Mark Bell's Power Project - How to Achieve and Maintain Strength and Movement Ability for Life - Fernando Lopez || MBPP Ep. 1037

Episode Date: February 12, 2024

In episode 1037, Fernando Lopez, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about how to not only achieve strength and mobility, but how to maintain it for life.   Follow Fernando on IG: https://www.instagram.com/fueledbyfern/   Official Power Project Website: https://powerproject.live Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw   Special perks for our listeners below!   🥩 HIGH QUALITY PROTEIN! 🍖 ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save up to 25% off your Build a Box ➢ Piedmontese Beef: https://www.CPBeef.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150   🩸 Get your BLOODWORK Done! 🩸 ➢ https://marekhealth.com/PowerProject to receive 10% off our Panel, Check Up Panel or any custom panel!   Sleep Better and TAPE YOUR MOUTH (Comfortable Mouth Tape) 🤐 ➢ https://hostagetape.com/powerproject to receive a year supply of Hostage Tape and Nose Strips for less than $1 a night!   🥶 The Best Cold Plunge Money Can Buy 🥶 ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!   Self Explanatory 🍆 ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained:      ➢ https://withinyoubrand.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off supplements!   ➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off all gear and apparel!   Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://www.PowerProject.live ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject   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 ➢ UNTAPPED Program - https://shor.by/untapped ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en   Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz   #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast #markbellspowerproject

With the split squat, what makes that movement so good? One, it handles this balance issue. Also, you're training on one leg at a time. This will grow your legs. What I've gotten from some of the stuff is, in most cases, you're trying to not only challenge with weight and with load, but you're also challenging with the actual movement itself. Does it ever get to a point where we're good?

Yes. The progression and the challenging of the mobility aspect is because you are tight. And when I think about like trying to help build an athlete, deadlifts, bench presses, and squats would be in there. I certainly wouldn't have anybody do it the way that I did it. I want to encourage people to just start low, start low, start slow, implement just a small facets of it over time. Power Project family, we've had some amazing guests on this podcast like Kurt Engel, Tom Segura, Andrew Hooperman. And we want to be able to have more amazing guests on this podcast. And you can help it grow by leaving us a quick rating and review on Spotify and iTunes.

If you're listening to the podcast, just go ahead and give us a review. Let us know how you dig it and help the podcast grow so we can keep growing with y'all and bring you amazing information. Enjoy the show. Yeah, I think there's massive difference between training people in person versus just online. And there's a lot of people executing really well. They're doing both. But I do think that sometimes when I get information from certain people, it makes me kind of wonder. I'm like, oh, maybe they share that information that way because they're not used to working with people in person.

Right. Yeah. I've noticed that when people don't have an experience with the in-person client, they speak a little bit more matter-of-factly and less it depends, which is generally the right answer. And have a less ability to think on their feet and like a quick adapt or what if you can't do this or what if this situation is occurring, how do you adapt to that? Like some of the ATG movements, if you see somebody kind of get into like an ATG split squat or sometimes you see something executed like a couch stretch or some of these things,

especially when you're seeing Ben Patrick do it, You're like, wow, that looks incredible. And then if you aren't really schooled in that, you haven't really tried that before, you go to try it and you're like, pretty sure the way I'm trying this doesn't look anything like the way that they're doing it or it hurts. You go to do it and you're like, man, that hurts a lot. And so when you work with someone in person and you start to see some of the challenges that they are going through, then somebody that is a coach that works with people regularly in person can really help coach them through it.

And it's a different experience. And that person is going to have just that much more knowledge than someone that's only coaching somebody online sometimes. Absolutely. And so something about ATG is that you're not going to see in the real in the 15 second you know bend dunking doing a splits all that like that's the end product that's to get your attention but there's progressions you know we start with people that are in 24 inch boxes and start doing a split squat and that that doesn't get attention if you post that no one cares so like their foot is on top of the box.

Yeah. And that's all you're doing. You're just getting started. Because they really can't get sink into like a lunge hardly at all. Correct. So, of course, that guy, if he only sees the reel, tries to do a flat ground split squat like Ben. Yeah, you're going to have problems. Yeah.

That's not our that's not the principles that we go by. It's all about progression and gradient approach to getting to this end range. So, yeah. Again, someone who maybe doesn't have that experience in person, like you said, sees that and will attack it without understanding that there are progressions. Yeah. You're one of those rare people that's had a chance to work with Charles Poliquin before he passed, right? What are some of the, because he's worked with so many people, so what are some key ideas that you've learned from him in the way that now you program for athletes and the way you work with athletes? Because you've worked with a lot of professionals too. So what are some things, some nuggets?

It's a great question. Yeah, I was at his last seminar before he passed in Estonia. It's a great question. Yeah, I was at his last seminar before he passed in Estonia. I would say one of the main things is just it is prioritizing structural balance. Like ATG principles are based off of, we give a lot of credit, we give all the credit, if you will, to Charles Poliquin, right? It's all about structurally balanced. So that comes down to not only side to side, you know, between legs, between arms, shoulders, whatever. It's between ranges of, sorry, the strength curve. So what is your strength in the bottom of a shoulder press versus the end squat, mid position, end position, ass to grass, bottom position.

So that is probably the biggest thing that we've gained from that is understanding that you need to have a proper balanced strength curve through entire ranges of motion. I mean, that's number one. I just would go with that. And then number two, I'd probably say is, I mean, he thinks everyone's pretty weak. And fat. And fat.

Yeah. It's like if you can't, he's got- So everyone's weak and fat. He's got very high standards, but you have to realize what he was dealing with, right? So in ATG, I know Ben, I know I myself pride myself in taking the extreme of the ultimate performance and kind of, okay, how can we bring that down so that anyone can progress potentially to those high levels? But even if you don't ever get there, that's fine. But how can you take it from someone who can't even get out of bed comfortably but still using the same exact knowledge? Okay, so it's the breaking down, the dumbing it down.

Charles wasn't interested in it, but we want to try to help as many people with that. That is what we do and get you to an ability where you can practice your sport or simply just live life a little bit more pain-free. I think strength is just such a fascinating thing. As we get older and more mature, we start to recognize that there's so many different ways for someone to be strong and for someone to demonstrate their strength.

Somebody throwing a shot put, that's a demonstration of strength. Somebody throwing a javelin, somebody doing gymnastics, somebody, you know, deadlifting 500 pounds. I think a lot of times when we're thinking about strength and we're thinking about sports, we're most often thinking about strength as it relates to the weight room. Every once in a while, someone might say, hey, do you think that really carries over? Like, who the hell even knows what that sort of means? It's an interesting term. But just as an example, you know, when I was lifting my heaviest weights, when I was my strongest, you know, I was handling, you know, a thousand pounds nearly every week on something like a squat, right? But if we just change the exercise slightly, take the same movement, got the weight on my back, and let's just say like you're looking for like an ass to grass squat.

Well, now the weight is reduced significantly. Let's say we just change the game even more and the weight needs to be lifted. Not without going down, you just need to lift it from the bottom. So you get, you wedge yourself underneath the weight. These are all exercises that I used to do. Various good mornings and various squats, like bottoms up squats and things like that. If you get down to a level that challenges my mobility, well, now my strength is also going to be compromised as well. So it's interesting. And I love what you said about kind of like strength curve and being in these positions, like the lower shoulder position,

it might be tough for someone to get the weight started if you just even take the example of me being able to squat a thousand pounds probably a little high in a power lifting competition yeah versus me sinking a squat into a position where my heels are still on the ground my my butt, I'm like as low as I possibly can go. My hamstrings are resting on my calves. It's like, well, now that's a totally different game. And that's a totally different thing because it's challenging me in so many different ways. That's right. So I love the attention that you guys have kind of brought to a lot of that

because that's been effective in my own training and just the health of my body, being able to keep myself together for things like running. Obviously, when it comes to a squat, I'm not trying to handle these crazy weights and those full range of motions. I'm doing whatever level I'm at right now. But just to give people an idea of how much weight that could pull off of somebody, I would say that that could like cut your weight almost in half and maybe even more. Like you might be knocked down 50 or even like all the way down to like 30% of your max when you're just starting.

Absolutely. Two things I want to talk about quickly, that about the weight of starting weight when you're doing these more ranges of motion. I mean, I can rack pull 800, 900,000. Adan i mean i can rack pull 800 900 a don can my brother can rack pull 1100 i mean he actually can this isn't this isn't a lot you can um you know so these short range pull just a short short range of motion deadlift basically probably wearing straps or something like that straps but no belt no nothing else right so here's the deficit just to prove that it's not just

rack itself i don't remember how much 450 something around that range deficit wide grip so you can get really strong but so if i were to do half that range of motion i can do more than double got it right so yes you definitely have to change the weight on the bar the weight on the bar is not we're not training the bar how much weight's on that we're training the tension and the muscles and the strength curve almost a little more emphasis on the movement correct like let me let me get the movement correct that's what i've seen in sima uh do so much of and and it's cool to watch someone do it and they they care about the quality of the movement like it's not even just the movement it's i want the movement to actually look good too

yeah look nice and smooth that's why we like we definitely prioritize form full range of motion again that doesn't mean we never do partial i mean the patrick's of the paula quincep of the peterson stuff this is very much a partial movement this is the million dollar knee exercise we are huge on this right so partials have their place but again it's in relation to that full strength curve if you also can't get out of the bottom what if you get knocked in sport down into a that position where your knee is very bent mmm now's where injuries occur because you can't get out of that position okay um and another thing i wanted to say was about how does the strength

relate to sport you know that's always a debate um but there is something that i'm aware of anyways i'm pretty sure there was some test done with Usain Bolt, okay, who has the record, I think it was like a Nike test or something, he has the record for a mid-thigh, just simple pull, the strength per pound, okay, so your strength per pound absolutely translates to athletic ability, there's a lot of factors. There's tendons. There's obviously movement pattern. There's skill. There's all sorts of things. But with all those things equal, the person who is stronger per pound will be the better athlete. Simple. So improve that quality to the best of your ability without compromising,

not at the expense of any of these other qualities, but do that in itself. The muscles work in a certain fashion. Get those as strong as possible. Then train your movement pattern. Then train your skill. You have your sport. You have your sport.

Correct. Just to test that out a little bit about you talking about like the strength being, you know, one of the more important factors. You take someone like Stephon Curry. You know, you're not really associating him with being incredibly strong, obviously, compared to your average person and everything. He's extremely fit, and we understand all that, but he's not a person you look at and you think, holy fuck, that guy is really strong. But in terms of some of what you're mentioning here when you're talking about strength in terms of athleticism, no one, hardly anybody else in the world can move their body and propel their body through space the way that he can. His conditioning is unbelievable. And that is a crazy amount of strength.

Not only the ability to accelerate, but the ability to break, right? The ability to slow down. Yes. And these are all like little factors that sometimes we don't really think about. But then also you got to kind of factor in, like I mentioned this earlier, like I think it's a form of genius, the way that these guys can anticipate. I mean, he's anticipating like what the other guy's doing, what the other guy's about to do.

Oh yeah. He's anticipating the way the ball ball's gonna bounce and all this crazy shit's going on all at one time but a guy like that has insane levels of strength that we just for some reason we we bypass we're not even really thinking about it or considering it yeah a lot of people compare him it and considering it yeah a lot of people compare him to lebron james okay yeah he's not gonna look as strong but per pound who knows also we forget like he is pretty jacked i think like because he looks so small comparing to lebron james he looked you got six seven fuckers and there's six three steph curry but like look at his arms he he's a pretty jacked guy right yeah thanks for pointing out the height because he's the point guard so he's gonna be the shortest like on the court but if he was standing here he would be the tallest you know what i mean same with kawaii leonard kawaii's like

yeah yeah it's easy to get like to not understand exactly how jack they are because they're around monsters like literal monsters but he would be a monster in here right now but also you don't need to be jacked like you don't you don't need to necessarily be jacked to have tremendous amounts of strength output you can increase your strength without adding so much muscle mass there are different types of training right so um you can emphasize these you can go pure bodybuilding, pure hypertrophy, growth of muscle, or you can go a little bit more emphasized on trying to gain maximal strength with minimal muscle growth. I do like what you mentioned in the gym when you used the term athletic hypertrophy because I haven't heard somebody say that before, but it makes perfect sense.

You know what I mean? Like if you're an athlete in a sport and you're doing some lifting, you don't want to gain so much muscle that gets in the way of your sport. But at the same time, if you're an actual athlete doing your sport, you're burning so many calories when you do your sport that there's going to be a limit to how much hypertrophy you can even have. You know what I mean? So it's like there's a limiter that's on you. There's a limiter. mean yeah so it's it's like there's a limiter that's on you there's a limiter and it's also um sometimes i first of all shout out to charles for that coined word i got that from him athletic

hypertrophy that's how he used to uh classify and so it's when muscle mass is needed depending some sports just need okay a football player you need to have cushion you need to be bigger momentum you know weight moves weight there's a factor to this but even outside of that just you want to run faster a sprinter some look at some of these sprinters they're jacked depending on your genetics and body you might need a little more muscle mass to tap in further for more strength so that ratio of that that that strength to body weight ratio actually is better while gaining the even though you're gaining weight you're increasing the gap right of the the strength so that's what happened with me i gained i mean i used to be a buck 80 at 20

years old now i'm right now i'm around 210 212 but in my peak i was football player i was running four fours 215 to 218 i gained 10 15 pounds and dropped my 40 time from 5-1 to 4-4 it's like it goes against all the but you can't do that you can't improve speed i think that's all and you absolutely can and i've done it not only with myself but many many people so again with all other factors equal the higher strength per pound is going to be the better athlete so and and I think the the Usain Bolt thing again to tie that back it's like that guy was he pulled such a heavy weight was unbelievable okay so you can't deny that that relationship is there so any any athlete you find like oh well this that that good if you if they were stronger would they be a better athlete

not if everything else was for that specific athlete yeah potentially so and you're also maybe talking about it with yourself i'm imagining you're talking about a little bit of an extreme situation were you really lifting much before i I lifted, I've been personal training and lifting since I was like, well, I started lifting when I was in high school football, 14, 15 years old. And, but not seriously until I got to 17, 18, you know, senior.

And then I went to call it and then I broke my ankle, like a fracture down to my lower lower ankle there and then i picked up jujitsu kind of like not heavy into lifting but always lifted probably at least six months of the year um but just the very what i would call basic la fitness lifting i don't know how to classify that other than that so then really targeted in terms of like trying to gain a lot of size and strength. Yeah.

It was just like basic four to six rep, you know, few accessories, higher rep, like just very basic, you know, you can read a pamphlet and kind of get the idea. Okay.

So I was doing that. But then as I started to pursue my football career, I was very skilled. It's not athletic enough. Just simply, you know i switched out of off of quarterback to safety and i was like i'm too slow i'm not big enough like those all these factors so that's when i started working with ben we started training 10 11 years ago now and found charles and all this stuff and i spent one month i timed my 40. It was 5'2", just under 5. It was like 5'1", 8 or something, 5'1", 8, something like that.

Trained RDL split squats. I started, by the way, on a 14-inch box. For the split squats? Yeah. Now I can do splits. So we spent a month straight, three times a week doing that. This worked for me. This is not a protocol.

It's just I spent doing rdls and that increasing my range of motion and increasing the strength and i went down and four weeks later i'm running four seven repeatedly i was like whoa this works i thought i couldn't get faster okay so then after a couple more years got down that four four gained a bunch of strength um there's old videos of me squatting you know 500 or 450 plus 200 pound change things like this so like it when i started squatting i was 225 maybe crap form you know deadlifting 275 so it's you can make quite an quite an improvement over time but um another example of the strength the body weight i am not a basketball player i don't i'm not a

good jumper i don't have a high skill in this i can dunk a basketball very easily exhausted right now i could go dunk a basketball easily there's a video of me i do it with ben every weekend when he's in town why because i'm strong for my pounds but that's all it is did your vertical increase as over time too with that oh so yeah he's kind of well known for his like 19 inch vertical now he's oh i was i think i was 21 inch vertical really yeah i ran a five two these things by the way super correlate you should not always there can be again skill and movement patterns can influence this but again my vertical was terrible i could touch the net and then in a couple years i remember we would spend hours trying to dunk and then finally just as we got

stronger and stronger now i can run up tom at two hand anything you know what i mean so all i have really done i didn't spend i didn't do any classes on how to jump yeah i'm sure i could improve easily was there any plyo work done during any of that time or anything like that? Yeah. So at first, no, right. It was just get stronger, increase my range of motion. Then as you get stronger, we have a kind of general rule where it's like, if you can't ask to grass squat 1.5 times your body weight your return on plyometric training is very low okay now once you get stronger once the muscle fibers in the body can handle more forces without pain and things like this then the plyometric starts to have a greater return yeah just think

about what he's saying there it's it's pretty simple to follow along. If you can't handle some of these weights this way, it's going to be very – not that it won't be productive at all, but it could be more damaging than – it could cause more harm than good. Because when you are landing, like if you're doing like a jump or something like that, every time you land, you're landing with not just the force of your own body weight, but with the force of gravity. So if you're doing something where you're jumping up onto something and then coming back down and trying to jump on something else, that's where you could get yourself in a whole heap of trouble if you're not... Sometimes people

think this way when they're going to coach some girl's volleyball or something like that. They're thinking they're going to have them do all these plyos and that's probably a great idea but not until they're up to par, not until they've gained a lot of strength. The box jumps.

Jumping onto a box, personally, I hate them. I think they don't need to be an action. Death jumps are far better. Land and then jump right if you cannot absorb what you're what you're doing you're just increasing your risk of injury so box jumps and and only increasing your power output your engine horsepower without the brakes without the ability to harness that

is how injury occurs in my opinion in sports so yeah some of these you know the volleyball is a perfect example i see they're doing all these piles and jumps like these people these people can't even use their natural ranges of motion you have them do a body weight squat and have knee pain like why are you having them they can't handle those forces you know so that is how the tendon breaks down the ligament you know that's how you get these acl injuries all the time. The hamstring is not strong enough to cut. They have the power to put that force through it, but they can't break it.

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Once again, head to goodlifeproteins.com. You can enter code POWERPROJECT and save up to 25%. Links are in the description box below as well as the podcast show notes can you explain like with the split squat what makes that movement so good because there's a bunch of things that are going on when someone does do a split squat so why would that be a movement that you know whatever anybody's doing they might want to consider progressing over time you don't need to start at the highest level of a squat but progressing over time i just i had a a good i had a reel on and it's just like i would choose it as my favorite lower body exercise because i guess there's many factors it's one it it handles this balance issue

right so we spend the majority of our life and in sport in the top half of our knee bend, let's say, right? We also have spent, probably a lot of us athletes have spent a lot of years half squatting. If you come from a powerlifting background, it's a half squat, you know, that's your maximal power output area. So spending this time now in this bottom full range you're going to fix these structural balance issues okay also you're training on one leg at a time and don't do this will grow your legs oh yeah you're gonna hit adductors like you can't do in a double leg squat you're gonna you're gonna fix imbalances between each like neural drives even core stability if you want to talk about anti-rot you know anti-rotation it's a little uh little yoga

ish as well yeah you're getting some of the benefits of like stretching and trying to relax and you're like what i've gotten from some of the stuff is the ability just to in the bottom position just to chill the hell out yeah you know everything in lifting so often is like you know white knuckled yeah well you can do this both so i'll go so you'll see here i go 225 i can do 20 like when i start with someone though yeah you're you what you can do and you i do have them do five second pause in the bottom relax get that like you know mind muscle connection to this new range of motion that you have not spent time in so that's the law it's a long-term progression yeah took me years to get to that i also do want to mention don't forget where you were but like when i the first time i did a split

squat and like that style split squat was a little bit before ben came and i had a meniscus surgery on my left knee and And I always thought like, okay, I'm going to have knee issues forever because of soccer. I had a bunch of knee issues. It was painful when I first started attempting to split squat. When I would try to get that deep into those tissues,

it was extremely uncomfortable. I had to regress it to a place that was pain-free. But over time, now the split squat is painless. It's one of those movements that I do every single day because it feels so fucking good. So hate it when people are like look at that movement and they say this isn't functional or it's unsafe for the knees it's unsafe right now if you haven't trained your joints in that range of motion almost ever because you don't have that strength in that part of the curve it's the same thing with dips it's like well that's bad for your shoulders if you go deep is it or do you not have the strength a dip inherently there's nothing wrong

with it no there's nothing wrong with my body doing its natural range of motion if i don't have the strength for it then you have to regress and okay work your way but to me that's also a sign if i have pain doing something that seems to be the normal movement of joints, that to me is like, ding, that's not right. I should fix this. What's going on? Let me look into this. So, yeah, and I even have my father, 71. I don't know if you can find the – I have a video.

He's jacked. I mean, he's on good TRTs. He started like five years ago, but he had complete, this is in the 70s. He had complete, he was a karate master, by the way.

Oh damn. He was in talks for movies with bad guy for Bruce Lee. I mean, the guy is like an amazing natural athlete. Never looked away until his fifties. Then he got really overweight, started TRT. We can get into dialer.

He's on carnivore for two years now. Like, amazing shape now. He had terrible knee pain. Could not squat. Started. Regressed. Just walked backwards with a sled. A little bit of resistance.

Now you'll find the video. He's able to do things that he's never, ever been able to do. He could never do pull-ups in his life, Bobby told me. Damn, look at him going. That's amazing. He's got some muscle on him too. There's another one of him squatting. Dude, what's with these old guys working out in jeans?

That's great. Dude, he's hilarious. He puts on 70s rock and just, he's jacked. He's in better shape now. I just saw him a few weeks ago and he's in Miami. And he's now 71 yeah this is like a year ago there's one where he's now holds weight and goes on a slant board squats deep full knee bend he has no meniscus it's gone this is 70 they didn't they took it out yeah

there he can squat ass to grass a little bit of warm-up now the way. So the strength of the muscle around the joint and it's full, if you have it fully balanced, there can really be remarkable what it can do for your joint and protecting that joint. So if there's pain to me, that's only a sign that there's an imbalance of strength. Not always the case, but that's generally, it's something I would at least look into with the uh with the split squat specifically um because like i i have a lot of imbalances right so like my left and rights are going to be very different is there something that someone like like me needs to consider when it comes to like doing the split squat to i guess an attempt to try to rebalance and obviously get stronger but like is there something else i need to worry about like just throwing it out there i'm pretty sure this is incorrect, but like, oh, if my left side's imbalanced, I'll do twice as much on my left side. You know what I mean? Like is there anything that I should even consider or not consider?

Yes. Simple. I always start with the weaker side. So you start with the weaker side and only match on the stronger side. That is a good question because a lot of people will, oh, I can, and they'll just do like double the rest. No, no. And if anything, you can add one extra set at the end on the weaker leg like sometimes i'll do that with a client if it's really far off now you we do have dominant sides

this is not five percent a little bit of percentage like is that's fine but with these unilateral exercises i always with with my guys have them, start with it basically. Put the most neural drive, the most effort into that weaker side so that they only have to match it on the stronger side. And that tends to fix the problem pretty quickly, honestly. Let's say someone's in a ton of pain and they're just like not sure where to start. Where do you think someone should start? What's a good starting point? In regards to the split squat? Just in regards to trying to get into any ATG type of thing just so you can get yourself out of pain. Body weight, like the lowest regression body weight.

Ben talks about this all the time, backwards walking if it's a knee pain issue. But there's a lot of low back and stuff. So just there's like ATG zero programs, let's call it, right? It's just getting to use your body in natural movements. Starting from the ground up, start working your tibialis. Put your back against the wall and lift. Do a little neck bridge. If you have to, use your own arms and just start going through these range of motion.

Start stretching. I'm not a huge into the excessive hypermobility stretching stuff. I'm not. But if it doesn't hurt you to bend down and try to touch your toes and come back up, do that. It's all about progression. The body will adapt to what you do. So if you sit, it's going to adapt and become a ball. If you start to move it go for walks

i'm big on walking i love i know you are too it's like start putting blood flow and start trying to attack those new ranges of motion that you should have but if you just progressively overload that effort then it just starts like so start with the body weight is the simple answer it's like master your own body weight if you can't use your own body weight and it's right ranges you have an issue so let's start that program and then from there you can progress into more advanced loading and and like you know with external weights and stuff like that and there is an older and active program that ben's mom is like like she does a lot of those workouts so people who are older they can actually do all of those movements and regress them to a place that they can actually do them at multiple times a week absolutely absolutely yeah that's my dad just started

squatting a couple years like a year ago maybe a couple years ago so it started with the sled so if you do have access to the sled that's phenomenal for yourself do you um do you do like a lot of other types of lifting as well like you you know that only see we only see what we see from like atg so we see the split squat we see various exercises backward sled and stuff but do you uh hop on machines and stuff and do like a little bit of bro sessions do you like bench press and shit like that so i bench press um i actually currently have a goal to bench press 315 and i do want to start testing out using your slingshot after this maybe you can give me a couple tips too i'm sure it's a new to me that's a movement there's a skill

there there's a whole skill to bench pressing okay so i want to learn that i've learned a bit but yeah i talk about it here a little bit. This is about range of motion, but I'm on a journey to get to my three 15 and whatever and see where it can go. But so I'll generally right now, honestly, I don't, I, I, the program I'm on most is a power builder, uh, which is a program I created. It was actually after I met with Will Tenney, we did a YouTube, uh, Ben and him did it with a YouTube and it kind him did it with YouTube.

And it kind of satisfies that old me in the LA fitness. I want to, it's not quite a big three program. I'm kind of working on that to be totally honest. Right now behind the scenes, I want to like make a good balanced big three program. But I get to deadlift. I do deadlift. You know, I bench press. But then I spend the rest of the time on my accessory to keep my body balanced.

And we're very much into full ranges of motion. I dumbbell press, like crazy range of motion, dips, all these things. So machines, man, by the way, don't consider cable machine. Right. Just so you know. But I haven't done that in a long time. I used to when I was young because I gained – like when I was – when I said I was like buck 80 and I went up to 200, that was what I did. I would do my basic movements and then pump out some accessory machine work. So look, for bodybuilding, for pure hypertrophy, very useful.

Again, that partial range. I just think even bodybuilders should spend time on the full range. Whether you do it first or at the end of your workout, whatever, like don't neglect it because that's when you get this bad connotation of the tight, you know, bodybuilder who's got a lot of joint pain. That only comes from not having a balanced strength curve. I think people would be shocked. i think a lot of high level bodybuilders can actually move really well i've seen these guys doing splits on stage a lot of the ifbb pros and stuff i mean i'm sure like for every guy that's like super mobile there's probably a couple guys that yeah that are not but uh even someone like chris bumstead comes to mind

i mean that guy can move really well he can dunk a basketball like and look at his dip yeah he goes shoulder you know beneath that elbow so people like oh it's bad like no it shouldn't be and when he does his squats and stuff like that i mean sometimes he's on a smith machine but he's still like burying his squats you know a bunch of emotions tom platts yeah ass to grass yeah now he's got a lot of mass that makes it seem a little short but look at the debt like look at the closing of the hamstring to calf even arnold arnold used to raise his heels so good old famous video of him with i think it was That makes it seem a little short, but look at the closing of the hamstring to calf. Even Arnold. Arnold used to raise his heels.

There's a good old famous video of him with, I think it was Columbo. And they're just, he's going down. You know what I mean? So the study that I referenced recently was full range versus partial range. Another thing I want to say is the partial range there's like some debate there because of this i think it's called epoxy it's like a lack of blood oxygen the blood that creates a like a growth hormone response or something can help with muscle growth okay so but then on the other side the full range activated muscle fiber so it was better long term and better strength curve

wise right okay now there's a truth to that and so that's again where we do use partials okay it's not an attack on that but i like to use certain methods to create that same epoxy the same lack of you know that burning sensation if you, which is the tri-set thing, the drop set thing, you know, start with a super full range, then go a little shorter, then go. So I have a program where I, ATG muscle, it's kind of one of the most successful programs yet. And it's, I use these trio sets. Okay. And I fricking love them. It's like, start with an astrograph squat, then go to split squat, then go to a hack squat. It's like, okay, you're going to have plenty of epoxy or plenty of burning going on if that's what you're anyways. And that's been proven over time. A lot of people use this type of method. So, and it helps achieve failure quite

easily. You know, um, Mike Menser is very big into just, you need one set to failure. There is a truth to that, but most people can't really tap in. Yeah. The intensity to do that one. That guy's an animal. Pros can do this. You need training partners. It's very hard to do it. And also, he does use these giant sets to achieve this failure. He just does this giant set once.

So in the end, it's kind of similar. We use sets to think of it as a one-up to hit that failure. Okay. So once you hit that failure you're gonna have a good uh hypertrophy response you know i think a big factor in all this too is just uh success you know you're met you're mentioning like these progressions and and uh regression sometimes sometimes you go to do something you're like oh shit like i'm not able to actually do that with uh hardly any weight oh crap i can't use any weight at all just got to use body weight

you say oh shit i can't do it that proficiently, full range of motion. So I've got to cut the range of motion down. But over time, you start kind of chipping away and you start to have progress and you start to be able to do the range of motion better. You start to be able to add weight. And I think what's lost sometimes in fitness in general is this idea of these small incremental improvements over time. There are still the guys out there and girls that are, you know, writing down their program and writing down if they did five more pounds or whatever. But I think the diligent practice of that, especially when you're new to some of this stuff, it can make you feel amazing. Like it feels so good when you go in the gym and you lift 300 pounds and the next week you're like, I think I can go a little heavier.

And you do 305 and maybe even like 315, like you're so pumped. And it gives you like a lot of momentum, gives you a lot of reassurance. So having success with this stuff I think is really important. It gives you a lot of reassurance. So having success with this stuff, I think, is really important. And when somebody's starting some of these programs, I want to encourage people to just start low. Start low, start slow.

Make sure it doesn't hurt. Maybe try one of these exercises or something before a workout or something like that, and you just implement just small facets of it over time yeah treat it as a warm-up or a cool down if you will just even that starting to build from there and you'll you'll gain something from it you just body adapts so if you're adding something new to it you know i can't say how that doesn't work and and to to to back up the thing about success i love that point. Never want to change what's working for somebody because in the end, what's the point?

It's results. That's the only thing that matters. And I was telling you about earlier about the study that was done with two groups of people. They tested their 100-meter. And then one group, without knowing, was running a little bit shorter each week. And so their time was getting faster. And the other group, it was increasing the distance and they were getting. And by the end, they tested the testosterone.

I think it was over 20% increase in the winning and the 20% or I can't remember. Don't quote me on exactly, but it was like huge drop in testosterone for the losers for the guys who they their increased uh distance for their hundred yeah so they thought they were they were like oh we're getting slow and they got depressed if you will they lowered their testosterone their body they were not doing well and then the other guys were winning right and they were their testosterone was skyrocketed so they then tested their actual hundred meter and all the guys that won were all faster and all of the ones were all slower because they ruined their confidence so just like you said take a win start where you can win pain-free ability leave give yourself some room to to win

and improve you know don't jump in and just fail off your first attempt. It's kind of like, well, what's the point? Give yourself time. I think you literally just mentioned this, but again, with all these things, you need time to be able to progress to all of this. I think one thing that makes it difficult when it comes to lifting in this way is when I was doing bodybuilding style lifts when I was younger, and my only focus was hypertrophy, doing a shoulder press is easy. I don't have to progress to being able

to do a shoulder press on a bench or on a machine. Doing a chest press on a machine, easy. Day one, I can do that. Doing a leg press day one, easy. I can limit the range of motion a little bit, stack fucking three plates on, and I can do that. All these things are day one wins an atg split squat uh full range of motion dip a jefferson curl all of these movements aren't day one wins because you're going to attempt a

jefferson curl with a little bit of weight you'd be like why does my back hurt right it's like this is a bad movement you have to literally start with no weight and progress there and that's not something that a lot of people who like to lift they're not used to progression like that yes they're not used to the time it takes to progress like that so then they think oh it's just unsafe shit yeah exactly they just assume automatically it's bad oh that must be bad um yeah and uh that's good yeah like a don like my brother and julian balde you guys had him on yeah uh he does you know again for instagram for the he's doing a 275 back it's like what and the comments are hilarious dude this guy rehabbed his but he broke his back

and he deadlifts over 600 pounds now easily like we were doing a deadly program i got to 600 he got to 700 he he's back is bulletproof when you say he broke his back what do you mean spondyly i don't know i i don't know the exact detail but he had spondyl what's it called spondylitis yeah something like this he he was actually i don't know something like that spirulina yeah let's see spondylosis a condition in which there is abnormal wear on the cartilage and bones of the neck cervical vertebrae well okay it was down uh low yeah and he and i don't know all the details but i know he he had some serious issue and he couldn't move and it was actually the bobsled uh tryout he made the USA rookie team, broke his back bailing a squat. So this is where, again,

Don Eagle, like, now he was doing this for, like, career purposes. That's a little bit of a different situation, but yeah, he curved and lifted and couldn't move for days, a week, and now he's deadlifting 700 pounds.

And he's still athletic as fuck. He's still playing football. He's sprinting. He's jumping. He's a mutant. Who am I searching for? I just pictured FP clipping that. Thank you.

I just pictured FP clipping that. Because he's throwing himself squatting and then he got back to lifting and now he's deadlifting more. They're going to be like, hey. Yeah, well, and this was, we use the reverse hyper a lot um that's so that's something that's not like commonly talked about in the atg system because

we don't we don't like it's not needed or it's not really there but i'm a big fan of the reverse hyper from louis simmons yeah broke his back power lifting yes a little traction action and just dude that thing is amazing so makes you feel taller when you get off. The first couple times you use it, you're like, holy shit. The big thing about that is the strength curve. So we spend time stretched position, in the mid position, deadlift. But what about that end position, that closed position? That's where reverse hyper comes in.

There are other ways to do this. Simple. That's Julian Baldy. That's our protege here. Don's protege. He's been training him forever. okay that's where reverse hyper comes in there are other ways to do this simple that's julian baldy that's our our protege here don's protege he's been training him forever he was back in atg and then now he's there what team is he on he was playing overseas and he played college made it from nothing i guess amazing story that guy's awesome um and then we have filipo fort another guy i was training since he was 15 years old um i wish we could pull up one of his back extension he's been all over sports center dude he likes to do those top reps where he like loads a fuck ton of weight to the right of that

that's an interesting he does that we do a lot of so he funny enough he had a weak lockout positions in his bench and in his squat so there are times where we will this is not atg here this is a don gone off the rails a don is more into the extreme freaks like this he's gone rogue i'll be honest i've done those things you know i miss shaking like that with yeah a little terrifying you're like ah fuck it what's the worst that could happen the high the high level strength athletes football players tend to get into that power lifting mentality and stuff like there's reasons to do all that but i'm gonna tell you that guy spends so much time in the bottom of a split squat so

much in the bottom of a seated good morning stretching hypermobile you know hypermobile quote-unquote he's not hypermobile he's strong through an entire range of motion okay so that was a partial range of motions um you know back to kind of the idea of like just feeling good you know and just feeling good about you know some of what you're doing you know the partial range of motions really lend themselves to you handling good weight the other thing that they do is that I don't think people – That's old ATG, by the way. Yeah. Oh, nice.

When he started. Yeah. I think a lot of people don't – maybe don't understand the execution of like a squat, the execution of a deadlift is actually like – it's quite challenging. It takes a long time to be able to execute and it's actually really rare to see someone like just perform a perfect squat oh off the bat yeah just just out just boom they can there is a factor of skill yeah there's a there's a skill set in there it takes people uh some time to learn and seem i'm mentioning like sometimes you can just go right on a machine

and you can learn it right away and that's what why machines were invented and they're great because you can just, you can kind of just get right to the point. You don't really need a warmup. You don't need a whole lot of instruction. You use the thing a couple times and you're off to the races. But with a squat and with a deadlift, these are movements that if you just cut them in half

or you only do like a quarter version of it, it's much easier to maintain position. It's much easier to practice position it's much easier to practice the exercise and it's not a bad place for people to just utilize that in conjunction with also working on the longer ranges of motion right like absolutely that's that's where the the partials come into play a partial you know um me try to say here like step ups these reverse step ups like if you can't do a squat if you have knee pain if it balances just put six inches on it and just start doing a touchdown squat there's many versions however

you want to you know people will argue which is the bad it doesn't matter like you know and and yeah and these quarter rep the, the problem I would argue, but say with telling, let's say, a young kid, okay, yeah, it's okay to do a partial rep as long as, yes, but they get high off of, wow, I did 250, wow, I did 350. And now they spend too much time in that and they then they create the imbalance, and now they get injured. Right. Okay, so that's kind of why, especially if they're not using it to have a progression for longer range. Yeah, if they had a proper coach, maybe, yeah, I might spend a little bit of time. You know, there is an ATG program out there that does these parts.

It's called the rhythm squats. Learned that from Charles, too. 50 rhythm squats. You go on your toes for 10 flat foot 10 you know just top quarter okay it's very good for uh jump programs for for peaking okay so again the world we live in is so dopamine driven right now that if i said online hey yeah you can do spend time doing in six months he's going to only be doing quarter rep squats with way too much weight and doing it on everything doing it on bench and

yeah everywhere because he wants to lift more weight right okay so that's where i would just put a caveat on that but in general you i completely agree there's there is a strength curve and the end of a range is going to be significantly stronger, of course, than the fully stretched position of that joint. And most exercises that you guys are doing, correct me if I'm wrong here, but most of the exercises that you guys are doing, and in most cases, you're trying to not only challenge with weight and with load, but you're also challenging with the actual movement itself, like trying to challenge the proficiency of the movement and maybe even the range of motion of the movement. Over time, does it ever get to a point where you're like,

we're good. There is an end. Yeah, like you don't need any more. You're going to get to a point where it gets to be weird. Does that happen sometimes? Absolutely. There is an end. You just keep squatting 500 pounds.

Or just like being in some sort of compromised position where you're like, I don't know if that's safe anymore. It's the mobility thing. It's the natural. So, okay. Yes, there is an end. If you are flexible enough the the progression and the challenging of the mobility aspect is because you are tight you don't have your natural born flexibility so we try to kind of try to restore that yeah restore that reverse out the sitting

and the and the not moving for 20 years or 30 years or 40 years, however long it's been, and gaining back natural range of motion. That's all we're trying to go for. We're not trying to go for extended hyper mobility. In fact, we really don't want that. So yes, long-term progression, you're challenging that mobility. But once you get there, like I don't have to spend a lot of time stretching anymore. I don't, to be honest. Like I, I just do my split squat. I can go right now, flat ground.

I don't think you spend a lot of time stretching anymore either, do you? Not, I just do it like kind of before bed. I do that kind of stuff to cool down, to relax my body, move into ranges of motion. But you spent a bunch of years stretching, right? You were doing that consistently for a pretty long time? Yeah, and I still do. Oh, you still do? I still do just to feel good, but I don't need it for my flexibility at this point.

I see. And now, so that's where it's like there's a balance between only mobility and tight, limited strength. So we try to incorporate all these facets like balance which increases stability challenging the mobility getting getting back restoring ranges of motion okay restoring natural mobility optimal ability if you will and then also increasing that strength so we attack all three of those factors in these movements. But yeah, once the mobility is there, then it's okay. Now you just start progressively loading the strength

and making sure you're balanced. And yeah, it goes from there. I do like what you mentioned there, Mark, though, about the stretching thing, because there's a lot of people who think stretching is unnecessary. And to an extent, it is. To an extent, it it is if you're doing

stuff and resistance training like what you're talking about here with split squats full range of motion controlling that load within those ranges of motion is going to allow you i think it's called stretch strength is what you guys have coined it but it's going to allow you to be strong through long ranges of motion now without that weight you can still access like you can do the splits without trying and it's not like you stretch to do the splits, but because of your, your ability to be strong in those positions, you can access them at will. And you're not hypermobile where you access these and your joints are out of whack or there's too much ligament laxity. There's all the tightness you need to get in and out of those positions.

I still think stretching is, I like stretching to kind of just, because I do jujitsu, get my body into those ranges, right? Allow my body to sink there a little bit, stay there a little bit, be comfortable because in jujitsu, you kind of need that ability to be in certain wonky positions and be chill, right? It's not like I don't, but I think you can achieve that level with lifting, but stretching is, I still find it beneficial for myself. Yeah, I kind of say that I don't stretch, but I actually stretch. And if I think about it, I stretch way more often than I probably give myself credit for. I was going to say the same thing.

But I don't. I was like, wait. Yeah, I don't. I was doing a couch stretch earlier. Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, exactly. I was doing it while we were talking and stuff like that. And sometimes I may not spend a lot of time with like a traditional stretch,

but I think that lifting to some extent is stretching. And lifting, it can be stretching and it sometimes isn't stretching. And so you can just simply take certain exercises with lifting and turn them into greater ranges of motion where there is more of a stretching aspect to it. And so that is probably where I would encourage people the most. Like if you don't really want to do the ATG stuff and you think you're going to end up with a man bun and everything else. Sorry.

Then we get it. We understand. You just want to lift the weights and stuff like that. But just explore a little further ranges of motion here and there. Just explore a little further ranges of motion here and there and use a little less weight and get some of the benefits of being able to open your body up a little better. Yeah. I was going to say, yeah, like I use stretching as a recovery tool. Blood flow. I flew last night, got delayed.

I was in an airport slash plane for 16 hours. It was tight. So right before bed, I spend time stretching. I don don't normally do that i don't have to normally if i catch myself i haven't stretched in a few weeks and i'm going heavy and whatever i start to feel okay i'll do a couple adaptive stretches i'll stretch what is getting tight so i use it as a recovery tool um strongly recommend that and to what you were saying is yeah if you don't want to man but no if if if you're on a program if you're winning you're doing good but you're curious so you want yeah start with something again

a lot of people will say oh what about the science there is science to it there's even science on the goal you tend to that why a body is tight it's a defense mechanism okay well increasing strength will just think about it like in the and i like kind of hypothesize this if the body was trying to survive and it's like well if i know if i stay here i'm not going to get injured but what if i extend my elbow like it's very weak it's going to get injured so i have to cut that but now if you start to hey you start to breathe you start to get stronger it goes oh okay look hey oh oh it's okay look and now all of a sudden you've restored your range of motion so strength is very important to in to that flexibility and to actually increasing flexibility so i tell people when

they're doing split squats don't be afraid to add a little load. Like start high, get to something you can do pain-free, but then don't be afraid to start to hold a couple dumbbells, you know, and start to progress as you're increasing your mobility. Also increase your strength and it will actually accelerate that process. Improving your sleep quality is as easy as shipping your mouth. And what I mean by that is putting some tape on, breathing through your nose will increase your sleep quality. It's no longer just something that only the bros do. It's now been researched and people understand

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but it wouldn't be on my mouth anymore. But hostage tape, if you have a beard or if you don't, will stay comfortably on your mouth all through the night. And if you're someone who has a problem breathing through your nose, hostage also has nose strips. So you can place those on your nose while you're asleep or if you want to be like one of those Hermosi guys, you can wear it during the day.

Andrew, how can they get it? Yes, that's over at hostage tape.com slash power project where you guys will receive an entire year supply of mouth tape and the no strips for less than a dollar a night again that's over at hostage tape.com slash power project links in the description as well as the podcast show notes i have a video we want to show you. We saw this yesterday. You haven't seen it yet, but I want to get your response to this. This is a little beef. Mm.

Uh-oh. There's not going to be an end of the world. It's not the end of the world you're talking about. It's the end of us. All right. thank you. Okay. Do they say anything at all? No.

Mobility, the ability or capacity to move as a human. That's mobility, right? And this is Czech. For people who can't see it, he showed a person doing mobility. And it showed him running. Next slide. Strength. Fake strength. Showing someone doing a deadlift?

Layne Norton doing a deadlift. Okay. And then real strength is... Something. It's moving through space with load. So everything they do is through the gait cycle and through movement. And what is being shown here is just a up and down deadlift as fake strength okay next stability the quality

i can't read that that far can you read it andrew and then this stability is moving through space and he's using one of their cable machines. The body needs stability through motion. Okay. Is that it? From functional patterns. And that's the functional trinity. Mobility, strength, stability.

Funny, okay? All right. Well, a couple things immediately i mean just on that that slide right there mobility strength and stability he's saying that the split squat is not that and the the stability definition was the quality state state, or degree of being stable. And it's not moving through space. The split squat doesn't have somebody moving through space, so it's not actual stability. Okay, well, first, I'm pretty sure if you look, someone's moving through time and space. Okay, so that's just a simple answer to that.

Not in the gait cycle, though. Fine, but they are moving through space. And two, it's actually funny enough he's promoting i guess the way he calls here the functional trinity split squat is i would consider is very much those three things okay stability side to side balance okay um i mean try one do one it's a lot of people you know you sometimes need to hold on. It's quite unstable. So there's a stability factor. Put 225 on your back and do it. There's a strength factor.

If you're not strong enough, your body cannot hold the bottom position. So there is an adaptive strength component. And then the last one is mobility. Yeah, well, like we were just talking, it does help restore mobility that is lost through time or from lack of body movement. So that already kind of – I don't like to get into the beef and all that. You guys know that. Maybe it's a lack of understanding of the ATG system or that movement in itself. movement in itself but what i saw on the earlier slides and the kind of the exercise

there is a i am aware that there is a very big field of uh movement pattern training if you will which to me and this is actually something that was backed up by charles um i wish he was kind of around because he would have some fun words but but um i'll be nice i'm a nice much nicer uh socially anyways uh so those are skills to me that is skill-based movement nothing wrong with it if it's helping somebody great i will never bash or shit on anybody who is gaining something from this but people who already play sport and already have set movement patterns, I don't think – I'll be a little more affirmative. It's not the optimal way to increase their movement patterns. Okay? So muscles work in one way. They contract and they have their individual function. So if I simply can increase the capacity of these muscles

while then integrating with whatever movement pattern, soccer, football, whatever it is. Jiu-jitsu. Jiu-jitsu. Then I'm going to get the maximal benefit for my sport. If your goal is to spin around three times then you know with a dumbbell then maybe that's that that would be the best thing okay if you want to do cartwheels do cartwheels okay so you know to to i don't know if he's had a lot of attack on atg or other people but like to

to say that something is a fake strength or is incorrect. Like that to me just doesn't make sense. I mean, if it's so fake, I mean, lift 600 pound deadlift. Like I've been in situations, I do a lot of volunteer work and I burn house and I had to use my, I'm going to tell you, I had a perfect deadlift form and I had to lift this whole kitchen thing, whatever. so these things are not fake it's just depends on your goal depends what are you trying to apply it if you pick up 600 pounds and your hands are way stronger than when you were only able to pick up 300 pounds i mean and your your grip i mean there's so many different aspects that that can carry over into it can carry over

into life it can carry over into your sport if you're doing jiu jitsu doing baseball you know baseball players have big jacked forearms and a good grip on the baseball bat and so forth so it you know to try to call it fake strength i don't think really makes any sense but to maybe say that it might not be as relevant as we think and that there might be other optimal ways i'm open to that i'm open to hearing some conjecture on that and where i will give his do i don't know a lot about him so i won't even speak personally to him but i'll say that you know somebody who doesn't move at all who is so stuck in a in a no movement pattern there's gonna be a lot of benefit to that there is absolutely and the last thing i will say this from what i did see that i'm gathering here is that anti-rotation core strength they're one of the main functions of the core is to prevent rotation to to harness

to stop right so hence allowing forces from the ground up to you know to be channeled through the entire body from a punch you so much from the hip it comes to the core if you don't have a strong core even in a squat if you have that's most people fail why do you need weight belts at some point it becomes a limiting factor okay so yes though a power lift maybe – well, that guy is power lifting. That is his sport. So don't call it fake. It's his sport. Especially if he's getting paid and winning, that's not fake. That's what he needs to do. Does the office worker that's 50 years old need to – no, fine. But again, it all depends, okay? And it all depends, okay?

So in the end, though, if we're talking about athletics, performance, I can't say that this be the main priority for, let's say, a basketball player or even better, let's just say a power lifter. You know what I mean? Dude, these athletes in sports need physical resilience. And the thing is that the things that he was showing there, they can definitely be progressed. And I can see how beneficial some of that is because you're moving through space, you're extending, you're coming back. But there's only so much low, there's only so much ways you can load those tissues with those movements.

You know, when he was doing maybe the dumbbell thing with the press and the cable, you're not going to put a 100-pound dumbbell over your head with that, ideally, while moving smoothly. How do you keep progressing it is a big issue. But an athlete that's a field sport athlete, grappler, even basketball players to an extent they lift, they need their tissues, joints, ligaments, they need all these things to be resilient enough to handle another man playing defense, tackling, pulling an armbar. Yes.

You cannot be physically weak. Yes. And the problem is like these sports, we're doing so much within the sport already that is a skill. Yes. That is a movement skill, right? That why do I need to necessarily focus on more movement skills? As in lightweight, movement-based skills. It's not like they're bad, especially for the individual who has nothing in their life that's a movement-based skill.

Again, back to the volleyball player, they jump all the time. All the time. So then a coach or strength coach is going to want to work on jumping, which could make sense. You could work on the mechanics of jumping. But usually what a lot of individuals could use is just some strength, just some good old-fashioned strength training a lot of times does the trick. You don't have to fake yourself out with a whole bunch of fancy stuff. Right. And to tie into another thing is they teach specific movement patterns, loaded movement patterns, right?

That supposedly or apparently have some sort of transfer, right? Well, in sport, especially contact sport, which is a lot more than you think basketball is a contact sport, for instance, you get external influenced. You get moved out of this movement pattern. If you've only trained in certain movement patterns, what happens when you're out of that movement pattern? It's going to depend on that range strength, that entire range of motion strength. And so you need to be able to put yourself back into a proper movement pattern.

And if you don't train out of those movement patterns, you will not have that strength or that ability. And that's how you get injured. I think with a lot of the just movements in general or the movement of fitness at the moment over the last maybe five years, let's say, with the influence of ATG and other movement practices, I think it's excellent in a lot of ways. I think what they share is excellent.

I think what you guys are sharing is excellent. I think all of it is going to have a net benefit to a lot of people. And hopefully over time we can refine and figure out what's going to be like the most optimal. But something that I look at and something I think about often is, you know, how did you obtain that? How did you obtain that black belt in jujitsu? How did you obtain that level of strength and power lifting that's cool that you did that but you did it in five years like i want to see you in another five years that's the kind of stuff that i start to think of yeah like what what does this cost you yeah what's the expense of this how did okay that's cool you're rich but how did you make it you're doing some weird scam thing

and like you feel good with that like you sleep at night you're gonna have friends exactly so those are the kind of things i think about and when i think about like trying to build you know help build an athlete or make or uh you know make it easier for someone to like dominate a sport or something well deadlifts bench presses and squats would be in there yeah but i certainly wouldn't have anybody do it the way that i did it right you know the way that i did it right you know the way that i did it was for for completely different reasons and it was the only those were like the only lifts that mattered the results yeah it was my very specific to my sport yeah and so i think we have to be careful we don't get too caught up i think we get like

get really boxed into the weight room and uh the weight room itself is important it can be very important but um there's been people playing sports at really high levels before there were weight rooms yeah and there's guys that still don't use weight room so it's i i find that as a tool for for the kid for me i was the kid that was not athletic enough. So there is a balance between skill, movement, absolutely. There's guys that spend too much time in the weight room and not enough on the field and need to practice more. That happened with me at moments. Yes, you can get caught up.

But the weight room saved my life in a sense. I mean, it allowed me for 10 years to pursue something that I was not naturally gifted enough to do, okay, through that strength building. And the ATG system, if you will, is exactly that. that it's it's trying to bring a long-term like a kind of emotional body because like i literally was like i would have never been able to play football i would have never been able to do what i can do today i would have i had a little bit of knee pains i had back pain i hit pain i all these things got fixed through this long-term approach but I can still squat 450 and deadlift 550. And now I'm going to work on my bench. And these things were never achievable without that long-term kind of approach.

So I really love, that's why I love ATG. That's why Ben and I, when we were in a literal garage 10, 11 ago you know starting to work with this and charl thank god to charles thank god i met him and like that stuff is it's the bruce lee thing you know use what works for you discard the rest like there are i've learned so much from powerlifting from bodybuilding from track and field you know know, plyometric work, stuff like that. Even some of the movement pattern stuff, guy, like those type of like. I fucking love the parabolic and functional patterns. Like it's for me personally, I dig that, the circular movement of it.

It's super beneficial for overall movement and integrating all the things that I've done in a gym setting. I enjoy that. You know what I mean? mean so so anyways yeah like there's great core like to me that's what i consider that like my core where like these movement these twisting and things like that's all that bracing work um but yeah i've so so at what expense right so at atg we try to eliminate that expense so it might take longer it might not be if you're a power lifter you need to power your body but you need to body build like but it can be supplement it can be its own programming for life and it could also be supplementary program to whatever sport you're in um and that's how i used it for football okay um

so i'm trying to expand that that's kind of why ben brought me in is like okay let's get into the let's expand this off of just knee rehab if you will and and kind of body weight and like functional life fitness but let's get into the strength let's get into the body building field a little more like how can we supplement these sports do you know if uh ben has actively ever thought of this um it's something i never thought to ask him until like more recently but he's uh oftentimes working out outside and i don't know if he i don't know if he just like kind of like is doing it and maybe doesn't know or understand but like some of the research and some of the

stuff that i've been seeing lately uh basically says that when you're surrounded by red light or surrounded by even sunlight, it can help with movement. It can help with fascia. It can help hydrate fascia. Have you heard anything about anything like that, or do you think he just kind of intuitively? that or do you think he just kind of intuitively uh i will not speak for him obviously but knowing him i don't think it's a specific thought okay sorry ben if i'm wrong he's never mentioned it but yeah he kind of works that way i i agree with what you're saying um but i know i i can guarantee you know he likes how he feels yeah you know what I mean? So, and he works out at home when he's not at the ATG headquarters. So his home gym space-wise is outside and he loves it. Right.

And he's, he knows, you know, he's obviously aware of there's sun and there's benefits to this. Like, I don't think it's a very hyper-conscious thing, but yeah. Yeah. You intuitively do that a lot too. You just go out and instead of jumping rope inside, he'll just walk outside and get the sun. Yeah, if I were to have my home gym,

it would be in a nice patio outside with a cover. You know, Florida rains too much. But there is, I go outside and immediately feel better. So I think anybody who's at all versed in the fitness and health area will know, even your listeners, if they're not brand new, they'll probably be aware that going outside is pretty important. So let's say that you've already gotten your blood work done with Merrick Health. You've gotten the right supplementation. You've handled your nutrition.

But how about the people close to you? How about the people in your life? Recently, I had my mom get her blood work done with Merrick Health, and she's gotten her blood work done many times in the past. But Merrick did an amazing job at looking at her blood work and giving her the supplement ideas to help her move forward. Because one thing is, is when you go to hospitals and they get your blood work and they do your blood work, when they look at your numbers, they're comparing you to the average person.

They're not trying to optimize you and help you move forward. They're just trying to make sure that you're not breaking. Whereas Merrick Health, when their patient care coordinators look at your blood work and when they looked at my mom's, they're trying to figure out how to optimize you and make you live the most vital life possible. So if you've gotten your blood work done, great. But think about the people close to you. Would it be good for them to get their blood work done and get this type of work done? If so, Andrew, how can they get in contact with Merrick Health? Yes, super important stuff, guys. Head over to MerrickHealth.com slash PowerProject.

That's M-A-R-R-E-K Health.com slash PowerProject. And at checkout, enter promo code PowerProject to save 10% off the PowerProject panel, the PowerProject checkup panel, or any lab that you select on their website. Again, MerrickHealth.com slash PowerProject. Links in the description as well as the podcast show notes. What you got going on over there, Andrew? or any lab that you select on their website. Again, merichealth.com slash powerproject. Links in the description as well as the podcast show notes. What you got going on over there, Andrew? It seems like with whether it's functional patterns, ATG, or even bench pressing, like a huge component of all of it is just being coordinated.

You know, like if I go out and I try to rotate that uh what's it called the parable the parable like one i'm like way more cautious and like you know i don't want to hurt myself but because in sema is very he's like a lot more fluid with his movement he's more coordinated uh dare i say charismatic with his movement you know i i'm not that way so like i won't be able to get it right away um It would just take me longer. I also didn't get it right away. But you got it, right? Like, eventually. So, what I'm getting at is over time, it's almost like a skill that you can develop.

Again, same thing with, like, the split squat. Same thing with the bench press. Same thing with jogging. Yeah, everything, right? It's movement efficiency. That's just proven. If you just do movement over a period of time, you burn less calorie. Yeah.

And so like, and not trying to be mean to like what you were saying or what FP is saying, it's almost like, yeah, it all works. We're all going to get good at it eventually, but it's just dependent on what you are trying to focus on. Are you trying to be a bodybuilder? Like, okay, maybe start at FP and learn how to like maneuver your body and learn how to understand how your body moves but then you're gonna go into to bodybuilding but i don't think any one of them has any say to be like the other one's not good ours is better well for who

and for what right it always the the true answer is it depends. We're saying like the guy who's never moved and older doesn't have any aspirations. Maybe FP is great. But the one thing I'll say is the ability to progress. Is it in the system? That's what I would say the difference is there. The ATG has a technically infinite progression. There is no cap to that progression. Yeah.

And then so again, going back to like the thing about like coordination and stuff. I know, again, it's like almost like a skill acquisition. But if you are working with somebody and I mean, I know, Mark, you try to teach people how to squat and you're like, oh, my gosh. Like, dude, how can you be that bad? Sometimes the RDLs, they just can't. Yeah, so like what do you control? You can control this with your back. I'm like, I always say don't shit in my gym. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, my gosh. You just defined my deadlift. But, yeah, like what do you do when somebody's like just like dude they're not getting it but like i know there's regressions but like what's like i guess what's a good protocol for somebody that's like man i'm i'm trying this atg split squat i keep falling over like what's what the heck am i doing wrong um we've we have there is regressions for it that's why you hold on to something you know it's it's um we ben is

actually right about to release some like split squat rack thing with the handles on the side which is actually amazing i love i warm up with that thing even because sometimes you're tired it's like so there is a balance component absolutely there's a skill acquisition balance but remember actually charles taught me this is balance is heavily dependent on strength heavily and i forget exactly the style whatever but he in one of the seminars he was talking about and showing how the stronger you are the better balance you're gonna have of course there's a major natural genetic factor in brain function before the age of two whatever it is there's a whole thing to that but the stronger you are is the only way you can increase your balance out like within your genetic capacity okay so getting stronger

but again if what if you can't okay then regress regress regress to the point where it's a on a magazine holding on to a rail doing a step up you know if that's the strength of your knee that's where you start walking backwards okay if you can't walk backwards like you're that go in a pool yeah do knee bends in the pool it's less weight there's always a way to regress yeah no matter where you are it can it'll meet you where you are that's right that's cool and people don't like to they don't like to to hang on to stuff. They think it's like they're completely changing the exercise or something.

But the exercise will still have its challenge. Your body will still get the inputs. And balance, I wouldn't say, is the first place to start with a lot of these exercises anyway, unless you're more advanced. Exactly. You can save that shit for some other time. The balance will come, too. And people get super frustrated. And they're like, oh, man, I don't have it.

They fall. Not fall, but stumble right away. Yeah, they'll keep trying to balance. I'm like, okay, hold on. Even hold on and have a dumbbell. Get the input, like you said, of progression and tearing down that muscle for growth. And don't worry about the balance so much sometimes again depending on what you don't allow yourself to get real negative about it and just realize that it's a practice like you just started like is this the first time you're

doing this why are you saying that you don't have any balance like you just don't have any practice at this yet you'll get the balance that's right it will take it will take maybe two three weeks for a lot of people just a couple weeks and and you start to get used to those movements right away. I agree. Yeah, that makes sense. Athletically, let me ask you this. Do you still do any sprinting right now? In sport.

So when I play basketball, I'll sprint. I don't do track sprinting. I'd love to. But you can sprint. I can. I will do some plyometrics if I catch myself going a few weeks without playing a sport, particularly like basketball. Right now, actively, I play semi-regularly. These are all semi-regularly.

I'll do – I spend a lot of time doing Muay Thai and jiu-jitsu. I, and jujitsu. I've spent 10, what, 12 years now since I was, I competed against, uh, AJ Agrasim, Florida boy back when I was like 18 or 19. I mean, he kicked my ass, but I got third place. So that's pretty good. Anyways. Um, so I always will pick up anything since I'm not professional or pursuing professional in anything.

I beach volleyball, uh uh basketball when ben's in town um it's great that you have the capacity to do all these things because one thing is is like again the conversation we're having earlier people assume that when you gain a bit of muscle or that it's going to limit your ability to be a good athlete and it it's like that's that's not the case that's not why you see good athletes like moving and sprinting and jumping it it's it's like that's that's not the case that's not why you see good athletes like moving and sprinting and jumping it's like it's not limiting them it's it's actually quite the opposite you know for me anyways let's put it that way it's been the more muscle mass i've gained because of the way i did it has increased my ability and function and on that point this

we've i've mentioned this before but the way in which you lift is going to dictate the way in which you move that's right you know what i mean it's like you lift with a super limited range of motion super heavy all the time you're going to have a weird gate you're gonna you're gonna move odd you're gonna be really tight you're gonna be visibly tight you're gonna have limited movement options you extend those you decrease the load you increase your range of motion you can have more movement options and more movement ability yep yep 100 uh what's your diet like it's a good question i wanted to talk about this because i know ben does not get into this i know ben's told

me he's like he's like this is how i eat he told me exactly kind of what he does and he told me like why he does it and everything. And then he was like, but I don't like talking about it. Yeah, it's because the world's a little intense on this subject. So, all right. I'm going to say what I eat, but then I do want to like talk about more over like a higher view of it. Okay. So for me, I am very much animal based okay

that means one and a half to two pounds of meat a day red meat um six to twelve eggs a day i'm uh you know and then i but i eat fruit okay i love fruit i'm okay with a little raw honey. And I have cheat meals. Yeah. I'm not a zealot. I like to enjoy my, I will drink sometimes. Now, when I say this, I do have to put the caveat because I realize what, oh, I drink occasionally means to some people. It means once a week, twice a week. No, no. I drink like once every quarter. Oh, damn.

Yeah. I don't drink a lot. And that's not intentional, to be honest. It's just kind of my lifestyle, whatever. I have a friend, one of my best friends. He likes to drink a lot. So when I'm with him, I'll drink a little, you know, but definitely not more than 10 times. Sometimes it's three to five times a year. Yeah. Okay. Special occasions, whatever. I don't really think about it, but I definitely need to say I

don't drink a lot. I think that's a, for long-term low body fat, that is an important factor. For long-term low body fat, that is an important factor. Protein is king to me. Like every meal, this is a thing I've had for 10 years, is every meal has to have protein. If not, I'd rather not eat almost. You know what I mean? So big on that.

Now, with that said, i don't eat vegetables i am not against vegetables yeah i like paul i don't have his stance on vegetables yeah i mean salad man what's that saladino okay um i discovered uh mr baker sean baker almost 10 years ago i forget exactly really like was interesting i started doing carnivore a month or two at a time back then and i was like attacked and i got to a point where i didn't really want to talk about my diet either but then i was like you know it's just fuck it like it is what it is yeah but i've also i've i've fluctuated i used to eat lots of salads i did keto like technical like big salad i've done ketosis for for six months at a time like i have found that the optimal diet is what works for you wow amazing concept but also what you can stick to the longest

yeah that to me is actually number one. What can you do? All diets, every vegan that's ever had a success story, every vegetarian, every carnivore. Same thing with your exercise. Guess what? You really enjoy being on your bike.

Boom. Get on your bike. That's right. All of them had one thing in common. The common denominator is they all did it for a long period of time. Along with some steroids. Oh, wait, wait, wait. All right. That's what got us canceled. denominators they all did it for a long period of time along with some steroids oh wait wait all right that's what got us canceled he was joking youtube that was a joke yeah it was a joke

you know i might have been very good but it was a joke um yeah it's like it's like one of those things where you have to be able to enjoy and do it in your lifestyle. So somebody, an influencer online saying, do this diet. Well, they got four kids and they can't afford the meat. I mean, whatever. It has to be accessible and you have to be able to adhere. Adherence is number one. Number two is what works for you.

And then number three, again, I'm not, it's protein, right? Protein is king. Like you have to have, I do say the one gram per pound. I just think it's a nice, simple number. It works for so many people. I've never seen it not work.

And the vegetables and fruit thing, it's up to you. Just eat balanced if you want like if you're not sure eat a little bit of both like you know what i mean yeah if you vegetables bloat me i don't like them a couple i can get away with like i think asparagus is the one vegetable i actually kind of like and it doesn't mess my stomach up but if i have like broccoli or um what's that other one the bowl brussels sprouts brussels sprouts man that stuff messes me up right so whatever it's just for my body that has worked i've been doing this for nearly a decade and actually the more i started like not having vegetables and being a

little bit more just in my own like being comfortable with my own diet yeah i now stay lean year-round constantly i can gain weight. I just eat a little more, train a little harder. And if I lose weight, I just skip a meal. Replace it with amino acids. Like there's just so many, the fasting thing,

it's a tool. Do you need to fast? No. Can you? Should you? Maybe if it works for you. Yeah. In the end.

So this is kind of where getting into the high level thing. It's like, if you want to lose body fat, particularly for body fat, it's like increase your energy expenditure. Okay, exercise. Good. Which exercise? Whatever you like.

Number two, eat enough protein to recover from this energy expenditure increase. Okay? And allows you to build more muscle and strength to increase the energy expenditure. Number three, sleep. You need to rebuild from this work. Hormones stay regulated. You don't increase your cortisol with bad sleep, which increases cravings. Good.

Number four, yes, you need to be in a calorie deficit. No one argues that. Even Conrad's like, yeah, the thing with eating more protein or this and that, what type of foods can determine that energy expenditure, which is kind of my next point is the fifth point is like real food. We do know that. Vegans and carnivores agree. You need to eat real food, unprocessed food. All right?

Yeah. So start there. You know what I mean? And that will maintain a long-term healthy hormone and energy expenditure. There'll be people say oh yeah well i can eat snickers and okay maybe yeah you can absolutely you can eat like two donuts a day and not eat anything else and you will lose weight but what about in 5 10 20 years that's the thing that gets forgotten sometimes in these like short studies or these kind of looking at things

through a straw it's like okay expand that So the real foods and then, yeah. And then of course, consistency and accessibility, accountability, you know, track yourself, like give yourself a purpose, a reason to do it. So for me, I want to be lean. I like how I look. I like how I feel. I can dunk.

I can play these sports because I'm lean and I don't have health issues. Like I want to be able to live long and healthy. And, you know, I see my dad. my dad is carnivore works for him. Okay. He saved his life. I saw him a few years ago and I was like, I remember it was his birthday. It was turning 70.

I didn't see him in a year. And I was like getting a little emotional. I was like, man, cause I saw some Instagram video. It's like, if you see your dad twice a year, how many years is he see him 20 more times i was like i got all fucked up yeah so i don't know if you guys ever saw that i've seen that video so i like rushed down it's his birthday i'm like almost he comes out he's like he literally says it's almost like he knew i saw that video he comes out he's like you thought i was gonna die soon did you and i'm like and he's jacked that was that that video i had posted that he showed earlier but it's like he's jacked and he's jacked that was that that video i posted that he showed earlier but it's

like he's jacked and he's he's got more life today than when he was 50 wow i prompt like it is i got i was so happy and now i'm like oh man i'll see you twice a year again i'm kidding but it's like he's more alive more energy happier than ever before so it nice worked for him um and he's killing it and stuff so yeah diet that to me those are like my principles it's just in the end all diets have to follow those rules and so as long as you're doing that do what works for you do what you like i would say uh you know vegetables intermittent fasting and protein are all things that can help control someone's calories you know I will say I will agree with you with a fiber on the vegetables yeah that when you are cutting when you are eating less you

will get hungry so it is a tool volume yeah it's a tool to fill so that I actually do agree with the vegetable thing if you don't have that problem you may not need that but if you are like i'm starving and how do i have cravings yeah fill yourself up with that fiber that that i will acknowledge that that does work um i do think for some people that really have big appetites and that maybe are concerned with health or maybe had um they're concerned about cardiovascular. I think fill your diet in with vegetables and fruit. Eat a great amount of protein.

Nail that protein down. Make sure you're not overeating fat. And then you should be good. I mean, you're on the road to having a very healthy diet. And I think in terms of carbohydrates, it would maybe just depend on activity level. Yeah i charles used to always say earn your carbs yeah i have that's what i go by when i'm not active for a few days i go 50 carb 100 carb i go low carb and then when i'm hyperactive i'm training hard i go body weight to double body weight you know depending throwing some rice potatoes i'm a huge white rice fan.

I eat white rice all the time when I'm not on my like carnivore month or whatever. Like I'll do these different things. I like to cycle diets too. I think there's a, it keeps me flexible, like a flexible dieting, if you will. So I'm a big white rice fan though. No talk, like very low toxin, all that stuff. You want to get into that but it's um what was the other thing you said you said protein vegetables uh protein vegetables and intermittent fasting are all great tools just to help like mitigate the overall amount of calories yeah you can do intermittent fasting so many different ways like you could eat your breakfast

and then just not eat for six or seven hours. Like there's so many ways of doing it. I use it all the time. Yeah. I personally like to do things that way better. I like having some breakfast. What I found is that having some breakfast and then when I get home from here, I won't overeat, you know,

before if I would fast, I'd have a tendency to be so hyped up to kind of overdo it. Yeah. I'll, I'll play sometimes. Like if I want to do strength training in the morning, I definitely am stronger, by the way, if I eat a couple hours before. I don't know exactly why, but I am. So I will like to eat. But after I eat, I'm not really hungry. I'll take my amino acid.

I'll take my kind of like post-workout stuff. But then I'll go a long time not eating. Or I'll eat big. And then after that, I'm so like over, like, I don't have to eat dinner. So yeah, it's just like skipping meal. In the end, it's calorie reduction. That's where that, that comes into play, you know? So, um, or portion control, if you will. So, yeah. And you've said that you've been feeling really good, but like, have you, um, gotten any blood work to see like with, you know, the red meat consumption and stuff, if anything has popped up red or whatever? Yeah, I've done, I've done a lot of testing on that. And I'm actually glad you brought that up. That's amazing. I had it in one of my notes. I was listening to the Sean Baker, he was talking about the LDL, the lipid energy profile thing. I forget the exact word he used there,

but I had that exact thing going on. It was perfect blood work. Testosterone's in the 800, da-da-da-da, everything good. I'm healthy. I'm pretty happy, actually. My LDL was very high. I think it was...

I'll have to find it. Maybe I'll send it to you guys, whatever, but I know it was in the 300, like high 300s. Yeah. Maybe 400. It was like around that 380 of this guy, the guy who did that experiment with the Oreos. I was like, okay. I talked to my dad because he's been on carnivore. I was like, yo, this is kind of sketchy.

You know what I mean? Did more tests on the type and the doctor said it was fine. But then I was like, okay, but I'm going to do a test. I started eating carbs again. Down. Everything else the same. It was like, was like all right wow how much did it come down do you know i think it went down i'll have to find the test but i think it went down to god it was in the two like low 200s okay and i don't even know i don't i can't off the top of my head even remember what's healthy or whatever like what's considered healthy or whatever but i remember it was a humongous drop and my what i do know from this stuff because i obviously constantly researching them up to

date on this that is like the hdl that my triglycerides were so low my my uh the crp like all my inflammation markers were like bottom like they were like uh the glucose everything is super super super low and healthy right so i was not too freaked out when i saw the ldl i was like okay and i again doing the research and finding out it's like oh that could just be the excretion of this for the breakdown for energy basically so that was interesting and I just I I was like wow that's exactly what happened with me uh per blood work so it's pretty cool to see that yeah tell us about some of these supplements you got here yeah okay so this stuff tastes pretty good I mixed it with something else that I had in here already just because I already had something

in my shaker cup but yeah tastes good I like that It's like an orangey flavor. Yeah, I have an orange and a strawberry. This is honestly a passion project of mine. It was quick backstories. I was literally born in the vitamin. My father's had one for 40 years down in Miami. My mom's a nutritionist. So I like literally grew up. I was mixing pre-workouts and amino acids when I was 15 years old in my kitchen trying – because I was like not – I wanted to be more athletic and get the most out of these things.

And I could have just done steroids and didn't. Bypassed. I was scared. Whatever. Testing and all that shit. Anyways, but I have a – this is an electrolyte in an EAA. It was turned onto EAAs, essential amino acids, by Charles. He used to do the BCA thing.

He realized – he actually told me, he's like, yeah, it was not working. There was a lot of transaminase occurring, which means they get converted to other things that you don't actually want. And then I was like, that's kind of what got me into the E. And then I was like, well, what formula of EA? So like I told you before, I'm going to send you this study. I'm quite curious what comes back, but it seems like an amazing study. It's showing a net nitrogen utilization of 99%. So they took over a hundred people, had them, yeah, those are my products. have vitamin d k2 uh bonded with omega-3 and mct oil zinc and magnesium creatine just pain in the ass creating all that stuff right oh huge pain in the ass but these things uh these are all things i take and i just basically wanted

like i said a passion project it's just like supplements i've grown up taking that i've always taken most consistently yeah but with the real quickly on the eaa formula it was just shown to be like optimally utilized whereas like any meat it doesn't replace protein you need all the micronutrients and all that stuff but as a supplement of just pure building blocks to your body for training it seems to be the best utilized best absorbed and so for that reason i went with that um but then yeah so everything else is just like everybody needs vitamin d we're inside too much you know we don't take enough the the quality of meat generally is average anyways it's lower for most people so the zinc and the magnesium is generally low in people you know so creatine it's amazing i mean brain it's actually becoming now more of

a brain supplement yeah so i'm i honestly went 10 years eight years without taking creatine specifically but i was eating two pounds of red meat so there we go now i'm on it like crazy yeah because i just thought i don't really need it no now i'm like religiously take it and i've noticed a difference a little bit fuller you know I think I gained a couple, like you do gain a little bit, a couple pounds of that water weight in the muscle, but that's good. It's hydrating your muscle. It's how I view it.

Awesome. Thank you so much for your time. Where can people find you? Fueled by Fern on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube. All pretty new. YouTube is like very new. The Instagram is a bit more developed. Been doing that for maybe a year and a half or so. And then the supplement company is Serpo, S-U-R-P-O, nutrition.com.

It's short for survival potentials, by the way. It's random. It's cool. Kind of my dad had some company in the 80s. I was like, no, I'll take that. Nice. Anyways, Serpo,rition.com and fueled by fern strength is never weakness weakness never strength catch you guys later bye