#252: Inside the World of SuperTraining - Mark Bell

Mark Bell (@MarkSmellyBell https://twitter.com/MarkSmellyBell) is the founder of Super Training Gym http://www.supertraininggym.com/ in Sacramento, which is often referred to as "the strongest gym in the West." Prior to opening his own gym, he spent time studying training under the legendary Louie Simmons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louie_Simmonsat Westside Barbell. Mark is no stranger to the iron at all. His best "geared lifts" in competition include a 1,025 lb. squat (465 kg), an 832 lb. bench press (77 kg), a 738 lb. deadlift (335 kg). Mark is also the inventor of the patented Slingshot https://www.amazon.com/SlingShot-Slingshot-by-Mark-Bell/dp/B00KL140I6/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20, a device used to assist a lifter in maintaining proper bench press form while also allowing him or her to use more weight or perform more reps. Mark now has an entire line of products and has been spectacularly successful. In this episode, we cover a lot, including: Mark's most important lessons for building strength. How to avoid injury and breakdown. Lesser-known training techniques that nearly everyone overlooks. How Mark became a millionaire by offering his gym memberships for free. And much, much more. We recorded this interview while touring his facility in Sacramento, looking at some crazy equipment that you can see by visiting tim.blog/supertraining http://tim.blog/supertraining. Please enjoy! Show notes and links for this episode can be found at www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. This podcast is brought to you by 99Designs http://99designs.com/tim, the world's largest marketplace of graphic designers. I have used them for years to create some amazing designs. When your business needs a logo, website design, business card, or anything you can imagine, check out 99Designs. I used them to rapid prototype the cover http://99designs.com/tim for The Tao of Seneca, and I've also had them help with display advertising and illustrations. If you want a more personalized approach, I recommend their 1-on-1 service http://99designs.com/tim. You get original designs from designers around the world. The best part? You provide your feedback, and then you end up with a product that you're happy with or your money back. Click this link http://www.99designs.com/tim and get a free $99 upgrade. Give it a test run... This episode is also brought to you by LegalZoom https://www.legalzoom.com/. I've used this service for many of my businesses, as have quite a few of the icons on this podcast -- such as Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg of WordPress fame. LegalZoom https://www.legalzoom.com/ is a reliable resource that more than a million people have already trusted for everything from setting up wills, proper trademark searches, forming LLCs, setting up non-profits, or finding simple cease-and-desist letter templates. LegalZoom https://www.legalzoom.com/ is not a law firm, but it does have a network of independent attorneys available in most states who can give you advice on the best way to get started, provide contract reviews, and otherwise help you run your business with complete transparency and up-front pricing. Check out LegalZoom.com and enter promo code TIM at checkout today https://www.legalzoom.com/ to save 15% and see how the fine folks there can make life easier for you and your business.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Speaker 02

  No, I would just say inappropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 0:23Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by 99designs. I've used 99designs for years for all sorts of graphic design needs. Whether you need a logo, website, book cover, or anything else, 99designs was created to make great designs accessible to everyone and to make the process of getting designs much, much easier. So when I first started out, for instance, testing prototype covers and getting prototype covers for the 4-Hour Body, I went the contest route. That is one option. This is a great solution if you're looking for fast, affordable design work and the ability to choose from dozens of options, risk-free. Let's say you need something, late-night, quick turnaround. Well, people in other time zones, other countries can also help you solve that problem. Since then, I've worked with 99designs on a separate

• 1:07Tim Ferriss?

  path or a different option, and that is the one-to-one project service. So, in a number of cases, and I'll give you one example, when I wanted to create the cover for my audiobook, The Tao of Seneca, this was a very important project to me, I decided to use their one-to-one project service. And with this service, you can invite a specific designer to your project, agree on a price, and then work together until you're satisfied. And they allow you to iterate and provide feedback and all this stuff. And I haven't shared it yet, but we also got some incredibly good, really some of the best illustrations I've ever seen from using this one-to-one project service with a handful of different designers and illustrators. It blew my mind. 99designs makes this all very easy and efficient. So

• 1:49Tim Ferriss?

  you can check out The Tao of Seneca design and other work that I, and your fellow listeners for that matter, have done on 99designs at 99designs.com/tim. And right now, you can get a free $99 upgrade on your first design. Again, that's 99designs.com/tim.

• 2:11Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by LegalZoom. I have used LegalZoom myself for many of my businesses, and many of the icons on this podcast have actually used LegalZoom. For instance, Matt Mullenweg of WordPress fame, CEO of Automattic, which is now worth more than a billion dollars, first incorporated his company on LegalZoom. LegalZoom is a reliable resource that more than a million people have already trusted to help with their businesses, whether that's setting up a will, doing a proper trademark search, forming an LLC, setting up a nonprofit, or finding simple cease and desist letter templates. Man, do I use a lot of those. LegalZoom is not a law firm, but they do have a network of independent attorneys available in most states. They can give you advice on the best way to get started,

• 2:54Tim Ferriss?

  provide contract reviews, and otherwise help you run your business. And important, there are no surprises. LegalZoom provides complete transparency. That means upfront pricing, customer reviews, and a satisfaction guarantee. Check out LegalZoom.com today to see how they can make life better and easier for you and your business. If you're pretending to be a lawyer on the internet, then you are asking for trouble. Put together the safety nets, get your Ts crossed and your Is dotted. Enter promo code TIM at LegalZoom.com to save 15%. That's T-I-M for 15% off. Check it out. LegalZoom.com.

• 3:37Tim Ferriss?

  Oh,大家好. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it's my job to deconstruct world-class performers of all different types, from business, entertainment, sports, anything you can imagine, really. My guest today is Mark Bell, @MarkSmellyBell on Twitter, who is the founder of Super Training Gym found in Sacramento, which is oftentimes referred to as the strongest gym in the West. Prior to opening his own gym, he spent years studying and training under the legendary Louis Simmons at West Side Barbell. Mark is no stranger to the iron at all. His best geared lifts in competition include a 1,025-pound squat, that's 465 kilos.

• 4:21Tim Ferriss?

  An 832-pound bench press, that's 377 kilos, and a 738-pound deadlift, that's 335 kilos. Mark is also the inventor of the patented Slingshot, a device utilized to assist a lifter in maintaining proper bench press form, while also allowing the lifter to use more weight or perform more reps. He now has an entire line of products and has been spectacularly successful. In this episode, we cover a lot, including his most important lessons for building strength, how to avoid injury and breakdown, the lesser-known, or some lesser-known, training techniques that nearly everyone overlooks, how he became a millionaire by offering his gym memberships for free, which in and of itself is just an incredible story,

• 5:04Tim Ferriss?

  and much, much more. So, we really dig into the audio. We recorded this at his gym, and while there, we took a full tour of his facility, looking at some crazy equipment and custom-modded equipment that he has at the Super Training Gym in Sacramento. If you want to see that video, you can, and it is at tim.blog/supertraining, all one word, tim.blog/supertraining. And for links to everything in this episode, as usual, you can find the show notes at tim.blog/podcast. So, without further ado, please enjoy Mark Smelly Bell.

• 5:44Tim Ferriss?

  Mark, welcome to the show.

• 5:46Speaker 02

  Thanks, Tim. I'm fired up to be here, man. This is gonna be fun.

• 5:49Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's been a while since I have hung out among the Goliaths here at Super Training Gym. This is my first time in the new location. I like the digs.

• 5:57Speaker 02

  I'm glad we got you, you know, finally to the new spot here. We're having a lot of fun here, and it's, you know, this is kind of a dream come true. This is 10 years in the making. Super Training Gym's been around since 2006. And, you know, I started off in somebody else's gym, and then I had my own spot for a while where we were near a mung funeral home where they were sacrificing all kinds of animals and shit like that. That was really bizarre. But to come to this and have, be able to offer the gym, the gym is free, Super Training's free, and it's just a dream come true to be able to share knowledge, and my mission and goal in life is to make the world a better place to lift.

• 6:37Tim Ferriss?

  Explain the business model. So how did you decide?

• 6:40Speaker 02

  How the fuck does that work?

• 6:41Tim Ferriss?

  How does it work? Yeah, no, no, honestly, like, what's, how did you make that decision?

• 6:45Speaker 02

  You know, when I first did it, one of my good friends asked me, he said, uh, he said, why, why are you making the gym free? Cause the gym wasn't always free. The gym used to be 125 bucks a month. I just kinda made that value up out of, uh, the four times a week that we get together and the amount of coaching that I was offering everybody. To me, it would have been valued a lot more than that. But power lifters typically don't have that kinda dote to shell out 200, 300 bucks a month. So I made it 125, but when I switched it to be free, um, one of my good friends, he was like, why are you making the gym free? And I said to become rich and famous. And from that moment on, that's when things started to really kick in and things started to really groove.

• 7:24Speaker 02

  Cause, cause at that point, everything started to make a lot more sense to me. It was like, uh, Neo in The Matrix. Everything just kinda started to come together. One by one, things started to unfold. My brother passed away kind of around that time. And it was just a message to me. It was very simple. You know, life is short. I don't give two fucks about what other people think. I need to get myself heading in the right direction. And I need to do the things that I wanna do. And I need to follow through with my hopes and my dreams. Rather than be so fearful of stuff. A lot of people are fearful of kinda jumping in with two feet into stuff. And I was like, you know, I can't have that mentality anymore. It's just not gonna work. It didn't work for my brother.

• 8:07Speaker 02

  And it's not gonna work for me. So I need to just forge forward and try to figure out a way to keep moving forward and to share the message I wanna share. And to do it my own way. Do things my own way. So making the gym free was a byproduct of the slingshot, um, being invented. And the slingshot giving me the financial means to make the gym free. Um, but I knew that the gym being free was gonna give me back. Everything tenfold and aside from that, the, or in addition to that, rather, the slingshot was made inside the walls of Super Training Gym. So I can never really repay Super Training Gym, what it's done to me, no matter, no matter how we slice it. So the gym being free is just my way of paying back to the power of the community.

• 8:52Tim Ferriss?

  Did you make that decision in part because it was just consuming like 10% of your bandwidth, having to keep track of membership payments and all the details that go along with that kind of profit and loss? And by freeing it up, it just made your focus on other things more pure? And what are the rules? Like, can anybody show up anytime they want? Or what's the commitment that you look for, if anything?

• 9:16Speaker 02

  I like some of the words you just said there. You mentioned the word pure. I'm not like the humanitarian of the fucking decade or anything like that. It's nothing, it's nothing corny or weird like that because financial gain is on the front of my mind. It's not in the back of my mind. It's on the front of my mind. That's, you know, I'm a scoreboard driven person, you know, I'm trying to put points up on the scoreboard. And as an adult, how do you put points up on the scoreboard? You put points up on the scoreboard by, by making money, right? Dollars and cents we're talking about, right? And so that's, that's kind of the mission. That's kind of the goal. And so by making the gym free, it allowed, it gave me a testing ground for a lot of the products that I have. It really opened the doors for a lot of other financial gain

• 9:58Speaker 02

  that maybe when I first made the gym free, I didn't recognize. But once I made the gym free, it was, I kind of just started to think more in terms of, okay, like, I literally own everything that's in here, including the people now. I basically purchased the people in some weird way because they're no longer paying me for my services. I'm allowing them to train here for free with hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment. That gym is so expensive to go over each piece of equipment. Every barbell is specialized, every plate is specialized. There's nothing in there is normal, especially the people. Nothing in there is normal. So everything's a little different in there. And because of that,

• 10:38Speaker 02

  it allowed me to kind of recognize that I have a place, a real strong testing ground where I can test products. And also, I'm not a product company only. I'm 50% products and 50% media. Without media, social media, without YouTube and without The magazine. The magazine, Power Magazine, without all these different formats. I'm a subscriber. There you go. As you know. Yeah. And you know, without these different formats to get the message out there, then what am I? You know, so it's great to see that it's all working through the podcast and through other things. Trying to make the products popular, trying to make the gym popular, trying to make money. All those things are definitely on the front of my mind. You did mention, how does a gym work?

• 11:20Speaker 02

  The way the gym works is not that complicated, but what we do is, we do have an email address that's associated with the gym. It's not plastered everywhere. But if you do find it, if you do work towards finding it, and you're able to communicate back and forth with us, then you're able to come here. So it's not that complicated. But we try not to advertise too much. The sign that you saw out front today doesn't say gym. We don't make it super simple to get here. And then, once you get here, we sort of make it a little bit confusing on what's the next step. You know, somebody's like, hey, I'm supposed to talk to Marcus? I don't know what's going on. I'm like, I don't know what's going on either. They're like, well, don't you own? That just happened like five minutes ago. And I was like, I don't know, Marcus. I'm just a, I'm just a fly on the wall here. I have no idea.

• 12:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. They're like, they're like, well, don't you own the place? I'm like, yeah, sort of. Don't worry about it. So we make it a little confusing. Go lift some heavy stuff. We'll talk in a half hour. Yeah. And then, you know, when I see people in here working, like if you're not sweating, I'm not talking to you. There's just no point. We're not gonna have It's a podcast. Yeah. We're not gonna Intimidated by all the mutants you have back there. That's right. There are some mutants back there for sure. But if I'm not seeing that you're working, then there's no room for me to have conversation with you. I'm not going to help you out of nowhere and just start giving you a bunch of advice unless I see that you're hungry for it.

• 12:35Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, and you have, I observed because we're effectively in your recording portion of the office at Super Training Gym, and someone came in earlier.

• 12:47Speaker 02

  We're in like HQ.

• 12:47Tim Ferriss?

  HQ to talk about the schedule. So the schedule for the gym, can you lay out the days of the week and what you do on them?

• 12:55Speaker 02

  So the gym schedule is, we get together every Tuesday and Thursday during the week from about 3 until approximately 7, and then Saturday, Sunday is from 9 until about 1. In terms of like the training split, it's pretty simple. We do lower body once a week, we do upper body once a week. I'm sorry, we deadlift and squat once a week, so I guess it'd be lower body twice a week and upper body about once a week. Every Tuesday is deadlifts, every Thursday is bench, and every Saturday is squats. After a while, it starts to get kind of pre-programmed into your body and your body's kind of like, oh, today's a squat day. Rather than it being Tuesday, it's deadlift day. You know, that's how meat heady we get around here.

• 13:37Tim Ferriss?

  When you start just instinctively exploding off of the toilet into like a-

• 13:42Speaker 02

  Exploding on the toilet and into the toilet.

• 13:45Tim Ferriss?

  Then you know you've had too much pre-workout stimulus, number one, and it's squat day.

• 13:48Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 13:49Tim Ferriss?

  So first of all, I want to recommend a couple of things. First is, and there's a poster here on the wall, two documentaries that I think offer a lot of insight into your background and your family and also your brother, because I don't know if we'll have time to really dig into the details, but Bigger, Stronger, Faster, which is how we originally met, I believe.

• 14:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:08Tim Ferriss?

  Because I saw the documentary, I was really impressed. So the tagline is, it's still cheating if everyone is doing it, which is about performance-enhancing drugs. It's a great doc, which was made by your brother.

• 14:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, and now it's kind of like, it's kind of in that classic status.

• 14:21Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah. And I liked it so much. Number one, I reached out to try to find- You and realized, oh my God, you're in Northern California and then traveled to Sacramento to embarrass myself.

• 14:31Speaker 02

  I was like, who is this skinny guy?

• 14:33Tim Ferriss?

  Who is this skinny guy?

• 14:34Speaker 02

  He has a huge head.

• 14:35Tim Ferriss?

  Why is this guy trying to throw kicks at me and stuff? What's going on here? And then the other is prescription thugs.

• 14:41Speaker 02

  Right.

• 14:42Tim Ferriss?

  Which is, uh, covers a lot of semi-related topics, but also goes very deep with your family. So those are just two things I want people to check out for further watching and resources that I would highly encourage checking out. The training split. Could you talk about Louis Simmons and Westside? And what are some of the key lessons you learned?

• 15:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I trained with Louis Simmons for about a year, also worked with him and coached under him, uh, for about an additional year beyond that.

• 15:11Tim Ferriss?

  And for people who don't know him, could you just give them an overview?

• 15:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, Louis Simmons is the owner of the, pretty much the strongest gym in the history of lifting. Um, he created a community that was so competitive and so strong that thousand pound, uh, squats were routine, 800 pound benches were routine and 800 pound deadlifts were very routine. Uh, keep in mind, this is back a few years when geared powerlifting was a little bit more acceptable. Now people have taken the powerlifting gear off. The powerlifting gear is very supportive and it adds additional pounds to what you can actually lift.

• 15:44Tim Ferriss?

  And for those people who, who don't follow powerlifting, uh, gear in this particular case referring to multiply bench press shirts and deadlift suits and so on.

• 15:53Speaker 02

  Stuff that looks like a straitjacket type of deal.

• 15:55Tim Ferriss?

  That improves your leverage.

• 15:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, it improves your leverage, but regardless of what people wore and didn't wear, um, at the time that was the style of lifting that was popular and Louis created the fastest, most explosive, strongest athletes in the game, uh, without question. And he would have, uh, what seemed like 10, 15 guys at a time that were just crushing world records in some different weight classes. And, uh, year by year, you know, things would change a little bit in the gym and they'd get new guys in and he would still create, you know, monster after monster, didn't matter. Just the only thing that would change in there was the names. The numbers would go up a little bit, uh, the names in there would change a little bit, but it was still the same thing, still him, you know, Westside Barbell kicking the crap out of everybody. Uh, Louis, um,

• 16:40Speaker 02

  Was a pioneer in a way of bands and chains being utilized in training. The bands and chains help to accommodate resistance. The weights are lighter at the bottom and they're heavier at the top. As your body becomes in a more advantageous position and more favorable position, you're getting more weight on the bar. As your body's in the least favorable position, such as the bottom of a bench press or the bottom of a squat, you have less chain weight or less resistance from the band. And so it gives you an opportunity for a lot of things. Number one, it can help you produce more force, which is great in any sport. It can also help you to just be faster, be more dynamic. The other thing that it's going to do is it's going to allow you, it's going to help prevent injuries because,

• 17:25Speaker 02

  as I mentioned, when you're at the bottom of the lift, there's less weight on you. You have less overall weight on you. So for example, if you were to bench press with some bands on the bar, at the bottom of the lift, if you had three plates on the bar like I was using today, it would be, you know, let's just say it's 50 pounds bands total. At the bottom with 315, it'd be about 365 pounds at the bottom. And if it jumped up to 100 pounds extra, it'd be about 415 at the top. So as you can see, again, the weights are lighter at the bottom, heavier at the top. It allows for acceleration. You can accelerate through the weights and it allows for a kind of consistent tension on those weights. So Louis paired up speed training, dynamic effort training, as he calls it, with maximal effort training.

• 18:08Speaker 02

  So he basically attacked training from two different ways. And there's a third way I'll talk about in a second. But the main two ways that he attacked it from where, from the perspective of, if I can move faster, if I can become more explosive, I can move more weight. Because in some cases, it just becomes a race against the clock. If you go to bench press 300 pounds and it's going to take you 12 seconds, the odds of you making one rep last that long like that is probably, probably not very good. Anybody out there that's listening to the show that can bench press even 300 pounds, take 200 pounds and try to, try to go five seconds on the way down with a five second pause and five seconds on the way up.

• 18:50Speaker 02

  And you'll quickly realize that time management of those lifts is crucial. You want to get underneath the weight and get it the hell over with as quickly as possible. So the speed element and the speed aspect is crucial. The other way that he recognized, um, you know, uh, just gaining strength was to simply just get stronger. Uh, work on handling more weights and trying to figure out different ways and different angles to handle more weights. Uh, he came up a lot of new and creative and different ways of handling big weights so it wouldn't, uh, kill your central nervous system. And so it wouldn't kill your knees and kill your elbows and things of that nature because

• 19:28Speaker 02

  he started to use a lot of specialized barbells and specialized, uh, he would squat off of boxes back in the day and then he started squatting off of foam. Um, he've even, he's even put springs inside of barbells to, to create a different effect. This one barbell in particular had a spring in the middle. And it kind of looked like, uh, the spring, uh, inside the roll of toilet paper or something on a shake weight. But you would squeeze the barbell together. It was like on a regular bar, like for bench pressing. You'd squeeze the bar together and sure enough it'd blow the, blow your chest up. It would, it would crush you. So he had a lot of great innovative ways, but those were the two main ways he thought of to increase strength. One was, uh, to, to max out, to go as heavy as possible. Max effort day.

• 20:09Speaker 02

  Max effort day and to choose different exercises each week. That's kind of the basis of the conjugate system. You might do a box squat one week. You might do a regular squat the next, next week after that, you might squat with chains. The variety is both good and bad. Sometimes the variety got to be so large that you no longer knew what the hell you were doing anymore. And sometimes, uh, the variety was a welcome change because you might be a seasoned lifter that is just so tired of doing the same shit over and over again that you can't even, the other, the other huge advantage of changing things up is. In a good way, you kind of don't know where you stand, which I think is kind of nice because being a competitive lifter and being a competitive athlete for so long,

• 20:51Speaker 02

  you can get really frustrated and the ups and downs can be very, very, the downs for sure can be very, well, the ups too. They can all be very negative, actually, because you don't want to have, you want to be kind of even keel as an athlete. You don't want the highs and lows to ever be too great because it can kind of throw you for a loop when something unexpected does happen. And the third way to increase strength is to have more muscle mass. So Louis recognized just hypertrophy, just some bodybuilding style training, the repetition effort method, as he would call it. Just simply, once you're done with some of the main movements, he would do three sets of eight, four sets of eight, five sets of 10. Basically get in more work, more volume with different exercises

• 21:36Speaker 02

  that would allow you to help build muscle mass. So you get done with the main lift and the overall volume of the main lift may not be through the roof because there's only so much you can do with a barbell. You'd move into assistance exercises. That's where you'd get your volume in and that's where you'd build muscle.

• 21:53Tim Ferriss?

  And if you look at a lot of these concepts, whether it's the bands or the chains, box squats, board, I don't know if I'm using the right term, board presses where you have, I guess, what are they technically? They're two by fours?

• 22:07Speaker 02

  I think so, yeah.

• 22:08Tim Ferriss?

  Just sort of put together at different heights so you can stop the bar from, in this case, the chest at, say, four to six inches.

• 22:15Speaker 02

  Partial range of motion.

• 22:16Tim Ferriss?

  Partial range of motion have become very popular. Do you have a particular opinion about when people should incorporate versus not incorporate these things? Because you could go to, I'm sure, many different gyms where you have somebody who's bench pressing 45 pounds and they have like 17 different accessories. For someone who is athletic but not a powerlifter, getting started focusing on these three lifts, at what point would you introduce things like bands and chains and so on?

• 22:46Speaker 02

  It's a great, it's a great question. You know, first of all, I think that a little bit of lifting, a little bit of training. What we're doing when we're going to the gym is is what I call artificial exercise. We're making shit up because we don't have to do the same tasks that we had to do hundreds and hundreds of years ago. We're not carrying buckets of water and we're not digging ditches and we're not building stuff as much as we were in the past. And so you gotta make shit up to to get to be muscular, to even look manly. You gotta like make stuff up to to kind of make up some ground for the girly shit that men do nowadays. That's kind of where we're at. I mean, seriously, hanging out on a computer all day and all these different things. We're not really things that we were probably designed to do, but anyway, a longer story for another day, right? Kelly, start in here and have some wine. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 23:32Speaker 02

  Let him go off on sitting. Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. I think that one of the key components to kind of all of this is that when you're a newer lifter, that you just try to keep it simple. And even as you advance, anything seems too good to be true. It is. There's no tricks, unfortunately. There are some things that can help. You use the term, and I love the term accelerated learning. That is probably the only trick that there really is, like find somebody who knows what they're doing and rub elbows with them and try to find other people that know what they're doing, because that will actually accelerate you to the top faster than you can imagine.

• 24:11Speaker 02

  Much faster than finding like some secret fat burner or something like that. Finding people that know how to lose body fat, finding people that know how to build strength and getting around those people is going to be a crucial element. For newer lifters, I always just suggest, and even even older lifters, again, five five exercises is about all that you need. You don't need to be in the gym for hours on end. If you feel good for the day and you want to do more exercises, then then ride it out and go ahead and feel better and and do it. But a real crucial thing to your training, and this is something that has taken me a long time to learn. Your training should make you feel better and not make you feel worse. If you can kind of always keep that in mind, your training should make you feel better and not make you feel worse.

• 24:53Speaker 02

  Think about that the next time you have some stupid idea to do something. You're like, oh, I'm gonna try to run 12 miles and you haven't ran one mile in the last couple of years. Tim Ferriss knows exactly what I'm talking about.

• 25:06Tim Ferriss?

  I do.

• 25:07Speaker 02

  I still follow his social media. He's doing something crazy all the time.

• 25:12Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, we both have, we specialize in certain types of gross indulgence.

• 25:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, so you just want to be, you want to be careful. I mean, if you haven't sprinted in a long time, it's probably not a great idea to go do 10 sets of 200s. You know, on a track somewhere, you gotta ease your way into stuff. You gotta take your time. You gotta build up towards something. And then, once you build up towards something, you can start to add in more stuff. The bands and the chains and stuff are great. Anyone can use them. I never, I never want to tell a new person that they can't do something because why not let them enjoy themselves the same way or like, let them have access to all the same stuff. Let them use a slingshot, let them use bands, let them use boards or whatever they want to do. But just kind of keep in mind, the basics are going to be the stuff that really gets you there. People from the 70s didn't have any problem gaining strength.

• 26:05Speaker 02

  And they didn't need any special tools back then. They had less stuff than we do now.

• 26:11Tim Ferriss?

  Well, and a lot of what Louis does is based on his reading of the Soviet research. As I understand it, which was from, I mean, certainly those previous decades.

• 26:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, Olympic weightlifting, yeah.

• 26:23Tim Ferriss?

  And just to underscore a couple of things, so the the speed or rather time being your enemy, I mean, I've heard this from also Olympic lifting, right? Same story. It's like the less time you spend under the bar, the better. And that was from a guy named Jersey Gregorek, who's a four-time world champion in Olympic weightlifting. The footnote that I placed in my head when you mentioned five exercises. What would if you were picking five exercises for a novice or an intermediate, right? Like, let's say somebody who hypothetically was an athlete, maybe a baseball player, I'm just making this up, soccer player in college, has a regular sort of physical practice, but has not lifted per se, has never had any instruction. What would the five exercises be?

• 27:06Speaker 02

  This actually is very simple. Take the activity that you want to do and think about if you were to ask 100 people. If you asked a hundred, if you got in front of a hundred people and said, hey, what five exercises you think would be good for a triathlete? Give or take, there's going to be a couple of things in the gym that, that somebody might say one thing over another, but in general, there's going to be some sort of a press, maybe two pressing movements, maybe you have, maybe one person's excited about inclined bench and maybe one person's excited about overhead. So you have two pressing movements. Maybe somebody in the room is a big fan of doing squats. So you have a squat. Maybe somebody else rather see like a leg press. Maybe somebody else rather see like a deadlift. Go around the room and you're gonna, you know, you can kind of narrow it down. Maybe you end up with 10 exercises total.

• 27:50Speaker 02

  You can probably agree upon about five exercises, right? Now, take those five exercises and start to think about, how do I build up these exercises? Through other exercises. So for example, Assistance exercises. Yeah, for example, uh, we, we have, you know, things like a, uh, an overhead press. What are some of the muscles involved in an overhead press? Uh, you don't have to be insanely intelligent to be able to grasp some of this. You know, we'll just kind of think about what are some of the, what are some of the muscles that you see flexing in the mirror when you do some of these movements? Your triceps are firing, right? Your shoulders are firing, so can a lateral raise help your overhead press? I would think so. It's going to help build up your shoulders, maybe help with stability.

• 28:33Speaker 02

  Would work in the back of your shoulder, help make the entire shoulder more stable so you can press more weight? Sure, it will. Um, the triceps are involved heavily. So you start to break things down in that sense and things start to become very, very simple and they become a lot less complicated when you think about, that's one of the things I really loved about the West Side Barbell approach is, um, that's kind of where I started to really see that kind of stuff and, and my eyes became very open to the fact that you can kind of narrow everything down by what is going to help me get to that? What's going to help make me better in a particular sport? So if you're grappling, maybe you want, you know, maybe you want more hips. So maybe you're going to squat a little bit more. Maybe you're going to do more sumo deadlifts. Uh, maybe you're going to do more med ball throws.

• 29:18Speaker 02

  Maybe you're going to do some more athletic stuff, maybe some twisting of some kind. You're going to kind of think of a few exercises that you want to do on a regular basis and you want to try to figure out a way to overload those exercises and ways to become more efficient in those exercises. And so from that standpoint, it gets to be, uh, very simple. You kind of think about just even building the muscles rather than thinking about.

• 29:41Speaker 02

  I always hate the term like functional because I, I, I don't understand what a non-functional movement would be. Um, the human body, uh, you know, you see some people that are gifted at like dancing or figure skating or gymnastics or any, I mean, the human body can do all kinds of crazy stuff. So, uh, show me a non-functional movement, you know, I don't know what that, I don't know what that means. Um, versus a functional movement. I, I mean, I get the basis of it, but, um, anyway, the point is, is we're, we're made to move and we're made to, we're made to move through these ranges of motion with these given exercises. And just trying to associate them with what is going to make those exercises improve to get stronger is going to be probably the most functional and easiest way to get through these workouts.

• 30:26Tim Ferriss?

  So if we look at, say, three primary exercises, if we're looking at the bench press, the squat, so let's, we, I mean, we could make it specific and say it's kind of a low bar wider squat, maybe for powerlifting and then, uh, deadlift and you could, you could pick conventional or sumo, whichever you want to talk about. What would be, uh, some lesser known assistance exercises that you've found valuable for each of those?

• 30:53Speaker 02

  Um, when it comes to, uh, both the deadlift and the squat, and not that it's lesser known necessarily because some coaches really understand the value of it. I love single leg stuff. Whenever you have an opportunity to do something standing or whether, and anytime you have the opportunity to do something, uh, with one leg or one arm, I think you're, you're better off. So, but not, not because the main barbell movements are great. We do so many of them already. That's kind of the beauty of doing these, uh, single leg or unilateral exercises. So think about lunges, think about step ups, um, anything like that is going to be, give you a different stimulus and it's also going to kind of take you through

• 31:36Speaker 02

  a range of motion that's going to, um, kind of dynamically stretch the opposite hip and stretch the opposite leg. Um, and it's going to create a lot of motion. A lot of times when we're lifting, we're not really moving around a whole lot, especially when it comes to the bench or comes to the squat or even comes to the deadlift. There's just not enough, um, motion going on with those movements. So my favorites for deadlift, um, aside from the unilateral stuff, my favorite stuff for, for, uh, deadlifting is simply, uh, partial range of motion deadlifts, which it would be. You can deadlift off of some blocks or deadlift out of a rack and that can help build up the lower back, help build up the upper back and therefore help with your overall

• 32:18Speaker 02

  deadlifting performance. One thing that people don't sometimes realize is that when you do a partial range of motion deadlift, because it builds up your lower back, it can build up your speed off the floor. So sometimes I think people think, oh, I'll do a deficit deadlift, which would be you increasing the range of motion in a deadlift.

• 32:37Tim Ferriss?

  By standing on top of the block or something.

• 32:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. But yeah, by standing on something or maybe instead of using 45 pound plates, maybe only use your 35 pound plates or something smaller than a 45 pound plate in circumference. So those are, you know, there's a lot of options when it comes to like, how do I figure out how to get faster off the floor? But anybody I've ever worked with, they've gotten faster off the floor from getting stronger and from handling more weight rather than handling less weight, which sometimes the deficit pull can actually make you handle less weight. So whenever you can kind of find something that's going to allow you to handle more weight, but still, I don't want to say safe because none of this stuff is all that safe. Once you, once you start really getting after it, it can be, can be dangerous. I don't want to sell people on a bag of goods. It's not true.

• 33:22Speaker 02

  But once you start to handle some big weights and anytime you have an opportunity to do something safely and effectively, you might as well go for it.

• 33:30Tim Ferriss?

  And in the case of say, bench press, what are some movements as assistance exercises or warmups that, that you've consistently used that might not be obvious to just a recreational lifter?

• 33:44Speaker 02

  Bench press, I'll tell, talking about assistance movements first. Obviously, I'm the inventor of the slingshot, so I'm always going to back that thing up. But the slingshot is not valuable for the reasons that people think it's valuable for. A lot of times people want to just handle more weight with it. They just want to load up a ton of weight and it can be used for that. It can be used for that very effectively. But here in my gym, what we do is we use it for more reps and more sets. So once we're done with kind of our main lift for the day, I want to also say, we don't exclusively just use a slingshot all the time. We do a lot of work without the slingshot on. The slingshot makes up 20 or 30% of our overall bench pressing. However, if we're hurt, it'll make up about half of what we do.

• 34:27Speaker 02

  So we'll go through a normal workout. Anybody out there listening that's, you know, likes to do certain styles of training, go ahead and do whatever that style is, five to five or three sets of three. Once you're done with that, throw a slingshot on and do three extra sets. Three to four extra sets. Add about 20 pounds per set or add weight as needed. Each person's going to be a little bit different and just follow through with the same exact reps that you did with your raw work. So, you know, just a sample workout. If I did three sets of three with 275, I would then put on 295 for three with the slingshot on, 315 with the slingshot on for another set of three. And then I'd finish with 335 for another set of three.

• 35:10Speaker 02

  All three of those sets are sets I would normally would have never been able to do without being able to throw the slingshot on. The slingshot's going to give you, it's going to allow you to handle more weight. It's going to allow you to do more reps, more sets, handle more overall volume in your training. And the method that's referred to when you talk about slingshot or reverse band training is called the future method. You're getting your body ready for heavier weights that's going to be able to handle in the future.

• 35:36Tim Ferriss?

  And for people who aren't familiar, and please correct me if this description doesn't do justice, but the slingshot in this particular use case, because you can, you can use different types of slingshots for different purposes, right? On the legs and otherwise. In this case, if people could imagine you lifting up your arms out in front of you like,

• 35:54Speaker 02

  Frankenstein.

• 35:55Tim Ferriss?

  Like Frankenstein. And then if you were to take, take a thick, but elastic fabric, and I'm not doing justice, and wrap around your-

• 36:06Speaker 02

  Like a knee wrap, yeah.

• 36:07Tim Ferriss?

  Like a knee wrap around your upper arms.

• 36:09Speaker 02

  Right.

• 36:09Tim Ferriss?

  And then lower a bar to your chest, that fabric, that material would make contact with your chest in the lowest portion, the weakest range of motion.

• 36:19Speaker 02

  Right.

• 36:19Tim Ferriss?

  And help you to accommodate that larger weight. And it goes without saying, but knowing the internet, I'm going to say it anyway. You guys have very good spotters here.

• 36:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:27Tim Ferriss?

  So you're not just walking into your garage and slapping on more than your max-

• 36:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:31Tim Ferriss?

  More, you know, one rep capacity and then hoping for the best.

• 36:34Speaker 02

  Right.

• 36:36Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, if you want, if you want to see caution details on that, you should just look up bench press accidents.

• 36:41Speaker 02

  Bench press fail.

• 36:42Tim Ferriss?

  Bench press fail on YouTube to give yourself nightmares. The, what about back work? Is there any particular type of back work that is helpful or important to the bench press? And I personally, number one, not terribly good at the bench press. It's not part of my regular regimen right now with focus and gymnastics, but a lot of people are very interested in it. I saw you doing, for instance, when we came in, band pulls of some type. So I'd love for you to talk about maybe some warmups that you use for it. And secondly, just as a, as a note for people who are wondering, when we came in, you were just, I think, in the process of getting warmed up, and I said, well, when, when do you want to pick up doing the podcast? And you're like, well, I'm going to do, start doing my workout and getting into it, probably 35 minutes.

• 37:26Tim Ferriss?

  So it's not like you're in the gym for four or five hours. But could you talk about the, the warmup and back work that's, that's helpful?

• 37:34Speaker 02

  Just before we move on to some of the back stuff, I just want to give you a couple of exercises without the slingshot, because I hate to be that guy that's overselling something. Close grip bench press, very simple, go, go with a closer grip than what you're used to. Don't go with such a close grip that it crushes your elbows and it hurts really bad. Whenever you're in pain, you're probably doing something wrong, or is there something from a long time ago that's bothering you? There's other options, so there's other ways of doing it, but simply just go closer than whatever your normal grip is. If you find that you're very strong with a close grip, then try to go with a wider grip. And again, don't go out so wide that you're feeling all this pain in your shoulders and stuff. Pain is a great indicator of like something ain't right. It's kind of like, it's kind of like if you pulled food out of your fridge from a few days ago,

• 38:19Speaker 02

  and you, and you heated it up and stuff, and you went to eat it and smells really bad, and you decide just to eat it anyway. Well, you might, there's, you might get sick, right? You might continue to do more damage, you might get hurt if you have pain while you're doing some of these, some of these movements. So if something's not, something feels weird, it's weird for a reason, and you'll have to try to find something different to do. Another thing that can help the bench press tremendously, and it's the easiest thing to do, is to do pause work. Take weights, pause them on your chest. Uh, count for, you know, three Mississippi's or so, you get a good three second count in there and then press. Uh, when you press the weight back up, make sure you're not sinking the weight back into your body more. Make sure you're staying tight the entire time. Um, you're trying

• 39:03Speaker 02

  to stay so connected to the bar that you're kind of zeroing the weight out, but you're not zeroing the weight out by resting it on your body. You're just creating so much tension and so much tightness, uh, that you're literally just kind of holding the bar, uh, just, just barely touching your T-shirt. Um, that'll build up a tremendous amount of strength and it will help a ton with your form. Um, I call it idiot-proofing the bench press because sometimes you get some people that get excited and they want to move really fast and explosively and show you how strong they are. And they start going all haywire, the left arms going, the right arms. Using their rib cage as a trampoline. Yeah, yeah, they're going just buck wild, right? Which is cool. It's great to, uh, it's great to be motivated, but you know, try, try doing some pause work. You'd be surprised at

• 39:45Speaker 02

  how much it can really help your bench press. Uh, moving into some back movements, uh, the movement that you saw that I was doing here is very simple. We just had some bands attached to a machine. Anything stationary that's bolted down or anything that's heavy in the gym that you, that won't, uh, that won't come shooting back at you when you, when you put a band around it would be a good, a good thing to, uh, use. Something you could do in your garage very easily as well. You can do it at home. Again, making sure that whatever it is you hook it to is very secure. All I was doing is just, you know, pulling the bands towards me. And you're pulling them sort of towards eye level? Yeah, you know, I, there's no wrong or right way to do it. You just pull whatever you want to pull to. Uh, we, we have a very scientific thing in here that we talk about quite often.

• 40:30Speaker 02

  Uh, somebody says, hey, Mark, you know, how many reps should I do? I always tell them some for a few, you know? Or the old Muhammad Ali, uh, R.I.P., uh, the old Muhammad Ali saying of, uh, you know, how many reps did you do when you did sit-ups? And he said, I only count, I only counted reps, uh, once they started to hurt. Those are the only reps to count. No pain, no gain, right? There's really no wrong or right way to do this. All you're trying to do is you're just trying to get the upper back kind of warmed up. And what I'll do is I'll pull and I'll hold for five seconds. Try to hold my, I'll try to keep my, the positioning of my rib cage upward. And I'll pull really hard with pull my arms back behind my body as far as I can,

• 41:14Speaker 02

  which is not very good for me because my range of motion isn't, it's really crappy. But then from there, I'll walk away from the rack. And what that does is it puts more tension on the bands. And then from there, I'll just move my elbows up and I'll move my

• 41:28Tim Ferriss?

  And your arms are bent.

• 41:29Speaker 02

  My arms are bent, right.

• 41:30Tim Ferriss?

  So you're simulating in a way, the bench press position.

• 41:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, right, right. Yeah. And it's like a standing row or whatever you want to call it, standing bench or whatever. And so, yeah, what that does is it's kind of activating my lats, it's getting my back kind of ready to go. And I'll continue to kind of move my arms around in different positions. Sometimes I'll find something that feels a little awkward, it doesn't feel right. And so I'll hang out and I'll move around in that position longer. Or I'll say, oh shit, that's a little bit weird. Maybe I should get on a foam roller. Maybe I should figure out, what is that back there? What's going on in that spot? You know, something I didn't, I maybe didn't notice. And maybe I didn't notice I slightly tweaked something at some other point in my training. The warmup is an evaluation of how you're doing for the day. And so that's

• 42:15Tim Ferriss?

  Like a diagnostic tool, right?

• 42:17Speaker 02

  A hundred percent.

• 42:18Tim Ferriss?

  And actually, since, since I saw you at the previous location and saw you doing sort of face, what would you call them? Like it's face pulls, but you were using cables and you're also using bands. And I started doing that and I still do that.

• 42:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:32Tim Ferriss?

  Even at the beginning of my gymnastics routines and I have a stall bar. You don't need to get one of these necessarily. They're a real pain in the ass to install. It's like a gigantic ladder on the wall. It's a real pain.

• 42:42Speaker 02

  A non-stall bar.

• 42:43Tim Ferriss?

  And, but I will do the, the work with bands and whatnot, like you said, to diagnose if there is an issue.

• 42:51Speaker 02

  Right.

• 42:51Tim Ferriss?

  Before I put a lot of load on it. And I'm like, oh, my left infraspinatus is really grumpy today. Therefore, I'm going to lay down and like put a lacrosse ball underneath it and then do internal, external rotation until it calms the fuck down. So I don't blow it apart when I try to do something on the rings.

• 43:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it just, it's also possible. It's just not in the cards for that day to do anything all that spectacular. You start to move around and you're like, man, I don't know what's going on. And maybe something happened at home that you're pretty upset about. Maybe you're not feeling good and yada, yada. And all of a sudden, you kind of got this downward spiral of things that are kind of against you for the day. And maybe it's not in the cards for you to lift all that heavy for that particular day. The other thing I do is I just turn back around the other way with the bands. So I'll just turn facing away from the bands. Uh, the setup you saw that I had, I have two bands. I have one band choked around the rack and then I have another band going through the other band. Uh, so I, so I have two basically handles for the bands where I can press and pull

• 43:48Speaker 02

  and do whatever. So I'll turn the opposite way and I'll bench press, uh, with the bands. I'll let the bands go way up over my head and I'll let them pull on my, my arms, pull my arms back behind my body. I'll let the band sit into my hands, which will pull, uh, my wrist and it'll help stretch my forearms. I have extremely tight forearms and elbows and just I got different stuff pulling on different things and in a bunch of different directions. Um, one of my favorite warmups, um, I don't do a ton of warmups for, uh, squatting, but for whatever reason, I need a lot of, I, I just basically come in and start squatting a lot of times. Uh, I will sometimes use my hip circle to warm up for a few minutes. Hip circles like fire hydrant type stuff on the ground or?

• 44:33Speaker 02

  Uh, hip circle is a product that I have from how much bench. Ah, there we go. Throw it up over your knees and you just start walking with it. You can use a band as well. Some people will take a band, they'll make a circle out of a band and they'll walk forward and sideways. Like the monster walks or whatever. Exactly. Yeah. Just trying to, just trying to walk around, move around, get the hips ready, get everything fired up before you start your workout. Uh, you're kind of asking your body a lot is the main thing to kind of recognize that if you were working all day and now you're just going to come into the gym and you just think you're going to perform great without really warming up, uh, you got another thing coming usually. So you, you want to, you want to do something that's realistic for you to do the second you get out of your car. Uh, you can hop on an aerodyne bike or some sort of, some sort of stationary bike. There's a lot of different things you can do. You can get on a treadmill.

• 45:19Speaker 02

  You could even go for a walk before you go to the gym or walk to the gym or ride your bike to the gym. There's a lot of different options you could do, but you want your body temperature to be up. Uh, my favorite thing to do though in the gym is a, uh, which I can show you in a little while is a bench press where you just take the barbell and you just move the barbell around in a bunch of funky different positions. So let's say you have one, uh, pinky, pinky, pinky on one of the power rings of the bar. You take your other hand and you put it, um, as close as you can. Um, I guess right where the nurling is about to end.

• 45:55Tim Ferriss?

  On the inside.

• 45:56Speaker 02

  On the inside, right. So you have one hand out really wide, basically, and one hand's in a lot closer. Take the weight down and let the weight push your shoulder down in position. You can even actually have a little bit of barbell weight on here if you're really stuck together the way I am sometimes. And what you're trying to do is you're trying to get the shoulder to drop back down in position and to open up and you're trying to get the barbell to touch your rib cage.

• 46:21Tim Ferriss?

  So you're doing some internal rotation with that?

• 46:23Speaker 02

  Doing a lot of very intense internal rotation. And what you'll, what it end up looking like is it end up looking like you're doing like some sort of weird.

• 46:30Tim Ferriss?

  Funky chicken dance.

• 46:31Speaker 02

  paddling like row type thing with, uh, with a barbell. So one, one side of the barbell is down. It's almost hitting the ground. The other side of the barbell is, is in full locked out position to where it's almost up over the rack. It ends up looking very, uh, very strange, but we do that warm up in here pretty much all the time.

• 46:49Tim Ferriss?

  And we'll take some video of that, guys, and put it in the show notes at fourhourworkweek.com forward slash podcast. So that'll be in the show notes also.

• 46:57Speaker 02

  We will also just take the bar and hold it in position and we'll like typewriter it back and forth. That's just made up that term. That was pretty good, huh? But basically just kind of like you're trying.

• 47:08Tim Ferriss?

  Moving it back and forth sideways.

• 47:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, just moving it back and forth sideways. Just anything to get those shoulders to open up. But when I, when I show you especially how tight I am after bench pressing, uh, you're going to laugh because the barbell is going to be several inches from my chest or stomach or wherever I bring the bar down to. Uh, but after I start to move like that, the bar will. cleanly touch my body without any problems.

• 47:31Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I'll laugh at your mobility and you can laugh at my strength. That seems to be the only way this is gonna continue our developing our relationship.

• 47:37Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 47:38Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, so I want to shift gears just a little bit. Actually, one question before I do. And this is a question from, from Twitter, which actually posted by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, N N Taleb, who wrote The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness, two great books.

• 47:54Speaker 02

  Really?

• 47:54Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Yeah. So what is the max deadlift for a non-competitive flanure? I mean, that is just a non-competitive lifter like himself, adjusted by age group, that would be considered decent. So let's just say you have a 40-year-old guy, non-athlete, recreational lifter. What would you consider? Uh, I'm just gonna make up some numbers. So 180 pounds.

• 48:17Speaker 02

  Right.

• 48:18Tim Ferriss?

  Maybe 15% body fat.

• 48:20Speaker 02

  You know, get going towards a multiple body weight deadlift is a great place to start. So, you know, in this case, the guy weighed what, 180?

• 48:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, let's just say 180.

• 48:31Speaker 02

  So yeah, like a 360 or a 405 deadlift would be really, uh, you know, getting like four plates on there would be a, would be an awesome goal. I think, you know, a lot of times people think because I powerlift, they sometimes will tell me, oh, I don't lift like you, man. And I'll say, oh, no, what do you lift, you know? And then they'll say, oh, you know, my best bench is like, that's only like 225 and, you know, I deadlifted like 350. And I'm, I'm the first person to be like, well, what did you do when you started? And they'll say, well, when I first started, like, I think I benched 95 pounds. And then I'll be like, well, what you're doing now is fucking awesome. What are you talking about? Why are you beating yourself up so bad for? You know, in the sport of powerlifting, the commitment to gaining size and the commitment to the nutrition

• 49:15Speaker 02

  and the commitment to sleeping and the commitment to even performance-enhancing drugs. Like, there's just so many levels of commitment, uh, that competitive powerlifters take that your average person doesn't care to go there. So the fact that they can lift 200, 300, 400 is still really impressive. Really what we're trying to do as powerlifters, and sometimes we get very carried away with it, just as you can with any other sport. We just end up taking it to that next level. And, uh, we're trying to do the same thing you're trying to do. We're trying to, it's just about self-improvement. However, our definition of success, our definition of self-improvement gets to be really swayed after a while because we're really trying to push the envelope.

• 49:59Tim Ferriss?

  And if you guys want to see examples of that, you can watch the bigger, stronger, faster with footage of some of the West Side lifters, including yourself, where you have guys with like blood shooting out of their noses at the bottom of competitive squats

• 50:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:12Tim Ferriss?

  and whatnot.

• 50:14Speaker 02

  You know, some people like, who would desire to do that, you know? And there's other people like, fuck, yeah, man, that's great. I love that, you know?

• 50:21Tim Ferriss?

  So you had, you had a period of time when you were doing pro wrestling and that was a real focus for you. I want to talk about a video that I saw.

• 50:30Speaker 02

  Uh oh.

• 50:31Tim Ferriss?

  We're just going to talk about, I want to, I want to get into a couple of stories. So there were a bunch of things that popped up on social media when I, when I mentioned that you were going to be on the show and I asked people what I should ask you about. And, and we're not going to go directly to this. This is going to be step two. First, I want to ask you about the fuck your elbow piece. We're going to get to that, but then there were all these questions or requests to ask you about poop stories and I don't know what the context is there. Maybe you have some background that I don't, but can you, can you explain for people the background on the fuck your elbow shenanigans? What, what happened there and how does it tie into professional wrestling?

• 51:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I did professional wrestling for about five years. My oldest brother, Mad Dog Mike Bell, he passed away several years ago now, but he was big into wrestling and me and my brothers as kids loved pro wrestling. I was asked one day randomly by a guy at Gold's Gym if I ever thought about pro wrestling. And I said, I think about it all the time. I watch it all the time. I love it. And he's like, well, how would you like to try out for some wrestling? And I was like, okay, sounds cool to me. I'll give it a shot, you know? Long story short, I ended up doing pro wrestling for about five years. I progressed pretty well. I ended up wrestling in the WWE kind of training grounds, which was in Louisville, Kentucky.

• 51:47Speaker 02

  Just uh, kinda ran out of uh, ran out of juice there in terms of my desire to continue to do it. I had a kid at the time, and my son Jake, who's now 12, so it was a while back. Um, but you know, at the time, you know, I was pretty hungry to do it. And once I had my kid and stuff and I was like, well, I don't really know what I'm doing. Cause now, if I was assigned with, you know, if I did something with wrestling, I'd be traveling all the time and it just wouldn't create a great family environment, so. Anyway, that ended, but I learned a lot from pro wrestling. I learned how to do wrestling promos, you know, they'd put you on the spot and they'd say, "Hey, you're wrestling Tim Ferriss, July 31st, you got 30 seconds, Smelly, go ahead," you know? And so then I would go and I would say, Smelly is my nickname, my two older brothers gave me, so. That was the name I used when I was wrestling as well.

• 52:31Speaker 02

  But they, they, they do all kinds of things like that, they, they'd swerve you and they'd throw things at you.

• 52:36Tim Ferriss?

  And you'd have to improvise.

• 52:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, improvise, they'd even say like, you know, "Hey, uh, you're gonna do an ad for this, uh, bar of soap." You know, you gotta, and then so I'd be like, "Oh, well, you know, uh, I'm not Smelly anymore after using this bar of soap," or something silly, you just had to go through it, right? Cause there's like 50 other wrestlers watching you too, and so. Uh, you know, you felt like an idiot, but after a while you'd start to have fun with it and you become more comfortable with it. And you started to really learn. I have many haters on the internet, as I'm sure you have acquired a few yourself.

• 53:04Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yes. It's a, it's, it's the tax you pay for being on the, on the internet.

• 53:10Speaker 02

  And for some reason, it's our singular focus, rather than the people that love us, tell us what a great job we do, and how inspiring we are, we always focus on the negative, right? That's just the way it goes. So anyway, this guy was, you know, he said, "I can't believe, you know, you tell people, uh, not to worry about their central nervous system, and that they're using that as an excuse to not train and this and that." Just at the time, stuff about the nervous system kept popping up over and over again. And I was just getting tired of, of hearing people use these excuses about how they need to like, auto-regulate their training and they need, they need special programming and all this shit, and so. I was like, "You know, I'm just gonna cut a wrestling promo on this guy, I'm just gonna give it to him straight." And so, I went on to kinda say, "You know what?

• 53:52Speaker 02

  Here's the truth, we, we're all gonna die one day, we're all gonna be in a lot of pain, we're all heading there. It's inevitable, death is a part of life, and was thinking of that and knowing that, the time that you spend on this earth, you might as well live it as a fucking savage and train and do whatever the fuck you want." And so when I said, "Fuck you and fuck your elbow," I meant it, "Fuck you and fuck your elbow." And so he was complaining about his elbow as well? Yeah, yeah, once so once that um because I think in the video that I talked shit about the central nervous system or something, I said, well, maybe you're using excuse because your elbow hurts or something. Well, I say fuck your elbow, just go in there and train. Don't worry about, you know, uh, you know, what do they say? A violent attack today is

• 54:36Speaker 02

  better than a well-planned attack tomorrow. That's kind of the mindset is like, just just go get the fucking work done. I don't care about the complaints. I don't care about your fucking excuses. It's kind of like, you know, you want certain work to be done. You have certain jobs that that you want to be done. Uh, from your camera crew that's right here. You don't want to hear them saying that their lower back hurts or whatever. There's this job. There's this fucking work to do, right? There's stuff to to get done. You don't care. Uh, obviously you do care if they're if they don't feel good, right? But at the same time, there's shit to get done. And so that's just the way I kind of view that. And the old wrestler in me kind of popped out for that moment and and attacked that guy. So. So you've done a couple of wrestling promos. Right? That have traveled pretty well. Yeah. As a result on the on the interwebs.

• 55:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, a more recent one was, uh, with, uh, well, I don't even know if he's a long-term friend anymore, but I don't know what happened, but, uh, it's with, uh, Mike O'Hern, you know, who Mike O'Hern is? I know who he is. Yeah. Could you? Well, maybe you could tell people who do not know who he is. Yeah. So Mike O'Hern is a, uh, has been on the cover of 500 magazines or so, according to himself, of course. I don't know if there's any real data at the back that up, but, uh, Mike O'Hern has been on the cover of about 500 magazines. Uh, he's a fitness model. He's been around for 25 plus years or so. He's always been in great shape. He's probably

• 55:57Speaker 02

  6'2" or 6'3". He's probably 250, 260. He's always claimed to be natural. And so he, when he used- Natural meaning drug-free. Natural mean drug meaning drug-free. And before the internet came around, when he would say drug-free and stuff, everyone was just like, oh, yeah, no one, no one really cared.

• 56:18Speaker 02

  As the internet progressed and as YouTube became popular, you saw a lot of these drug-tested lifters and a lot of drug-free, uh, natural bodybuilders become insanely popular to the point where they have 300, 400, 500, 800,000 followers. And those people started saying, "You know what? Some of these people are full of shit saying they're natural. Who is this guy over here and who's that guy over there?" And so that's kind of the stuff that's happened with, uh, Mike O'Hearn, all the way to the point where they gave him a new name. His name is now Mike O'Tren.

• 56:50Tim Ferriss?

  For trenbolone?

• 56:53Speaker 02

  For trenbolone, yeah, there you go, so.

• 56:55Tim Ferriss?

  Trenbolone is an androgenic anabolic steroid that is particularly, yeah, particularly popular among powerlifters.

• 57:04Speaker 02

  Use the code TIMFERRIS.

• 57:05Tim Ferriss?

  For 30% off your next tren order. From China. Quality not guaranteed. I'm kidding, folks. I don't, but, uh, trenbolone, these tablets that were used to inject into cows.

• 57:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, right.

• 57:18Tim Ferriss?

  And then reconstitute or basically, not that I would know anything about that, but, uh, continue. So.

• 57:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. So anyway, uh, Mike has been a friend of mine for a long time. We used to train together. Um, we used to power lift together. Um, and so he made a video, very short, kind of lame-ish video on Instagram where he called me out and he said, um, I didn't really mind it too much. I mean, it's still, it doesn't really bug me much, but the one thing that I didn't like is he said he's coming after my numbers. And so I was like, you know what, like.

• 57:52Tim Ferriss?

  Your, your, your PRs?

• 57:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, just to, just to protect powerlifting, to protect the sport. Like, I'm not going to tell him I'm going to go up and, uh, do a pose down with him in my underwear. And that's not, that's not what I'm good at. That's not what I know how to do. He's won a lot of competitions. He'd whoop my ass in that. So, so I was like, you know what? I'm just going to do, I asked my brother and asked a couple of other people, like, should I do like a wrestling promo on him? And they're like, oh, fuck yeah, that'll be funny. And so I did a whole promo. You can kind of watch, you can watch it on my YouTube, youtube.com backslash supertraining06, uh, where I said, Mike O'Tren, you're no longer my friend or something like that. It's the title of it. You guys will get a kick out of it. It was all for fun. And, uh, anyway, Mike retracted like whatever he put up. I haven't talked to him since then, so I don't really know. I don't really know where his

• 58:39Speaker 02

  mind is at with that, but, uh, I got him with a couple of good hard-hitting, uh, things on there.

• 58:45Tim Ferriss?

  What have you learned from some of the lifters you've interacted with like Ed Cohn? For instance, I mean, the man, the myth.

• 58:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:53Tim Ferriss?

  Not really the myth, the man, the legend. I mean.

• 58:55Speaker 02

  Almost mythological though.

• 58:57Tim Ferriss?

  Of mythological proportions.

• 58:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:59Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, what are, uh, there was a book by Marty Gallagher that, uh.

• 59:05Speaker 02

  I got it right here.

• 59:06Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, you do? It's a great book.

• 59:08Speaker 02

  It's right here.

• 59:08Tim Ferriss?

  This is hard to find.

• 59:09Speaker 02

  It's a bible. It's my bible.

• 59:11Tim Ferriss?

  There it is. Okay. So this, yeah, Cohn, The Man, The Myth, The Method. The lifetimes and training of the greatest powerlifter of all time, written by Marty Gallagher. This is a fucking great book.

• 59:20Speaker 02

  It's unbelievable.

• 59:21Tim Ferriss?

  So, so good.

• 59:22Speaker 02

  It documents his, uh, all his different contests and stuff like that. It's, it's unbelievable.

• 59:27Tim Ferriss?

  So can you give people just a little bit of background on Ed and why? People admire him so much and then.

• 59:33Speaker 02

  Ed Cohn is the greatest powerlifter of all time. He's regarded as the greatest powerlifter of all time because he competed in the 220 pound weight class. There's, um, a lot of different weight classes and powerlifting. Uh, but from Ed Cohn's standpoint, competing at 220 and 242, there's also the 275 pound weight class. There's a 308 weight class and then there's super heavies, which, you know, the super heavyweights are guys that weigh over 308. Some of them weighing 350 and stuff like that. Ed was so strong that he was able to topple Bill Kazmier from back in the day. Kazmier totaled a little bit over 2,400 pounds and Ed was able to surpass him.

• 1:00:14Speaker 02

  It was kind of a lifelong journey for him. I think it was like 1991 or so was around the time that he did it. He also, the, the style that he did it, the way that he did stuff was always super impressive.

• 1:00:26Tim Ferriss?

  And Bill Kazmier, for people who don't know, number one, they might recognize the name from world's strongest man competitions. Uh, just a beast.

• 1:00:33Speaker 02

  Oh, Bill Kazmier was a savage. There's no question. I mean, the way the guy was built was extremely impressive. He was, he was very lean for how heavy he was. Um, but you know, when it comes to American strongman competitors, he's, he's a legend. There's no doubt about it. Uh, even just in the history of strongman, period, American or otherwise, he's a legend.

• 1:00:54Tim Ferriss?

  So I interrupted you though. You're saying his, uh. You're talking about Cone and his, his method or his technique?

• 1:01:00Speaker 02

  It's not just what Ed Cone did, it's how he did it a lot of times as well. He's not a guy that cut corners. He's a guy that kind of used old school methods. He uses hard work. He's a tough bastard. He's a tough guy. And he's not gonna let anything hinder, they're not gonna let anything get in the way of him being the best. And so on his quest to topple this all-time world record, you know, he, he would hit these huge squats. He'd hit a big bench press. And then a lot of times it would come down to the deadlift. Now, anybody who knows Ed Cone, he's one of the greatest deadlifters of all time. He did a 901-pound sumo deadlift at one point at 220 pounds. Record that still stands to this day. Mind, mind boggling.

• 1:01:43Speaker 02

  He just had a belt on for that lift. Ed's, Ed struggled a little bit in the bench press though. So for him to try to beat Bill Cas- Bill Casimir, by the way, had the world record in the bench press for a long time. He benched 661 pounds, 300 kilos, which is just, just another mind boggling feat.

• 1:02:01Tim Ferriss?

  What gear or lack thereof at the time was?

• 1:02:04Speaker 02

  I don't think Bill Casimir wore a bench shirt. I think-

• 1:02:07Tim Ferriss?

  Just like a sing- just like a singlelet and a belt?

• 1:02:09Speaker 02

  I think the 661 bench press that Bill Casimir did, I could be wrong, but I think it was just in a t-shirt. Um, he, Bill Casimir also squatted like in the mid eights with a, with a single ply suit, which was basically like a, a ramped up singlet of some sort, didn't do a whole lot for you. Some cheap knee wraps and they would just go at it, you know? And then Bill also was able to pull over 800 pounds. So if Cone had to make up a lot of ground in the squat and the deadlift, because he couldn't bench as much as Bill Casimir did. Um, but this one particular meet that he did down in Texas, it came down to the deadlift and Ed Cone injured himself in training. He couldn't, uh, he couldn't pull sumo. So he gets down to his last deadlift and he's gotta pull 887 pounds conventional.

• 1:02:53Tim Ferriss?

  So sumo is wider stance, hands inside the legs. Conventional is kind of the opposite, right? Legs closer together, arms on the outside.

• 1:03:00Speaker 02

  Correct. And so there goes Ed Cohn, he goes up to the bar and he 887 pounds and just like the true professional that he was rips the weight up off the ground, locks it out. And it's kind of the only time you'll ever see him celebrate. You can find that video on YouTube. It's really neat to kind of watch because he doesn't really celebrate. He's usually very stoic whenever he does a lift. So you could see him get really fired up and just the passion the guy has. The one time, the time that he did come out here and the time that we spent with him here at Super Training, we shot some videos with him, we podcasted with him. And when he, when he left that day, I told the rest of the guys in the gym, I'm like, well, that's it. Like, there's never, that's it. That's, that's the goat. That's the greatest of all time. There'll never be another

• 1:03:44Speaker 02

  Ed Cohn walking through the door. So I was like, it's all just downhill from here with any other lifter that we get. And everybody's laughing, but, but everybody now understands why I said it because he's a great person off the platform. He's a great, he's a great person either way, you know, so he's, he's somebody that I look up to in lifting and in life. He's a super awesome guy to be around. He's always very happy. He's always very energetic. He loves sharing informa- he loves helping people. He's going to be the first guy, he's going to be the first guy to help you. He's also going to be the first guy to brag that he helped you, which I think is funny. He brags to me all the time still to this day about how he helped this guy with that and he helped that guy with that. And he's so excited about it. It's just great to see. But something

• 1:04:28Speaker 02

  I learned, the main thing I learned from him, I guess two things. When it comes to lifting, what I learned from him is that he likes to just do one set because he built up so, he acquired so much strength that he really only needed the stimulus from like one main set.

• 1:04:42Tim Ferriss?

  One main work set.

• 1:04:43Speaker 02

  One main working set.

• 1:04:45Tim Ferriss?

  But he would have warmups.

• 1:04:46Speaker 02

  Of course, of course. And warmups, whatever, I don't even know what you would even call them because it's 700 pounds, then it's 730 pounds, and then it's 760 pounds, and then it's 800 pounds. And it just goes on forever and ever. So, but, but yeah, they're warmups. They're very easy for him to do. You know, they're 70% for him, 80%.

• 1:05:06Tim Ferriss?

  Well, one thing that struck me, reading this book way back in the day, I've had it for ages, is that his training regimen- is actually very similar to the training regimen of Dorian Yates when Yates was in his prime. I mean, the programming was very similar.

• 1:05:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's kind of one and done.

• 1:05:22Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:24Speaker 02

  They get that main lift in there. The other thing I learned from him, which is this is really hard to do. I would advise anybody to try to practice this. I challenge anybody to be able to actually be able to follow through with this because it's really hard to do. But this is advice from Ed Cohen, the greatest power of all time. He said, be nice to those who are nice to you and that's it. Don't do anything else. And I always took that as like a challenge. That's really hard to do in life. You get somebody being mean or nasty to you. The only thing you can think of is like, how do I retaliate? How do I, how do I get this person's attention so I can get back to them? How do I get them to stop? How do I, you know, cut them off or I want to punch them in the face or whatever it might be.

• 1:06:03Speaker 02

  And, you know, that advice from him to me was, was, was critical and it came at a really good time. I was having some issues with the old member of the gym and stuff like that. And so it just kind of, it kind of relieved me of that tension. I was like, you know what? He's absolutely right. Why don't I just, you know, why don't I just concentrate on what I'm doing? Concentrate on the positive, great things I have going on and just.

• 1:06:25Tim Ferriss?

  Be nice to the people who are nice to you and then ignore the rest.

• 1:06:27Speaker 02

  Ignore the rest.

• 1:06:28Tim Ferriss?

  Are there any other lifters, for instance, you've interviewed some, some just phenomenal athletes. And of course you have a ton of them here at the gym, but a few names that come to mind because they're just, like you put it, mind boggling. Dmitry Klokhov, Konstantin Konstantinov, if I'm getting the name right, that guy, good lord. I mean, there's a video you guys can see, what's the, what was it? 945, 985 with just a, just a belt? And no, it was no belt.

• 1:07:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, no belt.

• 1:07:01Tim Ferriss?

  No belt. Have you, have you taken anything away from these guys? And Dmitry Klokhov is just an absolute mutant of Olympic lifting. Have you taken anything from those guys you've tested or incorporated in your own training or otherwise?

• 1:07:18Speaker 02

  You know, sometimes when you look at some of these guys, you you do have to recognize that there's just there's different species among us. You know, there's some people that are just different. There's a, you know, there's the guy in high school who's six, four, who's really lean, who gets all the chicks, right? I mean, there's, there's some people that you just sometimes can't keep up with, for lack of a better term. You don't know how to compete with them. And some of these guys are like that. Like, you're truly and honestly, just not ever going to be able to compete with them at some of the stuff they do. We have a, we had a lifter here for a long time, lifted with us. He was a PhD in mathematics. And he said, I think it was like second or third grade, they put some equations in front of him for multiplication and division. And they're like, we're gonna be going over this the next month. And, you know, we're

• 1:08:02Speaker 02

  gonna review this. And you guys will know this like the back of your hand. And he was like, I already know all the answers. You know, and there's, there's people that are just like that. There's people that walk in here. I just told you a story today about Encima, one of the lifters that we have in here. He did a 715 pound deadlift. I've been working my whole life.

• 1:08:20Tim Ferriss?

  Double, double overhand grip.

• 1:08:21Speaker 02

  Double overhand grip with no belt. It was a hook grip, you know, double overhand would be almost impossible with that kind of weight. I don't know if there's anybody can do that.

• 1:08:30Tim Ferriss?

  So hook grip, just for people listening who don't know, this is with the four fingers of your hand on top of the thumb, correct?

• 1:08:36Speaker 02

  Could not hurt any worse.

• 1:08:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I can't, anyway, I mean, not that, I'm trying to be part of the conversation to feel like one of the boys. But I mean, obviously, I can't even, I can fricking hold the water bottle for you guys. But I've never been comfortable trying to have.

• 1:08:49Speaker 02

  Oh, I know, it hurts like hell. So I guess my point is, is that sometimes, some of these guys are on such another level, it's hard to really learn much from them at all. I guess, like, Dmitry Klokhov, this is like, gonna sound ridiculous to saying it, but like, one thing that he really preaches to other, other Olympic lifters is to get stronger. As funny as that may sound, I think that. What he's referring to is like, hey, you know what? Stop worrying about like, you know, becoming more mobile and stop worrying so much about your technique and your form. He's like, it's not all these different things. It's just that you're a pussy and you're not strong enough. So work on being stronger. A lot of things can be really solved through deadlifting and squatting. And so his point was, hey, you know what? Let's just get more weight on your back.

• 1:09:32Speaker 02

  And let's just get, let's get, have that be the focus rather than you spending 10 hours a day on your technique and the snatch or something like that.

• 1:09:39Tim Ferriss?

  Well, you have a, you have a big mural in the gym that says, strength is never a weakness. And, you know, one of the guests I've had on the podcast, Pavel Tsatsoulin, who popularized kettlebell in the US really. But also say, strength first, like that is sort of the foundational skill and then you can build everything else on top of it.

• 1:09:54Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 1:09:55Tim Ferriss?

  I would go so far as to say, with say, Konstantin, who is not from Latvia, right? He doesn't need, doesn't he get really, he's from Russia, but he lives in Latvia and he's like, let's get something clear like.

• 1:10:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. He gets, yeah, he gets all.

• 1:10:07Tim Ferriss?

  Pretty, pretty fired up.

• 1:10:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. The, it was interesting in interviewing him, his, the text that came back was like so like harsh. That when we started to edit it on our end, I was like, oh no, we need to leave some of that in there. I like how he's like, he's kind of like, he's kind of like a really blunt. And he was also kind of mean too towards Americans. Like Americans are weak and Russians are strong and tough. And I was like, we're leaving that in there. Like that sounds, that sounds great. I love this guy.

• 1:10:32Tim Ferriss?

  That was a good interview. I mean, I read the whole thing and I actually underlined quite a lot, but what I, what I was going to say is that in some cases, it's, it seems to me dangerous to emulate some of the habits of people who are in the top point 001%.

• 1:10:46Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 1:10:46Tim Ferriss?

  Because they've already built such a, a, a foundation of strength training that they can then break the rules, right? So he actually, he initiates a lot of his record breaking deadlifts with a rounded back, right? But if you take someone who's just doing, say, 2X body weight and they want to get to three times body weight and they're like, oh, now I should lift with a rounded back. It's like, well, let's not put the cart before the horse.

• 1:11:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. A great, a great analogy for that would be, you know, you've done some MMA type stuff. You've done some martial arts and stuff like that. Imagine just learning a few weeks of martial arts and being like, okay, I want to, I want to start doing some stuff. Like Bones Jones and and where you try that is in the UFC against another, you know, against a professional fighter when you when you've had no experience with that. So sometimes you gotta just leave some of the things up to the pros and recognize that they're gonna look different when they do things. Konstantin Konstantinov, it appears that he lifts with a rounded back, but is his back rounded or are his erectors so dense that when he goes to bend down, his spine just kind of looks that way? It's hard to really tell. I mean, the guy's so damn

• 1:11:52Speaker 02

  jacked, it's hard to really reference much of anything. The thing to learn from him, though, is the explosiveness and the intent. He's he's not out there to like to win a balloon or a lollipop, you know, he's he's trying to like break stuff. He's trying to be very violent with the weights. He's trying to rip the weight off the ground as fast and as explosively as he possibly can. So that's something you could that's a good take home message for people. And then also realize he built up his deadlift by utilizing by doing a lot of repetitions. I remember in the in the article, he said he used to do sets of 10 and 15 routinely. You'll see that that often in the deadlift.

• 1:12:27Tim Ferriss?

  It's reminds me also, although, you know, Pavel and you need Dan John, a lot of you guys would would would if they're looking at what they would call easy strength, they're probably doing fewer repetitions per set. But Pavel has said to if you want to press a lot, you have to press a lot. Yeah, work on that that skill and the technique of it.

• 1:12:47Speaker 02

  Hey, hang out in those positions for the positions that you're bad in, hang out in those positions for a long time.

• 1:12:53Tim Ferriss?

  As you've gotten older, what have you added to your regimen, if anything, to try to minimize the likelihood of injury or spinal issues? I know one fan of mine had mentioned, and I don't know if this is accurate, but that Ronnie Coleman's had a number of back surgeries.

• 1:13:09Speaker 02

  Oh, man, yeah.

• 1:13:10Tim Ferriss?

  Of course, of course, you know, Ed Cohn has had double hip replacements.

• 1:13:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:15Tim Ferriss?

  Right? How do you think about addressing that as you get older? Because you're not just a powerlifter now, right? I mean, you're also an entrepreneur and you also you have a lot of other projects and responsibilities. How do you think about that?

• 1:13:28Speaker 02

  I don't.

• 1:13:30Speaker 02

  You know, I can't be, I can't be that worried about tomorrow if I'm gonna do the things that I, that I really, truly want to do now. Now, it would be irresponsible not to think about it at all. So there are some things that I added, but when I say them, you'll laugh because it just sounds silly to even say out loud, but adding in more food has been a big part of it.

• 1:13:51Tim Ferriss?

  Eating more food.

• 1:13:52Speaker 02

  Eating more food, yeah. More fuel, you know, you're gonna need more fuel for the tasks that you, that you, that you need to be able to complete. And, and that's not to say like, that doesn't go along with getting older. Probably less food goes more along with getting older than anything else. But in order for me to be competitive, in order for me to stay strong, I'm gonna need to add food into what I'm doing. So food is gonna be a big part of it, and the sleep regimen's gonna be a big part of it. As ridiculous as that sounds, Jesse Burdick and I laugh all the time. We wanted to start a website called Restwad, which is all about, all about snoozing, all about sleeping.

• 1:14:26Tim Ferriss?

  So I like hanging out with Jesse because he has as large a head as I do.

• 1:14:30Speaker 02

  Oh my, he's got a hell of a cranium, doesn't he?

• 1:14:32Tim Ferriss?

  It's incredible. How would you, so Jesse also-

• 1:14:34Speaker 02

  He's got those pockets like on the side?

• 1:14:36Tim Ferriss?

  Oh yeah, it's great. It's kinda like a pit bull. When you see a pit bull like chewing on something, you're like, oh my god, what are those muscles?

• 1:14:41Speaker 02

  It's impressive.

• 1:14:42Tim Ferriss?

  So, but Jesse is also, I mean, he can pull a lot of weight.

• 1:14:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:47Tim Ferriss?

  And this is a real athlete. How much can, now, I, my first real, like, hands-on interaction with Jesse was getting ART from Jesse.

• 1:14:54Speaker 02

  Oh no.

• 1:14:55Tim Ferriss?

  I'm gonna come back to that in a second. But like, what, what does Jesse pull? Do you have an idea?

• 1:14:59Speaker 02

  Ah, his best deadlift in competition, I think, is 821, 821 pounds.

• 1:15:02Tim Ferriss?

  This is a strong unit.

• 1:15:03Speaker 02

  Very strong.

• 1:15:04Tim Ferriss?

  Thick-handed young man. And I met him because I was having lower back and hip-related pain. So, active release technique, for those people who are not familiar, I'll try to give a very oversimplified definition and then just a short story on Jesse.

• 1:15:20Speaker 02

  Painful.

• 1:15:21Tim Ferriss?

  Oh my god. So, the idea, the basic idea, and this is gonna be super oversimplified, is that if you have tissues, let's just say that are, have developed scar tissue and adhesions, and they're adjacent tissues, that you can have someone effectively stick their fingers deep in between them, and then have you go through different, like, gliding motions to tear it apart. I mean, this is-

• 1:15:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:42Tim Ferriss?

  -roughly what it's like. Now, if you don't know where your psoas is, imagine-

• 1:15:49Tim Ferriss?

  Basically a millimeter next to your junk, your genitals, either gender. And it travels up kind of through the hip and attaches to the lower back. And so people who sit down a lot get very tight iliac psoas and hip flexors. And then they stand up and it pulls in the lower back, ouch, ouch. And so I decided to go see Jesse Burdick at one point. And he had me lay down on a table with kind of my legs dangling off. And he said, okay, safe word is brisket. That's how he started.

• 1:16:18Speaker 00

  How much is Jesse weight? Two, I don't know.

• 1:16:20Speaker 02

  He's probably two eighty or so.

• 1:16:21Tim Ferriss?

  Two eighty. Basically, imagine making like a ridge hand, like you're gonna sort of Austin Powers judo chop someone. And it felt like he stuck his hand kind of up to like the second knuckle into my groin. And then move my leg around like a marionette. It was a memorable day. I felt like I was, I don't know, it's like, welcome to Rikers.

• 1:16:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've had something similar done before. And for some reason, even though their hand is on your stomach, it feels like someone's fist is going up your ass. I don't know what that's about, but it's a weird feeling. You're like, what just happened?

• 1:16:52Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, or they're like tickling your spine from the front. I mean, it's a very.

• 1:16:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're like, I don't know what's happening at this point.

• 1:16:58Tim Ferriss?

  Usually you have to go to a funky club in the middle of nowhere at three in the morning with blue lights to get that service.

• 1:17:05Speaker 02

  But if you buy Jesse Burdick flowers, I mean, he'll be willing to do it all the time for you.

• 1:17:09Tim Ferriss?

  Restwad. So what else?

• 1:17:14Speaker 02

  So you have. The other element, the other element of the, you know, the staying healthy, you know, as you get older is is just to make sure that there's no stone unturned in your training. And make sure you're not doing that stupid stuff at the end of your workout that's gonna compromise. You know, at the end of your workout, you always have, you got the angel and the devil on your shoulder. And the angel's always telling you, hey, you should go home. You should probably just rest. You should, you know, take today as a win, buddy, and just relax. And you got the devil telling you, no, you should do another set. You know, you need to be more jacked. And so when you have that, that sensation of want to do more stuff, you probably shouldn't. Especially if you're already cooled down. There's other days to train. There's other days to get the job done.

• 1:17:56Speaker 02

  And it's a long, long process to get stronger. It's a long process to be fit. It's a long process to stay in shape. So view it as that. Make sure you're getting in.

• 1:18:09Speaker 02

  Make sure you're hydrated, make sure you're sleeping well, and even if need be, then take a nap. All these things are going to be crucial in your, in your journey towards succeeding at whatever it is that your goals are.

• 1:18:22Tim Ferriss?

  And the, the simple stuff, it's so funny how often, and I've, I've found myself succumbing to this often, it's like you're not getting proper sleep, and yet you're going to obsess on like the minute details of some tiny variation of some exercise. And it's like, no, you dumbass. You just need to actually get your sleep, or take a 20 minute nap, or whatever it might be. And the, what you just said echoes true across a couple of different fields, because for instance, in surfing, you know, that, that like just one more wave is like always when people get hurt. So people like Laird Hamilton will say like, never allowed to say that. And then you have people like Tim O'Neill, who's I think a six time national champion

• 1:19:06Tim Ferriss?

  in rally car racing. And it's like, at the end of the day, 4:30, like the witching hour, that's when everybody fucks up and drives into a tree or has some type of accidents.

• 1:19:14Speaker 02

  Your mind's not connected to anything anymore.

• 1:19:16Tim Ferriss?

  That's what you call it. And, you know, Coach Sommer, the former national team gymnastics coach for men's gymnastics, has put it to me because I'm also inclined to push it too hard, and particularly with connective tissue. I get muscularly stronger quite quickly, but then my connective tissue lags and I get injured. And he said, look, if you, if you, you can always push harder the next training cycle or in the next workout, but if you overdo it today, you might be out for two or three weeks.

• 1:19:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. And everyone's always trying to have all these crazy recovery methods and foam rolling and doing all these other things. And all those things are great, and they can, they can really help a lot. But if you just don't train like an idiot, then you don't need it as much.

• 1:19:59Tim Ferriss?

  Need less of it. Let's hit just a, a couple of rapid fire question here, and then we can, can get back into the gym and we can demo some of these exercises. The, the first one is, one of my most common questions, that is, when you hear the word successful, who's the first person who comes to mind for you, and why?

• 1:20:23Speaker 02

  My pops.

• 1:20:24Tim Ferriss?

  Your pops?

• 1:20:25Speaker 02

  My dad, yeah. All five foot four of them.

• 1:20:29Speaker 02

  You know, I got a Bo Jackson rookie card sitting right here on this desk that we're at right now. And, you know, when I was a kid, I probably would have viewed that as like success. But, you know, what I've learned over the years is that the success that we embrace as Americans and the success that we, that people are judged by can actually be quite maddening to even ever reach. And it's not always all that obtainable. You want to think about success and you want to think about what it means to be successful. I don't know if people really truly think about what the, what the, what the term means to them. That's the most important thing. Like, what does it actually mean to you?

• 1:21:11Speaker 02

  If you think being successful is being in movies, then look at any issue of People Magazine and see how many divorces and see how many problems a lot of these people have had that we would normally put up on a pedestal and say they're successful. They have all the same problems a lot of regular people have, but they're amplified. And their, their lives spin out of control very often through alcohol and other, all other kinds of problems. As kind of pointed out in Prescription Thugs, those, those types of things become very real to the rich and famous. And so, success to me is defined by the simple act of being good for a long period of time and doing the right thing over and over and over again.

• 1:21:54Speaker 02

  You know, people want a fast way to success. People want a fast way to getting better or self-improvement. And people often talk, times talk about like, you know, a steroid or this and that's going to get me here faster. Well, the ultimate pill that you could take is, again, the act of doing the right thing as often as you possibly can. It's hard because we have a lot of self doubt in our body. We have, we talk ourselves out of stuff every day. We have naysayers. We have people that tell us that we can't. So sometimes that sneaks in and they're like, oh, yeah, you know what? They're probably right. I'm probably right. I probably can't do that. I was probably shouldn't be doing that. And so to me, success is the ability.

• 1:22:38Speaker 02

  To continually get a lot of stuff done, whatever it is your goals may be, to continually make the right decision, day in and day out, and it's the act of being good for a very, very long period of time. Because being successful and being great is not something that can happen just in one particular day, or one particular month. I've talked before about Michael Jordan, and talked before about Muhammad Ali. These are not people that were good on just a given day. They were good for a long period of time. They did the right thing for a long period of time, and that prepared them to be great when the time was right. And they stood the test of time. To me, that's the ultimate form of success,

• 1:23:20Speaker 02

  is to be able to stand the test of time. I remember as a kid, as I started getting more and more into girls and stuff like that, watching my dad, and seeing him as an example. I remember a couple times, I'm like, there's no way that my dad is not going to look at this girl. It's impossible. There's no way. This girl has too little clothes on for him not to turn his head and not look at this girl when she walks by. I don't care how in love with mommy is, there's no way, there's no way. It's not possible. My dad would never look. And to me, that's the definition of greatness. Somebody who's that disciplined, and somebody who can make that sort of commitment.

• 1:23:53Tim Ferriss?

  I would just add also, that one thing I've admired about what I've seen of your path, and we haven't hung out as much as I would like, but we have interacted a fair amount. And I think one enviable aspect of what I've seen you do is that, and admirable is that you don't take yourself too seriously. And I think that like, life can be really short. It can be cut short. It can also be really, really, or feel really, really long.

• 1:24:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:24:27Tim Ferriss?

  So I think that the act of not taking yourself too seriously has allowed you to accomplish a lot of really serious things. And that that's an asset.

• 1:24:37Speaker 02

  There's no question about it. Having fun.

• 1:24:41Speaker 02

  How can having fun not be part of your success? Having, and I've, at the same time, you know, if you're not kicking ass, not getting ahead, it's harder to have fun.

• 1:24:54Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:54Speaker 02

  You know, make no mistake about it, like, like I'm a driven person. I wanna kick as much ass as the next person. But at the same time, I don't, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna sacrifice my training, or I'm not gonna sacrifice, I'm not such a serious person that I think everything's gonna be diminished or interfered with if I have a couple laughs before I go do a lift. Now, obviously, before I load up the bar with 600 pounds, I'm not gonna be like,

• 1:25:20Speaker 02

  I'm not gonna be like the source of entertainment for everybody for those, you know, 15, 20, 30 seconds before I go and do my lift. Soon as it's done, though, you break back to your normal self, having a good time. I just have learned, you know, over a period of time that it's not a, it's not a great thing to, to be so self-indulged in what you're doing. It can really, as I mentioned earlier, it can be maddening when you're trying to chase after certain numbers and certain things. It can, it can really make or break you. And so I'd rather do it. If I can't have fun and chase at the same time, I'd rather fall a little bit short and have fun along the way.

• 1:25:57Tim Ferriss?

  What $100 or less purchase has most positively impacted your life recently?

• 1:26:04Speaker 02

  Oh, man, positively impacted. I was gonna, initially, I was gonna say a pair of Groucho Marx glasses that I bought in Japan. And I got a lot of legs out of those.

• 1:26:13Tim Ferriss?

  Groucho Marx glasses?

• 1:26:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, they were, they were about, shit, I can't, I can't remember how much they cost, but they were like, in US dollars, they were like $2. But for some reason, everybody wanted to take a picture of me with them. They instantly made me famous somehow. I don't know how that happened, but there's like hundreds of people.

• 1:26:31Tim Ferriss?

  In Japan?

• 1:26:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're, yeah, in Japan.

• 1:26:33Tim Ferriss?

  Well, that makes sense. You're a fucking mountain of a human being, wearing Groucho Marx glasses.

• 1:26:38Speaker 02

  Oh, my God, yeah.

• 1:26:39Tim Ferriss?

  Like the most Japanese comic book thing I've ever heard.

• 1:26:41Speaker 02

  I was also wearing a purple jacket, a Ribera Steakhouse purple jacket. Satin, nonetheless, to make matters even better. But let's see, $100 purchases, that has done what exactly?

• 1:26:55Tim Ferriss?

  Just positively impacted your life. It could be any purchase, really. I'm just looking for something that's not like, well, my new Escalade, because people aren't just gonna run out and buy a thousand Escalades. I don't know, maybe they would.

• 1:27:07Speaker 02

  You know what, the wifey does so many of the purchases around the house that uh.

• 1:27:11Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, I can rephrase it.

• 1:27:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:13Tim Ferriss?

  What is a piece of gear that that you're extremely happy with that people might not be familiar with? You should be, one, the Triad, is that what it's called?

• 1:27:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:27:22Tim Ferriss?

  Which is pretty cool.

• 1:27:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:23Tim Ferriss?

  I saw another weird device which looked like some modified type of pull down grip uh for lat pull downs.

• 1:27:30Speaker 02

  I wish I could remember the name of that thing.

• 1:27:31Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:32Speaker 02

  That thing's pretty.

• 1:27:33Tim Ferriss?

  We will take video of that.

• 1:27:34Speaker 02

  That thing's pretty badass. Um, in terms of the lifting equipment in the gym, man, I I really like, we have, uh, you know, we have, well, the, everything in there is so expensive, so it's, you know, there's nothing in there.

• 1:27:46Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, expensive.

• 1:27:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Uh, there's what's called the Duffalo bar, which is by a friend of mine, Chris Duffin. Uh, basically, it's a, a, a, a kind of a, a spin on the Buffalo bar, which is a bar that is, uh, specifically bent a certain way. So it's less stress on your elbows and shoulders when you go to squat. I like that piece a lot. And then we have something in the gym that I'll introduce you to that you'll really like. It's also by Chris Duffin, it's called the Geisha. And this thing is, uh, I believe that's how you say it. It's a hundred and, it's a hundred and twenty pounds of cement, uh, that is in the shape of a foam roller. And you just roll it on your back and roll it on your legs.

• 1:28:24Tim Ferriss?

  Ah.

• 1:28:25Speaker 02

  It feels terrible and magnificent at the same time.

• 1:28:27Tim Ferriss?

  I have seen a number of products from him, so he also makes, there's like the Widow or the Widowmaker or whatever, all these different, they're like weighted cylinders.

• 1:28:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, Donnie Thompson, uh, makes some of this stuff as well. They, they, I think they make some stuff in conjunction, uh, and one, one of the things he makes is called the Ex-Wife, and it's like a hundred and fifty pounds or something like that.

• 1:28:47Tim Ferriss?

  Pretty. And the Triad's pretty cool as well, uh, which is basically thick bar, uh, or you could use it for thick bar training, but it has three different.

• 1:28:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:56Tim Ferriss?

  Grips on each, let's just call it, well, Triad, twenty pounds, forty pounds, sixty pounds.

• 1:29:02Speaker 02

  My friend, my friend who makes those is a huge fan of yours, so he's, if he listens to this, he's gonna. He's gonna, his heart's just gonna stop.

• 1:29:10Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I was gonna ask you if I could buy a few of them, actually.

• 1:29:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, the name of the company's Havik, if we can plug it, he'll.

• 1:29:15Tim Ferriss?

  Havik, yeah, fantastic. Yeah, so check it out, folks. If you could have one billboard anywhere with anything on it that is not an advertisement, if you could just put like a phrase or anything on it, what would you, what would you put up there?

• 1:29:30Speaker 02

  I like the quote, you know, the quote that some of the quotes we have in the gym, but one of my favorite quotes of all time is either you're in or you're in the way. And a little, little backstory on that, I won't go too long into it, but a friend of mine, I was, I was single at the time and I was dating a few girls and was trying to find the right one, was trying to find Mrs. Bell. And, you know, I, I went on a few dates with my now-wife, Andy, and my friend at the time, a little Italian guy, very fiery, very excited, Danny DeVito-like sort of guy, but then also super jacked and super ripped and built and talked a hundred miles an hour, chain smoked like a motherfucker, but looked like a pro bodybuilder at the same time.

• 1:30:15Speaker 02

  It was a weird combination of shit going on. His, his name was, his name was, his nickname was Vinnie Gombats. He was so abrasive and when he was talking to you, he always looked like he was like getting in a fight with you, but he's just telling you a story, but he's always moving his hands around so much and he was so energetic and loud and stuff. He, he used to stay at our house a lot, my brother just let him stay at the house for a while. He was kind of down and out for a period of time and my wife ended up seeing him out somewhere. And then they spent like a few hours together, they hung out at the beach together and stuff like that, while he's smoking and cursing up a storm at the beach. My wife thought he and I were really good friends. It was just more of an acquaintance than anything else and my wife was trying to

• 1:30:57Speaker 02

  just spend time with him and to get on my good side, basically. And so Vinnie comes home and he tells me, he's like, hey, I, I saw Andy, you know, and we were hanging out, she's super sweet, she's a nice girl, blah, blah, blah, he's going on and on. And he's like, you know, he's like, you're a fucking idiot. I don't know why, you know, you're with this girl, you're with that girl, you're complaining. And he's like, he goes, I got a saying, either you're in or you're in the fucking way. He's like, and Andy, she's in. And so that speech right there led to Andy and I being married for 15 plus years now and having two children.

• 1:31:29Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 1:31:31Speaker 02

  Either you're in, or you're in the way.

• 1:31:33Tim Ferriss?

  I love it. Well, Mark, I tell you what, we could, uh, we could talk and talk and talk and maybe we'll do a round two sometime. But I want to let you get back to training. We're going to film some stuff that people can see in the show notes. So we'll grab some video and probably, uh, also find some of your, your tirades, your professional wrestling challenge videos, uh, to put in the show notes. But, uh, where can people find you? What would you like them to check out? How can they reach you or learn more about you on the interwebs, et cetera?

• 1:32:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. Uh, so Instagram, it's at Mark Smalley Bell on Instagram and Twitter. I have a website called howmuchybench.net, which has all my products, which is, they're all supportive gear to help you lift more weight. To help you lift more weight more safely. And then also you're going to want to check out my YouTube channel, uh, which has tons and tons of great information on training. It's youtube.com backslash supertraining06.

• 1:32:27Tim Ferriss?

  All right. Well, there we have it. Any parting comments, suggestions, things you would like listeners of the podcast to consider?

• 1:32:34Speaker 02

  Just multiply your muscle and multiply your hustle.

• 1:32:38Tim Ferriss?

  All right, Mark. Thanks so much. I really appreciate the time.

• 1:32:41Speaker 02

  Thank you. Appreciate it.

• 1:32:41Tim Ferriss?

  And everybody listening, as always, you can find, uh, links to everything we discussed and more resources, et cetera, in the show notes for this episode and every other episode at fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. And as always, until next time, thanks for listening.

• 1:32:58Speaker 02

  I'm available for more of these. If you need me, I can take over a little bit when you're not around. Anything you need, buddy.

• 1:33:04Tim Ferriss?

  Substitute host, Mark Bell. Thanks, guys. Hey, guys. This is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the, uh, the world of the esoteric. I do. It could include favorite articles that I have read and that I've shared with my

• 1:33:47Tim Ferriss?

  close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by LegalZoom. I have used LegalZoom myself for many of my businesses. And many of the icons on this podcast have actually used LegalZoom. For instance, Matt Mullenweg of WordPress fame, CEO of Automattic, which is now worth more than a billion dollars, first incorporated his company on LegalZoom. LegalZoom is a reliable resource that more than a million

• 1:34:29Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:35:31Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:36:16Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:37:01Tim Ferriss?

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