Massenomics Podcast - Massenomics Podcast Episode 1 - The Gym

Episode Date: April 20, 2016

Massenomics Studio - Where the magic happens. In our first episode we introduce you to the world of The Massenomics Gym. We talk about how the Capital of Strength came into existence, and let you in on all the exciting new things going on in the world of Massenomics. Tune in. Tell a friend. And stay strong.

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. and buy yourself some of that sweet Massanomics gear. Okay, we're live here on the Massanomics podcast, episode one.

Today we're going to bring you up to speed on things that are going on with the gym, the website, all sorts of new stuff. You're here with me, Tyler. Next to me is Tanner. Hi, Mom. And across from me is Tommy. Say hi. What up? All right. So we got some

big stuff going on in the world of massonomics. Uh, website should be live by the time you're hearing this, go check us out at massonomics.com. As you heard on the intro, um, there you can buy all sorts of sweet merchandise, get yourself some of that massonomomics gear. We got some big things going on here. The Massanomics gym has outgrown its current facilities and we're moving to somewhere much larger and we're all kind of pretty excited about that. So that's going to be the subject of our first episode ever, episode one. Tanner here is kind of the fearless leader in the Massanomics gym department, so we're going to kind of turn it over to him here. I'm going to ask, I'm going to kind of interview our own co-host on this. So Tanner, tell us a little bit about just how the gym came to fruition at least.

Yep, the gym, the humble beginnings of the gym, you know, got started, where I myself, along with a lot of other people that lift in larger commercial gyms, you know, have that thought where they wish, I really wish we had our own place to train, you know, somewhere we could kind of do what we wanted to have the equipment we want to have, listen to the music we want to listen to, you know, just create an overall environment and be around people that take it seriously or at least have some common goals. Yeah, like-minded individuals.

I had always thought that and I'd heard a lot of other people do it and eventually I was like, well, shit. It cannot be that hard. We have to be able to pool some sort of resources together and I don't think it's going to cost that much. And, uh, you know, put ourself on the line so little that even if something doesn't work out, like no big whoop, like we go back and lift where we used to lift and we're not any

worse off than we were before at least. Um, so that was the thought. And then, yeah, eventually we, we did just say, screw it. And, uh, I had to find a place, you, eventually we, we did just say, screw it. And, uh, I had to find a place, you know, we knew we wanted to do it and I felt like I had enough guys and I had to get enough guys committed at least with like a strong verbal commitment. So, uh, to make sure that we could do it. So that didn't take very long. I felt like I had enough, you know, about 10 guys that were all about it. And, you know, I knew that they'd have my back with everything.

Was there ever, I guess, going from, you know, I think that's something a lot of people talk about is wanting to have a gym. Was there ever like one main event or anything that really turned into the turning point or just thought, you know, this, this, it can be better than this? Or is it just after enough time, it just finally got to the point where yeah i i would say it was after enough time and then you just you realize well if i don't do it or if we don't do it then you know maybe nobody's going to and let's just do it you know so i think it was just time and um you know you just we've talked about this before too you get older and you kind of when you're not 21 and broken in college and you have the flexibility to be able to make some uh different choices that you wouldn't have been able to otherwise and uh you know that time came up here finally and we got started with it so then

we had to find a place to do it at uh which that was probably the biggest hurdle we had to figure out at the beginning and i was kind of looking around and we have an extremely limited budget obviously if you take about you know your average gym maybe has a few thousand members i don't know what what the numbers would be but uh and we're gonna have 10 so we don't we can't have a 10 000 square foot facility with asana and uh uh you know everything else that you might normally think of at least not yet yeah not yet yeah that's just for the first couple months wait the tanning beds yeah yeah yeah we don't have any tanning beds yet yet either but so then i was looking and uh i kind of want a local business owner he owns a larger older building i was in there getting my hair cut

and he uh you know rents to those, those tenants there. And he was there and I said, man, this is a huge building. And I, what's all in here? And he's like, oh, you want to take a look at the building? And I was like, yeah, let's, let's take a look. And I told him what, what we were after. And, uh, he thought it could be a good fit for him if we figured out a place in this building. And first we went upstairs and there's some large areas that would be really nice but uh you know i was like yeah this would be cool but it's probably not going to be feasible for us and i was like what's what's the basement like and he's like well there's

not much i mean yeah there's a basement there's not much in there it's old and pretty much unfinished and everything but we can go check it out and i was like yeah that sounds good let's the basement might be about right so we went in there and um you walk down it's dark really poorly lit and you go down creaky old wooden stairs and it's a it's a musty old building basement that's been there for about 100 150 years and that's really what it's like and we went down there for the first time and most people would probably think, oh man, this is terrible. You know, no way it's going to work. And I was like, this is it. You know, like this seems perfect. So it's literally a 400 square foot 20 by 20 room that we got enough equipment and started making the best out of it. Excellent. Excellent. And I suppose, you know know though there was all that space up on the up on the upper floors

really what what's going to happen you start slamming some weights exactly yeah that was my concern too that's not going to work yeah you you would have been the worst the worst tenants to be living underneath that's for sure yeah between the weights and the loud music and people kind of coming and going in and out hours it actually worked out pretty perfect the spot that we have it's yeah i guess the really the only neighbor we have is directly above us there's a pastry shop which has worked out fine i guess i haven't heard any complaints or anything so you can really do the you know donuts and deadlifts yes absolutely absolutely pretty pretty easy to do there so you know things have things have kind of grown.

What do you think has helped as far as with your, you know, it's not like you have 500 members now, but you've got a significant amount of interest and you've got quite a few people that are there already now training to where you've kind of decided you need a little bit bigger space, mainly, I suppose, just to facilitate, you know, the amount of people that want to come and train there currently, if anyone else wanted to come in, they just, it simply wouldn't work. So, um, but, but what do you think, what do you think led to, um, you know, led to that, to that growth? Yep. Um, I think the biggest thing that leads to more people being interested or are the biggest thing that we have in our favor is the general environment that we

create there. Uh, you know, it's, it's really a cool, fun place to come and train. If, if your goal, uh, if you have goals to either get stronger or get bigger or get better in some way, and the main way you want to do that through is lifting weights you know it's it's a cool place to do that at and that's the biggest thing that we've got going for us i guess and it really does feel like it's a gym that everyone is a part of you know you walk in that's we have photos of a good chunk of all the members on the walls like we've done i guess you guys have done a lot too you painted the whole place it's been you know we have flags hanging we have massonomics on the wall

the posters that we got some banners all that stuff and it's not unusual either to maybe come in you know we have the chalk pr board and to have someone write a stupid message maybe it's something you know an announcement but it is really just kind of a, almost a clubhouse of sorts where people can kind of almost do what they want there. And everyone's cool with it. It really, it really seemed like, you know, the first time I was there, it seemed like the vibe really was that it's, it's like an open source gym where everybody's got input. Everybody's just every, everybody's there to try to make everybody better. So, and I think that's a good vibe that what that does for really retention, which if you're trying to make money, retention is important.

But I think for retention is really important for the, you know, the people training at a gym, being able to keep them showing up and keep them training. That's what gets them the results. So that's pretty cool. So what about, you know know we talked about this a little bit you guys don't have any you know it's not like there's trainers there's no um really no no structured coaching or anything if if i walked in tomorrow and i said you know i just

i kind of just like to get stronger you know i'd like to be able to generally squat more, pull more, bench more. How would I accomplish that through your gym? Yeah, that's, like you said, we don't have any specific trainers or anything like that by any means at our gym. But we have had that exact thing happen. You know, we've got some people in there that hadn't lifted much previously. And they came in and through one connection or another, they heard about it and like i'd really like to get stronger you know and i think it's works out awesome for people like that i think people coming in beginning you'd be hard pressed to find a different place to go train where you can get that much quality instruction from that many different sources.

That's what we talk about. I think everyone at the gym would be the first to say they're still learning, learning more, lifting every day. But in the beginning of anything, you go through that beginner phase of just making stupid mistakes or not knowing any better. And when you have someone that's been around a little longer, has some more experience, they can point out something that you might not notice for years and just a small tweak. And all of a sudden you're, you're making progress that you didn't know. And I mean, even a good example that this weekend we had a, a kid come in there and he was going to bench that day. And he just was kind of like, you know, remember through your guys' bench program or just kind of show me some benching tips. And

he, he, the first thing he said is he was like, you know, I have this bad problem of whenever I start to go heavy, my butt lifts off the bench instantly. And you know, this guy, he's probably like, I think he's 21 and he's been lifting more or less for the past five, six years. And he just said, my butt has always came up. I don't know how to stop that. It's like, well, let's just try moving your legs out a little bit, you know, just get a little more width in your stance. And just like that, he's like, it's gone. He went through the whole set. Yeah. He went through the whole set of not having that issue of raising his butt. And that's something that has more or less existed in his lifting for six years. And it's just that one tip took care of that. And it can be something as simple as that sometimes.

Yeah, for sure. And, and that's what i think we've got enough people around with the different experience that have gone through a lot of those things themselves that you can get those tips like those little tips and so yeah he'll he'll remember that and anyone else they do give the tips do they remember that and the next time someone says you know they have a problem with their butt coming up or maybe they don't someone doesn't even realize their butt's coming up um you know that's just a cue that can help them is maybe try your feet a little wider and just like that it you really could solve it and and then yeah the other thing you kind of asked about was programming uh and we don't you know no one has is that wants to come we're not going to say you have to do the program that we're all doing and if you don't do that just don't bother

coming you know that's that's that's not what it's going to be like, but we do, if someone is new to it and they're like, well, this is kind of what I want to do. You know, do you have something that might be able to help me out? Um, we do that. That's a regular thing that we do is set them up with programming. I mean, Tommy and myself lift a really similar program and um we've got several other guys there that do as well so that's it's not because we do it that we feel like we have to have others do it but we just know that it probably works pretty well and it's and it's simple uh so it's it works really good for getting people started yeah definitely definitely and what about um you know you kind of covered everything as far as far as how you know everything is community sourced you know but what about um

you know what what type of different disciplines you have you know when i when i stopped in there the first time you had some guys there they're doing just kind of some some basic bodybuilding stuff to some power lifting stuff and it seems like you kind of uh you know there's there's all walks i know you've had some inquiries as far as with Olympic lifting. I know there's some interesting stuff going on with some strongman equipment. Really, how much variation do you guys really have there? Yeah, from the outside looking in, the first thought you might have is that, you know, we could get labeled as a quote-unquote powerlifting gym,

I think is something that and it probably looks like that but i don't think of it that way and i don't think the majority of the members do either uh we do have quite a few guys that actively compete in power lifting there that's probably more of those than anyone else um than anything else but like you said strongman we're getting into that now we're getting more and more of that equipment all the time some really cool stuff you know with the atlas stones uh car deadlift stuff farmers carries uh log presses we're getting into that stuff now which i'm really excited about that let's uh let's talk about that for a little bit like how you know is there i've never been

anywhere that really has that type of stuff. So I've always seen it. It always looked fun, but you know, I have, I suppose you, you've got it now waiting over at the new place, but have you, have you gotten a chance to really tinker with it much? I haven't done a whole lot of it. So, you know, me with everyone else, it's going to be pretty new for me too. So I'm, you know, I'm excited for other people to get to use it, but in a selfish reason, you know, it's going to be pretty new for me too so i'm you know i'm excited for other people to get to use it but in a selfish reason you know it's going to be cool for me to get to do it too so i'm looking forward to it you know myself yeah like some of those strongman variations that's one of the things i've read is that you know it's just fun you know it's kind of a fun

way to train you still got to do a lot of your basic strength stuff but but in the end you know it's pretty badass picking up a big old concrete stone and heating it over. You know, like that's pretty cool. There's something about that feeling. Yeah, log press stuff. And some of those things are, you know, I think every little boy growing up watched The World's Strongest Man.

You know, like everybody saw it. Stay up until midnight and ESPN 2. I remember being sick home from school and seeing it on tv yeah it was it was kind of wild you know i went to the arnold and that's probably about a month ago and you know their their strongman competition is is just freaking incredible but they had uh you know the the host of the show was was bill kasmeier was the one was the one emceeing the whole thing. So he's up there announcing all the lifters,

and he talks a fair amount of smack the whole time he's going on. And then a much smaller version of the Magnus Ver Magnussen that I remember was also the one judging movements when the guys would lock out their movements. He'd be up there calling them good or foul. Yeah, some really cool stuff to watch. I remember that stuff when I was a kid. After seeing that at the Arnold, man, it just looked like that would be fun. Overwhelming, some of the weights that those guys move.

But that definitely looks like it would be fun stuff. And I think it's fun for kind of everybody. Everybody understands that picking up a concrete stone is pretty freaking cool yeah it just it looks badass yeah it does so no that's that's really neat what about the equipment now what types of strongman equipment do you guys have yep we've got uh a few different size atlas stones right now and unless you're pretty big and pretty uh advanced in your technique we've probably got some that are going to be pretty hard for you i would say so uh and then we're we want to get some more smaller stones too that can be used uh you know for a variety of different different types of training you know other than maybe just your traditional stone load um but then yeah we've got farmers carry handles we're working on a car deadlift

platform uh log pressing stuff um kind of trying to think here racking my brain there's a few other things we're kind of working on adding to that all the time though too i mean if you ask me for a month a month from now it's probably going to be more than what it is right now too. Cool. Cool. And, uh, I was just going to mention too, about other discipline wise, we've, you know, and it's not limited to powerlifting and strongman either. We've got, uh, a member right now that competes in physique competitions. You know, he just did one here this month. Um, we've got a couple other members that are interested in that same sort of thing. So that, you know, I personally don't do that or have a lot to do with it, but I like it there because even though they might not be doing all the same lifts as us,

it's still cool because they've got goals and they're trying to get better. Same thing exposes other people to different ideas. And that's the thing too. Some of those guys, those physique athletes are really next level as far as discipline. You know what I mean? Like their, their nutritional discipline, you know, would probably put all three of us to shame, you know, plus just, just like body mechanics. You know, you see some of those guys, they know exactly where, where you turn your hand here on this movement to make this, you know, it's, it's very, very

interesting. You talk to somebody, some bodybuilders really know what they're doing and, and man, you can learn a lot real fast. Yeah. It's very, it's very interesting. So you, you've got quite a few different people doing, doing lots of different things. Um, so the big move coming up pretty soon now that we hadn't really talked about the move specifically, other than that we're just making it happen, huh? Yep, it's going to happen really three weeks, I guess depending on when you're listening here, it's going to be April 23rd is the move date, and that's coming up fast on us. We've got a big crew of guys to help us out, the move done and we're all really excited about it we're going to a space that's about four or five times larger than we're at right now um you know

just high ceilings which i mean some of this kind of sounds funny talking about it but as far as when you're been in a gym and had a smaller one and you realize some of the things that are important to making a gym good uh having the we're going to have high ceilings uh really level floor which is you would you you might not realize the importance of that until you you know lay your bar down to try to do a deadlift or something that's crawling away from you uh so that's another another important factor and we get to have our own bathroom and really the whole, the whole room itself is brand new. It's built out, especially for us, for what we wanted and for the size we

wanted and what we wanted to pay for and everything. And, um, yeah, it's, and I think going forward, as far as the gym members, everything, it really gives everybody a chance to really grow. You know, it gives us that additional space right now we're maxed out on space. You know, it's right. If, you know, 10 people next month said we want to join the gym, assuming we weren't moving. If 10 people said next month they want to join, we would say, awesome. But just so you know, we, we might not have enough physical space for everyone to lift at the same time. Whereas with this, it gives, you know, we can keep that team attitude going of letting everyone live together if they want and also um i guess it just gives us more room to kind of play and experiment with more for sure equipment yeah we got we already have a large additional variety of

equipment there waiting for us that we've already moved in uh that we just didn't have the room for at our old space you know always stuff that we wanted but uh what are some of those new things um more machine stuff which we didn't really have a lot of before you know we got a lot of barbell guys and dumbbell guys and that's kind of what you know anything that you're going to be doing in our gym now it's probably going to be on a barbell or a dumbbell uh but now we you know some different leg machines uh cable crossover which would be be a staple at most gyms, something we never had before that we have the opportunity to have now. That's some of the big stuff. It's a little bit of a variation off of the more basic stuff that we were able to have in the beginning.

Excellent. Excellent. So the big move, you know, what was you guys get set up in the new place? You guys still still plan on competing quite a bit. I know I noticed you guys do quite a few competitions. You know, how many guys do you have that compete? Let's start with just say powerlifting stuff. How many guys do you guys take to powerlifting meets? I personally have gone to three and every one I've had other members from the gym come with. have gone to three um and every one I've had other members from the gym come with uh Tommy and I the first one we both did we had about six guys that all lift at that gym now you know the gym didn't even exist yet at the time but uh we took about six of us and then this year same thing about five five or six but there's even more than that that will probably compete within the next year or two. You know, I mean,

I think we've got 10 guys that probably would compete powerlifting within a year or two from now, if not more than that. It's just, it's growing interest all the time. You know, they see more of us doing it and, you know, it really is fun. We've got a big group of us. When you, when you send that group all together, it's a a fun day it's a fun weekend so i think i think that'll continue to grow too uh and then like i said we got the physique competitor that goes there we've got a couple other guys that are interested in that that that might grow a little bit too and then uh something else that you mentioned earlier is we've had more interest in the olympic weightlifting stuff and i like that, that's another thing. I don't do it myself,

but there's a lot of things, you know, I'm not so naive to not understand that there's a lot of things I could learn from someone that Olympic lifts and vice versa. So having that around is, is cool. In my opinion, we're not necessarily set up great for it right now, but I think, you know, I've, i've been talking about that we are always planning on continuing to grow and add more equipment uh we are doing that and i think eventually that's something that we could be set up better for too yeah and that just gives one more avenue for people to be coaching and helping each other too yep for sure and i suppose you know you guys well you took quite a few people to the state strongman competition last year.

And from what I saw, basically cleaned house. Is that about how it went? Yeah. Yeah, we swept the awards on that this year. So that was a pretty cool thing. We've had a group of us from Aberdeen that have gone for all the four last years. And we've always, I think, gotten at least two of the three places. places yeah but this year was the first year of the clean sweep so we were all pretty proud of that awesome and I suppose you'll have more people expressing interest in that too

when you have you know another you know three four months of people it's tough to train in a gym that's got stones and logs and all that stuff around and not ever try to pick one up you know yeah for sure i'm sure i'm sure that'll be uh yeah and that's a big advantage for any of us that are wanting to do more of that competing is actually being able to train with some of that equipment you know because right now it's like well we bench and we squat and we deadlift and some of those things are a lot like that but now we can literally like, okay, so this is what it's like to try and pick up this 300 pound boulder. Yeah.

I suppose, you know what, so, you know, what, what was that like going to the strongman competitions, having not been able to train with that actual equipment? Cause I think traditionally, you know, I know like at the Arnold, they announce specifically all of the events, I think, except one, I think there's, there's one wild card, but other than that, everything else is laid out specifically ahead of the events i think except one i think there's there's one wild card but other than that everything else is laid out specifically ahead of time so these guys kind of know you know what what they're training with whether it's a heavy yoke carrier you know so they got all year long to try that what's that like for you guys where you're just squatting deadlifting and benching and then you got to go try and pick up a rock or you know or pull an axle off the floor and yeah it's when when everyone kind of shows up, all the competitors show up a little early that morning to check it out.

And we don't know exactly what the events are going to be until we get there pretty much. I think we do have an idea, but some of that until you see how it's really going to be set up, you have to be there to see it to understand what you're really going to be trying to be doing. So we get there and everyone goes through that same process. We look at all the things and we're talking to each other and everyone's kind of figuring out in their head, like, Oh, I should be, you know, that's pretty similar to a deadlift. I can deadlift 500 pounds, you know, I should be able to pull that just fine. And then looking at an axle bar and like, well, I've never really tried to clean an axle bar before like you kind of go mess around with it and get get the feel for it but there's a lot of either you know maybe nervousness isn't the

right word but just uh just unsure of how that's gonna play out until you get out there but that's a part of it i think you know that's what makes it a little different is because there is some unknowns there yeah yeah that's that'll be neat though you get a little little more time with that equipment under your belt I think that should be should be a lot of fun well guys I think I think that'll do it for today if you have any questions or you want to get a hold of us you can find us online at massonomics.com check us out on facebook you can contact us on twitter and instagram at massonomics i'm tyler you can find me on instagram at tyler effenstone that's tyler e-f-f-i-n stone tanner where people get a hold of you oh you can check me out on instagram i'm just running the

at massonomomics on Instagram. There's a Twitter out there too, but I haven't been real diligent on that. So check me out on Instagram. And Tommy? And on Instagram, you can find me at TomahawkD. That's Tomahawk underscore D-E-E. Excellent. All right, well, thanks for listening and check in with us next week and stay strong.

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