The Ryen Russillo Podcast - Ben Simmons Landing Spots and Post-Lottery Talk With Kevin O’Connor, Plus Fitness Life Advice With Jeremy Scott

Episode Date: June 24, 2021

Russillo breaks down Trae Young’s performance in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals (2:00) before talking with The Ringer’s Kevin O’Connor about NBA lottery pick prospects and Ben Simmons��s trade potential (15:00). Finally Ryen is joined by author and trainer Jeremy Scott to answer some listener-submitted fitness Life Advice questions (57:00). Host: Ryen Russillo Guest: Kevin O'Connor and Jeremy Scott Producers: Kyle Crichton and Steve Ceruti Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

trying to be nice about but the the d-bag factor of the industry is high right like there's dude it's uh you know i'll say this and the people who listen to our podcast or you meet me in person you come here uh it's sizzle and steak is what i call the internet of fitness where i'm not saying you have to look a certain way, but if you don't, no one stops scrolling and they don't see it. And so Instagram is a game and it's analytics. That's how, that's how we get paid. So if, if my stuff with the shirt on reaches a million people, but this shirtless bullshit with little shorts on reaches 9 million people, I'm going to do it. So the sizzle is like, they can see me shirtless and they click and they watch it. And the steak

is the stuff that we give them once we're here. Then we can actually help them and coach them. But it's a really weird space, man. That is today's fitness life advice guest, Jeremy Scott, who has done really well and a lot of fun to talk to. It was a great line there.

We got Kevin O'Connor on the lottery in his latest mock draft. We'll talk some prospects and also fits for Ben Simmons and the Trey Young game against the Bucs. What happened? I'm going to go over

every Trey attempt. I'll attempt to. I don't know if it's going to be worth listening to. What's next? Okay, like I said at the top, excited about today's pod. I'm not sure I'm excited

about today's open. I'm going to try. I wanted to do this with the Philadelphia game where they blew it to Atlanta and go over all of their offensive possessions in the fourth. And so, you know, I watched like all of you did. Trey went crazy again, 48 points.

But I wanted to see what Milwaukee was doing right, what they were doing mostly wrong. So I went over every Trey attempt. So that's not every Trey possession. This might not even work, but I'm selling the hell out of it right now. I'm going to try to go over and see how this plays out, Saruti, running through all of the Trey possessions and how it was defended. There's a couple here or there that I'm just not going to include an offensive rebound or whatever transition,

but basically there's a theme here. So I've already watched it twice this morning, so I know what happened and what did or didn't work. And I will try to go over the possessions in a way that makes sense. So you can look for this and see what adjustments are going to be made by Milwaukee because the biggest one has to be getting Brook Lopez off the floor. It's a huge problem. And I'm not saying like, I don't like to go, hey, Brook Lopez, zero minutes, man, the rest of the series. That's not realistic. It's not going to happen. There could be a moment where Brooke Lopez is hurting Atlanta by stretching the floor and trying to open up Giannis. That's the thing. I mean, there's usually a reason these coaches are not absolute morons, even though they get talked about like that sometimes. So let's go. Game tips. First, four possessions. High pick and roll for Trey against drop coverage by Brooke Lopez. We know what drop is because literally everybody talks about it all the time. Where the center makes a decision. How does he

want to handle the ball? How does he want to handle it coming off that high screen? Does he want to meet him there? For a big guy who's a center, a guy like Brooke Lopez, it's just not going to work up there. So you want to stay back, protect the rim. The problem is Trey's as good at the floater game as anybody in the league. He's incredible. And what I thought was really interesting in a harbinger was that

we had the first high pick and roll and Trey ended up with Giannis on the other side. So he was like, all right, wait, that's not what I want. Let me reset this. He pulls it out and then resets it, gets the high pick and roll, drop coverage against Lopez, floater, beauty. Okay, boom. First four plays for Trey Young on attempts were against Lopez in drop coverage. The fourth attempt, which was also a floater in this series to start the game, was so vicious because Trey's so quick, body control. Trey's so good at his body angling, veering off left to right of the rim, and then still getting himself centered enough for the release. Some guys just don't even have that. They never figured that part out

of their athleticism and Trey has all that stuff. The first bad three of the game happened here for Trey and he actually had a lot of them, which is crazy because when you look at the highlights and the reaction and everything, we'll go through the bad threes as well. He got a switch against Middleton and I think because he was hitting some of those floaters, he's feeling himself a little bit. Let me take one of these threes and we know that Trey will have moments in games where he kind of just, not

impatient, which can happen, but he's just going to take some bad threes every now and then, which basically is every other really good scorer in the league too, so that's not specific to him. So it takes a bad three. Okay. Transition, fast break, it's a bucket. He got switched on to Giannis when they brought in Portis for Lopez,

and then he was like, nope, I don't want that. Let me switch this back to Portis. And then a floater. No Lopez in the game again. Switches to Portis. Portis stayed up at the three-point line. And then it still didn't work. And Trey got him with a floater.

They had another point where Portis was trying to stay with him. And they switched on to Pat Connaughton, and that was a weird three because he just was quick. He was really quick with it. You figure you get past the half-court line, and you're set up in the half-court offense at like 16, 17 seconds, and Trey was taking some threes there. All the Pat Connaughton defensive assignments

usually were just kind of a scramble and transition. Hey, this kind of happened over here. I don't know that Connaughton was by usually were just kind of a scramble and transition. Hey, this kind of happened over here. I don't know that Connaughton was by design the primary defender on Trey, except for maybe a couple. I would say in the shot attempts, it looked like it only happened by design one time. The rest of the time, it was scrambling. We're at 40-31. Lopez dropped back in the game. Guess what happens?

Floater. Bucket. 31, Lopez drop back in the game. Guess what happens? Floater, bucket. 40, 33, Lopez actually kind of stays up. Trey hits a deep three. I didn't love the attempt, but he hit it. Then Teague was in there for some reason. Yep, Jeff Teague got some minutes to try to defend Trey, but you know you're going to get screened anyway. They screen him, and then Trey hits another three against Lopez. He also had like two threes in a row here, but he had a couple screens where it was

really telling in that Trey was just feeling himself in a moment where he actually had a second screen, because this came back later where it's that kind of staggered screen deal where you're like, Chris Paul does it all the time. He'll go left to right and he'll have two screens waiting for him. And then there's kind of like a couple of different things that you have to worry about. And Trey ended up burning Milwaukee on this play in the fourth with an amazing assist. But he had a couple of screens and he just was like, yeah, I'm fine.

He had another missed three. Then he had an ISO step back three against Connaughton. So we got like three happy here at the end of the first half. And now we're talking about it's like 52-50. He had another, it's kind of this double drag screen where he took a long two, which wasn't all that great. At 65-61, he gets switched onto Lopez again who drops. Then

Trey had Drew where he worked him behind the back. Lopez is so deep under the basket protecting the rim. Another layup. It's tied at 67. He gets Middleton in a switch. Kind of goes iso three-pointer against him. Misses. There's a Trey transition play. He missed the layup. Not a big deal. There was an offensive

rebound where, remember, where he used baseline against Connaughton and he faked it around his back and then drove he missed the layup not a big deal there was an offensive rebound where remember where he used baseline against conaton and he faked it around his back and then drove baseline for the layup that made it 71 71 transition floater miss and that was a conaton assignment there okay so let's get into where it really matters here because this is this is important because it may be some kind of hope for milwaukee as we've run through all of this we know what the main problem is, is that Lopez, it was just, and as you saw as the close of the fourth quarter, the Bucs were like,

we don't think we can do this anymore. No Lopez at 81-73, so no Clint Capella. Collins screens, and it's Portis again, and Trey hits a floater on him. The shimmy three to make it 86-78. Drew actually just got lost,

went the wrong direction on the screen. And Portis, I mean, you want to say he was late. The entire world was late. The guy had a time to shimmy his shoulder just a little bit there. So that three actually still, you know, look, it's 86-78. In a drive where he went at Giannis at the five now.

Collins sets the screen. Giannis is on Collins. So now it's Giannis, Trey, and you could see as Trey drove at Giannis, not that he's afraid to, but it was a completely different challenge. You could see on some of these drives in the fourth quarter where it was against Giannis where he felt like,

okay, I have to account for the Giannis factor here because this is completely different than Lopez and Portis, and this is the thing that you have to start looking at if you're Milwaukee. Trey comes back in, 92-90 in the fourth. Iso versus Drew, he just beat him, but then in a traffic, another miss against Giannis. He got switched against Giannis. He waited, waited, wasn't sure quite what to do was hoping for movement that was another bad three I think like the fourth of his game I think you could argue

he had five or six bad ones in the beginning which is still again crazy at 48 and then at 446 they started bringing everybody up so Drew Holliday's the first uh defender Drew was picking him up past half court right not full court but he was picking up past half court, right? Not full court, but he was picking up past half court. And then they were bringing the screen so high up that now you had three people on the front line of the defense for Milwaukee all waiting for Trey to kind of get filtered through these screens. But they were going to try to meet him up a lot higher. And this is like one of the other adjustments.

It's Giannis at the five and it's okay. We get to meet him. Now, I don't know if you can do that for 48 minutes. It's kind of exhausting, but they're bringing everybody up. Drew's in the half court. He gets switched on a Pat Connaughton. Trey gets another switch, which again, doesn't make a ton of sense because if you've got Connaughton there, then you would think you would want to bring the next screen down and get Giannis out of the play. and get Giannis out of the play. So Atlanta is probably going to adjust that somewhat. Like, hey, why are we, when we get the bad matchup for Milwaukee, why are we then switching again a second time into Giannis?

That's something that happened a couple different times. And Trey just kind of had like a weird stretch. He had taken a couple bad threes. He'd had a turnover. And the funny thing is after a timeout, a little bit later in the game at 105-98, where Milwaukee's winning, they ran something out of it where Trey didn't touch the basketball.

And I didn't know if McMillan was going, hey, look, let's get somebody else involved here. Let's make sure we don't just turn this into you doing this, which I know no one's going to think happened because everybody thinks I hate the guy, but it's not the case. It's just like telling you the entire story. And I thought that was very revealing. So whatever. Trey got a huge bucket. It ended up being this incredible run here by Atlanta.

Collins hit a three. Trey got the and one against Drew where he dribbled into him left side. He got switched on a P.J. Tucker a little bit later. It was probably the sixth bad three of the game. He got switched on Pat Connaughton again. Giannis is lurking. He's lurking. It's another three.

Okay, now this was kind of the bucket that mattered. It's one 11, one 10 Milwaukee. Reggie Miller says Trey can't beat drew holiday one-on-one, which I actually would push back on a little bit. Trey's going to get him sometimes. And sometimes drew is going to hold up, but they're going to run screen actually, because it's not about not being able to beat Drew. It's about being able to beat up on Lopez and really even Porras, who should be more active. And that's going to be the biggest difference you're going to see in game two. You're going to see less Lopez. You can see more Giannis at the five.

There's also some stuff with Giannis in the dunker role as the five, which I thought was kind of cool because instead of him having to bring the ball up in all that traffic, they have him coming off of something else. So if Drew can beat his man, which isn't going to be Trey, Trey's defending Connaughton, you have a chance there for Giannis to do some stuff where he's not having to do everything on his own so far away from the basket. So that's another aside here. But what's so interesting about this moment, as Reggie says he can't beat Drew one-on-one,

you get Trey going now off of the screen at Giannis. And Giannis is so afraid to foul Trey he actually kind of curls up defensively instead of like he just wasn't ready to go up and contest so he didn't know he was going to have the body control and Trey is kind of accounting for Giannis but Giannis just turns like Giannis doesn't go at him and swat it he like turns He, like, turns to be like, I just, I don't want to touch you. I don't want to touch you. Trey misses the layup, Capella offensive rebound, 1-12, 1-11 Atlanta,

and that was the biggest bucket. And the funny thing is Trey, after he missed, because he slammed into Giannis and missed the layup, he flexed. He did an arm flex to the crowd. And we were like, wait, what? But Trey had 48, and he's a major, major problem. And he's a major problem for Milwaukee. Obviously, if Milwaukee is going to play this way, I don't want to say, hey, if they don't switch it. One of the teams is going to be way better than the other team from three, and then we're going to act like all these adjustments were made, and it may not even be any adjustments at all. It could just be that one team was the better team the entire game, the entire game.

And then when you looked at the three-point differential between the Clippers who were shooting it pretty well and the Suns who weren't, and then you had Booker who I'm not even saying it was because of the broken nose. Clearly, he just wasn't the same guy offensively in game two that he was game one. And you're watching the score going, wait, this is a close game. How is it? Because I actually thought Phoenix played that much better than the Clippers did the entire time. So I still think the right team won in that game as they're up 2-0. And we wait for the return of Chris Paul. And I personally am waiting a little bit longer for the return of Kawhi.

Because that one's Paul information. Again, I'm not going to share it all because I don't know what's right or what's wrong about it all. But it's been kind of all over the place with both of those guys. So, you know, enjoy game two, Milwaukee, Atlanta. We'll see what happens. Kevin O'Connor is the head of our draft coverage at the Ringer. You can also check him out, Chris Vernon, on The Mismatch. That's taped Tuesday, Thursday night, so it drops Wednesday, Friday mornings.

NBA Ringer show as well with Kyle Mann, who's terrific. So all the stuff is up. We had the lottery this week, and you guys did a big lottery show the night of, Kevin. So let's just start with Detroit at the pick. You know what? I'm going to present it this way. I mean, everybody's going to have Cade Cunningham going there. Were you certain Cade Cunningham was number one for everyone?

Because I feel like he's talked about as if it's a no-brainer. And the closer we get to the lottery, again, I'm not saying Cade's not going number one for everyone because I feel like he's talked about as if it's a no-brainer and the closer we get to the lottery again I'm not saying Cade's not going number one but I was a little surprised it's some of the conversation of like this is not a lock for every team that was in the mix it's not a lock for every team and with Cade Cunningham I know Woj reported that he's taking one visit that's to Detroit and in all likelihood Detroit will take Cade Cunningham but for every team here some teams have Evan Mobley number one some teams are talking about Jalen Green as a top pick of the draft and didn't we just see this a couple years ago Ryan right or wrong with Luca Luca what people talked about was well can he can he create off the dribble does he have the foot speed does he have the athletic? You hear similar things being asked of Cade Cunningham,

and he's not the same level prospect as Luka. He hasn't had the same level of success. Luka's been a professional since he was a little kid. But the questions are the same here for Cade Cunningham, and there are some legitimate questions. He does have to take a lot of difficult shots. His assist numbers were low, partially because of his teammates, but those are some questions teams have,

and that's like no knock against him necessarily. It's just about what Evan Mobley can bring with his versatility on both ends of the floor, where that could be a better fit and a better choice for some teams. With Detroit, I do think Cade should be the guy, though, there. Yeah, there's certainly thoughts on, mean you know fit i i kind of hate the fit need stuff when you're a bad team you know if you're a bad team you shouldn't be worrying

about it so where there's some discussion or pushback on mobley to cleveland it too because they have jared allen who's terrific i think every team would want a jared allen and he's going to get paid but if you like mobley then go ahead or you know if you feel like okay we're going to get paid. But if you like Mobley, then go ahead. Or if you feel like, okay, we're going to give Sexton Garland another year, and it feels like the team likes Garland more now than Sexton. Again, disagree with me if you hear anything differently from what I'm saying.

But then it's like, well, if we have this backcourt, then we can't take Jalen Green because of that. So I'm always of the mindset of, I don't really care if you're like if you pick players and they're supposed to be starters in those positions if your evaluation is this is the guy then take the guy especially when your team's winning 20 games when I think about fit I mean it partially has to do with the guys currently on your roster but when I think about fit I think about how does it fit into the vision I have for this roster right like do I want to draft another guard and what does that mean for eventually having to part ways with one of them you know if you did draft jalen green for number three at cleveland

if you do that how does that influence the choices made with garland or sexson at some point to find another wing or another big at some point. Right. So, cause I mean for Cleveland there, I would love the Evan Mobley selection. Like that would be a perfect fit next to Jared Allen, what they could build there with those guards. I'd love that, but it can still work to your point, Ryan. If, if, if it comes down to it, you know, cause on that draft show with Bill Simmons was and Kyle, I threw out the idea of Cleveland at number three being a team that could trade down because of those fit issues you're talking about. But ultimately, if you feel

Jalen Green is the best prospect in the draft and he's there at number three, fit shouldn't matter at all. It's not part of the equation. You just try to flip somebody else in that case. But I do think fit for your long-term vision, that is something that matters in terms of the selections you make on draft night. Jalen is a really impressive physical specimen. He's just, his feet, his drives, I think the handles there needs to be a little bit tighter. Of course, like any young kind of score-first player that has the resume that he has,

there's going to be moments where he's forcing it. There's going to be some turnovers. There's going to be some predetermined reads. I mean, I was watching a clip of him this morning for Ignite and he's a young player, still figuring it out. And he caught it like flat footed, no dribble, nothing. And his feet were on the three-point line. Like both feet were on the three-point line and he just fired. And you're just like, wait, what are you? So there's some of that in there. But when you're watching a college player, you know, like you and I, and we're going through and looking at different, whatever program you use to watch tape of guys. And if you just kind of do like a sort of like wide lens view of the game

that you're watching, and then you switch it on to some of the ignite games. That level of competition is so much tougher than I think people understand. And when you had the G league basically contracting this year because of all the deep, like when I watch ignite games, I'm like the competition here is so much better than the college games. And I'm talking even some of the Baylor and Gonzaga regular season and tournament games that I watched.

It just stands out. It's, it's kind of that thing of like turning the channel immediately. And now you're seeing something completely different. So in those frustrating moments for Jalen green, part of the evaluation is realizing like, do you realize what he's doing in how bad he's making some adults look that have been playing for a long time.

And that's where i think you can talk yourself into jalen green and why i think there were a couple teams one in particular but they're not sitting there at one so it's not really relevant that may have taken him number one overall and also the character aspect too you know you talked to jared jack in your podcast recently and what he said about jalen green and his character how he was seeking out information he first came to him wanting to talk and learn stuff. It's cliche sounding stuff sometimes, but

it checks out with what you hear from people around the league that this is a guy who wants to be really, really, really good. And isn't that important? Yeah, I appreciate you checking it out. I mean, he's listed. You have him at 6'5", 165. That seems light. That weight might be off. I think we need an update,

but we don't have an actual official measurement. Yeah, he looks thicker than 165. But I'm glad you listened because I thought, you know, look, Jarrett Jack was teammates with these guys. I like that we got a little Isaiah Todd and Nixon there as well because I thought Isaiah Todd had some nice moments when I was watching some of those Ignite games,

even though I wasn't as focused on him when I'm watching Kaminga and Green. But it was pretty clear he liked Green more than Kaminga. Did you pick up on that? No doubt about it, for sure. Everything he said about Jalen Green just struck me as very authentic. This is real. This is real stories. He actually works with this kid.

He actually likes this kid, for sure. Okay, so your top picks here, you got Cade going one to Detroit. You have Mobley going two to Houston. And the reason I kind of skipped there to Cleveland with Jalen Green was just because I wanted to get some of the Jalen stuff in there. Mobley's really impressive. I mean, he has all of the perimeter skills that you would want. I mean, look, it's not like he's going to put it on the floor at seven feet

and start dribbling around like Kevin Durant. I'm not going that crazy with it. But when you look at Houston, that is the opposite of having some picks in place. You feel like you can't get in the way of Kenyon Martin Jr. here, who had a nice year. Look, I'll put it that way. But Houston, there's no one on the roster. I mean, I guess you could say Christian Wood. But what did you like about Mobley enough to put him at Houston ahead of everybody else? Because I think this is a bit of a departure from where we were in the process about a month ago. Sure.

So with Evan Mobley in the mock update that'll be out sometime on Thursday, we're going to shift Jalen Green to the spot and shift Mobley down to three at Cleveland. But initially having Mobley here, the logic on my end was just like a best player available mindset. I have Mobley as second on my board. I think if you factor in how they're going to build this thing out, let's say Houston does take Mobley. There are some long-term issues with having him and Christian Wood in the frontcourt together.

The benefits are two highly skilled bigs. You know, Mobley can be versatile. He can protect the rim or defend on the perimeter. Offensively, he can space the floor out to three. He can do a little bit off the dribble for you. I think his passing and playmaking is way better than the numbers actually show. He's insanely talented. But when you have Christian Wood, who oftentimes gets bullied by bigger guys,

Jokic is in the beads of the world. Not saying a lot because those guys do it to everybody. But you do need to have some beef with your top guys and Mobley and Wood. Both of them are on the leaner side. So I could see Houston looking at this saying, well, take the scorer instead. Take the Jalen Green or take the take the shot creator like a Jalen Suggs at that spot or even considering a trade down for that matter, too. I think this is a year to really think about that for Houston at two or Cleveland at three. Just because I really still like Suggs and Green at the 3-4 spot that you could get more assets.

Because for Houston, do you like the Mobley-Wood thing with what they could be together? Or do you also kind of feel that they should go with one of the guards? I think Wood's incredibly talented. We know the numbers. I think he's a tough guy to play with. I think he's a tough guy to have around uh and he's so lean no i just think he's he's always i think he's kind of a tough teammate i see i'm talking about like interesting the locker room stuff doesn't get the ball enough shaking his head in the timeout making sure everybody knows that he's pissed you know that of stuff. So I don't know.

In other words, you're flipping him if you're Houston. You're not thinking about changing the pick. If anything, you're flipping Wood to a team that could use him now. Yeah. Which makes sense. You could get something good back for Christian Wood. Yeah, with that contract, and you were on it early. You were really on it, but I

don't know that there's a pity party for any team when he's gone. All right? So I'll just leave it at that. You have Suggs fourth. Some people look at Suggs and go, why are you guys making this complicated? He's the guy that you go, okay, I don't have to worry about. With Mobley, I think you could say, A, is he float a little?

I think it's kind of funny that his father's on the staff and his older brother who I actually think will be a pro. Um, he kind of has the personality of a younger brother throughout the game a little, which I know sounds weird, but I'm just telling you, like,

it's, it's one of the things that I see. I don't want to call it too passive or apprehensive. I just think that, you know, look, there, there,

it's a really good program and, and, and feels a really good coach. But, uh, there are times, and it happens with bigs. Like, I worry about bigs sometimes because the old joke is none of the big guys actually like playing basketball. They're just huge.

And that's not fair to say about all bigs, but we've heard it a bunch of different times. Where with Jalen Suggs, I know immediately I'm getting a guy that is completely locked in. He's going to fight his ass off. I think he shot it a little bit better for Gonzaga than they even thought. I think his year was even better despite the recruiting rankings and all that stuff. I think they were even more impressed with him throughout the entire season. And he just has moments in games. And I've used this before, that Halliburton part where when you watch Halliburton in college,

you're like, he's the only guy that even thought of this play. And the other nine guys are like, oh, my God. Suggs has those moments, even though he's playing with some NBA guys. So I think there's an attitude and a personality to Suggs that some people would look at it and want to argue him a little bit higher, but that's kind of the NBA game. You look at Green's body and movement,

and then you go, okay, I realize that Suggs is locked in and is more of a fighter, but I'm'm gonna go with the upside of of the fluidity of of a guy like jalen green's game for sure though everything you just said especially haliburton made me think about the conversation about haliburton last year people were talking about including me well what level can he become as a shot creator and over the course of the summer you know entering the season he dramatically improved his handle became a guy who could effectively hit some dribble jumper three pointers and now when you look at helleburton it's like oh maybe his upside is much higher than

we would have expected or anticipated with jalen sugs when we talk about jalen Green as the upside guy here, Suggs is still only 19. Does he have that untapped higher ceiling as a player? Because I'm not sure I see it necessarily on the level of a Jalen Green, but I'm curious if you see him as maybe a guy that could reach a higher level because we've seen guys do that. When we expect them just to be very, very good, they become great. I have more of an open mind about guys now because I just, as you've said all year long, I think we have to be... I'm trying to figure out the best way to say it.

But it's never been easier to score. This rookie class that we didn't have great hopes for ended up being a lot better and not just at the top i mean that was really the problem we get really excited about a draft because it's like hey who's good at the top and this one at the top we're like we're not sure and then you know between edwards and lamello it was terrific and then there was all these other players that you're like hey how the hell is sadiq bay last that long you know and granted it was a bad team but hell i mean sadiq bay can do a lot of nice things offensively.

He's been playing the league a really long time. So this may sound stupid, and maybe it's just this year because it was so ridiculous offensively. But I wonder if part of the evaluation for scorers is that we have to accept that these guys are going to score. The transition to scoring in the NBA has become a little bit easier for some of these players because like you really think jalen sucks is

going to find a way to get buckets you know so um that's that's something like i'm even doing it with trey man at florida who i think you you have him a lot later now than i yeah you have him going 24th yeah and the mock i have a lower yeah yeah and you have him going 24th. Yeah. And the mock, I have a lower. Yeah. Yeah. And you have them a lot higher, I believe on some of your big board stuff. And at first when I watched him, I was like, ah, I don't know. You know, he kind of does his own thing. He's a really good rebounder. But the more I watched him, the more I started thinking about today's NBA, I go, you know, if he's six, five and can shoot it like this in the NBA and you run it all this high ball screen stuff for him, like why, why couldn't it work out for him, even if there's some other parts of his game that I don't like? So I know I took a long

time explaining that, but it's not an epiphany, but it's me being a little bit easier on some of the evaluations for scores because I just wonder if you're big enough and you can shoot enough, if you find the right fit, you're probably going to score in the league now, which I don't think I ever would have said for years. You might be right about that, well i could still be wrong so i you know i'm just throwing it out there no i mean i think you could be on to something there what do we have i think 44 guys or something like that that scored over 20 points per game this season it's an outrageous amount i mean the the level that players are scoring i wonder sometimes when i'm watching games i ask myself and i don't know the answer to this is it more that

players are just way more talented now that they're doing more efficient things or is it like how much is it because of the rules how much is it because of defense i really think it's it's we also have a wave of just insane amount of talent here too uh i think it's a talent thing almost more so than just what people are doing by taking more threes. Does that make sense? That might just be a wave of talent? It could be. I mean, that's a pretty impressive wave, though, to get this many guys impacting teams offensively.

And I also think the way guys are figuring out the way the game's officiated, which I hope the league, as they've stated in that Woj piece, if you're an offensive player and you're allowed to just dribble into everybody and initiate every point of contact and you get called for it so then it's like how good you know some of these guys like if you just figure out that part you're gonna get free throw line seven or eight times a game the the nba needs to like adam silver specifically he like people like you and i hardcore nba fans we watch and we love the game but we deal with some of the bad stuff casual fans are going to tune out when they see stuff like that you got to make the

game appealing to everybody and removing some of these little crappy bump files when a guy's driving to the basket it can't just be the trey young james harden style you know lean into somebody it has to be some of these touch files make. Make the game easier to officiate. Make it better to watch. There's so many ways the game, which is already very good, could be way better than it is. The best way to fix it would be every time you dribble into somebody and you fall down and I don't actually see you get fouled,

I'm just going to let you fall down for two weeks. Just let it play. Just let it go. You fell down. Cool. You whipped it. You whipped the ball in the air. You dribbled right into somebody and whipped the ball in the air. I mean, look, Trey had one of those last night in a huge possession. Dribbled right into Drew. Then jerks his head back to the left.

And he figured it out. And good for Trey. But if everybody can get those calls all the time, it's not a great product. I mean, you already eliminate all the freedom of movement stuff. I never thought I would ever say this. I hate charges. Thank God for charges. Because if there weren't charges... Seriously, if there weren't charges, then forget it. Okay, let's hit on a few other guys here.

Because I'd say it's probably still a little early in the rumor season to feel. Do you have a couple that you feel great as far as players assigned to a team now that we have the lottery order? Definitely too early right now. Definitely too early. Okay. Kaminga. He's always in the top five. People seem to be all over the place with him.

Yeah, very much so. I mean, number five, like you often hear is the consensus top five. I'm not so sure Kaminga is a consensus top five from the people I talk to. There's a lot of people who are very high on him. View him as maybe the fourth best prospect even because of his size, six foot eight eight he can theoretically become a go-to scorer for you he's fluid he can create space with size and strength but the people who are skeptics of him and like i think that to reference that jared jack conversation there's some skepticism about the feel for the game and the the work and all that so if with kaminga there's other options in this draft who have upside but Keon Johnson from Tennessee Davion Mitchell even though he's a junior 22 years old

the way he popped as an upperclassman has teams very intrigued Scotty Barnes out of Florida State it's not like there's other raw players who don't haveides so a lot of teams and executives that i talk to prefer some of those names that i mentioned ahead of cominga and i don't think it's a guarantee that we see coming in the top five yeah i'm with you there the other thing too that i do love about this draft is when you start going through the top 10 to 20 guys i swear you're like at 12 or 13. You're like, this draft is huge. Big wings. I love Scottie Barnes. And now he's kind of the pre-draft darling where now he's the riser in all this. You seem to be resisting it a bit more than everybody else is. But I love Scottie Barnes because of the size and how smart he is, knowing that if he can't shoot in the NBA, then I'm going

to end up being wrong. I feel smart about being like, hey, everybody's catching up to Scottie Barnes' momentum. It doesn't mean I'm going to be right about the player because he's just not a good enough shooter right now, so I'm projecting a bit. If you don't like a player, you would say, oh, Scottie Barnes, I don't really like him.

The guy can't shoot. The Davion stuff, I fell in love with him that Villanova game. The Villanova game, the Villanova game. He completely changed that game in a span of two or three minutes defensively. And I was like, don't ever forget this because he's 22. Now history tells us don't draft the old guy, right?

That's where you screw up when you draft the old guy. That's somebody you have seven, a golden state who I imagine not only are you, you're breaking the exception of the older thing, but like, do you have concerns about Davian? Like, I just would like to know if there's a couple guys here where you have them in the lottery but you know like in three years you're gonna go I wish I mean that's that's all of us with anyone that puts time into this but is he one of the guys that you have

reservations about even though everything we saw throughout his college season was incredible only if that's an outlier year as a shooter that's it i mean because the improvement for him is a three-point shooter 31 over his first two seasons at baylor and 45 as a junior where is the reality between those two numbers 31 and 45 if he's somewhere in the middle 37 38 i'm happy this guy's going to be a 10-year pro i don't care that he's six feet tall he plays 45 if he's somewhere in the middle 37 38 i'm happy this guy's going to be a 10-year pro i don't care that he's six feet tall he plays bigger than he's listed right you like you mentioned that defensive impact on that nova game it's ridiculous what he can do in the defensive end of the floor the size i'm not worried about it's really just a matter of the jumper but i mean

i think like if golden state or somebody were to draft him he's one of those guys that come in right away and make an impact and still retain higher upside and some of the other guys like keon johnson from tennessee he didn't start playing basketball full-time until high school it shows in his game super raw great athlete you can create a little bit off the dribble for you but how many times have we said this about players he's so raw he's gonna improve his jumper has to improve his handle and then they don't turn into anything or they're just like a you know a dion waiter style spark plug here and there off the bench you know in and out of the league so that i have concerns about somebody like that but sometimes you want to take a big swing and you're willing to absorb risk right i

mean that's part of the draft it's about certainty versus upside and keon johnson is one of those guys that even if you have him ranked higher you might be a team that's just willing to absorb that risk with your evaluation compared to some of the more certain players like a mitchell at least in my opinion mitchell's more certain mitchell's more certain than keon johnson but you have johnson going six to oklahoma city here end to end keon johnson you're gonna fall in love with him I mean it's it's ridiculous and then he just set the combine record for Burt so you're like okay so he can leave man I mean his athleticism

part checks out if the skills catch up I mean he could be nasty dude like couldn't he be the steel of the draft as well here's here's what could happen here if he is as good defensively as I saw his effort defensively you see I'm saying?

Like, where are you with him as a defender right now? I mean, if you're drafted for a guy with level of certainty on the defensive end of the floor, it's not going to be Keyon Johnson because of the rawness on that end. But ultimately, again, like, so this is, I think this is the thing about fit. How do you expect him to grow? And how will he develop with your circumstance with the environment

you have around him coaching influences teammate influences like the character aspect matters so much here right with the evaluation of the younger raw players like how hard will they work at getting better at these things but yeah right now in the defensive end i see a lot of potential um no doubt about that like he can really grind to that end of the floor. Still hanging in there with Jalen Johnson, huh? To do. He might've been one of my least favorite guys to break down. I'm not the biggest fan. I believe I have him ranked like 11th, 12th or 13th, something like that. You have them 11th to the Hornets. Yeah, for sure. I mean, like it's just a reference. It's a Keon Johnsonson like with keon johnson you can see the activity you can see the effort right like all of that is there you can see potential like a bigger jalen's i like look he's not offensively um i mean even jalen has

some stuff offensively you want but keon is the same kind of guy as far as like all right you know you're rolling out there five on five like you'd want a guy like that on your side. Jalen Johnson, however, I'd be like, hey, you know if we lose, we don't get to stay on. No doubt about it. It's the type of thing where you can see it with Keon Johnson, with Jalen Johnson. It's more theoretical. It's like, oh, you have the 6'8", 6'9", long forward, potential elite defensive versatility against guards and wings. He's quick. He's strong.

He shot, what, like 44% from three this year, too? Yeah, exactly. I mean, like the numbers, it's all great. But then the inconsistency, when you really watch, there's stretches of the games where he's just not there. And anytime you see that, you worry, right? And the fact, like, there's already the concerns about the character aspect with him um leaving duke leaving img with jalen johnson there's so much more risk that you're taking on even more so than keon johnson because with keon johnson at least you can see it on defense even if there's some raw habits at least you can see the potential with what he can

be when everything's clicking uh give me another guy that you really like another guy in the lottery mentioned scarty scarty barnes already how about alper and sengun how much have you watched him the turkish big man one of the biggest complainer in the draft biggest complainer of anyone uh i asked a scout about him and i said what's up with this alper guy because he is old school man i mean he is he's incredibly skilled for a big man can't shoot it but the way he plays you'd never be asking to shoot it at least where when i saw him um he's turkish right man post moves for days yeah i mean he could have like a 1980s vhs post move tape coming out but that fucking guy fucking guy complained. A grain filter to the video, right?

But I asked somebody, I go, what's his story? And they go, think about it. The guys that he grew up watching are like Doncic. And I go, okay, but it's not like there's that much of an age gap. It was an excuse for why he complained so much. Because every time, and I liked him. I liked him. But there's certain players you

watch over time and you're like oh my god this guy he's never gonna call in his life yeah right it's really funny but he's good he is good so i don't want to be i'm already sounding too negative and i'll tell you what i think i think there's shooting potential with him too he had like this nasty step back three-pointer he has good touch good touch on floaters he's got some feel i mean i i believe over the course of time maybe he could develop a shot and be more than just a a low post big man but i love his effort i love the intensity the complaint i like his passing yeah oh the passing is so nice uh i i think the habits and like as he matures as a player, maybe complains less though.

Though some players that they get in the league, they just complain more because it gets rewarded. It's incentivized to complain in the NBA. But with a Sun Goon, I'm really a fan of him and think he could be a steal in the mid late lottery. Okay. Let's stay international.

Then Josh Giddy, a little pistol Pete ish, but I don't want to be offensive to Pistol Pete because he's like this guy who's just out there and he's just dribbling through everybody. He's doing all this stuff. Here's the deal.

He's huge. And I don't know what the numbers are. I got to check it out. And maybe I just haven't seen enough. But I swear, every time he got an angle and had a driving lane, he couldn't finish. It didn't feel like he finished consistently enough at the rim for all the other stuff that looked really good. So he's kind of this huge playmaking. He's 18. The shot wasn't bad. He wasn't hitting it enough.

But for 18 in size, I get the projection. But that seemed to stand out where I felt like, is he finishing enough? He's getting there, but is he making it worth the effort? With him, I'm interested in your thoughts on this because no doubt the finishing is inconsistent. But I liked how he tried to finish with feel, with craft. I think he understands that he's not going to be somebody who like he wasn't trying to dunk on people right no he was he would go for these skill finishes and i think if you're a guy who's either not a great athlete or you're just an under the rim player like a six foot guard which he's not he's six eight but if you're that player you have to know and show a willingness and a

desire to finish like that i think he does like he uses a lot of floaters. But on the other hand, I say all that a lot of those guys never become efficient finishes around the rim. They're just taking floaters. It's like a 40% shot for some guys at best. So it's very possible that he'll always be limited as a finisher around the rim. But I don't know. I like the fact that he at least tries some of those shots. And at 18 years old, maybe he develops it over the course of time because the passing is ridiculous.

That can carry him for a long time at the least. That was one of the things that I really liked about Kyra Lewis last year in the draft evaluation for him was that I was like, wait, this guy's not huge, but he's finishing. He's finishing at the rim.

And that's like one of the first things that jumps out at me. And honestly, it should be a little bit easier now in the NBA because of the spacing. Back 15 years ago, I'll just never forget Telfair. You wanted it to work. It was cool. It was fun.

And then you're like, he just can't finish at the rim, man. He can't finish at the rim. It's a big thing, no doubt. With Giddy, I i mean do you worry about his potential nba success for that reason yeah but i also think he's like a he's he's like a play-to-play if you do like a clip sword on him you would watch him and go oh my god how come this guy's not going top five he's six eight like look how fluid he is he's very comfortable i mean he's 18 out there with these grown men and he's just kind of like,

you know, he's very, he's not, everything that's going on around him, he doesn't look intimidated. None of that stuff matters. Like I think he has, isn't his dad like a long-term pro and all that kind of stuff too? So I feel like he grew up

with it and everything. A couple other guys, I want to just hit on him. Kai Jones, if you haven't watched him play, you'd be like, why is he going 16? I don't know.

I don't know with him. I was kind of all over the place. I think Zyre Williams out of Stanford is another guy where I was like, I mean, God, this draft is huge as I'm sorting through all these guys. And then there's Booknight, who you have going 19th to the Knicks. I think the Mocs always have him. Every time I talk with somebody about Booknight out of Yukon, they always love them. So give me,

give me book night. Let's just finish on those three guys because we go in any order you want, because Kai is so huge at Texas. I probably didn't like him at first. The more I watched him, I liked him a little bit better, but I have to admit the first impression part was like, I need to see more. And I just didn't see enough of him at texas yeah with kai jones it's like the strengths

are just ridiculous the 610 with the shooting ability he can do some stuff off the dribble even like it's so fun to watch that guy when he's on but he doesn't really pass too much he doesn't read the floor that well you know know, the shooting is inconsistent. The defense needs to get so much better. He has mobility, but he's not able to read the floor. It's like just these two extremes with him, you know, from the strengths to the weaknesses aspect that I'm not sure what to expect. I'm really not sure what to expect with Kai Jones, but I sure know that he's a guy I'd

love to take a chance with. If I feel like we can develop him as an organization, bringing him in the upside for him is ridiculous. But like you said, like all of these guys, Zaire Williamson, Zaire, like with size that he has coming out of Stanford,

Zaire Williams, he could be a go-to scoring type, but it's the same questions. Well, the feel for the game, the shooting ability. And with book night, a little bit different as a guard,

but he's, he's bit different as a guard, but he's odd because, like you said, a lot of people around the NBA love him. They love the elite athleticism and the intensity and the defensive ability that he could have as a player. Do I have him ranked too low? I think I have him 20 on my board. Is that too low? Look, I don't talk to every single scout.

We know that. It doesn't, it doesn't work that way in this business. It just seems like very consistently out. You know, you're just bullshitting about players. I haven't had one guy go, Hey,

book night is not for me. Every time book nights brought up, it's like, you know, I really like, like I like book night or I'll hear a guy say like, I just, I just love them.

And I bring them up too much around the rest of the staff. Go. Okay. Give me a, you know what? I think that's good. I bring them up too much around the rest of the staff. Yeah. I go, okay. Give me, you know what? I think that's good. I think that's good. I think we did just sort of an intro to this, because the rumor part of it isn't all that great, but this is a very deep first round, a very deep first round.

For sure. There's a lot of talent this year, Ryan. I mean, I don't know if it's going to be looking like the 2018 draft. That's for sure with how loaded that's looking right now. But there's a lot of good talent, I think, that could help teams right away. Cameron Thomas, another guy from LSU. LSU, yeah. Get a bucket off the bench for you.

There's a lot of those types of guys. Cameron Thomas, very high on the confidence meter. Oh, yeah. Elite. Yeah, elite level confidence. I do think that if you were to i always like this exercise if you could pick one player if you just made a youtube kind of like an one mixtape of that you would think would go number one just based on the best it might be kai jones if you said just

give me the best stuff in a two minute deal i'll have a little bust of rhymes underneath it like who would look the best in those two minutes if you only did the best stuff they've ever done it might be kai jones out of texas i think you might be right like like the top like if you have the top 15 clips for every prospect the kai jones reel that would get like 100 000 views you know a thon maker level hype it'd be insane no that's a really good point because you know look i don't expect most people to put the amount of work in that you're putting in but if kai jones goes like 15 16 17 whichever fan base when they see the highlight clips they're gonna be at home on draft night going wait we got we got him 17 how did that happen this guy yeah and guess what maybe as we've been told and taught every single year maybe it all comes together and works out for him. Very well-cooked.

That's what I would finish on. I am very open to the idea that the best player from this draft is... Look, I like Cade Cunningham a lot. There's some moments in the tournament, the Big 12 tournament games, he had some moments where he was completely in control of the game.

It was his game. He was making every decision. He was making the right decision. Those are the things that aren't the clips. The full game view of a Cade Cunningham, when he's right and you see it, I think it's really... He had a run there for a couple weeks in Big 12 play that I think is why most teams would have him won, even

when we start the podcast saying it's not certainty. But I'm very open to the idea the best player is not the guy that goes number one. I just don't know who it's going to be absolutely this year I'm with you Ryan last thought with Kevin here Ben Simmons fits this was a

rough as I said on my podcast on Tuesday a rough 24 hours on social media for Ben Simmons I would say it was about as rough as I think I've ever seen for a player for just a game but there is a market for just a game. But there is a market for him, and the market will grow. It will be stronger.

I don't know if Daryl – this is, I think, Daryl 101 right now telling everybody, hey, we'd like to make this work. I'm sure he's telling Doc Rivers, your message needs to be, we're going to make it work with Ben. Not that we're giving this guy away. It's a strategy. But if he were traded, a couple of the teams that come up all the time, like Portland comes up

all the time because of CJ Collum and everybody wanted to break that up because it hasn't worked. Would Ben make sense because now you're taking Lillard away from the basketball? Not all the time, but some of the time. Because it's not like Ben spaces the floor for you.

Yeah, I think he would make sense for Portland because he'd mostly be taking the ball away in transition. And that could help alleviate some pressure off of Damian Lower to have to create in those early offense sets. But for it to work, it could make sense for him to be an outlet. We saw in the playoffs, not just this year, the entire season, past playoff runs with Portland, he's going to get blitzed and trapped a lot. And oftentimes he wouldn't have an outlet, a guy that a team would worry about in the open

floor creating or scoring. I think if Ben Simmons in Portland were to fully embrace being like a Draymond style player, he could really thrive. And that's how he could create in those half court sets. If he's that threat as an outlet for Damian load in the pick and roll to give the ball to short roll, picking apart the defense or driving to the rim. I think the balance could work there in a playoff setting. Absolutely. And I don't think he'd, he'd have to be, I don't think he should be the primary guy.

That's Damian load. And it should stay that way if it were to happen. What do you think of the package of 7-14 and Wiggins from Golden State for Simmons? Now, my first reservation when I thought about it was, could you really have Draymond and Simmons play together? Because it always scared me when I saw Houston defend

Durant, Clay, and Curry with five guys in the playoffs. They just said, screw it. We're not going to guard the other two guys. And it almost worked. Yeah. If you had Clay and Steph, you'd need some kind of third scorer that you felt really good about. The only way I could argue is you'd feel like price-wise, hey, we got off of Wiggins' contract. Ben's contract's rough, 147 to the next four, but it might be the perfect transition of a year with him and Draymond together.

Then maybe it's a Draymond move a little bit later on, and now Ben Simmons is your switching four or five, and it doesn't matter that he doesn't really hurt you offensively as far as spacing the floor. That's where it might make sense. But with Draymond and Simmons on the floor, closing playoff games together, that's where it scares me. I think, I think you nailed it there. I mean, it sort of touches on what we mentioned earlier with the idea of fit,

you know, with how you want to build out your team. If the plan in terms of fit is about like a three, five year plan, at some point you're moving Draymond. Perfect. Like it makes total sense. But like right now in a playoff setting, having Ben Simmons, no guarantee he'll improve his jump shot. Draymond Green does not shoot well, has never shot well besides one season. I don't, I don't love the idea of how teams are going to defend that. If you're golden state,

I would worry significantly about the lack of spacing that you would have. I think Draymond and Simmons would kind of cancel each other out. You know, I've just mentioned how Simmons could help Damian load on the short roll. You can't have Draymond doing that. And then Ben Simmons, like standing, you know,

near the rim or vice versa. Like nobody is threatened by either of those guys behind the arc. So I like the idea of it for the next three to five years, but I don't like the idea of it for just this coming season. And that's a difficult balance here for the Warriors, whether or not they keep those picks. I mean, it's going to be really interesting to see what they do. Yeah, they can't just trade him because it makes sense.

Hey, we got to go ahead and trade these guys for bets. Which bets are available? Which ones make sense? And then you still have the Wiseman piece who I still have high hopes for. I just do. I think he was held to a different standard as a rookie. Um, and it was hard for him because it was a team that had kind of, uh, an acceptance level of things that other teams wouldn't have because they just weren't very good teams. So, uh, we'll see, but I wouldn't mention Wiseman in any kind of deal with Philly because

it just doesn't make any sense for them to have him be. Is there one other one before I let you go? Is there another one that you're like, hey, this is one I've kind of, as you're screwing around thinking about potential fits for Simmons somewhere else? How about, I don't think Chicago can pull it off, but I love the idea of Chicago on paper before the lottery. I love that. I like the idea as well as Charlotte. I'd love to see LaMelo and Simmons. That would be very exciting to watch. Again, not sure if they can pull it off or have the pieces to pull it off. But if we're speaking theoreticals, those are two teams with lottery picks that stand out to me.

But part of it is, where does Ben Simmons want to go? Where would Clutch be willing to let him go? to me but like part of it is where does ben simmons want to go where would clutch be willing to let him go like cleveland theoretically could say hey we'll pair him with you know colin sexton or darius call and it could work great does he want to go to cleveland i i don't know that the answer to that yet i wonder how long his list is in terms of teams that he'd be willing to go to and even though he signed and commit to long term like the team would have to factor that in as well that That makes it tough. Yeah, it does.

It does. And if there's one thing that I'm looking at if I'm Philly, it's like I need somebody that can create a little bit on his own. And Seth Curry is terrific. There's more to his game than just shooting. But you need kind of a decent-sized guard that can drive on the opposite side of Embiid and make you pay a little bit. And that's, I think, the biggest problem. We've been over it all. We've all said this stuff for years now. But

watching them against Atlanta, it's like, you know, it's crazy. Tobias Harris can't really put it on the floor for you consistently and get to the hoop. Ben Simmons can't because nobody has to play him uptight. Seth, who I really like, isn't really that guy. I mean, Maxie's like their best hope as a shot-creating ball handler. And that's just a little bit too much for a guy to ask Maxie to get you out of the East. Alright, again, check out all the draft coverage, the Ringers draft guy, Kevin O'Connor, and the mismatch.

It tapes Tuesday, Thursday nights, out Wednesday, and Friday morning. Thanks as always, man. Thank you, Ryan. You want details? Bye. I drive a Ferrari. 355 Cabriolet. What's up? I have a ridiculous house in the South Fork. I have every toy you could possibly imagine.

And best of all, kids, I am super jacked. So now you know what's possible. Let me tell you what's required. As promised, another fitness life advice. And this is a guy I'm a huge fan of, Jeremy Scott Fitness. You can follow him on Instagram at Jeremy Scott Fitness. And I think I came across a couple of his workouts when I was searching for something, all of us guys that are plateauing out there. It was the superhero workout. And the promotion part of it's been great, Jeremy. And these workouts are absolute ass kickers with the five-minute bicep routine, followed by the stuff at the end, and then the tricep one. And the TRX absolute ass kickers with the five minute bicep routine followed by

kind of the stuff at the end. And then the tricep one and the TRX, I always feel like an idiot on. I just feel like I never quite do it right. But let's talk about you. Where are you from? How'd you get your start? How did this whole thing start for you? You know, long story short, I'm from the Midwest, originally Minnesota, born and raised. And like most kids, played sports pretty much all my life. High school through college, played college basketball at a small school like a lot of dudes like me. And then I actually did my GA strength and conditioning kind of in that same small circuit of college basketball. And you have a choice to make in that part of life.

Like if you want to coach, it's a different kind of grind. You're staying in different cities. You're kind of working your way up the ladder. It wasn't the lifestyle I wanted. And basically just being at the time, 23, 24, I have no real skills. I basically suck at everything. And I'm in the life cycle where like 07, 08 happens.

The world's melting down. No one's hiring anybody. I show up to enterprise. Like I don't want to work here, obviously. But they think I suck so bad. They don't want to hire me. And that's the boat I'm obviously in at the time. So a buddy living out here in Scottsdale, Phoenix called me, I think it was like May 17th in Minnesota and it was snowing. And I was just like, I've had it with this shit. And I said, let me save a couple bucks up because I'm dead broke. I have no money. I packed up my car with everything I had. I drove out here, never been here, sight unseen. And I had one real job. I was an academic advisor for military students for probably a year and a

half. And most of that time, my boss was super cool. He let me build my fitness website up through there. I already looked the part. I just don't know anything so i'm ripped but i'm a dumbass and so i took the time to study and and figure it out and i basically one day just left corporate america to start this business that we've been doing you know solo for the last 11 years and uh i mean i had no clients no money no resources i would never tell anybody to do that it worked out for me uh because i'm crazy and i'll work 100 hours a week to make it happen. And that's kind of what's put me in this boat today. I'll give you this too. There's some other guys that I'll check out or work out or whatever, but it's... I'm trying to be nice about it, but the D-bag factor of the

industry is high, right? Like there's... Dude, it's, you know, I'll say this, and the people who listen to our podcast or you meet me in person, you come here, it's sizzle and steak is what I call the internet of fitness, where I'm not saying you have to look a certain way, but if you don't, no one stops scrolling and they don't see it. And so Instagram is a game in reality.

And we know, and this comes from men's health, which we've done a lot of work with over the years. I love those guys. And it's analytics. That's how we get paid. So if my stuff with the shirt on reaches a million people, but this shirtless bullshit with little shorts on reaches 9 million people, I'm going to do it.

And that's what we've had to basically do on the internet. And I joke because my wife and I, we sit here and I'm, you know, I'm going to be 38 years old this year. And she films a lot of our, like IG stuff. We have a camera crew who films most of our programs. And I joke with her. I go, could you imagine when you met me? Like, this is the shit that you would be doing. And like, I got, my best friend has four kids. He's like a real adult. I'm in here like wearing little red shorts,

doing workouts with like a tan on and like the sun is shining on me. And that's all cool, but it's not who I am. But if I don't do that, nobody knows how good we are. And so the sizzle is like, they can see me shirtless and they click and they watch it. And the steak is the stuff that we give them once we're here, then we can actually help them and coach them. But, uh, it's a really weird space, man. There's a lot of things i don't i love fitness and it's it's made me a lot of money and i've

been able to travel the world to meet super cool people but there definitely is a lot of things i wish would go away about it like the half being half naked most of the time is not my personality but yeah but i wasn't i wasn't even talking about like your approach to it i think immediately when i would watch your videos i'd be like okay, okay, I can tell he's from the Midwest, his personality, and not just the accent or whatever. And I'm not even knocking some of the guys out here in LA that I'll look at some of their videos, but I'll just be like, okay, dude. And we always make jokes about like, oh, sweet, another personal record and deadlift. You're like, awesome. Make sure you get that post up.

And I also know that those are the rules. In my business, I should have done a better job over the years of saying more outlandish shit. I just could never do it. But if I had said more stuff, like every six months, there's another guy I used to work with who would be like, every four months, every six months, you want to say something that all the blogs are like, that guy's an asshole for saying this. You should just do it to get that kind of attention. Look, it's a different industry, but it's the same set of rules. And whenever I watch any of your stuff, I'd be like, oh, this guy's normal. So I don't even blame the guys that were kind of like, hey, I'd probably never want to hang out with this dude, but I got the game. Well, we try to do... And I talked with a buddy of mine who's been in the

space for a lot I mean if you've been in fitness for over 10 years, i'll give you credit that you haven't been jaded by Everything that goes on and so i've been in a long time before instagram before facebook Like I like to say the real the real fitness people the ones who did it before you could even make any real money When we share stuff we try to do things that are going to help other people not to stroke my ego Like I don't need to see myself working out I know know what exercise looks like. But we do it for the end user. Me sharing myself deadlifting 600 pounds doesn't benefit you guys because that's not what you should be doing. And it's not important. So we try to give people as much value as we can on

the stuff where a lot of people in our space, it's almost like a flex contest. Here's how strong I am. Here's how fit I am. And it could come off that way, but that's not the important part is like, if you can watch our stuff, yeah, I may be shirtless and look like an idiot. I go, but if you can take something from it, like that's the key. Like you can regress it, progress it. So we try to actually coach for the platform and not just have it be my personal highlight reel. Cause that's not what we're there for.

But a lot of fitness, uh, sadly is that. But you were talking about like the, the rules of the math on it too. I love the Men's Health stuff. I just think they do a very good job of going, if we put these taglines in there or title it this way, they are on it, man. Because some places are these big brands. You're like, how could you guys have still not figured out

the way to get any kind of interaction? But when you posted, was it the super get jacked like a superhero, which you probably cringed a little bit about, but those workouts are incredible. I didn't click on it because it was, oh, cool. I want to look like Wolverine, which wouldn't be terrible, but because I'd known your work at that point, but those workouts are ass kickers, but they're actually great. Like you feel different after them, but you also have to have a little bit of a foundation of working out. You would not want to just jump right into those because you'd be tearing off ligaments.

Yeah, that's, they're not, uh, that program, what do we call it? And that again, like, it wasn't your title. I know, I know. Cause I can tell. It's like, uh, do you want me to find it? It's a, it's like a video game, right? Like that's how we design these workouts where it's like, sometimes can beat them and sometimes you can't i think we called it action hero jacks something like that and they always add the clips like oh look like bruce willis which i

already do uh or look like whoever it may be it's uh we have to game it right like we'll do it here in house like my wife and i'll joke of like body weight blitz like i'm just making up shit as we throw it on the workouts but it's catchy it gets people involved and that's the whole key if they can stop scroll read it and then we can help them once they're there yeah that's what it was it was action hero jacked um good good recall program yeah no i i love it i i'll admit if if i haven't done it in a long time i don't go the full five minutes on the tricep pull downs at, at the end. Cause then I still know I have the dumbbell 10 by 10 thing. So it's murder for sure.

Yeah. I, I'll admit the first, I didn't want to lie to you today. So the first time I got back into it, I stopped at three minutes. Okay. All right.

So here we go. Uh, I've sent Jeremy these questions ahead of time. I guess we appreciate so many of you that send in pictures. you know, Jeremy and I don't know each other. So I was like, I apologize for all the dudes sending topless pics to you here, but I guess it was just part of the deal.

All right. So here we go. First one, fitness question two. Oh, we'll go trainer one first. 5'11", 245, 25% body fat, but he's jacked, not shredded. We figured out the not shredded part at 25% body fat, 29 years old. I don't have any certification, but listening to fitness books and podcasts for years, recently it becomes sort of a default among friends and family for advice on fitness and nutrition. This past year, I decided to formally offer personal training to three friends,

family members, free of charge, only asking them to take before and after pics, which he sent us, and good results here. And then write a testimonial after I've been creating workouts for each, talking them through nutrition. We have weekly calls on progress. My thought is basically creating an unpaid internship for myself. I'm about to finish the six month period. My first client is going really well. My question is if I wanted to use these pics and testimonials to market myself and start charging, how would I go about this? Is there a basic certification I should obtain to pursue this as a side hustle? Uh, how do I know what's reasonable to charge? Uh, I mean the first, I'll just go kind of piece by piece. Uh, you're,

you're not, what is this title? Too thick to be a trainer, something like that. Uh, you're not like we have friends in this space that are big. Like one of my really good friends, uh, he's a great coach here in the Valley. He's six nine. He's's like 275. The dude is... He's a tank. But he's not coaching people to be shredded to the bone. He's not coaching bikini stuff. And so it really depends what your audience is. I'm not saying you shouldn't be a 300-pound bag of shit, but you should be in decent kind of shape. Now, if you're a strength guy, it's a little bit different. So I always tell people, you know, your body is your business card, you know, whether you like it or not,

people are going to judge you based off that. And if you're going to coach humans, what I would say is get lean or like leanish, whatever that is for that person at least once, just so you, you know how hard it is before you give other people advice on how to do things. Like I would never tell people, Hey, you know, get this shredded if I had never done it myself, because I know how bad it is before you give other people advice on how to do things. Like I would never tell people, Hey, you know, get this shredded if I had never done it myself, because I know how bad it sucks. Like the leaner you get, the rougher that road is there's sacrifice, there's dedication.

And if you've never experienced it, it's just like you giving advice. It's like, I want someone who's a practitioner. I don't want to learn golf from the bum down the street. If Phil and tiger would teach me, I think that's better because they've actually lived through it. So in terms of that, like you don't have to be ripped, but there's, I think like a certain baseline level of shape you should be in just to kind of lead from the front in terms of if you're going to coach clients. Okay. I went and, uh, I went with the second one instead of the first one. So we'll go back to the first one I sent you,

uh, fitness advice for the everyman. Um, he, you guys are in the top of the class fitness and discipline. I would not put myself in Jeremy's spot. So let's start there. Very few of us listeners will ever be able to see half of the muscles that Mr. Scott displays. I'm looking for a bit of advice for the everyman, especially in the after light of the COVID pandemic,

disproportionately affected heavier and obese people. As a former small-time athlete, I used to be fit, two kids, 30s, injuries, shell of my former glory. I'm carrying around a tire's worth of extra weight, and it's not the best goal for me to post, so he doesn't do that. Can you speak to the power of just getting out and walking 30 minutes every other day as a starting point to better health? I hope that's just the start, but knowing that the journey can begin, the easy part might help some of us truly protect ourselves health-wise through a stronger immune system, stronger body. So he's basically like, can you sell us on the value of just getting out the door and getting started?

Yeah, I mean, for most people, again, I'm a fitness person, so my advice might come off as a little aggressive. But we work with all walks of life here, people who are Ironman and the people who can barely tie their shoes. Walking is probably one of the most underrated things humans do. The average person, I think, per the Mayo Clinic walks like 3,000 to 4,000 steps a day, which isn't a whole hell of a lot. And if you could get that up to, let's say, I think 10,000 steps is the magic number, which is about five miles per day. And it doesn't mean you go walk five miles, but overall through your day is just moving through space. For most people that burns,, let's say, 2 to 3,500 calories per week. That alone can put you on a pace to be where you want to be, essentially. And most people don't walk even an hour a day.

Now, you have all this time. You're talking about a 2% to 4% investment of your entire day just to walk and move through space. And we're not doing that. I don't want to get super serious here. But there's people who are in hospitals or in wheelchairs. They would trade places with a normal person, a heartbeat just to be able to walk and jump and skip and move and do the basic stuff. So you just have to make it a priority. And for a lot of people,

like they love sports and they love their escapism through TV. And I'm not saying don't watch Netflix or don't watch your favorite sports game, but instead of sitting on your ass for three hours, you could do like what we coined like Netflix and stretch or like your Netflix and mobility and not for the whole game, but take 10 minutes and go through, you know, simple tissue work and just kind of move around.

Or when you go listen to a podcast, instead of just, again, sitting down the entire time, walk around a little bit, because it can a burn calories. And it's that, like we call it non-fitness activity that can make a huge difference and if you're you know at a step beyond that for the average person we see it depends on how much time you can dedicate to working out every week so if it's three workouts a week for 30 minutes a piece we call it three by 52 for most people that's ideal and we're talking just body weight stuff at first push-ups squats if you can do a pull-up variation lunges jumping jacks.

The very basic things you did as probably a kid or when you were younger, that's a great place to start just to kind of get the ball rolling. Okay. That was good. Guys are motivated already. We're not even through them all yet. Okay. Okay.

This guy's 26, 6'2", 195. I think a lot of people could relate to my issue. I'm trying to put on muscle and size at the same time as playing, Okay, this guy's 26, 6'2", 195. I think a lot of people could relate to my issue. I'm trying to put on muscle and size at the same time as playing as much hoops as possible. I play in an organized men's league. He says he's Pascal Siakam with a better jumper. This guy plays a lot of hoops. Pick up hoops two to three other days a week plus the league.

So that's four days. He says he's burning between 1,000 and 1,200 calories per hoop session according to the Apple Watch. But he says who knows how accurate this is. On top of playing hoops 3-4 times a week I try lifting so he's lifting 3-4 days a week so basically we're talking about this guy like this calorie deficit here because he's also playing hoops a lot which is important to him but he's trying to put on

muscle and he's also working out so he's basically saying look I'm working out 3-4 days a week but I'm playing all these hoops and I'm not putting any other muscle I think this is this, I mean, this guy's just putting a lot of work in. Yeah. That's a lot. Uh, it was a 26. Yeah. I wish I could still do that. I played basketball for an hour and a half a week ago. I'm still struggling. Uh, so there's that, uh, it'll catch up with you at 26, my friend, I promise you. But, uh, what I would say is if it's, uh, you're, you're an ectomorph or a skinnier guy trying to gain

size, tracking the calories and the macros. When I say macros, proteins, carbs, and fats is what I'm talking about. On something like MyFitnessPal, super simple to do. It's like Google for food. And if you guys are confused, we have a macro guide. You can message us. Our team will send it out to you. It'll help the education piece. But just to track the calories for, say, maybe two weeks to see where you're at with your activity level. And if you're still either staying the same weight or losing weight, you can basically assess them at a calorie deficit or surplus. Obviously you're not gaining weight.

So you're probably at maintenance level or a deficit and you have to understand the numbers. And honestly, that's a ton of basketball. Like basketball is the essence of interval training, unless you're doing like the old man bullshit, like jogging three pointpoint line to three-point line. But if you're really playing, like guarding people, you could probably burn 1000 calories a clip in an hour if you're really... You're the dude who hustles. And if you play three times a week, that's probably where you're at. I don't think you can eat enough to put on size. And when I say this, you have to be in a calorie surplus. You have to eat more than you burn if you guys want to gain tissue, it doesn't matter if you lift heavy every single

day, if you're not eating enough, you're not creating more tissue on the body. So therefore there can't be more muscles. Like if I gave you 50 bricks and a year later you reorganize those bricks, they could look different, but you still have 50 bricks. It's like, if you weigh 170 pounds and the next year it's 170, you're not bigger the composition can change but you can't gain size so i would say if you can play less basketball that would probably be ideal and definitely don't work out on the same day as you play hoops because that's it's not sustainable and i'm obviously you're young and it's amazing but you're not going to do that when you're 35 and you have like a real job and kids and stuff it's just like it'll take more away from your life than it's going to give to you so what what I would suggest, if you have three, four days to lift either three,

like total body lifts or two upper and two lower days, and then maybe play basketball, even if you can take out one day a week, two would probably be ideal. And when you're lifting, since you're already doing stuff that's so aerobic, like lifting slower, like control the movements down and kind of that hypertrophy range, which is to build muscle, let's say maybe six to 12 reps. So you can do six reps, but you can't do more than 12 and just really slow down,

you know, your lifting because you're already getting so much aerobic work as it is. And again, track the macros, do that. And I think you can probably put on size. And as you get older, life is going to kick you in the nuts

and you're going to gain weight as it happens. So I would tell you this, if you love basketball basketball that much don't stop and then pick it back up because that's when everybody so i mean this guy clearly isn't going to stop in three to four days a week right now would be the best thing ever and it's just not going to happen um for me i know at this point uh but i mean i remember like that was the worst part of my lifting phase is that i was at a place that had like this amazing lunch run. And if I showed up around that time, like I get warmed up, I'd even take some pre-workout.

I'd be all excited. And then I'd be like, oh shit, they're running fives. And then it's like, forget leg day. It just wasn't going to happen. And then I would go in there and then I was wondering like why I wasn't doing any better with any of the lifting stuff. It's like, because every time you come in here and there's a run, you just play basketball instead.

So I had to accept that that was my problem. You just got to make a choice, right? Like either you want to be the best, you know, 39 year old guy at lifetime, or you want to, you know, be ripped. It's hard. It's really hard to do both. Like, yes, it's possible, but I've never met anybody who's mastered both. Okay. This one's a little more personal. I coached Jeremy when he was in high school. So happy to see his hard earned success. Ryan rhyme with how much you've enjoyed playing pickup ball over the years. You should ask him about the KV tournament and how basketball played a role in his fitness. Oh, so yeah, this was just, uh, this was just your old coach. Did you, did this ring a bell here or what?

Oh, no. Yeah, no, I, this is, uh, I'll try to make it as quick as I can. Uh, Matt O'Brien is his name. Shout out to OB wherever. I think he's in Shanghai right now. Something crazy. He was my assistant coach when I'm in high school. And he's like the young assistant, right? So I'm 17.

He's probably 26. And so he helped me a lot. I wouldn't be here today without him and a lot of people who played that role in my life. And I think everybody obviously needs people like this who believe in you when you're a little knucklehead idiot, which I definitely was and still am a little bit, but we would play, we have these one-on-one battles and like go over skill work, but then he'd be like, let's play. And I think selfishly he did it for his own workout.

And I was clearly more athletic, could jump higher, faster, better. First step could shoot better. I was just better than him. But one-on-one against a grown man is different. And he would let me do my thing kind of get tired out he would do what the old dudes do they'd get sweaty take their shirt off and then just back you down and there's really nothing you could do and then when i start to gas out he'd start to say the shit like hustle beats talent and all those things um and that's you know how him and i kind of built this relationship and he helped me and it's like you wish at those young ages you were smarter you know like at 17 you know you wish you knew

what the 30 year olds do because that's how the old guys beat you they body you up they hand check you all those things but to cut the story short uh the kb tournament not valley is a place it's about 30 dudes uh and we've been doing this tournament for since i was i got drafted when i was 15 years old so we do like a snake draft you have like about 30 guys like six captains it's a concrete court double rims chain nets uh and nobody knows uh the draft order only the captains will know it and i'm obviously i'm older now so like that became my role so when we pick teams we're the only ones who know and uh obviously we're all old and washed up now. So it's not quite the same,

but the court's a little bit smaller. So we play four on four and the, so you'll have like one sub games to 11, you know, ones and twos, obviously you win by two, we do a round Robin, then there's double elimination.

And it's way bigger than basketball, but you're always that person. even now like when i go my wife and i'll say it's like 25 years we've been doing this shit it's amazing they get these people who live all over the country and still do it and i'm one of the younger guys so you can imagine how this starts to look over time and about 10 of us are still in shape but i always say to my wife i'm like you know what my only goal is to not get hurt because if i get hurt we're going to lose so much money and i'm going to be so miserable. And I say that every year. And then about the first 10 minutes, someone will follow me hard or something will happen. And I'm like,

fuck it, dude. And you just go mamba mode. And I try to just kill everybody all day. And literally now I can't walk for like four days afterwards. Like it's just, but if that's who you are, like if you, if you always took hero shots in your prime, you're going to take hero shots when you're 40. It never changes. And that's emboldened me to this day to be good at this business as well. When I was okay as a pickup player, I'd be like, you know what I want to do? I'd watch a Steve Nash game the night before. I'd be like, I want to just do a ton of transition passes.

And I just want to get other people involved. And I want it. And the second you get out there, you're like, whatever. That's not going to happen. You are who you get out there, you're like, ah, whatever, you know, that's not going to happen. Uh, you are who you are, who you are as a basketball player, pretty much. Okay. A couple more here before we finish up. I like that you had me until double rims though. I was like, oh, okay, I'm out. Oh. And then, then with the elements, when the wind blows, it gets real, it gets real dice. Okay. Our man's checking in here. Six, five, two 95, 35 years old. Uh, 15 months ago, I weighed 403 pounds. Uh,'5", 295, 35 years old.

15 months ago, I weighed 403 pounds. This guy's sending some pics, man. He's putting some work in. Threw a good amount of cardio, mostly spin bike, mountain bike, a little bit of running, walking, eating healthy. Dropped over 100 pounds. I'd like to end up between 220, 240 with a little mass. I played basketball through high school at about 250. I was a bit chunky.

I'm married, three kids, full-time job. So being efficient with workouts is very important. I don't have aspirations to be Mr. Olympia. And then he also wanted to check in about headbands for bald dudes. He says he's a big-time sweater, and he shaved his head, so the sweats get in his face. I mean, look, you already know out of central casting, you're going to look at 300 pounds, bald, sweatband.

Guys are going to look at you a little bit differently. But again, worry about your own reps. And, you know, don't worry about that. I'm offering up the headband part of this, Jeremy, so you can hit this guy with he's through probably the toughest phase. But now this is even a more challenging one because he's trying to get the body toned up a little bit here. Back down another, what, 60, 80 pounds. Well well tupac did wear a bandana tied backwards around his head and he was bald so if you can master that look great call and maybe you have a chance above the rim but uh respect you lost 100 pounds that's we've had a lot of people here do that uh that is not easy to do i would tell you

first to stop and celebrate it and really appreciate How hard that is and how very few humans are willing obviously to do that But you gotta decide how much time you're going to train per week. Obviously you have a real life So and again like the 3x52 if it's three or four times a week for like half hour blocks, that's probably ideal Um total body workouts are probably the best and And again, you're a heavier guy, so no high-impact stuff. Don't be jumping around doing stupid shit. We tell people here, like, can you do box jumps? You can, but you can also run around your house with scissors. What's the point?

It's not if you're going to get hurt, it's when. And so you have to be smart about what's the goal of the activity. So don't leave the earth for a while, but just focus on the things that you can do, you know, and again, if his body weight pushups, if it's body weight squats, lunges, those things. And if you're going to load it, you know, just obviously load appropriately. And for you, if you want to marry them both together, like we call it like metabolic conditioning, where you take kind of the strength work and the hypertrophy work and the aerobic stuff, and we kind of mesh it together. If you're in a lifting pattern and you're a guy and you're

going to go do your normal bench press which is fine i'm a fan of it maybe take just like 60 to maybe 90 seconds max in between the sets so it's we call it you know lift weights faster so you're getting this aerobic work in because the pace of it the movements are slow so don't get confused like you're not benching super fast the bench press is going to take what it takes but your rest literally when you look at the clock 60 90 seconds and you're going and you have to have it on the timer so if it's on your phone or a watch because otherwise your minds gonna wander you'll see a guy or a girl three minutes goes by and then it kind of goes to shit that will keep you honest and it's gonna keep you on

track and for most people that's probably the best thing to do and if you still mix that with your shooting hoops or going for hikes or whatever you do then I think that's probably a good mix. You know, look, you don't need my confirmation or anything, but just whenever I've tried to switch stuff up, that 60 second thing is the best. Now, granted, if you're strong, you kind of get annoyed because you're like, all right, I'm not lifting. But when you go through a workout and you're taking only 60 seconds in between exercises and as you pointed out accurately like don't lift fast but the rest is quicker it's amazing how different just the 30 seconds the difference between a workout where i go 90 seconds in between and 60 seconds in between

are like two completely different experiences all right cool um before we let you go uh i, I have a couple of rapid fire ones for you. Where are you on supplements? Uh, the basic stuff, obviously, like, um, if I'm being completely honest, I'd be way richer, um, if I lied more. So there's that when it comes to the supplement industry, but if, I mean, just be completely transparent, like I've turned down a lot of money to say a lot of dumb shit. And I just don't care enough. It's not what drives me to do this.

Obviously, we work with certain brands and things. If you guys want a free supplement guide, our team can give it to you. But it's only real stuff. I don't do pre-workouts. I drink coffee. That's my thing. I try to keep things as natural as possible. We have a greens product we work with, like fish oils,, you know vitamin d biotint the natural things probiotics

Things are going to help your body and not the things like take this and gain, you know 10 pounds of muscle in two weeks that stuff's all bullshit, right? And most of you guys understand like it's a supplement to what you're already doing and we see it and this is for probably younger Dudes as you get older you get a little bit smarter We see people spend 500 bucks on supplements, yet they buy all the cheapest food, which makes zero sense to me. It's just a supplement to what you're already doing. So food should be the base of what you guys do.

And what you can't get through food, then you fill in the gaps. That's why I like the greens we take, obviously, because I'm not gonna eat 10 to 12 servings of fruits and vegetables a day. That's what's recommended. That's a lot of micronutrients to get in. And honestly, if you ate that many veggies,

you'd be a fart monster. Your wife will not want to be around you. It's just, it's a bad look. So then you supplement around that with the things you can't do. If you have a hard time getting enough fish oil in, I think a probiotic for gut health is ideal. So the things that are going to make your body feel good,

if you're talking performance, creatine, it's a real thing and most brands are good. It's hard to kind of mess up creatine that can't help you guys with atp if you want to be stronger those types of things but i try to keep it to the things that have been studied in detail and the things that are going to help your body so there's no real risk reward with it what age um does it become kind of stupid to be doing heavy squats you know know, people are going to flame me for this. It really just depends like who you are and what you want to do. This is my two cents. How tall you are in your background makes a huge difference. It's like your friend that played football

in college and was like super fit. And now he doesn't look like that at all. When that guy comes back to training, it's so much quicker. Age range training is real. So if you did something at 14, 15, 16, you're basically training like you're on natural steroids because you get a boner every 10 minutes and your body's just running like on high. For the guy who's just starting at 40 years old,

he doesn't have the base built. He doesn't even understand what that is yet. So for anybody, I'm not a fan of back squatting for a lot of people. I just don't think spinal loading is ideal. If you own it, that's fine. And honestly, if you're six foot three, just the biomechanics alone, you're probably not going to be a great back squatter. You can be good, but the great guys tend to not be built in those frames. So we tend to tell people split squats, like elevated rear foot Bulgarian split squats.

If you can grab heavy load of those, I mean, grab a hundred pound dumbbell in each hand, rip me off 10 per leg, which most humans can't do. I think bang for your buck. There's a way bigger return because now it's unilateral training. We're training each leg independently as opposed to the bilateral training. And usually you have a dominant leg. If you play basketball, like you did, your left leg is way stronger than your right. You always jump off of it you sprint it's your push leg so we're a fan of doing that things like walking lunges reverse lunges the independent leg stuff we tend to find better but and heavy is relative to right and i would say like if you if you want to go heavy and maintain that i'm not

going to tell you not to but anything under five reps i think you start to get into the, at least I do when I step into the squat rack, like, holy shit, I got to really focus here because if something bad happens, it's going to be really bad. Not just, I'm going to drop the weight. When you have the workouts that I've referenced, and I've looked at a bunch of different things, the burnout factor on the arm stuff that you do, I imagine there have to be like some, and you can't be doing that every week, right? Or is that just part of like a four-week program that you kind of package in? Because I mean, it's extensive. I mean, it's the biggest to failure, maybe not to failure because you're telling us to go light, but that's an intense,

intense kind of strain on the body. Yeah, that program. I'm trying to remember when they asked me. And I love men's health. But sometimes they ask for really hard shit. And we create these things and we do them. And I'm always like, God, how is Roger in Nebraska ever going to be able to do this? Because I'm getting destroyed.

And he has no chance. He works at Bank of America. He's got six kids. He's fucked roger so yeah so no that program i wouldn't do it you know all year round i tend to do stuff like i've talked about this in detail i typically do two upper body days and two lower body days like a strength day hypertrophy day same thing for upper and lower or if it's that action hero jack program i I would throw that in for probably like six weeks or so, like somewhere in there. And then you maybe take like a deload week if you need it, or just do something lighter.

And then you can either go back to it if you want to see how you progress or go to something different. I do love that protocol. It's more, I try to throw as much bro stuff in there as I can because I'm like, every dude's a bro deep down. Like everybody wants jacked arms and a rock six. That's my best friend's fitness quote. He's like, Jeremy, nobody needs to squat. I'm like, dude, you got to squat, buddy. But that's how normal dudes think. So we sprinkle that stuff

in. But it is a lot of volume to take on, especially if you're new or you haven't done it for a while. And so you do that for maybe like a six-week segment. If you need to deload or switch it up, do something light like that week where you play basketball you hike you just you do things that are fun and fitness and not such a grind and then come back to that program or something else all right i got um i got two other little things here why does it feel like somebody has a drill gun going behind my right kneecap now um it's that's tough man um it really depends uh i'll share the story really fast i uh i did a hike here we did the grand canyon rim to rim to rim which uh is about 50 miles and uh i hadn't hiked to be honest in probably like a whole year like everybody else was like practicing hiking

i'm like oh no man i'm j Jeremy Scott Fitness. I'll be fine. About 45 minutes in, I had like had enough. And so that lets you know where my mind was at. I mean, we got stuck on the other side and we're going to stay there for two nights, but the weather changes so much. Like you start off wearing like full compressions. By the time you're at the bottom, you're sweating your ass off. And by the time you come up the North Rim, it's snowing again, which is crazy. So you're changing clothes, you're doing this stuff.

And that's the only thing I've done where you realize how insignificant you are as a human because like the earth is going to go on whether you're here or not and you're like and my body's just beats of shit and i'm like well you crawled your dumb ass down here you got to crawl your ass up and my leg on the back of it was so jacked yeah it's called your popliteus which is actually this thing behind your knee and you have like a popliteal nerve back there and your semi-tendons actually run down the back of your leg. Oftentimes like that can be it from either like over striding, which obviously I took like 8 trillion steps. And that was the cause of it. It does take a long, it can heal soft tissue work, mobilize it if you go to

professional. But if I'm just guessing based off my own personal experience of being an idiot, that's what it was for me. I know. I tried to, I tried to take shots last night. Um, cause I was like, all right,

let me see, let me see where I'm at right now. And I was like, yeah, I guess, I guess I'm not there. I'm not going to list all my injuries for you. Do you foam roll your calves though?

Uh, no, I don't. So when you're, so next time, and again, message me, I'll send you the video when you're on the roller,

like sit on your butt, obviously put the roller like just above your Achilles and think of your calves, like again, message me, I'll send you the video. When you're on the roller, like sit on your butt, obviously, put the roller like just above your Achilles. And think of your calves like steps of a ladder. Like the lowest part of your calf is step one, step two, step three, step four. And you're going to put one leg on the roller and then cross your other leg on top of it. So there's a little bit of body weight. And you're just going to go side to side.

So like that cross fiber, cross tissue stretching, you're going to actually feel the muscles split in there. At the bottom bottom of towards your Achilles. It's not going to feel bad. When you get closer up your cab, you're going to be like, holy shit. And you're going to feel this pain that you've like never felt before. You're walking around with that all day long. It's called what you tolerate is a module we teach these people here. And you don't even know it's there. And imagine how much you work the calves and use them, but you never massage them. We never stretch them. We never mobilize them. If you start to do that, oftentimes when you guys have pain, this is just a takeaway. If it's like tennis elbow, if you think it's your low back, if it's behind the knee, it's usually above or below the joint. And it's usually soft tissue that's super tight, that's pulling stuff out of place. And then it will hit a nerve and it pisses it off. And that's what you're feeling. It's been there for a long time. You just didn't notice it. And then all of a sudden it shows up and you're like, damn, I got a problem. That tennis elbow thing I had for a year and a half. Like it just wasn't, it was unbelievable. I did one day of forearms,

which was stupid because I was like, you know, I don't really do any of that stuff enough, like the dumbbell stuff. And I was like, let me just do a little at the end of this workout. And I was like, oh, that's weird. And I went, ah, whatever. I'll be fine. I'll go away. Because when you're younger, you're like, okay, maybe 24, 48 hours. It was a fucking year and a half. And then the thing is, I was so used to it.

The ultimate was trying to grab something from the top, and you would just feel like somebody was sticking the top of your forearm with a needle. And then I was like, oh, my God, you know what's gone? I was like, it's just gone. I don't even remember the day it happened I just remember days after the fact being like wait it's it's gone now and that's uh that's the

best part of getting old is your injuries you learn about them because they never go away uh go ahead and then the tennis elbow man it is no joke I've had it one time where it's weird because I could do pull-ups but I could do everything well i'd reach on my desk for like a piece of paper and a neutral grip and it would be the most painful

thing ever and i'm like what the fuck is going on and so usually it's either the forearm underneath it or the tricep and the backside and if you massage that across but even if you do it in your dojo every day probably took me a good four or five weeks before it was normal i mean it is painful i bought all sorts of things i was was doing the different, like that rubber thing that you twist in opposite directions. No one's going to be able to watch this because we're not going to release this part of the video. But it's exactly that. It was the top of the forearm. And if I went to grab something, because at first I was like, all right, I won't do any upper body for a week.

And then I was like, all right, I'll take another week off a little bit later. And then finally, I was just so annoyed because I go, well, the strength isn't actually being impacted all that much and it just hurts. So you're like, I'm not going to stop. I already gave you a chance to go away. You're not going away. So now I'm just going to suck it up. All right. Last one. Younger guys that want to be jacked, they're mad, they're not strong. They're watching everybody on Instagram, put all this weight up. And I know it's really, really frustrating and all this stuff, especially like some of these girls are doing sumo squats and they're just crushing you. So there you go. I believe in the old man strength thing. I remember the day I've shared this story before. It just sort of kicked in one day on the bench. I don't

know why it just kind of happened. Do you believe in that? Like, do you tell younger guys that ask you for questions? Because I felt it. I'm not saying it's for everyone, but do you believe that there's just sort of like after a couple years something just kind of kicks in where your body is all of a sudden stronger 100 it's we talk we call it man strength here it's the time when probably when you were i don't know 17 18 and you thought you could like beat your dad's ass and then you like looked at his hands and you noticed his hands didn't look like your hands like he has man hands like they're thicker there's denser and you looked at his face and you're like, man, my dad could probably take a couple of punches to the face. I don't know if I can. It is a real thing for sure. Uh, and most

of maturity, honestly, for a lot of you guys, I don't have like the research in front of me. If I'm looking back from all the stuff we've ever read, I think like it doesn't even mature to like 35. So there's guys who are 22, like,'m not that strong and i'm like we haven't put the you haven't put the time in yet to be strong you haven't learned like what your body can do so you will get stronger as you get older and you'll understand the positions that you can be strong in because there's guys who work for me you know we hire these young dudes they're all super great ton of energy 24 25 26 i can still beat their ass in basically everything now they don't see me lay on the ground when they leave because I can't recover like they can.

I go, but I'm so much stronger than they are because I've done it for so long. My muscles are mature. I haven't lost the strength yet. So it does happen. You just have to give it time and understand strength is relative. And there's friends of mine who can deadlift 700 pounds. I can't do that. Those days are gone for me.

If I do, something's going to come detached that's supposed to be attached. And I don't want that to happen. But they can't... I can do lunges for an hour straight, which is about a mile. I could do lunges for an hour just listening to a podcast and I'm fine. That's a different level of strength. So who's stronger? Is it me or is it them?

And you might not be the person where your one rep max bench or squat spot is strong but you might be super strong in that mid-range so you have like this muscular endurance that like another guy can't have and over time as you train like you're going to get stronger you just have to look at strength is not such this vertical vector there's a lot of ways to be strong and as you get older and train it'll happen and now because of technology and how we are as humans 100 a hundred years ago, we were dead at like 55. There's dudes who come in here. They look like, you know, guys, they look like Rocky four and they're 55 years old.

It's insane to see it. So just be patient as a young kid and strength training and fitness, like anything in life. It's a, it's a crock pot. You guys, it's not a microwave. You're not going to be, you know, Rambo in two weeks. Give it a couple years. Thanks a lot, man. I know you're a busy guy. Congrats to all the success.

And look, we reached out and you were right on it, man. So I hope you had a little bit of fun as well. Oh, yeah, dude. I mean, I've had more people. I mean, obviously, our Instagram is about 300 DMs a day. It's a lot. I've never had more people message me and say, listen to your podcast. At least, I haven't got through them all, like 100 people.

And my best friend, guys I played with in college, all kinds of dudes, like, holy shit, you're going to be on this podcast. We love it. I'm like, am I the only fucking asshole who doesn't listen to it? I'm like, Jesus Christ. Yeah, we're doing all right over here. Do you need to promote anything here on the way out?

If you guys want any of the stuff that we talk about or the videos we share, we post up every single day. It's just Jeremy Scott Fitness on Instagram. Jeremy Scott Fitness podcast. We talk all things health, fitness, nutrition. And if you want any of the stuff I mentioned, if it's any of our free guides, I'm happy to have our team send them out to you if it helps you guys in any small way.

There you go. So hit them up. We got an ally here and I'm telling you right now he has some of the best stuff out there. So lot of fun awesome brother appreciate it okay that's the podcast i hope you guys had fun with that um he's he's just awesome at what he does man and you guys didn't even get i don't even know if we're gonna do the breakout video kyle dude was jacked huh oh yeah super jacked super jack super jack there you go. All right. Cool. So check it out. Subscribe and hit up Jeremy Scott if you guys need any more fitness stuff.

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