Mark Bell's Power Project - How to Make Yourself Athletic As You Age || MBPP Ep. 1020

Episode Date: December 12, 2023

In episode 1020, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about how to build athleticism as. you age and how taking a break, or a, "deload week" can help you progress faster than never missing a day of training.   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! The Athletic/Casual Clothes we're wearing! 🕺 ➢ https://vuori.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order at Vuori!   💤 The Best Cooling Mattress in the GAME! 🛌 ➢ https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro at 8 Sleep!   🥩 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   Best STYLISH Barefoot Casual/Training Shoes! 👟 ➢https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/powerproject to save 15% off Vivo Barefoot shoes!   🩸 Get your BLOODWORK Done! 🩸 ➢ https://marekhealth.com/PowerProject to receive 10% off our Panel, Check Up Panel or any custom panel!   Best 5 Finger Barefoot Shoes! 👟 ➢ https://Peluva.com/PowerProject Code POWERPROJECT15 to save 15% off Peluva Shoes!   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:      You Need Greens in your Life 🥦 ➢https://drinkag1.com/powerproject Receive a year supply of Vitamin D3+K2 & 5 Travel Packs!   ➢ 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 ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en   Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz   #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast #markbellspowerproject

One of the things of becoming more athletic is building endurance. When's the last time you jumped? Like it's probably been a while for a lot of people. If you start jump roping, understand that it's a skill. Grab a med ball, do a couple throws, throw some sort of baseball or something. But we tend to not do it anymore because we're not a baseball player. And so what we miss a lot of times, we miss how much movement actually happens with something so simple as kicking a ball. People tend to get like really worried or concerned.

Like, oh, if I switch over to doing too much of this, it's going to pull time from that. And it will. But in the grand scheme of things, you're going to be more well-rounded and you'll probably be stronger in the long run. 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.

Mark, how sure were you that you would never do a marathon? Yeah, see? Yeah. You never know. You never know. You never know what you might get into or get into us. You never know what might pop up. Do we want to give some context here? That's okay.

Nah, nah, nah. Now, give context. Because if I'm about to say, like, I'm not sure if I'll suck a dick one day, then we need to give context. I'm pretty sure i'm not going to i'm like 99 sure you know 98 to 99 if someone's holding a gun to my head is like suck a dick right now i'm sucking a dick right now yeah right that's where that one percent comes in go by myself you know would you do it like a pro like man you've been waiting for this opportunity for

a long time wow i didn't pull the gun out yet didn't see that coming dude honestly i've watched so much porn that like maybe my mind might just go somewhere i'll be like fuck let's go autopilot they're like hey you have three minutes to make this dude come let's go can you do it challenge accepted shit oh anyway andrew i had a question for you are you still getting sore from like jujitsu and you're lifting or do you have things worked out pretty good to where you're not getting that sore isish uh yeah no i i wish i could say that i wasn't getting sore but no i am um from monday's session i don't know what today is so i'm just saying monday today's tuesday tuesday so yesterday's jiu-jitsu session um i it's it's really

cool so like in jiu-jitsu you don't feel anything your like pain is gone whatever it is with the adrenaline once that's gone then you start feeling everything um so i didn't recognize what the heck i did but like i i did something to where if i push into my armpit it hurts pretty bad where in your armpit it like kind of moves around i know it sounds like i'm faking it but like it's weird so when i do a tricep oh yeah like uh if i if i have a cable here like i'm faking it but like it's weird so when i do a tricep oh yeah like uh if i if i have a cable here and i'm like trying to do like a tricep push down like but at it like a weird angle it ignites it right away so like a weird gland thing there so i don't know so that's a little bit different that's not necessarily sore but my right knee is sore

today uh again i think it's just from the the constant like up and down and like rolling around on your knees and stuff. That's there today, right? Like that wasn't there Sunday and it's going to be there tomorrow probably not as bad. But that's more sore. My hands and my fingers, those are definitely always sore. Always is a bad term. But like right now, like when i make a fist i'm like oh yeah i did some jujitsu you know like yeah that's there yeah you know what i mean so like

stuff like that that happens a lot um if i miss like a lot of i'll say heavy-ish lifting sessions and i go do something pretty heavy then i will be like oh i felt that one you know and i'll feel it the next day but not from lifting to where it's like a constant thing like jujitsu. It's kind of like, ah, fuck, my hands are feeling it today. My knees feeling it today. This armpit thing, although it's more of like a, like a tweak is feeling it today. So yes, I definitely still do a year and change into jujitsu, still feel sore from jujitsu. Yeah. It's hard to manage it. Right. And especially with some lifting to get sore from jiu-jitsu yeah it's hard to manage it right and especially with uh some lifting do you get sore from the lifting too or just like i said there's like minimal um like it's it's like if i if i'm not consistent with like the like actual like lifting lifting you know not just necessarily moving around in the gym and stretching and like sled work and stuff but like if you and i

went like crazy on uh leg extension and then like maybe slant board squats, I would be very sore from that, you know? So like, I'm not really doing that type of stuff anymore. So when it does happen, it's like, Ooh, like I'm going to pay a huge cost for this. And I don't think it's worth it because of what it takes away from tomorrow's jujitsu session. Yeah. And you're looking for like more athleticism and you're just moving on to like different stuff the main goal isn't just to like hypertrophy the legs but your legs look better now than they ever have anyway right yeah yeah so i would still say that i am still i still do uh bodybuilding style stuff like that's kind of my main thing um i do some of the functional stuff that i see in sema doing but if if i have my choice i'm gonna have fun in the gym and it's

gonna be bodybuilding movements you know a lot of people kind of talk about this like sweet spot of how many sets you need to hit per week per muscle group and i think it just really depends you know what else do you do you know do you run, like, what else do you do? You know, do you run? Do you hill sprint? Do you do jujitsu? Do you do boxing or kickboxing, yoga? Do you have other activity? If you have other activity, then I think that kind of needs to be factored into that set formula because there's going to, you're getting, you're definitely getting more work. I realize it's not the same. It's not the same as doing like, uh, you know, a bodybuilding set or something like that, that might last X amount of seconds. And you might have like this time under tension and

all that kind of stuff. Um, but you are getting time under tension when you're doing something like jujitsu or wrestling or grappling, even with running, I would say like, especially in the very beginning of running, it felt like I was so inefficient at running that running felt like a really good leg workout in a lot of ways and still kind of does. And I don't know if that's, uh, because of like my muscle mass or my body weight, or if it's cause I have, uh, some good muscle to my legs already that they feel like they get worked more. Maybe if I was smaller, maybe I wouldn't notice it or something. Kind of around two heavy limbs.

Yeah, yeah. So it feels like, you know, it doesn't feel that – it feels very similar like dragging the sled, to be honest with you, especially like when I'm done. I still do get sore. Try to manage that, you you know between lifting and running and mainly if i do legs and if i do legs i'll kind of notice that the legs are like more fatigued and maybe tight rather than like a real soreness to them that's that's the thing i think like when

you're new especially when you're new to lifting and what we're getting into today is how you can develop athleticism no matter what age you are because even if you didn't play sport when you were younger you can still develop the abilities to jump run even sprint just like be athletic when you're older but when you're starting strength training no matter who you are like you're going to feel a level of soreness when you're training you're going to feel a level of uh you know, especially if you've never done it before, if you've never stimulated those tissues in that way. But one thing that you can do to help your recovery, and this podcast is probably coming out after,

but if, like, you build the habit of breathing when you're actually lifting, or breathing when you're doing any of these activities, because, like, if you think about it, if you were holding your breath while running, that'd be tough. Like, you'd be holding your breath while running, that'd be tough. Like you'd be holding your breath for a little bit.

You'd have to stop, recover, run a little bit, stop, recover. But when you're breathing, you're able to bring oxygen to those tissues that need it. And you'll be able to run for a little bit longer. So how about when you're lifting, breathe, right? That's one of those things where you can take your strength training to another level. You can build endurance while you're strength training. If you're breathing as you're doing your curls, your presses, your pulls, try to inhale when you're lengthening the tissue. So on a bicep curl, inhale when you're coming down, exhale when you're coming up and still maintain tension wherever you're trying to maintain tension. But you're going to notice that you still might

feel sore if you're new to lifting, but you won't feel as beat up from session to session. It's made a big difference for me through the years. Yeah, I think a lot of times when you're lifting, you have a tendency to, like, use a certain amount of weight. You have a tendency to, like, you know, make a certain face and make a fist and kind of clench everything up. All the veins in your neck be popping out. Yeah, you got your whole shoulder and your forearm and everything, and you're just doing a simple curl. And, you know, if you think about it, I mean, sometimes you do see the bodybuilders that are, like, going to failure, and you're probably seeing some of their final sets they might be finishing with, and everyone has different ways of training.

But if you can do the lift more relaxed, it's just another option in your training. But if you could do the lift more relaxed, it's just another option in your training. So once in a while, it's good to kind of go for it and say, oh, I wonder if I can handle the 40s with pretty strict form. I wonder if I can turn them over and get the pinky up and try to really flex the bicep and get some good tension on it with maybe a little bit of body English. And it's good to also do it very calmly where you have some supination going on already in the very beginning and you just stay that way and you stay more controlled and you breathe throughout the range of motion. But I think this is one of those big things that if you want to, any good athlete is able to go through their whole game, right? So whether you're someone who plays pickleball and a round is maybe 20 minutes or you watch basketball players and soccer players run up and down the field.

They're running, sprinting, jumping, moving laterally, but they're also lasting through the whole game, right? So one of the things of becoming more athletic is building endurance or being able to breathe well through whatever sport it is you're doing or whatever activity it is you're doing in the gym. And if you find that in a strength training session, after 20 to 30 minutes of doing movement, and you can get a good workout in, but if you feel devastated,

let's think about how can we build your endurance up, your capacity to be able to get through those sessions without feeling too beat up, right? And one of those ways is by learning how to breathe through those sessions and making sure you're breathing throughout the whole session, making sure that there's minimal time when you're holding your breath. And if you've been lifting for a while, I think this is a good chance for you to, in your next session, maybe you don't change anything, but pay attention to when you're holding your breath

and then think about, oh shit, if I'm holding my breath while I'm doing this, how could this be affecting the type of capacities I'm trying to build, whether I'm trying to learn how to run, whether I'm doing jujitsu, whether I'm playing fucking pickup soccer or basketball, how is this affecting the way I breathe in those other things? Are you, are you maybe proposing that they try it with like a squat, deadlift, those types of movements and just breathe kind of normal throughout rather than like bracing and holding the breath? A hundred percent. But I think that when you do, when you do this, like if you're someone who

powerlifting is your sport, right? I wouldn't suggest doing this with like your one rep max, but if it's like, you know, 40, 30, 40, 50% as you're warming up with your deadlift, you know, try to, um, as you're going down, try to see if you can inhale as you go down, maintaining tension, and exhale as you come up. On the squat, see if you can inhale as you're heading down into the hole and exhale as you come up. But the thing is, is one of the mistakes we make,

and we've done so many podcasts on breathing with Belisa Vranich, with Patrick Ewan, with all these people. When someone does attempt to take a breath when a barbell is on their back the thing is is most people are used to breathing up here the ribs and chest they're not used to breathing down there expanding the rib cage pushing the obliques out they're not used to breathing down there so the thing is is when you breathe it's supposed to be an expansion down here not because then if you're if you're if you're now when you

try to inhale when you're going down if you're like and you're arching oh fuck you're gonna fuck yourself up you need to take the breath down into the diaphragm and when you take that breath it's it's expansion down here and then an exhalation up while you're still maintaining rigidity within the spine. You can do that. I think we need to take it even a further step backwards a little bit. And people need to understand and realize they can do this when they flex. So you can flex a muscle and you can breathe. You taught me this when I was training for my bodybuilding show. I was doing some poses and you were like, you need to relax more. And they were going back and forth. And I was like, I'm not sure how to relax. I'm like flexing this way or that way. Cause you know, you're trying to get like the veins to come out and you were like, you need to relax more. And they were going back and forth. And I was like, I'm not sure how to relax.

I'm like flexing this way or that way. Cause you know, you're trying to get like the veins to come out and you're trying to like, you're trying to bear down. And then you're like, no, look, like I can bear down all the way and I can still talk just fine. And I was like, oh, okay.

And so I, you know, you learn a different controlling mechanism and you learn that you can just simply breathe. The pressure is in the muscle. That's where you have the pressure. just simply breathe the pressure is in the muscle that's where you have the pressure that's where the tension is at that moment um and you can flex and pose and that's why the guys on stage are smiling sometimes they're like getting the crowd into it as they're flexing and posing you're like how the hell is the guy doing that he's got like a lot of energy and he's able to uh communicate with the crowd while he's doing these poses.

Anybody that's gone through a posing routine, it can be pretty difficult. The guy's doing like a side chest pose, and he's pulling all this air in, and you would think they're like just going to bear down on everything and make it look like they're going to poop. But a lot of times they're still breathing, smiling, joking, and so forth throughout the whole posing routine. So how does the – real quick, Insuma, like how would the breathing work for like let's say like a lat pulldown? Like when does inhale and exhale happen? Because my dumb ass, I'm having a hard time like knowing when to inhale and exhale with like what Richard was explaining. Because like even this morning I was doing lat pull-ins.

And when I would inhale, I'm like, oh, there's no space for me to really get a hard contraction where I can flex my muscle and stuff. I'm like, oh, so maybe I'm backwards. So I'm just, again, kind of just stupid when it comes to this stuff. So for a lat pull-in or a pull-down, when are you inhaling? When are you exhaling? So I think with a lat pull-down, you could do that. Before you do go there, I want to wind back to the flexing thing because I was going to mention one thing. If anybody watches a lot of bodybuilding, if you watched Arnold flex or when you watch any bodybuilder flex and it seems that like the veins in their neck and everything is coming out, they're usually breathing while they're flexing.

But then at that last 10 seconds of a pose, when they hold their breath, they increase their blood pressure. And that's when you see the neck, the the traps all those veins start to come out because when they're holding their breath blood and flexing blood pressure is increasing all over so that's when you see all the veins and the shoulders the neck and all these like even the fucking face starts to come out there's a really iconic thing where arnold's doing a fucking he was holding his breath there it's a little bit of oxygen debt for a moment. Yes, for a moment. And a little pressure raise. Exactly.

But it's not the whole time. It's not the whole time. So that's just a little thing right there. But that makes a little bit of a difference. Got it. I think some of what Richard was showing us too, like, you know, he was showing us like various ways to breathe. He was giving us more than one way to do it. So one way he was having us do it was you just breathe continuously throughout the exercise, almost as if you're not exercising.

Another way he gave us to breathe was where you put like a grunt into it. And some of it was unconventional for me because I'm used to like in a bench press, when I lower the weight, normally I would get air at the top. I would breathe in. I would hold my breath as I brought the weight normally i would get air at the top i would breathe in i would hold my breath as i brought the weight down and as i pushed the weight up i would breathe out uh powerfully but what he was teaching was for me to exhale on the way down and make a noise on the way up which was weird yeah because it was hard to do that like in sync with what we were doing. But whenever you make a grunt, his point was that you have to do like a mini inhale anyway. Anyway, it was just interesting to do it. But I think we've talked about it a little bit on the show before.

Like if you're at the bottom of a squat, the best way to get lower is to let all your air out. Now, if you have a heavy weight on your back, that might not be a good idea. But if you have submaximal weights or especially with body weight, body weight is the best way to test this out and then maybe test it out with a kettlebell. Start out light and easy with it, but let that air out and see if you can kind of sink and get a little bit more depth out of it and then reverse out. I think you can kind of go with just kind of a normal breathing pattern from there yeah and andrew what you're saying like with a lap pull down whether it's um a cable pull or a lap pull down i would inhale on the way down exhale on the way up and i understand that when you're exhaling typically on a bicep curl i would inhale on the way down when the muscle is lengthening and exhale when i'm shortening. But the lat pulldown, I kind of do that a little bit differently. But you can then toy with it,

whereas like you can inhale, exhale, and then you can like exhale doing multiple reps, right? But just make sure that you're continuing to breathe through the movement and there's minimal moments when you're holding your breath. But I would try to find a cyclical pattern of inhale, exhale, right? Typically also, one thing you want to think about when you're breathing while training is when you exhale all your air out, what happens? You typically shorten those tissues. Like if I were to do a forceful exhale,

my abs are tight, everything's tight. I'm almost crunched in a little bit. So when you think about curling and a, right? Like you think of, and when you think of even when you're doing a pull or something like a collar drag nearing jiu-jitsu and you're doing a forceful pull when you're forcefully pulling someone you're here here here right forceful exhale contraction right so that's why when you do this you the baseline is inhale when you're lengthening tissues exhale when you're

shortening tissues but once you get the hang of that and you can make it cyclical so that you're lengthening tissues, exhale when you're shortening tissues. But once you get the hang of that and you can make it cyclical so that you're not holding your breath while you're training, now you can toy with that shit. Now you can try inhaling when you're contracting and exhaling when you're lengthening. You can mess around with it, but you want to get in the habit of being able to breathe cyclically and not hold your breath while you're training. That's the biggest concept you want to try to handle. And most people, when they're exerting force, they just breathe out, right? Most of the time. Most of the time. Most of the time. But sometimes they don't have that breath

because they're not already breathing. So when they now try to exert force in a dynamic situation in Jiu-Jitsu, they don't have that. They kind of just like, they don't have that ability to, you know? So that's why you want to get in the habit of just never stop breathing.

Mm. Yeah, I found that, like, just paying attention to my breathing in general, you know so that's why you want to get in the habit of just never stop breathing yeah i found that like just paying attention to my breathing in general throughout the day has been important just i'll catch myself sometimes holding my breath or just breathing more so than like what i'm doing like it doesn't match what i'm doing i'm like why am i breathing that way what am i what am i doing so um pretty much over the last maybe two or three years, I've been working on that and practicing it. Obviously, the mouth tape, we have hostage tape. That works really good, especially for sleep, just taping the mouth shut. It's more efficient to breathe in and out of the nose.

So I've been working on that. And then also doing some exercise with mainly nasal breathing which again it's going to be challenging and be difficult but maybe you try it for some of your warm-up sets maybe you try it just on a walk at first and just try it with wherever you can implement it try to implement it and if you can push it a little bit here and there i think you're going to notice a big benefit on your fitness levels and i think what nseema's alluding to and what Richard was alluding to as well on the show, and we talked about breathing more extensively on that podcast, he was basically saying that like, you're going to handle the stress a lot different.

And so if you think about throughout the day, you know, maybe you're thinking about something business-wise, or maybe you're thinking about something relationship-wise, or maybe you're thinking about Christmas or having people over your house or whatever, your breathing might be erratic in some of those moments. And that might be a time where, you know, your interpretation of that is now kind of landing on you as a little bit of a negative stressor. And you can just kind of, at that moment, you kind of take a big sigh and get a lot of air out what's been helpful to me it's just to know that the exhale is like the really powerful part that you need to pay attention to I think for me personally I tend to get a little short with the exhale and I'll tend to want to breathe in more. And so for me, it's been really helpful to kind of concentrate on just breathing out a little more.

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 that if you can breathe through your nose while you're asleep, you'll have better sleep quality and you will wake up more rested. Hostage tape is also really awesome because I know what I used to do.

I used to use a little bit of a cheaper tape and every time I'd wake up in the morning, the tape would be somewhere else on the bed or on my face, 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 hostagetape.com slash powerproject, where you guys will receive an entire year's supply of mouth tape and the nose 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

and what is it when you are starting to feel fatigued uh whether whatever the exercise is running jiu-jitsu doesn't matter when you like it you dump all the air out and you kind of feel like a little like refreshed why does that happen i'm not an expert in this but in my understanding is it's like a co2 to oxygen ratio and uh by blowing out a lot of that co2 it's supposed to kind of help you recover a little faster okay um i know again with with nasal breathing nasal breathing represents a little faster okay um i know again with with nasal breathing nasal breathing represents a little bit of like oxygen debt and that's something else that richard showed us yesterday but we i was doing some bench pressing and he was having me breathe out a lot uh like more excessively and so that was oxygen debt training as well and what it did is it like vasodilated

everything like the veins and shit in my chest and all the pressure and all the tension that i was trying to get from this uh bench press exercise that i was doing was magnified by a lot like by a long shot so i'm like doing reps and i think with the weight that was on there i could do like maybe 12 15 reps fairly easy and it felt comfortable um but breathing the way that he was talking about and exhaling more, it made the reps harder actually. So he was showing us ways to make things easier. He was also showing us a way to make things harder.

But in the end, it was all for efficiency, but efficiency of the particular goal that you have. So he showed a way of breathing where you make a noise and you let out a grunt and you bench kind of explosively. And that would be for like max reps. Then he showed another way of breathing where you're just more relaxed and you're looking for lengthening, kind of more of what Nsema is talking about. And then he showed us another way of lifting where you're breathing out excessively and just in some weird way i would this is probably kind of wrong but you're almost mimicking what it's

like to be at like slight altitude in my opinion because now you now the air is thin in that situation do you guys think that it would be possible to replicate that for something just like a sled workout? I ask because I'm just trying to think of ways that like are maybe the barrier of entry is a little bit lower because I noticed for myself when I'm on the mats, it's when I do feel that quote like oxygen debt where I'm like, I need to open my mouth. I need to gas for air. And if I get stuck under somebody then i feel claustrophobic and i just want to get out of it right away so if i can maybe train myself and feel that and understand that like i'm not gonna die like i think it could help a lot sled's perfect

for that okay you know and you can kind of uh blend uh power projects projects, people that we've had on the show, and you can take a little page from Chris Henshaw. You can like pull the sled but do something in between. It doesn't even have to be hard. You could just – you could drag the sled. You can grab like a 40-pound med ball and like walk with it. You walk down and back and then maybe walk outside to the tree that's out back and walk back in and then like repeat. But that will be challenging. It will be difficult.

Doing it with a belt might make it harder. So I would probably drag like and pull a strap because if you have a belt, it's going to kind of mess with your breathing a little bit probably too. I would also say, because I was actually just talking to Graham about this, if those types of situations, this past weekend, I have a new training partner. His name is Christoph. He's good. He had me mounted, right? So he was mounted.

And he had chest pressure on my face, and my arm was up here. His chest was like on your face? His chest was right. your face his chest was right dude why is he doing that yeah because he's good because he's good and this is why i'm excited that's extremely impressive but yeah so first off it's not if you have to open your mouth that's not a problem you don't have to keep your mouth shut and try to force nasal breathing when it's not there because with almost everyone i can breathe through my nose. With him, we end up opening our mouths because we actually push each other.

So when he was in that situation, I had to find breath, right? So I was breathing through my nose and I was exhaling and I was just trying, I was just making sure to myself, don't increase your speed of breathing right now. Because if you start going like that, you will panic. So the main thing is just like, okay, I'm going to exhale through the mouth. There's going to be, then I was like, then when I found a space, boom, I got out, came out. I got into his closed guard. I was able to recover because I kept my breathing slow. Just because you open your mouth doesn't mean you have to breathe fast.

But what ends up happening to a lot of people is once their mouth opens, they just start to lose it. Like it just starts to speed up, speed up. Their heart rate goes up. They can't maintain, and then they crash. But part of when you exhale, you want to try practicing slower exhalations. That's one of those things like with nasal breathing. I do it naturally now, but I'm not breathing fast through my nose when I'm breathing. My breathing rate is generally slow. That allows my heart rate to go down. And as I speed up, my breathing rate is still

relatively slow, even when I open my mouth. But what you try to focus on is when you're in those situations, because they're going to continue to happen, can you slow your breathing down, even though your mouth is open? Can you slow it down? Can you calm down? Because down because that's the only thing staying calm and slowing down will allow you to find the spaces where you can take advantage and get out of a bad situation and that's a really good point you have to you might have to slow down you know in the case of like you working out that's that's what's so great about training in the gym that people miss is uh so many factors are controllable you know you don't have control over uh the guy that the guy that took a bunch of red line before uh going to jujitsu practice

but you do have control over like the weights that you choose and the exact way that you work out and so um anyone that's working on nasal breathing i think the worst thing you can do is like feel bad about it and and to be pissed at yourself about it and be like man i fucking suck at this and then you're just uh you know breathing all over the place you allow your breathing to get erratic you're now frustrated the best thing to do in that situation you got you got kind of like two options one is to just change the the intent of the way that you're going to train for that day because it's not in the cards maybe you have a cold and snot's going everywhere and you're really getting annoyed with it. The other option is just to really slow down, like just walk,

allow your heart rate to get back to some sort of normal position and allow your breathing to be regulated. And Seema brought up respirations. We've had many guests on the show talk about breathing. And if your respirations are erratic, then the nasal breathing you're doing isn't, it probably still has a little bit of a benefit, but it's not giving you the benefit that you want. Cause the whole point is to be able to do stuff. You want to be able to exert more. You want to have a higher output with a lower heart rate over time.

You want that to continue. The amount of increase that you must have had in a year of jiu-jitsu has got to be insane. From the first day you went in to where your heart rate would be, having your coach say, hey, do this drill and this drill, your heart rate is probably going bonkers. And then now it's probably lowering quite a bit. Now with someone like Nsema, he could roll with like a blue belt,

a purple belt, a brown belt. It probably doesn't matter too much the skill level. His heart rate probably remained the same until he started to get to like, oh, shit, like this other guy is really amazing too. So that's kind of what you're looking for remember uh chris henshaw said five beats so if you check out your heart rate if you have the ability to check out your heart rate even though the watch isn't super accurate i mean five beats is still kind of five beats so um you want it to lower about five beats or so before you go back into resuming what you

were doing yeah yeah no i would i mean so the the the part that i will need to figure out right now is like what exactly what you just said but how you were saying that you can still control your breathing to slow down the heart rate even though you're working hard because when i so the the situation is i go for a takedown or a sweep against a competitive competing uh jujitsu athlete so i'm not going to just get the sweep and then come up on top i'm going to maybe get the sweep and they're going to fight for that position because they're good and they know how to you know they don't want to give up points yeah it's those like, what are they called? Like when you're just going back and forth trying to get that position.

So if I go like two or three of those and I end up on bottom, I am gasping for air. Let me tell you something that's actually quite interesting that I saw when I was rolling with Nicholas Marigali. And it's something that I should probably try doing too when I'm rolling with good people. should probably try doing too when i'm rolling with when i'm rolling with good people when we were rolling when he found places where like he like when he had me mounted or maybe we were doing specific training i had my back i noticed that there were moments deeper into a role when he was oh yeah hey i try to mimic that shit all the time double but yeah double inhale exhale yeah what does that do fuck i don't know he did it do it anyways. It calms you down. Double inhale, long exhale, calms you down. Huberman says, because Huberman has said that before.

Like, Mara Ghali, you son of a bitch. You've been listening to Huberman too? Yeah. Right? But he found those zones where, okay, I'm controlling Nsema from the back or whatever. He had those advantageous positions. When he was in those positions, then he would settle and he would so that he could bring his – he could calm himself down while I'm trying to get myself out of this situation, right? And then he could – and then he'd continue putting on pressure.

So this is the thing. Like that's why BJJ is great because it will allow you to find the segments where you can bring yourself back to really good control with your breathing and then keep hammering down on your opponent, right? So this is where you can practice some of those things yeah um yeah cool so we had a couple of different things to pull up did you guys have anything in mind first oh yeah we're showing uh we had some uh older older peeps doing some pretty amazing things and with some of this because we're gonna pull up this side but before we play this video, we just talked a bunch about breathing when it comes to improving athleticism, which is huge. But if you want to also improve your athleticism, you need to start doing movements in different ways. And there's nothing wrong with strength training in the gym.

But if all you're doing is bilateral movements like the deadlift, the squat, the bench that are having both sides of the of the body moving the same way you're not going to be able to be dynamic right so let's play this video because i think it falls in line with this even that freeze frame positioning he's in is extremely impressive like he's producing a lot of force yeah man because you can tell by like how how much energy is actually going backwards is how you can tell how fast someone's moving that makes me tired looking at it yeah here he goes triple jump nonetheless yeah well and like you know what do they say about, you know, people as they get older, like a big problem is falling.

And this guy probably falls most of the time when he does it. And he just rolled into it and it was no thing, right? Can you guys replay that? Because if I'm mistaken, the first hop, he hopped and then he landed on the same leg, right? Right foot. Yeah. It looks like it at least i think that's how you triple jump i think that's true but like think about the ability to do that at 90 where you hop off the right leg you land on the right leg hop again unless on mistake and i

wish i think it might be his left leg how about the leg that's i think it's his left leg so did it go left left right left left right i believe, at 90? Yeah. Yeah, that's crazy. Regardless of whether you land on the same leg or not, landing on one leg in a plyometric fashion is tough, whether you're 25 or whether you're 90. But it's only tough if you haven't practiced it. It's one of those things that shouldn't be hard. The thought of jumping rope, you shouldn't be like, eh, it's going to hurt.

That shouldn't be your first thought if you're thinking jumping rope. Same thing with jumping up onto something. Jumping up onto something, you should be comfortable with some light, modest jumps. You don't have to jump up on this podcast table. You don't have to you know jump up on this podcast table you don't have to be able to jump up on the reverse hyper but just when's the last time you jumped like it's probably been a while for a lot of people and just sometimes you start to think about stuff like that you're like well why is that well i i went many years probably without jumping i did some of it when i was power lifting but it was always like this kind of side thing that wasn't super important. And I didn't really understand all the benefits

of it, but jumping is something that will help build skeletal muscle. It's great for bone density. It's great for just human survival. And, you know, when you get into like running, jumping, throwing, those are all great things you know throwing is something that um that's another thing that people should be doing just grab a med ball do a couple throws or if you have someone to chuck a football around with you know throw some sort of baseball or something but we tend to not do it anymore because we're not a baseball player we're not a football player we're not a soccer player so it's's now illegal to kick a soccer ball or something. It's not. That's great activity for you. And so what if it's a little different than what you're used to? Kicking with your left leg

when you're not used to it would probably be incredible for you and really help your athleticism a lot. Dude, when you were talking about like jump roping shouldn't hurt and uh i'm i'm sent this video to andrew but if you start jump roping like understand that it's a it's a skill and the cool thing about jump roping is that it's not just a skill helping you kind of relearn how to hop and not use too much energy because a lot of people when they start jump roping look like this dude in this video after a while then you're hopping using less energy but it's also reactive because when you're when you're hopping you're reacting to the rope you're you're you're building your ability to you know kind of react to something

else and that helps your reaction time so and as you speed up you get even better but i want let's just check this out from 209, if you can go to that timestamp. Do we need audio? You could have it on. Yeah, sure. Why not? Most confusing thing about a jump rope is you only need to jump a tiny bit. You don't, and you don't need to, I think some people get discouraged because the jump rope hits them.

Like when they start, they'll get hit every three and they're like, yeah, you know what? Fuck it. I'm not going to do this anymore. But one first day is three. Every three jumps, you get hit. Second day, it's every six. Third or fourth day, like you're able to do 10 jumps nonstop.

It's like just keep doing it because then it becomes really fun. Remember those plastic ones? Those things hurt. Yeah. Plastic beads, those fucking. Oh, yeah. And if you like pain pain if you're a little bit like that just jump rope barefoot because then that you know really hurts and then watch the kid jump rope you'll see he says i'm light on my feet but he's actually jumping and using too much energy rather than just lightly staying on his toes.

So Joby Stacks here is using a lot of energy. Now watch this kid jump, bro. Look at the kid. Look how light he is, whereas Joby Stacks, a little bit more exaggerated jumps. Now, we can end this video here. We can end the video there, but that's what I'm saying. It's like when you jump rope, it might look like that at first, but within a few months months you'll be able to

hop and it'll it'll it'll feel pretty dynamic you'll be able to like just produce force really quickly off the ground because one thing you notice when the big guy was jumping and if you mute it you can play that part again but you notice to come off the ground took him a lot of energy he had to land took him a long time took him a long time to get off the ground and he's really jumping and he you know the body the body's really intelligent like he some part of his body recognizes hey this is going to kind of hurt and so he squats his way through it he's got these little mini squats that he's doing he's not just jumping with his toes or his ankles whereas the smaller younger guy

his body is aware that there's no threat. And the cool thing is that's why, that's why jumping rope is so awesome because just that little bit, that two to three minutes each day, the strength that you're going to develop through the feet to be more plyometric, to be able to pop off the ground over time is going to pay dividends because it's not only helping you learn how to jump, but your feet are now able to be there.

They're better at handling impact on the ground. And that, if you're now going to go play pickleball or we're at handling impact on the ground and that if you're now going to go play pickleball or going to go play some soccer or doing whatever you're running you're going to be lighter on your feet you won't be as heavy on your feet and that's a big deal when it comes to being a good athlete you take that rope outside and uh get some sunlight too while you're at it yeah and it just seems like um but like when I go jump rope, I am jumping over the rope. But when Nsema does it, the rope's moving around him. He's just doing his thing, and then the rope's like, fuck, I got to move.

Versus me, I'm like, no, rope, I got to move you. It's almost like in jiu-jitsu when I'm trying to move an opponent, and really I need to move around him. Have you messed around with jump rope much uh when you were younger no not one a little bit here and there but i never had a yeah i never had a consistent rope when i was younger i'd have ropes here and there because from what i saw when you started like not that long ago it looked like it was not easy for you but the thing is a lot it looks fluid now yeah it's a pretty quick learning curve. That's the thing about it. But the thing is I didn't just stop jump roping because it was hitting my feet too much.

That's the barrier. The barrier is like it's annoying. Fuck it. I'm not going to do it. Then you just stop. Rather than just doing a little bit each day, a little bit each day of it really adds up. Really adds up. What's a good jump rope to use

i think cross rope cross rope i i bought multiple ropes from cross rope i have some of their heavier ropes i have their speed ropes quite a few ropes from cross rope because they they last for a long time no don't have a code but they just sell good ropes for a a newbie cross rope but i mean like what weight or whatever oh i think they're – You can get a regular rope. You can get a regular rope, but like their half-pound rope isn't necessarily heavy. It has good feedback. The thing is it's like it's not heavy. It just has a good feedback to it.

I think that's their half-pound rope. And there might be a lighter rope than that, but the half-pound or anything lighter is good. Okay. Yeah, I think. There's a lot of things that happen when it comes to things. When you're doing something athletically, that's just not really thought about much. You know, you might run fast towards like a soccer ball. You might try to kick it with everything you have with like say like your right foot. But you don't even really realize all the shit that's going on in the rest of the body,

your hands, your arms. Like, I don't know much about kicking. I haven't thrown a lot of kicks in my life, but your whole, your whole torso, like everything goes into it. Um, and you know, if you haven't really kicked much or haven't really thought about it much, or haven't done a lot of sports, you might think I just need to move my right foot like fast and hard. But it's really like utilizing the whole body to turn that leg into like a whip. And so what we miss a lot of times, we miss out on how much energy you're moving in different directions and how much movement actually happens with something so simple as kicking a ball kicking a ball looks like to be like most simple thing right throwing a ball looks to be really

simple uh as a kid growing up i never really liked baseball i always thought the game was like slow now my feed on instagram is like mainly baseball stuff because it's fascinating to watch the way they throw the ball and the internal and external rotation and there's the amount of like athleticism that's happening in this just split second it might not seem like the most athletic thing yeah but it's fucking crazy when you really think about it you think about how much force they're producing how fast they're throwing the ball um even just where their elbow is their elbow is way in front of their fist as they're driving their hips towards the plate to throw the ball and then um with the batter the things

the batter is doing the way the batter shifts their weight they shift their weight while the ball's in the air they pick their foot up they pick up if they're right-handed they pick up their left foot and they hold the barrel of baseball bat on their shoulder the guys that are really good they hold it there forever like you're like that's gonna be way too late because they lift up their their front leg first they shift their body weight backwards that's where they put their energy backwards and then they get the momentum forward and they swing the bat simultaneously and you're like how in the hell did that just happen yeah and you know the whole goal of the pitcher is to make the guy like miss the ball and the whole goal of the batter is to hit the ball so it's and they're both

professional and you're like how the fuck is this gonna work out but it's it's pretty amazing when you really look at it and break it down you know something okay and i know right now we're talking about developing athleticism at any age but if you're a parent i think one of the coolest things you can do for your kid is see if you can just get them in different sports when they're young because um i i i played baseball for two years and i was i didn't really enjoy it that much even though like i was it was good i was good at baseball but i didn't enjoy it much i just kept focusing on basketball and soccer and then i focused on soccer um but to this day i still feel super comfortable throwing something as hard as i fucking can with my right hand i still could put on a mitt i can still go out to uh fucking scandia and i can i can fucking create that torque and hit a ball because that two

years of like fucking baseball it's it's just there and i don't i don't i don't fucking practice but the body remembers and it's only because of that experience so if you can just put your kid in a few different things that allow them to kick something around with some force right or shoot a ball into a hoop or catch and all these things you those skills are maintained it's like it's in the body and it's there and you barely remember it I barely remember it but I can still like those abilities are still there to create all that torque

and throw something well so get them in different sports and if your time has passed and you didn't do those things you can start to figure out ways of doing them on a field we're seeing more people talk about a lot of different options when it comes to exercise. And I don't think you need to be concerned or worried.

We were pointing out in the beginning of the episode that Andrew is maybe not training his legs or training his whole body the same way, but your body fat composition has changed a lot. It's still improved a lot. I think, you know, there's not really, I think people tend to get like really worried or concerned. Like, oh, if I switch over to doing too much of this, it's going to pull time from that. And it will. It will pull time away from your bench pressing or your deadlifts or some of the other movements that you like. But in the grand scheme of things, you're going to be more well-rounded and you'll probably be stronger in the long run. So if you think about, you know, someone might be able to deadlift 700 right now, but are they going to be able to deadlift 700 when they're 50? You know, like what are you going to be able to deadlift when you're 50?

I'm not saying that that's like the pinnacle and that's like the main thing that you should focus on as you get older. But most people are going to lose muscle mass as they get older. Most people are going to – X, Y, and Z is going to happen. And you're better off being more well-rounded because these are attributes that you can kind of carry with you forever. You could still learn how to do a lot of things right now it might be tougher and some of it like logistically might not make sense um there's some shit that like uh i saw a guy the other day like do this like cliff diving thing where i was like holy shit there's some things that just at my time to do that has passed you know if i was going to explore anything like that

i would have had to do it younger i wasn't really afraid of heights when i was younger i'm not necessarily afraid of heights but this guy was high up there and i was like holy the time to do it's when you're young so if you're a parent try to get your kids some exposure to some sports as many sports as possible and like and reasonable and then as an adult just don't be afraid to try stuff because it's going to have a ton of benefit and try not to get so locked in to just doing your curls every day or your triceps every day it's cool if that's what you like to do but just being able to do a couple other things could be really beneficial in the long run.

I really liked the way, I believe it was Giancarlo Badoni when we had him on the show, when he was talking about, I think John Donahue explained it, that like your technique or your skill, whatever it may be, is like a wheel that, you know, you got to spin. Initially, yeah, you got to like, you really got to crank on that thing. But as it's spinning you can just like tap it and it's still going so i feel like that's how like muscle mass is you know it's like you guys already did all the work so now you're just like you can touch it and then go try pickleball go try jujitsu and then come back and then do the little spinny you know tap and then you're still gonna look jacked and you're gonna look better because now you'll have a way better body comp and then um something else i'm curious what your guys thoughts are so like earlier how i had said okay if if i go do a hard

leg workout with you mark i'm gonna be very very sore uh let's say it was like it was back in the day where tuesday's chest day thursday's whatever day, and then Saturday's always leg day. After a while, those hard leg day sessions, I'd be wrecked, but I wouldn't be sore. Do you think that since I haven't been doing those, I wouldn't get more benefit from them now? Even like, you know what I mean? Like, does that make sense?

Like I've let some time period pass to where those heavy sessions will wreck me now versus before it was like, ah, this is just what we do. It's not that big of a deal. Yeah, I think from like – in terms of the size of your muscle, yeah, maybe. But the risk of it isn't great. The risk to reward ratio is like just not awesome. Not like what we were doing was dangerous um but making yourself overly sore and if you walk around old you're gonna end up in that position permanently at some point so if you continually are making yourself like where

you get up off the couch and you're slouchy and your feet are all pointed out and you're just like mumbling around fumbling around i don't i don't think that's great um i don't think there's anything wrong with that happening here and there because like every once in a while it just gets you you know the day gets you the person gets you the workout gets you like something yeah every once in a while things happen injuries accidents like all kinds of things happen. And so those things are sometimes unavoidable. But for the most part, your workouts should make you feel better. And the workouts should be things that are youthful.

They should make you feel younger. They should make you feel better. They should make you feel more resilient. younger. They should make you feel better. They should make you feel more resilient. It's kind of hard to put into words, but I've had many workouts before where I left the gym and I could, I felt stronger. I felt like better, which is interesting because I've also left the gym before where I felt like, like weakened a lot. Not like I made myself weaker necessarily, but the workout was fatiguing and set after set after set of what I was doing, I literally made myself weaker. So I walked in, maybe I warmed up, maybe I could bench 500. And then by the time the workout was over,

if you asked me to bench 315, I couldn't do it. You know, I would, because that's part of exercises. Like you are actually trying to fatigue yourself in a way. But when I look back on it, I'm like, that was overdone. Like that shouldn't have been done that way necessarily. It should have been done to a certain extent, but not to that extent. Not that hard. Yeah. Not that hard. Exactly. So I should have been able to still do something within range of not a one rep max, but still should have been able to still do something within range of not a one rep max but still should have been able to handle something because that would show you like if

someone was to deadlift let's say you warm somebody up and they deadlift 500 pounds nice clean lift they get done with their workout should be able to deadlift 405 with without even thinking about it without it should be very easy for them to do. And what I would say is if they could do that with proficiency at the end of a workout, they're most likely not going to be like crazy sore. Maybe they'll be like a little tight or whatever, but you don't want to just annihilate yourself so much that throughout the rest of the week,

you don't have anything left to demonstrate any sort of athleticism. And one thing to mention there too is like, as you're doing all this, you got to realize if you're going to be starting any type of new endeavor in terms of developing athleticism, whether it be jujitsu or running or sport, if the main things that you've been doing have been in the gym and your feet have just kind of been plastered on the ground when doing all these movements once you start now moving dynamically like let's say you start jump roping a little bit and now you're hopping on top of those feet like hopping on the balls of your

feet you start running and you're now putting that pressure foot step by step you're now doing jujitsu and you're getting into the deep aspects of your toes when you're trying to lay pressure into someone your feet are probably weak so this is this is one of those things where like we talked about microdosing jump roping but this is one of those things where you want to probably be barefoot more and replace your really cushioned shoes that you have in your closet right now try to get a few pairs of like barefoot shoes to walk around in so that as you're walking you have a wide toe box you these shoes are helping you in the that as you're walking, you have a wide toe box. These shoes are helping you in the background as you're doing things during the day.

Because over time, you want your feet to be strong and resilient so that they can handle the dynamic pressures of sport, right? It's not lifting is very different. Lifting, your feet are planted on the ground. You're not moving, right? You're there for your set. But once you start jumping, once you start moving, once you start moving laterally for your set but once you start jumping once you start moving once you start moving laterally and your feet are taking these different amounts of pressure not just your feet but your feet and your ankles if they're weak to being able to

handle that you will get an and you'll get a lot of injuries here and there so not only do you want to develop the skills to be able to move in those ways but you want your feet to be resilient enough to handle all those new stresses that you're now having. Get yourself some paloovas. It's amazing. You walk around with toe spreaders all day. It might feel uncomfortable at first, but like, I'm surprised at like what I can do with my feet. I still, that right pinky toe is still kind of falling behind, but I'm getting some better movement out of it. But I can, i can spread my toes really really well my feet don't even look like my feet anymore i looked out at them i mean they used to just i don't know they used to just be like a blob kind of a blob of meat and like all the toes not they weren't i

didn't have like a bunion or anything but all the toes were kind of uh like crimped together you know and now there's like space between the toes i can see the tendons i can see veins in them and stuff it's made a huge difference and the vivos right now for the month of december are 20 off typically they're 15. so for the month of december they're 20 our link is in the description they have a bunch of shoes for hiking running casual shoes they have shoes for everything so get yourself some barefoot shoes because when you're walking around in society, going walking around, you want to be using your feet to do that. You don't want your feet to have so much cushion that it's taking away that impact because those just like jump roping two to three minutes a day. If now you're walking, but you're now using your foot to do take every single step, whether you're taking 10,000, 15,000, 20,000 steps, those steps add up. And if there's 15,000 steps done, barely using your foot versus 15,000 steps a day done using your foot, that shit adds up. That shit adds up.

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as the podcast show notes. Andrew, you took a week off of jiu-jitsu recently? Mm-hmm. How did that feel? Did it suck? Yeah, so it happened for— A whole week? Seven days?

So actually, more than seven days. You fucking loser. Yeah. You really took time off? Everyone's going to— Jerk. Shit, man. If you were really serious about jiu-jitsu, you wouldn't be ever taking time off. You loved it. I. You really took time off. Everyone's going to jerk. Shit, man. If you were really serious about jiu-jitsu, you wouldn't be ever taking time off.

You loved it. I thought you liked it. I know. I know. Trust me. There was a lot of people putting out missing images of me. And when I got to jiu-jitsu Monday, one of my training partners was like, you know, asking me to fill out another waiver form because like, hey, I know it's been a while, you know, so I'm like, okay, all right.

No, so it happened for two things. So I've been, there's a lot of like weird stuff going on. So like I've been stressing a lot lately. So it caused like a weird headache that I had since Thanksgiving. And so I just didn't feel good. And so I ended up missing Monday. And then after a conversation I had with Nsema on air, it was just like, hey, just probably take the rest of the week off. I'm like, damn, like, what do you mean? And we talked a lot more about it. I'm like, all right, well, we're going to take the week off. And, you know, in my head, I'm like, shit, everyone's getting better without me.

Not only am I not getting better, but I'm getting worse because I'm not getting the reps in. What's going to happen to my cardio when I get back? Like what's going to happen to all of the technique, like everything what's going to happen. You know, I'm thinking like, shit, this is, this is not going to work out. I don't know, but in SEMA said do it. So let's, let's give it a, you know, give it a try. When I got back on Mondayay a lot of cool stuff happened um i rolled with upper belts and i got into really good positions and i was able to maintain them but it wasn't so much that like oh you got into a good position but it was like how i got there uh normally it's like a uh i'm extremely lucky if i get past like a blue belts guard or something it happened multiple times and then it also happened with the purple belt and each time um i'm not no disrespect to anybody i roll with

but it was sort of like everybody was underestimating me and i'm pretty sure that shit's not gonna happen again but in that moment you don't know me son yeah yeah and and so like again like i'm a white belt i'm trying to put this stuff together and everybody has more experience than me and it's never i'm not gonna say it was easy because that's definitely not it but i i've never put the pieces of the puzzle together so i can't think of the word effortlessly yeah yeah to be like oh oh that leg drag worked like it was clicking why did it work now i've tried that at least a hundred times it's never worked what's going on today don't know what was going on there um so yeah things were clicking i

went when when my guard would get passed i would do little weird things that would like lock someone's leg up and I'd regain at least half guard or something and it's like I would get compliments afterwards like that was the best role that we've ever had That was really smart the way you put your foot in to regain your guard something. This is fucking crazy The biggest takeaway that I got that I didn't realize in the moment is I was calm the entire open mat session and class. Typically, as someone calls me for a roll or we're about to start a drill, my breath will start getting shorter because I'm starting to get ready. I'm getting maybe amped up. I'm not sure exactly what's going on. because i'm like starting to get ready i'm getting maybe amped up i'm not sure exactly what's going on

when i came back and i was well rested i didn't experience any of that no anxiety there was none of it it was just like i was having fun things were clicking and i could just i could just roll i didn't have to get out of my own fucking head i didn't have to think about like how tired i was not that you sit there and like calculate like oh i'm at like you know 30 of my body battery versus 100 but you're just like fuck here we go like all right like what time is it like how many more roles do we have till class starts or what like that was all out of the window and like i said earlier like things were just like see that's working um my professor sean showed me a uh like a a typical reaction to the knee slice or knee cut that i normally do i just can't figure out how to get through it and he's like oh just do this and i'm like why the heck like how come nobody showed me this day one that's

so simple but i don't know if it was so simple because of the mindset i had and like how clear everything was or if it was just a very basic thing which you know is basic for in sema and sean but in that moment i was like oh my god like dude that's the answer to the problem i've been trying to figure out for over a year now and i'm like what is going on and so when i came in later that day, I was all giddy talking to Nsema. Like, you guys were filming, and I'm fucking screaming in the background. I'm like, dude, oh, my God, you were so right. And he's like, let's walk over here. Like, you know, shut up.

He didn't say that, but, you know, I was like, calm down. And so, yeah, everything felt really, really good. And I just, in my head, I'm like, no, if I want to get good at jiu-jitsu, I need to get more reps in. You know, I hear so many people talk about, like, I don't even have to question if i'm gonna go in or not i just go because that's just what we do and it's like it went against everything i've been told and everything that i've been seeing now let me ask you something too real quick andrew you said that like when you weren't there for a little bit, you started getting some messages from your training partners.

What kind of shit do you do? I mean, I know it's in jest kind of, but at the same time, what kind of stuff do you get? Did you get? So, again, my training partners are all great. I love them all. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Especially the ones that are in my text group. Yeah.

Those are like the best dudes ever. But like I'll get the Google Maps direction on where waza is in my school they'll be like hey in case you you know you forgot how to get there here it is so shit like that it's never like no one's ever malicious but it's just little small pokes to be like hey dude we fucking need you back here but yeah and that's great like that's good that people like people are looking out for people you know because they know that people disappear from jujitsu because there are there are guys like you who like this is the first time you've taken a week off but like that week turns into two three four months later where's where's he been but the thing is is like the fact that you took this week

off on your own terms is amazing and And I think if anybody that does any type of grappling and people probably even notice this with lifting, but when you're, you've been going so much and you're just starting to feel like you're, you're hitting your head against a wall, things aren't working and you go to practice and you're like, fuck, it's just not where you, frustration. Sometimes it's good to make the choice to just take a little bit of time away, right? Because what tends to happen and i've had this experience so many times that's why when i start to feel the way you're feeling like i'm like i'm gonna take i'm gonna take four days away like i really want to go but i'm just

gonna take four or five days away because what happens is when i come back it's like it's it's like so many things are happening that i haven't done before that i've been trying to think about doing it's just all these things start clicking. And any grappler probably knows this experience. But the thing is you made the choice to walk away for a little bit. Most people, it's not because they made the choice. It's because I got injured because I was overdoing it or this happened because I was overdoing it. And then they're forced to take more time away than they would like.

Right. But you were smart enough to be like, let me just back away a little bit. Come back. You feel refreshed. All these things are working. You're fucking passing purple belt guards. That's how you do this for the long game. Not like going everyday bohada.

Everyday bohada. Hurt yourself. Train while you're hurt. Yeah. Yeah. It was the coolest compliment uh super good super good guy uh again purple belt you know i passed his guard twice and like we were because he i learned so much from him we chat all the time but he was like you know what i'm kind of

getting pissed off that you're passing my guard he's like just know that shit ain't gonna happen again and so he was able to like turn it up on me you know what i mean like how cool is that that he had to recognize like oh wait a second like i can't underestimate him anymore like i i was hoping that this would happen because after you explain what you just explained right now i was like dude i don't know like dude like what if it you know doesn't happen you know what i mean like what if i take this time off and I don't, I come back and it's like, oh man, I obviously took some time off. You know, I was very concerned about that, but I felt really, really good. Like, I wish this was talked about way more. I think sometimes people will say that they love something so much or it's like they'll say it's, oh, man, it's hard. It's hard for me to take days off the gym. I'm a perfectionist, man.

I just want to get good at this right away. I fucking love jujitsu. And it's just so dumb because you're like you love it, but it's to its own detriment. It's like, man, maybe you need to take a step back. I understand. Like sometimes, sometimes you're just thinking this is the only way, this is the way to get better. This is the way I need to get through it. And you think that you need to kind of like just grit your teeth and plow right through it. But more often than not, if you can take a step back

is where you're going to have the growth. That's where you're going to have an epiphany. It's where you're going to like learn that you can't like when you're doing it all the time, it's tough. For example, I think that if somebody just – somebody that just knows sports in general, they know athletics in general, they could go to a couple of jiu-jitsu classes and give you guys tremendous advice. Like a good coach. Not even a jiu-jitsu classes and give you guys tremendous advice like a like a good coach not not even a jujitsu coach just because they're not in your world yeah you know what i mean yeah like i i would come and i would say hey why why does everybody what is what is this what are these people what are these guys doing and you guys would be like oh that's kind of because guys are kind of lazy i'd be like oh okay and then what

about what about when they're doing this like what is this uh what is that for and i'm like i don't know we just always did that you know what i mean like you can because you're an outsider never seen it before you would probably say hey like what's that for you know what are they doing that for and and sometimes you'd have really good reasons for it and sometimes the reasons would be like i don't know we've always done that yeah yeah because it's like tradition it's like baked into the it's a community right so you all end up doing similar stuff and i'm not saying jujitsu i'm saying anything you know take football or lifting or you know anything say hey why are these power lifters resting for like 10 minutes in between say well that's excessive you know they don't say, well, hey, why are these powerlifters resting for like 10 minutes in between? Say, well, that's excessive. You know, they don't need to rest 10 minutes.

Should probably be like on a five minute rest period, you know? And it's like, one of the other things too is excitement makes a difference for your training. If you've been training a lot and you've been so consistent, what tends to happen is like you, you get, start getting run down, but you keep going, you keep going. consistent, what tends to happen is like you start getting run down, but you keep going, you keep going. And then you get to a point where you're like, should I go today? And then you go. You do that for maybe two weeks. And then it's like, I don't want to go today.

Right? You get to that point. And then maybe you still go. But when you're there, then be like, all right, bye. Just go away for a little bit. Do something. And that's why having strength training is so good with whatever the hell you're doing, whether it's running, whether it's grappling, whether it's fucking you started playing a new sport. Strength training is good because you still can go get your pump.

You can go move your body. You can go get a sweat in, right? pump you can go move your body you can go get a sweat in right because a few days away from that thing you really love then you're gonna monday's gonna come and like you actually you mentioned it andrew like yeah no so i i truly believe for me because yes i do love jujitsu um i've i was doing it too much to be a detriment exactly like what you explained mark but I would just be so so run down you know like I would be dragging my like my gym bag to my room to like which gi all right throw this in there and then it's like that that deep breath yep all right let's go like it's go time just exhausted just perpetually tired yeah took the week off i was thinking about it sunday morning

about going the next day yep i was like all right we got one more day it was like freaking christmas for me like a kid you know like one more day just get through today and then tomorrow's the day when i was getting my stuff ready the night before i was like giddy like i was even kind of shaking because i was like getting the chills like oh dude oh, dude, like it's like there. Like I was, dude, I was so excited to go. Yeah. I haven't felt that in a long time. And it sucks to like to think that because I love jujitsu.

But I was running myself ragged to the point where it's like, yep, we're going to training today or tomorrow you know and and i didn't i thought that that meant maybe you don't love it maybe you're not fucking built for this the way like everyone else is you're not going to be the one that's going to carry the boats all these boats ain't gonna carry themselves and if they need somebody it ain't gonna be me because fuck i'm tired i told you guys my nephews say that ever since you said your nephews say it i hear it all the time now and that's just like that's again that's another one of the things that's in the text thread it's like well fuck who's gonna carry the boats and i'm like i guess it's not me i'm not built for this the way like everyone else is so i had all these negative thoughts and then gotta yell that to each other like when

you're encouraging each other when you're grappling absolutely who's gonna carry the boats yeah everyone just stops like wait what the fuck it's like every time you start getting tired just yelling so i had all these negative thoughts that like oh i'm not cut out for this you know the same thoughts i had when it came to like lifting and getting into shape i'm like maybe it's just it's not for me then but i took some time off and then here i am like oh my god like i can't wait for tomorrow now you know because like let's see let's see how much further i can take like these things that are clicking and make them cemented yeah so yeah it's wild i say absence makes the heart grow fonder right so a little time away makes you excited and just makes dealing with everything just so different makes dealing

with the stress of maybe you have some anxiety over a couple drills that you do or maybe you have anxiety of rolling with certain people, or maybe there's someone there that just annoys the fuck out of you. And if you're gone for like a week, come walking through the door, and that same annoying guy that always talks shit, he says something, and you just laugh it off, you don't even care. You don't tap him out later. Yeah, it just changes the mode.

It changes everything. And, Seema, you were talking about being excited for it and kind of forcefully being excited for stuff. It can work a little bit. It can. Yeah, it can work here and there. And you might have a stretch and you might have a good streak of luck. And you might be somebody that just has pretty good energy and you can get along with that for a while but usually at some point it'll start to dwindle down and if it's if you're not pumped to do it

and you're not like i mean why why are you forcing yourself to do it i guess it's kind of like the deeper question like you do want to get better at this thing whether it's lifting or jujitsu or anything else. And the way to get better at it is not to beat yourself to oblivion. Like it doesn't make any sense. Maybe at some point there needs to be stretches of that. And maybe you can say, Hey, like, you know, getting sore is normal. Feeling like totally beat up is kind of normal. Like there's a bunch of things that are fairly normal. But me not wanting to go, that's a little abnormal. So maybe on the days where I don't feel like going, maybe I'll just observe that a little bit more.

Maybe I'll think about that a little bit more. Maybe instead of going, maybe I'll watch a bunch of jiu-jitsu. It is hard hard though. It's hard to like – it's hard to just say you're going to go to the gym and you're going to help other people out. You're probably going to lift. I'm just going to go and I'm going to help the other guys. You're going to end up probably rolling, right? But if you can do that, that's really valuable.

And if you have people in your life and it's great to have a group of people that are encouraging you that's one of the best things ever right because it makes people stay consistent but if if you know you gotta have some time away and you're getting shit from people do not let that shit talk make you go if you know you need to not go right because that happens sometimes right and you said you had fear of missing out everyone else is getting better and i'm here not getting better but i'd flip that because people who are i think that people who end up being really great at certain things they're consistent that doesn't mean it's seven days a week every single week

no matter how they feel it means that they've been just at it for a long time. And there are small stretches maybe where it wasn't as frequent, but they've been doing it for years and years and years and years and decades and decades. Because, like, we've been lifting for decades now. But there are weeks where we only maybe got two lifting sessions and maybe. Happens rarely, but the thing is that we've been at it for decades, right? Same thing for jujitsu because 10 years down the road, you're going to have little stretches

where you're not going, like you just need to back off a little bit, but you've been doing it for 10 fucking years. Yeah. Right? That's the thing. So we can't, we got to stop thinking about this micro consistency

of being super consistent for a 90-day fucking challenge because that's what most people do when it comes to their fitness. day challenge 12 week challenge this challenge this challenge rather than like for a year can we just on average try to get in there most weeks and on some weeks maybe twice can we just because that that's what makes the difference how about this one you know uh everyone's sweating it that this guy's a black belt like man he's a fucking black belt it's awesome then you watch him get out of his car and he can barely do it all the broken black belt so how do you acquire it you know how did you acquire your muscle mass how

did you acquire your physique was it at the cost at the detriment of like a lot of other things because maybe it was or maybe it you know maybe it is and maybe that's fine for that particular person but do you want that for yourself or would you rather take your time and say i don't care how long they make fun of me for being a white belt or blue belt or anything in between i'm just going to take my time and i i don't i don't want to be broken i want to be competitive and i want to be proficient. But can I find, and you will, you can find, there's a lot of people that do it. There's a lot of people that figure it out. Maybe if you're going real high level and you're trying to compete, then maybe that's just where it's tougher.

And where you would have to have a skill set combined with genetics, combined with a lot of hard work, combined with maybe some luck sprinkled in there to kind of make it through like unscathed. But you can figure it out. I mean I've seen – there's a lot of power lifters that lifted really well that haven't had crazy surgeries. They haven't – they're still doing shit. They're still able to do stuff. that haven't, they're still doing shit. They're still able to do stuff. And I think like the top level guys who are black belts,

like you look at current top level guys like Victor Hugo, Amerigali, all these dudes who have been at it for a while, they're walking around pretty good. And you got guys like Rafael Lovato. Lovato is like maybe in his late 30s. He's a master, but he still is like out here competing against young guys, winning matches. And he's in his late 30s, early 40s.

He's 40s. Yeah, he's 40s. One of the legends in jiu-jitsu. Black belt. Been a black belt for maybe over a decade now. Who's the guy who's some other belt they like? Oh, red belt? There's some Gracies that are red belts.

And he was a little older guy that you guys sent me. I think Hickson's a red belt. Hickson Gracie's a red belt. And there are some other guys but rafael lovato was like one of the main american black belt legends of like the uh mid 2000s or whatever arguably won that last match dude that main event on flow yeah what was it called who's number one but yeah even so he's walking around doing well the thing is is like there there is an idea within grappling that like if you want to get to your black belt, like, some people think that you have to...

All these injuries happen, and injuries do happen, but it doesn't mean you need to work through them. And that's not just grappling, that's everything. That is everything. Give yourself a long time span of staying consistent with it. I think it sucks so bad with like, with Ronnie Coleman. You know, it's just so brutal to see he's such a legend and seems like he um seems like he's still happy and good for him

that's incredible but what's also unfortunate is that it happened when his career was over yeah you know and he just had a an accident i think on like a leg press and then he's had like bad back surgery after bad back surgery and just just ended up in a compromised position so i mean he's the greatest bodybuilder of all time but i don't know yeah was it worth it yeah paparazzi family on the podcast we talk all the time about feeling good good habits to make sure that your health is in check and one of the things that's super important is getting your blood work done because you could be getting great sleep. You could be having great nutrition. But under the hood, there could be things going on that you don't realize.

So it's always good to get your blood work checked so you can totally understand what's going on. Now, the thing is also when you get your blood work checked, there's so many different things and so many different numbers that it's hard to tell what's good, what's bad, and how do I optimize things. different numbers that it's hard to tell what's good, what's bad, and how do I optimize things. And that's where Merrick Health comes in because they have patient care coordinators on staff that can help you interpret your blood work and then give you the necessary recommendations as far as supplementation, nutrition, and if you need it, hormone optimization that'll start moving you in the right direction. Andrew, how can they get their hands on it? Yes, that's over at merrickhealth.com slash powerproject. That's M-A-R-R- at Merrick health.com slash power project. That's M a R E K health.com slash power project at checkout. Enter promo code power project to save 10%

off the power project panel, the power project checkup panel, or any individual lab you select again, that's at Merrick health.com slash power project links in the description, as well as the podcast show notes. Damn. Yeah. I was talking to my cousin Javier about all this and he's like, you know, what's, what's a you know, or what's, yeah, in 10 years, what's one week? You know, I was like, it ain't shit. So he competes in Nogi, and he's been winning tournaments. So it's in the family, you know, where somebody else is out there competing as well. But what I wanted to ask you and see him about competing, how does this change or how does this mindset like how do you refocus when you're prepping for a competition?

What do you mean refocus? I'm saying like, OK, if I'm like feeling like shit as some fight camps can make you feel, obviously you have a different purpose at that point. So like, yeah, like what's going through your mind when you're prepping for a competition? at that point. So like, yeah, like what, what's going through your mind when you're prepping for a competition? I got you. So, uh, cause you can't just be like, all right, yep. I'm going to take a week off in a, in a, you know, whatever eight week camp we can. What ends up happening with anybody that compete? This isn't just jujitsu. This is powerlifting. This is what happens with people who are like, I want to do a bodybuilding show is they go from uh training two three weeks three days in the gym right and then they're like time to compete let's go and they start going five days or six days because it's camp time let's go eight weeks

or fucking 16 week bodybuilding prep let's start being more consistent with my bodybuilding powerlifting meet in 12 weeks let's start let's start building that strength and get ready for the meet jujitsu competition scheduled for 12 weeks down the road let's start training but like if you already been training four days a week and you got a tournament coming up all right let's go four or five days now let's let's let's get that in because you're you're pretty much you're still training this is why like when competitions come up i always get excited for them but it's not like my chaining drastically changes it's it's i'm training i don't stop training it's never stopped but when people start getting excited about competition they start adding this extra and this thing you can add extra layers of intensity

to training meaning like you can do more specific training drills. You can do shark tanks where there's more intensity on certain days. But it can't be that your training goes from a 50% type of intensity to 90, 95%. Like you should be around like a 70, like an average of 75 to 85%, sometimes 90% here and there in terms of training intensity every almost every week and then when when competition prep comes you'll bump up that intensity a little bit but you've been prepped for competition training a lot of people hurt themselves in fight camps because they haven't been training and now they suddenly start getting ready for a comp and they think something magical is going to happen like you haven't been training much dog like stop trying

to put this extra layer of pressure now you're scared of competing because you don't been training much dog like stop trying to put this extra layer of pressure now you're scared of competing because you don't think you're ready because guess what you're not ready because you haven't been doing the work beforehand you're not going to feel mentally ready because you you training consistently is like a foreign concept to your mind you can't you can't trick yourself out of it you can't be like now i'm training four days a week and i'm not gonna now i'm gonna get competition ready and feel like you're ready because you know this isn't what you already do i'm not saying you need to'm gonna get competition ready." And feel like you're ready, because you know this isn't what you already do. I'm not saying you need to train hard all the time,

just so a competition's good, but you need to be consistent. Because when you're consistently training, when you're getting ready for a competition, you'll feel better because you're someone who consistently trains. I'd imagine a lot of guys too, as they're prepping for a tournament, are scrambling a little bit.

So, they're not just going to jujitsu more. They're trying to get into the gym more. They're trying to get in shape for this contest that's in like six or eight weeks, but you should have been in shape the whole time. Right. So it's, I mean, we see it with running too. I mean, you know, I, I, I'm guilty of it. Like I never – I just did a marathon. I did train for it. I tried to train for it, but I was simultaneously training and putting myself in compromising positions that I wasn't – that I was never prepared for in the past. for in the past and then now I'm going into a race, which I can say it whatever way I want, that I don't care about the time or I'm not too worried about this or that, but it's a race. You're going into a race. So how much sense does it make to do a, how much sense does it make to

jump into a marathon and to have a 16 week prep for a marathon when your previous training was only that you did a half marathon. Like it doesn't – it sounds like it makes some sense. You're like, oh, 16 weeks or so. Most of the people that are running and most of the people that really love it have probably been doing it their whole life. They've probably been doing it forever. They probably did track or something when they were young or cross-country. They got into it as they got a little bit older.

I mean each person has their own kind of story with stuff like that. But you don't want to be adding a bunch of shit as you're trying to get closer to a competition. If anything, you might want to be pulling back on some stuff so that you could have better recovery because you might want to – well, you do want to. You want to be more specific. You want to be more sport-specific as the contest comes closer and closer. So you should be able to like maybe pull back a little bit from the weights and not worry so much about where your deadlift strength is. But your deadlift strength should still be – should still have some sort of capacity because you should have been training the entire time. have some sort of capacity because you should have been training the entire time so it's kind of a it's a shitty message in a lot of ways because it's like well how do i gain how do i get all

this because can i train for all of it all the time and the answer is you can but you have to methodically do it and you have to really take your time with it and we know plenty of examples of it but josh settle gate he always comes up because he's our boy but like look at the progress that guy's made and we've seen it with andrew we've seen a lot of progress made uh in people's physiques and people's strength levels in even with your back like that's crazy like you're you're so much stronger of a person never mind your ability to handle yourself uh in like combat you're so much stronger of a person, never mind your ability to handle yourself in combat. You're so much stronger of a person for putting yourself through the paces of doing jujitsu for a long time.

So the weights that you lifted before and the deadlifts and stuff that you've done before, it wouldn't surprise me one bit if you'd be able to deadlift so much more than what you did in the past without a lot of training because now i think you'd be more confident you your body feels better your body's been in certain positions and situations that you've had to compromising positions that you had to get yourself out of no 100 i i yeah if i if i tried i can blow all my numbers out of the water for sure but that might take away from training the next morning, so I'm not going to do it. Yeah. Wild stuff, man. Yeah, again, this is all new stuff in general, but then even this idea is just new again. Yeah.

And I think the biggest thing when it comes to, like, building more athleticism, I think we have more videos of some cats to pull up but like is is time like understand that if you've been lifting for a while this is a new endeavor if you were someone who played sports when you were younger and it's been like you're you're years off of that like you haven't done that in a long time don't try to like rush back into it don't try to like okay i'm going to join a league and whatever and then you just start sprinting out of nowhere you need to ease yourself back into the intensity of your body moving in this way i made this mistake a few

years ago when i was like you know i wanted to go play some indoor soccer again and i'm shit my i i was fast right and i when i played soccer i could move i was fast, right? And when I played soccer, I could move. I was fast. And my body, my mind wanted to move my body in that way. But my body was like, hold up. Your hamstrings ain't ready for spinning like that, baby. Right? So like, I was like, oh, my hip.

Oh, oh, oh. I was like, oh, shit. What? But it's not because I'm old. It's because I am untrained for that. It's just like randomly like, oh, I've deadlifted 755. Let me just go do that again. Right? After it's been a while since I've done that, I'm going to hurt myself.

Treat this the same way. Treat movement the same way. You want to ease yourself back into all those ways of movement. Want to try this one? Who is this? Oh, yeah, yeah. Pull that one up. Do we need audio, Mark?

Yeah. Okay. Let me get that. Bam, bam, yeah. Pull that one up. Do we need audio, Mark? Yeah. Okay. Mm-hmm. Let me get that. Bam, bam, and boom. You know, society wants me to believe that a woman my age should not be attempting to lift 310 pounds. But I say, what does age got to do with it? It's your strength. That's what's got to do with it it's your strength that's what's got to do with it it has nothing to do with your age

let me show you what I'm talking about notice the erratic breathing to represent an old lady that's kind of interesting right because she doesn't usually breathe that way right dang right yeah because she doesn't usually breathe that way right okay dang just doing a trap bar deadlift 310 though yo oh wow age is just a number let's go freaking awesome she's awesome y'all should check her page out

yeah it's got a lot of stuff like that what's her name home body trainer home body trainer that was cool let's see it's great to be able to you know have a capacity to be able to do some of that stuff um for myself i'm not really you know lifting the same way that I was, not as many of like the regular compound lifts, not as many. It's actually been a while since I've done like a regular just barbell squat, but I still do a lot of other types of squats. And I still just have in my head of like, I need to like load my body. I need to, you know, load the skeletal, uh, system somehow. So sometimes the farmers carry, sometimes it's a medicine ball walk. Um, sometimes it's a, uh, I, uh, been walking more with a weighted vest. Like I have like a 40 pound weighted vest,

um, sled drags heavy, um, all that kind of stuff. But it, to me, it feels like it's allowing me to, uh, move a lot better because I don't do so much of that stuff before. It was like, that was the focus was the bench squat deadlift. And now that I don't focus on it anymore, those are, um, those are kind of in the background. Those are like peripheral things. Those are things that I can do more occasionally. I can do them a lot lighter. I can do them in different ways and it's allowing for better movement. It's allowing for more explosive movement. Something like a med ball is just so easy to get involved in just chucking around a med ball. And the thing about some medicine ball tosses or some jumps is you don't have to do a lot of them yeah you could literally do about 10 15 jumps in a workout that's a great

number to stop because uh the amount of explosive strength and the amount of force that you're putting into it is is enough to uh to to generate some change and then same thing with med ball tosses you know you can throw it backwards. You can throw it forward. Just look online. Check out some different ways. But you might find that's more fun to do stuff like that. You might find it's energizing. And then also just even on a walk or on a run, I saw Mike Dolce talking about walking and people have talked about zone two and how it burns fat and everything. I disagree a ton with that. I love walking and I think walking is amazing, but you got to do more than just walk.

I know that people know they need to still hit the gym and stuff, but like walking for someone who's already fairly fit, it's doing next to nothing. It's great for your brain. And it's good to have movement. Motion is the lotion. So movement is great. It's great for anxiety. It's great for all that shit. But it's not really good for fat burning. If you want it to burn body fat or you want to actually burn some calories, you got to make the walk more difficult somehow. So you either need a weighted vest, need to hit stairs every time you see them, need to do something explosive during your walk. So this could be, you can jump on a bench three times and, you know, walk at a pretty decent pace to the next one. It sucks because that means you have to pick up your walk and you can't just like

be doing it leisurely. But if you're trying it for the results of burning fat or trying to have some sort of change in your body, then you're going to have to use the progressive overload system that we utilize for everything else. You're going to have to make it more difficult at some point. All right, Roger family, it's time to step up your barefoot shoe game. Now we talk about foot health all the time on the podcast, but the winter months are coming and Vivo's come out with some slick boots. These are their Gobi boots and they have different colors on their website. Now these have a wide toe box. They are flat and they are flexible and they're stylish and sexy as boots. But obviously

Vivo is awesome because they not only have boots and casual shoes like their Novus right here, which again, wide, flat, flexible, so that your foot can do what it needs to do within the shoe. And you're getting the benefit of having your feet improve while you're walking around in shoes. But they also have shoes for the gym, like their Modus, again, flat, flexible, wide toe box, along with their Primus Light 3s and all the classics that you know. They also have shoes for running and for running on their website. So again, for all barefoot type shoes, Vivo is your one-stop shop for pretty much all the types of kicks you need. Andrew, how can they get it? Yes, that's over at vivobarefoot.com

slash powerproject, where for the entire month of December, but December only, you guys will receive 20% off your very own Vivo barefoot shoes. Again, vivobarefoot.com slash powerproject. Links in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Let's check this clip out. That's all right. A doctor saying to me once, when you're young, your body is so resilient

and it can put up with so much. And he said, you have a window until you're about 30 or absolute latest 35, you can get away with pretty much anything. And then it all starts coming home to roost. Well, I actually always say to women, please, if you are over the age of 35, it's got to be now. Weight training, resistance training, you've got to look after your body, stability, mobility, stretching. I think that's when most women start getting interested in their health because that's the point when they know they're going to need something. Remember a doctor? Better late than never, right?

Yeah, I think, you know uh obviously people training with weights is is incredible and i hope more people get into it but i i think the idea of like that our body was something completely different when we were young i think it's something that we need to kind of re-examine or maybe just make sure that when we talk about that that we're not talking about ourselves negatively now because like what of what use is that it's not really useful um you you worded it correctly when you just said like i haven't done that in a while like when you said you were uh doing some indoor soccer it's not because you're old really it's just you haven't done it in a while yeah and then also there's other factors too like you know when

you get into bodybuilding or you get into lifting being 40 pounds bigger you might be a lot heavier and your body's like yo um but that's a factor for a lot of people and and normally they're not heavier in the way that you're heavier. Normally they're heavier around the waist. Yeah. But that's going to make everything that you do that much more difficult too. So I think when you think about like an aging body and you think about getting older, it's like how do we maybe just – again, maybe the goal isn't always just to like rewind the hands hands of time maybe sometimes the goal is just to like let me just maintain this because if if i said if i said uh i drove myself to the grocery store today you guys would be like okay and but what if I was 95?

Right. What if you're 90? I've drove myself a grocery store. Oh shit. Grandpa got his ass to the grocery store, you know? So your age is a huge factor. And if you can kind of have like a maintenance or try to maintain certain things,

I'm hopeful that I'm able to do these things forever. Yeah. Maybe not. Maybe the weight is going to change. Maybe the amount of like pull-ups or dips or the amount of weight that I use on a particular lift, maybe that'll change a bit. But I still want to be able to do it. And I remember thinking that even when I was young, I was like, you know what?

There was some older guys in the gym. I'm like, when I'm 50, I still want to be able to like, I don't know, put like two plates on the bar and get a squat in or something. Just something like that, you know? And now I don't even necessarily care about that so much as just being able to have the functionality of doing the movement and be able to execute the movement and doing the movement properly. So, you know, things like lunges and things like pulling the sled, like there's just nowadays there's no excuse. There's so much information coming at us all the time. And we've talked a little bit about the transformation of like Dana White or Bert Kreischer or some of these guys. These guys have been guys that have been

lifting for a long time. Tom Segura. These are people that have had their fitness in check for a lot longer than you think. Just because they had excess body fat on them doesn't mean that they weren't exercising at all. So now that they made a switch and they had they made a switch with their diet, their nutrition, maybe some TRT is at play. But they made a switch with their diet their nutrition maybe some trt is at play but they made a switch they made a conscious change there you go burke kreischer from 275 to like 230 they made a conscious conscious shift and change uh with a lot of their habits in their life and therefore they were able to lose a lot of body fat but they were also able to lose a lot of their habits in their life and therefore they were able to uh lose a lot of body fat but they were also able to lose a lot of body fat because these guys actually have a lot more muscle

than you might think so that doesn't really look like a dad bod at all anymore you just i just notice he has no pants on he's a donna's crest yeah his his uh that's called yeah the the the line his weenie's almost out yeah adonis crest i like the different levels of like the coloring like the top the top is red and the middle was like uh tan and then the blower half is white yeah yeah he's tan as fuck and then like's pale as fuck and then like yeah the ring like he's got like around like where his neck is yeah but those those those obliques are coming in a little bit too man like look at the trap and the delt yo yo wow let's go burt sick staying connected to it one way or the other is gonna allow you to still be able to explore stuff and still be able to go out and do shit you were from burke chrysler to burke chrysler god good job dude

some good progress there hey last video play that video the uh the the man with the slicked hair with doing pull-ups the slicked hair doing pull-ups hair uh-huh it's in our chat oh shit let me pull it up then 74 74-year-old dude. Oh, how did I miss this? I don't know. You got to play his words, though, man, because it falls on what you were saying, Mark. You got to restart this.

And jump up. It's because I prepare. Quick edit. I can back up, look up, and jump up. It's because I prepare myself for being older. I don't want somebody to look at me and look at me as a mark or try to intimidate me, thinking that I'm old and they could take advantage of me or exploit me.

No. Let me tell you, a brother is ready to defend himself at any time, at any age, and I'm 74. You know where I can back that up. He's getting after it. He did a lot of reps there, too.

Yeah. Clean. Yeah, man. Like, that's the thing. I'm excited for what age looks like for a lot of people who've been lifting these days

because I think we're going to age very differently from our grandparents and our parents. It's going to look very different. Just starts with getting at it now. Got to keep that athleticism one way or the other. Hopefully, you know, some of you people, hope you like some recreational sports. We mentioned like pickleball, volleyball, softball, something. It'd be great if you could pick up something that's just a little different than just lifting weights.

Lifting weights is a great habit, and it's awesome that you have that habit, but hopefully you can develop some other ones so you can keep that athleticism. Yes. Oh, two quick things. Now, guys, our stickers just came in. You might have seen on this laptop. What? We have the Power Project right here glistening.

You got the Think Less right here, which we have some shirts and stuff coming out. And we have the Think Less sticker right here on this Power Project. Oh, my God. We'll get you all in on that soon. But, yeah, like, guys, this stuff is here. So we'll figure out a way to get this to you. And the Untappd program is live now on the ATG app. Whoa.

It's there. It is? It's live. How do you access said app? I want to check some of that. How does this work? Yeah, yeah. So it's on the ATG app. Whoa. It's there. It is live. It's live. How do you access said, uh, how does this work? Yeah. Yeah. So it's on the ATG app. You'll have to go to their website and sign up for their coaching. It's a monthly coaching service, but you just subscribe to untapped. But what I'm doing with untapped is that if you're in the coaching program, there's a link to discord server where if you have questions about like regressions, if you want to have questions about jujitsu stuff,

questions about recovery, all those types of stuff, you'll be able to talk to me directly there and I'll be able to help y'all out with that stuff. But along with that, the ATG app has a function where you record your movements, you send them in. Within 24 hours, you're going to get a form coaching back from one of their coaches. Is this the app?

That is the app. Okay, so people have a reference. If you're a grappler, got a program in there for you and it's going to be good excited check your form and say that form sucks it's immaculate baby you gotta get better cool um how that took you a while to to get all the videos and photos for that right yeah man there's a lot of videos there's a lot of videos man there's a lot of videos, man. There's a lot of the movements that I like doing that some people think is weird

have been really beneficial for my body in jiu-jitsu, and I've figured out a way to put that into, it's either a two-, three-, or four-day-a-week program, depending on your frequency. But, you know, you add that in, that type of strength training in jiu-jitsu, I think you're going to be able to build a more resilient body. Fuck yeah, awesome body. So congratulations.

Strength is never a weakness. Weakness never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.