Massenomics Podcast - Ep.28: This Is Female Powerlifting

Episode Date: October 16, 2016

In this week's episode of The Massenomics Podcast, we cross international borders and interview the women of ThisIsFemalePowerlifting.com in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. With their recent website launch, these ladies are poised to take over the powerlifting world with a message we at Massenomics fully endorse... "It's not that we aren't pretty. It's that our beauty is irrelevant. In the moment we pit ourselves against the bar, using every ounce of strength and will at our command to move the weight it holds, we transcend "pretty." To reduce what we do to how pleasing we are to look at or how fuckable we might be at the end of the day is worse than insulting; it's boring. We do have beautiful, strong bodies and we’re proud of them. But as long as we allow aesthetics to come before athletics in powerlifting, we create a culture that excludes lifters who don't fit the ideal."  Read the rest of the TIFPL.com manifesto by clicking HERE      Photography in the above slideshow by River Sky Photography   Check out the Podcast below....     Here's some of my much less-professional photos from our trip to the frozen North Don't forget to LIKE and SHARE this episode on Facebook... Make sure you LIKE the Massenomics Facebook page... If you don't already have a closet full of Massenomics gear, go to the MASSENOMICS STORE and load up on swag... Also, please CLICK THIS LINK TO GIVE US A 5 STAR RATING ON ITUNES... Click this text to follow Massenomics on Instagram... Vote Massenomics for President in 2016... Have your barber shave our logo into the side of your head.. Maybe get a Massenomics tattoo while you're at it.    Or you could sign up for our email newsletter at the bottom of this page. Stay Strong, M

M-M-M-M-M-M-M-Massanomics Welcome to Massanomics, the world's strongest podcast. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at Massanomics. Make sure you go visit massanomics.com. There you'll find the rest of our powerful content. While you're there, check out our store and buy yourself some of that sweet mass. So, well, we are live here now in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Um, we have taken the massonomics podcast internationally somewhat. Um, I, uh, rolled up here and I am here with the group from thisisfemalepowerlifting.com.

Everybody say hello. Hello. That is a lot of hello. So I am here with Beans, Jamie, Darren, and Gaia from thisisfemalepowerlifting.com. Also short, you guys do own the shortened version of that as well, tifpl.com. Yep, yep. We got right on that. That's a good move, right? Yeah. Who wants to type that out every time? That does end up being a lot. I actually double-checked that, I think, before I came here, too.

Just was like, they should do that. And sure enough, you guys are already on it. So before we get too far, I'll give our already listeners a little bit of a piece as far as how I found this group here. We did an article a while back on some female powerlifters that we had either found or known of that we thought were doing cool things that had kind of a limited following on social media. So we did that article out and I had, aside from some of the backlash from people who were really just offended that they weren't on the list, I had actively looked out to see if there was some people who, you know, would help us out as we do a version 2.0. And these guys were really helpful and helped us with a lot of things. And out of the blue, they also weren't super shitty about it, which

some of the people that were giving us requests were not all that cool about it. So which some of the people that were giving us requests were not all that cool about it. Anyways, and since then, we've found their stuff. They've kind of blown up all over Instagram right now. How many followers do you guys have? It's over 5,000. So by the time this comes out, it's going to be like 25,000. Obviously.

That's the rate we're going. It's the hashtag Masonomics bump. I think we're at about 5,200 now. 5,279. Yeah, almost 5,300. That is fucking pretty serious. So now, I'm going to be honest with you guys. We got you beat on Facebook.

Not for long. You guys literally have us 10 to 1 on Instagram. So I guess it's a real honor having some social media juggernauts on but uh so to get things started here um did i go through and do names you guys haven't announced yourselves yet not individually no okay so to my left is beans beans and that is a birth given name no obviously not okay but we're gonna roll with just that since no one calls me my birth name. I'm Jamie. We have Jamie, and then?

Darren. And then in the other corner? Gaia. Okay. And how many of you actually are there total? Is there four or five in the organization? Four? We're missing Ange right now because Ange had to go to a wedding this weekend.

Man, we've had wedding problems. Like maid of honor style. Man, we've had wedding problems. Like, made-of-honor style. Oh, really? Yeah. The original group of co-founders, as we call ourselves, is four. Okay. But in terms of kind of the heart of TIFPL, there's probably, I don't know, 12 of us? Yeah.

According to Instagram, there's 5,280. Yes. We got a follow-up. We got another one. Another one. While we were talking. No, it wasn't. Man, that's a different level because I will hear from, Tanner will text me and be like,

dude, we got three new Instagram followers today. We're like, man, we got 100 today. What's up with that? Yeah. What is going on? We still haven't had our 5,000 follower meal. We were supposed to celebrate at 5,000. I'm disappointed.

Well, you got a diet soda there that's got to count for something, I guess. Yeah. Zero calories. Counts for nothing. Does count for nothing. Well, that's unfortunate that we have one that's not here. Tommy misses about every other episode of the podcast because he goes to weddings all the time. It's a real problem.

We had an intervention last week. Adult life. Yeah. So anyway, I want to let you guys talk a little bit. And I don't know who to start, but how did you guys, before this all started, how did you guys know each other, meet each other? Basically, there's a new gym in town. It's not new anymore because obviously we all train there

and we have for quite a while now. But basically how we all met was that Evolve Strength opened in Edmonton, which is very specifically like a strength training gym. So it's full of awesome power lifting equipment and weight lifting equipment and all that sort of thing so it was an escape for us from the commercial gyms and it was just that sort of thing you know like you go to the gym and you kind of spot someone and you're like they look like they could be cool whatever but you're too shy to talk to them blah blah um I know I knew Angelina because she is a ref in the IPF so I'd never like

introduced myself to her but I knew who and what she was um and I saw that she hung out a bunch with Darren I saw Gaia in the gym and I was like man that chick has killer resting bitch face and at first I was scared and then I was like, no, I really want to know her. And it was actually after Gaia did her very first powerlifting meet and I was volunteering and like the whole time she just looked like she was going to kill a man. And I was like, damn. So yeah, I got introduced to her and then we just all started to really bond because we'd all be at the gym at the same time training together and stuff like that so we essentially only really know each other at the gym until like the last few months where we've

gotten to know each other personally a lot more I guess yeah because I mean I knew Ange and I had done CrossFit together at CrossFit Sherwood Park a couple years ago and then I had lost touch with her as she kind of moved into powerlifting a bit more and then met her back when when we started at Evolve. And then it's funny because you showed up on like my time hop this week is like, oh, a year. And like you're holding boards for me. It's you and Ghost holding boards for me. And I'm like, oh, I guess I've known Beans for a year now. But like I think especially for me with Gaia and Beans, it was only once we started this project that I really started to get to know them really well. So it's been it's been pretty cool.

And where Jamie fits in the story, I guess I dragged Jamie into this circle. Yeah, we met at a meet, kind of. Well, yeah, we met at the bar before that when I was working door and you were drunk. Beans met me drunk at the bar, which is how I make all my friends. Yeah. But, you know, I'd been creeping Jamie on Instagram for a while before that because she was just like this rad strong chick and I thought it was really cool and I was actually super intimidated by her um and then in 2015 we were both in Calgary doing a GPC meet and I got

to like actually hang out with her in person I was like wow she's actually super awesome and awkward like me so this is cool um and yeah since getting to know Jamie and you know just discover that you have such a passion for this message and it's awesome so yeah so I want to back up before we get into the like the the the depth of as far as what your guys' message is. But each one of you, what kind of got you into the type of training that you guys do now? How did that evolve? Did you just fall directly into powerlifting out of the blue? Because I think that's pretty rare. What got you guys started as far as powerlifting goes?

Looks at Gaia. What got you guys started as far as powerlifting goes? Looks at Gaia. Well, I mean, I have a history of doing kind of more hardcore sports. I played roller derby for five years. But when I discovered powerlifting, if I'm just being totally honest, I had been struggling with a depression. being totally honest, I had been struggling with a depression. And I needed to do something physical to start working my way out of that pit that I had fallen into. And a friend of mine was training for an Ironman triathlon. And they were like, you should come do my strength training with

me. You're pretty strong. I think you'd enjoy it. And she was just doing like weighted squats. Um, and she was, uh, just doing like weighted squats. And, uh, at first, the first time I worked out, uh, with Laura, I couldn't walk for three days and then I caught up to Laura and then I surpassed Laura and then I really surpassed Laura. And they said, you know, you should consider powerlifting. I used to be in a powerlifting club in university. I think you'd really enjoy that sport. So I googled Edmonton powerlifting and Evolve had just opened. And I immediately joined and found a club and found a coach. And I just threw myself into it headfirst because it had done so much for me in terms of making me feel more positive about myself, making me feel more positive about my body, about my life, like getting physically stronger had such an important psychological effect on me.

And then as I continued to pursue it, the more consistent I was, the more it became clear that I actually had a facility for it. I didn't expect to be any good at it, which that's just been a really nice bonus. A nice perk. Yeah. And all of these which that's just been a a really nice bonus a nice perk yeah um and all of these guys there's been a point uh especially before i really knew each one of you where i i thought like i would really like to get to know her but she's way too cool and strong and i can't

talk to her and uh and it's just been um one of the best things that powerlifting has brought into my life are these relationships with women who are strong physically and strong mentally and strong emotionally and who are there for each other and who like are there to hear and witness each other in our strength so that's been that's been pretty huge for me but um the first the thing that brought me to powerlifting was needing an emotional boost in my life yeah my story is just the typical you know not athletic at all my entire life no sporting endeavors um but always struggled with body issues and always was trying to be at the gym trying to do something about it um my best one of my best friends james started dragging me to the gym at 6 a.m every day and making me do these horrible like you probably crossfit style stuff like circuit training and

i hated every second of it um but he would come and pick me up every day and take me. So whatever. And then after a while he was like, Oh, let's try like doing just some like heavy compound movements. And so we started getting into like squats and bench press and deadlift. And I was like, I like this stuff way better. And, um, all of a sudden the gym stopped being a place that i went to try and like make myself feel like i looked better and it started being a place that i went because i discovered this power and getting stronger that was like way a way better feeling than trying to like look better because i felt bad about my body kind of thing so that was me Darren so I started in CrossFit 2006 so I've been around the CrossFit community for a little while and then I mainly did that because I wanted to supplement I'm pretty Canadian

I grew up playing hockey and so I wanted something to kind of do off the ice um and then I found that the CrossFit was really good in terms of supplementing my hockey and then I was also playing tackle football and so that was really good um but kind of as I got more and more years into CrossFit I started being like wow you know I'm kind of sick of doing kipping pull-ups but I really like you know lifting bigger weights started thinking about powerlifting didn't really go that direction went to strongman uh competed in that for about a year went to went to canadians that was pretty cool um and then i was actually 2014 was when i was like oh you know what maybe i think

i'm gonna try this power lifting stuff so of course that's when in november i ended up tearing my meniscus which was unfortunate so finally got cleared to come back that was january 2015 that's when i broke my ankle so that was super fun um and then June of 2015 was when I got it confirmed that I had an ACL tear and two meniscal tears so I had surgery on that so 2015 was like this write-off year for me where all I did was sit around rehabbing injuries and I between the ankle and the knee I was like you know what I don't know that I have the confidence to come back to hockey, to football, maybe even to strongman. I'm like, but you know what? Power lifting is pretty safe. I'm going to do that. So that was kind of, I was like, I'm going to come back. I'm going to do power lifting and I don't have a lot of other options. So fuck it.

I'm going to get good at power lifting or I'm going to die. Those are kind of like power lifting or bust at this point. I would say it's, I mean, generally it's safer than like running around and have another, I mean, if you were just running with people running next to you you're fucking probably more likely to get hurt than standing in place squatting yeah that's the thing i'm like in terms of the two bigger injuries that i've had i'm like hey you know what this is probably the safest thing i could be doing that isn't like netflix and chill and yeah i'm not quite there yet nice and. And Jamie, what about you? Well, I guess there's one way or another to get into powerlifting, but I played sports

my whole life. I'm Latvian-Russian, so my dad kind of forced me to do everything from an early, early age. I started marathon running 10 years ago or so, which unfortunately led to a pretty serious eating disorder. So when I moved here from Vancouver, I weighed like 93 pounds or something. I started working at a gym. This guy worked there. He's like, you should try to do some deadlifts. I'm like, okay, let's do it.

I pulled 95 pounds my first day. It was like body weight lift. Nailed it. Pretty proud of myself. So that guy's name is Jon Stewart. He runs his own little training business called Great North Training. And he was at the time a national record holder power lifter, I think. So he kind of talked me into eating and lifting. And we took me over 300

pounds for my deadlift in like a year. So we realized I might be pretty good at it and uh started competing and here we are nice well that that that covers everybody as far as as far as what got you guys all into powerlifting and now i'd like to you know give you guys a chance to tell me about when you actually came together to start this project and i i understand it started with mostly just talking shit yeah yeah i mean really uh like vitriolic bitchery is the glue that holds us together yeah so we just started um as we started when we would see each other at the gym training and then we ended up having like a little Instagram private chat where we were just complaining about the way our sport is depicted in the popular media. Like if you search, you know, girls who lift or like women who lift hashtags. Or female powerlifting on YouTube.

Worst. I mean, all you see is pictures of like women in bikinis and like their butts you don't see actual lifting and it's uh that can be frustrating to have uh an endeavor that I think is pretty obvious from all of our how we got into it stories it means a lot to us it means a lot to us aesthetically it means a lot to us personally and And to have it just boiling down to, well, but does anybody think we're attractive at the end of the day? It's just, it's so insulting. And it is interesting to see too. If you do search for those types of things on Instagram and stuff like that, a lot of what you do see the most popular stuff is.

It's like, well, someone lifting something that may or may not be heavy but also is certainly not wearing very many clothes you know that's kind of the um it's like the gist of what you find when you look out there yeah it's like do you want 10 000 followers okay so you're gonna have to film from the back and make sure you're pretty bootylicious like do it up and it doesn't matter what's on the bar you know that's that's the other thing that you find about it almost none of that is about performance. Yeah. And, like, we're not about, you know, oh, it has to be a heavy weight for us to want to showcase and celebrate it.

But, you know, we're not interested in that, you know, poo view angle kind of thing to see your deadlift. Like, that doesn't show a shit about your form or anything like that. thing to see your deadlift like that doesn't show a shit about your form or anything like that um and it's just turned into this thing where i think it's just like that whole uh fitness it's like fitness motivation veiled as power lifting yeah like content kind of thing and you know it's just turned into a whole bunch of flexing and booty shots and stuff like that which is really cool like if you're super happy with your body then it's really cool that you want to show it off and you want to flex and all that sort of stuff but like don't post a picture of yourself in like lacy lingerie and hashtag it power lifting like yeah but one of the things that started happening is we were um bitching and complaining about this

and making jokes about how it's so funny to see powerlifting sexualized in this way because it's so ugly and we started in this ig in this instagram chat um sending each other screenshots of our own faces at key moments in Lyft. And it's everything from like Grumpy Cat to Jabba the Hutt to a blowfish, you know, like not our prettiest moments. And just laughing at each other that way. And then we decided we needed to share that with the world. Yeah, and I'm going to go straight out there and admit that like, when I started sending you guys those screenshots of those videos, I'd never sent anyone anything like that ever.

Like they're the ugliest moments of my life. And it just it kind of felt really good to be like, hey, you guys, you understand this. Here's this super fucking ugly face I made and I'm not going to post this on Instagram because of it kind of thing. And then I started to be like, well, that's kind of dumb because I did a really good squat in that video so yeah and being like well you know what I'm not going to post it because some part of me I think it looks ugly so I can't post this and I think that that's like that's been really I think empowering for us as well as just being able to share it is you're like holy shit like I'm owning this ugly face this ugly part of me whatever what i conceive is ugly and i'm putting it out there

and i'm fucking owning it because i'm lifting weights that are good for me and i feel good about myself let's fucking do it yeah yeah there are for sure when i go back through my own personal instagram account when i first started there are some just like still shots of the barbell with nobody in it and that was how I was documenting my powerlifting journey then. That's when you would be able to tell somebody like, I was here and some things happened. Yeah, I put those on the bar. But the whole process I'm not going to put on the internet yet. I have videos and pictures of myself from early on that I didn't share because I didn't feel like I looked good in those videos and pictures.

And I remember when I first started out training, it was with my very good friends, Dan and Ghost and James. And like, you know, they're my dude friends, right? And I always have huge crushes on them and I always want to be impressive and all that sort of thing. And I'm like, oh, they're teaching me how to do this thing. And while I do it, I'm like really ugly while I do it. And, you know, it was really amazing to have people like that around me that I wanted to think highly of me that did think highly of me because I was putting all my effort into this powerlifting thing. because I was putting all my effort into this powerlifting thing. And that was really eye-opening for me to have people that I kind of like secretly idolize a little bit to have them embrace my ugly as well and encourage it.

So I don't know. When you're new to the sport and you're seeing these images, the videos you take for your coach, the stills you take of yourself at the gym, and you're looking for inspiration in the sport, and you search hashtags, and you come up with nothing but booty gains and beautiful women, thick thighs. And, and if you if you don't feel that you do, or if you don't fit that mold, then where do you find your inspiration? Where do you feel like you belong in this community and in this sport? And that's, I think that's kind of the essential sort of nugget that started making us feel that we needed to share a message in a little bit more of a serious way also than just grumpy cat faces

yeah because there was definitely that transition point where it went from being just like all these ugly which I mean and they're fun but you look at the original pictures, it's like, you know, it's just ugly face, ugly face, double chin, whatever. And then we kind of like, as it started resonating with more people, we're like, Oh, and it's, it's really interesting to watch like the evolution of our, of our posts too. The, um, what else is interesting too, is like, you know, Darren, you mentioned you, you'd kind of been involved with CrossFit for a while. And that's one of the things that I see, you know, in our, in our CrossFit gym, I trained at our powerlifting about half days of the week at our powerlifting gym. And I do CrossFit just to try and, um, one, I, I enjoy it. And two, I, I just want to look better and that

sure works. It's okay to like CrossFit. Oh yeah yeah. Absolutely. But the thing that I find a lot of times with women that come into CrossFit, especially when they're new, is even though they move well, once they're able to move well and are strong enough, there's like an aversion to lifting heavy. And you can watch them lift and you can be like, well, God, would you just put some fucking weight on the bar? Like you're not trying hard enough. Like you're trying as hard as you can with some weight that's really easy for you but you know there's a there's a lot of women that i see that do that that you can lift more than that and like you should be you know there's absolutely no reason not to be and i don't understand why you're just fucking do you not want to get bulky is that the goddamn thing i just wanted to get toned it's honestly one of the things though that i enjoy the most because i still i go to crossfit sherwood park

two of my friends own it so i like to go out there at least once a week i'm the ultimate cherry picker i do a workout once every two weeks if they post something that i actually feel like doing that day but i love going in and i love especially getting to interact with a lot of the women especially when when they're doing – like the compound lifts that I feel like I have some background in and can contribute something to. I love with deadlifts and stuff where I'm like, put 15 more on the bar. And then it's like, oh, I don't think I can do it. What's the worst that happens? You fail?

Yeah. Like it's just not going to move. Most of the time, it's not – you're not encouraging people to load up when they're falling apart and going to hurt themselves. But it's like you're not even getting anything out of this. You're just taking it easy. I think that's a problem that a lot of not competitive CrossFit athletes have, but just the average Joe comes in and they just are afraid to go heavy. And I think that my wife was the same way. It took her until really recently, I'd say the last like five six months to where she's actually

realized like where that line is and and that's really empowering for her to see that line way further than she thought it was because it if i was loading the bar for her and didn't tell her how much was on shit would just snap up and down be no problem and if she loaded the bar and she knew that it was some arbitrary number that she thought was heavy and the fucking thing would, you know, act like it'd be glued to the ground. And, um, so that's one of the things that caught me with your guys' message was that it was just about getting in, doing it and really fuck everything else. You know, the whole point is just doing the work and enjoying the process. yeah and i mean it's finding you're strong too right it's not okay until you can deadlift 400 pounds we don't want to talk to you

because who gives a shit you suck it's find you're strong like 225 is a massive milestone for you then fucking own it that's amazing like do it up find your success at whatever wherever it happens to be and just be happy about what you're doing. Enjoy your process. Cause that's a thing. Powerlifting is 90% process and then a meet every like four months. Like if you don't enjoy your process, what are you doing? Yeah, exactly. What else is funny is we have, you know, as, as men and you know, our massonomics page, we've, we've been able, it's funny and it's a interesting, we can post videos of one of our guys throwing up all over himself at a meet during a deadlift and that's funny but i don't know there's not a lot of women lifters out there that would be like guys this was hilarious you want to see what it looked

like when i threw up all over myself and that's exactly that is the niche that we have decided to step up and fill. That's right. If you're listening right now, please send us your puke videos. Yeah, for sure. And like, I don't know if you remember. Hashtag this is female powerlifting. And hashtag massonomics. In the last like, it's within the last 12 months, there's a chick Bree who competed in the US.

And she, on her third attempt, the whole whole way up like power spewed onto the head referee finished her fucking lift got three white lights and I just I wanted to go down there and high five her um but that ended up going super viral on the internet because I did see that like there's gonna be so many videos of dudes doing crazy shit but like when a girl is just like letting it all out and proud of it it's kind of well there was a lot of it when that took but like when a girl is just like letting it all out and proud of it it's kind of well there was a lot of it when that took off too is a lot of the the commentary behind it was like was like oh this poor girl and it's and but when you watch it you're like yeah but she she fucking hit the lift yeah like she owned that she was that if it was that big

of a deal she'd have put the fucking bar down and walked away i mean and i i've been power lifting for just over a year now so i'm by no means an expert but i mean show me the person who's lifted truly heavy in a deadlift and hasn't had the barf feeling because of their belt being placed just that little bit yeah off or who hasn't peed yeah i mean some sort of bodily excretion that stage that meets always meets always, we're like, who's going to pee first? You know what I mean? We don't really see that posted. Next time I can actually do a deadlift, I will. Well, we started a hashtag, pee a little, lift a lot.

Yeah. So when did you guys decide to just create create the – was the Instagram page the start? Yes. Yes. So you guys just launched that with no branding behind it or anything. You're just like, hey, let's all do this. There was zero plan. That was at a GPC meet.

We were sitting like we were watching a GPC meet. We'd been there all day. We were feeling pretty salty at that point because we'd seen a few things that made us grumpy. And we were like, you know what? We're doing it. This is female powerlifting. And we checked and it was available and we threw it up. Yeah, we just made the Instagram account right then and there and started posting on it. We had no plan. We were like, man, if we get 25 of our friends followers, that's going to be really cool. Yeah. We were literally like, how many people do we know what evolve yeah and once you get past the number of people that you do know at the gym you're like guys i i think we fucking made it yeah yeah i'm like oh my god 100 followers people started

following us that we didn't know yeah that's a username we don't recognize guys we've made it yeah that's what gets me. We'll get some followers. It's like, I have to follow them back now. That'll be nice. When you get to the point where you don't follow everyone back, you're like, ah, we've made it. We're bigger than you.

We're just never. Thanks for the follow, but fuck off. We were just amusing each other so much privately by sharing these photographs. And it was like oddly empowering to share what you would say would be one of the ugliest photographs have you ever taken with your friends and everybody laugh about it. And I'm also, you know, like I'm hefting 315 pounds off the ground in that picture.

So maybe I can feel pretty good about how powerful I look even though I maybe don't look pretty yeah and uh we were having so much fun doing that privately that we just wanted to open it up to more people and we had you know we were thinking maybe there are other other female lifters who feel the way we do maybe there's a few turns out there's a lot turns out there's a lot and it's super cool like i'm i'm a really shy and introverted person but i love getting on instagram and like looking through all of our followers looking through our hashtags commenting on everyone's posts and just like people really get into us and i really like we really get into them back it's so much fun you guys have seen um quite a bit of so how did let's talk about how things kind of steamrolled then as far as when i mean this is a has it been really gradual or did something

just kind of blow up was there a moment when all of a sudden you're like guys we kind of have a fuck ton of followers what are we going to do here the first thousand the first thousand was a big one like we were like holy shit we hit a thousand yeah and then i think when was it that the article in the metro yeah so a local print journalist took an interest in what we were doing um and uh wrote an article on us in one of the free dailies here and we were on reddit and suddenly we were picking up you you know, 200 followers a day. Yeah. At that stage, I think we had like 2,500 or 2,700 followers.

I think we were still under 2,000. Oh, really? Yeah. The Reddit spike was big. Okay. And we were so fortunate that somebody, that a journalist took interest in us and it was a journalist who really got it. I mean, we didn't have to coach alex as to

our message alex just really understood it and she represented us so uh she represented our project in such a true um it's a way that's so true to what we're doing and that was that was such a gift because it could have gone very badly well Well, and honestly, these women hate pretty girls. Ugly girls hate pretty film at 11. So the thing that's funny about that too, is like, it's, there's a lot of, anytime you see any like traditional print journalism that involves anything powerlifting, usually it's almost just dismissive anyways. You know, it's like, yeah, so there was this thing and then that's that. And then on to the next, you know, there was a fucking cat show last weekend.

And like it, so that's, it's really interesting that you found somebody that, that got it, let alone did something with it. You know, that's, that's pretty cool. We'll get things put up like uh there was a meet and uh three guys placed and uh from aberdeen and and that was that was that and it's like one paragraph and then like taco john's is getting remodeled next month yeah we're like fuck we just can't get any traction well and something that's been really interesting too is that it's not necessarily just people who are into power lifting who have gotten into our message um i mean we've had we've had more than one person ask like

i don't really lift can i wear your shirt like of course you can if you if this message resonates with you in some way then absolutely you can lift with us anytime. You can wear our shirt. You're part of this community. Yeah. Yeah. And from what I see, I would guess what percentage of your guys' interaction with generally the community or social media would you characterize as positive? Quite a bit, right? People that are like, yeah, it's's really cool we'll get into the other margin later but we we've not had like everything's been super positive i feel

other than there was one guy one haterade yeah we had a good time with that yeah it's actually really surprising because we do occasionally post some pretty awesome like grotesque pictures and there's nothing but positive comments like we don't we don't particularly police or censor our comments like we don't yeah we don't have anything to delete yeah kind of thing just that one guy just that one guy he's a he was a tried and true member of the Arch Concern Police. Oh, God. Okay. Let's do that right now. I want to do that right now. Okay. What is people's deal with any time they see someone arch on a bench press?

A female lister. They never do it to dudes. Every time. Yeah. They never do it to dudes. You're going to hurt your back, honey. You know what I mean? Like, that's the way they fucking talk.

Oh, honey, who taught you how to lift? Yeah. But I get on a bench and I go, I can't arch my back at all because I fucking suck. that's the way they fucking talk oh honey who taught you how to lift yeah but but but i sit i get on a bench and i go i can't arch my back at all because i fucking suck you know what i mean like i don't understand that but why because i assume you guys have you guys seen quite a few that quite a bit of that in the videos you guys put because i see it all over all of the bench female bench press videos i see there's always one or two fucking guys on there that just have to chime in about like, that they just don't understand that that's a good thing.

Well, they've got to get their attention somehow, right? So like, how am I going to talk to this pretty girl? I know. I'll tell her that she's lifting wrong. I'll give her this advice that will be life-saving for her. I'll be really dismissive and tell her something she's doing is wrong. I like the guy who talks about her bodies all the time because they have to have an opinion on it right it's on the internet so they have to

let us know that they're not super pleased yeah with the way we're arching our back in this particular video regardless of us lifting weights it's the arch that they're super concerned with right and i think most men like most men that see that actually lift that see somebody who a woman who has a really gnarly arch are usually usually like, no, like, oh, that would be good if I could do that. Yeah, it's mainly like, oh, how the fuck did you get in that position? Like now you only have to pull the bar like three inches. Fuck you. That's kind of a win.

But they usually, they'll come along at like, yeah, just like that. Well, yeah, well, you're only moving the bar. Well, that's kind of advantageous now, isn't it? Yeah, have you heard of powerlifting? Actually, the point is how much you can, like, what the fuck? Well, I mean, I think some of it comes out of an ignorance about what the sport actually is and the point of a powerlifter's bench press. Yeah. But also, I mean, Beans makes a great point.

They never, the arch concern police where are they for the dudes who arch aren't they worried about their backs yeah or is it only female backs that we're concerned about i find in them it's less the back and then it's more the oh but you're cheating bro bro if you were like all the way on the bench if you put your feet up on the bench too yeah it'd be a win that's not how they bench at you know the combine so it doesn't count exactly right yeah and the whole it's not like we're trying to build pecs here if i was going to do that i'd lay down on my back and i wouldn't arch at all and i'd have a dumbbell in my fucking hand you know these idiots don't we of course we only

train our like post our impressive lifts i do flat back bench it's programmed in my program to do flat back bench as an accessory like i don't know but if you're trying to move the most weight you possibly can you want every advantage you can it doesn't i don't understand why like you're gonna shit on an advantage that's well within the rules you know it doesn't make any sense to me but i would is that like the most common thing that you guys see that's on on our as far as shittiness on our posts on our instagram posts that's the only shittiness i think that we've ever had is that one guy that one guy that guy that like bragged about his total and we figured it out and he had like a wilks less than us all of us it was under 320 yeah he had under 320 wilks and anyone listening who has

less than that and is still working on their total that's fine but this guy was like i'm the authority on this subject with my 320 wilks um yeah i wish i remembered his name because i'd give him a little shout out right now because i had a I had a really good time bantering back and forth with him that day. Yeah. I think I actually saw. Until I deleted all of his crap. I think I saw that interaction at some point too. Oh, I'm so glad.

Maybe that's what reminded me to bring up. I wrote down on my to-do list is haters. And I think that was it. Shout out to the dude from Ottawa. Yeah. What I was super impressed with on that post was actually this other dude and i'm probably gonna get this wrong but i feel like it's amy louise's boyfriend um who came to the defense of our account i can't remember who that was

but you know one of our because we have some really cool dude followers that love our account and like this guy just stepped in and was like shut up dickhead this is why they need this account in the first place actually i think something that has been one of the coolest things about seeing this project through and seeing how it's taking off is how enthusiastic a lot of male power lifters are about it because it becomes clear to me that it's not just, it wasn't just other female power lifters who felt this way, who felt that there was something wrong with the way our sport was being portrayed. That also our, our male colleagues, our male, our fellow male lifters also, this is the

kind of content they want to see too. Well, because there are, there are actually men out there that like power lifting. You know what I mean? Like, then that's the truth is, and though in the grand scheme of things, that probably Because there are actually men out there that like powerlifting. You know what I mean? Yeah. And that's the truth. And though in the grand scheme of things, that probably is a pretty small world. You know what I mean? There's probably less people that like powerlifting than like fucking Selena Gomez's Instagram page. There's an awful lot of, like the people that are getting those just sexy accounts with 150,000 followers are not getting 150,000 powerlifting fans following them.

No. You know. 149,500 creeps, 500 powerlifters. Yeah. And the powerlifters might also be creeps too. That's been something really, like another huge gift about this project is, so we've got 5,300 followers almost now. 55, 80 now.

No, I'm just kidding. You had me going for a second. And there's such a sense of community. The conversations that our followers have with each other following posts the kind of encouragement that they give each other how excited they get about each other's prs it's so it's incredible it's incredible to see yeah and we get a lot of interaction on our posts because we are followed by a bunch of people who are really interested in powerlifting. Yeah. Like it's, they understand the accomplishment of the person that we've posted. If we post someone who is smiling after a great lift and it's just a photograph, people

understand what that feels like. And, you know, they can celebrate that with us. People are hungry for real content that documents this sport and if there's anything about our account that shows that is that by instagram standards we write novels sometimes i mean some of the the just like words word count on some of our posts insane for Instagram. And our followers read every word. They read it all and they engage with it all. And then they engage with each other. It's amazing.

You guys have an account that would have been of no good back when Twitter was at the top, wouldn't it? No. We don't fit in that 140 character count at all. We're not on Twitter. I took my personal Twitter and put T-I twitter and put tifpl on it so if someone tried to find us that way they could and i could be like yes but it's just me so you need to go over here we did we did we did that too we took our our twitter and just kind of merch same thing we just push all of our instagram stuff through to it so that we're on there but we don't fucking

do anything it's like forget about like one of two of two, your posts would be like one of 22, please keep reading. Like, yeah. Yeah. I mean, nobody, nobody reads that kind of length on Instagram and we don't do that in every

post, but we certainly have on some. And I, I have been astonished to see how many people read every, they read every word. They're, they're there for that content. Well,

that's the power of having an engaged audience too i mean when you guys get rolling on some some longer form content let's get to talking about the website i guess um website launched when not long ago september 6th because it was like the 6th of the 9th 69 there you go so yeah that was totally intentional dirt bags of t.i you go. So yeah, that was totally intentional. Dirtbags of T-I-F-P-L. So now you guys had done, what did you guys set up? You set up a bit of a email list sign up as well as offered a kind of a pre-launch shirt. Is that correct? Mm-hmm. And how did that go? What was the response to that? Amazing. It was amazing.

It exceeded our expectations for sure. Put it like this. Darren promised us a jig if we got to 50 shirts. Have we posted the jig? She did a jig. We have not posted the jig. I haven't seen any. I haven't seen a jig. I think we should post the jig.

Well, this episode's going to be out in two weeks, so you've got two weeks to post the jig. All right. It was funny, though, because seriously before we we put the shirts up we we were having a chat about it and we're like okay what are our expectations because we knew kind of where the price breaks were on the shirts too we're like if it's anything like us it is 50 and 100 yeah and we were like we're sitting there we're like can we get to 100 and we're kind of like no probably not but whatever we're gonna try right and then we passed 100 and we're kind of like, no, probably not, but whatever. We're going to try. Right.

And then we passed a hundred and we were like, holy shit. And like the next price break obviously is two 50. And we're like, I don't think we're there. We're not there yet, but we know, but you know what?

Like it was to sell more than a hundred shirts is like a hundred more than I was expecting. We thought we would do really well to sell 50. We, and that's why we were promised a jig. And we received a jig. And the jig was like two days. Was it two days in or one day in? I think it was second day.

Yeah. And it was a good jig. It was in a deadlift suit, wasn't it? Yeah, it was. It's a jig in a deadlift suit. My dog's in the picture too. It's pretty cool. We're going to have to see that eventually. So what about how far reaching was this audience as well?

I mean, as far as you can usually tell, it's tough on Instagram to tell, but like when you're shipping shirts to people, how far and wide as far as was your coverage? Quite a few. Most of it was to obviously North America. Quite a few in Australia. Why is that? Weird.

Why do we have Australians? I don't know. Could be all of my rat as fuck friends. And I think we got maybe a couple to Europe. Italy. There was a UK one. Definitely somebody from Italy. Wasn't there?

Yeah. So it was pretty cool. Damn, international shipping got me on mine too. If I'd have known, I would have just planned on picking it up when I was up here. But anyway, speaking of Australia, my wife was like, when she heard you talk last night, she was like, is Beans from New Zealand? Because she watched the show Flight of the concords oh yeah yeah and she says so then i said no you can tell because people from new zealand say it where's the car but people from australia say it

where's the car and there's a huge difference it's the small thing but um what else did we have okay so what's coming up as far as with you guys what you guys have talked about your to-do list you guys have uh what's the next phase what are the next things um the next phase is probably to get more rolling on the blog and the youtube channel by the way once we get to 100 subscribers on YouTube, we can have a custom URL. So if you're not subscribed, go and do that. But yeah, we want to get some content up and running. All of us have really busy full-time jobs.

So when this exploded, we kind of weren't expecting it to happen so quickly. We thought we could be really chill about all this. So finding the time to get all this stuff organized can be a little difficult um which is part of why like jamie it's been amazing to have other people in the powerlifting community who have shown this kind of enthusiasm and jumped on board to help us with stuff because like just managing and maintaining and interacting with our social media community is a huge job and

we want everyone to have a chance to interact yeah um so i know for for me um i was sort of saying before my i love focusing on the more technical type stuff so within the next few weeks i want to get rolling on like an introductory series combination like YouTube and blog of the first part of it is going to be how to not feel like a fucking idiot the first time you encounter competition equipment. Because I can understand for people who've only ever trained at a commercial gym or whatever and then they come somewhere like our gym and they see a combo rack and they're like, what, what?

How? I have to take this apart. Yeah. Well, I remember lifting once with Allison, who is like fucking legit power lifter. Yeah. But never uses an ER rack. And she was like, what the fuck is this thing? So it's not even like a beginner.

It's across the board. Yeah. Yeah. Like, so it's not even like a beginner, like it's across the board. Yeah. So I'm really interested in putting out a series that's a focus on that sort of thing, like how to correctly load bars for competition, all that sort of thing. I recently volunteered at one of our local CPU APU meets and at spotting and loading. And that really inspired me want to also uh write a series on how to be

a good volunteer because you wouldn't believe like you kind of just get thrown into it and some people are like naturally really good at it and some people are freaking clueless um so you know i want to do a series on what it takes to be a really great volunteer at a meet and all that sort of stuff i think i think too because we've we've kind of seen just through evolve and just with some of the local meets i don't think i realize just how many people come in really unprepared because i'm really type a and obsessive over kind of that stuff but just watching i don't i don't like watching people bomb out and i don't think anybody really likes watching people bomb out so just kind of those like quick tips so that you don't fuck up in your first meet

and you get to be successful. We've got like a million ideas for the content that we want to produce. Some of it we would like to do with video. Some of it we would like to do with regular blog posts, not necessarily just written by us, but by other people who'd be interested in writing for us. We're definitely interested in writing for us we're definitely interested in uh a podcast we're so interested in a podcast if you would like to hear our voices

comment on wherever tyla posts this thing and be like girls do a podcast and we also are interested in doing events and i mean jamie we've been talking about doing a meet. Oh, yeah. I'm an ideas person. So I get everybody else to hopefully plan everything for me. But I work as a trainer. So I have a lot of athletes who I coach actually in powerlifting already. So one of the things that we kind of talked loosely about doing to just sort of promote the sport locally is a kind of a girls-only seminar. And really give everybody an idea how a meet's run, what's expected of them, how to do the lift, a little bit of a girls only seminar and really give everybody an idea how a meet's run what's expected of them how to do the lifts a little bit of form correction and stuff like that and then kind of give everybody a month or two months or whatever to prepare and have a

mock meet real judging but sort of just for fun maybe like spirit award prizes and things like that but just maybe get some people who would normally be a little bit too scared to participate to start competing here because the more girls compete the more people we have to compete against yeah the bigger the sport is the more fun it is for some of us who maybe feel like well tired of showing up for default gold and we're feeling we're feeling like an asshole because like personally not again i'm an asshole i guess but i have a very strong deadlift so at this point if i'm doing 100 pounds more than everybody else at the meet it's not very fun for me yeah so the more girls we can get involved the more we can grow things and sort of show them that this really is a sport for everybody every single person every age every

body type um yeah bigger this whole thing can grow and i think with like with the amount of fragmentation there is, and like government, governing bodies and federations and shit like that anyways, there's a lot of meets where like you said, the default gold, or you go in and you just lift just to do it. And,

uh, you know, we have some running jokes about default gold. Yeah. Given not earned. Well, there there's, I'd be willing to bet in our area there's a lot of competitions

that where you're pretty much guaranteed you know if you pay you're guaranteed to get something yeah for sure and um yeah the it's one of those things where like people can the people that exist i think that's a problem in the power lifting community is the people that are already in it spend so much time shitting all over each other or trying to scramble for a bigger piece of the pie yeah and they're all fucking up because you need to just make sure there's more fucking pie yeah you know what i mean like and that's the problem is by fighting over each other what they end up doing is just driving these new people away totally absolutely we don't need another. We need another 25 lifters. Yeah.

Well, what you really need is about 30 fewer federations. Yeah. Or they all need to just play nice. But yeah, I think that, you know, because if a new person does come in, you know, if you get somebody who's trained well and she was taught how to bench properly, she posts a video, her first video on Instagram of a nice arch back and some fucking dickhead from God knows where comes on and says, oh, geez, look at that arch, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You're doing this wrong.

You're doing that wrong. And it drives people away. And you see that type of commentary all the time. Well, I mean, it's the same thing with the Fed thing, right, where it's, you know, somebody comes in and they decide they're going to lift GPC. And it's like, oh, my God, why did you pick that? Are you doing like late? Yeah, I totally got because I lift in multiple federations.

I've lived with IPF affiliated. I've lifted with 100% raw and GPC. And I pick all of those different federations because there's different rules in all of them. And there's different ways that I want to lift, right in gpc i can compete raw but still wear knee wraps in 100 in 100 raw i can't even wear knee sleeves so it's just like that you know extra challenge and then um in apu ipf uh the you know it's way stricter judging and it's way more competitive so that's why i like competing there and so i'm super chill and i love all the federations but definitely like when i started coming to evolve there was a very large group of ipf affiliated lifters um and we were kind of

like gym friends or whatever but they would come up to me and be like so like why do you lift with GPC? Isn't, isn't that like the drug fed? And I'm like, well, yes, it's an untested federation, but I like to wear knee wraps.

So I like, yeah, I like to smoke pot and wear knee wraps. I like to do piles of blow before I lift. The pot and wear knee wraps. I like to do piles of blow before I lift. The pot and knee wraps fed. Oh, my God. You guys. Okay, actually, scratch what we said earlier.

We definitely do need one more federation. The IPKF, the International Pot and Knee Wraps Federation. You heard it here first hashtag ipkf we're gonna have a lot of members i i really believe in this cause hashtag trademark uh this is how you're gonna make a million bucks i think i figured it out massonomics is gonna launch we're gonna race to this one well we can just work together we're in two different countries that's true this is how we make it international we'll have a canada and a usa branch once we finish this podcast oh that is that is fabulous okay so well you guys i think that's that's all that i had specifically to cover but um

you know what else did you guys want to get out there as far as basically the next time anybody hears from you guys via audio form is going to be either someone else who's cooler than I am has you on their podcast or you guys will hopefully have your own by then. So what else did you guys want to get out there between now and then, I guess? Anybody. Let's all look at each other cluelessly. Well, I mean, at this point, I think it's really,

we have created this thing and it has taken off and become a touchstone for all these people that we're super excited about. And we just want to make sure that we nurture it and let it grow and make room for it to

grow as well as it possibly can so in terms of like the next big thing it's it's really just providing more content yeah and the book's open like i'm very much uh my leadership style is i love feedback and then building things based on that feedback. So I'm super interested in once we experiment a little bit with a couple of different kind of outlets, getting feedback from our followers and seeing what they love and following that and trying to build on that basically. Because we're not, we were never in this to sell t-shirts. We're not a t-shirt company. We were in this to... Although our t-shirts are great.

They're pretty legit. The problem we've found is that no matter how many t-shirts you sell, there's really no way to put money in your pocket. No, there's no profit. And we talked about that early on. What we want to do and the thing that is the most fulfilling and satisfying for us about this is building community. Yeah. That's what we're here for.

We're here to build a community that provides education, that provides camar know they've got an army of female power lifters behind them and 5 280 people to jump down their throat and you know what and our followers are like that so if you need to send up an sos yeah tifbl i mean we would all swoop in there and make sure that whatever D-bag is floating into your comments, into your DMs, is out of there real fast. I remember before we even started the account that happened. Remember that day I sent you guys the video of that guy? There was some sweet powerlifter that I follow, like cute little blonde girl, blah, blah, blah. And she's wearing her Nike Pros, doing squats. And some douchebag makes some comment about her shorts so we all swooped in i think she was even 18 years old

yeah no she wasn't she was just a kid so that's pretty gross but yeah we swooped in there to defend her and it was great and now we wear mutual followers and all that sort of stuff yeah so i guess maybe the next big thing for us is like the TIFPL bat signal. Yeah. Let's start there. So I, well, that'll do it. I want to make sure everybody listening goes to their Instagram page. It is straight out. This is female powerlifting at Instagram.com. Well, I guess you don't need all of that do you just need this

powerlifting on instagram i'm reading too many things at once while i'm doing this um so make sure you go to that follow the page i'll have all the links and stuff like that in the show notes um also go to this is female powerlifting.com they have um some blog posts up they've got all sorts of things there by the time this comes out, we better have a jig video, at least on Instagram. There'll be a hidden link. It's an Easter egg. You've got to find it. Nothing but the jig video.

On loop. So that'll do it. Is there anything else, plugs or anything else you guys wanted to to give out while you're there if there is um i always give people opportunity to make sure that if they want people to check out their personal instagram they sure can if that's something you don't want out there i don't give a shit either way so it's not hard to find uh to find us and if you find us and want to follow us personally, go for it. Yeah, I'm cool with that.

All I post is my cat and powerlifting. I just want to shout out to Ange one more time because it sucks that she had to go to a wedding instead of be here because she would have dropped a lot of F-bombs and had some really cool content. I don't think I swore enough this round. I did. Did you?

Okay, good. I'll have to go back. But this might be one of our lowest swearing. So should we just spend the next three minutes being fucking fucking cunts? Cock monkey.

Bunch of cunts. Full of shit. What a grand finale. I'm wearing a shirt that says cunt. I honestly didn't notice that. It's the floral that put you off. that says cunt. I honestly didn't notice that. It's the floral that put you off. Floral cunt. I thought maybe, I don't know how to spell country. Maybe she just really likes country music.

Maybe it's an Australian thing. Yeah, I don't know what they're into over there okay well that'll do it for us today um as far as i don't have my cheat sheet here but i need everybody to um like i said make sure you follow this is female powerlifting on instagram um also make sure you like their facebook page once some of that longer form content starts rolling out that'll be a good spot to find that also check into this is female powerlifting.com go subscribe to youtube so we can get a custom url youtube channel i want that that way you can just say go to youtube forward slash yeah yeah it's a lot easier

yeah otherwise you have to search for it which is a pain in the ass for us um you know who you're listening to but uh make sure you go to massonomics.com there you can scroll to the bottom of the page sign up for an email newsletter you can go to this click on shop now you can buy some shirts hats all sorts of cool shit there you'll be able to find some of our articles blog posts and videos as well also the rest of our podcasts are on there too. So I'm Tyler. You can find me on Instagram at Tyler F and Stone. That's T Y L E R E F F I N Stone. What else am I missing? Go to our YouTube and make sure you subscribe to that and make sure you like Massanomics on Facebook. I think that's enough hustle in our stuff. That's a lot. I don't really have it written down. So

that'll do it for us today. Everybody say goodbye. Um, that's a, that's a lot. I don't really have it written down. So, um, that'll do it for us today. Everybody say goodbye. Thanks for having us. Thanks for coming on. And thanks for coming all the way to Canada. My wife's free flight benefits really shrink the world up for me. So it's really nice to be able to do that. Oh, we really, it's, it's, we really appreciate it. Awesome. Well, thanks for being on and and thanks for listening, everybody, and stay strong. You just heard the Masanamics podcast. With your ears, you're welcome. Check us out on Facebook. Find us on Instagram at Masanamics, and make sure you visit Masanamics.com and buy some of that sweet massanomics gear

from your friends at massanomics studio home of the world's strongest podcast stay strong Thank you.