Mark Bell's Power Project - Powerlifting Is Great Exercise for EVERYONE, Here's How and Why You Should Do it! MBPP Ep. 752

Episode Date: June 16, 2022

In today's podcast, Powerlifting World Record Holder, Mark Bell, explains how Powerlifting is a great type of exercise for EVERYONE, not just big sweaty dudes. Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the new Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw Special perks for our listeners below! ➢https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!! ➢Enlarging Pumps (This really does work): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 ➢https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/powerproject Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off Vivo Barefoot shoes! ➢https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off site wide including Within You supplements! ➢https://mindbullet.com/ Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://eatlegendary.com Use Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://bubsnaturals.com Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% of your next order! ➢https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order at Vuori! ➢https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro at 8 Sleep! ➢https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off ALL LABS at Marek Health! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #Powerlifting #PowerProject #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast

Power Project family, I hope you guys are doing well today. I want to give you guys a quick piece of fitness equipment lifting history. The hip circle that you see before you is actually the first hip circle ever. All right, there were no booty bands before the hip circle, which is pretty interesting. That's why you see it in gyms like The Rock. We've seen Kim K using it on Instagram. It is the OG. But that's also why we have the slingshots, gangster wraps, knee sleeves, elbow sleeves,

everything that you're going to need in the gym so that you can protect yourself before you wreck yourself. So, Andrew, you tell the people how to get it. Yes, that's over at markbellslingshot.com and at checkout, enter promo code powerproject10 to save 10% off your entire order. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Are we going? Yeah, we're going. Hey. Hold on. Let me show the people. Wait a second. There you go. Just got to fix these chapped lips. You're saying, Mark. I don't really like when you give me a dry smooch as much as when it's like a moisture smooch.

Yeah. That's why I'm putting this on, man. Thank you. I appreciate it. You're welcome. No one likes dry, cracked lips. Yeah, it's not good. That's not fun to, you know, that's not fun to look at.

That's the worst when your lips get chapped. Because then you keep kind of messing with them. Then you're really screwed. I never use chapstick just for that reason. Because I don't want to get into that whole thing. You never use chapstick? I never use it, yeah. Wait, wait, wait.

Do you ever have dry lips? No. And Zima, ask me if I use chapstick. Andrew, do you use chapstick? Fuck no. Well Seema, ask me if I use chapstick. Andrew, do you use chapstick? Fuck no. Well, no, this isn't necessarily even chapstick. It's aquaphor. It's a bad habit, bro.

That's why you need it. This is an intervention right here. No, no, this isn't chapstick. It's aquaphor. It's a lip repair. It's more like a... Lotion for your face. It's more like a Vaseline.

Right? Even better. Okay. Let's just rewind all of this, okay? because we have to go back to the base we're going to come to back to the chapstick thing but i've talked to both of you guys about moisturizing in general and how maybe it's going to be a good idea because for some reason you never know people see black people and they're like oh why is their skin so shiny and lousy they look so good good at 40, 45. Moisturizing. It's because the men and the women moisturize.

Women, white women and Latina women, they moisturize. No, that's not true. White and Latina women moisturize. But for some reason, you guys, the men, don't think you need to use lotion. Will the moisturizer help my ass get in the NBA? Even the way you said that, you tried to add some fire. You're like, will they have my ass get in the NBA? Even the way you said that, you tried to add some fire. You're like,

will they have my ass get into the NBA? No, no, Mark, it won't. But what it will do is it'll help you. It's going to help with my layup. It's not going to help with my dunk, though. It might help you be a little bit more slippery on defense. I mean, being real. It might help your chest bounce pass.

Yeah. Hey! From the 50s you're watching the old school basketball it's great that's some of the funniest shit when those guys are passing the ball around especially when they're shooting threes it's called fundamentals you gotta pass it like four times before the guy shoots it or whatever right but wait have you so after our last conversation months ago it was sometime last year have you guys been using lotion or i use some lotion here and there because like certain times a year my legs would get real dry when it's real cold out and all staticky and weird yeah and dry yeah i gotta use it then do you use um any face cream i don don't. You don't?

No. Well, you actually, you know, you have been looking better just because you've been getting in better shape. And people have been noticing you are reversing your age. But, man, a little bit of face cream. That would go a long way. Washing the face. That's a thing. Like, people have different soap for their face than they do for the rest of their body.

I do have a different soap for my face. It makes sense. Yeah. But then what's the soap that you use? You know what I found out yesterday? Well, it's not really just yesterday. I kind of have known this for a while, but I don't really understand why this is, and I don't know if this happens to other people.

But, dude, I get really fucking dirty. Like I actually get dirty. Like I'm like pig pen from whatever that cartoon is Charlie Brown Andrew who is this? I get like actually dirty like a little kid playing in dirt

what do you mean? so if I take like dude wipes and wipe myself down they're dark like after I worked out and stuff yeah because you're running you're running outside so this fucking thing is like deep in here oh you know oh you're trying to get the scooper out of there that's gonna be rough sometimes but yeah i mean i don't know maybe it is because i'm running outside or something i don't know

i mean in the gym i'm getting dirty now There he is. Look how dirty that motherfucker is. That's me. Yeah, that is you, dude. That really is you sometimes. That's totally me. But you know what's funny? You still don't stink, though. That's the thing.

Even though your nickname is Smelly, you don't smell. I'm self-conscious. I've never been around you and been like, Mark smells. That's never been a thing. And you say that you don't always wear deodorant, right? Yeah yeah yeah no i don't always need it it's just wild i i wonder because if i don't use deodorant bro i'm a i'm a wreck to be around you don't want to be around me if i haven't used deodorant it's bad when shit goes south though like when shit goes sour like you can't come back so for me if i if i sweat and then i like do something else for a little while and then i sweat again oh that's when shit gets real ripe.

Shit gets gamey, as Howard Stern would say. Gets gamey down there. There's some people that – some people, I don't know what they call them if they're naturalists or whatever. But they don't believe that you should be using soap every time you shower because apparently it like messes with your microbiome that's on your skin like you do have good things that are on your skin so it may be something to evaluate not using crazy soap right all the time because like you can overwash and that can give you skin problems i try to buy the hippie soap i don't know how much of a difference it makes what's the hippie soap uh just doesn't have like parabens in it and some other stuff i started doing that a couple years ago i again i don't know if it makes that

big of a difference after you told me about native deodorant i mean i got native deodorant and okay i use the charcoal yeah i changed deodorant years ago it's got to be the charcoal yeah i mean i don't want to talk about well i'll say this like the charcoal native deodorant it's the only one that number one actually worked well for me because there are other deodorants. I would use it and I'd be like, I still fucking smell. But their charcoal one, it doesn't have the parabens or phthalates or phthalates, whatever. Phthalates. Phthalates, yeah.

It works. It works. And I don't – I used to use Old Spice and sometimes I would get like – it would burn. I'd have a bad reaction to the old – so then I couldn't even wear deodorant for a few days because my armpits would be on fire. Yeah, people get rashes and stuff. Yeah, but not with this shit. So that's cool. I have some soap that doesn't even have like smell to it.

And Quinn is always like, why do you have odorless soap? I'm like because I don't think like – I don't have hair, you know, she's got like long hair. So it's like, it's different, totally different for a chick, but I don't have anything for like the smell to really attach to anyway. So as long as I just, as long as I don't stink, I got some body hair. Yeah. As long as I just don't stink.

I mean, good to go. You know, there are, there is an aspect though that does make me wonder because I'm, I'm good to go. You know, there is an aspect, though, that does make me wonder because I'm – I'm going to have you guys wipe yourselves down with these dude wipes. We're going to run a test. I'm curious. After, like, at the end of the day, let's see what you look like. Because my shit gets, like, dirty. I'm like, why the fuck am I – actually, I understand I'm sweaty, but, like, why am I dirty?

What kind of deodorant do you use, Andrew? I use Native now. You use Native? What did you use before? I think you used Old Spice, too. So, I mean, like, yeah, back in – Those commercials were dope. That's why. Yeah, I mean, like, yeah. Those commercials were dope. That's why.

Back in the day, I did. Now back to me. Now back to your man. Now back to me. Sadly, he isn't me. I memorized this commercial in high school because, yeah. Were you ever that guy for Halloween? Yeah.

Yeah. In high school, I did it. Of course. Remember the commercial? Isaiah Mustafa. With Ray Lewis too? Remember those commercials? When he would just, like, tackle people?

No. Oh, that's like a different... ESPN, sorry. Go ahead. Yeah, no. Old Spice has really random things like Ray Lewis was on like a rocket or something. It's like somebody's like high as fuck

whoever wrote some of those commercials back in the day. And that's funny as fuck because Ray Lewis is like one of the most serious motherfuckers. Yeah, right. He is not a guy who you want to meet in a dark alley. Not Ray Lewis. is like one of the most serious motherfuckers yeah right he is not a guy who you want to meet in a dark alley not ray lewis definitely on my own line though i'll tell you guys what we're talking about in a second but it's pretty funny yeah it was old spice for a long time but it would burn and but i just would power through it just because i'm like oh this smells good like one chick complimented on how good it smells or something. So I stuck with it, which is why we do everything we've ever done still do. And then

I did eventually try switching to, um, it was like, it was labeled as like a natural deodorant, like didn't have this or that. But then when I like look at the ingredients, which is weird, that deodorant has ingredients. There's even some that say they're gluten free, which is fucking wild. But it showed that it had like, i forgot what it might have been aluminum or something in it and i'm like this is bullshit so then i switched to native recently and yeah i noticed that the charcoal one works quite a bit better i don't know what it is but it just seems like that's the one that's always sold out yeah yeah um because. Because we just got a bunch of them. It was like a buy one, get one type of deal. So we got just like a couple different ones to see what they were like.

And my wife and my daughter got theirs. And so like I ran out. So I tried theirs. I'm like, ah, this just smells good. Like it doesn't work on me very well. But yeah. You know, with that being said, for all the men in the audience, kind of rewinding, y'all moisturize? Do you guys believe in moisturizing or not?

You motherfuckers wash your face? You wash your face? Mark, I'm telling you, man, just start. I wash my face, but I don't like independently wash my face. You know, like my wife is always like messing around with that shit. Yeah. Man, maybe I need to just write down a routine for you like because my shit my shit is not wild we need a skincare routine you know because when

you're 60 man i want you looking like you're 45 and andrew when you're 60 i want you looking like you're 30 because you got that latino in you so it should be possible um i use the same soap same like washcloth or whatever for my face as i do my balls. It's all just one motion. Do you guys use loofahs? What do you use? Yeah. Yeah, I use a loofah. You use a loofah?

Mine's like a hen mitt. So like one side it's soft, the other side is like gritty. You know, I think we talked about it on the show before, but there was like a breakthrough commercial years ago that made men use a loofah. Because men thought using a loofah was like too feminine. Really? I think it might have been a big footballah. Because men thought using a loofah was like too feminine. It was like a – Really? I think it might have been a big football player. Craig Hayward.

Craig Ironhead Hayward. A big-ass running back. Called it a lather thingy. Yeah. Hey, Ironhead, what's up with that thingy? And he like dangled it in the air. Yeah. And he's like, I may be tough, but I'm not too tough to use this or whatever.

Changed it all. Yeah. Changed it all. Yeah. Change it all. One thing that I think is underestimated, and women, I'm curious also your thoughts on this. For all, for like the 20 women that are listening right now. That's a lot. That's a lot. But what are your thoughts?

Comment either in the live or in the comment section below. But when I was single in 2021, right? I was just, I was messing around with some things. So as I started messing around with certain scents, one thing that I noticed is whenever I'd go on a date or something, the woman would be like, oh my god, you smell so good. And I was like, smell? You're paying a lot of attention to smell. So I didn't go crazy with the cologne or anything, but I was just like, the smell thing, the smell thing's an important factor, right? So, I mean, you've been married for years,

you know, like, whatever, Andy's gonna be there, but I'm curious, you know, because my girlfriend loves the smell of stuff. So I'm like, hmm, let me use this to my advantage. Do you guys use smell to your advantage? Do your ladies care much about that or not really

andy doesn't care about much that's probably why i'm married to her that's good she's always dtf that's good that's good but yeah no she doesn't care like body weight stuff like she doesn't care like she was with you at 3 30 i've never heard her say anything about like a smell or yeah anything in particular i do try to be clean you know i mean i like i come home from the gym i take a shower right away and stuff like that yeah like i pay attention to that kind of stuff i think i have like decent hygiene um yeah i mean just try not to be disgusting try not to gross her out is kind of my goal that's been hard but yeah uh stephanie will like she'll just grab like one of my sweaters that i was wearing oh yeah she'll be like oh my god you smell so good but like i don't do anything like i yeah i shower but like i don't put i don't have any cologne if you did that with her clothes you'd

be a creep yeah she'd be like what are you doing well mainly because it would just be her underwear wouldn't be like you're like wearing it on your head during a family during a family gathering using it like smelling salts what's wrong with smelling her underwear every now and then i like the scent if you guys don't like it there's the door yeah you know yeah, I mean, I just thought about now since you said that, cause like Andy probably likes wearing your sweaters and stuff. I get my clothes stolen all the time. I always see her walking around my shirts and shit, but I'm like, what if I just decided to wear your fucking underwear?

How would you feel about that? Can I just put on your thong and I, would that be okay? No. You probably would dig it. Actually, you probably would dig it. I'll put it on my face before I put it on my ass, though. Then you're going to be screwed. You're going to have to wear it all the time.

She's going to be like, I liked you better when you didn't have panty lines. She's going to be like, well, this makes things easier because now we can just shop for one style and that's for both of us. That's a to share community. I'll tell you guys the other day about the tan line thing. Oh, yeah. How for some reason. And Andrew, I think you and I are the same wavelength in this. I don't get why the fuck I find tan lines so like hot.

If you didn't see any tan lines, would you be like, hey, I don't know about this girl. She's a little too much. So like the way. What did I say oh yeah but the way i said it was like um what did i i called it something it was like painted on lingerie almost oh because like you're you're maybe not supposed to see but it's like you are seeing it oh there's some more mystery there i saw i i told my girl about i was like i don't know why but i find tan lines so hot like i mean you're hot either way but like tan lines for some reason they had something when she got a tan i'm just like oh paralyzed my knees just went there's nothing better than like

when you do tell your girl something and then they'll just like oh okay and like they do i'm like oh i wasn't even trying to get i wasn't saying this so I could get her to go out in the sun and get to. But she did. And my knees were weak. And now I'm just dead, man. I'm fucking dead. Can't concentrate on anything. Nothing.

Dude, you got that video of TD. Oh, yeah. Our boy TD is the best. If you guys didn't see the episode with TD, he's amazing. But this. Me. How the fuck am I? This video on his Instagram an instrument i don't know what this one's about but i'm gonna click back and see if you're gonna have to read it off my life is a big black power lifter and the music is funny

the bears could use you on the o-line fuck that taser i'll shoot your big ass can you bench press me from a blonde girl wouldn't want to meet you in a dark alley i have okay so the first and the last i have heard that before wouldn't want to meet you in a dark alley and we'd love you on our football team the chiefs need you this year i heard that shit it's just so funny and it's just funny that like he's heard it too and when i go through the comments like there are other guys like dog i hear this weekly it's so we're not making this shit up it's just funny it's funny yeah you guys gotta go follow at td smash follow him that's our boy yeah he's cool as fuck he had an injury recently right like his knee or something right well then he's like back to like doing

squats again like it looks like he's doing pretty damn good. He had an 800. He ended up failing it. The way he dropped the bar was wild, but he's back to squatting. So I guess that injury didn't last. I think it wasn't an upper. I think it was a pec thing. So that's why he's been squatting with a safety bar or safety squat bar. Yeah. Dude, what is he doing?

He's a bench guy. He all of a sudden going crazy that's what he said he wants to be a full power yeah no he has he has he already has a crazy total yes totals wild and i didn't know that this is like 23 something yeah let's see if it's doesn't say but yeah the dude's awesome he's a he's an awesome dude and also a great power lifter like his like that his you got to check out that episode because his personality is magnetic you know what i mean he can he can talk about anything he's just a he's a wonderful guy i love that dude so please guys go check out his instagram go check out that podcast episode we did with him i saw him uh in

columbus and it was before we did the podcast and we just kind of went on a walk and he's like you're walking kind of fast it's like it's gonna be okay it's gonna be okay we'll get through this together buddy it looks like an upper body injury apparently julius maddox attempted um uhx attempted 800. Was it an 800 bench recently? And he ended up failing it, but it was hip-hop. I think he's like 790 or something, right? I think he completed one of them. Probably 790.

It was a pretty huge bench. And I think it might be the all-time world record. He just keeps breaking his own record. There's been a couple guys putting up close to those numbers, but nobody in competition, I don't think. No one official, and that's kind of really what matters. I saw a bodybuilder the other day do, somebody sent me a video. Guy squatted 300 kilos, 661 for 10 reps.

He's bodybuilders, man. They got that rep strength. Isn't that crazy? They can just rep things out, yeah. Bumstead's very strong, too. Absolutely. bodybuilders man they got that rep strength isn't that crazy rep things out yeah bumstead's very strong too absolutely i mean i think i saw him deadlift in 675 for maybe a shit maybe he did for like eight or ten reps or something like that it was wild he did he said it was a deadlift or yeah deadlift i'm not surprised bodybuilders have the ability like their one rep map strength is still strong but their ability to push out high reps of things because they're bodybuilders they have great ability where 700 for four reps what dude did you see on um tiny tiffs page she

posted this 12 year old girl that deadlifted 250 yeah at like a hundred and something pounds yeah people like man dog we got a kid in here that deadlifted 755 he's 19 what is going on there's a 19 year old kid in here there's a 16 year old kid he's 19 and he deadlifted my my best yeah yeah dog fuck you get the fuck out of this that's amazing he's in like he's in really good shape you know but he's not like you know he's not real big i mean he has muscle on him he's big like he's in really good shape you know but he's not like you know he's not real big i mean he has muscle on him he's big big for his age for sure uh but you're not like man what does that guy you know it's not like when you see him you're not like oh my god what's that

dude lift yeah so 250 at 12 years old 105 pounds dog it's this is the cool thing about social media man is that because people we've talked about this people see these wild things happening earlier and earlier and earlier and it used to be six years ago used to be a 700 pound deadlift or seven years ago 700 pound deadlift that's fucking crazy now that's commonplace like you're not deadlift like you're deadlifting 700 no i know a few other hundred people that can deadlift 700 get to 800 bro then you're deadlifting 700? No, I know a few other hundred people that can deadlift 700. Get to 800, bro, then you're strong, right? So it's really cool that people are hitting these things earlier and earlier and earlier and setting these standards.

It's fucking dope. There's a kid in here the other day. He's 16, and I saw him like he was doing 405 for reps on deadlift. Looks like he benches pretty good and stuff too. But then when he was squatting, he went up to like 275 uh you guys might have saw him in the gym he was just randomly in the gym like kind of during the day he went to 275 and he's doing reps he's on the slant board it's fucking theo von and i'm just like what the fuck this is him deadlifting pretty sure this is the kid you're talking about i think so theo von

does he look like theo von or something just wait oh oh okay oh yeah yeah but he's such a cool kid he like didn't even know who theo von was but then he searched for him he's like oh that's cool like he thought it was funny too but yeah 16 years old this is so awesome man like when i and i just think he like doesn't kind of know because like the slant board with 275 is heavy as fuck the speed he's 16 yeah and his position does he play a sport he plays football but he's oh man good he likes it but he's just like whatever he just likes to lift. Dude, this is so cool. You know what?

Man, this is what I'm saying. The education behind lifting is so much better now because when I was a teenager, when I was 16, I didn't know shit about powerlifting. I just knew bodybuilding, just reps on reps on reps, leg press, machines, dumbbells. But if I knew about that when I was younger, it would have been so cool. So it's so cool seeing a 16 year old do that shit. It's amazing. You know, it's nuts. Just having a knowledge that a bench squat and deadlift is just a good idea, you know, in general, like a lot of people don't really, a lot of people don't really experiment with those exercises. They are kind of known as

like kind of being dangerous, bench press. People are like, I'm going to hurt my shoulder, as like kind of being dangerous bench press people are like i'm gonna hurt my shoulder hurts my elbow and sometimes it does but i think when something does hurt i think it's a good idea to try to examine why it hurts and start to try to figure it out and then if you can't do the actual exercise there's plenty of alternatives like if you can do dumbbell bench press there's probably not a lot of reasons to fight fight tooth and nail and to try to do all this rehab stuff just to get on a regular bench, unless you just really desire to bench with a barbell or if you're going to compete, then it would make sense. And same thing with squats, like find a variation of a squat that you can do. I've always been a huge proponent of box squats

and I wanted to bring some squats back into my training and so uh just yesterday i started doing some box squats again this is a guy 355 three by five yeah man saying he had a bad day like get out of here but this this is a cool thing because amazing as of recent we've been talking about um you know, not doing stuff like this as often. But within him, he's an athlete. Like he's doing football. He's doing things that are having you move, run, jump. And he's doing this too. That's where I think there's a complete thing because when somebody then goes down the rabbit hole of powerlifting really deep – and I get it.

If you're an athlete within the sport, you got to go deep within it, right? And I get it. If you're an athlete within the sport, you got to go deep within it, right? But when that's the only thing a person does, then it closes their body off from being able to do a lot of other things, which is what I'm – the kind of stuff I'm focused on. I'm like I want all of these ranges of motion and all of these ranges of movement while also being strong. He's doing it. And I think like kids can cement this at a young age. That's fucking awesome. They're going kids can cement this at a young age. That's fucking awesome.

They're going to be mutants in their 20s. In powerlifting, I don't really know if you end up absorbing forces. In Olympic lifting, you do. You pick the weight up and then you get underneath it and you end up with, forgive me if this is not actually correct scientifically, but you end up with almost you know, forgive me if this is not actually correct scientifically, but you end up with almost like a plyometric effect. You know, you lift the weight up, you dive underneath it, and because you dove underneath it, now you catch it, and now you have to kind of deal with those forces.

Whereas powerlifting, you know, you pick up a weight, and even if you kind of like dive bomb a squat and stuff like that, it's a little different. I guess you are kind of absorbing the forces because you do have that eccentric component to it but it's way different than weight lifting because weight lifting you get like a little bit disconnected from the weight the weight's actually floating in the air momentarily yes and you're you're like actively getting yourself under the weight in the case of a snatch or a clean and you're actually moving

kind of freely without the weight. You're like unloaded from it for a moment, and then that 250 pounds or whatever the weight is that you have on the bar all of a sudden connects back to you again, and you have to absorb those forces. And so many sports are about absorbing force. When you go to catch a ball and you're running over the middle in football, somebody's going to smash you right there.

As soon as you catch the ball, somebody's going to smash you right there. As soon as you catch the ball, somebody's going to hit you. In so many other sports, there are sports where you're not absorbing other people's forces. But even in something like tennis, you are trying to predict where the ball is going from the other person that hit it. And you have to change direct. Like you hit one, and then you got to fucking try to figure out how to redirect your body and go get the other one. We don't have that much of that kind of stuff in the gym.

Yeah. This was specifically with powerlifting. And the other aspect with Olympic lifting, it's also the throwing action of the weight. Like when you're doing a snatch or you're doing a clean, like, I mean, I guess you get some of that when you deadlift. But with a clean especially, you are throwing that weight up. Because especially when it's heavy weight, you're not going to be able to – it's not like if you throw it as strong as you can, it's not like the weight is going to really move. So you do have to have the ability to get that weight and then move underneath it. So you're not only having to catch the weight at the bottom.

You're also having to throw the weight from when it comes off the ground, which is another component that you don't get if you're only sticking to SBD. But it's funny you bring up tennis because we played tennis the other day. There's some tennis courts by my place, and my girl has some rackets in her trunk. So we just went over and we played some tennis, and it was like the reflex thing that we were talking about, the lateral moving back and forth. Yeah, no reflexes in the gym hardly. Exactly. And it was a fun thing. We weren't trying to be super competitive with it we were just trying to volley back and forth but you know just get it over the goddamn get it over the net let's

not make a lot of rules like let's just get it over the net get over the net without launching it over the fence yes and which did happen a few times always and uh it can bounce a couple times like it's not a big yeah yeah exactly two three times yeah whatever fucking serena williams over here oh my god that's great but yeah uh go follow wyatt so it's why w-y-a-t-t underscore underscore p lifter that's our dude wyatt and before we get to the diet thing do you guys know brandon sullivan did was he able to do that i think he was trying to my boy sully yeah no brandon sullivan his brother no oh is that no no no no joe sullivan oh joe oh yeah yeah did you go for that there's a lot of sullivan time the 500 squat yeah he was trying to do um

yeah tom platt tom platt's he's trying to do Tom Platt's. He was trying to squat, I don't know if it was 500 or 520 for like 20 or 30 reps. He must have kind of gone for that already, I think. Yeah. Did he get it? He was saying it was like a week away and then I didn't hear anything about it. I don't see anything on his IG. I just see like a giveaway.

Let's see. Hold on. He's trying to do what? 500 for 20-something reps? Yeah. Let's see. Let's see if I can text him. That'll work.

Yo, Joe, did you hit that squat? Oh, yeah. Well, he didn't next week. Maybe he has a week off and then prepping for it. Yeah, 525 for 23 is the record and that's what he's trying to surpass. Holy

shit. What a stud muffin. Yeah, man. Joe's a squat god, man. He's a fucking squat god. But yeah, maybe he's doing a deload before he hits it up. You know, I'm running into, like, more and more people that are, like, getting into, like, lifting. And I've been running into more people recently, and I think I might have mentioned this on another show,

where there's a lot of younger folks who are, like, doing a good job of, like, losing weight. They're doing a good job of being conscious of the food that maybe they were eating for a while that they maybe previously weren't paying attention to. Um, you know, maybe they got into a routine where they did play video games. They were inside a bunch. Um, but I think some of these, a lot of teenage kids are like now finding the gym. There's so many resources online and, uh, you got, you know know like the paul brothers like how many followers do those guys have on youtube yeah they're both in shape you know um i know that sometimes people uh what is it mr mr beast um he talks about fitness he's not like a big fitness guy but he talks about fitness he talks about like healthier eating and i think uh the more

that these influences start kind of going down that rabbit hole, the better off we'll be. And then you hear, you know, Tom Segura, Bert Kreischer, you're hearing these comedians, you're hearing Joe Rogan is like the king of it. I mean, he's brought so much to the forefront in terms of nutrition and training. And hopefully that trend just keeps continuing so it can keep helping people get into the gym. But powerlifting is like, it's something that kind of goes up and down, has little peaks and valleys here and there.

When I was young and the gyms that I went to, it was pretty popular, but it wasn't like a pop culture thing. Maybe five to eight years ago, it caught on pretty, pretty strongly. Yeah. Might be as strongly as it ever catches on. But what I think is important just to share is just the power of those movements, a bench press, a squat, a deadlift. Doesn't have to be that exact movement. Any variation of that. You can have a trap bar deadlift. You can do partial range of motion deadlifts. You can do variations of a squat, any type of squat. I like a lot of the information that Joel Seidman is pumping out. I don't see any reason why people can't do partial

range of motion squats or box squats if they have limitations or they have pain. And then same thing with bench pressing, bench press with a slingshot. Or if you're like, man, I, for some reason I can only do incline, go ahead and do incline. If you can only do dumbbells, go ahead and do dumbbells. You know, but I think the key thing to those lifts is the fact that you can use, normally you can use a good amount of weight on those lifts. And you, because you can use a good amount of weight on those lifts, it gives you an opportunity to kind of overload the body and to send the body the message of, hey, we need more muscle mass for this. You know, when I sometimes talk about powerlifting, I feel as if some people think I'm shitting on powerlifting and I'm not. Because if somebody goes too far down with jujitsu, let's say, right, Brazilian jujitsu, and they don't do any strength training but they just like jiu-jitsu jiu-jitsu jiu-jitsu that's the only thing I do right then they're going to end up

becoming this pliable martial artist person who has some good isometric strength but I see a lot of people that do purely jiu-jitsu get injured a lot because they lack strength in other areas so their joints aren't as strong as they could be so they're they would actually have a lot of benefit of doing some training in the gym. People that go too deep down the rabbit hole of bodybuilding, just pure bodybuilding, bodybuilding, bodybuilding. Well, a lot of those individuals that only go down that road, they move really stiff ways. They look really good, but then they can't bend down to tie their shoes. There's a lot of dysfunction. So what the awesome thing is that we're talking

about is that you can do powerlifting, you can do bodybuilding, you can do jujitsu, you can do any sport, but the gym can help balance things out for you and help balance out your body and help balance out your movement, right? With anything. You can go compete in powerlifting, but you can also move really well. You can be um and you could you could have you can have strength in different areas um that's i think that's what we're seeing a lot of because when i look at a lot of now top power lifters or people that are getting into power lifting they're not just doing power lifting they're doing some other things along with that to deal with deficiencies that happen when you only focus on the sport i also don't see anything wrong with like just doing the lift just to get the exercise. You know, I did, uh, 10 sets of two reps with, uh, 225 pounds. So it wasn't like,

and I was a squat. It wasn't like I was some earth shattering weights that I was moving around. It just felt good. Rest intervals in between were short. Um, it just felt like a really good training session. It felt like a worthy thing for my legs. Woke up today, my legs were like a little bit sore, nothing too crazy. But I don't think you even need a lot of weight. I think it's just like check in on these exercises, mess around with them a little bit. Again, I hear so many people, they'll say that they hurt their back

or something like that. And I would just say, does 135 hurt your back? Does they hurt their back or something like that and I would just say does 135 hurt your back? Does 95 hurt your back? Because it's not necessarily, I'm not talking about like just doing the lift just to get the benefit of doing the lift I'm talking about the exercise of it

it's a hip hinge, it's a squat right, you have a deadlift which is a hip hinge, you have a squat which is really good for your hips and then you have some sort of range of motion type thing for the upper body. Now you could do dips and pushups and other things other than bench press, but it seems like a pretty good one to me. And it kind of works the whole body as well. And so it's not really just that you're doing the exercise. It's not just for the overload, but it also is to get the benefit of just moving around like

that and i think that you should be a proficient in that yeah are you gonna say something uh well yeah sure um i don't know so maybe you guys can tell me if i'm like way off base here mainly because i haven't really been in the world of power lifting for very long it's been a blink of an eye but what i see is it's almost like power lifters kind of do things backwards um what i mean is like they'll go for a heavy squat uh they'll work their way up to their working sets or work whatever it may be and then afterwards they go do the accessories yes and you know when it comes to you know these accessories it's almost like they don't care like all they care about is squat bench dead.

Yeah. So they work their way up to their heavyset and then they kind of go do the other shit. And we all know that like as energy levels go, uh, they don't take them as serious. Yeah. You know?

Okay. So I always think like, I feel like they're doing it backwards because if they got in a lot of the accessory work, yeah, they'd be fatigued. They'd be beaten down pretty bad when it comes to their actual main movement of the day but in my head i'm like well if you're kind if you're trying to be as strong as possible you know you're kind of

going to be the sum of all the parts when you when you are working these accessory movements and then on meet day when you don't have to mess with the accessories now you're even stronger because you're only going to do the big main movement. I just think maybe people would be able to move a little bit better and they'd find that maybe they'd be a little bit stronger. And I know it's taking energy away from the main lift from that training day. But I think overall, the volume that you get in and sure, you're going to take a plate off the bar. But maybe, you know, you won't get as hurt. Your range of motion might be a lot better and you'll be able to do it a lot longer.

I've done a lot of stuff like that in my training, you know, where we'll do like a whole back workout and then finish off with like a deadlift. I've done a bunch of stuff for upper body, you know, where, again, I might be kind of working more the back of my body and the lats and stuff like that. And then I might go on to like bench press. Some of, you know, some of the heavier lifts when you do, you know, five sets of five or something like that, and you have 70% of your max, let's just say, that's pretty significant. It's just a pretty significant amount of weight. So you can't, it's, it would be difficult to, uh, get a similar working load from some other assistance exercises is going to be really valuable. And I'm not saying like a tricep pushdown or lat pulldown is completely useless, but they're just not great movements. They might add to hypertrophy and hypertrophy might add to you having a bigger muscle. A bigger muscle might be a stronger muscle because you just have better leverage.

So there are some things like that. But, um, when I'm talking about powerlifting kind of more from, from like now times, rather than me talking about like my powerlifting career, I'm not talking about people powerlifting to be powerlifters. And I'm also not talking about powerlifting as a sport. I'm just talking about the three lifts that comprise that make up powerlifting and how I just think it's a good idea for anybody to implement them and implement them whatever way that you want. I think that what you're laying out is actually a really good idea. Like why not do some hamstring curls and why not drag a sled for 20 minutes and then hit your deadlift? I think it's a good idea to get some of those assistance exercises in.

It just kind of acts as like a warm-up. And if you go into something a little bit fatigued, it can be a good thing. I would just say maybe you want to switch it up a little bit here and there so that way you can kind of see where you're – if you like to lift heavy, where your real deadlift is at occasionally. And, Andrew, I actually really like where that logic is you know we think of things like the winning warm-up you know that winnings warm-up will for some people will be a fucking workout it's like it's a lot of reps to drive a lot of blood into specific muscle groups that you're going to work in that day um but i i you know most powerters are, yeah, most powerlifters who are competing in the sport, when they think about that, they're like, well, I want exactly like you said, you know, I want all of my energy ready to hit this lift for my top set, whatever that top set is.

And I don't want to be tired by doing a bunch of accessory work beforehand. But I think there's a really cool middle ground with what you mentioned there. For example, if a lifter is going to be doing a bench press day where they're working up to a triple or double or whatever that is, maybe they have some accessories that are like some dumbbell bench or whatever. But potentially, maybe you do some light dumbbell bench and maybe some lighter tricep work, right? Maybe a few sets of what your accessories should be, just a few sets, not close to failure, nothing that's going to tire you out, but something that can drive a lot of blood to those specific muscle groups that are going to be worked during your bench press, but also prime your joints to get you ready for your bench press workout. And then go to your

bench. But by the time you get to your bench, you're probably going to feel really, really good before you, and really warm as you're working up to that top set of whatever you're going to do. So I think that's a really, really good middle ground. And I also do agree with you that people that are within the sport tend to underestimate the importance and underestimate the amount of development that they can get from their accessory exercises, especially when it does come to gaining muscle in smaller areas that typically aren't hit when you're doing the big lifts like your rear delts or different parts of your chest if you're doing maybe an incline or whatever. Or different parts of your legs when you're doing extensions or maybe if you have a GHR or whatever. be if you have a GHR or whatever. Those, when they come at the end, people tend to kind of sandbag that shit because it's not a big part of what you're going to do on the platform.

They see abs on a list and they just go home. Peace. Who needs that shit? I'm out of here. What's a couple fucking sit-ups going to really do for me? That's not going to help. PropRoger fam, this episode is brought to you by Vivo Barefoot Shoes. We've been wearing these shoes for almost a year now.

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order. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Let's get back to this video. What about, you know, we're just talking about powerlifting. So from the outside in, they see powerlifting motivation. Here's Mark Bell squatting over 1,000 pounds and, you know, a bunch of other people going nuts. How do people keep it safe? You know, how do people stay injury injury free when it comes to doing your

maximum lift on a squat bench or dead again you know when i'm talking about like uh doing some of the power lifts i'm talking about doing the movements doing the exercises and not necessarily maxing out um i am a huge fan of like singles and doubles and triples and I actually think it would provide a ton of value for a lot of people. If I'm thinking about somebody coming in, they just want to make the most progress the fastest possible way. If that person – if I'm kind of blind to how old they are, I'm thinking like some versions of bench squat and deadlifts would be great because of kind of the metabolic cost of those exercises and the fact that you overload. Uh, but if somebody is coming in and they're 70 years old now, I'm like, Oh, okay. We just, okay. Maybe we got to switch up the strategy a little bit. Maybe we should drag the sled. Maybe we should do some farmer's carries, uh, maybe partial range of motion deadlifts because now we can work the grip.

We can work the lower back and we can kind of fake it almost, fake some of those movements. But the power lifts are really – they're really critical and they're really crucial. However, I don't think that people need to worry too much about like trying to go real heavy on them. You want to be able to do the movement. But as they say in CrossFit. You want to be able to do the movement. But as they say in CrossFit, you want to be able to do the movements unbroken. And then like, what does that look like? It's hard to know what that even looks like. But there's a lot of videos that you can watch online of people doing proper deadlifts, proper squats, proper bench pressing. And a good rule of thumb is that your last rep of your last set should look like the

first rep of your first set. So again, if you're doing a five by five or three sets of three or something like that, your last rep on your last set shouldn't be this crazy grinder where you're like looking at the floor when you're doing your squats. It should be the first, they should all be clean. And if they're not clean, you got to go back and kind of clean them up and you want them to be – it's going to be really hard to get hurt. It's really hard to get hurt when your form and technique is locked in properly. Hey, Andrew. Makes it more difficult. Can you go to YouTube and look up 2% rule Ben Patrick?

you go to youtube and look up two percent rule ben patrick um now i was i was texting ben we're he was going back and forth with me about something that he's doing and by the way guys he's been getting fucking muscle ben's been getting like yacked uh when he when i saw this video of him uh talking look at his soul like we can just see this shit from the thumbnail um look at his fucking shoulders. Ben is getting bigger. But I think people should just go check out that video when you have the time. But how he looks at progression, I know this powerlifting, you can't necessarily always do just 2%. But the way that he's progressing himself is he's just doing 2% more each session. And 2% many times is a very small amount of weight and it's a very doable thing.

But a few things that it does is it allows an individual to work with a little bit more weight, but it also allows them not to work with so much weight that they won't be able to achieve it. Right? So you're always getting a small amount of progressive overload, but you're never progressing so much that it becomes unsafe and you work with weights you shouldn't be working with, then risk injury. Because what happens when most people are focusing on the power lifts and gaining strength, that weight on the bar, is that they end up putting too much weight on the bar, weight that they're not actually ready to work with because they believe they can. They grind it out and pop, pop, pop, something happens here or there,

and then they're out of the game for a little bit. But if you can watch that video that he put, because I think it was really well done, and maybe take some of that concept of some of the 2% rule for your progress. It takes a long time to get to an X weight, but the thing is, is you're going to get there safely and you're going to be having consistent progression as you get there. Now, to kind of take this out of the realm of powerlifting and into more general lifting, the way that I look at my lifts nowadays and the way that I look at my my what I do in the weight room is number one, I'm more focused on movement stuff. I still lift. Don't get me wrong. More focused on movement stuff. But when I do lift, I really don't think I'm going to be ever doing singles like singles, maybe.

But these singles are going to be at like 80 percent, 90 percent. I don't see a reason or the necessity of doing a 100% 1RM because the cost or the risk far outweighs the benefit that I'm getting. I might be able to do it successfully, but if I don't, I'm out for a little bit. So I can still work with heavy weight and get the stimulus. So I can still work with heavy weight and get the stimulus. Instead of focusing on the weight, I'm more so focused on the stimulus of what I feel, how it feels for me. Are my muscles getting stimulated well? Is it relatively heavy for me?

But with those two things happening, am I able to do this safely? If I can do that, I don't necessarily care that much about, oh, this is a 600-pound, 500-pound deadlift. What I care about is what is the stimulus I'm getting? Is my muscles feeling this? Because it is beneficial to work with heavy load. But again, heavy not in the context of social media, but heavy in the context of what my body feels. And if I'm getting that stimulus, I know that I'm heading in the right direction. I'm getting the stimulus my body needs to potentially gain muscle, maintain muscle, my bone density benefits, all of that. But, you know, because of social, a lot of people will work with certain weights or lift certain things that maybe they shouldn't be. And it kind of puts them at more of a it's more dangerous for them rather than being beneficial in the long run. If more athletes can focus on that, focus on slower progression

rather than just the weight on the bar, they'd probably get away with less injuries or no injuries in their athletic careers. There's a lot of really good points right there. There's so many things that dictate the weight on the bar. The exercise is a huge one. Even the very exercise that you select determines the load almost automatically. Once the exercise is selected and once the load is kind of almost determined, I guess you'd say, then the reps start to fall into place.

So the weights dictate the reps and the reps dictate the weight. So if you told me, Mark, here's a great chest workout I did the other day, give this a shot. He said, I want you to go and do four sets of eight, incline dumbbell, bench press. After that, you're going to do cable flies. And after that, you're going to do dips. Right away in my head, four sets of eight. Okay, he wants me to challenge myself. He wants me to go with weights that are pretty heavy. And also, the rest interval in between the set would matter a lot too. Yeah.

If you said, I only want you to rest for 30 seconds, well, now you just changed the weight on me. Yes. Because maybe when you said four sets of eight, I'm thinking, that would be a really good challenge for me to handle like 90 to a hundred pounds. Yeah. But then you said 30 seconds rest and I'm like, I better go down to like the sixties or the seventies cause that's going to be fucking challenging. Right. It changes the training effect too. It changes everything.

I'm also going to be more fatigued when I go into the cable crossovers because I didn't get as much rest and I'm going to have more of a pump. But cable crossovers, what's the rep range for cable crossovers? Automatically, my brain's going to 12 to 15. And why is my brain going to that 12 to 15 range? Maybe even higher. Maybe if it's like a triple drop set where I do like 30 reps. Well, why does that happen?

Well, it's because it's kind of odd to get into like a cable crossover position in the first place. And with my shoulders the way they are and like like, I don't want to put like a hundred pounds on a cable crossover because it will feel like it's kind of ripping my shit apart. So I'm going to go with a modest weight and I'm going to go with lighter weight. I'm going to do 12 to 15 reps. Maybe I'll do a drop set, or maybe I'll have short rest interval in between. By the time I go to the dips, now it's a body weight exercise and you might have even said you might even give me a rep range

but I might bypass the rep range and just say let me just see how it feels on my own he said 4 sets of 20 fuck man I'm actually really up against it right now I'm having a hard time my arms are shaking let me stick with like 4 sets of 12 so the exercises

that we select are big determining the, the exercises that we select are big determining factors in the weights that we use, the rep ranges. When I talk about people utilizing like singles and doubles and triples, I think it's immensely valuable for people, but I'm not talking about them going to the edge. I'm not talking about them like risking their fucking life, you know, for these singles yeah that's power lifting and that's the power that's the sport of power lifting and that is very specific and i stay i think that that can have value um but if somebody uh you know was to tell me that hey you know you get this you get to uh train uh uh steph curry for a while, you know, and he came in.

Like I'm not going to have him do heavy singles. Would I have him do some singles of deadlifts and some triples of deadlifts? Sure. That would actually be like one of the first places I would start. But it would be with weights that are moving really, really well and weights that were really light. Something else I find really interesting is Greg Glassman, the creator of CrossFit, he was saying he doesn't understand why people chose to use in circuit training. This is how he came up with CrossFit.

He didn't understand why people utilize such garbage exercises in circuit training. It's like why wouldn't you pick harder exercises? What do you mean? What was his idea of some garbage exercises? Garbage exercises would just be like, I don't know, you do, let's say you do like dumbbell bench press and you do some like step ups and then after that you do like a lat pull down.

Okay. Those aren't garbage exercises necessarily, but they're not really hard exercises yeah step up might be a little challenging depending on how high and if you're using weight and stuff like that right so he was like what happens if there's like a clean in there what happens if you go all out on a fucking bike and what happens if you uh in between that are doing a fucking rope climb or toes to bar or something like that it It's like, we just changed the whole goddamn thing. Who knows what this system looks like? Who knows what this program looks like? So interesting. But I mean, you know, people can get hurt when you're doing things like that CrossFit style,

because now you got time domains and people are in a real rush. So whenever we start to put, whenever we start to jack up the intensity of what it is we're doing or we try to go fast intensity being the weight on the bar or we try to go fast that's when you're you know your original question andrew about like worrying about you know getting hurt and sema pointed out the two percent stuff like very small percentage jumps maybe week one maybe use 50 of where you think you should be like Like go really light. You know, like if you're like, well, I think last time I squatted,

I used like 225. Yeah. If you go to the gym and you're like, should I use 135 for this or 95? The answer is 95. Every time. Should I use 135 or 185? Use 135.

Should I use 225 or should I use 275 or 245? Use 135. Should I use 225 or should I use, uh, two or should I use 275 or 245? Use 245. Every time, always go with that lower weight. Do that shit first. Make sure shit's comfortable. Make sure your body, you, every day is new. Every day is a new day. Your body's gonna feel different every day. Always choose the lighter weight. And then, you know, when you're talking about the lifting heavier loads, I think that as you, whatever stage you're in as a lifter, when you're newer, you're not going to be as comfortable or as confident moving heavy loads for yourself. That's why it's good to build the confidence of working with lighter loads over time and building up that intensity over time.

Because when you when you are more advanced and you are doing triples doubles singles number one you have the skill but number two you're more confident like when you approach the bar that has 405 or 500 pounds or whatever you know that this is gonna fucking move there's no guessing games in your head of like can i do this am i gonna be able to especially when you have that guessing game in your head of i don't know if i should do this that's like don't don't do it like do something a little lighter because oddly enough if you're if your goal is deadlifting 500 pounds right and the best deadlift you've done so far was like four off 405 for 10 don't go aim for 500 not even for a while go for 420 go for 430 see how many reps you can do see

if you can do three reps or four reps at 435 can you do three reps at 450 do you feel confident doing that because that will actually give you a gauge of how close you are to being able to actually deadlift 500 pounds and by the time you've deadlifted 485 for an easy triple but you've never done deadlifted 500 pounds before we know for a goddamn fact you're going to be able to deadlift 500 pounds, and you never had to touch that weight, risking your body to get there. If you do it correctly, you should end up with two PRs in a day. Like you should have waited so long that you do 500 and everyone's like, that was fast.

Wow, that was fucking dope, man. You want to go to 510,15 you know when i deadlifted 755 up until that point my best deadlift was 700 pounds i never deadlift actually my best deadlift was 715 but it was difficult it was that day what we did it in jeans in the old gym that was my highest deadlift up until that point and heading for that competition my highest deadlift in training was 685 for a triple, an easy triple. But the amount of volume I've been building up over time, I never did anything in training that was rarely risky. But when I deadlifted 755, when that came off the ground, it was fucking fast.

I had more in the tank, but in prep, I didn't do anything close to it. That's safe training. That's really safe training. And the squats that you did, from what I remember, were really good too. Yeah. The squats, I had like maybe 30 or 40 more pounds that I could have done. What a great thing to walk away with, right? Like it kind of – a little frustrating.

You're like, oh, man, I could have had a bigger total. But at the same time, like you're still alive. Your back is still good. Your back is still good. Your body's still good. And you're going to be able to train. You're going to be able to go right back to the gym on Monday and train. Like nothing ever happened. Did it beltless with just like the lighter knee sleeves, not even like the thicker, strong sleeves?

I think I had the strong sleeves on. I don't think so. No? I just remember they were pink. I think they were sports sleeves. Oh, maybe they were sports sleeves. Well, I always liked training in those sleeves because they're a bit more just comfortable for my knees yeah you know but um but that's rebellious though yeah but that's that's the

russian mentality to training um russians don't leave it all on the platform you when you see their first second and third attempts like everything looks pretty easy for them they have more but the reason why they do that is because they understand that we'll get there. Like let's keep the training safe because if I have an injury, I could be out of training for months. And once you have to get back into training, trying to regain that strength, you already lost some strength because you haven't been able to train. So how about we just train safely, keep the loads fairly conservative but still enough to push ourselves in terms of gaining strength or gaining size if you're a bodybuilder. Just so that we can do this for a long time because the big thing to understand is strength doesn't happen immediately. Strength takes time and you want to be able to be in the game for a long time.

So be smart with your load choices in training and be smart with what you do. Yeah, I wish I could go back and because like the way I train these days, I do not care about numbers. I just I don't care. Back in the day, I'd be like, oh, let me see if I could add up even just a five. And it's like, oh, I got hurt again. So I wish I can go back because now I just train for the stimulus. Like, am I feeling tired? Am I sore? Like, yeah, that feels really good but in

regards to like what you're saying in sema um mark says it all the time like we we practice you know shooting free throws we practice every other sport but we don't practice lifting right we just like oh i can bench press and i'm gonna go for a pr it's like well how about we practice and let's get the feeling down right right? Like, come on now. Yeah, no, it takes a lot of practice. I mean, powerlifting in general, it takes a lot of practice. And you're trying to, whether you're trying to build muscle or you're trying to get stronger, you're trying to send a very specific message to your body.

Did you do enough work for the day? Was there some sort of variable in there that, there's so many different ways you could do it. You do not have to lift heavy. There's going to have to be an intensity there somewhere though. There's going to have to be something there that challenges your body, that encourages your body to either lay down some more muscle mass or to get stronger. either lay down some more muscle mass or to get stronger. But there's so many different ways that you can do all that. So even just having shorter rest periods, you can probably use like, fuck, I don't know, 50%, maybe even 30% of the weight, like 30% of some of the weights you're used to.

If you're doing them in a circuit and now you're challenged by trying to breathe in between the sets, it changes everything. If you give that a shot, you'll see how... I did some sprint work on the bike the other day. In between the sprint work on the bike, I did some slant board squats holding a kettlebell. Jeez. Dude, it was really challenging. Just the yellow kettlebell. Was that way 30 pounds or something like that? Wasn't heavy. Um, and I was like, I'm going to do, you know, set of 10 squats. Every time I get off the bike, the sprints were done for 15 seconds. They weren't even like all full out, but they were like at like an eight out of 10.

And, uh, I did 10 reps on the first set. the second set i did eight reps and the third set i did six reps and i was like oh my god and i think i did about five sets of it um i was able to keep the six reps in there but yeah no it i mean shit it worked really good so there's so many different ways to kind of get that stimulus there's a lot and especially uh you know outside of the context or even in the context of powerlifting, this can go for both. What you're talking about right there, that's a great way for an athlete to build different levels of conditioning with some load, right? You go on the bike. You do a sprint for 15 seconds.

You get off the bike. You give yourself maybe every time you get off the bike, you give yourself about 60 seconds before you hit up those 10 sets, 10 reps of snapboard squats. Then you immediately go, you do your sprints again. Give yourself 60 seconds. You can do that for 10 sets. The amount of like capacity you get as far as your fitness level goes up, it's beneficial for you because you're working with weights. You don't have to go out and run. But you get that stimulus of potential increased heart health, increased aerobic capacity.

That's going to be healthy for you to do. And it's not having to go out and run like we talk about and doing that. But these are ways that you can work with weights and it still helps you work towards your goals. There's so many ways to design programs, but it's just, the reason why I'm saying this is because I, it can get some of you guys, you know, if you're on like an upper lower push pull split or whatever, it can get you outside of the strict idea of this is my training split and this is what I do. As in like, you know, I do my low push pull, low push pull, and the next week's the same thing, LPP, LPP, right? But you could sprinkle in two, you know, two 10 minute sessions or actually even three or four 10 minute sessions of conditioning afterwards gains bro and but you're getting that benefit it's like some some i think that the benefit of becoming slightly

better conditioned no matter if you're bulking or trying to gain strength or whatever i feel like that far outweighs um the potential cost in your muscle gain or in the rate of strength gain, because you're still going to gain that muscle. You're still going to gain that rate of strength. It might take a little longer, but the conditioning benefits are just healthier for you. And you're not having to sacrifice any of your training for it. So even though initially, because you've never done it before, you might feel really fatigued and it might hit you a bit.

After a few weeks, you're going to be fine with it and it's going to be just part of what you do. I think it's really funny because a few years ago, people have been really railing on CrossFit. Talk about how there are aspects of it where you're doing these things, you're moving really heavy weights at the top levels. OK. But the concepts behind the way they train, it's actually really healthy. It's really healthy for the person who just wants to be in good shape in a, I hate this word, in a holistic sense, you know, because CrossFitters are muscular. They have good conditioning.

They can run. They can swim. They have all these capacities, and that's extremely impressive. And capacity is what it ends up being all about so if we go back to some of what in sema was saying uh these aren't real maxes you know when you're trying to go heavy and but you're trying to keep things safe again we're kind of not necessarily talking about the competitive power lifter things get a little different when you're competitive power lifter but even still you got to remember uh the greatest of all time ed cone when i asked him about like how many times

he missed missed a weight in training he said never you know old guys he got a tendency to stretch the truth a little bit so we don't know we don't we don't we don't really know but uh the point is is like i've been around powerlifting for a long time, and the best lifters, it was really rare for them to miss a lift. Yeah. Really, really rare. In Stan Efferding's time at Super Training, which wasn't a lot, but he was here for months on end, two different times,

and over the course of maybe like a three-year time span. And I saw him miss one lift. I'm just trying to make sure that's 100% accurate. I saw him miss one lift. He missed a 600-pound bench in training. And he smashed it on the platform. But that was it. I never saw him miss anything else.

him. Uh, but that was it. I never saw him miss anything else. Like we just, when we were choosing weights for him, like in training, we just never, uh, we obviously were picking shit that was heavy. He was moving around heavy, heavy weights. Um, but it was, uh, it was all stuff that was challenging that was going to give his body a good message, but it also, you don't want your body to get like, if you go super heavy and you can have like kind of an overstimulus and you can also end up with, uh, not executing the lift properly. Yes. And you don't want to teach your body bad habits. Uh, I've seen a lot of guys do this. I passed up a lot of guys who were doing this. They just kept their same old form over and over and over again

and i was like i'm gonna i'm like i'm gonna get this guy this guy doesn't know it but i'm gonna catch him because i'm still working on this and he's 80 pounds 100 pounds ahead of me on this lift and that lift but i'm creeping i'm creeping and he doesn't even know it creeping on a come up guys you got to keep your form locked in. I'm sorry. Do you have to go? I got to tell you guys. Do you got to poop?

No, no, no, no, no. For the audience, there's this shirt that we had made, and I think I just got a video of it finalized on a tee. It looks. It's the microdosed shirt. It's the shirt you wore that other day, but it looks fire. Awesome. Oh, God god i can't wait for you guys to see this i think you guys are going to really like it audience i think you

guys are gonna really like it because i i think it's sick um but going back to what email to andrew oh yeah pop it up now well as you do that like in regards to like missing stuff it's it's almost like um it's i know there's calculators, but like it is mathematical, right? Like if you guys like, can you break some of that down for people that don't know? Because myself in the gym, like I've, I've missed way too many lifts, but like, I remember, um, I had, it was a slingshot bench, but I smoked 295 and then 300 was on the bar. And had I just been able to like calculate some of these things, I have hit that too but as soon as i pulled it i'm like oh shit this is 300 pounds and i totally collapsed right like i just fucking fell apart but like if i had looked at it maybe like more mathematically i probably would have got it but like yeah so like what i'm asking is like

can you i want to bench press 500 pounds so So if I, oh, my camera just died. So if I put 315 on the bar and I can bench that X amount of reps, I'll probably get there eventually. Like how easy is it to figure that shit out? There are percentages, you know, you can go off of. But I personally have kind of always liked to, I've liked for athletes to learn it themselves on what their kind of perceived exertion is or their perceived effort in some way. And also just kind of just scale of 1 to 10, like how hard was that?

And is your next lift – is it something that you're pretty positive you're going to be able to do? If you had to, could you maybe sneak it out for two reps? If it starts to get a little iffy – the problem with things getting iffy there's not a problem with missing weights uh the problem is you lead yourself uh you leave yourself very open to injury you leave yourself very open to getting hurt if you miss lifts so i don't really love to see people miss lifts and so i uh i would rather see somebody, I would start somebody out with a particular weight and I would, you know, I would kind of look at it and say, Hey, like, what would you think of that lift? And they would say, yeah, it was like probably like a six or a

seven. It's like, good. Well, let's just, we're going to add weight, but we're only going to add a little bit of weight. We're not going to add a lot of bit of weight. We're going to add like a five to each side or a 10 to each side. The newer that you are, the lighter the weight that you have to choose to add to the bar. Because if somebody's squatting 600 pounds and they go to 620 pounds, it's quite easy for them to do a 20 pound jump. But if you have 300 pounds on the bar and then you go to 320 pounds, that's,

that represents a much larger percentage. And so you got to be even more careful the newer that represents a much larger percentage. And so you gotta be even more careful the newer that you are to these things. But there's, I just don't think there should be really any doubt whether you're going to make the lift or not. I agree with you. I think in that mindset is really, is really important to understand. Like if you're about to touch a weight and you've never touched anything close to it and you're really skittish about it, that's probably a sign that you shouldn't touch it. But there are equations that can give you a pretty good understanding within a two to five rep max.

And if you do a one rep max, or if you're not a one rep max, but let's say you deadlift 500, in your mind, if you know, like, ooh, I could have done two more reps, so you could have done 500 for three, that means that maybe you could have done maybe 530 for a single, 530 or 540 for a single. But things get iffy for most people when you go above five reps or above a five rep max. Because when you start to do something for six or something for 10 um that is not reflective now of your one rep max strength that is reflective around your ability to uh recover and do rep after rep after rep this is why bodybuilders like we were just talking about tom plants did 525 for 23 but the one rep max strength of tom platts like i think 525 for 23 if you put that into one of those calculators it

would be like oh your your squat max is 680 but i think tom platts's best was somewhere into like six or very low sixes because he had really good ability to rep things out as bodybuilders do because bodybuilders typically do very high rep stuff includingerding, but their ability to exude single rep max strength is not shown with reps. That's why a safe two to five rep max, and there are calculators out there where you could type in and figure out what your one rep max is, that will give you a pretty good understanding of where your one rep max strength is. But once you get over that five rep max, you're getting into iffy territory with the data

that you're going to get back. reps maybe can be looked at it's not as easy as this as uh relying more on the muscular system and the single reps and doubles and triples and power lifting stuff could be looked at as more of the firing of the central nervous system okay drive yeah i just i wanted to ask because you know you had thrown out some percentages like saying like I'm never going to maybe go over 80 percent. It's like it's for some people it is difficult because like I'm like, fuck, I don't like I currently don't know what my max is. When I was following Jesse Burdick's program, it would call for like 60 percent of your one rep max of this or that plus change. Like it was like very convoluted. But then as like I look at like when i've you know calculated

i always ask somebody to do it for me because i couldn't figure this shit out myself but when i would i'd be like huh all right i'm gonna do like a set of three of like 95 pounds or whatever like it was like very very little and i was like this is too easy so i always had to like push it up but then when it came to the big you know like okay we're going to actually do like a double i'd always fail so like it was really hard for me to figure things out because percentage wise the light stuff was too light and then the heavy stuff was too heavy and this is why um when when let now let's talk context of power lifting sport in a new power lifter it is a good idea to figure out your three to five rep max with one or two reps left in the tank. Meaning, for example, on a squat, let's say that you're figuring out your

max and you slowly work up yourself up to a weight of 275. And then you do 275 for three reps. And you could have done one more, but you stopped at 275 for three. Could have done one more but you stopped at 275 for three could have done one more you know you had one rep left in the tank that would put your max out around 305 to 3 315 right and then everything in your training block can now be set off of the percentages of your proposed one rep max of 305 to 315 pounds so 80 of 315 70 of 315 but you don't have to touch 315 to set everything up because you have a percentage of that projected one rep max based off of your three to four to five rep max. That's how you can get these things set up. But if a lifter never does that, then they don't really know. They have to then, if they don't know how to do that, then they have to then actually go try to touch 315 and and test these weights which is not a safe thing that's why three to five rep max are a safe way to

figure that out jim wendler wrote the book uh 531 and there's a lot of great information in there and he's he's very like uh meticulous about being cautious he wants people to be really cautious he's kind of almost like so what if it's too? He wants you to like start out light and, and, and go on that side of things more often. And then so what you leave the gym and you're like, man, that first exercise, like that kind of sucked. I could have used, I could have used more weight, but I kind of ran out of time and I needed to get to my other movements. That's actually a great day. That's a victory. Just repeat, put that workout on repeat, and next time you go in,

just use a little bit more weight. Check this out. Woo! Coming right off the presses. Yeah, it's like in super fast forward. What the fuck? Hold on. I can't see the play button

because I'm all... You're close to it, Andrew. To the right, to the right. That's the third. Okay, play. Okay, well, bam. Here the right, to the right. That's the third. Okay, play. Okay, we'll ban. Here we go. Hey.

Wow. Look at that. Wow, that looks fancy. That looks cool on the black. That looks great. That looks so good. We got Corey Schlesinger as the Phoenix Sun. You guys remember when we talked about microdosing workouts?

This is the thing. This is going to be our second shirt. Yeah. That looks so good. This is the thing. This is going to be our first, our second shirt. Yeah. Looks so good. That looks fucking dope. What are you thinking? It looks amazing. Yeah.

I was just thinking, yeah, we're talking about microdosing fitness and just kind of microdose. Well, there we go. Microdose it all, you know. Microdose everything. Microdose stretching. Well, there we go. Microdose it all, you know. Microdose everything. Microdose stretching. Microdose just like moving around certain joints, you know, the bend. Just when I've been like on walks and runs and stuff periodically, it sucks, you know, if I'm running and I'm trying to time something. I won't do this, but sometimes when I'm running, I'll just stop and I'll just do some hip hinging. sometimes when I'm running I'll just stop and I'll just do some hip hinging just bend down reach towards my reach towards my toes I might take a moment and stretch yeah and move around a little bit I think that a lot of runners they they won't stop they they don't want to stop but when you're

walking or you're running for excessive periods of time or even standing like we are here if you just think like what's the opposite of what i'm doing currently and i've just been kind of thinking about that more and more and then kind of microdosing uh some stretches and a bunch of other things and i saw you standing on your head yesterday in the gym messing around some different things for your wrists and all that kind of stuff it's just kind of neat yeah no i've been doing a lot of regressions of certain calisthenics movements because you know for a while i've saying, I'm going to be able to do handstand walks. I want to be able to do handstand pushups, a lot of wild calisthenics stuff. But

I wasn't doing it as frequently as I needed to, to make the progress I needed to have as one of my weak points was the amount of strength that my wrists have. So I've been looking up a lot of stuff from this guy, Roy Gold, which we talked about on the podcast before. I've been looking a lot about Ido Portal's work and just digging in on looking for what are the most basic things that I can start progressing to help with all these movements. And one of those is that pose. I don't know exactly what it's called. It's not called a frog, but it's something like it. Mark posted it. But as I was doing that, I was actually able to achieve it within that training session. But when you're in a handstand, you need to be able to rock the

weight because your body is going to be shifting back and forth. And you're going to be feeling that in your hands, your fingers and your wrists. So what this pose was allowing me to do was it was allowing me to put the pressure that I needed to put into my wrists while also because this isn't it's not in this video but my feet came off that platform behind me and i was having to go back and forth on my hands like you would in a handstand so this is like one of the most basic regressions to being able to get me into a walking handstand and having the strength i need in my arms to move out this fucking cow ass that i have my legs outweigh my upper body man that's been one of my challenges in my in high school i wanted to be a i wanted to try break dancing like i wanted to be able to do air flares and shit and all the all the in break dancing club

it was a bunch of asian kids and all these asian kids they were fucking doing flares and shit and i was over here with my big ass like i can't do this i can only pivot off my ass why can't my ass be smaller this back spins all day off your ass so uh yeah man um it's really fun you guys should look up roy gold look up ido portal um it's a lot of fun stuff but these regressions are paying dividends because my wrists are recovering much faster than they used to. I grabbed a hold of our boy Melvin yesterday. Oh, yeah? Mm-hmm. So he was in the gym.

He got a workout in, and then we gave him, we dumped a bunch of work on him yesterday. And then so he was in here working, and then when I was leaving, or when I was about to leave the gym, he was just getting in. He was just trying to, like, warm up. Uh-huh.

And I was like, I know he's going to have some shit workout. If I just leave, he's going to probably have some, you know, he probably would have motivated himself to do something cool. But I was just thinking like, I don't want him to have a shit workout. So I'm like, hey, what are you doing? He's like, not much. Just trying to get warmed up. I was like, follow me. I had him drag the sled back and forth with me.

I had like seven plates on there. Oh, Jesus. Like I went, he went. We just kept going back and forth, back and forth with me i had like seven plates on there oh jesus like i went he went we just kept going back and forth back and forth with like very little rest and and then uh then i see him a few minutes later and he's he's now on the bike and he's doing some like stuff on the bike and i was like i got something for this he just kind of looked at me and he was like and i was like go for a minute and go at a level of like six and then go for

another minute go to level seven and then go for another minute and go at a level eight i was like it's really hard it's only three minutes oh but i was like so i think he gave a shot i don't know talk to him next next time i see him but then i saw him doing some of your kettlebell stuff that you recommended to him so he was he still got after it even after the beating. Melvin's a savage, man. One thing I like, this is an aside, one thing I like about, again, this is the environment that we got here,

just ST in general, is that everyone that ends up coming in here ends up doing fitness. It's not that you tell them to, it's just that they end up being roped in somehow. Owen, Melvin, Ryan's been on his shit. Ryan used to own a gym. But even he, when he came here initially,

he got hella big and he did a powerlifting meet. And then he cut some body weight and now he's just super fit in different ways. It's just everyone ends up transforming even if they're not trying to. It just happens. And it's so cool. I dig it.

Andrew, take us on out of here, buddy. All righty. Thank you, everybody, for checking out today's episode. Please drop your powerlifting questions, powerlifting exercise movements, all that stuff down in the comment section below. And maybe we'll turn that into a future episode. And please subscribe and like today's video if you guys haven't already. Please follow the podcast at MBPowerProject on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. My Instagram, TikTok, and twitter is at i am andrew

z and sema where you at let's see the discord is currently at 1375 we're 25 away from 1400 join the community we got a lot of channels in there we have a uh advice topic request accountability um episode discussion just like the community there is really dope so if you guys want us to talk about something or invite certain guests, obviously comment down below here on YouTube because we look at those. We definitely look at those. And come to the Discord and leave

requests there, ask questions there because we'll get to those and we'll maybe get to them on an episode. Mark? Oh, yeah, Mark. I'm at Mark Smelly Bell. Strength is never weak. This week is never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye. Did you forget to tell people where you were at or what? I know where I'm at.