Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Project EP. 187 - Where You Are is Unacceptable

Episode Date: February 28, 2019

Today the guys are talking about good habits, setting goals and staying positive while understanding where you are in life is unacceptable. Catch us at the Arnold Classic this weekend at Booth 945!! ���SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Find the Podcast on all platforms: ➢Subscribe Rate & Review on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-bells-power-project/id1341346059?mt=2 ➢Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4YQE02jPOboQrltVoAD8bp ➢Listen on Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/mark-bells-power-project?refid=stpr ➢Listen on Google Play: https://play.google.com/music/m/Izf6a3gudzyn66kf364qx34cctq?t=Mark_Bells_Power_Project ➢Listen on SoundCloud: 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 Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thenattyprofessor/  Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz

What you guys talking about? Talking about you. Me? Mm-hmm. Talking about you and how much you love that D. Yeah, you missed the whole thing while you were at the bathroom. Donuts? No.

Detroit. No. D12. It's a single syllable. Or it could be a, no. It's a single syllable. I don't play darts. No.

Not those darts. D-I-C. Direction. Deciding things. You can get that. Oh, dicks. Yes. Why didn't somebody say something?

Yeah. I would have been all over it. Right. All right. Well, we're firing out a podcast here a little earlier than normal because, uh, we're heading off to the Arnold classic and I'm super excited for that. We are going to be booth number. What's the booth, Andrew?

Hurry up. Hurry up. Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, Andrew's making it up anyway. It doesn't really matter. 945. Oh, 945.

There we go. Told you. And Seema was on point. He knows what's going on. He knows where to be. Yeah. I'm just going to follow him. He could be our bodyguard, Andrew.

That works. Yeah, people wouldn't be able to tell the difference. I look like one. Yeah, see? Just need the earpiece. Yeah. Yeah, we'll get you a Bluetooth. And some of those really narrow sunglass shit. Yeah. They're super dark. You can't earpiece. Yeah. Yeah, we'll get you a Bluetooth. And some of those like really like narrow

sunglass shit. Yeah. They're super dark. You can't see through. So you can look at chicks' butts. Nope. Not going to be doing any of that. I stay eye level.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You know, there's stages over there. I'm a faithful man. Yeah, but there's see-through pants out there nowadays. Doesn't really, faithfulness doesn't really, doesn't really matter how powerful you think you are. Those see-through pants come your way and it's game over.

It's not going to be, it's not going to be easy. Anyway, we're super excited to get out to Arnold Classic. It's always great to get out to Columbus, Ohio. I lived there for a while, trained at Westside Barbell, and that's where my son was born. Columbus, Ohio. I lived there for a while, trained at Westside Barbell, and that's where my son was born. And even though it's going to be freezing cold, it's always great to get out and see the fans. And my cousin is actually going, he's bringing, I guess he's bringing his son, which I think is actually technically my second cousin, but I always want to call him my nephew. He should really be like my second nephew, but I don't think that exists.

I don't know how it works either, but I always, for my cousins, I just say my nephews and nieces. Yeah, same thing. Black people call everybody their cousin, don't they? Actually, yeah, not. Well, actually, oh yeah, there's cuz, but in the African community,

everyone's like my uncle and aunt, even if they're not related at all. Just my aunt and uncle, and that's how they are same with mexicans and like uh at least these days now um like jasmine all our friends that's that's uncle mark that's that's uncle and sema and just like how's he my uncle don't question anything like uncle and sema looks a little different than us do you guys do that not really no yeah i mean so i guess sometimes i think with like some of our friends that we're really really close with that we that we see a lot yeah you know then uh yeah like especially to the kids because the kids don't know who's who so it's easy to say

uncle andrew it's just easier like who's like who is that to us you know it's just easier to say it almost that way rather than try to be like oh well he you know he's a podcast engineer or try to explain like all these other weird things but yeah i'm excited to uh to meet everybody and to hear all these stories something that we were just talking about i just got done with a workout i banged out some shoulders and some arms this morning and i was training with my friend sean uh sean owns a bunch of bunch of dutch bros out here in california he owns a few in woodland and a few here and or one in davis and he's opening up another one i think in dixon and uh very successful

in business and he's also somebody that's done jujitsu for years so you guys got to got to shoot the shit a little bit about that he wants to get back into into jiu-jitsu um but he's had some injuries he's been banged up he hasn't been as fit as he wants to be and it feels like he's really not in good enough shape to even bother to try jiu-jitsu again because he doesn't want to go back and um have to really like baby step it he wants to go back and be able to train pretty hard and, and to get, build some consistency. And I think that whenever you're trying something, um, whenever you're trying something new or whenever you're going back to something, I think that that can be a little bit of a mistake to think that you all of a sudden out

of nowhere have to go back to this like four day a week regimen. I think maybe that's a little too demanding on yourself. And I think in his case case i think the best thing to do would be just to go and and just to like do that simultaneously as he's building up his fitness as well because the jiu-jitsu will build up his fitness tremendously and he was mentioning like how he doesn't really stretch much and stuff. And my understanding, I don't have a great understanding of jujitsu, but, uh, my understanding is like, you're going to get stretched doing jujitsu anyway. Yeah. And so while it wouldn't be wise for him to all of a sudden out of nowhere to go in at

a high level, uh, it would be wise for him to just go tell everybody, Hey man, like I'm, uh, not coming back from where I was. Like I, I need some like easy classes and I'm sure you can go to some intermediate and beginning classes. Right. And, uh, the main thing is just to start, you know, and, um, Sean talked a lot today about control and how cool jujitsu is from that perspective. And we talk so much on this podcast.

I think the last time we said, take a shot every time we say the word. Um, but man, gaining control of stuff is really important. Your body is the only like vehicle that we have. It's kind of, it's really, it's really all you got. Right. And I think that we take it for granted. We don't always understand that that's, that's our product, you know, and you think about, um, this, this company, it's the way Slingshot was built. It was built with a product first and then everything else was second behind that. And, uh, you're a 30, 26. Oh, you're 26.

So in SEMA was, uh, comparing Dick's size a little bit with, uh, I think Sean, not, not literally, but, uh uh he asked how old he was which is kind of like a way of sizing somebody up in a way and uh i think sometimes we have a we have uh sometimes we have this comparison thing that we do we're like how old is that guy because if i said he's 26 well now you're in a lot of trouble right but if i said he's 35 or you're like okay eight years nine years you could and especially you you're a guy that likes to plan things out you're like i want to get my black belt in jiu-jitsu in this amount of years which is half the amount of years that most people want to are

able to even obtain it in um and so we have this kind of thing where we try to like measure up to what other people are doing sometimes and uh what i, what I liked, what you said is, is I liked that. You said that you think it's great that a lot of entrepreneurs are talking about fitness. A lot of entrepreneurs talking about, uh, regaining their health.

Um, but also you were like, you know, I'm kind of glad that I started with this. I'm glad that I started with my body first. And I think that's an important thing for people to understand and for people to know. Yeah. So the thing about Sean, like, yeah, he's 35.

Just a savage. He's got a lot of great things going on. He might even be a little bit younger. So I might be. You have things. But, you know, we were talking about this. And, like, I was listening to the Sam Harris podcast. Sam Harris is a

guy that's like he's big into meditation and all that type of stuff he's been on rogan a bunch and he had the ceo of twitter on and even the ceo of twitter was like yeah i started paying attention to like my physical health more that guy meditates a bunch but uh he's like i just started paying attention to it and being more cognizant of it and doing more things there but it's like first off you're the ceo of twitter and he is also the CEO of the cash app. Right. Um, and, and you're, you're just beginning to like really focus on, like you mentioned your body and your health. Uh, and like you also mentioned, that's the one vehicle that you have to move around. Like you can have everything else, but legit, if this is deteriorating, you're going to spend way less years on this planet.

So like, you know, I find it, it's alarming. But it's also like, I guess, like I said, it's really good to see that, you know, we have a handle on this and we're really paying attention to this along with everything else. Because as long as, you know, as long as this body's functioning well, right, that's going to help every other thing that you do. Work, gym, everything else that you do is going to be much easier. Dealing with your family, even your mood in terms of dealing with people in your life, you're just going to be much happier. It makes a massive difference. So, I mean, you know, another thing to think about is this. It's like, how long do you want to be going towards those big goals that you have? Right. If you're not healthy, you're going to have a much shorter time, let's just say, to reach those goals.

Or if your health isn't on the forefront of your focus, something might just hit you that you would have never expected that's going to stop you from getting there. Something health-wise because you just weren't paying attention to it early on. Uh, so. Doing, doing things one time doesn't make you great, you know, and, and doing things even a couple of times to make you great. What makes you great is when you have a track record, you have a track record of success. You have a track record, uh, of, of domination, like a like a michael jordan you know um there's a lot of people that have hit game-winning shots over the years there's a lot of very very talented

football players and basketball players but someone like michael jordan goes down in history as one of the all-time greatest uh american athletes ever obviously he's highly talented with his athleticism was unbelievable was next level he also worked very very hard but he also did it for a really long time and then he was successful in like a bunch of different things he was pretty damn successful in baseball even and he was very very successful in business and it's easy just it's easy to dismiss some of And it's easy just, it's easy to dismiss some of that. It's easy just to say, oh, well, you know, he, you know, because he transcended basketball, of course he's good in business. Well, there's a lot of other people that do really well in basketball that have not done

really well business-wise. Michael Jordan, you know, has his own brand. I mean, he, like what he's done business-wise is insane. It might even equal what he did in his basketball career. I think his money that he was getting paid by the NBA paled in comparison to his endorsement money from Nike and stuff. And then even when he retired, the money that he makes now must make a lot of the things that he did in the beginning sound almost like a joke. What makes somebody great is the ability to be good for a really, really long time,

to develop some consistency with good habits, um, to gain control over your life, to gain control over the things that you're trying to do. And when Michael Jordan was at his best, he actually even said he felt like he was a puppet master when he was, when he was on point. So he felt like he was a puppet master when he was when he was on point so he felt like he could literally control the guy that was trying to guard him think about how wild that is you know you talk about control in jujitsu uh get gaining control or in wrestling gaining control the person's like wrist and gaining uh you know control and see certain positions and things like that to get your to get your leverage to gain a more favorable position somewhere else. Well, Michael Jordan, you know, thought that like he could control and almost move these guys. Like he was playing chess.

Uh, what a, what a crazy ability to be able to have, but in order for any of those things to happen, you have to be around for a long time. So how do you be around for a long time so how do you be around for a long time well maybe michael jordan's main concern wasn't his uh crp it wasn't his uh c-reactive protein it wasn't his uh red blood cell the white blood cell count like maybe that wasn't where his focus was maybe he wasn't worried about living to be 110 but maybe he understood that if i'm going to be in this game and if i'm going to be able to beat the Detroit Pistons who used to routinely beat the shit out of him literally and uh he couldn't figure out how to beat them for a long time he must have thought to himself at some point maybe

I should take better care of my body you know here's a high level athlete already in great shape already shredded to the bone already as athletic as could be. But even he realized and understood, Hey, you know what? Maybe I should take this like lifting thing to the next level. Maybe I should get a coach. And that's when they started having, I mean, that changed strength coaches forever because then the bulls got a strength coach and then everybody else had a strength coach. And now seriously, yeah.

Now there's strength coaches all over the world, you know, getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to help these teams out. That wasn't, that wasn't the only place there were strength coaches, but Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls and stuff really, really put a lot of that stuff on the map and the mental game of it. There's coaches. There's a guy, famous guy. He's written many books that has has come from uh you know training and

coaching michael jordan to keep his mindset on that next level but back to your point back to what you said is that you're gonna have to be able to do this for a long time so if he didn't do that lifting maybe he would have never got past the detroit pistons but even on top of that maybe he would have got injured to where he could never even express his true strength, never even express what his mindset was like. He could never even fully express his athleticism. And so as we're going towards these things, we need to understand that we can't just be like good in just a couple areas. We need to work on being good all around as much as we possibly can. And if Elon Musk was to come into super training gym, I'm sure we'd be blown away by his intelligence, right?

We would talk to him, right? And then we would, but what if we had him do walking lunges or what if we had him do a squat? I mean, the conversation would change really fast. Like, dude, remember when Elon Musk came in here and he tore his ACL trying to squat 135 and he just plummeted to the ground or when he couldn't do one pushup unbroken without, you know, doing a pushup off his knees or something. Yeah. I don't know if his fitness is that bad, but just, you know, just as an example. Or we would talk about like, dude, you remember when we ordered lunch and the crap that he ordered? I'll be like like what the heck because that's something i remember like um when nba players would get older they would like start kind of falling off and they're like you know i'm gonna

i'm gonna make a strong comeback i'm gonna pay attention to my diet blah blah and people would be like what are you talking about you're a professional athlete how are you now just gonna like like there's there's nowhere to go and it's like, because they, they don't actually pay attention to anything. They're just always have been super gifted, like, you know, athletically, but then they work hard in the gym. Look at Charles Barkley. But then like when it comes to the nutrition side of things, they just wouldn't care. And then once they got older, they're just like, oh, I have to pay attention to this

now. And it's, I just remember being young, being like, how the heck are they not perfect all around? Yeah. You know, and it's just like, wow, it's, it's, it's nuts. Yeah. They young, being like, how the heck are they not perfect all around? Yeah. You know, and it's just like, wow, it's, it's, it's nuts. Yeah. They're doing so much work all the time. So much just like create like multiple practices a day.

They have nutritionists that handle their food. They're not thinking about any of that. They're thinking about the court. But the thing is, is like pertaining to the Jordan example, you don't have to, you know, you don't have to be some elite level athlete. You know, you could just go to the gym for 30 or 40 minutes a day and build that habit. And that'll make the, you're better than 90 something percent of the population if you're going to the gym for 30 minutes a day. Right. So if you could just build that small habit, sooner or later, you'll be improving. You'll start going 40 minutes an hour and that'll just become habit. And if you have that, that's such just a dangerous tool to

have in your toolbox for your, your, just your overall quality of life. Yeah. I remember when I, when I worked in an office, there was like a, a string of people's parents that were just getting sick. And then my dad had open heart surgery and I remember I was freaking out and I was telling my boss like, Hey man, I have to go now. now like this is what's happening and he just stopped and he was a bigger fella and he was like you know you going to the gym like all the time you bringing your lunch and eating right he's like you're never gonna have to go through this I'm just like like what like it hit me pretty hard at that moment because I'm like damn like this is the scariest thing I've ever gone through and I'm not even going through it like physically. But when he said that, I was like, oh, I wasn't even considering that. Yeah.

You were just trying to do it to get bigger biceps, right? Yeah. Yeah. I was trying to make Stephanie, you know, excited. But that's, you know, that's important though, too, is that we have like these kind of side things that we're doing it for. I don't think a lot of people really care about their heart. It sounds crazy right i don't think a lot of people like because look how many people do we know that are taken pre-workout

straight to the face like they're not even they're not even mixing it with any water they they just take the powder like on their way to the gym and they do like a double or triple dose and the packaging clearly says on there don't't take half a scoop, right? Not me, bro. People are like redlining their heart, you know, uh, on the way to the gym to try to, uh, to try to get in a good workout. And I think that that's like, because we're trying to think about the muscles, we're trying to think about, I want to look like Stan Efferding. I want to look like the next Jay Cutler. Um, I want to be able to lift like, uh, some of these savage power lifters that I see on Instagram.

And so they're thinking, I'm just going to do what I need to right now to make that happen. But they're not thinking about the long game. They're not thinking about what if I, what if I just rolled out over the, over the course of the next five years, what would it look like? Sounds really boring, but what if I was just to roll out a ton of sevens and eights for workouts, but, but do them all the time, you know, do them four or five days a week. And, uh, what if my diet was on point, like a seven or an eight? Um, and what if, um, what if my sleep was always a seven or an eight, right? You start to add up these things and you're probably wondering like, Oh, why isn't mark bell talking about a 10 or being at a hundred percent well because sometimes being at a hundred percent is not

rational and sometimes being at a hundred percent uh you have jujitsu you have your lifting you have your nutrition you have your girlfriend you have your work uh if you're pouring tens into everything else maybe your girlfriend's like hey like see you later dude right yeah and now what happens to your workouts what happens to your jiu-jitsu what everything else gets jacked up because you don't your social life your love life is screwed up and so i think that it would be maybe maybe somebody like a charles barkley and say me maybe a shaquille o'Neal, right? These guys, obviously, they've worked very, very hard, but they were given a talent that was so crystal clear. I mean, Shaquille O'Neal is a great example.

He's just massive. He's just massive. Like, how could the guy not do something, right? Obviously, tons of talent. I don't want to take away credit from him. He was an outstanding outstanding one of the greatest basketball players of all time um but it's so clear on what he was gifted i think we can all recognize and we can all say that we all have gifts inside of us but most of us are going to

have to be working pretty damn hard for a very very long time and most of us are going to have to be like really focused in and striving for these things in order for us to really get anywhere because we don't have this natural talent that's just so damn obvious i think shack though it's it's great that you brought up shack because he's one of those individuals that you see like okay yeah he was like a 10 in basketball talent physicality just dominance size everything but then i think he ended up getting like two degrees like he got a degree while he was playing and then he ended up getting another degree after he ended up becoming a not a was he a sheriff or something too yeah yeah he was like yeah yeah

sheriff or deputy or he got deputized yeah he like arrested somebody or something i don't know something strange happened yeah we should we should we should look it up i'll look it up but was he the one that they like raided someone's like trailer house and it was the wrong person or is that somebody else i'm not sure i'll look it up right now but like he and now he's killing it in business he's one of the most successful uh he's one of the most successful athletes in the history you know you got like Magic Johnson

I think might be ahead of him and I think that's about it yeah he's a sheriff's deputy in Clayton County yeah wherever that is it's crazy to see someone who already has

so much success takes on the takes on doing all these other things and trying to do them at a very high level like he doesn't stop a lot of times you'll see these high level athletes when they're done you don't hear about them a lot you know kobe too kobe i think he's now um his next passion is like writing stories so he has a podcast for yeah he has that podcast for kids right try and um he had a kid's book i think come out and a kid's book, I think, come out. And a kid's book, too.

And it's just like... That's cool. That's like... Wow, Shaq is so out of proportion. Yeah. It's just insane. Look how tall that guy is. Yeah.

But it's just a testament to trying to continually challenge yourself with new things. You know, trying to put yourself in situations where,, uh, you, you're not the best, you know what I mean? You don't know what's going on, but you can actually learn something new. I think, uh, even, even I was falling short of that for a while when I wasn't, you know, I was just sticking to lifting and sticking to the things I knew it it's, it's difficult to get out of that and put yourself in situations to really, to really just be at the bottom. Obviously that's a great thing.

Obviously you want to always do the best you can at everything, right? But what happens to you personally when you're trying to be, you're thinking to yourself, on your way here, you think, I'm going to best work out possible. I'm going to be a 10. Maybe when you're younger, maybe you did some of that stuff just because you were so excited about it. What happens to you personally maybe when you're almost trying too hard?

Almost trying too hard. I think the difference in my approach to working out now is gauging the day, gauging how I feel when I come into the gym. And when I say gauging how I feel, if I'm not in a great mood, I'm not going to use that and be like, okay, my workout's going to be shitty or something. I'm going to warm up. I'm going to get under the bar, do what I need to do. And depending on like how my body feels, I know days that I can really push it. And then I know days where, okay, today's one of those days where I'm going to back off. I'm still going to get a good workout, but I'm

going to work within what I've got. Yesterday's a great example. I came into the gym, um, and I was dead lifting and I was just like, I was just feeling good. I was feeling snappy. I was doing box jumps between like my deadlifts and stuff. And I was just like, yeah, today we're going to, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to test something out. And then I ended up pulling seven 25 and it was, it was easy, Mark. Like it was awesome. I didn't see that. I didn't even check that out. It was no, like literally it came off the ground. There was no hitch. It was easy mark like it was awesome i didn't see that i didn't check that out it was no like literally it came off the ground there was no hitch it was easy so i know that like at this point my deadlift is probably stronger than it's been in the past like i can pull more than i have

which is great but that's the thing like like between my sets i was dancing to the music and shit like that that was just one of those days where i'm like okay i'm feeling good i'm gonna i'm gonna put my foot on the gas i'm gonna make something happen today but on other days like i in the past i used to try and try and push it every single day and i feel like it's good to have that mindset but it's also good to like just annihilating these weights yeah it's also good to like really be able to be like okay today's not one of those days but i'm gonna go for that maybe in my next workout where i'm feeling a little bit better i think you you gain that with like experience and more maturity with whatever it is that you're doing but yeah like i was i was excited about

this because i was like wow things are just flying this is yeah that's 725 right there i was like this is easy it was kind of scary but uh yeah oh wow yeah it was good almost killed yourself with the celebration hey be careful yeah but i don't fall into that habit anymore like even when i know i'm having a rough day at jujitsu like there's some days where i'm just on point like everything's on point and then there are other days where I'm just... Things aren't going the way they need to go. And I just let it happen. I deal with it, and

I just go in and try again the next day. I really like the idea of... This is a hard one for people to swallow, and people that are young, they won't be able to handle this in any way whatsoever, but a good way to look at things is that... and people that are young, they won't be able to handle this in any way whatsoever. But a good way to look at things is that you shouldn't really be trying to do anything. You're just one of many, many things in the world that are being done. You know, you're not,

you don't have to go out of your way to like really try to do, like, I don't have to come in and try to impress you. I don't have to try to be like your friend if i just if i just be if i just am then uh and i'm good and i'm nice and i'm kind then we'll just be friends i don't have to really like go out of my way to like do anything crazy or special um this is from Mr. Rogers. I saw the documentary on Mr. Rogers and he said, you know, you don't have to. And this is a message to kids, but this is a message to adults, too. Like you don't have to do anything spectacular to be loved by people. You know, and I think that we always think that we do.

We always think that, you know, winning this tournament or, or, or winning a power thing meter benching this 500 pounds at two 20, we always think it's going to give us this like extra thing. And it's really not gonna, it's nice to have goals. It's important to have goals that I mentioned earlier. It's important to have these, these kinds of things that are, um, motivations that are kind of on the side, you know, Andrew was, you know, trying to get bigger guns, trying to get bigger shoulders, trying to excite his wife. And, uh, meanwhile, he didn't really maybe recognize like, oh, this could be like healthy for my heart. Right. So while we're going towards these goals,

we're going to pick up a lot of other great things. A lot of other healthy habits are going to, uh, come along for the ride. But I think if you can kind of, it's hard to tell people to relax when they're not a relaxed person. Uh, they might kind of just say like, easy for you to say, dude, you know? Um, and in the position I'm in nowadays, people might think that, but I'm not relaxed at all either. I'm trying to, I'm always trying to do better. I'm always trying to make things better, but you know, in, in this quest and, and as I move along, I have kind of recognized that, you know, I'm just one of many millions of things going on in the universe that's, that's being done. And if I kind of look at things that way, not, not as if I don't have

any control over anything, I certainly do. I got control over my feelings, who I hang out with and what I do. But I don't have to try so hard. Yeah. I have a question for you because I was thinking about this earlier and this ties in with what you were much heavier and you're heading down in terms of weight, you were still, and you are still like, I'm not going to say content with where you are right now or content with what you're doing, but you are, you're okay with it, right? Like you do want to get better, better, but you're still like, okay. And happy with where you are. Am I right?

Yeah. A hundred percent. And I don't have a problem with the word content um i think sometimes people look at the word content as being negative and i think sometimes people look at the word competitive as being such a positive but i think competition being competitive can sometimes be like a negative um as we were talking about like shack right now while it looked like shack was uh you know throwing out all these tens all the times in terms of like effort and As we were talking about like Shaq, right now, while it looked like Shaq was, uh, you know, throwing out all these tens all the times in terms of like effort and stuff.

Uh, we probably still never really saw like what a 10 looks like from Shaquille O'Neal, you know, or even Michael Jordan, even though they were so passionate and stuff. Again, as I mentioned earlier, um, if you're a 10 in too many different spots and I'm sure they were all tens, um, and they were all, you know, putting in the absolute best effort for periods of time, but you can't do it for that long. And so like, uh, with, with yourself, with your diet right now, it sounds like you're probably like at like a nine or a 10. And it sounds like with your jujitsu, you're at like a nine or a 10. And with your lifting, you're're lifting your lifting's coming coming back right but it's probably at like a seven or eight overall compared because you got the

bench press and squat uh is probably not maybe where it was before um and you have to make room for things socially you have to make room for friends you gotta make room for family you gotta make room for to be able to do your other job, uh, the right way and everything. So, um, while it kind of seems like we, we saw all the, we saw like, uh, Shaquille O'Neal and some of these other people, you know, performing at these perfect levels all the time, uh, they certainly weren't at perfect levels. It's just that what they did was so spectacular just because they're so talented and yes, they are working hard for it too

but the point is is like their eight looks like a 12 compared to somebody else yeah it's it's also because they're just so good at their craft you know it's funny like you wonder you hear stories about michael before big games some of his teammates would be like he was smoking cigars and maybe he's at a casino or something like right before the day before. And you wonder, OK, what if he wasn't? But he still outperforms everybody. Or Shaq, like when he put on all that weight and he got massive. You wonder what if he stayed in shape for his whole career?

How much more dominant would he be? But maybe he needed that. Maybe those guys needed that. They needed to be like a little bit laxed. And maybe they just needed people to think about them differently too maybe this needed people to stop to shut up and stop talking about them being perfect for five seconds like maybe they just they needed a little bit of that uh adversity like we all need uh there's you know some good and bad to everything there's some good and evil to everything and sometimes you you know when a lot of things are going really good

you see people like kind of mess up it's because like human beings need conflict it's like john jones right like uh yeah when he just like wasn't training he was partying and then he's kicking everyone's ass and then now it's like he tried to clean it up and he just it's not the same so it's like man turn back to the heel like just keep partying keep kicking people's ass john jones is a crazy example of that it's it's he's he's one of those i really love him as an athlete you know but it's hard to be like in the back of your head as a spectator just like what if everything was cleaned up what if he was on point all the time but like you said he can't always be at a 10 you know maybe like exactly for him doing other things at a seven or an eight is allowing

him to continue to kick ass at a 10 on the internet or uh yeah or chuck liddell um falling asleep before a match you know it's like imagine if he took it like real serious and he was like you know going through scenarios in his head or something yeah it's like who knows what else he could have been too you know but at the same time then he wouldn't have been the Iceman. He might've been a different person. You mentioned content, you know, being, being happy. You know, I am, I am very happy. I'm very like satisfied and excited about like with where things are.

And I'm very excited about like where things are going. I feel like I'm in the best shape of my life. I feel like, uh, I'm, you know, I, I'm as strong as I'd like to be. You know, I'm, I'm always trying to get stronger. I'm always trying to get like leaner, but I realized that, you know, I, I can't do everything all at one time. You know, that, that's the way training works. You mentioned, uh, how you kind of like let that's the way training works you mentioned uh how you

kind of like let that that day came to you you weren't like uh oh man if i do this 725 deadlift it's gonna be sick for instagram i wasn't yeah i wasn't even aiming for that yesterday you're just feeling good and you were like yeah okay i'll try something heavy but you had no idea where you're gonna like really land you weren't't really a hundred percent sure. And as you started to get closer and closer to it, you took what the day had in store for you rather than, and you can kind of like, I mean, it's a weird way to look at it,

but you kind of think like it was already there. It already happened in some way. Like the day is going to go the way that it's supposed to go, you know, especially when you're working hard and doing the things that you're supposed to be doing. So it's just, I think people have a hard time understanding, like, uh, being content with something. And that's why we see in the fitness industry, we see people fluctuate so much, you know, they get done with a bodybuilding show and then they're like way,

way out of shape. And, or they've done a powerlifting meet and they were extremely strong. And then, uh, there's their strength isn't there anymore. And I think it has to, I think people, their, um, mindset comes and goes so quickly with a lot of that. And it's a real, um, to try to be on point for a bodybuilding show does take like a 10. It takes at least a 9.5 or so to get on stage and to look the right way. And so we all understand that we could do that for several weeks. We can do that for many, many weeks. Maybe, maybe even if we're really, really good at it, maybe 12 weeks, maybe 16 weeks, but that's about all the time you got, you know,

you're not going to be able to really do it for much longer than that. But then the question is, and then what, you know, so you want to start a business or you want to open up a gym, uh, you want to start a, uh, online training business or whatever it is that you want to do. The next question after that has to be, and then what, you know, you want to start this thing. Okay. That's really cool. And you put a lot of work and you put a lot of time into it, but now you just got started and now you're actually really screwed. So, and then what, what are you going to do now? I remember Bradley Martin was talking to me a few years ago when he was going to open up zoo culture. And he said, man, I am

so excited for this. And it was like opening the next day. He's like, I can't, I can't wait to open this gym up. And he spent, you know, two years on, you know, getting the property and getting the equipment and everything's all set now. And I said, I said, and now the hard work's going to begin. Like your warmup's over with, you know, now, now you're just getting started. It's like going to the gym and getting your workout or your warmup done. It's like, you got yourself there. You went through all this trouble. You got yourself in the right clothes and the right frame of mind and you did everything the right way. well now the hard shit's gonna happen yeah and i remember his like long silence and deep sighs like you're like yep and he's like all right man i gotta go that was funny

there's this uh like for example with uh bradley the gym, you know, when he was going through that whole process and probably throughout his whole career, because he's obviously massive right now. If you look at Bradley like five or seven years ago, I mean, or even anybody, I think, anybody super successful in your place. successful in your like in your place i was thinking about this the other day and it's the idea of like being like present in that moment and like yeah you have these big goals or whatever but i i feel like it's it's hard for a lot of people to not be negative with their current position versus their goal for example if you're trying to lose a lot of weight and you are overweight right now, I feel like it's easy to have a lot of negative self-talk with where you are and be super negative with where you are currently. But I think more so the better thing to do is to be present with yourself, be content, but also have this drive to continue to try and improve.

And I think it's hard because it's like, for example, where I am right now, I'm perfectly happy with where I am in my life right now. I'm excited about where I am right now. I was excited where I was years ago, but that I'm still super excited and super driven for where I was years ago, but that I'm still super excited and super driven for where I want to go. And I, and it's, it's, it's hard to explain having both of these things. Like, yeah, like I want to improve and I absolutely want to improve, but that doesn't mean that I'm not totally okay with this

person right now. So if you're like overweight, it's hard to say, but you should be okay with yourself. And you should also be super driven and super excited for all the improvement you have to come. You know, it's hard though, because people in that position, a lot of people generally like talk down on themselves and they're extremely negative of themselves and they get depressed with where they are. And I don't know if I can necessarily like say you should be okay with yourself, but you should also be, you should be okay. And you should also not be okay because you need something to drive you in the right direction. You know, it's just hard because so many people fall off of that trail because they begin getting

negative and that negativity just makes them quit or stop but it's it's a hard thing to explain to to have both sides of that coin do you get what i'm going at here am i am i too abstract no i totally understand what you're saying uh i think you know one way to look at it too is like the negative can become the positive, you know? So like in school, like I always thought I was dumb. Turns out I was just happened to be a little slower than everybody. And it turns out being slow ended up being a strength for me. It turns out that, you know, like that taking my time with things ended up being a huge blessing and ended up being something that has helped me persevere.

I've always known like, all right, well, this just takes you longer. So here we go. Uh, this might take, uh, five days or five weeks or five years or 20 years. This might take some time. This might take a while. I still feel like I'm growing extremely slowly. Um, everything's been a real slow crawl. There's never been one thing that's happened where it's been like, boom, the company exploded or I went viral on something. Uh, there's nothing's ever happened like that, uh, that I can really recall. It's all been, it's all been very slow. I mean, I think even the, uh, even the definition of power I think is, is a work over time. And so like, that's, you know, I power, I've power lifted my whole life, power lifted everything. Um, not just in the gym. And so the things that you're faced with that are a negative to you that you're down about,

you know, I always say, never kick a downed opponent. Now, maybe you should bring yourself to your knees and maybe you should hit yourself a little bit to, uh, knock some sense in yourself and say, look, man, this is unacceptable where you're at right now. The fact that you're drinking, uh, you know, five nights a week and the fact that you're, you know, not taking responsibility for your kids and you're fat and that's okay. That's okay to, that's okay to, you know, okay. You're, you're realizing you're, you're coming, you're having like an awakening and you're saying, this is this standard that I have for myself is crap. This is not good.

I need to have a higher standard for myself and I'm going to start doing that now. But once you make that decision to start doing that, that's when you have to be careful to not beat yourself up anymore. You get to the gym and you're way out of shape for where you want to be, and that's not the time to, that's the time to say, hey, you know what? You made it here. And this workout's going to be hard, but we're going to get through it, and hopefully each time I come back, I can be a little bit better than I was last time. And that's all we're trying to do.

I often say, you know, just try to be a little bit better than you were yesterday. That might even be too hard. Like that might being better every day. Like that's kind of overwhelming. But just work on being better, period. Work on like just doing your best, being your best. Again, it doesn't have to be spectacular, but it has to be consistent. You don't have to be fancy.

You have to be consistent. So what are some things that can help you to be consistent? What are the things that are in your way right now? What's blocking you? Is it, is it the negative self-talk? Do you, do you live on the East coast and you don't want to wake up in the morning and go to the gym early because it's really, really cold? Well, what are some things that you can do?

What are some things you can do to, to, to make this more pleasant? Can you, um, you you know maybe go to bed like my my cousin does this she goes to bed in her workout clothes probably kind of frustrating for her husband but she goes to bed in her workout clothes because she knows that when she gets out from those covers uh in the morning that it's going to be cold she's going to think about how cold it is outside and she's going to want to snuggle back into that blanket and get into that little pot, that little warm pocket that we all,

that we all love to snuggle underneath. Right. Yeah. And she's going to want to just, you know, call it in and say like, I'm not going to the gym. Yeah.

But she's, she's, you take down these like barriers. What, what are these things that are in your way? How, how do you make something a little bit easier for yourself? Do you need to prepare your meals? Do you need to figure out

ways of being ahead? Do you need to lay out your clothes a day before? Like what's frustrating? What's bothering you? What's in your way? If I, if I asked you right now and said, you know, what's blocking you from becoming a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt, you would rattle off the three things that are either like in your way or just time restricted or, but anyway, you would rattle off the three things that are in your way. And I would say, that's great. And Sima, you should do that. Like you actually already know. Yeah.

And so if you got yourself to the gym, gym that's that's no longer the time to continue to beat yourself down it's good that you came this realization that you're fat and out of shape but now it's time to give yourself you know try to break down as many barriers that prevent you from being consistent as you possibly can so that way you can continue to move forward habits are powerful that that's the exact thing you're talking about right there just just figuring out the can so that way you can continue to move forward. Habits are powerful. That's the exact thing you're talking about right there. Just figuring out the negative habits that you have that are getting in your way. Like going to sleep too late each night, go to sleep a little bit earlier.

That's the same thing like when I had to do that with jujitsu. I had to figure out exactly what I could do to be able to get better as fast as possible. And the habits were certain things I would do that would stop me from going to class on certain days. And I just figured out exactly what I had to do so I could get there as much as possible. So it's, it's really that simple, but the barrier also is it's, it's really difficult to look at all of your, I guess, all the things you do each day, like right in the eye and say, okay, I probably shouldn't be doing this. That's that, that first step is actually the hardest, you know, looking at all of the negative habits you have and trying to pinpoint which ones are the keystone habits that would, you know, make the biggest changes. Keystone habits are like habits where like, it's that one big thing that if that one thing were shifted, so many other things would fall into place. You know, a keystone habit for me for the longest time was getting enough sleep because I used to, when I was younger, I used to get like five or six hours. I changed that keystone habit, making sure I got to sleep a little bit earlier, like making myself get eight hours a night.

I got to sleep a little bit earlier, like making myself get eight hours a night and literally everything from work, like control of food, energy in the gym. But you're losing three hours every day. But everything else is so heightened. Like my focus, my clarity. I'm not in a constant drudge. I'll have time to sleep, bro. Yeah. I'll sleep when I'm dead. Yeah, exactly.

No, but that's the thing. Like if you can just start with one big habit that you can make a shift, so many other things can make a shift in your life. I think there's a lot of deception. You know, there's a lot of things deceiving us. We think that that candy or we think that that, uh, those French fries, or we think that these things are going to be great. Like this is going to be, this is going to be so good. Like, oh man. And sometimes, sometimes it is. Sometimes it's a nice relief and a nice break from the monotony of all the other shit that

we're trying to do all the time. But a lot of times it's deceiving. I think Instagram is, it falls in that category. Social media falls in that category. I'm just going to lay down and, you know, before I go to bed, I'm just going to, I'm going to catch up on the day. Horrible idea. Probably the worst idea you ever had in your entire life, because you just going to lay down and, you know, before I go to bed, I'm just going to, I'm going to catch up on the day. Horrible idea. Probably the worst idea you ever had in your entire life because you're going to be on

there for way too long. And it's not always about, I do think that social media can be productive. I do think that having knowledge of what other people are doing in the world is not necessarily a negative thing. It can be though. And I think that if we spend too much time on it, it can be highly, highly dangerous. So I think that you would be better off saying, you know, I'm going to do this in the other room and I'm going to set my timer on my phone, or I'm going to look at the screen time on my phone and I'm going to adhere to this.

I do want to check social media. I don't want to be so damn rigid in my life. I do want to kind of check some of these things out. I do want to see what these guys and girls are up to, but I'm going to do it for this amount of time. Cause that's actually reasonable. And I got other goals and, and, and Instagram, uh, doesn't really fall into, you know, me obtaining some and achieving some of these other goals. Maybe you have a goal on Instagram, which is fine. Uh, it's you're going to have goals everywhere in your life. You know, uh, I, at some point want to have a million followers just cause like, and I'm not even a half a million. So you're going to have, you're going to have these goals that you, that you want that might sidetrack you might deceive you from the real

goals that you're actually really trying to get. And I think that it's important to understand what is this actually doing for me? Is this break from my diet for the day? Is this going to help? Is this truly going to help me be on point with my diet for the next three months? Or am I going to mess up today and then, you know, be back off track tomorrow and then the weekend because it's so-and-so's birthday and then the holidays are coming and so on. Yeah. And what, what you know and simo was talking about the um setting the uh what keystone habit yeah i think people uh understanding how bad habits can compound on each other you know so like mark just said like having this piece of candy it's just one candy it's not going to kill

anybody it's very true um but then that could lead to maybe just a sugar rush and now you're going to bed two hours later than you wanted to and now that two hours you know it's just going to keep rolling on to each other and uh and also the negative self-talk you know i think that's that's so powerful it's so much bigger than people even you know can comprehend you know because i don't think we actually do know to what extent it does go to because of like how, you know, we all talk about like how positive talk when we're going to the gym and, you know, we imagine the lift happening and, oh, look, it happened. Um, when it's negative, I think it's so much worse. You know, I'll never be like this Instagram

model or whatever, or, uh, so-and-so already lost 10 pounds and I've been doing the diet for twice as long and I haven't lost half as much, you know, and it's, you know, again, that's kind of more comparison, but as far as like the, the negative, you know, aspects of all that, it's, it's so much worse than, you know, it's like double, two steps back as far as like, um, you know, something being positive, like one step forward. Well, the second you think of it negatively, it's like, you're way back as like um you know something being positive like one step forward well the second you think of it negatively it's like you're way back here now you know so i think understanding how bad habits can compound on each other is almost more important than the good habits being set yeah because how easy is it for you to talk bad about yourself

it's way easy so i yeah i don't like when i hear that all the time and i'm just like no you don't understand you're you're really hurting yourself right now it's tough that that's one thing i've never allowed myself to do or i've just i guess i've tried to avoid it whenever like whenever i do find that i'm going into that negativity i try and force myself out of it because it's it can be a it could be a spiral downward be a big spiral downward downward. But I know this is off topic, but I think people will probably get some use out of this. You're talking about. Probably not.

Yeah, no, probably. Because you use social media for everything, right? For like, it bolsters what you do. But for yourself, what have like, what negatives did you notice personally that it may have been having on you and what did you specifically do to i guess counteract that um so i think that um you know social media can just be a large distraction and i think that you can end up in a position where you end up really comparing yourself to a lot of other people. And it's on a massive level.

And it's and it's just it's this is this is what it does to me. And it floods me with anxiety towards like, maybe I should be doing that. Oh, my God. Like in SEMA deadlift at 725. I need to get my deadlift up. Oh, my God. Like, look how good shape Michael Hearn is. Holy shit.

I need to get ripped. And then, oh my God, Bradley Martin is doing this crazy thing over here. And this person is doing that. And this person is doing this. And then it like, it just like,

it makes you feel like everything that you're doing is wrong. That you're not doing one. You're not doing one thing. Right. And it's, uh, it can like take your breath away almost. And for me, like I, I do feel good about myself. So luckily I haven't gotten, uh, like sucker punched by that too much because I always got my hands up and I, I feel good about where I'm at in my life. But at the same time, I can see how it can really just flatten other

people. I could see how it could be something that can even cause like suicidal thoughts in other people because they're like, man, what, what am I even doing here? Look at how, look at how impressive all these people are because we're seeing snapshots and highlights of everybody's life. Right. And so I think that that could be the negative side of it. Obviously the positive side of it is, um, you get to share your story. You get to share a message. Uh, for me, I get to impact fans, which is really cool. I get to share information with them that can potentially help change their life for the better, which how amazing and how cool is that you get to network with people from all over the world. There's no longer seven degrees of separation. There's like one just

hopping on the internet, right. And getting on some form of social media and you can end up making contact with who knows the rock gary v like people i see gary v interacting with fans i see the rock interacting with fans who knows who you can interact with uh via the internet it's pretty it's pretty amazing uh the way that i have um the way that I've tried to police some of this in my life has been to really only like make posts and then like walk away. Um, almost like, uh, like I'm going to report on some news. I'm going to report on like what I'm doing. Um, but just like the news, there's no interaction back.

You know, the news floods out all this, all this information to you. And most of it's usually pretty negative, but the news floods out all this information and they get absolutely no feedback. I'm sure they get calls and emails, but I'm sure they ignore probably all of them. Um, and that's the way I was kind of looking at it for a while. Like I'll just kind of like broadcast this out, but just like a old radio show or old TV show, they're not getting feedback. It's not a, uh, interactive platform. Um, and so for a while I was trying to do it that way.

And then I was like, well, that's not cool. Cause now I'm not checking into my friends. And so then I started kind of falling back into the pitfall. And then I just was like, you know, I just need to just delete this from my phone. I'll just be better off without it. And so that's what I've done. I've deleted. The only thing that I have is Twitter and Twitter is kind of nice. Cause it's just not that exciting. Um, and that's what I do with, I do the same thing with my food. Um, we talked before on this podcast about like buying like dark chocolate. Like I don't, I love milk chocolate. If I had my way, I would eat a couple milk chocolate bars every day of my life and a couple of peanut butter cups or something like that. But I know that I love the flavor of that too much. And I know that I'll, I'll consume

too much of that. And because I know that I'll consume too much of Instagram, it's just not on my phone anymore. And so luckily for me, I have people that can, uh, that can manage this. And I still share a message with them on, you know, what I want posted and kind of how I want to be represented and things like that. But unfortunately I've had to ditch it because it just, uh, it puts my mind in places that I'd rather not be. I want to, I want to be focused in on, uh, the people that matter to me the most. I want to be present for the people that I love and the people that matter to me the most i want to be present for the people

that i love and the people that i care about um and i want to be paying attention to that yeah i don't want you know i don't want people to be by my grave when i when i pass on and be like man he was so sick at instagram man could remember how good of a scroller he was man he could scroll the best of them. You know, I want to be known for other shit than just, uh, stuff like that. So, uh, for now, you know, and we talked about how everything should evolve. Your training should evolve. You should evolve as a person. Uh, you should evolve, you know, with your nutrition. And for me, my evolution right now is, uh, you know, I don't have social media on my phone maybe i'll bring it

back um but i don't have it for now yeah i found that super useful like that shocks me i didn't know that like it affected you that much and it and you look at too much porn while we're at it i figured i should bring that up i saw you know i i went I thought I picked up my phone and it was yours and the BBC was on there and one thing led to another. All right. Control yourself. Control yourself. Now he's thinking like, did he actually pick up my phone? Like, oh, I thought I had my password on there, my fingerprint.

Now he's not sure. He's like, wait, whoops. I'm just going to keep playing this off. Next subject. my fingerprint now he's not sure he's like wait whoops i'm just gonna keep playing this off next subject uh i had a butterfinger for the first time for when you're talking about having uh peanut butter cups i had a butterfinger and that thing lit my face on fire it was so good stone cold that's what he asked me about like he he asked all these nutrition questions and he was like he was like super interactive with it was super on board he's like all right i'm gonna cut back on you know on some of these foods and i'm gonna add in some of this and then he was like i got a question for you and i thought it was gonna be like something like you know like what kind of fat should i eat or something he's like how do

you cut back on butterfingers and i was like steve i'm like i i that's a great question and i i don't have the knowledge to to be able to help you with that i was like those Steve, I'm like, that's a great question. And I don't have the knowledge to be able to help you with that. They're so good. I was like, those things are pretty damn good. But they do get all over the place, though. You can't eat them in the car or watching a movie, even. You have chocolate all over you. I don't care.

It's worth it. They're so good. It's really crumbly. Yeah. Bart Simpson was a huge fan. Yeah. And I used to love the Simpsons, so it makes sense. He was like their main endorser. Uh-huh. Yeah. I used to eat Snickers all the time. Snickers is a huge fan. Yeah. And he used to love the Simpsons. He was like their

main endorser. Yeah. I used to eat Snickers all the time. Snickers. It's been so long since I've had one. So, so now, so now

that we're talking about this, we have to have it because that's just the way that things work. But there, there's new Snickers bars out with almond

butter. There's an almond butter one. So they have, they've had the almond ones for a long time, but then they made like peanut butter ones, which are really good, but now they made almond butter one so they have they've had the almond ones for a long time but then they made like peanut butter ones which are really good but now they made almond butter ones i'm like fake peanut butter is like one of the greatest inventions in the history of the world and fake almond butter that's probably really good i'm starting to salivate that's not fair to other

candy you know i know oh my. Snickers really is great. Oh my gosh. You know, I think it's bullshit though when they moved to like the king size Snickers and they divided it up. Into two. That makes no sense. Oh, they killed you because then it. It's not the same size.

It's not nearly as satisfying. And then it's also, it's split in two. It's smaller. Yeah. Because there's a space there. Yeah. They did that shit on purpose. They think we're stupid. They think we didn't notice that dude we're not having that i i don't know

if they still make them but they had snickers like protein bars for a little while i remember that they just basically like add a little pro which is brilliant that's great stickers ice cream bars are actually oh creamy almond butter 69 cents oh well that makes sense what am i talking about 200 calories i could have like you know eight of those only 1600 calories not a problem so it's a deficit of calories for the day we're all switching to flexible i can honestly see how that would fit into a program yeah post-workout like that he's trying to like yeah okay this, yeah. Post-workout. I like that he's trying to, like, okay. This would be great post-workout, right?

It would be a great post-workout snack. Isn't this the wrong thing to be talking about? Well, since when is almond butter bad? I don't understand. Chocolate is considered not terrible. So they make one like that, too, that's peanut butter, too. So peanut butter, and we got to compare flavors and stuff. Yeah.

But wait, so, like, you mentioned fake peanut butter and we gotta we gotta compare flavors and stuff yeah but wait so like you mentioned fake peanut butter are you telling me that for all these years it's been fake peanut butter like am i tripping it's like a peanut butter convection or something it's uh powdered or something like that yeah they can't release the information they'd have to kill everybody well what we'll do is we'll just eat a bunch of these and when paul saladino's in town we'll just have him run our blood work or read our blood work and then so that way you know it's it's for the podcast i got some for science i got some blood work done recently and it was after it was after it was like right after i lifted in here which you're not really supposed to do and you're supposed to be fasted but i don't ever listen to the rules i'm always like you know what i get my

blood work done frequently i'm just going to get it done whatever way that I am. And for that particular day I lifted. And then I had like a post-workout shake that had like some carbs in it. And my, I can't even remember that. I should, I'll, I should bring in the numbers.

They're like off the charts. Like, it's like, it looks so, it looks so dangerous. My like, my glucose and everything is just like way off. But I had a post-workout shake that had like 100 grams of carbs in it or something like that.

But it actually kind of made me think like maybe these things that are pretty common in fitness, maybe they're not even, like maybe they're pretty bad for us. You know, and like, do we really know? Like, do we really know? Like, we know the information that we get, you know and like do we really know like do we really know like we know we know the information that we get you know and the information that we get a lot of times is from these like supplement companies uh or they're for people that have a vested interest in getting this information out um and so it's like you know is this large amount of sugary carbohydrates post-workout? Is it even like, how beneficial is it? And then do we even know like what it's actually doing to, you know,

we all know that we're a little different and what is it really doing to us? You bring up a really good point there. I just had a conversation with somebody like with a client about this yesterday because even my blood work, I think I got it done in November. My doctor was like, and I don't even take creatine like every day anymore. I take like maybe a few days a week because I forget a lot of the time. But he's like, oh, your creatinine levels are at a... Andrew, I didn't even want to say.

Okay, I'm just going to keep going. Your creatinine levels are abnormally high. I'm like, oh, really? I also, there's this, and I've gotten this from multiple people that do their blood work that have, you know, they're, they're more muscular than your average individual and they're not even taking creatine. Their doctor's like, your creatinine levels are abnormally high. You should probably make it. A doctor tried to tell one of my clients, he's like, oh, you need to, you need to definitely just decrease the total amount of carbs you're eating. Just decrease it totally.

And start going really, really high fat. It's like just because his creatinine levels were a little bit high. And it's like he's healthy. He's lifting every day. He's super active. But I think active individuals, especially if they do get their blood work done, there's going to be things that are abnormal than like the normal, I guess, healthy individual that walks in and gets their blood work done.

So that's something that needs to be paid attention to. That C-reactive protein, which is supposed to be a marker of like heart health, heart inflammation. I could even be saying that wrong, but it's supposed to be an indication of your heart, how healthy it is. And there's a few guys, I think my brother had one of these guys on the podcast and he had his, uh, blood work done like 80 times in the last, you know, two years or whatever. So he's got, you know, a lot of blood work done and a C-reactive protein was like all over the place. Now everybody thought that this was the marker for health. Everyone thought that this is a great place to start. It's not the only place, but it's one of the places to start when you're talking about like heart health. Well, his was, his was just, you know, such a wide

array of, uh, of scores that he, that he got. Um, and he basically concluded that, look, it's going to look different on different days. And it matters a lot on how you trained the day before and even two days before. Um, and certainly even like the day of. And so, you know, when we're talking about healthier individuals or people that are exercising, uh, it would be great to gather more information on a lot of this stuff. And I was even, as I was, as I was, you know, checking out some of my own blood work and I have the cool thing about the blood work when I get it is it shows my previous blood work and it's usually, I usually make some small improvements, uh, almost across the And I have the cool thing about the blood work when I get it is it shows my previous blood work. And it's usually I usually make some small improvements almost across the board.

And then something might kind of like be up. And then I've got to kind of figure that out and move and shift that around. But it's cool that it shows me like previous blood work. But what I was kind of thinking is like, and how cool would it be if you can get a group of people to submit some of this information? I realize medical stuff can sometimes be sensitive to, you know, who the person is. So you'd have to figure out, you know, whether it be, uh, maybe it'd be anonymous or, you know, but anyway, my point would be is like, how cool would it be to have a database of people that run a database of people that do jiu-jitsu a database of people that lift database of people that do crossfit and to see all these

different types of blood work and kind of see what some of the averages are and then what are healthy things and what are what are healthy magnesium levels and things like i just don't think we even really know like some of these things were established but they were established a long time ago um i think our recommended daily allowance and stuff like that i don't really know even where some of that came from and and i would imagine that that all that stuff has been most of that stuff is probably in alignment with monetization of agriculture and stuff so you need this amount of calcium. You need that. Of course,

they're going to say that because they want you to drink more milk. And it's just like, how do we really know? Like, but what are some things that are moving people forward that are actually really working? That's, that's what I would like to know more about. That database is an amazing idea if it could actually happen.

Yeah. When you were talking about whether or not something is healthy for a normal individual versus like an athlete or, you know, whatever, it reminded me of when I was rolling around a lot of racetracks. People would always be like, oh, this product says it's been tested on a racetrack, so it's definitely good enough for my street car. And then, you know, parts will be breaking all the time. People's tires falling off. It's like, well, no, they're testing it on a track where it's perfectly smooth. There's no potholes. There's no curbs. There's nothing.

It's just perfect. And you're wondering why your car's falling apart over here on the street. No, but it's tested for the track. Well, no, it's for a track car. So maybe a pre-workout is not meant for somebody going to the office in the morning, right? Exactly. Yeah, and then real quick because she won't stop. Maybe a pre-workout is not meant for somebody going to the office in the morning, right? Exactly. Yeah.

And then real quick, because she won't stop. Jessica Smith says that you're so fat and that you can't hide your face. I'm trying to. She was probably talking to Encima. I think she was talking to me. She says that to me all the time. Gotcha. That makes sense. And then Jesse Burdick says Sacramento.

With like five O's? You know, it wasn't me. It wasn't five O's. It was just a lot of exclamation points. Yeah, but I didn't want to yell. You can yell. It messes up the audio levels. It's your show, bro.

I'll have to edit it later, though. No. And that'll be extra work, right? Slightly. It'll make it too hard. Kind of back to, we got a little little sidetracked but a little bit you know i think there's the the point of a lot of the stuff that we we brought up today is that there's there's going to be some good and there's going to be some bad there's going to be a little bit

of yin a little bit of yang to everything that you try to do and uh as we were pointing out earlier you know you don't want to kick yourself when you're down. You know, it's, we, we do, we are striving to be better. But at the same time, we always, it's, it's always a good idea to be accepting of the fact that you're probably going to lead yourself down the wrong path many times over. You're probably going to talk yourself into the fact that you're too tired, that you're more fatigued than you really are. You're probably going to, you know, talk yourself into saying negative things, some negative self-talk, but we want to try to reinforce the positive as much as we can.

And we want to try to develop a lot of healthy dialogue for ourselves so we can develop good habits. These habits will be things that you can rely upon in your worst, darkest times when things aren't going your way, when things are sliding downhill, when you wake up and it's rainy and stormy outside and you don't feel like going outside. That's when those good habits, you'll just think, okay, well, I'll just, I'll throw on a hoodie and I'll go to my car and I'll go to the gym or I'll grab an umbrella and still go for my walk. Like these are, these are the things that you're going to be able to rely upon. These are things that end up becoming,

they become ingrained into your system and it ends up being part of your character. And really, I think that's my goal. And I think that's the goal for all of us on this podcast is I would like for when people like hang out with you, when people do something, uh,

with you where they go. Damn, like this guy's got it. How does he have it all together? Like, I understand. I understand. OK, he's he's jacked. That's that's cool. But maybe I make more money.

Oh, no, he does pretty good there, too. Let's see. Well, I have a girlfriend and oh wait so does he right like you want to kind of like have it to where you know you're like pretty buttoned up you're like i don't know where can i get this guy i guess in nsema's case he can say at least i could choke this motherfucker out yep hey you know what i could probably make this guy tap, right? So if all else fails, just beat the shit out of somebody. That's all you need in this world, actually. Yeah. And then don't aim too low, right?

Like don't, like some kid out of high school, like, you piece of shit, I'm way better than you. Because then you're just setting yourself up for something worse. Yeah. Yeah. I've actually heard, it's a great quote where the guy says uh he says most people don't uh most people aim aim too low and hit rather than aim too high and miss so it's like that's but i think a lot of times a lot of times we're so worried about you know how hard something might be we might not even really try yeah might not even like set forth towards that motion, right?

That's literally, you know what's funny? That's literally something, it may sound weird, but whenever I, maybe I'm working with someone who's never tracked their calories before and they've never paid attention to their food, I always say, understand, I'm telling you this knowing that you will fail a lot. I'm letting you know this now.

You will fuck up a lot for months'm letting you know this now. You will for, you will fuck up a lot for months and months on end. It's okay. Just go again the next day, you know, because people like you go into something thinking that it's going to go great all the time and it's not going to be that way. And if you can realize that it's going to be horrible a lot and you're just

going to get better and better a little bit at a time, then you'll, you'll probably get to the end of it. You'll probably get to that goal. But if you think it's going to be peachy and it's not going to quit. Yeah. Anybody that you've worked with have, have you noticed like they've been kind of almost afraid to succeed? Afraid to succeed. You know, almost like, uh, like, Hey, and see my, like, I want to, Afraid to succeed. You know, almost like, hey, Encima, I want you to help me out, but don't tell anybody.

Kind of. I think more so it would be, the word would be afraid to fail. And those are like, I honestly, I think those are two sides of the same coin. Because if you're afraid to fail and you're afraid to mess up consistently, you're not going to succeed. So in essence, you are afraid of succeeding, you know, because I can't think of anything that takes work that doesn't also have a disgusting amount of pitfalls and failures. So just be okay. It's hard to say to be okay with that, but prepare yourself for that.

Understand that it's going to happen and it's almost unavoidable. But with all the times that you actually do mess up, that you don't track your macros the right way, or you mess up on your diet on a certain day, you'll learn from that experience. And then you'll, you know, just continue to chug along. Yeah, there's, you know, as'm pointing out there's there's a good and bad to everything and for some reason self-sabotage is ingrained into the human condition i i don't know why but it just is we're all gonna deceive we're all gonna cheat we're all gonna lie like lying is i i don't know where it starts i don't i don't even know if it's a learned behavior but you ask a kid who's got a bright

red pen. Hey, did you write on the wall? And there's red writing all over the wall. And they say, no, you know, I don't know if that's just, uh, a, a flat out lie or if that's a protective way of trying to look a certain way in somebody else's eyes, but either way, we're going to try to like deceive and cheat as much as much as we can at every turn. And I don't know, you know, I don't know what it is, but but it's there. And something I've been I've been listening to lately, lately where this guy was talking about, you know, if you're if you owe a bunch of creditors money, you don't announce to them that you're leaving town.

You just leave without any notice and you just go. And, and I, that's something I, I've actually done that all my life, not owed people money, but I, I've, uh, I've always just kind of left. I always just like leave, like when I, family situations and we were hanging out the other day and, uh were watching some uh watching the oscars and my sister-in-law had some friends over and i i ended up uh just i ended up coming to the gym and then i ended up getting um i ended up getting over there through jessica and i went on a walk and i just ubered home and it's like that might seem so weird my wife is so used to that at at this stage to where you know and everybody i think just understands like i just go to the beat of my own drum i just

kind of end up doing some stuff that's just a little bit a little bit different um but i kind of feel like i i need to um but anyway kind of the point is like you, you want to just like do you don't want to. You don't want to like aim and then wait and then shoot. You want to aim and shoot almost simultaneously. You want to have the action because if you if you wake up in the morning and you're like. Man, it's really snowing out really bad. Should I go to the gym? The answer is no, you shouldn't, you should get back in the covers, man. And you should,

you know, you should, uh, you know, snuggle with your girlfriend or whatever and wake up two hours later and eat some pancakes, you know, um, that's going to be the answer, right? You're going to, you're going to kind of talk yourself out of it. And I think, you know, an important thing to just kind of always understand is there's always going to be, there's always going to be that friction. And if you just decide and act almost at the same time, it's hard because how do you do it? Um, how do you, how do you all of a sudden know how to do, all of a sudden know how to do, um, a certain hold in jujitsu, it's, it's, it's not because you don't know how to do it because you practice it so many times it's ingrained into your body. That's actually kind of some, you partially do, but what actually really happens is you recognize you're the only one in the room that doesn't know how to do it and then all of a sudden it starts to really sink in you're like this guy's got me in this lock for the last four weeks in a row

and you're frustrated you might even like cry over stuff like this like sometimes this stuff matters to us a lot and you get like emotional you're super frustrated like then all of a sudden you're rolling with somebody and it happens and you're like, whoa, where did that come from? It's the same thing with when you're a kid and you're the only kid that can't swim. Now, all of a sudden you're swimming. It wasn't because the instructor just kept showing you and showing and showing and showing you. A lot of times that's not when it clicks. It clicks out of like scarcity.

You get scared that you're the only one that doesn't understand how to do this. So, you know, as you're trying to develop these habits, realize that you can write these things down and you can plan them out and you can do all these things, but you have to act on them. You have to act on them and you have to play tricks on yourself to get them to actually happen. Part of the reason why I get here at four in the morning is because by 4.30, I'm already 30 minutes into a workout i like tricked myself into doing it now i love fitness and i love to train so training doesn't really matter that much but like when it comes to like running and doing like cardio stuff

i hate doing i don't like doing it but i've been tricking myself into doing it so make sure that you're you know you're trying to aim and shoot kind of uh at the same time. And shoot at the same time. I like that. You know, there's a, Andrew, I told you about the book, The Five Second Rule. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. I told you about it, too. What is her name? Mel Robbins.

Mel Robbins. Mel Robbins. Yeah, yeah. She's great. That's like a legit concept that you were just talking about yeah you know if if uh same example you're in bed you know you wake up and you start thinking too much right like oh i should go you'll probably not go but if you get up and you legit just like step on the floor and start walking you're you're gonna go if like if you can if

there's a juggernaut. Yeah, exactly. We'll come back to that. I have to tell everybody what happened. I'm so curious. Yeah. But, but like that, that has been something that has helped me out so much.

I mean, it's not like I'm perfect with it all the time. I will sometimes catch myself in my head, but I've found that like, if I can just like, just go and just like not think and just like, just go and do the things I got to do without thinking about it. Things are so much easier.

Yeah. To just get done and do, you know, and that, that in itself becomes a habit. Just doing things becomes a habit if you can, you can build that. So. Yeah. Or even just kind of like, not in this, I don't want to say set the bar too low, but like, uh, I'm just going to go to the gym and I'm going to walk on the treadmill and just get warmed up and then move around a little bit stretch out and then before that's an excellent point that's an excellent trick is like convince yourself that it's not going to be that bad right and then you know it's going to get horrible yeah i mean you know deep down inside it's going to at some point

someone else will trick you into doing more work or you'll trick yourself into doing more but just get yourself there yeah it happened to me on Saturday. I just said, I was like, all right, I'm going to go in real quick, just get like a bicep pump, try to at least, and then like work my back and then get out of here. And then, oh, what are their names? The two guys that you just recently hired, Jay and, damn it. Tom. Tom.

They're just like, hey, man, is it cool if we work in with you? And next thing I know, we just had a sick workout. at it yeah it was dope and that's exactly what happened i was like uh bar is going to be set here got there and ended up just having an awesome workout yeah but real quick so we had a uh a quick photo shoot set up uh for mark and i it was uh when charity wit was here and it was just before mark was going to uh bodega bay to have his dopamine fast and it was like we had everything set up uh just we just like okay we gotta grab mark and then like like that's it like let's we 10 seconds i got pulled into a bunch of stuff too i think before we did a podcast too right

yeah that same day and uh they already kind of asked a bunch more stuff too i think before we did a podcast too right yeah that same day and uh they already kind of asked a bunch more of me than was scheduled and uh yeah the pod podcast got over with and yeah so again it's not like mark wasn't doing anything so i'm definitely not saying he was lazy or anything like that but it was probably my favorite thing that's happened at this gym at this location like so much so that i text mark right after it happened and i was like you know this told him exactly what i just said but uh like as mark's leaving he's like hey guys i gotta like see you guys later they're like no no mark we need we need 10 seconds of your time we got to get this one shot and he's like nope you can't stop me i got momentum i'm a juggernaut and he just left the building and everyone was just like dumbfounded and i am

on the floor laughing because i'm like they're like did he really leave andrew's like yep like he's gone like what do you mean like that and i text him right away i'm like that's my favorite thing that's happened here. And he just responded, there's a time and a place for everything. It's so funny that you mentioned that, like just walk it away because I've seen you do that

before and I'd just be like, oh, he's just, cool. It's just like, he just does that shit. He's a juggernaut. I think everybody, I think everyone thinks

I'm just like absent-minded that I just randomly like stop, like I just shut down, my brain shuts down and I just walk away. Yeah, so. I'm just like absent minded that I just randomly like stop. Like I just shut down. My brain shuts down and I just walk away. Yeah. So. I'm like something happens in my head. There's like an alarm that goes off.

Like I need to get out of here. Yeah. So we got to get. It's like a fire, you know. We got to design a shirt of Mark and like the juggernaut like helmet. Just like. I got momentum. You can't stop me.

That's where that came from. Oh, man. Too much fun. Sometimes you got momentum. You can't stop me. That's where that came from. Oh, man. Too much fun. Sometimes you got to go to the beat of your own drum, right? Yep. Nice. All right, man. Well, we're going to be at booth 945 at the Arnold.

Hope to see a lot of you people there. What are some of your favorite things that happen going to these shows? I shook Arnold's hand last year. Oh, damn. Yeah. Yeah. I got a lot of you people there what are some of your favorite things that happen going to these shows i shook arnold's hand last year oh damn yeah yeah i got a picture of it too i might look like a kid i'm just like so so yeah that was pretty awesome hopefully uh i'll be able to catch him again this year do you end up running into clients and stuff too and yeah i got one guy actually i think i have two guys that live in ohio are they anybody competing uh no nobody's competing in uh at that at that meet but um there is a cool uh grappling extra jiu-jitsu tournament going on if i go to the arnold again

next year i think i might want to do that but uh is it pretty high level those tournaments they run really well so like i mean if it's you know if you run into a blue belt competitor there'll be a blue belt but they you know they have white belts to black belts at that tournament. And I think it'll be interesting because if Arnold's going to be there, who knows when he's going to start potentially doing stuff with that tournament.

But I do want to check that out. I'm excited for the weekend in general. Strongman and all of that. It's going to be exciting. It's always exciting. Yeah. Brian Shaw, Hap Thor.

And I would imagine at this stage, you know, Strongman is so competitive. I wouldn't be surprised to see your third or fourth place guy from last year, you know, really give everybody a nice run for their money too. Cause these guys are, they're just, they're just always getting better, man. And you don't know, you don't know who's going to do what.

And, uh, there's some young guys in the field. I mean, Hapthor is pretty young too too but there's some young guys in the field that uh can be highly competitive so i'm excited for i i love watching brian compete like to see him get fired up and to see uh to see how good he's gotten over the years like he's better than he's better than he's ever been which is crazy and then to watch him repeatedly, you know, he comes in second often to Hapthor is crazy because you're like, this is a four time world's strongest man. He should not be coming in second. Yeah.

But Hapthor has upped his game so much and he's young and he's hungry. And so I think it would be an amazing story if Brian can figure out a way, uh, to, uh, to get past them at some point, that would be amazing. But just to watch both these, both these guys continue to elevate their game every year, they're deadlifted more weight every year they're doing more. And it's like, how the hell are they doing it? Because they're already like deadlifting like a thousand 50.

Yeah. I wonder if there's ever, has there ever been a time, especially in that sport where they're like the top two have been so neck and neck. Cause you see this rarely. I don't really think it, I don't think you've really seen this before.

I think Cedruna, Savickas, and Brian went back and forth a little bit. But that was about it. I can't, Marius Pudzianowski was really dominant and Strongman at that time had two separate, had two separate main leagues. So some of that is just skewed a little bit because some of the other competitors were in a different league um and then you had uh you know you had a lot of

dominance from the europeans and it just really haven't seen the back and forth like this uh with these with these guys and brian you know brian had a good run and then it's mainly been hap thor kind of more recently and so it it'll it'll be amazing to see you know and then eddie hall was kind of in there for for a minute but he's retired um i don't know if he's competing at the arnold i think he's i think he's pretty much retired so i don't think we'll see him oh that's right he's not doing arnold he's not doing world's strongest man but he still competes in strongman just those are so heavy and so crazy that he was like I'm good yeah yeah I mean I know I'm biased because I've hung out with Shaw quite a bit now but there's nothing like hearing an entire expo chanting USA yeah

it's oh dude you get the chills every time and it's it's uh so i'm looking forward to that for sure i want to see michelle too it's it's so intense and then like last year you know brian pulled like a thousand thirty and then hapthor did like a thousand fifty or something i was right next to thor's uh trainers and coaches and stuff and and they know who i am and i'm sitting with carrie i'm sitting with brian's wife. And just nothing but respect them. Like, everyone's cool. Like, I high-fived them. You know, I was like, that was sick.

Like, that was awesome. And there's no, like, weird animosity. Hapthor's a good dude, too. Really good competitor and a great champion. And I just want to see these guys slug it out again. And I'm on Team Shaw, obviously, too. I hope that he, uh,

I hope that he can pull one more out. Both former guests of the show. Mm. Hmm. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later.