Mark Bell's Power Project - MBPP EP. 666 - The Mentality And Habits Of Crossfit Champions Matt Fraser & Katrin Davidsdottir Ft. Ben Bergeron

Episode Date: January 24, 2022

Ben Bergeron trains some of the world’s fittest athletes. A former Ironman triathlete turned CrossFit Games competitor, Ben has coached athletes to six world championships. As coach to the reigning Fittest Man and Fittest Woman on Earth, he is considered one of the top coaches in the sport of CrossFit. Buy Ben's books on amazon, Chasing Excellence: https://amzn.to/3tTHkr9 Unlocking Potential: https://amzn.to/35hnhZI Special perks for our listeners below! ➢Bubs Naturals: https://bubsnaturals.com Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% of your next order! ➢Vertical Diet Meals: https://verticaldiet.com/ Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% off your first order! ➢Vuori Performance Apparel: Visit https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order! ➢8 Sleep: Visit https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro! ➢Marek Health: https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off ALL LABS! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 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

Hi, Roger family. How's it going? Now, we have had so many different guests ribeye, whether it's a flat iron, whether it's a bavette, no matter when you cut into that steak after it's cooked, you're not getting any of that chewiness, that gristle, that you have to spit out because you can't actually chew it. Piedmontese is super tender. They have great cuts that are low-fat, high-fat for whatever diet you're doing. They're just an overall amazing beef company. Andrew, how can they get it? Yep, that's over at Piedmontese.com.

That's P-I-E-D-M-O-N-T-E-S-E.com. At checkout, enter promo code POWER for 25% off your order. And if your order is $150 or more, you get free two-day shipping. Again, Piedmontese.com, promo code POWER. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. No rush, no pressure, though. I like this little chart that he's got going here. I'm looking at Ben Bergeron's Instagram,

and it says, I work hard, in quotes, and it's got this little blip, and then it says, I'm obsessed, and then I'm obsessed is like through the roof. And it has excellence. I think it's going to be really cool. I love talking with people that talk a lot about mindset type stuff. I think there's a lot to explore there.

And I know that there's some people that aren't in a position in their life to even be accepting of like listening to mind stuff. And they get pissed about it. And they get – and I've been there before. I've been that type of person where I used to hear motivational stuff. I'd be like, oh, gross. I don't want to hear it, you know. But now I've learned to kind of, first of all, understand. And actually something I picked up from Nsema was like, hey, is what this person is saying useful?

Like don't discredit everything the person said because maybe you don't – like if you listen to David Goggins, right, and maybe you don't agree with like him shouting at the camera and maybe you're not that kind of person that's going to respond well to a drill sergeant type of person, it's kind of irrelevant. there is. Is there any truth to what he says? It's pretty obvious that I think if we're all being real with ourselves, we can probably push a little harder. We probably do duck out of stuff when there's resistance and we should probably figure out ways to be more open-minded to it because you open your mind and you're going to allow some growth to happen.

Yeah. I was paying attention to, before this podcast, I watched one of Ben's TED talks. I think it's probably his only Ted talk. And it was really interesting because he is one of those coaches that technically will be able to get into a lot of cool stuff, but you're right. Um, he does focus on the mindset of athletes and a big thing just seems to be, he'll probably talk about other themes, but it just, a big thing seems to be like a stoic type of idea. You know, what are the things that you can control your nutrition, your sleep, your workouts, your mindset, and something else he mentioned, the things you

can't control, just get rid of it. Just like, don't pay it any attention. Look at it all as literal distractions. And somebody thinks about that. They might think that's kind of crass or that's kind of like over, you know, maybe that's doing a little bit too much. But if you want to get into the realm of some of these really, really good athletes, maybe that's something that you actually have to do. And like when he works with some of these high level crossfitters and stuff like that, like Katrin, who won the CrossFit Games years ago, he had to even just teach her and many other athletes just to block out the noise of sponsorship. All the back and forth of sponsorship. These are all things that you don't really think much about, and you wouldn't even really think that they would be potentially harmful.

But it is distracting from what you originally were trying to do. You were trying to become a better athlete. But it is distracting from what you originally were trying to do. You were trying to become a better athlete. You weren't necessarily trying to figure out ways to monetize being an athlete, which is just a different thing. And you're probably better off to push that off to like a professional. Maybe get an agent or have maybe a family friend or someone assist with that so you can concentrate on your game. When you think about like the amount of work that some of these CrossFitters do like when we had um chris henshaw

come and talk about how much work uh rich froning's done and someone else actually rich even talked about it um you wonder how they have space for anything else like being an athlete might sound sound really really awesome but when you think about like how much they're training how much they're focused on the sport how tired they probably are outside of that and like how all their emotion and physical attention is going towards the sport that they're being great at, you have to quite literally let go of a lot of other things. And I guess it's really impressive when an athlete manages to have some balance or a good athlete manages to have some balance because you don't see that often. Let's let Ben in the show. They're first zooming a little while. It's been a while. I'm nervous. First of all, I guess we got to talk about the plethora of books that are behind you.

When did this growth process start for you of getting diving into, I I mean it looks like there's literally hundreds of books behind you. Well, it definitely wasn't in school because I hated reading in school. Not even hated. I couldn't read in school. I would actually – in college, there was a class I took, a philosophy course where you went around the classroom and you had to read out loud. And I just skipped the entire semester because it was so embarrassing that I couldn't read um I have dyslexia so it's like it was brutal but I guess it was uh when I started getting into the the fitness thing and I

found something I was passionate about and I realized that it wasn't that I I hated to read it was that I hated doing things I wasn't passionate about. So that was probably my mid twenties. So 20 years ago. What do you think was maybe like a turning point for you to like open up your mind a bit to recognize that you, um, that you maybe should investigate reading? Uh, I think it was basically just being put in front of you know being put in a position where people started listening to me you know as a coach like you kind of have to feel comfortable and confident sharing knowledge with people and um that with a level of you know so I guess that's a desire for competence. And the next one is just an intellectual curiosity. Like I'm just – I'm fascinated by everything to do with becoming a better human being.

So whether that's the physical, the mental, the spiritual, connections with others, any of that type of stuff. And I believe that that's kind of what my role is as a coach and a trainer. It's as much about the biceps and look good as it is about the performance and move good as it is about the feel good and think good. So kind of like one thing leads to another. You start off thinking about movement and then it leads to nutrition and then that leads to the mental side of things and that leads to relationships and that leads to spirituality. It's just kind of the whole like one domino triggers the next. What was your start? Like did you – first off, what was your start like did you first off what was your

athletic start personally in your life um and then what did you transition to as far as coaching with people was it starting with crossfit as coaching or did you do something else and then end up in crossfit yeah my uh my my personal athletic background is one of exceptional mediocrity. I was, I was really good at being average at a bunch of different stuff. Um, I did the normal things. I played basketball and football and skiing in high school. And then I played rugby in college, um, was really into skiing, moved out West and spent time in Tahoe and Jackson hole skiing. Um, and then came back, settled into my corporate career. And, um, I'd always been a coach of some sort, you know, um, I coached sailing in the summers and skiing in the winters and, um, and

not, um, and then, you know, when I started my career doing finance in Boston, I did that for a couple of years before the World Trade Center and the attacks on 9-11 happened. And that was my impetus for changing my life. I was like, I am not having an impact. I am not doing what – I don't have any joy. I'm a cog i'm a um a piece of the machine so i left spent a year in wyoming to try to figure out my life and decided on you know i want to have impact so i was either being a firefighter or join the military but i ended up being uh decided on becoming a trainer i was getting into triathlons at the time, and I was the guy that was talking about the glycemic index back in the early 90s. So it resonated.

It seemed like a way that I could have impact beyond kind of sitting in a cubicle and staring at a screen and moving money around the world. and staring at a screen and moving money around the world. So I started doing personal training from personal training, founded CrossFit and started doing that with some of my clients and some of my high school athletes. And that just snowballed really quickly. Within two years, I'd opened up my affiliate. A few years later, we were doing pretty well and we won the CrossFit games, started training some of the individual athletes. Some of those athletes started winning the games and that's where it kind of just became this love, this – I feel incredibly lucky that I've stumbled into this thing because it's – Mondays are my most exciting day. Nice.

It's Mondays are my most exciting day. Change your can'ts into won'ts, I think, is a really interesting quote. Can you elaborate on that? Yeah. So you hear people say it all the time, and people don't understand the power of their words, and they throw these words out without understanding. I just think that words have immense power so if you're like oh sorry um i um i can't pick up with the kids from school today like that's no you you you can pick up the kids from school today you what you're saying is you won't pick up the kids from school today it's a choice you have a the means and the capability to go and do

that. It's like, I can't make it to the gym today. No, you can make it to the gym day. Change that can't into a won't and recognize it's a decision. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but let's understand it's not that you are being physically restrained to the point where you can not go to the gym. You're saying that I won't go to the gym today. And when you change the verbiage, when you change the way you talk, it ends up changing you as a human being. You know, that old adage, that old saying, you know, your thoughts become your words, words become actions, and actions will ultimately dictate who you become as a human being.

So when you start to change, um, the, and have that paradigm shift of recognizing that all of these things are actually our choices, even though sometimes they don't seem like it because it seems like you're stuck at work. Boss told you stuff. Those are all choices. You're still choosing to be in this job and in this profession and doing this as a living. There are alternatives. And that won't versus can't is fairly enlightening when you start to recognize it. So the can't and won't is one thing. But what's some other verbiage that you think people should start thinking about? Because now they'll think about can't and won't. They're like, ooh, yeah, can't and won't is one thing, but what's some other verbiage that you think people should start thinking about?

Because now they'll think about Canton won't. They're like, ooh, yeah, Canton won't. But there's a lot of other shit that we say that we probably got to change. Have to versus get to. You know, like I have to go to work today. I have to pick up the kids. I have to cook dinner. I have to go grocery shopping.

You get to do all those things. Like let's recognize the abundance that we have in our lives. There are so many people that would, in this world, that would give anything to be able to go home and cook dinner tonight. There are so many people that would love the opportunity to change a diaper. There's that saying of this, you know, this, this, um, 31 year old woman who's dying of cancer in a hospital bed. And she's just weeping to her nurse saying, I would give anything, anything to be able to go home right now and change a dirty diaper. Like recognize that these are have-tos, not, you know, these are get-tos, not have-tos.

Shoulds versus wills is another one. I should call my mom today. I'm taking notes over here. I should eat healthy. I should go to the gym. I should start a diet. I should have that hard conversation with my wife. Change those shoulds into wills and watch your life change.

I will eat better. I will call my mom today. I will have that hard conversation with that person. How long has this kind of taken you to do this to yourself? And how hard of a process has it been? I'm sure it's ongoing. And I'm sure that you probably stop yourself from saying certain things. And you're like, whoops, let me rephrase that.

So how long has this process been ongoing? Well, I think it's the ongoing part that's the whole thing. Like no one has this thing all – I shouldn't say no one. I don't have this whole thing dialed in. I still struggle with it massively, but I try to bring as much awareness as possible. I think the awareness thing is the big piece. I have this kind of three-step building block process that I think are the building blocks of any good life. And it is awareness, intention, action. I think a lot of people just take action. A lot of people just,

I'm going to be the hardest fucking worker in the room. Like I am just like a type A, I'm a go-getter. I am going to do everything I can, my power to achieve my goals. But they don't start with a certain level of awareness of like, we should be questioning our goals because our goals might be built into us from the conditioning of our past, from the education, from society, from teachers, from parents, siblings, everyone around us creates our goals for us. And we have to step back and go like, wait a minute, is this truly what I want? So what you see a lot of times, you know, I was just having this conversation with, um, yesterday morning, I had a conversation with a coach in the NBA and he's generally are not happy. These are people that

have the highest level achievements in the world. Like they're the 1% of the 1%. There is, you know, 30 teams. He's one of the 30 best basketball coaches in the world. He's going in. I have no joy and talk about first off, how cool is it that he's realized that he doesn't have, that he has that level of awareness. And secondarily, people chase that because it's the, it's the pinnacle of what everyone says, but people don't take the time to define what sex success is for themselves. So they just chase this thing. It's more wins the next level, more accolades awards recognition. And that's a, for, you know, what the happiness literature will tell us is that's, um, an empty pursuit because when you

cross the finish line, you had this immediate rush of dopamine of the goal thing being accomplished. And then you wake up the next morning and it's gone in the immediately it's what's next. That's why people always say, we asked multiple time champions, what's your favorite ring? And they always say the next one, it's never enough. Like when does the joy happen? And then they go, well, I'll be happy when I retire. And then they retire and they're still not there. So I think that we need this level of awareness in our lives of what it is that we are chasing. And if we have that level of awareness, it comes through massive questioning and self-awareness. And that only happens through certain vehicles.

self-awareness, and that only happens through certain vehicles. Everyone can choose their own, but meditation, journaling, stillness, getting out in nature, hard exercise is one of those things. Plenty of those things can help you tap into and question what is it truly that we want in our lives. And with that questioning becomes some certain levels of awareness. Like, whoa, And with that questioning becomes some certain levels of awareness like, whoa, I was actually chasing the good grades to get into the good college to get the good job because mom and dad said that was really important. Not because it's truly what I wanted. And don't blame mom and dad. They had the right intent with that, which is they don't want to see you homeless on the streets. So the guarantee that the best insurance policy they have is want to see you homeless on the streets. So the guarantee that the best insurance policy they have is good grades, good college, good job. Because they're

shooting for the lowest bar ever though. They're not shooting for happiness. They're shooting for Mavs Law's hierarchy of needs, the lowest possible one, safety, food, shelter, water. Well, I think we all can aspire to something greater than the lowest common denominator. And we can all go for belonging, purpose, self-actualization, joy, unconditional happiness, call it what you want, but that's for each of us to determine what is it in us that causes us that and get out of the rat race that most of us are in. Did, um, did something else happen? I want to, I'm going to say traumatic, but it doesn't have to be traumatic, um, to where it gave you this heightened sense of gratitude. Um, cause I'm just thinking there's a lot of people that are

currently working at a job that they just don't like, but they're like, ah, it pays the bills. I get the two weeks off a year, so it's good enough. But after hearing how you didn't like your job and you're just like, I need to be doing more. Was that just simply enough to make the quote leap or did something else happen to where you felt like I need to do more on this planet? Yeah, I think it was, um, so the, the, um, you know, in the, the hero's journey type thing in terms of the, the shift moment, um, or I should say the snap. So like the way that I write stories, it's like setting, um, uh, snap struggle shift and so on. The, the snap moment for me was 9-11. That was like the cold water getting dumped on my face. Like, wake up. You're not living the life that you want. You're going

through the motions and you're, it wasn't miserable, but completely complacent. And just kind of like Monday did suck. So I'd say that was the moment for me. You know, you were just talking about, uh, kind of athletes or people that have massive amounts of a success, not having joy or happiness within that. Right. When a high level athlete comes to you and you've worked with games champions, but they're like, I want to win the CrossFit games. What's your, what, like, what do you have them think about? Because, I mean, I'm also curious, like when an athlete and you've worked with athletes out of one, how do they feel afterwards? Because obviously they want to win another one. And isn't that something that's, isn't that something that's continuously necessary

if you want to continue being up there? Is it like the goal of winning the games or is there, is there another esoteric type of purposeful happiness that an athlete needs to have to be able to concentrate on the continuous goal of winning game after game after game? Yeah, it's a great question. And there's a dichotomy to it. There's the double-edged sword of it. The first side is I'm not that excited to work with an athlete that doesn't have that as a goal. Like if you come to me and you're like, Hey, I'd really love to make it to the games. Well, right there in and of itself is a level of complacency.

Make it. So, sorry? Just the word make it to the games is a level of complacency. Yeah. Make it to the games. You are not aspiring to be truly the best um and i want people that i want to work with people that want to uh push the envelope you know push the envelope of what it means to you know have physical capacities in this world so you know with that comes a level of obsession and when you have that level of obsession, you can't have balance. And if you can't have balance, you're probably not going to have joy. So yeah, it's weird and

it's hard. You know, along with that is my style of coaching is not, I try to be as non-transactional as possible. And this is the way I kind of fill, I kind of color between the lines of those two things, which is, yes, I want my athletes to have joy and purpose and passion and to live a completely fulfilled life. Because I think that's ultimately, I don't to create um empty vessels that are just programmed david goggin style of go go go go go it's okay if i'm miserable along the way at least i'm proving something to the world that i'm the toughest motherfucker that's ever lived like that to me is like um it is a noble pursuit because you're striving to be a singular thing. And that's kind of cool. Like a one of 7.5 billion has its own kind of like, you're going to put a

dent in the universe type thing. And that's kind of cool. But when he loses physical capacity, When he loses physical capacity, what's left? And a transactional coach is only interested in physical capacity and performance on the floor, court, field, ring, or rink. Whereas a transformational coach is interested in the human being outside of the playing field. And I try to be as much of a transformational coach as I can, which means I probably won't know how good of a job I've done with an athlete until about a decade after they're done competing. Because then we know how are they at navigating the real world and i want to get everything i can out of them so they perform as best as they possibly can when it matters the

most on game day i'm not diminishing that whatsoever what i'm saying is that it's not as binary as that's the only thing the other aspect to it is the difference kind of like go outside the bullseyes. It's not just hit the bullseye of performance on game day. It's also how are you as a spouse, a father, a member of society? Do you have joy in your life when this sport is gone? And I try to bring some levels of awareness to that for the athletes and not saying like, Hey, what you're doing doesn't matter. That's not the case at all. What you're doing right now matters a huge amount and let's pour everything we have into it. So when you get to be 55 years old, you don't look back

on these moments with regrets, but let's not also be obsessed 55 years old, you don't look back on these moments with regrets. But let's not also be obsessed to the point where we don't recognize there's a purpose beyond performance as an athlete. You mentioned a better person makes a better athlete. Do you believe that in the traditional sense of like the person actually being a better athlete or do you believe it more so in the person being like more balanced? Because we've seen a lot of athletes over the years really make some decisions that we would consider to be pretty screwed up. And it gets publicized and we've seen them accused of all kinds of different things over the years. So kind of what do you mean by a better person makes a better athlete? Because we know a lot of nice people that fucking suck at athletics. Yeah, so right.

So one doesn't mean the other. So because you're a nice person doesn't mean you're a great athlete. And because you're a great athlete doesn't mean that you necessarily have to be a great person. There are many, many great people, as you said, really nice people that, you know, can't tie their shoes. And then there's other amazing athletes that you wouldn't point to like Michael Jordan. Nobody's pointing at Michael Jordan being like, oh, he's the nicest dude ever. So you can become the best in the world. What I mean by that is, and also what I mean by that is when I say better people, world. What I mean by that is, and also what I mean by that is when I say better people, I don't necessarily mean dinner manners, polite, kind, and looking for old ladies to cross the

street. What I mean by that is from a character standpoint, better people have discipline, better people can commit, better people have fortitude. Better people are humble enough to take coaching. So what are the character traits necessary to be a great athlete? They have the hunger. They have the drive. Those aspects of being a better human being lead to being a better athlete. better athlete. And then just because somebody is an amazing athlete and they're not a great person. Well, if we worked on some of those character traits and made them more coachable, made them have more patience and humility, made them more competitive, made them a better teammate, would they then become a better athlete? I don't know, but just because somebody's at the pinnacle of the top, it doesn't mean they don't have room to just because somebody is at the pinnacle of the top doesn't mean they don't have room to grow if they work on other things. Bobby Knight was one of the best basketball coaches ever. He was a dick. So if he wasn't as much of a dick, would he be a better coach?

I think so. Larry Bird was one of his players. Larry Bird left Indiana University because Bobby Knight was a dick to him. If he had had Larry Bird, one of the best basketball coaches ever, would he have won three or four more titles? We'll never know. I'm really curious about this because there's, you mentioned there is a level of obsession necessary for an individual to become a champion, right? You also mentioned that obviously you try to work on their mindset. And you're not going to be able to really tell if you've done a good job until a decade after. You have the metric of, okay, they've won game after game. Dope.

So I'm wondering, because you're kind of talking about like you're aiming for there to actually be a balanced champion, right? Like that's the aim, right? But you also said that to be a champion, there is a lack of balance there too. So are we kind of talking that in the trenches, for example, Matt Frazier or – how do you say her name? Katrin David's daughter. Katrin David's daughter. I think I said that right. Katrin. Katrin. Katrin. There we go. There we go katrin david's daughter katrin david i think i said that right katrin katrin there we go there we go katrin david's daughter when they were in it going

towards the game like in training trying to be a champion were they balanced as far as their life is concerned or in that moment were they not but they were they had the idea of trying to be balanced later yeah it's a great question. So there's different, so this is my take on it, is that there's different ways to be balanced. And one is in the roles of your life. So you're a son, you're a father, you're a friend, you're a neighbor, and you're an athlete. In that world, trying to be the best in the world, you cannot have balance. You cannot have that type of balance. You need to give everything. This is the difference of passion and obsession. When you find something you're

passionate about, people are excited for you. Like Mark, I'm so glad that you're passionate about the carnivore diet. I'm so glad that you've, you know, that you're passionate about the carnivore diet. You know, I'm so glad that you're passionate about, you know, getting lean and ripped now. I'm so passionate that, you know, I'm so glad that you're passionate about podcasts. It's when they start to think that you've become obsessed, that people start to get scared for you and start to question things like, dude, I think you've tipped over the edge a little bit on some of these things, like calm down. Like this is, and that's the difference of passion. You can have balance obsession. There's no balance. So for somebody trying to be the best in their world, either Matt Fraser or Katrin, there's no balance in terms of their roles. At the time, Katrin didn't date anybody. She didn't live with her family. She moved across an ocean. She didn't even have a car. I mean, there was no distractions.

She drove with me. She slept in my house, in our basement. She drove to the gym in the morning with me. She then, when she was at the gym, did all of this massive warmup and prehab and dialed in. She ate the meals at the gym that were provided for her. No thinking, no cooking, no shopping. Then did all of the recovery stuff, the Norma techs and, power dots, electric stems and the saunas. And it was a 24 seven. There is nothing else in my life other than, you know, a every other day phone call back home. How long did this last by the way? Like how long was this routine? Her thing that routine lasted one year before she won the games.

Like, so her story is she went to the games twice and was an average athlete. She finished in the mid twenties, both times. Her third attempt at the games, she failed to make the game. She didn't qualify. That was her moment. That was her snap moment. And she's like, I need to change something. I need to do something different.

I'd worked with her a couple of times because she was a friend. Her coach at the time was one of our coaches. So she had been to CrossFit England a couple of times. She's like, I'm going to go move to Boston. Strangely enough, I was like, yeah, come and live with us. And that next year she won the games. So that's what that level of, here's the other cool thing about that,

which no one really talks about. Everyone's like, you need to know, you have to visualize it. You have to visualize winning the games before you can become a game champion. You have to visualize being the best before you can be the best. That's not true. We had had no at that time we had no aspirations of winning the games our goal was to make the games because you didn't make it the year before and she never finished above 24th it'd been insane to say we're here to win the games we just eliminated that distraction completely there was no distraction of anything about am am I good enough to, it was just everything, every single thing that we could possibly do. It was obsession at my time in my life. It worked out perfectly. I didn't have young kids. The business was established. I put a lot

into capturing at the time and it made, it was a total obsession. But the other parts of pull full back, there can't be upset. There can't be balance in roles, but there can be balance in terms of your emotions. And think of a pendulum. If your emotions go all the way to one side, like we think of like, you know, that pirate ship ride at the, at the fair or that thing that, you know, people have those balls on their desk and one hits and it's, well, if it swings all the way to one side, it necessarily is going to swing very far to the other side. And this is

people that don't have regulation and don't have balance in terms of their emotional control. And this was Katrin when she first moved to us. When Katrin, before she moved to us on the competition floor at regionals, trying to qualify for the games, She broke down in tears during a workout. She also was a person that had like this amazing, like was so fun to be like, but you have these swings. And what we do is we want to bring that back to where you control things. And I'm not saying that there's no swings at all, but we're trying to find center. We're trying to find more of a balance and we're not going to get rattled by things. And what ends up happening is not what ends up happening. We also see is what you're asking before is people win the games and yeah, it's fun. Yeah, it's exciting, but it's not like a freaking huge party where we go crazy with

afterwards. After catcher won the games, we went out to dinner with my wife and her mom, catch an ordered fish and vegetables and you know, no dessert, you know, and the next morning we started training again. Cause that's what it, that's what it looked like. It was just kind of like this. That's where there's the no balance, but the balance comes in the emotional regulation. I'm really curious about this real quick. When you talk about Katrin, she had two top 20 finishes and then she didn't even make it into the games, right? You were a top coach. When people look at individuals who end up being champions, typically maybe they see a trend.

Oh, they got eighth place. They got fourth place. They got second. Let's move them right there to that level, right? Or damn, like they have this avatar. For example, for some reason, CrossFit game males, they have the same look. Like they all have the same type of body, right? They have the same look, like they all have the same type of body, right?

So with Katrin, what made you take that? First off, you must have taken a lot of time. You let her live in your basement. You drove her to the gym. You had all this structure for her on this athlete that didn't even make the games the year before. Was there a sign within her athleticism that was like, can get her here or was there a specific reason that you're like i'm going to take this person who was in the top 20s and under my wing and spend all that time with them to try to get them to be a champion what was it that made you make the decision to do that because there doesn't seem to be an indication or am i wrong and there was an indication

no i think that you're right i don't think think there was an indication. Other than, well, let me back up. I had never worked with an individual champion before. So that wasn't like a prerequisite. It wasn't like, well, if you can't make, if you can't be champion, I'm not working with you. I'd worked with a handful of top 10 games athletes, and I'd worked with a team that won the games. But at the time, I do kind of try to figure out if people have the right framework to be a champion. And, you know, not to geek out about the CrossFit sport, but what you're saying, it makes a lot of sense. And you're, you're saying it without even probably knowing how right you are and that the guys have a certain look to them and they do. So the first thing that the first, um, kind of like prerequisite when you're kind of figuring out if there's an athlete that has potential to win the games, the very first thing you nailed it is their age and their height. It's those two things. So, you know, if somebody is 14 years old, they can't win the games the next year. You're just not, it's not going to happen. If someone's 44 years old, you're not going to be able to win the games the next year. So you just kind of like bring the parameters in.

And we start to realize is working with athletes that are kind of age 20 to 30 is kind of the sweet spot. Now there's outliers. There's the Haley Adams and the Mal O'Briens who make it there and do really well top 10 in their teens. And then there's the Scott Panchex and the people that make it when they're 34 and do really well in the Sam Briggs. But really that sweet spot is kind of like the mid-20s. So you want to work with them for three or four years. So you get them in their early 20s. So that's the first one. Katrin, when I started working with her, was 20 years old. So perfect. The next one is the height. For guys, that's essentially five, eight to six foot.

So that four foot span. If you're a guy and you're five foot two, you're gonna have a really hard time winning the games. Because when it comes time to row or climb ropes or get over obstacles, you're gonna struggle. Similar, if you're on the upper end of that, if you're six, four, and it comes time to do handstand pushups or burpees or thrusters, you're going to have a hard time moving loads that

distance. So that's the first prerequisite, catch and fit that mold. The next one is what is essentially your training background? What are you coming to the what are you coming to the table with and katrin was strong and um had pretty good she was a gymnast so that skill sets really it takes a long time to build you guys know like strength takes years skills like a gymnast takes years. Conditioning takes months. It doesn't take a long time to get your heart up to speed. You know, you can actually, you can actually do that. Um, so that was kind of exciting. So then you look at some other things like, um, adaptability to training, how fast people make adaptations. And you give people certain things, put them on a little progression. If you give someone a squat cycle, do they see gains in three,

four or five weeks or not? And it's just the nature of some people have the genetics to do it and other people don't. Then you look at how resilient are they? Do they get injured a lot? Then you look at their coachability. Do they take feedback really well? And you put people through that filter system and that's how you decide if they'd be somebody to work with. And Katrin excelled in most of those and was the best I've ever seen in coachability. I had never worked with an athlete that liked to be coached as much as Katrin did. She was a sponge. Some of the things that go unnoticed a lot in the sport because people don't – Matt Fraser is brilliant.

Matt Fraser is so smart. He was a 4.0 engineering student in college. At like MIT or something, right? Like at a pretty prestigious school. It was at University of Vermont. a 4.0 engineering student in college. Whoa. Yeah. Like MIT or something, right? Like I had a pretty, it was at university of Vermont. So it was like,

um, but he's, he's, he figures stuff out really quickly. Katrin is a straight A student, straight student. So I was, they were,

I was training both. I was coaching both of them at the same time they both won the games the year i was coaching them is amazing super like um just right place right time for me for sure um but they were at our house together and my kids i had young kids and um they had a rubik's cube and they both figured out the rubik's cube in like 40 seconds so you also need to be like super fucking smart. And I was like, what the hell is that? Like I can't even – I'm the guy that like takes the stickers off.

Oh, yeah. If I can get one side – I can't even get one side. If I can get one side to be like the majority of color, I'm the man. I was like, how do you guys do that and they both answered together the same time the same words they go it's just an algorithm and i was like what the fuck is an algorithm so damn they're like this is like back in 2016 now everyone knows what algorithms are because of you know smart technology and AI and all the rest, but that didn't exist eight years ago. So how quickly they dissect things and figure them out, I never had to tell Katrin the same thing twice.

the same thing twice. If I gave her a piece of feedback or I encouraged her to make something a certain part of her daily routine, I never had to play the accountability buddy. I never had to follow up. I never had to play the disciplinarian because it was put into practice. If I said something like, let's try to work this into our nutrition practice. It was done. Like it was just done. Let's see if we can try to climb ropes this way. When you've been doing it this way in the past, done like all of it. And Matt was the same way.

Matt was even more so in terms of like figuring out on his own. Matt didn't even wait for a coach. Matt just dissected. He took it like he was an engineer. He had an engineer mind for the sport. He would dissect the best performers at any given movement, figure out what they were doing, and then just do it over and over and over and over and over. I'm purposely saying it because to the point where if any other normal human being did it, they would have gotten blown up. So an example like GHD sit-ups. GHD sit-ups is a throwaway movement for most people. They don't

even think about it. It's just like a thing that gets thrown in. It's a filler movement. Matt doesn't think anything's a filler movement. Broke down the fastest people that could cycle that with the greatest levels of endurance and intensity. Broke down their movement on his own. And then when he figured out what it was, did 150 GHD sit-ups for a month, a day, every day. If I do 150 GHD sit-ups, I have rhabdo. It wouldn't even be an option. My intestines would fall down in my ball sack. It would just be a horrible situation. So he's relentless. He is relentless in his pursuit. It's not a mystery why he's accomplished what he has. Yeah. Both the people you're mentioning too, they're both a lot of fun to be around. I've been fortunate enough to be around them a little bit.

I don't know them super well, but they're also amazing athletes. They both have athletic backgrounds and they're both able to adapt to stuff very quickly. And I know that Matt is insanely strong, especially when it comes to that Olympic lifting background. How important is strength in the sport of CrossFit? I think sometimes powerlifters, they hear these real warped numbers from athletes that are much heavier a lot of times and also a lot of times using performance enhancing drugs and and other means and they're also in powerlifting you're focused on like three lifts in crossfit you're focused on many more things how important is strength in crossfit well it's it's a great question i think that you're like the way you ask is perfect

because it's strength is relative right so compared So compared to the freaks, you know, the strong men and the true power lifters in our world, our athletes are not strong. But compared to soccer, mom and dad, they're very strong. So just to give some numbers to what that looks like, Matt can deadlift about 550. numbers to what that looks like matt can deadlift about 550 um he can you know squat about five you know just short of 545 at 180 pounds 200 maybe yeah it's about 190 195 pounds okay yep um and he can uh snatch you know i think his top snatch is 315 his top clean jerk i'm sorry uh yeah 315 his top clean jerk is 385 i believe jesus so that's that's strong in the regular athletic world so you need to be on the upper end of strong for athletics um you know i would put in on par with like what we'd want to see from like an NFL linebacker type strong. But they weigh 50, 60 pounds less than NFL linebackers.

So relative to their size, they're pretty darn strong. They also need what you said as well. They're great athletes. So Matt's in our gym one day and we have these dollar mats. They're like the one one inch thick mats that people put underneath pull-up rigs in gyms and we have one of those just rolled out in the middle of the floor because the way we were doing the workout that day we just need it in the middle of the floor and Matt just walks through the middle floor does a cartwheel into a full 360 front flip into a full layout back flip.

Just like what? Like Tyree Kill scoring a touchdown. Yeah. But like, yeah, it was insane. And people don't realize kind of like, you know, the backgrounds that these guys have. Matt was a freestyle acrobatic skier. So it's essentially like a gym.

I didn't know that. So Matt's background. So again, Matt had the same background. Matt was basically a gymnast with lots of strength. And so when he came to our sport, again, Matt didn't have the conditioning. So he got smoked in that. To Matt's credit, Matt ended up being the guy that would win, you know, the seven K trail runs. You know,

he became the guy with the greatest level of endurance and conditioning in our sport. He just destroyed people so bad in the cross in the actual CrossFit games where the best of the best were there. And I believe like Sunday on the last day of the games, it's like he barely had to even do anything. Right. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yep. He was everybody. He's as dominant as we've seen in our sport. It's basically like if he is kind of the Michael Jordan thing, like if he's playing, everyone's going for second, barring an injury. We talked a lot about mindset, but how important is like

the preparedness? Because it seems like the, all these things kind of mesh together. Cause we are talking about exceptional people, exceptional athletes, and they're extremely intelligent. And so they're coming to you at some sort of level already, right, within them. But we see someone like David Goggins kind of yelling as he's running, and we think of like even in our own workouts, we get fatigued on a heavy set of squats and we're on rep 12 and like, oh my God, I'm going to die, but I'm supposed to do 20 reps. And you just think

like, this is just mental. This is just mental. What I've learned over the years is that the mental capacity of it, yes, it is important, but if there's no physical capacity for it, it really doesn't matter how much mental capacity that you're trying to pour into it. I think as you referenced before, and this has been said by many people, you're not going to get anything from an empty cup. You can't pour anything into it from an empty cup. So how important is it to be prepared to do some of these things that you're asking the athletes to do? Yeah. So, well, preparation is, is massive. And I, I love what you're saying there because people have this thing where they're like, well, no, it's not about mental. It's about physical. Like, dude, if you can't clean and jerk 275, you don't get to play the game. Like you don't need to show up. So it doesn't matter. And then you see people with this incredible mental toughness, but like it, so what's the deal? Why are people talking about mental? But like it, so what's the deal? Why are people telling me I'm mental?

And it's, you have to find out. It's like anything in, as a coach, our jobs are is to root out what are the limiters. That's the job of the coach. What's limiting, what's holding the athlete back. So if you're working with a basketball team, you, we root the cause. And is it, is our team not conditioned enough? Is our team not good enough shooters? Do we not play enough better defense? And the coach needs to figure out

how to get them better. And you don't get a whole lot better by getting Steph Curry to be a better shooter. Like, dude, you're already the best shooter. Like if you have the world record for the deadlift, you're trying to compete in a powerlifting competition. Your ego might say like deadlift, but you might want to work on the bench or the squat. Like the coach's job is to figure that out. And when you figure out it's a squat, okay, now we have to figure out and root that cause. Is it because of posterior strength? Is it because of mobility?

Is it because of thoracic strength? Is it technique? What is the limiter that's holding this athlete back? And the coach can then design a training program around that. Well, step back. It's not just about the root cause of performance. It's what's limiting performance. Is the performance being limited by the physical or the mental? And for a lot of athletes, they are reaching their genetic potential from a capacity standpoint, and they can't bust through that imaginary ceiling because their mental game is holding them back. What they're doing is what you alluded to is during that set of 20 rep back squats. It's not that they don't have the physical capacity to do it. It's that they have the wrong programming going between their ears during that. And they're putting an imaginary ceiling on their performance because they're

projecting, judging, or losing focus. So we start to give definitions to what we mean by mentality. Mental toughness is this big, elusive, weird thing. Is it David Goggins? Is it Matt Fraser? What the heck is it? Is it somebody that's fighting through cancer? Is it being able to study for an exam? What is mental toughness?

And the way I think about mental toughness is unconditional focus and effort. That's what mental toughness is. Unconditional focus and effort. So those two things, your focus and your efforts are under your control. are under your control. So when you're doing that 20 rep back squat, if you're on rep 11 and you're judging already, whether you're going to make this lift or not, you have lost focus. You are not focused immediately on the task at hand, which is rep number 12. That's really hard to do. Particularly anyone who's done a true 20 rep max, because you get to rep nine and you feel like you're at your max. But that is lack of mental

focus. And you start to then lose your efforts, which then diminishes your performance. So yes, performance matters, your physical capacity, but you might be limited by the narrative going on in your head. And if you had something distracting you during that 20 rep back squat, say it's the fire alarm going off. Say all of a sudden someone smacks you in the face, say all of a sudden your boss comes over and goes, Mark, we need to have a conversation right when you're done with this. Like all of a sudden your head starts spinning or, um, any,

those distractions would pull away from your efforts and your performance. Well, those distractions are obvious. We all know that. The biggest distraction we face is not those. The biggest distraction we face is the dialogue in our head. That dialogue is distracting us because most of the time for most of us, it is a either, it can be one of three things. It can either be a coach. Awesome. If it's a coach, good on you. That's not the case for most of us. A coach's job is to enhance your performance so you can reach your true physical potential. That's what a coach is there to do. So your thoughts you had would help you do that.

But most of us don't have a coach. Most of us have a critic. The critic's job is to point out your shortcomings, your faults, and how you're going to stumble and fall. And they don't do anything else. They're not in the arena. They're not actually doing the work. They're just there to distract you from your efforts. And then the third thing we have potentially is something in between, which is just that annoying roommate. That's just there to narrate stuff. Literally, that's what's going on in our heads all the time is somebody just

narrating life. Like, ah, Mark's holding a cup of coffee. Like, oh, okay. I'm on a podcast right now. I wonder if they're listening to what I'm saying. It's literally, we have a stream of thought that the job of that stream of thought is only, only, the only job that it has is to keep the conversation going. That's the only thing it does. It'll flip-flop back and forth between good and bad. It doesn't matter at all. It's just going to keep on chattering away.

If that was truly your roommate, you'd be like, shut up. Like, leave me alone. Let me have one minute of peace and quiet. Well, this is where practices like mindfulness, meditation, practice, like silence, like, like this is why these things have become popular as of late, because it's the goal there is to just get it to shut up for a little bit, be present, open-minded with non-judgment. Stop the judging back and forth. Am I going to make this 200 back squat? Am I going to make it? Am I not? Oh my God, that rep was so hard. How much pain am I going to be in when I get to rep 18 and 19 and 20? Like you don't know yet. You're projecting the future. This is the mental game we all play, whether we are aware of it or not. And the mental game almost always is a distraction.

Now, if the mental game goes, if that goes away completely, what happens is your presence, open-minded, you're not judging anything and you allow your true physical capacities to flow out of you. And that is called a flow state. It's really popular in extreme sports because they are at the edge of their capacities. But most of us have tasted this in some way, shape, or form. Whether it's us doing a certain performance, whether it is us doing public speaking, what is us writing or performing music or having a really passionate conversation or building something as an entrepreneur.

Like we've experienced this flow state in these fleeting small moments. If we could somehow extend those flow states and limit the distracting monkey mind in between those fun states to the point where it was almost entirely flow, that state is called enlightenment. That is what we are all chasing as human beings. And that is why 20 rep back squats, hard training, CrossFit, intervals, high intensity, whatever, is as worthy a pursuit of chasing that level of pure consciousness as anything else that's ever existed. Up there with meditation, silent retreats, reading scripture, going to church. It is why when we start doing these things, we become addicted to it because we know what's on the other side of it. And it's something that's rare that we all want more of in our lives.

And it certainly blows pharmaceuticals out of the water in terms of what people try to take to help with anxiety and depression. Not that those things don't have any merit, but we know that a lot of these exercises, a lot of this pursuit that we can have as a human can really be massively helpful. And a lot of what you just mentioned is part of the reason why I do the carnivore diet. It's to just block out a lot of the other noise.

People are like, well, why would you not eat vegetables? Like vegetables are good and this is good and that's good. And it's not that vegetables are bad. It's just that I'm trying to do something that is, and even with like some intermittent fasting, just implementing some stuff that is just bumping me up against things being a little bit difficult, things being a little bit challenging, just like we do in the gym. That's the way that we get stronger. We don't get stronger by, you know, loading up weights that we can't handle. And we don't get stronger by loading up weights that we can't handle, and we don't get stronger by utilizing weights that are insignificant. We've got to kind of brush up against things being a little bit challenging and things being a little bit hard.

And when you work on that for a long period of time, you come out the other end better. The people that give you a hard time about carnivore, we see this all the time everywhere, right? It's in terms of the nutrition world. Carnivore versus vegan versus keto versus plant-based versus zone versus macro versus Weight Watchers. It's like when you actually step back, they're all doing the same thing. We're all, there's only, this is what people have a hard time realizing is they're fighting about the, the, the tools when the principles are the same. And there are only two principles in nutrition that are constant and known by all, meaning that they're unrefutable.

Everything else is because people are right. Some people do great on carnivore. Some people do great on plant-based. Some people, you know, the China study, do great on super high carb. Other people do great on super high protein. Some people do super high fat. But there's two constants that we don't need to argue about. And that is real food is better for you than processed food.

Done. Nobody in any one of those camps is going to argue that one. No one's going to, every single camp is going to agree on that. The next one is eating less is better for long-term health than overeating. It's better to be a little bit lean than a little bit fat. Those are the two only things. And then from there, let's figure out which tool in the toolbox works for you. Cause all of them do those two things. Carnivore is going to limit the amount of food you eat. It's going to get you off of processed foods. Done. Good. We're all happy. That's awesome, Mark. Mark, I'm so glad you found something that works for you. Vegan. Vegan. Let's eat only vegetables. Cool. If you eat only vegetables, you're going to have less processed foods and you're probably going to have a hard time eating too much.

Like good on you. And every one of those other things works until people try to hack the system and they go to macros and they do macros with donuts and beer. Well, now that's not what we were talking about. That's not what we said. You're trying to hack the system. That's not what mac were talking about. That's not what we said. You're trying to hack the system. That's not what macros were in place for. We have to start with those two principles and then figure out which of the buckets work for us. And then there's actually a level above that is, well, now that we know those two things, give me your goals, right? If we know your goals,

then we kind of start to work with some secondary principles. We have the first principles, which is real food, not so much. Secondary principles are, well, I want to gain strength. Cool. Secondary principle for that one is you have to have at least a pound of protein for every pound. I'm sorry. That'd be awesome. A gram of protein, a gram protein for every pound of body weight. Cool. Now you're going to operate with that. Now figure out the tools that work for you under there. Carnivore seems to be a great option if that's the case. Cool.

Another one is performance. Okay. I will perform at the CrossFit Games. Cool. Number one principle there is you have to fuel your body with glycogen. So you need more carbs. Carnivore is a terrible option for you, but it might work really well for somebody that's trying to put on size and be healthy. Love that.

But now it makes sense. Okay. I want to lose weight. Good. The number one thing for the losing weight is you can't eat a lot. We're going to work with the macros for you. And now all of a sudden the buckets start to present themselves based off of the goals. So if it's, I want to live forever, cool. Whole foods, we're going to double down on that one. So nothing processed. And now it's a whole food diet. Like it's just, we're fighting over things that don't need to be fought

over. Going back real quick, cause we're probably going to come attack nutrition again, but before we skip over the mindset and the self-talk aspect of things, I want to ask you this because like, um, like I was lucky enough to grow up and my mom was very on me for my self-talk, very on me for my mindset. I don't even know where she heard that from, but exactly like, because I was brought up in that way, um, certain things as far as like, you know, pushing myself athletically, et cetera, those things were normal for me because I already had like, she, she helped me develop this without realizing it. But for a lot of individuals who let's say that their self-talk is kind of fucked, right? They are not going out and finding a coach, right? What are some maybe resources that can help them Matt Frazier this shit a little bit?

Because you mentioned that Matt, he had a coach, an amazing coach, but he was also a problem solver. And he would find out his issues and he would find resources to help him fix that. Are there any books that you recommend people add to their library of reading things that they should start learning? Because a lot of books talk about this stuff, which can help give you processes to changing your self-talk and your mindset. And I obviously have a lot behind you. Yeah. Uh, yeah. Uh, man. uh yeah uh man um so there's probably a a half dozen or so books that i would um point people towards um but maybe a good starting point would be mindset by carol dweck because it's just like if you don't if you're stuck with a fixed mindset, you're, you're, you're fucked. Like nothing. You can't, you can't be coached. You can't, you believe that what you're born with is who you are. And you obviously from your mom to realize

that what's not the case, like just your upbringing, your opportunities, your surroundings, your situation, your environment molded who you are. Yeah. So that's the first one is like, molded who you are. So that's the first one. It's like, you almost have to figure out how to move from, because you can move from it, how to move from a fixed to a growth mindset. Then that's, everybody knows that book. So it's like kind of like, almost like that doesn't count. It's like, yeah, it's permission. It's permission to play. Like, yeah, you have to have read that one. The next permission to play one, I would say, is Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday. That's just the next permission to play.

Until you've read that, we're not going to talk about mindset stuff. It reminds me of sometimes when you mention a movie and someone hasn't seen it. Someone hasn't seen Rocky and you're like, what the fuck? We can't even be friends. What are you doing?

You haven't seen Dumb and Dumber? Yeah, right. Get out of here. No, but doing? You haven't seen dumb and dumber. Yeah. Right. It's like, get out of here. But like, that doesn't exist. No one's there. Okay. And then we get to the next layer level. Like I'm just gonna say, cause it's a book I've read recently is it takes what it takes.

It's written by the Alabama football mindset guy. So he worked with Nick Saban and he became Russell Wilson's quarterback for the Seahawks mindset guy. So he worked with Nick Saban and he became Russell Wilson's quarterback for the Seahawks mindset guy. If you know anything about Russell Wilson, he is what he is because of his mindset. He's a mindset. Like I'm a New England Patriots fan, but I'm a huge Russell Wilson fan because he's,

I was a fan of his before I read it takes what it takes. I think he might get traded. He's dope. He's dope. He's awesome. So that would be a really good one. But even without the reading, because then the next ones are like you can go into the more spiritual approach of untethered soul and new earth and Deepak Chokra stuff. Start getting weird. That starts getting weird.

Exactly. So there has to be this kind of like, you kind of have to, so the way I was, I kind of was presented, but this was like the mindset stuff. And then Ryan Holiday and from Ryan Holiday, I started getting into stoic philosophy. You know, and you read about Marcus A aurelius and seneca you know you start to dive into those guys worlds and then you start getting into um you know maybe some of the more philosophical things and then you get into this like you know the more spiritual side of things but there's something that can happen without the reading at all, which is just

again, step one, the building block awareness. And first off, we have to become aware because most people don't even, not in our world, because our world, when you're an athlete, you can't not, but most people, I should say, most people, about half people don't even realize there's the voice in their head. So just becoming aware of that voice and listening to that voice a lot. And then from there, even more powerfully, it's hard to change your thoughts because your thoughts are tied to your emotions and emotions are going to happen from the limbic amygdala lizard monkey brain. Like you have no control over it, but what you do have control over is when it starts to formulate into the logical brain, the conscious brain, the prefrontal cortex, you start saying your words. When you say your words, you have control over that.

say your words, you have control over that. So can we start to kind of the way we started this conversation, turn have tos into get tos, shoulds into wills, and never whine, never complain, and never make excuses. We all wear white bracelets that say just that. Never whine, white bracelets that say just that never whine, never complain, never make excuses. If we hear one of our friends, peers, athletes complain,

whine, or make an excuse, we snap our own bracelet. Environment matters. You're creating a negative environment. You're hurting me. Now we have a level of awareness, a real level of awareness. It's not just kind of this like foofy, like listen to what you say type thing.

No, like we're calling it out in the moment in real time. When people say I have to, we in the moment in real time change that for them. Why do I think Matt is like inflicting punishment on people when they say this? Yeah. So yeah. Right. So it, to me, it's that level of awareness as much as you want to read or do anything like that. Nothing really matters until you actually have intention to take action. So to me, the action is like, make it real, a part of your life. And that's that when it actually starts to change who you are. Because otherwise, you can just sit and read a book and it does nothing. Intention without action is just a spinning wheel.

It's just a rat running. It's not getting anywhere. He has so much action. I'm sorry. He has so much movement and movement and movement, but there's no level of awareness. I'm not going anywhere. We got to bring some sort of, you got to tie those two things together. Ben, are you familiar with Art Williams?

I'm not. He's a speaker and I'll send you a link to a video or a speech that he did, but he did this speech that's called Just Do It. And ironically, maybe like a year or two later nike had their just do it campaign and they claim there's no connection but uh when you see this you'll probably understand that there probably is a pretty clear connection um have you ever heard heard of a book called iron will yes i actually have iron yeah iron wills unbelievable yeah but worse than Sweat Martin.

It's just a ridiculously good book. But you got me all fired up over here. I'm like, I got to hire this guy. I don't know about you guys, but I'm getting all pumped up. I'm like, this is fucking awesome. But then I remember you teach people CrossFit stuff, and that'll probably make me die. So I don't want to die.

I like to work kind of hard. What you got over there, Andrew? I'm sure you got a bunch of shit festering up over there the whole mindset thing that's something that I'm always struggling with and Seema corrects me all the damn time and I love him for it because you know I will say like whatever it may be like

I hope I can get to that thing later or whatever and he checks me on it all the time so I like the wrist thing there. When you hear somebody bring that negativity to your world, you snap yourself. That is fucking savage. Is there anything else that people can use to practice to keep away from this negative self-talk, this verbiage and stuff? Because since I've been adopting this, as little as I want to say four weeks ago, I said I'm a terrible reader.

And I've been reading every day. And I'm now 40% through Atomic Habits, which is an amazing book. Great book. Yeah. And in there, he kind of referenced something that you just said about like, you know, you can be in motion, but unless you're putting things in action, you're just spinning your wheels. motion, but unless you're putting things in action, you're not, you're just spinning your wheels. So what, what can we put in action as far as like keeping that negative self-talk away from us? Okay. So it's not as tactical as snapping a wrist bracelet, but the biggest thing is where I just pulled out of that, your words just there is as you become aware of this, there's a secondary level of negativity, which now you

judge yourself for being negative. So now it's the ego. Get out of my head. Yes, it's that. And actually what happens is this is kind of, if you're not aware of this, it can mess you up a little bit is when you start to go through this process early on, it can be really hard, dark, and depressing because you realize how far away you are from where you want to be. And before you were just ignorance is bliss. You didn't know you were this negative. You didn't know you were as ego driven. You didn't know how actually limited you were. You didn't realize how detrimental you were being to the sabotage of your own happiness. That's a rude awakening. And here is the actionable, it's just not as tactical, is

let it go. Let it go. When you start to realize you're not where you want to be, don't let that weigh on you literally let it go and this actually becomes the mantra for a happy life because as we said mental toughness is unconditional focus and effort well we didn't talk about that unconditional aspect. And the unconditional means no matter what, like no matter what. So what that means is when you're doing that 20 rep back squat and you have the distraction, whatever it is, whether it's somebody throwing cold water in your face or a bad thought, you have to let that go and just let it pass through you. What we do instead of letting it pass through us is we grab onto it. We hold on it and we let it spin inside of us over and over and over again, which as we just talked about is action without moving forward. You're eating yourself up inside without having taken a step forward. Only once we let it go, do we move

forward. Now that's easier said than done. This is all of our challenges because what you realize here is that word unconditional is really freaking powerful. The term unconditional love, we've all been exposed to that, but we don't dig into it, what that actually means. If I say, do you unconditionally love your wife? People go, yep. And I go, well, okay. So that means that you love her no matter what they go yep so you love her even if she cooks you a bad dinner like yeah i love her no matter if she cooks me a bad dinner you love her even if she's um um bad at packing for a trip like yep i get frustrated but i still love her do you love her even if she cheats on you he'll go no whoa i think that would be reason enough to like you know maybe i'd still think

she's i don't know do you love her even if she tried to cut off your right testicle while you were sleeping and people go like no like if she do you love her even if she tried to cut off your right testicle while you were sleeping. And people go like, no, like if she, do you love her? Even if she tried to hurt your children. Okay. This is what unconditional love means. This is what unconditional mental toughness means. It means no matter what, dude, it means even if you are in last place, your focus and your effort does not get diminished. I know what it looks like when you perform and you're in first or second place and it's your wheelhouse workout.

I know what it looks like. Why does it not look like that in terms of the effort you give your body language, your heart and your desire? Why does it not look like that when you're in last place and you hate the movements that popped up? It's because you don't have unconditional mental toughness. Something dictated your effort and your focus other than you. This is the same thing. So now we have unconditional love, unconditional mental toughness. Now we have unconditional joy.

Do you want to be happy? Every single person on planet earth goes, yes. And we say, can you be happy even if you lose five Instagram followers? They'll go, yeah, I can still be happy with that. Can you be happy even if somebody says shit about you on Instagram? You go like, well, it kind of hurts. I wish it didn't, but in a little while I'll be happy. Can you be happy even if it's raining outside? I can work through that. Can you be happy even if you get

fired from your job? Even if your wife leaves you? Even if you get diagnosed with cancer? Even if dot, dot, dot. And people go, well, no, I'm not going to be happy if those things happen. if those things happen. Unconditional, bro. It's up to you. Now, that's not something that's just handed to us as human beings. It's something we have to work towards. And this is what working towards these things is, is a certain level of awareness. And once you have that level of awareness, we know when we're not there and we know the triggers that get us hung up and you start to feel like, oh, boss said we need to talk. Like bosses say that all the time. Like they don't even say that we need to talk. They say, hey, do you have five minutes at the end of the day? And holy shit, you have this gut feeling

in your stomach that sits with you for the rest of the day. holy shit, you have this gut feeling in your stomach that sits with you for the rest of the day. And now you've lost joy. Your mind is spinning out of control. Like that's the trigger. Can we, because what we're doing there is projecting out to the future, causing anxiety, moving away from the sympathetic nervous system, sorry, from the parasympathetic nervous system of rest and relax where we're supposed to be. And we've been thrust into this sympathetic of fight or flight. And we think that we need to run away

from the saber tooth tiger when we don't. Today's society has given us chronic stress. And this is what eats us up as human beings. Can we be unconditionally happy, joyful, and not let stress, which is manufactured through our programming in the way we respond to moments, not affect us. And the way we get there is awareness of the things that do stress us. And when we become aware of those things, it gets more stressful because we're like, holy shit, I didn't realize that this thing stressed me out as much as it did. My stomach is literally upside down when before I think I never was even aware of this thing.

It's even worse. But then through that level of awareness, we realize we have, we get inflicted by these things. And now like the alcoholic that realizes he has a problem, we can work towards a solution. Whereas before no problem, bro. So you keep on living in this suboptimal state. But Ben, we live in such stressful times. We, we don't, what we do as human beings is we manufacture stress. What we do is we live in incredibly non-stressful times. You know what's stressful? When you don't have shelter, when you have to hunt and gather your food, when you have to convince someone of the opposite sex to mate with you when you don't have language, when you don't, when you have to like kill an animal, skin it, it's fur to hide it, dry it. So now you have

clothes to survive the, that is stressful. You know, it's ironic. Those guys had less stress than us, honestly, because what we've done is we've turned acute stress, which is those moments. I'm hungry. I need food. I need shelter. I want to mate. We've changed those acute stressing moments, which the body is very good. It's why acute stress like intermittent fasting, like hard workouts is good for us. We, we, our body loves evolution, loves acute stress because on the other side of acute stress is evolution. As you said, challenges make us stronger. What our body doesn't like is chronic stress where it's there all the time. Stress shuts down, diminishes the immune system. Doctors know this.

If you're going to get an organ transplant, they inject you with stress hormones so that your immune system is suppressed so your body doesn't reject the new organ. If they don't do that, your body senses an invader is really programmed well to fight that off. If we have constant stress, your body has operating with a lower immune system. Stress is that we're getting pretty good at understanding exercise is important. We're getting pretty good at understanding nutrition is important. We're getting pretty good at understanding nutrition is important. We're just becoming aware of sleep. We used to see lack of sleep as a badge of honor. We're just very, very shallowly becoming aware of that. No one besides people in our community, nobody has any clue about the destruction

of stress. Stress is real. Your body changes on a cellular level. When you experienced stress, every single cell on your body has a skin on it. It's called a receptor. The job of a receptor, just like your body skin is to interpret the outside environment. The way it interprets that environment affects the inside of the cell, which is the effector. Your body is basically a microcosm of what's happening on a microcosm in your body. You go outside. The body senses through your skin, the effector that it's cold outside. So it sends a signal to the effector on the inside, your metabolism to kick up metabolism

where warm blooded animals to stay at 98.6 degrees. So we don't get hypothermia and die. That's what every cell in your body is doing is it's trying to interpret the environment so it can regulate inside what's going on. That level of, the way that system that's happening, sensing the outside to affect the inside is called perception. That's what perception is. Your eyes perceive things, your skin perceives things, your ears, your nose, your taste, everything. We have senses that perceive things. We have another one that

people don't talk about, which is your mind. Your mind is a sensory organ that's trying to interpret your environment. And it's constantly trying to figure out, should I be fighting, fleeing, resting, or relaxing? It's constantly trying to figure out, should I be fighting, fleeing, resting, or relaxing? It's constantly trying to figure out, is this person a friend or a foe? And then from those signals, it kicks us into hyperdrive, sympathetic nervous system, fight or flight, send all the blood from the gut to the working extremities so we can get away from the saber-toothed tiger. When we get back to the campfire, chill, rest, relax. But the problem is we as human beings are threat detection machines and we are interpreting the world as threats

when those threats are not really there. We see the guy cutting us off in traffic as a threat to our existence. It's not. We see the person on social media saying something bad about us as a threat to our existence because in our ancestral past, if the tribe didn't like us, which was only 150 people, they might ostracize us from the group. At worst, we die of exposure in the woods. At best, if they don't value us as a member, we get knocked down the pecking order and we don't get as high a choice of mate or meat. So we don't have a good chance to survive and reproduce. The whole thing is set up on an evolutionary perspective so we can be a better version of ourselves for the next generation.

But we're interpreting the world incorrectly because we weren't programmed to be in a world of space travel, AI, Zoom meetings, working 60-hour work weeks, and traffic. And eating lots of junk and not sleeping, as you mentioned earlier. Exactly right. So those are the ones that we're starting to become aware of a little bit. Yeah. I've worked really hard over the last several years. We talk about it quite a bit on this show, reinterpretation, reinterpreting things that I once kind of thought were true or things that I – just bad speech to myself and internal dialogue and things of that nature. And nowadays when I hear people talk sometimes, I will hear what they say and I'm just like,

you're off the team. Like as soon as they say something that's a little off, I'm like, all right, noted, noted, noted. I'm not like dismissing everything they say, but I'm like, man, this is kind of unbelievable to me, but it's just because, you know, I've realized something in the last couple of years. But it's interesting because it doesn't really matter a lot of times how intelligent somebody is. They can still be saying these things that aren't necessarily, I think sometimes it's just dialogue because we probably enjoy complaining to each other. And we enjoy saying like, oh, things are so different because we have to wear masks and things are this or that.

And you kind of get upset and you want to drag other people into maybe perhaps getting upset with you. We see a lot of that stuff going on. But the reinterpretation has been massive for me. stuff going on, but the reinterpretation has been massive for me. It's made such a large difference in every single thing that I do. So it's been huge. One thing I love that you're doing is that you're utilizing a combination of math and science and philosophy all together. Like, which one of those is the most effective? Well, they're all really effective. So why not let's use all of them? And what I'm referring to when I'm talking about math side of it is that if you put Nsema on a specific program,

you know that if he's following the program in a specific fashion, and once you get to like learn him and learn how he responds to some of this action, well, you know on these particular dates, he should be performing at these particular levels, plus or minus, you know, a little wiggle room here and there, because there's like just stuff that's kind of unknown. But I like that a lot, because if somebody goes into a competition, one of your CrossFit athletes or someone like that, and you have them prepared with the things that you worked on already, well, you got the philosophy side down, you got the mindset down, you guys communicated

about that a lot, probably all through the process. And then the training, the way that I always looked at training when I went into competition was the contest itself is already kind of over to me. I'm going to, like I'm going to have great results. I know what I did. And I also am aware of what I didn't do in my training. So I am aware that this might be iffy over here, but I can be pretty damn confident in these two or three other things that I can kind of bank on.

And it's more of like a mathematical equation. So like, let's say that I felt like something was a little bit off for the competition and I didn't perform quite as well as I wanted. Well, I can just say, well, remember, you know, going into it, you thought a couple things were off. If you're being honest, you didn't push, you know, hard enough on a couple of these things and you knew that was going to be a little bit iffy, but it's, it can be difficult sometimes to be that honest and to be that aware of what we're doing. Yeah. So I'm a big fan. I

think, um, I call it reframing, but I'm, I'm exactly where you are. It's like, that's to me, that's, that is the actionable for mental toughness is you just have to reframe things because, you know, I like what you're saying. There's the math equation of terms of like, when you get to the competition, you kind of know, like it's, it's kind of done. Like, you, you know, where you're going to end up. It's actually, that's one of the reasons I love the sport of CrossFit because that's not the case. There is so much adversity in our sport. Number one is we don't know what we're going to be tested in. So that very first thing of like, now we're going to do, um, run up the mountain with a backpack on like, okay, I didn't train for that. Shit. Like how do you overcome that adversity? So it's a real challenge.

Similar to that is, um, because of the wear and tear, you don't know, like they give you a workout that you've done 30 times. It should be the math equation, but you're doing it on day five of the CrossFit games. You're not going to perform where you think you're going to perform. So how do you deal with that when your expectations are, your reality is not meeting your expectations. It's a real challenge. And that's why I love our sport because it takes, it's a big part of that is how do you respond to adversities? I also, when you start to figure stuff out and you say like, you know, breaking things down, whether it's science or whatever, um, complaining and you're like, dude, you're not like, you're not going to be in the bubble.

Like you didn't make the tribe. Like, I'm not going to hang out with you. Like you complain too much. That's, that's my wife and I's filter system for like, when we meet a new couple or a new person, it's like, if they're complainers, they're out. Like, it's just, we can't waste. It's not going to be time, energy. It's too valuable of a resource. But if they don't complain, which is rare, it's crazy. But if they're a group of people that don't complain,

we're like, hey, let's, they were cool. Like, let's hang out with them because they're fountains, not drains, you know, they're assets, not liabilities. It's interesting, though, to kind of break down what complaining is and why it exists. Because as you said, it's kind of prevalent. It's everywhere. So we all operate with a certain mental model. And that mental model has been preconditioned into us from our upbringing. It's the way we were raised. Either our mom said, you know, you're tougher than you think you are. Don't complain. You can

work hard. Amazing for the people that had that. Or there's the opposite, which is instilling a victim mindset, you know, which is the exact opposite or something in between like a pessimist or an optimist, which is like sunshine rainbows. Don't worry. It'll all work out. Like there's different levels to where we all were conditioned to be. And the people that complain, complain because we, we as human beings crave certainty. Uncertainty is scary for us and we don't like it. And this has been studied

massively. We would rather wait eight minutes for a train, a bus, or a plane knowing we have an eight minute wait. Like there's a countdown timer. Train is arriving in seven minutes and you're watching it. Train is arriving in six minutes. We would rather wait for eight minutes knowing when we're waiting than wait for four minutes, but you don't know when the train's coming. That level of uncertainty eats us up as human beings. It's a really anxious state. We don't like that. So we try to gain control of an uncertain world, which is reality. The world is uncertain. No one knows what tomorrow is going to bring. So it's an uncertain world.

So we try to bring control to it by complaining. Complaining empowers us. Because when we say Donald Trump is such a douchebag, I can't believe that this and the politics of what's going on. I can't believe Biden pulled out of Afghanistan, like whatever, you know, the, the people that believe that the vaccine is a hoax or people can't believe that the vaccine that people aren't getting the vaccine because it's so irresponsible. We like to complain because it gives us a certain level of control. And that's literally the reason for complaining. So part of me has this kind of empathy for complainers because it's not their fault. It's built into them from a biological perspective to complain and or it's just they're pre-programmed.

It's their conditioning. They were brought up that way and it's one of the reasons that i challenged myself and my wife brought this to me i wasn't this type of person as much as she's challenged me to become of just don't judge people like because you don't know what their programming is and you don't know the biases that we're coming to the table with. Like we might have certain biases that aren't true. And the biases guide our lives. One of those biases is confirmation bias.

And what we try to do in our world is find viewpoints that further enhance our belief system and viewpoints. And we see them, we go, see, that's the way the world is. See, politicians don't know what the hell they're doing. See, the Democrats don't know what the Republicans don't know what. See, I told you that. And we further entrench ourselves in that belief system. And when the world as uncertain as it is, and the reality of the world, which we don't, we think that we understand and we don't, doesn't present ourselves in the mental model that we view the world with, we have one option. I shouldn't say that. We default to the easy option, which is complain. There is another option, the option, which is complain. There is another option, which is simply accept, right? We could just accept that this is the way the world is. We could just accept that it rains and it snows in

the Northeast. We could just accept that I have a boss that doesn't understand that I'd like to do certain things a certain way, but we don't want to do that. We want to resist those things because when you resist them, it feeds into the ego. And I don't mean ego in terms of like, I'm the best ego in terms of, I have a certain way that I want to see the world unfold. And I'm going to tell a story to myself about the way that world's going to unfold.

And when we have that narrative, it reinforces us. It makes us feel good to go. See, I told you. And that's empowering. It brings certainty to a thing that we have no control over. You know, the thing you mentioned about complaining is a really, really big deal. I think the first, the first time I ever heard that, and I just, I literally started applying it right after I was like 19 or 20 listening to Tim Ferriss. And he was saying something like, I never complained or I've made a rule for myself,

just never to complain again. I was like, holy shit. Like that's actually really easy to do. If you ever find yourself talking to someone or complaining about something, I would just fucking pinch yourself or take that shit back. Because what that does when you complain about shit is that it stops you from trying to find a solution for the problem that you're having. You're just complaining about it, talking about it, and then you sit there and you don't do shit about it, right? But if you get out of that and you just totally change that, then you immediately become someone who's continuously looking for solutions to your problems, and that can change everything. If I can add to that just a little bit um throwing a question mark after the complaint is pretty useful like uh you know maybe saying like um you know instead of just saying man i don't know what happened to me but the last couple days i've

been so tired of low energy and my work production is shot maybe you say hey man you got any suggestions on some things i could do because like i i do? Because I don't know where I messed up. It might be sleep or something. Maybe you read a book or something and maybe you got advice because someone will be like, boom, right away they're going to be like, oh, listen to this podcast or I just heard this the other day. Yeah, I love that. So, wow, so cool. And by the way, that's the – Tim Ferriss was the original inspiration for this bracelet. Oh, okay.

He got it from somebody else and we stole it. He called it the 30-day complaint-free challenge or something like that. You need like a shock, like an app that shocks you. Like one of those like collars. Yeah, like a dog collar. It's got to be pretty intense. But yeah, I love – and what people – when you start to bring this to light and you go, dude, you're complaining. Their response is, no, I'm not.

I'm just stating facts. I do feel shitty. That's not complaining. I'm just telling you, I feel shitty. I am tired. That's not complaining. I'm tired. It is crappy weather for the third day in a row. I'm not complaining. I'm just. It is crappy weather for the third day in a row.

I'm not complaining. I'm just telling you, um, it sucks that our plane is delayed. It does suck. Here's what complaining is. Mark, you nailed it. It's, are you just, are you stating negative things with no plan to make them better? If you are, that is a complaint. better. If you are, that is a complaint. Full stop. We have to become aware of that. So now like you're having like people talking about all of these things and they can be as small as like, you know, waking up with a sore back. You know, if you don't have a plan to make that better and you're stating it out loud, now you're going into another thing, which is the frequency illusion. The more you talk about it, the more light you bring to it, the more spotlight you shine at, the more you'll see of it. It's like you're not helping out anybody, bro. Let's become aware of the thoughts because this is going to end up being who you become.

of the thoughts because this is going to end up being who you become. The more you talk about your sore back, the more you talk about how you're not feeling well, the more you talk about how tired you are without, here's the big caveat, which Mark said, I'm just going to re-highlight it, without taking ownership or having a solution-oriented mindset. If you have one of those two things, like I have a sore back, probably shouldn't have done that last set of deadlifts when I was already tired yesterday. Cool. Like you're taking ownership. That's not a complaint. Now you are staying, you know, that obvious it's freezing outside. I probably shouldn't have forgotten my jacket. Like, okay, you're taking ownership of that, you know, or solution oriented mindset.

As Mark said, I have a sore back. You know, I know that you had a back thing for a while. What did you do to make it better? It's freezing outside. It's shitty weather for the third day in a row. I wonder if I should move. You're not a tree. Like take ownership.

Like we don't have control over the way the world's gonna unfold we just don't we like to think we do but there's 7.5 billion people on planet earth we have a mental model that if everybody doesn't act behave and talk to us exactly like we want to do we're gonna get our panties in a bunch and you know get all upset and um that person doesn't like me and they said something mean about me. And we're get all upset about these things. That's insanity. Like it's not, we don't have control over that, but we do have control over the actions,

decisions, and behaviors that we take. If you don't like your boss, quit your job. If you don't like where you live, move. Like it's, I wish if I could empower people to do certain things, it's that. It's let go of the things you don't have control over and recognize the things that you do and take massive action towards those with intention and awareness of what you're really chasing. Here at my gym for several years, we've been dragging sleds and

pushing sleds and more popular now from a knees over toes guy, Ben Patrick talking about walking backwards with the sled and Louie Simmons, kind of the originator of shedding light on sled dragging. But I find it to be an exercise that nearly anyone can do. It's very simple. You know, you do need access to some type of weighted thing that you can put around your waist and you need to like walk with it. But in your experience with CrossFit, is there anything, are there any type of workouts or specific things that you've seen where you're just like, the skill set on this requirement is, or the skill set of this workout is not so crazy. It's not a rope climb.

It's not, you know, it's not toes to bar. It's not all these different things that might be the limiting factor for regular folks. What are some things that you've seen where you're like, man, I wish like the rest of the fitness community and maybe even beyond just the fitness community, people in general, wish they kind of knew about some of these,

you know, 12 minute workouts or six minute workouts that are, they're short, they're compact, they're efficient and nearly anyone can do them. Have you kind of run into some stuff like that? That's a great question. I don't think I've ever been asked that. It's really kind of simple, fundamental. And I love it.

And the sled one, I love it. Uh, and the sled one, I couldn't agree more with. I think that two things I'll get to the movements in a second. Um, there's a reason that we don't train solely with these things. So I'm just going to put a big asterisk next to that. And that is that we want, um, to what we do to carry to outside the walls of the gym. And one of the things that we need to be able to do there is have full range of motion. Full range of motion is one of the things that's most commonly correlated with longevity and functionality in late in life, right? Can you get below parallel in a squat? Can you actively fully extend your shoulders overhead? So you can't, that's just like really kind of baseline things. And that's why we do things like squats and presses. But to your point, not everyone has the capacity to do those things.

So what are the things that we can have a really easy entrance point that across the board anyone could do? I would move towards the really kind of like what you're just saying. I call them horizontal displacement, which is sled dragging being one of those. You're just going to move something from point A to point B across the earth. The next one, obvious ones there is just carries, right? So carries are phenomenal. And there's so many different variations, whether it's just a farmer carry, a unilateral suitcase, so a one-arm farmer carry, a front rack, a back rack, an overhead, out in front, like, out in front, like a D ball and on

the shoulder, like a sandbag. There's so many different variations of that. And it could be argued that it might be the most functional movements in the world, right? Like you, if you can't get, people like to say the squat, but if you can't get from point A to point B, you're in trouble, right? I like that a lot. Yeah. Picking up something off the ground and then all the different ways that you mentioned you can do it is awesome and then the next thing i would do is the other one so like in our sport there's a lot of like rowing and running and stuff but even those things are like there's a certain kind

of buy-in from a skill or um it's not open to everybody, but biking, you can't mess up. And so I don't say, I think like an easy workout, as you said, that you like, I want to put in, I want to try CrossFit. I don't want to worry about any sort of this end range of motion, flexibility stuff or skill stuff, or am I hitting standards or anything like that? You can't mess it up is bike and then horizontal displacement. You choose bike and sled push,

bike, farmer, carry bike, um, um, on the shoulder with whatever carry, you know, grab your kid, put them on your back you know just move from point a to point b i think that's a crossfit kind of like it's bread and butter is mixing modalities so in that case you're mixing a what's called a monostructural movement which is fancy word for cardio biking with a weight lifting implement and weightlifting people always like, well, it's gotta be dead press bench, clean snatch, or one of those things to be weightlifting. And no, weightlifting is just moving external objects.

And if you are pushing a sled that is weightlifting. If you are carrying something across the earth, that is weightlifting. It's moving external loads. So now we've combined two of those things. A third movement that we like to involve is called gymnastics and that's body weight. And if you're like, oh my gosh, I don't know how to do a pull-up. I can't do a squat, even a sit-up, I'm not sure. If you want to involve some sort of body weight thing without any other sort of limitations, almost everyone can do a plank. So now you have your triplet of those three different dimensions. What I want you to do is bike for a minute as hard as you can, push or carry something as heavy and as far as possible as you can in the next

minute. And then for the third minute, hold a plank, rinse, wash, repeat that cycle four times. And you have a 12 minute workout that you have. You'll just be like, you're kind of getting the whole deal. Wow. That'll kill. That will kill. Kind of still staying within the physical now, since we're off the mindset stuff a bit. CrossFit is one of the most physically demanding sports I've seen. And with that being said, like a lot of these athletes mean they're running, they're doing weight-bearing movements, they're doing different types of cardio, and they're doing in massive ranges of motion explosive movements too. and they're doing in massive ranges of motion, explosive movements too.

They also have a lot of frequency of doing these workouts. So they have to be some of the athletes that are as on top of recovery as any other athlete. And that's probably do it in the best way possible. What are some things that you have seen be very effective for those athletes to be able to recover efficiently?

And not just sleep, uh is there a structure to the way you have them set up their their sleeping routines or do they utilize certain types of mattresses like what are the more detailed recovery aspects in terms of what you've seen be very effective for crossfit athletes okay uh so yes recovery is a massive part of our sport. If you can, if you're the best performer in the world, but you're smashed after workout number one, well, you got 14 coming down the pipeline. Like that's one of 15 events that you're gonna see across the next four or five days. Um, and they're brutal, brutal, brutal workouts. Um, really, really hard. So the number one adaptation tool for recovery is actually the training itself. So as you are, as you build up the tolerance to more volume,

you're by definition improving your recovery ability. So place number one is increased volume. Cause if you only, no matter how good your recovery process is, if you sleep beautifully, if you do all the, and I'll dive into the more specifics, if you, because nutrition is another massive part of a recovery. And if you create the mental space, so you can fall back into the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the rest, relax, and digest. If you do all those things beautifully, but you've never done more than one workout a day, by day two of the CrossFit Games, when you've done three workouts on day one, you're smashed.

So number one is you have to build up the volume. You have to, that's the first one. The second one after volume is probably equal parts sleep and nutrition. I'm not going to say one's more important than the other. They're equally as important because if in our sport, if you don't get the calories, the engine has no fuel to run on and you're toast. You literally, we are a glycolytic sport. We operate on stored sugars. You need to have those in the body and you need to consume carbohydrates as you go along. If you don't, kind of like Tour de France, if they're not having the goose, the sports drink and having the milk by mile 80 of the bike, they bonk. It's the same thing in our sport. So nutrition is the next biggest one. Carbohydrates being the biggest aspect of that.

And this is why, getting back to nutrition, people are so confused because they see our athletes having Gatorade, yet they hear their coach, me, say, don't drink Gatorade. That's really confusing. That's really confusing. They see these really, every fitness program in the world demonized sugar, yet Marshawn Lynch is having Skittles at halftime. Like, what's the deal? It's again, what are we searching for?

Are you searching for health performance? Are you searching for health and longevity? Or peak performance for a period of time? And this is why we have to have the sugar in between. My athletes do have Gatorade. They do. They actually don't do Skittles. We do either Sour Patch Kids or Haribo Gummy Bears because they're almost pure glucose. But I would never in a million years have any one of my normal everyday soccer moms and dad, regular members have that stuff. It'd be poison to them. So the recovery in terms of the, the, and that's kind of like the specific hack in there and timing matters as well. We want to get it in beforehand and be fueled.

Sorry, getting as close as we can afterwards and fueled beforehand in terms of sleep. I love what you kind of alluded to because there's two different aspects to sleep. The first is quantity. And normal people need seven to nine hours of sleep to operate where they are. If you get under seven, you are hurting your body. That sucks because I usually get about 645. I have a hard time getting seven and I'm in bed for 815,

eight hours and 15 minutes. But according to the sleep device, it's only, you know, there's, there's times that you're not actually asleep. So the first one is just the actual numbers. What we shoot for, for our high level performance athletes that are at the CrossFit games, it's not the seven to nine. It's actually eight becomes the minimum and we like 10. I haven't seen any benefits above 11. So a lot of our athletes do sleep closer to 10 hours a night. So that's the first one. The next piece of that is not just the amount, but it is the quality. Like everything, nutrition is quantity and quality. Sleep is quantity and quality. And the way we, the tools that we use for the quality aspect is you hinted at a fair amount of them. Our athletes travel with their own pillows. A lot of them,

when we go to the games, get a mattress shipped to them and they literally take the hospital, the hospital, Freudian slip there, but they take the hotel mattress, tip it up and they literally take the hospital, the hospital Freudian slip there, but they take the hotel mattress, tip it up and they put their mattress on. We use weighted blankets. We use chili pads, which control the temperature. We do sleep noise, sleep masks, people like sleep mask. Oh my gosh. What are you like a 75 year old lady with fuzzy sicker slippers and a poodle? Um, there's, um, whoop just came out with this, um, people that wear sleep masks. Um, not people that, cause that'd be a correlative study. When people wear sleep masks, they sleep 5% better than when they don't. Oh, wow. And then we don't want any sort of light in the room. So if there's a clock in the hotel,

you put a sheet over it, turn it around. Any sort of lights is detrimental. There was a study that showed how powerful this was. It was recently debunked, but it actually said like people, they put a light on someone's legs underneath and they're like sleep. So it's not, your body's not that sensitive, but underneath the eyelids, it does matter. So your body's constantly searching for trying to regulate with a circadian rhythm of when it's getting light and dark. So this is why we don't do screens. Um, we try to eat in competition. It's really hard because, you know, we were just at Wadapalooza, which is a big competition in miami and events don't happen don't get done until you know 10 o'clock at night um in training we try to make sure that the athletes eat two to three hours before bedtime

that's not always available to us at night um but then the kind of more nuanced type things those are all like really tactical like turn turn out the lights, temperature, chili pad, mattress, pillow, music, sleep masks. We've also experimented with sleep shirts, which are, they're like these really thin hoodies. You put a hoodie on, your body feels like you're in this like protective cocoon, more noise dampening because you put on this big eye mask that actually covers your ears as well. And it's fuzzy. So it's not like sleeping with headphones.

We've played with Bose. And Apple now has these noise-canceling earbuds that are made for sleep. They're like, instead of white noise, it's like gray noise. So there's a whole bunch of different things we played with as well. But honestly, the biggest sleep hack is your mindset. Can you let it go? Or do you lie awake at night staring at the ceiling with your head racing? If you wake up in the middle of the night, oh, we also modulate when people use how much they're drinking and when caffeine happens.

No caffeine afternoon. We're all supposed to get a certain amount of hydration. Let's call it half your body weight in ounces. Let's make sure that 80% of that is happening before noon. So you can still drink in the evening if you want to, just not a lot. But the biggest one of all of those things is if you do all of those things perfect, but you're a neurotic head case, you're not going to sleep well. Those are all hacks. The true thing is, can you let it go? Can you let it go? It's why stress and the mind thing is so important. And that's a lifetime journey for all of us

to be able to chill the hell out when it's time to chill the hell out. I think there's so much more to explore here, but we're going for a pretty long time. Either one of you guys have any other questions? I did. Yeah to go for it for the um for the athletes that you've worked with that aren't going to the crossfit games you mentioned like you know like the moms and the dads and that sort of thing what is preventing them from being consistent in their fitness you know like whether it be going to the gym or you know like the weekend warrior like I was mentioning, what stops them from continuing on a regular basis?

It's such the right question. That's such the right question because it's kind of like the food thing. It's not the training program. It's consistency. You can lay out the best program in the world and if there's no compliance, if people aren't taking the medicine,

they're not going to get healthy. So even a subpar program with great compliance is better than a optimal program with subpar compliance. So it's the exact right question. And it's the reason that at our gym, that's what we reward. People are going to deviate towards what they get rewarded for. I'm sorry. They're just going to move towards that. So if you, um, reward people for bigger back squats and faster mile times, that's what they're going to push towards. And that's going to be counterproductive because the people that aren't there are going to see how far they're away from it and go, well, this isn't for me. Instead, do you reward people for showing up? So we have the one, there's two ways to get your name on the board at our gym. And the first one is performance. It's, we have a leaderboard and

it does matter. The second is, are you committed? If you come to our gym 25 times last month, your name is on the board. We want to reward people for showing up. number of things from the mental model that they're operating through the world to their expectations of where they are to where they're going to be to their buy-in and belief in the program and you as a coach to how much they trust you, the gym, the organization to, it's all of the subconscious aspects to it. We can't logically solve for all of those factors, but what we need to do is start speaking to the subliminal emotional side of things and get people to be rewarded for those aspects of it. And the ways that we do that is we have a prescription at our gym. It's if you do five things, those five things are, do you train right? Do you sleep right? Do you eat right? Do you connect with other people in nature? And do you think right? So we want to make sure that all five of those pieces are in place. In terms of the training aspect, the number one

thing that we train to talk about training is showing up to the gym five or six days a week. That's the number one first principle of our training protocol is show up five or six days a week. If we're not doing that, I can't guarantee you results. You may see them. If you come three or four days a week, you may see them. Heck, you might see them if you come one day a week. I just don't know. If you come five or six days a week, I can guarantee it. It's going to happen as long as the other first principle in each of those other four is happening as well. We operate with a prescription of five factors, eat, sleep, train, think, and connect. And we need to make sure that the first principle of each of those is in place.

connect and we need to make sure that the first principle of each of those is in place. How do you really quickly first principles show up to the gym five days, six days a week. That's a training one. Eat it's don't, um, don't eat processed foods or too much. Easy sleep is get seven to nine hours. Boom. Um, the think is never wind, never complain, never make excuses. The connect is don't judge other people. Be open, receptive, love them. You share this with as many people will listen, but how do you share this in your own household with your own children? Cool question, Mark. Cool question, Mark. We talk about it a fair amount and I'm lucky enough to have a wife that has the same life philosophies and principles and believes in the same values.

So she does a better job of it than I do. I'm grateful for that because she has more exposure to my kids than I do. She's the one that picks them up from school. She's the one that gets them on the bus. So it's super helpful for that. But we start off with any team, organization, or family you're trying to lead is, I think the first thing that we need to do as leaders is establish trust. So if your kids don't trust you, no matter what you say is not going to happen. If your employees don't trust you, it doesn't matter what the policies, procedures, standing and operating, the expectations, the metrics, the product, the marketing, it doesn't really matter. If your athletes don't trust you as a coach, it really doesn't matter. So what is the framework of trust? The first piece is care.

You have to show that you're putting them above you. You have to show that you care. The next is you have to show some level of competence. So you have to kind of show that you know what you're talking about. of competence. So you have to kind of know, show that, you know, what you're talking about. And, um, if you don't understand your kids, um, that's gonna be hard. Cause you're gonna say, listen to me, like, this is how it is. And they're like, you don't get me. You don't get, it's different now, dad. It's so you have to show some sort of level of, through that confidence is compassion.

Like you can't have it without it. And the last one is consistency. You can't be sometimes loving and a good leader and other times go off the rail because that's going to break their trust. So once you have that trust in place, then we can start talking about what are the values that we want to instill. then we can start talking about what are the values that we want to instill. And to me, it helps to be clear and communicative with those things. We have family values that our kids could rattle off at age five.

You know, it's just, it's not that we drill it into them. We don't ask them to memorize them. We just talk about them. We just say like, Hey, um, and much like great people that have great, you know, great opportunities, like mental fortitude, mom instills that we want to instill certain values into our kids. Um, and then from there, we kind of go off of, you know, like I think with any leadership is instill principles. Principles support values. So once you understand the kind of the rules of engagement, which is what principles are, things that guide your actions, decisions, behaviors, all of a sudden now your kids have

a way to navigate life without you there. And I think that's kind of the, the, the litmus test for a good leader is have you created as that has that leader created other leaders that have created leaders until it's this transformational thing. You're just creating a singular thing that is exceptional. But if they can't then go do it, I think that's coming up short from our leadership perspective. MO of leadership, which is, which kind of shows the compassion and the understanding, which is listen, learn, then help, and only then lead. I think a lot of leaders come in, whether it's

family, like you got to listen to me. I'm the dad, like listen. But if they don't, if you don't listen to your kids first, then you get this like, dad, it's different. You don't understand me. And you're butting heads. This is why I think it's important to connect with your kids in things that they like to do, not what you like to do. If your kids love video games and you hate video games, and you've never played a video game with them, you're not doing everything you can. You need to connect with them on their terms.

everything you can. You need to connect with them on their terms. If your kid loves ballet, but you grew up a wrestler and you refuse to go to ballet practices, man, your ego is destroying your role as a father. You have to connect with them on their terms. And once you've connected with them by listening and learning, then you help them in their pursuits. Now you've established the trust where you can actually lead. Have you written a book? I have. I've written two books. Most recently, I read a book just on this stuff. It's a book on leadership. It's actually holding up my mic stand. Uh, um, how can people, that's kind of what this book is about. How can people find your books? It's on Amazon. Yeah. The first

book I wrote is also on, I did the audible version as well. Um, so it's an, you can listen to it as well, which horrifies and terrifies me as a guy that grew up with dyslexia, reading a book out loud. Um, but I, and I haven't done the audio one for this one yet, but I'll do it when I get, you know, the, the four days to sit in a studio for eight hours. I just haven't had that yet. Where else can people find you? Probably as much as I don't probably Instagram, um, as much as I don't, probably Instagram, as much as I don't want to encourage people to spend more time on Instagram, but it's at Ben Bergeron or Cop Train.

Cop Train is the training platform that we get people to try to be the best versions of themselves through physical and mental training. Thank you so much for your time today, and we really appreciate it. I found it to be enlightening in a lot of ways and i'm actually gonna put that workout to the test i'm gonna mess around with the bike and the carry and the plank and i'll uh give you some feedback on it so thank you so much for your time today i really appreciate it guys uh really you know really poignant and questions and um i pulled stuff from it as well so i appreciate it Have a great rest of your day. Thank you, guys. Thank you. Damn.

Oh, my God. That was really good, man. I freaking love this podcast. That's really fucking well read, huh? Yes. Man, and then he retained all that information and put it in his own life, in his own words. Wild. I'm just happy that as he's speaking, I can kind of pick up where some of the things that I've read.

I remember this. I don't remember from where, but I remember what he's talking about. That was incredible. Yeah. I think the Rubik's Cube thing was really awesome. He was talking about those different athletes just being like, oh, it's an algorithm. That's the kind of shit that you see from people that are exceptional at stuff, and you're always like, just like you're dumbfounded.

You're like, how come I don't have whatever the hell that is? It's amazing when people have traits like that. Yeah. This is one heck of a way to celebrate my son's birthday. Today's his birthday. He turned one. One, one, one, one, one. What's his date?

21st. Happy birthday, son. One, one, one, one, one. What's his date? The 21st. Happy birthday, son. One, two, one. One, two, one, two, two. This means that you're off a diet and you're eating tons of cake. Even though he has no idea what the hell's going on. That has been the biggest battle. Everyone has been, I mean, everyone wants to see him happy and stuff. So, oh, let's give him some cake.

I'm like, no, no. I've been fighting him off for a year. And then my wife oh, let's give him some cake. I'm like, no, no. I've been fighting him off for a year. And then my wife's like, what about a cupcake? I'm like, fuck. I don't want to. I know. I'm figuring it out. I still have it.

It is funny, though. The first time they eat something like that and watching their eyes, it's a good time. Yeah. And that's what I'm saying. I'm like, oh, I don't want to fry his taste buds. Let's give him a better chance. And the reason it's because like i look back at how i ate you know it's like i'd eat whatever and then when it came to dinner time i didn't want it and i didn't know back then which we know now it's because like well can't eat a bag of doritos and expect to eat you

know whatever steak or something even though we didn't really eat much steak, but you're not going to want fucking dinner after eating candy all day. Jake had booby milk for a long time. And then he, that's why he's so tall. Yeah. When he came off the booby milk, he, uh,

we've made him like shakes and stuff. Cause he like really didn't, he, he wouldn't really eat. We don't really know why, but he just like didn't care. Uh, and so we started making them like these shakes

but we'd like put like protein in there and it would be like kale and like my wife researched it and like we found out like good stuff sick good stuff to still give him like good calories so he's like this little like superhuman person for a while and he was probably like that for a few years and we went to like the farmer's market in Davis. And there was a woman that she sells oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. And they're like famous. Like everybody in Davis knows about these particular cookies. And she loves like giving little kids like a piece of the chocolate chip or whatever.

That's how you get them. Yeah, I didn't really know. And she's like an older lady and she just, you know, these people, they have like a way about them where they can just kind of

just do whatever the hell they want, right? Yeah. So she just pops this little chocolate chip in his mouth and his eyes start like rolling in the back of his head

and he's like, you know, like smacking his tongue on it and stuff and he's eating it. How old was he at that time? He was probably like, I don't know, like three or something. I would have been furious.

I can't remember. Yeah, I didn't care. Oh, man. But it was just funny because like she doesn't have any context going into it. Yeah, totally. You're right. You're right. Yeah, she's got no idea like that.

He's been on like this plan forever, you know? Yeah. And yeah, he just like loved it. I was like, oh well yeah yeah now he's gonna love cookies forever yeah i've been really happy he's been loving you know piedmontese steak or just like anything like ground beef if we have like spaghetti or something he gets like he gets mad because we're just like we're putting it all together and he's just like hey i know what's coming like i need that now oh he starts destroying it yeah go ahead. No, go ahead. Okay, real quick.

Since Ben talked about the ChiliPad, I want to mention, obviously you guys know, we work with Eight Sleep. They have their Pod Pro cover. So they have their mattress and then the cover. That's temperature controlled where you can control that. But it also tracks your heart rate. It tracks your HRV. It tracks your movement during your sleep. It tracks your HRV. It tracks your movement during your sleep.

And they develop their sensors to do more things over time so it can track more things and change its algorithm on the temperature every single night, which the ChiliPad does not do. Just letting you guys know. So if you want to be able to have that type of benefit that he was talking about but more, Eight Sleeps is the way to go. It's damn amazing. My room is freezing cold. I don't know why my room is really cold. Mine too. It's like 62 degrees or some shit. I'm like, what the hell?

The heat works in there fine, but apparently it just never comes on. I never bothered to really mess with it. My wife doesn't really care because we have the mattress set to give us the right amount of heat. Then you get the blanket combination of all that. And it's just like fucking out cold. Yeah, it's the absolute best. And, you know, you can compare, you know, 8sleep to everyone else. But like I always say, Samsung makes really good phones too.

And you always have that option while I will go with my iPhone. But for more information or if you guys want to just dive deep into this awesome, comfortable bed, head over to 8sleep.com. That's 8 spelled out. So E-I-G-H-T, sleep.com slash power project. And you guys will receive $150 off automatically off of the Pod Pro cover. So if you have your own mattress, you don't need to buy the whole thing. You just get $150 off of that. Or if you want the mattress as well, you will also save $150 off of that combo. No code needed. Just head over to 8sleep.com slash powerproject. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. I like what you said about the sleep mask. I've been wearing one of those for many years and it's always been really helpful. If you go to a hotel

or a different place and just for whatever reason there's light coming in, it's a great way to eliminate the light. But also for me, it's actually helped me to even fall asleep because if you buy one that's kind of – just spend a little extra money on it. They're really inexpensive. So rather than buying one for like three bucks buy one for like 15 bucks it's really not a huge deal but you want to get one that's kind of raised up like off the eyelids a bit and what you can do is you can put it on and you can leave your eyes open and you can lay there and you can kind of like meditate and you can kind of chill but what it will do is you kind of think about the glasses you know the orange glasses or whatever

people wear at night to block out certain lights, that you now just have the option of just laying there for a minute, letting your eyes get used to it being dark. Yeah, something like that. Yeah. Doesn't have to necessarily be any particular brand. Go on Amazon and just look at ones that you know, and you might have to order a couple of them or whatever, but it's been a huge help for me. So you just lay down and with your eyes, you know, I suggest leaving your eyes open just for a few minutes,

work on your breathing a little bit, and then your eyes are adjusting to like how it's pitch black. You can't see shit. You know, it's really, really dark. And then you'll probably find yourself kind of closing your eyes and you can still work on your breathing and before you know you'll be out cold yeah i've been doing something well not similar but like when i go take a leak right before i go to bed like i just shut everything off you know the lights it gets super dark in the bathroom and

when i find when i get out of there like i'm not stumbling all over the place trying to get into bed and helps me fall asleep a little bit quicker. We're definitely going to have to talk to Ben again. Cause we have to get like deeper into the weeds of like training, but he just was smashing the ever living shit out of philosophical stuff. And we all dig that a lot. And I think that it's, it's like maybe like for the podcast, it's like one of our priorities,

you know, to make sure that people are exercising, making sure that people are like actually going and doing these things. I love what he said about his gym, you know, the 25 times, show up 25 times in a month. That means that he like goes up on the board. There has to be one week where you show up seven days. Yeah. Because it's like you can't go six days each week. You have to go six six six seven yeah yeah you gotta yeah you gotta gotta get your ass there depending on how many uh days in the month i guess

there are whatever but uh it's a huge priority of mine is to figure out how do we get people to take that first step and i i hope uh the people that listen to this today i you know i hope that uh i hope they stuck with the whole thing because sometimes you might see, oh, it's like a CrossFit guy. I don't really do that kind of thing. And hopefully they can recognize, man, we didn't really – we did talk about CrossFit, but CrossFit was like the backdrop of the whole thing rather than it being like the main thing. But I think it's just an amazing testament to how much an individual's mindset and self-talk can change their performance. Cause he didn't mention how there's an avatar to these winners, but at the same time,

like the story of, uh, what's her name again? Katrin. Dave's daughter said her name totally wrong. But the fact that she was in the top 20, which is still very impressive, don't get it wrong,

but then she didn't place. And then the year after that, she turns into a Games champion. I think she did that for two years in a row. It's a very big deal. Like, yeah, her workouts probably changed, but there is a big shift in terms of her emotional resilience. He talked about how she used to be, you know, she would have highs and lows. He probably brought her to a place of equanimity. And that evenness through day after day of hard training, consistency,

that's probably what tipped her over the edge to becoming such a great fucking athlete. As James Smith would say, I'm at baseline. Baseline. How you doing, James? I'm at baseline. Okay, that's a weird motherfucker. You said John Cena would say sustained right yeah

I've told this story before but I'll just mention it briefly again John was there's a famous video where I kicked him off the team and he was talking about living behind the gym and how dedicated he is. He actually was living behind the gym

because he had a Winnebago type thing. What are those things called? Is that right? Yeah, it's give or take. Yeah, something like that. Or he had some sort of bus. And it's got a bed and it's got all this shit on it. So he didn't need anything.

But I kept asking him if he needed something. I was like, because he's traveling from out of town. And at the time, he was on the road like, I don't know, like 300 days out of the year, you know, something ridiculous like that. And so I'm just trying to be courteous and saying, hey, like, I'll bring you a coffee. Like, you need a sandwich. You need like, I don't know, like, want me to grab your breakfast or like, you know, you want me to. So I keep texting him these things. He's like, no, I'm good.

Um, and then finally he just wrote like sustained and I was just like, that's a really fucking cool place to be where you're sustained. You don't need shit from anybody. And even like, uh, you know, money or like, you're not, you're not looking for any, you're not looking for anything like that. You're just good. You don't need to, uh you win this week's lottery. You're already all good yourself.

So, yeah, I like that. Take us out of here, Andrew. All right. Thank you, everybody, for checking out today's episode. Oh, almost a bank shot. Oh, I almost broke it. That was almost shattered. Yeah.

So today's guest, he is more centered towards the CrossFit community. And the CrossFit community always shows up. You guys are off today. So if you guys are a part of that community, we want more people. We want more people to check out today's episode because it's super important. So please like and drop us a comment on anything that we spoke about today. Oh, my gosh. You guys are missing so bad.

Let's see if I put the camera on you i was just gonna throw my phone anyway yeah please drop us a comment and subscribe if you guys are not subscribed already please follow the podcast at mark bells power project on instagram at mb power project on tiktok and twitter my instagram and twitter is at IamAndrewZian. One last time, happy birthday, Aurelius. I love you. Yeah, all that good stuff will party tonight.

And Seema, where are you at? Happy birthday, Aurelius. I'm Seema Inning on Instagram and YouTube and I'm Seema Yin Yang on TikTok and Twitter. Mark. Aurelius seemed like,

I'm going to show you how I party and see if he's going to just blow out his diaper big time. They've been happening pretty bad. Once they start eating

real food, that shit stinks. And then trying to get them to figure out the toilet is like... Oh, man. That'll be fun. It's like training like you do the dog. I can't put them outside. Yes, you can.

Be used to the elements. Actually, that'd be pretty good. I gotta change my can'ts into won'ts. Yeah. Or shoulds into wills. Thanks, everybody, that bought some of our hydration product. I really appreciate it. We also have the fasting gum out now, so anybody who wants to check it out, it's over at markbellslingshot.com.

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