Unpaid And Underrated - 166 : Doth Stall Mats Make a Gym?(ft. Big Andrew)

Episode Date: July 14, 2026

This week Joey and Keith get to know Big Andrew. They dive right into great topics like buying rocks, chalk, regional pizza, country artists, superheros, and what is a home gym? 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 @apmonty1851 Our Hosts @keithhoneycutt73 or his orange gym, @thenowhinecellar @joey_mleczko Special Guest: Big Andrew.

And welcome back. I'm going to throw something at you, motherfucker. You can't throw that far in New York. And welcome back to episode 166 of the unpaid and underrated podcast, a podcast by crew for a crew. I'm one of your host, Big Keith, joined as always by Big Joy. Yeah, I'm feeling froggy today. How are you? Oh, yeah.

And this week we got special guest, Big Monty, Mr. Andrew Montoya himself. How are you doing, buddy? Great. Howdy, outy, outy. Yeah, he does listen. I like it. let's see we got some general topics here I've been selling some stuff on Facebook

it's been a while since I've like kind of really gone down that rabbit hole people are the worst but like I've wanted to acquire some new stuff in the strong man gym in the garage gym and I until I get rid of some shit that's just been sitting on a shelf I can't really like get more shit or get less like there's a shelving you don't want to get rid of but it's got a lot of shit on it so I've sold like a couple hundred bucks with a random stuff and I just been doing like these dead drop deals because I'm like, oh, can you meet me and so and so? And I'm just like, nope, it's literally in a bin on my front porch, leave the money in the mailbox or Venmo me.

And if you steal, if you steal from me, like, whatever, it's 50 bucks. I don't care. Like, and I have, I've done like four or five of those deals in the last week and I haven't had to like, I haven't had to talk to a single human other than on like marketplace. So yeah, this has been pretty cool. But that led me to kind of motive, that essentially motivated me to get my Atlas stones from when Jake, Jake, you know, shots, did the shots fired there with the, the Instagram real scrubbing stones in the Massonomics gym. It kind of was like, okay, we know it's going to be rocks, but now, you know, at least we're taking it's confirmation that it is going to be some type of Atlas stone in them, you know, there might be several,

and also today, I think he mentioned he's going to have 20 separate rocks. So even between all the classes, that clearly means there's trump weights and or natural and Atlas. So we'll see. but either way, definitely needed some Atlas Stones. And one of my buddies's ex-wife was selling some. And I had them in my saved box there for a while. But I was like, man, I really don't want to go down the Atlas Stone Rabbit Holes. And it's like, you get one.

And then I'm going to want like a 25-pound jump all the way up to like 300 pounds. And it's like, ugh. But she had 100, 155 and 175. And I was like, okay, I'll take them. Because, well, actually, I was like, I think I initially was just going to get like the 175. And then she's like, I'll do 100 for all three of them. I was like, okay. That's a stupid.

price. Exactly. Like, fine. Yeah, exactly. The hardest part also was the transporting. So then I was like talking to some buddies. Like, yeah, just get some old tires. And then you can storm in the tires.

Like, well, that's all good and great and everything. But then like, even in my wife's hatchback, I wanted everything like in the back or at least with the seat up, but I can't get like two tires just in the back cargo bay. So I ended up doing one in the, I put a garbage bag down, the 155 because I just put on the actual passenger seat in the rear. and then like put the, put a, uh, a big cushion in front of it and then put the front seat, the front passenger seat all the way back down and kind of wedge it in. And then I did the tire in the back with the bigger one.

But it was, and then the hundred pounder just went on the floorboard of the passenger seat. But, uh, the 165. Like, I've loaded like a 265 pound stone multiple times, I believe. And I think I've died in 265 a couple times. So it's not a big weight by any means. But like bigger than the 175 I picked up. I shit you not. It took me like four attempts to get that fucker off the ground because it was slick as shit.

It was raining. it was actively raining so the stone was wet my arms were wet I couldn't I was loading it like into a car so it's not like I could triple extension and kind of like I had to literally like gently get it to like just I laughed it and kind of like below my tits and then I had to like just fall forward with it because I couldn't like I couldn't fuck my wife's car up so it was very awkward but I was at one point I was like man if I can't get this am I going to have to call somebody to stronger than me today or just wait for it to not be raining I'm like I already told her like if I couldn't get it I told her that I might not be able to fit them all in. So I already had the kind of the banked in like, hey, I'll come back for this one later. And it would have just been on a nice sunny day. But shit, it wasn't the most pleasant. Super sketch driving because I'm like, well, I was more sketch going over there. It's like, man, I don't know how I'm going to get all these to like not roll around and shit, even with the tires.

And then I had it. I was pretty happy with how I ended up loading it all up. But then when I unloaded them, it was getting the one out of the passenger seat was very difficult because it was just such an awkward angle. and then the bigger one in the back, I literally built a ramp with like fucking all, every single stall, uh, every single cushion and mat and crash bed I had.

So that was kind of easy. And then I was cool. That was a good idea. I saw that. Yeah. And I was gonna name them. I, I'm still debating on it yet.

I'm gonna name the two rocks Joey and Nate because one's about 175 pounds and that'd be Nate and one's about 155 pounds and that's Joey. So I kind of think I need to do that. And Joey gave me a bunch of shooters like, oh, you, you can't name them until you, you know, you lift them with what their intention was. And I was like, fair.

Yep. And then so yesterday I did. But that's, that's a natural stone law. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're not natural stones.

They're Atlas stones. But like, I'm learning so much about natural stones, just having friends that are into it. Oh, yeah. But like there are specific rules, right? Like,

Yep. You know, like if you travel to another country and lift their stones, if their stone is a chest stone and you shoulder it, you're a dick. Yeah. Right? Like,

you're not supposed to do that. right so like when you figure out okay this is how this is supposed to be lifted so you pressed the the hundred i think credible work great work right that was awkward that was harder than i thought i'd never yeah yeah yeah imagine imagine imagine the one the full lockouts the hardest part for me because it's like it's like it's like 99% there but it's like i don't know it's it well i think it's because it's you're lifting from the bottom up yeah so then it's like you're literally extent i you are the most extended i think i've ever been and the weight is just on my hand so it's definitely not like I tried doing that at 155 with a natural stone and not do well.

So we got that going for us. Speaking of rocks, Cam's coming over this weekend. He's, he wants to, he has heard rumors of rocks as well. So he wants to learn natural stones. So he,

he just wants to see, you know, how to learn the handhold, learn where, that kind of stuff. So he's going to come over. I think Stephen Stasia are going to come over as well. He's also going to leave me a log.

So we're going to be doing some log train outside. Yeah, buddy. Like an extra log or he just didn't need his now that he's just done with his for summer, I think. And he knows how much I really, really want one. And Cam's just a, the one that he has.

The, I forget which one it is. But yeah, he's just going to leave that at my place for the summer just because he knows I really want a log. And Cam's just a hell of a good. You can't keep that in or you can't tarp it in the driveway like when you head left.

Yeah, it's going to go, um, I have a chap skid outside that's going to hold my farmer's handles in the log with with a tarp over it. Right? And so that, that'll be protected.

I know what a skid is. You said a chap? A chep skids. So you know those blue skids that are built tough as shit? Vaguely. Oh, okay. They're made by a company called chepalots.

Like a skid and a pallet, I think, are interchangeable, but I just call them a palettes. Same thing. So heavy-duty plastic palette. Nope. That's wood. But chap is, chap in particular, they make those blue ones. They spray paint them blue. And you're supposed to track them, right?

Like, they have tracking numbers and stuff like that on them, but we just happen to have one. Yeah. That'll at least keep the moisture. Yes, off the ground and off the top. You don't want to rust someone's borrowed equipment, as always. No, but that means I need to buy 25s, which I'm not thrilled about, because I was doing those farmer handles this weekend. I had to carry the 25s out. And then I was like, I just did 25 pound farmers carries to go do my 135 farmer carry.

This sucks. I'm going to need extra weights. Yeah. That's the, it is the negative of having the two locations that you have a home. gym and. What a segue, Keith. What a segue. Yeah.

So I made a silly meme based on the office space. Like, what would you do if you had a million dollars? And the guy goes, two chicks at once. And then as I'm driving, I'm just like two gyms at once. Like, that was funny to me. And it actually, like, got everybody kind of talking about what two home gyms would look like. Because in my head, I was like, well, two different homes.

right like this was in my head you have your winter home and your summer home and both have like completely decked out gyms and then keith is like but i have two gyms and i was like no you have a home one home with two gyms in it i don't think that counts as two home gyms and then like everybody started talking so like so both of you let's talk what would it like what counts as two home gyms like do i because i have one in the basement and then my strong man stuff outside do I technically have two home gyms or do I have two gyms in one home? To what level does two home gyms count? Like if I was to have like my rack and everything in the basement and then a peloton in my bedroom,

do I have two home gyms? I feel like it has to be like completely duplicated, right? So like I feel like if it's for it to be two home gyms, you have to have like a rack in both. or like it's doing the same thing twice, if that makes sense. I agree. Because like, because if I just have like a cardio,

like the outside for Stroman, it would just be like, that's just an extension of my gym. Okay. It's a different wing. But if I have a rack upstairs and then a rack downstairs, I could almost claim that as like,

you know, upper gym, lower gym. So then by definition, Keith, you don't have two home gym. My yoke is a rack that I can squat out of and bench out of. and I can deadlift on stuff. I can squat bench and dead in my gym. I have.

Right? So it's just one of those. And then somebody brought up the two certifications. I think there's just levels. I think two certifications is a genius way to kind of separate that. But now so many people have double certified because of just picking up in one gym, the gym radar flag. If you had two of the,

if you're like, if you're like Mo and you had two of the OG flags, that's different. I only have two. I'm only double certified because I got one as a gift. But it's really, you're not. I don't know. I don't know that you're double,

quote unquote, double certified if you just bought the gem radar one because you wanted the new flag. I mean, I guess you are, but. And you're also not double certified because you only appear on the certification once, right?

Yeah. So I like that idea. Like, it's like if I want to work out, and that's what I was thinking. Like if I want to work out in my home in the summer and my other home in the winter, that's two home gyms.

But to have like, okay, downstairs is power lifting upstairs as strong man. that's a that's a decent one does anybody else have any thoughts remember this is silly i'm not like trying to like i would just argue that like if your secondary gym can if other people could do everything they need to do in your secondary gym and still you know quote unquote get strong stay strong use your strength like i don't know i think as long as you can do the but then i mean there's always caveats of that because then everyone like every yoke can be turned into a squat

rack with a pair of jacups yes but do you use it i mean i I do have a barbell. I've got plenty of plates. Like I can, I could do squat bench deadlift. Technically, I'd have to bring a bench upstairs. That's the only thing I don't have in the garage right now. But I could still floor press. But I don't know. I'd stack up my secondary strongman gym against 70% of the gyms on gym radar. Maybe not 70% of the gym. Probably 70% of the crew gyms and maybe 50% of the gyms on gym radar that like I would take my garage gym over their gym. Yeah, all right. I just thought it would be fun to have to kind of of like.

But yes, having bands in the toilet is not a second gym. Thank you. Yeah. Having just keeping your farmers carries outside or even, I don't know, like this, that's, is there a dedicated space?

Okay, here's one. How many stall mats? If you have X amount of stall mats, that might be considered a second gym. No, I've got like 12 stall mats in my garage. So is that a,

for, maybe I have eight for the rest of, I have a decent amount of stall mats. So the garage I'm going to, to change my brakes on the week. and they have a bunch of stalemats. Is that a gym? It's a communalative thing.

Does stalemats make a gym? I've never seen a garage with stalemats. I don't know. Well, hold on to you this way. If you have a guest house at your house, like, you know, you're someone who's made it, you have like a pool house, you have a guest house in the back.

Do you own one house or two houses, but they're both in the same lot? Right. I still think that counts as one house. Because this all stems from my silly meme, and then me going, no, I only have one gym. I have an upstairs gym and an outside, or a downstairs gym and an outside gym. And then everybody was like, I have two gyms

because I do this exercise outside and this exercise inside. And I'm like, but now I'm confused, right? Like, so either way. It's a silly concept. I still, I have one gym and it's just a compound. Mo. Oh, compound.

That's a great word. I do. I've referred to it as a compound before because it is kind of spread out. But like, the more I put out there, the harder it is for me to like not consider it a dedicated like, standalone gym.

Like, it's probably not, you know what I mean? But like, if I didn't, like, so if I'm like a hundred and I can't make it up and down my stairs anymore and I still want to lift, I can probably wobble out to my garage and still train and do 80% of what I can do in the basement. Compound is almost a better word than two home gyms. I mean, it is the best way to do accessories according to, you know, big tanner. Just do extra compound lips. Not that tanner, the other tanner.

the other, Tanner Paxton, that is. Oh, good stuff. All right, that's enough of that. Yeah, that was sillier goose than I thought you were going to be like hard stance. Oh, God, no. I don't care. I don't care. It was just funny that everybody kept having different things.

And I was just like, I made a silly meme. And now everybody's giving me. The first time I saw that, my favorite use of that meme was when I got, I picked up an identical Rogo Ohio Power Bar and stainless steel like the exact same bar. And my buddy made the meme of, you know, two, two stainless steel power bar at the same time. And I was like, uh, so I, that, that meme template always makes me chuckle. Okay, what do we got?

The, uh, anybody get a chance to pick up the, uh, the Tannercom that we used to be a proper country, pizza hut cups. Those sold out quick. Yeah, I, I would have got it if it had dropped when it was supposed to. Um, but I don't, I already have to wait three weeks for my last purchase. I don't want to pay shipping. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, it was supposed to be in the last drop. Yeah.

Oh, sorry. But it's going to make it makes their life easier, though, because it's, I mean, they could have sold them all in person at Lift Hard Levisi, but like, I don't know. Now that's a one less thing they have to worry about, but I guess then that was like 50 packages. He did have to see, see, send out. But it's balancing an act of what's easier to wait for Lift Hard and what's easier to, uh, they did on the pre-show last night. They showed a couple of the items by the time this airs. No, this is coming out Tuesday unless it comes out tomorrow. Oh, yeah.

So it won't be. The one item probably won't be. It was funny because they just gave a cocktiezer the other one. And it was like, it was the most like just a quick flash. And what's annoying about Zoom too, I guess like if I have the zoom up on my phone, it, you can either have it where it shows all the screens, but they're like the size of like your pinky nail or you can have the person talking. So when Tanner is showing something and Tommy's talking, it fucking shows Tommy, even though Tanner's the one showing. something. And I'm like, God damn it. Like Tommy, if Tanner's showing us something, shut the fuck up and let Tanner just say, hey,

look at this. So it goes to the big screen. I don't know if anyone else has ever felt that way. But like, I knew that Tanner was about ready to tease it because like, he was like, hey, I'm just going to flash it real quick. And then I was like, God damn it. I had to like go to the big screen where everything's tiny. But yeah, there's some some neat stuff coming for sure. And this is, this will be the last episode before lived hard. So yeah, we're, we're like nine days out right now, I think. And when this, airs, when this airs, I will be, like, the day before we start, some of us start to travel. A lot of us are, not a lot, but some of us are coming in Wednesday. A lot of us are going to

trickle in Thursday. And then, uh, all the power lifts will probably start showing up Friday and just be a good old time. Uh, make sure you find big cam. Uh, there is a limited edition. I'm going to say like mostly in person only DILF dungeon sticker that he is going to have only for people at the Lift Hard Live Easy. I'm keeping a few. I'm keeping a few. because I think I'm going to send a couple just to people that aren't making it, which is just a favor to some people who asked. Interesting point, I haven't even seen this sticker yet.

Morgan designed it, submitted it, and printed it without telling me. So I will see it when it shows up. And I'm hoping it's here by Sunday. Otherwise, Cam's not going to have them. So knock on wood, Canada Post, and we know how good they're doing. So Lift her, let me see five. These things are available.

Yeah. Yeah, that's a weird one. I thought about it today. I know you highlighted that, and this is kind of silly. It's a silly concept. I forget that you can see when I highlight shit with my OCD. Before we do the rate this week's episode.

How often, because I want to know if I'm crazy, okay? I want to know if I'm crazy. How often do you guys think about the California raisins? Once every four, year. Like the little... You're like the Olympics. Or, you know, the World Cup that's been around just as long almost.

Yeah. That was actually the callback to... Last week when you were talking about your coworkers or whatever, and then Hogan had not interrupted, but he countered the point with like, well, yes, the Olympics, like, in some form were around thousands of years ago and they did nothing for also thousands of years. Yeah. And then picked it back up in like 1890 or something. And so they'd only had 30 years on the World Cup.

So that was, I was actually, I didn't necessarily know that the, I didn't know the Olympics. Yeah. I was like, oh, okay, cool. So the modern, quote unquote, modern Olympics have been around, you know, not a significant, not a super, super long time. Okay. Monty, do you ever think of the California reason? No, I'm not a raisins guy. So it's weird that I think about it like three or four times a week, right?

Yeah. Well, people listening don't even know what the California is. California. There's for sure, like, what do we got to? Say, we have 100 listeners. There's like 40 that don't know what the fuck of California reason is. Like, for sure. For sure. Because like, I'm 40 and wasn't that like a thing in the late 80s, early 90s where they were like commercials and a little cartoon and a little action videos. Yes, the little rubber action figures. Yes, the little rubber action figures and move. Yeah. And they had like a little. So was it just to sell raisins or was it like, that's what I don't. I couldn't even tell you like what the California reason is. They had a song.

I'm pretty sure it was. They had a lot of songs. And one of them is the, I know you want. want to leave me, but I refuse to let you go. So I was thinking of that song, and I think about that song a lot because I love that song. And that reminds me of the California raisins. So I just think of the California raisins like two to three times a week. So I asked my boss at work, I go in and I'm like, hey, I got a weird question. He's like, yeah, what up?

I'm like, how often do you think of the California raisins? And he went, oh, my God, a lot. Because he had the toys and he had his favorite shirt when he was like eight, he's about my age was the California Raisin shirt and he watched all the cartoons and I was like me too so okay I'm the crazy 86 to 94 it looks like they were

yeah they were okay so a fictional rhythm and blues animated musical group so I don't even as well as advertising and merchandising characters can put I don't I don't even know if they're associated with like a fucking company that's the like that's the weird fucking

because like there's not is there an actual is there a an edible California raisin? Like, I'm trying to think what's that red box that are raisins. Yeah,

they had to have appeared on a raisin. I, I'm, I don't want to take it the whole podcast, like, Google and shit.

What are you, Tommy? Well, I was trying, well, Tommy does it all the time, but he can, like, he's probably,

I'm a very slow reader. Like, that's like a, like, my wife will tell me, it's funny. Like, she'll send me something and I want to talk about it. I'm like,

I'm on like, the fucking second sentence. And you're, like, we, We both got the home gym con email today, and she was already, like, talking about, like, the last thing. And I'm like, I'm literally on, like, the fucking second sentence. It's like, I don't know. You, like, you already spoiled it for me.

I don't even know what this is about. Let me read it. I'm a very slow reader. And then I'm like, every time someone's talk to me, I have to, like, start over, like, at least in, like, the previous sentence. So, uh, so the whole point is, I can't read Wikipedia as fast as Tommy and, like, add value to the podcast. All right. All right. So, I guess, I guess they'll chime in, like they did last week with my, um, you know, uh, uh,

Intros you don't skip. Oh, yeah. That one turned out to be a really good. A lot of people had fun with that one. But like, honestly, like, I think about the California reasons way too much. And, like, you said rhythm and blues. What about the Blues brothers? Do you guys ever think about the Blues Brothers?

No, I mean, that was a weird movie. I remember as a kid. And they went Saturday Night Live and they had all the stuff. I saw the movie before I knew what Saturday Night Love was. And I remember not really liking the movie and just kind of like not, you know, obviously anything that's a parody. I'm not a huge fan of. So I think that was true.

Well, that movie also set the record. for the most car crashes in any movie ever. Or something crazy like that, right? I do vaguely remember the ending of that, yeah. All right. Well, that's my rhythm and blues talk, I guess. All right. Well, Big Monty, we're going to let you get us back on track

with little Masonomics talk. Did you listen to last week's episode? Give us a reminder about it. And if you had to rate it, what would you think that'd be? So I listened to do a couple of them back to back, so they might have blurred together. But I think last week was the one where it was, uh, yeah. I remember there was, there's a decent amount of strong man equipment talk, which is notable.

That doesn't usually happen very often. And then there was also, was this the one with burger talk? Yep. Bacon or no bacon. That was disappointing. You hate to see it when some of your favorite podcast hosts don't appreciate the greatness of bacon on your burger. I would argue that the bacon does increase the variance of the burger, but that high end when

that bacon hits is worth all the mess. in my opinion. But no, overall it was pretty great. I think I'd almost give it five out of five slices of bacon on your burger. Wait, wait, would you get five slices? If you get, all right, this is a rabbit hole, but if you go to Chili's and you get the double bacon rancher, I have gotten eight slices of bacon on one burger before.

I think it was an accident. But sometimes God looks down upon you and is like, you know what, you need your life? And they weave them like a basket probably, right? I'd have to layer that. Like, I'm a big sandwich and burger layerer. Like, I don't want just like condiments, meat, then bread. Like, I have to mix some stuff around.

If it's a double cheese burger, I'll, like, flip the paddies. So there's a cheese on both sides sometimes. Like, I hate, like, if I forget two slices of cheese, why are you putting them together? Fucking layer that shit. Yeah, that doesn't, okay, that doesn't, I'm with you on that one. That doesn't make any sense.

Why are they on top of each other? Yeah, give me that better mouth ratio, for sure. I almost feel like putting bacon between the patties would make it a little bit less likely to slip out if we're being honest. Yep. Make it doesn't grip the bun very well on the top. Fair.

All right. I'm going to go, because I think we're switching up affiliate reads. That makes sense if I go. You don't want to rate. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, that's what I'm saying.

You're going to rate. Yeah. All right. Tommy's wife not taking shit at the concert. I love that. He's mentioned that a handful of times of like, whenever she gets involved, it's kind of like,

he's the more reserved one and she's the one that's going to go stir the paw. And I always chuckle about that because that's just such as life. Concert etiquette in general. I don't know. If everyone's sitting down, I'd be happy to sit down and not be the one asshole standing up or anything like that. And I wouldn't be offended if someone asked me to move to the aisle if I was seven feet tall and 400 pounds. And I'd be like, yes, yeah, I can do that for you, bud, especially if everyone's sitting down.

Like, you've got to read the room. I get that. the guy not known who the doors were that's wild karaoke bar that's wild which I mean I don't know though like 32

when are you what you would have been in high school and like fuck in 2010 right okay but guaranteed he showed him that like poster of fuck what's his name Jim Morrison I almost said Jim Davis creator of Guardsfield

that's the kind of night I'm having he's just Val Kilmer to me it'll always be Val Kilmer because like I know more about like that movie that was on like a rerun of as a kid than I do the actual band. Like I didn't, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know a few of their songs, but I didn't find it as, I wouldn't find it as,

like, he would see that and be like, oh, I know that. It was in every dummy's dorm room or whatever, right? I definitely found it more weird that someone wouldn't know what, like, the Pink Floyd album cover was than someone not knowing who the doors were. Like, that's close, but like, the doors, what song is that? Who sings that? Like, that was pretty funny, but I don't know. All it all, it all was a good, it's a good episode.

The, the bacon. like Monty hit it kind of perfectly like bacon can ruin a burger bad bacon shitty bacon expensive bacon it all kind of plays a role I used I used to I mean I'm still a bacon on burger guy like for the most part but like

you get enough shitty ones it makes you kind of not want to get one every now and then I don't know it's always paper thin like so you guys don't have female bacon right I think we've discovered this Americans don't have female bacon you get a female bacon it's essentially just a piece of

cornbread coated ham that you fry up. Now, female bacon on a burger, top tier. You'd be stupid not to get it if it's available. So a breaded ham slice on a burger? That sounds awesome because ham on a burger is good.

Like we have a restaurant here called Tom Walls and they're like famous as just like, it's like a smash burger with like whatever their house sauce is and like ham on top of it. And it's fucking spectacular. Yeah, you got to visit up here one day. I'll take you for a female burger. and then we'll change your mind about bacon on a burger

because it is technically bacon because it is smoked and cured. Ham, right? So, yeah. Anyway, what's your reading? Oh, five out of five Val Kilmer's. Great episode. No, it does not get easier. It literally never gets easier.

Just heavier, right? It just gets heavier. And like it either stays the same as you get stronger or it gets harder as you try and get stronger than you were. Right? Like, does that make sense? Right? Like, my 135 pound deadlift was hard five years ago.

And now my 450 pound deadlift is just as hard as that was because I'm stronger, right? Like, it's just, it's all variable. So, no, it doesn't get easier. And then as you get older, it gets even harder. Then you get two kids. You get a job where you're not standing. You're actually actively moving. like it just life finds a way.

I do want to discuss Tommy discovering chalk. That was a very good conversation. I love you, dude, but yeah. Yeah, that exists. It definitely is the same. Same exact reaction. I actually had a DM'd him because I was like, hey, like one thing I found recently,

if I use wristraps, it keeps my grip from failing. Yes. I'm like, farmers carries. And I had never thought about it. It was never a thing until I heard it on the drunk uncle podcast a few months, like a month ago. Yeah, I shared that with Tommy. And he was like, oh, don't worry.

I put a ton of chalk on Friday. I was good. And I was like, in my head, I was like, did you not use a ton of chalk in the past? No, he was saying he just like, he like powdered it. And it's interesting because like, I love my chalk. And I only use chalk not just to save my grip because I have shitty grip, but also just to make sure, like, it slips a little less. And it tears my skin a little less, right? Like chalk is there not only to help your grip, chalk is also there to make sure that your skin isn't moving around the bar as you're holding the bar.

Right. Like the concept is to also protect your skin. When I'm lifting stones or sandbags, I put chalk all the way up to my elbows on my forearms, right? Just again, for the same reason to protect my forearms from getting completely demolished by rocks and atlas stones and stuff like that. So the fact that I'm like covered in chalk twice a week, And Tommy's like, hey, did you guys realize that chalk helps with deadlifts? And I was like, what? The most ironic part of that, too, is like, Jujji Mufu literally Bukakied him in

Calk, chalk. Whoa. And then, like, his gym for two years in a row has gotten, like, destroyed. The Gryft. Yeah. And they literally, like, drew a fucking smiley face on his, on his floor with a piece of chalk. So, like, the fact that he is, like, the chalk guy. And he doesn't use, he.

but I will argue, I know I'm stealing your rating, but like, who, not all chalks are made the same either. I know Mr. You know, Big Monty here can probably chime in, but like spider chalk to me, he's got that, we've talked about chalk to death before, but like, maybe he'd admit, does Tommy just have shitty chalk? Like, like, I don't know. Like, maybe.

There are, there are different. I've got, I've got cheap, goodness of chalks in my opinion. I've got cheap China magnesium carbonate, it's climbers, right? It comes in blocks. it was like $5 for a pack of 20 back when I bought it. It's still half full because I'm a painter. Like, we'll talk about this in a second.

But I also have a bag of bone dust. And bone dust is so fine that I only use it for really heavy deadlifts. Right. So I have various levels. I used to have liquid chalk, but it's too hard to get now. It's just way too hard to get here in Canada. So I just don't fucking bother. It's too expensive.

So that would go to my next. Let me rate the quote. let me rate this episode. We'll go five out of five. What do you mean? Chalk helps dead lifts. And, okay, how do you guys chalk up? So when I chalk up, I paint.

I take the block and I rub it all over the parts that I'm going to use, right? If I'm doing a grip thing, I do in between the thumb and the forefinger. If I'm doing deadlifts, I get my whole hand. If I'm doing stones, I get my hand and my forearms. But I, like, paint it. Right? I don't crumble it. I don't, anything like,

that. What do you guys do? Bonte? I would say it really depends on what I'm doing. So I guess, you know, I've got this experience with across all, like, three different strength sports. So I would start with strong man, like farmers, any of those grip things. Depends on like the event.

If I'm not allowed to use a tacky towel or anything like that, I'll do, usually do liquid chop for strong man stuff. I really like it to dry out my hands. But I always make sure to keep like the pads of my pointer and my middle finger dry. So that way whenever I do a reverse hook, I can lock right into my fingernail. Smart.

And if you're getting, and if you really want to finesse some things, you put something sticky on your fingernail here. So that way you can hold onto it. If that's allowed clearly. Yeah. Strongman never cheat. Hey,

if it doesn't say it's not allowed, you know, yeah, it's the airbud rule, right? And then for Olympic lifting, I actually use the chocolate stuff. because that one, it gives me enough grip, but not too much,

so the bar can actually rotate my hands. Smart. And then powerlifting, I do the pads of my palm and then around the ring for, for deadlifts. Squat, I do the middle of my back so the bar doesn't slide at all there.

Usually doesn't make that big of a difference. Yeah, I was going to say I've mentally feel good. I've only ever chalked my back once, and I found zero difference. I think it makes more difference. if you're like a low bar guy. Yeah.

I'm a high bar. So I'm a high bar. So yeah. Okay. That makes sense. It's a big of a deal. Historically, where it's a painter,

but I would say with Strongman, I do a lot more loose and I'm less picky. But that's just comes to a strong man in general. I'm just less picky about, I still amazes me all the time. I'm like loading a bar or a log and I'm like, I still care, but I care like 80% less about what's fucking way the plates facing.

Or if like it's, it's like dirty plate math or, or, you know, shitty loading. I'm like, I'm not, I'm not always going to take the fucking five off to put a tin on or something. If it's like a pain in the ass on the crash pads and it's just easier just keep putting plates on than to take a bunch of shit off. Or if I'm adding weight to the fucking circus dumbbell, I'm not going to pull all the other weights off and then reload it again. Like, I'm just adding weight until I get to my desired weight. But, I know, chalk's a hell of a drug.

Affiliates here. We got belt fed strength. Anyone looking for some new leather goods? Reach out to Chris and Randy at Belt Fed Strength. Code Unpaid, great friends of the podcast. They will be at Home GymCon. Go meet them there. Go buy your, get some personalized, handmade,

lifting straps from Chris at Home GymCon. Plate snacks, hopefully some people took advantage of the Fourth of July sale. If they didn't, code unpaid still works there all the time. If you're still, this is listening, you don't have stickers and you're coming to Home GymCon, they're not going to work. To Lift Hard Live Easy, you can still get them, still have enough time to come to go to Home GymCon and get your stickers. though. And then obsidian ammonia. Oh, man, I have a, I wasn't gonna, I'm not gonna share the video, but I'll briefly tell my story with the city. Oh, here we go. I, uh, I said I wouldn't

bring it up, but if you want to, go ahead. I've got about six bottles of obsidian ammonia around the house. And I think all but one of them is like, there are different various levels of cashness of like how, how basically useless they are. And they're almost just like, you know, just decorations at this point. And I got two in the garage. And I thought I picked up the not so good one, but I picked up the nose bleach, which is like the strongest one I have and the freshest one I have. And I went like nose in the fucking bottle. And I had never in my life been assaulted chemically like that before. And this isn't like a good, like I almost fucking, like I, it ended my workout and ended my day. And I was in fucking bed with like red eyes and

a fucking burnt nose the rest of the day. It was horrendous. It was really, really not. It was extremely unpaid. Um, entirely my fault. Love that fucking, uh, ammonia in general. but pay attention to which fucking one you pick up because yeah, like within like one second I knew like like instantaneously I knew I fucked up. And I like, and this was like before I was like attempting like a fucking a rep at my like compoyed or something or maybe I was attempting a big circus.

I know I was attempting a circus dumbbell PR is actually what it was. And I was just, I called it. I had to go and actually fucking hose my face off and hose my like I was shooting fucking hose water up. I was douching my fucking nose and mouth with hose water. it was so bad. It was horrendous, but if you

want that experience, code unpaid at Obsidian, but use it correctly, and you'll just get something about 30% less than that, and you'll hit some PRs. And that's what I got to say about Obsidian, ammonia. I got to see the video and I wanted, I wanted to talk about it so bad.

I showed it to Morgan, and she was like, oh, dummy! And I'm like, I know! Because, like, I've been using ammonia for a long time, and even I don't fuck with nose bleach if I can avoid it. And I just like the look on your face like you just, it was you got hit.

You looked mad. Then the defeat kicked in as you just slowly took off every belt and every wrist wrap. It's so much stuff. And you just walked off the camera just coughing and wheezing. Oh man. I'm so sorry. And I know I hope people aren't going to make funny because that looked awful.

If anybody here has used nosebleach, you cannot make fun of him because you know how bad that can get. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It was, sorry, you had to go through that. Don't do it again. Yeah. It was, well, because I had opened up a bottle that you had given me the day before. And it was, I actually need to smell that one again because it was like, it was starting to warm up.

But even it was pretty cashed, even though it was brand new. But I think it was user error. Maybe I'm not sure. But I just, I think I had that in my head, too, that like, oh, yeah, all this fucking ammonia is dead. I got to put my nose in it to get anything and forgot that I had like, like one good bottle floating around and oh i had never been a like i thought i was going to go to the fucking urgent care or something if it didn't clear up but like you didn't follow the instructions it says don't die i understand i mean i did not die but i hold your face don't die lift heavy

like i can see how like frail or i can see how like old people and children die so easily because like if you're frail like maybe not children but like infants i guess like like like like that could have fucking killed somebody if they were like not a healthy human like I mean I'm obviously way overweight but like did it go behind your eyeballs? Did it do that thing where it goes up your nose and then makes your eyeballs feel like they want to fall out of your skin? Stephanie said my eyes were swollen. I never

I didn't see myself in the mirror to see them that were swollen. I was just like my nose like was raw and hurt for a minute like like a day or two. I had to go get like I was like doing saline and like nasal gel and shit. It was a really dumbest thing I've done it a long time. If you were lucky enough to be one of the few people that saw the video, and I'm probably not going to post that publicly, or at least not until it's, like, settled and, you know, Stephanie was not happy because she's been telling me, like, to be careful with this shit for years and how I'm going to hurt myself and not to do it,

and I don't need it, et cetera. And she's never been right until that day. All right. I'm ready. I think we got to guess. We got anybody listening to me. We got to kick off, getting these looky-lose. No, all right. Uh, big Andrew. You there, buddy. Hello. Howdy. Hey, hey, welcome to the podcast, Stranger. Let's go ahead and hit you with the easy ones. See if you can't mess this one up.

It's what's your Discord, what's your IG, what's your name? Where are they going to find you at? So on Discord, I'm Big Monty on Instagram. I changed it recently. So now I need to double check and this is embarrassing. I found you today. It was still AP Monty. Okay, yeah.

It was, okay, AP Monty, 1851. That's me on Instagram. Instagram. And then, uh, if you add me, I got it on private right now. So I'm just going to assume your crew until proven otherwise. And, uh, just your, your full name. Because so I only say this because it's, it's a name that Tanner has been saying on the podcast for damn near a decade, referencing like strong lifters out in the Midwest or whatever and, uh, crew members. So, for being someone that's not super active in our community, the crew community, but we're trying to get you into that more. But this, you know, so.

who are you one more time? I thought you if you didn't say that. Yeah, so I'm Andrew Montoya. So I've been a member for a while. I've just been kind of, yeah, yeah, it's definitely one of those ones where your last name is catcher than your first name. Yeah, I swear I've heard him say that name so many times over the years, just, you know, well before supporting or supporting members. I feel like you might have been one of the first, like, semi, and I don't know if it's just because he knows you. I don't even know how your name's gotten mitten so much, or maybe I'm just blowing out of proportion, but like, I feel like I've heard your name, like,

once a year pre like crew pre discord pre all that so it's uh you know kind of a little uh slightly different OG but we we got you on here so um but but yep but uh so massonomics in general you know sounds like you've been around for a long time or been a big fan of them consumer of them how'd you find them why you so yeah so i guess our history kind of goes way back because uh back in the day like early 20 early mid 20 tens for powerlifting in south Dakota the usapel was like kind of like the federation there was there wasn't many of the other federations around and so i can't remember which year specifically it was a national so state sd state used to be in rapid city so western south dakota where i'm

from originally so about 45 minutes north of mount rushmore and so it was in the upstairs of the ymca every every year and so So if you look at Tanner, I think it was, so it was back when Tanner was not, didn't have the long hair. I think he was still like, you know, lifting like the 275 class

back then. And I think it was, I don't know if it was Tommy's first meet or either first or second meet, but like one of the first photos he has of him squatting in that meet. My dad's the head judge. I was lifting. I was in high school back then. So that was like three or four years into my lifting career at that point. Actually, no, four or five.

And so we kind of, I was like, oh, who are these guys with these cool shirts? And so then I saw them through the shirts. I don't remember. I'd have to go back through and see like when I actually started listening to the podcast more frequently. But yeah, so we've known of each other for forever. And, you know, with the history of South Dakota, the East River versus West River kind of a thing. So we'll give, we'll give each other crap going back and forth because they're from East River. I grew up at West River.

So I'll make fun of the East River folks in their tree. And then West River is where all the cool. things that South Dakota are at. So it's kind of like one of those give and takes. But yeah, no, we've kind of kept up with each other since and then became a supporting member. From here, it says January of 2022. I found my membership card. Oh, what's your number? I'm going to guess it's 189. It's the last four digits, right? So it's one 10. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nice. Oh, damn. Okay, that's good.

So you're definitely in like the, probably the 80. Is it the gold or the black and red? I got the black one. Okay. So that's, that's, You were a 110 on the black one. You got to be like in the 70s or 80s now. At least at least the 80s because there's, you get some bandwagon people falling off. There's just, there's stories.

There's people that zip out and come and go. Everybody has a reason. Yeah. Not all of them are bad, to be clear, but like, you know, you don't get to keep your number. Exactly. Well, technically, you don't.

The more people that leave, you don't get to keep your number. I think Sanders made an exception for one guy who fucked up and let his credit card lapse. and then, you know, got all upset that his number changed, and Tanner has a nice and give him his, you know, I wouldn't have given his low number back, but hey, that's just,

because that just helps me out if he doesn't get it. But, uh, nonetheless, well, we fucked up and we forgot to get an ad read from you. So at your discretion, I don't want to hit you too off guard, but yeah, you were supposed to give us that, and we completely shit the bet on that one.

What do you mean? We, we, yeah, you went to go, fucking take a shit, and I came, left me with the affiliates, and I was like, all right, well, I guess for, my dinner wasn't ready till 6. five. So I had like 15 minutes to eat dinner and get this going. I was like, I have to peeve so so bad the entire conversation. All right. What's your ad read there, bud? All right. So unfortunately, the Masconomics guys didn't get to me, but those guys at Jim Radar did. So do you feel

like you're the only one who cares about the shape of the nerling on your bar that you might use once every other month? Do you spend more time thinking about gym renovations than those of your own house that you recently moved into and haven't painted at all and currently aren't not talking about myself. Do you think more deeply about the padding in your gym machines than on the bed you sleep on? Then gym radar is for you. Join hundreds of other home gym enthusiasts to answer the real questions in life, such as what truly is the ultimate felt load. Plus, show your friends and family that what they call reckless spending is actually not all that bad compared to some folks, and this next piece of gym equipment will finally make you able to get strong.

This is the social media that will actually see you making gains. Unlike those folks who make Jim Radar, this site is for sure on my radar and should be on yours as well. Very good. I think that's our first full Jim Radar ad read. Yeah. And Cavia, my house is somewhere fainted. I have to shout out credit to Montoya family for helping me out with that.

But you know, you get on a roll on an ad read. You can't stop. Oh, yeah. All right. So you're West River, right? So is that born and raised? Always there? raised. So I was born in the South and then my dad ended up getting a job.

The South of South Dakota or the South of America? South of America, it should be clear. So yeah, the question is, where do you live where you're from? I should have posed it better, I guess. Okay, okay. So I'm from Rapid City, South Dakota, West River, and I currently live in St. Louis, Missouri. So I'm on the meeting of the Three River. So I'm kind of like right in the middle of everything here. Nice.

And then where was, where were your southern roots at that you said before your dad moved? Yeah. So I lived in Atlanta, Georgia for a little bit when I was like under a year after I was born. Then we moved to Knoxville, Tennessee. And then when I was like four or five, we moved to South Dakota. But I was actually back in Atlanta for grad school and then moved to St. Louis after. So kind of like a full circle. You were too young, but what a culture shock.

Atlanta to South Dakota. Like, oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. So my folks are originally from East River, South Dakota. So there's like, you know, my mom grew up on a small farm in southeast, South Dakota. My dad was from Seapalls. And so they went to school in Rapid City.

And then they kind of took a little tour of the country and then made their way back. I had a map. So that's how I ended up growing up there. I had a map out today. Big spicy pizza turned me onto this app. It's called The Roost. and you can like send bird messages. So I'm going on there in a couple days.

You send a, I think it's called that. I forget what it's called. But like you pick a bird and you write a message and this app simulates the flight patterns and speed of a bird from you to your friend. It's weird and niche and kind of dope. But right now my bird is on its way to Big Spicy Pizza. And I had the map out at work. And I showed my buddy.

And I was like, um, it's like a real time. I'm showing you, like, where your little pigeon is trying to get over to Minnesota. You get some birds at, like, 72 kilometers an hour. You get some birds that are, like, 10 kilometers an hour. And it's just, whatever. Like, you pick your favorite birds. And I pulled up and I was like, okay, do you see how this is Sioux Falls?

And there's, like, other cities around it. I scrolled up and I showed him Aberdeen. And I'm like, I've been there more times than anywhere else in the country. And he's like, why? And I'm like, it's too long of a story. I'm telling you. Yep. All right, Andrew.

That one thing that you've seen that you haven't had a chance to buy, the Massonomics merch that just, you know, you go on their website today, it's not there, maybe something from that deep vault that you, one of those shirts you saw him wearing back in 2015 that you didn't get a chance to buy. Now, full disclosure, I don't think you've listened to a lot of our episodes.

We do this to try and encourage Tanner to bring things back. And I will tell you, it has worked. Can I use this opportunity as a platform to espouse the message that I probably said the most regarding merch on the Discord again? And that being the lack of an 8-bit weightlifting t-shirt. We have, we have Strawman, we have powerlifting, we have Highland games. They even got the bodybuilding banner. Yeah. Well, you know how they did the, okay. So you know how they got the bodybuilding one was, was, our friend,

Craig, big Chris, he literally made it up and then Tommy just edited it a little bit, I think, and then they just made the flag. Yep. They didn't get a shirt out of that, but you could at least, you could hire, honestly, like, you could hire someone if you're not, you know, it doesn't have to be AI,

you can actually hire an artist or something or commission, but I I mean, how many, but how many weightlifters are there, though? I'm not saying that like, I mean, are there as many weightlifters is there a highland games? Probably not. I'd probably say Highland Games is probably about the same, wasn't it?

Yeah, based on... There's like... Based on... What do you consider Highland games like consistently? Is a weightlift or someone that like occasionally does this like snatches and cleans for accessories? Or is a weightlift or someone that competes in weightlifting and like specifically trains those two lifts for like a competition level? I'll say this. I'll say this.

When I first introduced the What's Your Favorite Muscle thing? There was a big conversation about not caring. about particular muscles. If there is enough people that think that, but we got a bodybuilder flag, I think we can get an Olympic lifter flag. Like, remember, there are bodybuilders in this discord

who care about individual muscle size. There are people that care about pump. There are people that care about that kind of thing. Enough to get a flag. I think there's probably enough to get an allie eight bit. I also think just to complete the set, right? We have most of the other strength sports now. like might as well just run the gamut.

I'm not even saying you have to stock it for forever. And then like actually something that I think that would be nice if they bring back would be just like some of the sweatpants but just in like bigger sizes as a larger individual. What was the biggest sizes they brought back when they did like literally two drops in the last like nine months? I think it was like two X or three X maybe. So that's like a size like 40 maybe 40. Yeah. Anyone above like 280 ain't buying those.

yeah exactly or like you know some of the limited like the lift shores with like the money liner like those in bigger sizes it's usually the bottoms that don't have enough bigger sizes for the specialty ones

so those ones are ripping fast I'm seeing a lot of people are ripping through those whether it's the 2.0 or the 3.0 those are the 3.0 right the expensive ones yeah I can't remember like the no like the ones where it's like you know the original ones

it's like one trust fund yes These ones are like a wealth fund from a nation. You need to buy. Yeah, I have them and I stopped wearing them because I thought they were going to rip. And then somebody put in the Discord that there's ripped. And I'm just wondering if it's just the material or we're all just getting bigger. Which I think is the goal.

But I always downsize my lifting shorts, but I can't downsize those because they're not. They're not super flexible. They are not. All right. Do you by chance to know what your Hall of Fame? statuses for the Massonomics Hall of Fame. Including me. I got this card right here. So I, yeah, I just, like, I moved in late December a whole mile down my street to a different

house. And so everything kind of got jumbled. But, yeah, so depending on how much I accomplished at Lift Hard, Live Easy will depend on, like, right now I'm showing that there's like three or four that I haven't done yet, but have the opportunity to do that weekend. And if that, happens. I should be at 12. Nice. Let Tanner know because then he'll have a cup ready for you. Yeah. I need to. I just need to see if Massonomics Gym is going to be open on Friday for me. Yeah. I mean, you're going to get the gym no matter what. Like that's that's, if you literally go to Aberdeen, you're going to get the gym. Like, all you got to go in there is pick up a fucking dumbbell into a curl when you lift at a massinomics gym. Like that's, that's a gimmy as long as you show up to

Aberdeen and like walk through the broken glass door. Is it still broken? Yes. Abby confirmed it last night in the live. No, no. I was like, is that, so it'll for sure still be, it'll, it'll, it'll legit be a piece of plywood when we're there. Which the cool thing about, we should stick her the fuck out. I was going to say that. That might piss Tanner off because it's like not his door. And it's like, I was more thinking like, that's almost as an important picture as the billboard.

I do think getting a picture with temporary door that like, it probably has nothing on it. Like, I'm sure there's no signage. There already wasn't any signage. But, well, I think where was, was the urban hair salon? sign of on that door? Yes. It's the same. I think it's the same door.

No, it is. I just, I just can't remember if the urban, if the hair salon was like on the, like the brick outside, if it was like on a glass mirror, like a glass window or if it was that specific door. Like that I care.

Also, the guts of calling your hair salon, the urban hair salon in that location. I hope they're not listening, but like, gutty, bro. So urban. So the Hall of Fame. So what are you missing a picture with the crew that even too?

Is that something you don't have? Yeah. So I need to double check one of my training partners recently became crew in the last week. So I might have just gotten that one by accident. But I'm a notorious post everything to my story and nothing to my actual feed on Instagram guy. And so I might have to reverse that trend to cover that one. Yeah, the only ones I'm missing. So that one attend and compete at Lift Hard Live Easy.

I'm going to do both. And then, yeah, I've got most of the other ones. The ones I don't have is contest winner, voice on Masonomics Podcasts, have not had that one. Crew Falls, it's always, like, December, I always have, like, a contest or, like, other travel going on. So I haven't been able to make it up for that. And then, listen to the first 400.

I haven't ventured down that. That would probably be a master completer kind of thing. Can confirm, because I am a master complete. Yeah, you just did that, didn't you? Yeah, and that was the hardest shit. Yeah, that was the hardest one for me, but yeah, I did it. Technically, the competition win is the hardest. Yeah.

I know I cracked a joke, and I'm like, because they're giving out competition wins like candy and whatever, but, like, that was a sarcastic comment because, like, that's the hardest one to get. Oh, yeah. You have maybe four opportunities a year to get that one, so. Yeah, good work. I hope you get your cup. Yeah, I got to remember to message him and get that just doubly confirm. I don't want to claim Hall of Fame status if I don't have it.

So I got to make sure. So technically you're at nine now. You're at eight now. Eight now. You could do for the lift hard, live easy. Yeah. Yeah. Just let Tanner know.

He'll have a. Yeah. Yeah. You'd be crazy not to. Perfect. Now, you also don't have to post the picture. Right. No.

If you got to. No, I think it would do. I think, I don't, well, what's it say on the card specifically? Read the sentence for the picture. Let's see right here. Post picture with another supporting member on IG. Yeah, you have to post it. So, like, me and Keith would have to post the same picture if we took.

Like, if I went to Keith's out. Yeah. Okay, that's fair. Yeah. Yeah, so I'm going to have to double check my feed. Otherwise, I'll have to, I guess, be friendly and post that I had a good time or something. Oh, no. Oh, no.

No, no. All right. Want to get into that one there, Keith? Yeah. You got that CTF over there. What's that like? It looks like a jack of all trades, doing a little bit of everything throughout your whole career.

But what's the gym status right now? And is she certified? She is certified. I've got both banners up in there. So this is, so like I said a little bit earlier, I just moved down the road, picked out this house specifically

because it has both like a regular, car garage and then the previous owner built like a garage for an RV. So it's got like really tall ceilings in there. So the layout's like you know still 16 by like 26 or something so nothing crazy huge but it's tall which is

very helpful because I was doing Olympic weightlifting and like do you guys know what like a carport is where it's just a roof off the side? Yeah. And so St. Louis is like just south enough to where there's a bunch of those. So the house I was renting they like encased the carport. So I was

doing split jerks and stuff. Yeah, I was doing split jerks and like almost hitting the beams above my head. But now I don't have that problem at all. But yeah, basically, I'd say the majority of it is Facebook marketplace. So there's secondhand fines. I don't tend to buy a whole lot of stuff new. The rogue yard sale at the Arnold has been the source of a lot of the equipment I have in there. Oh, so yeah.

And then you draw you drive out to the Arnold every year then. Yeah, yeah. It's like the first year I did. So I've been to the Arnold every year. since 2020. And so the road yard sale, like, it's inconsistent. So like one year I got competition bumpers for a dollar a pound. Crazy deal.

Last year, nothing. This past year, they had brand new rogue Piroz bars for like $250. So it's really just about like going and seeing year to year. And then a lot of Facebook marketplace, the York Rack that I have was a Facebook marketplace find. somebody was trying to sell it for a decent discount, but I sat on it for a while. Then he moved down to like 400 bucks.

I'm like, okay. Now we act and stuff like that. So it's a lot of, you know, being patient and scrolling and, you know, having contacts. Like my, when I was doing strongman, my coach, so my former strongman coach, because I'm not actively competing in strongman right now, he had some gear that he was wanting to go to a good home.

so I picked up a apparently you guys done the magazine T Nation so they made a trap bar back in the day they called it a dead squat bar and he just had one of those so I got to pick that up for a pretty reasonable deal and the nerling on that thing

is the sharpest nerling ever like more nerled than an agro bar oh damn that sounds horrible though like you got a you'd have to chalk the shit out of using that we're just going to rip you up I feel like that's one of those ones where it's like I'm using straps for the sake of my hands, not for grip. The Agro3 bar was the sharpest bar I've ever touched.

And, well, I will take that back. There was an elite FTS bar that came out once that was just as sharp or sharper, but it was inconsistent because I tried another one that was the same bar, and it was completely not that. So, yeah, it's just being opportunistic of, like, kind of building up your stuff. Like, the biggest, the biggest secondhand fine I got was those Ivanko-Kromes. I was just looking at those. I want to point out, I just gave you the code unpaid.

It is your first comment. So if everybody can go ahead and bother him on Jim Radar and respond to my comment or add your own comments. I was looking earlier. I didn't. Did I see any reviews or not? Oh, there's lots of reviews. Yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that iron mind axle. I was trying to, I wanted to read his review on it, but he didn't see one.

No, and it, he's got the most expensive axle ever made. He's got 55 reviews, which is, yeah, I did a thing where, like,

I reviewed all the equipment in my gym. Like, great, and then I got new equipment. I haven't done that process. Ah, there you go. So my biggest,

my biggest question, and I've been trying to get to this. Sorry, I keep interrupting you, but this, this is kind of important to me. You have the illegal power bar, the IPF power lifting training bar. Was that a Facebook market find? No. That was,

crazy, crazy. That's... Hold, hold, hold, hold. I just looked at the price of that, because I was like, let me... Didn't you watch me in Tanner's video talking shit about that bar? And I vehemently disagree with it. Um, the, so I got, so when Aliko came out with their new line of barbells recently, right? They had a, they revamped their whole process.

They had a bunch of their old stock. So I didn't buy it for full MSRP. It was a discount from Aliko. So that was like, I think originally was like 1100 maybe. Yeah. So I got it for like. So I got it for like seven. Oh, okay.

That's, that's honestly not bad. I think Tanner paid six. Yeah. That's not bad. but like it's currently 1150. I pay fucking $600, $600 for a power bar before. Yeah, it's currently $11.50, which I was just like, hold on. I see illegal on anything and I'm just like, I have to ask.

Oh, yeah. No, that was like, that was a definite like, uh, should I? And then like 700 is a good deal, honestly. Yeah. And it was, I'm very, I'm very big on, uh, I'm very big on training with what you compete with. Like if you're, if, if your goal is like, you know, high level, competition. I want to compete with, I want to train with what I compete on. So that's why,

like the barbells that I have, like, I got a rogue Piero's bar, because that's what USA weightlifting uses. I don't think it's the best weightlifting bar. I think the Aliko or the, uh, uh, ZKC is pretty good. They're the Chinese company or Yusaka, you know, out of Japan. They're also very good, but like, I compete with rogue. I'm going to use Roe. And so I got the Aliko one for like, you know, gears down the line. Whenever I go back to like, Powerlify America, or something like that. That's what I'm going to compete with. That's why I bought the Texas deadlift bar.

I was competing in powerlifting, and they were all using deadlift bars. And I was like, well, I don't know how to use a deadlift bar. I better figure that shit out. And I had some disposable income at the time. And I was like, yeah, let's do that one. Because it was that one or the, what's the Canadian strong arms sport? Bills of steel didn't exist.

Bills of Steel didn't exist. Or then strong arms sport. Yeah. I got their kilo place before they, before everybody has a vendetta against Strongarm now. Yeah, it's made for some. You're not one that consumes much of the pre-show. I can't,

I don't imagine. Have you ever tuned into a live episode? I've never seen your name in there, I don't think. It's once in a blue moon. They're usually like, I think they usually record on my training nights. So that's why I usually miss them. But I heard the background that Strong Arm was going bad.

And I was like, well, I got lucky with mine. Yeah, if you knew what they did and all. all the back and forth. And like how animatedly pissed off Tanner was telling the story. It's just like, oh, yeah, fuck that guy. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's like, because it was a similar thing with like Hansu, right, for a while? Yeah.

Yeah, Hansu's like fucking ghosted people for like, didn't respond. My fucking buddy ordered change plates from Hans Hanzu. And it was like nine months to the, he like, he like asked me. Like, do you know anyone over there? Like, can you help me out with this? And I was like, and so I like, DM Brandon. And I was like, can you help my buddy out? Like, this is, like, can you reach out to your contacts here?

And he had him like a, like, it still took like a month from that, like from basement brain and reaching out on his behalf. But like if that hadn't happened, would he even, would he ever get him? Like, like he's fucking, it's shit that says in stock on the website. And he, his wife got him for him for his birthday like nine months prior. And I'm just like, that's why that's such a shitty fucking thing. But. All right.

Um, you had a handful of people fill out your questionnaire. How'd you go about telling him you're going to be on this random podcast? So I had my folks do it and then all my lifting buddies here. So I had a 100% hit rate on the people I asked, which was good. And, you know, one of them's crew, the other two are aware. So like one of my training buddies, they're actually, two of them are trading my garage right now while I'm doing this. So that's funny. Oh, I'm sorry.

I appreciate you being flexible this week because normally this would have been Thursday, but you made some accommodations for us. So I appreciate that. Oh, no. Today is usually my off day. It's more about the heat and everything. They're the normal gym that, so like I have, there's four different places I train. And the gym that where they usually train out where like all the strong man stuff is doesn't have AC. And it's been like that heat dome stuff this week.

And so my buddy Nick is training to compete at North Americans in a few weeks. And so he was like, hey, can I come to your garage where it's a little cooler? I was like, cool. I'm going to be doing a podcast though. So your RV gym has AC or your RG? I got a window unit for this couple of weeks. Smart. Because I was like, I can't imagine like an RV garage has a heat pump under anything.

No, I'm going to get one installed here in like a month or so. Oh, yeah. In the more time, I've got a window unit that I'm going to sell to another buddy for his home gym. So we've got a whole shuffle going on. Nice. Is there heat up? Also, there's no heat during right now then. So the heat pump will be the heat and the AC.

Good call. Yeah. All right. Well, we appreciate you getting some of that filled out. and it's always helpful for sure. Are you familiar with least fun, most fun? Oh, by asking right when you sort of drink some water. All right, so anyone, I got my drink here.

So yeah. Yeah, anyone listening for the first time. It's a game we like to play here called least fun most fun. So we're going to give Big Monty here one topic, and he kind of has to go through, use his druthers, and tell us the least fun thing about it and the most fun. Not either or, but a little bit of both. So least fun, most fun, starting your competitive lifting career at such a young age.

Oh, listen. Least von. And I guess tell us how old you're, I guess, I guess I should have you prefer to, like, explain to the people, like, very briefly, like, when you started and if you consistently lifted up and because I could like. Yeah, sure. So I started lifting the summer between my sixth and seventh grade. So I was about 12, I would say. And I haven't stopped since. That's what I've competed every single year since then.

Okay, cool. So, and how old are you? I'm 29. So I've got. 17 years of lifting experience. So it's one of those things where like, I'm younger, but I'm like an older. And your training age is older shit.

That's why he didn't know who the California raisins are. Yeah, he's a baby. Yeah. He looks like us, but he is not one of us. Yeah. He was, it was 80. I think you said 86 to 94. He wasn't even alive.

Yeah, this way. 96 baby. He's, he's not in the, he's not in the decade that's like one under us. He's in the decade that is two. under us. Yeah. Because we're 41 and he's 29. So there is a large gap there.

But all right. Yeah. Least fun, most fun starting so early. Yeah. So least fun would be no one else really understands why you love it and what you're doing yet, really, because you're kind of like the first one to it. Yeah.

I would say the most fun would just be like how it helped all my other sports. Mm-hmm. And there's like a certain cool factor. Like I remember the, I did a power lifting me in Minnesota the summer before eighth grade. And so like we had like a what'd you do this summer? And I was like I did this powerlifting meet. I squatted 315, like something like that. Which like hitting three plates in middle school was something like really fun to do.

Hell yeah. And so yeah, that was it was the only, I would say also least fun. I got a little bit muscle bound and I couldn't really run. So I had to take a year off in high school and I had to run. And so. Yeah. Very good. Very good.

Yeah. starting young is important. I didn't start until I was like 35, I think. And even then it was just, I started functional training and hated it with a fucking passion. And then discovered powerlifting, which led me to Strongman in Highland. Well, Powerlifting is the gateway.

It always is. I was always joking that there was a, somebody put out a meme where it was like, Obi-Wan looking across the desert and Star Wars, being like, he's like, my father. It's like, one day he will be trained. Because my dad was a state champion power lifter when he was in high school. So it's just like, just waited until I was like just old enough and got me that same iron bug.

Yeah, that was, that was my follow up was that was your old man. Was he champing at the bit, if you will, to get you lifting but kind of held you out until you hit puberty? And like, until you're 12, you can't touch a bar kind of thing? Or were you in his gym like just, so he basically had like, like restrict you from doing anything until you hit a certain age? Yeah, he was like pushups and situps are good enough until there's hair on your legs. And then, uh, then we're going to. going to do, you know, your standard like the standard like father, son at the YMCA. And that's where like ran into the original powerlifting crew that I, that I met,

it kind of like got me into the South Dakota, USAPL scene at the start. My kids join me in the gym sometimes and they just come in and, you know, oh, daddy, I can lift the seven pound weight. Oh, daddy, I can lift this 25 pound weight. And it's the only thing I ever say to them, honestly, is what group are you working? that's it that's like the most like training talk they ever get like it's fun that you're dead lifting a kettlebell okay but you're dead lifting the kettlebell and then you're skipping over to the dumbbell and throwing it over your head no we we have to dedicate our time what muscle group do you want to work right and then if they don't care

they don't care but like yeah you you don't want to push it on young kids like that okay my start was my start was tons of five by fives five by five's like for the entire first year do your fives Yep. Relatively new question, I've been asking everybody, and I'm going to ask you, what is your favorite muscle on your body, or, counter, what's your favorite muscle group to work?

Oh, it's got to be legs in general. And if I'm getting specific, I would say quads, now that especially I'm doing Olympic weightlifting stuff. So, love front squad is probably the lift that I'm the best at out of all of them. and so just doing, oh, they're glorious. I'll be a front squad evangelist. I know, like, it's one of those, yeah, but also, like, do I have to?

Oh, yeah, yeah. But I mean, like, if you're, if you see, like, you know, the edges of black in your vision as you're lifting, like, are you truly putting in a good effort? If you're not choking yourself with your own knuckles, did you really front squat today? Yeah. So, so. we might be bearing the lead. Like, Andrew's a very, very strong gentleman. I just want you to, what is your best front squat single and maybe like set up?

Like, what's your most proud rep PR on a front squat? For reps. It has to be for reps. Yeah, yeah. So you don't do that. That's gross. Okay, that's fine, too. Like, I don't know.

What your best leg press? I figured you do a lot of like a lot. What's your leg pressed to eight for with like 500 pounds or something. So I'm just curious of what you've, uh. Oh, yeah. I would say I hit a double at 606 on a front squat with an actual front rack and then my best ever front squad is 300 kilos, so 660. Nice.

And so that's like, that was one of those ones where it's actually kind of a counterintuitive thing at weightlifting. You don't want to get like to do too much static strength because then it takes away from your ability to recover and actually do the Olympic lifts because unfortunately you don't compete in front squat as much as I would prefer we did. And so, yeah, that's probably like the best, those are the best sets of front squats I've had. all right well uh we touch on occupation as little or as much as the guest wants so hit us with whatever you want on that one yeah so my background is i'm an engineer so uh did undergrad and grad school both in engineering so i was kind of like that crossing the hybrid between nerd and jock

especially in undergrad because i was on the football team so you know playing football in college while also doing engineering thankfully i went to an engineering school so the rest of the team was but i was like the nerd of the engineers on the football team. And so that was that was kind of funny. But I remember we were playing a game one time and I was talking with the, it's one of those things in lower school football. Sometimes you shoot the shit with the guys that you're playing against. And I was,

in one game I was a defensive line and I'm going against like the other team's team nerd as we're talking and stuff. So it's kind of fun the way that is. But yeah, no, so I'm just an engineer now. And then we've kind of touched on your lifting history. We can go into some more specifics, I guess. So the biggest, the neatest thing about yours is that you've competed at a fairly high level, you know, a fairly high level, you know, across three urban sports and there's something.

And you've done the, the Arnold in all three sports at a decent level, too, which is kind of wild. So I guess, you know, we got, we basically have you through high school and lifting. So, you know, anything that you want to kind of carry on and your ebbs and flows. And if you've bounced back and forth or if it's been three separate journeys or if you gone back and. forth. I'm just curious. Yeah, it's been kind of segmented, I would say, for the most part. There's been like a little bit overlap. So, uh, did power lifting through high school. College, I kind of took a break while I was playing football. You don't want to lose your scholarship or something, but like,

stayed strong there. And then, uh, once I graduated, I moved down to Atlanta for grad school. So I was doing powerlifting in the first year. And then I was lifting the 264 class, because it was before the USAPL left the IPF and everything. And I just did not, could not wake up well. Like my squad would say the same. My bench would tank. And so I did the battle. Right.

Like there wasn't a tweener. And so they didn't have the 275 option. No. It's funny. I joke with people that if there was a 275 or a 308 class, I might not have ever gone to Strong Band. But the, so I do the battle.

The USAFail used to have this meat back when they were in CPOT at the Arnold called the Battle of the Regions that I was doing. And I got the 24-hour flu on my way there. Oh, no. Worse me to lie. Worse me to my life. We did. I was cutting to 264.

I weighed in at like 255. And so after that, that was the year of the ghost Arnold. I don't know if you guys have heard that term before, but it was the one where like they let all the competitions go. Oh, yeah, yeah. But they canceled the vendors. That makes sense too because you literally were like, oh, I've gone to every Arnold.

I'm like, well, didn't fucking exist for two years. But I guess 2020, they still lifted. No, 2020. 2020, done. No, no. What are you talking? did. I'm not sure. Andrew would know.

But in any case, like, and so they only let the competitors stay in, like competitors from other competitions go watch the strong man. So that was the year that Thor ragdolled everybody. Yeah.

But, and I was there watching it with like 80 people. Well, it was funny. I was watching it. The stands were full with all the power lifters and stuff. And I was like, well, I'm sick of having to like limit myself to this weight class. I wanted to just see how strong you can get.

like no holds barred like let's just go super heavyweight and so what was funny was is that one of the guys I ended up with training with in georgia and strongman was actually competing there that weekend uh wesley clayborne he broke the american stone record when he was going with tom stultman but so i got back to georgia covid shuts everything down right and so i have a barbell but i didn't have any weight so i went to like walmart and i got buckets and i filled them with rocks and mud and so i was deadlift there's like some really old videos of me on my Instagram and it was like I got these cinder blocks that I would put down and I would have the buckets there so I get deadlift so that way my ROM was similar. Yeah yeah yeah you build a

platform and I got you and then the silver dollar deadlift pretty much and then the Georgia opened up pretty quick and that's when I was trained at Marietta Barbell and they referred me to growler's gym this is like north of Atlanta it's a private thing um so that's where I met like you know, Wesley Claiborne. John Fur is another high-level, like, strongman core pro, and a few other guys there. Mark Bevin's a master's guy. Like, I would name everybody, but, like, learned the strongman stuff there.

And so I did that power lifting me in the spring. I was like 255. And then I did another power lifting meet at 295 in June. And then by September, I was 315. And my strength, like, went through the roof. And I was like, okay, you know, the uh and he does he does say he's natty in the notes a couple times guys so don't jump to conclusions he is a so yeah natty natty lifter yeah i didn't even think of that uh my biggest

question is what's more comfortable oh being lighter so much more comfortable yeah but like the uh i would say like my best lifting weight that i've discovered is probably around like between like 335 350 i'm a little fatter than that right now but um the uh But yeah, no, that was like the dirtiest of dirty bulbs, too, because I'm in grad school, right? I don't have that much money on me. You literally can't afford clean protein. Yeah. No, so it's like, you know, 77, 23 beef or whatever, eating out of a bowl, like eating cereal and stuff.

I would get weird looks. I'm bringing like two or three PB&Js to the gym to eat while I'm training. And so, yeah, that was like, did that strong man for a while, then graduated and moved to St. Louis. That's where I met Nick and Connor and Jackson. My lifting buddy's here. Big Jackson now, he's part of the crew. Nice. So we train together for a little bit.

And then I worked myself up to like, I never officially got a pro card, but I did a lot of like low level. So I would say like low level pro, high level amateurs like that pro am show. Like there's kind of like that chasm between like the, a strong anchor pro or low level pro and like, you know, the guys who can go to worlds.

I was on the other end. that chasm, but I did like the, the Shaw Classic Open when it was still a thing. I did the Arnold Amateur one year. And then I did OSG one year as well. You weren't at the Shaw Classic. I saw the picture. Yeah, he definitely wasn't.

Yeah, I saw the picture. You weren't there. Like, there's no way to prove it. Oh, God. There was like, there's like two or three of those photos. And it's so, it's so bad. So the first year, there's two photos from the Shaw Classic that were bad. So there was one year where like they had all the open guys come out first.

And I'm sick. 6-1, 6.1 and a half on a good day. And I'm like the shortest guy there. And we're all in a row and we're all at an angle. And I'm wearing the Masonomics yellow curls shorts. Nice. So very bright on a black shirt. And I'm angled like slightly more than one of the other guys.

So I look like a Charlie Brown character from the side, like ridiculous like that. Whereas like everybody else looks fine. And they had that picture on their website banner for a while. And I'm like, oh, God. it's so bad. But the second year picture is the one that's the worst because I had to get back to work on Monday. So I had a late Sunday flight. And so what they did was they did like the awards presentation for the Shaw Classic Open that second year like during the pro show.

But it got to later everything. So I had to leave. And so then they take a photo with all the guys who are competing. And I think of the 16 guys in that photo like, oh, I don't know. Like, you know, I don't think. remember if Tom Evans was in that one or not, but like Tom Evans, Tim Buck, uh, uh,

James Jeffers from Canada, like West Irwinski, a bunch of guys who have competed at Worlds. And all of them like, every now and again, they'll post this photo. Like, look at all of us before we've made it.

And I'm like, I was in that competition. I'm not in that photo. So that way I could claim it's like, dumb valor from that. But it, and, and it even sticks.

Look at my iron podium. God damn it. Yeah. I wish Iron Podium was a little more like open power lifting as far as like user friendly for someone to just look. I mean, we can go find our results, but you got to click through each individual thing. And I'm not paying for premium. And no one else. I mean, no one,

no one can get the free experience of open power lifting because I don't think open power lifting is going to exist forever either. But sorry, I was just, uh. And I like, I did like just good enough to make it on Strombenn archives, but I'm not good enough to have a picture on there. So I know that, that classic area. But no, it was also funny because I was on work travel, and I had, so the first two years of the Shock Classic, there was an online qualifier.

It wasn't like you could just sign up and do it. And the second year, they gave us all, like, athlete bags and they were like a different color than the ones they did later. So it's like kind of like a cool thing. And then I had it carjacked. I had it stolen from my car. Oh, that's fucking. And so my work paid for all the stuff in the car, in the bag, which is great, because it was like hundreds of dollars. of lifting gear. But you can't replace that bag.

No, and now my buddy, Nick, who's competing high-level strong man, those guys, whenever we're meeting up with those guys, and he sees one of those guys that has a bag, like Bryce Johnson, he's going to be, he's competed up worlds and everything. He'll take a picture of that bag and send it to me. Do you got one of those?

That's just like I had one of those. That's so shitty. But, yeah, yeah, it was a... Now I feel bad you weren't there. Yeah, exactly. That's a good story, though. Oh, yeah. All right, so that got you.

Oh, geez. A screenshot in our notes. That's wild. Oh, you just called it. It was easier than copying the text. No, it wasn't. For me, it was. Fuck you.

Yeah, it works. All right, so you did Strongman for a couple years. And then you decided that you have really flexible shoulders and you're good at split jerking. Like, like, how to, that's, I wouldn't say an odd transition, but like, because I know strongman. I know power. I know power lifters and strong men. that have done Olympic weightlifting, but they all go back to strong man or powerlifting. And anyone that is a, but I mean, there are, I guess, Olympic weightlifters, there's the gym I go to locally.

There's the very distinct, the broccoli head powerlifting douchebags. And then there's like some of the regular powerlifters. And then there's, like, all the strong men are kind of in the same, like, they're all fucking have a 12 year old mentality. And that's what's why I love my boys. And then there's the weightlifters, which are just their own subculture of weird dudes. That's, yeah, 100% correct. I think I always joke where it's like basically like I don't know if you know who Shane hand him is he's like an OG weightlifter until Aaron Williams recently broke his records

but he was a world record power lifter and then he went to Olympic weightlifting so a joke is like only me and him like nobody goes to the one where you have to be more mobile everybody goes the other way fair yeah yeah but no I did that because I when I was trying to decide like switching for powerlifting I was like debating between the two and I went strong man originally had a lot of fun with it but then I was kind of getting to the point where it's like I've always watched the Olympics growing up loved it you know and there's just something about and I learned from strongman like my best movements were like overhead pressing stuff like that better and there was something about like being able to like do that sport that I wanted to really give it a shot and then I started doing it and I really liked it and there's like it's a lot less like it hurts your body a lot less. Grant said, you know, I tore my meniscus for the third time doing a Olympic weight lifting. So that it hurts your body a lot less.

You're doing like the same, you're competing in the same two lifts and you're maybe doing like five or six other lifts throughout the week or whatever. But like you're doing more repetitive fucking motion to your body than any strong man's doing. Right. But I would say it's more controlled and also the load is a lot less. I'm not trying to pick up like an 800 pound car. The felt load? Yeah, your felt load. Yeah, your felt load so much different.

But it was just, it was really the one of those things where I really wanted to try it out before I got like too far down to the strong man rabbit hole and like got to the point where like I was so immobile. I couldn't do it. Yeah. And so like when I switched from strong man that weightlifting, I had to like tactically lose muscle of my biceps so I could front rack again and stuff like that. But didn't really stretch on my lats and everything. But it's been fun. It's like a, I really am into like. the old school like all around strength athletes so like your misha clyevs your mark henries

your john coals your don reinhouts like the guys who have like like the goal i'm chasing now is a 3,000 pound super total career like the guys who kind of just did everything uh you want to tell people some people might not know what a super total is if you want to oh sure sure so your super total is your combined weightlifting and power lifting total so depending on who you ask i treat it as like your best total from weight lifting, your best total from power lifting. Some people will like super score it. So your best competitive squat. Yeah, yeah.

And so like, depending on who you ask, Mark Henry or Misha has the best. But I just want to hit that like 3,000 mark, which would be very fun to do. It is, Mark. Well, so Mark Henry had the best because I think he was the first to hit a certain amount. And then I think Misha beat it. So, yeah, so like, that's where the county comes in. So if you do total plus total, Mark has the best. Yeah.

If you do best competitive lift plus lift. Yes. Then it's Misha. Because like the Olympic lifts are a lot more inconsistent. Yeah. I got you. So his best snatch from one meat and his bats, clean and press from an,

or, um, you know, the other one, uh, I gotcha. Yeah. So like, yeah.

Yeah. Mark Henry demolished all of those from all. Yeah. Yeah. People forget like how strong he actually was. He just like, people do. competed at worlds.

But, like, you know, he won the Arnold, like. The first Arnold winner. He was the first Arnold winner, right? He, uh, he lifted the unliftable. Nobody had done it. Yeah, the Thomasinch. Yeah. With a vigor.

Oh, yeah. All the wrestling talk in the world. I know it's technically not wrestling talk. It's like where my world's collide is, Mark Henry, but. Yeah. Wrestling adjacent. Nice. Have you and Tyler Thompson's,

cross paths because I do believe you two are definitely the two strongest crew, or at least on Mount Rushmore of like active in our supporting members crew. I think he was getting to that higher level when I switched to weightlifting. Gotcha. I don't know if we've competed in the same show. I'd have to double check with Tyler. Do you know him and you just chat with them on Instagram or anything or are friendly? Yeah, yeah.

We're friendly with each other. I haven't seen him I don't think we've competed at the same show before because I remember like there was one year where Tanner messaged me was like trying to get me to do Lift Hard Live Easy

so that way I could so that way we could do like you know World Strongest crew but I was going against I think because the problem was like USA Weight Lifting Nationals was always like right around that same weekend and the past three years I just have this bad habit I keep hurting myself

and so this is yeah It just never worked out. Didn't you tell me you're hurt going into this competition too? Oh, yeah. Yeah. So was it last year I tore my meniscus for the third time at the Arnold? And then I sprained my wrist like a little bit ago.

So spreading your wrist is the worst, like, you know, it's the worst injury for weightlifting because it's like, it's not that bad, like walking around. But you can't front rack or hold the snatch or anything. And so now for this meet, like for bench, I'm just going to be like, we're just going to wrap the heck out of it. And just, I don't think I'm going to PR anything. But, you know, I just hit a total. That's fun. Hit a heavy squat.

Have some fun. Make Bryce slightly uncomfortable. He's going to be that. No, actually. He's going to beat me, but like, it'll be like, what is your, uh, the same zip code? Today, today I was doing Axel Press. And I happen to open Instagram on my rest, um, my rest. wrist on my rest.

And actually, yeah, those are combined here. And it was a video of trigger warning showing how you should wrap your wrists starting here at the palm and like work your way down like they're war wraps. And I'm with me because I have a, you might not know this, but I have like tendonitis and everything wrong with my arms from the shoulder down. I have in both arms. And I'm like, oh, okay, I'm going to try that. It was amazing. I went from like an 8 RPE town to like a 7 just doing that alone.

Right? So like, yeah, those wraps can really, like if you can use them, it's strong man, so like ain't nobody going to stop me if it touches the barbell. If it touches the barbell, fuck your lights. But like, yeah, that was,

yeah, that was like kind of like, in the middle of a workout, having that sent to me was like life-changing. I also did like one of the biggest days I've done at work in a long time too, right? I always get you. I work indoors, literally doors. So like my job is, yeah. Somebody. He said that to get you to get you, I think.

I don't have to do it on purpose. No, I didn't do it on purpose. Like my job is literally a company will order a series of doors and I have to go find them, put them on a skid palette and deliver them to them. And a 600 door a day is a lot of lifting doors, right? So I did 600 doors today and then came home and worked out. And I was dead tired. But that wristwrap thing was fucking dope.

I don't normally like the trigger warning conjugate stuff, but like that was awesome. I'll keep doing that. Big Monty, best power lifting total all time, I guess. I was curious where people like to hear numbers. and if you said you're right up there with Bryce, that's so you have you total 2K or you're right? I know you said you're not going to do.

No. You're not as strong as you would be in your past power lifting career, but, uh. Yeah, so I would say the best total I ever hit was, uh, 1967. The way you said no, the way you said no, like, yep, no, I haven't, I haven't even to come close to 2000. Yeah, 1967. It was in 2000. Jump away from a fucking two that you were.

I was one pull away. Yeah, that was 2022. You hit that. Yeah, so that one was like, I hit that one. I only weighed 325 then. But the, so I had a good squad. I almost tipped over with 750. I had a 326.5.

Yeah, I was doing a, so I was doing wraps, but no suits for that one. Because I was like, you know, I wanted to get some records or something. I can't remember what. And I just kind of did it for fun. But in USAPL you're only allowed two meter wraps. And so I had these really stiff, like gold, like the Titan gold ones. And my second set, they slipped off my, like, quas. And they bunched up in my knees.

So I couldn't feel my feet. So I had to re-rack 750, take it back out again. I got it. But then, yeah, so that one was, I was one pole away. I needed like a 760 pole. I got it like just above my knees with a stiff bar and couldn't lock it out. But, yeah, this meet. You also, hold on.

Big Monty. I don't have a big ass bench then. 1851 in raw is nothing to scoff at. Oh yeah. Well, you're always looking up, right? You're never content. It's like you're so close to that 2K number

that like... Your raw is higher than you're single. Oh, my single. That was like high school, I think. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because that was like, that was a funny thing. It was like my last year of powerlifting nationals for high school,

was the last year that USAPL didn't have a raw division. It was lift, equipped or lose. Wow. So, yeah, so that one was like, I learned that. The likelihood that your gear fit great when that, you know, well, I mean, maybe if your old man was into it, he probably did get you good fitting gear, but I know a lot of the guys say if they have to lift, like,

there's like three dudes share in the same fucking squat suit that's way too big for it. Oh, yeah. Like, like, you know, smaller schools and shit. Yeah, you lost just over 100 pounds on, your total doing wraps versus raw. Like, let's not scoff at any of that. That's an incredible accomplishment.

So then you're going to hit a meet PR raw squat here. I think that's the one lift where I'm like pretty close because from weightlifting, the squad is the one that has the most carryover between power lifting and weightlifting. Yeah. Because I always, I always squat high bar, high bar superiority completely. Agreed. But then, uh, the bench and the deadlift are where I'm going to be like not quite as good because the pull and weightlifting is very different.

You keep your chest over the bar a lot more. Yep. And then for bench, it's just like you just don't bench because it makes you more mobile for your clean and jerky and your snatch. And so my goal on the bench is to hit something above 400 pounds and not tarot. Those are my two goals. Those are good goals. Don't hurt yourself.

That's a good goal. Yes. Yes. So I'm hopeful for at least ideally like a 750 squat. and then bench like 420-ish and then pull anything above 7, I'll be happy. So have you watched the the Mastinomics recap episodes or like the YouTube videos or any of the live streams?

Like you're going on three years of, you know, having this massonomics powerlifting meat, strong man show, you know, and you just were like, I'm good, you know, I get you're prepping for the other shows, doing the other stuff, but like, you know, self-proclaimed big old Massonomics fan And what the hell took you?

Why did we have to wait until year four to get you out there, Big Dog? I can't. There was so, like the first year of the Lift Hard Live Easy was like I was peaking for North Americas and the show open. So like that one, you know, it's the biggest shows in my life. I can't risk it. And in the last two years, one year I had knee surgery. I think I saw, I think I saw you, Big Keith at a home gym con when I was on my crutch.

Oh, nice. Walking around. So that one, I was hurt. But then there was like that one year. I think I had a work thing or something. Oh, yeah, there was a weightlifting thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember that.

Yeah, so like now I'm trying to get myself, uh, no, this is the first year where I'm like, you know, I'm going to the dean. I haven't been to Aberdeen since I've had a basketball there in high school. And I hope to go back finally.

I feel like, yeah, you're, um, you're, um, I feel like you're, you're,

I mean, you're, I still go back to like, I swear Tanner's mission your name so many times for the years. you know, and you're always mentioned in like the Arnold, maybe it's just a lot of every Arnold recap episode. It was like, oh, yeah, we saw big Andrew Matoia and his dad, you know, and it was like pre, this is like like, like, like, in 2018, 2019,

like before like we really got into crew, crew stuff. So, um, make the most of it. I mean, you're going to have, obviously hanging out with Tanner Tommy's a little cool, but like there's going to be 150 to 200 people there that you're like, oh, I maybe followed like 12 of you on Instagram. So at the end of the week, try to like, you know, get more friends, meet more people. it's just fun.

Oh, yeah. That's definitely one of the goals is to like get the, get the community, like, not just in Discord, but like get it on the Instagram. So I can see what more people are doing, get more names with faces. You might have to go public. I was public for a while,

but like the amount of like bot accounts and stuff. Oh, yeah. I understand. So I like to control it. I understand. Because you mentioned that we might have met at the Arnold and I probably asked you, are you crew?

At the, if we were in. each other at all. I was just like, are you crew? And you were like, no. And I was like, well, let's go. Like, get on it. Yeah. You definitely don't need to that. We are, we are at 840. All right.

I had to question. I can't remember what the fuck it was now. But it's all good. Oh, when are you getting into Lift Hard? What? Are you just coming for, are you coming? What day you're going to be there? I plan on getting there like Friday, midday. So. It'll at least be there for Tanners. That was the plan was to make it at least by Tanners.

Thursdays is awesome. You're going to miss a little fun Thursday. Oh, fuck you. You're missing the end. Motherfucker, you don't want to watch me do strong, man. What the fuck, dude? I'm hoping to get there before the contest is over. I hope to get there, like, early Friday.

It's going to, the fucking show is going to be, I think the way Jake's email read, he's not even going to have to fucking break in between the events. It's going to be event, event, event, yeah. Just Waltz. We're running so many, we're running two lanes, and each lane has a shit ton of people on it. So you will have a built-in break just by there being fucking 20 people when he, just, for the award ceremony and then stand up there and help hand out the awards like a dick.

Like that would be the funniest thing. Like just walk in and, yeah, just walk in and be like, Jay, can I just help give out awards? And he'll like, oh, okay. Yeah. No, I was planning on going a little bit earlier, but my parents are going to be in town here for a little bit. And then I've got some stuff around the house I need their help with. And so then after that, we're driving back up to South Dakota together. So I'm going to be staying in Southeast, South Dakota.

I'm going to shoot straight up to Aberdeen on that Friday morning. So as long as I wake up early enough, I should be there to see at least some of the strong man contest. All right. All right. What we can do, we can get us some games. I do the one thing I will want to circle back to, I'm going to let you think about how you can tell it. You did mention the meat you bombed out at. And we do like a good poop story here.

I think there's a reason why we need to tell that story. We can do some games. You can tell the story now. Oh, I want to hear that story. I do too. Okay. Yes. So that was the meat where I think I got sick in the Atlanta airport on the way there.

I'm already like 15 pounds down. And then I just, you know that feeling like you're laying in bed? And then all of a sudden, like, you know, like, I'm going to wake up sick tomorrow. Yeah. I had that feeling. I woke up. And I'm like barely with it. And then I get to the meat.

I weigh in at like 10 pounds under what I actually need to be at. I'm like, all right, this is going to go terribly. I hit my opening squat, completely cram my pants. like literally like in the hole you shit your pants like like are you yeah in the hole it wasn't like full on but it was like you know there's something came enough to be noticed but the embarrassing part is like I can't remember it was between attempts or before bench like I ran to like a janitor's closet and found some paper towels to clean myself off with and I threw them in a waist can because I didn't go where the back and then after I got done with that I look up in the bathroom's like right there I didn't have to do that at all that is a So that's two good Arnold bathroom stories in a row.

And it'll do that. Last week and this week. Yeah. We had to Arnold this week. And we had you shitting, wiping in a toilet paper out of the... While Arnold peed. Yeah. Next to Big Kyle.

In the room over there. That was just a crazy meet because, like, no one ever really bombs out on deadlift. That's, like, not something that happens on that option. I mean, I've seen it, but you've got to be stupid. And you got to hurt yourself or fucking open, like, at 95%. Yeah. Or you get embarrassed because you've got yourself on squats and you're trying to save face. Yeah.

But dead to be like that. Like, I mean, I legit like, I miss 405 like randomly all the time. And I'm like, I can fucking pull like 60 more pounds than that. So I'm like, why the fuck that I miss 405? I can like, I know I can deadlift. I fucking axle. I doubled an axle at 455. And I just missed fucking 455 on a goddamn wippy deadlift bar.

What fuck? Yeah. Last week, 365 for three was the hardest deadlift I have done in five years. I'm like, what the hell, dude? Like, oh, all right. All right, big Andrew. FMK, we're going to hit you with some food here. Because there was some weight,

there was some lifting ones. I think we've talked with lifting to death. I don't want to keep going down that whole. FMK, regional burger chains. So we got Culver's, Waterburger, and in and out. Have you had all of those? I'm assuming those are ones you've had because you've lived in a few different places,

Those aren't all in the same place, right? No, they're not. I got you. Colvers Midwest, in and out, West Coast. I've only had Colvers out of that list, personally. Yeah, so I'm going to kill Whataburger right off the gate. And then I'm going to screw in and out. Because that one's like, that's one of those ones where, like, if I had it all the time,

I don't think it would be as special as if, like, I'm going to be in California this weekend. I'm going to hit it in and out and get a couple double. double doubles. They'm going to marry Colvers. I've had Culver since I was a little. You can't go wrong with custard and a butterburger. This is a, that's what I would put for that order.

Yeah. I didn't, I experienced Culverts for the first time going to the Dean a few years ago. I was like, that's not bad. It's still surprising, like how in depth of a menu they have and it's not just a burger place. You get fucking fried chicken and mashed potatoes if you want,

but it's like, ah, just give me a cheeseburger. It's like they have a fresh fry during lent and everything. And you're like, oh, wow, they're going all out here. Like legit custard on a burger?

Like the same custard you would put on like Eggs Benedict? I think he means ice cream, doesn't he? No, it's frozen custard. So it's like, you know, it's like ice cream but a higher cream count content, I think. Damn, dirty bulk for sure. I mean, what was that old Big Z quote? Like, how'd you get big shoulders like strawberry milkshake? Yeah.

All right. Mount Rushmore, let's make this one as provocative as possible. Top four modern country singers. Oh, shoot, let's see. Modern. Yeah, I thought of this one, like, you know, with the, there was the country discussion. Yes, yes, the Luke Brian's abomination.

That's a good word to describe that one. I'm fishing. Oh, no, I see. I sing it all day at work. It's a wake up, climb, tree, Camel, coffee. Yeah, just fucking words. Hunt fish.

She's like autistically just reading fucking words. Yeah. So, I think like the most mainstream one would probably be Luke Combs. I think he's mainstream, but still has like a soul to it. And he's a dang good singer. Getting more niche.

I would say Charles Wesley Godwin. Big Tyler that we talked about earlier would agree with me on that. So he's from West Virginia. He is. He has a bunch of, like, very good storytelling. He graduated from my rival high school. Oh, that's hilarious. But great.

His concerts are fantastic. I would also say, uh, Ian Munsick. So he's a little bit more poppy compared to those. But he's from, uh, he's from Sheridan, Wyoming originally. I know, he's got like, uh, how do I know? And so he's, uh, you're thinking of Taylor Sheridan. No, I'm not. So his, uh, his music is like kind of reminds me of home.

So it's kind of like, that similar region to Western South Dakota. So it's a lot more like, you know, bringing like a Western sound back to country. And then the last one I've been listening to a lot recently is Zach Top. So bringing that 90s sound, he's kind of like Alan Jackson

reincarnated. Yeah. So those are kind of the four that I would go with right now. I wish I had saw, was the Alan Jackson like farewell thing? Was that like live somewhere? Because I like, I saw it on Instagram, but I would have actually watched some of that. But I don't know. I think I missed that. Yeah. But he

Yeah, so he's like, he's officially retired from live performing, and there was like a big send-off. Oh, dang. And he had like a huge set, too. It was like a bunch of, like, modern people sung his songs as like the opening act. And then, like, 10 or 15 of those. And then, like, he did, like, another, like, 15, 20 song set, I guess. That's what Ozzie did. Then he died, like, a week later.

Well, I really hope Alan Jackson has a little bit of an extra life because he's got to be fucking. How old is Alan? He's got to be 70. He's fucking. I didn't want to look that up. I saw Alan Jackson live in West Virginia, in Charles in West Virginia in like 2025, and he was like not young then.

Or sorry, 2005. I just said 2025. 2000. Uh, well, Joey, do you got any affiliates for him there? Sure do.

Hit a barbell rescue. Great company for cleaning your barbells. I use it constantly. Not a lot of people know, but you can also use that to help, uh, put on your three and, and one or whatever you use.

If you're using anything other than three and one, maybe use his oil as well because, you know, the WD40 kind of smells after a while. Use code unpaid there, get your 10% off. Pretty much covers the cost of shipping at this rate. Home JimCon, if you don't have your tickets by now, I don't know why I'm still pitching this to you, but you can still use code unpaid to get your tickets.

Jake always says everyone buys their tickets the last couple weeks. Yep. Well, use code unpaid to get those tickets. And you save, what is it, 10%, Keith? Yeah, I believe. Yeah, and of course, Jim Radar. I do not have a code for you, but if you are listening to this and you're not on Jim Radar, what are you doing? Get on there.

Get your gym on there. Review your equipment. Put your equipment on there. A couple things that are really great about it. You get to see other people's reviews, talk to people about the equipment they own. Really cool for your insurance. If something was to happen to your house, you have photos of your gym, you have photos of your equipment, stuff like that.

Like there's multiple levels to how great Jim Radar is. But most specifically, you get to put your gym out there and share it with other people. There is a rumor those guys at Jim Radio, wherever they are. It might be a Lift Hard to Live Easy. It's not confirmed yet, but there is some talk. No, no, they don't have the time. They've got to get to Home GymCon. Do you think they're busy doing all the little things for Home GymCon?

Do you know how hard it would be to be at the Lift Hard Live Easy and Home GymCon and still have a good presence? That would be impossible. I'm one of the only people that do. know that would be. So good luck to those guys, whoever they are. This will be the first year with a booth forum, so, or whoever they are. All right.

Well done. Well done. Big Monty, unpaid or underrated. Game you're familiar with, right? Correct. All right. Do you want to explain it or do you want me to do it? You got it, man.

All right, buddy. So anyone listening for the first time, similar to unpaid, similar to overrated and underrated, but, you know, with a slight little tweak here. So anything that is, you know, anything we consider unpaid, something you don't like, because no one wants to be unpaid,

and then underrated, you know, makes sense being underrated. So big Monsey, unpaid or underrated, the Black Hills. Oh, underrated. So underrated.

It's one of the most unique places in the country. I would say because, you know, everybody's like, you know, go from Out Rushmore, but there's so much other unique stuff in there. It's kind of like, you know, both literally and figuratively, of like getting overshadowed by the Rockies and the Teton's nearby.

But it's kind of a, it's a really neat place to like take your family for a vacation. You could see, obviously you have to see Mount Rushmore, but you can see Crazy Horse and a bunch of other activities in the hills. And it's just like a really neat place to grow up. So that'll always be home to me. Nice.

Unpaid or underrated, the Gateway Arch. Unpaid. What is the Gateway Arch? So in St. Louis, the gayway arch, I believe they built it in the 50s or the 60s. Oh, it's just that big dumb arch. Yes.

It's not called it dumb. It's fun. Oh, my bad. My bad. It's just a big arch. Yeah. You can actually go inside of it, right? It's not just like, just like a steel or stone structure. It's literally like, is it, I don't know. I actually, I'm the only, I only think I know that because there was a Percy Jackson fucking show. Yeah, that's how I knew about it.

Yeah, the big fight sign. Yeah, the big fight scene was inside. I was like, I was like, wait, there's like, it's like a hallway inside of it. I thought it was just this fucking, like, My bad saying it was done, but it's just a big steel arch. No, it is. But we always joke about it being like our weather diverting device in St. Louis because a lot of times storms will like kind of split right when they get to St. Louis. And so we're like, oh, someone turned the arch on.

Or if the weather goes right through, it's like someone forgot to turn the arch on. But I only say it's unpaid because people around here will say it's the best national monument when I grew up, you know, half an hour from Mount Rushmore, which is clearly the best national monument. So that's the only reason I'm calling it unpaid. Otherwise, it's pretty cool to look at. It's kind of neat when you're driving into town and you see the arch. It's like, ah, home is 20 minutes away. Is it like, I mean, I guess I'm looking at, I mean, you wouldn't know off top of your head.

I'm just curious, like, how much bigger. So it's like triple the, so 630 feet. So I guess that's like a 60, call it a 60, it's like a 70 foot building or a 70-story building, give or take. Yeah, you see it on the skyline. It's very, makes the skyline pretty unique. Pretty cool. Pretty cool.

All right. Unpaid or underrated VersaGrips. Ooh. I'd say underrated in Strongman. I don't see enough people using them

when they can be, I would say. So like unless, like there's a lot of, there's a lot of athletes who have this habit of, you know, only doing what like most people would do

instead of doing what everything, like whatever the rules allow. So like, Take, for instance, I think it was Lucas Hatton at America's strongest band last year. They didn't say Versa Grip's were banned. Blazed through the deadlift way fast than everybody else because he could strap in. And I think they're really handy for doing accessories and stuff. I don't think it'll make or break you, but I think they're underrated and they kind of get a bad rap in general because they're kind of pricey.

But if you get like the knockoff brand or whatever. I actually, you might motivate me. I have like one more like 80% deadlift this week. I probably should have done it already. I might throw it in Friday real quick. And I hate deadlifting on a deadlift bar with figure eights. Like, I really, really don't like. I love figure eights for my axle, but I just don't like figure eights on a bar.

I don't know why. And I've like historically used versa grips. So you might, now you're in my head. I got to think if I want to actually just fucking, I'm going to get like one session working up to like, you know, 80% or something with the verser grips and see if I like it. So Jake says no, what's a versa grip? So it's the one where, uh, you have like a Velcro's. strap around your wrist and then it has like a piece of cloth or uh like a leather kind of like a grippy thing that goes under it so like the strap holds on that way it's kind of similar like a little yeah it's

kind of similar to olympic straps okay except they're a lot more grippy oh i might yeah i might end up wearing those i might i have to try that out and you got me uh you got me thinking don't don't don't try those a week before the competition kees oh i've i've got 10 years of experience oh okay i'll get cheesy i was like don't do that to yourself i just i just haven't, why I just haven't used them in a long time. And Jay, I think Jake's rule specifically, no, no grips with hooks. So, and it's kind of like, yeah,

I might have to follow up with like, like, Versa grip to me is not a hook strap because those are literally fucking metal hooks. Yeah. Don't even, don't even follow up. Make them take them, make them stop you on the platform and say those aren't allowed, grab something else. Just go for it. Yeah. No, the hooks are like those ones where like the, like, they actually

have like the little tongs or whatever. Yeah, I've seen that. Okay. Because that's what I thought you were talking about. No, okay. Yeah. Yeah, Versa grip's just, I've wore them for years before I got efficient with like hook grip and stuff. Yeah, I had those, but they cut off the circulation of my hand, and I just couldn't, it wasn't doing good for me yet. Okay. In my turn? I did three.

If there's a bunch of good ones left when you're done, I might throw another one at him, but I'll leave you some good ones. Okay. Unpaid or underrated, the overuse of belts. Oh, that's so unpaid. It's like, I even get on my own. and dad about that. I think it's actually, so there was a little period of time where I think I remember what year at the Arnold, but it was the year that JF Corone, he tore both his squads. Oh, yeah. You made me think of the video. Four or five years ago. Yeah, it was. So after that,

he took on more clients and he was the first ever strongman coach I had. And I worked with him for a couple of months. He got me over my deadlift plateau. And one of the things that I don't even kind of doing but he kind of taught me as well was like use your belt when you have to not just out of habit you know really it really focuses on building up your bracing your core and i already had to kind of because my college football team we weren't allowed to use belts at all in the way room no matter what like i was squatting i was trying to squat like 615 for two without a belt just because like the guys who were new to lift he would use him as a crutch yep like he would let me use my knee sleeves. So I was going knee sleeves

no belt, which feels weird. But it's it really helps. I think I honestly, I would take these sleeves no belt over I would do that too. Yep. Just with like the crunchiness in my right knee. I remember I if I can share a story. I remember

being at a power lifting me and I think it was my second last one. And there's people, they're literally using a rack to tighten their belt so tight. for deadlifts and I'm watching them

and I'm going what are you doing? Like you don't you shouldn't first of all because you're going to bust a rib and second of all like do you just not know how to deadlift?

And I think it was right after that that I just stopped using it until I got to like 80%. Right? And now my belt doesn't fit so I don't have a choice. I just don't get to wear a belt

because I lost I lost a you might not I have heard this. I lost like 15 pounds in a month when I got my job. So my lever belt no longer fits. So I have to wear my prong belt and I hate my prong belt. So the only time I ever wear my belt now is for axle cleans, right? Because it just, it helps a little bit.

Yeah. Your belt doesn't fit for the opposite reason of mine right now currently. Yes. But I can distinctly remember just watching them and they're like, they've got the side of the belt and they're like pushing it so tight. height and I'm just going like I don't I don't think you know how to deadlift at this point like

and it just blew my mind and I pretty much stopped using my belt at that rate um unpaid or underrated well what about a soft belt? Should I buy a soft belt? Oh, if you're a strong made yeah. Damn it.

I don't want to. I don't want to spend more money again and you'd be fine. Well you just got to get you got to see if someone can uh I guess it depends on, like, you know, if you have, like, somebody near you going to home gym con, I think, I don't know if all of Shaw's stuff is going to home gym con. Yeah, I know he's having a booth there. I don't know what he's bringing from evolution. It's might just be more to sell fucking.

So I was at Lori's and she was using one. And hers actually had like straps to put her leather belt around to like hold the soft belt in place with the leather belt. Yeah. I'd never seen that. like, I kind of love that, but like, they're not cheap. No, and you got to be careful, though. I ruined my first soft belt because I forgot, like, my first ever strongman show was George's strongest man.

It was a platinum plus back in the day. And I was putting on my soft belt for stones before I realized, like, I really don't need to do that. But I put my tacky and my arm sleeves on first. Oh, no. If I got tacky all in the Velcro and it's just like, then the belt wouldn't stay in place unless I had my leather belt over it. Yeah, I absolutely hate.

tacky. That's why I was saying like, Keith, don't try something new because I did that. I did my first ever stone competition like three weeks ago and it was the first time I tried tacky on an Atlas stone shoulder. And I do not recommend. I do not recommend it. Everybody was like, are you sure? And I was like, well, you're all doing it. So why wouldn't I? And it was the most uncomfortable feeling. Unpaid or underrated. I'm going to love this answer. Trap bar deadlift. Oh, I bet one of my lifty buddies put this in there. I,

so unpaid, it's, you know, I have my disagreements with RIP from starting strength, but his hatred of the trap bar deadlift I share. I don't, I don't know why my proportions, and I'm a big squatter,

but like my trap bar deadlift is, it's not bad, but I always hurt myself on it. Oh, I always. Well, you said only the one you have, like what are the, is it like a weird height or something or a weird width?

No, so it was, I think the reason why they put this in there. So it was the year, so there was one year when I was training to do North Americans. I was a reserve because my coach knew the folks and there were some people who pulled out. So it was the first year they brought back North Americans after COVID. And so I'm training for what I think is going to be a side handle card headlift. So for the Canadian shows, they don't give you like many details at all. And so I'm thinking it's going to be a side handle. So I'm like, well, if I just get strong with the heavy trap bar, this would be good.

and so I was going like I did I was trying to hit like 805 for reps on trap bar I get the first wrap I put it down I go to the second one just feel that nice little pop in my low back just like every other time I had to do the track bar dead left and so I had to do North Americans and the Shaw Classic Open that year I did those both in the span of a month which was a poor decision but it was it was fun you'll skip left for easy but you'll do two fucking shows in 30 days you dumbass That was, Lift Hard, Livese was after that because I learned my lesson. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But the, yeah, so trap bar deadlifts are unpaid. I have a saying, it's that the trap bar has an, the trap bar is an amazing implement for everything but deadlifts. Yeah, it's a great quad accessory. Yeah, I use mine for quads. I use mine for squad accessory.

I use mine for Xercher's every once in a while, right? Everything accepted. Like something light, like, if we're doing this one, like for conditioning or whatever, but like whenever I'm pushing heavy weights, like, it was like the last strong man on earth. They had a max trap bar and I'm seeing those guys do over a thousand and like my vertebrae or shaking in my back just even looking at them do that. So I signed up to volunteer at provincials, which I think is nationals, whatever.

We won't get into that. But the reason I didn't sign up for the show itself is because they have a 500 pound trap bar deadlift. And I just went, ew. Even if I thought I. That's a great answer. even if I thought I could do a single 500 pound trap bar deadlift, I don't want to. Like I just have no interest in that.

And you're welcome to it, but I think I'm with Andy on this one. Like, no, I have no patience. But I think what it started as my impatience for the trap bar deadlift was talking to people who are like dealing with like personal trainers at commercial gyms. and they're programming trap bar deadlift's as a deadlift accessory. And I kept going, I kept going, no, no, no, no. And they're just like, well, but my trainer says, I'm just like, no, it is not. It is not a deadlift accessory.

It is a completely different movement. And yeah, I don't know shit. I'm not a coach. I don't have no degrees. But I can tell you right now, I can do a 400 pound deadlift tomorrow if I felt like it. and I would never use a trap bar to train for it, like not once, because it just hits every muscle differently.

Sure, they're fun for other things, but no. Anyway. I put it on my deadlift day, at least once a month typically, just because I can't, I'm not going to historically hurt my back deadlifting, so taking like one deadlift session out a month or something and just putting a trap bar in,

that's an adjacent lift. I don't see an issue with it. Adjacent's a good word. I just don't think like if somebody If somebody said to me Hey I want to deadlift three plates How many trap bar deadlift should I do? I would say zero

Like I would just say zero Like you shouldn't at all You should implement those on squatting But again, not a coach Don't know what I'm talking about In my incorrect opinion But what do I know I think is what I'm supposed to say here I got one more if you don't have one

I think I have one I don't know how many. We've been having too much fun. Did I do two or three? I, I peed and came back, so I don't know. Unpaid or underrated strawberry. Oh, completely underrated, the best fruit. There can never be, they are so highly regarded that they can never be underrated.

They are the best. They bake all other fruits, bow and shame. Agreed. I have a big bush in my backyard full of fresh strawberries. It's the best. That was really funny. You cut out, and at least on my end. it was, I have a big bush

and then it was just nothing for like two seconds and it was the funniest thing ever. That's also true. I figured it would be. Ginger, fuck. All right. That's also true. I'm going to throw one at you because it's relevant.

And I have a quick story, I guess. But unpaid or underrated tacky towels. Ooh. Or only being able to use a tacky towel. Tacketals in general, I guess we can kind of take it a couple different ways. But I would say unpaid. I haven't found a good one.

like the only time that I've ever gotten a tacky towel to do what I wanted was when I had like there's a there's a company from Denmark that makes really good spray tacky that you can use the only time I've ever had luck with a tacky towel when I put like spray tack in with the tacky towel to like like adhesive a little bit in advance that's so like you kind of doctored one before I guess that was like for a training session right like that's what no that was for a training session oh yeah that's fair yeah but like like I'm talking about like the only time I've ever gotten a tacky towel to do what I wanted to do is when I use it with spray tacky in a training session.

But like, tacky tails, like the ones for golf. Like, I've never had any luck with those. Yeah. So, so,

so we have a mystery event called Rocks. And on our podcast, I had Jake and his wife on who were like, in the meet directors for it, uh, like six months ago. And I know he said, definitely said no tacky.

And he's, he's saying that he told us tacky towels are okay. I have no memory of that. Nonetheless, I do feel if I knew that six months ago, I would have bought tachytals already and trained with him and learned how to use him. So I could have just completely misheard him or not heard him or he didn't say it. Don't know. It doesn't really matter. But anyway, 15 people or at least 15 people ordered tachytowels in the last couple days because he actually said, yes, tacky towels are allowed. And no one knew that before.

So from my outside observations, very possible, Jake, you did say it. And I just didn't hear you. But nonetheless, a lot of people have bought tacky towels in the last few days because it's the first time they heard about it that they can remember. So regardless. Pro tip for that. Like when you're going, like have the, have a tacky towel on either side of your belt. So you have, so you've still given your belt before you go. So there was one, the year I did the Arnold Amateur, the loading race, you were allowed tacky towels.

You weren't allowed anything else. So that was like when I was training with them and I got the tacky towels on either side. So that way like the loading ended up being really light. it ended up not mattering, but like, that way you can just like rub your hands down your sides. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. To retack. Like, kind of like the thing where like,

a factual tacky, where you keep it on like the back of your hand. Yep, yep, yep, yep. You just do that and keep them in your belts for taggy towels. But like, I found just don't open up before the contest. Those those will actually be okay. For which event, bud? An alice download. According to.

Oh, you're talking about for us. You're talking about rocks. Yeah, it's rocks. But it, it, he's ended up. He's edited Iyer podium a few times in the last few months. It also says and recommended. Yeah, I'm just saying I don't believe. I personally don't believe that that was written in there until somewhat recently, or if it was, it wasn't announced. And I definitely don't believe that he said it on our podcast, but I could be wrong.

I will caveat all that with, I apologize if I'm wrong, but I don't think I am. But it could be. So nonetheless, I have to learn how to use a tacky towel. I did experiment with it some yesterday, and Dan watched my video and said, you did not rub it in aggressively enough, hard enough, and you didn't like rub it in your hand to get it warmed up and mixed together first. So I got a lot to learn about tacky towel. Breathe on it. go hold it under the things at the Ramcota that blow the hot air for your hands. That's actually might not be, yeah, if it's hot, I mean, it was pretty fucking.

At this point, though, like, no, I just hope the AC's cranking in there because sweat is going to be the biggest enemy of not having tacky and doing some kind of stone thing. My forearms get so fucking sweaty and wet that like, we'll see, it'll be a good time. But yeah, you pass. Well done. Just asked Tommy for his chalk. That's all you have to. Yeah. He's going to have lots now.

It's a huge fan of chalk. All right. I guess it's time to turn it over to you, Andy. What do you have for us? All right. So I got two different ones. So I was inspired. I think it was last week where they brought back to Silly Goose question.

I've got one Silly Goose question. I've got one FMK for you guys. Love it. All right. So silly goose question. So this is favorite style of pizza that's named about geography. But you have to live there for the rest of your life. So if it's, you, if you say New York City, like, you only get to eat one style of pizza

the rest of your life. But you also have to move to that location. Yeah, Canadian. But, like, what's the different? Canadian is ham, um, mushrooms and pepperoni, I think. I didn't know that it was actually a style. I was thinking like New York style, Chicago style. That's right.

Oh, okay. So you're thinking of style not topping. Correct. Okay. Yeah. Wait, so it's a Hawaiian, not a style? No. It's also invented in Canada.

You always say everything's been in Canada. That's your perspective, and that's what your Wikipedia says. Look it up, look it up. Look it up. Look it up. I don't know. I couldn't tell you the difference between half the pizzas. I don't fucking know.

I'm trying to think. I don't know. Is it really just New York City in Chicago? Like, I don't know what are my options? So there's Detroit style. Yeah, there's New York City. There's actually a St. Louis style pizza. There's a bunch of different. I like a, I like a greasy pan pizza. Like, what, where's that at? Like, not overly thick, not overly thin. Just kind of like right in the middle. Like, like, the best commercial shitty pizza to me is like Pizza Hut pan pizza as I talked about on the podcast of the day. So like what's the closest thing to that. That's what I want. If I... I guess you just have to pick which Pizza Hut franchise you want to live in in this case. To answer the question.

I just want to point out, Google AI says Hawaiian pizza, created in Chattel. Ontario. There you go. I do like Hawaii. I like Hawaii. I'd like, I'd like, I'd like, I'd like, I'd like, fuck that. My answer is Hawaiian pizza. I'm living in Hawaii. I've never been there. I've never been there. I was talking to someone the other day about he, he was going to Hawaii and I was kind of like, logistically, like how long of a freaking flight that would be and everything. And, uh, I guess I didn't realize how far off of the coast of California, Hawaii was, but it's like, essentially like three quarters of the distance of like the entire of our country. Because, and I, only because

he said it was like a six hour flight or whatever it was. And I was like, well, I know you can get from coast to coast and X amount of time. So I don't know. I like a pineapple on my pizza and living on a beach. It would be pretty cool. I would not live in fucking Chicago or New York. You live in New York. Not the fucking city.

It's not, it's not New York State style pizza. Is it? Isn't it New York City pizza? Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to happen to live in the slums of New York City and the slums of Chicago. No thanks to either of those. I'm going to live on a fucking beach.

I'm going to stick true to the question, but I'm going to base it on how much I like that pizza. So I absolutely do not like Detroit-style pizza. Is that the one with a really thick, fluffy crust? So that's the one where it's like the pan and then like it's a square, it's like a rectangle and they have like a little bit of sauce on it? Yeah, I have no patience for that shit. Like a casual.

Yeah, Detroit's out. Chicago is the one where the sauce is on top of the cheese. Yeah, they have deep dish or like Chicago like tavern style. Yeah, that's like the thinner like square cut. Okay. Yeah, that's out. So we're, we're, I'm going to live in New York because that's the thin crust, full toppings, greasy as shit. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going. Guess I'm living in New York. See, my answer would be Colorado style pizza, which is the most underrated under. What is that? What is that? So it's a, so it's like a kind of like a deeper dish ish. but they put honey in the bread instead of sugar.

And so it has like a, you know, like a soft pretzel, like an Auntie Ann's pretzel. That's what the crust consistency is like. And so what they do is on the tables, they have honey. So you eat the pizza up to the crust, and then you put honey on the crust, and it's like your dessert. Well, I want that now. And you have to eat it after you ski, and then you sleep for like hours, and it's great. I have friends in Colorado. I need to go visit.

Yeah, I want that now. make me do that. Hi, I'm just here for the pizza. Go away. Yeah. The one callback there is, did you say Auntie instead of Ante? Do people say Auntie? I say anti. Is that a, is that just a regional thing

or just a dial? I don't know. I never thought about that. Yeah. The way you said, I would say anti-Annees because it like, not rhymes, but like, Flos. It's not anti-Aannies. Antianns. It's, right? Am I wrong? No, Auntie Ones. Or Auntie Ones. No. Right? Like, so I would. would do anti-annies just because of the flow of the word.

I love a big soft pretzel for you. Oh, they have the hot dog wrapped pretzels too. Those are top tier. So good. Yeah. I don't even care if I have to pay like $20 for it at an airport. I'm getting on a flight somewhere. Like, yeah.

I want a pretzel wrapped hot dog with mustard. Like, that's all I want right now. I could eat. Nice. All right. I figured we should have some nerd talk, seeing as I am also a nerd. We did a lot of lifting talk. But so I've got an FMK.

I heard you guys talking about non-marvel or DC TV series previously. It's under an FMK Marvel, DC or all other superhero franchises combined. Then you have to

figure out how you arrange those. Movies and shows, everything? Yeah, good question. The entire anthology. The entire lore. I don't do comics at all so that I'm kind of out on that. So to me, it's just going to be movies

and shows. Oh, that's, I think you have to kill everything else because there's so much good in, and that's tricky too, because like, like, like, Marvel would be the frontrunner. It was like popularity-wise, but is it the best content? It's the most content, probably. It's the most amount of movies. So DC are all the shows on, on, you know, CW, right? Or to WB, I keep fucking, I can't see. Yeah, they got all the CW shows, like all the old cartoons and stuff. And it was all the Batman's and the Spine. Well, wouldn't be Spider-Man, nope. Yeah, because Spider-Man's Marvel, but, okay, so it's just Batman.

Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, all that. And then you throw in the alternative of, like, what do we consider superhero? Like, so. I would say, Invincible, the boys, any of those other derivatives, I would throw in there. There's some good stuff there then, too. I've watched them all. tricky part and none of them are like great they're all just kind of like they're all like seven out of seven at best i feel i had the luxury of um so my boy who is seven is uh learning to read comic

books he started with dogman and captain underpants and all that so i gave him um my first edition anthology of thor um so it starts with you know back in the 60s when thor was invented because like their kids safe right like back in those days everything was kid safe so he's learning to those but I also gave him a night crawler the winding way which is a fantastic night crawler and he came to me and he said daddy I love night crawler once I learned how to read comic books I think I really he said it took him a few minutes but he's like I got through part one and I think I want to read more and I'm like yes yes night crawl is a very safe character right night crawler's like he's like a pastor and all of this stuff he's just going through

emotional conflicts and stuff like that. He doesn't do a lot of violence or anything like that. So my answer is going to be, I'm going to marry Marvel. Just because the saving grace of the Marvel series is the Disney Plus ones. The Daredevils, the Punishers. And then the Netflix series before Iron Fist and the Defenders. But Luke Cage was such a great series. Jessica Jones was a great series.

those are the saving grace of all of those. And you can't deny how powerful the MCU was until endgame. It's fallen off since, but like you cannot look at yourself and say, you did not get excited every time a new Avengers movie came out. You're lying to me. If you're at all a comic book movie or comic book fan, you're lying to me if you say,

oh no, I don't really care. right like Tommy even Tommy has seen most of them and Tommy oh yeah yeah right which probably lends me to kill DC because DC has a lot of really good animated stuff

yep a lot of good comic books movies are trash the Snyder cut wasn't bad the Snyder cut wasn't bad but that the Snyder cut was three hours long. So is our podcast.

Yeah. And we're more interesting. What does the Dark Night trilogy do for you though? Do you count that? I think you have to count it. I do, but if I look at everything else, except

for the Batman, right? So you've got the Dark Night trilogy, you've got the Batman, and let's say you've got Man of Steel. Yeah. Okay? That's four movies out of like 50. But you got Watchmen, too, if you throw them

in there. I just, I've rewatched. So the problem is, is Image Comics a DC thing? Are you including that on the secondary? They got joined over in that like comic book crossover. So I think you technically there's Marvel and DC crossover. Okay. Now you're, uh, you have to go. Oh yeah, yeah. You asked you asked the wrong. I don't know, arguments back in my face. Yeah, you asked the wrong questions. Um, in fact, I had all of the trading cards from the Marvel and DC like Wolverine and Batman crossovers and stuff like that. I had all that shot. Um, so I would actually include the Watchman in the Independence, which would save the independence, I think. Like that would save the the Watchman movie and series and comic book and all of that stuff. But I've read so many

independent comics that would outshine all of them. Just, just the stuff that's, that, that people write. Have you ever read Johnny the Homicidal Maniac? No, I haven't seen that one. No, I found that at a nowhere the other day. Did you ever read TransMetropolitan? So I'm not as much of a comics guy. I do like the animated, I like deep into the animated shows. So we'll take out,

we'll take out comic books then, okay? That's fair. So I'm going to kill the independence because if I never had, if I never watched the boys are invincible or, what else is there? I would say umbrella academy probably. You throw that in there with the independent.

Filmed in my hometown, actually. The crow? the crow okay technically spawn hell boy okay now

now you're throwing things at me spawn and hellboy oh yeah hellboy was a comic was that turk horse or is that somebody else I'm just doing anything

superhero-e that's not I mean it's what do you define as superhero does it have to be a comic like does it have the DC or Marvel

at the top or does it have something else even if they're owned by DC or Marvel I'm going to include them as something else that changes my mind um

no it doesn't nope nope still gonna marry Marvel I'm going to uh what was the word you used yeah you didn't say F you said something else oh F marry kill okay yeah so we'll

yeah we'll marry Marvel will F independence and kill DC interesting D C honestly like look go watch what was the DC dark where it was like what's his name?

The one of Constantine. Constantine and all the magic and stuff like that. That's good DC stuff. That's good. I've watched the entire. I've watched the entire DC EU. Like the way I always said, wasn't there a DC channel for a minute that had like swamp thing and the,

the hall, the she hawk before it got picked up on the other show. No, it wasn't she Hulk. It was something else. It was something else, but it was like there wasn't there wasn't animated or not an, There was an actual, there was like a live action, uh, swamp thing, like, like five or six years ago. There's actually two.

There's one from back in the 90s, which was kind of terrible, which I have on DVD for some stupid reason. There was a show, like, the movies or the show? No, there is a show. I gotcha. Yeah. And then there was the new one. Yeah. Yes.

That one was fantastic. But there was a DC network that had like a few other shows before it got shit canned and then like some of it got picked up by other channels. If, if anybody could write Swamp Thing properly, that was. would be nice, right? Because you said you've watched the DC Dark. That was Swamp Thing written properly. Oh, exactly. I've always said that DC has the best animated movies and shows, bar none, hands down. Yeah. The only, the only Marvel animated show that comes even close was Avengers Earth's Mightiest Heroes. That was on the Disney Channel, like in the 2010s.

What about, um, what about the What If series? Uh, I think I might have just had MCU fatigue at that point. I liked, I liked, I liked, I liked, I liked Avengers Earth's minus heroes because it was like, you know, standard 616. This is, it was like, it was almost like they had a premonition that they were going to make Robert Downey Jr. Tony Stark because the animated characters like so much like him in that. Yeah, I remember that. I liked that one. They had a good storyline, but like, you know, like the Timverse in DC and, you know, Young Justice itself, which doesn't get it to do like the whole animated shows in DC, I think, clear for me. So that's like,

I just have such a fondness for those. I always rate them really highly. Batman, the animated series is one of my favorite TV shows of all time, right? The original one with Kevin Conroy and stuff like that, who did the voice for Arkham. Are we talking video games too? Like, that doesn't count.

Every DC game has been better than every Marvel game. That's true, yeah. Yeah. Some of the Spider-Man ones are okay, but that's like their own thing, I feel like. But, I mean, in the same way that the Arkham ones are their own thing too, right? Yeah, true. True.

I guess you never got the key to answer on this one. Yeah, I stand by my answer. My dilemma of like they're all kind of okay and then they all have their issues. But like if I have to gun to my head, I got to answer. I think I'm going to. I might marry the field just because like something a little different and there's some good stuff. Like some of my all-time favorites, like Watchman and the Crow would be in the field. And then.

I might I think I'm going to kill Marvel but like I shouldn't but like I think DC might peak DC might have a couple that stand out more enjoyable to me overall but Marvel for sure has a better overall like quantity but yeah just to be slightly different I'll marry the field I'll fuck DC and I'll kill Marvel

but I still like Marvel. Yeah if I couldn't watch the Puttisher series over and over and over again, then, like, I'd be sad. What you think? Do we talk about the, like, the 90-minute movie that was just basically a long episode that was completely unrelated to everything and he just killed people for an hour? It's unrelated until he comes back in Spider-Man. I haven't watched that yet.

So that, that was an introduction to him returning in the new Spider-Man movie. That was the point of that. And it was incredible. Like, it was as violent. It's as violent as, as, you. you need the Punisher to be. There's a certain moment in Marvel, and I know when it was,

it was Deadpool 1, where they said, you can't be violent. It has to be PG. You can't be violent. It has to be PG. And then Deadpool was rated R and outsold everything.

It outsold everything. That's when they let him make Logan. And Logan is, I've said it on this podcast before, an incredible movie that talks about, concepts of masculinity and your relationship with your father and immortality and everything like that that like you didn't think Marvel would be allowed to make.

And that's when they were allowed to make the Punisher and Daredevil. The Daredevil series, like the first hallway scene in Daredevil series, hallway scenes are a big thing in Kung Fu movies and Daredevil took it to a next step somehow. Right? So like that's why I'm going to marry Marvel. because if you told me you can never watch one of those again, I'd be fucking,

I'd be sad, I guess. But if you told me I could never watch the Batman again, I'd also be sad, because that movie is incredible. Yeah. Anyway, oh yeah,

I can go out, yeah, comic book. Are we getting sequels to the Pattinson Batman? Yes, that's in the works. So you've got the penguin, which was a still one of them.

I think it was a mini series, though. It was really good. I think it was a series series and it is coming back. Oh, is it? I thought it was a series. It was done. That should be coming back.

It was a good show though. Yeah, really, really was. So, like, there's, it's still tough. Like, maybe this is a hard one. Marvel, but I don't know. I was just trying to stump you guys of this one. Because if you tell me, I can't watch the crow again, even though it's a bad, like, it's not a great movie, but like, it's the original crow is, it still stands up,

except for, you know, obviously the terrible scenes in the beginning. Like, if it was between being. able to watch the crow, like, or any Marvel movie, I'd watch the crow 10 out of 10 times, like 100% time, just because it's also just, if you take out the, if you take out, like, if I had a bad memory, didn't remember watching movies as a kid and, like, the meaningful impact of watching movies from, like, 8 to 14 or something like that, that, like, have lasting imprinted memories of your mind, like, I'm sure I would have completely, if I watched all these movies as a 20-year-old, I'd have completely different opinions, I'm sure, but you can't

outrun your childhood memories and what those mean to you. Half the shit I say is nostalgia base, but you can't change that. It's in your soul. Okay. What about the Crow 3? Was that the one with Furlong? Yep.

Furlong was, that was, well, I, those also were horrible. Like, those were, the second one was almost still a movie, but then, like, the third one. The second one I still seek out, it's hard to find. I think I finally ended up finding it. And, uh, like, let's me a flash drive. I can send you ever anything. It's so much new to the, so much sex.

So much, like, what what's the point of this, but it still held some of the emotional aspect of the first one. And then the third one was just like, he had short hair and sharp bangs. I would watch the TV. I'd watch the TV series over the third movie for sure. Yes, with Mark DeKascus.

That was actually filmed here in Toronto. I think I only ever watched like reruns of that as a, like, I don't think I ever actually like watched that. I wasn't like, ooh, the crow is on tonight. I'm going to go watch it. I think it was just like randomly like, Okay, but I did. I consumed some of it.

Okay, but I did. I literally was like, I'm sure I would have loved it. I just don't remember. I think it was, wasn't it such a short-lived thing? I think it just passed me by because also that was like pre-internet, unless you read a TV guide or something or just happened to be on the channel when it was on.

It would have never, like so many shows pass you by, you don't even know existed from the 90s. The Mark DeKascus, the Crow had a really big, um, Kung Fu, the Legend Continues feel.

If you remember that show. Wasn't there a whole lot of, like he was in the like the purgatory time frame a bunch too or something like like it it wasn't great but also like the the entire concept of the crow does not lend to a long term storytelling yeah maybe like a six part net that would actually i would watch the shit out of like a yeah part mini series on netflix or something where they just have a that would that would be so much better than that shitty fucking movie we got last year that just was the most dumb oh that was like two or three years ago that was yeah what were they thinking like the entire maybe it's a 90

I think I said this on this podcast. It is a 90 minute movie and 60 minutes was why they love each other so much. Like, did you forget that this is the crow? Did you forget that he's supposed to be taking revenge on bad guys? That's the weird thing about being, like, the older we get, like, we are seeing remakes of so many movies. And I guess, like, you know, between the crow and point break are like two of my all-time favorite, like, movies because of nostalgia.

And, like, the point break remake was okay. The crow remake was, even know they made one. Ew, yeah, it was, it probably came out 10 years ago now because I saw that. I think I'm like when it came. I literally I think I took off work to watch it. Like I like went and watched like the fucking like 11 o'clock matinee or some shit. And I was like, it wasn't great,

but it wasn't bad. But yeah, the crow, the crow pissed me off watching it. Yeah. I was mad. I was mad the whole time I was in the theater. I was like,

it's the dumbest fucking thing. Like this is a B movie. I collected all the comic books of the crow. Okay. I dressed as the crow for Halloween when I had long hair in high school. Like I did all of that shit. I was a big fan of that. And I was just like,

yeah, I don't think you. read the comics. I genuinely don't think, I think somebody told you about what, like, what it was supposed to be and you were like, oh, I'm going to make that movie. Was James O'Barre even involved?

Like, did he have any say in this movie? Probably not. Look what you did, Andy. Well, Monty, you I haven't seen The Crow. What the thing? Like, the 1994 the Crow you've never seen?

No, I was just kind of sitting here. Like, it's, I mean, so watch it. I don't know what's going on. Watch it for the first time of the 30 year old, like, might not be the greatest movie ever, but like, I don't know. It's worth, I would, if it's between watching a rerun of, like, some random

bullshit, or you can watch it, I don't know where it's at for free right now, if it is or not, but the crows. Off that is the list. Yeah, it's got, um, it's got a pretty brutal, I think it's called bridging scene. Uh, bridging is when they sacrifice the female character

to make the male character's storyline continue. And I don't think I have to explain what that looks like any more than those words. I don't, I usually fast forward that part. Don't watch the crow from 2000 and like 22 or whatever. Yeah. The crow from 1993, 94. That's the one I'm talking about.

Just fast forward through those scenes. But then the rest of the movie's amazing. Really wrong. Yeah. Oh yeah, we are running out of time. It's fucking 930. I only had one more question, but it was just more kind of like to poke there,

I guess, would be unpaid or underrated podcasts on YouTube. If it's in addition to your fucking audio file that your website still pushes out to all the platforms and you're not just like pigeonholed into fucking Spotify or some bullshit because they give you a better deal. Like, sure, throw your video on YouTube. But like if you're only,

like Lucas Hatton doing a podcast that I would love to consume as a podcast, but he only does it. on this fucking stupid YouTube channel for money. I'm like, fuck you, dude. Like, I don't even,

like, I, like, I, like, I, like, I would just, that would be a podcast I download every week and listen to, but it's,

you have to make it this fucking YouTube thing. And it's just annoying. I get if they're trying to make money and build a presence or whatever, but like, don't call it a fucking podcast. Call it a, call it a fucking Q&A on your YouTube video. It's not a fucking podcast,

you motherfucker. So yeah, I like, I like the podcast on YouTube personally, just because I have YouTube premium. And so, like for me it's a little bit easier just because you know like you know wherever i'm at like i'll have youtube more available to me than like my phone or whatever you give them money for me i personally

like to keep all my media at one place so i don't want to have to be like i like to keep my spotify for music only or i like to have like all my entertainment stuff on youtube so that's why you give them money directly rather than through advertisement well i don't i'm not chipping into their funds or whatever but i'm all right you're talking about to YouTube. You are by paying YouTube, right? So YouTube is saying, the podcast people specifically, no, no.

Because that's how they do that, right? They say, well, we won't get ads. We will just take some of your money. I have no, I have no answer for that. I have never consumed a podcast on YouTube. I will never consume a podcast on Netflix. What the hell is that?

That I really, that I was really actually mad about. Yeah. That one was just like, because at least with YouTube, you could still get it for free. Yeah. Like when, when I think it was like the barstom, the barstool podcast. Like, I like sports podcast.

So like part of my take or spit and chicklets for our fellow from north of the border here. They, they moved like the video feed just to Netflix. Yeah. And I like the video feed. I like to watch some guys. Like, you know, but now, like, I don't have a Netflix subscription here. I was on my parents, but then they did the whole like IP address thing. So I got booted.

So now I can't listen. I can't watch my favorite podcast. for sports. And so I don't like, yeah, I completely agree with you there. Just to round it all out, we used to be a proper freaking country when Netflix was mailing you DVDs and you would mail them back. And now they have mobile games and now they have podcasts and they have all of this other stuff.

And it's all terrible quality unless you pay their premium, premium premium premium. Yep. I can't even watch wrestling because wrestling has moved to Netflix. but because we get it free from our cable provider, they throttle our quality. I just turn it off. Half of it's blurry. So I just,

I, not done. Looking for the Netflix DVDs and like the Gamefly DVDs back in the day or whatever. Those are Blockbuster. I did Gamefly, Blockbuster,

Netflix, I had all that as a guy. You got it. My closing thoughts on it, basically, it's just like, man, I fucking,

I literally, I'm, and I'm in a work truck with a camera in my face, and all I have is, you know, Apple play. So, like,

I can't fucking, on YouTube. Like, I'd have to, like, use my personal phone that's not onto the airplay and put a headphone in, but only do that why I'm stopped because I got a fucking camera looking right at me. So, like, I can't be dicking around on my phone, playing fucking YouTube videos to consume a goddamn audio content that I want to consume. So, but I do understand if people want to make money and grow their presence, but, like,

it's a fucking podcast, not a goddamn video cast. Like, I don't get it. Whatever. Which, ironically, I do listen to Massonomics. I only listen to Massonomics podcast live for an hour every week. And then I watched the rest on fucking YouTube every Sunday. So, like, I have a complete walking contradiction because that, but that's different, though, because I don't know.

We all make exceptions from Asinami. Fair. Yep. That's my yard work podcast right now. They, they publish at like 1 p.m. on Sunday. And then I'm like, well, time to mobile lawn. Yeah. That way I can listen to the, to the fellow's talk.

I am paying no $90 in shipping and exchange and blah, blah, blah, to any company except Masonomics. Like, like, we all have our exception. But if they didn't have the community, like,

I would, if it was just two dudes, like still just talking, like, if we didn't grow into this community that we've grown into and shit, like, I wouldn't give up.

I wouldn't be fucking watching no goddamn YouTube video. Or I'd just be like, yeah, I'll listen to that, like, randomly when I have time on like Thursday the next week.

Yeah. Maybe, but now it's like, you know, I don't know, you gotta support your friends. It's just, this is we,

community that we are all a part of. So, yeah, Monzi, I hope this episode gets you a little more involved in the community. I know you're a busy guy between you're working and you're lifting and all that stuff, but you'll get out of crew what you put in, you know. I'm not saying people that don't just, but like if you want more out of like this community and you want to like feel more involved in massonomics, you just, you know, come into one of the events

is definitely a good start. And then just, you know, I know you don't want to have a public profile, but you are going to have to, like, go out of your way to try to friend a lot of people at the gym and or at the looking event and stuff. And I don't, but you were definitely one of the few, you know, older heads or someone that's names been kicked around a bunch. Then I was like, oh, I've met it. Yeah. If, you know, I met you a couple times at the Arnold's. I figured, ah, this would be a good one, knowing that you were going to be a lift hard of easy.

You were on the roster. You didn't back out. That was good. Did you ever. Not this year. With your injuries, where you're like, man, maybe I'm just going to back out and not go this year. Because there's, that's the wildness of, it's with every lifting event. But, like, I think 20% of the people between fucking power.

lifting and Strongman from like the initial like 150 maybe not 20% but at least 15% of people dropped a lot of those lots have been filled but there's a lot of drops if i if it'd if it'd been an injury like so i've tore my meniscus three times if it's been like one of those i probably would have dropped out but like with a wrist like i'll do the you know i would have gone i would have crushed the uh biggest difference between your squat and your bench and i just would have like squatted like 700 plus and then bench the bar or whatever but no I wasn't going to drop out of this one since there's no leg injury so but now like my rest feels sturdy enough to hit something respectable for at least my own personal history standards was um I know we're going

right long but I'm just curious you're you're you're you did a lot of USAPL made since out Dakota so Joe you've had to know Jonah for the last 20 years then yeah we've we've crossed past a few times because he he started doing a lot of the meat directing stuff like after I had moved away for college. But like he was, I think it was one of the first meets that like he was lifting in it. And he like,

it was before he went to bench only. And so it was like, you know, he was squatting like 800 pounds or whatever. They had like, you know, they didn't have the Minnesota Department of Lifter Safety or anybody there.

So it was like, you know, they had like six to eight dudes all like, you know, framed a God. He doesn't drop it as they're all squatting. So yeah, no,

I've been familiar with Jonah for a long time. He's going to run a eight. I think Jonah's been like his gym was featured in a tour in 2020 in Crew Falls. He maybe he's been in another video, I don't think, but it would be really funny if people sought out his like 2016

podcast that would be so irrelevant to like his life today to it going in, for instance, he's going to be their meet director. That would be funny. If anyone does that, let me know how that what that podcast was about and if it's anything like meeting Jonah nowadays. All right, boys. Big Monty, where we're going to find you at?

You find me on Instagram. Monty, HV-51. I'll do my best of friend, everyone that comes in. I have a YouTube page that I haven't been too active with, but I'm going to once after Lift Hard-Live easy and I start training for Weight Lifting Nationals in March next year, I'm going to try and post more just like, bland as bland, no voiceover, just raw training content.

Gotcha. Because I say, I'm not going to watch your podcast on your YouTube page. Hey, guys. Yeah. That's funny. That's what we do here. But those are the two spots you can find me. And I'm getting better at being active on the Discord.

I usually hang out in the gym equipment section and how to get strong training. So, like, Benny Crew has any, like, lifting techniques or something. They do any weight lifting stuff. Tag me. I'll reach out and, you know, say like, hey, looking good. Or, hey, keep your head up, something like that. Well, if hopefully you can get us in your rotation of yard working podcast. You can see them weekly and come, you know, shoot the breeze with us in unpaid underrated.

That's our favorite. Unpaid underrated is the edging podcast, the trimming. He edged us all night long. That's good. Big Jerry, we're going to find you at. Joey underscore Mlesco on Instagram, M-L-E-C-Z-K-O. You can find me at the DILF Dungeon on Jim Radar.

Not that I'm doing a lot there lately until more stuff comes in. And that's actually it. Nice. All right. We have the Instagram, unpaid, underrated podcast. We've got the website, Unpaid InterimPontcast.com. I already talked about the Discord channel. I am Keith Honeycutt 73 on Instagram.

More importantly, go follow my Orange Jim, the no wine seller on Jim Radar and on Instagram, and we'll see you next Tuesday.