The Nick Bare Podcast - Archive - Mark Bell | Strength Is Never A Weakness, Weakness Is Never A Strength

Episode Date: June 13, 2022

Mark “Smelly“ Bell is a self proclaimed “meathead millionaire” who has leveraged a successful powerlifting career into a career as an entrepreneur. Mark is the creator of the Sling Shot, an assistive tool for powerlifters to utilize when bench pressing. Mark and Nick sit down in this episode to discuss what true strength is, and how important it is to be strong in all aspects of our life, not just physically. More Resources: BPN website: www.bpnsupps.com Nick’s website: www.nickbare.com Nick’s Instagram: www.instagram.com/nickbarefitness Nick’s Youtube: www.youtube.com/user/barelifenutrition Follow Us On Social Media! Instagram: @thebareperformancepodcast Facebook: The Bare Performance Podcast Twitter: @BarePerformPod

In this episode of the Bear Performance Podcast, anything that you're going into in life, there's not a situation where you can point out, like, that would have been great to be weaker for that. Being strong and or just having any capacity, you know, fill in the blank with any capacity, like having a capacity for something is really, really important. I was mentioning earlier that I'm really calm.

Well, I'm really calm because it's something that I worked on a lot. I also am just a little bit by nature fairly calm. But it's stuff that I've studied for a really long time. I have what I would like to call like an equanimity like bandwidth. And the balance of my mind is going to be pretty balanced through just about anything, even something like the death of my mother or the death of my brother years ago from drug addiction. Or anything that I hear, the input that comes into me does not have to be the output that comes back out. I do not have to be reactionary.

To me, I think that's really strong. I think that's strength. Welcome back to another powerful episode of the podcast. I'm your host, Nick Baer, founder and CEO of Bear Performance Nutrition. Every week we bring you insightful stories, knowledge, and inspiration to help you reach your full potential in life, fitness, and business. If you enjoy the message we're promoting in this podcast, we would greatly appreciate it if you would leave a rating and review on the platform you're listening to.

Make sure to subscribe so you don't miss it. sound on future episodes that embody the go one more mindset. All right, ladies and gentlemen, we have Mark Bell, the inventor of the slingshot, owner of Super Training Jim, world record breaking powerlifter, and now the newest runner in the game. What's going on? Not a whole lot, just hanging out here in Austin and really glad to be here. And what an amazing venue that you got here. What an amazing brand that you've built.

You've done such a good job with that. And then I just see this podcast everywhere. So I'm like, you know what? I need to figure out a way to get me a piece of that. So that's why I'm here. I wanted to get on the show because I just keep seeing famous person after famous person. I want to be famous too. So I'm like, let me come on this damn show.

And it was a really tough process, that resume that I had to fill out. I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to make it in. But thank you for letting me be here today. Well, thank you for paying the application fee. It goes straight to the BPN team here fully support Sam. It was more expensive than I was expecting. We got a lot of supplements to sell. That's right.

So I was telling the VPN team, this is, you know, this has been full circle kind of with you because, you know, I kind of first came across your content when I was in college. And it was when... I thought you were going to say when you were like 11. Not that far back. It was when bigger, stronger, faster came out. the documentary that, you know, your brother put together,

but you guys were obviously a massive part of it. And I watched that documentary dozens of times. And I was sitting in my college department watching that. And that's a main reason I got into the fitness space. No way. That's why I started BPN. It was really like, it was really eye-opening. That's really cool.

I loved that. Me and my brother both. Like we were huge fans of that dog. Your brother's jacked. The bear genetics. I'm telling you. The bear genetics. pretty solid. You keep your brother locked up in that dark room and it's for good reason. He's

more Jack than you. You got to keep him back there. You don't want him people to know about him. A little story about that. So when I was in high school, I was the older brother. I was three years, or I am three years older than Preston. And I started playing sports obviously when I was in middle school and in high school. And I had these dreams to be this baseball player. I wanted to go play at Clemson and then go play in the pros. So I started playing sports. And then my younger brother starts playing sports. And quickly my younger brother became the stud athlete of our local town, small town. But like newspaper headlines like Preston Bear running back.

Preston Bear baseball player. Like he's a little shit. And if you would have walked up to me, they say, hey, are you Preston Bear's brother? Oh, man. And there was a burger named after my brother in our hometown. So then I stopped playing sports because I was like, you know what, Preston? That's your thing. This is your rodeo.

You take it. But... I really wanted to bring it up. I want to know at what point in your career were you when that documentary started and was released? Like, what were you doing in life? So the movies, you know, at this point, the movie is like 15 years old probably. Which is crazy to think about. Yeah.

And then also it took about three, four years to release the movie. Because when you do a documentary, especially back then, you know, the fundraising, you know, they raised some money. And then the money only takes you so far. back then it just didn't take you very far so they would have hiccups here and there they would get some stuff shot then they weren't sure which direction the movie was going in then they would start again and so forth so it took a long time so we're talking you know that was like nearly 20 years ago but in the movie you'll see you you see me bench 705 it's kind of like the end kind of the end of the movie um and I was just heavy into my powerlifting career when the

movie came out and the movie was actually in theaters again it was three years later than the footage that you see in the movie so by the time the movie came out I was benching like in the 800s and my squat went from uh 854 to a little bit over a thousand and then I started getting into squatting a thousand 80 was my best squat benching 854 but primarily I was submerged I was dead set in the middle of my powerlifting career I think something that kind of saved me was the fact. And what I mean by saved is like, it's really easy to get too caught up in that world and to have that be your identity.

But luckily, I had like other goals and I had other things in mind. I tried football when I was young, didn't succeed as well in that as I would have liked. And just saw like the writing on the walk. I just wasn't, it wasn't for lack of effort. I tried very hard.

trained very hard. I just wasn't a great football player. I saw that other people were more talented than me. And that actually, I think, is a positive in some ways. Then when I transitioned into trying to find something else, I did professional wrestling for a while. And when I was doing professional wrestling, I was pretty good at that. I could cut a wrestling promo. I could, you know, talk trash on the other guy kind of thing. I could wrestle pretty good in the ring. But then I saw some of the athletes, Bobby Lashley, Shelton Benjamin. These are, uh, world-class NC2A champions as well as, and Brock Lesner, as well as being pro wrestlers. Well, Shelton Benjamin, one day in practice, hopped up on the turnbuckle,

just from being dead foot in the ring and just sprung up onto the turnbuckle. And then he proceeded to walk around the ropes and then he did a backflip. And stuff like that would happen. And I was like, I'm not capable of doing that. And I just kind of saw the writing on the wall. Again, I was decent, but it wasn't my passion. It was just things I was doing. And who knows why?

Maybe because my oldest brother did it, trying to follow in his footsteps. Maybe I was trying to fulfill something that I thought was in my best interest, but really wasn't. But weights were always there. Powerlifting was always there. So it was kind of nice that I had other things before powerlifting where I failed and where it was just kind of clear cut, like you're just, for whatever reason, you're just not that great at this. And when it came to lifting and when I started to kind of find my path and started to be able to learn my body really well, it was like, ah, I got it. Like this is, this is for you.

For whatever reason, you're actually pretty good at this. And then I was able to excel and expand. But in addition to power lifting at the time, I was also working on Power Magazine. which is a powerlifting magazine that I had for five years. And then in addition to that, the slingshot came about kind of simultaneously why I was still in the middle of my powerlifting careers. And I had children kind of all at the same time. So it was fucking mayhem. Everything going all at once,

but it wasn't like you're just a power lifter. So you see some of these guys get so caught up in it. They love smashing their head on the bar, and they love getting intense. And I like all that stuff too. but it wasn't the only thing I was submerged in. Otherwise, I would probably still be caught up in it. I probably wouldn't be running and doing other stuff today.

Was this early 2000s that you were really getting into powerlifting? Yeah, it was, you know, the super training started in 2006. The slingshot started in 2010. 2002 or so, like I was at West Side Barbell, training with Louis Simmons, being mentored by him, hanging out with him, I'm trying to learn everything I could from him. That guy, you know, he passed recently. He was an amazing guy.

He would take me to breakfast every morning. He would always pay for it. He would never let me pay. Sometimes I'd even end up having dinner with him. But it was just great to just absorb. And every single time, every single time we sat down, he would just start talking about the Russian weightlifters in the Bulgarian system. And he would go on and on about, you know,

glute ham raises and reverse hypers and how these exercises, are important and it was just way ahead of his time. He's talking about pulling a sled forward and backwards for knee health. And it was just really awesome to be around him. He was so passionate about it. And a lot of that rubbed off on me. How did you get tied up with Louis Simmons? Because it reminds me I recently had Tim Kennedy on the podcast.

And I read Tim's new book, Scars and Stripes. And he was talking about the way he got into fighting was just kind of surrounding himself in this, this market of professional fighters who are the best of the best. At the time, they weren't necessarily known as the best of the best, but now, like,

they're these legends, how did you get kind of next to and with Louis? I always thought that was the key. I always thought the key was to go right to the source. You know, it's a little easier nowadays because of the internet. So it's easier just to follow. I could just follow Nick Baers running and then maybe I can figure out a seven-minute mile or something like that.

But back then it was a lot more difficult to kind of figure out who the marquee people were, who the best of the best were. And it was definitely a lot more difficult to get to them. But in Louis Simmons case, he wasn't hard to get to. I would read an article in Powerlifting USA, and at the end of the article, it had his phone number in there. It was a Columbus number. It was like 614 or something.

And I'm looking at it. I'm like, oh, it says if you have any questions to call. So I was like, I'll call because I want to learn more about like box squats, you know. And I call and someone picks up the phone and they go west side. I was like, hello? And it's like, this is Louis. How can I help you? And then, you know, I'm like, uh, uh, um.

And so I start talking to him. And just over a time period, we developed a relationship. He would spend 30, 40 minutes with me each time I called. He would answer every question. you know, I think when I remember when I call and I would tell him like the lifts that I was doing, the numbers, I was like, oh my God, it's so embarrassing. Like he's probably just, probably never heard of anybody, you know, deadlifting 405 before. So he would be like, well, you know, our guys, you know, in the gym, they're pulling 800. But, you know, for 405, he's like, maybe your training weights 315 and he would kind of go over everything with me.

But I always felt in my heart that the key to being successful in anything, number one is your interest level. But number two, I think it is you do need to get around, you need to figure out a way to get around good people. You need to figure out a way to get around the best. So most things that I tried are most things that I did. I also boxed for a few years and I went right to Kevin Rooney. Kevin Rooney was Mike Tyson's former trainer after Customato passed away. I went to Louis Simmons to learn powerlifting. I always felt like why not try to go to the best person, even with something like CrossFit.

Like, I'm not a crossfitter by any means, but my resource is Jason Kalippa, who used to win, you know, he won the CrossFit games years ago. So I always kind of think, like, why mess around? Why not just go straight to the source? Find the best people. I 100% agree with that. It's, I think it's a pressure as well of being a business owner. And just to butt in for a second, I was fortunate that Louis Simmons didn't care that I was a quote unquote nobody. You know what I mean?

And so that's really valuable for me in the position I'm in now. When somebody contacts me, it's like I got to take it really seriously. I heard Dave Tate more recently, also a mentor of mine. Dave Tate more recently said, there's a reason why they didn't Google it. They asked you a question. Somebody asked you a question. Now, look, man, it's just impossible to answer all of them. But that hit me hard.

I was like, man, I got goosebumps even just thinking about it. Now, I'm like, that fucking means something. That person's, that person is in their home and they're thinking about you. They're like, man, I got to ask Nick this question. This is driving me crazy. I don't know how to manage running and lifting at the same time. And they're talking to their spouse. They're talking to their significant other.

And they're like, and they're driving their significant other crazy. They're like, I don't want to hear any more about fucking Mark Bell or Nick Bear. Shut up. But people, they get obsessed and they get excited about it and they are trying to find out the right information. I think you have to be obsessed. You have to be obsessed in order to, accomplish anything that's big and, you know, a large win. And I think we feel this as business owners, too, of you constantly want to develop and grow your team and provide them the resources

and the skills and allow them to be around people who can develop them. And it's something I've had to learn through this process of growing and building and trying to achieve these wins and goals that I'd select is I can only learn so much from myself. Right. But, this is a clear example. I spent about three hours two weeks ago with Ben Francis, the CEO of Jim Shark. I learned more in that three hours about brand building and business than I have in the last two years because he's been there. He's done it. He has the experience and he's willing to share with me what he's done and what I could do.

And I will look back and always remember those three hours of I learned so much. much so unconventional too exactly the other thing it's like it's nice to find and that's the other thing it attracted me to west side barbell is even though it was popular it was a little bit unconventional i've always dug that like i don't think that you always need to find like the special thing or find the magic thing or anything like that but when you point out a company like jim shark i immediately think like they did it different than a lot of other people and i think that's admirable because it's hard how many business have they've been in the history of the world there's been like millions of them, right? But those guys figured out a slightly different way. From what I recall, they did a lot of

stuff on YouTube early on. And that's still like YouTube, and YouTube's been around for a long time. I've been on the front end of YouTube since it started since like 2006. And even before that, I had a put file account, which that thing disappeared at some point. But to figure out things in an unconventional way is unique. And when you have access to communicate with somebody, I mean, what did you say the guy's name? I'm sorry. Ben Francis. Ben Francis.

It's interesting because you would think Ben Francis, that guy is not going to give me the time of day, but how much time did he spend talking to? Like a few hours. Right. People don't mind. They don't mind sharing their information with you. Right. As long as I think, and this is a good key takeaway for listeners.

It's sometimes you have to put in the work or provide some value or do something in the expectation of what you're getting in return. But if you're just asking, asking, asking for help me, help me, give me this information. But sometimes it's just showing this is what I'm willing to do to just learn from, gain from your experience. Yeah, then it's mutual. Right. I think that's a big piece of it. So when you're breaking in this powerlifting space, you're learning from Louie, did you ever think that you could turn powerlifting into a career of, like, is today where you're at now? Was that the dream or did it look nothing like that? I think some stuff happened a little bit separately,

but just give you some background and some context. I grew up with weights and money being like right in the same exact location. So when I started lifting, I started lifting a little bit like everybody else, like in regular kind of gyms. But once my dad saw that we were into it, me and my brother Chris especially, my dad built out half of our basement with like weights and I don't know how he figured out but like

he got a squat rack he got Olympic weights like he had a good setup it wasn't like he just bought you know two machines or something like that the other half of our basement was my dad's tax practice and I would get done with a workout I'm 12 13 years old and my dad would sit there and he'd like he had all these checks and he'd like put him down and he'd like show me he's like this is from from your aunt. This check is from, he's like, you know,

so and so we go to church with, you know, and he's like mentioning, it's like 200 bucks, 100 bucks. And like, this is so weird. I'm like,

you make money off of friends and family. And he goes, well, he's like, I would rather not charge them, but they insist that they pay because this is, this is my business.

Because my dad used to work at IBM. And then, unfortunately, he got released from IBM. And it was a pretty big, pretty big deal. family screwed things up for a while, but my dad got back on his feet by being basically an entrepreneur. So he started a tax practice. And so the family wanted to support him, other family members,

friends, people locally. And the next thing you know, he's got like 2,500 customers. He's just killing it and just taxes and real estate. He still does that to this day. But for me, I was, I was like constantly in that weight room, but my dad was also constantly working next door. And every once in a while he'd come over he'd be like hey you know the music's a little little intense it's a little loud right now so I'd have to kind of turn it down but then I would get done and he would like I just didn't care about like the math I don't care about like accounting and stuff I'm just not a uh I don't track anything like I'm just not that kind of person I'm not a spreadsheet kind of guy but my dad would still explain a lot of it to me and so

for me it's like weights and and money kind of always went side by side as I got older and as I got more and more into weights, I just recognized like this is going to be my life in some way. And in the movie, Bigger, Stronger, Faster, my brother, Chris mentioned something. He basically says, for me and my brothers, we somehow knew that weights were always the answer. And so somewhere in my subconscious that was always hanging out, how to actually make money, I don't know if I, if I knew what was going to happen or knew it was going to go down. But from the time I was very, very, very young. I always thought that I was special. I always thought that I was going to do something. And that's because my mother just instilled so much confidence in me. She wasn't able to instill the

same confidence in herself, unfortunately. And she died prematurely. She was obese and had a very hard time managing her diet, managing, you know, any consistent form of exercise and stuff like that. But she did a good job with me and my brothers of instilling confidence in us. So I just, I remember we drove past a place when I was a kid and it was a club. It was like a had weights.

It had tennis. It had a bunch of different stuff there. And it was shaped like a, the outside looked like a castle. And I remember telling my dad when I was a kid, I was like, I want to own that one day. Like I want to own.

He's like, what? He's like, what are you talking about? I was like, that castle. I want to own. He's like,

oh, you want to live in a castle. I was like, yeah, I want to live in a castle. And then my dad, instead of being, like, hey man, like that ain't ever going to happen. You know, like some people will shoot down their children or shoot down some hopes or dreams

and maybe not even aware of it. But I remember what my dad told me. My dad said, is your castle going to have a moat? And I was like, I was like, what's that? He's like, you know that you got the drawbridge and then you got the moat. I was like, oh, yeah, there's going to be alligators in the moat. And of course, of course I'm going to have a moat. And so my dad was always, my parents were super supportive.

And that is something that I like to share with my stories. I understand there's a lot of people out there that don't have supportive parents. And that must be a lot harder. Must be a lot harder starting position. But for me, that wasn't the case. So I didn't have to go out and look for love. I didn't have to go out and get extra hugs from anywhere. I luckily had them all right inside my own home.

How is that, you know, having that mom and dad growing up and that family presence, how is that now influenced the way you kind of lead your family and raise your family? your kids. Because I'm about to be a dad in like four or five weeks now. It's coming up July 8th. Today is June 2nd. So I'm getting close to there. So I'm really interested because, you know, when I used to go for my morning runs, that moment of solitude for me, I'd be thinking of creative business ideas or marketing plans or, you know, how do we grow this part of the brand? And now my morning runs, a solitude is how do I want to be this father? Like, what do I want to to teach my daughter.

What do I want, I don't want these kids to be raised. And my obligations and responsibilities feel like they're shifting in a good way. Like this next chapter is coming in. So I'm really curious learning from other fathers how the way you were raised has impacted the way you parent. Yeah, it's huge. Obviously, like, you know, I saw the way my dad was with my mother.

And I am not the same animal when my dad is. My dad, I remember my dad. like he was so faithful and so committed to my mother that he would not even look another woman's way. I remember when I was a teenager, when I was like 15, 16, I was like, okay, I'm sitting in like the back of our car. We're like outside, like waiting for my mom to come out of like the grocery store or something like that. She always took 9,000 years wherever she went. But a woman would walk by and I was like, like there's just no way. Like he can try to be as stoke as he wants, but there's no way that he's not.

going to like look at this woman that walks by and he would never look he would never look and I so I actually asked him one day as I got older I asked him I was like there's it's not really like a huge deal to like look you know you see a beautiful person like you look um my wife and I talk about that openly like see a beautiful looking male female it's like out of the ordinary like oh that person's super attractive just recognize it yeah you recognize and that's that right it's like you're not going too crazy about it hopefully but my dad's just like I can never do that to your mother she had plenty of like hurt and plenty of pain in her life so he's like I just I didn't never wanted to even just to

allow any thought to cross my mind so I always thought that was like remarkable but I was like whatever he's doing I was like I don't know if I can figure that part out but the rest of it I can do I can be there for my kids I can be encouraging I can always I can work on as often as possible calming the room down because I'm a fairly calm person in general. And maybe I can actually do things a little differently than my parents too. Maybe I don't need to, like, because I saw my dad yelling and trying to do stuff a little forcefully with my older, with my oldest brother and my brother Chris. And so I learned by watching some of that, I was like, that doesn't really work that well.

Like there's other ways. And I think you're seeing more parents nowadays. kind of understanding like, let me just, let me just have conversation with my kid. Where years ago it was just like, now you're getting your ass beat. Yeah. Not that my dad beat us,

but he would discipline us from time to time. Which I think, again, I think that some cultures just do that. I think that's fine. And I think whatever route people choose, I think any of that's fine. I think the main thing as a parent is, you have to just spend a lot of time with your family.

You have to spend a lot of time with your children. to spend a lot of time with your wife. It's, there's no like, there's no like real secret to it. It's just, you kind of just have to be there. And so I think someone who's disciplined like yourself already, what you'll find is you'll find these like little nooks in the day where the babies may be sleeping or you just, you got up earlier than everybody else.

And you'll find these little nooks in the day where you still get to get after it. you still get to do what you love to do. If you, if you aren't you, if you're not still getting after it, then you're not the person that your wife married. And you're not going to be the dad that you want to be, most likely. Because on the inside, you might be conflicted with kind of where you're heading and where you're going. So your goals and your dreams and a lot of things that you want to still do, those things might just take a little bit longer now because you have other responsibilities.

but just like we were talking about with running and lifting, it's like it's kind of good to shift your focus more towards one for a period of time where the other one takes a little bit of a backseat. So maybe BPN takes a little bit of a back seat, but with some of the people here, you talk with them and say, hey, you know, the next couple weeks and months, like my mind might not be, but I'm encouraging everyone here in the office to be creative.

And I, you know, maybe instead of me coming in with ideas on Monday, maybe we select somebody new each week to come in with ideas. Because my ideas might be a little stale for a moment because my mind is elsewhere. My time is elsewhere. So I think little things like that. But the main thing in my household, the way that we spell love is T IME. There's lots of time. And it doesn't always have to be people who talk a lot about quality time. so you don't have to always think of really cool situations and things to do.

You just have to be together. Yeah, I saw this post a few months ago that I've been thinking about a lot because a lot of people that follow me are parents, maybe new parents. They have kids in the way. And one of the responses and questions I get is either how are you going to keep training or just wait to see what happens to your training? And I understand that will change. There's a new chapter that's happening.

But also I saw this post a few months ago. Got you fired up about it. It got me fired up. And there was this father was talking about how important it is for your kids to see you train as they're growing up. Because when your kids see you go into this area and you're trying to improve yourself, you're getting after it, that instills a lesson into you. So when I was growing up, me and my brother would go. come downstairs for breakfast before going to school.

And my dad, who would help get our breakfast ready, would knock on 100 pushups in the kitchen behind the oven as we were eating. And he never told us to do 100 pushups. I just watched this. And I was like, okay, this is what you do. You do 100 pushups every morning and you instill this habit. So I started doing 100 pushups every morning, every day. And it just became part of my life.

He never had to tell me like, hey, Nick, every morning you need to do this. he just showed me and I learned from that. I think sometimes learning through observation is better than learning how to be or being told how to do something. I think you show your children options. You present them with options and you show them the importance of discipline

and then you don't need to actually discipline them. It'll actually save you a lot of time. When your kids, when you start arguing with your kids, I was looking for my phone, but it's in my pocket. But when you start arguing with your kids about them being on their phone, you know, hopefully many years from now, they're just going to be like, well, you're on yours. You know, so like how often are they seeing? Here's what parents do, though. A lot of times, unfortunately, and I see this a lot, and this is well-meaning parents that really do.

They love their children. They absolutely do. They absolutely love their children. They're very good parents. but I've seen this many, many times where someone is poking around on their phone and the kid calls them out, kids like, hey, you're on your phone too much too. And they're like, yeah, but I'm answering an email. Like, I think that's some serious bullshit right there.

You're just devaluing what the child is doing with the phone. Maybe the kid is texting their friend. Like, why is that not valuable for them? You know, I don't think that's a good idea to do that. I think it's, I think what you could say is something like, there's going to be certain times where I have to, like if you explain to them, like even when I'm home, there may be certain times of the day or I have to pull my phone out to do specific emails and do specific things at certain times.

And you can kind of explain to them. Sometimes it's going to be part of my life. And you could also explain to them a style of job that you have. And you could say, you know, hey, because of the style of job. I have because I am the owner CEO of BPN. If I don't get to this now, then nobody else, nobody else really will. And it's, it's important that I do it now. And so because I am, I don't have a traditional nine to five job,

I'm not exchanging my hours for dollars. And therefore, I'm actually on the hook kind of 24-7 for particular things. And it's just important that I get to these things. I think you can kind of talk to your children. You can communicate with them on a much higher level than we give them credit for. Children are way, they're way smarter and they're way further ahead than we give them credit for. But I think it's monkey see monkey do. They see you doing something and they're going to call you out on that.

I agree with that. So one of my favorite things that you say is strength is never a weakness and weakness is never a strength. Is that built off the foundation of power lifting as a whole, or is there a bigger meaning behind it? Yeah, I think anything that you're going into in life, there's not a situation where you can point out, like, that would have been great to be weaker for that. Even the run that you just did, even though it was a good idea for you to lose body weight and it was a good idea for you to do certain manipulations with maybe the amount of muscle mass that you had, your strength to weight ratio was still really good, and that's why running felt so good. So there's never an instance,

and it takes a lot of power to be able to run 630 minute miles or whatever the hell you were, wherever the hell fast you were going. It's never a good idea, you know, if you think about, if you were to get into a fight with somebody, you know, people aren't like, yeah, man, I wish I was a lot weaker for that fight or that football game this past weekend.

That would have been awesome if we got her asses kicked a little bit more, if we got blown back off the football a little bit further. it's always a good asset to have strength. And it's interesting with some of the weird quotes that I've said over the years because they take on different meanings as I journey through some different goals and my goals shift as like a person and as like an athlete. But being strong and or just having any capacity, you know, fill in the blank with any capacity.

Like having a capacity for something is really, really important. I was mentioning earlier that I'm really calm. Well, I'm really calm because it's something that I worked on a lot. I also am just a little bit by nature fairly calm. But it's stuff that I've studied for a really long time. So I have what I would like to call like an equanimity like bandwidth. And the balance of my mind is going to be pretty balanced through just about anything, even something like the death of my mother or the death of my brother years ago from drug addiction.

or anything that I hear, the input that comes into me does not have to be the output that comes back out. I do not have to be reactionary. To me, I think that's really strong. I think that's strength. I think one of the strongest things that a man can do is have great capacity and also know when to use it. So if I'm some awesome fighter and I have this great capacity and somebody's getting real

loud and it seems like something to go down, then I need to know what's appropriate. You know, what's appropriate? When would I use this strength to like go headbut the guy or to do whatever I thought was necessary in that particular moment? Or do I just, you know, if you ever seen anybody that has a lot of fighting experience, get into a fight. A lot of times they're usually pretty calm. And they're like, hey, do you really, do you really want to do this? So for me, I've always felt not just from a strength perspective, but it's always really nice to have a capacity. And my spirit animal is Bruce Lee.

And the reason why, I know he's not an animal, but it's the thing that I look to and look for when I'm thinking about chaos. Because when I was a kid and I'd watch some of these kung fu movies, I'd watch Bruce Lee do his thing, he was always able to take on so many different opponents at one time. There would be like six guys surrounding him and Bruce Lee would start to smile. He'd be like, bring it on, motherfuckers.

Like, this is what I've been waiting for. Like, are you guys kidding me? You're going to challenge me? I don't care if all six of you're going to try to beat me up the same time. And it would, it's not the violence that I liked. I like the fact that he had capacity to be able to deflect all that different confrontation coming at him at one time. So that's the way I kind of view the world in a lot of ways.

You wake up first thing in the morning. You have all the intentions of the world of doing something good, something healthy for you. You want to get out, get some sunlight. You want to go on a walk. And then the first thing, unfortunately, maybe you did look at your phone and maybe you, you know, see weird news being spread about the president or about a virus or about like whatever the hell is going on. And then maybe you end up, you know, going down a rabbit hole of seeing crap on Instagram or you get weird texts and they kind of hit you side. headways when you were really just picking your phone out to maybe pick some music to start your walk or to start your run.

And we have a tendency to have these things really pull us and to take us in a completely different direction. We were trying to go this way. But what you'll find is that you get super distracted. Whenever you're about to do something, whenever you're about to do something that requires a lot of energy, you'll find yourself all of a sudden distracted with every single thing. thing that you could possibly imagine and you'll try to do those things first before you go and do that hard run or before you go and do that hard workout. And I think that is a kind of a natural

response to a lot of the stressors that are going on today. But the single greatest thing that you could ever do for your stress is to lean into it and not be scared of it, not be afraid of it. Figure out a way to lean into it. Figure out a way to cope with it. You can do that with walking. you can do that with running. You could do that with cycling. You could do that with lifting. I say lift through it. You can do it with many different things.

But what do you have in your arsenal? What kind of capacity do you have? If you currently don't have the capacity for it, read a book, look it up on YouTube. I'll start listening to some podcasts. Instead of everything being always geared towards entertainment and flavor and taste and all these different things that we seek and we search,

start to learn and absorb so you can defend and deflect stuff and move around a little bit better like Bruce Lee. I love the capacity aspect to it. And I think it's almost safe to say that sometimes the weakest person is the one who wants to look the strongest or display their level of strength. It makes me think of when I was stationed in Fort Benning, Georgia, and I was in the, infantry officer basic course. This is before I was stationed at Fort Hood and received the platoon. So I was still in training. And at that time in the classroom, some officers from the 75th Ranger Regiment came in just to mentor us. We were able to ask them questions. They were captains

in Ranger Regiment. And I looked at the one captain and I asked him the question, you know, like when I go to my platoon, what's something I can do to succeed and lead this to in the right way. And he pointed across the room at this guy in the corner. And he said, you see that guy over there? When shit hits the fan, when chaos strikes, that guy is as cool as the other side of the pillow. So he has his capacity to inflict ultimate violence on the enemy.

And he knows he does. However, when it happens, he's not reactive. He doesn't just throw everything at it. He takes a step backwards. He has perspective. He looks at the picture. He establishes a plan and then he execute deliberately. And if we apply that lesson to our life in a sense,

you end up hitting the mark a lot more times than jumping at what you think is the mark. Yeah, you end up with like self-mastery, which is like, I don't know if you'll ever master much of anything, but it feels really good when you feel like you have been able to do that. And with family members, with friends, there's some people that will go to me and there's some people that will go the complete other way because they know they know the time they know the kind of medicine that I dish out and they know that I'm going to

I'm going to kind of try to steer them a little bit in a direction of why do you think that person reacted negatively to what you said you know I'll start to ask more questions what do you think that so-and-so is hurt and that's why they lashed out at you because hurt people hurt people right when somebody's hurt and they don't know how to deal with it so you can kind of think of some of these things as you can kind of go you can take a deep breath and go okay I get it that person doesn't have a coping mechanism for that that's why they got upset that's why they lashed out at me then you might be able to have a conversation to kind of figure out, you know,

there's some people like you just have to disconnect to because you're not on the same like wavelength, they're just not getting along with them for whatever reason. But if it's a family member or somebody, you know, you can't tell somebody how to live their life, but you can still encourage a lot of positive things. And you can say, hey, you know what? maybe it's just my perspective, but I kind of think that you have a tendency to see things from maybe a different point of view and you get kind of negative. I'm just trying to give you constructive criticism.

Like, do you agree with that? And they might be like, fuck you. And then that's where you're going to have to try to figure out, like, how do you get some middle ground so you can start to agree on something? But it's just something I've seen over and over and over again. whenever I see somebody kind of lash out or do something, I'm always like, oh, okay, they're just, they don't have that maturity yet in that particular thing. And then I have to recognize that I don't have it either. It's hard to have it in every space. It's hard to have it all the time. Like,

think about if the listeners right now, think about themselves and think about when they're listening to a podcast, something flies in the face of their belief. Let's just say hypothetically that I say, calories don't matter, you know, and I start yelling and screaming about it. There's plenty of of people that would listen to that and it'd start to get pissed. And he's a fucking hate. Can you believe that? How come Nick didn't say anything? Nick just sat there, man.

Like, what's going on? Like, you get all worked up. So it doesn't matter the person. It doesn't matter how much stoicism they practice or how they try to work it into their life. Because we're human, we are very, we're almost like bipolar. You know, we have, we have opposing thoughts and we're in constant conflict. man, you know, I'm going to go run today.

Well, what kind of run should I? I mean, I don't know if I should do like maybe some 400s. Maybe I should do some, well, I don't know. I saw, you know, Nick was doing, he ran 10 miles. Maybe I'll just go out and run like a long one, you know. Well, it's been a little while since I lit, you know, you're just going back and forth. Well, maybe, actually, maybe I should take a day off because I've been going hard. It's been four or five days in a row.

I've been going pretty, you know, so like, we're just talking to yourself all day long, that chitter chatter back and forth. And so for us to try to, you know, have balance amongst all the things that are going outside of her own head is really, really difficult. But I think if you can zero in and kind of realize that you have absolutely no control over anything except for your own thoughts. And even those can get fucked. Like when you're in the shower, you just start to think of like something random or you're on a run. You think something random pops in there. Those are not the kind of thoughts that I'm talking about.

those are kind of more things that kind of shout from your subconscious. I'm talking about the second level of thinking when you actually start to think about your thoughts. That's where you have control. And you have plenty of control in the third step of that, which is your reaction to what you think about your thought. I think candor is very important. I'm reading a book right now. It's called No Rules Rule. And it's from the CEO of Netflix.

and kind of his perspective and approach to building a culture and an environment that succeeds and wins. And one of the foundations of the principles of Netflix is they're all about candor. Applying and sharing feedback and criticism with team members, but it's a two-way conversation. It goes upstream, it goes downstream. But I think it also applies to having,

being able to be candid with yourself. And having that can be difficult. That can be very difficult because you almost have to pull yourself away from yourself to take stock of what you're doing right, what you're doing wrong, and then almost trying to apply a third person perspective on yourself. Sometimes it's easier just ask people for feedback, hey, what am I doing right? What am I doing wrong? Sure the military gave you some of that, right?

It does, yeah. There's a lot of like after action review assessments. Like you're either good at that job and you, and you did the assignment or you didn't, right? Yeah, I mean, there was, that's one thing the military does a really good job at that applies to, I'd say, business is you have scheduled counseling meetings that go over what you're doing right, what you're doing wrong, how to improve, how to sustain. And then every year you get an evaluation from your leadership and you get ranked.

I would get ranked as a platoon leader in the battalion. So you know where you stand against your peers. so you're constantly being evaluated and provided feedback. You probably learn that it's like not super helpful to. It might kind of keep you in check if you get, if you have concern over something as I said, but if you're bummed and you're just crying and super sad because they said he didn't do an amazing job

or on the other side of it, you're so hyped that you didn't hear any criticisms that they, they also gave you a couple criticisms, but you're so hyped about these other things that maybe you didn't even hear it. So I think it's important for it to, it's very difficult to do, but to have your emotions be kind of off to the side. Like, I think you can put them on pause.

I think if people are being real with themselves, I think you can at the very least put your emotions on pause. And one of the coolest things I've ever seen in modern history for putting your emotions on pause was Chris Rock's reaction to Will Smith. He didn't have any. I mean, he mentioned like a comment. he made a quick joke about this is the, you know, most popular moment in his TV history or something like that. Because I don't think he, I think it was just like an awkward moment, but he had no statement.

He didn't say anything. And then eventually the thing just dies out. So I don't know if we can practice it that hard, but you should be able to kind of put your emotions aside and say, okay, well, Nick is giving me an evaluation. He's my, he's my superior in this case. He's giving me information on the job that I'm trying to do better. at. And this is like a mathematical thing. This is a solvable problem. If I listen to the, if I listen to what Nick said, then I could say, hey, Nick, you know, the work that you've been given me, I'm actually

kind of struggling to get some of these, a couple of these things done on time. You know, what do you think I have to do differently? Then we start having conversation and you're like, oh my God, Mark, I didn't even realize that you didn't have a much editing experience. So maybe it's going to take you a little bit longer to get these videos done. Okay, well, let's work our way backwards from there. Like, when do you think you can have this done? What's a manageable thing that we can both agree upon with something rational that we can find?

Emotions and ego can, they can ruin a lot of things. I'm curious as your time in powerlifting and strength training, how you've seen other athletes who had so much potential be ruined or missed opportunities because of emotions and ease. ego. Yeah, just, you know, really bad attitudes and being so intense and being so attached. That's why I mentioned earlier about not getting lost in it. Most of the people that I know that got lost in it because they were like trying so hard. They never really became anything within the sport. Not like they didn't lift heavy. They did well. They weren't really able to

like turn it into much. And they were trying. They weren't trying just to lift. They wanted to kind of like turn it into something else, but because of ego, because sometimes these people felt that their workouts were more important than everybody else in the room. And because their emotions rode so strongly on their performance for the day, I operate a little bit weird. Like, I don't, I live my life with, with, like, low to no expectations, which is probably, like, maybe some people are like, That's interesting. But without any expectations, I don't have anything to be like a letdown.

So even with, that's why running has been so great for me more recently. Just I'm like, I'm going to go for a run. And it's like, well, what does that mean? Well, I'm just going to bounce back and forth between one foot and the other. How far are you going? How long is it going to be? I don't know. I'm going to just go.

And then if I feel tired, maybe I'll stop. People are like, what? Like, you got to keep pushing, right? well, maybe if it feels good, maybe I will. And the same thing has always been true with me with lifting. I didn't really follow a program. I did like West Side Barbell style training a lot of times, but I didn't have a specific like mapped out thing

that was like over a long period of time. Because for me, I always just knew, I'm going to take things day by day. And I'm going to keep putting my best foot forward in each and everything that I do the best that I can in a reasonable, rational way. And I might not be where you are right now, but if I'm slow, I'm going to be accurate, as we were talking about earlier. Slow is smooth, right? I was known for being slow.

In school, I was put in specialty classes. They were like, you're not as smart as the other kid. You need these remedial classes. I was like, I don't know, I don't know what that means. But I was put into classes with kids that had like behavior problems and kids that had all kinds of issues. So I didn't even really have much of an opportunity to learn because the classes that I were in, they weren't appropriate for me to even learn. And it was like the drop off between the regular classes and their remedial classes was too big. And at the time that I was in school

and where I went to school, they didn't know a lot about like ADHD or dyslexia or like it just it just wasn't as big of a deal back then. And really all I needed was a little extra time on stuff. but time is like one of my greatest strengths because I'm like I don't care how long this takes like you're running a particular rate or pace right you're running like six minute miles and stuff like that it's like it now there's two things that where my brain goes I think I think to myself you know what that's fucking awesome for Nick I see that what you guys have built here I think the same thing I think I think that's it's amazing what you're building when it comes to running, I'm not thinking like, I'll never do that.

I'm thinking that's a cool possibility. You know, I'm not there yet. And I'm like, there's really not no reason for me to even really think about it at the moment. Because if I'm honest, I'm running like probably like a nine minute mile. And even if I try to go my fastest, maybe I would get eight minutes on a good day. So there's no reason for me to like overly concern myself with that at the moment. But I'm like, well, I know the word.

that Nick put in, I wonder what it would look like if I put in a similar amount of work. If I put in a similar amount of work, would I get similar results? Probably. There could be genetic things going on where maybe I don't quite get to where you're at. But I should be able to get close. And also, who cares how long it takes? I mentioned a while back, I was like, I would like to do a six-minute mile at some point. And people are like, when are you doing it?

When are you doing it? I'm like, probably in like four or five. years. Like, I'm not going to try it now. I'm not going to do it right now. I'm not trained. I'm not prepared for that at the moment. So with things taken a long time, it's never bothered me. My workouts when I would power lift, they would take three or four hours. And then when I was done working out, I would just sit there at the end of the bench and I'd be like, I wonder if I benched with my feet this way. I wonder if I had my, what if my hands were, what if I wrapped my wrists this way? I wonder if I tucked my elbows in harder, had my chest up more. I wonder how it would be if I went with a

wider stance with the squat. Just kind of always thinking and always playing around with stuff and never being concerned with how long anything takes. Well, it's true that comparison is a thief of joy. It makes me think of when I was training with you at super training last time I was in Sacramento. We got a good pump. We got a good pump. And you made a comment where we were going back and forth on some lifts. and you would do your set and you know you weren't counting reps or anything and then I would jump in right after you

and then I'd use the same weight you were using and I'd knock out my reps and you made a comment of you see Nick never asked how many reps we were doing and I apply that same lesson in mindset to my training as well is people will show up for a workout

and they'll say how many reps, how many sets, what's the weight? Like whoa, let's just hold up a little bit. Let's just, let's grab some weight. Let's feel it out. Let's just knock out as many reps as you can. Like, feel it out. And I think sometimes people go into something and they want all the expectations and answer prior to. What are the reps? What are the rest periods? What are the sets? They want this equation that they think if they follow that equation, it's going to equate to result A, B, and C. And it's just sometimes putting in the work to get there. But I think if people

apply that that whole lesson of of training to a lot of other things it's just feel it out auto-regulate if you will and just and see where it goes test test test it test it a little bit more for yourself with uh business wise you know you have goals you have like numbers you have to you do you and or have you had expectations and how has that kind of played out for you. Like, have you been, have you been on both sides where you've been extremely disappointed and then you've been extremely happy? And then maybe you're like, well, maybe my expectations are unreasonable or maybe I just shouldn't have any at all. Like, where do you kind of stand on some of that? I've been on both sides of the table where I've been let down and I fell

short and a lot of my expectations sometimes. But also I've been really proud and happy of the result of others. And I think there's an objective way to look at it and subjective. And I mean, this is business in a nutshell for me is you can sit down and like say you go to a business score. Say you go to apply for a loan. They say, let me see your business plan of how you're going from point A to point B. Yeah, I wish it was that easy. Let me let me write you a plan before I get started how I'm going to get from zero to 100. And you can, you can make the plan and you can put it all on the paper. At month one, we're going to do this revenue. At month three, we're going to do this. At month nine, we're going to do this. And it sounds all great, but as soon as you get started day

one, that plan typically gets thrown out the window. So what I found with businesses, you kind of get to a certain point where you have systems and infrastructure in place where you can apply these objective data points, and you can predict scale and growth to a certain point. But sometimes it's just all subjective in a sense of you have to have a pulse. You have to have, this is why robots can't build businesses. People have personalities. They have feel. They have touch.

There's culture. There's, you have to just kind of read it. You have a gut. Robots don't have a gut. If you listen to your gut and you feel your gut, it kind of tells you where to steer the trajectory of that of that company and the people. So I've seen both sides where there's objective data you can apply to predict growth, but it's only going to get you to a certain point.

The best businesses aren't built because they have all the money or the right product. They have the right people. One of the things Ben Francis actually said to me when he was in town is a business will live or die based off of three things. One is a product. If you have a shit product, you cannot grow forever. You'll get to a certain point and you'll fizzle out. Brand.

If your brand isn't spot on, if people don't attract to it or believe in it, or they feel like they want to be a part of it, you need that. You need product and brand. The third is people. If you're the right people, you can scale forever. If you're the wrong people, you'll die right away. And typically, one of those things as you grow is going to be lacking. Or, like, as you, as you move forward, things break.

Products might break. Brand might break a little bit. People might break. We have to keep refining and revising each one of those to keep pushing forward. That's what I've kind of found through the process is. You can predict it, but only to a certain point. Yeah, my son, he actually works at In-N-Out Burger. And, you know, watching, like, the way that that company works,

he and I sat inside it In-N-Out Burger one day a couple years ago before he had a job there. and I was like Jake I'm like what do you kind of notice about this place that's similar to McDonald's and he kind of looked around and all the colors are similar I got like the red and the yellow and you know ketchup and mustard colors going on and and then I was you know and then we were like okay what's what about some of the differences what do you think is different here he's like well this has more of like a feel like that it's like maybe from like the 60s or something you know like that it's like nostalgic it's like an original it's been around for a long time. So I thought that was interesting. He kind of picked up on some of the branding and some of the color schemes, some of the similarities, some of the differences. But the third thing he pointed out was what you just alluded to was you can grow forever if you got good people.

He said, everyone here is really happy. And you go to McDonald's. And I mean, that kind of place, not that I've ever been to McDonald's, but that kind of place, you know,

the people are kind of grumpy there, you know, and they're like just taking your order and they're not as happy. in an Out Burger, they have these young kids there that are hustling around. They're super pumped. Their perspective of that job, it's a really important job for them. And I don't know what the minimum wage is nowadays, like 18 bucks an hour or something like that in California.

So they're like, I'm making 18 bucks an hour. Like, this is sick. And I get to like be on the friar day. This is awesome. I get to take some orders. All I got to do is stand out here and like mess around with this like iPad looking thing and take some orders. This is easy.

Throw out some trash here and there. $18 and now. This is amazing. Meanwhile, someone that's at McDonald's, they might be making a similar amount, but it's probably an older person. They're probably 35 and it's like last resort, unfortunately, maybe for them. And so they have a totally different perspective and different feel. And within trying to build a business, it's really important that you really survey and really consider and really understand the people that you're bringing in. You know, they say that you should be, you know, slow to hire, maybe fast to fire.

and hopefully you don't really ever have to fire. But I do think there's transition periods for some businesses. You know, I've been through many because I've had my business for a pretty long time. And there's people that you pick up along the way where you're just like, all right, what are you doing? You point to your buddy, Bill, and you're like, hey, you want to, can you film some video? And they're like, I think so. Like, all right, you're a cameraman. You know, there are things like that that happened in the beginning where at some,

point the company grows and sometimes there's not still room for that particular person because you need to kind of bring on more professional people but as the company grows you need to really make sure that you're bringing in appropriate people I heard somebody one time at a conference mentioned he mentioned that you want to hire eagles because eagles only sore you know they eagle is the only bird that will sore at this like particular height and he's like you want everyone's soaring as high as possible. You want everybody being an eagle. And he goes, what will happen is you will have this legit hiring process where you take your time, you evaluate, they meet with some of the other employees, and you strategize and you have

multiple meetings. Maybe they have, maybe you had like six meetings with this person. And finally, you're like, I'm going to bring them aboard. We're going to have them work. Six months down the road, you're all together at a business conference or you're doing something all together and all of a sudden you hear, and you're like, what in the hell was that? And you realize that you hired a donkey. Instead of an eagle, you ended up with a jackass, you know?

So you want to really try to find like-minded people, people that really, and that's just in anything that you do. If you're trying to run, go find some runners. If you're trying to lift, go find some lifters. getting into powerlifting or getting into bodybuilding, the first thing you should do or getting into running, go where those people are. Either go to a power lifting gym or go to a power lifting contest. If you go to a powerlifting contest, you're going to see tons of power lifters there.

If you talk to somebody and say, hey, you guys know anybody local that coaches and they'll be like, yeah, right over there, go talk to, you know, or I'll introduce you. People are, I mean, powerlifters might look a little rough around the edges, but people are willing to share information. to a bodybuilding show and people are all talking about how they got into it and their diet and stuff, they might be a little pissy because they're in a caloric deficit. But for the most part, everyone's kind in running. When I did that half marathon, like, it was like, I could see how people can get so addicted to it. Because when I was running, a couple people kind of gathered around me and

like, what's that big guy? I was like, nothing. Like, is this your first go of it? And I said, yep, this is the first one. They started asking questions. We started talking about diet and stuff. One lady was running for breast cancer. And her friend next to her was the one surviving breast cancer. There was somebody else that was running because her dad died a couple weeks ago. And I'm like, there was like, I'm doing this for my dad.

It was just awesome. I'm like running. And I'm like, you know, got goosebumps almost the whole time because it was super inspiring hearing all these different reasons why people were running. Some people are running just because they want to run faster. other people had these really cool stories and intentions on why they were doing what they were doing. That's what's cool about races. Like this past weekend's race, I shared a few miles with multiple people.

And we might have exchanged two to three words. Like, hey, you're going. Hey, you good? Yeah, I'm good. But you run next to each other for miles. And you're just clipping along. And after the race is over, you know, you meet them. You say, hey, it was great sharing some miles with you.

The running community is really, I mean, the fitness community as a whole is really cool in that sense. There's people that are like just kind of like at the stations with the drinks and stuff and there's people all fired up and there's people kind of cheering for you. They don't even know who the hell you are. Like it's amazing. It is great. I'd love to kind of take that that approach back to when you started Slingshot. What's cool about businesses that succeed and that invent products is they're typically started to solve a, a problem.

They're a solution to a problem. And that's what the slingshot was, right? Like, you needed to find ways to train chest when you had a Torpec. How did you decide, like, I'm going to take this piece of material, wrap around my arms, and then bench? You know, I hurt myself many times in training. And I also remember hearing from, like, old timers, they were like, oh, yeah, I used to bench, you know, four plates.

And I was always like, yeah, sure, you did. But I always was also kind of wondering like, why did you use to do that? Because at that time, I was still young and I was still continuing to get stronger and stronger without really running into many injuries. But over the years, I started to run into injuries myself. I was like, oh, that's what these old timers were talking about. Like, they just, they maybe overdid it at some point or just ended up with an injury. We can't, you can't bypass all injuries just through like training brilliantly, unfortunately.

even when you sometimes think that you're training with a good protocol sometimes you still get hurt like sometimes this shit happens especially when you're pushing the envelope so for me uh it was the second time that i tore my peck and i was trying to figure out ways of training kind of through and around injuries and uh i came up with a bunch of bad ideas none of them worked uh very well but one day i was putting my shirt on and i was putting my shirt on i put my my arms in both the holes of the shirt before putting the shirt over my head. And I kind of took my arms. I pushed my elbows back.

And I was like, oh, I'm like, I think that this would kind of work if I could figure out something that goes around the elbows. And I thought about it a little bit more. And I'm like, yeah, when you spot on like an inclined dumbbell, that's what you spot. You spot the elbows. You push the guys elbows up and gives them a little support. And so I thought about it a little bit longer. And I took some wrist wraps and I wrapped some wrist wraps.

around my elbows and had my dad hold the Velcro in the middle. I pulled my arms back and the Velcro smacked my dad in the face. And he's like, well, that didn't work. I was like, no, that's exactly I was looking for it. Like, that's the feel. Like that, that was perfect. And so, uh, I grabbed some knee wraps and I took some knee wraps and, um, I went to, uh, my wife's friend who, uh, made swimsuits for them because my wife's the swimmer. And she made swim suits, swimsuits for the swim team. And, And I said, hey, do you think you can sew these knee wraps together, like in this configuration? Because I'm trying to make this thing that goes over your arms. And it's good for like, should be, you know, should assist you like in a bench press.

I'm trying to explain it to her and stuff. I met her outside of a Starbucks that day with this knee wrap material. And then a few, you know, a few weeks go by. And then I met her again at the same exact spot. And she pulls out of her bag, what is now known as a slingshot. It looked basically the exact same. as what's being sold today, about 15 years ago probably. I said, could you stay here for a second?

I'm going to go inside this. There's a gym right there. There's a fitness 19 right there. I'm going to bolt in there real quick and press some weights up with it to see, you know, see how sturdy to see how it holds up. So I go in, I put 135 on there and 135. So it's just like jumping off my chest with the slingshot on. And then I put two plates on and I go moving out around a bunch.

I was like, holy shit. I get up off the bench and head to toe. covered in goosebumps, super excited, almost like crying, like almost emotional because you got to keep in mind like this idea has been racking my brain for a long time. I just raced through the process, but it was probably sitting in there for four or five years. And I actually, I actually thought about the idea a bunch. I took it to a couple different powerlifting manufacturers. They, each one of them individually told me that it was a bad idea. I went to a friend of mine who was a power lifter who had some money. I was like, you know what, he'll get it.

He'll totally understand it. And I was explaining it to him. And I was like, you know, I might need a little financing and like, because I don't know how much it will cost. But it's pretty an expensive product to get off the ground. But I was like, I still might need some help because I don't have a lot of money. And he's like, he's like, man, I just, he's like, I can't even let you do it. He's like, it's like, it's like, I don't think there's, I don't think there's any market for that. People don't care about bench pressing. It's like, fuck that, man. People do care about, I care about bench pressing. So after being told the idea was bad many, many times and also not having the most amazing self-confidence. I had good self-confidence, but if I got knocked back a bunch

of times, sometimes I would be like, like, yeah, maybe people are right. Maybe they have a good, these are people, a lot of the people that I'm talking about. These are people that I was close to. So kind of hearing their negative feedback was like, hmm, maybe they, maybe they don't want to see me jump into something and, like, you know, just fall flat on my face for whatever reason. So anyway, I, in that process,

as I'm going through that process, I get a phone call from my dad on a Sunday morning after I got back from the gym. And I hear my mom yelling and screaming in the background. And my dad's like, your brother Mike, he's, he died. He passed away, uh, sometime this morning. And I was like, what the, like, you know, I didn't even really ask what happened. I don't think because my brother had drug issues.

So, uh, I just, you know, hung up the phone. And I was like, just when you get news like that, you know, you have a brother. Like, it's just you don't know what to do with that. So I like walk down the hall. way of our house. My wife was crying. I was upset. I just like, I went into the bathroom because I'm like, I have kids, you know, and I was like, I don't, I don't know how to, I don't know how to process this. I don't know how to communicate this to anybody else. So just like hidden the bathroom for a little while. It's probably in there for, it's like 10 or 20 minutes trying to gather my thoughts.

And I was also thinking like, fuck man, I just, I just talked to him. I talked to him the night before. And the day that he died is the day that I broke an all-time powerlifting record. And I talked to him just a few, I'm sorry, I talked to him just a few hours before I broke that record. And when I was talking to him, he's asking me about the contest and how I think it's going to go and everything. I'm like, well, you know, I got this for the squat.

I got this for the bench. And he's like, well, he's like, you know your deadlift is your weakness. He's like, so don't be a fucking pussy. He's like, let it rip. You know, when it comes to the deadlift, he's like, he's like, whatever way you got to do it. He's like, figure it out because that's how you're going to break the record. Your squat and your bench are going to be good. But he's like, you need to have strategy going into that deadlift to where you're able to do kind of a light deadlift almost to be.

break the record. And what happened was is I did really well. I did okay in my squat. I didn't do as well as I wanted to. I crushed the bench and made up some ground there, but it left for like an iffy deadlift. And so when I went to hit the deadlift, I remembered what my brother said. And you know how it is having a brother. It's a big deal. Like when they say, hey, don't be a pussy. That really means something. That sticks. Yeah, it does. It sticks. So I'm like, you know what he's like, man, I do like sometimes suck at dead lifts. And like, I just got to suck this up. I know I can do this. I want to say maybe it was like a 744 deadlift or something like that. So I went out there and I fucking smashed a 744 deadlift. And I texted them that night and said, hey, I broke the record. I didn't hear anything back.

I didn't think anything of it. And then, yeah, the next morning when I came home from the gym, I got that call from my dad and just didn't know how to process anything. And it was such a weird like I'm riding this high. I like achieved this record. I was all pumped about that. And then this thing happened and I was like just like up and right back down. And when I got out of the back to kind of when I got out of the bathroom, I was walking down the hallways kind of wiping tears off my face. And I just told my wife, I'm like, I'm just going to go for a ride. Like I just, I don't, I don't even know where I'm going. And she was really worried because she's like, you know, can you even drive? You know, you're crying a lot, you know? And I was like, no, no, no.

no, I'll be fine. So I hopped in my car and I just started driving and I just called one of my buddies. I'm like, dude, I just, I was like, I need to come like. I don't, I don't really hang out with anybody. It's really, really rare for me to like, be like, yo, I'm coming over. Like, I'm not that kind of person. I'm either in the gym or I'm with my family. Those are the two spots that I'm at.

But I called a friend and I just said, hey, man, my brother died and I just need to come over. He's like, come on over, you know? So I hung out there for about an hour or two. and we were able to kind of talk things through and I was able to kind of level level things out from that point uh you know that was a just a tough thing to deal with having uh drug addiction in your family I lost an uncle that way now I lost my brother that way and uh it's a very very difficult thing to deal with just having that uh people that are listening kind of know what that's like it's you run the gamut of emotions because you're so

you're pissed and you're sad you're sad you're you're kind of pissed because you're like, why did they choose to always do this is what you're thinking in your head, but you don't really realize that they're sick. You know, my brother wasn't the same person for many, many years. He got very addicted to drugs,

and then he kind of turned into somebody else, somewhere along the lines. And that's what happens with people that are addicted to drugs. But if it fast forward, maybe about maybe a couple, months or maybe like a year later. Getting told the slingshots a bad idea, getting, you know, multiple times and just kind of sitting on this idea.

I'm driving home in my car one day, again from the gym, and I'm kind of thinking about the slingshot. I'm like, you know what, man, I think I need to push this idea through. I'm just kind of thinking about it. And that night, I go to bed and this is really weird. I've never had anything similar happen to me ever in my life, so I don't know what the hell happened still. I don't know if it was part of a dream or if it was a ghost or what the hell was going on or if I heard something that spooked me and made me think something different was

going on. But in my sleep or in this dream or as a ghost, our brother came to me and he just said, think. And I woke up and was kind of now more alert and more aware. And I was like, what in the fuck? What does that mean? You know, and it felt like somebody whispered it in my ear. and I was just like my nose was like cold but I was hot like I was just I felt sick no what the fuck was going on I don't know if I was losing my mind or imagination or what the hell was going on but from that moment on I was like you know what this must be about the fucking slingshot I need to push this idea forward and I need to make it happen and in in the movie bigger stronger faster and my brother says, I know I have something that I'd like to share with the world.

He's like, I don't know exactly what it is, but I need to share it with the world. So I thought about those, I thought about him saying that statement in the movie. And I'm like, well, I'm not going to be fucking buried with ideas inside of me. Like, I want to get these out. I need to make this happen now. And so you can kind of cut to like a rocky montage of me trying to figure out how to get these slingshots made and to get them online and get them for sale. what did that look like? What were those first steps?

Because I know it's like starting a business with a product. And it's, I think a lot of people think that you have this idea and you go to the product store and then you go into a catalog and you choose the product that you want to launch. And it's, I'll take 10,000 of these. What did that process look like of finding manufacturer? Like, how did you have money to start it? you bootstrapped it like what was from point okay now you're ready next steps so i had a couple prototypes so that was a really good start for anybody that has an invention you got to start with a prototype whatever way that you could make a prototype even if it's some shitty resemblance of

what you're trying to make uh that's where i would advise people to start anything less than that is just an idea and it's not an invention it's not an invention yet so you need to make it the thing that's in your head right now you need to fucking anybody's listening right now you need to make it need to make it you need to get to it a lot of people will kind of sit on these ideas and they're not sure how to make them find a way to make them in whatever way that you can go you'll if you think about all your resources you will find someone that will be able to assist you to make it um for me the process wasn't like that crazy. Years ago, I used to go to that same Starbucks that I created the slingshot at.

And I used to go there every day and I just used to work on like my iPad. I went there so much that my niece and my nephew thought that I worked at Starbucks. They're like, Uncle Mark, you're going to go into work while we go into the gym because their parent, their mom would go into fitness 19 and work out with my wife. and I was just like I had no way to answer that so I was like yep and so I'd go in there and I'd work on my iPad but you know see it's literally the American dream I'm in Starbucks and you know I created this invention at Starbucks I also found my manufacturer at Starbucks it's not like they walked in the door but I just typed in knee wrap manufacturers so anybody listening right now you

You have access to all the same things that I had, especially at that time. I didn't have money. I didn't have the resources that I have now. I didn't know the people that I know now. This was all just like made up. I'm like, all right, let me try this. I type in knee wrap manufacturers. I found somebody that could make the product.

They made the product. The product wasn't great. It actually turned everybody. I ordered like $800 worth of product, which again, for me at that time, that was a good chunk of change. I was like, man, should I really do this? That's like a lot of money. So I bought, you know, I don't know, maybe,

I can't remember how many slingshots, but I bought a handful of them so I could kind of spread them out a little bit more and try them out of other gyms. And the product just smelled really bad because of the type of, I wanted them to be red because I knew right away

that I wanted the product to be seen really well. A lot of power lifters wear black. So I was trying to get like some bright colors so that way other people may see the product across the gym because it's a wearable. It's not a consumable. So I was like, this would be cool because people have it in the gym would be bright red and they'll identify with that's going to be the product. That's going to be part of our color coding that we're going to do.

And so I made that first batch and that first batch sucked like it was too springy and stretchy. It was just like maybe a little stronger than like an ace bandage. And then the dye would turn people skin red. and my wife and I tried to figure out a way to get that like die to kind of die off and we like soaked them in a tub and we put them like in our washer machine we put them in our dryer and they broke our washer they broke our dryer and it didn't even work like they was still like just bleed red all over the place so that didn't work but typed in knee wrap manufacturers again and found a second a second company to produce the product.

And then from there it was a matter of just kind of finding some money. So I went to my dad and my dad's like, I could tell that my dad, like, he didn't think it was a great idea, but he was supportive, you know. I think he didn't say anything negative at all. But I just kind of knew he was like, what the fuck you doing? He was thinking the same thing that my friend thought. It's like no one really cares about bench pressing.

And what is this powerlifting device? And it wasn't never a power lifting device. I just happen to be a power lifter because it's for bench press, pushups, dips. It happens to be for a power lifting exercise, but anyone that bench presses can use it. And anyone that's ever had shoulder pain or peck pain or an elbow injury could benefit from utilizing the product. So that second company, that worked really well, but it just needed to figure out how to get some money. So I got some money from my dad. I had a friend of mine that was going to give me money, had everything all lined up.

And he had to bail last moment. He was going to have some extra dough from like a real estate thing or something like that. And his thing fell through. And then so I was like, holy shit. I kind of had a misunderstanding of how I was going to pay for it because I think I was under the impression. that I would pay half and then they would ship me some of them and then I would pay the other half or something but they're like no uh when the product's done we need the full payment and then we ship it to you so I called a friend of mine his name's John Hennigan he's a former WWE wrestler he happened

to be doing really well at a time in wrestling I call him like hey man I'm like you know you remember like that product I was telling you about like a long time ago slingshot he got all excited he was like he's like did you make it i was like kind of i'm like i'm in the process of trying to figure it because i remember you talking about that you're all hyped up about it and you were trying to figure things out he's like he's like what's going on i said well i need i need some i kind of need some money you know he's like kind of need some money he's like do you need money i said yes i need money he's like how much i want to say it might have been like 10 grand or something like that it might have been more. I cannot remember.

He's like, he's like, 10 grand. That's what you need. I said, yep. He's like, you don't need more. I was like, I don't think so. He's like, it'll be there tomorrow. I'll send it. I'll overnight it to you. It'll be there. There'll be a check at your door tomorrow. And I was like, holy shit, man. I was like, that's, dude, thank you so much. That's amazing. He's like, no problem, man. He's like, he's like, I think this is going to work. And I think it's going to work for you. He was the first person to really ever say that to me. And I don't even, he never even saw the product. He just heard me yapping about it forever.

He heard me talking about it a bunch. And, uh, so he sent, he sends me the money. I called him like that day. I'm like, dude, I got the money. This is, again, thank you so much. I'm like, I'm going to, I'm going to pay you within a year. I'm going to make sure I pay you back right away. He's like, don't worry about it, dude. He's like, he's like, he's like, you're probably not going to be able to pay me back in a year. It's like, it's just not, you know, he's like you'll be able to sell him he's like I have confidence you'll be able to sell him and you'll do well but he's like just the way business goes he's like 10 grand he's like muscle just like lighted on fire and I was like thinking like no you're way off man like 10 grand's a lot of fucking money

goes quick it goes really fast so that first order that I put in I had a goal of being able to sell them all within 12 months and I sold them all in 14 months for some reason and like a lot of visions came to me on what color the product was going to be. The name of the product hit me right away. Like the first time I ever used it, I'm like, oh, it's slingshots the weight up. Like, that's what I'll call. I'll call it a slingshot. A lot of stuff hit me right away.

I knew approximately how much money it was going to make, which is really weird. But I think that if I look back and then we go back at the beginning of the podcast, I'm saying like money and weights. They always went together for me. As my dad would tell me like, oh, I made this amount and this amount. And my dad would also show me, he would share with me amounts that certain types of people made.

He'd be like, a teacher makes about this much money. A police officer makes me, you know, makes approximately this much money. And he would go over some of these things. I was always fascinated by that. I was like, oh, I didn't really know that that worked that way. I didn't know those people, especially people in like hospitals. They can make like killer amounts of money,

which I know doctors make money, but anesthesiologist and all kinds of people like that, they make, and deservingly so. But I think I just had like a decent idea of money without even kind of recognizing it. So when I created the product, I instantly thought I was like, which is kind of funny thinking about it now,

I was like, this is going to make me a multimillionaire. I'm like, I know it. And when I say that now, out loud, it seems so silly. But I kind of knew the exact spot it was going to be able to get my wife and I too. And then I also kind of knew the drop off point. And I knew that there's going to, I knew that I would get to certain points where I needed help. And I needed to like research more stuff or my wife had to up her game and learn more stuff.

Because she's actually like our CEO. She makes all the cool decisions. She does all the real work. But I kind of just, in the very, in the very, beginning had a really cool vision for it's going to be red it will probably make about it'll probably get us to around five million dollars and then from there it'll probably get squirrely and i'll probably have to try to figure things out how did you first start getting those products out there was it just reaching out of friends or powerlifting communities and and pass around slingshots i'm sure once you got

it out there people were like if you see someone in a gym bench pressing with the slingshot on back in 2008, 2009, you're like, what the shit is that? Right. And someone's throwing up weight, you know, that they're normally throwing up or they're, you see someone that was injured. Yep. Is that how it just grew?

It just became this kind of viral item. That's a big part of it. Getting the product out there, you know, anybody that's trying to get a product to be, like, well known, you're probably going to have to give out a lot of free product. or figure out some sort of other strategy for your product to be like known. But I just used YouTube.

You know, I just, I already had a little bit of a following, nothing huge. But I was already, like, I always felt that people would be fascinated by strength. I remember the first time I squatted around 900 pounds. It was like, and a couple other guys in the gym were squatting 7, 800. Another guy was squat 900. And I was like, you know what? people are like people want to see this like i don't know why but i think people would want to see this like this there's something cool about this like we're these are this is insane you know

this guy's got eight plates on the bar this other guys got nine plates on the bar like it just looks it looks nuts people are bleeding out of their nose like it's it's normal there's normal for the not just a puddle of sweat to be in the squat rack but a puddle of blood to be sitting there too i was like even though sports kind of gross like everyone's fat and and people look out of shape but They're actually really strong. I was like, I think people really like this a lot. So I filmed a lot of stuff. I documented a lot of stuff.

And when it came to the slingshot, it was just a natural thing to start putting it in videos. And before I ever even had a patent, I shot a video with it. And I was like, you know, I was a little, I didn't say everything about the product. I just showed quick clips of me like lifting certain amounts of weight with it. I did some push-ups with the product. and at the time the product came out of 310 pounds or something like that. Faces, you know, twice the size it is right now. But yeah, that's kind of originally how I kind of just talked about the product.

And then it wasn't too long after that that we put it online. We put it for sale. It was July 27th, 2010. July 27th is my wife's birthday. So we released it on that day. Her and I went to dinner and kind of celebrated, had a drink or two. that day. We're like, all right, here we go. And we just kind of watched some sales come in and we're like, we made money while we're sitting at a restaurant. Like, this is insane. You know,

and we sold like three or four while we were just sitting there. And then for a long time, that's about how many would sell each day. Three, four, five, seven. We had a neighbor, next door neighbor. Everything just happened like real organically. We had a next door neighbor that would look in and they would see our garage and like, they're like, what is, what do you have in your garage. Like, what keeps getting shipped to you guys or like drugs? Because it looked like drugs. It's the way it's wrapped up and stuff. It looks crazy. And so the neighbor's like, well, he's like, I do logistics. If guys ever need help with that, because I told him I had an invention, a fitness invention. He's like, if you ever need help with that. And we were like,

no, no, we don't need it. Like, we only sell a couple of them a day. It's not a big deal. And then just over time, as people saw it more like on YouTube. And as we started sending some out to other lifters. We started to make other products, wrist wraps, and things like that to eventually. It was my goal to protect people head to toe, try to get every joint covered pretty much, the wrists, the elbows, the shoulders, a belt. And then I even created, I created knee sleeves and knee wraps, but also created a shoe with Reebok, which was really cool.

But I didn't really know that we were going to. to start to sell so many and I didn't know that we would need the help of like our neighbor. And we started utilizing his services. And then we, I got a bigger gym set up. And then we started to kind of have like almost like a studio style thing where we would film the slingshot a lot, film a lot of the lifters, film all the people in super training using it. So Slingshot, sorry, super training was like a storefront for Slingshot.

and all the videos that we would have, a lot of our own team and our own guys would use the product. So we didn't, even though we did send out a lot of free product and it went out to other people around the country, I think the main draw was from super training, was from that original YouTube channel. And now we are all joined together. My next door neighbor, his warehousing or his company is inside,

of slingshot headquarters which you've been to. No way. Yeah. It's all under one roof. That's awesome. I'm curious. Kind of like here. I wonder like,

because you came out to me, I wonder if that had like an impact on you because like this looks like a little similar setup. Oh, when we were, when I first came out to you, um, when we were a lot smaller here.

Yeah. A lot smaller. And I loved your guy. I was blown away by your guys set up. I was like, this is what we need. We need the gym. I love that.

I love showing people like, you know, And I love hanging out with people. You know, so it's like, you know, maybe the mystique of me being Mark Bell like dies off and you're just like, you're hanging with me. And then you're like, it just gives people an idea like, I think I could do something similar. Yeah. When you, when you first launched it, did you then have to file a patent because you, I'm sure people started kind of ripping you off or trying to create product similar to is that what triggered the filing of the patent? for the slingshot?

You know, I went early on the patent of the slingshot, and we had a patent, we had like a hidden patent because, like, if your patent is out there, then people can kind of get a little squirly with how they, how they may apply for a patent as well, and they might be able to, like, patent a very similar product. They could just make some, like, little tweak. So our stuff was private for a long time. and I would tell people that I have a patent. They're like, he's full of shit.

He doesn't have a patent. You know, anybody can make this. And so other people did try to make it. It's not really a huge problem now. There are people in other countries that make it. There are some really small companies that still make the product. And interestingly enough, powerlifting went all slingshot. Like, because in powerlifting, my 854 bench press is not a raw bench press.

it was done in a bench shirt. Most of the bench shirts today are basically versions of a slingshot. But it's just not worth like the dispute or the debate because it's like they, it's pretty much a different product. It has a different use. There's guys now benching like 1,100 pounds in these things. But I actually think it's cool. Like I think it's, I think it's great.

Like I think it's kind of neat that I was the one to be able to advance the sport and push it forward. and now we see some of these guys like smashing these huge benches. The slingshot, you know, that one is, it's fairly protected, even though I mentioned some of that other stuff about power lifting. It's like powerlifting is not big.

It's like pretty small. So that's not a huge deal. It doesn't cut into anything, I don't think. We've had to send cease and assist to some people before and protect the patent. That's actually part of having a patent is you have to defend it and protect it. but I made a lot of other products and I it's it's kind of annoying you know it's kind of

frustrating in some ways but you know that the hip circle you know you see like every fitness person has a version of a hip circle I created that product and I know it's just like a circle so people are like well it's a circle but it didn't exist before I put mine out there and now you kind of see those all over but again it's like more I'm more proud of it than anything. I'm more proud of it than I am like resentful or mad because that one I just couldn't patent. You can't patent everything.

It's like it's difficult. And you can't patent stuff just in terms of use. Like I can't take this glass right here and say, this is an orange juice glass. You know, I would need to, there would have to be something that I did to have it be proprietary. And even then it's iffy.

And so people can kind of manipulate things in many different ways with lawyers. But it actually makes me feel good to see all the other bands that are out there and see all that stuff out there because I know who created it. I know where it came from.

And I'm like, you know what? If that helps the fitness community and that helps other people make money and helps them grow some businesses, then I'm down with that. That sounds cool to me because it's going to rise all the ships, right?

In the long run. Well, I still use the strong knee sleeves. Awesome. I've been rocking the strong. knees leaves for years now. Yeah, they feel great.

And, I mean, I remember we got sent our first, our first slingshot years ago. And me, it was me,

Joe, and Preston. And we loved it. Because, like, for us, the hardest part of our bench was the top of that lift. Right.

So we'd get that leverage with those slingshot from the bottom part of the lift, that top part. I mean, it just got us up there to work and refine that area. So when did,

I'm curious, when did equip, powerlifting start? Like, what time frame? I think it might have started in like the mid to late 90s. Okay. And I think originally it was like, I think originally it came from a point of protection. And one of the first products was just a squat suit. It was a guy named George Zangis, who passed around these Z suits they were called in a warm up room as the story goes. And people were just like you and I are warming up for the squat and like I was like hey I have this supportive suit and we're like huh and like hey Nick you want one you're like sure Mark you want one

okay and some other guys said no and some some other guys like it didn't fit them properly or whatever no one cared no one cared about like who had what uh until they hit the platform and they recognized that the guys who they were wearing the suits were like not just protected more like it didn't just help their groin and their knees and their back they actually were lifting 50 to 50 more pounds. It was actually working almost like another belt. And so that's kind of where it got started. And it originally had some really good intent.

And then it just went real sideways. Because I think those companies were like, oh, we can probably help people lift 100 pounds more, 200 pounds more, maybe 300 pounds more. And so you started getting into multiple layers of squat suits where the squat suits would be made out of like canvas. The bench shirts even sometimes were made out of like denim. them canvas.

I think also years ago, if you back up even before the invention of a squat suit, guys used to squat in like cut off jeans shorts. And back then, it was very much in style that were like very tight pants, you know, very tight jeans. And so these guys that would get the cutoffs when they would go to squat, and I never had the pleasure of squatting in a pair of jeans shorts before. But when they would go to squat, the jeans shorts would be. supportive. And they got a good feel from that. And they were able to lift a little bit more weight

and stay a little bit more safe. And so that's kind of the origin of where some of that stuff came from. Did you enjoy, because you've done both equipped and raw powerlifting. Have you, I mean, what do you prefer? I really liked equipped lifting a lot. You know, I don't really have, it's like very difficult to describe what it feels like. But, But you're just, you're lifting like so much weight and you're like, uh, like quote on quote going so fast. You don't remember what I say going so fast. It's like you're not going fast necessarily, uh,

but it just feels like you're going fast. And it feels like you're like a race car driver and that if you make one error, you're right up on the wall. You're like, what in the fuck? Like now my whole car, like my car exploded on. I'm trying to jump out of it now because the car is on fire. Like that's how you feel. You'll go to do a bench press and you'll hit this like groove perfectly.

Then all of a sudden the weight will come right back towards your face and like, what the hell? Or sometimes it goes towards your stomach. And then same thing with a squat. You know, I fell with a thousand 85 squat and I was the squat that I did before that. I did 1036. I did it very quick.

I was able to explode through it really nicely. But that next attempt, the 1,00085, I was doing everything that I did on the previous lift. but I just made one small error. I think I just kind of shifted just a tiny bit. My left shoulder dipped and my right shoulder kind of twisted. And because of that, then my knee shot in, my other leg shot outward.

Next thing you know, I'm basically on the ground. Like both my knees smashed the front of the monolith and the weight jumps off my back. So as crazy as that is, I actually really liked that intensity of that. I liked that it was, for some reason, I kind of liked the fact that you could like die under these weights. I always thought that was an interesting aspect of it because you literally could on any one of these squats, any one of these deadlifts, or not deadlifts, but any one of these bench presses, something really awful could happen. So you had to be really, really dialed in. You had to really be paying attention to what you're doing. So obviously equipped powerlifting is definitely more for an experienced lifter.

Oh, 100%. Yeah. You know, what I would say, though, back to you talking about the knee sleeves, like there's probably a lot of people listening to this show right now that have never experienced knee sleeves before. And it is amazing. When you put on knee sleeves or elbow sleeves, like you might not think you'd be like, well, what kind of difference can they make?

It's almost the same difference as putting on a belt. Like when you have neoprene wrapped around your knees and you have that warmth, it also creates a lot of kinesthetic awareness. You'll just be more aware of kind of like where your knees are in space. And I think that, and it might sound like total bullshit. But Canisiotap does that as well as like even just underarmor, like having like tights or shorts in a particular way. It allows you to kind of feel your body out in the movement that you're doing.

So even something like, just think about like if, think about like for some people, if you're to do like a lunge. A lunch sometimes you're like, I've got to kind of figure this out how to do a lunch, especially if you're cold and you just got into the gym. It can bother your knee a bit for a lot of people. Well, just imagine if the pain or any restriction is just completely taken away. That's what a knee sleeve or elbow sleeve can do for a lot of people. It won't do it for everybody. Some people have like severe pain in some of those areas.

But it will help a lot. We make a bunch of different products. We have like compression cuffs, which are slightly different, which compress the area a little bit more. A compressed muscle is going to be a stronger muscle to a certain degree. You don't want to compress it too much. But when you wear like an elbow sleeve, you can also think about it this way. Let's just say that you have, I don't know, like a 13 inch forearm and like a 15 inch bicep, right? When you have a, when you have an elbow sleeve on, it's going to add about a half inch to both.

sides, a half inch to the forearm, a half inch to the bicep. Now, that might not seem like a lot, but as you go to bench press or as you go to do any pressing motion, as your forearm is starting to get closer and closer to your bicep, you now have those two half-inch things hitting up against each other and it has your arm being like an inch beefier than before. And we know that a larger muscle can oftentimes be a stronger muscle and that it can help create leverage. So, even also just somebody having more body weight, having more body weight, having just a larger person period and not necessarily more muscle, can also assist with making somebody stronger. So an elbow sleeve or knee sleeve, just by default, just by the sheer fact that the

neoprene is like resting and bunching up on top of the neoprene itself, it's providing a little bit more cushion for the pushing and it's given you a little bit of spring. I mean, I personally, I never barbell squat or lunge, especially lunges. Like, lunge is the one where I really feel it. I won't do either of those two without knee sleeves on. And it's risky. Every time I'm showing it on social media or video, everyone's always asking, what are on your knees? What are on your knees?

I'm like, knee sleeves. And I agree, a lot of people are unfamiliar or unaware of these things exist. But I do agree. You need to make some specialty, Nick Bear going more. Knees sleeves, right? I would love that. Let's do it. Because for me, it's protection for one, but it's that mental mind muscle or just mental connection that I feel safer, I feel stronger.

I can actually feel like I'm loading the muscle. It will make a plaid one. Oh, dude. I'm all about. Fucking game on, right? The whole team here, like the whole BPN team is rocking knees sleeves for every workout. Awesome. And they're game changing.

Makes a big difference. Well, Mark, I appreciate your time today, man. It's been epic. Like I said, for me, it's like full circle because when I first started getting into fitness and especially launching BPN, bigger, stronger, faster was that documentary or that movie that I watched over and over and over again. And following your journey and what you've built and what you've impacted the fitness community, going from extreme powerlifting, pushing some big weights to

you know, you stood on a bodybuilding stage and now getting into running. It's cool to see the evolution of fitness, moving from overall performance, and now applying this, you know, this health aspect to it. So it's been cool to see. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. It's awesome being here. This place is really inspiring, like, what you're building is just, it's awesome.

It's impressive what you guys are doing here. And I think that, like, I just think that this is. is the beginning. Like, that's what's exciting for me. When I see friends, uh, you know, working on stuff and they're so diligent, I'm always like, this is so dope because I know, like, even though this is scaling and this is growing and it's getting bigger and bigger by the moment, like, I don't have any doubts that it's going to be like twice as big. It's going to be three times as big. Like, it's just going to keep continuing. And I wish you all the success in the world. And I really, uh, can't wait to see that baby that your wife's got cooking up. It's cooking fast.

since I'm almost done. But that being said, strength is never a weakness and weakness is never a strength. 100%. All right, we'll see you. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Bear Performance Podcast.

Please leave a rating and review on the platform you are listening to if you enjoyed it. It helps us to grow and reach more people with the intent of changing lives through the Go One More mindset. If you are ready to take your health and performance to the next level,

head over to BPNSups.com to take the first step.