Weights and Plates Podcast - Ep. 116 - Your Home Gym Might Be Holding You Back

Episode Date: August 24, 2026

You bought the equipment. You know the exercises. You’ve watched the videos. So why aren’t you getting the results you expected?On this episode of Strong + Sleek, Robert Santana makes the case for... something that can't be ordered online, downloaded to your phone, or installed in your garage: the power of your training environment.Robert looks back at the influences that shaped his own approach to strength, nutrition, and body composition—and explains why surrounding himself with seriously strong lifters helped transform his own training. The lesson? If you want to get better at something, spend time around people who are already doing it well. He breaks down why training alone can have a hidden cost, how friendly competition raises your game, why the right gym provides far more than equipment, and why a room full of people working toward a common goal creates something you simply can't reproduce through an app, online course, or computer screen.

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:09 Welcome to the Strong and Sleak podcast. I am Robert Santana and I am your host. Welcome back. Third episode under the new banner. And I'm still trying to figure out what in the fuck I want to talk about. But, you know, many of you have followed me for years, which I greatly appreciate. Some of you are new. And as you can see, I've went on a new venture.
Starting point is 00:00:32 But the core backbone has not changed. You know, I've just had a lot on my mind lately as, you know, running this new gym, getting it set up. You know, we've pretty much wrapped up construction. Going to roll out, we're going to roll out marketing and kind of see where things go. But I think that what I want to talk about today is palatibility. You know, many of us that have been lifting in this way for a long time, you know, using barbells, pushing our limits, making weights heavier. You know, we sought that out.
Starting point is 00:01:01 You know, we wanted to get as strong as humanly possible. That was the goal. You know, growing up, muscle monster. were all over the TV. Action heroes looked like superheroes. We were loaded up on gear. They trained. They were probably muscular guys to begin with. And I used to watch a lot of pro wrestling, so motivated to get big. My mother, on the other hand, she was motivated to get small. She was always trying to lose body weight. And she never really exercised. You know, I've always talked about how my father influenced me to lift. I'd say that I learned a little bit about diet around my
Starting point is 00:01:35 mother. She wasn't over the top with it. But she'd go through phases. You know, she'd gain weight. And over time, she'd lose weight. But I don't remember a bunch of disordered eating or anything crazy like that. She'd just pull back her food. And I'd learn from a young age that, you know, if you're getting too carried away, you got to eat less. You know, that's kind of what it was like in the house I grew up in. And it was funny. I had another relative that would get really overweight. So my mother would not get really overweight. One of our relatives would get to the point where it was clinical obesity, you know, if you use the objective definition, you know, he was untrained, and he had a BMI well into the 30s. And then he would go all the way down to almost underweight.
Starting point is 00:02:15 And it never quite stabilized until I think it stabilized on the heavier side. He just eventually just stayed heavier. And this was back in the day, he was doing hundreds, if not thousands of sit-ups, thinking that that would spot reduce and give him the abs he wanted. No real serious weightlifting. I think he had one of those home gym, solo flex, or both flex. I think it was Solo Flex setups that they used to sell. And I saw that too. I saw the yo-yoing, right? So I knew that extreme diets didn't work as a young age.
Starting point is 00:02:46 So I guess what we're talking about here is what shapes your dietary or exercise approach. What kind of drives you to do certain things? You know, there's the natural drive, obviously. We can identify young athletes pretty quick. You know, they can't sit still. They want to do things physically. And they have low self-preservation. You know, they just have this insane drive.
Starting point is 00:03:05 to move. So, you know, there's the innate desire to gravitate towards certain things. And there's environmental things, you know, for me, my father lifted weights and my mother was very weight conscious, as many women are. I lived with her full time. So I looked, you know, I picked up some of those habits. These foods are good. These foods are getting me chubby, you know, like eating bags of potato chips made me chubby. Regular soda was not necessary in the regular diet. Breakfast was. I had a breakfast every day from a young age. My mother told me to do. Now every point is nuanced and argued.
Starting point is 00:03:42 You know, you got the anti-breakfast people, the anti-oomel people, the anti-glutin people, the anti-gloot people, the anti-gloat people, the shit, the anti-food people, your caloric restriction people. They want to live forever and, you know, reduce your telomere shortening. We can do a whole episode on that one day. But in general, you know, we talk about this with lifting. that are best practices most of the time. And I have found that people who eat within an hour of waking up tend to have better results with their body composition. Now, some people do need to eat a larger proportion of their calories later in the day.
Starting point is 00:04:18 You know, if you're training in the evening, you know, you probably need to eat more in the evening. I find that a lot of these nuances matter less as you become more advanced. I don't really pay attention to how much I'm eating one point in the day versus the other at the stage that I'm at, I just make sure that I eat enough. And I know when I'm not eating enough. I know when I'm not eating enough. I tend to get dehydrated because when I eat clean, I end up not eating as much sodium. And I'm in the desert, you know, the winter is less of an issue.
Starting point is 00:04:45 But in Arizona summer, for years, summer after summer, my training would go in the toilet. And I didn't really identify the pattern until one year. It was either last year or the year before, I can't remember. In Illinois, bulking season was the winter because it was so cold and you're covered up. Here, if you want to get the most out of a muscle building cycle and not have to be so calibrated with your food, it tends to work better in the summer, but also in the summer you're showing more of your body because it's over 100 degrees. So there's like this catch-22 there, right? So, you know, it's hard to stay hydrated here when it's that hot. So if you just eat a bunch of salty fatty foods and you're bulking, which I'm not suggesting you do, by the way, but typically one comes with the other, if you're eating saltier things,
Starting point is 00:05:30 they tend to be fat. If you eat sweeter things, they tend to be higher in carb, but they could be high in both. You know, cake and ice cream is high in both, right? Like this year, I just decided I'm going to, you know, just eat a lot of things that are high in salt. So I'm probably eating a lot of calories right now in the summer. And that's fine. I'm getting stronger than I've ever been. And then I pull it back.
Starting point is 00:05:47 Or you just accept that you're not getting stronger in the summer and that you can only push so hard because the electrolytes aren't exactly as well balanced as they are in the spring and winter. In the summer, it's very easy in Arizona and probably even worse in humid states like South Texas, Florida, some of the southern states, to keep your electrolytes balanced. The easiest way to do it rather than just drinking sport drinks or concoctions all day that are like salt water essentially. Easiest way to do it is say processed food. It's just accessible. Not that I'm advocating for processed food. I'm just saying if you're in a pinch on the run and you can't get to,
Starting point is 00:06:28 a Sprout's Farmer's Market or a Whole Foods or the organic food aisle at the commercial grocery store, you know, grabbing things like, you know, beef jerky, cured meats, sausages, etc., those turkey dogs. Things that tend to be higher in sodium. Tends to give you an overshoot effect and you're probably hydrated enough. That's what I do to make it easy when I'm driving around everywhere. Now, I'm not buying bags of potato chips or lean cuisines or frozen dinners or anything like that, but I do eat a lot of cheese, which tends to be high in sodium. and potassium, so I'm getting both. I consume Quest chips, which is processed. You know, that Quest chips don't occur naturally.
Starting point is 00:07:06 I have to look at the label again. I'm not even sure they're potato chips. But they're high in protein, so I get to check that box off and don't have to prepare a lot of things. And they're high in salt, you know, and some of them are higher in fat than others, but it's not crazy high in fat. And then I'll eat cured meats or smoked meats, jerky.
Starting point is 00:07:22 That's usually how I'm getting a lot of salt in my diet. I also drink milk, of course. I'll get two gallons a day now because I'm older. No, just kidding. So that was a bit of a side tangent there, but it's relevant. It is summer. Some of you are hot weather states. But, yeah, I knew from a young age, potato chips weren't good.
Starting point is 00:07:39 I knew from a young age eating breakfast tended to be better. And I also knew from a young age that weightlifting was more important than aerobic training from a body composition standpoint. As I became more educated, I started to learn where aerobic training is, in fact, valuable. And all of this kind of started in the house, you know, they were influbic. is there. You know, if you're around people that sit around all day and you don't have an innate drive to move, then you're going to pick some of that up. And then it's going to be, you're going to be pissing upstream to motivate yourself. And this is probably most gym members, especially personal
Starting point is 00:08:12 training clients in the country, if not the world. You show up because you want to be an environment that drags you up, right? Props you up. Get you to do the thing that's hard because everybody around you is doing it, the thing that's hard. And many of them have been in your shoes. So, you know, I'm talking to this guy. He doesn't want to gain any weight. He's too scared. guinea and as back hurts and i have to insist that hey you have to put on some body weight to get the most out of it so i suggested that he go to a gym where there's a lot of old timers that are also barbell training i don't know if he went there or not but that was my suggestion of being in an environment where people are doing the thing you want to do successfully or working towards the same goal and
Starting point is 00:08:49 problem solving troubleshooting dealing with the same headaches you're dealing with can go a long way you learn off each other you make good friends you foster a lot of me meaningful relationships, and you get better at the thing you're trying to get better at. That's how I got strong. I trained around really strong people. I had no aspiration of being a power lifter, but I knew that if I trained around power lifters, I'd see people lifting way more than me, and it would drag my game up. And I learned different solutions, different problem solving technique.
Starting point is 00:09:17 You know, I didn't lift exactly the way they did. I disagreed with a lot of programming stuff. But just sitting there, getting ready to squat and watching another guy do my max squat on a bench press, took the magic away from it, right? You can apply this to anything. You know, if you're a woman and you're trying to lose weight and you train around other women that have successfully done it, that drags your game up or that are grinding towards it. It drags your game up.
Starting point is 00:09:42 And then you also get hyper-competitive, too. There's some of that. Just keep it friendly, as I always tell you. Not always so. You want to keep it friendly. That competitive drive also pushes you in election. You want to create that environment where everyone around you is doing better at some capacity, but that everyone around is also supportive.
Starting point is 00:09:59 They're telling you what they did. I remember I'd train a group of girls. One of them had a no problem diet. Pulling back food was a no-brainer for her. She was incredibly disciplined. The other one, she came from a Hispanic household, liked to eat a lot. She wasn't fat by any means.
Starting point is 00:10:12 She just wanted to be leaner than she was. But the drive to eat was higher. And then they learned off each other. They did get competitive. It was quite interesting. But to this day, she'll say she learned from the other one, just being around that. Whereas the one that struggled to die,
Starting point is 00:10:27 it didn't struggle to lift. The other one was a good lifter, but not as good of a lifter. So then she would piggy, she would pick her brain on that or learn from her watching her move. So no matter who you are, whether you're an old person, a female, an overweight person, an underweight person, a normal weight person that just wants to look somewhat impressive. You know, you've got to put yourself in that environment where people are doing the thing and where they're relatable, right? I went to the extreme. I wanted to be around the caricatures of strength, power lifters, because I wanted the magic taken away from it. You may not necessarily need to go there. You know, coming to a gym like mine has helped a lot of people. I've had men pull as much as 500, 600 pounds in my gym,
Starting point is 00:11:08 you know, and it doesn't happen very often. I'm thinking of the biggest one that ever happened. And then the guys that were struggling in the 300s got close to 500, you know, in terms of weight lifted. And nobody was fat. I didn't have a bunch of super fat guys at my gym. I had some chubby guys that got less chubby. I had some skinny guys that got a little chubby. I had some people get visible abs. You know, the goals vary. But everybody got strong and was reasonably healthy. You know, I had girls that were on the skinny side and girls that were larger. And the strength spread was wide. But the thin one would watch the larger one lift and that would drag her game up to lift more. And the larger one would talk to the skinny one about food. You know, sometimes it is genetic,
Starting point is 00:11:48 but behavior plays a lot of big role in it. No matter who you are, if you starve, you're going to lose weight. There are somebody who tends to get fat easily or someone who tends to be thin. You're going to lose weight. It's just some people have to work harder for that weight loss and others, just like if you eat a lot of food and add weight to the bar, you're going to get stronger. You're going to build muscle, but some will have a more difficult time than others. So I can't stress it enough, how important environment is, and how much it's shaped my belief system with this, my drive to do it. I've been lifting weights since I was 15. I don't let myself get too fat. And I don't try to stay too lean either kind of go up and down when i'm going up i take advantage of that i'm like
Starting point is 00:12:27 you know i feel like eating more i'm just going to lift heavy and when i'm going down i take advantage of that and i try to be more active do a little bit more cardio i lift lighter weights i go for prs at a higher rep range i might take on other activities so uh i just try to moderate but we live in an age today so many people are lifting weights in their garage or in a spare bedroom they're lifting at home because it's more efficient for their schedule and all these other rational reasons that are rational on their face. But they're losing out on something. You're losing out on the end because we also have an issue of people complaining they can't
Starting point is 00:12:59 meet other people, especially single people here all the time, at various age groups too. 60-year-old single people, 20-somethings, 30-somethings, you got to get out. You know, you got to immerse yourself in an environment. That's how you meet, Peter, you're trying to get good at something or you're trying to improve it something that's hard for you. There's no better way to do it than not just to seek information out. or ask AI, but to spend time around people. You know, we were talking earlier about,
Starting point is 00:13:24 I was talking one of the producers here, about, I believe it was the topic, content or courses, that courses aren't selling as well as they used to because people can just build a course. Well, you can build a course on AI. You can learn how to do things yourself. But, you know, there's this old phrase that, you know,
Starting point is 00:13:38 has existed probably centuries, maybe since the dawn of humanity. And I think it goes something like, it's not what you know, it's who you know. So you can seek all the information out. But if you're not expanding your network of people and you're not feeding off of the environment, then you're limiting yourself. Now you become a knowledgeable person that can't carry it forward.
Starting point is 00:13:58 There's an epidemic of this right now. I think a lot of people lifting weights aren't getting the results they really want because they're spending time alone. And then they develop an identity. Oh, I'm a lone wolf. Or I don't want to be looked at at the gym. I want to hear all sorts of excuses for why people don't want to travel from their home to the gym. There's a lot of home gyms. And then the people that are at gyms aren't even working hard.
Starting point is 00:14:20 You know, the men's locker room has got real fucking weird lately. Living out of my old gym, one of the offices, I converted it essentially into a little hotel room. It was nice. It was nicer than my Hollywood studio. And when I was living there, I would shower at the commercial. I'd pay 10 bucks a month because I knew it was a temporary situation. I didn't want to build a shower for thousands of dollars. So I got a $10 a month gym membership.
Starting point is 00:14:43 You know, the men listening to this show, you remember, especially guys that are older, You'd go over to like local health club. And you'd get these guys in their late 60s, and they'd be talking to you butt naked, just looking at the eye, have a conversation. And you're a young kid, you're like, man, that's fucking weird, you know? But it's dealt with it. You didn't get any weird vibes off them.
Starting point is 00:15:02 It was just for whatever reason in that generation. You're like, why is it normal for this dude to do that? Still not normal for me, but I'm going to play cool. I think that goes back to the showering requirements that schools used to have. At least when I was in high school, they if you had PE class any other period before last period you had to shower you got your points docked this was at Carl Sandberg High School I don't know if they still do that but uh an orlin park Illinois so I'd imagine that this was probably a trend if you go back to people much
Starting point is 00:15:34 older than me so when you know back then that's what we used to see it was quite strange so ladies if you're not familiar with this this is the thing that we used to have to deal with and I think still in certain gyms. At certain age brackets, you still see some of it, but it's starting to fade out because generations are changing. Well, now I go into the Globo Gym, and I got young 20-somethings and speedos, like they're about to go on stage at a bodybuilding show,
Starting point is 00:15:57 flexing and poking each other's muscles and talking about their side delts. And it was one of the driving factors of me moving into a proper residence again. I just got sick of seeing that shit. It's just very bizarre. Bodybuilding is a very bizarre. contest, you know, but it is what it is to each his own, as they say. But that is an environment
Starting point is 00:16:20 that I do not want to be immersed in. And I guess the point that I brought about the global gyms is you got a bunch of people working out that aren't really trying to train, aren't really trying to get anywhere. Now a subset of them, they think they're training, you know, they're killing themselves, but going nowhere. Remember, principle number one is it has to get heavier at some point. It has to get measurably harder. So you can have a hard workout, but it's just exercise. It's not producing any overload stimulus. You're not going to move the needle on your body composition with that. So a lot of these guys that are flexing in the mirror, they had a great exercise session, but they're not training. You know, and then some of them just get on drugs and
Starting point is 00:16:56 let the drugs do the growing. But they're a minority of those global gyms. Most of those global gyms, if you go in there today, you go in their year from now, most of the people that were there today are gone and the regulars look the same. You've all seen it, right? So that's part of the problem is you got an assortment of bullshit in a lot of these gyms that are $10 a month. But there's another old phrase that probably goes back to the dawn of humanity as well. You get what you paid for. If you're going to pay $10 a month, you're going to get $10 a month bullshit. If you pay $1,000 a month, you're going to get $1,000 a month bullshit, which is typically
Starting point is 00:17:32 less. I'm not saying go pay $1,000 a month. You know, the sweet spot is probably around, well, in today's dollars in a major metro, like Scottsdale where I'm at, it starts to get better after $200 for the membership. So, you know, I've had people that say, oh, I could go to EOS, that's the local global gym here in Arizona, for $10 a month. And you're charging this much. And my old gym, it was, I think I capped off at $165 because it was tax. So it was $150 plus tax.
Starting point is 00:18:00 So it was around $165. And I'd get that argument. And I'd say, well, you're going to wait for machines. You're going to get a bunch of bizarre weirdness. you're going to have the locker room situation if you're a male. If you're a female, you're going to have the staring situation where people are staring at you. You know what I'm talking about, ladies. At my gym, people are going to socialize or cool.
Starting point is 00:18:19 They're helpful. If somebody's correcting your form, you're all trying to lift the same way so it's not perceived as intrusive. You're all taught by me, and you're all trying to move towards the model of what I'm teaching. I don't have a gym like that anymore. We're all training base now. But when I had the open membership, you know, it was a community. We're building a community. So you're paying more money to eliminate a lot of that bullshit that you get at the $10 a month gym on top of having better equipment.
Starting point is 00:18:44 So you got better equipment because you're at the higher price point. You have shorter wait times. The equipment's maintained. You're getting some level of coaching because, frankly, I like to hang out with people. You know, I'd be in the wait room talking. Oh, hey, you're squatting high. Fix that shit. You know, set your back on the deadlift.
Starting point is 00:19:00 And, you know, they're paying for a community. Once you start paying more money, now you're paying for a community. The group gets tighter and tighter knit. The focus becomes more narrow and serious. And you're just not dealing with shenanigans, you know? So if your idea of a gym is the $10 a month, 30, 40, 50,000 square foot facility that has everyone and anybody in all the weirdness, then, yeah, I wouldn't want to go to one of those motherfuckers either. I hated going to the global gym. As soon as I started getting serious about my training, I found the nearest lifting gym.
Starting point is 00:19:32 And then I just had to commit to 40-minute drive to a 40-minute drive to a 40-year-old. minute drive in Los Angeles traffic three to five times a week because I trained people too. When one opened closer, that was music to my ears. I moved to the closer one. But very quickly, when I decided I had strength objectives, I put myself in a gym where people were extremely strong. Now, if you just want to look better, you could put yourself in a gym where people look good and train and maintain that. And they don't just, they weren't just born that way necessarily. there are gyms like that. Now, if you want to go get into pageantry,
Starting point is 00:20:07 physique, bikini, bodybuilding, you know, classic bodybuilding, then you go to a bodybuilding gym. You know, you just got to figure out what you want to get out of your gym. We're going to do an episode here pretty soon about different types of gyms. I'm having a guest for that.
Starting point is 00:20:21 She wasn't available today, but we've been planning this for a while. We just got to get our schedules aligned. But, you know, the whole purpose of going to the gym is not to use the equipment. It's to access the, the community so that you can use the equipment, build connections, network, and improve your body and your health. My whole ethos is, if you move better, you look better. If you look better,
Starting point is 00:20:47 you feel better, right? So, yes, we want you to use barbells. We want you to use good plates, and you can certainly put that in your house. But we also want you interacting with people that are sometimes doing better than you, so you can learn off them. But then sometimes doing worse than you so you can learn off them because when you're helping somebody that's struggling, that teaches you something because then you start to see it in your own shit when you're videoing things. You know, competition is useful too. You know, and a lot of people who compete in pageants, you know, they're just trying to lose weight and the competition drags them to a point where they get super lean because they have something to work towards. A lot of people who compete in powerlifting
Starting point is 00:21:26 have no aspirations of ever placing or posting a lot of. record total or going to worlds or even nationals, they just compete in powerlifting to put their lifting towards something. You know, they want to lift a heavy weight. That's why you'll see people of all different shapes and sizes at local meets. You know, obviously when you go to regional, state regional, national meets, then yeah, you're going to see more extremes. You know, more people are going to be more muscular, larger, etc. But it's important to target your training towards something. And it's important to surround yourself by people that are both doing better than you and worse than you just a group of individuals moving towards a common goal.
Starting point is 00:22:06 I can't stress how much you're losing out on that by training in your garage just to save 10 to 20 minutes of drive time. You know, I understand. You've got to be efficient. You've got other responsibilities. But don't lose out on that. Experience it for a period of time, at least. You know, if you do it for three months, six months a year, you know, that's pretty good.
Starting point is 00:22:27 You know, I think you'll gain something from that. You know, that's why I don't like these online courses. You can learn things online, but you're not going to scale your network online. That's not going to happen. You're not going to get the energy online, the energy off other people. Sure, it's an immeasurable thing. Maybe some of you don't believe in that. But there is something that happens when you're in a room full of people working
Starting point is 00:22:49 towards the same thing and performing at different levels. There's something that happens that you cannot reproduce on a cell phone, a tablet, or a computer screen. So my take home message for you today is get off your ass. Go to a gym. If you're nervous and you're, you know, on the shy side, that could be of the shy side. Just force yourself to walk in. Just walk in, find a spot, read the room, get used to it.
Starting point is 00:23:15 And after a few times, you'll start to know people. People start to talk to you. People start to help you. And it just becomes fun. You know, now it's not your own little thing that you think about and then go back to your life. and I can't really talk to anybody else about it with. And can't troubleshoot with anybody else. You know, I'm an online coach.
Starting point is 00:23:33 I coach people online. I take pride in it. And I do believe that that is helpful. It's better than you coaching, lifting by yourself and falling into bad habits. And for some people, that's the best you're going to do. I'm trying to find a way to have a group option for that. I think there's a market for it. I just haven't decided how I want to set that up.
Starting point is 00:23:53 But I think that gyms originally were a way that brought people together. One of the things that I envied about these old black iron gyms was that you had an assortment of people there. You know, it was a blue collar thing. You had an assortment of people there lifting heavy weights, going to meets, hanging out with each other. You see all the pictures up on the walls when you go to these places. And I really wanted that when I opened a gym. I wanted a community. You know, CrossFit was as big as it was for that reason.
Starting point is 00:24:19 It was a giant community. People liked to hang out with people and do CrossFit and do CrossFit and do CrossFit competitions and go to the events, the barbecues, etc. right and a lot of sports are like that i mean think about how you met people when you were young you were either you know high school you were in clubs you were in sports you know you had classes together and then all that goes away you get a job you start adulting maybe you have some kids maybe you're working a couple jobs you know that's a little bit more challenging you know empathize with people that you know they literally can't carve it out but the lack of time thing is all often perceived and not actual you can find time if you want it in a lot of cases you know
Starting point is 00:24:53 I understand there are nuances and there are special snowflakes out there, but most of you saying you don't have time aren't special snowflakes, you're just not allocating it the best. Just figure out where you can cut. What are some senseless things you're doing? And how valuable is it? You know, I think it's you're missing out by not interacting with other people that are sharing a common goal,
Starting point is 00:25:15 whether it be weight loss. I mean, what was popular before? There was curves. It was Jenny Craig. I mean, those were clinics that people went into, right? I think Jenny Craig was diet.
Starting point is 00:25:25 Curves was exercise. Yeah, they go into these places and exercise. The workouts were bullshit, but people showed up. They met people that made friends. They foster relationships. And I don't know that the outcomes were universal. I would imagine the needle moved. We'd have to look at that.
Starting point is 00:25:43 The needle moved somewhere, even if it wasn't necessarily weight loss because it does rely on diet a lot. People got fit or at least, even if you don't lose weight. You're in better shape now. so if you're heavier and in better shape, and now you've got a bunch of friends that, you know, are going through the same sort of deal. I think I've beat that point to hell. Training environment, whether it's strength training,
Starting point is 00:26:06 running, you know, there's running clubs, there's leagues, you know, if you're in a league sport, if you're an Olympic lifter, you know, there's Olympic weightlifting, there's pageants, bodybuilding, bikini. I guess there's beauty pageants too. Remember those, the original pageant, the beauty pageant, and there's beauty pageants with muscle.
Starting point is 00:26:21 Musical instruments. You know, when you're learning an instrument, it's a lot more fun when you're in a band, even at the band sucks. Same thing. If you want to get good at something, do not minimize the impact of group energy on you becoming good at it. That being said, not every group is going to be for you. So you might have to try a few different places. You know, just because you went to one gym and had a bad experience, it just means it wasn't the right gym. that's something you really want to do.
Starting point is 00:26:55 Went to several gyms that weren't the right gym. You know, mine's the right gym because it's mine. But there are gyms, you know, that I liked a lot. I would love to have been a member at the Wichita Falls Athletic Club in Texas, but I don't live in Wichita Falls, Texas. So I just visit there once a year. There's a few others that I liked. Here I'm recording this podcast.
Starting point is 00:27:15 As you can see, this is not my studio. But it's the same thing. I come in here. I learn things because there's other podcasters in here. This is a podcasting company that I hired to produce my show. And while I give my producer shit about his equipment versus mine, I like being here. I like talking to them. I like having those conversations where I give somebody shit about that.
Starting point is 00:27:39 And I'm learning about the podcast business as well. So I've hammered that all to absolute hell. And I'm glad you made it this far if you're still listening. These episodes are going to evolve, just as they always have. I'm probably going to touch on some old things. I'm going to read your comments and see what I need to talk about. And I'm going to keep it a little bit more, what's the topic, it's a little more diverse and kind of rehash the same basic principles of barbell training over and over again,
Starting point is 00:28:08 although they need to be in here because I teach people how to lift weights with a loaded barbell. I swear by it, that will never change. And the more people that do it, the better. So that being said, let's close out here. You can find me at Instagram at the underscore Robert underscore Santana or Strong underscore and underscore Slake for the gym, which is now open in North Scottsdale in the airpark. 7755 East Evans Suite 101, Scottsdale, Arizona, 8526. So it's off of Rain Tree and the 101.
Starting point is 00:28:44 So if you're in town, come on by, send me a message. You can find the phone number on Google. at the Google page or on the website. Contact information is readily available. You can text. I have it on a cell phone. And you can find me on YouTube. I think we're changing the handle there.
Starting point is 00:29:04 So stay tuned for that. We'll put it in the show notes. And then, of course, strong and sleek.com. Thanks for tuning in and see you next week.

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