Mark Bell's Power Project - All Pain, No Gains? Training Should Feel Good! MBPP Ep. 766

Episode Date: July 12, 2022

Today we talk about one aspect of your training that might be holding you back, beating the crap outta yourself. Killing it today in the gym eventually starts to take away from tomorrow. Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the new Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw Special perks for our listeners below! ➢https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!! ➢Enlarging Pumps (This really does work): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 ➢https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/powerproject Code POWERPROJECT20 for 20% off Vivo Barefoot shoes! ➢https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off site wide including Within You supplements! ➢https://mindbullet.com/ Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://eatlegendary.com Use Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://bubsnaturals.com Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% of your next order! ➢https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order at Vuori! ➢https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro at 8 Sleep! ➢https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off ALL LABS at Marek Health! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast

Power Project Family, how's it going? Now, a lot of you guys are lifters, athletes. You're serious about the gym, and we are too. And that's why we've been using Slingshot products for years, all right? You have the original Slingshot, obviously the glittery pink hip circle, which is my personal favorite. But if you don't like that, then you have the normal hip circle that's used to warm up the hips. But on the website, they have tons of equipment, knee sleeves, elbow sleeves, the gangster wraps right there. So you need to go check them out.

And Andrew, can you tell more about it yes that's over at markbellslingshot.com and at checkout enter promo code power project 10 to save 10 off your entire order uh links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes guys say it mark say it mark don't say it don't say it ding Don't say it. Dinged up. Good job. I used to call my injuries, I used to just kind of be like, oh, that's a two-weeker. That's a one-weeker. Yeah, that's good. I just would kind of put it in that context. Jesse Burdick was always like, man, he's like, you're actually usually pretty intuitive with that.

He's like, what do you think I have right now? I'm like, that's like a two-weeker. You'll be fine. That is. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah exactly yeah exactly yeah man no it's uh injuries are fun initially when they happen i like there's this feeling of catastrophe right you're like oh god not again oh no right and then you're like, well, what the fuck do I do? Like, what, what, what should I do? How can I figure this out? Then you find solutions and then you're good. I think some of the people we've had on, especially with what I have going on right now, it's healing so much faster because I employed some stuff from Kodowski. Our boy Oscar told me to do some self-monofascial release

and I, I'm, I'm grooving grooving right now yeah i thought it was a mistake what you told me you know you're using the penis pump and you were doing curls and you're using the phoenix all at the same time right yeah is that what happened yeah yeah and then your girl walked in and something else happened right yeah she like got mad at me pushed me off the bed then i crunched on my clavicle and then the she's strong she works out a lot she's very strong does she have big wrists she has bigger wrists than well you know what no she doesn't have bigger wrists than me but her wrists are almost my size does she kind of double check and make sure you're not checking out ladies with bigger wrists than her nah man like you know she's confident in her wrists the funny thing is

she'll check those ladies out before i do. She'll point it out to you. That girl had major wrists. She's been in a relationship with a girl before. What about big ankles? Oh, that's hot. Big ankles means that you probably have big quads. And we know what big quads means. You have a bigger propensity for big ass so

big ankles big wrists big ass well not big wrists big ass it's more so the ankles oh i see the wrists you know you have good size wrists you have good size arms and shoulders typically yeah and then there are people like me with baby wrists yeah i think also too you don't want a girl with too skinny of arms i see a lot of skinny arm like models you know like i'm always like that arm's way too thin yeah looks like it's gonna break grab it and you accidentally bruise her because i mean i guess to use their own whatever you're attracted to but for me personally i'm like i don't know about that to all the skinny people in the audience, we're not dissing you. You are beautiful as you are too. That's true.

Yes. But it is interesting. But eat a cheeseburger. Right. Like we were watching, I can't remember which movie it was. Oh, it was Knocked Up. And they told her like, oh, we can't tell you to lose weight because that's illegal. But get on a scale and whatever the scale says.

That's a great movie. Take like minus 20 pounds and then weigh that. But it's funny because it's I forgot her name. Catherine Heigl. That's her name. Like she's already thin. Like you look at her arms and it's just like real thin. And there's like, what the fuck?

Like they wanted to lose. I mean, I know it's a joke and she's already had lost the 20 pounds to get the role probably but yeah like when you look at um in in movies like some of the chicks are like insanely skinny like um i remember like i used to think jessica alba was so fucking hot i mean she's still gorgeous but it was but if you go back and look at some of those like movies like honey her arms are extremely tiny she's not thick enough no she's definitely not thick enough anymore yeah after our last episodes so many people were in the comments like mark you like them fat chicks like mark is really showing he likes fat chicks i'm like god y'all are just mean that's great people can be so cold.

I'm a chubby chaser. You know, that interview with, I just saw the clip of Joe Rogan and Gina Carano. Did you guys see the clip where Gina was talking about how her like kickboxing instructor, who's like this guy from Thailand, he saw her for the first time in a long time. He's like, oh, you're fat. You need to lose weight. I was like hey foreigners are like that she said that she needs that she's like I need I need someone to keep me in check like that and then she was saying now uh Kevin Ross who's been on the podcast before she's like

he likes it though so it's like like uh he he plays into it and then she was like maybe he doesn't like this much though you know it is good to know. Like, if you're getting out of shape or whatever, truly getting out of shape or you're truly getting unhealthy, it is good. Because she was saying something like the people that really love you will tell you what you need to hear. Right. It isn't necessary for having some people that will just give you that brutal honesty. And, you know, you can bedside manner it a bit. But sometimes someone just needs to tell you to get your shit together yeah yeah for sure yeah someone needs to you know

there's kind of a whole thing of shaming right but what do you get shamed for sometimes you get shamed for uh you feel ashamed for things that maybe you shouldn't be doing. I don't know. Right. I remember fucking nine years old, Brandon Cavett, who was a professional soccer player in Sacramento. He played in the MLS. He was my coach. And one day we were doing hill sprints. And I remember this because I was just like, damn, that hit me. I got to fucking go. I was like falling behind, the team he's like and

sima stop being a fucking prima donna and i was like i still remember it to this day yeah but that boost that that kicked my ass right and i respond well to like that like i respond well if a coach is like get your fucking shit together like i don't want to have to hear that because i want my shit to be together but i'll take it because sometimes you gotta hear it you gotta hear it you know but at nine years old i mean come on i'm grateful for that coach you do need that sometimes you know uh it's hard to know what somebody's going to respond to you though sometimes that's like real detrimental then like there's certain kids that might not have showed up the next day and that's that's tough or parents and i'm sure a coach would feel well depending on the coach but

i'm sure they would kind of you know they're he's not trying to get you to like just quit he's trying to get you to like dig deeper right trying to just trying to have encouragement to dig deeper and i think now we know some different strategies and some different things but things were different 10 years ago 15 years ago things were different people just kind of like they just threw it out there and they let it i remember my football coach hitting people you know by they had football pads on and a helmet yeah and he just you know he'd come up and he'd whack you and like, we all actually like thought that was like a sign of respect more so than anything. Cause he wanted you to do well. He'd come up and he'd smack you on the fucking helmet.

He'd be like, come on, you can do better than that. And you're like, yeah, I can do. He's got a fucking good point. Should he have hit us? I don't know. Like maybe that's a step too far. I don't know. It didn't seem like it was wrong to me.

Got us, it got us to work hard. You know, in, in the context of know, in the context of like athletics, coaches can tell by the kids sometimes. If a coach is a good coach, they can tell if this kid is too sensitive to handle it or this kid can buck up and handle this, right? So I do think, though sometimes that is that is necessary and i might be more prone to thinking that's okay because i come from an african household where everything is like straight up like there there is no sugar coating when it comes to discourse on what you need to do it's not like oh baby blah blah blah my mom didn't have time for that shit this is your responsibility i told you to take the garbage out now you're gonna get smacked on the butt it's not like, oh, baby, blah, blah, blah. My mom didn't have time for that shit. This is your responsibility.

I told you to take the garbage out. Now you're going to get smacked on the butt. Because I got to ask you three times. It doesn't make any sense. How about you just do it the first time, and we don't have to go through this. Yeah, and I agree with that. I totally agree with that.

Me and my girl were having a conversation, though, because there was part of me that was not buying into, and this is not going into all the conversation that we were planning on having but we probably will still have that but we were talking about discipline right and i was talking about how i don't necessarily buy the idea of not using any like i don't want to have to slap a kid but i'm like does america truly have it right that you never should lay a hand on a kid like what is sometimes they need a slap like but i do think it's possible i think it's truly possible there's still something in the back of my head that is like ah but who knows i think if you

truly love your child you will have to hurt them in some way you know i just think that you have to does that mean physically that's kind of for you to decide probably more so than me use your own discretion on that i guess but like i think that you have to hurt their feelings you have to say stuff that cuts deep you have to tell them that their room's a mess and that that's that's not a great way not a great way to that's not a great way to go out into the world without skills to keep yourself at least somewhat organized. Can we just get the bowl of cereal from underneath your bed? Is it serving some sort of purpose? Can there just be some reasonable compromise?

That's what I try to communicate with my children is like, what's reasonable? I know you like video games. I know you like being on your phone. I know you like being in a room by yourself or whatever the things are that they're doing. Let's just have an open dialogue of like how much of that's going to go on every day. Are you on your phone eight hours every day? Like to me, that sounds like too much. What number can we what

number can we find that we can both agree on and let's try to keep it in that range yeah my thing right now with my son is like dude he's one and a half years old like he's not going to receive the message you know so it's kind of hard to i guess discipline when it's like he doesn't necessarily know exactly what he's doing although we we do do things here and there. But like as far as like, you know, like spanking or whatever, I think if it ever happens, it's just going to be a while to be like, like you understood that you did something really wrong and you understood why you got spanked. Like if he can understand and comprehend it, then maybe. But like if he's too young, that's where I'm like, oh, think so man what about a firm no yeah yeah you guys done that and then he cries um like kind of like grab his arm a little bit no you know you like yeah hey like just don't

mess with that right do that um he thinks it's hilarious he laughs so it doesn't work um the i think the um i'll say like the meanest parenting thing that we've done is like, we call it his octagon, but he has like a, it's like an octagon of baby gates, right? And it's like. Put him in prison. Yeah, we lock him up for a little bit and then he gets just really upset because then we'll put him in there and then we like kind of take a step back and start to go do whatever we were doing. But it's mainly because like he'll get like, we have doing. But it's mainly cause like, he'll get like,

we have like these like little golf clubs for him and he'll just like find a dog and just fucking whack him. I'm like, ah, like, dude, you can't do that. But he thinks it's hilarious.

And I'm like, you're kind of a little shithead right now. And so we tell him no. And he just thinks it's hilarious. He just laughs. And it's so cute because he's got these big old dimples and just, you want to let them get away with murder. But it's like,

no man, you can't do that. So it's, you know, put him in his octagon and then he gets upset and i cave in every time but your children's psychopaths bro no yeah yeah your dogs with a golf club yeah keep in mind it's a very light plastic golf club um does dogs don't whimper or anything, but they're just like, fuck, dude, stop. And I'm like, come on, man. He's like, he'll come after me with that shit, too. And I'm like, nope. Did you ever watch Game of Thrones?

No. Oh, okay. Okay. Oh, man. I remember the little Lannister kid. I'm not comparing him. He was the evil bastard. The evil king.

The evil boy king. He was kind of funny. Aurelius isn't that. He's too cute for that. Oh, did you guys check out Ryan Holiday on Joe Rogan? No. Yeah, yeah, I got to listen to it. It was really good.

When he was talking about the five good emperors, because Marcus Aurelius' son was a dickhead, right? So he didn't rule the throne like very well yeah he's in uh the russell crowe movie uh gladiator there it is but he was explaining why the five good emperors came to be like really fucking awesome it's because marcus aurelius was adopted and then so we're like the other ones that were really really good they were adopted because they didn't come up as being little shithead awesome kids in like you know in fucking whatever ruling the the uh whatever fucking land yeah so that's all i thought that

was really interesting because i'm like fuck i gotta find a house back in south sack to raise my son and then move back into elk grove they they talked they talked about uh yeah marcus rule is uh potentially not being a good dad because he had like some really fucked up kids right then they were like you know maybe they just maybe just didn't have like i don't know maybe because they had everything that it was harder for them to to behave better or whatever but that happens a lot you know with great with with a lot of times someone who's truly known as being a great man by many is, is not a good man. You know,

it's, it's difficult to balance the two things out. Like we know, you know, Jordan and many others like just seem like they were involved in some bullshit here and there. Right. Um,

that's, I think that's just the way that goes sometimes yeah that's tough what was our topic we're talking about bulking up yeah our boy marty bulking up if you uh our boy marty was actually there was that we will talk about that um but our boy marty he uh i think he's in the military, and he has an issue of where to know how to back off. Because sometimes some people are used to training so hard, and there's been a message for the past decade where training is supposed to be super difficult. You need to leave the gym feeling super sore.

Some people are used to throwing out. We know people who are used to just throwing up, throwing up, um, after multiple workouts and that's how they know I did a good job today. They like the vomit off their lips and they keep going. So, you know, but we know that you can have workouts where you're in the gym, you work out hard, you leave the gym feeling better, and then you can work out again. Well, the next day, even though you pushed yourself. So how can people, cause I think he's military. How can people that are used think he's military. How can people that are used to that, maybe they're former athletes or military, um, how can they learn how

to back off the gas a bit and train to feel good? Right. Yeah. It's a, it's a fine line right there because you do want to have that intense workout. Uh, For me personally, I've done a lot of workouts where I have gotten nauseous before. Most of those workouts were not self-induced. They were like for wrestling practice or football or something like that. And I may have just not truly been prepared for what it was that I was asked to do on a particular day

and therefore it made me feel sick or I got trained pretty hard. But it seems like most of what we do as humans, it seems like most information that you're going to be able to gather and have be helpful and have it end up being something your body receives well and organizes well. It seems like most of that stuff is in a – probably 90 percent of the time, it would be in like – it would be between a seven and an eight in terms of difficulty is what I believe where most people should hang out in their training. And that's not usually like, that's not, it's not that hard. And then how many sets look that way? Um, I don't think a lot. I think maybe there's three or four opportunities in a workout to where your percentage is that high, but that might be more of a personal thing

than, than anything else i think that zone two cardio type thing that people use for running uh runners have been using that the mathetone method for a really long time and i'm that's that's how you run faster is to actually run slower you know i was watching a video i saw this video pop up on my instagram feed the other day i was from some trainer and uh it had the he had the caption of like watching my client leave the gym after a leg day and they cannot walk down the stairs i've done a good job and when it comes to like for example leg day like day is like the prime example i think for a lot of people because like people think that if i have a great leg day i can limp limp it out of the gym, right? My quads are so sore that I'm limping or I can barely walk. And that's kind of that mindset that I think

isn't necessary. Even if you are an athlete, it's not necessary to leave being so wrecked that you can barely get into your car or your back feels so rough that you can, you know, barely walk or you feel like you feel like you're a cripple. I could understand in some cases, especially when it comes to, you know, even when it does come to powerlifting, I don't think that's necessary, especially with like how people know about like form and the mechanics of

squatting and deadlifting. I don't think you need to have such pain when working with those types of loads. You might think, I don't know, what do you think about that? Because we're coming off, we're going to come talk about, if you're not an athlete again, but specifically for powerlifters, because this is something I see with them a lot. Do you think that at a certain point that's just a part of the game since you've seen so many people that have gone through so much pain

to get certain numbers and lifts? I think something that helped me big time is that i used singles doubles and triples used i used a lot of singles now when people think of doing a single yeah they think of a heavy max single they think of a one rep max i never did that i mean not that i never did that it was very very rare for me to do that i would do a lift, and I would ask you guys when I was done, like, yeah, how'd that look? What do you think? And you guys would be like, dude, I don't know how it felt, but you smashed that. That looked easy. Okay, well, maybe I'll go up 50 pounds.

And you guys are like, yeah, easy, no question. So there was no question that I could do the lift. A lot of times the singles that I was going for are things I could have probably easily done for three reps or maybe even five reps. Could have done definitely multiple sets with that same weight. So I might take that next attempt, and then that one's slower, and that one's like, eh, like if you go for another one, like we're not quite sure it's going to happen. And I wouldn't usually take that one. When I was younger, I did that a little bit. But as soon as I started to learn that that was not beneficial for me, that's the thing to think about. What is beneficial?

You want the minimum effective dosage. We're not trying to like just overload ourself with the maximum all the time. So a lot of the main sets that I would hit, the heaviest weights that I would hit, even though they were heavy by other people's view, I would be able to manage them well. And that's something I noticed in a lot of other lifters in the gym too. Stan Efferding, when he came through, Eric Spoto, and a lot of the other greats that came through Super Training Gym, I was like, all these guys have the same thing in common. When they do their lift, the lift is really heavy. They're still improving all the time, but the lift isn't hard. And that was something that I was like, I need to take note of that. And I need to just continue to do that in my training.

What if someone's program calls for whatever certain percentage and it just, don't know man like it may be like they fucked up or whatever it may be like they still have to hit this number because that's what the program says and then that's where like shit kind of can end up you know injuries can occur right yeah you know everything can break down to numbers but i don't believe in following them super strictly you know i would what i would do is I would do, I would advise people to do things in reverse, you know, add up the numbers after the fact. Like, what did you do for the day? You did 87% and you did three by three. Well, were all three sets of three clean?

Did they look good? That's something that's noteworthy. But if you just did a percentage because it was called for and you didn't do it very well, that's not a job well done. Like that's not, uh, not what you're trying to do. And you can get stronger even by kind of lifting like an idiot and even kind of going for it. And there's definitely room for people that are newer to kind of go for it here and there and to have some, uh, messed up lifts. But most of what I advise for people when people are like, my coach, my coach, my coach, I hear people talking about their fucking coach all the time.

Comes the bodybuilding and I'm always like, fuck your coach, man. Your coach don't know shit. That should be a shirt. Fuck your coach. Yeah, fuck your coach. In the asshole. Okay. You took it there.

Okay, okay. I'm sorry. What if we print that on the inside though both these guys ears yeah what if we printed it on the inside though like says fuck your coach and then you flip it upside down like the lululemon shit where they have it on the yeah fuck your coach on the ass fuck your coach on like the chest and then on the little like notes under the shirt just in the ass amen y'all do what you like. But I usually advise people to back off whatever percentages they got. It actually doesn't have anything to do with the coach necessarily. The coach is just trying to give you information.

It's like an input. And then you decide what you're supposed to do with that. But some people will kind of blindly follow that information. supposed to do with that, but some people will kind of blindly follow that information. And if you just hit a lift that's 93% and it was awful and it calls for you to do a 97% lift for the day, you probably should do multiple sets of that 93%. See if you can clean that up. If you can and you have a successful lift at that, then maybe you go back and you do the 97%. But lifting poorly is not going to help you lift better. It's not all about just lifting more weight.

It's about lifting better, doing the movement better. So that's what you want to try to aim for over time is to execute the lift better. And then there are also aspects of this. If you are working with somebody, typically, who knows how you slept last night? Who knows what you ate the day before how you recovered if you wake up the next day and you go into the gym and you have something on the program and you're like i don't have confidence i'll be able to hit that typically people will have a range like if you're not feeling good today go for this you don't always

have to hit the number that's on the sheet you you actually you shouldn't there's some days where everything's amazing and that number like let's say that that was what you were supposed to go for but your coach says you could go for heavier if you feel good then you can go for heavier but you really need to you need to learn yourself and understand like if you're not confident enough to touch a certain load on a certain day it's best to stay a little bit below that as it'll allow you to just be safer and have a lesser risk of injury um so i like that a lot and that leads me into the next question which is like progressive overload where i think again people can really fuck themselves up because it's like oh i did you know whatever x amount of weight for x amount of reps last week so let's go ahead and up the ante but like what you just said uh got bad

sleep ate like shit the day before, whatever it may be. And it's like, it's not there, but that's what the program says, or that's what I'm going to shoot for. So is progressive overload like always a part of the equation? You know, this is, this is an interesting thing because we talked about the progressive overload versus progressive over stimulus the other day. And the thing is, is you don't like, even though progressive overload is science

based and you do want to be moving more, potentially moving more volume over time, there's a lot of different ways to get new stimulus. And there are other things you can look at other than just the amount of volume you've done, the, uh, the amount of weight you moved in case you increased in weight or the amount of sets you've done. You can also pay attention to like what you said, how clean things looked this day versus the day before. Let's just say that you're doing a chest press, three sets of 10 for 50 pounds. And the next workout, you do another three sets of 10 for that 50 pounds. But the last time you did it, it was like, it felt super hard. And this time it was much easier. There's a progression in there in terms of how clean it was. You could potentially

add a little bit more to it, but you've progressed. I see this a lot now with even the calisthenics stuff that I'm doing. It's not loaded. It's just my body weight. But I find that I'm able to get into deeper ranges when doing different movements. And I can work in those deeper ranges. That is a progression. If you're now, instead of chest pressing here, if you're able to get a little deeper with that same weight comfortably, that is progressive over stimulus. You are now stimulating more muscle fibers because you're going to be able to work with the same weight in a deeper range of motion. It doesn't mean you had to work with actually add more pounds or add more reps, but you added a deeper ROM with that movement and it was easier? Progressive over stimulus. So we can look at all these other things other than purely adding weight to the bar and

adding reps and adding sets to add more stimulus to what we're doing and make progress. It's hard to get stuff ingrained into your system when the intensity is too great. If you can't think about it, then a lot of times it's a little bit, it's a little bit too heavy. If you could think about it too much, it's probably a little bit too light. Like there should be kind of some happy medium of where you just kind of have to do the lift and almost get through it in a way. But you do, if you think about it, there's always room to improve.

There's always room to do better on any movement that you're doing. You could be doing some of those twists that we were doing today. We were just doing some twists with a cable, a cable twist type thing. can you flex as you're going through a range of motion um can you flex your left oblique more can you relax the back shoulder that's not involved as much are you able to breathe easier when doing that are you yeah can you yeah breathing adds a huge element what if what if just going through a range of motion you decide to hold your breath a little bit you might you know you might want to be cautious with that while you're lifting weights, but if it's a lighter weight and you're doing some walking lunges and you're trying to work on something in particular, imagine saying, I'm going to do this, you know, 50 yard lunge and I'm only going to do nasal breathing. And to start, I'm going to hold my breath, you know, just for like five seconds, a couple reps

worth that changes everything. That makes the intensity of what you're doing that much more challenging. So think about like mastery, trying to master a particular lift, trying to get it down to where when people see you do it, they're like, wow, that guy is clearly a professional at this. That looks different than when everybody else does that. Power Project fam, this episode is brought to you by Vivo Barefoot Shoes. We've been wearing these shoes for almost a year now. They're flexible. They have a wide toe box.

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Let's get back to this video. I love that. One thing that where I used to fuck myself up is like paying attention to, I'll just say fitness culture. So like watching like a Mike Izzard tell video where he's throwing up on leg day. And so I would go into the gym the next day looking at my program and be like, yep, I got to kill myself today. And what inevitably would happen is maybe I would get through it,

maybe I would get hurt, but I would just destroy myself and then try to go into the gym the next day. And I couldn't understand why this literally did happen, why I would get stuck under the bar at 95 pounds trying to bench because like I was just fucking exhausted and I still just like worked through it. So how much of killing it today is going to take away from tomorrow? Like how much of that do you need to be considering? It usually crushes you. A lot of times it crushes you a couple days later. We all know people that get really fired up. They start losing weight. They start getting momentum. And you might see them in the gym. You might see them around and they're sporadically here and they're sporadically giving it a good effort. They're here for an hour. They're putting in good workouts. Maybe they go Monday. Maybe they go Tuesday. And then they're just not here again.

And then they're just not here again, you know, or they come to super training all fired up about powerlifting. And on the third time they're here, they ask, hey, can I do more workouts than just the four that are recommended? And I usually tell people that's not a good idea, like in the beginning powerlifting for more than a couple months because it gets so hyped up. They get so into it. So you have to think about your energy on different days. I know there's the mentality of like, fuck it, man. I'm going to go in there and I'm going to get mine today and I'm going to do – I'm going to go as hard as I possibly can on this. And it's good to – like whatever it is that you're doing, it's good to put the best effort that you can into it. It doesn't mean to like lift like a slouch. It doesn't mean that you're going to get strong just by lifting light weights. What it does mean is that you need

to be focused in on the intent of what it is that you're doing and try to get the most out of that. Like try to actually draw the picture of the tree, you know, try to actually follow through with the assignment, stay inside the lines, you know, try to actually follow through with what's recommended before you go going outside of everything. A lot of times those same people that ask for like more workouts or they want to do more stuff that you find out they didn't do the glute ham raises they didn't do the the med ball sit-ups they didn't like they just did the deadlift and they did a couple squats and then they're you know asking about like can they do these side bodybuilding workouts and you're like dude you

didn't even do the five exercises that were suggested for today they cut that corner they just spin it in circles you cut that corner and you'll find that you'll you'll feel when you oh when you're overdoing it you'll feel it and you'll talk yourself out of workouts more often that morning run that you're going to do or that walk that you wanted to do you'll be like man i man i pushed that off again i wonder if there's something i'm doing and like that's a good question to ask am i doing a little am i maybe not as methodical with my lifting as maybe I should be a little bit more organized with it because maybe I am pushing it a little bit too hard and maybe it's making a lot of other things suffer. You know, one other thing to think about

too, whether you're a competing athlete or not, because I see a lot of people who they'll go into the gym, they'll do their routine, they'll come out of the gym, they'll be like, oh, my back, I have that pain again. And they'll have this pain over and over and over again. So you got to ask yourself, number one is what I'm doing actually helping me? Like not only that, but is it, it's help? Is it helping me? And is it pushing me towards a goal that I have? Like, is this pain that I have every time after I squat helping me? Is it helping me become healthier? Because like, even though your squat might be going up, the pain that you have after you squat, maybe you need to figure out the mechanics or maybe you just need to stop doing that

for a little bit and find something else that doesn't cause you to limp out of the gym because you're so dedicated to doing this specific movement, right? Because again, the reason why a lot of us are doing this is so that we can be healthier and move better and be better at being humans. But you're not better at moving or being a human if every time you leave the place, the gym that's supposed to help you feel better, you feel worse. So evaluate what's causing you pain and don't just keep going down that way because your program says so or because you see all these impressive Instagram lists. Don't keep going down that path. Figure out a way to adjust this. So it's because I don't think it needs to be painful.

I don't think you can be sore, but it doesn't need to cause you literal pain where now what you're doing on a day-to-day basis is harder because of your workout. And that's for athletes and? I think for both. Both and a weekend warrior? And a weekend warrior. Because an athlete, you're trying to increase your athletic performance. So, yeah, you do need to push things. But to the extent that it takes away from how you just are on a day-to-day basis, some athletes will say, yeah, that's a sacrifice you need to make.

I'm an athlete that says, no, that's not a sacrifice you need to make. And I differ on that opinion, you know, because it's like it's the you got to go through that pain to get to the pinnacle. I don't buy it. I really don't buy it. I think some people have gone through large amounts of pains to get to the pinnacle, and some people have gone to the pinnacle come out and they've they they weren't fucked up what about if you really love it you know what i mean like so you go and you do it and you you do your workout and obviously it's

it's really easy to get carried away with it but for me like i got made fun of and ripped apart so much early in my powerlifting career they were were like, you fucking suck at this. Like that was awful. Like that's really the way that you train. Like you trained at Westside. Like what, what the fuck was that? That was shitty. But in the back of my mind, I was always like, you know what? You motherfuckers are all going to pay because I'm going to go slow and I'm going to go steady. It works for me and everything else. And I'm working on what I can work on and I'm fixing what I can fix simultaneously. This is, I understand this to be a long process. So that's cool that you're ahead of me now, but where are you going to be five years from now? You're going to be in the fucking dust. You're going to be looking at my back. You're going to look, be looking at me

winning, getting victories over you and all the people that you train. And I'm going to be kicking your fucking ass because I wasn't scared to pay attention to the details and I wasn't scared to like sit in the pocket and do the stuff that was monotonous. It was fucking boring. It was, I would still do the workouts as recommended. I would still push myself hard. I'd still would, uh, you know, do the box squats and I still would do the max effort day. And occasionally I would go too heavy because I was in a flock of people where you're just kind of letting it all go, right? You're letting it all hang out, so to speak. But I would watch other people fail. And I was like, that guy fails the same way every time.

He has the same fucking story every time he comes in. And when he comes in next week, he's going to have the same story. But for me, it's going to be a different story every time he comes in. And when he comes in next week, he's going to have the same story. But for me, it's going to be a different story every time I come in because I'm going to keep working on stuff and I'm just going to keep nitpicking these details. And over a period of time, I may not beat you in the squat. I may not beat you in the bench. I may not beat you in the deadlift, but I will beat you in powerlifting because I will have a bigger total because I will pay attention to the whole thing, which is your fucking total, which is the most important thing. Meanwhile, I'd watch people. They would fail in the same spots every time.

And it was crazy to me. It was like insane. I was like, this guy fails the same. I don't even need to see his lift. I know what's going to happen, and I know what his complaint is going to be. Oh, man, if I ever get this shoulder fixed, you know, like fucking everybody look out. It's like you're not ever going to – you're never going to do it. So why the fuck are you talking about shit that you're never going to do? If I could lock out this arm a little bit better. Cool.

Yeah, that's great. But you still train the same way. You're not even addressing what the actual issue is. That's amazing. And then, so another aspect, this is a little bit like of a, of a side road. So I don't know if, uh, Marty has a family or maybe other people listening. I do have a family and sometimes I would go a little bit too far in the gym and then it would take away from the rest of my day. Now, um, we're in a pretty cool spot where we can just walk over to the gym and then walk into here and podcast. But like when I had an eight to five job or something like, you know, I was like a professional gym goer, you know, like that was my job. I'd pretend that sometimes. And now it's like I make fun of people that they kind of like, oh, I go super hard in the

gym. That's my life. It's like, well, actually you do have the rest of your day and the rest of your life to focus on. So like if you are giving that much to the gym and then you go home and you're just like dead on the couch or, you know, your family's like, you're kind of, you're missing them because you're so exhausted from giving too much into the gym. Like that's going to kind of fuck some things up too. And I've been there for sure where I wasn't present in the moment with my family because I was like, oh, I crushed it today. Nobody fucking fucking cares like nobody gives a goddamn like it just doesn't matter so that's something again like I said that's a little bit like a detour and what we were talking about but it's just something that came to my mind because yeah like I see dudes that

just want to that's all they want to do and it's like man like you have like some important people that are relying on you to be there for them yeah you're just trying to be better for what for yourself you know and yeah you do want to be able to like function afterwards and not just crash on the couch right yeah when you're on your own if you have the luxury to kind of just like spend all that time doing that that's fucking good and that's a great time to do it right time to do it but like you mentioned like when you do have other people that may want some of your attention and you're you're killing yourself so hard with your physical activity that you're a zombie outside of it. Can you be on top again? I mean, if you're too tired because you did too many tricep extensions to hold yourself up,

it's like, come on. I can't move my clavicle, babe. Can I just lie on my back, please? That's me right now, and I i'm loving it i'm fucking loving it i don't have to work all right like six months like still insanely your clavicle still bothering you i can't i can't hurt so far from this episode is the range thing i really like that you know what you're saying like if the program calls for x of x like give yourself a range i think that is very very helpful yeah you know because number one in the past when i've been

programmed for or i would follow lifts to a tee. But I've gone into the gym and I've been like, I did a deadlift that today. My body doesn't want to, man. But I'd still go for it. I'd be like, oh, got it. And I'd just be limping out, right? So you have to, you know, you're not a robot. You might sleep bad one night and something might go bad the day before. You're not a robot. You might sleep bad one night and something might go bad the day before.

You're not a robot. You might not always recover the same, so you have to be able to call it on certain days. Really good athletes know what they can do on a day-to-day basis. They've done it so long that they know today I can push. Today I need to take my foot off the gas. And if you can figure out that, you can learn that about yourself, you're going to be able to be doing this lifting thing for a long time. I was watching a video the other day. Dexter Jackson.

He was talking about how he just at a certain point in his career, he just stopped. I'm not telling people to stop training the barbells, but he just focused on doing machines and stuff because he noticed how his body was feeling. And he still was killing people i think he won masters olympia recently but he's the only guy from that generation that's not really broken that's still going and not broken because as time went by he paid attention to how his body felt and he adjusted his training he didn't just do something that he felt he needed to do because everybody else was doing it a lot of bodybuilders shitted on the way he trained doing mainly machines and machines and stuff you gotta train like ronnie coleman or dorian yates but you see how like even dorian yates has like

compliments of dexter jackson on the way he's trained and been like that's something that that that's it's good that you did that that's why you're here so long right yeah it's smart to uh to be able to audible you know to be able to and not be afraid to change up what you're doing. I know people, they are always kind of like pissy about the machines and stuff. But, I mean, think about, I mean, I guess you can hurt yourself on a machine. You can hurt yourself doing anything. But it's going to be less likely that you're going to get hurt on a machine. Usually, if you're going to use a machine, you're going to adhere to probably bodybuilding reps,

you know, three to four sets, 10 to 15 reps. And when you stay in those ranges, it's harder to get hurt. When listening to someone like Jay Cutler, you know, he tore his bicep and that was trying to heavy military press, trying to hike the weight up to the shoulders. That's actually fairly common injury. I've seen people hurt themselves doing heavy dumbbell or barbell preacher curls. I've seen people tear biceps on deadlifts. I've seen people tear pecs on bench pressing. I'm not saying to get rid of all these movements, but it might be something to consider. And even trying to get your legs to be bigger

can be tricky if you have a lot of knee pain. But are you just like going through crazy amounts of knee pain just to get your squats in? I don't know. I don't think that makes sense. I think what would make sense if you really love squatting is to try to address what you think is wrong with the knee. Try to at least make it better. Maybe you can't fix it completely yourself or maybe even with the help of somebody else, maybe you can't fix it entirely. But all the stuff that we share on this podcast about the type of shoes that you wear, about training your tibs and the knees over toes stuff, some of the Ben Patrick stuff that we've shared,

hopefully there's enough information out there to where you can fix your knee or you can fix your elbow and you can start to mold your training around what you have going on because how much do you really care about that squat? Like, is it that important? Like, are you holding on that much? Are you currently a competitive power lifter to where it's critical that you have a big squat? Can you also pause for a second and do different types of squats? Why not try to do a 100-pound dumbbell for sets of 10, work your way up to a 100-pound dumbbell

for sets of 10 on the slant board? You know, and if that starts to feel too easy, or even 50 pounds, but if anything starts to feel too easy, change up the rest interval, change up the amount of reps, change up the tempo. What if you go four seconds on the way down, four seconds on the way up?

You're going to be in a lot of trouble on that slant board, even probably with 50 pounds. So don't be afraid to get out of the box. Get out of the – I encourage you to get out of the box. Just stop trying to put yourself into that thing where that's the main thing that you're obsessed with when it's hurting you. And this is one thing to think about. It's cool that we have so many different things we can focus on. Like we're doing all these things to improve the way we breathe. We're doing all these things to improve our feet and our movement. Recently, I had an impact injury in jujitsu. I was doing something with somebody and then my body slammed on the ground. I heard this big crunch on my clavicle area. I heard it, right? I got up. Okay. The next

day or later on that day, I couldn't, I was coughing and it was hurting here in my clavicle. I noticed it was bruised, putting my arm over my head hurt, but I was like, well, okay, this sucks. I'm not going to be able to roll for a little bit. I'm not going to be able to do certain lifts, but there's a lot of things I can still work on because there's a lot of tools that we utilize. We use kettlebells. We do body weight work. We have stuff with cables. I still have jump rope stuff. I have all these things I can do with balance and body weight that I can still progress the things that I was doing while backing off of this a little bit to allow it to heal. But when it comes to, you know,

if all you do is just straight barbell work or you're only doing certain types of lifts, when this is gone, your workouts are gone. The training is gone. You don't have anything you can progress anymore. So that's why it's good to implement some different things into your training so that when something does happen, you have something you can continue to work on as it heals. You're not just out of the gym because that's what happens to a lot of people. They get injured. Then you see them a few years later.'m like what happened dude it's like i got this injury and i just stopped training yeah work smarter not harder but also harder and smarter you have a you have a you have a lot of tools like at this point now we have so many tools

that we can use uh and do in the gym that's continuing to help us to get into better shape and increase different capacities for movement and strength. Right? We're not just stuck with certain movements. That's why we're always progressing. There are certain things that you can do as well that you're not going to immediately even notice whether you're good or bad at it really. Like something like a med ball toss. even notice whether you're good or bad at it really like like something like a med ball toss like what's your previous marker for throwing a med ball as high up in the air as you possibly can you probably don't remember the last time you just tried to chuck one up in the air as high as you

can or to throw it backwards over your head as powerfully as you can uh to slam it into the ground there's there's less degrees of like measure. Like when you do a squat, if you're a 200 pound guy and you can't squat like double your body weight, then that's not very strong, right? Like we kind of, we have these markers. When you push or pull the sled and you do it forward and backward, you don't really know. Like, I guess I could see that maybe a person has the sled loaded up with lots of plates.

But even something like the tank, there's no like, okay, maybe it's on like level three and it's on a hard level. But my point here is that, as Andrew has pointed out before, with the weights not having any numbers on them, it's kind of hard to tell like do you care a ton about your cable crossover strength or do people really care a lot about their like lat pull down strength it's nice to see the weight go up and it's nice to see you know i handled i handled the stack you know occasionally on some stuff where you can do the stack um but a cable crossover is like a great example or even like of chest fly like you've really taken a lot of pride in trying to grab those 70s for chest flies and it just hurts and it's like ripping your shoulders apart. Or would you rather actually do the exercise with good form, get a good stretch and maybe have the 25s or the 30s or whatever your body can handle?

Yeah, because everybody clowns on like the quarter squat, right? Like, oh, I got a PR. But then, you know, people will see like you didn't go to death and all that shit or whatever your body can handle yeah because everybody clowns on like the quarter squat right like oh i got a pr but then you know people will see like you didn't go to death and all that shit or whatever but then with yeah well you're right like with the chest fly yeah you're just gonna end up pressing it you know if it's too much or you're just gonna fuck your shoulder up which i've done too many times yeah yeah i think with this conversation the big thing is just to shift your perspective on your goals in the gym. Like we've shifted. I know I've shifted in turn to like, okay, I'm improving on a lot of things, but I'm going to leave the gym feeling good for the rest of my day. I'm still going to make progress, but I'm going to make sure I leave the gym feeling good. Might be a little tired, but I'm going to feel good. to make sure i leave the gym feeling good might be a little tired but i'm going to feel good whereas in the past if i was doing certain things like okay this is my goal in the gym it doesn't matter how i feel after i need to get this done right so think about how you'll feel after and progress off of that um you know because there are certain times when we need to push

yourself i was mentioning like but jujitsu somebody's getting ready for a competition and let's say they're not a weekend warrior but somebody is getting ready for a competition and let's say they're not a weekend warrior, but they're getting ready for a competition and they're doing rounds and then they rest around. It's like, no, OK, maybe push yourself this round to go when you're tired. Push that, you know, push your cardio a bit. But you don't have to do that all the time if you're it's not something you're competing at. You know, I think you want to treat the gym like a classroom. You know, you want to like get something from it, learn something from it, have a take-home thing from it. I learned the coordination of being able to do this movement better.

I was able to flex my stomach better. I was able to engage my glutes better on this particular movement. I think there's just so many different ways you can go about your workouts. But I really like some of the stuff that we've moved into. But even when I was lifting heavier, these were still focuses I had. And I think it was something that helps keep me from getting too many injuries and it helped, uh, promote me being able to make progress for a long time to be able to hit some of the lifts that I wanted to hit because I wasn't going too hard. I wasn't going too heavy too often.

I would go heavy, and I would handle some weight, and I would occasionally mess up, and I'd occasionally go too hard. But every time I went too hard, I was like, ah, that was just too much. There was other days where I worked out, and I specifically remember, and I remember writing it down even and like I got stronger today like I went there I took what I what I um was able to gather for that particular day and I did I fucking grabbed it and I put it in my gym bag and I and I've held on to it I captured it I captured uh the intent and the meaning of the day and the meaning of the day wasn't to go in there and just destroy myself.

I did a lot. And Zuma, how did we get to this topic? Yeah. Our boy Marty was in discord and in the channel, I think it was the topic discussion channel in our discord. He asked us to talk about this. So yeah, you guys need to check out discord.

We have 15, 1560 members around there there's different channels where people are doing like accountability and talking about different stuff but there's also a channel where you guys can input what topics you're curious for us to talk about or you want us to delve into and we will take it from there and we appreciate that and we do appreciate it we do appreciate it but yeah there's a lot of people in there people are doing cool shit in that discord we're almost at 1,600 members. So click the link in the description to join us on Discord.

How does someone learn jiu-jitsu? I think obviously somebody could learn. If you just destroy someone every day, they're going to learn something. But if you just destroy them every day and you don't explain anything, like that's not a great way to learn, right? Like if you're – I mean you wouldn't even be able to go like 100% on me because you would just like break a bunch of stuff on me. But like if you went hard on me and just kept tapping me and you're like, Mark, you fucking suck. Like how am I going to be able to transition into like getting better with an intensity that I'm not prepared to like handle. Oh yeah. So like, you know, in most schools they have the instruction where like the teacher shows

a specific movement and you drill it with your partner and then you go into sparring. But when you're a white belt, at least for me, I didn't have a wrestling background or a grappling background. So grappling just didn't make sense. whenever i would roll with somebody the first things that you learn in jujitsu are escapes because you know you're you're having to escape things so someone will tap you on something and my thing was like if you're rolling with someone good they'll they'll kind of explain to you okay do this they'll slow things down and they'll talk to you absolutely especially upper belts they'll say hey i was able to get you in that because yeah you're a dumbass. When I was a white belt, because I was bigger, people did love just fucking my shit up.

But even so, even so, they'd always say, okay, well, when I get here on you, this is how you escape. So that's the thing. Your first things you learn aren't necessarily submissions. Like you'll learn to drill submissions, but you won't necessarily be able to get anybody in those for a while. You're going to be learning how to escape since you're always just going to be escaping things. And then some of your movement is going to get better where you'll start actually getting submissions here and there. And it just continues to evolve from there. You'll start – there are some roles where people are like, okay, let's just start in close guard or let's start with me on your side control and you escape.

So there's specific training. So you can drill specific things on how to get out of a back take, how to get out of side control, how to get out of a specific guard, right? There's so many ways to train it where it's just like, especially if you're like, you were like me and you didn't have a grappling background, it's like a different language. especially if you're like, you were like me and you didn't have a grappling background, it's like a different language. Um, but there comes a point where things click and then you just start, things start making sense.

Learn stuff in little chunks, little pieces. Yeah. It's over a long period of time. Things are slowed down and then they're sped up and you go, wait, what happened? Things are slowed down again and then they're sped back up and you go back

and forth and back and forth. Yeah. That's the way you learn football. That's the way you learn basketball. That's the way you learn anything. down again, and then they're sped back up. You go back and forth and back and forth. That's the way you learn football. That's the way you learn basketball. That's the way you learn anything. And again, just bringing it back into running. If you just look up something really simple like the Mathetone method, you'll see there's a lot of information out there about this kind of zone two cardio, how you can, through zone two cardio, you can stretch the heart and you can increase your aerobic capacity very, very easily. And when we're talking about lifting, we are tapping into different things.

We're more on the anaerobic side, and we are tapping into the central nervous system. But the body works very similar. This nervous system does need, like, a more intense feedback than you just going at 80%. It probably needs you to get sometimes closer to 90%, but how often you do that, that's going to be determined how long you've been training for and stuff like that. But for the most part, people that are newer, they don't even need to go into that. They don't even need to really worry about 90%. Stay in the 80% range. Don't overdo it. Don't push yourself too hard in the beginning. You're going to push yourself too hard anyway,

because you're not going to have a good barometer of like where you are in certain things. So that'll just naturally happen. When somebody tells you to, you know, hit up a bench workout at 80%, you might not even know where 80% is. And then you're like, fuck, man, I went way too heavy on that workout. All the reps were shitty or I missed some reps, I missed some sets, things like that. If you just kind of keep the simple principle in mind that I've shared many times is that your last rep or your last set should look like the first rep

of your first set. That should keep you in line to have a little bit of a governor on your training to where you're not overdoing it. Andrew, want to take us out of here, buddy? Yes. Thank you everybody for today's episode. Please drop us a comment down below. We would sincerely appreciate that. And please like and subscribe, all that good stuff. Turn on those bell notifications so you guys don't miss another upload. Follow the podcast at MB Power Project on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. My Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter is at IamAndrewZFumble. And Seema, where are you at?

And Seema's on Instagram and YouTube. And Seema Yen Yang on TikTok and Twitter. Mark. I'm at Mark Smelly Bell. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later. I know, me too.

There's a lot of allergies around here right now. Mm-hmm.