Mark Bell's Power Project - MBPP EP. 599 - Hannah Eden
Episode Date: September 29, 2021Hannah Eden is a fitness entrepreneur whose refreshing vision for HIIT workouts and unstoppable drive to help others is making the world a better place… one fight at a time. Eden began her fitness j...ourney as a CrossFit athlete in 2013, and since then she has reinvented herself as a celebrity trainer, entrepreneur and philanthropist. Grab the new Power Project "think LESS" shirt, supplies are limited: https://markbellslingshot.com/products/think-less-tee?variant=39468915261534 Special perks for our listeners below! ➢Magic Spoon Cereal: https://www.magicspoon.com/powerproject to automatically save $5 off a variety pack! ➢8 Sleep: Visit https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro! ➢Marek Health: https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT15 for 15% off ALL LABS! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢LMNT Electrolytes: http://drinklmnt.com/powerproject ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Subscribe to the Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ 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
Transcript
Discussion (0)
The kratom does not taste good.
No, it tastes like lava.
It doesn't taste good at all.
For sure.
All right, Mark.
We are rolling.
We're going?
Yeah, we're rolling.
We're in it.
Come on.
Did you try the drink yet?
Yeah, it's really good.
It's good, right?
Yeah.
Which flavor did she get?
I got a citrus salt.
There we go.
Salty.
You said you haven't really messed with electrolytes before, huh?
No.
Honestly. I think it's going to be a game changer for you.
It is a good one. Hydrocharge is pretty bomb. But this one's nice.
Not too salty. Doesn't have that weird electrolyte taste, you know?
Good. Glad you like it. It's very nice. They make a bunch of different flavors.
They make a chocolate one, I think, and Seema's looking forward to putting his chocolate one. We forward to putting his chocolate. We drank them all.
Chocolate in the water, huh?
We usually put the chocolate in our coffee.
Okay.
You guys were putting it on your donuts the other day.
Oh, you saw that. I did.
She's like, where the fuck are the donuts?
That's the only reason why I'm here.
She's like, what happened?
That was a rare occasion. I just randomly thought it would be a good idea to bring in and it was a genius idea to put the chocolate salt all over it
yeah good yeah what kind of donuts are you guys what what's your it was like a weird vegan
something or other donut from temple coffee super healthy oh yeah but i don't because it's vegan
right you don't like sprinkles fuck it i don't fuck with sprinkles. Because it's vegan, right? You don't like sprinkles? I don't fuck with sprinkles. They're too crunchy.
They don't do anything for me.
Not even for the texture?
No.
Okay.
Sorry.
I like a little crunch.
Didn't mean to hit that button.
Yeah.
No sprinkles.
No sprinkles in the ice cream either, huh?
Yeah.
Dude, so I'm jealous of the coffee right there, as always.
So all I'm doing right now is Element for my morning pick-me-up.
I haven't touched caffeine
in the last two days.
My head's killing me right now.
You got coffee right here coming in.
I'm good. I'm all good.
You don't whine on this podcast.
Is this something that you're trying to do?
Yeah, so I'm actually doing it for my wife
who's doing it for our son.
So he was kind of getting bad sleep and we're you know
backtracking like what's going on it's like we're having a lot of caffeine and it's something we're
going to do in october anyway so i'm just starting a little bit early and it's terrible
yeah i'm not a fan not going too well no but it would be cool not to rely on caffeine that'll be
sick yeah i have a friend that does that every so often she'll do like a month i think it is four to six weeks with no caffeine and i'm talking like she drinks
pre-workout cold brew everything has caffeine in it so the she used to work with me every day and
the first week i'm like please like go load up on some caffeine because you're a grouchy bitch
it happens we all do that and anytime i've tried to i get that headache it's so weird yeah
it's pretty bizarre i should give that ruins your life yeah so i i get that and then like i'll get
fumbly like i'll drop my pens and stuff and then i can't like speak correctly it's so weird of my
life i often can't speak correctly yeah anywho before i forget so i'm sipping on element we
highly recommend it really interested to see what hannah about it. If you guys want to get your hands on it,
head over to drinklmnt.com slash power project. You guys can load up on a value bundle. So you're
going to get four boxes for the price of three. No code needed. Just head over to that link. It's
in the description as well as the podcast show notes. But if you're listening to it, just in
case, again, it's drink lmnt.com
slash power project so what's been going on you've been traveling around a lot huh
yeah you could say that cruising around in a van and lifting weights out of out of a van that's
true it's uh i kind of wish it was a van you know if we were to rewind and do this all over again
it would be truck it's a toy hauler so we've got a fifth wheel. So it's 45 foot. Oh, shit.
Big, big vehicle.
It's literally a home on wheels, which was, I pushed for it to keep it real.
And now that it's done, I'm going to eat my own words because my husband sat right there,
but kind of wish it was smaller.
But because we were doing it for such an extended period of time, I'm like, man, we need space.
We've been together long enough to know that.
So we got the bigger one
and now that it's here it's not easy to get that thing around so uh yeah where so what do you do
with that thing where do you park it you gotta park it at like walmart and shit right ah see i'm
we have this is a great balance right we're very different i want to be in the middle of nowhere
in the fields where there's no internet or power and paolo is more of a koa guy you know
uh koa for those that don't know it's like the most uh it's like an adult field trip that there's
going to be people there that help you to do your laundry and games and hey do you know about our
game night tonight you know i want to see no humans so we have a good balance of being in
the wild and then being in like a campsite you know kind of interesting, though, that you don't want humans around
because obviously we were working out with you.
You're very outgoing.
And the fact that you're just like, I don't want anyone around me.
It's interesting.
Why?
Honestly, it's hard to believe, but I'm such an introvert.
I love my own company.
I love nature.
And I've discovered over time that being in the woods is a place for me. And if I need
to be on, I'm on. I love people too. I love being around people but
I do like being alone. That's weird.
I dig that too. I'm a big weirdo.
What do you think you like about it or is this more of a recent discovery for you?
I turned 30 in January.
And the past, well, we opened the gym in 2015.
The past five years of my life have been so full on.
Traveling from place to place to place.
Amazing, great things happening.
Always being around.
Let's move your microphone this way a little bit.
So you're talking into it a little bit more.
Thank you.
I like that.
But constantly chasing the wheel, you know, and just being out there, being on all the time.
And then for my 30th birthday, I had this weird moment where I'm like, I don't remember the last time I was alone.
And I love being alone.
So I asked for a survival course.
So this sounds bizarre,
but Paolo bought me a Christmas present,
which was to go and live in the woods for three days alone
in Big Bear, California at like 20 degrees.
And that was like my,
okay, this is exactly why I love doing these things.
And I think that's from childhood.
Like I grew up a lot.
My parents used to always take us to build forts in the woods
and do weird things outside
um and i didn't realize how much i missed it until i started doing it again can you tell us a little
bit more about that course please like three days at 20 degrees did you sleep in like a tent i did
and i actually built a survival shelter out of wood and built an a-frame shelter from the trees
and tried my hardest to sleep in that all night because that's what you learn when you go out
there there's some husbands listening
right now being like, I wish my wife would
fucking want to go away for a couple days.
Now you've got to understand
that. Please.
Honestly, it's so funny. Now we've been living
in this can, like a tuna can
together for the last year. I'm like, hey,
you want to take a trip? You should go take a trip.
Go take a trip. I'll take a trip. I'll see you
in like six days.
But no, the survival course,
it's called California Survival School,
I think is what it is.
And they teach you all kinds of things.
So the first thing you do is
if you were ever stuck in the wild
is you've got to build a shelter.
So they teach you how to build
like an A-frame shelter
using nothing but a knife.
It's bizarre.
And you build it.
That's awesome.
It's so cool.
You pack it with wood and dirt and mud to
keep it insulated and the idea is that you can sleep in there so they're like let us know if you
need a tent so i built my tent because i'm so type a i'm like if shit goes wrong i refuse to sleep in
the car right that's cheating but i need to have a backup plan because it's fucking cold and there's
bears out here so i uh built my tent built my A-frame shelter right next to it,
and I lasted until maybe probably like three or four hours, but it was low 20s then.
And I was like, I might get hypothermia.
Check your ego and go into the tent.
So I stayed in the tent.
Have you ever seen the show Alone?
Yeah.
Have you watched that before?
Absolutely, and that's where this whole thing came from.
That's a pretty amazing show.
and that's where this whole thing came from.
That's a pretty amazing show.
I was watching one episode where this one woman,
she built just this amazing hut,
and she was just chilling in there,
and she had a fire going,
but I think she needed to do something,
so she left for a minute,
and it caught on fire,
and she just didn't have any means to get the fire out.
Like, it was just this very small, like, just some of the straw or something that she was using or dry grass that she was using to build the thing caught fire.
And then the whole thing was just wrecked.
And she had to, like, tap out.
She had to just, you know, call it. She's like, I don't have a house anymore, and I don't have the energy.
Right.
Because, like, they're living out there, and they're and they're hunting and stuff like that as they're out there.
You ever get into any hunting and stuff?
You like the survival shit that much to get into that as well?
I would love to.
I mean, we learned how to make some traps out there, and they taught us how to plant stuff.
But I never actually caught anything.
My hunter is right here.
So Power loves to scuba dive.
So back home in Florida,
he would often go out,
get lobsters and lionfish,
bring it home,
and I'd be like the woman that prepared
and filleted the fish.
YouTube can teach you a lot of shit.
It's great.
On that show,
a lot of the women seem to catch rabbits and squirrels
and stuff like that, but they quickly learn that you can't live off of that.
No.
Because they're too lean and they don't have enough meat on them.
So there were a few guys that ended up, one guy actually, I think he killed a moose or something.
Yeah, that he almost got checked out because he was too lean.
Can you believe that? Well, so he was, so he, he, you know, chopped up the moose, whatever way you do it or whatever.
And he, he packed away like a bunch of fat and then the fat got eaten by a wolverine.
Can you believe that?
And then this guy killed the wolverine too.
But the wolverine kept coming back and it ate more of his food.
Some other, a different wolverine came back and ate some of his food and he had to tap
out as well.
Really interesting show to tap out as well. That's bizarre.
Really interesting show to watch people surviving out.
And you'd like to maybe do something like that?
I would love to.
It's concerning.
Have you ever heard of it?
Have you ever tried anything like that?
No.
I just wouldn't.
I'm too much of a baby.
I wouldn't make it.
No, I don't think.
Not even one day.
I'd like to do some Cameron Haynes stuff, you know? But outside of that, living in the woods, I don't make it. No, I don't. Not even one day. I'd like to do some Cameron Haynes stuff, you know, but outside of that living in the
woods, I don't know.
I don't know.
I think that's too badass.
I think I could come back and do like a five star spa weekend, you know, but I'd love to
get down.
But first of all, do you know how small Wolverines are?
Yeah, I know.
They're not very big.
I thought that they were huge.
I thought a Wolverine would be like this thing.
They're not.
They're like this wide. And they're about this they're about this tall but it's ferocious and it's like 50 but
they're not tiny either i think they're like 50 pounds right yeah i mean that guy looks mean look
at that oh fuck that and really they fuck up animals that are a lot bigger than them yeah or
i'm tripping but i know you're right oh wow about them. Oh, wow. What the hell? That's pretty crazy.
Man, we just spent 21 days
in the national parks. We saw all
kinds of wild
animals, including grizzly bears.
You were in Montana? Montana
and Wyoming, yeah.
Grizzly bears are no joke.
Oh my god. That's terrifying.
How did you see these things? You went hiking or something?
Or you went camping in the woods there too?
no camping
but we have long days
so we start in the morning
at like 4 or 5 in the morning
and we'll go all day
so a lot of the times we're filming
like 3 workouts back to back
which will be piggybacked on top of each other
so we're just exposed
and we're in bear country
so you take your bear spray
and if it's allowed you take your gun
because it's no joke do you guys know bear spray and if it's allowed, you take your gun.
Because it's no joke.
Do you guys know what to do if you ever see a bear?
Run.
No, you don't run.
Is it big or something?
It depends.
So there's grizzly bears and there's black bears, right?
So grizzlies usually can differentiate them by the big hump on their back.
But they say that if a grizzly bear attacks a human, they not really trying to kill you they're just trying to show dominance so they
say you should submit and like lay on the floor put your hands behind your hold onto your neck
and just like kind of submit to them but if you see a black bear and they attack you which is
uncommon they're gonna fuck you up they're gonna kill you so you have to try and be as big as you
can and try and scare him off
it's a thing that reminds me of the revenant you guys remember that i can't do those movies
oh you didn't see the revenant oh yeah he got fucked up that was a great scene well it was
it was horrible but it was a good scene they like lived inside the bear kind of right like
cut him open or something like that i I don't remember. I think that was Star Wars. Oh, yeah.
Close.
True.
Yeah.
Could be.
That's scary. Did this idea of cruising around in this, whatever this thing is called, this giant
fitness truck or whatever.
She's called Big Bertha.
Big Bertha.
She's got a name.
fitness truck or whatever she's called big bertha big bertha she's got a name cruising around with big bertha did was this was some of this uh spawned from like the pandemic and some of the
things that have happened and i think you mentioned you had a gym and then kind of what happened to
the gym and stuff like that yeah so uh we opened up a gym in 2015 which was actually when i think
i first met you um my career was kind of just beginning at that point.
And I was in the final competition to be the face of Reebok One.
So when we opened the gym, it was more of a,
this is what we're going to do with our life.
And my imagination ran wild and thought, this is it.
We're going to have a mom and pop's gym and we're going to have our kids here.
They're going to grow up and that's what life's going to be.
Then my career, I was 24, was just started to pick up and go in a totally different direction. So I loved having a gym, but it was a
small boutique facility. The business model wasn't the greatest. Now that I look back on it, it was
more of a passion project amongst all the businesses that we have. So it was always a struggle because
my career took me away from the gym. So it always
felt like a guilt there and always felt like I wasn't giving my best to our community in Fort
Lauderdale. So that was always a battle that we had. So as soon as the pandemic came, we had already
been online for probably like a year and a half. Well, 2017 was when I launched my online business,
but it just became a no brainer and it it was more of ego and we had some really tough
conversations to make that decision because we did have such a strong community in Fort Lauderdale
and our team of coaches that we'd spent it took us years to try and find the super superstar team
we finally found him and everything was going in the right direction but it was not sustainable
through the the COVID so we said you know I have no doubt that we could make it through,
but it's going to be straight ego operating this decision, right?
Like we have all these other businesses that are flourishing right now
and have the opportunity to grow.
So why would we suffer and allow those to kind of take a hit
while we try and make the gym work?
So we did it right away.
Like May 31st was our last day we made the call
and then put everything online and then said well fuck at first we were naive and thought it was
going to be a six month kind of deal we're like we'll take pump fit on the road and we're going
to take this rv and we'll go to these different cities and then we became extremely aware that
that wasn't an option either like people are really doing this and staying home and no one's going to meet up in a field to work out with a stranger. So then we made moves and said, we really were excited
about doing that. So why would we not? Like we've been living our lives for the businesses for the
last five years and have been really, really selfless. Let's take a year to be selfish.
We want to have a family, but we've been working so much that we've been growing and haven't been able to spend any of the money that we make, haven't been able to
enjoy each other all the time that we think is valuable. So we made a really drastic decision,
which is as extreme as we are, like, fuck it, let's get rid of the house. So we have no home
right now, no home address, just our business address where the building is. And we moved
everything into the RV
and we've been trying to make it happen on the road,
which has also been a big struggle,
but through really cool, rewarding experience.
And how long have you guys been on the road?
Because you mentioned Florida
and right now you're in California.
So like, yeah, how long have you guys been on the road
and what exactly have you been doing?
Yeah, so we left at the very
end of march of this year okay and uh originally i had put these pre-production plans together to
pitch a job that we're doing with nordic track and ifit right now um so i was doing research in
all these national parks so i found the most dreamy locations and then put them into this
app and was like i want to go here here here here boom like now figure out the route that we're going to go on so then it was like okay you're
going to have one night here two nights here one night here and it was just this constant moving
battle which if anyone has done camping or done anything like that it's a it's a bitch you can't
just show up somewhere and go on with your day it's like a three hour ordeal to park unload get
everything in get everything out untie stuff that can't be let loose while you're driving so it became very
obvious pretty quickly that this is not going to be fun if we do this because you're just non-stop
all day every day so then we've been doing like the two weeks in this area and then take the van
or the truck into these areas and go camp go go back country camping and like hike out five,
six miles,
pitch a tent,
sleep there,
come back and then go home,
you know?
So we did that for a while and now we're stuck in Montana.
Like for some reason,
we love that place.
Met cool people there.
Um,
it's a beautiful area and we've been like using that as a home base and then
flying,
coming to Sacramento.
We'll be going back there.
We went to,
um,
places, other places in California as well, and then we're going back there.
The next stop will be Colorado.
Rob and Dana Lynn Bailey are out in that Montana area,
and I had an opportunity to visit them a couple years back when they were still in Pennsylvania.
And I went to their home and they had like dogs and
all kinds of animals. But I remember Dana Lynn was like, she's like, oh, I got to walk the dogs.
She started walking the dogs. And then I think a goat was following her and then a deer. And I was
like, what in the fuck is going on? And Rob Bailey's like, I don't ask questions, bro. I don't
know what's going on either. It was the craziest thing I've ever seen.
Have you seen some weird shit like that out there? For sure. Actually, at their house,
I think Dana has seven or eight goats. And the love
that she has for those goats is nothing. I'm not making things up. No, that's the truth.
That's the truth. They have a, what are the dogs called? They're big farm dogs.
They're like so big and white and furry. I forgot the breed. So they have a what are the dogs called they're big farm dogs they're like so big and white and furry i forget and i forgot the breed so they have two dogs that protect the property
and then they also have goats as well like a new fendler something like that i thought it was a
golden retriever once but it definitely isn't it's like a oh there yeah bemis is it a is that right
it is a bemis something dog but they are really good farm farm dogs they let you know if there's bears around or something like that but how long have you been married for
how long we've been married for we got married twice first wedding was in 2014
andrew got married a bunch of times too i got married twice in the past year same woman huh
yeah no because we got married when everything was locked down like that was our date and we're
just like ah fuck it we're gonna do it anyways but the state didn't recognize it so we got married when everything was locked down. Like that was our date. And we're just like, ah, fuck it. We're going to do it anyways.
But the state didn't recognize it.
So we got married again.
I don't know.
I already forgot a couple of weeks back.
Oh, cool.
Congrats.
Just to make it official.
Thank you.
I like that.
Yeah, we did our first one when we didn't have any money.
It was maybe six or eight people in the top of a hotel.
We kept it really small.
And then we opened up.
And I'm like kind of a tomboy, you know?
So when I was younger, I'm like, of a tomboy you know so when i was
younger i'm like i never want a white dress i don't want to walk down an aisle and then i grew
up a little bit and was like i want to ring i want to dress and i want to do that shit so when we got
married the second time we went all out and uh we had a huge rage rager for our wedding it was a lot
of fun lots of fun because paulo's family's from brazil my family's from england so our first
wedding our family couldn't afford to come so then the second one like right you got two three years to
save so we had all of our family over here so it was really cool to do that how did you time how
did you guys get this level of communication because it seems like you're communicating on
a pretty damn good level to where i mean i'm sure there's like uh tension i'm sure there's fights here and there
but it sounds like you guys are doing a pretty damn good job because all the different i mean
you're making huge changes you know for one i'm sure like shutting down the gym was probably
really tough and then uh i don't know just to have like a to figure out your own life is is
fucking nearly impossible you know and then to to figure out your own life with somebody else
and to end up with like what I would call like a shared sense of purpose
is a really, really tough thing.
So how are you guys kind of been able to work towards some of this?
I appreciate that, first of all, because I think it's an ongoing journey
and to have someone else recognize that is pretty cool.
I mean, you do want to punch him, right course all the time right in the throat yeah and i'm
sure he wants to kick me right back but uh we've been together for a long time i met paolo when i
was 19 and uh yeah man we've been together a long time so before i had red hair which i don't have
anymore before i had any muscles or even knew what the word fitness meant. And I was in a really tough place. I was very damaged and lost, I think.
So whenever we met, I was in the lowest part of my life.
But he saw something.
Get the damaged one.
You know?
Good job.
Eric, fist bump over here.
Boom.
Filled those wings, you know?
But he's always had this sense of balance.
So I'm outrageous.
I'm extremely fucking weird, I guess.
I'm out there.
I don't know.
But same person has been here the whole time,
but just trying to figure out the demons.
And through a lot of therapy and personal development,
I think is probably the only reason why we're able to be together and communicate.
But naturally, I'm a very angry human being that's extremely hot-headed and so i was like that for a very long time of our
relationship which is i can't believe the guy stuck around props to you babe but uh i think a
lot of personal development i do read a lot and i understand that i think that we all have issues
we have all got shit going on inside of our brains inside of our bodies but
none is better or worse than each other but through a lot of uh tools and tips and reading
and therapy the one biggest thing is communication um which i'm so good at communicating with
strangers but maybe not so good at communicating with the one person i should be communicating
with the most you know so through be communicating with the most, you know? So through journaling, personal development,
doing weird morning routines and doing a lot of weird shit
to try and make me feel like I'm at balance
has now allowed me to be able to share
and talk about those things with Paolo.
And so both of us now have like,
we're not perfect at it by any means,
but the best times in our relationships is when we can sit down,
even in the most heated moment,
and talk about what's going on right now.
Not scream,
not slam a door,
not walk away.
And I think for this trip has been probably one of the most challenging trips
in our marriage,
but one of the most valuable and,
um,
growing experiences I think that we've ever had because there's no running
away.
There's no like,
I'm going to the gym or I'm going to go to the office.
It's like,
no,
no,
no,
you're sleeping in a tent,
tan and like a tin together. You got to figure it out before you go to bed. You've got to talk about it.
What did I say that pissed you off? What's your truth?
What's the conversation inside of your head right now for you to react like this to me and vice
versa? So really, really, really uncomfortable conversations I think is
probably how we're able to have that sense of understanding.
That's a tough thing to say to somebody like, why are you pissed? You know,
what are you mad about? And like, sometimes it makes them even matter.
Like, how do you not know what I'm mad about? But how do you guys,
and what does it look like? How do you end up in those conversations?
Cause even getting there, I think is always the scariest part for a lot of
people.
I think that my family are really good at not talking about things.
My parents are amazing, but they're always amazing,
and they're always happy, and they're always fine, you know?
Which is not the truth.
That's just what we've always believed.
I think that's a very stoic way of being, you know?
And that's a very English thing.
So I think that over time, and how does that kind kind of look like is that we've been through the,
I think the common,
the one most important thing that I think I'm missing here is that I love
you and I know that you love me and you know,
we know that we love each other and all this stuff that we fight about is
fucking pathetic.
If you really think about it,
but you,
your,
your,
your feelings are valid.
So we've been through the whole,
I'm going to scream as loud as I can to tell you how I feel. Vice versa. your feelings are valid. So we've been through the whole,
I'm going to scream as loud as I can to tell you how I feel,
vice versa,
but nothing gets resolved.
Like nothing is heard.
And I always used to say this all the time.
It's like, do you hear me?
Like, I know you're hearing me,
but like, do you hear what I'm trying to say?
So I think through doing it wrong so many times,
but still holding onto the fact
that we know that we are going to be together
and that this is going to work, but it's a matter of putting the effort in to try and make it work
versus just rolling through and wearing away and eroding every time we have one of those heated
discussions or heated arguments and now I think it's just a matter of we both understand that if
you tell each other right now in this very heated moment how you feel we're going to understand it
we're going to hear each other we might not agree but we're going to understand
your point of view because i think that's the worst thing in an argument right it's like half
the time it's like you make no sense and in my brain i make all the sense well really you both
make sense in your own brain so let me understand what your conversation is up there and let me help
you understand what the conversation is up here and this this is why I'm upset. He's really good at being able to press pause and might not agree,
but he's really good at making himself understand where I'm coming from.
I'm not great at that because I can only see one way in that state.
But I think from watching him being good at that has forced me to now look at myself and say,
all right, if he's able to do that when I'm in this state,
then I've got to be able to come
down onto that level too and have that kind of conversation. I'm really curious because you did
mention therapy, but outside of that, what are some other tools that like were really beneficial
for you in terms of that transformation? Because currently like you seem super, you are very
introspective, you know, you said you used to be very angry, et cetera. But like, I think a lot of
people, maybe if they are there, they think that's the way
they are.
I've met a lot of people who are like, yeah, I'm just a person that screams or like when
I get angry, I just, I will curse.
I will be emotional.
That's the way I am.
And you did work to shift that.
And a lot of people don't think they can do work to shift that.
So I'm wondering, you mentioned self-development books and stuff.
I'm curious about some of the books, But what were some things that people can take away and apply and do right now to get them out of that place?
Because I know some people who are just so static there.
I think fitness is the number one, right?
Which is why it's become my career.
And it's like, I call them demons.
We've all got them like or a dark streak.
And I can look at my whole life and zoom out and see that that trait has always
been there since like when I was born, you know, that's operated in different ways. Like it began
as I've always been different. And this is something that I'm still trying to figure out
the answer to because my parents raised me in a beautiful household. My parents are still together
as far as I'm aware, as far as I am aware am aware see I told you I find it hard to speak sometimes
I had a great childhood
but yeah I was an extremely rebellious
kid right before we moved
to the US I was 16
and dating someone that was in jail for
attempted murder
I was a very fucked up kid that wanted to
rebel that wanted to be mean
and angry so this trait
that I'm talking about that still exists
now is who I am, right? But other people don't really get, they don't deserve to see that side
of me, you know, because ultimately this is who I am. And if I don't like it, then I have to change
that. So anytime that I would, even as a child, get into trouble, look at the look in my parents'
face, that was all because
of something that I had done. And I didn't like that feeling. So that idea of like, okay, this is
who I am, right? But if you don't like it, why are you going to continue to be that way? Then when I
came to the US, it shifted from being this really rebellious kid to abusing all kinds of substances
and going wild. And then I showed that kind of dark streak there.
Then I found fitness. And at the beginning, it was all for the wrong reasons. Again,
it was like angry motivation. And it was like this way of building this exterior strength to
try and protect myself from the world. And it's like, that's where the shift came. It's like,
why are you doing this? Why are you running so fast? Why do you have to always level up and
prove yourself? Why do you need to get stronger? why do you need to move faster like and then I just started to be like you don't have to be this
way you know there's ways to channel that energy and I think that I've I personally feel like I've
done so much bad in my past life that now like the rest of my life is my time to make up for that
and to try and do right and treat people well and be kind and no one deserves to see my bad day
you know so that's where it shifted and was like okay well that's a scary feeling and a scary
thought but it's it's on you right like there's no one that's going to come up to me and tell me
to get my shit together and stop talking to people like that or do you like the way that people think
about you when they leave the room I just had enough awareness to be like okay I don't like
that and I hate this part of myself and I can I just had enough awareness to be like, okay, I don't like that.
And I hate this part of myself and I can't control it.
So then it was like, ultimately, to me,
the biggest strength is being able to have control over your emotions.
Being able to decide when you turn on that black streak
and let the demons out.
That's the ultimate strength to me, which is intangible.
So then things started to shift.
It's like, now I'm not going to go chase a barbell.
I'm going to sit in therapy for an hour
and have the most uncomfortable conversation
of my life, trying to figure out where these personal traits came from, trying to understand
how to take control of them.
What do I do in a state when I honestly thought the only way for me to be is just angry?
Like, no, it's not.
Go sit outside in a mountain and look up and like figure out what the fuck your problem
is.
You know, don't try and chase it and go lift a barbell so heavy that you just release
the anger.
But why were you angry?
So like trying to get to the root is probably something that's been a huge
journey for me and still on right now.
Yeah.
You never get to the root of root cause of the problem unless you are willing
to be like introspective or reflect upon it. I think a lot
of times you just, you know, you sweep it under the rug with, you know, going and punching a
punching bag or going to lift weights or we got these, we got these physical things that we can
go and do and they make you feel great. And it does kind of work. Do you think that in some ways that maybe CrossFit was really beneficial because the competition level in there is just so high that at some point, like you can be as irrational as you'd like and you could say, I, I'm, I want to lift these times. I want to kick all these other girls' asses. But those other girls are really fucking good. Do you think that that somehow maybe
assisted you in a way to being like, well, I can be
really good at this, but I can't really hang. There's some
other girls that are just way above what I'm able to do. Was it anything like that?
Yeah, big time. And I think injury came to do with that too, where maybe I was pushed to
make that decision more than I'd liked. But I accepted that decision it was like all right I think that
we've all got so much capacity and I used to put all of my energy into trying to be a CrossFit
athlete right which back then and CrossFit then versus now is a totally different world but
I was good but I wasn't great I was a great team member team member but I was not an
individual athlete you know so I I had a back injury that was lingering for a long long time
and I would push through the pain push through the pain it was miserable and then the week before we
opened up the gym uh December 2015 I was laying the the floor in the gym and I pulled my back out
and I was like immobile I'm talking like couldn't even get out of bed kind of deal and I pulled my back out and I was like immobile. I'm talking like couldn't even
get out of bed kind of deal. And I'm like, you know what? Why am I doing this to myself? I kept
going to doctors trying to have them tell me a quick fix that would get rid of this pain.
And I had some really shitty news that was like, okay, no, no, no. Like you have degenerative
disease. And if you keep doing what you're doing, you're going to have spinal disease of a 70 year
old woman before you're 30. If you want to have kids, your spine's probably
not going to make that happen very easily. So when I was like, oh, right, you got to stop being
selfish now, like, right, because I've got a husband that I need to think about. This isn't
just my decision now, this could ultimately change our entire future. So whenever that happened,
it was a big shift for me. So I was like, all right, stop putting all of that energy into being
a teammate. Put all of that energy into building your own shit. So then I shifted it, it was a big shift for me. So I was like, all right, stop putting all of that energy into being a teammate. Put all of that energy into building your own shit. So then I shifted it, was bitter,
didn't touch a barbell for a year, and then put all of that energy and capacity into running a
business. And that's where I discovered a lot about myself that I had no idea. And yeah, I would say
that it was very obvious from the beginning that i couldn't hang
you know you're good but you're not great it's a big difference right that was useful for me
um in professional wrestling and even to some extent even in power lifting you know when i
reached certain i was able to lift certain weights and do certain things but i also knew like there's
a lot of young people coming through and uh it would be best for me to just step aside.
I could have hung on.
I could have just kept trying to lift.
But I also saw a lot of people hanging on well beyond their years, well beyond their time, and just for lack of a better term, kind of continuing to be like a meathead or continuing to be like a knucklehead and not really learning or being able to pivot. And if you look at, there's a lot of successful
people that you can point to, but if you look at someone like The Rock, you know, The Rock was a
WWE wrestler for a long time. And there's a lot of people who had great success in wrestling,
but for some of them, they ended up leaving their profession or the sport kind of broken.
And they really didn't, even though they may have ended up with some money, they may have ended up leaving their profession or the sport kind of broken. And they really didn't, even though they may have ended up with some money, they may have ended up with a couple other things.
They didn't really end up with being able to live an amazing life.
And if you look at what he's done, he did a pretty damn good pivot into, I mean, if you just look at what he did or John Cena, they learned a completely different skill.
You know, you don't just get to be a movie star.
You have to, like, really work really hard at it.
And there's so many other business things that he's gotten into
that's really cool to see.
But I know The Rock is a special human being.
I know John Cena and some of these people we put up on a pedestal.
But anyone can do it.
Anyone can pivot off of whatever it is that they're currently doing.
I think it is a good idea to sometimes recognize like, you know, it's just this is not right for me any longer.
And I should move into doing something slightly different.
And I think there's also like those kind of people, right?
I went to school for photography and I was that decision to not pursue photography as a career was a game changer for me.
Cause it was like, okay, I didn't waste the last four years of my life. I had experience
learning things. Right. But I always believed that there's, this is going to sound very black
and white, which I am, which I understand I need to be a little bit more gray, but there's certain
people, right? Like no matter what you apply yourself to, you're going to succeed in one aspect. And then there's another, which is like,
oh, that's not me. I'm just not going to try. I'd like to believe that no matter what I put
my hands on, my dad raised me to, if you're going to do a job, you do it right. And you do it well
and you apply yourself. So understanding that I won best portfolio in school, but I didn't pursue
photography. I found CrossFit, became really good at it, became the best in the gym, but I didn't pursue photography. I found CrossFit, became really
good at it, became the best in the gym, but didn't pursue that. I landed my dream job after college,
but hated it. So I pivoted there. So like making all these decisions just became very obvious to
me that whatever I discover, I'm going to apply myself to and try and be the best at, right?
So go do that in places that you enjoy, like where you're not feeling pain every day that you can't touch your fucking toes at 23.
Or, you know, trying to understand how to open a business seems so daunting, but there's enough information online to figure that out.
We literally use legal zoom for our first business, you know, which is hilarious now.
But at the time it was all I knew. We got a book on how to open up an LLC for dummies.
time it was all i knew we got a book on how to open up an llc for dummies like the craziest shit that you now i look at and think it's funny but it's like that's all i had to do was just try
and like really try not half-ass it like you have an idea have a vision and then apply myself to it
um and i mean we haven't succeeded i don't believe in that word but by any means at this point in my
life but like we've done all right and we've had a good time doing it. I'm kind of curious, your lifestyle before, uh, you kind of alluded to like you're
partying and you're doing some stuff there, but when fitness came into the, into the game,
you said you were doing it for the wrong reasons. What, how did that fit? Like, how did the
importance of fitness kind of shift in terms of doing it for the wrong reasons and then
committing to it. And then that becomes like, like all you do, because I think a lot of people,
when it comes to working out, they find it hard to commit to it and build something out of it.
Um, like for example, we know a guy, Jeremy Avia, uh, he was addicted to some, I don't know what he
was addicted to before heroin, heroin. Yeah. And then he made a shift to fitness and that, that personality of his made him an absolute
beast as far as fitness is concerned. So I'm wondering, is there any of that there with you
as far as just like you, you, like the way you go towards things is just that how you are and
that shift into fitness was that like, was that gradual? I would say, yeah. I think that at the beginning,
the reason why I got so obsessed with fitness
is because mentioning that rebellious stage in my life,
if I ever got attention,
it was usually a negative attention
and not because I was a good person
or I was doing the right thing.
But whenever I started to do well in CrossFit,
it was like people were proud of me
and it was like I was doing well for the team. It was like a very different proud of me. And it was like, I was doing well for the
team. It was like a very different kind of attention that I think I'd ever received before.
So I held onto that and was like, you know what? This is so funny. This is my Reebok one
application video for my audition. It's hilarious. I haven't seen this for years,
but I tried to win because I wanted to impress other people and that was
a big game changer for me and then whenever I shifted into doing fitness for me it was because
all right now I'm understanding where this is taking me which is it's giving me a space to
release all of this negative energy and I realize that it's making me feel better so i think that important
point there was like i used to do fitness to impress other people and i look strong and people
like never questioned me you know and i think that there was a big shift that's happened in the last
maybe four years um which is since i put the barbell down since i stopped doing crossfit which
is i'm not now doing this because what other people think of me, I'm doing this because it's keeping me mentally sane.
And I wake up out of bed every day and I feel good about where I'm at versus like, I need to go to
the gym because people need me there versus like, I don't care if I'm alone. I don't care if anyone's
watching. Like this is my version of therapy. Like I need this for mental health. So I think
that was a big shift for me is understanding, uh uh not doing it for others or for aesthetic reasons but doing this just for mental health
reasons really are you pretty grateful that you didn't get like stuck in some of that because
that happens to a lot of people like um did you ever end up getting like do you think you got
dependent or addicted to anything? From the substance abuse?
Right.
I was definitely dependent.
I wouldn't say that I was waking up.
I think I mentioned this earlier and like blowing lines at six o'clock in the morning.
But I mean, I used to burn the candle on both ends, right?
Like this whole sense of overachieving.
I used to work double shifts and work a morning shift, work a night shift, and then go to
the gym the next day.
So it's like you're working from 9 a.m till 4 5 a.m in florida and then i'm going to sleep till 9 waking up and then trying
to go be an athlete so i'm so glad that i didn't and i i also am glad for my mindset which is being
able to stay in the bartending world and not drink or dabble in that was what i was doing at the very
very end which is pretty impressive for me which is crazy because I have friends now that are still doing what we did then, you
know, and they're 40 plus years old.
So, and the money, it's so much money in South Florida.
I remember we ate shit for months and months and months and months and months before we
could really see some financial stability doing things legitimately.
You know, we would make over1,000 every night in cash.
We worked in nightclubs in South Florida,
so we were raking in the cash.
It was crazy.
So there was a big weird patch after we let it go,
but we found our feet again.
But yeah, I'm so grateful that I didn't get stuck in that.
And I'm so glad I got that out of my system
because there is nothing else than I could think.
You'd have to pay me a million dollars to go stand in a nightclub right now until 4 or 5 in the morning.
It sounds like horrible.
It would be impossible.
As you kind of were shifting from shutting your gym down into doing some of the stuff that you're doing now,
what other areas of the country do you want to end up visiting?
I mean, you're popping around to a bunch of different places.
You said you're going to Colorado next.
Yeah, we're going to Colorado next.
We had a really good time going through Southern California
over to Arizona and into Utah.
That was awesome.
I think the one place that we haven't been to yet is San Diego,
which is somewhere we wanted to go.
But the reg is so big.
The idea behind this trip was to go and try and find somewhere we wanted to live.
But we've been in fields and mountains, and I don't think that we're going to be living there.
So we'll have to do another trip after this that can really take us into the areas that we could possibly live in.
Is there like a hike or something that you got your eye on where you're like, I really need to go see that or do that?
Oh, man.
I'm a sick fuck is the word I like to use.
And what, 2018, I biked and ran the whole country of Iceland.
Oh, what?
Yeah, man.
That was like the first or second thing I've ever done
that's pretty epic.
So ever since that's happened,
I don't know if you heard me say earlier that we want to start
a family, which is where I'm
really trying to hold myself back.
But I want to do something crazy, man.
What are we thinking, though?
What is it? Well, that was
828.6 miles.
So that was a pretty long journey.
Damn.
How many days, weeks?
It was supposed to be eight days, it took us nine that was a good
time that was a crazy experience you ever heard of people doing the appalachian trail that's pretty
popular yeah man yeah so this also people take like a maybe a month or two to do it usually
there's a great western divide as well which goes through the entire world and it's thousands of
miles when was this done by the way? This was three years ago. Three years
ago. Okay. Yeah. This was actually one of the hardest times in my life. Um, and then using pain
to accomplish good things is, is a great skillset I think to have. Um, unfortunately my best friend
died, um, due to cancer. So before she passed away, this whole trip was to give her something
to hold onto. Um um but she didn't
end up making it which was really sad and a really exposed part of my life when everything was very
public so i just ran away to iceland and took nine days to pour the pain into the road and it was
wild and paulo and um my best friend's husband at the time uh her niece and my also my assistant was all there and
we they followed me in an rv and i biked and i ran the whole thing uh but it was really really
troubling time so my my mindset now is like if i was able to do that through pain like i wonder if
i could do that without that pain you know your body allows you to go to some
fucking weird places when you're going through it but i do wonder now so that's where my my
curiosity is is like if i could do that and that you know listening to about how you're walking
every day and you're progressing i wasn't running or cycling before this i just trained for 10 to
12 months i got a coach and started with like 20 minute workouts and ended with 6 hour workouts. So I think seeing yourself progress and being able to have
this progressive overload is really, really real.
And it was really cool to do it then. But now my brain is
in a different place. I'd like to cycle versus run because my body just got so
fucked up from the running. That I would love to do something that seems
impossible and do it for some something great you know so i'm kind of curious real quick as you mentioned
um back then you were kind of working from a place of pain do you find that you still do that at all
nowadays are you trying to are you trying to lift with a more calm approach a happier approach what's
that look like and that's that's where it's bizarre for me because um beginning of crossfit and stuff i was very angry it was like
i was there was like this demon that every time i went into workout mode like you'll see videos i
look like a fucking cyborg crazy person and i don't really know what the thoughts are that are
going through my mind it's more like just energy being released um so whenever i did that that was
painful right and I wanted to feel
the pain to be able to perform. We'd have people write their letters in about how cancer has
affected theirs. That was my pre-workout, you know? And that's what I would read or do before
the day started. But now I don't feel like I'm angry. I feel like I'm a lot calmer. I feel like
I'm a lot happier inside and I feel a lot more fulfilled than I ever have.
So I'm curious to see what I could do.
So right now in my training, I don't think that I operate through pain,
but I do know that if I don't work out, then I'm going to be more irritable.
I'm going to have a shorter fuse, you know, so I know what it does for me in that way.
But yeah, man, I don't know.
I'd like to do something else just to see true performance you
know what can you do without being motivated by anger or pain and just see see what your body can
do because the mind and the body through that experience which i think we mentioned earlier like
i genuinely wanted to put my thought process into practice because i had spent maybe the last the
previous four years before that being in a place where I was
content with my body, content with where I was at in my fitness journey. And I was just telling
people what to do. And I'm like, I feel like an imposter if I don't put the shit to practice.
So I did every day. And I was like journaling and writing and recording the conversations I
was having with myself and telling myself what I try and tell other people. And it works,
you know, like your mind and your body are totally connected but your your mind is going to quit before your body does and that was the goal
of this this mission I was like I want my body to break down before my mind does to see where
my mind can take me so that's kind of what happened that's for sure some of what you're
describing kind of reminds me of parenting in a way like where there's really not like this
kind of reminds me of parenting in a way like where there's really not like this there's not this like um this burning like motivation you know to be to be supportive of your kids and to
always be there for your kids and to it's like the most selfless most selfless job um that like
it seems to me like whenever there's a whenever there's a great challenge, a lot of people can a lot of people can can meet it because they can get excited by the challenge.
So like when you have a newborn, like that's kind of a challenge.
But, you know, when the kids five, six, seven and so on and they progress, it gets to be like more and more difficult.
And it's not more difficult because the child gets to be more difficult or the situation gets to be any more difficult it's just constant and consistent
and it's forever like you're that right you're that parent to that kid uh forever and so it's uh
it's like a thankless job that you always have to put in like a an effort but what i've learned
from that and what i've learned from kind of observing other people like making these great transformations with their body or great transformations and fitness and
stuff is that when the challenge isn't there that they still go in and put in the work and they
still do stuff like I have a couple of friends that were I used to work out with them super early
in the morning and they loved that but as soon as we stopped doing that they don't work out with them super early in the morning and they loved that. But as soon as we stopped doing that, they don't work out at all anymore.
You know, they, they, um, they're not following a diet, nothing.
But like when we were training that early, that challenge, you know, assisted them to
rise to that challenge and then have a cascade of disciplines surrounding everything else
that worked out really well for them.
But I'd love to see more people, um, I like just putting in almost like a smaller effort, but doing it every day.
Like and just being like, you know what?
I don't fucking care about being a 10.
I don't even care about being a 9.
I just want to put in like a 7.
I'm going to do it every single day.
I've been lifting for 31 years, you know.
And so when you lift that long, it's like,
if you put in sixes or sevens, then you're going to end up pretty good. You know, you're going to
end up maybe being able to turn it into a career, you know? And I think that there have been times
in my life where I set these like larger challenges where they were really crazy or over the top,
you know, squat a thousand pounds and things like that. Those things did keep me motivated.
Those things kept me competitive and they were fun.
But I love it now more now that those things aren't around because the challenge is, do
you still fucking care?
Like, I don't have to care.
I don't have to make another Instagram post.
I don't have to make another YouTube post.
I already made my money.
I already did everything I wanted to do in fitness. I could just leave. I could just fucking disappear and be fat somewhere. But I'm choosing to still be a hardened motherfucker and still choosing to like, you know, let's let's figure out, you know, what the next challenge can be. And let's figure out ways to still put in that seven every single day.
that seven every single day. I think that to add to that, I think it's one of those things, like,
if I don't put in that seven, I feel like I'm getting dull. Like, it keeps me sharp, you know?
Like the workouts, I know that some days I'm not going to have the best day. Sometimes I don't really feel like it, but I show up anyway, right? And that's why I say a seven. I know some people
are like, one out of ten, you know, but you don't always give a ten. You also have other aspects of
your life, though, that are really important to you.
So if you're putting that 10 in every day into fitness, I think it can sometimes pull against other things.
Yeah, for sure.
Oh, I can definitely, definitely agree with that.
But putting in the effort every day and then constantly adding like these sprinkles of challenges that happen throughout the year, they help me stay up, you know, because this
trip has been challenging. This is the first time ever since I began working out that I've ever felt
like I've lost my mojo, right? Which is like, it's not that I wouldn't work out, but the workouts
were changing. They were like a 20 mile hike, which is crazy. I know that's still a lot for
some people, but the intensity wasn't there. I wasn't sweating and dripping from head to toe.
I hadn't lifted a crazy heavy weight that day,
but it's understanding that that's okay.
Like I think I said to you guys earlier,
I'm,
I know it sounds ugly to a lot of people,
but I know what my own body pretty well,
but this is the worst shape that I've ever been in,
but the most fulfilled I've ever filled felt,
if that makes sense.
So I think you've got to give and take,
right?
Every day that you do that.
So the mental challenges for me are now almost replacing the physical challenges.
Trying to keep your cool, communicate, journal every day, have a morning routine that doesn't
have a freaking cell phone in, like doing these things.
And now what I'm getting from what I used to get from going in and doing a 10 every
day.
Why do you think you feel more fulfilled?
What do you think that's from?
Being present, you know, and actually making sure I'm aware of what I'm doing rather than just going through the motions of doing things. I remember back in 2019, the month of September, I had six days home and they weren't together. It was like, get home, leave that suitcase dirty and full, go pack another one, you've got to go here. You've got to go there. You've got to do everything was just so quick that I couldn't tell you anything that happened that year.
I don't remember because I was just in survival mode going through the motions.
Now it's like I want to be present.
I want to sleep in one day.
I have a big problem with sleep.
Like I love to sleep, but I cannot sleep in.
Like I'm ready to go.
I want to get up at four.
I feel like every time I'm sleeping past five and wasting my day away, like it's ridiculous, but I need to slow down. And that was the purpose behind this trip,
which is like find a new gear because I don't have one. Quarantine exposed so much to me,
which is you're being forced to slow down and you can't like, there's no stress around,
but you're creating it. Like this is now a problem, right? So let's go on a trip,
find a slower gear, slow the fuck down and be present and do things
that you actually enjoy like planting seeds and watching something grow because you're home long
enough to water your fucking plants like random things like this that i have missed over the last
five years or being present at friends birthdays and not just assuming that my excuse of being
busy is okay um so i i've taken i think i'm doing things now that i should
have done at the very beginning of my career that would have just instilled who i am as i grew but
i was just so obsessed with taking the next step to try and evolve is what i always always used to
say that i was just chasing a goal without understanding where the fuck i was going
it kind of makes me curious though because you obviously you were killing it before and you were just moving moving moving moving moving but that kind of seems like you kind of needed that
and like you got really far doing that um so would you take any of that back would you change any of
that necessarily no i don't think so i'm grateful for all the experiences but i'm also really
grateful that i'm aware enough to make a change because it's a very selfish place to be.
You know, like I said, I've been with this guy since I was 19. That month of September,
that whole year, the guy barely saw me. And that was always my thing, right? It's like,
I'm growing, we're going to improve for our future, for our future. And if you don't check in with your partner, are you going to have a fucking future or are you going to be alone?
So that was something that I had to really figure out and so we we slowed down yeah and and i don't
regret any of it by any means but i think it also exposed a lot about myself that maybe i wouldn't
have discovered if covid didn't happen and and there seems to be like there's a thing with you
there's a thing with mark like uh when i when i look at a lot of people within fitness professionals
people stay doing the things that they're good, people stay doing the things that they're good at.
People stay doing the things that they're known for.
And it kind of drives some individuals into a hole.
He's trying to get better at running and moving.
I think you mentioned that you want to do a fight camp type training thing.
Doing things that you're not necessarily good at, even though you're a professional, I think that takes a lot of courage
because people are about to see you suck, right?
And what makes you okay with that?
Because a lot of people aren't okay
with people seeing them in that vulnerable, sucky position.
What makes you okay with that?
I think that throughout this whole experience
that I'm talking about,
I haven't really ever given a fuck
with what other people think.
Even when I don't like the things about myself that I'm trying to change,
I've never really operated on what other people think of me.
So I think that that is one big piece of that equation.
But again, it's a selfish thing.
I want to see that I can apply myself into a modality that I fucking suck at
and through consistent hard work that I can actually become decent at
and I can hold my
own. That's now an obsession, which is probably replaced the CrossFit obsession, you know, but
like, man, I remember my first training day on a bike. I thought that the bike was broken. I thought
that someone had left like a piece of plastic on the resistance reel and it wasn't, it was just
that hard. I'm like, okay, this is 10 minutes and my legs are burning out and I want to quit. I'm going to do this for
800 fucking miles. What?
Then that became, I have
to be cool with doing this.
I want to feel good. I don't want to feel like I'm in
the pain cape. I want to enjoy
being able to look up, look at the mountains and
soak things in because I'm not struggling
to survive. I think just overcoming
and becoming good at
or not good, just holding my own at places is now a new obsession. I don't need to win. I don't just overcoming and like becoming good at, or not good, just
holding my own at places is now a new obsession. I don't need to win. I don't need to be the fastest
athlete. Don't need to be the strongest, but I want to make sure that I give it a go. So yeah,
I want to put myself in uncomfortable positions. That's good. Being able to look up and kind of
enjoy it just reminded me of the post that Brooke Wells made a couple of days ago where she was like,
I think she said like 800 meter run and she's out in front
of everybody and she's got this big old smile on her.
Did you see that post? I didn't see it.
She's just crushing everybody. Everyone's literally
behind her. She's all jacked and she's just doing
her thing. She's still in a cast right now?
I'm like, damn. She's insane.
I think she did something to her arm.
Her elbow, right?
Yeah, like how far ahead she is of everybody.
Because she's
formerly a sprinter, so she's like,
yeah, this is my shit.
She's a sprinter.
She's going to fuck everybody up on this.
Man, she's such a savage athlete, huh?
She's way in front of everybody.
And her mindset. I mean, I've never met her in person, right?
But her mindset's pretty cool.
Even watching her overcome this injury, always so positive.
And it's not like whether or not she's gonna come back it's it's a comeback you know the
decision's already made yeah in her mind i dig that i'm curious as far as like the industry is
like fitness it's like muscle protein um how like you've obviously progressed through you've you've
done a lot of different things uh are there any specific type of like challenges, you've obviously progressed through, you've done a lot of different things.
Are there any specific type of, like, challenges that you've just, like, come into just by being a woman in some of these spaces?
Oh, for sure.
For sure.
In many aspects, I think, you know.
But again, I don't really care, which has always been on my side.
And I think that's my mom raising me that way.
My mom's always been different.
Mom had weird color hair. Mom had weird fashion, you know, that was different than everyone else.
So I've been raised with that. But, uh, there's often even conversations when,
when it comes to business is where something really is interesting for me because, uh,
I like to think that, uh, Paolo ran the whole gym at PumpFit and that was his baby.
But the online thing has been my baby since day one and did it all alone but if we ever go for dinner with other businessmen they don't even look at me to have the conversation it's the straight conversation with him and that used to
bother the shit out of me and now i'm just like cool like go for it it is what it is but people
don't even assume that a woman that because i i maybe a lot of women that have a personal brand they're
the personal brand part of it and then there's someone else that's the brains but that hasn't
been the case for me i've been a bit of both so i hold pride in that and now it like makes me laugh
whenever the guys don't talk to me about it and they go straight to another male could be anyone
could be a freaking driver and that's the person they're going to talk to about business before
they talk to me so that's been something for sure and then there's been a lot of opportunities too that
may have gone somewhere else if i had taken them but i just never have and i think that's just from
being secure in my own relationship and not ever doing anything that i don't need to do to hold
my integrity to my soul to level up or whatever else it may be in in the industry but um yeah
i've always been very grounded and had that circle around.
Let's take a small cradum break, huh?
Oh, I see what happens here.
I'll finish the other half.
Yeah, just take half.
Okay.
I don't know how you'll measure it out,
but good luck.
Good luck.
Cheers.
Bottoms up.
Watch that now.
Bruh, Encima,
what do you plan on having for dinner tonight, man?
I'm going to have a center cut ribeye and a flat iron times two from Piedmontese.
Wait, how many steaks is that?
It's three steaks.
Oh my gosh.
Three steaks, two flat irons, one center cut ribeye.
And the great thing about these steaks is that they have a decent amount of fat, but
it's not so much that if you had three steaks, you're going to be eating a massive amount
of calories.
So that's why it's called the diet steak. Yeah. So for myself, it's Friday. I'm like, I'm kind of, you know,
a whole day or a whole week, I should say of like some pretty solid eating. Like I'm in on my game.
So it's like today I just want to go like, I just want to go crazy on the big old steak.
So I'm going to have a bovet. I know. And the funny thing is, it's like,
I'm still going to be 100 on my plan
because that whole thing has 100 grams of protein i think only like 16 grams of fat so i'm gonna
have that probably some potatoes just oh my gosh i can't wait dude i'm gonna so if you guys want
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Yep.
Doesn't taste very good.
It really does taste like earth.
You got used to it. It's still good. It's a good way to put it really does taste like earth you get used to it
that's not good it's a good way to put it tastes like earth do you do you have any advice for like
because like you know you you said that you started kind of what 2013-14 yeah 2012 is when
i signed a contract to become a member at a gym okay 2012 you signed a contract to become a member at a gym. Okay, 2012, you signed a contract to become a member at a gym.
In the early 2000, whatever, social media started going, whatever.
But nowadays, is there any advice you have for a woman
that's trying to build a personal brand or build something within fitness?
What would you tell them to be careful of?
What would you tell them to try to do?
Just from your experience, What would you tell them to try to do? Just what, from your experience,
what would you advise? So as far as being, sustaining what you do is the biggest piece,
right? Consistency. So I think that in fitness is a lot of times I've even been guilty of this,
of like doing what I think we're supposed to be doing if you're pursuing fitness and it's always
backfired. So I think that if anyone's trying to pursue a career in fitness, doesn't mean that
that's the only thing that you do because you become inhuman if you do that. So staying true
to yourself and utilizing fitness towards your own personal preferences or desires is great.
Like the whole outdoor thing, I'm fit. So I'm able to do those things, right? But before I would
never let the instagram world see
that i'm in the woods doing weird shit because that's not fitness related but then i'm unhappy
doing the other stuff because it's not feeling fulfilled so doing things that you enjoy and
really finding your own lane within fitness is really really important i think did you find that
when you started talking more about the outside things outside
of just lifting did people start to fall off no no they actually started to fall on I think because
they realize or they the the words would be like thank you for letting us into your life
to know that you are a human right and this isn't all you do um because it becomes extremely boring
if it's the only thing that i'm doing all day every
day even from the content that we put out right it's like it's just why we're making changes now
but whenever you're working i'm in this space because i love to move and i love to change
people's lives right which is the from zoomed out perspective but if i'm only doing those things and
i'm serving so much to others and not myself, so like I'm filming workouts for people and filming workouts for people.
Now I hate the workouts.
Now I hate the camera.
You know,
it's like not anything that you do over and over and over again will become a
job.
I think unless you try and find fulfillment in it.
So I think that it's important to make sure that you're understanding what
you're doing,
you're enjoying what you're doing and you genuinely feel like passionate about
it,
that you become obsessed with it because you just want to to not because it's what you think that you should do
you know how do you manage uh social media and uh not getting caught up in like over sexualizing
anything because that seems to be from some females um i mean i guess the guys do it too
but it's just a different public perception, right?
It's seen differently.
It's seen differently.
It's interpreted way differently.
So, you know, maybe in your case, maybe some of the people that you guys met with, maybe they see the post and they see, you know, a sports bra working out.
And maybe this automatically assume like there's no reason to talk to her about
business she's the talent and she's you know attractive and sexy and all that and so i'm just
going to go talk to her husband and talk business um how do you personally toe that line do you have
any concern about it or do you just kind of just say this is me and this is what i like to post
and you're not concerned about it or how do you handle it I don't think I'm over I don't think about it as much as I probably should
um but it's not a thought process but you're like in a regular I guess I'm gonna eat my own words
here we went to a global gym the other day and I was wearing a sports bra that was pretty low
and I hate that when people stare at me right it's which I also understand that if you look a
certain way people are going to look but it makes me it takes away from the workout so I don't like
to work out to make people think that I look sexy so what did I go do I went to the front desk bought
a triple XL t-shirt put it over the top and got because that was my workout but then as soon as
I was done with my workout then I'm like oh shit I need videos for the gram so what do I do?
I take off the shirt and it's very much
like this is a tool, this is a job
this is what I'm going to do but this doesn't mean
that this has to become who I am
you'll never see me being that girl
wearing short shorts
and trying to take a booty
pic like this, it's just not who I am
but I think I learnt that at the very beginning
there's a photographer in Florida called Justin Price and any a booty pic like this. It's just not who I am. But I think I learned that at the very beginning.
There's a photographer in Florida called Justin Price and any big fitness girl or bikini competitor will do a photo shoot with them.
I did the bodies of work with the LHGFX, whatever it is, for bodybuilding many years ago.
And I also did lingerie like photo shoots where I'm looking back at it on the fucking floor
and it's like if you know me people would laugh at that because it's so not who Hannah is but I
did that at the beginning and I thought that's what you needed to do to get a lot of likes like
all my Reebok application stuff is me like doing some fucking weird shit but it got me into the
door but then once I got in the door I was was like, this is not who I am. I don't feel comfortable with this.
This is not the message that I want to put out there.
This is not what I want to influence people in any way.
I want to do things differently.
Those are actually really cool shots.
They're so cool.
They are really cool.
I would say they're more artistic than anything.
Yeah, for sure.
But I quickly, after the Justin Price photo shoot, was like, man, this is just not me.
So I don't do that anymore.
And now I'm the girl that has crotch sweat, doesn't give a shit about a camel toe and doesn't care, you know, because I'm here to work out.
And my eyes are closed half the time and people just try and kind of document what I'm doing now.
But things are changing.
You know, real quick, though, the thing you mentioned about the gym, right? Where you had that,
the sports bra thing, you had to put on a shirt for the workout. It is weird. Cause you know,
you, you mentioned like this in terms of the interpretation of like that, right? If I had
my shirt off during a workout, like my whole, my whole torso is shoring, right? But Oh, he's
jacked. He's just jacked. But you, you have a sports bra on. It's not like you have a sports
bra on. Right. And it's like, oh God, cover up.
It's kind of, it's kind of problematic on the end of the individuals that are interpreting
it.
Right.
It's like, it's the totally wrong interpretation because my whole torso is exposed, but it's
cool.
Right.
Right.
It's so, that is so true.
I don't really think, I don't think I read into it too much.
Yeah.
I'm cool with, I'm cool with where I'm at.
I'm cool with the relationship that I'm in.
And maybe if I, I don't know what would happen. I'm cool with where I'm at. I'm cool with the relationship that I'm in.
I don't know what would happen.
I always think about this.
If I was single,
I wonder if that would still apply.
You know what I mean?
If I'm needing attention or I'm not getting attention in certain areas
that I feel like that's my worth.
That's my way of putting myself out there.
So I do wonder about that.
But maybe it'd be a totally different mindset
if I was not married. What do you think of this TikTok world?
Oh man, we were just talking about this. I need to talk to you and pick your brain. We got you.
Because I don't even have a TikTok account. What? I think I might have one created,
but I'm not obsessed with social media like I should be.
Alright, first TikTok has to be you guys wearing each other's clothes.
The traditional TikTok video. Okay, that works. be all right first tiktok has to be you guys wearing each other's clothes the traditional tiktok okay okay yeah we gotta start out with that what do you want to wear babe actually i
have a video it's like i've been dying for this moment i have a video example to share with you
guys i would love this well this will make you laugh because we were in um we're filming and uh
have a bunch of new samples come in for our 2022 collection right for apparel and i'm like fuck how am i
going to showcase and ask people their opinion with this outfit and i it ended up being me and
him like eight o'clock at night with him trying to film and i'm like you know jumping and i'm in
another outfit three outfits and i'm like fuck this this is not who i am you're never gonna
catch me doing one of those things or freaking being on the screen you know so i quit and now i'm like this is why i can't do tiktok
because it's not meant i just can't pretend to do things for the sake of having to do them it
doesn't need to be that cringe though like i don't i don't do that cringe shit okay you don't need to
do the cringe shit i know we got you no we got you all right you don't you don't want to be cringe
though yeah you don't have to do the popular stuff. You can do like even
just informative stuff
like the stuff that you
do on your Instagram.
Great.
Some of the stuff you
the stuff you showed us
today was awesome.
That beast flow stuff
would be sick.
Oh yeah.
That shit would kill.
Yeah people are actually
looking for information
on there.
Oh sweet.
Then I'm going to
I'm going to give it a
go and do it differently.
I didn't do Snapchat
when Snapchat came out and somewhere naively at the back of my mind I'm like TikTok is going to give it a go and do it differently. I didn't do Snapchat when Snapchat came out.
And somewhere naively at the back of my mind, I'm like, TikTok is going to be another Snapchat.
But it ain't.
It's a real thing.
The businesses that are behind it, I'm like, okay, this is going to be a long-term thing.
So I definitely need to get on that train.
You might even be able to do some stuff with food, with nutrition, and especially the way
you guys are living right now.
It's actually kind of interesting.
You don't have typical setup.
I know you have a kitchen and a fridge and all that stuff,
but it's just a little different.
How are you eating on the road?
What's it looking like?
The Blackstone Grill.
Not a sponsor at all.
Those are fucking awesome.
That is the game changer for us.
It's like a flat-top griddle,
but we use that every day we will prep it's the
thing i have that i used in uh bodega that kind of griddle that i cook on yeah okay it's awesome
so we'll just meal prep on that but i was saying to you earlier if there's grocery stores it's
great the quality of produce is probably not where it would be if i was home but we're grateful that
we can just cook off cook our meals rather than eat out which is kind of our our style anyway but when you start to get really out there you got to get creative because they've
got like deli meat that's from oscar maya and like canned tuna and it's like oh we gotta try and
figure out how to do this and do it the best we can so it's been a challenge but i've tried to
just not care as much about the nutrition as well since we've been on the road and not allow the little things like that would usually stress me out that seems
so easy and available to stress me out because you can't control what you can't control how do
you normally eat like um not maybe not maybe like what you eat but how do you kind of uh prepare
yourself in a way that allows like under under normal circumstances, it's not what you're doing right now, but there's normal circumstances.
Do you like meal prep?
Do you always have something close by?
Like what's it look like for you guys?
So in the office, I'll typically make my meals every day, but I'll go get like a big plain, if it's a rush and not grilled already, but big plain naked rotisserie chicken, a box of salad with avocados and dry cranberries and nuts and sprouts and all
that good stuff and kind of just go low carb,
high protein for lunch.
And then breakfast,
my go-to every day is going to be like an oatmeal with almond milk and
protein.
And then I'll snack in between,
but not really much.
And then in the evening I'll go for a heavy,
heavy,
heavy meal. And I love to cook. So that's what I'll do every night that but not really much. And then in the evening, I'll go for a heavy, heavy, heavy meal.
And I love to cook.
So that's what I'll do every night that I go home, no matter what.
Even if it's at 10 o'clock, we're cooking a full course meal.
I'll have like a good carb in it and a lot of protein and a lot of vegetables.
We love vegetables.
You mainly just are eating like a kind of a whole foods diet.
You just like meat, vegetables, maybe a little bit of grains in there. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And then not depriving myself because I've been
in very different stages when it comes to my nutrition of being like the person that's picking
grains of rice off the plate and like not going to any restaurant, not allowing anyone else to
prepare my meal because you don't know the oils they're going to make with it. And yeah, my
aesthetics have changed. And when I ate like that, I wasn't miserable.
I looked damn good.
But it's not sustainable if you're not in the comfort of your own home, you know?
So that's not realistic in the life that we're living right now.
So, I mean, we're just trying to be flexible.
And I'm eating the worst that I've ever eaten.
But I realize that it's really not the end of the world.
And my body will probably bounce back as soon as I get home.
And trying to
implement those disciplines when you have no structure is an interesting battle.
Protein shakes, protein bars, you mess with anything like that?
Yep. Protein shakes, probably do one to two a day. Protein bars, when we do the jobs like we
are with NordicTrack, I mean, there's way too many bars going down, but it's better than nothing.
So yeah, if we're on the go, then I'll do the bars.
But I generally like to eat real whole foods.
I think you mentioned during our workout that you used to have kind of like an eating disorder.
What was that and what did that look like?
I just didn't eat.
I remember my last year of college, I was burning the candle at both ends again and just kind of was always wanting to achieve,
so did whatever it took to achieve when it came to college
and performing for school.
And I was so skinny, man.
I just didn't eat.
You said you weighed like 100 pounds or something, right?
105 pounds.
At this height?
At this height, yeah.
I'll have photos of you.
I'll bring them up for you.
I'll show you guys.
But I was tiny, like so, so skinny. I bet if you search like Hannah Eden before CrossFit,
it's crazy. I was just skin and bone. So yeah, I had a very unhealthy relationship. I thought that
if you ate food, you got fat. And so I just didn't eat food and I would just perform. And then when
I found fitness, I would still go wake up. I used to to take noon class i'd like finish bartending at
five in the morning go to sleep to like maybe 10 or 11 wake up get my acai refresher from starbucks
with almond croissant that would be my fuel for the whole day and i'm training at a competitive
level like that's ridiculous so once i figured out that if you want to perform you got to eat
i started to uh do more of that yeah man honestly your
transformation i think it's like it's fucking amazing because i know i know quite a few women
who are like really light and really skinny and they they don't lift at all that's impressive
and like yeah seeing the amount of muscle that you've been able to put on and how athletic you
became that's extremely motivating to see for a lot of people i think the weight difference between those is like
105 pounds on the left and maybe like 155 on the on the right and right now i'm like 140 140 yeah
yeah okay so this this makes me curious you said that like since you've been on the road i guess
you haven't been able to weight train as much that's why you've lost like a bit of lean body
mass and we've been doing so much conditioning through the running and the hikes and the food too we're not
eating as much as we usually do um but yeah when we like this trip we just finished on
where are we yeah saturday we're doing 10 15 miles a day for 21 days so like you're losing a lot of
weight you know um and i believe that you can do, but we didn't have access to gyms.
We didn't even have access to our truck during that time.
So I had resistance bands and that's it.
So the shift in training takes a big toll, obviously, on the aesthetics too.
Did you ever have like a real focus on trying to gain muscle or was it just a byproduct
of maybe performance in the gym?
Yeah.
So when I was into CrossFit, my strength was my engine.
How are you doing over there?
Second wave, guys.
So I was really fit and my conditioning was great.
So my engine was my strength
and my weights were my weakness.
So then it became like my coach always just had me
try and gain, gain, gain muscle, gain strength.
So that was like the engine kind of is a natural talent that i have like my endurance is
pretty great naturally so i had a good coach off the bat because he recognized like hey
the best thing that you can do is probably just gain more muscle mass because you're skinny
yeah uh i would say that comes in to yes and no because then it was like doesn't matter what it
fucking takes lift heavy shit every fucking day and i'm pretty sure that's why i have a back injury but um yeah i think that was
that was definitely something that helped me and i ended up becoming just as strong as with the
other girls you know and the muscle mass i'm grateful for because i feel like it's helped me
maintain over the years as well what did a crossfit do for you like um i know for a lot
of people it's really empowering i think a lot of people got into CrossFit, you know, not just females, but mainly females.
Just made so much progress on things like deadlifts.
I think, you know, I recall being friends with some girls that would come in and they would start out 135, 185 deadlifting.
Some girls who came in a little stronger, had athletic background, maybe 200 pounds.
But then they started deadlifting 315 routinely.
And I've seen some girls even like,
I guess like Brooke pulling like 400 pounds
after a trail run.
It's just like, it was just wild.
Did CrossFit do some of that for you?
Like where you started lifting some of these weights
and you're like, this is fucking awesome.
I can't even, I can't believe this is me
lifting these weights. Yeah, absolutely. is fucking awesome i can't even i can't believe this is me lifting these weights yeah absolutely i think it showed
uh potential for me and it was the potential will arrive once the work goes in so that whole
analogy and discipline and and finding strength and confidence all of that it was found in crossfit
that i've been able to take on and kind of apply to the other spaces. But yeah, I had this crazy strength of jerking. Like I can jerk so much. I could usually jerk a lot more than I could squat.
My squat was my weakest movement and my deadlift was my weakest movement because my back hurt. So
I would, I'd have limits there, but man, my shoulder strength is pretty stupid. I'd be able
to jerk. I don't know. I think my heaviest I jerked was like 205.
Wow. I couldn't do that now if you paid me. What's crazy too, is to see some of the weights that some of the individuals, again, male and female with like overhead squats or like walking
overhead lunge. I'm like, the fuck exercise is that? Like I've been lifting for a long time.
I'm like, never seen anybody even try to attempt, try to attempt some of the movements that are in CrossFit.
But anybody who thinks they're really strong in a squat, go ahead and try an overhead walking lunge.
And then just for an ego killer, take the weights that some of the girls use and see if you can get up and down the turf back and forth with an overhead lunge you'll
be uh shocked and you'll just say man i actually really suck at lifting yeah right yeah i'm
demoralizing i'm glad i'm glad that i stopped when i did because i look at i mean i remember
going to the games where brooke was competing and it's just on another level man but i'm glad that
i stopped when i did because i'm able to move now pain free
and i think if i had stayed in that world for another year when it was transitioning and the
weight started just keep going up and up and up that i probably would have done a lot of irreversible
well more irreversible damage you know that would have hurt this stage of my life and that i heard
you say earlier that you're just trying to move better and that's the ultimate goal right it's
like i want to be doing this shit when i'm 70 and wrinkly so i think about that it's like
whatever style of training i'm doing right now is this sustainable you know is this cool for
now or am i going to be able to do this in in a few years how was it it's awesome
wow that came out so much better so fast that must have came out pretty good it's because i've
you know it's a smooth move i don't clean break yeah you tapered shits going on over here yeah just laying rope you know
i like that i've never heard somebody say that before oh you weren't in the room i was saying
like a picture of like a soft serve ice cream yeah i like it laying rope you were about to say
what no we said that earlier i was earlier have you guys ever heard of the term
laying rope it's like real casual
like you just didn't be like sorry bud I'm just going to go
lay some rope real quick
I'm about to use that everywhere
I like that
it doesn't sound that
bad or offensive
but if you think about it
but then when your brain goes there
it's like oh I don't want to close my eyes.
You're like,
man,
I really got to go take a shit.
It's like,
you're like,
Oh,
excuse me.
Come on.
That's disgusting.
Gotta go lay some rope.
You know,
I always love it when you get new ways to talk about poop.
This is true.
I'm all about poop.
I have no problem talking about poop.
Do you have any poop stories on that?
Yes!
Long Icelandic trip.
You must have pooped.
Oh man, let me tell you.
I was an idiot.
And by the way, talk about nutrition.
I tried to do it the right way.
I was eating 45,000 calories a day.
Wait, 4,500?
4,500.
5,000 calories a day.
And at the beginning, I was like, I'm going to do this the healthy way.
And at that point, I was on my game of nutrition i never cheated you'd never eat me see me eating cookies
or any shit like that and then i realized quickly that it wasn't possible because it would just be
miserable to get the amount of food in yeah so then i started to switch it up and it was like
give me a jar of nutella put it on a spoon with peanut butter like doesn't matter like just give
me anything and uh to say the least, like shitting stories were disgusting,
but I would crave a Coke or something that's sugary at the end of the day.
And almost every day I was an idiot.
I knew it was going to happen.
I would chug it and immediately projectile vomit.
Wait, what?
Because there's no way you, like, oh man,
so much energy put out throughout that day.
I'm craving something sweet.
And it was instant every single time.
So that was disgusting and foolish on my part.
But I also got addicted to sugar after that trip.
And I still don't think I've ever been the same way since.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, man.
Just in a short period of time, huh?
I mean, it was, what, three years ago.
I'm not where I was then.
But as soon as the trip was done,
I'd wake up.
And the first thing I'm thinking of was like,
I never had,
I never used to eat toast with butter and peanut butter.
And then it was like for breakfast today,
I want to have Nutella with butter and some bread.
And then I'm going to toast it.
You know,
it was like,
but it just kept happening and it was really hard as well.
So then that helped me understand other people,
right.
Putting myself back in touch with just cut sugar out. It's not easy to cut sugar out. Yeah. It's really hard as well so then that helped me understand other people right putting myself back in touch with just cut sugar out it's not easy to cut sugar out yeah it's really hard well
also too when you have when you have a well put together body you're thinking like this ain't
gonna really hurt anything if i just do this and then the next day you're like this won't really
hurt anything if i do this and yeah it's kind of repetitive right oh yeah after a while you're like oh okay that does have it adds up turns out i don't mean to push the issue but do you have any if you don't it's cool
but do you have any good poop stores like it's just something something that just comes to mind
oh man here's one for you so whenever you go camping right there's this there's this term
which you pack it in you pack it out which means that you're not really supposed to shit in the woods
because your excrement can secrete into the earth,
which is not good, right, if we're going naturalist style.
I thought it'd be good fertilizer.
Right?
I guess it depends on what you eat, I guess.
Oh, okay.
But you're not really supposed to poop in the woods
or pee near water sources or any of that good stuff
if you're trying to follow the outdoor code.
But I do remember
this one time that I wasn't ready
to pack it out or pack it
in.
Paolo and I, he probably has no idea.
This is going to be great. Remember that cathedral wash
hike?
We were going through these narrows.
It's going to be this really short hike.
Definitely not going to need to shit.
Rule number one, you never go outside without shit tickets.
Okay?
Like toilet paper.
Just in case you've got to go, it's always there.
Buy a degradable if you want to be good.
I don't have anything with me.
I needed to poop so bad, right?
And usually we have this little shovel that you dig down so far,
you prop yourself up, you give yourself a good view,
and it's fucking epic.
It's great.
You're just shitting in the woods.
Well, I don't have any of that stuff with me i had a a hair tie that was made of velvet and a rock so i had to shit so bad
that i literally like just scooped some ground earth out of the way laid rope and then was like
oh my gosh i have no toilet paper and like that's like a no-go i'm not gonna use a rock to wipe my
asshole it's not going to happen.
So I'm like looking everywhere.
I'm like,
shit,
I can't take my socks off and need these.
Otherwise I'm going to get blisters.
Ooh,
don't have anything else.
I'm like,
hair tie.
This is great.
So I use the velvet hair tie off my head,
wipe my ass with it,
put it in a Ziploc and walked my ass home.
What a lady.
You know,
you got to do it.
I put my shit stories out there you got any
anything oh well i mean this is a classic but um the fact that you shit every podcast no no no no
you didn't shit yourself recently too right oh oh great story i got so excited you know what you
know let's tell that story yeah the sauna one's better. I'll make this quick. There was a shit.
It was 2019.
I was in a sauna and I thought I had to fart.
You know, saunas are really warm and, you know, everything.
So I farted, but it was actually a little bit of shit.
And I was like, you know what, though?
I don't want to get up yet.
I'm enjoying this sauna experience.
No.
So I sat with that and I have deep cheeks so it didn't
excrete right but everyone like it started to smell because it's shit right and it's a sauna
it's condensed six or seven other people were in there and i just saw people like looking around
and i just i just sat there like this just not even you know but no one could i
saw people start to walk out people came in and people left immediately just because it smelled
like shit in that sauna it was brewing it was right yeah you know and it definitely rose to
the top so you shotted i did i did yeah you can't you can't trust a fart you know you gotta be
careful yeah and then andrew you pooped yourself recently too, right? I'm trying to think. I'm not like embarrassed to not say it, but like, no, I have not shit myself in a hot
minute.
Yeah.
It's been a while.
Like I said, I have a lot of experience holding it in.
Like I had the worst stomach coming into this podcast.
Oh, he's got great advice.
Yeah.
Tell her your theory.
Well, yeah.
Depending on how bad you got to go.
But if it's like an emergency, most people will be like, I got to sprint to the bathroom and that's usually when you know shit will squirt out yeah so you have you gotta
stay balanced you gotta stay balanced you gotta keep your your knees bent okay you know because
yeah because if you want okay yeah if you extend your hamstrings it just like it pulls everything
out and then you're just that's it it's over yeah so you have to you kind of catch yourself so like you keep yourself like uh like if you're holding a cup
of water uh-huh you know you're balanced all the way through but it actually does help with uh you
know holding stuff in that's the thing well i got a story for paulo because he recently shit himself
so i'll tell since he doesn't have a microphone i'll go ahead and let you know about this one
so we're on the phone, actually.
It's great.
This happens way more than people give it credit for.
Oh, yeah.
Adults are shitting themselves left and right.
It's good for us to be vulnerable.
You know what I mean?
Let's share, right?
We're all human.
So, Palo, we had become obsessed with cold brew coffee.
And you guys know the brand Chameleon?
Yeah.
So you know how they have concentrate?
Yeah. Very concentrated. Yeah. Very you know how they have concentrate? Yeah.
Very concentrated.
Yeah.
Very strong.
This guy didn't read the instructions.
Supposed to mix it with water.
Yeah.
Doesn't mix it with water.
He's on the phone with me and we're talking or whatever.
He's like, oh, fuck.
I got to go.
I'm like, why?
He's like, I'll tell you later.
Hangs up.
Turns out he thought he was going to fart.
Doesn't.
Driving to the gym to coach a class that is our own gym.
So it's not even like you can get your workout and leave.
Like you own this gym, bro.
Shits his pants.
Then takes the car to the car wash with shit on.
You know what's happening.
He's like, hey, bro, can you wash my seat?
Yeah. And yeah yeah he totally shit himself
and then I think, what did you do?
coach the class?
I had to
gotta do what you gotta do
you ask this guy
we have this joke about it, if you were to be
deserted on an island and you knew you were
gonna be there, what would be the one thing that you bring?
mine was like a kettlebell.
He's like, booty wipes.
Not even a thought.
I'm going to bring booty wipes.
That's hella smart.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I haven't shit myself, though, in my adult years.
I pee in my pants all the time, but I haven't shit myself.
It's right around the corner.
I can't wait.
And when it does, I'm going to give you a call.
Send us a text.
Give us a call.
I'll give you an update.
You know?
It's inevitable.
I did a five-day fast not too long ago.
And I was just, like, brushing my teeth before I was, like, getting in the shower.
And I thought I was going to just, like, fart.
And I just, it was like a volcano.
Oh, wow.
It, like, bubbled out of there.
Like, you know, normally if you, like, shart yourself, it's a a volcano. It bubbled out of there.
Normally if you shart yourself, it's a shart.
This was full on
full shit, like a baby diaper.
There was so much. I was like,
oh my god.
Was that the one you sent the picture for?
No, you showed yourself.
I had to throw out
my shorts.
It was a nightmare.
I went right into the shower.
I'm trying to wash everything off, and it was just like I just threw everything in a trash bag
and then threw it out, threw it out.
You've got to take that shit out to the road.
Oh, man.
I don't know why.
I just need to be as far away from my home as possible.
I'm not sure why, but I thoroughly enjoy poop conversations. So these things come up a lot. And the crew that we're always
doing these crazy jobs with, a lot of them are ultra runners or whatever.
And a lot of them are into production as well. So I've got to let you know this one
story that I thought was great. And I won't say any names because it's not me. But there's one dude
we're going to call him T-Snake. So T-Snake
is an audio guy.
He does a lot of audio for a lot of commercials or whatever.
So you know the shark vacuum?
They were doing testimonials where they have to go into real people's homes
that actually have a shark product and ask them what they think of the product.
So he said that, and these trips that we'd go on,
we're often in third world countries or can often get weird stomach shit
that happens when you go home, you're shitting your pants for days.
It was one of those situations
and his belly wasn't great
and so he shows up to this job to film
this mother with her children
that were at the house
and they had a nice little set up.
So the bathroom downstairs unfortunately had
all the gear, the lights and all that good shit
so they couldn't shut the door
and there was one bathroom upstairs. and he said that before the job happened he had been
under the weather and had severe diarrhea but right before the job started he took some
imodiums like i'm good to go gets there does the shoot fills his belly going fucking weird again
he's like oh my god i can't shit in this client's house because like this isn't a normal poop this is going to be bad so he ends up asking the mother hey do you have a bathroom that i can
use because he's like posterior tilt here like it's bad we're balancing the cup of water real
real bad she's like oh yeah we have one downstairs and he's like oh fuck it's fucking blocked like i
can't do that and he goes do you have anything else and he's apparently at this time like green
sweating and she's like yeah there's actually a bedroom right up the stairs and they're stood at
the bottom and she's like oh i love your shirt and he's like oh thank you so much you know
then he starts to make his way upstairs and guess what it's too late he's like
oh no oh fucking shitting it's going down his pants yeah and then he's like every step with
every step and he's like
but what do I do now? Because I have to
go back downstairs. I don't have a backpack
with any clothes on. We're all like
did you go to the son's room and steal some clothes
from the kid that lived in the house? He's like no I didn't.
I had to figure
it out. He's like I went upstairs. I spent 30
minutes in the bathroom. I'm showering this
stranger's home and she's probably like
what is he doing in my bathroom?
And they were filming downstairs and he just took his underwear off.
I have no idea why because he left it in her trash can.
Cleaned himself up as much
as he could. Ran outside the front door
and just left. Didn't tell anyone. He was like the
leader of this whole shoot. Didn't tell anyone where he was going.
The worst shit story ever.
That takes the cake right there.
That's a bad one. Oh, that's perfect.
Oh man.
I love that he had to take a shower.
Yeah.
It's like stress reactions,
right?
You're not thinking it through.
You're like,
why would you do that?
Why would you take it off?
If you're going to leave,
just jump out the window
and fucking run.
Yeah.
Crazy.
Oh God.
It is eerie though
when it happens
because you're like,
I don't even know how to move
from this position
to get to where I have to go.
It's just, yeah, no good. We also refer
to it as getting struck by lightning.
Yeah. Because you are like,
it just hits you.
You're like, whoa, just like it just happened to you.
I saw this. I was like, oh, it's happening.
I see the eyes go from side to side.
You're like, I got to be right back.
It's weird, too, because it's almost like you got
shot into the future because you're like, I think I got like 10 minutes. It's weird too. Cause it's almost like you got shot into the future.
Cause you're like,
I think I got like 10 minutes.
You're like,
I'm good.
Then you're like,
I got like three seconds.
I'm lucky.
I was really certain I'd make it to the end of the podcast.
I was like,
I got this.
And then it just was like,
I was like,
no,
I can't do it.
That'll happen.
It's why that morning routine is key.
You know,
quick action.
Did you talk about the morning routine?
About my morning routine?
No. Okay. There's two questions I have for you that, um,. Did you talk about the morning routine? About my morning routine? No.
Okay.
There's two questions I have for you that,
um,
your degenerative disc disease,
is that something that's permanent and something that you,
like you have to,
your workouts are changed for life because of that?
Or so I thought it would be because it was bone on bone.
And every day I couldn't touch my fricking toes.
Like I was putting my pants on lane on the bed.
I couldn't do anything.
My bit doing any lateral movement was like excruciating pain.
Then I stopped and read a book called Foundation by Eric Goodman that just explained to me
to help my mind understand what was going on with my body.
And I changed everything.
I stopped squatting so low.
I actually really tried to find true core strength rather than just doing abs, you know,
where you're not engaging at all. So I changed a lot of things like that and retrained my body. So I wouldn't
just like pick something up. It would engage and I would hinge rather than round my back out.
So, I mean, I haven't had any treatment. The doctors are telling me surgery or like doing
cortisone shots to alleviate the pain. I haven't done any of that. I stopped lifting really,
really, really heavy
weights. And I just started on like focusing on form, strengthening up my posterior chain for real,
for real, doing accessory work, doing the boring shit that I wasn't doing before. And no, I'm not
restricted anymore at all. If I'm an idiot and I have my ego screams and I want to go squat clean
190 pounds and I'm going to be hurting the next day yeah but
uh no I don't I don't have to change anything at the moment which is pretty cool what you said
about squatting so low is really interesting uh we just had uh Joel Seidman on and he talks a lot
about this kind of higher squat angle and people are furious with him they're like that's a quarter
squat and they get all mad but I do agree with a lot of the stuff that he said. A lot of times when we are squatting to a position that you might receive like a snatch in or something like that, those are really, really low positions.
And when it comes to an exercise like the snatch, the design of it doesn't allow you to lift enough weight for it to be all that damaging to get into that position.
to be all that damaging to get into that position.
However, you could be squatting certain weights and you could be giving up positions,
you know, with 225 or 315
with weights that are just kind of heavy for you.
And you could be kind of forcing yourself
into some of these positions that your body's just not,
it's not like super,
like not necessarily super dangerous
for everybody all the time,
but it can be, it can be very dangerous.
And so I just think it's something to consider.
Like with your squat, have you, do you still train the squat?
Do you still train the deadlift?
Do you still do some of these movements?
And if so, like what variations have you had to start to do?
So when I was crossfitting, I would bounce out the hole.
I would go, because my mobility is ridiculous
and I can get my ass down low.
And I would always, even if I didn't make it on the first one,
I'd give myself a bounce and try and rebound it up.
That's what I did for the longest time.
And that's what hurt.
So whenever I started training again and trying to get pain-free, I don't squat as low as I could.
Think about people at home, just maybe in our understanding, but just are people listening to this.
Think about like a leg press, I think is a good visual.
You know, sometimes when someone goes to do a leg press, if they come down and they try to use as much range of motion as
possible, sometimes that lower back will start to round or you just get some other thing that's
like just off a little bit. And I think an exercise like that is a really easy way to get a good
visual. But a lot of times when people are squatting, I don't think they're accounting for,
it's like, look, man, you're kind of jamming yourself into these positions that you're, that for you, maybe at this moment,
you're not able to really express these positions. So therefore maybe squat a little higher,
go a little lighter, whatever you got to do. And I will say that ever since I stopped squatting
so low is when I, I still don't have much of a butt, but my glutes started to develop. I only
squat to parallel now, try and get my hip crease around my knee level.
As long as my spine is straight and I could go lower without having that butt wink happen.
I definitely could. And if like, if I'm moving slow or if it's not in a conditioning workout,
I'll go low, low, low, as long as my spine stays straight and doesn't start to round under.
But when I'm moving heavy and moving fast, I don't go that low. And a lot of my reps probably could be questionable, but I'm not trying to win.
I don't care now.
As long as I feel good, and for display only,
I'm not trying to get the lowest squat to get a rep.
It's not a bad rep if I'm not competing.
So I'm just trying to stay pain-free
and be able to squat every day.
But I squat a lot.
I still haven't changed that at all.
I just don't go as low.
Have you ever done sissy squats?
Yes. I love them. Yes, love some s. Yeah. We just did those with DLB. She kicked her ass, right?
But they were, they were a good time. Yeah. What's it like training with Dana Lynn?
It's awesome because she's a sick fuck and so am I, which I think is a good thing.
But it's cool because it's a totally different world to me. I've never been in the bodybuilding
world, never focused on that solely as anything.
So it's cool.
I think she's chasing a feeling, right?
The same way that I'm chasing a feeling.
So to be able to receive the feeling in different ways
is pretty cool.
But she's savage.
It's interesting you have so much muscle mass on you.
I know you say you normally have more on you,
but it's interesting that you have a lot of muscle mass on you
and you really haven't pursued.
It sounds like a lot of your training, you weren't necessarily intentionally trying to build a lot of muscle.
No.
I think the volume of training is pretty high and repetitive movement.
So without intending to do a bodybuilding split,
I'm sure that I could have a lot more proportion and symmetry if I focused on that.
But even just for the few weeks that we were training with Dana, my body responds
pretty quickly to that style of training. So maybe when we get home, we'll try something new.
Yeah. So you did some stuff with Reebok. You've done some stuff with bodybuilding.com. I'm sure
you've done a lot of things with a lot of other companies as well over the years.
What's it like now transitioning into doing more of your own stuff? It's cool. At the beginning, I was always wondering why I was trying to build my
own island. And now that it's been so many years, it's a really cool thing to see. And I'm so glad
that I believed in myself because we had a lot of opportunities that came up to work for other
companies. And we turned them down because we, I don't know why, I don't know where it came from,
but I felt like it was just the wrong thing to do.
Cause my biggest fear is like longevity.
We all work so hard.
And I talked to a lot of peers in the industry that I've known for years and
they applied themselves so hard to other people's companies.
And if that doesn't work out,
they're now,
you know,
almost 40 and have no, nowhere to stand on. So
I watched that happen a lot. So I believed in what we had. We had a gym. I believed in this
weird online virtual thing that I was doing. And I'm so glad I did because it's all paying off.
And now you have an app, right?
Yep. We've got an app. We've got our own app. We've got our own apparel company as well.
And we do a lot of different events and retreats and stuff, which is a really good time.
Tell me more about that.
What's your apparel company and what are these retreats about?
Yeah, so the whole thing for us is fitness, right?
And how it's changed our mental mindset.
So the apparel company is called FYR Apparel, which stands for Find Your Reason.
So in the gym in Fort Lauderdale, we had this big sign that said,
find your reason. And before we opened the gym, I asked everyone to anonymously write down three
things that they wanted through fitness. And that changed the game for me. And it made it so heavy
and emotional because it was like, all right, I'm going to paint this wall myself too, which was
cool because we actually put our hands into it. And we're going to write everyone's wants and
goals up on the wall.
And we don't know who's what.
I was thinking to see like, I want a six pack.
I want this.
And we got all of that.
But then we got really heavy shit from some people like,
I want my partner to see me.
I want to be proud of myself.
I want to feel strong.
I want to be happy.
And like it got onto an emotional level.
So then the apparel company is now kind of been stemmed from that.
So that's FYR Apparel.
And yeah, that's really fun too because I like fashion.
It's a good time to put them all together.
But yeah, that's the wall right there.
Oh, that's awesome.
I want to turn heads.
I want to be the best version of myself.
And it combined aesthetics with deep, deep, deep feelings
that I think everyone can relate to
so that's kind of the whole idea behind find your reason apparel and what does your app do
so we have an app that we release full follow-along workouts so i'll never forget the first time we
did that was with bodybuilding.com and uh jazz i think is the ceo at that time was like
what do you mean you want to do a full
follow-along that's 20 something workouts this week and they're like an hour long i'm like just
trust me this is going to be the thing that's going to change the future right like let's give
it a go he trusted us enough to do that and it was one of their most successful programs because
we're going through it with the people so i did uh previous programs with them as
well where you're on the camera saying today's monday and we're gonna hit four sets of five and
then you show them what it is and they go do their thing but the full follow along is like from the
very beginning from warming up to doing every single rep every single rest period together
i think it changes a lot so that's what we offer on our app right now um we offer all different
types of modalities. We never try and
specialize in anything. So we have
animal flow to bodybuilding
to conditioning to running
to all kinds of decompression
work and mobility work. So the app
itself tries to give you a good mix
of fitness and motivation as well
and nutrition too. There's probably other trainers
on there other than yourself probably?
It's just myself and Paolo at the moment.
But we actually just pulled the trigger yesterday
or last week to bring other people on
because it's a lot to do ourselves.
So we've got hundreds of workouts on there.
We built that library over quarantine.
And now we're traveling
and doing some workouts on the road as well.
Yeah, it's going to be really...
I'm excited for people to see the little Animal Flow stuff that you took us through because like you're mentioning real
core strain uh that was fun but it also was very demanding on the body you know and and i think
all of us here have like a goal of just moving better right and that is i didn't think it would
be as challenging as it was but it was it was challenging yeah i think that animal flow is probably one of the most overlooked things because people look at it
and it's like a joke to the real meatheads. It's like, this isn't
fitness, what the fuck is this? And I honestly felt like that a little bit too at the beginning
but I think it's the most challenging for body weight
flow is the most challenging form of exercise for me. Because if you don't engage, you're going to fall over.
Have you found some people that maybe like that when you expose them
to that, as opposed to maybe they don't like to lift weights as much? Absolutely. Yeah. Especially
people that don't have the confidence to do the heavyweight stuff, which is funny because I think
that the other stuff is harder, but there's ways to regress. There's like really great ways to
regress. So simple that anyone could do it. and then you can start to kind of stack on top of that
yeah i think a lot of times uh just to interrupt for a second i think a lot of times part of the
reason why some people like certain things is because they're kind of good at it you know like
when i first started lifting i ended up being pretty good at it fairly quickly and
that feels great like i'm good at this so I can do well. I think
one of the reasons why a lot of women, you see mainly women gravitate towards yoga is they're
naturally a little bit more flexible, a little bit more mobile. So it's something they can adopt.
But when it comes to lifting weights, there's a lot of people that they just don't enjoy it.
It never really, it never really hits them the right way. And I think something like this could
be great because I was feeling it everywhere, you trying to hold you're trying to hold yourself up in position
and you're trying to go through these other positions so it felt like it was a full body
workout and we only did a few minutes of it I can't imagine you know doing 45 minutes of it
or something like that yeah I think it connects your mind to your body and you have to have total
awareness of what's going on right because if you and it's like even from the cues that we were saying like even though both hands are on the floor shift all of
your weight over to the right side otherwise you're not going to be able to pick up your left
leg it's like it's a very different way of doing things but it's it's cool man and to combine that
kind of style of training with weights is my absolute favorite because you get a bit of both
but the cool thing though is people it's deceiving when you watch it because when you watch like you do it and you flow really well, right? It looks like
it's easy, but your whole body is having to work to stay stable. And then when you have to move
everything onto one hand and have like movement that flows after you do one of those, like your
body's pretty fucking tired. Like you're pretty fucking sweaty. You can burn a lot of calories
doing stuff like that. Um, so I actually,
I want to implement more of that because it's, it's, it's, it's a great way to do movement
without, I guess, beating yourself up too much. I can imagine if you do a 30 minute animal flow
with some kettlebell work, the next you'll have a good workout, but the next day you can do
something again rather than a super intense volume, heavy lifting routine. And the next day
you feel like trash. Exactly. You know, great way to decompress open up it's awesome i love that stuff when you go on some of these
hikes are you stopping to like look at stuff or you just kind of cruising right through them
nowadays i'm always stopping to look up i never used to and there's so many beautiful things like
we actually talked about this talking about awareness right we had a series of podcasts
that came out but um if you don't look up you don't see what's there like we went on a hike
i think it was going out good for your eyes and stuff like that too to look to look at the horizon
it's yeah healthy for you but we probably walked through the one of the most beautiful locations
but we were having a heated conversation with the head down and then we figured out our conversation
came back the same round.
We're like,
holy shit,
this place is amazing.
And it's like that whole idea is like,
just stop and look up because it's,
I can guarantee you that there's so much around you that'll make you feel joy.
But we're also head down,
eyes forward that we can't see it.
You know,
I will stop and I'll just like stare at trees for a while.
I think people probably think it's kind of weird,
but I just,
I'm in amazement of them, You know, like the way that their roots go and the way the branches go and like how they just, they'll figure out a way to survive kind of anything.
Yeah.
And the roots will even grow right through the blacktop and all kinds of crazy stuff.
I'm now doing the pee-pee dance.
So can I go pee?
Yeah, yeah.
All right.
Give me one second. Watch this.
I had a couple
incredible poop stories there.
Yeah. I don't think we've
ever had a poop story marathon like that
before. Usually they just say their poop
story. It's on to the next thing. But she was like,
tell me about your poop stories. I felt
I was like, wow, thank you for asking.
Really? You're asking really you're
you're asking yeah so you're asking little old me about my i guess it was funny it looked like
we had like a uh like a new um person on the live stream and they're like really in sema you're that
immature it's like oh yes are you not aware this is that room we are that immature i am a child
if you don't know everyone was really upset that you pooped in the sauna.
Yeah, that was, um, that was very disrespectful.
That was extremely disrespectful.
People walk in there and now they're still like, there's still something in there, you
know, hard to clean that out.
Yeah, man.
How did you feel doing those animal flows today?
Have you ever done anything like that?
People see the video at some point, but have you?
No, I've never done anything like that people see the video at some point but have you no i've never done anything like that and i was actually that was quick hey listen when i gotta go i gotta go sorry about that guys very fast like 40 seconds
yeah the animal flow stuff felt good i i liked it a lot and uh it feels like something i can
incorporate oh that's awesome i think it'd be cool. And if you guys want any extra tips, I'm down to share it all.
Hell yeah.
I think you guys need to collaborate with Knees Over Toes.
I think you guys would, our buddy Ben Patrick, I think that you guys would have a lot to share.
I don't know, like, I'm not really aware of how much of this stuff he knows, but he might know a lot of this stuff.
Well, I mean, a lot of his things have to do with uh mobility through long ranges so he doesn't do like any of the flow stuff but there's
a lot of i think movement based things that i think he would he would easily take to yeah i
think he would like it awesome man we'll have to make that happen for sure it's it's been a game
changer i think for that was something that the whole gym did as well but it's so hard it is so
hard and there's only maybe like
four or five base positions to be in and then it's like transitioning from one to the other that just
you can add fun and there's no rules you know like with lifting and stuff that's a little bit more
rigid animal flow like you have to be ready to fail over and over and over again and just laugh
it off and give it another go yeah so what's the next what's the next challenge you think? Do you think you want to kind of like make something up,
do something for a cause?
Do you want something to be competitive?
Like if you did like a triathlon or something like that,
it might be too much of a challenge to where you get too lost in it,
or if you were trying to compete in something. So what do you think would be kind of next?
So I think the next biggest challenge is we want to have a family and we want to have babies,
right? But my mind is always going to be thinking of what the next thing is going to be. So I think
I need to put a pause on that state of mind, have a baby, and then have a crazy comeback.
So I really am
looking at something that's
pretty much impossible, like the Great Western Divide
is thousands and thousands
of miles. Where does that go from?
I think it goes from Australia all
the way down through the world, literally.
And it goes through some of the driest
parts, which is super
dangerous because you're just so exposed. But with the right planning, the right crew, I think it could be a crazy journey.
And all of those things that I do are always for a cause. We have a nonprofit foundation
that we opened up for my friend that passed away called the Serene Soldier. So it's been messy
since she passed as these things go on, you know?
But it's,
it's,
it needs,
we need to do something real soon.
Yeah.
How the fuck do people still die from cancer?
It's,
it's just so brutal.
This story too is like,
it's earth shattering. If you want to end on it,
I'm not sure,
but it's,
it's sad.
She was six months pregnant whenever she was diagnosed.
Like,
we just lose way too many people.
It's wild.
It really is. She was high risk as well. So she was diagnosed. We just lose way too many people. It's wild. It really is.
She was high risk as well. She was apparently
under the microscope of what's going on.
So many signs, I think, that
now that she's gone that we should just all be aware
of. She had
colon cancer that ended up metastasizing
and going all over her body.
Her side effects were
just symptoms of pregnancy.
She had lack of appetite. she had a sore back she thought she had a pinched nerve like if you strip it all down you get second
opinions you know get yourself checked out females and she was 32 so um yeah get yourself checked out
yeah because if you can catch it early right that's you're supposed to be able to get treatment
for it and hopefully be better off for it right yeah you said she was six months
pregnant though did the baby survived yeah oh wow yeah crazy crazy crazy situation born at 27 weeks
but he survived yeah um she also had another son as well that obviously was alive at the time yeah
um but yeah it's a it's a cancer is a fucking horrible thing. And it takes the people
that you don't think it would take, you know, and it also takes the people that shouldn't go.
Not that anyone should go from cancer, but you know, some of the best humans are often taken
from that. So it's a sad, it's a sad thing. What's going on in Colorado?
Colorado. We are going to film some more content with iFit. But we also have some friends out there. We want to go on an adventure and do some kind of outdoor thing. So we're going to film some more content with iFit but we also have some friends out there
we want to go on an adventure
and do some kind of
outdoor thing
so we're going
we're just going to be there
filming for 21 days
I believe
and then we're trying
to extend the trip
for a week
so we can just play
there's a lot of cool people
in Colorado
is Matt Vincent in Colorado
or no?
no, he's in St. Louis
St. Louis?
St. Louis, yeah
and I'm yet to meet
Matt and Bon
because they're good friends with Dana and Rob, and he's also with On Air.
So I'm like, man, we've got to meet these humans.
They seem like really cool people.
There's a really cool guy you guys might get out there.
Alberto Nunez is in Colorado.
Do you know him?
I don't.
He's a natural bodybuilder who's been doing it for a long time, pro.
But he's super into hiking.
He knows a fuck ton about that stuff.
He'd be a great guy to collab with.
Cool, man.
I'd love that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So he's down there too.
Sweet.
Well, you guys are pretty awesome humans, huh?
And pretty strong.
When you were both walking away today without shirts, I'm like, fucking A.
These guys are jacked.
So big.
We've been prepping for this day.
Yeah.
We're getting ready.
Eating lots of protein, training hard.
Did you say training
hard? I did.
You gotta have that training.
Did you get it in? You didn't make it.
I didn't make it. I was closer too.
I didn't play basketball, guys. Just ignore it.
Alright, Andrew.
Want to take us on out of here, buddy? I will.
Thank you everybody for checking out today's episode.
Shout out to everybody on the chat room, even though you guys
are beefing back and forth.
It's pretty fun to watch.
What are you fine about?
Compound movements versus ISO.
Oh my God.
I know.
It's all good.
At least it's conversation.
No, yeah, yeah, yeah.
What do you think's best?
Here we go.
Oh man.
I like compound movements because they're fun.
They keep my mind stimulated.
I think that there's a place for both.
I don't think one is right or wrong.
I think that there's space for both.
Fuck, man. If you're moving, who gives a shit?
Yeah, you've done a lot of isolation stuff
with DLB, right?
And then, obviously, with CrossFit,
you've done a lot of barbell movements, right?
Yeah, that's what I'd say.
Do both.
I don't even know why this is still a debate.
You can have both in a workout routine and be perfectly okay.
Right.
Why wouldn't you just do both?
It feels great.
Yeah.
Because you have to be controversial.
That's why.
Ah, okay.
I understand.
Yeah.
So, anyways.
Yeah.
Thank you again, everyone, for checking out today's episode.
Thank you to Element for sponsoring today's episode.
Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes.
Please follow the podcast at Mark Biles Power Project on Instagram.
Did you make that one?
No.
I don't know where it went.
At MB Power Project on TikTok and Twitter.
My Instagram and Twitter is at IamAndrewZ.
And Seema, where are you at?
I am Seema Inyang on Instagram and YouTube.
I am Seema Yin Yang on TikTok and Twitter.
Hannah?
I am HannahEden underscore fitness and hannahedenfitness.com.
Before we drop off here, what was it like kind of finishing that Icelandic trek that
you went on?
Crazy.
Very emotional.
And I was definitely in a spot of like depression after it was done because it was such a big feat and it had taken so much pre-planning.
It had taken so much time and commitment.
And then when it was all done.
You had a vehicle behind you the whole time.
The whole time.
Those poor guys.
And was it your,
was it your husband who was helping you get back on your bike?
Yeah.
That was actually a really cool shot.
Like when we saw it,
I actually got goosebumps when Andrew pulled it up and I i didn't i didn't mention at the time just because
we were talking about other shit but that was that was like really legit i'm like that is yeah
that is a really good uh image of you two i think that's uh spectacular oh man thank you thank you
yeah these guys were the my backbone on that for sure but the trip totally took a different turn
whenever our friend passed because at the beginning it was like
let's have all these production teams there.
Let's make it this thing. I said to
Paolo, you're not coming. I love you but I can't
have you around when I'm in that state of mind.
I can't be vulnerable. I've got to be a
hard-ass bitch.
At first I was like, I can't have you around.
Whenever Jess passed, everything changed.
It was like, I want my husband there.
I want her husband there. I want Courtney, who was her niece.
So much loss happened throughout that stage of our life,
which is bizarre to think of.
So we all needed a space to be vulnerable
and put that pain into the road.
So the feeling afterwards was pretty crazy.
It was very weird.
It was like, you've just accomplished something that is insane.
But I felt like, you've just accomplished something that is insane. But I felt like not much, which is also the same idea of like the whole anticipation towards the goal is what gets me going, not the actual goal itself, you know? So I think that applies to just trying new things and becoming good at them too. I don't like to stay in a comfortable space. So it was a very weird feeling.
like to stay in a comfortable space. So it was a very weird feeling.
Yeah, we had Andrew Huberman on recently and he kind of explained that dopamine will get released even when you are just in the middle of attempting the thing that you claimed or said that you wanted
to do and not necessarily just because you did it, which is kind of, that's pretty damn amazing.
Even just something as small as just saying
hey i'm gonna get up off the couch and go walk to my mailbox could be something tiny but that could
release dopamine make you potentially feel a little bit better maybe because you feel a little
bit better maybe you're in a little bit better mood and maybe your kind of interpretation of
the whole day is set forth uh differently than if you didn't do that we actually listened to that
episode and it rocked me because he's like
Andrew, you missed dopamine episode?
Yeah.
He goes, this reminds me of when you said
I got the cover of Oxygen magazine
which is amazing, right?
And to this day I'm like, that was the weirdest
feeling for me because that night I went back
to my room and was like
I don't feel anything. I feel like
I don't deserve this position because I don't feel anything like i feel like i don't deserve this position
because i don't feel anything and it's like all right on to the next but i never allow myself
to feel nothing it's always like all right this is done what's next all right this is done what's
next like allowing yourself to be in that depleted like maybe a little bit of a downer
state is probably a good place to be to accept and process and acknowledge what you've
just done before you move on to the dopamine release of the next challenge, you know? So I'm
going to take that with me. And maybe after this trip, I need to just slow down a little bit,
you know? Yeah. Rich Franklin, he won the UFC. I think he was a, I don't, I don't forget what
weight class he was. He won a UFC title and he said it was like the worst night of his life.
He won it.
He was like, I fought my whole life for this.
I, you know, he was, he's formerly a teacher.
He's just like a normal dude. So he was very grounded, like grassroots person.
And I think that he just, he almost couldn't be all that accepting of that individual achievement.
You know, he loved the journey, loved the whole trip.
He loved the whole thing, but he's like, what did I do?
Like, now I got this fucking belt and now people are going to be coming at me.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And this is no longer like fun.
This is I better be I better be training my ass off.
Yeah.
I'm going to be gunning for me now.
That's such a that's so true, man.
You put yourself into a different category now, right?
You've got to maintain it, live up to it.
Thank you so much for your time today.
Appreciate it.
Thank you guys so much for having me.
This has been awesome.
Appreciate you guys so much.
I'm at Mark Smelly Bell.
Strength is never weakness.
Weakness is never strength.
Catch you guys later.