Massenomics Podcast - Ep. 543: The Training Wake-Up Call You Need

Episode Date: August 31, 2026

We visited the legendary Jackals Gym in Minnesota for a gym tour with friend of the podcast Brad Gillingham. It had been eleven years since our last visit. We had an awesome time there and left with a lot of takeaways for our own training. EliteFTS Use code MASS10 to save 10% on most orders! 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!

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? We're here, episode 543 of the Massonomics podcast. Season 2, episode 43. My name's Tanner. My name's Tommy. We got winners.

We got losers. We got chain smokers and boosers. Name that song, Tommy. I don't know that song. I mean, I know the, I've heard those lyrics. I don't know what song that is, though. Rest in Power, Toby Keith. I love this bar.

Okay. See, that's what I was going to lean towards, but I'm like, doing the thing where if it's a country song where they're going to say Toby Keith or Garth Brooks. You know, I'm just playing the stereotypical card. You would have been right. Damn it.

I do love this bar. Actually, we can't play that clip, really. No, not really. It's not like four times in a row. Or the ghost of Toby Keith stops your YouTube video. Rest in peace. I mean, I have that clip here somewhere, don't I? Where do I have that on the soundboard?

Uh-huh. There it is. There we go. A little Toby Keith after all. Okay. This week's episode is brought to you and all of us by our good friends. North of the border. That's right.

The South Dakota, North Dakota border. They're north of that. In North Dakota, the Greater Fargo Moorhead area, barefoot shoes. And why does it matter to you where they're located so specifically? It doesn't. They ship at least nationwide, maybe worldwide. I'm not really sure on that. You can fact check me.

If you're a Canadian, if you live north, north of the border, way up there, Ken Barefoot shoes shipped you. Big Cam says yes. As a matter of fact, we had our top men on it. By top men are men highest above North America. Highest in the next available country. The highest latitude possible. Although Big Cam, I do believe, is south of us.

Just to play into that bit a little bit more. But they do ship to Canada out of Fargo, North Dakota. They ship anywhere. And if you use discount code, Massonomics, I believe that works for our Canadian customers as well as our domestic. It'll save you 10% on anything that you order from Barefoot shoes, even if it's the brand new Coyote color. Thanks, Bearfoot.

Well, if you are worried about borders and international shipping, you don't have to with this next sponsor. This episode is also brought you by Juggernaut AI. Through the power of the internet and cell phones, information knows no bounds. It can cross any border and belief. And that's what Juggernaut AI does. You can sign up for the best, smartest program for you. They recently launched, I believe they called Juggernaut 3.0. it's their biggest update ever.

I've been running it for a few weeks now and they have some new UI elements, some new dashboards, some new ways to track things, probably some new programming stuff under the hood too. I don't know. I made my program a few weeks ago, so I'm not totally sure there.

But the point is, is they're doing really good stuff, the people over there on Jugger. One of the best things that I like about it is they change the readiness score to an out of 100. Instead of an arbitrary, like 16 to 24. Right.

Out of 100 just feels like it makes, it's a lot more intuitive to me. I agree. I'm not happy with how low my score is. I don't know why my score is so low, but we'll work on that. That's more of a personal problem. Yeah.

Sign up for Juggernaut AI. Go to the website, juggernaut.a.i. If you use code massonomics, you can save 10% off the lifetime of your membership. It's great programming. Do it, people. Juggernaut AI. This just in,

Strongest Man on Earth announced for 2027 in August by Brian Shaw. We just learned about that, didn't we? We did. And I think that's Loveland, Colorado. I think that's everything we know about it at that point, isn't it? Okay. I think so. Are we going to make it in 2027?

We've never made it. It's been on our radar all the years. Yeah. That's a tricky one. I don't know. Yeah. So end of August. Good part about it.

It is, I mean, it'd be like right now as we're recording this. And that's a good bit away from the, well, our lift hardly Veezy is just earlier. So it's a decent bit away from home gymcon then, too, would be our closest specific event. Yeah, I just have one event every single month in the summer is all it is then, you know. You know what could make Strongest Man on Earth potentially worth it is not doing a booth there. But if we could rank, if we could harang up a group of, gym tours right in that area. That would be a sweet little incentive to make the whole thing work.

Yeah. Or we could just drive there multiple days and drive multiple back and haul a booth set up and set up a booth there. That sounds fun if I say that out of out. It's actually you can make it in one day pretty easily, you know? Yeah. At the rate we go, you leave early. We'd get there early, you know.

Is it a 10 hour drive? For me, probably. Yeah. Actually, you're a little farther west. It's probably pretty similar for both of us. A little farther north I could go kitty corner. Yeah.

Yeah, 10 to 12, I think, something like that. Yeah. Okay. Which is nothing for road warriors like us. Oh, 10 to 12. We do 22 for a decade straight like it's a good idea or something.

Like we liked it. They do with a smile on our face. So you heard it here first. Come to the Massonomics booth at Strongest Man. on earth 2027. We're not committing to that. Okay.

I got a Jim Radar topic, but maybe if you don't have a really strong radar report, it could be for that. Oh. Well, I don't know if it's a radar report. It's just an interesting anecdote for Jim Radar. That's a radar report. Conversations around that. That's a radar report.

Okay. We'll save that for a little bit. We usually don't do a radar report this early. Yeah, it's a teaser then. All right. I like a radar report teaser. We don't have enough of those. Radar report teaser.

Also a teaser for next week's episode. Is next week we're going to talk about the Beyond Power Vultra and first impressions? I mean, that's all we should say this week, right? Because otherwise we'll just give our first impressions. Yeah. Yeah, you can't get me going on it. Otherwise, I'll just. But if you've been following along on our Instagram comment,

you might notice that we have Beyond Power Voltra's around. And they're big digital resistance guys over here. Yes. Yes. So we've, Tommy has officially come out of the closet of the Beyond Power closet. And right now I'm wondering, as Beyond Power has probably watched our content,

if they've been wondering, ready and everything, every choice that company has ever made. We're here. We're using digital resistance. Get used to it. So that'll be next week. has another teaser.

This week, though, I've got this rule of thumb thing. Do we actually want to get into this week or can we just give them more teasers for what's coming in? This just be an episode of all teasers. Just teasers. Yeah. Okay.

So. We got coming up. All right. So we'll probably do a meetup at the Arnold in early 2027. If people want to mark that one down. I'm trying to think of what else we can tease. Actually, as long as we're covering it, though, actually do make sure to go on our website and get signed up for Crew Falls, December 2, remember, first weekend of December. There's an official sign up list for that.

There is already over 40 people signed up. That Hall of Fame jacket ceremony is looking to shape up to be potentially likely, probably 10 new jacket level Hall of Famers. What was that, you're a basketball guy, Tanner. me, what was that draft class that had like LeBron and D-WA? 0-3. Was this kind of like the O-3 draft class sort of? Is this what this is shaping up to be? This might be like the O-3 draft class, right?

I think so. I think so. Yeah, this might be that. Who else is in that? Chris Bosch was in there too. I believe so. There's several other notable people as well. LeBron, the only one's still playing, though.

oddly enough for some reason he's the only one that's still at it I don't know why those other guys quit but whatever was Carmelo Anthony was he in there too I think Carmelo was

was he in that draft class or is he one year younger Carmill Anthony he was the number three pick he was okay he was the number three pick you can't forget what's it dark dark

Yeah, Darko was the number two pick for Detroit Pistons. Also, Chris Kamen, can't forget him. Chris Kamen, does he have South Dakota ties? Does he? Or not? Maybe he doesn't. How about Kirk Heinrich? He does.

Sue City, Iowa. Kirk Heinrich, he plays at UK. My buddy told me he was in Sioux Falls here. My buddy in Sioux Falls was telling me he was coaching his girls basketball game, like third grade, and the opposing coach was Kirk Heinrich, because I guess he lives in Sioux Falls now. Kirk Heinrich is NBA veteran player that you could run into in public and probably not suspect he was an NBA player

one of the few I mean he's probably still taller than what you think because even the guards in the NBA are still like oh yeah you are actually still tall but he's not walking around at 6-9 or something like that yeah okay what were we talking about the L3 draft class oh Kendrick

yeah yeah because who was Kendrick Perkins was in there. Oh, Perk. Yeah. Okay. Anyways. Okay. Yeah.

So crew falls 2026, December, whatever those dates are, like 4th, 5th, 6th. Get signed up if you haven't yet. That gives us our head count and lets us know, you know, who all needs their Hall of Fame Cup and jacket and that sort of thing when they get signed up. Who played at University of Kansas with Kirk Heinrich? like their center guy. Would he have been in that draft class? He would either, what was his name?

He was really good in college. Big forward. You got me very curious now. Yeah, he was not a good, not, not a, he was like, he was like Psycho T from the University of North Carolina, Tyler Hansborough.

Yeah, really good college player, but not really like built as an NBA player. That goes sometimes. Yeah, he's a lot like, that. I can't remember who that guy was for sure. Popular, very popular college name. If you're into college basketball, you'd know what I would have described at this point. Power forward Nick Collision, is that it?

Nick Collison. Collison, okay. Yeah. I don't remember him. I do not know. Okay. It's not paying enough attention to basketball nearly two thousands, I guess, when I was 10 years old. Yeah, yeah, Jake's, I think he played for the OKC Thunder. Yes. Okay. Yep.

Don't know that one. What are you drinking over there? Are you thinking this week? I'm so thirsty. Pink apple and lemon. Let's go. Pink apple and lemon? Mm-hmm.

What a combo. Mm-hmm. Is there a banana on that can or are you just happy to see me? It's an enormous banana. Yeah, it's good. How is it? It's good. All right.

I got the flavor town again. Guy Fierry. Just got to support our guy, guy. You got like a sponsorship over there? I watched this little reel and it was a, if you answer, I should actually wrote them all down and we could have played the game, but it was if you answer, it's like a,

are you a straight white guy test? And one of the questions was, have you ever considered starting a podcast? Wait, is that such a mean you're straight or gay? I'm actually not even sure what way that would, what way that was for the straight. Oh, okay. If you answered yes. And then also if you like Guy Fierry, that was another, that was one of the other seven.

Yep. And it said, was one of them, do you also like Mario Lopez in a totally straight way? You know, very hetero. You're really, really straight. You really like the way he looks and acts and talks, but it's all very hetero. Then, yep, that's us. All right. That's, you got me curious here.

What is this, what's this rule of thumb? I want to know what this is. Okay. This was just, just a thought I had. Actually, I debated if this was a title topic. I don't think it is. It's probably a five-minute topic. But the bigger thing around this is,

here's, I'll pose this question to you, the starter question. Does someone have to be stronger than you for you, to feel comfortable taking lifting advice from them? Me personally, well, no, because they could say, well, no, because they could be a lot smaller and be about as strong as me, but I'm kind of playing the game. Do you have to justify some way that they're strong?

Yeah, they don't. And you could say, they don't have to be stronger than me, but I'm not in the scheme of things like that strong. So if you're like much weaker than me, then I mean, if you're if you're if I'm looking for strong man advice, that's a different thing. I just haven't done that much of it. But I feel like at this point, I have a pretty decent idea of what works and doesn't work for power lifting. You know, it feels like you're saying to me if someone's weaker than you, you wouldn't really take their advice. I would have a hard time actually now that you say this.

Yeah, now that I've talked it through. I've done this long enough. I actually know what it takes to get. I mean, I'm my own worst enemy. I could, uh, just. quit all engagements, leave my family behind and go all in on this. And I know I could get stronger.

But, you know, there's just things that I'm not going to do. So it doesn't fit with my lifestyle. Right. So I kind of thought about that. I was just thinking about that question. I have absolutely no idea why I was thinking about it in the gym the other day. And one of the things for me is like, at first I'm like, well, no, that's not true.

They don't have to be stronger than me. But then I'm like, well, I rationalize it and all these other ways in my head where I'm like, well, maybe they used to be stronger than me. And that would count. Like you'd say like, that would certainly cut. But that's a calculation I would make in my head. Like I'm kind of thinking of absolute peak strength too here is.

Right. If you've been training for a really, really long time and your best bench ever is 225, I'm going to have a harder time taking bench tips from you is what I'm trying to, yeah. Right. And then. what I came to is I'm like, okay, they don't have to be stronger. They don't have to be stronger than me, but there does have to be like a certain level of

strength. Like, would I say they have to be stronger than me on every single thing? No, but there does have to be a baseline level of strength for me to consider. Even if they do have a very high level of expertise. And I guess you could start slicing and dicing it by what exactly is. the advice about. If it's nutrition, I don't care if they're stronger than it.

Yeah, obviously. Not relevant there really at all. But if it's, uh, technical lifting advice and it's a man. The man thing is also, I,

I don't think a woman has to be stronger than me to give me advice. You're like, right, because then you can justify it like, well, she's like stronger than me pound for pound. Yeah. You know,

like, you know, and also you fact in the man versus, like she's done a certain, because there could be women that are to a high strength level. They're not absolutely stronger than you, but you're like, well,

I justify it because in the scheme of things, she's in a way stronger than me, you know, if you try to compare apples to oranges somehow. That's just another way of justifying the same thing, though, I think where you're like. But what you're doing is you are,

whether, I mean, whether you realize this or not, you are doing like a resume check in your head. You know? Right. And that's with all things in life. Like,

you shouldn't just take blind advice from anyone. Like you got to have some credentials. And maybe, maybe you never really got that strong. I mean, here's a good example of someone that I think would admit it. God, what the hell?

I can't even think of his name now. Is it Steve? We've had it on the podcast a few times. He coaches a lot of people. Is it Steve? Oh, Steve Donovie. There you go. Actually,

great point. Great example. And he would be a really good, a really good coach, though. And like for sure. And just talking to him, I'm like, yeah.

I actually, he said he's never got that strong because of some injury stuff and whatever. I don't even know what his numbers. If we were in the same room as Steve and he was looking at me and be like, hey, you should do this, I'm pretty likely to listen to him or at least give it some heavy thought. He's a good example. Yes. I would listen to him. But it's because he still has a resume.

That's because you're factoring in so much else of the resume. Yeah. But so then that's, he's a really good example. Actually, a really good example that it's at least not absolutely true in just the sense of only, weighing in how strong. But he has the resume of coaching. So if you have the rich history of coaching and especially at a high level.

So it is possible. He's a great example of where it's possible. And I don't even know. I don't even know what his best total is. For all I know him not being strong, his best total is 1,400. And it's like, well, that's totally respectable too. Yeah, I don't need.

He's definitively not as strong as you or I are though. Like, and I also would listen to his advice from him without, I wouldn't even think twice about it. You know, I might, I'm not going to blindly listen to advice from anyone almost. I'm going to rationalize it and think about it. But like I absolutely would be, want to know what he has to say. I would value his opinion. But then I was, it just made me thinking, made me think, like maybe I have these,

maybe there's other just random, and this is just all fun games I was playing in my head. And I'm like, well, I at least someone, I want someone who can bench, more than I can overhead press. Like I was like, if I can overhead press more than they can bench, that might be a problem for me. If you can dole overhand deadlift more than they can ever deadlift,

that could be a problem. Like that's actually like a similar example of what I'm saying. I'm like, if your bench press is not more than what I overhead press, like if you're doing less for sets and reps on bench than I do for overhead press, I might generally have a hard time listening to what you tell me. Yeah, that's not a bad metric. I'm not even saying that that's the right approach to not want to listen because Steve is a great example.

I just, the truth is there's a thousand other factors that you consider. There is, but it is a pretty, I mean, it's like the first, it's one of the first hurdles people are going to think about when someone's offering coaching advice. They're going to be like, well, what are you done? You know, right. It's kind of the walk, walk, talk, the talk kind of thing. You know, it's not the only thing, but it is a thing. right yeah that was my only that was really my thought of it i'm like i'm come up with some rules

of thumb where i would i would listen to you you don't have you don't have to be as strong but you have to be in the ballpark yeah or have some credentials to show for it for sure okay this this reminds me now that you said this this reminds me of the video i saw today allan thrall i don't know if you saw this dana have you seen this have you heard about this he had a video i haven't i haven't He's about four minutes long on his YouTube channel. And I actually wish I knew what the title was at this point. But it was something along the lines of after you do this long enough at a certain point, everyone just decides they just want to look good, feel good, and be able to stay active and have, you know, energy and all this.

And he's absolutely right. He is. And he's showing, you know, pictures that he's like, you know, at a certain point, you decide optimizing your entire life around strength isn't worth it. because of what you give up in all other areas. And when you're younger, you know, he's kind of saying it's easier to go on that big bulk. And it's easier to spend three hours in the gym every day. And as you get older, you say, no, I want to play with my kids or actually, I don't want to weigh 300 pounds or whatever that is. And you start changing, you know, it brings other things into perspective.

You start changing. And at a certain point, you say, no, nope, I just kept getting fat. Or, you know, you do the bulk. You get fat or you get stronger. You get fat or you get stronger. And then pretty soon you get fat or you don't get stronger. You get fatter again. and you still don't get stronger.

And it's just like this thing of your identity and hollow ties together and all of that. And I think the message is good. But if I had to have a hot counter take to that video is my hot. I could make some countertake. My hot countertake would be a lot of people, because there's a lot of comments like, yeah, yeah, I feel this, brother. I feel this. And my counter take would be a lot of people didn't actually really go all in on strength in the first place.

You know, they just kind of phoned it in anyways. and they're like, whof, yeah, now that I'm in my 30s, I just need to, like, dial it back and just feel good. And I'm like, well, you kind of didn't do the things he's talking about in the first place. And now there's nothing wrong with that. But I'm just saying you're not completely on the same level. I, to a certain extent, I'm even like, I got fairly into it, but I didn't even go all in it. I still, there's a part of my brain that believes I still might have my best lifting days ahead of me still, you know?

Right, right. Yeah, I think some people are looking for a reason not to do hard stuff. That, okay, yes. And that they're like, okay, good. Giving my rationalization of, yeah, why I can. And also, I'm not saying that I don't just, I actually have lived and breathe a lot of what his message is. So, yeah, I've weighed. What's your heaviest?

280 something. 288. And what's your lightest in the last five years, the last four years even? Like 240. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm almost 50 pounds lighter. And, you know, I deadlifted 700 pounds and bench 475 and like kind of did some of the, you know, was doing some of those things.

Still not like there's other people that do it a lot more extreme methods. There is. Like there's varying levels of that sort of thing. I ate a lot of food and weighed a lot more and got stronger. But I also don't want to be 40 and I don't want to weigh 20 pounds. Like that's not excellent. I mean, it's just really heavy people of any body composition generally don't live a long time. Like you don't, I'm not a doctor or a scientist, but I understand that concept.

Any, you know, that amount of body mass is harder on someone's heart, generally speaking. I mean, you could make a case I weigh 250 pounds. That's not what an ideal person, you know, that's not what the healthiest. Yeah. If you're only concern is longevity, optimizing for health of longevity. I wouldn't weigh 248 pounds even right now, even though compared to your average American,

I'm a pretty healthy, you know. It's a very clean 248. Yeah, yeah. But I guess to his whole point, I'm, I don't know if I'm a hypocrite or what, because I would agree because I've actually lived and done everything he's saying there, but yet I don't even really like the video,

conceptually because what I think it does is give people a whole bunch of excuses to bitch out. It's like that's my hardcore take on it. And I'm like, I don't know, you probably never wanted to do anything hard. And now you're like, yeah, I don't got to do that. I'm just, I'm worried about my health more now. And I'm like, really, are you even doing anything different or are you just not lifting hard anymore? Right. Because that's not necessarily healthier.

I know. And I still, I think there's, you know, we're getting to be in our late 30s. And I think there's already people like, all right, getting out almost a 40. That's permission to not do the hard stuff anymore because I got an aging, aging knees and an aging back. So we don't want to go too hard. And I'm like, well, we're still on this side of 40.

We're still on this side of 50 even. Well, and I watch people that, uh, that we do this with that go for a long, longer than this. We're going to spend the last half of this episode talking a lot about someone that push that in a totally different direction. And, yeah. So that's, that was kind of where I watched the video. I don't think, I don't think it was a bad video on Allen's part by any means.

I think it is a very relevant message for a lot of people. I think there's a lot of people that are going to take that message as an excuse that didn't actually really push things. Well, and it also just conveniently fits his narrative. I'm not, this is not a criticism, but it fits his narrative at this point in his life. I mean, it is like, because it shows that, you know, the bulking and his 20s. the, you know, lifting, powerlifting. Right. And then, and he very much did do all that stuff.

But I don't, I don't think that that's necessary to say that that's the right choice for everyone, though. Like, I don't think to say, like, that's what you should, that's what everyone should do. Kind of depends on what you want. Like, there's risks. I would say, people take risks with a lot of different things that they do. And I'm not here to say what someone shouldn't, shouldn't, uh, yeah, I think I would say what part of what aging has taught me is that it's made me my nutrition the most serious I ever have. And I think that that's also allowed me to perform better. And then like I've put way more effort into compared to maybe 10 years ago programming

and when to send it and when not to. It's not like, it used to always just be like, we're going, baby. It doesn't matter if things feel good or bad. We're going. And just way more, I would say way more body awareness, way more just like caution when things aren't there. And because of that, just a higher level of intelligence and the way you approach things, I feel like you can give you a lot of longevity.

Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That's my takeaway is I don't love that. I don't love that. You mean you're not going to drop 50 pounds and become a full on jogger and that's the. Well, I mean, I even did.

I have literally done that stuff. 50 more pounds. Yeah. But I'm like, I drop 50 pounds. I jog more than I used to. I do other things more than I used to. but I'm not necessarily of the impression under the opinion that I need to be on a soapbox to encourage everyone to do that. Because some people I'm like, you never actually lifted head.

I mean, I agree exactly with what you said. I would also say, I feel pretty damn good, all things can sit. Right. You know, like, I don't know. Yeah, like maybe if I ran five miles a day and lost another 20 pounds and was under 200 pounds. Maybe I'd feel even better. But outside of probably staying up later than I should a lot of times or just having kids messing with sleep, outside of that, I do feel pretty damn good for the most part. Honestly, if you did that, you know, if you were running, because what was your

example there? If you ran what? You know, a couple, you know, go run 10, 15 miles a week, something like that, you know? Yeah. You know what would happen? You'd get just different injuries. I know. I just my knees and stuff would just be beat up and they just hurt. And I'm like, and I'm not condemning that either. But my point is, like, you think like, oh, yeah, I wouldn't lift as heavy and I'll do that instead. And when you're, I don't know, 30, 40, 50, what happens then is you just, something else hurts.

Yeah. Like, it's like, that's kind of what. Go in. Yeah. Some stress fractures in your feet. For sure. It's exactly what happens. Like, I'm like, that's 100%.

And I'm not saying any of that is bad to do. I would do all. I say do all of it. But don't act like one. is like the more morally superior option. Yeah. Because everyone's uniquely different. And you may be the person that can do all of it.

And you'll go run and be like, I feel great all the time. And that might be true. I've never beat up. It's always good. But I can tell you from personal experience, if I try to run that much, I will, I also, you know, we'll be here. You drop some pounds. You play City League basketball.

Next thing you know, you're blowing out knees, left and right. Two knees later and, uh, so that's, I feel good now. But see, I don't even tell them people not to do that stuff because I'm like, I've had this conversation like based around my knee. I know of in the past. And I'm like, I don't want to live in a bubble wrap. Right, where you don't do anything else in my life. It's like, oh yeah. Yeah, let's make sure that we're physically fit and active so we can do nothing ever besides one very, very specific style of training. Right.

Yeah, I don't know what my any additional points are on that, but I think that that's a good conversation. Yeah. Gets you thinking. Yes. So basically, if someone can't bench press more than I can overhead press, I'm not going to listen to their thing advice. Yeah, they're a fraud, a phony, a fake. If they're not heft in horse and a heave in. Heavy loads.

Okay. Where are we at right now? Should we do a little supporting our supporting members? Let's do it. Okay. This is, albeit a relatively new segment to the podcast. If anyone's brand new, you've never heard us do this before. If you've listened to a few episodes, you've probably at least heard it a few times. But what I kind of say, or what I like to say is there's a whole lot of ways you can support massonomics.

You can buy stuff, you know, our merchandise. our drink spotters, our shirts, shorts, everything like that from masonomics.com. Love it when you do that. You can watch our YouTube channel, our gym tours, our equipment reviews. Love it when you do that. Leave comments on there, like, subscribe, share those things. You can follow along and comment on our Instagram channel. That's all a little bit helpful, probably somehow for us in the long run.

You can leave us a five-star review on Apple Podcast. That would help us out. use Jim Radar. That is also probably Option B is get yourself a free account on Jim Radar, get signed up. But not option B and like it should be like a second and not as important choice.

Just it's number two on the list. It's like one or two A or whatever. Yeah, yeah. What other ways can you support Massonomics? Just like telling a friend, like getting someone to listen to the podcast that's never listened to it before, referring it to, you know, let them know, Hey, check out. Check these guys out. Give it a listen. Any of that stuff. But I'd still say the number one way, the number one thing that keeps all the massonomics wheels turning and in motion is by becoming a supporting member.

If you're a regular listener of the show, semi-regular, you enjoy it, whatever. You're listening to me to say this right now and you kind of enjoy this show and you're not a supporting member. It's really cheap. It's 10 cents a day. You could become a supporting member. It's almost nothing. It's actually an amount of money that in 20206 is almost meaningless to most people, I would say. Yeah. But when we get a whole bunch of people that do that, it is very meaningful to us. Like to you, it's nothing. To us, it's everything. It's our reason for waking up in the morning.

Yes. It really is the number one way you can support. can support us. So if you're, if you enjoyed and you haven't signed up yet, please, massanomics.com slash join.

There's also like super expensive options if you don't like the cheap ones and you want to give us a little bit more. You kind of get all the same things in return. But we won't stop you. No, we'd love to have you do more, but we'd even be happy to have you at the lowest level.

We will still like you, even at the lowest level. It's just scaled on how much we like you, depending on which level you sign up for. One of the things you get back for that, as you could be on supporting our supporting members. Like this week, big coach Peck is turning 70 years old. 70 years young, I think you mean.

70 years young. Still a beast too. Coach Peck has got to hang out with him at home gymcon. Looks really good for 70. Oh, yeah. I think I see. I'm as straight as they come, but Coach Peck looks great. Did I see his German chocolate cake?

Is that his birthday tradition? And I believe that's what it was. Yeah. Okay. Big Cedar announced he has baby number four on the way. Any words of advice there, Tanner? Stop. Quit while you're ahead.

You know what? Cedar, you need to not focus on lifting hard. You've done it. You just need to focus on feeling good and being there. As your past to quit. As someone with four myself, what I tell people is four. where your borderline have mental disorders.

When people go all the way to five, I'm like, oh no, that's a weird family. You're the sickos over there. Like, four, I'll take a little criticism for that. Five, I'm like, what are you, a certain religion or something that just has a lot of kids? Do we live in the Great Depression? You need some labor to help you with stuff?

Five's a number that. I'm joking. There's probably people listening to have more. and the kids of that that I really like. It's mostly a joke, but four is in today's day and age economy, the way houses and vehicles work. It's frowned upon. Four's the max that actually makes any sense.

Yeah. If you're going to apply reason to the scenario, you know, you then have to drive a six-seat vehicles. It gets, the seven-seat vehicles. It gets a little trickier. You basically, if you have five kids, you need to drive one of those vans. certainly helps.

What are those called? Those, yeah, what are those called? You know, like a big Mercedes van. What's that? Like a sprinter van.

Oh, Sprinter van. I thought you were talking more. I thought you were talking more. I thought you were going to go more American style there. Like a Chevy, the Chevy 12 pack van. What the hell they call that thing.

Yeah. Yeah. Around here you might call it a Hutterite van. Or like the logger shuttle or something. In the Army, you call it a 12 pack van. I've never heard that one, but... Because I think it's like a 12-seater potentially.

Yeah, it makes sense. Big Laurel and Big Matt in a hat celebrated 18 years of marriage, a marriage PR. Your marriage PR used to be able to buy cigarettes. I don't know if it can anymore, though. How old do you have to be to buy... Is that a national age? I don't know. Did that change?

Is it no longer 18? We really used to be a proper country. if you have to be older than 18 to buy tobacco products. Yeah, 21 years old in the United States. Wow. Really? So a 19-year-old can get drafted into the... And he can't...

Wait, you can't enjoy a pack of marlborals? You can get sent over to the Middle East, just like Tanner did, and you can't even bring a vape with you? Is that what's going on here? It's actually kind of wild because most of the people that join the military are 18 and 19 and a big part of the military is just smoking cigarettes.

Yeah. So I'm like, so those people like actually can't smoke there because they're still smoking. Like there's no way they're not. Well, but they're probably don't have any of those, any of that, you know, smokeless tobacco,

any of those, that oral stuff, you know, any of those. I actually am surprised that it's 21. I mean, not a bad, I'm not against, It's probably, well, good. I feel like, but.

I don't know. Are you over the age of 10? You get a vape now. I'm also like, are they in, what's the penalty? Like if you're 20, what if you're,

it is kind of odd to me. If you're 20 years old and you got caught like chewing, like with chew and the police officer's like, excuse me, sir, I'm going to have to give you a ticket. Like, where do you think you're going?

Oh, I just got done it. Like, I'm a junior in college. Like 20 years old in Aberdeen's like, oh, I just got done in my National Guard training for the weekend. I'm actually going back to my house that I own. I bought my first house when I was 20.

Like I was a homeowner. But you ain't buy your first pack of cigarettes when you're talking. Tell me I couldn't smoke a cigarette inside of it. What is the penalty? It has to be of no. There is no. I heard it's really, really aggressive, potentially a, federal prison sentence.

And the ATFs involved, so it's very serious. All what I'm saying, I suppose, is the old argument for alcohol in that same situation. You know, because like when before us, you know, you could drink when you were 18 at some point in time and they changed that. And that's kind of the joke I was making about like, that's what people used to say about the military. You're like, oh, and you can't have a beer with your buddies. But alcohol does have more vastly impair. It goes hand in with impairment. Like, oh, Steve isn't messed up.

He's had like 10 cigarettes tonight. Now, nobody should do that. But a dude on 10 cigarettes isn't going to like come home. Just punch holes in all your walls and pee on your front porch. Right. And not remember what happened when they wake up the next morning. You're going to know what's going on. I guess what I'm trying to say is it really feels like we used to be a proper country.

I agree. I didn't even know for sure that we've probably discussed it, but I guess I just forget that that's... Yeah, I can never remember if that's a state law or a federal or how that goes. Crazy. Okay, Big Steve and Big Anastasia did an online farmers carry competition. It was a fundraiser for pro strong women in Canada. Sounds cool. Big Megan of Massanomics gym competed at.

that queen of the Sioux Empire. Have you heard about the Sioux Empire? Actually, what's funny is I ran into Casey yesterday, and I talked to him about this. Oh, did you talk to him about Crew Falls at all? I said, yeah, is Tanner reached out to you? And he grabs this one, he's like, oh, no, did I miss something? I'm like, oh, no.

I did, I have DMed him, but I think, I was thinking about this. I DM'd his personal account, and I wonder if he doesn't check that, and I need to DM. That wouldn't surprise me, because he was like, Did I miss something? Like he seemed, you know, caught off.

So what did he say about it? It's a few months away. He's probably going to reach out soon. He's like, okay. No, I actually have been thinking I need to, I was just going to copy and paste the message and send it to Lose because I'm like,

I, he probably has not seen this. Yeah. So what did he say about the meat though? I think it was, Megan said it was all women and there was like 30 some lifters or something like that. That's kind of, yeah,

that was kind of the, yep. And Megan hit a PR, all time PR. Nice. Yeah. then what Northeast Ohio

crew meetup this looks like fun I love these crew meetups it was Kevin Nate Tom Kyle Joe Lebs and Hogan all got together and were competing

strong man I think they're all competing in a strong man competition Did they post this on Instagram I didn't see anything of this Usually I see these crew meetups When they happen Yeah

You know it was it was for sure I mean I found it in this thread So they definitely posted it on Discord at least Oh that sounds like Then A relatively new up-and-coming crew, a regional crew, the Kansas City crew had a meet-up. Oh.

And they have stickers out and stuff, but it was Fat Tyler, Brandt, Willie, and Boots all got together. I like this developing Kansas City crew, you know, to rival this Northeast Ohio, the Southern California, the crew England, the Pacific Northwest crew. There's a really strong Kansas City chapter. You know, there's the Kentucky crew. there too there's like a new challenger seems to be emerging in the Kansas City crew I like that yeah I love it and then I want to this thing like at say like the lift hardly easy all the regional crews and it's like the Anchorman thing they'll have the most stereotypical outfit for their region that they yeah yeah they all come in their chief stuff

and the Northeast people all have like 1700s revolutionary clothes on The Southern California group, obviously, you know what they look like. They're all like wearing board shorts and sunglasses. Whatever they do in SoCalde out there, you know. They're talking about which freeway is not to date. And then this week's guest on our brady little sister podcast, which is unpaid and underrated, which if you stick around and you get involved in the crew, the massonomic crew, the supporting member crew, you could become a guest on there.

Like Wesley Honeycutt, speaking of the Kentucky crew, the only Honeycutt crew member with a real seller for a home gym. It's not just in the name, it's really a seller. The only Honeycutt with a real true seller. Very important distinction there. Yes. And I believe it was determined that Keith is Wes's uncle, possibly. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah.

And this week's guest on half-baked thoughts on training, which is our drunken uncle podcast in our podcast sphere. I believe this week's guest was Big Emmett's dad. And I haven't listened to the, I haven't listened to it. All right. I like it. Yeah. Okay. That wraps up supporting our supporting members for the week.

Do you want to read an ad? I'll kick some people off and we'll get to our title topic here. Yeah, yeah, that sounds Are we going to do a certified training facility The week this week too? Are we going to do that later? Yeah, maybe we'll do that after. We'll tie that in.

That'll funnel right into the radar report after this segment. Okay. This week's, well, actually, how should I say this? This is a bit of an announcement. It's our newest sponsor. We have a new sponsor for the podcast. It's Elite FTS.

Check them out. I don't know if you've heard of Elite FTS. You can check them out at EliteFTS.com. This up-and-coming, gym equipment. I'd say anything you can fit in your gym bag or in a gym itself as far as equipment goes, you can get it at EliteFTS.com. Check out these new up-and-comers over there. I think right now they're running their big 20 sale, which is 20% off a whole bunch of stuff. Also, this is the most interesting part of the sale. The SS Yoke bar, which if you don't have it,

it's the Elite FTS SSB bar, I guess, is what other people might call it. is $80 off right now. Dang. Save $80. We also have a discount code as Mass 10. Stack that. Likely you could stack it on top of that and get the SS Yoke Bar for the lowest price

that you could probably ever get it at. You could get that right now. So kind of a big deal. Thank you, Elite FTS. All right. They're out of here. Yeah. Thank goodness.

Okay, title topic. We need a little title topic jams. Is that right? Yes, it's very right. Yeah, I think you disturb for this title topic. I think, let's see, what is our title topic? We were at Jackals' Gym. We're at Jackals' Gym.

The takeaway from it is we're going to talk about what really matters. Yeah. Or from a different angle, you could say almost nothing really matters in the gym besides about one or two things. Because nothing else matters. Just like the talk I said. I would say that this tour, so we did a gym tour with Brad Gillingham, friend of the podcast at Jackals Gym. Tommy and I were last at Jackals Gym 11 years ago.

Almost 11 years to the day. It was like 11 years in like two weeks or something. And Massonomics was a thing back then. So that's also a thing is a very loose way of putting it. It was a lot different thing, but I'm wearing a massonomic shirt even. That was probably the only Masonomic shirt that existed then, don't you know? Yeah, one of the few. Someone commented like, oh, Tommy didn't have a Masonomics shirt on.

I would be like, because I had one Massanomic shirt. That was all that existed. It was dirty. You wore it the day before. I probably did. Yeah, I probably wore it lifting a day or two before and it wasn't clean. So it was a very full circle moment. For anyone that's a back catalog listener of the Massonomics podcast, Brad Gillingham and Jackal's

gym were a central theme of a lot. of what we did. You know, we had several influences early on, and that was a big one, all mostly stemming from a kind of the program we were doing, and then B, that trip to Jackal's Gym was very influential to us in 2015, where it's what we got a refresher of this trip. But in 2015, it really made, it was a light bulbs turning on moment where it's like, oh, first of all, this is what training can be like.

And second of all, hey, this gym is sweet. Like that's a cent, that's part of what is working here. And what can we take from that and do our own version of that? So that's what that was 2015. That's where we left off with that. And then we talked about Brad for years ago. It was always the joke was he was a friend of the podcast. Always going to get him on the podcast stuff like that.

Never happened. The tour is freaking sweet. It's so, I mean, By the time this episode comes out, the tour is still probably a month away in our schedule of videos that we have. Yeah. But, God, it is just, it's one of my all-time favorites. It's so good. It's up there.

It's in your, it's like, is it in your Mount Rushmore of the gym tours that we've ever done? Yeah, probably. It's just too good. It's just too good. I mean, I told, we did this gym tour. You know, it's in Marshall, Minnesota, which is, it's north of me. It's way south of Tann. It's like almost a three-hour drive for Tanner.

It's about an hour and 20. minutes for me. And so we drove separately. We got done. I don't know. I was probably a half hour, an hour down the road. And I had to call Tanner and be like, God, was that just freaking sweet or what? And he's like, yeah, it was really good. I was just sitting there thinking the same thing. I was like, damn. Okay. It's one of the best tours we've ever done. Like with gym tours, you know, it's like children. You know, I love them all the same. They're all good. But right. Right. Right. There is something different about a guy that has been around a long time, like has the stories to tell. Like, if I were to,

you know, some similar vibes like Evan Centipani. He's been around forever. He's done a ton of stuff. Donnie Thompson. Been around forever. Done a ton of stuff. Has the stories. You know, Dave Tate,

these are the guys that are like the legends of it have done it, done the whole thing, seen it through the ages. And Brad is absolutely one of those legends. And to just, ah, the stories he had on everything. Like so many of them,

actually, if it was a guy I'd never met, I'd be like, yeah, that's not true because that's not how that works. But I always, I also believe everything he says 100%. I don't think he belishes any stories because there's so much evidence of all the things he says to back it up.

That it's it's just the truth. It's just the way it is. And I agree with you, Tanner, to back it up to the beginning, the start of this is I kind of forgot how, you know, if you're going to give some credit here, how instrumental that I think in the video we used the word of Jackals was the template for what Massonomics started out as. And it was, we went there. Like this, so if we're going to put some backstory, the whole Masonomics thing here, my,

a random roommate I got in college, his name was Craig. He was training at Jackals. And he was, he was a national level competitor. I think he might have even won nationals in USAPL in like 2008 or something. I think it might have been juniors, but.

Which they pumped out, let me talk to like over 50 national winners. Yeah, like 48 national, yeah, USAPL national championships from this little gym in, in Minnesota. And so my roommate Craig was there. He's talking about his coach. I didn't know what power lifting was at the time. You know, I liked to lift weights, but I was also like the scrawny kid.

And so like Craig kind of hyped this guy up. And then I just, you know, I always kept in tune with it. And then as time got on and I got more into lifting in my early 20s, started looking at this more and was like, damn, this is the guy is this guy. And so like I always kind of had this thing, you know, watching from afar this guy. And one time when Craig was back, we talked him into, Hey, let us come train with you when you go to Jackals and he got it cleared with Brad. You and me drove down there from Aberdeen. And I just remember, like, that was like the best training session ever. You know, all these guys yelling at you. There's eight people squatting on like one. We've been lifting at the Y still is our only lifting time.

Yeah, so where it's like, yeah, it's like a church choir there. Put your headphones on. Yeah, don't say anything. And keep to yourself. And you go here and there's eight people cycling out on one squat stand. And one guy's squatting. I don't know, 315, and by the time you get to the last guy in line, he's maybe doing 500 and you're just stripping weights down, moving it up and down.

That's no issue for anyone. The music's loud. Everyone's yelling. And it was like, damn, this is freaking sweet. Like, this is awesome. And I think, you know, if you, you could probably go back and see, but that was in August. I think did Massanomics gym start in November of that year? I think so.

So it was like three months. And I remember. I pretty much went home and it was like, I'm going to start getting gym equipment. Yeah. And it was also the realization I'm like, it doesn't take that much. Exactly. You don't need that much to. It's funny, though, because I remember at the time thinking Jackal's Gym had a ton of stuff in it.

I remember thinking that. Not that it doesn't have a ton of stuff. We started with. There's a lot of home gyms we've been to that have more stuff than Jackals Gym. And yeah. Yeah, like it was, that was, you know, middle of August. It was not that long later. I remember you coming up to me at the Y and being like, bought like a thousand pounds away.

We're doing this. And the first Massonomics gym, it was just the template of that. Like, yep, we got one squad rack, one bench. Exactly how we trained. It was everyone yelling at each other. We trained exactly like that. And where it was just rotating through your break is however long it takes for you in the rotation. Which is almost in all cases, even if you have six people rotating faster than what you do if you're lifting by yourself.

You think like, oh, I got to wait for six people. It's like, no, that person's done. The next person's going. They call their wait and they go. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Like, it's maybe five minutes between attempts. And even, but like Massanomics gym, it was, that was a template.

You know, we'd go in. If I get there, if Tanner's doing sets of 400 on bench and I like just get there, I'm like, oh, I got to, I got to warm up. Like, all right, we'll strip this down when you're your turn. And it's like, yep, so we might be going down to the bar back to 405, back to 135, back to 405. And, you know, hit weights between there. No, one ever said anything about it.

It never seemed like a problem at all. It was like, no, of course. It's like, yeah, we're all lifting. This is how you do it. And it was sweet. And it was awesome. It was so much fun. And it was inspired by the one day at Jackal's gym just seeing how that worked.

I'm like, oh, yeah. Yeah, that's what you do. Like, that's exactly how you do it. Yeah. I don't know if I ever would have known that that's so, like, even to the extent, we had these weird squat racks that you had to, you know, the Sybex one, the J-Cup, you pull a trigger. Yeah.

And we would just, one person would just stand with, because, like you and I could have squat all the same ones, but if you... Larry's with it. Larry's in there. You know, it's a difference. Even with 400 some pounds, we would just one person kind of stands with it under your shoulder,

lifts one side up. The other person will pull the trigger, move it to whatever spot, and then you put it down. It wasn't hard. No. And that's exactly what they're doing in there. They're moving up and down.

Plus they have hydraulic stands and they have a high and a low spot. So there's one guy, you know, he's got 405, and then there's another guy. I mean, they're just moving around. Like, and no one's ever thinking about it all like they just know how it goes right and it was just a wake like it was such a wake up call for like damn this is what actually matters in training and don't get me wrong we talk a lot about jimmy equipment i love jim equipment it's fun it's exciting it's always there's tons of new stuff happening

it is really cool to be a part of but it was such a wake-up call for like at the end of the day none of that stuff actually matters what whatever big jimmy equipment wants you to believe none of that stuff actually matters what matters is that you should be you should be that you should show up and lift hard. That is the only thing that matters. It does not matter the felt load on your leg extension. It does not matter how nice your bars are. It doesn't matter how good your plates are.

None of those things actually matter. It just matters how hard do you lift when you show up. I have so many things to say that are running through my head. I can't even process everything I want to say. I'm getting fired up just talking about it right now. Number one, I don't actually know if a single guy in there could have even said what kind of bar they were using. this is we asked Brad what's on your do you have anything on your wish list he goes you know I don't know we have like 50 national champs we have like 30 people that competed at worlds like

are we doing something wrong he's like this isn't a fancy place no and their racks benches bars and weights are all good they don't have a rack in there though is the thing they don't in the traditional sense of a rack you have some of the first racks ever made to know demand, but it's not what we all conventionally consider up. It's not two by two or that's a whole story of it. Sorry of itself, actually, which is very interesting. But no, they don't have like

that. And their accessory equipment is exactly all that they need. But what I would say to what some people consider to be important is like their accessory equipment is kind of garbage compared to what some people would think

they need. Like the lap pull down kind of works. I told you, I pulled on it right away. And at first, I'm like, the resistance I was getting from either the cable or something else, but I thought I broke it for a second. I'm like, oh, no, no, it's just old. That's all it is.

And then you do, like, does this stop me? Nope, nope, nothing wrong with this. The leg extension leg curl is the Titan plate loaded one that people have in their home gym and it's fine. And Brad goes, Brad's like, oh, it's great. It's a great unit. Love this thing. And it's hilarious because there's people out there and be like, that thing's a piece of shit.

It sucks. And then you got this guy who is... All of these guys. Yeah, actually I should say this guy. All of them. And they're like, no, we like this. This is awesome. And it's like you're going to tell them they're doing it wrong.

Like, are you going to tell them that? Brad, who's deadlifted over 800 pounds, 102 times in competition. And it's probably not fair to use him as the example. He's an outlier and stuff. What the example is, though, this group of 25 people that a decade ago was a different group with 25 people. All of those dudes in there are strong. Like I'm saying every single one of them.

Yeah. You know, not every one of them is like a national. You know, there's like for multiple sets of multiple reps. They're just wrapping through. Everyone's like a bunch of just, they weren't freakishly large people.

People, you name the body type it was in there. Or, Tanner, you know, deadlifting 500 some pounds for a set of, you know, all these guys,

all doing strong. There's some outliers too, like big, Lucas, right? Lucas is benching 550 pounds. That's a whole separate. Yeah, we'll talk on that too. We'll talk on that.

But my point there, before I get too lost on all of that stuff, is the proof is this enormous group of people that is all really strong. None of them really care about the accessory, secondary, tertiary equipment.

I also would go as far to say, which I've kind of made these comments before, it emphasized it even more to me, not that their training is not good, but the programming is not the secret sauce there at all. It's not some, what's working for those guys is not some secret programming. Yeah,

it's obviously not secret equipment. It's a good program, but it's not some crazy complex RPE system of undulating, you know, crazy, like it's. All those guys, their program is, They squat hard on Fridays. They deadlift hard on Mondays and they bench hard on Wednesdays.

That's their program. Yeah. You know, for the most, that's a variation of five by five or five by three. Yeah. Yeah. So big emphasis to me that programming is also not the secret to success in their cases.

What the secret is is they all are trying really hard to a level that I'm convinced a lot of people have actually never done once. Well, I'm actually not even, I wouldn't say that people haven't even done once. I'm convinced, my takeaway from that is many, many people will spend decades in the gym and never even witness that level of intensity. You know what I'm like? I don't think that's an exaggeration. I think most people would be like, oh, that's how you can do the gym.

Didn't know you can do it like that. And it's also not to say that the only way to achieve that is through yelling and screaming at each other. but that's certainly a i wouldn't even say that they're like in there just like freaking out going crazy it's just a high energy environment you know it's just loud and fast moving it's like i don't know if you've ever played like football and stuff like yeah it's just high energy and excitement like that's how i would describe it it's not like aggressive like everyone hates each other and they're not having fun they are all having fun and i'm just watching it having a great time but everyone is there

is having a great time and just the energy's really high it's like it's just like it's just like a bro spot, man. It's like the spot you want to be. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know what else I have to say about it. It's just hard to, but I just did. It puts it in just an ultimate perspective.

And the extreme juxtapositions here are right before that we were in your garage doing a video on the Voltra. Yes. Which that really highlights some things. Also our next podcast episode that we do is going to be talking about the Voltra. I really like the Voltra and I really like it in training and we're going to talk about some really cool things

to have to do with it but at the same time then when you go from the Voltra to this you're like imagine showing Brad the Voltra and telling him like I think this is what you need you know our jockey this is what you need to get strong it would be a straight up joke he would actually laugh right

because it's just like well what I need to do some like tiny isolation accessories that's What I'm missing out on is. You couldn't, like, could you imagine a scenario where you could bring yourself the courage to say that to even anyone in that room? No, you just feel like an idiot. Like, you'd feel like the biggest dump, like, that's the perspective it puts it in. And I'm saying that as someone that really likes the Vulture. That's the thing.

Because we are going to do podcasts and videos talking about this because we are fans of it. And it is cool. But with all that being said, it goes right back to the thing of what really matters and what really. and what really matters isn't the fancy equipment and the piece you're missing. What really matters is you show up with the attitude of like, oh,

and I'm going to kick ass and have a crazy time. And that's what actually matters. And most people don't do that. I mean, I'm guilty of it myself of not doing it. Oh, yeah. And everyone gets, it's easier when you're like closer to,

say, doing a meat or, you know, everyone waves and stuff. And I'm not even saying, like those guys probably 52 weeks a year don't show up in every single, training session is exactly like that. But it's kind of important for it to be training to be like that to some degree. Sometimes.

Like you got to have a little bit of a sense of urgency. You know, there's got to be a certain level of energy, you know, and some excitement. And that's, like, to me, that is my preferred training environment. Like, keep the vibes and the energy high. It's so fun. It's so fun. Like, it's, I mean, it, this is what the whole thing we're talking about, but it very much reminded me of the first few years of

Massonomics gym too. Part of that that's hard to replicate for a lot of people is as you get older, because what makes that work is a group of people that come to one place at a relatively same time

of same frequency and do kind of the same things at the same time. And as people get older, you know, when you have more say kids, I know that's not everyone. That's example. Like it could be work,

whatever life stuff. Two of the biggest ones, though. Like that's, right, right. It's harder for everyone to do that because everyone has different schedules.

It's like, and there was, we can't go on a Friday, like you and I, if we lived in the same town, we can't go be like, yes, every Friday night we're going to go do this,

you know, two and a half hours. Along with 10 other guys and like, we just, right, what's going to, like it's just, that's not how our life is anymore.

And like, to be fair, a lot of those guys are a little bit on the younger side, you know, they're not 18, but they're, they're also not 50s, you know, like, I don't know, 30-ish, a little younger, some a little older, but. And some are old. Some are probably, there's a few guys there probably in their 40s and stuff. But even they got enough people that different people can show up, you know, not all the

same people show up every time and it kind of works out that way, but. And they do this session, like they're just ripping, going crazy. And then at the end, you know, like, we had to get back because we had to drive and everything. And they're like, you guys sticking around for dinner and I didn't know what they meant. And then pretty soon they're willing. they're wheeling out a grill. They got the fridge pulling up in there. And I'm like, damn, this is just actually a sweet place to be.

Yeah. So the gym tour with Brad, when that comes out, you'll watch it. And as much as any one we've ever done, you know, I know like Brian Coppulmans was very much this way, it for sure was a walking podcast. You know, we touch on equipment. Yeah, because a lot of the people have some history. It's a gym tour. You know, we're talking about equipment a little bit.

Don't plan on being able to buy anything that you saw in that gym. What actually that's in that gym could you even buy? Well, that Titan leg press thing. Are the tight leg extension leg curl. You can buy that new. Technically, you can. I don't think those. Wasn't that like a Titex bar?

The one was a Tidex. I think one of the bars they were benching with might have been a Lico bar. Yeah. Also, the bar is just. absolutely caked in chalk. Yes. Yeah. Everything is just used and abused.

I'm not really sure what else you really buy new from in the gym. No. But it really was a walk. The stories we talked about in that are just so. And maybe I'm just biased because, you know, I've been a fan of Brad and Jackal's gym for 15 years and to other people it doesn't ring home as much. Maybe that's the case. I don't think so, though.

But some of the story. Okay, we do got to talk about some of the stories. And, like, they'll be in the podcast, you know, and some of them he elaborated more afterwards. But, like, his dad kind of sort of in a way being like an inventor or an early pioneer of the power rack. I mean, Brad would say, like, their belief was he did invent the power rack. Yeah. And his dad, his dad played for the Green Bay Packers for many, many years. In the 60s and 70s.

And in the Packers Hall of Fame, there's some debate as to whether he should be in the NFL Hall of Fame. I think he should. And even just talking about his, you know, he is a many-time Pro Bowl or a Super Bowl champion. the ice bowl, you know, Vince Lombardi was his coach for as enormous as Brad and all his brothers are. It was funny to learn or interesting to learn his dad was considerably bigger than all of them. Yeah, he said his dad was bigger than them, yes. So that puts him at, I don't know, did he say he was like 6, 6.3 50 as a 1960s NFL guard. Yeah, like they wanted him smaller.

They thought he was too big then. So like him telling that stuff. And then like talking about how his dad was like one of the first guys to do actual weightlifting in the NFL. Like a pioneer of lifting weights in the NFL. Like everyone was afraid. Like you'd get like too big and mussely and you wouldn't be able to move or whatever. And his dad is doing partials in the rack of like 1,400 pound squat parcels. 1,500 is that in that one picture.

He had these hose clamps to hold the to hold the weights on. Just strap bundles of weights by a rope down. Yeah, we have the picture and there's a reel out there on it. We talk about it the thing. But it's things that don't seem real. But then there's evidence like there's things to actually prove this. Like, damn, that is crazy. And, you know, see, like, just from his origin story of that.

And then it goes to, you know, just Brad's history of lifting and how insane it is, all of the achievements he's done over the years, like, you know, pulling 800 plus pounds 102 times and talking about like, yeah, kind of was the first guy to do hook grip in America. Yeah. Just think, like beating Big Z, beat Big Z at IPF World. just like the stories go on and on and on and on and they're all so good. Yeah, I hit him with the, didn't you beat Big Z at Worlds? And he's like, yeah, yeah, I did.

But it might, you know, it wasn't Big Z quite yet. He didn't weigh 400 pounds yet. Yeah, yeah. And then even, and yeah, we don't need to recap the entire tour. But afterwards of getting done, just talking to Brad about some other stuff and being like, oh, I mean, you still work in some heavy pulls. Don't you? Like, didn't you do like a 900 pound rack pull?

Actually, I did a thousand pound rack pull about six months ago. And it's like, you're 60 years old. And talking to him like, what's your bench at these days, Brad? And he's like, oh, I can bench 450 still. He's actually about a year ago training was really good. I got back up to 500. I'm like, you're 60 and your benching 500 pounds still. Like, that's crazy.

And he's saying like his best bench ever, Raw was about 600 and how he could never get like anything out of a shirt ever. I'm like, dude, 600, like this guy has. long arms too. Like he's big and long and for him to have a 600 pound bench, go watch some those old YouTube videos shoulder-wise. He's like one of the broadest guys you'll ever see. Just crazy looking at that stuff. Yeah. I didn't bring it down because I'm actually kind of been browsing it and reading it. So I don't have it with me, but he gave us each a copy. Do you have a, yeah, there we go. I was going to say, I've read the entire thing. Oh, you finished it. Okay.

He gave us his book. It's just a collection of 25, like, web, like articles he had made over the years and also got the custom train like an animal signature on the inside. But it's all of his poll. Okay. So I read this whole book. You can go on. You can buy it on Amazon.

It's $10 to buy it through. You should buy it on Amazon. 10 bucks. Do it. It's good. A lot of this, I won't say anything in here is revolutionary. Like a lot of it is just like, yep, show up and work hard. I'm going to tell you, though, there's a couple things in here that I really like Tanner.

Okay, so on the cover he actually has here, him sitting. So he's like five years old. He's like four years old. And his dad is helping him squat inside their house because like, I love, I even told Brad this too. And I'm like, I love that in the 19 late 60s or early 70s, your dad was like thought that you should have an elevated heel on the squat. He has him on like a two by four for him to squat up. Which is just like, like, I'm like, damn, well, like how. Was he aware that that was even like a thing to experiment with?

Yep. And so he, yeah, he talks about like his experience, like, you know, his dad and him being the role model and not looking up to him. And I like some of these things in here. Just a couple of these. The kettlebell. Brad's a big kettlebell guy. I did not know that.

I wish I would know that could have asked him more about it. Also the slam ball. Well, so that's what I was going to get to is when we were there, he talks about his conditioning circuit he likes. but Brad is also a big proponent of the slam ball. And he even, before he even read this, he brought it, he brought it up to me. He's like, oh, you got to get a slam ball. He's like, and you don't need to have you one.

Like I think in the book he says he likes a 25 to 30 pound slam ball. And he's like, you get that and you just throw that down as hard as you can. He's like, nothing wakes up your body and gets your nervous system firing, like throwing the slam ball a little bit. And I'm like, I think you're right. Like I actually have one sitting in my car. I'm like, I just, I think I need a slam ball. ball. Did you find one on Jim radar?

Oh, yeah. You know, they're like a 25 pound slam ball from rep is like 40 bucks or something. Like, why don't I have one of these? Because isn't that the way he uses it, kind of that he'll just do like one all out rep and then move right to his next. Yeah, or sometimes they'll do what I think he talks about in the book as like one of their conditioning circuits is you slam it as hard as you can. It'll get like six inches of bounce so you can catch it again. And then you might do like a couple. But yeah, you're not like sitting there just slamming over and over, throwing it around.

Right. There is always just slam it to the ground. an all-out explosion, you know, full power output. And then, yeah. Yep, that was one, another. Yeah, so then he got me thinking on the kettlebells again. I'm like, damn, do I need that freak athlete adjustable kettlebell? Because, you know, he's talking about how good it feels on your back.

You know, it gets the blood flow in, keeps things good there. And then, you know, I had a sandbag. I got rid of it. All of a sudden I'm reading this. And I'm thinking, do I need to get another sandbag back in my life? Because he's a big proponent of that from a conditioning standpoint of, even his, his conditioning circuit that they were doing. while we're there. It's like one slam ball throw, a log press that the weight changes depending on

who's up, a sled pull, and then like, I can't even remember what they're doing at the sandbag if they're doing squats with it or if they're walking around. And then they just repeat that nonstop for like 20 minutes. And I'm like, damn, that's probably what I'm missing in my life. I probably should be doing some of that. Yeah. So that was good. I liked his, yeah, he has the heavy strength and conditioning circuit in there, staying strong while you travel, talking about stuff like that. Push-ups. He had some good stuff on the push-ups.

I like that one. Oh, I like to read that part of it. How to train, or why to train front squat. I like the front squat one. Yeah, always a part of the Jackals' programming, I did not know. Like, he's taught, he has the sledgehammer in there, you know, where you can do the whole thing where you tip. I didn't know a sledgehammer walks, like where you can walk your hand up and down the thing as like a grip training exercise. Oh, I never knew that was a thing.

And he talks about that in here a little bit. what else do we got? Yeah, why we've always picked up heavy things. Tips for getting stronger. Staying strong as you age. Like, this guy lived the life. He ain't lifting for a few years and saying, you know, just want to feel good and, you know, take it easy.

He's not living that life. You know, he's telling us how he's had medical things where he's lost tons of weight, couldn't even deadlift 300 pounds. And all of a sudden, he's back in his 60, or he's back to 60 and he's pulling 900 from the back. So super inspirational. It was an amazing trip. I loved it.

It was great. The other thing in 2015, we went. Everyone, great hospitality. It was an autism experience. Obviously, we talked about what it shaped for us over the years. But nobody there knew or gave a crap what Massonomics was 11 years ago, obviously, like as they wouldn't and shouldn't. And of course, like that goes without saying.

Oh, you guys have 12 Instagram posts. It's very insightful. Right. I kind of a I guess my assumption going into it this time was that that might not even be any different that, you know, for this particular group that mostly everyone would still have no idea what massonomics is. And boy, did it feel different than that? Like I was, I hadn't realized that this was going to be, like I knew it was going to be a big deal for us. I hadn't realized that it was going to be a big deal for them. And it kind of was, you know, not to like pat ourselves on the back.

But I'm saying, I'm bringing it up because I was surprised because I expected that not to be the case. Yeah, we just assumed no one, because Brad said like, hey, are you guys going to stick around? They're lifting afterwards. Like it'd be great to get some footage of that. And like, oh, yeah. And we didn't know, you know, like, is anyone care at all? But yeah, people were like actually very excited to see us and talk to us. And Big Brian's supporting member.

He was there from the cities. Yeah. So people drove in from, you know, they call it Jackals Nation. People drove in from a lot of areas. to come with that. The one guy is from Sue Falls. He trains out at Jonah's Jim Liberty Barbell. So he made the trip.

And there was a big, the Lucas, the big bench presser benching 550 Raw, which. Yeah, we watch the strong. Brad told us before he goes, yeah,

we have one guy. He's going to be working up to maybe a over 500 pound bench. And I was like, okay, all right. Let's see what we got here. And yeah, it was Lucas Dam.

And he showed up. And you're like, yeah, you got the body type to bench. And he walked in and I was like, I'm guessing you're the guy that's going to bench heavy today. He's like, yeah, that's right. And okay, so he's lifting. And when he benched 405 in his warmup, I've never.

For a set of three. I've never seen 405 move that fast in my life. Like people say it's like, oh, I moved it like a plate. I'm not exaggerated. He moved it like a plate. It never looked like, I was like, oh, I'm going to go, like in my mind, I'm thinking, I'll just go up there and move it. It looks so light and easy.

But, you know, I can't obviously do that. Right. It was even 500. The way 500 launches off his chest is ridiculous. And then he ended up going up to five, was his last one, 550? 550.

And that's the thing where it's like, yeah, when it's 550, first of all, that is insane. But that's the one where everyone in the gym is like, this is what we're focused on. You know,

Brad's behind him spotting him. You got guys on the sides. Everyone's dialed in on that. And, ah, it's so awesome. Yes. Yeah,

that was, that was cool. It was. That was a good one. It was very fun. Anything else on Jackal's Gym 2026? I could go on.

I could go on for another hour, but in the name of not repeating the entire tour again and not having this go for two hours tonight. That's probably enough. Yeah. We were excited about it. I do think the funniest part is the next episode where we're going to talk all about the Voltra.

And just in comparison, it's just so starkly different. The two. But I will say, and the Voltra's, defense. It's just a thing that you used to lift. Like that's all, it's not, I would say it's not like some other machines and things that are trying to get you to do things a certain way. The vulture is just wait. It's weight that you do what you want with it. Like that is kind of the beauty of it. I also think in our

defense, um, that's part of what makes us maybe sometimes more unique than some of our counterparts that are doing some of the stuff is that I would agree. We can walk into jackals. gym in the middle of an absolute powerlifting, busting ass throwdown and get in on it and fit in like we belong there because we do. Yeah, I just got done doing a meet a month ago, you know? Yes. And we can totally participate on that.

And then we can also share our opinions on the Voltra, whereas a lot of people probably can have their opinions on the Voltra, but they might not be able to step into that other world. as much. Where, and I think that that perspective of being in that world gives a more sometimes unique perspective that I'm using the Voltra as a proxy for like a bunch of things, you know, but like that's the idea where I think I'm like, I think it's valuable to be able to exist in all of that stuff. Like to be able to walk some walk. Like not to say that nobody else can and nobody else does, but it's somewhat rare to. those extremes probably. It makes

like our take, our conversation that we had was it makes the felt low debate on leg extensions look so stupid like I knew it was stupid before and it was a big long running joke for us. Now I'm like it's just when you think I couldn't have thought it was any dumber or more of a joke, I'm like oh, it's even that

much more of a joke. Like I'm like the sheer insanity of some of the people that are discussing that I'm like, you guys are actually insane to another, but I'm like, lost the plot on like what matters. Like to be lost that the felt load isn't enough for you on the leg extension.

Like we've always said, like our guiding light, our North Star is like, what can I use to help me get stronger? And like a lot of people's guiding light is, what is the, what level of engineering excellence is behind this piece of equipment? Right.

And I'm not saying I don't care about that. That is a part of something that I care about, but it's not number one. on my list. It's probably not even number two, three, or five on my list either. Right. You know. Right. So it's perspectives. It's your priority. Yes. Do you like to lift or do you like the physics of the thing? Well, and still lifting keeps us grounded in those opinions, I think, that it would be like, we can appreciate what goes into this, but also hopefully understand what the point, what is actually the point of this at the end of the day and does it serve the purpose?

Yeah. But we'll talk more about that next week, I guess. Yes, we will. Will. Okay. What other, uh, any, do we want to talk any other new equipment this week? Are we going to save some of that for next week? Maybe we'll save that for next week when we're on the, I'm just, I'm just too old. I'm just too on the hype train. I just lifting hard and heavy. I came home the next day. I just had to put on some classic, some good, a good metal track. Just let it ride, bump it loud in the garage and, oh, just had a great training session. Is what I needed. A little highway to hell. It was therapeutic. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. What about a radar report then? Or wait, should we be certified training facility of the week first? I think we need a certified training facility of the week. All right. Let's do certified CTF. Do you have anything that's been on your radar as far as a potential certified training facility of the week?

Yes, I actually do here. There's over, as of today, over 675 certified training facilities on Jim Radar. there's, you know, over 2,000 gyms, but 675 of those are actually certified gyms. Yeah, this week, I saw something. I think it's an appropriate time to do this one because it really caught my attention. I was studying these photos. We're going to look at a little place called the Vienna Iron Club. Oh, hello.

Have you seen this? Have you heard about this? Well, I haven't been there, so to speak. but I've been to the, okay, here, semantics. I've been to the VNA Iron Club. I haven't been to this version of the VN Iron Club, but I would say if you're looking up playing along at home, you will notice that it has now been marked

as the certified training facility of the week. All right. We're ready to look at this Vienna Iron Club? Yeah, let's check it out. Okay, so the VN Iron Club, what makes this what Jim unique is Tanner and I have toured this before. This is Big Hogan's gym in the bus. and at the time it was just a one stall garage.

He has since moved and he has put a lot of effort and time into making this gym the premier environment that it deserves to be. And he finally posted photos. And I was, I was checking these. I was in awe of these things the other day, Tanner, when I saw these things. He always got quite the setup. Vienna Iron Club.

We got about 308 square feet. It was established in 2020. It's a strong man, powerlifting garage. Actually, he says garage basement gym. I don't think it's a garage basement gym anymore. I think it's just a garage gym now, isn't it? It looks like it to me. I think it's just straight up garage at this point.

This is in Columbus, Ohio. Hogan's top equipment brands. Number one is rogue. Number two, massonomics. You love to see it. Number three, Abmat. He has 188 pieces of equipment that he is claimed, which is a lot.

And not to be outdone by that. How many reviews has Hogan left? He has 344. I better go back up and see. Yeah, yeah, 344 equipment reviews. Man, that is a guy that uses Jim Radar. He even has three gym lists and four equipment lists. He has 3,080 points.

He's linked his Instagram, his Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, and open powerlifting. Yeah, so there's a lot there. So obviously these photos we can't go in depth on because there's just so much to cover. But when I look at these things, okay, his gym, he is black. I shouldn't say black. He hasn't blacked it out.

It's like a very dark gray. I think it looks quite nice. So the walls are dark gray. The ceiling's white. Floors are walled walled walled. What's that pantone? That pantone? Yeah.

Or when it's a black, Is it just percentage? Well, no, there is black, but a lot of the grays, there's like cool gray, three, four, five, six, seven, C all, you know through. But, I mean, black is just 100% black.

I don't think that there might be. I mean, there's probably a pantom for some version of black, but. All right, Hogan, what's interesting about Hogan, though, he does for all the gear he has. He is still rocking a rogue flatfoot rack of the five,

five-eight-inch variety. You know, there's a lot of one-inch elitists out there. Yep. That'll claim you can't get strong on anything less than that. But, uh, Hogan, just like me, putting up the good fight here. And he also, holding in strong at five-eighths. Also in the name of safety, he still has the strap safety, followed by the spotter arms, followed by the pinpipe safety.

So I'm glad to see he's still taking that seriously. That didn't change. Yeah. When he moved. Three layers of safety. Yep, yeah. Did you notice Brad had mentioned, yeah, sometimes we double layer these pinpipe safety with,

just to be sure. I like how he has to say that so matter of factly because they're doing 1,000 pound rack pulls. So yeah, we don't want anything bad to happen. So we do two layers of pinpipe safety. Just to be sure. Yeah. Hogan has proudly displayed the Massonomic certified training facility flag, the gym radar one.

He also has one of those really cool unique, like two-tone. Mutant metals. Mutuals. UDAs back there. He's got the rep by pep. And he has the cart this time. Last time he didn't have the cart when we saw his gym. Okay.

Was that the rep cart? That is the rep cart. Yes. All right. I'm going to look at photo. Well, we're going to get to it here. Photo number two,

you can see his strong man corner. He also has. Yeah, he's got those shelves are the shelves that he has the blobs on. Those are shelves from, Synergy custom fitness. Oh, they are. Okay. Yeah, those are cool. That's a really cool way to display those. Do we

have a discount code for Freedom Strength Strongman bags? We have a discount code. Yeah, we'll get 10% off. Yeah, look those up on Jim Radar. A lot of people buy through that link because of the discount code. Well, Hogan's got like a full set of those things. Yeah. He got a stone. His giant chalk peg. Circus dumbbell.

Yeah, he's got a good Strongman corner there. That's not his only strong man stuff, but this barbell wall. Oh, what's that article? Yeah, is that from Is that this year? That's from Aberdeen magazine. Yeah, is that from there's no place like home gym. Oh yeah, that's the Jim Radar article.

Oh, yeah, that's cool. I don't even have that frame, right? I need to frame the same thing. Yeah. And is that this year's Lift Hardly Easy Classic photo on the wall or last? Oh, that's last year. That's last year. Yeah, that's last years.

And then he's got the Columbus bus crew. Yeah, the bus crew. I like that. Yeah. Speaking of regional crews. I also like all the posters for all the meets he has hanging up there too. Yeah, that's cool.

This year. They look good up there. Yeah, that's really cool. All right. Next photo. His barbell wall is wild. Like this thing, I don't know.

Is it eight feet tall? Yeah, it's a big end. It spans the ceiling. So yeah, it's probably a 10 foot ceiling in there, actually, I don't know. Yeah, it's probably 10 foot ceiling

and he's got eight feet of barbells on it. So that's sweet. Tons of bars, every variety. His wall control is even crazier. The wall control is actually Florida ceiling. I'm just assuming the stuff on the top he never plans on taking down because it is way up there.

Well, Hogan is not very tall either. Unless he keeps a ladder nearby. I mean, that stuff is 10 feet up in the air. There's a lot of stuff up there. But I've never seen a wall control wall look like that. It's very impressive. He's got his locker with all the stickers on it. I'd love to see that too.

We got a barbell corner. He's got the foam hand. Oh, he's got a few rolls of toilet paper of the. the late FTS toilet paper up there. Yep. And his red slides. Yep. The foam finger from this year.

A lot of good memorabilia. One blue reband knee sleeve. Maybe there's two. I don't know. We got our. Well, you could buy those individually, actually. It might be one, yeah. Also, Jackals, a lot of blue reband in there still.

Oh, so much. And warm pants. Yeah. So many people wearing the reband warm pants. God, it just reminded me. I've never seen that many people wear. a freaking loser for not having warm pants. You know what?

I think you made the comment at one point in time, and it's very true. Like, outside of, I can't remember what you said, there was one thing on the wall. Yeah. I can't remember what it was. Like,

if you covered that up right now, you actually can't tell in here what, you know, if this is 20, 25, 2015 or 2005, like, what year is it?

There's nothing, yeah, outside of the one fancy digital clock on the wall, there's nothing that indicates the year or time. I mean, if you had to guess, you'd like, well, that poster says 2000, that one says 2001. These also look like,

2004. Is it the early 2000s? Because there's nothing else that gives it away. And that, oh, man. Well, someone, I think, commented on one of the Instagram posts, like, oh, it feels like you're at Westside Barbell. And it kind of is that same vibe, you know? Yeah.

Back to Hogan's, though. Back to Hogan's, looking through. Oh, man, he's got singlets. He's got a singlet and some. Oh, he's got the massive hanging above his garage Oh, he's got the His custom

Stranglano from last year, I bet. That's really cool. And that's, that shirt is the 20, that's the 2016 Strong Man Showdown shirt, isn't it? Yeah, that's an old one. That's the first one.

Yep. Do you remember designing that? I do. Back 10 years ago. In my bedroom. I remember doing it. Yep. And then he's got a shirt,

signed by all the world strongest man competitors this year he went to world strongest man we got a bench a yoke a lot of kilo play our cal he's got calibrated he's got the bumpers and the these are the good bumpers right like the iw yeah um hogan goes to the rogue garage sale and buys all this stuff uh since he lives right there in the bus what does he have two adjustable benches or is one of those a fixed bench oh one of those is a fixed bench i suppose got the scout reverse hyper Yep. Got some slam balls.

Really fires up the nervous system here. Yep. I have to get me one of those. Got a rower. I'm kind of forgot about that already. I'm going to get one of those too. I have heavy balls. You know,

like those 100 pound ones. Oh, they're that heavy? Yeah. Those ones by the door are super heavy. According to Brad, you need 25 to 30 pounds is all. Oh, that's,

I'm not going to argue. Yep. Got to get that ordered. Cogan also has the door to go into his house from the garage covered in crew stickers. Yeah. That looks good too. What else?

That's about it. It's a sweet gym. Yeah, it is. It's a sweet gym. Do you think, let's say, picture a world where you're in Columbus, Ohio. I don't know if you've ever read in there before. Okay.

You stumble into Vienna Iron Club. Do you think you can get strong in there? I'm picturing it. And, uh, hell yeah, I think so. Yeah, we're getting strong as shit in Vienna Iron Club version two. Okay. How about a little Radar report?

Ladies and gentlemen, can I please have your attention? Radar love. I just wanted to bring up a couple alternative uses of Jim Radar. One, this first one I think I've discussed before, where Jake has brought this attention to my attention, Jake the Snake, crew member, supporting member, Hall of Fame Jacket level supporting member,

runs the Lift Hardly VT Classic Strongman competition and coaches many people virtually and in person, but for a strongman clients that he coaches virtually, what he uses, especially as a strongman coach, it makes a ton of sense, is he has them make sure they have their gym radar gym profile filled out so he can see very easily all of the equipment and the space that they have at their disposal for training.

so when he's making training recommendations, he knows exactly what they can and can't do. Especially in Strongman, it makes a ton of sense. Even in powerlifting, to a certain degree, to know what accessory, you know, what machines you might have available to program

and that sort of thing. So as a lifting coach, if your client is a home gym lifter and they have their gym on gym radar, that's great. If they don't, you should just like make them get their gym on gym radar because there's not going to be,

there's no better way to facilitate that. down on all that back and forth of asking countless questions about everything you have and what type of room you have to do conditioning or moving things. Yeah, it makes a ton of sense. So that's really cool. And then the second thing I was talking to, I got some more clarification on what he uses as for is Mount Rossmore in the gym. Yeah, I mean, say what you do or don't like about using AI for different things, but he has found a way that he uses, you know, I don't know what you call this, but he has like one particular AI session that's all about his training and nutrition. So basically, only things he feeds into this are related to his personal training

and nutrition. He uses Macrofactor. You can use discount code Masonomics if you're interested in Macrofactor. And you should. Gets you a few weeks free and we both, I don't know, I've had the same conversation with Ross about macro factor. He started using it a few months ago. And now he's the biggest advocate for it that I've ever heard that he's like, he's like, this is a is $70 a year. And he's like, this is so much better than, because he was doing all these different free things before. Yeah.

He's like, this is so much better than the free. Yeah. Versions of that. But so anyways, he uses macro factor feeds that in there, you know, about his supplementation. And Ross is sliced and diced right now. Yes. Yeah.

So I'm saying he does all this stuff because he really is like trying to optimize basically everything around his training and nutrition and all of that. Like he's absolutely shredded and trains very hard. Talk about training intensity. Sometimes we lift together on the weekend and I'm like, I can't keep up with how hard he is lifting. Like I actually can't. I'm trying to and I am just too tired from doing that.

Whoa, am I a jackals because this is intense, Ross. Yeah. But so he feeds all of this. You know, he uses macrophic. feeds that in there. And then his training right now, he uses RP as like his training app and stuff. He feeds all that in there.

And then what he does, like particularly for his RP, is he'll feed all of that into his AI session. Then he feeds the Massonomics gym, Jim Radar in there. And then he kind of works on which accessory lifts he should be doing or could be doing based on the equipment available. Casey's not thinking of something.

Right. Or like the example he gave is he's like, and I mean he's having the, you know, he's communicating this through AI is like, I am really liking the RP app. I really like doing these Smith machine incline presses, but I feel like it's aggravating my shoulder. Like it's been great. Like the, I feel in my chest like no other lift when I do this though, but it's, I think it's aggravating my shoulder.

What, what's, you know, here's all the equipment that we have. What should I do? What, what could I try as option B? And like the one of the, the first thing it spits out is like, oh, I see you have all the bench block sizes. I would first try just, just use the smallest bench block and try to continue your Smith machine with just like removing just, you know, an inch of depth on that.

that. So you're still getting a pretty big range of motion, but just removing that bottom inch. And he's like, what he said he did that? And he's like, yep, that was. And not that someone couldn't figure that, you know, come to a conclusion like that. But you could also get 10 other piece of advice that may or may not be helpful to. Right.

And he's just using it a lot for. And it's not, it's obviously you don't need a, uh, you don't gym, need Jim radar to, through AI to tell you, uh, I have a squat rack. I could squat. but he just, it has been very useful for him in his programming of us like, uh, secondary movement selection ideas and stuff like that because it actually knows like, you know,

it'd be like, oh yeah, I see you have the humbler. You know, it's like one of the, you know, it knows, it knows like the details of the humbler then at that point.

And it's funny because it'd be like, yeah, it looks, I can see in the picture you have a hack squat, but that's not listed. I don't really know what hacks. squat that is. And it's like, well, yeah, of course, because it's this. No one knows. Nobody knows. Like, so he said he could pinpoint a few pieces that I didn't actually have listed.

He's like, well, why don't you have that listed? And I'm like, I don't even know what to, there's no what the hell this is. Right. Right. That is an interesting use case. Just another use potential, not, you know, the masses probably aren't going to use it that way, but kind of a cool thing or a cool idea. I just think there are some alternative use cases out there that maybe some people haven't considered for themselves yet. Yeah, I like that. That is interesting. Yeah. Also, feeding more into the machine by giving it to AI. Build that profile on your Ross. But what was the, you know, we were talking about something completely unrelated to that the other day. I was like, ah, you know, you're like,

yeah, try to keep some of that off of, you know, not feed it directly into the machine. But then he said, but to be real estate, probably already knows everything. Oh, I was joking about, I was copy pacing something. I'm like, well, that has that person's phone number in it or something. I'm like, I'm like, I got enough respect for the person that I'm going to not feed that in the chat, GBT. And then I'm like, well, after I hit enter, you know, after, you know, I clear it out, I hit enter.

I'm like, who am I kidding? Someone else has fed my crap in already, you know, inadvertently. Someone has been like, yep, here's Tommy. Here's my contact list. Yes. Make a new list. And it's like, yep, you know, someone else has fed this stuff in on you and it's,

feels hopeless. Probably. Okay. All right. Anything any other burning topics? What's the topic bear steel? Is that something we'll get to or? Yeah, that's for equipment.

We'll talk about that next week. Next week will be an equipment extravaganza. Big equipment rundown. We talk so much about training and lifting hard this week. We have to make up for it. We got to get a little yin to this yang. You can just be talking about hard training every week. I've got to talk about felt load of accessory movements that you do fifth or six in line on a good training day.

Where the real things are made. How important those are. All the minute differences. And that's why you can't squat more. God, I will say this, though. After we left there, it did make me reevaluate my training, you know. you know, I took a pretty hard stance on no seated exercises, you know.

It's hard to sit in on my ass. But I had still had this carve out, this exception for prone exercises, leg curls. And, you know, I'll be the first to admit. I was using leg curls as a way to avoid doing RDLs. I did light RDLs the other day. And they ruined me. They've, like, damn near wrecked my week. I mean, I was doing it with 225.

I was doing like, I think I did five sets of five. I'm like, have I even like once exercised my hamstrings? Have I been doing any in the last year? So was it? And it was your hamstrings that were sore from it? Like to the point where I was actually getting sore I did something, or getting worried I did something to them because they were so insanely sore. And this whole time I have not once let up on my leg curls.

Like I'm like, I'm just keep getting better at them. But I don't get sore. And I do this and I'm like, I don't know. I don't think leg curls do anything anymore now. I don't know. Do I need this? I got this giant machine, which is a, nice machine that takes up room to do leg extensions, leg curls.

I've already decided I don't like leg extensions. And I'm like, actually, maybe I don't like leg curls either. Maybe this thing needs to go. That was. This all comes full circle. It all just goes right back to, yeah, if you actually want to get stronger, don't waste your time with stuff that's not on a barbell. And it's not, to be clear, it's not the machine that you don't like.

Oh, the machine's great at what it does. I actually love it. I just, I just think, uh, fundamental. Like you're just going to get more gains always out of a barbed movement than you are out of any machine movement ever. Yes. Yeah. Okay. The next YouTube video that comes out or that comes out, well, that's coming out tomorrow as of when we're recording this, is that that that's the Volta first impressions.

That'll be our Volta First Impressions. And then, yeah, well, we'll talk about that way next week. We have a, I think a tour next week, don't we? Coming out is it? I think so. Yeah, we got to be in Western North. There's going to be a world. There's going to be a western northeast South Dakota tour.

Also, just thankfully for the gym radar map, just found another gym popped up right by you that we can go to her at some point in time too. So it's really convenient when they pop up just minutes from either of our doors. You need more of those. Also, we did find a really crazy one, about an hour down the road from me. That's like a straight-up 90s commercial gym in someone's house.

That'll happen at some point, too, I think. Yeah. Got a lot of gym tours. No short gym's out there. No. Thanks to Jim Radar. Okay. Anything else,

Senator, do we wrap this one up now? Let's wrap it up. Okay. If as far as buying stuff, love to have you buy things. The last drop went really, really sweet, but we do actually still have

horse stall mat grippers and coasters both left as of today. So if you don't have a horse stall mat gripper yet. Why the heck don't you have a horse stall mat gripper yet? Or a set of coasters.

You know, the number one thing people say about the horse doll mat coasters when they get them is like, oh yeah, this was funny, but this is just actually really good coasters. They are some of the best functional coasters that you'll ever have are these horse stalemet.

And they're fun to boot. Yeah. Horse doll Matt gripper. Tommy's been implementing it daily in his training, I know. Yeah, that's what I do. When he said RDLs, he's been doing RDLs on the horse stall.

Oh, yeah, of course. I just thought that was an assumption. 225 RDLs on the horse tall Matt Griffer would be pretty impressive. Oh, my God. That's it. YouTube. merchandise. These episodes also brought you by the Strength Co.

I feel like that's important for people to know. That's actually the most important. That's why we saved it. You saved the best for last. That's what we do. You know, we're talking a lot about lifting heavy in this episode, and I can't think of a better way to lift heavy than a bar loaded with strength co-plates. Not only does it look great,

not only are those plates going to be smooth yet easy to grip while you're loading and unloading for your buddies that are working in sessions at the same time as you, you know the weights are going to be what the weights say they are, because they're strength co-plates and they're accurate. it. I'm a huge fan of strength of plates. Tanner's a huge fan of strengthal plates. They're like the only plates I use in my gym. I highly recommend them. I think you should get a set for yourself. Check them out at the strength.com. All right. Thanks, Strenko. Tommy, where do you find me at Tomahawk underscore D? You can follow me at Tanner underscore bear. Just make sure to

follow Massonomics at Massonomics. See you.