Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 757: How to Sculpt Amazing Legs
Episode Date: April 26, 2018Would you like to be coached by Sal, Adam & Justin? You can get 30 days of virtual coaching from them for FREE at www.mindpumpmedia.com. Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. The guys talk popular dance movies.... (2:07) D*** in a box and fake IDs. Party tricks and silly things the guys did in their younger years. (10:25) Getting caught in the act. Guys share stories of finding their staff/members doing inappropriate things that would not be acceptable today. (26:30) How to Sculpt Amazing Legs (35:25) Treat it as a skill Range of Motion Do things that challenge you and are new movements Following the trends. 24 Hour Fitness’ switch to the commercial gym model and the future of fitness. (59:00) Related Links/Products Mentioned: Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon The Oracle of Bacon Watch Saturday Night Live Highlight: SNL Digital Short: D*** in a Box Working Up a Sweat: We Talked to the People Having Sex at Your Gym FREE REPORT: The Ultimate Guide To Leg Muscle Development Sissy Squat - The forgotten quad building exercise of the pros – YouTube MMA Fan's Guide to Grappling: Catch Wrestling Josh Barnett | Catch Wrestling Techniques – YouTube Difference between Sambo and Wrestling Build Your Legs with the Zercher Squat – YouTube Curves Women's Weight Loss via Fitness, Meal Plan and Coaching More People Flocking to Fitness Classes Inspired by Ballet, Cycling and Tech People Mentioned: Kevin Bacon (@kevinbacon) Twitter Justin Timberlake (@justintimberlake) Instagram Bret "Glute Guy" Contreras PhD (@bretcontreras1) Instagram Josh Barnett (@joshlbarnett) Instagram Arthur Jones (inventor) Mark Mastrov Lewis Howes (@lewishowes) Instagram Get our newest program, MAPS HIIT, an expertly programmed and phased High Intensity Interval Training program designed to maximize fat burn and improve conditioning. Get it at www.mindpumpmedia.com! Get MAPS Prime, MAPS Anywhere, MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance, MAPS Aesthetic, the Butt Builder Blueprint, the Sexy Athlete Mod AND KB4A (The MAPS Super Bundle) packaged together at a substantial DISCOUNT at www.mindpumpmedia.com. Make EVERY workout better with MAPS Prime, the only pre-workout you need… it is now available at mindpumpmedia.com Also check out Thrive Market! Thrive Market makes purchasing organic, non-GMO affordable. With prices up to 50% off retail, Thrive Market blows away most conventional, non-organic foods. PLUS, they offer a NO RISK way to get started which includes: 1. One FREE month’s membership 2. $20 Off your first three purchases of $49 or more (That’s $60 off total!) 3. Free shipping on orders of $49 or more You insure your car but do you insure YOU? If you don’t, and you are the primary breadwinner, you will likely leave your loved ones facing hardship and struggle if you die (harsh reality). Perhaps you think life insurance is expensive, but if you are fit and healthy, you can qualify for approved rates that are truly inexpensive and affordable. To find out if you qualify for the best rates in the industry, go get a quote at www.HealthIQ.com/mindpump Have Sal, Adam & Justin personally train you via video instruction on our YouTube channel, Mind Pump TV. Be sure to Subscribe for updates. Get your Kimera Koffee at www.kimerakoffee.com, code "mindpump" for 10% off! Get Organifi, certified organic greens, protein, probiotics, etc at www.organifi.com Use the code “mindpump” for 20% off. Go to foursigmatic.com/mindpump and use the discount code “mindpump” for 15% off of your first order of health & energy boosting mushroom products. Add to the incredible brain enhancing effect of Kimera Koffee with www.brain.fm/mindpump 10 Free sessions! Music for the brain for incredible focus, sleep and naps! Also includes 20% if you purchase! Please subscribe, rate and review this show! Each week our favorite reviewers are announced on the show and sent Mind Pump T-shirts! Have questions for Mind Pump? Each Monday on Instagram (@mindpumpmedia) look for the QUAH post and input your question there. (Sal, Adam & Justin will answer as many questions as they can)
Transcript
Discussion (0)
If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go.
Mite, op, mite, op with your hosts.
Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews.
In this episode of MIND, POOOOOOH it. We started by talking about six degrees of Kevin Bacon
and popular dance.
Seventh now.
Movies, podcast.
We're talking about Adam and Justin's fake ID,
shenanigans, and how I basically didn't party that much
when I was a teenager.
Kind of boring.
Dork!
We're talking about Justin's college and bartending experiences,
and things you can no longer get away with.
Back in the day, we used to get away with a lot of things today,
you just go to jail.
We were animals.
Yeah, we also talk about training your legs.
There's a lot of, we get a lot of messages from men and women.
A lot of myths around this one.
Yeah, and people like, you know, my legs just don't respond.
I'm working out real hard, I'm getting real sore.
So we talk about that in this episode,
and then what we did is we actually created a guide
just for you guys, right?
This is a guide for people who want to develop their legs,
and what we did in this guide, and it's free.
There it is.
As we uncovered the three biggest myths
and what you can do, just three things you can change right now
to get your legs to respond.
Now it's free.
If you go to mindpumpmedia.com,
go to the programs tab
under free resources, click right there. You'll see skinny late guide, click on it and you
get it for free. We also talk about the gym industry and our history running health
clubs. Oh, man. Yeah, fun. The good days. Storytelling. Fun, fun episode. Also, get the
no BS six pack formula for free this month. If you enroll in any maps, bundle, bundles,
or we take multiple mass programs, put them together and discount them 20 to 30% off.
That is also found at mindpumpmedia.com. dot com
Oh, and you doing the foot move
back Before we stack I don't know
I think I got that last part I did I love that movie did you really oh?
You know funny is you do love that movie because you're not a big,
like you don't remember specifics about trivia,
but you just did the exact,
what the exact movie is.
Full loose dance.
I did.
Because when Footloose opens, the movie is big.
And I guarantee you 90% of audience is like, huh?
That's because you're not old.
Okay.
But anyway, when the movie starts,
do some homework.
When the movie starts, the beginning is just feet
in the intro, remember?
It's that song that he's doing right there
and they're doing the,
yeah, there's all kinds of different foot moves.
All the different sneakers.
What a great Kevin Bacon.
How about this?
He did everything.
He is.
He really is in everything.
Remember they created that,
what's it called, seven degrees from Kevin Bacon?
Yes.
And then he keeps penetrating new markets, right?
Have you ever tried to play that game before
where you try and think of an actor
and you 100% can get connected to him
within seven people?
Somehow.
So is that how it works?
So the way science is?
He used to not be involved in like superhero movies
and then of course he made his way into X-Men.
No, what is it next man?
Remember he was that one in the earlier X-Men movie, the thing is a prequel X-Men. No, what is it? What's the next man? Remember he was that one in the earlier X-Men movie,
the thing is a prequel X-Men movie
where he was like the guy that absorbed the energy
and then like pushed it back, had like this nuclear power.
No, I don't remember that.
I don't remember that.
I don't remember his name.
The way the, it's either six or seven degrees
from Kevin Bacon I don't remember this,
but the way you do it, and you can do this,
there's a whole like website dedicated to this. You'd Google like six degrees from Kevin Bacon, I don't remember this, but the way you do it, and you can do this, there's a whole website dedicated to this.
You'd Google six degrees from Kevin Bacon.
If you put in a name, think of an actor
that for sure probably is never active with Kevin Bacon,
you put that name in, and within six people, it'll get to him.
So he's never, he never acted with Kevin Bacon,
but he's acted with Morgan Freeman,
Morgan Freeman's acted with Brad Pitt,
Brad Pitt's acted with so-and-so who's then acted with?
Mm-hmm. Oh, there it is. Yeah, yeah, see you know
That's movie every it's six six degrees wild things. Yeah, you don't need that seventh degree
Apparently you can connect right to bacon
Correct to baking. Yeah, what is wild you remember wild things? I thought was I never watched that where they're what's the river one that he does?
Yeah, yeah, I love that movie. That's a good movie. Yeah, it's the river one. I have no idea. You know, now that we're talking about it
The 80s had a lot of in the 70s to like dancing movies. You know what I mean? Yeah, they're not that many anymore there
Yeah, like the 70s had Saturday night fever. There is now. It's a
And step where we talking about that. They're not popular
Dude, seven Saturday night fever was a phenomenal right foot loose was huge
I don't I can't think of any what are some other dirty dancing massive. Yeah, what else is there better dance movies?
What are good grease grease I don't know. Dirty dancing massive. Yeah. What else is there that are dance movies?
What are good movies?
Grease.
Grease.
Great movie.
What a great movie.
Yeah, I can't think of any newer ones that are really big
that are dancing.
I think we just sound like a bunch of old people.
I think we just don't watch dance movies.
Yeah, I love them.
I love them.
I'll watch them all the time.
Don't they have like, can't obtain them.
Yeah, they have all the stuff.
Those are all popular.
Magic Mike.
I do think though that they're as big, do stuff. Those are all popular. Magic Mike.
I do, do you think though that they're as big as
competitively as like as foot loose and satan
I think for the time, I think.
I think so.
Yeah, I think there's some.
I don't think so.
Really?
No, dude, what's we'll call it?
What was that movie we just said with Patrick Swayze?
Yeah, I guess it is.
Dirty dancing was, and it's still to this day
that shit stood the test of time.
You will not find a woman
Young woman even young girls, you know, even even girls in their teens if you say oh, have you seen dirty dancing?
Oh, yeah, it makes me cry. Well, it wasn't the whole premise that like dancing in some communities was like taboo
It was like, you know, and then they just like did it to rebel. Yeah, that's what that movie now
It's like people laugh at that. It was a movie is like, it was a town, yeah, it was a town with a preacher.
What's your Puritans?
Who made dancing illegal because, you know,
doing that without nothings illegal.
That would definitely stop the kids from having fun.
You wanna hear the, okay, you wanna hear the 16, listen,
I'm gonna give you the 16 greatest all time dance movies.
Here it goes.
And just so you know, in the top five are movies today.
Yeah, but are these movies just ranked
in terms of the dance and time on
Popularity that's what you're about to burst. I literally googled the thesis. Yeah, top roasting. Yeah, no, I didn't say gross
You did most popular right so here you go. Just listen to dirty dancing is number one. Okay, so your arguments fair
There you go center stage. I don't even know what that is Peter Gallagher. Yeah, that's all wrong. Okay, center stage number three is black swan
Number four. Okay, that was true. Number four is step it up
Number five is you got served oh
You got served number six is strictly ballroom back in 1992 flash dance seven is flash dance
Girls just want to have fun is eight
Footloose is nine.
Honey is 10, see at least five of these are in there.
But those aren't, I don't think.
Save the last dance.
These are all those flashed girls.
Here you go.
Your theory is just way out.
No, it's about, I'm looking for top grossing.
Not just like, I feel like that's somebody who is into dance.
It's like, these are the best dance movies ever.
You might not have heard of some of them,
but they're great.
Pop culture, like change.
Yeah, like they they actually you know change shit
right yeah what the fuck does that mean I don't know like fucking dirty dancing changes are fucking
Oh break in remember breaking yeah breaking was awesome 1984 New York
I just want to point out that you're fucking dead wrong in this dude. There's more there's more shows that are now
Most of them are from the 80s. I'm looking through these right now. Would you care?
House party in there? Yeah, the kid in play. No, you got serve step up black swan all those movies are all step it up
Those are all no they actually they actually put coyote ugly in this list
I'm looking at staying alive was good to you guys remember staying a lot you guys didn't watch that I bet you
You didn't huh. Did you watch that at night fever? Yeah, I watch that at night. So staying alive
was part two and what happens with juncture voltage. So juncture voltage character and staying
alive. Just gonna give you a little breakdown. You watched part two. That's commitment. Well,
let's see here Italian dude. Yeah, it's lots of chicks. Okay. Yeah, first time I saw this.
I was a bell bottom. First time I ever saw, Saturday Night Fever,
which by the way, that movie's wait was before I was born.
But the first time I watched it, I was 13, 14,
so I was in that tender age of awkwardness
where you just wanna identify with something.
Did you ever grow out of that?
Yeah, and that really high voice.
You just dropped into it.
I'm still there.
Hey, you guys here, by the way, how do you smile?
Exactly.
So, I was home from school one day sick, and I'm flipping through the channels, and they're
Saturday night fever, and it's this fucking John Travolta, and he's just a bad ass, and
I'm like, I feel like I'm John Travolta right now.
And so after that, I can do that jump split kick thing.
Yeah, that's when I started wearing leather jackets and shit and then I started wearing leather jackets and shit like that.
So I'm like, I'm a New Yorker tie-in.
How about the boot you can dance?
How about the best dance.
None of those things.
I think you should've stick with Rocky.
Like the single best dancing.
Because that's where I could see dirty dancing is up there with that.
Like, it was single best dancing.
It's not that good if you watch it again today though.
It was, you know what I mean?
Have you?
I've been watched it in years.
It's like this like little arm shuffle and then like point thing and no
No, he's done about. He's done. Oh, uh, uh, uh, uh, dirty dancing. I'm dirty dancing. Yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. What, in my, in my, no, no. No, it's nice. When you see a girl do that, that's, that's great.
Oh, can I just, yeah, that's the hardest thing ever.
Can we just talk about that for a second?
Sexties thing ever, girl, who wears your shirt,
nothing else. Yeah.
I mean, we're just, thank you.
Just long enough.
I got a tall socks.
You got to bring that back.
You like girls with tall socks?
I do.
Yeah, I mean, too. Yeah.
Tall socks and little shorts or no shorts.
Oh, man. Thank you.
Yeah. Damn it. My girlfriend wears that shit
Fucking animals in here. Hey, did you guys
I'm off to go see JT tonight dude. Actually, I have no way. Yeah, I passed on a mic. You just call it bring it sexy back
Yeah, it's that we are you know what Justin I call a, yeah, I've passed on him. I just call it, bring it sexy back.
Yeah, that's how we are.
You know what, Justin Timberlake.
I call it.
I call it.
I get some seats.
It got you.
Oh, wow.
You're gonna be on the show later, right?
It's like that.
Maybe.
God, I can count on you.
Justin Timberlake.
Justin Timberlake is the real deal, man.
And you know what I really started like.
I hate on him, dude.
Me too.
You know why I can't currently ask for you.
He had my girlfriend. Come on, man. Brittany. man Brittany had did you banged her before you yeah, you know what I like about
Just jealous. You know what I like about him what I when I really start liking him when he was on when he started doing
Comics on yeah, I there's when I was like no
Dick in the box is what changed my whole perspective on him. I hate it
I hate it. I hate it.
I'm gonna say, I hate my life.
No, yeah.
Tick it a box, try my life.
Pivotal moment.
I seriously didn't listen to any of his music.
I hated it on him because he was in a boy band first and then he was dating the fucking
girl that I had a crush on.
Totally hated.
When he did Dicking the Box, changed my whole album.
This guy's fucking cool.
All right.
If you can make fun of yourself like that and do something hilarious like that and then
after that, I've always been like that.
Have you raised your hand if you've ever done the dick
in the box things, your girl?
Just me?
Wow.
A thousand to get everybody to raise your hand.
Like for real?
I was like, this is a good idea.
You literally cut, you know, a little hole.
No, I didn't do it.
When we were in high school, there was this big lineman
and he had a big, he had a big, a slump.
Right. He had a what?
He had a big slump, right? He had one of those what? He had a big slong. He had one of those
he had one of those lymph dicks that were still like seven inches limp.
You know how do you know he's just show everybody. Well, and the party he's
thrown on the table. No, he put it on a hot dog bun and
put ketchup and no he didn't. Yes, and he walked around.
He actually seems to be doing that. Yes. Why? That was in
Basterd party. Remember that movie with Tom Hanks? Oh no, I was.
Yeah, I didn't know that was in a movie.
Yeah, like it happened in my real life.
He actually, he actually put,
he put, he actually put condiments on some monster.
Yes, he put, he put his dick in the bun,
he put ketchup and mustard on it.
And he walked around the party,
asking people they wanted a hot dog.
Oh my God.
Did he have other hot dogs at least to kind of distract
from the one that's hanging on the one.
Things that wouldn't fly today.
Go to jail today.
Back then it was like, he's so funny.
I like relish on mine.
Don't you guys remember like high school party tricks
like that people would do with crazy shit?
No, no, no, no, no, Adam.
Yeah, no.
I expect that from my best friend.
Were there girls at the party?
Well, there was guys that would just take their fucking pants off.
Yeah, I did that.
But usually it wasn't impressive.
You know what I mean?
I wonder if it's like,
this is like repressed sexual energy
with teenage boys earlier.
For sure.
Yeah.
We're like, ah.
I'm gonna show my blood in my deer or something.
Yeah.
I just like get too drunk.
We're like, yeah, I'll take,
yeah, I'll put my thing in a bun.
We used to do,
I remember when we were in a whole,
we were in a Hawaii trip, right?
With our, I was,
I was, we just graduated high school.
And there was like 10 of us.
You went to Hawaii for high school?
I thought you were poor.
I was.
How the hell did you do that?
Well, I wouldn't enter that.
By high school, I was making money, remember?
Oh yeah, you were working.
Yeah.
Damn.
That's cool, man.
It was, it was only 600 bucks, right?
But that was 600 bucks was, you know,
a lot of money for a kid.
You must have tripped out traveling like that.
Was that the first time you ever did a big trip like that?
You know what?
And now that you say that, it might have been,
so how funny is it's crazy how much we fly today.
I just take that for granted that when I was a kid
that I never flew anywhere.
I flew one time when I was really young.
My mom flew us to Utah right after my father passed
so that was seven years old.
And then you know what, so I think the next time
that I flew anywhere was,
to Hawaii, fuck man, that's crazy.
Wow, and you did it yourself.
Yeah, with much high school, buddy.
You should be proud of yourself.
So anyway, tell us about this trip.
So we got, so we're all underage, right?
So we get to Hawaii.
When you get to Hawaii as a high school kid.
And this is like teachers and shit are there?
Or is this just you, you know?
We went through with one of those, you know, like invasion
or one of those companies that puts on like that,
they do this all over.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
You guys have heard of these?
Yes, I have.
It's like a high school trip or whatever.
It's kind of like, but it's a little bit of shop-run.
Yeah, but it isn't just for high school.
It's actually for like out of high school.
Like you have to be, well, you don't have to be 18,
because if you're under 18, you have to get approval
from your parents.
If you're over 18, you can go.
But it's typically like the 17 to 21 year old range.
That's, that go on these trips.
And they do cancun, they do Hawaii, they do like Jamaica,
and I think like a Florida trip, like they do like,
and then yeah, they have like these supposedly
shaperones, but they're like 25 year olds.
It's like, it's like a bunch of 25 year olds party
with you.
Party and was 17 and 21 year olds.
So yeah, we went on this trip and as soon as you got off the plane, there was like people
coming up to you and handing you these little cards for you to get fake IDs.
And so we went and got our everyone went and got your fake IDs and so funny.
God, I've never told this story on the show.
Yeah, you just wrote something funny, right?
So how great is this? So there's 10 of us and never tell this story on the show. Yeah, you just remind me of something funny, right? So how great is this?
So there's, there's 10 of us and we all, we all go get these fake IDs.
Now, mind you, these fake IDs, I think cost us like a hundred bucks.
So trip party costs a lot of money.
I think each of us kids maybe have two or three hundred dollars tops.
Maybe if you're one of the rich kids to spend for a whole week, right?
And we spend the first half of it on fucking fake IDs because of course,
we got our priorities right so
You know and you're you're hella nervous and scared you're when you're that age doing something like that because you know
It's illegal. This is illegal. It's wrong. So you know
We all wait in this line. It's like it's back alley plays. Is this a trap? Oh totally
We're all like gonna watch in like each other's backs like is this is you know someone else going through there
They're okay. Okay. We can do this so we do it right and we all
It's totally the Mick love in one. Oh
hilarious right so and you you have choices like I think organ Colorado, Virginia
There's like there's Washington. There's like 10 states that have like back then had cheesy IDs that were easy to fake
Yeah, you know California you're not getting a California fake ID
These are like they're just busing these fuckers out, right?
So we all like go pick our own different,
which is stupid too, that we pick different states
and we're all friends, right?
So that was already a stupid, like we're all,
oh, I did Oregon, oh, I did Washington.
We're all hanging out together, right?
That was a very smart.
So that was the first stupid thing we did.
And then we all, so we're all sitting around,
we're all sitting around our hotel room,
and we're looking at our cards,
and each guy's going around like,
oh, I'm for Virginia,
and I'm from what one, two, three, butthole street,
and we did all these stupid names too.
Like, I was just, yeah, stupid, right?
And everyone's such a bad player.
Everyone's going around, right?
And they're talking about where they're from,
they're street name,
and then how old they made themselves.
Some guys made themselves 25, some guys 23, right? And we get around, it's my best friend Justin who loved this
if he's listening.
And he's like, well, I'm from Oregon, this and that.
And he's like, and you see him start counting with his fingers.
Fuck, I made myself 20.
He's like, because it was that year.
He made a fake, he was fake idea that didn't work. So he didn't do the math right.
So that year in October is when his birthday is
and here we are in it's June or July
or whatever a month it is right in summer.
And he made himself turning 21 on his real birthday.
So he put his October birthday on there
and he did the math wrong and he was,
fuck, I'm only
20. I don't turn 21 until, oh my, this weed fucking died. It was the funniest thing.
They worked out. Did you end up using them to go drink? Oh, yeah, yeah. They worked
even when we came back to, so they accused them here. Yeah. When we came back as kids,
I used that. I had a Virginia ID that was what bought my alcohol as a, yeah, I had a Nevada
one. Did you get a big ID? It was hilarious because it was like a. Yeah, I had a Nevada one. Did you? You had a big idea?
It was hilarious, because it was like,
the skin tone was, you know how wide I am, right?
Yeah, it's visible.
So it was like, I'm not that.
I was like, it was like a guy that kind of sorta
like could patty like a nose kind of like mine,
but like he was like, visibly Indian.
He was not, he was not a white person.
He was not a white person by any means.
And I don't remember his name.
It wasn't like, you know, it wasn't super ethnic,
but it was like, I don't know how the,
like I went to one bar and I, and she knew,
she knew she gave me that look like really serious,
but she liked me and I just like,
we'll just keep paying her for drinks
and like giving her tips and stuff.
So she just let me like stay at this one bar.
Didn't work anywhere else.
But yeah, I just like, I didn't have a big ID.
Never.
How did you get all calls a young kid?
I looked old.
Oh, really?
Yeah, dude.
Bro, I was a shoulder tap or anything?
No, you know, and you know, I didn't go out.
I didn't go to a lot of bars.
The main, you need that stuff?
Not really. The main bar, I went,
remember important to building character.
You gotta remember this.
I was just working hard managing gyms.
Yeah, you gotta remember it, listen to me.
Beatsy, keep that in mind.
I was 19 and 20 when I was, when I was having these big gyms
as my first, like 16,
what about 16, 17 and 18?
No, no, no, no, were you drinking?
No, I know, I wasn't drinking at all.
That's when I was doing heroin.
So I was, I was in, yeah, I wasn't in that, not my, no, I'm, no, I, How can you be that productive? I didn't, I didn no, no. Were you drinking? No, I know I wasn't drinking at all. That's when I was doing heroin. So I was, yeah, I wasn't in that now.
I'm scared.
No, how can you be that productive?
I didn't do anything.
I didn't drink alcohol at all.
Barely anyone I was at that age at all.
I might have tried it here and there,
but I never really got drunk.
I think the first time I ever got drunk,
I was 18 and that's because at the time,
my general manager, who's a good friend of my mentor,
thanks buddy.
He brings some alcohol to the club
and it's like 11 o'clock at night.
And we start doing shots and this is one of the many lessons
I had with alcohol where I learned,
you gotta give it a second, but it hits you first.
You know what I mean?
Because I'm just, you're a first time.
Your first experience of getting drunk
was like with shots.
With work and, and, yeah. Wow work and, and, uh, yeah.
Wow.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Wow.
Like not even beer, you went straight to hard.
So when you were in high school,
did you not go to high school parties?
No, not really.
I mean, we threw some here and there, but not really.
No wonder high school was very memorable for you.
Yeah, it was boring.
No shit.
So what did you on the weekends when like all the cool kids
went to like a party and stuff?
On the weekends?
I was working out, reading, learning.
Look how much is paid off.
There we go, now.
It's all so, you put the work in.
We could have, we could have another,
what are you guys here? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha I'm just playing those assholes. What were we talking about? No, but no, I didn't do any of that stuff at all.
Wow.
Do you ever look back and think,
feel like, I mean, I suppose you and I both
didn't finish college either,
so do you ever feel like you kind of missed out on that?
You know, I used to, I used to think of that,
but you know, it's because TV and movies glamorizes
the college life so much that you see like,
like, oh, fuck, I wish it was part of a fraternity
and it would have been so crazy.
No, the reality is if I went to college,
I would have had to go to junior college first
because I didn't have the money,
then I would have gone to state college.
I probably would have lived at home.
It would have been an extension of high school.
That would have been, that was my experience.
You know what I'm saying?
That's how I was at college.
But when you watch the movies and shit,
you're like, I feel like I missed out.
And then I got married really young.
But I did have a stint where before I got married,
I moved down to Palm Springs area
because I bought a large share of a large club down there.
And I was down there for almost a year.
And that was, that's what I did a lot of parting
down there.
Because how old are you at that point?
I was 20
21 20 or 21 21 and so I moved down there and that was the first time moving out of the house and
I mean, but I still worked my ass off. It was crazy. We would get to work at 8 a.m
We'd work till 10 p.m. Then we party till two or three and then just rinse and repeat and and I know I don't know
I did it. I don't know how I did it.
I don't know how I had the energy to do it.
Did you have pretty much it?
Was that the only phase or time in your life
where you felt like you probably kind of were just like
crazy, working hours, drinking party
and were you doing that a lot?
Or was it just like a little bit?
I mean, compared to how I, you know, did things before,
even now, like even now, if I wanna,
if I had all the time in the world to party,
I would still not do it very often
because I find it's more enjoyable
when you kind of save it and do it when you feel good,
and then take care of your body,
feel good and then do it again,
rather than, there were definitely periods of time
where I party, party, party,
but then you start to feel shitty.
So I still kind of, what's the word, titrate it.
So I definitely titrate it still to this day.
And I did it back then too.
Wow, dude. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like those were some good times for me. I call it just epic.
Well, you actually went to a good college though and you played sports too. Yeah. I mean, it was like
I mean, it's overrated. Like you can you can party and not go to college. I mean, it's really not
the place to like spend a bunch of money
and waste your time partying,
but it did help to kind of get that out of my system.
I think that I needed a little bit of...
What do you think was your favorite part of going to college
and your least favorite part of going to college?
My favorite part was just being independent
and having no responsibilities and figuring shit out and figuring out who I was.
Well, you had a responsibility, you had to go to class.
He's comparing to now.
Kind of.
Dude, that was not, you just, I mean, you kind of rolled into class.
Yeah, but when you're, then I bet you didn't think that way, right?
Like when you're a kid, you think this is, you got,
oh, this whole work is so daunting.
I gotta do all this shit.
I mean, it was like like when I was full time,
when I was like in season for football,
it was tough because it was just time management,
you know, like it was they consumed pretty much
the majority of my day, like in the morning and at night.
So it's like everything in between was just studying
and then I actually even squeezed in,
you know, maybe like four or five hours
working at the bar.
So I was just like a fucking,
that was where I really learned time management.
And so that definitely as far as like a life skill,
totally applied from then on out.
When you were at the bar, were you like a barback,
were you actually a bartender?
Yeah, I was, first I was a server,
then I was a barback, then I was a bartender.
So you actually did, how long did you do bartending for?
Um, just like maybe a year and a half.
So I still a decent amount of time.
Yeah, we just, and we just did like cocktails, like we did a martini.
So it was like a martini bar.
And so it was like a set order of maybe like 12 or 16 types of drinks.
Do you think, do you get floored with a lot of the questions? I was just gonna ask you,
I was just gonna ask if do you think that this is,
do you think you're, you know, talking to girl skills
where it got developed with?
Oh, massively increased there for sure.
Yeah.
Oh yeah, because you're in a position of just like power.
Yeah, I mean.
I have to say that.
But like, they're sitting there trying to like,
drum up conversation with you at the same,
so it makes it easy,
because you're just like, you just have small talk,
and then, you know, they hang out
and they get more drinks,
and then they feel more courageous to like,
ask you like, really off the wall questions,
and you know, so I got used to like,
like, are you wearing any underwear?
Yeah, exactly, like, they would flirt,
like the flirting would start,
but then it would escalate.
It was a real question, so.
You know, they'd say that to him.
Yeah.
They do, you know what?
Cause he's got all the drinks and stuff like that.
You know, girls go in there flirting.
Of course.
They get some free stuff.
And on it, so yeah, I'm sure that contributed.
And then, you know, it was interesting,
cause I used to have these guys come in that were from an Audi dealership
and I befriended them and everything.
I had no idea that they had all these like mafia ties
and everything.
So I was like, you know, it's met a lot of interesting people
and interesting characters.
And like I had mentioned a long time ago,
like I was terrible at small talk.
I was just like, I had my friends and that was it.
And like if you're another person,
I just would give you like, you know, real like short answers for it.
Did you, did you sleep with girls at the bar or was that like, no, I'm okay to do that?
Like in the bar?
Yeah, on location?
Yeah, like literally on location. There was a lot of shenanigans going on.
I have buddy, I have buddies that are. I know he's screwed to question. That's why I'm
asking him because I have buddies that are bartenders still to the day bartenders.
Yeah.
Yeah, that happens, dude.
It does.
There's this one.
There's this one booth.
There was this one booth.
It was like a booth 54, I think.
Whoa.
That was the one that was the one that was the most.
Never is.
Don't bring the black light.
You don't shine that in there.
You don't want to sit there.
So.
Yeah, it happens.
It happens in gyms, dude.
I'm guarantee you guys have caught people
having sex in the gym.
Yeah. Oh yeah.
You have, right?
Yeah. Oh yeah.
I cycle room.
You know, at the Hillsdale, there's a way you can get up,
like up to the roof.
To the roof.
Yeah.
Yeah, I caught, I caught.
I saw my roof.
Bro, so.
I didn't know that.
God, man.
This, like, one of the, there are situations where,
you know, you have an employee and you like them,
but they make a stupid mistake and you're like,
God, you know, I have to talk to you about this stupid thing.
It was the fitness manager that worked for me.
I'm not gonna say his name
because I know those people from 24, that listen,
and we'll know who I'm talking about,
but he, one of my other staff members,
went up to the roof to get something,
comes back down,
they're like, hey, Sonsos up there with a girl.
And I'm like, what do you mean with a girl?
Like, he's having sex.
Like, oh, he's training his client up there.
Yeah, and I'm like, what are you doing?
So, I'm getting fresh.
Fresh air.
That's what I would tell Sal, if he was the boss
and he came and caught me up there, I'd be like,
oh no, no, no, we're just doing burpees up here.
Yeah, we're doing burpees.
Getting some vitamin D.
So I had to talk to you guys.
I was so angry with him.
He comes in my office and I sat him down.
I'm like, listen, dude, I'm like, I'm not mad at you for what you did.
I'm like, I'm mad because you got caught.
You're dumb.
Why would you do it there?
You idiot.
Find a better play.
I was like so angry that he got caught doing something
so stupid like that.
So angry.
That's the only time actually I caught somebody.
When did you, have you, I wanna hear some school?
Oh, well I had trainers that I busted
that in the way I found it, I actually didn't catch them
in the act, but it was happening on such a regular basis
that they had created like this little mini bedroom.
So back, yeah.
So it's Santa Teresa.
If you go into the cycling room,
that's where it was.
Yep, if you go into the cycling room,
you can go back and around like where
these, this like little fenced off gate
that wraps around this corner.
And it opens up to a room,
almost the size of this room right here.
And they had sectioned off, they had just put like these false walls up.
And if you just looked at first glance, if you walked around the corner, you couldn't tell.
It just looked like shit was back there. But if you walked all the way through and then you walk past this little partitioned wall that they
kind of put up, there was like this little bedroom that they had you, they took a bunch of mats that had been laying around and they had made a mat.
Oh, dude.
So you walked back there and you saw this.
Oh, it was.
Oh, yeah.
I knew right away what it was.
Did you know who it was?
I had ideas, but I wasn't for sure.
So I had a, I'm also I set up a hidden camera
on the front desk, the girls and one of the sales guys in there.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, it was the spot, right?
I was like, wow.
I made it clear to my staff.
Into you, I'm out of here. So to my, my trainers and stuff like that, I was very spot, right? I was like, wow. I made it clear to my staff. Into you, I'm outta here.
So to my trainers and stuff like that,
I was very clear that like,
don't not let me catch you back there with somebody.
I don't know who set that up.
I don't know who's going back there with that.
It's obvious what that's back there for.
So do not let me catch you doing that.
But yeah, no, that was something that was going on.
Yeah, gyms are interesting environments.
They're very...
You wanna enter gyms?
It's rated, it's rated, it's either,
it's always one or two with hospitals.
Yeah.
For, cause you get the...
Fidades.
At hospitals.
Wow, hold on a second, hospitals too.
You working, didn't gyms,
your wife working in hospitals.
I know, right?
And we're both professionals.
You found each other.
You found each other.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, God, and I think of some of the stuff we did back then and I wouldn't be able,
there's no way you'd be able to get away with some of this shit like, you know, one of the first
things I did as a manager of Sunnyvale, you want to hear a funny story, which for sure, no HR
department in the world would have allowed me to continue working there after I did, there's no way,
but I get there and it was on a weekend. Right, when I was given this flagship club,
and I pop in on a weekend when I'm supposed to have
these guys running the weekend for me.
I used to, especially when I first run a gym,
I wouldn't tell them I would do this,
but I used to work every day.
They didn't know that, so I'd pop in on the weekend
to see what's going on.
I walk in and like, where's my sales staff?
I can't find them.
So I'm looking around, can't find them.
And at the old Sunnyvale, I don't know how it is now,
but the sales offices were up at the,
there was a, you had to go up from stairs,
it was like another floor.
And then you could go up onto the roof.
There was like this little door,
so I walk out to the roof,
and there's my sales guys, and they're all smoking weed.
So they look at me like, oh fuck.
So I look at them, and I kind of nodded my head,
walked back inside and locked the door.
Oh yeah.
And out they stayed on the roof all day, all day long.
And so members were coming in and they were like,
hey, there's some guys on the roof telling us to call
the fire department because it was a hot and shit up there.
I'm like, no, they're gonna stay up there.
Till later on. You know what I let them in? I let them in. I'm like, no, they're gonna stay up there. To later on.
You know, when I let them in, I let them in,
I said, don't come back, go home.
You know what's so nice?
Bullshit is that we live in an era now
that you couldn't punish your staff like that.
I think that's a great way to punish that.
Yeah, they learned something that day.
It reminds me of the duct taping the phone to the ear.
You know what I'm saying?
Oh, dude, so do that.
I mean, it's like, you're not gonna make your call today.
I'm a fucking duct tape that shit to your head.
But it was so old school.
But the environment like, and allowed that, I guess,
and I don't know, you develop a certain kind of respect
and it's old school.
There's no way you could get away with some of that shit.
Well, I'm watching Katrina's company.
So she works for a huge construction company or concrete company,
but they do everything.
And they do all the major Facebook, all the big campuses, and watching her go through this
growth transition of they were kind of like the good old boys.
Like literally, they've got thousands of employees, majority of them were all men,
construction workers.
There's, you know, everybody has Tequila or whiskey
in the drawers, you know what I'm saying?
And it's very like madmen style.
And like the shit that you the way you talk
is like super inappropriate.
And just sailors.
Yeah, you know what I'm saying?
If an employee's like messing around and not doing work,
like they'll just, in front of everybody,
just talk shit to him, you know, say,
like it's just stuff that you cannot do anymore.
And they're, you know, they're trying to go more corporate
and she's a part of that wave coming through
and it reminds me of that wave in 24
because we were there before
and then I was there also after
and it's a crazy transition to be a part of that.
Dude, I thought, I saw my general manager,
when I first, when I first was working in this business,
I saw him throw a calculator, like a ninja star,
into the wall, like he was in a stuck.
Yeah, because we had a bad day in sales,
and so he was ripping everybody.
And this guy's a good friend of mine,
still to this day,
he was known for that shit. Like you piss him off and like you wanted it,
you were scared and he just hammered everybody in the office and then takes the
the calculator and whips it and throws it like an ninja star inside the wall.
You would not be able to get away with that nowadays. No way in hell.
But back then that was the that was the environment.
See even in like athletics, so I had certain coaches
that would get fiery.
They wanted to use motivation and certain tactics
to get everybody's attention.
And I guarantee you can't do a lot of stuff
that I experienced back in the day with a bunch of coaches
at one time.
What time, we had just had a shit poor performance.
And you know, he was just trying to make an example and decided to take one of the
tables and just pick it up and fucking slam it into the wall and it shattered
like all over the place.
And then just was like and like punched a hole in the wall and walked out.
We're all like, ah,, I was so scared dude, I was like, right in the front row.
I had no idea he was gonna do that.
Like, didn't say much of anything,
we were just like, is that how you guys wanna do that?
No, by the time I became a manager,
it had died down quite a bit,
but still it was way different than what you would see now.
But, I mean, I would do like the bottom,
like the last place sales guy tomorrow
has to wear balloons all day.
I would do something like that,
where I'd take balloons and I'd tie them to your pants.
And that's it, because your last place,
you get to walk around the gym now
with balloons underpants, people have to ask what?
Or, you know, we'd make a big competition of bet,
and whoever loses, you have to go put on women's apparel,
and then you have to sell women's apparel.
You can only take off the women's apparel
if you sell a hundred dollars of women's apparel.
That's amazing.
And you know what, it was fun, everybody enjoyed it,
but you would never...
Now of course.
You would never...
Super offensive.
Yeah, you would never get away with that kind of shit.
And you know, and sometimes,
and you know, as a manager, what I would do is
when people would give me grief over and be like,
oh man, I don't want to do that. Are you for real, you should? I would do it with them.
Because I'd show them. It's not that big of a deal. And I'd put on,
put on a sports braw on and walk around the gym and sell women's a pearl.
Not the first time.
Speed of women's apparel and your booty shorts that you're wearing right now. Tid your legs.
Sexy, huh? No, you're actually your legs look at their're they're growing. They are growing. Are they yeah, but you know
My sheeply yeah, but you know my my my upper legs tend to respond pretty well to working out
But it's partially because early on I think identified with my legs more so than anything that
Frequency your rods blow up usually huh huge yeah, but you know when I first started working out my legs were so skinny
That my knees were bigger than my legs. So I had like
Basically picture a femur attaching to you know the bottom part of the leg
Yeah, that's what they look like and I learned how to squat early on from these power lifters
And I gained something like 13 or 14 pounds over a summer, got stretch marks on my
ass and everything from it. But you know, you see a lot of guys struggling with this. I you know,
with they see a lot of guys struggling with it. Well, legs, legs is a I mean some I mean, some people have
again, you know, we always talk about how genetics are always the first, right? Like some people just have
I remember kids in height there was kids in high school that didn't even train correctly,
and they just had tree trunk legs.
You know, we got a running back kid
who just had these tree trunks.
And then I was always the kid with these twig legs.
And man, when I would train my legs,
it would just, I would get dizzy and nauseous
and it took so much for me to try and get these things to stimulate and
get any sort of response.
What was the first thing that you did that got them to respond at all?
Like did they respond at all when you first started?
I mean, not really, not really to be honest with you.
Like they didn't, I mean, very, very little.
Like I was doing, I wasn't doing squatting.
I wasn't squatting.
I was leg pressing.
It was leg pressing, leg extension leg curls.
I mean, that was like the go two three for sure, for years. And the only thing
that we would change with that is, you know, maybe throwing in some lunges in there or
adding weight or adding more sets, you know, of those major, those three major exercises.
And that was like literally all we would do to try and get our legs. You know, when
you think about it with a leg press and I know the leg press in not
anymore, it's not like this anymore, but when we were into working out, especially in the
90s and early 2000s, the leg press was considered like the one of the top mass builders for
your legs.
And in fact, there was a lot of debate back that you won't see this debate anymore. It's not really a debate anymore, but back then it was a debate.
You would actually read muscle magazines and it would say which one is better for leg mass squats
or leg press. And they would try to make the argument. But if you really deconstruct the
leg, the reason why I think people like the leg press, you can use a lot of weight. It's easy.
Yeah, the leverage. And let's be honest, the range of motion on a leg press. You can use a lot of weight. It's easy. Yeah, the leverage and let's be honest the range of motion A leg press is shit even with the good leg press. Yeah, it's not a deep range of motion
If you do go deep that's bad news
People don't know that either with a leg press if your low back comes off
Mm-hmm a little bit at the bottom of the rep which it does for most people when they're going deep on it
You are you are putting yourself in a bad situation. Super vulnerable.
Yes. Super.
And I've seen more slip discs from leg presses like that.
I think it's still, I mean, at least in with my peers and the, like,
men's physique were all inch like that.
It's still a fucking dominant exercise.
I always like come in the gym and I see my boys and I'm like, God, you guys stacking
up 15 plates on the fucking on the on the on the lay press.
It's a short range of motion though.
Like, it's not even close to so many different and present squat variations that you can do
with a quarter of that weight that I'm going to give you so much more leg to.
And I didn't know this either though.
I didn't know.
You know, I'm saying like you you correlate the burning and the pump and everything from
the leg press, you know, that you feel to I must be growing.
I mean, as a kid, when I was first learning to lift
and train, the burn and the soreness was what I-
It's your metrics.
Yeah, that was all your metrics.
It was like, oh, that was a good workout.
I've got to be hopefully getting bigger and stronger
because I'm sore, right?
So that was like how you figured out.
And we would hammer the shit out of the lake,
press hammer the shit out of the lake,
extensions and get a little sore from it.
And I saw very, very little growth.
And when we started squatting,
it wasn't until I was late 20s, late 20s before
I started to squat.
And even when I started to squat,
it still wasn't a regular thing for me
because my mechanics were really bad.
And my mechanics is skill.
It is.
All of it is a skill.
You said something on the last couple of episodes
ago, Justin, I made a post about it
and I started to cut you off at him.
I wanna make this point that a long time ago,
somehow we started viewing exercise as, just you got a breath hard, you long time ago, somehow we started viewing exercise as just you got a
breath hard, you got a sweat, and you got to get sore.
And it really doesn't matter what you're doing necessarily, as long as you get sore and
you sweat and whatever.
And that's how people judge the workout.
And we don't judge any other physical activity that way.
There's no sport that's like, I don't go play any sport and come back and don't talk
about any of my
Technique or skill and just say oh, I got sore. I had a good day at soccer. You know what I mean like with with with resistance with resistance training
We started we stopped training it like a skill and just started treating it like a get sore and sweat
And that's where a lot of the problems come from because if you treat it like a skill like imagine Adam had you treated
a lot of the problems come from because if you treat it like a skill, like, imagine Adam had you treated exercises as skill from day one, imagine your progress.
Oh, yeah.
You know, well, I see now what I mean, and my legs actually respond pretty well now.
Like, I used to think that I was balanced now, definitely.
I used to think I was this really hard gainer and I was just was never going to have these
legs because I would crush my legs.
They'd be sore for a week and then I'd hit them again.
It was just like, if I remember, I had at one point, they'd be sore for a week, and then I'd hit them again. It was just like,
I remember I had at one point,
getting to a point where I was just like,
this fucking sucks because I feel like this workout,
I've destroyed myself in to get,
and I'm still being teased by having these skin,
they're not growing really,
they're not responding the way I want.
And then if I would do movements like a squat,
my low back would be on fire,
my low back would hurt like crazy.
And so I just kind of wrote that movement off completely.
I just said, oh fuck it, I'll just continue
to leg press and do that.
And to add insult to injury, there's articles
that say things like, you know, if you're tall,
squats probably aren't for you
and they make you feel like, okay, I guess I shouldn't.
Well, no, that's exactly, if anybody,
and that was kind of like my chip that I had on my shoulder
if someone like, if there was anybody who like my chip that I had on my shoulder, if someone like,
if there was anybody who knew that squatting
was good with stasins, I'm like, hey, you know,
you're also five, five, bro, you know,
try being six, three in squatting and seeing,
because it is, I mean, you have longer levers
and there is more room for air mechanically.
And so, you know, it was challenging
and it took me a while to, I mean, it took this,
I don't think my squat got really good until just recently.
I mean it wasn't until we started mind pump did I really start to really work on my squatting
and deliff mechanics and I mean now it's nuts like some and now what I do which is awesome
that I have this tool in my belt that I just always have but didn't realize never used
it which is I'll come to the gym some days and I'll just squat five to 10 sets, and that's all I do.
And that is like, and man, I can maintain,
my legs right now are bigger right now
than they ever have been in my entire life.
I mean, they were bigger when I was competing
because I'm not quite to that size right now,
but my legs overall are bigger than they've ever been
in my life, and I really don't have to hammer the fuck at them.
I just do movements that really give me a big bang
for my buck.
I'll come in and I just the last time I train legs
was Bulgarian squats.
That's it.
Just doing some Bulgarian split squats or front squats
or back squats or dead lifts,
like those movements develop the legs so much
that you don't got a freaking crazy hammer yourself.
I think part of the reason why is that when you do them right, it's the range of motion.
It's a long range of motion that you can't really get as well with machines.
There's other reasons as to why there's a lot of machines.
It's leverage and you can cheat so much.
Can't cheat is something sitting on your back.
You don't really have to stabilize it as much. You don't have to stabilize and you can cheat so much. Yeah, cheat is something sitting on your back. You don't really have to stabilize it as much.
No, you don't have to stabilize and you can cheat.
You can leverage.
You can let, you can, you're what,
when you're leg pressing, what are you doing?
You, you grab the handles, you bear down,
you know what I'm saying?
Your back is supported and pressed against it
and all that's driving is your legs out
and you're only going maybe half-pretches.
Yeah, it's not, you're not having to work as hard.
And just because you get a pump or a burn a little bit, you think, oh, it's working really
well.
But if you knew that it was probably, I don't know, I'm just going to throw a number out
there.
But I'd say it's 50% less effective.
Yeah.
You know, maybe more?
Maybe more of that.
Yeah.
It's interesting because I was trying to think about that as you're talking about when
you first squatted.
And for me, I was actually fortunate because in our high school,
we had a class that was a weightlifting class.
And just at the same time, I was doing morning workouts
with the football team.
And so, of course, I just wanted to do something
that was related to working out and exercising.
And so I was in this class at the same time.
And so what was cool about it was it wasn't like an actual workout.
It was like going through all the mechanics of everything.
And so I had a college strength conditioning coach that came down to our high school.
And he just taught like he was a PE teacher that also taught like weight training.
And so he instilled like really fucking good mechanics with me and I never even really like realize that because I I just practice practice practice the those moves all the time
wished he would have taught me deadlift never taught me deadlift but he definitely taught me like overhead press and and he taught me like power cleans but, that was like such an impactful thing.
If I wouldn't have had that, it would have taken me years to build off of it.
It was my secret weapon for a long time as a personal trainer because with women, with
women in particular, because everybody likes to have strong muscular legs, but women really
try to target their lower body and they have forever since I've been in fitness.
It's always been guys like to work out their arms,
women like to work out the legs.
And it was my secret weapon.
I'd get a female client and she'd be like,
oh, my legs just don't respond.
My butt is this or my, you know, they don't look good.
And they'd be like, I knew it right away,
but it's cool, we're gonna squat, we're gonna do lunges,
we're gonna do front squats, we're gonna do deadlifts.
That's the funny thing.
And they never did those.
And all of a sudden it was like,
their legs responded.
See, I put that together for my clients. How funny is that? Like,
I figured that out early on in my early 20s. Like that, like, I was, I used to call myself
like the glue guy, you know, before fucking Brad Contreras came out. Like, I was the glue
guy for sure should trademark. And I was known for that in our gym as being the guy who
can help them. And my secret was like all the squat and squat variations.
Like that's, I train and a lot of women didn't squat
and I would teach the squat and their legs
would look incredible, their ass would look incredible
from in and everybody else were doing
these stupid kick back exercises and I was like,
no, no, no, no, if they're telling you
that these are the movements we need to do.
And it was, but it's so funny that I taught that.
I knew how important it was because I saw
the results of my clients, but then I didn't make it a priority of me and I used the excuses for me
Oh, I hurt my back or oh whatever like I always had these reasons why I'm not squatting instead of going okay
This is really challenging for me. I need to I need to treat it like you said like a skill
I need to get good at it and figure out why I'm not I wish I would have went down that path because I mean god
I have no idea where I'd be at now or how much easier it would be to maintain my legs.
That's also, it's range of motion.
Range of motion is a big one.
Another game changer for me a long time ago.
And luckily, because I was into the history of muscle building, is I would buy these books
and magazines that were old, that would have older exercises that had fallen out of favor.
And one of those was the Sissy squat.
An Sissy squat is a very knee,
flexion and extension, heavy movement.
And, you know, flexion extension is basically
like a leg extension when you sit in chair,
but a Sissy squat you're doing it standing.
But the thing about a Sissy squat that I really liked was
the stretch is I would do it at the end of my workout while my legs were pumped.
When you get to the bottom of a Cicci squat, if you're strong enough, you can get a deep
stretch in the quads and then you come up in squeeze and feel the whole quad.
I noticed with extra, so this is true for the whole body.
When you're working out the body, especially for hypertrophy purposes, there are movements where the maximum load is being placed on the contraction of the muscle,
and then there's movements where you get a good stretch,
and then there's movements where you get neither of those in the middle.
Those tend to be the heavy movements, like a squat.
There's no real stretch or heavy contraction with a squat.
You do get a little both, but it's not like all the weight is on that. If I did a fly, you get a big deep
stretch. It's a mid-range movement. But if I want to get a stretch on my quads, Sissy
squat, I can't think of any other exercise that kind of does that. If I want to get a squeeze
on my quads, well, then I can do that with almost any exercise, but a leg extension tends
to be there. When you include exercises that kind of hit all of those,
you get better results.
So hamstrings was another one.
Hamstrings, you know, we were taught like leg curls.
That's all you did for hamstrings,
leg curls, leg curls, leg curls.
Well, the first time I did a stiff leg of deadlift,
I had never felt my hamstrings like that ever.
And when you look at the mechanics,
the biomechanics of the hamstring and what function they do,
hip extension is more important than knee flexion.
Now it does do both, but you're gonna get
big ass hamstrings from just doing heavy hip extension
type movements like a stiff,
and you're getting that stretch, right?
A lot of the load is in the stretch.
Now my hamstrings always got developed really well, and I never,
I almost never did leg curls.
It was all dead lifts and stiff leg adenis.
It just seems more applicable, you know, like to function.
It is.
Well, I remember when I told the story about like dead lifting
and then going to the back to the seated row.
Yeah, remember that?
Yep, yep.
So I had the same experience with dead lifting
and going back to leg curls. So again, I same experience with deadlifting going back to leg crows.
So again, I told you leg crows, leg extensions, leg press,
those were like very staple exercises for years for me.
And leg crows, I mean, my hamstrings have always been
very, very weak even all the years of doing leg crows
machine. And I don't remember where I was at,
but maybe it's like 70, 80 pounds on the leg crows
or something like that. Like that would be enough to get me really sore and was tough.
And I remember when, you know, I started deadlifting.
I completely eliminated leg curls.
I just stopped doing it.
I got so into deadlifting and some of this happened when we
first started, you know, training and getting together.
And I started deadlifting like crazy.
And I remember looking back and it was the same type
time frame or so and I was like,
you know what, I haven't seen it road in a while.
You know what, I haven't laid crammed in a while.
Let's go see.
And again, because I hadn't done it a long time,
I thought I was gonna get on the machine
and I thought that I'd have to start half the way
and of course I was expecting that of course,
I haven't been doing this exact movement,
so I'm probably not gonna be as strong.
And man, I remember being able to do double the weight.
I mean, I spent years incrementally moving up 10 pounds
on that machine.
And I remember doubling it just from deadlifting.
And not having been incorporating that.
I thought, holy shit, that was,
and I wasn't even, this is not even stiff like a deadlift.
This is conventional deadlifting. Conventional deadlifting did so much for my hamstrings that it blew away all the work
That I had been putting it for years into that machine see that fucking blew my mind. This is why it's so important to
To not pigeonhole yourself or put yourself in a box when it comes to when it comes to training
It reminds me a lot of,
you know, when I was doing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu,
this was probably 10, maybe,
it's gotta be at least 10 years now
that I stopped training.
But back then, 10 years ago,
I got up to a purple belt level,
which is, you know, relatively high level,
is after that it's brown and black.
And one thing that I would do to give myself an advantage
over the other people in my classes
was I would go on YouTube and I would look up other grappling arts that were not Brazilian
Jiu-Jitsu and I would look at some of their techniques.
And there was a lot of carryover.
You'd see a lot of techniques that they all did, but then you'd see techniques that you
didn't see in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
So I'd look up catch wrestling.
Catch wrestling had all these net cranks
and all these wrist manipulations
and all these different ways to apply submissions.
Then I'd look at Sombo, which is Russian,
it's a Russian form of ju,
it's kinda like judo, but with leg locks.
Kinda similar, right?
So then I'd look at Sombo,
and I'd see all these different kinda heel hooks
and, you know, calf, crushers, and knee crushers,
and knee bars, and rolling knee lock, all these
different moves.
And I had good at Jiu-Jitsu class and I throw them on people and because they'd never seen
them before because they were stuck in Jiu-Jitsu land, I would get these submissions.
And then they'd ask me, where'd you learn that?
And I'd be like, oh, fuck, that's a, you know, I learned that from Josh Barnett catch wrestling
or I'd learn that from.
And I'd buy these old books and stuff.
So I treated Jiu-Jitsu a little bit like I treated resistance training.
Well, when it comes to resistance training, you know, most people that work out in gyms
today are not, most people are not training for particular specific sport.
Most people want to improve the way their body looks.
So most people I could safely say, and I'm sure you guys will agree with me, are really
interested in hypertrophy of their muscle and maybe speed up the metabolism, get leaner.
So they just want to be able to sculpt and shape their body.
That's the vast majority of people at Lefoy.
It's just a reality, right?
And so what they do is they look at, they put themselves in the box of hypertrophy and sculpting
which tends to be bodybuilding, tends to be bodybuilding techniques.
Well, you are missing out what you should do is look at all the different
disciplines of resistance training all the different strength sports and then look at the exercises that are most valued right within those sports
There's a reason why they have a lot of value
So Crossfit it did Crossfit did this Crossfit took the best exercises or a lot of the best exercises from different modalities and put it in their training and then they blew up and people got great, you know, hypertrophy results from it as well. In fact, I would hear people say, oh shit, I got a bet. I developed a better body doing CrossFit than I did doing bodybuilding. Now the reality is they were doing shitty bodybuilding and then they did something that was a little bit more
with better exercises.
So it wasn't necessary,
but it was just that they were trying
more effective exercises.
So I'm learning this right now.
Like I keep learning this lesson.
Like I'm doing Zurcher squats,
heavy farmer walks, bent presses.
These are movements that strong men tend to value.
Like a Zurcher squat for a strong man,
it's a staple movement.
It's a staple movement because, you know,
if you go to a swatch strong man competition,
they're lifting atlas stones and shit in their arms,
and so they have to be able to front load weight
with their arms and then still be able to squat or deadlift,
which is different than a straight arm deadlift
or a front squat.
Front loading is so underrated,
and that's something that's so applicable for any kind of sport in general too.
Yeah, in real life.
Like that's why, I mean,
going through any program that I did,
thankfully a lot of the coaches,
you know, were receptive to that.
And so we did a lot of front squats.
We did a lot of power cleans.
And so lots of driving forces in front
because, you know, you're on the,
the forefoot of, you know, your foot
and you're in certain positions where you have to squat down,
but really you have to be responsive
so you can't be back on your heel.
So I mean, it's all specific, right?
So if you wanna train, you can improve performance wise,
you can improve muscular wise.
So that was one of the things
like I had to learn then to activate my posterior chain and
go through that process after the sports were effective.
Well, that's my point.
Why are some of these movements so valued in these other resistance training disciplines?
Well, it's because those disciplines have identified the most effective exercises.
So you don't need to learn all the Olympic lifting lifts.
You don't need to learn all the power lifting techniques.
You don't need to learn all the kettlebell techniques
or all the club or mace training techniques
or all the bodybuilding techniques.
Just look at, you know, you know your favorite stuff,
but then look at these other sports
or these other disciplines, find the movements
that they find that they value
the most, apply those to your workout and watch your body respond.
Because again, I'm learning this with like a zertra squat.
I never did zertra squats consistently.
I did throw them in here and there, but I never did them consistently.
I'm getting now up to a point where I can zertra squat with three plates, which when I first
did zertra squats, which is maybe six weeks ago, so we're six to eight weeks ago,
so two months max, two months max,
I was doing this with 135, 165 pounds,
not that much weight I had to learn it.
Now I'm doing three 15,
what do you think's happened to my body
in that period of time, right?
It's responding.
It's responding, so learn these movements that,
and again, I did this early with some of the old school
strength training exercises
because at the time you talk about the 90s and early 2000s, if you wanted to work out your legs and build your legs,
everybody, all the bodybuilding magazines said, hack squat on a machine, leg press, leg extension, leg curl,
maybe a back squat, and that's pretty much it. I'm reading these old strength training books in manuals
that from the 50s and 60s and some of them from even before
and what are they saying?
Back squat, front squat,
hax squat with the barbell,
sissy squats.
I'm looking at all these movements
and I started implementing those and my legs just
fucking blew up, they responded.
And there's wisdom, there's a lot of wisdom
in that kind of stuff.
What do you think it is that causes people
to just to rebuke all those types of movements?
It's just their hard.
They require a lot of skill.
That's 100%.
And what I mean by hard is I don't necessarily mean
they're hard like they make you sweat and all that stuff
because you can do that with a lot of movement.
I can take somebody and I can make them sweat and puke
with no equipment whatsoever.
And I could have them just do some burpees or whatever.
If they're hard in the sense that they're hard to do
because they require a lot of skill.
This is a lot more risk involved, too, because you know,
it could get away from you if you don't have the proper mechanics
and you have to really learn how to stabilize your body
and keep certain positions tight
and have isometric contraction at the same time.
Well, it was fitness went mainstream.
That's what happened.
GIMS used to be places where people who knew
how to fucking work out went.
That's what it was.
If you didn't know how to work out, you didn't go to a gym.
No, that's a good point.
That's like if you compare it to any other sport
or anything like that, you go to a basketball court
because you like to play basketball.
You know how to play basketball.
You wouldn't go to a some well-known park
that all the players go to and play and show up and try and play with them if you've never played before.
You get dunked.
Right.
But when you think about that's kind of what we see right now as you see these commercial
gyms that want everybody to come.
So they make it all easy.
Yeah, they make it.
It was what they did.
It was the machines.
They go because they have to be there.
It was the machine revolution because initially machines were created.
Some of the first machines in gyms were made by the gym owners.
So like Joe Gold of Gold's gym, you know, he made machines.
You had some other, you know, Jacqueline made his, so Arthur Jones of Nautilus, he was
one of the first commercial machine makers, 24 hour fitness, which is the,
I mean, let's be playing 100% this is the truth.
They are the guys that,
they're the ones that created the industry.
They're really, or at least,
they're the ones that made it super profitable
or taught everybody.
They create a commercial gym model.
They're the ones that, I don't know if they didn't invent it
because there were other models that were out there, but they were, they're the trailblazers. Yeah, but they're the ones that were memorable. They're a Microsoft that, I don't know if they didn't invent it because there were other models that were out there,
but they were the trailblazers,
they're the ones that were memorable.
They're a Microsoft for tech, you know what I mean?
Like the first ones, the fucking make it happen.
And 24th Fitness wasn't called 24th Fitness
when it first started.
It was called 24th Nautilus.
And that's because it partnered with Nautilus equipment
and it had a bunch of Nautilus equipment in their gyms.
And that's what they did.
And that's how you got people to come into your gym
who never worked out before.
Otherwise, when you do,
you can have a bunch of people coming in without a bunch.
Otherwise, you'd have to invest in a lot of trainers.
But imagine if you opened up a gym with a bunch of squat racks
and a bunch of old-school shit
and then you just let people do their own stuff.
When did that light bulb go off for you
when you realized that this was, how this gym was made in other words like
Wow, this really wasn't designed to get people the best this whole gym is not even designed to get people the best results
It's really just to accommodate that everybody so everybody would come in. I knew that really early on oh you did
Yeah, because I remember when it was the switch went off from me
But it wasn't for at least that's about your four
for everything is all safety driven.
No, it was early on for me because at a young age,
a couple times I had my dad drive me to a powerhouse gym
or like one of these old school bodybuilding gyms,
and I remember I'd walk in and I'd be like,
this is way, and yes, there were lots of machines
and stuff, but the environment was different.
There was people using chalk, especially powerhouse.
I don't know if you guys remember powerhouse
back in the day.
That was an iron dungeon.
And then I'd go to 24-hour fitness
and you could still have an ex...
You have similar equipment, you can make your workout happen.
It was just a totally different environment.
And then I remember being like, okay,
there's a little bit of a difference here.
And then of course, I worked in the gym at the age of 18,
and I knew, like, we gotta make this attractive to people.
I mean, let's be honest.
Of all the shit in the gym,
the stuff that's gonna give people the best results,
the best short-term and long-term results,
is the dumbbells and barbells period.
Where was all the money spent in the gym?
Cardio.
Cardio machine.
Cardio, and then second was machines.
It's like Casino.
And they actually found out.
Where's all the money in Casino?
It probably started.
It started in third classes.
Yeah, that's it in classes.
That's true.
Like I said, it's just like like,
like, I remember.
Casinos are all like,
stayed in machines.
They're scared. They don't know what the fuck they're doing. It didn't go off for me until I remember
Like you have rows of cardio
Rows there all the way till two. Yeah, I think you were there for when I was at Hillsdale
I think you were at Santa Teresa. So I think you were there for this. Maybe you remember this
You might have been gone by then
But for me the light bulb went off when I started to notice how the company followed trends.
And our gym would start to shape or change
or we would offer something because there's competitors
out there that were doing something
that I knew Dan Well was trendy
and not really getting people results for sand.
Sergitron.
Yes.
And this is what did it for me was when curves was exploding
and was starting to take business
from 24-hour fitness, I remember we brought out
the express zone.
And the express zone was basically a curves
inside of our gym where we had-
You should explain curves for people who don't know.
Yeah, so if you don't know what curves is,
well first of all, it's one of the largest
fastest growing fitness chains in the world ever.
And it was targeted towards women. And it was supposed
to be built as a non-intimidating environment. It was like 20 or 30 minute workouts. Yes, it was a
20, 30 minute workout. It was a circle of machines. So they had it set up to where there was no mirrors
in there. There was music playing, a little scale inside there. And then a series of about 12, 15,
maybe 20
machines in a big circle and it was designed to you take these classes and you
just go from machine to machine to machine to machine for 20 minutes and
then you're done. And it was exploding man. People were opening up everywhere and
I remember it was about once it was starting to cut into revenue from our
business and so but I remember being the guy understanding what they were doing and how they were
marking the people and knowing that it was bullshit and knowing that like this is not
really helping these people.
It's literally just playing into their insecurities and giving them what they want.
And I remember I lost a lot of respect for us when we not only did we, because it's
one thing to offer it, which I'm all for, right?
Offering it as like, you know, if you love curves
and you like that, maybe here we have it here,
you have this, these machines, if you wanna start with that
and then hopefully we can then convert them over
to lifting weights and doing things like they should.
But they put a lot of pressure on us,
managers at that time to push it, you know,
to push it and to train people and to teach
it.
One of the dumbest ideas that they've ever remembered.
One of the big, big flops of 24th and then.
Oh, it was a really tough thing for them.
You used to waste the money for them.
I don't even think it did do anything for them.
No, it did terrible.
It did terrible.
It did terrible.
Just following along.
What you see complaining is something that you see what they're doing right now.
So you're seeing all gyms now doing this, not just a knock on two four.
I mean, everybody's doing it.
They're just trying to compete its business.
So I understand.
But now CrossFit is cutting into all these commercial gyms.
And so what are you seeing at all these commercial gyms now?
Look at golds is converted to look at 24 American barba.
They're all starting to provide these kind of unconventional layouts that allow
people who love CrossFit into train that way can do their CrossFit-type workouts inside these commercial gyms.
Yeah, these monkey climbing racks and stuff.
Yeah, like platforms are there.
They actually have tire flipping machines. Have you seen them?
Yeah, I've seen them.
Have you seen this just as lazy as you are?
It's a half tire flips.
This way flips out.
Yeah, it's a half tire.
And you're going to adjust the weight too, so it's like a 200 or a 400. Now, here's the thing. It's a half tire. If it flips, this way, flip. It's a half tire. And you get it just to wait too,
so it's like a 200 or a 400.
Now, here's the thing.
So lame.
And this is what made me angry too,
about 24-of-fitness is,
and I really do hope.
And by the way, I have so much love for them
because that's where I learned everything.
So I know I'm hammering on them right now,
but they also taught me quite a bit.
But 24-of-fitness used to be the trend setter.
And at some point, they became the trend follower.
Oh, such a fucking great.
And that got on my fucking nerves because, you know,
here's the thing, there's nothing wrong
with following a trend if it's like, if it's legit.
So like the functional training trend with, you know,
with grass field and, you know, sleds and stuff like that,
I don't mind that because there's real benefit to that.
People are gonna get real benefit.
But the reason why they're doing this
are following someone else.
The curves trend that was fucking stupid.
And anybody in fitness who understood fitness,
all they had to do, and I wish companies would do this.
I wish 24 of fitness did this back then.
Just ask your fitness people.
Stop asking your marketers.
Ask your fitness trainers.
Hey, trainers, do you think we should do this?
Do you think people will get better results?
Are you gonna be on board?
And every trainer would be like, no, that's stupid.
And then if you see that, you know it would have been
a waste of money.
But they followed that stupid circuit training trend
with machines, which are already in the gym.
Someone wants to do a circuit, they could fucking do a circuit
with, they're already there.
No, they had to organize them a particular way,
put Express's own over it,
and then tell everybody to do so stupid,
big waste of time and money.
Dude, don't you see that though
with any big monument business?
Like they just get like so big where,
they get into this trap where now,
they're just trying to find other things to include, even though
they led the way they innovated.
And then it's like innovation, once you get to a certain size, I always tend to see like
companies, it's really hard to maintain that innovative edge.
Well, because you switch priorities, that's why.
Yeah, because now you're trying to feed it to your shareholders.
Well, it's shareholders and their bills.
It's because they took their finger off the pulse of fitness. That's it.
Fitness at its core is about getting people better results, making them healthier, stronger,
creating community because gyms are about community.
Always have been since day one, otherwise you work out by yourself, but if you go to
a gym, one of the big benefits is, or pluses, that a lot of gyms forgot. And again, CrossFit capitalized on, is the community.
Keep your finger on the pulse, and you'll be ahead of the curve all day long.
Take your finger off the pulse, and you're fucked.
And that's, again, one of the things that they did, like they looked at the fitness model,
took their finger off the pulse, and what did they say?
We have 400 locations, we've got more gyms than anybody. All we need to do is put the prices up on the wall, charge less than everybody, and we'll
take all the members and we'll put everybody at a business.
Err, wrong, that's not what fitness is all about.
Well, it's partially wrong.
And that drove the price of all gym memberships down to the point now where a 30,000, 40,000,
50,000 square foot gym will cost you 20 bucks a month.
That's not a very good business month you asked me.
Back when I was managing gyms in 1999,
24-Fitness were charging $45 a month,
and people were paying that shit.
Today, you couldn't charge 45 bucks a month
for that kind of a membership?
Well, I think most of them,
meaning I saw this I was actually doing cardio this weekend
in 24 fittings. I don't go there that often. And I see they're making the move into the
virtual world for sure. So they're, they're, they have a very interactive.
Oh, interesting. Yeah. And it's, and I haven't dove all the way through. I just kind of
downloaded, looked at it and I was watching the TVs up when I was doing cardio and kind of want paying attention to its features and everything it does. But, you know,
they're moving that they have to though. I mean, I think that it's what, I mean, personally,
what I saw, fuck it's now, I mean, we've been doing this for almost four years. I left two years
before that. I mean, I saw it like six, seven years ago. I remember kind of like evaluating our fitness business and going,
man, you know, I see all these other companies and I see what's happening in tech and I kind of see
how so much has changed and evolved. And really the fitness game really hadn't evolved and changed.
I mean, and this is before CrossFit, right? This is like, you know, when I was seeing this happen,
I was like, man, we really have been doing kind of the same thing,
the same gym model.
24 Fitness really has led the way,
like as far as like how you do, how you do business.
And it had been working because no one else had came out
and done a better model.
But I really think that, you know,
it's gonna be tough for some of these,
these commercial gyms to hang with the future
of how health and fitness will be done.
It feels like they're starting to get back on track a little bit.
I've been meeting more trainers that work at 24 and people that work there and stuff.
Am I wrong, Adam?
Are you still pretty connected?
Yeah, I'm still pretty connected.
I feel like they're starting to move in a good direction.
Well, what they did, were they been moving in that direction?
What they did, really really a big mistake they made
about six, seven years ago was,
or maybe even longer now, was thinking that,
you briefly mentioned it, that people could just
put a price up there and then people would buy.
And that could, I think in fitness,
that is, couldn't be further from the truth because of all things that you sell,
it's one of the only businesses,
it's the only one I can think of off the top of my head,
that you're selling something that's not tangible.
Every other sales business that you do,
it's a dream, you walk away with something in your hand,
you get something for spending thousands of dollars.
Well, when people buy fucking a trainer or buy fitness,
you walk away with nothing.
They're buying work.
Yeah, exactly.
They're buying more work, more discipline,
more sacrifices they have to do.
So I think it takes a very talented person
who not only can communicate that to another person,
but they also motivate and inspire them
to follow through that goal.
And so I think they made a huge mistake when they started to devalue the value of people that have the art of communication.
That could communicate very well and that were talented in sales.
And they thought, oh, we could just pay these guys half the money and just provide them.
Yeah, automate it, make it so easy.
And so I think that happened.
I see them trying to get back to some old ways as far as teaching sales and things like
that, but I don't know, man, it looks really, I mean, we'll find out because I don't know
if I told you guys this already or not, but, you know, I've got Brianna.
She's reached out to, I think, five or six of the CEOs of some of the biggest fitness franchise
I love to talk to them and I've been wanting to be some fun conversations. Yeah, I know I really I mean because the one on the top of my list would be Mark
Masteroff would love to talk to Mark and I still think he's I mean he's the Godfather. Well, he's actually he's less on my list
Just because I already love and respect him and what he's doing and what he's done.
I actually wanna talk to like, you know,
planet fitness, the current 24 fitness person right now,
LA fitness, these are some of the crunch,
like a great glass man.
I wanna talk to, yeah, that would be a great one.
I would like to talk to some of these guys
and just kinda hear where they are going currently right now,
where they see the future of fitness and kinda,
because you know, I'm stay in my own lane.
Like, I haven't been in that space in a long time.
I'm not talking to the CEO and I'm a firm believer in like,
you know, when you're somebody at the bottom
and you just get the trickle down effect,
you think you know everything that's going on.
It's like, it's just like politics.
Like, you know, there's a lot,
there could be a lot of moves that, you know,
when you're moving a ship that big,
it's not like a, oh, hey, the market's going this way, we should go this way all of a sudden, you've got to slowly turn
the ship, and so I'd like to talk to some of these CEOs and see if they actually see the riding
on the wall, and if they're already making moves to move in that direction. So I think it'd be a
really interesting conversation for us to have on the show. Yeah, I'd like to see, I'd love to talk
to them because it's, it's, it's an interesting's an interesting time. Especially when it comes to gyms,
the competition is far different now.
What I see exploding a lot more are small,
small facilities, small type specialized types gyms.
That started happening about 10 years ago
where I would see yoga studio,
Pilates studio, circuit training studio,
like people started working out in these places
versus the big impersonal type health club.
So it brings the community back.
Well, the key would be,
I lost that a bit with the commercial setting.
Well, here's the thing,
the gyms that I ran had that vibe in them,
and they were massive.
Yeah, of course.
The staff creates that.
Really, here's a thing,
like, yes, gyms have equipment, yes, they gotta have cool stuff and amenities, I get creates that. Like really, here's a thing, like, yes, gyms have equipment.
Yes, they gotta have like cool stuff and amenities.
I get all that.
But the staff makes such a tremendous difference.
Yeah, but it's tough to build that culture.
When you've created a culture where you're finding
less talented people to run these facilities
because you're putting less effort or emphasis on people
with- And paying them with actual talent. Yeah, with talent. facilities because you're putting less effort or emphasis on people with.
And paying them a actual talent.
Yeah, with talent.
And that actually are good at developing these other leaders or creating that culture inside
the facility.
So that's why these small boxes, because I see a lot of these small boxes having success
and they're really not that good of leaders themselves either.
It's just that when you only have 100 something members,
it's pretty easy to create some sort of a community,
like Justin's saying, with that few of people,
it's inevitable if there's only 100 people
that go to this CrossFit gym,
that at one time you're probably gonna end up meeting
every member.
They're like, do the work for you.
Right, exactly.
They come in, hey Sally, hey John.
That's exactly what I see right now.
And I mean, I was a part of this at Orange Theory.
Now, I was at Orange Theory for two years,
and the two years that I was there,
we were the number one facility in the entire company.
And I knew why, you know, I knew that we had created
an incredible culture inside that facility,
but I also knew that a lot of people that were there
and that were running it
didn't really fully understand that.
They kinda understood it, but they didn't really
understand it.
They took it for granted, and I left that place,
and I know they're not the number one anymore,
I don't know where they're at now,
but a lot of these guys that have these small facilities,
like you said, Justin, they have the members are already
meeting each other and interacting and it's small enough and quaint enough that it kind
of naturally creates an environment like that.
And that's why, like, you know, the real challenge is can you take something that small and
can you scale it to what Sal is talking about, a big facility because there's so many moving
parts with that.
You're probably not going to meet every member, a place that big.
And so how do you make it feel like cheers or how do you give it that type of an environment
with that large of a building?
It takes, it takes some real talent to do that.
The boxes need to figure out how to increase the value of what they're doing because the
market has changed so much now to where if a person walks into a 30,000 square foot,
24-footness, anything over $27 a month,
they're gonna be like, oh my God, that's so expensive.
That same person will spend five times
as much on a cell phone bill,
or five times as much on going to the movies every month,
or whatever, so it's really not the money.
It isn't, 50 bucks a month, most people can afford.
It's just that they don't see the value in anymore
because it's been so devalued.
Yeah, and so they need it inherently lazy.
They need to change the conversation.
They need to change, because I tell you something right now,
if you were spending 150 bucks a month,
but you were going to a place three days a week,
you enjoyed going to, you really loved the atmosphere,
you also got fit and healthy from it.
That would be $150, you would never take out of your budget.
That would always be, boom, $150 a month for the gym.
And $150 from gym membership is a sound super freaking expensive.
But if you create that kind of value, people will spend it.
So they need to change the conversation a little bit
and that's gonna be a tough one, that's tough.
Cause it's easy to go down and price real hard to go back up. And now that they've done that, it's gonna be a little bit of that's gonna be a tough one. That's tough because it's easy to go down in price, real hard to go back up.
And now that they've done that,
it's gonna be a little bit of an uphill battle.
I mean, I really think the future is
what we're building right here,
because if you, if you were to partner,
like let's say we were to partner with like a 24-hour fitness,
what we're building virtually is perfect to complement
a company like that,
to where your members now have all these resources
of all these different programs based off
of what of their goals are and even to the point
where we have Prime, Prime Pro, or the assessment piece.
I mean, a lot of when we first started this
has been modeled after the gym.
It's like we just basically have created
or we're creating a virtual gym in a sense.
I mean, we're, our community are the people that are listening right now. You know, this
is our community. Our way of building value with our community is by providing content and
value for their lives on a regular basis to the point where they feel, oh my God, I'll
buy any program you guys put out because of how much value you, you provide month. So
there's our culture, you know?
And there's something in it.
You know, you bring up a good point.
Do, are there any big gym organizations that are connected
to like influential, powerful social media or podcasts
or anything like that?
Well, I think 24 is gonna move that way.
You think so?
That would be smart.
Doesn't need to do something with Lewis House.
They did.
He's on their app and I saw him on the TV
when I was inside there too.
I thought there's a buddy right there.
I sent him over text messages.
Hey dude, you know what'd be cool.
And this is just me rack my brain with that idea.
Like a company like that would be smart.
You know, like these forms that we've created,
this really tight knit community.
This is literally like our gym.
Like we've already created a gym of mind pumpers,
you know, like pump heads.
And, you know, having that same,
you could foster a very similar community like that
and manage it, you know, just from your gym
and have everybody communicate, you know,
they just have to have direction.
They have to have, everybody has to be in line
and have one purpose and goal
and then have everybody, you know, help each other out
That's interesting. Well look check it out if you go to your app store
You can get the Mind Pump Media app and then you can search specific topics among all of our 750 plus
Episodes so if you want to look up fat loss if you want to look up Craya teen if you want to look up muscle building
Fasting whatever you just type it in the search function. It'll pull up all the episodes will recover that particular topic to look up Craya Teen, if you want to look up muscle building, fasting, whatever, you
just type it in the search function.
It'll pull up all the episodes and we'll recover that particular topic.
And the best part about that app, it's absolutely free.
Go get it.
Thank you for listening to Mind Pump.
If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy,
and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbumble at MindPumpMedia.com.
The RGB Superbumble includes maps on the ball,
maps performance, and maps aesthetic.
Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming
designed by Sal, Adam and Justin
to systematically transform the way your body looks,
feels, and performs.
With detailed workout nutrients in over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having
sound and an adjustment as your own personal trainer's butt at a fraction of the price.
The RGB Superbundle has a 430-day money back guarantee and you can get it now plus
other valuable free resources at MindPumpMedia.com.
If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a fine-star rating and review
on iTunes and by introducing MindPump to your friends and family.
We thank you for your support and until next time, this is MindPump.
you