Danny Jones Podcast - #307 - Smart Drugs, Steroids, Longevity, Sunlight & the Dark Side of Biohacking | Mark Bell
Aired: 2025-06-06
Duration: 02:46:36


=== Cautious Kratom Gummies (13:58) ===

[00:00:07]  Yeah, I'm new to the whole kratom world, bro, but I'm loving it.
[00:00:11]  I've never had gummies.
[00:00:13]  Yeah, you know, you have to be careful with kratom.
[00:00:16]  Yeah, I've heard.
[00:00:18]  There's a lot of like adulterated versions of it.
[00:00:21]  And this is, you know, anytime you're getting it in a gummy form or anytime you're getting like in liquid form, you want to be a little bit more cautious.
[00:00:28]  I think capsules are, if you're looking for safety, I think capsules are very safe.
[00:00:33]  Are they?
[00:00:34]  But now there's people that are making, and I forget what the name of it is.
[00:00:38]  It's a different type of kratom.
[00:00:40]  It's like a nine mitragene something.
[00:00:42]  I forget what it is, but people are getting very addicted to that kind.
[00:00:47]  I also went to a smoke shop and picked up just this little liquid thing, a kratom, just because I was curious about trying other brands because I make my own.
[00:00:58]  And I tried probably a quarter of a small shot.
[00:01:04]  And dude, I thought I needed to go to the hospital.
[00:01:06]  I was just kind of shaky and weird.
[00:01:08]  So people, please be very, very careful with kratom and be careful of the dosing.
[00:01:13]  And that's the hardest part to learn is about the dosage in there.
[00:01:17]  And it's complicated.
[00:01:18]  I can't even really barely explain it because I have capsules that are 750 milligrams.
[00:01:24]  But the capsules that are 750 milligrams are basically like a powdered version of a kratom leaf.
[00:01:31]  It's mitragene.
[00:01:34]  But then when you turn it into like a liquid and you put it in like a gummy or you put it in something else.
[00:01:38]  It becomes way more potent.
[00:01:40]  And so the smallest amount of milligrams goes a really long way.
[00:01:44]  Like this gummy, I think, has like 25 milligrams, which sounds like a very low number compared to the 750 milligrams that I just talked about, right?
[00:01:53]  But with the kratom capsules, in order for you to kind of feel the kratom impact or effects, you need probably two or three capsules at least.
[00:02:00]  Some people might even take like five or six.
[00:02:02]  But those are all, in my opinion, they're relatively safe.
[00:02:06]  I think one of the most important things about any of this stuff, especially when it comes to something like kratom, is it can be really addictive.
[00:02:11]  So you just, But a lot of things are addictive.
[00:02:14]  We just trained today, right?
[00:02:15]  And I'm highly addicted to training.
[00:02:18]  It's all about moderation, right?
[00:02:20]  It's anything, if you're using something every day, it's always a good practice to abstain from things like that for a while.
[00:02:26]  Every once in a while, just take a break from it.
[00:02:28]  A little practice, yeah.
[00:02:29]  Yeah.
[00:02:29]  Sometimes it can be hard to do, but this stuff, I wonder how much is in this stuff.
[00:02:33]  The white rabbit.
[00:02:35]  That's the extract, though.
[00:02:36]  And I'm not sure what it is.
[00:02:38]  I would say it's a minimum of 25 milligrams.
[00:02:40]  It says Mitragyna speciosis extract.
[00:02:44]  Plant energy extract.
[00:02:46]  Um, zero caffeine, zero sugar, zero calories.
[00:02:49]  I don't think it tells you the exact milligram of kratom that's anyway.
[00:02:53]  While we're passing out drugs, try a gummy.
[00:02:57]  I'm scared.
[00:02:58]  I would just take like half of one, just half of one of these.
[00:03:01]  Yeah, now do these do you get the stimulant effect from these at all?
[00:03:04]  Yeah, yeah, I do.
[00:03:06]  You do okay?
[00:03:08]  Yeah, I know what you're talking about.
[00:03:10]  You can come down to other side.
[00:03:11]  I think kratom is amazing, and I think that if people learn to just use small dosages of it, then they'll be okay.
[00:03:17]  But if you're like If you're smashing them, is that a full one?
[00:03:20]  Because I've ripped up a bunch of them in there.
[00:03:22]  Oh, no, this looks like a half of one.
[00:03:23]  Already half, yeah.
[00:03:24]  Down the hatchet goes.
[00:03:25]  Okay.
[00:03:25]  There you go.
[00:03:27]  Mmm.
[00:03:27]  Yep.
[00:03:27]  Delicious.
[00:03:28]  In three minutes, you're going to have your pants off.
[00:03:30]  It's going to be great.
[00:03:30]  Wow.
[00:03:31]  I love it.
[00:03:32]  I can't wait to see how this goes.
[00:03:34]  Yeah.
[00:03:34]  A lot of people do Kratom when they lift, right?
[00:03:36]  When they work out?
[00:03:37]  Yeah, I like it quite a bit pre-workout.
[00:03:41]  Blunting pain is another thing that Kratom does.
[00:03:44]  It's why people use it.
[00:03:45]  Originally, people were utilizing it to come off of opioids.
[00:03:48]  Yes.
[00:03:49]  Kratom, just like do your own research because I don't, I only halfway know what I'm talking about.
[00:03:53]  My brother, Chris Bell, he made a movie about Kratom, talking about Leaf of Faith.
[00:03:59]  And maybe you can have him on the show to explain further.
[00:04:02]  But kratom is an opiate as well, but I don't think it's an opioid, which so it gets to be a little complex.
[00:04:09]  Yes.
[00:04:10]  It's a leaf.
[00:04:11]  It's a leaf that comes out of, I think it's like Malaysia or something like that.
[00:04:17]  Yeah.
[00:04:17]  It's Thailand.
[00:04:18]  Thailand.
[00:04:18]  Yeah.
[00:04:19]  It's a Thailand leaf.
[00:04:20]  I saw an incredible little documentary by Hamilton Morris where he went there and he was talking to the people that basically like walk around and chew it.
[00:04:28]  And I think it's actually like illegal there too.
[00:04:30]  They have to like be careful.
[00:04:31]  I think it's like you can get in trouble even if you have a Cratom plant in your property there.
[00:04:35]  Wow.
[00:04:36]  I think some people historically have had it like in little vats of liquid and they just occasionally would hit it up and drink it while they were working and they would just utilize it all day, every day.
[00:04:49]  Pretty much.
[00:04:50]  I'm not saying it was a safe practice, but it's interesting.
[00:04:53]  Super interesting.
[00:04:54]  I'm interested in all kinds of drugs, man, all kinds of performance enhancers, everything.
[00:04:58]  And it's just, it's always been fun for me to experiment with different things and see how they.
[00:05:04]  Help or see how they hinder or see because everyone and everyone experiences drugs in a different way too.
[00:05:09]  Like, some people, you know, will probably get a huge effective kratom or feel that stimulant effect, or maybe like help them in their workouts or their exercising.
[00:05:19]  And some people may have no effect.
[00:05:21]  Um, and I've noticed that like I react differently to lots of drugs than most people do.
[00:05:25]  I'm like, I've always been like a very hyper responsive person to drugs.
[00:05:30]  I'm uh 48 years old, so all growing up, it was like a campaign like say no to drugs, and you saw that all over the news.
[00:05:38]  Uh, Nancy Reagan had that uh mantra and it's a good message in a lot of ways, like yeah like, especially if you're a kid, like let your brain develop, like that makes a lot of sense.
[00:05:49]  Yeah um, I would love it if most people and most kids could make it.
[00:05:53]  You know past like 25 before they really touch just about anything.
[00:05:56]  But uh, we also know that that's probably not going to happen.
[00:05:59]  What i've learned over the years is that there's a lot of drugs that can really wreck your life and put you in a really bad spot, but then there's some drugs where you can make an argument for them.
[00:06:09]  You're like, well, I've had pretty good results, but also sometimes people crash and burn off of some of those same drugs because they do them too much or whatever it might be.
[00:06:20]  I have a son.
[00:06:21]  He's 21 now, but when he was maybe 14, 15 and getting curious about some of these things, I mentioned to him, I just said, you know what?
[00:06:29]  When this topic comes up, I'm just going to tell him the flat truth.
[00:06:33]  I'm just going to tell him flat out kind of what's going on.
[00:06:36]  And I said, I was like, Jake, you know that I'm on steroids.
[00:06:40]  You've seen bigger, stronger, faster.
[00:06:43]  And he's like, oh, yeah, I know.
[00:06:44]  I know the whole story.
[00:06:47]  So we never talked about it until that moment, but as he was more curious about drugs.
[00:06:52]  And so I said, well, here's how I kind of look at things.
[00:06:53]  I think there's drugs that can kind of propel you forward.
[00:06:56]  And I think they're good, but every drug is a double-edged sword.
[00:07:00]  So there's good and there's bad to the particular drug that you choose.
[00:07:04]  Alcohol can be really relaxing, but it's super addictive and ruins people's lives.
[00:07:09]  But it might have its place in some person's life that can handle it.
[00:07:13]  In a reasonable way, cocaine crack uh, whatever these other drugs are, I think we can all agree like man, those seem to be heroin fentanyl, those all seem to be, or painkillers.
[00:07:30]  It's rare to know someone that does heroin.
[00:07:32]  That's like totally fine and like kicking ass in day to day life, right.
[00:07:36]  So there's a lot of drugs that you should probably just almost like never even try.
[00:07:41]  And there's some drugs where you're like, well, You like gaining muscle.
[00:07:44]  You like being big.
[00:07:46]  Then maybe you try some steroids.
[00:07:47]  Maybe you try growth hormone or some of these other things.
[00:07:51]  But the one major thing that I shared with my son was Mark Bell isn't Mark Bell without steroids.
[00:07:57]  Right.
[00:07:58]  And I'm not trying to discredit everything that I've ever done or anything like that, but I did them on performance enhancing drugs.
[00:08:04]  I did them with the assistance of steroids.
[00:08:07]  Just like I could say, I wouldn't be sitting here in front of you today if it wasn't for my wife or if it wasn't for my brothers getting me into lifting, right?
[00:08:13]  These are all things that aided and assisted into the whole process.
[00:08:17]  But also, there's been great poetry, great music, even children created while people are under the influence of a drug.
[00:08:29]  Only the best art.
[00:08:30]  In my opinion, it was created under the influence of drugs.
[00:08:33]  Probably.
[00:08:33]  I mean, just think of your.
[00:08:34]  Especially music.
[00:08:36]  I was just thinking, like, I really like Eminem a lot.
[00:08:38]  It's like, he talks about mushrooms all the time.
[00:08:40]  You know, like.
[00:08:42]  So anyway, you get the point.
[00:08:43]  Totally.
[00:08:44]  Totally, man.
[00:08:45]  And I think a lot of it has to do with intent, too.
[00:08:48]  You know, a lot of the most destructive drugs are people just using things to mask pain or, you know, out of boredom.
[00:09:00]  Drugs that I find the most interesting are the ones that you go into with like a positive intent.
[00:09:05]  Like, how can this enhance my life or enhance certain aspects of my work or my creativity or my body, make me faster, make me stronger?
[00:09:17]  Those are the most fascinating things to me.
[00:09:19]  And drugs, like the stigma of things like steroids is very similar to like the stigma of painting just the word drugs as a negative thing in general by like the Reagan administration.
[00:09:32]  And I think that that.
[00:09:34]  I think that steroids are just a technology that are not, you know, it's part of nature because we are part of nature.
[00:09:45]  Nature created humans.
[00:09:46]  We wouldn't be human beings if it wasn't for technology.
[00:09:49]  Hey, you don't have to sell me on steroids.
[00:09:50]  Right, exactly.
[00:09:51]  But I like this is like what I say to people is like that talk shit about steroids is like we wouldn't look the way we do now if it wasn't for fire that enabled us to chew meat.
[00:10:02]  And like all the technology that we've been able to create through the evolution of humanity is.
[00:10:08]  Exactly the reason we are where we are today.
[00:10:10]  And like steroids are just a technology that came from nature.
[00:10:15]  So it is by definition a part of nature, you know?
[00:10:19]  So, like, and to your point, I mean, people will, they'll take Fidogea, Gresta, they'll take all these other things.
[00:10:25]  Yeah.
[00:10:26]  And they have no problem with those.
[00:10:27]  And they don't think that those things could potentially have harm or danger.
[00:10:30]  Yeah.
[00:10:31]  But everything is a double edged sword.
[00:10:33]  Everything has a positive, everything has a little bit of a negative to it.
[00:10:38]  I just kind of always think like people are trying to take these precursors and they're trying to take all these other things that are similar to steroids.
[00:10:45]  I'm always like, why don't they just hop on a little bit of testosterone?
[00:10:49]  I do think it's a lot more acceptable and you're hearing about it a lot more on the men's side.
[00:10:54]  You're hearing a lot of men, you know, seeking and getting TRT and some of these things.
[00:10:59]  And the TRT is like beyond, it's like TRT plus or I heard someone say TRT sport.
[00:11:05]  They're on like a TRT sport stack where.
[00:11:09]  You know, maybe they have a little extra other than just testosterone going on.
[00:11:12]  Yeah.
[00:11:13]  But I think the more that we're open to this and more that we start to hear about it, I think you're going to see more women taking it as well.
[00:11:20]  And I think it's important that women get their hormones optimized as well.
[00:11:25]  There's a lot of issues with women taking testosterone.
[00:11:27]  Absolutely.
[00:11:28]  Yeah.
[00:11:28]  Yeah.
[00:11:29]  And there's so there's the only people that can make the only people that can make correct dosages are compounding pharmacies.
[00:11:38]  My brother Chris actually just started working for.
[00:11:41]  A company down in Houston called Empowered, and that's a compounding pharmacy.
[00:11:45]  It's one of the biggest in the world.
[00:11:47]  And a compounding pharmacy has the ability to actually make stuff customized to you.
[00:11:54]  So for a woman to try to get, you know, seven milligrams or three milligrams of testosterone from a bottle of testosterone that a guy might use, which has, which would be 200 milligrams per milliliter.
[00:12:06]  It's like, man, you've got a lot of math to try to figure out how to extract that tiny little amount out every time.
[00:12:12]  And so compounding pharmacies kind of come to the rescue in that situation.
[00:12:15]  And you can obviously can't go directly to them.
[00:12:18]  You still need to get it prescribed.
[00:12:20]  But it's a nice option for women.
[00:12:21]  There's a lot of women that suffer from all kinds of different things that.
[00:12:25]  You know, I'm not a physician, I'm not a doctor, but I think it can be very helpful for a lot of women to at least, at the very least, just look into it.
[00:12:32]  Yeah.
[00:12:33]  Dr. Gabrielle Lyon was talking about this on her podcast, and a doctor like that, accredited person like her, is not going to talk about women taking testosterone if she doesn't think that it can provide some value for people.
[00:12:44]  What specifically can testosterone do for women?
[00:12:47]  I believe it can really assist and help with like menopause and things like that.
[00:12:51]  So, and then also, you know, women.
[00:12:52]  I think it boosts libido, right?
[00:12:54]  Like for women too, right?
[00:12:55]  Yeah.
[00:12:56]  Yeah.
[00:12:57]  Huge libido boost.
[00:13:01]  It also will help with bone density.
[00:13:03]  Yeah.
[00:13:03]  You know, bone density, muscle mass.
[00:13:05]  You know, almost all of us, except for the few, a few of us that are totally crazy that love to lift, everyone's going to suffer from some sarcopenia.
[00:13:13]  You know, your muscle mass is going to start to come down a little bit.
[00:13:17]  And they say like over the age of 40, it starts to really decline.
[00:13:21]  But I think that women, women, it's been amazing, like their journey, like over the, because I started lifting in probably like, I don't know, 1988 or something like that or 1989.
[00:13:34]  I was just a little kid.
[00:13:35]  I don't remember the exact age or time, but I was like around 12.
[00:13:39]  And when I started going to gyms at like 15, 16 years old, there was no women in there.
[00:13:47]  Every once in a while, there'd be like a woman and she would be like the boyfriend or she would be, yeah, she would be with somebody that like was teaching her how to lift or whatever.
[00:13:55]  But we just went to the gym.
[00:13:56]  It was like 70% chicks.
[00:13:58]  Yeah.
[00:13:59]  It's a lot of women in there and it's amazing.
[00:14:01]  And then plus the evolution of how strong women are getting.

=== Carb Backloading Myths (15:14) ===

[00:14:05]  Debt doesn't just randomly show up one day.
[00:14:08]  It builds up little by little with car loans, medical bills, credit card payments, and then all of a sudden you're juggling payments and feeling stuck.
[00:14:17]  But here's the good news you're not stuck.
[00:14:19]  You just need a reset.
[00:14:20]  At American Financing, they help homeowners like you every day.
[00:14:24]  They use your home's equity and roll that high interest debt into one simple affordable payment.
[00:14:29]  They're saving homeowners an average of $800 a month with no judgments, no pressure, just real solutions that put you back in control.
[00:14:36]  Imagine breathing again, sleeping again.
[00:14:39]  Knowing your future is yours to shape.
[00:14:41]  It starts with just one call.
[00:14:42]  It only takes 10 minutes to get started, and there are no upfront fees, so it costs nothing to find out how much you can save.
[00:14:48]  And if you start today, you may be able to delay up to two mortgage payments during the process, creating an extra bonus and savings upfront.
[00:14:54]  Their mortgage consultants are salary based, so there's no incentive to push you into a loan that won't work for you.
[00:14:59]  And they're ready to help.
[00:15:00]  American Financing is licensed in all 50 states, so there's no reason to not take advantage.
[00:15:05]  Take back your peace of mind with American Financing today.
[00:15:08]  Call American Financing today at 888 995.
[00:15:12]  2440.
[00:15:13]  That's 888 995 2440 or Americanfinancing.net slash Jones.
[00:15:20]  NMLS 182 334 www.nmlsconsumeraccess.org.
[00:15:26]  Thank you, American Financing, for sponsoring this episode.
[00:15:29]  It's linked down below.
[00:15:30]  Now back to the show.
[00:15:32]  Yeah.
[00:15:32]  I mean, I just posted on my friend's page the other day, Hunter Henderson.
[00:15:36]  She is so strong.
[00:15:37]  She's an IFBB pro bodybuilder, insanely strong, world records in powerlifting.
[00:15:43]  And she's just doing, you know, she's squatting 315, like, but she's squatting 315 like super deep, super controlled, along with all these other leg exercises she was doing.
[00:15:52]  And I just, I wrote on there, I'm like, I'm out of here.
[00:15:54]  Like, I gotta, I gotta not, I gotta not watch your page anymore.
[00:15:59]  Like, I'm embarrassed.
[00:15:59]  Like, you're killing me, you know?
[00:16:02]  So, there's a lot of people like, and there's a lot of girls with really impressive lifts.
[00:16:06]  There's girls lifting, deadlifting, you know, three, four, 500, and even 600 pounds.
[00:16:11]  Jesus.
[00:16:11]  Shit's getting crazy.
[00:16:13]  Wow.
[00:16:13]  Yeah, that's insane.
[00:16:14]  That workout that we did this morning was phenomenal, man.
[00:16:17]  The way that you were explaining to me those, those twists with using the core and the glutes together to contort the spine and, using the dumbbell to do that movement between the legs with the lift.
[00:16:29]  I've never done anything like that before.
[00:16:31]  That was super, super cool.
[00:16:34]  I'm very accepting and open to a lot of conjecture and a lot of criticisms.
[00:16:41]  And I think maybe even while people are listening to this show, not just this episode of this show, but all of these episodes of this show, because you have a lot of conspiracy theories, things going on, and you have a lot of things that are challenging the status quo.
[00:16:54]  But I would love for everybody to kind of, they say put on your thinking cap.
[00:16:59]  Put on your cap that blows off the previous beliefs that you have for a moment.
[00:17:07]  Just suspend your beliefs in a little cloud and just have them kind of hovering over you and be prepared to potentially have those beliefs help you to change your mind over time.
[00:17:21]  Because changing your mind over time and changing your answer over time is going to be the thing that over a period of time you'll have a collection of thoughts.
[00:17:29]  That will be more intelligent, more intelligent, more intelligent.
[00:17:32]  It will just keep advancing.
[00:17:34]  Right.
[00:17:34]  And you can be almost a little robotic with it in a way where, and you don't have to be so attached.
[00:17:41]  I think you, what was the quote that you said while we were working out?
[00:17:43]  Yeah, there's a great quote of this guy.
[00:17:45]  I forget his name, but he was on my friend Julian Dory's podcast.
[00:17:48]  And his quote was, I have a bunch of very strongly held, or I have a bunch of very strong opinions loosely held.
[00:17:57]  Right.
[00:17:57]  And I think that's a really wonderful way to go through life because if I, If I tell you, like, oh, if you want to get big, you got to do eccentrics, but you don't believe in eccentrics because you heard Mike Isretel maybe say that they're not important, you just missed what I said, kind of, you know, and maybe, maybe what I'm talking about is slightly different than what you previously thought.
[00:18:21]  And so I see that happen all the time.
[00:18:23]  I'm still very guilty of it.
[00:18:24]  The second I hear somebody spewing something, I'm like, bullshit.
[00:18:28]  Like, this guy's an idiot.
[00:18:29]  This guy's a liar.
[00:18:29]  This guy's, this guy's dumb.
[00:18:31]  This guy doesn't know about this or that.
[00:18:33]  Yeah.
[00:18:34]  It's easy to do that.
[00:18:35]  But.
[00:18:36]  Try to do what's harder to do, and what's harder to do is to be open minded.
[00:18:41]  The sport that I've done for the last 30 years or so powerlifting has potential to completely wreck and destroy your body.
[00:18:50]  Yes, for me, I was very fortunate that I learned so much over the years and I had so many great mentors that it didn't destroy my body, but it did leave me really tight and it did leave me to like just have a lot of holes in my game.
[00:19:07]  Normal movement in life.
[00:19:08]  You know, something's as simple as like me touching my own shoulder.
[00:19:12]  I know you did a good bicep workout.
[00:19:14]  Yeah, it's not just because I'm jacked.
[00:19:17]  It's like there's a lot of people that have a hard time doing that.
[00:19:21]  There's a lot of people that can do it very easily that are even bigger than me.
[00:19:24]  So it's not just about being jacked.
[00:19:26]  It's just that that joint doesn't have the capacity to do that because it hasn't really had to do that motion before.
[00:19:35]  And so, I've been just studying the whole game and I have always thought and have always said, like, if you want to be a champion, if you want to be amazing, you want to be great at something, then you're going to be willing to do all of it.
[00:19:48]  Like we did the myofascial release stuff.
[00:19:50]  That stuff sucks to do.
[00:19:51]  It hurts.
[00:19:53]  We're on those balls and we're doing the different things on those kettlebells.
[00:19:57]  But if you love jujitsu, if you love golf, then you'll be on the ground doing that shit.
[00:20:02]  It's not easy to do.
[00:20:03]  But I fell in love with a lot of the stuff from the guy's name is Naudi Aguilar, functional patterns.
[00:20:10]  And people get pissed off at me just for even liking it.
[00:20:14]  And it's like, dude, I'm not trying.
[00:20:17]  You're in the wrong team, bro.
[00:20:19]  Yeah.
[00:20:20]  Well, I just would really wish that.
[00:20:24]  People would just give stuff a shot.
[00:20:26]  Like, okay, maybe you do think it's dumb, but that's a good first reaction.
[00:20:30]  That's a good, it's good to have that safety net.
[00:20:33]  But go to the gym and actually just try to apply one thing that this guy's ever said.
[00:20:38]  And if you do, you're probably going to be like, hmm, that's super interesting.
[00:20:43]  I think I could see some pretty good points there.
[00:20:44]  You might not love it.
[00:20:45]  You might not want to do it.
[00:20:47]  You might not believe anything he says, but it's going to be hard to deny it if you could try it and if you're able to feel it.
[00:20:52]  Yeah.
[00:20:52]  I think it's super important to change up.
[00:20:55]  Your goals and your routines, especially with weightlifting.
[00:20:59]  I love to do that.
[00:20:59]  It's hard to do, but like, you know, you also have to like learn and evolve with stuff.
[00:21:04]  And the problem with that is it's difficult for people online, especially like these doctor influencers online.
[00:21:11]  It's very hard for them and it's counterintuitive for them to do that when they're talking from a voice of authority saying, I'm this, you know, I went to Stanford, got my degree and all this stuff.
[00:21:22]  I'm a fucking doctor and this is the right way to do things.
[00:21:25]  And then a year later, you're, Flipping that around, saying something completely different.
[00:21:31]  So, like, it's the antithesis of like maintaining this authoritative voice that people have online that build their brands, you know?
[00:21:39]  I think Paul Saladino did a good job of switching lanes.
[00:21:42]  And I know people got mad at him about that.
[00:21:46]  But I thought it like he tried something different, right?
[00:21:50]  So he was eating meat, he was on the carnivore diet.
[00:21:52]  And some people look at it like, oh, he's a failed vegan.
[00:21:54]  Now he's a failed carnivore.
[00:21:55]  And now he's bouncing around at this other thing.
[00:21:58]  Well, If he's really smart, he'll continue to bounce around until he finds the exact thing that not only works great for him, but works great for maybe people that are listening to him.
[00:22:07]  And I think where the carnivore diet might have some holes in its game, especially when it comes to like weight loss, it's just the amount of fat that people consume sometimes.
[00:22:16]  And so if you're going to eat, like my brother and I actually are the first people to mention a carnivore diet, first people to mention meat and fruit as a potential diet.
[00:22:25]  Yeah.
[00:22:26]  I heard you guys, I was talking to you this morning.
[00:22:27]  You were on Rogan and like, What 2015 or something like that, and you're talking to him about the carnivore diet, and he's like, What, bro?
[00:22:33]  I eat kale.
[00:22:35]  I think you called him a nerd.
[00:22:36]  Yeah, I was like, Yeah, what kind of nerd?
[00:22:38]  Yeah, what kind of nerd eats kale?
[00:22:39]  I'm gonna have a kale salad.
[00:22:41]  He's like, What's wrong with salad, man?
[00:22:42]  Yeah, and there's nothing wrong.
[00:22:44]  Look at the evolution of look where we are now, man.
[00:22:47]  I know, I know.
[00:22:48]  I'm a fan of vegetables, by the way.
[00:22:49]  I think they're great.
[00:22:50]  They don't have a whole lot of energy to them, they're not really calorically dense.
[00:22:54]  Yeah, um, and they can be a great filler.
[00:22:57]  I think there's a lot of stuff that vegetables do that we don't even know.
[00:23:01]  So people talk about the like anti nutrients that it has in it and stuff like that.
[00:23:04]  But I think I don't, I just don't think we really know.
[00:23:08]  I think that like an anti nutrient that might be in kale, um, probably also has a hormetic effect somewhere, you know, meaning that like a little poison is a good thing.
[00:23:18]  And so I think that there's just, there's too much to like too much unknown.
[00:23:22]  But I think if there's a hole in the game of the carnivore diet would be that it has, it can potentially have a lot of fat in it.
[00:23:30]  There's a lot of people just thinking like, I'm just going to blast this because I'm not eating this.
[00:23:34]  I'm not eating this whole other thing of macronutrients.
[00:23:39]  not eating any carbohydrates for the men and women that are mainly just practicing only eating meat.
[00:23:45]  Now, if you're eating meat and you're also eating some sugar, which would be like fruit and honey, then you have an even bigger problem because you're still consuming a ton of saturated fat and you're eating carbohydrates.
[00:23:57]  It doesn't really matter where the carbohydrates come from that much, but if you're in a state of overconsumption and or, which no one ever talks about this, you just have a hard time being compliant.
[00:24:08]  Well, now you're on a high fat diet where It's also like high sugar and high pizza and high ice cream and high all these other things because you're having a hell of a time with adherence.
[00:24:20]  The carnivore diet can have a crazy problem with adherence.
[00:24:25]  And so someone might do it for two or three days, but then they cheat.
[00:24:28]  Two, three days and they cheat.
[00:24:29]  Yes.
[00:24:30]  We don't know what the outcome of that is.
[00:24:32]  Have you ever heard of Tim Ferriss's slow carb diet where he just basically stays, I think he stays like low carb or keto on the edge, borderline of keto all week long.
[00:24:42]  And then on Saturday, he'll just slam donuts and pizza.
[00:24:45]  Yeah.
[00:24:46]  Yeah.
[00:24:46]  I mean, there's so many ways to do this.
[00:24:50]  But even in that case, I think it can just end up being reckless if you're not aware of the fat consumption.
[00:24:58]  And I've been tampering with every diet that you can think of.
[00:25:01]  I used to do Carb Night from John Kiefer.
[00:25:05]  I don't know if you remember that diet.
[00:25:06]  I'm not sure I've heard of it.
[00:25:07]  Yeah.
[00:25:08]  There's like carb backloading where you just mainly eat all your carbs at the end of the day, which doesn't sound like a great idea.
[00:25:14]  Yeah.
[00:25:15]  I've done protein leveraging.
[00:25:17]  I've done, there's a.
[00:25:19]  There's all kinds of different diets that you can do.
[00:25:23]  There's something called a protein sparing modified fast, which is just like almost impossible to follow.
[00:25:28]  But really, what that is is like rather than someone like yourself saying, I'm going to do a 72 hour fast, instead of doing a 72 hour fast, you say, I'm over the next 72 hours, I'm going to only eat protein.
[00:25:43]  That's all I'm going to eat is protein.
[00:25:45]  It's going to be straight protein too, just like egg whites, maybe chicken breasts, there's a little bit of fat in there.
[00:25:51]  Yeah.
[00:25:51]  Maybe some turkey.
[00:25:53]  But you do that for two or three days.
[00:25:54]  And that is obviously a very restrictive diet.
[00:25:58]  Right.
[00:25:58]  But this is how a lot of bodybuilders get really, really lean for a bodybuilding show.
[00:26:02]  They'll have really lean sources of meat.
[00:26:04]  They might have some carbs and stuff in there too because they train so hard and everything.
[00:26:08]  But they're going to be on a very, very lean diet.
[00:26:12]  Like Chris Bumstead is at like 1,600 calories when he's, you know, the last maybe three, four weeks before a bodybuilding show, which is insane because if he has to sink his calories that low and he has to sink his fat down that low, his fat might be.
[00:26:26]  40 grams or something like that a day, which is really low to try to do that.
[00:26:32]  But my point being is like, there's so many different ways that we can move all this stuff around, but you can't have the carbohydrates and the fats being really high unless it's like for some really short period of time.
[00:26:46]  So even if it balances out at the end of the month that your carbs and your fats are high and you're in a caloric surplus, you are probably going to run into some issues with heart disease and probably going to run into some issues that.
[00:26:59]  You could have avoided if you just had a little bit better knowledge.
[00:27:02]  And if you just, the easiest way to look at it, in my opinion, is just to watch those fat calories.
[00:27:07]  Just pay attention to it.
[00:27:09]  You know, be careful of like, oh, I'm eating buffalo wings and pastrami and salami and cheese.
[00:27:15]  And because that's, Tim Ferriss is a big fan of cheese.
[00:27:18]  So I know cheese is like one to one.
[00:27:20]  It's like one gram of fat per one gram of protein.
[00:27:25]  Oh, is it really?
[00:27:26]  I didn't know that.
[00:27:26]  Same with eggs.
[00:27:27]  You know, egg, whole egg is like six and six or seven and seven, depending on the size of the egg.
[00:27:32]  And that's pretty fat.
[00:27:33]  So, you want to, like, in my opinion, I would rather see somebody add some egg whites to, like, an omelet or to their eggs that they're going to have in the morning.
[00:27:42]  So that way they're having more volume, but they're also not consuming nearly as many calories.
[00:27:50]  Protein is a weird thing.
[00:27:51]  It's like it's not a great energy source.
[00:27:54]  You got your carbs and your fats, and those two can count against you a little bit more so than in terms of not being able to lose weight.
[00:28:03]  Keep in mind, too, as I'm.
[00:28:05]  Talking about a lot of this stuff.
[00:28:07]  I'm talking about like losing body fat.
[00:28:09]  Right.
[00:28:09]  So if you're somebody that just wants to be healthy, then things are a little bit different.
[00:28:12]  The other day, I tried to split the dinner bill.
[00:28:15]  And we all are aware of those pesky payment apps that take up to three days to transfer, require 300 different levels of verification, and always forget your password.
[00:28:25]  And then on top of all that, they take a cut forcing you to pay extra.
[00:28:28]  Listen, if I take this bill and I give it to my friend, that's how fast I expect it to be transferred digitally.
[00:28:35]  And that's where today's sponsor, Cash App, said, Hold my beer.
[00:28:38]  Moving money should be simple.
[00:28:40]  We're not applying for mortgages here.
[00:28:41]  What a relief.
[00:28:43]  It took seconds to set up and all I needed was my phone number.
[00:28:46]  No digging around for bank info, no forms, just boom, done.
[00:28:49]  The first time I used it was when one of our guests didn't receive the taxi voucher I sent him.
[00:28:54]  So instead I sent him some cash on Cash App and he got the payment instantly while we were still on the phone.
[00:28:59]  It didn't take two to three business days.
[00:29:01]  It was instant.
[00:29:01]  And what about safety?
[00:29:03]  If you're about to send money to someone sketchy, Cash App gives you an alert like, hey, you sure you want to do this?
[00:29:09]  Which definitely has saved me once or twice when I've mistyped someone's phone number with my butterfingers.
[00:29:13]  What a beautiful safety net.
[00:29:14]  Also, you can personalize payments so you can send your buddy rent money with the pizza emoji and the sparkly background.

=== Testosterone and Blood Work (16:31) ===

[00:29:19]  Every time my in laws want something, they get the poop emoji.
[00:29:22]  Bottom line is, I use Cash App because it's the fastest, the safest, and it makes my life way less stressful.
[00:29:28]  And for a limited time only, new Cash App users can use our exclusive code to earn some additional cash.
[00:29:33]  For real, there's no catch.
[00:29:35]  Just download Cash App and use my code DANI10 when you sign up.
[00:29:39]  Send five bucks to a friend within 14 days and you'll get $10 dropped right into your account.
[00:29:44]  That's Cash App, baby.
[00:29:45]  Download today.
[00:29:46]  And your fats can be, your fat or your carbs can be in whatever range that you want as long as you're not gaining weight.
[00:29:52]  Right.
[00:29:53]  And that's something that you don't notice when you're not overweight.
[00:29:56]  It's like when I started experimenting with the keto diet like six years ago, seven years ago, I felt great.
[00:30:02]  I felt amazing.
[00:30:03]  That's when I first learned about it from Dom.
[00:30:04]  And I started to do my blood work.
[00:30:07]  And I told you, my cholesterol was off the freaking charts like crazy.
[00:30:12]  I thought like my primary care doctor was like, you're going to be dead in five years.
[00:30:17]  Like, he didn't know.
[00:30:18]  I mean, he didn't understand, like, you know, all of the latest research and all this stuff.
[00:30:22]  I mean, those people don't really know when they're seeing patients, you know, over 70.
[00:30:25]  And it's still changing all the time.
[00:30:26]  I think that with all the information I've heard about cholesterol, it seems like where we sit now is actually a little bit more in the middle.
[00:30:34]  So I think for a moment there, we would be like, oh, it doesn't matter at all.
[00:30:37]  You know, Nick Norwitz did his Oreo study and all these different things, but it still seems to matter.
[00:30:42]  It just seems to matter in terms of your LDL cholesterol is high, and then you also.
[00:30:48]  You don't want to check like your APO B. There's all these other things.
[00:30:50]  I got all that stuff checked.
[00:30:51]  Yeah.
[00:30:52]  And you check your, um, your like fasting insulin and LP little a is another one.
[00:30:56]  Right.
[00:30:57]  Yeah.
[00:30:57]  And I was pretty decent.
[00:30:58]  I, I got a, um, uh, what's it called?
[00:31:01]  The CT, CT angiogram, whatever.
[00:31:03]  Just check the plaque and I was good on that.
[00:31:05]  So, um, that's great.
[00:31:07]  I think I'm, I'm pretty, I'm pretty smooth sailing on that.
[00:31:10]  But, um, but yeah, another thing I wanted to ask you about was like, I've noticed a lot of super young people jumping on testosterone lately, like kids in there, like, Early 20s.
[00:31:23]  There's like, there's these dudes that walk around that gym that we were just in that look like, like bigger than him.
[00:31:29]  Yeah, bigger than our own.
[00:31:30]  These kids are like 19 years old and they don't look a day younger than 40.
[00:31:36]  And I'm like, geez, I couldn't imagine.
[00:31:39]  And I know that stuff can't be good for you when you're super young like that.
[00:31:42]  And I mean, so I know there's a difference between being good for you or being like hampering your lifestyle because like one of the main downfalls of it, I know, is it makes you infertile, right?
[00:31:52]  So like if you want to have kids, it's not a good idea to do it.
[00:31:55]  But like, I wonder, like, what would be the other downsides?
[00:32:01]  Of it long term, if you're managing obviously, if you're blasting like 500 milligrams a week, that's not going to be optimal for like your heart health and things like this.
[00:32:10]  But like, if you're doing like a normal dose of this stuff and you know you've already addressed the reproductive stuff and you know you don't want to have kids anymore, like what would be the downsides?
[00:32:22]  There's definitely a lot of drawbacks to the whole thing.
[00:32:25]  Um, one of them just being like being bigger, you know, having a lot of body weight.
[00:32:30]  Um, people tend to live longer when there's just smaller, yeah.
[00:32:34]  You know, I think a lot of centurions, people that live to be over 100 years old, they're usually like 100 pounds or 120, 140 pounds.
[00:32:42]  They're like little people.
[00:32:45]  So I think that, you know, doing some of these things when you're young, it's good to like probably get a lot of these things out of your system.
[00:32:51]  So if you're going to do it at any time, the body repairs itself pretty well.
[00:32:57]  But you could be really tampering with something that you maybe don't fully understand.
[00:33:02]  Testosterone and steroids in general, they change like so many things about you.
[00:33:07]  You know how people have kind of stated that, you know, the COVID vaccine changes your like DNA and things of that nature, right?
[00:33:15]  Testosterone changes like everything about you, changes your personality, changes everything.
[00:33:19]  Really?
[00:33:20]  There was somebody that on my YouTube channel that I just got done with a run and I posted like a video and I was, you know, kind of stating what I did for the day.
[00:33:29]  I was like, oh, I lifted and I, you know, got in a good run.
[00:33:32]  And someone's like, well, it's easier for you to say because you're on steroids.
[00:33:35]  Like, you know, and I actually thought about it for a moment rather than like getting mad about it.
[00:33:39]  I gave it a second and I was like, You know what, that dude's kind of right because steroids are actually motivating.
[00:33:47]  People might not really know that, but like you think about anybody that you talk to who's had like low T, they're kind of like down.
[00:33:53]  Yeah, you know, like hey man, you want to go, uh, go play some pickleball?
[00:33:57]  Like, I don't know.
[00:33:59]  Like, hey, you want to, you know, play some video games?
[00:34:01]  Like, you know, they're just like low energy, they're kind of, uh, just not the same, right?
[00:34:06]  But it can flip a switch for some people when it takes some testosterone.
[00:34:10]  Or what about the person that maybe their whole life.
[00:34:12]  Uh, maybe they grew up a little bit smaller than everybody.
[00:34:15]  Maybe they grew up like kind of skinny.
[00:34:16]  They kind of got pushed around, right.
[00:34:18]  Well, now they do a little jujitsu and they get in the gym a little bit and they uh take a little testosterone.
[00:34:24]  They're going to feel like a completely different person, though your powv is going to change.
[00:34:29]  Your point of view on everything is going to change massively when you have a little bit more testosterone in you, because you're going to be stronger, you're going to be bigger.
[00:34:39]  And then there's also another side of it, like if you start to take something like trend Balone or some of these things changes uh, Like so many things.
[00:34:50]  It changes a lot of your senses.
[00:34:51]  It changes the way that you smell things.
[00:34:53]  It changes the way that you taste.
[00:34:57]  It can really literally change your life.
[00:34:59]  You'll hear people talk about how angry they are when they're on it.
[00:35:02]  Now, everyone doesn't get the same effects.
[00:35:04]  Everyone doesn't get the same side effects and stuff like that.
[00:35:06]  But the biggest, probably one of the biggest issues with steroids in general, with all of it and these young kids taking it, is the addictive side.
[00:35:16]  That's going to be hard to like.
[00:35:18]  Do you think they're addictive?
[00:35:19]  Testosterone?
[00:35:21]  They are for me.
[00:35:21]  I've been on them for a really long time.
[00:35:23]  What specifically is addictive about it?
[00:35:26]  Just the whole feel that you get from it.
[00:35:27]  Oh, really?
[00:35:28]  You know, because I've definitely considered, I'm 48, and I definitely have considered, I'm like, maybe I should just come off.
[00:35:33]  But now I'm like, well.
[00:35:34]  Oh, really?
[00:35:35]  Even in your 40s, you said something coming off.
[00:35:37]  Yeah, and now I'm obviously on like way lower dosages and all that stuff.
[00:35:41]  And I get my blood work checked and I try to do it in a healthy way and all that stuff.
[00:35:46]  But I'm just like, maybe I should just, because I've been doing them since I was 25 years old.
[00:35:50]  So that's, you know, how much research is there on people like me?
[00:35:53]  20 years?
[00:35:54]  Yeah, how much research is there on, yeah, Arnold, right?
[00:35:57]  He's like almost 80.
[00:35:59]  Right.
[00:36:00]  There's a lot of people that have been doing it for a long time.
[00:36:02]  But even, let's just hypothetically say that I stopped for 20 years.
[00:36:05]  I'd start taking it again when I'm 70 if I thought I needed it.
[00:36:08]  You know what I mean?
[00:36:09]  Right, right.
[00:36:10]  That's how I feel about these things.
[00:36:14]  I tried testosterone for like four months about two years ago.
[00:36:19]  And I felt tired.
[00:36:22]  I didn't feel great.
[00:36:23]  Honestly, I probably thought I felt worse on it.
[00:36:27]  I don't know what it was, but I definitely felt like fatigued all the time.
[00:36:32]  Just tired all the time.
[00:36:34]  Previously, did you have like low testosterone and did you get your testosterone checked while you were taking it?
[00:36:38]  My testosterone was, I got it done before and it was like 750.
[00:36:43]  And then I got it done in the middle of it and that was, it went up to like 1500.
[00:36:48]  I don't know.
[00:36:49]  I mean, that's a lot more, obviously.
[00:36:51]  Yeah, right.
[00:36:52]  But it can make you feel lethargic in some ways because it does make you, it just makes you like bigger and it almost like, I don't want to say it makes you slower because there's so many different outcomes you can have in accordance to like how you're training and everything else.
[00:37:04]  And it, They can certainly make you faster because they can make you more powerful, make you more explosive.
[00:37:10]  But they will also cause, like if you take them for a handful of weeks, it might also cause some water retention.
[00:37:18]  Yes.
[00:37:18]  And your blood pressure might go up a little bit.
[00:37:21]  You might just feel a little bit more tired.
[00:37:22]  That's what Dom was telling me when I tried it.
[00:37:24]  He's like, do your blood pressure all the time.
[00:37:25]  Just keep track of that.
[00:37:27]  And I did that.
[00:37:28]  I mean, I like whenever I try to investigate things like this, I make sure I do more than enough homework to make sure that I'm not going to fuck myself over and the blood work and stuff like that.
[00:37:39]  But yeah, so like the fatigue stuff was really weird to me.
[00:37:44]  I didn't feel more motivated either because I heard people talking about more motivation increases and things like this.
[00:37:49]  And the other thing was it killed my dick.
[00:37:54]  People talk about it boosting their libido.
[00:37:56]  It fucking drove mine into the ground.
[00:37:58]  Was that all you were taking was testosterone?
[00:37:59]  Yeah.
[00:38:01]  Yeah.
[00:38:01]  It's like I said, all these, all drugs are like a double-edged sword.
[00:38:06]  You know, erectile dysfunction happens in a lot of people from testosterone.
[00:38:12]  I don't even know if everyone understands all the mechanisms behind that.
[00:38:16]  I do know that when your testosterone goes up, a lot of times your estroidal, like your estrogen, will want to kind of like.
[00:38:22]  But that boosts libido, right?
[00:38:23]  Estrogen?
[00:38:24]  It can.
[00:38:24]  Yeah, it can.
[00:38:26]  And also, if you drive your estrogen way down, that can hurt you.
[00:38:30]  But I think if your estrogen is way up.
[00:38:31]  That's protective, right?
[00:38:32]  That's like protective of your body.
[00:38:33]  It can be like heart.
[00:38:34]  Yeah, it can be like heart protective.
[00:38:35]  But I think if your estrogen gets out of hand, whether your testosterone is blasted through the ceiling or whether your testosterone is really low, you're probably not going to feel great from either one of those.
[00:38:47]  It's like this thing about being in the middle.
[00:38:49]  And so I think we're just at the very beginning stages of figuring a lot of this out.
[00:38:55]  I think that in the future, it's not just going to be a shot of testosterone.
[00:38:58]  I think that each person that seeks this out will probably get a shot of something that maybe has three or four different things in it.
[00:39:06]  So that it's good.
[00:39:07]  Because, I mean, that's what bodybuilders are doing now.
[00:39:10]  And when I started years ago.
[00:39:11]  What do you mean?
[00:39:12]  Three or four things.
[00:39:13]  What do you mean?
[00:39:14]  So I was a professional wrestler for a handful of years, like jumping off the top rope type stuff.
[00:39:19]  Really?
[00:39:20]  And when I was doing pro wrestling, we basically would say that if you're not on three things at one time, that you're natural.
[00:39:27]  That's fucking awesome.
[00:39:29]  So, yeah, it's like you take testosterone, ekapoise, and something like Anovar or something like that.
[00:39:34]  Yeah, I qualudes.
[00:39:38]  Those other drugs, those other compounds, like bodybuilders are meatheads for sure, but they're also really smart.
[00:39:44]  Those other compounds can, so if you do it strategically and you're paying attention to what you're doing, you're not just blasting all three of them.
[00:39:53]  You can take.
[00:39:53]  You can lower the testosterone quite a bit.
[00:39:56]  You could take like primabolin or Mastron I don't know if this will get like thrown off of youtube or whatever, but but you could take these other things.
[00:40:03]  Medical advice people yeah yeah exactly, you could take.
[00:40:07]  You can take these things uh, you know, with testosterone and not have to take the same amount so you can get the positive effects of testosterone.
[00:40:15]  So, like if we forgot your first experience with testosterone and we what, and we redid it and you said what your goals were we can appropriately dose uh testosterone and uh like something like a prima bone, because the prima bone or mastron both of them have a tendency to lower your estrogen a little bit um, not not crush it, but just just keep it in line so you stay lean right, um.
[00:40:38]  And then also, you're not going to get the negative sides from either one of them because you're taking like half the dosage of each one and you would do that maybe like twice a week or something and you'd have like really crazy uh, phenomenal results.
[00:40:50]  So when I started, the first time I ever took anything, I think I took um.
[00:40:55]  I think I took testosterone and and deca together.
[00:41:00]  That's a Nandrolone.
[00:41:01]  And I took those together and I think I gained like 25 pounds.
[00:41:05]  And it was like in a really short period of time.
[00:41:07]  So back to like good and bad, like 25 pounds in a short period of time, that's not, it's not very healthy, right?
[00:41:12]  Like your body's like, yo, like what's, what's going on?
[00:41:15]  But I felt awesome.
[00:41:17]  Right.
[00:41:17]  And a 45 pound plate felt like a frisbee, felt super strong, like strength was going through the roof and then veins started kind of like popping out everywhere.
[00:41:25]  I was like, this is awesome.
[00:41:26]  And so that's the addictive side that I'm talking about.
[00:41:28]  Cause those kids that you're talking about, the gym.
[00:41:31]  They're not just taking testosterone.
[00:41:32]  They're taking a bunch of other stuff.
[00:41:34]  Actually, most of them, many of them probably don't even really have good access to testosterone.
[00:41:38]  They're probably.
[00:41:39]  Well, that's another thing I was going to say.
[00:41:41]  They're probably taking other shit.
[00:41:42]  Well, they're buying their testosterone underground.
[00:41:45]  They're just buying shit somebody's probably making in a bathtub or something like that.
[00:41:48]  They're not getting this stuff from a pharmacy or anything like that.
[00:41:50]  And when these guys share what their goals are, then the guy selling shit to them is probably saying, oh, you need the orals and you need this and this.
[00:41:56]  And those are more toxic.
[00:41:59]  They're flat out, the oral steroids are.
[00:42:02]  And these kids also never did their blood work.
[00:42:04]  So, they don't know what the fuck they're doing.
[00:42:05]  They don't care.
[00:42:06]  They're just excited.
[00:42:08]  They just want to be jacked.
[00:42:09]  I mean, look at how many people we go online.
[00:42:11]  It seems like everyone's jacked.
[00:42:13]  But as we talked about in the gym, only like 5% of the population even works out at all.
[00:42:17]  Yeah.
[00:42:18]  One of the things I did notice, though, that I can't deny is I had, like, I can get a shitty night's sleep and still be able to get to the day no problem and wake up in the morning, like, hop right out of bed, like, ready to go.
[00:42:30]  I think it's a big cause of sleep apnea, too, interestingly enough.
[00:42:32]  I mean, for one, you get bigger, but I think there's some sort of correlation, I don't know what the correlation is personally, but.
[00:42:38]  it seems like there's a correlation to testosterone.
[00:42:40]  I've heard that.
[00:42:41]  And I don't know.
[00:42:42]  It could just be the weight gain.
[00:42:43]  It could also be that you're, you know, maybe holding a little extra water.
[00:42:46]  But almost everybody I know that takes testosterone, especially when they start to take quite a bit of it, they almost all have trouble sleeping.
[00:42:54]  Really?
[00:42:55]  My sleep definitely got better.
[00:42:57]  Yeah, I went, I went many, many years where I was probably only sleeping like four or five hours.
[00:43:02]  It was crazy.
[00:43:03]  Wow, man.
[00:43:04]  That was like right in the middle of my powerlifting career.
[00:43:06]  So it was stronger than ever.
[00:43:07]  I guess I didn't, it didn't maybe hurt me at all to not have that.
[00:43:11]  Or who knows?
[00:43:11]  I mean, maybe.
[00:43:13]  Maybe it'd show up in something nowadays because maybe that did have a negative impact.
[00:43:18]  But at the time, I was strong as shit, so it didn't matter.
[00:43:21]  Yeah.
[00:43:21]  You know what the funniest thing is to me is how there's this huge stigma with these steroids and testosterone in sports like the NBA and the NFL.
[00:43:31]  And it's like, oh, they can't be doing that.
[00:43:33]  These guys are going to be piss tested for these things.
[00:43:35]  But I know a lot of those guys are literally on testosterone and they have to be on testosterone.
[00:43:41]  When you're playing in the NFL and you're getting smashed to bits by these people every week, oh, God.
[00:43:46]  Like, and then you're going to go take one day off, go back and start working out and running drills again until your next game.
[00:43:55]  There's no way that the human body can sustain that for years unless you're on these drugs that can help your body recover.
[00:44:03]  Right.
[00:44:03]  Supposed to help a lot with brain health, too.
[00:44:05]  Yeah.
[00:44:05]  So, like, oh, for concussions and stuff.
[00:44:06]  Yeah.
[00:44:07]  Like, who better to be on steroids than these guys?
[00:44:09]  Oh, of course.
[00:44:10]  Like, are you not entertained?
[00:44:11]  Like, we want to be entertained.
[00:44:13]  Exactly.
[00:44:13]  Right.
[00:44:14]  It's interesting because we want to be entertained to a certain point, but then it gets to be like too much.
[00:44:19]  It's like, uh, Yeah, when it comes to, I don't know.
[00:44:22]  I do want to be entertained, but not if these guys are injecting testosterone.
[00:44:25]  Like, that's too far.
[00:44:27]  That's not worth the entertainment.
[00:44:28]  But then they like, some dudes snort cocaine before, you know?
[00:44:33]  And it's like, how performance enhancing is that?
[00:44:35]  Like, that's got to be amazing.
[00:44:36]  A lot of these guys are on Adderall, right?
[00:44:39]  Have you seen the videos of some of the run?
[00:44:40]  I don't know if you ever watched football, but there's, you can watch the slow mo videos of some of these running backs, like Derrick Henry, could watch him running, or even Antonio Brown back when he was still playing.
[00:44:48]  Oh, and their eyeballs.
[00:44:49]  Fucking eyeballs are saucers, dude.
[00:44:51]  Yeah.
[00:44:52]  So, for so I didn't, I just learned this recently when I was talking to a buddy of mine who was an assistant coach for, I think, the Gators back when like Tebow was playing.
[00:45:01]  And he was saying, Oh, yeah, he goes, All the running backs and receivers, they're all on Adderall.
[00:45:05]  Oh, shit.
[00:45:05]  Every single one.
[00:45:06]  I'm like, What?
[00:45:07]  I had no idea that would be like something that would help football players.
[00:45:11]  It seems like a body kind of like athletic ability thing, not so much of a speed.
[00:45:15]  I mean, Adderall is basically like speed.
[00:45:17]  I do think that there are things like Adderall, and I could be speaking, I could be talking out my ass a little bit here, but I think that some of these things that are, Like that, have to do with dopamine.
[00:45:27]  I think some of these things could potentially help make somebody more explosive.
[00:45:31]  So I know there's some other drugs that people get into too that they'll take and it will make them like faster, like literally faster and stronger.
[00:45:38]  Like at the moment, it's not a steroid, it's just something that boom just switches something on.
[00:45:43]  I think it's interesting that Kratom isn't, um, it's not banned, it's not a banned substance when it comes to like NFL, NBA.

=== Adderall for Football Players (15:57) ===

[00:45:51]  Oh, really?
[00:45:51]  Um, even the Olympics, I don't think.
[00:45:54]  It's interesting.
[00:45:56]  Because you're like, what do you think it would be?
[00:45:58]  Yeah, because I know a lot of bodybuilders love Kratom.
[00:46:00]  Yeah, it's getting bigger, and you have these, what is this, White Rabbit or something?
[00:46:03]  That's White Rabbit, yeah.
[00:46:04]  Yeah, I think Larry Wheels is the one.
[00:46:06]  Yes, he has his own custom flavor.
[00:46:09]  Larry Wheels is the man.
[00:46:11]  He's just so freaky strong.
[00:46:13]  I do, yeah.
[00:46:14]  Yeah, I've had the opportunity to see him when he was, he's still super young, but when he was like, I don't know, like 17, 18 years old, deadlifting like 675 or something like that.
[00:46:27]  He's a beast.
[00:46:28]  Yeah.
[00:46:28]  Unbelievable.
[00:46:29]  Yeah, the stuff's super interesting.
[00:46:32]  But I like Kratom so much.
[00:46:33]  I invested in a company.
[00:46:35]  The company's called New Brew.
[00:46:36]  I'll have a bunch sent to you.
[00:46:38]  Is that like this?
[00:46:39]  Is that different?
[00:46:39]  You'll absolutely love it.
[00:46:40]  Well, that's my own company, Mind Bullet.
[00:46:42]  Oh, so New Brew, you just invested in it?
[00:46:44]  I sell some Kratom, some Kava.
[00:46:46]  I have gummies, and I have capsules, and I have little shots of Kratom and stuff like that.
[00:46:51]  But I invested in a company called New Brew.
[00:46:53]  They make a drink that's a little bit like this.
[00:46:55]  I think I've heard of that.
[00:46:56]  It's a fizzy type of tea.
[00:46:59]  And it has a kava and kratom in it.
[00:47:01]  The kratom is very low dosage.
[00:47:03]  Oh, you know who was just telling me about this?
[00:47:04]  Was Hamilton Morris.
[00:47:05]  Yeah, these are they're fire, man.
[00:47:07]  They are so they are so awesome.
[00:47:10]  It's such a great product.
[00:47:11]  So, is it like an energy drink?
[00:47:13]  It's so new brew.
[00:47:15]  You know, it's trying to be a replacement for a lot of people for alcohol.
[00:47:19]  And my wife actually was.
[00:47:21]  Oh, brew, I get it.
[00:47:22]  Beer.
[00:47:22]  My wife was digging, drinking wine for many, many years.
[00:47:26]  And I would drink here and there too with her.
[00:47:28]  But instead of that, we drink that instead.
[00:47:31]  Really?
[00:47:31]  We made the switch.
[00:47:33]  You know, I quit drinking when I got one of those aura rings.
[00:47:35]  Oh, you suck.
[00:47:36]  I never had a problem drinking, but like in my 20s, I was just, you know, going out and.
[00:47:41]  Going to bars and drinking just not whenever I wanted, you know, I'd drink fucking me and a couple friends would just smash a handle of Captain in like an afternoon or whatever.
[00:47:49]  But like when I got one of those o rings, I started to notice like this how bad it up your heart rate and your HRV and like paying attention to all these little like nerdy metrics of like your organs and that.
[00:48:00]  What is your it put it on paper for me?
[00:48:02]  So I'm like, I just I really never drink alcohol anymore.
[00:48:05]  What are your thoughts of like, I don't know, say like you and I go and grab a steak or something tonight and I'm like, let's get like a bottle of wine, like, would you drink then?
[00:48:12]  Of course, yeah, yeah, that's that's kind of the way I view it, like, hey.
[00:48:14]  Is this just going to, I don't know, enhance the moment a little bit?
[00:48:17]  It's going to be more fun.
[00:48:18]  It's going to be more relaxed.
[00:48:20]  And I'll just drink.
[00:48:21]  I don't really worry about it that much.
[00:48:23]  Years ago, I used to not drink at all.
[00:48:26]  I've only been drunk a couple times in my whole life.
[00:48:29]  I don't really.
[00:48:30]  I love steroids, but I don't love drugs in general.
[00:48:33]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:48:34]  Even my son was trying to show me how to smoke pot one time.
[00:48:37]  Really?
[00:48:37]  I could barely figure it out because I've never done it before.
[00:48:41]  We posted it up on my Instagram and stuff, and everybody was talking trash.
[00:48:44]  I don't know if you really inhaled.
[00:48:46]  I was like, I was trying.
[00:48:47]  I don't know what the hell I was doing.
[00:48:49]  But yeah, some of these other drugs, I really like them because it feels like an alcohol is something that I can enjoy.
[00:48:57]  And alcohol is something that can relax me.
[00:48:59]  And even more recently, with some of the diet and some of the things I've been doing, I'm like, why don't I just have like sometimes at the end of the night, why don't I just have like a glass of wine?
[00:49:08]  Because otherwise, for me, my mind is always thinking about food.
[00:49:12]  I love food.
[00:49:12]  So I just want to keep eating.
[00:49:14]  And I'm like, well, at seven o'clock, why don't I just have like a glass of wine and then that'll be it for the night.
[00:49:19]  And that works pretty good for me.
[00:49:21]  Yeah.
[00:49:22]  Yeah, I feel the same way.
[00:49:23]  I know, like, if I'm going out with friends or if I'm, you know, doing something where I'm being social or going to a party, of course I'll have drinks.
[00:49:28]  And I know, like, I know that I'm going to fuck up my sleep that night.
[00:49:31]  It's just like something you got to deal with.
[00:49:33]  But, like, on a normal day, like, for, like, the night before a podcast, I'm not going to go drink.
[00:49:37]  Hey, we can make an argument.
[00:49:38]  Maybe it's good for you.
[00:49:39]  Like, maybe, maybe it's good for you to have a little shitty sleep here and there.
[00:49:41]  Do you want to make your body more resilient?
[00:49:43]  I think so, too.
[00:49:43]  I totally, dude, there's, it's weird, too.
[00:49:45]  Sometimes when I'm like, when I get really fucked up the night before, like, before, like, something I have to do the next day, And I sleep like shit and I wake up hungover.
[00:49:55]  Sometimes I feel like super hyper vigilant and like sharp.
[00:49:59]  I feel better than I would have done.
[00:50:01]  I don't know what's going on there, but that's happened to me a few times.
[00:50:03]  We should make an app that shows how much better you slept after you drank a lot.
[00:50:07]  I know, right?
[00:50:07]  An anti people would love it.
[00:50:09]  An anti aura ring or something.
[00:50:10]  Like, oh my God, you got 100% of your sleep after getting completely wrecked the night before.
[00:50:15]  The other day, I just got the other weekend.
[00:50:17]  We were going to the beach, the kids, whatever.
[00:50:19]  And I had this little bottle of tequila somebody bought for my birthday.
[00:50:23]  And I was like, fuck it, I'm going to drink this.
[00:50:24]  I'm going to take this to the beach.
[00:50:25]  I'm going to slam it.
[00:50:26]  Drank a whole, like a whole mini bottle of tequila.
[00:50:28]  And I was like halfway through it.
[00:50:28]  I'm like, I'm not feeling any of this.
[00:50:29]  I don't feel shit.
[00:50:31]  And then about 20 minutes later, it all hit me like a truck.
[00:50:35]  Oh, no.
[00:50:36]  Yeah.
[00:50:38]  And I was pretty smashed.
[00:50:40]  It all came together.
[00:50:41]  It's fun to do that every once in a while.
[00:50:43]  It all came together at the same time.
[00:50:44]  Yeah.
[00:50:45]  Yeah.
[00:50:45]  It all hit me just at once.
[00:50:46]  It didn't, it just completely snuck up on me.
[00:50:49]  I wasn't ready for it.
[00:50:50]  I think some of what we were talking about at the gym, I think, is, Was pretty cool about like your goals and stuff like that.
[00:50:56]  And I think that I think a lot of times people have trouble, um, like really being more specific about your goals.
[00:51:04]  I know there's like some, uh, uh, people that talked in the past about, you know, having, having a particular goal and being like super specific about it and writing it down.
[00:51:14]  I don't, I don't know if you need to go that far with like your exercise and stuff like that, but it is cool to like really think about it on a, on a deeper level rather than like, I just want to be like bigger and stronger.
[00:51:24]  Maybe you can try, maybe you can kind of figure out like why.
[00:51:27]  Like, what's the reason?
[00:51:29]  And the reason why that's important is like, maybe bench squat, deadlift, bent over rows and military presses aren't the best thing for somebody.
[00:51:36]  Right.
[00:51:37]  But maybe they are.
[00:51:37]  They can be.
[00:51:38]  Like if somebody is 135 pounds and just they're graduating high school and they want to be a little bit more jacked, they want to be a little thicker, then maybe they do those things for a little while because maybe that will help make them feel better.
[00:51:52]  But if we're talking about like an athlete or something, they might want to have other considerations like, oh, well, you want to be fast and you want to be.
[00:51:59]  And you want to be big and strong, but you want to be big and strong and fast in your sport and not just be able to perform, you know, some good lifts in the gym, that kind of stuff.
[00:52:07]  Yeah, totally.
[00:52:09]  Yeah, I just want, I mean, my goal has always been, I've never really wanted to be like some of my friends, just like super jack fucking, you know, meathead gorillas.
[00:52:19]  I know they look great.
[00:52:20]  I admire that, but I also want to not injure myself.
[00:52:22]  Like, I want to be able to sustain my body as long as I can and enjoy like doing the sports that I like to do, you know, which is why the shit that you were showing me today was so fascinating.
[00:52:33]  And I need to, I definitely need to incorporate some more of that stuff because working out with like Dom doesn't, I don't think Dom does much of that kind of stuff.
[00:52:39]  Dom does like the very like push and pull, like the basics, right?
[00:52:45]  I mean, he's out on a barn, yeah, like carrying those hex bars with like a million pounds on them and doing, you know, like crazy amounts of squats.
[00:52:54]  And one of the things I did, I do love though is that behind the bar shoulder press.
[00:53:02]  I forget what's the name.
[00:53:03]  It's like, what's the name of those kind of basic presses where you're like to, Bench or like a straight bar up and down, where you're not doing dumbbells, but you're doing like compound movements.
[00:53:12]  Compound that's what I'm looking for.
[00:53:14]  Yeah, those compound movements.
[00:53:15]  I think that those are super, super beneficial.
[00:53:18]  And I've basically done those since I was in high school, but definitely I noticed like as I get older, it's like it's way more important to do some of the stuff that we were doing today.
[00:53:27]  I think you know, even speaking upon that right there, it's like that would probably like advice for people listening right now, like getting rid of a barbell for most people.
[00:53:39]  Most of the time would probably be a great idea.
[00:53:43]  There's nothing wrong with a barbell.
[00:53:45]  It's not a bad piece of equipment.
[00:53:47]  And if you like to squat or you like to bench, like if there's a particular thing you really love to do, then and you're doing it correctly and you feel good about it, then by all means, you should probably continue onward.
[00:53:56]  But if you feel like tight and you're kind of banged up, you're kind of injured, you're not feeling great and you just want a little bit more mobility and just want to move and feel a little bit better, just switch to trying and doing things one arm at a time, you know, one leg at a time, one, you know, the kind of bilateral movements.
[00:54:13]  Right.
[00:54:14]  Um, it can really change a lot of things for you, like just that one simple thing rather than going in and being like, I'm gonna squat and you're gonna squat heavy and you're gonna put the weight on your back and all that kind of stuff.
[00:54:24]  Maybe you're like, I'm gonna do walking lunges and I'm gonna, you know, do them until my legs, you know, burn like crazy.
[00:54:30]  Uh, Bulgarian split squats, step ups, like there's a lot of other movements you can do.
[00:54:35]  And then if you still want to, you know, train both legs at the same time, I mean, I'm sure you can mix in a couple of other things, but I think a lot of times we just get one dimensional.
[00:54:44]  And what I've always said about a barbell is a barbell provides a crazy amount of value because of the amount of weight you can use on a barbell.
[00:54:54]  If you try to use an equivalent amount of weight with dumbbells, it's really hard.
[00:54:57]  Like a 300 pound bench press is a really nice bench press.
[00:55:02]  But for someone to try to handle 150 pound dumbbells, that's a really good feat of strength.
[00:55:09]  For somebody to handle 150 pound dumbbells means they've been in the gym forever.
[00:55:14]  But there's a lot of guys that bench around 300, even to take 200.
[00:55:17]  And then to think to have 100 pound dumbbells in each hand is like a totally different thing.
[00:55:22]  Or even think of a 200 pound loaded barbell versus a 200 pound dumbbell, right?
[00:55:30]  Oh, yeah.
[00:55:31]  Not every day.
[00:55:32]  Yeah, they're a world of different.
[00:55:34]  They couldn't be any more different, right?
[00:55:36]  Totally.
[00:55:37]  The barbell, it does allow you to overload the body.
[00:55:41]  So it allows you to overload the spine.
[00:55:42]  And those are some really good things that you can do because it can be important for some people that are looking for some of the impact of bone density.
[00:55:50]  And having thicker and stronger bones.
[00:55:52]  Like, so it does have some application.
[00:55:55]  It's just that I think we get a little too obsessive with it.
[00:55:57]  I also think we get a little too obsessive with, you know, like having this like arch posture and being super stiff and only doing both arms at the same time.
[00:56:06]  If you just, if you just change it up a little bit and you pull with one arm, well, now your body had to like twist.
[00:56:12]  Yeah.
[00:56:12]  And there's some rotation in there.
[00:56:13]  So it's like, it's a really simple thing to solve or cure.
[00:56:17]  And again, I'm not saying like eliminate barbells forever for everybody, but for most people, you should probably just, uh, Do a lot less barbell, do more dumbbell, and even, hey guys, if you're not already subscribed, please hammer the subscribe button below and hit the like button on the video.
[00:56:32]  Back to the show.
[00:56:33]  Take things a step further and even work on some bodyweight exercises.
[00:56:36]  Yeah.
[00:56:37]  They're tough.
[00:56:38]  There's something about pull ups that is just like, I can't describe what it is, but it's like, I know it's not a ton of weight, it's only your bodyweight, but something about it is just so taxing and so brutal.
[00:56:52]  And I get like such a pump from doing basic bodyweight stuff like pull ups and push ups.
[00:56:56]  Like almost sometimes more than than lifting more weight than that.
[00:56:59]  You know what I mean.
[00:57:01]  Some things to consider, you know, like again kind of back to the steroid thing a little bit.
[00:57:05]  If somebody takes anabolics, somebody takes steroids, they're going to, they're going to gain more weight, they're going to have more muscle mass on them than somebody naturally right, if somebody, even a natural person, if a natural person, decides to go to the gym and they start to lift a bunch of weight, they're going to have a lot more body weight on them than what we would otherwise had on us hundreds of years ago.
[00:57:31]  Naturally, especially if they're like specifically doing bodybuilding the way that, like Dom, does bodybuilding, right?
[00:57:37]  Right.
[00:57:39]  It might not be a profound, crazy amount of weight that you have on you, but it could be 20 extra pounds, 30 extra pounds, whatever it might be.
[00:57:47]  And so when people talk about like being natural, I think the act of like lifting all the time, whether you're bodybuilding or powerlifting or Olympic lifting, isn't very natural.
[00:57:57]  Because like, I just don't think we, I don't think we'd have ever gotten that big.
[00:58:00]  Like, people having big legs.
[00:58:01]  Like, people always love when someone's got big legs.
[00:58:04]  I've always thought it was kind of stupid.
[00:58:07]  I like having muscular legs and calves and stuff.
[00:58:09]  It's kind of cool.
[00:58:11]  But it's like, well, go try a 400 meter, you know?
[00:58:15]  Right.
[00:58:15]  Go to the track, try 400 meters and see how those legs work for you.
[00:58:18]  Like, they're just too heavy.
[00:58:20]  They're too heavy to lug around.
[00:58:21]  So these are just all things I've.
[00:58:23]  I've.
[00:58:25]  I just.
[00:58:25]  I like to think about them.
[00:58:26]  I like to do, like, I'm not saying that this is bad and that it's dumb to be big and jacked.
[00:58:32]  I still love it.
[00:58:33]  I'll always love it.
[00:58:35]  But it's good to like just reconsider.
[00:58:38]  Reconsider some of these things.
[00:58:39]  What is your body capable of doing?
[00:58:41]  Like, are you capable of just doing like basic stuff?
[00:58:43]  Can you jump?
[00:58:44]  Can you sprint?
[00:58:45]  I don't know.
[00:58:46]  If you can't, I just, I don't think that's great.
[00:58:50]  Doesn't make any sense.
[00:58:51]  You work out all the time.
[00:58:52]  You can't jump or sprint.
[00:58:53]  Like, it's stupid.
[00:58:54]  Yeah.
[00:58:55]  Some of my favorite things, like one of the best things I ever learned was when I had like five years ago, when I had this like sciatica thing in my back, I learned like all about the movements of like the hips and the shoulder blades, especially and like learning to keep your posture better, like to protect your spine.
[00:59:13]  Rotating the shoulder blades in and like having the shoulders back and then usually, and like having different area, like different tilt positions of your hips and your pelvis when you're doing these lifts, and that like changed everything.
[00:59:28]  For me it's huge having a.
[00:59:30]  You know, having good posture is incredible and lifting can sort of uh can help force someone into having better posture, but lifting too much can force somebody to have worse posture.
[00:59:43]  Somebody who's got like winged shoulders or someone who has their shoulders like really internally rotated forward and they go in and they hammer out like a lot of bench pressing and stuff like that.
[00:59:52]  Their shoulders are just going to kind of continue to creep forward.
[00:59:55]  And then if you're at your computer all the time, kind of combination of things, looking down at your phone and so on, it's just going to sort of want to shift your head forward.
[01:00:05]  And it's going to sort of just over time, you know, put you in some bad positions.
[01:00:08]  But what I'm trying to explain and what I think what they're doing at functional patterns is they're trying to say, Oh, functional pattern.
[01:00:15]  You know, we know that you can move your body into like these weird ways and have your body sort of almost like misshapen from heavy lifting.
[01:00:24]  Yeah.
[01:00:25]  I mean, if you know what you're doing, you can lift really heavy and you can build a great body that looks symmetrical.
[01:00:30]  Like there's tons of people.
[01:00:32]  Arnold is a great example.
[01:00:33]  There's a lot of people who've done it over the years, but you have to like know a lot to be able to do that.
[01:00:39]  And what I think is interesting is that you can also just take some of that, uh, Some of the knowledge that we know that you can force yourself into these bad positions and look sort of awkward from like overlifting.
[01:00:51]  You have that, you know, the lat syndrome thing going on and stuff like that.
[01:00:55]  What's the lat syndrome?
[01:00:56]  Where, you know, we're imaginary lat syndrome where someone's like kind of posturing up and they're just kind of like, hey, what's going on?
[01:01:03]  You know, and it's like super stuck and super stiff.
[01:01:06]  And people just moving around like they have a stiff neck.
[01:01:09]  You know, you wake up with a stiff neck one day and someone calls your name and you can't move worth the shit.
[01:01:15]  Yeah.
[01:01:15]  I think we take some of those same principles and just understand that we can unwind a lot of that.
[01:01:20]  Some of the stuff I showed you today.
[01:01:22]  Yeah.
[01:01:24]  You don't have bad posture, but over time you can solidify your postures in positions that otherwise you might be compromised.
[01:01:33]  Like I've never seen you swing a golf club or haven't seen you surf, but there could be like little small things that you're doing or do jiu-jitsu.
[01:01:41]  There could be little small things that you're doing or something slightly off that is, you know, leading to some stress in your lower back and things like that.

=== Footwear and Deadlifts (14:45) ===

[01:01:49]  And if you strengthen it in the gym and you strengthen it the right way, like I just don't think, I don't think like deadlifts and the 45 degree back raise is really going to like do it.
[01:02:00]  You know what I mean?
[01:02:01]  Like think about how different jujitsu is than like a deadlift.
[01:02:04]  Yeah.
[01:02:04]  Like they're not, and I'm not saying like the only way to get better is to like do the sport.
[01:02:10]  But what I would say is like what you're doing currently isn't going to work the way that you think.
[01:02:19]  However, you could still pick heavy shit up.
[01:02:22]  off the ground and have it have massive benefits.
[01:02:25]  So what some people might try to do is they'll say, okay, well, all right, maybe like the regular deadlift bar is not for me.
[01:02:31]  That kind of bothers my back.
[01:02:32]  So I'll use a trap bar.
[01:02:34]  And that seems, it sounds fair.
[01:02:36]  Okay.
[01:02:36]  It's a partial, it's a less range of motion.
[01:02:39]  You're able to be in better posture for the lift.
[01:02:42]  Might not be a bad idea to explore some of that.
[01:02:45]  But it would be even better to explore lifting a heavy sandbag.
[01:02:50]  Right.
[01:02:51]  Because now you're asymmetrical shit.
[01:02:53]  Yeah, now your spine has to like round.
[01:02:56]  Your spine has to open up and your spine has to round over.
[01:02:59]  You were just mentioning some of the things you did for like PT and you were learning to move your spine around.
[01:03:03]  Yeah.
[01:03:04]  You have to like for me, I and I took like pride in this because this was my sport.
[01:03:10]  and to squat 1,080, you have to have a really rigid spine.
[01:03:14]  Jesus Christ.
[01:03:15]  So at 1,080?
[01:03:17]  1,080 squat and a 766 deadlift and 854 pound bench.
[01:03:22]  God damn.
[01:03:23]  Didn't you drop that much at 1.2?
[01:03:25]  Some chicken in a skirt walked in front of you or something?
[01:03:27]  1,085.
[01:03:29]  Yeah, that didn't help things either.
[01:03:34]  But I created this rigidness in my spine to where if I just bend down towards the ground, and even if I can touch the ground, But if I'm touching the ground, my lower back will still be flat.
[01:03:46]  Like all the other spine will move, but the lower back, it just stays like super, super stiff and super tight.
[01:03:55]  So like you can't hip hinge, like hinge your hip.
[01:03:58]  I can hip hinge like a mofo.
[01:04:00]  Okay.
[01:04:00]  But I can't like unlock my lower back to really round all the way over to the ground.
[01:04:06]  Oh, interesting.
[01:04:07]  So like I can move like almost maybe like three quarters of my spine, but that last part, towards the bottom doesn't want to go anywhere.
[01:04:17]  And that was created through bracing, you know, through, you know, we'd say big air in powerlifting.
[01:04:23]  You say big air, you push your stomach out against your lifting belt and you just hold this posture.
[01:04:29]  I mean, I remember when I did squat 1,080, I remember or just squatting over 1,000 pounds many times in training and many times in competition.
[01:04:37]  I remember standing with that weight and I was like, I'm not going to fucking move from this position no matter what.
[01:04:44]  I'm just going to, all I'm going to do is open up my hips and bend my knees.
[01:04:48]  But this upright posture I have right here, nothing's going to move.
[01:04:52]  And I was able to accomplish that because I built up a ton of strength through doing exercises like good mornings and deadlifts and stiff leg deadlifts and bent over rows.
[01:05:00]  But all of them with a very straight spine.
[01:05:04]  And sometimes the spine would go from straight to maybe just a little bit of almost neutral-ish, maybe a slight bend.
[01:05:10]  But everything was almost always straight.
[01:05:13]  More recently, I started getting into picking up sandbags and picking up stones and rocks and shit like that.
[01:05:21]  And now my back, at first, it was very taxing for me.
[01:05:24]  At first, it was very hard.
[01:05:25]  I had to start with like 60 pounds, 80 pounds.
[01:05:28]  I just start really light.
[01:05:29]  I'm like, oh my God, this is embarrassing.
[01:05:30]  I'm so weak at this.
[01:05:32]  And it's not like I couldn't manhandle the other ones, couldn't lift them at all.
[01:05:36]  It was that every time I'd lifted them, I felt like I was going to get hurt.
[01:05:40]  And it's because my lower back wouldn't round.
[01:05:44]  But if you can get your lower back to round, you think about jujitsu, someone's trying to stack you or you're trying these different movements.
[01:05:51]  They can't do shit to you if your spine can really move.
[01:05:55]  It's obviously not just your spine, but if your spine can move better, it's going to be harder for them to pass your guard.
[01:06:01]  It's going to be easier for you to pass theirs and so on because your hips and your lower back can get unlocked.
[01:06:06]  And so I would suggest for people listening to try some of these things.
[01:06:11]  Maybe just instead of the barbell, grab some dumbbells for a little while, move those around one at a time so your body's twisting and moving instead of your regular deadlifts or maybe replace some of your deadlifts.
[01:06:24]  With picking up like a heavy sandbag or something.
[01:06:26]  Yeah.
[01:06:27]  Try some different shit.
[01:06:29]  Have you ever messed around with like foot exercises and like feet, the foot balancing stuff?
[01:06:35]  Yeah, some foot fetish stuff.
[01:06:36]  Yeah.
[01:06:36]  That stuff's really changed the game for me.
[01:06:40]  Oh, foot stuff is great.
[01:06:41]  Learning how to keep my foot posture correctly and walk with my feet pointed in the right direction and like strengthening those muscles.
[01:06:48]  That's huge.
[01:06:49]  Foundational.
[01:06:50]  It's huge.
[01:06:51]  And the simplest exercise, I mean, there's two really simple things you can do for your feet.
[01:06:57]  One is just to try to kick your shoes off a lot more.
[01:07:00]  If you can, you know, in times when it's appropriate, if you're in particular gyms, they might not want you to have no shoes on.
[01:07:07]  But whenever you have the opportunity to train barefoot, that's great.
[01:07:11]  Don't force it.
[01:07:12]  Don't try to train barefoot on blacktop or anything wild like that.
[01:07:15]  There's probably no real reason for that.
[01:07:19]  If you run, you might want to try to run a little bit on some grass or something like that.
[01:07:24]  Or any opportunity that you get to be in nature and run on a beach or something like that.
[01:07:29]  All that stuff is incredible.
[01:07:32]  But a really, really easy one, take your shoes and socks off and just grip a towel and continually grip it.
[01:07:39]  While you're doing this, let's say you're doing your right side.
[01:07:43]  You would have all of your weight on your left and your right is just kind of going.
[01:07:47]  You're just crinkling your feet and you're trying to actually scrunch your foot mainly at the arch.
[01:07:53]  But what you'll find is like that doesn't move great.
[01:07:56]  You're going to probably, I mean, most likely, unless you're like a dancer or something, you're going to find like that part won't move that great.
[01:08:02]  And so really focus on that.
[01:08:03]  And you want to try to almost turn your foot out to where you're getting a little bit more towards like the pinky toe.
[01:08:12]  And then what you'll do is you'll start to shift your weight like in the middle.
[01:08:16]  So now you have 50-50 body weight and now you're trying to crinkle that foot.
[01:08:22]  Then you lean all the way over to that side and you have like 70% or so of your body weight on the right side while you're still trying to crinkle that towel.
[01:08:31]  And you're going to find that you like totally suck at it.
[01:08:33]  You can't really even grab the towel.
[01:08:36]  But over time, you can work your way into being able to pick the towel up.
[01:08:41]  You can work your way into being able to pick the towel up even if it's wet because then it's going to be heavier.
[01:08:47]  But at first, it's like that scene in Kill Bill where the girl's looking down at her foot and she's like, move your left pinky toe and she can't get it to move.
[01:08:56]  You're going to feel like that because your feet probably just don't move that well.
[01:09:00]  Yeah.
[01:09:01]  Yeah.
[01:09:03]  I recently got one of those brands of wide toed shoes.
[01:09:08]  I forget what it's called.
[01:09:09]  I think it's called Flux or something like that.
[01:09:12]  Does that sound right to you?
[01:09:13]  Yeah.
[01:09:14]  Because my whole life, I've always worn like skateboard shoes.
[01:09:16]  Here's where I get to be the old guy and I get to jump in with some cool stuff and I get to pretend that I created everything.
[01:09:21]  Yeah.
[01:09:21]  But I sort of did.
[01:09:23]  I worked with Reebok many years ago, probably eight or 10 years ago.
[01:09:27]  Oh, really?
[01:09:28]  And we created a shoe together and it was mainly for powerlifting.
[01:09:33]  I was like, powerlifters have fat feet, powerlifters got wide feet.
[01:09:37]  All that heavy lifting kind of makes your foot kind of turn into a human shaped foot into like an elephant foot.
[01:09:44]  Right.
[01:09:45]  And, uh, So, we made a version of a shoe that was a little bit similar to a Chuck Taylor, but it was much wider, had a wider toe box.
[01:09:56]  And I got this opportunity.
[01:09:58]  There you go.
[01:09:58]  You see them right there.
[01:09:59]  Is this them?
[01:10:00]  CrossFit Light TR, they were called.
[01:10:02]  Yeah.
[01:10:02]  And we made one of them with ST on it for super training.
[01:10:04]  Oh, that's cool, dude.
[01:10:06]  And it's kind of crazy because, like, from here, you know, Reebok made these for a while.
[01:10:11]  They made them, they made like two or three different versions of them.
[01:10:15]  And then from this point on, It was like game over.
[01:10:18]  Like there's just an entire, you know, Vivo Barefoot and all these other companies started to come along years after this happened.
[01:10:25]  And this happened only because of my friend Kelly Storette.
[01:10:28]  Kelly Storette was like, he's like, Do you have your own shoe, Mark Bell?
[01:10:32]  And I was like, I'm like, No.
[01:10:34]  He's like, but man, he's like, you know so much about lifting and stuff.
[01:10:36]  He's like, you should have a lifting shoe.
[01:10:38]  And I was like, I'd love to.
[01:10:39]  He's like, I'll introduce you to the people at Reebok.
[01:10:41]  So he was kind enough to have myself and my buddy, Jesse Burdick, go to Reebok and start to explain to these guys about, you know, lifting.
[01:10:50]  And as I started to get more into like foot stuff and looking at feet, I started noticing like people at coffee shops and people just walking down the street.
[01:10:59]  I'm like, holy shit, I never noticed it before, but nobody fits into their shoes.
[01:11:02]  Right.
[01:11:03]  Like listening to this show now and.
[01:11:05]  Go out and start to observe some people walking around their shoes.
[01:11:09]  You're going to see so many people, the outside of their foot is outside of the rubber that they're standing on.
[01:11:15]  Yes.
[01:11:16]  Makes zero sense.
[01:11:17]  Right.
[01:11:18]  The reason is, yeah, even like, especially running shoes, I feel like, because they'll have that skinny base, the sole, and then you'll see literally the fabric comes out around on both sides because their feet are wider than the sole of their shoe.
[01:11:31]  But they have like crazy bunions and stuff like this.
[01:11:34]  It's insane.
[01:11:35]  It's an aesthetic thing, right?
[01:11:37]  So, like, if you make a shoe.
[01:11:39]  That's if you make a shoe that's super wide in the front and more narrow in the back the way that your foot actually is shaped because you have your five toes, hopefully, right?
[01:11:49]  And as you have those five toes, as you go up further to the foot, the foot gets a little bit wider and then it tapers back in again towards your heel, right?
[01:11:57]  But a shoe is built the exact fucking opposite way.
[01:12:02]  Isn't that crazy?
[01:12:03]  It's crazy because a shoe is built a little bit more like a torpedo, but it should be it should be turned the other way, the front part.
[01:12:10]  Yep.
[01:12:11]  Should be the fatter part.
[01:12:12]  And people are always like, oh, it's like a clown shoe.
[01:12:14]  I'm like, it doesn't look good.
[01:12:15]  Yeah.
[01:12:15]  It's not like, well, so what I try to communicate to people is that you want your shoes to be foot shaped and not shoe shaped.
[01:12:24]  Yeah.
[01:12:25]  So just don't buy shit anymore.
[01:12:26]  That's not, there's certain circumstances where if you're playing soccer or certain things where you can make an argument, a tighter shoe or even for running, you know, you can get some really cool running shoes that might, Squish your feet a little bit, but the shoe might be Exponentially like there's super shoes.
[01:12:47]  I don't know if you know what a super shoe is no Super shoe has a carbon fiber foot plate in it and because it has a carbon fiber foot plate in it if you were if I had the shoe right here in front of you and I tried to like fold it or if I tried to push it on the desk and like let it go it would jump across the room.
[01:13:04]  Oh wow because it has like all this stored energy from this carbon fiber foot plate that's like made out of this like rubbery plasticky thing that is real bouncy So, you can make an argument that there's like a good reason to wear a super shoe.
[01:13:18]  However, they kind of end up in that category of look how skinny that's.
[01:13:21]  No one has a foot that's that skinny.
[01:13:23]  Right.
[01:13:23]  Not a person on the planet that has that part of their foot that skinny like that.
[01:13:27]  Have you seen like famous basketball players' feet?
[01:13:30]  Oh, yeah.
[01:13:31]  With the LeBron James' feet, they look destroyed, man.
[01:13:34]  Yeah.
[01:13:35]  And, you know, so that's.
[01:13:36]  Pull up an image of LeBron James' feet.
[01:13:39]  Here we go.
[01:13:42]  So, this is really interesting.
[01:13:43]  Okay.
[01:13:44]  The shoes do some of that.
[01:13:46]  The shoes do some of that stuff to his feet, but also, as crazy as this is going to sound.
[01:13:51]  Pull up that one right there where it's like, whoo!
[01:13:54]  Bottom left.
[01:13:55]  Yeah.
[01:13:55]  They look like the toes never came out.
[01:13:59]  Yeah.
[01:13:59]  I wonder, I wonder, like maybe.
[01:14:01]  Maybe the toenails.
[01:14:02]  Yeah.
[01:14:02]  That's not fucking dead.
[01:14:04]  And that's not even a bad picture of his feet.
[01:14:06]  Like, it's worse than that.
[01:14:07]  Yeah.
[01:14:09]  But yeah, he does definitely have bunions, but interestingly enough, in a sport where there's a lot of stopping and starting and jumping, It's actually really important that you smoosh your foot together like a crazy person.
[01:14:21]  So having the ability to splay your toes is a nice ability to have, but you would never splay your toes and then like jump.
[01:14:27]  You wouldn't be like, oh, hold on a second.
[01:14:29]  Let me get my toes out all away from each other as much as I possibly can so I can bounce off of them.
[01:14:35]  You actually are going to like turn them into like a little club.
[01:14:37]  You're going to turn your foot in like a little club and you're going to squeeze everything together and you're going to jump off of that.
[01:14:42]  Because when you jump, you jump off the outside edge.
[01:14:45]  Well, everyone's a little different, right?
[01:14:48]  There's some people that, you know, they go into it more.
[01:14:51]  There's a lot of people that are probably upset with me right now because there's a big thing about the big toe.
[01:14:55]  The big toe is a big thing.
[01:14:57]  Really?
[01:14:57]  But the big toe is going to be the thing that pushes off probably like last.
[01:15:01]  So you're going to like stop.
[01:15:02]  And you're going to like come to this like fat side of your foot, and then you're going to like turn inward towards the big toe.
[01:15:11]  But a lot of people like LeBron and a lot of famous like track athletes and stuff like that, they, they, um, not so much track athletes because they're straight ahead, but anyone that has a stop, start, and jump, um, soccer players and so forth, football players, even their feet are probably going to be haggard, pretty messed up, and especially because of the cleat, you know, and people think like a bunion, they think it's just like a normal, like, oh, it's a genetic thing, but it's like, No, it's because your foot has been in this like little prison for a long time.
[01:15:39]  Yeah.
[01:15:39]  Yeah.
[01:15:40]  I got those yoga toes.
[01:15:42]  Those are dope.
[01:15:42]  I'll put those on my feet for a while.
[01:15:44]  Apparently, they're really good for like blood flow.
[01:15:46]  I got some badass shoes on right here.
[01:15:47]  Check these babies out.
[01:15:49]  Yeah.
[01:15:49]  What are those?
[01:15:50]  They look like Jordans.
[01:15:51]  I know.
[01:15:51]  They're sick.
[01:15:52]  These are called Field Grounds, I think they're called.
[01:15:57]  Field Grounds.
[01:15:58]  Field Grounds.
[01:15:59]  So they're like grounding shoes?
[01:16:01]  These are not particularly grounding shoes.
[01:16:03]  Okay.
[01:16:03]  No.
[01:16:03]  But they, yeah, they look cool and they fit great.
[01:16:06]  Yeah.
[01:16:07]  And so it's nice to have a shoe that like looks decent because I got, I got some weird shoes.
[01:16:12]  Yeah.
[01:16:13]  But I don't mind wearing them because I'm like, I don't really care if someone thinks they look goofy.
[01:16:16]  No.
[01:16:17]  I mean, it's the most important part of the whole balance of your muscular skeletal system.
[01:16:26]  Yeah.
[01:16:26]  Why did you get into feet?
[01:16:28]  Because you're weird?
[01:16:28]  Because of my back.
[01:16:29]  Right.
[01:16:29]  Because if your back's fucked up, the problem probably starts with your feet, I would imagine.

=== Rope Flow and Neck Training (11:32) ===

[01:16:34]  You know, unless there's other things going on.
[01:16:37]  Like, oh, it's huge.
[01:16:38]  Right.
[01:16:38]  Yeah.
[01:16:38]  And then, as well as your gait, like the posture, like the way you walk when your feet, like, If your feet, if your toes are pointed out when you're walking, that's going to throw off different muscles in your legs and your shins and in your hips.
[01:16:49]  And it all connects to everything.
[01:16:51]  And it starts with the feet and how you, you know, how you take care of your feet and how you're, the strength of your feet is like super important.
[01:16:59]  I didn't realize that until, you know, until I had a problem.
[01:17:02]  And then, you know, when I started fixing that, then things started to get better.
[01:17:05]  Yeah, you have to be, you can go down, you can go so far like nerding out on this shit, dude.
[01:17:09]  You could, it can become a problem.
[01:17:12]  I was just talking to a dentist the other day and a dentist is like, How do we know, you know, some, maybe a root canal that you got 15 years ago isn't contributing factor to your knee hurting?
[01:17:21]  I'm like, wow, it's just like, you know, it gets to be, like you're saying, it gets to be, it gets to be pretty wild.
[01:17:26]  Yeah.
[01:17:27]  You know, all you can do is, is to try to do your best with the information that you currently have.
[01:17:31]  And again, match it up against your like previous thoughts and start to try to like, you don't have to like sit there and train your feet like religiously.
[01:17:39]  But what will happen over time is you'll become a little bit of a crazy person like myself where when I'm like, relaxing or have downtime.
[01:17:48]  There's times where I'm just not doing really anything.
[01:17:50]  Like I'm literally just watching TV with my wife and kids watching 1883 or 1923 or whatever these series are that are on TV.
[01:17:58]  I'm a sucker just like everybody else to watch some of these things.
[01:18:01]  And I'm just not doing much.
[01:18:02]  But there's other times where I have a bunch of different things that are next to where I sit when we watch TV and I just hit the floor.
[01:18:09]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:18:10]  I get on the floor.
[01:18:10]  I get in the ground.
[01:18:11]  I'll start like rolling, you know, just like foam roller type stuff.
[01:18:15]  But I like to use like a a medicine ball that I roll around on.
[01:18:19]  That's really hard.
[01:18:20]  It's like a 10-pound medicine ball.
[01:18:21]  You can pick it up off of Amazon.
[01:18:23]  It's black and blue and it works amazing for getting into like the sides of your back.
[01:18:29]  I had you kind of experience some of that today.
[01:18:30]  Oh, yeah.
[01:18:31]  And you were sitting on it, getting into like the glute and everything.
[01:18:34]  Yeah.
[01:18:34]  I realized my ass is really in bad shape.
[01:18:37]  I got it.
[01:18:37]  It was painful.
[01:18:38]  It needs to be pounded out of there.
[01:18:40]  I got to get my ass pounded.
[01:18:41]  Yeah.
[01:18:42]  Again.
[01:18:44]  But, you know, you can do a lot of these things while you're just kind of chilling.
[01:18:47]  Yeah.
[01:18:47]  And the benefit of them and why you would consider doing them is that every time you go back to doing, Said thing, you're just going to feel better.
[01:18:56]  And over time, you're going to feel better.
[01:18:58]  You're going to be better.
[01:18:59]  You're going to go to jujitsu and, like, oh my God, I couldn't believe I got out of that hole today.
[01:19:03]  Just like little shit's going to start to happen.
[01:19:05]  And you start to work on like your grip or your forearms.
[01:19:08]  And you're like, wow, I couldn't believe it was easier to grab a hold of that guy or break his hold or whatever the case is.
[01:19:16]  So with the feet, it's like you could just sit there with a towel underneath your foot.
[01:19:21]  And as long as you're not annoying the rest of the family, right?
[01:19:24]  My wife said that I'm the founder, the chief.
[01:19:26]  The CEO of annoyourfamily.com because I'm always like doing all this shit, like in their side view when they're trying to watch TV.
[01:19:34]  Me too.
[01:19:35]  Me too.
[01:19:35]  It's always been like that with me and the little weird things like that, or like little weird supplements, or like even just like weird diets.
[01:19:43]  My wife could not give two shits about any of it.
[01:19:46]  I'm like, we got to try this new way of eating, this new diet.
[01:19:50]  We're going to try doing this and cutting this out.
[01:19:51]  And she's like, fuck you.
[01:19:53]  I'm eating the same shit I've always eaten.
[01:19:55]  I don't give a rat's ass what you do.
[01:19:57]  Just leave me alone.
[01:19:57]  Yeah, chicks didn't fall into the supplement.
[01:20:00]  They didn't fall into the supplement thing.
[01:20:02]  No, not at all.
[01:20:03]  We're suckers.
[01:20:03]  Especially my wife.
[01:20:04]  She could give a rat's ass about any of it.
[01:20:06]  And they're way healthier than us, too.
[01:20:08]  We should probably pay attention to what they're doing, right?
[01:20:10]  Yeah, totally.
[01:20:12]  Oh, my God.
[01:20:13]  Do you do any of the neck stuff, the iron neck, or any of that crap?
[01:20:17]  A little bit, yeah.
[01:20:19]  I wonder if it's good.
[01:20:20]  Because I've tried it.
[01:20:21]  I try it every once in a while.
[01:20:22]  I have one of them.
[01:20:22]  But when I'm doing it, I feel like I'm hurting my neck.
[01:20:27]  I don't know if it feels like I'm doing more harm than good.
[01:20:30]  Yeah, the neck stuff, you.
[01:20:32]  It's like a delicate thing to try to train, but if you're, if you are um, if you're doing jujitsu, you gotta be training your neck right, you really should be training your neck.
[01:20:42]  Two people that you should follow.
[01:20:44]  One is Ensima Ying Yang from my podcast.
[01:20:47]  Okay uh, he's the co-host.
[01:20:49]  He's probably gonna laugh.
[01:20:50]  Oh yeah yeah, yeah.
[01:20:50]  Yeah, hears me shout out his name because I always kind of say it wrong.
[01:20:54]  Um, but you can look him up.
[01:20:55]  He has an amazing youtube channel.
[01:20:58]  Um, he also uh yeah, he's also been the co-host of my show a lot, but he does a lot of stuff with training the neck, And look at this guy.
[01:21:05]  I mean, it's like, it's, dude, it's dumb.
[01:21:07]  He's a fucking, no, it's like, it's, yeah.
[01:21:09]  He looks like a test tube, uh, created like, uh, like he was created in a fucking lab or something.
[01:21:15]  Uh, superhuman, a, uh, a pro bodybuilder, um, in, in a tested federation.
[01:21:20]  He's a natural bodybuilder.
[01:21:21]  He's been a friend of mine for a long time.
[01:21:23]  Look at his legs, dude.
[01:21:25]  Holy shit.
[01:21:27]  So he hears some of this stuff about like lifting and getting too big and getting too bulky and then not being able to move good.
[01:21:33]  And he kind of just, he kind of like laughs it off because he's, he's very mobile.
[01:21:37]  But he's been aware of, you know, his mobility.
[01:21:41]  He's been ahead of the game.
[01:21:43]  And some of it has to do with like him coming onto the podcast.
[01:21:45]  He's learned a lot.
[01:21:46]  Yeah, he looks amazing.
[01:21:48]  It's like funny because I think in that picture right there of Ensema, I think he was actually showing me some stuff like how to do, how to bodybuild because I was prepping for a bodybuilding show at the time.
[01:21:59]  And he wasn't prepped for a bodybuilding show.
[01:22:00]  He just happened to pop his shirt.
[01:22:01]  He's just like, he's literally demonstrating for me.
[01:22:04]  But like, look at the shape that he's in.
[01:22:07]  He's not even like, look at that plant.
[01:22:08]  Okay, so what is this guy on?
[01:22:10]  What's his, uh, What kind of supplements is he on?
[01:22:12]  He's on being amazing and being Nigerian.
[01:22:15]  He's got to be on some sort of drugs.
[01:22:17]  Nothing?
[01:22:18]  You're telling me he's all natural.
[01:22:20]  He's as natural as far as I know.
[01:22:23]  Yeah, he's a he's you know, he's just a he's just kind of a big dude.
[01:22:27]  He's like 6'2 and He's a good like 240 250 He puts weight on fairly easily like a while back.
[01:22:36]  He his neck's wider than his head.
[01:22:39]  Yeah, yeah, because he he he trains that sucker.
[01:22:42]  God damn, bro.
[01:22:44]  One thing that's really cool about him and to see his evolution.
[01:22:47]  Oh, that was rope flow by the way.
[01:22:49]  We should plug that.
[01:22:50]  Okay, can you go back to a couple of those clips of him twirling around those ropes?
[01:22:54]  Because people try to give him shit for this.
[01:22:57]  Like, this isn't how you got jacked.
[01:22:58]  What are you doing?
[01:22:59]  Yeah.
[01:23:00]  You know, this stuff looks stupid or whatever they say about it.
[01:23:03]  It doesn't look manly.
[01:23:04]  Yeah.
[01:23:05]  And he's working out outside.
[01:23:06]  He knows what he's doing.
[01:23:07]  100%.
[01:23:10]  But this rope flow stuff can really get your spine to open up.
[01:23:13]  And when we were doing some movements today, I noticed that when we were doing some movements today, you were having trouble allowing your spine to kind of like relax.
[01:23:20]  Yeah.
[01:23:21]  And this will help your spine relax.
[01:23:23]  All it is is a weighted rope.
[01:23:24]  It's not anything too crazy.
[01:23:26]  You can start to practice this with a band or you can start to practice this with a jump rope, but it would be better if you got one of these.
[01:23:32]  It's called a winding rope.
[01:23:34]  I think NSEMA has a website, but it's like Stronger Human, I think.
[01:23:37]  I'll try to plug that and maybe you can put it in the show notes.
[01:23:40]  Okay.
[01:23:40]  Because I might not have said it correctly, but I think that's what it is.
[01:23:43]  And they have ropes on there.
[01:23:44]  He actually trains people for courses on some of this rope flow.
[01:23:48]  And I'm not trying just to plug him for no reason.
[01:23:51]  Yeah.
[01:23:51]  I'm trying to give you guys some information and some insight into some things and some practices that can help you move better.
[01:23:58]  I've actually seen him improve a lot myself.
[01:24:01]  So it's not like he's just a genetic freak and he's just a mutant.
[01:24:05]  He's working on these things all the time.
[01:24:08]  And what, so theoretically, this rope flow, what is the ultimate goal of it?
[01:24:13]  Like, what is it loose enough?
[01:24:15]  Like, what is it?
[01:24:16]  A little bit of what we talked about earlier about how weights can sort of pull you into these positions.
[01:24:21]  So, and then also we did talk in the gym a little bit about spinal compression.
[01:24:25]  You know, lifting can cause a lot of like compression, and lifting, for lack of a better term, can just kind of make you feel like short.
[01:24:32]  You ever forget that there's like an extra, or you ever forget, like, you ever mess up when you're going down a flight of stairs and you like hit the bottom step and it feels like it made your whole back, you know, shorter?
[01:24:44]  Yeah.
[01:24:46]  That's kind of what lifting sort of does over time.
[01:24:48]  It's just like very compressive.
[01:24:51]  And I'm not going to say like scientifically that this is like decompression because somebody might have a heart attack about it, but it feels like it's decompressing your spine, it feels like it's opening up your spine.
[01:25:02]  And because the rope has some weight to it, it actually will pull you in directions.
[01:25:06]  It's not really heavy.
[01:25:08]  It might be like 2 kg or 3 to 4 pounds, somewhere in that range.
[01:25:13]  But it has some weight to it.
[01:25:14]  And because it has some weight to it, as the centrifugal force of the rope, it's going to kind of pull your body towards that side.
[01:25:22]  So it's going to help you to get in otherwise tough.
[01:25:25]  It'd be harder to get in position if you're just trying to move your spine around because you don't have a resistance.
[01:25:31]  Much like what we were doing in the gym today when I had you twist and do some of those movements.
[01:25:35]  You wouldn't have been able to do hardly any of those movements at all.
[01:25:38]  You would have just like fell on the ground before you got a full twist in, because that weight resistance was uh, set up horizontally right for you to like move against yes right, and most of the time, muscles that I barely ever use.
[01:25:52]  Exactly most of the time when we train we need um well, all the time when we train, you need like, some sort of resistance of some sort, and so the rope.
[01:26:01]  Even though it's a very light resistance, it and the benefit of it being a very light resistance resistance is you get in Hundreds and thousands of reps.
[01:26:11]  When you throw a football, when you throw a punch, when you're doing a lot of these movements, if you watch baseball, you watch a quarterback, they're going to raise, like if they're right handed, they're going to raise their left shoulder up a little bit.
[01:26:27]  They're going to lower their right shoulder.
[01:26:29]  They're going to cock the ball back, right?
[01:26:31]  And then they're going to do the exact opposite.
[01:26:33]  The left arm is going to go down.
[01:26:35]  The body's also rotating.
[01:26:36]  There's a lot of shit going on just when you throw a ball, you know?
[01:26:40]  And so your left arm.
[01:26:41]  Shoulder will go down, your right shoulder will go up, and then you release, right?
[01:26:45]  And then we kind of can't figure out why, like bench pressing or doing some of these movements in the gym, doesn't really help us throw a football further.
[01:26:52]  Well, it's obvious why it doesn't help you throw a football further necessarily because they're very much unrelated to each other.
[01:27:00]  Some strength training can really help, like for example, maybe training your biceps a little bit could potentially help a pitcher or a quarterback because your bicep is a decelerator of your arm.
[01:27:14]  So, your bicep will help protect you, will help slow your arm down after you release something.
[01:27:20]  Right.
[01:27:20]  Which could be really necessary.
[01:27:22]  So, don't like throw your arm basically like totally almost out of socket or tear something when you're chucking a ball.
[01:27:28]  So, there's definitely some application of like where lifting can really help.
[01:27:33]  But a lot of times we just need, with these particular types of movements that you're trying to get in, I think it's really helpful to get in a crazy amount of repetitions.
[01:27:42]  So, I do rope flow as well, and I do it morning and night.
[01:27:46]  I've seen huge benefits for myself.
[01:27:48]  This isn't something where someone's going to be like, oh, I got shredded because I did the rope.
[01:27:51]  It has nothing to do with anything like that.
[01:27:54]  But it is a practice that you can do outside, get some sunlight, get your body nice and warm.
[01:27:59]  Every single time I pick the rope up and every single time I put it back, I feel better.
[01:28:04]  It's that simple.
[01:28:06]  It's that simple.

=== Precision Over Volume (10:00) ===

[01:28:07]  I mean, this should be the start of everyone that hits a gym.
[01:28:10]  This should be the start of their workouts.
[01:28:13]  I know that probably only the people that are impacted and affected and are compromised, they're probably the only people that will.
[01:28:19]  Entertain this, but I think this is great for everyone to do it and if you just take a page out of my book or just learn from me, I made myself super stiff.
[01:28:31]  So lifting and stuff is cool, but if you do it congruently with other movements right, then you don't.
[01:28:37]  Then you can learn from my mistake and not end up like stuck because I got the mobility of like a trash can.
[01:28:42]  Yes, it's super he.
[01:28:44]  He's interesting because he's a bodybuilder whose legs are wider than a redwood and he's also a jujitsu black belt.
[01:28:55]  So those things don't go hand in hand, being a bodybuilder and being a jujitsu person.
[01:28:59]  I know.
[01:29:00]  I know.
[01:29:01]  So he, yeah, luckily for him, he, so there's a couple, couple things that are, that are awesome for him is that he did his bodybuilding career when he was younger.
[01:29:10]  I think he's only like 32 or something like that.
[01:29:12]  Okay.
[01:29:13]  He did his bodybuilding career when he was like, maybe like in his 20s.
[01:29:16]  Yeah.
[01:29:17]  And he started to pursue jujitsu right around the time that I, right around the time that I met him.
[01:29:22]  Actually, I met him and he knew no jujitsu.
[01:29:25]  So I got to see this crazy evolution of this guy.
[01:29:28]  It's been.
[01:29:28]  It's been amazing.
[01:29:29]  Wow.
[01:29:29]  But yeah, he did bodybuilding first, and then he got into jujitsu many years later.
[01:29:33]  He did bodybuilding, and then he stumbled upon me when he started doing powerlifting, and he started to come into my gym, and we got him to do a 755 deadlift, a 655 squat, I think, and like a 400 pound bench press.
[01:29:51]  So he's a monster, and I think he only did like one powerlifting meet, but he's a pro in bodybuilding.
[01:29:58]  And I think that if he was to go back to bodybuilding, I don't want to discredit a lot of the other people.
[01:30:03]  Awesome natural bodybuilders out there, but I just I think he'd be one of the best in the world if he went back into it for a little while.
[01:30:09]  Yeah, dude, he's a freaking monster.
[01:30:11]  Because it's hard to be that big.
[01:30:12]  What do you think about the Sam Sulik guy?
[01:30:14]  Yeah, I think he's awesome.
[01:30:16]  I think the information.
[01:30:18]  Crazy big.
[01:30:19]  Yeah.
[01:30:19]  Well, the information that guy shares, you know, it's great to see that he's gone viral because he explains stuff in such a great way.
[01:30:29]  It's so simple.
[01:30:30]  And I think that he's just super relatable.
[01:30:33]  He's just chatting in his car and all that kind of stuff.
[01:30:37]  Showing what he's cooking before and after he works out, what he's making.
[01:30:40]  It's like freaking 14 eggs.
[01:30:42]  It's just, it's just like really like kind of plain, you know, it's like, but he's intriguing.
[01:30:47]  And he just won like Mr. Olympia, right?
[01:30:49]  I think he did.
[01:30:50]  Yeah.
[01:30:50]  I think he got his pro card.
[01:30:52]  So now he gets to compete as a pro.
[01:30:54]  He also is, I think he's insanely smart.
[01:30:57]  Yeah.
[01:30:57]  Because when he starts explaining stuff, you can start, you can start to tell.
[01:31:01]  I've heard him talk about like, oh, there's, you know, this spectrum and this spectrum.
[01:31:04]  And there's, he's like on, on this spectrum, you have, you know, let's say 30 sets.
[01:31:09]  And he's talking about, you know, sets and, you know, sets that you do in the gym, right?
[01:31:12]  So say it's sets of curls or something.
[01:31:14]  for bicep work.
[01:31:16]  He's like, you got 30 sets over here and you have zero sets over here.
[01:31:20]  He's like, we both understand, we can all understand that zero sets provides zero value, right?
[01:31:27]  But as you start to do one set, two sets starts to be more and more value.
[01:31:31]  He's like, but then that curve starts to come back down.
[01:31:34]  He's like, when does that curve start to come back down?
[01:31:36]  And he's like, it's probably somewhere around 10 or 12 sets.
[01:31:40]  So 10 or 12 sets would be referring to maybe you did three different exercises and maybe you did three or four sets.
[01:31:48]  Of each exercise.
[01:31:49]  Right.
[01:31:49]  Not usually for biceps, but like for maybe like your back or something, a bigger muscle group, right?
[01:31:54]  That's pretty normal.
[01:31:55]  And then he explains well, once you start to get to like maybe 15 sets, 18 sets, 20 sets, maybe for most people, it would probably start to not have as good of an impact.
[01:32:06]  Diminishing returns.
[01:32:07]  It's starting to get to be like way too much.
[01:32:09]  And there's a couple bodybuilders out there who've done, you know, 20 sets and things like that, and they've been able to get through it.
[01:32:15]  But for one workout, I think.
[01:32:18]  Right.
[01:32:18]  I think that explanation is really good and really clean because if you're to try to like, if you try to actually apply what he said there, well, you definitely want to be in like that middle slot, especially if you really love to work out.
[01:32:31]  Because if you're in that middle set range, that seems like something you could probably do, you know, maybe even twice a week.
[01:32:40]  A lot of people that build up big, amazing physiques, a lot of times they train the muscle group more than once a week.
[01:32:48]  Some of them are able to like, they just like to annihilate on one day, which.
[01:32:53]  I was never really a fan of because I don't like the trash legs, like having your legs just be like completely gone.
[01:33:02]  What do you mean?
[01:33:03]  You mean like just worked so hard that they're thrashed?
[01:33:07]  Yeah, I think the idea of having legs day and having like an hour, an hour and a half of just all legs, maybe if you're pursuing a career in bodybuilding, maybe that's the only exception I can think of.
[01:33:19]  But I don't think it's a good idea.
[01:33:20]  And we were talking a lot about stiffness and stuff like that.
[01:33:22]  So imagine.
[01:33:25]  Imagine every day.
[01:33:26]  Imagine you come to me and you're stiff as a board.
[01:33:28]  You have this like bodybuilder, you know, physique and you can't move hardly at all.
[01:33:32]  And you say, I want to move better.
[01:33:34]  And I started going over what you did.
[01:33:35]  And you're like, well, I do 25 sets of chest and I do 25 sets of legs.
[01:33:40]  And I do, and I, you know, every seven days I hit them up and I make them make myself so sore that I could barely move.
[01:33:46]  Well, then I watch you walk after a leg day.
[01:33:48]  And I'm like, oh, well, there's your problem.
[01:33:51]  We just need to stop doing this many sets.
[01:33:54]  If we just pull back, like your gait's going to get better.
[01:33:56]  Like everything's going to improve.
[01:33:58]  Yeah.
[01:33:58]  And then obviously we'd have to like, you know, do other things to help you with maybe if your gait started to erode from years and years of lifting.
[01:34:08]  But a lot of times it's just like you just keep making yourself tight and then your body relaxes.
[01:34:13]  And as soon as your body relaxes and as soon as your body wants to be like chill and like recovered, you go and blitz it again.
[01:34:19]  And you do it like repeatedly over and over again.
[01:34:21]  So you're telling those muscles to not only be tense, but be tense in whatever exercises you're doing.
[01:34:28]  So the way that you're doing the exercise could matter a lot.
[01:34:30]  Because again, there's a lot of people that built.
[01:34:32]  A great body that's super aesthetic and Seema's built a great body that's super aesthetic with uh, primarily bodybuilding when he was younger.
[01:34:41]  But he also never lifted like well, I shouldn't say never.
[01:34:43]  He very rarely lifted like an idiot.
[01:34:45]  He would lift with precision, kind of like the lifting that you would see like Arnold or something.
[01:34:50]  Do you see Arnold get after it on some sets here and there and he would, he would push hard and Arnold, you know, did a lot of sets and and Seema handled a lot of volume uh, but when you go through the workouts and Seema is also very like cerebral, he's very calm, And when you go through your sets like that, that's a different input on your body than doing some of what I did for powerlifting.
[01:35:12]  Like for me, for powerlifting, and everyone's a little different, but for me personally, for powerlifting, I had to be hyped.
[01:35:17]  Yes.
[01:35:18]  I needed pre-workout.
[01:35:19]  I needed the music.
[01:35:20]  I needed kind of all of it or felt like I needed it.
[01:35:22]  Maybe I didn't need it, but I felt like I needed it.
[01:35:25]  As I got to like the middle of my powerlifting career, I started to kind of recognize like, oh, this is actually a problem.
[01:35:29]  Like this is not, this is like hardcore and halfway cool.
[01:35:34]  You know, at least I thought that's what it was.
[01:35:36]  But I was like, this is actually kind of dumb.
[01:35:38]  I should be able to just lift a weight with no hype.
[01:35:40]  And so I started to really work on that.
[01:35:42]  And that started to allow me to actually move better.
[01:35:45]  But so like, oh, really?
[01:35:46]  Yeah, a ton better, especially through the movements I was trying to do because you're giving yourself the stimulus all the time that you wouldn't normally have in your body.
[01:35:56]  And your body is so hyped.
[01:35:58]  You know, they talk about like flight or flight and all these different things.
[01:36:00]  Your body's so like over tense and overhyped.
[01:36:04]  I mean, imagine being that, imagine being super fired up.
[01:36:07]  Someone smacks you in the face.
[01:36:08]  They're trying to like get you all fired up and you caffeine.
[01:36:10]  These things.
[01:36:11]  And yeah, exactly.
[01:36:13]  Yeah, yeah, you just you're all you're always at a smelling salts, yeah, yeah, smelling salts.
[01:36:19]  So you do all that stuff, but imagine it was like to go against someone in jujitsu.
[01:36:24]  It's like you might just like the opposite of what you want to do, yeah, you might just like get tapped out right away because you're so fired up, you like try to like charge the guy or something like that, or even if you're trying to like to fight someone and punch him or something like that, you might just get destroyed by the guy that is going to be a little bit more thoughtful, he's like watching what you're doing and paying attention to.
[01:36:43]  How you're going to come at them, you're not paying attention to anything because you're just like hyped.
[01:36:47]  And so, these I like to call them inputs, and how we handle the certain things that we're doing, it sends a message to your body.
[01:36:58]  It sends a signal to your body of like, this is what we're doing.
[01:37:01]  We're going to stay tight like this.
[01:37:03]  We're going to stack the body up.
[01:37:05]  And we're not going to move in this particular movement except for the parts that need to move so I can get credit for the lift, but I'm not going to move anything else.
[01:37:14]  And, you know, that's the way it was for me for years.
[01:37:17]  And then so over time, it starts to make the body like stiffer and stiffer.
[01:37:21]  A little bit of bodybuilding done correctly and done, it doesn't have to be like perfect, but a little bit of bodybuilding done correctly in combination with a sport or in combination with something else.
[01:37:37]  It's not like you have to like do so much of the something else that it impacts the bodybuilding negatively.
[01:37:43]  But whether you're playing volleyball or pickleball or some golf or some other recreational stuff.
[01:37:49]  I highly recommend that you explore some of that and that you do some of that because you're probably just going to make your body insanely stiff and insanely tight.
[01:37:58]  What do you make of these people that do like they put their hands in like super cold water before they lift, or they'll even do like full cold water immersion before they lift?

=== Joe Montana's Huddle Pressure (02:31) ===

[01:38:07]  Because it sounds similar to what you know.
[01:38:10]  I wonder if there could be like if that could be detrimental if you're only gearing yourself up to do these exercises after you freeze yourself because now you're in this super.
[01:38:21]  Fight or flight state, and your body's like super ramped up to lift, you know, a ton of weight.
[01:38:25]  But that's interesting because, like, the way you're describing, you know, being kind of more relaxed and more focused during these things, you can kind of see how that would be super beneficial.
[01:38:37]  There's like the story of Joe Montana.
[01:38:39]  You know, Joe Montana was just like cool, calm, collected.
[01:38:43]  Yeah.
[01:38:44]  And he was one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time.
[01:38:47]  And he was known to have like ice water in his veins.
[01:38:50]  So it was what they would say when he was, uh, You know, when it was the fourth quarter and when they had to make a comeback and stuff like that.
[01:38:58]  And there's a story of him in the Super Bowl.
[01:39:00]  The 49ers are playing against the Cincinnati Bengals and they're in the huddle.
[01:39:04]  And there's like, it's a famous drive that the 49ers had where they ended up winning the game.
[01:39:10]  And Joe Montana just is like looking around and he gets in the huddle and he's about to call the play.
[01:39:15]  And everyone's like listening and everyone's like thinking he's going to like hype them up a little bit.
[01:39:19]  You know, it's the last drive.
[01:39:20]  They have to make this.
[01:39:21]  They have to get in scoring range.
[01:39:23]  They have to score a touchdown to win the game and everything.
[01:39:26]  And he just is like, hey, did you guys notice?
[01:39:29]  John Candy is in the end zone back there by the field goal post, and all the guys turn around, they look and they're like, They're like, holy, and it's John Candy.
[01:39:39]  And they all laughed, and then he got in a huddle and called the play.
[01:39:42]  And then they famously did the drive.
[01:39:45]  So you see, like, not only being calm, like what it can do for a particular person, but what it can do for everybody else around you, too.
[01:39:52]  Right?
[01:39:52]  You know, it has a huge impact because they're like, Well, he's our leader, he's our guy, and he's just he seems to be calm and.
[01:40:01]  Seems like he has the most pressure on him.
[01:40:03]  Yeah.
[01:40:03]  Like, who has the most pressure on him?
[01:40:04]  The quarterback.
[01:40:06]  And who's the, all the newspapers and all the whatever that comes out the next couple days.
[01:40:11]  It's all going to be about how he messed up, how he threw the interception, the game's over.
[01:40:16]  And so that kind of like broke the tension by bringing up John Candy.
[01:40:19]  Exactly.
[01:40:20]  Wow.
[01:40:21]  And I've always liked to be that way myself.
[01:40:23]  I always like to, you know, approach stuff with a little bit of humor, you know, like just try to make a joke of some stuff and things like that.
[01:40:30]  I think that that's, uh, really important.
[01:40:33]  Some people get frustrated makes I can't get a straight answer out of it makes.
[01:40:35]  I'm usually just like dicking around, but it's.

=== Circadian Rhythm and Supplements (15:51) ===

[01:40:39]  It's a great way to go through life.
[01:40:40]  But at some point in my power of thing career I got like overly caught up in like the numbers and I started to get like a little obsessed with the numbers and what happened was the more obsessed I got with them, the harder it was to get better.
[01:40:53]  I needed to like I need to like chill a little bit, like it's still gonna.
[01:40:57]  It's gonna take you.
[01:40:58]  It's gonna take you an enormous amount of time to achieve the things that you're thinking about.
[01:41:02]  Right, i've i've mentioned many times to people it's gonna take you.
[01:41:06]  It's going to take you at least 10 years to be great at something.
[01:41:11]  And even then, you're like, once you get to that 10-year mark, once you get to 10 years of doing jujitsu, somebody else might tell you that you're great, but you're going to be like, I have so much further to go.
[01:41:24]  You're like, I think I got another 10 years to go.
[01:41:28]  It takes decades to be amazing at something.
[01:41:30]  Yeah, totally, man.
[01:41:32]  I got to take a leak real quick.
[01:41:33]  It's a quick break.
[01:41:35]  There's something that I learned years ago, and it's about Explanatory knowledge.
[01:41:40]  Does the person have some knowledge that they're able to explain fairly well that you can apply?
[01:41:50]  All the other stuff almost is irrelevant.
[01:41:52]  So sometimes what you can see, especially in the fitness industry, sometimes somebody will say they're a doctor and you're like, ding, right?
[01:41:59]  You're like, oh, cool.
[01:42:00]  Exactly.
[01:42:00]  You buy into it a little bit more.
[01:42:02]  It checks the box.
[01:42:02]  I believe everything this guy said.
[01:42:03]  Brain surgeon, sold.
[01:42:06]  I've been in the industry for 30 years.
[01:42:08]  You're like, ding, right?
[01:42:09]  That's another good sign.
[01:42:10]  Yeah.
[01:42:11]  Um, I've been to a hundred different countries.
[01:42:12]  You're like, ding, like that.
[01:42:13]  I've you know, right?
[01:42:15]  I've uh, I've worked with thousands of clients, and so all these things go off where you're like checking off some of these boxes, and maybe their way the way they're talking is uh, either like intelligent or just vibes with you really well.
[01:42:30]  Yeah, maybe there's somebody that uh, that looks a little bit like some of the people you hang out with, or they're talking a similar way that you're used to hearing people talk.
[01:42:39]  Yeah, maybe they're even part of a they're super confident in the way they talk, they're confident, maybe they're part of. a political party that you agree with, right?
[01:42:46]  Right.
[01:42:46]  So all these things add up.
[01:42:48]  Now your ears are perked up and you're listening and you're excited to try the thing that they're talking about.
[01:42:53]  But they didn't, the words that they're about to say next are really the only words that matter.
[01:43:01]  And that's where they give you an actual explanation as to why you should try the thing.
[01:43:06]  So we were just talking about feet and all that stuff.
[01:43:08]  Yeah.
[01:43:09]  So why would someone explore messing around with their feet?
[01:43:12]  Well, potentially it could help your back.
[01:43:13]  Potentially it could help your knee.
[01:43:14]  Potentially.
[01:43:15]  If you don't have symptoms, then maybe F everything that we just said and don't really worry about it that much.
[01:43:20]  Right, right.
[01:43:21]  It's just a mind like the social media space.
[01:43:23]  Do you want me to get you a cold one of those?
[01:43:25]  That'd be great.
[01:43:25]  Steve, will you grab him a white rabbit?
[01:43:29]  We got, oh, get him the Larry Wheels one.
[01:43:34]  Oh, yeah.
[01:43:35]  It's the iced lemonade or something like that.
[01:43:37]  Larry Wheels tribute white rabbit.
[01:43:39]  You got to just be super mindful of all that.
[01:43:43]  It's a minefield of grifters out there on the internet, right?
[01:43:45]  Right.
[01:43:45]  You know, and there's just people out there who know how to sell.
[01:43:49]  And there's two.
[01:43:49]  There you go.
[01:43:50]  There's the Larry Wheels lemonade.
[01:43:51]  Thank you.
[01:43:52]  This is delicious.
[01:43:52]  Oh, it's got Larry Wheels' drill on it.
[01:43:54]  I know, right?
[01:43:55]  That's dope.
[01:43:59]  And yeah, you just got to learn how to navigate this stuff.
[01:44:04]  You know, because, you know, obviously there's all kinds of crazy shit.
[01:44:07]  Like, you know, Liver King was one of the big fiascos.
[01:44:11]  I don't know what happened to him.
[01:44:12]  He kind of disappeared.
[01:44:15]  But then you have people like Jack Cruz, who is.
[01:44:19]  Okay, first of all, he's a brain surgeon.
[01:44:21]  He's been doing this stuff a whole lot.
[01:44:23]  When he talks, he sounds smart as fuck.
[01:44:26]  He obviously knows what he's talking about.
[01:44:29]  And, you know, he talks in a way that's like super compelling and it sucks you in and you believe everything he's saying because he says it so confidently as if it's the fucking gospel, right?
[01:44:43]  That compounded with the fact that he's like a brain surgeon.
[01:44:46]  It's easy to believe everything he says.
[01:44:49]  To Jack's credit, He's not slinging a bunch of bullshit products.
[01:44:52]  He's not slinging anything.
[01:44:53]  He's not selling anything.
[01:44:54]  He's just trying to get his information out there and, you know, try to teach the world everything he knows.
[01:45:01]  I think, could he be wrong about some shit?
[01:45:02]  I'm sure.
[01:45:03]  But like, you have to kind of understand the landscape of these people and be able to evolve your bullshit detectors, especially in this space, right?
[01:45:13]  In this health and wellness space.
[01:45:16]  Yeah, it's easy to get sold on stuff.
[01:45:18]  I, you know, I love supplements.
[01:45:19]  I literally have like an entire room full of like all kinds of different like, yeah.
[01:45:24]  Magnesiums and all these different things, and vitamin D, and just like countless things a bunch of stuff no one's ever heard of.
[01:45:33]  And I wouldn't say that they don't work, but they literally don't do much or it's hard to notice like a real difference from them.
[01:45:43]  Everyone's always like, magnesium helps you sleep.
[01:45:45]  I'm like, I don't know, maybe it does, but like I've never felt it like particularly help my sleep.
[01:45:52]  Right.
[01:45:53]  There might be some supplements out there that have magnesium and maybe a couple other things and they find a decent combination and maybe it helps some people.
[01:45:59]  Right.
[01:46:00]  There's a lot of stuff being said out there about like, Like, you know, people are magnesium deficient.
[01:46:05]  You're like, well, how do we know this?
[01:46:06]  Like, where's this information coming from?
[01:46:09]  The other thing that happens too is like maybe a lot of people are magnesium deficient.
[01:46:13]  I'm not saying that.
[01:46:14]  I'm not saying either way.
[01:46:15]  I'm just saying like what I hear.
[01:46:18]  Another thing that happens is that somebody on a big podcast could be talking about vitamin D and the importance of vitamin D.
[01:46:26]  But then it's like, well, hold on.
[01:46:27]  Wait a second.
[01:46:29]  You kind of keep making it sound like you're talking about the vitamin vitamin D. Or are you talking about trying to like collect a bunch of vitamin D by getting out in the sun?
[01:46:39]  Right.
[01:46:39]  By, you know, getting more sunshine and being in a place that has like a decent UV and stuff like that to help.
[01:46:46]  Right.
[01:46:47]  Because then I think people get confused.
[01:46:48]  They think the red light's going to help their vitamin D and it doesn't work that way.
[01:46:52]  Right.
[01:46:52]  I think you need like UVA and or UVB light.
[01:46:55]  I forget which one, but you might even need a little bit of both.
[01:46:58]  You need both of them.
[01:46:58]  Yeah.
[01:46:59]  Yeah.
[01:46:59]  You need both of them.
[01:47:00]  And the best way to do it is not necessarily through like a.
[01:47:05]  A light system that's in your house, the best way is through getting the sun.
[01:47:11]  But I think it's just a tough thing to figure out because you're like, I don't really, I'm not really sure.
[01:47:17]  There are things though that if you're keeping track and you're keeping score, there are things that really do move the needle sometimes.
[01:47:25]  I found for myself, like learning about salt and electrolytes has been something that I think has been helpful for me.
[01:47:32]  However, I have to admit, that as soon as I dropped some of the keto stuff that I was doing, as soon as I dropped some of the carnivore stuff that I was doing, and I switched over to eating more fruit, I don't think I need it at all.
[01:47:46]  Because I think the foods that I'm eating, I'm eating meat, which usually has salt on it, and I'm eating a lot of fruit, a lot of vegetables.
[01:47:54]  There's tons of potassium, and I'm basically getting fiber and all the things I need.
[01:47:59]  So supplements are intended to be like a little bit of a side thing.
[01:48:08]  But something that's important to know is like they could be dangerous as fuck.
[01:48:12]  Yeah.
[01:48:12]  I think I've heard, you know, off of Amazon, when you're purchasing off of Amazon, so much of that stuff tests out to be fake andor has other stuff in it.
[01:48:22]  It's like, so you think you're ingesting something good.
[01:48:24]  You're doing the exact opposite.
[01:48:26]  You've mentioned your wife doesn't do it.
[01:48:27]  My wife doesn't do it.
[01:48:29]  They're probably just as healthy, if not healthier than we are.
[01:48:32]  And we think we're like, you know, giving our body this good service.
[01:48:36]  And back to Jack Cruz for a second.
[01:48:39]  Jack Cruz is selling circadian rhythm.
[01:48:42]  He's selling the sun.
[01:48:43]  He's selling the sun.
[01:48:44]  Yeah.
[01:48:46]  Get outside, you dumbass.
[01:48:47]  So, like, I've had Jack Cruz even on my show, and he was even, like, volatile.
[01:48:54]  You had him on?
[01:48:55]  Yeah, I had him on.
[01:48:56]  When did you have him on?
[01:48:57]  Probably like a year ago or so.
[01:48:58]  Okay.
[01:48:59]  It was just a remote.
[01:49:00]  I wasn't able to get him in studio just yet.
[01:49:03]  But yeah.
[01:49:04]  It's hard to get him to leave El Salvador.
[01:49:06]  Yeah.
[01:49:07]  Yeah.
[01:49:07]  He was, you know, he was inflammatory.
[01:49:09]  He was mean.
[01:49:10]  He called us names and shit.
[01:49:11]  Yep.
[01:49:11]  Yeah.
[01:49:12]  None of that.
[01:49:14]  He's like saying that we're meatheads and whatever.
[01:49:17]  And none of that bothered me at all because he's anti muscle.
[01:49:21]  He thinks muscle's bad.
[01:49:23]  Yeah.
[01:49:24]  And that would be a great discussion to have with him.
[01:49:27]  Should we have as much muscle as him or should we have more?
[01:49:30]  Like, you know, I don't know what the answers are, but.
[01:49:32]  Yeah, there's a lot of fingers you could point.
[01:49:35]  I'm not going to throw out his information, though, because he was maybe a dick to me.
[01:49:42]  And I don't even think he's a dick.
[01:49:43]  I think he's trying to get points across.
[01:49:46]  Yeah.
[01:49:46]  And he's trying to get people's attention.
[01:49:47]  Yeah, totally.
[01:49:49]  And again, he's from New York.
[01:49:50]  It's like, yo, you're just talking about going outside and getting a little bit more sun.
[01:49:55]  And what he's telling people to do is to go outside, especially in the morning.
[01:49:59]  And get some of the morning sunlight to set up your circadian rhythm.
[01:50:02]  He's trying to tell people, hey, be a little more conscious of your technology pieces.
[01:50:06]  Maybe pay attention a little bit to how much EMF is around.
[01:50:09]  Those are all incredible, great things to be paying attention to.
[01:50:13]  Yeah.
[01:50:14]  Right?
[01:50:14]  I mean, those are 100% without any question, without any doubt, healthy practices to do.
[01:50:22]  Right.
[01:50:23]  I would say one of the things that really helped me out of anything I got from him was actually watching the sunrise in the morning because, like, I have, you know, spending the day outside, I could maybe it moves the needle a little bit, maybe it doesn't, but like I could spend the full day indoors or the full day outside.
[01:50:45]  I don't notice that much of a difference in the way I feel.
[01:50:47]  But when I, what I notice that's palpable is that when I wake up as the sun's rising and I spend like 10, 20 minutes outside, not even in the direct sunlight, just outside, like out of the sun, but like the light is in the air bouncing off the trees a little bit.
[01:51:05]  I am at the end of the day around 8 30.
[01:51:08]  Between 8 30 and 9, I am like fading and I am like struggling to stay awake.
[01:51:15]  I don't need any other gimmicks, I don't need any supplements or whatever.
[01:51:17]  But when you watch the sunrise, and you, as soon as you start to get tired around eight or nine o'clock, if you don't fight it and try to like stay up later, if you go with it and go to sleep right when you start to get tired, that has been like the biggest game changer, just as far as energy for me throughout the day and feeling good.
[01:51:36]  Like you could take, give me any diet, any supplement, any fucking drug.
[01:51:42]  Nothing, I have noticed nothing that moves the needle as far as energy for me that is better than watching the sunrise.
[01:51:50]  And the way it sets the clock, like the way, and I'm fucking butchering the science of this, but like the way he explained to me was that like when you're doing that and you're outside and you're getting that, I think it's UVA combined with NR near infrared light or the infrared light from the sunrise, it's creating some sort of chemical through your eye.
[01:52:15]  It's melanin or Palm C in the eye.
[01:52:20]  That is a protein or some sort of hormone that breaks down into these other peptides that create all kinds of chemicals in your body, including melatonin, starts the melatonin clock.
[01:52:34]  So that in exactly like 12 hours from now, the natural melatonin is going to start pumping.
[01:52:39]  And that, for whatever reason, is like. one of the been one of the most foundational things for me as far as like maintaining energy throughout the day.
[01:52:50]  It's just a it's a healthy practice to go outside.
[01:52:53]  And I think that like from a mental standpoint and stuff too, I think it, I think just people trying to get outside or figure out more ways of inviting the light into their home.
[01:53:03]  Yeah.
[01:53:03]  Or even cracking some windows open here and there to get like fresh air into the home.
[01:53:07]  I think all these things are things that could really help us out in some huge ways.
[01:53:11]  I mean, even with in terms of like seasonal depression, in terms of like just depression in general.
[01:53:16]  Yeah.
[01:53:17]  People getting outside more, it tends to make you feel really good.
[01:53:20]  It does set your day.
[01:53:21]  And I know exactly what you're talking about because I find that, so I don't drink coffee anymore.
[01:53:26]  I very rarely have caffeine.
[01:53:28]  I'll have like a decaf coffee here and there just because, you know, I got used to coffee.
[01:53:33]  But I got rid of a lot of those things because I felt that they kind of messed up my like circadian rhythm to some degree.
[01:53:39]  Even having it, you know, super early in the morning and people like, I only have one cup.
[01:53:44]  And, you know, maybe that works great for them.
[01:53:46]  But for me, it's been a blessing to be able to get rid of it.
[01:53:49]  But I think one of the reasons why I've been able to get rid of it.
[01:53:53]  is seeing that morning sunlight and getting that energy from the morning.
[01:53:56]  But I'm similar to you where I'm like, you know, I haven't felt anything crazy happen like in a day.
[01:54:02]  But I know that it's not like you don't just do something for a day or a week.
[01:54:06]  It's like over a long period of time.
[01:54:09]  And if you kind of think about if you get your circadian rhythm kind of linked up and 730, 830 at night, like you're like, oh shit, you're looking at your clock, you're like, oh, maybe I should start to think about getting to bed and you get to bed at like nine or 10 or something like that.
[01:54:25]  You start to do that over and over and over again, and you start to get the proper sleep.
[01:54:29]  Well, now you're getting proper sleep.
[01:54:31]  Your brain is clearing everything out.
[01:54:33]  Your body is really at rest.
[01:54:35]  You're really recovering from the day, getting rid of a lot of stress.
[01:54:39]  Also, your memory and all these other things are all going to be improved by better sleep.
[01:54:45]  Better sleep is also going to improve the way that your body acts and reacts the next day.
[01:54:50]  We know that with one poor night of sleep, some people, their blood glucose can register as being pre-diabetic.
[01:55:00]  And so they're not even handling carbohydrates the same anymore.
[01:55:02]  Right.
[01:55:03]  Which, you know, gets into like the calories in, calories out equation, which sometimes that can get thrown off because for some people, they're going to utilize energy less efficiently than another one.
[01:55:15]  That doesn't mean that we say that.
[01:55:17]  And then this is where people get lost, though.
[01:55:19]  Then they'll be like, well, see, the calories in, calories out doesn't mean anything or doesn't matter.
[01:55:22]  It's like, no, it still matters.
[01:55:24]  It's just that that person, they're dealing with carbohydrates a little bit different than the other person.
[01:55:30]  Because their sleep is interrupted, because they're stressed out all the time and so, but over time, if you can just repeatedly just do your best, to do your best, to try to do the right thing as many times in a day as you possibly can right, it leads that leads to tremendous health outcomes.
[01:55:49]  It's just that there's so many offensive things that could happen every single day.
[01:55:54]  Someone's like, oh, why don't you come over, have you know birthday cake?
[01:55:56]  Or like just something dumb, in nearly every single day, especially when you have children and Especially when you have, like your own business and successful things are going on.
[01:56:06]  Every day is a day to celebrate.
[01:56:09]  Every day is a day to like, yeah, have something to celebrate and something to have like a dessert for or whatever.
[01:56:17]  Especially having kids.
[01:56:18]  Kids are just chaos.
[01:56:19]  You can't really have a set schedule of a perfect day every day.
[01:56:24]  It's impossible with kids, especially when you're doing all kinds of activities and you're eating all their leftover food like I've been doing.

=== Travel Meal Strategies (05:47) ===

[01:56:30]  But like I was telling you at the gym, though, another thing that goes into this circadian rhythm stuff.
[01:56:34]  Which has also been a game changer for me is for a long time, like around starting in about 2017, 2018, is when I really started doing the intermittent fasting stuff.
[01:56:46]  It's not eating breakfast and just eating lunch and dinner.
[01:56:49]  But ever since I met Jack, he was like, Oh, I only eat breakfast and dinner, I don't eat lunch.
[01:56:55]  I'm like, Why?
[01:56:56]  And he was explaining to me how the metabolism is running way faster and running way more efficiently early in the morning, or like between not super early, but like.
[01:57:06]  You're supposed to, he was explaining to me, you're supposed to eat before the UVA or the UVB light kicks in, which is typically around 10 o'clock, especially here in Florida, around 10 o'clock.
[01:57:16]  It's different depending on where you are.
[01:57:18]  But if you eat before that UVB light kicks in, your metabolism is going to burn through everything that you ate a lot faster versus high noon, like smack dab when the sun is right in the middle of the sky, your metabolism is running the slowest.
[01:57:37]  That's the slowest point your metabolism is running throughout the day.
[01:57:40]  So, like, if you're going to eat during lunch, it's going to automatically slow you down, make you tired, which I was noticing too.
[01:57:46]  And now that I'm eating massive breakfast and skipping lunch, I feel like a hundred times better.
[01:57:52]  It's interesting.
[01:57:53]  Like, it's interesting how, yeah, food can kind of slow you down.
[01:57:57]  I think the amount of food that you consume matters a ton.
[01:58:01]  Because if you have, like, if you eat something real small, like if you just had, like, a little bit of fruit or something, probably midday, it probably wouldn't, like, Make you feel shitty.
[01:58:09]  Right.
[01:58:10]  But what's hard though is to, it's hard to eat a little bit.
[01:58:13]  You know, it's tough.
[01:58:14]  Like once you, you know, if someone's like, hey, let's grab some lunch.
[01:58:17]  Totally.
[01:58:18]  You go somewhere awesome for lunch, you're not going to like just eat half of what you ordered.
[01:58:22]  You're going to eat like the whole thing.
[01:58:23]  And then at two o'clock or something, you're going to feel like insanely exhausted.
[01:58:28]  Yeah, exactly.
[01:58:29]  But I personally, I've always liked breakfast a lot.
[01:58:32]  And I always felt like, me too.
[01:58:33]  I always felt like there's something just, it's just personal like belief for myself.
[01:58:39]  It always felt like it was like nutritious for me.
[01:58:41]  It always felt like it was good for me.
[01:58:42]  I know people say like breakfast is the most important meal of the day or whatever.
[01:58:46]  I don't necessarily really think that.
[01:58:48]  I just feel that for some people in accordance to like their schedule and stuff.
[01:58:53]  And I think, you know, how do you, how do you implement some of these things?
[01:58:57]  You know, because like someone might hear that and they're people like to think about like people like to think about this stuff, like their diets and their routines is like their religions.
[01:59:04]  Right.
[01:59:05]  And they try to make, they try to make it maybe a little too concrete.
[01:59:10]  What I like to share with people, and I've been trying to share this for a while, and hopefully people will remember this, is eat while you're home.
[01:59:18]  It's a little bit similar to when you travel.
[01:59:20]  When you travel and you have an opportunity for a good meal, especially those of us that are trying to eat healthy, you have an opportunity for a good meal, then you take it.
[01:59:29]  You have an opportunity for mainly just consuming a good amount of protein and not overconsuming calories, whether it's the gym that you went to has protein smoothies or something, or it's the hotel that you're staying at has a continental breakfast, but they happen to have hard boiled eggs.
[01:59:48]  You know, like these opportunities that might pop up, you eat that healthy meal when you can.
[01:59:54]  And so same thing for those people that work like nine to five, you should eat in the morning, like definitely get in like a breakfast and then eat when you're home.
[02:00:02]  And you, you know, I can understand why some people might want to eat a little bit in the middle, but I would just bring more like snacky stuff with me in that scenario where I was at like a nine to five.
[02:00:14]  Right.
[02:00:14]  And by snacks, it's like.
[02:00:15]  We got to start to redefine what snacks are because we don't want snacky bullshit food.
[02:00:20]  We want to have snacks that are healthy.
[02:00:22]  And so you would bring some fruit with you, try to bring stuff that's portable and easy.
[02:00:27]  Right.
[02:00:28]  Maybe some cheese or cottage cheese or yogurt.
[02:00:30]  Right.
[02:00:31]  That's the hardest thing about the carnivore diet, right?
[02:00:33]  You can't pack a bunch of ground beef with you wherever you're going or steak.
[02:00:36]  Well, unless you do what I do, and that's you walk around with a meat bag.
[02:00:40]  A meat bag.
[02:00:41]  Yeah.
[02:00:42]  So I take, I'm sponsored by a company called Carnivore Crisp.
[02:00:46]  Oh, I love those, but they're a fucking million dollars.
[02:00:47]  Oh, they're so expensive.
[02:00:49]  I know.
[02:00:49]  So I post a picture of my meat bag here and there on Instagram, and people have a heart attack.
[02:00:54]  They're like, that's like a $1,000 bag.
[02:00:55]  It's so expensive.
[02:00:56]  I put it in like this giant ass, like Ziploc bag.
[02:00:58]  I'll usually like season it because they're seasoned with some salt, but I like to throw it's delicious, like a salt vinegar thing that I got from a company called Porking Good.
[02:01:10]  And anyway, so I walk around with a meat bag, but you're right.
[02:01:15]  It's very hard to have a healthy snack when you're more limited on a particular diet if you're not consuming, you know, fruit is super easy to carry around with.
[02:01:24]  Oh, yeah.
[02:01:25]  Apples, bananas, those kind of things are great.
[02:01:30]  So it's hard, it's sometimes hard to figure out like, Yeah, what do you bring with you?
[02:01:33]  But eating in the morning and eating in the evening, it worked really well for my cousin.
[02:01:39]  He lost like around 50 pounds so far and he's gotten in a lot better shape.
[02:01:43]  And, you know, he has a job where he could be there for six hours or he could be there for like 10.
[02:01:49]  And he would just say, he's like, man, I get home and I just be so hungry.
[02:01:53]  And we had him mess around with some intermittent fasting.
[02:01:56]  But as soon as we gave him like a breakfast, it just changed everything for him.
[02:01:58]  My God, I fucking love breakfast, man.
[02:02:00]  And it's good.
[02:02:01]  And everyone's different too.
[02:02:02]  Like, My wife loves breakfast more than anything.
[02:02:06]  So like being able to like take the kids to school and they go get breakfast with my wife is just like it's perfect for us.
[02:02:11]  Yeah, I go to work and then I skip lunch.
[02:02:14]  I'm not going to eat lunch alone, you know, so it's like it's better for me to just skip breakfast.

=== Blue Light and Dark Habits (08:08) ===

[02:02:18]  What are you going to do?
[02:02:19]  Your wife's eating?
[02:02:19]  I mean, sitting there, just sipping on some water or something.
[02:02:23]  It's done.
[02:02:23]  Like it's like you might as well just participate.
[02:02:25]  Yeah, everyone's different.
[02:02:26]  Everyone's lifestyle is different.
[02:02:27]  And, and, you know, you just got to figure out what adapts to you the best and not think about, you know, these health things as like dogma, religious.
[02:02:34]  Yeah, especially when it comes to the light, you know, and what are reasonable things that you can do?
[02:02:38]  Right.
[02:02:38]  Like you were mentioning earlier, like the yoga toes, like the things that you put between your toes.
[02:02:42]  If you're having symptoms, you said your back hurt, you're trying to figure out how to get rid of that pain.
[02:02:47]  So you explore some things with the feet.
[02:02:49]  Sounds reasonable to put on the yoga toes.
[02:02:51]  Sounds reasonable to get a shoe, like a Paluva shoe.
[02:02:55]  You ever seen those?
[02:02:56]  No.
[02:02:57]  Those are made by Haluva?
[02:02:58]  Yeah, Paluva made by Mark Sisson.
[02:03:00]  It's like a five-finger toe shoe.
[02:03:03]  Oh, yeah, I've seen that.
[02:03:04]  Yeah.
[02:03:06]  His actually feels like you're wearing one of those toe splitter things.
[02:03:13]  And it feels like a little bit of a passive stretch.
[02:03:15]  And you wear them for a few days or a few weeks, and you'll start to notice your toes will start to be able to splay a lot better.
[02:03:21]  They make a bunch of different types of shoes.
[02:03:23]  They're always kind of working on the designs and making them better.
[02:03:26]  But those are awesome.
[02:03:28]  I mean, they're great.
[02:03:29]  They're a good fit, too, for like a trail or different things that you might be doing.
[02:03:33]  But I really like those a lot.
[02:03:35]  But those have helped my feet a lot.
[02:03:37]  But for each individual, they have to ask themselves, like, what is.
[02:03:40]  What are reasonable things to do?
[02:03:42]  Is it reasonable to just pop on a pair of like blue light blocking glasses while you're watching TV?
[02:03:48]  I think it's reasonable enough.
[02:03:49]  Sure.
[02:03:50]  If you wear the red ones, you're going to notice you can't see hardly anything.
[02:03:53]  Right.
[02:03:53]  And maybe those are a little bit extreme, but it does block out all the blue light.
[02:03:56]  If you wear the yellow ones, it's a little bit more passive and you can, you can kind of make out the colors of the show that you're watching, but at least you can still see pretty well.
[02:04:06]  Is it reasonable to start to change all the lights in your house?
[02:04:10]  Right.
[02:04:11]  For someone that's married and like, you know, it's like, Yeah, my wife doesn't want those lights all around the house.
[02:04:16]  Exactly.
[02:04:16]  Right.
[02:04:17]  So, how do you have some sort of compromise?
[02:04:19]  So, in my house, we've done a couple of things.
[02:04:22]  We have a bunch of different light fixtures in our kitchen, and we have lights that are like a little bit lower.
[02:04:28]  We have lights that are at the ceiling, and we have lights that are lower.
[02:04:31]  And the reason why we're both talking about all this is because of blue light.
[02:04:34]  The light that comes from the light bulbs, which looks pretty much white, it's just this bolus of pure blue light without any of the other spectrum.
[02:04:44]  And blue light's not bad.
[02:04:45]  Blue light comes from the sun.
[02:04:46]  Right.
[02:04:46]  When it comes from the sun, it comes in many other spectrums.
[02:04:48]  Full spectrum, yeah.
[02:04:49]  And that's healthy for us.
[02:04:52]  But these kind of lights just kind of beaming down on you all the time, at least in accordance to the science that we have now, says that that's not maybe the best, healthiest practice for us.
[02:05:01]  Right.
[02:05:02]  And maybe partially that could explain why so many people are wrecked.
[02:05:06]  Maybe it's just our diet.
[02:05:08]  Whatever the case is, I'm starting to agree more with Max Gulhane said on my podcast, he said, it's really hard to outrun a poor light diet.
[02:05:20]  And I was like, that's got to be the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
[02:05:24]  And then as I started practicing some of these ideas of messing around with better light habits, better habits around the lights that were in my home and better habits with being outside, I started noticing just everything was a little easier.
[02:05:37]  Not necessarily like just pure like weight loss, but my decisions with food were changed.
[02:05:43]  It was easier for me to stay on the diet.
[02:05:44]  I felt less stressed.
[02:05:46]  So those are all things to like to think about and consider.
[02:05:49]  But in our home, we, um, Whenever the sun starts to go down, I shut off all the lights in our kitchen.
[02:05:57]  Our kitchen is kind of right next to our living room where we have our TV.
[02:06:01]  The TV's like pretty much always on 24-7.
[02:06:03]  Yeah, same there.
[02:06:04]  And we shut off the overhead lights.
[02:06:06]  We have lights that are a little lower.
[02:06:08]  And I had the, my wife, my wife does all the manually stuff around the house.
[02:06:13]  So she switched out the lights because I'll break something.
[02:06:16]  She switched out all the lights in these lower level lights that we have in the kitchen.
[02:06:23]  And they just kind of like shine down onto.
[02:06:26]  The countertop where the sink is and stuff like that.
[02:06:31]  And so if you need to see, you walk over there and you can see just fine and you can mix up whatever foods you're making or whatever.
[02:06:38]  And the rest of the kitchen is like, it's not super dark, but it's not super light.
[02:06:46]  And so it wouldn't be great at certain times of day or when you're doing certain things, you're trying to cut something with a knife or something like that.
[02:06:52]  That wouldn't be the time to be in the dark on that part.
[02:06:55]  But just small compromises like that.
[02:06:58]  And the light bulbs that we put in there.
[02:07:01]  They're not strictly just like yellow lights, but they're just they're way less powerful So they're not giving out a raise really crazy signal But for those of you that maybe have some uncompromising women maybe or woman I should say Just use I call them off lights and an off light is just a light that's off in a different room So I'll put on like our light for our pantry shines into our kitchen So when I need more light in the kitchen,
[02:07:28]  I'll sometimes just flick that on when I go to brush my teeth at night My wife and I don't usually like brush our teeth at the same time, but if we are brushing our teeth at the exact same time, I'll put the light on in the shower with the shower curtain closed and there's still plenty of light.
[02:07:44]  She doesn't really love that I do actually like scrubbing her face and doing whatever else, but she doesn't really mind it.
[02:07:49]  It's only for just a little bit and I'm out of there because I don't need to spend that much time like manicuring myself.
[02:07:54]  I just brush my teeth and go to bed.
[02:07:56]  So yeah, I do little things like that and I can't say I'm not going to sit here and report like, oh my God, like you guys have to do this.
[02:08:04]  This is amazing.
[02:08:06]  It's just stuff.
[02:08:06]  As I've gotten to be more aware of the poor outcomes that could happen potentially from just blasting yourself with blue light all the time, I just shifted over into making some of these other decisions.
[02:08:20]  And like I mentioned earlier, I think it's helping me stay tethered and connected to my fitness and staying tethered and connected to my nutrition better than ever.
[02:08:30]  For you, what is the best time of day to lift weight and exercise?
[02:08:35]  I usually like to do stuff.
[02:08:38]  I like to do stuff in the morning, but not necessarily when it comes to lifting weights, not necessarily like right when I wake up.
[02:08:44]  Right.
[02:08:44]  So it might be, I might wake up at like five or I might wake up at like six or seven.
[02:08:50]  And I probably won't lift until like nine or 10.
[02:08:54]  Like that would be like the perfect scenario for me.
[02:08:56]  Right.
[02:08:57]  Sometimes on the weekend, I may actually work out even a little bit earlier just because I like to have the rest of the day a little bit free for any family stuff.
[02:09:05]  Yeah.
[02:09:06]  And I have a beautiful gym on my property, which is.
[02:09:09]  You know, great to have that access, yeah.
[02:09:11]  Um, and then if it comes to like something like running, I actually like this time of year is the best time of year for me to do this.
[02:09:17]  This is like this is incredible, uh, and people should just try this and try it with a walk.
[02:09:23]  You know, if you don't like to run, try it with a walk, and hopefully, maybe over some time, you get inspired and maybe you'll turn it into like a walk jog, and maybe it can turn into like a walk run, and maybe it turns into a real run.
[02:09:34]  Um, but a sunrise, a sunrise run, oh, yeah, I love that greatest invention of all time.
[02:09:39]  Oh, my god, it's the best, it's the greatest, it's the greatest thing.
[02:09:43]  I mean.
[02:09:44]  If you can get out a little bit earlier than when the sun is out, and I call it beating the sun, if you can beat the sun, it just feels so awesome.
[02:09:53]  You actually can get, I think you can get addicted to it a little bit.
[02:09:56]  I don't know if you've noticed this, but when you're getting up and even just seeing the sun without like walking or doing much else, have you noticed like you're super bummed on like, you're like, you look at your clock or whatever and you're like, oh man, I missed it.
[02:10:09]  You miss the sun coming up sometimes?
[02:10:11]  Yeah.
[02:10:11]  That happens to me sometimes.
[02:10:12]  And I'm like, I really feel like I missed out on something big.
[02:10:15]  Yeah.
[02:10:15]  No, I feel the same way, especially like if I'm sick or whatever and I'm like laying down or I'm in bed all day and all the curtains are closed and it's super dark.
[02:10:22]  I feel like it's super depressing.
[02:10:25]  It can be, yeah.

=== Myostatin Gene Secrets (04:37) ===

[02:10:26]  Another thing I wanted to ask you about, what do you know about these myostatin inhibitors?
[02:10:36]  I don't know.
[02:10:36]  Do you know anything about this stuff?
[02:10:38]  This would be a category for some of my freaky friends that know all kinds of crazy stuff about this sort of thing.
[02:10:44]  Yeah.
[02:10:45]  Alex Kickle is a guy that I work with a lot on a lot of different things.
[02:10:51]  He helps me with like nutrition and health and stuff like that.
[02:10:54]  Another guy that I have in my back pocket is named Andy Triana.
[02:10:57]  He goes by the name of Go Super Brain on Instagram.
[02:11:01]  These guys are so intelligent.
[02:11:03]  They're so smart and they know all the details on some of these things.
[02:11:05]  I would be speaking out of turn if I knew.
[02:11:08]  What I do know about like a myostatin inhibitor is that I believe these are things that were, I can't remember.
[02:11:17]  These things, they weren't, they weren't, They were discovered from these cows, I believe, the Belgian blue cow, which is a really just like jacked cow.
[02:11:26]  Now, I don't know if those cows were like made like genetically or if they were just natural, like a, you know, quote unquote natural cow that's like on a lot of juice.
[02:11:36]  But it's in my brother's movie and there's a really good photo of my brother like with the Belgian blue cow.
[02:11:41]  But I believe they have this like mild shell.
[02:11:44]  Look at that thing.
[02:11:45]  Yeah.
[02:11:46]  Yeah.
[02:11:46]  These guys are almost as jacked as Ronnie Coleman was.
[02:11:50]  Isn't that crazy looking?
[02:11:52]  Dude, that is absolutely so.
[02:11:53]  These guys, from my understanding, is like these dudes have to be careful.
[02:11:56]  Like, I don't think they can like do too much.
[02:11:58]  I think they can get really hurt.
[02:12:00]  Like, they're really, really powerful.
[02:12:02]  And because they have like so much muscle, I've heard that they can like break their legs.
[02:12:06]  And because you see how small, like, how they're they skip leg day.
[02:12:10]  Right.
[02:12:11]  These guys are skipping.
[02:12:12]  They got little tiny legs.
[02:12:13]  These bastards are skipping leg day.
[02:12:15]  Yeah.
[02:12:15]  And they can get hurt.
[02:12:16]  It's balls, dude.
[02:12:18]  Yeah.
[02:12:18]  Bro, nice balls.
[02:12:22]  A little bit similar is a Piedmontese.
[02:12:26]  Certified Piedmontese beef is super lean meat.
[02:12:30]  And this is where we can have a good conversation around like saturated fat and beef in general.
[02:12:35]  But certified Piedmontese beef, a filet from them has zero grams of fat.
[02:12:43]  It's like a four ounce filet.
[02:12:44]  It's like 26 grams of protein.
[02:12:45]  Yeah.
[02:12:46]  It has zero fat.
[02:12:47]  It's like wild game meat or something.
[02:12:49]  Yeah, it's gnarly.
[02:12:51]  The steak tastes amazing, though.
[02:12:54]  That's the thing.
[02:12:54]  It's still tender.
[02:12:57]  They had it at a local supermarket that I go to.
[02:12:59]  And I picked it up one day and I was like, what is this?
[02:13:02]  I'm like, I look at the stats.
[02:13:04]  It's grass fed, grass finished, regenerative agriculture.
[02:13:08]  It was pretty expensive for like this tiny little steak.
[02:13:10]  I was like, man, that's kind of a lot.
[02:13:13]  But then I looked at the stats and I'm like, am I imagining things?
[02:13:16]  This steak has hardly any fat.
[02:13:18]  I was like, well, I'm just going to take a gamble on it and buy it.
[02:13:20]  But there's no way.
[02:13:21]  It's not even possible that this thing tastes good.
[02:13:24]  It has, you know, and I looked at the other cuts that they have and they all had like half the amount of fat as other steaks in the stores.
[02:13:30]  Like, so a ribeye might have, say, I don't know, 20 grams of fat.
[02:13:35]  Their ribeye would have 10 grams of fat, stuff like that.
[02:13:37]  Their cows in general just have way less fat because their cows, are a little bit like those Belgian blue cows, but they're not nearly as gnarly as they don't look as crazy as that right, but they still are, are jacked.
[02:13:48]  They're still really uh, really lean.
[02:13:50]  So I went home and I tried and I was like this is amazing.
[02:13:54]  So i'm like I think my brother, uh was, was eating it too, and I think my brother like made a post about it, and then I think that we ended up getting a a cool relationship with those guys and so they send me uh, this beef, which has been like the most amazing blessing to get some free meat here and there.
[02:14:10]  But they have 93, They have 93.7 lean ground beef as well.
[02:14:14]  And again, you're thinking like that's going to be kind of dry.
[02:14:17]  It's not going to be.
[02:14:18]  Obviously, if you buy their 85.15, it does taste better.
[02:14:21]  Yeah.
[02:14:21]  But their leaner options are absolutely delicious.
[02:14:24]  So those are great options for people that want to eat, you know, leaner meat without having all the saturated fat.
[02:14:30]  So these Belgian blue cows, what is so unique about them?
[02:14:34]  Why are they so jacked like this?
[02:14:35]  Do you know?
[02:14:36]  I don't really know.
[02:14:37]  So I forget some of the language around it.
[02:14:40]  So I don't want to be screwing it all up.
[02:14:42]  It does have to do with the myostatin gene.
[02:14:44]  Right.
[02:14:44]  But I'm not sure if they don't have myostatin or if they have extra.
[02:14:48]  I think it's that they don't have.
[02:14:49]  So, from what I understand, is the myostatin.
[02:14:51]  Maybe we can look it up a little bit too.
[02:14:52]  So, yeah, myostatin, I think, has to do with the regulation of testosterone production or something like that.
[02:14:58]  Oh, I thought it was the regulation of the muscle in the sheath.

=== Genetic Freak Athletes (08:38) ===

[02:15:03]  And I thought it was something to the effect of the muscle just can expand and expand and expand and get much bigger than normal.
[02:15:11]  I thought that.
[02:15:12]  That's probably it.
[02:15:13]  That's probably it.
[02:15:15]  Okay, Belgian blue cattle, known for their double muscled phenotype, have a natural mutation in the myostatin gene.
[02:15:22]  The mutation, specifically an 11 nucleotide deletion.
[02:15:25]  That's what I said.
[02:15:28]  Deletes to functional loss of myostatin, a protein that normally inhibits muscle growth.
[02:15:33]  So these myostatin inhibitors that people can take basically inhibit this myostatin, which stops your muscle growth.
[02:15:41]  So basically, it's some sort of gene modification that you can do that will make your muscles bigger.
[02:15:47]  You know, I think when it comes to like steroids, I think, you know, people talk a lot about protein muscle synthesis, which is hard to say sometimes, but protein muscle synthesis happens when you eat protein.
[02:16:00]  It also happens when you lift.
[02:16:02]  And then it also is just going on all the time when you're on performance enhancing drugs.
[02:16:07]  So it's a really interesting thing.
[02:16:09]  But even so, even when you play the card of, I call it like, you know, you're playing these cards.
[02:16:14]  I learned this from one of my mentors, Dave Tate, who owns elite FTS.com.
[02:16:19]  Shout out to Dave Tate.
[02:16:20]  But Dave Tate said, like, you have these cards that you're playing, you know, throughout your life.
[02:16:25]  And, you know, card number one is like, you go out for the football team and you're slower and you're not as explosive and as strong as the other guys.
[02:16:32]  So you go and you lift.
[02:16:33]  And that's like a card that you play.
[02:16:36]  There's other guys on the team that don't even need to play that card because they're fine.
[02:16:40]  Like they don't even, there's guys that go, there's guys that go pro that barely lift at all.
[02:16:44]  Right.
[02:16:45]  And they even, they even turn pro and they turn all pro and they go in the Hall of Fame without any real lifting at all.
[02:16:51]  It's like kind of boggles your mind.
[02:16:52]  You're like, I thought for football, you'd have to, there's some guys that they have other physical activity, I'm sure of some kind, but some of them is kind of minimal and they just kick ass for whatever reason.
[02:17:03]  Right.
[02:17:04]  Um, But you're playing these cards throughout your life.
[02:17:07]  And once the card is played, you don't get exponential, any extra growth after a certain time period.
[02:17:14]  And I find this to be really interesting.
[02:17:16]  I've talked about this before, and I'd love to talk to somebody high level in terms of like maybe understanding biology or understanding sport or something like that.
[02:17:26]  But it seems like after like about six or seven years, that no matter what you do, it seems like you're about the same, right?
[02:17:35]  So you lift for six, seven, maybe eight, maybe like I did mention earlier that.
[02:17:39]  When you do something for 10 years, you can become great at it.
[02:17:42]  But lifting, it's like you don't necessarily get like way stronger.
[02:17:47]  You don't necessarily get way more muscular.
[02:17:49]  You just get like way more experienced and you understand how to recover from your workouts and stuff like that.
[02:17:54]  And so you do lift more weight, but you're not getting like insanely stronger after like six or seven years, in my opinion.
[02:18:01]  Yes, I've noticed that.
[02:18:03]  Once you get to that timeframe, and it could be different for people.
[02:18:06]  So I'm not saying like there's no one outside that box, you know?
[02:18:09]  But.
[02:18:11]  Once you get to that time period, if you were to take steroids, you can elongate that.
[02:18:15]  So now you might be playing with another like three years, you know.
[02:18:19]  But some of the point I'm trying to make here is that the human body can only go so crazy.
[02:18:25]  It can only go so nuts.
[02:18:26]  And some of these peptides and some of these myostatin inhibitors and some of these things that are coming through now, these things could really be a break in terms of like what someone could do.
[02:18:38]  It might just blow the doors off of everything.
[02:18:40]  I mean, Ronnie Coleman.
[02:18:41]  Is the biggest, most jacked person really to ever walk the face of the earth, especially for how lean, like he got striated glutes and be like 290 pounds.
[02:18:51]  It's just absolutely insane.
[02:18:54]  But back to the kind of the scenario of playing these cards, if somebody has to play like their deck of cards to make the varsity football team when they're a senior, the likelihood that they're going to really do much in college is probably going to be pretty low.
[02:19:10]  You know, they had to kind of do everything, they had to lift, they had to have the nutrition dialed in.
[02:19:16]  And they needed to take steroids to be on the high school football team, right?
[02:19:20]  So the odds of them doing anything Division I are probably out the door.
[02:19:25]  But for other people, they might go to college and maybe they even get a scholarship, but they're finding out, like, oh man, I'm getting my ass kicked.
[02:19:33]  And it happens every day.
[02:19:34]  And it happens maybe for like a whole year.
[02:19:36]  And they're like, man, I'm just going to.
[02:19:37]  I heard other guys talking about using a little bit of stuff and getting a little bit bigger.
[02:19:41]  So they finally do that and then they get a little bit bigger.
[02:19:44]  But that guy that needs to take those steroids in college just to kind of keep up probably isn't going to be.
[02:19:50]  Pro, and if he is a pro, it's probably going to be short lived, it's probably not going to be awesome, right?
[02:19:55]  And even the guys that go to the NFL and even the guys that feel that they need it, they could potentially become awesome or they could become great.
[02:20:03]  But the guys that seemingly don't need much of anything, right, are the guys that they don't need to play any of those cards, right?
[02:20:09]  They just were already dealt a pretty good hand, you know, they already have a good, a good uh, deck of cards in their hand, yeah.
[02:20:17]  I had a friend, uh, there was a kid I went to like elementary school with who was.
[02:20:23]  Just a genetic freak.
[02:20:25]  And he was like, we would go outside like during recess or during PE and we would play football or different things.
[02:20:32]  And he would just be, it would be like the equivalent of like Tom Brady playing with a bunch of middle schoolers.
[02:20:41]  Like it was just completely unfair.
[02:20:43]  This kid did not belong.
[02:20:44]  It was very clear.
[02:20:46]  And we all knew, like the teacher, our fifth grade teacher, would be like, this guy's 100% going to the NFL.
[02:20:51]  Like there's no way.
[02:20:52]  He was like treated like this fucking god in our class.
[02:20:55]  Like he was just like this, he was just severely different from all of us, right?
[02:20:59]  And then you see his parents were both pro athletes.
[02:21:03]  Oh shit.
[02:21:04]  Super tall.
[02:21:04]  The mom was like a fucking.
[02:21:06]  Pro WNBA player, and the dad was like a really successful football player, like all through college.
[02:21:12]  I think maybe even in the NFL.
[02:21:14]  And sure, sure as shit, this guy went on to play for the NFL and was a really successful wide receiver in the NFL.
[02:21:21]  And it was like, you just know, and there's, I know, there's, I know your brother made a documentary about this people that basically raise their kids to be like from the jump to be pro athletes.
[02:21:31]  And they'll even trophy kids, trophy kids.
[02:21:33]  Chris Bell, yeah.
[02:21:34]  Yeah.
[02:21:35]  And, um, You know, it's crazy to me that people will.
[02:21:42]  No, you'll know.
[02:21:43]  It's like, you know, I always thought there's this sort of unconscious thing in people that attracts, like this unconscious thing in humans that attracts them together, like especially like mates, right?
[02:21:59]  Where, you know, maybe the woman will be deficient in some sort of biological feature and the man will kind of make up for it.
[02:22:07]  And there's, they don't know about it, but it's the subconscious thing that drives them together.
[02:22:11]  But there's also what I realized a long time ago there's people that are just like both super freak athletes, like genetic freaks, and they know that like if we get together, we're going to create some superhuman babies that are going to be like freak NFL stars, things like this.
[02:22:26]  And like that's such a crazy thing to me that people do that.
[02:22:30]  That's why they're like, hey, we should get busy because, yeah, right?
[02:22:32]  Let's crank out some kids and let's kind of see.
[02:22:35]  And we're going to get them trained from the moment they're born.
[02:22:38]  We're going to start breeding these kids to be super athletes.
[02:22:41]  A lot of it makes a ton of, you know.
[02:22:42]  A lot of that makes a lot of sense.
[02:22:43]  I mean, if you grew up like in an athletic family and your brothers and sisters or whatever sex you are, but they're all tall and lean.
[02:22:56]  And so it makes sense that you would be attracted because that's what you're used to, right?
[02:23:01]  Not like you're attracted to your own family members, but you're probably attracted to the fact that they do a lot of similar things that you recognize as being valuable in your own family.
[02:23:13]  Like in your own family, everyone is regarding you being a great tennis player as like a thing, you know?
[02:23:19]  So I'd imagine, you know, if you're a girl and you grow up and someone is good at a sport, it might be something that, especially if it's healthy, like, you know, the person's really good at tennis, everybody loves them and it works out great.
[02:23:31]  And it's like the dad's not like a big asshole about it or whatever.
[02:23:35]  That person will probably want to be attracted to somebody that has, you know, some attribute like that, I would imagine.
[02:23:40]  Right.
[02:23:40]  It kind of makes some sense.

=== Wolves, Machines, and Purpose (07:31) ===

[02:23:42]  Yeah.
[02:23:42]  It's bizarre, man.
[02:23:43]  Well, Mark Bell, thank you for doing this, man.
[02:23:45]  This has been fucking amazing.
[02:23:47]  I wanted to ask you something.
[02:23:48]  Yeah.
[02:23:50]  How did you get into so many of these different rabbit holes of the conspiracy theory stuff?
[02:23:59]  That's a good question.
[02:24:00]  And do you like that?
[02:24:01]  Because some of my outside perspective of your show, I haven't seen every episode, but I've seen a handful.
[02:24:10]  It seems like there's quite a few people that are like, I hate the term conspiracy theory even, but it's like you've been talking to a lot of disruptors.
[02:24:20]  Yeah.
[02:24:21]  And do you like that moniker?
[02:24:22]  And how did you end up here, do you think?
[02:24:25]  I don't know.
[02:24:28]  I don't know how I fell into it.
[02:24:30]  I might have just had somebody on here a long time ago that got me really interested in this rebel.
[02:24:35]  I mean, it's like, you know, the biggest questions in the human mind are like, where did we come from?
[02:24:45]  Are we alone?
[02:24:46]  And I think I'm somewhat drawn to that, like many people are.
[02:24:51]  And when I started to realize that, you know, a lot of these mysteries are like super tied up in things like the government's been doing and like all kinds of things that I always thought were just crazy out there.
[02:25:04]  There, but like, there's like hard evidence for a lot of the stuff being true, and like, just like all kinds of crazy mind bending shit that it has been documented and we know actually happened.
[02:25:20]  And you're like, no, there's no way that happened, but it did.
[02:25:23]  Right.
[02:25:23]  And it did.
[02:25:24]  And it just kind of like, yeah, man, I don't know.
[02:25:28]  I just kind of like followed my interest.
[02:25:29]  And like I mentioned to you earlier, I like, I really like talking to people that, you know, Haven't been on podcasts before or haven't really been in the public like before, and that are like just coming on and talking about some weird, obscure thing they were a part of or studied or whatever.
[02:25:47]  And to me, that's like one of the coolest things about doing this is bringing to light some things that people may have never even thought about or never even considered.
[02:25:58]  Why we're here is like, I love that question.
[02:26:02]  Do you think it matters?
[02:26:05]  Like, to you, for your life, does it matter why we're here?
[02:26:07]  It doesn't matter.
[02:26:08]  I mean, I don't know.
[02:26:10]  I'm not sure.
[02:26:10]  Or, like, why do you think we're here?
[02:26:13]  What's your theory?
[02:26:14]  I don't have a theory.
[02:26:16]  I really don't.
[02:26:17]  I just like, you know, asking the questions.
[02:26:19]  I mean, sometimes when I do some of these podcasts with these folks, it leaves me with more questions than I had when I started, you know?
[02:26:26]  You know, some people think it's like demoralizing.
[02:26:28]  Like, if we don't know why we're here, like we don't know our purpose, people think it's like super sad.
[02:26:35]  But I personally, my personal belief, and I grew up Christian and I grew up like, you know, in a church and stuff.
[02:26:40]  So maybe this is like a little bit religious.
[02:26:42]  First of all, I think that every person has a godlike feature within them that you need to explore yourself enough to find that.
[02:26:53]  You mentioned that super athlete guy.
[02:26:55]  Everyone has some attribute in them that is similar to that.
[02:27:02]  Maybe society-wise, maybe they're not going to regard it the same way they would an NFL football player because that's something that we hold in the highest regard.
[02:27:13]  Here in the United States, but I believe everyone has a godlike future within them.
[02:27:17]  But I also think that we're here the same reason why a tree is here, the same reason why the grass is here, the same reason why the cows are here or any other animal.
[02:27:29]  And I think we're here to like reproduce and contribute to the earth.
[02:27:36]  And the earth is like this organism that needs to be fed, you know?
[02:27:40]  And so whether we're, you know, putting more carbon in the air or whether we're trying to take it out or like these different things we're trying to do.
[02:27:47]  Um, that's sort of my belief, and I don't think it matters if we really know humankind's purpose, but I think it's important that you search for your own purpose, yeah, totally.
[02:27:58]  I also think it's important that you never find it, right?
[02:28:01]  Yeah, because I think seeking and searching is critical.
[02:28:03]  I totally agree, yeah.
[02:28:04]  I mean, I don't know if I believe that like we were put here by anything for any specific purpose.
[02:28:09]  Like, I think, like, um, like you said, the planet is just this living organism that we're a part of, and we are this super rare species that has evolved that we don't know exists any other place in the universe.
[02:28:26]  But we have this insane ability to have reason, which gives us, which is unique to human beings.
[02:28:35]  And by the fact, just by the fact that us having the ability to reason gives our brain, it's like a fundamental thing.
[02:28:45]  Thing in our operating system that we have to believe in some sort of higher power, like a god or something like that, right?
[02:28:51]  Because, like, everything has to come from something, right?
[02:28:55]  So, like, we know, like, I know I came from my parents, they came from their parents, and so on and so forth.
[02:29:02]  The first human, like, how do you comprehend that?
[02:29:05]  Where did that come from?
[02:29:06]  So, so, so yeah, I think we are meaning machines, like, we have to find meaning, right?
[02:29:15]  To give our life some sort of purpose.
[02:29:17]  And I think that.
[02:29:19]  That to me just makes human beings so interesting.
[02:29:23]  What if another animal or species ends up with some reasoning skills?
[02:29:27]  Are we fucked?
[02:29:27]  I don't know.
[02:29:29]  Maybe.
[02:29:30]  I think we're creating that with technology.
[02:29:32]  Yeah.
[02:29:33]  You know, I think we're creating something that we have no idea what we're creating, but we're on this trajectory to basically just get better at everything we do.
[02:29:43]  And that's creating some other sort of organism, whether that's like, AI machines.
[02:29:51]  And my biggest thing I'm afraid of is like how far we go as far as integrating ourselves in the machines.
[02:29:57]  Which is why I think it's really cool that there's companies out there that are like doing technology that are trying to make it more primitive, like the daylight computer.
[02:30:05]  Yeah, yeah, that thing's dope.
[02:30:06]  Like how they're trying to go the opposite way of iPhones and computer screens to make us more in touch, you know, to take care of our bodies and our circadian rhythms and ground us more to nature.
[02:30:19]  I was chatting with a couple friends the other day and we were talking about like the recreation of those.
[02:30:24]  Uh, those wolves and uh, oh yeah, those dire wolves, dire wolves and uh, I think they're talking about like a woolly mammoth and yeah, potentially like a dinosaur and stuff.
[02:30:33]  And I said, you know, and just kind of like I just was joking, but I was like it's probably our second go of making dinosaurs, yeah.
[02:30:39]  And my friends stopped and they were like dude what, if you're right, it's like they're like that's wild, you know, because some people believe that there's like maybe, like maybe we've sort of been here before um, you can get a little bit into like uh, Terminator right, like Skynet being fully realized right, And that we kind of created all these things.
[02:30:57]  It's just, I think it's all like fascinating and really fun.
[02:31:00]  I think it's fascinating.
[02:31:01]  And I don't, I don't know whether it's good or bad.
[02:31:04]  My friend Paul Rosalie, who's been living in the Amazon for decades, his reaction to it was like, fuck these fucking Game of Thrones loving nerds.

=== Belief in Extraordinary Things (03:24) ===

[02:31:13]  These guys do not need to be doing this.
[02:31:15]  Fuck that.
[02:31:16]  Go save the animals that are going extinct in the Amazon.
[02:31:18]  I think it's so fucking funny.
[02:31:20]  But like, yeah, I don't know.
[02:31:21]  I don't know where it goes.
[02:31:22]  But do you believe in God?
[02:31:26]  Where are you with that?
[02:31:28]  I believe in God.
[02:31:29]  I believe in a higher power.
[02:31:31]  I don't know if I believe in everything the Bible says.
[02:31:34]  I don't know if I believe in all the fairy tales.
[02:31:40]  They're good stories and they can move someone in the right direction, right?
[02:31:44]  I can see how they can be beneficial to humanity.
[02:31:46]  Yeah.
[02:31:47]  I do believe in a God.
[02:31:50]  I don't know if that God is what we're told through texts that people have been writing and editing and throughout.
[02:32:01]  The last 2,000 years.
[02:32:02]  It's a bizarre story.
[02:32:03]  The story is, it's a bizarre story of somebody like writing a book thousands of years later.
[02:32:08]  Yeah, I think God is a super important thing.
[02:32:11]  That concept is a super important and fundamental thing to humans.
[02:32:16]  Have you had an opportunity to travel quite a bit?
[02:32:18]  Yeah.
[02:32:19]  So, what I've noticed when I travel to some really nice places, the nicest things that they have to show you in all those places is the same thing everywhere it's a church.
[02:32:33]  And it just goes to show you like the power of belief is extraordinary because these churches and these buildings are extraordinary.
[02:32:43]  They're unbelievable.
[02:32:44]  And by today's standards, I mean, these things would cost millions and millions of dollars.
[02:32:48]  So much time, so much was invested in all these things.
[02:32:51]  We don't know exactly what the deal was like the pyramids and stuff.
[02:32:55]  But a lot of these things were probably built, they were built with some sort of belief.
[02:32:59]  Totally.
[02:33:00]  And I love that story because I think that that is something that should give everybody a lot of hope.
[02:33:06]  Whether you believe in religion or not, or you believe in God or not, that's not even really the point, but just the power of you believing in something, the power of you believing in yourself.
[02:33:15]  You believe in your family, you believe in your community.
[02:33:19]  Yeah, all that stuff is just, it's so unbelievably powerful.
[02:33:23]  And I think the way society is going right now, especially geopolitically, and the way there's different countries, and each country has a military, and all the countries that have to fight for like their military dominance and the hierarchy of nation states in the world is completely antithetical to this idea of having this cohesive.
[02:33:47]  Belief that draws people together, that gives people purpose.
[02:33:50]  And it's crazy to see how all of this shit spirals out of control.
[02:33:55]  It just seems like the more technologically advanced we get, it seems like the farther away we get from nature.
[02:34:06]  And I think, you know, now that I think about it, I think if anything is God, I think nature is probably God.
[02:34:14]  And I think that is a super important.
[02:34:17]  Important thing for human beings.
[02:34:18]  And it's scary to see us get farther and farther away from that.
[02:34:23]  It's definitely the best thing he created, or if he did, if there is a God and he created something, the sun and sort of how we work in relation to the sun and our environment, I think is extraordinary.

=== Nature as Divine Grounding (06:11) ===

[02:34:38]  And that's why I love the information from Jack Cruz.
[02:34:40]  Yeah.
[02:34:41]  Because I found that to be super powerful.
[02:34:42]  It's like, yeah, and you've heard Joe Rogan talking about it.
[02:34:45]  He's like, man, I'm just going to end up in the woods one day.
[02:34:48]  Yeah.
[02:34:48]  He's like, I think I'm just going to get like, he's like, I just, he's like, I've always liked it.
[02:34:52]  I always liked being in nature.
[02:34:53]  And he had a bunch of other guests on there.
[02:34:54]  And we've heard people talk about the, I mean, there's, there's the magnetic field.
[02:35:00]  There's like, there's grounding.
[02:35:01]  Like, there's a lot of that stuff.
[02:35:03]  Hugging a tree.
[02:35:03]  Like, we've heard of all these things for a long time.
[02:35:07]  But man, I don't think there's anyone that can really argue with the value of just like sitting on like a tree that fell down and just chilling.
[02:35:17]  Yeah.
[02:35:18]  With like a really cool view is like the most amazing thing.
[02:35:21]  Away from, These devices that connect you with people and not thinking about that, and just being alone with the birds chirping and the insects crawling around you.
[02:35:31]  There's something about it that just awakens something deep inside you that I think has been atrophying for centuries and millennia.
[02:35:42]  And I love it.
[02:35:43]  I think, I don't know.
[02:35:45]  I'm fascinated with the idea of becoming more connected to that.
[02:35:49]  You were saying your diet is a little off right now.
[02:35:52]  My diet's shit.
[02:35:53]  Yeah, yeah.
[02:35:54]  I, I, uh, I try my best.
[02:35:55]  How do I encourage you?
[02:35:56]  What do I got to do?
[02:35:58]  Who do I got to talk to?
[02:36:00]  I don't know.
[02:36:01]  I think I was encouraged today watching you in the gym, man.
[02:36:04]  Yeah, today was fun.
[02:36:05]  Today was super fun.
[02:36:06]  It's things like that that inspire me.
[02:36:08]  Talking to people like you, it really gets me motivated.
[02:36:12]  Do you at least go after protein?
[02:36:15]  Do you eat some protein?
[02:36:16]  Yeah, yeah, I do.
[02:36:17]  On the protein train, at least a little bit?
[02:36:19]  Yeah, I eat a lot of it.
[02:36:20]  It looks like you're in good shape.
[02:36:21]  You don't look like you eat like that.
[02:36:22]  I've always worked out.
[02:36:23]  I've always tried to eat.
[02:36:25]  Well, at least since I was in my late 20s, I've tried to eat good.
[02:36:28]  But I've always worked.
[02:36:30]  I started working out, I think, in ninth grade or 10th grade or something like that.
[02:36:34]  And I've always pretty much maintained.
[02:36:37]  The physique that I have right now, it's gone up and down.
[02:36:40]  Like, I've had spurts where I've like fucking got in the gym every single day.
[02:36:43]  I'm just gonna get lean and jacked.
[02:36:44]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[02:36:45]  And it's like annoying to me when people say, like, oh, you look, you've been working out.
[02:36:48]  It's like, yeah, I've been working out since I was fucking 17 years old.
[02:36:51]  But you've been working away before that.
[02:36:53]  But like, I've always done a good job maintaining and my diet, I do my best to eat the best and eat as much, you know, eggs and meat and protein as possible.
[02:37:03]  But like, you know, when you got two kids and.
[02:37:07]  You guys, it's really hard to keep that discipline, man.
[02:37:11]  There's a little bit of shit that sneaks in there.
[02:37:13]  This thing keeps me disciplined.
[02:37:14]  This podcast keeps me really disciplined.
[02:37:15]  Because I know before I do a podcast, like the podcast days, I'm the most disciplined.
[02:37:18]  Yeah.
[02:37:19]  Because I can't fuck around.
[02:37:20]  I can't be eating a bunch of garbage before I do a podcast.
[02:37:23]  It's going to affect my brain.
[02:37:24]  Can't think straight and, you know, get distracted.
[02:37:27]  So, if anything, this thing is great because it keeps me grounded and it keeps me, I get to learn about shit like that you're teaching me right now about health and lifting weight and maintaining your body.
[02:37:37]  And, um, I think that's it.
[02:37:40]  I'm super lucky to be able to have something like this that basically fits in with my lifestyle and enables me to get better in everything I do.
[02:37:49]  You've probably just never been an overeater.
[02:37:50]  We talked about that a little bit in the gym.
[02:37:53]  It's actually a curse sometimes for people to have their maybe shit diet habits not result in gaining body fat because then it's like, well, why would I bother doing anything about it?
[02:38:03]  Right.
[02:38:03]  But it's kind of one of those things.
[02:38:05]  I think that if you're staying like a similar body weight most of the time and you're, and you're pretty happy with it, like there's probably not a lot of reasons to change it.
[02:38:14]  I think what will happen for you is I think it'll be a natural shift as you, as you continue to like grow this podcast and as you be continue to become more successful.
[02:38:24]  It's just a natural evolution to like want to be a little bit more successful at everything.
[02:38:28]  Yeah, like I kind of love the idea like people that come and do my podcast, they gotta, they gotta stand next to me and Ensema right and it's like good luck trying to explain your diet and your workout to us.
[02:38:39]  Yeah exactly, you know like you can't be talking to us because you know you're not gonna sell us anything Kind of bullshit.
[02:38:44]  Yeah, exactly.
[02:38:46]  And it's not necessarily like a competitive thing, but it's more like, okay, I did really well in this section of my life.
[02:38:53]  I did really well in this section of my life.
[02:38:55]  I'm going to do the best I can in some of these other sections.
[02:38:58]  And then over time, you end up being like Joe Rogan, where he's a black belt in multiple things.
[02:39:04]  He's a proficient hunter.
[02:39:06]  He's good at archery.
[02:39:07]  He seems to be a prolific reader.
[02:39:11]  And he's the goat when it comes to podcasting.
[02:39:15]  He's a comedian.
[02:39:17]  Like the list of shit goes, he always stays in good shape.
[02:39:21]  He does like brutal workouts.
[02:39:23]  He's probably, I don't know, 53 or 55 or something.
[02:39:26]  And he does a podcast like every day.
[02:39:28]  He's an absolute animal.
[02:39:31]  I really admire that.
[02:39:31]  I'm like, this is amazing.
[02:39:33]  But it just was a progression over time.
[02:39:35]  It wasn't something he like set out to do.
[02:39:38]  There wasn't like 30 years ago, it wasn't like, I'm going to be the best podcast ever.
[02:39:42]  I'm going to be, you know, black belt and this, this, and this.
[02:39:45]  It was stuff that he just worked at, chipped away at it.
[02:39:48]  Every single day, and I'm sure he probably had a lot of heartache over some of the things he was doing, like trying to act and trying to maybe be something or fit into a thing that wasn't correct for him.
[02:40:00]  And then also even like getting better at jujitsu and stuff is really painful.
[02:40:04]  Yeah.
[02:40:05]  Like to the point where like I've been in tears after workouts before, not after jujitsu because I haven't done much jujitsu, but I've been in tears because I cared about what I was doing so much that I'd get like emotional.
[02:40:16]  I'm like, man, I'm never, you know what's going to happen?
[02:40:19]  I'm never going to get this.
[02:40:20]  And I just have all this self-doubt hitting me.
[02:40:22]  And I'm like, you know, then I'd calm myself down and talk myself back into like, no, no, no, this is just a really long process.
[02:40:29]  And part of getting to the ups is having like a bunch of downs that happen in between.
[02:40:34]  So.
[02:40:34]  Yeah, I think the world of Joe Rogan, I think he's incredible.
[02:40:37]  And I think that for someone like yourself with you trying to balance all these different things, you'll continue to get better at stuff.
[02:40:44]  And then your kids, they'll stop being such little shits.
[02:40:46]  Like they'll get older, but you have another one on the way, don't you?

=== Carnivore Diet Struggles (03:16) ===

[02:40:49]  Yeah.
[02:40:50]  Yeah.
[02:40:50]  I got a girl now.
[02:40:51]  Oh, my God.
[02:40:51]  Two boys and a girl.
[02:40:52]  That's a wrap, baby.
[02:40:54]  Yeah, but so you'll be able to achieve some of the things I'm talking about about seven years from now.
[02:41:02]  Yeah, exactly.
[02:41:03]  Once I get some free time.
[02:41:05]  But, um, but yeah, man, this has been super fun.
[02:41:06]  Thank you so much.
[02:41:07]  I appreciate it.
[02:41:08]  I really appreciate you coming on here.
[02:41:10]  Um, your podcast is fucking phenomenal.
[02:41:12]  Thank you.
[02:41:12]  Tell people where they can find it and, and, uh, all your other stuff.
[02:41:16]  Mark Bell's Powered Project.
[02:41:17]  I also have, um, I need to send you a bunch of, uh, my protein powders and stuff.
[02:41:22]  Oh, hell yeah.
[02:41:22]  I make the steak shake.
[02:41:24]  I make total carnivore shake.
[02:41:26]  These are both, uh, protein powders that I made taste amazing.
[02:41:30]  They have liver, kidney, heart, spleen, pancreas, uh, small amounts of it.
[02:41:34]  Cause like if you put too much of that stuff in there, you're going to make it, uh, Tastes disgusting.
[02:41:40]  But it does have that in there.
[02:41:41]  And then also, a lot of people get like bloated and they get kind of messed up from protein powders.
[02:41:46]  And so the steak shake has beef protein isolate, it has whey protein, egg protein, and collagen.
[02:41:55]  Oh, wow.
[02:41:56]  And so that one's got four different proteins coming at you at one time.
[02:42:02]  And then it has a little bit of MCT in there too, just for like flavor and mouthfeel.
[02:42:05]  Okay.
[02:42:06]  And then the total carnivore one.
[02:42:08]  This was me like saying, all right, I'm going to throw out any allergen that anyone has because I hear it constantly.
[02:42:14]  People are always talking about.
[02:42:15]  You can go to withinyoubrand.com if you want to check out the website.
[02:42:21]  So I took out every allergen by making a total carnivore steak shake.
[02:42:25]  And the total carnivore is beef protein isolate and collagen.
[02:42:29]  And I have friends and some people I've sent the product out to.
[02:42:32]  And they're like, dude, I drink your shake and I get no gas, no bloating.
[02:42:37]  Like they're always completely shocked.
[02:42:39]  There's no dairy in it.
[02:42:40]  There's no egg in it.
[02:42:41]  There's no gluten.
[02:42:42]  There's no wheat.
[02:42:43]  I tried to pull everything that I possibly could out.
[02:42:46]  There's certain things that you can't.
[02:42:48]  There's certain things that are very hard to pull away.
[02:42:51]  It also has beef tallow in it to give it really good flavor.
[02:42:54]  So there's certain things that you have to keep in your protein powder.
[02:42:57]  Otherwise, it just turns into like cement.
[02:42:59]  And obviously, I didn't want that to happen.
[02:43:01]  So in addition to the total carnivore steak shake, I also sell a total carnivore steak shake that is unflavored.
[02:43:09]  And I was like, I was like, there's no way that this is going to really like.
[02:43:12]  sell well.
[02:43:13]  It sells great.
[02:43:13]  Really?
[02:43:14]  People are buying it all the time because then you can just kind of add your own flavor at home.
[02:43:18]  So there's people that will add honey to it or a little bit of vanilla extract.
[02:43:22]  You know, everyone's like a little different with I love cinnamon in my protein shakes.
[02:43:25]  There you go.
[02:43:26]  Some people are like really adverse to like stevia and some people are really adverse to like monk fruit.
[02:43:32]  Yeah.
[02:43:32]  And some people have a heart attack if you throw sucralose in there, which sucralose is amazing, by the way.
[02:43:37]  Makes everything taste so good.
[02:43:38]  And I think what people don't realize about sucralose is like, You only need, like, in a Coke Zero and those kind of things, that's what has sucralose in it.
[02:43:46]  Yeah.
[02:43:47]  It's only a small amount.
[02:43:48]  Like, it's a tiny, tiny amount.
[02:43:50]  I'm not saying, like, it doesn't have any negative side effects at all, but it is good to know that it's a small amount.
[02:43:56]  So, yeah.
[02:43:57]  WithinUbrand.com has the steak shakes.
[02:44:00]  I have hydration powders.
[02:44:01]  I make chocolate and a salted caramel hydration.
[02:44:05]  Oh, my God.

=== Essential Training Sleeves (02:29) ===

[02:44:06]  They're so good.
[02:44:07]  If you add those to the protein shakes, I made everything strategically so that the flavors really blend and mix together really well.
[02:44:14]  Oh, yeah.
[02:44:15]  I got to get some of this stuff.
[02:44:17]  The banana steak shake.
[02:44:20]  Don't sleep on that one.
[02:44:20]  That one's really good.
[02:44:21]  Sometimes banana flavoring can be like weird.
[02:44:24]  We nailed it with that one.
[02:44:25]  And then also if you want to check out the slingshot, the slingshot is.
[02:44:30]  a product I made years ago.
[02:44:31]  It's a supportive upper body device for bench press, push-ups, dips, helps save the shoulders.
[02:44:37]  It's basically just a strap.
[02:44:38]  It's originally, when I originally invented it, the first version of it was literally knee wraps that I had sewn together by my wife's friend that sews together swimsuits for my wife's on a swim team.
[02:44:53]  And I had this lady sew these things together when I had this idea.
[02:44:56]  And then I just like went and tried to use it one day.
[02:44:58]  I was like, holy shit, this is the invention.
[02:45:00]  I had this invention in my idea for a long time.
[02:45:03]  because so many people have banged up shoulders and have an issue bench pressing.
[02:45:08]  And I wasn't, I was not expecting that it would have the impact that it's had, but I've sold over a million slingshots.
[02:45:14]  What?
[02:45:15]  Holy shit.
[02:45:16]  We've been in business since 2000, 2010 and been selling them worldwide for a really long time.
[02:45:25]  We make many different versions and many different sizes.
[02:45:28]  So anybody who wants to check that out, that's at markbellslingshot.com.
[02:45:32]  Amazing, dude.
[02:45:33]  That's incredible.
[02:45:34]  Thank you so much.
[02:45:35]  I need a slingshot too.
[02:45:36]  I know I'll send you all this stuff, man.
[02:45:39]  All the products are things that, you know, I do talk about them on my social media and stuff a little bit here and there, but I try not to be too pushy with it.
[02:45:47]  But the truth is, is like even something like the slingshot or the knee sleeves that I make or the elbow sleeves that I make, these are all products that I always go back to using.
[02:45:56]  I might not use them for a little bit just because, like, you know, it takes an extra little extra time to put stuff on.
[02:46:02]  And I'm thinking like, oh, I don't lift the way I used to.
[02:46:04]  And so I make excuses on why not to wear this stuff.
[02:46:08]  But then every so often, I crawl back to it and I'm like, I should just wear this all the time.
[02:46:13]  It just makes the workout feel better.
[02:46:16]  And so, a lot of times, I think people are trying to make workouts harder with different devices and different things.
[02:46:21]  And that's cool.
[02:46:22]  That's a great route to go to kick up the intensity.
[02:46:26]  But if you want your workouts to not hurt, go and check out the stuff we have at markbellslingshot.com.
[02:46:31]  Amazing.
[02:46:31]  I'll link it all below.
[02:46:32]  Thank you.
[02:46:33]  You're the man, Mark Bell.
[02:46:34]  Thank you, brother.
[02:46:34]  Good night, everybody.