Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 383 - James Smith The “Gordon Ramsey of Fitness”

Episode Date: May 7, 2020

James Smith is an Australian best-selling author, personal trainer, TEDx speaker and fitness instructor. Regarded as the “Gordon Ramsey of Fitness”, James uses his online academy, The James Smith Academy, to help people across the globe reach their fitness goals and understand the psychological factors behind weight loss. Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Support the show by visiting our sponsors! ➢Perfect Keto: http://perfectketo.com/power25 Use Code "POWERPROJECT" for 25% off and free shipping on orders of $29! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Icon Meals: http://iconmeals.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" for 10% off ➢Sling Shot: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ 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 ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/ Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

Power Project crew, welcome to today's show. This episode was recorded on May 4th. So again, shout out to all our Star Wars fans. May the 4th be with you. I eventually will go back and re-watch all the movies. It's been so long, I don't even know which one's part one these days because the new ones came out, but they're prequels. It's all very confusing. However, I'm going to try to get back on that. But today we have an awesome guest and you actually have like a two for one. There was a little bit of confusion because he's down in Australia. So like the time stuff, like time change was a little bit off. So you guys get us for about half of the show. And then the second half with James, James is a bestselling author, a personal trainer,

and an online fitness instructor. And he hit us with a bunch of analogies that make so much sense. And he hit us with a bunch of analogies that make so much sense. I mean, we're talking about like from NASCAR to tracing paper. That'll all make sense soon. And just real quick, the tracing paper one makes so much sense. It was in regards to tracking your macros. You know, like a teacher might have their students use tracing paper to learn how to write certain words or draw certain things. And even though they have an idea how to do it without

it, the teacher will say, well, this is going to help you later when you are on your own. And it's so true because even for myself personally, a year ago, I wouldn't have any idea what a full cup of rice even looks like versus now I have a really good idea of what it looks like and I can scoop it out myself without having to actually get a cup you know, get a cup to level it out or like to weigh it out. So it made a lot of sense. And I think you guys are going to get a ton of value out of this episode. And when you do, please reach out to James on social media. His links will be down in the YouTube description and iTunes show notes.

Let them know what you guys think. Let them know you guys heard them here on our show. We would sincerely appreciate that, but I'm going to go ahead and just get out of your guys' way because this episode was really fun so ladies and gentlemen without further ado please enjoy this episode with james smith ka-chow you hit the right button i hit the button awesome i had some more of that bob at stake again last night cooked up a big old giant thing of that the wifey stole some from me and april stole some from me but i still was left with just enough to make it through but that's uh that's the steak i'm riding with right

now i know i keep changing my mind but i'm enjoying that one a lot and it's been a while like i've been digging that one for a while now we just had that one last week and yeah man i keep saying like it's the it's the most filling like it has the best macros it's the best diet steak i've ever had those burgers though oh yeah what'd you think so like i i i'm basic i don't have a grill or anything so i just did it on a frying pan and uh it was fucking amazing i ate five patties and my girlfriend ate one they're so good how we do it yeah i think uh frying it out of a pan reminds me of my childhood so much because that's all that's all we did you know my mom that's all she did she's fried them on the pan put at the time i thought way too much salt but now i'm like i think that was the perfect

amount of salt because it was delicious but But yeah, dude, those patties are something else though. They're so good. God, they're so good, man. I cook a lot of my stuff that way too, just in a good old pan. You know, sometimes every once in a while I use like a cast iron or something like that. But for the most part, I just don't really feel like using a grill sometimes. As lazy as that sounds, just rather just rather just you know it cooks up pretty easy especially like um and sema's got the air fryer you know like stuff like that's real

real easy not a lot of cleanup right it's you know the simpler the better whatever is going to keep you uh keep you on plan and on point yep absolutely the best beef on the planet the only thing better is to get it at 25% off, but also they ship straight to your door, so you don't have to deal with wearing a mask if your county now requires you to wear that everywhere you go. It's kind of silly, but I just don't want to deal with it, so I'm just going to get all my beef delivered straight to my door. You guys got to head over to piedmontese.com. That's P-I-E-d-m-o-n-t-e-s-e.com at checkout enter promo code power project for 25 off your order and if your order is 99 or more you get free two-day

shipping mark you said skillet like a like a cast iron skillet yeah right are the man we have two of them both uh they both got rusty and i i've been trying to like clean them off and get them it did rust just keeps coming back i've seasoned it like twice now i'm like is it really worth the hassle of having a freaking cast iron skillet yeah i don't i never had any issues with uh with rust on mine although andy ordered a new one recently because we didn't have one at the beach house. So she ordered a new one and she accidentally, she's done this before. She accidentally ordered one that is just absolutely gigantic. She's like, it weighs like 700 pounds.

She's like, this thing is huge. She did that one other time with a ladder. She's like, this thing is huge. She did that one other time with a ladder. I think she went to like buy like a ladder to, you know, just high enough to like, you know, reach the ceiling or whatever, you know. And she ended up buying some 11-foot ladder. I don't know if you guys have any idea how fucking gigantic that is, but it's huge. You know, you'd be able to go and like repair a basketball hoop with it, you know. Yeah.

They delivered this giant thing. I'm the only one that was home. So I'm like, yeah, put it in the garage. I have no idea what's going on. She's like, why would you think that I would want that ladder? I'm like, I don't know. I'm like, I didn't order it. She's like, but why did you sign

the paperwork from the guy dropping it off? I'm like, I don't know anything about it. I didn't know you ordered a ladder. I have no idea what's going on. So we had to ship it back. It was like 200 pounds. It was huge. Oh, my God.

Yeah, because imagine if she did really need it for some specific thing. You're like, there's nothing that we need that's going to require an 11-foot ladder. She's like, did you think I was getting up on the roof? I'm like, you never mentioned a ladder to me. I'm like, I don't recall a conversation. She's like, I told you. Women women they always pull that on you right i told you five times yeah i'm terrible with that when it comes to like dates of things i'm just like this is the first time i've heard you say that we're doing this it's like i literally told you last week

i'm like i thought you were joking there's nothing i could do about it now but yeah and then if you say you may have missed it you don't listen and then you're in a lot of trouble you're in a lot of trouble i think the best thing for us to do is just not to really talk it's not our heads yeah men out there just don't say anything play it safe play it safe the best you can you ate five you ate five burgers to her one burger now that's very nice i ate three burgers two double patty one single patty and she ate one burger yeah but the this next one she'll have more patties i'll give her two and i'll eat four so yeah they were really good though i i was curious though uh can you guys cook those in an air fryer like i don't know how

an air fried burger would be a burger yeah i believe so i think you'd be okay it probably would cause a lot of grease at the bottom which is like good and bad but might start smoking a little crazy not sure though yeah i cook wings in there and they're pretty fatty yeah i'll give it a shot today i'll give it a shot today wings are really good in that thing also andrew there are counties that are required like does sacramento do they require us to wear masks yet because i haven't heard anything like that i believe it started today i could be wrong but i think that's uh yeah i think it's uh Yeah, I don't know where, but here it's been in place. If you go into the grocery store, you have to have a mask.

In Davis, I don't know if it's required, but they're handing them out. When you go to walk in, they just hand them to you. So everyone's just putting them on, I believe. All right, time to use my mask. Yeah. Shoot. I think the more that we get back out to normal stuff the more we'll see that you know weird weird shit might as well i'm excited for uh today's

guest i've been following his stuff for quite some time james smith he uh he has a lot of like comedic type stuff that's online i think um maybe he would be similar to like a jordan syatt where he's a guy that's you know giving it to you straight he's giving you the facts giving you the cold hard information and he's trying to maybe dispel some myths that are out there on nutrition some of the stuff i find that's interesting is we've tried to talk to many different people on this podcast about differences between men and women. And normally we don't really hear trainers or coaches really say much about it. They're usually like, oh, the diet's a diet kind of thing. And obviously they point to hormones and there are obvious differences between men and women, but James's talk, his TED talk was primarily on the differences between male and female and how you should proceed moving forward with dietary recommendations and how they should factor in their menstrual cycles and all these, a lot of different things that you just wouldn't, that just, I'm not hearing a lot of people talk about.

I didn't know he had a TED Talk. I was seeing his YouTube channel, but I didn't see that TED Talk. How long ago was that? I think it was only like maybe six months ago or three months ago or something like that. But it was interesting because, you know, here he is a guy that goofs around all the time. And he just goes up and just gives like a straight presentation. I mean, he had some humor while he was up there, too. And he did a great job.

He did a great presentation. But I was like, oh, man, like this guy can do it either way. That was pretty cool. So it'll be exciting to try to get his thoughts on that. As far as when it comes to like men and women like training and stuff, I know definitely when I like when working with female athletes. Yeah, the menstrual cycles are pretty big deal. Sometimes it's really good to add some carbs in then because they just perform better at that point. So I am curious to see like what else he has to say about that because whenever we've had like people on some, some do go in,

but it's not often where I guess we have someone that goes in really deep on a lot of those differences. So he may be able to bring or shed some light onto that, which would be pretty cool. Yeah. And the strong sisters, they were talking, you know, quite a bit about the differences and, and how it should be managed. And his whole point was just this, is that like there's certain times of the month that they need more calories females may need more

calories and there's uh you know science there's science the scientific literature to back some of this up and he's like why not just anticipate that kind of before it happens and have a little surplus of food which it won't be a surplus of food because it will just be a maintenance of food, but it will prevent binging, you know, prevent because sometimes people struggle with binging or having cravings and things like that. So imagine if you knew when you were going to have those cycles happening, if you knew when these things were going to go on and you're like, all right, this week I'm going to eat a little bit more fruit. I'm going to eat, uh, an extra serving of steak. I'm going to eat. You just have a little bit extra food that week. And maybe you can, uh, get through everything without gaining weight. Because if you were to gain weight and you're trying to diet,

I'd imagine that make you feel like crap about yourself. And then you probably a vicious cycle of that going on as well. Yeah. And then also one more thing, this home workout video that you sent was pretty fricking hilarious. I mean, even myself, I've just been telling people try and get some movement in, you know, we've been talking about quarantine. That's all we got, man. That's all we got. Right. Let's let's do something. But he was just like, fuck that.

If you don't have weights, that's all we got, man. That's all we got. Right. Let's, let's do something. But he was just like, fuck that. If you don't have weights, that's all bullshit. His delivery was hilarious. So I want to talk to him about that too. That'd be interesting. I like how he put a spin on it though, too. You know, where he was like, well, you know, if you do have weights at home, he's like, those are like at least legit home gym workouts. He's just basically saying, you know, the body weight stuff is not, is not really going to cut it. But what we've been talking about here is that the body weight stuff is,

it's all that we, a lot of us have access to for the moment. And so why not do it? Why not embrace it? Why not just be like, screw it? We understand what he's saying because we love to lift weights. You know, we want to, we want to deadlift and squat and bench and all those kinds of things. But at the moment, not everybody has access to that. And so we're just doing what we can.

Yeah, I do think, though, like you can figure out a lot of – we talked about the calisthenics bros here, you know what I mean? You can figure out a lot of stuff to progress, you know, push-ups. If you can get yourself a pull-up bar. He was mentioning the trx thing in his video which i didn't even think about that's a great idea but even if you can get your hands on a few bands like a light band or something there's there's a ton of like different types of resistance stuff that you can do to make your home workouts difficult even if you didn't have

weights it'd be cool if you did. Did you guys catch the last dance? Did you catch the last two episodes? I wasn't able to watch it yesterday. No. Oh, man. It was good. It's good, man. It's real good.

Yeah. They got into the gambling, like the gray cloud that covered. Ooh. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It was really good, though. And I just like Jordan being like, what's it bothering anybody?

Like, I need this to get away. And then he talked about Phil Jackson. Phil Jackson knows that we needed some time off. Other rookie coaches probably want to practice today or something like that. It was really good. Oh, God. Yeah, you saw him kind of trying to justify it. Oh, yeah.

And he was like, it's not a big deal. He's like, I could stop at any moment. He's like, if I had a gambling problem, he was like it's not a big deal he's like i could stop at any moment he's like if i had a gambling problem he's like i wouldn't have anything he's like but i still have you know we wouldn't have any food we'd have any clothes and you're like no sorry mj like that's actually you're you're talking like an addict dude like you know there's something something went haywire somewhere along the lines. His competitiveness, I think, turned into that. I think that's what happened.

And I think that he maybe had a hard time deciphering between the two. But even as he talked about it more recently, at least so far in what we've seen, he still hasn't addressed it being problematic. But maybe he does later on in the video. But at the same time, I understand his stance, and I understand the stance to be defensive because everyone, for some reason, they're just waiting. They're just waiting for you to crash and burn, so they can be like, I told you so, I told you.

Told you he wasn't this, told you he wasn't that. They're just waiting. And so I think people are always waiting with Michael Jordan. I think people have been waiting for LeBron to screw up. People have been like watching everything that he does and paying attention. And they tried to say a bunch of stuff when he came out of high school that he took stuff early and things like, you know, they, they just, they try to throw everything at you that they can for whatever reason. I don't know why, you know, when people are real successful,

we're also looking for that other side. Like what's, what's jacked up about this guy. Yeah. And they, they, they showed the, uh, I don't know if it was just a piece or the entire, it was pretty short, but the, uh, the, the bit with Kobe Bryant. Um, so that was pretty, that hit the fields for sure, seeing him. But, you know, Kobe, he goes on to talk about other people saying, like, oh, Kobe, you could have took Jordan or, you know, you're better than Jordan. He's like, whoa.

He's like, what you guys don't understand is I don't have five rings without Jordan. Like, I am who I am because he is, you know, because of him. And he talked about how, like, at that first All-Star game, and it was really cool seeing Jordan and pretty much the whole Eastern Conference locker room being like, oh, that Laker kid or that Laker boy is going to try to take us all one-on-one. So like this whole All-Star team is talking about Kobe.

And so, you know, and then Kobe saying's saying like no i got mike i got mike so it was really cool and then that you know that game he he told him like yeah like you know whatever you need just give me a call and i guess they had a really close friendship but they just never were public about it and i'm like damn d like that's amazing like just hearing kobe say like no you guys don't understand like i'm nothing nothing without him. There's no way I'm better. It's like, like goodness. I think it was so far as probably my two favorite episodes, uh, because it's finally showing like how, how competitive Jordan was.

It's finally showing like how, uh, revengeful he was, how like vindictive he was. Like he just would not let anybody win with anything. You know, he was, he was bucking crazy. Basically he was, he was kind of crazy. A coach would a coach or a scout would say, Hey, this guy's a really good defender. And he took that to mean like this guy can play defense against you, Michael. Like he, he took that as 100% offensive. Like what? You think he's good on defense? No, no, this guy's garbage on defense. And I'm going to show you, I'm going to

make you eat those words. I'm going to make you not think that of this guy ever again, because I'm going to absolutely destroy him. And he went out there and did that on so many different occasions. And even when he was mad about gambling, he went out there and just kind of use that as fire. Like, I'm going to show you. And he just ended up wiping out the Knicks. I'm going to watch it. But did it show any dark sides of that? Like, did it go into how much money he may have spent in those days?

Or what exactly? It grazed over it slightly so far. I think they will talk about it more. grazed over it uh slightly so far i think they will talk about it more but it talked about how he michael was on a uh like a jury um for a guy who's super shady and how he gave this guy you know um fifty seven thousand dollars or something like that and jordan was like i just gave it to him as a loan but they think there was some sort of bet that happened there, but none of which, like so far, everything they uncovered, they haven't uncovered anything that's illegal. These are all just normal bets that you or I can make. These are all, you know, the stakes are higher because it's Michael Jordan.

He's got a lot of money. They talked about how he played on the plane and on the buses. He played poker and blackjack and those kinds of things. But again, uh, those aren't, those things aren't illegal. Um, he's not like betting on the games and, and, uh, and things like that. He's not, you know, not betting against his own interests. You know, he's not, you know, betting against the bulls and stuff, weird, weird things like that are betting for the bulls he's

just as simply um he's into like he's into like some uh playing cards and things like that and then he likes to make bets with people just like uh little kids do i bet you i can beat you to race across the street and if you put five dollars on that that's not illegal true yeah there were i don't know the guy's name but there was a guy that wrote a book like in the middle of all this stuff that broke out and he said how much like uh how many how many i don't know if it was i think it was millions that he and jordan had bet each other on golf games oh yeah there was a guy that came out and said that jordan owed him like around 1.5 million dollars yeah they played a lot of golf together and yeah There was a guy that came out and said that Jordan owed him like around $1.5 million. They played a lot of golf together. And yeah, there's a bunch of stuff like that.

But I would imagine there will be more that comes around the corner. Because I think we're getting close to timeline. I think it's close to when his dad dies. And from what I remember, that was like a nasty situation. But I don't really truly recall. But I think that's the timeline we're starting to get to close to that. I like how they got the two timelines and they're closing in on each other. I find that to be really fascinating and a unique way of doing a documentary for kind of,

kind of neat. You know what I was thinking one day I was, cause like I haven't seen these episodes, but I was thinking about Jordan and the gambling thing. And it's like, he just dominated people at basketball and he knew he was the absolute best. And I feel like gambling is the type of deal where you don't know if

you're going to win or lose, like you'll put up a lot, but it's risky. And I feel like deal where you don't know if you're going to win or lose. You'll put up a lot, but it's risky. And I feel like he, I don't know, I feel like he was chasing a little bit of risk there because you could lose your money. You could lose a lot of money. But in basketball, yeah, you can lose games here and there, although you still know you are absolutely better than everybody else.

I agree. I think that he wanted that little bit of, and I also think that he felt he was so competitive. I think he felt that he was like a lot better than a lot of people, not, not above people, but as a basketball player, I think that he felt he was better than, and I think he felt like he was a unique person. And I think that when he, when he thought of gambling, I think he thought that he could always win because he's competitive,

but you can't like, it doesn't change the odds. The, you know, if we flip a coin, the odds are 50, 50, basically. Right. I guess you can maybe figure out mathematically, if you flip a quarter, it might be different if you pick the same thing every time or something due to its weight or whatever, or something like that. But for the most part, you know what I mean? Like it's 50, 50, you know, just because you're better at something than me or I'm better at something than you doesn't change it. But I think that he felt like he was so strong mentally, I think that he felt he could impose his will on even that.

Yeah. And I think he oftentimes found out that wasn't true. Well, and the way he said earlier, you know, he was trying to justify things. He, you know, he's like, I know I'd never bet on the games. I only bet on myself. And when I heard that, I'm like, Whoa, what? But he's, when he's talking about like playing golf and stuff, he's like, I didn't bet on anything else.

I bet on myself. I'm like, okay, but you know, I don't know. It just, it's just, it's weird, right? Like nowadays, like you're not allowed to gamble on the planes anymore. Like teammates, they're not allowed to play like cards or anything and put money on it. Like, yeah, I can't remember which team, but somebody, you know, a fight broke out because so-and-so didn't pay up or something weird happened. Yeah, like on, you know, in the middle of the air. Look what happened with Pete Rose, you know.

Supposedly, he never gambled against his own team, but he gambled. rose you know supposedly he never gambled against his own team but he gambled and while i think he gambled while he was a coach uh which was the biggest thing that came into question um and i mean like he's been boycotted forever like he's he's one of the greatest baseball players of all time and uh it doesn't look like there's any signs of them ever allowing him into the Hall of Fame. Even he's like he's he's old. You know, the guy probably doesn't have a lot more years left on this planet. And you figure I I personally think that, look, if you if you're not harming other people and but I think they felt like they felt like he disgraced the game I think is what it's about. But look, does he deserve to be in, uh, the hall of fame for baseball? Yeah,

he sure does. You know? And I even, I even think, uh, like things with OJ, like they want to try to take those things back. It's like he was already in the hall of fame. He already won the Heisman. You can't take the high. There's nothing you can do. I mean fame he already won the heisman you can't take the high there's nothing you can do i mean they did take the heisman trophy they took it out of usc but he already won it it was about him being a football player you know it's like those things already they're in the past you know obviously if somebody murders somebody and they haven't been inducted in yet that kind of makes sense but it's kind of hard to make sense of it

after the fact i guess yeah it is always weird when they take things back like didn't i could be way off but didn't they do that to reggie bush also because like i thought he got paid or something like in college yeah i think yeah i think uh reggie bush is uh i think that those usc titles i think are maybe ill-admitted as well. But no one cares. It's so weird, right? Like, yeah, you're right. No one does care.

I'd imagine maybe there's somebody that lost that game that didn't amount to anything that was like, that should have been mine. There's a famous shot putter, and this kind of thing has happened more than once. Cannot remember his name, but there's a famous shot putter that received a gold medal at an airport. Because they met him at the airport. He finished second in the 1996 Olympics. And now it's 2006 or something like that. And they just had to schedule to meet him somewhere. So they met him at an airport on his way, uh, flying somewhere else. And they're

like, Hey, you actually won the gold medal because the first place guy tested positive, you know? And it's like, nah, how do you feel about that now? You know what I mean? Like, and what if you didn't throw your, if you threw your best and you got beat, like, let's say you threw a PR, let's say you threw your best ever and you got beat, it, let's say you threw a PR, let's say you threw your best ever and you got beat, it would be easier to be like, oh, cool. Like, that's awesome. Okay. I thought something was up with that guy because I'd never seen anybody throw like that before. But if you, if you, let's say you had a shit day, you know, and you, you got dq'd a bunch and you made one good throw and that was it and it was like not even close to your best i don't even know if you would it's a gold medal

but you didn't get to stand on the podium and all that and you didn't get you know what i mean you weren't acknowledged as a gold medal winner with all the other gold medal with all the other olympians at the time you ended up winning it at some airport strange right it would go ahead makes you wonder about like all the guys who got second and third and fourth to lance armstrong at all of the competitions that he demolished them at oh god that's rough yeah and especially for like olympians you know like that i don't know any like outside of like the dream team i can't name like an olympian you know like in my opinion like i i mean in my experience like they're not they don't really they i want to say that they they peak when they're on that podium so right so you take that experience away and it's like well shit now

nobody nobody really gets to see that you know nobody gets to see you on top of the world for that that makes sense yeah people know yeah people know their name for a small for a period of time like a carl lewis or michael johnson right there you go yeah normally those names allude you as soon as uh you uh, you know, unless, you know, unless you're a sports fan or something, but an interesting thing too with track and field is I've heard that, um, they've tried to give the metals, you know, they've tried to go downward to send downward with the metals to figure out who, you know, who was first place.

And they have even had to go into a different heat before because so many people tested positive. Oh my God. first place and they have even had to go into a different heat before because so many people tested positive oh my god what year do you know where this was in oh i don't know i don't know but it's like they had to go to like the sixth or seventh you know there's like about six people that run in a race you know and so they had to go to like five six and seven they had to go to the another heat to uh accredit somebody with a silk with a silver medal did you imagine and that happened a lot with uh with cycling you know um they were cycling more than just their bikes yeah it's funny i'm part of this group in Facebook and someone posted, I bet you are. And they're like, how many of you guys think Michael Jordan is like cycling some stuff or how like big Michael Jordan to use steroids? I'm like, come on. Okay. I mean, I get he could have, but as like, and so many people are like, yeah, definitely. He's a pro most, most likely. Yeah, for sure. I'm just like, come on, people. Really?

Most likely, yeah, for sure. I'm just like, come on, people. Really? It's just an interesting thing, right? Like it would be weird to hear that he did it because his progression, especially for his physique, looks great. Like it matches up well with, okay, he worked out really hard, you know, towards the middle of his career. And he went from, you know, 198 to like 215. Sounds fairly normal. You know, given the fact that it's Michael Jordan, you know, some of the best genetics probably ever, right? given the fact that he probably started to pay more attention to his nutrition and stuff. However, it's also one of the most competitive people ever.

So what's out of bounds to Michael Jordan? What's out of bounds to a Peyton Manning? You know what I mean? Like what's out of bounds to a Tom Brady? Like where do they draw the line? Tom Brady is a great example with the deflated footballs and all these different things that him, him and his team have been accused of. It just, it really,

it draws into question like, well, if you're that competitive on everything else, I don't know. And at the time and still, I don't even know if that's still maybe even still, I don't think the NBA has a policy. They used to not have a policy for a really long time when it came to performance enhancing drugs.

It just was not. It wasn't a thing. It was a thing earlier on with football, obviously. And so they had to do something about it. Baseball didn't know anything about it until Jose Canseco came along and started cranking out some home runs. And then, yeah, the rest of the leagues and stuff didn't even, they just didn't even really care about it. Football didn't start to implement any testing for steroids until,

I think, kind of closer to the late 80s. And they've already clearly been around for quite some time. Yeah, I mean, a lot of people say steroids saved baseball, you know, the home run race i mean i know they need more steroids in baseball again yeah dude we need another jose canseco we need more home runs yeah do we know if our guest uh maybe has the wrong time or something like that maybe it could be so i sent a couple out. One was to the wrong email address, but I have the corrected one and I have not got a response yet. So we got nothing. I've been texting and emailing. if it doesn't work out we will uh reconnect with him but uh i've only had a little bit of communication with him through some in through some instagram but very easy to get the times

mixed up i think he's out in england or something like that right yeah yeah do you think any sports would benefit from like the strongman treatment and i mean it like this like in strongman i mean you you know that you know those guys yeah they're definitely what do we know what are you insinuating right they very obviously use straps we get it where are you going yeah exactly they strap up right they use lots and lots of straps for their deadlifts and and just you know anyway well so what about if like we had some regulations for football or some regulations for baseball like you're allotted nests right i think uh i think baseball i don't think it would i can't envision it hurting anything in

in football i'm not 100 sure but i know that you know in mma the worry is that these guys are just a little extraordinary in terms of their strength and power and speed and and things like that but um i don't know if there's any validity to that i'm not sure but um because from a genetic standpoint there's people that can just throw a lot harder punches anyway. Right. Um, there's guys that are just more explosive anyway. There's guys are just stronger anyway.

Right. There's already massive discrepancies with how strong someone can be, um, in the middle weight class or something, let's say, or the heavyweight class. There's already massive discrepancies with how fast and how hard someone can hit. So I know that Joe Rogan has kind of made those statements in the past, but maybe it doesn't make sense, especially given the fact that these are skilled athletes. They're all going to go in there in shape all the time.

If they weren't skilled athletes and it was, and you rewound back to the original days of the UFC where I don't think they had much testing. And if you, and if you look at the pride fighting championships, there you go, there's a good example. So pride fighting championships, they didn't have any rules. And you had, you had guys like Mark Coleman and Ken Shamrock and those guys just just jacked, completely jacked. Mark Kerr, these guys like they looked they looked amazing. And even guys like Liddell and those guys, when they would go over there and when they fight overseas, they would put on 10, 15 pounds and they would, you know, they would just destroy each other. But the rules were also different in pride. You could hit somebody when they were down and stuff like that. And so it looked worse. It looked a lot more violent.

And so I think maybe that's where Rogan kind of got some of that, some of that evidence from. So I think that if the rules were the same and people took them, I don't really think it would hurt anything. people took them, I don't really think it would hurt anything. The only thing I guess muscle tears are, they clearly happen a lot more overall health of the athletes, mental health of the athletes, I would say is a huge factor. Because steroids, they just don't, they don't help with that. They don't assist. Like if you, if you, if you have a lot of downs and you take some steroids, you may be a little bit more even keel.

Like you may feel a little bit better about yourself. However, it's hard to gauge like how to take steroids to change how your mind is feeling, to change your mood, to kind your mood, to, um, you know, kind of give you more energy or make you feel better about yourself or those kinds of things. But it can help you with a better physique, which in turn, a lot of times helps people feel better, helps people be more substantial. Their shoulders are a little bigger. They're standing a little taller. They're a little stronger. They feel a little bit better. So it can help with a lot of those things. But I think my worry and concern in terms of like uh athletes especially athletes that are hitting each other uh would be their mental prowess and kind of like potential deterioration of that because uh they're

already kind of a bunch of animals smashing on each other as much as they possibly can right and maybe that would heighten that a little bit i don't know yeah i think it'd be a uh right and maybe that would heighten that a little bit i don't know yeah i think it'd be a uh it would set a set a president precedent and it would almost be like a rite of passage like you're uh you're you're a high school athlete you're getting ready to go to the pros like okay hey now it's time to start you know taking stuff because that's what it's going to take in order to get to the next level you know like you you could probably get by without it, but you know, everyone else is already doing it. So you might as well just start now.

So it kind of just becomes a part of the process and that would kind of, that would be a bummer. But at the same time, I mean, you know, baseball wouldn't be fun again. You think baseball has made a change since they've gotten more stringent with that?

I don't watch baseball. So did you guys notice like a difference in? I think if they didn't put a stop to it, you'd probably watch baseball. Really? I think my original understanding of it was that they gave baseball a good slap on the wrist. And they were like, nudge, nudge. Like we did this with the NFL. Like we did and they were like, nudge, nudge. Like, we did this with the NFL. Like, we did this with Vince McMahon.

Nudge, nudge. Like, hey, you guys should pay attention to this. This is a serious – these are serious allegations. You should do something about it. And they just never really did. They were very, like, I guess, like, ignorant to it, and they never did anything about it. And then, you know, once Canseco came out and started saying all his stuff, they just, they had no choice at that point to do something about it.

It's just, again, it's just one of these, um, it's people's like value assignment to baseball, you know, baseball is America's pastime. And so how dare you, how dare you try to be better and try to hit the ball further? It sounds kind of weird in a way. But again, the weird thing about baseball is originally when most of that started to kick up, they didn't have rules against it. So that's what makes it strange. They did have rules against amphetamines and some things like that. I forget exactly. I'm probably speaking a little bit out of turn a little bit, but they didn't have rules for PEDs and have rules

against steroids specifically for a while. So without a rule against it, then I would say that you have to kind of have it be like water under the bridge. But I think by the time Conseco started talking about bonds and then, you know, hitting those big home runs back when bonds was like breaking those records and stuff. I think at that time it was illegal,

but not long before that time it wasn't. And that's, I think that's how the whole thing got started in the first place. And I'm a big believer in the fact that I don't think Barry Bonds utilized performance-enhancing drugs his whole career. I think he just used them towards the end. And if you look at his physique and if you look at the kind of player that he was when he played, he wasn't smashing those home runs. when he played he wasn't smashing those home run he he still hit home runs all the time but he wasn't like a known home run hitter until later on in his career when he slowed down and he got he got bigger but you know as he was saying he's like i just been lifting which which was which was

uh the truth about baseball is people didn't used to lift in baseball and right with the timeline that Bonds talks about getting bigger is when it was more acceptable for those guys to lift and lift heavy and get big I wonder how many of those dudes like it's just a byproduct of lifting because man I know a lot of people who you wouldn't

expect them to be able to get like big like that but they just do like yeah it just happens yeah and it's such a bummer because i think you know barry bonds he comes from a family of athletes you know like he was already the best player that's my opinion the best player ever played before he even touched steroids so then when he started taking them yeah he became you know he became the home run champ he hit more home runs than anybody ever but it's like dude i'm positive he would have gotten there without not positive okay he would have had a really really good chance of getting there without steroids because of who he was is he in the hall of fame

i know so it's the weird thing about him is he um he didn't retire he didn't quit he didn't get kicked out of the league he just like he just like stopped he just stopped showing up and still to this day if he goes to the game people go crazy for him people love him um i went i went to a game like two or three years ago and I tapped one of his like security guys he was with. I was like, oh, I'd love for my son to get a picture with Barry if it's possible. He goes, yeah, man, he's cool with that. When he comes up the stairs, he's like, he'll snap a picture with him. And Barry just like turns around and he like, he does like a once over on me and i'm standing there in a tank top

and he's just he went whoop he just kept walking he's like i'm not taking a picture with that dude because it was like hot out and my veins were going everywhere and stuff and i was really just trying to get a picture but he he saw he saw me he just he gave me once over and was like nope and he just took off i was like oh shit and i think i was think I was with Jesse Burdick and Burdick's like, Burdick's like, Yup. He goes, I saw it too, man. I was like, I was like, it makes sense. I was like, it makes sense. If I was like, if I was in his position, I wouldn't want to be answering questions either. You know? Yeah. That's man. That's amazing.

Wait, did he avoid you just because you looked like just super big or something? I think so. I think so. He also just might have wanted to get out of there too. Legitimate. Oh my God. That's so funny. About Jordan, you know, like being just having so many people around him,

you know, after the games and in this next episode and see me, you're going to see that they they showcase a lot of this and he's sitting on the couch he's got a big old cigar and he's kind of saying like people kind of think they want to be me but he's like this is really hard he's like I got to just be in this room he's like it's just me just me and the cigar like that's it he's like I he's like people they want to autograph they want a picture and he's like people, they want to autograph, they want a picture. And he's like, I'm just, I'm at the end. I just, uh, I can't, I can't do it anymore. You know, I, I love it. I embrace it. I, I take on the challenge and they show him like he's impeccable. Like he's

never off. He's always well kept whenever he's supposed to be in a suit. He's in a suit whenever he's supposed to look, uh, like a million bucks. He looks like a million bucks whenever he's supposed to look like a basketball player. That's about ready to, you know, hit the game winning shot. He's, he's doing it, you know, whenever he's supposed to have an interview, whenever he's supposed to be on Oprah and like shift gears and be that person, anything that he's ordered to do, it's like, boom, he's right there. Like every time he does not miss. And one of the reporters talks about it.

She's like, people talk about being like Mike, but man, they got no idea. Like this guy was perfect on everything for decades on end. And she's like, it's just completely impossible for anybody to follow the blueprint that this guy was leading. And, yeah, you don't really think about it. I mean, little things like he's not totally bald, you know, but his head was always shaved. You don't see specks of hair on his head. You don't see his mustache or his beard or if he had a goatee at the time or had a mustache. You don't see that shit out of whack ever on him.

you don't see that shit out of whack ever on him like he was always he was always on point and you're like how is that possible with cameras on him all the time you know but that's who he was that's the way he was yeah no like that that's one thing with you know and i was thinking about this in like the first few episodes because you you got to see some clips of his dad and his dad apparently like owned a business right which and his dad was a shark dude his mom which okay let's be honest here for some reason his mom looks younger than him i mean did you guys did you guys notice that jordan's mom his mom is awesome his mom forces him to go to nike which is something you'll see in the next episode too okay i missed that it's so cool he's he wanted to like do something with like adidas or something like that she's like no she's like michael you need to listen to these people because they could

be giving you a good opportunity he's like i want to get she's like you're gonna get on that plane and you're gonna go listen to the people at nike and he's being a little he's like being a little bitch about it she's like you're gonna listen to them that's crazy but like not like his growth is what's really crazy too because you remember the clips when he was just like uh in college or first in the nba and he just sounds kind of like young but then it's like after a year his voice drops and then everything is just it's like every every single interview every everything he's just absolutely on point it's crazy like how fast he matured to that next level I don't even think he got caught ever really saying much of anything controversial. They pull up this one incident in the next episode that you'll see, but I just think they're searching for shit.

I just think they're just searching. They were mad because he didn't come out and publicly back one of these political figures. come out and publicly like back uh one of these political figures but um he just he's like i'm not i'm not political he's like i'm a basketball player that's all i cared about and he goes maybe selfishly and maybe you know maybe there's a flaw in that he's like that's what i did but he also points out too he's like you know um like the nike sales they talk about the nike sales how they just go absolutely insane. They thought they were going to sell like $3 million worth of shoes and they sold like $120 million or something like that in like a year. And he goes, you know, people need to not make any mistake about it.

He's like, the only reason why any of that worked was because I'm the greatest basketball player. Like I work really hard on the basketball court. Like that's what it's for. That's what it's about. It's not the commercials, although commercials were fun. It's gotta be the shoes and what Spike Lee and the ones with Larry Bird and McDonald's and they're all creative and they're fun and we all remember them and love them. But, um, none of that means anything if it's just some schmuck basketball player that's uh scoring eight points a game you know we we loved it because he scored 30 points a game you know and because he could dunk from the free throw line shit like that yeah he he talks about it like he's like

if i average two points a game we're not selling any damn shoes damn but that's that's the crazy thing too because it's like, I'm thinking, I'm trying to think of any other athletes since then. I mean, there's a lot of athletes that have had shoe deals, but I don't know any other athletes who have really been able to drive like shoes like Jordan has Kobe had his weird spaceship shoes. Shaq had his like a really affordable Shaq's right. I had a pair of those when I was a kid lebron has his lebrons

but those never really looked that great oh jackson really yeah bo jackson supposedly drove the nike sales by like a hundred percent when he came when he came along it just went really crazy which is really weird because he was mainly uh i mean he was football and baseball which doesn't really have shoes it has you know I guess like if you're on the turf and if you're on the turf and football and you got shoes. But other than that, both sports require you to wear cleats, you know, so that was that was different. And that was after that was after Jordan and after Nike was already elevated. So kind of even harder to, you know, get, get ahold of, uh, of people buying stuff, but like probably because Jordan made it so popular, it was probably,

you know what I mean? He drew so much attention to Nike as a brand that people knew Nike was the go to thing. And now they got, you know, now they got Bo Jackson, they got Jordan, they got Bo Jackson. And, uh, I think, and then the commercials they did with Bo Jacksonson too you know the bo knows bo and all that kind of stuff like they were just at that point they're just having fun and just demolishing all the other shoe companies yeah i would say uh alan iverson with rebar yeah yeah okay i i've been wanting to get the uh the i don't even know which ones are called now the

question or the answer, whatever they are. It was ones I had in high school. They're so dope. They're so comfortable, but they're like ridiculously priced now. Yeah, Allen Iverson and Shaq, right? Like I think, but yeah, there really wasn't a lot of, I mean, there were some other people like Larry Bird. It was, you know, Larry Bird and Magic johnson and uh you know a bunch of other guys

had like shoe deals but they had deals with the shoe companies they weren't they weren't like the thing like jordan was the thing you know and then he had his own shoe um yeah it was just this really this really interesting circumstances and um also interesting how jordan was so good so early on and um i think that that's something that is forgotten about sometimes i guess like if you look at like a bones jones right you know bones jones was was really really good early on and he no one's really been able to figure him out in the ring uh quite yet and i don't know if anybody will be able to but jordan enjoyed so much success so fast the nike deal and those shoes the the his famous uh air jordan's he's wearing them when he's a rookie you know yeah i noticed that rookie and like. And like, now, if you were,

now if you were to wear that stuff as a rookie, you'd be kind of discredited. They'd be like, Oh, come on. Who's this fucking guy. You know what I mean? He'd be like, ah, another, another guy with a shoe deal. Like, you're going great. You know, but he did it at a time when it wasn't there. It just was, there wasn't a blueprint for it. so yeah it's just uh the way everything kind of came together the way everything clicked together was was just amazing yeah i remember myself pair of jordans they're so expensive though man i know but still they're also uncomfortable and jordan talks about that in the uh in the documentary he's like my feet were bleeding

because he was wearing old jordans he's like my feet were bleeding because he was wearing old jordans he's like my feet are killing me he even mentions his after the game his feet were hurting so bad i was like that's not a great endorsement oh shit yeah the closest that i got was a uh a pair of sb dunks that look similar to like the the ones but i know what you're talking about and man yeah those were hell uncomfortable these are painful i don't like it so we're air force high tops but like every kid had to have a pair of those i don't yeah like when i was in middle school i had those white air forces just because everyone had them but they were they were super uncomfortable walking it's funny because like dudes will make fun of or not make fun of but

like they'll say chicks will wear high heels and they're so uncomfortable, but sneaker heads will do that shit every day. Oh yeah. A lot of those shoes are terrible. Or when, uh, when I was in junior high or yeah, it was a little bit of high school to like stuffing your shoes to make the tongues look like they're puffier.

I don't know if hopefully that died down by time you were of age to make the tip. You would, you would know exactly what I'm talking about. If as soon as I said stuffing of the shoes it was it was a really dumb thing and when i was in school he didn't put the uh laces in all the way like he would just let the whole like tongue of the shoe like just kind of be popped out of the popped out of your shoe and like your shoes would be like coming off you were trying to walk down the hallway it was stupid yeah we kind of did that

too we kind of did that too yeah and that's definitely made like uh i think the spider verse movie i think that's was that the one where he's always it's a it's a choice or it's a preference or something like that yeah yeah because i know jasmine says it now too i'm like like dude your shoes laces are all dirty now you got a time so it's a preference i'm like attitude do you notice how high up jordan has his pants and shorts and stuff like that when you were talking about like no flaws or anything it's like and you said it over text we're like yeah can we get these guys some some suits that fit because like holy shit yeah pippin pippin's the worst like his stuff really doesn't fit at all i think jordan's stuff is like meant to be doesn't fit at all. I think Jordan's stuff is meant to be long,

and it's still tapered and stuff. It wasn't tapered enough. They weren't paying Scotty enough money, I don't think, for him to get the right suit. Yeah, he definitely looked like he was still wearing his dad's suit as a kid. I never understood how these guys were so wealthy, but their suits just looked so bad. And I understand the style wasn't like fit like it is nowadays.

But even so, it's just so bad. It might not have even existed. I don't know. Like it just. Yeah, maybe Taylor's didn't like Taylor to big and Magic Johnson back then. He still looked good, though. You'll see. You'll see in the in the in the thing.

He's he's like full suit and tie he's all like old and shit and he's he's he's hilarious not wanting to cuss and like in front of the cameras and stuff so well reserved that's a cool documentary man i'm glad they're i'm glad they're running it i you know jordan has kind of disappeared for so long i haven't seen really much of anything on him except for a little stuff when uh kobe died i think you know he came out and started talking a little bit but before that the only thing i've seen of him is like the memes of him crying he he did he did try to come back to basketball a little bit with like the wizards and wizards and stuff like that right and he was like a coach i think basketball a little bit with like the wizards and wizards and stuff like that right and

he was like a coach i think for a little bit maybe like a gm for a little bit but then he just just gone yeah i know what the rumors are oh go ahead no i'll just say like it is upsetting that there's a whole generation that knows michael jordan because of the meme not because of the player what are you gonna say no like the the um the rumor is is that you remember when lebron won with the calves in 2016 right and he came back after the calves were up 3-1 like that's i mean after golden state was up 3-1 like that's never been done before and everyone was like oh my god he's the greatest oh my god well the rumor is that like jordan after that happened and after

all that started circulating where people started saying lebron's the greatest it was at that point where he was like let's release that footage let's just start this whole thing let's get this documentary rolling because he was pissed about that so that's just like if that's like legit again that goes back to how how just competitive that this guy is you know he wants to stay at that pinnacle he wants everyone to remember that he is the goat he's like hold on a second we have proof that i'm the best ever right okay roll those tapes back yeah i wouldn't be surprised oh man that's definitely hard to deny that he's not the best, especially after seeing this stuff.

I mean, he's just – it's rare to see somebody have so many highlights. They're like, oh, and then this happened. Then he just goes on some tear and he scores like 50 points. And then the next game he scores 40 points. The next game he scores 50 again. Then they're in another championship. And then this guy said this to him. Then he was pissed at that guy. and so he shut the guy down he stole the ball from the entire

game it was like it was crazy stuff where you're like just every time and time again he just proves himself as uh as being the best over and over again yeah and then you know just i i don't want to say it's like petty stuff but when he was talking about the finals against the Suns, and he's like, yeah, Kraus thought that Dan Marley was the next best thing. He thought he was such a great player. He could play defense. He's like, so I made it a point to make it known that that guy could not stop me. And in my head, I'm just like, yeah, who would think that Marley would ever get close?

But maybe in that time, like the whole thing with Kukoc, like, holy shit, like, oh, damn it, Encima, you can't not watch these, okay? Like, I just, I'm gonna, like, spoil everything right now for you, but just, yeah, just all-time, like, crazy competitor. It's amazing. I don't know what this podcast, this episode is going to be called if i you can name it right now for me i know but one thing i was gonna have you guys have you guys heard about the uh michael jordan satan um kind of correlations no michael six letters jordan six letters two three two times three is six jordan has six rings on the chicago bulls like people people are thinking that jordan like has something to do with satan

did you so i've been getting sent that documentary left and right uh like in out of the fuck something about the shadows i don't know if you watched it i said i haven't watched i sent it to you guys but it has a lot of stuff to do with that like uh satanists in the way the media has like made us they're teaching us without us knowing type of thing but it's showing like some celebrities how they got famous because they like they've uh submitted to like satanism and stuff like that and like so now there's like little cues here and there in like katie perry's videos like showing some weird shit going on and it's because you know she you know agreed to those terms and now she became

super famous whereas before she was like a christian singer that nobody cared about and now all of a sudden she's like you know one of the biggest pop stars ever so yeah that's crazy that wasn't in there but man illuminati yeah everything it's that they're the thing they are they them they keep getting us they keep sticking it to us yeah and that uh see you're gonna see this also but uh on um jordan's range rover he had uh his personal license plates it was just two tray i don't know why but i thought that was like the sickest thing ever two tray 23 so two three oh yeah okay okay you'll see it it's dope i don't know. We lost Mark.

Oh, you lost me? There you are. Now you're back. I just hit a weird button. Maybe it was just my button. My internet went out. You muted me. Maybe. Man, you son of a bitch. Yeah. What else we got?

I gotta hit a workout later today. What should I do? Hmm. Well, you have some, you got some weights, right? In your garage.

But, uh, let him see me give you a killer workout. He, he killed us when he, when, when you guys are both here. Yeah.

All right. Just message me what you got and I'll write something for you and I'll send it to you. Okay. There you go. Look at that. That was easy. How are your clients holding up in SEMA? Are people staying steady with their workouts?

Are they kind of frustrated? Everyone's doing pretty good. I pretty much just told everyone to at least get themselves a pair of dumbbells or just something, whatever they could get. So everyone has at least a pair of dumbbells. Some people have a kettlebell and some dumbbells and I've programmed around that. So it's pretty much smooth sailing. And there are a few people that in this time and my, got my guy,

Alexander, Eric, Tony, like they've legit there, they've built or they're building Eric's buying a rope rack, but Alexander and Tony, they're building squat racks in their garage. So, yeah. Oh, yeah. a rogue rack but alexander and tony they're building squat racks in their garage so yeah oh hello hello all right it's my orientation all right am i should i be answering portrait there you go that's better there you go okay is that is that right is that okay for the camera yeah it looks great looks good all right excellent um how How are we doing? What time is it where you guys are? It is almost 4 p.m.

Oh, okay. So we're at a nice time. Thank God. I don't feel bad that anyone's staying awake or anything like that. What time is it over there? We're just about 8 a.m. 9 a.m., sorry. Sorry, I don't know what bloody time it is.

Yeah, so it's firstly in the morning. So it's great. Yeah. Great to have you on the show today. I got to watch your, your Ted talk and I really enjoyed it first of all. But secondly, I was surprised because a lot of your stuff is comedic.

A lot of your stuff is really simplified. When I watched it on Instagram, you're, you're making a lot of jokes and have A lot of your stuff is really simplified. When I watched on Instagram, you're making a lot of jokes and have a lot of fun, but this was kind of a straight up presentation. And you talked about the differences between men and women when it comes to caloric intake. So I wanted to focus in on that quite a bit for today because we've had a lot of guests on the show today, or we've had a lot of guests on the show in the past, and they haven't really said a whole lot about differences in male and female when it comes to caloric intake. So it's one of these topics that I found rather fascinating in the few years since I've gone

online where I've always treated women as almost smaller men as a trainer there was there was no distinct no distinguishing them when I was younger uh in my first years as a PT that was just almost how you approached it you're like okay the compounds are going to be very similar between training a man and a woman the accessory is probably quite a lot different squat deadlift RDL is going to remain the same and then there were times i was challenged in my first two years of training where someone was like how does my cycle affect my training how does it affect this and being a male trainer i just kind of was a bit stumped and i almost felt like i shouldn't know i was like i'm a guy why you know this sorry this is out of my

remit you know same if someone asked me a complex crossfit question i'm like wrong man wrong person i can't do it myself and i ended up going down this kind of black hole of information menstrual cycle training differences and i was quite shocked that first of all none of the real governing bodies educate us on this and But first of all, none of the real governing bodies educate us on this. And I found that women and men have a very difficult or different time dieting, not just the different physiologies they go through a menstrual cycle, but even the simplicities of burning calories. And it's something that I suppose we take for granted as men that we can expend on a lot of calories uh every week uh in training in

a shorter period of time and if you're in a relationship or you have a partner and you both go out and have the same meal and of the same calorie value we never think for a second that it's going to take different amounts of times to burn that exact same amount of calories and raising that awareness can make a lot of people feel better because i think that women may feel inferior to men when it comes to losing fats but without reason and that's something that has kind of always been a powerful point to get across if we can give them that reason and tell them why it can make them feel a lot a lot better about it yeah we hear it all the time a lot of times uh we'll we'll hear um a say, they'll complain that a female will be very upset.

She'll say, my husband, he just stopped drinking soda and he lost 10 pounds. And she's like, I stopped drinking soda and didn't notice the change. So why are some of these things the case? Is it because of the menstrual cycle? Is it because of hormones? Is it because of body composition makeup or just a number of those types of things going on? From my standpoint, I think it's a mixture. First of which, if we look at society and having an hour for your lunch break, for instance, if you're going to use that opportunity to expend calories or train the amount of time, you're not given more time for lunch if you're a to use that opportunity to expend calories or train, the amount of time, you're not given more time for lunch if you're a female.

And the same with after work. If you're sharing a lift to the gym or you have the same quota, you've got to be home for dinner at 7.30, let's say. You finish work at 5.30. We're all given the same finite period of time. So even with very similar training regimes, it's going to take a little bit longer for women to burn calories. But not only that, from a physiological standpoint, a lot of women struggle to diet for four weeks of every month.

And especially for one week at least, and sometimes two, women should consider picking their time to diet and picking their times not to and especially when they're in the second half of the menstrual cycle after ovulation where they have increases in hunger they'll be kicking against the wind trying to restrict calories and i think as long as we can get that across and say to say to people look first two weeks good time to restrict calories last two weeks maybe a better time to stick to maintenance uh that they can feel a little bit better about the longer periods it takes to diet. As far as the menstrual cycle is concerned, I know it ranges from client to client, but do you ever find that some clients perform better during their menstrual cycle? Because I've worked with someone, it's not something that happens a lot, but oddly enough, there are some times where it's like, they feel even better for some reason. And I don't know if that's something you notice on an individual basis. A lot of, uh, what, what I've kind of experienced

is anecdotal. So similar to that, where some people do often completely go against the grain and, uh, I've never, I've never sent my female clients for bloods or anything but the women who report having polycystic ovary syndrome are often the ones that definitely go against the rules where they don't seem to uh feel so hindered in their luteal phase they uh keep a more equal performance throughout and although they might have other issues that arise it's quite interesting that they don't suffer with the pms quite so bad and um like you say there are people that kind of break the rule some people go yeah that's me and other people go do you know what i'm actually fine in that later part and uh yeah i've definitely come across that and i say to them don't don't voice that too much because you're going to annoy a lot of other women so along with like uh you

said you know certain times of the month you will you should do a restricted or a deficit versus maintenance calories what about like food types like do you recommend a certain type of food and not really necessarily concerned about calories so personally with the approach that i use uh I am very much out of the coaching methodology of just giving people calories and protein and let them decide with their carbohydrate and fat intake. I think across the board, I like training people that only like to aim for two things rather than having a precise macronutrient split. I know that some personality traits don't prefer that. When it comes to perhaps going to maintenance my my go-to is about programming pieces of fruit so that i think

the average amount of uh calories that they require women require through their luteal phase is about 300 a day and calling an average piece of fruit 100 calories i find it a lot easier to say look three pieces of fruit more a day on top of your normal calories even if that's at your maintenance amount whatever it is and i seem to think that also can play into the the urges that people have for carbohydrates or for sugary foods we can kind of hit the nail on their head with that during that later part but i'm never getting too caught up about it and i know some coaches do but i think if you're going to start playing around with different physiologies i I still like to keep it quite simple and intentionally reductive because my demographic are relatively new to training and tracking.

And I find that fitness people love having their carbohydrates and their fats split, but the demographic that I'm training it's very much usually just calories and protein how are you enjoying your uh body weight exercises at home do you know what i i'm i can imagine right now that i'm surrounded by people that all appreciate my standpoint on this where if you have equipment at home you've got a suspension trainer or a trx you can make a workout. But when I see people jumping around to time or to workouts, and suddenly every trainer, I'm not sure if this is the same in America, but in the UK, everyone, free workout, join me.

We're going to do 300 crunches and loads of jump squats. For me, I've actually started running, which is probably one of the things that I've been portrayed as anti-running. I'm not anti-running. I'm just pro-resistance training. And you get to the point where you're so strongly trying to say to people, resistance training is your way forward. High-protein diet resistance training, you're not going to go back. You do become anti-hit and anti-running. But yeah, I've become a full-on Strava wanker. I've even

got a Garmin now to time my running times. I'm ashamed to say it out loud, but that's where I'm at the moment. Do you think, uh, maybe it was a little problematic how connected people were to the gym or do you think that's a healthy thing? I mean, for people not to be able for people to, you know, be taken out of gyms just for a handful of weeks really hasn't been that long. Do you think people should be able to handle this a little easier? Or are you finding it a pain in the ass yourself? Sounds like you just switched to some running. That doesn't sound like it's that big of a deal to you.

For me, the mentality I've developed, and I'm certainly not the best trained in this live here, but going to the gym is a mental thing as well where you pack your bag you time your pre-workout if you're having one you go there that hour there is not for emails it's not for anything apart from your working working sets rest get in get out and if you don't accomplish all the sets you want it kind of eats away at you and the same way that when we select cafes to go to can I have a coffee I'll do my emails I'm going to work on this strategy, do this presentation. We've had all avenues taken away from us, which means that we all suddenly have to accomplish all these things from home. And it's the adapting part that's quite tough. People could say in the same

sense, we're reliant on our gyms as we're reliant on our coffee shops. So it's one of those things that I think in the future, if this is going to be a recurring theme with COVID and other viral disease, we do need to potentially have a little box at home with equipment that we can use to resistance train. And we should have a coffee machine at home so we can get work done. But yeah, I think we've all certainly realized how dependent we are on these things and how important it's not just gym is for our mental health but having that routine because leaving the house getting away from your kids even getting away from your friends is quite a really important part of everyday routine in life is there anything you're enjoying about running that's different from

lifting or do you hate it i can get my step count done in an impressive time. So I bought a PlayStation. As soon as the country got locked down, I was like, that's it, call of duty. I'm getting a PlayStation. And to go out for an hour and come back and hit my 10,000 steps, I feel accomplished. So even though I'm there at 4pm playing PlayStation, I'm laying there going, yeah, but don't worry, I've hit my steps today. So running is the best way to get your steps done in a short period of time. Have you always had a step goal for yourself? I think like a step goal is one of the coolest things where people can get more, I guess, build a habit of being less sedentary without having to like exercise, just building that habit. And have you always had a step goal for yourself or did you develop that because of quarantine?

I think it's something that I really like to establish into my clients. And then I felt like a bit of a fraud giving out the information. I'm sure we're all guilty of not taking our own advice, especially with training, where we're like, you need to dial back your training to your client. And then you realize that you're over trained and you're sore and you're doing way too much volume. So after a while, I was like, you know what, James, you should take your own advice here. But in a bid where I'm not anti-cardio, but I am pro-step count, I am pro-people being active. And rather than saying to people, you must park really far away from the shops, you must take the stairs, you must do this, you give them a step count to work towards and suddenly they do it

themselves. And it sounds pretty bad to treat your clients like like children but i've done that for years where you know if you're in a room with a child and you're like do not go through that door they'll do it they'll go through it straight away but if you kind of give them the freedom with a with an over pinning principle if it's just 10 000 steps a day they will become proactive they will walk more and without the word cardio coming into, they're almost upping their own anyway. And it is a bit different to athletes, to normal people. But then again, I found some of my clients do go out jogging on their own prerogative

if I set them a step count. But for me, it's one of those things that, especially when dieting, when reducing calories, people then realize, they go, James has told me my steps are going to reduce when I cut my calories. And then I realize it myself. Some days I'm like,

oh, I'm knackered. I'm well-trained. Oh, look, I've done 3,000 steps. I'm like, oh my God, I'm going to have to go for a walk. But I'm very fortunate to be in Sydney where we've got amazing coastals

and nice places to go for walks. But with people at the moment, they can work their hardest to get their steps up in their house. And even cleaning, I find if I make sure I've got my iPhone on me or my Garmin watch, Um, but with people at the moment, they can, they can work their hardest to get their steps up in their house. And even cleaning, I find if I make sure I've got my iPhone on me or my Garmin watch when I potter around the house, folding clothes and get step count on. What are some other, uh, like, I guess, basic habits that you think people should have as far as their fitness is concerned, something simple like getting steps in on, like a lot

of us don't think about that. So what are some other basic things that you really don't think a lot of people are thinking about when it does come to keeping body fat off losing fat etc uh sleep for me is a huge uh it's something i've only really realized in the last few years how important sleep is and being a busy personal trainer on the floor i was having a coffee at four or five p.m. And it never really occurred to me why I couldn't fall asleep. I set myself quite strict bedtimes.

I've even developed a bit of sleep stress where if I know I'm not going to get adequate sleep, it's already in my head for the next day. Hold on, I'm going to have to dial back and probably not accomplish as much as before. But with my clients now, sleep is a huge underpinning principle. And in periods where I know that my sleep is going to be disrupted,

I almost give myself the break away from training or seeking progressive fat loss. Or whenever I'm cutting weight for a comp, I train Brazilian jiu-jitsu, I will have to go sober for three or four weeks before to ensure that my sleep is good enough to ensure that i can actually cut my calories because without the sleep i can't cut calories and without giving up alcohol i can't get the adequate sleep so it's kind of this knock-on effect that goes throughout and again i find that if i focus on my sleep then my alcohol intake is reduced as a byproduct whereas if someone said don't drink alcohol

they're like now it's part of my life i need my gin and tonics and my beers. So I think sleep-like steps is that kind of overpinning principle that creates good habits underneath. You have a lot of people misunderstand your message sometimes because you are joking around a lot and you're having a lot of fun. Are people like sometimes thinking that you're serious? Like there's one video where you show like the best exercise to burn fat, but you continually after every exercise you show, you mentioned like eat less and move more. I think every single time are some people are like, wait,

those aren't the best exercises. Like are people misunderstanding your message a lot of times and, and kind of getting confused even though you're just having a good time. I think, yeah, it is. You can be very easily misunderstood and a lot of people can not quite get the approach that you're going with. But I think that in the industry we're in,

we don't need 100% of people to, almost we don't need 100% of people to enjoy our message. And the sarcasm there will bring a lot of enjoyment to a lot of other people that do understand it. But I intentionally like to be polarizing. And I've said this openly before that if I was to be sarcastic or give someone incredibly tough love, the people who I repel, I don't think would make good clients. And I'd only end up refunding them a few weeks down the line when they're getting annoyed with the way it works and you kind of bring the people that are going to be good clients closer and even if it means

that i have several thousand also sarcastic clients they will enjoy it whereas the people that don't understand the sarcasm i'm just going to grind on them eventually and i'm just going to annoy them and uh yeah it's it's almost a way for me to to wean people out of the funnel before they make it to the stage of being a client. And similar, if you bring this into a dating context, on a first or second date, sometimes you drop some hints about your intentions to gauge your reaction. And then sometimes they'll be like, I'm looking for something serious. And you're like, I'm so glad we've clarified this so early on in the first date so that you don't end up going into a second. So I see these videos being very much like that.

So people are well aware of what kind of message I'm putting across because if they don't like mine, there are plenty of other people that they'll get on with. How long did you like, I guess, did it take you to get comfortable having that personality out in terms of fitness or did you always have this when you're on the floor as a personal trainer because for some people i guess it would be scary for them to just put themselves out the way you have and obviously it's been well received but were you i guess uncomfortable with sharing yourself like that or never really do you know what i'm i'm actually a lot more reserved in real

life um i'm a lot more uh kind of when people meet me in real life they're like oh you're a lot nicer than what i would think and i have to explain to people that there are so many personal trainers online bidding for the same area of space it's a busy room everyone's talking to each other and being facetious and crass. And, uh, you know, sometimes controversial, very often controversial is a bid to get attention. I'm attention seeking in essence. And at first I'm almost sure that no one really understands the motive until I've taken them away from social media. And then when I run my email marketing campaigns or podcasts or longer format YouTube videos,

suddenly I think people don't understand it and they go, okay, he was doing that to get my attention because Instagram, you have got a very short period of time to capture people. And if you are too slow or too boring, they may never see you again. So, uh,

I think after a while people start to understand that. And then if they enjoy the longer format stuff, they can do it, the email marketing stuff. I don't even swear on my online academy. So some people join, they're like, James, where's all the swearing? I was like, yeah, I'm kind of using that at the entry point to get people in.

For me, it worked because I'm very much like that when I've had too many copies. And when I'm wound up or riled up by something, I do become very sweary. But I do see a lot of trainers trying to do that without any of the other kind of things. They just become a sweary PT. And even if I do call someone fat or I call someone out, if people watch carefully, I present the solution at the same time. And a lot of people end up just shaming people. You're a fucking fat.

If you don't join my program, you're going to be fat forever. And I'm like, whoa, that's not quite what I'm doing. So yeah, it goes in all different ways. But for me, it's all about getting people away from social media. Do you personally draw some lines in between the different types of media? You can kind of say like, okay, this is what my IG is for. This is what my YouTube is for. This is what my email marketing is for. Because each one has on Instagram, it may fall flat. So do you have lines that you've drawn to pick where you're going to put stuff? Absolutely. So Facebook was my initial platform. I started it in 2014. And a couple of years later, my average video length was about three minutes. And that was perfect for me. Because I could get

a point across, I could discuss it, have a bit of a longer format. And then about two, three years ago, there was a big algorithm change where Facebook no longer was a place for brands. In a bid to save the platform, it became a lot more family-orientated. So all personal trainers were wiped off Facebook.

Pretty much our engagement was slashed. And you would find out about your cousin's birthday a lot more than you would a brand. So I was kind of forced to go to Instagram at this point. And Instagram only gave you 60 seconds. So I then have my Facebook stuff that was a lot more longer format, and my Instagram stuff, which was a lot shorter. And having a shorter time period to get your point across, probably made me a little bit more unpopular and a lot more polarizing because I then had to be a bit more of a dickhead to fit it into 60 seconds um then when instagram tv came across it kind of saved me a bit because i could then be more facebooky across both both

platforms uh both of which are very crowded rooms to me where people are one finger swipe away from you going quiet you disappearing they're not. They're looking for something else. TikTok is an interesting one because although in your first post, you could get a million views, you're never really going to be on brand. On TikTok, you're probably going to be doing something stupid or something viral, and you're diluting your brand heavily in a bid to get likes, shares, and engagement, which is where our ego kind to kind of takes over so i don't take that too seriously but podcasting they're driving they're commuting you have the

ability you don't have to worry about them getting their phone out driving down the motorway and switching you off um youtube i haven't really conquered too much yet email marketing is where you can really have a conversation with people and the way i like to run my email marketing is where you can really have a conversation with people. And the way I like to run my email marketing is not to have any brands, not to have any images, not to have too much going on so it looks like a message from someone. It looks like their friend is messaging them or an SMS text or whatever it is. And having a different persona throughout all of those, you can get people where they are.

Because email marketing, I feel someone's there with their laptop, with their wallet and their phone right next to them. If you try and sell to someone too fast on social media, they've got their phone in one hand and they're probably on the move. They're not going to get their wallet out and their credit card details out there. With podcasts, having a vocal call to action, send them to a website rather than something too complex. Yeah, I think it's really important to have different almost attitudes in every social media platform to understand what that person's doing at each point. Are you trying to, like, quote-unquote, sell just information a lot of times with a lot of these posts, a lot of this stuff that you're putting out there,

whether it be a YouTube video or an email campaign? You're not really necessarily trying to sell a product, although maybe in the end, that's the goal. But at first, you're probably just mainly selling information. Is that right? Yeah, I think there have been so many light bulb moments through my training career. And I remember the first time someone told me a Romanian deadlift didn't have to touch the floor. My life changed forever. I was like, this makes sense. I finally realized it was about going to hamstring range motion.

And I'll never forget when I read that on someone's post. And I was like, every post has to be like this. Because I will never forget who made that post, how I felt after I watched it and understood it. So I was like, my content is going to be like this. And hopefully people are going to be hungry for more of those. And then it's about getting them on to, as a person training, I'm sure all of us have repeated the same conversation so many times.

So for me, it was about putting those into video format, telling someone that adding their macros equals their calories, telling someone a Romanian deadlift doesn't have to touch the floor, telling someone that going too low in the leg press could hurt their lower back. So I recorded all deadlift doesn't have to touch the floor. Telling someone that going too low in the leg press could hurt their lower back. So I recorded all of those and put them all in a place so that I could almost give these people

these aha moments and go, if you want more, this is the place to go. And it's not a hard sell because people that do want it will go and people that don't won't. And I like that sales approach because as a personal trainer, you're very much like,

if you want my services, you must buy. And so when we all create a system or a product that doesn't require quite the severity of commitment, it makes it easier to run a business, I feel. And then ultimately, is there a sale? Is there a product that you have where you sell online coaching or something to that effect? Yes. I used to run one-to-one online coaching,

which was one editable PDF program and WhatsApp for desktop. And everyone really underestimates the power of chatting to a client on WhatsApp and sending them a program. And at the time I would refer them to YouTube videos for exercise tutorials. And you can charge a lot of money, any coaches working. If you have WhatsApp on your laptop, which makes it very quick to type, and you have an editable PDF that you can rotate for every four or six weeks, you can charge a lot of money for that. Because rather than say you charge a hundred US dollars an hour, you could charge someone a

hundred US dollars for the week and just chat to them for six seven minutes every day and you give the same amount of time that you can work remote and i found that if i created an app that had a calorie calculator on it uh videos for exercises and videos for nutrition concepts i could sell that so i sell a membership to a academy app it's called the james smith academy and that works out about maybe 12 US dollars a month. So people can access all of that for a very low amount of, without costing too much. So for me,

yeah, everything points towards that. All of what I do is about that. And even the book that I wrote, not a diet book was also a way of directing people or making them hungry for more information to go to that. So yeah, the sale at the end of it is about a community of online personal training.

With some of your posts, you know, kind of trying to get a rise out of people to get attention. Do you get a lot of backlash out of that? And if you do, how do you handle it? Yeah, I do. And I usually rub a lot of people the wrong way. But the people I seem to rub the wrong way but the people i seem to rub the wrong way are other personal trainers online and the people that i rile up are the people that are never going to do business with me so uh vegans practitioners uh and you know

fasting zealots these are people that are never going to join my academy. And so many personal trainers are worried about what other personal trainers think. And I have to say to them, that is the only person that's never going to do business with you. So it's intentional who I decide to rile up. And in my book, I did this chapter where I said, imagine if one of you guys invited me to a barbecue in, uh, let's say California. And I turn up and one of your friends is talking about NASCAR and I'm a British guy.

And I stand there and I go, do you know what? I think NASCAR is rubbish. Hopefully we're not too South in America at this point. There's not too many people from that. Half of the group are going to be like, who the hell is this ticket? Who's this guy you've brought along?

Mark, why have you brought this fucking English knob? But the other half could go, do you know what? I hate NASCAR as well. I don't think it's a fun sport. They're just driving around in a circle. And then what I can do by having that polarizing opinion is having half of the people really like me and agree

and half of them really hating me. But that's better than me just sitting there and nodding, going, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think it's important that we do rub some people up the wrong way because without doing that, we can't get the other half to remember our name when we leave the barbecue. That analogy is perfect.

And I think you do a good job of just trying to simplify a lot of stuff because I think we try to make it so complicated. You mentioned keto. You mentioned people that are into fasting and vegan diets and these people that are trying to make – they try to make nutrition into something really a lot more than it is. than it is. And nutrition, while it's hard to practice because the foods taste so good, it makes it difficult for us to have the restraint that we need, especially if you're somebody who over a period of time has gotten used to those foods. You become accustomed to those foods. They end up being bad habits. Maybe you wake up in the middle of the night and eat and all these different kinds of things that can happen because you can't stop thinking about these foods. But nutrition is fairly simple.

And I think what you were pointing to earlier about, I think you were saying you have people track calories and protein. Is that right? And then you kind of let them make a decision. Do you want to run off of carbohydrates or do you want to more, you know, quote unquote run off of fats? You allow people to make that choice? Yeah. And I think that giving them the freedom makes their life a lot easier. Certainly my personality was when, if I overshot my carbohydrates by five grams, which is negligible, in my head, it was like going to work with a bed unmade. It was one of those things I was like, this is playing on me all day.

with the bed unmade. It was one of those things I was like, this is playing on me all day. Whereas if someone's got pizza for lunch, they're probably going to go home and eat three plain chicken breasts, but they've made it work. Even though it's kind of a dysfunctional finish to the day, they can still hit their targets. And I think that gives them the freedom. And then I know a lot of the scientific papers show no real difference in fat loss when protein is matched. But but ultimately i feel that some people have different urges and i can't sit there and be like yeah you're from your dna says you're from the mediterranean let's go a little bit more high on the fats oh you're from an african origin let's make sure you're more carbohydrate i think it's better to let people pick for themselves

do you um as your clients are progressing uh do you suggest that they continue tracking after their goal because like you know i feel like a lot of people tracking is can be a very cool tool to get you to understand what's in food but there should be a point where you learn to ditch the scale and you learn to just eat things habitually where it's tracking doesn't have to be a big part of your life now how do you feel about that And then how would you have people maybe approach that goal? So that's a really good question. Intuitive eaters, we know them in the internet. Guys, listen to your body.

They're not intuitive because they tracked for so long before. They're guys, I'm like, Dave, you're preaching intuitive eating, but you've competed 17 times. You know, the macronutrient breakdown of that slice of salmon to the T. So I think that everyone that wants to eat intuitively should do tracking first. And I often compare it to tracing paper. When we're at school, we're given the tracing paper and we're like, what the hell? Why we got this?

I'm not an idiot. And the teacher just has to say, use this because when we we take it away you're going to be a lot more accurate and if your writing goes to shit right get the tracing paper back in with the lines on whatever it is and i always try and sell it as that approach and i know that further down the line my clientele is just going to stop anyway and then if they revert back to old habits they'll bring it back in again um it's not something that i say to people you do this for life i say to them you do this until your habits improve enough to the point you're self-proficient um me i i typically only track in the weeks running up to a jiu-jitsu comp uh mostly for accountability and i'm very open with that i'm very open that to my clients because they like you say they develop the habits to do it without the tracking some people do have negative effects with trackings and there is this terrible stigma but uh here's

another analogy that i use uh do you guys have or have you heard of marmite or vegemite yeah yeah yeah you got that and if i was to leave like a tub of Marmite on the side, people that love it say nothing. They don't say anything. It's just something you put on toast. But people that hate it, they're like, oh my God, you don't eat Marmite or Vegemite, do you? That stuff is disgusting. That stuff tastes like shit.

What? And they're there, they're like, oh my God, oh my God. And suddenly we're getting this biased standpoint of only hearing about people that have bad experiences. And I think that that has really skewed and shit on the industry of tracking and managing calories because as soon as you say it out loud they're like oh my friend felicia had a mental breakdown tracking her calories and you're like yeah but then there were 10 000 people who remained silent who got ready for their comps made weight for their weightlifting competition and made weight

for their jiu-jitsu comps, absolutely fine. But they're not the ones that kind of spare up to the top of a conversation. I would imagine with a lot of your clients, um, once they stop tracking it, it may be because they have kind of gone off the rails, right? Like who's really gonna continuously day after day track pizza and Ben and Jerry's, right? So a lot of times it's probably showing disorder in their life or disorder in

their diet. They, they kind of, uh, they lost control for a few days cause they're still new to it. Right. So that, you know, they can always go back. They could always utilize the calorie counting to kind of get them back on track. Yeah. And I think that, uh, even having many and large cycles of this where someone might go do you know what i'm only going to track weekdays and i'm going to create enough damage control

to enjoy my weekend or it might be really dieting the first week of the month or the last week of the month when they don't have enough money to go out and eat meals or spend loads of money so then they can utilize that tool in the periods they need and then relax in other times. And I think that if you do it for long enough, you can actually get a lot of peace in your life by tracking. And, I mean, we all eat the same 15, 20 meals. Save that as a meal on MyFitnessPal. No one's really like the time one, the time excuse.

It doesn't really pay off. And I think that as long as people can implement it when they need and stop using it when they need, yeah, they can then have their cake and eat it so to speak and then have their tracking time do you personally utilize a ketogenic diet yourself or for your clients do you personally utilize any fasting for yourself or for your clients So ketogenic, uh, never. I just, I won't do that. Uh, I mean, if someone out there was on my program and they were like, I love it, I wouldn't convert them. I'd say, okay, if you love it, that's cool. But on the whole, I've got to speak to 80% of the audience and want it to stick as far as fasting. Now, I think that fasting has benefits for fat loss especially but i hate the purported

benefits of its magical properties and even uh you know i feel like a lot of zealots are now diluting what was a great initiative to to reduce body fat at the moment i'm actually uh practicing the fasting when there's ramadan one of my friends is a. So I'm, I'm eating one meal a day, which is something I've never actually done before, but I'm doing it to get a feel for it. And I'm losing weight. I've lost about three kilograms through one meal a day. So I'm getting some perspective on it. But a lot of the times I will try these things for my clients, but I'll report back that I've, I've also trained for the least I've trained in the last couple of weeks where I'm eating the least. And I think that,'ll always say to people, you know, ketogenic diet, probably not going to do

that because the amount of time it takes to get into ketosis, but I've done fasting for one day, two days, three days, and I've never really felt the benefit that would make me want to promote it to my clientele. Yeah. And I think, you know, along, along the lines of fasting, something that people should be just be aware of, there's a lot of give and take from the human body. And if you, if you take too much, if you take away too much, your body remembers that shit and your body's like, Hey, you're going to have to pay up. So I think a lot of times people are like, Oh man, it's working. I lost some weight. They, they, they kind of point to that, but were you able to keep the weight off? Were you able to stay on your diet? A lot of times I have friends and I know a lot of people that four, five, six days down the road,

they find themselves going off the rails of their diet and being worse than they were before. So it's something to really just to be conscious of. I think mild amount of fasting I think can be really effective though. amount of fasting, I think, can be really effective though. Yes, certainly. I say to my clientele, I'm like, look, maybe giving up breakfast is a great initiative. Let's keep Saturday in there and let's put Wednesday in there. Go out for a breakfast with your friends on Saturday. We might not have a croissant on a Wednesday, just so it doesn't feel like you never have breakfast. And especially like you just said, I looked at my training load this week, lowest it's been in a month. My mood has been vastly affected between 1 and 5 p.m. I'm useless.

So today I said to myself, I'm going to do this podcast. I've had two coffees where I usually have one. And then I'm going out for a run because I know this afternoon I'm going to be a hungry asshole. So, yeah, and everyone will be like, they'll just keep hearing me say I've lost three kilograms. He lost three kilograms. He lost three. And then I said, but hold on guys, I was an asshole. I was thinking about food all the time. My training load decreased. Uh, you know, and like you say that everyone's only proclaiming the benefits, keto, the water weight that people lose. Um, but then again, you know, although you get a scale victory, your breath stinks, your performance goes down the pan. But yeah, it's an interesting one with human psychology, I suppose, where people want a system, don't they?

Everyone wants a system. Yeah. Do you think you could adapt and get better with fasting over time? Yeah, I think it's certainly like an attitude shift. Again, it's more so with elite athletes, say you've got a powerlifter, a crossfitter, and a bodybuilder. The amount of discipline across these personality traits, they will do what you tell them. Hey, Dave, you've got a comp coming up.

I want to try this fasting protocol to get you a bit leaner. He will do it. But my clientele, I always say I've got a comp coming up. I want to try this fasting protocol to get you a bit leaner. He will do it. But my clientele, I always say I've got Linda, who lives in Norwich. She's got two kids making loads of fucking noise. She's got a husband who's demanding all the time, moaning about his shirts. Linda's like, iron your own fucking shirts before you go to work, right?

I've got this kind of clientele in my head of who it is. And telling these people that it's a good idea not to eat for a few days, they will look at me and just think, you are not my personal trainer. You're not the right person for me. So with my anti-keto and anti-fasting kind of message is with them in mind. Whereas if I had people that were a lot more performance orientated

or physique orientated, I could potentially sell a slightly different solution to them. So I think that, you know, uh, being anti the fasting thing, I think for other people, it's great. Um, but for the clientele I have in mind, they'd run a mile. If I said to them, don't eat for a whole day. When I was tracking, um, I found it really, really helpful to input all my macros at the beginning of the day and then just kind of follow that throughout the day.

It took a lot of the anxiety away from everything because I knew what I was going to eat. I knew I was going to hit my macros. I knew I was going to have a good day. You had mentioned something earlier about like, you know, like kind of like almost like some other methods that you can use to help like ease some of the tracking stuff. Do you have any other like almost like hacks to help people get into tracking? I have this policy where it's log it before you eat it. Just log it before you eat it. And I say to them, I'm not asking for a lot. Just log it first. And even if they're going to overshoot

their calories, that's fine. You want to have an ice cream, that's fine. But log it before you eat it. Because the amount of times that I've gone to log something, I'm about to eat it, about to put it in the microwave and I think, ah, that's not really going to be very good. And yesterday, I had McDonald's last night

and I haven't had a Big Mac in ages. I haven't had a Big Mac in ages. I'm having my first meal of the day and I looked and then I thought to myself, how many calories in a cheeseburger? And a cheeseburger only had 300 calories and the mac was about 580 and i thought that's probably only a little bit less enjoyment for half the calories and it completely changed what i ordered

and that one to me is is probably the easiest one just log it before you do it uh when i'm in shops i'm going around and i see a waffle i'm like like, oh, waffle. Then I scan it, 400 calories, Belgian waffle. And I think, hmm, do I want this more than I want a cheeseburger? And suddenly I have all of these things, whereas if I was to log it all in first part of the day, rice, chicken, turkey mince, or whatever it is. But personally, I like to do it. It's when I have the craving come up, I can then act upon it. Everyone listening in America is going to be like, this PT is uh eating waffles and McDonald's what's going on

how about let me ask you this because when you when you help people approach the whole cravings thing um are there any things that you have people do like when cravings come up I mean or do you generally say if it fits go ahead and let yourself have some of that or is there anything you have people do like when cravings come up i mean or do you generally say if it fits go ahead and let yourself have some of that or is there anything you have them divert to instead of like going for those cravings for example like we talk about you know utilizing protein to satiate yourself so that if that does happen you know you're not as inclined to go binge right do you have anything when it comes to that that's the main way that i sell a high protein diet because i'm like if you hit this your hunger is going to be managed a lot better uh your

chances of binging can be reduced and people are like oh great and i always sell them on that um rather than having cheat days or cheat meals i don't even like the terminology i say look if you want to have a pizza tonight have the pizza because if you call it a cheat it cheat, it's not going to reduce the calories. You're not going to get a third off your calories for calling it something different. You could call your pizza Chuck Norris, and it's not going to change the calorie amount that's in it. So I say to them, just have it. And if you want to break from your diet, just do it. If it overshoots your calories, fine. And I say to them, I'd rather you do that. But i have to be say to them be smart if you have a large pizza don't expect to eat half just order a small pizza i know through

economies of scale it's going to be a worse deal the amount of dollars you spend per slice but if you put half the pizza away once you've cooked it you're mental that's what i say to them there's no way that's happening if you're going to buy ice cream don't buy the whole tub and scan in half because you're not going to eat half. If you put half of the ice cream back in the freezer and don't eat it, you're mental. So I say I set them up for that. And then I try saying to them, like, in my book as well, I say, look,

that Domino's pizza is this many calories. You could have two bagels every day for the next week with whatever topping on you want. So I'm always trying to say to say to them like your craving is this but would you rather have bagels for a week would you rather have this and i i do like spreading them out across the week from a performance standpoint where if they have something hedonic every day it's not going to hinder their training they can have it straight after or before a workout whereas if someone sits down and has like a huge pizza, they're not going to move for the rest of the day.

So as far as cravings, I say that give in to them. Obviously don't give in to them too much because that's where you've just come from. But I feel that human beings amplify emotions if they suppress them, which is why I've really hated the false positivity during COVID

where like some days I've just moaned. I've woken up. I was like, today's fucking shit. I'm hating today. Today is rubbish, but don't worry. I'm going to get back on track tomorrow. Someone's like, oh, you're so negative. I was like, no, I'm being real because there are people out there that are being falsely positive and by suppressing their real emotions about what's going on in the world, they're amplifying them deep down. So yeah, I always say to clients on that standpoint, like, you know, always thinking about pizza because that's ultimately what's going to happen

when you say to yourself that you can't have it. I think about pizza 24 hours a day, I think. You were talking about the waffle. I kind of like, I liked what you said there about the waffle where, you know, you're just thinking to yourself, is it worth it? Like, yes, we can all agree waffles are delicious. We can agree that pizza is delicious. Is it worth it?

Is it towards your goals? You can probably interject some facts and you can probably interject some maybe goals that you have, even if they're kind of more long term goals. You can at least kind of pump some sense into it. There's a great book that's been out for a long time. It's called Eat This, Not That. And it kind of pushes you towards other types of meals. It has different meal options within restaurants. So if you're at McDonald's and you're going to have the Big Mac, it might advise you to just make some small changes. But I agree with that a lot. Is it something that you really love? Like, do you really love cake? Do you really love a brownie? Like, if you really love it, then maybe you should go for it. But I think that is a good

question to ask yourself. Is it worth it? Does it taste that good? Is it going to satisfy what you were looking for in the first place? Because a lot of times it doesn't even do that. It just kind of opens up the floodgates for you to want to eat more and more junk. So make sure, you know, I would say make sure that it's worth it. And I like what you said about, you know, if I eat the waffle, then I can't also have the cheeseburger later. Or if you're going to, then it just needs to be accounted for in some ways, right? Yeah. I say to people, I don't care how bad the damage is just note it the same way that when you spend money you can't afford

it's going to be there in the bank it's not just going to disappear and not exist um but like you say with the swaps getting people as well to you know even if they're not that experienced as a trainer and they're not burning that many calories i'll say to them what about some cereal and some skin milk and i'll be like this is mainly carbohydrates if you have this before your workout you're gonna fucking kill it you have it after your workout you're gonna replenish your muscles and they start to feel like an athlete they feel like they've just come off the tour de france and they're eating food to their goal and whereas they might eat a cake and go this has got no part in fitness. You can say to people, look, these are hedonic foods like bagels and be like, this is high in carbohydrates. It's got some protein in it.

It's not got that many fats. And suddenly they're like, yeah, I'm kicking with the wind. I'm doing what my trainers told me to. I'm getting my bagel and I'm training. And I think that we can alleviate a lot of guilt with people by doing these swaps. And suddenly they feel like they're accomplishing a lot whilst getting into the urges that they have which is very powerful yeah mark would uh he would have bench bagels he would have just a bunch of bagels before he'd go on a big bench session and he said it makes him feel like superman i love bagels that's one of my weaknesses i've been clean on the bagel front for actually not only four days but um again

when i'm when i'm looking to make a some days i feel like having a big sandwich and i'll always put it in a bagel because if i get a loaf of bread i'll eat the whole thing and uh yeah getting people to eat cereal after a workout stuff like that the calories actually aren't that bad a box of lucky charms small one it's just over a thousand calories. So if you get some skim milk in that, again, what a way to see out an evening. And the worst thing is you don't feel bad after doing cereal or bagels. You feel a bit full, but you don't feel too guilty or too disgusting from it. How long have you been doing jujitsu for? Two years, two and a half years i used to play rugby and um although i enjoyed it you don't really develop much and one of the best things about jujitsu to me is the humility that's

involved that anyone can come along who looks like an office manager and they will kick the living daylights out of me without leaving a mark on me, without hurting me. It almost feels like controlled drowning. And come the other side of it, I think it's one of the best sports in the world, and it's growing in America a hell of a lot. Anyone here do jiu-jitsu at all? Yeah, and Seema does jiu-jitsu. I got a question for you on that. When you said in rugby you didn't feel like there was much development,

what's the difference between that and jiu-jitsu? In rugby, we turn up, we play our games, we'll have our strengths and weaknesses. And you're playing off the playbook, similar to American football, where athletes do their kind of, you know, sprints, SAQ, fitness off the field, and it shows up in the sport. But with jujitsuitsu i study in my spare time uh i download tutorials i'm watching videos i'm trying to understand things and when i turn up to training sometimes even my professor will be like where'd you learn that where'd you get that from uh and that side of the things the understanding side of things crazy similar to when a lot of us develop with our clients we get a type 1 diabetic we go go away, we start understanding hypers, hypers and all these things. And you bring it back to your client and suddenly

you've gone away in your spare time. No one's made you do it. But, um, I, I love that now. And suddenly I see something and I'm like, that doesn't quite make sense. And I go away and I study a bit more on it and then I can add it to my training. I can add it to my, um, kind of weapons belt of what I want to do. And we all have systems. In the same way that in training, we all have our system where we have a client onboarding. How's your squat? What are we going to do?

Some people raise heels. Some people go mobility. Nothing's wrong, but we all have our own approach. And with that sport, it certainly keeps that element of our brain ticking over, where if we're not progressing, we feel like we're moving backwards. I like what you said there. Cause I, I would think, imagine that rugby is a little bit like American football where you're a certain size, you're a certain weight, you have certain dimensions, you have certain attributes, therefore you play a certain position.

And you don't really learn a lot. We just, we watched it a lot on TV as kids and the coach kind of just assumes, you know, you know, you know what you're doing and they do show you stuff, but nothing like jujitsu where there's so many different drills and there's so many different holds and there's so many different techniques. There's so many different styles. There's so many different ways to get somebody into a specific position that you do have a great opportunity to grow. So I like that a lot. It's cool. How's it over there? Like, cool. How is it over there? Like,

Oh, how's it over there? Are you guys able to start rolling yet or no? Are they still closed? Gyms are still closed here and they will be for quite some time, even though the, we've only got less than a thousand active cases in Australia across the country.

So other 25 million people, we're still under 100 deaths. So I think as far as countries going back, Australia will be one of the first, but they're going to be very careful not to get a spike. We don't have gyms open yet, but I'll show you this now.

This might work. I have jiu-jitsu mats in my house here. So I've got some clothes folded there. So I've set up my own jiu-jitsu gym in my house here so i've got some clothes folded there so i've set up my own uh jiu-jitsu gym in here so that i can do drilling with friends that come around we're allowed two friends around now um but yeah it's it's going to be pretty locked off for the time being so i'm going to be trying to drill as much as i can and running as much as i can so that when those mats do open i can hunt some purple belts. God, that looks beautiful.

And Joe, the matting isn't that expensive. And for any jiu-jitsu athletes out there, it's nice just to have your feet on it because your toes become very weak when you don't train for a while. People seem to forget how much

mobility you need in your feet and your ankles and yeah it's very nice for the sake of probably a few hundred dollars make a little home gym uh i'll keep this in the future when i have kids people seem to worry about how to keep their kids there just get to teach them jujitsu and just leave them alone for a few hours every day and there'll be a few there'll be a few black eyes and a few missing teeth. You broke the lens. Yeah, yeah, absolutely fine. No heel hooks, you're only seven years old.

Hey, thank you so much for your time today. We really appreciate you coming on the show. Get yourself some bagels and let people know where they can find you. I will be at James Smith, which I thank you to my mom and dad for giving me such a common name, uh, on social media. I'm down as James Smith PT,

just in case people didn't know. Um, and for anything else, James Smith, academy.com. Thank you very much for having me. I've thoroughly enjoyed this morning. Um,

it's been great to chat to you guys. Have a great rest of your day. Awesome. Thanks a lot, man. Cheers. Thank you. Thank you very much.

See ya. Bagels. Awesome dude, man. Sick, man. man he came in at the he came swooping in yeah yeah i was a little like oh this is a cool conversation regardless and then i was like there he is so that was cool i loved all the uh the different analogies that he had the tracing paper man oh my god i'm stealing that that's a james smith original but that's such a good um that's such a good way to explain like what tracking could be for some people they want to take it up it gives you a good idea like in the back of my head i always visual yeah i always like have an idea what's in a lot of these foods and the calories in these foods i'm eating just because i've tracked them for so long yeah even. Even like today, just a simple cup of rice, like before I tracked,

I still track today, but like right now I was like, Oh, I got, you know, I got to eat before this podcast. So I'm not going to pull out the cup. I'm not going to measure.

I'm not going to wait. I'm like, I'm just going to do it. But like, I can look at it and be like, that's about a cup. Like a year ago, I've been like,

Oh, that's maybe, I don't know, half a, half a spoonful or something like i would have been way off and now it's like okay i'm pretty close so yeah i think that the tracing analogy is really really good i had a thing of monster mash um last night and a little bit earlier today and i was like i'm glad that i don't track because this is a lot it was this

giant pile i just had no idea how much it was. I just, I knew the bowl was kind of small, so I intentionally like overfilled it. But I was like, that's, that's being fat. I'm like, this is a lot of food, but I'm glad I don't count because this has got to be, you know, 1500 calories or 1200 calories or something. Do you have to use the bathroom again, by the way?

No, I'm good. You're good? I had three, three good ones today. or something. Do you have to use the bathroom again, by the way? No, I'm good. You're good? I had three good ones today. I was going to say, speaking of Monster Mash, how cool was it to see the Rhino on ESPN? I know, that was great. I was like, whoa, this is cool.

That was weird. The whole thing was weird. That whole setup they had and everything was different. But just doing the best they absolutely could with it. And it was amazing to see Thor hit that lift. And he looks like he did it with a little extra oomph in there. Honestly, it was hilarious to me, but it probably wasn't that funny to anybody else. There is the commentator guy that was there in Thor's gym.

And every single time he's like, let's run ref he's like let's run that back again let's run that back again let's run let me see that one more time from a different angle he just kept saying it the same way that every time i just cracked up yeah super uh super monotone every single time and he's like oh look there's magnus for magnus and like the way he's talking like anyone in Like anyone in the strength community would be like, oh, my God, we got Magnus for Magnuson, a legend here. He's announcing today. Like someone would be all fired up and amped up. This guy's like, yeah, and there's Magnus for Magnuson.

And Thor's got his team here with him today. Let's see if he can do this lift. This would be amazing. You're just like, oh. Tough job. They probably told him like a day before. He probably did. He was a big dude, though, because when he stood next to Thor, he was like 6'7 or 6'6 probably.

Also a big dude. It's crazy. Those Icelanders are made that way, I guess. Boxing match. Oh, my God. It's like a year from now. 2021. Yeah.

I really hope that they look good when they box. Like, you know, have you ever seen those YouTubers that like, like KSI and Logan Paul, they did a boxing match, but the boxing didn't look good. Although it was fun seeing them punch each other. What's his name box pretty well. Who's the other guy? Is it, is it Fousey or that guy?

Do you know? Yeah. Yeah. I think so. I don't know. I don't remember seeing his match. He ended up, from what I've seen of him, he ended up, you know, boxing pretty good. But, you know, I think that they'll do okay, especially they have so much prep for it.

They just, they both need to lose. They both probably have to lose some weight. I don't know if you can have that amount of size on you and not be able, like just breathing hard. I wonder like if they change the rounds, if they had like one minute or two minute rounds, it might help, you know,

a three minute round is like three minutes is no joke, man. It's, it's unbelievable how hard that is. One minute rounds, three minutes between rounds. Yeah. Flip it around you remember

when eddie said thor is going to retire from strongman if he's prepping for this is he gonna do world's strongest man next year it was like like now i'm wondering like what's he gonna what's happening next year you know if he's getting ready for a boxing match he's clearly not concerned about it right yeah that Yeah, that's a seven-figure deal. I think on a post he said that he's only going to focus on this for the next year and a half. Oh, wow. Okay.

Yeah. I can't imagine he's going to want to drop a lot of weight to do Strongman, you know? Right. And he's not going to go to a strongman event to not win so of course not yeah i so i think he's gonna have to pick one or the other and right now it looks like he's picking the fight literally picking the fight it's gonna be entertaining as hell to watch honestly though you've i've never i i don't think there's anything close

to some like beast like that inside of a ring. No, I can't think of anything. I mean, Stallone versus Hulk Hogan, you know, like in Rocky III or something. But, I mean, it was just in a movie. You know what I mean? That's kind of what it reminds me of. Muhammad Ali fought everybody. Muhammad Ali fought professional wrestlers and stuff like that.

He did a lot of weird, fun stuff. And they would hit each other and stuff, but not like these guys are going to actually go at it. It's going to be different. How long ago do you think they knew they were going to fight each other? They probably have known for the last month or two and then that's why they've been talking so much about each other yeah that's what i was curious they probably already don't you know they probably already don't like each other that's a lot of it's probably real

and then either they've had conversation with each other or somebody has had conversation on both sides and said hey let's just you guys lean into it go ahead and play you know play it up because we're gonna have you guys fight yeah okay cool with that and with that said i think they did a really good job i mean as soon as he announced that like the internet blew up it was it was all over the place quick so that was pretty good. They did good. Yeah. I just pray.

I mean, I think Thor is going to be in a little bit of trouble. Like I know he's bigger, right. But he's going to be in some trouble if Eddie has like that, that mindset training before he goes into the ring, like he did before you hit 500. And then he just goes in and he sees red when he sees Thor. Oh,

you're right. Think about that. And now you get to punch somebody you really get to just try and kick somebody's ass i wonder if they'll try to do anything else with it like have anything on the undercard or oh for sure you know anything else or or uh you know how they'll do it i'm sure people will be pissed about it and they'll say, you know, that, uh, like I think like regular boxers will probably be kind of frustrated because these guys are coming in out of nowhere. Yeah. And they're going to get paid a ton.

Yeah. Hey, more, uh, the KSI Logan Paul thing made, it was one of the highest paid boxing matches. One of the highest paying boxing matches ever. And those were two top YouTubers now.

So that's crazy. crazy yeah all right man well andrew take us on out of here thank you guys for checking out this episode you kind of got a two for one you got us and then we got our awesome guest yeah so i mean technically we can do like three podcasts today so not bragging just saying you know we're working our faces off during this quarantine hopefully you guys can appreciate it if you guys do please head over to itunes drop us a rating and a review it really does help the show please follow the podcast at mark bell's power project on instagram at mb power project on tiktok and twitter my instagram is at i am andrew z and sema where you at i didn't see my in yang on instagram and youtube i didn't see my yin yang on tiktok and twitter mark at mark smelly bell

strength is never weakness weakness never strength catch y'all later