Mark Bell's Power Project - Hostage Tape Founders - SHUT Your MOUTH for Better Recovery || MBPP Ep. 851

Episode Date: December 13, 2022

In this Podcast Episode, Alex Neist, Ben Read, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about the incredible benefits of nasal breathing and sleeping with mouth tape, as well as how stoicism helped Alex and Ben get through very difficult times in their lives.  Visit https://hostagetape.com/powerproject for the best deal available on Hostage Tape! Follow Hostage Tape on IG: https://www.instagram.com/hostagetape/ New Power Project Website: https://powerproject.live Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the new Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw Special perks for our listeners below! ➢https://hostagetape.com/powerproject for the best deal available on Hostage Tape! ➢https://www.naboso.com/ Code POWERPROJECT for 15% off! ➢https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!! ➢Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM ➢https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/powerproject Code: POWERVIVO20 for 20% off Vivo Barefoot shoes! ➢https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off site wide including Within You supplements! ➢https://mindbullet.com/ Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://eatlegendary.com Use Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://bubsnaturals.com Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% of your next order! ➢https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order at Vuori! ➢https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro at 8 Sleep! ➢https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off ALL LABS at Marek Health! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject  ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok  FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en  Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #HostageTape #MouthTape #PowerProject #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast #markbellspowerproject

Hey, Pat Rogers family, shut your f***ing mouth. No, not really, but kinda. You should keep your mouth shut when you're asleep. Now, on the podcast, we've been talking about the importance of nasal breathing for years, and we've been talking about using mouth tape during your sleep for years, as it's gonna help your sleep quality

because you're gonna be breathing through your nose. We had James Nestor, author of Why We Sleep. Actually, that was Matthew Walker, but James Nestor, author of Breathe. We had Patch McEwen. We've had so many people talk about the importance of taping your mouth and breathing through your nose when you sleep for your sleep quality, which helps your recovery, which helps every aspect of your health and fitness. is one of the big problems with mouth tape that's a hostage tape.com slash power project and there you can actually get the power project annual deal which will give you a year supply of hostage tape 55 cents a day for tape pretty much and you'll be able to save 150 along with getting two tins

a year supply of tape and a blindfold that is going to be something that you want to get your hands on links in the description along with the podcast show notes. Shut your mouth. He's like, I was just having good fun. I think Jason Kaliba could make some really good money with his feet. Because first off, it's the feet of a CrossFit Games champion. And the feet are very unique. And it turns out they're so flat that that could be something that turns a lot of foot guys on.

His feet, yeah. His feet kind of remind me of like Fred Flintstone. Like the Flintstone vehicle. You got to move your feet. guys on his feet yeah his feet kind of remind me of like fred flintstone like uh the flintstone vehicle i got you pretty good this is fucking monster you'll be fine oh man yeah so just make sure you guys stay close to the microphone when you speak and then we'll be good to go yeah let's uh let me just do a fucking demo with this thing because apparently I guess I don't know what I'm doing too

but you guys have had some customers not know what they're doing, right? So we're talking about some hostage tape here today and this is mouth tape and when you sleep with your mouth shut and you breathe in and out of your nose you're going to notice some great results from it.

Don't just take it from me. Give this thing a try one day and you'll see for yourself. But to apply this, you just crack it open. You got to kind of pull on it. You give it a little tug here and it rips in the middle. And then you want to kind of fold it outward because the tape on here is super sticky. So those of you that have facial hair, people that are worried and concerned that it's going to fall off, this stuff, it may fall

off, but it should not fall off. It should stay on pretty securely. So you just kind of open it like that. You getting a shot of that, Andrew? And then you just stick your face in there and you go like that. Yeah, as you would like the proper way to put on a band-aid, right? That's one way to do it, right?

Mm-hmm. Mark, what was that? I't um oh got it okay now one thing i'll mention too that a lot of people don't know is so when you put it on you actually if you rub it right it activates the glue to help it stick so if you feel like especially when you've got a lot of facial hair, rubbing it activates the glue, helps it stick better. So rubbing it makes it a little bit stickier. It does. What about, we tend to use a lot of Vaseline around our mouth,

so what about us? How do we do it? Well, that's on too. So a lot of our users that, if they feel like it is too sticky, they'll use Vaseline or they might use some chapstick or even beard oil. We all know you motherfuckers have Vaseline right there. Right next to the bed.

That's right. How'd that get there? Big old thing dug out of the middle of the Vaseline. One thing that's super impressive, though, is like this is the 3M micropore tape that I've always continued to use. I've used this for years. And the main reason I've used 3M micropore tape that i've always continued to use i've used this for years um and the main reason i've used 3m micropore tape is because it was super cheap right but the problem with this tape whenever i'd sleep with it is you could put one one applied right in the middle it doesn't stick so you usually have to do one and your mouth is

still kind of openish so you got to use three that's insane and i have I have pictures where that's what I had to use to tape my mouth shut. And sometimes it would still come off. But with this, even when bearded, and the cool thing is you guys have a lot of reviews from bearded guys. Bearded, it sticks and it doesn't come off. Right. Andrew, and you have an incident where you woke up and your tape was on your wife's ass. Yeah, it was. Everyone. It wasn't an accident. tape was on your wife's ass. Yeah, it was. Oh. And everyone.

It wasn't an accident. Everyone but me was confused. I was not. No. And so the other thing about the micropore tape, it was funny because somebody had mentioned this in our Discord that like in the morning, it's like extra sticky just on the lips. So like it's falling off on the sides. But there's been times where I ripped it off like kind of in a rush and like piece of my lip is still stuck on the lips so like it's it's falling off on the sides but there's been times where i

ripped it off like kind of in a rush and like piece of my lip is still stuck on the tape right like a night time of using that tape has been really like really really sticky but in the wrong spots and so now using hostage tape i don't have that and then i i would get here sometimes and i would i promise it was the residue from the micropore tape it looks like not it looks like not i don't know if it looks like not but uh it looks like not yeah i think uh before we move forward i just want to say that neither one of you guys are using performance enhancing drugs this is all a byproduct of the hostage tape right i am completely natty completely natty people aren't gonna buy it anyway so i figured we'd just get it out of the hostage tape, right? I am completely natty. Completely natty. People aren't going to buy it anyway, so I figured we'd just get it out of the way.

That's true. I think what we've got to do is what you just did there. Every single person we have on the podcast has got to ask that question. We've got to start out with that. You're going to have to. You know?

How did this come to be? Because taping your mouth shut seems wacky and weird when you first hear about it. I tell you, it sounds fucking crazy. It absolutely does. And it was one of those things where I think it was about like three, four years ago. So I went through a divorce

and I couldn't sleep. And obviously through that divorce, my wife, she slept in a separate bedroom. And so it just really kind of ruined the intimacy. And I was a snorer, and I didn't really know that there was a problem. I didn't understand that snoring is bad. It shouldn't be happening. And I didn't really think about it too much until we had gotten divorced, separated. Then I started to evaluate, all right, there's got to be something to this. How can I actually improve this? Also, one thing is most people joke about snoring yeah when

it comes to snoring it's so normal and we were just talking about this right there it's so normal in today's culture that when people like oh yeah snore my wife gets at me for snoring it's like ha ha you're snoring but right that's fucking your sleep up dog yeah totally like we just it's normalized we think it's normal we don't really think much of it elbowing you and making fun of you or if you're uh in a hotel room with somebody else, they keep throwing pillows on you. Right. It can be a mess. And it's actually, it's literally just a medical issue.

You're not trying to snore. Right. You're just in a rough position and your body for some reason is forcing you to sleep with your mouth open. And you're unconscious. So you don't really have control over it. So when your partner gets upset at you or whatever, you're just like, sorry? Like I didn't even know I was doing that.

Yeah, totally. And then they're getting resentful and pissed off at you and they want to kill you. And then you end up sleeping in separate bedrooms and you don't really know what to do. But I remember I started out with trying to get a mouth guard. I think most people who try to start out trying to fix it, they start with a mouth guard or some sort of apparatus,

like dental apparatus. You got it off Amazon, something like that? Yeah, I just bought it off Amazon. And oh my God, it was fucking awful. It was the worst. And it keeps your mouth open. I couldn't keep the mouth shut. So you're drooling all over the place.

They hurt like hell. It didn't work, right? So then I came across an article that I think was a James Nestor article. And when I wrote, when I, when I read about how he had went in and they did this experiment where he plugged his nose up and the fact that he developed snoring sleep apnea from that. And then when they pulled it out out a mouth tape and only nose breathe that was when a light bulb went off for me and i went holy shit how am i 35 36 years old at this time and i've been an an athlete my entire life and i've never heard of nasal breathing and this idea of keeping my mouth

shut so i went online and i bought some think, my cheap microport tape. I think it was what I did. Yeah. And I bought it and I put it on and I didn't know how much to put on. It was literally like what you just did, right? You put this huge fucking strip on. Because it has to stay on. Right.

You don't know how much to put on. So you kind of just, you put it on, you do your thing. All right, I guess this is going to be it. I went to sleep, and I woke up. I felt like a teenager. I could not believe how amazing I felt. And it was at that moment that I knew, all right, we're on to something. We're on to something.

I just didn't know. And that was a few years ago where we'd started the company this year. But I knew that, all right, there's something here with mouth taping and that we could take this and actually help just get more people inspired to be able to mouth tape and realize that it's not crazy. Let's make it normal. Right. Let's make it normal and like actually create a brand that inspires people to do it, gets them interested in it, and isn't so maybe medical, right?

But a little bit more fun and has a, people have a fun buying experience when they get it. So, totally. Yeah. I mean, I've been using it on runs and all kinds of stuff. And, you know, you think when you're running, you're like, oh, well, I can probably just, I don't really need the tape. You know, I don't need the embarrassment of of running around with tape looking like a psychopath.

But I think you do need the embarrassment of it because you're going to find yourself kind of cheating here and there. And you'd be like, well, I can kind of. Just one breath, just two breaths. Yeah, and you're going to do that. And there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, that's a safe way to do things. But when you're forcing it and you're forcing forcing some oxygen

debt i think is where you get the real benefits and i know um and sema doesn't use tape while he's doing jujitsu but he's been swearing by nasal breathing for a long time he keeps coming in all fired up telling andrew and i about uh his uh his own experience with it through jujitsu and how it's helping him improve his uh uh his stamina and stuff like that and same thing with josh setledge and some other people that you shared it with that are actually doing it are noticing huge benefits right yeah no like we first heard about this all this nasal breathing stuff in 17 seven i think 17 is when we had patch mckeown on the podcast i think ron penna too when we had a conversation with him he was like oh, we were all in conversation with him one day.

And he's like, let me ask you. He's got these really weird ways of wording things. He's the guy that started Quest Nutrition and now Legendary brand. And he was like, would you pick up a hypodermic needle from the sidewalk and stick it in your arm? You're like, no. He's like, well, then why in the fuck would you sleep without tapinging your mouth we're like what how do you make that late but yeah yeah we're like apples to oranges we're like okay it sounds like it's pretty important i guess it's like when he was talking about flexibility he's like you think you're flexible you're like no it's like if i shot

you in the head you would be that's what ron does if i blew your brains out right now, you'd be plenty flexible. You're like, okay, do you have a gun? Just a mental weakness is really your thing. Yeah, true. So it's like we did that episode with Patrick. And if you guys should check it out, because that's when we first discovered how important nasal breathing was. We had James and Tester on, I think, like a year later or something. But after we started taping our mouths shut when we were sleeping, I noticed immediately first off my sleep quality was better. But also from his book, that's when I started trying to focus on specifically during

jujitsu to keep my mouth shut the whole time. And initially it was super hard. But over time, as I got used to breathing through my nose, I found out that I was calmer and I was calmer because when you're breathing through your mouth, it's like you're activating your sympathetic nervous system. It's your fight or flight. You feel more. You don't feel as in control. And especially in jujitsu, when there's a man that now has you mounted and you're trying to escape. And then because you're panicking, you're breathing through your mouth and then you become more panicky.

It's not good. So first off, it massively changed my performance on the mats. But then if you think about that, your performance is better because you're breathing through your nose. Why would it make sense that when you're asleep, you're breathing through your mouth, like you're snoring? How is that good?

Sleep is when you're supposed to have the best recovery. So if you're gonna have the best recovery, shouldn't your breathing be optimal? Right, right. So it's just, it's so good because it falls in line with everything we do. Sleep is the biggest place where you can recover. So taping your mouth shut when you sleep, if you're able to, will give you the most recovery possible.

Yeah, the power of the breath for me, I think, started probably about four, four and a half years ago with Wim Hof. Things sort of introduced me to this idea of just like just how powerful the breath could be and what it can bring and introduce into our bodies. You know, I remember doing, you know, his breathing exercises for like two or three times in a row. And, you know, he talks about releasing DMT in the brain, you know, you know, through this process. And it just it was sort of amazing and eye opening, you know, and then from there it went to cold hacking. And then from there it was started doing all of this other like just this biohacking trend,

you know, and then I got into health and wellness space. And you start to see people talk about things and looking at snoring and, you know, breathing problems as an actual thing we need to fix and not just being normalized and not just being a joke, you know. And for me, that was sort of really, really powerful thing that kind of set me on this journey. It gets you into like a rabbit hole because then when you are listening to some of the authorities in this space, they're like, well, this all, they believe it all stems from kind of soft foods, you know, maybe not having to chew our foods as much as we used to and processed foods and things like that. And so affecting over periods of time, affecting the jaw, like the strength of the jaw and

then affecting the airway. Yeah. It's amazing to hear. I heard Nestor talk about that when he talks about how when you look at humans, right, in this modern age of how our teeth, all of our teeth have just gone to shit over the last how many hundreds of years. But before that, they weren't. If you go back and you look at old skulls of people, that whole talk that he gives, they weren't. If you go back and you look at old skulls of people, that whole talk that he gives,

it's mind blowing to understand what we're actually doing to our teeth, to our bodies with mouth breathing and all of that. It's fascinating. There's an amazing book on that, by the way, guys, whether you get it on audio or you buy the book, it's called Jaws. I forgot the authors, but Jaws. It's an amazing book where they pretty much go over how like a lot of the dental industry too, you know, most people get their wisdom teeth pulled, but you're supposed to have enough space in your mouth for your wisdoms. But in Western culture, because of the food we eat and the facial structures aren't being developed to where they could be, a lot of people are having impacted mouthways and they have to get their teeth pulled. You know what I mean? So that's a good book that explains the whole topic.

But again, like all of that ends up falling in line. And it's especially important within our industry, like the fitness industry and a lot of guys in the audience who are bigger, who have bigger necks, who, you know, a lot of guys end up getting sleep apnea or having breathing problems during their sleep because of their big ass necks, right? So if you can improve your breathing during your day, and I think a lot of this can start with the way you're working out in the gym, the way you're going out through your day. If you can just start trying to focus on nasal breathing, that can itself make nasal breathing during sleep a lot easier. I think the hostage tape too, the, you know, having your mouth taped shut at night, I think helps to teach it to you and for you to keep your mouth shut so i've had nights where sometimes i forget to put it on or maybe too lazy

or just feel like i'm i don't want to put it on for whatever reason and i feel like i feel like my mouth has stayed shut now i don't really know so i i'd rather be more secure and just just do the thing and tape the mouth shut. But I think it really does help. And I think it's a way to kind of train you into that. Yeah, definitely. I know what I noticed too, because I'll do that sometimes too, where I might forget and my wife will be like, honey, you're going to put your tape on, like you're snoring. But there'll be times where it might stay shut. But then after maybe a day or so, if don't do it mine definitely falls open so i've always got to put it on i just i i'm you know resigned to the fact that i'm always going to be a mouth

breather no matter how healthy i am so i'm always just gonna have to put tape on for sure i have noticed though like when i when i first started using mouth tape years ago this is actually a cool thing that anybody in the audience can do because i think sometimes it's necessary for people to test things out so they can understand the difference. There'd be nights that I would remember to use it and I'd wake up in the morning and because we have the eight sleep, which tracks our sleep and also use the aura ring, like you could see the difference in terms of your quality of sleep. But then the night that I forget to use it, first off, when I would wake up, I would feel the difference because you'd wake up, I'd wake up with a dry mouth because my mouth was open. Right. But I also, like, I wouldn't feel as rested as the night that I actually used a mouth tape. Right. So I think

that's, it's cool. If, if any of you guys want to test this on yourself, just grab some tape, sleep, you know, you'll probably have great sleep. Do that for a few days and then sleep a night without taping. See how you feel in the morning. Cause you'll probably have great sleep. Do that for a few days. And then sleep a night without taping. See how you feel in the morning because you'll notice the difference. And you can even track the difference in terms of your sleep quality. Yeah, the amount of people that we have who are giving reviews where they've got a whoop band or they've got an aura ring or something that's tracking themselves. And they're showing us the results of, wow, this is how much better I slept. of, wow, this is how much better I slept.

And this is data that's showing, wow, I slept so much better because of Hashi's tape and taping my mouth shut. So, yeah. How did you guys figure out, well, how to keep that shit on? Because again, this would always end up, sometimes it'd stay on my mouth all night, which was nice when it happened, but sometimes it always come off, which is why I'd use three strips. Right. But it's really awesome that we all have facial hair. Andrew, especially he has mass amounts of facial hair, but this shit doesn't come off at all. So how'd you guys figure that out? Cause that's dope. Tell them the story about, uh,

yeah. So, um, you know, like Alex, you know, went on Amazon, I had some snoring issues. It was creating problems in my relationship where, you know, my partner would kind of nudge me and be like, you're snoring, honey. Can you go sleep on the couch or whatever? Those kind of things. So I went through three or four different contraptions, one where you put the neoprene sock thing around you and you Velcro it all up and try to do that. I did this other one where it's this plastic thing you put in your mouth and you stick your tongue through this thing and it holds your tongue and you're sleeping like this and i'm like but your mouth is open yeah your mouth is literally open and your tongue is sticking through this do you know the names of anything saying so maybe andrew can look some of

them up um it's sort of uh i don't if you if you look on Amazon, it's like tongue snoring thing and I'm sure you'll be able to find it. I guess I won't name the name, but I do know of one. Yeah, it was a horrible contraption and then,

and then once I actually learned about mouth taping, I went on there and bought some of the cheaper products on there and I would wake up and I even sent Alex and it would like,

it would like tape my like nose or up here or my eye down and I was like, that's how I woke up the next day. And I'm like, I don't think this is working, you know?

And so I think for us, one of the things like, you know, when, when Alex and I first started talking about, I was like, it's gotta be flexible because we move right. We're going to move right.

You know, in the night. And I thought that that was something that I didn't see anyone else having. And so that was something we really wanted to have. And then Alex really worked to on the the the glue formula to make sure that i've done that that's that's the one i bought right there yeah i bought that one and tried it and it was a oh my god it hurt so much to kind of click the tongue upward no that's supposed to push your bottom, the bottom of your jaw forward, right? To help. Yeah.

And all that thing did for me was it kept my mouth open and it made me a fucking drool monster. Yeah. The lower jaw being forward is supposed to help open up the airway a little bit. Right. But I, unfortunately I don't think you can just buy any old random mouthpiece. I think you would have to go to like an orthodontist, which I had, I had a special mouthpiece

like kind of made for me and that actually was pretty helpful. But I still need tape over top of it because, and then you just end up with this fucking giant thing in your mouth and your mouth is taped and it's pretty uncomfortable.

So I just continued. I don't think I need it anymore. Yeah. So to what Insimo was asking, so really it all came down to like, look, if you're covering your mouth the mouth is this this like sacred place where when you cover it people have a primal reaction

to want to remove it so we knew that it has to be really comfortable it has to be the most comfortable mouth tip that you put on your face that you almost forget it's there right and so that's why the flexible fabric that we ended up going with was such a key there. It's so comfortable, so easy and nice that, yeah, you forget it's there. And then secondly was the glue. I spent probably five months perfecting the right glue because it would either be way too fucking strong where you're like, oh, my God. And then you're bleeding. Or it was way – way too fucking strong where you're like, oh my God. And then you're bleeding.

Or it was way, it wasn't strong enough. And then it was maybe kind of falling off. So it was trying to find that balance of just a ton of testing and making sure we had the right stuff. And then when we finally found the right mix, we were like, I think we found it. And then we got it.

And then we started sending it out to people. And you were actually one of the early group of people. You weren't the first. There was another group of guys that I sent it to first, and they were like, yeah, this is really cool. They didn't really have an issue with mouth breathing, but they thought it was really cool. And then I sent it to you and then got a response from you.

And now we got Tom Segura ordering some up. Got Tom Segura. Tom is ordering it? Absolutely. That's pretty cool to see his name in the actual ordering box. I know. We were sitting last night. We were sitting at the bar.

We were just eating some food. And it popped up. And I went, dude. My dad still goes on our website and orders stuff all the time. Like, dude, there's no reason. This is my uncle uncle a bunch of my family it was great it's great but i'm always like i feel like i feel like just send you some i feel like tom if you would have just messaged me i would have sent you something because it's

tom's a girl yeah like i don't know who he is right so joe joe rogan when you want some just message me i'll send it's all you do slide into the dms that's a free tape that's right you know if anyone wants to go down the rabbit hole because i i don't know if you did this too but after we learned about um first off the nasal breathing at night or whatever we started have you ever heard of mike mu and oh yeah yes mewing that's a thing i believe actually i do too yes the jaws book that you're talking about yeah was written by students uh of him of mike yes so they okay so yeah so there is a connection there as well go down the youtube rabbit hole of mewing and mewing transformations because you're gonna see all these all these homies bros honestly um and bros know what's going on dog yes it's like fucking jawlines but also

mastic gum yeah i bought so many packs of mastic gum. And I'd just be working on my computer just chomping on this hard-ass gum. I got to bring that other gum in for you, too. I have another gum that's like some tree bark type shit. And at first, it's like chewing on crystals. Yes. And they're all like apart. And then it kind of like comes together.

And then it's weird. It will get like pretty soft. But some people are like, throw it in some ice water and then try's weird it'll get like pretty soft but some people are like throw it in some ice water and then try to chew it again and it's like you know it's it's a lot of training for your uh your jaw basically yeah totally funny story if you take about 10 hostage strips and bend them in half start chewing on those yeah yeah totally yeah so there are there are some things i think that would be wise though for people to do for people that are struggling with their sleep. Obviously, using the tape is super easy to do, and I'm encouraged to do it every night because it's simple enough.

I did mention every once in a while I won't tape, but for the most part, I'll do it, and it stays on. I don't have any problem with it. I don't have to really mess around with it. And then you showed me the other way of putting it on. That was really helpful because it's so sticky. It would like stick to each finger and I was trying to get off one finger and trying to get it on the other one. And then when I'm trying to put it on to run sometimes, I'm not smart enough to stop running. I'm trying to like do it while I'm running and it will kind of stick everywhere.

But I do think there's some other things that people can do to help enhance their sleep. And I think it's a good idea just to push your cardiovascular a little bit. So you can do that through lifting weights and you can do that through many, many different means. But I think people should get their heart rate up a little bit, get the heart rate above 120 and see if you can kind of like ride that out or above 110, whatever feels appropriate for you. And see if you can kind of keep that elevated for a couple of minutes at a time. Maybe at first, maybe you're only able to do that for two or three minutes at a time. Maybe you can start to incorporate some nasal breathing into your training and just have appropriate rest in between sets that kind of only allows you to nasal breathe during some of your training.

And we've talked about it here on the show. We actually feel like that would be a pretty safe way for you to train. It would keep the weights in line. It would keep your sets and reps in line where you wouldn't be like redlining. You know, a lot of times we're training like we're just going so hard. So finding ways to get yourself to breathe hard during the day I think would be a really excellent way to help you to have the kind of reverse of that when you sleep and that's to really just calm the hell down. But I also want to add into there like this is something that takes time. When I started nasal breathing with jujitsu, it didn't feel good. It feels horrible.

It feels horrible. It feels really, really difficult. I feel like it didn't pass out at times. It doesn't feel like you can get the amount of air that you typically would if you're going like that, right? So it's going to feel a little bit uncomfortable. But like you're saying, if you can push your nasal breathing capacity during the exercises you do, and this can be some low-intensity cardio. This could be you doing a little bit of kettlebell work. Maybe it's just a walk.

Could you – I mean during a walk, hopefully you're not breathing through your mouth yeah it's not hard for you but yeah yeah if it is if it is i don't think most people realize that though i think people are still walking and running and they're breathing through their mouth and they don't realize that oh shit i should keep it shut and do my nose i think part of the challenge too is uh it's a it's a quantity over quality thing you know because one of the things that nester talks about is just because you think you're getting more volume of air into your lungs you actually get more oxygenation of your blood by breathing through your nose because of the capillary actions create this nitric oxide reaction that allows the blood to take up the oxygen much

more effectively than it does through even even though that might feel better. Exactly. It might feel better, but it's, it's a quantity over quality thing. Absolutely. And this is also one thing that Patrick mentioned, Patrick mentioned that like, even as he started trying to breathe more through his nose, it took time for that to feel good. It's like if you're someone who perpetually or breathes a lot through your mouth, right? When you start focusing on breathing through your nose, there's little muscles in here too that probably don't get that much action. So they will develop over time

and it'll be much easier to do that. That's why I just want people to understand that this isn't some like, for some people it's going to be, ooh, this feels great. But for some people, breathing through your nose when you're sleeping or when you're doing a lot of other things

may very well be quite uncomfortable. My sister's quite overweight. And right now for her, I'll see her at my mom's house. And when she's walking around, her mouth's like this. She doesn't even realize she's breathing through her mouth. And I have to continuously remind her, hey, hey, you know, shut your mouth, right? And if you're someone who's not like, maybe you're not thinking about it, or it's not something that's been at top of mind, you could be working at your computer. And I'm sorry, I'm rambling, but I'm remembering when I was like 24 or 23, when I was with one of my exes, I was, I was wearing some beats headphones and I was at the computer and she's like, why are you breathing so loud? And I'm pretty sure my mouth was slightly open when I was doing some work on my computer. So these are,

these are things you sometimes don't think about. You don't even realize you're doing. But if you can become more cognizant during your day to just try to keep it here, that will make it easier at night. And it's also interesting too because I think a lot of people, you're right, this might not be comfortable. But it's important to push yourself through those comfort zones. I mean you know it through training. You know it through any sort of progress that you ever try to make. know it through training, you know it through, you know, any sort of progress that you ever try to make. If all we do is stay in the thing that we're used to or the things that we're comfortable

with, then it's really hard for us to get better or grow or to progress, you know? And so I think that that's an important component. And it's trying it too, right? This is something that's non-invasive. It's inexpensive. Right. And it's something that everybody can try it. It's not as dangerous as people think.

Like the people that, it's amazing. Like we all see the comments of people who are like they think this is so dangerous i have allergies yeah right and like you're gonna kill people they're not gonna wake up like well what if you have a stuffy nose and you just don't wake up like you're gonna wake up right but it's something that's non-invasive that's easily something you can try just to see how it goes right and you preach it all the time about just being able to try things. Right.

It is important to note that this is not a cure for sleep apnea. No, absolutely. This just might help people with some minor snoring. And it works great with a CPAP. So for people who wear a CPAP, one of the biggest challenges that they have is depending upon the mask that they're using, their mouth might be falling open. So then the air is being blown in and back out their mouth. I see. Sometimes they have the CPAP that goes through the nose, right?

Right. So then it's not working very well. So they might be wearing a chin strap that they don't like or maybe they're not wearing one at all. So then wearing hostage tape, we've got a ton of reviews of people who they've completely changed how well their CPAP works for them because now they've got hostage tape on. It feels really comfortable. They don't have a bunch of extra straps, and it's allowing that CPAP machine to work really well and help them feel better. I've noticed over the years waking up from being in bed for seven or eight hours and feeling like I had hardly any sleep. seven or eight hours and feeling like I had hardly any sleep. Like I could kind of feel it in my legs being someone that trains for a long time or been training for a long time and being someone that's

connected to my body. I would feel like my legs were like fatigued without like leg training necessarily. And I'm like, what the fuck is that? Yeah. And so over, over a period of time, uh, you know, through losing weight through, um, I believe I don't have sleep apnea anymore, wearing mouth tape, running. There's been a series of things that are involved in this kind of process of me, uh, getting to a better spot. But when I wake up with mouth tape on, I don't have that feeling anymore. I feel fresh. I feel good. I feel ready to go. I feel, I feel like I slept. Whereas before, I literally,

I don't know what happened to my body or when or how or why, but I somehow adapted to it. I tell people all the time, I think I only would sleep like three to five hours. And I think people think it's an exaggeration, but even when I did track it and stuff, that's what it would show.

It's like you slept for about three and a half hours, three hours, five hours. And over a period of time, I got so used to it that when I would start to try to sleep longer, the longer length of sleep didn't make me feel any better. It actually almost made me feel worse because I would feel groggy. So I had to get myself in better shape.

I had to get myself a lot healthier. I had to get, I had to get myself a lot healthier. Right. And then utilizing techniques like this, focusing on nasal breathing has been massive for me. You make a really good point. I mean, James Clear in his Atomic Habits book, you know, really hits to that point, right? Get 1% better every day. Right. And I'm a big believer that there's no magic bullet that's going to solve all of your problems. You mean my bullet? Oh yeah, he tried some. That's why he's doing a fireball.

There's no magic bullet that's going to do any one thing. But if you can do 10 or 20 things that each give you a 5 to 10% improvement over time, then that's a 100% gain. And I think that that's a really big thing that people should push their comfort zone,

try things, try a multitude of things. Like you said, working out, maybe having better sleep habits at night, having tools like mouth taping and things like that can really transform, I think. Here's an interesting thing I'd like to mention. Along with my legs feeling like fatigued, I noticed that while doing the i think it's a bore score

right is that what it's called the bolt bolt score okay the bolt score um i practice some of this while i'm walking sometimes and i'll occasionally um just take a breath out not like a deep breath out or anything just a casual breath out and i'll try to walk as many steps as i can um while i'm doing this and when i push this a little bit i feel the first thing I kind of feel is my legs. And I'm like, that's what my body was fucking experiencing while I was sleeping. And this is me like holding my breath as I'm walking for however many seconds or steps I'm able to do. And quick thing about the Bolt Score, guys. If you YouTube Bolt Score, all it is, it's a test that patch mckeown has people do to see um how well their breathing quality is so you breathe in you breathe out and

then you you can either walk or you can sit there and just see how long you can hold your breath until you feel the need to breathe i believe he wants people to be over 25 seconds is 20 or 25 seconds just google it um and if you're below that, you have a lot of work to do as far as your breathing is concerned. So it might give you an indication of your recovery for a particular day too. I know Phil DeRue is really big on kind of checking in on stuff like that. Yeah. And for a lot of people who they're afraid of the mount tape and they don't want to do it, or they're not used to it, or they're having trouble with it. A lot of people, what they'll do is, and we suggest is

wear it during the day. Like if you're at home sitting at your desk, put it on, just start to get used to it. What starts to get your body used to it. Cause we do see a lot of people who they might try it for the first time and they'll wake up within a few hours. They're like, I can't do it. So try it throughout the day. Get your body used to it. And then you can start to ease yourself into it. And then once you do it for like a good seven-day period, for a lot of people, they're just blown away. They're challenged to do it at home while you're like bringing in groceries and like mopping the floor and shit like that.

Real talk. This reminds me. We've had a lot of like big guys on the podcast. Real talk. This reminds me. We've had a lot of big guys on the podcast. It brings me back to an episode we had with PH Deadlift and other individuals, right? Where they'd be at the mic, but then they're just like – And they don't even –

They don't know it's them. They're just like – They're snoring while they're away. Right. And I'm just like – And what I purposely do is I back away from the mic so that when the listeners are listening or watching, they know it's not me.

Cause I'm like, that's not good. But what I'm saying here is I think that a lot of people, cause there's no reason why guys like that who are in that good of shape should have to be breathing through their mouth while they're at rest. You know what I mean? So if you're chilling, if you're working on your computer or you're doing something where you're at

rest, tape your mouth shut so you get used to breathing through your nose because that's just an adaptation thing. Once you're then used to breathing through your nose,

you don't have to keep your mouth taped shut when you're doing everything else. You know? Right. Well, you know, the other myth to what you're saying too

is it's not just big people, right? Like, I'm a good example of that, right? I'm a 175-pound, you know, six-foot guy. Yeah. I still have an issue with that, right? I'm a 175-pound, you know, six-foot guy. I still have an issue with that, right? I snore like a banshee, but it's not because of my weight. And so you'll see a lot of people think, well, if you lose all the weight, then it'll cure your issue.

Well, no, that's not true because if it was true, then why would I still be snoring? Yeah, and one of the reasons that I read that bodybuilders and people like that do have the breathing problem is because think about it, right? They build weight. They build mass, right? They have an extra 15, 20 pounds on their chest, right? And then, like you said, the thicker neck and all of a sudden stuff just restricts the space in there because they got so much more muscle mass.

Trying to get jacked. Exactly, right? So it makes sense that you're going to kind of fall into that if you're not conscious of it and trying to make the different choice. I'm kind of on the same wavelength as you. It's like I'm a more slender person, but I still snore like a bear. It's crazy. Why does that happen with guys like you and me? Dude, that's a great question.

Manliness, I think. I think so. We're just too manly. It's our defense mechanism when we fall asleep you do have a huge dick of those maybe it has to do with that it's all that work with the phoenix yeah exactly but you know you were saying how it took forever yeah so i guess that would make sense well no just because it takes a long time.

But no, this is again because we always talk about habits on the show. It's not just eating a different type of food. It's like a lot of habits that go through your day. And when you think about all the actions, like when I see guys lifting weights, there's an aspect of lifting weight with intensity. And you'll see them doing fucking rows. They're like, ha, ha. And everything is just ha, mouth, mouth. And when you build those habits, it's hard to think that like when you do want to start

sleeping soundly and you do want to breathe through your nose, it's not going to necessarily be the easiest thing to do when there are so many other things, little things within your day where you're just, that's your thing, you know? So it makes sense. Yeah. No, I know when I, so I run every morning. I run about like, you know, three, four miles every morning. And only recently within the last like two years that I start to really focus on nasal breathing during a run. And every once in a while, I'll put the tape on and I'll do a run with the hostage tape on. And it's amazing how difficult it was first starting out. You can't

believe that, oh, wow, I'm actually using my mouth to breathe a hell of a lot more than I think I am. Again, I think this could be a really awesome way for somebody to introduce a little bit of running. Like run with the tape on and then when needed, walk. But like seriously, walk, slow down, maybe even just like rest on a tree or something. Because it's going to be really, really difficult. And I've actually been practicing it for a while, but it's very difficult for me to run with any sort of real speed with the

mouth tape on for any period of time. So it's really nice because it forces me to slow way down. I've had to figure out a certain pattern of how I breathe. I think you were talking about it a few months back. That's a big thing because you can breathe a lot slower than you think. You can. And what I started to notice was I had to start to do a cadence of how I would go. And I would do it with my steps. Right. And once I figured out the cadence of how I would breathe

through my nose, it became a hell of a lot easier than when you're like, how do I do it? You just don't know. And you can't find that rhythm. So A couple of years ago, I'd never been a runner. And a couple of years ago, I decided to cultivate the habit. So I was like, I am going to run every single day. And that's going to be like what I commit to. And then, you know, it starts snowing and raining and all this stuff. And you're getting, when I got into the winter months. Where do you guys live?

I live in Portland. He lives in Minnesota. You guys are both in spots that have some crazy weather. But what I noticed is in the winter, especially when I was running, I would mouth breathe. And I would get side cramps because I'm breathing in all this cold air. It's making my throat just ache because the air is so cold. And I start getting side splints and stuff. Just stay a little closer to the mic.

Sorry about that. And so one of the things that I noticed is I started changing. And I taped the mouth and I started breathing through my nose. And it made all the difference. The scythes went away. I didn't have the burning in my throat anymore. Because there's like this natural warming element that happens when you go through your nose as opposed to letting the cold air directly hit. And so it made a big difference.

There is so much information on this. If you Google it and you look it up on YouTube and stuff, I mean, you can listen to James Nestor, Patrick McKeown. They could, I mean, they both have books on it. They talk about it for hours. Anders Olsen. Who's that? Anders Olsen. Yeah, he's actually was in, he did the study with Nestor.

Oh, yeah, yeah, I remember that. He's out of Sweden, I think it is, right? Yeah. Yeah, so there it is, right? Yeah. Yeah, so there's a ton of great information, and we've heard this before. Like, this has been around for a while. I remember in boxing. It was a big thing in boxing.

When you saw somebody start to breathe, it'd be the third or fourth round, and they would say, look at this guy. He's already breathed. He already has his mouth open, and it's a real danger in contact sports because if you get hit in the face or hit in the jaw with your mouth open, it's proposed that you could break your jaw that way, which is, that's wild when you're getting tired and then getting smashed on at that point in a fight. But what an interesting intuition

that they had so many years ago. And I think it dates back even way further than that but that was my first time in hearing that was like this guy is defeated he's uh clearly has his mouth open i know and sema has kind of said like this is this is really awesome when he's going against someone that he's working hard against and they're mouth breathing and he doesn't have to result to that i know rogan's talked about that quite a bit right once you notice a guy when you're doing you know jujitsu once you see a mouth breathing he knows done yeah like what like once you see that mouth fall open he starts going like this and you're still breathing calmly like if you push the pace at that point in time your opponent's done yeah you remember the podcast we just did with mason fowler and he mentioned this guy canin

duarte there are guys in jujitsu at the black belt level where like yeah i know i love that i love the way mason put it because that's how you can tell that they're in control canaan duarte when he rolls with people he just looks annoyed his he's nasal breathing oh that's what yeah yeah he's nasal breathing the whole time and his movement's good but he's just like just killing people same thing with this kid mika galvao hadra gracie i've watched so many of his matches, but he's the greatest jujitsu competitor of all time. And when you watch him roll with people,

including the match that he did with the other goat, uh, greatest of all time, he's won 13 world champions, world championships. He beat this guy, Boucher. But during the whole match,

Hodger's mouth was closed. And towards the end of the match, Boucher's mouth opened. It's like when you watch high level athletes and their breathing and their just ability to breathe usually you're not seeing them go like no they're in control it's it's a big fucking deal that's cool i mean they just don't have to use that much energy reserve to kick your ass it's like that's disgusting because you're like i'm trying everything i can to win, but I'm still getting killed. But I think that's the, sorry.

Yeah. Demoralizing. It's demoralizing, but that's also quite inspiring because you can train that capacity. You can get it too. Yeah. You can get it too. When I learned about it, I wasn't immediately just feeling, I was having to think about breathing through my nose. It wasn't something that I would just do.

I was having to really think about it when doing activity. through my nose. It wasn't something that I would just do. I was having to really think about it when doing activity. But if you just slowly train that, like we're talking about here on walks, little run walks, increase your capacities while you're lifting, keep your mouth fucking shut, right? It will compound and it'll become easier. Well, it's interesting because it's like, it's an entire organ on our face dedicated to breathing, right? And, you know, our mouth is dedicated to eating, you know, and speaking. And, you know, like Eastern cultures have been talking about the importance of breathing forever, you know, thousands of years, you know, be it through meditation, be it through yogic breathing, things like that. And I feel like in the West, it always had this sort of like woo-woo connotations.

And so it's really interesting to see it sort of coming and actually being brought, you know, to more mainstream in the health and wellness space. From an anecdotal perspective, have you guys seen or heard anyone talk about the facial structure changing? I would imagine it would take, I would imagine it might take a really, really long time, but have either one of you guys noticed or heard anybody say, yeah, because I know like on some of those runs when I'm just nasal breathing, like it takes all the muscles in my face, all around my eyes.

The whole nasal passage has to be accepting of what you're doing. I used to be a two. Now I'm a solid seven. So, I mean, I've seen it personally. I've seen it personally. You're slinging dick. I know for me, I think it's definitely helped my jaw for sure, the old that I've gotten. But I just think it's amazing how as an athlete myself my entire life, I never knew about it.

I had never heard about this. And granted, I was a football player. Our coaches didn't know. Like what the hell did we do? Football, is he talking about using his feet? He's talking about the real football. We're talking about the black and white football. Yeah, yeah.

The football. Like World Cup football. We're going to have that debate, right? I know. Oh, yeah, guys. He played American football. As all of you already knew. Speaking of which, a guy named Tom Brady.

He's a famous quarterback. He's a guy that throws the ball for the offensive team. The Hurricanes. He's on the Tampa Bay He's a guy that throws the ball for the offensive team. The Hurricanes. He's on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Pretty close in team. And he had another comeback victory yesterday where they won the final minutes of the game. Played like shit for three quarters. It was unbelievable.

Tom Brady. Love Tom. Love me some Tom. Got it. Got it. Love Tom. You're talking about football? American football?

So, yeah. I mean, as a football player, though, like, I've never heard about it. Love Tom. You're talking about football? American football? So, yeah. I mean, as a football player, though, like, never heard about it. I've never, they didn't teach us that kind of stuff. How great is the training for football? It's got to be. I mean, it's only, what, six seconds, right? Six seconds in a cloud of dust, right? And, but we just didn't, they didn't teach us that stuff at all.

But just like the training from the time you're in high school, like the lifting and the running and the, and as you get older and older, you're like, does any of this training make any sense that what we're doing? Yeah. Especially, I mean, you know, a lot, it was a lot of Olympic lifting. Like we did a lot of cleans and squats and benches and all that kind of stuff. But yeah, I just didn't, we didn't learn it. And then as I got older, right, I started to do yoga. And I, when I would do yoga and they would talk about how to breathe, I was like, whatever, I'm not doing that.

Like, no way. I just didn't believe it. But now that I'm doing it, I'm like, I don't know why I didn't listen. You got to calm yourself down. Mind blowing. Relax your left pinky toe. That's right. You're like, I don't know why I didn't listen. You got to calm yourself down. Mind-blowing. Relax your left pinky toe. That's right. You're like, wait, what?

How do I do that? You know, a big thing, though, is like kids, man. Like I wonder about this because, you know, with technology and with habits of what kids are doing at rest, I mean, what you notice, and I've seen this with one of my nephews, is like they'll be sitting down with something in their hand, but because they're here and they're kind of whatever, their mouth will pop open and there's no thinking of that.

So you wonder with like how kids are developing now, and it's not much, I mean, there's a lot of differences from when we were children, but you don't want this type of issue to compound. If you can catch this with kids early, like if you can just make sure they're sleeping with their mouth shut, they're chewing hard food and developing their face and they're fucking doing some type of

physical activity out there, they'll be better adults. You know, I do that with my kids. So I'll go in, I've got a 13 and 11 year old Rex and Harper. So I'll go into their beds at night 13 and 11 year old Rex and Harper. So I'll go into their beds at night and I'll just take a peek to see, are their mouths dropping open or not? Because I know that if their mouths are dropping open, that's a serious issue that as we've seen James Nestor talk about, and even in that book Jaws, that if a young kid starts to develop that,

then the whole, their whole face completely changes how they look as they get older. I think CPS is going to be showing up at your place. Right. You're like are you taping your children's mouths shut? What's going on in this place? That'd be the worst look too. They go into your children's bedrooms and they're just like nobody helps.

You're like oh it helps with all these things. Look at all the lists of things I got that helps. I told you how CPS came to my house when I was a kid. What? Okay this is a quick side story. I'm helps. I told you how CPS came to my house when I was a kid. What? Okay, this is a quick side story. I'm African, so I was spanked. And I was not abused. I was spanked because I was a stupid fucking kid. We were all spanked.

Like an African. Well, actually, maybe you were spanked. I was. Okay, good. Honestly. But my girl doesn't want me to spank her kids, so whatever. I don't think I'll have to. But you're allowed to spank her. That works out. Even if she's not being bad nah she's actually not a fan of this thing now we don't do that we don't do that no no no yeah keep it clean kosher keep it kosher but i came to school one day because my mom used a belt like

any african parent does totally normal and i had a little something on my leg and the principal took me to the office and they're like, is everything okay at home? I'm like, yeah. It's like, what's that on your leg? I'm like, I don't know. I knew where this was going. I knew where this was going. So a few days later. Hey, that's good, man.

Good looking out by the school. It is a good looking out by the school. But my mom wasn't in it. My mom's just, she's such a good person. But she, you know, she spanked her kid like any African parent does. I got to remind you guys about that. This is not white America. This is African.

Africans spank their kids. You know, in Africa, by the way, I got to remind people. Teachers spank the students. To this day, teachers have canes. Different culture. Different culture. You know what I mean? So CPS came to the house the next day. And then they talked to my mom. And it was a black lady, by the way cps came to the house the next day and then

they talked to my mom and it was a black lady by the way that came to the house from cps and she's like there's nothing going on here so when she left i remember we're living in the apartment my mom looked at me oh she's like get the belt he's just like i was like i know it wasn't even my fault but little story on CPS. I've dealt with it. You're just standing there with the belt already. Like, how dare you bruise, son? It's too weak. It's too weak.

We've got to toughen you up so you don't bruise this bad. My mom was a great woman. I know some people think about that in a bad way, but she's a good lady. She's an awesome lady. My late grandmother, she used to have us go pick out the switch, she would call it. You had to decide, like, do I want to get the thick one, right? Or do I want to get the thin one?

The thin one's not, ooh! And so it was always a challenge. I used to have the, my parents used to use the flyswatter on us. What is a flyswatter? Oh, a flyswatter! We used to have a flyswatter when we were kids. Well, no, it was a metal one,

but it had the plastic flip thing on the end. Well, that's kind of nice. It has a bigger surface area, so it doesn't hurt as bad. Yeah, but my mom used to use that thing on us. The coat hangers.

That's funny. Ooh, coat hangers? Grandma was not. Grandma had a different day. Grandma's like putting it over a flame and everything. Making you watch. I got brands. I was like, shit. God damn. grandma's like putting it over a flame and i would say the worst was the uh like you know the thing that like opens and closes the mini blinds it's like that handle oh yeah that piece

that fucking thing hurt the most it's not like that big long plastic yes thing because you could get like a good whip in it you know and then and then it like, fuck that thing. Yeah. No thanks. Have you guys owned businesses together before? Like what's your, what's your background? You said football, but like what about business wise? So for me, so I started, the first company that I started was back in 2006. So I'm a 16 year entrepreneur myself. Nice.

And that was a sports video analytics company. So it was basically, we took sports video, it got uploaded to the web and then we would analyze it, break it down, make it searchable. So as a coach, so Insima, you were a soccer player. Yeah. So let's say you played a- Football. I know soccer, I'm joking.

You played a game. Let's say you played a game on a Saturday, right? And then that video would get uploaded. And then by the time you woke up the next day, then you and your coaches would be able to go in and look at all the set pieces, pull up all your touches, right? Pull up all those things. And we would do that work for you. And so that was kind of- This was a long time ago. You said about 16 years ago. So you must have been kind of an early adopter.

Right. So the idea of what we did, it's pretty mainstream now, this concept that a lot of people are doing. But we were actually one of the earliest pioneers with that concept of actually using human beings around the world to watch the video. We call them loggers. They would watch the video and they would log the game and add data to it, right? Because at least back then until now, you can't use AI to its full extent to actually automatically tag information in video. You still kind of can't now. There's a lot of elements that happen that you need a human eye to be able to audit

what's going on to actually make sense of it. But there are some basic things, like a basic touch or basic shot could be used now in Tag by AI. So that concept of using humans to do it was very revolutionary. And we were one of the first to do that around the world. So you can upload a video and it would tell you how many times you made contact with the ball and things like that? Yeah. So depending upon the sport.

So in a soccer match, there are a few different levels of how we would do it. But what's really important for soccer is you want to see all your touches. You want to be able to evaluate all the times you touched the ball. Was it a good touch, a bad touch? How many passes you completed, incompleted? All of those individual things that you're going to use to evaluate yourself as a player. But then also it's looking at the bigger things too. All right, let's look at the set pieces.

Let's look at shape. Let's look at back four action. Like some of those other things that then you're using. But then other sport like volleyball. We're taking volleyball. We're tagging everything by rotation. We're tagging all – You see how many jumps somebody did in a game and stuff like that? No.

No, we're tagging all the individual actions, right, all the sets, the digs, all of those, right? And then we're also statting it. So not only are you able to search for everything and pull up every time in SEMA touch the ball, but you've got all of your statistics too. So we were doing it for all sports. Primarily, ironically, even though I'm a football player, football was not our bread and butter. It was actually soccer. We took off with soccer, and then we were doing most of the Olympic sports.

Wow. So soccer, volleyball, basketball, ice hockey. And because when you look at those sports in particular, what's the difference between a soccer team and a football team? Well, the football team's got 20 fucking coaches, right? A soccer team's got two, right? Okay, pause. Why does a football team have 20 coaches?

That's just the way we do things. This is a whole podcast with our buddy, The Thinker. That drives him crazy. There's a lot of different linebacker coach and special teams

quarterback coach. Probably too linebacker coach. Special teams. Special quarterback coach. Yeah, a lot. Probably too many cooks in the kitchen. Right. Yeah. So as a result, I didn't focus on football. We focused on these other sports who actually really needed the extra help to be able to make sense of it. So that was that business.

And then in the course of that business I met Ben and so my brother and I were actually we were co-founders of that first business and Ben and my brother are friends and Ben did all the branding for my first that first company yeah and so then he and I have known each other for you know what ten years at least ten years yeah like ten years where'd you get some of that background and being able to help with branding and stuff like that so i actually uh i've been in the kind of marketing advertising realm for about two decades now and i've been running my own uh agency for going on 17 years now and um and so yeah you know we you know it's a kind of a boutique agency we

had about uh eight or nine people you know and and we just kind of pretty much do everything soup to nuts for clients from branding to photography to video, storytelling, you know. We try to just create brands that start conversations. I mean, that's kind of, you know, the way that we always positioned it. And, you know, when we met with Vidswap, you know, the company. And we, uh, we kind of created something and, and, and what was great about Alex is he just, he loved the brand from the very beginning. Like he got the shirts made and then every meeting that I ever had with him for the next decade, like he was always in the shirt, like sporting the brand and, and, you know, just kind of, um, it was kind of really passionate about it, you know, so it was really nice. And so – and then I worked with him on some other side, small projects here and there.

And then, yeah, he came to me and he's like, you know, I have some ideas, you know, and he was talking to me about them. And then, you know, when he talked to me about a hostage save, I was like, yes, you know, because it was really serendipitous how our – we were on these very similar paths, even though we didn't know it right from the divorce to, you know, taking, uh, um, more health and wellness stuff about ourselves, you know, self-improvement, you know, all those kinds of things, you know, even interested in stoicism, all of these kinds of things. And we were sort of on these parallel paths without even knowing it. And so when we really started talking about it, it was just like, yes, and yes, and yes, and, you know, and it just kind of kept building and it. And so when we really started talking about it, it was just like, yes, and, yes, and, yes, and, you know, and it just kind of kept building and building. And so that's kind of how it happened.

What's the creative process for you like? Because when you came in yesterday, you were like, oh, let's do this, this, this, and this. And you were very, you directed me basically. Yeah. So, I mean, I think that, you know, ideally, you know, if we have time, you know, and everybody involved, we'll try to have some concepts in advance. I think we even potentially sent you some to think about how some things could fit together.

And then when you're – sometimes when you hit the ground, you're like, OK, this is a reality. This is what we have to work with. This is the timeframe we're in. Let's – you try to just be clear-sighted and seeing like, OK, how can this come together? OK, I can see that. Let's try to get these shots. Is it helpful that you're the one actually filming them? And I would imagine you're editing a lot of this stuff as well.

Yeah, for now. I mean, I usually work with my team, you know, and my team definitely, it is helpful when you have someone doing lighting and someone doing audio and someone running the camera. And, you know, I can kind of be more, you know, watching all of that and, you know, directing from there. And sometimes that makes it a little bit easier but uh this wasn't you know that's not what this was you know this was definitely just kind of coming in i mean my background is in all of these different you know skill sets and things that i've been able to pick up over time you have to know a lot of different things yeah i mean i think that's one of the things that um has honestly helped make us successful is like you know a lot of times this idea of being a jack of all trades, master of none, it's this pejorative, you know, that people like to

criticize. But I find exactly the opposite to be true. You know, by having sort of a wide range of things that you understand, it actually helps me manage those teams and those people with empathy, but also with specific direction. And I know what's possible, what's not possible, limitations, challenges that we're going to face. And then, you know, once you have a wide base of things that you know, you can actually start finding novel solutions to specific problems that a lot of time experts can't. Because experts have a very deep, narrow body of knowledge,

but then all of their knowledge is in that. And so if no one's ever solved that problem, they don't know how to go beyond that. They can't think any other way. Whereas if you know this whole range of things, you can be like, well, in this industry over here, they solve it this way. And over here, they did something similar and they solved it this way. And you can kind of bring these things together to find these novel solutions. People always say, well, you can't do it that way.

You're like, well, I just did. Yeah, exactly. It's not the way we've always done it. And I think that's one of the things. Mark, you mentioned that thing about engineers in the nutrition space yesterday. It's funny. We were just having this conversation. Yeah.

We see people outside of their particular realm of expertise come in and have really great conjecture, I guess you'd say. Really great information and great things that kind of go almost not necessarily opposite but are just different than what has been accepted previously. And that's what I think, too, about even the health and wellness space. And I think how that's sort of pushing more knowledge in a field generally that traditional medicine doesn't really explore. When you're in traditional medicine, you go in and you learn these things, and this is the body of knowledge because that's what the research that they showed you and that's what they taught you. Whereas things evolve over time. Things change.

New ideas get presented. And I heard one time, what do they call a doctor who graduated at the top of their class? Doctor. What do they call a doctor who graduated at the bottom of their class? Doctor. And so it's not all the same you know and so you know having you know people that can come in and look at things differently but still know it and have a passion about it because you know it's it's what they do it's who they are it's part of their dna um you know those are

people that i like also like to learn from yeah we we had uh ted naman on our podcast a few years back probably time to get him back on the show again oh yeah he's uh big on protein leveraging he's the one that kind of taught some of that to us and he just has amazing information and that guy didn't have any nutrition background he was an engineer so he's looking at things quite differently right for sure when patrick even came onto the pod um we were talking about noses a little bit and he said it in the nicest way possible, but he's like, Oh yeah. You know, over the years I've been eating the soft food,

so I have this small nose, but, but you look at and see him as big nose. He was like, that's a nose that can breathe. And what I was wondering from you guys is we've been talking about nasal strips a little bit. Yeah.

So what have you guys found? Cause I even noticed like, I don't need a nasal strip, but when I put it on, been talking about um nasal strips a little bit yeah so what have you guys found uh because i even noticed like i don't need a nasal strip but when i put it on breathing does feel a little bit better so what would you like what have you guys noticed with that yeah so you know what's funny is i've never worn nasal strips before never done it and so it was probably a month ago ben and i on a zoom when we were going over this. And I just wasn't bought into a nasal strip. And he goes, okay, dude, I want you to try something.

I want you to take your hand and then open up your nostrils like this. And then tell me how you feel. And I did it. And I was like, holy shit. You're telling me that this is what it would feel like if I put a nasal strip on? So then I went down to like – Test that out now, guys. Do that. Or even do like a little pig nose and that works too.

Yeah. Just a little – Yeah. So, yeah. So if you just go like this and you go, holy crap. Like you start to realize how much more open your – Pinch the cartilage up a little bit. Shake your hand.

So when I did that, I went down to like, like you know the pharmacy and i bought some some nasal strips yeah and i started wearing them the extra strength ones and now i wear them on a when i run every morning and then i wear them when i go to bed and it makes a huge difference for when i'm wearing the tape and i'm getting i'm doing doing that nasal breathing. And so, yes, wink, wink. We are coming out with some hostage strips, some nasal strips. We've got some coming out in black very, very soon. Yeah, that's something I left you a message for. I'm like, you got to work on it because you might as well just cover the whole head. You were like, you got to do something with the nose, man, or maybe even a full helmet.

But people shouldn't skip over that. I know you guys are going to come out with that, but if you can right can right now if you're listening get some nasal strips because that's another way to make this easier for people you know if you're struggling getting like breathing i haven't even thought about for running but like if you're struggling nasal breathing while running fucking put a nasal strip on you know what i mean that can help open that up and make it easier for you to breathe through your nose that's a big deal i actually so there's there's two variations of them there's the extra strength ones and the regular ones i tried them both at least for me the regular didn't work the extra strength ones were the ones that worked for me

the manly nose yeah forget the brand do you guys remember the name of the brand breathe right breathe right strip yeah and the breathe right strip has a little bit of metal in there and you can kind of contort that around and move that around a little bit. And I found that to be a little bit helpful. I sometimes found that it was like I'd put it on, but it wouldn't stay on. Yeah, a lot of it was hit or miss, and it would like because of the metal that's in there, it would like bend off. And then you'd have like you'd have one nostril doing pretty good and not the other one. Yeah, I find if I don't like kind of clean my nose a little bit like the skin, like it will just like

start coming off. But I don't know. Do you have any recommendations for like targeting a good area? Because sometimes I'll put it on and I'll be like, oh, I can see even my nostrils

look like they're bigger. But I'm like, fuck, dude, like it didn't work. And then sometimes I'll put it higher. Like you put it too high or too low.

Yeah. And then if I get it just right, it's just like, oh, I can. I feel like just right here is all you need so like what i do is i aim for like that weird like soft spot in between like the bone i guess i don't fucking know what i've learned is you have to try to aim for it to kind of overlap right here where your nose face meeting so when you put it on right the edges of it they kind of

overlap right there in that spot so i try to aim for that when i do it on right the edges of it they kind of overlap right there in that spot so I try to aim for that when I do it and then it always seems to be right but honestly right in that spot where you'd get a zit

remember that you'd get a zit right there you ever have one there oh yeah fucking kills or on the lip maybe like once

makes you cry I'm high dog I fucking hate it yeah that shit looks like you got something well and it hurts

to try to pop it yeah totally or inside the nostril. I've never had that. I have. Yeah. That's just terrible. You're picking your nose too much then, right?

Probably. Guilty. Hi, Project Family. Hope you're having a good day. Now, we've partnered with Eight Sleep Mattresses because it's made a big difference for our recovery and everything that we do. Me personally, I sleep really hot, so I used to wake up in a puddle of sweat. But now, since the mattress changes its temperature through the night, I sleep like a baby. Andrew, how can they learn more?

Yes, you guys got to head over to 8sleep.com slash powerproject. And when you guys go there, you'll automatically receive $150 off of your order. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. I'm curious for you guys, because you were friends before you started this company, right? So how is that being in business with friends? Because there's probably things there because there's a lot of people that want to do stuff with their friends, but there must be things that you got to think about when you're starting to make money with your homies. Well, I'll say this. I would say Ben and I weren't necessarily friends per se.

We worked together, right? Whereas like my previous business, my brother and I, my older brother and I, we went into business together. So when you work with your brother, I mean, you know, when you work with your immediate family, that's challenging, really challenging. Because the amount of fights we got into just because we have egos with each other and we both think we're right was just never ending.

Right. And so, uh, I would say that, I mean, Ben and I, like I said, we worked together. I wouldn't say we were friends like him and my brother, really good friends. So that would have been maybe similar, but even though your brother's a dick, right? Totally. Totally. friends so that would have been maybe similar but even though your brother's a dick right totally totally so um i just think that uh we had such a great working relationship yeah um and it just we were on the same page with how everything came together i saw yesterday you guys talking back and forth and there was no like it was like no let's do this and it wasn't really like yeah it wasn't like please and thank you just like let's we're just fucking working again one is like i was wrong most of the time where ben was i know ben was just like no dude we're gonna do this

but you were letting him do that too yeah well okay tell me what you want i think it comes from sort of a mutual respect thing and in a roles thing i think every successful partnership whether it's you know a relationship a friendship you know work dynamic, I think people have to have roles. And if they can fulfill those roles and you can trust them to fulfill those roles, and you know, you can hand something off to that person and you don't have to think about it anymore. And they feel the same thing about you, then that's, that's a magic, you know? And I think that's what Alex and I have, right? From a creative, you know, direction perspective, he gives alex and i have right from a creative you know direction perspective he gives me any leeway i want or need or believe that is important for the company you

know and from an operations perspective and you know kind of building the company up like it's just complete trust you know i'm saying like i know he knows what he's doing you know again it's like you know a lot of what we've you know success that we've had with hostage tape you know it's in some ways building a better mousetrap right like we built a better product do you know what i'm saying but we've also positioned it in a way and to some people it might look like oh it's an overnight success but really it's my two decades of experience coming into this it's his two decades of experience coming into this we each managing our roles and respecting the other and you and building this partnership that can then kind of blossom.

And you actually kind of glossed over something earlier that we haven't talked about on the podcast in a while. But years ago, we all got into stoicism. We read Arianne Holliday's books. We just started seeing that everywhere. So we really delved deep into that philosophy. So you mentioned that you guys were both into that. How do you think, if you can remember, how did that kind of change the way you guys go about things, whether it's business, relationships, et cetera, diving into and understanding stoic philosophy? stoic philosophy? Yeah, I think for me, I got into it in my divorce. And so for me, you know, I look back on my divorce and going through that as I appreciate and I'm grateful that I went through it because it would not have made me the man that I am today. So going through all of those difficult situations, I look at that as it helped me become better.

Right. And one of the ways was learning some stoicism in that not everything has to create a reaction. I don't have to have a reaction. I can stay cool, calm, and collected. Not everything has to affect me. Right. And taking my ego out of things. Not everything has to be personal.

Right. I don't have to take a personal because it's usually not right and and then learning to have empathy for people and just all of those things that i it was a huge period of just learning how i can be better yeah so yeah absolutely i mean for me you, agreed with a bunch of what he just said. I mean, you know, the idea of, you know, being strict with yourself, but tolerant of others, you know, it helps me be accountable to myself to become my highest version of myself, you know, and be it through, you know, finding people to partner with, be it through, you know, my own personal, you know, challenging myself, pushing myself out of my comfort zones, you know, I mean, we've both run successful businesses in the past,

and it would be easy for us to just keep doing that, you know, stay in that vein, you know. But when we find something that we're passionate about, realizing that, wow, this could also help other people, you know. We could bring something into this world together that maybe we couldn't bring alone, you know, and being able to, you know, find that and build that. But I don't know. I think for me it was definitely a way to have more compassion, a way to also not get so distracted, right?

I mean, one of the most eye-opening things for me is like, you do not have to have an opinion, right? And it's just like, it was such a simple thing, right? But that was like one of the markets of realism. You do not have to have an opinion about anything, right? And so there's certain things that they would come up, be it in the news cycles or whatever, and I would be like, why is this happening? It didn't affect my life in any way, shape, or form, but I felt like I had to have a passion. And I started to realize how much energy I was wasting on all of those things.

And when I realized I could redirect that energy into things that could help me self-improve, my own conditioning, my own progress, I think for me it really – it kind of gave me a tenacity that I don't think I had previously. Why do you guys think that women don't seem to give a fuck about stoicism? It seems to resonate really well with men, right? Women are emotional creatures. They just are. They're like the tide they come and they go and as men yeah we have to learn to be able to handle that know that look that's the way women are and that's okay we still love them but we're the rock we're the ones that are the even right

stay cool and just have to be able to handle that. And ladies, there are women out there who dig stoicism. I think one thing that people get wrong about stoicism is they think that you're not feeling emotions. My ex got really mad at me when I was talking to her about stoicism. She's like, you already don't talk about your emotions. You're so emotionally blunted.

You don't feel anything. You're such a robot. But the thing is, I feel everything. You know what I mean? Like you might be cursing at me and all that shit. I feel it and it stings. But that doesn't mean I'm going to come back at you with that same energy. You know what I mean?

I can feel these things and understand them. But it doesn't mean I'm going to come out and say, fucking Alex, fuck you, you motherfucker. I'm not going to do that shit. I think one of the best ways that I can describe it is sort of this idea that, you know, yes, you have all the emotions. You have all the feelings. Yeah. But they don't have to drive the bus. Exactly.

They're on the bus, but they're not driving the bus. And I think that is the biggest difference, you know. And I think, you know, women have a different way of processing the ways that they feel. And, you know, so it just resonates differently, you know. But honestly, the other side of the coin is also true. I've seen a lot of guys who cannot handle their shit you know and that's never good you know and it helped me honestly because i used to have a lot of anger issues you know and so you know kind of it helped me to sort of recognize that i don't want to be that guy i don't want to

be the guy who can't control his anger because that's never a guy that you see you're like oh i want to be that dude. No, you know, you just don't, you know, and you even mentioned it like when you're in the martial arts or, you know, when you're fighting,

it's not the guys, you know, coming at you like that. It's the guy who's looks serene on his face. You're in trouble. And it doesn't make your women feel secure. If you've got an emotional, overly emotional man,

a woman is not going to feel secure. That's what a woman wants. A woman wants security. They want to feel secure in their man. Now, they're going to try to bait them and try to get them to be emotional, right? But, you know, a good man is going to keep his cool, right? And keep that, be that rock, right? So that the woman feels good and feels secure.

Yeah, anger and stuff like that is an interesting thing because it very rarely does it work out where you've got real mad and you got what you wanted. Right. It doesn't seem to work out that great. You know, an interesting aspect of this is that like I see quite a bit of rhetoric online where women do talk about how like boys aren't taught to feel and boys aren't allowed to cry. And there are aspects of that where it is true.

Like it is kind of, you don't see often where like men talk about the way they feel. Doesn't mean that men don't feel though. Like women are better at talking about their feelings. They're better at talking about their feelings. They can get into groups of women and they'll talk about everything they feel. It's not that men don't feel. We just tend, sometimes many men don't talk about it often. And there could be a bad thing there where if you're a guy who has all these things and you don't have another, you don't

have a group of guys or people that you feel safe enough to talk about aspects of the way you feel and everything's just here bottled up inside in your head and you're going around life that way there's no outlet yeah that's not a good thing yeah so it is somewhat necessary to be able to process and maybe have someone or people where you can be like dog this feels like shit man yeah it's you know like that is an important thing for men to do because you know like when men get angry they're more likely to fall through with suicide that's a real thing like we are the ones who will kill ourselves there's something violent yeah and what's also a lot of people i don't think they understand about anger is usually anger is the surface emotion and there's something under it be it shame be it fear right and for men

at least in society it's generally not okay for a man to be afraid. But it is more okay for a man to be angry. What do you mean? So I think, you know, a lot of times, you know, there's this idea of being a coward. You know, don't fall off your horse. You know, you stand, you go down with the ship, you know, all these kinds of things. It's not okay for men generally, I think, in society to feel fear or to show fear, right? Because we're called cowards. We're called wusses.

We're called wimps. We're called fear, right? Because we're called cowards, we're called wusses, we're called wimps, we're called whatever, right? And so instead, you know, that fear sort of manifests itself outwardly in anger, you know, and because it's more socially acceptable. And so I think anytime, you know, you see a guy who has a lot of anger, it's probably there's this whole bottle of emotion underneath

that he hasn't dealt with or doesn't know how to deal with in a healthier way like you're saying. And so that's kind of I think how it comes out a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's a rough spot being in that situation. I think some people will also look at stoicism and not really understand how it's helpful or practical. They'll look at that and be like, oh, that's nice to like read that passage. But how is that going to apply to me when I'm in a fight with my girlfriend? And it's like, well, the stuff that you hear your girlfriend say

or the things that you're thinking are all just an interpretation of her communication to you. And you can start to work on that over time. I'm not saying that you don't have to go through similar experiences, but you could figure out ways. I mean, if things are feeling very difficult, then you have to ask yourself, why am I in this predicament in the first place?

Why is there so much friction? Maybe I should go talk to some of my friends and see what they think. Is this normal? We just started dating three weeks ago, and we're fighting all the time. And your friend would be like, no, man, you guys should just be fucking right now. Like, what's going on?

That's right. Why are you fighting so much? And you can think about those things, but having a stoic mindset and just trying to figure out how to keep a balanced mind, I think is literally all anyone's ever actually trying to do. I have kind of observed over a period of time that almost everything that we do seems to have to deal with some sort of stress mitigation. And so sometimes we intentionally give ourselves more

stress so we can mitigate stress in other areas of our life, like with like lifting weights. And I think sometimes we also just want to just fucking stick a monkey wrench into something just to make it all fucked up, make it chaotic. Is that your nickname for it? Your monkey wrench? Yeah, monkey wrench. Make it all chaotic. And also maybe at some point in your life,

maybe you've dealt with a lot of chaotic situations and that's like a comfortable thing for you for there to be like a lot of noise around. And so you intentionally fuck things up. Or you learned it as a child from your parents. Right. Right. I think a lot of the issues and things that we have, patterns we have as adults, we learned it as kids from our parents. Either it's from observation or they just did it to us.

Maybe you didn't grow up with a calm and quiet home at all. Yeah. I grew up kind of rough and a single mom and everything, and I didn't really have – Hey, welcome. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And my mom had a lot of health problems growing up too, so that kind of made me go into this health and wellness space in a way. I mean, when my mother was my age, she had already had two heart surgeries and you know so it was you know it was really real for me you know

especially not to get too deep but like do you think you were frustrated with her even though because maybe you were young and maybe you don't understand what was wrong oh oh absolutely yeah no the uh there's there's been a lot of you know kind of soul searching and you know self-improvement and you know therapy stuff to really understand what my childhood was like and why I became the person that I did, you know, because, you know, one of the things I didn't have growing up really was a positive male role model. But what I had an abundance of was a lot of shitty men in my life, you know what I mean?

And I was fortunate enough that I didn't pattern myself after them. And instead, what I did was I was like, I don't want to be like you and you're a piece of shit and you're a piece of, you know. And so I recognized I don't want to be like any of these people. So I had to kind of like find my own way and my own path. And that's another perspective. You can be grateful that you had all those pieces of shit around. Exactly. To say, I don't want to be like that guy.

Absolutely. You know, and it really, it really kind of helped me, you know, evolve who i became i'm curious though even though you did have like you saw how shitty they were like because for me like i saw some like my dad he's a flawed man he did some shitty stuff and i knew that i didn't want to repeat a lot of that stuff as an adult you know i didn't look at that and say oh i'm a i've had a single mom blah blah so so i'm gonna act this way no i wanted to go the opposite direction but over time did you see any things where you're like fuck i'm doing this and i remember this guy did that same shit i thought i wasn't gonna do that like what are some if you care yeah no i mean for me it was the anger it was the anger yeah yeah for sure because i mean

you know a lot of the the male role models in life, they had anger issues and they just, they had zero control over it. And then it took them into either prison or, you know, really bad situations, you know. And while I never made, you know, those sort of catastrophic mistakes, it was definitely this underlying roiling thing, you know, that was there. And it was something that i was never proud of but i knew it was there you know and um and so you know never having sort of a father figure to really help you i think one of the things that we do with children is we tell them how to take care of their bodies but we never tell them how to take care of their mind and their emotions right we're like wash behind your ears brush your teeth get a shower wash your hair but we we don't say, well, this is what you

do when you're feeling sad. This is what you do when you're feeling disappointed or let down or when things didn't go your way, you know? And I think not having that, and I mean, you know, maybe it's gotten better now. I'm not really sure. It sounds so simple, but it's so powerful. Exactly. You know, but we don't really teach kids those things. And the reason they're not taught is because their parents didn't teach them those things, right? And so it just becomes this sort of lineage of just, I mean, it's kind of heartbreaking if you think about it in that way. And so, you know, one of the things for me that really helped me deal with my anger was actually forgiveness. And when I recognized that forgiveness wasn't for the other person, but it was for me, it was for my healing,

the other person, but it was for me. It was for my healing. Then I could sort of let go a lot of that anger and that frustration that really, I saw trapped so many of these other guys that I didn't want to be like. Yeah. Being trapped is a, is a great way to word it. I think it's, you know, it's important to talk about these stories that we have, you know, behind us, because I get asked a lot of questions. I'm always like, I was just, I was really fortunate. I had two amazing parents, two amazing brothers, um, and not only amazing parents, but amazing grandparents. Like I remember learning so much stuff from my grandfather. I remember, uh, you know, seeing him working on cars and having him like literally explaining stuff to me when I was six or seven years old as if I was 12 or 13.

And I remember those times. And I remember pouting. I was always such a bitch. I was always crying about something. And so someone always had to kind of pick up the pieces with me or explain something to me. And they would just say, hey, look, life's not always fair. Shit's not always fair.

Get out there and go catch a ball with your brothers like that's what everybody else is doing like go figure it out and so uh i did have someone there and it was really helpful for me yeah yeah i'm curious for both of you with single moms because like for especially in the mexican family my dad my uncles were all like men don't cry like you don't ever share that type of emotion with anybody. Um, so they were like actively teaching us this. Did either of your moms ever say anything like that to where it's like, Oh, you don't show any weakness to anybody. Yeah. You want me to start? Yeah. I mean, I guess I'll say this, you know, this. My mom was raising three kids in the 80s by herself. And she was kind of a struggling single parent, didn't make a lot of money.

And it was hard between working a full-time job and having her health issues and, you know, trying to, you know, raise three kids. I was the oldest. And so what ended up happening was I kind of became the man of the house, for lack of a better term. And that, you know, kind of came with its problems too. You know, my mother always kind of, I would say she always made me feel loved, even though we didn't have anything growing up and, you know, we were dirt poor. She made me feel loved. She made me feel loved even though we didn't have anything growing up and you know we were dirt poor she made me feel loved she made me feel like i could do or be anything that i wanted and i will say that that was probably the greatest gift that she gave me you know um she gave me a lot of baggage too you know what i'm saying but um but i always felt loved you know, and I think that that for me made me realize how harmful these other men were, not only in her life, but in the lives of their significant others. And I think that was probably part of the catalyst that made me realize why I didn't want to be them. Because if she was, you know, kind of vindictive or mean or cruel

or complained a lot and all that kind of stuff, I may have gotten into that victim mentality that allowed me to turn in to those kind of guys. And I think maybe because she thought more of me, it allowed me to in some way realize that I needed and wanted something different for myself. Wow. some way realized that I needed and wanted something different for myself.

Oh yeah. Dude, you know, the, the love thing there is like my mom also, she never, she never felt, made me feel first off bad for feeling certain things. But also when I was a kid, like certain things would happen and she put me in sports since I was six, she gave me tools, right? So because of that, my tendency as I got older, when I would get mad or angry or whatever, is I would either go run or I would go lift. And the reason why I say that is, Mark, you mentioned like a lot of people do things for stress mitigation. There's quite a few men in my family who have had problems with substance use. I had a relative die because of drugs. And my thing though, I feel like I was lucky because she, without realizing it, she gave me the physical outlet to be able to have something whenever I did feel something or I didn't feel good, I could go sweat it out and think clearly. or I didn't feel good, I could go sweat it out and think clearly. So that was one of the biggest things.

And one of the big things she did too is she never did talk shitty about my father. I find, like, I was very fortunate because I know other kids who did have single moms or single parents. And even though my dad did talk shit about her for the time he was in my life, like, she always talked positively about him right which always that that that's why i don't like i guess i don't have animosity towards men or or men with power whatever because like she never did that and that was a huge thing one thing though too from what you're saying is like all my relatives would always repeat oh you're the man of the house you're the man of the house you're the man of the house, you're the man of the house, you're the man of the house. So I do think there is an aspect of that that did play into my adulthood when dealing with women, because when I was in my early twenties, I did not emote much.

There was a true aspect of me that wasn't, you could yell at me or whatever, and I just will not, I'm not going to engage. And that can be a good thing, but that can also be a very infuriating thing that I had to be like, hmm, okay, well, I do need to probably start learning. Squeeze out a tear every now and then. Yeah, right. You know, and that did play in, but I feel that that was a better thing for me to work through than being emotionally volatile. Because as a man, if you're emotionally volatile like that's what like you know that's dangerous laying a hands on a woman or doing anything like that as

a guy you it's it's not good for you if you have that issue you know you can work through it it's not good i always think of that movie i always forget the name of it but it's uh gary shandling and he's a he's an alien and and he's just trying to watch TV. His wife is infuriated with him. She's yelling at him, and he's like, do you even hear anything I'm saying? He goes, yeah, I can kind of hear you, but you're in the way of the TV.

And so she just is so mad. She takes the remote control, and she just smashes it on the ground, and he gets up, and he looks at the remote, and he's like, oh, shit. And then so he goes to leave. she goes where are you going now he's like i'm going to get more batteries since i can't find the other ones they went everywhere that would have been me he had like no reaction to her like enraged it's the best man what i what so what i love about what ben said is that was something i learned from my parents That's incredible. leave that we could do anything we want. And I think that's one of the best things that we can give our kids is giving them hope and belief in themselves because too many kids don't have that.

Right. And so they did an amazing job of just instilling in us that you can do anything you want to do. You just got to work your butt off and you go do it. Yeah. Right. But you also maybe want to manage that a bit by depending on on how old the kid is, by saying like you are maybe not going to be able to be proficient at the thing you're talking about unless you're doing the work for it. Right. Yep, exactly. Yeah. And I tell that to my kids every other day. I say, you can do anything you want to do.

You just got to work hard for it. Right. You can do it. Believe it. Absolutely. Because sometimes when they're really little, they'll talk about wanting to do this and wanting to do that. But,

you know, at a certain age, you got to start to explain, well, that guy, you know, he spends a lot of time doing that. Right.

Don't want to crush anybody's hopes and dreams, but if you're not doing it a lot. Well, and you try to be an example too, right? Like I know when my kids see me, they see that they see a guy who works a lot. I'm a workaholic. I work all the time. I work probably too kids see me, they see a guy who works a lot. I'm a workaholic.

I work all the time. I work probably too much at the business and everything that I've done. And so I try to be an example for them and not just always talk to them. What do you guys do exercise-wise and food-wise? You mentioned a little bit about running. Yeah. and food wise you mentioned a little bit about running yeah so so what i do so especially like through the divorce was when i really turned things around because i got that total dad bod i gained 35 pounds i was 210 pounds i was fat i was just out of shape right and so what i ended up doing was is i i do a 24 or 20 a 20 hour fast and then I eat for four hours.

So I eat once a day and I've been doing that now for a good four or five years. And people think I'm crazy. They cannot believe that I do it. But I eat one time a day, once a day. And what I then do for supplements is I'll do supplements in the morning and for lunch. So I'll do – I do a ton of like vitamin D, certainly multivitamin, a whole bunch of that kind of stuff, probiotic, right, that I'm taking at those times. And then I run usually four miles, four or five miles every day. And then I don't –

Fasted? Yeah. Oh. Yeah. I do all my workouts fasted. Absolutely. And by the way, I'm not dissing you. We've had... Within the community of fitness, there's so much dissing of fasting. I just find this

interesting. Yeah. I tell you this. I went from 210 down to what I am now. I'm about 175. And I have about a 9% body fat. Nice. And I maintained this physique, 9% body fat, for four years. Have you ever been this lean before?

No. I mean, not since I was in high school. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? But ever since I got into college football, you know, they bulk you up. They're feeding you Domino's pizza every night. Yeah. Just trying to bulk your ass up, right?

Because you're burning 6,000 calories a day, right? So, but it was after that and I wasn't playing, then I couldn't just burn the calories. And so, once I learned about fasting, well, because we didn't eat breakfast anyways. Yeah. As my family growing up. So I was already used to the idea of like I don't need to eat three meals a day. And personally, I feel like we weren't designed to eat that much anyways. That's just my opinion. And so for me, it works fantastic. And then I cut out sugar entirely.

I don't eat sugar. Not fruits. You eat fruits? No, I don't. I'm not much of a – I'm more of a meat guy. That's about it. Okay, okay. Right.

Now, yes, I'll eat pizza and burgers and stuff like that too, but I don't eat sugar. One of the biggest things that helped me with that was is I used to love soda. Oh, my God. I could drink so much soda. Oh, wow. So to kick soda for me, I started drinking Zevia. Yo. Zevia.

So we drink some diet soda too. Yeah. But I started- You're a juice guy too. I know you're a juice guy. I'm not a juice guy. He is. You're a juicer.

I was a juice guy for two weeks. That's why he's not Natty. He's a juicer. I was a juice guy for two weeks. That's why he's not Natty. He's a juicer. I was a juice guy for two weeks. Okay. I brought it back and I realized quickly why I shouldn't have brought it back. But to the topic of Zevia, because Andrew knows all the different diet sodas. I like the zeros.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, but I started noticing that I was like the diet Sprite that I would love just didn't feel right in here. Like for some reason I just, you know, my gut was a little bit, so I started getting to Xevious. I know you've been drinking Xevious for a long ass time. Oh my God, dog, Xevious is so good.

And it doesn't bother my stomach at all. It's like, it's just so good. It, it certainly, you go through the transition you always go through. It's like, this tastes like shitty diet soda, right? Of course. the transition you always go through is like this tastes like shitty dyed soda right of course but once you get past it and you retrain your taste buds yeah you realize how amazing xevia is so what's your favorite flavor it the uh i like the mountain dew yeah i like the mountain dew one a lot and uh dr peppery one yeah the black cherry one's also quite good. I went through all the fruit flavors

for the longest time and now I get two cases of creamy root beer on delivery. Everyone loves the root beer. Every month. All we drink in my house is I've got a fridge full of root beer, the Zevia, creamy root beer

and then I'm big into Liquid Death now too. I drink a ton of those too is your diet do you feel like your diet's hard at all no not at all like yeah because people will look at it and go how the fuck and do you change things up a little bit here and there like will you eat twice a day occasionally uh or just the only the only time i'll eat twice a day is if it's like a holiday or hey my buddy wants to have lunch downtown. So you are gluttonous.

Look at that. I'm gluttonous in the sense that, dude, if you take me out for like if we're on a business trip, I'll eat so much food. You'll order a couple dinners. You'll look at me and go, where are you fitting all of that food? That's great. Right? Like my old employees were big offensive linemen. Yeah.

And we would go out like during conventions and stuff. Uh-huh. And they would be blown away about how much I would eat. They're like, dude, I'm 300 pounds and I don't know where you're putting all that food. So, but yeah. Hey, let's go. Yeah. I mean, I mostly drink water.

Okay. You know, for me, it was kind of a similar story. I think, you know, at my heaviest, I got about 178, 180, which for a guy my size, you know, it's too much, you know. You're borderline obese at that point, you know. And so I recognized I had to do a change. And so, again, getting into that sort of biohacking, you know, health and wellness space. Found out about this intermittent fasting thing and low-carb thing. And I did that, and the weight just fell off in amazing ways that I, you know, never thought was possible. I was like, this is going to be multi-year kind of thing that I'm going to have to go through.

Yeah. And honestly, within, I'd say, three months, I was at, like, young college weight, you know, that I'd say three months I was um at like young college weight you know that I'd been you know I got down to like 145 148 you know what types of foods were you eating um mostly it was it was kind of it was like you did the carnivore thing it was it was just a lot of chickens and you know sometimes I would do uh beef every now and then steak, things like that. But that was mostly it, occasionally pork. But I mean it was mostly protein, protein, protein. And then I would have maybe some mandarins or some sumac, citrus or something like that. That was kind of like my dessert spoil thing.

And so I did that. And so I always – what's really nice is that's kind of always my go back to you know so like right now it's starting to get into the holiday season between Thanksgiving and stuff going into winter so um I get a little bit more slack with diet and all that but workout wise um I mostly do kind of um body weight stuff you know just push-ups pull-ups squats you know I do kettle bells you know I kind of do that sort of thing yeah um i want to get more into like uh you know like the dead lifting and squatting and things like that but i've just never like had anybody to kind of show me the ropes on that stuff which you know

i guess maybe i do now but um and so that was kind of always something to where i always because i heard it's just a full body multi-compoundcompound workout, which for me it's all about function at this point, especially as I'm starting to get older. I want to make sure that when I'm 60 and 70 that I have the function that I want because even – I mean after I hit 40, 42 like things just started like like was that supposed to you know it just didn't start feeling right you know and so um so once you know after i got to that that max point you know bringing it back and and for me i find working out is um really effective mentally so it's not just the physical gains and benefits and stuff that i see like oh you look in the mirror you're like okay i don't want to kill myself today but it's more So it's not just the physical gains and benefits and stuff that I see, like, oh, you look in the mirror, you're like, okay, I don't want to kill myself today. But it's more like, it's more like the mental perspective, right? And how like, I just, I feel so much

better, but it's my outlook. It helps me to have those, you know, more positive perceptions and things like that. Did you guys, I'm curious if you can remember what you felt like before you started doing the habit of fasting. Do you have a different, I guess, perception of hunger nowadays than you did in the past? Yeah. What's that like? Yeah, totally. I can remember always feeling hungry, certainly. Always being hungry and definitely looking forward to eating.

But then when you would eat, you eat lunch, you get kind of groggy and tired after you eat your lunch. And now I feel so much more energy. Okay. So that's an interesting thing though, because like you're not eating during the day though. So when you say you feel so much energy, what do you mean? Maybe it means what I should be saying that I feel more alert. That's probably a better word, right?

I feel more alert, and I just feel – I don't feel groggy and tired. So I feel more alert. And then when I do eat later, I don't feel so awful when I do eat. But, yeah, I – and I'm not – certainly when you first start to fast, you have to fight through that initial so many days or weeks of like – It sucks. Right, of getting through the – you feel so fucking hungry that you want to eat and you see food everywhere around you that you just want to gorge. But then once you get through it, for me, I got through it. It was easy. It was easy to just forget about it.

And I could then refocus on work or I could focus on going and getting a workout in or I just have more time to be more productive, right? To produce rather than just constantly consuming, right? Just for argument's sake, what were the meals that you were eating in the middle of the day that you would have? And then you would feel a little groggy afterwards. Even right now, if I eat lunch right now, no matter what it is, it'll still sleep. I'll still feel. Yeah. Okay. I just wanted to bring that up. Cause it was Jay that was saying that like, oh, it could be, it, it might not be so much the fact that you, that not eating gives you more energy. It's just the fact that what you ate might be the bad,

like, but he's talking about like lots of processed food. Now, okay. If I had like a protein shake, right? Yeah. I don't, I wouldn't feel groggy then because it's, I'm drinking liquid protein at that point, but your standard sandwich, you know, something like that, your normal lunch, I definitely would take a dive. But on the aspect of the stress hormones,

you know, the increase of stress hormones when you are fasted, even Huberman's mentioned this, you are actually more alert because of, you know, if you have, if your cortisol is slightly increased, that is, you are more alert. So that makes perfect sense. How about you? Yeah, no. I think for me, I remember reading – I think it was like sort of an Eastern kind of idiom. It said you should always leave the table a little bit hungry.

And it was interesting because growing up in the South, like food is everything, right? Like I think we invented the all-you-can-eat buffet and i mean that's just that's just what you do you know in the south and like you're not finished until you unbutton your pants you know and it's that kind of mentality and you know and you can see it in the health of a lot of people in my family you know being overweight obese you know all these kinds of things and so i remember hearing that and I was like, huh, that's interesting, you know? And, you know, for me, you know, my mom was a type two diabetic. And when I, you know, got to my heaviest point, you know, I went in and got some blood work done, that kind of stuff. And they said, oh, your A1C, you know, is here and that's kind of borderline pre-diabetic. And

I was like, whoa, you need to, really? Like, this is not okay. You know, because I saw the path that my mom was on and the sort of cascading health effects that kind of come with that. And so I really started to look into it. And that's another thing where the intermittent fasting has a lot of benefits, right? Is that when I found out, because I didn't know this, I always thought type two diabetes was your pancreas stopped working, right? And you needed insulin to substitute. And that's absolutely not what it is. It's insulin resistance. It's basically like your body produces enough insulin, but your body has too much of a tolerance for it. It's like someone who does heroin. When they do that first hit, like that's all it takes.

But then you've got to do more and more and more and it's the same thing. And so the best way it was described is that every time you put something in your mouth, your body has to initiate a metabolic response. And that metabolic response is very taxing on the body overall but it's also dealing with it with insulin. And that's how you get that insulin resistance is because you're eating all of these things. And so sure enough, once I started to do the intermittent fasting, I went back. I think it was probably about six months later. And they're like, yeah, you're like a four or five now, which was well below the borderline where I was. And it was just really amazing to see like how that simple change of not being in that, you know, feeding cycle of 16,

18 hours that I was awake, you know, grabbing my first cup of coffee, maybe like a bagel, and then eating a snack before I go to bed, you know, that whole wake cycle. And it just really kind of made me look at food differently, less of like something that I should get pleasure from and more like this is my sustenance, right? And that it's okay to be a little hungry. You know, that's kind of a superpower in a way. Do you know what I mean?

And that it doesn't have to be this horribly negative thing that it is like in the South, right? Like you're not eating enough, boy, you're too skinny, you know, and all of these other kinds of things. And so that's kind of how i processed it that makes a lot of sense man yeah i think fasting is amazing it uh can certainly make your diet just so much easier right just simply take a portion of the day and uh you know saves a ton of money don't eat i know there's some people that have different practices where they'll just say okay well in the morning i'm only going to allow for x amount of calories and so they still have

something and then they eat later on or sometimes and semen i will do kind of more like liquid calories through like a protein shake and a coffee and then we'll save our food for later but just the gist of it is just people eat way too much yeah and i mean if you think about like the evolution and like what we were built for we we weren't built to have refrigerators, right? With supermarkets full of food, right? We were built to kind of go through these feasts and famine. And when you kind of think about it from that perspective, it starts to make sense that, okay, well, the metabolic response is so taxing on the body.

When it's not doing the metabolic response, it gives the body so much more time to clean out, you know, all the waste products and the byproducts that kind of built up, that build up from just, you know, the day to day. It's just fun because I think the episode that might be right before this was with our buddy Jay Feldman. And Jay Feldman had a lot of good things to say. He's not a fan of fasting. He would rather have individuals. I think I saw a part of that. Yeah.

It's not out yet. No, no. But he's been on with Brad Kern's a bunch. With think I saw a part of that. Yeah. It's not, it's not, it's not out yet. No, no, but he's been on with Brad Kearns. Yeah. And by the way, Jay has, there's a lot of good stuff there that people should take away because there were,

when Mark and I started fasting years ago, we over fasted. Like, like we, you know, there, there were times where like, you know,

since we were fasting too much, we'd come in and we do a lot of physical activity, like a lot. Be beat up, tired from it. Yeah. So if you're doing a lot of physical activity, like a lot. Be beat up, tired from it. Yeah. So if you're doing a lot of physical activity and you're eating once a day and potentially you're not getting in all the calories you need to be able to perform the same shit the next day, you probably need to eat a little bit more the next day or have a few more meals. Right. Right.

So there you can overdo it with the fasting. Absolutely. But I also disagree with Jay in the sense that I don't think you need to be constantly also eating. There is a happy middle ground. Even if you're a performance athlete, some days you don't need to fast as much. Some days you could eat three square meals. It's like just,

but I think fasting gives you the superpower of like you said, I think, or it was one of you of not feeling like being hungry is a problem. You said that, you know, like I used to just be angry when I get hungry. People are really tethered to their food. They're tethered to the hunger and also their whole day is set up.

I mean you remember when either one of you guys had a regular job and you were working all the time, it was always the question when you walked in was like where are we going to lunch? And somebody would bring in coffee and donuts and whatever. And as soon as you ate some of the donuts, that would be the conversation. Then you had to kind of worry about where you're going to get your food, where you're going to park, how long it's going to take. Because if you work for somebody else, you're only trying to take like an hour or so. And so there's just like all this shit that's involved that you could easily just skip if you simply just have a certain part of your day where you don't eat. One of the things that I really learned is that people think that they eat because they're hungry. And one of the number one reasons people eat is because of their feelings.

And I think that that's a really kind of – it's an important thing to note because I think a lot of people don't even realize it. They eat when they're bored. They eat when they're bored. They eat when they're sad. They eat when they're happy. That bastard pointed it out. And so I think that for me, recognizing that and it kind of even gets back to the stoicism thing too a little bit. A little bit of discomfort is not

a bad thing. You know what I mean? I think eating has become an experience too, right? It's the experience of going, being around people, doing things with people. I know that's like being somebody who's worked from home. I've worked from home now for 17 years. Woo!

Good for you. I have not worked in an office that long. So what most people got introduced to with the pandemic was just normal for me. Like this was easy, right? So the idea of going out to eat at night, for me, it's my chance to get out. And so we tend in my family, I'll take my family out maybe too much because it's my one chance to get out. So we'll go out to eat because it's my only time I eat, right?

So it's an experience for me to go out, have some food, but then also just to get out and feel somewhat normal yeah no i feel that do does your wife fast how she feel about it she does she does yeah she does cool yep you don't hear of many like so so i mean there are a lot of women that fast but it's you also there are a lot of professionals within fitness who talk about like how it's not the safest thing for women to do or women tends not tolerate it as well as men do. So that's pretty cool actually. No.

Well, I think too, like, look, when you live with your partner all the time, you tend to start to emulate, you know, them. Yeah. And so I think she just naturally, you know, since we got back together, she just naturally now starts to emulate the habits that I have, which is, all right, now she doesn't eat maybe as much as maybe she used to. This is funny, dog. My, like, I eat like once or twice a day.

You know, my girl eats like six times a day. That woman is a food monster, but it's just, it's funny. Yeah. And I think Mark brings up a good point. You know, it's like, you know, if you're, it's complicated to make six healthy meals a day, right? It's much easier to have one or two, do you know what I'm saying, that are healthy because if you're eating six, you're like, oh, I'm on the go. I need a snack.

So I'll just eat this granola bar with chocolate chips in it. You know what I mean? Or whatever because you can trick yourself into thinking that that's healthy even though it's maybe full of sugar. And so I think that also is one of the reasons that it just kind of simplifies the whole process. It does. So I think we skipped over something. Uh-oh.

I think you said you got divorced. I didn't. But then you got remarried to your same wife. So we are back together. Oh. So that's kind of a whole key to the whole origin story of hostage tape really, right, was so we had- We actually kidnapped her.

I'm sorry. We kidnapped her. I like that. We held her hostage. No, so the whole experience of not being able to sleep and the snoring and all that, right? She started to sleep in a separate bedroom and then it just really killed the intimacy

and just everything kind of went from there, right? So we ended up getting a divorce and then we were separated and divorced for, you know, two, three years. Wow. And, and then we ended up coming back together and that,

and it's been now a year and a half. And so since we've been back, since we've been back together, we're back together and I'm not snoring. I'm wearing hostage tape every night. And if I don't, I forget she reminds me. Oh yeah.

So, you know, what did this before? She's not being held hostage by bad sleep anymore. Right? No, but yeah, it was,

it was, uh, especially for our kids too. It was huge to be able to give them a good, secure, you know, home environment now and they're they're doing amazing in school you know i got some great kids um so it's to feel good but

also really weird i guess at the same time right yeah it's definitely weird whirlwind it feels like it was a dream for sure as you literally in the span of two, three years, I went through the hardest time of my life. And it's some of the worst things that any person can go through. Well, it's good you got someone you can talk to about it. Right. You can talk to her about it. She went through the same thing. So I can talk to Ben about it.

There you go. So, but it was awful. Yeah. But also too, I look at it as for every awful bad situation, it's a chance to learn and get better. Right. And have a growth mindset about how can I take all of this and become a better man? And I'm grateful that we went through it because if I hadn't gone through it, then I wouldn't be the man that I'm proud to be today. I wouldn't be the dad that I'm proud to be today. I wouldn't be the partner that I'm proud to be today. All of those

things. So I'm grateful for that. Did you get her to sign the prenup second time around? I'm just kidding. You know, I think, I think, you know, one of the prenup second time around? I'm just kidding. You know, I think one of the things, kind of to piggyback on that, is this idea of adversity and actually how much it can actually help us grow. Because I went through a divorce too. And just to be honest, it was the hardest thing that I had ever done. But I remember going to a – I think it was a Zazen meditation. And at the end of the whole meditation, the roshi at the front, he went around and basically he said, what do you do with all the pain and suffering in the world? And at that time, there was like the war in Syria and all these kind of horrible things kind of going on in the world.

And he's like, what do you do? And everybody went around and they said what they said. do. And, you know, everybody went around and they, and they said what they said. And, and, you know, people were like, well, I try to teach my kids, you know, to, you know, be kind and, you know, generous to other people and those kinds of things. And when it got to me, I don't know, I just kind of had this realization. I was like, what if this is our sandpaper? What if these, these are the things that help polish us, right? Because how do you learn kindness in a world with no suffering, right? How do you learn compassion, right, in a world with no need, you know? And I think that sort of idea for me, it just made me kind of shift my perspective and my perception on any time these horrible things or these hardships come up in our lives, that they really are huge opportunities, you know,

for us to either take a different direction, to learn something new, to get out of our rut, to see our path differently, you know, and our choices and to grow from them. And I think so for me, I always try to look at any of these challenges as, yeah, a bit of sandpaper and polish that can help, you know, make me better. It's easy to feel bad about certain things that you see. Um, but it's also easy to not understand stuff that you see. Um, on my way to, uh, Nevada the other day, I saw a deer that got hit by a car and it was, didn't have a head. And I was kind of like, I was like, fuck man. I don't

think anybody likes seeing that kind of thing. But then I thought about it a little bit more. I'm like, that deer is going to get ripped apart by some bear or something anyway. So it's kind of easy to look at. And you think about world news and stuff and different wars are going on. It's like, I don't know about you guys, but I just put my hands up sometimes. I'm like, I don't know anything about that culture. I don't know anything you guys, but I just put my hands up sometimes. I'm like, I don't know anything about that culture. I don't know anything about what they go through.

I don't know why this group is fighting with this group or what's going on. And I can look at it. I can say that's horrible, but I can also know that, like, I literally know nothing about it. I don't know who started what. I don't know who got into what or who's trying to overpower who or who's taking advantage of who. So I just try to just fucking just stay right here and i don't watch the news keep to myself and and not yeah not even really watch the news and if i do see some of it i don't even bother to try to run it through a filter or anything because it just i just let it just fucking especially especially with the twitter files did you guys see the twitter

files that dropped yes i did you see this oh i heard about so fill you in on this one oh i can't do you want to explain it i mean i can to the best of my knowledge or whatever but basically so elon bought twitter there was a lot of people that were trying to block this deal turns out a lot of those people were trying to block it is because they he was able to uncover a bunch of like cold hard facts about how they manipulated a lot of the shit that we saw during the election the main one being our president's son's laptop oh yeah with all that shit so they were actively like banning and blocking and suppressing a lot of people talking about this and there's proof that there's people that worked for Twitter that did this. And so they manipulated the election. So the Biden administration, people from the Democratic Party would contact Twitter and say, hey, can you deal with this?

And the people at Twitter would go, okay, you got it. And they would suppress and remove posts. Was anything like that done for people that were conservative or conservative candidates? I think there's a lot of stuff. There is. Yeah. But if you look at the again and like I fucking don't like any of it. OK.

Any party. But like you can see that like they're like the money involved and how many different times Democratic Party reached out. It's like significantly blows the Republican Party out of the water. Because Twitter itself was a very left organization. So what ended up happening was just the way that they hired older people, it ended up being very left dominated. And so as a result, I think they were opened up to the idea that anytime the Democratic Party reached out, like they would just give them what they want. But I think the point here is that after seeing that, it kind of makes you go, why the hell would I even listen to any media at all?

When you see that kind of stuff that's happening and like, all right, let's just go find our news on Reddit or like these own pockets on the internet that I know I can go trust and listen to and hear podcasts. No, I can go trust and listen to and hear podcasts. I'd rather listen to people on podcasts and get news from them, like guys like yourself, what you're saying. You don't want to get the news from us, motherfucker. There's a ton of shit and a ton of amazing people that you're talking to. But I'm going to listen to them. I'm going to listen to more relevant to your day. Other countries having nuclear bombs and whether they're going to use them or not,

I don't have any clue on what to do about any of that. Nor control. Other than just to go to the gym and keep eating meat. That's why you have to

think less. There you go. On our project.live. That's right. We have our Plum Think Less hoodie live now on the website along with our

devil pussy mug and our other, what else we got? Micro dirt shirt, a lot of stuff. The Think Less shirt, but also, like, what I wanted wanted to point out was like the the camera does not do that color justice right now i was wearing it earlier that plum color looks so good in person so good oh you just ate some of it also while you're fasting but actually a really good show that i do appreciate

is breaking points um it's on youtube there's's a conservative, there's a liberal, they're going back and forth about both sides of the topic. So like, it's, it's not like you're going to CNN or you're going to Fox news. You're getting some good insight from two professionals where this is their thing. Those are their political parties and they can, they can intelligently talk about the views of both things and come to some

type of consensus. Breaking points on YouTube. Amazing show. Please check it out. Yeah. I think for me, like, you know, it's really easy to, you know, have these sort of headlines and, you know, articles. And, you know, it's like, you know,

one extreme and another extreme. Like I read a statistic the other day and they said that 10% of the users on Twitter create 90% of the tweets. And if you think about that for a second, right? Like, if you just think about that for a second, like, what would that mean? Well, that would probably mean that 5% of the most liberal that are the most extreme and 5% of the most conservative are the ones dictating the conversation because they're the most active, you know, and then we're

all just kind of reacting to it, you know? And so I think that, you know, for me, it's more like, I would rather have more deeper information. Like if you're concerned about Russia, go read a history book about Russia. It will give you a lot more insight into what's going on. That's kind of what I'm saying because I'm like I don't know. I hear like relatives and stuff mention stuff. I'm like are you a historian of like these countries? Do you have any idea?

Like do you really know? I'm listening to you and it sounds fair, but I'm like I don't know if you know what you're talking about and then and then sometimes you know i go back to the stoic thing i'm like do i have to have an opinion on this like kanye like i mean i was like i'm sorry yeah yeah yeah so it's like control yourself you were like no It's like... Control yourself. You were like, no, ye. You were like... That's that Minnesota Midwest accent.

I'm sorry, dog. That was so funny. Have you been at home like, honey, have you heard that ye likes Hitler? I'd imagine he probably doesn't. Oh, fuck. just yeah but no i mean it's sort of that idea like do i have to have an opinion on this like it's just it's sort of i see people getting so worked up and it's like it could be mental illness it could be racism it could be all of these things but you know how can i sort of instead of take that energy put it into my life

and my community and the people that I care about life? You know what I'm saying? To kind of raise that like what you've kind of done with the gym here and opening it up to the community. Like, I just think that that's such an amazing idea, you know, and I think that you can offer, you know, and I and like that's the kind of stuff I'm like, yeah, that's what I want to invite more of into my life. Put your energy there. Yeah. And not, you know, the latest cycle or the latest outrage machine. Dude. Now, that's what I want to invite more of into my life. Put your energy there. Yeah, and not the latest cycle or the latest outrage machine. Dude, that's huge.

There is an importance of trying to be somewhat aware of what's going on. You know what I mean? I mean, shit. When it comes to voting, there's so many things that I need to understand to make a good vote as a citizen. There is that. But there's a deeper aspect where my mom, she has a lot of CNN playing on her phone. many things that i need to understand to make a good vote as a citizen right so there is that but there's a deeper aspect like where my mom she has a lot of cnn playing on her phone and she's certain things i'm like why are you letting this stress you out like this shit hasn't it's not

gonna if you just didn't care about this you'd be feeling so less stressed right so there's a tendency where people like it's like they turn it into their battle and then it makes them, it just, they're not as, I don't know. They're not as. But these are the most tense times that we've ever had at CMOS. Best time it's ever been to be alive in the world. We know that. I saw the news. It doesn't say that.

Right? No, that's what the news makes you feel. It makes you feel that the world is such a horrible fucking place and everything's going to fucking burn in the next 10 years. And it actually makes sense if you're trying to control people, right? Because fear is the number one way to control people. And if you keep people afraid then, you know, about the economy, they're not going to leave their jobs, right? If you keep them afraid about their party, then they're not going to stray or look at a third party.

You know, so it's just thing after thing. And so, I mean, you know, we even see it like, you know know we're selling like a solution to maybe help some people sleep better and like when people complain that they haven't tried it they're like you're gonna kill people you know and it's just this it's just this huge exaggeration or fear factor that kind of comes in and they're not even willing to get there's like for me i've always been the kind of person to where i'm like – I wish I could try that. My nasal passages aren't big enough. It's like right away negative. It's just like you didn't even – Exactly.

Did you even try it? And for me, it's sort of like if I'm in a rut or something isn't working, I need to change something. It's just that simple because to do the same thing over and over again isn't going to change anything and allow me to kind of have a different experience. Andrew, you want to take us out of here or you got a question? Yeah, actually I did. I wanted to go of have a different experience. Andrew, want to take us out of here? You got a question? Yeah, actually I did. I wanted to go back to some mouth tape. I remember the first time that I put it on,

again, after Ron Penna and after Mark had told me I needed to give it a shot. And I was one of those people where I'm like, I think I'm too stuffed up in the middle of the night. But eventually I'd learned that my nose would kind of work its way through and it'd open up on its own. I remember that first night I woke up at like 2 a.m.

And I jumped right out of bed thinking it was just time to wake up. And I'm like, oh, shit, I'm fully energized. This is kind of incredible. That's just a side note because the real thing I wanted to talk about was how mouth taping can actually help with your erections. What's going on there? Because we've heard about this many times before, but I don't know if you guys had some more like uh details i think that has to do with the nitric oxide okay yep so what again what most people don't know is that by breathing through your nose the the air passing through there helps your body produce nitric oxide which i believe has something

to do with this guy down here. Yeah. Right? A bunch of dick pills have nitric oxide. Like, not nitric. What's that? It's not nitric oxide. There's something. Like citrulline or something like that? Something like that.

But a lot of those pills have an ingredient that has to do with that to try to help guys have better erections. But like he was saying, increased nitric oxide production because you're breathing through your nose can absolutely help. It's the best bedroom hack you can use. like he was saying, increased nitric oxide production because you're breathing through your nose can absolutely help you. It's the best bedroom hack you can use. James Nestor says that our nose is actually filled with erectile tissue. Just like, you know. Maybe that's why I was smelling all the time. That's why I love picking my nose as a kid.

Nostrils getting all hard all of a sudden. All right. Well, okay okay that's all I had yeah just because I mean it's right like we as men like that's kind of like we got to make sure

that that's working if that's not working then fuck everything else I guess you can't fuck everything else but like it's just such a simple easy thing to do is just

tape your mouth shut and all of a sudden you're waking up with ridiculous morning wood and your wife or your partner is there next to you because she's not in the other room because she can't fucking stand yes to be next to you because you snore so loud yeah there you go real quick before we head out um and it's great that you guys already have this on the website but i remember i messaged you because i was thinking one day, I'm like, no, there are some people that drink a lot before they go to sleep and they party.

And some people will might throw up if they're whatever. You know what I mean? So like you guys have a disclaimer on your website. But yes, don't first off, don't get drunk before you go to sleep, please. But if you do, don't take your mouth shut. Yeah, no, we do have a disclaimer on the product page for sure. Don't tape your mouth shut. Yeah, no, we do have a disclaimer on the product page for sure.

Like, you know, if you're maybe too obese where you really should be wearing a CPAP machine or if you, yeah, if you go to bed and you're really sick or if you have an allergy reaction or, yeah, you're just, you're too drunk and you could throw up, you know, the rare chance that it might happen, just be smart. And if you think something might go kind of awry, you know, don't wear it. Here we go. All right, Andrew, take us on out of here, buddy. Sure thing. Make sure you guys stick around for Smelly's tip before we get out of here. And let us know what you guys think about today's conversation. Drop those comments down below. Hit the like button and subscribe if you guys are not subscribed. For everything podcast related, including that dope ass sweater, the Think Less hoodie, head over to powerproject.live

right now. That shit just went on sale. And make sure you guys are following the podcast at MB Power Project on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. My Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter is at IamAndrewZ. And Seema, where are you at? Discord's down below.

Let us know what you guys think about this conversation and some hostage tape. Oh yeah, links down below. Yeah, for sure. Hostage tape. At SeemaYinYang on Instagram and YouTube And see my yin-yang on Instagram and YouTube. And see my yin-yang on TikTok and Twitter. Alex and Ben, where can people find you?

You can find us on all of them at hostage tape. There we go. The smelly tip of the day is just to try some hostage tape. Please give it a go. Throw it on. And I want to encourage you not just to try it for sleep, but I'd love to encourage you to try it for some exercise. to try it for sleep, but I'd love to encourage you to try it for some exercise. Actually, you'll find it pretty challenging, even if you're just doing something like an arm workout or some simple exercise in the gym to keep the mouth shut the entire time so you're not cheating.

Go ahead and stick that tape on there. Can you show us, before we hop off here, can you show us the eye mask as well? Yeah, so we do have a hostage blindfold as well. eye mask as well. Yeah, so we do have a hostage blindfold as well. Because certainly one of the things that a lot of the sleep experts talk about is being able to reduce the light, right?

Yeah, sometimes my wife is like reading or something like that, so I like it to be pitch black, so I throw those on. Makes a big difference. And they're comfortable. Absolutely. Alright, strength is never weakness, weakness is never strength. I'm at Mark Smelly Bell. Catch you guys later. Bye.