Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 433 - Walmart Workout Plans ft. Anders Varner

Episode Date: October 12, 2020

Anders Varner is the host of Barbell Shrugged and Director of Media for the Shrugged Collective. The Shrugged Collective is a fitness network with the goal to be the first of it’s kind to reach 1 billion views. Anders is a 4-time CrossFit Games Regional competitor, and the former co-founder of CrossFit Pacific Beach. Anders is a member of John Cena’s “One Ton Club” and has worked with athletes from the NFL, WWE, and CrossFit. Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Special perks for our listeners below! ➢Freeze Sleeve: https://freezesleeve.com/ Use Code "POWER25" for 25% off plus FREE Shipping on all domestic orders! ➢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 ➢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

What's up guys this episode of mark bell's power project is brought to you by piedmontese beef There we go talking about beef again, dude, you know, i'm on a high carb low fat diet There's no way I can have amazing ribeyes Uh new york strips and all that good stuff. There's just way too much fat in it Why are you gonna just like sit there and tease me with all this stuff? You know the cool thing about like piedmontese is that it kind of falls in line with uh you guys you guys know about mark's protein leveraging diet where he goes pretty low fat pretty low carb and really high protein and piedmontese fits right into that because literally every single cut of their beef has a lot of protein

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I'm going to check it out. But I just haven't. I could easily just go to Spotify, right? But I'm not. I don't know. I just haven't. I just think it's funny. More so than anything else.

Have you heard the whole thing? Yeah, I've heard the song a bunch of times. Okay, alright. I started seeing posts about WAP before I even knew what it was. And then I find it and I was like, oh, it's a song.

I'm like, I wonder what that stands for. And obviously that's one of those things where like, uh, it's so popular. Like if you ask about it, like you're kind of an idiot. So I'm just like, it'll,

it'll come around. I'll figure it out eventually. It's like, uh, what's the version that they put on the radio of that song, right? Just complete silence for three minutes. No,

it's weird. I've heard that version. It's very odd. That's funny. The new versions of everything is just weird, man. Is it WAP or WAP? Or WAP. Yeah, sorry.

I don't even know. I think they say WAP. It's WAP. Never say WAP. That's right. All right. Yeah, WAP doesn't sound right. Yeah.

I'm going to send this link out, but we can just go ahead and get started right now. And Mark, if you want to let people know who we got coming on. Yeah, we have my buddy Anders on the podcast. I've been on his show before, and he's got some cool shit going on. He was telling me he's got like, I don't know. He's going to fill us in and let us know more. But he basically was saying he was doing like some sort of health and fitness thing for Walmart. And so I was like, well, I've been to Walmart before and, uh, it, you know,

it appears that, uh, those people could utilize, uh, some strategy with the fitness. So, um, hopefully you can fill us in on some of that. And I know he's been helping people for many years too, like overcome addiction and a whole host of things through fitness and strength training and stuff. So it'll be neat to kind of hear what he's got to say about all that. Yeah, I think that's huge because, I mean, as is right now, you can go to Walmart. They do have their, um, like supplement section or whatever before it was like a bunch of garbage. Um, you know, like a lot of six star nutrition

and stuff like that. But now they have a lot of quest. They have like a bunch of other like store brands and name brands that will allow you to, you know, kind of get some healthy stuff, but it's really cool to hear him, and here he is. How we doing? Hey, what's up? Hey, there he is. How's it going? Good, man.

Sorry, I'm getting my arm here all straightened out. What the hell happened to your arm? You're in a sling there. What's going on? It took a little spill off an eight-foot jump of some sort on my first day mountain biking. And tried to rip my shoulder straight off the body. But luckily, we've been lifting weights long enough that it can handle a little impact. There we go.

Basically, that's the story I'm telling myself, at least. Yeah, just a really nasty sprain. The shoulder pretty much dropped like three inches. It was like so loose and gross in there. But I didn't separate it. I didn't break it. Just kind of held on by the last thread. Are you pretty familiar with mountain biking?

Have you been messing with it for a few years? No, we were down in Arkansas Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday of this week and it was like part of the integration into all this fun business stuff we're doing with Walmart. They were like, let's go mountain biking and we'll bring a

cameraman and we'll do all this cool stuff. I made it about 90 minutes and then the day ended. And now, now everybody's going to remember you for sure. Right? The best part about having a, that's what I told him. I said, look, we needed something to ensure we had a good team down here. So we had our broker. He was like carrying my bike down. He was in charge of making, he was like running operations, making sure we had cars.

He was like, do you want an ambulance? I was like, please do not put me in an ambulance. Please do not make that happen. Just trust me. I'll be okay. And then we were out with our buyer as well. He's the one that ended up driving me to the hospital just to get an x-ray and make sure everything was still attached. I got home and I was like, we can trust these people. They like us. We're, we're all on the same team now. You guys have a connection to fit ops. Cause I know they, they have, uh, they do some stuff out in Arkansas and some of

the military bases and stuff like that, I believe. Yeah. I'd actually love to have you guys out. We that's how all this stuff started. I mean, we talked about it when you're on the show. You're involved with Sina and McIntyre and all that stuff. And then Efforting, you guys remember Stan Efforting was doing a tour for fit ops and he was doing the vertical diet tour.

Yep. With Bob. That's all, it's all vertical diet tour. Yeah, with Bobby. That's all kind of interconnected. Yeah, so that's how this all actually took place was while all of the CrossFit world was at Wadapalooza in Miami partying, having a good time with all their fitness friends. And Cena put me in touch with Matt Hesse and crew down there.

And he was like, you need to go speak at this. It's like, dude, do you know that Wadapalooza is happening? It's February. I want to go to Miami. I don't want to go to Northwest Arkansas. That sounds ridiculous. Why would I ever want to go to Northwest Arkansas? So I was giving my talk and that whole event is just that whole camp is incredible. The stories and the people. And then that night, of course, you get a bunch of people that like lifting weights together. And we got to have a who can lift the most. And I just happened to be snatching with the buyer for, I guess you'd call them merchandising retailer.

The head guy that buys all the supplements around the world for Walmart was sharing a barbell with me and I had no idea. And then I asked him at the very end, I was like, what do you do around here? What do people do for work? There's nothing here. Like, well, there's this little store down the street called Walmart. I buy all the supplements for the whole world. It's like, do you ever think about putting training programs next to protein powder? He was like, well, why don't you write something up and tell me what it looks like.

Okay, I'll do that. And eight months later, we're going on the shelves. It's going to be incredible. That's amazing. Yeah, that's really cool.

So it's kind of just uh the way the way everything works out you go and do something totally random and against the grain and next thing you know something really cool happens so how does that look actually like are you guys putting in your supplement with the training program or is it going to be the training programs next to a bunch of different types of supplements that you don't necessarily have an affiliate with? Yeah, so the latter. I mean, I would say that we have some sort of affiliation with the Performix brand just because they're the ones that run FitOps.

We have really good relationship with them. Super open lines of communication. They've hooked us up with all of their network down there. And we really could not have done this without uh performix really just bringing their uh two-year education of being on the shelves into this but no we don't have a supplement company uh it something may come out of this in that once we grow but right now it's it's head down and just purely focused on making sure that one we launch in the first week of November, um, to making sure the product looks good on the shelves,

making sure it gets to the shelves. Um, this whole process has been such a giant learning curve. I mean, Walmart is the biggest retailer, so they work with the biggest suppliers and it's like that whole system is built for Coca-Cola, not Barbell Shrugged. And that's a really... For me, it was a very steep learning curve. And then you work for like 7 months just to be able to get the nod to say, yes, it's a go. And then you finally meet somebody that really knows how to put things on

shelves and has connections to designers and everything else. And then we basically scrapped the first seven months worth of work and redid everything so that it looks really pretty. And it has like a professional, a professional did everything in the last three weeks basically. Um, and I was the one driving the driving it for for the first seven months are you guys gonna uh release it nationwide or is there gonna be like a test market first uh so we start in san diego la palm springs and vegas um we're in 20 stores to start uh but what's really cool is that we have the.com. So you can go to walmart.com and be able to get on there and find the programs, which this is one of the coolest

parts about us just being able to bring really actual strength and conditioning training programs to people at Walmart because the number of times I went on walmart.com and they have a legitimate program written by Richard Handman called the Big Penis Enlargement Fitness Program. Can you tell me the sets and wraps, please? That's what I said. I said, how did Dick Handman write this book? And it passed. I know how hard it is to get all this stuff done, to get into Walmart.com. And somebody figured it out and that

passed i couldn't believe it um i was like why did i write the fat loss program this is stupid i needed to write the big dick program um so that's who we're competing against there's a whole bunch of weird stuff on walmart.com i'm gonna have to i'm gonna look it up just for research purposes only that's absolutely tell me tell me if for research it works too this one after n equals one doesn't count you need at least two people all right his name was dick to richard richard handman dick handman big dick program yeah this is This is real. I immediately. That wouldn't surprise me if that was John Cena that wrote that. Nobody would believe me.

No, I found it. Yeah. The real thing. Giant penis enlargement exercise program by Richard Handman. It's got like a Chippendale model on there. Yep. Like super low jeans like that vein that no dude wants to see on another dude hanging out it's all in there

this is great you can't you can't make it up right richard hanman love to have that guy on if you can find him we were that would be the best episode ever oh yeah you know he just has like some, uh, totally different name. Probably. He's like, that's not my actual name. You guys fucking kidding me.

Yeah. Um, yeah, if we can, if we can find them, I'd love to have them. But so, so where do you guys,

where do you guys start with something like this? Um, there's so many different things to try to tackle when it comes to exercise or fitness or, um, thinking about the clientele that might be rolling through there by protein powder for the first time, you know, are you, uh, prescribing like very much beginner stuff? Is it, you know,

fat loss oriented, strength oriented? What do you got going on with that? Yeah. So our, our whole, uh, process started with realizing that this is not our typical target market of people. I went to Walmart near my house and sat in the aisle for four hours. It was like a week and a half before COVID hit. And I was there without a mask. And it was just like when people were really on edge and I was just sitting in there watching people shop for four hours. So I wanted to learn how price really mattered in Walmart and how sensitive people are. If I go buy a $50 tub, five-pound thing of protein, that's my normal price, but it's $27 on the shelves there.

And that's a giant difference. And then my original thought was like, I want to sell our programs for like 50% off of what our normal ebook would be of $47. It's like, well, you can't be in the $20 range because now you're the same price, if not more expensive than a lot of the protein that's on the shelves. And then you look at the pre-workouts right next to it, and you're definitely more expensive than the pre-workouts. That stuff's in the $15 range. So I wanted to think about meeting people where they're at and making it as easy of a process as possible, where they just look at it and they go, oh, of course, I have to buy this along with

the protein. It's not really a huge problem if it ends up in their cart. So we got our price point below $10 to $9.48, which is... In all honesty, I was blown away that I was okay going that low. I was like, one of those, am I really going to put my whole life into something and sell it for $9.48? This seems like I'm ripping myself off. But we figured out by doing digital downloads, not having to have printing and actually releasing a full book, it became an easier process. And we build one website. We're setting up serial codes. So they go in and they basically take what looks like a gift card.

So it's a bigger gift card, but a 3x5 card. And it's program specific. So what are the three highest goals that basically everybody has, whether they are seasoned or brand new, they want to lose weight, they want better conditioning, or they want to get stronger. So that's the route we took, which is assuming they're in the beginner to maybe intermediate phase of training. How do we write those three programs over for a six-week period to get people moving? And then how do we change the education process?

Because that used to be the thing that would annoy me so much when you walk into a store like that. And there's like waist trainers and a bunch of slim fast stuff. And you just go, God, I wish these people had something that just had a better education model than an easy-to-consume, sugary product or something that will just actually never work. And in all honesty, now it's put up or shut up for me

because I'm there. And we're giving them real strength conditioning work. We're giving them real conditioning programs. It's going to be very cool to just see how our education process meets the demand of where they're at. So those programs are all six weeks long, 30 days of training, six weeks, five days a week. Only one of them is done in a gym. Um, only one of them is done in a gym. Everything else is at home with just a pull-up bar or, or it's a conditioning program from wind sprints to, um, longer term stuff, just more of like an aerobic capacity type setup. Um, so we, that, that piece was really important

to be able to get the price point down and be able to write programs that we're proud of that are, you know, if we can just not trick them, but write a good program that works, maybe they've never seen it. Maybe they're actually genuinely interested in instead of jumping on a trampoline and trying to lose weight, whatever weird stuff people do. So that's where we started. And then it was the process that we were very unaccustomed to. How do you build a display that stands out on a shelf? How do you make three by five cards with serial numbers on them at checkout so that it talks to our website and automatically generates a,

like a, an email to them to get their programs to them. All that stuff was just a learning curve. But the actual programming piece, I'm really stoked on just because we get to get good programs in there. And I'm sure Billy Blanks is living up in a mansion somewhere in Carlsbad, California, high atop the world. But I don't want people kickboxing air in their living room.

So I want them out training andboxing air in their living room. So I want them out training and doing, doing what I think is important. Will there be like different levels to each program? Like, let's say somebody runs through that first six weeks, uh, with the hope be that they just start over or is there going to be like, okay, you did level one. Let me go check out what level two is, or is there like some, like a form of progression? Yeah, that's absolutely the program. I mean, if I were to, I'm sure we're all relatively aware of the program and the book. But what I really envision us doing is creating like a body for life in which we have this initial program. We've got kind of the testimonials baked

into the email sequences that they get to keep them engaged and motivated. You know, how to take before pictures, how to take the after pictures, what measurements matter. Is it just the scale? Are you able to get some body measurements to see actually what you have going on? So those pieces are, I love body for life. That was like the first real training program. And I've always thought that it was just so awesome how they built the program.

And then it was like nine chapters of inspiring testimonials and they changed millions of people's lives. There's just one program. So, yeah. So yes. Could they redo it over and over and over again? Absolutely.

Could they buy any of the other programs that we have on our website? Absolutely. We're, you know, once they're a part of our ecosystem, they're going to continually be brought into our programs and our methodology more and more. But for right now, three is enough.

I got to get these three moving first. So you mentioned Dick Handman and his book. Yeah. What other experiences Walmart have with selling programs? There really isn't. So one thing just so cool about Barbell Shrugged is when I was down at FitOps, the guy that I was sharing the barbell with was like, dude, I've been listening to your show for like eight years. You're literally like my strength and conditioning coach. We've just never met. I had no idea any of this.

He thought he was lifting with somebody cool, and I was just trying to lift weights. So by the time we actually got into having a real conversation about how we could launch this and what it would look like. We already had this just cool interaction. And he knows what we talk about. He knows our methodology. So that's really important to him. And we went down last week to do the shows. And he has a really tough job because he has to find really high quality supplements, products to put on his shelves and work with the suppliers to get a price point that his people will actually buy. So if you're selling a $75 product, he needs you to somehow get it to $35 and still be able to make money and keep your business moving and everything else.

So his initiatives and becoming kind of as, as he's become the global merchandising retailer, whatever the actual name of the main buyer for Walmart global, he is his brain is filled with what's right and wrong from listening to our show, training by himself. And now he's got the ability and the network and the job to be able to bring really high quality products and supplements into his stores. So that's really the coolest part to see Walmart changing.

And I was at... This week, I was at the coolest Walmart you've ever walked into in your entire life. It's like Walmart one. It's like where they bring anybody that wants to see the coolest Walmart. There was more products on the shelves than you could ever imagine. It was so clean. Everything was just perfect. And then they had a... They're running a beta test. It's the only one in the country right now of a Walmart health clinic. And inside the Walmart health clinic is a buddy of mine

from FitOps. That's the strength coach inside the clinic. So they have taken what really is this culture of Walmart right now, which isn't so great. Nobody really thinks about health inside Walmart. They think about people of walmart.com and now they, it's his job to change that culture and really bring quality education, quality products to the shelves and start building, you know, shifting the conversation away from being sick to being healthy. What was the conversation like with your family? Like, you know, you've been plugging away for a long time,

and I'm sure things have been good. I'm sure things have been great. But Walmart, like, that's, you know, it doesn't really get any bigger than that. It's the biggest, one of the biggest companies in the world, one of the most established companies in the world. So what was that conversation like? Yeah. The day-to-day in my house is very optimistic. We clearly play this game and money's a part of it. And the more people we can help, the more money we all make. And for some amazing reason, we get into 5,500 stores and I

sell one program per store a day, you're selling millions of programs in your life. You're changing an insane number of people's lives. And my, you know, and my wife, she's such a savage, but she kind of just in a way gotten used to me working my way into weird situations like this. Just over the last decade of talking to people and meeting cool people and being on shows like this. But probably the coolest one, uh, my dad,

damn, this is going to be tough. Um, my dad texted and was just like, you know, your parents have like kind of been in business with you since the day you were born, like grooming you to be something and spending all this money and all this time and all this energy, like paving this path for you and hoping that you make good choices. And they wear all those consequences and opportunities right along with you, even though they do it from far. And he wrote me

just a really long text basically saying like, hey man, I'm really proud of you. And stuff means a lot. I know how much they sacrifice and it's a cool thing when, when you get that, like, like genuinely proud of you. This is awesome.

My, uh, my dad is a huge Trump fan, huge Trump fan. Uh, a lot of my family is, uh, to,

to a fault, you know, they've been Donald Trump fans for a really, really long time, like 30 years or so. And they don't, they don't see that he can do any, he can do any wrong, but, uh, had an opportunity to bring him to a, uh, Donald Trump jr. Uh, rally

in, uh, sparks Nevada. And he just, you know, smiling ear to ear. I happen to know Trump jr. And so my dad got a chance to meet him and shake his hand and stuff. And when we walked away, I told my dad, I said, dad, how weird is that? That's from you buying me and my, you know, me and my brother's weights. Yeah. You know? And he's like, yeah, I know. He's like, it's really fucking weird. And we kind of talked about it a little bit, like, uh, what you, what you were talking about right there. It's like, you don't know what's going to spark something in a kid. You don't know. You know, he had no idea. He just, we were interested in weights. We wanted to play football. We wanted to be bigger and stronger and bought us some weights, you know, and then there you go. Yeah. It's a very similar story. And, you know, I, I remember, so I went away

to high school when I was 14, I went to a boarding school. And I can remember those long car rides where he's going to drop me off. And you never really think about how hard that would be as a parent. You always just think about it as the 14-year-old getting dropped off. It's impossible to think about other people. And so it's hard enough for me. But I never thought about the parent side, that you're dropping your kid off at the school and you won't... Kid literally left home at 14.

He'll be home in the summers and that's it. And, um, he would sit there and teach me about like goal setting and basically writing a business plan, but for your life and how do you want to go about achieving things? Um, so all that stuff just kind of sticks with you. And when you get the, like, I'm proud of you means, it means a lot. Have you always worked in fitness? Like,

is that something that like you were focused on since day one or did you kind of do something else that ended up here? No, that was, uh, you know, that was probably like the, the tough time of life when I wasn't doing fitness. It wasn't that I wasn't training. I was still training just as hard as I could. I just thought I was supposed to get a real job. I did all the things that I was supposed to do. And the next thing that I was supposed to do was go get a job.

So I worked for Northrop Grumman for five years and government contracting and selling intelligence to the, to the government and sitting in a cube and sitting around like Thursday ice cream socials. Just man, it was just so not who I was supposed to be. And it's not like I, if people want to do that, that's awesome. I was just a legit rat in a cage trying to break out at all times. And then I still didn't even know. I knew. I went to grad school in 06.

So I applied for an affiliate in early 06 before I left. Maybe grad school in 07, 08. And then I applied for an affiliate in 2006, 2007, before you even needed a level one for them to say yes. They just wanted people to pay the money to grow the brand and get people in the door. And then the girl I was dating at the time got into grad school and I was like, shit, am I going to open a gym? Am I supposed to do this girlfriend thing? And probably should not have opened a gym. That was good. But also wasn't supposed to do the

girlfriend thing either. So after I graduated, I moved to San Diego and I really, I knew I didn't want to go back to work in that capacity. The girl and I had broken up after three and a half years of dating, which was like just crippling. Like you really, you know, you don't want to go back to where you were. You're really lonely. I had just moved to San Diego basically to party for six months. Um, and the only thing that I kept doing over and over and over again was showing up to the gym every day. So much so that I didn't have a car in San Diego.

I had no money. I didn't really have like a, a job. I was just kind of like living off some money that I had and some very part-time work. But every day, I would ride my bike to the bus. I'd park the bike, hop on the bus for half an hour. They'd take me to the train. The train would bring me to downtown San Diego. And it would be about an hour-long commute for me to get to the gym. So I could train for an hour, hour and a half and prepare for what was going to be the CrossFit regional at that time. Um, and that was the only thing that I consistently did was just keep showing up to the gym. And at some point I just remember thinking like, if this is the only thing that really loves me back right now,

I should just go do it and, um, and try to be good at it because maybe I can make it. And if I can't, who cares? I lose nothing. If I file bankruptcy tomorrow, what am I going to lose?

Like 20 bucks. What's the point? Who cares? And we made it. I ran the gym for six years. We sold it, learned a lot about business, learned a lot about hard work. And now everything, looking back, makes so much sense. But at the time, it was really like a desperate, what the hell am I going to do with my life? And then once I made the leap, there was just no way around it. I just had to be good at it.

During those times, did you have some decent discipline? And I mean, it sounds like you were making it to the gym every day. And do you think maybe the reason for the gym every day was to, as you mentioned, being lonely, you think the reason for the gym was to maybe fill in some gaps so you didn't feel like a loser. You didn't feel like a deadbeat kind of. Absolutely. I mean, the gym was always the only thing. And it still is in a way it's like, if things start to be chaotic, the very first thing that I do is tighten up my nutrition. It's like the second thing that I do is tighten up my nutrition.

It's like the second thing that I do is I sit down and just like writing the outline of a strength program. And it just, it is the center of everything. I don't think a lot of people understand. I hope they do. And I'd love more people to have just a thing that they always can come back to. And for me, it's always like, if I can get my nutrition squared away, because when things get chaotic, you're not eating well, you're not sleeping well,

you're not training well. Oh, um, when, when things get chaotic, your training gets, um, so,

so weird. And you're, it's, there's no schedule. There's's no discipline so let's start back at zero and and zero for me is always eating better training better and um everything else seems to fall in place the more that i focus on that did you have some other disciplines intact or was that pretty much was that like if you were supposed to be somewhere did you get there and things like that or or were you like were you pretty supposed to be somewhere did you get there and things like

that or or were you like were you pretty kind of like laid back and you just cared about the gym if i had somewhere to be which for the most part i didn't i would have been there i mean what i was doing was a very disciplined thing i just didn't know it at the time because there was no passion behind it. So I was working from home while I was doing grad school. So I was taking night classes. And what I learned was that I could be really anywhere in the world because online classes had just started.

So I polished off an entire year of courses in the first in one semester, because I realized that like, this online thing's a joke. So I'll take the in person ones plus the online ones at the same time. And I'll just do my whole master's and get my MBA and three quarters of the time. So that was great. That's very disciplined. I just there was no passion behind it. I was just checking boxes. Maybe sounds like you were poking around for a purpose. Yeah, that's much more, um, was, is, is much more the case. And then once you realized that, that lifting had such a purpose, then it seemed like it was game on from there. Absolutely. And, you know,

even when I got to San Diego in order for me to not get caught, cause I didn't tell them that I moved to San Diego. I just did it. And they didn't know that I was graduated because they probably would have expected me back to work in person for six months earlier. But I would wake up at five and fire off like two or three emails. And then I would go back to sleep and then I'd wake up at five and fire off like two or three emails. And then I would go back to sleep and then I'd wake up, fire off a couple more emails. So they would assume that I was just on the East coast working in periodic

times when I was really just on the other coasts hanging out and didn't have much going on. But that, that move really allowed me the space to, one, deal with what I was dealing with of just being lonely and no real purpose to life. At one o'clock in San Diego, everyone on the East Coast is at four and they're shutting down. No one's checking in on me. So at one o'clock, I'm done every day. And now I'm just living in Pacific Beach with nothing to do and just aimlessly walking around town, or I'm sitting on a bus on the way to the gym. And I had time to just watch and think about stuff and finally just

go commit. That's how I found our first lease. That's how I wrote the business plan. It was like, wake up at 5, put a couple emails out, go back to sleep at 1 o'clock. Everyone on the East Coast is done. So I'm done. And then I would just walk around, look at buildings, wonder if I could put a gym there. And it the, the space to be able to go do that. But yeah, there's definitely discipline and waking up at 5am and having to go. And it's just, there was, it was, as you said, there's no purpose. There's no passion. There's, I didn't want to be great at what I was doing.

So you just, just going through the motions and checking boxes. It's the art of dicking around. I was so mad when Tim Ferriss wrote the four hour work week, I was probably the only person in the country that was like, he stole my shit. Tim Ferriss, you're you're that's mine. Like I did in three hours. I know I rewrite the whole thing. That's my book. Um, yeah, I actually read that. And I was like,

this is 100% how I opened my gym. To the T, even when I opened the gym, I still couldn't pay myself for the first 8 months. So I was up at 5, firing off emails. And then if I had conference calls when classes or coaching was going on, I would put my phone on mute, set it in the corner. I'd be dialed in. And if they needed me or didn't need me, I had no idea. And if they did need me, I would just be, oh, I lost connection. I'm sorry.

And most of the time, they didn't need me. But you just make it work. That was the fun part. We were just grinding and hustling and making things work. We pissed off some of our old bosses, but we also built a gym and trained a bunch of savages for a while. I find a lot of this stuff really fascinating because I feel like there's millions of people that are lost.

And especially in these times when a lot of people have lost their jobs and they're just kind of floating around and not sure what they're going to do next. And, and maybe they're, maybe they're not even like actively looking to do anything next. They're just kind of like waiting for something to happen and maybe they'll act and maybe they'll end up doing something again. But for yourself, when you said you were at this other job, you said that you, um, you couldn't do what you were meant to do, really. And can you explain that a little bit more? Was that because of the environment? Was that because of like, I don't know what that environment's like.

I've never had a real job in my life, so I don't know what it's, I don't have anything to compare it to. But I'm just imagining that you would end up not you personally, but in general, you could end up being the person that cuts corners, being the person that ducks out for lunch a little early, being the person that's gone a little bit later than they should be being the person that's just really trying to get through the day. You're going to make the same amount of money either way. You're just just another number and so you just at a certain point you recognize that and you just don't give a crap was that kind of is that sort of what was going on with you or is it something different yeah it was you know all

of those things play into it i think i think the thing that i love the most loved the most, love the most about being an athlete growing up and playing hockey at a decent level, or like at least for a school that really prioritize the sport and leaving home and taking these risks and going, whether I knew I was laying the foundation for what I'm doing now at the age of 14 or whatever it is that, that like the longest story of how you get to where you're at. But, um, when you look around the office, like when you're in a locker room,

there's the captain, we all aspire to the standards that that person lives their life by. Like that's how they became the captain. And when you're in the weight room, there's, there's the big strong guy with 12 abs. And you go, I wonder what that guy does. I wonder what that guy's eating. I'm going to try really hard to be strong like that guy. And then if you're good enough and if you work hard enough, maybe one day you'll lift weights with that guy. And that'll just be the conversation and the circle that you surround yourself with. So it's impossible to fail because in order to become that person's friend,

you just have to live the same life he does. And when you live the life that he lives, having abs is just this stupid byproduct of living a life with purpose and doing it the best you possibly can every waking moment. When you're in an office, you don't really want to be friends with any of them. You don't aspire to be like any of them. And that is depressing as you can get. That could be a stand-up comedy bit right there. That was pretty good. It's awful, right?

My boss was an awesome dude. He used to like, we'd sneak out and go, to your point, Like, yeah, it's sneak out and go catch like a nationals game like once or twice a year. And he's an awesome guy, but I've been in locker rooms. I've been around sports. I'm an athlete. I recognize that like very quickly you walk in and you're like if i sit here for 30 years this is what i'm gonna look like no thank you get me out i gotta break out of this mess now and um and it was also like it wasn't just in the office right like that all that stuff carries over because that's it's where you live it's who you hang out with outside. Everybody's kind of got the same corporate gig. None of us really knew anything was anything different. And we woke up, we trained, we went to work,

we came home, we had big, you know, it's, it's just, if you're, if you're going to be good at something, you have to try to go from squat rack one to squat rack six in the back of

the gym where the big boys are hanging out. And there's only one way to do it. And that's to train your ass off and go just get better. I'm glad how that happens because like that same exact thing happened when I started training on super training with a bunch of bigger, stronger people. It's like immediately I just started getting stronger just because I was around those dudes.

It's the easiest way to get, I don't know if you, if you have a gym membership, I think that's like the easiest way to progress in don't know if you if you have a gym membership i think that's like the easiest way to progress in a way you just make friends with those people and you got to earn it like that's the real nobody at super training cares about you until you can squat x amount that was true i'm really good friends with travis mash and my favorite part about mash's gym and all the athletes is that at any point in time, you can talk shit to Mash and he'll go front squat 500.

And you go, oh, like you're the one that sets the standard. So as soon as he's got some seniors, the best in the world, he's like, well, you still got to beat me every day. And that's cool. That's culture. And that's how you get respect. And that's how you, you know, if you don't live the life and if you don't put the work in, you'll just, you can go find another gym for sure. But why would you want to do that when you've seen what the best looks like?

I'm glad I'm not the only one that had that realization around the office. I mean, I've explained it on this podcast a bunch of times, but I looked around and I looked at the most successful people, the ones that just had been there the longest, and they were all very much out of shape. They were handcuffed to their desks. And then as far as people that I worked with, the last lead that I had, I remember she had said, Hey, can you guys please stop texting me on the weekends? Because I need to sleep.

I was like, you're a great leader. I can't wait to run through a wall for you. Like that's terrible. So yeah, I, I totally feel what you're, um, you know, talking about, like when you, you went to work every day and you were doing what you weren't meant to be or weren't meant to do. It's like the worst feeling ever. Um, can you explain? So like, uh, and then maybe Mark, maybe you can help me like articulate this topic a little bit better. But when you, uh, you know, you were waking up every day, you were just doing what you were supposed to be doing. Uh, you weren't necessarily, you didn't know where it was going to lead to. Uh, when you were training with the buyer from Walmart, you had no idea, but you still went out of your way to do that. It's sort of like,

it was just one of those moments where you're at the right place at the right time, but you weren't necessarily lucky. I know a lot of people think like, oh dude, Anders is just lucky because he just happened to be there at the right place at the right time. But you actually, you know, you put yourself there with a purpose. I'm sure that's happened before in the past. Can you explain, you know, a little bit like, kind of like, again, like I'm having a hard time putting it into words, but you know what I mean? Like how you put yourself there without really knowing what was going to happen. without really knowing what was going to happen. Yeah. I mean, there's count.

You know, when I built my gym, I never really thought that the general population would show up to the gym. I thought it would be way too angry and way too aggressive. And I wanted it to be that way in that I wanted people to walk in and it be a very high level conversation about lifting weights. I really wanted to compete in CrossFit and I wanted competitors there because I knew that that would breed, um, better athletes, stronger athletes, kind of a, kind of a top down approach. Like the old school bodybuilding magazines,

they didn't have the 100th best bodybuilder in the world that had the best in the world. And you saw that. And even if you didn't want to get into bodybuilding, you still could admire that extra high level that they were at. Yeah. And we set that standard with, you know, the coaching staff and,

and the conversation and the way we ran meetings and all that. Granted a lot, luckily a lot of general pop people showed up and learned a lot because we had bills to pay and we needed to be able to eat um but also at any point in time whoever walked through the door it was very important to me that the culture of the place said you're right at home and i wanted if any of you guys showed up or if anybody that I respected to show up to just walk in and go, Oh,

this is a, it's so obvious. This is where I will be training. Everybody in here knows how to train when they move. It's, it looks nice. Like if you're tiger woods, you're not going to go hit range balls at the Muni.

You just don't go to the cheap driving range because you can't. You're visually... It's awful watching somebody swing a golf club and it's just going to be terrible for your eyesight to see something that bad. And that's the way I wanted it to be in my gym. I wanted everyone to move well. I wanted it to be in my gym. I wanted everyone to move well. I wanted it to be pretty when you walked in. I wanted lines of people that knew how to do a snatch and a clean and jerk, and it not look disgusting. And in order to do that, you have to work really, really hard to get people that have never heard of Olympic lifting moving well. And I mean, the first time to really put a specific point on when that happened

was when John Cena walked in. I had no idea he was showing up. We were all just kind of floating around on a Thursday because it was a rest day and everyone was just rolling out and talking about nothing. And then he walked in. I was like, all right, let's go. You're home.

This is where you train. You could train anywhere, but now it's your choice. And I'm going to ensure that it's the best day in the gym you've ever had. And that's the way we made it roll for four straight years. We move well. We have great conversations. Music's always right. And we just set that standard and he never left. And that's just... It's almost like the way that you just carry yourself. And then all those people and all those stories and all that trust gets built. And over time, you get into cooler places.

You get invited to better things. You have opportunities show up, not because there isn't some luck involved, but it's because for the last 10 years, it all culminates in how you get invited to this specific event. And the people that are there, because it's such a tight-knit community, they have to be operating on a certain frequency. And that's just, you get drawn into that versus fighting your way through and kicking down doors if you do the right thing and you work hard enough to get there. if you do the right thing and you, you work hard enough to, to get there. CrossFit is really interesting in a sense that, you know, if Andrew and I showed up, you know, you would be like, okay, well, Mark, you know, he's been in the gym a lot, but there would be a lot of factors that would equalize Andrew and I,

that would allow for him to be competitive in a lot of the stuff that we might do because, uh, I may kick his ass on a lot of the lifting stuff. Um, but then when it comes to something like a snatch, like it would be hard for me to even learn the snatch. I've never, I've never even tried, tried one before. Uh, so that would, that would take a lot of time. And then also when it comes to the gymnastics aspects or it comes to certain movements that might call for a little bit more mobility or a little bit more endurance. And so I think that that is a is a huge appeal. But I like what you're saying is, you know, I believe that when you're doing things properly, you end up with an intensity that is off putting to a lot of people. But you want it to be. Yeah, because it's off putting to the correct people. You know, you might have to kind of tell people, Hey, look, it's not,

it's not really what you're seeing. You know, you, I know you saw the guy bleeding, you know, when he unracked the squat, but like, you know, it's not like that all the time. And that guy's been lifting for 12 years. Like this, you know Like this is going to be a little different as you come through the door. You're not going to be like, you know, killing yourself on every single workout, but eventually we'll get, we'll get to those points. But I think it's a, when you say general pop or you say average person, I think a lot of times people sometimes think that that's like a negative connotation, but a lot of times people sometimes think that that's like a negative connotation.

But a lot of times you can't judge a book by its cover because a lot of people are savages and you just have no idea. Yeah. And I think of like the military when you're dealing with like the Marines or you hear people talk about SEAL training and stuff. And they're like, man, the smaller guys, they always completely, not always, but most of the time, they completely dominate the bigger guys. And the bigger guys get made fun of and teased because they just get their ass whooped over and over again because the smaller guys, they just have a mindset that they're just not going to stop. And they kind of take on that mentality of just like, they're not going to get beat by the bigger guys. So I think that's a fascinating thing with CrossFit where there's a lot of

body weight exercises and there's a lot of things that allows for a lot of people to have a better shot or better chance to be competitive. Yeah. I think also you can't over or understate how important the whiteboard is every single day. There's a legit ranking of where you finish in comparison to your peers. And for better or worse, I think it changes the game every single day that you find out how good you

are. And nobody wants to be last. Some people are comfortable just being in the middle, and that's just where their lifestyle is at, and that's totally fine. But I also believe that just winning in general is really important, or feeling like you're getting better and climbing that whiteboard is really important. One CrossFit did it like no other because they had a ranking, uh, that was local. They had a ranking that was, uh, by age they had, I mean, how wild is that? We've never seen

anything like that. And I, I still, I mean, it must just take a tremendous amount of resources, but I can't believe that there's not ranking systems that have, uh, completely just copied that model. Cause what a wonderful thing to be able to compare your, you know, in powerlifting terms, it'd be great to be able to compare your bench press to somebody in Sacramento or somebody in whatever local town or city you're in and then see how you rank in the state and then see how you rank in the nation and then see how you rank in the world. Like that was amazing with the CrossFit open.

You could do one burpee and submit it. And you're like, yeah, I'm, you know, 2000, whatever the hell. Yeah. Whatever the hell rank you'd be, you know, but that was incredible. And I think Glassman was right. He said men will die for points and he didn't mean just men, but he just meant men and women in general will die to be like competitive with each other.

Really cool concept. I missed that last part oh i was just saying yeah how glassman was saying that you know men will die for points and that importance of you know just being competitive with one another seeing what somebody else does and then kind of getting the idea of like i think i can kind of do that ish you know know, I'll give it a shot. Yeah. I think that that is something that people really need to, I mean, not to get too far away from fitness, but in general, we're like a really soft creature and we don't really enjoy being uncomfortable. And as soon as somebody is like forced to say, to put the locus of control on themselves and that that say like i'm the problem and i need to get better it all of a sudden they get really offended it's like no we should it should all be equal for everybody you go well parts of it but what about

the guy that eats perfectly and does training five six days a week and always sleeps and always does all the things right, you're out partying four nights a week and you're not living the life. So why should you two have the same fran time? Why should you guys have the same back squat? You shouldn't. You're not putting in the work. And that may be offensive, but I also

think that that's one thing that CrossFit brought out and why it gets such good results. And yes, there are parts of it that you could probably eliminate and that's every training program. But for the most part, when you have to put a score next to your name, that's a symbol of your fitness. And if you don't like where you stand on the whiteboard, whose fault is that? Like you can, you can wake up and be better tomorrow.

You can wake up and not go out that night. You don't have to be hung over today. You're allowed to go to the gym in the morning and go row a 10 K to work on your capacity. No one's stopping you. Just do it. Just man up and go put in the work and do it. And that's why the day CrossFit hit, it was like, we found the drug.

I found out how I could be an athlete after college because if you told me that being an athlete meant that I had to go do social, dating, drinking, kickball games and call myself an athlete. Stop. Just don't even finish the sentence. That's not me. I play sports. I'm an athlete. That's who I identify with. And I don't want to be on the kickball team. Slow pitch softball is great for, it's just not for me. I don't want to do it and when my friends and i it was like four of us that started in 2005 when we found it it's like this is the jam right now and every day we tried to kill each

other and we didn't know what we were doing but we knew what we were doing and and all of us had been training for sports from the time we were 14 years old until we found it. So we had 10 years of CrossFit experience and score, not CrossFit specific, but, you know, strength training and sprinting and playing sports and being competitive. And all of a sudden we found the drug. We found the training program. We found the thing that every single day there was a winner and a loser. And when we went home, we all told each other who won for the day and nobody wanted to lose. So we all got better. And then all of a sudden

regionals showed up and the open showed up and we had a system. There was a game that we could go play and it took me 12 years to find out how good I could be at it and then move on. But that's,

we don't have to be so soft. You're allowed to wake up and try to get better as a human being and, and change your circumstances and, and work towards that goal and grind. It's definitely not easy, but it's all right to go kick yourself in the ass and say, I'd like to be a better person. but it's all right to go kick yourself in the ass and say, I'd like to be a better person. So you said that you, you kind of tried to see how good you were for 12 years.

I'm curious about that. But then also what, I guess what allowed you to move on from that and how, like, how are you feeling, I guess, not competing currently. I don't know if you're not competing in something,

but how does that shift? Because I'm not at that stage yet where I don't want to compete in something. Yeah. And I can't kind of figure how I'd be okay with that. Absolutely. Yeah. To the first part, I think I've always wondered how good I could be at something. That's why business is so fun to me because it's the sport that we just keep playing until we don't want to or we go find another sport and we have enough money that we don't have to play scoreboard games

like that. But the life that I was living when I was at Northrop Grumman was not the life of an athlete. It was the life of the guy that has a 9- five job and sits in 25 to 35 minutes of traffic on the way to work and on the way home and then sits on the couch when he gets home. I wasn't living the life at all. There was a billion things I could have been doing better to be a better athlete than the way that I was

living. So when I went to grad school, I found Carolina CrossFit, which is one of the first CrossFit gyms. Paul Beckwith was, I actually had a coach, which was great. I learned about, I don't have like an exercise science background. I just enjoyed playing sports and enjoyed training. about energy systems, programming, periodization, just asking questions. And I knew that I wanted to be good at this. So I learned a lot more. And I wanted to just... It really was just... I wanted to learn so that I could get better at it. And when you're 18 years old and playing ice hockey, you don't really have to worry about food that goes in your mouth.

No one cares. Smashing Big Macs, it's not a big deal. I've got no money. I'm in high school. As you get older, it becomes more and more important. So I had to learn about nutrition. I had to learn why partying on a Friday and then training on a Saturday might not be a good idea anymore. But then to really go all in, I had to open the gym. I had to create a way that I could find a place where the people around me were just as dedicated as I was, wanted it just as bad, if not worse than I did. And I needed people that were grinding and working really, really hard, doing all the little things that make sense, that make a massive difference in the way that you perform on specific days of the year when

it matters. And that to me was the only way that I could really find out how good I could be from the community of people around me to the conversations, to the way that we train, to the equipment we used, all of it. It all needed to be at a standard that I wouldn't be able to achieve unless I just did it myself. Um, and, and that really became what we built. We put 75 plus athletes into the regional in six years and, uh, had an athlete go to the games. Like that was what we did. We set out to do a specific thing.

We didn't want to run a boot camp. We wanted the athletes that we created to be the marketing for the gym. And it takes a long time to play a sport to do that. Go ahead, Mark. Yeah. How revealing were the people around you when it came to, you know, kind of leveling up from a business perspective when it came to especially now, you know, being friends with some of the people that you're friends with, interviewing all the people that you've interviewed? Has there ever been a time where you asked, you know, a Rich Froning or Matt Frazier or John cena or any of these people where you ask them a question about business lifting nutrition and they said fuck you never they want to talk about it right

they want they're like oh you're into oh you want to know how to save money or you want to know how to build money or you want to know where to invest or and they start rattling off stuff you've never heard before and you're like i don't know what that. And you're like, I don't know what that is. Like, what's that? Like, I don't know what that is. And then you've got to start kind of taking notes. But really, people, they want to talk about it. I think it makes you feel good. You've got a great body. How'd you get it?

Like, I want to learn stuff about diet. What should I do? I'm fat. I want to get in better shape. And just how smart they are. Like, talk about Rich Froning. If you sat down, everybody thinks Rich Froning works out. But I bet if you asked Rich Froning how to make money,

he would be able to just crush that conversation. Like, if you ask anybody that's doing really, really well financially, like, Corey G is one of my favorite people to talk to. Because Corey G does his lunges and he reads his book and he does things and he's got his abs out and he's a dad and he does all this stuff. And on his Instagram, he's dunking and he's got his LeBron high school jersey on. And you go, Corey, tell me about money. And he could talk to you for days about investing

and how to get into the real estate world. Like his capacity for building business and understanding finance and stuff that went on at MusclePharm and what to do and what not to do is endless. But nobody wants to talk to him about that. They only want to talk to him about the apps. I only want to talk about the other stuff. I know how to slowly starve myself over time to get abs. That's easy.

That's just the easy part. They're so smart. And they want to tell you that because everybody always asks them about fitness. And that's the part that they rarely get to talk about. That's the cool conversation. But yeah, getting back, did I have a hard time leaving the competitive stuff? It was awful.

It was probably the second most or maybe the deepest depression, depressing time. I don't know about depression, but the depressing time in my life. But there was like, oh, I started the gym at depression, but the depressing time in my life. But there was like... I started the gym at 27, competed in my last regional at 32. I competed four times at the regional. And it was like this

wave of humans that came after my era that were freaks. Like, freaks. Like, freaks. I snatched 225 and was like legit

when I competed. And then all of a sudden, one year, if you snatched 225, you took dead last. And there was a year where the Granite Games held a one rep max snatch event. And if you snatched 275, you took 12th place.

And that was more than anybody at my regional snatched the year before. And it was 12th. And you just look at those numbers, you go, well, I'm not getting any younger. And those guys are all 23. How the hell is 23 going to compete with 32 or 32 competing with 23. And they're already 50 pounds ahead of me. And I'm at the strongest I've ever been in my life. How do we, something's going to give here. And it's probably going to be seeing the females

outlifting. You're like, well, my back, you know, I got this injury when I was a kid, they're just savages. So many things were going on in the ecosystem of CrossFit just as a whole at that time. So this is 2015-2016, where Reebok had been around for six, seven years, something like that. The mainstream had caught on to crossfit which was soul-sucking um that crushed me that i i was embarrassed to tell people that i did

crossfit for a long time um because i didn't want them to think that i was one of them um it sounds terrible but it's like a cage fighter like like back in the day, like when UFC was taken off, everybody was a cage fighter and you were just like, they had like the big print, something hardy was an immediate need for me to rebrand the type of training that we did at the gym. Because if you're not competing, and for the most part, if you showed up at the gym in the first four years and you put in two years of work, you had a good chance. Because the pool of athletes was so small. you had a good chance because there just weren't... The pool of athletes was so small. And if a smaller pool of athletes, you don't have to be as great. You can probably make it to some level that you're relatively proud of if you train really hard for a couple years.

So that was great. But all of a sudden, the whole game... The athletes advanced drastically. Significant advances in the way people moved and overall strength. As well as this giant current of people coming into my gym that had never done fitness before. And now all of a sudden, we're doing super high intense fitness and Olympic lifting. And I was just like, we have got to change all of this. The whole culture of this place has got to change because what we're doing in here right now is not built for these people.

place has got to change because what we're doing in here right now is not built for these people. And part one is I wasn't mature enough to know how to do that and rebranded the gym immediately to just get out of that box that CrossFit puts you in. The next part was really telling people that we were going to change things but doing it in like not the nicest way and like I wish it's the whole conversation is really about like maturity and my ability

to go down and talk to the athletes and go yo we love CrossFit if I could do it now I'd just be like hey look we CrossFit. I want you to go compete in CrossFit all the time. And I want to prepare you for that event as well as I possibly can. But there's just going to be some changes around here. And we're going to work on more basic level strength. You're going to still get better at your CrossFit stuff. We're going to just do fewer Metcons. And we're going to do less complicated stuff. And if you want to scale things up, awesome. If you don't and you just love it, great.

But what I was doing was like, we're leaving CrossFit because it's not safe. We're leaving CrossFit because the average person that shows up in here isn't prepared to do what we were doing yesterday. We're getting people injured. Handstand push-ups and you're landing, you're compressing your spine through your neck is just stupid. But you know, a month earlier I was telling them how great it was and how awesome it was. And what changed was me.

And I wasn't really mature enough to just say, my time here is up. I need to sell this. And I tried to just ram my new vision of what right was down people's throats. And what they wanted was CrossFit and what they should have gotten was CrossFit. I just wasn't mature enough to understand it. And.

I don't understand. You get jaded when you're in a sport for a long time. Can you, can you tell us a little bit, cause I know you're a huge Olympic lifting fan, and I don't think that people have any idea of this guy and how just unbelievably strong he is. I don't know how to say his last name, but can you just give us a little bit of information on Lasha

and what this dude is doing? I think he's under the age of 30 and he's just smashing people. And if anybody has an opportunity to look up some of his stuff on YouTube, you've got to check him out. I mean, the lifts that this guy is doing is just crazy. He's 6'6". He's like 370. He can move just unbelievably.

So can you tell us a little bit about him? Yeah. I think he just snatched, I want to say it's almost 600 pounds or something like that. Four, nine, four, nine,

500, 500. Yeah. Yeah. 500. Yeah. He does a clean and jerk with almost with closer to 600 down. He's just an absolute mutant.

Yeah. I think the coolest part of watching, well, one, when he grabs a bar, it looks like to do a snatch, it looks like he's in a clean grip. It looks like a regular deadlift because his arms, that's just where they go.

He has changed so many opinions on what Olympic weightlifting is. It used to be a small person sport, but now you've got a guy that's six, six. I just wonder how many guy, how many strength sports he would be the best at. Like would he be seven years old?

Would he be the best world's strongest man? Would like, where else could he just do that? He just happens to be this Olympic weightlifter. It's remarkable what he's doing. And it's terrifying to think that somebody is going to snatch 500 pounds. Right. And he'll probably do it at next year's Olympics.

Because 27 to 32 for a normal person is kind of like the best years of your training. And then he's just hitting that window and that's just normal people 27 to 32 he's got like the best coaches the best recovery the best everything on his on his team and on his staff so who knows does he go does he go 550 when he's 35 years old and he's just been, he's got another decade of strength in him. How are these guys getting so strong? Like, you know, with this guy in particular and some other people that I'm seeing, like it seems like there's a, there's been a nice shift, you know, from the West side stuff,

which Louie Simmons is a genius and the West side barbell stuff is fantastic. But it seems like there's been a shift from that kind of max effort, you know, go as heavy as you possibly can, make your nose eyes and ears bleed to people lifting with like more optimal weights. And what I'm seeing from this guy and from a lot of other people is when you, at least when you see a lot of their lifts online, they're just done really, really cleanly.

Are they lifting with maybe just more optimal weight, more optimal weights rather than weights that are so heavy that they kind of mess up the system rather than enhance it? Yeah. We've probably all gone way too heavy way too often and seen what that does to us. I think that there has to be a transition for people into really that just 80 to 90% range. And the more optimal you move, the lighter weight feels all of it. You know, I think mash would probably be as far as someone on our team that could really

dig into the exact methodology that each country's using. I know that what's happened in the United States is the thing that's the most incredible to me. And I follow his team, Mash Elite more than any of them, but he's got, you know, he's got kids that are sub 18 years old that are clean and jerking,

basically world record attempts in training. And I was out there and I watched Morgan put 419 on the bar for a clean and jerk, which is six pounds off of the world record and he's 17 years old. Jeez. And he's got...

He's just starting that weightlifting team at Lenore Rhine, but also... I'm forgetting his name right now, but he's Ryan Grimsland, who's 17. He's not even in college. He's the number one kid in the

country. Back squat's 500. He's 150 pounds. It's just crazy that, and I think what just happened in the United States is CrossFit played a major part of it, but this is also just whether it's swimming, whether it's just, it's crazy that, and I think what just happened in the United States is CrossFit played a major part of it, but this is also just whether it's swimming, whether it's weightlifting, whether it's, um, whatever we all have probably like the marathon,

who's going to, who's going to break the record, who's going to go sub two in a real marathon. Um, but there's, there's a, there's a number and everybody knows what that number is. So that just becomes the standard. And talking about training and super training, you don't really matter in the powerlifting world until you can squat, what, 600, 700, something like that. So nobody even cares that 415 or 405 is an amazing number to squat in the gym. You're just another person that does it. It's like being a scratch golfer. It's like, cool, great. There's only thousands of you.

But there's only one Lasha and there's only... The world records are... They're just an idea of what strength is. And if you don't believe that that idea is the right number and, and you've already seen somebody do it, it becomes much more feasible to, to get there. And just breeding gets better.

Yeah. I would imagine that big, strong people like to have sex with other big, strong people and produce bigger and stronger people. Like think about all these little freak CrossFit kids are going to show up in the next 10 years. Because everybody in CrossFit gyms are banging.

They're definitely going to have little freak fast muscle uppers. It's just guaranteed. You haven't even seen... CrossFit's only been around for like, what, 10 years? There's no way. The kids that are in the teen division right now are monsters. Yeah, like, weightlifters are going to sleep with weightlifters and create future badass weightlifters with perfect appendages and perfect levers.

But yeah, once those numbers are posted, I don't know if any, I shouldn't say if anybody, there'll be another live show one day, but right now, if you can take that guy and get him to snatch 530 in the next 10 years, 540, I don't know, it's crazy.

No, like what I was just thinking when you were saying that is like, when you look at football and basketball, like all those, both those sports, baseball, all mainstream for the longest time, you can watch them on TV. But when it comes to like powerlifting, it seems like within the past decade, when people started being able to like watch all these videos and social media of all these super strong lifters got really popular on YouTube. Um, you know, it's like, I think Andrew was looking at this dude, was it like a 16 or 17 year old kid that squatted some exorbitant amount, like recently, like 600 or something pounds at 16. Like you're seeing a lot of those. Oh, maybe it was, but yeah, like there are these kids that are just like squatting and deadlifting, just these disgusting weights, just because they're able to get this early introduction to it that you typically wasn't possible.

And how hard, how hard did it used to be to find a coach? Yeah. Oh, yeah. You didn't know anybody that I mean, you could. The only thing that you could do a long time ago was go to a competition. You can go to a competition and every once in a while, somebody would have like an actual coach, but they didn't always have like a real coach. Sometimes it was like a spouse or sometimes it was like the guy, the gym manager, you know, he wasn't really like a coach necessarily. He just knew a little bit, you know, knew a little bit more than most. And so, uh, the guy might help, you know, carry some of your crap for you or something like that in a competition. But yeah, it was really difficult to find any information.

Yeah, the new age of actually professionalizing weightlifting coaching, whether it's just a personal trainer that can go and make as much money as they possibly want, or an Olympic weightlifting coach, which nobody even knew existed a decade ago and just go on youtube and you can have the best coaches in the world coach you and never it doesn't cost you a dime so the amount of education information is in how accessible it is is really incredible uh which only further pushes how far we can go um but yeah it's crazy when you see what people are doing now it makes me also realize that like i'm probably just a great high school athlete at most things i'm never going to be a d3 college college athlete i'll just be the fun guy in the locker room that everyone wants to train with, which is perfect.

So Dave Castro, people dropping their affiliates. Where do you see CrossFit going? I think this new guy is probably going to crush. I think he's dialed in to how to run a really, really good business. Um, I think the gym owners, I,

my, when all that stuff was going on and people were leaving, I thought that it was really, really short sighted on the gym ownership, not from like a value side. And are you doing the right thing or the wrong thing? But just, I don't think many of the gym owners really understood the business side of what they were talking about. And they were just playing a definitely a knee jerk reaction. And

look, uh, what you said was perfect earlier. You said, you know, people want CrossFit, so just deliver them CrossFit. And like, um, I understand everybody was upset and the times are maybe more sensitive. And so people were like, I just can't be part of that, you know, that, that madness. And so they wanted to get out. But if you just think about it from a business perspective and you think about it, like what is CrossFit? There's nothing inherently like wrong with actual CrossFit. CrossFit is a great principle, great training tool. Maybe you don't agree with the owners or some of the other people involved, but once they made a decision to kind of switch out of that,

now you can still deliver a great product to people and you can still deliver some great fitness to people is kind of my thoughts on it. Yeah. I don't think that the gym owners were, I think that the gym owners were in a way feeling like they were protecting their community. But what they didn't think in the long run was that as soon as you de-affiliate and somebody new... In the gym business, you need people coming in the door, they need to be sold something, and then you need to deliver a great product. They need to be sold something.

And then you need to deliver a great product. And CrossFit allows gym owners in many ways to not have to worry about people coming in the door. Because you move to a new area and you say, I want to do CrossFit in this town. Enter. Your gym pops up. You had nothing to do with that. You didn't have to have an SEO strategy. All of your... Everything that you do pointed to CrossFit in your town and your gym.

And then you have hopefully four stars underneath your gym name in Google. And when you leave that community, what you quickly learn is that those leads stop coming in. So now you have to have an onboarding strategy. And what kind of marketing are you doing to get people in the door? The other problem many gym owners are probably facing right about this time, if they actually did leave, is you have to redo the entire culture. You're no longer allowed to say, we do CrossFit. And everybody knows what that is.

Constantly varied functional movements done at high intensity. We put all this stuff in a hopper and whatever we pull out, you should be great at because that's what fitness is. Great. Everyone's bought in. So now you're the coach and you go, well, we're not a CrossFit gym anymore. And somebody wants to go, well, okay, well, what do we do? Well, it's kind of like CrossFit, but we do it our own way. What does that mean?

Well, it's, yeah, we kind of, it's like smarter. It's better. Okay. Can you tell me how? No, they can't. They have no idea because all they know is that constantly varied functional movements done at high intensity is the way that they've been training people forever. So you try to differentiate yourself

the moment you take CrossFit off the name and it's just, it doesn't work. I know because I did that. I did that. When we rebranded San Diego Athletics, I had trouble answering that question because I knew that I didn't want to do that, but I didn't know what I wanted to do. It's easy to say, I don't want to do that. Answering what do you want to do is a much harder question. And the other thing that many gym owners probably figured out very quickly was people want CrossFit first, then they want you to be their coach second. So if they want to be good at CrossFit, they're going to go get their CrossFit and they're going to find a coach that equally cares about CrossFit as much as they do. And I would imagine

many of the gyms that, I guess that was like six months ago, five months ago, are starting if they did actually de-affiliate and stuck by their Facebook posts or Instagram posts or whatever they, however they got their message out to the people. If they actually stuck de-affiliate and stuck by their Facebook posts or Instagram posts or whatever they... However they got their message out to the people, if they actually stuck to that message, are probably right about this time wondering why they have a lot fewer leads, much more confusion about the training program. And they've had a lot of people leave just because... I bet many people in the gym didn't even know all that mess was going on.

But because they were the leader, they felt like they had to say something and thought that they shouldn't have said anything. It just maybe de-affiliating isn't the best thing. Especially when they go and hire the new guy who's a badass and he's going to crush it. Eric Rosa, he's going to kill. He's from Denver. He's a smart guy.

He's run a multi-billion dollar business. Um, I've always thought that CrossFit was run so inefficiently and that just look at the number of signed up the open. They've got an email list. That's probably three to 5 million people deep that are people doing the open. They've got an email list that's probably 3 to 5 million people deep that are people doing the open. It's a very hot, warm email list that they have. And they could turn over an immense amount of revenue by just sending ebooks, t-shirts, send us an email, sell us something. It's never happened. It never,

ever happens. So now they have... All they've ever sold was the certification and the affiliate. So it'll be really cool to see where it goes over the next decade. It definitely needed a new voice. Some of the battles that Glassman was trying to take on, although worthy of fighting or just out of scope. And it's easier to just kind of like lead in the thing that you're doing versus jumping so far out. Yeah. Glassman did an amazing job with the, with the company. I mean, he,

obviously he's the inventor, the creator, he's the one, you know, behind, behind the whole thing. But I think sometimes, you know, I think sometimes you got to just get out of your own way at some point. I think, I don't think he would have been as successful if he didn't have the mindset that he did. So I think that it was important at some point, but a lot of times what happens in a lot of businesses, when you get it to a certain point, and I'm sure he was offered this many times over, but people will pay you to stop showing up. Like they're going to say, hey, you know what, Anders?

Like, dude, these programs are too hard for people, dude. And I know you're passionate about it and everything, but the company is going to do a lot better if you just sit on your ass. So here's $100 million. Go take a hike. Yeah. And you'd be like, but I want to program for people. I want them to snatch and clean and this and that, right?

Yeah, I'm sure there's plenty of examples of that. But Glassman, to me, was always at his best, standing in front in a room with a bunch of people that didn't like him or didn't believe in his message and delivering the what is CrossFit speech. I could probably give you a good chunk of that hour if I had enough cups of coffee and dialed back into that guy that was 26 years old and watching it every day so that I could explain

exactly the hopper model. And, you know, like I could do it. I could figure it out. I could, I could go back. I could dig into the memory of myself in that place. You remember how many people that he smashed and, and some of the people that worked for CrossFit smashed. I remember, uh, I was thinking maybe Andrew Berger, his last name. Um, he's just completely smashed the starting strength coach on ESPN. Yeah, that was hard to watch because I'm a fan of both.

So I was like, oh, this is just hurting my soul right now and watch this coach get crushed. But, yeah, CrossFit did such a good job coming in, and I think a lot of people were just um you know they're super they were super jealous and resentful that there was this kind of new thing coming in and people didn't even want to admit that it was new and it ain't new that's just cross training yeah that was well i read yeah i remember doing T-Nation programs, but I was doing CrossFit on machines where it was like max reps in a minute for X, but I was doing it on like seated row. Now it's badass.

Now, yeah. But if you call it CrossFit, it's awesome. And you give it a cool definition. That's actually something that I try to... I learned a lot from Glassman. As far as like, probably, I've only met him one time. And it was very quick. And it was at the games. I shook hands. I just said, thanks for all of this. You did it.

Great job. I'm a part of it. But I learned a lot in the way that he spoke, in the way that he delivered his message so confidently. And one of the things, it was so clearly defined that this is exactly what we do. And we can give it to you in a one sentence chunk. It's constantly varied functional movements done at high intensity. And if you don't buy that, well, then we can expand it out a little bit. And then we can expand that out a little bit. And now I can provide you examples. He wrote in that speech, the perfect sales letter, which is the perfect definition.

It's the person that we're looking for. It's how we test what fitness is. What is fitness is just this beautiful, beautiful sales letter of how we define fitness and how and why CrossFit is better than everyone else at it. And when you watch him do it, or when you read the article, or when you just are in that community, it's perfect. Everyone's bought in. We all know what we're doing. We're all doing this simple definition. And then if you go, well, what does that mean? Everybody's got the three points right after it. This is how we test it. And what are you looking for? How do you know if you win? Well, you increase all these biomarker habits. You go from sick to well to fit. And we've got this beautiful graph to show you how easy it is.

Like it's laid out so well. And whether he was a copywriter or a speaker or a fitness guru or whatever it is, I try every single time I write a program to be able to sit there and go, this is the definition of this program. Like we're trying, the purpose of this is for busy people to get strong,

lean and athletic and not spend, you know, two hours in the gym. Can we get you better? Is it for Olympic lifters? Is it for CrossFitters? Is it for people that want a better physique? Who is this program for? How do we get there? How long is it going to take? And that stuff was genius. I didn't know that I was learning from somebody that was that good at what they did and how well they were able to deliver a message until I really had to sit down and think about how to make my business better. And then you start reading all this stuff and you go, I've heard all this before, but where, why, how? I'm trying to connect the dots and I go, oh, that's the What is Fitness. It's a sales letter. Awesome. I got it. Totally. I'll just follow that forever.

Wow. Are you still, in terms of CrossFit, is it still affiliated with what you do or in terms of Barbell Shrugged, that isn't really linked much right now? I don't think that I, uh, the majority of our audience is probably CrossFitters. I would, I'd be willing to bet that, you know,

however much power lifting is a part of each of your lives on a, every, on a daily basis. It's still a lot of power lifters that listen to the show. Um, just like us, we have a bunch of CrossFitters, but I,

I personally know less about CrossFit as a sport and a business and a training methodology now than ever in the last since i found it um i was i did another show a couple months back and somebody actually pointed out that they'd noticed a significant change not so much a distancing but just getting back to like strength conditioning principles versus, um, being a CrossFit specific podcast. And I was really proud of that because that's, you know, yes, we do lose some people that are like the diehard CrossFitters, but that's really where my,

my heart is at is just teaching good principles, getting stronger and living a better life. Um, I think that that suits me more. It's more where I'm at now. Um, you know, you asked about like not competing. I don't understand what CrossFit is unless you're competing. It doesn't make any sense to me. Okay. Like, I don't understand why somebody would go through that stuff on a daily basis. I couldn't agree more. I think even sometimes with even some of the powerlifting movements, they are great, but why not do some variations of those movements

so maybe they don't hurt as much, you know, like I almost always rely on a box squat, you know, and, um, it's just because I don't really feel the need to do a regular squat. Like it's more comfortable to me. I can, and I'll squat a little higher or if I'm going to bench press, I'll wear a slingshot, you know, just little things like that. Or if I'm going to deadlift, maybe it's, um, you know, maybe a deadlift raised up a little bit, partial range of motion. Just, um, you know, just why kind of put yourself through, we, we talk about it all the time. Like there's no other way to get in shape, uh, like a bodybuilder that other than to

do a bodybuilding show. Yeah. Otherwise, like why kill yourself with this, uh, you yourself with such a low calorie intake? Yeah. And I feel like most people, if you told them CrossFit was the best way to gain a little bit of muscle, lose a little bit of body fat and have some better conditioning so they could live a better life, they go, okay, well, I'll do CrossFit. And if you also told them that there was some other super secret thing to help them gain some strength, lose some fat, and have some better conditioning to live a better life, they go, okay, well, I'll just do that. In the end, their goals don't change.

The way that they go about them is kind of really up to them. But I'd rather just talk about how to get them stronger, a little leaner, a little more athletic and, um, help them live a little better life because I think that that's really at the heart of what people want. Um, and you know, well, I, I like that conversation better. Um, instead of being super top I methodology. What are your thoughts on, uh, like just a hypertrophy and like some bodybuilding, like, because there's a little lack of that in most CrossFit, um, programming. And, uh, now that you have distanced yourself from it, I'm interested to know, like, you know, what are some of your thoughts about that? Because, uh, some bodybuilding training, in my opinion, is just a really easy way to A, kind of burn up sugar, B, increase protein synthesis, gain some muscle mass, have your body kind of working for you, you know, via gaining some muscle mass down the road and so forth.

I think it's the most important thing people can do. and so forth. I think it's the most important thing people can do. I think even on a higher level of why we distance ourselves from CrossFit is because it feels really inauthentic of us. And the hypertrophy thing is very authentic to the conversation because that's what I do. That's what Doug does. That's a lot of what Travis does,

even though he only shows you himself getting super strong, doing his like core lifts. But that's how I started lifting weights to begin with. And that's probably what I'll do for a very long time. There's just no better way really to stay healthy than submaximal weights done really well with high quality movement for higher reps. You're still going to get strong. You get a nice pump. That's what people are chasing. And the sustainability and the ability to also mix the movements up. The downfall, really, of CrossFit when it becomes unhealthy is when you're doing 150 chest-to-bar pull-ups

and doing butterfly kipping pull-ups. That's when your shoulder explodes. It's when you're doing tap-and-go snatches. It's 60% of your 1rm because it's written on the board and you shouldn't be doing that like that's when that's when things fall off the rails um there i train in my garage i'm actually like in my garage right now and um i often think about going and getting a gym membership just so I can go get on a seated row and row all day long. Like I could just sit and pull seated rows forever and lat pull downs.

And I enjoy that stuff so much more. Um, I get more benefit out of it. Um, I feel like I'm in better shape. I feel leaner. I feel stronger.'m in better shape. I feel leaner. I feel stronger. And I just don't have that beat down. And you can set that training up. And this is some of the stuff that I think is really important is that

you're allowed to feel the exact same way you feel in CrossFit at the end of your workout, doing bodybuilding type workouts. You can set supersets up. You can set super sets up. You can set up drop sets. You can understand some of that metabolic stress training. You can, if you, like just this past weekend, we did, it was basically like 10 to one and you just set the seated row up with a really heavy weight for 10, bump it up, go nine, bump it up, go eight.

There's countless ways to feel that metcon feeling doing bodybuilding and you should totally go and and do all that stuff um it's it's really to me the the healthiest way that you can do it is to go walk for at least an hour a day, just be outside moving, and then find a muscle group, go hit it hard, be strong. And we start to see so many people fall off in the CrossFit space because they don't do enough horizontal pulling. It's tricky to create a workout where it's like 21, 15, 9 bent rows. It just doesn't work.

So you end up leaving a lot of that stuff out. But then you've also got people doing a lot of really heavy snatching and cleans and they don't have their back built in a way that they should or they haven't done pull-ups. So their lats don't really work. They don't have proper pulling motion. They don't, things just don't engage the way that they should. And they don't have the mechanics to do it because they only are doing kipping pull-ups.

So personally, I feel like if I was to structure a perfect training program for somebody that wants to train to be stronger, leaner, it would probably be three days of bodybuilding, maybe one day of CrossFit, and then of this stuff so much when the goal is to just lift weights and do the big, big six, do a press, do a bench, um, you know, squat deadlift, squat dead bench row, military press. It's, it's really simple stuff. And then change up the accessories as much as you can to have some fun and get a pump. I think one of the big things there is that, I mean, you started mountain biking, but the great thing about like what you, you just mentioned the great thing about what CrossFit did is it brought in

like individuals that would do bodybuilding would be really scared of doing cardio because cardio would make you lose your gains or even power lifters would be scared of taking a short run or again, hopping on a treadmill because you'd lose your gains. But CrossFit implemented all of that. It allows you to do a lot of different movements. If you're doing it, I feel like if you're doing CrossFit in a good way,

you don't have to get hurt, but you also end up being really jacked, really strong. You end up being really good in shape. Cardio vast. Really? It's like an overall mix but it can be toned down a little bit so that you don't mess yourself up yeah i don't think there's anything innately wrong with crossfit i think the biggest problem that people

face in it is a lack of alignment of who they are as an athlete um what their goals are which most likely are unattainable and then because they don't attain those goals or they feel like everyone's getting better than them faster, they start to lose their minds. And then they push too hard or they're training too much. They're trying to get better faster than their biology allows. And it just, you know, anytime somebody... I've had plenty of nicks and dings when it comes to CrossFit.

But anytime I see somebody make that Instagram post with like, CrossFit hurt me, I go, I don't know. There's something else going on here. Did you think you were good? Did somebody tell you you were good one day and then you believe them and thought that you mattered? Because if that happened, I think that's the culprit. Somebody told you you were good and you believe them and you didn't realize that there were real athletes in this world. So let's start there because you were

overreaching for a goal that was unattainable to begin with. Second, were you doing something stupid? Because I typically only hurt myself when I'm doing something that I should. I'm playing a game I've either never played and I'm going too hard. It's always my fault. I'm in a sling right now because I went over a jump on a freaking mountain bike and I had never done it before. Did I earn it? It's totally my fault. I'm in a

sling because I'm an idiot, but it was fun. Like I wanted to go play the game. So like, Are you on one of those bikes with an engine? Like with a motor? Oh no, no, no, no. The downhill was enough. Those things are sick. Like the special bikes or whatever. And they got like, I think they can go like 40 or 50 miles an hour or something. I needed training wheels along with mine because I took a spill. But I really feel like that is the number one. There are people that join a group class structure that should have personal training

and should not be doing some of those lifts, 100%. I'm in agreement that somebody can walk into a gym and be put into a program that they should not be in. And that leads to injuries a hundred percent. But the majority of people I feel like that speak negatively towards CrossFit believe they should be somewhere or should be some sort of athlete and be recognized for their athleticism and they never got there or they never had a chance and along the way because they got so upset with themselves they just blamed crossfit for whatever host of problems they actually like that and they

always tell you how competitive how competitive they are and you're like, but you suck. Yeah. You're not very good at anything. I don't care how competitive you are. And it's fine to suck. Just don't blame CrossFit for it. Like you're allowed to show up and train hard. I think that that's also cool. Like we lose sight because of all the stuff.

It's okay to just have fun. If I had like a singular message for why it has to be for you guys too, or you wouldn't do it. It's so fun. Like it was super hard for me to leave CrossFit. And when I say leave, like I still go do it once a week. I still like to feel like crap. I still like to jump on an airdyne and see if I can burn my legs up. You know, like all that stuff's still fun. I just, I don't need to hit the gas pedal that hard every day.

Sometimes I just want to sit in my gym and just lift weights, but it's fun. And when it stops being fun, change it up, get out of there, go do something else, like figure out a way to play a game in your own head and get better at something else. But fun is the single thing that has kept me going this long and training the way I do and making it all matter to me. It drives me crazy when I hear people speaking negative about anything in the way that they train or the result of the training or the methodology of the training. You go, no one forced you to show up. Shut up.

Just stop being so negative. Go figure out what you do like to do and go do it. It's not that hard. I guess it is kind of hard, but like why spread so much bad when you could just enjoy training and have fun. When is your stuff going to be available at Walmart? We launched the second week of November. So people can go over to walmart.com.

I don't exactly even know what to search yet, but hit the fitness programs. And if you can get past Richard Handman's penis enlargement program, we'll be right next to that one. But yeah, if you're in San Diego, LA Palm Springs and Las Vegas, those are the 20 stores that we're going to be launching in.

It's exciting. So here's to the reviews of the penis enlargement program. See nobody. How many people do you think succeeded on that program? It's exciting stuff. Here's to the reviews of the penis enlargement program. See, nobody. How many people do you think succeeded on that program? I just don't think anybody heard this podcast. I think they just immediately they heard that in the beginning. Yeah. They just went to Walmart.com and purchased that.

How pissed am I going to be because of this? I should stop talking about that program because I'm going to sell zero programs. talking about that program because I'm going to sell zero programs and Richard Hanman's going to be just bawling out of control and some mansion after, after I'm done talking about it, I buy the Google searches and stuff, you know, Richard Hanman. So good.

The whole thing is branded perfectly. Amazing. Where can people find you? Uh, Anders Varner on all the things and barbell underscore shrugged on instagram monday wednesday podcast barbell shrugged.com for all the programs ebooks nutrition congratulations that's congratulations that's uh fantastic news thanks for uh thanks for sharing all that with us get that shoulder healed up so you can get back in the gym and

start on some big weights. I'm learning new things right now. Every time you get injured, you get to learn something new, right? Yeah, absolutely. It'll be cool to see, like, you know, you mentioned the people of Walmart. You guys are going to have to start the account, the jacked people of Walmart with some of the transformations that you guys are making.

That's actually super real. Yeah. Jacked people of Walmart. There you go i love that that's awesome i appreciate it guys thank you thank you so much great stuff man that was unbelievable it was it really was i was really curious to see uh just a good idea of maybe what are some of the big things he learned from Sina, but we weren't able to get there. So maybe we'll get there another time, but you can fill us in on all that sometime later too. a lot of there was, um, you know, kind of sacrificing and suffering, uh, for the unknown, you know, that's, that's, I mean, that's like almost the definition of being a parent, I think, you know, and what he was talking about with his dad, you know,

dropping them off at school and, you know, and he, he would be at the, at the school, um, for the whole year. And then he wouldn't see his son until the summer or whatever, because of the type of school that he went to all those things, you know, they're there. You don't know, you don't necessarily,

you know, there's a reason for it, but you don't know really what the real reason is. Yeah. I don't know what drives you to start to eat better and to start to make these better decisions every day or, um, you know,

any of these things. What's up? I have to go check something real quick. Yeah. Yeah. Shit, man. He looks pretty worried. Yeah. Hopefully everything's okay. Yeah. Shit. Uh, anyways. Yeah. We'll check in with him after. But, um, I thought, yeah, you know, like I said, what you just just said, suffering for the unknown. That's the part that I couldn't quite articulate when I was trying to get, you know, that topic out of him, which was, you know, like showing up at the same time as that guy from Walmart.

Like that, that doesn't happen unless you are putting yourself out there and you're, you're putting in the work. You know, he, it wasn't like he got invited to go have like drinks or something. Right. It was no, like you're going to go work really hard, like work out really hard. And then like that led to this, that led to that. And so it's boom. Everything. Okay. Over there in SEMA. Yeah. What the hell? I heard a scream in the other room. I was very concerned. Yeah. I heard a weird noise too. Yeah. Did you hear it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Wow. Okay. All right. I'm back. I mean, we can edit a lot of that out, but like,

I don't want people like, you know, uh, an investigation to start because of this podcast. No, we're good. The person he had locked up, they finally got the tape off their mouth.

They got out of their closet. I really want to see how that sounds when it's all edited up. I can't wait to rewatch it. Your face was amazing. Yeah yeah we were just talking about how you know we just thought it was cool how anders was sharing with us uh you know he didn't really have he didn't really feel like he had a purpose for a while and he was kind of just suffering and sacrificing for the unknown just via lifting which you know sacrifice and, those are big words.

So I don't want to make it seem like it's anything more than it really is. But that was what he was doing is he was putting himself out there. And as Andrew pointed out, like, you know, you don't just end up sharing a barbell or sharing a workout with somebody that's from Walmart by just sitting on your ass and sitting on the couch and being someone that procrastinates all the time and being someone that's from Walmart by just sitting on your ass and sitting on the couch and being someone that procrastinates all the time and being someone that's just, just not a self-starter, not, not someone that's a kind of a go-getter. And the only way to get those things is the only

way to appear lucky all the time, uh, is to be out in front and is to be just active doing stuff. just active doing stuff. I've had many situations like that happen many, many times over. One example is just going to meet Kelly Sturette. I had no idea why I wanted to meet Kelly Sturette. I saw some videos of his. He wasn't really well known at the time, but I was like, shit, man, my mobility sucks. And I know that if I improve that, that I can help improve my squat. And I did go from, I think squatting like nine 70 to a thousand 80, like pretty quickly just from getting some tune-ups and some advice from him. But it wasn't, you know, it wasn't just that, you know, it was like, as I was talking to him, I was talking about foot positioning and squatting and deadlifting and all this stuff.

And he was like, what shoes do people have for powerlifting? And I was like, well, they don't make shoes for powerlifting. He's like, you want to make shoes for powerlifting? I said, yeah, that'd be cool. He's like, well, I know people at Reebok. he's like, well, I know people at Reebok, you know? And so that was just, you know, I was a trip up to, um, up to San Francisco, you know, took two hours or whatever to get up there and spent, spent the day with him. But, you know, you think about it longer term,

like I couldn't even really have a conversation with Kelly's Tourette or couldn't even be, um, I guess like on the same wavelength as him without all the prior years of training. So it's not really just a drive to say, you know, you got to kind of think about it a little bit more. And I think sometimes we undersell what we do. We undersell what we've done.

You try to make it not really seem like a big deal, but it is a big deal. It's a big deal to to be able to level up and to be able to do these things because the actual leveling up is just the kind of end result of everything that you did for such a long time and that's what anders did a great job mentioning with abs he's like just having those abs is just a byproduct of just training hard and no one and a lot of people that have them don't really care that much about them because they just know it's a kind of end result of just working their ass off.

Yeah. I didn't know. That's how, uh, the, the Reebok thing came to be was through Kelly. Yeah. Kelly's amazing.

We had him on the, uh, he's, he's a part of the, uh, markbell.com super friend series. Um, listening to him talk,

I was like, Oh my gosh, like I understand now, like this guy's a freaking genius. And then speaking of, we have Kayla Wollum coming up, uh, on that series.

Let me check the date. Cause I will freak. All right. Lost it. Hold on one second. Uh, October 14th at 1130 AM Pacific standard timeific standard time uh markbell.com uh exclusive webinar with uh with kaylor woolham if you guys are not already uh signed up for that there is a

free seven-day trial um just markwell.com register you gain access to everything on the site including that webinar i wanted to throw that in there before i forgot because i kept forgetting the other ones but crazy would be crazy. Yeah, that would be sick. But, yeah, Kelly is so dope. And, again, did you go up to San Francisco to lock in a shoe deal? No. Of course not.

No. But you put yourself there. I went up there to learn. Yeah. I went up there to learn stuff that I didn't feel like I knew that much about, you know, mobility, flexibility. I don't know much about it. What could it, what could it do? How could it enhance? And it really improved. It improved a lot for me, especially from like a training perspective. Like my training sessions would always take like a really long time. And then just through meeting him, I could, I could just fast track a lot of the warm-ups

and i didn't have to do because i was always like i'll just warm up with the squat but when you only warm up with the squat and you're you know squatting a thousand pounds it takes forever and so instead what i would do is i would um do some of his distraction techniques, utilizing a band, and I would do a couple stretches. I'd probably spend, I don't know, eight or ten minutes on the whole thing, maybe sometimes a little bit more. I would usually do a warm-up first just to get the body warm, pull a sled or something like that. So that might have been about five, six minutes, just getting a heart rate up a little bit. I would do those stretches, and then I would squat 135, but then I would throw my briefs on and I'd go right to 500 because I was like, I felt good. I felt ready to go or 400 or whatever,

depending on what the working weight was going to be for the day. And I didn't have to spend a lot of time, you know, doing one plate, two plates, three plates, four and so on. And so I could kind of skip some of those um intermediate weights without any uh negative repercussions at all because i felt really tuned up i felt really good yeah that's exactly what you're not like yeah that's uh that's the crazy thing about mobility it really just you spend less time in the gym if you move better because you don't have to warm up for 45 minutes. Yeah. And you can look at it like you do a lot of your stretching at night.

And if you look at it, you know, from that perspective, well, how long did it take you to warm up? You said you don't even really like to do the warmups. No, most like a lot of drills and stuff. Yeah. A lot of people would cringe if they hear me hear this, but I don't warm up anymore. Like I literally just go in and lift because I feel good enough to just go in and lift i don't yeah i mean the human body's designed for that it should be we shouldn't be so damaged that we're you know that we're

we're shot like that but if you if you learn how to train which you have a great understanding of programming that that's number one because most of the time we just program way too much stuff for ourselves. And then you're just dead no matter what you do. But on top of that, just taking care of yourself, stretching, sleeping, hydrating. Those are all huge factors. Yeah. One thing that I want to like mention from what we were talking about, as far as like your shoe with Reebok and then Anders and Walmart, it's just like, it's the whole, uh, Oh, that person's lucky thing. I think

you guys may have already mentioned this, but like Anders before that he was already doing barbell shrug for maybe five or six years in terms of his podcast. Right. Which that guy was listening to without him even realizing it for the past half a decade. And then they come across each other and he's like, I've been a listener of of your podcast and can you make some stuff for the whole of walmart like that if you didn't do that podcast it doesn't matter if you met this guy there would have been no business opportunity there so it's like you have to be doing something for a long enough time and i mean even on a much smaller scale i was training at super training you know since 2015 just being around you guys started going to expos all right and

then being around you guys enough then i'm invited to come do the podcast just because i've been there for a while and i don't know i did some yeah i've done some stuff so i wasn't lucky i've just been there you know so it's it's crazy it doesn't help it doesn't hurt i mean that you're extremely handsome oh well my my my mom thinks so too. I mean, Andrew and I talk about it all the time. I don't remember a text message thread where Mark and I are going back and forth where we just don't stop talking about how handsome you are. Oh, and jacked.

Thank you guys. Yeah. Very jacked. I'll send you a screenshot. It's just all it is all day long. Just like, man, do you, how big do you like? All right. You guys are trying to give me the shirt. It's not going to work.

I'm going to keep it. I'm going to keep it on this podcast. He's super jacked. I'm going to keep the shirt on. It's not coming off. Such a tease. Pants are off. The pants are definitely off.

Yeah. That's what I love about these Zoom calls. No pants. You don't have to wear pants when you're on Zoom. Nope. Great. Nah. But damn, training programs in Walmart. That's going to be cool.

It's going to be crazy. Yeah. Congratulations to him. It was funny because when he texted me, um, I just played it off. Like I didn't, I didn't like, uh, tell him to go screw himself or anything, but I was just like messing with him or something. He, he, uh, yeah, he was like, Oh, I got this partnership with Walmart. I'd love to, uh, come on the show. And I just wrote back, cool. And then he wrote, uh, can I be on your show? And then we just went back and forth, but yeah,

I'm just, I just wanted to mess with them and throw it out there and just see like, what is like, he, I think he was like, did he not read the text? Yeah. Yeah, he could have been like, sure, you can come on, but do you have anything new to talk about? Anything big, at least. Yeah.

Get a new friend time or something? That's honestly hilarious. Yeah, I just got that. Cool. Alright, there's nothing else to talk about here fuck you oh god doing that what you guys got for today you got some jujitsu coming up some jujitsu coming right up and then um i got a lot of uh home projects so oh no yeah it's gonna be you gotta take care of that person that's in the closet yeah i gotta i gotta i gotta go home depot get some new chains get some tape gorilla gag you know

ah these prisoners man these prisoners oh all right andrew take us on out of here buddy absolutely well hopefully you guys see and see me back on the podcast and this doesn't this doesn't hit the authorities but uh thank you everybody for checking out today's episode, huge shout out. And thank you to Piedmont teas for sponsoring this episode. For more information on them, please check the show notes and the YouTube description, Facebook description. Make sure you use code power project for 25% off your order. And if your order is $99 or more, you get free two day shipping. Make sure you're following the podcast at Mark Bell's Power Project on Instagram, at MB Power Project on

Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and of course, here on YouTube. My Instagram is at IamAndrewZ. Nseema, where are you at? NseemaYinYang on Instagram and YouTube. NseemaYinYang on TikTok and Twitter. Cops, please don't come to the house. Everything is cool here.

I'm joking. Mark? i'm at mark smelly bell strength is never weakness weakness never restraint catch y'all later good job it's funny that that was audible though