Massenomics Podcast - Ep.31: WTF Is a Wilks?

Episode Date: November 6, 2016

This week, we're broadcasting from the New & Improved Massenomics Studio, which we've set up to allow us to release the podcast in video format as well as our conventional audio podcast. We talk about all the recent happenings in the world of strength and fitness, and mostly a bunch of nonsense as usual.   Click below for our traditional audio version....   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 Massanomics gear. This is too high. Maybe.

Okay. Good. All right. We're here front and center in the new mass and Amic studio version 2.0. This time with video. If you're listening, you missed it. We were pointing at the camera um tanner's still doing it we're uh so we finally moved the studio down to the basement um

i don't know i think it's an upgrade even though it's in a much less pretty room is there asbestos down here though like more like as worst as i uh i don't think so okay the house was not that old okay then we should be safe but uh chalk went up to have an unused room so we we just stuck some lighting and moved everything down here so this way we can start recording shit on video and finally putting it on youtube so we we did Nick Tylukey's episode last week, should be on, that'll be our first one up. That's our test, our pilot, video pilot. We did that one on the road though, so we pretty much just stuck a camera in the corner and started talking. But this one's a little more, a little more deliberate. Today we're going to talk about who the hell knows.

We had, last week's road trip was pretty nice. We went up and met with Nick. You guys hopefully have all heard that. If you haven't, um, pause it, go back, check it out, come back and could be in our top 20 episodes of all time. I would say it's at least in our top 30 easily. I didn't want to go there and say it, but that's what I was thinking. And I would actually say it's top five. So, I mean, if we're really saying for real, it's gotta be, and say it but that's what i was thinking and i i would actually

say it's top five so i mean if we're really saying for real it's got to be i don't think that's much of a jump yeah yeah i think every time we end up with like a really good a really good one it's because it's not us talking yeah you know what i mean like our so what what does that say about the odds of how this we're really good at showcasing other people i guess what it we've had uh yeah all our best episodes are interviewing other people of how this one's going to turn out. We're really good at showcasing other people. I guess. We've had, yeah, all our best episodes are interviewing other people. So since this one's just us, I wouldn't hold your breath for this one.

It'd be in a home run, guys. Except for at the very end, we have a lot of really, really exciting, important. At the very end. So you won't believe what this trigger word did at this thing during this one weird tip so um what's new down at the gym guys this weekend was like a little bit of a christmas yeah it was massonomics christmas it comes on october uh 22nd every year. Well, half the stuff you ordered on Christmas last year.

Yeah, let's start with that. We did get the safety squat bar and the Cambridge squat bar that we had ordered in April, I think, maybe. So May, June, July, August, September, October. Six months. Six months. It's fair production time. So we did actually get those. And we haven't talked about that, have we? Right?

Because we've had them for maybe a week or so. But last week we were with Nick. We had something real to talk about. Yeah. So we didn't bring it up. Yeah. But we have them. And have you used both of them?

I've used the safety squat bar and the camber bar. I think I just stood in it. I didn't put weight on it, but I got to like feel the motion of it. Yeah. What do you have any thoughts of either? I'd actually never even used the safety squat bar ever. So that was kind of different. I can see how people would like that a lot, especially as like a front squat alternative.

The camber squat bar, that thing is really weird. It's like, where do my hands go like you're just standing there like what do i do here but uh that one was pretty cool too i think that one i that might i don't know how heavily i'll get into that one anytime soon but uh i can definitely see the benefit to that too just kind of throwing off your center of gravity and what you're used to with it yeah it feels fucking really weird i have i haven't used it but i saw a couple of you and they're like you can tell as soon as they take the weight off they're like oh fuck what did i do it is i i really like the safety squat bar a lot it sits perfectly i mean you don't even have to touch it and it'll just yeah sit there and balance on you but yeah yeah, the camber bar really feels awkward.

But I mean, I suppose that's the purpose, or that's the intention. Yeah, it also looks very awkward in the bar holder, too. It sticks out like three feet. So what else we got? The big thing we got is the bench. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I did just scroll past that, too. Most importantly, the bench, yeah.

The bench, yeah, always. And it's an Elite FTS bench, and it's red because of the whole mass comics thing. I just like to even look at the picture. Yeah, it's like, wow. I kind of want to go touch it. It is on the slideshow on the website. If you go into the gym, we kind of have some glamour shots of all the equipment. That one finally showed up.

Yeah, they put together a pretty nice piece of gear there. There's pretty much everything you could ask for out of a bench on that thing, right? So what's the actual name spec of this model? Do you know? Yeah. Actually, to answer your question no i don't know but you have the resources to find out yeah uh it's an elite fts something bench press but there's something that goes in between elite fts and bench press that i uh it's either um

the competition isn't the right word but there's a word i don't know maybe i'll pop back into that later but uh it's actually kind of it's not one of the exact models that they sell off of the website i worked with because we're such an important customer yeah they custom fabrication yep yep he uh they came to our gym and took some measurements and you know just got a feel for like what we're into and what would look good in the room yeah and this is what he came up with so they did massonomics red yeah and it's got the uh band did we have to send them that paint yeah yeah for those of you that don't know there's a i think if you go to microsoft paint now there is like of the one of them is massonomics red

it's like it's like 10 It's one of the weird things. It's just like regular red, except it's huger. Yeah, that's right. No, and it's got the pegs for band attachments, which is kind of cool. That also have miniature baby weightlifting clips attached to them. Little, tiny little clips. It's what, like, normal clips look like in Tyler's hands. Yeah, pretty much. And then, you know, we've got the spotting, it's what like uh normal clips look like in tyler's hands yeah basically yeah uh and then

you know we've got the spotting the diamond plated spotter platforms now which is like a command station yeah it is just command anyone you can get your balls like so deep into anyone's face now that you want to that's the key there is you don't have any rail in your way preventing you from no you can just smother some which i think that was i think you told me that was the prime selling point of this yeah and because you're like who would want a 1200 bench until you heard that part right for sure there's quite a few guys from the gym uh that will you know um from both the spotting perspective and also the benching perspective that really wanted the nuts in the face all about giving the people what they want right uh we say uh you know we use the i use the term strongest gym in aberdeen and uh ryan said maybe that we're the gayest gym in aberdeen

and i i just thought why can't we be both yeah like is there any real reason we can't who are we to argue yeah yeah but yeah it does look good the one kind of weird feature i know that i think a few people kind of questioned right away are those what do you call it the headache oh yeah the headache rack or it's just like the really small stubby um supports or spotting arms yeah which looked like they'd be in the way but after you do it once you realize that the only way that will be in the way is if the bar is coming directly down on top of your forehead. Right, so it's literally just to pretty much save you from smashing your face open. And I think a lot of times for shirted benchers, that's even more important because as they're getting close to the lockout, when the shirt's going away and they're going more to their triceps like you know some funny things can happen sometimes so you know i don't see a lot of our guys missing benches no where it's they're gonna crush their

face and die but truthfully i don't see any of our guys missing any benches that's the first part yeah if they do we get kicked out so but yeah you can tell with that thing, though, like everything is over-engineered to the max. Like just the grips for moving the arms on it are like the huge things you can wrap your arms on. There's no like trying to hold on to this while pulling the pin. Right. It really is engineered to perfection, it seems like. These pictures, you just recently took all these pictures, and I always like the pictures because they make it always seem way bigger and way cooler and nicer than it is in real life i would make the i would maybe make the argument that it's even nicer in real life though but the pictures aren't bad but the thing about the pictures is you don't get to meet the people and you don't get the smell in the picture

either that's true you can't really capture a larry in a picture you can't put a shane no in a picture no no speaking of that we pretty much have to get shane back on again right i had several people uh also yeah if any of anyone listening now hasn't listened to the shane episode yeah that'll be the arnold one we had quite a crowd in there but uh but yeah everybody else we had already had on before several people have actually clamored to me that they want more Shane. The world just needs more Shane. It's almost turned into like a cameo appearance when he shows up in someone's Instagram video now. Because he's always flexing.

Several people have said they love the Instagram videos when Shane's throwing a flex on. Because it's always like he's not paying any attention. And then at the last second, he he's hitting a big front double buy. Like he caught a deer in the woods or something. It's been disturbed in its natural environment, and it reverts to what it knows. Are we pretty much out of shit to buy for equipment? No.

I don't think so either. We're definitely out of bars we're buying, right? Well, no. Because we went over all of the other bars other than the Duffalo. I think you could still make the, well, the Duffalo would be cool. And I think you could still make an argument for the IPF style or the IPF approved Rogue bar. Those are the two I want, yeah. The Rogue, it's the 20 kilogram Rogue Ohio Power Bar is the one that is IPF approved.

So I want that just to have it. I don't know. From what I've seen, it's not really any different than the Texas Power Bar. I've used it, and it's okay. And I know. It's good. It's a good quality bar. I don't want to shit on it.

No, it's just. Yeah, it's just another bar to have. And we talked about how after we got two Texas Power Bars, it would never be an issue because there's always two awesome bars. But now that we have two, people are always using both of those. So it's like, get another one. And then the Duffalo bar. I mean, I want a circus dumbbell, a yoke, a monolift. I mean, I could go on for quite a bit longer than that,

even with things that, you know. Some of the strongman stuff, you could just spend an endless amount of money on it. Yeah. Oh, there's, like, an endless amount of options. Like, anything you want can be a strongman. I do want to get, a guy lives right down the road from me, works at one of the beer distributors in town. We need fucking kegs.

Yeah. works at one of the the beer distributors in town we need fucking kegs yeah we need uh you know probably one 16 gallon keg for like pressing and loading mentally most of them are like yeah we need a half a dozen eights yeah eight gallon keg we need five is what they usually throw you know uh five or six whatever whatever that is that they usually do i'd like to get and then you know we can determine how heavy they are by how much we we load in them you know so i'd really like to get five or six of those but i mean if tommy be willing to just buy six and just never take my deposit back it only costs me like 600 bucks shit on the deposit so we'll keep them i don't know you can have the beer well we're we're gonna help we can all have the beer is the gym gonna buy a semi so we can pull that too would

that be so it's not a bad idea we could use brandon's pickup yeah that's got stacks on it that would almost do it that would almost do it um one of the things we didn't have off air or we had off air i think last week was we were talking with nick about uh about lifting in his garage by himself all the time. And we had mentioned to him like, you know, you ever have to bail on a lift that, you know, when you're in here by yourself and in all those years of training in his garage, he said, yeah, I, uh, had, I did miss a front squat once. I think you said got away from me or something, which I don't know if that means he couldn't

lift it or just this grip got weird and it fell. Now, I could be wrong. Maybe we misinterpreted, but it sounded to me like he had legitimately missed one lift in over a decade. That's kind of how I took it. I've missed that many lifts today. But when you got skills.

And he hasn't even gone to the gym yet no no he's doing yard work and such we've got um what else did we have for down there strongman stuff we had uh we've been i've been looking into the fucking like the stone of steel which is oh yeah and then they also have the the well how how much was the stone? Do you remember? I don't know. They're like $800 or $900 or something like that. Which is unreasonably expensive considering what you can buy concrete for. I suppose if you have a gym and you're going to be like, we're going to have stones,

you might as well spend $800 on one and then have it around and that's the only thing you have. Yeah. So are those plate loaded then? Yeah. I wonder how that works. spend 800 bucks on one and then have it around and that's the only thing you have yeah so are those plate loaded then as well so i wonder how that works so what what what there is in there and this is my understanding of is there's like uh they load up and then there's there's a spacer so there's spacers so you keep the weight centered but i still am not sure you know the the shape of the plates you know so you can keep the weight in center, so you put your space in, so you're not all loaded to one side or another. But I'm still not certain if you had like 35s in there.

Yeah, they're tilted. You know what I mean? Like there would be one side that would be wonky. So I'm sure they've probably covered it. I mean, if we did a cursory internet search, we'd know. But we're not going to do that. We're going to say it's a bad idea. Just keep wondering forever.

Until they send us one to try. God, what else was new, guys? Something we talked about, IPF Worlds was, or I mean, USAPL Nationals was last week. And I went through and looked at all you know all the placing how everyone did what i first i looked for anyone from south dakota that might may have placed and i checked out minnesota and just seeing if i noticed anyone local but then i was looking at uh the masters uh what what took some of those weight classes and i came to the determination that

we've got a couple uh 40 plus-year-old guys at the gym. That are national competitors? Yeah, that should be probably competing at nationals next year so they can go try and bring home some hardware. Did you corner Larry on that one yet? Yep, we've cornered Larry and Nick, and Nick is basically going to do it for sure. Nationals are in. and Nick and Nick is uh basically going to do it for sure nationals are in is as long as he is able to compete that you know in March you know barring injury or something like that as

he does okay then he'll plan on competing in nationals in Orlando for 2017 and at the rate he's going I don't even know how much he'll put on his total between now and then right so he and he'll he'll lift in the uh he's going to try to lift in the 205 class which is a little lighter than he was last year but he thinks you know if he stays a certain maintains a certain level of strength even while cutting you know he sees that he can probably do pretty well in that weight class yeah and that would be the same weight class that larry would probably compete at if he was going to try to do nationals also so we could have you know number one and number two in the 205 masters the potential is there yeah the potential is definitely there yeah like they both I mean Larry has totaled well over

what uh 1400 yeah what if I think 1431 that this year at nationals and larry has totaled over that several times so it would be pretty cool that'd be really cool yeah so i i don't want uh i'm i'm not gonna let them go off easy on that i'm gonna keep pushing for them to do that yeah yeah inspire them yeah like the parent that they don't have to inspire them like the parent that they don't have to inspire them. Or more like the parent that like forces them to do something. No, you're going to play soccer. You have to. Speaking of world-class competitors, today while the Vikings were losing

and I was getting very upset, I spent a little time on Instagram and scrolling through the Discover page, I came across just a guy that looked pretty jacked, so I clicked on it and it was Zydrunas Savickas. Have you guys seen him recently? I did. He's like, doesn't even look like the guy

from World's Strongest Man anymore. He looks like a built guy that could kill you. He looks in insanely good shape. I don't understand what he's doing. Is he still a World's Strongest Man competitor? He didn't this year because of injury, so he didn't compete. He has competed some other strongmen.

He did not compete at World's Strongest Man because he's recovering from injury. But I do not think there's any way that he's going to be able to be competitive at that level when i saw his weight that he's at now i saw him in his current shape he's in i just assumed he was done yeah because he has to be like 100 pounds lighter yeah like probably 100 pounds i would say i've i don't and in what time frame is this that we're talking like less than a year well because he he competed last year at world's Strongest Man, which was 2015, and he was huge then. Well, he was huge last year in March. Yeah. So we're talking like seven months.

Yeah, less than a year. Six, seven, eight months ago, he was massive still. I'd say maybe like 400 to 300 probably. And he could have been down a little bit at the time because when you're like, what did you probably weigh? Close to 400 or 375? Yeah, maybe he was quite probably. When Maybe he was 75 and he was 25 pounds. I don't think anyone really even notices. Right.

But, yeah, he looks good right now. Yeah, he does. He does. But, yeah, I'm not sure what his plan is for competing going forward. I mean, no doubt he's still stronger than 99.9 percent of people everywhere but yeah if you if you if you follow savickas underscore biggs with a z big c uh that's fucking crazy how how much leaner he is yeah like he looks like he could be i mean his power lifting records his the thing is his arms are just as big yeah yeah legitimately they're just as big but like his his torso is like his waist is probably a third of the size of what it was

he kind of looks creepy to me in that picture because i've watched you know every year he's competed in world's strongest man and his face like has not that he's not that he's slender there but it just looks a lot slimmer so So it almost looks a little bit like a different person. So it's kind of weird. It looks a lot like a different person. Yeah, if it wasn't. Well, that was a good thing, too. Someone sent it.

When I saw it the first time, I was like, well, I don't understand why this is relevant. Because these are not the same people. Yeah. Like, did the guy on the right challenge the guy that left to a fight? Apparently, he's selling a diet now. And you can order direct from him with supplements and such. It just seems like when you're... And it only costs 200 euros.

Which I'm just going to assume is a lot of money. I don't... Yeah. It's like $8,000 American. Yeah, I guess more power to him. I don't know yeah it's like eight thousand dollars american yeah i guess more power to him i don't know why unless he's gonna try to scale back his competing or compete in something else or he just wanted to live past the age of like 45 which could be another reason would be desirable but i i feel like he still i mean i've never heard him say anything about him not wanting to still compete at that level.

And, you know, it's not like he could still, you know, he, he's one world's strongest man very recently. You know, there's,

he'd still be top two or three or four competitor, you know, without a doubt. So, uh, I hope he's not done competing. Just shows shows up again bulked all the way up again like well just just to show he can do it he's been posting a lot of pictures to instagram in the gym i get the feeling he really likes this uh like looking pretty jacked thing that he's got going on now yeah there's a lot of just like that one which he wasn't he wasn't like

a big selfie guy before no that's yeah i don't know like props to him what they want it looks weird though it does he's still fucking enormous oh yeah jesus i mean i think he's i would guess he probably could still compete at world's Strongest Man at this weight, but I just probably don't think he could compete with Brian Shaw, Half Thor, and Eddie Hall, who are all really close to 400 pounds. You wouldn't think. I think there's a reason you have to be 400 pounds right now to be at the top, highest level. Yeah.

It would make sense. I'm sure his supplements are just really good. His supplement game is on point. Yeah. More power to him. That's crazy. Um, yeah,

I'm glad you brought that up. Cause that snuck across my feed. Like, and I was, I was, I was convinced it was fake. Yeah. I kind of thought it was too.

And then I had to like go through his page and check out the rest and either he's playing the really long game on a crazy prank or it is real i had uh at the god i don't even know what the damn uh what the meat was but we had uh cj cummings who we talked about in the past clean and jerked 401 pounds uh at 69 kilo body weight which is pretty impressive fucking disgusting that's crazy i think he also he also he also that's gonna be like close to world record stuff for his age it is no it was his record yeah it was his record um that he he set that record earlier and then broke it. And then I think he broke it twice that night, actually. But yeah, he pretty much crushed everybody.

Somebody had posted on Instagram right away what he got in the clean and jerk. And somebody underneath commented, like, what did he snatch? What was his total? And how far was second and they all the guy responded was second place was about 400 kilos behind him it wasn't even fucking close right yep he's a force so he because he didn't get to compete in the olympics this past year did he no no i don't know what the story how far out he is from being able to do that, to be honest. I'm not super plugged into how all of that works. You would think, though, by the time four years goes by,

he's at least 16 right now, isn't he? Yeah, I think he's 16. At that point, he's 20. He should be a pretty major competitor on the world stage at that point. That's one of the things I've heard is they said that America kind of shits the bed on Olympic weightlifting just as a whole. We're not as competitive as a lot of other countries that's why we barely get any people even that are able to

compete um and but they said like our youth our youth lifters right now are fucking really really ahead of the game and actually now i kind of wish i knew what the numbers were but they keep they keep like retesting samples from the olympics four and eight years ago now and they just keep snaking metals away from people over and over again and i don't remember what the total was but i swear it's like three quarters of the fucking metals have changed hands already yeah um so maybe we are just 20 from this olympics no from the lat they haven't even retested this one. So just from 2012 and 2008, um,

most of those metals just are not with their original owners. Yeah. Uh, that's, I think it was Louie Simmons maybe that was talking about it, that, uh, he thinks that Olympic weightlifting,

uh, because of CrossFit now, not because of any of the people doing CrossFit right now will get better, but because of the children of the people that are doing CrossFit right now. Not just CrossFit, but the Olympic lifting because of CrossFit, the growing popularization. His theory was that within within 20 years usa should probably and will probably be a lot stronger force than they are now because

of the influence of you know the crossfit parents right now some of the east i think it was some eastern european coach weightlifting coach was saying too he's like i don't understand why you know you americans don't don't know why you're not good. They basically have state-sponsored drug systems to dodge the tests, and the state is basically helping them do it. And here in the United States, we tell on each other the whole time. So we spend four years tattling on each other, testing everybody. And these other countries are just going fucking nuts with it, getting huge, getting strong,

and then just finding a way to skirt the tests. And that's pretty much the difference between the two. And the other thing, so in these European countries, if you're a good athlete, what sports can you play professionally? They probably have basketball and soccer. If you're, I is that is that yeah can you make a living doing anything else i know i know european europe has a basketball league that yeah is somewhat solid but you're definitely not either going to be a basketball player though or well i get that but here when you consider all the even at the collegiate level the thousands of athletes playing football the thousands i mean there's probably at least a thousand guys in the nfl and when you consider it a lot of those are like the real freaks of freaks

like i mean a lot of people just aren't going to be into that in general too right i think it's the same thing with powerlifting though like we were talking about the gym the other day is like why are all these powerlifting records being smashed all the time well is it just because like are people just made stronger now or is it because there's just that many more people in the sport all of a sudden yeah i think it's the bigger pool has have to has to have more of an effect than anything the bigger pool of people would be you know i i that's what i kind of feel like with some of it is too though you know you just have that many more people exposed to it yeah there's people doing it now that if they were around 50 40 years ago 30 years ago 20 years ago maybe they would have not been powerlifting and

even 20 years ago if you were powerlifting i mean you i think you just kind of were in your dark hole in the gym and you didn't hang and now everyone's like throwing it out on instagram and everything and it's you know at least like socially people look forward to it you know you still can't make a living doing it but it's a lot more popular in that way like people can follow it and do do all of that with it so maybe the same thing with weightlifting too but even weightlifting though like around here that's another obstacle is um not that there's any like expert powerlifting coaches around here but from a technical standpoint i'd make the argument powerlifting is less technically you know it's

less it's less technically less technical skills needed for powerlifting than at least yeah the barrier to entry is a lot and yeah it's so you're you know joe schmo wherever you want to learn how to clean and you know a do solid cleaning jerks or have a good snatch. Like, really your only option is to go to a CrossFit gym and hope that the coaches there are solid because who has someone that can teach that stuff at any type of high level? Yeah, it's interesting too. We had this article about just what some NFL athletes, kind of what their totals were, a little bit of speculation on some gym lifts and stuff that we'd seen.

And around here, the elite athlete, that's what they go for. You know what I mean? There is a shit ton of strength with these guys, but they're not going to be like, well, I am transcendently strong, so maybe I should power lift and i can maybe get some free supplements i was even talking to tanner and no chicks or i could go try to go to the nfl yeah but even even like people i think a lot of people if you read like pure athleticism

they say that some people say that the best athletes are basketball players just because of being able to run like the hand-eye coordination running jumping movement you know the nfl is so specialized where some guys your position you're never running more than five yards at a time like it's super specialized so people say that but just to go back to show how that carries over like two of the probably top four strongest men in the world right now are former kind of higher level basketball players being ryan shaw and and half thor half thor yeah like if 10 years ago someone said yep uh two of the top four strongest men in the world will be uh these basketball players they'll be like biggest moron they don't even know how to lift away and like people would go on and on about it but it's it's just goes to show that you know people have this skill kind of built in them and they're gonna

certain people are just kind of champions whether right it's in whatever sport it's in they're gonna figure out a way to be and that's good that was kind of a little bit what was behind that you know talking about the NFL players too it's just like you know they're they're not championship powerlifters they don't aren't trying to be but they just have this potential that you know if that was something that they were interested in just imagine what they could do. Yeah. Yeah. James Harrison's the one that comes to mind too.

He's one that I see on Instagram all the time. That dude is just terrifying. Yeah. He's, he's really intense with his lifting too. You know, he's fun to watch. Yeah.

He's, uh, he's, he's all about that sweatsuit. I was going to say in the solid gray sweats i suppose like uh when you're a pittsburgh stealer or any nfl player when you're at the training facility do you just throw your sweats and like their laundry and they take care of it or do you take that home and put it in your washing machine at home i don't think you have

i don't think you do that stuff for yourself yeah like you got to have people or a team that's just yeah wouldn't that be sweet i think they're probably almost disposable really at that point like they probably wash them and donate them somewhere i'd sell them well i was gonna say weird old fans more money like four times what that's worth for someone for his sweaty old gray he probably gets He probably gets DMs on that video, guys asking for those sweaty sweatpants. Now, in regard to this NFL article we had, which you can find it on massonomics.com, we have at the very bottom Eli Manning,

who we had a little bit of controversy. Eli, he had a claimed bench press of 315, and we had some people that were legitimately like, no fucking way he benches 315. I think people were butthurt about it. Yeah. But the deal is Eli Manning is also 6'4", 220, and I'm assuming he's been a foot,

like his dad was a football player. He's been a football guy probably since he was a child yeah probably 20 20 30 years so i'm sure it like like if if a person is 6'4 220 and walks around a weight room for 20 years i think you can probably bench 315 like that's actually like for of some of the things that some people disputed and there was some talk about oh this wasn't a depth and we get it but they're not going for fucking white lights i don't have no argument there but you know it's more just like what it what's just yeah yeah like how i just yeah 64220 now being able to bench three like being able to bench 315 isn't really an impressive

lift at that size even like that's why it's not so unbelievable yeah so i maybe that was just one guy who was off base but um there's but there's a punter on here who was legitimately just stronger than me yeah steve weatherford and he is real jacked on our fucking deals not on oh we got a bad link but uh squats 475 benches 400 and deadlifts 550 as a punter. That's ridiculous. Some of that. It is gym lifting. Maybe not your power lifting numbers, but still.

But is it done with punting standards or power lifting standards? Yeah, that's true. That is a good point. I think punters do have a really high standard. Yeah, that's true. That is a good point. Punters do have a really high standard. But he's a big fitness guy.

Like, all his postings, all fitness stuff. And he is actually not in the NFL right now. I don't know if he's retired or just didn't get signed. But he's probably had a bigger contract in powerlifting and had to leave the NFL. Yep, I think that was it. It makes sense. But, yeah, dude is fucking jack though it is ridiculous so i'm getting out lifted by a 210 pound punter which sucks so and then to tie that back you know let's say steve decides you know i'm whether he's

retired now or whatever i just want to pick up a lift olympic lifting as a hobby and he gets a coach he could probably be throwing up some pretty impressive numbers in a very short period of time yeah yeah i don't doubt that for a second yeah i would agree with that for sure we've got uh god who else did we have on here that was you know the only one that really did some much olympic lifting that was was connor mcgovern who i had followed he's a denver bronco um but yeah his numbers were big i mean 785 squat 500 bench 655 deadlift he's a big boy at 305 and the same way with him some people critiqued his squat to me you know they made comments about that and i'm not arguing that and i also don't care like it uh but he's strong as shit is the point yeah and could even if he wouldn't wanted

to power lift and didn't want to make whatever he's making you know he was i think he was like a a second round draft pick or something so he's why does he give a shit yeah exactly and actually i i messaged back and forth with him a little bit and i was kind of curious how much he thought his number his gym strength goes down during the season you know during the nfl season and he said it's off the charts how much weaker he gets during the season i bet because he said his priority is sund. Like he can't go hit a heavy squat session on Wednesday. He's like, he's getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to be ready to play football on Sunday. You know, like he's not, he's not doing what we're doing. Like just,

you know, like he has to think completely differently. Uh, you know, the strength training is just a tool to be able to help him be a better football player yeah and i suppose like the amount of you know and then you get all fucked up on sunday yeah you probably spend two or three days he said he said in season is basically like you just try to lose as little as you possibly you know mitigate your losses as much as you can which is you really can't do that even but i always think it's interesting how like with the back to the basketball thing how like nba players do it i don't even know how i mean these guys aren't weak some of them are fairly sizable you know like a guy like dwight howard looks like he's built like yeah like volkswagens for shoulders yeah but like they play fucking like 81 games or 82 games a year right like yeah

and that you're playing like every other night forever yeah and if you're a playoff team you're playing 100 and yeah it's like a nine month season other stupid amount of games yeah so you're like every night you go out and it's but but it's basically just cardio for fucking ever. Right. You know, two hours of running and jumping. Do they go and lift? I suppose their lifting is a lot different than, you know, what the rest of us would consider lifting. It almost seems like it would be like mobility. Yeah, I bet they do. Get the kinks worked out.

Right. A lot of things with bands, I picture. Something about their combine. They have, you know, like the the NFL combine the NBA has a combine but their bench pressing is 185 instead of 225 like in the NFL and I do know that when Kevin Durant came into the league he could not bench press 185 pounds I remember that I thought people were saying like he couldn't probably couldn't even do 135 right and I mean he has he's has a seven foot wingspan. Yeah.

He's, like, the skinniest man that you would ever see. So it's not surprising. Yeah. But it also seems terrible to me that, like, to not be able to. The range of motion on his bench is probably, like, farther than a lot of people's, like, deadlift moves. Like. It would be crazy to see him bench. Yeah.

Well, I think his wingspan, see, he's. Yeah. He's, like, 6'10 or 6'11. He's about 6'11, but I think his wingspan is, like,'s yeah that's like 6 10 or 6 11 he's about 6 11 but i think his wingspan is like seven foot six and that's all those guys are yeah they have like an extra six inches on each arm that doesn't make any sense either right yeah so he'd be pulling it like he'd be doing fucking rack pulls that's but i i still think he should be able to bench press 185 pounds i would think you know what about okay what is this career has suffered considerably not even not related to basketball but just like as being a man a man what what numbers do you think at a minimum to be like a man in the world under the age of 48 say yeah are you talking someone

that does actually lift or just like you should yeah a lot of right like missions here yeah because then you're gonna get the guys because there's a lot of guys out there you know i'm the smallest one in this room and i'm 6 1 2 15 and that's fairly large by average standards even like there's a lot of guys out there that are 5'8 and 140 pounds i would think any man that's over the age of 20 years old and that does anything ever should they're like they're like moses oh yeah yeah yeah that isn't like you've restricted to a wheelchair you know like they should be able to bench 185 pounds and like if you can't you should like you should probably do it could do some things you know just like that's gotta be just better for you moderate training you should be

able to get there relatively fast assuming you're in good health and even that's even a for for any body weight person you should probably be able to you know bench 185 pounds i would sure think what about uh what about squat you should be. I think the biggest thing would be. Make sure you're correct on these because you can never go back on this. Yeah, now that it's out there, we can never. We're just going to get blasted at this forever. No, we don't get criticized on what we say on audio. So only what goes into.

It's because nobody listens or watches. But you post an article that, you know, 100,000 people see and everybody comes out of the woodwork. I think the biggest thing would be being able to perform a squat you know because like anyone can lay down and should be able to press a bar off of their chest you know with any kind of poor technique but squatting like to be able to literally break i think you should be able to put one plate on each side 135 and just be able to get to parallel. And that's probably more mobility issues than strength for a lot of people.

But that's probably almost more important. Yeah, for sure. Because if you have the mobility, you can build the strength. But you see it. There are tons of guys, though, when you go to any gym, they just load up the leg press machine and can do that all day and can't do one-tenth of it on a squat because they can't even move their body that way. Since we're on video, I can't show this without outing us,

but I have seen some videos of some training, and I won't say anything about it specifically, but where these people have dozens of plates on the fucking leg press machine and are doing not, just like not even, not even quarter reps. No, like, like a calf raise with it would have more motion.

Yeah. But just like, just like the lock out of the knee. Yeah. And not, it's just like the buckling of the knee, like a bad, uh,

over hyper extension, like just on the brink of ending up on fucking YouTube for the rest of your life. But I remember seeing it like, you know, back when we'd lift at that, you know, a commercial gym is you'd see guys that would, you know, throw on 10 plus plates on the leg press. And then it's like, that was their leg day. So when they were done with that, it was time to squat and they'd throw 185 and they'd have to get like their belt out. And it'd be like this big, huge, it was like, it was max effort day at 185 and they'd have to get like their belt out and it'd be like this big, huge,

it was like it was max effort day at 185 on squat because they just can't even get their body into that position or even have a back strong enough to even support it. That's why I think just with one plate, just 135, if you're able to perform a decent looking squat, that's, that's pretty, you know, that's any, any average Joe walking around. If you can do that that then you can probably feel all right about yourself i think now what if you're a let's say six foot six roughly 300 pound male in his lower 30s with like a beard with a beard that he just shaved and a podcast studio

in his basement what should he lift minimal of 500 no excuses i think about that a lot where i'm like well what i mean that's not even double body weight what's to be when i start comparing what other people do with body weight i'm like like even at my body weight i'm like god fucking damn it i just want to quit but i think like at at, at my body weight, if you're, if I'm training, like the numbers that I have in my head are like, well, I should definitely be able to maintain a bench between three 50 and three 75. I think that's reasonable if I train, you know, and then, you know, I think I should be able to squat pert near four75 to 500 is a target that i think if you're a 300 pounds strong person and you don't squat 500 pounds you're not strong for 300 body lifting and and deadlifts

about the same i think about five yeah yeah that that all makes sense to me. And, you know, if your primary, what you do is CrossFit. Then I'm just going to be weak as fuck. No, no. No, I just, I was going to say that that's only going to help. Yeah. Like if you're, if your strength, if you're taking your strength from 400 to 500 on a deadlift or a squat, that's, I would think that that's only going to make things easier. Yeah. And it's not like I'm going to pack on 40 pounds of body weight to do that.

No, keeping a similar body composition that you have now, just getting, I mean, that's obvious to even say. I think that's the way it is for pretty much everybody. If you're not trying to sacrifice body composition, if you're just stronger in a year, you're probably better off for having done it. And not even just for the strength things. Even some of the more cardiovascular or metcon type stuff isn't it wouldn't even be helpful there if oh yeah we

just actually had a deal yesterday where we were on the fucking assault bikes and you're basically just doing dead out sprints for calories well me i can put a lot more power into the fucking arms and legs of the thing than somebody who's lighter than me and so i was literally doing the same amount of of work in less than half sometimes a third of the time and we had talked about this with with big joe on the uh the strongman competition where he's 100 pounds heavier than i am but he's just so much stronger that like even though i probably do way more cardio than he does every week like flipping that fucking tire just you know just clear clean house on all of us on it because it just wasn't as heavy to him right you know and um so it's not that he was killing his cardio workouts like prior to this it's just that he was stronger he was he was strong

enough so it didn't take a hundred percent of it yeah um it took 100 of me but that was the same deal on the bikes you know yesterday it was where like i was able it sucked those things always suck but like you know you can just well yeah joe didn't get done with that tire and be like yeah it was easy you know it still sucked for him yeah and if it had to go any longer he would have been in some trouble right but um but yeah that's kind of the deal too is like if as long as you don't have to fuck up by getting far yeah yeah and if it had to go any longer he would have been in some trouble right but um but yeah that's kind of the deal too is like if as long as you don't have to fuck up by getting getting any bigger um you i'd be better off i just got stronger than this punter for sure punt sanity uh as long as we're talking about body weight and stuff like that uh and also that i us apl nationals

that just went on something that i had looked into quite a bit uh this week was the wilks formula and wilks score and which i had never paid attention to that much before and i i always i didn't really i thought i didn't like it but i also didn't really know what it was and um what i still don't like is using body weight times as a reference. And that's what I can't remember who I was talking. I was talking to somebody about this is people always like to use the measuring tool that makes their lifts look the most impressive. So when you're under 200 pounds, people love to use the times whatever body weight. whatever body weight, which I mean, if you're, if you're one 50, a two times body weight bench press is 300. That's a fairly good bench press for that size. But in the scheme of things,

a 300 bench press, isn't that impressive? If you're two 15, you have a two times body weight bench press of 500. That's really impressive. So the times body weight thing is what smaller people like to use the, you know, bigger guys like to just use max strength just absolute strength i just want a total number yeah that's it yeah and people will always just use that but yeah the wilks is kind of it is fair it is i my opinion is what it does is uh you know there's a coefficient for any you take any body weight and there's a coefficient for that um and there's an the actual formula is uh 500 by, and then there's five different coefficients that you have to multiply times your weight. And it is complicated, but when

it, you know, there's a lot of things you can just plug that number into, but what it actually does is it can, regardless of how much you weigh, it converts your total to a score. To a score that's relative to what you would do if you weighed 51 kilograms. Oh, really? It brings everyone to a relative score of if you weighed 51 kilograms. That's what... I wonder how they come up with that number.

I don't know if that was like the lightest weight class at the time. It's like. Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah. I suppose you wouldn't want to have something that's heavier than the lightest person. IPF, USAPL uses the Wilkes formula, and some other feds use different formulas. And there are some out there that convert everyone to a very heavy weight.

But all the differences that is, is you're looking at a big number there versus a little number here. So that doesn't make any difference. But it really is fair though. Because I know Tyler pulled one up here and I had actually, this is funny we were talking about it because earlier in the week,

I had actually hopped on and got on the same website. So for variables you can put into it, gender, body weight weight obviously weight lifted is always going to be there but do more sophisticated ones take into account age is that one or is that not a thing in there there might be but i the wilks formula itself does not take into account age okay but possibly there is some uh something else that they add into the equation. So if you want to compare a master. So it really is just comparing body weight and weight lifted.

That's the only inputs you need. Yeah, because the reason you need gender is because the entire formula itself is different if you're a female. Which makes sense too. So my Wilkes score is 320. This is only out gym lifts, obviously. Tanner, what's your body weight uh 270 and my best competition is 1620 i think it's like 420 yeah 420 shit son tommy what's your body weight uh 215 and gym lifts right now i'd be at like 1400 our 1350 actually probably is more accurate

what are you gonna hit 1400 1600 sky's the limit all right we'll put you at 1350 just not just for now you're gonna we'll know in march right yeah 376 try 1400 and see how much that bumps it up yeah what happens if tommy gets his shit together 390 so that's a pretty big um and ray williams he did uh he had that awesome squat that went viral and everything and his wilks was 545 something like that as a fucking truck yeah and he is at 400 pounds and he he i'm he has had the highest that I saw. I didn't actually go through it. I think isn't that one of the highest Wilks of all time?

Yeah, I would think so. Yeah, one of the highest Wilks. But I thought it was really interesting. He weighs 400 pounds, so he's fucking huge. But he still out-Wilksed, scored like John Hack, all those other guys that did awesome at a lighter body weight. So that kind of brings up the other question we had though we were talking about it is like was the wilks i don't even know how long this formula has been around like was it designed with the scalability for 400 pound guys

squatting 1 000 pounds and doing this like that that's actually a point where like formulas kind of fall apart that's actually why i started when we talked about that and i was like that is a good question i wonder if it is just screwed with with him because he's huge and his numbers are huge and i i think the way the formula is set up a little bit, uh, more advantageous towards a heavier lifter. Oh, really? The way the actual formula is from what I saw, it's pretty relative to most of the, you know, and it's pretty relative to the other formulas that are out there. And I can't remember the names of those. There's been a, like a Olympic weightlifting uses something different they use something that's

it has the same goal in mind yeah but it's not the will because it's something i don't remember the name yeah i just i actually just listened to it on a podcast today but yeah but yeah so some people think that the formula itself is just slightly skewed in favor of a heavier lifter yeah but i don't know. From what I, it just, it seems, it makes sense to me. And what's the other one that you see in powerlifting? It's Wilkes and I feel like it's like a guy's name or something. Yeah, there's Wilkes and there's a Watts.

Watts, yeah. And Sinclair is a, I think Sinclair is the. Sinclair is the Olympic lifting one. And the Watts one also makes sense to me too and i don't think you'll find like relatively a huge difference but you know if you ran how everyone did via wilk score and then ran everyone how they did via watts like i don't think it would be in it you know there probably would be some changes yeah and how people finish but i think it would be relatively similar yeah this is getting into

like that territory of like really kind of obscure things that very few people yeah no no exist let alone understand in any way well we have a lot of people that power left but none of us even care about wilk scoring you know but it's a better it's a better gauge of probably absolute strength whereas okay if i look back a year ago and, all right, I've gained 20 pounds and I've put 20 pounds in my total. Well, my Wilkes has gone down if that's the case. Yeah, it's a gauge to be able to check that. Yeah, especially when your body's gaining weight and you're gaining strength. Am I actually gaining as much strength relative to my body as I think I am?

Right. And then if I weigh 270 pounds, if someone out there that weighs 110 pounds like i deadlifted three times my body weight like you can't do that like you're not very strong like yeah then i you know i or like a hundred pound girl shows up in the gym that you know for a girl's lifting a lot of weight but we're like yeah i mean that's 370 pound deadlift, whatever. Well, then you can do like, well, actually, according to Wilkes, she would be top level in the world.

And you can also look at the Wilkes on a lift by lift basis. It's just, it's the same thing. You just, instead of using a 1500 total, you use a 300, you know, and it's gonna,

it's gonna, it's gonna take your number down to, uh, a relative. If you were weighed 51 kilograms, what your bench would be or what your deadlift would be. Which then kind of also brings into, I think another thing that's pretty interesting is whether you want to call it like benchmarking or just like categorizing or rating your lifts

and how they compare it with, you know, looking at like, I don't even know what they call it, like standards, like strength standards or something of, you're elite or whatever all the classifications are. Which I think is kind of interesting to see if you need confirmation or if you need something to tell you where your shitty lifts are. Or you could see, maybe you'd be surprised that, I feel like, just for an example, someone might feel like they have a decent bench and deadlift. And then they go into that and see, well, I have a decent bench and deadlift. But according to this, your squat's really good because you're higher on the chart there. So it is another interesting way, I guess, to look at what you excel in.

And I think when you're comparing yourself against yourself, any and all of the tools, times body weight, when you're comparing your current self against your past self or your future self, that's all good information. But I just think some are better than others if you're going to compare you versus someone that's not similar to you. Because it is, I mean, it's not even a light comparison at that point. Right, right, exactly. Obviously, if someone's lighter than you and they're lifting more, it's a more impressive lift. Ray Williams' 1,000-pound squat is 2. what times body weight? Two and a half times body weight. And I hit like a 500-pound, almost 500-pound squat in the gym.

That's a two and a half times body weight. Yeah, a higher. You beat him in that. But most people would argue that his squat was one of the most impressive squats ever. And it absolutely yeah yeah well guys that's about that on wilts formula that's well at least we got at least we got to talking about something we meandered through this fucking thing for the first half hour um at the very least you can at least size yourself up to someone accurately now right

yep yep for sure but does it factor in tallness, though? It doesn't. Which, you know, is a whole other thing. That is another thing. That's killing me. That's an excuse I like to use quite often. As a former tall, really kind of skinny guy, you know, I'd make the argument that all the lifts are significantly,

well, I guess I can't go that far now because deadlift, you could say you have longer arms, but some people are tall and don't have long arms either, though. Yeah, we had, we were talking talking when were we talking about this but that you know some guys it just depends on where they uh where they stand up with the bar you know for me if it's on your for me i'm tall but it's on my dick if i stand up so your arms aren't long relative my not at my knees you know well that's a whole another

but some of our guys you know we had the strongman competition and some of the guys that are exceptional deadlifters i mean just above the knee yeah that's about where that's a really good really general thing if you stand when you're standing there just standing with a barbell if it's close to your knees you probably have some potential to deadlift a lot of weight and if it's on your wiener if you're doesn't hang to your knees you're at a bit of a disadvantage but if that's the case you should be able to turn around and say hey maybe i can bench press yeah yeah that's the turn that's the turnaround that's backing that up a step this we're just talking about like comparing things and making them to like your liking.

It reminds me of, there was a South Park, just because people will skew numbers however they want to their liking. There was a South Park episode where all the guys are trying to figure out what's an average dick size. And it comes to some point, I think the agreement is three inches or something. And then to give a a presentation because of course stan's dad randy like randy has to come into like the fifth grade classroom and give the formula on how you find your dick size and it's the best part is it involves like the yaw of the show

times the yaw it's like it's so funny yeah that is a good one i don't remember who the comedian was but he had a bit where he said he always he always takes his measurements from from the anus to wraps it twice around the balls to just be on the tip just beyond so well we got a little r-rated there at the end finally we were mostly pg the whole episode so we had talking about numbers if this is if this is the first if this video is the first massonomics podcast you're seeing it's more like the last 30 seconds than it was the first the first 10 minutes like on the this is female powerlifting when you interviewed those girls they didn't they were upset that they didn't cuss enough. So the last 30 seconds is them just.

Well, I think they were so worried that they couldn't cuss. I had to, I was like, you totally can. And we got through the whole episode. I was like, you guys hadn't, you didn't swear near as much as I expected. And they made up for it. So will we have any issues with our sponsorships though? If we, like we swear too much, you. Will any of them pull any of their money? I think it's a concern.

We may be concerned. I mean, Nike, if you're upset with us, just let us know. Put a stop payment on our last check, and we'll clean this up before we put it out there. This podcast brought to you by Nike. I think that'll do it for today, guys. Do you have anything else we've got to run down? Nope. That's a big no.

I don't think so. Make sure you go to massanomics.com. All our articles are there. The rest of the podcast episodes are there as well. You can scroll to the bottom, sign up for our email newsletter. Follow us all on Instagram. Make sure you like our Facebook page.

What else are we following? YouTube. Subscribe to the channel. I'm Tyler Stone. You can find me at Tyler F. N. Stone. That's Tyler E-F-F-I-N Stone on Instagram. Tommy? You can find me at Tomahawk underscore D. And Tanner? Check me out at massonomics. And I get a lot of the other guys from the gym in on there.

So you can check them out too. Yeah. Some big PRS. Yeah. You can PRS every day. You can see what Shane's biceps are all about. So thanks a lot for listening and watching. And we will talk to you next week.

Stay strong. See ya. You just heard the mass in our mix podcast with your ears you're welcome check us out on Facebook find us on Instagram at mass in our mix and make sure you visit mass in our mix calm and buy some of that sweet mass in ourics gear. From your friends at Masinamics Studio, home of the world's strongest podcast, stay strong.