Unpaid And Underrated - 173 : How Do You Manage A Duck? (ft. Big Matt)

Episode Date: September 1, 2026

This week Loren and Keith get to know Big Matt. They dive right into great topics like LHLE 5 predictions, wraps, dragons vs. dinosaurs, vintage plates, and gym tetris. 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 @mattwallace165 Our Hosts @keithhoneycutt73 or his orange gym, @thenowhinecellar @joey_mleczko Special Guest: Big Matt.

And welcome back to episode 173 of the unpaid and underrated podcast, a podcast by crew for crew. I'm one of your host, Big Keith, joined this week by Big Lorne. Hello. And we have Big Matt Wallace as our guest this week. How are you doing, guys? Pretty good. How are you guys? Oh, it's been a doozy of a week.

That's for sure. It's one more day. One more day. I kind of miss working four tens every now and then just because I haven't had a Friday often. several months now. And it's been, I don't know, it's nice to get home at 3 o'clock every day, 315, 3.30, somewhere like that, but that, I don't know, I'm not having a Friday off or a short Friday for a while. Just with my job schedule, it's so fluctuating of when I work,

when I don't work, what time I start, what time I work till. So I had a nice stretch there of being off almost every Friday for like several months straight, and it has not been the case in a long time. So is today a Friday for you? No, no, tomorrow will be. No, that's more of the complaining. That's that's me being a whiny bitch that I have not had a Friday off in a while. So such is life though. Such is life. What do we got? So episode 173, as with Tanner, with his big number 78, it is also, you know, I have a special number to me and it would be 73. So this is the Big Keith 100 episode there with 173. So go football numbers. Nice sentimental number to me.

I was wondering who's football number that was. I couldn't see Matt. I couldn't see Matt wearing 73. I mean, he would be, I mean, you know, you got, there's some, there's some, like, you have a small enough of a team and maybe everyone's under 200 pounds. The slowest guys are just the linemen at that point. So if he was a, you know, if Matt was just the same size of all the skill position guys, he was just slow as shit.

Like, that could make sense. I've seen some, I've seen some like 160 pound pulling guards back in, back in high school for sure. True. Line me up. I'll nose tackle anybody. Nice. Good little, well, since we're on sports and we might as well follow up with books, I wrapped up Dune this week.

I think I burned through it pretty quick. It was an audiobook and just have been able to actually have AirPods in all day at work. Just the work I'm doing, I'm not in people's homes. I'm just doing common area stuff. So I've been able to actually just consume audio 24-7 at work, which has been nice. So got away through the first book of Dune. And if anyone's not familiar, I'll sell you on it. It basically covers the first two movies that are currently out as of 2026 that it currently is, if anyone's listening to this in the future.

I did pretty good. The movies, I think, were well done of the book. And then the book itself, I think was written in the 60s. I personally usually don't love dated material like that because I just, I find that like there's usually some big flaw in it of like, oh, well, we shouldn't. We shouldn't say that. And, you know, you can't say that today kind of thing. But I don't know. I thought the book was very well done.

I think basement Brandon reached out to me and said he loved it and was like, I said they kind of go downhill and get weird after this. So I am curious. I'm finishing up the most recent dungeon crawler Carl book. And then I'm going to get back into Dune 2 sometime next week. And, you know, I'll keep you boys posted. How many Dune books are there? I think there's like six.

There's several. There's more than, there's more than, like, there's more than, it's more than a trilogy. I, I, I, I, I, uh, there's several. I think I downloaded the whole audio book, you know, a pack and there was quite a few. So we'll see. Are they making all six movies or they, that I'm, condensed things in the first. So the first, the first book got two movies. I can't imagine that it's popular.

Well, especially with like, it takes fucking five years to make a movie. So like, I think it was like, well, like 21 and, or was it, 2019 and 20, 24, those came out or something along those lines, don't quote me. But there's at least three or four years in movies like that. So like, God, it would take. And I don't think they age that much. Maybe they do. But like, I can't imagine they're going to go past whatever the next movie is.

But maybe they will. I don't know. Yeah, they would probably have to film them all at once kind of thing. Yeah. It's not like Avatar when everything's just animated and you can have 20 year gaps and stuff. Yeah. So. Make a billion dollars a movie.

Yeah. But we'll see. That was, uh, it did motivate me. I think I'm going to watch the dude. doing movies this weekend or at least one of them just because I haven't seen them since they came at since I first watched them, you know, years ago, a few years ago. So we'll get to maybe give that whole, maybe even knock out the 80s movie as well and just kind of knock them all out.

And after now that I've read the book, the main book. So we'll see. But that's enough about me. Big Lorne. This is our little chance to get reacquainted with Big Lorne down in Texas. So you just got done on Lift Hard Live Easy. How'd that go for you? It was good.

Finish second, half a point. It was a battle to the end. It was kind of anybody's show towards that last stone event. So Big Jake did a really good job, like it coming down to the wire for the stone. So it was me, Big Allen, and Caden kind of came down. And even there could have been a few others that just could jump into two to three. I mean, it was kind of within striking distance for. one to five kind of nice that's a good comp yeah second place half a point can't complain

oh dang now did you win that last or did we have you want uh did you win your class last year or was that uh yeah last year was kind of the same situation except uh i came out on top at the end because again it came down to the end of me toby and allen and um just out of nowhere just i think last year is maybe like a half a point as well because i tied with somebody and so had to split points last year and then this year had to split points on the log press. So lost some points there, but still happy. So say Alan had done a little bit better last year and it was you and Toby face to face. Would you beat his ass too like Alan did?

I don't know. I would have definitely got lost in those blue eyes. Yeah, they would have walked over you. Maybe it would have helped me zone out and like ignore the pain. But I don't think I could have done any better than them because the stalemat gripper has been like the worst grip implement I've used as in difficulty wise. Yeah. I was like, oh, I'm going to, I'm going to do this weight and put it on the first time and just got so discouraged.

I was like, I'm nowhere close to the weight I want to do. So, yeah, it's frustrating when I need to get back on it now that the leaderboards are kind of like stagnant. I mean, with each run, they kind of pop up again. But while people aren't doing it, I need to jump in see if I can move up a few spaces. It's fair, fair. So then if you did get an event win last year, that's a very elusive for the Hall of Fame. So where are you at? Did you get your jacket yet?

Or are you pending? No, I am pending the cup. So my crew falls. If I listen to the back catalog, I'll have 12. And then at the end of December, I'll have 13 because of my four-year mark. Okay. And then I basically just need to be heard on the podcast and go to Arnold or Home JimCon. Yeah.

And I plan on going to one of those next year. So I'll knock that off. So maybe next year, Lift Hard Live Easy. Get a jacket. Nice. Or no. No, because Home Jim Con's after. Yeah.

Arnold. I mean, it's so close. Arnold's before. It is pretty far. Yeah. Arnold's like February, March. And then Lift Hard will be June. And then the home gym cons late July.

So. Yeah. So I'd have to go to Arnold to get the jacket at Lift Hard. Gotcha. Hmm. Home JimCon. Well, wouldn't you get at the Arnold then? Oh, yeah.

Home JimCon is definitely on my radar. I have a family right outside of Louisville. So we just recently had a family reunion and found out that they're like 45 minutes outside of Louisville. And so want to go up there, visit them. And then they said they'd make the trip into town. So be good to hang out with them. Nice. Did you ever say that word in front of Brandon?

Because he's going to give you hell for the way you say it. Hey, that's all right. anytime he talks to me I'm happy he's a good guy he's a good he's a good boy I uh he actually hopped in on the pre show and I talked for like 10 minutes for you before I realize I had the link in the wrong spot totally spaced on coming to discord for this oh good yeah I was just telling Andy during the pre show I was like man I there's so many times like two hours after the podcast and I'm laying in bed and I like see like three missed DMs and like two missed texts from someone at like seven o'clock. And I'm like, oh, maybe I should look at my phone going into the podcast,

uh, because people rely on me to respond to messages, but. I just responded to a message cam sent me on Discord on July 30th. Discord messages are hard. If you're not, if you're not, especially if you're not, if you're not, if you're not friends with that person, like they just don't ever show up unless I've noticed if I'm on my desk, if I'm on my computer, I'll get an alert for messages from people I'm not friends with. But if I'm just on my phone on the app, I do not get that message or I don't get that icon. So very strange. Lauren, just one more, go a couple, a couple of more things here. How many,

how many supporting members are in your household? In my household, there's three. It's me and the two boys. Nice. So the youngest, the youngest crew members that I know of. What about Darren? Is Darren a taste, he's a sport member? Okay. He's a supporting member, but not in the household, but in the family. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I figured he would be. So it's the, the Kaler crew. Nice. Good deal. Good deal. you. And then Jim Tetris, what, what, tell me about that. So I'm in the process of getting a hip thrust machine or a glute bridge machine and trying to sell my seated shoulder press from Arsenal. And it's kind of a cramped corner. So just trying to figure out a way to make everything work in there and still

have like a good flow to the gym. Just driving me crazy. And I've done a few like blueprint things on line and laid out the floor plan, but I haven't done it since I was originally opening the gym, and it was so tedious because some of the machines I was getting, like, there's one of those websites. It used to be called Gymscape or something. You could do your floor plan, and they have a bunch of machines that you could lay out on there, but they didn't have any arsenal stuff. So I was just taking the measurements offline and making cubes and moving those around.

And it literally looked like a Tetris board. But I was playing bad because there's a lot of gaps, which I guess you want gaps in a gym. So. But yeah, trying to figure that out. I got tired of seeing the sketchy setups that some people would have for hip thrust. And I know hip thrust isn't going anywhere. So might as well just cave in and get a machine for it. No, that makes sense.

That makes sense. So what, do you say what brand you ended up going with? Did you do your Jim Radar research? I didn't do much research on Jim Radar. I was just going to keep the theme alive. I'd seen some good stuff about the Arsenal one. So I was just going to keep going with that. And then the sales rep still kind of reaches out to me pretty regularly.

So I know he's easy to work with. So just send him a message or an email. And he gets me back a quote really quick. So I just decided to go with Arsenal. There were a few others. Like Big Lou has one. I think he has an Atlantis one maybe. but that would require working with a new sales rep.

Yeah, that sounds unpleasant for sure. Yeah. And I know they're going to try to ups on me on other stuff and not want me to just buy one thing from them. So I don't know if I have the willpower to just buy one thing. Now, are you sure you aren't just, after this week's YouTube video, are you sure you're not just going to sell all the equipment in the entire gym and just get like four vultras and some bounce?

I mean, you're going to be a big vulture guy? I mean, I have the vultras. but the thing with machines is it gives you something to attach to so you can kind of make any machine a cable stack machine. Okay. Is that what you do with your, do you do that just for your own training or do you, do you like, because you're nine to five is personal training more than you. It's not so much an open gym.

It's like, hey, come and like get your hour block with me and I'll be your handler essentially, right? Yeah, the original idea for the gym was like kind of like a training studio. So one-on-ones and group stuff. and then the open gym just kind of happened by accident because I was able to get more machines than I thought it was at the beginning. And I was like, well, if I'm going to be up here, then might as well, like, open it to the public and let other people come in. And kind of made me change the, I guess, business plan of the gym, which has worked out pretty well because a lot of people are coming in. I have those weird small business hours.

So some people aren't fans of that, but I'm like, they've been going to other gyms. So it's not like they're not getting a gym. They're just having to drive another 15 minutes. Gotcha. And then you trust your client. You trust the gym members of Vultras or do you just keep the Vultras in their locking key and pull them out for yourself and your clients? When the battery's low, I'll keep them in the office.

And then if I use them with a one-on-one, I won't necessarily take them down. I'll kind of keep them out there. And then if I see somebody that looks like they would be interested in it or they show signs of I see in their training, they do stuff that I think would benefit them. I'll kind of give them a little rundown on how to use it. And then usually they'll go home, kind of Google it or YouTube some videos on it and come back with a little bit more knowledge of it.

Nice. Did either of you guys get a chance to watch Tommy going through his vulture today? Yeah, got to watch that. I honestly learned something new. I didn't know that you could hit those two buttons to unlock it. Oh, to do the... Yeah, to do the... To stand up on the cavaries and not be loaded, basically?

No, the docket and undocumented. Yeah, yeah. So how do you do you fucking twist and pull or what do you? No, there's like a, you go to advanced settings and then you have to go to like, yeah, I was doing it the hard way. You had to go. That seems so more in depth and elaborate. There has to be an easier way.

How the fuck did you not Google that a year ago, dumb ass? Like that's so. Hey, I mean, what I was doing worked is longer. That would be so, I'd be so mad at my. Oh, that's. So did you, have you actually tried it since then? Yeah. You were like, I got it out today.

Yeah. Specifically. I got it out today. Because I kept wondering what that button was for. I was like, you can't turn it on for here. There's a reason for it. But yeah, I just was too lazy and didn't it.

Search like, what is this other button for? No, that makes me happy. That's really good. Look at Tommy coming in and saving the day already. I know. I might buy another one now. Well, someone DM Tommy and let him know of this whole story because I don't think Tommy listens very much.

But that's a big magic, you get a chance to listen to uh watch it at all i haven't watched any videos today i mean i got off work went right to the gym and came came home and set up so excited for hell yeah man unpaid underrated podcast hell yeah that is the hard part uh we've considered like moving this earlier in the week sometimes or later in the week is but like like thursdays is good for most people and then uh but man it is hard to get that youtube video in sometimes it's just like if it doesn't if i'm not if i don't get like a full lunch that day typically like i'm not i'm not watching And it's just don't have time.

I also agree. What about the podcast itself? Did you get a chance to listen to that? The one that came out Sunday night, Monday morning? Oh, yeah. Watch that last night in the gym. Oh, nice. Yeah, that's a good one.

I mean, John Hack is a guest episodes are always fun. But, you know, specifically John Hack is a, that's a good listen. Just, you know, until Colton's recent performance, what he was arguably the current greatest of all time. So always kind of fun to hear what he has to talk about, say. For sure. So if you had to give it a rating, what do you think that'd be? Oh, I'm giving it a five old school video games out of five. Nice, nice. They did. That was this week, right? They did the old school video game chit-chat. So yeah, that was. Yeah, Tommy was talking about Transylvania.

Yeah. Which I've, some of those games, like, I never played a Final Fantasy or the Transylvania. I played all the, basically every game that Tanner talked about I had played, and like, most the games Tommy talked about. I probably couldn't even tell you what the cover art looked like. Yeah, I was just, I've recently just finished Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic.

That's not too old school. I mean, 24 years old at this point or so, but that's a, every other year visit for me playing that game. Nice. Now do you, like, do a lot of systems allow for the, because I have a PS5, I don't even know what I could play, like,

how old of it? a game I could play. Obviously, you're not like inserting PS1 decks, but you can, which is how frustrating is that you have to like pay $10, $15 to buy a game that you owned 25 years ago and probably paid $40 for and then

got like 11 cents when you traded it in and now you're spending another $10 to play it as an old man. Oh yeah. And it's, you don't even have it. It's just on the system. And if you run out of room, you got to start moving stuff around and delete and stuff. Yeah, it's not, not fun.

But it's, yeah, I'm mostly Xbox. So whatever, if it's on that marketplace, I just, when I get a hankering for it, I try to grab it. Nice. But yeah, the episode in general, I enjoyed not a, I do like that there's not a ton of guests anymore. When they do have a guest, typically it's a guest I actually want to hear about for the most part. So like, that's not a bad deal. And I do like that it's just like, you know, it's a half hour shooting the shit, our interview and another half hour of shooting the shit. So you still kind of get the core of what I'm there for,

just the boys shooting the shit. And then just kind of add in, you know, John who gets it. So it would be cool to see his gym tour. And if they actually can get him to come to Home GymCon, I think that'd be a dope. But yeah, I'm going to go ahead and give it a five out of five. I'm just as tall as John X. Yeah. Yeah, I, I feel like Home JimCon is definitely going to get to the point where a lot of, a lot of these higher level lifters, strongmen, competitors are going to start showing up. And because I don't think the home gym space is going to shrink from here on out. Oh, for sure.

And I think a lot of people are saying, you know, a lot of lifters going towards home gyms. So hopefully the competitions can kind of upgrade and follow in that trend as well. Yeah, time shall tell. I know Kurt has got a lot on his plate and doesn't have a ton of resources when he is there. I did hear I think he might take a step back from when his show. shows actually, I guess some of the issues this year was, you know, he's running, he's helping manage like five other events simultaneously while he should be like solely focusing on the strong man show and not just having his volunteers kind of run it. So I think I've heard through a grapevine. I think it was Antonio had mentioned it that, you know, he's like self-aware of that fact and kind of needs to lock in on his strongman show when it's happening. But it's hard when you're kind of the, the czar of all the other events that are running simultaneously. So, Big Lorne, what did you think of the old John Hack episode? It was good.

I always liked hearing the cool beans. So that's one plus about always having a guest is the cool beans. And every time I rewatch Hot Rod, I always just think of Massonomics guests. But I would give a five out of five barbell hand railings. I thought those are really cool, really cool idea whenever I saw that on the video. So I'm glad they talked about it. Yeah, definitely passes the brocode, huh? Yeah, definitely.

I had like that's Instagram's been telling me like three times a day for the past two weeks since that Instagram real came out and I think I just posted this is fucking awesome or this is good shit or something like a most throwaway comment ever and it's got like 2,000 likes and I just keep getting like an alert. I think it's almost annoying. I wish I could like turn off alerts for just like a like a like a like a like a like a stop like it's cool but it's like I don't I don't know. I like I go look at the heart to think like to see something new and relevant. it. It's like, oh, no, this thing again. I had a comment like that on Brian Shaw's video of him unloading that 50-cow rifle. He's talking about home defense. And my, yeah, my comment was, are you defending your home from the next town over? People got to kick out of that one, I guess.

That is funny. But, I mean, he made that thing look like a toy. He's just mag dumped it. And, yeah. That was with Kentucky ballistics, right? the YouTube channel he was on? I think so. I saw them in the comments too, yeah.

Yeah. Big Lorne, your was, so I think we heard Brandon tell the story on the Lifhard of Easy recap. Did he do it justice on how your spaceman kind of became a hat? Or was there any follow up to that? Yeah, he nailed it. I mean, we spent it a lot of time together at Lift Hard Live Easy, so we talked about it.

That was like one of the first things I think we talked about. But yeah, after they were doing space, space theme, and then last year I did the denim vest and the cowboy hat, I really leaned into the Western. I was like, oh, I'm not going to do anything this year. I was like, well, if I could do a spacesuit, that'd be pretty cool. And then I was like, NASA spacesuits. And it's like, oh, NASA logo. And my unlimited creativity is just ripping off other things. So why not rip off Massonomics and NASA?

Nice. So I sent it to Tanner and Tommy and Tommy was like, whoa, you didn't have to go that hard. And then a couple weeks later, Tanner was like, hey, we're ripping off your idea. I was like, you're not ripping off my idea. I ripped off y'all's logos. So, I mean, you're not ripping off anything. Nice. But, what's that untapped theme that you think would make a good one for L-A-L-H-L-E-5, right?

Yeah. five. Yeah. Yeah, I was talking to a bunch of different crew about it. And we were talking about, like, themes.

And then I think I was talking to Hogan and Brad, Brad the Pad about it. One of them had mentioned, like, kind of nautical, kind of with, like, the deep sea diver helmet. Somebody had kind of mentioned,

like, Cyborg, almost like the Terminator face. And then another one, I think would be cool. like wrestling or like WrestleMania so like Ultimate Warrior type thing face paint and stuff that'd be pretty cool one

I don't know what color scheme you would use for that I don't know Is there like a number associated with the Edmonds Fitzgerald that would like that would correlate with any of the upcoming Liftard Levit Vizis I mean there are any I mean

Lift Hardly Visi 29 Yeah so I mean that's We got we got a waste What year would that be someone do the big So that's what 20 21 years? now, right? What's what's 21 years from? So, 2020, 36, 36, 40, 2007,

ish. Yeah, I don't know if we're going to be doing it. I don't know. We're all going to be fucking 60. Well, I'll be 60 plus. I don't know. You know, some of us will be. We can just do like two or three a year. That way we get to 29 faster. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's, I would have to start skipping Lift Hardly vizis if that was the case, because my book of financials could not afford that. At least, yeah, that home gym kind and Lift Hard Leave Easy. kind of got a little space in between them for next year.

Yeah, I'm so excited about that. A little easier on you there. Yeah, just the, it's like I've mentioned it before, it's not even like, like I'm going to spend the money no matter what and like it is what it is. Like the money's already in the bank account and like that's not, it's not, I mean, it sucks having that much expense in the same month, but the bigger issue is like, you don't get that break from work spread out, man. You're just like, oh, I just felt like I just had like, I took a half a week off and I

worked for a week and a half and I took another half a week off. It was like, it was just, whereas like, it's so much nicer to have like, you know, you look forward to that time off and then you get that time off. And then you actually like lock back in for work for a couple months and then you get the time off again. And it's just, it's just, I don't know, kind of makes the year seem like it's more spread out. Time doesn't go by as fast. So. Yeah, whenever I got back from Lift Hard Live Easy, I didn't go to home gymcon, but I still had another trip planned. It was the first week of August and we went to Utah for a golf trip.

and that was that was pretty rough because I had to like cancel classes and stuff and then luckily it was still summer so my cousin could help me cover the gym but I felt bad having to cancel classes like almost two three weeks like in a row kind of thing but that was a hell of a I know some of my wife's been out to Utah a couple times for work and like I've seen the it's like pictures of a couple hikes she's done and it's just like underrated I think on how like beautiful the scenery is out there so was the golf course like in this like awesome place with like great backdrops and shit Yeah, the first one we played at was on Thursday, and that was like a cheaper course, but it was right outside of Zion. So you could see some of the national park from the golf course. So that was a really cool scenery. Then we played again on Friday. That one, you still saw some of the scenery, but it was a little bit further west. And then on Saturday, we played my first PGA course, and they're actually growing out the rough and getting the greens ready for the tour coming there at the end of September. So I lost a lot of balls.

Yeah, it was a lot of fun. I heard Hogan lost a couple balls there not too long ago. And I've got a consultation to lose my balls here coming up soon. So you're not alone in that boat. Yeah. All right. Just had my initial consultation the other day too. Nice.

I'm not afraid. It's just more like, that's just more time. I don't have to, like it's like another like two days of work I would need to take. Because I mean, obviously I want to do it Thursday. Friday and then like have the weekends everyone says but it's just like I'm like cutting it so close when having enough PTO to like do what I want each year. There's like, God damn it's another couple days. I don't have to take time off that I'd have to take take time off for now because I can't,

I'm not going to like go up and down a ladder or like lay in a crawl space with, you know, my nuts just cut open. So I need a few days off there. All right. Minimum. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Sure. I don't have a fancy desk job where I can just like sit on my cushion and like have my, I guess, I don't think you, well, I can be more if you had something up your butt. But I guess you'd have to, I'd be not kind of like, I can't ice my balls in my work van necessarily. Yeah, I mean, you might as well just book these trips back to back prostate exam. Yeah, yeah. Just get both ends. I thought I was going to have, I thought I would be getting a colonoscopy soon because, but I just had my physical and I'm 41 now.

And he was like, uh, they really, unless you have a history of it, like 45 is at least what they're saying, what that doc, but I feel like most people. People are getting them sooner and sooner. So I don't know. I guess I have another few years unless I tell them I want one early. That'll be a thing soon. Anything else in the lifting world or massonomics world we missed? It's so hard to keep up on everything as we round out general topics here. I'm getting, I'm getting...

Not that I can think of. Nothing. So I think we are good. We got some affiliates. If you guys want to save a little bit of money, go use our friends affiliate, or our affiliates at our friends. companies. So obsidian ammonia, took a nice whiff of that tonight before I hit a little rep PR. Plate snacks, I mean, if you want a good sticker, you can't go wrong with plate snacks. Actually,

to harken back to my rating of last week, Tommy, you know, slightly throwing some shade at people's massive fucking stickers and how there's no room for him on his, his big M, his big custom massonomics logo that he put all the crew stickers on. It made me chuckle because I've been a a hater of oversized stickers solely because, like, they don't fit on my Tetris board of crew stickers either. So I feel the pain of that. And it's just always nice. Code unpaid will get you some, you know, high quality stickers a little bit off. And then, uh, happy birthday, Big Chris from Beltfed Strength a few days ago. Uh, we love you, buddy. Go use code unpaid and save 10% there that we don't get a kick out of. Um, and I know his regular affiliate discount is nowhere near

that much of a percentage. So we're kind of stealing from him when we use it. So, you know, feel free to use it or not use it. But I did ask him if he was okay if we were still pushing it like three years later from his episode. And he, you know, said absolutely. So, you know, you have his blessing to keep using code unpaid to belt and all your straps and belts and the leather accessories. Hopefully Tanner likes his technically custom, but soon to be, you know, in store product belt. Let's, let's hear in the Discord how you're liking that belt. Tanner. And with that, Big Matt, do you have a Massonomics or Jim Radar, a little ad read you want to hit us with? Oh, yeah, I do. Massonomics, is it a gym, a podcast, a lifestyle?

Maybe it's all three and then some. Whether you're getting up on a new horror stall Matt PR or chatting with friends all across the globe in Discord, Massonomics has it all. Apparel, yearly strongman in powerlifting competitions, both virtual and in person. drink spotters, and of course, Jim Radar, the most advanced and well-c curated home gym database and social media platform the world has ever seen. Add your gym, browse hundreds of items, leave reviews, and get certified today. Nice. Well, thank you. We're going to dive into the interview portion of this episode, Matt. So I'd like to just kind of let you introduce yourself. I always say that and people get confused. I'm not, we'll, we'll, we'll be. We'll, we'll,

We'll get to learning more about you soon, but this is just the hit me with your Instagram and your Discord. What's your name? How are people going to find you? Who the hell are you? Matt Wallace. On Instagram, I am Matt Wallace 165, and I believe it's the same on Discord. I'm not sure. I'm still pretty new to the whole Discord thing.

And then YouTube, I believe it's just Matt Wallace powerlifting. Oh, dope. I don't think I've seen your YouTube. What do you throw on the YouTube? Just typical training footage. Actually, well, this past home gym con, I tried to use that as an opportunity to just do shorter one to three minute interviews at certain booths, asking exhibitors to show off one or two things that they would want people who didn't attend home gym con to see and just give a quick overview of it. We hit up Rory, you know, Massanomics, of course. ATX,

force, just some of the bigger ones. And GoBrow, that was a cool one to look at that, that new Camber bar, the adjustable camber bar. That was a fun one. So,

yeah, I was gifted a decently, a very nice camera from a friend who he, he used to be a full-time streamer. And so he's, he came out, he's come out to the garage a couple times. And he was like,

I think that you, and my friend, teammate, Tito, Tyrell Williams, we got a cool thing going out here. So he gifted me a camera. He's like, just start making videos, post it and just keep building an audience. And it's really just kind of for fun. So being gifted a nice camera, not that I felt obligated to make videos, but it felt right.

And I like it. It's just fun. It's kind of, it's enjoyable. And, you know, yeah. Well, it's just a cool archive too. because like, you know, 30 years from now, you're not going to want to scroll back. I mean, Instagram might, Instagram might not exist in 30 years. YouTube probably will because it's just, it's like long, I mean, I don't think long form media, video content like that's going to go anywhere.

But, I mean, YouTube's social media adjacent, but it's not social media. So I don't see YouTube going anywhere. Whereas whatever, you know, that will really suck if Instagram does go away at some point. and like our archive of lifting content just disappears, whereas at least you have it on YouTube, it's kind of future proof to, you know, at least in our lifetime, you would think. So I think for that aspect alone,

I think that's very cool, just to be able to like, be like, oh, let's watch me and the boys from 20 years ago lift some weights in the garage. Like, that's a very cool little archive time capsule you have yourself. Yeah, it's like an equivalent of throwing in Christmas, 1999, VHS and the TV, yeah. 100%.

do uh matt do your videos or does your channel get posted in the uh discord for crew tube oh no i have no clue probably not i i yeah i i'm not too sure i think is that like is that like something i would post or uh well you can do that but uh initially tanner was able to add like 10 or 20 people so where it would just auto the bot would auto pull it but i think it's there's too many there's not there we eclipse whatever that number that number was that would auto pull people's like updates but there are people that like manually go in there every time they throw a video up and just throw it in a YouTube feed channel. So if there is something you think is crew relevant or something that's cool and you want to just throw up there. Yeah,

there is a, I don't know if it's somewhere on our discord like the massonomics discord of just YouTube or I think it's actually called a crew tube, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. So you can throw your links in there, help get a couple follows. But I think I think big, uh, DM big Mo or he'll listen to this and reach out to you maybe and get the actual link. Because I think he keeps a doc or a spreadsheet maybe that he may be. I'm not a hundred and I know he's the keeper of the crew tube list. So I'm not really sure what that does or gains you. But, you know, especially if you're making content,

that's good to get your name out there. So big mofo, reach out to Big Matt Wallace and get him on that list, please. All right, Big Matt. What, uh, what proxia of massonomics and why you still here? What was that origin story? Massonomics. So it goes back a lot farther than when I start. I've been a supporting member since February this year.

I have known of Massonomics for a long time. Like I'm friends with Tom Cals and Tom Finn. So going to the Arnold, I think it might have been the first year that they had a booth. Massanomics had a booth. You know, just being around the Arnold with Finn, stopping there, him saying hi, but I was just kind of younger, shy, like, I'm really a shy or shy type of person. So it was just like, oh, I don't know these people. They're Finn's here to see them.

They're here to see Finn. Cool. And then just moving on. But just then the gym tours, I started seeing more of the gym tours. I think they might have popped up on YouTube. And I'm like, oh, that's, I recognize that from years ago. and I'm like, oh, gym tours are pretty dang cool. Like, this is really cool to see how people outfit their space,

what kind of space they're working with, what they prioritize, what, you know, and, you know, this is all pre-jim radar. So you can be having a garage gym, a few versions of one. There's just a sensible thing to be like, oh, yeah, this is great, this is cool. And then to be, and then after that, it was listening to a few podcast episodes and just Tanner and time like and after meeting crew members at home gym come this year it's I don't think it's weird to say but when you are

listening to the podcast it's just kind of like you're just hanging out with the guys and you're just it's funny laid back but there's always something to talk about relevant information informational information and then just kind of realizing that there's this whole community that really supportive of each other. They, you know, hosting in-person events, powerlifting, strong-man competitions, and then having such a big presence at Home GymCon. This year was just really solidified it for me. And of course, I've, you know, and my wife and I were coming up on our one-year anniversary.

So her family, she always took, they always took family trips out to the South Dakota area. And I was like, well, we're out in South Dakota. We're going to go to this place. gym and visit them, see them, met Tanner, picked up my certified training facility banner there, and yeah, just tried out a bunch of stuff, tried the horse saw macripper for the first time, and that was just cool and fun. And, you know, I genuinely, I don't understand how Tanner and Tommy sometimes balance and accomplish all that they accomplish.

They've got a lot going on. So that's just a bit of appreciation for them and all the hard work that they do and everyone that helps them out. Well, I think Tanner said it recently on the podcast. He's basically up from 5 a.m. till midnight every day, don't stop doing something. Maybe it was 6 a.m. But regardless, it's just, I think since Jim Reiter dropped six, seven months ago, well, even before that, because they were working on it in like last fall, that's just nonstop for them. They have got a lot of, they're juggling a lot of balls, that's for sure.

Big, big ball jugglers over there. So that's good. I think I forgot that you had done that. So when were you at the, what time of the year were you in Massachusetts in South Dakota? Mid-September. Okay. Of this past year. Oh, so it was, so was that before you were a crew?

Because you said you joined in February. So February of 24 you joined crew or 20, like, well, no, 25, I mean. Of 26. February of 26, but I went out to. So you had met Tanner before you were through. Yeah. So it's one of those things where like, yeah, for me, I'm like, I don't spend money all the time on like anything. Yeah, it's weird against someone $3 a month when it's just, but once you're in it, you get it.

But beforehand, yeah. Yeah. And once I met him and it was just like cool, you know, because powerlifting and going to the Arnold for quite a few times, just how many businesses and apparel companies and whatnot. are in power lifting, the strength world. It's just like, it was just another, you know, people just trying to pump out a new shirt every two months and just get a couple bucks from people. But after meeting, meeting Tanner, after seeing the gym, seeing the vintage plates, that was a big thing too, and just being able to chop it up about that and kind of that,

like I said, that that just launched my love for that whole realm. It was just like a cool And it's so fun listening to I'm working through the backlog So hearing them talk about stuff relevant at the time Powerlifting wise talking about like the US Open Talking about 2017 World Strongest Man

And I get flooded with memories of what I was doing In powerlifting and like with teammates and friends And training partners back at that time And being like ah So it's just it's a it's been a cool find joining uh becoming a supporting member and joining the massonomics universe is a is a good thing overall nice well we're glad to have you yep and uh you mentioned um finn and i'm gonna go on a leap are you in the illinois area yeah yeah northern illinois yeah okay uh have you been in that area did you

move there like grow up there yeah born grew up all within like three or four towns of each other pretty much. So family, most of the families out here. And like I said, coming up in powerlifting in Northern Illinois, realizing like there's a lot of heavy hitters out here with Finn, with Calas, with the Lillow Bridges, Derek Kendall, when he was out, anywhere at Barbell Central at Jacked Hardcore before that. I was just like, wow, there's Dan Bell coming up, you know, a few times.

it's just like, whoa, this is, this, it's not your, this is already not your typical sport, but these are not your typical participants. These are some of the highest levels in the game, you know, all time world records going. And it's just like, oh, this is, this is a much, much more special opportunity than I think a lot of lifters would get, especially just starting out. So it's like, oh, I need to just absorb and learn as much as much as. possible from a lot of these people that I'm around. I guess that makes sense because I was looking at your notes and it said that you aren't a fan

of Chicago. So that would kind of make sense that you're in Illinois and not like in Chicago and not just like a couple states over and having a grudge over a city. Yeah, you know, and here's the thing. I work construction. So going to the city, going to Chicago, I am, I can see the same building over and over again, but I'm still in awe of the architecture. I'm just fascinated.

I can appreciate good, hard work like that and how cool. Like, you know, it's one of the greatest cities in the world. And it's an hour train right away for me. But yeah, being in the city, that's fun for a few hours. And then I'm like, I need to get back to my, I need to get back to my chickens. I need to get back to my grass. Yeah, makes sense. And so since you joined crew relatively recently, like now that you're going through the backlog or anything or I don't know how far you went on Masonomics, like Instagram or post or anything like that, is there a piece of merch that like you're kind of sad that you missed out on?

Yeah, I mean, I think the lift shorts are everyone will say that if they don't have them. that'll be that'll be my answer as well it's kind of an iconic piece at this point and yeah it is a shame they can't sell them publicly anymore I would do think if they could do another bootleg under the table deal either

you know lift well yeah next year's lift out of easy maybe because I think they did it two years ago or three years ago that's a big seller like they're fucking I love those shorts and any mesh or the new shorty shorts like I don't care just give me a lift logo like it's the unequivocal like best thing they've ever done in its peak massonomics and it sucks that they can't like hang their hat on it anymore

uh and it's what I'll always consider like massonomics core memories yeah it was fun whenever I got to that backlog of the because like I mean whenever I got in they were like still kind of fresh on the uh can't afford to buy these they're too expensive and then whenever I finally got to that backlog story of the guy that made a comment and then a couple episodes later, it kind of comes full circle with that. But that was pretty fun to hear that story. Though the funny thing is too, like that was like, what, five, six years ago, I would love to pay what they were charging five years ago for shorts on today's shorts. Like, oh, you're, you're only going to charge 2899 or 29? Like, fuck yeah, yeah, give me those $30 shorts, not these, I don't

even know what they're, I couldn't tell you what their shorts are going for nowadays when it was more than 30 bucks. All right, Big Matt. The Hall of Fame status, did you ever get, did you find the list or did you get a card from Tanner when you were out there? Yeah, I got the list. I'm at five or six, depending on if, because I posted a picture with Dave Hats. He came out to the garage to drop something off for me. And he was a Massonomics member, so we took a picture together.

I posted it in the vintage weights Facebook group. So if that counts six, if that doesn't count. I'm going to say that if it's only, if it's not on your main Instagram page, I'm going to say that does not count. So I would, uh, I would, uh, did you not get any pictures at home gym? I guess we, I try to pressure I got a picture with you, but it's hard. It's hard to remember to do. Like, I will, I come back.

So some years, I have a hundred pictures and other years. I'll have like 10 pictures. And I always feel like, oh, I should have got a couple more. But, you know, you live it in the moment sometimes. It's like, it's the last thing you want to do. and say, hey, take a selfie with me. Yeah. But is what it is.

And so the garage, that's your certified facility? Yep. Yeah, your home, Jim? Yes, sir. Yeah. What is the name of it? The, like the actual space we don't have a name for, but the group of guys that used to train together more often, a little sparse now, because lives just going in different directions, we call

ourselves the garage boys. So my buddy You got a pioneer built made with our faces on it, and he put my dog on there. So that's hung up at the front door of the gym. So that's the moniker we go by. Is that what she certified it under, garage boys? I believe so, yeah. That probably would have been it. Or just Matt Wallace's gym.

Okay. Are the faces on that belt in Mount Rushmore form? Like y'all's faces? That would have been good. No, it's just a little. framed squares with the dog in the center. He's the centerpiece of it also. Still pretty badass.

Yeah, no, it's cool. Especially from who it came from. It was cool because he was a high school classmate, a few years younger than me. We didn't chat for seven plus years. And just one day he reached out and he's like, hey, I see you power lift. Do you mind if I come, when we were in my first garage at this point, he's like, do you mind if I'd come lift with you and your your teammates sometime? And I'm like, yeah, of course, come to my house.

And he's like, oh, it's at your house. So me just welcoming some guy I haven't talked to in over half a decade just to come to the house and lift with the boys. He was just like, oh, this is nuts. And, you know, kind of saved his life in a way where, you know, it gave him something to do somewhere to be for a few days a week anyway. And, you know, then that turns into traveling the country doing meets and stuff. and, you know, one of the many things I love about strength sports, strength community.

Yeah, for sure. Well, I'd love to hear that. That's awesome. So that was, so I guess we can, well, we can, I mean, let's just dive into the gym more now. I mean, it might come up later, but that's just why we're on it. Let's not, you know, save it for later. So how old are you, Matt? I'm 32.

Okay, so then, then you take us through the building the gym. I mean, we'll get into the lifting aspect later, but like, let's just hear about the gym itself, I guess, for the next few minutes. I'm curious of what you've built and how it stands right now. So right now, since we've got our house in April of 23 of 2023. So as soon as that happened, it just was all full steam ahead and getting the garage ready for that. So it was empty, it wasn't empty, but like it was lawnmower stuff, whatever the previous owner had left behind. no insulation in the walls, nothing else. So mingle, get it cleaned out as much as possible to start moving the stuff that I did have out of its current location.

And so that was insulating all the walls, plywood, paint, horse stall mats, and insulating the ceiling came later. and actually the sign dealer that I referenced in the gym tour video, they've got like two foot by 16 foot long old metal roofing panels that they used inside their shop at their house. So got to go get those, put those on the ceiling to really kind of give it a more finished look instead of just staring at bats of stuff. but something that will kind of round it out and make me a lot happier. Hold the heat in a little bit better in the winter.

Awesome. Sounds like you've built a nice little place there. Was it a bigger footprint from when you had your previous gym? Because it sounds like you've been lifting with the boys for longer than since 2023, though, right? Oh, yeah. I mean, some of these guys are from 2016, 2017. You've had a home gym in some capacity for 8 to 10 years then. Uh, I would say, we're on three now. Yeah, because so.

Are you training with them in a commercial place, then you're saying? Uh, kind of. If you want the timeline, we started at Zen Zen Barbell. I started in 20, late 20, or yeah, like mid-2013. Then we had to move that to the kickboxing gym, MMA kickboxing gym that I went to before I found powerlifting. we moved over there. Then COVID hit. So that was garage. That turned into garage gym number one, which was just in my apartment. It was just a long one car.

But that still had the Texas combo that had the monolith, the metalift, the belt squat, deadlift platform. You know, monolift in your apartment. You're a lot. Yeah. That's wild. Oh, yeah. No. And like, you could lift in the garage, open the garage door.

You could see a Casey's, like, you know, Casey's gas stations. Yeah, yeah. You could see a few of the pumps from the garage. So I just always imagined, and even when I get gas there now, I just imagine, like, what were people thinking when they heard the music and yelling the weights in the phone? Because you would have definitely heard it from over there. I'm like, what is going on? So. So your gym is the one that has the big beefy belt squat?

Yeah, it's like kind of like the one that they have, almost like the one that they had made off of the one that you have specs. Is that your girl? It's made off of the winning. It's based off of the winning. Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah. Now I'm putting your gym video in my head. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. So we left the one car and then moved to another commercial, a commercial gym that had a second space, not right next to it, but not connected. But they had an MMA gym that they wanted to kick back up. And they had a back room, blah, blah, blah. Like, hey, put your stuff. in the back room. You have a team,

you have a group of people, we're trying to do it all, commercial gym, MMA, and strike sports in the back. I'm like, yeah, cool,

it's put all the stuff in there. And that was a, like I said, in the tour video, that's how I came across, or that's how I was gifted quite a few of those pieces that are quite,

um, apparently sought after. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then that,

and then that turned into, that turned into buying the house, getting the, the garage gym in its current location. Nice. Nice. Yeah, I remember your video, that shoulder machine was pretty sick. Yeah.

What is that one called again? Okay. Paramount, yeah, Paramount Total Shoulder. Okay, yeah. But mine's a partial shoulder because it's got shots all chopped up and raised. It's like, so the originals are like almost a foot and a half shorter. So I don't know why, but whoever did it, they raised it up. and which is kind of nice because my feet kind of dangle off the seat so it's all shoulder if i'm

shoulder pressing it's all shoulder i'm not getting some no leg drive which is like that's kind of nice yeah so i'm like that is a weakness for me so but yeah like like tommy said in the video it's a piece that i cannot believe a current manufacturer hasn't tried to recreate um especially in that like i saw at temple of gains they had almost a uh recreation of the nautilus experience load lap pull down but then it also had a low row setting like kind of way to do it too so same ish machine but with a modern innovation but yeah that paramount total shoulder you could just pump something out like that three and one at home gym con that's gonna go nuts yeah yeah I mean the only thing that I could kind of think they would try to do now is kind of like what dialed

motion is doing with all the rack attachment stuff so like for it's As far as like a footprint thing, they probably want to want to ship, they would just like want to make the three and one on a rack adapted thing just to save on shipping, which for home gym, yeah, I understand it. But like to have something like that in a commercial gym or like a bigger home gym that has plenty of space, like you can't beat it just to have it there for that reason. No. And that was, yeah, with, you know, Pioneer fit every half inch matters that also transatlantic. late to a garage gym, a home gym. When you are just fighting for every half inch, where can I squeeze this in? Like you were saying, you got to figure out how to get that glute machine in there.

Yeah. But yeah, that's, that was good. Because I wanted that or the Nautilus double shoulder. So the Paramount Total shoulder popped up about 40 minutes away from me. And everything else I was looking at was in California or something. So I'm like, all right, well, right there, put it in the back of the truck, bring it home. I'm doing a shoulder work. Actually, I posted video for me doing a few sets while I was still in the back of my truck,

parked out front. Nice. Yeah, test it. Because if you didn't like it, then might as well just leave it there and be like, up, free delivery. Oh, yeah. Yeah, take it back. Take it right back.

He'd be like, nah, wasn't feeling it. Good deal. I definitely want to get into more about your team and everything when we get into your lifting here in a bit, but we'll just keep going down the list here. I will have to, I do have to tell you. I think you're in the Mount Rushmore of people that submitted the most, had the most amount of questionnaire submission submitted. Oh, same. You were at 13, and I think you're only outdone by two other crew, so that's helpful. But we'll pre-advance, apologize anyone. We didn't

get to their questions or their comments or whatnot, but it's more about just giving us a shit ton of data, and then, you know, if we need to pull from it, we will. If the conversation's flown, we'll just let it flow. But it definitely helps us, because we get some, uh, some soft-spoken crew on sometimes that we go through every single submitted piece of information, because I don't anything more than a three fucking word answer back. And I get other people that I only get through three out of 100 things because every answer is 10 minutes. So in nothing really wrong with either one of those.

It's just we've learned that the more the better and if we don't have to use it, oh well. All right. But so on that note, how did you get all these people to fill this out and what did you tell them it was for? It was pretty easy because, you know, most of the people I did send it to, you know, I didn't like spam everyone. wanted my contacts list. I just like people who knew that working out was, is a major part of my life. It was really easy to just throw it out there, be like, hey, I'm doing, this is actually

my first podcast ever. So I'm like, that helped a lot. Hey, I'm doing my first podcast. It's a lifting podcast. Here's a questionnaire and just send him the link and hoped for the best. And we were Teddy Roosevelt on that Mount Rushmore. There you go. It's easier than kind of being like, hey, so there's this cult that I'm in. And this is like a sub sub podcast of that. cult so yeah it sounds like you didn't know there are these guys online i really really like and i i've met some of them in person yeah yeah yeah you've met a handful of us in person now yeah all right uh well anyone listening we have this game we like to call to play least fun most fun i'm gonna give big matt a general topic and he has to go through using his druthers and kind of telling me the least

fun thing about it as well as the most fun so big matt uh i want to hear least fun most fun vintage weights and machines. Oh, most fun is how beautiful vintage plates and vintage machines are, mostly vintage plates because, you know. We can lock in. I did machines and weights just in case. So if you want to just stick with plates, that's fine. I knew you were a big machine guy, so I didn't know if you were going to have strong opinions

on one more than the other. Oh, yeah. Well, I will say the best part about the machines is a Nautilus hearing, a Nautilus chain-driven machine go and knowing that every rep that you're doing. doing is connected to that sound. Like it's it does kind of tickle a part of your brain that does help you squeeze out a few extra reps. Right.

So beautiful plates. That beautiful sound, uh, least fun is, uh, paying for shipping on anything. And I haven't shipped a machine ever. Yeah. Or technically one, but, um, and, but shipping plates for sure. And kind of the anxiety of, uh, not knowing exactly what condition they're going to show. up in. So that's, that is the least fun on plates. Least fun on machines is just moving them around in general, whether it is to the gym or within the gym. Fair enough. All right. Well,

this next one, we kind of, as little or as much as you want to talk about, stuff submitted for your occupation was all fairly around, you know, construction, but do you want to tell us specifically what you do in the trade or if you own your own business or anything? Or what's, what's Big Matts nine to five? nine to five more of a more of a more of a seven yeah as soon as i said it i was like that's not those aren't the right hours but it was uh yeah uh yeah it's um my i worked for my stepdad he he owns his own construction company he's a more well-known builder around our area so um working a couple summers doing you know some roof jobs before graduating but monday after you know the Monday after graduation on the job site, helping out and just building.

I work with my stepbrother. And until recently moved away, his childhood best friend. And typically, if we need the extra help, my uncle isn't too far either. So it's a real, it's a family affair, which I like. I like, I don't want to work for, you know, someone else, especially, but definitely not a corporation of any sort. But knowing that the work that I'm doing on a daily basis is benefiting not just myself, But my family as a whole, you know, that's definitely a motivating factor.

But, yeah, we're just construction, general construction. We got a few houses going right now, whether it's, you know, getting framed up, finish framing, foundations being poured right now and another one. So we're just all over the place doing the last stuff. We've done a few big church builds. We built a 46,000 square foot church. Dang. Um, so it, anything, we're, we're getting geared up for a church edition, you know, in town too. So all over the place, plenty, plenty to do, which is great, great thing.

Nice. That sounds like here's no shortage of work out there. And I don't know, man, working with family, I guess it's, since it's your wife's family, that's one thing. But like, if it was like, I couldn't work with my siblings. I know that for a fact, or my dad. Like, maybe I could work for like my in-laws. I don't know. But I definitely couldn't work with like the other people I grew up.

up with. Like, that'd just be too much, like, pre-built-in drama. So, kudos to you for having that being able to do that. Do you also do, so I've had several people submit powerlifting coach. So is that something you actually, is that just your, you know, you coach your team or do you actually, like, write programs and, like, do that as a side hustle? It was a lot more in the past. I only have a few right now because it is, it's more of a side thing. because by the time working, you know, doing construction, coming home training myself, and then, you know, trying to find time with the wife and relax with the dogs. But so there's only a few specific people I work with.

But yeah, that's training in person. Powerlifting. There was personal training for a little while when I was at the commercial spot. And yeah, online programs for people. I usually just send them eight, ten. 12-week blocks, just systems and training methods that I've used, programs that I've used over the years, like that I made myself not like taking programs from other people. That happens more than you would think. That's the sad part.

No, yeah. And that's why, and I've always, I've always, especially having equipment, having, you know, because when I was at Zen Zen Barbell, they would host the Illinois State Meet, the APF, AAPF, Illinois State Meet. So getting a combo, I got a combo rack for benching, you know, at the competition. I bought a kilo set or two so that way we didn't have to borrow it from other people. So having equipment, having plates, having bars and stuff, it made me enjoy the in-person part of it more. And that's kind of joining the team and then having to bring people in after other people would cycle

out. That's what really started it back then. And, you know, 20, I didn't start bringing people in until like 2016 or so. So, but yeah, that's what kicked that off. So are you a big conjugate guy? Not not really, because I've never like, look, I've never sat down with it and looked at it in detail. And I will, I have recently been enjoyed. alternating heavy and lower sessions, especially after coming back from home gymcon and not having a solid plan. But yeah, I love watching West Side versus the world, though.

That's for sure. Yeah, it's a good one. Whatever you do the programs, like, what are the, what do you base it off of, like, for the, like, the 5-3-1s? I mean, obviously there's, like, conjugate get and there's all kinds of other different like, I guess, basis for powerlifting, because I don't do a lot of powerlifting programming.

So I'm just curious, like, what you use to kind of make your program, just the basis. It's a mixture of percentage base for the compound movements, the squats, the bench, deadlifts, and then the accessories I like doing in an RPE range. So, and I typically a powerlifting peaking block is split up into four, four blocks of volume, speed, strength, and peak. So building a gas tank at the beginning of the prep, working on proficiency within the speed, just moving fast, moving right. And then, you know, adding weight to the bar for those last few weeks and then peaking. So that's kind of the basis of So that's percentage on the squat bench deadlift and then RPE, you know, did we go heavy on squat bench deadlift?

All right, let's keep the accessories a little bit lighter, but get the pump, bodybuild at the same time. Yeah. That'll definitely work. That sounds like a good, good basis to get strong for sure. And it seems like you've followed your own advice because you got a pretty decent total at a couple different body weights. it looks like in definitely in the, what does this say, 29th all time and tested in wraps at 148 and then not as well in the sleeve category. That's actually, I thought that was a typo.

It was supposed to set 3,279th all time in sleeve. So what do you get like 200 pounds out of wraps then or something? Or is there just not a lot of wrapped 165s out there? 148s, that is? Yeah, not a lot of wrapped 148s out there. that that kind of died off when I was finally kind of catching a groove but then yeah I was probably one of those

I was probably one of those lifters that stayed in a weight class for too long I should have dedicated more time in my youth to moving up and I'm just kind of turning into an older man who's fighting for every every pound on any sort of lift at all but yeah the 165 I mean I mean Austin Perkins is at the top of 165s and he's he brought drug-free, out-toteling, untested in wraps.

So that is a high mark. But yeah, there's a lot of strong 165ers out there. Plenty-o-strong 148ers, but I justify it as they're too scared to put on a pair of knee wraps. So, yeah, if you just stopped at the 29th all-time 148 in wraps, that would have sounded so much cooler. Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, Nate, just fix that and post, you know, we'll take care of it. We'll make it look good, Matt. make you look good.

Yeah, thanks. All right. So, I mean, I don't know how you want to do the timeline of lifting, but I mean, it's a pretty big part of your life. So if you want to just kind of say when you started, what kept you in it, and then kind of take us through somewhat of your competitive career, or at least when you got into it and kind of why you stayed with it?

Yeah, high school. I think a lot of people have the whole bullying origin story, especially when it comes to the jury. We don't like bull. Oh, yeah, dude. I was a bully, but I kept getting beat up by the guys. I was trying to bully. So in our school, PE was just you either played games, sports such like that,

like whatever game they had planned out for that day or that week, however they were running it. Or once you were a junior in high school, you could do the lifting conditioning, the conditioning class. So I was actually, I started junior year in. games but my bully was in my class was in my gym class so he would just make it a point to you know go after me on anything we were doing uh getting you know playing field and i was i was pretty good at field hockey because i played in the cul-de-sac growing up with kids that um actually traveled and played hockey i was like so excited to play hockey and uh he would he just ran at me full speed when i wasn't looking and checked me from behind right in the back of

neck and shoulders. So I talked to my counselor and I was like, what are my options? And she's like, well, there's no other games classes. So you have to join conditioning. And I'm like, I've never lifted a weight in my life. I don't know what's worse, you know, getting bullied here, getting made fun of over here. And she's like, what's the only option? So I was like, all right, conditioning.

And I think I was one 115 pounds and it was max out, you know, we'll max the squad, we'll max the bench, maxed that lift. and I can't remember. Actually, I don't even think we did squat and deadlift because, but bench for sure, I bench 1.45 at like 115, 112 pounds, whatever it was. And I was like, I was scared to do that. I was scared to do this class.

I was scared to go to this class. And I go there and I'm like, oh, I'm actually like decent at this. This is interesting. So just spent that year doing that. tried kickboxing and MMA after that. Did that for solid time. Never fought, but just trained. Just enjoyed hitting the bags,

hanging out with the team, helping out. And then a friend's boyfriend wanted to go to the gym with me because I was still lifting while doing the MMA kickboxing stuff. But a friend's boyfriend wanted to go train together. And he belonged to a powerlifting team, Zen Zen Barbell. and he said, we just lifted together, we benched together. And he's like, you're 100, at this point, 140 pounds and you bench in 225, you should come to my powerlifting gym and hang out with my team and I. That was the start of that.

Just got deeply involved there with. Did you tell you there was a good chance you'd be the top 29 lifter in your weight class and drug tested, etc.? Oh, they're really, oh, they're really hyping me up. And this is actually one of like probably the most embarrassing stories, but going out to dinner with my coach after 2014 WPC Worlds in Florida, him telling the waitress that I, that, you know, he said, he's like,

you know, you're serving a world champion. And it was just like, yeah, buddy, but I was the only one in my class and all I had to do is not bomb out. And I could walk away a world champion. As long as you get the state record holder flag or t-shirt,

you're going in the right. You're in the right spot. Oh, yeah. Dude, people think I'm the strongest little guy in Illinois. So I was your first experience using Raps. I mean, obviously you kept using them.

Did you like it? It was painful for sure. But I came up in a equipped gym. So I was the only raw guy in an equipped gym. And then Raps started getting popular. So, you know, instead of using the, well, technically, I guess my first experience with Raps

would have been the old, Um, like some overkill wraps. The old, uh, what is that material called? Where, but they're just like stretchier ace bandages. Oh, I know. Yeah. Like the Deraband kind of stuff? Like the therapy.

It's like almost like a thin canvas. Like, but. Oh, okay. Yeah. That was, um, so they were, they were always trying to get me to go into the equipment. And I was like, I don't, I want to just do raw. But yeah, wearing, wearing actual wraps and squatting for the first time. was, you know, taking my max squat for a set of a sloppy, but, you know, moving the most weight

I've ever moved in my life for multiple reps, four or five reps or so. It was like, oh, okay, I'll do this. And for a while, that was just the norm. We were all rapping. And then getting a teammate who, my teammate friend Tyrell Williams, he's, I think now, I think now he is, he is the 17. or 18th all time. He's got the 17th or 18th all time tested drug tested total. So he was a 700 plus pound squatter when he came to the gym.

But, you know, having an actual powerlifting team and like a support group to and teach him and help him out, we're getting, he got all the way up to 900 plus, you know, raw, drug free. So he wrapped a lot. I wore knee wraps. Other guys wore knee wraps. Um, then we phased out, did, did some USAPL stuff for a while, um, and sleeves. Um, I actually, what was I think? 2019, I did USAP, I did power surge and knee wraps. And then three days later, I competed at

USAPL raw nationals. Because it was in, it was like if it was in Lombard, so not too far from me. I was like, well, I kind of have to. I'm already signed up for this one thing. It's like, it's right here. Let's just do it. So yeah, and then just training together, competing together all over, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, Florida, Texas. It's just been, it's been a ride. So. Nice. Now you said your groups kind of, you sound like you used to be able to train three or four days a week with like a, you know, a full crew.

What's that kind of look like now that you've, you know, you're at where, I don't know if you live farther out, maybe in the sticks. Then it's just harder for people to get to you. you had mentioned that it's not as big as a crew, not as often as a crew. So what's it kind of look like now? Yeah, it's mostly me right now, especially after this meet, Tito. You guys, someone actually mentioned him on the last, the home gym con recap episode, talking about how he saw a guy squat and not 800 pounds, just blow it up out of the war. I'm like, yeah, that's Tia.

Yeah, he's, again, same thing, just trying to get back into the rhythm of training. so he comes out once a week now. So for the most part, it's just me. But, yeah, I mean, there were days back in Zen Zen where there's eight plus of us just on any given Monday, Wednesday, Friday night. And just over the years, it slowly dwindles down. You know, guys start having kids. People move away.

You know, people don't love it as much as we do. So, yeah, but there's, you know, everyone's on some nights, we still get three or four out here. too, so definitely happy about it. Nice. I'm definitely in the same boat. I feel that like in the last decade, I've had times where I've had six, seven people or, you know, I've had a good core rotation of people that would come every week. And then it's just that slowly dwindled down to, I'll have a lift party once every six months and like five to 20 people will show up. It just you never know. But I do miss some of my favorite memories were like that Sunday morning where I knew at least

four people were showing up every Sunday for fucking like five years straight. And then that's kind of gone now and I'll never be able to recreate that, I don't think. So it's just kind of, it was that just perfect timing where you just had these people that all had the same committed goals and like your place was the place they came to and it's just, you know, I'll be friends with these people for the rest of my life. But it's like I might not ever lift a barba with them again because,

you know, people with people scattered or gotten to different hobbies and shit. So I feel that for sure. But so do you, are you finding yourself then, um, not doing as much rap stuff or do you, just got really good at wrapping your own knees?

Or do you train a lot of raw stuff and just throw wraps on for like your RP9 stuff? I'm not really sure how wraps work as far as like volume days. You're not doing like sets of ten in wraps, are you? Oh, no. And honestly, it's been a while since I've done knee wraps, especially after these, you know, newer sleeves came out. You know, they're fair. Almost a warm-up knee wrap anyway. So.

But yeah, when there were more. people around when I would feel more comfortable failing because I was doing that a lot on squats on rap squats. But yeah, you just warm up like any other squat day. I have set numbers in your head where, okay, I need a loose self-rap on this number. I need a tighter self-wrap on this number. I need someone to wrap me on these, these, these, so forth. But yeah, volume, no, that just all bare near sleeves.

And I mean, when I first started competing in APF, it was naked knee or not, or there was no sleeves. There was no raw with wraps. It was naked knee or equipped. So, but then sleeves got, you know, you get pair SBD sleeves. You're like, oh, this is quite comfortable. And now you get a pair of pioneer sleeves and you go, oh, I'm, I'm almost getting to some of my rapt numbers. This is real cool too. So, yeah.

Nice. Well, I think we might have. Oh, and like, yeah, oh, sorry. I was like training a few times with the Lillow Bridges with Tom Callis. And Tom, when Tom Finn, when he was power came back in the day, like, they all wrapped. And it was, you know, Calas was always going after Rapt World Records. Eric was always going after Rapt World Records. So, and again, I think it's just that having the team around you makes it a lot easier to do that.

And it's a lot more motivating to get in there, get hyped up for that. Absolutely, absolutely. Well, what else, Big Lorne? Do you get any of these hobbies you want to ask them about? Well, I was seen in there, said you started competing in Strongman a couple years ago. Yeah. Are you still actively training in that? Yeah.

So you're kind of full-fledged Strongman now? I like to, I'm like, I'm liking splitting my time between the two using Strongman as just a way to get overall stronger and like try out new things and have more fun in a strength sport again. I've been powerlifting since 2013, so doing Strongman was a nice variety, provided a nice variety. Definitely gave me more things to get for the gym, which is fun. And I also became friends with a few local Strongmen too. So, you know, same as just how it was with Powerlifting. If there's something that I can get that's going to help them with their competitions,

prep for their meets, so on and so forth. I'll get it for the garage. And we'll all just have fun together. But yeah, Strongman has been a fun, fun little side quest, but might take more of a precedence in training here soon. I was going to do another one in October, but I'm in a wedding on the same exact day. So that's that. That pulled me from doing that. But I got to find another one to kind of get motivated in that realm again.

Since you're a handy carpenter, do you have any Strongman implements you've made yourself? Atlas stones, frames, yokes. I don't know how you are at welding or stuff like that. Oh, just mostly wood, screws and nails. Actually, the only things that I've really built when we were at the commercial space and we were in that back room, I made like ascending steps for loading bags and stuff for bagwork like that. Nice.

But at the house, at the garage, I made a pair of, of deadlift blocks, adjustable deadlift blocks. So I think they can go from two and a quarter inches to four and a half, but you can just take them, slide them out and one or the other or both.

So those are really the only few things that I have made. I mean, I did DIY that barbell rack in the gym. That's just a shelving unit, half of a shelving unit from a and cut the cross members off and put the two sides on the wall. And so I can use the like storage hooks and stuff to hold barbells tighter than and adjustable on like a gun rack.

So did you have it? Did you have yours a little further off the wall so you could, uh, or am I thinking of a different gym? That wasn't somebody's. I can't remember if it was his or not. I think, uh, uh, uh,

deadliest lift had them on. Sorry, somebody strove by with really loud music. Um, But yeah, I do remember you talking about the uprights and putting that on the wall for your bar storage. Yeah, the Cadillac bar is really the biggest bar that fits in there, though. So, like, no log or nothing, but having a place to put that is nice. Well, real quick, we've done a lot of lifting talk, a lot of sets and reps.

I want to hear a little bit about your vintage weight collection and maybe we move in and some other hobbies here because I don't like. I feel like we don't get the ball rolling. We're going to be, you know, having to cut you off soon. and round this out. So we should get to a couple of the things your friends and family submitted outside of lifting. Oh, yeah. But I do want to hear about your,

I do want to hear about how Tanner inspired your plate collection and how yours is probably better than his already. Yeah. Well, it was just cool, like going out there. I didn't really know much about vintage plate. I was just kind of getting into it, but I'd never seen anything outside of the Iron Man's that I found and the Ben 100s that I had.

have from that first gym I went to. So being able to see other plates in person, see people's setups, I was like, oh, this is, because I love antiquing. So antiquing and weightlifting at the same time, I tell my wife, it's, we're saving money. I'm two birds once. I'm not spending money twice. I'm spending it once. Diamance.

On two hobbies. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, that seeing his in person just kicked me off. and then a guy local to Chicago was selling a museum-worthy collection. So grabbing stuff from him was almost necessary at that point. But that helped kick off the addiction pretty quick. Nice.

Nice. Well, keep that growing. I never got into the multiple different brands or anything. I just kind of like what I like. And I stuck to my Yorks for the most part and kind of just built that out. But I know some people like to have a nice, variety, but not so much over here. All right.

Chickens, so you're, do you have a little homestead going out there? Do you, you get some, some, some, some free range chickens, or you got a little chicken coop, or what you got going on? Yeah, built, built our coop. It's a decent size little thing. Just kind of made it a little mini house for them and a big run. But yeah, we got the, got the coop, chickens. We got a duck.

not too long ago. Garden has been kind of popping off this year, a lot of tomatoes. So we're just, you know, yeah, a little, little, almost something new every season just to see, you know, what else we can add to the house and. So does the land? Does the duck, like, live in the chicken coop, or is the duck just, like, live on the property and just knows not to go anywhere? I guess, how do you manage a duck if you don't have, like, a full fenced-in yard? Oh, no, they're, they cohabitate the duck and the chickens. I got her when she was a tiny little baby

So she just kind of grew up under the wings of other chickens and stuff So she probably thinks she's a chicken I was that was my follow up does she think she's a chicken like like yeah like she doesn't like I'll fill up her kitty pool And any other duck in the world is gonna freak out and like be so like Dive in but she just doesn't care she just she pecks around the ground with the rest of them And she just she at whenever she would see like it's kind of of funny because if if we have to bring a chicken in for you know they're sick or something's going on we need their broody whatever it is when we reintroduce them to the flock the duck just gets

visibly excited and it's just like so happy to see their chicken friend that they had that they remember not seeing for so long that's actually awesome cute that's the same is it's adorable that it's good so you so you get a lot of eggs from them then is that your your main you're not uh just You should basically just have the chickens for the egg aspect. Oh, yeah, probably. I buy eggs from Costco once in the past two years. What kind of the chickens are they? We've had light brahmas, buff Warpingtons,

Wyandots, Easter eggers, silkeys, just a few different, whichever ones my wife wanted. Going to expand the farm? looking at like goats or pigs or anything? Or it's going to stop at chickens? I would love. I would love a couple of goats. I think that would just be so fun.

They're just, they're adorable. But for right now, right now we got other stuff to focus on. So throwing more animals in our, in our mix is a tough one. Yeah, my wife wants goats. No, they look adorable.

I mean, they look so fun. Yeah, and then you can do goat yoga. Yeah, dude, people pay big money for that. I know. You just wake up and do it on your lawn every morning. That would be, you know, you're saving. Can't afford not to us some money. Exactly, yeah.

They'll pay for the home gym. Yeah. Oh, no, you're in there. Yep. Sorry. No, you can go, Keith. I was just saying, I just saw that you're allergic to peanuts. So that means no peanut butter, huh?

That's, that's. Oh, never. Oh, man. So you knew, like, from that, I mean, you had to have at least had some reaction as a baby. So was it something that your parents caught and actually get you tested for like super early? And you're just like no peaking in of peanuts or something like you're born with a card that says this kid will die if he touches a peanut. And they have to, you have to learn it somehow. Oh, yeah, pretty much.

I was just, I was always that bummer who had to sit at the peanut table by himself and lunch. And if anyone brought anything in, I was always the, you know, scapegoat as to. So yeah, we've known for a while, but that hasn't stopped my mother or my best friend from feeding me, something laced. Oh, damn. With the deadly ingredients. You just get the EpiPen strapped to your pocket ready to go? No, I've never had an EpiPen, actually. I've tried to just, like, be safe about it.

And it's actually gotten to the point where, because as soon as you take that first bite, you just know something's off. Like, I'm not going to die from that first bite, but I know something. something's off. I'm going to start swelling up. Throat's going to start closing. You know, it's going to start getting harder to breathe. So hope for the best. And you just ride it out or do you get to the, do you get to urgent care or something? No, yeah, raw dog life. Damn, man. Ride it out. Just let it, let it pass. It's not going to get like, it's gotten bad a couple of times where I'm like, this is like, this is definitely the worst I've ever gotten it. And there was one time where I was like, okay, maybe we need to start walking towards the car.

But after that, one bite in, I know if I'm in immediate danger or not. Dang. Let's see. What's some funny stories here. Some of them just seem like sad. I don't know. I don't want to pick on you like you were like was there a. Oh, no.

Well, just were you all alone dancing by yourself at a high school dance or something? There's a funny story there. Oh, yeah. I submitted that one myself. Okay, okay. Yeah, no, that was a traumatic moment. Like I said, I was a pretty shy guy, pretty shy kid. So I think it took me a long time to get my first kiss.

So even before that, the mixers at school, high school mixers playing flowrida and little John T. Payne, everybody, you know, all the friends that I went with, they all had found dance partners. And I had found myself at one point midsong realizing I'm just in a sea of people coupled up dancing together. I don't know. It was almost like an out-of-body experience, like a camera just shot into the sky, and I could see everything from above. I'm like, what a dork. I need to get out of here. And I walked home. And you said it was flow rider you were dancing to? Oh, everybody was getting low. Yeah. People were getting low to flow rider. That was a huge, you know, right at that point in time. So that's a soldier boy. People were cranking that soldier boy on each other, not me. Cranking each other, huh? Yeah, crank and hog. I mean, at least those are like acceptable songs to dance to yourself, and it wasn't like the cranberries or something, like you're out there just dancing by yourself.

You know, like Lingert, just out there by yourself. Oh, yeah. No, that was playing in my head, though, on the walk home. I was, yeah, that one was not fun. But that is a funny story, looking back on it, because I'm just like, why did I put myself in that position for that long. I should have just figured something else out way sooner. Yeah, and one thing I saw on the notes that caught my attention.

So it was talking about, it first started talking about you getting your first tattoo in high school, went to a baseball game, or basketball game, had a cut to show it off or whatever. And then after that it says macaroni art penis with guinea pig pubs. Oh, man. Yeah. Are those related? That's not the tattoo, is it? No.

With the note, sometimes it's really hard to understand what's a run on sentence and what's a second fucking category just because I don't know. I don't know. It's frustrating sometimes because I'm like, I don't know if this goes with this or not,

but yeah. Yeah, no, that's that's another embarrassing story. The tattoo is an embarrassing story. Your first tattoo and it was a our rival. We were facing our rivals in basketball, our rival school. So it's a big deal. went to the game had the shirt I was wearing I cut a hole around where the new tattoo

was to be like yeah I got a tattoo guys and stuff it's so I'm like that's another that might be worse than being in the mixer alone that it's pretty bad well what was the tattoo or is that are you burying the lead there oh no it was a Bible verse so almost even worse I was just like I'm you know preaching this this Bible verse and I'm showing it off like a like a glutton for for attention quite the opposite effect i'm glad i grew i grew out of that i like to think um but yeah the macaroni um penis and guinea pig pubs um pubs that's an episode time is not there you go yeah pubes is not 100% accurate or at least i've convinced myself it's not but my friend used to have guinea pigs and one time he just gave him my hair cut and we're just like

bro what are you doing like and he's like they need a haircut and we're like I can't tell if you're being serious or not so well yeah there's another kid in the neighborhood who um you know we would drive our cars to school because we could leave for lunch at the time and i mean just to get to school we'd drive our cars to school so we uh at his house took the guinea pig hair and made a macaroni art in the shape of phallic shape and uh decorated it with guinea with the guinea pig hair so it's not the actual guinea pigs people cubes, but the guinea pig hair is the pubs. The pubs, yes.

I had a way different picture in my head. Yeah, well, I'm glad I could sort that one out for you. Yeah, thank you. The other picture sounds horrible. Yeah, I was looking at your, tattoo either, I don't think. I was looking at your pictures because you, one of your nicknames was Dorito back, and I get it now

because you do have very wide shoulders and your back is just jacked. And I was like, I don't see any macaroni art. That would be a really random tattoo, but I mean, kids being kids, you never know what they're going to get for their first tattoo. Oh, yeah. Yeah. All right. Thanks for clarifying. Not a problem. Thank you for giving me the opportunity, too. We always like to get a couple embarrassing stories. We're not, we're not bullying you. We don't want to bring up traumatic.

Not too much traumatic stuff, but I can't control what's submitted. I hear you put a hurting on some Olive Garden the other day. or in the past, that is. Oh, yeah. I would go to the all you can eat, never-ending postable, and my goal was to leave only after eating every form and type. And I think the last time I tried this, I failed at the last one, the whole wheat linguine.

I just couldn't finish. Now, did that help you grow into the 165s from the 148s then? If I would have kept doing that, it definitely would have helped. And I know people say this all the time, but it is hard for me to gain weight or keep on weight. I think, especially with the job, too, it's not like eating multiple meals throughout a day, works during work hours. But at one point, I was calculating. And I mean, if I wasn't eating at least 4,000 calories a day, I was losing weight, trying to, trying to get better than 180.

I've never weighed more than 180. And if I was eating less than 4,000 a day, I was not, not maintaining 180. So it just, it took a lot. That's wild. That's a lot of calories to be still such a,

well, you're my height, give or take, right? You're like 5-7, 5-9 somewhere in there? I can't ride away. Yeah, 5-9. Okay, a little bit so, a little bit the harder me. Let's see.

There's so much stuff. I don't know. Do a couple more things and probably get into some unpaid or underrated. So pick, pick a couple things. It's really sticking out to you, Lauren. Yeah, wanted to go back to the animals. First, the possum. You had a possum at one time?

Yeah, not a certified pet, but a local resident of the woodpile. Yeah. So he, you know, uncovered the dog. going crazy. So finally uncovering that, finding the possum, just grabbing her and getting her out of there. And one night finding babies just crawling around with adorable. So that was a fun little, you know, she never bothered my other animals. So I tried not to bother her too much. But yeah, the dog would just keep going. I'm nuts. Yeah, and that was going to be the next one. I mean, can't talk about the centerpiece of the

artwork you have at the gym, the dog. Yeah. What's your dog's name? His name is Tut. His name is Tut. Nice. T-U-T-U-T-E. Oh, Tut? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. What kind of dog?

He is a 10-year-old, about 70-ish-pound pit bull, Rotweiler, German Shepherd mix. It's quite the mix. The big, big three. But the sweet, anyone who's ever met him will, I know people say this all the time,

but he is legitimately the sweetest dog that anyone has really ever met. Everyone says it all the time. They're just like, I genuinely cannot believe he's this sweet, nice. And then we just recently got a puppy at the beginning of the year. So they're just the two bestest buds, little pals. What's the puppy's name? Goose, short for Gustavo Fring, because that was my wife's favorite character and better.

call Saul. Oh, he was such an evil fucker. I know. That's what I told her. And she's like, yeah, I'm watching it. And I'm like, all right. And then when he died in Breaking Bad, spoiler alert, when he died in Breaking Bad, she just lost interest and we

never finished. So I'm like, okay. Oh, wait, you see, you're one of those like, maybe you haven't been married long enough to be comfortable watching your own TV shows and your own room like on a Saturday just because, like, I don't want to watch her shit and she had a lot of my shit. So every now and then it's just like we'll just watch our own TV shows for half a day and just like, you know, say hi to each other here and there.

So you're you're not that at that stage in your marriage yet, huh? No, no, we definitely try to watch stuff together. And I mean, like, I don't have too much time to watch anything anyway. So if we can, if we can spend that time together and watch while we eat or after and pick a show that we like and or shows that we individually like and are introducing to the person. So yeah, she kind of stomped on my stomped on my. stomped on my nads with not finishing Breaking Bad, but it's all right. Oh, you'll have to get back to that at some point.

That's a good one. I do want to hear briefly about Do you have a, do you still play your own version of Hot Ones with your buddies? Or is that just like a, was it something from Matt's past? Oh, that's a, oh yeah, that was a one and done. Especially the way that, the way that

they reacted. One of them was an emergency room visit. Oh, Jesus. You guys have some stupid. The other. Due to a fucking one of those ghost peppers or something stupid? Oh, no, it's just, you know, does everyone have that friend who will just, like, for the sake of the, for the sake of the night, they will go above and beyond everyone else? So when it came to the hot ones saying, yeah, he was throwing down sizable, sizable bits of hot sauce. And, yeah, he was not doing so great the next morning. Everyone, I did not eat.

I got there late after they started, but I did take a two. toothpick tip of like the last one or whatever the last dab or whatever it is and just put that on my tongue and it it felt like I was getting a piercing. It felt like someone just pierced my tongue at a clairs. And I just swallowing the toothpick tip worth was just I feeling it crawl down my body. And I'm like, I can't imagine what you guys are going through right now. This is, I want no part of this besides watching you guys suffer. Yeah, that does not sound fun.

well Lauren I think we're good um if we'll probably move into unpaid or underrated but if there's anything actually Lauren's gonna hit us with my affiliates but uh Lauren anything that we didn't cover you can supplement that with into unpaid or underrated you don't have to go with just what's on the list so unless you had an FMK or a rushmore you really were adamant about hitting them with I'm good with skipping those this week just because you know we've been just we've been viving well so Just keep that in mind and then hit us with the affiliates there you see on the screen. All right. So we got Barbell Rescue.

You got to keep those chefs very clean. And the best way to do that is Barbell Rescue code unpaid. So I'm told give that a try. Then we've already kind of talked about it once or twice. We got home JimCon. I'm guessing one of the newer sponsors of unpaid and underrated. Oh, they've been around for a few years. I mean, it is relatively new.

I see what you did there. Yeah. It is relatively new. Yeah. Code unpaid, get you in there free, right? I mean, with a donation of like, you know, whatever they're going rate is minus 10%. Okay. All right.

So donate for a ticket and then you get in free with unpaid. And then we got Jim Radar. You use that code unpaid and that gets you a free account. You can just find all the gyms around you and you can blip. all over the place. That is, I know for sure, one of the newer under sponsors. Absolutely.

Big Matt, I will have to ask you to maybe turn a light on if you get a chance. So solely, so I can see that pretty face of yours. We're having a little Paul Floss moment here where he's sitting in a room with no light, and then it just progressively gets darker and darker and darker until you just turned into a pair of teeth. And I'm like, I got to see, I can't do it anymore. So I appreciate this. Is this all right?

Is this enough? Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. All right. It's my, my gas pump. Oh, dope. We were supposed to ask you about that, I believe. Yeah, that was one of the things I wanted to ask you about. Now that we can see it.

Yeah. Yeah. Now, she's all lit up. So what's the story behind it? Can you tell it? Yeah. Oh, no, for sure. Yeah, like I said before, my wife doing all those family trips through the South Dakota

area. She fell in love with Sinclair. She just loved the little dinosaur. And so we just kind of started a little bit of a Sinclair collection when we moved to the house. So anything we'd see, pump plates, thermometers, you know, little signs, cups of grease grabbing them. And then my antique dealer, you know, shot me this.

And he's like, hey, I just picked this up down south or wherever he picked it up from. He's like, I know you like, I know he loves Sinclair. And it lights up. It works. Everything's all original except the top bulb thing. But he had that recreation one already said in it. So I was like, absolutely, I will get the car over there. We'll go get it right now.

So without telling my wife, I bought and hauled this to the house. And she was pleasantly surprised. and it actually it still has the price per gallon on here set at 32, 32 cents, 32 whole cents per gallon. Wow. So I think it's about, I think it's a 1960s or so.

It's a nice night. Yeah, I mean, yeah, oh, dude, it's awesome. It's, it's, it's, my buddy says it looks like the speed cola from Codzombies. I'm like, yeah, yeah, it does. But yeah, I mean, yeah, I, I love that thing. That thing is pretty awesome.

Very cool. You haven't gotten a dinosaur, have you? Like out in front? I've always seen viral videos of a guy planning heist of the Sinclair Dinos. That's not you, is it? Yeah, yeah. No, that's not me. I wish it was, though, because it would save a few dollars.

But yeah, that was kind of, like, I always thought how funny it would be if she just showed, my wife just showed up home one day and there was one of the Sinclair Dinos just like, off in the distance of the yard, seeing it. seeing how long it would take her to realize that it's there. So I'm not saying that's off the table, but for now, the gas pump will do. Maybe an anniversary

present. It'd be a good idea. That'd be a good one. That'd be a good one. All right. Well, Big Matt, I think we're at that time. We're going to get it into one of our games here. It's called unpaid or underrated. Similar to overrated or underrated with a nice little unpaid twist. So unpaid

obviously sucks. No one wants to be unpaid. underrated is great. So that's how we're going to play the game. You get to use your druthers. Lauren, we're going to use as many as we want, since we kind of skip the other games, if you see four or five that look great, if you only see three, it's great. It is what it is. I'm going to start off and remember you can pull them from anywhere in the notes. So Big Matt, unpaid or underrated, small spoons. Unpaid. Why is that? It's annoying. I'm trying to really show. I told you, 4,000.

calories and I'm losing weight so I need to shuck. I'm almost burning calories using a small spoon trying to eat that much. How small are we talking to? We're taking like a baby spoon or are we talking like if you if you get your cut your box of cutlery and it comes with like two different size of spoons, you're just talking about like the small spoon. Not like a comically small spoon though. No, not a no not a comically small like pretty much the average size of like the plastic cutlery like that little thing. Anything that size doesn't do it. I want like a I have like a I have a very specific like spoon that I eat almost every meal with. Even if it's not spoonable, I spoon it.

But yeah. And you take that to work. So you take a nice metal spoon to work and you just have to wash it every day then? Or do you don't? Because I do disposable cut at work and just toss everything. So you take a, you're taking a man spoon to work with you? No, work lunches are forcable. Those are, those are, I make an except because it's the tuna packets.

the only thing I use for my, I would use a utensil for. Yeah, because every other day, every day is just a sandwich, tuna packets, dried fruit. And you're getting the fourth out, where the fuck you eat in these other 3,900 calories at? God damn. Oh, yeah. Well, so on the, yeah, when I'm bulking for that, breakfast was six eggs, four bacon, two hash browns, and a protein shake with oats. and that was breakfast. That was about,

I can't remember exactly the numbers, but definitely well over a thousand right off the bat. And then lunches were everything that I just listed, but twice as many. Like that's just how I would do it where I'm like, okay, it's just all the same stuff. Just, yeah. And then dinners, I mean, it was not uncommon.

And last night was chilly night, but during the bulk, it was not uncommon to do a, you know, two pounds of ground beef in the chili and then all the other stuff going in, the beans, the tomatoes, all the other stuff. And my wife and I, her having two bowls, but me finishing off the entire, the rest of the thing. So a pound and a half of beef alone. And even at least. So it took work to get there.

But, you know, so follow up on the chili since food is so regional. Obviously a bean in chili guy sounded like. So then is the cinnamon bun, is that a super common thing in Chicago adjacent or no? Because it definitely wasn't super common out in the east. It's just I get why it's good and it makes sense. But it's just I wouldn't say it's common like it is in South Dakota and Iowa. Cinnamon buns? You don't have cinnamon?

Like you don't do cinnamon buns? I don't not. But it's just like I would never, we would make corn. I used to grow up, we'd make cornbread with chili. I didn't make a cinnamon bud with chili. Oh, I've never done that. No, no. that's what I'm telling you.

Yeah, no, like, specifically there's, there's this whole group of crew in the Discord that all, anytime someone talks about chili, it's, or maybe it's even originated in this podcast. I don't remember, but like, I learned through this podcast or Discord that, like, there's this whole group of people between Iowa and South Dakota that, like, a cinnamon bun is a mandatory side with a bowl of chili, it seems like, like, like, an actual, like, homemade cinnamon bun, not just like a honey bun or something. And it just was like, huh, it always stuck out as a little weird to me. It sounds amazing, but like, it's just, it just goes back to how regional food is.

Oh, yeah, I've never heard that before, but you're opening, you're opening doors. I don't think I can close. That's, uh... Sounds good, though, for sure. Yeah, that might have to be next week's, uh, we'll experiment. There you go, there you go. All right. Unpaid or underrated conspiracy theories.

Underrated. Yeah. Yeah. Any of them that, uh, you definitely believe are, real that you get shit for? Without getting political. No, this might be the most political thing I've ever said. I'm not on board with dinosaurs.

I just not. Oh, wow. And I just can't. They didn't, that they straight up didn't exist? I think, I can't, I will not live in a world where you tell me that dinosaurs exist, but dragons did not. That's, that's how I see. Fair enough.

I can't, it's either both. or none or just one. Maybe it was just dragons. There's tons of paintings and pictures of dragons through hundreds, thousands of years. But apparently no. I give me both or give me none. I can see that. Like if you were just saying Dinophore's don't exist, that's stupid.

I don't believe in them. That's one thing. But like to this say, if Dinah, that's it. It's an interesting take. I don't know how I feel about it, but it was an interesting take. It's a more logical take than what my knee-jerk reaction was when you were telling us you don't believe in dinosaurs. So I'll allow it. I'll allow it for sure.

All right. It makes you liking Sinclair even funnier. Yeah, I know. And dino nuggets. Yeah. So, okay. The little dinosaur. Yeah, well, and something submitted was it was dino nuggets.

I can remember and there's things you hate or things you like, but that was a submission. All right. Unpaid or underrated. Ooh, let's see. Robot vacuums. Unpaid. Well, before last month, unpaid, after last month, probably underrated, because that is pretty sweet. That is pretty convenient to just have that little guy going around cleaning up the dog hair. Oh, yeah, for the dog, I got you. So did you get far enough in breaking back?

to meet what did Jesse name that fucking the DJ Roomba or whatever is that what it was? DJ Roomba was Parks and Rick.

Yeah. Was it? No. Yeah. Okay. Well, there was still, maybe I got that wrong, but there was still

the drug addict character on Breaking Bad definitely like threw a party and had a fucking vacuum that he put a boom box on or something.

or did he not? Am I completely thinking of Parks and Rick? Oh, someone fact-checked me there. For sure, Tom did that, but I can't, I mean, I watched Breaking Bad right when it came out, so it's been a really long time since I've seen it. No, I could have swore because there was like

something valuable got sucked up inside of it too. It's like a whole scene I'm remembering. Anyway, someone that watched that show more recently than Tanner, who hasn't seen the wire yet. Fact check me on that. All right. Let me get one more good one in here. Unpaid or underrated

sufficient carpet padding. Oh, that is underrated. 100%. I've got horribly flat feet. So whenever you take your shoes off in someone's house, I can tell if I'm going to have a great time or a mild, mildly annoying time as soon as my feet hit the floor. Hardwood, definitely. I love hardwood.

I have it mostly in my house, but I wear crocs all this. the time. But yeah, when you, oh, when you just stand on a nice well padded, like underneath the carpet, the padding that goes underneath the carpet. Just a, you know, not too deep. So you're not tripping over your ankles, but just comfortable enough to just, yeah, yeah, just grab on. And yeah, that's a good one. Nice, nice, nice. All right, Lauren, what you got for him? I mean, we already kind of know the big cities one. So unpaid underrated, expensive clothes. Unpaid.

I can't see myself. As you said, there are a $40 T-shirt. Is there one brand? I would pay any amounts of money for Massonomics shirts. Fair enough. Fair enough. Is there one brand that kind of got you, I mean, obviously most expensive clothes are overrated or unpaid. But is there one brand that like just kind of made you resent all expensive clothing?

I had a friend who like he just wore express all the time. Like that was his thing. It was just express. So like going there and finally seeing it being like, this is ridiculous. How much money are you paying to? We're going to the same. bar is talking to the same women. I don't think the shirt is going to do it, pal. But he was just, he, he, he, he, he always wanted the finer things in life. And I was just like, man, and again,

when I was buying gym equipment, it was like, all my resources have to be dedicated to paying rent, buying food, and buying gym equipment and paying for powerlifting meats and trips. So am I going to wear an $80 T-shirt to our local college bar? No, thanks. Okay, I got one more, Keith. Yeah, take your time, brother. All right. Unpaid, underrated, coffee.

Unpaid. No? You're not a coffee guy? No, never have been. My dad let me take a sip out of his cup when we were vacationing, camping up north. And I was like, what is it? What's the big deal? And he was just drinking black coffee, gave me a sip.

Fuck, it ruined it. I can't stand it. Don't like it. Don't need it. Don't want it. Okay, so it's a taste thing, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It just killed it. Wasn't sure if it was going to be expensive because like some of those coffees get 15, 17 bucks for just sugar and some coffee. Mm-hmm. Well, imagine being the A-hole that spills a $7 coffee on an $80 shirt. How fucking stupid would you feel after that? Does your wife drink coffee? Uh, at the, so this will actually be a fun little thing, right? Because a lot of people submitted.

And I'm so thankful. I'm so happy about that. It's really nice. I feel loved and appreciated through that. But this will be a fun little Easter egg because I'm about to break some breaking news. Yeah, yeah. She used to drink coffee. But now she does not because we are expecting a baby girl in early March, late February, early

March. So all of you who said you would listen to the podcast, if you get this far, you will hear something very exciting and personal. Thank you very much. So I'll be excited to see how many texts flowed in. And then I'll know who listened and who didn't. And we ended up in every buried it two hours in too. I know. I was like, what's a good time to do? I'm like, delicious. Let's let's chop it up at the end. That's awesome. That's awesome. But I guess, thank you. Thank you. I selfishly wanted to ask because my wife's also a coffee lover and I despise the taste and smell and kissing her after just had a couple coffee coffee. It's just like, oh, God, I don't even want to, I don't even know who you are. I don't want to touch you. I mean, I'd obviously love her to death, but God damn, a coffee kiss is the worst. It's on par with cigarette mouth. So then you're- Not that I've kissed any of those, but.

So you got a lot of work to get the house ready then, huh? What's, what's the nursery going to look like? You get it all planned out. Have you been playing like house Tetris with which room becomes the nursery? We got, we have two rooms at work that can be cleared out pretty quick and be options. One of them is actually Tuts room. So it's the dog's, the dog gets a whole bedroom to himself. For now. That's an easy one. Yeah, for now.

So that's an easy one. But yeah, we're just, we're actually, we're celebrating our one-year anniversary. next week we're going to Alaska. So get the big trip out of the way. Yeah, if by some miracle, make it to home gymcon 2027, you know, life is just, you know, I really, I wanted to, I was had all intentions of signing up for Lift Hard Live Easy 5. If I could get in, it's a very desirable event.

The good thing is you get on the wait list and if you're committed to like knowing on a couple months notice that you could still do it, which is hard. But there's always, every year, I think we've, you know, there'll always be space right at the end. It's just a matter of kind of playing chicken with it. Yeah. So with this new edition,

we got to see how life goes. Got to learn on the fly. So we'll see. What's the, as someone that's been to Alaska, I did a cruise to Alaska like fucking 15 years ago or something. It was awesome. What's your Alaska trip looking like?

Oh, I know we're going to be camping up near Denali for a little bit. We're going to do a husky dog sled tour thing. So I think we get to go check out the kennels and the camps and then get pulled around by the pups. And then we're going to do a wildlife boat excursion too. So that'll be fun. I've definitely never, that's the farthest I've, longest I'll ever be on a plane, farthest I've ever been from home. Alaska has been on, you know, my wish list for my whole life pretty much. So really excited to go see it.

That's awesome, man. You will have a blast. I think it's a place that most people should try to at least, you know, even if like you do it the easy way and do it on a cruise ship, which is like, you know, I don't like cruise ships, but seeing Alaska from a cruise ship was awesome. But it's definitely a place that's not like anywhere else I've ever been. That's for sure. very cool and that's awesome i hope some of your friends and family get a kick out of learning about your uh your your your growing family uh on a random lifting podcast about nothing yeah uh i love it i think it would be awesome all right are you sure you're all done lorne nothing

else jumping out at you uh there was one thing i i saw um i don't remember where it was but um in regards to taxidermy i saw something about taxidermy squirrels Uh, no squirrels yet. Um, but we do have a few, a few mice. We got a, uh, a chef, a chef rat in the kitchen. Okay. Uh, a mouse in a bathtub in the bathroom. And, uh, a jackalope on the living room and on the living room wall, a little rabbit with giant antlers sticking out of it.

Another one of my wife's, uh, uh, that's more her hobby. She would love to actually learn taxidermy and, uh, play with, and, um, play with, and, sculpt and mold. But yeah, we like we like the funny ones. We would like to acquire a collection of silly, funny, funny ones. That's a nice hobby you guys both kind of enjoy, though, is the, the antique hunting and the knick-knack hunting as you, you know, fill the house with, you know, your future possessions. Oh, yeah. We love, yeah, we love estate sales. We live just barn sales, going to places. So we just always like every estate sale we go to, we're just like one day we're going to have a cool estate sale because we're getting all the cool stuff from the estate sales.

So but yeah, like that one of those barn sales was where I got that fire hydrant. So like I have the antique side of the wall in the gym. So I love just filling it up with stuff either semi relevant to lifting or just cool things that just fill the space. face out nice, look cool. And then with the vintage plates on the same wall, it just carries through. Oh, yeah. That's awesome. Well, I think you passed. You get the cool beans or whatever we do over here. You know, we can air the episode, et cetera, all that good funny stuff. And this is the time. If you have anything you wanted to ask me and Lauren, feel free. If not, we can land this thing. Don't really matter to us. But I always like questions if you got them.

Oh, yeah. Can I, can I chat, throw one more quick story out there about Massonomics reuniting families? 100%. Yeah. So, you know, I garage gym, but I also go to a bodybuilding gym locally here that opened up recently. And there was someone in there with a backpack with a massanomics patch on it. And I'm like, well, who is the cool guy around here? And met him, chopped it up, you know, you know, clicked immediately, invited him out to the garage. he was he was the guy that brought out the the portillo's to Tanner and Tommy when they did the tour josh corn yeah um he ended up tearing his pack or his shoulder hurting something in the gym and then a few you know months later i'm at a friend or I'm at a family member's graduation party and my stepdad's brother in law so my my uncle will just say my uncle he um was telling me about his nephew who tore his peck benching 500 pound whatever blah blah blah and i'm like oh that's horrible i hope he feels better and then he shows

me a picture of him and it's josh corn the mass anemics fan from the gym and like we just been friends for like a few months and we had no idea we were actually cousins so that's a fun little like call back to to that but questions for you guys so crew really is family sometimes huh do crew really is family that is pretty dope um i'll go with two like sillier ones and then I got the third like I would love to hear your your thought processes on that one but

the fun one what's the largest animal you can take in a fist fight yeah because it's like well I want to say something big and bad but if like we're being realistic it's like you know dang if I'm face to face with this like it's going down I don't even like killing spiders anymore man that's such a hard one for me too

because now I have to think about like that I have to live like I honestly think I don't know sometimes I think it'd be easier to kill a person than an animal like as fucked up as that sounds like I know right

like I don't know but like there are there are people that like deserve to die versus I don't feel any animals deserve to die so like being look at it like that's like I know that's a really morbid fucked up thing to say maybe I should go to therapy but like I don't know I think we had something similar let's unpack that yeah yeah

we have this game welcome to things me. I can't remember what I oh man that's Lauren's big old son of a bitch

and he's a lot stronger than me so I think he could take out some fucking like bobcat or something probably but then it's also like you can kind

to cheat it and be like what's a really big dumb animal that wouldn't fight back and then you could kill that like that's the

but I think it's not killing it's just enough you said it's a fist fight essentially so that was going to be my answer is something big

but I don't necessarily have to fight like a tortoise I could just walk away from it. Give me about five years and then when it comes up to me I'll just like move again and then I don't necessarily have to fight it but it's still

a bigger animal. It's going to outweigh me big time but I'm not going to kill a tortoise. Good take. Good take. I feel that. That was good. That was good. If you could place yourself in any sitcom, what would be? What universe are you

injecting yourself in? I've got to go hang out with my boy Larry David like in whatever. No, that just means I'm like a character on Seinfeld or if I'm in Curb Your Enthusiasm or I haven't given his new one a shot. I don't even really know if it's a documentary or if it's a comedy, but he has some like revolutionary war-looking thing

I see on HBO. But like anything Larry David and how we are the same person, personality-wise, it would be amusing to me. But also maybe it'd be eye-opening and be like, God damn it, I fucking don't like people that are like me. Like I think that would be that would almost be. It'd just be like two Larry

David's pissing each other off, I think is what the show would be. Yeah, I think. I think Seinfeld was going to be, Seinfeld was going to be my knee-jerk reaction one, just because that's one of the shows that I, like, just put on and enjoy. And then I've always had, like, my house was basically, like, Jerry's, anytime the front porch light was on, people were at my house. Even if I wasn't there, they were at my house.

I'd come home. I'd get out of school. People are already at my house, playing with all my stuff. And so I'd say Seinfeld, because I don't think it would be that different, because, like, I always have the drop-in stuff. going on. Nice. Nice. All right. The one with a, that I like with a little bit more explanation behind. Bodybuilding, powerlifting, and strong man. Who are your dream training partners in those three disciplines? What's you got, Lauren? Or if you can go through, you want to just give both,

give the answer for and then progress to the next sport might be better. Yeah. I mean, we can go with the sport, I know the least about bodybuilding. I think, what's his name? Tom Platt, get some legs. So that would be my bodybuilding, like, dream partner. He was the leg guy, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah, okay. Just making sure. Yeah, five, what, five, 25, squat for 25 or something. And, yeah, giant legs, high intensity. That was an animal. I think for bodybuilding it'd have to be Arnold just even you know especially now because it's like you know what are we going to do we're going to have Arnold for another like five years max and he passes away so it's like you almost you're

losing your window to like have a conversation with Arnold Schwarzenegger and like the life that he lived and like the different like he had like three different lives basically I remember watching the documentary and like he had his like bodybuilding career he had his movie career he had his political career like that'd be really interesting even if like even if you almost took politics or his lifting out of it like he just lived two really interesting lives and i could like you know really ham it up and pick his brain about a lot of shit so i think it has to be arnold a classic choice absolutely all right uh power of thing or strong man next which one which one uh i think we'll

go strongman for me uh i'm gonna go strong man uh and uh i've just really enjoyed like his out of strong man content a lot and just looks like a lot of fun to hang out with martin's lecy Like whenever he did his strength unknown and he would like travel around the world and do all that stuff like I think that would be a really cool training partner. Yeah, that's a very cool thing he's doing. Those clips I see on on Instagram are always kind of fit. Some of those unique and crazy movements. It's just like, well, that's something I never would have even thought of ever attempting and that like these guys are just throwing stuff around. Yeah.

For Strongman, I think I'd have to go Shaw, just because I know he's such a geek about equipment. And after meeting him at home gym con and shooting the shit for a couple minutes, I'd be like, oh, I could talk to this guy all day. Like, I could. And then, like, knowing he's, like, a perfectionist and where he's, like, super strong and gets buried in the weeds, which is, like, usually a super strong guy is just kind of muscle fuck it and don't really worry about form as much.

And Brian was kind of, like, did both. He was very analytical and, you know, strong in general, whereas, like, I'll never be strong in general, so I have to be analytical about my lifting. So it's kind of like, oh, it can actually, like, learn a lot from him. So I think that would be a really cool session. Well, don't sell yourself short, Keith.

I see you making moves on the Mars bar. You're moving some PRs almost weekly, it looks like. I love that Mars bar. I, it's been a great addition to my really starting to push that. And it's got me thinking like, man, it's just,

I almost want to weigh it to see if it actually like, because I think someone said like theirs is a few pounds light. And part of me is like, are these, am I really getting like, why does this feel so light? Like this is I'm just fucking smoking some of these weights and feeling really good about it. So I'm enjoying the ability to destroy my legs and core and everything and just like have no upper body issues where years of like going, oh, great, I can I can low bar squat today.

And now I can't move my arm for like three days. Are you still, are you going to be using it often now that you are working with a strong man coach or more focused on that? I really don't. I'm probably, it's probably going to be, I'm assuming it's going to be the main mover. maybe for the most part. There's a very small chance I do a power lifting meet this October, but that would only be to like keep my streak alive. And I kind of already told Jake I wouldn't.

But then I've also sent him a text recently. But I'm like, oh, there's like a 10% chance I will do that. So if I end up doing that, I might be like, I'm probably going to be like a month out and be like, all right, I can, really it's just going to be where my, if I can't bench at least like 250, I don't really want to do a strong or a power living me. And right now, like, I guarantee I would hit like a 10 to 20 pound squat and

deadlift PR. but my bench would be like 30, 40 pounds off of my max. And like, that's how bad it is. Like these past, this past month has been the first of my benched, like, consecutive days, like weeks in like two years. And then I'm like barely benching hardly anything. And it's like, oh my God. Like I think I literally lost like muscle and like my shoulders had never been as

strong, but like my, my, my tits got super weak for sure. Like just not benching for two years. It's like, oh, wow, I did lose like the ability to bench press. so we're getting it back. Now, so then we'll segue into the dream powerlifting training partner. I know a lot less of those. So I'm going to take the easy way out and say John Hack. Because it's fresh on my mind.

But it is a fair choice. That's a good one. You know what? It's got to be, I think, like in today's age, I mean, as cool as Eddie Cohn would be, I think, like, I don't know. I think Colton would fucking get in a lift with the guy that will potentially have the longest running record of a total. That's like a multiple body weights. And well, he's like all time fucking total too, which is wild at like 275 or 308.

Like, I don't think, I don't know in our lifetime that we're going to see that broken because it's like it's so head and shoulders above where someone else is. It doesn't seem real It doesn't seem like life has not changed at all But at the same time it's like wait someone 110 pounds lighter than Dan Bell You know just out totaled him by a hundred pounds Yeah it's like it's like he he squats and he squatting deadlifts like novice totals like like like that's like Yeah at a light weight and I'm like what the fuck

No no I meant like in not not his subtotal like his his squat is people's totals, his deadlift is people's totes. Like his combined total, yes, he fucking, he's like an 1,800 pound total between his,

without his bench press, which is fucking wild. I think just to like have that like, you know, feather in my hat that I kind of hung out with the dude that, which is still, I feel like he's not famous enough yet.

Like, I don't know. And he's been around for a couple years and he's like, this isn't like a new, but he's, I don't know, maybe I just, I'm not as into power lifting anymore.

So like, and I don't know. maybe in just an untested powerlifting, I don't know how popular it is anymore either. So like, I don't know. It would be interesting to hang out with him, though, just because he's just doing such wild fucking numbers and such a light body weight.

Yeah, South Africa went on a run there with Colton with. Oh, yeah, Reno. Reno, too. Rayno Nell and Strongman, Drickus Duplice and UFC middleweight champion. They went on a solid little run there. I've learned more about South Africa since, you know, was it lethal weapon, too?

Is he my only other experience with him, I think. Yeah, there you go. You'd take that one to the dinner table. Tell the wife. Well, good. Those were good questions. I enjoyed that. Well, what do you say, boys?

You're going to bring us one in? Let's do it. It would be a good time. All right. Big Matt, we're going to find you at. On Instagram, you can find me at Matt Wallace 165 on YouTube, Matt Wallace Powerlifting. And on Discord, I believe also Matt Wallace 165.

Big Lauren, where are you at, buddy? And what's that gym you want to plug? On Instagram, you can find me low underscore underscore co. And then the Jim's Instagram is at Wild Iron 361. And then on Discord, I am Big Lauren, I think. Yeah, good. That's where you're at. All right, Instagram.

We got one unpaid underrated podcast website, unpaid internpodcast.com. You go ahead and the biggest, place we want you to chit-chat though is the you and your channel in the massonomics discord. Please give us all your feedback there and the old chit-chat. And I'm Keith Honeycutt 73 on Instagram. More importantly, go follow my orange gym than a wine cellar. Until then, see you next Tuesday.