Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 386 - Become The Ultimate Home Gym Athlete ft. Jerred Moon

Episode Date: May 13, 2020

Jerred Moon is “The Garage Gym Athlete”. He is a best selling author, former Air Force Captain, athlete, strength & conditioning coach, and podcast host. He is also the founder of End of Three Fitness which has helped over 10,000 athletes achieve extraordinary fitness results. 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, thank you for checking out today's episode. This episode was recorded on May 6th and it is with our new friend, Jared Moon. Jared is an author, fitness coach, veteran, and podcast host. And what we got into today was a bunch of home workout stuff. Jared wrote the book Garage Gym Athlete, and we talked about his new book coming out soon called Killing Comfort. But basically, this guy has been working out at home since day one, essentially. He talks about his first squat rack being made out of wood that wasn't even bolted

down to the wall. So every time he would use the top portion to do pull-ups, the whole rack would fall forward on him. But anyways, what you're going to get out of this episode is a ton of motivation. We talked to him about some you know, some people are having a hard time right now without a gym, without home gym equipment, but these are all the people that he's been working with for many, many years. So he has tons of experience in this department. And I just, I know you guys are going to get fired up because I know we are. Jared gave us tons of tips on how to get motivation, how to stay motivated, you know, how to set goals and how to like really break through certain plateaus. And even if you are a trainer yourself, uh, we get some really good insight on what trainers are lacking right now during this, this lockdown.

So literally everybody, if you're a trainer or the trainee, you're all going to get a ton of value out of this episode. Uh, please find Jared social media links down in the YouTube and Facebook, uh, descriptions and the podcast show notes, wherever you're listening to this, episode, please find Jared's social media links down in the YouTube and Facebook descriptions and the podcast show notes, wherever you're listening to this, click in the view more, whatever the heck it is on your app and find his links and let him know what you guys think about this episode. Give him a huge shout out and thank you and let him know that you guys heard him on this podcast. And ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy this episode with our buddy, Jared Moon. Yeah. so I just cooked up two burgers, some of those Piedmontese burgers,

through some raw cheddar cheese on top, and it was just amazing. I made two of them, and I was like, I'm going to eat this one. You guys heard this story from me before. I sit down and eat this one. I didn't think I had enough time to eat two of them. I was wrong. Yeah. I ate five yesterday again.

So there's freaking amazing. Yeah. You know, actually what's really cool. So I put three of them. I had three of them on the pan, but then I did two of them in the air fryer. The air fryer burgers turned out amazing,

like way better than the ones I did on the pan. So five, five, five is pretty good. Cause those are pretty good size patties. Yeah. I was, I was full by the end. Yeah. Those are thick boys. Have you ever had the sliders before? No, I haven't. For some reason, the sliders are amazing. I don't know if it's like the consistency or, or, or how it works, but they're really good too. They're kind of kind of um i like putting the sliders in in a pan and just throwing like a ton of cheese on top of them and then the cheese melts all around them and gets a little crusty and crispy and it's just awesome i think it's the

the added surface area of the slider you know the patty it's just a big chunk there's the you know the little sliders hasiders, they are delicious. And we're just talking about specifically the burgers and the sliders. But everything that they have at Piedmontese is amazing. For more information on that, 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 POWERPROJECT for 25% off your order. And if your order is $99 or more, you get free two-day shipping. Highly recommend the Flatiron Steaks.

What's the diet steak? Flank steak? Is that the one? Bovet steak, although flank steak is good. But Bovet is insane. Of course, the Tomahawk Rib Eyes. Everything is leaner, so it has less fat, more protein, cooks faster, even defrosts faster uh you guys seriously

need to dive into that asap okay you guys wearing any pants by any chance or do you ever wear pants during the show i just don't wear boxers but i have shorts on oh just curious okay because like we could be kind of like wearing whatever or not wearing whatever we want. You couldn't be here outside. Just your dick flapping in the air and everyone walking by. That would be a little bit odd. Especially some of these older folks around here. They'd be like, what is going on in that house? You might start the movement to turn that area into a nude beach.

Yeah. Hey, you never know. You might start the revolution. It's nice being outside, though. Getting that sunlight feels good. I think I walked for like 25 minutes after our last podcast. And man, it's just sunlight. It cures everything.

It's like nature's coffee is it uh it's going to be pretty warm over there right in sacramento yeah yeah it's super warm right now yeah probably like yeah it's kind of that that well it's a little bit past that weird weather where like hoodie in the hoodie in the morning and then you know sweating at in the middle of the day but like this morning i was a little chilly you know, sweating in the middle of the day. But like this morning, I was a little chilly, and so I still have the long sleeve on. But towards the end of the day, man, it just gets pretty dreadful. You have our man in the room.

There he is. Hey, how's it going? What's going on, Jared? Yeah, not much. How's it going? It's going great for us over here. Great to have you on the show today. Appreciate you spending some time with us for today. And might as well just kind of like dive right in. I think that, you know, you started the perfect cause and the perfect business in a time period where everyone has to try to figure out a way to work out at home now.

where everyone has to try to figure out a way to work out at home now because we don't have the convenience of going to the gym. So if you don't mind, give us a little bit of your background and tell us a little bit more about your garage fitness journey. Yeah, happy to do that, and thanks for having me on. So the back story, I was really into fitness going back to when I was 14 years old. I had an uncle who was a powerlifter and then a bodybuilder. He just got me into things. It was pre-internet.

He told me one day at the beach that I was just too skinny. I was like, well, can you do something about that? He's like, yeah, I'll send you a program. I just waited every day for his program. It was a 40 40 page packet that was mailed to me and he he sent it to me just told you flat out you're too skinny yeah he's just too skinny and i wasn't even offended i was like is there something i can do that'd be awesome like what can i didn't even know like lifting weights would be something i could do to like fix that and so he he got me on track got me super into fitness but i always had this dream early on of being a fighter pilot.

And that's what I really wanted to do. And so I ended up going down that journey all through college, going into pilot training and actually got injured. And then after that happened, I was like, you know what? I'm going back, you know, full on fitness here. Like, let's get back, bring the passion back. And so I started a side hustle at the time, just coaching people, writing articles. But I had absolutely no money. My wife and I were in so much debt. And so I just started building things. I built a power rack out of wood. I built

a plyometric box. I built every single thing that you could imagine. And that slowly turned into me getting more certifications and writing more blog posts, doing videos. And then, you know, it's been a 10 year journey now of just helping people exercise in their garage. And that's why we have garage gym athlete.com just to help people help people do that. You know, whether they're building a project or, or need some programming, that's, uh, that's what we're trying to do these days. That's how you know, someone's dedicated when they have a wooden squat rack. Yeah. I got a lot of flack for that over the years because it was not... I've seen some pretty impressive designs, but like I said, cash was tight back then. So it was not even like, let me buy the thickest, best wood I can. It was like, what can I get away with here

that will still hold my squat weight? What's the minimum viable wooden squat rack I can do here? squat weight you know like what's what's the minimum minimal viable wooden squat rack i can do here what was it carrying at that point like what could it carry without having a potential mishap at that time my squat was like uh 420 and i could put 420 on it uh without it breaking and so i never really loaded it up past that because i didn't want i was like this is what i squat i don't need to do like a 500 pound test because i'm not there yet so i'll just i'll i'll see what what it does at 420 it didn't break so like, cool. Then I'm good for bench and press and everything else with this rack. So you were able to, to, uh, do other movements out of the rack. It wasn't, wasn't just a, it wasn't just a squat rack. Yeah. So I, I set it

up to where it had like, everything was fixed. So if like you came to work out with me and we weren't, we weren't the same height, like that would be problematic for you. Uh, it was just perfect for me, but I even actually, uh, my dad, my dad is like the mastermind mastermind behind a lot of this stuff. He's like got that engineer brain and he would always come over and visit and he'd be like, all right, man, we need to make this just a little bit safer. Like I'll help you. So he helped me like, uh, bolt it to the wall because previously, if he did a pull-up too fast or something like that, the rack would start to tip over. And so he helped me bolt it to the wall and get it a little bit safer. But then looking back, him and I joke, we're like,

I don't know if that was the smartest decision, some of those things, man. But it got me through. It got me through several years. I think i did that for like five solid years diy projects in a wooden garage gym basically i remember when i started seeing sorry uh seeing some of the like the home gym stuff i i remember my dad being like oh we can make that and i'm like yeah but like the way my dad would have made it would have been so wobbly and probably would have fell over or something just because like oh that's good enough. But how much did like that wreck cost? I mean, I have it on my website. I think I got it for like, I put all the those days dollars, you know, so we are talking like 10 years ago. I think it cost me like 120 bucks or maybe, maybe less, something like that for a full. And we, I mean, we had supports in the bottom,

you know, so like if I had to, had to bail, which I never ended up doing because it would have busted the wood and you'd have to kind of rebuild it. But those were there. Those safety supports were there if I needed it. But it was a full like cage, you know. Tell us about some of the benefits of training like that. Like there's something kind of cool about limited training. And I realize it's unlimited because you could like, you know, pick up a plate and do an overhead squat with it. But like, you know, we're, you made a squat rack for a reason.

Like you made a squat rack because you're going to do a front squat out of it. You're going to do a regular squat out of it. You do kind of standard weightlifting and powerlifting movements, shrugs, bent over rows, maybe overhead pressing, you know, all those kinds of things. So tell us a little bit about the advantage of not having access to everything. Like sometimes you walk into a big gym and, you know, you can do a leg extension, a leg press, a leg curl, and they got the seated leg curl, the regular leg curl, and the single leg curl, you know, they got all these different options. In your opinion, what's some of the advantage of being in the garage gym and having

some limitations to what you can do? Yeah. And that's, you know, that was the world I came from. So growing up in high school and through college, I worked at gyms and like global gyms, you know, like lifetime fitness type, every piece of equipment known to man. And so I was accustomed to having access to all these things. But it was really... When I was in pilot training, the timetable was just ridiculous. It was mandatory 12-hour days in the location. They wouldn't let you leave the building for 12 hours. Then you'd come home and study for several hours. And I'd be like, there's no way I'm going to the gym. I don't see how this is possible. But I'm not going to not

work out. So I'm going to do something at home. And so the advantages is that it simplifies things. You aren't overwhelmed with what you could do. And so I've always been about following a program. So when I started this idea of the garage gym, I pulled up my program, which is all printed out, and I audited it. I was like, okay, if I have just this in the garage, what can I do? And I got to about 80% to 85% good. I'm like, well, I can do most of this program. There's like a few specialty machines or whatever. I'm not going to be able to hit, but like, it's going to be fine. And so I just kind of got away from some of those, you know, isolation machines. And you talk about leg curls, things. And I found other ways, like you can get really creative with bands in the gym, especially once you add bands you can do a lot of that stuff but that's what i did i just like what's realistic here with very minimal equipment and then i just kept adding piece after piece until i feel like for how i like to train i can do anything uh anything i like how about this like what do you think are some uh really slept on pieces of equipment that

maybe people should be uh thinking about getting for the garage gym. Like recently, I've been working with a lot of kettlebells these past few months, and I found out literally how effective they are just because the lack of gym. They're super effective. And it's something I'm going to keep moving on with. Are there any pieces of equipment you think strength athletes should consider other than, you know, their squat rack and maybe a platform? Yeah, I mean, if we're going outside the lines of, you know, their squat rack and maybe a platform. Yeah. I mean, if we're going outside the lines of, you know, kind of traditional stuff, I'd probably say a sandbag because you can just, you can load them up. You can empty them out if you need to store them. And you can get, I mean,

you can get really heavy sandbags, you know, whether it's like a strongman style or just something that you can walk around with. Now you can't get that barbell stimulus, right? That real heavy weight with a sandbag most of the time, but you can get a really good workout and do a lot of cool stuff with sandbags. And I wasn't into sandbags for a long time. I started adding them to my training a little bit last year and it's just been, it's been a lot of fun. You know, it's something cool to add to the routine to switch things up. When the, uh, pick up to, yeah, sandbags are brutal to pick up. Oh, yeah. They're, yeah, they're so like just like just bags yeah they can't eat there's no handle it sucks um when the when the lockdown started i just like a lot of other people were like oh

shit i gotta go buy dumbbells i gotta buy this and then everything was like either sold out or prices were through the roof um now i'm like i'm really glad I didn't because I realized I didn't need any of it. Like I have enough here already. But at what point do you think somebody, um, say they run into like, uh, okay, I do want to work hamstrings. I don't have bands like, okay, maybe I'll do something else. And then they run into the same problem like over and over like, shit, okay, maybe it's time to upgrade. At what point should somebody actually be like, okay, yeah, I think it is time to add some more equipment to my arsenal. You know, I think first you got to make sure that you're the type of person who can train alone in your garage and make sure it's something you're going

to stick to. So, get that minimal amount of equipment. We typically recommend, you know, like a barbell plates, pull-up bar, kettlebells, and dumbbells. And that's about all you need to get started. And then if this is like, Hey, this is something that you're going to stick with and you're going to, you're going to do like start adding those pieces, you know, slowly. Cause I, you know, talking about having a, a wooden garage gym, you know, fast forward to today, I have a three car garage with like, it doesn't look like a garage, you know, like it's just, there's, you know,

flooring everywhere, equipment everywhere. It's still pretty minimalistic. Like I don't have a bunch of machines and stuff, but I just know that this is something I'll be doing for the rest of my life. So I just add one piece of equipment at a time as I, as I see it come up. And I think if you know, you're going to stick to this, stick to it, then just every time you feel like you run into a wall, make the purchase or, you know, make the shopping list or something, and then kind of go through that triage list and knock it out over time. What about women? What can we do about women? Because they want to consume a large area of the garage with their car. They're obsessed with putting their car in there. Yeah. So this is a, this is a battle I fight.

Yeah. It's a battle about space, right? Yeah. And so, and, uh, so this is my second house in Texas and my first one, I, I kind of won the battle. I was like, okay, I got the, I got the garage, you know, we're not going to really park in there. And, uh, that was all cool. And then we had this massive hailstorm roll through. It ruined both of our vehicles, like had to get a new roof on the house. It was just bad. And I was like, okay okay maybe you were right and so we have uh like my car is basically a beater she has the nice car and so there's enough space in there when when the garage is clean to where she can roll up in there and park and there's no problem and if we really had to we can we can fit both cars but uh yeah that's i lost that battle through through just a really bad storm, unfortunately.

How much like in terms of, I guess, pricing or you know what? I mean, I don't know. Is the website that you have, is that a resource for where you can buy equipment? Because I'm curious, like a lot of people want to like get the best deals on this stuff. Where do you suggest they start? Yeah. So no, we have a lot of DIY equipment. I don't normally, I don't publish too much information

about equipment these days i've really like you know kind of moved more towards just training and training methodology over the last several years i think garage gym reviews my buddy cooper runs that website he has a lot of great if you're like what like, what's the best barbell? He's tried 15 of them side by side and done like tests I wouldn't even think of. So definitely somebody you want to check out if you're looking for good deals and, uh, you know, where's, where's the best economy and things like that. And along with that, you, I mean, you were mentioning figuring out if you're going to be the type of person that's actually going to use your garage gym. And it's funny because there's a lot of individuals that have come to work with me or that I've worked with that they had a full-on garage setup,

but they barely ever used it after they set it up. You know what I mean? So I guess, what do you think is the checklist to know if you're going to actually really go ahead and use that? Because a lot of people don't think about that. They think once I get the gym, I'm going to be working out every single day. And a lot of the times it doesn't really end up that way. Yeah. So, I mean, if you, that's why I think everyone should start relatively small. Well, I mean, I could actually recommend either way. You could either go in so deep financially that every time you walk out to the gym, you're hitting the face with what you're not doing. I like that approach. But at the same time, if you're worried about it and money is scarce, then I would go on the... What's the smallest amount you can

carve out in your garage? A small bit of space. If that's one mat from Tractor Supply where you could... That's your lifting platform and a barbell and some plates, then just see what you can get done with that and try and set up that consistent routine and see if it's something that you will stick with. Because I know a lot of people... I, I don't even think about it. You know, I, that's where I train and I train by myself. I have training partners over occasionally, but some people like they need those, you know, they need a training partner, you know, and I, I training partners are great. Like they, I've had training partners all throughout my, my training career. But, uh, I think you need to realize and really think about how big of a piece for you is that when you train

every day, is it, is it a social thing? Do you need that motivation? Um think about how big of a piece for you is that when you train every day? Is it, is it a social thing? Do you need that motivation? Um, and just kind of being self aware about who you are in other situations. Like, do you need accountability or are you a self starter? For you personally, it sounds like you're, um, motivated by the tinkering of it all. You know, you're motivated by the programming because I'm imagining that you're like, I'm going to try this and then I'm going to do this for four weeks and see

how that turns out. So you're excited probably every time to work out, kind of regardless of the day. I'm sure some days more so than others, but in general, you'll probably usually excited because you're excited about the, uh, the process of it. Is that right? Yeah, that's a hundred percent. I mean, I love, I love programming and, uh, trying to see how far can I push it with this minimal equipment set up and, you know, what is the, what is the top end for, for my strength and my conditioning simultaneously? Like how far can I go, uh, with just a good program? Because a big part of it is, if you have 5 or 6 hours to train every day, I think the program is important, but not as important. If you only have literally an hour to train a few times a week, I really think that people should be putting their best foot forward in that timeframe

and making sure that they have a really well thought out program. And that's no different than me running a business. I have 3 kids. I have a really well thought out program and, and that's, that's no different, you know, than me at running, running a business. I have three kids, you know, like I have a garage gym, but I don't spend, you know, three or four hours training every day. I still only train an hour each day for the most part. And I just want that to be very effective and optimal. It makes a lot of sense what you're saying there. And then it also, um, kind of bleeds into some of the CrossFitters, you know, some of the CrossFitters are at this point, professional athletes and they, you know, they can work out three times a day. They can kind of, they can kind of afford to do that. I know they have other responsibilities. They have other

things going on as well. But for most people, that's not wise to work out that many times a day, unless it's for a specific goal, unless it's for a short period of time, because it could be too stressful, you know, bouncing around from so many different, so many different things. Yeah, I think that's something I've been preaching to our athletes over the last year is this, this intensity wave that people want to be on. People want to hit it so hard and they don't realize that there's a cost, not only, you know, physiologically, but psychologically, like it's going to wear down your CNS and like, you're not going to be as good of a dad. You know, you're not going to be as good of a husband when you are training that hard all the time. And I don't, it's great. Like if you're ambitious, that's awesome. You're type A, let's

go get it. Let's crush it. But like, it's gotta be on a limited basis. You can't go after that hard every day and expect to, to live a normal life after that. How about the type of training that you personally prefer? Cause I mean, I, I believe you have a military background. Yes, I do. So yeah, I, uh, I flew for a little while in the military and then transitioned on my way out. I got an opportunity to work with special operations in a strength and conditioning capacity. You know, I was a physical training leader and unit fitness program manager. So what was cool is I got a lot of experience on how to apply some of my ideas to very large groups of people, and not only the motivated operators, but also the people who aren't so

motivated in the military, because you know, there's the military is just a cross section of society. And so I learned how to program workouts in a way where you can't really, can't really cheat them, you know, and like, there's, there's always a little extra work for somebody. Uh, but what I ended up stumbling on what I, the type of training I love the most is just concurrent training. You know, I thought it was CrossFit. I thought I was going to like CrossFit. I, I dabbled in that for a while. But that intensity piece, Mark's talking about, like it just, I don't think long-term it's good. I think a lot of people might find that out the hard way.

We've had a lot of athletes coming from that background, come talk to us about their concerns and kind of recovering from stuff like that. But I think just really good strength programming combined with a really good conditioning program. When I say conditioning, I'm not talking about, you know, CrossFit and Metcons. Most of the time, it's just, yeah, running, cycling intervals,

things like that to keep your conditioning at a really high level. What's, what are some of your goals that you have at the moment? Because I'd imagine that's a key component to the programming, especially that you're doing for yourself. Yeah, my goals, I'm just always trying to stay ready to do things uh you know i i do 100 mile bike race every year which kind of started out of uh uh like i wasn't um i wasn't prepared for that at all so i did it to go see you know meet myself as a term i use a lot i like to meet who i really really am and so that's part of our our training and so i wasn't trained for that at all. And I went and did a hundred mile bike race. And so I'm, I'm just trying to prepare slightly for those things, but not be over-prepared for them. But something I

would say is kind of in my sights right now, there is a CrossFit style workout called Murph, where you run a mile, a hundred pull-ups, 200 pushups, 300 squats, run a mile. I did that every Saturday for two years. And, you know, I really like to push myself on Saturday. That's like my intensity day for the most part. And there's been some recent conversations about who has the fastest time in the world and stuff. And I would like to take a shot at that in the fall of this year. So I just finished my second year in February. Now

I've kind of taken some time off and then I'm like, you know what? All right, I'll, I'll go for it. I'll see if I, how fast I can do this thing. And what is the best time and who has it? It's really like, it's heavily disputed right now. I think, uh, the in competition, it's like, uh, close to 34 minutes. So like 33, 34 minutes. Um, and then there's like multiple ways you can break the workout down and stuff and, and do it. But, uh, 34 minutes. Um, and then there's like multiple ways you can break the workout down and stuff and, and do it. But, uh, that's the fastest recorded time, like in a competition setting by like Frazier or Froning or something like that. It was, uh, Josh Bridges. Oh, okay. Yeah. That workout's brutal. Yeah. It just stresses me out just thinking. Yeah.

It's a dirty one. It's, it gets to you so this got this conversation is going to impact a lot of people because there are people that are you know they're they're in a slump right now because the gym's been taken away there's a lot of lack of motivation right now so as someone who is always motivated to work out at home and somebody who probably has helped others find you know some inspiration to work out at home. What's some of the best advice that you've been either given or some that you have given out for getting people to stay motivated at home? You know, I think it kind of depends on what type of person you are. I think some people need to get, it might feel or seem like you don't need to be super organized

right now or super, you know, like, uh, scheduled because, you know, whatever, you're just at home and things are normal. But I think that you need to do the opposite of that. I think you need to write down exactly what you're going to do today at what times and what your goals are for that day and get more militant, get more, you know, uh, structured because you need that structure to carry you through these really difficult times. And I've been just, uh, telling our athletes over and over again you know there are three habits i want everybody to to go after every single day and the first one is hormesis so what doesn't kill us makes us stronger for most of us that's just training how can we stress our body a little

bit and make it better i could also be using a sauna ice bath something like that uh hormesis is the first thing. One thing is like, what's pushing you forward. What's your motivation. And then the third thing is a hard thing. So we have all of our athletes do a hard thing each day. And we kind of, you know, I kind of put a formula together for what a hard thing actually is. And a hard thing because, you know, I could put a rock in my shoe and walk around today. That's going to be hard, you know, no pun intended. That's going to be hard. No pun intended. That's going to be a hard thing for me to do.

But it's stupid, right? There's no reason for you to really do that. So the hard thing that we have is pushing forward against your own desire, something you don't want to do, plus daily over decades equals a hard thing. So when you're doing something that's going to push forward against your natural desire, you don't want to do it, that's initially hard. But to make sure that it's something you you're doing something that's going to push forward against your natural desire, you don't want to do it That's an initially hard but to make sure that it's something you should be doing

Is it something that you could do every day for 10 years that's going to you know, have an impact So for a lot of people once once we put in that, okay What's it going to look like over a decade and what's against your desire now? We're like, okay, it's a 30 minute walk today That's that's simple, right? But that could be your hard thing. And for everybody, it's going to be different. But I think pursuing one hard thing every single day through that lens is really important. It's something that's difficult, but also towards your goals, correct? Yeah, exactly. So like I mentioned, you could do a lot of like, you could do really hard workout today and call that your hard thing, but you're not gonna be able to do that every single day. And I don't think, you know, one thing here and there is what, what adds up to a successful

person. It's these, you know, this consistency over time, over that decade, over two decades, that, that really builds the person into someone better. And I think a way that people can build this is, uh, you know, Louie Simmons with the, uh, Westside barbell method. He has a lot of really good points when it comes to the max effort work. And when he talks about PRs, there's so many different ways to get a PR. I mean, there could be hundreds of different ways to get a bench press PR. Even if you're just bench pressing and you're not adding bands, you're not adding chains, you're not adding boards, you could still potentially do a close grip bench. You could do a wide grip bench. You could have a three rep max, a six rep max, an eight rep max, a pause max. You

could pause the weight on your chest for four seconds. That could be a max. So something that might motivate some of the people listening and might get them excited is, and this gets to be something that you need to learn as you're training for a while, you can audible to some of these different things if things aren't feeling great. So if you're going to try a one rep max in the bench press for the day, if that's what's, what's what's on plan and scheduled to do,

but something's not feeling right, maybe you can do the best you've ever done before for three sets of three, you know, or maybe you can do your, maybe there's some other option that you can kind of lean into that would be slightly different, but it keeps you motivated. Anytime that you're able to surpass things that you did, uh, previously makes you feel amazing. I know for me, I've been really excited cause I've been, I've been running and I had these different points that I run to around here and I'm like, Oh, okay. I did that in five minutes. Okay.

I did that in eight minutes and I can see that I got better than last time. And it doesn't matter that I suck at running. What matters is that I'm getting better at it. And if, and it feels, it feels great. And I've been doing the same thing with pushups. I was able to do 85 pushups the other day. I'd like to be able to do 100 in a row. You know, things like that, they're exciting. And it could be stuff they haven't even ever tried before. And that's a record in and of itself. You could just say, I want to see how

many bodyweight squats in a row I can do. You know, and maybe you do 100. And the next time you try to do it, you do 110 and so on. But that, that will keep you motivated. Yeah. I think those micro PRs are really important in, in like every aspect of our life. Right. You know, the only thing that I know in business, like it could be, it can just get, uh, it can just weigh on you, you know, everything. Like if you're always trying, you're always trying to outdo yourself essentially in business, you know, and that's the, it's like, okay, well, did we have a better customer experience this time? Or did we PR the customer experience? That's something that's really awesome. That's something we should look at, not always be looking at revenue or all these other metrics. What's one part of this that we

can make better? I think in business and life and training, that's great advice. I still really love that hard thing aspect that you mentioned, because you mentioned walking for 30 minutes, right? Walking is something that we talk a lot about on this podcast because it helps individuals build the habit of not being sedentary. But the fact that you can call that a hard thing, I do agree, because it's out of habit. A lot of us live sitting down, work sitting down, etc. So walking just seems like a waste of time, but you know, to, to build that habit for a majority of the population, including ourselves, that's a really, really, really, really beneficial thing. Yeah. And I mean, let's, let's be honest.

I mean, we all, all, all of us sitting here, we like to train, but if I were to just say, like, if you asked me, okay, what was your hard thing today? And I've already trained. And I was like, well, I trained today. That's a lie. I absolutely love training. Like if that's all I could do, like I would just train. Like I just love doing it. You know, I have to actually like restrict myself in that regard sometimes. And so to say that that's my hard thing today because it's hard for other people,

it's not true, you know, but slowing myself down and like going on basically like a walking meditation type, you know, that's hard for me to do. And so that is a hard thing for me. And so that's kind of why I bring it up, because everybody's hard thing is going to be a little bit different. And just because you're accustomed to doing something that's really hard for other people doesn't mean it's hard for you. Maybe your hard thing is something else. Maybe your hard thing is disconnecting from your phone and playing with your kids. You know, everyone has a different hard thing that they need to embrace. It's just a matter of finding it. For David Goggins, you know, working hard would be for him to probably like meditate.

Right. And meanwhile, when he's running, you know, you think, oh, what a badass he is, but that's not hard for him. It's become easy. His body has adapted to it. He's gotten used to it. We saw Hap Thor Bjornsson, you know, deadlift over 1100 pounds for him to deadlift 900 pounds, which, um, probably under 50 people, maybe around 50 people or so in the history of the world have deadlifted 900 plus pounds. But for him, that's not hard. He could probably, he might even be able to do it for, you know, a handful of reps, maybe even more who, who knows. But I always found it interesting. I always felt like hard work is a misconception. You know, when I was powerlifting and lifting some of the weights,

I think people would think, oh, that's so badass. And I'm like, no, you know, it would actually be badass and would be more admirable is if I took my ass to the library. Right. Because that's where I don't want to go. And I don't like to, I don't enjoy reading. But if I forced myself to read and had the discipline to do something like that, that would be me really expanding myself. Me just continually piling up points at something that I'm already good at. It's fun and it's amusing and it's interesting to me and it makes me happy.

But it might not be the best thing to always hone in and focus on. And it's definitely not hard. It's fun. Yeah. And like you, do you feel that challenge? Because I actually write these things down every day. You know, what's my hormesis for the day? What's my hard thing? What's my one thing. And that's how I developed or like not developed,

but like realized that training, I used to put like, when I first started that I'd be like, yeah, training my hard thing today. And then I'm like, you're not like, you're not, you're not challenged. You're not like trying to get better at something. You're not learning new material here. This isn't, this is truly not, you're like like it's kind of a cop-out answer and then i once i finally realized that i'm like okay i where where can i go from here to get better yeah can you tell us um about the uh the concept of like killing comfort like where does that kind of just come from more of like all this right here that we've been talking about yeah it's a lot of this so you know you know, Killing Comfort is a book I just finished that comes out later this month. But the whole idea, because like the subtitle of the book is the prerequisite to extraordinary results. Because

everyone has this great like idea for a new habit strategy or like something that you can do here. But like none of that matters. None of it matters unless you can just get good at killing a little bit of comfort each day and going back to that hard thing. This is going to be so different for so many different people, but the whole book stemmed from, you know, it's not just for people getting into things, but when I started training people very early on, I realized like some people would, I was doing remote coaching and they would pay the monthly fee and not do what I said, you know? And I'm like, this is weird. Cause I had just come from a community of like type a bad-asses and fighter pilots who like just do everything they say that they're going to do. And then I transitioned to coaching and it was like, I don't know,

like 60, 40, you know, 60% of the people are going to do it. 40% were just like, I'm not comfortable with you paying me if you're not going to do what you say, if you're not going to do any of this stuff. And so that just triggered something in my brain that I've been obsessed with is like, why do some people do and some people don't? And how can I help the people who don't become the people who do? And so that's kind of where all this started several years ago several years ago is like just diving into different studies and research on like how why you know what makes us complacent what makes us comfortable how does this sneak up on us and how do we start to kill some of that complacency or comfort little by little to try and get better yeah I think a big part of it is, is just, uh, you know, your interest level,

you know, hopefully, and then, and then trying to tie the interest to a bunch of facts, you know, like, uh, okay, you said you want to be in better shape. You said you wanted abs and now you're off on the weekend, uh, drinking and, and doing these other things that shows that the interest level wasn't quite there, but let's figure out ways of chipping away at it because you can, you can get better. You can build up your discipline. You can, I know for me with like, say something like a ketogenic diet, um, I would allow myself to eat, uh, you know, some carbohydrates or something off the diet every like third day when I first started. And then it was every seven days. And I was like, well, you know, now I'm just kind of loading up for that, that one day. And I'm turning that into like an event

rather than just a meal. And then I started to learn, you know, a lot over a period of time. No, this is, this is what you want to lean into. This is, this is where you want to go. You, you said that you want to be in better shape. So let's keep going that way. And it took a while. I had to, you know, I had to, uh, I had to mess up a bunch of times. I had to, uh, enjoy the comfort along the way here and there, um, to understand like what I really wanted out of it. Yeah. And that's, you know, you're talking about small things. That's what I, that was one thing I stumbled across in coaching people is I would, I would like, if I found out I got a person who honestly wanted these results, but they, they don't have that sticking power, they're not ready for that yet. Then I would just throw, and this was hard for me,

just coming from my background, like everything to me is a mathematical problem that can be solved, you know, and it took a lot of like, you know, understanding the human side of things. It might be, you know, a little bit easier for other people, but I had to break it down and really understand different forms of human behavior. But I got into like, okay, I don't care about what you're eating right now or the program. I just need you to do one thing for the next week until we talk again. And I almost don't care what it is. And I don't care if you're losing weight or what you've changed, because I would give them something so small, it would basically be impossible for them to not do. And then after they accomplish it that first week, okay, the next week, we're going to do something, you know, small, but moving in the right direction. And when I started working with people who don't stick to things as well like that, you know, the timeline's a lot longer, but their success was a lot greater. So you're saying that their success was greater by short, like doing one small thing for a little

bit than adding one small thing on top of that, rather than giving them all the things that they needed to do? Exactly. Yeah. Because if I think a lot of this kind of is mathematical, if you say that you want to get stronger and you guys want to, me how to, like, you just give me the program and you're like, eat this and lift this, do this program, you'll get stronger. Yeah. I bet you would like 99% certainty, you know, whatever you tell me to do will work, you know, barring some sort of weird genetic thing. But if they're not sticking to it, like, what's the small thing that I can give you? You know, what's this tiny next behavior we can do that's going to move you towards being able to do this full program and changing the diet? Because that's all, I call it the full overhaul,

right? Like everyone gets excited or they watch a documentary or listen to a podcast. They want to just like, you know, let's go balls to the wall. We're changing everything on Monday. Like, how about you, instead of that, how about we just change, instead of waiting till Monday, first off, let's do it today. And let let's be really really tiny thing and do that you know for a week or two and see see how you feel after that what what are some of those uh smaller things that you would have people do yeah so i mean it could be a very small thing depending on the individual but i mean if it was cutting something out of the diet, maybe, maybe they drink soda, you know, and you're like, stop doing that. We'll talk next week. Like I'm paying for this, but trust me, like it's, it's gonna, it's gonna work. And if that's all

they have to focus on, it's hard for them to not do, you know, and other people, it could just be getting consistent. Um, you know, like I just need you to go do the warmup today. I'm sure you've heard that like tip. It's like when people are not motivated, like I just need you to go do the warmup today. I'm sure you've heard that like tip. It's like when people are not motivated, like I just tell people to go do the warmup today. That's all for the rest of this week. All I want you to do is do the warmup. I have programmed for you. I don't care about the rest of the training. And then they get in there, they do the warmup and they're like, well, hell, I'm already in here. I'm warmed up. I'm going to do the rest of the training. Like, of course you are, you know, but even if you only did the warmup, at least you're starting to build some sort of behavioral change in activity by doing something every day. When you report back next week. Kind of reminds me of Rob Bailey, Rob and Dana Lynn Bailey. They started a clothing company years ago called Flagner fail. And Rob Bailey shared, shared a really cool story with us. And he basically said that the reason why he started Flagner fail and what it meant to him and what it

represented when he saw the writing on his own shirt in the mirror was, um, just this idea of, uh, like, don't fuck up today. Like just, just don't quit. Just don't surrender, you know? Um, which is a different message than go out there and kill the day. You know, you got to go out there and destroy the day, which destroying the day and killing the day. And those things are, those things can be great when you're ahead, but when you're behind and you don't feel great about yourself and you have a lot of self doubt, I think coming from that other side makes it seem like a mountain that you could at

least start to climb rather than just looking up at this giant mountain going, I'm never going to make it over that mountain. I'm never going to make it over that other one. I'm not worth a shit. And I really liked this message there. And it sounds a little bit to me, a little, some of what you're talking about sounds similar and you're kind of chipping away at some of these things that are uncomfortable over a period of time, maybe they become more comfortable and then you, then you have to try to try to find some, uh, new stuff to stimulate you. But I think a lot of people are, um, you know, giving themselves a lot of anxiety thinking of the stuff that they don't have.

They don't know how to get it. They're not sure how to get there. And I think if you dial it back a bunch and just say, you know, just, just don't give up whatever it is that you're trying, try it to the best of your degree that you can. And like you're saying, I really love the message of just maybe just try, try to only take on one thing at a time. Yeah. And then detach from that outcome that you actually want, you know, just, just try and put in that small amount of work on that one thing that you've decided to do. And that's it. Let's just work on getting some basics of blocking and tackling here before we move to winning the Super Bowl. Let's get some real small stuff dialed in because

a lot of people where they're getting their information, you know, it's from these, these Titans, you know, like, you know, who have done a lot of great things. People like yourself, people like David Goggins, people like Jocko Willink. And, and these people are just larger than life, but it's like, then you start putting yourself in that context and you do start to feel like a failure, no matter how good you've done that day. And that's not what anyone needs to focus on. You only need to focus on your next step and what that process is for you. Don't worry about who you're going to become, because I can guarantee if you just, if you put these, a couple of good habits in your life and you do them daily over decades, you'll be surprised who you are at the end. But it's that decades part that really gets people down that they don't want to focus on, but that's the reality of it.

You said a key word in there, detached. What did you mean by that? reality of it. You said a key word in there, detach. What did you mean by that? It's just like only focus on the work itself. Like if I want to have the world's fastest Murph time in the fall, I can't just go train every day thinking about that and going full intensity of like doing the workout. Like I'm just going to focus on doing, you know, a thousand pushups over the course of the next seven days and make sure that they're really good form. Like I'm just, I'm going to forget about that. What's going on later this year. I'm just going to focus on really good form on my pushups to make sure that I'm as prepared as I can be. And just forget about what's going on down the road because it's coming. You're doing everything you can to set yourself up for that,

that good situation later, but you don't need to be thinking about it all the time. It's just going to cause you stress and anxiety, shoot up your cortisol levels, you're going to jack up your entire health. So like, you know, let's just, let's just chill and focus on what you're doing right now. It's more of a math equation. Yeah, exactly. You can solve it with facts. Yeah. You just, you put in the, the equation of doing each, each little task every single day, and you're going to get better. Is that kind of how you, um, I guess how you approach all your big goals, you know exactly what you're going to do. And then you kind of formulate all the little things you have to do to get there. You set that all in mind for yourself. Yeah. So each area of my life, you know,

whether that's, um, how I'm, how I'm operating as a dad, uh, financial goals, business goals, uh, training goals. I always try and zoom out to as far as I can for that given goal, as long as it makes sense. So maybe that's 10 years out. And then I'll go to, okay, what's going on in five years to keep track on that 10 year. And then I go down. I just kind of, I try to go as small as I can. And then once that's all like written out, maybe I spend some time doing this one day, I'm just going to move all of that big picture stuff off to the side. And I'm like, okay, I know when I was putting this plan together, it all lined up. It was a linear progression from

daily action to what's happening 10 years from now. But I don't need to worry about all this stuff right now. And then I can do a check-in once a year, once every six months or something to make sure I'm still on track. But I don't need the stress of all this stuff right now and then i can do a check-in you know once a year once every six months or something to make sure i'm still on track but i don't need the stress of like all the things i'm trying to achieve and i can just focus on hey this is based off of what you did put together here's what you should be doing this week how are you able to uh manage time with the family training business everything like I'm always fascinated by dudes with families because I'm just, I think about like my small family, you know, our podcast and stuff. And I'm like, fuck man, there's not enough time in the day. And then someone like you comes along and

I'm like, how does this guy do it? So, I'm always fascinated. You know, I would say it's probably just limited distractions. Like, I don't really do anything else other than the things that you just mentioned. Like, don't, I don't really do anything else other than the things that you just mentioned. Like I, I train, I hang out with my family and I work, you know, I fit in some friends and family time here and there, but I just don't have really any other hobbies. That's the, you know, like the true, um, the true answer to that, that question. But I've just been super structured with my time because that's what I, I had to do my, like this, this company started as a, as a side hustle. And so when I got home from work, I had to work on the side hustle. And then I have 3 kids

now. My time with them is very important. So my day ends at 4.30 no matter what. That's when my day is over. It doesn't matter what I have going on. That's my wife's expectation. I work from home. So like she will walk in here at four 30, if I'm not done, you know, so like I, work becomes a game for me. I have from when I start till four 30, if I can't fit all everything in that timeframe, then, then I kind of failed that day, you know? And so that's, uh, that's just what you have to do. Get really militant and know what you want. So it's, I know when I train every single day, I know when my family time is, I know what I'm working on and I just execute and, and limit distractions as much as possible. Now I wanted to know this because on your Instagram, like it says you guys, or your, your team, I don't know how many people are also on your teams working with thousands of people.

A lot of individuals, especially with what's going on right now, they can't train people in gyms and they realize, especially trainers realize kind of how fickle that job is. If anything does happen, they're out. Right. So they're trying to transition to working with individuals remotely. What are some big things that you think trainers are missing out on in terms of skills needed to motivate individuals remotely, get them success remotely without having to be with them in person. Yeah. And so there, um, there are six people on my team and that's a hundred percent what makes this, uh, possible, you know, everything that we are doing and being able to work with that many athletes. But I think, and we've been working remotely for so long, we have kind of taken it for granted on all the things that we do. But I think a couple of things that coaches need to get better at is, is the mindset piece of things and how to communicate this,

the sticking power and, you know, build a better relationship with your clients. However, that's going to happen. You know, what, whether that's through text message a zoom call you know you you have to build that relationship that's still paramount in coaching that relationship is is paramount and then i think programming is a really big deal and i don't mean being really crazy with your your programming and constantly trying to be creative to where that you know they people never know what they're going to get but but just you really like that. If that's all they get to see first, like if your workouts,

like our workouts load for our athletes on Sunday morning and they all check it that we have to put our best foot forward in our programming, you know, making sure that we're asking them the right questions and, uh, you know, our we're hyper-focused on recovery and making sure their life is balanced through different parameters. And that's all very apparent in our programming because it's all right there. So making sure people are focused, they have, uh, you know, proper tutorials for everything. And, uh, you're, you're still building that relationship. So really relationships and programming, I think is what you really need to focus on. If you're going to go remote. We had some, uh, friends that maybe made funny in the past for training in your, in a garage. And now, now they're like, some, uh, friends that maybe made funny in the past for training in your,

in a garage. And now, now they're like, Hey, uh, can I come over and I hit a workout up with you? Yeah. I mean, that's, that's kind of been the whole, the whole gist of this, this journey, man. It wasn't when I was getting involved in garage gyms, I mean, rogue was just kind of coming online, you know, like they weren't, um, they weren't a big company and, uh, you had to pay a lot for shipping with any of coming online. You know, like they weren't a big company. And you had to pay a lot for shipping with any of them. And so like I'm going through forums to buy barbells and bumper plates and things like this. And I built my own rings.

And people laugh at like, you built your own rings? It's so ridiculous. You can get rings for so cheap. I'm like, well, they were like $200, you know, when I was doing this stuff, you know, just for some basic, like I want to do dips on rings. And so, yeah, and now it's, it's becoming more and more commonplace. And I think with the recent pandemic stuff, like it's just going to become more commonplace. Cause even if you go to the gym, I still think everyone should have some sort of fitness setup at home because of, I didn't use to say because of a pandemic, I used to say because of things like Christmas and Thanksgiving and all these things that do happen in our lives that might keep us home more than we expected. That way we can still train. But now, hell man, yeah, I think everyone should have at least a minimal setup in their garage so they can hit up something no matter what happens.

We've heard so many times over the years, oh, you know, it's hard for me to train because I have kids. And, you know, the gym down the street doesn't have daycare and stuff like that. It's like, well, now, you know, your kids could be, you know, in the other room and you could be training and you could still be looking after them if that's necessary, if they're young enough for that. And you just kind of bulletproof your life, you know, and I think that that's an important thing to do just in general anyway. You shouldn't really need anyone or need anything. You know, it's, you know, having some family around you is certainly helpful. It's no one really, no one really gets through life on their own 100%, but you shouldn't really be relying on so many other things. And I think this is something that this situation has kind of taught

us. Like maybe people were a little too reliant on the gym always being there. Maybe they're too, I mean, the way that gyms are from the time that I grew up versus the way they are now is just, it's hard for me to wrap my mind around because gyms used to be very, very expensive. Um, and rightfully so they got so much, how do they have that much equipment? Uh, they got every piece of equipment you can imagine under the sun. And they used to be, you know, kind of more of a minimum of like 50, 60 bucks a month. Now you see sometimes they're like $10 a month. I don't, I can't make any, uh, make any sense of that, but I think, you know, this is probably like a reset button on the fitness industry a little bit. You're going to see more, you know, more people getting home equipment. As we've seen over the last couple of years, a lot of people getting more or starting

their own gyms even, you know, so we'll probably kind of continue to see that trend. CrossFit kind of kicked that off, I believe. But I think Gold's Gym is like filing for bankruptcy last I heard. And who knows if that means that that's the end of them or not. But yeah, it definitely looks like the fitness industry is going to take a giant shift here coming up. Yeah. And I'm kind of looking forward to the shift, man. I mean, I don't want, I don't wish any bad thing on any any business owner at at any point i mean i hope that uh golds recovers and and they come back stronger but i think like you said maybe we were too reliant on uh on the coach putting together the the perfect program

for us at the the crossfit gym we're always having 24-hour access and working out these uh weird times you know, and maybe we need to realize that we need to take control a little bit more. Because that's the unfortunate thing I'm starting to realize, like my wife and I are basically obsessed with health and fitness. Like, that's just what we talk about. That's what we and it's not normal. You know, we're definitely not normal. But that just happens to be what we're interested in and sometimes we're like like no wonder you know no wonder other people are in a worse off situation with their health or their weight or whatever because you know luckily whatever happened genetically to me i became super interested in that stuff at an early

age and i've been obsessed with it but i feel feel like today, if you don't have the guards up, if you're not learning new things about health and fitness, you're going to walk into a lot of traps that you didn't want to. And you're going to end up gaining weight because you just had bad information. You didn't do anything wrong necessarily. You just had bad information or you were going off of what a high school gym teacher told you and it just isn't right anymore. You know, there's, there's a lot of things that, that play into that, but, uh, you, you really have to take more ownership of your, your health and fitness these days. Yeah, I agree. Ignorance is only going to like last so long. You

know, it was some people like, ah, well, that's not fair to say. Cause some people don't know. Ah, they kind of know they at least. They at least halfway know. I mean, people knew that cigarettes weren't great for you before there was research behind them to show that putting smoke into your lungs is not a great idea. Right? Yeah. I mean, I think that's what, and that's what I'm always looking out for is like, what are we doing? What are we doing today that in 50 or 60 years is just going to seem ludicrous you know because you right now you smoke a cigarette or if i was like just smoking right now you guys might be like what are you what are you doing dude have you are you like you all right like yeah okay but

that that was back then you know whatever 60 years ago maybe 70 smoking they just thought it was no no big deal it's smoke passing in and out of my lungs like it's not a problem and then you know we we started to catch up scientifically what are we doing today that's the exact same thing like i have some theories and ideas about what we could be doing that's this probably bad for us but you know that's what i'm always looking at like there's something like you know we think we got it all figured out but i guarantee there's something we're just doing every single day that's like in 50 years, you know, my grandkids are going to be like, really? You do that every day? Like, yeah, no one, no one even thought about it. Yeah. My brother and I talked about that. Go ahead. I'm just curious. What are some of those things that you, you, you've been thinking

about that you think, okay, this isn't, this is kind of weird. Yeah. I think, um, you know, just to put it in like a big, broad term would be our devices. Like, I think there's a lot of emerging research and they're in the, is it correlation or causation like debate, but the impact of high screen time usage, like three, four hours a day in the association with suicide rates and depression is, is very alarming. And, you know, we're, no one's afraid, no one's like, everyone's afraid to be like, yeah, no, no, no, it's your phone. That's why people are committing suicide at higher rates today. No one will say that yet. And that's okay. I don't even know either. I'm just saying that's one theory I think is like, maybe my kids, they won't even think it's cool to have a phone that can do all this stuff. They're

like, why would I want to be so connected? Like why would I want to have my neck bent down with my thumbs flying for six hours? That doesn't make sense, dad. Like that's dumb. You know, I think that's one small thing that might not be such a good idea later. And I don't think we're going to realize it for a very long time. Yeah. And I think if you put that in combination with other things, then, then, you know, you're really starting to look at a, a country that's set up for illness. You know, you, you start to have, my brother and I have talked about this before on a more broad, on a more, uh, with a more broader, uh, subject,

but just with carbs, like we were just kind of kidding, but we just, we saw someone smoking. And as I, as we, as we went past past them i didn't say anything to them obviously we were in a car and i just said to my brother i was like isn't that weird like people still do that and then we were talking about like i wonder if that'll ever be the case with processed foods like oh my god you see that person like they're eating a donut like that's weird you know i think i think we live in a free country and people should be allowed to do what they want and they should be allowed to select their level of harm at their leisure, really. But it is an interesting thing.

Like the more knowledge that we have, maybe those things will be reduced a little bit. I mean, I don't think that, you know, eating a donut is necessarily an unhealthy thing to do here and there. But the point is, is like, you know, maybe people will start to really value nutrition and say, hey, like, you know, we shouldn't be doing that too often, you know? Yeah. And I think, you know, Jerry Seinfeld has like a really, like, kind of like a funny observation, you know, I mean, that's what Jerry Seerry seinfeld does but he mentions uh if an alien were to come to this planet and see us walking behind another animal and the animal taking a crap and we were picking it up and putting into bags he's like he's like who would the alien think

is in charge we're like picking up this feces and carrying it for them like obviously the dog is in charge right because like we're carrying its crap around And I think the same thing is true if an alien were to come down and see someone eating a really clean whole foods diet versus someone eating super processed foods diet that we now have research on that says, you know, it's worse for you, you'll eat more, it's gonna make you obese, lead to all these health problems. And you know, the alien would be like, well, you must be forced to eat that food because it wouldn't make any other sense. And most of the time, the answer is either they didn't have the education on why or it's financials. You know, like they couldn't afford the whole food stuff. And so they ate the worst thing. They didn't want to make the uncomfortable choice of cutting out the, you know, ESPN or whatever out of their budget and have those whole foods. But it's crazy, man. If we were to get an outside creature to come look at us, they'd be like, what the hell? Like, I don't understand some of the decisions you guys are making. Well, we may even feed our pets more responsibly than we

feed our children. Because with a pet, someone's like, oh, you know, the dog only eats like twice a day. Right. It's like, well, why does the dog only eat twice a day? Well, I don't want the dog to get fat and sick. Like, well, why does your kid eat 17 times? That's a hundred percent true. Yeah. What's your diet like these days? Uh, yeah. So I, I've been down a lot of different rabbit holes on the, on diet. So I went, uh, I had a paleo about 10 years ago and then from pale from paleo, started kind of reintroducing, I'd say, more moderate carbohydrates after that. And then still wasn't doing well with the higher carb. And then I went fully keto a year or two ago. But I just didn't do real well on keto.

But it led me down this rabbit hole of just like how our body uses fuel at different times, you know, so if it's super high intensity, your body prefers sugar, if it's more low intensity, it prefers, you know, fats to burn. And then I kind of started to eat based off of that data, like personal data, like, if I'm going to have a heavy or high intensity training session, you know, I just eat more carbohydrates in preparation for that. And if I have a lower intensity day, I eat a lot less carbohydrates. And, uh, it was a conversation I had with Rob Wolf that kind of made me realize that because when I went keto and the reason it didn't work for me is like, I was trying basically like no carbs. I was like at 10 grams of

carbs a day. And like that whole, they're like, no, no, just give it time. Like the time never came. Cause I was just, I was training too hard. Like the intensity was not there. I was not, I did not feel like myself for a very long time. And then, uh, you know, I got the, some P strips and everything else. And like, I could go up to like a hundred grams of carbs or a little bit over a day and still be in ketosis. And he's like, yeah, dude, like you're super low body fat. You're training a lot. Like he's like, you're still kind of keto. It's just a higher carb keto and so i think i fluctuate probably in and out of ketosis throughout the week based off of my training schedule but what i eat is a lot of just whole foods you know like um we don't have a lot of processed things or any

processed things in our house really so fruits vegetables meat um some starchy carbs uh like sweet potatoes and stuff like that yeah all. All roads always lead back to lead back to Rob Wolf for some reason. Yeah. He's, he was a major part of my, my journey early on, you know, I read his book, the paleo solution. And that was, that was probably the biggest shift for me. Um, because prior to that, I mean, I, nutrition was still important, but I had taken the, I was like in a more bodybuilding, like chicken and rice type, uh, everyday mentality. I didn't really care. It was more of like a macronutrient thing, right?

I didn't really care what I was eating. Like broccoli didn't make sense to me because it didn't have a lot of macros in it. You know, like there just, there weren't a lot of calories there. And, uh, he kind of changed some of my perception early on with that book and to where I was really just like, okay, this makes sense. Like, let's eat like fruits and vegetables and some meat like that all makes sense to me and kind of has ever since. Yeah, I think when it comes to nutrition, the big a big truth of it that no one wants to admit is like the book of nature. The book of nutrition has has already been written, you know, and like it

doesn't need to be tampered with any further. The foods that are, were meant to eat, they're pretty obvious, you know, there's different types of meat, there's fruit, there's vegetables. And then once you start getting beyond that, then it's kind of, you know, hard to maybe pick and choose each thing versus a, you know, a tuber versus a grain and so on. But for the most part, if you stick to the things that were put on this earth for us to eat that we didn't have to mess with too much to produce, but I don't think you can really go wrong. I don't really think that you can get fat off of those foods unless they're highly processed and mixed together with a bunch of other ingredients yeah and they did a study in like um in a ward like last year the year before

where they had the two groups of people like the processed food and the unprocessed and the whole food people and they let them eat like unregulated and just see what happened and uh you can eat whatever you want like but every time you come to like get more food from us we're gonna give you fruits vegetables meat like very basic stuff and then the other uh group would you know i don't know exactly what it was but like a twinkie or whatever processed food and they ate like significantly more because they just weren't they didn't feel fulfilled from that that kind of diet as as we all know that's not very fulfilling and uh they ended up with a lot more,

a lot worse blood markers and everything else. And it was like the other group just kind of regulated themselves and they lost a bunch of body fat and like, but they were allowed to eat as much as they want whenever they were hungry and it still wasn't a problem. You know, you were talking about eating at or having your carbohydrates or something like that,

or your diet is a reflection of your activity on a certain day. And you probably work with a lot of individuals that do not necessarily CrossFit, but CrossFit type work. I know that in the past within the CrossFit community, like they would eat a lot of carbs because of the demands of their sport. Do you feel that that is still somewhat necessary for what they do? or could they get away with your type of approach yeah so i think you'll find out real fast especially if you eat a lot of carbohydrates and sugar because you know we we start we can store carbohydrates in our inner muscles and liver as glycogen right and but we don't really know how full our glycogen stores are at any

given point you know that's the that's the confusing part. But I realize with me, like, they're not super full. You know, like, for lack of a scientific term, like, if I go all out intensity, it's only about 20 or 30 minutes later to where I realize I am out of power. You know, this is, it's gone. But if I were to be eating a lot of carbohydrates for several days in a row, I really feel like they've been kind of like topped off and I'm never going to hit that low. But I think that people should experiment and not just be like, I'm going high intensity tomorrow, a lot of carbohydrates today. I would go like, just go try workout fasted at whatever intensity you were going to hit it at anyway and see what happens. And if you never quote unquote bonk or run out of energy,

your diet's probably fine. You don't need to like have this like pasta carb load before your 12 minute Metcon. Like that's ridiculous. You know, you, you have plenty of fuel stored in your body to handle most anything. Um, it's when you get outside of that. And I think a lot of people take like nutritional, like, you know, I've, I've done these hundred mile bike races where it's, it's necessary for me to fuel during. And it makes sense, but I, I'm also aware of when that's happening and not not getting ridiculous with it. And I think people are taking that kind of sports science, like these multi hour long events and trying to put it in their life for like

a 30 or 40 minute workout. It's like, dude, you're, you're fine. Like drink a little bit of water, have some coffee and go hit the training session. I guarantee everything's going to work out. Sure. Jared, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. Where can people find your book that you already have out and where can people find your upcoming book? Yeah. So if you go to garagegymathlete.com, you can learn more about our training and find the garage gym athlete book. And then the new book, you can go to killing comfort.com and you know,

get that it'll be on Amazon and everything else. And then if you're, if you are a nerd like me and you like programming and stuff, the third website is end of three fitness.com where we've really kind of started to put some of our methodology and things out there so people can, can nerd out on it. And it's not for everyone, but something I, something I love. Do you know, uh, Joel Jamison at all? Uh, I, I'm aware of who he is, but we've never spoken before. Yeah. I should connect you guys.

I think you guys would get along. I mean, he's, he's very deep into, uh, programming, but you might have to go for a ride in his helicopter. I don't know if you're cool with that. Yeah. I mean, I've done a few helicopter rides. Just look at his credentials, make sure he's all good after, after Kobe, man. I just like, yeah, I know it's a little, it's a little scary, right? Yeah. It's, it's, uh, I mean, I came, I come from the aviation world and like, I just, I'm like, if I'm getting an aircraft with you, you better, you better be more trained than I ever was. Have you been having an opportunity to watch the last dance at all? No, I haven uh michael jordan documentary you should check it out it's it's we we've been digging it a lot we've been talking about it on almost every show i think they're on like episode

six but it will give you some good uh binge watching yeah i've seen i've seen a lot of stuff posted about it and i need to i need to dive into it all right man thank you so much appreciate it have a great rest of your day. Yeah. Thanks for having me on. Thank you. And my microphone is off. That was cool, man. I think a lot of, a lot of people are going to really dig that. Oh, go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. He had a lot of great, a lot of great advice. I loved it. His approach to habit change was something I really liked too. Like, um, I mean, cause you can set out, like you can have exactly what you think a person needs to do to be able to get to their goal. You can have all the steps, but if you give them everything at once, it's going to be very hard for them to digest it all. His approach of giving someone one task a week to try to do, try not

drinking soda this week, try walking for 10 minutes a day this week. You know, it, those things add up over time. That's a really good approach for all of us to take. Well, I think some people that do online coaching are really smart and seem, I know that you, uh, have a phone calls and set up any, and you communicate with people a lot. And I think that this is about so much more than just your training and just your food. Um, if it was about training and food, they probably wouldn't ever contact you, you know, because training is, training can be overwhelming if you're, if you're brand new to it, but really you can kind of just like, you can kind of figure some of it out, you know, you can,

you can kind of mess around with it and have some ups and downs, but really these are people that are struggling in other areas to really connect the dots. Maybe they don't want to spend time doing it. Maybe it's a student. Maybe it's somebody who has a job and a family and they don't want to try to figure it all out. And on the flip side of it, maybe it's just somebody who just has never had discipline in that area, or maybe they're just not interested. Like they don't want, they don't care to learn a ton about nutrition. They just want to be in better shape. But the story is, is that, you know, if you don't have the knowledge, then it's hard to know why you're doing something. It's a, it's a really, uh, gigantic factor in motivation is the principle

of awareness. If you're not aware of why you're doing something. But even if you just have a brief understanding, like if you just tell me, Mark, like, you know, you told me you have a history of going back for seconds and that's why I need you to weigh your food, right? Even that amount of information is enough. Like weigh your food, you know, as James Smith said the other day, he said, you know, track it before you eat it, right? These little simple tools, the little simple rules can be things that stick with you forever and you don't have to really have a massive knowledge. You just need to know that's the right thing to do because it matches up with

my goals for the moment. And that should be enough motivation for you to stick to it. Yeah. Yeah. Just like mobility. No, go ahead. Yeah. Just like mobility. Like the way I look at mobility is when I don't do mobility enough, I start to feel pain. My lower back starts to hurt.

My body starts to feel rigid and I can't move well. So that's my motivation for being, doing mobility and being mobile because I don't feel pain. I just move really, really well. So it's, it's, it's really that simple. That Ron Penna speech. I don't like stretching, but I, you know, he, he hates stretching, stretching, but he hates being in pain 10 times worse. He hates, hates going to bed early, but he hates missing an opportunity because he's fatigued or he's tired.

Right. Like that was, that was hilarious. And it was like, I think that gave us all a really good perspective. It was good to hear somebody, somebody say it that way. I think it's easier to come from that side. As I was mentioning with Rob Bailey, like he's just looked at his own shirt and he's like, just don't suck today. That's a way different responsibility than saying, Andrew, you got to go out there and you got to whoop everybody's ass today.

You got to beat everybody that you know. You got to kick all their asses, you know, but it's just like, hey, man, just do the best you can today and don't be a pussy. Like that's an easier message to follow, right? Yeah, a way easier pill to swallow for sure. A much easier way to put points on the scoreboard. That's what it seemed like, you know, with the do one hard thing. You know, it's like, hey, like if you're struggling right now,

you probably haven't, you have no points on the scoreboard. Let's just, let's hit a couple singles and then get some momentum going. And I love that. You know, yeah, go for a walk. Okay, boom, you're on base now. Let's see what happens tomorrow or the next time you're up at bat. I like that a lot. The hormesis, the one heart thing and what was it, what's pushing you forward? Like just having those things up on a board or something can, that, that's, that's, that's a really good idea. I think I want to implement that. And I think, uh, I think everybody listening, I think is capable, you know, is plenty capable, not, not just capable of doing what he suggested,

but they're capable of setting themselves up in a position where these things are easier. Like, um, do one hard thing. Like I think about, I actually think that I'm pretty lazy. You know, somebody might look at, uh, maybe because of the, the posts that they see on Instagram, it's a lot of like training or something like that. Or I don't know, they might associate, um, some other things with me not being lazy, but I gotta tell you guys, I talk my my I talk myself out of like diving on the couch pretty much all day long. I talk myself out of eating pizza all day long. I talk myself out of I have to talk myself out of it all day.

And it's actually kind of funny to think about the couch because I haven't I don't even know if I've ever sat on that couch. I'm like always standing or trying to move around just because I know that if I do that, that my mind is going to wander and I'm going to end up being a couch potato and I'm going to end up sitting there. But I have to like, you know, I'm kind of in constant conflict with all these things. But luckily, I have enough interest in exercising and moving and getting outside. I know that a walk is going to make me feel better. I know that the sun's going to make me feel better. I know that if I go downstairs and move around the dumbbells a little bit, if I put on the weight vest and go hit the stairs, I do know that it's going to be difficult, but I know that what's on the other side is going to make me feel really, really good. It's going to make me feel accomplished for the day. So anyone who's like,

man, I don't know about that hard thing. Like it's kind of hard to do the hard thing. As he said, sometimes he encourages people just to warm up, you know, just, Hey, just go warm up. And then you know that you're going to do something harder. That's what I find myself doing on these runs. I'm like, man, I ran yesterday. I did the stairs yesterday. I can kind of sell myself this story. Oh, you worked hard yesterday. You can chill for today. But as soon as I go on one of these walks, I'm like, there's no reason why I can't run this hill. There's no reason why I can't sprint this hill. There's no reason why I can't do this. There's no reason I can't do that. Next thing you know, I'm working out for like two

hours straight. Yeah. I've, I've seen you do that where you just trick yourself into working out way more. Cause like, yeah, same thing. Like if you said, okay, I'm yourself into working out way more because like yeah same thing like if you said okay i'm gonna work out for two and a half hours i'm gonna run i'm gonna do this i'm gonna do that and you're just like no i'm not but like okay now let's just go stretch hit a walk see how it feels and it's like what i did yesterday was an hour and 45 minutes i just just kept going i i went down and i was like i'll do the stairs and i was like i'll do like uh just kept going. I went down and I was like, Oh, I'll do the stairs. And I was like, I'll do like, uh, I don't know. I'll do like 10, 10 flights of stairs or whatever. And then I did 10 and I was like, ah, I should do 15. And then I did 15 and I was like, ah, I should do 20. And so I did.

And so I did 20. And then when I was done with the 20, I was like, okay, run down the stairs and see if you can run, run uh all the way back up that treacherous steep hill oh god yeah i ran up that deadly hill and then um i proceeded to walk for like 90 minutes after that so with the weight vest on um i had the weight vest on the whole time. Yeah. Yeah. My traps are, my traps are tight. My neck's all tight. Yeah. It was, uh, it was awesome. But yeah, whatever way you got to talk yourself into doing stuff that's difficult. And I think even something like a weight vest is, um, it's like a fat guy's way of like getting in some good cardio because it's,

it's not that bad to throw on a weight vest and go on a walk. It's not that bad. Like if you don't ever want to mess with running or, or, you know, maybe you don't want to really mess with, uh, getting too deep into like cardio type stuff,

but just putting on a weight vest ain't that bad. It's actually, I actually like it and it's great for like squats or pushups or any other movements that you do. It just amplifies everything. I would say for most people, a 20 pound weight vest would be plenty, but the, one of the ones we have here is 40. Yeah. That 20 and a 40. I need to buy one cause it's super useful. I want to go walk with it. What's the brand that you have? It's an XD, XD official official it's called on on ig okay they actually uh they sold their licensing to um what's the strap thing what's that thing called that master

the uh straps that you use for like rows and stuff like that the kate the versa grips no no no um uh it's like a whole program it's straps like that attached to like a trx trx there you go yeah i should i should know these things but yeah trx that's pretty awesome yeah no the uh the stuff he was mentioning for for like coaches in terms of building relationships though that's i think a lot of people should should like should think about that. Building relationships with the clients that you're with online, because that's the only way if your clients don't feel like they have a relationship with you or they know you, it's going to be hard for them to work with you. So, yeah, he's doing that at scale, too, which is really crazy. I don't think that's talked about enough.

You know, I don't think that's talked about enough. I don't think that's talked about enough on how to... I know people mention it a little bit, but how to motivate, how to really motivate your online clients, I think is an amazing skill set to be able to have. I just know from my experience of working with people, I never really did a specific online coaching necessarily, but what happens is like that first couple of days or first couple of weeks, the amount of engagement is really high because they don't know, like, you know, you, you might've said, you might've gave them a list of foods they can eat and then they go out to eat. And then a bunch of other lists of foods comes that maybe aren't, aren't on the list you

gave them. And they're like, Hey, what do I do? And, and they're kind of like in a panic. And so they ask you about kind of every situation in the beginning. And it's, uh, you know, it's, it's hard, but if you don't communicate with them, they will fail. And I've noticed that when people don't communicate back to you, that's a sign. They probably screwed up somewhere along, like, like if you were coaching me and you're working on working with me to lose weight, communicate back to you, that's a sign they probably screwed up somewhere along. Like, like if you were coaching me and you're working on working with me to lose weight, I'm checking it every week. Hey, I lost four pounds. Hey, I lost two pounds. Hey, I lost two pounds. Hey, I lost two pounds. And then nothing. And then, and then you,

you text me, Hey bro, how's it going? Nothing, right? And then like finally after what, Christmas or whatever, after New Year's, I hit you back and like, yeah, man, like things went a little rough there. And you're like, yeah, I figured, right? That's the thing. Like, we're all like, everybody's human. You know what I mean? And it's hard to, when you fail at something and you have somebody that you're being accountable to, right? It's hard to tell them, yo, I kind of fucked up this week or I kind of fucked up this past month and I didn't want to say anything about it. It is tough, but it's one of those things where, I mean, you just,

you just got to, it happened. Okay. Then just move forward past it. It's, it's not that big of a deal. All right, gentlemen, let's get on out of here. Thank you, everybody, for checking out today's episode. Thank you to Piedmontese for sponsoring this episode. For more information on them, please head to the iTunes show notes or whatever podcast app you're listening to this. Check out the show notes or the YouTube and Facebook description. 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 ending on instagram and youtube i didn't see my yin yang on tiktok and twitter mark dude tell us

about this fat loss autopilot man i'm enjoying watching it what's going on with that yeah so like last week i made a series on uh on ig on IG cause I was like, what are you guys having more problems with fat loss or muscle gain? And like the majority of people were just like fat loss. So what I did is I, on Monday through Friday last week on my Instagram highlights, I just put some of the biggest habits as far as like lifestyle, nutrition, um, lifestyle, nutrition, uh, daily habits, potential supplements and stuff. And there's one more in there that I forgot. Oh, yeah. Yeah, whatever. But I put all those up there. So people could kind of just like, use it and try to just build in habits. Because like, when we talk about the stuff that we do on this podcast, a lot of the stuff we do is kind of automatic for us, you know,

their habits that we've built in. Well, the reason why I don't binge eat anymore is because I've utilized fasting and I don't eat any more processed food. So I like, like all of these are habits that we have built in. So I just wanted to share that with people. And then the coming week, I'm going to have a challenge on Facebook where I'm going to try to like, just kind of help people cement some of these habits in and give them a few like extra tools that they'll be able to do that with. And's pretty much what it is. But I'm going to keep that on my IG highlights so that anybody can just like, share that with somebody or give those like give that somebody because if they can implement like habits, it's much stronger than just like saying, Oh, I eat this diet or this diet, because you can, you can eat almost any diet sounds like, you know, processed foods.

But if you have those habits in line, you're going to be okay. Like a lot of people have already DM me saying I broke through a plateau and serves my fat loss because I started chewing my food. You know, we got that from John Berardi. It's really simple things that just make a big old difference. Yeah. Chewing your food, getting better sleep. And when you're doing, when you're exercising, you know, if you are to do some hit cardio or something like that, because you would love for

it to burn some fat, that's great. But sometimes you can overdo your training and your training can make you even more hungry and really trying to battle hunger is a really tough thing because hunger, hunger isn't so bad, but hunger, a lot of times will turn into a craving as well. And I kind of think that sometimes I've noticed that when I overeat, when I'm really hungry, when I overeat, then I even still have a craving on top of it. It's a weird thing. So I have to eat a little bit before, you know, like I can't push that shit out too much because my mind will wander. And I'm trying to like trying to trying to stuff that before it before it ever occurs. But I love that. I think that's great. There's a lot

of things that people can do to accelerate their fat loss. That isn't necessarily just about like, hey, man, you got to eat a lot less food, because we know that in the long run, that's not gonna be anything that's going to be sustainable. Yeah, man. Like, I mean, we talk about sleep all the time on this podcast. I'm not going to go into it. But like last night, I think I got like five hours, right? Right now, I'm like deathly hungry.

Like I knew by the afternoon today, I'm going to start feeling like super hungry because of what I did last night. I didn't get enough rest. So it's like simple things like that. You know, if you get enough sleep, it's going to work in your favor for your cravings. It's simple stuff. Strength is never a weakness.

Weakness is never strength. I'm at Mark Smelly Bell. Catch y'all later.