Mark Bell's Power Project - Jacked at 60 With NO TRT - Clark Bartram MBPP Ep. 898
Episode Date: March 7, 2023In this Podcast Episode, Clark Bartram, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about how Clark at age 59 is still maintaining muscle, moving extremely well and coaching without the need for... TRT. Follow Clark on IG: https://www.instagram.com/clarkbartram/?hl=en New Power Project Website: https://powerproject.live Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the new Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw Special perks for our listeners below! ➢https://hostagetape.com/powerproject Free shipping and free bedside tin! ➢https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!! ➢Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM ➢https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/powerproject to save 15% off Vivo Barefoot shoes! ➢https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off site wide including Within You supplements! ➢https://mindbullet.com/ Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://bubsnaturals.com Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% of your next order! ➢https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order at Vuori! ➢https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro at 8 Sleep! ➢https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off ALL LABS at Marek Health! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://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
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You look great, man.
You're in great shape.
What's going on over here?
Yeah, well, you know, trying to represent
for the old guys out here in the world.
Many, many years of training?
Yeah, not as long as Michael Hearn.
I didn't come out of the womb lifting weights.
Mike, Mike.
How long did it take for him to come out?
What did you say, Mike?
You familiar with that name, Michael Hearn?
You look him up, Andrew.
I'll see.
Google him.
Maybe something will come up.
I know Michael Malley.
Do you know that guy?
Mike O'Hearn
oh is that the guy
that um
claims he's uh
claims he's
a bodybuilder
claims he's a bodybuilder
yeah a bodybuilder
and a powerlifter
he lifts weights
he's a weightlifter
yeah
oh is that where they
put the weight over their head
that guy
yeah Mike is uh
what in his 50s now
yeah Mike's 50
no one seems
no one knows.
He either rounds up or rounds down.
He does something.
Depending on who he's talking to.
Exactly.
How old are you now?
59.
How many years of training?
So I started at 14.
Yeah.
I remember it specifically.
Actually, you remember the bull worker?
The bull worker?
It was a long, and you pushed it in like that. I know what you're talking about, yeah. Yeah, so I started with a bull worker that bull worker you it was a oh long and you pushed it in like that
i know she's talking about yeah yeah so i started with a bull worker we had one of them like a
supposed to be like a chest expander or something yeah it had the bands on the outside you pull out
you do like the archer but three of us as kids had one of those you know we were poor and we
put it around the neighborhood and we were seeing who could get the biggest biceps.
So I had the bull worker and I was getting all pumped up and it came the day for the showdown, you know,
and I showed my bicep and it looked just like it does now.
It had a peak on it and my friends made fun of me.
They're like, Clark, you're, you know,
something's wrong with you.
I ran home crying, but there was a man I met.
I went to the YMCA and I was probably 13 or 14 years old
and I showed him my or 14 years old,
and I showed him my arm, and he said,
listen, you have championship qualities in you,
so don't let your friends make you feel bad.
There it is.
Look at that.
You guys are on top of things here.
That's what that thing is, huh?
I want to see how the fuck it works, though.
Like a bow, right?
You push it in like this. There's a spring on the inside inside so you push it in there so like that oh wow cool okay does
somebody still someone still makes that yeah so i went back to ohio that's where i'm from and a good
friend of mine ran down in the basement she's like clark wait a minute i gotta i got something for
you so she comes up with this bull worker the exact one we had when we were kids.
Probably felt very nostalgic.
It really did.
I almost feel like I cried.
No, I did.
I cried.
I literally cried.
There it is.
Yeah.
I forgot to bring it home.
I understand.
So I'm crying in this video talking about it because I actually reached out to Bull Worker
and I said, hey, you guys still in business?
And they brought a team out and shot a video about me and this bull worker that started my whole career.
So yeah,
that was 13,
14.
That's neat.
Yeah.
I remember you too,
from back in the,
they got that poster in the background of,
uh,
EAS back in those days of,
uh,
muscle media and,
that,
that magazine from Bill Phillips.
And I actually participated in the,
uh,
the transformation challenge where he was giving away his car.
Oh, you did the Body for Life. Oh yeah, I think everybody did.
I think everybody read that book too, the Body
for Life book and he had a lot of really
good principles in there. I remember him
saying just simple
stuff like
the amount of protein to eat, the amount of carbohydrates
should be like the size of your hand.
It was like little
things I never forgot. I'm like, okay, well what I mean? It was like little things I never forgot.
And I'm like, okay, well, that's what a meal looks like.
Now I have a better idea because as a kid, I didn't have any idea what a meal really looked like in terms of a meal that was going to be nutritious for, you know, having like a lean body or a jacked body.
Right.
Well, it's power lifters.
You know, you're just eating anything you can.
You get as big as you can, right?
And strong.
You know, you're just eating anything you can to get as big as you can, right, and strong.
So from there, did you get into, like, bodybuilding, or you just kind of just started lifting?
So at the age of 17, I joined the Marine Corps.
You know, I wanted a challenge in my life.
I needed to get out of my hometown, Canton, Ohio.
There wasn't much for me there.
I didn't want to work in the steel mills.
I mean, I appreciate the people who do that, but I didn't see that in my future.
So I joined the Marine Corps.
That was my only way out and did good in the Marine Corps.
And that's where I really got into lifting.
I started playing rugby and they had a big mirror.
We'd come home from rugby practice or back to the squad bay.
And it said, be your best today or something like that. Me and this Jack dude, and he must have been on major gear then. He was just huge. Gonzo was his name. I was skinny. I was like 160 pounds and he
was all big and jacked and we're all posing in there. I had abs and shoulders and biceps and
stuff. And he kept saying, you got to come to the gym with me. Let's go train. So I started
training with him and then it caught on. So after I got out of the Marine Corps, I got into the gym
business. 24 hour used to be called family fitness back in the day. And I started there. So I was a trainer
and yeah. Let me ask you this, man, because like, it's really cool having you on because you're 59,
you don't look 59 and your body doesn't look that way either. But through the years of your training,
has anything changed in terms of the way you train or treat yourself nowadays?
Because the fact that you've been able to maintain all of this is something that most people don't think is possible.
They don't think you can look like this at your age.
They think you also move well.
Yes.
We've noticed when you walked in, you're not like, you know, real stiff and it doesn't seem like you're in a lot of pain.
No, I'm not.
And I appreciate the fact that you can see that because my goal has always been to be athletic. Weight training for me is not about aesthetics as much as it's about function and
form. And I want to look good, of course, but I don't want to be stiff and not able to move and
play football and do all the things that bring me joy in life. So the things that have changed
really haven't been much in all honesty, because I was always a guy who didn't let my ego
get in the way. I would lift lighter in better form and more mind to muscle connection. And I
was doing these things before I even knew they were a thing to do. I knew to slow down and really
feel it. And when I was watching other guys, I remember I saw a guy drop 315 on his chest from here, and that kind of convinced me to stay in my lane.
And I'm a fairly strong guy, relatively speaking, in the place that I'm in here,
but I always knew that I just wanted this to last forever,
and I knew beating myself up wasn't the way to go.
So to this day, I don't have any injuries,
and I can run and jump and play and do all those sorts of things.
Well, strength, we tend to narrow it down to exercising, particularly certain types of lifts.
And then even worse, we'll narrow it down to one lift.
So how much you bench.
People talk about bench press, squats, deadlifts, maybe a military press.
And that's the only thing we hang our hat on but we forget about.
There's so many other attributes that people can have that are amazing that are not only things that are proof that someone is strong but they're also things that can really help for longevity.
Things like push-ups, being able to do things with your body weight. I mean, how many people can go into the gym and without warming up, just, you know, grab some dumbbells and do some walking lunges without any thought, without
thinking about their knees crackling and hurting, like probably not a lot, probably people that are
fit, probably a lot of people that are fit would even have trouble doing that. So it's, it's
interesting because I think, uh, as I've trained my, my perspective on lifting, you know, it was
more about, you know, the heavy weight and power lifting and things like that.
But over the years, I've come to appreciate the athleticism and the fact that as we get older, we don't have to be decrepit.
We don't have to be in tons of pain.
We can fix ourselves with the stuff that we love with some of the lifting that we're doing.
You know, something about me is I've never warmed up.
I've never stretched.
I can go right into the gym and just jump in and start exercising.
I see guys warming up longer than my entire training session lasts for.
But let me ask you, when you jump in, it's a methodical jump in.
It's not like, let's say you have some squats.
You don't just jump into your heavy set like you.
You know what I mean?
What do you say you just start working out?
What do you mean?
Well, I'll see somebody sitting in there doing all this sort of stuff and stretching and just spending a lot of time doing things that you could do under the bar.
So a squat, for example.
I just grab the bar and squat.
That's the best stretch and the best
warmup is the actual movement that you're going to be doing. But I see people doing all of these
things and I'm wondering to myself, why? I mean, why are you doing all of this to go do something
that could be the exact thing you need to warm up? So if I'm bench pressing, I'll grab a bar,
but I won't go five, 10, 15, 20. I'll throw a, you know, a decent weight on there that
I know is manageable for me. And, and I'm smart enough to know my body. That's the key. And that's
one of the big things with age, right? Is you really get it. You understand exactly what you
need to do. And so I went, I started going to this gym right here, the gym, and it really changed
everything for me. The atmosphere, like you had mentioned here in your place, Mark is,
is just conducive to really training hard and having fun. And I kind of lost that for a while,
in all honesty. You know, you've been doing it your entire life. You get bored with it after a
while. What brought it back? Do you think this gym specifically? That gym, 100%. Are there people in
there just like getting after it? They're getting after it. You know, everybody is serious, but
everybody's nice. We're having a good time. No one's trying to be the gym tough guy. It's
well-equipped. I mean, all of the machines are handpicked. It's the best of each brand.
The gym tough guy. I forgot all about that. Oh yeah, they exist.
It's been so long since I've been in a gym where I've gotten that vibe from somebody,
but I remember that. Yeah. It certainly isn't me.
For you also, you mentioned that you do a lot of different types of stuff.
You also do sprinting.
So was there ever a time that you got disconnected
from variable types of movements outside of just lifting weights?
Or has that always been a part of what you do?
It's always been a part of what you do? It's always been a part of what I do because, you know, raising kids, you know, you grow up,
you're an athlete, you play sports, you do different things. And then I think a lot of guys,
when they get into corporate life or industrial life or whatever it is they do, that's when they
disconnect from the core of who they are. But because I got married and had kids right away,
after I got out of the Marine Corps, there wasn't a lot of time for me to disconnect.
I had kids and then they got into soccer and I was out on the field coaching and running and
playing. And I wanted to be that dad who was the example. And I'm very proud to say that I still
am. The other day, two weeks ago, my son's college buddy, he played football and he was
a quarterback and his buddy came. We went out on the football field and there were three of us,
one quarterback, one receiver, you know, one defensive back, and we're running routes,
throwing balls, just going around in circles like that. And I felt so good because, you know,
there was one situation, I caught a pass and I ran, we were on you know, there was one situation.
I caught a pass, and I ran.
We were on the 20-yard line.
I just ran the whole way, scored a touchdown.
I mean, the guy could have tackled me if he wanted to,
but I got down there, and the guy's like, damn, dude, your dad's a badass.
And I know my son felt really good about that,
and that's what kept me connected to being active and staying athletic because I've always been around
it you know yeah I think I've seen some videos of you uh chucking around a football and I was like
damn he can rip a football pretty good yeah that's I do that that's kind of like a pattern interrupt
for me in my when I'm trying to reach guys over 50 that I coach I'll throw a football and a buddy
of mine played for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Brad Johnson won a Super Bowl.
Yeah, quarterback.
Yeah.
So he and I were on a podcast one day.
Something like this.
I mean, I don't mean to interrupt.
Don't lose your train of thought there.
But something like that, going out and throwing a softball, a football, a baseball, just going.
And obviously, if you haven't done in a long time, don't go out there and just, you know, throw as far as you can.
But to kind of have a contest with some friends and see how far you can throw and stuff like that can be amazing.
And it's awesome for your athleticism and for training.
Yeah.
So that one right there, that's what Brad Johnson and I, he was on my Zoom call one day.
And I said, hey, throw a football 30 yards, bounce it off the turf and put it into the trash can.
That was a 50-yard one right there.
Boom.
Nice.
So sometimes I get it in one shot.
Sometimes it takes me three days.
But that's the thing about me is I'll stay out there for three days by myself and just throw that ball.
And what I really love, too, about this is there's always on the other end of the football field, there's a group of kids.
There's always on the other end of the football field, there's a group of kids.
And I'm able to kind of speak to them and tell them, you know, life ain't over till you stop trying.
Right?
So this stuff is a blast.
You also never know when you're going to get that call. You might go to a football game and maybe all the quarterbacks get knocked out.
And they're like, yo, we need you to come in.
Exactly.
Point you out.
I was trying to get the XFL to sign me as a long snapper.
How awesome would that be?
You've got a 60-year-old long snapper.
So I found some ice, and I just made a snowball.
First try right there.
Doink.
Any idea how fast you can run?
Do you measure any of this stuff?
And have you tried to chuck a football as far as you can and stuff like that?
Yes, I've tried to throw a football as far as I can.
Man, I can throw it probably about 50 yards now.
That's great.
That's a really great capacity to hold on to.
I was going to try and run a 40 the other day, but when we were playing football, I did kind of pull up a little bit of my hamstring.
So I knew better than to try and run because the kid ran.
He goes, I bet I can still run a 4.5.
And instantly I'm like, oh, man, I want to see what I can do.
And the kid ran a 4, like a 4.7.
Nice.
And he hadn't played college ball in a while.
So he's still out there.
Pat Brodger family, how's it going?
Hope you're enjoying the episode.
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That's a really cool thing, though, about all of this is like, first off, you mentioned how you were in the Marines.
You were married afterwards.
You had kids.
But your kids kept you connected to movement.
afterwards you had kids but your kids kept you connected to movement and what happens we we've been having like it seems like a lot of the conversations we've been having recently
kind of echoed the same thing when you like let's say you go to the gym you start lifting and you
get disconnected from sports or general movement and then you start trying to do that again later
on or years later you feel stiff you don't feel like you can move well. You have to, I mean, you have to rebuild those, those skills. But if you never get away from it, it's like you can end up like this.
And a lot of people, if they can, it's like, it would be a good idea to maybe join some kind of
recreational sports league or join jujitsu or join something that allows your body to move in a
different way rather than just the stuff in the gym. So that as you get older, you can move well.
move in a different way rather than just the stuff in the gym so that as you get older,
you can move well.
Yeah.
That's what you should be doing.
And because I deal with men over 50, that's what I do is I coach men over 50 all around the world.
The amount of times I hear guys say, well, in college, well, in high school, well, in
whatever, and I'm like, why did you lose it?
Well, we had kids.
I'm like, I had kids. I mean,, we had kids. I'm like, I had kids.
I mean, my wife had them, but I was there with her.
I participated for a little bit in that process,
but that's not an excuse, but we use it as one.
But the beauty of it all is we can come back,
and I've seen it happen time and time again with guys,
and that's my message.
Like, hey, it's not too late for you.
Don't buy into all the BS that we're reading and seeing on the internet like you and I were talking about earlier with people saying, you know, after the age of 30, every man starts to decline.
So that leads people to believe that life is over.
So if every man lost 1% of their testosterone at a fast rate.
I would be half the man I am at age 60 right now.
Yeah.
And I'm not.
And it's not due to genetics, right?
There's the epigenetic factor as well, right?
It's like 20% genetics and 80% lifestyle.
So these guys have developed, you know, and to give them credit, they're taking care of their families.
They're building businesses.
They're doing things that are noble and right and what we should be doing.
But eventually they realize, damn, I kind of left myself in the back burner.
It's time for me to do me.
Yeah, we've seen it happen time and time again. is on the family and the person's trying the best to maybe make more money so they can have
maybe try to build a better life for the family and have everybody progress and so forth. But
then they get lost in those jobs and they might spend so much time at that job that they start to
be fatigued and tired and kind of beat down from the week and maybe don't feel like they have the
time to train, which again, we know can be a thing
that you can just switch to a priority. You start to prioritize it. You start to fit it into your
lifestyle. You'll want to do it so much that when you don't do it, you'll feel off rather than the
reverse. Yeah. Well, you said it earlier, jumping jacks. I could take any deconditioned man on
planet earth. Okay. let me step back one.
I have a friend of mine who I met through football.
He won a national championship at Georgia.
He has Parkinson's now.
He showed up at my house the other day.
So I'm up all night thinking, okay, what can I do for this guy?
Balance and coordination and all this.
I had him do jumping jacks.
And I knew before I had him do jumping jacks and I knew before I
had him do them, he was going to say, I haven't done jumping jacks in 30 years. I promise anyone
that's listening and watching right now, if you go do one minute of jumping jacks, one minute of
body squats, one minute of pushups in three minutes, you will start changing your body. If you do that
every single day, you will absolutely change your body. I blew up on TikTok with something called
three moves, three minutes. And I had every troll in the world saying, oh, you mean to tell me you're
trying to get people in shape in three minutes? I said, absolutely, you idiot. What is wrong with
you to think that you can't take a deconditioned person and have them doing,
I mean, you're articulating these joints through ranges of motion that you probably never have
in a long time. So I don't know. I get excited about this stuff.
Well, you know, people, they need simple fixes. You know, they need something that they can
gravitate towards. And I think something like a jumping jack or promoting walking, I think,
is a great thing for people to get on board with. When it comes to the food, how do you coach
some of these older guys through the food category? Because I think a lot of people
get really comfortable with a lot of snacks and the modern foods that we have.
So journaling, I have guys write it down. So a new guy just signed up with
me and I just left him a message on the way up here actually and said, I need you to write down
everything you're eating. Not ideally what you think I want to hear, but what you have been
eating for two days. You know, there's studies that have come out that you guys know about that
have proven that when you journal it, that in and of itself is going to help you improve the way you
eat because you're like, Oh God, I didn't realize I ate a bag of chips.
So I don't ask people to change everything overnight.
It's just a subtle thing because it needs to be sustainable.
I don't think any of these diets that are out there in the world today are sustainable
for the average person.
I did a popular Reels video that blew up.
I said keto, intermittent know, all of them.
And people are like, oh my God, that's great. You know, those work for some people, but I'm
talking about the average guy that comes to me that's worked in corporate America for 30 years.
He's 50 pounds overweight. It's like, Hey man, just let's just cut it back a little bit. And
then I slowly get them to the point. So if you looked on my phone, I have a WhatsApp thread with guys
just prepping food now that have been in my coaching program that have now understood the
value of being prepared and having food ready for them. So it's about sustainability.
I guess meal prep is probably a big part of that, as you're mentioning.
Yeah. Well, you could use Icon Meals or prep it yourself.
My guys do both. Some of them use Icon Meals. Some of them use their own prepping.
I mean, one photo on my picture that I'm on my phone today, just beautiful.
Guy could start his own meal prep company. He's done such a great job.
Yeah.
And he came to me. He was ready to die, literally.
Wow.
The skill of cooking, you know, I think is something that's really left us. And I don't think that people need to be skillful at cooking necessarily.
But I think that people don't even know where to start sometimes with cooking eggs and cooking steak and burgers and things like this.
Chicken, they don't know how to make these things like flavorful.
Do you give them any tips on any of that stuff or what's some of your advice there?
Yeah, see how quickly you can pull up this video.
You guys are doing an amazing job on this.
But I did a video where I show the kitchen appliances that you need to have.
A rice steamer, a George Foreman grill, a Ninja blender.
So those things make it easy.
Who can't plug a George Foreman grill in, throw some garlic powder on top of the chicken, put those bad boys in there,
close the lid, and come back in 15 minutes.
There's no reason not to be able to cook.
Yeah.
So it doesn't need to be gourmet food.
It just needs to be something that you enjoy.
And I think most people would enjoy a nice chicken breast or even a thigh with some garlic
on it and salt and pepper, and that's it.
You could dunk it in whatever you want to dunk it into right there.
Look at this, how efficient we are around here.
We're big fans of air fryer.
Yeah, that air fryer.
Yeah, air fryer is great.
That's the best $179 I've ever spent.
You can put salmon and asparagus in there at the same time and I don't know how it figures
it out, but it cooks both of them perfectly.
That's genius.
I need the Clark Bartram air fryer.
Somebody endorse me.
I'm going to get on TV on QVC
and have the Clark Bartram air fryer.
Man, you mentioned chicken breast.
I can't remember the last time I had a chicken breast.
So what do your meals look like?
What do you eat on a daily basis?
So I'll get up.
This morning I had a handful of oatmeal
with some protein powder in it and some – what is that?
Egg whites?
No, no egg whites.
No egg whites.
The seasoning?
The protein powder.
Oh, PB2?
No.
What's the – like buckwheat.
One of those grains.
The flax seeds or something like that?
Yeah, one of those things, but it wasn't that.
Okay.
So I'll have that, and then in a couple hours,
I'll have some bison and sweet potato mash and some asparagus,
like typical bodybuilder-sounding food.
Yeah.
And I get it all sent to me.
Todd from Icon sends me my food, and I just pull it out of the freezer.
So I rotate between turkey breast, ground turkey, salmon, chicken, and bison.
Yeah.
And then with some green vegetable and maybe some sweet potatoes.
And you've been doing this for like decades or eating in that style forever.
Yeah.
I think the message of people reducing some of the fat that they get from some of their meats is probably pretty important.
It sounds like that's what you've done with your diet.
Yeah, for sure.
I mean, you don't want too much fat, right?
But there's some is good that's just naturally in the meat, right?
Anything that's around the edge that people love so much
when it's all burnt up, and we all love that taste,
but there you go.
It just gets easy to overdo it.
Yeah.
It gets easy to overdo certain foods,
or certain meats that have a lot of fat in them.
Right.
How are you, uh,
staying full on some of these lower fat foods? Um, cause like sometimes if I eat like an icon
meal, I'll kind of like look around and like, maybe I should have another one, but I do that
sometimes. Okay. The other day I ate two of them in a row. Yeah. I mean, well, first off, cause
they're freaking delicious. So that's kind of one of the, not an issue, but it's one of the things
that just makes you want to grab another one.
But what I've noticed for myself is when I have gone lower fat is I'll be kind of curious about what else I can eat versus when I have a little bit more fat, I feel a little bit fuller and I'm kind of almost disinterested in continuing to eat.
You know, I'll throw an avocado in there or some good fat, right?
Like all of this seems like information that's just been delivered a million times
over and over again.
But I don't think it has
because there are a lot of people out there
that still ask, what should I eat?
So we make this assumption
that everybody automatically knows,
but we do because this is the world that we live in.
But if I walked into,
like I wouldn't know how to do that.
So I would need to learn, you know,
and you get an expert or someone that's done it for a long
time to teach you how to do it. And it's, it's basic. It's so simple, right? When I've tried to
help people before, just depending on like the style of diet I may suggest to them, or depending
on what, what I say to them, their interpretation of what I said could be, you know, really off the
rails different. I, a lot of times I usually encourage people to eat whole foods,
um, for maybe like two weeks. Don't even really worry a ton about, uh, trying to eat a lot less because I found that the hardest thing for most people is that they're hungry and that they get
cravings. So I'm like, well, let's just make it real simple. And can you eat more whole foods?
Let's try that. Um, but then I'll ask him also to send me some pictures of their food
and they'll just have like these gigantic, you know, portions of food. And then I have to kind
of say, Hey, you know, we got, we got to trim some of this down. So I think that's some of the issue
when somebody recommends carnivore or keto or really almost any style of diet is that people
are going to take that and they're going to like run with it. They're going're going to have a 12-egg omelet with bacon and cheese and stuff like that
first thing in the morning.
You're like, I just don't think you're going to be able to burn those calories.
No, because they came to you inactive, right?
So then the first thing you do is tell them to eat.
Then they just say, oh, I can eat all I want.
And I love what you said about Whole Foods.
I used to travel with Jacqueline Lane.
Some people don't even know Jacqueline. That was my guy, man. We hung out and we had the same
contract with a company called Fitness Age. But Jack would always tell me, Clark, if man made it,
don't eat it. If man made it, don't eat it. And every time we went to eat, Jack would have a salad
with 10 vegetables. And if it didn't have 10 vegetables on it, he would politely have the waitress or the waiter take it back until he got his 10 vegetables.
So he's like, add more vegetables on this?
Add more vegetables. He needed 10 different vegetables on a salad. I'm like, what if they
don't have different vegetables back there? They had to figure out something because that
was Jack LaLanne, man. How are you going to tell Jack LaLanne no?
Wow. Let me ask this. Since you were close, what other, I guess, stuff was he doing that I guess maybe people don't know about?
Because that's really interesting.
I haven't heard any – we don't know anyone who's known Jack LaLanne.
Oh, man.
Jack and I hung out so much.
I got drunk with Jack LaLanne on his 89th birthday.
Really?
He lived to what?
99 or so?
He didn't make it to 99.
Elaine was just on my Zoom call a couple months ago.
She wrote the book about him.
But Jack, I remember him.
I went.
We had a – he was on a TV show with me, my show called American Health and Fitness.
And then we also did Armed Forces Network together.
We dressed him up like a drill instructor.
And Jack was this tall.
He made me feel – he was a little guy.
Were you on those bodybuilding
show type things on ESPN? Is that what you were on?
Yeah, I was on Kiana's Flex Appeal.
I remember those shows.
But I was at Jack's house, and
he was telling me, he invented Carnation
Instant Breakfast.
Really? That was his thing.
And he was telling
me, oh, there's so many stories
I have about Jack.
It's classic.
But he got onto these things.
He was always ahead of the curve.
Like even with lifting weights,
he got ridiculed for lifting weights.
He said, you know,
people would tell him you'll get muscle bound
and all that sort of stuff that they thought back then.
But he read about a tribe in Africa
that drank blood from cows.
The Maasai.
So he started drinking blood from cows.
And he said, Clark, I was on to this.
And he said, until I got a coagulated piece of blood and it was in my mouth, he said, that was the end of that for me right there.
Yeah.
That was the end of that.
He also invented the selectorized weight stack.
Wow.
Yeah.
That's really cool.
He was a pioneer.
I remember seeing like old videos of the TV show that he had years and years ago.
And I remember distinctly when he went over this one thing, I was just really blown away
by kind of the way he said it, the way he worded it.
And I just, I never looked at it this way, quite the same way as he did.
But he was like, I saw, saw you know i saw my dad kill himself
in front of my own eyes and i was like oh my god he's like he did so because he had diabetes and
he did it with food and he just kept feeding himself feeding himself until he i was like oh
my god like that's just but what an interesting uh interpretation like we don't i don't think
that we recognize that we are a lot of us are killing ourselves. Yeah. I did a Reels video about it the other day.
So a man will say, I'll die for my family. And I'm like, bro, why don't you live for your family?
You know, all this bravado, what good are you if you're dead? And the reality is if you don't make
a change today and start exercising and eating right, you are dying for your family one day at a time. And it's true,
and it might seem mean to say that, but our job as health practitioners is to get people's
attention. That's why I throw footballs. That's why I take my shirt off and do whatever I do or
say something bold to pattern interrupt people and get them to listen, because that's what it takes.
We're in such a busy world where people are so caught up with everything. And then we get all of this comfort, creature comforts,
and it makes it easy to not do what we should be doing to live a healthy life. And you don't
need to be jacked. You don't have to have abs and all that sort of stuff. You know, there's a saying
in sales, right? We've heard it before. Sell them what they want and give them what they need. So
I'll show my abs and say, hey, get abs.
But it's never about that.
Once they get into the program, then I deliver what they need.
So I teach five principles to my guys.
Mindset, meals, movement, community is a big thing for me, and integrity.
So that's what they get.
I'll never tell them get on a treadmill, eat white fish and asparagus, all that stuff.
That's the last thing I talk about when guys come and join me.
What's community about for you and the people that you share that with?
Most professional athletes, when they stop playing sport, don't miss the game as much as they miss the locker room.
So that's community.
So that's community.
The Marine Corps, when a guy spends 20 years serving his country in the Marine Corps or a woman,
they miss being on that ship together in a small, confined area.
Families, when they go on camping trips, fight and argue, but that's when they get the closest.
That's community.
Every big organization is based upon community.
The church, Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, NA, AA,
all of them. It's all about community because when I'm down, I need you. When you're down,
you need me. And I see it happen every single day. And it's specifically with the guys that say,
I don't need community. I just, you know, just tell me what to do. And I'm like, no, you need it more than you realize. And when you get a good one that serves you and loves you,
then you're going to understand the value of it. and then you're going to be an advocate for it and help me get other people in that community.
Well, obviously the people in your program have that community there.
But in what ways do you encourage – I'm assuming it's a majority of men that you work with.
Yes.
In what ways do you encourage them to find communities in their area or things to do?
How do you encourage them to build that?
Just start talking to people.
Most people put their heads down,
don't pay attention to anyone when they walk past them.
Open a door for somebody, look them in their eye.
If you're at Starbucks, you never know.
You might sit down, have a cup of coffee with them,
and then you've created a relationship
and somebody that you could benefit from
in some way, shape, or form.
Maybe it's a business relationship. Maybe it's some sort of counseling or something that you
need. Who knows, man? Mark's tired though. He's over here trying to stay awake.
I'm falling asleep because of what you're saying now.
No, it is that simple what you're saying. But it's like one thing, and we've had this discussion on
the podcast with different people. It's like a lot of young men are lonely, especially younger men. Like they,
a lot of them don't do things to get out and meet new people in the community. And they're spending
time alone at home, whether it's on the computer or whatever, like they just are spending more and
more time alone. And not only is that going to affect your health and your fitness, that's,
that's going to affect your, your long-term health in general. Yeah. You need people,
you know, that's how we're, you know, in communities, they say it's like 150 people
max is what the studies show.
That's all you really need.
So a gym, right?
You got about 150 people in the gym.
That's a community.
That's a relationship.
It's like-minded.
You had mentioned that earlier.
It's like-minded people in here doing the same thing that level each other up.
How were you able to – you know, nowadays people can monetize very easily
because they can be like an influencer. They just get like a big following and that does take
creativity. It does take time and things like that. But you've been doing this for a long time
and I'm sure that you, you've mentioned a couple of different things. You were on TV and how were
you able to like make a name for yourself? Cause it's difficult, right? Like, you know, you have,
sometimes you see people go down a career path where they're like a legendary
bodybuilder or something real specific.
How are you able to make a niche maybe even like when you started?
Yeah.
So before social media, right, all we had was magazine covers.
So there were probably five of us, me, Michael Hearn, Christian Boving,
Sebastian Siegel, Frank Seppi, right?
We were all fighting for magazine covers.
So that was a calling card, and you never got paid for those things.
People –
What?
No, no.
You don't make any money on a magazine cover.
The most I ever got paid for a magazine cover was 500 bucks from Bill Phillips before I got put on a contract for EAS.
Muscle and Fitness paid 300.
Think about it.
People will pay money.
I know people who have paid money to get on magazine covers.
We're narcissists at 100.
But I sat there one day and I said, okay, how much is it to advertise full page in a magazine? So back then it's like 30 grand to be in muscle and fitness.
And I'm thinking to myself, what's the front cover worth?
Okay, I'm not getting paid, but if the inside's worth 30 grand,
the front cover's got to be worth 100.
So now I've got a $100,000 advertisement for Clark Bartram.
What can I do with it?
So that was my mentality.
So I would take those magazine covers and show everybody I could,
and I was
getting endorsement deals before endorsement deals were a thing, right? You know, I was getting
contracts and turn it into TV shows. And I, I was just very methodical. You know, I thought about
everything that I did and I haven't worked. I mean, this is all I've ever done is fitness and
I'm still doing it today and making a living from it. And I feel very worked. I mean, this is all I've ever done is fitness. And I'm still doing it today and making a living from it.
And I feel very fortunate that I was just smart enough to know that there was something that I could benefit from with what I was given.
What was the TV show?
And what were you demonstrating?
So I was on Kiana's Flex Appeal first.
So I auditioned for that
and I won
three seasons
on her show
and
bring some of that
up
legendary
yeah
Kiana's Flex Appeal
Kiana's Flex Appeal
you don't remember that
bro
I don't know
he's 30
you're gonna be
interested
yeah
Kiana
yeah right there
that sounds like
you'll be interested
yeah
I'm pretty sure I'm in the, right there. Oh, man. That sounds like you'll be interested. Yeah.
I'm pretty sure I'm in the next right.
There I am.
Look at me.
There he is.
Hey.
They had these dudes that dressed me all the time.
Are those jean shorts?
I don't know what they were.
They're like, hey, put these on.
You're like, wait, what?
Yeah, exactly.
They dressed me up, and they had fun with it, man.
I was like their little Ken doll or something. But at least you got paid for this.
Oh, I got paid.
So this was in Maui.
We shot in Jamaica or somewhere too.
And then, so anyway, I did good on this show.
And all of the people on the set were like, Clark, you should have your own show.
You're really good at being on TV.
I was like, okay, how do I get my own show?
I'm not Kiana. So after we were on a break from the show, I had a buddy of mine in the gym.
Matter of fact, that gym that we saw when we first started here, he said, man, we were watching me on
TV. He's like, you're really good. You should have your own TV show. I'm like, people keep saying
this, but I don't know how to do it. He's like, well, I got a little bit of money in the bank.
I was going to produce something else.
Why don't we shoot a pilot episode?
So it was me and Monica Brandt shot a pilot episode
for my show, American Health and Fitness.
Monica Brandt.
Yeah.
Damn.
Yeah.
What?
Oh, man, we're just educating the history of fitness.
Monica still looks great.
She's fantastic.
I saw her at Gold's Gym
like nine million years ago
and almost died.
Yeah.
I just almost passed out.
She's amazing.
So we shot it
and the show was...
Anticipation's killing it.
Yeah.
I'm just like,
come on,
let me see what you're talking about.
There she is.
Wow.
Yeah.
Nice.
She looks very good. Yeah. She is the og fitness model right there there's a scene of her
and i running down the beach on the opening of our show and it's just like baywatch looking stuff
and it's like so yeah we shot it was a workout segment and the whole thread line through the show was it had to do with the body part.
So we would do like a chest workout and then we did a thing called trainer to trainer where it was like training the professionals.
And then the end – the payoff in the end was – I can't remember what we call it, but I would always be paired up with somebody in their field.
So the pilot episode, I went with the Navy SEALs,
and I did a run-swim run.
I went and did their obstacle course.
One week I'd be with an Olympic sprinter and race them,
and then I would be with a world champion wakeboarder
and try and wakeboard.
So the ending was fun.
I got to do all of these different things that just challenged me.
So, you know, trampoline people.
Yeah, it was fun.
Yeah. It was just being athletic. Right. So that was part of why I maintained that part of me. I even forgot that when you asked me that question, I had that TV show and I had to be at least
capable of doing these things that I was being challenged to do. Did you ever own a gym or want to own a gym? Yes, I've had gyms. I've opened gyms for people. And, you know, it's a struggle, man.
It's a passion over everything else and not necessarily a business.
It's not a business. And I hear young trainers now saying, I'm going to open a gym. And I'm like,
oh, I don't want to be a dream stealer. But that's the last thing you want to do
is open a gym. OK, you got five clients and you got one that's wealthy and says, Oh, you should open your own gym. And they're
going to fund you. But in six months, they're going to be bugging you for their money. I've
seen it happen a million times, you know, and it just doesn't work out. So yeah, I've had a few
and all my buddies are like, yeah, I'll join your gym. So I'm sitting there at 5am with nobody in
the place, but me and I'm calling them up and like, oh, yeah, I got three more months left at 24-hour
fitness. I'll see you in a while. I'm like, man, you told me you were going to come and join my gym.
It's only 30 bucks a month. Yeah. Yeah. You know, Clark, I'm curious about this. Like what do,
you know, you mentioned the food you eat and stuff, but what do your habits look like maybe
around your sleep when you wake up? Just what do your daily habits look like that have allowed you to stay so consistent and end up
where you are now? I go to bed at eight o'clock every night. Every night? Every night. My wife
gets mad. You're going to bed now? And I'm like, yes. What are we doing after eight o'clock?
Well, we watch TV. I'm like, I don't want to watch. I want to go to sleep. I'm in bed by eight.
I'm sleeping by 8.06. You're like, you're going to give me a reason to stay up or?
Yeah.
I'd still be sleeping by 8.06.
Snoring out cold.
So then I'll wake up between 4.30, 5 o'clock, and I get in a cold plunge.
Not all the time, but I get in a cold plunge.
I got in there this morning because I knew we were going to talk about it today.
I'm like, I can't not get in there.
So then I'll get in the hot and I'll do some red light therapy.
And I don't typically do any work until 7.
I like to set my phone on do not disturb from 8 p.m. to 7 a.m.
And then I'll do some morning stuff, some meditation while I'm in the hot tub.
Then I start
my day after that. I'll go to the gym
or I'll train some clients. I have a nice gym at the
house. We saw the video of that.
I'll have three or four clients that I'll
train on random
days, Tuesday, Thursday, or whatever. Then if
I'm not doing that, I'll go to the gym,
get a workout.
Typically, my workouts last about 20 minutes.
Then I'll do 30 minutes to an hour of cardio on the Stairmaster.
Then I come home, do my work.
I might have a coaching client to talk to, talk to my team, whatever.
Have you ever not done cardio, by the way?
Yes.
Yeah?
Yeah.
I'll stop from time to time.
But now I know that I need to when I look at my body and I know the things I want to do.
I'm going to do a couple photo shoots coming up here.
So cardio is necessary for me to do that.
But then, you know, that's my day.
Random stuff.
You know, I'm starting my podcast now.
So there's just different things throughout the day because I have different deals still.
Like I got a real good deal that just came up. I'm partnering with Russell Brunson. He's got
a new, you know, from ClickFunnels, he's got a new supplement line that he came out with and I'm
going to be the face of. So that's a huge opportunity there. And I work with Kelly Dunn,
you know, Kelly Dunn, your brother did the. I think he made some of your stuff out there.
I can tell by one of the little tincture bottle.
I can tell by touching it that he made it.
It's a very similar feel on that thing.
So yeah, I work with him.
I work with a company called Rebalance.
So between those different companies that I work with,
I'll do videos or some content for them,
and I'll go to the football field and throw the ball around or whatever. Yeah. That's it. So, I mean, your, your habits
have been super consistent and this makes me kind of curious. Cause like, I remember seeing a video,
one of the first videos I saw was Merrick shared a video of like you talking about your testosterone,
right. And you have still have high test and you mentioned you didn't do any HRT. And I
think it was like a year ago or something, right? But obviously, you've had solid habits for forever.
But what makes you, being 59, right? A lot of guys are like, oh, I'm over the hill. Maybe I
should get some HRT to optimize myself. What makes you not do that? Because I don't need to yet.
Not want to. Not need to yet. I don't need to yet. Is there ever a time you not do that? Because I don't need to yet. Not want to. Not need to yet.
I don't need to yet.
Is there ever a time you think you would?
Absolutely.
I'm pro HRT, TOT, as Jay Campbell calls it, when it's needed.
But here's my issue, and here's the problem that I have,
is too many men hear their buddy say,
oh, yeah, I got on this, and 20 pounds just dropped off,
and I feel great.
See, that's their experience.
That's not going to be your experience.
And until you adopt lifestyle principles that will aid in that,
people think that TRT is some sort of magic pill.
It isn't.
Here's what I'm thinking should happen.
You know when you go to a bariatric physician to do the thing, they say, oh, no, you got to lose 50 pounds before we do this surgery.
You're not healthy enough.
You're not healthy enough.
I think every man, like I just thought of this on the way up here because I knew we were going to talk about it.
Every man who's overweight that is expecting for TRT to help him lose weight should be required by their physician to lose 30 pounds first, 20 pounds first.
Come back to me after you lose 30 pounds.
Then we'll put you on.
Lose 10% of your body weight.
Yes.
Get it off because they think that's the problem is they think that's going to
knock it off without changing their lifestyle.
Not only will it not help you lose weight,
it's probably pretty likely if you don't
have good habits that you're going to gain weight. Yes. If you increase your testosterone, you're
probably just going to be more bloaty looking than anything else. Yeah. So I'm pro TRT and I
will do it when I go to my physician and they say, okay, and it's not even what they tell me
my levels are. It's how I feel.
Like if I don't wake up in the morning with a boner,
if I don't wake up in the morning with a zeal and excitement for life,
if I don't feel like I'm like, whoa, man, she looked good or whatever,
like just being a man, that's part of what we are,
and that's the testosterone in us.
The minute that starts to decline, I'm going to go find out what's going on,
and then I'm going to take actions that are appropriate. It's a tough thing though, because many men haven't felt that in years.
Yeah. And that's their normal already. Yeah. Well, and again, if they haven't yet changed their lifestyle, if they're not eating right, if they're not exercising consistently,
then they have no business, in my opinion, doing anything. And I've had doctors argue with me
before and say, Clark, we've helped so many men and they don't exercise and they don't eat right. And I'm like, you are
an idiot. If you allow one of your patients to not exercise and eat right, and you're giving them
an exogenous form of a hormone, I think you're in malpractice, in my opinion.
Yeah. I mean, food, their sleep, just having better, healthier habits.
Stress management, all of it, man.
Right.
And then from there, if somebody still wants to make the decision because they, let's say, they lost some weight and they're like, I want to look a little bit more jacked.
It's like, well, then maybe you do go that route, but also maybe in the process of building these habits and maybe having,
you could still have the TRT clinic assist you and help you. But maybe it's not that they're
just prescribing you testosterone right off the bat. Maybe they're giving you suggestions
on what you can do with your diet and what you can do with your sleep. Maybe they do look at
your blood and they say, wow, your like magnesium is really low. Let's figure out what's the reason why your
magnesium is low. What's the reason why your cholesterol is off? What's the reason why your
blood glucose markers are off? Those are all things that could be negotiated and worked on
without the use of any pharmaceutical drugs at all. So every man that comes to me, we suggest and we'll even pay for
a blood test with Merrick. So say you signed up with me today. We would say, okay, Mark,
we're going to have, when was your last blood test done? Because we're not just throwing stuff
at a wall hoping it's going to stick by saying do cardio and eat white fish and asparagus. We want
to know what your body is going through. And the only way to tell that is through blood.
That's why we partnered up with Merrick.
And that's why this opportunity I have with Russell Brunson,
we're going to be doing the same thing but prescribing supplements as opposed to hormones.
So there's two different things here.
So I want to cover all the angles with every guy that comes to me
so we know what
we're doing is the best care we can give them. I'm not a doctor, but when they get their blood
tested with Merrick, they consult with one and then they're given a course of action that's
appropriate for their specific needs. Right. And a lot of people don't do that. And we actually
pay for that depending on the level of you know membership they come in at what does
your work what does your workout look like do you kind of mainly do like bodybuilding style stuff
you didn't mention like doing body parts and stuff like that or do you strength train or how do you
usually do it i'm very instinctive so i don't have a set routine like i won't show up with a notebook
and say i'm doing chest and tries today i'll show up and I swear it's like a machine will talk to me.
I'm like, that seems good, and I'll go over and I'll just start doing it.
And I know it all comes out in the wash, right?
If I'm exercising consistently, it doesn't matter how I divide up my body parts
or what kind of split I'm on and all that kind of stuff.
People ask me these questions, what are your macros?
I don't even use that word unless I have to.
It's almost like moist to me.
It's gross.
Well, sometimes we need moisture.
Good point.
Just let it dry.
But my workouts are instinctive.
Some days I won't even go to the gym.
I'll go and do the sprints or I'll get on this frog machine.
You ever see that frog machine? Yeah, that thing's crazy. Oh, dude, I was the even go to the gym. I'll go and do the sprints or I'll get on this frog machine. You ever see that frog machine?
Yeah, that thing's crazy.
Oh, dude, I was the biggest advocate in the world.
I took that all over the NFL.
I challenged some of the greatest athletes on the planet on that thing.
See if we can bring up some video of that.
It looks killer.
It looks like it would.
I was the first one to make it across the football field doing this challenge.
I know.
I think Mike O'Hearn took a lot of shit for that, right, along with the duck eggs and stuff like that, right?
Well, that's where I found it.
I was at Mike's house one day, and I see this big wheel and rubber bands on his desk.
I'm like, what is that?
He's like, oh, he just kind of blew it off.
And then I went to an event, and I saw the thing, and I fell in love with it because it was just like a full-body workout, and you'd be done quick.
Yeah.
So, yeah.
So this is called the Ledavion Challenge. You go 25 yards, shoulders only, 25 yards, legs only, 25 yards pike, and then 25 yards kind of a thruster kind of a movement.
Are those like weights on the side?
What is that?
Are those 25-pound plates or something or is that just wheels?
Those are wheels.
And there's a clutch in the wheel that will allow it to move forward like that.
Oh, man.
And then those bands can be divided up in
different tensions. So this was my first time trying this. I failed miserably, but I was the
first person to make it across. I've seen people go 99 yards and stop. When that thing's done,
you're done. You can't do anymore. And the genius thing about this was those back wheels come off and that pad comes off.
And then you can stand up on those foot pads and do vertical movements as well as horizontal.
I'd be worried that I couldn't bail.
Like, how do you bail out of this?
How do you get away from the jigs?
I do a front roll and front roll off of it.
That looks like it burns.
You can just tell, yeah, everything.
Like your core, your hip flexors, like, aye, yi, yi.
Hell yeah, everything, like your core, your hip flexors, like, aye, yi, yi.
You know, while this is playing, is there any, do you feel like, obviously that's a new piece of equipment,
but do you feel like there's anything really new under the sun?
You mentioned like the cold therapy and stuff.
When's the first time you heard someone talk about like cold therapy or going into a sauna and some of these things?
They've been around for a pretty long time, right?
It's been around forever.
I mean, the Russians have been doing it for a long time.
Matter of fact, the first time I did it, I met this Russian guy on an airplane.
I was coming back from the Mr. Olympia contest.
I sat down next to him.
He's like, do you lift weights?
And I was like, no, I run marathons.
He's like, oh, okay.
Come to my gym.
So I go to his gym. He owned the old Jack LaLanne gym down in Claremont Mesa in the San Diego area.
So I show up.
This place is probably 50,000 square feet, and it was just me and him.
We're the only people in there.
So we start going through all these giravoy.
They're not kettlebells.
They're giravoy.
So he put me through a six-minute long-form workout.
My hands were bleeding.
So we go through this.
It said Russian hell on the wall.
He put me through hell.
So at the end.
I would have left when I saw that.
That would have been the longest spot.
Nice gym.
I should have left on the next thing.
We go into the locker room.
He gets butt ass naked.
Okay.
He's standing in there.
There's a cold pool and a sauna.
It's 190 degrees.
Come in.
Come in.
So I go in.
We're sitting in the sauna.
My nostrils were burning.
My lungs were burning.
One more minute, one more minute.
You can make it.
And I'm like, no, I'm going to die.
One more minute.
So I'm sitting in there.
So finally we get out.
And then he's like, dive in pool, dive in pool.
And I'm like, what?
Dive in pool.
And so I jump in the freezing cold water.
I had to swim the length of it, come back, go back in the thing. I'm like, what are Dive in pool. And so I jump in the freezing cold water, had to swim the length of it, come back, go back in the thing.
I'm like, what are you doing to me, man?
My hands are bleeding.
You're naked.
I'm freaking going cold water, hot.
So it was definitely Russian Hill.
But that was my first experience with contrast therapy.
And I use it every day now.
And I firmly believe, in in all honesty that's the reason
my testosterone levels
are going up
because I went from 721
to 874
with nothing
and people would be like
that's impossible
it is possible
to do that
not for every man
not for every man
but for this man
I wasn't one of those people
they tested that
after the age of 30
every man goes down
by 1%
will you accept that in your life? oh fuck no okay yeah there's another stat too that after the age of 30, every man goes down by 1%. Will you accept that
in your life? Oh, fuck no. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. There's another stat too, that after the age of
40, they say that you lose like two to 4% of your strength, but you don't have to. No. You don't
have to adhere to that. Like that's just, that's what happens to people that don't exercise.
Right. And people buy into it because they believe all of these things that we've been told just by osmosis.
Okay, I'm just going to get weak.
I'm just going to get old.
I'm just going to lose my hair.
I'm just going to be ugly.
I just can't bang no more.
I can't do all this stuff.
It's like, no, not me.
I think that is one thing that people do really forget.
You did just mention that, like the percent loss in terms of testosterone or the muscle loss, like those things are somewhat biological. But if you have good habits, if you have good habits, if you take care of yourself,
if you do things like exercising, which is not as common as people think it is,
you're not going to end up with the results of the average male because the average male isn't
doing all those things. Well, they're not testing any of us and or even people listening to the
podcast right now. They're not testing those type us or even people listening to the podcast right now.
They're not testing those type of people.
People that are listening are probably people that exercise.
They're not testing those types of people.
I think you mentioned that you're almost 60 years old.
So have you noticed a decrease in muscle mass and strength from when you were 25?
Probably, yeah.
I would be lying if I said I didn't.
And what about like body weight and stuff like that and said I didn't. Yeah. And it's partly due.
And what about like body weight and stuff like that?
And I don't know, body fat percentage?
So I've been 185 like forever.
I could look bigger, look smaller, and I'm like 185 consistently.
Now, back in the day, I did do steroids back in the 80s, right?
I was 230 pounds then.
Shit.
Okay?
Wow.
I was strong then. I, you know, we were doing crazy stuff.
I remember my first experience with that. I was so scared. This fricking big power lifter guy in
the gym's like, Hey, come over to my place. I go over and he had just this closet full of stuff.
And he's like, you want some? And I didn't take any of that. But my roommate guy by the name of
Pete Revis was getting ready for the Mr. North County bodybuilding.
So I'm watching him, and I'm seeing his body change.
And I still was just barely out of the Marine Corps, working at the gym, had a good physique, but I wasn't jacked or anything.
So I snuck in his room one day, and he had a bottle of Anovar.
So I took one little Anovar one day.
I went back the next day.
I took another little Anovar the next day and then another one.
Three days.
He's probably like, damn, I'm going through this.
Three days I went in and bench pressed like 315 pounds 10 times because I was convinced I was on steroids.
I didn't know anything.
I was just like, man, I'm going to get jacked and strong now.
And I did.
Right?
So the placebo effect is a big thing too, right?
It really is something.
But you're sure that was Anuar?
Yeah, it was 100% Anuar.
Okay, okay.
You mentioned –
Little football-shaped blue things.
You mentioned 185.
Then you mentioned like 230 for a bit.
So aside from like the 230, like what's your body weight now?
Are you still around the 185 mark? 185, yeah. Yeah, so you've been able to sustain a bit. So aside from like the 230, like what's your body weight now? Are you still around the
185? Yeah. Yeah. So you've been able to sustain a lot. Um, obviously there's things like, uh,
from our youth that are gonna, you know, our skin and things like that. And maybe, um, uh,
because you were bigger at a certain point, maybe the skin doesn't come back the same way,
but relatively, do you feel like you're similar strength and similar size?
How do you feel?
I feel great.
I mean, I'm formidable, right?
For a 60-year-old guy, basically, I would say I'm in the upper percent for strength and speed and agility
and all of these different things.
And the hand-eye coordination, too, is something that you kind of alluded to earlier,
throwing the football or going out and playing catch or something like that.
We don't do that when we get older.
It's a big deal.
When my clients come over, I have a wiffle ball and a wiffle bat.
I have a 78-year-old guy holding a wiffle bat in my driveway hitting it.
He's like, why are we doing this?
I said, because you need hand-eye coordination you need balance you need proprioception you need
all of these things that lifting a weight ain't gonna do for you really good for your eyesight
in general it's all of that man i have them bouncing on trampolines and i i have a little
rebounder and i make them bounce a ball back and forth. And I just got one of those earthquake bars and have them
wobbling around. I just have fun doing different things. So my workout, back to that question,
I might see that thing sitting in the corner and go, okay, I'm going to have fun with that. And
then just play and do different things. And that becomes my workout. I coined it metabolic mayhem.
I just, whatever.
Whatever I decide to do, I'll round up four or five different things and we'll just go through a little circuit and have fun.
Is there anything that you avoid?
Like are there things where you're like, I just, you know, I'm just not going to do that exercise again because I get hurt every time I do it kind of thing.
Are there a couple things you have eliminated over the years or not really?
I don't squat heavy. Like I won't back squat heavy.
I'll belt squat heavy. I just don't back squat heavy. I'll belt squat heavy.
I just don't, I'm already short enough.
I'm not trying to get shorter.
You know what I'm saying?
So yeah, I'm thinking the belt squat
will even kind of put me in a little bit of traction.
So that's kind of the way I think
in doing heavy back squats.
I believe we think similar, right?
Okay, good.
Yeah, we think similarly.
I think there's just a cost associated
with all this stuff so you know you want to go deadlift a heavy weight uh maybe that's your thing
and if that's your thing then uh by all means go at it like hell and go at it with everything that
you got but if you're not um going to compete in deadlift and it's really not a huge deal whether
you squat 500 pounds for reps or whether you can squat 400 pounds for reps,
then I just kind of think like, why worry about it so much? Maybe,
maybe start to explore some different things. Maybe explore like, how am I going to, how am I
going to, you know, move this kettlebell through this particular range of motion, maybe explore
some other things. But there is a factor in, in, in all of this too, with doing what's fun.
is a factor in all of this too with doing what's fun. And so if you like something,
then don't let anybody slow you down from doing it, regardless of what they're saying. Like I love squats. I love deadlifts. And I understand the reasons why people love to do them and continue
to do them. But I do see a lot of people lifting heavy to their detriment. And you're like, man,
it just sucks because you just
keep breaking yourself down. You're making yourself stiffer. I don't think you're doing
yourself any more favors by doing it. But again, it does matter what people like to do. So if you
like it, then I guess continue on your way. Yeah. My buddy yesterday, he said, you want a deadlift?
And I'm like, sure, I'll deadlift with you. I was thinking 225 at the most. So I got a phone call.
I walked out and he had like
three plates i'm like i'm gonna go do something else i'm not trying to make you take weights off
and i'm certainly not jumping in there i i'm gonna check out and i don't care what anyone here
thinks you can call me a bitch you can call me whatever but you know we take our shirt off and
see who looks better again it's not worth the four weeks of uh limping around or having your
back thrown out or whatever it might be.
No, not at all, man.
Are there any, I'll say, old school bodybuilding concepts that you even believed in and they were just kind of like, these are all definite truths.
Nobody can move around these, but looking back at them now, even though you are in great shaping, everything's working well, you're moving well.
Now, even though you are in great shape and everything's working well, you're moving well,
is there anything that maybe that you subscribe to that looking back you're like,
damn, maybe I'd be in, I don't know, less pain here or there, or maybe something might be better off if I wasn't doing that stupid thing that we used to believe in back in the day?
Drugs.
Steroids.
Like I said, I did it back then.
And I did it because it was almost a rite of passage in the
80s. It wasn't a
type one or
schedule one, whatever it is.
Everyone had them and we did them.
We could get them from doctors. All you had to do was go to
a doctor and let him give you a physical. He'd check
your balls at some doctor
in LA and he'd give you all this stuff, man.
I'm like, oh, I'll go get a physical
that the dude look at my balls for steroids.
Clip that.
So, you know me and your brother did a movie together.
He got clipped out when you said clip that.
He did World's Finest with me when we did the Batman thing.
We played construction workers together.
Oh, shit.
Yeah. We were standing there next. Oh, shit. Yeah.
We were standing there next to each other holding things, just kind of waiting for them to shoot us.
And that was it.
How about in the gym, though?
Outside of steroids, anything in the gym?
Something back in the day?
Not really, because I never really did all that craziness, man.
I knew better, you know.
Power Project family, how's it going?
Now, we like to look good in the gym and out of the gym.
That's why you always see Mark and I and Andrew
is stepping up on the short, short game,
wearing shorts from Viore and clothes from Viore.
And honestly, the number one compliment that I've seen,
that I've gotten and even Mark's gotten is,
damn, your butt looks good.
And that's because, well, the clothes we wear make our booties look delicious.
Andrew, how can they get it?
Yeah, you guys both have pretty big wagons.
You guys can head over to Viori.com slash Power Project.
That's V-U-O-R-I dot com slash Power Project to receive 20% off the most amazing apparel that looks so good inside and outside of the gym.
It's going to make your ass look fat.
And your ass will look fat.
Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes.
God damn it.
That's a good one.
That's a good one.
It's going to make your ass look fat.
What about what's stood the test of time?
Stood the test of time as far as beliefs.
Just being consistent.
It's really basic, right?
All of this stuff is so basic.
I don't think there's anything new under the sun since Jack LaLanne.
You know, Jack would just tell me, Clark, man, the thing he told me is every four to six weeks.
Clark, your students, he always called them students.
Make sure you tell your students every four to six weeks to change their workout.
Okay, you understand that?
I don't understand this, Clark.
A man will give his dog the best food in the world, but in the morning he'll get up and have a cigarette and a donut.
It doesn't make any sense, Clark.
I'm curious about this, Clark, because someone will mention this in the comments.
So you mentioned like you did some Anabar back in the 80s.
This is what everybody did.
Okay, I know what you're going to say.
They're going to say, well, look, the residual effects.
So what are your thoughts on that?
It's dumb.
It's dumb because we talked about lifestyle.
So if I wouldn't have maintained a lifestyle,
you think a little bit of testosterone back in the 80s and free Anabar,
and I certainly did more than that, right?
But that's not going to last. It's like
taking a shower is not going to make you not stink for the rest of your life. Or going to
the dentist once is not going to make you never have a cavity or saying your wedding vows and
not doing stupid things is not going to keep you married. There's certain things you need to do
in order to stay that way. Yes. And if I got on something today, I would absolutely blow up.
And this is what a lot of people would say, right?
I'm very sensitive to things.
I mean I respond.
I don't even really take a lot of supplements.
I don't.
I'm just not consistent with it.
So I think that's a stupid comment from people.
I think it's ignorance.
I think people just want to point at someone and go, there's no way,
because maybe they couldn't have attained it themselves
or they don't think it's possible or for whatever reason.
I don't know why.
But I have no reason to lie to anybody about anything that I'm doing currently.
And for someone to think that what I did in the 1980s is lasting today
is ridiculous, man. I would go as far to say that if someone can, someone could probably do
something for 10 years straight, they could take steroids for 10 years straight. If they were 10
years removed from taking those steroids, you wouldn't see hardly any residual effects of the
steroids they took 10 years prior. Well, we see people like that. There are people out there that we know that have been jacked
and are no longer jacked, right?
Yeah, you don't get to keep it.
It doesn't really work.
It doesn't work that way.
It's a certain signal that your body gets,
and then you're able to train a certain way,
and the two things go together.
And certainly if we're just talking about if you did stuff for a few weeks
and then you are able to hold it for a few months and things like that,
or you take stuff for two, three years, and you're able to hold it for a couple months while you're natty or whatever, of course you would be able to do that.
It's not going to dissipate that quickly.
whatever you did for however long you did it will probably almost all be gone unless unless you have a lot of really good habits and unless you are still giving your body some signaling through
some other means so maybe you're still lifting heavy and maybe you're still doing like everything
really really well well but still most of the way that you looked while you're on steroids versus
the way you're going to look when you're off steroids would be drastically different. You don't get to keep them. I've
never seen it happen with anybody.
There you go, people.
Bam.
This is going to –
Mic dropped.
I'm not trying to be mean or anything, but an example of that is Pete Rubish.
Because Pete Rubish has been totally off for a while and he looks good, don't get me wrong,
but when he was on, he was insane. I've been talking to him more recently and he's good don't get me wrong but when he was on he was insane i've been
talking to him more recently and he's been like power lifting pete rubish used to be a power lifter
and at a very young age i mean this guy was ripping up some crazy weights mid 800 pound
deadlifter just an absolute monster and he was very forthcoming very open about steroid use and
abuse and things like that and um they just sent him off in like a bad path.
Like he just wanted to get off of them.
I think they were not good for like his mental health.
So anyway, he got rid of them and now he still power lifts.
And he messaged me the other day.
He's like, I think I'm kind of like done power lifting
because I can't really do it.
I'm kind of like banging myself up without what he was using before.
You know, he was doing it a certain way.
And now he's trying to do it a different way.
And he doesn't know how to do it this different way.
So he's like, I think I'm going to bounce from this.
I'm going to bounce out of it.
He's actually asking me about running.
I've seen him doing running on treadmill and stuff.
Like he's running pretty well.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. So it's just – again, you're going to see people if they go off steroids, they're not going to really have – they're not going to be able to keep much around for a very long time.
Well, what's 230 minus 185?
50 something.
Okay.
But there's one interesting thing too.
It's like you mentioned obviously not maintaining all that muscle, but there's also like the mental aspect. If like you've trained and let's say you were using a lot of PEDs and you got to this superhuman level, well, what happens when you don't necessarily have that superhuman level of assistance?
Can you still – do you still feel good training in the gym?
Do you still feel good lifting?
Do you still feel good doing all these activities?
And that's something that you need to come to terms with if you're choosing to first off go down the route of using PEDs and steroids. But then at the point when you come off, you got to be okay with that difference.
So many people match their identity with what they do.
And so I would say for a lot of people, that would be very unhealthy.
It would be very unhealthy for their mental health. You know, for me, I was, I did my powerlifting career a very specific way
and I lifted the weights I lifted and then I was able to just transition into different stuff. Now
I just, I don't care what I lift. And I think that people hear that and they're like, oh, I'm sure he
still cares about like, I kind of care about what i lift within a given workout to get
a good stimulus um but no i don't really care i i i just i worked all that out of my system at some
point yeah it's like i'm rocky right he's like there's still something in the basement you know
it's all out of the basement you close that chapter it's done you moved on right and that's
a problem with a lot of professional athletes is they haven't moved on. I know a lot of guys, a lot of friends that are still trying to live in those old days, right?
And it doesn't serve us well to do that.
We just got to be able to move on.
It sounds like you have like a simple message, a lot of consistency, a lot of old school habits,
journaling, eating multiple times a day probably so you're not getting too hungry,
getting your protein requirements in and these different things and having your sleep organized
and being consistent with your weight training and stuff like that.
What about when it comes to like supplementation and things like that?
Have you noticed anything that has been really something that's been effective for you?
So I take a product right now called Rebalance to balance my cortisol levels because that's
an area that a lot of people don't think about.
And men don't ever think about hormones, right?
We talk about testosterone.
That's the only hormone men ever think about is testosterone.
But there's a whole bunch of other ones, right?
And cortisol is one that because we're stressed out, not if we're stressed out, because we're stressed out, that we should look into and manage.
And that's another reason I have guys take blood tests.
And that's another reason I'm excited about this other opportunity I have to provide people supplementation through their blood work.
So this Rebalance product, there's a lozenge in the morning, afternoon, and evening.
And each of them has certain nutrients in it to provide energy in the morning.
And I had mentioned to you that I don't drink coffee or do any kind of drinks,
any more energy stuff.
And then there's one in the evening to kind of just bring you down a little bit to chill
where most people would have a glass of wine.
Oh, I come home, I like to have a glass of wine.
This is in essence a glass of wine. Oh, I come home. I like to have a glass of wine. This is in essence that glass of wine. And then before bed, you take one to help you
sleep consistently through the night to go through all the sleep cycles. And I'll tell you, last
night, my sleep was so vivid and I had such lucid dreams. I can almost control. I can can i can control my dreams i'm sleeping but awake and in a dream that is
absolutely amazing and it's because i'm providing my body the nutrients that it's been lacking so
i'm not into all of these performance supplements i'm into more that are going to you know for
longevity and quality of life not necessarily just being jacked.
So it's called Rebalanced?
Rebalanced.
I'm curious what's in it.
A lot of stuff.
People are going to have to go online.
I don't know.
There's just a lot of ingredients.
You know, there's adaptogenic herbs in there,
and there's different ashwagandha and things.
So, yeah, it's really cool.
Yeah, it really is a good product.
And it's a lozenge. in the delivery mechanism is really what makes sense because you're you're sucking on this lodge and so you're
not swallowing it and having it absorbed by your stomach acid you're just slowly letting those
nutrients absorb in through your tongue and your mucus membranes which is some of the most
absorbent places in your body, and then it gets in there
and can actually go to work.
So I've seen the difference.
A lot of people are using it and saying, Clark, I'm sleeping so much better.
Have you gone down the rabbit hole of organic and grass-fed and switching out deodorants
that have aluminum in them and toothpaste and things like that?
Yeah.
So I'm part of a company called Legendary Men's Care.
And we have a toothpaste that we started off with
where we took out all the endocrine disruptors.
So you can go on and see Legendary Men's Care there.
And we're coming out with an entire line of taking out all of those things,
like aluminum and some of the other endocrine disruptors and chemicals.
Look at that.
Isn't that ad great?
Right there with the toothbrush.
So, you know, and we don't think about,
you swallow 7% of your toothpaste every time you brush.
So you're putting this in your mouth, hopefully twice a day,
and you're swallowing all of these chemicals that are not necessary
to make your teeth whiter or make them cleaner.
Like suds, for example, are not necessary to help you clean your teeth.
So there's other things in other toothpaste that claim to be natural
that aren't really natural.
Some of the oils, well, they might be natural,
but they're not necessarily good for the male hormone system.
So then next we're going to come out with a soap and then an exfoliant.
Guys don't exfoliate their face.
I'm big into exfoliation and skin care and stuff like that because I want to look good.
You must exfoliate.
I mean I use face scrub and shit, but yeah, like these guys don't like using anything.
It's just another thing.
Yeah, I got to add it in.
I know I should.
So that's why we're doing one product for that, and that's a meeting that we had with my partners is like, it's got to be one thing.
It can't be do this, this, and that.
It's got to be one thing for a dude.
Yeah, you don't want the Michael Hearn 15-step thing you're doing before you go to bed every night.
None of that stuff.
No eye cream?
No eye cream.
He cakes it on and leaves it, right?
I don't know.
He said that on our podcast.
That's the makeup he leaves on.
on and leaves it, right?
I don't know.
He said that on our podcast.
That's the makeup he leaves on. Yeah.
He was probably in a little Michael Horn makeup room back there somewhere.
But yeah, so those things, and I try and eliminate things like that, right?
I'm not obsessive about it and I didn't go organic with the food.
I eat, right?
I mean, I eat food.
If it's available and it's there, I'm going to eat it.
I'm not going to eat the crap.
But who knows if stuff is organic anyway, right?
There's all that argument that's going on right now.
There's a brand called Organic.
That's just the name of their brand.
They don't say they're organic, I don't think.
That just might be the name of the brand.
So we buy into things that may or may not.
Like we shouldn't be drinking out of these bottles right now.
Yeah, plastic bottle or whatever.
Yeah.
May or may not.
Like we shouldn't be drinking out of these bottles right now.
Yeah, plastic bottle or whatever.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, I mean, I don't want to be scared to live, but I'm going to do the best I can with what I have available to me.
And sometimes ignorance is a little bliss in a way, you know, because I could go down the Internet and watch one guy talk about testosterone, for example, because I study that stuff all the time.
One guy is like really convincing and I go like this on TikTok or Instagram. The next guy is saying the complete opposite. I'm like,
who do I believe? Myself. How do I feel? How do I look? Am I waking up like ready to live life?
So nobody can argue with me about that. Did your kids end up practicing some of the same things that you practice? Yeah, my son, he's an athlete.
As a matter of fact, his football career just ended.
My daughter's an athlete.
She's probably the best athlete in the family.
She was track and volleyball and CrossFit,
and now she does pole dancing,
and she's just a badass on there.
So yeah, they follow along,
and they enjoy staying fit and healthy,
and mom trains people.
And for all the guys, pole fitness is a thing.
Pole fitness is a thing.
You mentioned pole dancing.
They're like, she's a pole dancer.
Pole fitness is a thing.
And I still don't want to see her on the pole.
I saw on Instagram the other day.
I'm like, oh, my God, dude, really?
I have to unfollow my daughter.
My buddy calls me.
He's like, dude, I saw your daughter's Instagram.
I'm like, shut up, bro.
I didn't want to hear it.
You're like her godfather, you weirdo.
My girl has a pole at home.
It's a pole and a lira thing because she likes that pole fitness.
To have her follow my daughter, Taylor Bartram, photography or the goddess within or something like that.
She's a badass.
Taylor Bartram photography or the goddess within or something like that.
Yeah.
She's a badass.
How do you suggest people,
um,
make better choices at home when, uh,
maybe the rest,
maybe they have a family and the rest of the family is not like,
uh,
on board with this,
uh,
new venture of fitness that someone might want to go down.
Yeah.
First thing I would say is don't say anything to anybody,
right?
Like don't make a big announcement and don't try and convince other people to
live your lifestyle, live your lifestyle and don't be influenced by those people. Like make
a decision that this is something that you're going to do. Set goals for yourself. I mean,
in the office, there's going to be donuts always. There's always a reason and always an excuse. And
a family can't necessarily be something that trips you up because the bottom line, a man needs to be
there for his family. A man is meant to be strong and be bold and confident and all of these things we need to
be. And I don't believe you can be all of that if you're not feeling as good about yourself as you
know you should be. I'm not going to say if you're fat, I'm not going to say if any of those things,
none of that matters. If you don't feel confident, you don't feel strong, you don't feel capable,
you're not going to be as good of a father and a husband as you could be.
I signed up a guy the other day in my program.
He was on my Zoom call, and he said, you know, I'm a cop,
and I just don't feel like I could defend myself the way I could 10 years ago today.
That's why I joined this program.
He said, I'm too heavy.
I'm too slow.
I'm not athletic enough.
that's why I joined this program.
He said, I'm too heavy.
I'm too slow.
I'm not athletic enough.
So, yeah, just got to decide, man.
I was going to ask, like, for some of these older clients that are coming to you,
on this podcast we're kind of on the same wavelength as far as, like, just because we're older doesn't necessarily mean things are going to fall apart
because someone else said so. But how are you making sure that everyone is staying safe and
staying healthy in the gym? Right. Cause a setback is, I mean, no, you just explained it. Like we,
nobody, everybody feels like shit when that happens. So how are you making sure everyone
is doing things the correct way and safely? By example, when my guys are on my zoom calls with
me, I tell them very clearly,
like I'm very transparent with them. And I say, we're not out of your set records. We're not
out of your show off for anybody. I can't have you get injured. I had a guy hurt his back a
little bit. He joined one of these F45 gyms, not that it was the gym's fault or anything like that.
He just joined that gym, jumped into the deep end of the pool and hurt his back a little bit.
And I said, didn't I tell you not to do that?
I told you to go slowly.
And the thing that I need to do with men is hold them back from themselves.
Like, oh, I used to be a college athlete.
I'm like, bro, that was 30 years ago.
You haven't been a college athlete in 30 years.
That's great that we can get you there again, but it ain't happening overnight.
So that's why I say sell them what they want and give them what they need.
When they get into the system, then I reveal to them like, this is going to be longer than 12 weeks. It's going to be a year, maybe two years in some cases. So it's really monitoring them.
And that's why I have all the groups, the WhatsApp group, the Zoom calls, and a whole
lot of connectivity with them. And a lot of people do want the 12-week thing, right? It's hard. How are you getting them to buy in to say like, hey, it's going to take a year and it's never
going to end. This is now your life. You do such a great job during the 12 weeks that they don't
want to leave you. You over-deliver. My dad taught me when I was young, he sold cash registers.
And I remember him walking into a 7-Eleven one day and he was just going to change
the tape, right? In the cash register. And he came out and he said, listen, son, he said, you know,
it doesn't matter how I feel about that person in here. They paid me to do a job and my job is to
outperform however much they paid me for that job. And I'll never forget that. And that's how I've
conducted my business. So if someone pays me,
you know, a thousand dollars to train them, they're getting $3,000 in service.
But what I do in all honesty, and this might sound corny is I love my guys. I really love them and
they love me. And we have a relationship that's been established that they don't want to leave.
And it's not because I want them to stay like for money. I want them to stay because I know what happens
after someone busts their ass for 12 weeks
and then quits and goes back to normal life.
Oh, I gained all my weight back.
I got to start over.
So many guys have come back.
So it's my job to give them the best possible experience
and then they won't go anywhere.
You mentioned mindset being a big part of it
for a lot of the people that are joining.
What do you go over with mindset?
Do you share stoicism or quotes with them?
It depends on the situation.
So when we have an initial Zoom call together to bring you on board, I'll kind of get an idea of who you are and what you believe.
Like if you're not a God guy, I'm not going to throw scriptures at you.
If you're not into whatever.
So I'm pretty intuitive to throw scriptures at you if you're not into whatever. So I'm pretty
intuitive when it comes to that. But the main thing that I'll do for them is just really listen
and provide whatever I think is necessary in that moment. Like we just had a guy recently was
struggling with some stuff and he was, you know, he's a Christian guy and I just prayed with him. And that was what was needed in that moment.
And he appreciated it so much.
So it's person by person and situation by situation.
And it really just depends on the moment, right?
It's not a one-size-fits-all model.
So it's really individualized.
That's some good insight because you've been working with people almost all your life.
Insight B is like you've been working with people almost all your life.
And I mean in the age of like online fitness where people can just do the same thing for every single person that they work with, I think that kind of shows your experience in the realm because like you treat everybody like an individual.
As you should, right? Because everybody is.
Then there's the community aspect, right, where they come together and it's collective and we have these big Zoom calls.
So I'm just doing what I'm doing.
And I'm telling them in that moment, like, hey, if I say something that doesn't resonate
with you, don't think that's this entire program.
This is just me speaking my truth.
My truth doesn't need to be your truth.
But if you have something that is important to you, you know, bring it up to me and we'll
connect on that level.
So, you know.
Let me ask you this, because we kind of just brushed over it when you mentioned it.
But you mentioned your test went from seven something to eight something and was that – you said that was because of cold plunging?
Yeah, I believe so.
I don't have any way to verify that.
Yeah.
But it's the only thing I changed in my life.
Yeah, there's other people who have reported that.
And I think there was also a guy that reported that he was able to he had a prostate issue i believe it was doing like 90 seconds every day for a while so there
are more and more people uh having testimonies like this yeah i mean cold waters yeah it works
it's funny because i have heard those things too but it's just when somebody says that it's like i
the internet will just come down on them for that. Even though like that may
very well be the reason. And it's like, there's no research to back it up, but it works well for
some people. There is some research. There is. Yeah. There's, there's research that's coming out,
but here's the deal. I don't care about research. I don't care about science. I don't care about
any of that. All I care about is Clark Bartram and what I get from it. Yeah. And if I say it
to somebody else and they benefit from it. And the reason I did it is because I talked to a guy that I believe and trust 100%.
He said, bro, my test is up over 1,000, and I swear to you on my life,
I don't do anything.
All I'm doing is the cold plunge.
Really?
Give me one.
And I got one.
Damn.
The plunge, that real nice one.
Huberman owns it.
He owns everything. That's so good. nice one yeah uh huberman owns it are you concerned about it you know because what we hear a lot after we talk about cold plunging is like oh but you can't do it after your workout it's going to blunt your gains you should do it
before your workout oh there you go that's the science now yeah don't because i listened to
huberman the other day he's talking about has's some – I ran into him at Gold's the other day too.
He said, DM me.
I'll get back to you.
He never got back to me.
He's a busy man.
Yeah.
Yeah, he's doing a lot of great work.
What are some of the great training partners that you had over the years?
I'm sure you've had your –
Jack LaLanne.
Come on, man.
Who could get better than that?
Lifting weights with Jack LaLanne.
That was legendary.
So O'Hearn will ask me to come up and live with him, but I'll be on a separate place.
I'm not even going near what he's doing.
Come on.
I don't want no part of that, man.
But no one really.
I mean honestly, I've never really got into it that much
I wasn't like that guy I just always lifted I don't really like lifting
weights I enjoy the result you had mentioned that earlier I I don't look
forward to it I see all of my buddies that just live for the gym. I don't live for the gym,
man. I don't. I love the benefit. Every once in a while, I'll enjoy the workout,
but I'm not like coming and coming and coming. I'm just freaking working out, man, because I want to
continue to look good the rest of my life. I like looking good. That's more addictive to me than lifting weights.
That's okay.
That's awesome.
Where do you have – where does somebody start?
Somebody's listening.
Where do they start?
Because I know for me, like when people ask me, they'll just like rush up to me and start talking to me about diet.
Other times they're just going to talk about like how much cardio I should do.
Others, how much lifting I should do.
Where do you – yeah, where do you typically have somebody start? With a realistic assessment of where they're at. You got to know exactly where you're at in order to know what to do next. We can't all
jump in at the same place, right? We have to slowly move our way in. And that's why an assessment is
important when you're working with somebody. When guys come in, I sit down, I do an hour long zoom call. We have a long
conversation and I get beyond all the BS, right? Of the college, blah, blah, blah. Okay. I get it.
Where are you at today? When was the last time you exercised? What are you eating? How are you
feeling? How much time do you have to commit to this? What's realistic? What's sustainable?
So once we get all that data, right? Cause the world's driven on data. If you don't have the data, you don't
know what to do next. So I have that. And then I put a program and I'm saying, okay, all I want
you to do is two circuit training workouts a week. You're one body part all the way through a circuit.
Well, I want to do more than that. No, no, no, no, no. Slow down. We're not going to do this
overnight. And that's the big problem that people make is they just want to go all in. So I, like I said, I hold people back more
than anything. So just being realistic about where you're at. Yeah. Do you have to work with anybody
that has like a night shift job? Yeah. Lots of guys. How do you tackle like their sleep and that
sort of thing? I had a doctor on my zoom call the other day. We talked about that. And he was just saying, look, man, it takes time to get your circadian rhythm back in order, especially if you're on a swing shift.
It's almost impossible to do that because by the time you're getting your circadian rhythm in order, then you switch back to 12 to midnight or whatever the shift is.
And then you're screwed up.
So you just kind of have to manage it.
Have you been able to avoid injuries?
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Thankfully.
Never tore anything?
No.
No.
You know, I've played rugby.
A tweak here or there maybe?
Yeah, wrist, playing rugby in the Marine Corps and stuff like that.
But in the gym, no real injuries.
What do you maybe contribute that to?
Being smart, not letting my ego get in front of me
and trying to do things that I know I'm not capable of.
Like I'll stop.
And people are like, come on, whatever.
And I'm like, no, I'm done.
I'm good.
I don't need this.
And guys will keep pushing.
And I know when I'm done, I'm done.
And I don't push myself.
But there are times I do stupid things too.
Like the other day we were playing football and I was doing a live and some guy was trolling me.
And I said, oh, 619, you're in the area. And my son was right next to me. I said, come to
Escondido high school, you punk. My son's like, what's wrong with you? Guy might come with a gun.
I'm like, man, don't. So yeah, I do stupid stuff. So that could have been detrimental.
That's crazy. What about like today's fitness?
Is there anything that bothers you?
Because you were just talking about like social media and stuff.
You've been able to navigate that pretty well.
Is there anything that's bugging you about today's fitness world?
Yeah.
So there's just – I see a lot of people in the gym.
Well, okay.
So I want to do a YouTube thing,
and I'm going to call it What's in Your Bag, Bro?
Because everybody's got a damn backpack on full of stuff,
and I'm wondering what do you need to bring into the gym
that requires a full backpack?
I really want to do it.
What's in your bag, bro?
And have them zip it open.
So the other day I was up on the Stairmaster,
and I'm looking down, and this girl walks in,
and she's got the bag with all the stickers, athlete, all that sort of stuff.
And she zips it open and she pulls out and there's glass high heel shoes in there. Right? So now I
know she's practicing walking or whatever, but it just blows me away. One dude's got a bag,
I swear to God, it has to weigh 150 pounds. It hangs down to the edge of his leg.
It's beating the side of his leg.
And I'm like, what is in there that weighs so much?
He's got his smelling salts and his wraps and his straps and a roller.
And I'm like, I don't know, man.
There's just too much extra stuff happening to me.
I don't know.
I'm a minimalist.
I was like, go.
I do it.
I did four sets on your prime machine in there.
That thing was amazing.
I loved it.
That's all I needed.
I'm good.
You know what I mean?
Didn't require a bag, backpack, none of that.
No, that's a huge way to avoid it.
They love your slingshot, though.
I got a guy in the gym the other day, but I saw him kind of mess up on it somehow.
It came off his arm and one arm went up.
He did something wrong.
He needs a lesson on how to use it.
Got to give him instructions.
I was doing push-ups with it the other day.
A guy said, hey, try this and do push-ups.
I'm like, I do push-ups for five days with this thing.
Right, right.
You can do a million of them.
Yeah.
You got anything else over there, Andrew?
No, I'm good, yeah.
Just bored with me now?
All right.
No, you did great.
Thank you so much.
I appreciate this.
It's been a lot of fun.
This is, you know, so many people, you know, respect what you guys are doing.
And they're like, oh, you're going on that podcast.
Oh, so I'm a big shot now.
I've made it.
I made it to the big time.
Finally, after 50 million years of being in the fitness industry, I finally did something worthy.
Thank you so much.
Appreciate it.
Andrew, take us on out of here, buddy.
Yes, absolutely.
All right.
Let us know what you guys think about today's conversation.
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And SEMA,
where are you at?
I'm at SEMA in Yang on Instagram and YouTube.
I didn't see me in Yang on Tik TOK and Twitter.
Clark,
where can people find you?
Tik TOK is the real Clark Bartram.
Instagram is Clark Bartram. And you can
go to my program, maximizedmanelite.com. That is maximizedmanelite.com. There you go.
I think it's amazing that you're, you know, so hands-on. You're doing like one-on-one
consultations with people via Zoom. That's what you were saying, right?
Absolutely. You have to, right?
Otherwise, it's not personal.
It's not worth paying money to do.
And I would imagine that your results probably must be massively improved
by communicating with people that way.
Oh, man, you go on my Instagram, you see guys' transformations.
I'm blown away every day.
And I told my team yesterday,
listen, I don't ever want anyone to get familiar with a man changing his life.
The minute you get familiar with it, you need to go back and listen to the testimonials and see the lives being changed.
Because it's easy to make that happen.
But you have to go back and look at that one guy who changed his life.
And that will reignite you to do what you do.
And I do that every single day.
I talk to a guy and they thank me.
Clark, thanks for changing my life. I'm like, I had nothing to do. You did it. I just helped
guide you. What do you think is the biggest difference between the person that eventually
decides to do it and the person that you just can't quite figure out? They're just not committing
all the way. It's belief in themselves. That's what I really think it is. On some level, they deep down believe that they can't do it.
So they want to convince themselves
just by looking into it
that they did something good.
But until they take action,
they're not doing anything.
Thank you so much.
Appreciate it.
Strength is never weak.
This weakness never strength.
I'm at Mark Smiley Bell.
Catch you guys later.
Bye.