Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Project EP. 30 - Bro Session Live

Episode Date: April 4, 2018

Just the homies talking about stealing Quest bars, current events in Powerlifting and your questions. Re-Watch the Live Stream Here: https://youtu.be/4r2reaTRF54 ➢Subscribe Rate & Review on iTunes at: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-bells-power-project/id1341346059?mt=2 ➢Listen on Stitcher Here: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/mark-bells-power-project?refid=stpr ➢Listen on Google Play here: https://play.google.com/music/m/Izf6a3gudzyn66kf364qx34cctq?t=Mark_Bells_Power_Project ➢Listen on SoundCloud Here: https://soundcloud.com/user-921692324 ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell

We're going to be live double. Double live. Double live. Does that exist? Double live. What? We'll let it run over here for a minute. The coffee will be my camera.

We'll just fucking fire. We'll fire Andrew. Is that that nitro brew I bought you? Yeah, this nitro brew's got me feeling some kind of way, buddy. I accidentally put a little bit of special stuff in there. Put some steroids in here? Mm. I can't believe you didn't get me one.

Yeah, I didn't want to get you one. Thanks. We didn't invite Andrew? What happened? Well, I found out he's been stealing quest bars, so... Dude. I didn't know we were selling those. He's been... I literally caught him stealing quest Bars that we sell. From our store?

From our store. Is it stealing if I didn't know they were on sale? Yes, you can't plead ignorance. Here's a question for you. This is loaded. Is it racist that you found him stealing? No. Is this a racist situation?

Because I didn't accuse him of it. Is this racial profile filing no if i had known a quest bar was gone and i just went up to him being hispanic male and accused him of it that is different versus me looking over and holding a quest bar in his hand this is really opening up a big can of worms right here because this is a bad circle we can go down well because the thing was i i'm eating it and he just stares right at me he's like where did you get that instead of just assuming maybe i purchased it somewhere yeah it seems i mean just in general you know jewish people seem to always have the upper hand and everything well we seems like another case we short fat you got to

have i mean we have a lot of bad things going for us. So we need to, you know, have some things on our upper hand. But great beards. Yes. Andrew. Hairy. Yeah. Was this an act of desperation or what happened?

Well, I got. Walk us through your day and what led to this stealing of the quest bar. Gotcha. Well, I was the second person to walk in the gym. So he was late. Gotcha. Well, I was the second person to walk in the gym. So he was late. Already did a whole... Great job of being second place. Yeah. Continue.

Well, the only other person that was here before me has already left. And I'll be here probably longer than anybody else. Oh, now he's talking trash. Just call him a shot. Now he's getting sassy. Well, I'm in between houses right now because we're moving. So i don't really have everything ready to go he's just throwing sounds like he's throwing money around buying houses and shit yeah that that power project money that's that's right anyway

so i didn't have anything to eat for breakfast made some coffee while i was here grabbed the quest bar little did i know i was borrowing a Quest bar, not stealing. He was... How much are the Quest bars? He was at the final bite. Like, he was already working his way down. What flavor was it? You know, I have it right here.

It was cookie dough. Yeah, oatmeal. Oatmeal chocolate chip. But I had another one. That's my favorite one. I put it back. Not the oatmeal chocolate chip. Yeah, yeah. Damn. That's my favorite one. Not the old milk chocolate chip. Yeah. Damn.

Alright, peeps. I'm shutting this down. We're going live on YouTube. Yep. YouTube. It's the YouTube Power Project. Make sure you go check it out. YouTube Power Project. Mark Bell's Power Project on YouTube. Go check it out. Sayonara.

Are you live now? Yeah, we're currently live. We are still live. Don't worry. We're still live, but we're on the YouTubes. All right, I wanted to pop on here today to talk to you guys about the Power Project. We've kind of just been rolling right through it. We've been steamrolling right through it, and we've been firing out a lot of podcasts lately. We're switching over to doing all of them live. The only ones that won't be live are the ones that have been recorded already, which are ones with Chuck Liddell

and a few other people that you're going to see coming up soon. I'm really excited to roll some of those out. And I just didn't want you guys to get all confused on what's live and what's not and what's this and what's that. All you need to know is that you're going to get fucking smashed with a lot of information and a lot of stupid shit from me and from the power project. Now it used to be called Mark Bell's power cast. We have switched that shit up. We have dissolved that, um, that the power, the power cast was great. We did it for about four years. Yeah, four years. Did it for about four years. We built up a tremendous amount of advertising,

built up a ton of fans. And I appreciate all you guys that have been sticking with me, that have been following along from the very beginning. But this now, this format gives us the freedom to move and to get into some other spaces that we weren't able to get into before just because the podcast before was kind of cumbersome. The fact that it wasn't live was kind of frustrating to me and I wanted to be able to upgrade the podcast just as we upgrade everything around here. The gym has never stayed the same from day one. The gym started out in somebody else's gym. We started renting out space from somebody else in the very beginning. We then moved the gym to a smaller facility

across the street from a Hmong funeral home where they're like slaughtering chickens and doing whatever the hell else they were doing, sacrificing cows and shit like that. And every step of the way, everything has always gotten better. Every step of the way, powerlifting has always been the backbone of what we do. The only thing that we've done recently that's been a bigger change is we have gotten out to more people. We have gotten out to the general public more. And so therefore, we occasionally have to talk about shit that the general public wants to hear about rather than just talk about meathead power to stuff all the time. But it still is the backbone. And the only thing we've really done that's been the biggest change and biggest difference has been

we've added stuff. We're adding stuff all the time. We're not subtracting anything. You can still go on our site and you can still see, you can still go on our YouTube channel, our super training 06 YouTube channel that has been around for a long-ass time, and you can still see a lot of powerlifting. Every once in a while, you might see a profile on somebody that is doing something a little bit different than just powerlifting. But for the most part, you're still going to see a lot of guys from Super Training Gym loading up some heavy benches, some heavy squats, some heavy deadlifts. From time to time, you're going to hear me talk about my war on carbs. From time to time, you're going to hear me talk about a ketogenic diet because that's the kick.

That's what's going on right now. And I've lost a lot of weight and I'm trying to share that information with other people. And I'm trying to share that information with you guys, just as I've always done from the beginning. I try to share the stuff that I'm doing. I try to share what I think is cool. And I also try to monetize it. And I'm not afraid to say that anybody with half a brain can realize that anybody, half a brain can see that go back and watch some of the old videos of me squatting 900 pounds, thousand pounds, and being on a quest to squat 1,100 pounds, you'll see early

versions of compression cuffs that I later turned into products that I now sell. The reason why I sell it is because I think it works. I think it's effective. And I'm never going to back down and I'm never going to slow down with being somebody that's going to sell products. I have products. with being somebody that's going to sell products, I have products. I feel that they're good and I'm going to get them in front of people. And if that means that I have to sometimes feel like a fucking idiot and feel like a dork sometimes to do it, that's just part of who I am.

And that's part of what I have to do. I really don't like doing that. what keeps the lights on? I mean, the whole reason we can do the podcast and have the YouTube channel and have the staff that we have is because we have products to sell. That's what keeps everything moving forward. We didn't have those things. Yeah. It'd be chasing a dollar every day. Yeah. I really, I honestly genuinely don't like doing that. Like I don't like, uh, you know, I went into a gym in Davis and, uh, promoted the slingshot pushup. We talked about that a lot. And I went in there and had

a bunch of women that mainly do like yoga and spin. They exercise and they were, some of them were, were fairly fit. But their, their strength level was not high. Yeah. I can imagine. Yeah. And I brought it, brought in some hip circles for them to try out. I brought in some slingshot sports for them to try out slingshothot pushup. And, you know, they used them, they liked them. It was successful. A lot of girls that couldn't do a pushup can now enjoy doing five pushups, 10 pushups. And now over a period of time, they can work on doing pushups in the slingshot pushup, and then even venture out of the slingshot pushup and have the strength to do regular pushups. Did you feel pretty salesy when you were doing that?

Or was it once they threw it on, did it click? Did some of them? Because sometimes at the trade shows, like at the Arnold, someone might walk up. They're a little skeptical. Have you heard of slingshot? Have you ever tried one out? And they go, I'm good. I can bench 315 or three.

It's always 350, 350. And you're like, oh, just come on back. Let me throw it on your arms. Try it out. And you put it on. They do a couple of push-ups. And they up and it's, they have a smile on their face and they're, they're like sold, right? Like I did, all I had to do was put on their arms and have them do a pushup. It does feel like a sales pitch. Um, but I did not realize how ingrained

into my body that this actually was, um, until I've gotten to this point. I actually did not realize any of this until about this year in particular, when I just started thinking more, I started thinking about my dad's relationship with my son, my relationship with my dad, my relationship with my grandfather, and my dad's relationship with his grandfather. And then it just kind of hit me. I was kind of thinking of all these things and somebody asked me, you know, what my child, because, you know, people, when you're successful, people want to know every aspect of your life. They want to know. Because they emulate it. Yeah. They want to know what your childhood was like and stuff like that. So I started kind of thinking

of some of those things and I was like, yeah, you know, my, my grandfather, he like built his own house and he, he built his own car and he used to fix up cars. That's insane. He worked on the railroad and he knew how to weld and he knew construction and he knew how to hunt and he knew how to do this. And it was all things that he kind of just figured out. He didn't have a college education. Didn't have a Google to search, YouTube to watch. Yep.

And yeah, he certainly didn't have any of that. He didn't have anywhere to like kind of look it up but a lot of times you just kind of learn the job and i think there's something to be said about people that are just fascinated with stuff they just tend to learn things pretty fast and he was somebody who's always tinkering with stuff always trying to figure out stuff but another thing that he did that was ingrained in me from the time I was a kid, he was always promoting. His name was everywhere. Like you got, you guys saw me make some of those shirts that say a shell bell auto mechanic.

Well, that was his shop that he had. That was, that was in his house. That was in his garage at his house. He had, uh, you know, when we, when we had a Christmas and Thanksgiving and stuff like that, he'd start up all these cars, 14, 15, 16, 17 cars, and he'd move them out of the way for our, you know, our Thanksgiving and for our Christmas, he'd, he'd move them off to the side. And then, you know, we would have a big party because we have a huge family. We'd have a huge, huge ass party and everybody else would park their cars

around in those spots. And we'd be playing football and wiffle ball and you name it, we'd be doing it. But out in front, it said shell bell auto. He, you know, back in a time when it wasn't easy to get like a sign, like he,

he would make all this stuff himself. Yeah. He would, he would put signs like on, on the outside of his car, like, which people don't have, people didn't have stuff like that. Then they didn't have, you know you know there was no it wasn't like a magnet that you just slap on the

car it wasn't like you just go on the internet it was a commitment you were welding something or yeah something on the car paint yeah it was a big commitment and and a lot of people like hated him for it you know like when when he passed and and to his funeral, I mean, there was hundreds of people there. He was like just like a legend in his area. He really touched a lot of people. But a lot of people also kind of they love to hate him in a way because he was successful. He was only like five foot three or five foot four. He was short in stature, but he was like he was feisty, you know, and he was a go getter. He was somebody that worked, worked really hard.

Many people have similar stories with their, you know, relatives and stuff like that. But, you know, I never even really thought about it until I got older. I was like, oh my God, yeah, I did see a lot of that growing up. And then my dad, when he lost his job with IBM, he did the same exact thing. My dad started his own real estate business. My dad started his own income tax business. He still does taxes today and he's still a hustler. My dad started his own real estate business. My dad started his own income tax business. He still does taxes today and he's still a hustler. My dad has a new shirt or new hat almost every day, you know, that says tax works on it. You know, he's constantly branding and rebranding and repackaging and redoing. So this is genetic. Yeah. It's been-

This is a trait that's been passed down through DNA. Yeah. And I never knew it. You know, when I was a trait that's been passed down through dna yeah and i and i uh i never knew it you know when i was a kid i did some weird stuff i would sell stuff like door to door i would just like gather stuff from my house and try to like you know get like a a wagon and pull it with me and like sell it or just grab like your parents stuff that i would grab whether they wanted to get rid of it or not you're selling selling it? I would grab some junk and just try to sell it. And then I got to a point where when I got older, I started to lose a lot of confidence in myself because I didn't think I was smart enough. Just as you get older, you end up with a lot of reservations for yourself.

Somewhere along the line, someone tells you you're not good enough or someone tells you that it's weird. Well, the risk is bigger, right? Like when you're a kid, there's really nothing to lose, but the older you get. That's probably like seven or eight, you know? So they're like, oh, that's cute. But when you're like 12 or 13, like who's this weird dorky kid trying to sell me this crap, you know? And you also don't have like ego,

right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The fear level is... You're not afraid to fail when you're a kid because, yeah. It's even worse now with social media and stuff. Yeah, as you get older you start to develop an ego and uh somebody knocks it down a notch and just gets knocked down another notch and i'm like you know in these classes with these kids that were you know lighting their desk on fire or fighting with these kids could not pay attention to save their lives

there were this is like a disabled class right right? Like kids, all kinds of issues, mental and physical. Yeah. Really ran the gamut because there, you know, at that time there wasn't, I think now there's like a little bit more specialized learning that you can get. For me, I mean, the main thing with me, I was just like slower than most people. It just took me longer. Yeah. It took me longer.

And it's still, to this day, it takes me a long time to read. It takes me a long time to do a lot of stuff. And my brain just works differently maybe than some other people, which I found out later is a strength. Like for me, it works well. Like I've kind of found my niche and I found out what works well for me. And sometimes I'm going to compute things a little bit differently than other people, but I'm still able to get a lot of tasks done. I think there's probably a period of time in my life where I kind of bought into some of this, like, oh, I'm learning disabled. Like, yeah, I'm in these classes and they exempt me from different classes in school. I didn't have to take like advanced math. I didn't have to take a language,

which was a requirement for all the other students. I didn't have to play an instrument. I wasn't really forced into any of these things where you would, where you try some stuff because you'd get in kind of a compromised position. They're like, well, he's still having a hard time with some of this remedial stuff. There's really no reason to put any more stress on them and have them try these things. Do you think you didn't push it quite the same? Like if you were in those regular classes, do you think it'd be fight or flight or just because you were in that special class

or maybe the expectations were less? Did you maybe kick it back a little bit or did you want to prove people wrong or you don't even really know? No, I think that, I think that, you know, it's a, it's a literal like handicap, like, but it's a handicap that I put on myself more so than anything else.

Yes. Like some teachers were, you know, not kind to me. And there was, there was some stuff that happened that was like, didn't make me feel great. But I mean, looking back on it, it's like, well, you know, my parents were strong enough. My brothers were strong enough. My family environment was strong enough. I should it's like, well, you know, my parents were strong enough. My brothers were strong enough. My family environment was strong enough. I should have been like, fuck that. You know, and that's what my parents ultimately taught me.

And they all ultimately showed me is my, there was one incident where it was just taking me a really long time to do my homework. And then the teacher, you know, he just kind of drowned it out in front of everybody else. He's like, hey, is it taking anybody else four hours to do their homework? And I'm just like turning fucking bright red. You know, I was easily embarrassed at the time. Now, now it's a little harder to get me embarrassed, but, um, you know, and I, you know, I went home and I was really upset and I was telling my parents and my, my dad, you know, my dad's like, I'm going to go over there and punch your teacher in the face. You know, my parents are very compassionate.

They love their kids very much and they'll do anything for them. And so I was like, you know what? I was like, dad, you know, I don't, I don't want that. I was probably like 12 or something. So it was like, you know, very embarrassing for any of that stuff to be going on. I didn't want to tell my parents, but I was also kind of distraught about it and I was upset about it. So they, they kind of, they kind of saw that of distraught about it and I was upset about it. So, uh, they, they kind of, they kind of saw that. And then we talked about it more. And, uh, ultimately my dad

said, look, you know, here's the thing. It's like, you just have to go through school. You got to figure out a way. This, this is, this is what happens. You, everyone goes to school. He's like, when you're done with school, he's like, maybe we can figure out something else. But for now, this is what we're doing. You have to go to school and you'll have to deal with it. And you'll have to just be smarter and stronger than your teachers. You know, he's like, he's like, so what? You're not good at math. He's like, I'm good at math, but he's like, doesn't make me anything special.

He's like, you're good. At that time, I was already lifting weights and stuff. He's like, you're good at football. You're good at lifting weights. He's like, you're good at some of your own things. And that didn't really help much. I was like, yeah, whatever. Wasn't really listening to him much. And then it was my mom. My mom was like, you're faster than all your friends. Cause at the time I could actually run. And she's like, you can outlift all your friends. And whenever you play any sport, you can mimic what anybody else can do.

She's like, one day, all this stuff will add up. It will turn into something. And you'll be fine. You know, she was just like, your day will come is what she, I remember her saying that. Wow. Specifically. And I was like, yeah, I can hang in there till then. And pretty much from that point on, I was just like, fuck everybody.

You know, I don't really care what they say about me. As long as it's not my mom and dad saying something about me. And as long as I'm trying. And what can you do? Then I'm okay. But there was definitely situations where I used some of those. There was definitely situations where I took advantage of being learning disabled. And kind of cruising through some of these classes where I had kids like drooling and snorting glue and whatever else.

Whatever else these kids were doing. That's rough. There was definitely a lot of fights in these classes. But another thing I didn't realize until I went and talked to Michael Tran, this will be a video that you guys will see coming up on YouTube soon. We had a great interview with Michael Hearn and Michael Hearn flipped the script on me and he started interviewing me. Uh, but Mike had a similar upbringing, had very loving parents. Uh, he grew up in a really big family. He had like,

I don't know, eight or nine siblings or something like that. Um, but, uh, he grew up with a learning disability as well. And he was like, Hey, he's like, I got a question for you. He's but, uh, he grew up with a learning disability as well. And he was like, Hey, he's like, I got a question for you. He's like, you were, you were, uh, in some special classes and stuff. Right. And I was like, yep. And he's like, yeah, me too. And he's like, you ever stand up for any of those kids? Like, you know, like anybody ever pick on him? I was like, yeah, absolutely. And I never even thought about any of that, but some of that, uh, you know, some of that nature of like wanting to be stronger and wanting to be able to like right or wrong for somebody else that's getting like teased or picked on.

And some of those things were definitely a part of my upbringing. I mean, I used to see it all the time, just kids being, kids are, kids are going to pick on people that have. Kids are kids. Kids are going to pick on people that have problems. I mean, it's just, there's, I don't blame them because I make fun of people too. Yeah. We're all judgmental, right? As you get older, you learn to do it more. I mean, do it less. Do it behind closed doors.

Do it behind closed doors. But yeah, those are all things that ended up being traits that kind of ended up molding me and ended up, you know, kind of turning me into, I guess, whatever the fuck I am today. Anyway, I wanted to share some of this stuff with you guys because I want to show you guys that the Power Project is going to be a little bit different than what you've seen in the past. We're going to be firing out a lot of content, a lot of videos. We're going to be traveling. We're going to be hitting the road.

We're going to be doing a lot of stuff. And then also, with the Slingshot Media, we are working on picking up more people. So if you're listening to this show, we don't need you to be a power lifter. Nope. We don't need you to squat 500 pounds, although that would be nice. It'd be awesome.

We need some sort of skill set, but we are looking for some more people. And part of the reason why we're looking for more people is because, uh, the guys have done such a good job whenever we brought them anywhere or whenever we sent them out anywhere. So I want to do that more often. I would love to send out a crew to stay in efforting to do a day in the life with the Rhino, get the 10 minute walks in there,

have him hanging out with his kids, making his monster mash, showing us some OJ, eat three carrots. Absolutely. Eat, drink some cranberry juice or whatever concentrate yeah whatever the hell whatever the hell else it is he's doing uh get some video footage of uh of of his wifey and stuff and you know just be great to get more stuff like that so i'd love to send the crew out to do there's so much happening here that it's

hard to send people out and and cover and cover the gym and cover what's going on. So, yeah. Right. And we love having people come here. Yep. You know, we're going to have Steffi Cohen come out at one point. I don't know if you guys have seen what that girl has been doing. But Marcus hit up some deadlifts the other day off of some blocks.

And he did a set with like 500. I know he went up to like 625 or something. He did a set with like five. Marcus is coming off of some injuries. Yeah. His deadlift is definitely not his strongest lift. Marcus, AKA Filipino Thunder.

I think he successfully pulled about 733 in a meet. Yeah. Maybe 711, 733, something like that. 804 squat, I believe in a 519 bench.", something like that. 804 squat, I believe, in a 5'19 bench. Yeah.

At 220? No, 320. 440? I don't know. Something like that. How much did he weigh for those lifts? I don't know. I think anything over 300 is just ginormous.

He's going to be pissed at us. Sorry. He was a lean 242. Anyway, chubby little Marcus is over there deadlifting his little heart out, banging out some triples. And I was just like, hey, that's pretty good. He's showing me the form and technique. And I was like, but I just saw Steffi Cohen. Not only did she deadlift 500, but she did it for a triple, and she did it from the floor.

And then I saw Aisha. Is that how we say her name? I think it says Aisha. Aisha. Yeah. Yeah. Is that how we say her name? Uh, I think it's just Aisha. Aisha. Yeah. Yeah. Is that how we say it?

I don't know. I'm probably messing up. She's going to punch me. But she, she knows what we're talking about. Yeah. Anyway, that girl is fucking strong as shit too. She's down in the Los Angeles area and she did 500 off of blocks for like seven reps. So I'm like, Marcus, you got some fucking. Dang.

I didn't see that. I'm glad I didn't see that. Cause that upset me. I'm, you know, like Marcus is fucking... Dang, I didn't see that. I'm glad I didn't see that because that upset me. I'm, you know, like, Marcus is like, yeah, post-traumatic. He will never just acknowledge something. He'll never just be like, great. No, he'll always have like, oh, well, it was from blocks or they had a deadlift bar or straps or... If you can think of it, he'll come up with it.

But you're like, it's a girl. Yeah, that's a third your size somebody was telling I think it was Jessica saying that one of her friends made it to the NFL like going on and on oh yeah

that was great he's in the NFL now and then from across the gym yeah but he's on the practice squad dude he's the ultimate hater dude

he's on the NFL team. How are you going to hate on somebody for being Marcus? He's not cream of the crop, but he's Marcus recklessly coming in last minute, diving right towards the back of your kneecap to just take your ass out and be that guy. Oh my God. What's going on with all these

girls though? What's happening? And why are we? What happened to us? We suck. I know I i suck i don't know is it because all we care about here at slingshot is making money that is a good focus and so that's yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna say that i'm focusing on my career and i'm choosing to not be strong i'm making that conscious decision we want to look pretty and we want to make more money so i need to need to focus on that part too. We've reduced the pop tarts and we reduced the pizza. We reduced the donuts.

Well, Wicked West Pizza, I think actually found. You go to a place. They relocated. I'm starting to hear reports that you go to a place almost every night. Okay. And you have ice cream, like this ice cream donut thing. It's an ice cream donut. You can put some toppings.

I've asked repeatedly for a punch card, but they will not give me one because I had gone there pretty often. I'll say this just flat out. I would never be caught dead at a place like that. I took you once. Whoops-a-daisy. And you tried to get me to go with you. I've invited almost everybody to come with me. It actually was really good.

I think I got like cookie dough ice cream inside of it or something. Yeah, so they take a donut. They cut it in half, like really high quality ice cream, toppings, and then they seal it back up and warm it up. Holy shit. So the extra fat move to do, though, is once you get all the toppings on top, there's a bunch of overspill. As soon as you said extra fat, as soon as you said extra fat move, Marcus just slid right into the room.

Yeah, he got all fired up. And his big old wide face just lit up. Well, he's trying to keep that 242 frame. I wonder if he's hearing us on the live feed and he's starting to get pissed. There's no way. There's no. He came in to put pressure on us. I forgot that other people in the building can be watching this right now.

Yeah, so we don't talk about him anymore. There's a disadvantage of being live. Yeah, we should have shut that out for a minute. Jesus. At least get a little delay going. Yeah. Yeah, we're watching Steffi in the animal cage right here.

Is it Stephanie or Steffi or how do we, what do we, what do we got going on? Her name's Stephanie but goes by Steffi, Steph.

It's all about Instagram so I think it's Steffi. You know, all these girls too that, Smokey has been working, Jesus, 530. If I just said,

hey girl, out deadlifts me. She'd be like, hey. Smokey, Smokey has been working, Jesus, 530. If I just said, hey, girl, out deadlifts me, she'd be like, hey. Smokey has been working for Slingshot for quite some time, and he's been working with a lot of these athletes, and something that we traditionally do here at Slingshot is we just completely ignore whenever the girl has a boyfriend or husband. For sure, yeah, yeah.

We just go right to them. So with Steffi Cohen, we've been working on getting her out here. The problem is that Hayden wants to come along with him. Hayden who? Yes. I'm saying. Hey, Hayden who?

That's what I'm, that's what we're talking about. I don't know who that is. So they own a gym together, right? Yeah. Hybrid performance, I believe out in Florida,

out in Miami area. I think it's relatively new, maybe like six or so months. 545 deadlifts. There's no way she's going to get this. Well, she has straps on, so. Straps and sumo. Did you say strap on?

That was kind of rude. But it was and sumo. Yeah. I mean, you know, I don't really understand what's going on, but the improvement in powerlifting has been crazy. The amount of weight people are moving has just been absurd. the amount of weight people are moving has just been absurd. And then also to see in the animal cage, I think it was done conventional, but I think Dan Green deadlifted 900 conventional.

With no belt. With no belt, but maybe, maybe, maybe he had straps. Yeah, he had straps. There was a couple of people that were like,

oh, he had straps. It's okay. So he, 20 pounds. I mean, but Dan Green's coming off of some like vicious injuries. He's been really. In's okay. So he, 20 pounds. I mean, what? But Dan Green's coming off of some like vicious injuries.

He's been really. In the last couple of years, he's kind of seemed like he's been coming back. Then he got injured, coming back, got injured. You remember he, he for a while was just on a tear.

He was breaking every record that there was. I think this was last year maybe. I believe 220 and 242. And this is for 865 right here. Jesus. I don't think this is this year though. Yeah. He's known for his sumo deadlift and he's,

uh, you know, Dan has huge, huge legs, a huge lower body, uh, which obviously helps him quite a bit in the squat and the deadlift. But he,

I mean, he's just strong all around. The guy's, you know, been breaking records for a long time. Um, I would love to see him, uh,

come back and hit the platform you know power lifting needs it needs uh more people to continue to push the sport and when you have people that are jacked like that i think it helps a lot too like somebody like larry wheels it's like that that kid came out of nowhere remember that do you remember early on when larry wheels was lifting with stan and they both deadlifted like 700 for a rep or two. Yeah. It was like forever ago. And now he's at what? Eight something or? I think he did 900 also.

Maybe in training, but he's benching over 600. I think he benched 615. I think he's like 23, if I recall, or something around there. So that's a pretty big jump. He looks a lot like yourself. I mean. Very similar. Complexion.

Complexion is similar. Small waist. jump he looks a lot like yourself i mean very similar complex wise similar small waist i yell power in that deep deep deep voice as well while people are everything's all tapered in waist is tiny shoulders are huge stage ready cocks real strong yeah not really not that strong middle you know the the lifting that's been going on is just insane. And then to really cap things off, you know, having Forsaken Warrior Steve Johnson and Rob Hall go head to head back and forth. 600 pounds for 63 and 65 reps back to back. I think it took like an hour and a half.

I really don't understand that. You know, remember we had Taylor Woolham here in the Mexican wrestling mask. Luchador, eh? Luchador? In that deadlift battle back and forth. But, you know, and that went on for quite some time. But this was just insane. And I think the rest intervals were pretty short too.

Yeah, I think they try to keep it to 30 seconds between lifters. I mean, it's insane to watch these guys lift the speed that they do stuff um i can't figure out how to lift 225 that fast yeah very explosive there's uh we got the our boy higa monster in there he's always in the animal cage he's uh yeah he's always there every year he was on our plane on the way back from the Arnold Did he have two seats and I didn't Southwest make him get two seats. We got to get him on the podcast He's got that thickness going on. Yeah, he his Daughter to softball they've been out here a few times. Yeah, I was like what are the odds he was in near us in Roseville

Yeah, she kicks ass. She's on the traveling softball team. That's insane. Or Shaken Warrior has deadlifted 900 pounds in competition, I believe, right? Yeah, I think like 909 or something like that, I believe, American record. I need to apologize to Rob Hall because I got to be honest, I have not heard of Rob Hall before this. So he's just an example of how strong and how freaky everything is right now. Even as much as I love powerlifting, I can't be aware of all these mutants out there. Well, we try to share him too. In the March-April issue of Power Magazine, he's the strong spotlight. Jesus.

So we snagged him up. Our boy Wade Zeno trains with them out there in Texas. You know what's cool about the animal cage is that these, these people that are standing around with cameras, these people are standing around with phones. These are not just fans. You know, the, the people that are inside the cage, those are other premier athletes in sport. Those are other athletes that are Pete Rubish is in there.

Those are other athletes that are on another level. And yeah, there's like 700 pound benches in there and shit that are filming this thing. I see our boy Ace over there. The cameraman Ace. What's the story behind that? You like body slammed him as a kid or? Wait, which guy? Ace.

Remember he came out with. Who did I mess up? With Steph Fit Mom. The like third Mexican you've allowed in this gym. Oh yeah. He said he met you when he was a kid and you body slammed him or someone, maybe your brother body slammed him. I used to do a lot of things for money back in the day.

Just parents calling you up to straighten out their kids. I'd oil myself up and I'd get into my undies, the pink ones. Yeah. And that would be that. No, I think that kid messed around withies, the pink ones. Yeah. And, you know, that would be that. No, I think that kid messed around with some wrestling for a while. Yeah. And I think when I was in Ultimate Pro Wrestling in Orange County, California, I probably wrestled him or one of his relatives or something like that. Choked him out.

Yeah. Because I've seen some of the promo pieces that he's made for like some of those organizations that look pretty sick and he still uses like some of the similar techniques for like, you know, uh, primeval labs and all that stuff too. In this video,

Steve Johnson looks like he's about to die. Now these guys almost did die, right? Uh, yeah. Almost killed. So, um,

Rob or sorry, uh, Steve forsaken, Steve Johnson's hands look like it went through a meat grinder i'd never seen hands ripped up that bad and then rob hall actually um got taken off in a stretcher i believe to the emergency room that's just i mean i mean that's like all out what do you think about that i mean you think do you think like i mean you are doing it for like pride you know but like is it worth it so for me personally no but i mean if you can but what if you were what if you were benching what if you were benching uh oh now we're talking now you got

my attention we're benching yeah what if you're a benching like with our boy damon over here and you know damon's i wouldn't do it he's got a strong bench but like if you guys you know benched a certain weight like let's say 225. Yeah. Um, things, things might equal out a little bit and you, you know,

you might press it for his head. No, he doesn't, he might press it for a similar, similar amount of times. What if, you know, what if you,

uh, what if you did five reps and then he went and he went back and forth? I mean, would you just go all in and just fucking just give it everything you got? So I might, I know this might be a surprise with being five,'6", 180, I'm not very athletic. So I think part of that is my nature. Like if I think I was going to get hurt, I'd honestly probably quit.

I look at the bigger picture, I guess. Right, right. Which isn't a very good athlete. I'm definitely a little bit that way myself. So like I'm not, I think that everybody always thinks you need to be like ultra competitive and people use the word competitive as a positive. And I think sometimes it can actually be a real negative. Well, sometimes people are like assholes because they're competitive. Sadly, look at Rob.

I mean, he got hurt. Who knows if that affects his work or affects his family for the next couple of months or maybe medical bills. It sounds ridiculous, but he, he legitimately could have died from doing, I mean, this, this is, has a tremendous impact on your heart and it's cool. It's, it's fucking awesome for somebody to have that kind of determination. Beyond impressive. And, and to, to watch somebody do it, it gets you amped up and gets you excited.

And these guys are like fucking cheering for each other, which is even cooler. Yeah, that's awesome. But yeah, man, you're like, and I don't know what makes it worth it. Because like in MMA, you know, we just interviewed Chuck Liddell for the podcast. And talking to somebody like that, somebody would be like, oh, well, it's worth it because he's an MMA champion. Well, it's like he wasn't always an MMA champion. You got to get there. He, you know, put himself in really compromising positions.

Our buddy Nico, the guy that is teaching me how to box, you know, somebody might weigh five more pounds than him. And they're like, well, what do you want to do? And he'll be like, sure, I'll keep, I'll fight anyway. That literally happened. I was with him pre-fight and they told him, hey, you know, come in at 135. So he made the cut and then he gets there and they're like, oh, sorry,

your opponent's going to come in at 145. He's like, well, what the fuck? He told me I had to come in at 35. Like, yeah, our mistake. Do you still want to fight? And he's like, oh, I'm definitely going to fight. You can put anybody out there and I'll fight them. But I'm just like, dude, like like you don't know who won nico jacked him up in the first round all right good it's pretty bad yeah i was worried that that story was gonna

take a turn all right good yeah shout out to nico he fights in two weeks actually oh we're nice yeah it's hard to know you know what's worth it you know yesterday having uh ben pokulski here here, hitting up some chest stuff. Now, he didn't put me in any sort of real compromising position where I'm like, oh, I don't know where my next breath is going to come from type of deal. But the day before that, and this is something that not everybody always gets to know or understand, but I'm doing this every day. So there's people that take great pride in bringing it to me. And they're like, I kicked your ass. I'm like,

whatever, buddy, I've been doing this every day. And I've been doing this for a really fucking long time. You're catching me like at some certain part of my career or whatever, I'm going to win some and I'm going to lose some. There's, there's just no question about it.

But when we had a Mr. Carnivore pants here, Dr. Baker, you know, he was taking me into some deep water. Yeah. I saw that. A couple of things.

Some trap bar carries. Yeah. So, so the trap bar carry is a great example. When we did that, you know, we went up to four plates and I was able to complete the four plates and it didn't feel too bad, but definitely felt heavy off the floor. Uh, before that we did some deadlifts and Dr. Baker is 11 years older than me. He's, or he's 10 years older than me. He, you know, he, he ended up hitting, he ended up going for five plates and he managed that pretty easy. I went to go before he did and couldn't even budge to five plates off the ground. So I went to, I went to lift it off the ground and I was like,

nah, I don't know. Like if I, you know, when you go to do a deadlift and you get rounded over from it, you kind of get folded up from it. You're kind of like, I can push into it more, but I'm going to round over more. And as I was rounding over more, I'm like, I'm really dumping that into my arms and my biceps. And I'm not making excuses, but I, I would have rather given up, which I ended up doing then to tweak a bicep. Well, what's wrong? You just weren't strong enough.

Like that happens. I go to pick stuff up all the time. It's like, I'm just not strong enough. Right. Like I don't need to make excuse. Something hurts. I'm just weak. I mean, in this particular case, five plates, you're just not there yet. And Stan was here months ago and he and I worked up to five plates and I was able to do it while he was here. But that was also probably about 25 pounds ago. Do we have video of it though? Or I don't think it never happened. It never happened, but I remember at that time it is actually feeling a little easier. I can't remember if I had like a belt on or whatever, but anyway, yeah, you're right. Sometimes, you know, you know what, you're just like, this is where I'm at.

Yeah. You actually gave it a lot more attempts. I wanted you to stop. I was walking over with a belt to give you a belt, which you're now a large, which we share, which is kind of embarrassing. Um, so I was walking over with a belt. Oh, Damon's got the mustache. It's pretty nasty.

You gave it a few tugs. I was really surprised. I thought, I was like, all right, this is going to probably work. And then you got back into position and tried it again and then got back. I was like, oh, no. I was trying. So speaking of things that we should or shouldn't be doing, Nibbling Zombie hit us up on the YouTube chat. I love the names.

Yeah, some of them are really good. That's probably the best one so far. But he pulled his bicep tendon off his bone. Been there. Yeah. And he actually wants to know, like, how soon do you see people deadlifting after surgery? I believe, Smokey, you have some recent experience with that. Yeah, so I, nine months ago, ruptured my bicep tendon deadlifting as well.

And within a few days, I was back in the gym. Mark and Marcus and the team really helped me out. And I did everything and anything I possibly could. Ended up dropping 20 pounds because I figured my weight was the thing i could control since my training was kind of in the shitter at the moment and um i mean i was back to doing deadlift variations maybe i was doing deadlift variations within a couple months um with the bicep tendon they are actually they're not reattaching it. They're attaching it to your bone to a different location. So they attach it down into like the forearm. So the bicep tendon actually, and that's what I was, I was dead lifting.

I strained my forearm. I was like, oh, thank God it's not my bicep. That's like literally the first thing I thought like, oh, sweet. My bicep's fine. Just my forearm strained. And sure enough, that's where your tendon goes. And so the doctor is really adamant. Hey, sit 12 weeks.

Don't push it. 12 weeks. Don't push it. So week two, I felt great. So I pushed it and I thought I retore my bicep tendon. And I remember being on my motorcycle in the driveway where I probably shouldn't have been doing 10 weeks or 10 days out. And, uh, I thought I tore it, but that shook me so bad that I chilled out, but I was back to deadlifting within to deadlifting within 10, 12 weeks, double overhand. It's important to note that you went to a doctor. Yes. Immediately. Went to the emergency room immediately.

Went to the emergency room that day. Yep. And then you got surgery how much longer after? Yeah, so it happened on a Tuesday. Wife met me at the emergency room on a Tuesday. Couldn't pass up a trip to bodybuilding.com with Mark here. So I had an option to have surgery on Friday, but I said, nope, because we had first class tickets. I mean, I can't pass that opportunity to Idaho. So we went to Idaho and I had surgery, I believe that Monday. So within six days, seven days, I had surgery.

And then the recovery, like I said, was, um, definitely a good 12 weeks. And then I'm probably nine months out. I'm like 95%. There's definitely some things, um, the team and I discovered yesterday at lunch that my biceps don't activate quite the same, uh, which he was so sad. I was very sad. There's definitely a big difference between somebody that blows the bicep out all the way and immediately seeks surgery versus myself who's had many tweaks over the years. I luckily haven't had like a real crazy blowout where I've had to have something surgically repaired.

And maybe I have, I just haven't even gotten it checked out. But there's a big difference. Something I learned from watching people over the years that have had surgery is, and there's, there's rehab protocols and there's some things you can do, but basically when you have surgery, it just takes X amount of time to heal. Yeah. Like 15 weeks or 18 weeks, you know, just depending on the person, uh, if the person wants to work a little harder and they want to try to get blood to the area and they want to

complex and they want to do some of these things, maybe they can recover a little bit faster, but usually time will actually heal it. And then you're like ready to go and you're not ready. It's not like you're, you know, ready to go and lift the same weights you lifted before. You're not at all, but. They'll have to be like a progression. Gotta start back from the bottom. But you could also have it be

where you're not starting completely over, where you're doing, you know, 45 degree back raises, leg curls, drag in the sled, right? You're doing a lot of. Safety bar squat. I mean, my safety bar squat went up. My weight went down.

My safety bar squat went up because that's the one movement I could really do well. You can do a lot of other movements and that's, that's where you want to, of course, you're going to get sad about it. You're going to be mad about it. You're going to be upset, but you, you want to, you know, do me a favor and focus in on the five things that you can do and try, try to just, you know what, there's stuff I can't do sucks, but what are you gonna do? Cry about it. Yeah. I made it clear when it happened, I had, I'd had several surgeries before that. And I

know I'm not, I'm very familiar with it. And I, I just made a decision that I'm not going to let this slow me down. And I, like I said, I adjusted my food. I did all my work. It was amazing on, uh, on YouTube. He's like, I've had like over 20 surgeries and people like, this guy's a fucking idiot was he tearing everything every week and he wasn't referring to lifting at all that's my first training surgery that was funny

that's why Smokey's partially crazy he's had a lot of brain surgeries a lot of brain surgeries he's got the brain of a what's in there I don't know I think so. That's why you try to lick Andrew all the time. Oh.

He knows about that. Yeah. Got another question from Alexander Rethwich. So he's prepping for a push-pull meet, and he wants to know if it's a good idea to still train squat. Like, is that going to help him in his meet? I say absolutely. Yeah. You know, towards the end of the, you know, last several weeks before the push pull, he should probably just focus in on more of what he's asked to do on competition day. But in the meantime, might as well keep squatting, just have a squat in there once a week,

just to keep the movement and just so that you're not it's not so new to you when you get done with the push-pull meet a lot of times squats can help with deadlifts too yeah so actually when i got hurt nine months ago i was training for a push-pull meet and i had been safety bar squatting um up until my last like 12 weeks and then i'd stopped squatting completely and i actually think it hindered me because I wasn't, I wasn't breaking parallel. I wasn't moving the same. My getting a position for bench was more difficult. My lower body strength was, was harder.

Yeah. I actually think it hindered me. I think it would have been better off maybe doing a safety bar or a camber bar, something where my shoulders aren't being jeopardized. You broke our cambered bar though. I did not break it. I was just the last to use it while broken. Two separate things uh we do need to get that fixed though yeah i'm mad about you don't squat damon now he has an excuse now damon has an excuse not to squat uh rob edwards just wanted to you know

let us know that he's work he's uh watching this instead of working he's all the way in edmonton is he fapping uh hopefully um johnny carpenter he said he's joined the uh the war on carbs yeah he wants to know if uh he's been doing full carnivore for a month now and losing fat making gains but he's worried that he might hit a plateau. And if he does, what can he do next? Start adding in carbs or just stick with it? Because, I mean, you've said you've been still gaining and dropping fat, right? Crying is always good. That works.

You know, just. Water weight. Get some Ben and Jerry's, pop the top of that thing off, throw that bitch in the garbage, watch Biggest Loser, drown your sorrows in some New York Super Fudge Chunk. Is that a real one? I think so. That sounds really good.

I don't know. I might have made it up. It is now. I like fish food a lot, and I like, shit, what's the other one? Today. Tonight, though. Yeah. Tonight, though.

But yeah, just drown your sorrows in some ice cream, and then that'll speed up your and you'll be losing weight again bam reset it's yes that's the keto reset no i mean if you're making progress uh continue on the path that you're on um i i kind of feel like uh as i go through the ketogenic diet uh for over a year pretty much much straight now. Um, it's starting to, it's starting to feel like I'm finding out like these new discoveries, but I think that the discoveries, even though I am sharing them with everybody, uh, it feels like the discoveries are a little bit unique to myself. So, um, I do try to take my time. I try to be responsible with sharing the information. So there's some stuff that I've been doing more recently where I, I try to be responsible with sharing the information. So there's some stuff that I've been doing more recently where I try not to just share it right away because I'm trying to

see how it affects me. I've been injecting all of my steaks with Tren and growth hormone and insulin to try to see the response. Is that before or after you cook them? It's both. Yeah. Oh, it's like the season. It's before and after season. It's before and after season it's before and after or marinade no i've been uh you know mixing in a sweet potato mixing in a little bit of fruit um just like last night i had a sweet uh japanese sweet potato i don't know why timing on that or is there you just you don't care do you do before training do you do after does it matter just convenience i think i'm so low, but it just doesn't matter. I think the body's ready for it, you know, at all times. I've done it both before and after and not both in the same day, but I've done it both ways where I've had it before a training session.

I've also done it where I've had it after. And they both feel pretty good. Yeah. The advantage of having carbohydrates before a training session is the simple fact that you would probably be consuming less overall food and you'd probably be consuming, in the case of a ketogenic diet, you'd probably be consuming less overall food. You'd probably be consuming less overall fat and therefore you would digest it faster technically. And so therefore, you know, some carbs before a workout can be beneficial. It's the one real hole I think that's in a ketogenic diet or that's in something like the war on carbs is that, uh, you know, that, that pre-workout you can't like, I used to, as when I was young, I used to love having a little bit of like cereal before workout. It was like just some fast acting carbs. Um, I wouldn't use milk because I'm lactose

intolerant. I would mix, I would, uh, eat it with, um, like a whey protein shake. Yeah. And it was just like, I'd have one bowl. It wasn't like a big splurge or anything, but I got some fast acting carbs and went to the gym. Uh, other things I would do is like eat rice or eat some fruit, you know, on a keto diet, it's really tough, but I've been experimenting with some different things and, uh, you know, Stan, Stan, the rhino effording has been helping a lot. Um, I've been messing with some cranberry juice, cranberry juices, iodine in it. The iodine can help with electrolyte balance. The iodine, uh, can also help, uh, your thyroid function. The, or an orange can help your thyroid function. So can the cranberry juice because it has fructose in it.

Fructose can help keep your liver healthy, which can kind of give you a little bit of, I just say it this way, give you a little bit of fire, just make your body temperature go up a little bit, not actually go up a little bit, but it's a way to put a little bit of, throw some logs onto your, um, onto your metabolism. So do you think implementing some carbs can be a slippery slope? Um, I, you had me, you helped me lose the last like eight pounds when I was trying to cut 20 and I hopped on a keto diet. And, um, as my, as I was healing, my arm was healing. Um, I was getting back into training, but my training kind of, you know, stopped for a second. So you had me implement some carbs. And I was like, once I started, I want, like, I still have them. I went to Walmart and bought probably like 10 sleeves of rice cakes. Like I just went nuts. Like you said, make sure I have some carbs. And I went, okay, go to the cart. So.

Yeah. Yeah, it can be. And that's, and that's why a ketogenic diet, I think people are confused on why a ketogenic diet works. And then are confused on why a ketogenic diet works. And then people are like, carbs aren't bad and this and that. Well, they're not bad, but they're really hard to control. That gets to be the hardest thing. And that's ultimately what we're talking about is you're trying to gain control. And for some people, because their diet is out of whack, they're behind every single day on every single thing that they do. They're behind financially. They have credit, outstanding credit card payments. They have financial aid that they've never paid off from school, loans and this and that. into words and it's hard for me to explain, but when you start to clean up your diet,

when you start to head in the right direction, and when you get rid of carbohydrates, it can make a lot of things easier because I think you can just think more clearly. And I would say that that's true of any diet that you gain control over. And if you're losing weight, if you're fat to begin with, I'll also say that because if you're not, there's really not as many things to, not as many things to worry about. But if about. But if you're dropping weight and you're feeling good, it can kind of help clean up other aspects of your life. I'm not the only power lifter or athlete that has retired from the sport and made more money as you started to transition into something else. more money as you started to transition into something else. And a lot of that has to do with just your time consumption is, is so immersed on what it is that you're doing at the time. And I think when you mix in poor nutrition, uh, it can really amplify the problems and the stress that would normally, uh, that should normally kind of, you should be able to deflect really easy, just becomes harder.

Everything kind of sticks to you more. Everything just becomes amplified. Things become harder. You're not happy with the way that you look. You're wearing baggier clothes. You can't look yourself, you can't look at yourself in the mirror. You don't want anybody to take a picture of you or with you or anything. So you run into these things that you're kind of hiding from. You run from them on a daily basis and you're not even realizing it. So like sometimes some of the posts I may make, they might be harsh and people might be like, fuck this guy. Why is he talking like that?

Well, I'm talking that way because I've been on that side of the fence before. I know what that feels like. I've been a bum before. I've been behind before. You know, I used to sleep later than I do now. Like I've done all these things and I've come to the realization that life is so much easier and so much fucking better and so much more fun when you're winning. And an easier way to win is to clean up some of the things that

you're doing. If you can clean up some of the things you're doing, you can get momentum. And when you get momentum, you can start to fucking win and you can start to feel better about yourself and start to feel better about everything that's going on. When you get control of all those things, you have control of yourself. And then a really cool thing happens. You're not fucking worried about what anybody else is doing because you feel really good about what you're doing. There you go. And you got to fucking worry about it.

Have you been able to keep off whatever weight you try to drop, Logie? Yeah. So I dropped down from 197 to 177 to compete at 181. So I'm 180 this morning. So my goal is to just. Furry though. Yeah. I wonder what I'd be if I just shaved.

160. Yeah. Go down 165s. We'd be twins. So my goal is to, my goal is to drop an even point. For being jacked and old and strong and handsome. Nope.

I'm not resentful at all that guy gets in here at like five o'clock and he's just tearing the place up 100 for 10 i think he did for 13 lucky 13 i mean he is short i mean you're you're not tall but you're not that short i mean he's really he's really short he's uh what's the character from game of thrones oh yeah yeah he's uh he's uh tyrian right tyrian oh yeah yeah he's uh he's uh Tyrion right Tyrion yeah that's what he's he's a little

I don't call him I mean I do right now obviously little midget from uh Game of Thrones you know DJ Webb is somebody that claims

to be on the war on carbs we gotta call that guy out well he has a schedule his schedule he's gotta eat he's at his fucking cereal month or whatever what was that

national cereal day so him and I what a fat bastard him and I keep each other in check all the time who was that and he told me he's like alright and I keep each other in check all the time. Who was that? And he told me, he's like, all right.

You're not doing a good job. He hit me on Audible. I found out via Instagram. So I wasn't aware. But yeah, he was like, oh, when we come back, I'm doing no carb, no carb. I'm going to fast. That's what he said. He said, Monday, I'm going to fast Monday and Tuesday.

And then Tuesday or something was international cereal. He's like, all right, bowl number four. I'm like, what? He had, I've never even seen some of the stuff that he had. Oh, he... I don't know. He had frosted Lucky Charms. Yeah, he had a bunch. He had, like, underground cereals and stuff. No, he probably went to, yeah, some fancy store on this one. What are you fucking

driving on over to General Mills or something to have him make them custom batches and stuff? Yeah. That was crazy. Yeah, prototypes of cereals. Yeah, and why do you need so many boxes? He had Frost. I've never seen that before. Why can't you have one box? Your whole family shares one box. I can't get over that. I'm still thinking about it.

I've been thinking about cereal for the last week. I love Lucky Charms. You remember at the ST Classic when he tried to down that. This is a great story. It was a cake-sized donut. We're working the st classic we had the event at the expo in january the biggest donut and the whole day he tells me he's like i'm not gonna eat a donut today i'm just gonna eat bar i'm gonna eat clean i'm gonna eat clean i'm

gonna eat clean loves protein bars that guy great ate a protein bar everything's good the event's over i look over he's eating the biggest donut i've ever seen in my life for a bet and i'm not kidding it's probably like 12 inches by 12 inches. It was the size of like a medium pizza. Was it two of them? I think it was two. So what happened was- He has diabetes at this point, right?

Yes. Well, he pounded through like three quarters of the first one. He's like, oh, it's too dry. And then he goes and grabs like a normal one. He's like, yeah, this one's moist. It's good to go. And so he ate like one or two more. He's the biggest flip- this one's moist. It's good to go. And so he ate like one or two more.

He's the biggest flip-flopper. Yeah. You know, he, it's funny because over the years I've run into a few people that have worked with Damon Thurman. Yeah. And these guys are, you guys are in the Air Force together. And I've run into some people at trade shows and stuff. And they're like, ooh, they're like Damon. It's like, he's tough. And Damon's pretty quiet around us.

I mean, knowing the guy for a long time. Unless he's yelling at you for taking his weights off his bench. You know, he'll, he'll get in the mix here and there. He'll talk some shit, but he's relatively quiet. Does his work, comes in, trains hard, has huge pipes, right? Yep. Brags about him. Brags about him a little bit.

Sets up our fan. Fucking goes on. No big deal. Goes on his way. But DJ Webb was like, man webb was like man he's like he's like damon man he just uh i want you know one day he just like yelled at me for like a really long time and i was like one day he's like well it's a couple times and i was like well what's a long time what do you mean he's like for like two hours i was like, well, what's a long time? What do you mean? He's like, for like two hours.

I was like, really? I thought he was going to say four minutes. He yelled at you for like two hours? Five minutes. He's like, yeah, man. He's like, don't get on his bad side. And I was like, hopefully I won't. I don't know. We'll just make sure his bench is cleared.

He'll be happy. Yeah. But, you know, and now we see why, though, because DJ Webb is so dysfunctional. He is a little scatterbrained. Yeah. He's kind of all over the place. We got to help this guy out. What you doing today?

385 for two on the bench. Oh, my God. 385 for two on a deadlift would be a tall order. You probably just skipped the workout, right? Yeah, I don't do that. No, you did deadlift Tuesday. Yeah, Tuesday I deadlifted. And you're pulling 405 for a couple reps.

Yeah, I was supposed to do like 475 for a couple reps, but my hammy was a little tweaked. So I was trying to join Smelly on some, we call it pizza for breakfast. And who would have thought walking with dumbbells in my hand would have eaten up my hammy like that. Guys, whenever you're trying something new, you know, even if it's something that's not that new, you've done those workouts with us a bunch of times before. Anytime you, you know, throw something into the mix, it can really change things. You got to be careful. Yeah. I need to get back in the habit of either getting there early and warming up or just, you know, if you don't feel great, take five extra minutes. I should have just hopped on the bike,

warmed up and I would have been fine. It's really hard to stay in your lane. You know, it's really hard to just hone in and focus in on yourself when there's a lot of other things going around, especially in this gym. We get fired up. You and someone, you know, Oh, I want to do that. You get pulled into whatever. Hey, let's do this. Yeah. You don't think about it. And you're like, Oh, you're using the eighties. Oh, I can't use the sixties. It's like, you're only a hundred pounds more than me, but I should still use the same weight. Yeah. It's just, it's just kind of the nature of it. So last week you hit 385 for two. Yeah.

It wasn't that great. Marcus gave me a little bump at the very top. Cause it was a, which we actually don't do very often, but I think he knew I was going to be a grinder. That's a big difference between power lifting and bodybuilding. We don't really, it's a pretty rare.

We don't kind of like, we'll grind through a lift, but it's not usually with assistance. A lot of times, I think, I think some of it stems from a, how, how we're judged in competition. Sure. Once the weight goes back down, it's not a, not a good lift anymore. Um, and so therefore we try to make sure the lifts are executed as cleanly as possible for a training session. Um, but then also I think we're worried about injury, you know, and we hang around each other a lot and we, we try to protect each other.

You know, somebody goes to squat and that bar move dips down at all. My arm is right underneath it and we're going to try to take the weight right away. And sometimes the guy's like, Oh, still, you know, still trying to lift it. But I'll, but I'll look at the spotters any day and say thank you. Because if I had to grind that 385 on that second rep and my shoulder ended up tweaking and I'm out for two months, all for what? For a training day?

It could turn bad fast and it can turn really bad really fast. It's more my fault for maybe not taking a 375 for a double. What do you guys think about like in strongmen when they can like hinge off of like their thigh? Like I thought that was fucking crazy. Oh, yeah. Like so like yeah like so like it looks scary in particular on like a deadlift yeah on a deadlift yeah yeah you know like yeah during it like yeah yeah they they hitch hitch the weight up or they kind of like edge the weight up you know their body they they lean they're edging they edge it yeah well because i seen Shaw's homie Andy they were

you know the day that they were training and I thought he was gonna die like he I don't remember were you there that day

yeah yeah it was in the it was in Shaw's garage and like I'm like oh my god like oh that's weird he's just like trying to grind it out

just for like but that's normal but yeah I didn't know that that was normal so like I just I don't know like I said I seriously So like, I just, I don't know. Like I said, I seriously thought he was going to like fucking rip his arms. Yeah. People will go as far as to kind of tuck their hips forward and drive

their knees forward. Almost like a hack squat. Like catch it. They'll catch the weight on their quads. They'll pause there and then they'll repull and repull and repull. And sometimes they end up with this crazy hitching type thing. Yeah. And, you know, we're not able to, we're not allowed to do that in a powerlifting meet. I think when it comes to powerlifting or bodybuilding, I think some body English and some cheating is sometimes necessary on something like a bend over row. You get some momentum into it and you can increase the range of motion. And Ben Pekulski showed us yesterday that when you increase the range of motion, you

increase muscle tension a lot of times. So, you know, some of the method of bodybuilding of kind of keeping these short reps where you're keeping a lot of tension on the muscle, those things are correct. And that's one way to do it. But another way to do it is to, if you tuck your elbows in on a bench press, the way that we do as powerlifters, and we do it all the time, every single set, every single the pec and to train my shoulder in a lower and more compromising position. Because what I did with Ben attacked my chest in a way that I've never had it attacked before. I mean, it's super, it's super fucking sore today. I think there's a difference between training and competition, right?

Like training should look clean, but if you're giving it a hundred percent, some things aren't going to go that smoothly. And you might hitch in theory in strongman or your your squat might do a little wobble, or your deadlift's going to be a grinder. Speaking of strongman, what do you guys think? So Corey's asking, what do you guys think about Shaw's performance at the Arnold? I thought it was awesome. He did amazing. I think when it came to that stone lift, that 410-pound stone that they were supposed to. It was unbelievably awkward looking.

Yeah. Yeah. That they were going to shoulder. I think Brian is more of a guy that will typically manhandle stuff. He'll pick stuff up and he just kind of like moves it around fast. And next thing you know, it's up on his shoulder. Next thing you know, he's throwing nearly a 600-pound stone over something. But in this case, he was trying to have more technique.

He was trying to be a little more technical. Uh, I think the advice that he got may not have been great for his, uh, body type. And, uh, when he went out there, he just wasn't able to, uh, he wasn't, wasn't able to do it. And so that really set him back and that screwed him up for the rest of the day. Uh, Hapthor Bjornsson did amazing. I i mean the mountain deserves all the credit he he won and it was a fair fight and they both they both went at it head to toe and that's what you want to see and neither of them got injured i believe no neither guy got injured that's huge neither guy got injured not only did i get injured but they seemed like pretty damn healthy afterwards like they didn't even get banged up yeah i think i saw shaw like towing a you know fire truck this week

or last week or something yeah um unbelievable Unbelievable performance from both those guys. Really cool to see both of them getting, getting, you know, working with Stan Efferding with the vertical diet and Stan is now, you know, I think it's really cool to see him promoting the vertical diet more. It looks like he's working on some different ways of monetizing it. And I say good for him because Stan has really provided us with a lot of free information. And he'll continue to provide us with a lot of free information. But, you know, Stan is somebody that I really look up to and I really appreciate him. And I think he's on to something, too, with the vertical diet. A lot of us follow it, you know, at least the best that we can.

Any diet. of us follow it. You know, at least the best, the best that we can. My diet, my diet's like, I guess, vertical and horizontal, and it looks like a piece of steak pretty much right now. It's, that's all I'm eating. But some other guys that are doing it where they're mainly only consuming a handful of ingredients of foods, I think it's a great way to go. The concept is just, you're able to digest those foods quickly, get those foods in and out of your system quickly so you can eat more and so you can train harder. Yep. Any other questions? Uh, let me check really quick. Uh, yeah, that was basically it. I know some more carnivore diet stuff. Cool. Well, they can, they can check out all the stuff that we did,

uh, with, uh, Dr. Baker cause we covered a shit ton. Um Smokey had to squeak out 385 last week a little bit, and we're going to work on some things with him this week when we go work out in just a few minutes. Just going to probably maybe change the warm-up up a tiny bit. What I advised him to do is instead of 275, his progressions from 275 upward, just to keep a five-pound plate on there the whole time. So instead of it being 275, it progressions from 275 upward, just to keep a five pound plate on there the whole time. So instead of it being 275, it'll be 285. Instead of 315, it'll be 325. And whatever

tweener jumps he wants to take on his way to 385, there may be an extra set in there or two. But my thought process is that, you know, not to get too technical and stuff, but you do need to wake the nervous system up a little bit and your body needs to be really prepared for the weight and for the movement. And if you don't prepare, if you don't prepare properly or do too many reps, you can tire yourself out. It's really rare that I've seen like an extra set or two really bother anybody that much. It normally usually, it normally helps in a lot of cases. And so that's,

we're going to try to do today and see if we can get you the two doubles clean. That sounds good. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never a strength. This is the power project coming to you. And I really appreciate you guys following along. If you like this format,

if you like what we did today, let us know if you fucking hate it and you think Smokey's the worst. Don't let us know. Definitely let us know. Don't tell us us don't let us know if you want andrew to shut up more tell him because he's got control of everything pretty much so you'll be ignored that's it man we're gonna go train see y'all later later