class of BA first semester in mass communication and journalism. Today we are going to discuss a few things about the early communication system and in the next video we are going to discuss the other objectives of this particular unit. So in this particular video we are going to discuss we are going to trace the origin of communication and we will also discuss the growth of communication that has happened through the various ages. So when we talk about the growth of communication about the early communication human communication system it has a very fascinating history. If we talk about if we think about how communication evolved how communication started at the very beginning it is quite fascinating. Today we know that we are staying in the we are living in the information age and when we think back about how people started communicating at the very early stages how they communicated with each other how they disseminated the messages to their fellow human beings it is quite extraordinary and interesting. Okay now let us think about the age when there was no language no words how people communicated. Okay so the first thing that comes to our mind is people used to communicate through gestures that we can say that nonverbal communication or paintings the cave paintings the images the drawings that were made on the rocks and stones isn't it and we also can talk about the kind of the birds that were used to carry messages from one places to another. Then came the age when people started employing men who used to take communication from one place to another on horseback there were runners who used to run miles and kilometers to deliver different messages especially in the war times. Okay then later on gradually various instruments and various machines were invented through which people started to communicate and then later came the stage of mass communication. Okay so let us go right into the very beginning so how communication took place say in the stone age and how it evolved to the age that we have today that is the digital age. Okay so how communication how human beings acquired the means of communication. Okay the first we have already discussed about the kind of sign languages that were used right for example lighting a fire in the hilltop and communicating through the use of smoke right. Here we can take an example let us imagine that we are in a foreign land and we do not know the language of that particular land now we have to ask somebody for food or other basic needs right. So how we can communicate in that particular situation. Here we have to use all kind of signs and you know non-verbal communication systems that we know in order to forward our message forward what we want for example a plate of food or anything that is necessary for us. So here the sign language is used to communicate our message in the same manner at the very beginning of human civilization these kind of you know communication methods were used to pass on the messages. Now then later it came to cave paintings that we have already discussed and later on gradually in various ancient empires in ancient dynasties like the Chinese Empire or the Roman Empire they used various other means you know that we have discussed just now for you know communicating with their people or with other kingdoms or other such purposes. Okay so there is one particular term that is called anthroposemiotics it is a particular term which has been given to the entire idea or of the study of communication that takes place in the human for the human beings how the human communication system evolved okay and this particular term is also known as human communication and this human communication it passed through many stages to come to the the stage that we have today okay the first stage is the age of symbols, signs and signals okay so when we talk about this particular age we can talk about the very beginning of human life itself okay when the human life itself began people started to communicate using symbols, signs and various signals few of them that we have already discussed in this particular video okay so this happened before the development of speech right so we are talking about cave paintings and other symbols like lighting of fires communicating with smoke etc okay so here we come across a very interesting term that is petroglyphs so what are petroglyphs these are the kind of illustrations or the kind of images that are you know made by the early human beings especially the Neolithic age people which came after the cave painting okay after the cave painting the petroglyphs came into existence these are the images which are made by you know carving on the rock or stones and these petroglyphs they actually date back to 10,000 BC around 10,000 BC so here on the screen you can see two images these are few examples of petroglyphs the first one has been excavated from Sweden and it dates back to Nordic Bronze Age and the picture in the below is a native American petroglyph which is found in USA so other than petroglyphs the other modes of communication of that period are pictograms, locograms and ideograms so what are pictograms they are just illustrations which are which represent a concept an idea or an object or activity okay so these are called pictograms or pictograms pictograms later evolved into ideograms and they are ideograms are graphical symbols that represent an idea okay then the petroglyphs they showed an event the pictograms they tell the story about the event and ideograms are graphical symbols that represent an idea then there are logograms these are actually these represent a meaningful unit of a language and we can also talk about geoglyphs these are actually the drawings or large designs which are created on the ground and very interesting example of geoglyphs are the Nazca lines which are found in Peru these are created by the Nazca culture between 200 to and 600 BC so here are few examples that you can see on the screen then let's move on to the next stage or next age that is the age of speech and language this age is actually major development in the human history when the speech and language was developed around 35,000 years ago it kind of revolutionized the entire field of communication as the development of speech or the development of language it provided the human to another dimension and there was the development in the physical and the social environment there was that we can see the development of culture and this speech and language they acted as a marker of identity and individuality for the human beings then comes the age of writing okay the earliest example of writing could be found on rocks and stone pillars okay people started to engrave create carvings on rocks and stone pillars as it helped in preserving the writings or preserving the messages for a longer period of time okay and these carvings on these writings on rocks and stone pillars these acted as the method of communicating across time because they lasted for a longer period of time okay the oldest known form of writing were primarily look graphic in nature gradually more portable forms of media evolved for example the clay and stone tablets were developed which could be carried easily from one place to another and hence they also acted as a form of communication over space then we can talk about cune forms which are developed by the Sumerians dwelling in the southern Iraq they developed this medium of writing over 5000 years ago again the ancient Egyptians they used another method of writing known as the Egyptian Herod lives which consisted the combination of logographic, alphabetic and idiographic elements again later around 170 BC writing materials like papyrus and parchment were developed which helped in you know giving permanence to the form of writings that were done at that time these are few examples that you can see on your screen the ancient Egyptian Herod lives and the Sumerian language that was developed that comes the age of printing which came with the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in 15th century and the first book that was developed is the 42 line Bible then we see the age of coming of the newspapers or newsletters okay the first news pamphlets to start regular publication is the weekly news in 1622 and there are many examples like the London gadget the public occurrences both foreign and domestic which came into existence in 1690 then the Boston newsletter in 1704 okay so these are few examples of newspapers they brought about another age as these these papers carried information related to different aspects of life and these also marked a new era in the history of human communication then later on after this comes the age of mass communication which brought about new dimension to the history of human communication and the age of mass communication began with the invention of printing press with verbal types okay then began the era of mass communication and the era of information technology that we have today and the in the coming of the worldwide web it brought about a major change in the field of communication so these are the various stages of human communication that forms a base for the communication system that we have today so we are going to end our video here and in the later class we will talk about the early communication systems in India and other aspects related to the history of human communication thank you


Okay, so this reaction actually should be reviewed for you after going through organic one. This is the solvolis' reaction of the alkyl halide, in fact, the tertiary alkyl halide you see, with methanol. So what this will do is do an SN1 reaction using methanol as the eventual nucleophile, the solvent as the eventual nucleophile. So remember methanol, of course, is polar due to the just like water. This portion of it has a very strong dipole moment this way, so it gives it a very polar characteristic. In fact, it's polar this way, too. So the overall molecule is a polar solvent. So what that will do is tend to pull the ion away, the good leaving group away from the alkyl halide or the eventual alkyl group because you've got a tertiary carbocat ion that's going to form. So let's just show that mechanism really quick. So again, then you lose that stereochemistry there. The other thing we say, you have to balance charges on both sides of the reaction. So that's your SN1 reaction. That only occurs when you've got a tertiary alkyl halide or secondary, but usually tertiaries and very polar solvents because it can separate, it can do that charge separation, you understand? Do you get that? So then let's just take these dipole arrows off of this one and use it. So methanol's in there. Once it sees that positive charge, of course, that's like super electrophile, right? This is nucleophile because it's got these electrons here, of course. This could come back and attack, but that's a nonproductive reaction, I'll go back the other way. In fact, it'll racemize the stardium material, you see. So anyways, this will come in an attack there. And remember, this center, just like all carbocat ions, is sp2 hybridized. So it's planar, trigonal planar, so it can attack from the top or the bottom or the front or the back, so you're going to get effectively a racemic mixture, essentially. I mean, you've got some sort of steric hindrance here, but it's quite far away from the reactive portion of the molecule. You may get a higher concentration of one or the other, but I don't know if it's too easy to tell without actually doing the reaction. So anyways, we'll just do one of them in an antitumor, because again, it could attack from the front or the back. I think it's good to show this one, to emphasize the fact that we didn't get a version of configuration. And of course, since methanol's the solvent, you might think of it like this, like we sometimes write in excess, so there's another methanol molecule hanging around somewhere. And it's going to deprotonate and give us the final product, see this on the video. Plus, it's an antitumor. So you make, essentially, you make an ether out of a, in this case, a tertiary alkyl halide. So you take a tertiary alkyl halide, react it with an alcohol ether, but it's a racemic mixture of these two ethers, because of the SN1 nature of the reaction. Are there any questions? Sure. Okay, yeah, you guys should know that one, since last semester you did it. Okay, cool.


On Saturday, May 6th, the University of Pikeville will be hosting their annual commencement ceremony at the Appalachian Wireless Arena. Many friends and family members of the graduating class will be in attendance to show their support. The medical and optometry ceremony will begin at 9.30 a.m. and the undergraduate ceremony will begin at 2 p.m. Saturday morning this week we have approximately 200 medical and optometry students who will be graduating at 9.30 a.m. and then at 2 p.m. in the afternoon we have another 300 to 350 undergraduate and master's degree students who will graduate. The majority of the undergrads of course will enter the job market and they'll be working to find places of employment for the next several years. Who knows how long people stay in jobs these days, right? But we have a significant number of our undergraduate students who end up going on to graduate school or medical school. We've certainly accepted a pretty large number of them this year at our own medical schools and we look forward to a continued relationship with those students. Cancer. It's a very scary word. But an outstanding treatment facility was here at home. I was led to the Lawson Cancer Center. As a nurse practitioner at the Lawson Cancer Center we are champions for our patients. I am so happy for Robert. The treatment worked. The retention and graduation rate at the university is much higher than it has been in recent years. Once these seniors graduate they will be taking the next big step toward a fulfilling career. Both the retention and graduation rates have been on the rise at UPIKE over the last several years and that's why you're seeing larger graduating classes each year. Students who start here are staying here and then they're graduating and our goal, of course, is for as many of them as possible to stay in the region and continue to work here and live here. Graduation is a wonderful time of celebration and we have so many people who are from here who finish up here and so many people who come in from outside. It's just such a great opportunity to show off our beautiful city and our wonderful region. I'm just glad this is such a welcoming place where people can feel at home. Reporting for Mountain Top News, I'm Nick Collum.


The Intel problem is it's being squeezed by NVIDIA for artificial intelligence. It's also being, they have their own artificial intelligence platform. And AMD's got better chips right now in terms of speed and graphical user interface. Graphical user interface is used for crypto mining. That's, crypto mining obviously is, you're talking about Ether and you're talking about Bitcoin. It's used for gaming. So AMD's got sex appeal now. Remember Intel Mobileye, Mobileye is a very smart company. Not a lot of people, but paid a lot of money. That's an autonomous car play. These are, Intel's being buffeted. There are times when Intel's been buffeted before. I want to see what Brian Krasanich comes back with. I do not think that you should write off Intel. I do think that AMD is more pizazz. I think NVIDIA is more pizazz. I've been trying to get people to understand pizazz can be a two-edged sword. NVIDIA can go down, not just up. And that's when you buy it, not when it's running. And you're getting so much attention from your dog who's now Everest NVIDIA. I use that as an analogy to be able to say, let's not get silly. Like AMD for instance is up 30% very quickly. Now what I point out is that AMD was down 30% very quickly. And I just don't want people to get hurt. Now people on Twitter naturally think therefore I'm shorting these stocks. I can't short or I'm in league with the shorts. You know what nonsense? I think AMD is going to go up over time well. I think NVIDIA is a very big stock. I have compared it to Intel in the 90s. Give me a break. I am just saying that you buy these things when the market gives you sell-off. You don't chase them. That's all I'm saying. When the market gives you sell-off, you don't chase them. If you were to buy some NVIDIA now, leave room for more NVIDIA later. That's how we do it in action alerts. That's what I would suggest.


So I've done this Greek or this dry Greek the way down twice or three times and now I'm going to see how it's going up Subscribe don't forget to like comment and tell me what you think


You're listening to Barbell Logic. This is Matt Reynolds. I'm here with my compadre Scott Hamburg and one of my close friends, Brett McKay. Welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me. So Brett, now you're in upper management of the cult. Now I'm in upper management. We jumped in, man. Right. That's right. No. So yeah, I did the podcast and then a few months later, it was 2015. I asked, Hey, let's do some videos. So I was doing YouTube heavily back then. I don't do it anymore with the site. And I filmed how to squat and my low bar squats sucked. It was terrible. I don't know about that. No, like the wrist were terrible. I know everybody yells about the wrist. Yeah, everyone's like, it's fine. We did deadlift and then I went back and then shoulder press. And then I went back a few months later to do bench press and power clean. Yeah. Yeah. And then after that, I was like, I'm going to start doing this. So I started doing the programming, the, you know, linear progression, novice. But I had to stop because like on the low bar squat, I would just cause my setup was terrible. I would get really bad bicep tendonitis. And it was so bad that I couldn't deadlift. Like I couldn't, like I'd get done with squattings. Like my biceps just they're, they're hurting. Is this normal? I don't know. I guess so. And I would just fight through it. And it got the point. I can't, I can't even pull anymore. So I'd take a break and then I get back to it. And then finally it happened again. I was like, okay, I'm not going to do this anymore. And that's when I got, that's when you reached out to me.  Right. I'm doing online coaching. It's like, I use your videos all the time. Right. The same videos we're talking about. Yeah. Just like, thanks for what you've done. This is cool. Yeah. And you said, Hey, can you help me with my bicep tendonitis? Right. Exactly. I said, Hey, you know, I like this, but I asked you like, do you offer online coaching? Cause like, I think it'd be great if it's like, cause I don't have a coach to look at my form. And I couldn't get that in Tulsa. And you're like, Oh, well actually I do offer online coaching and you should ask. And it's really not the reason that I emailed, although I was super excited when you were the one that reached out and said, I remember sitting at the dining room table and, and tell them, Rachel tell my wife, like, I think Brett McCagey has asked me online coaching. It's just like, who? Right. But who? Yeah, it's fine. Right. And that's, we started working together. So that was what, like November 15, November 2015, we started working together. And my favorite thing about that is that little skinny guy that is in those videos was not the guy that's sitting at the table. Yeah. The first video is I did, I was 185 or 180 ish. And then I went back four months later, cause I'd started eating better. And I got up to 200. I was like, I weigh 200 pounds now. But then when I got on with you, that's when it really started picking up. Sure. Cause you started doing the new church. What did he tell you she weigh? What him? Yeah. I don't, you, you haven't really been like giving me any targets. You're like, I think at one point you're like, if you want to like pull, I need to weigh 245 if I want to pull 600 or something. Yeah. I remember saying stuff like that. I mean, for me, the, the diet drives the progress.    And so from the very beginning, we put you on linear progression, your linear, your actual linear progression wasn't very long because you had done a lot of it already. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing. I wasn't like completely new to barbell training. Cause I think I remember when I posted that video of me doing a bench press, five reps of 225. Sure.  Like, no, I had like, I barbell trained all through high school doing, you know, whatever programming the strength and conditioning coach gave you at the time. And then I did barbell training on and off since then. So, I mean, I was a novice still, cause I had a linear progression in me, but I did have some training in me, of course, which helped speed things along. Cause yeah, how long was I on linear progression once I started? Probably two months with me, I think. So by the time we got into January of 16, we started to put you on intermediate based program. So some more of a Texas method. And we put you on a, I remember for a while, you actually did a four day split on three days a week, which I'm not crazy about, but at the time I remember you were having like, it was really busy art of manliness. Right. And it was like, I can only get in three days a week. So we basically just alternated upper, lower, upper, lower. Why don't you like the four day, four day in three? Because I don't think it tends to give enough stress to drive adaptation, at least not with a guy that's, that's Brett's age. So you get somebody in their mid thirties you know, on the week that it's two lower body sessions and one upper body session, I think it's fine. But on that next week where it's two upper body sessions and one lower, it just doesn't seem to be enough total stress. And so when I've done that, I still have a few clients that do that on the week that we're like the Wednesday workout is the lower body workout, a hammer them. So they're doing at least two sets of five on deadlift, if not three sets of five on deadlift, because it's just one session that week. And so they're not going to have to do another lower body session until Monday of the following week. So you're talking about a five day layoff. That's what you're doing to me. Well, just hammering me. Well, yeah, you've got advanced programming now. So you have to get hammered. That's that's the deal. So yeah, so let's stay on the body weight thing for a second. So we drove your body weight up to about where you remember like your high at the meat, the high point was like 227 228. Okay. That was the meat. And I you know, one of the things that's been just kind of a joy with working with you is that really from the beginning, you ask questions, but you've you've relinquished control and you trusted me in my in my programming.  And I'd got up to like 465 on my own and then I plateaued. And then I started like, I'm going to find these like special deadlift programs where you do like back extensions. Like it was like weird stuff. And it didn't budge.  I want a deadlift 500 pounds. Yeah. And I mean, I feel like I have like, I mean, I'll ask questions. I'm curious. Yeah, of course. No, you know, very well, it's not because like, this is dumb, like, why are you having me do that? And get some of that when I know it's probably even like, I don't actually don't get a lot of that. They just don't do it. Like you program it less argumentative.  The other piece of this is let's certainly don't say this to make you uncomfortable in any way. But as you get these people who are who have a big following online, they tend to not do a great job of following the program, right? It's not even that they are argumentative. They're often not, you know, I think they're busy, they've got this big following, they're doing all this other stuff. And so the program or the linear progression is not that important. And for you, it's funny, you've really kind of adhered to the program with consistency, as well or better than just about every client I have. And so that's really the telltale. It's not about how far you are on the right side of the athletic spectrum, or all those things are cool. And those athletic guys make me look better as a coach. But really what it comes down to is consistency. And you've just been insanely consistent. Yeah, last two years. I love it. I enjoy doing it. I think I've only missed a few workouts and because I was like, super sick. Yep, super sick. And then if I have a vacation, I always tell you like, I'm going to be gone. Let's plan for a D load. Yep, we plan D load weeks. And so, so we got your body weight up to almost 230. Right. And in the process, you know, we've talked about this both on the podcast we've done that I've done with you. And also in some of the articles that we've written, anytime you're gaining weight anytime, you're gaining both muscle and fat. Right. And so what we're trying to do as you gain is you're trying to gain mostly muscle and the least amount of fat possible, but you're obviously gaining some fat. And so at 230, when you were up around 230, you were a little bit uncomfortable with the. I got pudgy. Like my waist got up to like 39 inches, which was the horror. Right. But I mean, from what though, from from 36. It was like 34. I mean, like I was kind of at 34 when I started and then I ramped it up to 39 inches, which was pretty even my wife was like, you're looking, you're not looking good. She's like, you're not looking unhealthy. This is the problem. The hard part with the the program often and certainly some of the negative feedback gets is that it will make people fat. But the interesting thing is, is that you just have to get through that window of strength gains. And while it's there for the taking, you've got to take it, you've got to swing for the fences. And so you did you swung for the fences, we got you big, we got you strong, you crushed your 500 pound deadlift PR, you squatted over 400 pounds, right?  And then over the last several months, maybe the last what about three to four months somewhere in there, we've really tweaked your macros and started pulling back. And you have lost about 15 pounds. Now you're about two 15 ish 214. Yeah, it's more tweak the macros. That's the macronutrients. The macro. Yeah, so micro nutrients would be like calcium, potassium, the macros macros macronutrients. Right. So what we did was we the protein's always going to be high and really kind of depends on the person. But for the most part, we recognize that Brett tended to respond better to a little higher carbs and less fat responds well. No, actually, I got my genome sequence because like we put me on the fat, the high fat thing, right? Because everyone's like, you got to do high facts. That's like the paleo, all that stuff. Like, yeah, of course, look at this guy, he lost lots of body fat by eating lots of fat. And I would do that. And I would just get fat, right?  And they're like, no, you just got to push through, right? There's that that thing.   And I would do that.  And I would get fatter. And then I would move to, OK, let's just go to higher carbs. You know, that's the same voice thrall uses for Internet haters. Did you know it? Yeah. Oh, God's raw. And what happened was I felt great and the body fat started coming off. And so, I mean, that's a good that's a good point there. I feel like when it's with, especially with nutrition advice and even fitness advice, everyone's different, right? Just because you see some guy who's promoting Paleo, like it works for him. Sure. Just because it works for him doesn't mean it's going to work for you. Absolutely. And just because high carb works for me doesn't mean it's going to work for you. So that's what's been great about you is like we'll experiment. Yeah. And we'll say let's try this. Take some time to figure out how to get it tweaked to the point that we can really dilate it. Right. And now we've got to dilate it. And it's also why it's important that when you hire a coach, those listeners out there to hire a coach that you stick with them long enough to let them figure it out. And, you know, occasionally we get somebody who will jump from this coach to this and they'll hire this coach and that coach. Well, the problem is I don't care what the coach says. Your very first program from that coach, especially if you're not an absolute novice, it's just a cookie cutter program because they don't know you yet. So now like you're programming now, you're doing advanced programming, but I actually write that programming every week for you because it has to be so tailored to you because I've now figured out exactly what works with you. But that it took a while to get there. Well, it was the same thing with the diet.  And your waist is down to 33 and a half. Yeah. So the waist is now smaller than it was when he started. Right. Right. But think about this like his erectors are bigger. Right. His abdominal walls bigger. His obliques are bigger.  So he's now smaller waist than he was when he started, you know, 30 pounds less than this and got him up to 30 dropped him back down at 214. And I look good. Yeah. Very good. What's mama say now? She looks great.  Right. But again, there's that. Yeah.  Well, wait a minute.  I don't know.  I look.  I guess I was kind of I remember I did a video and there was a gut like you could see the gut and it was just like hanging out there because I did a video like what happened? Art of Manliness video. So I stopped doing them and I saw I've been powerlifting and then people were like, dude, you got a gut. And I was like, yeah, it's true. I do have a gut. That's gone. Yeah. We got to do a new video. I mean, a new video. We can do at least one more video. But again, like you have to trust the process. I think it's hard for a lot of people and I feel like I'm a pretty coachable person. Definitely. I think that's come from, you know, playing sports in high school and being able to take feedback like that to get better. So if you've never been coached, you've never played sports that might be hard, right? To take that sort of feedback. We just did a couple of episodes about how to get started with the linear progression. And we talked about, you know, you need this kind of equipment and this is what your first session looks like. And then we broke and we went and ate lunch and we were saying, you know, we need an episode about coachability. Right.  When you're under the bar, you don't know. Right. Exactly. You lose your mind. You're just a hamster when you're under the bar. You've got to listen to the guy. And then if you pay somebody that has a proven track record and you don't listen, that's like, that's almost the definition of insanity, but you are so coachable. That's why you're successful.  The only thing that's in question is like, how long is it going to take? Right. How long is it going to take to get super strong with a 33 inch waist? I think another aspect that helps you be coachable is I've tried to do this is like, you know, I watch my own videos and I try to like look at, okay, what am I doing wrong? And I'll even tell Matt like, this is what I think is what I'm doing wrong. Yep. Is that right? And then I would be like, let me go over to Scott's house and like have him look at this in real time. So I think you have to take a proactive approach, like take the approach like I'm probably sucking at this more than I think I am. Right. With that in mind, let me do what I can to get better. Right. So that's kind of been my approach. That's good. Yeah.  It's no, it's no slight, you know, we don't need to have ego in it when we go for help, you know. Right. And it might not, you might not even take the advice, right? Because they might like, OK. Yeah. Yeah. Reynolds told me you need to gain some weight, right? I think I was like 185. I think when I started with you or something like that, maybe 190 or you need to gain some weight. So I got up around 220. It's like, you know, I think you'd do really great at 260. Yes. And I said, no, no. I'd have to get a new car. And like I wouldn't fit in the car anymore. So, you know, I just use my judgment. But it's good. Yeah. It's use your own judgment to get that third eye on you because you might not be seeing something that you don't know about, we do the same thing all the time. The staff will post videos of ourselves to the rest of the staff and say, hey, what does this look like? What am I doing wrong? You know, I had a coach that I coach who was who was getting forward on his toes and I couldn't get him off his toes. I couldn't get him off his toes. And so I reached back, reached out to the staff and said, how do I get this guy off his toes? I've tried this. I've tried. We've tried this in basketball. We tried the box squat. Yeah, on the squat. And we switched them to tempo squats and three second negative eccentric and a three second concentric and it almost instantly the amount of time that he had to think about is actively thought the whole time.  It cleaned it up and I've used tempo squats before, but I've never used tempo squats to get people off their toes. And so it was a thing that we learn essentially doing tempo squat is what finally got me to keep my chest up properly. Right. Yeah, it was a time to think the first thing I do with the vast majority of people come see me for in person as I slow them down. So they go too fast. I get it. They see the really good lifters as your form. And that motor pattern locks in and it's perfect. It can speed up and get a little more rebound, a little more rebound, a little more rebound. The problem is that most people walk in and they try to get all that rebound and the form is a disaster. And so I've got to slow it way down. Do the same thing. The seminar is slow way down. I go down really slow up fast and you're fine. Yeah. So we started when you first hired me. We were walking in with this bicep tendonitis problem. Right. Did we fix it? We did fix it. How? So what it was, it was my set up on the squat. Yeah. So what was happening was the way I was setting up on the squat was to get, I was basically trying to get in a low bar position using a high spar. So I would get under the bar like a high bar squat. Right. And then wristband and then just shove it down my shoulders and then I would kind of crank up my wrist above the bar here. Yeah, it was right right there on both sides. Yep. And I showed you the video of how I set up and you're like, OK, next time just put your wrist on top and then just put yourself in there. Yep.  Sure. It's like I'm really tight in my shoulders and my chest. But after doing that, it cleared it up because I was no longer doing the cranking thing. Sure. And then also I think by doing, you know, going under and then trying to get up, I don't think I got my wrist all the way on top of the bar. And so I was holding a lot of that weight because what would happen? In your hands anyway. The bicep tendonitis would hit around like when I my squat got up to about 325, 340. Before that it was fine. And I think it's because, you know, I can handle 225 in my hands. Yeah, sure. But after that, it cleared it up. I mean, that's not to say I don't get bicep tendonitis anymore every now and then. It flares up for whatever reason. But that's one thing that you have to learn as a novice lifter or an immediate lifter, like managing the pain and working around the pain. So that's one of the useful things is having to coach, right?  I don't know if I can work and you're just like, well, ice it, take some Advil, put some with a DMOS. DMSO. DMSO. DMOS with Dom. What is that again? Yeah, there's Dom's. Dom's and there's DMOS. We're talking about dimethyl sulfoxide. You can treat Dom's with DMSO. Right. Yeah, there you go. And then you just put it on there and then, you know, you'll feel a little bit better. It's still good, but you can still do your workout. You can still train. You can still train. That's the thing. And that's the thing. That's the difference between training and exercise. And that's the hard thing for a lot of inner beginner lifters to realize, like, even if you don't feel good, even if you hurt, like, you still have to train. Yep. You might adjust things a little bit, but you still have to train. Yeah, absolutely. We do it all the time. We got an email yesterday. We had a guy that's a relatively new client and he emailed because he'd strained a bicep. And he said, I'm going to take a month off. I need you to freeze my account.  You can't squat. You can't deadlift with a strained bicep. Like, and we'll work around the other stuff, right? Like you can probably press with a strained bicep. Like, you know, you can't chin with a strained bicep, right?  But so we see this all the time. I mean, we've talked about this, like, what injuries do you have to have to absolutely stop training? It's very few fever, broken bones, muscle vultures. Yeah. Yeah. And even like a broken bone in the last 24 hours, sort of broken bone, right? Like if I if I have a broken arm, I'm not going to train for a day or two. But then and I'm not going to press and bench press, but I'm going to figure out how to squat with a safety squat bar. Right. And I'm going to figure out how to one arm Sumo deadlift because which isn't optimal, but it's better than sitting at home and dying, you know, which is the problem. Yeah. I've got a guy with a broken leg that I've got him doing like the seated deadlift. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, it sucks, but what's he going to do? Like he broke his femur, right? You know, right? But I guess where a coach comes in handy, because I think if someone is doing it on their own, they'd be like, well, yeah, I can't. What do I do? What do I do? I'm hurt. I guess I'd be right. But the coach would be like, no, you're fine.  Dirt on it, boy. Right. Like you're going to be OK. Sure. And it's good to have that someone just to push you like that. So that's another thing. So we did intermediate thing. What would you call it? I was doing like a split. Yeah. Four days, four days, split. And then after that, what was it? You had DUP? Is that what you do? Yeah, I think it was DUP. And that was terrible. Yeah. That's you got real strong. That sucked. Yeah. No, I got strong. But that was another thing. It was weird. You didn't block now. What am I doing now? Yeah. I'm going to block. Yeah. This is a version of block. I don't even know. I don't even ask. But the DUP, what I thought was interesting was, and this is where, again, like that where you have to trust the process, trust the coach, was with the deadlifts, there were some days where it was just like, it was really heavy and you're having me do a lot of reps. And I was like, I can't do this. Like I can do one rep or two reps. And you're just like, I have to do five of them and then like two sets of it. Two sets, right? And you're like, no, it's okay. You know, you're not going to get it, but you're eventually going to get it. And I was like, I don't think so. And then, but I'll be darned. Like three weeks later, I was hitting it. I was getting it. So that was weird. I mean, and sure. And, but I was glad when we were done with DUP. The first time anybody goes into advanced programming where they've come out of this idea that like the fatigue process, right? The stress recovery adaptation, that stress, the time that it takes me to go through that entire stress recovery adaptation process goes from every day to weekly. And then you get into this thing where all of a sudden I'm trying to drive up your fatigue for four, five, six weeks in a row and then dissipate it. So that we get enough stress to break home your stasis enough and then allow you to recover to get the needed adaptation, which becomes harder and harder and harder as you become more advanced, right? You can't, at this point, you can't deadlift 535 on Saturday and then do 540 on Monday and then 545 on Wednesday. It's like not possible. So this entire stress recovery adaptation cycle elongates. And the first time somebody's exposed to that where they've never really had to go through several weeks of fatigue buildup, it crushes them.  I mean, it's more psychologically. Oh, for sure. Not the, I mean, you're tired, but like the psychology, you feel like I should be able to do this. Like I feel fine physically, but then you get down there and you're just like, no, it's not happening. And it happens like workout after workout after workout. You go into the training session already tired. Right. And it beats you down. And I remember there's a few moments, like I remember, you know, I'd write my reports to you and be like, dude, this is just really depressing.  And you'd be like, okay, well, that's when you do things like, oh, let's take a look at your diet and let's tweak that a bit. But yeah, it's so weird. Like the next week, everything's awesome. And I don't, it's just, it's weird. It's the weirdest thing. So what was your bachelor's in? Bachelor degree? Letters at the University of Oklahoma. So that's basic. Like classic. Yeah. So it's just a fancy way of saying to manage degrees. Actually, letters is the very first degree that like medieval universities gave out back in the day. So it was connected with the classics department. So I had to take Latin. I had to take a modern language. I had to study philosophy, literature, history, all that good stuff. So we're in a book club. Actually, all three of us do that. We read kind of the ancient great text of the great books, the great books of Western civilization. Intellectual linear progression. That's right. We do an intellectual linear progression. I wanted to ask you, what has occurred in your own life in the refining process of barbell training? And can you compare that to what you've seen in this intellectual linear progression as well? Having gone through that even as a young man, right? So even at the time that you were in your batch, I assume 19, 20, 21 years old, what does this look like for you? If we pull away from the physical side, what has the barbell training done for you mentally, emotionally, socially? And then how does that look in that kind of big picture of this linear? So emotionally, barbell training can become addictive in a way. It's like you chase numbers and that's, it's kind of scary that I'm like, okay, I've always thought 500, that's it. I'm done. I'll quit, yeah. No, okay, now it's 600 now. Yeah, right. I'm going for 600. And it's like, this is safe. But no, going back to that, we were talking about some stoicism last night, right? The way you master fate is just to accept the burden of fate, right? And barbell training is a lot like that.  The idea of success in life is just showing up. And that's the same with barbell training. Like you just, you get down there and do the work. It's gonna be, it might be the crappiest workout.  So the next time you go in there and you've created that habit, you'll go in there the next time you do better. So I think, I mean, that was to say that the big picture thing that's what I love about barbell training is that if you just show up in life, if you accept that things are gonna be hard, you can get through it.  We often think we're very fragile. And in a lot of ways we are, right? But it's amazing how fast we can recover from things. You know, we were talking, we were reading the Aeneid. This guy, his city burnt down. He had to carry his dad on his shoulders. His wife died. But this guy was able to push on. He was able to soldier on. I'm sure you guys seen people in your own lives where just tragedy strikes. And you think, man, how can anyone recover from that? But they do. They do. I mean, I think that should give people a lot of hope.  It's gonna hurt for a while. But I think there's that whole stress, adaptation, recovery thing that happens to us psychologically too. Like you're gonna become stronger in the process.  You can push yourself further than you thought. So maybe that's another thing you can learn from barbell training. Yeah, I think the barbell training prepares you better for those times in life than for those who haven't done it, right? So I certainly don't wanna call tragedy on my life, but I do feel like I'm better prepared to handle it if I have to, if I am called to do that because of the barbell training that I've done. There was a thread on Reddit last week, Big Earthquakes in Mexico last week. And a guy said, you know, I think the title of the thread was, this is why we train. And there were these earthquakes and the guy lived kind of in the country and like four in the morning, they jump in the truck and drive into town. And the guy spent all day like carrying cases of water and dragging people out of wrecks, you know? And he's like, you know, my dead lifts up in the mid fours for sets now.  And this is why we train. When I had TV, I mean, I still have a TV. I don't have cable or anything, but you watch The Biggest Loser.  This is a terrible, like it wasn't like physiological. Like they were there physiologically. Like the psychology, it wasn't there.  Barbell training. Just mean to move their food farther and farther. Right. Farther and farther away. Linear progress. Linear progress. But no, what barbell training does, I think exercise in general is like, you get comfortable with being uncomfortable, right? When you have 400 pounds on your shoulders and you're like, this is going to suck. And I feel like I'm going to die, but you know, you're not going to die, right? You can do it. And if you can't get the squad, their safety depends there. But when we did that session a while back ago where I did, I think 375 for a set of four, which was like a rep PR for me. On that fourth rep, I literally thought I was going to die. Like this is the most terrible thing in the world. I mean, as soon as I was done, I just laid down.   Everything's going to be okay. I want to talk about you turning the TV off. How long you guys been without television? Without cable. Like we have, so we have a TV. We just don't have cable. It's been probably two years. So you realize you're paying what, $150, $170. And you're like, I watched one channel. I watched one TV show. So I was like, why don't I just get Roku and just, so yeah, it's like, we watch, the only TV we watch is American Ninja Warrior. Okay. So we, we, our family loves American Ninja Warrior when we did Downton Abbey last year, watched through that. And that, that's it. Like I, I started watching a man in the high castle. I didn't, I mean, it was okay. I didn't get into it where I wanted to keep going. We got about five, six episodes. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's okay. It wasn't, it wasn't as arresting as Downton Abbey. You always want to know what happened to the Lord Grand. Yeah, we watched it too. I watched every episode of Downton. I don't watch anything. Reynolds is like, have you seen? Oh, nevermind. Don't worry about it. I've never seen anything. I started to ask him. The last movie I saw in a theater was the SpongeBob movie, like 10 years ago. That's terrible. It's the last movie I've ever seen. It's one of my kids. It's like sacrifice work.   I love SpongeBob. But what I am doing, I bought an old school TV antenna. I'm going to put it up. Cause you, if you have cable connections all through your house, you can connect to an antenna, put it on your house, and then use that cable connection to, you know, give TV to all your HD TVs in your house. So I want to do that. Cause like I want to watch a football game every now and then on Saturday. I can't do that right now with the Roku. So that makes sense. So I'm going to do, we watch TV like 1955 here. That's a lot of our TV time has been replaced under barbell. Yeah. We train in the evening, you know, and, you know, we train in the, in the garage. We can see the houses across the street. They've only got the light in the window, you know, cause they're all watching TV and we're out there sweating and grunting. Yeah. I used to think it's a sports fan, huge sports fan. I mean, I was one of these kids that would read the sports Almanac growing up and memorize the stats and yeah, and played, you know, fantasy, everything, fantasy football, baseball, yeah. It was more, it was more about bragging rights with your buddies and stuff. But since the business has grown into, since I think I grew up at some point and realized that my time was more valuable than that. I don't think that sports are immoral or anything. I think they're amoral. Obviously they're not necessarily good or bad. And then there's pieces of sports that I actually really like. But for me, it was one of those deals where I was busy enough that I was gonna train for sure. And I trained with my wife and it's something that my wife and I are able to do together. And then when I have free time in the evenings with my family, if I'm watching sports, I've got two little girls, a wife and two little girls, they don't wanna watch sports. And so I ended up, you know, we don't, and we're the same way. We actually have access to cable TV, but it's only because our internet comes from the same company and it doesn't save us any money to not have cable TV. So I'm basically paying the same price for internet. I would pay the extra to not have it. To not have it? Yeah, I know. It's actually something to think about and yank it anyway. Anyway, it's good. So last piece of this is good.  Like why were you drawn to that? Both in like intellectually and physically.  I know, I'm a masochist. I don't know. It's more than that. I don't know. It's just, I think it's the way I was raised. My family background, just playing sports and football where you're inculcated in that, like you do hard things because they make you better. That's what I think it comes from. I mean, it's just the way I grew up. And that's what I like. But the funny thing is there's a lot of people I grew up, they did the same thing I did, but they're not really doing that anymore. So I don't know what the difference is. I mean, I don't know. I don't know what the difference maker is. You just got, I mean, at a certain point, it's up to the person. You can do everything you can.  I think about it with the guys that I mentor, the guys in their 20s. And you go like, how do I get these guys to buy? How do I get my own kids to buy into? Like we model this extremely well. It's hard. I think we overestimate, like especially with parenting, like how much influence parenting can have. I think it makes us feel like we're in control, but we're not. I mean, I've seen families where the parents did the exact same thing. One kid turned out fantastic. The other one was just, okay, failure to launch. Predestination. That's right. I mean, it could have been, I mean, because there's so many factors in there. There's their genetics, there's their friends they hung out with, there's the timing of when they were born and the kind of the culture Milu they were surrounded in. So I mean, I think parents need to cut themselves some slack. You know, you realize, okay, you can do the best you can and it might not turn out the way you hope it would turn out. But what do you do? I mean, the only thing you do is just show by example. Sure. And. Well, that's really what you've done with the website, with Art of Mainlandness and with the new launch of The Strenuous Life. That you, I guess, do you think that you're reaching guys now who are already committed to voluntary hardship and then you're giving them a pathway to continue down that road? Or do you think you're actually converting some people who were not wired for voluntary hardship? That's a great, that's a hard question. But with The Strenuous Life, I think it's mainly guys who have been looking for it. Yeah. What we're trying to do with The Strenuous Life. So for people who don't know what it is, we started this thing called The Strenuous Life. It's basically Boy Scouts for Men. They've created badges based around 50 different skills. They have to do an hour of physical activity every day. I don't care what it is. It could be yoga for all that care. I just want people to move their bodies. It's just for the badge. Just for the barbell badge. There's a barbell badge too. But no, there's an hour of physical activity and then like a good deed every day. When you have to check in every day, make sure you did these things. And it's been amazing the feedback we've been getting. It's like, guys, I'm saying, I've been looking for this. I've been wanting to push myself, but I don't have a structure. Yeah. No accountability. No accountability. I don't know what to do. I don't know where to get started. I mean, that's why I love Boy Scouts as a kid. Is you just go in and like, here's the stuff you do. And you do this stuff. You're going to learn some things and you're going to be better. And so that's what we're doing with the Strenuous Life. So I think we are attracting guys who are like, this is what they had an itch. They wanted to scratch. There's a lot of former military guys who are signing up who are like, I miss this sort of thing. So am I getting people who are just like super lazy? Probably not. Maybe the art of, hopefully we do an art of manliness. We'll, you know, convince them otherwise. But I think what I think the goal there is with that stuff, you can't, you can't preach it. I think men don't respond to preaching where you just like get on a, you know, preaching Adam for, you know, blah, blah, blah. This is what you need to do. Like maybe some guys do where you just like, they do all the, they say all the trite things. Like push yourself by like, even as a, as a football player where I'm like, when my coaches did that, I was like, okay, that doesn't, that is an inspirational quotes. Doesn't do it. It doesn't do it for me. Yeah. I remember like the thing my football coach would say, be like, this is like so hard that normal people can't do this. And you guys are going to be so much more successful because you played football. And I was like, I don't think that's necessary. Cause I know a lot of guys here that probably aren't going to be that successful. I know a lot of guys who played football that were successful. They're still talking only about the days they used to play football. Right. Right. That was the highlight of their life. Right. Exactly. I love what you do because for a lot of reasons, but one of the things is there, I don't know, people are becoming more sort of, I don't know, siloed. Right. And there used to be lots of fraternal organizations and lots of outlets for men to be men among each other and help each other. And those things don't exist anymore or they're marginalized and they existed for a reason. And now people don't pay any heed to those older organizations. And there's a big void there to be filled. And you help do that. You reach these people through a medium that they can relate to and kind of feel that need. It's a big deal. Yeah. And that's what I'm hoping that strenuous life does. Cause one of the things we're hoping it does is it gets people together in actual meat space, like, you know, get together. It's like, we're going to do a thing tomorrow. Yeah. Right. And there's, I think, how many five or six guys who are coming? A few more. Yeah. A few more who are going to do some deadlift. And then we're going to go to Ruck. Deadlift. Ruck. Cause I think it's important, like, especially for men and in their 30s and 40s are some of the loneliest people in the world. Yeah. And loneliness, like it hurts not only psychologically, but physically. And it's, I think one of the reasons why you're seeing this opioid thing that's happening in a lot of these, and a lot of, and then a lot of America's that people are just lonely. They're sad. Yeah. And there's no outlet for that anymore. They don't have a place where they can go.  And provide the framework for guys to get together and, and actually do stuff that's valuable together. Right. So as a, it's not just watching sports, watching you guys see the fight. There's nothing wrong with that. It's something that recognizes a call to something greater here and we can actually refine ourselves physically, mentally, emotionally, socially, all these things where, where we're missing out because we, because we're often, most of us are stuck in kind of suburb hell. Right. Where our life is going to soccer practice all the time. Right. You pull the car in the garage, put the door down, then get out. But that's exactly right. Nobody sits on the front porch. Nobody knows their neighbors anymore, right? Right. So air conditioning, central air conditioning gets invented and all of a sudden there's no eaves over hanging eaves. Nobody's out on the front porch or back porch anymore. It's the, you know, our friend Mel Ripley, he went to one of our training days we had here in Tulsa and they had like 40 people show up to train together we weren't, weren't in the clinic or anything. We just threw a weightlifting party essentially. And he called me and he's like, I can't believe how supportive everybody was.  Everybody was just cheering his son on, you know, the, there's a guy there that actually, he was just trained at this gym and he came over to me and he said, what's that kid's name? And I said, well, that's, you know, that's a, that's Jacob. And so when Jacob went up to deadlift, that guy was just yelling for him, you know? And I was like, you know, I wish I had that kind of community all the, all the time.  Sure. But yeah, people are dying for that. People, it is the thing. It's like, it's so weird. It's like, we've forgotten how to socialize, right? Particularly, I think, you know, 20-somethings, 30-somethings.  Yeah. Let's play bridge. Yeah, bring a castle roll. Bring a castle, like it's, keep it low. And I think, I feel like millennials, particularly they have to have like high expectations of how things should be. It's like, it needs to be awesome because it's going to be on Instagram. Sure. It's going to be on Pinterest. So they have to like make it like cute. And they have to like, it's all this work. So it's so much work. They're like, I'm not even going to do this. When it's just like, you know, just invite some people over to your house, order a pizza, train Bartone, yeah, take the phones, put it face down. That's right. And I think also too, we tend to outsource our socialization or the organization of socializing to companies, right? It's like, I'm going to let this company figure out what we're going to do. Say more about that. Like who would they be? These events that like the mud runs and like it's like, it's super elaborate conferences. Like, I mean, that's how people socialize. Like I'm going to go to a conference, right? Pay money. It's like, you don't need to do that to socialize. You don't need to do that.  When Terry and I first got married, there was a couple in their like 80s that lived on the corner from us. And every Friday, there would be cars out there. And we were taking a walk one day and I could see in the window, they were playing cards. Next Monday evening, I went and banged on the door and I'm like, you guys know how to play bridge? And I'm like, yeah, we have a bridge game every Friday. And so we played bridge with them every Wednesday for years. And people used to do that all the time. You think it's going to be boring but it's actually pretty fun. You play it for like the conversation.  And that's why I like barbell train. I think if you have a gym in your garage, like that's such a great opportunity to get some people over just like, hey, want a deadlift? And I think most, if you ask most guys that, they're going to like jump at the chance to do that. So we did that. I'm like the leader of the men's group in my church and I need to do an activity cause like they don't really do anything. So I was like, let's just do doughnut, deadlifts and doughnuts. So I bought, you know, two dozen doughnuts. And we had like eight or nine guys show up which is more than- It's not enough doughnuts. It's not enough doughnuts, right. Wouldn't be for us. Cause like I was just deadlift. They were excited to like, oh, I'm going to get the deadlift. Yeah, do something hard. Do something hard. So it doesn't have, I mean, I would encourage you if you all are listening to this. And that's what I love about most of the people who are into strength community, get that. I mean, I love one of the things I love going to the meat just like everyone's just super cool and down to earth. The strength community is not what you see in the online community. The trolls there are much louder than everybody else. If you actually go where strength people are, they're the kindest people you'll ever meet. Because the stronger they are, the more they've gotten their butt kicked and the more they understand what you're doing and they're just the nicest people. They really are. I think the primary target is like, everyone needs to be strong. Yeah. Yeah, it's about strength and health and the refinement that occurs there before aesthetics. Right? And aesthetics comes. I mean, we see it with Brett, right? So, so it's... I do see it. It was all right. Oh, thank you. I could, listen, we met last, was it last week we met for lunch? Yeah. And you got out of the car and I was like, oh my God, look at that guy. He's like jacked and making me blush.   I was wearing my shorty shorts. Yeah. The shorty shorts. So, aesthetics certainly is part of that. It's a byproduct of this performance increase, but the fitness industry is rife with all these people that all they care about is the aesthetics. And so then, and most people don't know any better, right? That that is what fitness is to them. And so, still there's probably an enormous percentage of your listeners, of your readers, of your website, of kind of like, wait, what are they doing? Like I thought they don't look like a men's health model, like the guy that's on the cover of the magazine. Like, well, you don't understand. That guy didn't eat any food or drink any water for four days and took diuretics and tan and everything just for the photo shoot. He's super not healthy for that photo shoot just so he can look what you think is healthy. They oiled that guy down.  They took those photos. He collapsed and started an IV. Yeah, right, right. For real. Yeah. Like I was talking to a guy, he called me, he wanted training and he said, you know, the Brad pitch or was fight club scene. That's it. I'm like, no, listen. It's not gonna happen. Brad pits, I think he's six foot tall. He looked it up. I think he was six foot tall and he probably weighed. Springfield was already native, by the way. He weighed about 165. He was a bit older for a bit. He probably weighed 165 in that. And, of course, he read the script. They signed the contract. He knew he was gonna shoot the film eight months out. Sure. So they start working. And get paid $18 million. $18 million. So he can sacrifice a little bit of health because he's gonna get paid. Of course. So he starts training for this. And then he knows, okay, Friday we're shooting that scene. So he's taking every drug. He's drinking horse pee. Right. Then he takes all the diuretics. He sweats, he sits in the sun. He does all that stuff. They shoot that scene. They start the IV. He collapses. He collapses. They start an IV because he's dehydrated. And then all the guys watch the movie and go, I wanna look just like that guy. Right. Look how well he performed in the fight in the basement of Fight Club on that scene. In that movie. Wait a minute. And then meanwhile, you got 19-year-old guy. He weighs 231. He squats 115. That's like, man, we just wanna help you get better. Let's not worry about pit. Can we help you get better? And also what I like about it is, I feel like a lot of guys, the reason they don't even get into physical fitness at all is they think it takes too much time. Whenever I post like PRs, they're like, I would love to do that, but I don't have any time. I can't train every day. And I'm like, dude, I train three, maybe four times a week and it's 45 minutes. You need three hours a week. Right. Give me three hours a week. Because that's all it takes. And you don't have to make your whole life around it. And you can have a family and still do it and still get strong. Yeah, I mean like three times a week. It's all I trained. I mean, I guess I'm doing four times a week now. Yeah, but you're also advanced. Right. But when you first start out. It's still not that much time. Right, but it's still not that much. 45 minutes tops. Yeah, right. And if you're not watching TV, if you're not watching TV. You get plenty of time. Yeah, right. You get plenty of time. What's the average person watch TV? It's something, it's still something crazy even though. It's 20 hours a week. Yeah, it's still something insane. Yeah, it's crazy. Like we just added computers to that. I was reading some study about that. Yeah. Dude, thanks for being on the show. No, this was fun. I really appreciate it. Yeah.  You've helped us tremendously, but I'm just thankful for the fact that you've just been consistent for two straight years. You know, it's one of those awesome things. Well, look at the guy's bracelet. He's wearing a bracelet. This is do it now. Do it now. It's good. Yeah, I got to get you one of these things. So wait, what's next on the table for me? Well, you've got the meat's coming up. So the meat's coming up the end of October for you. So I like to ask you a question.  Last week of January or something like that? Second week of January. You want to go to Nationals? Yeah, I've already talking about my wife's. We've got friends in San Francisco. So we're tentatively planning together. Are you guys going to go? I'll be there. OK. So if you go, or some of my clients go, I'll go. I'm actually flying home from Hawaii the day before. But what I may do is just book the flight to San Francisco since I'm coming from Hawaii anyway, have my family go on home and I'll stop in San Francisco for the next couple of days and then come home two days later or whatever. That's I certainly can do that. So yeah, well, what we'll do is we'll be cool for you at the meat is that you're going to set three PRs, three individual PRs and a total PR at a weight class lower than you did last time, which is cool. So the weight has finally has gone down. You're leaner, you're stronger. You've got more muscle. All those things have occurred. And because you're stronger, you can set quantifiable things. And so then after the meat, we'll do the same thing that we did last time and we'll have the discussion. Say, OK, where do you want to go now? Well, I think that it's time to do a powerlifting meat down the road, like an actual power like an actual with the benchpress. So my benchpress is terrible, though. It's not that good. I mean, it's it's past 300 pounds. Yeah. So I bet you benchpress 315 by Thanksgiving. That'd be pretty cool, man, because we identified where the weak point is now. Right. So yeah. Well, thanks for being on the show. Thanks for what you've done at Art of Mainlandness and the strenuous life. It's been it's been awesome. We've got such a great crossover appeal, I think. And so I know we've got a ton of our clients that are big Art of Mainlandness fans and we've had a ton of guys sign up from Art of Mainlandness for online coaching. And it's been awesome. No, it's been fun. Thanks. Anything you need to plug? No, Art of Mainlandness. The Strenuous Life.co. .co. Yeah. Yeah. I got the .com finally. The guy finally sold it to me. Nice. But it's .co. Squatter. I'm going with that. So yeah. The Strenuous Life.co. If you want to get into Boy Scouts for Men, right? So earn some badges and do a barbell badge. Do hard things. Yeah, we set that up. So well, this is Barbell Logic. I'm Scott. You can find me on Instagram. I'm at Scott underscore silver strength Reynolds is at Reynolds strong. And we'll talk to you guys in a few days. Thank you.


Hey guys, it's Wilson here today. We are going to be shooting something a little bit differently We're doing a reaction video and this is coming straight from our director Jason the guy behind the camera It's something that we are doing a little bit more fun.  And I'm definitely very very guilty of it and that the funny thing is I'm actually on the other side and on the other end as a As an operator as an restaurant operator. I also have experience dealing with crazy customers like this all the time So it's really interesting to be able to see how someone actually plays this out, but nonetheless Was that you let them in I do let them in I Am guilty because when I used to work in the restaurant industry. I don't let them in I Yeah, I just tell them we're closed. Yeah, but then usually that is when the the owners are not there and Yeah, I am guilty guys But when I'm the owner I would I would always be like yo you gotta make that last buck that could be a $20 ticket Take them take them because that $20 ticket can easily pay for that Person's 10 bucks salary. So as an owner, it's funny actually being able to see the different roles that you play whether you're the owner or the cashier or the customer It is so funny because this whole script is about the three characters and all three characters I truly understand which is why This is video is actually quite interesting Dixie wherever you like That is so funny I was never like a crazy customer like him before but I totally can relate to that because when people come in and ask for ice cream They're like, hey, you know what?  They ordered an extra large ice cream That is exactly how I feel all the time when I go dine at restaurants is that It's funny because every time I'm at a restaurant I kind of like gaze around like hey, you know what how long has these people have been there What are they ordering and that often times I get upset because I would order and This guy comes in after me He places is an order and he gets his food first and that's what really really gets to me is like when this guy comes in 10 minutes After me and he gets his food first and then my wife goes yapping yapping app and I go yapping yapping But usually we're a little bit nicer customers. We never really tell The waiters that you know what? Why is there food here already? Why is our food not here? But definitely it's something that always goes through my mind all the time. It's like something that is bothering It's crazy.  I don't really like this flavor. It tastes as wonky And yet we have and they have this expectation for us to give them a new ice cream free of charge This stuff actually happens like this guy's good Thank you Okay, okay, what's going on here your employee just beginning when I was trying to eat now boss I can explain how you're fired. No, we don't need two dollars now for this.  I actually thoroughly enjoyed reacting to this but it's a little bit kind of yeah I think you know what cow did an amazing job actually portraying these crazy customers And if there's only one lesson you guys can take away from this It is to always always back up your staff given the fact that they are doing the right thing Because customers are always crazy There's so many crazy customers out there and as owners if you always just go about a moto of Customers are always right then unfortunately you're gonna have back that motor up Sacrificing the loyalty from your staff and why is that the case? It is because your staff would feel that you know what you're gonna throw me under the bus regardless So why would I have and give you any loyalty? Why would I want to stay at a restaurant that doesn't back me up? Whereas if you're if you're owner and if the manager Backs up the staff and if they feel supported if they feel that they can do the right thing They can and be empowered to say no to crazy customers that are out there There are so many crazy customers out there and if they feel that they're being taken care of then the staff is gonna Stay there much much longer. You're gonna have much more loyalty from this staff You're gonna have much more happy staff to help you build your restaurant I really hope you enjoyed this video. Make sure you let me know Is this the type of video that you want to watch something a little bit lighter something a little bit more engaging? If it is make sure you smash the like button and let me know in the comment section below How we can improve until then see you guys in the next video


Thank you. Hello. Thanks for having me Before I start a little bit about my employer that thankfully allows me to be here with you Yelp has got a website and an app to help you find great local businesses And we got over 120 million user reviews and we are active in over 32 countries So to help you make sure you find the correct business that does what you wanted to do and have a good experience So let's dive right into it. What will I be talking about? First of all, just Specify what I mean with end-to-end tests Then discuss the problem that we have with setting up end-to-end tests See how a fixture or data factories help solve the problem And just to clarify because some people ask me what I mean with fixtures Fixtures are the tasks you need to do to set up the Environments or your tests can run in our case. That's mostly inserting data into data stores But it can also be all sorts of other tasks and then lastly, how can that help us make the test faster? So end-to-end tests some people call them system tests acceptance tests I've seen people say now that but those are integration tests. Yes Integration tests are something where you might just test like one external component. Whereas end-to-end tests Are defined as or I see them as an environment where you try to replicate as much of your production environment as possible So you spin up as many internal services as possible And you try to be as close to production as possible and then you run your test on that test infrastructure This means these tests are typically the slowest tests to run and they're also the most expensive tests in that sense And you know, so we want to make sure they are effective because if you have a distributed architecture Those tests are crucial in making sure that you know everything works in production and works together Obviously unit tests are still your foundation of everything, but they don't tell you that everything fits in together nicely so just a quick shout-out to the technologies we use in our technology stack That are relevant to this talk. So I'll be mentioning these we use pyramid the web framework We use swagger slash open API to communicate between services and in the example here I'm going to be using my SQL with SQL alchemy Again, we also use a lot of other software like for data stores most notably Cassandra elastic search Several others doesn't matter for this talk So what do I mean with a distributed architecture? I'm sure like many of you are familiar with this You have Services here in this image. It's called microservices doesn't have to be the point is that these services are Not necessarily running on the same host. They are separated by a network layer And in our case the code bases are also separated We don't have a big mono rate for some like some companies. These are in separate git repositories and just like in production also in testing these Services are spun up separately and separate Docker containers and then communicate over the network and so the problem the hard part about end-to-end tests is that You have to create the correct state for your tests and not only your own service and your own service data store But also in all dependent so downstream services that you are calling And so how did we do that? well I'm not really happy to say but yes We basically wrote a bunch of SQL for my my SQL so Yeah, I got these files and when your Docker container is created for your downstream services then we just run SQL insert some data and Then use that data and tests this means you have very tight coupling to your downstream services and Yeah, it's hard to write Because we write raw SQL. It's hard to get right. You might forget stuff You might do it differently than your production code would have created that data and it's hard to maintain so What are some of the possible solutions if you take a look at what Django does they have Well their own ORM and you can use it really nicely and tests you you import your model And you have a nice Python API to creating the data you need You do that in the setup function and it actually even cleans up after the test is run So this is pretty nice but we'd like that for downstream services as well and without code duplication so without having to do that like in and Multiple services that call one in the same service Like yeah, we don't want to repeat ourselves So since we don't use Django internally, I mentioned that we use pyramid and SQL alchemy. What can we do? well This is what my talk is about We are creating or yes, we have these Factory libraries that basically generate the data that you need for your tests With a nice Python API and they contain the SQL alchemy models you need for that plus Creation functions that provide a slightly higher level of abstraction They take care of things like default values here So don't have to specify all of that if it really doesn't matter for your test and they make sure your data is logically correct So making sure that if you create a Certain object a certain row in a table you also create all other rows that should be created at the same time This is especially important since we like other companies that run my scale at scale Disabled foreign key checks for performance reasons for scalability So we can't even rely on the database telling us that we forgot to create a relation And lastly If you have these packages all of a sudden you document which services are using which other services Datastore API for their testing So all of a sudden what you didn't know beforehand or couldn't figure out reliably now you can actually Figure out manually and automatically creating a nice dependency graph and telling you which pieces of code you need to look at if you change something in the data model So let's take a look at such an example and to end test how it looked previously Yeah, it's basically we use pytest for testing So I'll talk a little bit about that later the important part here is we do a get request It's really not that complicated. I would say and in the URL we pass two parameters to test this endpoint It's if I didn't mention that it's like arrest APIs With Jason basically I think what many people are using So we pass a business ID and a question ID And how do we do that? We pass them as hard-coded ins So there's an actual number in the test and that number Corresponds to the ID We specified in those as real statements. I showed you before And then we use them here Both for the business ID and the question ID and you know, we pass some other parameters Doesn't really matter in this case and then we assert on the response So how do we want to that test to look? How do we want to change it? How does it look now? First of all, so you you see I don't know if you could see that it's basically just three lines that change The first line is the top line Where we pass Pi test fixtures, this is why I'm using data factories now for those libraries we use to create the data because Pi test uses the same term fixtures for setting up your tests and it does that in Providing special functions that you mark as fixtures and then if you use that function name as an argument to your test function It executes that fixture function and returns or provides in that argument whatever That function returns. We're going to see an example in a second I hope that makes it clearer But the point is that like question and business ID is now something that gets done during setup and provided here as Arguments that we can use so the only two other lines that change are now where we pass the business ID And we don't specify an hard-coded integer anymore But we actually pass whatever an ID was generated for the business and we do the same for the question and So those are the code changes in the test itself What we get to do now in addition is delete those ugly SQL lines We used to set that Set up the test previously But now the important question is how do we actually generate such a business ID or the business data? Well, the fixture itself is very short because it delegates all the work to that Factory library I mentioned earlier We mark it with a decorator so Pytest knows it's a fixture and then it calls the create method on the business factory to create a Business with frankly like all of the default values. We don't care what specific business it is for our test So how does that create method look like? This is it. We get the option of passing all sorts of Values to to customize the business if we want But really all it does is use the business model, which is an SQL alchemy model Which is not important for this specific examples and and and creates An instance of that model in the database and returns the ID This provides reasonable defaults that we don't have to specify for each test and it prevents DRY so we don't need to repeat ourselves But you might now ask me why do we need these? Functions can't we just use the models directly? As I mentioned, we don't have foreign key checking And even if we did like not everything can be Caught by foreign key checking Sometimes your production code only generates Data entries together and you want to do the same in your tests So in this case it's for a business owner or this user how we call it internally and you can see there's like a business or private table That should always have an entry for any entry that is in the business user table And there's another relation with a business user business table that might have one or more entries that connects a business user to a business on Yelp So What do we do here? We want our code to mirror like as closely as possible as what our production code does So let's take a look at the business user fixture and what we do here. We can see it's relatively the same to the business fixture in the beginning and creates an a bis user entry with the SQL alchemy model, but then Here it also always creates an entry in the bis user private table. So you can't Not do that, which is exactly what we want And it also since most of the time you want to associate a business user with a business It also does this here as a convenience With a second method that it calls for you if you provide a business ID that you can still use in your test separately In case you need it for your test So There's another case Maybe you'll say well, this is all nice But I actually do have some services that provide me with a data creation API Can I use that? Yes, that actually integrates very well with this approach So in this case we got a service that's called question and answer we use Swagger so a library called bravado to communicate with that service We make a request to the service we pass some parameters and we get as a result a Question object and this is also a pie test fixture That we can then use and I did in the example before we just specify question And then this piece of code gets executed and returns the data Now while this is possible and this is indeed code I've taken out of an internal repository You should be aware that in contrast to using models and those factory methods or functions rather This has the disadvantage that it kind of assumes that you can actually like communicate with that service and that The specific endpoint will work and return data So in case it doesn't for whatever reason instead of getting a nice test failure that That really points you to the issue you get an error at fixture function execution Which is a little bit harder to debug so just be aware of that Now Let's discuss a little bit the pros and cons why I like this approach I think it's a natural fit for pie test fixtures. It just integrates very well It also provides much easier data creation if you like if you look at this you could Use those pie test fixture functions to execute raw SQL and you would get some of the same benefits But you would still have to write SQL. You would still have this extremely tight coupling Yeah, and it just this provides a nice Python API also It Makes sure people create separate data entries for each test automatically since once you have written those pie test fixtures Most of the time all people need to do is just use those arguments in their test function And it will automatically create new entries for each test which has several advantages that I'll get into just in a second And you don't have to Convert all of your tests immediately you can actually just for example Write new tests with this pattern and not touch your existing tests or migrate them slowly And this will all continue to work One thing you do need to do is you need to maintain those Libraries with those factories It's a little bit of overhead in our experience. It's actually not that much work but it is another repository with more code, so be aware of that and It can be potentially slower, especially if you use to share Like these fixtures these data between tests Because you now well create new entries for each test Every time you run it and that can be slower Which is not great since I used the word faster in my title So let's take a look at what we can do to make them faster Well, this is actually very easy use all of the cores your machine has or Your test executor You know run more tests in parallel There's two issues with end-to-end tests in particular That might Make this a problem since it's about writing data so first of all Many tests are not repeatable So you can't run them more than once without resetting your data stores. This is not a problem here For just running them once if you then reset your data store But let's keep it in mind for later and the second one is that if you share Data between tests you now all of a sudden depend on execution order and this is something You'll see in a second. We've encountered With our tests So you write these tests and they use the same business and one test changes something about the business and the second test runs And everything is fine because it knows that this data was changed But if you parallelize tests, you can't guarantee test execution order So depending on which test runs first one of them or even both of them might start to fail So, but how do we actually run tests in parallel? Well, this is it for pie test. That's actually really easy. You install something You provide the parameter n with the number of workers or processes you want a pie test to use and That's it Well, since we did that Before converting any of our tests just to see if that would work Well, it turns out it didn't this is just a Sample list of issues we had and you can see we got a bunch of test failure So this is not something you can simply do and this is why these Fixture factories or data factories help because once you do Isolate your tests and you have separate data entries for each test You fix this issue since you at that point what one test does the other test doesn't really care about anymore. So Oh, actually one thing that I did want to mention even if you just randomized test execution order You will get most of these failures. So Paralyzing tests is just something to make it faster But in my experience, especially if using something like pie test which has a deterministic test Execution order by default if you randomize test execution, which is basically what we do with parallelizing you get these failures So you can see here the latest issue or the last issue in the list was let's enable Parallel test execution for all of our acceptance tests. We call them acceptance tests internally So we should be fine, right? turns out that We weren't fine There were just issues that we only discovered when more people were running the tests in parallel Simply because even if they do run in parallel Pie test doesn't really always Randomize to test or run them in completely different order So the more people use your tests the more issues you will discover and again this resulted in basically us switching more and more of those end-to-end tests to use those data factories I Provided the number four in our example for how to execute or how many Processes to use I can tell you that at least for us Using more than four processes didn't provide a significant speed up But it did cut down execution time by roughly 60 percent and as you know And to end tests are like the slowest. So this is actually a significant speed up Plus it provides you with you know a nice API. It's easier to write those tests and since we also solved a problem of test repeatability it means that you can actually like When you do develop the tests you can actually run them multiple times without having to Reset your data store state across your downstream services because Since you always create new data entries. You never get a problem with like I don't know you wanted to like reply to a message and the first time it works and the second time It says well you actually already reply to that message But if every time you run the test it creates a new message and then tests if you can reply to that message Your test will just continue to work So what are the main takeaways of my talk? First of all if you use this kind of pattern you will get faster developments and not only test execution, but People will be able to write tests faster and encounter less frustration in writing these complex end-to-end tests And you will get more correct test data We've had multiple instances where we discovered that the test setup we did using a raw SQL Was not the correct one like it didn't represent how the data would look like in production Convert tests for test isolation and repeatability. This is basically what all those Jira issues I showed you were about If you do that then you can also actually make your tests faster by for example running them in parallel And you will just get much better tests up set up anyway since you Really don't want to depend on test order execution Um, yeah, and as I mentioned it is also easier to iterate over them Over the tests and if the tests are not hard to write like if it's not such a pain to develop end-to-end tests The developers are more likely to actually write end-to-end tests, which will yield to fewer bugs and more stable software I also wanted to call out since I'm now at the end of my talk Talks by my colleagues that already happened yesterday and the day before yesterday Please check them out. They were really good in my opinion. It's not not a surprise. They are smarter than me They will be online as I assume Yeah They also showed this slide one thing I want to call out here is the engineering block where we have in my opinion really Interesting blog post again written by people smarter than me Yeah, and that is it my slides are online on GitHub There's like just a few typos. I'll need to fix it also contains Some of the speaker not actually all of the speaker notes. It's just not that there is so many So go check that out. That is it. Thank you Okay, we have time for About five minutes of questions if they're already are you running this test on a CI? How are you orchestrating all of these services before running them? Are you running this test like on a CI environment like and How are you orchestrating or the microservices before running them? Okay, so it's actually like really hard to hear from in front here I only saw other speakers struggling with that. So first it was about the CI environment, right? So while you can execute them locally we then use Jenkins for continuous integration and it also spins up everything Yeah, so how we how we set that up in the past we used docker compose for doing that We're actually in the process of switching to an internal Solution called Yelp compose which kind of does what docker compose does but it's more tailored to our environment so basically yeah, you have something that defines your dependencies and The configuration for them the data stores they need and then it builds and spins all of that up Thanks for your talk My question is instead of writing grow a skill.  Yeah, that's a good question Well, first of all our production database is is way too big so We we couldn't use that and basically it yeah couldn't use that and tests So basically we just want to create a set of data we need for well running our our tests and If you depend on production data, you would also again have the same problem of Depending on the fact that the data doesn't change or you know Like you can't just have a fixed set of data that you then always reuse even if you use production data You would say well, there's a business with the ID 100 and I'm going to modify it and then Yeah, you at least don't get test repeatability right like because once you have modified it You need to reset your data in a mere anyhow And you also need to make sure that for example all of the test use all of different businesses From your production data, which again is actually not that easy to coordinate amongst Many teams of developers. So it's most of time just easier to create the data you need. I hope that So I have a question. How do you avoid the data collision in the test especially when running in parallel? Yes Frankly in the case of my SQL, we just let the database take care of it. So We tell it to create a data like an entry and it returns a primary key And then we use that primary key and frankly the database just makes sure that if there's like 10 inserts coming at the same time that it all still works It's really like I can actually expand on that The problem is really with Tests using the same data. So as long as you have row-level locking You you never run into any issues as long as every test uses different rows And as long as you do that you're fine This actually like solves a lot of these kinds of issues at the beginning you showed these model packages, yeah With the factories and the models in them and then you said that it was also kind of an advantage that you can then See the dependencies throughout your code on these models Did you mean that you have? different microservices using integration databases using the same models or did I misunderstand that Yes, so I can give you like a specific example. We have Sessions managed in a specific service And so obviously like since this is a very core part of things We have like multiple other services using that session service. So if you have like a common package that is That creates sessions just as an example then you can reuse that everywhere So at first you don't repeat yourself and second of all you can see like you can write a small script and find out Which other? Repositories use that data creation package, right? So all of a sudden you know Who is actually creating? test data for your session service, so if you plan on doing a backwards incompatible data migration or schema migration at least you know now Who you need to watch out for like at least for their test environments, right Time for one more very quick question. You said that you know Every test uses different data because they are separately created throws But is that like no part of your application logic that for example like takes the count of every Something in the table? Yes, that is a very good question. I was waiting for that. Obviously. It's not solving all of the problems It's true if you had such a test That would be a problem typically for us. You wouldn't like take account of all businesses But there are some cases I can give you an example. We do have Things that are specific for countries, right? So and then if you have tests that Modified a state of something for a country and then you have another test that creates businesses in that country All of a sudden like one of the test influences the other you don't have test isolation anymore and you might get test failures So yes, there are still cases that won't be solved by this It still requires you to manually design your tests that way by for example using a country We don't normally use another tests, you know stuff like that, but yes, you're right But I would say it actually helps in the vast majority of the cases we encountered not all of them Yes, maybe the comment was maybe there's a way to actually specify test order, but So I suggest you continue in the hole because I don't think anyone can hear really and yeah, thank you very much