Massenomics Podcast - Ep 501 Equipment Companies Suing Reviewers

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

What does it mean for the industry when equipment companies start suing people that make review videos?? We made a big announcement about the 2026 Lift Hard Live Easy Classic in this episode! EliteFTS Use code MASS10 to save 10% on most orders! 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! Texas Power Bars Get the Barbell that changed the game!

You know, thanks for what you do with your podcasts and all the rest. You're doing a great job. Hope everybody keeps tuning in. You get a lot of good info, a lot of insights, understandings of 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, you all do it. Social media, website, everything. Massonomics. Welcome, everyone, for an extra special episode one, season two. of the Massonomics podcast. That's right. Episode 501 officially marks the start of season two. And wow, what a first season of the show that was.

So you're saying when you count to a thousand, you go one to 500 and then one to 500. Is that your preferred method? Yes. Yes, it's one to 500 twice. It's the easiest way to mentally break it up in my head. Yes. My name is Tanner still, even on season two.

No name changes. Yeah. My name is so Tommy. Yep. Yeah. Still still in the same. Same cast. This is not like, what's that show you got me to watch, finally?

The first season's good. Oh, true detective. True detective. This is not like a true detective style series. We will maintain the same cast in season two. That's the right way to do it. Like what if we just completely swapped us out and was like, yep, for the, you know, we're pinch it and next two guys up to have the next 500 episodes.

Here you guys go. We'll see you guys in 10 years. We laid the groundwork for you. Yeah. Yeah, this is episode 501. We're going to maybe recap 500, just a little bit. We have a really big announcement about the 26 Lift Hard Live Easy Classic. We want to talk about some Black Friday stuff that's coming up.

We have possibly sports and books segment, a very interesting title topic regarding equipment companies and reviewers. We have some other equipment that we want to talk about in this episode. But first, speaking of Black Friday and deals that are coming out, be on the lookout for all these companies that we're going to mention as sponsors this week. First one being the Strength Co. Check them out at the Strength.com. Regardless of sales, they now do have their lowest prices ever on shipping rates. So couple that with possibly some impending Black Friday deals.

Black Friday deals on black e-coded plates is a match made in heaven. And if I've ever seen one, check them out at the Strength.co. Be on the lookout for their sales that are coming up. They're the go-to plates for Massonomics Gym and Tommy's home gym, The Strength.com. This episode is also brought to you by Juggernaut AI. Juggernaut is the smartest program for you. Since 2009, Juggernaut has been your trusted training resource,

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Thank you, Juggernaut AI. This is a slightly unconventional way to start off the show. But now that we're in season two, how about a little throwback to open powerlifting stat of the week? But first, we need a little open powerlifting stat of the week music. Let me see what I've got here. I don't like that. There it is.

There's the open powerlifting stat of the week. Just get ready to get hit with a stat right there. Thank you, Buck Cherry, for our open powerlifting stat of the week. Now returning in season two of the Massanomics podcast. After a 300 episode break, it is so back. We're so back, baby. Big Kevin from Ohio, parts unknown of Ohio,

provided us with an updated open powerlifting sad of the week. Big Kevin got us. What is the heaviest raw total ever where the bench was the biggest of the three lifts? So are you tracking Tommy what we're talking to? Yes, yes. Biggest total. So the bench was better than the squat. The bench is the biggest lift.

And wait, are we talking? The highest total. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, highest total ever. And are we talking raw here? What level of raw. Okay. So we're not saying equipped with bench or a second.

Yeah. Bench a thousand pounds or anything like that. Right. Nope. It's raw. So what do you think the highest? And it's also you can only, this is to get the highest total.

So you can only really only sandbag the squat and deadlift. So, you know, there's not really a lot of sandbagging going on. Right. We're talking about the highest total. I mean, okay,

just thinking it's like I don't think that the bench is like 300 pounds more than the squat and deadlift. That'd be really weird. You know, if you're benching like 600 in your squat and deadlift or both in like the threes. Also, it's not that big of a total. So, okay, you just say, just for the sake of part of my brain says they got to be pretty close. You know, like if, right, like you can't be having a massive total, have a big bench and then also have tiny other ones. So correct.

If you say they're close, okay, 5,55 gets you a 1,500. It doesn't seem like that crazy. I mean, that's a big bench, no doubt. but that's not like an insane number. 600, 600, 6,000. Like, that's pretty big. Like, that's a big bench. 600 pounds, but, so 1,800.

Could someone go more than that, though? I don't know. That's the thing is, if we're talking raw benches, just the number of people benching over 600 is so small. Short list, short list. But then if I say 600 bencher, Well, they didn't bench and squat, or they didn't squat and deadlift 600.

They did less, you would assume, somewhat less. So, 18, I don't know, is it like 17 something, 1740, 1750? I would say you're right on track with pretty much everything. It was Mehir Whitset in 2018. He deadlifted 600. He squatted 600, and he benched 600. 6.05. Oh, okay.

18.05 total of 452 dots. Wow. So yeah, you're pretty much spot on, I would say. It makes you wonder if that was kind of intentional, you know? Very possible. You know, was he? Especially with the round numbers of the squat and the deadline. That's what I'm saying, that the fact that almost everything matched, it feels like maybe.

Maybe an extremely strong person that a squat in a deadlift of 600 each are relatively token for him. That's what it would seem like in that case, that if you can bench that. much that the squat that at least the squatter deadlift wouldn't be that close to each other still that one of them would be a little more out there but an 1805 raw total with his bench being the highest lift of all three i mean that is that is an impressive total that's it really did it to him surprising surprising way to to go about that yeah it's kind of a fun i like that stat that's a good one Yeah. So season one, open powerlifting stat of the week,

off to a great start or a great start in season two here, correction season two. So is that, is that our only one though? Do we got to wait like 300 more episodes to get another one of those? It's the only one we have so far. Maybe someone could get a sort of a good stat of the week for season two episode two. Okay. Here's a crazy stat. Biggest total where the highest lift is the squat. That could be pretty crazy.

Oh, you mean the big? biggest total. Yeah. Oh, okay, you got me. Okay. What are you drinking over there?

Anything in particular? Oh, yeah. This is a good old fashion. Got some of these ramblers yet? Lemon line. Nope, still got those.

Not even in season two. Lemon Lime Waterloo. Lemon, Lime, Waterloo, it is. Except for me, I'm a bit of a rambling,

man, even here in season two. Season one, I don't know if we kicked off by drinking sparkling waters yet, but season two, we're not going to wait to 100 episodes or so. We're jumping right to it. It's good. And I got mine in a drink spotter. Chill.

Only way to magnetically keep your drink drinks cool in a convenient coozy. I got one of these beverage devices. Oh, you said magnets where we're going, we don't need magnets. Because we have carabiners. We've still got a few. So last week was the drop. We've got a small stack of the carabiner mugs left. Those could be gone by Black Friday.

We have about this many patches left. It's just a few. Small stack of patches left. And was the zip hoodie in this drop already? Am I remembering that correctly? Yeah, there is very few of those left. If you're a 5x or a 4x or a 3x or a 2x, we have like one of each of those. So if you're a large human,

I'm calling you five and four Xers out out there. You guys like to write in and complain when people don't have stuff that fits you. Right now we've got something that fits you. We just need you to be ordering it. There's still time if you're a five Xer even. You could get one. There's one.

And then the bench, the new bench heavy tea, not many left, but a decent number of sizes left, actually, on the bench heavy tea. so you could get it. That was the last, I don't even know, my time's so off with this episode.

I know. I'm telling you, we're on the episode 500 hangover right now. Should we talk a little behind the scenes of episode 500? Now that the cat's out of the bag. Yeah, now that we kept it secret for a very long time, everyone knows we recorded episode 500 from Mount Rushmore. Go give it a watch if you haven't yet. I think it was a fun episode.

And I got to give Tanner credit on that. He said one day he's like, I feel like we got to do something really crazy for 500. And I'm like, yeah, we should. And I didn't give it any more thought that he's like, I think we can do it at Mount Rushmore. And I'm like, that's actually a really good idea. And you basically-

That was many months ago. Yes. Oh, yes, many months. I mean, those might have been like four months ago or more. And you basically filled out the permit for it, did the whole thing and got it all lined up. And as far as that part of it goes, it was pretty smooth, actually.

Yeah, it was. We became buddies with the park rangers. and they helped us hook it up. It was not that complicated. I didn't, had no idea. It wasn't like, it wasn't like we're like, oh yeah, we can definitely do this. We'll just line it up quick and we'll be good to go.

It was like, I don't know. Can we record a podcast on Mount Rushmore? Will they let us do that? Yeah. And I guess as long if you're just like nice to them and seem normal, it's not that big of a deal. We didn't have to pay a little small fee of some sort for the permit, but it was, I don't know, 50 bucks, maybe something like that.

Like, we didn't actually know, because if you look at the video, we're not recording from the main, what do they call it, like the main terrace or whatever. Yeah, the Grandview Terrace. There you go, yeah. We're not recording. So if you're like, oh, I now know most of the parts of Mount Rushmore. If you watch that video and think, oh, Mount Rushmore's pretty chill. There's not many people there.

It's because we were off in kind of a side area. You're in the Borgleham Terrace. Yes, we're in the Borgleham Terrace. Which when you're looking at Mount Rushmore is down about 100 stairs and to the right. of where you typically stand. So a lot of people don't make it down that direction. That's why if you watch it, there's not a ton of foot traffic over there

because it's not the main stage. But I did like before we went there, you did make the park ranger send you a photo of the outlet, just to prove that there is in fact an outlet there, that they're not just saying there's an outlet there. Well, we have done enough things before in the past where I'm like, this is going to sound weird,

but could you actually send me a picture? of the outlet. Like, because we really need the outlet. Like, it's really going to throw us for a loop if there's not. And he did, in fact,

send me a picture, a photo of the outlet. So I'm like, okay. And the outlet were great. The only issue was on us is an action. And I actually ended up being fine, but Tanner's like,

yeah, I got an extension cord. Extension cord could have been about a foot longer. If it was any shorter, we probably wouldn't have been able to position the cameras in a way that you could see Mount Rushmore. But luckily, it was just the,

right length. No, I think ultimately we were in the exact spot we wanted to be, but we had no slack to get no. No, no, none at all. Yeah. I actually didn't think it was going to work as we were about to get, I'm like, yeah, we were really cutting the corner over this edge. And yeah, it was, it was the exact length. Anything shorter went to work. And it, what, um, he, uh, Antony asked about the second camera angle, because we did, you did have two cameras. set up but I think the first or the the backup camera the secondary camera after a certain amount of time it was no longer on right well no what happens is so we brought two cameras for the special occasion and we had a lot of set up it took a long time we did yes there's a lot of cords and to carry it all

there was and tiring yes and so what happens is the main camera I have is my newer camera and it can just you can hit record and it will record forever the second camera because it's older it cuts off at 30 minutes So every 30 minutes, I had to go and check it. And at one of the times, after the first time when I went and checked it, because I had the screen turned towards us so I could see it, I turned the screen back when I was checking it. And what had happened when I did that is I had touched, not us. I touched the background.

So it put the background into focus and not us. And typically when I'm recording stuff, I'm behind the camera, I'm watching all this. But because I'm in a rush and trying to, you know, look at the camera and stay on track with the podcast and all that, I just wasn't checking the screen that closely. I was just mainly looking to see that the red record button was on. So when I hit the record button again and flip the camera around or the screen around,

I must have just tapped the background. It put us out of focus. And so after those first 30 minutes, if I went to the second camera, then the background, everyone walking around looks great and we're all super blurry. So that one just got, that camera angle got cut for the other hour and a half. But it didn't really matter. It was not a very camera. I mean, it looked sweet when it started.

but yeah, it just, it wasn't the end of the world. Jake said, you'd start calling us Discovery Podcast because we're hiking all around with our podcast equipment, like Discovery Deadlift. I like that idea. Wouldn't want to do it every week, though. Oh, we were saying, we were so winded.

And our conclusion was it has to be the elevation or something because there was a lot of upstairs. Yes, up and downstairs and going and then holding all that stuff. Because I'm like, yeah, I can take off rolling on the pelage. time bike and be quite a way he's in before I'm breathing this hard but yeah for this setup it was then because of whatever you know the bathroom was a good three-quarter mile height to get to go to the bathroom so we both had to go before we started so we took turns to go to the bathroom and I pretty much jogged there and back because I'm like this is just going to literally take forever if I

walks and that was that was the whole you know I didn't really I didn't really think of this variable until the very end was that we're starting to set up just getting going and it's starting to sprinkle a little bit. It's like, no, don't tell me it's going to sprinkle now. We've come all this way. If it rains, this totally messes the day up. And it was sort of later in the afternoon. So it's not like we could just sit around all day and wait this thing out. And you're pulling it up on your phone.

It's like, yeah, it says chance of rain for the next two hours, which is what our time was reserved for. Right. So we're just thinking, okay, we'll just hurry this thing up if we have to. and okay, if it's 45 minutes. But if it's starting to start raining, like the cameras aren't going to work and like the video board, like it actually did start to rain,

that wouldn't be okay. And luckily, after we hit record, there was a few little sprinkles and nothing else. Like the wind came up a couple times where I got scared and thought maybe the tripods are going to tip over, but somehow the weather miraculously worked out for us. Cooperated just enough.

And once we were really rolling, it seemed to be mostly okay, like the rain was. kind of just keeping us on our toes at the very start of it, really. And then we were kind of in the clear after that. Other than that, I think we did a good job keeping it pretty much secret. You know, basically the whole time leading up to it. And then we launched it as a premiere on YouTube.

And there was a peaked at like 80 some people watching the premiere on YouTube. So, and chatting along with it. So we've never done a premiere before, have we? I don't think we've ever published any video as a premiere. Yeah. I know of it with over 900 and some videos on YouTube. Yeah, that was cool. And then also to add to the craziness of the whole weekend,

we decided to both bring our families out and we all stayed in one cabin together. So there was a lot of kids running around. Right. Yeah, that was actually our break. Yeah. It actually was. It actually was.

That was the easy part of the weekend. Oh, God. And I'm just remembering, I drank a lot of beers that night. I don't know if you realize it. Oh, yeah, that's right. When we're sitting there. That night, after that night.

Yeah, after that night. Like, oh, I'm going to celebrate this occasion. And it's not too often I sit down with a case of light beer. And man, I was feeling that one a little bit the next day. Yeah. Oh, that's what 500 episodes are for. Yeah. Yes, yes, it was.

We actually end up just sort of like, nah, screw it. We're not going home. You guys went home. We stayed another night. I'm like, nah, we're not going to do this. Yeah, because so, yeah, we went home on Sunday. That's right. Yep, yep. And I don't know. Overall, I'm really happy with the way episode 500 turned out. I think we wanted to do something special and I think it was pretty cool. First podcast ever from Mount Rushmore for anyone. And I think it was a good mix of Massanomics, nostalgia and also just talk, just talking about the whole thing. Yeah. I love that someone came up that I knew.

while we're recording to because what are the odds of that? I know. Also in South Dakota, it's like, well, it'd probably be weird if no one popped up. But yeah, it was funny that, yeah, it was a guy that you knew from high school. Yeah. And also, we do have full closure. The guy that talked to Sean's in the airport is in the Discord. So, yes.

I forgot his name already. I forgot who that was. Me too. I forgot. That was really funny, though, that he goes, yeah, I'm the guy that talked to Sean's in the airport. Yes. All right. So that's 500.

I guess we'll do it again in 500 more. I'll be ready. Every week now is for Mount Rushmore. We're going to do the next one in the badlands. We need to go more remote. We're just going to go to all the national monuments. I don't know how we're going to find it a power cord to get way out there, but we'll have to do it.

We'll just bring a generator, I guess. We're going to do one from the needles highway. From the top of the needles. The Mitchell Corn Palace. We're going to go to all the South Dakota of Landmark. From the top of the Aberdeen parking garage. From the one-way main street in the dean. That's settled, right?

That it's just staying one way. I don't live there. So I don't know for sure. Did we come back to that? I don't think we did. Was that the final conclusion that it's off? I think so, yeah. It's now staying one way.

I think it was, it was yes, it's going two-way. And then a bunch of people did a petition and all this stuff. And they said this is the most important political moment of lives. Everyone vote like your life depends on it. The most recent I know is that it is staying one way. Okay. And like I think that that's set. I'm sure everyone planning on coming for the Lift Hard of Easy Classic just breathe the huge sigh of relief knowing that they're. How are we going to deal with

that change if we come back and now the whole of a sudden you can drive both directions there. Yep. Throw everyone off. Yeah, using the money to fix potholes is what, uh, Big Abby is commenting that I have heard that also, that that's what they're going to use the money for. I don't, I don't really buy, I'm not buying or selling anything that they're saying. It's all just words. Yeah.

Yes. Okay, so that was episode 500. Make sure you give it a watch if you haven't already. Oh, speaking of, Speaking of Massonomics on YouTube episodes, our Elite FTS episode finally came out. Oh, table talk. We didn't even have that in the docket here.

I'm going to add it just so I can check it off right now. Table talk, yep. Check it off. There it is. Yeah, table talk. So when was that? The joke first. The joke with the timing on this was that when we went.

Was that in April or May? Or May. I think it was maybe May. So we go. You know, they asked if we want to do table talk again. We said, yep, and it worked perfect because we could, you know, turn this trip into this big home gym tour that we did in May. All those gym tours did come out now at this point.

I don't know, probably a few months ago. We got them all done finally. Yeah. But we do table talk, do the gym tour with Dave. It was a great morning, like always. I thought the episode was really fun. The gym tour was obviously very fun too. And I don't like it when we're leaving.

You make a comment like, oh, Dave, any idea when this will come out? probably pretty soon. We usually do the better ones first. And then that's been the joke in the discord is that, hey, when is that coming? And we said, Dave said the better ones come first. And here we are, June, July, August, September, October. I got the feeling, though, that they were probably pretty backed up when this summer, the Dan Green one came out.

And that was a really good, many months old. Yeah, it was from the Arnold. And so that one was even at that point three or four months old. And you're like, okay, well, if they're sitting on this one, then, yeah, they have a lot in the back catalog right now. We do always like to monitor how ours performs and ours is performing well in relation to other ones that have been released recently. So always makes me happy to see that. It's not very fun if we go on there and we have the worst, worst episode that they've had. We're actually probably in the top 25% of recent ones.

So thanks everyone for checking it out. That means somebody is interested in seeing what we have to say on table talk. been sharing some of that stuff. I think for anyone that's listened to the episode in its entirety in the form of a podcast or watch it on YouTube, I've seen nothing but positive comments, even from people that aren't already in the massonomics sphere,

you know, even from just the table talk, people just a lot of good comments. The only negative comments I see are from people that just watch nothing but a short clip and base a whole bunch of opinions based on that as one does. Isn't that how you're supposed to form your opinions is based on how the short. clip maybe out of context.

Yeah. And then, uh, and even then mostly still positive, but just, uh, some interesting comments on that. Like the guy shared that shared it.

This, if you're the mass, if you're a mass, I'm a supporting member of the Discord, you know this, but some guy that shared in his story and what was the end of it. Uh,

uh, but to each their own, I guess. That's the kind of funny tagline. He's like, that's what he called me out for not understanding equipment at all. He's like,

to say that strength curves aren't important, some people just don't understand equipment and some people never will, but to each their own, I guess. And I'm like, I don't know, that may be a stretch to say I don't understand equipment at all. Like that would be, as far as percentage of people in the world, I would say, you know.

It's the meme of the bell curve of like the person that doesn't know anything is like, oh, equipment doesn't matter. And then the peak in the middle, like, Equipment matters a lot. And then the guy on the other sentence, like, equipment doesn't actually really matter. Like,

that's the classic example of what this is. Yep. Yep, that is what I would say. And also, like in the home gym Facebook group where just literally like

the thumbnail gets shared. A lot of people like formulate opinions on the episode without even listening to a second of it, which is interesting. It's kind of what the internet's for, I suppose.

And I've seen that time and time again. So none of that. surprising but a lot of people that I'm like oh how about you give it a listen right see what I mean some of the people are complaining about things that we that we'd literally discuss and like oh well if you did this this and this is like yeah we actually we actually say that if you listen to the thing yes it was a lot of fun table talk round two we were excited to get in people some people mentioned you know that our regular listeners to our show is like oh, we're on 2x speed.

But when you get there in the heat of the moment, you get an energy drink going with Dave live at the table. You're not recording at 10 o'clock at night. Yeah, it goes. It just goes. It was a lot of fun. I haven't listened back to the whole thing, but I listened to most of it,

which was fun because it was so long ago. I didn't. Oh, I know. It was like just listening to a show that I wasn't on, although I am on it, you know, it was fun. Yeah, I got to go back and catch more of it. I've only listened to just a little bit. Yeah, I got a few more clips to share from that.

But Table Talk, Table Talk was fun. If you're here listening now from Table Talk, thank you for checking out our show. And hopefully you stick around for the ride for a while, become a supporting member, get a certified training facility. You know, we'll start to brainwash you and everything that we would like you to do soon enough. And you'll get the hang of it soon enough.

We'll make sure to mention strength curves every week for at least the next 10 weeks. Yeah, that's the one clip that I see got a lot. is talking about when I'm talking about the strength curve and then you're chiming in the straight curve and then Dave's chiming in. I'm like, Dave wasn't arguing with this on anything. It was very natural conversation. I think that was the one where he goes. So what is everyone saying he's a dumbass too? Right. I think that's one where he's talking about that's the margins, the stuff that doesn't really like it matters, but it matters to such a small degree. Right. You don't worry about that until you have all the other pieces dialed into perfection. Then you can start to worry about that part. Yes.

What were our most recent YouTube videos that we published this week? So last week was Mo's gym tour. Two gyms in one home, basement gym and garage gym both. And a lot of homemade woodworking equipment in there and Facebook marketplace. Fine. So if you haven't checked out Big Mo from an actual South Dakota gym tour, check that one out. and this next one that comes out tomorrow as we record this will be big Evan Centipani's YouTube gym tour basement gym tour have you got a chance to watch any of it yet

Tanner just the first like two minutes I always got at least watch like the first I got to see the opening it's good his gym tour is good I can just say this people make sure if you're a fan of Evan Centipani at all like yes 100% watch this but if you're not even really sure who he is matter like watch this because you you'll be a big fan of Evan by the time this is done. Yeah. It says hardcore basement bodybuilder gym tour. It's good.

Okay. Do we want to do supporting our supporting, oh, or should we do lift hard, live easy classic 2026 announcement? Do we do that first or do supporting our sporting members and certified training facility of the week first? Well,

neither one of them will be probably super quick, so whatever you think. Let's save the big lift, Hardly Veezy classic for the very end just to keep people. Of the whole episode, very end? Well, yeah, we can do that too. Oh, is what you mean by very end?

I guess that is, but that's a bad idea too. I don't know. I'm going off the top of my head. I don't even know. All right, we'll just wing it. We'll feel it out. See how it goes. Okay.

Well, let's do supporting our supporting members. This is a relatively new segment to the podcast. in terms of the full duration here. It's very new to season two because this is the first time we're doing it here in season two. So in respect to season two, it's completely new because this is the first episode of season two. It's a segment where we give back to those that support us

so you can become a supporting member by going to massanomics.com slash join. You can get signed up. It's how you get it in our Discord. It's the only way. It's how you listen to the podcast live. It's the only way. It's how you listen to the pre-show. We had a very greasy pre-show

where we talked about stuff that we can't talk about on the show. We do that every week before the show starts. We make sure to think, is there at least one thing we got cooking that we can't talk about on the show yet that we can bring up in the greasy old pre-show? We do that every week,

and only supporting members can get in on that. We had our crew mailer, our most recent one that went out was the trading card sets that only supporting members got in. We've got some competitions coming up that only supporting members are going to be able to participate in. And I don't know, a whole bunch of stuff. It's the best lifting community on the internet also. Like I kind of skipping over the most important part.

It's just a really cool group of people that you get to associate with. And it's how you get in on our Lift Hardly Easy Classic, which we're going to talk about and everything else. But it's how you make it into the segment each week. We got a long one this week because we haven't recorded for a little while. So it's Big Tim competed at USPA. IPL Southwest Regionals in Tucson tested under 275 in the 60 to 64 year old class. He broke the IPL World and USPA National Record Squat with 457 pounds for his division. Big Mo competed in Olympic weightlifting.

He went six for six with an 86 kilogram snatch and 150, 115 KG clean and jerk. He also coached his godson in his first sanctioned. powerlifting meat. That's Big Moe, nice snatch. I watched the video. That was really cool. Yeah. Big washed up Dan hit a family PR with his new baby girl.

Congratulations. Big Sergeant Anderson hit a family PR with his new baby girl. Congratulations. Big Alex Wes outdid both of them with a double family PR with the twins. The twins? Twins. The twins. Do I have a Twins button handy?

still? What? You do somewhere. Let me check here. Oh, man, what button is it? With the twins. There it is. My handy, I mean, not handy at all.

It's there somewhere. With the twins. Yeah, so Big Alex West was with the twins. Big Debo and Big Matthew competed at Big Dan with the arm tattoo strong man competition. Debo got fifth in his first strong man comp ever. Big Hogan competed at Ohio State's strongest man, men's open 181 pound division. Big Kurt competed in King Kong grip competition. He got PR on three out of four lifts. Big Mad Cow also

competed in the King Kong grip competition. He got 11th out of 295 competitors. 11th out of 295. That's an excellent percentage. A big percentile. Big robo. did his powerlifting meat. He went seven for nine with 480, 348, 544. Big A.A. Ron got second place finished in his powerlifting meat with a 522.5 kilogram total, which was a big meat PR at 9 for 9. Big Steve C.

I think I'm reading this right. I think I tracked this correct. I don't know if you know about this. Big Steve C did two meets in one weekend. He competed in his first and second powerlifting meet on Saturday. He went eight for nine. with an 1155 total, and on Sunday, he went seven for nine with an 1144 total. Someone please correct me if that's wrong.

I don't know that I've heard of that before. Wow. Yeah, that is, that is interesting. That is, that's cool. That's impressive. Big Derek competed in his powerlifting meet. One of them was with Big Steve on Saturday. Did not go as planned.

He tore his bicep on his final deadlift. attempt, I believe. And he was possibly already even had surgery on that to reattach. So wishing him a speedy recovery still made supporting our supporting member even with a torn bicep. Go watch Tanner's hook grip video, I guess.

That's true. Is there a YouTube hook grip video on that? Yeah, remember? Okay, yeah. Your grip secret. Yep, one weird trick or something. Yeah, we'll share that somewhere. Big Dan, juror,

did a power lifting meet who went eight for nine, 110, 10 kilogram master's champion. Big Dave and Katie put on a big meat in, I don't know if you consider it North Dakota or Minnesota. Where are they out up there? I think it was technically in Minnesota, wasn't it the meat?

We'll be confused with some of the Florida area. They put on a big meat there. Big Zach from Massanomics gym was refing. He was getting his roughing wings, I believe, yeah. Big Chris Hornick was competing. He had a meat PR big Chief Samson and his son, Big Luke Samson were both also competing.

Big spicy pizza was there competing and Big Jeremy was there competing. All veterans of the Lift Hard Live Easy Classic as well. Mini crew also competing in the garage gym. Oh, yeah. Competition was going on. I saw a lot of great lifts, a lot of variations in lifts

coming from the crew. I think Big Gen won an award for sure. I don't know who else potentially won. This week's guest on unpaid and underrated is one of the mats. I think there's like 15 Matt supporting member. British Matt transplant athlete who competes in the transplant games with a transplant kidney, I believe, go give it a listen. Our braddy little sister podcast.

That's another perk of being a supporting members. You could make it as a guest on that show like Big Matt did. That is it for this week, supporting our supporting members. It's a crazy supporting our supporting members segment. It took me a while to get that together today. I don't think we've even had on half that long before. No, that was intense. I get it.

We took a week or two off, but also I think everyone has. This is most, October must be the time to have your late fall competitions. Must be with everything going on. I think people are like, oh, no, there's,

there's Thanksgiving and Christmas coming up. So November and December, off the books. It's October. Okay. Certified training facility of the week. Do you have one picked out, Tommy,

or should I have one here if you don't have one picked out? I have one that's kind of caught my interest. All right, let's do that then. Okay. We're going all the way to a little place called Los Angeles. Okay. And if you zoom way in, somewhat on the east side of it,

it's above straight north of Big David's Cup there. A little place called the Eagle Eggs Power Gym. What's the full title here? Eagle Eggs Power Gym for the Orphins. Big Andy. Let me find that. Where did you say it is from David's Cup? Straight North, David's Cup.

Close or a ways away? Oh, no, not that one. I mean, it's all relative. that's true i'd say it's the only pin that's straight north of his cup what'd you say it's called uh eagle eggs power gym for the orphans and it's in california yeah just it's one of like three that are basically right in l.a oh that david i was looking at the other david in uh san francisco area oh oh the old davids they're always up to their tricks aren't they yeah okay all right now i'm You mean close to where we tour.

Yes, close to where we tour. Okay. See, I was looking at British David's. Yeah, okay. I'm like, yeah, this isn't that complicated. Yeah, I'm like, there's not really, I'm not guessing your directions, but there's not really anything immediately north. Like, there's northeast and northwest.

I wouldn't describe these as straight due north. Okay. Now it makes sense. I'm there. Okay. Eagle eggs power gym already. Holy crap. What do we got here?

You're seeing the pictures? Yeah, what is this called? Eagle Eggs Power Gym. for the orphans. Yeah, so right off the bat, this is a garage gym, and the garage looks like it's finished quite nicely. The floor,

I think this is rolled flooring here, isn't it, I guess, from the first photo that's, yeah, like this is a seamless black floor. Yeah. And the rack, right off the bat, this rack is, actually,

a couple things going on here. So we have, I gotta get a bigger, I got to blow this picture up here. There's some details here that I, really worth looking at. So in the rack. We're going to check out here.

There's, okay, it's an all black rack with red accents in it. I think it's got a rogue bench mantere or something in there. But we have like some premium touches here.

Are those the ghost rollers? I can't tell there's a ghost of the Irwin rollers in there. Yeah. And then you got some rack extensions for a pull-up bar. You got the old basketball hoop on there.

A lot of plates. Yep, Gen 2. Yeah. Important distinction. A lot of plates got the mutant metals. There's a Voltra on there. Don't see a ton of those in the wild. No. Brigg. You got an SSB.

There's some storage for some dumbbells and things in the rack. But then off to the side behind there, do you see that lap pull-down tower? What low row is that? Yeah, I'm not sure with the drink spotter on there. You see a drink spotter? On the front of it. Oh, yeah. Well, can you tell on the very top of it?

It says a name. Yeah, I can't. It's just pixelated enough that I can't quite make out what that name is. And I don't know. And then there's another cable machine or like a functional trainer in the back corner even farther. They got a rogue scout reverse hyper there. And let's go to photo two. Photo two.

This is a really cool touch. They've done the whole wall with that like grass kind of fake turf look. You know, it looks like the wall is covered in Vine. It's a really cool look for a garage gym. Yeah, it's cool. And he has the light, the hex lighting on the screen. Yeah, you got the hex lighting, got a TV with easy chained, I think, too also. Yes, is old, naturally.

Got the Jen Thompson, Jen tour, a gym tour on the video, which is great. I noticed that too. There's a few things here, though. There's a machine, first there's a, it looks kind of like the leg curl, leg extension from like Temple of Gaines. Temple of Gaines. Whatever that style is. Another drink spotter on there even.

There's a pendulum squat back. there, isn't that what that is? Yeah. That pad comes out with the weight horn. Yeah, for sure. So that's on there. You got a dumbbell back. What is this one here?

This is some type of like hip thrust machine or something in the middle? That's my guess. I would say it's a hip thrust machine. It says bells of steel on it. I don't know. Maybe they make one. I'm not sure. There's a few barbells on the wall.

You got a mini split. So we're temperature controlled even. And next photo. You know you need that AC in SoCal. Yeah. Yeah, we were there. It's, man, I don't know how those people survive, you know. You can see that bells of steel.

Oh, yeah, yeah. There you can see it better. You got a treadmill of some kind. We got a beverage fridge, a safe, it looks like. Last picture, we got wall control with all types of attachments, the certified training facility banner, some bands, some other things. I think that's all of it. That's one heck of a garage gym.

I got, goodness, we got affiliate codes from almost everything in there. We talked about Temple of Gaines, bells of steel, rep fitness, possibly, maybe tight fitness. We got affiliate codes in all those companies. Yeah, okay. Last thing I was kind of wondering, though, I was thinking as we're going through, do you think you could get strong inside of the Eagle Egg's Power Gym for the Orphans? Oh, hell yeah. Me and began to get hella strong up in the Eagle's Egg, Power Gym for the Orphans.

It just rolls off the time. The longer names on the certified training facility map. You two get on the certified training facility map by going to massanomics.com slash certified. We're closing in on 400 certified training facilities. Get yourself on the map. You get to a pin on the map. You get to send pictures that we add there.

It's possibly we get you featured on certified training facility of the week like we did with Big Andy. just now we do a new one every single week. And it is the number one way that we research gyms for when we're doing our cross-country gym tours. So if you ever want to DM me and be like, hey, you should check out my gym sometime when you're on a gym tour. The first thing I do every time is see if you're a certified training facility. And if you're not, then I send you a reply back that says, hey, here's the map that we use when we're scouting out places to go. And I link the certified training facility. and most of those people do not join to become a certified training facility then.

They just don't want it bad enough. Yep. Actually, it's not true. Some of them have joined. I shouldn't say most. Like it's a 50-50 shot that someone's going to join up when they send that because that it shows me, oh, you do actually want a gym tour because you're willing to put your money where your mouth is. Yeah, right, right.

Certified training facility of the week. and this week's episode, this is also big news for season two, our newest sponsor of the show, Elite FTS. They are the newest sponsor of the Massonomics podcast. Be in the lookout there for some serious Black November, Black Friday deals coming, 50% off bands as we speak. Then you use discount code Mass 10. On top of that, it'll get you actually 60% off of bands. Now would definitely be the time to be buying bands. They have $80 saved on the SS Yoke Bar,

another one of our personal favorites. We've got one of Nasanomics Gym that's been there for years. Tommy has one in his garage gym that's been there for probably a year. It is on record as being both of our personal favorite specialty bars. Just be on the lookout for everything else. I think there's a series of different sales that they're going to have at Elite FTS. Mass 10 every week. Listen to our Table Talk episode.

Listen to Table Talk. There's like two or three episodes every single week. So unfortunately, ours is getting buried right now. But go give that into a lesson and hopefully move it to the top. EliteFTS.com, Mass 10. Did you start this episode reading a Strength Coad, Tanner? I think I started with a Strength Coad. Okay.

Okay. Then I will make a point of not reading a Strength Coad. And I instead read a Build Fast Formula ad. This episode is brought to you by Build Fast Formula. Build Fast Formula are our go-to supplements to keep us feeling good in and out of the gym. Big fans of the 80-20 protein. It's 80% casein, 20% way protein, and it tastes great.

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Okay, now I think you should kick off all the live listeners, and we will go to our title topic, and we will follow that up with a very big, important announcement for the Lift Hard Live Easy Classic 2026. So none of our live listeners get to hear it. I know a bunch we're hanging on to hear it. So let's not let them in. I feel like we've been too good on that lately where we let anyone in on the cool stuff.

And we used to always keep everyone hanging. I feel like we should keep everyone hanging this this week. That's only fair. I've got to make sure to listen to it when the full episode comes out. So we are going to go. move into then our title topic for the week, which, here we go. A little title topic music to set the mood. The mood is set.

The mood is set. A working title topic. You'll see it. If you're listening to this, you've already seen what the title is. You're in the future, and we've already figured that out. But it's something along the lines of maybe Tommy can, we'll have a different description here, but it'll be like equipment companies. versus reviewers or equipment company manufacturers versus content creators maybe.

Content creators, yeah, something like that. And this is obviously influenced by the recent lawsuit. Well, I don't think you should say obviously because there's definitely people that don't know what's going on. True. Okay, yeah. So let's give it the background. Okay. So start this by saying,

we haven't been to law school. Tanner's been to one of Canada's top business schools, which is probably pretty close to law school, but took business law in undergraduate and possibly in grad school, and I just completely don't remember it. Well, there you go. You're pretty much a lawyer of this way.

I took business law class. To be fair, that's probably more than most of the people on the internet commenting about this right now. I think actually from a statistical standpoint, that would put you in the top at least 10%. 10%. Yes, yes. Right.

So you're very, you're actually almost overqualified to talk about this topic. But what we're going to discuss here is, so there is an equipment company called Vulcan. I actually didn't know anything about them. I'm not sure I heard of them before. I've seen them with, my only thing prior to this rack was like seeing their bumper plates, I think, and maybe a few barbells of theirs around. Yeah, maybe. But I've come across their bumper plates before. It does not cross our radar.

much and the home gyms were visiting. No. That's a fact. Definitely not. But what it happened is they had a like a power rack all in one trainer thing that everyone has now. And I guess they sent it to Gluck for review. He released a review. I believe the video was something like the worst piece of equipment I've reviewed. It was something like that, wasn't it? Yeah. It was pretty direct into the point with the title on it. And then if you watch the video, he just goes through, I don't like this. I don't like this. This sucks. This isn't good. This is okay.

This isn't good. You know, he's, he's tearing it apart. He's, he's not, he's not going easy on it by any means. No. And I think it would end up being a 15, 20 minute video,

something like that. Yeah, I think so. And it ends with, you know, him saying, stay away. I don't recommend.

And I think I got to watch it earlier because we support, so we're in this Patreon because he puts out Patreon videos early sometimes, but it then did publish to us full YouTube channel. Yeah, because this was, yeah, a month or so ago, something like that. But anyways, I guess Vulcan took offense with it, did not like it.

And from what I understand in my limited understanding of the law is that they are suing him. And is it under, like, is it because of defamation? Is that what the angle they're taking? Yep, for they're suing him for damages as related to that. And I think maybe there again, we. don't take us for gospel on that, but I think maybe the figure $75,000 was thrown out. Oh, was that

actually, there was a number in there, actually? I think so. I think maybe that was the damages for the defamation or something like that. I'm not sure how that gets come to, but I believe there's a figure like that, something like that in there. Interesting. Yes, I don't what makes it hard to comment any of this

is I don't know how law and lawyer stuff works. Well, that doesn't seem to be stopping anyone else. Well, I know. Anything like, anytime something like this comes up, it just turns into what people believe is morally right from their vantage point. Right. That's a really good point. Like it's all, you're almost just, but that's what everyone seems to do is they're just like, well, I feel like I know what the answer is because I feel like I know what's morally correct. And I don't know that that's matters. What is no, it's like that. Yeah, laws are

not just based off of what your moral opinion is, you know, like like collectively, hopefully laws somewhat align with most people's moral opinions. But, uh, but, uh, That's just not how the world or the laws actually work. Is that just what you think ought to be is typically not just the given. But yeah, so we can't, I can't speak on the law part a whole lot of this because, again, like I said, don't know a ton of it. But I think the bigger takeaway is the optics of doing something like this. And just from a PR standpoint for a company, you've got to realize what you're getting into with something like this is, it's what do they call it the Streisand effect?

where by trying to not draw attention to something or not wanting people to talk about something, you draw even more attention to that very thing that you were trying not to draw attention to. And this has to have done that to them. Like there's no doubt. Like if you... Yeah, so you're saying like the video was about Gluck...

Gluck didn't like this product and he said bad things. We don't like that he said bad things. So now everyone's talking about how they... Yeah, so we're going to sue you because we didn't like that you said bad things. And by suing you, we've now drawn way more attention to this video and people that say bad things about our... company. Yeah.

I mean, uh, someone there really should have thought about that. Like that's not the way the internet and, okay, so, you know, we're saying how we don't know how laws work.

What I do know is how people form opinions on companies and the public perception online and suing people, especially like when you're a company, you're suing like what is perceived to be a smaller person. Like it's the whole punching down thing. It just, you look like a big corporation trying to stomp out a, a smaller guy and it's not a good look

and from a PR standpoint you gotta know what you're getting into here and from a PR standpoint it's not not good when I do think people generally believe that Gluck gives unbiased reviews and he doesn't have many reviews where he's

giving a negative bit you know he has criticisms in every review he does I think you know there's criticisms of some sort of criticism of like every single product he's ever reviewed I bet I haven't watched And there should be. Like there's no such thing as a perfect piece of equipment.

Exactly. So that does, like he has a pretty reputable opinion, you know, so I guess his, I take his opinion as something. When I watch that, there again, I don't know. We've never used the product. So we've never used any of their stuff. Yeah, I can't say anything about the product. I've never seen it.

I've never seen it, touched it, used it. So I have no idea. Like maybe it's good. Maybe it's not very good. Maybe like Lux says it's actually really. bad. I have no clue. So I can't actually comment on what the product is like at all. Exactly, because we've never

touched it. It was already, well, we showed up to Gluck's house just really shortly when this was going on it. Just right in the midst of it actually. And it was already gone. I think maybe they had picked it up like earlier that day that we were there. Yeah, it was within a 24 hour window of us visiting it. We had just missed it. But I would also just comment

I like Gluck. We're buddies with Gluck. I don't want this to be a pain in the ass for him. My hope was that this gets settled the easiest way possible. What I do think that maybe some people don't understand is some people are like, oh yeah, stick it to him, Glock. Like they have hopes of him being like, you know, being the team leader. Yeah, the self-righteous guy.

Yeah, that's always... And I'm like, that's a good thought, and it'd be great. Hopefully it works out that way, but also he has to look out for his best interest. And, you know, no doubt he's talking to a lawyer about this and what his options are. And even though, even if they're morally in the correct

and he was just giving his opinion and is all correct, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter if that's not the way that the law, if the law is going to be perceived or, you know, what the lawyers and judges would. would decide. So yeah, it'd be great to back him in that way, which I do back him and support him, but I just think we can't be surprised if at the end of the day they have to be like, yeah, we're, we have to, we had to sign something and we're just not talking about this anymore. You know, like this had to go away.

That could be the thing is, yeah, like what, what's the conclusion to all this is that no one actually knows besides them because that's how lawyer stuff works. Right. And like, I don't think you can blame. them if that happens because they have to watch out for their interest and things get really expensive for everyone involved when there's lawyers and lawsuits involved. And like I don't want them to have to waste a bunch of money at this issue would be my hope for them is that they don't have to waste a bunch of needless money towards it. Yeah. Yeah, it's an interesting, it is an interesting thing. And it brings up also a bigger just topic of honesty and reviews and

working with companies. And I think a lot of people, so this is something we're doing more of recently, is that I don't think people realize that not everyone you work with is just this big faceless company where they give you, it's not like Apple releases an iPhone. You'd be like, oh, this iPhone sucks. The old one is way better.

Like they don't care. You know, they're a whatever, $100 billion company. Like you don't matter. But most of the other companies outside of like Rogue and even, even like the marketing and the, you know, the PR affiliate team at Rogue.

isn't like this massive 200 person department. Like there's contacts at all these that you know. And it does bring up the thing of like, you want companies to release good stuff because every time you have to have these, it makes companies not want to work with you or not want to engage with you or remember that, oh, you can be really critical.

And I'm not saying you can't have honest reviews, but it just works better for everyone when things go good. You know what I'm saying? I guess maybe I'm not articulating that well. Well, we have a easier position where we only quasi do reviews and we're quasi getting into it where we can just kind of pick the things that we already know are. Right. Yeah. We only like.

As of right now, yes, we only do reviews of things we're actually genuinely interested in or like really want, which means that it's like unless we're getting totally caught off guard, it's going to get a good review. Right. We're hopefully going to find some things we think could improve about it. Yeah. You know, like for sure. But overall at the end of the day, we're going to say, most of the same. mostly good things because we're picking stuff that we want and we already kind of know have a good feeling that it's good right because our primary channel and I'm not saying the other

people are doing it wrong but like our primary channel isn't a reviews channel so if we're going to do a review we want it to be something that we think we will like and also our audience will like you know like that's why we don't just do every single thing because like that's not really the direction of our channel you know it's but it really I really don't understand like there again we don't understand the law, but at a certain point, I'm like, I don't even get what's going on. So a person can't just do a review and give their opinion on something and they can't dislike it and then they're going to be sued for that. So like, then I'm like, so how can anyone give a negative review on anything? That's what's weird about it. That is what's weird about it.

Because you just start to, like, what good are reviews for if nobody can say anything bad about anything. Well, exactly. You start to go a few steps. You're like, so wait, are you two videos? not allowed. Like, can I say it in an Instagram comment? Right. Or does this, is this only, like, no doubt if Gluck was just some random ass dude that bought this and had 50 followers on Instagram and made a 30 second real saying, oh, I freaking hate this thing.

It sucks. Nothing would happen of it. You know, like, they wouldn't care. So then you're telling me, well, does it only matter because once you get to a certain size? So, okay, now, please define. What is that size now where it actually matters? You know, like, that's where it just gets so weird trying to police this stuff.

Well, in that, it comes, yeah, it comes down to the size of the company and how much bullying they can do and what they can get, you know, because Rogue Fitness can sue anyone for anyone that they want and like the cost of the legal side of it. They don't, they can eat. Like they don't, I'm sure at the end of the year they don't want to say, we have a $5 million line item mix in the expense side of the. But they probably have many of those every single year. Right, right. They probably have a lot of those. It's just, I don't know. I just, it's concerning to me in general that the idea of equipment companies suing reviewers

for giving them a bad review. That's just concerns me. Yeah, I don't like it either. Yeah, I, I, yeah, it is concerning. Doesn't this, why wouldn't this transcend this industry big time too? Like, so, what about it? Yeah, I mean, it brings. up the whole thing because I think people have fought this before of you leave someone a bad

like Google review and that company figures out who you are and tries to sue you and I don't know again don't know the laws and the ethics on how that actually works see there again I don't understand how the company can do that yeah I mean you hire a to me it makes no sense but like I'm sure there's some angle you can work if you want to pay enough money to have someone that's I don't like if you hire a plumber to come to a job at your house and they suck and they don't follow through and you leave them a bad Google review and then they fricking come at you for that. And it's like you did a shit like so can I not leave

an honest review? Right. Yeah. So yeah. It's like oh yeah. That was my opinion on the service by buying your service am I signing a gig order that I've no longer allowed to discuss any of this and it must be you know it can't it can't be known in public opinion what took place here. I just I just don't know if I understand that for sure from the from the consumer side. It doesn't feel like there's a lot. And hey, Tanner took two business ethics classes. So if he doesn't get it, our business law classes, if he doesn't get it, then I don't think anyone gets it. Little ethics and

law together here. I do, that does just really concern me, though. It just seems like a really slippery slope, especially if, if Falcon gained some ground on it. I'm like, so who's going to be the first reviewer to say something bad about something? one then after that. You know, like, I don't know. It's,

it really is a no win game to me, though, because this whole thing is like, okay, Vulcan actually does, no matter what comes of this, though, who's going to want to do a Vulcan review?

Like, they have to realize that they've just, and buy something from Vulcan. Anyone that's plugged into this at all is not going to buy something from them. Well, yeah, like people will still be buying stuff,

but I'm just saying, like, once you get to a level of being an educated consumer, and you do go down this road and like looking into this and figure out what's going on, no one is going to, want to support that.

And then also all of the people in the space that are making, no one that makes content is going to want to touch Vulcan again. Right? I mean, it's terrifying because even if you don't have a negative review, let's say you have a positive review, but you have some things of feedback, are you going to be like,

well, they take offense to that. Like, I can't talk about. Right. That's the things that people are going to be thinking about from now on. So like they've kind of murdered their affiliate marketing program. If they didn't have one,

maybe they don't have affiliate marketing, but, you know, it would be a really funny idea for someone else to do. You do a Vulcan review, and you buy whatever Vulcan, and you film it,

and you say all really nice things, and you film it like someone's, you know, a hostage tape where, uh, I really liked the Vulcan rack. And like, someone like butts you in the back of the head

with an assault rifle, like quick off of camera. Yeah. Like, there's like lights, really sharp, sharp lights pointing at you. And it's, well, The whole point, though, here is that someone was not thinking of the long term for what this means for the organic marketing and affiliate marketing of their company because they really, whether they win the lawsuit or lose the lawsuit or whatever happens of it.

It doesn't actually matter. You can't say that they didn't do an enormous amount of damage to how that program actually works. Well, that's the way better path. I think this is obvious and I've seen many people mention it is would have not been to do a lawsuit, would have been to talk to him. and, you know, maybe saying that they're going to work on a few things. Here, every company, listen to this, if you release a bad piece of equipment, maybe you don't even think it's bad. If you release a piece of equipment and it turns out that it's getting bad reviews,

here's the answer. Oh, we have now, we're engaged in feedback with reviewer X, Y, and Z to fix these things. And we're going to come out with a new and improved version two. We can't wait to impress you all. And people go, sweet, they're in tune to the community. This is great. And not only as a company did you get good PR, you also got free feedback out of it. Yeah.

And everyone's happy. Like that's, that is the answer. That's how you do these things. Then the reviewers do a review on the new one. And they say, oh, I got to hand it to them. They, that first one, there was some issues. And they really turned it. You know, they responded and they turned it around.

And now they've got a really nice product. You know, that's what you would. And there's a lot of companies that have gone through that exact process. Like, I think Kavon would be the, at Bell's a Steel. He's told us several times. Like, yeah, that one wasn't so good, but we worked with so-and-so and we got a version two, or we listened to what people were saying, made a version three. And, I mean, that's kind of business, though, isn't it?

I mean, that's not how business works? Hey. You didn't go to business school. Oh, wait, I did go to business school. Oh, yeah, that's right. Oh, yeah, it was business. It wasn't a quasi-law school of some kind. I only know business law.

It was really my stuff. Just business law and ethics. It's all he knows. Not business, though. Yes. One of Canada's top business programs. Yeah, it'd be interesting to see how it plays out. Obviously, we're friends with Gluck,

and I would like it to be as painless as possible for them. I guess the takeaway is, don't ever, for any reason, ever do anything that anyone could ever be upset about and take the wrong way ever. I guess I alluded to earlier though, too, and just come back to this, because we've dealt with some quasi-legal things

over the history of massonomics. And, you know, when you get that stuff, some of that stuff is just really scary. And you're not, when you're in the shoes and you start dealing with lawyers, you're not thinking, oh, yeah, we're going to mother F these guys. We'll show them all that we were right.

At a certain point, it's like, yeah, I actually think we're, right, but what are our options here? Oh, okay. So like it looks like our best option is to probably, you know, I don't want to spend, I don't want to spend tens and tens of thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of my life to figure out if we are right or not. Like, that's what it comes down to. Exactly. Exactly. Which is also the annoying part of how the law works. Actually, here, here's a, here's the summary of people, never in doubt, just look at who has the most money,

and typically they end up being the right one. Yeah. Yeah. That's unfortunately what it seems to have. It's how business works, the law works. Just whoever has the most money typically is the one that wins. So stay tuned. We've got some big equipment reviews coming where we really trash on it.

We just want to see how this goes. So with that being said, we are going to go scorched earth on some people here. We do have some equipment reviews coming. Actually, timely one coming probably the fall next week yeah we actually have a really do are we going to talk about that at all this week you know about what you're reviewing and what you've got in your garage gym i mean we could otherwise yeah i guess yeah we can say what it is and maybe we'll go more in-depth

next week then when it's when it's coming out but uh i do have in my gym the gm wd i think it's leo8 version two that is our leg extension and uh It is a much... Plate-loaded. Yeah, plate-loaded leg extension, leg-curl machine. It can flip down to do both. And it is much beefier if you think GMWD, isn't that some cheap Amazon brand?

Usually, but this is a much beefier product, and that's why it stuck out to me, that it looked like... It didn't look like a product that you just get on Amazon and throw a few bolts on it and hope it stays together. It looked like something that was really substantial that was made for a man to heft, heave and horse around some real weight.

And so we're going to get to the bottom of that. You have been putting it to some serious testing. Yeah, yeah. We've been putting this thing through the ringer. And I got some... You brought in some ringers to put it through the ringer, didn't you? I did. Yeah, so I got some conclusions on this.

So be on the lookout for that review coming. Next... I'm excited to see the review. This week, actually. So you've had it in the garage gym horseing around with it for now. Yeah, I've had it for just about a month now, actually. Yeah. I'm excited for that.

So that'll be the following week that that comes out. It looks pretty good. Does it look cool, too? Oh, it looks freaking sweet. Yeah, that's honestly what caught my attention with is. First time I saw an Instagram video for, I'm like, what is this device I'm looking at here?

It looks good. So pass that test right away. I don't want to ask too many questions because I don't want to give away the review. Yeah, that's all I'm answering. That's it. I can. Okay. Yeah, I don't think that's any crazy revelation to say it looks good, though.

All right. Well, another equipment news, did you see the rogue my love? I did see this. Have you heard about this? Have you seen this? So, okay, first thing, that was the name of the bike, too, wasn't it? When they had those bikes. What pipe?

What was it? You know, they actually made like a kind of a hybrid mountain road bike kind of thing. They did? Yeah. You don't remember those? They only existed for. Rogue did? Yes.

It's, yeah, it's called the Milo. Google it right now. Like an outdoor bike? Yeah, yeah, look it up. It's a. I don't remember that. Yeah. It was not around.

They tried to get into the bike world, huh? It was not around very long. I think it came out maybe a year or so ago, maybe two years. Oh, yeah. That seems like a tough industry to crack into. Premium bikes. Or, you know, at least like moderately, you know. Mm-hmm.

So you can still, can you still buy it? Well, look, it's on sale for 500 bucks instead of a thousand. Yeah. Okay. So they recycled the name, first of all. Yeah. What's the interesting part, though, is that, yeah, the name Milo is getting used to get here.

They have so many products, they now have to just start naming things that they've already named. We've used every name in the English language started over again. But, yeah, so Rogue came out with this. It is the Milo, okay, I just got to pull up the actual product page for this thing. Damn it. Now it keeps giving me the Fricken Rogue Milo. Here it is. Okay, the Rogue Milo.

They call it the next generation smart screen. What this basically is, is think of the cross member, the logo plate cross member on your rack that typically has the rogue logo on it. And now there's a TV in it. And it is available in 32 and 43 inch TV screens. And I don't really get it. I don't like I know it's easy to hate on this product and say it's dumb and everything. I don't know.

Maybe there's some novelty to it. but I personally don't really, because I think as a TV, it's not doing a very good job because it has an annoying ass bezel around it of like a three by three rack, which is already like,

no, we figured out like TVs, we don't want a frame around them. It's nicer to not have extra stuff. So it has this annoying, like logo plate cross member around it, which has to just be a pain. It's just more crap to do it. It's just like an awkward location, isn't it?

Yeah. And then, and then also, not only one, does your TV have this, enormous frame, which we decided that we don't like anymore on TVs. But then it either has to exist on your wall with this enormous frame, which doesn't really make any sense, or it has to exist in your rack, which now means you can't walk through your rack if you don't have like a hundred and, I don't know, 110 inch rack or whatever it is. So yeah, like clearly I'm not

the market for this one, but I guess someone is somewhere, I just have a heart, like I'm really trying to be open-minded about this. Because I know, the Voltra, there's probably clips of us being skeptical of it. And then we used it in person. We're like, okay, yeah, it is pretty cool. Like I can see how people would like this. Yeah. Just in my little simple peanut brain,

I'm having a hard time understanding why people would be excited about this one. Not saying they won't be, but I'm having trouble just putting myself in those shoes of what's exciting about it. And maybe we just don't, maybe I have to see it to understand why you would want it. But it'd be different if this was, nothing's into I mean it's well it's the lack of like it'd be different if this was like a tonal or a

Peloton thing like something that it's all very very integrated and it revolves around the screen but when the screen the main thing they're showing on the screen is like Netflix HBO YouTube and I'm like ah I don't you know like when I'm at a TV so when I'm at a screen all day and then when I'm not at that screen I have a little screen in front of my face that I'm answering DMs like You know what I don't want to see inside my rack when I finally go to work out is another screen. After I've, you know, maybe you drive to a gym with screens on your dashboard of your car and then you get out of there. And then there's another screen greeting you with the HBO Spotify.

In your gym, wouldn't you just want a TV where you want to put a TV and not like inside your rack? That's what I would think. Like that's more versatile. Maybe there's a different, maybe there's an alternate thought process that I don't. Well, because the one thing here is there. is this rogue integration. It says this rogue move integration. And I think, again, I'm not the audience for this. But I believe it integrates with all the rogue echo cardio stuff. So like your rogue echo bike and the echo rower and what else do they got now? Echo. I don't know. There's a few things. But I don't know. Do you need a giant S TV for the feed out of just the monitor or whatever it's getting like that's again. It seems like that. It seems like that. monitor does the job on it, doesn't it?

Right, right. I mean, I guess it's obviously them going down the path that a lot of things seem to be going down. And maybe this isn't, maybe this isn't the best, you know, maybe this is just step one of them coming up with something else that's better in the long run. And this is just the first step that it has to be. I'm not really sure. I couldn't see wanting it for myself, though. Yeah. I don't, well, I'll say this.

their product page is not doing a good job of giving you a compelling reason why you would want it. Right. Because I think I'm in this world a little more than most people. I think you are too, Tanner. Yep. You know, you've spent $100 plus $1,000 on Jimmy Quitment over the years, a lot of it from Rogue. I'm just a simple, modest garage gym owner myself, but I look at a lot of this stuff.

I don't think they're like giving me a compelling selling point for why I would want this. but I don't know. I guess some people look at it and say, screen good. Another annoying part, though, and I don't think anyone's realizing this is, you do have to run a power cord to your rack. That's also annoying, isn't it?

It's the part that would, you know, I guess you probably run it through your rack. But you still have to get a power cord to your rack, which means there will be a cord across the floor coming down from the ceiling or something. It's not like you just magically bolt this TV and it works, you know? Right. Right.

So I would love for them to impress, like, I would love for this to come out. People are like, oh my God, it does this and this, this. And be like, oh, because it is a cool area of innovation. Again, I don't think, I don't, I don't even have a TV in my gym. Most people's places we go to do have a TV. And every once I think, like, I'm missing out, not having a TV. And they're like, nah, it's fine. But I would love for them to have some cool innovation for ways to incorporate an app or a TV into your gym.

But I'm just not quite seeing the vision yet. Yeah. All right. What about our Lyft Hardly Veezy Classic 2026 announcement that we've been teasing here? We've been teasing around a little bit in episode 501. We've mentioned it a time or two already. So we do have the dates.

I think the dates are public knowledge, if they're not. I guess the Saturday is July 18th. So no huge news there. It's the comparable weekend that it's been, every year, right? You know, it's the same weekend that this will now be for the fourth then. That lands on the Saturday is July 18th.

What the big news is, oh, also we can announce the sign-up date that we have out there is going to be third, well, that's actually just for supporting members first, actually. So, yeah, so for support, we can announce this on the podcast, For supporting members, the sign-up date is going to be Thursday, December 4th. That's when you'll be able to sign up for the powerlifting or the Strongman meet. If you're a supporting member, you know, we'll have those links out in Discord and we'll make those available to any supporting member. If you're a supporting member, you're not in the Discord, let us know and we'll make sure

you have the links to be able to sign up for whatever, whatever you want between Strongman and Powerlifting. But the big news for our fourth Lift Hardly, Easy Classic, this is the big news. the Lift Hardly Veezy Classic at 2026. We're going to have powerlifting and strongman again. It'll be the third year of having both of those events. But the big new news is that those will be on separate days this year.

What? Yeah, so competing will be two days this year. Saturday, as always has been, will be the powerlifting meet. But this year, Friday, July 17th, will be the Strongman. competition. It'll be on the day prior to the powerlifting meet. It'll be in the same place. We're going back to the Ram Coda again. So it'll be in the same spot. Both the competitions will be in the same spot, but the Strongman will take place on the Friday. And because it has its own day, the Strongman competition will then be bigger than it's been in the past in terms of, I think,

events and competitors. I think it'll be a full five event strong man competition now. And it's going to open up to more competitors than what we've had in the prior couple of years. Because even last year it was only opened like 25 people and it was a limited weight class thing. It was kind of a each year has been slightly different weight class divisions than what a normal strongman competition might be. This next year, that'll be a little bit more comparable to what a, you know, big weekend strongman comp would be. So Jake running the strong man show, Dave and Katie running the powerlifting meet. again, Jake is going to announce more on Strongman events soon, I believe. So stay tuned.

I think prior to registration opening, he will announce at least some rough ideas, if not specific ideas on what those Strongman events are going to be in what the weight classes are and maybe even some info on weights. I don't know. That'll be him for the side. But what we're telling you today, two-day event this year. Friday, Strongman, Saturday, powerlifting. Oh, man.

It's going to be fun, isn't it? It is going to be fun. That means Friday night at your house, some people can really cut loose now. They can, but I'm still going to, they are still going to be gone at dark. So if they want to continue to cut loose, it won't be at my house. Well, the bugs will take care of that. They actually will do take care of that. Once it gets dark, the bugs, the mosquitoes will take care of that.

So, yeah, so after Friday, Strongman can cut loose more, but I just only want them cutting so loose at my house. they can go cut loose more somewhere else. That's what the hot tub at the Ram Cota is for. Everyone knows that. Yes. What happens in the Ram, the hotel hot tub stays at the hotel hot tub with about 50 sweaty guys.

And we're doing that to give them each their own space, you know, their own time, their own space. It's more dedicated. The Strongman can be bigger that way. Yeah,

the strong man doesn't need to be like a two and a half hour, three hour event. Now it can take most of a day and that's perfectly fine. And it's jamming less into one day. It actually gets us done earlier on Saturday, too. Isn't that a pro of that from like us as administering the whole weekend being done with the event on Saturday? I mean, it's more work in the sense that there's two days of running things running here and stuff. Yeah, it just makes the Saturday day itself a little less of a cluster, not having to set up two completely separate.

events and have volunteers ready to work both of those events at any given time and tearing down two separate events. It's just, it's less for one single day. And this will be for Jake to talk about too, but I believe the idea is powerlifting will still be 24 hour weigh-ins. Strongman will not be 24-hour way-ins. Strongman will be weigh-ins the day of. So actually, strong man and powerlifting would be weighing in at the same time, at the same place on Friday morning. So with no strong-man 24-hour wayans that makes it so they don't have to be there Thursday, you know, because then actually makes it like a whole other day

that people need to be there and ready and stuff. So they don't think Strongman will not have 24-hour wayans, I believe, is the thought there. More to come on that soon, but we did want to get that out because it's kind of big news and a big shift. It's one of the bigger changes we've had probably since, I don't know, introducing Strongman as an event in the second year. Yeah.

Going to a two-day event is a big deal. Yep. And at this point now, sign up is less, by the time you're hearing this, less than a month away. So get your plans in place. Yeah, for July 17th and July 18th in the Dean in 2026. I wish it rhymed with Dean, but can we make this in like 2015? Can we go back in time? The Dean in 2015.

Actually, any teen, yeah. Yeah. We actually did it in like 16, 17, 17, and 18. 18, any of those would have worked. We were just 10 years too late. We weren't really saying the dean yet to that. We weren't on it. Okay.

Did you have a sports and books segment here? Do we want to talk sports and books this week? Yeah, let's talk sports and books. Okay, first off. Classic segment. I didn't make the Mount Rushmore segments. That's right. We'll get to the sports part right away.

How closely did you watch the World Series, Tanner? We know you're a big baseball guy. If I said I actually watched a second of any of it, that would be a lie. Okay. My first thing was going to be, I just, at the end of the day, do not believe that baseball does a good job marketing itself because one day I turned on my TV and I'm a channel. It's like, game four of the world series. I'm like, really? I didn't even know game one started and we're on game four.

And what teams are in this had no idea either. And I will admit that I don't pay the closest attention to sport. but I do watch some sports and just no idea. I had no clue that baseball is like when the Super Bowl's going on, everyone knows the Super Bowl is going on. There's no surprises there. Entire continent. The entire country knows.

Like there's no. The country shuts down for the event. It does. Even the NBA finals, I feel like they market the finals pretty well. Like there's ads for it all over the internet, like social media. There's content about it everywhere. The World Series.

apparently not. They must just not market that or something. Because I just have a hard time believing that I live in that much of a black hole when it comes to the World Series that I'm just not seen anything. But maybe I'm the weirdo. I don't know. The other thing that they have going against them that football and basketball don't is that their sport is horrifically boring to watch on television.

Maybe my bias coming through here, but it is insanely freaking boring. The funny part of this is, so my in-laws... Apologies to the baseball watcher, which I am personally friends with many people that like it, but I'm like, oh, my God, it is boring to watch. My in-laws were over here this past weekend, and whatever it was, game, I think it was game six. Game six was on, and, you know, my father-in-law,

he's a big sports guy, all sports. He's usually likes anything. He'll watch it. And, oh, yeah, game six, yeah, we got to watch this, and he's got it on. And I'm kind of paying attention. And I don't know. the end of the second inning, the score was like three to one or something like that.

And then my wife and I were putting the kids to bed and she got them to bed or whatever. So she's like watching. She watched like five innings of baseball. I come out and it's the eighth inning and it's still like three to one. She's like, oh my God, this is so boring. She's like, I've watched like six innings and no one has hit or scored anything. It's like like two hours. Nothing has happened.

And, you know, her dad just laughs about it. And I mean, I kind of do, too, because, like, well, that's baseball. But the end of the game did end up being interesting, but it is the funny part of certain sports you. You'll then invest three hours for them to get to the good part. Which you could kind of say that about any sports, too, to be real about it. But particularly that one. Yeah.

Like, and I like sports a lot. You know, I grew up a jock, I guess is what you would say. And I like sports. And I played baseball as, you know, I played until as, I don't know, a teenager or something like that. that. It's just playing it's, that's different. That's pretty fun, I suppose. Watching on TV sucks. Actually, going to games live in the park, pretty fun. Yeah, I'd go to baseball game anytime.

I'd been to about 10 different stadiums of the MLB stadiums because I do enjoy going. That's fun. Watch on TV, I think it's terrible, but I was keeping track. I like sports, so even when I don't watch, I keep track of what's happening. And it was, I was cheering for Toronto, which is funny because for people that don't know, Toronto is not in America in case someone was wondering. Toronto couldn't be the opposite of what I would call a small market team.

Like Toronto is how many millions, you know, population of Toronto is. He's enormous. Yes. But in my mind, it's like, no, Toronto is like the small market, you know, it's almost like someone rooting for the twins. Oh, the twins are in the world series. It's like, oh, no, Toronto's in there. It's this Canadian team that, so going against L.A.,

so that part of it is what I had logic in my head that I'm like, I kind of want them to win because they're the, they're almost the little guy, even though it's an enormous city. Yeah, I know what you mean. Oh, it is, I think it's a Canada thing, though. You know, it's right. It is that, I think, isn't it? That's got to be, like our perception as Americans.

Like, that has to be what skews it. It's like, oh, it's a Canadian team. It's not the same. And the, you know, pitcher hitter from L.A. It's very, probably, yeah, I mean, that is crazy impressive. Like, I can give props to that all day. Like what that guy's doing is insane. That is very interesting.

It doesn't make the game fun to watch, but it's really interesting. From a stat line, it's really cool to see. Not actually watching the game, though. You know, but it's a very interesting storyline to follow, I think. And I was even explaining it to my wife. I'm like, It's like, I was trying to explain, I'm like, how rare it is. And I'm like, it's so rare it doesn't happen ever.

Right. It hasn't happened in probably over 100 years. So, you know, something that's really into baseball would know the stats. But I'm like, so she's like, oh, he's pretty good at pitching and he's pretty good of hitting. And I'm like, he's really good at both. And it does, it's never like in my life or our grand parents' lives, it's like never existed.

Yeah, since the game has existed. There's been thousands and thousands. than thousands of people that have played at the pro level and none of them outside of maybe like Babe Ruth or whatever, none of them have been able to do what this guy's doing. So yeah, that's what, that is what's crazy about it. Yeah, so that's part of it's pretty cool, I guess, too.

Also, do you know how old he is? Ah, is he like in his mid-20s or something? No, I think he's like 30-something. Oh, he is. Oh, okay. Yeah, which is also interesting, because you're like, that's what you would expect. I guess a Google search would, I could be completely wrong about that.

That might just be, I just made that up in my head right now. 31. Yeah, that's older than I would have guessed. Like I would have guessed 25 to 28 maybe. So I'm curious what the, so obviously he was probably playing baseball for many years in Japan or whatever he was playing baseball. You don't think he just picked it up in the last few years in his spare time. No, but I just mean a lot before he, a lot of his adult life, he didn't play in the MLB, I suppose. Whereas if he would have been American, he would be playing in the MLB.

According to this, he started March of 2018 for Los Angeles Angels. So that's seven years ago. Oh, yeah. That's probably about, well, so he would have been 24, 25. Yeah, I don't know what the MLB pipeline is on. Yeah, I don't really, because, well, yeah, because probably is really normal, though, because people probably end up in the AAA. Right, you play college for a few years, yeah, then go to it.

So that's probably very normal, actually. That's probably not even worth noting. God, there's probably some people listening to this that'd be like, God, these guys commenter in baseball. is awful. And that's why they call it sports and books. But I was, so I was, you know, just ever so marginally disappointed that Toronto lost. Yeah, I really didn't care at all.

Okay, so that's the sports. That's the sports part. That actually went way longer. That was the boring part. I thought that went way longer. Okay, I'm a book guy again. We're reading over here. He's so back.

I'm so back. for season two of the podcast. Just have decided that I had to cut down on social media time. Not that like social media time was like a lot, but sometimes I got annoyed when I'm like, oh, the social media time is more than I would prefer. And let's be real, like to get through Masonomics content doesn't take me that long, you know?

It really doesn't take that long. Then once I'm done with that and then the peripheral, like the people directly related to Massonomics to get through their stuff, which also doesn't take too long. And then, okay, we're good on social media. I'm like, why am I looking at this again? And then you just get sucked in the black hole of... You're not really worried about just scrolling the random crap.

No. Just the explore pages. The people in my sphere. That's what I want to know about. That's it. Right. And then I'm like, why am I even looking at this stuff? It's so annoying, which, yeah, doing it once in a while.

Who cares? I'm not wrong with that. But I'm like, okay, this is too much. This is too much. I got a tone. I got to cut this back. And I need something to keep me busy. I don't want to just be what.

I could just replace it with more TV, but I also don't really want to do that. And I'm like, okay, I'm going to read. I'm going to get back on the reading train here. It's been a while. So I went on over to the local bookstore here. And I'm like, I'm going to pick out some books. Had no idea what to go with. Because, you know, you're getting back into it.

You can't just like pick a big book right away. You know, that's a real daunting task when you haven't read a book in a few years. You know, it's been a few years. So you've got to pick that right one. And I'm like looking around. It's been one week since you looked at me. A week times like 50. Probably 100, yeah.

So, okay, I'm going through the bookstore. I see Brave New World. Now you're familiar with this book, aren't you? Hey. Yeah. Did you read this one or not? I can't remember. Yeah.

Oh, you did? Yeah, I read Brave New World a couple years ago. Okay. And you also did 1984 at that same time, didn't you or not? I read both of them. Okay. So that was the main thing that stuck out to me is I've done 1984. I've done four in Fairtime, 451.

I read Brave New World before 1984. Oh, you did? Oh, that's interesting. Okay. Because, so I'll say this. I got the book. I read the whole thing in like three days. It's like a two and a world.

Yeah, it's like a 280. It's not that long. That was one of the main reasons. I also am like, oh, it's not a big book so I can get through this fast. Okay. Who's the author? Can I never remember. Aldous Huxley.

Yeah. Okay. Yep. And I would say as a book, I enjoyed reading the book of 1984 a lot more. and I think there's a couple things. One is that Brave New World is kind of old. It was from, I don't know, it was like the late 20s or early 30s.

Yeah. And it's the thing where sometimes when they say words, you're like, do you mean that in the literal sense of how we mean that nowadays? What drug were they all on in? Yeah. Soma. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So there's, so you, okay, so there's just, it's slightly less readable in the way that it's, it's written in a version of the English language. That's a hundred years old.

You know what I'm saying? Also by a guy that's not from America. Not that that's a huge difference. But just the English language has changed a bit in 100 years. And it's not exactly like an action-packed book either. I wouldn't say that. And I would also say that as far as like spilling into popular culture, 1984 is just full of words and phrases and things that have,

that have, they're just part of the, they're just part of the vocabulary. modern day. People know, yeah, like Big Brother. There's just a whole list. Everyone references Big Brother. Yeah, all the time.

And there's a bunch more in the, it's just been so long, it's been a few years since I read the books. I'm just having trouble remember. But you can look up like words and phrases and concepts from 1984 and you'd be like, yep, heard it, heard it, heard it. Yeah. You could do the same thing with Brave New World and you might not know any of it.

Right. But as far as general concepts go of like what he's trying to warn against, it is good. Like, it's good in that way. It's just as far as reading an actual story for entertainment, I was less entertained. And actually I was kind of frustrated with the book because like you read it, you're like, ah, no, I don't think that's true.

But they're like, well, but maybe it is. Like, so you just have this kind of like moral dilemma of reading it. Like, is that the case? Is it that bad? Or is it just the thing of this, this Puritan thought of mind in the 30s where no, everything's going to crap and it's all going to suck? Um,

but I guess it's thought provoking. And like that, yeah, isn't that the whole point of the book is to like make you think about things? And it did do that. It really did get me thinking a lot of things. So that was good. So I got through that one.

And then I needed a second book. And figured, all right, there's a book that's, there's a book that's making its rounds through a bunch of people that I know. It's getting hyped up. And so book number two is Project Hail Mary.

Oh, you're talking. And I am over halfway through that one too. So I'm making some good progress there. And hey, that's just some good old modern literature. Like, I know what they're saying. I know exactly what the word.

different than Brave New World, isn't it? Yes, it's not trying to make some greater commentary on civilization and culture. It's just pure entertainment. The English is in a way that I also speak English. So I don't, I'm never confused when they say the word orgy. Do they mean orgy? Brave New World. No doubt that that's accurate.

Well, it's just things like when they say orgy porgy. Okay, are they actually talking, it's the 30s? Are they talking about an or is it like in a weird 30s way where it's scandalous to see a woman's a leg? Like, you know, it's stuff like that. And I'm always like, and then, you know, they're not being exactly like super out there with it. So I'm just like, are they talking about sex right now or not? And sometimes they obviously are.

But other times I'm like, okay, I can't tell if they're just trying to say something's provocative or if this actually isn't reference to sex. Right. For the most part, it actually isn't reference to sex in that book. But yeah. Yeah, so it's just stuff like that. But Project Hell Mary, very entertaining book. I'm actually just straight up enjoying reading the book.

And it's one of those things where it's been a long time since I felt this way, but you're just flying to the pages and also like, you're excited to see what's going on. I don't even know when I sat down to read. I think I just read like 90 pages. Like I don't even like that actually surprisingly went by in a hurry. And it's refreshing to have that feeling again. Yeah.

So where are you at approximately? What's going on? I'm trying to think of how to. to say it without spoilers. Right, right. Maybe, maybe a... I'll just say, there's two guys working together, I'll say.

Yeah, okay. And they're crafting plans and stuff. Yeah, okay. But it's good. It's really good. It makes me... And you know they're making a movie. Yeah, I did see.

It's right on the book cover. It's right on there. Yeah, Ryan Gosling is the guy, right? Yes, yep, Ryan Gosling is a guy. Yeah, I'm excited to finish this one up. I'm already, like, I got my reading list of, like, the next 10 books I want to hit. I'm pumped. So are you on good reads then?

Everyone wants to ask me about not being good reads. What actually did is I just made an Excel sheet of what I wanted to keep track of. Doesn't mean I'm not pulling up good reads to, like, see what books are. You're not tracking yours on good reads. Because there's some books that I'm like, oh, people talk about this book, this would be good. And then I'm sure Amazon says the same thing, but you pull it up on good reads. You can see the rating what's out there. and oh, it's a 900 page book.

Okay, I'm going to sit out on the 900 page books for now. Like, let's ease into this reading muscle here. Yeah. So you haven't taken on Red Rising yet then. No, that is on the list. The only thing that's daunting with that is I know, you know, what's there's seven books or whatever. You're not going to read just the first one. That's the thing.

You can't read just the first one. And so then it's like, oh, I'm really going down. That is on the list. I don't know. I'll get there at some point. You know what I do want to read. This will be probably next on my list. probably because I've never read anything by this person.

Stephen King. I got to read something from Stephen King. I got a few options. I'm not really big horror guys. So probably some of the stuff that's not horror. And, but I've never, I've never be the front runners. Do you know?

The one like the like the Shawshank Redemption, Green Mile. What's the other one? Stand by the Body, I think. Stuff like that. And like none of those books are very long. Those are all like almost like short stories. so something like that is probably probably what I'll read next.

Oh, we're going to have sports and book segment for days at the rain I'm going. It's going to be just a weekly here. Sports and books up the wazoo. I'm on book three. Oh, on the third one now. Yeah, but like maybe halfway through. Okay.

I think it's Morning Star is the third one. After three, will you go right into four? Will you change it up? I don't know. I think the three is the original trilogy. Oh, they wrote, and maybe they're not a lot of conventional opinions consider the rest not to be as good or just as different, I guess. I don't know. But I don't know.

If I make it that far, the way I am, I can't see myself not continuing on. You've got to complete it. Is seven actually the end or is it just? I don't know. Is it seven? Is that what the number is? I don't even know, actually. Okay.

It might be five or six or something even, too. And I don't know. I don't know what's, if it is all written or if it does all done. If there's more coming. I don't like to look, you know, I don't look at anything about it on the internet. You know, I don't like. Yeah, I'd say that with both the books I've read here. I didn't know a thing about either one other than reading the back of them.

And they keep it pretty vague when you read that, what you're even getting into. Right. Yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't check out anything at all. Like, I'm sure there's all, there's probably forums on. Oh, yeah. Well, that's like, with Brave New World. Okay, I get done with that one. I'm like, okay, I got to watch like some video essays on what people.

think on this to see if if I'm missing points here or if my thoughts on this align with what other people are thinking and because a book like that, you know, it's been around forever. There's unlimited content and topics and, you know, it's also a book that's in schools. Yeah, that one is different. Like right now, Project Hail Mary when that one's done, I don't think I'll do it. It's like, no, that was just entertainment. I don't need to do any research into what was trying to be discussed here and the impact of that 100 years later, you know.

Right. Yeah, completely. Okay. I thought Megan Johnson, Megan the Quarter Horse on Instagram, Massanabics Gym member, supporting member. She said something that was really funny to me at the gym the other day. She said, because she's been watching the gym tours on YouTube and she listens to the podcast and maybe uses it on YouTube. And she's like, I got to tell you, YouTube now thinks I'm like a 40-year-old man. and I get suggested Joe Rogan videos. She named some other things. She's like, all I really use it for is watching the Masanomics content. And now YouTube thinks I'm a 25 to 50 year old male. Right. I'm like, oh, it kind of checks out with our core demographic.

Yeah. That YouTube knows that. And she's like, I just get a lot of Joe Rogan clips and other stuff I don't want to watch, you know. Yeah. I mean, it does, like, yeah, there's a 90 plus percent chance that if you're watching your stuff, you are a man between those ages. So I get where the guess is coming from. But that's, I see, that's weird.

I don't, because I don't follow Joe Rogan super closely. I don't get recommended his stuff like ever. So I just, I forget that that's a thing, but YouTube must have decided that that's not the. Yeah, I don't really see it on YouTube either because my YouTube is so curated to the lifting stuff that I suppose I just don't, but I don't know. But I just didn't think that was like, I was like, I watched a few Masonomics videos now. It has to be pegged as. Yep.

You're a dude. Yeah. Ben, uh, lifting the top, trying to continue my goal of trying to lift the Thomas inch dumbbell at the gym. Oh, looks like you're damn near doing it. Yeah. Just about, it shocked me the other day when I finally went to pick it up. And I'm like, oh my God, I picked it up.

It just like kept coming up for the first time. and then that day I did it like three times and just can't quite just like really confidently stand and hold it yet. But it's probably not too far. I don't know. Has there been any technique changes or is it just using it more? It's not technique changes, I guess, more so. Well, I think I've just been training it. And what I do to train it is I do assisted picks.

So I pick it up with using an extra, like I'll use. two fingers on my other hand and pick it up. And then once I have it up, like I can assist, pick it up, and then let go. And I can hold it. Ah. And so I've been doing that. And I can't hold it for very long,

but I can hold it for like a couple counts. And then I have to drop it. So I've been doing stuff like that. Oh, okay. Where I'm like just like holds or like assisted picks. But the other thing that probably has helped me the most is I'm like, oh, I just have to actually warm up for this a little bit. Not that much.

Just because it is so heavy. Yeah. So I'll actually, my favorite day to do it now is, so I do trap bar deadlifts. I do it at the end of my trap bar deadlift day because I don't use straps or anything, obviously, when I'm deadlifting. And I think my grip just feels like pretty primed once I get out of that. Do you think your grip is maybe just a touch fatigued? Is that what's holding you back at the very end? It doesn't feel like it, like it could be, but it doesn't, I wouldn't use it as my excuse.

Like, I don't think it. If anything, it feels better just because it's... So what I've been doing, when I do it on not those days to warm up, I just grab the heaviest dumbbells, regular dumbbells. And I just stand and hold them for like 20 seconds. Yep. And then I start and every time I'm like, ah, that really, that one additional warm-up thing, you know, I always pick up the lighter one first and do that stuff,

but just a little bit of warming up before I even pick up the lighter one. Because then I'm warm for when I pick up the light one, which I always pick it up anyways, but now I just pick it up way more confidently. And then I just feel like I'm more confident when I go to the bigger one. Probably that's, I think, what's helping a little bit. Yeah, that makes sense. So I kind of, after, it was just like within the last week that I'm like,

I think I'll actually, I mean, I have picked it up. You know, like if there was a three foot bench, I could have set it on the bench. Yeah, watching the video you have, I'd say 90 plus percent of people would call that a successful lift. Right. It's really like in my opinion, it's not, like it's not what I want. Like I want to pick it up and then set it down on my own free will. You know, like, like I want to pick it up and be like, okay, it's time to set this down. Well, I can't do that yet.

Here's a little pro tip for you. If you can't get it, just make sure to chalk up your left hand and throw that one on there quick. And then you probably will get it. Have you tried that technique yet? Actually, since I mess with it frequently enough, I actually stop doing stuff. stuff like that and I'm like, okay, no, I'm going to go too old. You're getting really frustrated and quickly switching to the other one? Does it work?

Like, I try to somewhat do something that I maybe will believe, you know, I do a little bit of actual sets and reps of some sort. And I feel like that's probably helping as much as anything. Maybe. Not doing the typical thing of what you describe. Like, oh, let me try my left hand. Like, yep, it's worse. This one that's been sitting cold over here doing nothing.

and surely this one has strong. We'd be remiss if we did not remind everyone to check out our affiliate link page at masonomics.com. It is the time of year when a bunch of people are going to be purchasing products. So we mentioned our sponsors. We have affiliate links and discount codes for a lot of those. They're all on that page. There's several discount codes on our affiliate link page. You can click to them all there.

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There's a great hero image of them on their website, and now that I see it, could be my feat for all I know, wearing the all black, oh, so gen 2s. And then I feel like they've really been picking up their boot game. This arctose just catches my eye every time. I'm like, gosh, I don't know almost why I don't own this arctose. I could be, if I look at this about five more times,

I'm going to really consider buying this new boot. I've got the Bruin myself, which I also enjoy. Check them all out at barefoot. Dot store discount code Masonomics. Is Texas Power Bar? Is that the last one? Yep, Texas Power Bars. This episode is also brought to you by Texas Power Bars.

Forged in Texas since 1980, built to outperform, built to outlast. it is no secret that the massonomics podcast is a big fan of the texas power bar i don't know tanner how many's the gym gotten at like 15 20 of them in there 100 texas power bars just all of them it's like they're multiplying i have a texas deadlift bar a 29 millimeter texas power bar spent an extensive amount of time with the original texas power bar and there are favorites they're the go-to actually this week be on the look up for our this past week our video with evans centipani his home gym tour that is a guy that have spent some time in the gym moved a waiter to and he gives a all-star testimonial for the texas power bar

in his gym tour so check that out but uh texas power bar they're the go-to if you need a power bar look at the original or the 29 millimeter if you uh want to switch things up a little bit deadlifting get the Texas deadlift bar. I mean, it is the standard when it comes to competition deadlift bars. And yeah, if you need anything else, check out their squat bar, All-American Bar,

any other bars they have. They are all great, all amazing, and honestly pretty affordable when you consider what you're getting here. Really can't go wrong. Thank you, Texas Power Bars. Stay tuned for next week, episode 502.

We have a big announcement about the Arnold 2026. We're double. tailing this lift hard live easy classic announcement with a big Arnold announcement coming in 20 for the 2026 Arnold that we're going to drop like a bombshell on episode 502 so be prepared for that one buckle up for next week anything else we need to hit on this week before we that's probably sending on home johnny we got more stuff here but we got to save stuff for next week okay Tommy where do they find you at you can find me at tomahawk

underscore D. You can follow me at Tanner underscore Baird. Follow me. Find me in the dean, but just make sure to follow Massonomics at Massonomics. See you.