Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Project EP. 129 - The Fertile Female Jessica Smith

Episode Date: October 22, 2018

Mark Bell invites ST's own Jessica Smith onto today's Power Project Podcast! Jessica is one of the STrongest lifters in the gym and today we talk about her journey from alcohol saleswoman to head of social media for Sling Shot. Find Jessica on instagram at: https://www.instagram.com/jesska_smith/ Rewatch this episode's live stream: https://youtu.be/xpXhPxzVXxM ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots ➢Subscribe Rate & Review on iTunes at: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-bells-power-project/id1341346059?mt=2 ➢Listen on Stitcher Here: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/mark-bells-power-project?refid=stpr ➢Listen on Google Play here: https://play.google.com/music/m/Izf6a3gudzyn66kf364qx34cctq?t=Mark_Bells_Power_Project ➢Listen on SoundCloud Here: https://soundcloud.com/markbellspowerproject FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell Follow The Power Project Podcast ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MarkBellsPowerProject Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz

Who am I? Andrew annoying the fuck out of Jess. It doesn't get you hyped up? No. It gets the people going. He's trying to be a hype man. Yeah. But I don't think it's working out that good.

It hypes myself up. I forgot my phone yesterday and it caused a giant cascade of problems. I had like 36 text messages on there. 36. Specificity. That's what this podcast Today's podcast is going to be about specificity. And we're going to have to

clean these microphones off when we're done because specificity is very important. Spitting. Good thing the covers on them can soak up a lot of that spit. Yeah, that's true. Whoa. This thing is so big and thick.

Never heard that before. Eeyo! I never heard that before, that's for sure. Andy Bell can't throw me a goddamn crumb. I might at least lie about it. Okay, I'm sure you've seen bigger ones, but come on. You know? Andy Bell can't throw me a goddamn crumb. I might at least lie about it. Okay. I'm sure you've seen bigger ones, but come on.

You know? But she hasn't seen smaller ones? That's right. That's right. That's right. I got something in this fight that's the best or the worst. Right? Yeah.

Yeah. Come on. Just help me out here. I just need a little encouragement. Yeah. Mark, did you know that we have a girl on the show right now? We do. I'm aware of that.

All right. Just making sure. And she's so tall. Why are you so tall, Jessica Smith? My parents. Oh. Quick. It's that simple.

Yeah. That was easy. My uncle's like 6'8". Your dad is known for like really being able to lay some huge farts. And poops. For sure. So both. Yeah.

We have like a. I guess he. Yeah. He did share a poop story with me. The college one? Yeah. That was an epic poop story. The.

Can you reshare it? Because I didn't hear it. Yeah. So basically what happened was. Uh oh. Here we go. My dad had moved into the dorms. I hope he's not watching Because I didn't hear it. So basically what happened was. Uh-oh. Here we go. My dad had moved into the dorms. I hope he's not watching.

I bet he's watching. He would not be embarrassed. He'd be proud, right? Yeah. I may get some details wrong. I'm sorry, Dad. I'll do my best. I love that you know the story.

Like, is this like family lore? Like everybody knows? He was like, do you think this is a good story to tell, Mark? And I was like. You're like, it's excellent. He always does that. Yeah. It's on the family crest, like the whole story.

Like a poop knife, a family poop knife. Oh, my God. Oh, I get it. Do you know what that is? No, but it sounds lucrative. Basically, it's like if you take too big of a poop, that won't get flushed down. You have to cut it in half. Right. So it's a poop knife. Yeah, the flushed down. You have to cut it in half. Right.

Yeah, the Titanic. My brother did that when I was young. That's what we called it, the Titanic. And we had to cut it in half with a plunger. But then it gets all over the plunger. I know. So you get like a wire coat hanger. Of course. That's what your dad did, right?

I think it was a coat hanger. Oh, God, that's where I got it hanger. I think it was a coat hanger. Oh, God. That's where I got it from. You got to chop the poop in half. So he was in the dorms. And he was new, you know? Young. So young.

Yeah. So powerful. So much potential. Yeah. So he's in there doing his business. And he lays this massive shit. And it's super long. He said it's like a baby's arm from end you know from stern to end or whatever it takes up the whole toilet he was like wow this is beautiful i have to leave this for other people to experience so he doesn't even

attempt to flush it that's great he literally just leaves it in the toilet so then a few days later oh he hears some people talking they're like i think that new guy i think that new guy left it left something in the bathroom and i overheard the janitor janitor ladies saying they're not gonna fucking touch it oh so he goes back in and he checks it out. And this thing has tripled in size. From the water. It's like the snake that you buy for the kids that you put water on. It's like that little pill that you put and then it transforms.

It got waterlogged. Turns into a giant dinosaur. It transformed into a dinosaur. Fucking Loch Ness. Yeah. I wonder what was in his poop. It took him a few... Well, have you seen my father?

Yeah. Who knows? Insert picture here. I'll find one. He was a big dude, so I would imagine, yeah, big logs. Yeah.

Massive. Anyway, it took him a few times. That's how he got expelled from college. Something like that. Is that what happened? That's when he left and then made you? Or was this way before?

There's a lot of inserts in that. A lot of things that happened? Before. Gotcha. Jessica Smith, how'd you get here? How'd you end up here? Not necessarily on the podcast, but how did you end up powerlifting? So...

Explain the story to us. What happened? How'd you get suckered into all this? It started when I was five. Oh. No, I'm just kidding. I was believing you already. I was like, damn, that's awesome.

No. Okay. You're on a boat, and you're with your uncle, and he did something inappropriate? Think again. Oh. No. Oh. So I'm in college, right?

Sorry. I know. Blonde in college. What are we doing? I'm rowing. Leg. Oh. So I'm in college, right? Oh, sorry. I know. Blonde in college. What are we doing? I'm rowing. Legally blonde. Right. Rowing for Sac State.

So CSUS rowing crew. Anyone knows what that is? On a boat? I don't know what that is. I'm on a boat. Oh. I'm rowing. I do it for-

Not a concept two rowing team. We did do our tests on that boat. Oh. I'm rowing. I do it for- Not a concept to row a rowing team. We did do our tests on that thing, which I was really good at. I've seen you before. You're amazing at it. Yeah. Anyway, had a passion for it. Graduated college, was done rowing. Rowing is kind of an expensive sport to follow.

So unless you're doing something and that's your whole life, then it's really not worth it. So I move on. I get a job. I'm like, man, I have this thing that I used to do all the time that I loved. Like, I don't have that anymore. So I had like a void. I'm like, what do I do? I'm like, let's try lifting.

At that time, did you gain some weight because you were very active? Rowing, I'm sure, takes a lot of energy. So initially, I didn't actually gain a whole bunch of weight because I used to. Oh, Smokey. Smokey was peeking in. So actually, I didn't gain a bunch of weight after rowing initially. So actually I didn't gain a bunch of weight after rowing initially. I guess I was still lifting, but I was lifting at the school gym.

So that was cool. I'm just doing some stuff some coaches taught you maybe like in high school and college. Yeah, and in college and stuff. So I did stuff like that. I didn't gain a bunch of weight actually until I basically stopped going to the gym altogether. I was really unhappy because I hated my job at the time. I was selling alcohol for a huge distributor. Were you paying attention to like diet back then too?

No. So a lot of my job was driving around in the car. I would literally commute. My whole day was a commute. I would drive from store to store to store doing my thing. Were you kind of like a sales rep? Yeah, I was a sales rep. Not that I hate sales. I mean, I'm kind of doing sales now, but it's different. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I'm kind of also in the same situation where I was very few females in that market, really. When I moved over to general market, I was the only chick. Right.

Yeah. Does that make it, like, kind of harder? Yeah, you got to try and shoot the shit, and then when you, I mean, you've met me. We have a good amount of females that actually work for Slingshot, but we don't have that many, like, in the gym. In the gym. Yeah, in the actual gym. Yeah, so, you know, me, I me i'm not like the most appropriate person but you know i'm appropriate enough for

work yeah you're a little bit like hanging out with the dudes yeah and so i would do that and people find it very odd half the stuff that would come out of my mouth i'm like you know what if this came out of your mouth you wouldn't even blink an eye oh i see double standard going on a little bit so i just was unhappy started gaining weight wasn't paying attention i would say most of it wasn't paying attention uh and then i hurt myself i hurt my back because i was doing a bunch of lifting i was lifting cases of wine and cases of liquor and vodka all that shit and so i was in a lot of pain i could barely walk walk. Um, and I was like, you know what? I got to do something about this. So I ended up joining Midtown strength and

conditioning here in Sacramento. Um, that's where super training used to be. Yep. But while you were there, it wasn't there anymore. Yep. When I was there, it was not there. The only person that was there from ST was Mike. Yeah, Silent Mike was coaching people. Yeah, so this gym is cool because it has Olympic lifting, CrossFit, or at the time it was strength and conditioning classes. So you do Olympic lifting. You could do just normal, original, like what what would you consider, like, fitness stuff. Right. Cross-fitty style stuff.

Yeah, conditioning stuff. Right. Normal. And then there was also a powerlifting class every Monday, Wednesday, or something like that. And I was like, man, that looks interesting. And I used to watch from afar. I would go in the other room and do Olympic lifting, and I would stare at it. I'm like, man, that looks like a lot of fun. Because this Olympic lifting, it's fucking hard. Yeah, it hurts and it's not easy

to learn. Yeah, and I'm not super flexible. So at the time, anyway, so I was trying to figure it out. I was like, you know what, one day I'm just going to go over there. And I did. And then Silent Mike was my first ever powerlifting coach. Oh, cool. Yeah. Then I watched Marcus and Silent Mike and Austin Baumgartner. Watched them compete in the meet that was at Midtown.

In December. The USAPL meet, yep. Yep, December 5th. I remember. Yeah, I was there. I saw you. I didn't know you, though. And then after that, I was like, all right, cool.

I'm going to do a meet. So then I think I ended up doing another. I did a USAPL meet like two months or three months later in Midtown as well. Oh, cool. And then Mike was leaving Midtown. He was going to stop coaching because he was doing a lot more stuff, traveling, and he couldn't make, he couldn't commit enough time. So he felt bad and he was like,

I can't continue to hold a class if I can't be here. So he's like, I'm going to stop coming, but you guys are more than welcome to come with me to super training and train with me on Tuesdays and Thursdays. So he took me, Tiava, and Evan, and they were the three ladies of ST that would come and we would join. Yeah, that's how I showed up. Oh, my God. That's how you ended up here. i showed up oh my god that's handed up ended up here and uh you know like there was that video from forever ago where i'm like filming and uh you know back then i i had some camera crew here

and there but uh didn't always have everybody filming every workout we didn't have the media team that we have we didn't have the staff that we have now and uh i also remember like even before then like getting into small conversations with you i remember just seeing you coming into the gym and like i just for whatever reason i just immediately thought that you would fit perfectly with slingshot and what we were trying to do um it was just kind of like a sense even without having a lot of discussion with you but after talking to you a little bit i was like yeah i'm like man she seems really perfect and i i know you had another job so i was like i'm not really sure how to even like approach this but i'm just gonna do it anyway but there's that video where i'm filming and i'm going

around the gym and i point the camera over at you and you're like i'm like what are you doing you're like what's going on over here yeah and you're like i don't know i'm just trying to figure out my life right now. And then it just kind of goes on. And, you know, the YouTube comments poured in. People were commenting on it and making funny jokes to it and references. But, you know, I remember you saying that. And I remember you just kind of like throwing it out there.

But I was like, like, I actually kind of think that she's halfway serious. I actually think that, like, there actually kind of think that she's halfway serious. I actually think that like, there's something, there's something there. And then that's when I approached you about, uh, working here and possibly meeting with Andy. And I just, I think I approached it as, uh, you know, it doesn't hurt to like, just do an interview just to see, and then you can kind of see if it seems like something that would fit for you and we can go from there. Yeah. He poached me for like three months. Yeah.

I think it was a bit, it was like a little while after that first video, or whatever, and then you brought it up super cash. Whoa. That's my coffee. You brought it up super casually, so I was like,

is this guy serious right now? He's just offering me a job, just like whatever. I do that a lot uh i've noticed yeah i do that a lot i just like with t you know i called uh i texted him a couple times and said this is mark bell and i want to hire you and he you know he did that uh video for ohern in los angeles i got his info from ahern and i just hit him up right away. I was like, you do great work. I want to hire you. And he's like, what the hell? And he's confused. And I called him and I said, I said, you know, come work for me and I'll change your life. It'll be, it'll be awesome. You know? And he was like, he's like, you don't need to convince me, man.

He's like, I'll come out there tomorrow. And then, you know, Andy was kind of like the voice of reason. She says, let's slow down a little bit and let's make sure everything makes sense. But you know, it's kind of the same thing with you. I had a sense that I was like, oh, this is somebody that's young, somebody that will help me a lot with a lot of the things that I need to get done and will help me grow in more ways than one. And then also I can help like probably mentor her if you needed mentoring. But I, I felt like, you know,

it would, this would be great for us to get together on some level. And so, you know, I, I, yep. Poached you for a long time.

And then, and then you had a meeting with Andy, right? I met, I met with Emma first. Oh. I had an interview with Emma, which really wasn't an interview. It was super just casual, relaxed.

I brought my resume. I looked kind of nice. And then we sat down, and she was like, yeah, you know, I think this would be perfect. But, like, what are you comfortable with? And I was like, well, to be honest, I'm not really sure what we're doing here. But it was cool. like well to be honest i'm not really sure what we're doing here but it was it was cool i mean just speaking with them and she was really relaxed and had a good um energy right and then she was like all right i'm gonna talk to andy and then i ended up having a phone call with andy andy pandy

yep mark has this habit of if there's an energy of a person that he really likes, he's like, I got to hold on to him. So he's just like, you come with me. He does that all the time. Not just with me, but I've watched you do it with a lot of people. Yeah, I try to do that because I think we all could use help. And I have had many moments in my life where I was lost. I've shared this many times on the podcast. I didn't know what I was doing until I was probably, you know, like 32, somewhere between like 32 and 35. I started kind of figuring out like where I fit into this world. And really, you know, now looking back on it, I still don't know if I figured it out. Like I still like I'm still working on it really you know now looking back on it i still don't know if i figured it

out like i still like i'm still working on it you know but um obviously i feel a lot more comfortable now than uh than before like i created the slingshot and created this business and a lot of things like that and i feel like i'm in a good position when i see somebody i'm like man that's a that's a cool person like i want to know that person more. That's a good soul. I think I can recognize a good soul. And then I can say, okay, well, with this soul, not only can I do something with this person like yourself, I can help you grow, help you mature, and help you just,

I think I could help you in life in general. You can make better decisions for yourself down the road. Uh, who knows how long you'll be with Slingshot or who knows how long you'll, uh, desire to stay here. Maybe you'll work here forever and maybe you won't. Um, but whatever it is that you, even if you do move on from here, you know, it'll be, uh, you know, a positive experience. That's what I'm hoping to be a positive experience that will help you with the rest of your life. And the interactions that you've had with all the people in here could potentially help you with a future relationship or future job. Who knows? You know, and that's kind of the goal and the objective and part of

the reason why I do that. And even for people that aren't just employees, you know, just people that are just floating around in the gym out there, you know, it's important to, uh, it's important to share yourself with people. And so that's why, that's a big reason why I do that. Um, when you were, um, transitioning from your job to this job, what's, what has been kind of the, uh, the biggest difference? You said you really weren't happy with the other job. Like why, I guess let's start out with maybe why do you think you were unhappy? Um, I just think that the company didn't really match up like their, their set of, uh,

I don't know, I guess their mission statement, but like the way it ran, it just didn't really match up with me. Right. It didn't match up with my set of morals or work ethic. Were they maybe just more business-oriented, kind of straightforward? No, I wouldn't even say that. I just think that they didn't put their employees first. They put money first. Oh. Which really pisses me off.

Yeah, yeah. I'm like, all these people are out here really hustling. This isn't a pretty... we make things look nice. We make things look cool. But you're out there, you're fucking working. You're sweating. You're in straight business clothes and you're sweating. Right.

It is disgusting. And also, I can't tell you how many times I've, like, choked myself with, like, a scarf and some bottles of wine. Like, it is wild. And then we're out there busting our ass but we're on like low on the totem pole so it's the rollover i mean it's just right so so fast was it like uh your compensation based off of like what you sold or whatever not necessarily that um they didn, because we were so low on the totem pole, they didn't really do that for us too much. Oh, okay. Even if we did do really well. So if you're crushing it, it still doesn't matter. Yeah. Stuck on the road for 13 hours every day. It was like big brothers watching. We had trackers. Yeah. I used to have that too. Yeah. A lot of companies do stuff like, yeah, that's crazy. A lot of companies do stuff like that because they

recognize like, oh, we can hire people that are really young and we can kind of roll right through them. And they kind of recognize like these are these are like level entry jobs. Yeah. Some people have the education necessary to maybe move on or the experience or the will to like just gut it out and eat shit and be disrespected for five years and but they also recognize that like you know what most of the people are probably going to be here for a year or two that's what we're going to get out of them maybe in that time period they might experience one raise that raise will you know hopefully be enough to have them you know go from being six months, where they only really got trained to know how to do the job,

to keeping them here for 18 months, which is worth it to us, and then they'll probably go on about their business. And so they don't ever bother to develop relationships with those people. It's like disposable. Yeah, and it's not a great way to look at business, but what happens is these companies, they get really big. And as they, as they grow, um, you know, let's say like, let's say that this company was sold. Right. And, uh, what they'll do is they'll, they'll pay, they'll pay me. They would pay me to like, not those say it's a, you know, Mark, like, uh, you could show up at like a Christmas party or something, but that's, we don't want you around at all. And the reason why they do that is because I would be way too attached. I'm way too attached to the company. And so some of my ideas are good, but some of my ideas are bad in line with what their vision would be.

Um, you take like Ron Penna, for example, example with quest nutrition quest nutrition is a totally different animal nowadays um they used to have the smartest brightest people in the world in their offices all the time they have had leading doctors and nutritionists um world world renowned people that have written uh books and textbooks and just these people that are full of uh great information well the company is different now they have a different ceo um i'm sure that ceo probably cares about people but he doesn't have time to care about the x amount of number of employees that they have um and so they put their time and energy into making money And so each person in the company, we've got this social media person,

we have this person does media, then that person just does their job. They might have somebody that kind of has a watchful eye over that situation. And if they do their job well, kind of like the job that you had before, maybe you'll be eligible for a raise, you know, maybe you'll be eligible to make some progress but really it's just about your job it's not about anything else and then i mean to be fair though i had so i did move up i didn't stay in the same spot i moved over i mean that's i mean i moved over i was the only chick in the general market, which was cool. I thought it was cool. My bosses, I have to admit,

I had good direct bosses. The ones above me were fantastic. I can't talk bad on them because they did care. They did care about us. The guy above them, that was the asshole. Who would just nitpick. They were super cheap.

That's what I was going to say with a company like that it just comes down to the bottom bottom line like okay we have Jessica over here she's can sell whatever like X amount how do we get that amount but pay someone less or how can we give her less or how can we get her in and out quicker

and that's when again like Mark, it's about a money-making thing. Yeah. And it's really fucking annoying because you just don't think about the people. Yeah. And for me, what I'm trying to do with this company is provide more opportunity for the people that work here. Who knows if that'll always be the way that I view it, like 20 years from now or however long this whole thing lasts. I don't even know. But, um, it, you know, maybe as I get older, maybe I'll be like more rigid or something. Maybe, maybe there will have been some turnover and maybe I will have to act or

treat some of the people, uh, differently or something, but I don't like the way any of that sounds. I don't like the way any of that sounds. I don't like the way any of that looks. And, um, I don't really, you know, I have, obviously I have goals for the company. I want to see the company do certain things, but those things don't really matter to me. That's why I don't ever really look at any of our numbers. Um, you know, Andy was sharing with me, like our sales that we did, uh, for the IPF, uh, stuff, you know, getting everything IPF approved and having a sale for it and everything. And I don't even like knowing that. You know, I definitely don't like knowing the dollar amount.

I like knowing the number of orders is kind of cool for me because I know that, you know, we used to sell, like, five things a day, 10 things a day. And so to hear that we did, like, you know, over 1,000 or something in a particular day, I'm like, 10 things a day. And so to hear that we did like, you know, uh, you know, over a thousand or something in particular day, I'm like, Oh my God. And that, that makes me feel really good. Cause I know that everybody worked for that. Um, but you know, I think there's a lot of people that will have companies and they will bring a company to a certain level and we'll make 500,000 or $800,000 a year. They'll be very, very successful. But because of the stress and because of, you know, leveling up is very difficult. What happens after you, you know, start to hit certain markers, then you have to hire more people

and people are very cheap and they don't want to do that. And that's not a position I ever want to be in. I want to be able to continue's not a position i ever want to be in i want to be able to continue to provide more opportunity for the people that are in this building and to allow you guys to grow and allow you guys to i mean i've seen it happen time and time again here where you guys will come to me with ideas um that weren't nothing was forced upon you you're like oh i you know i came up with this or andrew you came to me about the podcast, you know, and then we were off and running with this and it, that creates an opportunity. And in the opportunity is more money. Um, and, and for me, I, that, that makes me feel really good, you know, to see some of you guys, uh, have, uh,

bought new cars, you know, like I remember kind remember the first time that happened, I cried. Emma was driving around in a new car. I was like, holy shit. Fucking Emma's driving around in a new car. It really hit me. I was like, oh my God. I'm responsible for everybody's holidays and shit. I'm like, there's some serious crap going on here.

And some of us got kids now too. Oh my God. Well, you're going to mess up Christmas if anything happens to me. Uh, I don't think Mark gets enough credit. Cause I mean, we don't necessarily share all the,

the cool things that Mark does for us. Oh, behind closed doors. No, it would, it would seem so fabricated. It would seem so fabricated. It would seem fake, for sure. If we talked about everything, all the cool shit that goes on.

Like Andrew getting married. Engaged, so far. Well, you know what I meant. Married. Still off the market. But yeah, no. He opened up his Bodega Bay Beach house. Helped set it up.

Yeah. He was the, I don't want to say he's the complete driving force because there was there was a lot of me involved but no he was uh he definitely pushed me and he's oh he and i went on a 10 minute walk yeah it was like a big bro kind of and said yeah definitely what are you doing that's a yeah that's a perfect way to put it that's a hot piece you got over there dude like let's have her sign let's have her sign the paperwork because somebody else might come flying in yeah but then i i asked the question and then the first training day back he's like hey are you sure and that's when that that's where that photo came from because he was he grabbed my hand and he was like hey

one thing led to another now it's kind of me and andrew he's like you haven't said yes yet like you asked but you guys didn't say i do i was like oh boy so he's still he's like, you haven't said yes yet. Like you asked, but you guys didn't say I do. I was like, oh boy. So he's still making a play for me. Yeah. I mean. I'm trying to hit that. You helped me and you've helped my dad a lot.

You know, I've lost a lot of weight. Your dad's amazing. And my dad's lost, you know, damn near 100 pounds. Remember when he came to the old gym? Yeah. He was a big boy. He just wanted to work. He wanted to impress you so much.

He was. Oh, there's me and Andrew. Yeah. Oh, you didn't post the gayest picture. No. No, but I posted it on your story. It's here somewhere. I'll find it.

God, we look good. That's all I could say. Yeah, but when your dad, when he came to super training the first time, one thing I love to try to prove to people is that you can do all the, there we go. There it is. Love and marriage, love and marriage. God, that's a great picture, Andrew.

Yeah. But when your dad, you know, when he first came in, you know, it was, what I love to show people is that you can do all the same stuff that we're doing. So here your dad is coming in, an older guy. He's heavy. He's out of shape. You know, he used to be a, um, used to be an athlete and stuff like that. And he's not anymore. And, uh, you know, a lot of your self-worth, uh, a lot of that is a great picture.

I have a, I have a good, uh, comparison photo. A lot of your, um, a lot of your self-worth. Is it on yours or his? A lot of your, a lot of yourself on yours or his, a lot of yourself worth deteriorates, you know, like you used to do this, used to do that. You used to be able to do these certain things and now you can't do them

anymore and you don't feel good about yourself. And one thing I really loved showing him was you can, you, you can do all the same shit that we can do. And that's what we did with that first workout is he do all the same shit that we can do and that's what we did with that first workout is uh he did all the same stuff that we did he just did it at a different pace he did it in a different way but do you remember in that workout how many times he had to stop and how many times we had to give him water we had to get him out of the sun we had

to really make sure everything was okay yeah well he's not like that anymore at all no he'd be able to he's working yeah there he is he yeah he lost over 100 pounds wow wow that's amazing yeah so my dad i mean he's even lost more weight than that photo there on the right um um yeah how about him from like uh just i mean he he was always uh you know what is is crazy in this picture is his legs you know when you look when you look at his his legs his legs are no longer dark anymore at the bottom which is a sign of uh very poor uh heart circulation your your body's ability to circulate the blood when you become really big like that and i had the same thing when i was heavy your body you can't uh you get the blood back to your heart which is fucking

great sounds crazy right but um how is he uh you know from a mental standpoint and uh like it i know he's always been fun seems like he's always been a fun, loving guy. How has he changed otherwise? He wants to do more stuff. I mean, he does stuff with my brother now all the time. He goes cycling with my brother and goes out to breweries and stuff. And I mean, he's not a huge drinker, but he's more lively. He's got more life left in him. Right.

Yeah, he's having a lot more fun doing it. He doesn't want to just stay in the house and watch TV and sit on his recliner anymore. When you were young, when you were like a kid, was he real big? Like real, real heavy? Or is this later on that this happened? No, I mean, he was like bigger, but he wasn't like... God, he looks great. He's got his smoky shirt on.

Yeah. He's got... that's great. And he's got the, uh. Let me pop that little willy. He has the, uh. That's great. He's got the compression cuffs on his knees. Yeah, so he wears the compression cuffs or I have a,

oh, I almost went off-roading there. The gangster wraps around his knees. Around his knees. Yeah. But he... What was the question? You got me all distracted with that awesome video. No, I was basically just asking how he's changed, and you're kind of saying that he just wants

to do more stuff. And then I also asked, when you were a kid, when you were 10 and stuff like that, was he real big and fat? I mean, he... That happened later on. I mean, he was bigger. He was definitely always bigger. But I wouldn't say he was like super obese.

Right. Like in that picture. That just happened later on. This is my favorite picture of him. Yeah, he's got the Joe Rogan shirt on. He's so proud of it. I love that. So what has

he been doing to slim down like diet wise so um initially it was one of those those programs to get less fat for your work the six month challenge or whatever yeah yeah uh he was like i want to lose weight and of course okay so like everybody else my dad has gone through waves of losing over 100 pounds, gaining it all back, losing, gaining, losing, gaining. That's like a thing. It's a very familiar thing. I think that happens a lot, too, when you only lose weight through food manipulation and not anything else. Yeah. Not a real strong form of exercise and strength training.

I mean, my dad originally, when he first lost over 100 pounds, he used that like by Salish shake shit. Yeah. I'm sure some of y'all have heard that. Yeah. Yeah. So he lost a bunch of weight. And then initially this time around, he started just making healthier choices with his food. started just making healthier choices with his food. So he was making food, just chicken,

green beans, vegetables, rice. And he wasn't keto. He was not keto. For the first six months, he was just eating, making better choices. Well, people don't realize you don't have to be keto. The advantage I share with people all the time is that the ketogenic diet for people that really lack control and they have a hard time with the option of having yogurt and bananas and apples and rice and some of these different things that you may be allowed to eat on a very nutritious plan that allow you to lose weight. Um, when you're, when, when some people are, when some people are able to eat those things, they go haywire. And then they eat a bunch of junk. Right.

But if you just eliminate some grains and you eliminate some sugar from your diet, you can make some huge extraordinary changes without being on any sort of crazy plan. I mean, that's kind of the plan you're on now, right, for yourself? Yeah. I mean, so for me, i actually started out doing just keto because i was out of control yeah making terrible decisions control i think is the number one thing when we talk about diet i think that's like principle number one how do we gain some sort of control and maybe maybe the first thing you try to gain control of is uh just like going on

some walks or something like just because, you know, trying to really gain control completely over your diet is going to take a really long time. And if you are going to say that you're going to do something and then you don't do it, it's a lot of negative reinforcement. It's a lot of pressure and it can kind of cause more guilt, more depression, more anxiety over this kind of concept and idea that you need to control your diet. I think you also begin to think, oh, my God, like, do I got to do this forever? And the answer is not really. No, you don't. And also, it doesn't all have to happen overnight.

So for you, you know, going on a keto diet was just the start of it. And then you're not doing keto anymore. No. So I was doing keto for a bit, lost a bunch of weight, like 30 something pounds. And then it was starting to affect my training. So Mark was like, I just want you to add in rice. Or actually, I think he just said sweet potatoes, Japanese sweet potatoes. That's like his favorite thing by the way. I try to push him on everybody. Have you had these? For some reason people don't know

about it. I know they're delicious. I mean they're good. That's all I did. That's all I added. I wasn't keto anymore but the only difference in my food was that I was just eating rice and sweet potatoes. And now you have like yogurt and I see you eating fruit and stuff like that. Yeah. Fruit's my favorite. I love fruit too.

And if you don't eat shit, it actually tastes freaking amazing. Even if you aren't keto. Right. You know, my dad. What about veggies? You eat some veggies? Yeah. Squash.

I love squash. Zucchini. Veggies, fruit, and then just some just meat, right? Yeah. Meat. Could be red meat. Could be chicken. Could be.

Yeah. I've been eating a lot of chicken. You go through phases, right? Yeah. Where like you like something and then you switch it up. Yep. Eggs. Oatmeal.

I do eat oatmeal a lot now. I think eggs are important. I think there's something to eggs. Like if you can handle them. Some people are kind of allergic to eggs. But I think the eggs have a lot of cholesterol in them. And I think it's actually really important for strength training. And then also if you're not eating steak, then I think the eggs are almost more important.

Yeah. Because you're not going to get that much uh nutrition from a goddamn chicken that's true they're just protein straight protein yeah um have you seen other changes in your pops you know in terms of like his uh his mentality like i said he doesn't seem like a depressed guy to me but like maybe when he was real heavy maybe he was i don't know oh um yeah i'm sure my dad was moody just like anybody. Yeah. Um,

I would say is got a little bit more mental clarity there. Yeah. Um, it's easier for, so he still has sleep apnea though. Um, so he still sleeps with the machine. Um,

he might, one thing that has changed, I will admit this, no more gout. Oh, I know people say red meat causes gout. No, yeah, it's... Incorrect.

Yeah. He's doing just fine. It would get so bad. My dad's gout was so bad, he had to have crutches. Sometimes he'd have to call out from work because he couldn't walk. What is gout? Do you kind of know what it is? I don't really know.

So it's like crystallized... But your feet hurt, right? Yeah, you can get in your feet and ankles and knees, I think. I don't know about knees. I just made that up. Isn't it a skin thing? No. Your skin gets all messed up?

Mm-mm. It's in your joints. Oh. It's like something's crystallized in your joints. And it's nasty. Yeah, it hurts. He could barely walk. There were days that he had to call out of work. And now he's like riding his bike all over the damn place right yeah so originally when

he so like the probably the one of the first times he ever lost a bunch of weight he was on such a good clip then he ended up getting gout and that kind of just spiraled yeah his weight gain again that happens to a lot of people. He was doing so good, and then he got discouraged because he could barely move. Rosemary and I were talking this morning about you. We snuck out and went on a 10-minute walk. And I was telling her, we were saying how awesome it is, the transformation that you made, the weight loss. And on top of that, you're getting stronger, which is awesome to awesome to see too especially because you got a powerlifting meet coming up um but i was telling rosemary i was

like you know jessica will she'll be able to keep that weight off because of the strength training that you're doing and because of the muscle mass that you have um you know you your body weight might fluctuate here and there but in general um, um, it should be, I don't want to say easy, but it would take a lot of work for you to get back to being as, as, as heavy as you were. You'd have to go out of your way. Now it wouldn't take very long, right? Cause like we all know that like we can all just kind of lose our mind and eat a bunch of junk. And it takes like the snap of a finger. Yeah. to be fat in 10 seconds. But you're aware of that enough to where that's in the back of your head.

Like, I ain't doing that shit, right? Yeah. But also you developed some really good strong habits. None of this is like, you didn't lose like 60 pounds in six weeks. No. You lost like 30 or 40 pounds, something like that? Like 40, 45. Yeah. No. You lost like 30 or 40 pounds, something like that? Like 40, 45.

Yeah. First of all, that's a huge amount of weight. That is a huge amount of weight. People don't understand that. You hear people say they lost 60 pounds and 80 pounds, and you hear all these numbers all the time. Anything over 20 pounds is a lot of freaking weight. And that wasn't even me at my heaviest either. I didn't like to take pictures. I didn't go out of the house.

Yeah. Ayo, depression, what up? Yeah, but when you lose the weight correctly and you take your time and you learn it over a period of time along with doing strength training, along with whatever other exercise you're getting, and you develop these really strong habits,

then it's going to be that much harder for that weight gain to happen ever again. Yeah. I mean, the biggest thing for me just with the weight loss is being more confident. And so, I mean, I mean,

depression, anxiety, it's a real thing. Yeah. I mean, so I was a psych major, um, and,

uh, the, you went to college. Oh my god. But the most common mood disorder. What the hell? I know, I'm here, so what am I doing?

Two people now that we can... Why is she so smart? Smokey claimed he went to college too, but I don't know. I don't know. Undefeated judo champ. Judo chop. He mentioned that in his speech. That he was undefeated judo champ. Yeah. Judo chop. He mentioned that in his speech. Mm-hmm.

That he was undefeated judo champ. What did you go to school for? So originally, I just went to school to play sports. Good. To get out of Bakersfield. You ended up getting a scholarship, didn't you? Yeah. A fucking scholarship.

Here's the thing. A fucking scholarship. I love that scene. I had supportive parents i had good grades i was good in sports um you know i did well in school but i didn't have any direction whatsoever because i mean all these good things but when it was time to apply for colleges i didn't know what the fuck i was doing so i just didn't um and then one day this email comes in and my teacher read it and it was if you're above 510 or have good grades have sports background you, shit, they talking about me. No, I'm not shitting you. My teacher, he made me, Mr. Parra, he made me go to my... Oh, here we go. Motherfucking scholarship.

I'm dribbling a Swiss ball around, an exercise ball. But anyway, yeah. So he made me go to my counselor, and my counselor called the coach up here, Mike Connors, MC. What up? Oh. Oh. Somebody calling us? I just want people to hear it.

Oh. Play it one more time. What's up, players? I've been up in here trying to get a motherfucking scholarship. Every time, like, you know what's funny is like it's so disappointing sometimes when you go back and listen to something. It's not as funny as you thought. Every time I watch that, it's funnier. Funnier than I remember.

Yeah. Anyway. MC. So I ended up going on an official visit they saw how tall i was but to be honest i was there oh yeah some junk in the trunk and everywhere else yeah if you go back far enough on my instagram there's a comparison so this is not the first time I've been fat in my life. It was before I, you know, joined college sports and then my coach basically was like,

hey, I'm an idiot. It's so weird when guys talk to girls about losing weight. They get so uncomfortable. Like Mark did that. It was amazing. Because like I'm not sensitive. Like I already know I'm fat. You don't have to tell me.

So my coach basically had to have that talk with me. And so all I did was change portions. I just had portion control. And I lost a bunch of weight. That's great. And then I kept it off throughout college. I kept all my weight off. And I was probably, like, the smallest, I should say.

But I didn't have a lot of muscle mass. I mean, my legs were big. Don't get me wrong. My legs were big, and my back was a little bit bigger because of rowing. It's all legs. People don't think that.

They think you're using your arms. It's all legs. Legs and back, maybe? Yep, legs and back, lats. That's why my deadlift, so it's shit. Don't get me wrong. I know my deadlift is not-

410 for two, though, right? Yeah. Like, don't get me wrong i know my deadlift 410 for two though right yeah no like don't get me wrong i mean it's okay yeah but like the only reason i'm able to do that is because of rowing my back is so strong from rowing it's stupid stupid the capital st yeah um how did you end up getting a scholarship i I went on that official visit, and he liked it. I had great recommendations from all my coaches. And then they have X amount of people on a team. Yep. Right?

And so they have X amount of scholarships to give. Yeah, and so there's a lot of tall people out there, but there's not a lot of tall women like me. I mean, there are, but there aren't. No, there's not. I mean, you don't see me walking around the street all the time. Right. So he was like, all right, let's.

So I ended up just, I was like, you know what? Fuck it, let's do this. I didn't really have anything else going for me. I was probably going to stay at the local JC, play volleyball, because I love volleyball. I was like, yeah, that'll be fun. Joined. It was the hardest fucking sport in my life.

Rowing the first year. Whew, rough. I was like, I'm going to die. Isn't like just the logistics of rowing kind of a pain in the ass? I mean, I know we're here in Sacramento, California, so weather-wise things aren't too bad, but it's got to be extremely cold sometimes, extremely hot, like the training. Yeah, you get up every day at five. You're in a damn boat.

Yeah, so what a culture shock, really, and it's, I mean, so it's expensive. I mean, most sports, you just grab a ball, and you go out in a field, and you just play. Not a huge problem. Yeah, me, I had to drive 30 minutes, get up at 5, drive 30 minutes, get to practice. Practice in the morning, no matter if it was summer or winter or whatever. It was cold as shit. I mean, cold for California, so don't at me, everybody. I know. It's not that cold.

Yeah, we're not in Minnesota. Okay. We get it. But it was cold. And then it would be rainy. And it doesn't matter. Unless there is thunder and lightning

then you're going yeah and only if the thunder and lightning were close enough but if it wasn't they said fuck it let's go

we're out in this metal thing were you a big wimp like Andrew and I Andrew and I were talking yesterday how like at that moment you know going to these hard practices

all the time you just kind of hoped that you could like fake some sort of injuries uh there were days that i did yeah for sure um but you never did you just stuck it out yeah i stuck it out i actually okay so toot toot toot my own horn here but uh you're trying to fart You told me to get it out before we walked in. I actually, by my freshman year, by the end of my freshman year, I was the fastest girl that we had on the team. But I was also probably the biggest. So, you know, whatever. You know what we should have you do?

We should have you go ham on that Concept 2 rower one day, and then we should just see if there's any guy in here that could ever beat you. Oh, yeah. I mean. There probably won't, but we'll see. I mean, I know Brian Shaw could, but. Oh, yeah. So then. Depends on the distance, I guess.

That'd be pretty sick, actually. I basically kept that from freshman year through my senior year. I was the fastest chick. And by my senior year, it didn't matter by body weight, I was still the fastest. That's awesome. Yeah. I made sure of it. I was still the fastest. That's awesome. Yeah.

I made sure of it. I was like, none of these small skinny bitches are going to beat me. Even though they were fast as shit, I was like, nope. I couldn't find any pictures worth comparison. But even in just this picture, like your face, you look way different already. Oh, my gosh. Wait, can we just look at the caption for a second? What does it say? The epitome of elegance and taste,

beauty and grace. Hashtag sex nimble. So true, so true. No one laughs at my jokes more than I do. That is also a fact. Oh no. You mentioned that you kind of have thick skin because you recognize that you've been heavy. And you've probably kind of been that way for a fairly long time, right? On and off. So, okay.

I don't know. As a kid, I was skinny. I was a string mane. String mane. Until I went to high school so this is where i think i could have been better but i didn't know i didn't realize like didn't know what's going on my control yeah uh i was in a lot of sports i was always active did you halfway know at some point like uh like did you halfway know at some point like i'm getting fat and like the

food i'm eating is contributing to that? It didn't really hit me. Unfortunately, it didn't hit me until I was too late. Yeah, I was too big. I think by my senior year, I was like, oh, fuck, I'm kind of fat. And then when I went to school, when I went to college, I was like, shit, you bitch thick. Because they thought I was a thrower at Sac State. And I was like, no, no, I'm a rower. They're like oh okay

sure like you throw shot put right chubs yeah basically no that's that's what I mean Marcus Marcus said he thought I was a thrower too because he was on the throwing he was on the track team he's thick he is thick um with three c's for reals uh somebody was asking your best lifts and what weight class i'm a i'm a super heavyweight um if you weren't i mean people are asking because they don't know yeah 4.03 in competition. Benched 2.15, or 2.14, but 2.15 here in the gym last week. And I think I squatted 2, I mean 3, 3.30 in sleeps. Knee sleeps. Knee sleeves. Was that when Ed Cohn was here? No, I did a 3.25

when Eddie was here and then 3.30 in the meet. Yeah. Hell yeah. So you mentioned we're talking about your body weight, right? And so, you know, you recognized, okay, like I'm fat and I need to figure out, you know, something to do for it. But like in kind of recognizing that, did you kind of know what to do about it or not really? No. about it or not really um no um looking back though i i realized there are things that i could have done differently um going through high school and like being in all those sports and stuff we

were so busy my parents didn't really they kind of stopped making dinner right which okay like i don't expect everyone's parents to be making them dinner every night. Right. But we would go to McDonald's. It's a huge factor. Oh, yeah. Massive. And if I, and I know for a fact, if I would have said, hey, mom, instead of stopping at McDonald's, can we grab some food for home? They would have done it in a heartbeat.

Well, when we had Tony Semina on the podcast and we asked him and we asked Big J, our boy Big J Extreme Fitness, I asked both guys because both guys kind of have a tactical background. Tony's former police officer in military. And I asked both guys about the school shootings. I was like, you know, what do you think's responsible for this kind of stuff? And, you know, what do you think can be done? And like, you know, and people had all these ideas of, you know, let's have a cop at the school and let's do all these things. And let's check people for guns on the way in, have metal detectors and all these things. And both guys said that, you know, Big Jay said it comes down to love.

Just people having enough love in their life and enough. And the way that he defined love, which I thought was amazing, especially coming from this big old grizzled guy that you wouldn't think would talk this way. He said, I define love by the word T-I-M-E, time. You have to put time into people and you have to be there for people. And so basically, in short, what he was saying was it comes down to parents. And then Tony Semonet said the same thing, which I was kind of shocked to hear from him with a military background and him also being a cop. He was like, no, he's like, that ain't going to change anything. He's like, people just, he's like, we need better

parents. We need better leaders. We need people to lead by example. We need people to love their children and to be there for their kids. And that'll have the biggest impact. And this is probably the second or third time now that I've heard somebody bring this up when it comes to the epidemic of obesity. Um, uh, your big, big fat, uh, squatter buddy kind of mentioned that, um, you know, he, he basically said that, um, because a lot of parents aren't cooking and, you know, some, it might be controversial, but moms are no longer, yeah. Uh, moms are no longer kind of staying, uh, staying at home and preparing meals for kids. And not that the mom has to, but somebody needs to be responsible for that. 100%.

And so, you know, a lot of times things kind of spiral out of control from there. And it's like, yeah, like it's easy to go to McDonald's. It's inexpensive to go to McDonald's. And it tastes amazing. Yeah. You know, so it actually makes a lot of sense. It's not to say that your parents in particular are to blame. Yeah.

But parents listening to this podcast understand that you can help gain control or any of you that are going to become parents in the future. Just understand that that is really important. I cook breakfast for my kids every morning. But also kids, too. Like, I know, like, it's also like a matter of like, like my parents were really strict. I love them to death, but they were strict. And so it was almost like I didn't have a choice. I felt like I didn't have a choice.

But if I, I'm sure if I would have asked, they would have been like, sure. Yeah. But as a kid, you don't even think about it. You don't even think about it. So. No, you're just like, fuck yeah, McDonald's. What's up? My big, my big buddy.

Yeah. He did say something. He's like, I know this is really controversial. And at first I was like fuck you he said when mom started going to work obesity went up and i mean he's kind of not wrong i'm not saying that that that's a thing but he was like at some point someone needs to at least if you're not if you're gonna work that's fine but if you don't prepare your kids luncheses, because school lunches are awful. And I'll be the first to tell you.

That was another thing. My mom used to make me lunches and I used to hate it. And all I wanted was school lunch. And I got that in high school. And that's when I really started to gain weight. And what did you eat? I totally forgot about that. Fries and cookies?

Pizza. Pizza. Yeah. Whatever they had. Whatever they had. They had those peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on those like graham cracker things, the long skinny ones. It's like 5,000 ingredients.

Oh my God, they're so good though. I remember my high school had like a spicy chicken sandwich. It was insane. And all the flavored milks. I mean, come on. I'll tell you guys. Those are just boxes of sugar. I'll tell you guys what I did in high school.

The second that we had the opportunity to venture out and not eat the... We didn't have that in my high school, by the way. Oh, you didn't? No. Yeah, so we had places close by. You go to McDonald's, there was a couple other spots. I went to this deli and I got me a pound of roast beef. Because I started to learn about the keto diet when I was in high school.

That's awesome. And what was actually really funny about that is I, so I weighed 240 pounds when I was like 16. I was a big kid and I was fat, but I wasn't the fat kid by any means. I was already lifting. I started lifting at 12. So at 16, I started to gain some body fat, had a stomach, but like, you know, I had a little bit of like arms, especially compared to like, you sound like my dad, especially compared to like other kids, you know? So, um, and I wasn't

huge. I was probably similar height at 16, maybe almost already done growing, um, at that age. And, uh, anyway, I remember like, you know, learning about a ketogenic diet and, um, and then also I was on the track team and they made us run on the track team. So I started to lose weight and it was actually all the whole thing was actually a really good experience for me. It was good for me to have this like pocket, uh, this pocket of time for being like just heavy. Right. right um because girls didn't play into anything at that point because i you know i wasn't getting anything back from you know from the situation ever because i was heavier right and so i went from 240 right down to like 200 and then

the girls were kind of like hey you know i was like see you later like i'm playing football and i'm fucking training like i'm not i don't care i don't want to deal with you right now yeah i don't want to deal with all you bitches but uh that's kind of that's kind of what what happened and it actually it helped kind of shape my life in some way because a lot of my other friends were wasting a lot of time in these freaking relationships and there was so much drama all the time going on with it i was like and then i i as i kind of saw all that unfold i was like man people are like with each other for two three four years of the clip and none of it seems to make any sense no one seems to be all that happy i'm like why are they even bothering what are you doing like why even bother to have a boyfriend or girlfriend in high school i didn't it's for

the benefits maybe but i think i think you're better off oh yeah i don't think i missed out on anything way better off like i don't think i missed out on like because there were people you probably wanted one more than anything you know right oh yeah right nothing like today. Hey. Hey now. You weren't smoky. I know, my bad. How was it going through school being big? Like you're tall too.

So I know my wife is 5, she's 5'10", and that was a big deal for her. She always just felt like this giant, and you're taller. I didn't, okay, so there's this one experience that I remember in specific. Is that a word? Beth-ificity. I was waiting for that.

I think I had just transferred from Hort Elementary, Bakersfield, California. Bakersfield in the house! Represent. I think I transferred from Hort Elementary, Bakersfield, California. Bakersfield in the house. Represent. I think I transferred from Hort or God. Another school. I just had like a transition school.

I was there for one year and they were not very nice to me or my family. So we moved. And that being said, I ended up at Eisler Elementary. The first day I walked in and it was time for recess. And I was like, oh, shit. Like, I don't know anyone here. You know? And I think I was in third or fourth grade.

I got so red. So I used to have a nickname in grade school. Uh-oh. Kool-Aid face. Ugh. I was so pale in white, and I would just get so red, so they called me Kool-Aid face. Anyway, but I was so tall. Hot and sweaty.

Yeah, I know. I was tall, and this girl, her name is Amanda, Amanda McDonald. I always remember her. is amanda amanda mcdonald i always remember her she came up and she gave me she like grabbed my arm and was like i want you to hang out with me and i legit think the only reason why she wanted me to hang out with her was because i was so fucking tall because they were just like let's go fuck people up she was like amazed that she had never seen anyone so tall and i just remember her just like looking up and i was like, oh my god, I have friends. She would brush my hair.

That's great. It's so random, but we became really good friends just that first year. I don't know, it's totally random. That was, I feel like, my experience. I would always shrink down because I thought I was so big and tall and I didn't want to be, I didn't want to stick out like a sore thumb.

There's a lot of guys that have like, yeah, there's a lot of guys have bad posture from that. Guys that are real tall, like six, seven and stuff. 100%. Their posture is not only bad because it's uncomfortable to be that tall. It's also just kind of ducking down and trying to get to everybody else's level. They'll crouch a lot. Yeah. Because when you're young and when you're like 11 and you're four inches taller than everybody you don't want to stand out so you kind of hunch down which is kind of funny because

our as you get older everyone is so jealous that you're tall your individualism is so strong and so important yeah i sprouted pretty early like height wise and so i was always taller than all my friends but like'm just super skinny. So I try to, like, stay low to not be so, like, oh, there's a fucking flagpole again. So here's the funny thing, too. You look at, like, Kevin. He kind of walks around like that. Yeah.

He's real thin. So he's like, you know what I mean? I actually had to talk to him about that. Oh, okay. Don't walk around like a hump. Yeah. A little LGK. That same year, we were moving stuff around the classroom

and then i realized how strong i was nice i didn't realize how strong i was but it was like off putting for some people so i would pretend like we had to push desks oh no so the first time i did i literally like threw it they're like they're like hey can you pick can you pick that up over there and you're like yeah i got it have just threw it out the window. It was like a scene out of Matilda. Fucking truncheel just like throws. Like, that's what I felt. I felt so, and I wore my hair in a bun too.

So like the really tight, nasty buns. Fuck your desk. And then after that, I was like, oh my God, I'm so strong. Oh my God, this is too heavy. I can't push this. Can someone please help the little lady? Yeah, I hella did that. As a kid kid because i was

like no one else can move this how is it that i'm moving this like i can't oh my god i need help can someone help me yeah yeah so self-conscious about that like now i look back i'm like that was dumb but you're a kid like we said earlier. You just don't know better. Yeah. You're just trying to fit in. Plus, I mean, you stick out and kids notice. And kids are honest. Kids are assholes. Yeah.

If a kid calls you ugly, you know you're ugly. That's true. Damn, I'm ugly. Just don't ask. Like if a girl calls you ugly, she's probably jealous. She probably likes you. Yeah. A guy does it, he probably likes you.

Or you might be ugly so but if a kid calls you ugly you're ugly so how old was that when you kind of realized like oh shit like i'm stronger than everyone else around third and fourth grade oh wow yeah i was so i can find it somewhere there's a picture of me when i was like five i was massive we had like a we had a birthday party for me and he has a picture like that yeah we had like a I was like five. I was massive. We had a birthday party for me. Andy has a picture like that. Yeah. We had like a...

It's amazing. I was like five years old and there was a picture of me for like my birthday. And I look like I'm in second grade. But I'm five years old. I'm going to have Andy bring in her picture.

It's like her at like ballet with like other girls that are her age. And she's just like a total giant yeah you just tower over everybody it's like oh it's the instructor in the play or whatever as well it's like nope that was me exactly damn my brother was my brother was huge mad dog he was like massive like he he you know he and i were about the same height. He probably weighed like 260 or something. But he was a good 250 or no, actually, I think he was more like 270 pounds. The size of the neck on that guy.

Yeah, when he was in high school, he was just a big old boy. And everybody always thought he was older when he was eight. And they thought he was like 13 and shit like that he was just it was just massive they thought that for me too like if you were to go and get you know eat out at a restaurant like you're you're older than 12 i'm like try again you're like no like i'm nine no dog i'm just oh i'm. So back to the, some of the diet stuff. So you, you ended up utilizing a ketogenic diet. That's how you got things rolling.

And then like, I'd imagine like being in this environment, I actually, I'm really proud of the fact, one of the things I'm probably more proud of than anything else that's, that's ever happened at super training or at slingshot is the way that all the employees eat, at least while they're here, you got to have some real balls to come in here and, uh, and just chow down on some like pizza during, during like lunch, because a lot of times people are bringing their own meals. And for the most part, I see people, uh, being very health conscious and I'm sure there's, you know, some trips to Pandav Express from Smokey and Josh. But other than that, it's been pretty clean eating going around here.

So when Mark is fat, we're all fat. Uh oh. Um, and Smokey, uh, Emma, all of us will attest to this.

When Mark's fat, we're all fat. Um, we all make terrible decisions because it's just around. Right. But when Mark is on his fittest, we're all kind of on our shit too. Yeah. And it just

trickles down. People notice. People pick up on things that you're doing. And, you know, we all started making meals and coming in and we were no longer going to that teriyaki place from down the street at our old place oh yeah that place was good place is really good and then sancho's right next door mexican place hurts your stomach though forever that's what i started learning about that teriyaki

place i'm like man my stomach cannot deal with this anymore yeah but that's what we would get for podcast guests we would go get the teriyaki chicken smelled amazing it did smell i always thought because like whenever we'd get it, I'd be starving. So I'd like inhale the whole thing in a couple seconds. But like if you look at it, it is a big portion. It's a lot of food. It's like five pounds of food. Oh my gosh. But even when like when I first like, well, when both of us like we're like full time employees, I noticed like you always had meals always and i remember thinking like oh fuck looking around like because i came from a job that had like uh well i worked at home so i had meals ready to go or not meals but like i had the um access to make whatever i wanted whenever and i was like fuck man i gotta start packing lunches and stuff like i don't know what to do like it's gonna be weird and then i look over and you have like i don't like just whatever like bomb ass lunches and i'm just like

damn i gotta get on her level but you were like well i gotta like it's cheaper for me to do it this way like you like out of necessity like on a couple different levels you stayed really strict on your diet whatever the diet was at the time or whatever but you were the first person that i noticed was like really like just um really strict on herself there you go consistently bringing food in it was it was out of a necessity necessity necessity uh when i took this job i took a pay cut but i wanted to get out. So I did. And I just had to be better about my food and money I was spending. And the first place to control that is by going to the grocery store, not Safeway. It's so expensive.

Yeah. We were talking about that yesterday. Yep. You know, when it comes to that kind of thing, people don't understand that it's so much cheaper. Like, they'll be like, oh, you know, steak costs, you know, a ton of money or whatever, you know. And it's like, okay, that may be a little bit more expensive, but I think there's actually a ton of stress and there's a ton of problems with going out to eat for lunch while you're working. The logistics of it all, like if you, most, a lot of people go to office buildings and office buildings are oftentimes in like a city.

So if you work in like the city of Sacramento and, and you, and you, you know, have a, an hour lunch break, well, now you got to figure out where to go. And that like, it doesn't sound like it's stressful, but it's extremely stressful. Where are we going today? You kind of have like three or four options that you know of that are kind of fast enough, kind of sort of fast enough if you find parking, but it's a giant, it's a giant pain in the ass. It's hugely, you know, it's hugely inconvenient on many levels. And even if you roll through like a Chipotle or something and grab, and grab something on the go, you have so much more control over your diet with making your own food. And I would also go on to say that you can make it taste better a lot of times. Like these places don't, you know, you

can't, they're not going to flavor it for you the way that you like. And you can kind of control every aspect. You can get whatever salsa that you like you can get uh whatever salt or pepper or other ingredients you can make uh stuff 100 customized to yourself so it just it doesn't make sense to me that that's such a big hurdle for people yeah i used to get in a shitload of trouble when i worked in an office because like if i didn't i mean we we used to have our six-pack bags you've seen that big ass one that i took? Yeah. We would pack that with, like, we'd call it first lunch, second lunch, and then, you know, whatever, just a bunch of snacks. But if I didn't pack that, we'd have to sprint to, like, In-N-Out or Chipotle, like, one exit away. And I'd get in trouble because I'd have to finish eating at my desk.

And they're just like, you can't be eating and working. It's like, you guys do it all the time. You're all fat. Yeah, right. Just because, you know, you just want to be an asshole and look down at me right but i mean i don't care what restaurant or whatever it is it's so much better when you know for sure that like the meat or whatever hasn't been messed with like i don't know i've gone to chipotle too many times where the meat just tastes bad. I can't, like, to risk that is no bueno. Being on a diet and then going out, you just don't know what people put in your food.

Right. The level. And then, okay, this too, like, now that I'm moved on into just eating regularly, so I work with a nutritionist through hybrid nutrition. Steffi, Hayden, Greg is my coach. Yeah, Greg's my coach and he's great. But you just, there is like a level of stress now included with me going out to eat.

Because if it's not a place that I know where we're going, where I can look at kind of what the calories look like before. Yeah. And also, if you don't count, okay, so I know you're not a huge counter, and that's totally fine, but just for the sake, if you've never been on a diet and you just want to start looking at what you're eating, just track it. You don't even have to count calories. I just want you to start tracking your food.

You have no idea how much fat, carbs, protein. It's like something as simple as having a chicken sandwich down the street at fucking Jack in the Box. It's got like 60 grams of fat in it and 75 grams of carbs and then 30 to 35 grams of protein. You need to start to learn. But that's like your full day's intake of fucking fat in one sandwich.

It's not real. You're really not even getting that much protein out of it. It's so sad because you think this is going to be a healthy choice and then you look at it. It's like, wow, that's really like, what did they dip this in? Butter? The craziest part about that is getting a sandwich from Jack in the Box

when you can get their tacos. Damn, they're so good. Those are really good. Two for 99 cents? Hell yeah. I know what's up. Yeah. People have heard us talk on this podcast before about nutrient-dense foods.

One of the biggest problems with foods that are not healthy for us is that you're constantly hungry because you're not getting the nutrients that you need. And so you're just in this ferocious eating state. Yeah, you're so hungry. And even when you eat, it doesn't satisfy you. I don't know. It's like going to Black Bear Diner. But I don't know what they put in their food. But if you go and eat there, you literally won't be hungry for another like seven hours.

Oh, yeah. But then it's like you wasted your whole day. Right right and you still need to get all your protein in how athletic of me oh you need to get your protein in um but it's super important it seems so silly but like that's the most important part of your you know day-to-day food right and you can't even you don't even you don't even have calories to afford to really eat anything else because you had a giant ass like omelet and toast and everything else. Where the fuck are these going to come from? Yeah. Yeah.

It's so dumb. I agree with you about people are just not paying attention to what they're eating. Yeah. So, I mean, even if you don't want to count calories, I don't give a shit. Yeah. Don't count your fucking calories. But if you just start tracking what you're eating, it'll open up your eyes. You're like, man, I'm a badass.

Yeah. I mean, not to talk down on yourself, but just to open your eyes just a little bit and see what you're eating. And, you know, like everyone always talks about how different we are. And I fucking hate that. Oh, everybody's different. Everybody's different. And we, you know, everyone's different everybody's different and we you know everyone's really not that different human beings are human beings and even the differences between men and women are not that great we should be eating similar we should be eating similarly

uh at the very least uh now you can pick you know if you feel a ketogenic diet or a low carb diet is going to fit, um, your lifestyle and, and allow you to lose weight, you can kind of pick and choose on that. And then in terms of, uh, you know, whether you want to have carbohydrates, cause you want higher performance and stuff like that, you can pick and choose all these things. And yes, there will be some differences in, you know, maybe Jessica can have 200 grams of carbs a day and maybe another girl can only have 100 to make the progress that they're looking for. But in general, we're not that it's not that drastic.

The differences come in the goals and the difference. The differences can come with like the size of the person, you know, like Brian Shaw is a massive person and he's got these huge goals and Brian Shaw lifts more weight than kind of, you know, him and Hap Thor and some of these guys. Now they lift more weight than anybody's ever lifted in the history of the planet. So on a more regular basis. Yeah. And they're doing some crazy stuff and they got to figure out ways to recover from their workouts. So they have these really extreme, uh, diets, but again, in general, from their workouts so they have these really extreme uh diets but again in general we should be eating similar foods it doesn't have to be uh i'm just tired i'm just tired of hearing that i feel that's an excuse and everyone says everything in moderation and yeah you you can you can have

foods that are outside the box but like the everything in moderation attitude and we're all different and saying these things they don't actually help anybody. Our country is really fucking fat and these things aren't helping. If you have the control, then sure, everything in moderation. But if you don't, it's a slippery slope. And I'll be the first to tell you. Up until recently, it's like I have to question whether or not like I know if I have a craving, I'm like, at some point I need to satiate it, right? But I also know that if I satiate it too much, it is a slippery slope for me.

Like, I will be right back to where I was. But even if somebody was to come. It's not fear. It's just like, I know. I know myself now. And I know my traits and habits. And I know what I need to do. And I know what I don't need to do. Right.

Even if somebody was to come in here and just give us like some fresh oranges and stuff and you're hungry, you might want to eat it and you may actually eat the orange, but it's something that you probably think about, right? You're like, oh, you know, should I have, you know, okay, yeah, I can have that. I'm hungry. I'm going to eat it, right? It'd still be something you would at least think about, right? Yeah, I mean, so even if, I do this now, so I can say this, but if I've hit all my macros whatever for the day, and I'm still hungry at night, I'm going to go have some fucking fruit. I'm going to go eat my strawberries, because that's like my favorite thing in the world. And I'm not going to feel guilty about it right i don't give a shit well it doesn't matter i don't think it matters that much too and the reason why i say that and the reason why i like i'll never say

that calories don't matter because i think that's a foolish statement it's the only measure that we have to count but i think the percentage in which they could be wrong is huge and i think our counters and things like that could be massively off and so therefore i think your calories have like about a 10 window uh food labels can be up to like 50 off so i think legally it's 20 right i think yeah i don't know but where's the control on that yeah but but anyway so 20 it's a lot anyway right I don't know. But where's the control on that? Yeah.

But anyway, so 20% is a lot anyway, right? Whatever percentage it is that they are off and like, you know, who knows what your tri-tip steak, how many calories it really had versus somebody else's. Like different cuts are going to look different ways. So I think you do have some calories to play with, whether it's plus or minus. Kind of hard to tell. But I've always used the scale. You know, I've always just weighed myself. So rather than like weighing my food, I've always just weighed my own body. Like, do I, you know, what's my goal? Do I want to weigh more? If I want to weigh more, I check in every day and I try to see if I'm heading towards weighing more. And then I just do the opposite.

If I'm losing weight, I just start to see if I'm, am I weighing less? So I just kind of weigh the object that the food goes into rather than weighing the food itself, which is just a slightly different way of doing it. And it's just, um, for me, it's, for me, it works out easier, but people that like to count calories, um, I think it's fine. I think it's, it's okay to count them. The main thing is just to be aware of what the hell it is you're doing. Right. I mean, the body is a weird, weird thing for me. So my current struggles right now is that I'm losing weight too fast, and I'm cutting it real close to my knee. It's starting to fuck with my leverages and whatever.

In the last six weeks, my weight didn't budge for like a pound it was so frustrating my coach is like making these changes to my macros i'm following them i'm like doing everything i'm like being super ocd about tracking but then you know in the last two weeks you know it just i don't know it's like I've dropped five, six pounds. It's really scary because it's starting to mess me up when it comes to my lifts. I'm crying and I'm upset. My coach is mad. Sorry, Marcus.

But I haven't changed anything. It's like my body just started reacting to it. I don't know why. Why now? Why now? Why now? I've been working for, I've been working on this for the last six weeks

to like budget a little and nothing. Yeah. And then all of a sudden it's like. There's never been no changes in the last two or three weeks? Nothing major.

No. It's been all similar. Sometimes, I mean, sometimes it's, you know, sometimes it could be something small, but sometimes it's your body.

Sometimes your body just takes time to get used to whatever it is you're eating. Yeah. You know, maybe the different fibers and different foods you're having, maybe it just took time. And who knows, maybe there's been a slight shift towards eating more fiber and more protein that you didn't account for or whatever. I don't know. Whatever it is, it's pissing me off. burn more protein that you didn't account for or whatever. I don't know. Whatever it is, it's pissing me off. I got Marcus in here offering me burgers and a burrito yesterday.

That was funny. Your metabolism, you know, can be a really finicky thing. But I think that, you know, sometimes when people get too crazy about counting their calories, I think they do get a little bit more stuck. I don't know if that little bit more stuck i don't know if that's like a i don't know if that's like a it could be you know emotional thing or like a hormonal thing like you have you know you're so freaking tied up about it that gotta hit my target yeah you're so stressed about it honestly that could i mean that really could be it yeah and there's also sleep i mean you get a little bit better sleep you get a little bit more sleep here and there uh that could really change things i know like whenever i was competing i always started to get more sleep and then i'd always look at the scale and i'd be like what i'm trying to make the scale go up what's happening why is it going down and it's just simply because i'd get i'd go from getting four hours of sleep to getting six hours or seven hours or whatever I was starting to get. What has been the hardest part of being able to adhere to the diet? This whole process

has taken you about two years and it seems like you're very stable with it now. In the very beginning, I remember you would waver here and there, but after a few months of kind of sticking with it, then it seemed like you stuck with it and never really looked back. So what was the hardest part for you? Social. So for those that don't know,

I not only power lift, but I'm also on an Australian rules football team. I play Aussie rules footy. It's similar to rugby in that everybody likes to go out and celebrate after with a lot of beer, a lot of drinks.

So, unfortunately... A lot of gay women in this sport, too, by the way. If you call me lesbian one more time. But, uh... And, I mean, Rosie will attest to this, too, and i think it's a struggle for her and rosemary

rosie um she struggles with it i think still to this day because you know her boyfriend rob very social guy and she so they're both very extroverted and they get their energy from other people so they like to be out in social settings. And be out and go do things. Me, I'm an introvert. So it wasn't that hard for me. But it is still kind of hard. Because I almost said bye to a lot of the relationships that I was holding on with that team. I just.

I had more priorities aimed towards my health. And honestly, I'm not sad about it because i miss the people don't get me wrong but i was thinking about my dad and i was thinking at him looking at me losing this weight and if i started going off the deep end going out drinking every weekend then maybe he would lose some motivation for himself and he didn't put that on me. I put that on myself. You know, but in my head, I was thinking, you know, if I fall off, my dad might fall off. And I, you know, I kind of want him around. You know, I want to see him at my wedding or whatever it is.

You know, I want him to see me have kids. See your gigantic kids running around. Yeah, at some point. And so I just, that was more important to me I prioritized that my goals of losing weight and keeping my dad healthy and also I wanted to lift more I wanted to be better I wanted to be more athletic because honestly that was like the time of my life when I was in college not to say college was the time of my life because honestly i've had a lot more fun since but feeling good not being out of breath when going upstairs uh feeling confident in my own skin being okay going out on dates and like being myself because like i know i'm great but like

if i don't have the confidence to share that then they don't know i'm awesome right i'm fucking awesome but you know what I mean? It's a small thing that really makes a huge difference, and I kind of had to say bye to that social aspect of going out all the time and going out to bars and doing things like that just because it wasn't that important. How old were you when you kind of had that realization? 23, 24.

That's huge. 24 probably. Yeah. When I was 24, I was kind of a shithead, but there was no way I would have had any kind of thought of like that, of thinking whether it be about my dad. I mean, I wasn't competing. I just was worried.

I was like, these guys, you know, what are we going to do? Did your dad have health issues? No. Really, you know, surprisingly, anytime he got blood work done, he was okay. But he was on blood pressure medication. So I think he may no longer. He definitely was pre-diabetic. There's no question.

He was pre-diabetic. I can just tell from the photos and when I first met him. Yeah, and then, you and then his thyroid stuff. He's had a few surgeries and stuff. Just like his inability to kind of be mobile, really. Just mobile moving. Living life. Getting out.

Having to park really close. Yeah. Having to have the cart because he needed something to lean on. Right. Not being able to go to an amusement park. Right. That sucked.

Yeah. You would have to do weird things to get into the rides. You know, people just take these, they, they, you know, they just take these things as if like, it's just part of life. Like, oh, I'm getting older. We're going to grow old and fat together. And that's what people think. And like, oh yeah, I'm, I'm old. So yeah, my, of course my knees are supposed to hurt and my back is supposed to hurt. And you know, I'm not supposed to be able to get in and out of the car.

Yeah. Okay. And maybe that's when you're old, but being old is like 80, 90 years old, you know, not anything before that. If you're jacked up before that, there's something else, you know, some people just have severe medical issues and who knows why, you know, people have all kinds of crazy things happen, but for the most part, you should feel pretty damn good. You should feel strong. You should feel excited. You should feel that you're, you know, that you're giving yourself the best shot every single day to succeed, to feed yourself well, giving yourself the best shot every single day to succeed, to feed yourself well, to feel good, to be with your family, um, to do fun things. But the fact is, is that, you know, it's, it's easier to be sad. It's easier. It's easier to have that drink. It's easier to hang out with your friends

and just eat whatever. But what kind of life is that? Like, I don don't i think that's a shitty life it seems like it's fun but i think it fucking sucks to be honest with you like i don't i have never for myself personally i've never been in those situations like i don't i don't like those situations i don't mind going out once in a while with a couple friends but like i've never been a guy to like go hit a bar with some friends and act like an asshole and drink beer and just i don't know just to me it's always seemed i always put that as being like extremely negative there was not one positive thing about it for me i was like oh i'm gonna be fucking hung over the next day and then what like i want to train i want to wake up the next day and i want to lift so that's what it turned into for me because i used to so i always

look at those people as losers i'm like they're just going to be spinning their wheels their whole life i'm not hanging out with them yeah so i mean i didn't really party in college so i was in sports and that's that's what was important to me when i was in college i didn't i didn't sleep around i didn't have boyfriends i didn't just kicking some ass actually just kidding i had a boyfriend during college so that's probably why i didn't sleep around um and didn't have boyfriends. I didn't. Just kicking some ass. Actually, just kidding. I had a boyfriend during college. So that's probably why I didn't sleep around. And I didn't drink a lot. It was like maybe once a year that I would get really drunk.

But that was it. You know, that was like the one time, a one shot a year, you know. And I didn't start drinking until after college. Like really drinking. When did the heroin come in? As soon as you started working here, you like i need something yeah you gotta ride the lightning need something to take me out of my misery yeah based from like experience when i was younger and i would drink like every night like every day it was because i was very unhappy and so i used the alcohol to kind of escape from that like shitty feelings and whatnot but you're because i was very unhappy and so i used the alcohol to kind of escape from that like

shitty feelings and whatnot but you're right i was a loser like but i because i felt like i had nothing going for me right so it was like well fuck i'm doing this right now with these losers over here it's amazing you sit around you hang out with your buddies and you drink and you talk about what a bunch of losers everybody else is. Yep. Talk shit all day. Yeah, it's just a super negative headspace, because you get drunk and your inhibitions go, so all that stuff you've been holding on to all day, which, okay, don't get me wrong, too.

Every once in a while, that's probably what you need. But to do that every weekend, it puts you in a really negative headspace and a depression-type thing. So for me, I mean, there are a few other factors that have contributed to my weight gain in the last four years outside of just going out and drinking. Like depression and anxiety.

Yeah, depression was a huge issue with me. That's why, like I said, I use it to kind of escape from just feeling like shit right now i just love a good depression nap anybody else um yeah yeah that's when you don't want to leave the house yeah you don't want to leave your room i'm joking me wrong i still have those two i do uh but when you're more active and you have goals like for me it's strength goals so i want to be stronger i know okay so's strength goals. So I want to be stronger. I know, okay, so looking awesome is great,

but I want to be stronger. I want to, you know, I want to bench two plates so I can be with the, so I can hang out with the boys, you know, like, and on bench day, I want to be able to, like, hey, Smokey, I benched two plates, you know? Like, that would be so cool. And I'm really close, and that's what I want to do, so. Two plates?

Yeah. I mean, it's just like little things like that. That's what I had my eye on, and I didn't. Yeah, it sucked losing some friends because I wasn't drinking every weekend. But, you know, when they figure that out for themselves they'll probably not be as upset with me like andrew and i talked about you know some of the things that that happen here um do you ever feel weird talking about this job to other people yeah people go what do you do and then what do i not do yeah it's hard to explain and And then like your buddies that maybe just drink often and just kind of have the same things going on all the time or even like a relative.

You kind of feel weird talking to them if they're asking you like, hey, how's it like? They're really asking how it's going. It's not like just somebody see the coffee shop. Yeah, they're really into what you have to say, and you almost feel like you can't share it with them because you're hanging out with some really high-end people. You're like, oh, this week we hung out with Brian Shaw. He's a four-time world's strongest man.

And then at work we all decided just to go to a movie for the day or like the different fun things that happen here. You know, it feels like you can't share it all the time with people. Yeah. Well, yeah. Because people get, oh, well. Well, I mean, it's just because you're not trying to like. You don't have a regular job. You can go suck a dick.

I work my ass off. Yeah. Well, it's tough to kind of, you know, to, to tell people what we do. Cause it's like, Oh,

like if you ask me like, Hey, how you doing? Like, ah, man, fucking got to work overtime. And my boss fucking sucks.

And like pay is horrible. And like, Oh, I just can't wait to get out of there. Anyways, what are you up to? How's work? It's like,

yeah, uh, I was just hanging out with stephy cohen and um yeah my boss is great yeah just got some dope sunglasses although he doesn't even i know he doesn't even like us calling him his boss yeah he made that that we had like a speech i was like i don't want to be called your boss okay that's fucking awesome i feel like smokey's more my boss yeah and he just don't tell him that. I think he likes that.

He likes that general manager cap. Yeah. Well, I like the relationships in here, and that's kind of back to what we were talking about in the very beginning of the show. I like being involved with you guys. I have fun with you guys. I feel that that's the best way that this company will move forward,

and the reason why I mentioned that little spiel that I did the other day about, we're going to hurt each other's feelings. Like everyone needs to be aware of that. Like we're going to, we're going to get so close in here that we're going to, you know, we're going to continue to get closer. Like more crazy shit will happen, uh, both good and bad. And, uh, you know, the rough times and hard times that we all go through together,

and the good times, will all just draw us in closer. And then we're going to hurt each other's feelings. Like, I'm going to say something to Andrew one day, and he's going to be like, what the fuck? And then he's going to come complain to you about it, and then we'll have to probably sit down and all talk about it.

And, you know, like some people might cry. And I mean, there's just these things that are going to happen. They're going to be very sensitive because it's not about work anymore. And that's my, that was my whole goal in the first place, which I'm really happy that it's not really just about the actual work. And it shouldn't be because fuck work. It's weird because we have like our inner office relationships,

but we also have the gym relationships. And that's also like completely different. Yeah. Uh, you're able to, I mean, there's no HR in the gym. Um,

we have one now, but I know April, love April, but before then it was, you know, kind of free reign and you kind of tiptoe that line of like, this could be the thing that said someone over the edge let's do it you know uh there's that button there's that button um marcus used to do i used to hate marcus he was so mean to me. He couldn't stand me.

And I just wanted him to like me. So it was like the worst feeling in the world. It was really great because even smoke, you know it was bad when Steven notices. And for those of you who don't know who Steven is, it's Lil Smokey. Lil Smokey. Yeah, when he notices, you know it's bad. But, you know, we transitioned past that.

We're friends now. He sits in my office sometimes. How did you get the nickname, the fertile female? YouTube. Anybody want to answer that question? Yeah. Yeah. YouTube comment.

I think it was when DLB was here. DLB and Rob. That long ago. That was before I, I don't know if DLB was here. DLB and Rob. That long ago. That was before. I don't know if I worked here or not. Yeah, because I was right when I started. Well, we started about the same time. Yeah.

My followers on YouTube, the followers of Super Training 06. Oh, Mark Bell Slingshots. There we go. On YouTube. Yeah. These guys need to beat it a little bit more. They need to whack off a little bit more. Something.

Or they need to get some a little bit more. Because every time there's a female, they flip out. True to form. Every time. They can't handle it. Go to Minute Mark 206. I was going to say, they'll time code it and say, you're welcome. You're welcome.

And I was actually pretty thick then, too. So when it was like, oh, my God, that's when you picked me out to say that? Like, in that frame, like, that's what all the comments are about impregnating you. Yeah. And then in Brian Shaw's channel, are about impregnating you. Yeah. And then in Brian Shaw's channel he put that Lululemon thing out and of course

I'm like in the background he's like they should have babies. Some strong man needs to impregnate her. Yeah. Oh that's like the common one. Yeah.

Some strong man needs to Does that work? No. Does that work on you? Does that Okay so it's a little weird when people that don't know me call the fertile female. Like, okay, you're not Mark. You're not Smokey.

You aren't Rosemary. But you are fertile. But like, don't, like, that's weird, right? Like, unless you're my close friend or family or family, don't fucking call me that. Has anybody asked you to autograph anything yet? No. It'll happen and then you'll write Jessica

and they'll be like, can you write Fertile Female? When I went to the Arnold last year, it was my first experience of people asking me for pictures. That was cool. And Jesse was so funny because Jesse's in the back. I watched him take a back and he's like, I watched him take a picture and he goes,

it's your first picture of a picture. And I was like, this isn't the first person to ask me for a photo. And he goes, no one else has to know that. And I was like,

oh, okay. The best part too about the Arnold was last year, I think I posted like a picture of like Brian or something.

And someone goes, oh my God, I knew that was you when you walked by. I was going to ask for a picture, but I had a Chick-fil-A sandwich in my mouth. I died. It was like the funniest thing on the planet. And then literally the next day he asked me for a photo. That's awesome. YouTube comments about you are some of the best ones, I think.

They're pretty graphic sometimes. She's breeding material. Look at those hips. What am I? A fucking horse? Child-bearing hips. Hold the commentary over there. Smokey came in and then somewhere somebody said horse. I don't know. It's too

far back to go. What did Smokey say? Just Smokey things. But someone else said that you're hot. Yeah. But anyway. You're very pretty. There you go. Yeah.

That's all I'm saying. Marco's, you're like the sister I never wanted. That's true. Yeah. All the time. When did, I don't know, did you ever realize you're kind of a savage on social media? I'm very blunt. Is that what it is?

I think so. I don't know. I just want to. I don't really cut. Like this one right here. Oh, God. That's such a good one. Because this came from your brain.

It did. So here's the thing. A lot of the fun videos that happen here at ST sometimes come from my brain. I just don't know how to possibly put them into the universe. So I use the media team to put it in there. And if the song was playing, it'd be even better. I know. I just don't want it to get pulled off of YouTube.

But it's pretty great. Cool. So what are the weight differences right here in these two different pulls? Two pounds. Damn. But that was in my meet, and that was, I didn't shit myself there. RPE, I didn't poop my pants. This is, what, 405 right there?

No, it's 410. Oh. Oh. Oh, hey now. Yeah. But also, I was probably about 15 pounds heavier there. And that was in March. Do you want to continue to lose weight?

I don't know. Yes. I mean, so it'd be cool. But I don't know what that means for strength. It just means I have to really rebuild. And also, too, how much weight do you think you might want to lose do you have like kind of a goal I told I have friends that told me if I'm under a certain amount of weight that we can no longer be friends so oh but I don't know I kind of want to see where

we're at and see because it's really. I can't even compare from like college because in college, I didn't have too much muscle mass on me. And although I was at a certain weight. Oh, yeah. I was, I still was like skinny fat, you know. Do you feel, I mean, do you feel good? Yeah, no, I think I look great. Pictures of you from like these nine million weddings that you've had to go to. I know.

Yeah, you look good. these 9 million weddings that you've had to go to. I know. Yeah, you look good. So even in the post of you benching today, I'm side spotting, but I was looking at it and I was like, wow, I have definition in my arms. That's cool.

I've never had that before. That's awesome. And when I turn to the side, you don't see my fupa as much. My specialty fupa hat. That upper pelvic area. Oh, this whole time

I had it wrong. I thought it was private area. I was way off. You can't say that. You're not supposed to say that in the air. First person. You mentioned having some depression and some anxiety. You can't say that. You're not supposed to say that in the air. Sorry. First person. We just got kicked off. You mentioned having some depression and some anxiety.

What was the, you know, obviously stuff like that doesn't go away, but with these goals and kind of responsibilities and the diet and stuff, has it helped? Have those things made you have less of that? Yeah, because I just have to have more control over certain things. So when I'm more in control of what's going on, I have less feeling. Usually when I'm anxious or depressed,

I just feel like there's so many things going on. It's chaos. It's out of my control. And not that I'm a control freak. I kind of am, but I'm not. It's one of those things that kind of like soothes me that I have this going on and I can focus on this. And then I don't have time to sit there and focus on all these other things that I can't control. So I'm working on like realistic things, you know, and things that I can't control. So I'm working on realistic things

and things that I can make work every day. And that helps me combat my depression or my anxiety. Because then when you're anxious, you're focusing on things that are really just things that might happen in the future. But you need to be in the now, kind of right now. Yeah, things that you worry about are oftentimes things that actually happen in the future, but you need to be in the now kind of right now. Yeah. Things that you worry about are oftentimes things that actually never happen. Right. You know, and, uh, there's scenarios and, and even anxiety. Um, you know, if I do this for

work, then it's going to cause this reaction. And it's like, well, it may or may not. Maybe you should check and find out, you know, like if, you know, Andrew puts together a certain video or photo and posts it or whatever, he might think, oh, well, Mark might be pissed if I post this too early or post this at the wrong, or whatever the case is. But he could, you know, take a couple extra seconds to think about it and say, oh, well, maybe I'll just ask. And then you just ask.

And then it's not really about having anxiety anymore. It's more about like, just kind of waiting until you find out what happens. Right. And then you don't have to worry about like what the outcome is. Cause you, you think basically that you kind of checked everything, you crossed all your T's and dotted all your I's and in a way, what do you, what do you think basically that you kind of checked everything, you crossed all your T's and dotted all your I's in a way. What do you think the main thing that's facing people that are your age today with anxiety and depression?

Because I hear so many people say it, and there's so many different levels to it, obviously. There's some people that are really suffering and have some major problems. And there's other people, I think that probably are just sharing just cause, uh, I don't know, maybe they want to get a little sympathy on social media or something. But, uh, aside from that, like, you know, what do you think are some of the major things, you know, facing people today that are causing this? Cause there's more of it than ever. Uh, I think the expectations have grown exponentially, but also social media.

It's huge. I don't think everyone does this, and I don't think that we should put everybody in this box that they do this, that they portray a certain self-image on social media because at the end of the day, you're still going to portray yourself, and a little bit of that stuff will sneak out but i think even portraying yourself

correctly you're going to always portray the best things that happen right you're not going to always portray like the worst things that happen so even a particular photo from yourself or particular like i don't i'm always going to pick the photo that makes me look yeah in my opinion the best it's like the highlight of your life. It's not the lowlights. Right. And two, over time, expectations and bars have been raised. And people often think that everybody is raising with those.

And so they get this anxious, like, oh, I have to meet those same expectations. No, you need to meet your own like comparison is so big like just stop fucking comparing yourself to other people i think that's a huge thing like just work on your own shit like work on you and don't compare other people's expectations with yours because they think you you know, they have to keep up. No, you need to keep up with yourself. And, you know, at your daily win, like I may not have been able to go on the Stairmaster today for 45 minutes at 3 a.m. Like some other bodybuilder chick that we follow on Instagram does. at 3 a.m. like some other bodybuilder chick that we follow on Instagram does.

But I was able to go on a 10 minute walk after I ate at lunch at work. And then I did it again when I when I got home instead of sitting down on the couch and watching TV. And then when I came in, I was motivated enough to go make my food for tomorrow. Like that could be a daily win. But we look at these things and we're like, that's different. She's doing this. I should be able to do this. It's like, no, you are in two different, two different worlds. Live in your own, you know, stay in your lane, do your thing. Ain't nobody going to stop your, your, uh, your, uh, success. Only you are. And if people around you are going to start comparing, like, oh, well, so-and-so did this,

it's like, bye. Bye-bye. You can leave me. I don't need you. You want people that are there going to be clapping you on and making sure you're doing good. There's enough success in the world for everybody. There's enough room at the world for everybody. There's enough room at the table for everybody.

Like this whole comparing and it's a black hole. Social media sometimes is a black hole and you know that. Oh, hell yeah. That's why I got the hell off of there. I think that rather than comparing, we're always going to compare. We're always going to be guilty. Um, you're always going to compare yourself to how you look, you know, how you stack up against somebody else. Um, you know, every time you go to the urinal, you're always going to kind of check to see if the guy next to you is bigger.

Anyway, what was I saying? Um, you're always going to compare yourself to other people. It's just like. Natural. Yeah, it's very natural. But maybe rather than compare, maybe we should like try to rationalize ourselves versus other people. Maybe not have like this measuring stick of, oh, man, like I don't measure up to what they are. Maybe it's more like. Like a pace car.

Yeah. Maybe it's more like, oh, wow. Like, wow, it's crazy that that guy was able to do that or that girl was able to do that or, um, you know, but you, you, you, uh, you try to make some sense of it. Like you're saying with this person, uh, doing cardio at 3am for 45 minutes and you getting into 10 minute walks. Yes. It's half the amount of exercise, but it's the best thing for you at the time that you're doing it. Maybe this other person that's waking up at 3 AM,

maybe that's a rational way for them to live their life because maybe they're a competitive figure or fitness girl. Right. And then, so why, you know, if, if you have a, you know, this is sort of a nine to five, you have like a nine to five. It's like a it's like a not even nine to five. It's like 24 seven. But if you have a job and you can't just play fitness all day long and you have other responsibilities, maybe that 45 minutes of cardio doesn't make sense because you might do that cardio at 3 a.m. and you might do it for like three weeks, four weeks. It might yield some great results. You might lose the 40 pounds that you lost over two years and you might have lost it faster.

You might have lost it in six months. But what happens when that doesn't fit your lifestyle is that unravels and it comes undone. And you're trying to live up to being somebody else. And at some point it just doesn't work anymore. And then what happens? You gain back 40 pounds probably. And then some, it all just kind of unravels and it all falls apart and it just makes you not feel good about yourself. Yeah. I, I kind of use social media as that, uh, pit as well. And it's, um, sometimes it's great. Yeah. I kind of use social media as that pit as well. And it's sometimes it's great. Yeah. Well, it could be very uplifting. It could be, it could be extremely motivational. It can be really fun. I mean, making your own posts and customizing it and like,

it definitely gives you a thrill. You're, I mean, there's studies that show your heart rate goes up, your endorphins, people like your post. Makes you feel good. People make fun comments on it. You're like, oh, this is cool. But then there's kind of the other side of it. You want to share like a big deadlift. You're like, oh, check it out. I deadlifted 410 for two.

And some asshole comes on there. It's like, this chick. Why don't you learn some form, bitch? And it's like, whoa. What the hell's going on? How tall are you? I think in March. So I post, Mark slipped on a two and a half and like maybe benched 200 for like two.

And it was like the first time I'd ever touched the weight, you know? And he posted, he made this post on his own. He made it on his own Instagram. Someone goes, yeah, but that bitch is over 200 pounds. It's not exciting. I'm like, you can go fuck yourself. Jeez. I was like, wow.

No one can be happy for anybody. You just had to stick that knife in and twist it around a little bit. Okay, cool. Someone's not getting any at home. Yeah, right. Yeah. Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed today, apparently. How tall are you?

I get that. Well, I get that not even on social. Well, I get that a lot on social media but i also get it a lot at uh gas stations oh just randomly like yeah do you play sports you play basketball oh yeah that's the pickup line yeah what uh what should other girls know that that grow up you know like know, like, you know, that grow up tall, that grow up big, you know, what would you look kind of like them to know, like some girl that's, you know, young and, and that, you know, maybe gets kind of picked on or teased for being big or for being heavy,

you know, what, what, what's something, some experience that you have that would maybe help them? Honestly, just controlling what you want to control and and making a decision so if you want to be bigger be bigger do your thing um but also be comfortable and confident in that and like i don't know my huge thing is like confidence i've finally found my confidence i'm a fucking light up in this bitch um and i think it's really special when you find that in yourself. Genuinely. Not that shit that you spray with a can.

Oh, look how new it is. No, like it's legit. It comes from within you and other people pick up on it. That's what I want people to look for. I don't know how to do it. Like for me, my way was taking control of what I could control, making better decisions, and being better with my food and strength and being more athletic.

That was like my thing. Now, you won't always be in athletics. I mean, you're like my sister, she loves doing her makeup. But it puts her in like a, you know, a zen place. And like that's like her thing. She wears makeup. Yeah. And she's good at it.

But like some people want to say, well, say like why do you wear all that makeup like you think you're ugly it's like no like it just puts her in a good headspace it's fun she doesn't need it but she likes to do it and that's you know like that's that's what builds her confidence she's like i have the skill that i can transform i can transform people i can transform myself like that's fucking cool if you find your thing mine just happens to be lifting weights right or being you know doing cool things like tackling people i love that i could get a rise out of it just smashing somebody yeah if you just hit someone so hard, you got up, you're like, oh, that was sick. Like, they don't feel that way, you know?

Like, I'm not doing it to hurt people, but it feels good. It does. It feels amazing. Yeah. Some girls, you know, they might find out that they like it. Like, for me, Australian rules football is just also another, like, outlet. But, like, finding your outlet, whatever that is. It's a big problem of today.

I think that it's hard for people to kind of find their confidence. There's a lot less participation in sports. And I don't think that sports are everything. And I don't think that every kid necessarily has to play a sport. But a sport is a great place to learn these things. And, um, there's certain things that you learn physically that you just can't learn any other way. And somebody might be able to say the same thing about education or the same thing about music. Maybe somebody could say the same thing about art, but like, I don't have that much experience with some of those other

things. So I don't know how those things make you feel, but I would imagine it's probably similar, but a lot of times it's going to come from something physical because some, because when it's physical, your body gets really drained and fatigued and you have to kind of override that process and you have to fight through it. Uh, much life, much like life, uh, is a giant kick in the balls. It's a giant tidal wave of things that you sometimes can't control that are very hurtful and very harmful. And how do we deal with, how do we cope with these things? You have to be able to kind of fight through that resistance. And you feel that when you're in the gym.

It's like, okay, there's this resistance on my back or there's resistance in my hands. And I have to figure out a way to overcome this resistance. The only way to overcome the resistance is with brute force and a mentality and a positive mindset and a positive, even your own body language can play into it. You know, sometimes you're feeling mopey, right? and you go to do a squat and you're like, ah, and, and how bad does everything hurt? 10 times worse, you know, in your knee or your back or whatever the case is. And you're like, you're feeling everything at that point. Meanwhile, the week before you were totally fine and you rifled right through it but

when the workout is over you can kind of have that conversation with yourself or if you have a training partner they can go over some of that with you and say hey you know what you weren't that way last week uh and the reason why is it's because it's in your damn head you need to get out of your own head you need to you know last week when you came in here you had fun when you were training this week when you came in you, you had fun when you were training. This week when you came in, you were just, whatever it was, you were just wearing it from rep number one. And you can like make shit hurt. You know, I've seen Emilio.

I've seen Emilio. We're all guilty of it. I've seen Emilio do some squats when he first came into the gym and he wanted to kind of prove to people that he's strong and he was trying to move these weights around real aggressively well with one plate two plates and three plates he just looked like he was gonna die he was like turning purple and he was just like doing all this crazy stuff and i was like dude just relax just just lift and don't show don't show the pain don't show the effort in your face just be stoic teach your body that that ain't shit that weight that you have on the bar it's nothing it's not going to move you you know powerlifting is all about uh getting yourself into a position and maintaining that position

through x amount of range of motion whatever's required for particular competition but you pick up those big weights and you say, you know what, this way ain't moving me anywhere. I'm in control of this. This is where this weight is going. And when you've done that with a thousand pounds in a squat, and you've done that with 800 pounds in a bench press, you can't help, but feel good every day and feel confident about yourself.

It can really build, it can build you into something that you never imagined you could be. Yeah. Well, it's like what you were getting about pushing against resistance with a straight brute force and the payoff. It's acute stress versus chronic stress. Right. You know, we're all stressed out like, fuck, I got these bills, like, you know, bank accounts like looking real low. But when you make, when you successfully get past that bill, there's no huge reward at the end of it.

Your body doesn't quite feel or understand that the stress is over. Right. So all that cortisol and all that, that stays there. However, when you do get under the bar and you successfully make that lift, it's like, oh, shit, I had enough strength to get through this. And unfortunately, not a lot of people understand what that feels like and they may not ever experience it. So it's kind of a bummer. But, you know, once you get through it, you know, all the endorphins and everything gets moving again. You feel great.

And some people listen to this podcast that maybe they don't love fitness. They don't love working out. And I know a lot of the people do that listen to this show. But you can do that through other means. I'm just trying to share with you, and Jessica's trying to share with you, like the way that we've been able to overcome anything has been through feeling it, through a sport or through something physical. She mentioned her sister has felt it through makeup.

Like who knows what it might be for you, but you can push yourself in anything. You push yourself in education, or you can push yourself to learn and acquire a skill yesterday we talked a lot about that how you force yourself to learn stuff and force yourself to become better you know i'm always talking about do more be more jessica i think has learned that lesson the more that you do the more that you can do it's like you can get out of stuff it's just so much easier to handle shit when you've done shit and it's so it's so easy to sit on the couch when you sit on the couch

you know what i mean like i don't you know it's really rare uh i don't know if you guys ever noticed it's really rare just for you guys to ever see me sitting down in the gym and and part of that is just that like know if I sit down, I'm going to sit down. So I don't sit down. The only time I sit down is to do a shoulder press. I try to continue to move. Even if I feel

like I need it in between a set of squats or something, I won't do it. Because I want to try to keep moving. I'm there to exercise. I'm there to move. And I don't want to slow the momentum down for anything. Damn. I don't know. All this fitness stuff.

So fitnessy. I know. It's making me hungry. Well, don't look at me. I don't know, Mark. We did a lot of stuff before. Like when I was larger, Mark would just pick me up and say,

you're coming with me today, you know, and do that. But it's like a same thing in work. It's like, if you just start doing stuff, even if you aren't necessarily asked for to do it, like something comes out of it. People take notice.

So, and that's one thing here too. It's like, yeah, maybe I'm not being paid to do that and yeah other people at other companies wouldn't do half the shit that i do with my job title but like you get something out of it at some point and if you don't then that's when you make the decision that it's time for you to move on right but usually here at st even if it's a year or whatever however long it's like people take notice and do things like andrew when he first started was just taking photos now look at him

smoky when he first started was just doing ad. And he made a decision and a risk to come over here. And it worked out for him. I made a leap of faith, took a job pay cut to come here. I worked customer service. That was fun. Now look at what I had no idea what I was going to be doing when I came here. And like six, seven months into the job, I had a new title. And we got someone else to do it.

I was doing two jobs. That's probably going to happen with Emilio too. Emilio cleans the gym, cleans the bathrooms. He started to teach himself media shit. He's like learning stuff all the time. He sent me videos all the time. The first video video that he sent me it couldn't have been any worse i mean he couldn't have done a worse job like i can't believe he sent it to me at all it's like poor guy well i wouldn't have sent it to anybody um i would have really covered up the fact that

i don't know what i'm doing and i would have just edited uh chronologically and i would have kept it really safe and simple but uh he tried to he at least tried to do some stuff but what i saw was from one video to the next to the next there was a huge amount of improvement i was like you know what this shit would be great on our youtube channel and the way that he goes around and messes with everybody and um it definitely fits uh fits a lot of our style but the same thing will most likely happen to him it will be probably just a few more weeks or months uh until we look into you know hiring someone that cleans the gym and he won't have to worry about that he'll be doing his thing yeah i mean he'll be stoked it's like chris like he's he's doing like high level commercial type stuff real Real commercials. Like real shit, you know?

Stuff that he could really be proud of and like take to another employer whenever, you know? And they would be like, holy shit, that's cool. Chris Griffin is definitely a guy that I realize I can't have on lockdown forever. Yeah, you can't lock down that potential. Yeah, no. I know, it's a lot. It's like this ball of energy and it will just. Yeah.

It'll just explode and he'll end up doing something else. But I'm keeping him here for now. Yeah. As long as I can. Yeah. I mean, it's just. It's nuts. You think about like where we've all come from.

And so here's the thing. This is like my biggest pet peeve. And I'm glad I get to say it. People go, oh, you're so lucky. You get to do all these things. It's like, I want to go work for you, Mark. Just like, dude, take a fucking leap of faith and do something about it. If that's what you really want to do, then get your ass on a plane and come over here.

Or people go, oh, I really want to get on the podcast. Dude, if you have a good story and you want to be on the podcast get a hold of andrew you you know y'all talk about it but if you're willing to stick your neck out and take this leap of faith and this chance because you really feel like your story is what is what needs to be heard then it. But like everyone always says that. If I lived closer, I would totally take a job just doing whatever you guys needed.

Austin Baumgarner used to drive from the bay just to work out with Mark. And this is before it was all popular and shit. He used to go out of his way to drive a few hours to come work out for a few hours and then drive a few hours back home. And if you guys know the Bay, the traffic's awful.

And the fact that he voluntarily wanted to do this to be around Mark and to lift and be and live better, like, there's no excuses. So when I see people that say that stuff, that really bugs me. Because I know Mark won't ever say it. I mean, he might, but he probably won't ever say it. How annoying that is. If I had that opportunity, you shut your mouth. Everyone has an opportunity. You put yourself in that spot.

So if you really want to take a leap of faith, you do it. Smokey just checked in. She's still talking. There it is you sounded just like him yeah i thought smoky was on the podcast oh my god how did that happen kind of sound and you got to do the finger come for me smoky that's that's how he sounds to you well when he gets going yeah who yeah he does that a lot before he before he hits up his benches i was being so supportive of him yesterday and he gave me the finger he was like like too much yeah i was like

there you go buddy he was like oh like killed it yeah i know yeah do you want how hard is it to work here i love working here i love my job because i think people think it's easy though too uh no on monday i was up till 1 a.m. making sure things were up. And you were also here last night, like, while I was leaving. You and Terrell were, like, checking somebody out. Like, they were, like, buying something. On Tuesday, I was here till 10. And no one, I mean, no one's here to see that, right?

You know, like, Marcus was, like, locking up and making sure everybody was out of the gym or whatever. But I was still here till 10. You know, like Mark didn't see that. Smokey didn't see that. You work. And then that happens a lot, though. Like I know for a fact Josh, Kim, and Chris Griffin were here till 8 or 9 on Monday. And no one else was here to see that.

We don't go, hey, check us out. We're leaving at 10 p.m. We don't do that. We work really hard, and a lot of times it's by ourselves or without a lot of eyes. Yeah, there's no one telling us, hey, you can't go home until you do this and this and this. Smokey has to tell me to go home sometimes. He's like, do you have a wife? Smokey had to force Andrew to take vacation time.

That's good. He's like, you need to take some vacation time. No, I showed up here and he's like, you can't be here. I'm like, haha, yeah, well, what do you, like, why, what did I do? And he's like, no, you don't understand. You can't be here. You have to take time off. Yeah.

Smokey's the same way, though. He really, I'm glad he took a vacation this year He's the same way We all kind of have the same work ethic I'm here seven days a week Steven's here seven days a week But I don't think that would happen unless we had We have a good relationship Yeah

I like my work relationships They're more than just Hey I see you in the office. Right. Or if one of the links in the chain was like really weak and you know, we're like kind of all trying to pick up the slack for one person. Right. I mean, obviously, but like, you know, it's like, I'm down to, you know, like before the seminar, I don't even, I was here way too long, but I'm totally fine because I worked with like everybody that day. Yeah. And then like by the end of the night, it was like me and Griffin, we're still here, but like, I, like, of course I'm going to bust

my ass because he's still here with me. And in the morning I was squatting with Mark and, you know, throughout the whole day, like Smokey helped. Even Paul, the sound guy, came and helped me out. I mean, it's just one of those things here where everybody has their own specific job, sure. But if we ever needed help, someone would go and help.

Right. And if Steven's talking trash... Yeah, he just said Chris's bench is weak. Oh. We benched the same yesterday. Who have been some of the biggest influences in your life? I know your dad has been a huge influence on you. I love when he comes around.

And part of the reason why I was so excited to be able to have any impact on anything he's done. It's just because he is so fun to be around. And he did check in. I forgot to mention that earlier. Oh, shit. Hey, Dad. But I also love that he's so supportive of you. I think that's great.

Yeah, my dad was there at every race during college every week, and he just wanted to be there and be supportive. Remember when he came to me about the, like, keto carnivore diet? Yeah, he doesn't know. He just wants to, like, check in, you know be supportive remember when he came to me about the uh like keto carnivore diet yeah he doesn't know he just wants to like check in you know but remember what he said to me what did he say he's like i he's like i'm really really concerned about this diet he's like mark i haven't farted in three weeks he Oh my God, I forgot about that. He's like, and that's kind of what I'm known for. He used to clear out gyms. I was like, hey, yeah. Can't take my identity away from me. I said, listen, man, I'm so sorry.

I was in club volleyball, and at one point he farted and cleared out the entire gym, and this is like a massive gym if you've ever been at a college, I mean, at a club volleyball tournament. He's an impressive guy. Mm-hmm.

I mean, it's, I mean. I mean it's It was like something had crawled up his ass and died. Not everyone has talent like that. That was a regular so when Marcus you know starts to fuck with me about

farting on my stuff I'm just like you don't even hit what I've experienced in my life. Like you could take a shit in my office, and I probably wouldn't even notice. It would smell a lot better than what your dad's done over the years.

Yeah, like, it's just, it's like permanently, it's like in my DNA. Oh, yeah, and I don't know who wrote that. I still don't know, but Marcus is the one that took the picture, because you can see him in the reflection. But he sent it to me, and I still don't know who wrote it. It's really nice handwriting. Yeah.

Who writes like that? Maybe Rosemary. Oh. But when I do fart, I do say, that's a song on my people. Oh, yeah. I have gas. It's normal. Girls fart.

What? No, they. Girls fart or puff. No, they don't. They puff. My friend, Noel, in rowing would say that. Girls don't fart. They puff. My God. Who's been an influence in your life that's helped you over the years?

My grandma, for sure. Oh, yeah? Yeah. She's still working. She's old. She's old. She still works full time. Oh, yeah? Yeah. She's still working. She's old. She's old. She still works full time. She works for a church.

You spent a lot of time with her when you were a kid? No, but we would go over there every week. That's pretty frequent. I think it's frequent. It is. Yeah, with a grandparent. Mm-hmm. We'd go over every Sunday was Grandma's day.

And we would go over and hang out. What does she do? She works for like a construction company. She does, I think, the accounting or something. But she also does it for the church. And she gives her tithe. She used to be a Sunday school teacher. She's like that.

She's never had a smoke or drank in her life. Took care of her brother who was sick for a really long time because he fell off a bunk bed. And she took care of her mom. She takes care of the family. I mean, to a fault almost. Can't say no. She's kind of the glue.

Yeah, but she's the glue for sure. She's the one thing that would keep my whole family coming together on the weekends yeah every family needs somebody like that and it's just gonna it's gonna suck when that's no longer the case you know like i'm older and it's been a long time but i actually got to see my grandma this weekend this last weekend it was really good even though it was for only a few hours. Yeah. That's cool. She's so sweet though. She's so little. She's so proud.

You know? It's like, oh my God, I see all the stuff you're doing. Is everyone's grandma little? She's shrinking. So I told her that. I was like,

grandma, you're shrinking. She was like, I know. I was thinking about doing that yoga thing. Because there's like yoga for older people.

And it stretches them out and they get taller. That's amazing. She's like, I saw it. And my brother had offered to them out and they get taller. That's amazing. She's like, I saw it. And my brother had offered to take her to all our classes. That's cool. Yeah.

So my grandma's a huge, like I look to her for, like she's always been that person. That's cool. Like my dad, sure. But like my grandma has always been like, she just has so much love to give. That's cool. And like I. Like I'm blunt. Straight forward.

And I'm. I'm harsh sometimes. And I do have that RBF. That resting bitch face. Taking pictures of that. And then you also told me you'd murder me today. Well you keep doing that. Thing. It gets me hyped up. Well, you keep doing that thing.

It gets me hyped up. Good for you. Yeah. It makes my blood boil. Damn it. But I don't know. I want to be able to give that much love. I don't think it's physically possible for me to do that as much as my grandma's done it,

but it's something to strive for. Is she always like real happy and positive? Yeah. And she doesn't talk, she does not talk bad about a single person. I've only seen her do it once. And boy, did that make me laugh. But she, she's such a positive person.

She, all she wants to do is spread love and caringness and being a better person. And like, you know, not that she makes me feel bad but like i think everybody could you know have that one person that does that and that's my grandma cool that's right any other questions over there andrew i got one pretty heavy question um we could i mean this could be its own whole nother uh podcast but we had uh somebody listening saying that they're um really unmotivated to because when you were talking about like trying to gain weight for this meat coming up um they're having a hard time just eating in general because they lost both their parents to cancer um so some like couple people in the chat room were saying

like it's a mental thing like but she's just like just like, I have zero drive to eat. My family wants me to eat, but I, it's just not there. So I'm like, I don't even know how I can answer that. Yeah. There's, uh, you know, uh, there's, there's times in your life when, uh, things are going to be really hard. And, um, I think it's okay. It's okay for things to be hard. It's okay to be sad. It's okay to be depressed. It's okay to be pissed. Um, it's okay to have all like, just everyone mourns differently, you know? Um, and, uh, it really highly depends on how close you were to those people.

And there's so many different factors that go into all that. Um, you know, the main, the main things like food is one thing, but the main things are that you are trying to stay away from bad habits, um, and bad habits by bad habits. I mean, like dangerous habits, like if you ever had a drug addiction or if you, or if you ever had a problem with alcohol, those are the things that you really want to be paying attention to your food. I wouldn't be that worried about it. Now, you know, if you're trying to figure out how the hell do I get back on the right track?

And it's been a few months since they passed. Um, I, you know, people don't do this enough, but people, you can go and get help. You know, you can see a psychiatrist and if the first person that you go to sucks, go to another one. Your first session is free. Yeah. So everyone's, if they're like a legit psychologist, your first is free. Yeah. Or kick around the idea or concept of, you know, if you're religious at all,

maybe go to a church, church, talk to a minister or pastor. Like it might be a good idea to try to bring somebody else in to talk to about this. Um, it's really brave of them to ask the question here on the podcast. I appreciate that they, uh, are kind of looking at us for answers. That's, that's really cool. Um, but when you go and see a psychiatrist and when you go get help, uh, from somebody, a lot of times a simple act of you saying things out loud helps, helps you anyway. So they don't even really need to do that much, but the fact that you're making these statements and you're saying, Hey, look,

this is what happened to me. And I'm really broken up about it. And I, I, I can't eat. I'm not functioning really well. I'm not doing well at work and I don't know what to do. I don't know where to turn. And by you just making that statement and, and putting that out there in, into somebody else's hands, um, things will start to make a lot more sense, uh, in terms of like trying to figure out like, you know, the food thing and, and trying to figure out, you want to just stick to things that you've been comfortable with for a really long time, obviously the healthier, the better. Um, but I would say, man, you know what, just, just don't really worry about it that much.

This might sound really harsh, but if your parents were here, what would they say? Right. Like, that sounds really fucking aggressive for, like, the fact that you just lost your parents. But if they were sitting there, what would they do? What would they say? They would want you to be healthier. Yeah, to nourish yourself. They don't want you to, like, fade away.

Right. Now that's well said. When it comes to, like, seeing a psychiatrist or somebody, how important do you think it is to be inclusive with, like, your family? I think this would be very individual, you know. But, yeah, if you have a significant other, that's the first person you should communicate with. Um, it sounds like their friends are involved a little bit already. Um, you know, when you, when you eat foods that aren't healthy for you, there's, there's some

major problems with it. It doesn't matter what's going on in your life or what's not going on in your life, but, um, they, they can, they can kind of trick you about your appetite your appetite will grow stronger when you eat foods that are nutritious for you and digest easily so if you eat once a day and just have pizza or just like a burrito or something uh the odds of you um feeling like you want to eat again you go to black bear diner you go to these kind of easy to eat places. You eat one meal and then you're done. Yeah. You're not hungry anymore. So. It's an awful feeling. So yeah, all that kind of stuff would be out the window. You know, I would suggest that they check out Operation Get Less Fatterest, which is, you know, a Facebook thread. I have to say it is kind of flourished itself. Mark puts out stuff, but it is really self-sufficient.

That's great. Like people are in there being, they say, you know, I'm having a hard day. Everybody's in there jumping in, you know, giving positivity, motivation. Or they just say, hey, this is my daily win. This is what I did. And people are like, that's sick. Or people are sharing their progress photos, little things like that. Cause if you don't feel like you're alone, you're more opt to.

That's the whole point in doing it. I said, you know what, we're going to do this and we're going to, we're going to do this together going into and going through the holidays. And as I mentioned before, you know, the diet is not really much of a diet right now. It's just a list of foods and some suggestions. I want you to eat more often. Uh, I want you to go on 10 minute walks. It's all stuff that's just very, very easy for people to do. The food options are pretty wide, but things will tighten up as we go along and it will actually turn into something where you're actually going to lose weight, uh, going into the holidays. But the other option too is like, let's not forget, you can just, you can pay people to help you with stuff. You know, I mentioned the psychiatrist, but, um, you know, Jess mentioned she has a nutritionist.

There's people that do these things professionally. And so, um, you may want to try to consult somebody. She went through hybrid performance, you know, maybe you connect better with a different person or whatever. Find somebody that you think could really help you with your food. And then also, too, when I was first depressed and super anxious, I actually, with the help of Emma, she got me to go to a doctor. And I actually got on antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds. And then when I started actually figuring out what I needed to nourish my body

and to actually go work out and do things, I stopped taking them. That was only because with the help of Mark and team, Team ST, it's like a family out there. Everyone's super supportive and they just, except yesterday, I was mad at everybody. But it's a team, it's a family out there everyone's super supportive and they just except yesterday i was mad at everybody but but it's a it's a team it's a family you know and everybody helped me and i stopped taking my meds i didn't need to take them anymore i got my shit on lock doesn't mean i comes unhinged

every once in a while but that's you know and kind of on that same note, you know, along, along the lines of like, uh, you know, us being a team, um, you know, communication is crucial. And so like, if you did get frustrated, a particular workout, sometimes, uh, there's multiple things that can happen. Sometimes you have a shitty workout and you're frustrated at everybody else. Sometimes not everybody's there to help you. And you're kind of frustrated by the situation but you can also tell everybody you can say hey you know what i got a really important lift to do i'm going to do it like this time and i need you to be there can you be there you know you check in with people and and then if they're not there of course you got every right to be super frustrated um if you told them you know but if you did if you didn't tell them then

maybe you can't maybe you don't have a leg to stand i used to do that a lot when i was uh you know lifting in gear because you do need help yeah you need a lot of yeah you can't gear live by yourself yeah you need a lot of support and a lot of help and then i'd be like ah you know it'd be great if we had two or three more people here. And that was a learning process for me. I'm like, all I got to do is tell people. Yeah. Marcus doesn't do it,

but I do it for him. When he has a big squat, I think that's another reason why I moved it to Tuesdays. But we need people here to spot and load and help. That's a lot of weight. And you can't be squatting

800 pounds by yourself. I mean, you can, but it's stupid. And you shouldn't, especially if you have a team so if you just tell people hey can you stick around they most likely will and so i've been doing that well i was doing it until he moved it to tuesdays i remember um you know we've had these different situations that have happened here at Super Training and at Slingshot. I remember it was probably just two or three months ago. Andy and I, like, you know, obviously I share stuff with Jessica. She posts a lot of stuff on my social media and stuff like that.

But I just, we just send her messages sometimes. We just send her a picture or like, I do that a lot with people in here. I'll do like a voice message or almost everyone has gotten some of those um but like i i'm like oh well this is like i i'm just you know as i'm like out doing something fun with andy i'll just send you a picture and sometimes it's like hey can you post this sometimes it's just like i know it's going to make you happy you know and so i'll just send you something. But this one time in particular, Andy and I were in Bodega Bay and Jessica has been working her butt off for us. And we've done this a lot of times with a lot of other employees, just called you up and said, you got a raise. We love you. You're kicking ass for us. We really

appreciate you. And you know, it's just, it's just fun, you know, and there's Jessica balling. She's super pumped, super excited. And it just, uh, it just makes you feel good. And so that's, that's what a lot of this stuff is all about. That's where, that's how we're able to move forward. That's how, how we're able to execute on a level that we're able to execute. And that's how you end up with employees that are here from eight o'clock in the morning until 10 o'clock at night they just want to work they want to work for you because you work for them right i stick my neck out for mark because i know he'll do it for me yeah a lot of people don't get to see that side they just think oh people just think i'm a money hungry son of a bitch yeah all they think they think oh yeah

i don't even want to get you started get it. But yeah, people just think that you're all about money and you're not humble and you need to eat humble pie and you're a cocky SOB and all that stuff. People really think I'm self-centered crazy bastard. It is wild. But then it would, like we talked about earlier, would seem so fabricated and so fake if we went out of our way to say, you know. He's the humanitarian of the year. Yeah. I mean, when he got his new place, Mark got him this big-ass TV for his family.

Yeah. I know it sounds silly, but, like, we actually had to have, like, another person bring their car because it wouldn't fit in his. It was too big. Yeah. And it's funny because, like, I wanted to post that, like, on my Instagram being like, hey, everyone step your fucking game up.

Because this is the first housewarming gift I got from Mark. And it's a big ass TV. But then I'd be like, I don't know. I can't even share the level of generosity that Andy and Mark have all shown me in the last two years. I literally, I would cry my eyes out. So I'm not going to do it. I refuse to do it but i have to say that i can tell you like in my heart my soul that no one that i could ever work for would do what mark and andy have done for me

and i don't need to share that for it to be true so i'll just say that and that'll be it yeah yeah yeah i you know i sometimes wish that there's other things that i could share you know because like social media is fun but as i'm going through this process uh you know and growing and you know uh gaining more maturity like you just constantly do that as you get older you just you learn more about yourself and what you like and what you don't like and you get more comfortable with things as i'm kind of going through that process i'm like man like it'd be so cool to share some of these things on social media it'd be great there's for people to see all these different kind of components you know these different things that my son does or

these different things my daughter does and how happy it makes me and how proud i am of them and these different then i'm like actually you know what like unfortunately like that doesn't belong on social media that's special for me that's that stuff's for me that stuff's for me and my dad that stuff for me and my wife and the stuff for me and my dad that are so important to me that make me feel so good yes i am bursting and i do want to share it with everybody and i want to run out and be like my daughter and my son are the coolest fucking things that ever happened to me they're the coolest things i've ever done but it's it's too weird it's vulnerable yeah yeah that too like yeah quinn she's not into like fitness right now but that girl can draw yeah and mark knows that and he cried the first time. Yeah.

You got that shirt that she, yeah. Nice. And it was so sweet, but it was so real. And we didn't, we didn't put that anywhere. Right.

You know, but Quinn can draw her little butt off. And, you know, Jake, he wants to film stuff, you know. Jake News.

Yeah. He's got crazy facts and he, it seems like he loves to shoot shit so yeah i don't know where all that will go yeah it's amazing when you see your kid uh find something that they love to do it's uh i don't know it it's it's hard to describe unless you have your own kid unless you have your own child and see them go through the process but you know with a kid you try to like you you throw them like an instrument and you're like oh okay well they're playing piano or they're doing whatever right and then they don't like it or whatever all right well

here's a pen and some paper and they draw and they maybe don't like it right you watch them kind of go through this process and you know give them books and they, you know, they fall out of favor with liking to read and you give them a baseball and a baseball bat and they, you know, maybe, yeah, maybe they like it for a year and then they don't like it. It's fine. Kids change their mind nonstop, right? They're, they, and they know what they like and they know what they don't like and they're going to keep changing and keep moving into different things. But when they land on something you're like oh my god this is really really awesome and you know with my daughter like the reason why i made those shirts and different things is like i want to make a big deal about it yeah you know this is really cool

she uh you know has a unique ability how unique is it and how strong will it be or develop, I have no idea. You know, maybe the drawings she's done so far, maybe the last drawing she ever does, maybe she doesn't care. Maybe she doesn't want

to do a lot more of them, but... She knows her dad supported her. Yeah. Yeah, celebrate those things, you know.

Rosemary said she didn't write the note on your thing. Gosh, who did it? I don't know, because Smokey doesn't have a nice handwriting like that.

I know Marcus is like a Neanderthal, right? Chris has good handwriting. Griffey? He'd never. Oh, Griff. Maybe Mariel? But that's like not Mariel's handwriting. Mariel has a really nice handwriting, though.

Emma? I don't think Emma would. No, because that's not Emma's handwriting either. I want to know who did it. Does it have a left-handed person tilt to it? Is it you? Oh, please. Okay.

Come on. I mean, it looks like something that I would write, but I really didn't write it, so. I was going to say, you're the only person I could think of. Like, I can't scribble correctly, so that's why I picked up a camera. Unless it was, like, someone from Team ST, which is possible.

Anything's possible. Yeah. All right. Well, that's all the time we got for today, ladies and gentlemen. We probably went over two hours on this one. We were chatting. We were chatting up a storm. Right, Andrew?

Two and a half hours. Oh, my God. Whoa. We left out all the best parts. Do you want to start over? Well, I will say that. What's your name? Out of everyone in every podcast, Smokey has never been this active on any of them.

I knew it. Number one fan. Yeah. He's the worst. All of our stuff at markbellslingshot.com. All of our lifting gear is IPF approved for 2019. Hey, yo. Oh. I didn't know we were going to get sound effects.

Go over there and check out all that stuff. And I think if you type in Power Project, you get like 20% off or 15% off. 15% off any and all slingshots at checkout. Slingshots are not IPF approved, everybody. You can't cheat that bad. Not yet. They're IPF approved, everybody. You can't cheat that bad. Not yet. They're SPF approved. Yeah.

That would be awesome. Where can people find you, Jessica? At Jessica underscore Smith on Instagram. Or, you know, just hit up MB or Mark. Single. Oh, God. Here we go. DMs left and right.

Boys and girls. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye. Bye.