Mark Bell's Power Project - The Dangers Of Having 6 Pack Abs - Marcus Filly || MBPP Ep. 983

Episode Date: September 13, 2023

In episode 983, Marcus Filly, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about how Marcus found himself focusing on how he looked instead of how he performed and how that lead to poor eating habits. Follow Marcus on IG:https://www.instagram.com/marcusfilly   Official Power Project Website: https://powerproject.live Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw   Special perks for our listeners below! ➢ https://Peluva.com/PowerProject Code POWERPROJECT15 to save 15% off Peluva Shoes!   ➢https://drinkag1.com/powerproject Receive a year supply of Vitamin D3+K2 & 5 Travel Packs!   ➢ https://withinyoubrand.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off supplements!   ➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off all gear and apparel!   ➢ https://mindbullet.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off Mind Bullet!   ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save up to 25% off your Build a Box   ➢ Better Fed Beef: https://betterfedbeef.com/pages/powerproject   ➢ https://hostagetape.com/powerproject to receive a year supply of Hostage Tape and Nose Strips for less than $1 a night!   ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!   ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM   ➢ https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/powerproject to save 15% off Vivo Barefoot shoes!   ➢ 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/PowerProject to receive 10% off our Panel, Check Up Panel or any custom panel!   ➢ Piedmontese Beef: https://www.CPBeef.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://www.PowerProject.live ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject   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   #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast #markbellspowerproject

In college, like, I got objectively a little chubby at one stage. Popped my shirt off. The guy on the team, Damn, Marcus, you're looking a little abdominous. Which was his, you know, his way of saying, like, You're looking a little fat. I just had this perception of myself as not fit. That sent me down a very interesting path of dieting.

Oh, I got lean for the first time, and people are recognizing it, and as compared to what he said to me, it feels better to be recognized as the lean person. It definitely planted a seed that created a monster. How was it negative? Were you like weighing food and being super meticulous? Saw my abs pop for the first time. I was like, oh, OK, this is something. That became the only recipe and the only formula. And then that led to, you know, Oh, what the hell? That was, there was some very problematic with what I did. I had no sense that I was being kind of

pulled and gravitating towards a particular look. And that was impacting all these decisions that I was making small decisions, big decisions, whatever. What's been going on with you? What, what have you been up to? Anything new? Let's see. Did a big travel this past summer with my family, my kids. So I was telling Graham before we got out here, but I haven't left home for longer than seven days or maybe eight days since I had kids. And even before that, I like to be around my routines. So we packed up the kids and we left for a month this past summer. This is like the first, you know, real summer that they had where there was no like school or anything like that. And we went back

East to where my wife is from. Um, so we were kind of just in a rental van, you know, minivan, minivan life, which was pretty sweet. Wow. Yeah. I'll tell you more about that. But, yeah, we were in Massachusetts, Boston area for two weeks. Then we went out to Western Mass, where her parents are from. And then we went up to Maine and just schlepping the kids around, putting them in some camps.

They got to hang with cousins. I got to try and work truly remotely, not not be with, you know, our media team and not be near the gym that I'm used to going to. So getting to train in globo gyms and just like, it was a different thing for me for sure. And it stretched my comfort level, but so many good experiences, memories, things like that getting made with the kids. So go to a local gym and you're like, oh yeah, I forgot about a leg extension machine. Oh yeah, for sure. And how damn cool they kind of can be

or just leg curl. These machines that I think like, some of these things went out of favor and they come back and they kind of go back and forth. Same with the kettlebell and same with some of the stuff that we see now that's popular. It's like it was popular before.

But machines have a ton of usage and they're great. And so sometimes it's kind of nice to go to one of those gyms and just be like, I'm going to go on that machine, that machine, that machine. Exactly. And you know, you asked like what's new going on. That's kind of what's been new in my training. And I think that the time away and visiting different types of gyms just reinforced, like I've been doing so much more machine-based training in the last 12 months. You know, we have, we have a handful of machines at our facility down in, in San Rafael and, um, we're getting more of them and it's like,

yeah, I think, I think the, the audience that I've had for a long time is coming from maybe a CrossFit background or a functional fitness background and where they're – it's not just about like training types anymore. It's not like I'm not talking to people about – look at that. It's not just about like functional training versus bodybuilding and how they can mix together. We talked about that last time I was here because we're functional bodybuilding. But now it's like machines are super functional if you use them thoughtfully. It's like you're building muscle. And my experience in the Globo gym all summer long,

that's actually the gym that we were at, that one right there where I was doing the hanging leg raises. Yeah, what happens when you start to use some of these machines but in conjunction with still doing things that are going to pour into some of your athleticism, your, your athleticism is probably not just going to randomly disappear because you did some preacher curls. No, no, no, no. And if anything, it's like, if you have a foundation of good movement, uh, and you continue to, to work that motor control, movement practice, exploration of movement. And then on top of that, you use tools like machines to stabilize so that you can overload your tissue and grow muscle.

Okay, muscle and strength on top of good movement quality. That's a recipe for functionality and enhanced life. And so I'm hugely a fan of it. But then going to these gyms and seeing that people are only learning movement on machines, they're not learning movement another way, or they're not complementing machine-based training with some other movement practice that gets them to be more aware of their body. They didn't have athletics when they were younger. They didn't do gymnastics. They didn't wrestle.

They didn't play team sport. They didn't develop a way to move. And they're like, okay, I'm going to go into the gym. I'm going to start a routine. And okay, I learned this leg extension. I'm not saying it's bad or wrong. It's just like, you got to learn to squat. Let's learn how to do something that, or, you know, develops your ability to coordinate yourself in space, not just in a fixed position.

Yeah, that factor that is missing is the stability because of all you're doing as machines and you're staying within this fixed range. It's great because like, let's say you're doing a shoulder press. You can come all the way down and come all the way up. For sure. But like when you use dumbbells,

you at least have something now that's causing you to start, oh, oh, oh, it's going this way. Let me stabilize and use my core to keep this going up and down, right? Yeah. So they're great though like they i but i do think they get a better rap because of the lack of stability that people

can gain from it yeah i mean like it gives them stability right but like outside of that do you have the ability to keep stable with other movements yeah it's uh but then the the i think what a lot of people like to do in the fitness industry is they like latch onto a concept and then they just ram it down your throat so much. They're like, oh, that stabilizes you so that you don't build it within your own tissue and your joints. So don't do any of that and come over here and stand on the wobbly board while you're like pressing four different ways and you have five bands attached to you. And I know that's kind of like a meme almost that gets like – It's a person. It's a meme and people laugh at it,

but it's so interesting how these extreme examples that people throw out there actually just permeate like through the whole culture of the gym it's like no no i only use barbells and i only use dumbbells and i'm like why not use a hack squat machine why not use a leg press like why not go and do a preacher curl machine like you don't have to be so binary about this stuff um it's also interesting how people get, they get like territorial and their premise or their theme matters until it doesn't matter, until there's something else cool that they can talk about. So like, for example, somebody might say like, I don't understand all this unstable training. Like, what is this guy doing? But then like Onnit comes out with a bag

that's like full of water and then now that's cool and now they're like wait that's really awesome yeah it's like wait i thought you were shitting on like things being unstable yeah because there is research that shows that when you train off unstable surfaces you don't exponentially get stronger or train the stabilizer muscles in the fashion that you thought that you would but it's foolish of us to science the body and to try to look at stuff under a magnifying glass because we have always found out every single time, every single time in fitness, when you zoom out and you get that 360, 360 degree view of what actually is going on, that there is some sort of adaptation going on to some of the stimulus that you're providing. And if somebody wants to stand on a BOSU ball or somebody wants the ability to stand on one foot

on top of a post that's really narrow to balance and to work on those things and they enjoy that, fucking why not? That's a form of exercise. Are you burning calories? Are you working on your balance? Does that have a transition into you having better balance on one foot and you're on your toes in that particular movement? I'm sure it probably does. Yeah. I thought we were about to start talking about Karate Kid when you were talking about standing on one foot on the post. Yeah, kind of that person. I was so deeply ingrained in this culture of what was CrossFit that I was like, machines suck. They're bad. Don't do them.

And then I started to kind of reevaluate that and maybe start to introduce some things. I think bodybuilding is having this kind of resurgence, like machine-based bodybuilding, like true bodybuilding, thanks to social media and kind of like the Chris Bumsteads and this kind of modern era of bodybuilders. And so much of it being online and like rather than people posting their wads, they're posting their like sets on the hack squat machine and it's viral on TikTok and people really are engaging with that and they're wanting to explore it. And I'm like, okay, yes, this is, there's a lot going on here. I'm, I'm gravitating towards it as well. And I'm like, yeah, by going and practicing it and being in, in spaces, gyms, like the one I was at on the East coast, I'm like, there's so much utility here and we can help, we can continue to help elevate this audience like their understanding of training and how to move better for the long the long haul. Yeah. I think every CrossFitter at some point is probably going to move into doing something different. Right.

Like for sure. I'm not saying that CrossFit is like totally unsustainable but a lot of the movements and a lot of the things that are done in CrossFit because it has like a gymnastics base, it has an Olympic lifting base. It's really not normal to see people in older ages sometimes still performing gymnastics moves, although that would be great. And it's not normal to see people doing Olympic lifts

sometimes later in their life. And again, that would be great. And those are things you should probably explore. And they're things you should probably work on. But the majority of your training will probably start to switch over to things that are just more comfortable and a little easier to get to. Yeah. And that have more efficacy in the real goal, which is to build and sustain muscle and strength.

And then something that helps you to maintain coordination, balance and athleticism. And if you have those two things going, then that's, I think a recipe for a lot of, you know, longevity. Curious about this.

You, um, you already had the functional bodybuilding stuff going on for quite a few years. And then I noticed like we had Ben Patrick here and then you started doing some things with him. What did you learn from like, and maybe what are some concepts that you took away from the way he did things that maybe you weren't doing before? Or was there a lot of through line with both of the things that you guys were showing as far as training is concerned?

I think, yeah, it's interesting. Like you had been on the podcast a number of years ago and it was right around the same time that I started like DMing him. podcast a number of years ago and it was right around the same time that I started like DMing him and he was so enthusiastic and engaged with like with me beyond any level that I would have anticipated from somebody who was just like cold I was cold DMing or I tagged and something um but yeah he certainly influenced me a lot and what I think captured my attention early on with him was this idea of like, Hey, we're here to simplify things down to the most effective and fundamental parts of training that are going to have the greatest impact, which I really was in a, I was deeply interested in at the time.

Cause I think I had been doing hyper specialized stuff to try and get really good at a few, very, you know, a handful of skills. You're talking about CrossFit still? Maybe. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. No, yeah. That's what I'm talking about. I was like very, I mean, CrossFit's this broad, general, you know, fitness concept. However, at the sport level, it's very specialized in a lot

of ways. So I was, I was now three or four years removed from that, trying to do things like, okay, what are the best parts of the functional training and bodybuilding world that people can use repeatedly that are going to be effective? And then I would say, so I was kind of trying to simplify things, make it more accessible. And then Ben was like, I'm going to simplify it way more and make it way more accessible, right? Kneeability zero. I was like, geez, it just totally takes my thinking and extends it. Yeah, the zero program.

Who the fuck wants to buy something that's worth nothing? He's a genius. The zero program. Yeah. I want you guys to imagine that you're wearing a cast on your hand and you're going through your whole day with this cast hand. Well, because your fingers don't move, your hand will start to become stiff, weak, and that'll work its way up your arm. That's the same thing that happens when you wear these damn shoes. OK, sorry to curse, but it's frustrating because these shoes that have a narrow toe box, although they look nice in their Nikes, narrow toe box.

So your toes can't move. They're not flat, so your foot is in this weird thing and it's not getting stronger. And they're not flexible, so they don't move and your foot just moves like this all day, which means your feet are getting weaker. That's why we partnered with Vivo Barefoot Shoes. They have a bunch of shoes for the gym and casual shoes, but the thing about these shoes is that they are wide, they are flat, and they are flexible.

So your foot can do what it needs to do, and it can get stronger over time. That's going to allow you to be a better, stronger athlete. Andrew, how can they get them? Yes, that's over at VivoBarefoot.com slash PowerProject. When you guys get there, you'll see a code across the top. Make sure you use that code for 15% off your entire order. Again, VivoB barefoot.com slash power project links in the description as well as the podcast show notes throw these away watch the

watch the camera um and then investing a lot of time and energy into like all of the systems the training plans the the progressions that he had, you know, building up to his standards. I realized like, okay, after some time now, now I'm just getting, I'm getting re engaged in this process of like, I want to get hyper good at one, this, this thing, which is his system, which I was like, okay, that's, that's problematic in the same way this was problematic. Like do I need to build, you know, up to the elite, you know, level of Nordics, you know, and spend two days a week

working on that. And then I'm like, now I'm just trying to be the pro ATG guy. And it's like, well, that I just saw the commonality in what I had done previously. So, um, I was actually a question I asked your brother was like, Hey, you had a lot of success in helping your knees get stronger and healthier through his ATG system. What are you still in? And he's like, Oh, I had a lot of success in helping your knees get stronger and healthier through his ATG system. What are you still in? And he's like, oh, I had a ton of success. My knees feel great. And I'm like, well, what are you doing now that you still attribute to that?

He's like, oh, I'm doing slant board squats and sled. I'm like, okay. So his system has 12, 15 things in it, right? And you've picked the two that really make the biggest impact for you, and you're going to keep them for probably ever. However long you need, yeah. Yeah, however long, yeah. I mean, he'll probably add a couple more things in if his knees start hurting again,

but if he maintains that, then that's going to be the minimal effective dose for him to have strong knees, but then pursue fitness the way he wants to, whether it's I want to keep muscle mass, I want to do something else. So that's, again, where I'm at now with, you know, how do I use these tools in a way that doesn't consume my thinking and like, okay, I'm going to be the best, you know, at this thing, but I want to, I want to build muscle. I want to be strong. I want to have a good aesthetic and I can't dedicate 10 hours a week to HEG, but I can do slant board squats. I can do ATG split squats.

I can do some reverse sledding and I can, you know, I can focus on my Nordics, you know, once a week or once every two weeks and maintain that. And wow, it really keeps my knees strong and allows me to go and squat heavy

and do hack squats and do leg extensions and, you know, build my upper body and feel really good about it. Gotcha. Andrew, see if you can bring up that clip. I would love to get your, some of your perspective and your thoughts on kind of what's said here from

Mark Ripito. He is operating far, far below his capacity in the weight room. And none of that constitutes a stress to which an adaptation must take place. An adaptation to anything. He's not helping his balance. He's not helping his neck. He's not helping shit. No.

And on the other hand, what would help him? Putting 200 pounds on his squat would tighten everything up, make everything stronger, make his neck more injury-proof, make his knees more injury-proof, make his back more injury proof, make his back more injury proof, because now the whole column of muscle from the floor to the top of the head is stronger. And all you have to do is squat and deadlift and press. What would? I love Rupert's health. He's amazing. You know, they are showing clips of like Joel Seidman, but let's kind of forget about that for a moment and just a little bit more on, you know, what Coach Ripito was talking about there.

Just what are some things that come to your mind and have you found that to be true with yourself that if you improve some of those kind of standard lifts, squats and so forth. Did it help you become a better athlete, or have you seen that help a lot of other athletes? I mean, it's, God, there's things about what he said that really resonate. Like, okay, there's truth there. And then I don't know who that athlete was, but... NFL player. Yeah, like he's clearly a good athlete he's built up a strong base

he doesn't need to add any weight to his strong base i think that's a key word right yeah like yeah there there's a point to which it's like okay yeah the the core three lifts are impactful and they can take people and build a tremendous amount of foundational strength and then at some point it's like what there's for the vast majority of people, even high level athletes, like you do not need to get stronger. You need to be able to feel like you can take that strength and use it in different ways,

apply it to different circumstances, apply it to your sport. Like that NFL player has no business trying to improve their squat bench or deadlift at all or press beyond where they're already at. It's like now take that strength and that athleticism and go enhance it for the specific sport. I'm not saying that that's the way to do it. I don't really know Joel's methods and how they maybe impact that athlete. But that athlete needs to do some resistance training and stay engaged.

And if they feel like that is one motivating, inspiring, they, they do it like, then I think it's great. I think for really getting away from like elite athletes, because Joel shows so many of his high level athletes that perform in like elite sports,

they're the best players in the world. Like that's not everyday people. So the everyday person, absolutely. Like use the bench or press squat deadlift to build, players in the world like that's not everyday people so the everyday person absolutely like use the bench or press squat deadlift to build a foundation of strength and then at some point like if you can squat you know one and a half times your body weight for 10 reps like but i don't think you need to go a lot heavier than that yeah Yeah, check. And then what's going to allow you to just stay engaged with that muscle mass, that tissue, and express it in new ways? Like that to me is what long-term fitness and long-term resistance training should be like for most people.

So, yes, Ripa Toe is like use these tools to build a foundation. like use these tools to build a foundation. And once the foundation is there, and I don't believe the foundation is, you know, a double body weight back squat or a two and a half body weight dead lift. Like these are elite numbers that people don't need. Like they need to be able to squat their body weight for 10 reps. Like you can do that, put a bar on your back. That's your body weight. Do it for 10 reps. You are strong, probably strong enough. And now what are other ways that are going to keep you engaged, allow you to take that strength, explore different movements, keep it fun and do it for many, many, many years to come. I saw Paul Pierce, you know, he's a retired basketball player, probably,

probably a hall of famer, um, lining up on a deadlift the other day and he was setting up to deadlift five plates on a trap bar deadlift he was trained by Ron the guy that anyway he was he was training with with a group of friends and they were all lifting five plates and he started to try to do it and it wasn't going anywhere and then he wanted to try it again they're like paul like no like don't don't don't he tried it again he he wasn't able to do it but point there being again there's a guy who had a really strong base he probably didn't necessarily need to you know lift 500 or 600 pounds to make more progress in the sport that he was in i would imagine that most of the people that he probably played against they weren't like oh my god he's so fucking weak i can't even believe it meanwhile he scored 34 points on somebody you know so i doubt that people were you know really uh noticing that he wasn't uh wasn't able to do

a 500 pound trap bar deadlift right yeah i mean that how and again i i just think in terms of like most people because i'm not training elite athletes. It's, you know, the amount of weight you can lift is so irrelevant to your, you know, like your absolute maxes. It's so irrelevant to probably how you feel, but also like how people perceive you and how you show up in your life. how people perceive you and how you show up in your life. Um, doesn't mean that we shouldn't be measurable about like expressing strength and how much, you know, trying to progressively overload and get strong, but chasing, chasing big numbers and PRs and RMs, like one RMs, um, and, and being hyper-focused on like, let's add 200 pounds to your squat or let's add a hundred pounds to your squat. It's like, that's just a arbitrary number. Like, I don't know that that actually equates to

your satisfaction, your health and your wellness. Uh, and I will also say that one of my, one of my guiding principles too, is what, what's going to set somebody up so that they can go into any physical environment and express themselves to their maximum safely. So expressing yourself maximally, being able to give full effort, feel confident that you can do it without blowing out your hip or your spine. People who walk through life and they're constantly like, oh, I don't want this. My goal is to get you to a place where you walk into most environments and you're like, I'm resilient enough to just go for it. Um, but that doesn't, that's not the same

thing as me saying, Hey, we should go to the gym with the sole purpose or the goal of trying to raise the bar and the maximum of what you can do. It's just enter into an environment that at your current level of fitness, you feel like you can go and do it hard and push yourself and you're going to walk away totally fine. Let me ask you this, man. I know that fitness is what you do. It's your lifestyle. It's probably your family's lifestyle also, right? What are some daily habits, maybe daily non-negotiables, not on the nutrition side, but maybe on the movement side of things that you think anybody can try to adopt into their lifestyle and gain some benefit from, from the person who's just getting into this to the elite

level athlete? What are some things that you think they should just try to implement into their daily habits as far as movement's concerned? Yeah. What are some things you maybe even did on your vacation? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think two things. Be really, well, pay attention to where you're spending the most hours positionally in your day. So I don't think people actually put a very, they're not empirically driven on this one. They don't have like a number associated with like, I spend X number of hours sitting. Okay. It's fine. If you, if this is your job, this is your

life. This is what you do. You're in this position. Let's evaluate one, the magnitude of how, how that's impacting you. Like how many hours, what's the, you know, you, you're actually in your, your seat for eight hours a day. Okay. That's going to be like a key indicator. Like this is where most of my movement problems or successes is coming from. If I'm sitting down all day and years down the line, I'm having low back pain, I'm having knee pain. Okay, we can trace that back to how you spend the majority of your time. So if you can be very objective about looking at

where you spend most of your time and then trying to optimize whatever that looks like to add in either movement breaks or better ergonomics or whatever you know, whatever, right? It's like, okay, I sat for eight hours today. Let me just try and make sure that every 50 minutes I stand up for five. Or, you know, you create some practice that helps there. So that's a movement.

I mean, you asked for movements. That's more like evaluate where you spend most of your time and then how are you actually moving or postured in those hours of the day. That for me was pretty impactful years ago when I recognized it was like my job is not standing on my feet and coaching people in person anymore. people in person anymore. Like I'm behind a computer screen and my life could easily become quote unquote sedentary because I'm the, my, my working hours are mostly at a computer and typing things. So I'm no different than somebody who's working at desk job, even though I'm in the fitness industry, I'm spending a lot of time behind a computer. So how can I just make these six hours a day that I'm behind the computer or four to six hours and I'm behind the computer. How can I make that more movement oriented?

It's standing up. It's these little things underneath my feet, the things that you guys have under your feet. It's having little gripper, you know, gripper. That's not the 300 pound easy access stuff that just sits here. No one closes easy access stuff.

Like a lot of things and trip tips and tools that i've like picked up from you know kelly and juliet over the years how they approach like fidgeting and even your uh treadmills outside in the sun yeah probably encouraging for you to go out there and just like at least start walking because you're like i probably you know want to get some sunlight in the morning yeah that was been that's been a huge thing that i've changed in the last probably 18 months is that I got a little desk to put on my curved treadmill, and I pop my computer on there.

And if I have a meeting that's with my team and people I'm comfortable around, I will take a meeting while I'm walking. And it's not optimal for taking notes and being really hyper-focused on details, but it's also a great way to get ideas and creativity flowing. So, you know, taking meetings like that, that has changed kind of, Oh, I've, I've got three hours of meetings today. I'm going to be moving for probably two of those hours on a treadmill and getting some steps. How do you set that up by the way? Because a lot of people do work from home. So, I mean, there are going to be probably some people that are like,

I could maybe do this. What's your setup look like? Or what does a setup look like? Yeah, the setup is the two that work are I have a curved runner, so like the assault runner. Yeah. And then there's a company that sells, they're called ErgDesk, and they sell like a platform that just goes right on top,

and then it's got a little strap that you anchor it, and you can walk. You can't run with it because your arms would hit it, but you can walk, and it fits a laptop or it fits an iPad if you're going to watch something or whatever. That, for me, is super easy. And at my house, my home office is right right next to the garage and it's right there. So I will be at my home office. I'll be typing and then I'll just pick up my laptop, go in, plug in, and I'm going.

And it's like a, yeah, it's a pretty sweet setup. I've got the nice light so people can see me. The other way is the standing desk that people have. They sell little walking pads. You know, there's pretty decent ones. They're not totally inexpensive, but for under $300, you can get a walking pad They sell little walking pads. There's pretty decent ones. They're not totally inexpensive, but for under $300, you can get a walking pad that you can put underneath your desk. And you can even walk at a very slow pace on those things and still type and still do. If you have a portion of your workday where you're not doing something that's hyper-focused It's like, maybe you're just checking emails or you're doing some data entry or you're doing the thing that like you can,

you can do that. Um, so those are kind of my two approaches for, for getting people set up with them that I wanted. Now going to the East coast, especially going to Massachusetts, there is some amazing food out there. Oh my God, yeah. Did you enjoy the amazing food or how'd you work that out? Yeah. One of the things that bonded me and my wife when we met was food. And we were foodies and traveling. Any place we'd travel was about engaging in the food culture. Before I met her, when I was in my early 20s, coming out of college, when I had done like extreme restrictive bodybuilding type dieting, you know, I really, I think it was not a healthy place that I was at at the time, but I gravitated towards like food network.

Like, okay, how do I like now really explore the culinary world? And I was, you know, big into it it so food has always been an anchor point um and so i have kind of arrived a place now where it's like okay i know that i need to eat a certain way to feel good and be sharp and to look the way i want to look and to perform the way i want to look but there's absolutely room for indulgent great food and i make it very intentional like we were in Boston and we went to the North End and we went to Regina's Pizzeria and we got you know coal-fired pizza and I ate the whole thing it was like this I'm here for this this is what I'm doing like we're in Maine we're driving through Portland Maine we're stopping at Nick's and we're getting

lobster rolls like that's happening okay you said lobster rolls I was like okay yeah it's and we're getting lobster rolls. That's happening. You said lobster rolls. I was like, okay, cool. The last one was we went to Fenway. I'm like, I'm at Fenway. I'm getting the Fenway Franks and I'm doing the whole thing here. Making sure to the other one is the North End, the pastries, the

cannolis. Blanking on the name, but doing the little Italy dessert thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, we absolutely indulged. But I was still, we're at an Airbnb, and I'm still getting my Instacart order from Costco, which had meat, eggs, dairy, vegetables, fruit. You can Instacart Costco?

Yeah. What? And you don't need a membership. I have one, but I just didn't realize I could Instacart Costco. If you have the membership, you get a little bit of a price break, but you can Instacart Costco for sure. That's amazing. Which we arrived.

We flew in. We didn't get to our house, our Airbnb, until like 10 p.m. when we arrived, and the Costco order is there because I Instacart ahead of time. And so we had food all set up, and yeah, we do that. That's a big hack. You've got to Instacart to your Airbnb. Probably a lot of walking too, I'd imagine. Tons of walking, yeah. Every day I would get up before – it was kind of fun.

Oh, there we go. That's me walking on the treadmill. That's the setup. Wow. Yeah, in Massachusetts during the summer because I had not been to New England during the summer like that. The sun was coming up at 445. Oh, shit.

It was like getting kind of bright. We didn't have like the blackout curtains because it's not our place. But I was like, okay, I'm kind of bright we didn't have like the blackout curtains because it's not our place but i was like okay i'm kind of up i'm put on i put on my i traveled with my 20 pound go ruck uh plate carrier and that went in my carry-on which is now going to be a staple for all travel going forward semo is traveling with his kettlebell yeah yeah so i put that on and then we would uh the other cool thing about staying in Boston was that like, you know, for as long as I've, most of my life, I've never lived in like a real urban area. Like I always live in the suburbs. I live kind of far from things, but like walk out of our Airbnb

and we're like on kind of the main, you know, main, main roads, like Massachusetts Avenue. And I'm like, okay, I got my pack on. There's a cool walking path. I can walk, you know, 40 minutes this way to a Starbucks, grab a coffee, walk home, like, and I'm home before the kids are up. And then I'm helping them with breakfast. And, you know, we start our day. So there was tons of walking that happened. Yeah. When it comes to like the movement and the habits that you were just talking about, if somebody's already low on energy and they may be, they're like in a little bit of pain, what's some of your advice

for kind of getting them to like get started? Because, you know, I recommend people like, oh, just move a little bit more, do whatever, you know, when it's like, well, I would, but my back hurts

or I'm already tired and you want me to get more tired. So I'm just curious how you would approach that. I mean, I think I've heard you talk about this too. It's like, you know, you don't have to start with something big. And I try not to overwhelm people with like quantity. It's like, and give them sort of the encouragement and approach from this, the standpoint of

a little bit of movement is going to actually give you back more energy. You're not going to actually give you back more energy. You're not going to deplete yourself, but it depends on the type of movement that you're choosing. Hey, go out and got to get some movement and go like hit this 15 minute, like high intensity thing. It's like, that's probably going to knock somebody out. That's already low energy. And it's also going to be really intimidating because they're already in pain or they feel vulnerable. They're vulnerable. So the least – the most vulnerable person who's low on energy, this is where the walking is huge. And I like the idea of adding weight to the walking because it makes it seem like, oh, it's more than just walking.

Because even somebody who hears walking because it's the best thing for them, they're like,, that's more than just walking. Because even somebody who hears walking, because it's the best thing for them, they're like, I can't get fit just walking. It's like, oh, but you could put a pack on that weighs 20 pounds. So actually, when I drop my kids off now, now both of our kids are going to the same school, which is sweet, because it's just one drop-off instead of two. I drop them off, you know, my youngest, who's only four, she's like, uh, carry my backpack. And I'm like, Oh no, daddy has his own backpack.

And I pull my, my pack out of the, out of the trunk. And she's like, Oh, okay. And so she's got to carry hers. We all carry ours. And we'd walk up into the school and I dropped them at their class. I make sure to park a little further away. Um, and, uh, I'll come back to the, they have a really cool thing that they do for movement for the kids in the morning, but I have my plate carrier on. And then just walking back to the car today, one of the parents was like, Oh, that's a cool backpack. She's like, is that what, is that like a weight? I was like, I was like, yeah, it's a, it's actually just a weight. It's not a backpack. There's no, there's no like compartment for anything. And I was like, she's like, oh, that's cool. And it makes it harder.

I was like, well, it's just, you know, a little something to add to your walks and make it feel more like fitness. And she's like, oh, that's cool. And I'm like, oh, yeah. And I've been doing this kind of on and off for the last 20 years because I probably got my first like weighted vest when I was in college. Yeah. You know, at 19 years old. It was called the X-Vest and it was like big on T-Nation. And I was like, oh, this is the coolest thing. It was like the new

advanced one. Thing was super uncomfortable. Broke down after like, it was so fast. I was like, oh, and yeah, they're actually a lot more robust now. They last a lot longer. She's like, oh, I'm going to go check it out tonight. I was like, did I just influence somebody? I'm an influencer. Is the GoRuck plate carrier just super comfortable or something?

Oh my God. Versus all the ones you've tried so far? I mean, I've gotten sponsored by GoRuckuck here but i got a lot of their products and all of the all their packs that have built in like uh slots to put plates are really really phenomenal and comfortable so um but the plate carrier i i was like intrigued by because i'm like you know they have these packs. They're like backpacks with a plate that you put in them. But I'm like I'm not really going anywhere where I need to put stuff in my backpack. I just want the weight.

And the way that one sits is, yeah, exceptional. And then if you are going to do some fitness stuff in it, you're going to do like pull-ups or whatever. It stays on your body well. It probably doesn't hit you in the face or anything like that right yeah and they have um you know they got the different weights so like i actually they've got a 10 pound weight that you put in there when you put the 10 pounder on it kind of almost feels like you don't have anything on so i was like well maybe i could try running with this but i haven't really dipped my toe into that i like this because i have the rogue tac tech tech vest thing and it has one in the front, one in the back. But like, I like this because there's nothing kind of covering the front. Exactly. Yeah. TRT. It's a popular topic. A lot

of guys are hopping on it. It's something that we've talked about a lot and you might think you're a candidate, but how would you know if you haven't got your blood work done and you don't know where your markers are? That's why we've partnered with Merrick Health owned by Derek from More Plates, More Dates. And the cool thing about Merrick is you't got your blood work done and you don't know where your markers are? That's why we partnered with Merrick Health owned by Derek from More Plates, More Dates. And the cool thing about Merrick is you'll get your blood work done and you'll also have a patient care coordinator that can help you analyze your blood work, analyze your testosterone, all these other markers to help you actually figure out if you're someone who needs TRT. Because there could be things that you could be doing nutritionally with supplements or even with your lifestyle that can boost your testosterone to the levels that they should actually be at.

Andrew, how can they get their hands on it? Yes, that's over at MerrickHealth.com slash PowerProject. And at checkout, enter promo code PowerProject to save 10% off the PowerProject panel, the checkup panel, or any individual lab that you select. Again, that's at MerrickHealth.com slash PowerProject. Promo code PowerPro project at checkout. Links in the description as well as the podcast show notes. I said I was going to mention the thing about the school and I just want to make a shout out to this, my kids' elementary school. They have something that they call in motion every morning. So the kids arrive and at 8.40 is when school officially starts. But at 8.20, they've got on the blacktop, they've got music bumping,

like all kinds of like contemporary jams. And the kids love it. Everyone loves it. And there's parents and there's just a circle and people are walking. And it's like kids walking by themselves with their friends parents walking with them and then at 8 40 the p teacher uh mr malone comes out and he does it's like a 20 minute

like everyone welcome and they have like a choreographed like song and dance and he does these moves where he's like touching his toes and like getting kids to move and like everyone's into it and the kids love it and parents join in. And it's like, wow, if somebody arrived at eight 30 from eight 30 to, to nine, they were moving, they were saying positive things about like how they're going to attack their day. Like I'm going to respect myself. I'm going to respect my school. I'm going to respect my friends. Like I'm like, you know, it just gets me kind of fired up. So that happened, you know, it happens for me every,

every time I drop them off. It's pretty fun. That's awesome. So you mentioned, you know, like you all carry your backpacks. So what are some other habits that have split that you do that have spilled over into your kids' lives? Cause that's like how we kind of do things at my house too, where we normalize like fitness and we normalize eating correctly or however we deem that to be true. So I'm just curious, like if anything else has spilled over and your habits spilled over into their lives. I'm starting to see it in my six-year-old now. Um, she is really proud that she can do a pull-up and that she can do multiple pull-ups and there's reinforcement that's coming in from different places so i um i've said like i don't know i mean it wasn't like

a forced thing but she sees her mom and her dad doing this and then she's done some gymnastics and so she knows that like hanging from the bar is like a thing, you know, it's, you know, and there's advanced gymnastics skills, but she's kind of focused on this pull-up thing. And, um, when we're in the gym, we're in the garage and, you know, she says, oh, can I do a, do this thing? I'm like, oh, have you done your pull-up yet? And so she's like, that's kind of becoming a thing where she goes and gets up there and her little sister sees it and she wants to try, uh, just having things to hang from in the house, like having rings that are available to them. Um, but then the other day she was in the, uh, you know, afterschool program and, uh, the, I walked in to pick them up and the, you know, one of the teachers or, you know, uh, people taking care of them was like, I walked in and she was like, Oh my God, no, it's so amazing.

And I've never actually spoken to this particular, like, you know, teacher before. And I was like, Whoa, like what, what happened? He's like, she did four pull-ups and she was, he was like going nuts. And so they, they saw that. And there was like this, uh, recognition of like, Oh, you're super strong. Like you can do four, like they pushed her to like go to failure on a set of pull-ups. So that's one area. And then the other day we were at one of my daughter's like photo shoot day for soccer,

which is cute and also- Best sport in the world. I'm the assistant coach this year. There you go. Which is wild. New things happening. I'm gonna assistant coach this year. There you go. Which is wild. New things happening. I'm going to talk about that. Tough to coach six-year-old girls at this point.

But my youngest is getting her photos taken, and we're all just sort of sitting around idle, you know? And one thing I've kind of gotten really – paid a lot of attention to is that a lot of parents go to these kids activities and they just sit while their kids are running around and getting all their energy out. And so I know it's not always conducive depending on the age of the kid. Like you can't just be like, okay, here you go. I'm going to go and, you know, go for a run or something like that. But my daughter, my older daughter knows that I like to walk. And so she came up to

me and we were just waiting for my youngest to be even just like start the photo shoot process, which is like an hour long thing. She's like, daddy, can we go for a walk? I was like, oh my God. Yes, absolutely. We walked around this field, you know, 30 minutes, and she wanted to hold my hand. I was like, okay. And then we got back, and she's like, okay, I'm going to go run up in the hills. I was like, go for it. So those are just two other areas that it's kind of showing up. Yeah, I think when I see families traveling,

I always see the kids trying to lug around those backpacks and stuff. The kid is super small, but the kid wanted to bring a lot of crap with them. We did that with my kids as well where it's like you can bring as much stuff as you want, but you're going to be hauling it around yourself. I'm not hauling around your shit on top of the shit that I have. They were actually troopers with that. We got them the backpacks that had the little, they're like roller bags too. And they were great on the trip.

They always took care of their own stuff, but we accumulated a lot of things on the trip, so we had to ship some boxes back home from Massachusetts. How many? Oh, go ahead. I was going to say, where did your journey start? You know, like when you were younger, I'm imagining because you're super lean,

you're one of the leaner people that we ever have on the show. You're completely shredded all the time. I would imagine that you started out maybe on the thinner side. And so like around how much did you weigh when you started? And did you find that it was beneficial

to start to learn some compound movements and chase a little bit after strength just to put some size on? Yeah. Well, actually, I think I wouldn't say I was on the smaller side. I mean, I was – I guess you'd call me a mesomorph even when I was younger. Like I wasn't on the ectomorph side of things. And actually in college, like I think I was – I got, you know, objectively a little chubby at one stage. Even though I was playing sports and I was pretty active, I had this like period of time in sophomore year where I injured my hand. I tore this ligament. I was a goalkeeper

at, you know, in college. And so I basically was like sideline, but still living like the, you know, I was eating, like I was training 20 hours a week. And, um, I got kind of in what was like more or less the worst shape I had been in, in years. And, um, there was a pivotal moment that happened, you know, in, it was, uh, we were at the end of the fall season and I was just coming back to like, okay, I can play again. I was like, you know, moving again. We did, we had something called the scrub cup uh which was um you know friday game sunday game saturday game that sounds dirty i think we all assume that sounded dirty right here it comes i'll get the explanation but okay the team played friday and sunday and we had a roster of 20 22 you know players right with reserves you know maybe 13 guys played in the game

and those same 13 guys were going to play on sunday and so on saturday they just did a little like flush the other eight of us our coaches were like you guys got a scrimmage hard today so we we would you know affectionately call it the scrub cup we were the scrubs of the team okay and it was like okay so we're we just wrapped up scrub cup, getting water, popped my shirt off. The guy on the team, Ryan Swantech, is like, damn, Marcus, you're looking a little abdominous, which was his way of saying,

you're looking a little fat. Abdominous. Abdominous. That's different. Which was the first time in my life, that moment where I was like, whoa, I just had this, like this perception of myself as not fit. I never really looked at my body and been like, oh, you know, you're kind of smooth. You're kind of like, or you're, you're ripped. Like I didn't, I just, I trained when I was younger, I trained through high school and, you know, love to lift weights. I wanted to get stronger. I didn't know about squatting deep. I

didn't know about how to deadlift properly, but I did a lot of stuff. And, um, but it wasn't for like vanity. It was like, I wanted to be muscular. Like I want to build muscle, but I had no like real concept of any of this. And then that was like a crazy wake up, you know, or not wake up, but I created a monster. He did. It's like, that's where you started. It created a monster, which was my college experience. Uh, thereafter was vastly different from a fitness, nutrition perspective than it probably would have been had he never said that to me. And it just so happened that at that time, I was really launching into this idea of weight training to build strength and athleticism. Because Division I athletics weight training programs are pretty standardized around the country. At least they were at the time. It was like you bench squat deadlift. You learn how to power clean. We learn how to power snatch. I was at UC Berkeley. They

had a great strength conditioning program. So I was starting to get into that. Um, but then the seed got planted of like, Hey, you're, you're not, you're not – you don't have a – your physical representation is looking like you're not as strong and as athletic as you actually are. And this is my interpretation of all of this from like a single statement. And that sent me down a very interesting path of diet, and exploring nutritional impact on physique while also thinking about like trying to think about nutritional impact on performance. But as we know, like they are very different. And so I kind of spent- If you're trying to get really lean, you don't have the ingredients that would help you in performance sometimes or the nutrition

overall. Yeah. I was that guy that was like, you know, I was in a prime place to recomp. Like I was getting stronger, training hard, and then I started to kind of diet. And so like I was shedding fat and building muscle. But then you know at some point that that relationship is not going to last and that you need more fuel and you need better nutrients in order to keep this progress going. But I became somewhat attached to this notion of like, I got to get lean. Oh, I got lean for the first time. Oh, now I'm aware that this is the, and people are recognizing it. And as compared to what he said to me, it feels better to be recognized as the lean person than the, you know, abdominus person. And, definitely planted a seed that created, you know, somewhat

of a monster, so to speak, and in many ways, an unhealthy relationship with food early on and with dieting and with my approach to like, you know, how I'm moving relative to how I'm nourishing myself. How was it negative? Were you like weighing food and being super meticulous and worried about fat calories and stuff? You know, to be honest, I was not that. At the time, I wasn't. And this was before CrossFit? Yeah, way before CrossFit.

So I was 19 years old when that was said to me. I didn't probably start competing in CrossFit until 24. And I wasn't sophisticated with my dieting or – I don't think dieting was as sophisticated as today with like macros and – some people were doing it, but I was more of like I found a meal plan. I knew how to do a spreadsheet and kind of generally get an idea of calories, but it started with just like a meal plan that somebody was like, Hey, this is a great way to lose fat. And it was, I don't know, probably like 2000 calories a day, high protein, low fat, you know, whatever. And I was like, okay, I'll

just follow that. Right. And initially it didn't feel hard because I had some body fat to lose and it sort of turned on some process in my body that felt like, okay, I'm making progress. I feel energized. I hadn't hit a wall yet at all. And so I just followed that very meticulously for let's say three months and saw my abs pop for the first time. I was like, oh, okay, this is something. And because of my limited understanding and my limited knowledge, that became the only recipe and the only formula to maintain this look. And I was like, oh, well, when then that thing came to an end, because I was like, I can't sustain this anymore,

but that's the only way I know how to look this way. So I fall off and then, okay, I'm going to re-engage in this meal plan diet thing. And then that works and then it stops working. And then I'm on this rollercoaster of like, I don't know how to maintain a body look that I've become, you know, for better, for worse, kind of attached to in a way that feels healthy sustainable so i'm kind of just trying to chase after this thing with a bad set of tools and i don't know another way to do it and fast forward like maybe 18 months and i was kind of in an overtrained, undernourished, high-stress college. I was out of soccer at this point, now pursuing my pre-med,

so like highly engaged academic pursuit. And the convergence of all that stress, I got a major back injury. Yeah, from just like overtraining. I remember a SI back or something? Yeah, like a SI, left SI thing that had like some radiating pain down my leg. But I remember if I can – I go back to that. There was like this period of two months, three months leading up to it where I'd do a workout at the gym and I always felt kind of hot. I didn't listen – I didn't know what to think of it.

I'd have my pack on. I still have my X-Vest. Yeah. And I'm walking the hills up in the Berkeley Hills, which if anybody's been out there, they're steep. I'm doing weighted hikes because I'm trying to keep my energy expenditure up and keep the lean physique. And I remember being on those hikes and being like, damn, my back is hot. Like what's going on? Like what is this thing?

going on like what is this thing and then just remember one day like i finished a workout a leg day which meant do every big comp i did leg press i did squats i did lunges i did all the things yeah and i'm like back in my my apartment i'm just like oh this feels now like when you go from like it's just being hot to like okay there's something that's got me a little cockeyed and it's nervy and oh, something's up. And then that led to, you know, the next couple of years of a new journey of self-discovery of like, oh, what the hell? That was there was some very problematic with what I did. I'm just curious because CrossFit started at 24, right? Yeah. Uh, lasted what? Seven years, eight years. Yeah. Seven, eight years. Did, was CrossFit by any chance, uh, a conduit for you just to be able to have a lot of expenditure? Was there any part of it that was just like,

yeah, you enjoyed it, but also it's calorically demanding. So it's a way for you to or did you just actually really enjoy the sport of crossfit well at that point i was i had kind of let's see competitive crossfit did was highly calorically of course expenditure wise like it was high up there because as competitors we were not just doing the wads but we were doing big resistance training sessions plus big olympic lifting sessions plus over time we all learn like oh you got to be an aerobic beast like you got to go do zone two you got to do like long hours of you know bike intervals and running and so I mean, you're burning probably 5,500 calories a day on some days. You know, that was a big – but none of – I enjoyed that.

I liked being somebody who was moving a lot. Okay. But that wasn't what got me into it. What got me into it was just like, whoa, here's something that's super challenging. But also the community aspect of it was really empowering because, like, I didn't have a team and someone to be around for quite some time that felt positive, but then I did. The other part was that the recipe or the combination of doing CrossFit with this newfound intensity that I regained plus the paleo movement, which was basically just a diet where I didn't have to think about calories and numbers. I just kind of just ate certain food groups. That combination kind of gave me this newfound freedom where I was like, oh, if I just do it this way,

like I don't have to think about all the things that I have kind of bad memories from as a college, you know, over-dieter. a college, you know, over-dieter and now I can just do CrossFit and eat paleo and I feel like I look really good and I feel strong and I don't have to like overthink it. So it was kind of like this easy recipe for, oh, this is what I've been looking for for so long is someplace where I could inject a lot of energy, work hard, train, feel good, eat nourishing foods, not count them, not follow a meal plan, but just sort of generally some guidelines. Cool. This is what really made it feel like, oh, and now I want to be a coach and I want to tell everybody about this because it's so impactful.

What you got going on over there, Andrew? what you got going on over there andrew well i mean so we had uh talked about where is it a post you made in regards to uh kind of what you're just talking about right now about like getting shredded seeing your abs for the first time yeah um you guys want to just play this yeah yeah okay cool thank you this is good all right let's go wish someone told me sooner that getting hyper lean can mess up your body image down the road. See, I was an athletic teenager, but I didn't look ripped. Then in college, when I first saw my abs pop, I never wanted to see another version of myself. At 27, I was one of the fittest CrossFit athletes on the planet.

But even though I looked super jacked, I worried that I didn't look lean enough. Focusing on the outside might lead you down a long road of self-judgment so instead find a way to move that makes you feel great and eat in a way that supports that movement that is a positive cycle that will continue for a long time to come i wish someone easy for you to say you look great right right i guess there are a lot of those comments, huh? Were people saying that? No, that was really, I mean, overwhelmingly received in a positive way, you know, and it's, it's, it's, you, you guys got the longer story here, right? That was, you know, getting, it was, and I've written about it extensively in blogs and newsletters and talked about it on our podcast.

But Ryan Swantech said that to me that day. And had he not, I wonder where I would have – I really wonder like, hey, what would have happened for the next three to five to seven years? You would have been a doctor. I would have been a doctor. And I may have – maybe. But'm also you know it's like a fat doctor or a competitive eater could have went down a couple different roads that was a main story moment for marcus philly yeah right Right. Oh yeah. Damn. So, um, but yeah, it's still, it's still something that I, you know, once that seed is planted, once that period of time in my

life happened, it's like, it's, it's, it's difficult to completely unsee it and never think about it again. I have a much, much healthier relationship with food and with movement now. Um, I'm definitely somebody who, you know, will err on the side of being lean rather than, you know, putting on body fat in the pursuit of some, you know, uh, performance gain or getting stronger or building lots of muscle. Um, but I don't do that blindly anymore. Whereas it's like, that was maybe my early twenties where it was like, I'd had no sense that I was being kind of pulled and gravitating towards a particular look. And that was impacting all these decisions that I was making small decisions, big decisions, whatever. I know you're not really focused on elite athletes, but just curious about

this with all the additions that you've made in the past few years in terms of what you do in the gym and what you do as far as movement and how you think about things. Is there anything that you think would have potentially improved your career in CrossFit as far as the way you did fitness then that may have allowed you to be a better CrossFit athlete? Yeah, I think so. I think there was the culture in CrossFit, certainly when I was coming up, was still very much that the way we trained was the way we competed. It was like always full tilt, full intensity.

I remember just opening up my program for the week because I had a coach back then that would program for me, but I would just sort of like look at, okay, these are my daily workouts. These are the, the Metcons that might be showing up. These are like the, you know, snatch doubles that I'm going to be doing. And I always was like calculating, calculating like what do I need to do to beat, to set a PR this week. Yeah. And that was, you know, that was early days of CrossFit when people didn't, we thought that CrossFit as a sport really was governed by different rules than other sports. Nobody shows up to like Monday, you know, at an nfl field like okay how are we

gonna just how are we gonna win today like you know it's like no it's monday you got a game on sunday like let's just chill and let's ease into the week there's drills we got a lot of shit to learn yeah we film we're gonna stretch we're gonna jog we're gonna warm up yeah we all thought we were different um we were not so that was like a cube how do we you know how i would go back and be like how do i accumulate a lot more reps at lower intensity so that i can build the strength skill muscle tissue ligament you know and tendon joint health um and and just generally build my base capacity. Right. Yeah. This became very common. It's much more commonplace now. I don't, I don't, you know, there's only so many hours in a day that you can train, you know, in any sport. Um, and CrossFit obviously has a lot of different

disciplines that you need to get better at. So it's like, okay, well, you're gonna go do three hours of cardio today. Then you're going to go do like two hours of weight training and Olympic weightlifting. And then you're going to also go do this. And so it's a, it's hard to pack it all in, but I do believe there's a, a certain element or a certain amount of bodybuilding, bodybuilding principles, like hypertrophy rep ranges and work that I would, I wish I could go back and implement back into my CrossFit, you know, days, because implement back into my CrossFit days because so much of what CrossFit ends up looking like on the competitive field is high volume, high rep count movements done at a pretty high intensity

for the movement that it is. It could be thrusters at 95 pounds, but you might be doing 100. And so you have to doing a hundred. And so, um, you know, the, how you have to do a lot of that. And, uh, one way to do it is go do a Metcon with a hundred thrusters in it. You just, you know, expose yourself to that, but there's a certain stimulus to fatigue ratio associated with that kind of work. Whereas if I could have maybe gone back and done a hundred dumbbell thrusters in a session with like sets of 15 with 60 seconds rest and kind of think about it more from like a bodybuilding

standpoint and thrusters, maybe not a good example. Cause that's not like a traditional bodybuilding exercise, but even just thinking about like doing seated strict presses for, you know, dumbbell strict presses for sets of 20, five sets of 20, like a couple times a week, like that would have had a difference. That would have had a great stimulus, wouldn't have created as much fatigue for me, and has great carryover. So it would have been a way to get more of that

base building volume in on the weight training side. Because we learn how to build base volume from the aerobic capacity side but to like get the reps in front with weights um and with gymnastics in crossfit was always connected and attached to the wads the metcons which were fatigued you were fatigued doing that which meant it increased likelihood of risk to injuries to just, again, all that fatigue that allows you to – doesn't allow you to train as good later in the week and so forth. So that would be certainly something I would go back and improve on. Good luck trying to train that way when you've got Rich Froning, Jason Kalipa, Matt Chan, all those monsters from back in the day.

All those monsters from back in the day and you just – I think with Rich Froning, I don't know if it's like folklore or if it's like true, but he just like would just work out literally all day. Yeah. I think he would just like walk by his barn and he would hop in there and do a workout. Yeah. And then a couple hours later, do another workout. A couple hours later, do another workout. I'd be interested to have that conversation with Rich, but like, I know that today he incorporates, you know, what you would consider more bodybuilding into his training.

But I believe even back then, like, you know, it wouldn't be uncommon to like, if I would ask him, I wouldn't be surprised if he was like, yeah, I would go in and just do like, I just jump into the barn and do like,

you know, five sets of 20 in the bench. It's like, well, that's not CrossFit. That's not building your max bench. I think that is what he would do sometimes because i remember seeing some workouts where he'd do like a floor press and he'd do curls in between so that's like heart rate was up but he's not like killing himself yeah it was so it's like and these were like

the intuitive guys early on that were like i need to do more work to win this thing. I got to go out and be training more often, but I can't do 10 wads a day. I can do three wads a day, but I got to get all this other training and what should I do? And they just – you would naturally have to gravitate towards bodybuilding-type principles or bodybuilding rep ranges or body – and so – and then, um, and then, and then also one of the other things that was so clear early on was, and it was talked about was that the people who had done bodybuilding before CrossFit had more success early on, or they had done some weight training, you know, consistently, right. Talking about how big Jason Kleep is. It's a big boy winning the CrossFit games for sure yeah and he he had been doing he'd been in gyms selling memberships doing all the thing

for years right and that that gave him a huge base but then it was like if it gave us a base to do the thing well then why did we just abandon it it's like why didn't we just keep that thing going on top of this stuff? And it was again, back to the question of like, well, there's so many, only so many hours in the day and I got to catch up with all of the people. So I'm going to Olympic lift for three hours a day and I'm going to do this many wads. And then what happened? 90% of the athletes burned out the top 10 or top five or top 2% who were resilient enough to get through that crazy amount of intensity and volume were the ones that survived and they were winning and they were the best.

And it's like, oh, you had – it was Hunger Games. What are some of the things that stuck with you from CrossFit that you'll probably utilize or incorporate maybe the rest of your life? um i think it was probably i think it was the easiest uh way well it taught people intensity better than anything else i had ever taught or been exposed to so you know now everyone likes to say like you know there's this resurgence of like mike metzer's training methods like it's all about high to heart you know now everyone likes to say like you know there's this resurgence of like mike mentzer's training methods like it's all about high to heart you know high intensity you could just push it one set as hard as you can it's like that doesn't work for the vast majority of people

because they have no concept of what that feels like yeah they've never even dipped into like 70 percent of their maximum they might not have a lot of strength yet either. So they're not really tapping into anything that great just yet. Totally. But then this whole thing of CrossFit, like it taught a level of intensity and effort like really quickly, you know, and I think suffering through some of that helped, it recalibrated my mind, you know, to something that was hard, you know, so doing hard things allows you to kind of carry that into all parts of your life. I think that was really valuable. Um, it's a different type of suffer. It's a different type of like, you know, commitment to

the pain. Um, I think a multidisciplinary approach to fitness is also something I, I learn like this, this it's cemented in me. And for a lot of people that concurrent training methods, like I can do weight training and I can do cardio, like that will forever be something that I embrace. Thank you. Thank you. CrossFit for teaching me that, um, this idea that, you know, cardio is going to burn your mind. Like now we got your hybrid athletes we got all you know we got everybody who's on that train and that bandwagon i think that um early crossfit really showed that in a very very profound way it's like and i'm not talking like the games i'm talking before that when we had you know somebody who could go out and pull like

josh everett yeah you've had him maybe on the show at some point i know i know him yeah he's one of the early early crossfit guys he's one of the ones posting on the you know.com in like 2002 and he's like pulling 500 pounds off the ground but he's also doing like a sub 2 minute 30 you know sub 230 fran and he can do helen in like a competitive time and these are workouts that have a wide discipline, a wide range of like, you know, cardio and strength and muscle. And just seeing that at that time, now you like, uh, that's, that's, that's nothing. That's, you know, Rich's head totally blew the ceiling off that. Miko Sela blew the ceiling off that too. But the early, early days, I was like,

dang, that is really making me question everything I've heard about doing running or being cardio, like, so that will stay with me for a long time. And then I think maybe the last one is, you know, really starting to understand the spectrum of skills and how like advanced you can get with things like um crossfitters are not world class in any one thing they're very good and maybe bordering on elite in in some things but they're not you

know they're not world champion gymnasts, but they could do some pretty cool gymnastic stuff, you know? And some of them are getting close to, I think like world record times on like the rower and things like that, right? I, I, I, I don't, I don't know how close, but close enough where it's made a lot of people be like, whoa, I got to pay attention to this thing. You know, when, when like at the American open for Olympic weightlifting, when like, you know,

a certain number of CrossFit athletes just show up and, and they podium, it's like, you guys don't train for Olympic lifting, like specifically, but you're beating, you know, um, I don't want to misquote and say something that's not true about like CrossFitters are better than so-and-so, but they get close enough to these very elite levels that you're like, oh, and you can do these other things. That's pretty interesting, right?

Yeah, you're not going to be a world champion, but you're going to be damn good. It makes you wonder, though, like if they did choose to specify. Yeah. You know, that means that they have the capacity to be world-class at those things because they have such a high capacity at all these other things. Yeah.

Yeah, I think that was what was also cool about the sport was that it, and that was kind of where I was maybe going. There's like the exposure to lots of things and not just like, here's this thing called Olympic weightlifting, but like here's what is possible. And then now we like know like, oh, you can, now we're paying attention to elite level athletes in these disciplines and learning from

them so i use i i think that maybe that's my takeaway is that i can look at anybody who's very elite or exceptional or the best in their field and i'm gonna learn something from them that I can now pull into my life and make it about this collection of, you know, principles, methods that can all happen at the same time. So I don't, I can learn from the best power lifters in the world, be like, okay, and I consumed a ton of your power lifting content in the early days of CrossFit when you were, you know, subject matter expert and you're presenting and you're talking about it. And I'm like, okay, this is awesome. I'm not going to go win a powerlifting meet. I don't want to, I'm not, that's not what drives me, but now I'm taking expert knowledge and I'm bringing it into a fitness approach that I want to use for a long time. And that's sort of been the foundation of how I built functional bodybuilding.

Really, in essence, like I'm just taking the best of all the things that I've heard out there and bringing it into a place where people have access to what I would consider the best knowledge that we have available in a lot of different ways, you know, like bringing in some event stuff, you know, bringing in what I know about endurance training from learning from this person. So in that way, yeah, CrossFit is, you know, it set a new way, a new framework for me looking at my fitness forever in the endurance component, the multidisciplinary kind of concurrent training. the multidisciplinary kind of concurrent training and then also okay now i get to look at all these different disciplines and i get to go to the extreme to learn not because i'm going to be the extreme i just want to learn from those people who have they've dedicated their lives to this thing and we all want a little piece of that it's like fitness hacking where can people get the abdominus diet program i will lay it out right now how do you

eat nowadays how do i eat because a lot of people are probably like checking out your instagram and stuff right now i'm like damn what like what does this guy eat he's shredded also do you talk to this ryan guy like does he know about what he's done to you i've probably only started his face is on his refrigerator i've probably only started to use his name a few times like in the last 12 months and different references to this and i'm actually hoping there's a picture of him so you open up the closet there's like candles the other funny thing oh ryan ryan swantec anybody out there where is ryan swantec swanee was a upperclassman when i was a freshman so he was a junior i was a freshman i love the guy and

i didn't have like any like he was a good friend like by the end of the whole thing and i didn't i didn't look back at the time i didn't see that as like a problematic thing. Um, I look back and like, Oh, that was maybe a little problematic. That kind of fucked me up. But kind of what you do as teammates.

So you make fun of that in front of the other guy for not being as fast as you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You poke at each other. You give the freshmen to jock itch just cause it's what you do. That's just you guys.

Precisely. Precisely. That's what they did to us. But Ryan, Ryan was ryan was the only guy on the team that had long hair um i didn't have short hair in college i didn't have long hair until like 2000 like many years later he had long hair and he used to wear a headband which i often wear a headband but he used to wear a headband and he would, when he would go onto the, like when he was playing,

that was like the, all the other teams, that was like the, that was how they like, you know, rag on him was like, he was like the headband guy. Like,

let's make fun of the guy that's got the long hair and the headband. So I just remember we were playing, I think it was at Stanford and and stanford's like um they're so they probably have a much more updated soccer stadium now but it was always an awesome place to go play the fans were super into it it was kind of a small intimate setting like the the stands were always packed it always felt like oh my god we're in this like packed area but it was only like you know 2 000 people or something like that but it felt and the fans would get into it they were always behind it and they had this like packed area, but it was only like 2,000 people or something like that. But it felt – and the fans would get into it. They were always behind it.

And they had this like – this chant. Anytime he would go on the field, it was just like headband. Just clowning on him and just – this stuff actually ends up getting in your head a little bit when you're out on the field. So it's just funny. Like fast forward a bunch of years. I got the long hair at the top, not the headband. I'm getting shit on YouTube for fucking having the same hair as Ryan. That's great.

Yeah, he influenced me, I guess, in a lot of ways. What's the food look like nowadays for you? How do you stay in this lean? Oh, man. The food for me, and I've actually gone through, I was saying this earlier. It's like, I've done, I've done every, all the diets I've done so many, and I'm actually in the middle of writing a blog newsletter that is titled, um, I've succeeded on, you know, 12 diets in 12 years. I've succeeded and failed at all of them. What does that mean for you? Which is basically like every diet you can succeed on and every diet you can fail on.

What's the thing that connects the successes and what's the thing that connects the failures is you and your consistency to it. And whether that diet at the time inspires you to eat the amount that you need to achieve your body goals? Like, does this thing help you control for calories? And the other part is, does it supply you with enough nourishment, nutrients, and quality to, one, support the calorie, you know, conversation, One, support the calorie, you know, conversation. And two, make you feel like, give you like, let's say the micronutrient energy, the digestive system, you know, consistency, like the ancillary benefits to like eating quality foods that go beyond just keeping you in a calorie maintenance level. Um, so the things that have always, that I've always come back to, whether I explore animal-based eating for a while, or I explored intermittent fasting or explore high fat,

high protein, low carb, or, you know, done all the different stuff is that when I eat sufficient protein, when I actually get, uh, uh, enough carbohydrates for me, like when I go low carb, enough carbohydrates for me. Like when I go low carb, it's great for a period of time and then doesn't really support my training and my, the way I like to move. And if I don't keep my fiber high enough, that also doesn't really work that well with my energy balance and my digestion. So those are kind of the staples. It's like I eat, you know, 200 grams of protein a day, maybe a little bit more, maybe a little bit less, but it always well above my minimum requirements as a 180-pound, you know, athletic male.

I probably eat anywhere from 400 to 500 grams of carbs a day. That's sort of a sweet spot for me. It's been that way for a year. And that's coming off of like a period of like pretty low carb eating. Cause once I stopped CrossFit, I convinced myself, I'm like, Oh, I'm not training to win the games anymore. I don't need this many carbs. So I'm going to, I'm going to get on the low carb bandwagon. And that's going to be good for my, but I'm like,

I'm still training hard. And after a while it started to feel like i was tanking a little bit yeah and then um i make sure to get i i kind of opt for higher fiber fruits veggies and carbohydrate sources um for us from a satiety standpoint. It just helps keep me satiated, next to protein, and pretty much covers everything that I need with my daily diet. Higher Project family, if you're trying to increase your muscle mass, if you're trying to lose body fat,

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as well as the podcast show notes. What did going low-carb long-term, why did you realize like, I probably should bring carbs back? Because for me personally, I did low-carb long-term, why did you realize like, I probably should bring carbs back? Because for me personally, I did low-carb for a while. And nowadays, there could be some days that I do have lower carbs. And then certain days where I wake up and I'm like, oh, I should just eat more carbs today so I could feel it. What made you get off of that? I think I was actually experiencing some negative, like the downstream negative effects of like low carb, which was I was starting to impact my, at least my perception was it was impacting my sleep. But I was getting pretty bad cramping from being too low carb and then not really assimilating enough electrolytes or absorbing enough.

I was like, you know, this is when I got really into like element salt packs. I was like having five a day, six a day just to like avoid this like big cramping that I was suffering from or dealing with. that I was suffering from or dealing with. The other thing I started to see was that like, I was now like not feeling like I could attack training in a way that felt like I was bringing my best energy. It was, I was still training hard, no question.

And because I was already like, you know, I had a good muscle foundation and I knew how to train hard. Like the, the perception was like, Oh damn, he's getting after it. But I knew that I wasn't. Like the, the perception was like, oh damn, he's getting after it. But I knew that I wasn't really getting after it. I was just sort of- There's a gear that was missing.

Yeah. A gear that was missing. Um, and I also felt that like gravitation towards like, man, I, I still crave these things. Like when I get a craving, it's for this thing. And I, I've always kind of trusted that. It's like, if I'm craving this thing and I'm not eating it and I kind of adapted my palate to this, but I'm still craving this thing. Like there might be something to that where I got to listen to it, you know, and now my bias is more towards higher, higher carb, you know, moderate, high protein. What are the fats at? lower fats like under 100 so like and i that's a that's a separate conversation around like my blood lipids which was very

interesting over the past two years but now if i'm if i get a craving it's oftentimes for fats because i keep them lower and i'm like oh i want to just go and like eat a block of cheese like i really just want to get like i want to take the Gouda cheese out of the fridge and just eat the whole wedge. Like you're pregnant. Yes. Like I want to – yeah. Pickles and some cheese or something weird. Oh, yeah.

Cheese is definitely – that's a good – I love cheese too. Yeah. What did you learn from your blood? Like your blood work I'm guessing you got. Yeah. No. So I went – I was like – I kind of came out of like, I was doing low carb, low-ish carb. So like 200 grams a day,

which isn't like terribly low, but it was low. Um, maybe like two to two 50. And then, Hey, I like really as with many things, diet, fitness, training related, I love to explore. I love to get in and be like, okay, what's this all about? Rather than just listen to other people's stories, let me do this thing. So I went deep into the animal-based eating world with hearing things from Paul Saladino about plants and their potential negative impacts they might have. Yeah, they'll kill me. Yeah. Oatmeal definitely killed me.

But all these things that I was dying from, there was a couple things that really resonated with me. One, the whole ancestral, like, concept around, like, which foods are, you know, did we really evolve around and which foods are you know did we really evolve around and which foods did nourished us through like the biggest transitions in our you know evolution but also that i had i had had some like really bad gi you know uh issues over the years where whether it be like extreme constipation to really terrible diarrhea, like that would go on for, for long periods. Um, which I think is connected back to like pretty much that post-college medical school period of time in my life. I ran a course of antibiotics for like three years for my acne because it just

kept getting, my prescription just kept getting refilled by the prescribing doctor. I kept taking it because it helped improve my acne a little bit in high school and made me like, oh, this is like major insecurity. I'm going to keep taking this thing. So you run antibiotic for two, three years. You pretty much mess up your microbiome pretty good. Then add a bunch of stress on top of that in medical school. I was like the guy that was taking in medical school and like i was you know

i was like the guy that was taking laxatives and like metamucil at at age 21 to just like have so there was that period and then several years back after our first our first kid and i think right so actually we had just had our second, my second daughter and sleep was, you know, not good. I had this like period of like terrible diarrhea that lasted for like three, three months. Like I was like, I have diarrhea for a few days. You're pretty bummed out. Like having like three months, you're like, yo. So I always had this like connection back to gut health as like, I've got to optimize

this thing. Got it from my, you know, early mid twenties. And then this resurface of it, I was like, oh my gosh, what's going on? So I'm constantly thinking about it. And I'm hearing about animal based eating. I'm hearing about plant foods. And I'm like, man, you know, maybe I'm like really, maybe it's maybe my, my gut after all these years, like I'm really sensitive to these things. Okay. Let me remove all this plant material and see if that's going to help my digestion. Let me introduce more dairy, raw dairy. Let me start to eat more raw dairy. Let me, and then I was kind of like, oh, maybe I should just be going really low carb. Maybe I should just like kind of almost go keto with this thing. And I kind of went extreme on it. And, um, for, you know,

basically six months I followed that very, you know, that diet pretty strictly. And I was taking in, I re I recently went back and looked at my numbers cause I tracked a lot of the food data in, you know, food tracker. I was taking in like 250 grams of protein a day, 200 grams plus 200 to 250 grams of fat a day, and then like 100 grams of carbs or 150 and less, and a little bit from honey, a little bit from fruit, and then I would eat like some you know uh pickled cucumbers or something like that um very low amount but i saw and as i'm looking through my numbers like my saturated fat

intake during that time was actually close to like 180 to 200 grams a day uh well over like 150 and because i was eating so much dairy and so much tallow and so much, uh, you know, 80, let's call it like 80% lean, um, meats. Um, and after six months, like I couldn't say that I was like, I wasn't feeling some pronounced impact positively nor anything negatively. My body composition had shifted. I had put on more body fat. Um, and, but, and, but I was training really hard at that time too. And I was feeling kind of down and I got blood work done and you know, some people don't like

the people that don't respond to high saturated fat that can you know impact their their cholesterol numbers my numbers came back and i'd always been a little bit high on like uh you know ldl cholesterols um but my numbers came back i think my ldl was at 300 plus and my apo b score was really really high and was in the hundreds my apo bpoB? Yeah. It was 200. Woo! So I was like, oh, okay. What does that mean? I got this voice over here being like, cholesterol doesn't matter. You don't have any other signs of insulin resistance or metabolic dysfunction. I mean, granted, my fasting insulin was really low.

Yeah. My HDL was really high. And my triglycerides were moderate to low. And I didn't have like CRP issues or like my – HCL was really high and my triglycerides were moderate to low. So, and I didn't have like CRP issues or like my, so I was by all met other metrics, like you're pretty darn healthy, but there's this other thing that's just really outlying here. And,

um, I didn't really know what to make of it, you know, and I was kind of nervous. I was like, it's hard for me to look at that number and feel really good about it. Thinking I'm doing, I'm checking all the boxes for my health over here. So, um, I got some, you know, I did some consulting with a couple of different people and kind of was like, okay, well, where do I got to lose to just explore something else? Cause I'm not necessarily like married to

this eating approach. Like it's maybe it's good, maybe it's bad. There's positives, there's some negatives to it. Who knows? Like I'll try something different, change my, my diet and macros and really just focus mainly on like increasing fiber and decreasing my saturated fat intake to what was, you know, I was coached, like, this is like an acceptable amount to aim for each day, which meant that I had to change my fat sources and just change the total consumption of fat. So I basically dropped my saturated fat intake down to 35 grams a day or less, which on 100 grams of fat a day, if you're getting a variety of fat sources, it's not that hard to do. And actually, fast forward 12 months, and my blood lipids for the first time in my life

getting testing are all like at the bottom of like the like low low end of healthy ranges my apob score came down into like the 50s and my ldl dropped you know considerably down to in below i don't know i don't know where it was most recently, but below 100. What are your main protein sources now? Yeah. So I'm like I get two whole eggs a day plus some egg whites. I eat different types of chicken. I have a 93% ground beef that I get that's grass-fed that I found at Grocery Outlet.

Shout out to them. They're freaking crushing it. $3.99 a pound i found this stuff nice so not bad um and then yeah some like low-fat or non-fat uh dairy yogurt those are my and then like whey protein shakes so uh and some sardines so yeah those have been been my main protein sources. Yeah, it falls in line with what Stan Efferding has been talking about for quite some time, which is about 30 – he says about 30 percent of your calories should come from fat and 30 percent of that could be saturated fat. And that's at 100 grams of fat a day, having 30 to 35 grams of fat as saturated fat, that hits that percentage.

Yeah. Yeah. So that was just my experience over the past year. And I think it, rather than like take that to be like, okay, this is gospel. Everyone needs to follow this thing. I'm just like, Hey, I tried something. I explored it. Here are the benefits. And then here are some of the objective outcomes of it that I got from doing blood work. And when I evaluated like the pros and cons and it didn't feel appropriate to me to keep pushing on that let me see if I can change something to pull this marker back into what's going to feel

good and uh and for me my health um and and then by doing that I had a positive outcome so it's like okay well evaluate that for yourself Don't just like go by like, oh, I feel good. It's like, well, also get yourself checked out, like get some blood work done, see what's going on on the inside. And does it all line up in a way that actually, you know, gives you peace of mind that you're doing the best thing you can for your health. Yeah. And I think when I most recently read Peter Tia's book that just came out, like his whole chapter on cardiovascular health and cardiovascular risk and the things that we, that he's taking, you know, really close look at for his longevity patients kind of helped me feel like, okay, I think I made a good decision to

sort of like hone in on some of these numbers, this, these, these metrics that maybe are still not conclusive, like this is the right amount of LDL cholesterol that you should or should not have, you shouldn't go over this. But his research and the way he presented it in his book was like, okay, I think that that's actually a pretty good metric to pay attention to if you're looking at your cardiovascular disease risk.

I think it's really cool that you mentioned that though, because the topic of ApoB has been coming up quite a bit on the podcast as of recent. And we talked to Simon Hill, we talked to San Efferding. And one thing is that if you can get your blood work done, understanding the diet that you're currently having, there are some people that can get away with high amounts of saturated fats and still have low ApoB. I'm one of them. And there are many people who have commented about that, how like, Oh,

my ApoB is normal and I have high saturated fat intake. So you could be one of those people, or you could be one of those people where you start eating high saturated fats and your ApoB skyrockets. It's good to know that about yourself. But some people go the route of saying this diet is the right diet for everybody, whereas not everybody's affected the same way by eating that way. So you got to understand that. Yeah. And, and, you know, and then I go back to like, well, what are the things that are still consistent about my diets? You know, regardless of like, if we look back 18 months or we looked now, it's like, well, there's, you know, there's protein at the center of each meal.

There, the, the majority of what's on my plate is something that I can make in my home that I don't need a factory to like produce for me. Right. It's, it's the, you know, it's not, they're not hyper-processed. They're just home processed. Like I chopped the veggies and I put them in the plate. You know, I, I peeled the fruit. I, you know, ground up the beef and put it in the pan. Like, uh, so, and then there's this little dip into indulgence, you know, periodically that I think is important to keep in there as well. So like that, that's always been the consistent thing. Um, and so my back to like the, you know, 12 diets and 12 years and successes and failures, like, well, these are the things that are always true when I'm succeeding, not just from what's going in the body but how closely I'm sticking to the plan. And here are the things that were all different that ended up not really being the difference maker.

The difference makers were these things. Yeah. Can I ask say something about um because you know you've been wearing veos for a while now you've been getting inside barefoot stuff i don't know when you're across your career if you really focused much on your feet but have you noticed a difference with like what your feet do by focusing on them in the past few years what has changed for you i mean i think uh yeah yeah so I don't think I was even aware how bad my feet functioned when I was an athlete. Yeah.

Like soccer is horrible for feet. Bro, I had surgery because of that shit. Did you? Oh, man. Yeah, that's good foot surgery. Because the cleats were so narrow. Yeah, cleats were super narrow. I like coaching my girl soccer, and I'm like, can we get some better soccer cleats

for these kids? Go look up Code Footwear. They have like a custom thing. It's kind of expensive, but they can make custom wide foot cleats for whoever. Yeah. Well, maybe we'll wait

until they're growing out of shoes. Yeah. But that's good to know. Yeah. So I don't think I really, and plus also in, we were talking about it out there. It's like when you look down at your foot,

like what, what do you see that makes you like think aesthetically like, Oh, I'm athletic or I look good or I like the, in college, unfortunately, like so weird. Like I was,

I'm a size 10, true size 10, maybe a 10 and a half. But when I would put on size 10 and a half shoes like a new balance or whatever i'd be like man my foot looks too big but if i put on a nine and a half i was like oh i look good so i would be jamming my toes up against nine and a half you know new balances for like three years in college because i thought it looked better so um all of that to say like – and then getting into CrossFit, I didn't have great ankle mobility. And if you can squat more upright in CrossFit, you win.

So I was like, I'm wearing Olympic weightlifting shoes in everything. True story. My first CrossFit competition live event is in – what year is it? 2007, 8, 9. No, 2009. It was in San Jose and Jason Kalipa was the man in San Jose. He was like the host of the event almost. He wasn't competing. He was above us already. But I remember out there with this guy, Pat Barber, the first event is run 800 meters and then as many overhead squats as you can do and the total time was like a it was a six minute workout so you know an 800 meter run you know if you really sprint it right maybe three three and a half minutes something like that and then you

get to hammer out 115 pound overhead squats for the remainder of the time and the score was how many reps did you get so i ran 800 meters in my my ollie shoes because i needed to be i needed to be upright for these squats yeah and i basically wore ollie shoes for the next like three years like everything jumping on boxes wall balls doing pull-ups doing anything because so soccer the new balance the weight lifting shoes my feet were bricks i didn't even know there's such a thing and then uh yeah i think i started i got my first pair of vivos and i was like i put them on and i was like oh these kind of look a little funny they're you know something's uh just because you're looking down at a different shape. And then,

but I, it was actually in 2020 pandemic. I got my, they, they sent me a pair, you know, it's kind of one of the perks of being a social influencers. People like, Hey, try our stuff. I'm like, sure. Why not? Yeah. Um, but I got a pair of Primus. I put them on. And that was also when, right, everything was different. Like every day I was now walking my kids in the stroller for like an hour a day, 90 minutes a day. We were getting out. We had a routine. Like it was the COVID routine. It was wake up, you know, like go for a walk with them. And I'm doing it in these shoes. And I don't know, I don't know how long it was, but I was like, whoa, something feels different. Like my foot is working.

It's waking up. And I don't think I could look back. So it was like getting this awareness that like my feet had been shut down for a while. Then they start working. Now I'm using this different type of footwear. Then Ben sort of hits the scene, and he's talking about building strength from the ground up and this backward sledding and then driving the toe into the ground

and then doing like, you know, Pauliken step-ups or Patrick step-ups and then the Peterson step-up and rocking up on your toes. And I'm like, now I'm getting, okay, there's a lot going on here. I'm really starting to feel this and uh i would say that prior to that i would always have like aches and pains in my knees and my back and yeah part of that was probably that i was like doing competitive crossfit and that just makes you hurt in a lot of places but i also was like like, okay, there's now there's, there's a different level of like, I don't know, connectedness that I feel.

Um, so that's been a big, big part of like rediscovering a whole new area of fitness or a whole new area of like my body mechanics and my health. Yeah. Great catching up with you today. I appreciate it. Yeah. Likewise. This has been awesome.

Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later.