Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Project EP. 135 - IPF Approval Overturned Announcement

Episode Date: October 31, 2018

Mark Bell and Sling Shot were just notified that the IPF’s original approval of the current X-Sleeve has been overturned. Mark Bell has turned this into a positive by creating an even better X-Sleeve that will be IPF Approved for 2019. We will give you all the details and info right here, right now. ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots New IPF Approved Extreme X Sleeve Pre Order: https://markbellslingshot.com/collections/knee-elbow-sleeves/products/new-x-sleeves ➢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

Good workout today, training up those hammies. That was good. Hopefully I don't cramp up like I did last week, though. That was fantastic. Those of you peeps that are tuning in over here, we're going to talk some IPF stuff. We got an announcement to make. But before we get to that, we got to talk about some sales and stuff that we're doing over here at Slingshot. We're doing some cool, fun stuff.

and stuff that we're doing over here at Slingshot. We're doing some cool, fun stuff. Obviously, you know, you guys know, we got some big sales going on for Black Friday. Like, who doesn't have stuff going on for Black Friday, right? But we have a Halloween-y sale, right, Andrew? A Halloween-er. Oh, wow.

Yeah, put that in your pipe and smoke it. Yeah, I don't think we're supposed to say anything until later today so wait today's not halloween well on itunes today is halloween on uh the live stream it's not halloween yet isn't it uh like isn't tonight something too like mischief night or something is it i don't know i wasn't a cool kid so i don't know i don't know i never really got much into halloween because it just seemed like you couldn't really cause that much trouble. Like, you can only kind of do stuff, but it's kind of dumb. Like, spray silly string on someone's car. It's kind of stupid.

Yeah, I remember. It's, like, thrilling, though, when you're 14. Yeah, we did some stupid things when we were kids. But as far as the Halloween sale, yeah, this is the first anybody's hearing it right now. Oh. So that's really cool if people that are tuning in. 15% off of everything? Everything.

Is that what it is? Yeah. Oh, my God. So for anybody that's catching the live stream, they just heard it for the first time. So, Andrew, did you see the video that we did with the, because you're not, you're the podcast engineer, you don't know how much stuff you see and don't see. that we did with the, because you're not,

you're the podcast engineer and you don't know how much stuff you see and don't see. Did you see the commercial that we did where we spent $250,000 on getting all of our stuff IPF approved?

Yeah, yeah. Well, the cool thing is I actually was a part of it, so I was there. You get included sometimes still in stuff. Yeah. I mean, it was really cool

because we had Griffey, Chris Griffin, kind of directing the whole thing. Yeah, he did a great job. Yeah. Ryan Soper was kind of camera one. He did.

And then we had Terrell, which is camera two, and Grip, which was just awesome to have them three working together. But also that meant I can work audio completely by myself. So capturing all the audio that was necessary as far as the dialogue. It was really cool because we were all hitting on all cylinders. That was great. Yeah, it was probably one of the coolest projects I've been a part of since being here on the team. It was fun to shoot too. It reminded me of like I've done some stuff before for TV and for movies and some different things.

Really, really small stuff. Nothing major. really really small stuff uh nothing nothing major um but any of the things that i have done um the the things that i've done they've been short and concise and they're like hey go in and do this and then they cut and then i'm out of there and then i go and watch the show and like something really cool became of it not that's how this commercial felt to me i did a show a long time ago a tv show called g E, which is good versus evil. Oh, okay. And they had a wrestling theme going on for that one.

And Mick Foley was one of the main guys, one of the main wrestlers. And this wrestler is battling good versus evil was the concept of the show. And he was deciding on whether he should stay good or whether he should be evil and uh you know the dark side had had its appeal just like it always does whenever you see uh star wars and these different things and so um the idea here was uh this guy was gonna like sell his soul to the devil and become like undefeated champion of the world and and take over and um he was really enticing to him because he's lost one time now i didn't know any of this when we did the shoot but i i walk in i'm late for the shoot they're like you're late they're like you're

lucky we still have a role for you they're yelling at me they're like here put this on and i was like well i was just gonna go shirtless and i took my shirt off and i was pretty lean at the time and they're like, even better. They're like, get out there. So I get out there. They shoot this shot of me that's like 15 seconds long. I get paid for a full day's worth of work, even though I was only there for an hour or whatever it was. And, you know, four weeks go by.

And then I watched the show and they explain the story of this wrestler and everything. And they're like, well, they're like, you, you've gotten beat before. Like, we didn't know you got beat, who beat you? And then it pans to me. And it was just, uh, it was really cool. But that commercial kind of reminded me of that because you guys had everything set up, uh, the whole time for it to end up, uh, turning out great. Like I came in, I delivered a couple of lines. I think the most amount of times I had deliver a line was like three or four times, you know,

something like that. And, um, then it broke, then it broke it up and we, we did end up chopping out a couple of things, but for the most part, we were able to keep everything and everything looked great. Yeah. And that's a huge credit to Chris Griffin for all the pre-production, you know, like kids so damn smart. It just, it came out exactly as he wrote it all down. Why has he got to be so smart? I don't know. He went to school and stuff. Anyway, so you did see the commercial. I'd imagine all these people saw the commercial where we announced that we made all of our products, uh, IPF approved, right? And so we were super happy. And so we made an announcement. We had a sale. We had a party. We threw a party. All kinds of things happen because we are so, we are so excited and so pumped about being part of the IPF. The IPF has over 1.2 million lifters, which I had no idea

that till more recently. But worldwide they have over a million lifters. That is, uh, unbelievable. It really is really cool. And, um, I would like to think that I'm a big part of that. And that might sound conceited or whatever, but it, it just, uh, it's my belief that what we've done here at super training has helped elevate powerlifting has helped elevate and drive people to sport. And the things that I did with Stan Efferding, even though he's not quote-unquote IPF, I think a lot of those things drove people to raw powerlifting.

And raw powerlifting exploded. The IPF, the USAPL, none of these federations had raw powerlifting. It wasn't until Stan and I started to do stuff, started to collab on some stuff, that all these federations started to open up this raw category. It didn't exist before i know it sounds weird but that's the way it was back then anyway so we spent an enormous amount of money investing into the ipf putting some money back into power lifting obviously we want to return

right like obviously like we're not retarded we want to make i'm allowed to use that work because i'm old just trust me i'm not trying to insult anybody. We're not stupid, right? And we want to make money, right? And we sometimes have to invest money in places that we think are going to benefit us the best. We thought investing in the IPF would be a great idea. And so we went ahead and we did it. When I think about investing in other forms of powerlifting, when I think about investing into a powerlifting meet, I always think, man, that is just so short-sighted. It doesn't really solve the problem of, of, uh, of making the sport larger, making the sport bigger. Um, now if I invested tons and tons of money, if I invested, let's say I invested five, a $5 million budget for two contests per year.

Well, maybe that would elevate the sport, but I'm not going to invest that kind of money into something that I don't know is going to work all that well. And that would just take a tremendous amount of time, energy resources, and it would just be overwhelming to try to figure some of that out. And so when I think about these, these paid contests where they're paying athletes, paying lifters for world records, they're paying lifters sometimes to fly to the contest and these different things, those contests are great.

I really like the idea. I like the concept. I love that people get paid. But in the long run, Steffi Cohen making five grand to hit a new PR deadlift or hit a new all-time world record deadlift does not really help the sport of powerlifting necessarily. You could make the argument that Steffi Cohen is driving a lot of young ladies into powerlifting because she's

beautiful and she's strong and a lot of people look up to her. That makes a lot of sense, but Steffi Cohen having five grand barely helps her, much less helps anybody else. And so when I think about where we're going to put our money, where we're going to put our, um, where we're going to invest, I kind of think it's more important rather than just to put money into things. It's more important to spend some time with, uh, with these federations and with these contests and with the people of power lifting. Um, and it's better off that we continue to say to, uh, to stay the path of super training gym and continue to show people power thing in our gym and continue to show our team and what we do, um, and continue to have our guys and girls

compete and have them compete at a high level. So that's, that's kind of where we, we, we put our time and energy into. And now there's some things that are sometimes out of your control and not a lot of people recognize me as a business person, but if you look at the different things that I've done, I probably kick more ass in business than anywhere else, because who else do you know who has made money in this space that has done really well? There's not a lot of people, you know, you can count, you can count them on one hand. And if you're missing a couple of fingers, you could still count them on one hand. There's not a lot. There's only a few people. And I, and I've figured out, I've navigated this space. I've navigated this area very well. And it's because I am a power

lifter and I make products for power lifters, being a power lifter and being a competitive power lifter for many years and pushing the envelope and pushing my body to the absolute max and also trying to ride that fine line between, you know, getting a lift past and riding out the rules a little bit. I was going to do any and everything that I could to try to lift the most amount of weight. And I think a lot of other lifters would say that's true of themselves as well. Um, in the IPF, they have, they have a lot of rules. They, they put together a lot of rules and they put together, uh, what they feel is, um, the most competitive power team federation that there is. And, you know, because of that, because of my style and because of their style, maybe we don't always, not always going to necessarily go together a hundred percent, fit together a hundred percent.

And so when it came to this situation that I'm about to talk about right now for the first time, you have to understand that I am a person when I was allowed to wear multi-ply powerlifting gear, uh, that's what I wore. I wore, uh, powerlifting briefs that were three layers and a squat suit that was two layers. So I had five layers of stuff on because they didn't check how many plies you had. They usually called the contest double ply or multi-ply, but it really just, you put on whatever you had to put on and you lifted whatever you had to lift. So I always like to push the rules a little bit. Um, that's the way I feel the most comfortable. I like to be extreme, so to speak. So in coming up with knee sleeves, I made, we first made the strong sleeves and the strong sleeves were the strongest, stiffest sleeves on the market. And then, you know, we worked on some technology and we worked on some resources and I worked on just using my noggin and using some of my creativity. When we were powerlifting years ago, a lot of guys would wear polyester bench shirts and they would wear denim fabric bench shirts and squat suits and canvas this and this and that.

uh, bench shirts and, and squat suits and canvas this and this and that. And you would wear some really wild stuff to get the best possible result that you could. And so I created the X sleeve. X marks the spot X is for extreme. And so this, this represented a whole new level of stiffness and a whole new level of a product that can, uh, deliver a very powerful punch, a very, very powerful kick out of the bottom of your squat. Now, the principle behind what we were doing here is we, we put this, uh, sticky stuff on the inside here and, um, the sticky stuff is what has caused some issues. So there's a product in here, product inside the knee sleeve, some non-slip technology, ladies and gentlemen, that allowed the knee sleeve to stay in place and it allowed it to not move or slide or glide around while you're doing your squat, which with how stiff the outside

material is, that would help rebound you and propel you up out of the bottom if the sleeve wasn't going to give or move anywhere and so the ipf has overruled and overturned their initial approval of the x sleeve this is the x sleeve with the with the grippy stuff on the inside now what we're doing to make things right, to make matters right, we obviously do not feel very good about the situation. However, I feel amazing about the situation at the same time because when you're a killer and when you take people out, other people are going to try to take you out.

And that's where we're at here at Slingshot. We're assassins. We're knocking people off left and right. And now people have their hand on the trigger and and we're uh we're in the line of fire right um we have a giant bullseye on our back people are people are trying to keep up with what we're doing and uh they'll do anything and everything to throw us under the bus so in my opinion what has happened is our i guess i'll call competitors, but I don't feel like we have any competition. No one can actually hang with what we're doing over here.

Our competition, they have outed us and they've said, and the IPF heard their complaints. And so the IPF, instead of handling it the right way, saying, hey, you know what? Tough shit. We already approved these products from Mark Bell and from Slingshot. And they're already on the list. And that's that. Instead of doing that, they made us retract the X-sleeve from the product lineup. And so what we did,

we just did something really simple because we didn't want to screw over the fans. We didn't want to screw over the people that ordered the X sleeves. So everybody hang on to your panties here because here's where it gets to be really good. So this has happened to me before and I'm sure it will happen again.

Somebody comes in with a complaint and their complaint actually just makes us better. So congratulations to our competitors for making our product better. So due to the fact that it has this grippy material on the inside, we actually now are allowed to make the knee sleeve thicker, not thicker than the rules allow, but thicker than it currently is. This knee sleeve, due to the fact that it has this sticky material in here, is at about five millimeters. So we get to add an extra two millimeters of thickness. That's going to make this sleeve tremendously powerful when you go to squat in it. And you could argue that it now becomes even more powerful than it was originally.

Having more material will actually prevent the product from slipping anyway, because the product will now fit even tighter than it did before. And a lot of you guys know how tough it is to get on a pair of, a pair of X sleeves. This is the price of doing business. This is the price of being popular. This is a price of being strong. This is the price you pay when you get out in front of other people. And you want to know what? This is the main reason why most people never try. Because it's hard and because people are always trying to knock you down. You climb a ladder, boom, someone knocks it out from underneath you.

And you're like, oh man, that really hurt when I fell from that ladder. Man, they really knocked me down. And then you try to get up another one. And after a while, you're like, you know what? This is not worth it This is why people don't take risks in their life because people are assholes People are always trying to knock you down. They're trying to take away your hopes and dreams They're trying to stop you and prevent you from doing the things that you want to do

But we're not going to take that we're not going to take that lightly here at slingshot. We're coming at people full force Any person that has purchased an x-sleeve any. Any person that has purchased an X-sleeve, any purchase, any person that's purchased an X-sleeve, whether they knew about the sleeve being IPF approved or not, we are going to send you, you'll have to order it. You'll get an email, but you'll have to order it. We're going to send you the new version of the X-sleeve that is approved by the IPF that doesn't have the gripper inside of it. We're going to send you the new version of the X sleeve that is approved by the IPF that doesn't have the gripper inside of it. We're going to send you the new pair for free, no charge at all. And again, that's whether you knew about them being IPF approved or not, because that's the way

we handle things here. I like to flatten things out. Somebody has something shitty to say. I like to say, you know what? You actually make a good point. You actually make a good point. I totally agree with you, but here's my beliefs. And I like to come from the other side and have people understand, you know what? I might not always agree with what that guy does, but at least he heard what I had to say. At least he's paying attention to me. And at least he understands my perspective.

I understand the perspective of some of the other companies out there who got frustrated when we put our money into the IPF saying the IPF is crooked and the IPF is this and that. I don't think that the IPF is crooked. I think that the IPF has a tremendously hard job to do. They have a brutal job to do and they do the, and think about it, where else are you going to compete there's not a lot of great options you know a lot of the federations there there's a lot of there's a lot of great powerlifting meets that happen every year um but you hear complaints about all of them all the time the spotting the loading the misloaded weights um people not spotting uh properly uh you hear

about all kinds of stupid stuff, bad calls on the squat. It doesn't matter what federation you're in. You kind of always hear these things. And it makes you wonder, you're like, why do I even have a membership card? Why do I got to pay for a membership card every year if these federations aren't actually doing anything for me?

But I would argue and say the USAPL and the IPF are doing something tremendous for you. They're doing something huge for you because it's the only federation that sets up a regional a state national and worldwide form of competition where you can see you can actually physically see and tell if you're the strongest power of the world i mean that it's the only one that sets it up that way now otherwise it's kind of an objective view on whether you're the strongest in the world i think a lot of people would say larry wheels is the strongest in the world right now but um if he if he's not competing against somebody else that's the best in his weight class and he doesn't beat

them then how can you consider him the best and so the ipf and the usapl they do a great job of of uh being able to put all those things together so that people can have uh contests where the competition level is really really really high um what's your thoughts on people kind of pointing the finger and kind of laughing and whatnot and being like ah ah, you're going to have to take a hit after, you know, the IPF overturning their initial approval? Yeah, I'm not too worried about any of that. You know, there's just a price you pay. It's a price of being of being in business. You know, it's, um, every company goes through these different things where they make a product. They think the product's great. They put it out in the market and then there's like a recall on it.

And it's like, oh shit. Well, there's, and they don't have the same problem that we have. Um, we have much, we have much less of our product out there than say like Ford or Chevrolet or, uh, Tesla or whatever. Like they might have thousands and thousands and thousands upon thousands of products out there in the marketplace. And they go, Oh,

Oh shit. Like they're dangerous. What about the hoverboard? Right. Right. Um, exploding everywhere. Yeah.

And I've had cars. I'm sure a lot of people listening have had cars where there's been a recall in the seatbelt. It's like, that sounds actually pretty dangerous to recall in the seatbelt or the airbag. You know, there's just a price associated with doing business. And, um, when you're trying to be a leader and you're, you're, um, you get out in front of people, um, it's, it's going to even be harder because there's going to be other people

are going to try to police your business. And that I believe 100%, that is what has happened here. We've talked to some of the heads of the IPF and they said, yeah, we're getting phone calls. We're getting emails. We're getting all kinds of stuff about, you know, I'm sure they're not getting phone calls about the other competitors. It's probably mainly just about us. And what we're doing is because people want to try to, because nobody knows who some of the other competitors is probably mainly just about us and what we're doing is because people want to try to because nobody knows who some of the other companies are so they want to

try to police us they want to try to keep us down they want to try to have an advantage uh over us and um you know now that we're thrown into the mix i'm sure we'll be doing the same thing right we're going to see somebody doing something and we'll be like hey well what's what's the deal with that product what's the deal with this what's the deal with that product? What's the deal with this? What's the deal with that? Once again, I just want to be really clear. The IPF, we got every product that we have approved. Obviously, we didn't get a slingshot approved and things like that. All the gear that you can standard, all the gear that you can normally wear for powerlifting meets uh got

approved including our x-sleeves that have this grippy grippy thing in here right um the ipf has revoked they have overturned their own ruling and they have uh taken uh this version of the x-sleeve with the gripper uh off of their their approval list that is why on our website it said sold out for a few days because we had to retract we had to pull this thing down we didn't want people buying it with the impression that it was ipf approved what we're doing to make things right is we're going out of our way to say any customer that has ever purchased an X-sleeve gets a free pair of X-sleeves, the new ones from us that are going to be on the IPF approval list. Just again, to be totally clear, this product right here was on the list. It was actually officially on the list.

We got all the information. We are extremely excited and passionate and fired up about being part of the IPF, but I can assure you, we did not jump the gun. We took our time. We are a veteran company. We've been around long enough to understand that you don't just go and fire shit off into the atmosphere and not understand that there's going to be repercussions and there's going to be a response, a response. And so we waited, we waited and we waited and we waited and we waited. We held back, we held back, we held back and we were ready. Then we knocked everybody in the teeth with the commercial that we put together. Everyone saw it. And then I think, you know, people have gone to IPF and said, I can't believe,

I can't believe you're letting these knee sleeves in. And then, uh, you know, the IPF and said, I can't believe, I can't believe you're letting these knee sleeves in. And then, uh, you know, the IPF felt the pressure, even though these aren't, these don't have anything that I think are that, that, uh, are against, uh, their current list of, uh, rules, but they feel that they are. And so we had to, uh, take the non-grip out and create a product that is still within the, parameters of what they have to be IPF approved. And so we made another X-sleeve. This X-sleeve now is going to be called the grippy X-sleeve. The new one that comes in is, I think it's the extreme X-sleeve is what it's called officially.

So there's the story. You got it all right here firsthand. You go to our website and tomorrow you're going to see, uh, both of these products on there. There's going to be 15% off. Now this product is, is approved. It's still, I still believe you can wear this in every other federation, but you just can't wear it in the, uh, and ipf so uspf um uspa

lmnop spf you could still wear it and uh those of you that are cross-fitting in it and stuff obviously there's no problem there and if you're doing olympic lifting there's just no rules and regulations on that and if you're doing strongman they don't have a whole lot of rules either. They just want to see you lift up the heaviest thing. So you kind of, you went into the waiting part of the process, but like, what is the process? Like we sent the ex-sleeve in its final form to somebody to be approved and it was approved. Right. So how does it, like, where does it go? How does that, how does it like where does it go how does that how does uh it get checked off and then get okayed yeah so some of my understanding is um you know i think

sometimes some of these things are like they get a check they cash it and who the hell knows what they do with it right um you know i don't know I don't know how professional of a company this is. Um, so far the professionalism doesn't seem amazing. You know, um, I, I, what I think happened is I think that there was two different people going on here. There was one guy who is, um, kind of the head of everything. Um, and there's another guy who is in charge of checking the gear. And I don't think that they communicated all that well on this situation. I do not know,

I do not understand how they had a list that they put out and then they claim that they never even saw this sleeve so that's some severe negligence on their part uh in my opinion that doesn't make i mean i don't know how that even registered doesn't make sense to say that you never got it totally makes sense to have it on an approved list and say that you never seen it is odd. That just means, like I said, that kind of gives me the message of, oh, maybe you care more about the money than what you're actually passing on this approval list, which that's not a great message.

That doesn't feel good to think that they're that way. I'd rather have them say, hey, you know what? Absolutely not. We got the sleeve and this one's not approved or we say as we did we checked multiple times with them specifically about the x sleeve because of how extreme it was we checked in with them specifically about the x sleeve and they were like oh yeah that's on there too and it just so yeah again um that's on there too. And it just, so yeah, again, um, you know, mistakes were made on their part.

Um, on our side, I don't see any mistakes that we made. I guess it's possible that we did something wrong, but I, I really went over it a lot with Andy and Andy went over it a lot with our team and we communicated a lot. We see each other every day. Um, so, and it's not that this company hasn't made mistakes. We've made plenty of mistakes before, but in this case, um, we, we were not at fault at all. So the product, you know, went out in its final form and it did get approved. It ended up on the list, whatever way it ended up on a list that ended up on the list, uh, whether it was premature on their part, I'm not sure. Um, but then, you know, once, once we kind of made the announcement and once we started talking about the products more, I think our products started to be out there a little bit more in circulation. And I think that a competitor actually physically took our knee sleeves.

I would even guess that our competitor probably ordered them when we had free worldwide shipping. And they probably ordered them. And they probably took them to IPF officials and said, hey, man, what the F is this? How is this approved? What in the IPF? Yeah, exactly. What in the IPF is going on around here? I couldn't help it. And there's Andy Bell chiming in.

New X-Sleeves will be available for pre-order tomorrow that is right andy bell new x sleeves will be available tomorrow for pre-order these sleeves will still be on the site just keep in mind that they're no longer ipf approved they got disapproved these guys are left on the cutting room floor so to speak which is very sad if you're wondering why i'm over here doing this because i got my live feed on instagram here which i'm actually going to shut down in a minute i'm going to say goodbye to everybody over there but we're still rolling over here and before we went all nuts with this commercial and stuff what uh formal type of confirmation did we have like in hand before we went nuts and filmed that big

ass commercial uh there was many emails back and forth there was many emails back and forth and there was uh and and we have a contract where the products are actually listed on a contract um it's every product it's like it's like an itemized list you know so it says gangster wraps and then it says uh strong sleeves and it's you know it says all this stuff it's this big old list of like 20 products or whatever whatever the hell it is um and those products are on the list and they're supposed to be approved for the next four years and um just uh for whatever reason um uh there could be a lot of reasons for it but whatever reasons the ipf said you know what we uh psych you know just kidding and uh they they overturned they overruled their initial

ruling which was to have the product on the list now you know i am glad that and they overturned, they overruled their initial ruling, which was to have the product on the list. Now, you know, I am glad that we're not two years down the line or a year down the road, you know, and people are competing in these things, and people are all fired up, and to have them, you know. I think the IPF, legitimately on their side of things, I think they legitimately think that we try to like do something, but we didn't, we sent them the product. So there's no, there's no foul play on our part.

We made a product that looks a certain way and has certain dimensions and certain things going on. We thought it had a chance to get IPF approved because it got approved everywhere else. And it did, and then it didn't. So there's not really a ton more to really say, you know, in those terms. I just want people to know that, like, we didn't, it wasn't like a first pass or like, yeah, that should be approved. Like, we'll, you know, we'll let you guys know. And then all of a sudden, hey, it's approved. Let's make this commercial. Let's tell

everybody. Right. It was full on, uh, confirmed and ready to go. Yeah. And as much as we're explaining this, you know, as soon as some of this stuff comes out, people are going to be like, Oh, Mark Bell's money hungry. And you know, people are going to say all these weird things and assume all these weird things, but it has absolutely nothing to do with that. Um, and it has more to do with just a simple miscommunication. I've said before on this podcast, many times, the problem with communication is thinking that it ever happened. Um, we thought it happened. We double checked, we triple checked, but, uh, uh, for whatever reason that that wasn't good enough and it didn't work out the way that we were looking for. But to me, all these things are a positive.

And the reason is, is because we've been working really, really hard to make our way. We've been really been working hard to put up points on the scoreboard. I want this company to I want this company to be on the map. Well, now we're on the map. We're on everyone's radar. It's very, very clear. And there's people circling around us, uh, kind of watching her every move. And I've been in these situations before, uh, when I was competing in powerlifting and, uh, I'm sure I'll end up in these situations again. It's just part, it's just all part of it. It's part of, if I'm going to come out and I'm going to talk and I'm going to be vocal and I'm going to be the leader and I'm going to be the sounding board, the mouthpiece for this company, then a lot of

shots are going to be fired my way. And that's, that's just the way it is. That's what comes with this territory, but it doesn't make me scared. It doesn't make me want to back down from anything. It doesn't make me want to hide. It makes me want to communicate more. Makes me want to tell people more about what's going on rather the anticipation of what might happen. And so for me, I don't have any of that. We're going to shoot a commercial here in a minute where I'm going to let things fly a little bit and tell people about what happened. And we'll post that on social media, and we will just go from there. will just go from there. In a meeting earlier, you had kind of talked about how you seen this day coming, or at least you were prepping for it or you were hoping for it. How long has that been in your mind? Um, you know, I, for many years, you know, I, I always, uh, you know, it, it,

it's going to happen, you know, on, on bigger levels than this, you know, this is just kind of the start of it. Um, but yeah, I've envisioned this for this company, you know, from, from the beginning, I've always wanted, I've always wanted our company to be recognized by other companies. I always wanted our company. Uh, I wanted, I want people to be jealous of what we're doing. I want people to be jealous of the jobs that you guys have. I want people to be jealous of what we're doing. I want people to be jealous of the jobs that you guys have. I want people to be jealous of the different things we're able to afford. I mean, people come in here and they're like, holy shit. They see this podcast room.

It's got seven cameras in it. And they're like, wow, like I got one of these, you know, as is really expensive crap. You know, we got a lot of stuff in here and it's because we've sold a lot of products to a lot of great customers. And we've continued to take care of those customers. And we always will, because we appreciate that we have a 20,000 square foot facility that we're able to have free power lifting and free, free, a free gym in because of the loyalty of the customers over the years. This is all built. This isn't built off of Mark Bell. This is built off of the fans and the customers

communicating over and over again about how good the products are. And they continue to do it. The company continues to grow. The company continues to soar. And I will continue to be transparent. I'll continue to let you know what the hell is going on. But what I would say is think about where you put your money

and think about who you're voting for. I don't mean voting for politically, but I mean when you spend money on something, you're voting for somebody. You're voting for that company. So somebody might say, I don't really like Mark Bell. Okay, well, what's your alternative? Because you know you don't like me because of, because I'm everywhere because I'm on YouTube

and because I have a podcast and because I have, I wrote a book because I'm right. I'm just in a lot of different spots, but where is your money going? Otherwise, uh, at least I'm a lifter. At least I'm a lifter. least i'm a lifter that's created stuff for lifters with lifters in mind i've worn all this stuff i wear all this stuff who are these other people who are these other owners of these other uh um these other federations uh if they if they were anything i'm unaware of it and there's no bigger power to thing fan than me i love power to thing and i'm unaware of any of the numbers these guys have ever put up uh these other owners uh they've never put up one point on the scoreboard in terms of

in uh terms of what i consider points on the score but i don't know i'm unaware of anything they've ever done that's good or great and so so, you know, when I think about, you know, where people are going to put their dollars and what people are going to buy, they should be buying from Slingshot because we make products for the lifters. That's what we're here for. That's what super training gym is all about. The gym is free. The gym is free.

There's no trick involved. People keep asking me that. Like, what's the, there's nothing. How do you become a member? Just don't be a pussy. That's it. Just,

just don't be a bitch. Just come in and say that you want to try it out and come in and work out. There's no, there's a, there's no strings attached. Um, the one thing we don't allow is we don't allow you to wear shitty products in here.

So that's, that's about it. You can't wear other other can't wear other companies products it's a request of a free gym right um it doesn't mean you have to wear our stuff but you just can't wear anybody else's stuff um that's that's it but there's no there's no you know the gym is uh i don't know there's three hundred thousand dollars worth of equipment there or more. I don't even know. Like there's a lot of great stuff in there. Not only is the gym free, but if you end up training with us often, you're going to get a lot of instruction. You know, and I can't even tell you how many people I've had come up to me

and say, man, I really want to train at your gym, but is it really free? Yeah, it's really free. That's why I say it's free. It doesn't cost you anything. How is it free? And there's not thousands of people lined up ready to go train. Because powerlifting's hard.

That's why. Powerlifting's tough. It's a tough thing to get good at. Yeah. So what's going to happen with the X-sleeves the way they are now with the grip? Somebody's asking if we're going to discontinue them now. No, we're going to keep selling them no we're going to keep selling them we're going to keep selling them we were gonna we were gonna

um just kind of do away with them and then we're like you know what they're too popular people love them because a lot of people bought them before they were ipf approved so a lot of people bought them without without even understanding whether they're going to be whether they were going to become ipf approved or not a lot of people just purchased them and they were fired up and excited about it. So, um, yeah,

that's right. Don't be a bitch. That's what I said. Somebody's chiming in on Instagram, but, um, yeah, the X sleeve is,

uh, still going to be sold. We're going to call it the grippy X sleeve. You're going to see it. Um, the new X sleeve and the grippy x sleeve will be on the website tomorrow and we also have a halloween sale going on at the same time so we had a meeting and um you know a lot of times andy and i come in and kind of tell everybody something we tell everybody

about like what we're looking for what we're're doing this week, but we're also, you know, looking for information. We're also trying to use you guys as a sounding board. And a lot of great things came of that meeting. I mean, if you think about, you know, where we were at the beginning of the meeting versus where we left off was quite different. You know, we ran a gamut of all these different scenarios and all this stuff. Again, obviously it's to make more money. We want the company to succeed. We want the company to prosper. We want the company to grow. We had the Zevia guy in here yesterday. He said, when they first started, you know, the product had sugar alcohols in it and had this and that, and he didn't like that, but the company grew, it expanded, they made more money, they made the product better.

That's what we're trying to do. We're trying to continue to grow and expand so we can keep making the products better. We can make, keep making the people that work in here better. The more opportunity there is for Andrew, the more opportunity there is for Chris, the more opportunity there is for the people that work in this building, the better the information that's going to get delivered to you. I mean, that's cool. So go buy a shirt that says power on it or go buy a strong shirt or, or go buy a hat from us. Go buy a slingshot from us over at markbellslingshot.com. If you go over there right now and you want to, uh, get 15% off slingshots, then I think you type in power project, right? Power project at checkout. We'll get you 15% any and all slingshots and i think you type in power project right power project at checkout will

get you 15 any and all slingshots yeah and then also there's the sale tomorrow for halloween but um you know i again this is the price of uh of being in business this is this is uh the price that you pay there's always going to be a target on you. And, uh, I think a lot of people feel that way in their day to day. I think they feel like kind of the world's out to get them or they feel like it's them versus everybody else. Or, um, you know, it's your fault. You couldn't get to work on time because, oh man, they're doing road work, you know, they're doing construction on my street.

And so I couldn't get to work on time. Um, you kind of always have that feeling but what are you going to do you're going to just continue to be late you're going to continue to cry about it or are you going to try to do something productive uh or are you going to try to spin it to be positive when we got on the phone with the ipf my wife and uh the guy that she was talking to on the phone they were goingF, my wife and, uh, the guy that she was talking to on the phone, they were going back and forth adult conversation, but nobody was,

I mean, no one was heated. It wasn't, it wasn't getting crazy or anything, but the second I had the opportunity to talk and, and this is my wife's job is to kind of be a pain in the ass. She kind of has to be, somebody has to,

somebody has to get the bottom of all this. Right. And so she has to do that and she doesn't mind doing that but when i got on the phone all that guy knows is his perception of me you know and who knows what the perception is of me floating around um i'm sure they don't really care that much they're just excited to uh they're excited to have us be part of their federation now um but when i got on the phone i said hey listen you know what i am so excited i am so fired up and pumped to be part of the ipf it's the biggest power lifting federation that there is i used to compete in it compete in it

as a kid i competed in the adfpa before it ever branched off and became the usapl and then before it partnered up with the IPF, I've been competing in power since I was 12 years old. And this, uh, us coming together, us collaborating on this is awesome. And it's great for, it's, it's just going to benefit the lifters. And that's what I'm excited about. And the guy was like super pumped and he was excited. And he said, you know what? He goes, I tell everybody over here that, uh, if there's anybody who can turn, uh, negative publicity into great publicity, it's Mark Bell. So he's like, I know that you'll figure it out anyway. So they already had discussions. They already, they know

that because of, uh, you know, what they did with this product, um, taking the X sleeve, um, or, or overturning their approval of the X sleeve. They know that it's jacking us up, but they also know that we're strong enough to overcome it and have it, uh, not only be something that we overcome, have it be something that's great for us because what I like about it is now we get to continue to communicate with our customers. So there are some customers, there's a lot of customers that bought this X sleeve with the intention of using it in USAPL meets and being able to compete in the IPF and now they won't be able to. But we're replacing this sleeve with an approved X sleeve,

especially for them. And it gives us an opportunity to email those customers explain what happened walk them through the process and say oh yeah you know what we're sending you some free we're going to send you a free pair of the new x leaves because we realize what a hassle what a giant pain in the ass we didn't have to do that it would have made more sense for us to just do it with only the people that bought it and purchased it and thought it was for the people that bought it with the intention of using it in the IPF. But we decided to do it for everybody. So anybody that gets the email, anybody that gets the email within the next day or two, I want you to act on it. I

want you to click on it. I want you to open up your email. I want you to look on it. I want you to click on it. I want you to open up your email. I want you to look at it. I want you to go to our website, and I want you to make this right and get the right product. I've been reading a handful of comments in a couple other videos that I've seen on the YouTubes. One that just stood out to me, and it was just funny because at the end of our commercial you said you're giving money back to power lifting but people were like well he's getting all the advertising he's going to get all the money how is giving back to power lifting or how is mark giving back to power lifting by investing and you know making all his products ipf approved yeah you know i mean the first thing, is that 250 K literally just went straight to the IPF. So the IPF needs money to have judges. It needs money to have spotters loaders.

It needs money for new computers, uh, to keep records. It needs money, right? It needs money, right? They have a website. They, uh, they do a lot, right? They have a website. They do a lot. They do a lot of things. They spend a lot of money on these competitions that they have. So that money literally went back into a federation that runs a powerlifting organization that is the most powerful powerlifting federation on the planet. And so that's where that money went to and towards. And yeah, maybe it just went to some dude's salary too, but who cares? Because those people need to be paid for their time and for their efforts as well. Um, my reaction to

some of that was, what is your idea? What, what, what is your suggestion because the only thing that anyone ever comes up with is you should invest in our contest because we're going to pay cash the paying cash thing's been around forever i've run a lot of meets like that and i'm sorry but i've done that probably about 10 years ago so it's that's an outdated protocol that doesn't do anything for powerlifting it really doesn't it i'll say it again it doesn't do anything for powerlifting. It really doesn't. I'll say it again. It doesn't do anything for powerlifting. There was a contest in Dubai this week for Strongman that had a tremendous amount of money on the line. I can't even remember how much money was on the line.

How many people were aware that there was a Strongman contest in Dubai? Not a clue. Except for a few people that liked watching Brian Shaw and like watching Hapthor Bjornsson. Most people are completely unaware that there was even a contest. So what does that do for strongman? It doesn't really do anything for strongmen unless they're able to run that contest for three years, four years, five years, six years. And then there's, uh, there's, there's kids and there's younger people younger generation going ah that's what i want to do with my life because that looks really cool i can pick up

heavy stuff and it seems like if i'm good enough seems like i can actually make some dough doing it as well for power lifting to benefit from somebody investing money into it, you'd have to invest enormous amounts of money into it. Um, who are you going to pay? How many people are you going to pay? I mean, the only thing that makes sense would be to structure a professional powerlifting league, but you know what? You don't have any people would complain about that. Thousands of people would complain about that because how many people would be good enough to get paid and then how much are you going to pay them you know just do some math do some simple math what if you paid um there's there's at least 50 lifters in the world that are that are a hundred percent worth making fifty thousand dollars a year just on how strong they are right just on

just completely just about just how strong they are right just on just completely just about just how strong they are right let's even say 30 000 just add that up who the hell is going to pay that and how who and how are they going to pay that you know um it just doesn't make any sense um nike you know doesn't pay uh for the salary of lebron james um nike doesn't you know, doesn't pay for the salary of LeBron James. Nike doesn't, you know, they don't come in and they pay these guys to be spokesmen for them. But LeBron James gets paid by the NBA. He gets paid by the league that he's a part of because that league is on a crazy level. I'm sorry, he doesn't get paid by the NBA.

He gets paid by the team that he's on. He gets paid by the Los Angeles Lakers. But that whole situation and the way all that is formed has been formed over decades and decades of these individuals being on TV and them having commercials. Everything, you go to Sacramento Kings game, game you know we're here in sacramento california go to sacramento king's game and everything's a commercial they take a halftime break it's brought to you by somebody uh all throughout the entire stadium there's commercial something going on everywhere there's a banner there's a thing there's a every single thing that you can think of selling they they, they sell you on.

Now, power of thing is just not to that point. And it just, it more, more than likely, uh, never will be, but somebody will have to have a more, a much more complicated, much more complicated, uh, attack than to just simply pay out the lifter, uh, for what they did at the end. Like if the NBA was to, um, you know, pay the best basketball players in the world, which they don't. NBA is just the organization that houses it all. If they were to pay the best NBA players in the world, they'd be broke. This doesn't work that way.

Yeah. So it looks like Hafthor got $75,000. Shaw got $35,000. I always have a hard time pronouncing. Is it Mateo? Oh, yeah. Oh, shit. Sorry,000. Shaw got 35,000. And I always have a hard time pronouncing. It's a Matt, Matteo. Oh yeah. Oh shit.

Sorry, dude. I've seen him compete a hell of times. I still know his name. That guy's got some traps on him. Yeah. Uh, this guy.

Mm hmm. Yeah. But still, yeah, I think only. Yeah, that's some big money. And I think they got flown there.

Like that's, that's pretty cool. Yeah. But 35,000, I mean, Brian's would have to, I mean, whoever the person is would have to come in second. Um, you know, they'd have, I mean, shit sec, he's the second strongest guy in the world. Um, there's so much that goes into that. Um, that is one competition. Obviously he can compete more.

Um, but, uh, it's, it's tough. It's tough to compete. And you don't see that in powerlifting anyway. There's not really a lot of contests where there's that much money on the line. Now, when it was multi-ply powerlifting, they had more, well, it looks really cool. It does look sick. These are the things that are actually going to, that would help more so than anything else is, is high production, These are the things that are actually going to, that would help more so than anything else is, is high production, a high production value. Um, having, having good interaction with the fans and stuff, but, but these sports, I mean, there's, when it comes to power to things, just something different would have to happen for there to be an explosion of cash, uh, for everybody to, uh, for everybody to figure out ways of making dough. But, you know, every company is going to decide on how they spend their money. Some, some companies like to spend money on, uh, investing in their,

um, in their athletes and they spend a lot of money on their athletes. And then, um, other companies like to, uh, have like influencers, other companies like to run commercials. Um, just every company kind of has their own format, their own way of doing things. The Zevia company, having Patty Spence here yesterday that owns Zevia, that company is so different from what we have. They got soda. We have slingshots. It's a different attack. It's a different approach. Do you think it would bother you or anybody

if we go to a powerlifting meet and it's kind of like going to a Kings game where the seat you're sitting in has an ad, the banners, every time a new lifter goes up, it's brought to you by slingshot or whatever. So a lot of people

have been to powerlifting meets and when they get asked um or when when they get stopped and someone's like hey it's 15 bucks to get in people flip out they flip out yeah but then people use no money it's like which way do you want it can we settle on a way that you want it to be um Um, now, you know, we, Jesse and I have toyed with this for years and it's something that it bothers us. It bothers us that the lifters don't really get a lot, you know? Um, but what are you going to do? You know, Jesse and I played around with the idea of having a, um, you know, a thing of cash where you just say, Hey, anything you want to

donate goes towards the lifters. So i could see a lot of people reaching in and giving five bucks and and maybe like excuse me maybe it doesn't actually like go towards the lifters like you're not going to split up the cash at the end of the day right but it just went towards all the snacks and different things they have provided to them in the back or something like that right and it's it's like, yeah, but it's at the same time, it's like, no, let's make this a family environment. Let's make this fun. That's, I mean, that's why we do a lot of seminars and stuff for free too. It's like, I just, we just want to, we just want to share stuff. That's why the gym's free. Just want to, I just want to share stuff

with people. And, uh, yeah, Burdick and I have talked many times about, Hey, you know, how do we, and uh yeah burdick and i have talked many times about hey you know how do we you know we figure out you know uh it's something you know whether where there's some compensation for the contest and we're like no screw it let's just not even worry about it like the running the contest and having having people come up to you and look you in the eye and shake your hand and say hey thank you so much for putting on this contest that's plenty you know you don't really need you don't really need a whole lot more than that you ever think about like uh the winner of this meet is going to get like a year sponsorship from slingshot or something to where you're gonna i mean you kind of do that already but like an official like hey i'm gonna i'm gonna take care of you guys for the next year. Your meat, whatever, the cost of going across the country to hit up another meat,

all your gear, that sort of thing. So that way you're still technically giving back to that one power lifter and making a huge impact on that person's life and maybe kind of influencing the next meet at Burdick's Gym. Yeah, I mean, all those things are great. The issue with that is like i don't know who's gonna win and then like once the person wins i don't know who that person is like uh as great and as big of a deal as conor mcgregor is like i would be pissed if i was a sponsor and

i saw him throwing a hand truck through a bus right or if you're a khabib sponsor and you saw him going out in the crowd trying to attack attack the guy, you know, um, and, and different people are gonna have different views on those kinds of things. But, um, you know, I, I wouldn't want to, uh, to be associated with somebody, uh, that has like this sketchy background or whatever. And I'm not saying that they would, but like, you just don't really know who they are. So we're better off, uh, supporting people that support us. We're better off supporting people that we know. Um, you think of, uh, you know, Jeremy Avila, somebody that we've had around before Brian, we have an outstanding relationship with him. Uh, and there's been a lot of other lifters that have come here. And, um, there's a lot of, a lot of lifters who do a lot for us. Um,

and they don't ask much of us. They just, you know, we we've been able to share, uh, that them on our social media and help give them more recognition. Uh, there's a lot of lifters that have really done, um, uh, some great things for us and great things with us. And, you know, I, I really would love to see that, uh, continue. I would love to see the sport grow. Um, but I don't think the sport growing has that much to do with, uh, necessarily there being like more money in the sport. Um, the slingshot record breakers meet that is coming up. It's right around the corner, November 10 and 11th, I believe. Uh, I'm super excited about that. We're giving out cash at that meet. Um, it's, it's an honor to be part of that. It's an honor to

hand a check over to somebody for a few thousand bucks if they break some records and stuff. Um, but again, I don't think that really drives, I don't think that really drives, it's not, um, it's not like sexy enough or cool enough to really, you know, really move the needle. I mean, if, if, uh, you were able to have a thing about this, Greg Glassman, uh, developed CrossFit. Greg Glassman has a statement of saying that men will die for points. And when he says men, he means men and women, humans. Yeah. People will die for points. And when he says men, he means men and women.

Humans. Yeah. People will die for points. And if you think, think about that, like it's Thanksgiving and you go outside and you start chucking around a wiffle ball and you're playing wiffle ball with your family or whatever. Next thing you know, it's going full tilt. People are sliding, sliding in headfirst, the home plate on the blacktop, right? Like things just start getting wild. was safe yeah yeah and all of a sudden you're like how do we

get to this point where there's a fight in the street you call that a strike yeah yeah yeah there's a fight in the street over this uh silly game that we've we fired up over here but um that that to me is is is where the focus should be. The focus should be on the competition. How do we make the competition better? How do we streamline the competition? So people aren't like, ah, I'm not going to that meet, but I'm going to go to this meet over here. Nah, I'm not going to that one. I'm going to go to this one over here. How do we funnel it into a system of finding the strongest human beings in the world? If you think about CrossFit, they have a six-week program that is announced every week.

They have these workouts, right? Let's say Andrew and I are CrossFitters. Well, Andrew does, it's 2018, right? So we'll say, and then it's week one of the workout. So Andrew and I do 18.1, uh, on, on the first day that they announced the workout and, uh, Andrew trains in, um, trains in Oakland and I train here in Sacramento and I know Andrew, we've been friends for years and I, I can go and I can look up NorCal and I can,

and I know that some of the people are going to be like, but CrossFit's changed there. I know, I know they've changed their thing. I'm just, this is all, but I can still look in NorCal and I can see son of a bitch. Andrew beat me on 18.1.

Well, I can try it again. Now I try it again. I try it again i get a better score i'd submit it in time it's done correctly or however they do it and uh now you see that i jumped you and you're like shit man so i mean that's doing so many different things that's getting you to the gym more that's getting you to the box that you train at which is which is all very positive. Um, it also, I mean, also can get a dangerous place for people because people do get hurt

because men will die for points, but that's the, that's the level of thought that would have to be put into trying to blow power lifting up or turn it into something bigger. We've talked about it many times in this podcast before. Um, I do think ultimately, uh, well, I don't think I know for a fact that I can do it. I know that I can, I can help the sport, but I'm not in a position to do that just yet. I have too many other things going on to, uh, I need to be older in order to really make this work. And I don't know, maybe an opportunity will pop up with what we're doing with the IPF now. Yeah. Do you think going kind of like all UFC on powerlifting and making like a... I guess the IPF is already that with like drug testing and stuff. So I guess the question is, do you think that has anything to do with the popularity

or the lack of popularity when it comes to powerlifting? The IPF... Because, I mean, you said it yourself, the IPF is huge, right? It's huge. And then these other organizations aren't as big. Right. The IPF

is... The IPF has a lot of, the IPF has a lot of, uh, a lot, the IPF has a lot of older people associated with it. So I think that if they had some young blood in there, I think that that would help. And I know that there's people that work for them right now that are young, that are probably like, they don't listen to me. Um, but I think all that will continue just to get better. It will all continue to get better. And I think, um, that if powerlifting is ever to really grow, I don't think it's through the Olympics. I don't think the Olympics will matter. Um, I, I think it would be cool, but IPF people, people have never been to another country and they never been, or not to another country, but people have never been to an IPF world event in another country.

Most of the, most of the people that are out there. And if they have, they would, they would be blown. Like I haven't been to one, but I know, but I understand what they look like. It's insane what it looks like. It does not look like anything that we're used to here. It is just multiplied by 200. There's going to be a lot of people at Jesse Burdick's meet, Slingshot Record Breakers meet, that we're doing together.

There's going to be a lot of great excitement and stuff like that there, but it's like, um, there'll be two, 3,000 people, 4,000, 5,000 people sitting in their seats, uh, paying very close attention to what's going on in some of these, uh, bigger IPF, uh, competition. So I think the growth of the sport is going to come through the younger lifters think about how many people there are out there that don't know what they like to do yet you know you mentioned your daughter she started dancing recently and you're super excited what does it have to do with dancing nothing has nothing to do with actual dancing uh you you she could have played the violin and you'd be like oh my god she's playing the violin this is so cool yeah she found something that she loves to do that's that's the cool thing but how many kids are there out there

that could use being exposed to something like this that this powerlifting could change your life forever dance it would be like probably pretty unlikely to like dance your whole life but we do know some people like uh we've had some crossfit girls come in here before and they've danced from the time they were young and now they do choreography and stuff like that and but for for a lot of people some of the things you do when you're little like play baseball or something those things will run out how long you're gonna play baseball for how long you're gonna play football for how when you're little, like play baseball or something, those things will run out. How long are you going to play baseball for? How long are you going to play football for? How long are you going to wrestle for? And like, like then you have to find someone else like wrestler. You got to find someone else too, which might be awkward.

And you got to find, you got to find somebody else to play baseball against, or you got to be in some old guy baseball league. But with lifting weights, it's something that you can do forever. And so I think that the ticket and the key is, uh, through younger people. And I don't mean kids that are 10, you know, I mean, kids that are anywhere between 15 and 25, basically, um, collegiate power lifting, what, you know, is, is on the rise and that's going to be something that can really help grow the sport. And so again, I don't think money, I don't think money is the main thing. Um, if the collegiate athlete could, the collegiate lifters, uh, could get expenses paid for and things like that. Now we're starting to, that's, that's starting to,

that's starting to be a real positive because now we go back to Nike, Nike, Nike will invest in these basketball camps and they will pay for, uh, some kids to go to these camps. They will do certain, you know, so there's, there are some, there are some things that could really help the sport i think more camps slash seminars will help and i think uh just instructing our youth as we did with female power lifters instructing our youth hey man it's okay to rip up some heavy ass weight you know we've done that with females and now females all over the place are just crushing weight left and right freaking joey is in there kicking everybody's ass all the time i don't know what that's about she's like i haven't deadlifted in a while she's

like bam bam bam we're like whoa and just don't deadlifts twice as much as me without even trying yeah she's like my form is so bad yeah she's like yeah that was awful. Or yeah. What about Jessica pulling 410 for, for two reps? You know, I mean, just, you know, it's just ridiculous how strong people are getting, but strong people will continue to push the sport and people need to be kind and need to not be dicks and people need to be positive. And that's why I'm being positive about the situation. Yes. The situation sucks. Um, um i i work really hard you know i i just went into our r&d room and i looked around the room and i can't even explain why but like when i see some of the stuff that i've created in the past like i just i want to like

break down and cry because i'm like shit man like yeah like i i made i made that thing over there and i'll look at i'll be like that thing made that thing over there and I'll look at it. I'll be like, that thing was so stupid, you know? And I'll look at something else. I'll be like, oh, there's a winner. You know, there's the, there's the original hip circle. I'll look at something else. Like I made a deadlift suit one time that was made out of like knee wrap material. It's a, it's crazy.

It's crazy. By the way, these people that are trying to make these suits that connect to belts and stuff, you guys are so far behind. You don't have no no idea you have no idea the different shit that i made and i definitely don't want to clown on anyone's inventions or stuff but did you see the sweaters with the wrist wraps connected inside that's awesome we need that i mean i dug it because i'm always cold but i just i don't know i just figured a lot of people would think that that was silly. That's so good. That's so good.

You never know when lifting's going to break out. I like it. Yeah. Just out on the town and all of a sudden, oh, wait, got to get set up for this big-ass deadlift. You know what's funny is Austin Baumgarten came to me one time and he uh he just came up to me and he was like hey you know what would be cool if you could figure out a way to like sew compression cuffs into like uh uh compression pants and i was like and everybody else kind of laughed and i was like no he's actually on something pretty good there he's's just, the problem is, is you end up Frankenstein and things and it's hard to make stuff look

appealing. Um, in our society, you forget how important that is. Like, uh, like if you want to look really weird, put on a pair of jeans, right? Get your best pair of jeans, right? Get your best pair of workout shorts, take those workout shorts and put them right up over top of your jeans and then go to the and then go to the local coffee shop you'll look like a complete idiot so the aesthetics of things is really important that's why some of the products that i've had in my head for all these years i have not created because they look too dumb

i'm like nobody wants to look like an idiot you know sitting there in a corner austin comes up with some cool stuff just in conversation talking to him he's a really smart guy oh he's brilliant he uh he really loves food he's he loves food so he'll get so excited about like he's he's somebody that like if you say, hey, you know, ever try a Quest bar? They taste pretty good. He'll go, Quest bars are disgusting. He's like, good compared to what? And I'm like, okay, okay. I understand your point. Good in comparison to a Butterfinger or peanut butter cup. I get it.

You win. But it tastes pretty good relative to other protein bars, is what I was referring to. Speaking of candy, tis the season, buddy. What's your favorite? And are you a candy guy? I think you're more of a chip fry guy, right? Yeah, I am, but I mean, do you realize-

How is that a thing? It's just because of the stomach thing. Like if I have fries or whatever, I'm fine. If I have too much sweets, my stomach hurts really bad. Just kills you. Yeah. But do you remember Reese's Nutrageous back in the day? Yeah.

Okay, that was my jam. That was really good. I don't see it anymore. I don't know what happened to it. I think I bought them all. All right. So where was I what happened to it. So. I think I bought them all. All right. So where was I? Where, we were talking about candy.

Where were, okay. I was in, I was in Alaska. Um, and we went to the movie theater and I saw, we, we got to, now you got to go on the website. Cause I don't know what's happening with Reese's. Um, I bought what I thought was kind of like a Nutrageous, but they had something new and different out, and it was delicious. You ever have a Break 5 or whatever it's called?

Take 5? I've seen that, but I've never had it. Take 5 is good. I used to go to the store, and I used to just buy all the candy. I used to just go in and buy it all. I love all of it. I love Snickers.

I love the Snickers peanut butter ones. Snickers almond. Obviously the regular Snickers rules too. I like, you know, it's weird because I like dark chocolate and I have a, I have an expensive like kind of gayish palette. I would say. But there's so much that goes into a gay palate, right? So I'm finding Reese's outrageous.

That's the one. Pull it up. I can't see it over here. My bad. I'm hiding it. I know. Yeah, that's what I had. So it's got, like, the candy bar, and then it's got the small Reese's pieces inside of it. I was watching a movie, so I didn't even know what I had. So it's got like the candy bar and then it's got the small Reese's. That's what it was. Pieces inside of it.

I was watching a movie, so I didn't even know what I was eating. It was all in the dark just going to town on it. It's great because it was like a king size one. I think it had like four chunks to it. You're so fat. Well, I am so fat. It even gets fatter. So I bought it and like my family didn't know that I bought it because we bought like a bunch of crap kind of popcorn and stuff.

And I was like, oh, they don't really know that I have this. So I hid it from them. Well, so I had it on the side. I had it like on the side of me where I was sitting and I had every intention of sharing it. But then I took one bite of it and I was like, fuck this. I thought for sure. I thought they saw me eating it, but no one saw me eat it. No one said anything.

Usually Quinn or Jake or someone's all over me like, what is that? And normally it's normally works out great. Cause I'm like, I ate like one chunk of it. Not a big deal, but not this time around. I was like, I'm hammering this whole thing. That's good. That's awesome. Um, I definitely like a dark chocolate.

Like even just the simple dove dark chocolate is hella good. But, uh, Snickers is always a good go-to. Peanut butter cups. It's weird. There's a lot of people that don't like peanut butter cups. And I don't know what's wrong with them. It drives me nuts. Somebody on the chat box, they said Almond Joy.

And I don't know. I'm not a fan of the coconut. They're trying to be all healthy. Yeah, it's like, fuck that, dude. Just have a candy. Yeah, no, don't go trying to sneak in a bunch of healthy crap on me. Come on, Eric. But he did bring up another point, or not suggest, whatever.

He just brought it up about having scholarships for high school kids that are in powerlifting. That might be cool, too. That would be cool to like that would be cool now there are a couple of colleges that have like scholarshiped powerlifting trying to get my motherfucking scholarship yeah yeah it is really cool oh paydays are good too corbin good call yeah payday is pretty good and it shouldn't be that good but it's good uh this is where like my uh butterfingers nutritional like upbringing i remember playing basketball and then my dad being like hey here have this payday so that way you have a lot more energy it's like all right cool that makes sense it's got peanuts right peanuts are healthy well and it's also true though i mean you got some sugar in there too

which is you know sugar you know as we were pointing out on the yesterday's podcast is sugar is a form of energy but it's just so overdone that's that's kind of the issue with it um so there was a bar made years ago called a bar none and like it was out for a few years it kicked ass i loved it i used to get it all the time and then and then uh it just as my son would say when he was like probably five or six it disappeared miss him oh yeah he may have his own word yeah it disappeared oh man we have we still say some of those even though jasmine doesn't say them anymore yeah and they and they kid your kids get pissed at you what are you talking about so peanut butter cup oh this looks this looks great. Hold on.

Let me pull this up. Did you find it? Oh, man. Memories. Oh, my God. Oh, man. Tame the chocolate beastie, it says at the bottom. Am I reading that correct?

I think so. What is a chocolate beastie? I guess I have that inside me. I guess. Dude, I love chocolate chocolate we went to look at how they make the chocolate look just oh you have no idea how to do that with your camera you got to work on that shit buddy that shit's fake though oh i think sorry bro i could light it i don't know if i can photograph it kind Kind of looks good, but it kind of looks like a turd towards the end. A turd with traction.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. A turd with tread. I went to Ginger Elizabeth's. You ever been there before? Never heard of it. Yeah. There's a reason why I never heard of it. It is the most expensive, most ridiculous goddamn place in the world,

but it's so good. It's just in downtown Sacramento. Um, I forget exactly where it's at, but yeah, Ginger Elizabeth is awesome. We should actually have the woman on the podcast cause she's from Davis and all she does is make these kick-ass cookies all day, um, and, and chocolates, but the cookies there are ridiculous. They have that kind of crunch to the outside. You know, it's a good cookie when it weighs like 25 pounds. The thing's got some serious weight to it. And they're just, I mean, it's hard to describe,

but they are so good. They're soft and moist and they're just, it's just absolutely like, it's impossible to eat just one though. And then you just get sick and feel like you's impossible to eat just one though and then you just get sick and feel like you're gonna die oh how about twix twix is fantastic i'm a big fan i can't eat them in my older days now because they kind of hurt my teeth the caramel it i don't know it just sticks to your teeth it just it just hurts you get that like layer of crap on your teeth yeah yeah uh somebody else said three musketeers which you know it's very filling very very filling uh three

musketeer is uh is not good because it's it's just like the poor man's snickers or something like it's missing the other ingredients they are very girthy though they They're great. They're great. They're very fluffy. They're very airy. Yeah. Uh, you know, if they were around and, uh, and, and you had no other options,

yeah, you'd eat some of them. I mean, they're, they taste really good. Do you ever have M&Ms with popcorn? Yeah.

Like while you're eating your popcorn, you shove in some M&Ms. Yeah. It's amazing. I love that move. M&Ms and ice cream. It almost doesn't matter what I love that move. M&M's and ice cream. It almost doesn't matter what kind of ice cream.

M&M's always goes good with it. You know, as you get older, unfortunately, you get to be like, you know, we've talked about our kids not knowing how to, like, match up their ice cream the right way. Yeah. And then they make, like, a big bowl of, like, ice cream soup that just looks like it'll just kill your stomach. Yeah. But as you get older, though, you go too far the other way. I'm always like, it'll just kill your stomach yeah but as you get older though you go too far the other way i'm always like i'll just get vanilla it's like what happened i'm the same way i used to be i used to be a savage yeah i don't know because i remember my dad would do

that all the time he's like i just want vanilla i'm like dude you have all these flavors and you're gonna get the you get the one from the store like no and then now i'm like yeah everything else kind of bothers me hurts me one way or the other it's kind of like like nowhere is this more apparent than when you're making a sandwich right because like you can mess up the flavor of the sandwich by throwing the wrong thing on there like i like to i like to taste the cheese on a sandwich so i don't like to mix in too much other crap. I don't even really like vegetables on my sandwich because it kind of pulls away from the cheese and meat flavor. Yeah.

I can't do tomatoes because it just makes everything soggy and gross. Yeah, and then everything falls apart and it slides. Yep. I never understood that either. I don't think that's a good option. Someone else said a whatchamacallit. I've never had one, though. Oh, those are really good.

I never had a Heath bar either because when I was a kid, I thought it said health. So I thought it was like a power bar. That's great. So I never tried one of those either. Have you ever had an Abba Zabba? I don't think so. I've seen them before though. They're so chewy. You'll lose teeth. Is it like a Charleston

Chew? I think so, yeah. Like a big giant to like you you take a bite and it just keeps stretching out forever that's awesome and if you take a bite your teeth will come out why when you go to like bodega bay dylan's beach why is there so much salt water so much tap i don't know yeah what does that have to i don't think they make it like in salt water i think it's just do the crabs help make it or something i mean i hope not but i mean i don't think that stuff's appealing to me like at all no to me it looks gross i'm not a i'm not a hard candy person like i don't like uh like butterscotch and like skittles and shit like that

i mean i'll i'll eat it i guess if i'm threatened i'll eat it but But what are they? Some of that stuff, like the sour. What's the sour shit? What are those things called? Like the straw ones or? You're talking about like Warheads? The ones they have at the movie theater. Oh, Sour Patch Kids? Yeah, yeah, yeah, those.

Yeah. I mean, those are amazing, but I just rather waste my calories somewhere else, I guess. Oh, man. Rolos, no thanks. Those hurt my teeth. I think just the caramel hurts my teeth. Yeah, so I went to Ginger Elizabeth's one time, and I think I spent like 75 bucks. Like, we went there.

Some cookies. Yeah, Andy and I went there after we went to Press. You ever been to Press Bistro in downtown Sacramento? No. Pretty nice place. Not crazy. Not like, you know, it's not like over the top or anything, but it's a great restaurant. We actually went there.

The first time we ever went there was we were celebrating the one year anniversary of the slingshot being out in the pub and being out in public or actually maybe it was just the first year it was out wasn't even a one-year anniversary it was just the it was the birth so anyway we went to press bistro and then uh after that we rolled over to ginger elizabeth's which is just kind of behind it and um we're just like oh we'll take some of those and we'll take some of those and we'll take some of those and we'll take some of those we'll take some of those and then you know of course you get to the register and they have fun stuff at the register too so you grab a couple of those and i was like oh my god they got ice cream too and

we're just ordering like everything and and then they ring it up and i'm like oh my god we just spent 78 dollars on chocolate. That's crazy. Yeah. I don't remember the last time I went nuts on just sweets. I think. They have like macaroons and shit. Oh, those look good. I don't think I've ever had one.

Those are really good. They look good. Yeah. More people need like their stomach to get jacked up from the junk that they eat. You know? It's weird though. You know, it's, it's all so all so strange like why why is your body okay with french fries like it shouldn't be i yeah i don't know man and and you know recently like

we've been talking like i'll have a steak and that'll jack up my stomach but i can go to in and out i'll be fine you know i i've I've actually kind of used to be that way too. Where like certain things like bread, I feel like my body always digests bread really easy. I had Ezekiel bread on the way to the gym today because I was pretty hungry. Like I had hard-boiled eggs in the night. I was like, dude, I need more. So I had just two slices of bread, plain, like just sitting on my lap, like no actual like napkin or anything. Kind of gross when I'm

looking at it now. But, uh, and it was great, man. If it, it tasted amazing and it was just totally plain kind of, kind of dry and, uh, you know, like, uh, not, not stale, but it wasn't soft because it's Ezekiel bread, but it was really good. And my body does respond well to bread. It's Ezekiel bread, but it was really good. And my body does respond well to bread. Somebody, uh, somebody wrote in here, they said, get chocolate protein powder and get rice bubbles and make. What are rice bubbles? I don't know.

And get rice bubbles and make some cocoa pops. I have no idea what that is. That sounds weird. But another guy wrote in and said, you take your protein powder and you mix it in with your cereal. And I've done that before. It's actually really good.

Just some slingshot protein, some water, shake her up, throw it in the, throw it on top of whatever cereal I'm eating. It's freaking delicious. When's the last time you've been to Cinnabon? I would like to say I've never been to it

but I must have at some point those things are okay they're just not my first choice it doesn't really appeal to me that much I can't remember which comedian he was on a podcast I think or maybe it was stand up but he was like you can just look at the shame

and all the guys standing in the line at Cinnabon. Oh God, I know. I know. Yeah. I haven't been there since probably like high school. They're in the airport and like, people are like, I don't know. It's, it's weird. You know, I, I, I'll never look at food the same, you know, from, from the time I was

about, uh, 11, 12 years old when I started this whole lifting thing, it's been a long evolution into having the mindset that I have now. But as soon as I started to learn about sugar and how shitty it is for you and just excess food in general, um, I started making changes. And then, you know, now when I go to like, uh, like Starbucks, I can't help and look, but look and see just how much junk is there. There's those like cake pops and cookies and, um, and chocolate milk and, uh, apple juice. And it's just, it's like, it's just a giant cascade of, like, this junk, and people get it every day, and they don't even realize how shitty it is for them, you know, they don't even understand, like, this stuff is, this stuff's dangerous, you know, especially to have the first thing in the morning, you're gonna start your day off with a goddamn donut,

like, that's a, I don't know, that's just kind of a give-up thing to me that's you're just like what a weird way to start your day yeah pizza is really good i'm just reading some of these comments i had something on my mind and i just lost track because when he said pizza i forgot everything i was thinking about yeah somebody just said why is there so much sugar shit out there well because it sells and people keep buying it. So, you know, you have to try to work on not purchasing it anymore. That's what it was. When Patty Spence was just saying the number one thing you need to take out of your diet is soda.

He's like, that's the worst thing you can put in your body. I was like, thank you for saying that. Yeah. Because, I mean, it's everywhere. Like, you know, big Mexican family family so we have parties every weekend it's somebody's birthday every day including yesterday right that's where i was at last night and yeah i mean it's they're cheap you know it's easy when you want to feed a bunch of people think about the impact that you can start to have though you know on on your family and on different people. So they have a party, you bring over a 12 pack of Zevia, you know, um, they have a party and you bring over a plate

of vegetables, right? Um, you, they have a party and you cook up a bunch of skewers with chicken and steak. Skewers aren't gross. They're good. They taste good. Yeah. You know, they taste really good. There's, there's always other things that you can do. There's always other options and it's just, um, it's just habit. And then, you know, people will, you'll bring over a thing of skewers and you'll be like, oh, next time maybe I should bring more. Yeah. Because people will eat it up.

A lot of times at those parties, there's really not a lot of real food. No. It's like, i'm gonna put out chips it's actually the whole the whole thing is is uh it's it's very sad that it's like just so normal like someone takes a bag of chips and they get a giant bowl and they put it out and it's like it's like who is this for is this for like a dog or something an animal gonna come and like start eating out of this giant bowl like the whole process is kind of sad it's like man everyone's just gonna we're just like it's it's almost like uh you stop everybody and say all right everybody and you stand up on

a table and say listen for the next three hours all we're gonna do is damage our bodies and try to hurt us hurt ourselves we're gonna eat a lot of junk we're gonna going to drink a lot of alcohol. And then that's going to be it. And everybody can go home. And it's like, wait, what? What are we doing? Wait, damage my body? No, I'm just going to eat some chips and dip. Yeah.

I just want to eat some food because it tastes delicious. Yeah, I'm a fan of chips too. This is the crunchy saltiness. French onion dip. It's pretty damn good. Yeah, but the thing with me like if it's like a like okay well if we're gonna be dipping then we're gonna have um like the wavy what are they called ruffles right yeah okay so i don't want your chips to break all the time yeah i don't i end up like

i'll put like too much of the uh the ranch or whatever uh take a bite and i instantly eat like 10 more chips to even out everything. Oh, yeah, you try to pile it in. Yeah, because I have to be more on the drier side than the moist. What about chips and salsa? Huge fan. I love chips and salsa. Yeah, Stephanie's dad makes a

mean salsa. So does my mom. It creeps up on you, though, the chips and salsa. You don't really think much of it. You crush one or two of those. And then you're like, you get your food and you're like, Oh, you're like, I'm not as, I'm not nearly as hungry as I thought. Yeah. Um, what else?

Oh, I was telling you about like, uh, we were at, we went to get a couple of things at Walmart. We had, uh, because we have a, um, like a super Walmart next to our house. We're pretty close to our house, like five minutes down the street. And we had just a cart full of like vegetables and just random healthy foods and whatnot. And the person checking us out, she was just going back and forth. You know, she's checking stuff, just shaking her head. And my girlfriend, well, fiance and I, we looked at each other like, dude, what's going on here?

And then so she finally was like, you guys win healthiest cart of the day. Oh, yeah. And I was like, what? She was like, if people only understood how much better it is or how much cheaper it is to actually buy healthy food. She's like, because people come out here with two, three carts, just hundreds of dollars full of Pop-Tarts. And she's like, that's not even real food. And I'm like, it's so good real food. Right. And I'm like, it's so good that you know that like,

cause not a lot of people do. And she was just like going on and like how crazy it is to see these families that are obviously overweight, still just killing themselves, not even knowing it or knowing it, not even caring. Yeah. It's,

you know, it's, um, it's just, it's hard for people to make, uh, changes, but hopefully what happens. And, uh,, it's, it's just, it's hard for people to make changes, but hopefully what happens, and with my brother-in-law, he's been coming into super training and working

out and he's, he's been doing other forms of exercise too. He told me just the other day, he said he's been working out so often that he feels awful when he doesn't exercise. And that's where people need to get with their food. And that's going to take, that's going to take a lot of time and that's where people need to get with their food and that's going to take that's going to take a lot of time and that's going to take a lot of effort and it's just going to take some people longer than others for me you know it took me decades to kind of get to a point where i'm like you know what i just don't really want that because it doesn't go towards my goal and it doesn't make me feel good so now it's easy for me to pump the brakes and say, no, I just want steak and potatoes. You know, uh, I'll wait till later to eat that because, you know, I'm on an eating schedule or

whatever. It's, it starts to be easier when you're, when you're reasoning reason why, uh, overpowers everything else, it gets to be easier and easier to make the decision. People say, oh, it's, you know, it's inconvenient. Um, but it's not inconvenient. It's more convenient to have your food with you. Um, I would say that probably the average American, uh, person and or persons in a household, there's probably at least one cooked meal every day. And so if you think about it, if you were to cook one meal, if you were to cook one time nearly every day and you just cooked extra food every time you cooked, you would always be prepared. You wouldn't have to run out to lunch.

Again, if you like are in like a city area and you're trying to run to lunch and you're trying to get your car out of parking, out of a parking garage and all. I mean, you're you wasted 15 minutes, maybe 20 minutes just trying to get your car out of parking, out of a parking garage and all that. I mean, you're, you wasted 15 minutes, uh, maybe 20 minutes just trying to get to the destination. Now you're waiting in line because it's lunchtime and everywhere's packed. You just really cause yourself a lot of stress and it'd be easier to just make some of these things at home. And even if, even if you didn't want to follow a real specific diet, let's say you're like, man, you know what? I don't think I have a gluten thing and whatever. Make some of these things at home, but you can still make a burrito at home. That's rocking, you know, and you can pack it for the day. Um, everything that you pack all the time doesn't have to be the most healthiest meal anybody's ever seen. Um, there's no reason to

go out of your way to make anything that's like really shitty, but, um, why not mix it up a little bit? Why not have, you know, just, just if you're, if you're unfamiliar, if you haven't dieted much before, you know, give yourself, give yourself some leeway with it. The foods that I recommended in operation, get less fatterest. Um, all that stuff was in there for a reason, whole milk, uh, cottage cheese, yogurt, um, uh, whatever types of steaks that you like, whatever type of fish that you like, you want to have, you know, something like meatballs or just don't worry about it. Just try to really get in a good amount of protein, try to stay away from grains and sugars. Uh, there's nothing evil about those things. It's

just, we tend to overeat them. Um, and then, you know, from our boy, Patty Spence, who was here yesterday, I agree a hundred percent. If you can just handle doing one thing for yourself, just don't drink calories. Yeah.

I mean, he kind of said it, okay, don't drink calories. And he made the caveat of saying, uh, you know, don't drink calories unless it's from,

uh, milk or unless it's from alcohol i think that's those are or unless i had protein yeah he said protein or fat and then he kind of threw an alcohol yeah right because i was like wait what but no he was absolutely right yeah but even people that you know even people that drink um i mean trade trade your alcohol you know there's got to be a trade-off here. You can't be drinking alcohol and eating like shit and having sugary drinks. So there's got to be a stop to something at some point.

And diet is actually very simple. Like if you currently drink soda, get rid of it. If you currently are having fried foods and fast foods, get rid of it. See what the result is. If there's not really much of a change, then you got to start to look in other areas. And that can get frustrating, but start to look at how much food you're eating. How often are you eating? What kind of snacks are you having? You're having like, you know, chips or you're having packaged foods. Start to look at these things and start to pick it apart and say, okay, I want to pull back from some of this.

Losing weight is not that, it's not that hard of this losing weight is not that it's not that hard it can be frustrating but it's not that hard yeah and i like also what you say about just adding something so if you are drinking soda all day long add a zevia just once just just so that way it gets rid of your cravings that way you're not wanting to reach for that second you know soda that you normally have after lunch or whatever yeah you got to replace some of those shitty habits with something different right yeah and then uh chuck just checked in on the um on the chat room because it just brings up another point like how awesome it feels when because he's saying in his conference room right now at work there's a bunch of pastries donuts and whatnot but he stuck to his guns and he just stuck to his like uh you know meat and eggs like you know he and eggs like you

know he didn't take any of the shitty food like how good does that feel when everyone around you is eating like shit and you're just like i'm gonna stick to my diet plan right now it's awesome and you know even even on that same note bring in healthy food for other people you know obviously can't afford to do it every day but do it it a couple of times. See what, see what, see what it looks like. You know, see, you bring in a tray that's got carrots and celery and broccoli. Maybe get creative and make, you know, make something, right? I mentioned skewers, like there's some meat that everyone can, can kind of grub on, right? Make a couple of different things.

And then you can go to your employer and say, Hey, you know what? I brought in some healthy food the other day and everybody crushed it do you think we could get can we get fruit can we get vegetables we could still do the donuts how about we do the donuts once a week you know we've made some sort of compromise but um unless your employer is a complete idiot i would imagine they'd be like yeah you, you know what? That's actually a great idea. If they're the one supplying the donuts. A lot of times it's just another teacher or something grabs them or whatever and puts them in the faculty room, right? Yeah. Do you allow yourself to eat like any candy over the Halloween time?

I normally do. We'll kind of see what I'll do this time around. You know, Halloween is creeping. So I don't know. I know that on Thursday I'm going to the Oakland Raider game with Marcus. So it probably makes sense to just kind of eat whatever on that day. But I don't think I'll eat a bunch of junk. I'll probably just have some burgers and some different shit just out of convenience and just out of like

the experience you know sometimes like i never like to be the guy who's always going to be whipping out tupperware everywhere all the time you know um yeah if we're traveling for work and we're doing something then i'll probably stay on the diet. If it's something that's for leisure, for fun, some with the family, I still pack snacks and stuff. Cause I just need a certain amount of calories. Otherwise, uh, I'll start to lose too much, but, um, yeah, I try to just relax when it's time to relax. If it's, um, if you're trying to have an experience with your family, it's kind of hard to just be off on your own plan now it just depends i mean if you if you go out often with your family then you need to decide like you got to pick and choose um we go to sushi like once a week once every other week or so

and so i can't be like okay when we go to sushi i'm just gonna have at it and eat whatever i want yeah because we go too often so i i mean i almost always i'd say i eat at like on a scale of one to ten i'm usually like a nine when we go there i eat really good and then like the last couple things that i'll pick out might be a roll that has a bunch of junk on it right but i don't even like to eat that way that much anymore because it will bother my stomach. Yeah. And it will make me feel like crap. That's funny. Cause I've been thinking about, uh, tonight's dinner. Cause, um, so Jasmine's doing really good in school. She, uh, Jasmine. Yeah. She, um, I can't explain exactly what it is, but basically she's in a, an additional program to her regular education. And it was to kind of build her math skills back up. And she had a goal of reaching,

we'll say 60%. And she got a hundred percent. So I'm telling Stephanie, I'm like, let's make a huge deal about this. I'm like, tell her whatever she wants to do. Like we'll go do it Tuesday night after her dance class.

And you know, whatever we'll celebrate her, you know, awesome accomplishment. And she's like, I want to go to spaghetti factory. I'm like, cool,

we're going. And then I'm like, Oh oh what am i going to order yeah she really called you out like spaghetti factory yeah i'm like hmm yep yeah um you just got to make a decision on you know what what what you want to do what i usually suggest to people when it's situations like that if you're trying to uh put a little bit of a blanket on it and and just go there and and know that you're probably just going to eat fairly bad um my suggestion would be i would time it to where you eat at like you know let's say let's say you're going at seven something like that i would eat at like 5 30 i'm on a schedule so that way okay you're on a schedule but i would get some

food in in your body uh that kind of carries over so when you get there and you sit down you're not dying yeah that's the worst thing if you sit there and you're dying for food then it just makes the whole rest of the day that much harder yeah more harder is harder is i know and then i've been kind of trying to think of like okay i can get broccoli or i can not get you know noodles or whatever they probably have like steak and chicken and stuff there yeah i think yeah they have chicken but it's so funny because like i'm like do you guys just have baked chicken like ah we only have it on certain days and blah blah i'm like well like it's today one of those days like i can check and they never it's never that day it's so complicated You're like, how does your menu change?

Like your spaghetti factory, it's not like super high end. It's amazing. Those places go out of their way to have like, like everything on the menu has to be bad. Yeah. Because they already have meat. It's not like, it's not like everything they have there has to be awful for you. Obviously like eating tons of pasta is not great, but like pasta doesn't usually have a ton of calories. If you make it at home,

I mean, it's just carbohydrates usually, you know? So yeah, I don't know. It's, uh, eating out is always a difficult thing.

Anyway, I wanted to end this podcast by wrapping up and talking about these sleeves. Uh, for those of you just joining us, the, uh, the x sleeves all the products uh that we offer uh at slingshot that you would typically see somebody wear for for power if you meet all of our knee sleeves and uh all of our wrist wraps uh singlets socks a bunch of other stuff that we have has all been IPF approved. We spent a tremendous amount of time, money.

We put a nice effort in to make everything IPF approved. So it was a message that we can deliver to everybody and have it be real clean and concise and to eliminate confusion. Well, confusion has been added into the mix courtesy of our friends over at the ipf uh this product the x sleeve which has a grippy material on the inside is what caused all the hoopla in my opinion the hoopla was uh was uh risen by some of our competitors our competitors went to the ipf they cried they said slingshot's too good and they're going to steal all our money and all our customers and and and yeah um can you get rid of that thing in the middle that makes people

squat 200 pounds more it's not fair their products are way too good that's right so this product the x sleeve the extreme sleeve uh we had to change the product in order for the product, in order for the X-Sleeve to still be approved. So what we did, we took this out, we took this rubber material out, and we have another X-Sleeve. Both of these will be on our website. on our website, anyone who's ordered this, anyone who's ordered this X-sleeve that is now no longer IPF approved because the IPF overturned their own ruling. It was on the IPF's official list of approved products. It no longer, this particular knee sleeve is no longer approved because of this sticky stuff here and so because of that slingshot is taking care of you we are making another knee sleeve that does not have this in there both the products will be on our website tomorrow anyone that has

purchased an x sleeve that has this sticky non-slip material in it will receive a new pair of approved, IPF approved, X sleeves that do not have that material in there. So we will still be selling both products on our website. We have a sale going on tomorrow for Halloween. It'll be 15% off. And, uh, when you go there, you're going to see that you're going to be able to still order these. If you're not someone that cares about lifting the IPF and USAPL, you can still purchase these. You can still train in these. Um, but anyone that has ordered these, there's thousands and thousands of customers that we have to, uh, get this information out to. And there's thousands of customers we

got to communicate to about this change. We are going to, we're going to not exchange, I'm sorry, we're going to send you a brand new pair of X sleeves to make up for the fact that they're no longer IPF approved, even though it's not our fault, because that is what we do over here at Slingshot. We always go above and beyond and we are here for the customer and we're here to kick some ass or make sure you guys kick some ass because the new product will actually be a little bit better than this one. It'll actually be beefed up. It'll be a little bit thicker, thick with two C's or three C's. It might be three. It might be three C's. It won't be thicker than what's allowed in competition because that would put us back in the same spot, right? So it's going to go from five millimeter.

This was five millimeters in thickness to seven. And the reason that it was at five is because the rubber material, we had to be very careful that it doesn't go over. So it'll definitely be thicker than this current sleeve. I can't guarantee it'll be seven on the dot because there's a bunch of reasons why, but it'll, it'll be thicker, uh, than the current X sleeve that's out. Sorry for the confusion. Sorry that that had to happen, but these things happen. Uh, this is the price of doing business. This is the price of, uh, This is the price of being somebody who, being in a company that gets out in front of other companies.

There's going to be other people that try to drag us down. And you know who you are, bitch. There's other people that are going to try to drag us down, but they don't stand a shot. We're going to continue to grow and we're going to continue to expand. And we're going to continue to kick ass. We're going to continue to grow and we're going to continue to expand and we're going to continue to kick ass. We're going to continue to be everywhere. You're going to continue to see us on YouTube, on Facebook, on Instagram.

You're going to continue to see us all over the damn place. And that ain't stopping anytime soon. This company is just going to get bigger and better and bigger and better over and over and over again. better and bigger and better over and over and over again. Um, and lastly, on a sad note, uh, power of thing has lost a great one. We lost Constantine, Constantine off. Um, he's somebody I corresponded with for, for a long time. Uh, I did many videos with Konstantin, even though he was not in the same country as I was. Konstantin was a Latvian lifter. He actually lifted in Russia.

So everybody always just thought he was Russian, but he was Latvian. And, you know, from my correspondence with him, it was always fun. He'd always make fun of me. He'd always tell me I was a pussy for using a belt on deadlifts. He deadlifted, I think, 940-something pounds conventional with no belt. He was an absolute beast. He was somebody that really uh inspired and drove stan efforting to break a lot of records that he broke um not everybody knows this about

kk but he also uh benched 584 pounds he was just extremely extremely strong squatted really well well. Also, um, a lot of the power thing community is hurt, uh, by, by losing him. I believe he, his friend, uh, Kirill Serkev said his heart just stopped, which I'd imagine would be considered a heart attack. Um, and, uh, it's sad. It sucks to lose people. Um, we, uh, we put together like a little tribute video that we, we threw up on, um, Instagram. We're also going to put up a video of KK and some of his better lifts, uh, on YouTube. Uh, he was an awesome lifter, a powerful, powerful person. Um, one of the more explosive, uh, lifters I've ever seen.

And, uh, you know, he'll be missed, but, but uh hopefully he won't be forgotten hopefully his name can kind of live on uh and uh the lifters of old could tell the lifters of the new uh about what a great lifter he was and and uh keep his uh spirit uh living onward um i think there's a video out there where he does 55 pull-ups um and he has got like a band around his waist too he's just the strength level of this guy was insane a lot of the videos that you'll see of him lifting on youtube he's wearing st stuff he's wearing uh st shirts and slingshot stuff and uh he was a big supporter he was a big fan um he and i when we correspond uh he'd always tell me uh how weak i was and how weak america is it was really funny i interviewed him for power

magazine he was on the cover of power magazine and um he actually says that in the article you know about why uh what why he's so strong and while all of us are so weak, it was just hilarious. And I, you know, he was, he was having fun with it. He was having fun with it. He was, uh, he was running with it, but, uh, heart disease, the very, is a very scary thing. It's a brutal thing. It takes a lot of great people. It takes a lot of great people that we know and love and care about. It uh too young i want to say that uh he was probably only like in his 40s if that he might have been like late 30s i don't really even know um but you know your heart is something that you got to take seriously so if you're out of

shape uh you're going to want to work on on uh trying to you know be healthier get your blood work done because kk was a healthy guy he was a big strong guy um but uh who knows you know who knows if he would have got some tests done maybe he could have found out more about himself and maybe he would have been able to uh fix it you know so i I don't know. It's a tough thing. Some people are just only meant to be here for a certain amount of time anyway. So who knows if it was preventable. But it's my opinion that a lot of these things are preventable. And that's why I'm trying to get all my stuff checked out all the time and do the best possible job that I can.

Hopefully you guys understand what the hell I was talking about, talking about the IPF approval and non-IPF approval and everything else. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never strength. Enjoy the 15% off sale tomorrow for Halloween.