Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 960: Mark Bell

Episode Date: February 4, 2019

In this episode, Sal, Adam and Justin speak with Mark Bell at his Supertraining Gym studio in Sacramento, CA. In his experience, what are the benefits that come along with age? (3:07) How different is the skill of building mass for bodybuilding than powerlifting? (10:00) What lead him to hire Hany Rambod? Did he do everything he told him to? (13:40) How was he able to run his gym while getting ready for his show? (19:43) When did he start making money? How did he figure out how to survive? (23:15) Where does survival mentally come from? (31:46) Is he more aware of the environment he is raising his own kids in? (36:43) Does he remember his first business failure? (38:05) His connection to ‘pro wrestling’ and how he met John Cena. (41:35) From what he learned from pro wrestling, has that transferred into his success in new media? (48:12) Did he battle with addiction during the ‘steroid era’? (51:17) Does he remember what is first cycle was? Was it a love affair from day 1? (55:50) Has he thought about the ‘going on gear’ conversation with his own kids? (1:00:35) What is his opinion on SARMS? (1:02:11) What made him think about getting into the podcast space? What has the journey been like for him? (1:05:42) What did he learn from his relationship with his former co-host? (1:12:43) How did his fans react with the podcast change? Was there any push back? (1:18:43) The guys reminisce over their first interview with Mark. (1:20:28) What have his kids taught him about himself? (1:24:25) Are his kid’s naturals when it comes to sports? Have any interest in competition? (1:27:40) Has his son expressed any interest in lifting weights? (1:35:00) What is something specific he has been working on HIMSELF? (1:38:09) Is social media enhancing or hurting what he is doing? (1:45:04) What is in store in the future for himself and his companies? (1:48:40) Featured Guest/People Mentioned: Mark Bell (@marksmellybell)  Instagram Website Podcast YouTube Mark Bell's Power Project - YouTube Hany Rambod (@hanyrambod)  Instagram 4x Mr. Olympia Physique Champ (@jeremy_buendia)  Instagram Chris “Boar” Bell (@bigstrongfast)  Instagram John Cena (@JohnCena)  Twitter Shelton J. Benjamin (@Sheltyb803)  Twitter Brock Lesnar (@BrockLesnar)  Twitter Stan "Rhino" Efferding (@stanefferding)  Instagram Products Mentioned: February Promotion: MAPS Performance is ½ off!! **Code “GREEN50” at checkout** 5/3/1: The Simplest and Most Effective Training System to Increase Raw Strength – Book by Jim Wendler Mark Bell's Power Project EP. 67 Live with Hany Rambod Inside Pro Wrestling (2000) [Ultimate Pro Wrestling Documentary Featuring John Cena] New J Hitman: My Real Life in the Cartoon World of Wrestling - Book by Bret Hart Mind Pump Episode 865: Stan Efferding: The World's Strongest Bodybuilder Mind Pump Episode 922: John Romano Bigger, Stronger, Faster (2008): Watch on Prime Video This Is Everything You Need to Know About SARMs - Legion Athletics Mark Bell's Power Project EP. 172 Live - Sal, Adam & Justin of Mind Pump Podcast Mind Pump Free Resources

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mite, op, mite, op with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. So in this episode, you're going to hear us talking to Mark Bell. Now we do record these intros after the interview, and I'll tell you we had a good time. We had a good time meeting with him. No, it was a really good time, And I think God, we did with him. We did three, three, three, three hours on his podcast.

Three hours on ours. This was a long day. It was. A lot to talk about. I was impressed with his operation too. We show up to his facility and we were treated with incredible hospitality. His staff was on point.

The store and the front was amazing. The gym was, if you're a strength athlete, it was impeccable. Oh, that's a great gym. That's a gym for strength athletes. I also really appreciate how Mark and his team and everybody handle everything. Because, you know, I've given him a lot of shit the last couple of years on this podcast when talking about his interview, because he was one of the first interviews we did and he did in this car. We were a little salty there for a while. And so when Sal brought it up in this interview, so you'll hear it at one point,

Sal calls it right out and we talk about it. And so I think that I really appreciate how Mark handles it. I think that he was a great sport about it. And I just sense then, shit we've been texting back and forth. So got a lot of respect for the guy I know we have a lot of mutual friends that everybody that we keep running into pretty well liked in the very very well

I can see why you know, he's a likable guy He definitely cares a lot about like helping people so that comes through you can find him on Instagram at mark smelly bell His website is mark bell slingshot. Of course He's the inventor of the slingshot which brilliant piece of Equipment that you put around your arms that helps you. Yeah improve your bench strength I know Justin's messed around with it. Mess around. I love it so far. Yeah, it's really good his podcast is Mark Bell's Power project also I want to remind everybody that in February this month all month long Maps performance.

This is our functional based training program. This is for people who want to move like well-rounded athletes and want to look like a well-rounded athlete. There's a lot of core work, a lot of rotational work, a lot of unconventional exercises, a special focus on mobility. It's the program. I think everybody should do, especially people who are serious about their overall fitness, it's half off. So 50% off maps performance, it's also getting revamped.

So if you have mass performance now, or if you enroll it with the 50% off sale, when it gets updated, you'll get the automatic update at no additional cost. So here's what you do for the discount, go to mapsfitinistproducts.com and use the code green50, GREN50, no space for 50% off. And on that site is our other maps, programs, and maps bundles for different goals, different targets, different experience levels. You can find all those at mapsfitinistproducts.com.

So without any further ado, here we are talking to Mark Bell. Well, Mark, you've been training at a high level for a very, very long time. You're not an old guy, but you're not a spring chicken. What are some of the, in your experience, what are some of the benefits that come along with age? We all know what the, the detriments are, right? You're not gonna, you can't recover as fast,

the aches and pains. Can't get it up You can't I swore to God on a handsome. Yeah, all that stuff But what are some of the benefits like what have you experienced that have come along with age now that you can say that you makes you gives you an advantage over 25 year old mark Bell um, I would say Probably the biggest advantage is just I would say probably the biggest advantage is just being more accurate and doing the lift the right way.

You know, when I was young, maybe I just didn't know or didn't care and I just wanted to kind of get in there and get after it. But I think accuracy and efficiency are huge, they're really important. You want to try to get the most out of the least, try to get as much as you possibly can from that workout that you possibly could, and stimulating the central nervous system, which is just, you know, this idea of like trying to get stronger.

It doesn't look like what most people think it looks like. How do you mean? It just doesn't, you don't have to be a maniac to do it. Like you're not gonna go to jail and you're not gonna go to hell if you do the exercise with proper form and technique. You actually are gonna make so much more progress when you do the lift the right way.

And you know, I think a question, a good like internal dialogue to have with yourself is Okay, I'm gonna go through this particular workout for the day. You want to start to think about what what is your intent of the day? What are you trying to do even if you don't program for yourself even if even if you guys even if I followed mine pump I've some something that you guys wrote and I said okay Well, they said they wanted me to do do some explosive stuff. So what's the intent of the day? The intent of the day is to move fast. All right.

Well, that's the intent of the day. Well, let me get my body, mind, and spirit all wrapped around this concept and this idea. So as I've gotten older, you know, I've kind of understood this idea of, let me get some pre-workout in. But I'm not talking about a supplement. I'm talking about pre-workout as in its Monday, and I'm thinking about last Monday's workout when I missed it.

So it's when that Monday rolls around again, I'm thinking about it on Tuesday, on Wednesday, on Thursday, on Friday. Think about that whole week, and I start thinking about, okay, why didn't I miss that squat? Why didn't I miss that bench press? Or maybe it's because I just didn't eat enough, or maybe that wasn't, you know,

I haven't been sleeping for shit. You start to kind of analyze something. So I've learned to just, I guess, be, you know, patients is a huge virtue in life and in the gym. And then in addition to that is, is having an intent of the day, having a purpose behind each thing that you do and having efficiency and accuracy with that. Now before, what was different, 10 of the day, having a purpose behind each thing that you do and have an efficiency

and accuracy with that. Now before, what was different, you would just go in and just berserk, just I'm going to go after this and crush it and forget about it. Yeah, so I thought like if you were going to do a set of five, I thought it was like an all-out set of five. I thought you that you shouldn't be able to do six. But really, well, and this comes with lifting maturity, though, too. So this is a blessing of having lifted for many years.

Once you've lifted for many years, you can potentially, and maybe it won't work for everybody, but you can potentially get more out of less due to a lot of different factors. But I think a good idea for most people is to try to think about how many repetitions can they do in a workout with bad form. And this is something that you want to think about if you're doing a 5x5 or you're doing three sets of three or somebody says, hey, I want to see you do eight sets of four of this 78% of your max or whatever. The percentage is nice.

It's nice they gave you a recommendation, but forget about the percentage. Let's see what it looks like. Because your interpretation of how you do four reps and my interpretations of four reps might look completely different. And this was laid out really, really well by Jim Wendler in his book, Five, Three, One, where he talks about, look, man, I don't want you to die

on your set of five. I want to see a good, clean set of five. Maybe you could have done seven. Maybe you could have done eight. But I don't want rep number one of set number one to look like you're gonna die when you're doing, when I'm asking you to do two or three sets of five. And then same thing as you progress each week

and you start to move into doing sets of three and sets of one, he always wanted you to kind of leave a little bit of room. A lot of people will say, you know, you're kind of leaving a little bit of room in the tank. You've got a little bit extra. And I think that's an important concept. It's an important concept for all aspects of life, and it's hugely important in the gym.

When you think about this idea of you want to go in there and get a good, strong training session, and you're trying to get stronger. Well, a huge important factor of getting stronger is how are you going to recuperate from this workout? So you want to get in there, but you want to stick and move. You don't want to stay on the inside for too long, because you're going to get caught by something. And you're going to get caught by a dangerous punch at some point, and it's going to knock your ass out. You're going to end up being knocked out of the game. And as soon as you get hurt or as soon as, and there's many different versions of getting hurt,

you can even just hurt and impede your recovery, not necessarily just have pure injury. Like hurt your progress. Yeah, you hurt your progress. You hurt yourself. You fucked up. You messed up. You had this opportunity. You're going in there to try to be better and you made yourself, you made yourself worse and you can actually, you know, you could see this from fatigue, obviously, in a given workout, you get fatigued so much, you can't do a push-up or something like that, right? But this happens over periods of time, too, where you've fatigued yourself so much, that your body's like, Hey, man, this is you're going crazy, man. I don't know what the hell's going. I don't agree with this. We're not doing it this way. And so a good conversation to have with yourself is, these guys recommended for me to do three

sets of three on a deadlift. What should that look like for me? And maybe for you, maybe you do have a hard time keeping your back flat. And so maybe for you in particular, maybe your back can be a little bit rounded. Maybe there's a little bit of leeway that you get. That's fine. But is it going to look like all three sets of three are hitched and you got the music cranking and you're going berserk on every single rep? Or should it look like, wow, you got through those three sets is three pretty easy. Maybe you should do the same thing next week and just add a little bit of weight.

It sounds like you're communicating a lot of the skill that goes into lifting, not just the brute muscle contracting force. You're going in there to practice the skill, like if I were to practice shooting a basket and trying to perfect the skill. Now, you recently competed in bodybuilding, different kind of training, how different is the skill aspect in the workout? Like are you approaching the workouts differently? Does the frequency look different? Is it more perfecting and exercise with strength versus perfecting the feel for bodybuilding,

which is what people traditionally believe? What was different for you through that process? I think I have some different thoughts when it comes to some of these things. Number one, you one, to build up strong ligaments and tendons, there's been some research that shows you can do sets of 20 and sets of 30 and so on and do really high amount of repetitions. That can be effective and you can get a lot of blood flow to the area

and it gets blood flow like deep into the tissues and stuff like that. But additionally, if you want to have, if you want to talk about someone with strong tendons and strong ligaments, that's going to be somebody that can, that somebody can show you their one rep max strength with a huge weight. Because that kind of gives you an indication of like, okay, well, everything's all tied together. Pretty good on this guy, just bench 700 pounds raw. And so I think there's some misconceptions surrounding a lot of these things. There's misconceptions even when it comes to injury. Oh, when you're injured, you should use lighter weight

and do higher reps. And then actually think about that for a second. I just told you that my shoulders fucking killing me. And then now you just told me to do three sets of 20 on the bench. It's like, man, that's a lot of time under tension. Is that a wise move? Now, if I did it with extremely light weights, maybe we're on to something here.

You know, if I did it with really, really light weights, and I used to slow eccentric, and I was trying to rehab the injury, then maybe we were talking about something a little bit different. But I'm a big believer of get the hell out of there, get out of being underneath the bar when it comes to recovering from an injury, when it comes to strength training. Now when it comes to trying to build some muscle, we do need to have a little bit more time under tension.

But this is where heavy weights still can come into favor because it's going to take you longer to lift a heavier weight. There's so many different versions of where you can get your volume from. And you just need volume. You need an overall, you know, in school, they used to say, show me your work when you did math. Lifting is the same way. At the end of the day, you're going to have to show somebody your work, and you're going to have to have a body of work that represents the goal that

you have in mind at the end of the day. It doesn't really matter how you got there, but you're going to need something. In order to build mass for a bodybuilding show, or even be lean for a bodybuilding show, I'd say that the diet becomes probably the most important thing. Oh, here's your term. And then there's some touch-up stuff that you can do in terms of the movements, in terms of cable crossovers and sit-ups and some different things. I'm a big believer in that. A lot of people don't believe in spot redone reduction and stuff like that. But I believe when you start talking about an on-stage bodybuilder and you start talking

about the mind, muscle connection, I think we're talking about a different animal. I think that that stuff does exist. And I think guys like Charles Glass and many of the top coaches have kind of proven this theory where they're making people's, you know, Christmas tree, their spinal directors pop out just that much more the last few weeks before the show because the guys drying out and they're refining it with the higher repetition stuff. But to answer the question very plainly, like my workouts did not change that much because I believe the real stimulus towards looking like a bodybuilder comes more from your diet

than it does from your training. So what led you to hire, honey, you hired honey, right? Yeah, honey, run by. What? Why, honey? He came on Mark run by. What, why Honey? He came on Mark Bell's power project and he called me out. So he came on my podcast. Oh, that's how that happened.

Yeah, he came on my podcast and he was like, Hey man, he's like, you got in some great shape. I was like, oh, thank you, appreciate it. He's like, you owe it to your fans. You got to take it all the way. You got to do a bodybuilding show. And I was like, okay, I was like, if you, I said, I don't know anything about bodybuilding.

You never thought about this before? No, no, never, I've never even been to a bodybuilding show. The only bodybuilding show I ever been to was my own. What a great way for him to promote himself. I know. I'm going to get this guy, everybody knows, to compete. Well, that's 100% on what he was thinking.

I'm glad that he did because I'm still in better shape for it. I'm still in better shape from that show, which was in August. And I kind of had this agreement with myself going in that I wasn't going to weigh more than 10 pounds, more than that, like a month out. I allowed myself to rebound up a little bit after the show, about 20 pounds or so.

But I said, you know, about a month out from the show, I want to make sure I'm within 10 pounds of striking distance of that weight. And then right now, I weigh the exact same as I did on stage. Now, I'm curious about what your experience was like because for a while there, when I first was competing, I was also coaching and I actually coached a lot of bikini competitors and somebody that you did.

I said, I did. And a lot of bikini competitors and somebody that you did. I said, I did. A lot of men's physique athletes. Motivating. And, you know, honey and I don't know each other personally, but I've actually trained a handful of people that had trained with him. And I had to fix some metabolism. Recommendation that he was giving nutritionally and cardio wise had set some of these bikini competitors back.

And so I've actually never really been a fan of what he's presenting. Now, that's my only perspective is that, right? So I don't know him. We haven't hung out and talked. I know Jeremy really well. But did you, when you were going through that process, was there anything that you didn't agree with that he was doing or that you did differently from what he told you, or did you literally just do

anything that he told you to do? I pretty much just did what he said because it's a space that I didn't know anything about. And like cardio did start ramping up. You know, we started at like 20 minutes and we ended up at 90 minutes. Oh, wow. He's like other people's experience might be different

than my experience because he was a text away for me. So like, I don't know how people hire him or how it normally works, but maybe they have because I'm somebody in this industry, maybe he gave me a little bit extra special treatment. I don't know how he handles other people. But with myself in particular, he kind of told me about, look, we're going to ask you to have a

tremendous amount of output. There's not going to be a lot of input coming in. There's not going to be a lot of calories coming in. There's going to be a lot flying out the door. And when the show is over, you're going to have to be very, very careful and very cautious of what you eat. And you have to really pay attention. And he was even suggesting like, you might want to kind of go on a keto diet. You might want to try to reset your metabolism. He's like, you know, enjoy yourself for a few days, but you might need to do something

to really just try to balance out and make sure that your metabolism doesn't get too screwed up. But also at that time, I was fortunate enough to have a guy name, and this should be somebody you guys have on the podcast. These smartest person I've ever met when it comes to nutritional information is a guy named Joel Green.

It's like a food scientist of some sort. I don't even know what you would categorize him at. Joel was giving me a lot of advice when this bodybuilding show was over and the advice was very unconventional. He was saying have like these 3000 calorie breakfasts and breakfasts. Yeah, there was more than one breakfast. Yeah. First breakfast, second breakfast. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There was like two or three of them. And he was giving me a lot of weird recommendations. He was big on grilled cheese sandwiches. He's like every two days. He's like crush. I like this guy. I know. I know. He's like, crush a grilled cheese

sandwich. And I'm like, okay, what if I crush a grilled cheese sandwich? I'm still hungry. Should I go back to the kind of eating healthier food? He's like, no, just have another grilled cheese sandwich. Now he had sophisticated rules. I know he had like sophisticated reasons for that. He was like, oh, it's the calcium. And it's this guy's knowledge goes beyond anything I've ever seen before. So I was just kind of trusting in him. Now there was a balance of energy too. It wasn't just like I wasn't just, you know, going balls to the wall eating everything and anything that I wanted. But he basically, he was just saying, we got to kind of unring that

bell, which is what you're talking about. We had to kind of fix your metabolism. It's like damaged. It like doesn't know what to do with calories and it doesn't know what to do because you're not expending anymore. Do you know what your calories were at leading up to the show? Like, how low did you end up getting? I think my calories kind of throughout the prep were in the 3000 range.

Oh, I'm about to. And I didn't really get like, mine didn't really descend that badly, although we did start to cut out carbohydrates. But I wasn't eating that many carbohydrates anyway, because he kind of was like, you don't really eat them anyway. So he's like, I don't really know how much we should be giving you. So that was kind of a feeling out process for him was like, I have no idea where you're at. I have no idea what you respond to and what you don't respond to. I think the conventional thought is that because I don't normally eat carbohydrates

that I maybe don't respond to them well or maybe I don't handle them well, but that's not the case at all. I actually handle them really well and I've gotten really good shape before with carbohydrates, three, four, five hundred grams. A lot of the damage that you'll see will be from people who do repeated shows. And probably because you had leading up to that, I always focused on strength, probably in a calorie surplus or maintenance, most of the time, your metabolism was like, healthy.

Pretty healthy. Yeah, you could probably fuck with it and drop it and it's not going to have a huge. Now, getting ready for a bodybuilding show can be extremely all consuming. And I've talked to people who say that when they do that because of the structure, it actually helps them in business because they're so structured and organized. And I talked to other people and said, I can't even focus on work because that's all I focus on. And, you know, you gave us a tour earlier of this place and you've got quite the operation here. Thank you. How was it? I mean, massive. I mean, you have a, you know, you're shipping departments huge. You got a huge gym in here. You got this great podcast and

media studio and all that and you know, great place. A lot of employees, a lot of stuff going on. How were you able to run all these things while getting ready for your show or did it make, did you sharpen you or was it a bit, was it something you had to take a step back from, you know, take a step back from? All the people here have been, they've hand picked us like not even the right word because they kind of have come to us. All the people that are here belong here, all the people that work here really belong here

and they really have a great purpose for us and except for the guy we fired last week. Yeah, except for a guy run a podcast over here There's a couple of people that we were a couple people because of lawsuits that we can't fire, but we're working on you know But you know the I have a I have a great team of people and Something that you mentioned when we just had you guys on the podcast was kind of like this idea of like if you have an idea it might end up looking a little different than you originally thought. I have a similar line of thinking where if I give something to you, I have the thought process of I hired you, I pay you. My thought process is I handed

this over to you. There's a really high potential because I ask you to do this often, that you're gonna do a way fucking better job than I can ever do. So I'm not handing it off to him being like, oh man, I wonder, what's his interpretation of this post or what's his interpretation of this email? He's gonna fuck it up.

I actually kinda think that if I think that he's gonna screw it up, he probably will. But I have a more positive outlook on it where I, because the men and women that work here have proven to me time and time again that they can step up to the plate and they can knock the ball out of the park. And so it gives me a lot of confidence.

It doesn't really matter if I don't need to show up, or if I don't wanna show up, I don't have to show up. These guys and girls are gonna take care of it. My wife and I went on a vacation this year. We were gone for maybe about two weeks or so and these guys handled it just fine. So I didn't have to step back from anything though because all the stuff that I've done

when I was younger was way harder than any of this shit. So, I started to sling shot. I started a magazine. I started my gym all while raising two kids and being married and juggling all the, just as you guys have done, just as anyone, anyone who's trying to juggle career, family, all these people have done it.

My dad's done it. I mean, anyone who's trying to juggle these different things at once, I was kind of getting all these things done simultaneously while squatting over a thousand pounds every week while bench pressing over 800 pounds. So there was a lot of time was consumed to me spending tons and tons of time in the gym on myself. A lot of time was consumed on me building super training gym, which started in 2006. And a lot of time was consumed by me starting to develop some of these ideas. And a lot of time was consumed by my family. So I'm no stranger to, you know, kind

of what it takes to advance. You started the super training gym in 2006. Yeah. Was it now? Was that successful out the gate? So were you, because you made the comment earlier that you were poor for a long time? When did you start making money? How long was that? Was that one sling shot came out when things started to turn around? Super training gym has never been successful in terms of like a business as to weird business model. The gym is free free. Yeah.

I remember you saying that. Yeah. So technically it's really successful though. Yeah. People show up. Yeah. That's for sure. Yeah, from a financial perspective, it's definitely maybe the opposite of that, you know, but. Oh, not to make money. But, you know, it's a little bit of a, it's a little bit of an illusion in some way because everything has kind of come from super training gym. And so, you know, I, you guys kind of asked on your way in. You're like kind of everything kind of spawned off of the slingshot stuff. And I said, yes, but that's actually not

really the correct interpretation of it. No, actually everything spawned off the actual lifting. The lifting that's happened in here, because I started recording and started documenting stuff in 2005 before or 2004 before YouTube was ever even around, I had a account with put file, which doesn't exist anymore. And then as YouTube started to come around and about 2005, 2006 is when I started, my YouTube channel and started, I just knew.

I was just gonna ask you how the hell do you know because back then YouTube was cat videos and I just felt it. I felt it. I felt that it was like a calling. Like I knew that what we did was weird and I knew that other people wanted to see it. So I'm like, I need to share this in as many different spots as I possibly can. This is not normal.

It's not normal for this guy to load up eight plates on his back and squat it. Not normal for this girl to squat six plates. Like this is shit, it's strange. And I also know that other people would be obsessed by it. And other people would be amazed by it. And some people just want to learn more about it. Like what is this?

What are these men and women doing? Well now if you started the business without charging people to come into the gym and that was the catalyst to the success, how the fuck did you survive financially during that time when no one's paying you for anything in your struggle? Was this when you were doing gay porn? This was, uh, yeah, that was...

You mentioned that earlier. So it was the darker times. Looked that up. Were we at the time? That's the title of the first video. Darker times. I'd love to say I'm ashamed by it, but it really, you know, kept the lights em at it. Yeah, yeah, it was awesome.

Hey, when you're good, you're good, right? Ungeniable. So at the time, my wife had a job and she was making some money. And then I also did some personal training and stuff like that. And so we just did what we could. And in terms of the actual, the gym and the financing of the gym, everything just happened in such a weird way when I kind of look back at some of these things and think about how it all came

to be. It just, it doesn't seem real in some way. It's just strange shit happened, but a lot of circumstances shifted my way that allowed a lot of these opportunities. And one of the big ones was as I had super training inside of somebody else's facility in the very beginning. And I was a, it was in Woodland, California, it was called Body Construction Zone. And I was a trainer there as well. And I was also you know, working with my powerlifting team. And at the time I was coaching football as well. So at Pioneer High School, I was a defensive line coach and a strength conditioning coach for the team.

And so as this gym was like building up locally in the air, it's a new gym. You know, I went and approached them and said, hey, it'd be great if you had some powerlifting. I work at the high school and I know I can get a lot of these kids over here. And so I kind of sold them on this idea of powerlifting, and how it'd be good for their gym. And they said, hey, you can actually take the spot back here, and you can just, you know,

you can fill it up with equipment. And so I talked to the owners and stuff, and I was like, well, I don't have any equipment, but I think it'd be great for you guys to invest in it so that your gym is different than all the other gyms around here. At the time, I wrote for EliteFTS.com under the name of Jackass, and I went to Elite and said, hey, like these guys are gonna purchase this equipment,

and see if I can get a discount and stuff. So we ended up getting a lot of equipment for a really good price. From that point, I was working with these guys for a few months, maybe like a year or so. And then I just didn't get a check. And I'm like, uh, so I go to one person, they give me the run around, go to the next person, they give me the run around, go to the next person, go to the owner, you know, and each person got their own version of the story and why I'm not getting a check.

And I was like, well, I was like, you know, I have, I have a family. I got to like, wife and kids and like, we rely on these face checks. Like, I can't not get paid. I can't afford to like, you know, do this for free. And so, they were like, well, what do you want to do? And I said, well, I said, I'd love it opportunity to buy the equipment. And so these people, they're business is going under. And I knew because their business is going under, I knew they didn't keep record of anything.

So I was like, I'll buy everything in that back room. I'll take it off your hands. I tried to make it seem like a favor. Like I take everything off your hands for like three grand. And like, oh, I think it was way more than that. I was like, yeah, I think you're right. How about five grand? They were like, okay.

It's like 25 grand worth of equipment. So super training gym kind of started off of that. And then I just found some shithole place in the Thomas, California, where we were next to a among funeral home where there's slaughter of animals on a weekly basis. Yeah, cause they do that for in the parking lot.

Yeah, and they do it for weddings, funerals, everything. It was my best friend is married among girl. And it was wild. That was then I'm the best man in the wedding. Did you have to kill something? Yeah, yeah, no, that's part of the best man's practice. So how crazy is this? My best friend reaches out to me and tells me

that, hey, you know, getting married all the stuff like that, I have awesome support of him. He's like, hey, I need you to come down on, you know, Thursday, two days before the wedding. Drink the blood of the goat. And he's like, we gotta, we gotta slaughter a cow, right? I'm just like, what do you mean we got a slaughter cow? We get a friend in your pocket or what?

I think nothing like that. He's like, he's like, that's the part of the tradition in their culture is for you as the best man to do this with me. So yeah, no, I had to slip the throat. Did you slip the throat? Yeah, hold a hold a hand. Well, he actually did that part of it. I was there with him moving and throw, but it was looking to its eyes. Yeah, I took a picture of it. I don't know if you guys remember, we were all together when this all happened. There's a picture of me with my head down by the,

it was pretty crazy. I mean, they would give us food, like because they were there every weekend and we had a lot of people lifting on the weekend. And yeah, they would be like, hey, you want some food at first. We were kind of like grossed out by it, but I was thinking like, well,

it's pretty much the same way. We get our food, we just don't it, but I was thinking like, well, it's pretty much the same way. We get our food, we just don't see it that way. We don't see it the same way. And so, but it was crazy because they would haul in like these sides of beef, like in the back of like a truck. It was like a whole half of a cow that was like, just chopped in half. It was insane looking.

And it's just to kind of see that you're like, whoa, like in this, this turns into food in a little bit and they cook it up and it yet seemed like gross, but I'm like, whoa, I don't know how, I mean, that's how we all are. Yeah, no, it was so I moved from that whole process. You know, it was wild to literally slaughter it at the slaughterhouse. And then an hour later, we were unfolding it,

you know, all this bloody mean stuff on the table and then we're cooking it. And then two hours later, we're eating it, you know, that's to be a part of that. But I, you know, I think it was... No wonder you guys are so strong over there. You get the sacrificial animals. That's right, metal playing,

blood in the streets. And you hit records left to right. So how long were you there? I was probably there for about two years. And, you know, again, to kind of reiterate, like you asked the question of like, how did you figure out how to survive? Because that's a big question for a lot of people.

Like, how do I make a leap towards, you hear so many people saying, if all of your passion, follow your passion, and then other people that have a nine to five, or like, dickhead, I can't follow my passion. You asshole, I don't have the opportunity because I can't leave my nine to five. And there's kind of this gap between the two people,

you know, one person's preaching this cause they feel so good about what they're doing. And the other person's so mad cause they can't figure out how to make that jump. But we just did whatever we could. Me and my wife, we just did whatever we could. And we tried to, I had a bunch of different jobs when I first moved, I'm from New York originally,

my first moved to this area. I was a balancer, I did whatever I could. I just did, just make something so I can continue to do the shit that I love. Where does that come from? Was that something self-taught? Was it innate in you? Was it child?

Because of how you grew up? Like where does that, you know, survival mentality come from? Because not a lot of people have that. Always been fascinated by money. Straight up, always been just fascinated by money. So when I was a kid, I used to take like a wagon and I'd load it up with like a bunch of shit from my garage and like sell it to people.

I'm like knock on their door and like, I was like relentless with it. So people like once I came around a few times, they're like, man, this kid like, he just tried to sell me this mug like two weeks ago. And like, but like I appreciate the effort. So they'd be like, I'll give you two bucks for it, you know? So. Dad's like, where's my favorite mug? my favorite mug? Well, then my dad started actually helping

me with it. He's like, maybe you should like, you know, maybe she could get like nice or stuff, like get some things of people might actually like want. Not your mom's broken frame. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And not your dirty underwear. Well, it was could be valuable. But you know, I was doing, I was doing a lot of that kind of stuff and and also just my dad so my dad My dad has a tax practice and my dad's tax practice was So my dad my older brother Chris Was born with like bad hips and bad knees and so he went to a chiropractor a long time ago and this kind of set forth Our powerlifting forever. The guy that he went to said, if you're going to be out of pain,

you're going to have to be strong. And so he taught us about powerlifting. We got excited and fired up about powerlifting. And my dad's like, well, this is great. Like all three of my boys, like my oldest brother, Mike, was already into lifting. We already had a little bit of stuff at the house. But my dad was like, we might as well go all in. So I don't know how my dad figured this out, but like we had a squat rack, we had Olympic plates, like we had like a full like gym, you know, in our, in our, in our basement.

And the other half of that was my dad's tax practice. And so like I would go down there, like work out and I'd move around some weights and stuff, I didn't know what I was doing. And then I would like go in and I'd like talk to my dad. And my dad would be like, you know, show me all these checks and stuff. And he'd be like, wow, that positive association. Yeah, he's like, he's like, I made 50 bucks, you know, off of this guy and 120 off of this guy.

And and then a lot of people he was mentioning to are like, are like friends and family and stuff. I'm like, Dad, you make money off like friends and family. He goes, yeah, you make money off of friends and family? He goes, yeah, he got it. I'm helping ways off. He's like, make money off everybody. And it just kind of left my mind open to a lot of these things. Because my dad, he worked for IBM, IBM had a headquarters

in Pekipsi, New York, where I'm from originally. And my dad worked there for like 19 years and right around the time he was able to like, collect a pension and do all these things. from originally. And my dad worked there for like 19 years. And right around the time he was able to like collect a pension and do all these things, boom, like boot his ass out the door, because they can now hire two or three people, two or three younger people. That was kind of that generation. I don't do stuff quite like that. Anymore, some companies probably do, but it's less common now. But

when I saw that and I saw my dad just Just spin it right into like okay, no big deal like just do my own shit and he started a tax practice and started Doing a real estate and then when I think back and I get questions from guys like you guys I start to think back of you know when I was a kid and I'm outside our house and I'm shooting baskets and stuff, well our mailbox said in giant letters that like the city or whatever complained about in giant letters it said, Bel Financial Services.

My dad's car said, buy a house. My dad would buy magnets and put them on the side of the car. As soon as my dad started a business, he'd make a t-shirt. And then I started even thinking deeper into it. I'm like, where is some shit come from? You know, Clay must come from my weird dad with all these things he was doing back then. And then I started thinking about it even more.

It actually came from my grandfather. My grandfather had a used car shop and he would fix up cars and boats and stuff like that. And he'd sell them. But I remember seeing a lot of his stuff when I was a kid. He'd have Bell's auto mechanic and it was like, you know, he had shirt, like he had shirts made up in like the 60s and 70s and stuff and he had, it was on their mailbox and he'd like try to like paint it

on the side of his car and like just craziness and I'm like, holy fuck, that's where, that's where this idea of me taking these videos and putting them up on YouTube and having this recognition of, hey, other people are going to want to see some of this stuff. Other people are going to want to see super training gym. I got to make t-shirts. And I got the first t-shirt I ever made had the ST logo on the front and had kind of a Superman-type thing around the ST.

And then on the arm, it had the address, just the same exact shit my grandfather did, 40 years before. That's funny, because while you're living it as a kid, you don't even know that it's... I had no idea. That's literally right. It was a long time for me to have that really...

In printing it. Knowing all that, because you have kids, knowing all that, are you more aware of the environment, you create for your kids that they're going to rope with? Yeah, and for a long time, my wife and I were kind of worried, because we're like, our kids don't think that we work. The other kids, a lot of family members for a long time thought that I worked at Starbucks, because that's where the slingshot was created and invented was at Starbucks.

I used to go to Starbucks with my iPad and my iPhone, and I would just sit there. And I just, because I didn't have like an actual nine to five, like I mentioned earlier, did some bouncing and stuff like that. And I power lifted. Those things consumed a lot of time. But you know why people were off at work or why my wife was working or at the gym or why my kid was in daycare or at school or whatever he was doing, I would go to Starbucks for a little bit of, you know, and work on kind of personal development

type stuff and try to, I don't know, I guess just figure out, like I call it dick and around. I think dick and around is important. Like, people, you know, they don't want to waste time. But I think that wasting time is actually can be actually valuable because I think dick and arounds important. Like people, you know, they don't want a waste time, but I think that wasting time can be actually valuable because I think that when you waste time, you start to stumble upon a lot of the things that you're kind of called to. And so my nieces and nephews and stuff, like, Uncle Mark, he works at Starbucks.

They thought I was punching in and punching out of it. I'm on the time-waster. Do you remember your first business failure? Most of the stuff that I've done has been in concert and in collaboration with my wife. And so I love kind of diving all in. Like, a few guys came to me with like a business idea, especially a few years ago.

You guys came to me like a few years ago. I'd be all hyped up and I'd be like, hey, let's do, and if it was just me, it would probably be like often running with it, you know? But my wife will say, you know, okay, well let's kind of think about like, what does this look like in like two years, you know? And what are these mind-pump guys and you,

like what's this collaboration? What does it do for collaboration? What does it do for you? What does it do for them? And is everybody still going to have the same feel in like two years from now? So my wife is the one who will kind of pump the brakes on stuff. And so we started super training gym, we started Power Magazine, we started the slingshot. And all those things have been successful. They weren't successful overnight. They took a long time and I've been powered of things since I was 12 years old to kind of get a lot of these things

in motion in the first place. So it took decades really to kind of lay the groundwork that gave me the ability to be able to do any of these things in the first place. But I haven't had,'t had, I tried pro wrestling and I was successful enough to wrestle all over the country and I was successful enough to wrestle in Japan. Now, how does that work?

If you try pro wrestling, there's the only organization I'm aware of is like the WWE or at the time when I was a kid. Yeah, it was a cool for that, right? Yeah, like how does that process, what do you mean, how do you try pro wrestling? Yeah, so, yeah, you, well, I just, I was training at Gold's Gym in the mech of body building.

I was training at Gold's Gym in Venice and got approached by a guy named John Holiday who was a wrestling coach and a, and a promoter. And he was just like, Hey, kid, you know, you know, you're pretty big, pretty jacked. Like, you ever think about doing pro wrestling? And I was like, all the time, you're like, actually, my brother's and I do it everything. Yeah, you're getting me, of course. I love pro wrestling.

I was like, I just don't know anything about it. And he was like, well, he's like, I got a camp down in Malibu. He's like, you know, come check it out. And so I tried out and the guy killed me and maybe do like a thousand step ups and made me run and do push ups and all this. That's the try out. They just take it through a crazy workout.

Oh, it was horrible. Yeah, it was horrible. Yeah, but he made it, made it take, they call them bumps. He made me take a lot of bumps and stuff like that too. Just, just seeing if you're like tough enough. So what's a bump like they throw you? Yeah, it's a fall. Okay.

Yeah, it's a fall, right? When they throw you against the ropes and then give you a, give you a, that's a shit. That's a shit. Yeah So what's a bump like they throw you? Yeah, it's a fall. Oh, okay. Yeah, it's a frame, right? When they throw you against the ropes and then give you a shot. That's a shot. Yeah, that's a, officially called a shoulder tackle, but a bump is just you landing on the mat. Oh, okay.

So like, oh, we're gonna throw you around a little bit. I'm gonna take you through it and say and work out. And then if you don't leave, maybe. Yeah, and I was dead. You know, I was really dead, but he was like, oh, you know, come here tomorrow at eight o'clock and I foolishly showed up. But I did well enough in wrestling to make it through some of the amateur ranks and to,

I got to do some stuff with WWE. I got to go to Louisville, Kentucky, where they have the training grounds for all the WWE athletes. And my brothers and I, part of the reason why the John Cena dollars there, my brothers and I got John Cena into wrestling. My oldest brother, Mike, was his wrestling coach and kind of meant to our beginning of the lot. When was he a phenom as a kid wrestler too?

Or was he? He's always been John Cena. I mean, from day, you know, like you just have that. Yeah. Look, you got some people. Yeah, like we all know like one person, right? Like we all know we all know one person that's just way off like they're way different than everybody else and he's that guy You know when he when I first met him, you know, so There's so many stories to kind of sift through here, but when I worked at a

Talking about trying to make ends meet I I worked for a company called Mass Movement. And what we did is we moved fitness equipment into gyms until we, we would extract. I knew this company. Yeah. Yeah. I remember they moved, uh, I owned a gym for a second. And I think we actually hired you guys to move some shit. There you go. So we'd move equipment out of the gym and we put equipment back in. It was brutal. I mean, moving fitness equipment is brutal.

They don't make it to be moved. Which is kind of stupid. It was like, it's gotta be moved, right? Like I think they're like, okay, we're gonna make this sick like press. And then they don't think about, how's anybody gonna move this nine-hour pound thing or this calf raise or whatever.

And so I was working at this place called Mass Movement. And we had a lot of crazy characters in there. The guy that ran the place, the guy that the owner of the place, he was like in the bodybuilding, in the lifting. And so he was always really kind to me and my brother and put a couple other people in there that were into fitness. And he'd always kind of say, hey, you guys don't need to like

sweep up and like do some of the shitties. Like just, you know, clock in when you want. And he's hey, you know, you guys don't need to like sweep up and like do some of the shit He's like just just you know clock in when you want and he's like I'll punch you guys out You know when I leave which would be like seven or eight p.m And we'd only we'd work like half a day But he just wanted us to come in and do the grunt work You know, he's like you guys just come in move some heavy shit around you'll get paid for a full day So we're like this is is great. And so one of the managers there in the warehouse, she kept telling us about her friend. She's like,

oh, my friend, she's like, you guys will gel with them so good. He's super jacked. And how many times have you guys heard somebody tell you about how great an athlete somebody is or how jack they are? And you meet them and they're like, five, three, and they're like 150 pounds. Yeah, you're like, what is this guy? You know, and so she kept telling us about her friend and I was like, yeah, whatever. And so she eventually showed me a picture. And I was like, who's that guy? And she's like, that's my buddy that I keep telling you about. She's like, that's John Cena. And I was like, holy shit. I was like, that guy is freaking huge. She goes, yeah, in this picture, he's like 18. And at the time, I mean, we were pretty young anyway. I was only like 21 or 22.

And she's like, yeah, he's gonna come out here and he wants to do bodybuilding and he's gonna work here at mass movement. And I was like, cool. So I'll then assure enough, a few weeks later, he comes out and I meet him. And just like I said, is the second that you, to be totally homosexual, the second that you to be totally homosexual,

the second that you lay eyes on, the second that you lay eyes on, I mean, you know that this guy is special. Like for whatever reason, there's just people in this world that are made out of something different and maybe the rest of us, even though we all want to be that person. This guy is truly that person. He's just charismatic and he just people are just drawn to him. People, I mean, people would go up to him and ask him tons of questions about his workouts and his diet. And they did, he wasn't John Cena then. He was just a normal dude who was lifting. But his wrists are like, you know, double the size of a normal person's wrist. He's massive. It's ridiculous. And so people are drawn to him.

And then when he started actually working there, he and I are like moving boxes around and like folding these towels and stuff. And I was like, it's like, dude, I was like, he got to do pro wrestling. He's like, no, I want to do bodybuilding. And he was getting ready for a bodybuilding show. And I was like, what are you doing for the bodybuilding show? He's like, I'm just not eating. He's like, and I'm like, real.

It's cool strategy. Yeah. I'm like, really? He's like, yeah, I train really hard and I train twice a day and I'm just not eating. And I'm like, you don't eat at all. He's like, well, he's like, I have like two protein shakes a day. And I forget what the other thing was that he had, maybe like a chicken breast and some vegetables or something. And I was like, and so how long you're doing this for when I was, I was expecting him to say, like, you know, two or three days, he's like, for about two months. I was like, and so how long you're doing this for? And I was expecting him to say, like, you know, two or three days, he's like, for about two months. I was like, holy shit.

Like no one can, no one can actually do that. By saw him day in and day out with his two protein shakes and his chicken breasts, his two protein shakes and his chicken breasts. And I'm like, this guy's a fucking lunatic. Like anyone that can handle that can kind of handle anything. And so I kept talking to him about wrestling. My other brother, Chris was talking to him about wrestling. And eventually he came down to ultimate pro wrestling,

UPW, and ended up wrestling for about five months. And then he got picked up by WWE. And it took him a long time. It took kind of progressed through the minor leagues. Like there's a huge process that goes on. And to John's credit, he didn't get to jump or bypass anything because he had a bodybuilding look. He had to really, truly work for it.

So when I say that, we got him into the wrestling business, he did all hard work. Right. So when you say that, you're talking about like skill and presentation and all that. Yeah, but he had that. He just had that. Really? I mean, you can even, like, if you look up, there's a documentary that was done on us being pro wrestlers that was done for the Discovery Channel some 20 years ago.

He cuts a promo on me. That's just, it's just out of this world. He was known as a prototype. He'd come on and kind of had this robotic thing to him, but he had it down. Like he practiced, you don't talk about like, you know, people are always wondering how to get good at something, well, he fucking practiced it, right?

So here I am, I'm super nervous, and like I go to cut a promo on him and mine's awful. And then he gets the mic and boom, he just smashes me. He's like, smelly, I look into your genetic lunch box, and I see a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with the crust cut off. And he goes into this whole thing. It's like, money.

Oh, he just, because that was my wrestling name is that I was, my name was smelly because my oldest brother called me smelly and I was picked on. We just kind of, and wrestling, that's what they do. They kind of just utilize whatever you got. Sure. And they just kind of like,

Where do we heal? Where are you a good guy? just utilize whatever you got. Sure. And they just kind of like, Where do we heal? Or are you a good guy? I was a good guy. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we were, we were, he and I both, he and I both kind of switched things up, you know, here and there, they just kind of depending on what we were doing.

Like, you know, when you don't have, we don't have a TV script to follow, you can kind of play, you know, you play whatever. So we could, we could switch things up a lot. But he and I did did many battles. We've wrestled a couple times for like 30 minutes straight, 40 minutes straight. Oh, wow. Wow. Now, all the the stuff that you learned in pro wrestling is any of that helped you with like this new media world of podcasting and video and all that. 100%. And that's why I brought it up because you asked about like failed things. So, you know,

my whole life, I wanted to be a professional football player. Like that's what I loved when I was a kid and I was really drawn to that and I was attached to that and I I would train every summer I'd run and I would, you know, do all these different things and you know, I just thought like, hey, if I just put in the work like it'll just happen. And it was actually a good thing, you know, in a lot of ways that these things didn't happen. And then kind of same thing with pro wrestling. As I started messing around with pro wrestling and started doing it, and I started realizing, I'm not as talented as these other people. Like, I don't know, I don't know, you know, specifically like what the difference is,

all right, I know I'm trying really hard. And yeah, potentially I could try harder. And then- Where you when you started to realize that, where you're like, oh, this is different. Yeah, 25 or so, 24, 25. And you know, my dad is saying it says, you know, part of knowing who you are is knowing who you're not.

And that has been something that I've always kind of leaned on in my life. And I kind of looked around when I was at Ohio Valley Wrestling and I was like, okay, I'm not like that guy over there. I'm not like that guy over there. I don't have the attributes of this. Like I'm not seven feet tall. You know, I'm not like that guy over there. I'm not like that guy over there. I don't have the attributes of this like I'm not seven feet tall You know, I'm not and I was in pretty good shape and stuff, but I wasn't in the shape that I'm in now And I was just like kind of looking around the room and like okay, I know I don't have that I know I don't have this and

Shelton Benjamin who's like a four-time National Champion collegiate wrestler. I mean, these men and women like athletically are just off the charts. This is like, they normally almost always have like a crazy background, right? Most of them have like a very competitive wrestling background already or something. Like Brock Lesnar was there, Randy Orton, Mark Henry.

I mean, Mark Henry is the world's strongest man competitor and Brock Lesnar is a multiple time national champion and handles guys like that. Yeah, yeah, freak. I mean, these are freak athletes. These are not, you know, these think the pro wrestling just because it's scripted, they just think that like, maybe they're not talented people.

But these are very, very talented people that work on their skill every single day. And so Shelton Benjamin pops up on the top rope and I'm sure you guys have kind of seen the undertaker like walk walk the top rope And then he comes down and he like punches the guy or whatever Shelton Benjamin did the same thing but he ran around the entire ring on the ropes Wow, and then proceeded to stop and then he did what's called a moonsault Which is basically just a back flip and laid it on his. And like things like that just kind of made me go, there's definitely not like, there's

no room for me in this. And I think that that's healthy though. I think that that's a good thing. And I think that's, I think that's, you know, as a parent, I think that's the hope for my kids is that I don't want them to feel like they're excluded from anything. I don't want them to feel like they're excluded from anything. I don't want them to feel bad about anything. But at the same time, it's great to recognize who you're not because then you can figure out who you are very quickly.

You mean you don't want to bullshit them and give them a seven-place trophy? Right, yeah, like that. So I read a Bret Hart's book. It was a great, great book. And one of the things that I was really fascinated in was how crazy the steroids, the opiate, all that use was, both before we got on air, we, you and I were kind of talking a little bit about cratum and I was sharing with you that I wish I was familiar

with cratum when I went through my opiate addiction because I think that would have helped me tremendously. Now, when you were going through all this, did you battle with any of this? Did you start dipping into anabolic this time? Are you tip partaking in opiates and things like what would happen with you? I never got into like pain killers.

Mm-hmm. I never got into what I guess I'd consider like recreational drugs. I actually, before, probably like, before the age of like 25, I think I've only been drunk at that point, like one time in my life, and I was only like kind of drunk because my friends gave me some drinks on my bachelor party.

And I was about it. So I wasn't like, I wasn't intending that stuff. Steroids, however, they were always present. They were always kind of there. I always kind of knew that I would end up gravitating towards them at one point or another. Remember, you know, reading like muscle media 2000 and reading some of these magazines. And I really wanted to, I wanted to learn more. I was really fascinated by them. I'm like, man, these things they make you, they make you like bigger, they help you get bigger and stronger. You know, and then on every other page in this magazine,

are things that are supposed to try to help you get bigger and stronger, but they don't actually really work. According to a lot of the strong man athletes and according to the people that I looked up to, like a Bill Kazmire and according to, because back then people were a little bit more open too. In fact, this is like before my era, but you can go back and look at some like old muscle and fitness back when it was called like muscle and power.

And it would say the person's workout and it would say they did five to five squats. They did three sets of 10 leg extensions, three sets of 10 leg curls. They did some ab work and when they finished up their workout, they had some milk and some steak and a potato. And then it will say, Diana ball, 25 milligrams. And then it will kind of go on to the next thing. And I was always like, wait, what's that? You know, what's so true? I have some old magazines that you would say that. And then it went, and then it went the opposite where they pretended like none of that happened with the weeder muscle and fitness and also.

Then you had like muscle media 2000, you know, Bill Phillips, Dan Ducane, and then they were bringing it back to the whole honesty thing. But there was a lot of pushback back then too. And my, my uncle was, was big into pro wrestling as well. And so he, so he played football, and I didn't know at the time, but he was into antibiotics and stuff like that too.

He's the one who had those magazines, and that's kind of where I first saw a lot of this stuff, because I wouldn't have had access to those older magazines otherwise. But yeah, I was fascinated by it. I was like, man, these things are, these things seem like they're great. Like why the hell are they even illegal? And then I kind of learned more. I'm like, oh, these things are, these things seem like, they're great. Like, why the hell are they even illegal?

And then I kind of learn more. I'm like, oh, we got to inject them. That's really weird. You can inject in this oil in your body and you need a syringe and like, okay, now it's starting to sound like, starting to sound like drugs rather than like this cool supplement that I kind of thought that it was. And then it was probably around the time of, I was about 25 or 26. I was training at Westside Barbell.

My wife and I, we lived in Columbus, Ohio. I was commuting and going to Ohio Valley wrestling, wrestling to be a pro wrestler. And it was kind of around that time where I was just like, I just need to be bigger. You know, like I just, as I was mentioning, I looked around the room and I'm like, there's no spot for me in here, you know?

And so that was around the time that I got on stuff, which was really weird, because I went from being natural and being at Westside to where everybody already knew, I was already established as the new guy, and I was already established as being the only guy in the gym who didn't take anything. And then all of a sudden, I wanted to take stuff.

So I'm like, who do I even ask? Like, where do I even start? And then who in here is gonna think I'm a cop? Because no one actually knows me. And that's what started to kind of fly around the gym. They're like, he's starting to ask for drugs, man. I think he's a cop. So no one would sell me.

There's so many. Yeah, no one would sell me anything. So then I started going to like message forums and stuff like that. And I just ended up ordering shit off the internet. That's the first time you got some was off the internet. Yeah, holy shit. Back then that was very different.

Yeah, would you start with? Yeah, as I say, do you remember what your first cycle was? Yeah, yeah, I had a testosterone, Dekka and Diana Ball, and I got fucking massive. It was awesome. I gained like 40 pounds. I didn't really understand that like That I was gonna have that kind of response on me

A lot of the pro wrestlers they were taking stuff too and I was kind of asking them for some advice but they weren't very knowledgeable and so I was really getting a lot of the information off these information off these message boards and They you know, they were saying I take, I take somewhere to three to 500 milligrams of both and then take X amount of this. And by the way, this might get shut down on YouTube because they've shut down other things that I've talked about when I've gone. Oh, really? Really? You can't promote, you can't promote, but I'm not promoting it and not to... I was sharing a story and counting on it.

Yeah, do you guys air these on YouTube? Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, no, no, no. This is before. Yeah. This is it. I don't, well, we did a whole, uh, anablogs stairway thing

with, uh, Stan Effarding and I did one. I had John Romano on the show. I think it might depend on how you talk about it. Of course. Yeah. We're really careful about not promoting it as much as sharing our personal, which is why I like to ask because, you know, I did a lot of things the wrong way.

Like you and my, it was my early 20s when I did and you know, I took the advice of just some random bodybuilder guy and probably took way more than I needed to. Right. Yeah, you know, and you know, did not put as much effort into my post-cycle therapy and what I should be doing with that and it forever changed me hormonally. Like I, I never fully recovered.

Well, that's something I try to share with people very openly. Like, you know, if you're gonna make that decision, then, you know, it's almost like going into business. Like, you know, once you kind of start a business, what's your exit strategy gonna look like? Or like, what does it look like in a few years from now? And same thing with, you know with getting on anabolic steroids, it might be a life decision, you might have to be on them,

the rest of your life, otherwise you might not be, I know for myself where I was before I ever took them, and how strong I was before I ever took them, and the shape that I was able to get in before I ever took them, and it would be hard to get back to that spot without them for a period of time. And when I say period of time, probably about a year

because everything, maybe longer, everything would have to kind of like normalize and who knows how long that would take, it might take a really long time. And so you end up being worse off than you were than before you ever took out. I think it's also too important because you said how much weight and muscle and mass you gained,

but you had been powerlifting in training since you were 12. And there's genetics to how people respond to these things as well. I had guys that would work for me, trainers, or sales guys when I would manage gyms, who would get on gear, and their training wasn't good, their diet wasn't good, and they didn't have the best genetics,

and these guys would gain like, hey, pounds, and're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're

dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they're dying, they Yeah, my friends at wrestling, they were like, holy shit. I was like, yeah, I actually work out. Now, you fell in love the first time you took them.

Was that just a love affair of cycling on and off or were you on them? And that was it. Ah, just, you know, I love lifting. You know, so anything that's going to help me with lifting, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to be four, just like my lifting belt, like it helps me lift more, you know, if I take something, it helps me lift more, then I'm gonna, I'm gonna want to utilize it. And so I, when I, we called going to the dark side, when I went to the dark side, I kind of made a decision, like, I'll probably be dark side

for life, because I knew, I knew some of the things that I wanted to get out of it. I think maybe secretly, I think I knew that I was really doing it for my love and passion of just training and it wasn't really for wrestling, but I used kind of wrestling as the excuse, much like you use like a football as an excuse for like lifting, but you probably lifting just to get you better shape. So you can meet girls or something like that.

Like it's probably, there's probably other reasons other than just that. And so yeah, I mean, how could you, and then also how do you not get addicted to something? You know, the people talk about addictions. How do you not get addicted to something that makes you better at what you love to do? What if like, you know, what if you took a drug and it made you write better music?

You know, that does happen, right? People take mushrooms and they marijuana and all kinds of things. And then they're like, holy shit, I write a lot better when I do that. So there they are. Well, now that you're a father, at some point your kids are going to listen to your podcast and watch if they don't already, if one of your kids comes up, he says, hey dad, listen, I'm really into training like you. This is what I really want to do.

I want to get on some gear so I can just build bigger muscles and be real strong. Have you thought about what that conversation would be like if that happened? I haven't really thought about that in particular, but I have had a lot of people ask me over the years, you know, hey man, I really been thinking about it, you know, and then I'll try to explain to them

what you mentioned is like, this could be like a lifetime thing. And do you want to have children? You know, there's that, like, because who knows? It might mess you up to where you can't or something. And then it's like, my brother asked me that question and bigger stronger faster.

And I was like, well, if I can't have another kid, then I guess I made a mistake. Because at the time I already had one, I think. And if it messed me up forever like that, then I guess I have to live with those consequences, but I try to make people aware that this could be a potential real consequence. And what they do, what steroids do,

I'm never gonna undersell it. I don't know what the fuck they do. I don't know, I don't know. Like some people say, you know, oh, there's no real proof that tumors grow bigger, because you're on steroids or growth hormone or some of these things, but it's like, I don't really know.

So I'm not gonna really say that. It's a drug and it's very dangerous. And it's important that people be cautious with it. Well, they've been around long enough. I think we know a lot of what they do when they don't do, which brings me to another topic. I've been getting a lot of questions now for the last, maybe a couple of years on storms.

People wanting to take these, you know, storms that they're buying online. And my argument to them is always like, look, if you're gonna go that route, why not go the end of, I don't promote that you go break the law and take steroids, look, if you're gonna go that route, why not go the end of the amount, promote that you go break the law and take steroids. But if you're gonna already go that route and take something that's attaching to your Androgen receptor,

why not take the thing that at least has been around for 50 years and we know, that you have an opinion on the SARMS, is that becoming a big thing in the sports world or people like it's waste of time? I think it's pretty clear that they work. And I think it's pretty clear that they work and I think it's pretty clear that people are utilizing them. What's not clear is maybe how they work and maybe all the different things that they do. At least with steroids, they've been used for a long time, like you said. They

got a little bit of a track record, so to speak. And they've been used for a while, not just amongst bodybuilders, not just amongst athletes, but clinically as well, just to boost someone's testosterone. And you naturally have testosterone in your body. Some of these things that the Psalms are doing, I'm not fully aware of the mechanics of how these things work. But I would say that they're probably not things that are naturally floating around in your system. You don't make storms.

Which doesn't necessarily mean it's bad, because you don't make broccoli either. You know what I was like. I can't really say whether I think they're good or bad, but I do think that people are like from my understanding and what I've heard from a lot of people is they're gaining weight, they're gaining strength, they're seeing, and I would imagine a lot of our athletes

are on them, a lot of crossfitters are probably using them, there's one in particular that's supposed to be exercise in a bottle literally. It's supposed to lower your LDL cholesterol. It's supposed to make your trick your body into thinking that you just did a half an hour cardiovascular training. Which I don't know how it works and I'm not saying that it does work. These are just things that I've heard, but that is fucking crazy.

And that's what Louis Simmons predicted in bigger, stronger, faster in my brother's film. He said, what happens when they make something that's better than steroids? He's like, then what do we do? Yeah, I will see. I think my own standard, but I don't know about the Saram thing. Yeah. So yeah, that's, it's an interesting topic because I think people are always going to try and push the limit and to see an experiment and see what they can do.

And unlike steroids, I think, I mean, there's people that, I guess, steroids are weird because the way that people have to sell them is so strange, but so arms, I guess, is a little bit similar, but now we have the internet, and people are figuring out ways of purchasing sores on the internet via, like, they're buying gift cards and purchasing whatever weird way they can.

Oh, interesting. The weird thing about sores and the thing that I would really be cautious of is that there's a lot of monetary gain for these companies that are making them. So that would be, these are gonna be the people that are gonna share the information with you. And so I don't know, you know what I mean?

Like I don't know how truthful they'll be. And I don't know what it's pretty biased when they want you to buy it, right? Yeah. There's so many stuff for 90 bucks or something, but I mean the know how truthful they'll be. I don't know what it's pretty biased when they want you to buy it, right? Yeah. There's so many stuff for 90 bucks or something, but I mean, the supplement industry is the exact same way. It's hard to say about it. Oh, so is the CrossFit industry, right?

They have their own medical journal that they provide all their information and it supports. They've been gardening. Yeah, they actually told us that. Yeah, that's a true story. I wanted to ask you about a little off-air we talked about your podcast journey. And one, I'd like to hear what made you even think about getting into the podcast space.

I know that you've had more than one name for the podcast. So maybe share why you got into it and then what that journey's been like for you. Yeah. So initially it was called Mark Bell's Powercasts and it was something that was started probably like about five years ago or so, maybe six years ago. I don't remember now, it's been a long time. I've done a lot of episodes and I don't even have a record of how many of those we've done, but at some point I had to shift gears, you know, sometimes when you're in business and sometimes when you do things other people sometimes you grow apart, you know, sometimes when you're in business and sometimes

when you do things other people sometimes you grow apart, you know, and so in this particular case, me and the guy that kind of came up with the idea of having a podcast, his name's Jim McDonald, and he actually has gone off and done his own podcast as well. We just weren't seeing eye to eye and even off the bat, like he and I are just different. Like I see that you guys are all very different, but you guys are all very much the same too. You have a lot of similar goals. And he and I had kind of similar things that we liked, like powerlifting and like podcasting, but we had too many differences when it kind of came down to like the overall picture of what we were trying to do. And you know, he kind of liked the advertising model and he liked a lot of and he would research stuff and he'd come to me and say, hey, you know,

this is how much you can make off of doing like A, B and C. And I was kind of a little frustrated with it. And I was like, well, you're just really making money off of me because that's why I'm not trying to be a hot shot or anything, but that's why people are tuning in. And I don't like the way this sounds. And so then eventually I kind of gave into it, which was a bad idea on my part to kind of give in on some of that stuff. And I actually told him and our other co-host at the time, I said, look, you guys want advertising, go for it.

You know, just go get it yourself. You know, go grab the advertiser yourself. And I said, I'll even give you my contacts. I got contacts with every major company that you can possibly think of that would sponsor this podcast. Turned it all over them. They did absolutely zero with it. So zero internal drive from either one of them. And to me, like that's like the most disgusting thing in the world. I cannot handle that. I can't handle even being around that.

It's like a virus to me. And I don't like that. I don't agree with that way of thinking and stuff like that too. And then the other part of it was the other guy on the show was an actual employee of mine too. So that was causing some friction there as well. And so it was getting to be like a stressful situation rather than just fun. Like you guys are saying, like, we all get together and we all just sit down and I'm sure

occasionally things get heated. But for the most part, it's the job itself. If it wasn't fun, you guys would sit down and have a major conversation. I'll hate it. It's the same fucking fun anymore. So that's where we ended up going is it ended up just not being fun anymore. And as things kind of shifted and as things started to change, we ended up hiring, not hiring, we ended up utilizing smokey who you guys met on the way in and he was handling our advertising. And we were starting to do really well. We were starting to do six figures with

our advertising and we were barely just getting started. And you know, it got to a point where we started taking on some ads that I was like, ah, these are not even like really in the fitness space anymore. And they're not really like there was one for like a watch and one for this. And then I'm like, I don't at the time I wear a wear a fit bit now, but at the time I didn't wear a watch, and I'm like, I don't even wear, now I'm doing these reads, and I'm like, this is, I don't care, I don't give a fuck about money.

I have always been fascinated by money, and I've always liked making money, but I know actually, physically care about it that much. It is important to have financial freedom as a wonderful place to be, and I love it. I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world. But it wasn't where my focus was. My focus and my reason for doing the podcast

was not a financial one. My purpose and reason for starting my podcast on my YouTube channel long time ago was not for financial reasons. Like at that time, YouTube didn't even give you money for it. Yeah, you didn't even know you could make money off of it. Yeah, right. It didn't know, it didn't know any of that. Like that's not the real reason why I started anything. And the same thing with the, the slingshot was obviously like a thing that I could monetize. It was very clear

that once I had an invention, now I could sell something. But that's not the main reason why that was invented either. So as I kind of thought about him, where I'm like, man, you know, this is just not working out. And he and I had a conversation. And his thoughts were so opposite of mine. I kind of went home and I talked to my wife about, I was really upset. You know, I was fucking crying because this is somebody that has been with me for a long time.

So this is a shitty dissent. Like, I don't want to have to. Yeah, that was probably a hard conversation. Yeah, I don't want to have to talk to this guy and tell him like that we're done, but at the same time, I'm like, it just doesn't feel right anymore. And as I always started saying it out loud, as you were mentioning on the podcast earlier, as I started singing out loud, I started realizing how much more sense it actually makes, rather than like, sometimes you say something out loud and it sounds really dumb and you're like, whoops, that sounds really retarded.

But in this case, it just made more and more sense and I'm like, wow, I didn't even realize how unfair this is to him too. To keep this going is unfair to him. Because he's making money and he's kind of under, he's like almost delusional because he's getting a salary from this, which is cool. He's making some dough, he's like almost delusional because he's getting a salary from this, which is cool. He's making some dough, but he's almost blinded

by the fact that like, yeah, you are getting money, but this is causing you a lot of stress. He even shared with me that he needed to get help for and go to the therapist and stuff. And I'm like, so when I went to him and I explained it to him, he was pretty heated, he's pretty mad. And I said, you know, I just, I don't, I just don't think this is fair even for you.

And when I said that, I think it kind of sunk in with him. And I think he was kind of like, you didn't do the, it's me, it's not you, it's me. It's not me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so, you know, I do appreciate everything that he did for Super Training Gym because he did a lot of the videos Training in Jim because he did a lot of

the videos in the beginning. He did a lot of the stuff that people really liked from Super Training.tv that we did years and years and years ago. We're one of the first people in the fitness industry to even do voiceovers. It's like this weird stuff to say that you did a million years ago. It sounds really weird to say it now, because it's not like I'm too at my own horn, but these are things that we did, and no one to this day is even close to having put out as many informative videos

than what I have done. I have continued to do it now that he's not here anymore, but I really do appreciate him kind of getting a lot of that started. What did you learn from that relationship? I'm assuming that it probably was a little bit of bad blood when different directions. Maybe don't talk very much.

What did you learn from that? Just, you know, it's just so cliche to say, but communication is really crucial. And I guess probably the main thing that I learned from that, and this is a really weird thing, and this is new to me. I've never really experienced this before, but I'm in a position now to where if I don't communicate with somebody,

and maybe this is, maybe this is not even correct, maybe this is just my feeling. My feeling is that if I'm not in communication with somebody, they're going to start to build animosity towards me. And a lot of that is surrounded by probably social media and probably like maybe the things I post. So think about it, you know, if we're working together and you're busing your ass every day and we're hanging out all the time and we're communicating a lot. And then boom, I got like 75 other things to do and we don't talk for a bit. I come back around and I keep kind of doing that over and over again.

You're seeing a different post, you're seeing my beach house, you're seeing my new car, you're seeing this, you're seeing that, and you're still working really hard, but maybe you don't feel that things are fair on your end. You're not communicating that back to me. You and I are not sitting down and talking about like what really makes sense for you, what really makes sense for me. We just kind of keep going, it keeps going in the circle and your animosity is starting to kind of,

you're about to blow your top, you're about to blow up. And that's when I kind of was recognizing, like, man, even when I have had conversations, because not like we never talked about it at all, even when I've had conversations with him, he's been very, very stressed about it. You do kind of big ass-eye and stuff like that. And I was like, man, like, and I, I don't,

it's rare for me to get like really worked up about anything. And so for me, I was even starting to feel stressed out about it. I'm like, man, if I'm getting stressed out, I know that he, you know, handles situations differently than I do. So, I'm like, he must be really freaking stressed out about it. So we got to probably discontinue this. Did you find that you were building resentment

because you weren't able to fully express how you felt the whole time? Because I've had friendships where I've had to end them and the reason why I've ended a lot of these friendships was and I look back. It's like, I never told them how I felt through this whole time. I just built up and built up until I finally said,

I don't wanna hang out with you or whatever. I think that might have been more on his end. But I don't, I'm not sure why, but like, it's just one of those deals where on that person's end, they feel slighted and on my end, I feel the opposite way. You know what I mean? Like, I feel like, hey, I'm presenting you a lot of opportunity. And he feels like, I'm not getting enough out of this. So it's like, whoa, how the hell the hell the dac is getting there. Did you know you were going to do another podcast

when you had told them you were done or were you done like I'm not doing podcasts anymore? Oh, there was like a pause for a little bit. Yeah, there was a little bit of a pause. And then we just kind of like picked up the pieces and it took a minute, you know, it took a minute to kind of figure out because I went from, you know, having two co-hosts to, you know, to having one, to having none and then to kind of restart.

And then I was like, well, you know, now who, I guess all along I kind of knew that I could just be on the show myself because there's just so much shit to talk about as we've talked about on the last podcast. I mean we could see you're in talk about training forever. So I always like to have ownership of stuff. I'm not necessarily a control freak, but I also don't think that I'm going to really, I can work well with other people, but I can't work well for you. And I know that about myself because I don't care about what you want me to do. I care about what I wanna do.

And that's just kind of, I've always been that way. And I mentioned that on the podcast, we just did in terms of education. I've always been the shit that I don't care about, I don't care about it. And it's kind of taken me a long time to, it's taken me a long time to kind of come to this realization that like I hardly have any emotion

towards a lot of things that I need to, there's certain things I need to care about a little bit more. You know, like if my wife is feeling a certain way, like I need to pause and I can't be like, well, I don't even talk about that. Because I honestly, for many, many years of my life, didn't really care that much about a lot of stuff. I'm the kind of person that my car could be on fire.

Well, it kind of was on fire. My dad and my son borrowed my car and they went out to Reno. They went to a, they were going to a Donald Trump rally. I know that'd be really popular. They were going to a Donald Trump rally and I told them they could take my car because my car was newer. As I escalated, it was like a 2016 or 17 or something like that. And on their trip, it bit freaking blew up. It just the engine to stop working. And they're stuck on the side of the road. My wife is like freaking out. She's like, you know, at that time, I think it was like nine o'clock at night

and nine o'clock turned into 11 o'clock and so on. They're in the middle of nowhere in Nevada. And, you know, fortunately for me, my wife and I use a car service and we got a friend that was able to, you know, get somebody out there in the middle of nowhere and pick them up and bring them to a hotel and all this stuff. But the whole time, my wife was kind of upset and panicking and she's really worried because

of my son and my dad are stuck on the side of the freeway. I'm just like, well, I'll just call my friend and he'll probably get a car out there and they'll probably pick them up. She's like, well, what about the escalator? I'm like, who cares? I'm like, just leave it there. She's like, we can't just leave it there. I was like, well, technically we could.

We have to. Yeah, and as a technically we could, and or we can just get it towed somewhere and then maybe they'll fix it or maybe we'll sell it or whatever. And so how did the fans react when you canceled the old podcast and then started the new one? Did you get a lot of change over people like, ah, it's fucking different.

Yeah, you know, there's a lot of weird interpretations of me. You know, people like which ones? Well, people have, people that have been around me understand that I love the train. I love to lift weights, you know, and passion is that. And my passion is also helping people to, you know, if I can get people to feel one fifth of what I'm feeling, then I think I'm doing pretty good. Because I just get so excited by training, it's done so much for me over the years. And so that's one of the goals and that's one of the missions, but the fans. I mean, they were confused, you know, and I think that when they see the transitions that the gym has gone through and they see the changes that have happened, you know, people might

say, well, oh, man, you've really changed. And it's like, well, I hope so. That's my goal. Like, I want to change. I want to be better than I was yesterday. And I want to leave the person that I was like in the dust because I want to change. I want to be better than I was yesterday. And I want to leave the person that I was, like in the dust, because I want to continue to progress,

and I want to continue to grow. And there'll still be certain values that I hold dear to my heart, and then I hold on to, but there's going to be a lot of stuff that I leave in the past, and there'll be probably a lot of people I'll leave in the past,

and I don't have any, I don't really have control over that. And I've kind of had this philosophy of either you're in or you're in the way. You know, somebody's with me, then they're with me, then that's cool. But if you're not with me, then you're against me. You know what I mean? So that's kind of the philosophy that we've had here. And it used to be on the on the gym wall.

I probably I need to get it up on this gym wall, but it used to be on our gym wall. And that's kind of our main model, like you're either with what we're doing or you're not. Do you remember coming on our show years ago? A long time ago. I vaguely remember it because I think that we just did it via Skype, right? Yeah, I know we did.

I've given you shit without you being on the podcast for a long time. We've probably done, I don't know, 300 or so interviews and people always ask me my least favorite. And I say, it's Mark Bell's interview. And they go, why? He's such a great guy, because everybody likes you.

I mean, when you get a chance to hang out and meet you in person, as I feel we have too. Everybody said really good things. Everyone's always say great things. I'm not a fuck that guy, I don't like that guy. And they're always going like, why? And I said, well, the motherfucker took our podcast

inside of his car. You're on your cell phone. I said, well, the motherfucker took our podcast inside of his car. You're on your cell phone. I said, I can hear his dinging of his fucking door while we were, you know, asking questions from him. So, fuck him. No, I don't like him. That's awesome. Yeah, so for the longest time, I talk shit about you

until, no, that's as much as I would say. I just, you know, I speak with, Hey, that's proof. That's some proof right there because I feel that I invented those videos from the car. Go back and watch some of the old YouTube videos I'm doing right for my car. Now to be fair, that was a good studio.

That was early on when we were just getting started. And so you put up a lot of piss and vinegar. Yeah, you were doing this, you're like, I'll get on this, these guys podcast, whatever. So it was better be honest., I remember one of you though. I remember we were interviewing you and I could hear you like, turn on the car, like open the door, you're here.

That's awesome. And hold on a second guys and you're doing something else. I'm like, this mother. Well, the biggest part of that was just, you know, try finding somewhere quiet in your house when you got two kids, you know. So that was the biggest obstacle obstacle a couple of years back. I mean, my kids are now, my son is going to be 15 at the end of this month.

Oh, wow. And my daughter is 11. So yeah, I mean, they're growing up. But when they were young, I just remember everything was just chaos all the time. So anytime I took a phone call, I'm like, I need to get the fuck outta here. I don't have any more else to go. The gym is gonna be crankin' loud too. Now these guys talk a lot on our show

because they both have kids and share, I take care of my kids. What a reflection it is having children on yourself and your insecurities and your weaknesses. What have your kids taught you about yourself? You know, first I wanna kind of address, you mentioned earlier, because I did say that,

I've been asked a question about steroids a lot, and you were specifically asking more so. About your kids, about my kids, they were asking about. So my kids, they don't, I don't know what they know, but they more than you think usually. Yeah, yeah, way more than you think. So my son is actually like he was looking for like his cowboy hat and he stumbled upon some stuff that's in my closet, you know, I got needles and shit like that. I got testosterone in there. I do get stuff prescribed by a doctor, but like

when that question does pop up from my kids, and I didn't have a chance to communicate with Jake about steroids at that moment, but it's probably, you know, we probably do need to get in conversation about it soon. I didn't want to like start the conversation too young, just because I just thought that maybe it's maybe it's not a good place to start but I'm sure that he probably already has some questions about it so now I should be a good time to kind of get on that and I wouldn't bullshit them though I wouldn't say like oh you know I get it prescribed but I would say that I would say that they look they're what I'm doing is legal like I have like documents that I get this from a doctor.

I'm not like, you know, bionists and on some alleyway, but what I will tell them is I'll say, you know, these are the, this is something I utilized in my career. I thought I needed it to lift the weights I lifted. So I'll just kind of leave it at that, you know, when it comes down to that. But what about back to my question

about looking at your kids and seeing, you know, their insecurities and things like that, and it being like a big reflection for yourself, do you see things in them that makes you go like, oh, fuck, that was me or I got that. I think that, I think that, I've experienced a lot because I've moved around a lot. I've been around a lot of people.

The experiences that I've had in professional wrestling and rubbing elbows with really high end or high level, I should say, lifters and business people. After seeing all these things over the years and taking in a lot, and I've always actually been surprisingly enough, I've actually been very quiet for a long time. And so I was very shy and very reserved. And when I look at my kids and I kind of see how they respond to things, it was when they were really, really young and they started kind of playing sports and just getting around other kids. I started to recognize like,

it just made me kind of think about, okay, when I was a kid, somebody might look at their son and be like, man, I don't understand, this kid, he gets up to bat and he's like barely in the batter's box. And he barely has his bat up and he looks like he's terrified.

Well, fuck, man, maybe he is. The kid who's pitching, can't even get the ball over the plate. He's like, one pitch will be 50 miles an hour, and the next pitch will be 10, and the next pitch will be thrown over the backstop. And it's like, man, maybe your kid is scared, but I think it's hard as an adult to remember back to how you actually felt.

And it's easy for us to think about, hey man, you gotta get in the gym and you gotta bust your ass. You're gonna make things harder on yourself so that everything else in life's easier. And you know, it's easy to kind of say some of these things now, but as a kid, you were probably like terrified of these things.

You're probably scared of these things. You probably were a lot more reserved. My son for the longest time, but do his homework and he wouldn't hand it in. And my wife was like, I don't understand why I won't hand his homework. I'm like, he's just too shy. Is it like, to be her failure, you think?

It's like he's too shy. And she's like, he's too shy to hand it his homework. I'm like, probably that, probably that, probably also like he probably didn't do all of it. You know what I mean? Like, he probably did like a certain percentage of it, but then he like didn't realize he didn't do the answers on the back or something. You know, probably something along those lines, but I was like that too. There was no possible. And in my wife would be like, you got

to talk to your teacher. You got to tell your teacher that you've done some of this work and then you got to hand it in. I'm like, he's not there's no way. He's just not going to do that. He's like, I don't understand why wouldn't you do that? That's what you do. I'm like, there, he's just not gonna do that. She's like, I don't understand why wouldn't you do that? That's what you do. I'm like, I agree with you that we should suggest that to him. And we should encourage that. Hey, you're gonna have to talk to adults. Like that's gonna be par for the course here, you know, going to school. But I was like, he's never gonna do it.

And she's like, why do you say I was like, I would never would. I was like, never in a million years when I talk to an adult, especially my teacher. Like I was terrified to talk to, you know, to even barely talk to my grandparents. Like when you're a kid, I think a lot of times you're, I don't know, you just, it's awkward, you know,

it's awkward, you can't find the right words and you're not sure what to say or what to talk about. And so. Now is he naturally into sports? And is he a natural in sports, I should say, or have you found that that's even something he's interested in? Neither one of my kids care about sports. My son recently was asking about football, and I went to a football meeting and stuff, and so he's been thinking about playing football,

but he's been training here in the gym. Neither one of them, yeah, neither one of them really ever cared about sports. And it's actually really, how do you feel about that? Being like, so competitive and being into sports. Yeah. Just because I know for me, specifically too, my oldest, he's somewhat into it, but it's not the same.

It's not the same experience I'm already watching through him going through that process and like, how do you feel like watching that? Times are just different, man. You know, I think when we grew up, I think that's what kids did. They played sports. And there's been many generations of children that haven't played sports. You know, so I think they're going to be totally fine.

I think like what did the sports do for you? They might have done absolutely nothing. They may have been more damaging than they were good. Like, is playing football, people are getting their heads bashed in playing football. If you were getting concussions and stuff, I'm not saying I'm against football, I love it. I always have and I always will.

I love watching football. But at the same time, I'm not gonna sweat it if my kids, you know, if they don't care about sports. You know, I would, I have been teaching both of them since they were really little about nutrition and about having some sort of movement and fitness be part of your life riding a bike, swimming, doing something, they both ride their bikes to school, they're both pretty active, they're both like doing stuff, we encourage them to, you know, put stuff down and get outside, do stuff, do something with your friends and get out and get moving.

There are a lot of great values, there are a lot of great things that you can learn from a sport. As I was mentioning earlier, no one who you are is no one who you're not and when you're sometimes involved in some of these sports, you're like, oh shit, that guy was a lot faster than me and that girl was, it's kind of like, oh shit, that guy was a lot faster than me. And that girl was, you know, it's kind of a good thing to realize you kind of where you stand in society, like your spot, like, are you this much better

than everybody else at these things. But one thing I think that's happening that I see with children is maybe like, they're a little bit more scared to try stuff than what I remember as a kid. And I don't know what that is. I don't know why. Like even my nieces and nephews when they try something and they're not good at it, they're just like, they're just gone. I think it's because they get trophies all the time for everything. And the other thing I think is they're not bored. because they get trophies all the time for everything. And the other thing I think is they're not bored.

I mean, when I was a kid, I was bored. And so I just did shit. You kept playing basketball, I kept shooting hoops or whatever, right? Like it's now kids are like, this sucks, gonna go get super entertained by my video games and electronics, you know? They're just not bored.

They don't sit there and do nothing. I agree with that. I think the boredom's probably the biggest factor. And I kind of hear kids say stuff like that. Those just say like, I'm not that good at that. It's like, well, shit, of course you're not. You never try it before. Like you barely try it.

You try it for 10 seconds. I played ping pong with my, and these things, they take a lot of time. You know, as a parent, like trying to teach a kid how to hit a ball or something, man, it could be agonizing and trying to figure out how to play baseball with your kid is almost impossible because the ball is going to come back and hit you right in the balls every single time. And a lot of these things take time. I remember playing in a ping pong with my nephew, we call him handbone, his name is Hamish, and he and I are going back and forth.

And he's awful. He's like three. You know, he can barely see over the thing. You know, he's just, but I was like, you know what I'm gonna do because I was the youngest. I was the baby of the family. I'm just gonna play with him for as long as he wants to do this for however long it takes. Let's see. Let's see what he's got, you know. Yeah. And so we're playing forever and he keeps hitting the ball in these weird spots. I got it like get under he was he's being lazy He like he won't help me get the ball when he can easily duck down and get it. Mm-hmm. he's being lazy. He won't help me get the ball when he can easily duck down and get it. I got no mobility whatsoever. So it's taken me forever to get the ball each time and we keep

going back and forth, going back and forth. We played for like an hour and he's like, can we be done? I'm like, sure, I was waiting for whatever you wanted to be done with it. But then the next day, we went back out, we played it again, played for like a half an hour and then now he's like five now. But now we play and we can actually play ping pong. We're actually going back and forth. And with my son and with my daughter, they just, they never really expressed that much interest in any one thing that they wanted to really sit there and like learn it. My son has a piano in his room and he's been messing around with that. Yeah, he has a guitar. He mess around with that. He like teaches, teaches himself how to do shit through YouTube.

But I'm like, let's just see what he's interested in. Like let's just see what kind of naturally comes to him and what he naturally wants to do. We had him try a couple things. So I do think it's important you need to support your children, but you need to force them to do shit. Like just like you need to maybe force them to eat a particular way.

Like, yeah, of course they want ice cream, but you can't serve that up nonstop. And you're gonna have to figure out some different ways of protecting them. But probably the greatest way that you can show love to a child is through discipline. And that's the hardest thing, and I think it's the hardest thing.

It's easier just to kind of like, oh, just let them watch cartoons or just, you know, let them eat whatever, rather than like going over to them and being like, oh, just let them watch cartoons or just, you know, let them eat whatever, rather than like going over to them and being like, hey, you're done with the TV, shutting it off. Let me have your phone, take away the junk food or whatever they got themselves into.

Like, man, that sucks. That takes a lot of energy. It does. If you ever talk to adults who were kids that had no structure and no discipline, they'll tell you that they felt like their parents didn't care about them and that it was very difficult.

So as much as you think, you know, as people think, oh, it's better if you let the kids do, no, kids thrive off the structure and knowing that you care enough to tell them to get off the TV, to not eat this, to do that. They know that you, yeah, they wanna know where they stand. That's what they wanna know those boundaries are

and those thresholds are. And you need to be able to provide that for them. Because now they know and they'll back off. And it's funny because we feel bad about it, but at the same time you're providing structure in their life that they can carry on with and it lowers the anxiety. The thing I'm real careful about is not...

I'll introduce my kids to stuff, but not pushing them so hard that they automatically hate it because I'm the one that's pushing them. So I've been like little by little, I mean my kids know what I do and they know that I've been in fitness for, for you know, since they were born or whatever since before.

So they see I have a garage and they see me working out, I talk about it and I wait for them to ask me. And so my son now is 13 and he's been asking me like, hey, so how do I, how do I put on muscle? And I'm just like, try not to get fucking excited. I'm like, oh, well, you know, it's a crisis of, yeah. Down blanket. Yeah, it's pretty cool.

You know, you lift weights and, you know, okay. He's like, okay, cool. And then, you know, a couple of weeks later, he's like, hey, what's it, what is it, what does it mean when you say bulking? And I'm like, so I'm explaining to him, I was like, I think I want to do a bulking program this summer. And I'm just like, fucking tear comes down.

So I'm like, we're going to do that together, son. We'll do the bulking. Can you put me on a diet too? And I'm like, thank you for the still wonderful gift, you know, as your kid expressed an interest in weights at all. Yeah, my son, he's been lifting here for the last couple of weeks. Oh, yeah. And it's been really cool to see like, how fast the improvements happen. You know, he's like lifting here for the last couple weeks. Oh, yeah, and it's been really cool to see like

How fast the improvements happen, you know, he's like that age 15. They're He's modern unnatural and abolished. Yeah, he's like moving around like 95 pounds like the first day like on the bench for a couple reps And then the next time he came in and he's doing it for like 15 reps and it's just like hold down Media improvement. Yeah, it took me to my 20s to get over that Seriously, yeah, he can probably bench like around 135 or 140. Yeah, it took me to my 20s to get over that. Yeah, seriously. Yeah, he can probably bench like around 135 or 140. Oh, that's nice. Yeah, he's just, I think that I don't know if he'd be like a naturally talented lifter.

I do think that he would be stronger than a lot of his friends, kind of, you know, right off the bat, which he's kind of already, he's already proving that. But he and I had a similar situation where he was exposed to it through, through PE, they were, you know, talking about lifting. And I showed him and his sister, I talked them forever about from time they were kids, I would say, Hey, you don't eat that. It makes you fat. I just let, I just made it plain and simple. I made it black and white. I didn't even try to sell it as like health and didn't try that, it makes you fat. I just made it plain and simple. I made it black and white. I didn't even try to sell it as like health and didn't try to sell it as anything mental.

I was like, this makes you fat. Period. Just left it right there. As I got older, I started sharing more with them and not saying the word facts. I didn't want them to have a complex about that. But when they were young, they understood that. And they started to learn, like, my daughter My daughter would eat something and I'd say,

hey, you know, she'd be done with dinner or whatever. She said, hey, you want a cookie and she's like, nah, I already had one today. You know, because she kind of learned, they kind of learned the rhythm. But I showed both of them how to lift. I was like, here's some basic exercises. Like, I don't know anything else.

So, you know, I'm gonna show you what I know. And if you guys want more, if you wanna work out with me more, you wanna learn more stuff, then we can do it. But I just showed him a couple exercises and left it at that. And then my son and I, he and I go on walks pretty much every night, me, him and my dad, and sometimes my daughter will come with us too.

You know, we're big prop big proponents of the 10 minute walk around my house. We do it, do them all the time. And we'll go for a 20 minute walk or so at night and we get done with this walk and my dad goes and does his own thing. And my daughter gets back in the house. My son's like, hey, dad, he's like,

you know, we've been, we've been lifting in school. And I'm like, oh, cool. And I'm not saying anything. And he's just kinda like pausing, and he's kinda, he just, he wanders around a lot. He's like walking back and forth, he's like pacing. And he's like, I think I wanna, I think I wanna like lift more, you know? I like, I wanna work on it.

You tried not to jump out of your ship. Yeah, yeah, I'm like, like the Rocky music starts playing in my head. And I was like, well, I said, you know, I said, maybe, I said, maybe we'll go this weekend just like try to make it totally seem like nothing, you know? And then yeah, that weekend I woke him up and brought him here and then he's been kind of lifting ever since.

Oh, that's freaking awesome. That's exciting. And I ask him like, I'm like, do you like it? And he's like, I don't know. Yeah, funny. Yeah. Are you a store? I don't care. I'm like, do you like it? And he's like, oh no. I'm like, yeah, fine. He's like, yeah. Are you a store? I don't care.

So, you know, on both your podcasts and our podcasts, we talked a lot about desired outcome, self-awareness. You talk a lot about self-talk. I would love to hear something specific that you have been working on internally yourself this past year or two that you probably have a lot of conversations with yourself about? Yeah, I chat with myself more than anybody else. That's for sure.

You know, when I talk about this internal talk, I think some people might think it's a little bit weird. Some people might be down with it. And some people might not have any idea what to tell them talking about. You quickly realize how much internal talk there is. Once you start to realize how negative you can be. And one of my goals is to go through a whole day and not be negative one time, but it's very hard.

It's very, very difficult. And I try to even change, even with messing around with somebody, I try to even change that, because I've learned that, like having two older brothers going up and going through professional wrestling, you learn how to really chop people down, hard.

And it's fun, right? Because it's banter. It's like, we're just buddies, man, I'm just saying, relax. But I had to, over a period of time, recognize that, okay, some of these people on social media don't know who I am. I still make mom jokes. Can't help that. If there's a good mom joke to be had, I gotta say.

But. They never get old. Yeah, they never get old. Like your mom. That's right. Boom. Yeah. But for the most part, I try to be as positive as I can.

Because I'm like, you know what? What if this came at this person the wrong way at the wrong time? And it cut them down or hurt their feelings like I don't want to do that I don't I don't ever mean to do that and so I'm like that's not who I am as a per I don't want to you know portray hate and I don't want to be hateful towards anybody and so the internal dialogue I have with myself is mainly Just to figure out ways of being positive. And the reason for it is, is that other people will be plenty negative for you and towards

you that you got plenty of supply of that. And I actually like to use a lot of negative energy as fuel, which can be a little bit dangerous. You know, it's like using some nitrous that can give you a nice turbo boost, but you can also end up flying off the road and going to the wall, right? But I've used it my whole life. I've used it to squat a thousand, eight, I've used it to bench 854 pounds. And it's not this idea of, you know,

I'm a raging lunatic or anything, but it's just this idea of, I need the newspaper clipping. You know, I need the Bill Bella check, like the Patriots somehow, some way, every single game convinced themselves, everyone else is out to get them, and that they're somehow the underdog. Like how do they do that every year?

So you're going to your ninth Super Bowl, no one's caught onto this, you know? But Bill Bella check always told us. Yeah, Bill Belichek at least pulls out a quote that someone said in the other person's locker room and he puts it up in their locker room. And it's just, I feel like in some ways that that gives me like a superpower,

it gives me like a leg up on some people. So, you know, as a kid, I was labeled as dumb. I use that as leverage all the time. I use that as dumb. I used that as leverage all the time. I used that as fuel. I used that as calories, if you will. That's something that fuels me, that's something that drives me, that's something that still to this day,

you know, as part of the reason why I wake up at four in the morning is to try to get out in front of the day. And I'm more positive, note, it's to get out in front of the day and to make sure all my other tasks are done. It's to make sure that the day is fulfilled the way that I want to. What I think is really important to grasp is if you live each day, like if you let's say that you want to have it like a 10 out of 10 day and you actually think about this for a second.

You write some things down. What does a 10 out of 10 day look like for you? Maybe it's that you spent some time with a loved one and you spent some time with your kids and you did A B and C. You fulfilled all your requirements nutritionally. You got in a good workout. You were nice to your friends. You were called your mom or like just these things, right? You handled all these things in a day and when you kind of sit down and you're like, okay, that was a cool day. That was, get real, I did everything I needed to. There's nothing, there's nothing in this day that I'm like, I'll just do it tomorrow. You got everything done that you wanted to do for that day. To me, that's really fulfilling. And I think, I think it's a good

concept for a lot of people to try to embrace is, you want to try to have the best possible day that you can. And like, how do you do that? Where is that start? In the beginning of the podcast, I talked about a pre workout and I talked about how it could last like a whole week, because my pre workout is my last failure or my last success with a particular goal or something that I had in mind, something I wanted to do. If my goal was to bench 400 pounds and I missed it on a Thursday, my recovery for that starts right then and there, and I start thinking about that, how am I going to get that next

week or how am I going to rework things over the next couple of weeks to make sure that I get that. All that starts for me with not waking up early, because I think people see this message that I wake up early, and then some people get frustrated, like, man, you're teaching people not to sleep. That's not at all what I'm trying to preach to anyone. I do think though that there is something special

and there is something magical about learning the discipline of getting yourself to bed on time. Whatever time that means for you, for the allotted amount of time that you need to rest and recover for that particular day. And that's how you set yourself up for success. And that's how I think you can set yourself up to have the most fulfilled day that you can. I always share this message of do more, be more, the more that you can do, the more things you can handle, the more things that you can deflect.

How is any one of this table going to hurt the rocks feelings? Can, right? Because he's done more, he is more, he does a lot, he is a lot, he's a big deal to a lot of people and there's really, we can throw something out at them and say this or that or whatever it wants to, but it's probably not going to work. A lot of us, over a period of time, the more stuff that we do, the more we'll be able to handle. Then we have shitty situations in life.

Maybe we'll be able to handle them and deal with them a little bit better. If I'm here and you correctly, the thing that you've been working on most is this kind of positive attitude or positive reinforcement. Is it more related to how you project yourself to others like on social media or is it more like self love? Like are you somebody who's hard on yourself so much or you I'm stupid or that was a dumb idea and so you're more working on that part of you or is it more like you're quick to fire at somebody who says some shit on social media? Yeah, the social media side of things is a weird one.

That one's a little harder to answer and so like sometimes I'll even just go off social media because my health is important, like my recovery from stuff is important and social media Makes it a little bit difficult for me to recover from the things that I need to do every single day I train every time I train I train pretty damn hard I'm still trying to push some big weights. I still have some lofty goals. And so I Can't allow like is is social media enhancing what I'm doing or is it hurting? You know, how does it help? How does it hurt? These are questions I ask myself throughout the day whenever I'm going to do anything.

Have a cup of coffee, eat anything. Just even just someone calls me up at seven o'clock says, Hey, you want to meet me at eight to go to dinner? Hold on a second. Hey Mark, how does this help? How does this hurt? You know, that's what I'm thinking. That's the dialogue in my head because I'm like, if I go out at eight and then I'm back at 10 and then and then I just ate and then I'm, you know, I usually try to finish my food two hours before I go to bed and now it'd be 11 and 12 and Leaks into the next day and my so the anxiety a lot of these things that people are suffering from I don't want to just sell it off and say that like hey, man If you just did the shit you need to that you'd be fine

But if you just did the shit that you need to you probably be fine You know if you did if you did the dishes when you're supposed, if you did the dishes when you were supposed to, if you made your bed when you're supposed to, if you, if you ate the correct foods, if you had a 10 out of 10 day, if you did all the stuff that you were supposed to do, it's going to require, you know, life is going to require to require you to do the things that you don't want to do when you normally don't want to do them. When you sit on the couch, you just got home from a long day and you're thinking yourself, oh, time for a 10 minute walk, that kind of creeps in. You're like, I shouldn't be sitting here scrolling through Instagram. That's when there's absolutely no more decisions that you made. And you just walk your ass out the door and you go do that 10 minute walk

because you're trying to create new habits and new disciplines. And I think that a lot of people will feel a lot more fulfilled and they'll feel a lot better about themselves as they continue to achieve more. In terms of like, you know, the message out to social media, I don't mind being negative. You know, I don't mind being a dick and I don't mind telling people like this is,

because it's my social media and it's my it's my thoughts. These are these are my thoughts that I developed in this way and I hope that you enjoy them and I hope that you get something out of them. I hope that they're entertaining, but if they hit you the wrong way, then I I don't know how to help you because I just I'm never intending on hurting anybody. I'm never intending on being a negative in anybody's life. I'm never intending to pull anything away. All I'm trying to do is add to someone's life. So if I made some post the other day about like fasting and I showed like no food, you know,

like I'm gonna do some ridiculous weird stuff sometimes and just that's what I felt like sharing. So that's what I'm gonna do. Excellent. What's in store for the future with you and with your company, with your business? Yeah, with slingshot, you know, we're always we're always creating new products. We got a bunch of things A bunch of things in the works, but you know, it's just pretty much business as usual It's just trying to communicate to the customers on what it is that we have we have a lot of products

The slingshot is a supportive upper body device for bench press, pushups, and dips. The slingshot and the hip circle are things that have been copied by nearly every fitness brand that you can think of. The slingshot is a little bit harder to copy because it is patented. The hip circle, it's a circle, so I wasn't able to patent it, but you see everyone sells a booty band. I see the booty bands, yeah, that's good. Yeah, everyone sells and makes me feel great. You know, like, so there's no shortage, there's not a shortage of money to be made.

There's not a shortage of success out there. There's not, there's not an unlimited amount of money to be made, I'm sure, but I don't care. You know, I don't care if other people are executing on some things. I'm just hoping that I can figure out a way to execute better. That's where my focus needs to be. My focus can't be on all man, these people are like, it's easy to sit there and go, everyone's

copy and well, it's not everyone, first of all. And secondly, it's like, you know, who are these people and let them copy you? That's great. You know, on professional wrestling, there's only so many different stories you can tell. And if you go out and do a match and you go out and do a match and you go out and do a match, what are the odds that my match is similar? Probably is. But what if I do it 10 times better than you guys? No one's going to remember what you did. No one's going to remember the shit that you guys did, right? They're not going to even feel the same way about it. They might not even recognize it as being the same thing at all. Some of the things that we're trying to do here at Slingshot are we're trying to turn this into a juggernaut of a company where the things that we do are different. They're so different that other people can't follow it.

They can't follow it up. They can't figure it out. The things that we have that we're about to start to do, other people just won't do it. They won't be able to afford it. It'll be too hard for them to execute. We're going to kind of zapos and stitch fix are all of our products. So basically, we will have...

We've got a pretty loose return policy as is, but you'll be able to order like four or five knee sleeves at a time if you want. You send back, like you're like, ah, I'm not sure, man, they got a bunch of different knee sleeves. I don't know what fits and what doesn't fit. And so we're trying to create what's something like that is we're trying to create as if you were coming into our store, which is here in West Sacramento, and you were trying on knee sleeves. And I'm like, oh, you know, you should try this West Sacramento, and you were trying on knee sleeves.

And I'm like, oh, you should try this one on. And you're like, well, I don't really want one that's that stiff. I don't really squat that much weight anymore. I just want something that's warm. And I'd say, oh, we'll try this one on. So it would be the kind of similar process you would pay for however many knee sleeves you wanted to order. And then you could ship them back very easily.

So there's just some things that we're working on executing and just, you know, like I don't, you guys mentioned competition earlier. Like I have kind of a weird thing where I can get competitive with people on some stuff, but I don't think, I don't think you and I, reserving our energy to like lock horns is fucking great idea. You know, like I think that we're both going to get like beat up from it. And we're both going to like eventually kind of lose from it. It's gonna suck. Maybe he beats me on one thing, I beat him on another.

But if I'm working out with you guys, which hopefully you guys will come back someday and we'll get a workout in, if you're using 150 pounds on a lap pull down or something, I'm not gonna try to do 160. I don't like to, I don't care about stuff like that. I don't, I don't, I try not to waste my time with that because I feel like it's easy to look at the word competition and being competitive

as, as if it's a positive thing, but it has so many negatives around it as well. As I was mentioning you guys earlier, like, you think about the people that haven't been competitive, the people that have gone outside, the free thinkers, the people have done their own thing, their own way. Well, shit, man, they're extremely successful. Not only successful, they go down in history forever, and they make monuments of those people

because they thought so differently that they didn't even think about. I don't even wanna do battle with you. Well, they may be competitive more with themselves than anything. Right. Right. They're competitive maybe in their own way or they, or they look at competition, maybe in a slightly different way. But as I had mentioned, you guys earlier, like you want to be

competitive, maybe you start a restaurant and do what everybody else does and sell all the same shit that they do. Or maybe you start a YouTube channel and start hustling some T shirts or something like that. Or you can kind of Amazon it and be a free thinker and do something that no one else has ever done before. Excellent. Well, thanks for coming on, man.

Yeah, thank you guys so much. Great time, man. Great time, man. Thanks, brother. Thank you. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check

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