's kind of the limitation of uh an eight-week program eight-week program or a 12-week program or a and especially what on when i say an eight-week uh, literally an Excel sheet that you have this eight week program, and then you get done with it and you say, okay, let's start it again. Do it again. Yeah. And then you just, okay, I'll do it again. And you just keep doing it again forever. And you were kind of do it.

You were treating it almost like linear progression. Like, all right, you just reset this. And then you just, all right, all my numbers went up. So let's bump them all up and do this. And yeah, that worked for years on end to do that. Right. Yes. I mean, you had a huge total. I, I running that program, I got to like over a 1400 pound total running that program. Like it's right. Basically doing nothing but that. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And it's kind of just like getting, making slow, steady progress, like the whole time, basically. The only thing that wasn't slow and steady was my squat. My squat just went up 50 pounds a year, every year for like four years or three years. It was right. Otherwise everything else was yep. Just slow and steady was my squat. My squat just went up 50 pounds a year every year for like four years, like for three years. It was right.

Otherwise everything else was yep. Just slow and steady continued progress. Yeah. How's it, how is your training going now? Uh, actually really good. I took some videos the other day,

you know, home gym life. I got my tripod and all that. And I, I was going to post these on, I wasn't sure where I was going to post them. Have you done any store Instagram story posts? Well, that's what I was going to post these on, I wasn't sure what I was going to post them. Have you done any Instagram story posts? Well, that's what I was going to do.

I was, cause today is my RP 10 bench day and I already did my squat, my deadlift day. And what, so I haven't, my just training has been, I had some back problems last spring and then just training wasn't going the best for a long time. And starting in October, things started going really good for me. I just was doing pause squats, five by five. I was running linear progression where I was adding 10 pounds a week every week. Then I got to the point where I was happy with that. I feel like I hit my pause squat goals and things were feeling good. So I kind of brought it back down and started doing regular squats, building back up. And the first week in

my home gym, I had a very mild back tweak, like one that I hadn't had. It was actually hurt on extension. I've never had that in my life, which sucks. But at the same time makes me feel good because I'm like, well, I'm not hurting like an old injury. It's not the same. I almost, I'm at the point now where different injuries are a moral victory now, which is messed up, but it's like, oh, thank God it feels different than the other one. Yes. So, so, but that really, that really mentally was a barrier that sucked. And so it took me a little bit of time. I had a good session last, last week, deadlift squat went good. And so this was supposed to be RP 10 week on juggernaut. And I haven't been hitting like hard weights. So I can't in my mind just run into what it would be

a true RP 10 when I've been touching that. So for deadlift, I picked my RP 10 at 355, set a five, and I rated it like a six. It was so easy. I really felt like I probably could have done 405. So my deadlift is right back to basically where it was a year ago. It has not missed anything. It maybe even feels better than a year ago. Even a year ago, hinging still kind of hurt my back. Hinging does not hurt my back right now. That does not bug me. So deadlift is feeling great. And then squat was the one that I had a little tweak on, on my back. So there's just so much anxiety around squatting. And I put on sleeves for the first time in a year. And I put on a belt for the first time in six months and God damn, it's like, I feel like I'm just squatting on a trampoline all of a sudden. It's like I got springs under me.

It's stupid. It's probably mostly mental, but it is stupid. I don't know, on the squat, I think the belt. I don't know, man. Sleeves on a squat is just weird to me when I put those things on. I don't know if it's the mental cue of. There's definitely some mental. How I can push into the sleeves.

Like it just makes everything feel so tight and a belt absolutely does help too no doubt about that but right um so then for squat for squat the other day it was supposed to be an rp 10 day i took 335 for a set of five sorry a set of six and um i rated that at like a six and a half a seven or it was so easy it was so easy easy. And it's more as just, I haven't touched weight over three 15 in like a year on the squat. So that's what's right. It's just, I haven't gone there, but if I can keep, keep staying healthy here, I'm going to be at bench. Bench is like not dropped off for me. Bench has been pretty, I've, I've been able to keep the intensity and the volume relatively high. So bench, I'm not worried about that. That's kind of where it's always been but uh squat and

deadlift if i can just stay healthy those ones will keep climbing and i know they can i know when i'm healthy they can climb fast like in a hurry so that's the goal stay healthy stay healthy keep these things going maybe there'll be uh who knows maybe something will pop up this summer you know if something were to pop in it could up in convenient spot, maybe I'd have to throw my hat into the ring and see what happens. If there was something in a convenient location, you know, particularly fun, the right timing. If you're going to be there anyways. Like if somehow my juggernaut was set for, let's just say,

like 100 days out right now just to pick a random number and, like, something happened to be 100 days from now. It could be possible. I could see it. Yes. How about your trade? It looked like, though, you you were hitting uh the cane call must be building back better yeah yeah my build back better program is actually feeling pretty decent i'm using the slant board on squats and i i can't squat flat it's still not there i mean i can it just would look terrible you know and like it wouldn't

be good for my body to be doing it do you think if you put your lifters on would that be enough of a difference or do you still need that additional no it's it's it's getting slightly better every week still okay but it's still it's gonna be like at least a month i can it's been over a month since i heard it i can tell it's gonna be at least a month i can it's been over a month and i heard it i can tell it's going to be at least a month until i don't even know if it'll feel normal in a month yet yeah but it is making progress but what i thought about doing that slant board we i have is a 15 degree and maybe i've discussed this but i have different degrees don't you they have the prime one and they make it in five and ten also so i thought about buying the 10 and the five so that way i could progress away from it.

Funny, funny how that works out. There's just another thing you can buy to help you get strong along the way here. That's I, I, the, if those weren't so expensive, I probably would have done that already. Are they all prime? The ones you have right now? Oh, damn. And so I buy two of them. I have like 500 bucks.

Yikes. That's a lot. Piece of slanted metal. I might have like 500 bucks more into it. That's a lot. For this piece of slanted metal. But I still might because I do like the idea of progressing away. You know, of like instead of going from 15 to 0, go from 15 to 10.

So maybe I just buy the 10 because maybe the 5 is close to a lift. Maybe you can call them and ask if they can make a 7.5. To get back to your question, the interesting thing thing probably and this is probably splitting hairs but i prefer wearing my barefoot shoes and standing on the slant board because i do not like the way my feet especially after wearing barefoot shoes for so long feeling other stuff i do not my feet feel so crammed in lifters i i totally get totally get what you're saying. You know, I have the, whatever the same ones I have the Addy powers. Yeah. Yeah. And I, I like, and I like the way what I can do as far as like kind of the tripod foot. I really can't do it as well when I'm wearing lifters. I a hundred percent get it. I have relatively narrow feet. So for me, that's never been much

of an issue, but I do get even in there though you do feel it way more than you feel in your barefoot shoes like it's not a thing in your barefoot shoes whereas it is a thing when you have your lifters on yeah but yeah so that's kind of uh that's kind of where that but going good i did uh you know i've been doing look like you had some more monster block pulls the other day yeah i've been doing block pulls just for the heck of it you know just well actually really the real reason for the best reason for block pulls is they do not hurt my ankle at all essentially whereas the deadlift from the floor it doesn't hurt at this point it just still it's hard to get into the exact normal position that i would be still because i cannot

i normally my knee comes forward a little bit more than what it would be right now yeah um yeah so it's going good though hopefully get that block pull number up just in case something ever pops up yeah you just never know you always want to be prepared yeah um those are way easier than dead lifting off the floor though obviously like that's the case, but it does, it just, it's a different, especially once you get used to that starting point,

right? Like at first there is a learning curve to get used to it. Yeah. The few times that I've done black holes, it just feels so awkward where I'm starting that I've never gotten good at it. For me, it's like the first rep is relatively more hard than the first rep of a dead left off the floor because I'm just that much less used to the position.

But then once you get going and you're like, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, like I'll just pop up and back up and down with this. Right, right. Yeah, exactly. I should say. Oh, go ahead. One thing also that I'm doing different, I'm going to try to make an attempt at it here,

is I've decided I'm going to go team no mix grip anymore I'm doing straps and and hook grip going forward yeah and I've I'm a proponent of that which makes me realize so I've used straps like three times now in the last month which probably ties my record for the number of times I've used straps in my entire life yeah I've never used them I just don't do it and I will say it's not rocket science, but I'm not the best at using them. You know, it takes some time to,

that's what I don't like about it is you kind of got to do the thing where you kneel down and get them positioned and then go. And that's not my deadlift set up. So that's what throws me off a little bit. And then there's always one that feels like it's just a touch tighter than the other. And I don't like that feeling either, but that's just rolling with the punches. That why i like when you get well then when you do

most people would think oh i could lift more you maybe they can lift more with straps but i like when i go to the hook grip it's almost like a cheat code because then i can set up so much more quickly that the setup feels better yes you know like it feels easier yes and you just and you're starting from up top and you're going down you're not stuck down in this crunched ball adjusting things uh our guest is here but i gotta because we're on the topic we got like two minutes still tanner he's early yeah um okay the quick cliff notes version of your hook grip guide you always say keep the volume low you'll refer to it i haven't gone back to it yet i forgot about it until right now you always say keep the volume low. Did you refer to it? I haven't gone back to it yet. I forgot about it until right now. You always say, keep the volume low. You only need one or two reps, right? A week. Right. And then you typically just do it on your last rep or two of any given set, right?

Yeah. I like volume low and frequency high. And I think people could do that different ways, but I think that general rule works because the volume low saves your thumb the frequency high allows you to be able to be decent at it like that's you need that's what i feel like you need in order to be for it to not are you you're only saving it for working sets though aren't you you're never like doing what i do is my last warm-up i always take my last warm-up as a single like say it's like 50 pounds and i do my last warm-up hook grip so that's my one rep of the day is my last warm-up is usually a hook grip so that's just one rep of a weight that's not heavy but it's just like can't like because i don't want i just like the thought of doing it one time

before the really heavy one and then yeah that's what i'll do like if i have three sets of five i'll do the first two two sets I'll wear straps for the entire first two sets and the third set I'll make a decision to um do like put the straps on and say do the first uh four reps with the straps and just quickly take the straps off and do the last rep last rep hook grip so or sometimes maybe i'll say i don't know why i do this but i'll be like i'm gonna do the last two reps okay that's what i was wondering so or if like if maybe you have one top set of three yep like say you're on juggernaut and you're a top set of three i occasionally i might make the decision no today i am going to do all three

that hook grip i can do but three is my the max all right yeah so me in a given day then like you're never going over four total reps on hook grip like on average i'm doing two or three okay okay like and that's what i thought it's probably two and a half and never more than four that's what i thought i just wanted to make sure i got that right and i think too much more than that it i know for me it screws up my thumbs if i do more than that yes and then as far as the actual positioning the other takeaway is don't be afraid to just let that sit lower than what you might think. That's what I like.

And maybe that's a personal preference. But that makes sense to me, though. You don't need to bury your thumb into your palm. I do not feel like you need to bury your thumb in for that. Okay. And I feel, for me, I know that that's a secret to it working. It's like to the point where I'm almost like, how could this even work? Like, I feel like I'm not grabbing the bar because that's what you have a tendency to want to

grab the bar and you don't have to pinching my thumb. And by chance, pinching my thumb happens to bring a bar with it. Yes. That's what it's like. That's how I think of it. Maybe some other people like to get it a deep set into their hand, but I do not like that. Yeah. Maybe it depends on how long your fingers are. And then you also, I feel like this goes without saying, but you also go double overhand as long as you possibly can. Right. I do do that.

So when I warm up, basically all my warmups are double overhand, except for my last warmups, which I do hook grip. So where do you, where do you start getting out of double overhand for you? What's that weight? I can do like a set of five double overhand with four, four plates. Really? Yeah. that weight i can do like a set of five double overhand with four four plates really yeah but i'm kind i my grip isn't great but it is good at that one thing and i don't know if it's just because i've always done it well definitely that doesn't hurt like i've done like a set of 10 at

405 double overhand before i can't do that right now but like so i can always do i could always do 405 double overhand so sometimes if that going to be my last warm-up, I might even just do double overhand for a rep, then hook grip for a rep too or something like that. But I always like to do my very last warm-up rep with hook grip. Okay, wow. Well, actually, no, that makes sense. That's what I've been trying to do too,

is just hang on to double overhand as long as I possibly can because I do know that my grip is not where it possibly could be. But should we get our guests in here? Yeah. Let's we'll, we'll come to some ads and supporting our sporting members after, after the guests. Do we got to kick everyone out though?

Or yes. Yep. I'm kicking them out right now. I'm going to kick out these other freeloaders to get them out of here. Big Brandon. This is your third time on the show. Do you know that? I've punched my hall of fame card three times in one spot.

So you did receive your Hall of Fame card. I did, but I'm like, I need to do a lot more stuff. I need to visit there. I need to put a pin in the map. I need to do some crew meetups. I need... I'm wondering if you're not... Do you know what your number is?

I'm guessing you've got like eight to 10. Yeah, I think off the bat, just vaguely remembering, I think somewhere between six to 10 is probably pretty accurate. Yeah, I think off the bat, just vaguely remembering, I think somewhere between 6 to 10 is probably pretty accurate. Yeah. I would claim 400-plus podcast views, but I don't know if that's full podcast. Yeah. I've got to keep myself honest.

That is the honor system one. That is. Yeah, we're not really checking those, so I suppose you could check it and we'd never be the wiser. This is the first time, though, on video. You're welcome. Yeah. It kind of feels like we're watching a YouTube video, doesn't it?

It does. Yeah, I like this. All right. We got a lot of fun stuff to ask you that we prepared. I have no idea what this is about for the most part. Well, like all of our other ones it's some pretty serious hard-hitting topics so i hope you're ready yeah uh oj simpson died today did you see that i did just see that and i was like i was thinking to myself i'm wondering if people are gonna post

like some in memorandum type stuff or not like what's the sensitive one it's kind of a weird thing when someone like that dies like Like, what is the sentiment? Are you saying because of his role in the Naked Gun movies? Well, because if you're not a Buffalo Bills fan or whatever team he played for. Yeah, right? Bills and 49ers. Yeah, right. But yeah, I don't know if people are going to be sad or happy.

Yeah, I don't know. Let's kick it off with this since we're kind of talking about that i assume oj simpson won't be on the list but as you know from south dakota we have mount where the mount rushmore state you're familiar with that and we occasionally have this game the mount rushmore so you're a bit of a jersey guy you just had a youtube video recently on a custom jersey you had made so what's your what's your Mount Rushmore of jerseys, either that you own or that you wish you owned, you know, your,

your Mount Rushmore who's on it. Oh, and color is probably important too. You know, if you're saying it's a, you're saying it's a Michael Jordan 23 Jersey. Is that the red one or the black one or what's, what's on the Mount Rushmore?

Yeah, sure. So we sticking with a specific sport, any sport, any can do anything i guess yeah we know you have maybe a basketball bias but it could be anything i pulled out like a rugby jersey just rugby and soccer jerseys and we're just like yeah well maybe not that because it would not be very much fun if you did chose rugby and soccer yeah so i'm i'm probably pretty biased to some of the teams that i support and what's interesting now is if people follow jerseys which surprisingly there is like a subculture of like jersey logo design and type stuff like a lot of the retro designs have like

come back so like growing up in like the northern virginia dc area growing up i was a big baltimore fan orioles and like for a while they just had like a standard like bird logo but they've since gone back to like the cartoon bird with like the the panel hat with the white in the front and like the old school script so like that's something that really resonates with me I'm hoping that my Wizards aka the Washington Bullets also do the same like in the the 70s when they were last good they had like a jersey design that was like a striped Bullets jersey with red, white, and blue, which I really liked. And their current jerseys kind of play off of that a little bit. But they're a little bit more modernized for my look.

But if I had to go like all-time favorite jerseys, I would probably say like old-school Denver Nuggets I liked. If you remember, like they had like, it was almost like a rainbow. Yeah. Yeah. The mountain, the city skyline, the rainbows, and that kind of same thought. The Houston Astros had that same design.

They called it the tequila sunrise. Big fan of that type of look. So I think those are probably two right off of the bat. For the most part, I think you got to really appreciate some of the classic designs out there. So even though I cannot stand the Pittsburgh Steelers, I like that design. I like the black and yellow and like the,

the very classic look that hasn't gone updated. Understated. Yeah. Probably a little bit closer to you is like green Bay, but I just, I don't, I can't, I can't get behind the wisconsin and the

green bay look but same same thought process so let me kind of take a step back because we've gone through a couple let's just go with current orioles design 70s bullets design um houston astros tequila sunrise um nuggets and then do I have one more? Is there four or five on Mount Rushmore? There's four. Okay, so let's go with those. Okay. That's good.

Are the Wizards, would that be what, if you're from Rhode Island, is that who you, like, if someone was from Rhode Island, would that be their home team? Celtics. Okay. That makes sense. So we're about an hour and a half south of Boston so like my kids they have Washington influence from their

dad but they like Boston teams mostly okay makes it easier for being a fan that's for sure yeah I mean they've been a lot better that's for sure who's your favorite Bullets or Wizards player of all time of all time george mirasan played for the bullets right yeah he did you know he's seven foot seven number 77 and also oddly enough sean bradley did he also play for the wizards or the no bullets okay he didn't okay no he played for yeah six or is it big tall white guys but yeah so the interesting thing is is like if you take a look at some of the the wizard stuff besides mirasan they also had minute bull if i don't know if you're familiar with him he's really big tall his kid is playing somewhere now i think

yeah i think he's on yeah i want to say he's on denver uh but then also the bullets also at a time when they had minute bull they also had mugsy bogues but he was like you know ah yeah i've seen the picture yeah pictures of them yeah yeah there's there's a classic kind of mugsy bogues and manute bull picture but if i had to pick a favorite that's really tough when i grew up like when i really got into watching the wizards they had a really good team of like chris weber juwan howard um so so i'm more for like Rasheed Wallace bullets, even though he only played there for one year. Obviously, the slogan I use, bar don't lie. That's a playoff of Rasheed Wallace's ball don't lie.

So even though we only had him for one year, still really like him. So I'd actually probably go Rasheed Wallace. I'll take him for one year as my favorite player of all time. Also, MJ did play there. He had a my player of all time okay also my mj did pit play there for a you know uh he had a hot cup of coffee there i can't stand jordan number one as so let me let me get this off agent zero gilbert arenas i guess would be one other notable one yeah jordan when i was growing up always beat our squads so i didn't like him then and then when he came to kind of be in the front office and ownership he traded away a lot of our good players.

When he came back to play for us, he also got rid of a lot of our young players and I'm just not a Jordan guy. What, uh, who is the center? Does that, did they, did,

did, did, uh, was it the wizard or was it, what center did they draft? Like number one is the overall pick. That was a total bus. Yeah.

Kwame Brown. Wasn't that a Michael Jordan decision or something then too the overall pick. That was a total bus. Kwame Brown. Yeah. Kwame Brown. Wasn't that a Michael Jordan decision or something then too? Yeah. Apparently it was a Jordan decision, but then I guess Jordan, if you read the stories, like basically ruined him by yelling at him the whole time and not giving any confidence.

Yeah. I can picture that long line of bad draft picks on our part. Yeah. Hey, but at least, at least we're not Detroit. We're not the worst team in the league right now that's true yeah there's something to hang your hat on um our

minnesota timberwolves are good though oh man yeah they just fell out of first place though last night they lost they lost to denver yeah oh yeah so they're probably like a game back but i have some friends that are hardcore timberwolves fans and they were telling me that earlier this year, it was like, I don't know, November, December, I think, that the T-Wolves had spent more time as the number one team in the West than they had in their entire franchise history, which was surprising. You would think during the Garnett days and all those

that they would have had some long streaks at number one, but this year is the most time they've ever been at number one. Yeah. And they've been able to hold on pretty good. The Carl Anthony towns has been hurt for quite a bit now, but between a go bear and Anthony Edwards, they're a good squad. The beast Anthony Edwards is,

is a pretty, pretty fun right now. It'll be curious to see what happens with him over the coming years. If there's any possible way, he just stays in Minnesota for a long time. That'd be pretty sweet, but yeah, I never thought I'd be on the massonomics podcast talking basketball I don't know as much yeah but uh yeah I do enjoy basketball but Tanner there has been uh

um some talk that we have to play a one-on-one game Brandon at some point just go for his great about my chances but you never i don't know i haven't played competitive basketball in 20 years so i haven't played for a month or two now so yeah uh how are you six four six i'm saying six three these days yeah okay i think in my in my playing days i was listed at six five i was probably six four and now after you know i'm 43 right now and all my snapback deadlifts and squats six three of the safer that might qualify as world's tallest power lifter like six three six four is you know that's up there there's not very many power lifters that tall yeah that's right outlive not outlift that's our model then that's like i feel like someone put put some kind of shirt together

that talks about like powerlifting champions and like certain ways that filter out being the best the record holders that's right yeah i wonder if someone could put that together we got our people on it do you you you probably have seen that tommy recently started a home his home gym and we wanted to talk to you about that. We may have exchanged messages even, Tanner. He may be intimately involved in this plan. Yeah. So what I'm curious, and Tommy, I don't know if you need to rerun down the main pieces,

but the first question I would have for Brandon is, like, what does he think in his years of home gym experience, what in his opinion would be kind of the next couple items on your list but what are your main things that you've got so far okay set up tommy main things so far i have a bells of steel hydra rack three by three five ace inch i have a rep 5200 bench i have a uh i have a strength co standard bar i have recently acquired the gungnir one inch adjustable dumbbells weights are on the way i have the rogue matador and strength co plates strength co plates obviously yes strength co plates full set there um

i think that's about it for right now you're you're in a garage and you've got a couple horse stall i mean yes in a garage got some horse stall mats too yes so that that would be the main highlights currently yeah i think that's a that's a pretty good solid base right so bells of steel rack especially now the hydra series being like american units of measure freedom units if you will that'll adapt to pretty much anything you want. You know, we do, we did talk a little bit about those Gungnir pickups. That was a great find, but you had to get those standard weight plates. So you're going to have some extra plates. Yes.

Bench good bar. Good. I think if I were you, if it were me, and I kind of went through that similar transition when I was in a garage for a little bit of time that we don't like to talk about, is like limited space. And so equipment for me, you know, it's big and bulky, takes up a lot of room, tends to be expensive. Whereas I think you can still get a lot of enjoyment and utility out of having other barbells. So obviously at the massonomics gym, as I just saw in a recent gym tour video, you guys have tons of stuff, including your favorite bar, the elite FTS SSB. To me, that'd be something like to look into like some sort of specialty bar to break things up. Um, whether that be like an SSB, which would be my choice. That's like the

first bar. I usually recommend people outside of a normal barbell, or if you just want to get fun with it and get like a deadlift bar or something like that, I think that would probably be the route I'd go. And then continue to do what you're doing, which is scour, you know, Facebook marketplace and look for good deals on stuff versus let me find something that's super expensive or, you know, takes up a lot of room and you don't want to necessarily overcommit to just yet. So I would probably go specially bar to kind of break things up and not take up any more space or set you back too much. I like that. And that's Tanner and I talked about this offline a little bit yesterday and that mirrors pretty closely. We talked a lot about bars. We did. Yes. We talked a lot about

this. And, uh, that was basically the conclusion we came to, you know, Texas power bars has been a long time supporter of the show. I've always enjoyed their bars. I wouldn't mind getting a 29 millimeter Texas power bar. So we talked about that. And then, yes, the elite FTS safety squat bar has been our favorite specialty bar. So that also seemed like an easy fit. So that was that was also kind of the direction that I had on the wish list, too. So that that makes sense.

Yeah, because I mean, with that safety squat bar, like if you get like something to prop a leg up you can do a lot of single leg movements so that could hit like your quads versus getting like a leg extension machine you could do stuff like hatfield squats with that safety squat bar walking lunges you know you could use it to do um what's those those presses those like jm yeah so i mean you can get so that bar in addition to just giving you a you could use it to do what's those, those presses. So, I mean, you can get, so that bar in addition to just giving you a different like stimulus for your, your normal squat work, you can do a lot of other things that would take the place potentially of a lot of other equipment.

What brand SSB do you have now, Brandon? So I have the rep fitness one. So I had the elite FCS one. I ended up selling it when i got a kabuki transformer bar and i found that i actually only really use the transformer bar in the safety squat bar setting um and i like the safety squat bar better just because with the kabuki it has longer handles it kind of just tended to get in the way a little bit uh and rep is hard to beat for the value with the free shipping and whatnot and also just to build quality of their bars.

What is the rep one, Ron? I want to say it's like right at 300. Okay. Now, depending on what you're looking at right now, Elite FCS recently was doing a sale on theirs for like 320 with free shipping. Yeah, there was some guy saying that in the Discord, that that was the time to buy. I didn't jump on that yet, but.

Yeah, because otherwise it's like four something with shipping. It up being almost 500 bucks and they also have a new coating out so there's like an all black coating so the the old bars as you guys probably realize with the clear coating would chip the first time you use it so i haven't heard any negatives about the new coating the only downside if you go with that bar which i'm sure you already know is you need axle collars it doesn't normally take just a regular collar so it might be another thing you'd have to look into versus the rep which has standard collars on tanner does do grants special collars fit on that bar do you know or are those still yes they do that's what i use i use those on the ssb they do they do to know on there that's that is what i use when i because i've been cycling with the ssb

right now and that is what i use um on there yeah if only someone made a massonomics branded clip in that style if only if only yes yes uh you bring me on and i'm just gonna plug all your own yeah actually that that reminds me grant was talking about for the lift heart live easy classic this summer you know he that's when he brought the red massonomics one he had a little bit different idea for that that this year i won't spill the beans on it yet but it could be something similar but yet a different play on it so that'll be exciting but brandon you mentioned or tommy you mentioned the 29 millimeter texas power bar brandon't you have a, some sort of hand in that? I had to do a lot of apologizing to my friends over at Texas power bars. Cause I made a, I made a video a couple of years ago saying how like the, the Texas power bar, isn't

a real power bar because it's 20 and a half, which buddy caps made a video saying, you know, a half a millimeter doesn't make a big difference, which I would agree. But when you combine that with the standard, I know, right? We need every little bit we can get. But when you combine a standard or normal Texas power bar, which you guys know from having owned every single generation of one, you usually get those really fat, thick collars on it. So when you combine that with a thinner diameter shaft and you push the weights out further, you do tend to find a little bit more whip in those bars than normal. So luckily enough, Texas Power Bars and I linked up. They said, you know, we saw your video. We hear you. We're going to give a 29 millimeter bar a go. We want

to send you a prototype to test it out and give feedback, which they did. They sent their media crew over to film a bunch of stuff and then didn't hear from them for almost like a year. And I hadn't really told too many people about it. I think we might've talked a little bit about it, like offline, just about some stuff that we were working on. And then I was like, you know what, I'm just going to go ahead and release this information and put it out there and kind of put it in the people's hands. And I did. And a lot of people hit up Texas power bars. And then like three weeks later, it was official. It was released. And to my knowledge, it's been selling extremely well so i would wonder and they would know these numbers and we don't know them but i'm

guessing to the retail market that 29 millimeter power bar has crushed it like it's kind of the feeling i've got for them you know that uh they've probably sold a lot of those 29 millimeter bars since they came out with it yeah i think so and I think one of the things they wanted to do with that also is get in more meets. Now, obviously, they have a big presence when it comes to powerlifting in Texas-related meets and whatnot. But these days, with everyone being so concerned with IPF spec, this and that, I think putting something out there that meets a lot of other needs introduced a newer generation of people to texas power bar who might have written them off before as you know a legacy brand or an outdated

brand um and then you have those diehards that of course just love the 28 and a half and the regular fat collars too but i do think it helped them some although i will say in their recent march madness poll on their instagram yeah what, what one? Deadlift Bar one. I think that is the winner for me of their bars, though. If I think about Texas bars, especially if you're considering comparing them to other manufacturers of bars, the Texas Deadlift Bar is still the one that it's hard to find someone that really competes with exactly that you know i know

the kabuki deadlift bar like has come around in some meets but it's almost just still a different thing it's just a more extreme product in a way right right uh so that's why i kind of agree i kind of agreed with the texas deadlift bar that made made quite a bit of sense to me yeah i'd i'd agree too and the 29 had a tough go because it was matched up against the texas deadlift bar early on which i would have rather seen it going head to head with the 28 and a half but yeah i mean i can't argue with that way i have i have two deadlift bars the texas and the kabuki and i typically pull on a stiff bar just because i compete usapl which uses one but the tex Texas gets more use than the Kabuki in my household.

So you, we talked about Tommy's, you know, what he should get next. I don't know if you watched our, any of our recent gym tour, but you're obviously pretty familiar with what we've got in there. New stereo. That was the takeaway. Yeah. That is probably the highlight of this particular gym tour. It's what's made me the happiest I think over the last year but uh is there anything that you can think of that you that you watch it and you're like this is really what they should have or what i saw there's the gaping hole yeah or like what like that thing sucks they really need to upgrade it with this like was there any did you have any of those thoughts yeah so let me give you a real answer first as I try to think of another one. But one thing that I noticed without you prepping me for this question, that it's funny because

if you talk to pretty much anyone else or you go on like the garage gym reviews, Facebook page and group, there's one common theme of peace or something for your gym that everybody talks about, which I don't think exists in your gym. Do you know what that is? Do you have any guesses? It's not necessarily a piece of equipment, but it's something that goes in a gym and a home gym specifically. It's memed a lot, but not in your space from what I can tell. I mean, it sounds like you're saying reverse hyper, but there's a reverse hyper. So that's not that. I feel like I'm going to know. Oh, is it like a, I don't know. I actually don't know.

Is it gym floor related or something? Stall mats. Yeah, stall mats. Yeah, stall mats. So you guys have a lot of bare concrete, which I get for this case. And obviously you have, looks like some, I don't know if it's stall mats, but you do have platforms, obviously, for your deadlift stuff. But like most people, you know, stall mats a stall mats, but you do have platforms, obviously, for your deadlift stuff. But most people, stall mats, stall mats, stall mats. We do have them in our dumbbell area.

Some gyms like ours, they might just cover the entire thing in stall mats. I've actually never thought of it that way, that you could potentially do that. That's never even crossed my mind before. Right, right. It would be an undertaking in terms of... Well, I mean, it would be semi undertaking in terms of uh carrying i mean it would be semi-expensive i wouldn't be that worried about that but like more the work of it but i don't know tommy what do you think like having been in that space like would it be better if

all that open concrete area was to me the idea stall mats from a functional standpoint is to protect the concrete and equipment and the main spot where i think protection is needed is in the dumbbell area so it makes sense that they're there um the rest of that side of the gym is all machines so stall mats i guess it would just be aesthetic more than anything um the other side though the platforms all the platforms have are all the racks have platforms minus the half rack the half rack is bare over there right so i could see potentially something for the half rack benches i i guess maybe from a grip standpoint maybe you could make the argument but um i guess i don't think of it as a deficiency right now i totally get the uh how people do bring it up a lot but that's that is interesting though that's never actually crossed my mind

and and that is a valid a valid point though yeah i mean i don't think for your space it's necessity and even for something that size it if you did go flooring route it'd probably be rolled flooring anyway right like you're not gonna do all those stall mats for that but i just i just thought it's funny because most people are like oh you need stall mats and you right yeah right yeah that's a good point yeah the other thing that i i noticed or at least just stuck out to me, was considering the size of your space, it didn't seem like you guys,

so you have that one main rogue monster rack, the red rack that you always seem to lift in, but that's the only real, what I would consider, real big rig or rack in the space, which is just a little bit surprising to me, given the size of your overall space and how much other equipment you have, that you don't really have any other big, dedicated, full-on racks.

And we do have two of those. They just look exactly the same. Oh, okay. So we do have two of those. Yeah. But yeah. So what we actually have, we have the two Rogue six-post monster racks. And then we have the Rogue monster.

I think it's called Collegiate. The Collegiate half rack. Or isn't it? The Collegiate half rack would be the other one. I don't know if they're – like, I love the racks, actually. Like, I could have a gym that's almost just those, so I could definitely be on board with even having a third big six-post rack of those. I don't know if we need it though or not.

I don't think so either. No, right. But I, I, um, I am on board with that and I do like those. I would like to actually have more of those. If like, if we had additional space, that would probably be one of the first things. Some people would say a monolift that's come up and it's just not on my radar really as something that like, it just takes up so much space and has so limited utility as far as what it could be used for yeah i did hear you guys talk about that and that i think it was the call with big keith you guys are talking and whatnot i mean you're talking

a couple grand and then even even then it's like safety is a potential issue like you can get straps and stuff but you need more than one person to really operate it and use it. And it's just like, it takes up so much space. It's just like, why is it really that necessary? No, I agree. What about then your gym? You kind of have everything it feels like, and you have like really refined some things. I was even watching one of your recent videos and you were talking about, I mean, you talked about this specifically, like the three things that go into what, um, is a requirement for you to even get anything else at this point. But is there, do you have a wishlist? Is there anything on your wishlist right now? Or are you kind of just feel like I have it all? And if that's the case, is that a good feeling or a bad feeling?

The end of the road. Yeah. So a lot of the stuff I'm doing now is just like it's more tweaking than full-on getting new equipment um which is is good and bad good good that i'm getting to a place where i feel comfortable bad where i rely on some of those stuff for tax write-offs at the end of the year like i spent all this money on equipment gotta write it off right um but interestingly enough you can kind of see my white rack in the back i actually uh just paid for a new rack that'll be coming in to replace that can we make can we take a guess here yeah sure is erwin fitness high on the list or there it is number one on the list so basically the reason i'm looking to change out of this one i mean i love what is this one right now

is that rogue or rep or what is that one? Yeah, so it is a Rogue, what a lot of people refer to as an RM5. So Rogue has actually come out now with an RML5, but it's the same general thought process where it's a six-post rack, but the working portion in the front is 30 inches instead of a 43-inch depth of an RM6. So it's a little bit shorter up front. It's like the mullet of racks on the back section is 24. So I like it a lot. But some things that I would potentially change,

because as I had mentioned already, you know, I use a lot of stiff bars for how I compete and a 49 inch wide rack like this with very super thin collars and plates close. Even if you have a really clean walkout, you do end up banging. It's so hard to do. It's so hard to do. Yeah. Yeah.

And on like max, like if I'm going like a really heavy single, like it's either going to mess me up on my walkout because I'm hitting the rack or I'm using so much energy to make sure I'm taking like 5000. You're not even thinking about the lift now. Yeah. Right. That I thinking about the lift now. Yeah. Right. That I wanted to go 47 inches. So I wanted to go in a little bit, which Irwin offers rep fitness also offers that, but reps really big value prop to me is having integrated cable systems in their racks, which is really cool, but it's just not something I need because I have dedicated cable stuff already.

And then with Irwin, they have some unique height options. So this rack here is a 90 inch height. And I think I could, I could probably fit a little over a hundred, but that would get me kind of close to the, the, the Joyce. And if I were to do pull-ups, I'd hit my head, but Irwin offers a 96 inch rack height. And I just really like what Garth is doing over at Irwin. So it just, it kind of made sense. So we're going to be getting a new one, new custom logo, all that kind of stuff. He's working on some newer stuff that's not on the site in terms of like storage options for the back, because I have a ton of like bumper plates on their kettlebells and whatnot. So that is one change.

And again, that's more of a tweak. It's not a necessity, but it's more of just like same i want it and same color scheme same color yeah if i went different color scheme now i was gonna say you'd have you'd have like an angry mob after you yeah uh so that is one thing and another thing is i'm currently looking at getting a custom combo rack in so i have a i've had a couple of combos in in the past right now i have a get rx one that i'm looking at the side that's more like budget option, but I'm looking to get one that's more, you know, custom color and a little bit custom branded. So that's still in play and to be determined a little bit. Interesting. Wow. That's a, that's some big moves. I didn't think that the, I just assumed the rack was just set in stone. It was, it is what it is forever. Yeah. Well, I mean, so like a lot of people, like I say, they miss my blue rack that I had before this in my home. And then like this one was just going to be a temporary garage one because it started as a normal RM3. And then I just, when I moved into the basement here, my thought was I'd get something like a Sorenix Apex rack or a big, huge, whatever. And I just, I really liked this one and I've been able to expand it. And that's one of the nice things about like racks in general, especially if you get one like, you know,

Tommy just did that's pretty standard in terms of sizing and bolts is like, they're like adult Legos, right? You can build them out however you see fit. So that's, it's been really helpful, but I'm just at a point now where part of me is also just stagnant. And I was like, I need to do something different. Are you keeping the 30 inch depth is 30 still the number number there yeah so 30 inch depth that the only real difference from erwin to this is the back portion of storage the rogue uses 24 inches erwin uses 18 inches i believe rep uses like 16 inches um so it's gonna tighten up the back a little bit which yeah so

save me a couple inches off the back if you will that like your original blue one that wasn't rm6 like would be the same as what uh we have right or it was a rml yeah so it was a monster light okay that was a light okay but um like though for ours there's the monster six it's great for mass dynamics gym but i wouldn't want that in my home gym like that is takes up it's just a waste of space in a home gym i think too like why would you want and we talked about this before i even considered a home gym we talked about it multiple times tanner you even said a few times like if i had a home gym i might just throw a combo rack in because it just right it's so light on space it's just easy to to manage but uh i had always said before i even considered

what i went here was I was like maybe I would just go with the the half rack because it is so much more compact but once I looked into it realized because mine's also the 30 inch depth like getting that now when I go to the mass dynamics gym and I see that full depth that six posts with the full depth and then the you know the extra posts on the back that thing takes up a footprint. It's a lot of space. Yeah. Yeah. I think, well, it depends, right. It depends on the space, depends on what you want out of it too. So like I'm in a bigger space here, so it can fit. But like, if I turn around and look, I have probably 2000 pounds of weights on that thing. I have five kettlebells. I have a set of dumbbells from five to 25 pounds on it. I have six pairs of chains on it. I have five kettlebells. I have a set of dumbbells from five to 25 pounds on it.

I have six pairs of chains on it. I have barbell storage on it. I have cable system hooked up to it with the Vultra things that are probably faded out. But I mean, you could have that in just that, or you could have a half rack, but maybe you're going to want something else to add on to another space. So it just really depends on what the person wants. How do you like those V those Voltra cable systems? Oh my God. I'm very conflicted on those. Right. So let me kind of set the standard here is I like them a lot more than I ever

thought I would. The company had reached out to me for months on end saying, Hey, we have these things. Can we send them to you? And I was like, no, like just looking at them, like, this is not going to be for me. I'm not interested. And finally, they were like, look, we're just going to, we want to send them to you. You don't have to show them in a video. You don't have to do a video review. You don't have to be an affiliate. Just give us your feedback. So I got them in and I'll be damned. They are fantastic. Like the, the action on them, if you will, super smooth, they're super versatile from,

you can set those up to be changed. You can set them up to be banned. You can change the resistance curve on them. It tracks all your metrics. It has velocity built into it. They're awesome. The problem is, is just one of those units with a rack mount costs $2,500. I have two. rack mount costs $2,500. I have two. It's like a used car strapped onto your rack there. They have batteries in them. And what happens to batteries after a couple of years?

Die, right? So you could potentially, or a lot of it's software-based, you could be left potentially with a brick. Versus, you know, you spend less that and get like a selectorized normal cable machine, and that'll potentially never go bad. So it's conflicting because I love it, but at the same time, it's almost impossible to recommend to most people. Right. That is a spendy unit there.

Right. Yeah, that's good. Is there anything, I mean, if you go to your old youtube days obviously you're training in the commercial gym before the home gym thing even started for you before the basement thing before you were basement brandon is there anything that you miss about training in a commercial gym um i don't i wouldn't say i it, but some things that I think people could miss is, and some people might actually want to get away from it. It's like the social aspect of it. So like whenever I would go to the gym before, like I normally would go by myself, train by

myself, get in, do my work and get out. But there's still like some bit of a community there. Like you get to know the members, especially like in a space like yours, for example, where it's more of a private facility, but there's a big community aspect. And some people do better when they have, you know, training partners, things like that. Like I'm usually for the most part alone in my basement 99% of the time. So that could be something that could be missed. There does come the odd timing when it's like, it would be nice to have like a machine that would do something versus having to set up a barbell with something or find a solution when if I was in a commercial gym, I could do a peck deck, for example. And here, I'm stuck to dumbbells, which is okay, or I can use the Vulture machine. But still, sometimes it's nice to have access to certain equipment or just get a different feel for things.

Sometimes it's nice to have access to certain equipment or just get a different feel for things. But at the same time, I think having a home gym and spending money on stuff and getting nice quality equipment, a lot of commercial-type gyms I would go to, it's like, I like my gym better. I like the equipment better. So it's kind of ruined me in that regard a little bit too. Yeah. Do you feel like, I mean, you just said it there, but like if you are traveling or something, you go to another gym, I get this feeling with mass dynamics gym because it is all the stuff I want. So I have all the stuff like there is no gym I go to that. I used to have this feeling before mass dynamics gym was what it is.

I enjoyed traveling to go to other gyms because I was like, ah, I can experience these other things that I don't normally get to have. But now I kind of feel like I have every single thing that I've ever wanted. So there's no gym I go to where I get that. I don't get that. It's like, oh, they don't have this and this and this. My workout screwed. Get inside. Right. When I, so I don't travel as much for work anymore as I used to pre-pandemic but when I do travel one of the things I do try to do is visit other gyms and it might not be because of the equipment in some cases it is because I know some gyms are fully decked out or have certain stuff but you know from watching other people's YouTube channels or following them on Instagram like seeing some of these gyms which like like to, to relate it back to

a sports reference that we talked about before. Like when I travel, I like to go see different stadiums and stuff like that. Like go to different ballparks, arenas, same thing. Like I like to go to different gyms. So like when I was in Chicago, I went to quads gym where Eddie Cohn used to train when I was out in California, I went to, you know, Metroflex, Metroflex, uh, LBC where CT Fletcher was before he opened up his own space. So I still like to get in those other places, but a lot of times like the equipment itself, it doesn't really do it for me anymore there.

You talked about it with those, I can't remember the name of them, but the digital cable rack attachments. How often do you turn down equipment that is offered to you? Whether it's offered to you specifically in exchange for something or just like offered to you in an ambiguous way. Like, do you regularly turn stuff down at this point? Yeah, I'd say probably like 90% of the stuff that I get offered, I turn down. Recently got offered an opportunity with our friends over at Tonal. Oh, did that intrigue you at all though? No, not, not really. So the way that I am now,

like I said, because I have most of the things that I want or that I would use, like a lot of that stuff just isn't appealing. And I don't want to take something on where it's going to cause me more work potentially. Like I put out a video a week, if I'm lucky these days on YouTube. And ideally I would rather be focused on training than a review. And if it's not something like to go over my list that I, that you referenced earlier, like if it's not something that's going to upgrade what I have, or it's not something that I think could like replace something or be an addition to how I train. There's no real point in me kind of pursuing that because what's going to happen if I do a video or agree to it, I'm

going to have to do a video and it's probably not going to be a positive video. So it's like, it doesn't help anybody here. It doesn't help the company. It doesn't help me. There's no real point. And a lot of the stuff you get offered for free, it's not great stuff. It's like, you know, free. It's not great stuff. It's like, you know, imported copies of something else, low quality. Just, I don't want to associate myself with, with that kind of stuff. There's no, no need for it. It doesn't do me any good. And it doesn't do my audience any good to be associated with some of that stuff. So along those lines, and you kind of said this with the Vultra, but has there been anything that you've taken lately that you were maybe hesitant towards? And then you got it and you're like, wow, I'm actually surprised what this

product is. So the Vultra would be the prime example of that. I think I'm pretty good at kind of figuring some stuff out. I'll give you an opposite example, something that I took on that I thought would be kind of cool that I haven't really used and that's the uh eccentric k-box so like the flywheel I have a setup for that and every time I post about it I get tons of people asking questions or saying they love it but it's just not something that I've been able to really kind of find a use for and how I train yeah I don't see how those would fit into anything I do. I've always, I've been like mildly curious when I've seen those, but I just, I don't know. It's way outside. Yeah. I think if you're doing like a lot of like high rep work and stuff like that, it could,

it could serve a use, but for like a power lifter type workout and the way they convinced me, cause I told them no for a long time too, is their CEO is like an IPF masters champion who uses it. So I was like, all right, I'll give it a shot. But it's just like, I haven't really found a use outside of like an odd accessory here and there. And that's the thing with some of this equipment that like, if it's something that's going to take me a long time to like set up, it's probably not going to be something I'm going to want to do. Because by

the time I get to that in my training, like I've already done a bunch of barbell compounds. I've probably been training for like an hour, hour and a half. And I got like, I got shit to do. I don't want to take 20 minutes to set something up, take it apart, do all that kind of stuff. So things that you have to like build or be really kind of into in that regard, just don't really float my boat. Uh, talking about your YouTube channel, do you know how many videos you've posted on YouTube? I want to say it's probably around 1300 and that's on this channel. This is my, this is, this is my second channel so i had a a channel before that i ended up getting demonetized demonetized like a year or so in and i had like 6 000 subs

which like what year is this oh 20 okay this is probably like 2010 yeah and i was like 6 000 subs a big audience like i'm not losing this like i I'm only making, you know, $20 a month on YouTube anyways, like who cares about monetization? And then I grew that channel to be around like 35,000 subs, which was still really large at the time. But then that's when kind of everything came in with like AdSense and making revenue and getting sponsors. And I was like, I need to get paid for this. So I started a new channel from there. And unfortunately at the time deleted all those videos, which was probably another couple of hundred, just because I was like, oh, they're not going to use them or they're too cringy. Cause that's when I was making videos with my shirts off doing supplement reviews

my younger days, holding on to what was left up here. I was like, no one, no one needs to see this. So I regret not having some of those videos these days, but yeah, I've made a lot of content. And even sometimes like a video of mine will pop up or someone will comment on it. I'm like, I forgot I even made this. That's what I, that's what I was going to ask you next. Like out of 1.1500, would there be some, if you went through them, you'd be like, what is this? I do not like, was, is there some that you could completely be like, I do not recall

anything about this video. Yeah. So, and depending on what the subject is, I can kind of tell where I was in my YouTube arc, so to say, because when I first started my channel, it was like supplement reviews. And then it started to get into other things regarding supplements. Like I still remember I did a video on ectosterone, which is like basically like bug juice it's called, or I a you know um that red deer velvet or whatever antler spray right there you go yeah i did a video on that right and it's like then i got into more

or something yeah yeah i got into nutrition i got into like where i was doing like a bunch of training logs from when i was working with like dan green or doing um 531 or dog crap training if everyone anyone remembers those those type of programs. And then eventually around 2015, when I built my home gym, that's when everything kind of shifted to just more equipment-related stuff. But there's a ton of stuff I forget that I even did. Yeah, that's interesting with that many videos.

So do you have a YouTube button? Like what's the first threshold to get a button a play button you know the uh hundred thousand subs so where do you keep that i've never noticed that in your gym before um it's i'm looking off this way there's like a corner of my gym that we just have a bunch of like big rubber totes that just we throw all our shit in okay it's in one of those and it's it's it's not as nice of a button as they make today so it's like great at that it's like a cheap frame and a little silver button in between and there's like a glass front to it it's not like the solid piece that they do now which is

really nice uh i'll try to find a picture and i'll send it to you on instagram or something but i think the frame like fell apart because it has like some cheap staples holding it together but that was the that was the initial kickoff okay so today on YouTube this is Tommy and I both had a couple follow-up questions around this this general idea but so I get I mean you kind of probably post what you want to on YouTube. Are there certain styles then that you do prefer? Do you not enjoy doing a review video as much? Would you rather do a training vlog? What do you like posting?

What do you like creating? And what do you not like creating as much right now? Yeah, so I do not consider myself a review channel. I know I get lumped into that because that's how a majority of my, I'd say probably my second half of, I think I have like 230,000 subscribers. I think I made my first 100,000 without doing a single equipment review, but the majority of the rest, the other 130,000 or so has come since doing the reviews. And those are probably the more active channels or active viewers, I would say. So most people view me as an equipment reviewer, which I don't think I am because I don't go out and just get anything that's new, right? Again, it's something that I need, I want, it's going to fit in my gym for the most part.

So I'm not reviewing or talking about the latest stuff as it releases or anything like that. Oh, and I kind of forgot what the question was. Where, where am I going? Well, like as far as the videos that you make now, yeah, yeah. Because you, you still put out a lot, a lot of videos. Um, are there certain types that you enjoy making more or any of that sometimes does it ever, are there types that feel like work that you don't like as well? Like, how do you feel about it? So I only make videos that I want to make. So if it's like work, then I probably won't do it, which is probably why I like some of this stuff.

Like, I need to make a video review on the Assault Air Runner that I've had for more than a year. I haven't done it because that's work. I don't feel like doing that. My ideal video would be like a training day video. So here's what I'm doing for training. And as part of that, I'll work in some other stuff. Maybe it's, oh, I'm using this bar or this piece of equipment. This is why I like it. Or let me talk about something else that kind of ties into just training, whether that be nutrition or supplementation or whatever, kind of like an all encapsulating video, which I like to do because it's just

me talking and sharing my thoughts as I make a video. The problem is, is though, if like, if I'm trying to get people to view that or someone wants to watch a video review, but it's a three minute segment on a 15 minute video that has a bunch of other stuff, then that kind of shoots myself in the foot. So I've just kind of accepted that because like YouTube for me is still something I just do for fun. The downside of that is, is making videos I want probably doesn't work well with the algorithm or getting more subs these days. So my channel is probably pretty stagnant, if not dead in terms of growth. But that's okay because the audience that I have and that I've kept, I find it to be pretty interactive. Like I don't have a Discord channel set up and stuff like that. But like the people that comment on my videos, like I feel like I know them because they've been watching and commenting for so long.

And we kind of have discussions as part of that. Right. So, okay. So with that then, I'm assuming you probably don't even pay like much attention to the analytics. I mean, you probably look at the analytics, but you're not like, oh, this didn't perform this way. I better change this on the next one. Like that's not a part of your plan at all then. Is it? Yeah, no. So I think I've had like the same, like SEO words in my description for the past nine years or something. It's like bodybuilding, gym, CrossFit, powerlifting muscle. And then like back when I first started and even for the first

couple of years, like every day I'm on social blade. How many subs do I have today? How many views did I get per day? These days, like the only way I know is because YouTube sends like a monthly recap of how you've done. And that's the only way I know to keep up on it. Okay. Do you. Which is nice.

It's nice from a stress standpoint because I don't worry about it. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. And I mean, you come from that perspective because you looked at it like it's not, it is like a hobby of yours or it's like something you do because you enjoy. You're not like strictly in it trying to make that your sole career or anything like that. Right. Yeah. I mean, don't get me wrong though. It does provide a good passive income and funds a lot of stuff here in the gym, but it's not something where I'm like, I got to make a video today because I need to make more money off of my content.

Right. Yep. That totally makes sense. What, um, okay. Here's, here's, here's what I'm thinking. What are we more likely to see you at someday? The Arnold or the Lift Hard Live Easy Classic in western northeast South Dakota? Or for Keith's sake, I better include it. He'll be upset if I don't. Home Gym Con in French Lick, Indiana. I've been getting some heat lately from some strays from Home Gym Con, I feel like. Actually, I wondered that. You probably do. People are like, actually i wondered that like you probably do people are

like why the hell aren't you coming you know like i actually had this conversation with some people yesterday actually um here here's my stance on on that and just traveling in general right like i don't take a lot of paid time off of my real corporate job uh i i just don't and when i do it's typically like with the family, right? You guys both have families, you know how that goes. So trying to convince the wife to go to Columbus, Ohio in March or French Lick, Indiana in April. I mean, obviously the sell of Northwest South Dakota

is much more appealing to a lot of people. It's at least something no one's ever heard of. Yeah. It's just, it's a tough sell. And it's like, that's where my priority is. Like, I would like to go to those things, but it's not, it's not high on the list, if you will. Yeah.

I think out of those and no disrespect or shade, think i'd like to go to the arnold first just because like experience uh of course you know well and also like i'm really into usapl powerlifting like i follow other federations as well i follow powerlifting america ipf wrpf some uspa stuff like i like powerlifting so to be able to go and see one of those meets like to me like the arnold is besides maybe nationals like the biggest meet for me in terms of like domestic meets i'd like to see so that's one thing um and then i'd probably go like live hard easy live hard lift hard it'd be like a crew falls meetup it'd be fun because like i said like when i travel i like to go to other gyms so massonomics gym is on the list um but also

obviously i've been knowing you guys for a while and there's a lot of other people that are part of the crew that i've known and got to talk to so that would be fun like home gym con again for me it's like i'm not really in the market to buy shit like it would be cool to see some of these things and at least like i think if for me to home gym con the biggest draw would be you know meet up with like jake and all them from um from the garage gym experiment and maybe meet face to face with some of the people and companies that i've been working with but like i'm not interested in the equipment for the most part. It's just not something that's really interesting to me. And maybe that's surprising to some people because again, they view me as a reviewer, but it's just not a big draw for me. You're going to just continue to have to take

the heat from people like Keith on that one then. Hey man, I mean, I'm not, I'm not a big enough reviewer where I get people sponsoring me to go out there like some other guys I know. That's what we are. An upstart. You could say a startup review business over here is what we got going on. Just a couple of real young guys trying to take a crack at this thing. That's right. Yeah.

Tommy, what do you think about over-under? Is there anything else on the list that we want to talk about? I say let's get this going. Brandon, I feel like you're familiar with it at this point. You've played it a couple times with us, and the rules are relatively simple. You just have to remember you do have your druthers to elaborate as much or as little on each as you'd like, but you cannot ride the line.

So we're looking for hard line in the sand political takes. I feel like that's the one thing your channel has been missing is enough political takes. So we're going to draw that out of you. All right, let's get to it. You know what I love about watching someone on YouTube or anything else like that? I can watch them for 10 years like I have you and not know what their political takes are. That's the best thing in the world. Like respect a person more than the person that's like, all right, let's just get this out there. This is how I feel about this. It's like, all

right, man. Okay. I don't care. I hope that that's what people could say about us someday. It's like, you know, I've listened to those guys for 5,000 hours, talk about nothing. And I don't know what their actual, any important opinions are. are they just they just tune in for the weather forecast yeah yes i know how they feel about weather but not much besides that what's the weather like in rhode island right now the last couple days have been really nice they've been like 60s today is kind of like overcast and rainy and probably low 50s so it's not too bad how far are you from the ocean two minutes oh oh like yeah is a Rhode Island beach day is that a thing do people do that uh I mean it's not really it's just normal life I guess I think we take it for granted like when I lived more landlocked you'd be like oh we're

going to the beach or the lake or whatever and now it's like you drive by the beach wherever you go anyway so it's just like it's just there okay yeah so i mean but are there like big public beaches we're on a nice summer day there's lots of people out there no oh i say that because we're in the northeast we're very hidey-tidey so i belong to a beach club oh what is it like there's other what's that is this like a golf country club? Yeah, right, right. It's like Malibu Sands from Saved by the Bell. It's like you pay, so you buy in, we have what's known as a bathhouse there, which is in reality like a four by eight closet

to throw your shit in. A bathhouse sounds like something like Roman times where there's like maybe sexual activities that go on inside of it it's all very you would you would i i was very let down when i found out the truth trust me um but it's basically like and it's not cheap like bathhouses up here right now are going for like this particular place are going for like 150 000 oh wow Oh, wow. Yeah, it sucks. We got in a much cheaper before the price boom, thankfully. So we have a lot of equity in it,

but you get in and what it is, it's on the beach, but it has like a bar, restaurants. It has a pool there for the kids. So it has a bunch of stuff. But then you actually have, do you also have beach access though? Like they groom the beach and do that whole thing? Yeah, so it's like a private beach there, and there's like town beaches.

And there are state beaches, obviously. There's a lot of beaches here, but the beaches aren't like what I would consider nice. So they're like rocky or lots of seaweed. Okay, so it's not that white sand beach that you're getting in Florida. That's not it. Yeah, the state beaches are for the poor people, Tommy. Come on. Yes, the poor.

Yes, I've heard about them. Let them all. Let them all. Let them all. I'm just joking. Pile up together. Great beaches everywhere. Yeah. What's the local university that you support and sometimes go to the games?

Yeah. Rams. University of Rhode Island, buddy. Okay. University of Rhode Island. So is that a, what is, are they a division one school or what is university of Rhode Island? Yeah, they're Division I school, or what is University of Rhode Island? Yeah, they're a Division I school. They play in the A-10 conference.

Okay. So, like, a lot of – They haven't been recruited into the SEC or anything yet? No. No. I think we won, like, 11 games this year in basketball. We're going through a little bit of stuff on our end. Yeah.

With everything going on, nil deals and all that you know everyone is everyone's refreshed so bath we're considered a basketball school um in the a10 um football we're part of the fcs whatever the whatever one double a is called now so we're like a step below the big boys oh so it's the same as our schools that you know sdsu usd north ndsu yeah yeah college sports up here really aren't huge right so the other big school up here big is providence college so they play like big east uh but they're a small you know catholic school um not very big so like how far because that part of the country like i can look at it on a map and identify states but like like how far is like Yukon from you?

Oh, Yukon's pretty close. Probably about 45 minutes away. So, I mean, you gotta have a lot of Yukon fans in the area too, then don't you? Yeah, but they suck. Except the basketball. The head coach at Yukon, head coach at Yukon basketball came from the University of Rhode Island. He was here for five or six years.

They know how to make it. And he left you guys high and dry. Yeah. Now we suck. So thanks. thanks dan really yeah yeah university of rhode island all right okay we got five topics let's do all five tommy you feel like doing an extra one i i feel none that need to get banished here so overrated or underrated hans. Oh, so I would say as I can pray, I don't know if you're going to crop this in the film, but I'm sitting next to all these nice hands and power colored chrome

calibrated power lifting plates. Those ones look really sweet. I think I've really mostly only seen them from you, but the colored ones in particular. Look at the chrome. You're saying right. Tanner. right tanner yeah the colors because you do you still do you also have just the all chrome ones or i do or yeah well i don't know if it's all but the non-colored chrome ones yeah yeah so i can't ride the line on this but i'm going to explain it so i think they're underrated in the fact that for what they offer at the price point they offer i think it's hard

to beat especially when you take a look at like their power bars they have a bright zinc power bar that goes on sale for like 215 bucks oh wow i would literally put it up in quality in terms of the build quality to like an aleko bar for like a thousand dollars the thing with them that gets people though is like they have a lot of value right the plates great the bars great the customer service and communicating with them not the best so like they are very hit or miss and intermittent when they respond to you when they do they work any problems out if you have great, but they don't do a very good job at communicating. And I've told them this. And especially if you order something

like shipping with them is just tough because you'll be like, where is it? And they'll be like, oh, we don't know. You know? Okay. And then just one day it shows up. Um, that part needs to be worked on, but I think overall as a value brand, considering the quality they offer, I would say they're underrated. You know, my obviously also working on cool stuff, you know, they're doing different, you know, like those plates, you know, they recognized where there's probably some people that would like to get their hands on something like that. And they came out with that. So that's smart. Their products, I think, all look super nice.

I love those plates. I think those are some of the best looking plates. My least favorite part about the company, and this is someone that's never actually seen any of their stuff in person or touched or anything i just do not like it when companies use barbells and plates in their logo and that's the part that that's my least favorite part of them let's see if i can do this without breaking my toe. Yeah. That S from middle school that used to write on like, like, like it's please everyone class,

please open your textbook to page 50. And then someone wrote that S inside the textbook. And then they're like, let's put a barbell on it too. So people know we sell barbell plates. So very, very polarizing in terms of the logo. I know a lot of people are

like i love the plates hate the logo but again i like the name hansu i think that's cool i just i don't like the logo that's pretty cool yeah that is shiny um do you have to buy those in a set is it only do they only sell those in a certain set so right now the the colored chromes, yeah, you can only get them in like a 459 kg set, which is a lot. That's like seven reds, seven pairs of reds. So they're working on that for my understanding because, again, it's coming from overseas and it comes in a big crate and their shipper was basically just putting the sets in a crate and they didn't ship individual plates. But I believe they're working on getting that resolved to order individual pairs and then what's that set cost is it like four right here 4 500 yeah yeah the thing with with them though too is like they will randomly have these huge sales where it knocks off a ton of money or they'll have like these

groupings of stuff where if you buy a set of plates you get a free stainless steel power bar which is like a 500 value so it's like you got to keep your eye out on that or you could also use code basement to say five percent but i'm just saying five percent off five grand come on yeah yeah you can't afford not to use that yeah thank you yes um pen to paper scenario there for sure this is not a topic but we i actually Yeah, you can't afford not to use that. Thank you. Pen to paper scenario there for sure. This is not a topic, but I actually thought about it earlier and forgot until just now. Kabuki, Duffin's company, do you have any speculation as to any changes going on there right now? You know, their site, you know, they're not taking orders for the next 10 days.

And maybe there's some ownership change. And, you know, they've not taking orders for the next 10 days and maybe there's some ownership change and you know, they've done some things with rogue lately. Yeah. So I know Rudy is retiring and they've sold part of the business on his behalf. I know Chris unfortunately lost his mom this week, so I'm sure he's going through it. I'm not sure that coincides with each other, but still there's some stuff going on over there if as of late they didn't just drop all their prices and say they have new in-house production so like with the oregon power bar and stuff like if that didn't happen i would say they're going strictly to like their education model you know where they're doing a lot of these courses and classware and education versus producing equipment because they had a lot of issues, I think, in their supply chain. But they've seemed to iron that out. So I'm not sure. From that teaser page, I want to say I saw an updated squat face on there too a

little bit. So I'm not just sure if they're maybe going to rebrand and maybe consolidate some of their offerings or completely outsource. So I've really no idea what's going on over there. offerings or completely outsourced. So I've, I've really no idea what's going on over there. Also, I suppose there is a thought that it's just, uh, a marketing, you know, uh, it seems odd. You say, yeah, I'm going to shut down our site for 10 days, but if nothing else that builds like, we're talking about it right now. Yeah, exactly. Of, uh, and I'm not saying that's the only thing behind it, but like there, that's a thought also. Yeah. I would, I would, if I had to guess, I would say kind of an updated branding and maybe revamping of the site because anyone who's ordered anything from them in the past, if

you've looked at some of the spec sheets on their bars to what you actually get, they're like not right. Like the deadlift bar was initially advertised as four inches longer than it was. The Columbia power bar was advertised as not having center neural. It had center neural. So maybe they're just going through and doing a refresh. And I wouldn't be surprised again, if they consolidated their menu, some, so to say, to just focus on a key couple of products and then also push heavily that education

and coaching side of the house. Do you have the collars up the clips did you buy a pair of the uh kabuki um whatever yeah i don't i don't remember what they're called that company had reached out to me before that partnership yeah to say hey we're doing this do you want some and i think i said yes and they never ended up sending them but no i do not have them mine i ordered them like right away I was intrigued by Duffin standing on 500 kilos of plates and jumping on it and them not falling. You actually have them now, Tanner? Yeah, they have come in.

This is news to me. Okay. Maybe we'll save it and do a review on those or something like that. My initial thoughts are I think that they probably will hold a ton of weight, but then that's maybe not also my – it's a balance of concerns with a clip of what I want it to do and also ease of use and just other things so i'm just not sure like it probably holds more than any of our other ones but i'm not sure if that was a concern on the other ones you know that we've been using regularly so i don't know

it's yeah and i have some of the clips i have i I have this pair of clips from X master. Terrible name. You search X master and you get something else. You know what I'm saying? Then you know what I'm saying? If you don't, don't, don't try doing it. But if you search for X master,

don't just don't do it. But the clip is like, literally, I think they might be tighter than my rogue aluminum ones, which are usually like my go-to ones, which they're so tight to a point where it's like, it's, it's hard as shit to close them.

It's like, I don't want to use them just because they're so hard to clamp on a bar. So my big thing on my initial take is, so in the gym, we have a bunch of, we have every style clip that's ever been made probably, but we have some of these old ones that are just, you know,

the, the Chrome collars that tighten down with a screw and i put these on the rack next to those and i think no one as is if i leave them there would ever grab them or every no one in the gym will ever use those because they look like those old crappy ones yeah they almost look you know at first glance they look exactly like it from a distance so i think no one would ever grab them and um there is something once you're used to like the style that grant makes or like the rogue ones that we have you know just the lever on it the little lever it's really different to go back to then putting something on and then screwing it

down even if it's only like you have it set right so it's only a quarter turn it's just um it's just definitely different than what i am used to at this point yeah and i have i have competition style collars too you know big ones And they're just more hassle than... I never use ours. The only time those come out in the gym is when people are getting ready for a meet like the last month. They're like, all right, the calibrated collars are coming out. And I just want to load it exactly like it's going to be loaded on the platform. Right, right.

Okay, overrated or underrated? The heavy-duty neoprene sleeves that took the world by storm over the last year or two, however long it's been. Yeah. So I want to say they're overrated having owned almost all of them and I still consistently use mine, but I think in general, it's more of a confidence thing than it is an actual performance thing. Meaning that, you know, back when I bought my first pair of knee sleeves, those bright blue Ray-Ban ones that you, yeah, that only they only sold in singles for some reason.

So you went on Amazon like, Oh, 45 bucks. And only one showed up. You're like, I got to buy two. Back then everyone was like, Oh my gosh, this is like cheating. And then, you know, things like mark bell sleeves came out the spd sleeves came out and they're like oh shit these add like 10 15 pounds and then some of the somewhat stiffer versions came out like another different pair of mark bell sleeves like oh these add 10 or 15 pounds and now it's like the stiff sleeves these add 10 or 15 pounds from point A to point C you're a hundred pounds. Now you should be squatting more. So it's like, to me, I think it's just, they're tighter and more compressive. So people generally think, and also that they make it hard to walk if you size them, right. They're just like,

these things make my legs feel better. And in your mind, if you think you're stronger, you probably will be stronger. That placebo effect can be real. I don't doubt that they do add some more than a normal pair of knee sleeves, but to the extent that some people put like faith in them, I don't think that's true. And I think people just also have a bias based off of what they wear when they're doing certain lifts or completing certain lifts. Like if you talk to a lot of people in the IPF, they'll tell you SBD knee sleeves are the best or the Aleko $1,200 bare steel bar is the best because that's what they've used and that's what

they set their PRs on. That's what they're comfortable using. And if they're changing something, it's almost superstitious. If they change something out that they're not used to, to do something that could potentially lead to a failure, it's just their mind's not in it. And then again, the body's going to react based off of that. So I do think those stiff sleeves are mostly overrated, but they could still be a useful training tool. Tommy, you don't have a pair of the, any of those style, do you? Not the stiff ones. No, I mean, I love the mentality that it just feels like you're playing mind games with yourself after a while. you're just kind of okay if it is

giving you 10 more pounds you didn't actually get 10 pounds stronger and i'm not a national level competitor so it just feels like morally philosophy like it just feels like you're just playing games with yourself at the end of the day yeah and when i when i recommend when people ask me like what sleeve should i get like i don't recommend them to most people. And if they ask me about them, I say like, if you're looking to get the most out of your squat, then they will probably make sense. And luckily now there are some more affordable brands like pioneers are only 75 bucks. Um, there's a lifter who's going into the, the, to powerlifting America who goes by wheeze on Instagram, who has like a, they're called no

name brand or no brand he basically just i think just buys them on alibaba and saves money by not putting his brand on them and then resells them for you know 70 bucks as well so they're they're more affordable than like the 150 or so the insers used to cost when they first came out uh but for most people like they're not going to be enjoyable because they're probably going to size them wrong where they're going to have to like end up cutting them off uh or they also chew up the back of your knees like my knees get like literal cuts on them from those sleeves that it doesn't make sense for just the majority of people lifting yeah that makes sense you still have your original spds don't you tanner uh yes that's the only pair i've ever owned in my life i bought one pair of spds and

i'm like they're still going strong i don't i i've had six years i think we do get criticized for our knee sleeve takes by people though that are more into the knee sleeve they don't they'll say like you guys don't even wear knee sleeves half the time so people be like what do you you know people say what do you know about knee sleeves you're never wearing them you made a video on them didn't you yeah i think so and then you're an expert yeah it's on the internet it's true yes yeah i like to talk about the heavy duty sleeves and i've never put a pair on before i've never even held a pair yeah okay i might have to link up after this i will get you guys a pair of pioneer knee sleeves on the house uh does pioneer are you uh do you have a code again for pioneer as long as we're talking about it i know they've changed i use i use it to buy some leather straps

you know 25 leather straps so when you saw that check come in uh that was definitely a part of that you're welcome that's right so you owe me just keep that in mind i'll get you i'll get you some sleeves that would be even then we would be, I bought like 10 belts from pioneer a little bit ago, but it was in the period of time where they didn't, you know, they had gone away from, uh, gone away from having that. Trust me. I, I was trying like, uh, everything I'm like, maybe there's a glitch and they just don't advertise it. I was like basement, uh, uh, untamed, you know, I was trying all the old ones to see if anything was still on there

and i they they didn't have it so yeah he took he took down the program for a little bit as they revamped it and he's going through like another an app or something now to make it because he was doing everything basically by hand like i would get every month like a printout of every single like order and this and it's just too much work so i don't blame them okay overrated or underrated caitlin clark um as long as we're talking basketball oh man how do i how do i approach this because she is pretty highly rated yeah yeah i'm going to say overrated yeah and i gotta i gotta explain this one because this is it's tough because she has done a fantastic job for women's basketball bringing attention to the sport

or whatever but in a national championship game when you go like seven for 25 oh and a lot of bad turnovers too bad look yeah and she was doing uh one of the things that i liked is early on tournament i'm sure you guys probably saw there was a clip going on where she was complaining about fouls and she looked into the stands and her dad was basically like shut up she complains she whines at calls a lot yeah and i mean she's she is a fantastic player right all time all-time leading scorer like jacking it from the from the logo and all this stuff um but like at the end of the day like if our of i was her teammate at some times like i'm running i'm playing defense hard all right we got the rebound to run down and like just when i'm getting

there she's jacking up a three from half court i'm like oh shit you gotta run back i would say that so i'm interested to see how she does next year in the wmba like again a big fan i think she did awesome like i watched and my boys watched like i we tuned into those games especially because like the championship game was on at three o'clock on a sunday which means my kids can people versus nine o'clock for us yeah the men's game um so just great but i just think overrated in a sense of like, I could, I guess shoot it 30 times and score 20 points a game. Maybe I don't know. Yeah.

I think that's, it'd be hard to say underrated to, to answer her, you know, as her, her as a topic, it would be hard. Although I think,

I think if you ask me that, I think if you asked me that question last year, underrated would have been an easy answer. Right. Now the hype train wasn't going quite as hard as it was this last month here. Um, okay. No, great answer.

Um, last one. Overrated or underrated, not regular mugs, but, uh, heavy mugs, heavy mugs. Yeah. So I, I own a heavy mug. I what do you want from what do you own what brand okay that's the only one i've ever seen in person is the x master one is that the one that mini action jesus had okay yeah yeah and there's like there's a the ones that come to mind right are obviously the aleko one the rogue one um the jd jim equipped one i want to say those are the ones

that come to mind most often for me those are in my opinion extremely overrated as someone who has fallen into the hype train by buying 80s themed cartoon swords that are now maces so like i have a he-man sword that's like a swingable mace a thundercat sword swingable mace yeah um i have uh you know the oak club you can't see i have an oak club basketball attached i want that i really want that and they don't like them now i know if you ever want to get rid of that let me know i will be in the market to purchase that from you so so i have i have fallen to the, you know, the hype train oftentimes like $70 drink holders for your gym. I got to not the gold version of course.

Um, but to me, it's like having something that's novel is one thing. Like I have a lot of stuff that's novel in my gym. Like I'm looking at my Texas monster squat bar, 35 millimeters, 65 pounds. It's still usable though. Like those mugs for the most part, aren't usable. I know a lot of companies out there are looking into making them more usable by, you know, increasing the amount of actual liquid that it holds or making sure that it's like food grade stainless steel they're using. But I just don't see the point. It's like someone buys it just to have it and then it's going to sit on a desk or somewhere and not actually be used and overrated for sure. It is shocking.

I totally agree with you, but it is shocking. One of the guys that helped out at our booth at the Arnold this year, he brought his X master one and had it just sitting on the, on the booth table. The number of people that were either, oh my God, that's one of those heavy mugs or asking what it was. It was, I mean, it was as big of an icebreaker as anything that I saw at the arm. But nobody asked if they could buy one.

No, no one did. So like nobody wanted to buy it. Everyone just wanted to like look at it and ask questions about it. My takeaway from that is like, I know it's called the heavy mug and I know it was heavy, but still the first time I went to grab it, I was like,

whoa, this is shockingly heavy. When I went to grab it in the way that you would actually grab a mug, that is what made me realize how unusable this was. You couldn't touch it to your mouth without potentially smashing your teeth in. You also don't realize that it has a four ounce ounce capacity you know it's not actually inside of it

yeah yeah yeah i was hoping that uh they would bore the hole big enough on it so you could like stick it on a barbell or something you could it'd be a funny gag to use it as like a landmine attachment you know you have the handle built in but right a little bit too small. That's what she said. Good news. Looks like you passed overrated underrated for the three-time champ. That's right. He can stuff it in a box with your YouTube play button. I'm putting this on my LinkedIn profile.

Three-time member of the Massanomics podcast. Yeah, we didn't get to talk about the dude you're getting a dell guy this time at all but uh people can go back to the i don't know i think it's probably been two or three years since we've had you on the podcast i think i was on last year was it okay i think so yeah that could be we kind of lose. I do know that it's been a while. It's been a while either way. Stain knows. Okay. That soundboard was totally worth the investment just for that.

Right there. Just that alone. They actually reached out to Tanner and said, we want to do a Masonomics edition. It'll just have that preloaded on the soundboard. Every button is there. So what is your YouTube channel and what if someone is buying equipment and they wanted to use one of your links? How do they, what's the best way to do that?

Yeah. So my YouTube channel is basement Brandon and my goal in life is just to have code basement work at pretty much any site. So always try to give that a go, no matter what you're doing. There's like other things like that I'm, I'm partnered with, with companies where I have affiliate links, but those don't save you money. So you don't care about that. It's fine. I don't care either. But if you do have like, one of the things I always offer to people, and it's not a hassle at all. If you do have gym questions, equipment questions, like just hit me up on Instagram or even a YouTube comment. Like one of my things that I probably need to see a doctor about is like, I have to respond to people. If someone

writes me, like I have to respond back. So like if someone has a question, shoot me the question, I'll answer it. No problem. Or at least give you feedback. Even if it's secondhand feedback saying like, I don't know, I haven't used it, but here's what I've heard. And I'll do that affiliate free as well. I won't solicit affiliates on that case. You do really respond to just about everything. I can also vouch for that. You've helped me on, you've at least provided feedback on several things so far on my short

purchase list. So thank you for your help. Yeah. It's like talking shop and I have no friends. So it works out. I'm going to start really testing that theory and ask you just like really useless, annoying questions and be like,

where is the limit here? Another DM from massonomics. Oh God. I welcome, I welcome the challenge. Awesome. Well, we appreciate you coming on again. This is a lot of fun and I think, uh, I think people enjoy it just like every time.

Thanks guys. I appreciate it. Thanks Brandon. All right. See you Brandon. See ya. Appreciate it. Thanks, Brandon.

All right. See you, Brandon. See you. Those are basement cellar cooled straight from the beach club. Cool beans. Beach club. Fancy, fancy. Cool beans.

When I play the stain, it's been a while. How well can you hear that? Faintly. It doesn't. Because I never know if the other person knows that I'm even playing there. And I don't know if he's hearing the same thing I hear either. I mean, I would imagine he is, but you get the impression. Would you know, if you didn't know we did the Stained It's Been A While thing, would you know that that's what I'm even playing there?

Maybe. You know, he's old enough that he knows that song. Like a younger person that maybe doesn't know that song, I wouldn't count on it. I would imagine he probably heard it well enough though i wouldn't want to be the person that doesn't know stained um tanner you read the ad i gotta pee bad yep this episode is brought to you by juggernaut ai actually we should have talked to brandon a little bit more about juggernaut ai because he historically has been a user i believe currently is a user of

juggernaut ai he used uses it, as he mentioned, he is a USAPL competitor and he uses it to train for his meets and programs him right up to the meet. It goes through the different phases of training. If you want to start with what they call a bridge block, then that moves into hypertrophy training blocks. And then strength training blocks is kind of your core of the program. And at the very end of it, uh, they color coded in red would be your peak. So if you're a competitive power lifter, that's what leads you up that last three, four or five weeks to actually competing and peaking you for the best, uh, ultimate one rep max numbers. Even if you're not a competitive power lifter,

you're just a, uh, so you're an at-home strength trainer that just wants to test those numbers of your squat bench and deadlift, Juggernaut AI would still be an awesome option for you. When you go sign up, make sure you go through the web browser. Just had someone ask me about it this week. Hey, how do I use the discount code? You actually have to go through the browser. It's juggernautai.app. That's where you get signed up. That's where you can use discount code MASSANOMICS to save you 10%. Thank you, Juggernaut AI. And today That's where you get signed up. That's where you can use discount code MASSANOMICS to save you 10%. Thank you, Juggernautai. And today's episode 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. In 1979, Buddy bought his first lathe to begin addressing the known issues. In 1980, his passion, drive, and purpose now had a greater mission. 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, 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 your own, visit texaspowerbars.com. And of note, it might be too late, but they have been running a sale lately where the bars are discounted pretty good, 50 bucks. Like up to 50 bucks off on a lot. Yeah. It brings a lot of the standard bars, like $250, which is a pretty damn good deal. You and I were just looking at it and deciding what bars we need in. Yeah. And Tanner's just trying to decide what Texas Power Bar he needs. He already has one of deal you and I were just looking at it and deciding what bars we needed yeah and uh Jander's is trying to decide what Texas Power Bar he needs he already has one of all of them he actually has

two or three of most of them and he still was like I kind of got to take advantage like I just need more of these yeah so uh hop on over to texaspowerbars.com uh when you order make sure you tell Massanomics sent you to uh you know let them know we sent you thank you texas power bars uh wow okay love love catching up with brandon that was great but we also still have a lot to cover here tanner i don't know if you do have a lot to cover um you do have a lot i have several things first i have a sack can i can i let's take a peek inside unleash this sack on you loving to see it's you've been holding it in for way too long it feels like i've been holding this in so this package showed up at my house yesterday unannounced i had no idea what it was all right i thought i kind of recognized the address but i had no idea what

was inside are you ready for this tanner oh let it out let it all out hold nothing back now actually here we go oh hello those from uh california or south carolina neither we're talking middle america baby so what i'm holding somebody that owns a pair yes what i'm holding here is the red special edition massonomic strength co collars yeah and i'd always said ponied theirs up well and i'd always said i'd wanted a pair well i when these were for sale last year they were really cool but there just was no point in me having a set of collar i have so much massonomic stuff that if it's something that i can't feasibly use i get a little more selective about it and people wanted them they were buying them so to me it didn't make sense to withhold a pair of colors from someone that would like them. And so I never got them. Now that I have a home gym, I really miss them. I really wish, especially that red is one of the colors of the gym. And this is what came

in a little box. This picture was in the box with it, Tanner. I'm not sure if you can hold this in front of the webcam. Oh yeah. They're being cleaned with alcohol. Yeah. Yep. And the person has rubber gloves on. So they prepped them for you. you yeah so they're showing that they're not having skin contact with these with these collars oh god i know who it's from the notes i do not trust him did you just touch those that is a trap yep so the bond the space jam transfer thing through the collars i know i do not trust him for a second that picture is all a part of the trap so yes this box did come from iowa which gave me a hint as to what who was coming from the note says big tommy congrats on joining the garage gym life parentheses and not that

basement gym nonsense i found these hanging out in my garage and thought you could put them to good use don't worry these have been sanitized and packed using the utmost care. Enjoy. And that would be big Ryan out of Iowa. So he hooked it up. Thank you, Ryan. I am so grateful for these.

I really had no idea what was in this box and this genuinely caught me by surprise. And I'm very grateful to have these. So thank you for sharing that. Great of him to send you those collars and his communicable injury diseases i know yeah i'm supposed to go have an rp10 bench day after this i'm a little and ryan's sitting there whoo knock on wood you know yeah that's good that's funny yes so i'm pumped for that so that's one equipment thing i also have

another equipment update. My dumbbells. People had been, or I'd been talking about for a while how I got to figure out a dumbbell thing. And I was kind of taking my time, but also at the same time now, I'm like, well, I'm getting close to a month in on this. I would like to have some dumbbells. I got to make up my mind on something here.

And out of nowhere on Facebook marketplace, these gun gear, one inch adjustable dumbbell handles popped up. So it's not the big Olympic size adjustable dumbbell. They make a smaller one that is a one inch one takes one inch plates, which is the downside. But these were what I would consider a pretty smoking deal. It was under a hundred bucks for the pair and couldn't afford not to even. Yeah. Even if I wasn't going to use them, I just couldn't afford not. I couldn't afford not to even yeah even if I wasn't going to use

them I just couldn't afford not I couldn't afford not to considered buying those if they were in Aberdeen just like even though I have no use well and they were just I actually can't afford not yes they were just down the road they weren't in Sioux Falls but they were just down the road I reached out to the seller and he even offered to to drive closer so I uh I do got to give props to Big Darren Big Darren was the guy selling these. We had, we had guesses as to the story of these, you know, I messaged you 10. I'm like, we were talking about, I'm like, should I do this? And you're, yeah, you basically said that like, yeah, can't afford not to do these. And what was of interest is in the picture where he was

selling these, there was a little home gym or Reddit home gym sticker. And you go, I bet he won those in a contest. And so I met Darren and first of all, he was familiar with massonomics. He owned the, I think he said eight bit power lifting flag. Oh, I should have brought this up. He also, he's like, I bought one of the runs of the basement, Brandon banners. When you did those, I should have brought that up to Brandon. But so he was familiar with us. He's followed what we do. He said that I check out the podcast every once in a while too. So I know what's going on there. And he said, actually, when you messaged me, I was like, is this really the guy messaging me here? And I asked him how I got him. And yes, that is how he got him. He won him in a home gym competition giveaway there. So he said he's been sitting on them for about two years and he's just never seen one inch plates pop up. So he decided it was time to, to part with them. And I said, Oh, don't worry.

I'll take good care of these bad boys for you. So, yes. So you haven't, you don't have plates yet. So you haven't used plates around the way plates will be here next week. So funny, like, uh, less than a week after you did that, uh, door neighbor, four houses down from me, literally, that I talked to, had a set of dumbbells for sale on the internet for $250. And it was like 20s, 30s, 40s. It was like the set I would want, too. Yeah, it was a good variety. They're not fancy. They're just the hex ones.

But so many of the sets, though, that you look at, first of all, most people charge way too much. They don't get it. Oh, this was a good price. It was a good price. But then a lot of the sets, it's like a 5 through 30-pound set. It's like, I don't really want a 5, a 10, a 15. This was a pretty good variety where it had the 20, 30, 40s, and then it also had like 80s.

Was there like a 50 in there, too? Yeah. I thought if there was a set that could pop up, that was the one. Yeah. But at this point I'd already bottled this stuff for the adjustable ones. So, um,

yeah, I had to pass on it, but this, yeah, that, that was a, that was a hot deal. That was that,

that those, your neighbor had, I would have taken that any other day of the, any other day of my life. I would have taken that, but I had just pulled it. Literally like on my, like a neighbor that I actually talked to and like and I'm like what the like what are the

odds of that you know so I'm gonna give these a try these adjustable ones I'll have the the one inch weights one inch weights aren't terrible on on I just bought a bunch on Amazon and yeah I have it set up so I could do like I think 60 pounds per dumbbell something like that end up spending a little over 100 bucks so all in I'm I mean I'm still doing good I'm not well I also found some of those after you purchased those not like what would have been the most visually but right right well yeah it wouldn't look good or really technically be enough so then you still would have had to buy some but I did then find some of those too. Yeah. But in the scheme of things, this is a very minor amount of money to now basically have dumbbells that I can do five

through like 50 ish pounds, or if I wanted to load one up really heavy, I could. So I got some options now. Yeah. So have you been scouring Facebook marketplace then? So what I was going to say about Facebook market is in my entire life, I've maybe clicked on that market tab of Facebook 10 times ever. That sounds like an average day for me. So I was going to say that has very much become part of my daily routine. Facebook Marketplace is an addiction. What I would like to compare it to, not a lot of people go fishing anymore.

Fishing, I feel like, used to be a real old-timey pastime. A lot of people did it. Actually, where we live in our part of the country, fishing is still a popular pastime, but you know, with kids going on and all that stuff, you can't go fishing as much anymore, man. This feels like this is the modern day version of fishing. When you're reeling a good one, you throw out your reel and say, what am I going to catch today? And like, what, what really got me is to be like three days into this Facebook marketplace and find these Gungnir adjustable dumbbells like right away I'm like oh man I am hooked I gotta go like hop on there every day and see what I'm gonna find well then the fact

that you did find those for like $70 does make you think well I can't afford to miss the next thing I know the next thing it's only gonna be up there for one day. So if I don't see it, then I don't get it. And that was already the thing. This was up for a day and I messaged him and while I'm messaging him, he's like,

yep, yep, I'll, yep, I got you down. And then like an hour later, he's like, just making sure because someone else is already asking about it. So yeah, it is,

I totally get how people get into that now. There's a decent bit of, because I check all the time and I don't even search for anything anymore. My is just it just caters to you yeah it knows what you're looking for so i just have to browse marketplace and it shows me everything about an old pickup and everything about a gym equipment that could ever pop up and uh um like sioux falls does get a decent bit of used gym equipment and like real like not just crap yeah there's not

all the time but within an hour of Sioux Falls yeah I mean I think even right now there's multiple rogue racks on there yeah there's they'll be like Texas power bars that pop up and like there's be legit stuff that comes up on there there is there so yeah and that makes it convenient that uh it's just a short drive or even a local pickup if I want to do some of the stuff. But I am in the boat where I am being, you know, if I didn't have that Massanomics gym exposure, I probably would be saying yes to a lot more things. But now that I've used a good chunk of the stuff and I know what I really like and what is so-so to me, I am going to be super selective here. Right. I do. I love Facebook Marketplace. If it wasn't for Mastonomics and Facebook Marketplace, I don't think I would have Facebook.

But Facebook Marketplace, I couldn't afford not to have Facebook for Facebook. Like, that is the buy-sell trade. Like, I mean, I don't think any, I don't, you know, I mean, we've talked about this before, but what's the old one? Craigslist. Craigslist. Craigslist. Like, it has to just be dead in the water. Like, why would you go to that cumbersome old site when you can, you know.

Yeah, not a lot of action there. I mean, there still probably is stuff that pops up, but it's just, it doesn't feel as good. No. And a lot of times I don't like all the algorithm stuff but sometimes it's like i do like that they just know what to show me in this instance where i'm like and they do hit pretty well where they're like nope this guy wants to see gym equipment so they just like right here just today there was a rogue trap bar listed in sioux falls it's like i could go pick that up and have that right now you know how much do they want for that uh 385 yeah i don't know if that's a good deal or not but that's the thing is a lot of these aren't

a great deal i guess you're like saving on shipping technically but way too many people you need more savings than that is not the appropriate price to sell something no it's a lot of these people are like okay i bought this and i'm taking it down 10 i'm like no that's not the used market and like here's just right now, this was listed a week ago in Brookings. It's a Rogue Monster RM4 90-inch rack. It's like, they want $1,300 for that. And I'm like, that's, yeah. I just want to browse Facebook Marketplace

while we're on the podcast even. Yeah. To see if there's any good deals we're missing. But they have, yeah, a Matador, some storage. It's like, okay, the whole thing new would be $2,100. It says, and they want... I don't think some of these deals are aggressive enough. No, right, I agree.

I notice that a lot, but you can... The ones that are good, you have to act fast, though. They go fast, they do. Like, there's a reason, like, this stuff... Price to sell, know what I've got. Yeah, it's like, yeah, maybe... Like, yeah, I get it, it's cheaper than what you bought it at but the price doesn't reflect used i will not respond to is this still available if it is up it is

available because i sell stuff on facebook marketplace too i have a few things for sale right now everyone is this still available like i'm like i just like like yes yes it's sold when it's sold yes Yes, it is still available. That's like the icebreaker is like, hey, can I buy this? Yes, come buy it. All right. So the home gym is alive and well and growing, and make sure to check it out on YouTube.

I think maybe we'll save my coffee hot take for next week. We'll let it cool down a little bit. It's a little too hot still. Yeah, it is a little too fresh. This hot take on the coffee is a little too hot. I think it needs a week to cool down on this. You also had home gym updates and wish list. We can wait on that because we're sort of going to do a video about that today anyways.

So that'll just go in the next week. We'll be able to kind of recap the video and talk more about that too and the maestro we'll continue to sit on the maestro stringing that one out yeah we do have thursday this week april 18th really big stuff the world is forever changed big big stuff uh do not miss out on april 18th or something. It's big. It's really big. It's one of the biggest things we've done. So if size is the prize, you're going to enjoy this one. Then we've also been starting to work on more Lift Hard, Live Easy Classic,

July 20th, 2024 in western northeast South Dakota. We've been hammering out more details for that. I think it's only going to continue to get bigger and better and greater. So make your plans to be here this summer. And then it is tax return season. Please head over to massanomics.com and spend as much of that money as possible on our site. I was thinking this was the perfect business plan. You sell something to someone.

They give you your money. I'm holding these collars right now. Ryan fell for it. They send it back to you. We sell it to them. We you your money i'm holding these collars right now ryan fell for it they send it back to you we sell it to them we take their money we play the long game and let them send it back to us yes the business i'm in could everyone please send back all the stuff that you ever sent us and we will resell it we will either keep it or resell it yeah uh we do have good inventory of of quite a bit of stuff on our site so uh make sure to check out uh teas drink spotters um sold our last hat have no hats right now so finally don't have

to worry about anyone buying those we do have just a few beanies left though a few stocking hats a few toques so check out our toque selection it's there's still a couple in there um i do want to make sure that i let everyone know to head over and check out the Strength Co. Though it's thestrength.co. Talked about the Strength Co. plates with Brandon. I don't know if we talked about enough, though, that he actually does have a pretty good collection of Strength Co. plates himself. He does. He had a picture posted the other day, and, God, it looks like a museum with all the plates loaded up.

Well, and I think in our conversation, and if you've ever followed Brandon and looked at his stuff, he has a discerning eye for visually pleasing and still high-utility gym items. So it's no surprise that he goes to the Strength Co. when he needs Made in America iron plates. No surprise at all. It's where we go. It's where a growing number of Massonomics listeners

go when they need plates. So whether you've got a home gym, a commercial gym, or a semi-club oddity gym like Massonomics gym for the one other person listening that might have that, go to thestrength.co. Let them know Massonomics sent you. You can also get bumper plates while you're there.

You can get collars like Tommy was showing off. If you're interested in those collars, not those red ones, but they have black strength coat ones you can get there. Also, they got a selection of tees, et cetera, and check out the OK podcast. And today's episode is also brought to you by Swiss Link. Since 1995, Swiss Link has been importing military-issue goods to the United States and into the hands of those yearning for quality gear at uncompromised prices. Swisslink.com is home to the authentic Wavian fuel cans. They're made from the same factory

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by entering code MAS at checkout. Code MAS, M-A-S-S. Save you 15% at SwissLink.com. Thank you, Swiss Link. And, of course, we have to mention, I would love to mention our Supporting Our Supporting Members segment. If you're interested in becoming a supporting member, you could make it in on this segment. We like to give back every week to some of the people that choose to support Mathsonomics and our podcast. We do it through this segment, like I said, but also get access to our exclusive Discord community.

It's the only way you get in on the Mathsonomics Discord. There's a discount code there that's exclusive to supporting members. Several perks, like we send out a few things a year that only go out to our supporting members at no additional cost. So we'd love to have you sign up. We have been having some new members come in. I love seeing every new supporting member. There are several levels and options of affordability there.

So please, if you're a listener, consider joining our supporting member crew. We'd love to have you. And this week I want to shout out none other than Big Tyler Thompson. He got third place at South Carolina's Strongest Man and qualified for nationals, events included. He pulled 795 795 pounds on the axle on a stiff old axle so big tyler thompson um not one to be trifled with in the terms of strength there is he no we had big lou competed at the ghost clash and it was there

on meat day for big lou and we talked to him hoping it would it was there on meat day for Big Lou. We talked to him, hoping it would be on meat day. It was. He went 9-for-9 in sleeves, finishing with his best total ever. 10 pounds over his best wrapped total ever, even. Miami Lou did not disappoint either, did he? They don't call him Miami Lou for not disappoint either. Did he? They don't call him Miami Lou for no reason. That's his new name is Miami Lou.

And then we had a big, big Garrett, South Dakota man. He lifted at the 2024 Ryan Hanks lift-a-thon for South Dakota special Olympics. I think he's also one of the organizers of that event. He got a PR on all three lifts, hit a 405 squat, 225 bench, 510-pound deadlift, and they raised a bunch of money to support the South Dakota Special Olympics. Mastonomics was a, we donated some stuff for that.

We donate every year. So thank you and shout out to him for setting that event up in South Dakota. That's cool. Coincidentally, garrett just got in for the lift hard live easy classic he was on the wait list and just uh just got signed up and we know big tyler thompson's in for the strong man and big lou is going to be there just saying there's going to be some strong people around yes this week's guest on unpaid and underrated was Big Chris Mark,

the man with two first names. He's also signed up for the Lift Hard, Live Easy, Strongman. And then our most recent two additions to the Massanomics Hall of Fame, which you have to be a supporting member to make it in, are Eddie Woodard and Jake the Snake Heinreich, both making it into the Hall of Fame. So welcome to the Hall of Fame, gentlemen. It's a very exclusive club still, so people are not.

We didn't know exactly what the numbers would be like, but I think we've still only got like 13 people in the 12 Achievement Hall of Fame at this point. So make sure if you are a supporting member, we've sent out your Hall of Fame cards. See how many you got on the list and let us know if you hit 12, or you could be the first person to hit that elusive 15

and get your, maybe a little mystery prize to go along with that. Let's wrap this sumbitch up. Tommy, where do they find you at? You can find me at tomahawk underscore d. You can follow me at tanner underscore baird. You can follow Mastonomics at Mastonomics, but everyone, just please remember to stay safe down there.