Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Project EP. 133 - 3x Olympian Reese Hoffa

Episode Date: October 29, 2018

Reese Hoffa is a professional thrower, recreational Rubik's Cube solver, and Owner and Head Coach at Hoffa Throws Academy where he devotes his time to help middle and high school student reach their full potential. He is a 3X Olympian, Olympic Bronze Medalist, and World Champion in shot put. He was ranked among the top three shot putters in the world for ten consecutive years. Body Tempering tool mentioned on the podcast can be found here: http://forgehdf.com/ use code "MarkBell18" for a $40 discount and FREE SHIPPING! ➢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

Can we work on figuring that part out? Just change the whole thing all around and cut them out? Mm-hmm. Genius. Maybe I could Photoshop the audio somehow? I don't know. Hmm. Hmm.

Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. I don't know. Maybe. All right. We're good to go. All right.

Yeah. We have a script? Reese, did you bring anything? A script? What are we going to talk about? I gave Corey the script as we were squatting. Oh. So it had all the questions that you were prepped for and everything.

Does this happen a lot? Does Corey fuck shit up a lot? No, he's actually very reliable. He's usually organized. He is. You know, we have our talking points. It's on my hand right here. So whenever we get to those particular sections,

if I'm looking down at my hand a lot, it's because I got to make sure. Hey, how cute are we, by the way? I'm wearing your shirt. I'm wearing yours. We just became best friends. It's amazing. Did that just happen? Yeah. We became like squat buddies. We're squat buddies. Squat pals. That was a good workout today. What do you think?

Oh, that was an exceptional squat buddies. Squat pals. That was a good workout today. What do you think? Oh, that was an exceptional squat workout. A lot different than what you're used to. Like a lot of times being a thrower, what kind of rep range are you normally using? So when we get into the fall, we're probably around tens for a couple of weeks. So the way I do it, I take about a month off and we basically have about two or three weeks of what I just call, we just go in the weight room and we're going to lift. So we're going to do all the lifts that we haven't done for a month. So we'll do bench squat and we'll do as high as tens, twelves. And just to get my baby arms ready and my baby legs ready to do work, we do that.

And then actual real lifting starts in November. Right. uh we do that and then actual real lifting starts in november right and then but most of the training is kind of devoted towards um i understand like the off season's probably devoted towards that necessarily but most of the training is devoted towards being explosive absolutely trying to be explosive um for me and cory we give ourselves about three months just this lift as heavy as we possibly can. And then from there, it's, we go down to a specific weight, whatever it is, we'll, we'll kind of either it's 405, 385. And what we do is as long as I can do that for any rep range, if it's 10, nine and not

get super sore, then it's perfect. Right. Being a high level athlete that has competed in the olympics before what do you think about you know other athletes just you know just it seems like if other athletes just get in some strength training like them actually being extremely strong um i don't i don't know it's not i don't want to say it's irrelevant because it can matter Yeah. But it's not like a prerequisite of a defensive end in the NFL to bench 500 pounds. Yeah. Although it probably won't hurt anything.

It's probably not, it's probably not even a great thing to focus too much on because you might be losing some other aspect of fitness or some other aspect of what you should be working on and what you should be training. But for yourself, you know, you develop tremendous amounts of strength, tremendous amounts of power, and you're very explosive, but you're probably not the strongest guy in all of the shot put, right? Oh, no, no. You mentioned there's some guys that bench like mid-sixes, I think, right?

Oh, yeah. The Christian Cantwells of the world are mid-sixes. Joe Kovacs is of the world who's world champion. He's in the mid-sixes. So there are some exceptionally strong athletes and maybe that's your genetic makeup makeup where you can do that. Right. Whereas myself, I just, if I went up there and tried to bet 600 pounds, I, it

would crush me and would take long periods of time to recover from that, which means it would affect the way that I threw the ball. Right. So for me, the most important thing is let's have a base amount of strength and let's be as powerful as we possibly can be. And that's, what's going to make the ball go really far. I know sometimes like a power lifter will kind of look at different athletes and throwers aren't really a great example because throwers are a lot of times are insanely strong.

Yeah. But, um, in some cases of some other sports maybe a baseball player maybe they they hear a number of uh what a crossfitter does or something like that and it's like well look you know guys you're talking about two things that are really really different you know power lifting you're just training for the bench squat and deadlift that's what we're responsible for on game day that's what we do yeah and they ask us just to do one rep and a lot of times we'll have knee wraps on or knee sleeves got some sort of other form of support yeah then also in like bodybuilding and in powerlifting you can kind of choose what

you want to do in terms of uh peds you know you can decide to uh push the limits whatever whatever way you want and you can get tested or not get tested. Yeah. And so sometimes you hear somebody else's numbers and, uh, an athlete, you know, maybe that's in the UFC, you know, maybe he does sets of a five and a squat with, uh, 275. Yeah. But the guy weighs 200, you know, the guy weighs 200 pounds. And of course it's not an exceptionally crazy strong squat. The point is that guy's working on what's heavy to him and he's and he's going through some sort of strength period and so i always try to i think it's important to communicate

that with people because i think it's wrong they get a misconception about strength training to where the weights have to be these huge numbers and no they don't have to be these huge numbers first of all do the lift the right way. Yeah. Have form, have technique, have your stuff be crisp. But if you're chasing down the numbers, you might be kind of pursuing the wrong thing. Oh, I totally agree. I, I've never been a person to chase numbers to a point. Now the reason bit crazy enough, the reason I benched 500 pounds was because we had a discus Thor from Canada and discus stores. I don't really consider super strong athletes.

He came in and did 500 pounds. And that put me on the road to saying, Oh, I want to bet. I can't let this wimpy discus Thor be stronger than Canada too. How insulting. I know. And it was crazy. You know, he could go and he did it. And I was just like, I want to do it now.

Is that a thing amongst uh throwers like did the shot putters and discus guys give each other a bunch of crap well traditionally we like to think the shot putters are stronger than the discus thorns but there are some crazy strong uh discus thorns out there not to to knock those guys but i think it's more in good fun we're just we're just trying to have fun. Just something to motivate ourselves. And for me, I just, at that moment, I was young and dumb, maybe. I don't know. But I just could not let that person be stronger than me.

Does anybody ever do both? Are they way completely different things? It's two different kinds of movements. Discus is a little bit longer. I like to think that the rotation, you have to be more intellectually advanced in order to do that because everything goes so fast. Whereas in the discus, you have more time to think about it's a lot longer. So you don't, you don't have to be as smart. So what you're saying is I'm intellectually challenged because I could never learn it. You know, I threw the shot put, uh, in high school and uh i i threw i threw pretty good

but i can never learn how to spin and anytime i learned how to spin i would just first of all i throw it uh not as far because i couldn't control it yeah and then i'd every time i'd end up out of the circle and my coach was like this is the dumb he's like it's the dumbest thing i've ever seen i don't know why he's like i don't even know we bother. And he kept trying to work with me on it. And it just, he's like, it's going to take, this is going to take too long. And it will potentially take you forever, but I am super stubborn when it comes to learning stuff. If I get it in my mind, I'm going to do it. It's my life. I'm going to do it. Gosh, darn it. And that's, that's just, i wouldn't let it go uh and i can't tell you how many times i failed trying to learn the rotation until i finally got it and then it's

like okay this is gonna make it like when i first tried to learn to spin my and in uh my junior year in high school i was horrible and then one day it kind of clicked right before i went to the state championships i'm like well our coach is like okay I think it's time for you to spend. I'm like, well, this is the biggest me of the year. Are you sure? Like I'm a little bit more consistent gliding. You know, maybe I should just know we're going to spend and trust me. I think I ended up being PRing by a four or five feet.

Wow. And winning the state championship. That's a huge difference. Watching myself throw a shirt. Listen, it's. I mean, do you felt jacked that's a huge difference. Watching myself throw a shirt, listen, it's really shocking. I mean, you felt jacked that day though, right? That's the important thing.

I did, because this is the crazy thing. So I throw one of the best throws in the state of Georgia, and these big 6'4", 6'5", football players, and that's what you're going to get in the state of Georgia, just these gigantic human beings. They're like, hey, how much do you bench? And at the time, I was i only bench you know 350 pounds or like what 350 how did you throw so far i'm like i guess it's the power of the rotation growing up uh and or once you kind of started getting we'll get to your story in a minute but like once once you got into um shot put who were some of the guys that you were looking up to?

Oh, my, so obviously Randy Barnes, who's the world record holder. Brent Noon, who was kind of like my throwing idol, my throws coach. When he was a younger coach, actually met him and got to be taught by him. Who else? John Godina, obviously. CJ Hunter. Brian O'Field. A little bit of Al Feerbach in there.

You know, I had a lot of throwing idols and just people that I could watch. And this is pre internet. So I had some videos that were smuggled into the state of Georgia that I just would watch every single day. There's something so cool about stuff like that. We talk about this kind of stuff a lot on the podcast. The harder it is to acquire, uh, some about this kind of stuff a lot on the podcast the harder it is to acquire uh some of this kind of knowledge yeah uh almost the better the result when somebody does learn it because they had to go through a lot of crap to figure out how to even

get it oh oh absolutely uh i remember when they came out with a vcr that had the slow-mo function on it. So I was able to play a video in slow-mo and record it, dub it if you will. And that just blew my world. So I could take Randy Barnes' World Record Throw in slow-mo, frame-by-frame, and record it on film. Because I'd bring it home, we didn't have that fancy of a VCR. So I could slow-mo and just watch Randy throw frame by frame, trying to figure out the secrets of the rotation. That's crazy. And then now you just, you know, boom, you just YouTube it and there it is. You could go on YouTube and, you know, I feel like, and that was like, for me, the most awesome thing when you could start putting videos on the internet.

My biggest goal when I was in college is to have one of my throws on the internet. Because that lets you know that you have made it if someone thought your throw was so great. That's so cool to think of it. You know, think of it in those terms now, right? And there were hundreds of throws of me now. But at that time, just, and it was throwfather.com. That was the website I was trying to get on. And I finally got like a random throw from Florida on there. And I was just like, I've made it. I'm now a good thrower. You remember those forums back in

the day? Like you could actually really learn a lot of great things. There was a lot of people that would chime in. And, and, uh, I remember, you know, um, looking at that for powerlifting and I would learn all kinds of stuff. I mean, there was some garbage on there too. It's the internet, right? Yeah. There was some really useful information on there. Somebody would talk about their experience with a certain kind of training and I would research it and I'd be like, oh, that's cool.

I want to try that someday. You really learn a lot. That's the crazy thing about information now. someday. You can really learn a lot. That's the crazy thing about information now. There's almost an oversaturation of information out there in any given sport that you want to do.

It's the ability to be able to look at that information and pull the crap out and then find the diamond in the turd a little bit. I think that's what kids have to do now. That's the name of this podcast, by the way. The Diamond and the Turd.

The Breeze Hoffa. So. And the title of your next book. It should be the title of my next book. But, you know, for me, as I, like I talked to young throwers, I'm like, you can find any throw in the world. But if you are, let's say you're 5'5", you don't need to throw like Ryan Krauser, who's 6'8". Yeah. Don't do his technique because what he's trying to do and what you need to do to become a successful thrower are two opposite things.

Maybe look at me, who's 6 feet. That's closer to what you're probably going to need to do to make the ball go far. But, you know, people get in their mind they have to do it like the new sexy person right i feel like flipping this desk over right now because i talk about that all the time on this podcast i'm like you have so so much access to so much video uh you know larry wheels is the hot new thing in powerlifting this guy's crushing weights he actually bent 605 for triple the other day and it looked pretty easy plus he's shredded he's doing a body but i mean the guy's on fire he's doing he's amazing and uh who wouldn't want to be like him

of course you want to be like him but at the same time uh if you're not built like him you don't have some of those genetics you should probably you know look into having form that matches your body type a little bit more i totally agree agree. And, you know, granted, you know, my technique is, may not be 100% ideal for everybody. I look at my technique and I see flaws everywhere. And I think that's, people see that all the time. Right. But the basics of what I do, I think are really solid. And any thrower that would commit themselves to just doing those little things will probably

be really successful and make the ball go somewhere. It's just a question of, can you convince them to do those little things to make them throw far? So, yeah, you know, it must've taken, you know, a long time to, to refine your technique and refine the form and all that. But like, there's so much that can be learned from a sport, especially individual sport, because you can't be like, oh, Rob over there, he missed, missed his block. And so that's why, you know, that's why the quarterback got sacked. That's why we lost the game. Cause he fumbled and the other team returned it for a touchdown. You can blame other people.

You can maybe, you know, blame, blame the whole rest of the team really. Right. Yeah. But this is all you, right. This is all on you. And so you have to learn these lessons. And when it comes to, uh, these lessons and when it comes to uh your sleep when it comes to stretching and it comes to these things you didn't throw and you didn't

perform as well as as you wanted to perform yeah because you didn't warm up enough because you didn't uh cool down enough you didn't whatever it was you didn't do it enough and you sucked that day yeah that's that's true uh when i used to throw or when i threw it's a lot of self-reflection and knowing how to lose properly and when i say losing properly is if i go to a meet and i don't perform up to my standard you need to do some real soul searching like what did i not do that contributed to me not being able to perform at my best? Because I feel like I've always had the ability to go anywhere in the world and perform at a high level. I flew to Doha and this is just for fun. It's one of those competitions where I'm probably about four or five feet better, maybe even more than that, better than a competition.

So I'm sitting there with one of the guys in the room, and I'm like, listen, I'm going to win this competition, but I'm not going to warm up. I'm not going to take a single throw. I'm just going to take competitive throws. End up doing it just as a mental exercise. But also there's some competitions where I'm going in there and I'm playing the psych out game.

I'm just getting into everybody's head, telling them that they're not going to win and figure stuff out like that. It's crazy. Yeah, it sounds like you have fun with it. Do you think people struggle more with losing or do people struggle more with not being able to handle winning? I think it's losing.

It's definitely losing. Yeah. Um, I, I have trained myself to be able to lose in a way that is positive. Um, and it's like, well, I just missed this position. Hit that position next time. I'm going to win and not just harp on every single mistake you made that contributed to the loss.

Let's look for positive ways to get your mind in the right place to be successful. So, I mean, I don't win everything and that can't be the expectation. I'm going to win every single competition, but when there's a situation that arises and I should be successful, usually I'm going to be, I'm going to be very successful is because, and it's more through the losses and everyone telling me that I shouldn't do something. And I find a way to win every time I lose, but also every time I succeed, I gain something positive on both of those experiences. Right. I think sometimes too, when it comes to, uh, you know, people have a tendency to overanalyze when they lose and then underanalyze when they win. You're saying in this particular competition it was more for fun and you threw x amount of feet further than these other guys um and so

sometimes when people win they win by large margin they don't really you know they don't really pay attention to the little things that got them to be able to throw so far in the first place well that was just more of a situation that i needed in the terms of where I was in the season. I knew I was going to win. I needed to challenge myself even more for that win. Got it. Yeah. Because, you know, the way I do my seasons are I pick meets that are very easy for me to win.

Just to start off, to kind of kick the tires, that kind of thing. to kind of kick the tires, that kind of thing. And then as the season goes on, my goal is to be in the hardest competitions against the best competition in the hardest environments to throw far and find ways to throw far. Because if you cannot, like I've been to meets where it's like they don't give you a warmup

and you gotta throw. So you have to know how to go in that situation and be successful. I've been in situations where you're throwing in a parking lot. You have to like, in most people that we get in their mind, they don't know how to be successful in that environment. It's commonplace. I'll figure out, I'll put water on my shoes. I will kick some dirt up, put grass on my shoes, anything to make my shoes more slippery in that environment. That is, and I've lost in those situations where i went to a ring it was too fast i didn't know how to do it i freaked out lost i'm like well i need to learn

how to be more successful in that environment but so i gained something positive from that loss uh what was your mindset going into competitions like that like if the environment was way different as you became more seasoned as you become a veteran did you kind of have like these rules for yourself where you're like you know what i'm not i'm not thinking anything negative i'm not saying anything negative about uh you know how the field is i'm not saying anything negative about how the footing is yeah to myself and then but maybe to other people maybe to psych them out you're like man that's a crap ring today like i don't know what's going on with it but it's shitty out there uh you if you're trying to win you've got to convince

yourself that it's not as bad as it is uh it's just a little slow it's not oh this is super super slow i'm not going to be able to do this and you just figure out a way to make it work and i think that's just the goal is just you look look at it, you, as you were saying, you just got to be really positive all the time in your mind. And sometimes you do have to play the psych out game. I mean, I've done competitions where I fake, like I am really, I did that heavy. I'm not going to be throwing far today. And that ring is going to be way too slow for me to throw. And oh gosh, it's going to be horrible.

And I'll go and just, I'll throw a warmup really bad. See you guys, man, I'm just not going to throw way too slow for me to throw and oh gosh it's going to be horrible and i'll go and just i'll throw a warm-up really bad see you guys man i'm just not going to throw very well and then i'll just also i'll flip a switch and i'm going really far and it just shocks i'm like what is that you said you were not doing that good and i'm like well that must have been a lucky throw you know you just you play to like i'm playing to the crowd right yeah um do you think you know what do you think separates out somebody you uh were able to become you're a highly decorated athlete and you're able to become a bronze medalist in the olympics what do you think separates out someone that makes it to that level versus someone that doesn't. Is it maybe the mindset of this is going to, this is probably going to take me a long time and I'm okay with that.

You know, transitioning from one season to the next and figuring out ways of getting better. Like, yeah, I can get better, but it's probably going to take a while. Like you're not going to rest until the job is done. You know, when it comes to throwing it does take years so i was successful pretty successful you know before i kind of made a breakthrough in six and ten so i had to just say you know what i'm not going to be as good as this

person for a little bit but i'm eventually going to catch them. So the mindset that you have to have to be an Olympic caliber athlete is, number one, you have to have a mind to handle defeat, a mind that says it's okay to lose. Even at a world championship and even at an Olympic Games, it's okay to lose because you've got to get this experience because you're not that person. Because it's really, really easy to compare yourself to another person that is successful. I'm, I'm not that person. So I can't do what they're doing because it's easy. I, you

know, you can look at Krauser and Krauser, he eats five chickens every day and it's, you know, a million eggs and you're like, I'm going to be Krauser. So I'm going to do that. And, you know, Krauser comes out and he, he, he doesn't do a stand throw. He does, uh, he runs, you know a million eggs and you're like i'm gonna be krauser so i'm gonna do that and you know krauser comes out and he he he doesn't do a stand throw he does uh he runs you know five miles before he competes and you know i'm gonna be that guy that's what that's what you have to do to be a champion and that's not really the case you you got to do you so you can look at what he does and you can maybe pick out something like instead of eating five chickens i'm only going to have one because my digestive system can handle one. And you do that and then you become successful. But you kind of have to, it's like a trial and error.

You've got to learn how to be successful. And there is no, there's nothing that, no piece of paper, nothing you can read. There's not a video you can watch that's going to make you great. Because to get to, we're all unicorns. I'm a unicorn. A handsome unicorn. A handsome unicorn. There are a lot of unicorns out there that do, that throw.

And everyone does it in so many different ways. You know, as there's only one unicorn, one unique unicorn. So there's no two unicorns. So you got to find the unicorn that is you and be the greatest unicorn you can be. It makes a lot of sense. Did you have a mentor going through this process? Do you have a, or just, you know, a coach or someone kind of leading you through it? Cause I think in these type of sports, like if you don't have a good coach, it's, it's

going to be really hard. So I did have a throw Sherpa. His name is Don Babbitt and he, we just, we kind of learned as we went. So he had coached a few athletes before me. He was at Cal State LA and did some work there, came to Georgia, and I came along. So Don definitely helped a lot in terms of building a foundation in terms of, and he's very well versed in all things like he's got like a photographic memory so he knows all everything that's really got to be done like this guy did this far and this is what's going to make him a top 10 in the world and then the second person

i would say would be adam nelson a fellow georgia guy went to dartmouth came back went to california for a little bit and then came back to georgia and trained with me and when he came in he was the world he was the right after he won the olympic silver medal and then won like a world silver medal so he was like kind of the guy i looked up to and thank goodness that he was there because he knew exactly kind of what you need to do outside of the training part of it when you're on the road you know what what you need to do outside of the training part of it. When you're on the road, you know, what do you need to eat? Where do you need to go? Those kinds of things.

And, you know, Don never really traveled with me abroad unless it was like Olympic or world championships. So having someone like that to say, well, don't eat that because that's going to make you sick is, is huge and incredibly beneficial for having a successful career. Did any of these coaches end up becoming like father figures or anything? Did they kind of, you know, she ended up traveling with them and then you end up spending a lot of time with each other, right? Oh, absolutely. Me and Don, if you don't have a very close relationship with your coach where it's just a guy that you go see it's going to be

really hard i mean me and don have spent many of many of days just sitting in a hotel room in germany uh drinking a few snobs of so and uh just talking throwing about life uh dreams all all this kinds of stuff um i think other than guess my mama, she probably knows me about as well as anybody. Yeah. Mama's boy. A little bit, you know, so I'm a mama's boy. She can't help it. She, you know, both my parents, I mean, I, you, you get everything from your parents, you know, but you know, my, my mom and she will always have my my mom will always have a special place in my heart so i was adopted so when you're going through that process you are afraid a lot that's what i would say because you're going into a brand new house a new environment and she made

that transition as flawless as it possibly could be you You know, giving me the hugs and words of encouragement, taking the extra time to teach me how to read alphabet and just make it generally through life. She is just as important as my dad, who taught me really how to be an athlete, really. But she's just like that foundation. Like, I don't know what kind of person i would be if i didn't have that person in my life because i'd probably be an

absolute mess do you think that you would ever adopt a child absolutely that's that is the thing is it's not if it's when i'm definitely me and my wife that's what we talked about we want to have our just a natural child because she's she's under the belief that it would, uh, we'd be depriving the world if my genetics was not out into the world in a smaller 2000 version. Spreading the seed. Spreading the seed. And absolutely. I, I look forward to adopting a kid because I've been through that process. I think that's like a, I insist to call it,

to say it's cool is like not the right word, but I guess it's a really amazing thing, you know, that, that people do, you know, like, you take on another person,

you know, in your household. And a lot of times, uh, people have, you know, other kids that they've already had or the kids they may have already adopted. And, um, you kind of don't know exactly what you're getting yourself into.

I mean, nowadays they share a lot more information and stuff, but, uh, the people out there that adopt people, I've just, I think it's an amazing, that's an amazing thing to do for somebody because you're really, um, you're changing somebody's life. Yeah. You know, you're changing somebody's life. Yeah. You know, you're changing somebody's life in a huge way. You know, for me, I wouldn't have made it to college. I wouldn't have been as successful of an athlete if I was not adopted. I got to meet my birth brother, my brother.

And, you know, he went a completely different direction. He did not graduate from high school and went to jail and all that kind of craziness. Is that your only other sibling? It's the only other, well, I mean, my mom had two other kids after that, but of the, what I would consider sibling wise, he was the only other one. So me and him, we were in the orphanage together and all that kind of thing. And, uh, just seeing he got adopted back into our family by an aunt. And then I ended up just being put in this family and I definitely feel like I got the, I got the most out of it. And when I, you know, I eventually found my mom again, when I was, when I graduated or my junior year in college. And, uh, she actually got to see me

graduate. That was, you know, talk about, like, I want to give somebody the life that I can provide. You got an unfair advantage. I got to tell you, you got two moms. I do have two moms, which is going to be really trippy to explain to our kids. Like, this is my mom. And I have, they're designated as my A mom and B mom.

So my A mom is my adoptive mom, and b mom is my birth mom so that they have that right yeah they'll be able to organize their thoughts in in that way um when uh when your mom when your mom uh adopted you something happened uh before that and you were really young and you kind of thought that's what led to you being put up for adoption, right? Yeah. So when I was probably around three, my brother went and picked me up from the daycare. And as we're walking down the road, he finds a lighter on the ground. He picks it up, brings it home and decides late at night when my parents put us to bed, you know, we get up because we're kids and he's lighting strings on the, um, on a curtain and putting it out with water and he ran out of water

and I don't know why he didn't take the lighter with him. He put it on the bed, being the younger brother, want to do everything the older brother's doing. I decided I wanted to light it and I had incredible dexterity, which, you know, and I got the thing to light. I lit a string on fire and burned down our house. Wow. And then a couple of months later, my, you know, I'm in an orphanage. So obviously that was traumatic. And I was like, well, this is the reason I'm in the orphanage.

The reason I'm put up for adoption is because I was an evil and bad kid. And I burned down my house. Do you remember a lot of that? Oh, absolutely. Well, when something like that, well, you're always, I feel like you're always going to remember a fire and you know, I was the person that caused the fire, but I remember that whole process of burning down my house. And then we kind of were bouncing around to my father had a, my, my dad had a house. We stayed there for a little bit and we stayed at a grandmother's house. I remember the day before we went to the orphanage. So my mom went on a date with a random guy and we're in a hotel and she comes back and she's super happy.

And then all of a sudden we, she's like, okay, we're going to go for a ride. And we get in the car. We drive to the adoption agency. And I didn't know it was an adoption agency. And, you know, we're playing with toys because we're kids. And then she gets up and I'm all right behind my mom. And then all of a sudden, like, three people come up behind me. And I'm like, that's kind of weird.

And then I give my mom a hug and then she walks down the stairs so I'm about to follow her and then these three guys just grab me from behind and drag me into this adoption agency and obviously I'm you know crying for like a day and I don't know what's going on I don't know why I'm there um they separated because I was three my brother was six they separated us and I'm like I don't know what's going on I remember like we're in a we go into like a four bunk bedroom and they just put me in there and I'm bawling and then I think it was like four days later, my mom comes back. I'm like, oh, well, all is forgiven. And, you know, maybe I didn't realize this.

She just took me to another orphanage, which was the St. Vincent St. Thomas orphanage. Drops me off again. This time she doesn't give me a hug. We just go in a room and I'm playing on a little wormy thing and riding the big wheel around. And then they take me into another room and say, all right. And then I go crazy again. And they had to put me in a containment room because I was being very, you know, destructive.

I was a pretty strong kid. So pushing kids and breaking stuff. Wreaking havoc. I was wreaking havoc. I was causing chaos. And, you know, eventually while I was in the orphanage uh me and my they like we can't deal with this kid he's going crazy and they're like oh he's got a brother maybe he can help control him a little bit and then once i was hanging out with my brother it made it much

better but you know he's with like the six and twelve year olds and they're like and i'm three but that was the only way they could keep me under control because anytime i was away from my brother i was just really just i was chaotic it was it was crazy and then when you got it your brother you guys still went your separate ways though from the orphanage well i didn't you know they don't explain that to you i mean i don't know if it's really hard to explain to a four-year-old yeah the whole process so um and weird for me is like, since I was incredibly cute, I was very, very cute kid. I went on a lot of home visits.

So I would go visit people's homes and just have a ball. I went to Cincinnati Reds, uh, Cincinnati Reds games and went to circuses and got ice cream and I'd come back and my brother was always there. And I just thought that was just going to be the process. So while I was out there, I was having a good time. was always there and I just thought that was just going to be the process so while I was out there just having a good time and then one day at the the Hoffa's house my parents house they're like hey Reese you know we and I'd visit them did long visit stay for a week and they're like hey we'd love to adopt you do you want to come be a would you like to stay with us and my first instinct was

no I don't want to stay here because I because my brother wasn't there and they're like are you sure and I'm like okay this is really fun. Because I lived on a farm, so I got to play with cows and chickens and play in the hay. Nice. Got to run around and all kinds of stuff. And I eventually said yes. And during that process, I thought, surely they're going to adopt my brother too. And then it never happened.

And then you're just like, well, I'm already here and I'm having a good time. And then at that point, you know, we moved, we moved from Kentucky to Georgia and, and then there's not much you can do. Is your brother ugly? He's definitely not as good looking as me. Um, but he, I guess he's good looking guy. Um, did you, uh, have resentment for your mom you know as as you got older you know when you kind of started to realize like oh man like my mom took me somewhere and other people took me and did you did that build up at some point no um i never resented my mom because i always blame myself for the situation i was in because i felt like i i burned down the house she didn't have a choice.

I guess you just kind of think that since it was my fault, I should have to live with it. The hardest part was being separated from my brother. So from a very young age, I would write down random numbers all the time. Because I understood the concept of a phone and that you just push numbers in there and then all of of a sudden you would be in contact with people which was mystifying to me I'd never seen a phone before and so I would just write down random numbers even when I got older I would look through phone books when I was in college I looked up my last name which was Chisholm I knew my brother's first name was Lamont and I wrote I think it was 10 letters to Lamont Chisholm in Kentucky in hopes that maybe he would contact me and we could be reunited and see what's going on with him. And so for me, when I met him and then heard about like his life, that was also pretty hard.

also pretty hard. Um, I've always been very forward thinking and always trying to progress myself and someone that just kind of stays in one place and doesn't really have a lot of drive was very hard for me mentally for a while. Yeah. I mean, you must've, uh, must've had even some guilt, even though obviously it has nothing to do with anything you do. Right. Um, I, I mean, I, I felt guilty that, and I didn't, when I met him, I just thought he was, he was adopted. And, but then just hearing, like hearing his stories, like, yeah, my, our aunt adopted us. My mom who left from Kentucky to Connecticut actually came back to raise him for a little bit. And I guess he was a little bit of a hellion. He has a little bit of me and me and, me and um she couldn't deal with it and he ended up going to her grandmother's house going everywhere um and then just just seeing that he just you know he works at the you know kentucky fried chicken and it's like you're older you were both i mean we're pretty athletic like he played basketball and then all of a sudden you figure like, I didn't even graduate high school. It's like, what?

And he's like, well, the reason I didn't do it is because you weren't there. It's like, well, I, you weren't in my life and I figured out a way. It's just, it was very hard for me to conceptualize that. And, um, so I just, I felt bad for him, but I'm like, you kind of did it to yourself a little bit. Right. So maybe it's a very hard view, but that's just how I look at it. Did he maybe grow up like less fortunate, like in terms of like finances, like the people that you went with, maybe they're not rich or whatever, but like, do you think that played

into it a little bit where he just didn't have the same opportunities perhaps? Well, I mean, both of my aunts were mechanical engineers, so they had money. They ain't got no excuse. I mean, they were both mechanical engineers. I mean, they offered him, I'm assuming, a great life. You know, I kind of resent that not taking the opportunity. So when I found my mom, she was like, well, you have all these aunts and uncles that would love to meet you. And I tried to talk to them, but I just felt really uncomfortable, you know, going there. I felt like it would be a betrayal to my adoptive parents. Um, that was, you know, talking to my mom

about, Hey, uh, found my birth mom. Um, and I'm probably going to get on a plane and go visit her and i i just just to hear the just the pain of like i'm about to be replaced aren't i and i'm like no you're not going to be replaced you're just it just there's so many questions yeah um health questions like am i you know like i guess that's part of like why i didn't drink as much alcohol is like am i susceptible to alcoholism if i start i don't know how it works so i'm like i might gotta stay away from this am i gonna have a heart attack because it's in my genetics that kinds of stuff and then you know talking to my mom you know she's like no you're you don't have any of that stuff you're you know everybody in our family is healthy as a horse so you you're like, oh, well, that's good to know. I wish they would have put

that in the paperwork when you get adopted. Right. So, and that's, uh, that's, that's really, really, uh, that's really wild when you, so when you, uh, you know, had the opportunity to meet your mom, what was, what'd you start kind of asking her? Oh, just, you know, just the, the basic stuff. Where was I? Where, where did I live? Who's, you know, do you know where my dad is? And, you know, that stuff like that, you know, look at baby pictures. I kept it as simple as, as possible just for, for her herself.

Right. So I, like for her, she didn't really want to know about so i was in a biracial so i'm the only black person in our family so just the struggles of that my mom's like i don't want to know about that i just want to know about all the positives and what i see and it's like okay hey two witches own and i can i can play that game you know if you only want to keep it positive then i keep it positive so that game you know if you only want to keep it positive then i keep it positive so that is the kind of relationship that we have it's just anything positive and great i do i talk to her i don't talk to her about any struggles that i have

identity and all this other craziness i just keep it very platonic and we talk about the fun stuff you know about her kids and what they're doing they're playing tennis and all kinds of stuff like that did you ever ask her why yeah i, I asked, I mean, that was the, the, when I got, when I placed the phone call to her or when she called me when I was studying for an anatomy exam in college, the first thing I said was, I apologize for burning down our house and you having to put me up for adoption. And then she's like, that was not the reason you got put up for adoption. I was 14 when I had my first kid and this is a middle school. And then at 16, my sophomore year in high school, I had you and it was a struggle. Like she's like, this was back in the seventies

where they were implementing car insurance and she had to pay for car insurance. And then she's like, I had no money because, you know, because of, of what they're implementing. I knew that I could not support two kids with the income that I had, even though she had like my grant, we would stay at my grandmother's house and all that kind of stuff. She just, she knew she could not give us the life that we she felt like we deserved and when she found out that i was an act like she my brother and my mom since they kind of lived together they my brother he actually had visited my house when during the adoption process so he kind of had a general idea of where we used to live so they went back to see if i was still there um because my mom was curious and maybe wanted to have a relationship with me at the time.

And then, you know, I ended up moving and they had no idea that I would become an athlete. They, they had no idea that I would be, you know, go to college and do all these things. So when she, when I, when I told her I was doing, she's like, my goodness, I can't believe this. You're, you're a star athlete and you're going to, you're about to graduate from college. And this is unbelievable. So like when I was up in Indiana, he went to IU and I thought about enrolling into grad school just to be closer to her, to have a, a little bit more of a relationship with her. But, you know, I go up there and it's freezing cold and it's snow on the ground. And it was just a little bit, it was a little bit ground. It was a little bit weird. I'm not comfortable here.

But I still want to have you part of my life. We phone call. She comes visit from time to time. That kind of thing. Are you a strong believer in fate? I do. A lot of things just happen for a reason. Your brother picked up that lighter that one day for some, who the hell knows why. Yeah. I think fate was definitely in play. So in my adoptive family, I was the only one to go to college.

And my parents are incredible. It's just sometimes my brothers and sisters decide to do crazy things. And I like to think that God put me in that position to just kind of reaffirm like, hey, what you're teaching your kids is actually good stuff, that it actually makes them into productive people. and we're giving you this gift of this kid that's not your own to show you like, hey, you can raise someone and they can be great and spectacular and carry on the Hoffa name. I'm really big about, you know, the name and that kind of thing. And, you know, when you lose your name, because when I, before I was adopted, my name was Maurice Antoine Chisholm. So all of a sudden that's taken away and you're like, well, what am I?

So when I was four, I got to choose my name, which was pretty cool. My favorite TV show was Knight Rider. And the person I wanted to be was Michael Knight. So when they asked me, hey, what do you want your name to be? I said, well, I want my name to be Michael Knight after my favorite TV show. And they're like, well, you can't be Michael Knight, but you can be Michael. Michael's my first name. I just go by Reese. And, um, instead of Maurice, they're say they decided to shorten it to Reese. So I feel like there's a lot of power in the name, like Hoffa. I didn't know

that Hoffa was this really like Jimmy Hoffa and all that kind of stuff. Right, right. So for me, I just wanted to make sure that the Hoffa name carried some serious weight just in high school. And then all of a sudden you make it great. You know, anyone that hears Hoffa, I like them to think, oh, that person's amazing. So that's kind of the way I lived my life in a way is just kind of just make their name. Like they gave me this home. They gave me the last name of Hoffa. I wanted to make sure that when any, anyone that ever heard that name was going to say that person is awesome. I want, I want to take time to meet that Hoffa person. And I feel like in some ways I've been able to succeed doing that. You know, it's an

interesting perspective that you did it from such a positive way. I know there's other athletes and other people who've done it almost from a negative way where they had a chip on her shoulder about something happened. Um, uh, Shaquille O'Neal is like that, like Shaquille O'Neal, you know, he kind of reunited with his dad, with his dad when he's older and things like that. But, um, and I don't think that's his birth name either. I think he went through some different people and stuff like that, but his dad, I guess, basically walked out in the family when he was young and he was like, you know what? I'm going to figure out like, you're going to, you're going to know who I am. Like, I might not know who you are or where you are because you left us at such a young

age, but you're going to, you're going to like, you're going to feel me basically. You're going to know who I am because I'm going to be such a badass at something. And then he became Shaq. You know what I mean? Yeah. For me, the only one, and maybe this is an adoptive thing, but I would just one day like to meet my dad

just to say, hey, this is what your seed has produced. And my older brother has actually, after we were adopted or whatnot, has had the opportunity to meet him. And, um, and he posed the question to him. It's like, Hey, you know, he would love to meet you. And he just flats out, refuses like, no, um, I can't meet this person. And I just, to me, it just seems so weird.

Like I don't want anything from him. I don't, it's like, obviously, I'm not going to ask for money. I just want to meet the person that created me to see the male version of me in a way. And it kind of hurts a little bit that he's like, no, I don't want to meet this person. I don't want to have any interaction with them, which is kind of tough because you know, my dad loves me to death. And I'm just like, if you're like, I mean, I feel like a father, you want to know your kids a little bit. Right. But that was his decision. And I respected, Hey, I mean, maybe my celebrity is just too much for him to handle, but hopefully before he passes away, you know, I'm in my forties now, he must be in his sixties or seventies.

It would just be, even if it's on his deathbed, just like, Hey, it was, you know, now that I got to know who you were, it was just kind of cool to see what you've done in your life. I'm so proud of you. You're right. Not much. And then we could leave with that. It's probably painful for him i would imagine you know in some way you know he probably just just wants to just not not have it be a thing or whatever you know or too emotional or well this is the thing this is the the position

i think he doesn't want out there and i'm the circumstances of my birth are not the 100 most positive and i know there is a lot of shame in what he had done and that is probably why he doesn't want to have a relationship i it just you have to answer to what he had done and he doesn't want that to happen i'm not going to say what it is because who knows, he could be watching and listening to this and I don't want to out the guy, but there was probably a lot of shame in how the circumstances of my birth. Wow. Fucking wild ass story.

Yeah. So, but the household you did grow up in, the people that did adopt you, you felt enough love and felt enough attention. Oh, absolutely. you you felt enough love and felt enough attention oh absolutely um my my dad is probably the strongest person and it's just not not really physically he's not he's only like five eight but he is just the strong person that just i feel like he just he had tons of love what's his strongest lift give us his numbers strongest lift well my you know my dad is more like the uh woodland like he cut these like cuts down trees farmer-ish kind of person

doesn't really lift weight manly man there we go he's kind of a manly man and those guys you don't want to mess with either they got weird strength they do have weird strength yeah so, but taught me a lot on how to be a functioning male person, just respect of women, respect of yourself, respect of older people, uh, just kind of how to, how you should live your life. Your word means something kind of guy. And, um, really just foundation of sports he was you know he's a he was a good baseball player and obviously i played baseball but you know he's one of those guys that would just stop for a moment and hey let's go throw a football let me teach you how to throw football real quick or let's go and like i was trying i was trying for baseball and he literally took two weeks of teaching me back doing batting practice and throwing when i tried trying for baseball and he literally took two weeks of teaching me back

doing batting practice and throwing when i tried out for basketball he's a really good basketball player when i did basketball he would just take time and you know after his long day he gets up at like four o'clock in the morning gets home at 5 30 exhausted but then you know he'd be like hey i know you're about to try out for the basketball team hey let's let me teach you how to do um a left-handed layup or let me let's let's work on your jump shot real quick you know he's one of those kind of guys i'm just like and i ate it up i'm like this this is so awesome he's just he was super involved he never missed a single game wow that i played and it didn't matter if it was a monsoon storm. I remember my dad sitting, I'm playing football. He has those little Kroger bags just enough to cover his head

watching me in a monsoon play football. And, but he's also my, my most, uh, he will criticize everything I do though. Why didn't you tackle that guy? um i remember uh in eighth grade while i did track and field and played baseball i was in a shopping competition i got frustrated and i kicked the ball my dad's like you should never do that that's disrespecting the sport i'm like well what do you know it's not a big deal he hated like he hated when i like uh would celebrate on making a crazy sack he's like reese you you got to act like you've been there before. But, you know, it's so hard to get. Those kinds of things.

But he would also, I was offensive lineman. We get the book. He'd be the person out there running plays with me. Once your parents adopted you, how long did it take before you kind of let your guard down? Because I'd imagine going through everything with your, your biological mom, you know, she's left and then she came back and then she left again. Still working on that. Yeah.

Let my guard down. Um, it took a, I'd say five or six years. Wow. Um, just to, to be comfortable being in a new home. Um, I went from being with my brother to being in a family of four kids. So you understand like the pecking order, like the older person's in control

when the parents aren't there and all that kind of stuff and just being comfortable being in a room with another person um that must have been hard too when you're like eight nine years old and now you know i i know it's now your brother but or sister or whatever yeah but they're now kind of in charge of you why mom and dad go to the grocery store or whatever and you're like oh yeah what is this shit like are you not in charge of me right no it was it was a bunch of crap you don't know me my older my older brothers and sisters not in charge of me? Right? No, it was, it was more like. It's a bunch of crap. You don't know me. My older, my older brothers and sisters were in charge of this like all summer.

Like my parents were, were working class. So my mom and dad went to work every day and they would be in charge. Like my sister would literally lock us outdoors. Like, okay, everyone outside, you can't come inside until five o'clock before my mom and dad come home. And she would just, we had a little table outside. Can I get a canola bar or something? You can't just put me out here like this. You can go inside if you have to go to the bathroom.

Oh, we have 10 minutes where you can take a nap. That's the only time we can go inside. The rest of the time you're outside. And this was in Georgia. 10 minute nap. I like that. 10 minute nap you get to go inside. Because her excuse was, we're kids and we mess

up everything she's like i get the house nice and perfectly clean i do everything i'm supposed to do i don't want you hellions coming in the house knocking over stuff and getting getting there because you know you're a kid you get water everywhere you're knocking over trash cans how uh how much older was she oh she was let me see if i was four she was like? Oh, she was, let me see. If I was four, she was like 13. Oh, okay. So she was, so by the time she was taking care of us, when we moved to Georgia, she was like 15 years old. My brother was, uh, 14. So they had a good handle of our house and we had our neighbors that also kind of checked in on us, if you want to call it that. Did you ever feel like, uh, the other siblings were more

loved or anything weird like that just because maybe they're biological or yeah um i mean obviously that's that that goes through your mind um when you're the only one you always know that you're the special one so um i remember when i got glasses and i was like the only one in my family had glasses um and it wasn't never intentional, and I was very rough and tumble. I'm sticking out really bad. I'm really sticking out. I'm not the same color as everybody. Now I got glasses.

What's next? Give me a big red Rudolph nose while we're at it. If I had a list, if I had a crazy list, that would have just completed it. But no, um, you, I have a, a love hate relationship with my sister who's nearly the same age she's six months older in four six months she can tell me what to do kind of bs but other than that you know i think we're probably the closest my younger brother god bless his soul because i would terrorize him a little bit because it's like an older brother younger brother dynamic i just oh man i never let him win at anything and my little sister just i might as

well not even play with her and then my older brother and sister they were so much they're so much older you couldn't do anything and like my older brother and sister could literally beat me up so you know the only person close is my sister. So we're probably the closest out of anybody in our family because we're so close in age. You know, fast forwarding, you know, kind of out of that position and fast forwarding to you, you know, breaking records and becoming, you know, well-known and stuff. How was that received kind of in the household? Like as you, you know, as you became a teenager and as you started, you know, getting, you know, probably in local newspapers and things like that. What are the other siblings and household kind of feel about

it? Obviously my parents were ecstatic. I think both my mom and dad loved that I was doing really, really great and doing great things. My brothers and sisters, well, my younger brothers and sisters, they, I don't know. I guess they were cool. My middle sister, on the other hand, her name is Jeanette, you were going to butt heads on that. So she hated that I was so good at everything I did. Because you're all going through the same school too, right? Even though they're older and you know, you're the, the, the little brother and now you're

really kicking ass and you're, I mean, shit, man, being, being, uh, on track to be, uh, an Olympic athlete is, you know, it's, it's crazy thing. So they must've been like, you know, this is, and I know you're playing football and doing other things. Yeah. I'm playing football. I'm wrestling. I did a little baseball.

Dabbled in baseball. I think my sister, she was the person that helped me stay level-headed on this. She never let me get ahead. When you have six kids in a house and you're working class, you don't have a lot of money. So my parents were like, when you turn 16, you have to get a job. And then you kind of support yourself, trying to teach you life goal, like life skills. Cause you know, when I was in middle school, I told my parents, I'm going to go to college. So they're like, Hey, we need to help you up. So you got to get a job when you turn 16. So I paid for, you know, gas in my car,

my car insurance. And then I started paying for my own clothes and meals at school. And a lot of that was pushed by my sister because she's like, well, I had to do this a couple of times. So he's got to do it too. And I'm an inherent people pleaser. So, you know, she didn't follow it all the way, but I'm like, well, if that's what you want me to do, I'm going to do it. And I always made it work like she she hated me more because i would get a job and i would just you know trickle my way up and make you know crazy and pretty for a yeah i understand good money for a high schooler so it drove her crazy like everything she tried to do to make it harder i just found found an easier

way to make it done. It just drove her nuts. And, you know, and we laugh about it now. She's like, I don't know why I was doing that. That was just me being stupid. I don't know. But now it's just, you know, but now, you know, she's doing her own thing and she's just 100%. But everybody in my family is like, oh, we're just so happy you're doing great things and, uh, would love to just do what I do. That's cool. Did some of them, uh, end up traveling to some of your competitions and stuff as you started progressing into world championships and different things like that? Only my mom.

And that was just more because the NBCs and TV stations were like, we would really like to have your mom a part of this adventure. And she played her part. She understood what it was all about. So she and she, she played her part. She understood what it was all about. So she would, you know, sit down, do her interview. She was mic'd up for the Olympic trials in 2012 and all that kind of stuff. Um, she did some stuff with Johnson and Johnson and, you know, you know, I, my mom is an absolute trooper.

Like she would come up and do these interviews for these people right after work she would drive the you know hour and a half two hours to come to athens and and talk and she she's awesome or she we did like a photo shoot with johnson and johnson and she it was like five hours of people just taking pictures of us and she just okay this is so great and you know my mom's awesome both my mom's actually but my adoptive mom and birth mom were doing this kind of stuff. Yeah. Cause you know, you watch the Olympics that they are, they always give you the story. Yeah. They always give you that, that story of, you know, uh, you know, how this guy came to be sort of thing. And, and that's almost like the most fun part of

watching the Olympics. A lot of times it's the story. Yeah. You get that insight into like, you know, who this person is person is and all this stuff. So as you're progressing through high school and stuff, when did there start to become some sort of recognition in terms of maybe like a scholarship or something like that? It was my junior year. The first year I started throwing shot, this is where luck kind of plays into this.

Don Babbitt had just gotten the job at the University of Georgia, and this is in 2016, or 1996. I know, I don't know why I went there. Yeah, you just confused me. You're like a time machine. Yeah, he was a time machine situation, but he just got the job at Georgia and Georgia was like, hey, we're going to give you a bunch of money to get shot putters. So, and I was on that short list. I was, you know, the number one shot putter in the state of Georgia. So he instantly recruited me, you know, over the, while I'm watching the Olympic games, he, I'm getting phone calls from Georgia and they're like, Hey, we would love for you to

come to our school. How long were you throwing for? One year, just one year, one year. And, uh, and, and as a football player, um, as a football player, in terms of like, uh, how good some other guys weren't were, um, advancing maybe to like the division one level and stuff. Did you feel like you weren't that kind of material? Um, yeah. In terms of football, you know, the state of Georgia, we play really, really good football. Yeah. So you learn real quick what a Division I talented athlete looks like.

I played against some of them. They move and are incredibly powerful. And I'm like, I can't move like that guy. And I'm not as tall as this person. Right. And when you're going through that process, you're like, look, you're not really tall enough to play the position you're in like if you're like if i was a fullback i would be easier for me to go to college than being a defense and offensive lineman at six feet so i could have played at a smaller d2 university right perfect

size for that but you know i you know i have big dreams i want to go to a major division one school and when i was going through the process a lot of division one schools you know, I, you know, I have big dreams. I want to go to a major division one school. And when I was going through the process, a lot of division one schools, you know, the Clemson, Liberty, Florida State, Georgia, they were all like, hey, we think you could be great. You know, for every one of those stories, it's the, you know, UCLA's, the Kansas's are like, you're not, you're too small to throw the 16 pound ball. You're never going to make it go anywhere. No one at six feet's ever gone thrown really, really far. And really the only schools even

offer a full scholarship would be like Clemson, Liberty, and Georgia. Those are kind of like my three schools that were, Hey, we're going to give you as much money as it takes to come here. And then everyone else is like, you're not good enough. So we'll give you like 50%. I really love that about sports. I, I, I think that a lot of times I think there's like, people kind of have this perception that people are saying they're not smart enough or not good enough, but usually no one's actually saying it to you. Like, Hey, you're too stupid. You'll never be able to write a book or whatever. Like no one's actually going to say that to your face. Right. Yeah. But when it comes to sports, they tell you flat out, like, dude, you're not good enough. And're like no but i and they're like no you're too short

you're too fat you're too slow you're like jesus all right you're just unloading everything on me but i really love that about sports and i think it's a healthy process to go through you're like okay well i can't be like some of these people over here. I can't really figure that out. Yeah. Let me try this one over here. Oh, okay. That one didn't work so great either. I wonder how this would work. Yeah. You find something and you're able to navigate it.

Who turned you on to throwing a shot put? His name was David Makovic at Lakeside High School. He's not there now. He's at a place called Tequila High School. He is probably, I guess for for georgia athletics he's the most passionate throws coach you will ever find oh cool um with his bad knees and all and uh he's got the southern accent and everything going well he's got a little bit of southern accent but he's just he he just loves throwing And I just got really lucky that he was there.

And I wished, in the funny story, like when I first met him, he didn't want to work with me. This was in middle school. I'm throwing the shot. And one of the off days from baseball, I'm doing track and field. So I go up to the high school coach, Coach Mikovic. And I'm like, hey, I'm a shot putter from middle school. I'm in eighth grade. Can you help me become a better thrower?

And he takes a look at me. And I guess I'm not shot putter from middle school. I'm in eighth grade. Can you, can you help me become a better thrower? And he takes a look at me and I guess I'm not that impressive looking. And he's like, no, I'm not going to help you. You're not good enough to be a shot putter. And I'm like, okay. And you know, I go and do my, you know, really horrible technique of throws. And then you go fast forward two years later, cause I played two years of, uh, high school baseball. and then you go fast forward two years later because i played two years of uh high school baseball and i he's like hey why don't you try throwing i'm like sure and he's like well you're not good enough to actually throw with us yet you have to uh we went to a long jump pit and he said once you can throw over the long jump pit you will be good enough for our time for me to work with you which is probably like what 12 feet or something like that? I think it was, I don't know, 30 feet. I don't know.

It was a long one. So eventually, you know, I spent all this time by myself in the corner of our track throwing, trying to get over this long jump pit. And I like did it a couple of times. I call him over and I do it. He's like, okay, you can start throwing with us now. And then it was like, I went from throwing 30 or 35 feet in a very short period of time. It went like 46 and then I broke 50 feet within two weeks. And he's just like, oh yeah, you, you're pretty talented.

Maybe you could be good. And he just, and he, and then, uh, I think we went to a track meet where I got, you know, six, he's like, I think you should probably learn how to spin. I'm like, okay. And should probably learn how to spin. I'm like, okay. And we tried to learn the spin. I'd never, I didn't even compete in the spin until the state championship. So two months later, after working diligently on trying to learn the spin, he's like, okay, now we think you could throw with the spin and actual competition and went there. And one state was the number one shot put in the state of of Georgia. And kind of the rest is history.

And then after that, going into my senior year, I was just like, okay, let's see what happens. I went to national meets, finished second in the country indoors. And one of the top ten, there were a couple people. And this is what's great. All the people that were above me when we get to college, now I'm better than all of them, which was awesome. than all of them, which was awesome. And then, you know, then coach Don Babbitt comes into my life and is like, yeah, we're going to offer you a full scholarship to come to Georgia, which my parents were just like, oh, thank you, Jesus.

Because that was like when I, when I started kind of getting things going in middle school there and I told him, hey, I want to go to college. The second thing, the first thing he said was we can't pay for you to go to college. You have to figure out a way to go there yourself. We, we just, we don't have that kind of money. We'll try to support you in any way we can, but we can't pay for you to go to college. You have to figure out a way to go there yourself. We, we just, we don't have that kind of money. We'll try to support you in any way we can, but we can't pay for you to go to college. You got to find your way there. So they put it out there. I knew exactly what the expectation was. So when I got a full scholarship to go to Georgia, they're just like, awesome. Thank you. And you know, it's funny, like the

tears I saw in my mom's eyes when she's dropping me off at the University of Georgia are absolutely priceless. Because at that moment, I'm like, they, they, they, they, hopefully this, this big sense of accomplishment has finally been hit, hit some. Yeah. They spent all this time raising you. Yeah. A lot of time, effort, money, everything into it. And, uh, and it results in something that they probably, they probably never even thought of. I don't think they, you know, maybe they, I mean, they knew I was a hard worker.

Yeah. But to actually see it happen, um, I know they're just like, we, we, we did it. I think, and I think every parent, if you don't, if I think of every parent out there is like, that sends their kid to college, doesn't take to say we did it we did our job then uh you're missing a moment yeah i i think i think that's true as well i think it's a you know it's an amazing thing to be able to get any of it right you know being a parent like this whole thing is very is very complicated but there's nothing more beautiful that can happen than when your child finds something that they like oh yeah like you you don't like shot but you love it yeah uh so it's so it's even different you know but man i find something that my kids like and i'd love to celebrate it you know my my daughter likes to

draw stuff and uh the two two drawings that kind of stood out to me i made t-shirts out of them and i wear them sometime and then i made sizes for her and my wife and stuff like that and um we all have fun with it because i want to i think that's like a win like hey we found something that you love like and who knows who knows what it turns into whether she is passionate about art i don't care I just, I'm just excited that she found something that she, she really enjoys. What was it like for you when you were in high school, you're trying football and you're trying some other things. And then I know it took a, took time for this thing to like click.

Yeah. But when this thing clicked and then people were starting to write, you know, newspaper articles about you and stuff, what did that feel like um it was pretty awesome um i think it was for me it was really awesome to share it with my my parents um to go to like the rotary clubs and you know they when you do good at stuff they make they you go to award banquets yeah all this kind of stuff i'd'd imagine even in town, people would be like, hey, kid, I saw you in a newspaper. Good job, right? Exactly.

That's amazing. That's huge. I remember when I made the newspaper winning my first day championship. I still have the article. I'm a hoarder, so I have every single article. Of course. Stuff like that's great. Throughout most of my career

that was unbelievable like i kept reading it like i can't believe they're writing a story about me and it's only about me and what i did and you know i did football and you know you got to share it with footballs like you know right you'll get a blurb. Like I was a lineman, so it's like, well, Reese had, he was the defensive player of the week and he had five tackles, but the quarterback had, and then quarterback and running back did all this. That kind of stuff. So it was kind of interesting to be able to look at a newspaper article and it's just about me and my accomplishments

and being able to share it with not only my parents, but the throws coaches. I'm by far one of the best throwers to ever come out of our school. So to be able to put their name out there and say, hey, these are some really good coaches, like David Makovic, Coach Gaddy, those guys, they loved it too. They actually put me on a plane to go to my first national meet. I've never been on a plane before. I didn't even know what to expect.

I'm sitting there. I'm like, so. They paid for it. They paid for it. So. Wow. That's huge. I'm sitting in this plane.

I'm just like buckled in. It's like, okay, what's about to happen? Like, okay, just relax. And this, this big heavy machine that weighs many tons is going to fly in the air and it's going to stay there for the, uh uh three hours as we go to boston doesn't even have a propeller it doesn't have propeller just as big just is not going to work everyone please get off the plane now yeah it's like everything gets really loud and the sensation of being you know propelled back in my seat and then we're in this weightless world and then we

land and you know we're coming from georgia and boston and now it's freezing cold and it's snowing and we don't know where to go that was by far the that was what really opened my eyes we get on the subway we're sitting in our seat and the guy next to me says he's going to kill my coach and i'm just like what like i never never even had that i never had that kind of experience in georgia but this crazy guy on the subway is like you see that guy over there i'm gonna kill him i'm like don't know what you're just like so you know i'm like coach we gotta get off this bus we gotta get off this thing really fast we get on me and we go up and we're trying to find a hotel and you know we're not used to

snow in georgia we have like one inch and it's like the apocalypse um so we're walking around in the snow and we're like where are we supposed to go it's supposed to be here and it's like just a regular building we walk five blocks in a circle and then we finally find it kind of experience just like this is so awesome we went to you know went to university of harvard and ate food down there i, I never been on a college campus before. And just, just getting those, like, these are the kinds of the experiences I got because I got to throw and I got to experience it with two people that got, that shaped my life and gave me the future I have today. That's, that's amazing.

Yeah. I'm trying to think, uh, you know, Georgia Bulldogs. I'm trying to think about like, Hmm, what, uh I'm trying to think about, like, who they had there football-wise. Was Garrison Hurst there? Oh, yeah, Garrison Hurst was there. Garrison Hurst, the badass. Oh, he was. So, you know, being a person that does weight training stuff,

we had a place called Powerhouse Gym. And Garrison Hurst, you know, right after his senior season, and he lived, was it like 30 minutes up the road he came to our gym and worked out i've never been so i've never been that close to greatness in my entire life yeah like he glow like he walked in and he's glowing it was unbelievable like he's like he had his little entourage of people like why are you glowing dude what are you doing this is unbelievable like his his skin was so shiny i wanted to touch him uh and like but you know you you don't want to do that and and whatever but he was on yeah what if he punched you well he hopefully if even if he punched me it's it's kind of like i'm a

wrestling fan um and rick flair's uh stepdaughter goes university of georgia oh wow um i i wanted him and maybe he'll do it. I wanted him to slap me. To give you a chop. I wanted him to give me the chop. I've been watching that for years. And my brother-in-law's a big wrestling fan too. I think they would.

And since he's at Georgia, it's killing him. Just to have him do that. And I know he's older. You look at him. But he still has the fire. I know he's got, you look at him, but he still has the fire. I know he's got one left in him. Oh yeah. He's got a, he's got a few. Yeah.

I've, you know, I just go bare chested backhand right there. Love red marks. I can get the pictures. Wrestling was, you know, wrestling was huge, uh, in that area, you know? Oh yeah. The, uh, the old days of the like AWA and like, you know, even like, um, even like through the, through the eighties. Oh, absolutely.

You know, it was, it was enormous. And Ric Flair, um, Ric Flair got in like a fight almost every night, uh, outside of wrestling because he was such a heel and he was so hated. People would like throw shit at his car and like, he would always take it too far. And then he'd end up like in a scuffle with somebody well um pretty wild the steiner brothers i think it's rick his son goes to kentestau state university and we went up there and uh we we do the forge and we're up there demoing it for him and his son is probably the he's got all the records there but they have a wrestling belt and i have a picture of me like you know for me it's like yeah if he would have said oh it was hulk hogan i'm like okay that's

great right i'm like sting steiner brothers um at wcw background i i that's because it was on tbs and i think the other ones were on cable we had regular one. So those are the wrestlers that I watched growing up. And believe me, my younger brother has had the stinger on him a bunch of times. Those moves all hurt, man. They're no joke. So you think it's fake. So that's the problem with them saying it's fake is because I could do it on my little brother and it would hurt him. Yeah.

And it's like this. I put an arm bar on him. It doesn't feel fake. Yeah. I could put an arm bar on him and you know what? It hurt Yeah, I could put an arm bar on him, and you know what? It hurt. Oh, yeah. I twist his arm around, like, oh, this really works.

The Boston Crab, the Camel Clutch. Oh, my gosh. They're all brutal. Jake the Snake. Do you guys remember this play? I remember hearing it on the radio. Oh, yeah, against the Jets in overtime, yep. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm unfortunately a Jets fan. And this is, god damn, Garrison Hurst goes 98 yards right here. He's fast, man. He was incredible in college. I remember watching him. Oh, come on. That's an illegal stick farm. Look at T.O.

Look at T.O. You're not catching that guy. Get out of here. Wow. So I remember i heard this on the radio and i just be like ah like damn it it's over and then it's like wait he broke a tackle he's still going yeah no this ain't gonna happen and all of a sudden we're just going nuts it was so sick look at bill parcells like oh man yeah what an insane yeah that was an insane play

georgia you know they're not uh they're not short of having great running backs i mean oh yeah one of the greatest of all time went there herschel walker and i'm sure i'm sure there's a herschel walker stuff everywhere over there there is uh herschel walker i mean i feel like anything he touches turns the gold so talk about freak athletes that might be one of the freakiest athletes to ever walk the face of the earth he pretty much is i i'll give him well i mean what about bo jackson yeah bo jackson you gotta give those really i mean two sports yeah we got look we have the bo jackson rookie card right here bam i had his uh score football baseball card

oh yeah i had that one it was it that's, that's a rarity. You don't have very many of those. I think I still have it. Yeah. I mean, Bo Jackson did prove it because he was in, he was in two different sports, but you got to remember too, you know, Herschel Walker was on like the bobsled team, right? Yes. And then later on in life when he was like 50, he's like, oh, the MMA seems cool.

I'm going to try that. And he fought a bunch, you know. Talk about a individual that's in incredible shape. Yeah. That's Herschel Walker. Jacked and tanned for life, I guess. Jacked and tanned for life. Absolute life.

And now that he's like one of those guys, you're around him, he glows. He's just like, this guy is unbelievable. And it's, I try and I like, I know I've had that experience with people where they come up to you and they put you on this pedestal and they think you're some kind of God life figure. And I try to, you know, control that.

But when you're around people like that, it's just like, you, you start shaking. You can't, you can't contain it. You're like, Oh man.

Yeah. You just, it just, you turn into a bump, bumbling idiot. You do. Absolutely. And I try not to be that big of an idiot and just be quiet,

but I'm just like that guy snickering in the corner. Herschel Walker was crazy though. Cause he would do like kickoff returns and stuff too. I mean, and he was huge. He was a monster. I mean, who's that big doing kickoff returns?

That just shows you how much of a, just he's an alien. He was, uh, sit down to earth. He didn't know it was an alien, but he's an alien. He was, uh, sat down to earth. He didn't know he was an alien, but he's an alien because he, he is. Not clearly he is. Super strong. And he is sprinter, like he was a sprinter. Like he's probably the first high collegiate athlete to have thousands of people watch him run a race.

He's unbelievable. Wow. We're watching some footage of him just running people over like crazy yeah it's it's i don't know man there's there there's something so fascinating about uh genetics and uh where some of these mutants come from yeah i remember um you know watching a lot of uh barry sanders when barry sanders was playing and oh yeah um i always thought like this guy i don't know what it is about him but like they should You know, watching a lot of Barry Sanders when Barry Sanders was playing. Oh, yeah. I always thought, like, this guy, I don't know what it is about him, but, like, they should study him. So, like, how is he able to move like that?

How is he able to stop and change direction and make it look like one single motion? How is that possible? That's a very good question. I wish I could move like Barry Sanders. like not even like think about this was crazy. His son can't move like him. No. Like you you're raised in that household and you, you can't do what he does. I always found it interesting watching him run, how much his shoulders would move. You know, his shoulder pads would, would they move, they move all over the place.

Yeah. Like, um, there's something like magical about watching him run. Yeah. But he looks like he's running really hard where there's some guys who are like, uh, a little bit more graceful when they run and they got longer. I mean, he was short and maybe that's part of it. This one is, or the one where he gets twisted up and flips around is like the. Is that the Chicago Bears?

Yeah, there's a good one against the Bears and the Cowboys, which is probably coming up here in a minute. But I love, I love this kind of stuff. Did you end up going to a lot of football games when you're at the University of Georgia? I mean, that's a, that's a big thing, right? I tried to go to as many as I possibly could. They get like, as a, one of the perks of being an athlete at some of these universities is you, they give you free tickets. Right.

And you know, I'm from Kentucky. So anytime like Georgia's playing Kentucky in basketball or something like that, or, you know, watching Florida games and stuff, I'm definitely done ho for that. I remember I was, uh, always so frustrated. I mean, I love watching Emmett Smith in the day too, but they were always talking about who's better. And I'm like, come on, man. Barry. Barry Sanders.

Not only is he better, but he's so much more fun to watch. What about Jim Brown? That guy? Oh yeah. He was, he was for his time. Oh my God. Great. Gale Sayers.

Great. I love watching those guys play. You know, it's interesting. We were talking about pro wrestling earlier and you wouldn't think, you know, you don't, I guess you don't really think about the prowess of some of these pro wrestlers, how, um, how athletic they are. Oh yeah. You don't really understand it, you know, fully. But, um, you know, I did pro wrestling for five years and when I was at, uh, when I was inville kentucky the wwe training ground yeah i saw some crazy shit from some of these athletes and i was like it made me realize i was like okay i i'm i'm

not only am i not anything like them i can't even figure it out how to be on that level you know so i'm like i'm gonna have to figure out a a different wrestling strategy or something because i i'm not like these other guys i mean there's guys doing i remember shelton benjamin um who was an all-american collegiate wrestler yeah hopped up on the top rope you know undertaker does that thing where he walks on the ropes yes um shelton benjamin and the undertaker does it and he's holding someone's hand and he comes down and he whacks you on the head right yeah shelton benjamin did it by himself no one holding his hand he ran around all all four corners and we got to the fourth corner he did a backflip landed on his feet and i was like i'll never be i'll never be

able to do that whatever that was yeah whatever that was i don't have that and there he was all shredded and everything and there's there was other great talent there too. Like, uh, we had, uh, Bobby Lashley was there and, you know, I, I, I, uh, me and my brothers actually got John Cena into wrestling. No way. Yeah. Yeah. John Cena. Uh, he used to work. So we had a, we had a friend, we, we worked at a place called mass movement where we all moved fitness equipment.

Yeah. Probably the worst job ever. mass movement where we all moved fitness equipment. Yeah. Probably the worst job ever, you know, trying to move a, uh, thousand pound, uh, you know, calf raise machine or something up a flight of stairs. Oh my God. Yeah. Crazy, craziest thing you'll ever try to figure out in your life.

Yeah. It was wacky. Um, but that's the job that me and my brother had. And one of the girls that worked there she was like the warehouse uh manager she kept telling us about her friend she's like oh my god like i can't wait for you to meet my friend john he's gonna love you guys he's into lifting and he's into wrestling and all this stuff and um so we were like oh okay whatever and she kept telling telling us how jacked he was and you hear people say it all the time.

They're like, oh, the guy's really big. And then you meet him and you're like some little squirt. He's not big at all. Right. Yeah. Well, then she showed me a picture of, uh, John Cena on the beach and it's, he's like 18 or something. And he's doing like a double bicep pose.

And I'm like, I'm like, how old do you say this guy is? And she's like, and I was like 20 or something at the time. Or she's like, well, he's, you know, he just, he's probably like 18 or 19 in this picture. And I'm like, he looks like a professional bodybuilder. I'm like, that's insane. Like he's, he's just that jacked. She's, she's like, yeah, he, he trained, you know, she's like, I've been telling you about him forever. So fast forward a few months and John came out and he wanted to, um, he wanted to pursue some bodybuilding and my, this is when I lived in Los Angeles.

And, uh, you know, John trains at Gold's gym in Venice and he wants to pick up a job cause he's there for the entire summer. So he's like, I need to make some money while I'm out here. I don't want to be a bum and just bum off my friends while I'm here. Yeah. So he picks up a job at this place where we're moving fitness equipment. That's where we ended up meeting him. Get to know him a little bit better and, uh, get to, you know, see how he trains and all. And he trains like a lunatic, extremely strong.

And, um, he, he starts talking about how he wants to do like a bodybuilding show. He signs up for this bodybuilding show, does tremendous. He looks amazing. He's completely shredded. Yeah. Yeah. He's that's, that was the bodybuilding show that he did.

He looks, he looks freaky, right? Yeah. And then this opportunity came along for him to do, I believe the show was called Battle Dome, which Battle, yeah. Battle Dome was kind of like American Gladiators. Yeah. And my oldest brother actually ended up being, uh, uh, one of John's first, uh, pro wrestling

coaches. My oldest brother, uh, somebody hit John up and said, Hey, you know, you would be great for this Battle Dome thing. And, uh, he was like, Oh my God, this is great. They threw six figures at him. He's like, this is life changing. You know, this is, this is a huge. And so my oldest brother, my oldest life-changing you know yeah this is uh huge and so my oldest brother my oldest brother knows you know a shyster when he sees one you know so my

oldest brother's like dude he's like let me he goes just don't sign let me look at can i look at the contract he's like i i've been around these people before my brother kind of looks it over and stuff and he's like man he's like this is really one-sided this is all for them you have the potential to make six figures but you know he's like who the hell knows what's really going to happen yeah my brother said dude why don't you come down and and wrestle and my said me and my brothers are already in this wrestling league yeah ultimate pro wrestling he said wrestling will be around forever this shit this battle dome thing yeah he said he'd be on air for a couple years and it'll probably go so yeah what are you gonna be this battle dome guy the rest of your life or whatever and uh john kind of agreed and he thought

okay well yeah let me try wrestling and so uh he came down he started wrestling he got a contract within about probably six or eight months or so. And, uh, he was, you know, it took him a long time. He was, but, uh, he, he went to, uh, Louisville, Kentucky after that and spent five or six years. They're really kind of like honing in the craft, you know, at his time when he came in, they weren't going to let some bot Jack bodybuilder guy come in and, and start to, uh, run. There he is. And start to really run shit because, um, they've done that before with guys that had a body.

Yeah. And it, it just was, it, it just worked out shitty where they weren't good wrestlers. They weren't good on the mic. And so they really, they really,

he, he really took his time developing a character and how he spoke, you know, on camera. And he just took, they took a lot of time with his wrestling skill and everything. Yeah. And so, yeah, you know, it's, um, but he, but he's a mutant of an athlete too. I mean, John can squat. Um, I think his best squat is like mid, mid sixes. Yeah.

He benches, he's benched, uh, nearlyed uh nearly 500 pounds um i've been friends with him for 20 plus years um and he's just he's just mutated uh he has drug test after drug test after drug test posted in his gym yeah he actually does get drug and no one ever believes him but if you ever you ever get a chance to meet the guy and you look at his structure you look at his wrist is the size of your fist it's weird man it's weird he just some people just people are just different man there he is wearing the strong sleeves banging out a 611 squat he actually it's like i don't know if anybody ever notices this but when you see him on tv and stuff you can you can see some weird stuff with him. His hands are just gigantic.

Yeah. He's got these massive hands. There's like threads and posts all over the place about John Cena's hands. It's a kind of a funny thing, but his hand is like, you're wearing one of those foam, one of those foam hands. He's got this massive, uh, you know, some people just have a structure. I'm sure in your time, you must have been accused of doing stuff because a lot of people think that explosive athletes, it's almost like you can't meddle in Olympics without being on some stuff, right? Well, this is how I attempted to handle it. No, I don't do it, but I don't go out of my way to say that I don't to certain people.

I want to, Hey, if you, if you think I am, yeah, of course, all the time. Yeah. Yep. And like, what are you on? Like, um, we'll name some stuff. Yep. That's it. That's it.

Like I. You're like, I only do it Monday through Friday. It's not a big deal. I can stop anytime I want. Yeah. I, I like the approach that I want people to think that what I do can't be done naturally. Yeah. But I can, but the thing is you can't like the way I look at it. If you looked at all my lifting numbers and everything that I've done, there's nothing that's just going to jump off the paper.

Like, wow, that's unbelievable. You know, 500 pound bench. That's pretty, I mean, most strong people can hit that. 600 pound squat, pretty much anybody can hit that. So I don't think, if you think that I got to 600 pounds because I was using something out of a bottle, then fine. Believe that. If that makes you, if that helps you sleep better, it makes you think that that's what you got to do, then go do that. But but if it's just it's just consistency over time you're

watching a video of me squatting 600 for the first time look at those glutes yeah uh the the most important thing is cory who stands behind me is like i hope he gets this because there is no way i'm saving him is was cory just praying he just he just prayed that i would get it um no he didn't he he doesn't tell you this early on i'm thinking honestly i think he's right behind me i didn't know he was that far behind me like standing as far away from me as possible he's not really supportive at all no he might as well not even been in the room he might as well not even be spotting me because there there's no, like he did. Look, he's not even bending his knees. He's in jeans.

He's not ready to go at all. This is a great video on four spotting skills right here. So what I got at the end of that was, um, a back slap saying, okay, you made it. That was a what? Six plates for a W dub. Yeah. Just for a double. This is the, like, um, the 600 600 this is the first time i've ever done 600

just squatting just for it's more for fun like cory's like hey why don't you do 600 i'm like yeah why don't i do 600 yeah i mean this weight that you're doing right here moves great i mean it looks like i feel like there's a lot more in the tank and i believe the the philosophy that cory has is he never wants me to do anything that I can't do. So there's never been a lift that I've done that I've ever missed when Corey's there. I, I, everything I've gotten there. So it makes you believe there's nothing I can't live. I think it's, I think it's, I think it's crucial, uh, to know, to know the athlete that you're with because there might be some other people where you want them to kind of miss.

Yeah. Maybe, maybe because when you tell them to do some of the assistance work and you tell them to do other things maybe they're not getting some of that done yeah so it's like you know what it'd be good for this asshole to miss every once in a while then i can kind of say look okay you know you you're on track you should have made the lift yeah but you're not doing your accessory work we've talked about you know yeah i'm sure cory's over there you know he's like nodding his head he's had that have this conversation a million times

with a million people at your gym i'm sure yeah that's the the beauty of having now i the thing is i probably could have found some trainer that has some crazy system for lifting. Maybe had better spotting skills. Better spotting skills. But there's something to be said about just a person that is young and eager to get into lifting and brings fresh ideas. I could go to somebody that's much older and wiser, and they're just going to tell me what they do. Instead of going to someone that, you know,

Corey was just kind of getting into the strength game a little bit. So to go to him, he's going to, he's going to have all these really unique ideas on how to build strength. Like I didn't want to go to a throw, a lifting coach that was already coached a bunch of people in, in, in throws. Corey's never coached a thrower. There's something, uh, something real magical about having someone that's a clean slate. Yeah they're open to a lot of new ideas that happens here uh at this facility all the time uh both with our lifters and our employees um you know what can i share with somebody um about a particular job when they've never done the job before yeah i can share all kinds of stuff i can share my interpretation of what it should look like.

I can share all the different, uh, all the different kinds of mottos and mantras that we kind of hang on to here. Actually, this is, this is what the company does. This is how it works.

And they're not going to have a lot of, a lot of input or interaction in the beginning because they're just going to kind of be doing, they're going to learn, they're going to kind of learn the ropes right but once we get into it they're so excited about it and they were they'll come to me and they'll say you know i've been thinking about this and i'll be like shit man that's great well now it's to the point where i always tell them oh you know your job a lot better than i do you know what you know what do you think and they'll come to me with uh new ideas and stuff so it works out great and they bring a lot of energy to it and that's kind of what you're saying about cory huh cory brings tons of energy and i think he he challenges me in

ways that you know a 50 year old rose coach couldn't like uh i mean i've challenged me and cory have done a bench squat uh challenge where whatever I bench, Corey has to squat. And it almost killed him one time. But, you know, he, so like, I think I did, you know, 560 somewhere. No, 500. Was it 500? Okay, 500 in the bench and Corey had to squat it. And Corey's, I don't think he's ever squatted that much.

Or, no, it's 485. And Corey's, I don't think he's ever squatted that much or his four, no, it's four 85. Um, he went home, ate, you know, five, you know, 24 inch steaks, bolt up, went in and it almost got him, but got by golly, he went out there and did it just stuff like that. It's just, it's good to have somebody that can challenge you and just come up with different ways to keep your mind engaged in working out because lifting weights can be somewhat monotonous. So if you can have somebody that can come in there, like we did a challenge where he's like, Reese, I don't think you could do 315 25 times. I'm like, yeah, sure I can. So, I mean, I got, I did 24.

So technically he's right. But it's just good to have somebody that's going to make it fun to work out. And when you come in, you're excited about doing stuff. Yeah. We're looking at a video where we had a bunch of high school punks come in and say, Reese, we can do more 225s, three lifters, by the way, than you can do in a single. So they did 38 and I did 38. Awesome. It made me think that maybe I could do the combine.

If I can get 38 out there, that's pretty, this guy is amazing. He should play football. That's pretty, yeah, that's pretty legit. Yeah. When you were throwing and on your, on your way to the Olympics and stuff, how, how much did you implement the big three

as far as squat, bench and dead? And you're training your training uh, training and stuff. Well, I always benched and squat, um, deadlift. Um, I was not the best deadlifter. Now we, we, you know, we, we have kids that come in and challenge me and say, Hey, I can deadlift more than you. And this being a bigger human being, I can somewhat naturally come in and crush them. So that's what I'll do.

I'll just play around. Like I just play around with deadlift. I don't, I don't take it as seriously as I probably should. Yeah. Where do you think you get your confidence from? Cause like, I know early on in the conversation we had before we even came on, uh, on the air, you were just like, you know, they said I couldn't do it. So I'm going to prove everyone wrong type of a mentality.

Like, where do you think that, like, uh, just the fact that you knew you were going to overcome pretty much any obstacle that faced you I don't know 100% where that confidence comes from it's just just something inside of me and maybe it's just through life I've've always, everything I've tried, I've always been successful with. I mean, I've tried out for many teams. I think there's only one basketball team in middle school that I did not make. And that was it. That was my only failure there. So when that happens, you just get this, you get confident that it doesn't matter what they throw at me.

Like I'd never played organized baseball, but made every single baseball team that I attempted to try out for just on sheer athletic ability. And I was a horrible hitter. Maybe it was because I was a catcher and I just not a catchers out there, but I made every single baseball team I ever played on and contributed on all those teams. Like when I played football now being a, you know, a male in the state of Georgia, I am pretty much exposed to football from birth. And ever since I was a young boy, I always wanted to play football. So when I tried out for the baseball team and I'm, you know, the seventh and eighth graders are playing against each other. I'm the starting defensive tackle. And I'd never played, like I didn't play PV league baseball

or play PV league football. I just went out there and I just out-athletic the next defensive tackle and it was a starter. And you know, it's just always the way it's been. Like when I, when I played football in middle school, I never came off the field. I was on every single team. But I mean, even at the, at the biggest stages, I mean, you're talking about Beijing and stuff, and you just had that same confidence roll straight into there. No, um, not all the time. Um, my first Olympic games, I did horrible, uh, because I was not prepared to have the eye of the world on me. I just mentally could not handle people now paying attention to me. Like I did so many interviews talking about myself. And, um, luckily by then that my, the, the stories were not dominated by me being adopted. They were just

normal. Like who is this rando kid that made this Olympic team that he probably shouldn't have made. And they just try to make, you know, just micro stories out of it. And I just wasn't used to doing that and, um, getting drug tested all the time. And then all of a sudden going to the Olympic games and every, I'd say half the field are people that I've watched at the time, like on YouTube and videos. Oh, there's, there's Adam Nelson. There's John Godina. There's, you know, this Ukrainian shot putter. I'm like, I see all of these people that I'm like, man, it'd be really cool to meet them.

And then all of a sudden now I'm throwing against them. And I just, it blew my mind. I remember, uh, uh, Lars Riedel, who's a, he's the German discus champion. I slapped him. I was, uh, the, you know, he's six foot 10 and you know, you don't really realize you, maybe I thought the Germans were going to beat me up, but you know, um, the, the, uh, bus we were on kind of jostled and I, my hand and I just opened hand slapped him across the face and he just kind of looked at me a little bit like, and I'm just like on my knees, like, please, sir, kind sir.

I am, I am a young thrower that had my whole life in front of me. Please do not kill me. And he kind of laughed it off a little bit but you know you're in that situation this is like lars riedel like i watched that guy when the the 1996 olympic games in the discus he is one of the greatest discus throwers of all time and i just open hand slapped this guy and i'm you know but you know he had it coming to him though he didn't have it coming to him and the thing is if he would have stood up and slapped me you know backhand me across the face and be like you know what i deserve it i i do not have either i'm not good enough to uh be in his presence so that and that was kind of

the problem like i'm i'm around all these these superstars they're like seeing kobe bryant and all of these incredible professional athletes on Olympic teams. I was ill-equipped to handle that situation. So, you know, by the time I get to Beijing, I'd had some success. I won two straight world championships. I thought I was going to go in there and roll over everybody as I've done in every single major up to that point, but I didn't do it.

And that just, I had to eat the biggest piece of humble pie that could ever be put in someone's face i call it a shit sandwich without the bread yeah low carb very low carb yeah it's keto friendly i think that's uh yeah it's brutal you know when you think you're gonna be able to come out on top and it doesn't quite doesn't quite go your way when you when you eventually uh you know you're a three-time olympian and when you eventually uh did medal you did place um what i sometimes people aren't satisfied because they're like well they could have been second or they could have been first yeah uh what did it feel like for Um, I was extremely excited to finally win an Olympic medal. Um, so when I, you know, I won the two previous so easily, it was easy. Like I just kind of, I felt like I just rolled in and won, but you know, there's other world

championships and stuff that, that lead up to the next opportunity to go to the Olympic games. By the time I got there, I just kind of understood the game a little bit more. You just, I wished it would have been first place. You know, I would have got the book deal, would have gotten to play the Augusta National where I'm from in Augusta. And, you know, the skies would have opened up and everything would have been great. But I think the place i got was just right um being a bronze medalist it's it's perfect

um it kind of puts that cherry on top of my career because everyone you talk to most anyone there they're like this guy's probably he's like that year even though i got a bronze i was still number one in the world so everyone knew it's like this is just one competition out of the 32 competitions he does a year okay he doesn't he didn't win this one but right after that i won the next four you know i just i just look at it's like well it's just like any other competition um i get a nice little medal in the only reason it's it's really that important is because somebody else is saying it's this is the most important meet and to reason it's really that important is because somebody else is saying this is the most important meet. And to me, it's just every competition is important. And if I lose any competition anywhere else in the world, it shouldn't be that bad, even though every four years you get a chance to be perfect on one day.

No big deal. But I just looked at it as like, hey, I did the best I could on that day. I look at each competition and world championships and stuff like that. Did I PR for that particular situation? I did. I went there. I threw 64 feet my first Olympic Games. I threw 67 the second Olympic Games and I threw 69 feet my third Olympic Games. So every single time I get an opportunity to go to the Olympic Games, I throw really well. So if I would have made the 2016 Olympic Games, if I threw 70 feet, I'd be another bronze medalist.

So, hey, there you go. Has the shot put advanced since the time that you got into it to its present time? Because you're mentioning that you threw quite a bit further. Were the other athletes progressing as well? Yeah, they were. The person that won the 2004 Olympic Games, that was Adam Nelson. He threw just under 70 feet to win his. The 2008, a guy named Thomas Bajewski

threw just over 70 feet to win the Olympic Games. So for perspective, for that year, that was the worst competition I had all year long. I won the Olympic trials at 72 feet 6 inches, but the winning distance was like 70 feet 5. So the next Olympic Games in 2012, I think Thomas threw a little bit better. He threw 71 feet to win his second Olympic Games. And I just kept

improving. So I would say it's getting better. But after that Olympics, he went down in the toilet. He never did anything ever again. He was pretty much off the grid. And I would say now like the 2016 Olympiclympic games with krauser throwing seven almost 73 feet yeah it's getting a lot harder and i know like tom walsh who was third at that one who's won pretty much every world indoor and world outdoor after that at the olympic games that guy is probably going to throw 74 feet at the Olympic games. So it's getting harder. And I think a big part of that is people are looking outside of the box when it comes to

throwing. We're way smarter about training and we're more efficient at teaching the techniques to people at a younger age. So they get experience a lot sooner. So I wouldn't be surprised if either Tom Walsh or Ryan Krauser break the world record very soon, because we're finally doing what Randy Barnes had to do out of a bottle, essentially, to break the world record. What's the deal with this throw

from a long time ago by a former 49er? I think it's michael carter yeah michael it's like a high he did it like in high school but he threw some like ridiculous i realized it's a smaller shot but yeah it's like something like 84 feet or something like that right oh yeah it's uh 82 feet yeah um and no one is even close to that like no one's within like five feet or something right or maybe even more. So the, I think the closest person that would have had a chance would have been Krauser. Krauser threw 77 feet indoors, but ended up getting hurt his senior year in high school,

which kept him from throwing that distance. And, you know, I, I talked to him about that. I was like, you know, how in the world did you throw that far? He's just like, he got a track and field news, and there was a throwing sequence in there. And every single day, he did every single frame of the throw that he saw in that track and field news. That's how he threw 82 feet.

Now, if you have an athlete that is willing to put that kind of dedication into a sport, maybe there's a chance and you look at like this guy's an olympic he's a olympic silver medalist and he's a super bowl winning defensive lineman this guy is an absolute mutant that there aren't they don't make people like this anymore yeah there there's no one that's going to do track and field and football at the same time so he also did the throw without a spin. He did. He's a glider. Are there gliders that are in the Olympics? There are some gliders,

but us rotators are doing everything in our power to vanquish them, to make sure that they feel inferior to what we do. So, you know, like David Storrell, he was a three-time world champion. He would have been in Thomas Bajewski. But see, the thing like with thomas is it was just i feel like his olympic gold medals were just more situational like in that situation he just threw far enough to win right it wasn't that he went out there and threw 72 feet or through this incredible distance those people don't really exist like david storrell

three-time world champion those years that he was a three-time world champion he still wasn't number one in the world it was either me or christian or somebody else so like yeah okay he go there and he hit his one magic and that's the thing like for him that was that was his olympics that was that was his golden his golden ticket for me i just treated just it's just another me i'm gonna i'm just trying to get my you my try to make some money and try to do the best I can. That was always my approach is I just want to make sure that anytime I competed I'm at a certain level and if it happens to be good enough to win, great. And that's how you can do this for 14 years. When you compete at a high

level there's, you know, people are going to try all kinds of crazy things to be the best in the world um do you feel that the sport has uh gotten better with that kind of stuff of of you know catching people that are cheating or or has it gotten worse or like in your opinion kind of they i think what's happening is maybe they're getting better at hiding it um or maybe we could be the more positive we've eradicated drug use in track and field but anytime you put large sums of money on the line people are going to try to get an edge to try to get a piece of that pie and for me it's like i'm going to take my lumps and if i hit it great and I'm, I'm throwing the best

I've ever thrown, then I'm going to get my thing. And that's, that's, that's the way I like to approach it. I'm going to get whatever I get because of the hard work I put in. I don't want to cheat myself and thinking I have to cheat all the rest of the, because when you do that, you're cheating everyone in the competition. Like, yeah, I'm not really, I didn't want to put in that time. I just wanted to use a performance enhancer and that's why I did what I did. And, you know, like Adam Nelson, who he's the, he's now the 2004 Olympic gold medalist, but he was a silver medalist because, uh, Uri Belenog, who beat him was on a performance enhancer and it took him four years because, you know, at the time they didn't have the technology to catch whatever he was on. And then they, you know, then they figure out, oh, well, hey, this is the drug he was on. They test it.

Oh, well, he's gone. And then, you know, by then he's already retired from the sport and he gets absolutely no benefit. Like it would have changed his life forever if he was the Olympic gold medals in 2004. So he gets a gold medal, what sent to him in the mail or something? Well, they think they send a courier, and I think they met him at the airport, and they hand him the box, and they're like, congratulations. And then he goes back home, and he shows his wife and his kids,

and it's like, I'm now Olympic gold medalist now. It's kind of sad, and I take my hat off to USA Track and Field in terms of they tried to make a few special moments for him, like announce him as the Olympic gold medalist. But I guarantee you just talking to him, he would have much rather been able to benefit monetarily from that Olympic gold medal. It probably cost him a million dollars. Wow. Just in terms of endorsement deals, upgrades from his Nike contract and all that kind of stuff, instead of being a silver, because I think he is a victim of his own success.

He had won a bunch of silver medals up to that point. He had never won a gold, and this would have been that opportunity, him winning a two, this is what would have happened. He would have been the Olympic gold medalist, and the next year he would have been the world outdoor gold medalist. He would have had two majors back to back to back. It would have definitely helped him out. Right. And you know, there is a possibility, I mean I'm not going to say this, I mean I like Thomas and I like David. They seem like they're pretty

good people, but if they ended up testing positive, I'd be sad. But you know, I'd take the Olympic gold medal. I feel bad for the guy that is the bronze medalist because he'll have to take that up with the guy that stole my bronze medal. So, but, you know, maybe I'll get a gold medal. I don't mean if I got a gold medal five years from now, I'd be like, I'll still be super excited. Yeah. Right. Put it in a shadow box and, and then I'll just upgrade my celebrity.

So. How, how did it feel to actually accomplish that and to represent the United States, to represent the Hoffa name you mentioned being so important? What was that? I mean, were you just balling like a little baby or,

or was some other emotions going on? Um, it was more, you know, I've been in the sport for a long time, so I had a little bit more handle on my emotions. When I won my first world championship, when we were on the bus to go and get that medal,

I was crying like a baby because it's like, I did it. I finally did something great. It was just a large, when I won the Olympic bronze, it was just this sense of accomplishment that I had figured out a way for like 10 years to compete and be successful and finally put it together in a meet like the Olympic Games, which is,

I feel like the Olympic Games, they do everything they possibly can for shot putting. They make it so difficult to try to win that medal. So to be able to overcome the delays, because when you're at the Olympic Games, if a runner is on the track, they stop everything because you've got to watch the, it was like the heptathlon was going on and the

british girl was going to probably win so they stopped like they we had a 15 20 minute stop of throwing and we got to sit there and watch them run the 200 and the announcement they run it they give the high five they do the little interview and then they're like okay now you can throw and you're like well how am i supposed to create any kind of rhythm? Because I'm a rhythm, you know, rotation is a lot about rhythm and timing. And you can't create that when you have 20-minute breaks. Right. So, I mean, for me, I've been very successful when they just put us on an island and let us throw.

Whereas NBC will come in and they will say, you've got to stop this because we've got to show it live. And the thing is, like, I think in the past, I think that was, that's probably a big deal. But now in the information age, you just let people go and they're going to get the information out there and then you can do a replay. It's not like anyone's losing anything. They're still watching on the internet. Right. Yeah.

Um, what, what are some of like, uh, your rules for success? Um, you know, that people that are listening to this right now could apply to their everyday life. You know, what are some, what are some things that led you to this bronze medal? Um, what are some things that led you to your world championships? What are some things, some disciplines or whatever the routines that you got into that allowed you to become so successful? Well, my my approach to success is just consistency, doing the little things all the time, even when it's annoying to do it. See the goal and attack that a goal. And I know there's going to be a lot of people that tell you, you can't do something. And it's not that you want to be mean or rude to these people, but you just can't listen

to people. They don't know, like people can't see your heart. They, people can't see your desire. It's not like you're wearing on your chest or something. Um, so if you want to be successful in especially throwing, you better believe that you're going to be one of the best. The moment you don't believe you're going to be the best, you're going to come up against people like me that are going to beat you all the time. And they're going to make you believe it's okay to lose you to me all the time. You've got to go in and think, I can beat anyone at any moment.

And if they end up beating me on that day, it was just, they just had a day. I'm eventually going to win. And that's always been the way I've done things. Like I've always believed, yeah, I'm going to be successful. And every time I'm successful, it just kind of feeds into that monster of success. Like it's addictive when you get, when you start becoming successful at something, you're just like, I got to get more. And hopefully your low of losing isn't that low so that you can get back to getting back to that success there's it's like a performer you know they just they love that that crowd and everyone cheering for you and the same thing

happens when you win because when you win they make you feel feel special. You get to sign more autographs. You get to meet new people. And you get to see joy and happiness. The greatest thing about being an Olympic bronze medalist is going to elementary schools and putting a medal in the hand of a six-year-old or an eight-year-old or going to a high school and having them touch an Olympic medal. To me, it's like, it's just another medal. I've won so many medals, but to them, it's just like, I'm, I'm touching an Olympic medal. This could be the spark that changes that person's

life forever. And that, that's the, that was always the best part about having a medal when I had it, when I had the bronze medal. What happened to it? Um, I went to a, I was doing a charity event. I was in my manager's car. And so I put my medal in there.

Cause you know, you go to these things, just trying to get people to generate more money to, you know, when an Olympian is close to you, they're like, oh, let's give them some more money. So I brought my medal. So I've got one of my sticks to go and do stuff like this. Left it in the car during a Patriots Falcons game. In the car park, two trucks,Falcons game in the car park.

Two trucks, which happens to be the Ford F-250s, they have a defect that you can pull the handle hard enough and it just pops the door. It doesn't matter if it's locked. And the people, the thieves that were looking for it knew this about the car and popped it, and they took out all the bags. They didn't take the crappy computer in there, but they took my bag, they took my manager's bag,

left all the golf clubs we had in there because it was a golf event. And they went into the wind. And then, well, then the car next to us had three guns in it. So the police, obviously, were like, well, if there's three weapons in the Atlanta area, we want to make sure we get those first. So that was it. And, you know, I called them. Hey, did anybody bring the metal back in? And, uh, and the way I look at it is I try to be upbeat and positive. This metal is, you know, when I had it, it touched, I can't tell you how many people's lives and hopefully the person that has it, they need it. They need, like they

need that metal and the, maybe they never never return it to me but if it just does something for them that makes them feel special for just a moment then the metal's doing its job and then when it's over hopefully that person can find in their heart to take that metal and take it to the atlanta police department and say this is the metal for reese hoffa can you get in contact with him and i get it back and even if even if literally the guy that stole it from me walked up to me he's like hey i've had this for five years i'm super sorry i'm like okay hey i hope it had a great adventure because you know what you think is about metals are they stay in shoe boxes i have shoe boxes of metals and they really don't go out there and touch people's lives

i would rather it touch someone's life. And if it made them feel positive, Hey, what, what happened, man? And if he just like, Hey, I was having a bad, I, I needed money. I thought I could sell it, but I just couldn't do it. And I gave it back to you. It's like, well, thank you very much. I, and I'm then I'll take that metal and clean the gook off of it. And then I will go out to other elementary schools and let other kids touch it. Cause that's what it's all about is just reaching people's lives and making it positive so you wouldn't kick the person's ass that's no your middle no shot i'm glad you said that no uh i i don't think i could do that like i mean even when it was lost i just felt bad about losing it. I never was like. Smokey, somebody stole.

Super angry. Smokey, somebody stole his bronze medal. Yeah. While he was at a charity event. Google it and let's see if we can find this thing. Track him down. If you tracked it down. Smokey's got it.

Smokey's got it. I looked on eBay for months on end waiting for something like that. It's got shot, but I think it has my name on it. I, you know, I've, I've gotten a lot of, I mean, they can't take away being an Olympic bronze medalist. So I have that title. It's all, it's going to follow me for the rest of my life. It's just a medal.

And I've, I feel like I've accomplished so much in my life that if i lose one medal and i know other people put a lot mud i say this and there are a lot of people like i would kill i would murder the man that took my medal but i've had a lot of other positive things and overcome a lot of things that if i lose one medal that's fine how do you keep it together you know you talked about uh kind of feeding this confidence monster. Yeah. Um, how do you keep it together? So you don't become like egotistical. You're not a dick to people. Um, that's, that's more of my parents.

Um, it would be very easy for me, you know, throughout my, my career growing up and, uh, being, have a big head and,, you know, my dad really kind of is a big head. Yeah, it is a big head, but you know, my dad, I think he just did a great job of explaining to me that, you know, you're, you're really good at what you do. I am super proud of everything, the way that you carry yourself. And it's not fair to other people that see you because you're like, you're a role model. So you, if you just go out there and it's, it's all about, it's the ratio all the time, Maurice, Reese, Reese, it kind of gets tired. But if you come from a perspective that, you know, I understand that I'm really good. And it's like, it's like you, you've got to act like

you've been there kind of things. Like this is just commonplace. I'm just really good at what I do. So I don't need to go there and tell you how great I am. If you don't already know I'm good at what I do, then maybe I need to work harder. You know, that that's the way I've looked at it. I don't want to go out there and make it the reshow. I just want to, I just want people, I want to be someone that you can come up to me. You can talk to me and not feel like it's an intimidating situation. I'd rather just come up and just have a conversation than to come up to me and say, Oh my goodness, you're Reese Hoffa.

You, uh, I saw you throw that one time and it changed my life forever. And I can't believe I'm in the same area of you right now. That freaks me out more than just somebody who's like, Hey, I'm, I really appreciate, I really like watching you throw. You do great work. That's awesome. And then we can just have a conversation. That is that to me, I love that more than people shaking. That shaking makes me nervous too.

Yeah. You're like, well, what's going on with this person? Yeah. Um, you mentioned, uh, you know, some of your, you know, uh, the way, the way that you've been successful through this consistency and a lot of positivity and, um, building up a lot of confidence. Um, are you a person that uses, uh, some visualization, uh, before you get to these competitions and things like that? Or what's your secret? Um, I, you know, in my, in my, my man cave, my house, I, you know, in my, in my, my man cave, my house, I have my own ring and I practice winning.

I go out there and I imagine myself winning meets actually physically going through. Like you have a shot put ring inside your house. Yeah. It's yeah. I have my own ring in my basement. That's awesome. That's dope. So I go in there and I turn on some Metallica.

It's not normal, by the way, just so you know. No, I think it's pretty normal. No. Standard practice. Most people don't have that. So I have a shot put ring in my house and I practice with my little shot put, little foam one. It could be whatever.

And I just practice at the Olympic Games. This is the third throw. I got to throw something big. I go in there and I take it i hit the throw oh that's olympic record i just like and maybe it's one of the quirky things about myself but before i've gone to a competition i have probably rehearsed winning that meet a hundred times physically and mentally so that's what i do on on the uh the plane i i just i constantly like I feel myself in the positions I need to be in and I'm like, sometimes I'll be like in first class, I'm jerking around because I'm feeling myself turn through the ball and crazy stuff

like that. So that's part of it. It's just, I'm constantly in my mind winning and being successful so that when I get there I'm just doing what I've rehearsed a hundred times. Uh, did your wife travel with you to some of these competitions? Um, she, um, my wife really likes going to the Olympic games and the other ones, she trusts that I can make it to and from those events without hurting myself. But, um, I have, she's traveled to, I took her to a three meet series and she went and did it. And then she said, I don't want to do this ever again because, you

know, I went to, we went to Sweden and we get off the plane, immediately go get something to eat. I go to the track, I do warm up. I come back to the hotel and then I'm just resting. And then she's like, well, I'm super tired. Not a big deal. So we're there and, you know, the fourth day we get in a car, we drive from Warsaw, Poland to Bydgoszcz by taxi. And that's a four hour drive in a car. She was like, uh, super tired. Uh, I guess we'll rest. So I get there, I take a rest, it can be the next day. And then we get on a plane, get up at, you know, six o'clock in the morning. We fly to Italy, go to the hotel. And she's just like, all you do on these trips is go to a hotel room or go to a track.

You're just like, you don't do anything. You don't, you don't go and see the sites. I'm like, this is kind of the job. Like I get on a plane, I do recovery. is kind of the job. Like I get on a plane, I do recovery. So, you know, with Corey, Corey, whenever I leave, we, we write out our, uh, our workout program. Like, this is what we're going to do when you get off the plane, you do this and then you do that. And then, you know, I have a plan with my coach. So anytime I do like a major and usually they're always halfway across the country, uh, we have a plan every day I have to go and get water. So it makes me get out of my hotel room, navigate through somewhere, and it keeps me awake. And I do this until I finally

acclimate it, which is very annoying and I don't like doing it, but it's been very successful. But you know, that's just those kinds of things. So my, when my wife travels, when she does this kind of stuff, she's just like, I hate traveling with you because you don't do anything fun and everything you do is track related yeah she doesn't want to be with you when you're uh fully concentrated on the competition i i am really boring when i'm in competition when i'm in competition mode i'm just i am literally a robot i mean that's what the europeans think of me they like i'm reese hoff of the throwing robot and they just they can't believe someone could do what i do like i'll go and compete on monday travel tuesday wednesday and still like there's no reduction in result like they'll go do the

same thing and they live in europe where it's like they only fly an hour and a half they could actually go home before going to another one i'm living at a hotel room and I still throw really far all the time. They're just like, do you ever not throw far? So that's where the drug talk comes in. They're like, so what do you want? You've got to be on something. This is inhuman. I'm like, no, if you just have confidence in what you're doing. And I'm crazy in thinking that I should never not be successful. You mentioned doing things, uh, you know, that, that you don't want to do.

And you mentioned, you kind of said they were annoying when you feel something being, when you feel something is being annoying. Yeah. Does that attract you to go through it? Cause you know, the result, like after you've been teaching yourself this over the years. Yeah. Um, so for me it was i never it was it's annoying to the thing to the point where if i if i don't do it it will drive me crazy i can't go to

bed like if i did not go downstairs and practice winning and doing all the stretching stuff i would not sleep well at night i just i couldn't sleep I would have to physically, like it didn't matter if it was at 1 o'clock in the morning. If I was supposed to do that on that day, I have to do it. It's my OCD, I guess. I have to do it because if I don't, I know I won't sleep well. I will regret it. The world will end. And because I didn't do this, it will be the reason why I can point back to why I wasn't successful to

attract me. And I never want to be in that position. It feels horrible. It probably makes you extremely irritable, right? Like if just, just like circumstances got out of control and, uh,

you were stuck, you know, on a plane and the plane didn't take off, right? All these different things like they happen when you travel, you know? Oh yeah. Sometimes it's like, okay, yeah, I know I'm supposed to do this, but it's, it's almost

unreasonable for me to even ask myself to do this at this point. I really just need to go to bed. But you just got to piss you off like crazy. Right. Um, I find a way to do it. Um, so I was flying from, uh, flying to Doha and, doha and you know i went from the u.s to germany and from germany you gotta you gotta stop in saudi arabia because you go to saudi arabian airspace we hit a bird on the way in and it uh damaged our plane and uh they didn't let us go to a hotel room

so they put us in a broom closet literally looked like a broom closet with a toilet so this is at i don't know one o'clock in the morning on my sheet it says i'm supposed to do this i'm doing that in the broom closet i'm just claiming some space just give me and really just give me 30 minutes and my sanity will be saved because if i don't i'm i'm gonna i'm just gonna be jerking around in the room like just like i'll just say okay if i just do these it'll be fine like i have to do something or i i just it just it just wouldn't i've never not did what i wanted to do and when that started happening i retired from the sport because i just i i just, I know like the, the, the curse is if you know what it takes to be great at something and then you stop doing that, you might as well retire. And that's

what I had to do. I just, I couldn't make myself like, I skipped like two days from, uh, doing the stretching workouts downstairs. And I'm like, why am I doing this? Usually I'm excited to go down there. Cause I get to put my music on. It's the one place my wife doesn't go and I can do whatever I want in that room and then all of a sudden it's like I just go to bed and I don't feel bad about it and I'm like, okay, something's wrong.

This is the time. I need to start looking at something else because I no longer have the passion and the drive to do really what's required to be great. That's crazy. Cause we just got a question from a, a rower who's actually, he had, he's had, he has had his sights set on becoming an Olympian.

Yeah. Um, he kind of wanted to remain anonymous, but that was his first question. He was like, how do you know when it's time to retire? And you just answered it perfectly. When you can no longer do what's required to be great. And the thing is like, I had been great. I've been on the top of that mountain. I've done it five times. I know what's required. I know what you have to do. And I know how much wiggle room you have to be great. So the moment I just physically couldn't do it, I'm like, like I need to I really need to seriously

consider retiring and you know Corey was there during that process so like when I would go to a U.S. championship generally I do nothing but that that kind of stuff so my my last year competing I was like hey do you want to come with me to U.S. indoors and outdoors and all this kind of stuff I would never do that if I was really serious about competing. So almost in a way, I almost kind of gave up. So that year in 2016, I make it to the world championship, and I don't even go. Because I know, like, if I went to that, I know that I'm not going to perform up to what I would consider the Hoffa standard of performance. I wasn't doing what needed to be required.

Wow. And then, um, he had a follow-up question. At what point does a professional sport become unhealthy? Um, I mean, I feel like I've generally done it as healthy as I possibly can. Um, I mean, I, I mean, I have some unhealthy habits. Um, I mean, I would eat a whole loaf of bread after every single workout. I know. So this is how I do it.

I would make four peanut butter jelly sandwiches, and then I would make another additional three to four ham and cheese sandwiches. I like it. And then I would eat that every single day after training. Not very healthy, but I'm'm like it's just so delicious i mean i i think i think this guy's on the the right track because you just answered his very next question so i don't know what's going on with that but i'm healing him right now yeah i know because he had asked like you know if if uh like how do you overcome an eating disorder that's that's come of you know because of the sport that you're in?

What were your struggles with that, at least once you stopped? When I stopped, the first thing I had to do was I had to stop eating bread. I was a bread addict. I'm a cookie addict, too. I'm an ice cream addict. I had to just physically stop. Like, so the first step is when you go to the grocery store, don't buy it. And you know, if I had people come over and they bring bread, I'd say, okay, I can have

a sandwich and then I got to immediately throw it away and try to avoid it like the plague because it's, it's like anything. It's like a Lay's potato chip. I can't stop at just one. I know, I know I have an issue. So I try to just not do not eat that thing or try to cut down. Like I tried to do the keto thing and not have any sugar. Right. And it was really, really, it's, it's so hard for those first couple of weeks. Cause you're like, my body is telling me, and I'm like, uh, especially at night, I'm like a grizzly bear. i want that sugar to put me into my put me in a stupor and being able to break it with other stuff is also the other key like eating some you know i have a fruit or just

like i'm gonna have a hot dog or something stuff like that yeah something that's helped me i i kind of had the same thing for many years and i would just try to make something that was uh uh just like real savory you know real real fulfilling so like i would make like an omelet or something you know it's not the same as like diving into ice cream and it's no definitely kind of the opposite of sweet but i was like this isn't a bad gig you know eating a four egg or five egg omelet with a bunch of cheese and a bunch of sausage or bacon in it like this it's gonna taste pretty damn good or even just uh some high quality steak with some butter on it or something it's like

that's gonna taste really good i know it's not the same as the peanut butter cup that i want to kill but you know you got to figure out a way to replace it somehow it's i think it's if you're going to survive that and you know i've like anyone else i've fallen off the wagon i've had one too many oreo cookies and stuff but you know when you finally kind of commit to doing it you just gotta you just gotta only have the good stuff available so when i when i really commit to do, I have nothing that has sugar in my house. And if it is, it's very like it, I didn't realize it was in there.

Right. Just like you just, you just, you avoid it. Like my cupboards are empty. Cause I try to, cause I, what would happen is I would have like cereal in my house that has all this

sugar, but I know it's going to be delicious. So I stopped buying milk. So it's like well i have all this cereal but it doesn't taste good without milk so i i don't so i don't eat it so like i had boxes of cereal like when i was going through this like where it just stayed on my shelf and we just finally just had to throw it away because it met its uh expiration date so yeah what's your favorite cereal um i would do oh oh, I love them all.

It would be cruel to say, what's your favorite cereal? It's like trying to say what's your favorite child. Just don't do that. Eh, just whatever comes to mind. Like I would do Life, Honey Bunches of Oats, Raisin Bran. I'm all about variety. So I like all the different kinds of cereals and then all their delicious flavors. I could do, you know, even Wheaties and all kinds of stuff.

You just pour enough sugar on it to make it delicious. That's just how I did it. Life cereal is underrated. It is. Well, the cinnamon life is delicious. I love cinnamon life. It's not a bad life. It's a crack cocaine of the Hoffa household.

So you're traveling all over the world. We talked about this a little earlier. Yeah. You're in and out of hotels. You're probably having a lot of random new foods. Yeah. A lot of stuff on the go. Absolutely.

There has to be a poop story somewhere in there. There's always a poop story somewhere. Especially, yeah, throwing as hard as you were throwing. I mean, something had to happen. Putting down as much calories as you can. And spinning around like that. It's got to shake everything up. So my poop story kind of is I get drug tested a lot.

World Anti-Doping and U.S. Anti-Doping come and get me as much as they possibly can to make my life really hard. It's clear you're on tons of shit. Yeah. So where I use the bathroom and they decided this day they wanted to get me in the middle of the day. So I'm out there throwing. I'd already peed. But, you know, moving around that lot, I jostled a little something in my belly. And so I'm drinking tons of water, but it was blocking the urethra from getting urine out.

I had to create space. So I go to the University of Georgia, the football program. I was good friends with those guys. Hey, I need to do a drug test. Can I do it here? And they're like, whatever you want, Reese. So I take the drug tester. We go in the room.

I'm like, listen, nothing's coming out of my pee hole unless something comes out the bun hole. So, you know, he pops a squat, you know, when they do, when you're getting drug tested, it's really invasive. Like there's no modesty. So you pull your shirt up to your shoulders and you pull your pants pretty much down to your ankles. So they get the whole gun show.

So I'm like, look, I gotta, I gotta go boom, boom. And, uh, so he, he, so I bend over. I'm like, okay, I'm going to do it. And he's like, fine, whatever. And apparently I ate something that kind of died in my stomach. Uh, and, uh, I let it go. And it just, and then the guy, if he could jump through the door, he would have, but the door would not give. Oh no.

He is shrieking. He's like shrieking on the, up against the door because the smell hit him like a Mike Tyson punch to the face. And I'm just like, okay. And then I stand up. I don't even wipe. I just stand up. I pee in the cup.

I put it down and the second wave hit me. So I, you know, the it down and the second wave hit me so i fit you you know the second wave the second wave so i finished we talked about the second wave yeah all the time the second you know finish my second wave and this is the guy can't leave the room until my urine sample's gone so he gets the whole shebanga bang on how i do it and um needless to say when we finally left the room and he finally got some clean air, cause he almost died. He was trying to hold his breath the whole time. Uh, he retired.

He, uh, you know, you get, so I, I had been drug tested. You forced him into early retirement. I mean, I've been drug tested thousands of times. And of those thousands of times, the same guy drug test, you see him all the time. And, um, he never came back. Never saw him again. there was a new guy people don't know when to retire you know like he he stayed he stuck around for too long a lot of people i mean brett farve you know a lot of people do it too long they hang it

they hang around the same profession for too long he could have retired and went out on top and look what happened he he got he got a wave. And I think he, someone convinced him because it's, you know, usually it's pretty traditional. You go in there and you pee in the cup and you're done. But when you run into someone that's like, I'm going to literally take the most rancid

poo that's ever hit your nostrils, that makes your real think about your, uh, your life decisions in terms of, do I really want to. Can you imagine the conversation he had with his wife that night? This guy took a full out dump in front of her. She's like, I've been telling you to quit that stupid job for so long anyway. It doesn't even pay you that well. Yeah.

He's like, I know. I gave up medical school for this shit. I really love looking at guys' dicks though. But if that is something you like, be a drug tester because there's a lot of hogs out there for you. Yep. A lot out there. And somebody's got to watch. Yep.

Someone's got to watch and look at it. I'd rather be a blood tester. You don't have to see that. You just sit down in a chair and they just take your blood. Easy. Sounds a lot more delightful. A lot more glamorous. Yeah.

How'd you get into this Rubik's Cube stuff? Because that's kind of weird. more glamorous yeah how'd you get into this rubik's cube stuff because that's kind of weird well um i i really like kind of nerdy-ish borderline nerdy stuff you know rubik's cube's not really that nerdy but uh it is no i is it it's weird it's pretty cool right no it's like magic that's why i look at rubik's cubes like the man is like magic so um i saw a kid on the bus while i was in college he was doing rubik's cube and i instantly was fascinated by how fast he was moving his fingers and watching the colors move around it was pretty and um that day went to walmart bought a rubik's cube said i'm going on the adventure i mixed it mixed it up and

started that three-month journey to try to figure it out. What eventually happened was I ended up finding this kid in his dorm. I knocked on his door, and he's like, well, how did you get in here? And I'm like, I know some people. And I was like, hey, look, can you teach me to do the Rubik's Cube? And he's like, but I got other stuff to do, and I had to threaten him a little bit. And I held him down, and he wrote down the algorithms. And, um, then I learned and he became my master and I became a slave.

And, you know, I, now I do the Rubik's cube. And then you competed in it before too, or watching a video. It looks like a competition. It is a competition. Um, I decided to test my skills against, uh 10-year-olds in the Rubik's Cube at the bottom of a church where all great Rubik's Cube competitions are taking place. I didn't make it out of the, this is pool play. So everyone gets kind of the same scrambles and the top 30 people move on to the head-to-head rounds.

Is there a lot of rules to this thing? There's a few rules. You look at it, you put it down, put your hands on the pad, and then you pick your hands up and solve the Rubik's Cube as fast as you can. My PR was a solve that I'd seen before. I nailed it. How many seconds does the world record for it or whatever oh it's like eight seconds so he's looking at this is this is a hoff original

that's why my picture's up there that's that is state-of-the-art uh kind of graphics what you're seeing there it's fascinating it's fascinating i think we found another editor that's right yeah you can't tell you originally there's a there's a tv screen i put it in the tv screen i thought it looked dumb but um i just got i just i saw this online and said hey i want to try this i want to test my skills to see if i if i can make it out of it i knew i'm not very good this is the cube you see there that's like my old competition cube. Now I have like a $26 Rubik's cube that goes much faster. The corner cutting is incredible on it. Do you have to like lube it up? The Rubik's cube I'm talking about.

Yeah, you gotta lube it up. So when I first started doing it, I used to use petroleum jelly as my lubricant and it ate the entire plastic out of the inside of my ruby you switch to coconut oil it's more healthy well i i moved to a silicone and now they have like the specialty uh lubes that you can get from ruby's cube they come in little little syringes really they got their own lube they have their own lube so they watch them there's so many of this you get you have five attempts so um and then there's uh are there different ways to solve it other than just matching up all the colors well i am there's the uh

like people do different shit with it there's a frederick method which everyone pretty much uses and then what i call the penosa under the guy that my master's technique who taught it to me i don't know what what it's called or it's just a different way so there's a couple ways so you can solve it those ways you can also use a four by four algorithms to solve the three by three so whenever i'm training the four by four i'm working those algorithms on my ruby cube is there is there other way like in competition do they put it together any other way than just matching all the colors together there that's the only way they they pretty much do it so what they do is they have this group of people that stand on the side and they do nothing

but scramble cubes and then they bring it out covered and they put it in front of you and they take the bag away and you look at it and i think you have a minute and you decide, okay, what are my first couple of moves? And then you put your hand on the sensor and then you go, that's how you do it. There you go. And so you own a gym, right? I own a gym, uh, Corbin training and wellness and half of those Academy. Uh, that's where the magic happens. Basically. Um, own with me, Corey Davis and Jordan Clark. Uh, we have kind of the tripod effect and we just, I teach me, Corey Davis and Jordan Clark. We have kind of the tripod effect. And we just, I teach people, I also do massage therapy out of there. But we teach people how to be better. That's really what we just try.

We do small group, individual personal training. I do the Thrust Training and Shot and Discus. And we do a little bit of Strongman. We do, it's like the gym for, it's the average Joes of the world. We have a lot of people that come from different backgrounds, from lawyers to stay at home moms, soccer moms that just want to get better physically. And we just help them on that journey. What's your favorite thing to do when it comes to the gym?

Like what's your favorite kind of person to train or work with? So for me, my favorite clients are the ones that are very knowledgeable about football um have a little nerd so that if i'm like yeah i can do the rubik's cube they're impressed uh very enthusiastic i love enthusiastic and people that like pushing themselves further than they realize so you just put you know when we're lifting i kind of look at where they're at. And sometimes I'll say, well, we're going to go up by 10 pounds. And they're like, I don't know if I can do this.

I'm like, just trust me. Just go ahead and do it. Just give me everything you have on this last set. Right. And they go and do it and they just surprise themselves. Or we do, I do squats, but I also couple that with some box jumps and just trying to increase people's vertical leaps. So we'll do, I'll go up there and we have like a 30 inch box and they've never jumped.

They jumped on a 16 inch box the last time. And I'm just like, hey, we're jumping on this box. Just move, you know, get your knees a little higher or whatnot. And to see the excitement and happiness in a client's eyes that did like jumped on a box they've never jumped on their entire life is that that's really that's the moment it's not the when they come in and they do the normal workout every single day it's when they go out there and they do something and they just it blows their mind like i didn't think my body could do this and they do it and then all of a sudden now that becomes a new norm. And it's like, in my

mind, it's like, I knew you could always do this, but once you get over that psychological barrier that tells you no, and then you finally say yes, now it just opens up a whole new world of what's the next new barrier for them to kind of crush. What's it like being able to coach kids and be able to coach them in terms of the shot put? Well, when it comes to that, it's a lot of fun. So I coach kids from fifth grade to professional. So I run the gamut. So some of the kids were just teaching how to do a stand throw. And watching the growth of a 10- or 11-year-old kid learning how to use their hips

and push through the ground and strike the ball without throwing like a baseball it's incredible and then obviously you know they start out at let's say 20 feet and then they break 25 for the first time or they break 30 feet for the first time and they just they're they're very excited and super happy and you know in the state of georgia we have really good youth, uh, youth track and field. So they have plenty of opportunities to test their skills against kids of their same age. And when they go to these competitions and are successful and they just, they didn't realize that maybe track and field is something that they could do, um, outside of the sports they're doing.

Cause I'm a big proponent of, okay, yeah, I want you to do track and field, but if you're also a swimmer, I think you should swim. You know, if you do basketball, do basketball too and play football. Um, I hate having kids that say when they're 10 or 11 years old, I am now going to be only baseball, or I'm only going to play football for the rest of my life. And like, you're missing out on opportunities to teach yourself other movements that are going to come in to play when you're doing that sport. Like, I love when someone's like, yeah, as a baseball player, it's like, okay, at least they know how to use their hips because that's one of the things you need to do to be a baseball player. But if that's all they've done now, it's like they've, they've

honed these motor patterns that now you have to overcome. That's pretty hard, but I love it when they're like, yeah, I play baseball. They play football. I do basketball. I swim. I do a little bit of wrestling, but I also want to do track and field. That's letting me know this kid really wants to be, or their parents want them to be a very well-rounded athlete. And usually they're the easiest athletes to coach because they've moved in so many different ways. It makes it easy when I add another little wrench into their movement patterns. What's it like to be able to, be able to mentor some of these kids and be able to not just share the throwing with them, but some of your experiences? That's actually pretty fun.

General consensus with the athletes is when they first meet me, they are terrified and scared of me. They're thinking I'm this mean mean person but then when you kind of tear down some walls they're just like i'm just like a normal person so it makes it really easy to kind of mentor them and let them know like okay hey we're going to go to a competition where there's going to be 50 kids this is how we're going to attack this competition. And when they do it well and they are very successful, life is awesome. And even if they go there and they don't do the best, that's also where you get to be a mentor and just say, hey, it's okay.

Hey, there's just one competition. You're going to be in so many different ones. Don't just get down because you didn't do well in this meet. Hey, let's focus on the next one that's going to come up in a couple more weeks and we'll correct the mistakes. That's why we go to practice or that's why we, we do these competitions is we need you to kind of fail a little bit because if you're perfect all the time, you'll never grow because you'll keep wanting to do the same thing over again. I need you to fail. So you'll be open to change and make things better within your technique.

What's something that motivates you and inspires you nowadays? What motivates and inspires me? My pursuit for trying to desire a child. That's one of my main goals. I mean, I put it off throughout my entire career. So I'd love to be able to have a kid. My second kind of big thing is I really enjoy working with the higher end athletes,

like kind of the professionals trying to teach them what it takes to be a professional. Just the, the small nuances. It's not always, if you do this, man, you got to eat an entire loaf of bread after every training session at not

once a week, not twice a week and not half a loaf of bread an entire loaf of bread it's the uh do as i say not as i did uh kind of philosophy but just uh just showing them the ropes like hey you need to do these kind of competitions you need to compete against these people because it's easy to just kind of stay in your fishbowl um as a pro and say i'm just going to do the easy competitions go throw against a bunch of college kids that don't know what they're doing i would i always push our athletes say hey there's this competition where there's going to be

five really good throwers hey let's figure out a way to get you over there and let's test your skills under extreme pressure and it's okay to go there and fail. But you need to put yourself in that position because these are the people that you eventually have to beat. If you fear people, then you're not going to be successful because you're going to think you should fail. I want you to go in there and let's say you beat two of them. Then now you're like, oh, that's two more people I can beat when it counts. We've had Rob McIntyre on the podcast before, AKA spray.

Yeah. How did you get to know Rob at the university of Georgia? At the university of Georgia, he was doing his undergraduate work there right when I was kind of finishing up myself. He worked with a university of Georgia athletics in terms of the, in the weight room. He's not actually a proctologist, you know that, right?

That's not what I was told. Okay. I figured something like that happened. No, but Rob is very knowledgeable about lifting, even when he was in college. Incredible drummer. I'm not sure if he talked about his time. He did. He did.

His Dan Fest days were absolutely incredible. I was the keg sponsor for a couple of those. Awesome. Um, but you know, Rob was just, he's just awesome. Everything about Rob is amazing. And some of the things that he is able to talk me into to doing, I'm not sure if he talked about the donut eating contest. No.

What's going on? The donut eating contest that we'd done in Georgia. But, um. What, what talked about the donut eating contest. No. What's going on? The donut eating contest that we've done in Georgia. But. What happened with this donut eating contest? Well, we're all hanging out at Rob's house. You know, he's playing on the drums and, you know, we're just doing rock and roll. Have you ever seen him in his gimp mask? I have not.

Oh, okay. I don't know if I want to see that. Never mind. Okay. But anyway, so we're hanging out at Rob's house. We, I think it's at, I don't know, one o'clock in the morning. And one of, I had already graduated, so one of the throwers at Georgia just happened to hang out with us. And he's like, you know what, Reese?

I think I could eat more donuts than you. And I'm like, well. Those are fighting words. I know. Very disrespectful. I'm a pretty good eater. So Rob, you know, with know. I'm very disrespectful. I'm, I'm, I'm pretty, I'm a pretty good eater. So Rob, you know, he wrote, you know, with Rob, everything's very official. He wrote up a contract, um, for, um, for the competition.

And, uh, obviously he has it filmed. I mean, you know, we did the film, the pre, the pre donut eating competition stuff. So we're doing a lot of smack talking and i have a manager during this and we're you know doing our stuff and they go to crispy cream and i think they i think we get four dozen donuts and we begin to go now i didn't realize that once you start eating those mini donuts the yeast is what's going to get you because it starts expanding in your stomach and so you know we we knock out the first dozen in five minutes and then we start on the second dozen and then the yeast is starting to expand in my stomach oh and you know i talk about a poop story i know so

i make it through two dozen and then then then we went to jellies. Now, that's some heavy hitters. So we're already full. We're 24 donuts deep right now. And needless to say, I lost because I could not handle the jelly-filled donuts. The guy's name's Kyle Health. I think he's a throws coach somewhere. I can't remember where. He ended up beating me, and then I had to do a practice of shame

where I had to keep my head down and get his shot and present it to him like he's a king for an entire practice. It was stupid. But it's those kinds of things. Rob is known for his incredible videos. So if you go down to Tampa and go to his place, he's going to film everything you do. Rob probably has the greatest collection of videos of just the randomness of, you know,

one of our throwers went to a Waffle House and stripped naked and walked out just for a reaction to see what would happen with the Waffle House employees. That's what Rob will have you do. You know, you're just like, why am I doing this? And Rob's like, no, no, it's cool, man. Just do it. It's going to be fun. And within all that, he taught me how to squat. That kind of stuff. I had horrible squat technique. And then Rob kind of came in and he's like, hey, he had a powerlifting background. I was like, why don't you just move the bar down your neck a little bit?

And it changed my life. So I was like a 375 squatter and then boom i'm squatting 500 he asked a lot of questions you know that's what you get from people that are really smart yeah he'll ask you a lot of questions and you're like i don't know like he'll ask you you know he'll ask you something real specific like you say something he follows it up with like multiple questions and you're like dude i don't i don't know why I do that. Or I don't know, you know, like, what's this for? What's that for? I'm like, I'm like, I don't know.

Would you shut up? Rob doesn't ask me questions. He just calls me fat all the time. Well, he is pretty, he is in pretty good shape. He's incredible shape. He has like at his gym, he has this little thing that'll tell you the amount of fat tissue between your muscles. Oh no. And who wants to know that?

Apparently he does. And, you know, he made me do it. That's because he tests really well on it, right? Yeah, he's like, hey, Reece, put this on there. I'm like, oh, is all that space, that's the good space? He's like, no, Reece, that's the fat. You must get rid of it. But I love, I mean, the thing is, I love Rob.

Rob is awesome. I wish he wouldn't have left athens because we lost we lost a great person when he went down i mean cena apparently needed him which for something i don't know what he needs him for but cena's jacked he doesn't need anybody doesn't even help i'm hoping one day i can go back down to tampa and take back my snatch record that cena took from me. So he had the record at 297. I went down and we made it 303. And then he only went two pounds up and went 305. I don't think he appreciated it because I was yelling and screaming and telling him I was the greatest in the world.

And Cena was like, I'm not going to let that happen. Who is this guy? It's kind of a crap deal. He just went up two pounds. I thought it was more respectful to go up by, you know, almost five. Yeah. But you know, it's, it's, it's John, Mr. Cena. Don't look him in the eye.

He owns the gym. He does own the gym, but it'd be cool to go down. I just like to meet him and just have a good old snatch off. Snatch off. Yeah. to go down i'd just like to meet him and just have a good old snatch off snatch off yeah what about uh he goes to do a snatch and you come out of nowhere and just forearm him right in the lower back i thought about that you know i thought about that see if if i would you wear a mask or no yeah i probably should yeah um when you want your identity out there so when we went down to do that we i did a competition in florida won meet, and then we drove down the two hours down to Tampa from Gainesville to go do this, and I wasn't in my right state of mind.

So if I was in my proper state of mind, I would have definitely had more shit talk to Cena. Like, this is my gym. Don't ever do the snatch again. If you ever do, I'm going to come down here and smack you or something. How do you get the record at the gym? You just have to be at the gym yeah you don't have to be like a member you just have to go there well yeah i think you just i don't know see i know if you know the guy that owns the gym he can bend the rules a little bit like i'm not official member of the gym but he was telling me what the records were and then when i came here that's the first thing i want to

do i'll say what's the records? Which ones can I take? And they have like a top five board. So like, can I give anyone the top four? It's like me peeing in your gym a little bit. Like Hoffa's in the gym. So I went down there and I was like, 297. Anybody can do that. So I'm like, I could take that.

I mean, at least should be 300 plus. Right. So I went down and did 303. I should have done. See, if I, I was pulling hard that i was i was really feeling it that day i should have went a lot higher but you know i have some friends that do powerlifting that will get me properly prepared for that maybe 315 ish so that cena will never ever have that record and he'll have to see my name on the top as the champ his name's all over his own

board i noticed he isn't i think he's got some of his own rules going on he does well i'm sure if if cena's like look re we can't have someone that fat as part of it rob will change the rules yeah because it'll be like it'll be like body weight ratio kind of record. Yeah. I'll never reach that. It's for publicity and stuff. You can't have, you know, right. Yeah.

You know, I, I just, I, I just think it's awesome that, you know, he has a lot like those, those wrestlers are, they're mutant athletes. Let's, let's be real. wrestlers are they're mutant athletes let's let's be real i've i mean there's i think their bench record is like 560 and the guy just he just puts it down there yeah what's it uh what's that guy's name hey guys that guy he's a he's a he like he put it down there ate a sandwich and then he lifted it up off his chest like it was nothing he might have benched 585 he's competed in usap l2 and he's just uh he's absolutely enormous he's not he's not fat he's he's pretty monster he's pretty damn jacked and uh yeah he's also um it's like biggie something biggie langston yeah biggie langston

that guy is a machine i think he i want to say deadlifted like 8 30 or something he went to i think it was a national meet he went to like usapl nationals and he did what he did well in the squat um i want to say maybe he squatted close to eight and then it just turned out his bench ended up going really well too so he went three for three and then it got down to the end of the contest. And he had an opportunity to beat the Vanilla Gorilla. I'm having a hard time remembering his exact name right now. What's his name? Who?

Blaine Sumner. Blaine Sumner. Yep. So he went head-to-head with Blaine Sumner. And Rob was with him. Rob, Rob was with, uh, Biggie Langston. And he said, Hey, he goes, you know what? It's, uh, all you gotta do is pull eight 21 and you win the meet.

And he's like, do you think you can pull eight 21? And Biggie Langston's like, yeah, I think so. Shouldn't be too hard. Went out there, just picked it up. And Rob's like, it was ridiculous. He's like there just picked it up and rob's like it was ridiculous he's like he picked it up so easy and he put it back down i mean he he i think he's competed just a couple times and he he won the national i mean that's that's not that's not an easy thing blaine sumner is insanely strong yeah i mean he's one of the strongest lifters of our

like time and this guy just came in and just kicked his ass. I'd love to be able to do that. That would be cool. But more in the Rubik's Cube world, I want to be able to win a Rubik's Cube competition. I think you started something new with that shot put that you did in our store. Yeah. I got to admit, I was practicing at home in preparation for that. The first two attempts that I missed, it was all for show, just setting up the finale of me nailing it.

The cornhole shot put world championships. That sounds like an appropriate name. Yes. Yeah. There we go. Any other questions over there? No, that's all I got,

man. All right. Come on people. Where can people find you if they want to follow along? You can find me at Hoffathrose follow along um you can find me at hoffathrose.com you can find me at corblandtraining.com you can find me at hoffathrose on instagram you can what's this where's your gym at over at uh corbland training but uh the beautiful shirt you're wearing there is a product we call the forge oh oh yeah yeah

that's your massager thing that's it's yeah it's uh just one of those devices uh donnie thompson was uh so gracious to have us up at his facility and uh taught us all about it and uh and when we came back instead of lugging around a 125 pound ex-wife um you can have something weighs about 30 pounds it's a little bit safer putting it on your body uh you can actually put the 35 pounds on your body, on your hamstrings, quads, wherever, and you can side load it where it actually make it a lot safer. Oh, cool. It'll make it a lot safer putting it on and off your body, and you could increase mobility.

It makes your body feel a lot better, especially after a hard workout. Pre and post, we use this before you lift. You can do it after you lift and one of the main reasons we have this is you know if i wanted to to get up to 250 pounds which would be what i would need on my lower back and hamstrings um that uh to get one of those to go to a metal shop and actually have that produced would cost ridiculous amount of money right and the freight on that would just be even more ridiculous. So we came up with a device that only cost you about $389 that you can use on your entire body. Basically, having a whole collection of body tempering advice is the Forge.

It's safer. We have handles on it. We have the groove in the middle for your spine. There is just, it's awesome. It definitely has helped me out immensely. Um, in conjunction, of course, with Corey Davis, um, it just, it's, I think this is definitely a game changing device. And the more we put it on people's bodies, University of Georgia's football program bought it, uh, Xavier basketball's bought it, you know, we're just, we're going, we're kind of like the pied piper of mobility just getting this into people's hands the moment we put it on their bodies

they just it clicks boom instantly they're like oh okay oh yeah i gotta get this yeah that's a tough part is uh having a product that uh people have to feel you know to truly understand you know yeah and we don't we've there are some people that understand it and they will just instantly buy it. But for some, you know, for some programs, you just got to put it on their body. So, you know, it's really nervous going into the University of Georgia football program just after them winning the, getting to the national championship game. And, you know, unfortunately not finishing the deal against Alabama. Um, and then putting it on those, those coaches and they're just like, we need this. And, you know, they almost wouldn't let us leave until we sold them six.

And that was awesome. And, you know, they do videos with it now. And that's pretty awesome. So the more places we've been able to go and show it to people and put it on people's body, they're just, it's awesome. It's almost a religious experience. What does it do? Obviously it's kind of like massaging,

but body tempering is a little different where you can just literally just put something on a location and it can help with some muscle soreness and help with recovery and stuff like that. So, you know, it's, you come in, you have, you're breaking down muscle tissue. So your fascia basically is kind of sticking and it just helps loosen up that, that fascia separating those fibers, let them lay a little bit better. You don't get as much sticking.

There's also, you can turn it on it's in and get pinpoint. If you have big adhesions there, you can put it on there and release those areas. It's, it's a great tool. It's a, I hate saying it's like aggressive foam rolling because it's not, because one of the things I had problems with is holding my body up. I'm a big fatty at, at what I was, um, holding my body up and doing, you know, uh, quad work in on my elbows and trying to hold a particular position whereas with this i just sit down i put the weight on my legs and there you go it's it's doing its job i can hold it for long

periods of time and it it seems like it doesn't it really helps i can do it on my hamstrings you can hit the calves you can do on your lower back it's it's pretty awesome it just gives you another tool because like you know the foam rolling thing can be great at times but. It's, it's pretty awesome. It just gives you another tool. Cause like, you know, the foam rolling thing can be great at times, but, uh, it's hard. It's also hard, really hard to relax on a foam roller. Exactly. You know, I feel like everything on me is so tight that it's hard for me to like, um, be able to get much relief from, from a lot of those types of things. Cause I, I have my body weight on it.

If I'm trying to rub my back on a foam roller, then I'm like flexing my stomach and my back's not really, uh, and then also because I'm so tight, shit hurts so bad that I'm like, ah, you know, and that's where, you know, being able to have a device running over the butt feels so good. Yeah. Uh, but it's, it's great to have a device that you can go in and say, okay, I start at 100 pounds and then maybe tight and then all of a sudden you start feeling a bit of a release you know maybe i could do a little bit more instead of having to go lug out another big you know body tempering another 100 and whatever pound you can just say hey put another 25s on there boom and it's just it's so quick it easy. Um, we figured out ways of potentially doing it by yourself. I mean, the, it, I don't, there's nothing out there that's like this device that can help so many

people because, you know, at 30 pounds, there aren't very many women that are going to be very scared of this. They can, men, women, and children, you can all use it and we can make, we can customize it to the amount of weight that you need to help your body recover and be at its absolute best. Yeah. Filipino thunder, Marcus, uh, no surprise. He's the strongest guy in the gym. He's always messing around with stuff like that. He's always just really doing a good job of, uh, taking care of his body.

And then when he goes and does his squats, he moves really well. And, um um you know for me i just have not i've just have done a shitty job of like keeping up on that kind of stuff yeah stretching the mobility stuff and i think people maybe don't understand that it doesn't always have to be stretching no yeah some of that work that you're doing with tempering in in a sense is is uh almost a form of stretching because it's breaking up some tissue and it's going to allow you to move in a better range of motion as well. Yeah. And it's really when you're getting super, super tight and the fascia and everything is kind of sticking together, it kind of puts you at a high risk of tearing stuff the you know restricting movement because if you're gonna god forbid you have 700 pounds on your back and your hamstrings lower back whatever isn't

functioning the way it needs to and you're moving improperly it's going to put too much of a load either on one side or the other or it's not going to allow you to be hip hinged at the proper angle and then all of a sudden now you're hurt now i'm now my lower back's hurt because i couldn't hit the proper position this helps get you feeling really good so you can maintain proper position through everything that you're doing where can people purchase that thing at it's uh forgehd.com forgehdf.com we'll attach it to this podcast as well that's all the time we got strength is never a weakness weakness is never a strength catch you forgehtf.com We'll attach it to this podcast as well. That's all the time we got. Strength is never a weakness.

Weakness is never a strength. Catch you guys later. Awesome.