Massenomics Podcast - Ep. 522: Are Machines a Distraction?

Episode Date: April 6, 2026

Are machines a distraction for your home gym? Probably… but maybe that's not always bad. We are doing our best to get Mario Lopez on as a guest soon. 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. What's up, everyone? Episode 522 of the Massonomics podcast, as we also like to call it, episode 22 of season two. Your season two is just barely getting started, it feels like, doesn't it, Tommy? It just feels like the first time. It feels like the very first time.

We've got a very special episode 522. I actually was trying to get some people to do some fact checking for me right now. We have to be really close to the 10-year anniversary episode. I'm curious. According to our archive, April 19th is the date of the first episode ever being published. and the second episode is published on April 20th. So this is not it because this will publish April, whatever. Next, so are we calling next weeks or the week after that?

That's a good question. Probably the week after that, probably. Okay. Yeah, I think next week's a little too early. I think it'd have to be the week. So 524 is going to be our 10-year anniversary episode. I think so, yeah. Okay.

Well, we did, even though this isn't the 10-year anniversary, we've got something special playing this episode, a very special, a big, big special guest coming on later this episode for episode 522. I guess if you didn't figure it out by now, my name's Tanner. And my name is Tommy. And I guess if you didn't figure this out by now, this episode is sponsored by Barefoot Shoes. You can check out their full line of Barefoot footwear at Barefoot.

Store on the internet. And if you're summer ready like they are, even though we're going through our 70th fall spring of the season, you can still hop on the bear flops. They have a wide variety of wide, natural shape that allows your feet to move freely, and they're made with materials in America. Shop bear flops is one of their newer products.

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Also. Okay. Ursus. Yeah, I'm thinking ursus 1.0. Check out the ursus 1.0. That's where I'm going to direct you right now. And I'm also going to direct you to discount code massonomics because it'll save you 10% on anything at barefoot.

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They're made to last a lifetime and look great in your gym. Masonomics has like 30 pairs of these things, maybe more. I got like five or six pairs of these things. They look awesome. Once you see them in person, you'll think, how did I never have these things? in my life. They really are that piece that will just take your gym to the next level. I highly recommend a set of strength co plates. And if you want to get some for yourself, head on over to thestrength.com and check them out today. Thank you, Strengthco.

Okay. We'll do some pinning here. Seeing all these people in our live chat. If you're a supporting member of the Massonomics podcast, you can listen along live. You can also check out our pre-show. It's unfiltered. It's on cut. It's on recorded. It's the greased show and all of podcasting. We just wrapped that. up. Number one rule about the pre-show is what happens in the pre-show stays in the pre-show. The pre-show is real. Some people suspect that at times the pre-show is made up. The pre-show is actually real. Even though we're recording this on April Fool's, the pre-show is 100% real. There's live listeners right now that can vouch for it. But seriously, what happens in the

pre-show stays in the pre-show. We talk about all the stuff that's not safe for the real airwaves. So I might even say unfiltered and uncut. even is how they describe it. It's raw. It's raw. I mean, me being a completely straight guy, I'll say this. It is raw in there. The pre-show is raw.

And coming from a guy this 100% straight, you know that that means something. Take from that what you will. You can use your imagination there. There may have been a lot of Mario Lopez memes in the pre-show this week. There was a lot of them. And quite a few of them made me laugh out loud, Quite loud, actually.

I think we're bringing the key. Yeah, so once you become a supporting member, you can check out the pre-show and have fun with us in there. Talk about the big guests we've got coming on this episode. We've also got a whole bunch of other topics we're going to cover. Is there any direct Mario Lopez follow-up off the bat? It's not Mario Lopez as the guest this week. I really did enjoy all the Mario Lopez's meetings.

this week. They were making me laugh a lot. The one, the first one that I saw, and also one of my favorites, was the Dase and Confused one where I keep getting older, but he stays the same age. It's Mario Lopez. That just is exactly what Tanner said.

It's so funny. And yeah, there's just been a treasure trove of those ever since. Yes. My wife asked me, she doesn't often ask me what the Massonomics meetings are about, and she often doesn't know, but she did have to be like, what are these ones about? The sky here.

I'm like, you wouldn't get it, honey. Let's just say I'm 100% straight. Do you know what it's like to be a straight man? I know who Mario Lopez is. Well, I feel like you understand this, but let me start by telling you I'm completely straight. Put a few disclaimers out there first. I feel like you should understand this as well as anyone,

but let me still say it. I need to verbalize this. I'm straight. Okay. That's enough Mario for now. I mean, there's really never enough Mario, if I'm being honest. But I suppose we'll table Mario for now. Okay.

What? I'm trying to decide if I, which of these I put in and which of these you put in. I was going to say a lot of times we highlight when people, I mean, we have, we have, this is a segment that comes back every once in a while. it's Instagram slash YouTube comment of the week. We usually reserve that

for like the dumbest, nastiest, meanest comments. But I was just going to say because we don't always bring it up and it's worth mentioning, sometimes it seems like we just get so many positive comments,

especially on our YouTube channel. You know, people talk about YouTube, all the bad comments on YouTube. When we post a gym tour, we get like one, legitimately 100 of the kindest, most positive.

comments that you could ever imagine. It's all the most like wholesome stuff ever. People talking about how negative YouTube is all the time. I say go to our comment section. It's just like nothing but positivity and just genuine feelings on things. And it's not all the people that I've just known forever. You know, it's like it's most of the time

as people I don't even know. Yeah, I don't recognize lots of the names in there. Like actually the majority of them I don't recognize. And maybe they go by different YouTube name or something. but it's not immediately obvious who these people are leaving the comments. It's really specific to the gym tours too. Every week someone will pop in and make the comment, yeah, I never really comment on YouTube,

but I just want to let you know this is like my favorite one ever. You know, this one's so good. I love this. This is just, I need to cut a bunch of the comments and post them as comments on our gym tours. It's great advertising for our gym tours, honestly, because of just the positivity and, like, the thoughtful. And a lot of times it's like a full-on paragraph of, you know,

just how much they love it and what it means to them and that sort of thing. So it is cool to see that. I think that's why YouTube limits the gym tour videos to 10,000 views because they need something more polarizing in the feed for people to argue with. They're like, oh, nope, this is too wholesome. Throttle it down. No one's shitting on each other in the comments here. This can't get out.

We can't promote this. Yeah, we've got to keep it contained. It's too positive. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So that's cool. Keep that up. I mean, that's kind of fun.

Like this week's with Big Matthew, the Iron Chaplain Gym, there was just an overwhelming onslaught of positive comments on that video. I mean, that might be the most we've ever gotten on one. Like that one was nothing but positive stuff. Yeah. Yeah. What are you drinking over there? Are you drinking anything?

Yes. Got a crisperty, crackety, blackberry lemonade Waterloo. I got a Waterloo, too. Oh. Twins. Is that peach? Yeah. I'm completely straight, but I'm going with the Waterloo Peach today.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. With the Twins. Twins. Not exactly twins, but we have the same brand. Oh, yeah. It's good. Oh, man, that's a taste of beverage.

Peach is one of the better flavors, though. Yeah, that hits the spot. It's just like, what am I eating a picho over here? Is that what you call those? Those sugary ring? Yeah, those pchio things. Do you call it, oh, peachy-o, is that, okay. Isn't it peachio?

Yeah, maybe pichio, I think. Pichos seemed a little off. Yeah, Pichio, yep, that's what it is. It's been a long time since I had one of those. Those would hit. Do you like gummy candy? You know, if I had to pick, I would go with Sour Patch kids. They're pretty damn good.

Like, my kids like them. So, like, if they're getting candy, that's like what they go towards a lot. But yeah, it's good. But like with all that, I just now, you know, you get older, eat little candy. You're like, what am I doing? I feel disgusting. My teeth have, like, sweaters on them. I feel all gross eating this.

Like, that's why I just don't even really do it anymore. I eat no gummy candy. Like, no, I mean, in a given year, I might eat one gummy candy. Oh, yeah. I mean, if it wasn't for my kids, I would have zero candy. But it's when you get kids, somehow they just have this ability to just somehow be in possession of candy and all the time. It seems like. Swedish fish people like.

Do you like Swedish fish? I don't remember those when I was a kid. I feel like that's more. I kind of remember them. I feel like they're not quite just doing the candy thing right. You know, they got to just crank it up a little more. There's also like a blue. Yeah, there's blue ones too.

I'm not sure if you had those. Yeah, Sour Patch Kids, obviously a favorite. Dots are terrible. Uh, yeah. Dots are, those peachyos are legit, though. I could, if I was still into that, I could hammer a bag of those. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Flavor town. They're just absolutely covered in sugar, too. Like, it's just, inside the bag, there's just like, you know, 100 grams of just loose sugar in there. The good stuff. Yeah. That good, good. Okay. Ooh, we got a few updates here.

What's the home gymcon update? Let's give us the breakdown. Home JimCon, okay. Here's the big biggest update. Do we need a little home gym con update music? Do we have it? Yeah, let me try this. Ladies and gentlemen,

Mathonomics is in the house. That's what they're going to be saying at home gym con this year. Gino's going to be there announcing our booth all weekend. Yeah. Everyone that walks by, he's going to scream. We're going to get a PA system that just faces directly into the aisle at every single person that walks by. He's going to scream Massonomics is in the house.

People are going to love us. Now, so we, what did we do? We got our flights and hotels booked, so it's official now. The money's been paid. Non-refundable flights have been bought. You know, I'm wondering, this is kind of, uh, this is, real behind the scenes look for everyone right now. We're just thinking out loud.

Our booth probably shouldn't be exclusively a Massonomics booth. Like we probably should have Jim Radar on the home gym con list. Shouldn't we? Yeah, we could have them. We could have them put both or switch or whatever. We've got to have both on there. Both need credit here.

We can't be leaving one off the list here. Well, and realistically, if nobody's figured it out yet, like Jim Radar is going to be a big part of our booth at home gym con. If nobody has pieced that, if none of you should, Sherlock Holmes is out there of connected the dots on that. Reconstructed the crime scene here. Yeah, we got it. We get Jim Radar on there.

Get the credit for, get the credit. That's true. Well, Jake's probably listening to this. So Jake, could you, on like the map and the stuff, can you make it say,

what do we want it to say? Massonomic slash Jim Radar or? I mean, we have a 20 by 10. Yeah, we have at least a two-booth face. Jake just got another vendor added to the list. Even better.

Double the vendors. Now I can officially say Jim Radar is a vendor at Home GymCon. Yes. I like it. Yeah. And then next year we can be the title sponsor. It's the next logical step. First to 10 foot booth next title sponsor.

It grew exponentially. Okay. So did I say the new? I guess part of the news is that we have actually books. some, we, we figured out the day we have to get there and the day that we get to come home, we actually took those steps to figure out. We still don't really know how we're going to do all of that stuff. Well, on the airplane is how we're going to do it.

But outside of that, we don't know anything else. Maybe the rest of it will basically take care of itself. They usually do kind of, you know. Yeah, hopefully it just kind of takes care of itself. And the other big news, now this is big news. All supporting members are going to be, want to be listening. Hit record, jot this down. Pause for dramatic effect while everyone waits for this big home gym con update news

that applies to all supporting members. Is that enough of a pause? That was very dramatic pause. Okay. It was a moment of silence. You ever be at things where there's a moment of silence and just like, I wonder how long it's going to be. Oh, you know, I was at an event recently that did it.

And it's like, well, it was a surprisingly short, surprisingly brief moment of silence, which is probably the better way to do it. You never want to think like, yeah, is this ever going to end? Okay, so the special home gymcon update for all supporting members is just getting distracted by the Mario Lopez memes in the live chat, him with a seductive bag of peach, peach rings. that that bag doesn't look like peatrings though you know what that looks like that looks like

what's that well chocolate hard candy that starts with an r worthers no that's not what i'm thinking here the problem is the peatrings are covered in chocolate so it doesn't make any sense yeah what no it's like what's johnny saying it uh jonathan it's resins is rhizin or risen or someone post a picture of the packaging yes this is what i'm talking about. There's a lot of different spelling. Yeah, Anthony asks,

is that like an old person candy? Well, compared to you, it's all old people, candy, Anthony. Okay, I looked at a picture here.

I kind of made. Reason, isn't it reason? Yeah, I don't know. Someone post a picture. Yeah, it's reason.

It's what you say, right? It's reason. I don't know. I don't think I ever had these. You've never had a reason? I don't think so. Yeah.

There you go. That looks. That's it. You've never had one of those? I don't think so. This doesn't really look very familiar to me. Yeah, that's it. Reason.

Has Tommy eaten it? Don't think so. No to the reason. I would say yes, that's an old person candy. I mean, it sounds like a candy that I would like. Chocolate.

Big Lisa says S-tier candy on reasons. Keep my eyes. Big Jonathan also. Keith, of course, has never seen it in his life either. Never had it out east, I guess. No. Okay, reasons, yeah, that's reasons. Okay, yeah, the big news, though,

Home JimCon is officially a checkmark on the Massonomics Hall of Fame Supporting Membership Checklist. So, in a way, we've never edited this. This is the only time the checklist has ever been edited or amended. This is an official amendment to the checklist. It's going to be item number, what is the number, three on the checklist is currently attend the Arnold. Now item number three is attend the Arnold or,

not end, or attend home gym con. Attend the Arnold or attend home gym con. It is not retroactive though. It's attend home gym con in 2026 or thereafter. Because we have a booth now, right? Yeah. Actually, let's get even more specific. For now, it's just for 2026.

Massonomics has to have a presence there. So just in case our present, future presence, is ever in jeopardy, it would maybe not count. So it only is applicable on years that we're there. And it's not retroactive. So it's starting in 2026. Is that fair? Yeah.

That's why it's a Hall of Fame. He has risen. Hey, you know what? Okay, this actually just reminded me. speaking of a Hall of Fame, I believe in Nevada. Yeah, yeah, okay, Nevada. So, okay, Tanner, you know, a lot of states have special license plates, you know? Sure.

Nevada has a Hall of Fame license plate for people that are members of a Hall of Fame. And I'm not sure how they designate or how they determine what officially constitutes as a Hall of Fame. but you know if we have any Hall of Fame members in Nevada it'd be really cool if they got a MSS and MX. Oh, Hall of Fame license plate. You know how do you know about that? I just thought I just a podcast I was listening to about cars they were talking about

they always talk about the goofy license plates all these states have and someone had mentioned that Nevada has a Hall of Fame license plate and they're like I don't know what it takes to be considered like the Hall of Fame you're in to be considered Hall of Fame worthy but wow. Yeah. I think that's something maybe someone needs to look into. You need to one be in the Massonomics Hall of Fame. Two, see if you get the special Nevada Hall of Fame license plate to commemorate that.

Yeah. Okay. You mentioned something about trolling. That's going to go more hand in hand, actually, with our title topic this week. Okay. I've got something else then that's probably worth bringing up now. Did you see Colton the world record breaker deadlift 520 kilograms? I saw him doing his powerlifting meet.

Uh, uh, And then did you see Thor's post about Colton's deadlift? I think there were several interesting things about that. Okay. Do you have anything to add on that? Let's hear. I want to hear your thoughts here, Tanner. The deadlift looked pretty legit from what I saw.

You know, like he's... Sure seemed like it. He's very strong. I think the interesting thing was Thor's... Back, the shots he shot he sort of, you know, know, subtly took or not so subtly took on it. I actually think, though, Thor knows exactly what he's doing by making that comment, and it's just a PR thing.

You know, it's just getting people more excited about what he's doing, honestly. Like, I think that that's 100% of, he purposely said exactly that because he knew it would get people fired up. And it gets more people talking about him going at his deadlift and gets more publicity around it. Right, right. I thought, okay, I mean, at this point, it is it is mostly dumb to be picking apart someone that's deadlifting that much because it's like, well, at any point, like these are numbers that just don't make sense to anyone. There's like literally what, two or three people on the planet that are even in this ballpark.

The numbers actually don't make sense. Most people at a certain point, they're like, how many pounds is 520 kilograms? And most people are like, I don't actually know. I haven't even thought to figure it out because it's so much at a certain point that you're like, I don't really know. And it doesn't, whether it's 1,140 or 1,180, does it even seem different at a certain point? No, no, at that point it does. That's the thing too, where the idea of it is the less exciting part when you have Thor like kind of chipping it by a few kilos.

It's like, well, yeah, it's not really, it's less exciting than what it used to be. But the one thing he said that is interesting and it's stupid because this is kind of true is I, I can't rose in his initial comment or in a reply to something. but he had mentioned that he wants Colton to pull conventional. And he said, because there's way more money and sponsorship opportunities when you're pulling conventional. And one, he's 100% right.

Yes. He's just factually right there. And two, that's actually really dumb when you think about it. Yes. That is a thing. But he's right and it's really dumb. That's all I can say about.

I don't even know how you justify how at that point one's better than the other or not. because you say, well, Sumo's cheating. You can say, well, also, you know, if you want to look at it, I don't know, maybe weighing like almost 400 pounds is kind of cheating too in a way. Also, to add to the convoluted nature of the entire thing, Thor says, you know, yeah, let's see what you can do conventional. But Thor wears a deadlift suit.

He wears a deadlift suit. And Colton didn't wear a deadlift suit. So it's also, that's like another, like another thing to complicate it of what. And also Colton did his after he did a powerlifting meet too. Which is also like, so that's where at this point, hey, they're both the best in the world at what they're doing there. Yeah. But boy, the point that the record is getting set at now has, it's in a very specific set of rules that has, has to fit this very specific criteria for it to count and for people to be excited.

about it and for people to put money on it. But then if you just go, if you just go do it sumo after a power lifting meet, it's not as cool. It's, you have to do it as part of this exhibition strongman thing where you get to do all these rules that work in your favor, but not these other rules. And it's like, okay, we're kind of just playing games with ourselves now. It's sort of like the powerlifting thing of like, well, yeah,

we can make a world record if we just split it the right way. Make it the one true world record if we do it your way. So what is more impressive to, deadlift 520 kilograms sumo with straps or to deadlift 520 kilograms conventional with straps with a deadlift suit well i don't i don't to me deadlifting 520 is deadlifting 520 what actually is more impressive okay i don't want to say one's better than the other they're both just outstanding right but the thing the thing that people are really overlooking is like Colton weighs what?

$2.75 or something like that. I mean, that's kind of crazy when you're talking like a guy weighing 275, doing this after a meet versus a guy that's doing everything to peak for that one perfect moment while also weighing like 400 pounds. It's, I mean, if you line the two guys up and said, hey, what guy deadless is 520 and people don't know, they're going to pick Thor every time. And then when you go, no, this guy does too, they're going to go,

that's going to make people's head explode. And you say, no, but it's sumo. and like, oh, screw that guy, it sucks. Like, no, no one's gonna, the normal person wouldn't care there. Yeah. But then Thor is still right that he's like, yep, but I'm the one that gets to make all the money off of it. It is.

I know that's, and I don't know if that's just the marketing gimmick of Strongman that's convinced people that that's, because I don't know, I don't know why it's any of us impressive. I think part of it is literally that it's Thor. I think so. Like if it was somebody else,

if it was, J.F. Caron or, or like, Rhino Heinlar, whoever. Right. You know, that way. Then it's. People are checked out.

It's Thor. I mean, some people care, of course, still, but not less. A lot less. A lot less. I don't think people want to admit that either, but a lot less do. Like, it's literally because it is Thor specifically, like him, exactly him. Where if you pick somebody else down the roster, it's like, oh, yeah, strong man care. Like, people that are really into lifting care, but it doesn't transcend anything.

Yeah, I know. I, I, 100% agree. He's like, then Thor's smart where he's riding the success of his brand. And, you know, building, like Eddie checked out a little earlier on that stuff, obviously. Brian was around for a really long time. But Thor has managed to keep this going quite a while. And yeah, yeah, I think you're right. If it was some other guy doing it, it'd still be exciting.

But I don't think people would be, I don't think there'd be the sponsorship money behind it the way it is when he does it. I don't think there, I think it's safe to say there wouldn't be as much. I think that's 100% true. Yes, there would not be as much if you just pick. It works out great in everyone's interest that it's Thor, honestly. Oh, I know it does. It works out great for Mitch Hooper that he gets to be the other guy going against. You know, it's like, that's it.

Honestly, the whole thing, this, Thor making that post is great for Colton for Colton. You know, like that's great. That probably got eyes on him from just a whole bunch of people that hadn't previously. Yeah. to tell him how bad he sucks for not doing it right. It is a funny argument to be like, well, congrats, but like it wasn't conventional. It's funny because it is kind of like the most rudimentary lifting argument,

but then it's the people that are like, it's like the two guys that are the best in the world that are still like, yeah, but it was sumo. You're still saying that. Well, also the conventional has a bunch of asterks by it too, though. Yes. But, like, they're still, even the people that are the absolute best at it are making the same things that, you know, the dumb meme from 15 years ago. Also, I'll be curious to see if Thor pulls 520. You know, if he doesn't, can't do it.

That's even more interesting then. Okay. Do we want to hop into supporting our supporting members this week? Let's do it. Okay. Supporting our supporting members is a relatively new segment. It's just, I think, the 22nd time that we've done this segment here in season two of the show. I want to mention there's a few different things that you get to be a part of by becoming a supporting member.

This segment is one of them. We talked about the pre-show. We talked about listening live. One of the biggest things, though, that's coming up soon. This is the most time-sensitive matter when it comes to being a supporting member is we have a crew mailer. This is something we're mailing out to literally everyone that's a supporting member at the time of this mailing.

There's going to be a figurative line in the sand that if you join before that date, you're going to get in on this. And it is coming soon. Might even be this month, maybe. It could be heads up, but it could be this month. Yeah.

Like we could spring it on you like that the line in the sand within the next couple weeks, we could announce the official line in the sand and give you a last call for alcohol. so to speak. So the safest bet so you don't forget is to get signed up right now. Because this one, if you're not familiar with our supporting member things we send out, we've done maybe five, six of those in the past.

And everyone's been different. I believe in my eyes, they've all been pretty fun. Some of them kind of funny. Some of them pretty iconic for the Masonomic culture. So I think this is no exception to those rules. I think it's going to fit in real nice. This one is 100% unique in comparison to anything we've done before. And I just think everyone's going to get a kick out of it.

So you'd be kicking yourself in the rear end if you don't get signed up before that. Also, you can make it on supporting our supporting members like Big Chris D, big Mike Eming, big Ed P all competed together at the Strongman competition. Ed got second, Chris got third. I think they went head to head there. Nice. Big Lisa got first place at the Empire State Strongman Classic in the 275 class. Big Jackton Ginger was at Big Coach Cam's gym.

Their coach cam was holding a meet there, the King of the Hill meet, and they lifted together. I think they were both lifting some big numbers. Big Rob is hosting, speaking of Home GymCon, the Home GymCon Grip Strength Championship, and that registration is cool. currently open. And who knows,

maybe you'll even see a few Masonomics-themed elements of that grip competition. Anything's possible at home, JimCon. Big Love Lady hit a family PR with the birth of their second child, the first girl.

Very nice. Big Kim from all the way in the Alaska. He did a career bowling high of 287. Tommy, what do you think of that 287? That's a, that's a, That's a good ass game right there. That's coming from one bowling guy to another. That was Big Kim, you said?

Yeah. Oh. Of Barbell Rescue. I was in the presence of greatness earlier. Yeah. Rethinking my whole life here. That's awesome, though. So to get a 287, does you not getting a strike have to come really late in the game?

Yeah, that'd be like missing probably your second, it's probably ending with like a spare versus two strikes. Yeah. But pretty late in the game. He probably had a pretty, he was getting heated there, I would say. Like he was pushing towards that 300. Either that or he did miss the last one, you know, he missed a few pins and last. It's something like that. Yeah.

Big Joe D. And big goat bacon had a crew meetup. They did some big squats together. It sounded like big old Greg had a new sibling PR with a new brother-in-law that he welcomed to the family. So I would say a new brother-in-law, that would mean big, old Greg, let him know, congrats on the funeral. Yes.

And Big Nate was this week's guest, well, kind of guest on unpaid and underrated. He was also the guest on the Massonomics podcast last week. So go give Nate a listen on unpaid and underrated. Really making the podcast circuit, isn't he? Yeah. Popping up all over the place. So that is our supporting, our supporting members segment. but really what I want to tell you, get freaking signed up to become a supporting member.

Now's the time. If you don't do it, you will, if you've been around for a while, you'll know what you'll be if you don't get signed up. I don't even feel like I have to get that vulgar this time and tell you what you'll be if you don't get signed up. But there's a vulgar phrase about horses that you're going to be. And their rear end. Yes. And you can probably piece the rest of that one together of what you're going to be if you don't get signed up here. And now, what about a certified training facility of the week?

Yeah, do you have any... Courtesy, courtesy of our great friends over at Jim Radar. God, those are close, close, close friends of the podcast. Great guys over there. Aren't they just the best thing you? I love what they're doing at Jim Radar. I mean, yeah, I love YouTube, podcast, all the rest. I just love everything they're doing over there.

Yes. Uh, any... I have one here unless you had a preference or something else. No, I already like it. Okay. I'm going to a little place called Tampa, Florida. What's the name of this gym? This would be the garage gym collective.

Garage gym collective. See, it's easier for me just... You can search through Jim Radar in a number of ways. You can search by the map like Tommy was doing. But once he knows the name, then I just like to search that in the gym's page and I can pop right to the garage. Raj Gym collective.

I'm going to go ahead and give him his certified training facility of the week badge. Right now, he's got it. All right. Damn, I saw the pie just hit refresh and saw the points just pile in there. Yeah. This guy's a silver. Gonna make his dreams come true. Do we call that silver?

I think so, yeah. He's got a silver badge. Okay. So garage gym collective in Tampa, Florida. What are we working with here? Okay, so we have, okay, this is, I think, a three-stall garage, 750 square feet.

Yeah, that'd be about a three-stall garage. That's a good-sized unit. Yeah, this thing is blacked out. Even the garage doors are painted black on the inside, which you don't see that a ton, but everything's black. Ceiling, floors, are ceiling, walls, flooring, diamond plate horse stall mats,

in case I was wondering on that. Looking at the photos, okay, it's almost hard to tell because there's so much stuff in this garage. The first photo, we have, he's got a lot of machines in here. What is this, some of these, I can't. He's got a plate loaded hip thrust glute drive machine from Temple of Gaines. He's got a, he's got the Temple of Gaines pendulum squat. Yeah, I'm just, is that what you're, well, the first photo is just even hard to tell.

We're going to see, we're going to jump to the second photo. We got the pupper. Got to have a, got to have a gym dog. That's great. What is that? Some sort of, uh, Golden Retriever or something? Sure, seems like it.

And it's sitting by some weapons there, so that's nice. Yeah. Photo 3, we got a different angle. What's this leg press he has here, Tanner? Oh, that old thing. That is the leg press hack squat from Titan Fitness. Okay. Actually.

Wow, I don't know if we've ever ran across one of those, have we? Or is that something different? Like, he definitely, he has, does that look like that's what? Yeah, that must do that is. Yeah, I don't think we've ever seen that before. No, I don't think so either. Um, God, okay. So the, all right.

What do we have for the rack here? That is a PR 5,000 from rep fitness. Yeah, so on the rack and he's got a, well, no, he's got another one here, Echo Strength. He's got it. He's got multiple racks. That's what's throwing me off here. Okay. He's got two racks.

This Echo Strength is, is that what it is? It's got the full functional trainer built in it. I'm not really familiar with that brand. I've just started seeing it pop up. and Jim Radar. Did you really heard of that one before? Yeah, it's the half rack functional trainer with Smith machine. Yeah.

No, I don't know about that. So we got that one in there. You got the wall control back there, all types of attachments. He's got a fan in the corner because it gots to have the fan when you're living in Florida. I'm looking at photo number. Okay. Here's why I's confused on that leg press. He's got two different leg presses also.

Is that what it is? He has the Titan Fit, because there's two in that picture actually. He has the Titan Fitness leg press hack squat machine. He also has the Echo Strength commercial 35 degree leg press. Okay. So we got to garage him with two leg presses in it then. He's got a frigging pit shark in there. Really?

Yeah. Man, I'm not seen that. Oh, yeah. Okay, I've seen the photo now. Yeah. All right. A pit shark. This guy is not messing around.

He takes leg day seriously. Yeah. Also, he's got a Ryobie saw, too. I don't know if you see that thing. Oh, yeah. Oh, I spotted it. What do we got the, some, is that a Rit fit bench? Yes, that's the Ritfit Gator 1,600 pound adjustable bench.

It's got like that, almost like that third adjustment, like that head pad that can fold down like some of these, some of these have now, you know? And then does it have the art, like the spots where you can put your arms on for doing curls? Yeah, you can. Yes. Let me just name some of the machines he have in this home gym. You do that. It's easier than you're trying to. He has the echo strength hip adduction and hip abduction machine.

The echo strength leg press that we talked about. The Titan Fitness leg press hack squat that we talked about. He's got the Titan Fitness lat tower, you know, the selectorized standalone lat tower. He's got Fetil Fitness chest and rear-delte fly machine. So, you know, that's a type of machine that several companies make that you can do both. both of those with the pit shark that we talked about, the Temple of Gaines pendulum squat, the Temple of Gaines loaded hip thrust glute drive machine.

He's also got a paramount seated leg curl, so that's a likely used piece of high-end commercial equipment. And then he's got a Sybex. VR2 leg extension. So he's got commercial leg extension leg curl machines. Isn't that the one that Thomas has have, is the Sybex Fear 2 leg extension? It might be.

It might be. Do they have the, what's that? Yeah, they have the Sybex Eagle. Yeah, they have the Sybex Eagle. Wow. Yeah. That is why I struggle to describe it because there's a lot of machines there. That's a lot of plate stacks he hauled into the basement.

No, garage. Oh, this is in a garage. Yeah, this is a garage. I get confused because this is so blacked out. Now I see the garage doors. Yeah, like, it's not obvious. This might be the most blacked out garage gym that I've seen. this, like a lot of times we see basements that look like this.

Yeah, and all these machines are black. There's like two machines that are white. They have a black pad, but otherwise, everything is black in this gym. Overall, this is a very impressive gym. Yeah, this is legit. Do you think you could get strong in Garage Gym Collectives, Jim? Oh, hell yeah. Yeah, we're getting hell of strong in there for sure.

It's a hell of a gym. What is garage gym collective? Is that, I mean, it's the name of his gym. Is that something beyond that? I don't know. I clicked on the Instagram page and, uh, because, you know, we have that linked on Jim radar. You can find people's socials and he only has one post.

So it's not like he's doing a ton of posting or anything either. I guess it's just his name of his gym and everything. It's a sweet gym. Mm-hmm. That's for sure. Okay. Certified trading facility of the week in the books right there. I wanted to also let you.

you know about our newest sponsor of the show. We got a little time before our guest gets on here, don't we? Oh, yeah. A couple minutes. Yeah, we always got time. It's our show. Don't really want to keep him waiting, but, okay. Elite FTS, newest sponsor of the podcast.

This is just in our newest sponsor. Check them out. They've got an Easter sale going on right now. You can save 40% off of their bands, some of their bands. You can save 40% off of, well, 20% off of their, a whole bunch of stuff. And actually, if you use discount code mass 10, you can stack that with those other sales.

So I think on bands, you could actually get those 50% off with discount code Mass 10 potentially. Test me out and see if that's accurate or not. Lead FTS. Thank you, Dave Tate and company. Mass 10. Oh, crap. I got to get all these people out of here.

Yeah, we also, do we want to do a radar report before or after? Yeah, let's do a radar report. actually. Okay. And then we kick him out. Yep. All right. So this next part is a radar report.

It's also brought to you by the fine folks over at Jim Radar. Incredible people over there. The Jim Radar before the best. Maybe we just need to talk about how great the gym radar people are for the way. I feel like I'm just really starting to appreciate these people over at Jim Radar. Everything they do. They're just, they're the real deal over there. It does it?

It feels like it, doesn't it? Yeah. I don't think enough people know about them. We've got to get the word on out of more. Yeah. Wow. Just. Jim radar, that's impressive.

This week's radar report. There was, there's some new features to the website. And I think this will really, you know, for those people that are deep in the home gym nerd layers of this, there's some really valuable data here. And what we did is we made the ownership of pieces much more transparent as far as the ownership counts. Who has what, how many times it's existing.

And so the way we've done this is a few ways. Now when you go to the equipment page, right up at the top, it used to just be broken out into categories, racks, machines, benches, et cetera. Now on the very top, there is the most owned by equipment type list sitting right there and waiting. So you can see the first categories, racks, you can see we're tracking. It now has this information right there. We're tracking 392 racks.

When you go to machines, we're tracking 904 machines, benches, 255, you know. So each category has the number of products we're tracking in it. And for example, if I close, click on racks. Okay, what are the most owned racks? I click that button. It automatically applies the filter to you. It shows you the page and it gives you the stats on how we're getting there. So these will update in real time as it happens. But as of right now, most owned racks, it is analyzing 600 plus gyms out of the database. We have 12,000 plus equipment reviews that it's looking at. And in this category, there are 392 racks that are tracked. And this list then provides

you with the top 12. Why is it 12? Well, because that's how our grid is set up. And it makes it a nice even grid to show you the top 12. We work by multiples of fours a lot. That's how we do it here, people. That's how it goes. It's a little secret sauce. So you can see in this case, the number one rack is the rep fitness PR 5,000. It is owned by 68 gyms on the website.

It has 22 ratings for an average rating of 4.93. The number two most owned gym is the PR 4,000 rack. And you can go through the list and see. And as you would expect, it's dominated by rep, rogue, Titan, bells of steel. you know, that's actually all of the names in the top 12 is those four brands. And on that page, you can scroll down and you can see gyms that contain the equipment from that list. And then you can see the brands that are most populated by the most owned racks. And so that's really cool to look through there and see that.

And I think people, if you're into home gym stuff at all, what people are buying, what people are doing, definitely check those lists out. But if you scroll past those lists and even look at like the rack category, or sorry, let's go down even more. bench category. You can look at any bench and it will tell you right on the bench card, the little product card. It's going to tell you at any product, how many gyms that that product exists in. So if you just search for any random ass product on the website and you think, does anyone own this thing? Well, now it just tells you right there. You don't have to go

digging through the deeper pages to find that. And what's really interesting actually, like here, the rep nighthawk. So when I click on that, you can actually open up any product tab. and we've added some stat lines to the top of the product. So right underneath the product name, there's a few bubbles there. One is it will now tell you how many gyms it's owned by. This one is owned in 75 gyms. It will tell you it's ranking on the website.

The Nighthawk is actually the number one most owned bench on the website. So it has that tag on it there. It'll tell you the total number of views, the average rating. So just giving you more data there, which is really cool. And then that also carries over into the brand pages, where if you really start digging into the website and like in this case, if I click on the rep fitness brand and go there, it will give you some rep fitness data. And in this case for rep, it will tell you rep is used in 506 gyms on the website, which is a lot of gyms.

Like rep stuff is being used. Rep as a brand has 948 total pieces that have been reviewed. Their average rating is 4.5 and they have 265 products being tracked on the website. and then when you scroll down through that page, the brand page, you can see the most owned rep pieces. Tanner, what's the most popular piece by rep according to Jim Radar? Rep by Pepin. The rep by Pepin. 103 gyms have the repins.

I mean, that kind of feels like the hype is real seeing that right there, doesn't it? Yeah. The thing I like tracking is on the most owned. Got a real tight race for the number one spot. This flip-fops occasionally for the most owned weight plate. currently the strength co is edging out the cap china made by one two inch olympic yeah the strength co yeah the strength co nine three gyms have strength co plates 92 gyms have cap barbell olympic plates and those they do go back and forth though don't they yes they have gone back and forth

a few times so strength co if you if you own strength go plates and you're not on gym radar yet get on gym radar to help Stringco maintain the number one spot. So get your gym on gym radar. And then we still have a lot of people getting on gym radar that haven't, you know, filled out any of their equipment in their gym. So once, also once you get on gym radar, fill in some of the, you know, the most, I'm saying, like, popular or just like fill out your nuts and bolts of your gym. What do you got for a rack?

What do you got for a plates? What do you got for a bar? What do you got for a bench? at least add that stuff to your gym. Yeah, it gives us an idea what you're working with there. Those four or five most basic things, get that stuff added at least. But it's, if you're into this stuff at all, though, I mean, it's, it is addicting to get in here and actually look at how these things are being broken down and what's going on. And I think this is just a really cool thing that gives people a little more insight and data into what's actually going on in the home gym community.

At least, at least this subsection of the home gym community. Yeah. We're stall mats in 223 gyms right now. It's also kind of crazy. You know that one other new feature that I guess we've never talked about specifically is now when you go to the gyms page, you can see that you've always been able to sort this and filter this by a whole bunch of different ways. But now something that you can do specifically if you go to advanced filters,

you can now sort this by state or province or country. first, yeah. In the case of United States, yeah, you can select United States and then select your state. Whatever state you want to. So I'm just saying, Missouri, do we got some Missouri gyms? I'm like, yep, we've got 11 gyms from Missouri. And I can see everyone like Big Monty supporting member. I can see Monty's training hall here in Maryland Heights, Missouri. And this again is just people that have, like, if your gym is set to private, we still, I mean, people come to the website can't see it.

But as long as your gym is set to be publicly viewable, people can look it up here. Publicly viewable and if you specifically put your address in there, because you don't have to put that information. And that's also a choice by you of how you, how specific you, I mean, nobody's specific address is in here. But whether you want to go to city level or just state level, you can do any of that when you're designating your gym. Tanner, what state has the most number of gyms in it? New York's a big state, but it wouldn't be my first choice. a bit South Dakota is up there. Is it Ohio?

No, I think it's California. California by a decent amount. Ohio does have a lot 36, but California has 53. Yeah, makes sense, doesn't it? You know, it is a big state. I wonder if Ohio is about number two. Ohio's got to be up there, yeah. Gotta be.

Well, we've toured a lot of gyms in both those states, so it kind of checks out, doesn't it? Mm-hmm. All right. that's a pretty good people a pretty good idea of some of the new features that are over there on Jim Radar. I'm just thinking if there's anything else new.

Those are the big things that we had been working on and Nate has been helping us with as of late. And I do really like those things. I like looking by state like that. I've checked that out multiple times. I really like the equipment most owned stuff and just actually just the additional facts that are listed more ready.

on the site anywhere you're viewing equipment. It makes the equipment viewing a lot more useful, I think. It gives you like a guide for anything now on any pieces of equipment. You get like a feel for it immediately. Yeah, I think it also legitimizes some of this stuff because when people tell you, oh, the repins are really awesome, you know, you might hear that from a few people. But then you go on here and you see, oh, actually, it's not only is it reps, not only is at the number one selling dumbbell, according to Jim Radar.

It's also Rep's most popular product. And like that adds a lot of legitimacy to that. Not that they need it. But yeah, yeah, just it's a really cool way to see what, like we say this all the time, but what are people actually buying? And it's right here. It's right out in the open. Yeah.

Good stuff from our great friends over at Jim Radar. Now should we boot the live listeners asses right out of here so we can get to our guest. Is he popping? I mean, he should be in here anytime. So I wonder if we need to get the live listeners. Oh, he's popping. All right. Need to leave this a little under wraps, I think. And I don't need to get in this on this action as live listeners, I don't think. You know, after all these years, people still do not leave under their own will. I have to. I would also think that Zoom at some point would make a feature where you can bulk remove people, but it is a one-by-one task. I can only assume you're reporting each of those individually as you remove them.

For the most heinous crimes imaginable. Okay. Nervous for this guest we're getting on here. All right. And we are officially in the clear. Oh. Talk about sigh of relief. Okay.

Oh, we just had to cut something out there. Actually, the guests, we tried to get them on. we had some technical difficulties this week. So we're just going to move. We decided to make the judgment call. We're going to move right into a title topic this week instead of the guest. Smooth transition. Luckily, we had a title topic backup plan in place.

So we're always prepared. We're just like Boy Scouts over here. So what is this week's title topic? No, I'm ready to go. This week's title topic. are machines a distraction. Dot, dot, dot, question mark. All right, Tanner.

I'm going to tell you my thought process here. You know, we haven't talked about this at all, but I'm just going to tell you it was going through my head recently here at my gym. And I want to know your thoughts, what you think on this. So I was it in November maybe? I added, actually, we need to back this up even a little more. When I was at Massonomics, can say back. Let's go even farther back.

Yeah. Well, I guess you could say all the way back to the Y, but I didn't use many machines. I think the only machine I ever used at the Y was the leg curl machine. They had a standing calf machine there, didn't they? Yes. I did use that one too, actually. I didn't like the standing calf machine. I totally forgot about that. Selectorized standing calf machine.

That would be cool for the Osamaic's Gym to have one of those. It is a cool piece of equipment. It doesn't, not that big of a footprint either. No, no, it wouldn't be. I don't know if I really ever use any machines at the Y besides the line leg curl and the standing calf machine. That was probably about it. Then Massonomics, Jim, for a long time, had zero machines. As time has gone on, it slowly added a few more.

But even when I was there, it didn't really have much. And I don't know. The only selectorized machine might have been the, you know, the dual stack cable crossover and the lap pulldown. That was probably the only selectorized machines at the time, wasn't it? Yeah. you know my one other thought on what you're saying was just making me think you know the old layout of the why how there was like yeah kind of the machine cardio side and then the right and it would have been really and they also had a machine room too but that was yeah those were even more trying to think of a nice geriatric machines yes yes there you go they were even more you know i never used anything in there but if you had me if you told me to describe me like a room full of machines that were selectorized and went to 50 pounds is what it felt like yeah It was.

But that other side, it almost, I can't really imagine my workout having, because it would have been such a buzzkill to go to the cardio half to go to a machine in the middle of a workout to be like, okay, I finished squatting. Now let me go over here and do this machine. But I don't think they had very many though, did they? Yeah, there was, they're all the, those are all like the maroon pad ones that are over there. There's like two, actually the outside rows are cardio. Yeah.

Then there's two inside rows of just selectorized machines. I can't picture that. There's probably. I mean, I can picture the layout, but I can't picture what the machines look like. No, there's probably 25 of them.

And each had a number because, like, people would go get a program printed out from that kiosk there. And each one has a number. And it tells you, like, go to C2 and do four sets of 10. Four sets of bullshit before moving on to the next. But it would have been such a buzzkill of a workout to like go over there. Yeah.

That's what I'm thinking, yeah. That is true, yes. I don't know if that'll tie in with what we're talking about, but that's just the first thing I'm thinking about there. Actually, it kind of does lead into it a little bit. But, yeah. All right. So then at Massanox Gym, there was never much for machines.

I guess actually there was the leg extension leg curl. Machine was in there too. But it was also, those were from a different time. You could say when iron was iron. It used to be a, they just machines would clang and they'd bang. Exactly. They weren't smooth, but you were moving weight. And so I've never, I mean, I've never been a huge machine guy.

I've never used to much. And then you look at November-ish of this year, I believe, was when I added in the GMWD, leg extension, leg curl. The L-E-O-82.0 was added to my gym. And actually, it's a really good machine. We have a review out there on it. Several people on Jim Radar have it. I think pretty much everything has really, everyone has really positive things to say about it. And I have enjoyed using it.

And since I've had it, I basically use it twice a week. One day I use it for leg extensions. Another day during the week, I use it for leg curls. And I've loved having leg curls again in the routine because that's a really hard movement to mimic in a home gym. And leg extensions, I haven't really been a leg extension guy, but I thought, hey, this is the time I'm going to get into it and give it a real go.

And now it's been, what, I don't know, close to six months-ish since I've had this thing. And the other day, I was using it, and I'm walking away, and I'm just thinking, you know, I'm not sure if this is actually, actually making me stronger at the end of the day. And at the same time,

I'm like, it's kind of just another thing to have to dick around with. And I'm saying this as a guy that likes the machine. But then that got me thinking, I'm like, you know, at a certain point, aren't all machines kind of just a distraction? You know,

Actually, actually, I think machines at best should be thought of more like a specialty barbell. It's something that helps you work around an injury or a limitation you might have. And if strength is your primary goal, I almost think machines are not that helpful at doing that. And I have several reasons for thinking this, but some people will say, well, I strength isn't my primary goal. Fitness is. I'm like, well, also you can do a lot of fitness things. don't involve machines. Or some people might say,

well, hypertrophy is. And bodybuilders use them. I'm like, well, they're also kind of playing a different game than you do.

This is what I've learned as time goes on here too. But the thing with machines is I can hit it. I can hit, like with leg extensions, I can get a deep, very deep,

very targeted burn in my quads. But I just at the end of the day feel like, well, it's so targeted and so specific, I don't really feel like it's actually making me stronger. I don't know. Maybe it's giving my quad in one very tiny portion of it, some more

hypertrophy. But I don't think it's making me stronger. The other thing with machines is you use them enough, you can kind of figure out how to get good at the machine. Yeah. And you could say you can figure out how to get good at a barbell movement too. And there is like all movements have a level of efficiency to them. But when you get good at a barbell movement, you just start getting heavier and heavier. And with machines, there kind of is a limit to, like, I don't know,

I don't want to put six plates on a leg extension. Like, that just starts to feel sketchy to me at a certain point. And, or like, you start looking lower rep ranges

and like, okay, then you really got to load up machines when you're going on a lower, you know, lower range of reps there. And I don't know. This was just going through my thought,

through my mind the other day. I got done with my leg extensions and I thought, you know what? I think if I did six months of split, squats instead of the leg extensions, I'm like 95% sure I would be actually better off in the long run doing six months of split squats than I would be doing six months of leg extensions.

Yeah, and you're using split squats as an example. You could also say lunges or step-ups with the bar. Most people would be like, yeah, that actually sucks more. And that's why I don't do them. That's why I do leg. I mean, I'll be totally honest with you. Why do I like to do leg extensions? Because after I'm done squatting and I'm pretty burnt out for the day,

pretty easy to sit there. You know what sounds really bad? is having to do split squats or something. You know what sounds easy? Throwing a couple plates on the machine, getting to sit down on that thing and straight by the like, yep, I got a little burn right there. Yeah, there we go.

But then in the back of your mind, you're like, yeah, I did take the easy. This machine was taking the easy way out on it. Like that's, yeah, that's the talk I've had with myself more recently. What are your thoughts on this, Tanner? When you put the topic in, you already hit the nail on the head

as far as what I considered that what I was thinking in my head, the biggest caveat to me is if your goal is strength, like a power lifter or like if not even necessary a power lifter, if your goal is to get stronger, they're probably mostly a like I could say just,

you could say distraction as like a negative or it could just be more of like a, yeah, it's just like a distraction from the primary goal. It's like a little side quest over here. Right. Yeah. Maybe it's not hurting me.

Maybe it's not hurting me. Maybe it's not helping me as much as it should be. Right. But it's kind of like a little side quest over here. That's, yes. Like I don't mean it as a complete negative, but yes, that's, I would agree it is. And I actually had that same exact thought in my head because then I'm like, well, what if your goal is, you know, you're like more like a bodybuilder. You know, you want to use machine.

I thought this, we hadn't talked about this once. I had the exact same thought. You're like, no, I'm more, you know, I see Jay Cutler. He was using machines or whoever, you know, I'd, uh, C-Bomb, like, use someone relevant to people. more modern. You know, if you're not 40,

like you're not fordy, like all the young guys do. Who, let me pick, Lee Haney. Someone more related. Yeah. Someone more relatable.

Lee Haney. Here we go. Then you'd say, yeah, they're, they're using machines. So I use them. Because I don't care about,

you know what, what people say is like, well, I don't care about getting strong anymore. That's not how I train. I don't deadlift and I don't squat. I don't care about, I don't care how much weight I can squat. I'm not chasing a number on that. You know, I don't care. So that's also a thing.

I think some people really like to emphasize, like I don't care about that. That's not why I care. You care about that. I don't care about how much I can deadlift. I don't do deadlifts. I don't care if I can deadlift four plates or not because I don't care about that. You ever hear people talk like that sometimes? Which, I mean, I get it.

You don't care. That's good. Which is totally fair. Yeah, I don't need to be chasing numbers. But at the same time, it's like you wouldn't even be a little excited if you got stronger at that. Right. You wouldn't even be a little bit excited. But so what I came to on that too is to, you know, the logic of, oh, this is I trained for hypertrophy and stuff like that.

You know what's probably still better for hypertrophy for your average novice or intermediate trainer? squatting and deadlifting and benching and overhead pressing and lunges and step-ups and split squats and just like glute ham raises. You know, like... And we're not... This doesn't just sound like a starting strength thing where you could only do four lifts ever. There again, I like all this stuff too. I know.

I'm just openly admitting I think it is kind of a little bit of a distraction. No, and that's what I'm... And sometimes they intentionally use it as that even where... You can say, well, a distraction is something that can also keep training fun and interesting. And I also agree with you. But just to show you where my head before I started to like pump the brakes on myself, I start thinking, well, like, okay. You know, it would be really cool also to have my gym, a rhino, a rogue rhino.

Like everyone, that's a cool machine. And then I'm like, well, but what? So just to have another way to do squat? Like, I don't have an issue with doing squats right now. Why do I need to come up with a slightly different alternative to squats when there's already 50 other versions I can do between, you know, the safety squat bar, split squats, high bar, low bar, pause squats, you know, dumb, you're holding dumbbells and doing, like, there's so many things you can do.

And I'm like, do I need a piece of machinery that's taking up like 12 square feet to do this or more actually? I think it, a big thing it could come down to is what you said, though, if you're using it to train around something that you can't do, that's where a big use of a machine can come in. Yes, for sure. To finish my thought on the bodybuilder thing, because you said it, and I'm like, yeah, that's exactly what I thought to.

Let's not compare ourselves to those guys. They can do that for extreme hypertrophy because they're at the ultimate advanced level. They're dealing with the highest level of genetics and they're artificially enhanced to the gills in most cases. I think they've also moved a lot of weight in their day too. Yes. They didn't get there by just like riding the leg extension

to, you know, like, like Evan, he just lifted heavy-ass weights. I mean, he's, I think he will tell you, like, probably to a fault, like, you know, probably more than he should have, but, you know, he just hitting heavy weights for a really long time. And then, you know, you're dialing stuff in with machines as you go on. But, yeah, uh, yeah, machines are a distraction if your goal is to like, let it be known as a fact. Yeah.

Because here is the other one, though. So, you know, there's, I like them, though. I do. I do. and I'm not knocking anyone for doing this. And if that's what keeps you going to the gym, I don't think there's anything. Like, I don't knock on anyone's training style.

Whatever it is that makes you in the gym, be active, do stuff is good. I'm just telling you objectively from what I've experienced, they will probably hinder you more than they're going to help you in a lot of times. The people I actually, in my analysis, thought they're best for, it's not the people. because most people are like in beginner or intermediate stages

if we're being honest. You know, like that's the stage most people are in. So if you're wanting to get stronger, isn't kind of a distraction a lot of times. There's some uses for it and stuff. If you're wanting hypertrophy, mostly probably still a distraction a lot of the time.

The people that it's good for probably are the people that want to come to the gym, elevate their heart rate a little bit, and not do anything very hard though still. Like they just want to elevate their heart rate a little bit. Right. You know, they want to do a, they literally are okay. They've like decided I don't want to do anything too hard.

I literally just want to come to the gym for 45 minutes, four days a week and just like get slightly sweaty and tell myself I'm doing something and burn some calories. But that's what I think too. But once you commit to like machines are my thing, you're at the mercy. of what's available to you too, you know? So if you have some shitty ass whatever, that's what you got to use. And like, it's not like a barbo where it's like, no, you can just do the movement.

Like the biggest variable there is the quality of the nerling. Outside of that, you're doing the damn thing, you know? Yeah. And yeah, like if you decide whatever leg press is really important to you and you go to whatever gym and they don't have that one, all right, is that still an important movement to you? Because if they got the bad one,

you're either doing a bad one. one now forever or you just don't do that machine any you don't do that movement anymore and that's that's the weird thing with it and then just as far as a home gym goes you know like the rhino is a machine you see a lot of people have and in a world with unlimited room and unlimited budget would I have a rhino absolutely it's just cool it's cool but I can also see how I the honeymoon phase would end quickly on that one and the other one I have a rhino I almost never use it I know I know you don't you I mean your favorite thing with it is not really even squat stuff you know.

I don't even really like it at all. I'm being completely honest. You've made that pretty well. But then, you know, then I think, well, okay,

also there's this whole thing of functional trainers. And I actually, I do think probably the, the best machine is like a lap, pulled-down machine. That's a hard movement to, you know,

you can get bands and kind of try to mimic it, but I do think, well, you do pull-ups. Yeah, I'd say that's what you get, like, you get, like,

you get, like, you know, right, But a lap pulldown, I do think is one of the more helpful machines being that you can get so many movements out of it. It's not such a single-use machine. And that's a machine I have. And I do believe if I was starting over a gym, that would be very, very high my list of like something you got to get again. Because I can confidently say the number of things you can do with it from lap pull downs, the triceps, Facebook, like all this stuff.

There's a lot of uses there. But then, you know, the other one is these functional trainers, these all-in-one things. And partly with like functional trainers is it is like you can, you know, it can be your lap pull down. It can be your tricep push down with your face pulls, like all that stuff. So in that aspect, it's really good. But then I start thinking like, oh, but then there's the chest fly. And I'm like, I don't know anyone that's like, oh, dude, how do you bench so much like chest flies, man? I've never met that person.

So I'm like, wait a minute. I've never done chest flies. And that's probably for a reason because they don't do anything. You know, and I'm like, we're right back to the distraction point again. Yeah. And to be clear, distractions are good and are fun. That's what I was just going to say. Like, to be really clear, a distraction isn't necessarily bad.

No, because it isn't. You can say the same thing of like adding new barbells. After you have one, the second barbell is kind of just a distraction, along with the third and fourth and fifth and so on. And I mean, I even, I'm guilty of that. I have multiple barbells. You really only need one. Yeah.

And it's fun. But my point is sometimes what's it, you lose the forest, you know, you're, through the trees. Sometimes it's like, oh,

no, no. Yeah, I need to just pump the brakes, take a step back here. And, uh, think about what I'm doing.

Yeah, I would agree with all of that. That being said, I'm getting more machines all the time. Yeah. But it's because I do agree with it that I'm like, no, they are distraction,

but I also, I like recognize that and that sometimes that's, actually, the way I, uh, Because like at Massonomics gym, it's not a full-on commercial gym, but we pretty much, for the most part, if there's a body part you want to do,

there's a machine for it, you know? The way I pick my accessories a lot, because I'll rotate them even like week to week sometimes. Because a great example would be after squat day, and I'm going to do a secondary leg movement that's also like quad-focused or whatever it is. If my squat workout was really hard or I'm like already fatigued, or like it's just like, you know, you get done with it.

You're like, oh my God, I just can't do anything else. I'll be like, I'm going to do a leg extension because then I am going to do something. I know. It's like I'm going to do something then if I go to the leg extension. And that is exactly the way I think. And then I, the next level of the conversation is, well, because I have this machine, I'm giving myself an out. Because if I didn't have the machine, I wouldn't do nothing.

Right. So I would just do the harder thing and suck it up and do it. But now I'm giving myself an out. and I'm taking the out. Yeah, that is true. Because then alternatively, if I have a squat workout, I'm back, oh, that was not a too bad day. Then maybe my workout, maybe my next lift is going to be the split squat or the,

whatever, you know, whatever, insert more challenging lift than a leg extension. Yeah, like that. And that was, like, I had that revelation that, you know, I did split squats. I put them back in for the first time in a long time. And I'm like, I got done with one set. I'm like, okay, quads are on fire, fill it in my glutes. it's got to also work your core because you're actually standing upright and doing something. You're not sitting down.

I'm like, you can't tell me that this movement isn't paying dividends over a leg extension when you're talking one quad development, but also just even total body strength. It's probably the biggest pro that I'll say about the machines is that actually, though, because it's, if you do any particular exercise for so long, you do like there is a diminishing. return and diminishing adaptation for it. So if you're doing split squats as your assistance exercise all year round, like you're not doing a bad thing, but eventually you like you do and you're like, it feels like I'm just kind of going through the motions on these even.

And like you get to anything where you're like going through the motions and you're like, oh, sweet, I'll do the leg extension for four weeks instead. And then you haven't done that for six months. And you're like, whoa, this is really burning my quad. Yeah, perfect. I'll go do the leg extension, get detrained and go back to doing something hard again. Well, that's actually potentially fair also. And I think I saw another thing that kind of made me think this was the other day.

I think you had a post. I don't know if I showed out the Temple of Gaines, the multi-flight and something else. And Ross was like, oh, perfect. We don't have to bench or lift any heavy weights anymore. That's kind of been the joke as I've been getting this stuff. Like we get the leg extension leg curly. He's like, oh, great.

We don't have to squat or deadlift anymore. And then like we got the multi-flight. Oh, awesome. We don't have to do, we don't have to bench anymore or press. I'm like, yeah, sweet. It is. It's like, great. We don't have to do hard stuff anymore.

Like, ooh, the gym was getting too hard. We can just live on the selectorized machines. So all the, I just want to also make this very clear again, if it's not to everyone. We don't care how you train. We're not actually knocking anyone for doing what you want to do. I'm just saying when I had. this little, this reflect, this moment of reflection and actually being honest with myself, my takeaway, I think machines, I think machines for me at this stage of my life probably are

more of a distraction than they are a helper. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's fair. All right, that was a good title of topic. We didn't need a guest anyways, did we? No, we did not. Okay. Now, this is kind of like a subpoint of this now.

I wrote a little note here called trolling. You know, I'm watching the YouTube's, people discussing equipment, gym equipment, you know, what's happening in the world. I've checked some of that out before. We put out a video or two in our day. There's a few guys out there. They get these machines.

I don't know if we're a YouTube creator or not, but we do have over 1,000 videos on YouTube if that counts as a YouTube trainer. Eventually, we'll figure out how this whole creation thing works. Yeah. But, you know, there's a few guys out there. They get stuff sent to them and they talk about it. And I don't know if you've seen any of these videos or not, Tanner. And there's always a comment section.

Are you familiar with the comment section? I've heard of this. And I like to read through this. Have you heard about this? I like to read through the comment section. They'll see what people are thinking about, what they're talking about, what's on their mind. And every so often, when I say every so often, I mean every video, there's at least a comment where I read it. And I'm like, oh, okay.

This is the most odd. specific, nitpicky, tiniest little detail I could possibly imagine, they are definitely trolling the reviewer here. They definitely are. And then I read the follow-ups to the comments and nope, that is an honest, serious comment. It just, it gets me every time because every once in a while, it is someone trolling them. But then like 90% of the time, I'm like, oh, no, like someone is that concerned about that one oddly specific part of the equipment that actually doesn't have to deal with the,

the functioning. And so the point is sometimes I don't know what's real and fake anymore. Oh, with artificial intelligence the way it's going around, I can't tell what the heck's real anymore. You know, you wake up and there's a picture of Mario Lopez and who knows. Riding a sheep. Riding a sheep. Tanner's got a hat on his head.

I don't know. And this is for me a very completely straight guy. Yeah. So AI is what I'm trying to say. Yeah. I did get some new equipment in the gym that we kind of brushed on. We brushed on there a little bit. I won't give away all the details.

Wait, are they machines? They're machines. A couple of machines. Now that we've shit on all the machines, let me tell you about my new machines. That's the beauty of it, right? Yeah. Actually, some of the stuff I've gotten recently, a rogue adjustable, box.

Oh, yeah. Squat box. I forgot about that. And that's quite the heavy duty piece of equipment. So what does that thing weigh? Oh, she's a heavy unit. I would say it weighs like 80 pounds or something like that. I didn't know.

Maybe it might be 100. It's a hefty unit. So it is hard to move. Yeah. I mean, luckily I'm strong. So I did read a lot of reviews about people complaining about how heavy it is on Jim Radar. And thankfully,

for me, I am pretty strong. I'm stronger than the average person. So moving around like an 80 pound box isn't impossible for me, believe it or not. I can do that. And I do probably want it to be pretty heavy duty because we have people squatting six or 700 pounds in the gym. I've seen some people box squat attempts in there

and you have a box not being heavy is actually more worrisome than... Yeah. So the heavy, you know, the heft, you know, I've been on the record multiple times making fun of people complaining about gym equipment being too heavy. This would be one of those scenarios where I'm like, I like my gym equipment to be heavy. There's something about that.

When you see a guy loading up the safety squat bar with 500 pounds, and he's got bands going. He weighs 300. Yeah, he weighs 300. The whole rack is almost moving. Yes. Do you want your box squat to be light? To be solid.

Yes. So that thing's pretty cool. I was, did a lot of research on that on gym radar, actually. We have a rogue affiliate code, of course. I have a ton of rogue equipment. If you look on my gym radar, it's probably one of the, is it's got to be in my top three of,

I think it's probably the number one in there. How do I, let me check that just so I, just so I don't speak out of turn. Yeah, it's number one. I have more rogue equipment than anything else. But a lot of times I like to not buy rogue equipment if I can because I'm like,

oh, that's just such a big company. I like to support other ones. But people like to knock them, but they're good at what they do. Yeah, it really fit my price point slash need. I didn't want the cheapest options, you know, the lighter duty stuff. And for this particular item, I wasn't really willing to spend twice as much as the rogue option, you know, to get like the really high end ones, you know. So it just made sense. I also bought that, speaking of rogue, I bought that rogue V-grip.

Yes. I was greatly influenced on that by Jim Radar. Yeah, that one actually, surprisingly enough on the topic of that, if we go to attachments, that, I mean, that piece has been out a few months, I think. It's the number seven, three most owned piece that people have from Rogue Fitness. Yeah, and it's the number, it's the number seven in the attachment category. The first three are Mastonomics drink spotters. So you could argue that it's actually number one, two, like number four in the attachment category.

But yeah, 70 gyms have that thing. The only thing that people have more of on Jim Raider from Rogue is the Echo Bike and their bands, monster bands. Right. So, I mean, have you used it much at all? A little bit. It's very nice. I think the reason so many people have it is because it's just really a really, really affordable high-end attachment, too. Yeah, isn't it like, yeah, $9.5.

Okay. Yeah. A little more. It's cheaper than that, but. It's pretty nice. It's good. I mean, it's also really funny. I think I showed you this when we were there.

didn't I? Because I have this old, just shitty. I mean, it's not even shitty. It's just old, I guess. And you're like, like, nobody would know what brand it is even. And it looks like it's been, I mean, it looks like it's, it looks like it's 30 years old. It looks like it's been dropped thousands of times.

You know, the nerling's not existent. You hold them side by side. It's made out of metal. It's neural handles and stuff like that. It looks like a piece of shit. It rotates, right? But it. It.

Almost is exactly the same product. Now, if I'm going to do something with that movement, am I going to grab the rogue one? Yes. Does it do even one percentage? Like literally a one percentage increase in anything? I would say probably not. Is it even one percent better actually?

It's way cooler. It looks really cool. It's red. It's rogue. It's shiny. Does it, is it any better at all? I don't know. Like you, I would have to leave that up to someone else.

To me, I'm probably not, I don't have a refined enough judgment to notice what that difference would be. You and your crude hands over there. Yeah, yeah. I also got the Angles 90 grips. I have not used the angles 90 grips at all yet. So I can't give any. I kind of get the impression there's, there's some very mixed opinions on those things.

Yeah. I just kind of want, because I just want to, I've been collecting a massing a bunch of different attachments for the gym that we don't already have, which brings me to I also got a pair of Porter Eclipse grips handles that are also red. You know, they match the rogue and they do look really nice. And I've used those only once so far. Those, you didn't have any type of like single grip attachment in the gym. I had single, you know, I've literally. single grip, like actual grip tools. And then I had a single rope,

like a rope that was just, it wasn't a V-Rope. It was literally... It does maybe unlock some certain movements or grips. I didn't really have anything that was exactly like that before. So that was new.

And then the two bigger pieces is we just got the Temple of Gaines, leg extension, seated leg curl and the Temple of Gaines multi-flight. Both V-3, I think the newest version of either one. And we're going to do reviews on those two.

So I probably won't give away all my review input right now on this because we're going to do shoot reviews on those really soon. Yeah. Videos on the way. I don't want to give away all the, all the inside. I mean, I want you to watch. We want you to watch the video on YouTube. We can't have these videos come out and have 10, 10 views on them.

Right. And I have at least 100 views. What are we doing that for? Yeah. Oh. Okay. We covered a lot of ground already in this episode, haven't we? We have.

Anything else we want to get to specifically this week? I don't think so. We probably covered it all. Like, do you think we'll ever be able to podcast again? Or did we cover everything in this episode? You know what? Now that you say that, we might have actually just covered all of it. All right.

Thanks everyone for tuning in. This was the last episode of the Massanomics podcast. This was it. So we're actually not going to make 10 years, are we? Damn it. We were so close. I was worried this is what was going to happen. Do you have any sponsor read action for us over there?

Yes, yes, yes, I do. This episode is also brought to you by Juggernaut AI. Juggernot AI is the smartest program for you. Since 2009, Juggernaut has been your trusted training resource, helping tens of thousands of athletes reach their goals. Here's how it works. You download the app on your little cellular device that you keep with you, the thing that you're always scrolling on Instagram or whatever the hell you do.

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Code Mastonomics. Not in the ad, but I've still been plugging away on macro factor. Yeah. And I assume you have been too. Yeah. And I was just thinking about it, I, based on my own experiences and what I've heard other people say, I think macro factor works. Someone let me know if you think otherwise. I think macro factor works 100% of the time if you do what it tells you to do.

I think it does. Like if you want to gain X pounds, lose X pounds, you will do it if you can follow what macro factor is giving you. I mean, it's not going to be instantaneous at times or, you know, like there's a runway to these things, but it always works if you work. The only time I feel like it wasn't working for me was once I gave myself a more serious audit. It was like, oh, actually, it wasn't tracking that number very good. I was just in my head that one thing. I was always kind of eyeballing it and I was drifting off a lot from where I thought I was. And then also I had the wrong brand and the wrong product for that that I was copying every day and that was off by a

few calories here and there. And then all of a sudden like, oh yeah, you're off by a few hundred calories at the end of the day every day and like that can start to add up. And then once you start cleaning that up, you say, oh, no, nope, it is right again. Yep. Well, that's, I had some of that drift myself even. I'm like, God, why am I like three, four pounds lighter than I'm really wanting to be? And then I look through my days and I'm like, well, yeah, I guess if you leave just like

150 calories on the table every day for a week. All of a sudden, you're 1,000 calories are more off all of a sudden. Yeah, and that is where the changes come from. So macro factor does just work. We have a discount code? Yeah. Asinomics. And it gets you a couple weeks free trial at the beginning of it.

Enough to figure out if it's something you'd be interested in at all. Yeah. And you do have to use it for a, you know, if you use it in full faith for a week, I think you'll know if it's something you want to continue trying or not. Yeah, you'll know if it's like something that you're actually going to want, because you have to put the effort in. But once you figure it out, I mean, do you spend more than a minute or two a day in there? No. I mean, it's really, really fast. It is just the most minor of nuisance, though.

also you're always like you become a little bit of like no I have to do this which that can be but it is almost no time a day I mean it's under five minutes a day you could mess around with it if you want to I really don't like I'm not ever

really checking anything interesting in there I pretty much just use it as the most basic tool function of like nope I'm inputting what I'm eating and I'm going for the goal and that at the end of the day I might spend like one minute be like where was I at?

And, you know, I'm like, do I need to eat one more thing? Here it is. No, I think I've said it before on here. Like, I think it's probably the biggest factor in improved performance for me in the last several years of my life. Like, I know for sure if I, my diet and things were the way they were when I was lifting in my mid-20s. If I was still doing that now, like, it would not be working the way it is. It would be, when I'd be just fatter and then also my performance. would not be as good as it is either.

So when you say it's the biggest factor, would you say it's the macro factor? Factor. It's not a micro factor in this case. It is a macro factor. Absolutely it is. YouTube-wise, we talked about the Iron Chaplin Gym tour that came out. The one that will be the newest as the time you're listening to this is our tour

with Michael at Jungle Gym reviews, right? in also the greater Detroit area. So we're going through those Detroit tours right now. Michaels was a fun one. Obviously, he was two minutes down the road from Matthews and just completely different gyms and gym tours. We could do 100 gym tours and we have, and each one's a little different.

That's a great case of it. If you're not watching our gym tours on YouTube, that's insane. Start watching those. We do have another trip coming up really soon, this month even. Yeah, actually. We're going on a trip. Maybe we don't need to spill the beans on that yet, but.

No, stay tuned next week. Maybe we'll give you some updates on where we're headed and who we might be seeing on this trip. Because we are doing a lot of tours on this upcoming trip. Action-packed. Yeah. Merchandise-wise, grab a drink-spotter, a drink-spotter, light, a drink-spotter, XL. Anything from the website. If you're on gym radar already and you're not a certified training facility,

become a certifying trade facility if you'd like. You get a flag, a certificate, some unique stickers that go along with that. And then there's perks on Jim radar. Like you can upload more than five photos. You get on the map. It's actually the only way if you, Tommy uses the map to find certified training facility of the week. The only way you actually get on the map portion is if you're certified. There's a couple other things that's worth points on the leaderboard.

consider becoming certified and then we've got some t-shirts around a few odds and ends things we probably need a restock of some stuff but if you want to support Massonomics and you're already supporting member you're already a certified training facility you're already watching and commenting

and liking all the YouTube videos buy a t-shirt from our website Tommy where do they find you at Tomahawk underscore D you can follow me at Tanner underscore Bear just make sure to follow Jim Radar And Mousinomics at Mousinomics.

See you.