Massenomics Podcast - Ep. 420: Gingercules Ken Cooper

Episode Date: April 22, 2024

Big Ken Cooper, Gingercules, joins us for this one to discuss being 6’4” 325 pounds, dungeons and dragons, and the best N64 games of all time! Don’t forget to check out the new Drink Spotter XL! Build Fast Formula Use code MASSENOMICS to save 10% on every order! BearFoot Shoes Use code MASSENOMICS to save 10% on every order! Juggernaut AI Use code MASSENOMICS to save 10%! The Strength Co Get some Go-To Plates! Swiss Link Use code MASS to save 15%! Texas Power Bars Get the Barbell that changed the game!

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

If you don't follow Massanomics, y'all do it. Social media, website, everything. Massanomics. What the shit, Tommy? What shirt are you wearing over there? I noticed we're matching again. For real, though. What are the chances that this keeps happening? Especially of this shirt.

Yeah, this is a bit of an oldie. Yeah. One of my all-time favorites though the massonomics uh varsity script maroon tea that's an all-time classic that is an all-time classic of mine and this is about to be an all-time classic episode of the massonomics podcast because we've got none other than episode that's right you guessed it 420 bla20. Blaze it. Here we go. Blaze it. And we're recording this on 418.

So we're just two days away from 420. It's all, uh, it's all coming to Graham Hancock to get in here and do a bunch of weird number things where it's all right. This is episode 420 recording it on 418. And you know how people do stuff with math and numbers but they do all this stuff and you're like

what are you saying like that doesn't you just oh you divide it by 8 4 plus 1 is 5 plus the 9 we're now at a bigger number episode 420 blaze at the mass dynamics podcast the lifting podcast about near finn my name is tanner and my name is tommy it kind of is all part of the prophecy though of starting

this podcast when we did and knowing we're never going to quit so we could do episode 420 roughly on 420 on on close to 420 of the year 2024 plan It's all the master plan is coming together. That's what we were thinking back in like 2015. Big 420 guys here. All about the holidays. Blaze it. So happy holidays to all of those of you that choose to celebrate. I was thinking, do we do some for the week of our 420 episode? And we could even start the sale on 420 which would be two days

from now do we do so that would be on saturday do we do like a sale on the high bar lifting club t probably should just to get people all fired up if you know what i mean yeah what it would it be is it even possible you know what people never stop to ask if they should or if they could um was it even possible that we could be like buy any one regular price tee get the high bar lifting club tee for four dollars and twenty cents wow you're saying from a uh make it possible in the is that even actually possible for us to do that it would you could probably make it so that you could do a whatever discount. It'd be like a $16 or a $26 discount on just that t-shirt. Right.

We could probably do it that way. So the coupon code only applies to that item. But there probably is some... We'd have to look into it. We'll have to do some digging on that one. I really like that plan though. If you bought a regular price t-shirt, you get the high bar lifting club for just $4.20 is a deal right there that's a smoking that would be the cheapest

item we've ever apparel item we've ever had in our store ever that would be blazing off of the shelves and you know what else goes blazing off of shelves the strength co plates from the strength co they are the best hands down hands, put your hands wherever you want to, the best plates on the market. Iron Olympic barbell plates. They've got those tight tolerance on your barbell sleeves. They're E-coated, they're black, they're smooth, they're easy to grip.

They're available at the strength.co. They come in all sizes all the way up to Hondos, one of my personal favorite sizes at least in my top 10 of all strength co plate sizes then of course the classic 45 25 10 5 2 and a half one and one quarter um so please a very affordable shipping a great value buy at the strength co a great value buy 365 days out of the year, whether you've got a home gym, garage gym, or semi-private club, massonomics gym style gym. TheStrength.co.

And today's episode is also brought to you by our friends at Texas Power Bars. Now, if you're a Texas Power Bar aficionado, lover, enthusiast, just like us, you'd be well aware that they've been running a flash sale of up to 50 off all bars i'm assuming they're also doing it because of 420 blaze it must be why it's a blazing flash sale so what does that include oh that includes all types of good stuff we're talking texas the original Texas Power Bar. We're talking the brand spanking new 29 millimeter Texas Power Bar, Texas Deadlift Bars, Texas Squat Bars, and more. In all of their classic finishes, including Cerakote finishes, you can get them up to

$50 off depending on your preferred flavor. So if you want to get a part of the legend and know what it's all about, head on over to TexasPowerBars.com Thank you, Texas Power Bars. Oh, thanks, Texas Power Bars. We got a banger of an episode. We saved it all right here for episode 420. We've got Big Ken Cooper coming on as a guest in a little bit, and we've got more topics than we could possibly ever get to this weekend. And next week, in a week, we're leaving for home gym. We're going on a trip to French Lick, Indiana.

I know. It's just dawning on me. That means we kind of need to record again early next week, don't we? We have to record next week probably on Tuesday or Wednesday. Can we get it edited in time if we record on Wednesday night? That's a tight turnaround. We might have to record on Monday, actually. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So we got to, we're just doing some planning right now. We're planning for 421 right here in 420. Hot dog. A little, one of those peaks behind the Massanomics meat curtain that we've kind of known and loved over the years. You just saw it happen right there. what day of the week is that oh okay probably the biggest news that we've had in ages and eons is the release of the brand new product that just came out today tommy and everyone else listening and watching we both have it here it's

of course the drink spotter x. And it's big, baby. It's bigger and better and beefier than ever. See what I've got in mine over here? Yeah, a little Veso Blitz, baby. I got a Waterloo in mine. That looks tiny in that huge thing. It is. It's just an illusion.

For anyone that's been looking for Easter eggs along the trail that we always leave, you could have caught this in a few of our recent YouTube videos. Also, this has been behind me at the Massanomics podcast for the last few weeks, if you look closely. Also, if you've been in Massanomics, Jim, you would have just straight up seen one in there. There was another Easter egg. They were just there. There has been a trail left of these that you could have picked up on it early earlier if you were watching very closely and this thing is big it's beefy i've had mine in my garage for

well since the existence of my garage gym and i love this one i love i because i like to lift with the big hydro flask and this accommodates it so this has been the perfect beverage holder for me i also just like the increased size of it. I think, what did you do the math, Tanner? Was this some 37% bigger than the old one? It's not just bigger, it's 37% bigger! Yeah, that's correct. 37%. It does fit the Hydro Flask. It fits a Nalgene bottle, if you're a Nalgene. I think Nalgene is slightly out of favor over the last. I feel like it's.

Oh, give it time. I'm sure they'll come back around. But do you think if there was a trend line over the last 10 years? Their line has been down for sure. It's not trending in the right direction. Do you think drastically? How bad do you think it's gone down? I don't know, though.

Is it the inverse of Stanley Mugs? But were they ever selling that many of them or is it just they kind of just like 10 to 15 years ago like every stupid bank and stuff gave away like one of those with their logo on it they could have they could have i think i never i mean it's to be on the receipt it's uh been a while like i think it's that's been like 15 years ago. They used to do that all the time. But maybe that decline was already been experienced so long ago that they've already been kind of at the bottom. There's nowhere else for them to go. I'm thinking five to 10 years ago,

but it's really been like 15 to 20 years ago that those already went away. But it will fit those. If you're still hanging on to your greasy old nalgene water bottles that you should have thrown away a decade ago if you still got them they'll go in there what else it will hold the stanley yeah stanley cups it'll hold a variety of liquor bottles as well yeah what do we have in there maker's mark a few different couple different things if you have a super if you have a super jumbo phone, it'll fit larger. I believe it fits almost all larger phones now.

Yep. So you got that going for you if you're one of those big phone people. Someone asked about the magnet size. There it is right there. Same magnet as the Drink Spotter Lite. Still holds like 15 to 20 pounds. So actually, if you put things in there carefully it it will hold like over 20 pounds i've actually hung a 25 pound weight from this magnet before so uh i think it would almost

be i'm not a uh uh the type of person who would do science to measure that sort of things but i don't know what the container would be that could hold enough liquid and stuff for this. Yeah. But it would have to be, it would have to be a silo. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Well, it just, a gallon, I mean, it could hold a gallon easily. So what are you going to get? That's that tall and skinny.

That's a gallon. But I mean, it would probably like to actually make it fall. It'd probably have to be, because what's a gallon way? Is it like seven pounds? Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. So it'd need have to be... Because what's a gallon weigh? Is it like seven pounds of gallon of water? Yeah, something like that. So it'd need to hold like three gallons, but yet fit in that. It just has to be a five-foot-tall tube of water.

Yes. That might put it to the test. So make sure to check out your Drink Spotter XL at massonomics.com. While supplies last, I suppose, right. You know, there's day one of the release.

So we yet to see how many, and we also are going to be bringing a few of these along with us to home. Jim con. If you happen to be visiting us there, we may have a few, a few there. And we did make a fun video for this too. Yeah, we've actually

made more than one video, but we posted the best one today, right? On YouTube where we were doing a little measuring, right? Yes. I had a lot of fun making that video. I like how that turned out. So if you haven't checked that out yet, make sure

to see it. You can either find it on our website on the Drink Spotter XL page. It's linked right there, right? Yes, the link is right there. Or our YouTube channel or our Instagram channel. Actually, I think you can even find that one on TikTok now already. It even made it there.

That one even made it to TikTok. So you know it's good. That's how you know it's good when it makes it to TikTok. And this is, anything else about it? It just looks cool. I like the logo on the front. The light is still a great product. This is a great product.

But when you have them next to each other, you see how much more substantial this one is. You know, a drink spotter light can fit in here. So it is. Right. It is just a big beefy product it's like a giant magnetic bowl to attach to your rack i really have enjoyed having this thing around so it is it wow it is like drink spotter inception isn't it yes

safety within a safety yeah depending on how you put that in the magnet can make things tricky there, but yeah. When you stack them. Okay. So make sure to check out the drink spotter XL. Of course we still sell them the OG drink spotter along with the drink spotter light. So we pertinently are now have a drink spotter for every possible one of

your needs. For most occasions. Yeah. Okay. All right. What thing do we want to talk about? We do have at least 10. Okay. All right. What thing do we want to talk about? We do have at least 10 different things. We do.

You know, you gave us a cliffhanger last week and said you had a coffee hot take, and I still don't know what this hot take is. Well, luckily we let this hot take cool down for about a week. So everyone knows I do not want to be bothered until i've had my morning coffee of course yes you know i mean it's not that actually reminds me i had to go take some i have a client that that produces like items they make uh like printed items and engraving and stuff and i was going to send you these pictures, Tanner. I had to go take some pictures of sample items for them. I'm just looking at it right now.

This mug. Are you ready for this? These might be like your new mantras going forward. Are you ready? Oh, how am I going to see it? Are you pulling it up on something? No, I'm just going to read it to you. You'll just have to envision.

I just pictured it. Okay, this mug says, I don't need an inspirational quote. I need coffee. So there's mug says, I don't need an inspirational quote. I need coffee. So there's one for you. They get me. And then the next one here. Kisses are like coffee.

I need them every day. I don't know how I feel about that one as much. A little sweeter. A little on the sweeter side. I want my coffee takes to be a little angrier than that. I want people to be like, I'm scared to approach this man. Has he had his coffee or not?

I'm not taking a chance. I don't know if he's had his coffee yet. I'm just going to stay away. The other one they're more afraid of. I don't know if I'm going to get smothered in love and coffee at the same time. It's just too much. Too much affection. I don't want people to feel good about my coffee meme hot take stuff like that. I don't want people to feel good about my coffee meme hot take stuff like that. I want them to feel concerned.

Like, is this person this person doesn't need coffee. They need counseling. It's not coffee that he should be so worried about. He needs help. He's certifiedly insane. This person has a lot of demons that coffee won't fix. like a morning cup of coffee

is he's beyond that that's not what's gonna help him at this point okay so i am a bit of a coffee drinker i'm not saying i'm the world's foremost coffee drinker i'm certainly not an expert on coffee um not at all i'm not even i'm not a i drink coffee like almost every day but i'm not a connoisseur i would say uh my wife more so is and i i like the things that she makes but i'm not really the maker of the coffee i'm the drinker of the coffee and i kind of almost like it all for the moment you know like i like trying different ones and stuff but i couldn't tell you back like i couldn't eloquently explain what I like and dislike because I'm just kind of saw good.

That's what I'd say. Saw good. So that was my hot take. It's quite the exclamation point on the end of that one. No. So here's what I'm going to say about coffee. This is my coffee hot take coffee does not need to be so damn hot oh yeah i when i have a cup a cup of coffee i like to be able to

drink the cup of coffee and when it's so hot that it burns my tongue that is not the experience that i want when i'm drinking coffee why does it need to be so hot? And I don't need to pour it. I don't want to let it cool for 10 minutes before I drink it. I want to pour, like when I go to pour the cup of coffee, that's when I would like to start drinking the cup of coffee. Also, when I drink the coffee, I'm usually drinking it for a purpose of like, I want the stimulant to wake up and talk to the world. Yeah. I want the caffeine stimulant that's hiding in the black bubbles down there. And, um, I don't want to be able to only take like for 10 minutes, I don't want to only be able to take these safe, tiny little sips of

where I'm like, ah, okay. Ouch. That kind of hurts. So. And then it seems like so many of the containers that you put the coffee in are geared towards holding the heat for so long. I'm like, why do you need it hotter longer? Any of those Yeti cups, all that stuff, you have to keep the lid off until it's at an acceptable temperature. And that's when you decide to lock it in.

You can't lock it in at the height of the temp there. It's too much. That's, and I know, I call that a hot take because I'm assuming a lot of people think differently about that for some reason. Do they though? Do they? I don't know.

I sort of just assumed coffee was super, super hot for when people were taking their time with it so that, yeah, maybe the first couple of minutes are basically not doable but then after that you have a little bit longer window than if it was just slightly cooler in the beginning that was my guess but maybe i'm giving that's not how i want to enjoy my coffee experience though like i want to be able to i don't want it to be cold unless it's a cold brew intentionally i suppose but like i and it it can still be warm like it still could be kind of hot but it's almost always

too hot to begin with I almost always I find gas stations are the biggest offender of the overly hot coffee in my opinion yeah I can tolerate it most places right off the bat but gas stations really have that crank to 11 and then when you're in the car trying to do it and it's just bumping and it's you can't do it. It's like, ah, great. Like it's burning my mouth. Awesome. It's also like my, our coffee, our crafts out where I work, you know, our brewed coffee there. It's that way too.

And I drink coffee a lot of times before I go to the, you know, if I work out over noon and I'll do coffee. And if I'm busy, I don't have like i'll i won't get to the coffee pot like 15 minutes before i want to drink it you know i'll get there oh yeah like 30 seconds before i'd like to do it so you can't be slamming it right and sometimes i will like when i'm on when i literally do not have the time i will put a ice cube or two in there because i'm like i need to be able to drink. Like a hot little bowl of soup for your little mouth. Yes. So why is it so hot though?

Like, does it need to be like, does it in order for it to be made? Does it have to be that hot? I don't think it has to be that hot. I mean, you can make coffee with no temperature, you know,

it can just, just sit and soak in it. I don't know if they're like, if the heat makes it work better though, makes it release better. I have no idea. I don't know if they're like if the heat makes it work better though makes it release better i i have no idea i don't know i just i kind of just assumed the the heat plates just cranked up to the hottest they could get them and some have right bigger heat plates than the other yeah so how do you feel about that like do you think that's a oh i think that's a totally fair thing it's it's just yeah too and you can't taste it anyways when it's too hot doesn't

taste like anything it's just scalding hot right so i'm in favor of that but what is your acceptable window when it starts coming down in temp where you're like nope this is not an acceptable temperature to drink oh i'll throw it down when it's almost a room okay i will if i've if i've filled my cup of coffee rarely have i ever dumped any coffee. I will. So I do the same thing. Not that I chug it, but if I get a cup of coffee in the morning,

I start working away. I might be sipping on it. I get in the zone and all of a sudden I realized I have a half a cup of coffee. That's totally room temperature. Like it has no temp. I will still continue to sip away on that thing. Like it doesn't. There's a lot of people that once that gets cool enough,

they can't touch it no I will admit that it is not as good yeah when it's you know I hot is better and then the closer it gets to room temp the worse it gets and then as soon as it starts going below room temp it starts getting better again because now you're entering the cold zone

which is kind of a funny thought that it's like no it's just in the middle where people don't like it. Yeah. Just those middle temperatures that are a little bit sketchy. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I also am not, yeah, I don't, I don't know. I guess I just want that to stop.

Like, that's my petition for people is, like, stop making the coffee so damn hot. I think that's fair. You might have a. Some mugs are, like, specifically engineered so that, like, it doesn't release any heat. Yeah, those mugs are too annoying because you've got to go lidless. You've got to go topless on those bad boys to cool them off. That's my hot take, coffee hot take.

That was hot. That was a hot one. Yeah, maybe it's a cold take. I don't know. A lot of plays on words with that hot take. All right. Oh, well, what about a can? You got a can over there?

Yeah, I do. I already spilled the beans on it here. Oh, you didn't open it yet, though. No, but I am now. Okay. What do you got then? A little Waterloo Blackberry Lemonade. I feel like I've had these for a year i just can't get through them the twins you know i still got them twins um i got something a little bit different here a little bit of something something Whole Foods grapefruit sparkling water.

Wow, fancy over there. Yeah. Best served chilled, it says. Non-BPA lining, of course. Thank you, Whole Foods. Best served scalding hot. Yeah. Grapefruit sparkling water, non-GMO verified.

Thank you, Whole Foods. Pretty ritzy over here drinking from the Whole Foods can. That's that Primo stuff. Yeah. Prices of no object in this household apparently. I don't even know where this came from. Well it came from Whole Foods is where it came from. Well there is no Whole Foods. Like where is the Whole Foods?

Probably Minneapolis. It's just a short five hour drive away. It's the nearest Whole Foods. That's good. It packs a wallop. That is drive away is the nearest Whole Foods. Ooh, that's good. It packs a wallop. That is good. Let me try that again. Got me feeling all jealous over here with my lowly Waterloo.

Oh, yeah. That's a good sparkling water. I'm going to give the Grapefruit Whole Foods a four. Wow. Okay. That's tasty. So it contends with the best of four out of five jd power and associates awards yeah that's good that might that's better than a

pomple mousse wow okay you got me uh i got the bar set high i'll have to look for one of those yeah that's uh i guess we got to go to spend our spend our retirement at whole food so you can probably get a few sparkling waters am i right people it's expensive there oh yeah here okay got that can in us we got that you know we got that can in us okay what do we got alico bar sack segment slider marketplace deal of the week home gym updates the maestro what do you want to tackle maybe do you want to do before everyone leaves do you want to hop in on the hottest new game on the massonomics podcast is that home or is that uh marketplace deal of the week that is the marketplace deal of the week

and i don't know i'm introducing the rules to you for the first time here tan yeah i know this is going to become this game become maybe a recurring segment. At the very least, it'll be a segment that comes and goes as it pleases. And just like the Instagram best comment of the week, this might not be the deal of the week. This just might be the most noteworthy item of the week that you find scourging through Facebook Marketplace. Yes, the deal of the week.

And this one, if you're a massonomics discord member you get the added benefit of screenshots will appear in the discord for you to join in on this uh if there's something noteworthy to be shared so tanner in future weeks you may have items to share with me as you're doing your digging and spelunking across the deeper depths of the marketplace but because i could. But because I caught you off guard this week, I got a couple things here for you. All right. It's possible I could have seen some of them even myself.

You could have. You could have. So first one, this is actual real deal, I think. A decent deal here. So this is like the deal of the week. I think this is an actual deal because that is what I've learned very quickly on Marketplace is how god-awful people are at pricing items.

A lot of people price things within $10 of new. So if it's a $400 item new, it is used and beat to shit, and it's listed for $390. Even if it's not beat to shit, a lot of times I'm like, sorry, that's not the used price. I'll buy the new one for the i don't get where just know that i'm getting new if this is a holdover from covid times or people thinking this stuff is highly highly coveted and desirable and hard to get but i i mean we talked about this order it from the manufacturer have it here in five days and pay like 40 more dollars than what you're off it'd

be worth a 50 premium versus your like shitty used one you have like and i'm not out anytime stranger and it'd be different if this stuff was just really hard to come by but it's not hard to come by anymore you can get it it's in stock you can get it you can have it in a week just like you said so with that looking through here though i did see in minneapolis somebody had an elico open deadlift trap bar. Do you know what bar I'm talking about? The Alico open deadlift trap bar. That's an expensive bar.

Yes. The retail here. Let me get you the retail. The retail on it is, I should have got this going. Alico trap bar, $970. Plus shipping, I suppose. Yep, and then you add in shipping. I'm sure that's over $1,000 on that thing.

Someone has one for sale in Minneapolis. Would you like to guess a price, Tanner? Is it $500? You're very, very close. Yeah, $500 I think is a good price for that. Because this is also, a lot of people don't factor in that some of this stuff is a niche product. Like the actual market for it is so small. Right, right.

Yeah, $475? It's $525. Okay, $525 was my other guess of $25. So that's $525 and they'll take $500. They would definitely take $500 because they've already had it listed for $650 and there's a cross through that and it says $ $25. So that's five 25 and they'll take 500. They would definitely take 500 because they've already had it listed for six 50 and there's a cross through that and it says five 25. So, uh, God, if I was a little bit more in the market for an open, for a trap bar, that would be really, I'm not even really in the market for a trap bar. And that one even piqued my interest

a little bit, but see that person is pricing it at what it should, you know, what we were talking about before is someone will have that and they'll have a price for 900 and be like well it's 975 plus shipping on the website i'm like yeah yours is used that's not how it works and also i don't think uh in the secondhand gym market shipping is not you don't get to factor that in. Like, no, I paid $200 for shipping. Well, that sucks. But like, that doesn't,

that's just, that's secondhand. You're eating that cost. That is your problem for buying that. Yeah. You don't get to pass that on to the next guy. Yes. Okay.

So that's the actual, that's the actual deal. But now are you ready for the noteworthy item? So this is the deal. This is the deal of the week. Okay. I also think those trap bars, they had, they kind of had their moment in the sun. They did.

I actually do think they, you know, we have the Kabuki one. And it's really nice. It is really nice. The open trap bar was. They just got, like, really popular for where a lot of companies were starting to make them, and people were buying them all the time, and now I don't hear as much about it. I mean, I'm glad we have one. So I'm not saying they're, like like a fad that necessarily went away,

but it seems like there was a wave a little bit. Yeah, I don't know. And I don't know had that product existed before or was it someone had came out with that and everyone's like, yes, that's a great idea. We all need to do it. Yeah, right. Also, I did see someone had an eight through 70 pound dumbbell set

with most of them, a few missing in there with a rack for $600 in Minneapolis. And I hope that was a pretty damn good deal too. Yeah. Hex dumbbells, so the best, but right. If I was really pursuing the dumbbell thing harder, that would be a good place to start. All right. Now this next one, this one caught my eye because I was typing in Aliko and some interesting things were popping up. So we have an Aliko competition bumper, full plate set, full bumper set. And the notes, it says used good. Eliko Competition bumper plate set for sale. I have six total sets to sell, which immediately, wow, this guy has six full sets of these things.

A set comes with a pair of 25 kilos, a pair of 20 kilos, 15 kilo and 10 kilo set. Amazing shape, barely used, best bumpers in the world and at a fraction of the retail cost. Okay? Okay. Would you like to guess a price? Uh, $1,000 a set. So once again, that is a very good guess, Tanner.

I just posted in the Discord. I'm trying to guess something. I want you to look at the screenshot, though, because there's something very noteworthy about this screenshot. So I just posted in the Discord. Everyone in there is going to see it first. I might have to zoom in, read the fine print in there. I'm not sure how clean that shows up.

Let's see. Um. Ha ha. Ah. shows up um oh yeah i see who's selling these so i found found an eliko bumper set being sold by none other than the fourth pillar himself. Yeah. Pillar four. So I did find Coop. Coop is offloading some Eliko sets down in Missouri. Yeah, so that's like over three bucks a pound. And maybe that's a good, I'm sure those are expensive.

You'd have to really want those, I guess, though. You know. The market for those, again, that's. It's not that much weight you're getting there for... No, it's really not. 300 pounds. Mm-mm. I mean, for Coop, I'm sure it was more than enough. For whatever reason, he has, what does it say?

Six sets of them? Even for a review company, that's a lot of sets of those, isn't it? Yeah. Maybe Aliko just keeps sending them to him. I don't know. I'm not really sure. I'm sure if you watch his YouTube channel, you can get insight into it. It probably is.

But I've never, I never look at, I basically never pay attention to the name of the people that are selling the items. And that one just stuck out to me because I'm like, who on earth has six sets of these things? And I looked down at the name and it says Cooper Mitchell. I had to do a double surprise. Your reach. It spanned. Well,

I was just typing in Missouri. Cause I wanted to see what existed for illegal out there. So I typed in 500 miles of Sioux falls. And then even then, when you say 500 miles, it starts to expand it out a little more, but it actually, it might be within 500 miles.

It's not super far, but... So I thought that was interesting. And then one other thing came up. So going through, because I'm typing in Illico stuff just to see what's out there. And somehow I land on their website when I'm checking prices. Did you know that Illico has a wooden 28 millimeter technique bar on their website for sale you mean a broomstick yes exactly they sell a broomstick for uh do you want to guess or do you want me to just tell you i let me throw out a guess it does have this broomstick does

have a notch out you know where the where the rings are it is notched out where the rings are so you can really practice and then the elico name is engraved into the middle of it all right 150 dollars it's not that bad actually 50 dollars 50 okay 50 is actually okay i think i mean that's insane still but like 50 like i mean if you to sell anything, you have to sell it. I understand like for money. Right. Right. But like it is 20 millimeter piece of wood with ring marks on it and their name.

$50 isn't terrible. I was really hoping when I clicked the pictures, it would be engraved or a knurled wood. That would have been really cool. No knurling on this wood though. Okay. Okay. All right. Well, 50, that's not insane okay i mean kind of yeah

though i mean yeah it's a little bit insane but like i was just expecting far more insanity uh-huh okay so those were our uh marketplace deals of the week i love that new segment so now one of our fastest growing segments it is one of our fast growing segments next week i'm but i'm sure you'll be coming across something that is noteworthy, good or bad. You can send the message along. All right. Excellent. I like that.

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Okay. Maybe you... Or wait. Yeah, maybe you should read an ad. Okay. Then I can do supporting members. Okay. Today's show is also brought to you by Barefoot Shoes.

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The boot shoe. The boot shoe bootie. I forgot to really dive into that. I've been meaning to check it out on the site. I don't know that much about it yet. They've been a little cryptic about it. they haven't really let a ton of information out but right i don't even know how you say that is it the ursa day u-r-s-i-d-a-e i'll have to ask them we'll have to get our inside guys to give us some more information on this but i think they're going

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So this thing looks pretty bomb. I'm very interested in this. If you are a fan of barefoot shoes, make sure you hop over to their Instagram. First of all, it's on there. And I think it's on there and uh i think it's for pre-order on their website i'm trying to see here let's see uh no don't see yet maybe it's not for pre-order anyways oh yeah here we go here we go it is

oh my god i keep clicking the wrong button i got I just got to get to the bottom of this quick. Well, and also, it sounds like they did some inventory, checking inventory numbers and moving things around and stuff. And on the Ersonomics, the Massonomics Barefoot Collab Shoe, they did dig up a couple extras in some like normal sizes because all that was left, I think it was like size three and four and some odds and end pieces. And there is a few more. So make sure to check out the Ersonomics and see what size is available. If you never got one the first time, there may be a chance you could snag one still. Yes. I mean, there's not many. I'm not

talking like they found a truckload of 50 of them them but like there's a couple in some common sizes in there yep so if you are in the market for a pair of barefoot shoes for yourself make sure to go to www.barefoot.store use code massonomics and you will save 10 on your next order that's code massonomics at barefoot.store thank you you, Barefoot Shoes. And our guest has arrived, Tanner. Should we pop him on? Yeah, let me start. We'll do supporting members later. Or you got to boot people off. I got to boot people. Okay. Yeah, you can do it quick. Alright. Quick supporting our supporting

members segment. This is another one of my personal favorite segments. We do it every week. We have a group of supporting members that choose to support our show. You can do that also if you'd like. Actually, we insist that you do it. Stop whatever you're doing and go support now. Support us! Massanomics.com slash join.

That's where you can find out more information on each of our levels. And get signed up. It's very easy. It's so easy a caveman could do it. And if you get signed up, you get things like access to our exclusive Discord community. It's the only way you get in on that action. There's a special discount code just you get in on that action. Uh, there's a special discount code just for those of you that join. Um, you get early info about our drops. Um, you

just get to be in on the crew. It's kind of a, uh, it's an awesome community that, uh, it's hard to even describe. You just have to be a part of it. And then you'll just, you'll just start to understand it. That's the best way to, and part of that is we give back each week to those that support like this week, we had mostly squat videos. Matt competed at a strong man competition. What was it? He got a cool, I know he got a cool trophy. I don't know if he got first place or what it was, but he had a cool trophy there.

And also a big Murph and big mad cow were both there that he got to hang out with two other crew at the competition that were there to cheer him on. I liked seeing that, a little crew meet up at the competition. Big Dan with the arm tattoos did a bench-only competition. He hit a big 474 bench for Big Arm Tattoo Dan. He's the Dan that has the arm tattoos. And then Big Caden of Western Northeast, South Dakota hit a family PR.

They, with the birth of their new son. So congratulations, officer Johnson, officer, big Johnson with a big new family PR. And then this week you can check out a belt fed big Chris from big belt fed on the unpaid and underrated podcast go give uh big chris a

listen and hear more about his process on how he makes belts and everything else about him thank you supporting members we've got big ken cooper here on the mass dynamics podcast we're excited to get you on if anyone doesn't know who that is you might also know him by Gingercules. Is that how you would pronounce that? That is the canonical pronunciation, yes. Good job. Excellent. Been practicing that all day. Tanner is known for having the proper canonical pronunciation of words. I can't even pronounce canonical, so if that tells you anything. We got several things to talk to you about actually uh the more we dug the more interesting stuff we found and oh boy sometimes

that's not true for every guest believe it or not you know we've we've had people where we had to dig really hard to dig and just keep hitting roadblocks but we kept finding more strings to pull so yeah so it's going to be exciting. The first one I want to talk to you about is what's your take on the Roman forearm handshake? How do you feel about the Roman forearm handshake? I feel like if we were in person, we could do a good Roman forearm handshake right now. So I played water polo way back in the day in high school, and my friends and I watched Gladiator, of course.

As one does. Yeah, as many of us did, I'm sure. And we thought that that handshake was the coolest thing in existence at the time. And evidently, I haven't grown up since then. And I've decided to continue the legacy of my teammates after doubling in size since my water polo days. And the best part about it is it's a very convenient way to do a forearm size check. Oh, you're sizing people up as you go. That's good.

Well, the history of it is that it was used to check for if you're hiding a dagger or a weapon up in your sleeves. So the modern version is you're just checking the forearm size since I haven't worn long sleeves in a very long time. They don't they don't do me very well. I do enjoy the I can't say that I've experienced that in a long time. And I was like, oh, yeah, I wish I had that in my repertoire. Like I wish I did that. Uh, you have to be quick about it though,

because like someone goes for a handshake and you have to make sure to like get past them before you get caught in the hand. Oh yeah. You have to be decisive for sure. Cause are, are you familiar with the, with the, uh,

the saying of someone saying, throw one in the old vice. Have you, have you heard that before? I haven't heard that one before. No. Yeah. You say throw up, toss one in the old vice have you have you heard that before i haven't heard that one before no yeah you say throw toss one in the old vice you clamp it down okay like your hand is so strong that it's a vice grip oh i see yeah you try that sometime it's also a great icebreaker nice add it to the repertoire yeah the handshake repertoire yeah you say you can tell a lot by someone's first

initial handshake and you can really tell a lot when they hit you with the the roman form handshake you're like wow this guy's playing on a whole like we were here we were doing checkers and this guy's doing chess on us i love that um so we did get to hang out with you talk to you a little bit at the Arnold this year. Great times. Yeah, you lifted in the cage. Was that your first time in the cage or not? My first time in the cage.

What'd you do? I did 2100 SPD back-to-back, one after the other, and I doubled the deadlift at the end, because how could you not when there's a bunch of people yelling at you, right? When in Rome. there you go yeah would you do like a 700 squat 550 bench 850 deadlift or something does that add up that's right that was my first uh 700 plus squats since uh my small knee incident a couple years ago so what better place to hit it than there? Yeah. We, we also, uh, want to ask you about that a little bit specifically

to about the, the, uh, knee injuries that you have, but, um, anything else about the cage though? Like, was that, um, like, was that a bucket list sort of thing? I think for a lot of people that have been lifting and, you know, been serious about powerlifting and in the space for a long time, I assume the answer is yes. Right. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, uh, growing up seeing, uh, I remember distinctly Dan's 900 pound beltless deadlift and was like, just the hype, all the other lifters I've seen over the years. They're just, just the energy. I thought it would be so cool to get to experience that one day. And, uh, the funny thing is having done it, I basically blacked out and had like an out of body experience during the whole event. Cause I was, I've never been that hyped lifting before. And that's saying something after doing it for, you know, what, 15 years. So, uh, I'm

really glad there's video and pictures of it because honestly, like, it's hard to remember exactly what was going on. I was just, you know, people yelling in my ear, people screaming. Someone started taking a chair and slamming it on the ground to get the crowd hyped. It was wild. friends actually came out um i have a group of friends uh i normally play dungeons and dragons with uh right at this time actually we normally do thursdays but uh the dungeon master was busy this week so i had a availability so so we didn't we didn't throw anyone off their game then nope nope i am uh uh free free from dungeons and dragons for once do you have we didn't need the we didn't need the d&D people after us again. Yeah. Good luck. Do you have like a,

because I've never played D&D, do you have like a standard character you play as every week? So with my group, I kind of begrudgingly got into it because originally I would play some online games with them and they started playing Dungeons and Dragons.

So I really was, I was playing Rocket League at the time, actually. And I really wanted to play Rocket League with the boys. And they're like, oh, we're doing Dungeons and Dragons this week. So you got it. You got to try it. And I was like, I just want a game, man. That's too much of a of a commitment. But I made a joke character for that campaign. It was Stump.

He was a half orc barbarian who accidentally gnawed off one of his arms. And I kind of made him as like a joke character because I figured I wouldn't be doing it for very long, but ended up falling in love with that character, falling in love with Dungeons and Dragons. That was like five years ago. Some of our campaigns have been two years long. So first I had the barbarian Stomp, and then I realized I basically get to play a Barbarian in real life. So I tried doing a Druid for my next one, a Fungal Druid, and right now I'm actually playing a Bard,

a little autonome, like, mechanical steampunk clockwork Bard named Klangus that has a giant gong on his back. Okay. So, yeah. it's particularly interested in the bard uh yeah with a tight resemblance to my last name how do you is that a b is that a b-a-r-d bard or that's that's correct yeah he's uh so is it a poet is he a poet kind of um okay the uh class description uh specifically he's a college of eloquence bard. So he's very kind of silver-tongued, has an ability to advantage on charming and persuasion. And his story is basically that a gnomish tinkerer made a mechanical gnome mostly as a joke to piss off one of his neighbors.

That's what the giant gong is about he would just clang this giant gong to anger the neighbors and then eventually one of those clangs hit just right and like hit some of the cogs in his head and gave him this uh sentience so like you know you clang therefore you are in his case and And the campaign has been him with a group of adventurers learning to what it means to exist and also save the world at the same time. So is it standard affair to have a well thought out origin story

or is that the exception here? It all depends on the group that you're playing with. My first one was certainly, oh, i have 10 minutes to do this i'm just gonna make the most biggest joke of it as possible but um the really the best part of it to me is the emergent storytelling that comes out like um the way that the plot develops and the characters interact they sort of start to take on a life of their own or develop through their own actions and that's

how they become deeper as characters and grow to have some kind of development and learning along the way it's uh been a lot more than i could have ever expected getting into it uh at the beginning but i guess that's what good friends are about right they give you that that little push to do something different and uh discover something that you actually really enjoy and take something away from and the next thing you know we back up on just running through the ages of time like as far as dungeons and dragon like to take a little bit more of a 10 000 foot view because i don't under i don't know very much about it yeah yeah so what are we talking here is this an online game because that's never what i pictured dungeons and

dragons right you have you're in person correct like or are you not so we're in person about once or twice a year maybe these are friends that i originally made in college um uh it was actually one of my friends from that water polo team see it all it all ties back together that we developed the handshake with right um he ended up going to a different college on the crew team and a bunch of the guys are friends he made uh rowing and uh we started playing uh online games together and then um nowadays we play online um we usually use a discord and have like everybody on face cam and then we have these like virtual tabletops where there's like a map and character sheets and the dungeon master kind of controls what you can see and your little characters you move around

but nothing beats getting to meet up with the boys and have a good in-person session so but it's pretty the gameplay is still like it you don't it's not like particularly lagging by doing it online it's not like super inferior just missing maybe some of the actual in-person interactions but it still all is like controlled by the dungeon master right like isn't he the one directing it like you're not like doing anything with a video game controller or anything right it's just right so the best way i describe it to people is it's basically a collaborative storytelling experience where the dungeon master gives uh specific rules and plays all the non-player characters and gives you sort of a sandbox in which you can interact with your friends as their characters and uh think of it like playing a video game except it's the most open-ended video

game that you've ever played as long as your dungeon master is uh good and willing to go along with it you know you have the general call to adventure like the main quest pulling you somewhere but you know inevitably we get you know wrapped up finding some random shop or inn in town or going to the casino where i got uh my bard got kicked out of because he didn't understand the concept of what these rules were and tried to help one of his friends on a gambling game and ended up getting involved with the casino pit boss and a whole cult related to that. It was a whole thing, but it was a ton of fun. All right. Well, that's good.

I feel like I'm more intrigued probably about Dungeons and Dragons than I ever have before. That's like, I now officially more know more about it now than I, I don't think I've ever understood anything. Tommy, you sounded like you have a little bit. Yeah. I mean, I get that. I have some friends that do it too online like that. And so I get the general concepts of it. And then I used to read, I didn't read like Dungeons and Dragons books, but I read books that were like set and kind of altered our parallel universes, you could say. So I'm somewhat familiar with the, some of like set and kind of altered our parallel universe as you could say so i'm somewhat familiar with the some of the lore and culture of how those things work okay um i gotta mention one other thing for someone that's listening and possibly maybe they they

hadn't followed you on uh instagram yet until they're listening to this big ken is enormous you are are you six four three hundred and some odd pounds correct uh yeah i'm about uh i think i weighed in at 323 today i'm currently loading water to uh weigh in under a svelte 308 for my competition on sunday weighing in on saturday so so obviously you can just hear six'4", 320 pounds, and you know that that's big. But also your body fat percentage, you know, 6'4", 300 could look like a lot of different things. Your body fat percentage is low.

Like I suppose it's not always the same, but it is not high. Like you're like what? Like, I don't know, like 10% body fat or less or I don't even know. The last DEXA scan I got, I think it was about six months ago or so. I was, uh, three 11 at 8.8%. Right. So like, even at the, like what I, uh, no marveled at this year, even at the Arnold, you know, the Arnold is full full of of the freaks of the

you know just the freaks of the freaks all these people and you still dramatically stand out in a crowd uh you know i'm not i just want to make sure because i think it gets lost sometimes like if someone just or even if someone does follow you on instagram but has never met you in person might not understand that you're six four you, you know, that like, if you just saw you lifting, they might think you're five 11, uh, which would be tall for a power lifter on average typically. Um, so I, I think, uh, it's worth noting, like you're, you are freakishly big. It's like, well, thank you. Worth noting. And what, where I go with that and what i want to talk about you had a post talking about i think it was you meeting big z oh yes and he even mentioned

that you're big so and i wondered um did you get that a lot from like was it i assume he would be towards the top of the list but what did you get some cool reactions from people like uh big z and stuff at the arnold you know oh yeah um mitchell hooper was a was a cool one too because he's approximately same uh oh that picture of you guys together it just looks like oh just two guys hanging you can't tell how big you guys are because you're both enormous right yeah and honestly it was kind of eye-opening to me in a way i mean i know all of uh people that have lifted can identify with the uh you know another five pounds another whether it's on the bar or on the body and i've been at this grind for so long sometimes i forget like oh i don't actually see myself next to people that i you

know look up to is like the biggest and strongest in the world it's like oh i guess i have uh put on some size after all it's easy to always fool yourself looking at the mirror you're like yeah you know i know another inch on my biceps maybe then i would make it someday and it's like oh well you know you gotta be happy with where you are too the forever forever small feeling or you know like there is nothing that doesn't make yourself look small in the mirror. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. What was the time you, we had to kind of talk to a follow-up question to that. And now I'm kind of what,

if there was anyone that had marveled at you, your size there, but there was something else. And now I'm kind of drawing a blank. I forgot how to, I like that question. We were seeing, seeing grizzly in person was pretty cool. He was, he was sitting for most of his uh greetings but he got up to me and gave me i gave him the same uh classic uh roman handshake and right brought him in he was he was that had to have got a smile out of him i would think oh yeah he looked he looked he looked really happy yeah it was it was it was cool he's such a such an icon I remember, too, what I was kind of thinking,

my line of thought on that is, so at 6'4", 315, 20, 25 pounds as a powerlifter and being lean at the same time, like I was just trying to think, what other powerlifters are there that fit even close to that, are around that build? Like at your height in particular you know it's it's just rare i just couldn't think of anyone like when we were talking about it i'm

like i don't know what the comparison would be on that like is there anyone that uh you've looked at or that was like yeah this is a tall dude that we have a similar build is there anyone out there with a similar build to you in power lifting yeah um not really at my at my height that i that that i know of um i know that uh nicholas dupree's is uh actually a little bit leaner than i am and also very large he's not quite as tall but that is a uh incredible to be that amount of mass and also that that lean so there aren't too many people out there but he sticks out to me as one of those guys that's somehow in bodybuilding shape while also being one of the strongest people in the world right right something i got to bring up and ask you about i don't do you do you still have do you have a home gym i haven't seen any videos i do yes okay so is that the rave cave yes yes

with all the okay ridiculous rgb lights yeah like can you explain the lighting and okay for someone that hasn't seen this like are you do you train there very often or do you like do you enjoy enjoy going out to the gym more um so now that i'm training uh specifically for for meat prep um i've definitely been going out to gyms more and I'm lucky to have a lot of really nice gyms near me that i've uh you know growing up is playing a lot of video games and being a big nerd i've always liked uh rgb lights so i went a little wild with the uh nanoleaf panels and uh it's really wild there's a lot of them on there a decent bit of light set up before in a gym but this is like the craziest i've seen like there's a lot of like people that have like their their gaming room that's over the top and it still doesn't have that many lights in it yeah it's uh definitely got a little out of control but once i

started i was like oh you know i just gotta add a few more here to cover this side of the platform and then if i do deadlifts here and then next thing you know uh ceiling's pretty much covered and you know get the music pumping and put them in the sound reactive mode. And it's a lot of fun seeing them go to the beat of the music. So if you have them going, is that they go in the entire session or is it just for like some top sets where those are on? They're usually on the entire session, but I usually have them in the more ambient modes until it's time to get to the top. And also part of my mental justification for my silly idea was along the lines of, if you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball. If I can bench press 500 pounds while there's a dismal strobe light coming up in my eyes,

I can meet day, you know, whatever goes on, it'll be fine. Is it distract? I mean, so there would be a level of distraction because that was my first thought is like, I'm not sure if I could lift with that going on because that is insane. It depends on how obnoxious of a setting I put it on. There are definitely some that are straight up like strobe lights and pump up the heavy EDM bass tracks and it gets uh it is you know it is good to know though that if you're ever in vegas like at a david get a

residency and he needs someone to come on stage and bench that you could be there at a moment's notice and just not miss there you go always uh always practice and be prepared yeah i like the rave cave and also i mean if i'm being frank it makes for good instagram posts too beholden to the algorithm what can you do it must be fed yeah uh yeah um you mentioned you're an engineer you're also an uh mit graduate correct yes i think my little banner. Oh yeah, we can even see it back there. So was that, I don't know a ton about MIT, but was that undergrad, graduate or both or what? Undergrad.

I got degrees in computer science and electrical engineering and that was quite enough for me for the time being. It was honestly very challenging and humbling, but that was exactly what I needed to spur some growth in how I approached things. Basically, I got away with some not so great habits and needed to learn to rely on the help of others a lot more to make it through there successfully. And I made a lot of connections. I'm very grateful for to this day that I still keep in touch with. So it was a really good experience. So MIT, very, very noteworthy, very prestigious school. Was that always a goal of yours or was that something that as high school

went on, you thought, ah, maybe there's a chance of this here? You know, it's, it's kind of like working up to a 900 pound plus deadlift for me where me, where it's like, do you want to get there eventually? Yeah, but if you overfocus on that, you miss all the steps along the way. So it's a long time ago, but I had parents that had high expectations of me, and I just tried to do what I could each step of the way. And as it seemed like more of an opportunity, it was really during the college visits that MIT kind of stood out to me among the other colleges of its type. So that's when it attracted me a lot. Basically, the people there seemed to be more interested in talking about what they were doing and the cool things that they got to do versus about themselves compared to some of the other Ivy Leagues and other top tier schools. And that's what kind of attracted me to it.

Basically people didn't take themselves too seriously and weren't afraid to have more fun with what they were doing and that while still working extremely hard, that's kind of walking the walk and not just talking the talk. Yeah. Like, like the Harvard dweebs. Yep. Where was it? So you threw at mit also was that a goal or is that something when you got there that you're like oh i could do this too as long as i'm here um i did want to throw in uh in college what happened was i did water polo and swim team for three years through through high school my high school was very uh centered on water polo

actually it was an aquatic high school southern yeah it was uh we don't have that in uh western northeast south dakota not a lot of water polo teams yeah for uh for southern california we had more people come to the water polo games than our um basketball games and even some more football games it was kind of like our our flagship sport and we took it really seriously we had more people come to the water polo games than our basketball games and even some more football games it was kind of like our our flagship sport and we took it really seriously we had several can be extremely physical too can it oh yes yes i uh um actually had my i was wearing braces at the time you know uh for braces you have those little spikes on them you put the rubber bands on uh somehow uh i got shoulder checked by someone and the spike of the brace went into his shoulder and ripped out my braces against into the flesh of the guy's

shoulder um yeah and uh a few of my other friends lost a few teeth from getting kicked or punched in the water uh it's uh it's pretty physical. But for me, the biggest thing was, that's what really introduced me to lifting. And for that, it was a lot of circuit training and calisthenic stuff. And I was like, Oh, man, this lifting stuff is pretty cool. I remember there was a, I was a freshman, and there was a guy on the team who's a junior, and he was on the preacher curl with like 35s on the easy curl bar. And he's doing some reps with that. And I thought that was the coolest thing. I was like, oh, man, someday I want to be able to move some 35s in the preacher curl like that.

Yeah, I couldn't do it until after I stopped water polo when I got so tired of swimming. I felt like I had that black line on the bottom of the pool burned into my retinas because we'd uh if you were on the water polo team in my school you'd do water polo swim team and also club water polo basically you would be swimming all year just lived in a pool yeah yeah i got kind of tired of it friend convinced me to try track and field drawing he's like oh you're pretty big i was 180 pounds at the time but but pretty tall and big frame and kind of strong. And like, oh, you should try throwing. The shot put, you sound like you could get it pretty far. And tried it, enjoyed it, switched to it. Senior year of high school went from 180 pounds to 220 pounds when I started taking lifting

seriously. And I got into MIT and talked to the track and field team. We're like, yeah, we'll start on the team and worked hard. Eventually, by senior year, I was like 250 pounds, made it to nationals, was All-American in the hammer throw, went to nationals for shot put, discus, hammer throw and weight throw. hammer throw and weight throw. And to this day, I attribute a lot of my really strong core strength to the specific exercises we would do for, for throwing. There's a lot of medicine ball throws. We do GHR twists, holding a 45 pound plate back and forth, weighted sit-ups. That's where I started doing my ab rollouts too, that I can still do at my size. Now there is a guy on the pole vaulting team. Those pole vaulters are super athletic who was like, Oh, you should try doing these ab rollouts with us. And eventually started doing those. And the secret to doing those at, uh, 320 pounds is do them when you're a hundred pounds lighter

and then keep doing them. You don't just try the first time when you're 320 pounds. I wouldn't recommend it if you're not trained. It's a serious amount of strain. Also, I found that for me, the point to be able to do a decent standing rep, I had to be able to do about 40 to 50 kneeling without a problem. 40 to 50 consecutive kneeling. To get to one good standing one yeah that's

that's that's what i found because it's so much harder with the i'm sure depending on your limb lengths i have pretty long long arms so that makes it when i stretch out even more it's a lot of torque but yeah it's a great exercise highly highly recommend i remember seeing uh constantine constantinobs doing those with a few plates on his back back in the day. Yeah, of course. One day. So when you go to MIT, then get on the track team, is that when you first get introduced to like a regimented training program of lifting in the gym, actually?

Is that the first time in your life you're doing that? It was actually in in high school i was really lucky to have a track and field coach who uh trained with the american record holder in the hammer throw and had like serious so you had something competitive experience so no he knew about programming periodization he was he was a really good coach i so yeah he got me started pretty early. So, yeah, I actually almost got kicked off the MIT track and field team for doing extra workouts outside of practice against coaches' wishes because I wanted so awfully similar for me and people that have never lifted before you know yeah individuality right but uh you know it worked out worked out our differences yeah so going through mit and then becoming an engineer are you an electrical engineer or um the majority of what i do is uh automations engineering uh factory automation um a lot of

industrial control stuff um we do uh what else like hvac control systems a lot of vending machines um we do a uh beer chiller system to basically the the controls and the programs that run those controls to keep the fancy barbeer systems cold lots of lots of stuff but yeah so my point there you have a real job when you do real things you probably have real stress there and stuff like that just that uh and i'm uh that's not alone unique for say a high level power lifter but it seems like if you took a poll there's, it might not be the most common, uh, I would guess out of the group. Do you feel like, does that interfere at all from like a stress or time standpoint, or do you, are you able to manage that? All right.

Uh, it definitely has its challenges. Um, at times I'm sure that if I worked a more, uh, physically demanding job that would also have its challenges in different ways. Although for me, making sure that I have an adjustable seated standing desk and making sure I don't sit all day so my hips get super tight before I go to the gym after work and try through that all my life, engineering is very, there's a lot of systems, a lot of variables you have to keep in mind. a way obviously you're thinking about your your percentages and your progressions and everything but on a smaller scale in a way nothing is as beautifully simple as lifting can be when you take a weight and you either pick it up or you don't and that's being able to be present in something as simple but fulfilling as that gives me a really nice mental break from needing to juggle complicated systems and the even more complicated part, keeping customers and, you know, keeping teams of engineers happy, depending on how we're working with different people. So it does provide challenges, but just like anything in life, if you look at it the right way, it provides opportunities as well. And I try to work it out in

a way that matches my requirements and my demands in a way that allows me to do the best that I can in both worlds. Do you go into an office for work or do you work remotely? I go into an office. Yeah. We mostly work with a lot of, I do a lot of computer programming, but a lot of the stuff that I program is, uh, has to be connected to sensors and physical boards. And a lot of that for the most part needs to be done, done in person. So do you ever get office pizza parties? Um, not as often as we, not as often as we, as we should, I'm going to bring that up with, uh, with management HR HR, at least.

Yeah, yeah. That should be. Okay. Switching gears slightly here. We're from South Dakota, where you might have found Mount Rushmore if you were coming to visit. So we like to play a little Mount Rushmore game. And what we're curious for you is what your Mount Rushmore of gingers would be. If you've got any that stick out to you i don't

know if you can think of four or if anyone comes directly to mind but we'd be curious if you'd have anyone to fill out the mount rushmore of gingers let's see uh first one that comes to mind uh benedict magnuson um because when i got lifting his deadlift, I mean, that 1015 heaviest conventional in a competition to date, that was just the way everything about that video got me so hyped while watching it. It still does. Yeah. It's a sweet video. Yeah. So he definitely comes to mind. Uh, I would say Disney Hercules, uh, also comes to mind as an iconic uh ginger i mean but with my name i guess i'm a little bit biased but uh you know uh iconic ginger presence through the ages i think that a lot of people have seen that's the cartoon hercules right like it didn't

really dawn on me that he he does kind of have red hair there doesn't he yeah yeah yeah it's uh i i i can i think i i would call him a fellow ginger myself actually yeah depending on the art it goes from blonde to just straight up red wow okay yeah never never realized that one all right he's in the club let's see other gingers um you know uh reading was a big part of my life growing up and i had the harry potter series so i got to put ron weasley on i was wondering if he'd make the cut yeah i mean uh being uh i actually spent a long time growing up reading old meat non-fiction books i don't know what really young me was about. I was just like, Oh, I'm going to be a great engineer. I don't have any time for any silly fiction books.

I'm just going to read like how things work and figure out life. But one of the first series that I read and was like, Oh, maybe there is something to this whole, this whole fiction thing. Shortly after reading the novel hatchet back in the day. Oh yeah. Reading in junior high or something yeah i think i liked i like the outdoors a lot so that one was kind of a good bridge between like non-fiction and fiction and then past that yeah the harry potter series really left left an impression so have you ever read any uh harry potter fan fiction

at all uh i i have a weird um a weird habit of sometimes reading really bad fan fiction for fun just because sometimes it's enjoyable to see so i'm sure at some point i must have read okay but have you read manacled i guess specifically what i would want oh it should probably be on your reading list not because i've read it uh my wife is a big reader a very big reader we've talked about it on here many times actually but um it's one that she as of late i think she's read it like three times because she loves it so much manacled uh fan fiction harry potter i've never heard of this either is is it it must be fairly well known then if i think it is pretty well known.

Is it supposed to be funny or is it just good? No, it's dark, actually. It's like a post where Harry Potter ends. I think this picks up slightly. And it's almost like I think the synopsis of it would be, if you know what Handmaid's tale is at all, like, I think Hermione ends up in a handmaid's tale scenario where,

um, who are the bad guys, the blonde kid and, uh, like his dad, like Draco, the mouth. Yeah.

Like they're, they're like the powered families. And I think, uh, she is Malfoy's handmade actually in the story something like that it is dark that's my just from my wife explaining it to me that's not the one you recommend to kids after they finish the series in middle school no probably not okay but yeah ron weasley i guess long way of saying i think that's a great choice

uh but yeah ron weasley i guess long way of saying i think that's a great choice in i i added uh that to my list of uh books manga anime movies uh that i okay that i want to watch and the fact that i have a dedicated note to that in my note-taking system probably says a lot but yes uh so is that three times that's three that's three we need the fourth one he's gonna round it out here uh fourth one i'm gonna go with uh lucille ball oh the classics yeah i mean that's a that's an iconic ginger right right there yeah i i grew up watching some i love luc watching some I Love Lucy because my mom and my aunt were fans. And I mean, there's, you know, got to pay homage to the classics. And as far as icons, I mean, that's an iconic ginger right there.

Wow, Lucy. The candy conveyor. That's the classic, isn't it? That's the one. Yeah, that's the one. I love some good some good physical physical comedy yeah i think that's what i love so much about mr bean as a kid oh he's the he's the master of it he's the best it does not get any better than him fellow electrical engineer is he really oh really

yes rowan rowan atkinson yeah Extremely smart and has that persona. That's completely different. Got it. Got to love it. Although his awkwardness, I can relate to having no engineers in my time. So he's got that done. Yeah. Not to ginger though,

unfortunately. So it doesn't get to make it on to the, but Lucy, that's a good fourth choice, I guess. Notably left off a carrot top, I suppose. Gotta love some good prop comedy. Yeah.

Do you have a meet coming up this weekend, like in two days? Is that right? Sunday, yeah. Okay, on Sunday. So in just three days, yeah. Any number predictions, or is that something that you wouldn't put out there per se? Uh, I don't, I don't play them close to my, uh, close to my heart. I don't, I'm not afraid to say what's going on, uh, for me. Um, so this will be my fifth meet, I believe. And it'll be, if all goes well, my first one that i hit a total pr since my first meet reason being first

meet 21 55 total second meet uh knees took a what did happen because that would be the thing that we haven't covered that i really don't want to hear yeah everyone i mean it it is very noteworthy of understanding what happened yeah yeah um i've been asked a lot about it probably understandably having put the video out there to people to enjoy uh my uh justification for that is oh well if i can come back and uh squat a pr again then you guys can see it and not be too uh grossed out by it um so uh yes uh nothing felt off, no abnormal soreness or anything. I was feeling pretty good. I squatted 733 pounds in meat prep. I think my second attempt at the meat was like 705 or something. Third attempt was feeling good, went for 744, went down and partway up my left quad tendon tore off the bone

and started going down. And the weight pushed me down such that my right patellar tendon tore. There were also, I think, seven ligaments that had pretty severe tears to them. Basically I ended up doing like that, uh, soccer player stretch with like both knees kind of under me, except it was, uh, forced into that position by a lot of weight. Uh, thankfully the, the bar fell, uh, kind of rolled off me and went behind me. So it certainly could have been worse. Uh, and yeah, um, you know, know, I was a little bummed because that was going to be my first meet where I was going to give a 900 pound deadlift to go. That's been a big goal of mine for a long time back then. I pulled 881, 400 kilos in training and it moved pretty easy. So if all went well, we were going to send it and go for 903 for a third but uh wasn't in the cards and that kept me up many

late nights at that hospital ended up spending i want to say close to a month about uh three weeks uh hospital and then rehab center they were great working with me um so you were were you sleeping in the hospital for almost a month then uh three three weeks and change wow yeah that is a long time yeah it was not uh not easy uh at my size i have sleep apnea too so i had a nice uh you know c-pap machine uh not not my own one hooked up to me and uh yeah it was sitting at a hospital is not not easy especially i was getting like a injection overnight or something like the morning they'd come in and flip the lights on at like 4 30 and be like oh gotta take your take your injection like oh yeah here we go again yeah but you know one day at a

time uh came back to it and what year was this when that happened uh that was two and a half years ago so end of 2021 okay and so when that happens tanner also recently went through a catastrophic injury uh to his ankle playing basketball and so i i know tanner a lot of relatable and stuff here yeah you guys are both just war torn over here but uh mentally for you was there was it just was there ever a doubt like was there ever a question of will i do this again or was it like no i will make another shot at this take an attempt at this um i certainly didn't wasn't thinking at the time oh i'm definitely gonna deadlift 900 pounds like i like i wanted to or i'm gonna certainly not squat a pr um i just I wasn't really thinking about

it at the time. I was just sort of thinking, okay, you know, this condition I'm in is pretty tough. What can I do today to do what I can to get a little bit better? And just kept doing that one step at a time, made it back to the gym. And I was doing Larson presses for a while. There's a little funny little video where John Hack is holding. Um, there's a little funny little video where John hack is holding up my legs doing a little, little plank as I'm Larson pressing, uh, I think like four 40 for five or something. Um, and, uh, yeah, just, uh, took it from there. I think my very first, I did, what's my favorite squat. I want to say maybe four to five months after I did a super light squat. It didn't feel great.

Stuck with SSB for a while and worked my way back up. Deadlift started coming back up. I did a ton of stiff leg deads just to start building strength and confidence back. Really high rep stuff to start and uh yeah one year later to the very day is when i pulled my pr of 909 for a deadlift uh at one year that time that is a quick turnaround post from the injury date yep one year from the injury date to the day that's pretty crazy that is and then uh yeah had you had any like your doctors or surgeons that uh that did it like once you're out of the hospital is there any follow-up oh yeah interaction with so were were

they understanding what you do like and that you like a year later that you did that like were they like really how you know where was there any shock on their part or were they like no don't do that we're the best surgeons of all time here. Right, right. I think he was more understanding the most given that he is the team doctor of the Chargers. So he's worked with pretty big guys with big knee injuries that want to get back to what they love. And I guess in their case, what pays the bills too right right i still got to be an engineer but uh um so i think he was more understanding than most but he said to um

you know it's uh normally there's a checkup like a year later but we stopped mine after like i want to say seven or eight months because he said you're already past the point where most people would be after a year so there's not not really a point to, you know, just keep listening to your body. And as my professional advice, I wouldn't advise you to squat heavy again. But, you know, the ideal result of the surgery is that they're as strong as they were before they went last time. But you got to listen to your body and ultimately make the choice that's right for you. And for me, for my squat, um, the biggest thing for that has been reps and doing like five kilogram jumps. That's part of the reason why I,

I hit my first squat PR, um, seven 38.5, uh, two weeks ago from my top squad of this meat prep. Um, that was a, that was a cool feeling. You can imagine all the time that, that, that went into that. Um, that's crazy. Yeah. Cause yeah, seven 33 was my biggest, uh, before then. And, uh, I don't know, I haven't decided yet if I'm going to try 744 again, just to, you know, kind of give it the metaphorical finger or just be like, you know, we're just going to skip over that one and go to 749 next time. I haven't decided. What I have decided for this meet to come back to that question, I'm not going to go over what I hit in training this time, just to give me the extra peace of mind on my on my third squat to

stick with what i've done in training and felt pulled a really big deadlift in training though too then right yeah that was a that was a big pr yeah um the few days before that pr squad i pulled 430 uh 948 for uh my biggest what was my biggest before that i hit uh 9 15 for a pr two weeks before and it moved so easy like oh i gotta go up a lot more than that next time and yeah even that moved uh moved pretty well so that was that was really cool like i said before seeing uh constantinobs was a big uh one of those big guys dead lifting i wanted to be like someday and yeah but then within what he was lifting uh getting real close so if all goes well at this point what what was his best best dead wasn't it like nine nine nine thirty nine oh right okay right 939 he

did a beltless i want to say like 929 and then a belted 939 approximately. Right. He had the built-in belt, right? Like, this is my belt? Yeah, yeah. Those abs, yeah. Must be those abs rollouts. He's on to something. Absolutely. Tommy, what do you think about overrated, underrated? I say let's do it. We'll try anything once. So we do have

this last and final game specially prepared for you. It is the Ken Cooper Ginger Achilles set of overrated, underrated topics. You have your druthers to elaborate as much or as little on each one as you would like. But what you have to understand is that you cannot ride the line. In each one, you have to ultimately decide if each is underrated or overrated. So if you're ready we'll get started on this we got some we got some bangers here um so first one first one overrated

or underrated uh lateral raises or maybe we'll even say heavy lateral raises underrated yeah so like what's a what's like the top set of lateral raises that you've ever done before oh uh 125s for five messy but uh yeah i think my my best ever set i would say was the hundreds for like 14 cleaner than that yeah so where did where did that come pushing those because that's not you don't see guys doing that often that's not a thing right right uh yeah i really love lifting it's shocking probably but uh um when i was in college and before i was on a formal power lifting program i did some pretty objectively stupid things lifting for fun. And they were a lot of fun.

For example, a la Rich Piana, I actually have spent eight hours in the gym training. It wasn't all doing arms. Oh, okay. You didn't do the eight-hour arm workout, though. A good three to four hours of those were arms shoulders uh you know yeah it was it was a lot of fun basically what we did was i had like multiple training partners come in and like you know like uh tag in tag out so we'd have like the first group for the first mini uh like first hour hour and a half workout and the next group came in. So yeah, one of the big things about starting to power this

formally, which for me now is, let's see, a little over three, three and a half years ago, maybe my coach, Andy has been very good about teaching me to pull back on the reins a little bit. Sometimes more is not always better, especially as I found as I've gotten stronger and stronger, I get a lot more out of doing one really good intense set and a back off than before, you know, Oh sure. Let's do a, I, I remember back, back at home, I was doing a 20 sets of five pause squats every, every weekend to build my squat up. And that's actually when I squat a 500 pounds for the first time I pause squat 20 sets of five, 20 sets of five pause squats every weekend to build my squat up. And that's actually when I squat at 500 pounds for the first time. I pause squatted. 20 sets of five.

20 sets of five. That takes a while. Yeah. Yeah, I would just enjoy challenging myself doing difficult, maybe borderline dumb things. For the difficult. For the difficult, always. Yeah, I've always loved i love

power lifting in the compound lifts but i love just pushing heavy accessory exercises too and i think the power lifters that are many of them who are the strongest and certainly look the strongest tend to take their accessory exercises uh pretty seriously so for me i just i enjoy them and ended up getting uh pretty good at them and uh you know that and super heavy curls if you if you can just throw some heavy weight around sometimes it's fun to do all the time some people get the wrong idea seeing you know obviously the 150 pound curl set or something is the one that gets all the views online and then people assume that's all I'm doing in the gym when, you know,

that just comes with the, with the territory. So it brings out some fun comments too. And the never gets old, never gets old, especially it's, it's especially fun to, you know,

now that I have actual numbers and competition too. I, I, I, I also like, come on too. Right. I know. Also, like, come on, people. Like, if someone's ladder raising 125s, even if the form is sloppy, there has to be some level of understanding that you can't do that unless you're really strong.

Like, have these people ever held a 125-pound dumbbell before? Like, you just try and swing those up at the same time like out of your body at all like it's just it would be very enjoyable to see some of these people just try to see it and see what it looks like because yeah it takes uh it takes a lot of a lot of bracing and a lot of balancing so you can imagine when you're moving i mean i'm a big heavy dude but when you're moving that much weight you gotta you gotta, you got to counterbalance it. Yes. Okay.

Good answer. Overrated or underrated Buzz Aldrin. Hmm. And do you know why we chose Buzz? Well, he is underrated. I would say. Okay. Why, why did you choose him?

I have a sneaking idea, but. Well, he's an MIT guy. So that's our, that's our logic on that. We wanted to go MIT route somewhere. That's a good reason. Yeah, I feel like people don't talk about him as much as they used to. I mean, I get it that things have moved on, but I would say underrated. Yeah. Okay. Good answer.

Is there a statue of buzz or anything outside at MIT? There's probably like at least a plaque somewhere. It is a big campus. Okay. And it is very eclectic, which is fitting for the type of people and what goes on in the, in that area. But there are places that I've never been and I spent a lot of time there. One of the things they do to introduce the new students kind of to the culture, MIT has this culture called hacking. It's not necessarily literally like breaking into computer systems or anything. It's more like going around to parts of campus that are unknown or doing like fun but harmless pranks there was one where they uh made uh mit has this big dome in the middle of the campus like a lot of college campuses do and to like

promote the lord of the ring movies a bunch of people came together and put a giant uh the one ring around the dome complete with the accurate inscription uh all around the outside um it's a tremendous amount of work but those you know when you got to procrastinate on your uh differential equations what better way to do it than make a giant uh one ring replica of the middle of campus uh so yes i'm'm sure he's there somewhere, but unfortunately I haven't, I can't recall or I haven't seen him. Did you happen, at your time at MIT, did you do any card counting with Kevin Spacey? Between.

Or anything else with Kevin Spacey for that matter. There have been a number of things. It's unfortunately no. No, very fortunately. Yeah. Between the engineering two degrees and track and then my eight hour workouts, I had zero time, negative time. I remember also hitting my first 200 pound snatch. I used to do a lot of Olympic lifting back in the day.

Snatch lift, yes. At 2 a.m. in one of the dorm gyms, because the regular gym was shut down. Everybody has a terrible sleep schedule there, even worse than most colleges, as you can imagine. But it was like my 17th or 18th attempt i was so stubborn uh finally stood up with it 2 a.m good memories sometimes i miss being younger and more stupid but you know schedules don't matter i'm just gonna keep trying this bang my head against the wall until it miraculously goes up

okay so buzz aldrin good answer overrated or underrated shrek underrated also a little little bit biased considering it's a big part of my uh my sister's brand she uh i'm the she's the much more well-known one online than I am actually she's a she has a baking page and she she bakes funny funny cakes and everything and she has a bunch of funny Shrek Shrek meme cake she's done over

the years so what's the name what's the name of this I got a baking Thursdays I have to give her a lot a lot of credit too because she she pushed me into, uh, encouraged me to put myself out there, join a powerlifting gym. Cause I was the perfectionist type where I was like, Oh, I'm not strong enough. I'm not big enough. I want to wait until I'm better. And she gave me a lot of encouragement to put myself out there, start putting my lifts

online and join a powerlifting gym where I met John hack and Andy Huang and, you know, started learning and growing a lot. So I always give her a lot of credit for that encouragement that she gave me. She does have a following, doesn't she? She's got over a million subscribers on YouTube and 300,000 on Instagram. She makes some very comical, very funny pieces here. I do got to give her credit. She's got some some buff cakes on

there too which is sort of yeah it's uh it's it's really funny yeah she went to columbia got a computer science degree and was like oh i really like baking though uh during the whole uh covid thing she started baking more and started putting her stuff online and found a lot of success so has she ever done any of the is is it cake thing where she like makes she has yes okay i actually did a little collab video with her where we did uh well sort of a is it cake we made uh crocsants like crocs out of croissants basically okay yeah that's nice yeah excellent shrek is definitely a recurring theme throughout your pieces here. Yep. She has her niche. Shrek has a pretty popular community around it, doesn't it?

Rightfully so, I would say. Oh, I got to interject with my favorite Shrek story. First time at the Olympia, I'm leaving. There's a giant line to get an Uber. It's literally like an hour so many people are lined up we finally get one and it's a pretty nice uber and there are screens in the back and our uber driver says oh hey do you guys want to watch something and i'm just like yeah how about shrek and he's like all right put shrek on for on for the Uber ride. So yeah, got to watch.

I think it was Shrek 2, randomly in an Uber ride. Literally named it as a joke in one of the movies he had preloaded in his car. Was Shrek. Was Shrek. So it was just, you know. I'm like the fifth guy today not to ask for this. I'm sure a lot of drunk people on the strip probably default to that but uh i was only drunk on the experience of my first olympia so yeah yeah that's good

that's good okay last topic this one's worth all the marbles we save the most important for last rated or underrated doom 64 oh it isn't my favorite of the dooms but i i don't have the heart to say anything doom is overrated so i'm gonna say underrated i have to come down on a side but as far if i had to rank all my dooms yeah it would be in the lower third for sure yeah it's good but uh when did i have my first i played the the doom pc the kind of horror oriented one first which gave me a very different idea of what doom is and then for me doom 2016 i mean i still listen to the soundtrack uh i wouldn't say every day at the gym because i gotta save it christmas every day kind of thing i save it for those really impactful sets you know it's like you can't you can't drain the magic out of here everyone that's lifted for a while i think

understands that yeah like that's something you learn for sure it's like for me there's a somebody at the gym has a playlist that includes system of a down and when like chop suey comes on or something and i'm like you know stretching or like doing my first one i'm like oh god this is the worst you can't you can't do this just describe you the ipods at the gym that yeah oh uh but yeah doom 2016 and doom eternal i know they're the they're the newest ones but with the soundtrack the experience i am just such a fan uh and obviously you gotta pay respect to the classics too uh but doom 64 it's it's good but yeah it's it's it's still underrated, but it's not as underrated as the others, which I will sing praises of eternally. Pun intended.

My memory of Doom 64 was actually, I'd like to know, when do you think that came out? Was it probably like 2001 or something? I'm just looking here. I don't know. I was even going to guess like 99. Oh, 97. 97. Okay. Okay, 97. looking here i don't know i was even gonna guess like 99 but maybe oh 97 this says 97 okay yeah okay 97 so i remember that came out go to the local video rental store we get the game we bring

it home trying to play it so i'm like eight at the time my brother's seven and can't see anything the game we just like we think the game's broken we can't figure out what it is well the game was so low and also tvs no we did not blow. We probably actually did. Probably did. So it's like, ah, it's got to be like NES. Yes. TVs kind of sucked then. And also the game was so dark that if you had your brightness down at all on your TV, you just couldn't see anything. It was just pitch black.

Right. Right. That's my doom. That's my doom 64 memory. Yeah. Not, not the best memory for me on that one. Are you old enough, Ken, that did you grow up playing Nintendo 64 at all?

Oh, absolutely. Okay, so best Nintendo 64 game. Actually, I want to hear whatever you got to say, and also I want to hear best Nintendo 64 game. Majora's Mask. Oh, okay. Hold on. Where is it?

It's not on right now, but there's a majora's mask right there above above my desk yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah nice um ocarina time close close second um there's so many tendencies where it gives up the so in kindergarten we made these about me posters like oh you know i'm ken i'm uh five feet tall and already 90 pounds and blah, blah, blah, whatever. My favorite color is red. Shocking. The last part of the poster was if I had one wish I would wish for like the person, you know, who went like the week before me was like, Oh, like world peace or like, Oh, I wish for everybody to be happy. Me, Nintendo 64.

Yeah, yeah. Priorities. You were on the right track already. And I got that Nintendo 64. So I guess I get to live in the dream. Ocarina of Time. I totally agree. That belongs in the very top.

What about things a little more multiplayer like Smash Brothers or mario kart or something how does how does that ring for you i almost feel like i need to have a separate list for story-based single-player games i think that's fair i think that is fair there different experiences right like experiences with friends bonding over it versus getting immersed in a storyline but both of those are very high up on on the list and uh uh mario card on the switch i still play to this day occasionally great great game did you ever have okay for the nintendo 64 i cannot i had okay i had one it's been a long time since i've talked about nintendo 64 oh obviously goldeneye belongs up there in the multiplayer as well that's that's what i was gonna say golden also banging soundtrack that i feel like that's big that's been getting a little traction online

lately as people I like people talk about just the pause screen music how it's like they had like the most like they put so much just even to the pause screen I also think in there I for sure have seen memes or just dumb videos about I don't know if it's true but it was something like the entire development team for Goldeneye was like 10 guys. It was like some insanely low number of people somehow managed to put that game out. But do you remember the thing

for Nintendo 64? Was it the expansion pack? That little red thing that would drop into the front of the console? Is that what that was? Yep. It increased the RAM on the Nintendo 64

so you could render textures at higher qualities for certain games. Because was it like Jet Force gemini or something that needed that or there was a perfect dark maybe it was i think i think perfect dark is one of the games that needed it there's like a small selection of games that that required it i think i might have got it for i don't think donkey kong 64 needed it also fantastic soundtrack

dk rap yeah one of the greatest bangers of all time is that dk oh yeah okay yeah yeah i had to throw that out of one of my one of my reels a few weeks ago for fun um a couple other games as long as we're mentioning it i loved nfl blitz because it was just the smack you know i was just at the right. There was just something about the excessive smashing of people that was like, ah, the play didn't go as I wanted, but I get to pick you up and smash you across the field after it's over. There you go. And then I think, was it like Sean White 1080 snowboarding?

Or maybe it wasn't. Maybe Sean White. Not Sean White. But yeah, it was 1080 snowboarding. 1080 snowboarding was awesome. Yeah. Yep, that was good. I liked that game.

I'm just looking here at the list because I forgot about so many. I mean, Super Mario 64 was also an all-time classic. That was good. Liked that game. I'm just looking here at the list because I forgot about so many. I mean, Super Mario 64 was also an all-time classic. That was good. Literally genre-defining. Like, so many games. At the time, my mind was absolutely full. Yeah. I remember.

This is Mario now? I had friends that... I didn't have... We had an NES. That's all we had. I had friends that had Super Nintendo and Segas and would go over, and it was the craziest thing. And I still remember my dad on Christmas was like like i got an extra present for you guys and we opened

it was a nintendo 64 and our heads like exploded and the game we got was mario 64 and so you know you didn't have the internet you weren't looking like you didn't know it was coming ahead so like it was just totally off guard and it was the most mind blowing thing ever to all of a sudden be playing a 3d video game where you're, it didn't even seem possible. It felt like it was like something from the future. And this was when I was like seven or eight. So it was, yeah, it was, it was big things at the time. The old, the old rumors like, Oh, if you get all 120 stars, you can play as Luigi or something. And, uh, for, uh, what was it for all of us? Smash two. It was like, Oh, if you if you uh if you beat the game a

certain number of times you can play as master hand there was like all those rumors and that's how it always was it was just like things people talked about that somehow like that's like everything you learned and like i was like you get exchanged at recess even on the nes marios that's what it was like that's how you learn thing it's like no if you jump up over above the blocks of that part you you know it's just like, without the internet, it's really weird, but that stuff all gets found out and figured out and passed on amongst people.

It's just, it's kind of crazy. Other, just other highlights when I'm looking at the list here. F-Zero, like the F-Zero games were banging. Those were good. I was a big Mario Party fan for a while too. We got some pretty heated battles going on Mario Party party and what else do we got in here did you ever do star wars rogue squadron yes yes i did oh that one was good that was a lot of fun yeah was was uh starfox and n64 yes starfox that was one of the early nintendo yeah there was uh the first one was on uh super nintendo i think but the starfox

starfox 64 love that game. The classic do a barrel roll meme, which is actually an early on roll, by the way, according to the flight turn. A barrel roll, you'd actually do a barrel shape and fly in a larger formation. I have the most useful knowledge stored in this brain. I feel like that's important to know.

Ah, man, N64. Yeah, some real classics there. But Doom 64 still underrated. Yes. Also in the line of Doom, though, how about Duke Nukem? I was actually thinking about Duke Nukem myself. That was my, because that's, before I knew about Doom, I knew about Duke Nukem.

Yeah. I mean, all the old the old school youtube videos of like people using the soundboard with the duke nukem voice clips and like going into random calls and you know doing the i'm here to kick ass and chew bubble gum i'm all out of gum never gets old yeah uh yeah but what what was the original game though before doom before duke newcomer was it quake there was was quake first or was doom first i think i think doom was first yeah and then quake sort of brought it to the arena shooter more multiplayer uh angle for it i'm pretty sure doom was the earliest one and that was yeah there was a whole or would you say like wolfenstein would have been that's what i thought

wolfenstein that's what i wondered is wolfenstein the first one that was my understanding is that maybe wolfenstein was first but i could be i could be wrong on that i okay i'm just looking here yeah this is saying wolfenstein 3D was in 92 and Doom was 93. Yeah, Wolfenstein was the one I was thinking of. Because I had a friend that had that and it had already been passed up that I didn't think it was that much fun when I saw it. I'm like, this doesn't

look as good as others that I've seen now. So we think Wolfenstein might have been. That's what it looks like, yeah. Okay. Okay. All right. Well, we'll have to save,

uh, next episode for more Wolfenstein talk. Also next episode, we didn't get to it this time, but next time we're going to talk more about the archers paradox. Ooh, yes. That was a,

that was a fun project of mine. So be, be thinking about the archers paradox Paradox for next episode, too. Oh, I got plenty to say about that one. I'll come prepared. We'll find my old presentation. We'll leave people on a teaser for that one. But who knows?

It might not be until like two more years that we have you on, and then everyone will be like, I've been really waiting for that Archer's Paradox talk. I couldn't Google it. I had to just wait. I'm wanting more. No, that's awesome. uh appreciate you coming on where uh where do you tell people you want them to uh find you i mean we talked about your instagram handle ginger gingercules but um anything else that you would

want people to be doing uh that's that's where i am uh everywhere i'm trying to get a little more youtube stuff going gingercules there uh got my tiktok where'm trying to get a little more YouTube stuff going. Ginger Achilles there. Got my TikTok where I try to have a little fun with it. Ginger Achilles there. And yeah, for people that are interested too, I'll plug my sister's Bacon Thursdays. Yeah.

I'm going to check that out more. Yeah, we're going to do some more fun stuff together. She's always been a really good cook as well as baking. And at least as far as large muscly types, I feel like I have my cooking down pretty well. I get tired of eating bland food all the time. So work with her to make some more, make some more food content, give some people some insight as to how to be, you know, 320 pounds, single digit body fat, right? There's something, something to it. Yep. I do not, do not doubt that for a second. Uh, yeah, that's awesome. We, we appreciate you coming on. We'll be cheering you on this weekend. I'll see some big numbers and we'll be cheering you on from across the country. Well, thank you for having me. I'll give it my

all and put on a good show. I promise. Oh, there's a live stream for the meet too. So I'll drop that in an Instagram story or something in case anybody wants to follow along. And yeah, it'll be a lot of fun. I'm going to go out there and show what I'm made of. Awesome. Good stuff. See you later.

Good luck. Thanks a lot, Ken. Thanks again. It's good talking with you guys. Yeah, you too. See ya. Good stuff. See you later. Good luck. Thanks a lot, Ken. Thanks again. It's good talking with you guys. Yeah, you too. See ya. Cool beans! Cool beans.

Beans. Cool beans! I almost shut the episode down right there. Whenever we get off the guest, I almost always want to click exit out of it. But you gave him his cool beans, didn't you? He got his cool beans. What were those cool beans? Those are, are boy i'm just trying to think there's just such to be a lot of things yeah i'm trying to think would be the most fitting i was going to say

those are retro gaming cool beans but they could also be straight from the straight from the water polo pool cool beans yeah i think those are water polo cool beans yeah that's what i think that those are that what a what a fun what fun, just a bunch of fun conversations. I feel like we could have just talked to him about things for another hour or two. That's what I was actually just kind of looking at the clock. Yeah, I could have gone on an N64 for another hour. That was basically what ruled my life for like three or four straight years. That was the only thing I cared about in life.

And the cooking thing, could have talked to him a long time about what the hell his sister's got going on here she makes the things i don't know what you call this genre but it's where like you take mario and you make it look like he has just a ginormous fat ass but yeah or like you have here like one of shrek but he's pregnant and then batman but he's pregnant like i don't know what you call that i know that is a thing though but she has a lot of that. Just check out her page and swipe around, and you'll get the feel for it right away. She has a picture here. She's with that one guy. He's, like, the super buff cook.

Do you know who I'm talking about? He's huge. He's, like, massive. Not the guy that has the fit crunch stuff. He's not super buff, but he's kind of, like, the kind of buff guy. No, this guy looks like C.G. Fletcher. Like, actually looks like he's got massive arms. Oh, OK.

No, I'm not sure who that is. I was thinking of Robert Irvine. Oh, no, no, no. This guy is this guy is enormous. Yeah. Yeah. This is quite the page looking at it. Also, it says she has two point five plus million followers on TikTok.

That is nuts. She has a following. Did you did you say she's got a million YouTube subscribers? YouTube subscribers, too. I mean mean that's huge yeah um i said it at the beginning of the episode but you know as we were looking for more stuff on ken it's like oh there's just like an endless amount of stuff it just keeps going those are the funnest people that's and he's uh an interesting guy you know we could have uh we could talk to him for a long time just remind me there's one thing i wanted to ask him because he said it multiple times

and I want to know where this came from because most people, especially even people we talk to, don't have this and most people in life don't have this. He talked, I asked him multiple times questions and he goes, well, you just kind of take it one day at a time and do the thing you can control and then eventually you look and you've made progress.

Most people are like, no, I just look like I need to be here in a year. i like year year you're like it's just constantly looking out and he's just like no i just took it a day at a time and then pretty soon you realize you did the right things to get there right that seems like that's a little bit of a an intentional effort that he to look at things that way yes most people could never even verbalize that right but uh yeah so he's, yeah, definitely,

definitely not getting to where he got on accident. That's for sure. Right. Right. All right. Good stuff. They're real good stuff. I also want to mention that this episode is brought to us by juggernaut AI,

the training app. I've mentioned a while ago, Larry legend at mass dynamics and Amics Gym. The one and only Larry Legend had turned 47 now and hit an all-time deadlift PR after powerlifting for at least a good 20 years. And he did that in large part by Juggernaut AI. Actually, I talked to him about it more. And he was just, you know, very definitively saying how important it was.

He was. Okay. So he was still giving the credit to it. And, and how he, the, like the turning point for him with juggernaut AI is just like accepting. He's like,

going to let it take the wheel and that he's just going to do what it says. And, and like, okay. Cause with Larry, the thing is always, he starts feeling beat do what it says. And like, because with Larry, the thing is always, he starts feeling beat up and it's the end of the world, but he just accepted that. And he's still,

you know, he's a guy that works really hard, really long hours. And some days he is beat up and he does get down, but he still does the work. Knows that it's all for a reason. The weight might go. And yeah,

he's just kind of like, and he, and he made the comment a number of times he's like i don't have to test it like i don't need to be testing you know i'm like i now trust it like i don't have to feel like i can go months without testing a one rep max how long you can go without really like even touching that heavy of weights and make crazy progress. Right. Exactly. And, um, that was it.

And also him just saying, no, I just doing the accessory work. Like even like, it's just, I'm like just doing it, putting in the time. Um,

and Larry's always been an accessory guy though. Hasn't he? No, he's never. Yeah. He's never. No, he's smarter accessories or like really just,

I think his biggest point was just doing what it says and just doing it. Just don't go off script, follow it. Right, you know, and I'm not saying he stuck to it 100%, but he kind of make it sound like he stuck to it 95 plus percent. Yeah, and like that that was just ultimately really successful for him. Is Larry doing the meet this summer?

Yes, he has signed up so he's so he's doing the because did he just finish or was that just a planned pr along the way what where's he that would know that was his test that he did that was a full mock okay he did okay it was and hit a deadlift pr on his ninth attempt for the day you know he he went nine for nine and oh so that was a full a full day oh he did it yeah and. And his squat and bench numbers were both good. And all three of his third attempts were not what I would consider a true 10 either. All right. On the RP.

You know, like there was like 9.5 at the highest on all of them. If he can keep feeling fresh and staying healthy. Oh, he could hit an all-time PR. He could have a monster total. Yeah, he could hit an all-time pr you could have a monster total yeah he could hit an all-time pr wow with some individual you know with certain most certainly a deadlift pr along the way that's good yeah and like not like that in itself isn't so much to marvel at there's a lot of people but the fact that he's done it as long as he's having and done it in his training ages you

know it's not like he just has gotten into lifting recently there's been mentioned damn near 400 squatting over 550 dead lifting over 550 for like 15 years now yeah and um you could do probably 20 years signing up for yeah yeah 20 years uh juggernautai.app sign up that's if you go to the web browser sign in there that's where you can use discount code massonomics it'll save you 10 for the lifetime of that membership at juggernautai.app this 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 swiss link is also home to the authentic Wavian fuel cans. They're from the

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by entering code MASS at checkout. That's M-A-S-S to save 15% at SwissLink.com. Thank you, SwissLink. Was the Alico bar topic, was that part of the Marketplace Deal of the Week? Yeah, yeah, that was the wooden bar. That was the... I've got a

segment we've got okay here also also i'm uh i'm headed to the cities this weekend too so maybe i'll have to uh i'm going to the minnesota timberwolves oh uh home playoff opener oh damn that'll be fun saturday night yeah i've never been to a playoff game yeah especially jack jack and i are going damn that'll be sweet playing playing the suns and i'm most stoked that you know nba regular season can be a little hit or miss of who's playing or who's this can't be hit or miss this is do or die time now yep yep so we're gonna get kevin durant in full force you know carl anthony towns in full force and um well anthony edwards obviously full force um right okay i've i think he kind of always plays so like you know i kind of headline here but i thought what i had seen was that the sons are kind of the

almost worst case scenario matchup for the t wolves i feel like they could be the worst case scenario matchup for the t wolves i think it said did they not beat them once in the regular season it was something like that that That I think is right. But they played them twice recently right here at the very, that was like the last game of the season too. And I don't know if it, I mean, it actually did matter for the. But I think it was, I think you're saying it's a bad matchup for them, isn't it?

I think it is too. But when I look at it, I'm like, I don't know who, you know, how. See, they have some center, right? With a four. I don't know who that center is of theirs, but I'm just wondering who guard guards. I've never watched those two plays, so I don't know, but I'm wondering with Carl Anthony towns,

if he's relatively healthy here, I don't know who guards him. Yeah. Like Kevin Durant. Does he have to either guard Carl Anthony towns or, uh, um, uh,

what's the big guy? Uh, go bear. That's, you know, I'm the guy. Go bears. Not like, what do you know? Towns or what's the big guy? Gobert. Gobert's not like that. Would he, though? I would assume he'd guard like Towns maybe, but I don't know. But I don't feel like he'd be a great defender on him. I don't know.

Is Booker a good defender? I'd assume he does not guard Anthony Edwards. They have to have some of their guard that guards. They have Bradley Beal. Maybe he's a good defender. I don't know. I actually don't know. But there's no way that Booker guards Anthony Edwards.

They wouldn't do that, I don't think. But anyways, enough about the basketball specifics, but I'm just excited for the experience of a playoff game. I imagine it's going to feel a little bit electric. It's a weird thing. I had to buy the tickets. You don't even know what time the game's going to be when you have to buy the tickets. Oh, yes. And I'm like, we wouldn't have had to go to the first game, you know,

because they'll get the first two, and then presumably if they at least win something here, they're going to get game five and stuff like that. But you don't even know what days they're going to be on. The only one we knew the day of was this first one, and not even the time. But I'm like, well, it's a Saturday, so we can make any time work. 420, baby! Yeah, that's where it is.

You know in Minneapolis there's going to be some 420 parties going on for sure. Definitely. I never thought, yeah, there definitely will be. So I'm excited for the atmosphere. Oh, yeah. That should be pretty fun. This will only be, well, was last year the first time the T-Wolves had made the playoffs in 20 years? Was it last year?

I don't know if they did the year prior than that, too. Maybe I'm not sure. I actually don't know. Either way, though, anytime you get playoffs in Minnesota, people are hyped. Because in Minnesota, people support their sports teams. It's what they do here. You know, I got not much else going on. You know, it's a major huge city where there's 10,000 other things to do.

It's like, no, people support the sports team. So, yeah, people will be fired up for that one. So are you going to pick up the Alico bar then? Or does that still just stay there? I actually not sure what the timeline. If they could get it, like, close to me, then I could for sure. So I got to actually message Diet Me about that. And you're not going to swing by and pick up an illegal open trap bar while you're there?

Well, I'm going to look at what's for sale before I leave, actually. Just to be safe. You don't want to be caught off guard. If anyone knows me, yes, I'm absolutely just to be safe you don't want to be caught off guard um if anyone knows me yes I'm absolutely going to be scouring Minneapolis because there are a few things that I have looked at and I just got to look if there's any like anything that I really need because I'm gonna have to go out of the way like you know that's the problem with going to the big city it's like you're like yeah it's kind of here but really it could be like 45 an hour detour and

yeah I mean I'm not on that tight of a like 45 minutes an hour detour and yeah i mean i'm not on that tight of a schedule we've got time for it and stuff but my primary focus is like jack and i also like to get to the game very early yeah like we want to be like one of the are you staying at the same hotel we actually picked a different one it's attached to the sky okay so right there still though yeah but we did pick a different one just um yeah i just wanted to see if their breakfast was i didn't love the breakfast so i'm like let's try this one and see if the breakfast is any better uh-huh yeah that's understandable i'm a you know i'm a big break gotta have that this is the most important meal of the day it is you know and we're gonna get on the road

sunday morning i need a little breakfast before we before we do it can't be starting the day on an empty stomach but it is still attached to everything so we'll park in that usual parking garage and yeah but we've got to be like the first people to walk in the stadium or else i'll feel like it was well why did we even come here wasted your time might as well go home now when we're driving like five hours there and like five hours back the next day i'm like no we're getting like we're gonna experience this for as long as possible too you know well i'm pumped for you guys. That'll be a lot of fun. Yeah.

My problem is then I'm going to be like, well, now we want to go to other ones. I know. Yeah. Well, if they win this, like, if they win this series, the second series looks really tempting then. And I don't have to tell you, like, if you just, I don't have to tell anyone about this, but if you just do anything, like, if you just go on a trip to tell anyone about this but if you just do anything like if you just go on a trip anywhere that's like a five-hour drive and then like you're doing anything there like anything at all whether it's a concert you're spending over a thousand dollars yeah it's

like you can't do anything for like a reasonable amount of money like when you start adding it up you're like shouldn't even add it up because you're like, how does this cost that much? Well, and if somehow a piece of gym equipment wants to get added to the bill, too. Well, that's completely different. It really does almost start growing exponentially at that point. Yes. Yeah. Okay.

First thing, we got a special package here, and this is something in here for you as well as me. First things first, we got a couple of koozies. This might be a giveaway of what's gonna i think i know number two uh but got a couple koozies alcohol you later from huck finn barbell and suck my blue collar chicken from huck finn barbell both classics do you have one of these two in particular that you kind of got your eyes on i like them both and then he sent us a couple t-shirts one for each of us here and we've got the can you see that all right oh yeah uh the old lift heavy lick cats cats or pussy as some people might say it in and at the bottom i like how it's huck finn barbell

apparel a phrase they don't typically use i don't think it's huck finn barbell apparel god that's good and in the od military green a particular font style that may look familiar to some of you out here that have been following along in the saga for a while that's good so we love that shirt go uh you know a support of huck finn barbell is a support of massonomics so go get yourself a lift heavy lick pussy lift i can just can't you just picture huck finn barbell saying i almost can't say it not thinking like, you got to lift heavy, and then you lick pussy. Exactly. Like a, rah.

And then you lick pussy. That's it. That's the promo. All right, next thing here is a box that came in today. There's more? Yeah, and this says, Hola. These hats are completely unnecessary and if you never wear them, I wouldn't be

offended. But on the other hand, they felt like hats that were completely necessary and your lives wouldn't be complete without them. I've heard it both ways. Hope you enjoy them. Keep the sun off your face in those balmy South dakota summer days um a little more goes on i uh i'm not going to be able to be there at the lift hard live easy

classic i'll save some of that but this is from none other than big susan of course long time massanomic supporter supporting member competed at the lift hard live easy classic in 2023 unfortunately she's saying she won't be able to be here but she did send us each a hat and got the nice the silly goose hats the silly goose hat i like it that's good the uh top of the, I don't think you can see this. Is it kind of squishy? Yeah, it's kind of squishy. I didn't expect that until right now when I picked it up.

Is there print on the inside? What's on the inside? It looked like there was something in there. That's just the cardboard thing. Oh, like the inside. Okay, gotcha. Yeah, it's got a bunch of farm animals. Very cool, though.

That will be that old mesh-style trucker hat. That'll be a good summertime hat. A silly goose hat. So thank you, big Susan. Yes, thanks. We got a whole wardrobe right here between Susan and Huck and Karen. Got my summertime outfit. I imagine Karen did more of this packing and shipping and printing and everything.

If I know them like I think I do, I'm assuming Huck Finn took all the care. I bet Karen was just sitting there drinking beer and Huck Finn did everything. She was just drinking beer and screaming the whole time while Huck Finn was working away. He's like, and then you got to lift heavy and like. Old. Huck Finn. Going to see him in one week from today also. yeah i forgot about that yeah yeah just a week away i listened to uh let's get stupid podcast just uh earlier today and he did confirm that uh he is going still so yeah i'm uh i'm not up to the newest week yet here i'm just

a week behind so i'll be catching that soon he's gonna be there i think who did he say he's going with didn't he say earlier white george foreman that's what i thought he said i think that's yeah right okay all right do we want to what's a slider um tiny cheeseburger that is actually a slider uh this actually does tie into a little bit of what big ken was saying that i had recently i think i told you this when i bought oh i think when i bought my safety or no just getting on bells of steel's mailing list somehow i got a survey thing fill out the survey and there i gotta give him credit here this is amazing for filling out a survey you got a 50 gift card which is an amazing incentive for surveys the number of companies that i get that say fill out a survey and you'll be entered in the drawing for a hundred dollar i'm like

entered in a drawing with what a million other people for a hundred dollars bells and stills like no just fill this out you get 50 bucks and i cannot turn that down so i got that you couldn't afford not to after i could not afford not to which is going to be a recurring theme pretty soon here and i uh got that and I'm like, what, what do I need? What's something good. And a lot of people when I, on the episode, when I said, it's hard to train your glutes or hard to train your posterior chain in a gym, a lot of people were recommending a glute ham slider. Tons of people were sending me that thing, like a shocking number for, and I'd never used one before ever. And I think I told you about it.

And you're like, yeah, we got one in the gym. I never even remember seeing it in there because I didn't even care about that. And so I thought, you know what? I got my $50 gift card. Let's get one here. So I got that. And, um, I haven't done an ab wheel or anything like that in an incredibly long time. And maybe, maybe my just memory is wrong. I never thought that they were that hard. Oh my God. the first time i was trying to do just like an ab what do you even call it with just the rollout yeah an ab roll there you go yeah it was like i was just shredding every part of my abdominal yeah i mean i'll keep you that'll make you that'll mess you up soreness for like a week oh i was one after like three

reps i'm like oh this is actually the thing where you get so sore you realize you're in trouble immediately yeah yeah and i had that doesn't take very many weeks for that to like normalize yes but the fact that it was that bad made me think oh maybe there is some neglected stuff here right and i had to just resort to partial movements of it because it was so intense i couldn't i couldn't even do it without feeling like i was just gonna tear my midsection open that is what exactly what it feels like. So I guess what I'm saying is I'm excited for this slider to maybe address some weak points and bring some things up. So did you order one?

Yeah, I already got it. I got it. Oh, you got it. Yeah, I ordered it like two weeks ago. It's here now. Okay. And I've used it. I just used it the other day for the first time and was absolutely blown away by how not prepared I was for it.

So you must be looking at some other stuff, too. Well, so this is part two of the story now. Because you know what everyone likes to rag on you for is like not having it. I got to say, I don't know. But everyone likes to say, like, make the point like he's's in his uh he's in his i think i got everything i need or like you know like no no no i got everything i need to go have a workout right now i will say i've got that i can go have a workout but there is definitely um on my to-do list there's actually not very many things that are actually written.

I have things in my head, but until they're on the to-do list, I don't think of them as very serious items. And on my to-do list, there's only a couple things that are even like cost more than $100. There wasn't very many on there. And one of them that I just had on the list when I was slapping it together, I just put SSB question mark. I put that on there. And I feel like every episode since I've had on the list when I was slapping it together. I just put SSB question mark. I put that on there.

And I feel like every episode since I've had a gym, either it's brought up on the podcast or I get a DM afterwards of someone telling me to get the Elite FTS yoke bar, the SS yoke bar, every single time

to the point where it's almost like, no, I'm not going to get one now because everyone's bugging me about it. I'm not going to do it. You stop it. You can't make me. And then they kind of had a deal a while ago, I think a couple weeks ago. And I think that went away just because I wasn't even paying attention to it then.

And then we had Brandon on last week and he was sort of mentioning it again. And then yesterday I got a DM from Eddie and it was a screenshot of the SS Yoke bar sale at Elite FTS. He's like, how many people have sent you this screenshot today? Actually, surprisingly, Eddie, just you. But what caught my attention was this, this deal that was going on said three, I think $327 in free shipping. And we just got done talking to Brandon. He was talking about, yeah, normally the bar is like four 40, four 50 said you had tax, you had shipping. It's basically a $500 bar, which that had not dawned on me.

That was that expensive. Cause when he said that last week, I was like, Oh, I, okay. I'm not going to pay 500 bucks for that. Like I'm not saying it's not worth it,

but that's just not right. You just don't want to spend. If I'm not a lot, $500 or something in my gym right now, it's not that. Right. Right. And so then I was thinking like,

God, if it, something comes up sooner, I might have to go the rep route just cause I don't want to drop 500 bucks on this thing. Right. And Eddie sent that over yesterday and it really got me thinking. I'm like, man, I got to be prepared. Like if I ever need this, I don't want to be caught off guard and not have this, you know, and I started justifying it to myself.

And then I'm like, all right, I got to screenshot this and send it to Tanner and be like, is this a good deal? And you're like, yeah, that is a pretty good deal yeah and that was at like five o'clock while I was working out and it was all I could think about for the next five straight hours I just couldn't I didn't want to buy the damn thing but I couldn't stop thinking about it yeah and it was actually pissing me off because just consuming my mind so much I'm like I've never actually I can't tell you the last time it's been years since I've thought this much about buying stuff. I don't know if I put this much thought into buying my house. It was just like, yeah, let's buy the damn house. Like, I just couldn't stop thinking about it. It was actually really starting to make me angry how

much time I just couldn't move on from it. And so finally it was like 1030. I sat in front of my computer cause you know, all big purchases have to be made at a computer and that's right i sat down on my computer and i added it to the cart and i just like more official on the yes it's more official you can really just get the lay of the land for everything that's going on and i put it in my car and all the charges and then i all of a sudden i'm like watching videos about it and i'm like why am i watching i literally had a video come out about this damn bar on my own on my own youtube channel two weeks ago why am i watching I'm like, I'm doing the whole thing of like, I don't even know what this product is. I'm going into research mode. Like I'm going to research my way to a logical conclusion. And then finally I'm just like, ah, what? I've almost felt like I put a full day's

worth of work of mental energy into deciding to buy this damn thing. So finally like I give up, I'm going to, I'm going to buy it. I'm buying it. It's going to happen. But then I had one last thought. I'm like, maybe I can make the deal sweeter. So I type in a lead FTS coupon codes, type it into Google. And one of the first ones that come up says table talk. And I'm like, you know what? That is a legit, that's gotta be a coupon code. They have table talk. So I type it in the damn code works it knocks another 10 off so before tax i got that bar for 290 before tax wow and that with free shipping almost feel like i need to buy a second one for that and i got the black one so i didn't get the clear coat either so i don't gotta worry about that clear coat chipping and all that so i got the black one

and at that point once i saw 290 i'm like, I don't say this often, but I really could not afford to not buy this thing. And that's when I knew I made the right decision. So has it shipped yet or anything? I haven't gotten notifications. I'm in no hurry for it. No, right, right. I feel like you're allowed to use, having been a guest on Table Talk, you get to use the Table Talk.

I kind of felt like, yeah, I was owed that one. Dave, you owed me one there we go i got an i got a brand new ss yoke bar for 290 that's a that's a deal right there that is a great deal actually like that's a great deal that extra 10 on that makes that like just out just something about seeing that pop below 300 just really did something to my brain. I don't say this lightly, but you almost at that point could not afford not to buy it. I mean, I was going through the whole thing. I was putting pen to paper.

I was running the whole thing. And after it was done, it was like, yep, I can't afford not to do this. Yeah. I bought a couple pieces of gym equipment this week, too. We had talked about those slant boards from Prime Fitness. Yes. They were a little cheaper than what I thought I was saying i thought they were 200 bucks a piece they're really 125 a piece okay that's actually not too bad shipping so i bought i have the piece of metal for 120 it's not bad that's actually a very genuine oh that's when i was thinking that it was

200 now it's uh so you you did a little thing called price anchoring there. Yes, yes, yes. I did it myself, yeah. So I did have the 15 degree. That's the ultimate goal. It's just always price anchor everything higher in your head. So when you go look it up, you're like, oh, that actually is a deal. That's pretty cheap. So I ordered the 10 and the 5 so I can exercise my step-down program. So what angles do you have at this point now?

I have 15, and now I'll have 10 and 5. Oh, you only had one before? Yeah, only one. Oh, I thought you had multiple of those things in there. So now I have like the three, but they actually make like 20, 25, 30. Oh, they do? Yeah, I'm like, that'd be pretty aggressive. 30 would be crazy.

I don't even know how you'd stand. I was going to say, do they have some grip tape on there to lock you down or some straps? So I got those coming. And then I also ordered, you know, we have the Titan wagon wheels. And they're pretty beat to shit at this point. They've been flat spotted. They're more octagons than around.

I ordered the Rogue. I think they're called like the 26ers. They're those 70-pound wagon wheels. Are they supposed to be a little more robust? Well, they're not made out of metal. They're made like hard rubber. A space age polymer? Yeah, they're made out

of something. Oh, so they're... What are they called? Rogue 26ers, maybe? Something like that. Is that like the Philadelphia 26ers? Rogue wagon wheels. Oh, yeah. It kind of looks like just a giant competition bumper plate or something.

Yeah. Yep. Yeah, that does seem like that'd be a little more sturdy. Yeah. So I ordered those also. I think both of them are almost here. So I'm really hoping that that's, I'm starting to wonder if those, these aren't the two, you know,

the couple things that have been holding me back up to this point you know there's a good chance of that also that's what I was I'd put money on it that's probably has what's been holding you back uh yeah in my gym not having those things as well it's the 26er and the slant boards that's what has not allowed me to get stronger the missing piece I may or may not have a loadable dumbbell and a curl bar from the Serenco in my gym at the moment. Whether they're there a week or two from now is to be seen, but at the moment there are two more items in my gym. So it is growing significantly.

Has your wall control showed up yet? My wall control, that is on my to-do list for this weekend if I can somehow manage to get that put on the're getting a lot of uh increasing amount of gym projects going on i i have a lot of actually i want to it's just funny how this is snowballing i'm i want to increase my footprint of my uh of my stall mats and what i really like i don't really don't want to go through the hassle of cutting those damn things like i don't really don't want to go through the hassle of cutting those damn things you know right i really don't want to do that so as you could buy two more well the optimal footprint would be 10 by 10 but with four you can get to if i

remember math correctly you'd be at 12 by 12 with four of them or maybe that's cool i should be at six six by 10 or uh 12 by 10 12 by 10 no no no no no no because if you did if you did 12 by 8 depending on how you I guess you could lay them out well yeah yeah but but I'd want to be more than eight though so yeah like I'm for sure going to be at 12 by 8 but I would like to be at but the optimal that's the thing it's like there's no easy way to get to 12 by either at 12 12 by 8 which is not really where I want to be that bad. I'd prefer to be 10 by 10, but 12 by 12 is the next easy one. But 12 by 12 is a much bigger footprint than where I want to be, you know, because you start getting too close to the cars.

And all of a sudden, does the car drive onto the edge of the mat? And if the car is driving onto the edge of the mat, now you have water on the mat. And that's a bad deal. Right. You don't want that. Now you have water on the mat, and that's a bad deal. Right, you don't want that. Well, you just start to edge over the mats farther and farther until the car is out of the garage.

Well, and so the car at odds here is my wife's Tahoe, which is a large vehicle. And I can already see, I would have made this decision, I drive a 2009 Malibu. I don't give a fuck about the car anymore. It's priceless in more ways than one at the moment. It's actually, I would go on to say that it might be in the top 1% of all Malibus on the road at this time.

I think as far as the pristine and care level of it, it's pretty mint still. The damn thing's nice. But I have already realized that if i lived in a warmer climate i'd be fine just not letting my car ever be in the garage again and then i went to winter in south dakota is the problem that is the problem like that just sucks once you go to having your vehicle in a garage to back outside you're like oh this is awful and it also if i didn't have kids it wouldn't be that big of a deal either it's like okay yeah i guess my car will just sit here

for a week straight and not start anymore that's fine right but when i have kids i gotta take them to daycare and i gotta be doing like it is a pain in the ass when you have negative 30 degree weather scraping your windshield sucks yeah it sucks it sucks so that's there's a lot of mental things going on a lot of wheels turning up here and then it didn't help when i told you this earlier uh my neighbor across the street he also has a home gym and i was checking out his home gym and uh of course he has a hot dog heater hanging from the ceiling and his too so kind of the thing you gotta have that hot dog you you do have time on that though

yeah well that's what i figured you know i'm doing the math here. I'm like, okay, it's April now. There's been some colder lifts, but nothing that's not tolerable. So April, it's only getting better. May, June, July, August, September, October is still great. If it was this year, November and December are still fair game. So then I'm looking at it. I'm like, really? It's just January and February are the only two shitty months. We had, when we came back from the Arnold, it was 60 degrees that day.

Oh, that was nice that day. Yeah, right, right. So this year, there was only two months that it would have even been questionable for the gym. I mean, last year was a different story, though. There would have been like five months where it was, well, but it wasn't ungodly cold. It was more the snow that got you last year. Right, right. That's true.

It's not the heat that gets you either. It's the humidity. It's the humidity. So we'll see. We'll see how things go. There's a. It's not the heat that gets you either. It's the humidity. It's the humidity. So we'll see. We'll see how things go. There's a lot of wheels in progress, a lot of gears turning. We'll see how, you know, home gym cons next week. I got to get my hands on some things.

I got some people sending me stuff, too. I got some updates on that coming. So there's just a lot of things going on right now. We got a lot of balls in the air. Yeah. When we talked about Brandon, we talked about flooring and that mass dynamics gym. And, you know, there's a couple of people that sent me some ideas there.

And I'm like, could really go all in on this flooring thing, but that would be quite the undertaking. I just can't get myself to it. I don't think it. No, I guess it's okay. There's a lot of scenarios where I think just going all out on flooring would be cool. Like if I did my whole third stall in flooring, it would be cool.

But I just, I don't think it really actually adds. Like if you said, oh, we're going to like kind of revamp how the flooring is in the dumbbell section, I could see. Right. Yeah. Like maybe. Make that better. But even there, I would say, wait until you figure out what your dumbbell rack scenario

is before. That would be the timing, you know, do that at the same point in so i could see if you're like yeah we're going to like rethink that whether it's making it slightly bigger or you go with like a more premium option of like the roll stuff right i could see how that's the time to revisit it i just don't see ever having a reason for it on that other side of the gym that's sort of the beauty of that side is it doesn't have that that's kind of what i think too yeah but i think it's one of those things where you i think if he was there he'd get that too though you'd see that yeah yeah it's part of that thing you get um feel of experiencing it did i see i thought ryan had a snap or in a story and answer or something was the ghost bench like in the middle of the like floor in the gym

on that other side unless somebody moved it no yeah i thought it looked like it was in the middle you know kind of like the walking aisle where people go back sometimes it slides that's actually part of my daily routine is sliding because it gets people rack it no but it actually looked like the back was facing towards what oh east wall like it was like looked like it was out and turned and someone could have you know it's not that hard to slide so someone could have if they were using it you know they could have done that but uh no i otherwise no it's one of those things where you just have it so burned into your brain how the gym looks that all of a sudden something seemed off and i'm like analyzing the picture thinking what is going on here what's

something's not adding up someone could have been using it that way but i have not seen that no okay well uh now for sure though, I have now, this is the annoying thing is about things lead to more things. And so now I do need to get some type of barbell storage solution. I have been holding off on that. The easy, I've shown you those barbell anchors. Is it,

is it Darko? Is that who it is? Yeah. You're looking at that for like specifically your safety squat bar then. Yeah. That's really cool. And I'll probably get one of those. Yeah.

From Darko lifting the barbell anchor. They look sweet. You can get whatever color you want. Safety squat bar goes up there. Probably get one of those, but that also only holds two bars. And at the current state of things I have just at this very moment in my gym, I have three bars and possibly more in the next week or so here.

So probably just, I think I'm just going to get something for the wall. I think just a vertical wall storage because with a four post rack, there's not really a good spot to hang them on the rack unless I'm thinking about it wrong because I bench out of one side and I squat out of the other.

Well, you're going to walk out your squat so you can't have barbells there. Yeah, see, and that's what I use both. Like if I stayed in the back for the bench and squat, I could probably put something out towards the front, but I squat out of the front and I bench out of the back. So both areas need room for clearance. My only opinion on that is what you could do is buy,

like what I said, those just one bar vertical barbell holders where the bar sits down in it yeah because you could put those on the post like say the back side of your posts you can have those right there and they only stick out you know it only it adds like that much more to it and then you so you'd like have a bar like you could do like two one on each you know you could you could get a couple bar storage out of that pretty easily and then if you also had that what is that anchor that anchor that holds to you know you could have like between a barbell anchor and like two of those you could have like four bar barbells see that i just i think a vertical wall one would be more convenient

it's like they're so cheap those in like three or four. Yeah, those cost probably almost nothing. Like I think on Rogue, it's like 40 bucks or something. Right. And the fact that I would get the gun rack, but it just takes up so much wall space. Yeah, it eats up a lot of your wall. That it kills all of my flag and banner area. So that's why I think I got to rule that one out.

All right. Well, another thing for the list. I'll keep everyone updated here. That's right. 420, we really blazed this one, didn't we? I think we blazed it real good. Blazed the hell out of it. Blazed it good.

We blazed it hard. We blazed it long. Make sure, everyone, to go check out the newest, hottest, biggest Drink Spotter XL on massanomics.com. We've still got some in stock, so we'd love to sell you one. Bigger is better, especially in this case. Anything else we need to tell people, Tommy? Go buy that damn Drink Spotter.

I guess we'll record one more episode before we're gone to home gym con. Yeah. So we will record one next week uh probably in not too many days uh tommy where do they find you at you can find me at tomahawk underscore d you can follow me at tanner underscore bear just make sure to uh stay safe down there and follow mass at massonomics see ya We'll see you next time.