Unpaid And Underrated - 145 : A Bigger Nerd Than People Realize (ft. Big Kurt)

Episode Date: February 17, 2026

This week Joey and Keith get to know Big Kurt. They dive right into great topics like whiskey, strongman, drumming, creating content, and being a nerd. Links Ü&Ü Hoodie Massenomics x Ünpaid and Ünderrated Colab Get Your Own Keith Head Follow The Podcast On Instagram @unpaid.underrated.podcast Online UnpaidInternPodcast.com On Youtube @Unpaid.Underrated.Podcast Our Guest On Instagram @the_kurtlocker Our Hosts @keithhoneycutt73 or his orange gym, @thenowhinecellar @joey_mleczko Special Guest: Big Kurt.

Hello, crew, Big Dr. Hogan here with a special announcement regarding crew cards. In partnership with the unpaid and underrated podcast, we'll be holding a contest to win a signed copy of the ultra rare card from set one of crew cards. I've had a lot of people asking who the ultra rare card is, and as far as I've seen, no one has shared or pulled the ultra rare card from set one. I will not be posting or announcing who that card is. is up to the winner of this contest to decide if crew gets to see that card. To the winner, don't let all that power go to your head. Or do, just have fun with it. The contest is to make an ad about and promoting crew cards.

You have a lot of flexibility here on what you do and how you go about it. Just have fun with it and be creative. The idea behind this is to create more interest and engagement in the project as set to releases upcoming Arnold weekend. Some general ideas that might be helpful as you plan out your ad. First, you get the opportunity for your own crew card by being on the unpaid and underrated podcast. Second, you can get a pack of crew cards by coming to major massonomics crew events,

things like the Arnold, Home GymCon, Live Hard Live Easy, and Crew Falls. And finally, if it is your turn for a card submission, and do you want one, then please be on the right side of that line that gets drawn in the sand and turning your submission on time. The contest will be open for submission today, Tuesday, February 17th. The contest will be closed to new submissions at the end of the day, Tuesday, February 24th. Submissions must be an Instagram reel and use the hashtag ultra-rare crew. be sure to put the umlaught over the you and crew also tag the podcast and myself in that reel

that's at unpaid dot underrated dot podcast and at world's strongest psychologist the winner will be chosen based on the correct opinion of the podcast team and i if this is your first time hearing of crew cards then ask another crew member Let's get some engagement and conversation going about crew cards as we lead up to the new release. Thank you all so much. Welcome back to episode 4-640 of the unpaid and underrated podcast. Podcast by crew for crew attended by crew tonight. No, but often mocked by crew.

So I am one of your hosts, Big Joey. I am joined as always by Big Keith. Howdy, howdy. And our new host today is Big Curtis. What's happening? I forgot to change my name on the episode. I've already effed up. So we're just going to call me Big Kurt.

Otherwise, no one has the Kurt Locker. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, interesting. The gym is the Kurt Locker. I'm just Big Kurt. Okay, okay. Yeah, I can't represent the gym. That holds me.

All right. I think I might not have ever put that. I've known you for like six years. I've ever put that one together. I probably have and then forgot. But that's good to know. I'll keep that in mind. I am wearing the unpaid and underrated hoodie.

Just a side note, I put Tiger Balm on some of my tendonitis today. And my arms immediately went as red as the Massonomics logo. So I am on fire right now. Underneath, I am wearing a deadlift till I'm dead shirt that says, fuck this, I'm going to deadlift. It is one of my favorite shirts. I might wear it to work tomorrow and see how much trouble I get in. What are you guys wearing? Anything cool?

Barbar Rescue shirt, representing Big Kim, for another podcast. Yeah, strong and silly Nice Yeah, the old silly goose t-shirt I think that's the original That's the same Yeah, yeah, because the other one was the silly goose That's more recent

Yeah, yeah, I have that shirt too But I like this one better So yeah, that's the one that I You thought was a hawk Yeah, I infamous to me Like never really paid enough attention to it And I just saw the big wings And like didn't like my eyes just didn't register

There was a big freaking goose in the middle of it And I was like, oh yeah, yeah That's just like a big eagle or a hawk I thought it was a hawk and we were like, what? If you ever see anyone say silly hawk, they're mocking me. Got it. Yeah, I didn't know that.

Yeah, it does. I mean, looking down, though, I will say, looking in my own video feed, if you didn't know it was a silly goose, I could totally see it being a hawk. That was probably intentional. That was kind of my, that was my defense last year

when I got mocked for that heavily. Don't defend Keith. I've got Hosewater, anybody else? Anything cool? I'm drinking some fennel tea. I had a little upset stomach. So my wife has this special tea. She likes different cramps and bloating and all that.

It's doing good. Fenal tea is delicious. It tastes horrible. This one's slightly more mild than the last batch of bags we had. Those were strong. This one's a lot more tolerable. I'm drinking Weller Rye straight. Wow.

A little hot, a little hot, but I like it. It's good. I'm trying to, I've had the flu twice this year, so I'm trying to protect myself from future. diseases. Yeah, the crater will do that. No ice, no spring water, no nothing, just straight up. Yeah, just straight up, I like 99% of the time I'm drinking. It's just going to be like bourbon neat or whiskey neat. I'd like beer too, but for the most part, I just like my whiskey poured out in a glass. I actually had this funny time I was flying to Kosovo and I was on an Austrian Airlines

airplane and the flight attendant who is this like very flamboyant flight attendant guy he comes up and he's like oh hey guys you guys want anything to drink and i was like yeah i'll take uh whiskey and he's like well we have shivas and i was like yeah i'll take that then shivas 12 just poured in a cup and so he's like with coke and i'm like no no coke and he's like with ice i'm like no no just like poured the whiskey in because it was an international flight and it's free drinks uh so i eventually coached him to where I could just like hold it up and I was so weird because I just drank whiskey neat. I just remembered what I had. And I didn't realize how trashed I got until I got up.

It was like he just stopped coming to my seat. And I was like, oh, hey man, held the cup up. And he just like rolls his eyes. He's like, oh, my gosh, this freaking guy. So yeah, whiskey, neat. It's the way to go, man. See, I would normally throw a splash of water in just to cut down the, well, I want to say cut down the legs, but just cut down that alcohol burn so that I get the whiskey, but I mean.

Sometimes I do. So it depends. So Bookers is a really, I enjoy Bookers. I think Bookers kind of gets a bad rap because it's Jim Beam heavy. So Bookers is like. It's a blend. Is it a blend? Is that why?

No, it's, it's cask strength. And so I'll throw water in it just to cut it down. But if I do experiment with like any water or a little bit of ice, it's for a specific thing. So I just want to see if it changes the, the, the smell, wow, the smell, the scent profile, or if it changes the way that it kind of tastes, a lot of people describe just kind of opening it up. Yeah. Because when it's really high alcohol, it's difficult to kind of get the nuance.

You're just getting the burn. You're not getting the cask. You're not getting that. So me, I drink a peaty scotch. I really like my Lefroigs and things that are very peaty, very smoky. So I throw some water in so that the alcohol doesn't cut down on that flavor. right i can see that single ice cube splashes spring water just whatever can do that so that i'm getting those flavors i'm not getting hit by alcohol and then it's ruining the flavor of the whiskey

um i'm also a fucking nerd so no no i like that though because that also is true because you get so something to be said for throwing like a piece of ice or something is you you bring down that temperature you open it up a little bit but you also i find that i take a drink and i'll kind of hold it in my mouth for a while. Again, kind of a nerd. And it's nice. So again, you have a really good point. The P.D. Scotch is you do kind of lose it in the high alcohol if you don't. Or really just most alcohols in general. You lose it a little bit more of like the nuance of it. But if you can hold it in your mouth longer, you almost get like that experience of this is how it takes cold. Then it kind of gets warmer

inside your mouth. And then you swallow. And it's like this whole whole thing. No, no judgment there. I feel like if you're a nerd drinking alcohol, that's a pretty acceptable thing to be a fucking nerd at well at least the expensive ones uh do you do you know the tequila hack right you put it in your mouth okay so you breathe out

okay and you drink it and then you swallow it and then you breathe in and what that does is that gives you all of the flavor notes outside of the like you don't do this with like Jose Cuerva or any like of that cheap shit you do that with like the really high end like the mescales and uh the The $100 bottles.

And that's when you start really seeing their flavors. I learned that from the guys that made, I can picture the bottle, but I can't remember the name. The guys that created it came up and did a tequila tasting in my city and I went. And it's not Taramana, but it does start with a tea. But yeah, that's the lesson I learned about tequila. So the order is you breathe out, you take a drink. Swallow.

Oh, no. Sorry, it's the other. way around. Breathe in. Yep. Drink, swallow, breathe out. How the hell can you breathe in and drink it? Like, I feel like I'd be like a high. No, you, you breathe in.

It's not like this. It's not like this full breath. I feel like I tried. I would try to swallow after breathing in and I wouldn't, I would like like like six fixiate. You breathe in. Well, then you aspirate it. Yeah. Yeah. That's the words.

That's definitely cutting its legs off. Put that right into the next thing. I'll go into my stone. story, if that's okay, because this is actually, uh, I went to the stones of strength. And, uh, the I, HFG stone, um, I don't even know what to call it. It's a garage. Um, but I went and I talked about it last week and I actually went this time because, you know, nothing got in my way. Steve picked me up, big Steve and Stasia of other fellow, uh, crew members. And we went and lifted some really big and heavy rocks.

And can I tell you right now? I didn't know. I was already following two of the people that showed up. Lori was there. She is a tiny strong woman. Or not so tiny strong woman. Big Viking strength was there, Mike. And a couple of the guys from,

one of the guys from Muscoa was there. I wasn't following him yet, but I knew of him. And a couple other guys were there. And all we did was just lift rocks and have a grand old time. I am still so beat up. I have not been in the gym all week. I could show you the bruises right now,

but my arms are bruised as hell. It was mostly, it was all net. It's his own, you didn't really do any atlas stones. It was all natural stones, wasn't it? I was afraid of the Atlas stones. So I'm glad you brought that up because some of those Atlas stones

were historical stones. So there was no tacky allowed. There was no tape allowed. They were historical stones lifted by Magnus lifted them. I sent the thing in the group chat there. Some of the names that have lifted those stones and they were like, no, you can't mess these up.

Is this the Ohio Stones of Strength? What is this? No, this is Ontario Stones of Strength. I'm up in Canada. Okay. Yeah. I know you're in Canada. I just didn't know.

Yeah, I was like, wait a second. How have I not? I feel like I haven't heard of this one. Yeah, I HFG, I think. Or if you look up the Stone Table Pod. cast that'll take you to her stuff. And I did a dinnies stone, like full on weight in the front, low in the back, Lori telling us, because Lori just did, Lori is my height and probably 10 pounds, 20 pounds

lighter than me. And she just did the full dineas. No shit. Yeah, she's so strong. It's crazy. Mike did a 310 pound Atlas Stone right in front of me, threw it at me and Steve, if you see the video. We ended up catching.

it and trying not to die. But it was incredible. But the one thing I will say is, Rebecca, I don't know if you're listening, you put on a better party than any event I've ever been to. She had chicken wings and pizza and charcutory and like a whole table of whiskey. Just everything. And I was like, that's pretty dope. I was like, I came here for free, lifted stones.

Meanwhile, I have to pay 150 bucks to attend a power lifting meat and they don't even feed you. I was like, this is the best thing I've ever been to. But yeah, I got the 240 pounds stone into my lap, which I did not think was going to happen. Kurt, I don't know how much you know about me. I weigh 150 pounds. So I got that stone. I've seen you at the Arnold a couple times. I know you're not the largest gentleman, but you're also, you're pretty big.

You're pretty big guy. Strong for my size. Even my point of that ever. Yeah. Because I was like, I'm not as strong as you guys. and he's like, you weigh 150 pounds and just lifted 240 pounds. You might be strong, dude. So it was a really great time.

10 at a time will go again. You said you left 250? You laughed 250? I laughed 240, big natural stone. Stood up a little bit with it, but I think Keith, you were the biggest supporter I had. You had a loose t-shirt and just fell right off your chest. It didn't seem like you. I think you're hard.

So that stone in particular is very heavy on the two sides. So it just rolls. It just wants to roll. out of your hands constantly and that's what it did to me you know would have loved the shoulder it I think I shouldered 165 but I think that's about where I ended that and I was like we're not doing that again

there was these really cool farm farmers handles which were literally railway ties with handles welded to them so they were 200 pounds each so I got to stand up with those wanted to walk with them but there was no room to walk with them but yeah that was a hell

of a time. So how long were the, so you talk about, you don't mean railroad ties. You mean like railroad gauge, like steel? Yep. Yeah, yeah. Because row ties are the wooden part that goes. Okay, yeah, okay. So, yeah, they were railway rails.

They were rail. Yeah, the rail itself. Because I was like, that's so cool. I have actually tried to make those before. Like, I have tried to, like, get material to make those just because that exact design would be really cool. We have a thing local here called Railroad Days because there's like 70 billion. different freaking railroad tracks that run through this little neighborhood.

And I was like, we should do a strongman competition and just do it all railroad themes. So like have a railroad tie frame or something or have all these different themes. And they're actually really hard to get, or at least I found that they were really hard to get. If I'd been able to get them, I would have them. But that is freaking cool. They'd love it. I think she wants to do the next one in the summer. So make your way on up.

I just might. You never know. I'm traveling a lot. but I think a nice trip to go pick up some rocks. I am known by my daughters as the rock person. They'll point things out while we're hiking or something. I like, Dad, do you like that rock? I'm like, yeah, that's a nice boulder.

Nice. I have a couple things to share. One positive, one negative, essentially. So I'll go up the positive. While watching the mass economics video this week, there was a bit where Tanner was kind of going on about the dinner at the Eagle and how, you know, they're not having a booth,

but there's going to be a bunch of us, like 40, 50 of us getting dinner together, et cetera. And I had pretty much decided not to go to the Arnold this year, like months ago when I was just kind of doing the budget and realized we spent tens of thousands of dollars the last couple years to travel and see my friends. And it's just, I got to cut something out. And the Arnold was the easiest one to cut out, but it was also the easiest one to do. So while we were sitting there watching the video on Sunday night, the wife had kind of went ahead and just booked the hotel and just said we were going anyway. So I was like to kind of surprised me with that. So we will be going down just for

for Saturday. We probably won't leave here until like, you know, mid morning. Maybe, I don't know. I don't even know if I wouldn't want to go to the venue or to the expo at all, but because it's like, it's like, it's like 60 bucks just to get in. Now it's going to be like, 60 bucks for two hours at the venue, go back to hotel for a minute and then go out to dinner. But it's like, it's a long drive just for the dinner. So we'll see. But right now, you guys are going to drive it down. Yeah, yeah. It's, it's a six hour drive. So it's not too long, but it's not too short. You know, it's just kind of that like pain in the ass drive, but it's doable. Whereas before, we, I we'd come down for a couple days, but then you go more than one night in a hotel,

and that just gets at, you know, atrocious. So we will be at the Arnold this year. So that is the plan as of it stands right now. And then I feel like I have to go. Like everybody. Yeah. You got to just, yeah, we, there, I don't know if you caught last week's episode yet, but it was, yeah, they're, they're really sell.

I think it's up to Tanner texted me when I told them it was going. I think we're 42 confirmed people. And I don't know how many of those spouses or whatever, because it was like last year, we just had like a little part of the room and then it was a pain in the ass because we had like we were trying to bar crawl with like 30 people and we should just kind of stay where we were at but this year we have

the room that we were in plus like a whole bar section and more tables and stuff so we can accommodate as you know I think it was 50 or 60 people so it's not that. There's definitely still room for people to get in so I'm excited. So that'll be fun but the negative story I had this week was I had another sandbag incident

anyone familiar with me knows how much shit I got for the lift hard to live easy when Jake and Tanner's big mistake bag that they used a broken bag and, you know, made maybe the asshole that used it first. And then it really broke after I got done with it. So, yeah, I was shouldering a 200-pound rogue sandbag, you know, it was just kind of off the cuff. I was just like, oh, I'm going to, oh, I think I had done it because I'm doing static strength in a couple weeks. And one of our, our, the local guy that puts it on throws in a optional stone event at the end just to kind of, you know, if you're going to charge someone, 100 bucks to do an event, essentially, at least. at least throw in something that he just, you know,

it's not part of static strength, but it's just part of the show that he's putting on. So I'm like, I don't have stones, obviously. So I haven't done it. I haven't done a sandbag wrap in a minute. So, you know, I was doing some sandbag over bar.

And I was like, I haven't done this in a minute. Let me, let me shoulder it. Because I, you know, was really not sure what the lift hard to be easy. We have a mystery event coming up this summer. So I'm kind of like,

yeah. So I got to be able to like, you know, and my, if I had to guess, I think it's a natural stone to shoulder, but you know, we'll see. It's probably the stone that took out Trond. But I'm basically trying to just cover all my bases.

But anyway, I did stone to shoulder with a bag to shoulder. And then instead of like sitting it back down and putting it back away, I just, I walked it over. And where I've been storing it's right next to my dumbbell rack. And then I so I dropped it from shoulder height. And it landed right on the damn, uh, sharp corner of a dumbbell rack, poked a fucking hole in it. So, oh, and it was right on the corner.

Is it a slow leak or was it catastrophic? Uh, I mean, it was like I could stick, I don't know, it's a, it's a, it's a two finger hole right now. I need to go down and sew it up and duct tape the shit out of it. But I think inevitably I'm going to replace it and it'll be an out, it'll become an outside bag because I don't care if my outside, if my garage bags have leaks and shit, but I don't want my basement gym to have leaks because I don't need the cats being stupid and trying to eat sand.

Like, I don't know if they would. If it was pea gravel, you probably would have been able to pull it up easier. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Blur, blur, blur. If pee gravel would have broke my dumbbell wreck. It's the same way. No, no, but the gravel itself Wouldn't have dissipated like the sand does.

It was a joke. All right. Anybody watched Tommy's YouTube video this week where he did the top 10 non-gim items? I did. So I haven't yet. Eight hours ago, that puppy came out. I just did a video like,

I think it was actually the last video I did before my little hiatus. So I am curious. I do see a leaf blower. So I feel like he's gone against my advice of the Rumba. but I need to go watch it. That was a good one. And then last week's massonomics episode, a couple of things that stuck out to me.

Well, the Arnold Talk, which I kind of covered, the Amazon shipping blunder where Tanner basically said, you know, because people will send him gifts by just changing their address and their shipping address to Tanner's address. Yeah. So then they got some random item that they're like, we didn't order this and it's not like a bit or a joke. so they honestly think that someone just didn't re-change the address and like ordered something for themselves. Tanner got like diapers. Like he never said what it was. Yeah, that's just hysterical. So that and then.

I hope it was a sex toy. I genuinely hope it was a sex toy. And then Tanner doubling down on his horrocious. Horrocious. Oh, what's the word of think? Oh. Well, you want to say atrocious or horrendous. Yeah.

Oh, wow. I did make up a word. Oh, wow. I sure did. At least that's logical and makes sense. I didn't just like pull it. No, no, I would not. No.

Is that even qualifies it? Is that a conjunction? Does that technically qualify as a conjunction? I think it's a compass. Wrong. I don't know. It was inaccurate. Yeah, wrong again, Keith.

But nothing's as wrong as Tanner count. Tanner counts to, we're doing alternating curls. He counts, what was it? No, it wasn't alternating. Oh, it was alternating. Yeah, it was. It was alternating. One to five.

One to five. And one to five. Or one, one, two, two, three, three, three, four, four, five. And then starts over. So he counts to 15 and like one to five intervals because he can't just count 15. And like that's the weird. That's the weird. Like that's the most like like I thought I had like ticks and like issues and I that's that's like that takes the cake for me.

I can't I don't get it. But all in all, go ahead and give it a five out of five Tanner can't count. Yeah, I'll second that five out of five. I love it. I have listened to three episodes of the back catalog since listening to that. And one of the cool things about the back catalog is I'm finally within the episodes where it's starting to feel like I'm listening to new episodes of the podcast I love. So I'm around one 170 or so. That's a sweet spot too.

Yeah. Like that's where it's like, oh, this is what I've been used to just new to me instead of the old. I can't wait until the new intro comes in. So I'm going to give that five out of five random Amazon sex toys. and then I think the last general topic is just something I need to say. So I got a message from Lauren probably back in December. Lauren, friend of the podcast, Loco on Instagram. You know, you see the wild iron next to me.

He says, oh, I need your address again. My brother listened to our episode and wants to send you something. And the first thing I said is, is that. going to clear customs because sometimes our episodes can get kind of wild. And he said, I'm sure it'll be fine. So I get this box, finally, the day after we record with Rory, of course, because we recorded with Rory a day early. So I get it on the day we're normally supposed to record.

Yep. And I actually asked Lauren, do I need to open this on the podcast? And he said, no, it's not going to be that special. So it comes in, it has a big thing that says open here. So I open it and there's a note. and it says, Joey, I heard you're a fan of the Eagles.

Enjoy this signed Eagles CD. For reference, Joey hates the Eagles. I fucking hate the Eagles. And I like the Eagles, so it's an ongoing issue. Actually,

and you know what? I want to point out something I learned the other day, Tom Waits also hates the Eagles. So Tom Waits and me on the same side. Take it easy. So,

See what he did. That was a pun if you don't get it. So I take out the note. I look at my wife and I go, if this is an Eagle CD, it's going to be very funny. And I open it and it's a signed copy of the Blessed Hell Ride by Black Label Society, signed by the whole band. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Anybody that knows me or listens to this podcast, I love Black Label Society. I've got a tattoo of their logo. I've got vests and I've got like all the black label stuff you could ever. think of. They've been my favorite band for all 20 years now. That's Zach Wild, right? Yep. Oh my God, yes.

And I'll tell you, I looked at that and Morgan said, are you about to cry? And I went, I might. The idea that this silly podcast that we started just to interview people in the crew,

they heard how much I like Black Label and not only were they willing to part with their signed CD but pay to ship it all the way up to Canada just for little old me hit me so hard right there that they would do that for me. Um, so I obviously Lauren, I, you're probably listening. Thank you. Thank you to your brother Chris. Uh, but that was huge. We're probably going to frame that. We're going to, I think it's, uh, the, the jackets sign. So we'll take it out of the, the CD and actually frame that. But that's, that's, that was huge.

Like, I know we get a lot of crew gifts, but that one was, that one hit hard. Yeah, Joey gets awesome and rebellia. I get gummy bear dicks. Thanks, guys. You get what you deserve. No, I have gotten a lot of, yeah. Wait, did you really get gummy bear dicks? I did.

That was like, it was a couple years ago. And we still don't know who sent it either. That's the funny. You know, so the funny part is if you looked in my Amazon, like, orders, I've, I've purchased gummy bear dicks before. But it was back in, like, 2012. So, separate, separate story. And I have anyone that's sent me cool shit.

I have got multiple cool crew gifts. It's just I always like to bring up the gummy bear dicks because it is really funny. All right. You want us with those affiliates and we can get that Masonomic sponsor, Rejoy? Yeah, definitely. Still, Obsidian, plate snacks, beltfed strength, code unpaid. Like I've said before, some of those are kickbacks. Some of them are not.

Some of them are just for you guys to use. So hypedust.com, plate snacks.com and bellfed strength. Use it for any of your home gym needs. You want some good ammonia. He just released that menthol cigarette scent again. That's the one I actually have active in the gym right now. You sent me that one. I haven't opened it yet.

I've opened it. Or maybe it's Irish Carbomb. I haven't opened it. I don't know. You sent me two. I'm only open. Yeah. I sent you nose bleach and Irish carbone.

Okay. Yeah. I haven't opened the Irish carbone. Yeah. I saw the menthol one or the cigarette one. Yeah, that one's weird. It kind of like hits you with sad. stories of the mall when you were a kid

and also get you excited about it. I feel like I would be reminded of drinking underage. Yeah. For sure. Well, on that note, Kurt, do you have anything good? Do you want to say about Masonomics? Hit a hit a hit. Yeah, yeah. You know, you want a

you want a crew of people that they got your back. They understand where you're coming from. The first world problems of being a lifter, but also having crippling ADHD and weaponized autism, well, I think Massonomics might just be what you're looking for. If you're the kind of person that Huff's Amonia stops twice, gets into the rack, and then looks to the left and sees a small innocent child that's terrified for their life, you need to tune in to episode 453, which I just made up off the top of my head, but that one's going to speak to you in particular. So Massanomics is the best group of people. You can literally meet up with them in the airport. I've had that happen.

you can meet up with them at the gym, you can meet up with the Arnold, you can meet up with them at Home GymCon, which you should definitely do, and they got your back, they're going to go, and they're going to help you shut down a burger joint and run them out of milkshakes before I get them in front of the line.

And that all actually, very fun. All right, let's kick all these Likikus out and see if we can get that guest on. Yeah, let's do it. Big Kurt is that you? No.

Nah, I bitch to it. Hey. Appreciate you guys. Hey, welcome to unpaid and underrated. What a nice place that we have. We're glad to have you. So just so people know who we're talking to, go ahead and introduce yourself and where people can find you.

Yeah, so names Kurt. About eight years ago now, I started a small little YouTube venture that I never really focused on all that much, but it's grown to something pretty cool called the Kurt Lock. that's been really more just a gateway to all sorts of amazing opportunities. I started it just to basically unload some of the free crap that Coop was getting and try to snake it all my way. And really it kind of opened up into being a part of the Home GymCon crew and helping to

direct strength competitions there and help other meet directors have a good time and getting to know the Massonomics people. But yeah, Kurt, you can find me at underscore or at the underscore Kurt Locker on Instagram. I've also got a weird radio side of me, so Backwood's Beacon over there on Instagram. You can find me on YouTube. That's where most people I think know me from,

and it's just the Kurt Locker over there. I don't know if there's underscores or something. All I know is if you come across, it's either a Kurt Russell podcast, which is weird. That's not me. Like the actor Kurt Russell or just like a dude named Kurt Russell? He's making songs and fun. It's about Kurt Reisel, yeah.

Oh, that's wild. And then if you find some Asian guy giving you style advice and his name is Kurt, the biggest thing to remember is to spell Kurt correctly, that's with a K. Oh, yeah. Whoa, whoa, what about Kurt Henning? Not my problem. Mr. Perfect? No, he's stupid.

Mom messed up, bro. I'm saying, right? Kurt is spelled with a K. Nothing against Kurt the man, but their parents were just stupid. They just made a mistake. Okay. So where do you live? Where are you from?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's, so I hail from Minnesota years and years ago. I lost that Minnesota nice part of me and stopped blocking a federal law enforcement from, oh, wait, no, I never did that. I live in Ohio right now. And, yeah, I'm a retired military, enjoying my facial hair and my faceal hair and my, hip that no longer works and all sorts of good stuff. We don't need hips.

Not really, no. I actually squat it today. It felt super good. I was the first time I squatted probably and embarrassingly, probably about a month. But yeah, my left hip stopped working. It's a really weird thing. That actually did happen to me too. Yeah.

What happened with yours? So like mine has just been, I kind of lose control of it. Yep, that's what happened to me. It's just dead. And yeah, so yours is better now. So, like, what happened? I was training for my first competition, actually, my first powerlifting competition.

And I was doing, I want to say, the last strength block. And it just went. Like, I deadlifted and my hip just went. Yeah. I got through the competition, went to physio, and it turned out that I had just sprained it so that the entire interior. So you know your hip is like a joint in a socket. It was all scar tissue.

It was 100%. Like they did the MRI and everything. They were like, that's just scar tissue. You're fucked. So I had to go and go to several episodes, several sessions of laser. And then the chiropractor, who was also a lifter, he had this really great idea where he would jam his thumb into my hip flexor and make me move my leg. that sucks. That's the most pain I think I have been through.

But I decide, like, I will tell you, I fought going to physio for so long until one day I was doing, literally, I was doing body weight lunges and my hip gave out and I fell. Like, I full on fell. As a 39-year-old man, whoever I was old I just fell on the ground like a weirdo. And I was like, ah, I'm going to have to get this. I think it's time. Yeah. So all they had to do was they had to just get rid of the scar tissue,

which it's not a pleasant scenario. It is very painful for quite a few sessions. Well, they just did x-rays on mine, which also I do have somewhat a funny story about. So when you do x-rays for your hip, I would sit on the table to demonstrate, but I would hate for this to all of a sudden become an x-rated show. But basically, they have you sit like a fraud. leg thing, you know, and then they take a picture of your pelvis. So all I'm going to say is that pull up the photos and civilians have this really cool app.

So now that I'm a civilian, I have this cool app where I get to talk to my doctor. And I know that I sound really dumb right now to like 99% of people, but it's called my chart. And they sent you the photo. It's so cool. I didn't have that. That's not a thing. Oh, yeah. So they sent me, they sent me the two images of my left.

hip. And in the very first one, I see like this weird shape coming in right next to my thigh. And I was like, is that my fucking dick? And I, first, my wife is like, let me see it. And I go to, I go to picture number two and share his shit. Like, absolutely. I imagine that we can swear on this, but like, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So sure enough, it's like a full on just like perfect silhouette of my fucking wiener. And at least they didn't see the gerbil. Yeah. Yeah. The gerbil wasn't in it. Yeah. Thank God. I was at the side. I was at an angle, so they couldn't see it. Yeah, they couldn't catch the gerbil.

And then my wife was disturbed because I immediately downloaded the photo and then sent it to like. Of course. She's like, I thought that x-rays burned through all the soft tissue. And I was like, no soft tissue here, baby. It was hard tissue. But they did fight some arthritis or whatever. So I start my physical therapy stuff soon. I got to travel next week for work.

But the week after that, I get to go see physio and start working. through that whole process. I hope. I kind of hope they do, but I kind of hope they don't do the thumb and the flexor thing. Well, at least if they do it now, if they start to stick thumbs in me,

I'm going to think about a big bearded Canadian guy, I know. Oh, man, it was one of those, like, he would do it, and I would, like, whine the whole time. And then when he was done, I'd be like, damn it, that feels so much better. Like, I feel like I'm going to be on the, like the stupid little chair thing held up.

I would be like, big Joey! I think one of the funniest things, just sorry Keith, I know we're hijacking this, but this is unpaid under it. This is what we do. I've told this story before

is the physiotherapist was not a lifter, but the chiropractor that was handling me was. And she hands me a five-pound kettlebell. And she goes, I need to see how much you can squat with this. And the chiropractor walks out, looks and goes, you might as well give him a balloon.

Like, give them the heavier one. That's ridiculous. this because at the time I was I had just done a 350 pound squat at my meat right he's like you're not going to be able to tell anything you need to up that weight on him and I was like oh thank you it's like the opposite of a backhanded compliment what's the opposite of a because like a backhanded compliment is like oh well you sure are smarter than you look yeah yeah actually I guess it's just a compliment yeah it's just a regular compliment uh so kirk How did you find massonomics in general?

The podcast, the Instagram, how did just stumble across the boys? So, I mean, I was aware of massonomics just kind of tangentially through the lifting community. 2018, I think was the first day at a booth, maybe. And I was at the Arnold that year working with Air Force recruiting because they were trying to get whippersnappers to try to join the job I used to do. do. And, uh, and like I was aware of it where I run into them or, or whatever. Um, they, I was like nobody at the time. Like at the time, the YouTube, I, I don't even think it was monetized yet. So it was like 100,000 sobs. Um, but I, it kind of went on a lull there for a while. And it got brought up, uh, weirdly by Mike Bartos. Um, I was chatting with big Mike Bartos. And he's asked

what I thought about the massanomics podcast. And I was like, honestly, spent a hot minute since I listen to it. And then I really owe my crew status to big coach carp. That's two weeks in a row. Yeah. Oh, is it really? Wow. Yeah.

Oh, so I guess you guys just had Rory. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But, yeah, so I coached. So I have a master's in exercise science. I coach people that I know I don't like publicly advertise. I do too much of it because honestly I don't have that much bandwidth for it. But I coached Eric for something.

I don't remember what it was. Shit, probably remember that. It's years ago now. And I didn't charge him anything. And so he bought me a nice rack t-shirt, my first drink spotter. And basically just kind of drew me into the community.

And from there, I bought my supporting membership and all that. So, yeah. Long story. Good guy. Yeah. Eric is like, Eric is like. is a good guy. He's he's got to work on his talk to textability because there's typos are and it's like I get into one of her group chats that he's in and I'm like man what the fuck

did this even mean like and then he's and I I I'm not a good at I have bad typos. Oh yeah. I'm like I'm like a six he's I'm a six and he's a nine for sure. Yeah but he also lives like in Tennessee and Tennessee is a lot of great things but like it's not as it's not like you're from Alabama but it's also not like you're from, you know, Ohio. Definitely one of the first guys that will give you a shirt off his back. Yeah, he would. So you've been around a long time, Kurt. What is that one piece of Massonomics merch you've seen one of your buddies wearing

or hanging in their gym and you're like, oh, I'm going to go grab that. And it's just not available. What's that one thing you wish they would bring back? Oh, oh, bring back. Shit. That's a really good question. Bring back, bring back. a lot of the stuff they have they've had they can't sell anymore too because like a lot of the beer parody shit they've like they've had to nick i would have to say it would be one of the band pieces of merch because uh like that's missing from my card is i don't have a band piece of merch so i'm gonna go is the buddy light shirt count yeah yeah that's that's banned yeah i'm gonna go with the buddy light shirt they got like a cease and desist from like someone pretending to be their lawyer or someone that could no no the buddy light one was directly from ronnie coleman was that okay yeah oh was

Yeah, all the other stuff. Any of the Coors or Anheiser-Bush stuff? Yeah, that was that story. Yeah. But the buddy light was directly from Ronnie Coleman, because that's when he was about to launch his supplements. Yeah. Sometimes my mind remembers things, not very often. It sucks up the weirdest thing.

Yeah. So you just mentioned your Hall of Fame status. After tonight, what is your status? I think I'm, uh, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, owed something at this point. I remember you're just saying to have that ready. It's up there. It's up there.

Like, I don't know. There's like 12 things on it, 12, 15 things. There's 16 and you need 12 to get into the, to get a sippy cup level and then 15 to be jacket level. Pretty sure I'm at like 12 or 13. Yeah, right. You should be missing. You should be missing.

Train at the gym. Yep. lifting the lift hard to live easy and crew falls. What about win a competition? Win a competition. Oh, no, I won that. I got super lucky. I won like the $2 bill one like two years ago.

I got like $100 and $2 bills or so. Oh, damn. Oh, hell yeah. So theoretically you're 13. So Tanner double check that with him. And I think he needs to cup at the Arnold if he makes it. Yeah, yeah. I just need to keep up on the,

checklist is all. But yeah, I've got a lot of them. It's just basically I got to come up to, at this point, I got to go to the Dakotas on a great adventure. And that's going to be hard considering the home gym con is, the last year, it was the fucking week before. This year, it's the week after. I wish Jake was able to keep it in April because that worked out perfect for crew members that want to space out their shit quarterly. But hey, and he's, you know, he's got limited options, so I get it. Yeah, especially with the bigger, like going to kick again. Yeah, it was definitely limited, especially where you could get all four. quadrants. Yeah, the whole thing. I remember. Did you, you said, I know you looked forward earlier, but you didn't have your supportive membership number or handy, did you? Okay.

I actually always carry this in my wallet. This is, this is something. Yeah, this actually goes with me. Yeah. Do you guys want the number? Yeah. So I feel like if I give this to you, it's going to get stolen. This is so it's not.

We had a guy the other week that thought the 42069 was like a select to him. But so just for clarity. that's that's that's that's that's that's everyone has four 2069 it's only the couple numbers after that yeah yeah it's the last four digits yeah i guess it should be zero something something yeah zero 143 oh it's pretty low that's not bad that's and it's probably lower now yeah for sure there was a there was a minute there Tanner was telling everyone their updated numbers and for the most part everyone's dropped anywhere from like five to 30 depending on when they came in because we've had a lot of, you know, as many people come in,

people go out and it's just kind of circle a lot. What a bunch of freaking quitters. Right? That's what I said. Dead to me. They're dead to me. My mom didn't raise no pain. You say that, Joey, but you're the first one to call me a fucking gatekeeper, the first chance you get in any fucking scenario. Blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Yeah, you are.

You just said, but you're judging. If you leave Massonomics crew, you're dead to me. With, yeah, that's, and me being gateke. That's, that's a gatekeeper. personality and I'm appreciative. Anyway, so we know the certified gym is the current locker. You are certified. Let's confirm that because that's,

we'd have to end the call if you're not a certified training facility at this point. Oh, no, absolutely certified, man. I actually have two certificates of certification. Oh, why? Because I was driving while typing at the same time and I hefted it up and nobody caught. That's true.

And just, I wanted, I was on the initial. bye, dude. Like, here's the problem is like, I used to get off of work. And on the way back, that's when the, uh, the drop would happen. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like, let's be clear, I'm not stopping because that's freaking lame, laying safe. And you should definitely do it. Um, no, I just, I just pull it up. And I was like, trying to check out. I realize there's so many freaking steps to like getting, getting that put in my cart. Uh, and yeah, I just threw my,

I think I just threw my name where it's a gym name. Uh, I did the same. Uh, did the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. So Tanner fixed it for me, which was awesome. Damn it. So you're just double certified? I mean, I would argue that I would need to make a separate purchase.

That might happen at some point in time. I do sometimes wonder if I should have the first Massonomic certified storage facility that is just happening to be certified as a gym because my gym, the Kurt Locker, is out in the garage. and it's constantly changing. And then my father-in-law's pole barn is where all the rest of the stuff goes. So like all the big equipment stuff from Home GymCon, like those giant fire truck tires for deadlifting and all the, you know, all the Black Widow training gear equipment stuff, that all goes into the barn and comes out if I ever do content on it or it comes out for Home Gym. So I think you have two options. you can be the first certified massonomics storage facility

or you can just gatekeep the hell out of everybody and be like, no, I'm certified twice what you got. I mean, either way, it's like, yeah. Bring back the gatekeeping conversation. Do you want to hit them with your least fun most fun? Yeah, I got least, Kurt, we got a game we came up with here. So it's called Least Fun Most Fund. So we're going to give you a single topic,

and I need you to tell me the least fun thing about it. as well as the most fun thing. So basically the high and the low of this one topic here. And we can get into more of it later too, but it's just a quick little one hitter. So least fun, most fun. Being a strong man, meat director. Oh.

What's that gut reaction best in the worst? Oh, man. So one of the most difficult things to organize. Okay, so least fun is trying to convince people to come and work for free. I can't pay your hotel for the most part. I try to, but I can't pay all of your hotel. I can't pay all of your expenses.

But my least favorite part is trying to talk people into coming and helping. I do have a solid crew right now. And we kind of have some hacks, but that's my least favorite part. My favorite part is, gosh, so that's like a big high. So, like, picking out like one high out of all that. I think it's got to be so like it's got to be awards. And it's not because it's cool to see people get first, second, third. It's because it's cool to see people get things.

So for both years that we've done the throwdown at Home GymCon, every single athlete has left with something. The first year, it was like a bunch of equipment we gave out. But like that's all during awards so that that happens. And then this last year, watching Nick Best, hand on all the trophies. And, like, I've never, I mean, Doug Madewell's giving me a trophy before, and he's technically a pro-strongman because he's been around the block forever.

But, like, I've never been handed something like, hey, you did great. Here's a thing from a pro-strongman. So, like, watching the people that won get their awards. And then also, like, being able to see everybody leave and they had a good time like that. Like, that conclusion bit is probably the high. Good answers.

That was a very good. Very good. I like that. And then Joey's got one for you. One of the ones I always ask. So let's say you're about to go do a big lift. And you have your choice of any person ever, a fictional living,

dead, anybody. Who's the person that's going to slap your back and hype you up before that one big lift? Anybody? Anybody. Man, that really opens up the aperture.

Yeah, we've had a gone, a gauntlet of answers from like, you know, some bodybuilder to like the guys like dead grandpa. Yeah. It's wildly, uh,

interesting what people answer. I don't think it's going to be a family member. I'll say that. Um, so I'm going to start with ruling out the people, right? So, uh,

it probably won't really be a family member because nobody in my family gives a shit. Uh, so like, sure, it'd be cool to have like my nine year old hype me up or my seven year old hype me up, but I know,

you want to say that. But meanwhile, I'm like, I'm going to lift and my daughter's just going, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, that's an outside chair. And you're like in the middle of a big overhead press and you're like, uh-huh, thanks, honey. Dude, I think back to like, I don't know, like, I've been obsessed with like military history forever. And so for some reason, I keep coming back to like who is like a true American badass? The entertainment. not a bad answer

dude that would knock me over and someone that also wouldn't destroy my back in the process was it who was the guy from nah because he wouldn't give a shit you know what I'm just going to have to I'm going to have to settle on this one because I don't know the

I don't know the right answer at this point I think I'm going to have to go with who's on it's Jefferson that's on the $2 bill no yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I'm going to go with Thomas Jefferson. But the swole version, not like... Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The Jefferson Deadlift T-shirt, Thomas Jefferson. Yeah, but I mean, because that's the real Thomas Jefferson. Not the horse teeth dentures guy. Not the fake one. Yeah, that's the fake Thomas Jefferson. That's like something that the history teachers made up. He looked like the guy on the t-shirt, and I was really happy when the massonomics guys had that very photorealistic.

They took that bold stance to show the real Thomas Jefferson. So we're going to go T. Jeff. And also because T. Jeff was, he slayed in France. I don't know if you know your U.S. history well. But when he was our ambassador to France right. Yeah, like during the war, basically. Him and Tom. Yeah, him and Benjamin Franklin like slayed, dude. Like they did good. Right. Well, so anyone that knows Kurt Locker knows, you know, he's a was a career military man and just recently put his paper. Was it the last summer or this? Yeah, so it was like six months ago, so go over, right? Yeah, sort of. It was, so technically I became a civilian on one November.

So somewhat recently, but I did what's called a Skillbridge program in there. So basically six months of my life was spent. I founded a small business and I don't do anything with it. But I didn't have to go to work for six months. nice there you go uh one thing i was sitting at the before i came on here stephanie just got home from a work thing and i was like oh we're having she like you met my wife a couple times at home gym cons i was like oh we have we're having card on tonight what do you have any questions for him and she's like you know she was like uh well now that he's retired is he just as busy as he

ever was and i'm like i'll ask you yeah so uh so busy but in a very different way um when you're when you're when you're so i was a bomb tech in the in the air force and you kind of know your job, right? So like you might deploy, you have to go train. Like it's very regimented. It's this, this, this is the rules. There's no, don't be wrong. There's some curveballs to EOD, but it's very much easy. So going in transitioning into civilian life, I'll say that all of a sudden, the amount of work I can get done is now associated with how much more extra work also gets added to the top. So I have, I've become a, a big, very integral part of my new company that I'm a part of.

So as far as hustle goes, I mean, there's no shortage, man. I just got back from Shot Show a couple weeks ago. And I think that I'm handling like 60-something accounts or something and a lot from Shot Show. I like the busyness though. Like it's good. The family has some, we have some balancing. I still got to figure out, right?

So in a business development role, I find that, I'm basically my hours are all the time. So I need to do a better job of like setting boundaries probably. But yeah, I would say more busy, but on things that are much less scary. And my kids no longer have to worry about me going to work and getting blown the fuck up. Yeah. That's a positive. Hey, that's that's two EODs in a in two weeks.

Rory does something a little bit. Yeah, Rory's not EOD. So we've had other, we've had like two or three other EODs on in the has been not like. Yeah, there's a couple. There's, uh, I, sorry. He doesn't, he doesn't, he doesn't think he talks about his job too much publicly. Got it. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I know, uh, yeah. And then, uh, have you guys had big Georgia on last, yeah, he was in last year or so. Um, so then follow up on that, though. So you said you did like the, the exit program where you have to kind of come up with a business or whatever, but you're not doing that. So then you're doing,

so you actually have a, another job than you're saying, I guess I missed that part where, So you took a salary job somewhere doing sales or something? Is that what it is? Yeah. So if you were to distill it down to like its core, it's a sales job. But my actual job is mission integration. So that's why like that's what all this is in the background. Like that's, I do content for bunker supply company.

I do a lot with our Mac product line to make it like super super civilianized. It's phone cases and mounts, which is kind of fun. in the grand scheme of things. But it's like tactical shit too. Right up your alley then. Yeah. So I do a lot. I get to interface with some very,

very cool organizations. I get to go into places that while I was active duty, I did not get to go into. And, I mean, it's pretty basic at its core, but essentially I got a really good job because I'm a massive nerd.

A big ham radio guy. Big on builder. Like, I do a lot of my own making of things. I build my own electronics. I build power supplies, radios. I'm a bigger nerd than most people probably realize. Yeah, like I, for instance, I got pissed off because my grill, which is not a pellet grill, it's like a gravity series. It had to be plugged in. So I designed and cadded a power supply holder. I actually have the battery for it. So like here's the battery that I ended up putting in my grill. I just brought it down here for the winter. And basically holds it up in there. And wherever I move my grill, it will power my grill for like 20-something hours. And you can also like charge it. And it's all fused and protected. I remove some safety features,

installed some other features. I'm that weird guy that like, if I'm like, hey, do you want to put a radio on this that like sniffs out, Keith's, cell phone and every single time Keith walks within a certain distance of this, I get a voice alert or something like that. I can build it. Interesting. Or I can do like your headphones or your watch or I can do any number of different things. But yeah, I do all sorts of nerd crap. But I love it. It's great. It's a great job. And my wife loves it because it used to be I had to buy all this crap for myself. And all of a sudden there's businesses that are like, here, make me a thing. And then the ham radio, that's, that's a, that's part of what you're doing or that's just another side obsession or what, what's, yeah, it's just another hobby.

So another hobby, I, when I was a military, I had all the military radios and basically I could do anything on military frequencies that I wanted to. So we would. So we would just do things. As about, gosh, man, would have been about three, three years ago, had somebody take me out. and he was a military dude. And we went and did an HF communication using an NFFFat halfway antenna, which is just a wire, right? So like we set up this random wire. We sit out in a parking lot.

And the dude gets on his mic and he just happened to get lucky. And he got some freaking guy in Ukraine, like in a parking lot. And it just immediately like my brain was like, this neat. I want to do them more. So I got my license. and I truly enjoy it. Like, I think it's a part of the, there's a lot of people out there that are trying to get prepared,

trying to do preparedness type things. And there's like this negative connotation to get in your ham radio license. Because people don't want to follow rules, but it's been nothing but great for a lot of the stuff I do. I've got a few radios. I don't know. I've got one main VHF, UHF rig that I carry.

I actually have fried my garage door opener with it. I was a fun little happy accent. And I'll then, I then fixed my garage door opener, but. Oh, there you go. And then I've got like a nice, two nice HF rigs that I do stuff with. And my farthest contact, I'll sit out in the backyard with my daughter, my 9-year-old, and she'll operate on my license. Her furthest contact, she talked to some person over in the United Kingdom.

And my furthest contact was a guy from my backyard all the way to Syria. So, it's just, it's fun, man. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, when you're a kid, like, walkie talkies are the coolest freaking thing in the world. And then at some point, they just become, like, either utility or kind of lame, like, people judge you for being a nerd. And I just got to the point in my life where I was like, yeah, like, I don't care what you think about me.

I think this is really. That is so cool. Yeah. Oh, geez. What do you think in there, Keith? Oh, so always, uh, just a strong man. I saw some pictures of you on Facebook there. When did you basically really dive in a strongman? Because I think one of the one of the pictures was you, you know, talking about how small you were and how you thought 175 was a heavy weight.

And I guess I'm just kind of like, give me like the timeline. Because being in the military that long, was it more recently that you got jacked and started competing? Or was it kind of always been a little, uh, something you've been doing? Solid question. So I came back from Afghanistan 13. They were trying to do back surgery on me. And I'm like two and a half inches shorter than when I joined. And like military life's hard on you. So I got into physical therapy and kind of similar to Big Joey's story, had a, except for mine as the opposite. My physical therapist just happened to be a lifter. And he got me on starting strength. So that would have been 13, 2013. Started doing that. It started helping with symptoms. Obviously it's not going to like go away. and I, through YouTube, found Alan Thrawl, and I found Brian Alsruh of NeverSate. And so through them, I kind of got into Strongman.

Would have probably been like 2015, probably, kind of that level, that era. Did my first competition in either 16 or 17. But yeah, I had like, Brian Alsru was my coach. which, you know, kind of comes full circle as well because, like, Uncle Nick was at Chacho. Oh, man. Uncle, you know, if you know who Uncle Nick is. Yeah, he just like, yeah, he just like walked right off. You post a picture up on just the other day, right?

Yeah. And I was like, Uncle Nick. And he's like, oh, you're the first. Oh, you're like, turned around. He's like, oh, shit. So now I'm like, the world record holder for the circus dumbbell. And he's pushing for an actual world record this coming up like really, actually might have already happened.

I should probably look that up. But, yeah, we like recognize. each other. But yeah, but he was a Brian Olsru's training partner. But yeah, got into it from there. Won my first show in 17. So 2017 I competed. One, got kicked up to the open

class. And from there, it's just kind of been like every year I would pick two to three shows. Last year I took off quite a bit. I started having a lot of kind of creep up problems. Hilariously enough, none of them

lifting related at all. just old with your career and your job i mean that also like like if joy or i said that it might not make sense but you say on that like that matracks yeah it's just one of those things it can wear down and it just kind of catches up so um truth be told i haven't lifted lifted lifted in months um it's been a really rough i've been out in the gym i've done a lot of cardio i'm actually down some body weight um which was kind of the goal i figured if i'm going to do something i'm at least try to lose some weight. It's not aggressive by any means. I'm still over 200

pounds. But yeah, it's been a really weird, and then it just got freaking cold, dude. So, holy shit. Yeah. Strongman would have been a, I guess strong man, if we count strong man

by when you started training, it'd probably be right around 2015. And if you count it from when you started competing, it'd be 2017. Nice. Any plans for getting, well, the best of you probably, you probably I think in 26 is going to be a wash two at this right then. If your body, you know, your hips all fucked up and all that.

We'll see. We'll see. Like I said, I squatted today. Squatted pain free. Nice. My upper body's having issues too. So I was in a sweet CV-22 crash. So like the big Osprey things that crashed all the time.

Wait, wait, wait. The plane? Yeah. I was like it. I love that plane. I guess you didn't hear that episode. Okay. I mean, I like that plane, too.

I just didn't like that one time that. Obviously. But it's so weird that you said that and I knew what you were talking about because I was at a, I was at the, this fucking. I was at, I was at the London Air Show and the Osprey was there. And it's the one with the turning propellers that can like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've seen those in movies, but I've never. Dude, they're cool. Hey, when those things rotate forward, it like goes.

Yeah. So we would take off at Camp Leatherneck, and it'd be like three Air Force EOD guys, and then a platoon of either Marines or like British Army, whoever we were going out with. And it would do like a vertical takeoff because sometimes they take off like planes. Sometimes they take off vertical. They would do a vertical takeoff and then it would rotate. Like you would watch because you're sitting sideways. So you'd watch through the window and you'd watch the propellers go from flat to rotating forward. and there was this magical point.

And I don't know what angle it is, but there's this magical point where it goes from just to hover to like, boom, like roadrunner. And everybody is like, and then you spend the next like 30 minutes, everybody's trying to push off of each other on this flight trying to like straighten back up.

And then as it comes back into the hover, everybody's like trying to push back up like, oh shit, we're going in in like a minute. We got to be ready to go. Yeah, it's a cool. It's a cool plane, dude. It really is. It just sucks when they don't land on their wheels.

There's a post. Yeah. The wheels are integral part of the ground between. You know, they can't be. They also have a procedure, though. So if you like the Ospre, you'll like this fact. There's a procedure for what they call a mattress landing in their publications. So sometimes the wheels just don't work, you know.

It happens, I guess. I don't know. I'm not an airplane designer, but I feel like that's kind of a failure. but they have a mattress landing. And what they do is they go get all the mattresses from the base lodging or like the barracks or something. And they go and they actually have this procedure for how you lay them on the airfield.

And then you chain them to all the anchor points, like all the grounding points. And then it just lands on the mattresses because it's better than landing on... Yeah, I mean, if you have to watch the top, I guess. You know what advanced, I suppose. It's like a thing, yeah. That kind of feels,

like such a failure where they're like, uh, hey, uh, sometimes this, this doesn't work. Mm, mattresses.

Could we fix the thing that doesn't work? No, no, mattresses. I mean, they are better than they used to be. I'll give them that. Like,

it is an interesting, uh, concept for flight. Uh, yeah, like all that to say, like my upper body, um,

I had my right shoulder worked on. Um, I, I very, very, very likely, I, in fact, I 100% know. I tore it in Afghanistan, and it was three of the four rotator cuff tendons.

And I competed on that from 2017 to 2019. And then in 2019, I got my shoulder fixed. And that's where my upper strength blew up. But my left shoulder now has been giving me fits. So the next step would be like x-ray physical therapy, imaging. Hopefully nothing's wrong with it. hopefully it's just like some tendinitis or me just being a bitch or something i don't know but i know no plans right now other than directing uh the home gym con uh meets and then uh apparently i i

do such an okay job that jake has brought me on to uh i'm actually the not the director well i don't even know what my title would be but i help all the other uh meet directors make sure that all their logistics are squared away And they're sponsored. Senior director. I am senior director of Home JimCon. The liaison between them and Jim and Jake. Any chance you could leak some of the events for Home JimCon?

Yeah, I mean, I can talk a few of those. They're not, nothing is public yet. And also, nothing is finalized. I've had a really hard time. But I do know what some of the events will be. For instance, we're bringing back the Hercules hold. That is 100. 100% coming back.

It was just a popular event. People liked it. Plus, it was just a really well done unit. Like, it worked really well. I'm bringing back. It's going to be a moving event utilizing the cone and wheel attachment. It might just be some PG-13 cone and wheel stuff. I want to do an overhead event.

I originally was going to do head-to-head logs. And I have a bead on a second Pitbull Strongman log, which is awesome. because it's kind of the best one as far as I'm concerned. But, dude, I had a guy reach out to me just the other day. And he is noncommittal. So when I say like all this stuff, he is noncommittal with this, but he wants to make custom old sear dumbbells. And it's like, oh, I feel like if I say no to this,

it's because I'm a giant piece of shit. So that sounds amazing. That is like figuring out the. weights because it's not loadable, is it? Or would it be loadable? No, they're like the sear solid. Yeah, so he has to make it. Yeah.

So then it's like, well, you need like six, six of those or at least four of them depending on. Oh, we need more than that. Like, because we do it. So many. Yeah. We do a novice split, right? We do heavy and weight, heavyweight, lightweight, novice.

Plus we have all the weight classes. Yeah, I don't know. That's like a dozen tier dumbbells that that seems to are well. Plus I've got masters. Plus, we're doing juniors as well. So we'll see. You know, I would love for.

it to work out. It might be one of those things where it's like press a log for it might be a medley of some sort. I don't have it worked out. The Sear Dumbbell one is brand new to me. Yeah, but if Scott can bring his other pit bull that he just picked up, I think that'd be pretty

dope. Scott's the guy I'm talking to. Yeah, he was yeah, I was in, yeah, he's a good fella. Oh, Scott's amazing. Yeah, I've got, I've got the far outpost stickers on there on log. So, no, I'd love to have Scott's out there. I even sent him the

Amazon link, because my hand holds, I put that. Yeah, I put the edging out. I saw that on YouTube. I'm just rocking the foam for the time being, but I got to look into that other stuff. I'll send you a link, man. It's the stuff I have is... It's so bad. Exactly. It's just one of those things, especially, so

that's like the one thing about Pitbull, and I wouldn't change it. I really wish that Alex Beninga would, because that guy used to make Pitbull logs. I wish, I have his phone number. I should like text him and be like, please. I'm assuming it's because he can't make it for less than $600 now because prices of tubing and shit.

Like, it's got to be the... But he wasn't using, he wasn't using tubing, though. He was using drops. So that's, that's why he used to sell. When I bought mine, it was $300.00 shipped. Shipped. Yeah. That's, you can't... And it came UPS. Yeah, you, that's wild.

I've had two, and I wish I had kept my second one, but I sold it because now I'm, now I realize I can do log in the basement if I stand in the exact right spot. Yeah. So now I still get off the area. As long as you lock out in the right spot. Yeah, it's got to be.

I have like a four inch window to not to not screw it up and not hit my floor choice, but it works. That's called discipline, baby. But it'll be a deadlift event as well. I want to bring back the Kratos bar. The problem that I'm encountering is that I need two and I don't have two. So what will very likely what I'll end up doing if I can't get two is it'll be a max deadlift.

well, I'll have a warm-up area, so there'll be no warm-ups on the platform. And basically, different weight classes will pull either on the Kratos deadlift bar, or I will set up my Made Well Strength, Detlift Apparatus of Excellence, and we'll just run a second lane, and it'll just use that. Hilariously, the Made Well-Strength ones have more whip than the Cratos bar, but I just can't get one. I also look at the Monster Bar. It's all a matter of it.

Yeah, Tanner picked up the monster bar, but then I think they like doubled in price in the last couple months and shipping. Yeah. $300. And I think he bought it when the bar was $200 or $250. So he got it under $500. And then now I don't think it's anywhere close to that because I looked at it when Jake released the events for our summer show. And I was like, oh. And then I thought about getting the things from Doug.

And I'm just like, well, when I looked at the specs of the bar, it's really just like my kibuki bar with like two inches farther out. So unless you know in advance, the meet directors. because our meat director Jake had mentioned that he might make it look cool, which to me means he's just going to space the plates out of another foot and have the plates like as far out to the sleeve as possible. So unless he does that, like that's the only thing I wouldn't be able to recreate. But if it's just a regular bar, I mean, that's just even a power bar with all the plates pushed out because I think the one we're doing is going to be the 29, not a 27.

So, oh, I don't know. I would do, I would try a couple different just to like see where it's at. The biggest thing with that bar from my experience is that is if you are a, if I remember right, Keith, you are a very consistent speed puller. Like you're not, you're not like, bam, bam, what, whipping the bar and then like ripping it off the ground and it pauses at your knees. Like you move at a relatively uniform pace going up. That's fair. Yeah. So if that's you, that's how I pull to, you probably won't have issues with that bar.

I would either use the kabuki, and if you wanted to make it a little bit more wippy, just to, like, get used to any sort of contingencies you need to have during that lift, is I would just make it to where your plates are loaded at the end of the barbell loading sleeve using two collars. Yeah, that's actually... I think on YouTube a couple months ago, I actually asked you for the dimensions of the Cerberus, because I didn't have the dimensions of the bar that we're going to be using, so I figured the Cerberus one would have been close enough. And then when I got that, I was like, what's really just like three inches farther? out. So I don't know yet, but it's, uh, it'll be fun. There's a little, there's a little, I got at least one show before that to even work. I got to get through static monsters and then possibly a spring meet before I can worry about July too hard. Then, uh, the event will very likely finish. Um, I'm really thinking about just doing, uh, sandbags again. We'll do sandbags to overhead though. We'll probably be the difference there. Um, it'll be a two day show again, uh, but sandbag to overhead. Um, and it'll just be the same series. Like, like, it'll be. Um, it'll be the same series. Like, it'll be. Um, it. everybody gets the same series. So some freaking 120-pound chick managed to put a 300-pound bag overhead. That's freaking awesome.

But basically, it would just be lifted in succession. So starting at the 50, go it overhead, 75, 100, 125, 150 going up from there. Never, I don't think I've ever fully pressed a, well, maybe if I did, it was like my, like, my training bag. I think I've ever, like, pressed a bag with, that was in a substantial weight. Well, now I want to. It is a little tougher. But the nice part is that you can really get it. I don't know.

I think you can get a really good feel on where it's at. And if you're really good at it, you'll smash your palms in. And then you can really stabilize. I think you can do a lot with it. Do you push press it or is it like, do you use it get, does it get too wonky if you push press? Just get it up. Just get it up. For me, if I'm doing it.

strategically. Yeah, like I don't have an aggressive dip either. Like I'm pretty static overhead. It's, I'm not a remarkable strong man either. I've only ever won one. national title and it was within the veteran community. So like I was doing the whole like I'm the number one with this category in this category, this category, this category, I was doing that number. But I'm by no means extraordinary. But what I find is that just a nice pause in your dip and

then just explode up. I push press it, but I also don't push jerk it. I think it works well. Uniform speed is the important part. And then of course tricep lockout, anything overhead like that, especially when your arms are coming in versus out. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Your triceps are going to be significantly more tech. I just don't think the reason I said it, Keith, is I don't think there is a strategy to it. It's going to be based on your strengths, right?

Like, when I overhead press, I might push press the log, but I don't push press the axle. Right? Like, does that make sense? No, I understand. Right? It's because I'm engaging the lats instead of the shoulders. or the triceps instead of that. So I just don't think there's a strategic version to that.

Now I'm going to go and try an overhead press my sandbags to see how I would do that because you are going to be closer in, right? So when you're over, like I, when you do a stone again, like it's not the same as doing a barbell or doing a log or doing something like that because you have to find the handholds. You might be like this trying to do a stone overhead. how do you say what's your strategy for that? Like you don't. Yeah, you could probably like game it.

With Kag overhead, for instance, you'll have a high, low, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, because that's easier, right? You might be able to do some of that with a strong man bag as well. I've never tried to, but I imagine like from the lap, roll it up, get it up to the chest, get underneath. I don't know if getting you know how high, low would be something I'd recommend there, but I imagine that you could if you really wanted to.

But yeah, you can do it. I do it pretty often when I am training just with like lighter bags, like hunters. And I'll do, you know, a couple 10 reps or whatever. It's not too bad. It's good for you, I think. By the way, my shoulder hurts. Yeah, I was going to say, like, this is. By the way, my back hurts.

Act. Actively the most injured podcast guests we possibly have ever had. You know, he's giving out a lifting. No, no. We've had some pretty beat up fellas and heard some traumatic injury stories that we don't want to relive. The other thing I like about sandbags is that like, sure, it can suck if you drop it on yourself. But it's not like watching World Strongest Man when Zadryna Saviscus drops an Atlas stone on his chest. Yeah.

Yeah, I'd rather take a sandbag to the head than a like neural accent. Who was the Canadian that, the Canadian that dropped the log onto his lens? and was just gone. It was a, uh, Oh, man, I don't,

I, I, I, I, I, I remember what you're talking about. I don't remember who, um,

year one of me doing meat directing, I had one of the females do that with the log. And if you, I'm pretty sure somebody has video of it, because I've seen video of me, I dove trying to like, yeah, because I saw her going down and she tried to like,

go down and like turn to go away, but her leg was still fully extended. and the log was coming down. And it still got her. She kind of limped around for a little bit, but she was fine. But I like dove into the platform trying to make sure she didn't get crushed by that thing. How's the liability? Like, is it all through Iron Podium?

Like, does your meet director thing through Iron Podium buy you an insurance, then like a liability thing? Or how does that work? Yeah. So first off, I have private insurance for the gym. All my stuff for the gym is my personal training company. which is Iron Right Athletics. Everything else is DBA.

I'm doing business as the Kurt Locker channel underneath Iron Right Athletics, and I carry liability insurance there. For the actual meat itself, you get liability insurance through United States Strongman, which is done through. Oh, it's through. So yeah, my certificate is signed. And then I protect Garage Gym Experiment, Home GymCon, Iron Right Athletics, the Kurt Locker, Curtis Stads of old.

I put all those. And of course the venue. You have to put the venue. Gotcha. But yeah, I think I get like, I get a pretty good coverage. So I think I have, I think I have a three, I think I have like a $1 million or $3 million policy for Ironwright. Because I don't want to get sued by a stupid client. But like, can they?

Like, do you not have to sign a waiver to be like? You have to sign a waiver as well. But, you know, it's, I highly doubt. What are waivers at this rate, right? Yeah. I mean, and they don't even have to like really take you to court. They just got to get you to have to get a lawyer and they've got you. Yeah.

But, you know, I carry mine. Plus, you have to do. If you want to do United States Strongman, you do have to have insurance and it's through them. So it's good. If they were to sue. And I was, I get the kicker insurance as well. There's like an extra bit of insurance. And I'm always like, yes.

I've been doing enough shows and seen people. I've seen some pretty tremendous. injuries at a few different shows. I'm like, if that guy wanted to be a douche, like he could like, like hurt the beat director financially if he just wanted to be a douche. So I, uh, I also do a lot to,

uh, so JD Jim equipped is a really good example of this. I got to give JD tons of freaking credit because when he first approached me last year, I guess it would have been like two years ago now, uh, about making the

implement for the Hercules hold. I was like, absolutely I would love to. It must be safe. And I sent him the video of the guy who like pulls it over on himself. And I gave him this list of requirements. And it was exhaustive. Like I was like it cannot be able to be, you can't be able to pull it up past 85 degrees or something like that. And also can't fall further than X amount of inches. And he, he came through man. He made an outstanding implement. Like that thing is super safe. The most dangerous part about using that implement is for me when I'm pushing up the side

if the athlete was to just like take the handles and then in that split second that I go to let go, if he was just to let go, like it would probably come and hit me in the face. And with those heavy weights, we were loading like 700 pounds per hand.

Like 7 to 800 pounds per hand. So that would have hurt. But I mean, that thing is super safe. But I also put a lot of effort into being safe. Like we had a sweeper last year and his whole job was just a sweep in between athletes because I didn't want anybody slipping

on that polished concrete. We try to make sure that everything's spaced outright. We put a lot of effort. Strongman is not inherently dangerous. I disagree with anybody that would say otherwise. There are certain aspects of strength events that carry risk, but it's not

inherently dangerous sports. I try to cut out anything I can while still making it a spectacle. because that's a part of it as well. So it's a fairly safe ship. To hear? YouTube. So you mentioned the hiatus.

Those that just because you went from kind of being, you could probably just kind of phone, not phone on your job, but you knew how to do your military job. And then you come home and work on your YouTube. And then now you've started this whole new career. So the last six months, I'm assuming that's why YouTube has kind of been on pause.

Yeah. So I think I've, let me, I'll pull up my YouTube studio. I'm pretty sure my last video was like 60 days ago. go. Okay. So I'm only on like a little two-monther. Basically, yeah, it was a, some trade show stuff, a little bit of work stuff, but you kind of said it. Like, you know, I worked long hours

when I was military as well, but it was very, I knew when things were happening. A little bit of it was brands. I do have a couple backlog brands for like more affordable cardio pieces, for instance. But, you know, there's just less brands working with smaller creators like me. Sometimes. There's also just some brands that don't want to work with me. I'm not an asshole by any means when I review things. I'm very much like work with companies. Like you would never see me get sued. But you're also not going to suck their dick. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just one of those where some of my favorite people suck dick. Yeah. We know. But it's just, yeah, it just kind of fell by the wayside. So yeah, it looks like my last video was actually. my 10 non-gim items that actually run my gym and that was

December 12th. So, Mass and I was the last video that Tanner watched before they came up with their idea for this week's video. Probably, yeah. I came up with some pretty off the wall. You see my nerd stuff come through. I've got a few that are on the thing, but another thing that I interrupted was the freaking weather, dude. It just got cold and I'm older now and I'm fucking pissed. What do you have for a bit? Yeah, it's so dumb cold.

Everywhere. You're in Ohio, right? So you're close to us. Yeah, it was freaking cold, man. Like, it was like my pipes were freezing in the house. So, like, our bathroom that's like on the front of the house, the toilet feedline froze. So, like, you could still use the toilet, but you had to have a cup to, like, put the water from the sink into the top of the toilet to make sure you could flush your poo-poo down. But I don't have a heater out there. I used to have, like, a propane, like one of those, you screw it under the top of the propane heaters.

and it was like an 80,000 BTU thing. Yeah, it was big and it worked pretty well, but the fumes were bad with it. And once it started making weird noises and kind of like caught fire this one time. So I kind of put it out and put it out to patch here. You got to find yourself a nice heat and put it on the wish list for next year. So me and the wife just talked about that.

So now that we're out and we can like be in one place for a while, probably going to see an addition on the garage at some point, probably do a heater. We'll say, yeah, it's just expensive. And Mr. Cool doesn't want to work with me. I know because I message to Ness. Well, I appreciate your YouTube channel. There's a lot of Strongman stuff on there.

That's the one thing I feel. I mean, the shitty thing, there's not enough of a market to make it financially viable to put a lot of effort in a strong man, but like the 20 of us would love it and watch the shit of. Like, watching like, I want to see reviews on Hussafelt Stones and like all this random, like, Like every, but then it's, I don't know, shit that I want to buy.

I just feel like so much stuff that you're so much stuff getting reviewed. It's just like, I don't have $12,000 to go buy reps new this or rogues knew that or, you know, it's just. I get it. That's why I started the channel. Again, like I wanted to get free shit. And, uh, and like I was sick of watching Coop get like a free Soren X rack. But the other thing, um, to what, to your point is nobody makes content on like strongman stuff. It's just not really a thing.

So like there's tangential. So like Alan Thrall will make, you know, a gym tour where he shows all the stuff. And he might get, he might say like, I like this or I don't like this. But like that's not that's not the content, you know, that people are wanting there. And you know what's really interesting about Strongman is you're right. It is such a, it seems like such a small market of people that want to buy the equipment. So you're right to like do the reviews as tough. but what is the biggest draw to like most large conventions?

So like when you think about the Arnold, what do you think about? You think about the strongman classic. Like that's what you think about. You think about the strongest women and men going out there and doing some absolutely. It's the heaviest show. Like it's known as the heaviest show. And that's what people are really drawn to. And I would argue that strong man probably has a big.

your general population poll than like CrossFit or high rocks or whatever or even powerlifting i i i don't i don't mean to interrupt but i kind of do you tell somebody that you lift heavy and the first thing they do is they go oh like the thing i used to watch on tsn after wrestling yep they're talking about world's strongest man exactly you're like uh no i i do powerlifting it's a one rep max and uh i get three attempts and uh they all have to be like perfectly like aligned and blah, blah, blah. But, but that, like, you turn around and you go to these companies, and they're like, no, we're only, we're only interested in powerlifting.

So I see what you're saying, for sure. I think it, I bet a lot of it is, like, so how many, like, out of the 100 strong men that I personally know, like, only 15 of them have home gyms. Out of the thousand powerlifters, I know, like, 800 of them have home gyms kind of thing. Like, I think the ratio of people that do CrossFit and powerlifting and anything else with barbell sports that train in a home gym is significant. higher than Strongman because

well yeah there's probably a barrier to access for sure when it comes to that right because like you know you got you got implement you've got and that's the shit I want reviews on I know and I'm with you on that I've done a lot of them too so at the same time

like what do you what do you need for power lifting you need a barbell and some plates right and that but what do you need for Strongman you need a sandbag and you need this and you need that and you need that like really you don't. Scantz sent me a thing that was like

it was this book on how to use How to train Strongman in a regular gym? Yep. My Cal Beck? Yeah. So like Cal Beck has been a huge advocate and he's done a lot for the community.

One of my volunteers, Safier or Mo, he's, that's his coach. Cale's an awesome guy and like I know people that know Cale. I don't know Cail directly personally, but like I know Mike Patelino

who knows Cale. but yeah it's just one of those weird things where like strong men generally train is like a part of a crew it's like show up somewhere you train there's a barrier to entry and then it's not even that you need one sandbag it's that you need 20 you know like yeah uh i've got two full sets of freedom strength sandbags dude like think about that for a second let that settle for a second i have two complete sets i don't have the room for that yeah that's why i've got the barred so eight or nine sandbags and it has zero like two years ago. It's how she goes, baby. Yeah, you get it. And so the other thing that makes it hard to review is that so often, like, so I'm not cool enough to work with Fringe. Peter Keller won't talk to me or whatever. I'm sure he would if I was to reach out to him, but,

but I've never reviewed a French piece, but Fringe gives out, like, tons of free equipment to all the reviewers. Um, like Mike Bartos would be the equivalent, right? So like Mike Bartos makes quality, strong man equipment. Um, I've never gotten a, single free thing from him. The only free thing I've ever gotten from Mike is because he was late delivering me a circus dumbbell so he paid for UPS as that I'm sorry because

he was late. And like he made up for it. I love the quality of my circus dumbbell from Bartos, but I have to go buy shitty plates now because only like three of my your plates fit on it. So I can't load like How old is yours?

So I think I bought it used, but it was couldn't have been more than a four or five years old. Yeah, so you got... They bought it new. I know what stock you got. I'm part of the reason that Mike changed that.

So I was... Yeah, so if you watch my power pin review from like, gosh, like 2019, I got a power pin. And that was the problem I had is that, like, I didn't have, they were not tight tolerance plates, but I couldn't fit my plates on there.

It was like those old rogue gun metal ones. The, like, they were kind of like an OG deep dish kind of thing. And those wouldn't fit. And I went to him and he made it right. And like he realized that the bar stock he was using was too thick. Yeah. And so he's right at two inches or more.

But that would have happened if the review didn't happen. And like it was a known thing. So it would be awesome if like it would all that to say like to rep for instance. They sent me the oxy list for free. Like I didn't pay for that. There were some requirements that came with. it like I had to bring it to home gym con and all this, which I don't mind. I'll do that all day. So they were able to get me that, which is great. So I have that now to review and to do content with.

But like smaller companies like Bartos or Texas Power Concepts or Alan Beninga, Pitbull, like if he was to do it. They're not going to send that stuff for free because they can't afford. They're not doing the volume to justify the marketing. So it's just, it's kind of tough. And you're at the mercy of what you're at the mercy of what you're you have access to and what you've purchased and that's why the reviews are slower there. I've really struggled. I'm happy that you talked about this because I've struggled with whether I should even keep going with Strongman stuff, not necessarily competing or doing comps, but just on the YouTube in general, I know that like you and the 20 other diehards out there are going to watch every

single second of that video and you're not going to skip the ads or whatever. but dude like those videos they tank like no one gives a shit because I don't give up because like that's the hard that's not sucks about this the market today

like everyone that's got the affiliate thing they're all trying to say the $20,000 item and it's like I don't give a fuck about that like like like I like Glax's a good buddy but I don't want to watch all his videos nowadays it's like it's all like they're good quality videos I do watch them but it's like I'm watching a video

for something I know I'm not going to buy just because I'm like friends with a person that's put in the video video out and it's like that gets repetitive and old like I'm like like Brandon's the only one putting out like stuff like like bars regularly like and even he's like kind of slowed down I'm putting bars you know

he's doing his blog stuff now yeah which that's that's kind of cool too because you know him long enough it's like that's actually cool to see that side but like I just miss review game from like six years ago when it was like attachments and barbells and like just basic four post racks and like nothing I don't know I'm just meat potatoes

I'm looking through my videos right now and I know that like I'm a bit heavy on the sports performance stuff. So like the OVR sprints, right? Like I knew that that was going to do badly. Yeah, but like people. Flywheel and stuff too. Yeah, the flywheel stuff. I love

flywheel stuff. Flywheel stuff is great. Is your French cleat video one of your better ones? Just got to figure it because that's more, that might like cross over to like DIY stuff and people that aren't even gym related that might come across something like that. You know, the French cleat video, if I remember right, I'm trying to get to it right now.

it actually didn't do that good. It was one of those weird, like the DIY stuff, that was kind of a weird time too, because I was between gyms and, like, moving into that gym. And I was trying to figure out, because, like, at the time, I was still playing with the idea of doing, like, a weekly training vlog.

There was just a lot of, a lot of different changes. Holy shit, dude, I get old. Oh, and that's also when I was doing Kabuki training. That's why there's all these other videos. I used to have to upload my training once a week. Yeah, so this should be it right here. I know this is super exciting stuff.

Can you share screens on this? We'd have to give you privileges, I think. I don't think it's not something we're fancy enough. And we don't do video. I mean, so we post YouTube, but it's just the audio with the thumbnail. Because like Nate does edit stuff out and like shortens, pauses and stuff.

And I know you can do that on Stream Yard, but we never really got into that. we just have always been on Zoom and it's just it's easy for us nobody wants to see me and Joey's face out there and like I'm like picking my nose or something like I don't need that I don't need some ass I'm literally picking my teeth right now

like the whole past 20 minutes I've been like a piece of chicken in my teeth you've been fighting with and that's probably where we differ because actually I'll get into that while you're looking at that I'll throw a question at she's like you were doing really good there with you essentially you had a podcast

but it was just you posting interviews on your YouTube video and I only get ever actually triculated, trickled to? Is it matriculian? That's not a word. It is a word, but I don't think it's the word you want. Your YouTube videos never made it over to like a podcast platform. I don't believe.

So I was trying it out. I did like 12. And it was, they were fun. I tried to make them fun. I just wanted to make them like me talking to people like the people. I wanted to talk about. Yeah, just general stuff.

I just wanted to see if it was something I could keep. up. And I love Andrew Hainesis to death, but it died with Andrew Hainis because it was like, I'm trying to get you on your number eight. Like Andrew coached me for a while. I'm friends with the guy. Really interesting dude. Plus he was a dog handler. So in my previous career field, I would have worked with him a lot or his career field a lot. So we just got along pretty well. But yeah, it just kind of like never happened over and over and over. And then it was like I went on mission for a week or something like that, came back, missed the post, tried to redo it, did another one.

And it just became, I don't know, man, it was like... It's a lot. Yeah, it's a lot. So anyways, my mass storage video actually did better than I thought. It was the paint, the level platform video that did not do well. No one gives a shit that my entire platform is leveled, the whole like 20 by 12 or whatever. but yeah the French cleat video still only got like

30, like 3,000 views so I mean not not terrible but also not great now I'm kind of curious so yeah the Titan, the old Titan Fitness video that I did where I just bash Titan Fitness is still my number one performer at 60,000 views

but when it comes to YouTube I just need to focus on it if I want it to be great you know there's an algorithm you got to do the algorithm what I've always found with this is I have no desire to do this as a living. This has always been a side hustle for me, something I do for fun. So I mostly don't give a shit. Like I'm going to make content I like.

Also, like, I hope you guys are successful with affiliate marketing because I'm fucking not. And I'm so sick. We got a lot of bucks collectively, I think. And it's just, you know, we joke that it goes to get us a speedboat, but it essentially pays for stickers and like got my home gym con tickets one year like that was yeah it's just it sucks like

uh and it's I hope that other brands or other people are getting these affiliate marketing things but I'll even talk to people that are like oh I used your link and I'm like no like yeah yeah that was denied yeah and it's been like really shitty so like it's just come to the point where like I'm not big enough for brand

to necessarily want to work with me on a regular. And I'm also not a rising star. Like Kenzie's a really good example. She's doing great freaking work. And she's growing super rapidly. And she's getting the backing she needs from companies to continue that trajectory. I have had almost the exact same analytics for eight years. And basically, this is what I know.

I will grow at about 100 subscribers per month. every single month, forever, no matter what. Like, that's it. Yeah, my, my numbers suck, but nobody clicks on my links, which is fine. My dad left just slow and steady. Yeah, yeah, yeah, just one pound at a time, right? You can't set more than one. Isn't that you're thinking?

He can't do more than a one pound PR? I, sometimes I do that. He just tracks his one pound peers. I did have a, I do. I did have a, well, I've also gotten to where, like, I need that extra motivation and getting a two and a half pound rep PR still gets me happy and I'll ring I have that I have that orange bell now that dinner bell

like nothing gets it's nothing kicks my endorphins into high gear than when I get a fucking scream fuck yeah and ring my bell like I don't care he's like he's whatever works for you works for you whatever works for me works for me it's Pavlovian for him now that bell just like does it throw him

yeah I love that I love being able to ring that bell I mean there was a there was a time where social media was do what you like and people will come and now it's not like that anymore. Now it's like, oh, you got to have the right thumbnail. You got to have the right cover. You got to have the right song.

You got to have the right blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, or else we won't push your stuff. And, you know, I grew up. I wouldn't say I grew up. I learned social media by the, if you post it and it's good, people will like it. But now it's if you post it and it's good, we're going to bury it because you didn't use the right anything. Yeah. And, yeah, that's... That's been my frustration, too.

I'll say that I put a lot more effort into. So with some of the content that we're going to start doing for my job now, a lot of the licks that I've learned as far as, like, how to theme a channel, how to stick with a certain content type, you know, all these lessons that I've learned through the years of doing content reviews, personal training stuff. I got really stoned on like painkillers and decided I was going to record a rehab video in 2019. That's a fun one. It's like me trying to be artsy while I'm blasted on like bike it in or some shit.

We used to be a proper freaking country where you could just court what you wanted and people would watch it. Exactly. Yeah. Man. But it's just one of those things. I just don't want to do it as a job. you know, if you want to do this job, that's fucking great. I'm happy for you.

I don't give a shit. So I'm going to continue to do. I look up to like the Sean Rines of the world who, you know, he makes content that he wants to make. That was supposed to do the podcasting thing, right? And he does what he wants. He doesn't do what the algorithm wants. And, you know, he's successful. Joe Rogan's very similar.

You know, he does the content he wants to do. If you look at the successful people, not sure, there is a timing aspect to it. but yeah like make content you love and if people assimilate to you and they like you as a personality which is probably a little bit of my problem uh i i would have to place the argument that no jo rogan doesn't get to do what he loves and it just shows up jo rogan is fucking joe rogan like he's one of the the top celebrities in north america he could he could literally post himself drying his hands and it would get more views than any video I've ever posted to my life. And I don't think that's because he's doing what he loves. It's because he's Joe Rogan. Well, I've met that more from like the

intent. So like he's like so Sean Ryan and him, I bring them both up because they've spoken about the intent behind the shows that they bring. And a lot of it is just I want to make. So like Joe Rogan talks about how he used to just be him and his friends got together, got drunk and recorded themselves and posted it on the internet. Yeah. And that's, that's the, that's like the formation of the Joe Rogan experience.

Oh, that's not the Kurt Russell, uh, podcast we were talking about earlier. That's not the Kurt Russell one. No, I should listen to it. My brain was going.

I thought it was Kurt Russell time. I do send the Instagrams for those, uh, threatening messages every once in a while to like give up. Give up the name. Uh, I think we got to, I got to ask you about one funny story and we probably should move on to some games

because we still got to use them to get to get. for sure. Yeah. It's 845. Like we could talk all night, but I don't want you to hit us with that. I got to go and we still got four games. So one funny story someone submitted. If it's not something that's kosher to talk about, we'll just move on.

But someone specifically says he has a good story about a burn mark on his arm from a spoon while in the service. Is that something you're comfortable sharing? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So back, I used to fix airplanes. When I first came in the military, I fixed airplanes for a while. So I met up with some EOD guys. I knew I wanted to retrain into EOD, and so we were getting super trashed at a party. And they liked to beat me up.

Like, I was like the, what do they call when they have like a fraternity and you're trying to get a rush or something like that? Yeah, that sounds like. Yeah, yeah. So like they would just like, like the one guy, his son was like a professional fighter. So every single time that this guy's son and I were at a party, we'd get drunk. And then they'd like pay to watch him beat me up. And he was a good fighter too. Like he whoop my ass.

So yeah, one of these parties, this very important person in my career, he actually became a very important person in my career. He got super trashed and he took and he put a bunch of spoons on the stove inside of a pot of water. And he's like, oh, I'm going to burn the fuck out of all these pieces of shit. And like, yeah, at the time we thought it was funny. and his wife was like, no, and she's like babysitting him. And so she takes the pot of hot water, throws it out, puts the spoons back in the drawer. And then this guy runs back up and he's like, ha, ha, jokes on her.

And he just puts the spoons directly on the burner. And so went and got his son, who's this fighter guy. And he's like, hold Kurt down. And they like held me down. And they burned my arm. And then like a bunch of guys like all burn themselves. I don't know. It was a weird time.

2006, Alaska, man. things got wild. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, there it is. Alaska, you should have, you bury the leaves with Alaska. Did it a lot of that. It makes a little more sense now because I was like, this is the most depressing fucking story I've ever heard.

Like, okay, Alaska makes sense. So we all wake up the next morning. It's downright scary. And I'm like laying like this. And this is where the scars is at. It's really hard to see. But it's, this is where it's at. And like, like, the skin peels off on my forehead.

I'm like, ah, and then ended up getting infected. And like other guys are waking up. and they're like, oh, here's mine or here's mine. There's one guy who looks like a set of Mickey ears because I guess he flinched. He's like, if he held down, just do it and like got burned twice. And then like one guy came up and he's like, yeah, you guys are idiots. I didn't get burned at all. And we like beat the shit out of them.

It was like the one thing he shouldn't have said. Listen here, homo, you didn't get beat up like the rest of us, puku. We did that once. It ended up getting infected. I got hospitalized for it. And so you have to remember now I'm having to explain to military leadership. They're like, well, how did you get this arm and how did it get infected? So now it's like, do I want to get in trouble for telling this alcohol-related incident where we all got super drunk and burned each other with spoons and get everybody in trouble?

Or was I working on my truck and burned my forearm on the header of the truck? Yeah. Because I did give it time to cool down. Yeah. That's the, that's probably the move. at that point, I guess. Until all the other people also got infected. And now suddenly...

Until that. We were all working on the same truck, man. Same hitters. One time we did that, God, this is going to sound so stupid, and I can't believe I'm sharing this. A buddy of mine, weird guy,

Love him, his name's Nick. We took a coat hanger, and we turned it into a penis. under his request. This was under his request. And we put it in the fire and he said, okay, brand me. This was all his idea.

But he flinched. So he had a double dick on his leg. That's great. I love that. That's great, dude. Full circle back to Kurt's X-ray. Called him Dick Farn. Yeah, it actually is, right? We called him Dick Farned. farm for years because he just had two

dicks on his leg. All right. I think we can you want to, are you familiar with Fuck Mary Kill, Kurt? I am. Yeah. Okay. So I got I got two that I'm, I'm debating on. So you want to go Kabuki

products or Black Widow products? FMK. Oh, let's go Kabuki because they don't exist anymore. It's more fun. So have you used all their bars or I guess? Okay. So, let's see I'm going to go

the Cadillac bar specifically the Duffalo Bar and I don't know if you're Are you a trap bar guy or are you a PR deadlift guy Which one's gonna make that harder? Oh probably the

deadlift bar Okay so Cadillac Bar Duffalo Bar Kabuki Deadlift Bar the PR deadlift bar Yeah I'm gonna Because it'd be fun

I'm gonna fuck that deadlift bar. I'm going to regret it. It's going to be like that the best I ever had. But it's so useless. You can only do one thing with it. I'm going to marry the Duffalo bar because it's got more than one use and legitimately got me through my shoulder surgery because I couldn't get my shoulder into position.

And like we just go way back. It's like it was there to take care of me. I love it. And I'm going to kill the Cadillac bar, which also hurts. hurts. Like, you know, it should never be easy to kill unless it's a terrorist. And, yeah, it hurts to kill the Cadillac Bar, but I got to kill that thing because, I mean, all that it does is bench overhead, a little bit of rowing, and ultimately the other two just beat it out.

Good answer, good answer. And then Joe is going to hit you with some Rushmore. Yeah, I actually want to hear your top four drummers, your Mount Rushmore of drummers. Let's go, dude. All right. All right. All right. So number one of all times. is uh you know i'm probably i'm i'm like 38 i think 39 38 38 uh i like neil peart from rush of course i uh so i played drums in high school middle school high school played in bands the whole nine uh super inspired by neil peart absolutely just legend as far as things go especially like when you look at how he came out after his uh his wife and his daughter died and he did that whole like hiatus where he went and rode a motorcycle for like a year.

He changed up everything he did. He started playing traditional grip. He started wearing like ballet shoes while he played, which was something that I tried to emulate a little bit. And it was like my precursor to barefoot shoes. So top four is let's transition. Did you know the Godsmack song, Realign, is about that? Oh, no way.

Is it really? Yeah. No, shit. I'm going to have to go re-listing. So Neil Pert, I guess, jumped on a motorcycle and drove across Canada. Yep. Because he's Canadian. He's from actually here, New Toronto.

Got a BMW motorcycle. Yeah. And when he needed to sort himself out, he got on a motorcycle, drove across Canada. And that was the first song that Godsmack ever wrote that wasn't personal. They said they wrote it about Neil Perts right across North America. I want to say I'm wrong about that. I'd like to say somebody's going to say like, no, Joey, you're dumb. you're stupid, but I'm fairly certain.

That's what that song is about. Yeah. Wrong again, Joey. Oh, to look it up. Yeah. The book is called Ghost Rider. It's a good book. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yes. Okay. I'm fairly certain I'm I'm correct on that. Yep. So then Ghost Writers also,

they did a song called Ghost Rider. And mind you, Neil Paird also wrote all the lyrics to all Rush songs. A little known fact about Rush, if you, if you like Rush, I mean, who doesn't. But yeah, a lot of of just really good history there. Plus, I getty Lee, Alex Lifeson and Neil Kurt all getting on a trailer park boys episode is always

one. Yep. Yep. They're Park Boys, man. So transition number two, I'm going to go, this is going to throw some people off, but Carter Buford, Dave Matthews man, absolutely inspiring methodology to the way that he plays. He plays

left hand open for a lot of his stuff. Now, for people that don't know, when you play drums, normally, you'll play right-handed cross stick. So like your right-hand is coming over your left, and you're playing the high-hats, and you're playing the snare drum. Now, if you're left-handed, you can do a left-hand version of that, where basically you play left-hand cross, where the high-hats are on the opposite side, the snare drum's on the opposite side. But Carter Bootford actually, he played left-hand open. So he played his left-hand on the high-hats and would

play his kit open. As a result of that, he was able to use, if you listen to a lot of Dave Matthews. There's a lot of percussion, um, additional notes that are occurring during that music. And it's because he didn't have to like reach underneath his arm or reach over his arm in order to play the rest of his kit. Being left hand open, it's right there. And so as I play, there were certain songs I would try to play left hand open or I would try to play left hand open with like an alternate, uh, like a symbol ride. So like I would do like a high hat symbol, uh, ride symbol variation where I would almost play like a paradigdle across the two and then work in the snare drum. But yeah, just a lot of inspiring stuff there.

And he's just a solid musician. Regardless of what people think about Dave Matthews band, I don't care. I'm a fan, but I'm also very eclectic in nature in the way that I like that. I didn't know any of that. That's incredible. Yeah, no, he, it's, watch his clinics from back in the day. I'm going to have a hard time only getting out of four. I'm really realizing quickly.

So Joey Jordan's in. technically you have five you have your four round much mount rush more and then you have your alien face oh that's right that's right so yes all right so we're going to go uh joey jordinson from slip nut hell yes hell yes joey is an animal man like absolutely animal um i was sad to see him go i understood all the reasons and everything but still i felt that he made joey jordanson is what made slipnot Like the drum solo where they tilt the, they tilted the whole drum platform up like that. He went almost upside down.

Yeah, I know. It was so visual and it was so good. And he did a good job too because I think that with metal, a lot of people just assume that you know how to play bass to them really fast and you hit things hard. But Joey is great. Like Joey is super freaking talented. There's nothing in particular I can talk about.

Like I talked about with me like Peart and with, Beauford, but, like, Joy Jordensen is definitely up there as far as, like, all-time metal drummers, only to... It said that he brought blast beats to the general public. Ooh, actually, that's a really... Yeah, it's suddenly... Yeah, Joey Jordensen, Slipknot was being played on rock stations. Duality was being played on rock stations, right?

And that's... Joey Jordson helped do that, right? Through the sound, sure. And the sound had to be there, too, because there was a balance that you had to do to get on the radio. Yeah. The only other metal drummer that I will say, yeah, he was metal. As Mike Portnoy, Dream Theater. Yep.

Yep. With Ted Schen experiment. So Mike Portnoy is just freaking amazing. Like just all time, absolutely amazing, super melodic. Honor thy father, the intro to honor thy father. And then also, I like the way that he does time signature changes. so you'll be listening to a song and you'll be at like a 3-5 and then he'll go to a 4-4 and then transition to a 3-7 and you're like what the fuck is going on? Like if you're trying to tap this beat out, it's so hard to do.

And I remember being a kid in high school and I was like trying to play Dream Theater music. And I couldn't like I just could not figure out the time signatures. I couldn't figure out the changes. I couldn't figure out how to count a lot of those odd time signatures. So that's. That's four. That's four. All right, number five.

If you want, you don't have to. I'm going to kick in old school here, and I'm going to say Buddy Rich, buddy rich in his big band. I like old jazz music. I like, actually, I like big band music. I actually listen to Humberto Ramirez is one of my favorite jazz musicians. He has a big band in Puerto Rico, super talented. I just happened to be deployed down there once, and I got to see them live,

and that's why I know that particular group. But Buddy Rich was just great. Like he was a fantastic drummer. He was ahead of his time. The single-handed role, like, come on, son. Like, you can't beat Buddy Rich in the single-handed role. Plus his drum solos were, they were good, but they were visual for the time. And you have to think of like Buddy Rich in the big band was like 50, 60.

Yeah. And so to have like an aggressive drummer doing drum solos at these, orchestra type events is a big deal. Like that's, that's really cool for the percussion and drum world.

Is, is he the one that did the funky drummer? The most, the most sample drum beat of all time. I don't, I don't know if I've heard of that.

I know particularly because Public Enemy said the funky drummer in one of their... So that's a James Brown thing, right? I'm not positive. But I, I do think,

that the name you're saying to me is very familiar as being sampled very often in hip hop. Yeah, I don't know. I think it's a James Brown song. It's a song by James Brown, released in 1970. Okay.

Yeah, and the iconic drum break Blake, the iconic drum break is Clyde's double field, which is a freaking awesome name. Yeah, Stubblefield. But yeah, Buddy Rich is great, but it's all like black and white footage with him.

Like it's... Well, I knew I knew the name, but it was just one of those, like, I think I heard that through some hip-hop stuff, but... Any love for Danny Carey? So I love cool. I love Danny Carey. Just not making my... Not making my...

It's too weird. It's too weird sometimes. So I like... Well, I mean, they're tool, so... Yeah. I mean, what was the... Solace project? What was the side? Perfect Circle.

Was it perfect circle? Was that tool? Redone. The singer, the drummer was not in that. Danny Curry wasn't in a perfect circle. That would have been Josh Alexander for the most part. Danny Carey, I like, it was just, you know, he wasn't at all influential. And in my coming up in drums and percussion and all that kind of stuff. Very good.

I'm trying to think of other like honorable mentions. Dom Famularo. Dom Famularo. He was a clinician and was fantastic. He played traditional. He played a really cool triplet where he would do a repeated triplet on his high hat. And he would, because he held his drumsticks traditional, he would play the back and the front of the drumstick on the hi hat as he came up. And it was like a triple roll, like the whole time.

And he would just come in the middle and just roll on the high hat, roll through the rest of the kit. But he played both sides of the stick in this really visual graphic way and just absolutely skilled. You ever heard of the hip pickles? No. Dude, the Hit Pickles was like a marching percussion group. They're so freaking cool. They should have been more popular than they were. But it was a snare drummer.

It was a quad, you know, like the marching quads. But he had, I think there was six drums on it. And then the bass drummer had three drums stacked. So it was like big bass drum on the bottom, middle bass drum on the middle, and then a little bass drum on the top. And you had a cowbell. And they would go and do these events. It's super cheesy now.

go and I watch it with the my I'll let my girls watch it with me just to kind of relive my childhood a little but the hip pickles were freaking cool they were short-lived but they were super cool if you've never heard of them you go look at them yeah I will did you play drums I imagine you you must have some sort of knowledge of either metal or just uh metal mostly knowledge and yeah uh drummers are one of those things man I play drums for a super long time I regret getting out of it. I still go to guitar center and once I get past my little

bashful phase, I'll tear it up a little bit still. I thought about playing for church and stuff, but just I don't have enough time to do it. I need to do something. You've cut a lot on your plate. I got a few things going on. So I've heard.

So we had a decent amount of Instagram submissions. I'm going to cherry pick a couple real quick. We can make them quick haters if you want and we can get into the the closing game here. So mostly squat videos is asked, which kind of contradicts what I said earlier, but what are your safeties for a gator all capitalized submunition?

I'm assuming that's a bomb tech question. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he wants me to say something, so gators have the deployable trip lines. They can't have mag. This is what I'm going to say, right? I'm going to get naked. I'm going to go down there with a non-magnetic tool.

I'm going to have a drinky poo or two. I'm going to go do my thing. You're going to stay up here where all the safe people are. Use that zoom in lens so you can get this all on video, and I'm going to go take care of it. All I need is a lighter, a little bit of debt cord, and a knife. A non-ferrous knife,

and I'm pretty sure I'm going to be pretty well set. You're not going to get any listings like H.E. Frackack-H. Fratcock, Stryker, Trip, Mag, size of coos, out of me. Nice, I'm sure he'll hold. I'm sure that'll make sense to him. And then last week's guest, Big Rory, he asked us a few, I think he brought this up a couple times on his podcast

and he submitted it here. I think he says it in Jess, but he's asking for that trophy. We heard the story about the Iron Podium Mishap and him walking away. Dude, that first year, do you know that like one of the chicks stole a trophy? Just straight up. Like, I'm just going to, I'm going to throw it under the bus here.

I'm not going to throw it. game, but straight up stole a fucking trophy. But not like, it wasn't like you accidentally gave it or won and then she just home. She just like saw him on the table, took it and left. She comes up to me and she's like, we have to leave early. And I'm like, hey, thanks for coming out. She didn't put you. I was like, hey, thanks for coming out. Really appreciate it. Was there any feedback? No, cool. See you later. Um, and so then I'm going to go hand out awards and I get to her division and her, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

first place trophy for that division is just missing. Just straight up the door. Now, Rory's a little bit more. And she stole it. That's, yeah, what a, what a bitch. It's one thing to take, like, the, like, does she, and I mean, does she think she, like, I'm curious in her mind, like, did she think she won? You know, I don't know.

Like, that's, I don't know where it was that. We made that one right, um, because that was made by somebody else. Um, the reason that Rory did get remade right away was because, uh, the gentleman who made those trophies, uh, had kind of a falling out with me. we ended up making amends later. But yeah, I had kind of a falling out based on some sort of misunderstanding. And yeah, he was just like, fuck you, I'm not making your trophies. And Rorries was really embarrassing, though, because I, I, one of the things as a meat director you have to do is you have to.

And I took forever to do this last year because I had to do it right is you have to recheck the scoreboard, every single entry. because what had happened is a semicolon or something. It was like either a semicolon instead of a colon got imported into the Iron Podium. And it caused an entire weight division to not have one event count. And so when I went through, I was really rushed at the end because we were over time. And I was like, oh, we got to do awards. First form come here and grabbing awards and doing awards. Well, Rory had won.

But because this one event had not tabulated for his group, because of a fucking semi-colon, the other guy got the trophy. And so I ended up working it out. Like, everybody got worked out. I paid out of my own pocket because there's been cash prizes every year. I actually paid the other, I paid one of the guys out of my own pocket,

the one guy who made it money. And we made it right, but yeah, I totally fucked that up. Sorry, I can get you through. You literally gave my, I told him last week to eventually shut up that you gave him a

barbell, so you should be happy with that. I did give him a barbell. Yeah, I did keep a bar, you did. And the lasting memory that I remember from that show was like bag over bar and all these strong dudes doing novice doing like 79 reps. And I'm just like, so I kind of had something like that a couple weeks ago. I was doing a stone over bar off with one of the persons of the show. And we started way too light. And no one would like give us the heads up of like, yeah, hit 10 and then go to a heavier stone rather than just we did like 30 reps of the fucking lighter style.

It's horrible. But yeah, I'm glad you kind of. learned that from that to you know kind of people also need to learn when they're not a fucking novice anymore just my two cents like some people just aren't I'm still a novice joy so I'm a master's now

so it doesn't matter but if I was 35 I'd still be a novice did novice all the way until he was master's sure is fucking not gonna compete in the 275 because I'm not strong yeah the 275 is a scary class that's when like humans become looking a little bit more like giants

yeah but they're not tall All right. That was our... All right, so I got some affiliates and we'll get into unpaid or underrated. So, Barbell Rescue, home, JimCon, apparel from the Strength Co. Code Unpaid. It'll save you a little bit of money at all those locations and, you know, just be great. So, Kurt, we have a game slightly similar to overrated, underrated, but our little spin on it is it's unpaid or underrated.

So unpaid is shitty and underrated's awesome. So we're going to hit you with a handful of questions here. unpaid or underrated caliber of your sidearm that you carry. Oh, yeah. That was my submission. I think it's

unpaid. No fucking cares. Just put holes in the fucker's head. No. So, yeah, I think people make a huge deal out of it and they try to be like, oh, knock down power, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. At the end of the day, it's like,

hey, man, if you carry or if you shoot, just like, shoot. and if someone tries to like kill you, kill them, I guess. I don't know. If they don't go down after one, hit them again. One second. Is Ohio open carry? Yeah.

So it's open carry and it's constitutional carry. I'm carrying about 99% of the time that you see me. Okay. Because I know at the Arnold, like, there's big signs that are like no fire. arms. And I had to be like, as somebody from Canada where you don't need those signs, I was just like, that's weird. But also, I'm in Ohio, so I should probably just assume.

So I just didn't know that. It's also because it's constitutional carry. So you don't need to have a concealed carry license to conceal carry. You can just be over the age of 21, I think, to have a, you obviously can't have a record or anything. You have to be able to legally obtain a firearm. And you still have to follow certain rules. but yeah, they put those signs up so that you can't carry there.

It has to be very visibly marked. Another store that I'm constantly having to ditch my gun and before I go in there is whole paycheck. Those fuckers don't let you carry in there either. And it's super irritating when I get all the way to the door and I'm a, I am a rule follower in that sense. That's good. Yeah, the one time you don't is the time you fucking go to jail.

That's what I mean. So like at the door, you have to check your No, I go back to my truck and put it in a lockbox. Oh, okay. There's not some, there's not a, there's not a fucking hushet there. It's not like the movie. Like a co-check of garbage. Yeah.

It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, this isn't deadwood in the fucking 1800s. It's, it's not really an FU culture at all either. It's a, it's a responsible culture. I, I practice a lot in between meetings. Actually, like, we're, so on the video, we're in my office where I sit for work. and I have this sitting right next to my computer and it's got a laser cartridge in it and I'll do precision training in here in between meetings for work. So I'll,

I have a target system that uses a phone and all that kind of stuff and I'll set up on one side of the room and, you know, shooting. It's something fun that I do. I grew up with firearms. I carry firearms. I never, you know,

I don't want to have to use my firearm. in self-defense, but I'm also not going to be that guy that shows up on prepared. Makes sense. Yeah, as a Canadian, wild. Absolutely wild. You got to come hang out, dude. Right. Unpaid or underrated Amazon collapsible dollies.

Oh, my fuck. Oh, my God. So that was a mistake in a half. Those are not rated for what they say that they're rated for. that is all I got to say about that. They are unpaid. Unpaid is shitty. Yeah, unpaid is shitty.

Do you have, so a follow up to that, though, yeah, unpaid. Is there a, like, I have just a regular, I've had the same dolly. I think I bought it big lots 20 years ago. And I tried to move like a 230 pound bag with it the other day. And it's like, I don't know if it's the lips not. I just, is there a perfect sandbag dolly for the home gym? So I'm probably going to be making one. a modified one, obviously,

and it's just going to be something I'd make. It needs to have large front forks so that you can get under and pick it up, reinforced, heavy steel shits, and non-inflatable tires. Yeah, so hard, hard tires the way to go. Because I have the struggle of, like, I want sandbags in my basement and in the garage

because I'm going to do, but I also can't afford to have every 25-pound thing twice. So, and theoretically, I need to take some of the basement sandbags out back out to the garage in the springtime, but it's like, it's miserable. And I actually have a 225 out in the garage or 230 that like I, because I have two of them as I got a good deal on a second one. But like I try, that's the one I tried to dolly into the basement because I, that's like would be like a pretty, it's like more or less my max carry, give or take. And I can do that up a stairwell and then downstairs. Like I can carry it straight for like 50 feet, but I can't fucking maneuver like this.

So I tried to dolly it and it's just like my tires are flat. It doesn't sit on the lip. I even like have a ratchet's trap to it and I'm like I get it all the way of the stairs. I'm like, well, I can get it to the stairs but I can't make the turn and it's just like, ugh, okay. So funny enough, my father-in-law has a dolly from like the 60s or 70s that is really good at it. Like it's in the barn where all the stuff gets stored. I think works like a champ.

But the one that Keith is referencing were these ones off of Amazon and they broke down to the size I needed them. And they bent like within minutes of use. just complete and total failure. Yeah, good stuff. Last one for me. Unpaid or underrated. So not made in the USA, but made in North America. Companies that brand made in North America

or just the concept of North America branding. Are we counting Mexico? I mean, it's North America. Yeah. Some people count Mexico with South America. Because it's technically central, but. H-on. H-on.

Now you got me questioning. is like I don't think I've ever thought I thought is Mexican? So it's technically Central America so nobody so I guess And we've talked about it before There's the Machiaadors right So the macchiadores exist right on the Mexican

and American border And they will say made in America But it's Mexican workers traveling over the border To make those things in American soil Like we could Let's not go that far in depth in this Let's just say companies telling you it's made in America.

No, no, but my, my, my specific was North America, because essentially getting into wanting him to rate Canadian products, basically. It was my way of circumventing that and, uh, just saying, but wait, hold on, what Canadian products are there? There's a fair. There's a, oh my gosh, there's, uh, there's, uh, the freaking handles that Brandon Cable Diamond, uh, worked with, uh, oh, God, what?

Oak Club, thank you. Oh, club. Okay, yeah. Irwin, Irwin Fitness. No, I know. Bells of steel is, uh, well, bells of steel is not, I know, but it's based out of it.

There's sex strength. Sex strength is out of. But a lot of it too was also a dig on like when, when I was wanting to kind of talk about when Rogue had to had made in America. But it was also. It was Canadian steel. So I was trying to get into talk about that a little bit. Yeah, sure. Yeah.

That's a good one. So I remember when that happened to. I thought that people got pretty up in arms over nothing. I will say that made in. And if we were to widen it to North America. I used to be much more, like, had to be made in USA. I will say that I still think it's underrated. I say that I think that it's at a state right now that's a little bit sad.

I would love to see more manufacturing come back. I don't love how much we rely on some other countries for, you know, parts of our, parts of how we make things and how we industrialize and provide products and services. I think that there's a lot of confusion on what Made in America actually does. mean because there's many variations of it. But I'm still going to stick with it's underrated for sure. It doesn't mean that everything is great. But I still to this day, like, for instance, if you see me out, every single time you see an article of clothing on the lower portion of my body, there's a like 99% chance that it's grown, harvested, processed, sewn, and

distributed all within the United States. All my stuff I buy is origin. My barefoot shoes are the Made in USA Patriots or whatever. Like it's something that I do prioritize. But also it's confusing when you have like things that get brought. So Ancour is really bad at this. They say that their stuff is assembled in USA. American assembled.

There was there wasn't there a big equipment come? Was it Arsenal or one of those other something like they, you know, they put it all together in Tennessee, but it's all important. shit. Yeah, and it's like, you know, there's other countries that make great stuff too. But I still, I'm going to stick with my guns on this one. It's, it's underrated, almost entirely. It's just sad when you see people take advantage of a good thing.

Or it's sad when you see like an American company that tries to fall on the sort of, what I'm American, and it's a piece of shit. You still got to put a good product out. Yeah, you still got to get a good product out. Exactly. Yeah. And I also don't like it when people like, try to put a good product out. fall back on the, again, falling back on a first shitty product or a shitty service or something along those lines. But overall, it's underrated. I think that more companies need to be doing that kind of stuff. I would love to see it happen. But I also get annoyed when I hear people say like,

oh, well, tariffs affect American manufacturing and their prices are going up too. And it's like, well, no shit, you fucking idiot. Like, look at the supply chain and where everything goes. Of course, their prices are going to go out for made USA products because made in USA. it doesn't mean that all the raw goods are made in USA. There's still stuff that has to get brought in. That stuff still gets put through tariffs, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So shut up. Like, you're dumb.

You don't know what you're talking about. Sometimes you do. But I'm also angry. Joey, is made in Canada like a thing that people are like wearing their hat on? Is that like a thing like for manufacturing or like products? So to an extent, we do have made in, we have a product of Canada, made in Canada. made in Canada and a Canadian product. Canadian product is 100% Canadian from everything that we grow.

A Canadian product is we might have imported some of those, but we made it here. It is very clearly labeled. So it is to an extent. It's not always, you know, most of the time right now we're focused on Canadian produce. We mainly buy Canadian produce. Sometimes we have to buy Mexican. Sometimes we have to buy American. But right now it's a focus on Canadian produce.

All the apocados are for Mexico. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like you can't get them for anywhere else. You want to buy mangoes. You ain't getting them in Canada. Like even like celery and green onions and stuff like that.

Like we got you have to buy. But yeah, there are things where it's like dairy products in particular. There'll be a product of Canada, which means the company is Canadian. and they made it in Canada, but they might have used products from another country. So, yeah, we do watch those. Unpaid or underrated.

Catch up with eggs. Catch up with eggs is good, dude. And I'm getting really upset. There's this weird group of people out there that think it's disgusting. But I think it brings the right balance of tomato acidity and a little bit of sweetness. That's just right.

Can't confirm. What about Saracha? I like hot eggs too. Hot eggs are good. So I'll do one better than Saracha. I think that my all-time favorite is going to be spicy ketchup. You ever seen spicy ketchup before? Yeah, spicy ketchup is like my jam.

That's my stuff. Unpaid or underrated the Arnold? It's unpaid. At this point in time, I go for my friends. But seeing, and also if Bang brought back the Bang Girls from 2018, because they were all like coked out of their mind. That was fun. That would at least be entertaining.

But yeah. And also like they stuck strong men behind the paywall, which really did. Yeah. Yeah. And also just because you paid doesn't mean you get to go, as I learned in the year that we went. Oh yeah. We had tickets with seats. Went to the washroom, came back.

And they were like, you can't come in. We're at capacity. And we're like, no, you're not. our seats are right there. My friend's wife is holding our seats. We're going to our seats. And they're like, no, we're at capacity. And I was like, no, you're not.

Like, we paid for those seats. You have to let us in. But the problem is people weren't leaving. So what they did to us the one year is they would, you could buy admission, okay, and get general admission. But then they would just go steal everybody's paid seats. Oh, what a bunch of dick. Oh, yeah.

It was the, and I was like, so go get those people out of the paid seats. Well, we can't really do that. And eventually they let us in because we were like, no, she's holding our seats. Those two seats are empty. We're going in. I have an exhibitor pass. It can let me in. Yeah, no, it was not a good scenario.

Yeah, that's just the thing. Like, the Arnold used to, it was just more fun when the main stage was watching the natural stone to shoulder with Marius Pusian, or not Mary. Whatever, whatever that guy. Holy crap. Wish that you'd come back to, Marthus. Mateus. Mateus kills Cowsk.

Watching that or watching or watching like Thor's big, you know, a thousand pound deadlift. That was what was cool. It was like it got loud and rowdy and it was right there and it was a pain in the ass to get through. And that's when it was cool. Lately it's just kind of gotten.

I go for friends. Jake Jaworski, so Home JimCon coordinator, he asked me if I wanted to go because we've gone not together, but we always meet each other there. And I'm not sure if I'm going to.

We'll see. With you guys all going, there's a chance I might just go, just to go, just to see all the Massonomics people. That part's fun. But even then, I feel like Massonomics deserves a cut of that.

Yeah. So at this point. I'm not sure if you caught the new episode yet, but if you do end up coming, there's an RSP on Massonomics thing. And like if we go to like the big dinner, it is, they had to like essentially reserve the whole thing and pay like $3,000 out of pocket. So there's going to be like a however people were there divided by the money and you got to pay 20, 30 bucks like reimbursing them. Just a bit heads up in case you didn't know that.

But we'd love to have you there. But, you know, because what's Cincinnati at Columbus? Was that a couple hours? Yeah. So it's about an hour and a half, hour and a half to two hours. That's not. That sounds like a good Saturday. And I even don't even come to the expo then literally just do whatever you want all day and come to come to dinner with us.

Just figure out where to park or, you know, let's do a parking garage and then just get a little walk. But the dinner, that's really the only reason I'm going is to hang out with the boys for a few hours of the dinner. But okay, my last one, unpaid or underrated 35s. Are we talking about plates? Yep. Because this is a thing. People think I'm annoyed by 35 pound dumbbells. And I'm like, no, no, no, no.

The dumbbells are fine. Dumbbells make sense. People think that you're talking about dumbbells are freaking stupid. That doesn't make sense. What more than you think? So, like, I have a bar that weighs 35 pounds.

My axle bar weighs 35 pounds. And that doesn't bother me. No, 35 pound plates are underpaid. They're fucking useless. With a few exceptions that I've made clear. I'll make them clear here. And I've even, I've added to the list. If you are a vintage weights collector

and they made 35s, that's the most. recent one that I've added. I'm like, all right, fine. You want to collect all your Pokemon. You go ahead and get your 35. I've got a lot of York 35s. Yeah. That's fine. I have like seven sets of 35 pound dumbbells. I like, I also like that he said, he said, Pokemon. Thank you. But yeah, they're also like if you're a power lifter or Olympic weightlifter, but I will make a thing here is that technically those are not 35 pound plates. Those are 15 kilo plates. Yeah, 33.

Are different. But there are pound versions of power lifting plates. So if you have a disc set of pounds and you're weird and they're in pounds, then sure, whatever. Also, if it was all you can afford at the time, that's fine too. But 35 pound plates as a whole are just stupid. They're just dumb. It's one of those things where it's, so like Rogue makes their new deep dish, and we have a 45, 35, 25, 25, 10, 15, 5, 2, 1 in a quarter. And it's like, well, why did, why do you have the 35?

It's like, well, it's the step in between 45 and 25. And I was like, well, that sounds like you just need two tens because you, even if you get the 35, you still got to get two pairs of tens because you have to be able to get up to 25. So there's a 20 number you need per size. So you need two tens because they don't make a fucking 15 unless you buy the high temps. They have the 15 of that. So yeah, they're just dumb. They don't cause you to purchase less tens in order to get up to the 45s.

They don't do anything as far as like sometimes you'll use a 25 pound plate because you want a longer range of motion. So you use a smaller diameter plate to make it further away or closer depending on the lift. And yeah, like a 35 is like this weird in between where it like. It doesn't do either of them well, so it's stupid there too. And yeah, it's just one of those things where companies will make 35s because it's another thing that they can sell. It's just another skew. It's another thing. It's a waste of good steel.

And it's just one of those things that I'm adamantly against. I will not judge if you love 35s. That's great. We all have that in our life that we love. yours just happens to be 35 pounds but yeah that's a that's my 35 pound plates

stick I still think they're dumb the best use I've ever seen for 35 pound plate was holding down in a vent tent at a strong man competition I didn't like to do. All right, I think you passed on paid underrated excellent

normally we move on do you have anything that you want to ask us any games you want to play anything you want to ask us regarding anything else. No, this has been a lot of fun. I really appreciate you guys. Let me let me on. I, uh,

yeah, I have fun of this. This is good. Outstanding. Yeah, you did, uh, now do you think you, yeah, we'd scratch that itch of,

uh, not being able to interview people for a while. Like, you think this is, uh, we're going to reinvigorate, you know, the hell with Andrew is in his shitty schedule.

But so, but I, I do see like, if people liked it if people like that kind of content because here's the other problem too is it's really hard to tell if people like content

because you have to leave a comment right like it's kind of like this it just goes off into the ether and you're like does anybody fucking care that I just talk to Deadliest Lift about all of his stuff which is a lot by the way

the guy's like almost a fucking doctor but yeah like talk to him about all his stuff like does anybody care like there's the usual comment but it's just kind of hard to tell and the view count wasn't there. So I don't know. Potentially. We feel that.

But we kind of, we kind of this week, like, like a lot of times, we know we have our core listeners, but like, if people don't engage on Discord sometimes, I'm just like,

did no one listen? Like, do we not say anything funny? Like, was there no, was there nothing content? Was there nothing worth like driving the discord to actually just have like sub-conversations?

And like there was like one thing that someone talked about. And I was like, this was a great, like I had a great time with Roy. We talked about. so much different shit. And then like it was just crickets. I looked at my phone at lunch and there was no fucking comments. And I was like, like, come on guy. Like when I don't know, I get it.

People are busy. But it's like. Yeah, it's hard to engage. And there's like so many discords out there. So like my discord's all discombivoliere. I think it says like big Kurt, but it's got a picture of some radio beacon thing. I think this. I'm in like 20 different discord channels for things. It's just it's hard to. Man, I have a hard time keep it. I get like super. Oh, like I feel terrible on the massonomics ones because I'll have like a week where I'm like oh right I'm like staying on it and then like Monday I'll miss it Tuesday I'll come back into it and I'm like how are all the channels have fresh content they're all lit up so far behind that I've no idea what's going on well it's because we went from having like 150 members to 800 and now it's just like I don't

recognize 75% of the people talking and it's just kind of like oh the internet is here now but I mean it's good for them that's that's money in their pocket and it keeps it going and if they're successful, they, we can continue our podcast. So like, the worst, I selfishly like, don't, I mean, do I wish it was still had that like smaller feel and it was just like you could, you knew everyone that commented in there? Sure, that'd be awesome. But like, would massonomics be able to sustain if they only had like 50 subscribers? Like, no. Because, you know, they would have, they would have, they would, they would probably would have hung up the podcast or quit put an effort into it. So I get that having 800 people in the discord and kind of everything getting lost is.

what's going to keep them motivated financially to keep doing this because that's a decent chunk of change for them. So like, I get it. And it keeps us podcasting because I love doing this once a week, getting to know someone for two hours. Like, it's just fun. Because especially when it's like, you know, we've interviewed 140 plus people. And I think I've met 80 of them. Like that's the cool thing. Like, too, it's like it's people that I get to meet in person because we like Massonomics, we get to go travel and do this fun shit with each other. And I don't know, that's just fun stuff for me. So I love it. I'm glad we're here. but yes, please go comment on our freaking post

and our Discord. We don't know if you fucking listen or not. So go tell us what you liked about what Kurt said. Why don't you tell them to how to do that? Yeah. Kurt, where are they going to find yet? Yeah, they're going to find me. If you want to like chat with me,

hit me up on Instagram and a DM at the underscore Kurt Locker. If you jump on YouTube, make a comment. I'm really slow to respond right now because I'm not really making content at the moment. But who knows, you might see some interview format stuff come back on.

But that's at the Kurt Locker. If you look up Kurt Locker, two words with K-U-R-T, you'll find. Joey where you're at? Joey underscore M-L-E-C-Z-K-O, only on Instagram. Instagram. We are unpaid and underrated podcast. We got the website, Unpaid Entering Podcast.com. In the Massonomics podcast, we have our sub-channel there.

It's unpaid or underrated, I believe. Some of there's a YouTube out there. I'm Keith Honeycut 73 on Instagram. More importantly, go follow my orange gym. Until then, see you next Tuesday.