One thing that I've noticed with powerlifting is, and I followed power lifting as a kid, you know, I was a big fan of, you know, Captain Kirk and, you know, some of those Ed Cohen and all those, those amazing lifters back in the day, powerlifting used to be super, super niche and in the fitness space and I want to ask you this, it seems like it's getting more mainstream in the fitness space. It seems like more people are now looking to powerlifting principles, not necessarily to compete and be all hardcore about it, but because they're seeing the value in powerlifting principles for developing their body, changing how they look. I've seen more women interested in powerlifting today than I ever did before. Am I wrong or does this seem like an accurate? Yeah. I mean, there's definitely, there's an economy to the style of lifting that resonates with a lot of people's end goals, right? Like there's a way to wait. I don't, I don't need to train in the gym for two hours. Likely if you're doing that, you won't be doing that for very long. If you're utilizing powerlifting movements as, as staples in your programming. So I think it's, it's, it's definitely like this cumulative effect where social media, obviously the inception of CrossFit and the popularity of CrossFit, like 2008 on onwards sort of brought these movements to people where, okay, maybe I like the squat bench deadlift stuff or like the squat press deadlift stuff, but I don't really like the Olympic lifting. So it's sort of like fractionated off. And then people started to say, well, where do I get more of this powerlifting?  It's like, okay, these bearded men who help themselves get dressed is really kind of scary. But then you started to see like commercial gyms got real wise and shout out to commercial gyms for like, I mean, I do a lot of work with a franchising Canada called good life fitness. And you know, there's 375 clubs and you can find five, six, seven squat racks in these gyms. It's like, I remember working for the same company 10 years ago. And it's like, maybe you had one and they were thinking about getting rid of it to deter that guy who showed up with a suitcase and a bunch of chalk, right? It's like, I'm going to be here making noise, right? But I think just it's, it's definitely a complimentary skill set. Trainers are now realizing that look, if we can start to utilize these movements and there's, there's better education out there about how to use them effectively, we can start to get results with our clients in a more economical way and more time sensitive way. Arguably one of the most radical shifts that we've seen in the, the commercial gym, I think, bro, you talk about 10 years ago.  So that's over 20 years. It's over two decades. And I would manage 40,000 square foot facilities, huge, huge big box gyms. You'd have one squat rack, maybe it was in the corner, dusty. If you deadlifted in the gym, which I would do sometimes as a trainer, I would deadlift. I'd have people coming up to me, including other trainers telling me, what are you doing? That's terrible.  What is that? What is that exercise? Like insane, such a dramatic change in difference and no way women were interested in, in anything that had to do with powerlifting. You're talking about the exercises of powerlifting, the bench, the deadlift and the squat. I'm talking more specifically about the concept of even training low reps and training for strength. It seems like that's just becoming much more of a thing. Are you getting more questions from like everyday fitness people? Like, Hey, I want to get some of the benefits of powerlifting just so I can change how I look. Yeah. Across the board, I would say I get it more from the athletic standpoint where people were afraid from, you know, I don't load the spine. If you're going to be, you know, if you're going to be a football player, like, or don't go overhead or bench press, if you're going to be a quarterback where now it's like there's so much carry over to being able to build strength. And I think there's such an appreciation now of the skill that comes with it, and then that's where we can start to drive lower rep rates and really get changes is before it's like, you know, it was always looked at like almost like the fat burning zone on like, you know, when cardio machines are to have that, then there's like this fluid chart that's out there of like one to four reps is strength. And then six to eight to 12 is hypertrophy and 15 plus is endurance. And like as academics, you can kind of look at that and be like, well, you know, not really like, I know plenty of people who build muscle off one to four reps, but the thing is you have to be skillful to elicit that stimulus in those one to four reps. Like if your skill breaks down in some of these movements, you're splitting the atom, like you do it one way. It's like you can light some stuff up and do really well in your training. You do it another way. You can blow some stuff up. And yeah, you can, I've absolutely seen people aft themselves up deadlifting and squatting and bench pressing. And I've been a part of that. Like when skill breaks down, it goes the wayside. So, but as there's a, as a, hopefully on the whole, the IQ of the fitness industry is rising with easier access to better information, people are starting to respect the skill that comes with these movements and in doing so, they should, they start to yield a lot of the benefits that they can provide. I think part of the resurgence too into your point, Sal, is, is the results, right? Like I know, I remember as a trainer, probably one of the, first of all, as a trainer, a most common client that comes in, a middle-aged mom, uh, overweight by 15 to 30 pounds, probably the most common person that walks through a commercial gym. And the most common hurdle that you have to overcome as a trainer with that client is I don't want to lift heavy weights to make me bulky. And so you would spend the first few months of trying to debunk that or to get them comfortable with that. And once I finally did and get them to, Hey, we're going to do some triples, you know, we're going to do five by five block for a while. And once you got them to do that, the results that they saw, even if they were an experienced lifter or experienced gym goer would blow their mind because they had been marketed to so long about high reps and low rest periods and pumping type exercises. And this is the way to tone your muscles. And this is what you want to look like. If you want to have lean, long-looking muscles. And then all of a sudden you get this trainer who convinces them that they need to be training in strength type blocks. And they see their body morph and change more than ever has. I think that is what's really starting to sell women.  I think it started with a, I want a bigger butt to big butts. Yeah. As soon as that started becoming popular. And it's definitely a driver and you get him to deadlift and squat. And they're like, Oh, Lord, this works. I've been doing a million donkey kickbacks and nothing happened. And you just had me deadlift for three weeks. Jazzercise cannot produce that. It totally can't. What do you think about relatively recently? Robert Oberst, he's a strong man competitor and he's a friend of ours, love the guy's smart dude, gets on Rogan, got a lot of heat for saying that deadlifts are bad and there's been a little bit of a we've been hearing this a little bit in the fitness space. There's been a bit of a debate as to whether or not deadlifts are something anybody should do, whether they're functional or not, whether they're too dangerous to do or not. What do you think about all this? And by the way, your background isn't just powerlifting. You also have a very extensive background in just human physiology. And you do correctional exercise. You help people through pain. Yeah.  Oh, deadlifts are bad for your back. It's like, well, no little bit about the back. And then as a strength and conditioning coach at Stanford University with the rugby team for multiple years. So in a sport that that specific sport in general, that actually has a lot of carryover. If you think about the positions you find yourself in, in a rugby match, that deep hinge position, unlike most other sports, I, you're going to see a great amount of carryover. So I don't, so people were putting words in his mouth. Like I don't think to, to give the, you know, to play devil's advocate to like the narrative that spawned as it sort of landed on my doorstep. Like I don't think he's necessarily any saying anything bad about the deadlift per se. He's saying that a lot of people might not see a carryover. Like let's say like we're looking at life as a sport and as coaches, we are strengthening conditioning coaches for life as a sport. Does it have much carryover? Yeah, I think so. Can I have I seen drastic amounts of injury around it? Yes. Um, but I think there's a way to pre-screen if we know like what we're looking for, like, look, my dog doesn't know the internet exists. Right? Like he doesn't have the instruments to perceive that as a thing. Now, unless you have an extensive strength conditioning background and a very deep understanding of the muscular physiology around muscles of the spine and surrounding the spine, you might not have the instruments to see when and where this is bad. Like if you can't do a body weight pull up in a neutral grip, where you're really going to use your lats to stabilize your spine and move your body, you likely shouldn't be loading a barbell from the floor. Cause those same lats that are going to move your own body are now going to be loaded on a medium that gives you a much longer runway of progression of load past your body weight. Right? So if we're trying to load on a bar extra physiologically more than we can control and within our own, within our own body weight, then yeah, that's going to, that's going to leave force transfer going through discs in the spine and vertebrae in your back. That could be potentially dangerous, but there's ways to pre-screen for that again, if you don't have these instruments, it might seem like this abstract concept. So I just think consider your sources, right? Like if you're, if you're getting your training advice from a podcast with, you know, Robert obviously has like a lot of experience. Um, I don't know to what degree Rogan has extra, I feel like every time I come on here, it's just like, so Rogan said this thing, go. It's like, just pull the pin out of the grenade. Um, yeah.  Like as a chiropractor, I've seen a lot of injuries that as, as a consequence of, of, of deadlifting. But I think how many times in the run of a day, I would say deadlifting is more functional than squatting. And I would say all power lifts are more of an expression of function rather than functional movement. So, so if I could summarize, if I could summarize this in a very, very short phrase, cause he just said it in Latin, right? It's no, that's okay. No, and I know I want to, here's why I want to summarize it because this is how we've explained it in the past. If you can do a lift with good stability, good control and good strength. In other words, if that lift is appropriate for your body, that is a safe lift. If you do it right, it's a safe lift. Does that summarize it effectively?  I mean, there's a lot more to it. Like, how do we assess stability? How we assess range of motion? How do we assess, you know, implications of function? But yeah, I, I also, the argument that I made too, is that, let's say you don't have the prerequisites yet. The pursuit of that, in my opinion, is the most valuable. Like if, and that's why I don't like statements like, Oh, you shouldn't do this or trying to get people to avoid movement. Figure out why. Like, yeah, if you can't do it, okay, maybe that means at this moment you shouldn't be loading a bar and doing it right now.  And I'm, aside from all my other fitness goals that I think are important, that they're all going to take a sidebar and I'm going to put a lot of energy and effort towards getting to where I could do this movement. Wouldn't you agree? Yeah. And I think that's where these lifts, like I will go on record and say that squatting isn't functional. It's not. Like, and I was like, Oh, like, do you sit on the toilets?  You know what I mean? Like if you take, like to me, gate cycle movements are functional, that's what, that's what defines us as humans. Like if you want to talk about muscle function, function is how muscles behave when we walk and breathe. Fight me, change my mind, right? There's, there's a clear distinction between these two things is like, Oh, like, we sit down and take a look. If you have a day that goes by where you take more shits than you take steps, your days on this earth are numbered, right? Cause that's, that's human function is gate cycle. So it's like deadlifting is not that, but it is an expression of function, right? So like you said, like, I mean, I was strength, condition coach at Stanford, I dealt with 17, 18 year old kids who were incredibly athletic, but some very incredibly uncoordinated. Like they had a great, uh, acumen for their support, but lifting was not their sport, right?  No, if I could, then that would be a great expression of their function. But that's not really, I'm after driving intent to like explosive power output and things like that. So for me, rather than an Olympic lift, it's like, Hey, let's just do a box jump. Think we could do that. That's explosive enough to drive the intent. But in the back of my mind, it's like, why can't these people do an Olympic lift? Well, they have no overhead mobility. Okay. Hey, then in the background of just like, Hey, we're going to box jump rather than snatch or clean and jerk on the background is like, Hey, we need to improve your thoracic extension. We need to limit your bias towards internal rotation. We need to strengthen to stabilize the post your shoulder. In the few years I had working with them, I knew that they weren't going to get to the point where they're going to be progressed from box jump to snatch or clean and jerk. But that was our trajectory. That's the end goal. Like that is the end of the runway. Right. So yeah, like you said, like avoiding provocation isn't treatment. Like, Oh, deadlift hurts or deadlift might be bad. It's like, we'll bolster it, reinforce, assess and understand why and work towards that not being a thing. In my experience, one of the best things I ever did with clients, this took me a while to piece together was okay, you can't do a squat. You can't do a deadlift. You can't do an overhead press properly. Let's figure out why let's work towards that. Sometimes I never got to that place. Sometimes I would have a client advanced age and we never got to the point where we could load a squat or I never got to the point where I could do a barbell deadlift or a full standing overhead press. But the progress was incredible when I tried to get them to the point to be able to do those things. And sometimes I did get them to do those things. And then when they were able to do those things, they progressed through the roof and it was far better than the first half of my career where I would say, Oh, you can't squat. Okay, we're only we're going to avoid that. Who cares? Here's a machine. Here's a machine. Here's a machine. That's all we're going to focus on. When I moved away from that, try to figure out. Okay, well, why can't you just do a normal standing squat?  Why can't you just push something up above your head? Let's figure that out. And then when I did, man, the results and I'm talking about average every day. I didn't train athletes very rarely. They train athletes like you did. I wasn't training bodybuilders.  They got phenomenal results from doing. I'm talking about working him out two or three days a week at the most. Yeah, I also think too, like with a statement like Robert Oberst made on the show, like it's in front of like millions of people. And so this is something where it does resonate to us because, you know, given the risk versus reward, there's always that risk versus reward.  How, how good does their body stabilizing? Like, you know, there's all these factors to that. But what it does for the most part is deter people from them pursuing something like the deadlift, which I think is, you know, something that we need to sort of, like, nip at the bud. Here, it's same people who are like, don't deadlift and squat. They're bad for you, but you should go running. Like, what running is extremely complex? Yeah, humans evolved to run, but none of us have done it ever since we were made, you know, kids. We don't run very well. So you're going to encourage people to go running, which has a very, very high injury rate. I think the conversation around resistance strength, especially heavy resistance training needs to be appropriate and accurate, which leads me to another question. Powerlifting as it applies or powerlifting principles as it applies to the average person. As it applies to the person who wants to improve their fitness, wants to build muscle, wants to get more aesthetic looking, you know, add curves or add some muscle.  Well, yeah, I mean, to me, especially as a clinician, it's like it's based on shoulder, hip and spot. Right. So you can, bench press is bad for your shoulders, squats are bad for your knees and deadlifting is bad for your back. Right. So it's it's and a lot of times they're not myths, they're not wrong. It's just they're these blanket statements that they hear without any context as to how to make them not true because look, like squats are bad for your knees in the same way protein is bad for your kidneys.  It's like, well, yeah, slamming back 300 grams of protein a day and then crushing your pre-work amino acids like maybe not the best idea, right? If you have like a blown ACL or you have like your six foot seven and you're a starting center for an NBA team, it's like, yeah, that's a lot of sheer force. That's a huge demand and stability based off center mass and base support at this current time. We should not be doing this exercise. So I think it's it's having that conversation and lending context to these movements and not just, I mean, not saying that they're a myth. It's like, no, these, these exist in absolute truth, but it's the it's the gradation of function to get you to that end point. That should always be the goal. But I really like the point you brought up is like managing expectations, I think is your best asset as a client or coach or trainer or clinician, right? If you can effectively manage but and supersede look under promise over deliver, you don't go Michelin star on the first date, honey, anything off the value menu. Like that's where you start. We're going to build.  And it's like, look, we know based off of like motor unit recruitment and like neurological adaptations and just basically skill acquisition in early stages of compound movements that they're going to put on an incredible amount of relative strength, right? But that's really not strength, right? It's efficiency, it's training and it's practicing.  It's like, well, yeah, because her back squad is the empty bar. And if you get her to just move properly, Karen's going to have 90 pounds on the bar, which she started with 45. Like that's easy. But then all of a sudden you're at the end of your runway, right? You're done. What do you do? Just you increase weight.  So in overcoming objection around power lifting, it's always squats back for your knees like, yeah, yeah, probably if like if you do this long term without prerequisite screening of stability and range of motion, they absolutely can't be bad for your knee. Something you said that was a really interesting is you said practice the movements. Now the the first form of resistance training to really kind of permeate mainstream was bodybuilding and the mentality around body building training was feel the muscle, feel the burn, go to failure. The mentality with powerlifting is much more about practice the movement, perfect the movement. Am I am I am I correct? Yeah. So so how does that look when you're training? You're going to go work out. I want to utilize these principles of powerlifting. I'm going to go work out. What's the difference between I want to feel my quads burn and I'm going to train with powerlifting principles. Well, I mean, exercise election number one, obviously, so powerlifting principles are going to be centered around the squat bench in the deadlift. Now there's accessory and supplemental movements that can be thrown in as an adjunct to that to challenge muscles. It depends on where you're out on the continuum of skill acquisition in early stages, high variation in barbell movements is counterintuitive for the goal of actually learning the core movement. So stick to basics, basically. Yeah. In your early stages, I mean, you want to stay away from failure because in early stages, your failure, like there's this conversation around fear, should you train to failure, should you train to not like, well, what system is failing? Let's start there. Let's clearly define the parameters of failure. That'll help us with our goal setting figure out what exactly it is we're trying to achieve. Right. So in early stage skill acquisition, failure is technical. No one fail.  What a good point.  It's like, oh, don't train to failure, train to failure. It's like, look, I can train to failure on two reps. And I don't know front squat and that that could be a huge stimulus to improve body composition or a challenge my quads because I'm failing in position where there's tension through the fibers of my quadriceps muscle group. Right. I'm not your form that fails. Exactly.  That's going to stimulate a different physiological response. Right. And that's going to you need to be able to, you know, curate these responses based off of the goal of your client. Right. So introduction of powerlifting principles, early stages, minimal variation, higher frequency of these movements to practice the skill, making sure bar speed stays high, ensuring that they have the prerequisite range of motion, unilateral stability through lower body movements, the upper body strength through the lats to stabilize the spine and dead lifting and squatting. So there's a lot that goes to it. But say you've brought someone to this starting line where it's like, we're going to introduce barbell compound movements. We can practice them in in in higher frequency because we're not training them. We're practicing skill. We're not training output. Yes. Now when we do that and we have to look, here's where you run into an issue. It's like a lot of the US APL and IPM without getting too much into like the political side of powerlifting as a sport and just sticking with principles. There are a lot of people look, they're going to yield a great benefit from high frequency because they're going to get so efficient, they're going to get so good at the movements. Then all of a sudden, you know, they have to start thinking about other systems. Like if you're high frequency squatting for 500 pounds numerous times a week, that you need to start switching gears, but people get so emotionally attached to a program that's given them results. They think like, look, what's got you from A to B is not going to get you from B to C. You need to switch. Then then when we start to introduce the idea of muscle building, like in early stages, it's like, hey, your technique work is just practice the day of movement. Have the range of motion, have the stability, practice the movement higher frequency, nothing to failure because failure is going to be technical. Once we get to the point where that technique is acquired, as we start to push volume and intensity ratios and approach failure, that failure is within the realm of a technically sound execution of the lift. Then it's like, what's failing? Oh, my upper back is failing. My upper back is not strong enough or my quads aren't strong enough or my hamstrings aren't strong enough. Now you've gone from intermediate or you've gone from novice to intermediate to intermediate to advance. Now all of a sudden we have to start our technique work is no longer practicing the movement. Our technique work is, OK, our quads are weak.  As a consequence, yeah, you're probably going to end up with bigger quads. A hack squat could be seen as like a supplemental. So here we have primary movement, the back squat, supplemental movement, the front squat or sorry, accessory movement, the front squat, supplemental movement, the hack squat, right? And then we're just challenging that. And then when I go back into a peaking phase and start to challenge my top end strength under low volume high intensity later on in a program. Oh, now my upper back training is OK. I've I've solved for this this quads part of the equation. My technique is more or less standardized and good. It was breaking down because my maybe my hips were shooting back out of the hole because my quads weren't strong enough. I've doubled down on my efforts in training my quads, the muscle in isolation and by varying degrees and with varying implements. Then I go back to retest. I've PR'd my squat. But now it's starting to rear weakness somewhere else in a different muscle group that I start over.  And I really liked that. And let's go a little bit deeper into this. So we get asked a lot about training to failure. And it's something that we tend to tell the average person to avoid. And I've never thought to explain it the way you just did, which is I think this is how I would say it to somebody now. You probably have no business going to failure if you can't define what's failing. Is that a fair statement? Absolutely.  That's why I failed. Or, oh, my quads gave out. That's why. So if you can't do that, you probably have no business training to failure. Can I add one thing to that, too, because there was something else you said where you said you're practicing the movement and then you moved to muscle building. I want to stop there because I know exactly what you're saying, but I want to make sure that this is very clear for the audience. Don't get confused and think that practicing the movement doesn't build muscle. It won't yield. And going to failure builds muscle because practicing the movements, especially when you're in the first five years of your training is what's going to build the most movement.  I think of it like throwing darts. Like if you're at a bar, throwing darts or like you're asleep on the couch halfway through the afternoon and there's darts on ESPN 8 or whatever. It's like if you're throwing, like darts is like 180. You got to get to 180. 160. I have no idea. Yeah, this is usually when I'm asleep on the couch in the middle of the day because I don't have a real job. Serious darts guys. Yeah, big darts guys. But it's like the way I can conceptualize the sport from what little I've seen it in and out of my afternoon naps is like, OK, if you're say at 150 and you throw too high of a number, you default back to the safe mode number that you're at before you through that triple 20 that would have put you over that number because you got to hit it on the nose. Well, that's building strength and yielding high weights to challenge muscle and create mechanical tension, metabolic stress, muscle damage. That's going to drive that high percheve response. You want to hit it on the head. Now it's easier to do that if you don't have the skill to hit that 180 on the head.  But as you get better and you get more skillful and you know where this failure one chance, you get one shot, right, one opportunity. No one's going to finish that. All right. Max Marzo did a really good job of explaining he would. Yeah, he articulated this really well when we were talking about that they're getting, trying to get people to understand there's there's there's still this myth that pervades the space that, you know, more equals more results.  So this came to me years ago going hiking up in the hills and I would see person after person passing me up while they were running and, you know, being a trainer. I can't help but look at mechanics whenever people move and had watched them run and I was like, oh my gosh, that's terrible. Oh my God, they're going to hurt themselves. So why do people run this way? And I was like, oh, I know because when people start running, they don't think to themselves I'm going to learn how to run. I'm going to learn the skill. They think I'm going to run till I get tired. I'm just going to get exhausted. That's the point of this whole thing. If more people treated resistance training as a skill versus I'm going to go to the gym and beat myself up, we'd have much more fit bodies and far, far, far less injuries. It was the whole mentality of the whole purpose of your workout is to get sore, get tired and get sweaty versus the purpose of your workout is to learn the skill and practice the skill of resistance training. If you do that, if all you ever do is that, boy, you're way better off. And powerlifting being a strength sport, I think does that very well. The other thing I think powerlifting does very well and the reason why I think I'm seeing more women more than ever, I've ever seen my career. I might see more and more women interested just everyday women interested in powerlifting or even competing in powerlifting is this one thing right here. Powerlifting as a resistance training modality focuses on performance, whereas resistance training as it's been for the past 20 years has been focused on how I look. So you got all these women who are working out concerned about how they look, body image issues, whatever, switch into powerlifting. I used to do this with clients. This is how I used to get my female clients to move away from the body image stuff. I say, we're not gonna worry about your weight, stop weighing yourself, don't look in the mirror, trust me on this. All we're gonna do is focus on how strong you are and their bodies would improve because they would move their focus away so much from body image to performance. Are you seeing a lot of that? Well, yeah, because I mean, it's a really good conversation to bring up because it's one of the few sports that actually levels the playing field based off of genetic differences and morphological differences. If I had to build a powerlifter in a lab, it would look something like a female structure. The pelvis shape is usually is gonna accommodate for a better base of sport. Now, if we play with the leverage game, we get them to go sumo. We basically take out the one disadvantage that they might have is just like women have, what is it, women have nine times more estrogen, men have 15% more testosterone, or 15 times more testosterone. It's like, okay, Androgen receptivity higher in the upper body. Females as a consequence of this usually have less ability to scale, strengthen the upper body, period. But wide arch in the bench press, short levers as they're on average, shorter. Sumo deadlift takes out a lot of the utilization of the lats. Well, here you have a sport where when we look at this Wilkes ratio, which is a rough coefficient of strength of body weight, the top five strongest people in this sport based off of Wilkes are all female. So when I hear all of a sudden it's like, the 100 meter dash, I don't wanna say it, but it likely will always be the fastest person in the world will be a fastest man in the world. But right now, the top five strongest power lifters in the world, if you went on openpowerlifting.org and you searched by Wilkes, top five are gonna be females. So that is a very empowering and enticing thing where, look, we're really evening the playing field here. And there is an enormous amount. There is, it meets, even since I've started my powerlifting career in the past five years, the amount of female lifters and male lifters is almost a one-to-one. When we go to like, you guys had Steffi on the show, she's a close friend of mine. Like when we go to meet, it's like, that's the draw card. Like I've been lucky enough in my career to be, I've seen the biggest, I was there when the Vlad Alshov squad at 1117. I've seen Julius Maddox, break world records, there's nothing like watching Steff Lift.  So it's like, there's so, it's very enticing to anyone. If anyone saw someone of their kind being praised like that, it would absolutely draw to it. And it's, and even more than that, again, coming from the general population, in my experience, women benefit more. Generally speaking from the powerlifting principles than men do because, look, when I train a male client, typically this is the conversation as we're working out. No, no, no, that's too much weight. No, no, no, your form is bad. We gotta go a little lighter all the time, right? The dude's like, oh, I could do more weight. Now you can't actually form it. With women, it's always like, hey, you can lift more weight. I don't know if I want to, I don't know if I can't, I don't know whatever. Or I don't care how much I'm lifting. I just want to look a particular way. And then they have the body image issue stuff. You put them in the powerlifting principles, you get their mind off of how I look, do I look okay, what's going on? Okay, I'm lifting heavy. Oh my God, I'm so empowered. What, my metabolism's faster? Wait a minute, I'm getting leaner because I'm building more muscle. The benefits for women are tremendous. So it doesn't surprise me at all that you're seeing a one-to-one ratio and that the women are more of a draw. Well, and now all of a sudden, even hormonally and neuroendocrine, like there is a benefit. If you look at the differences between men and women in training adaptations, like not only, yeah, we have like the discrepancy of estrogen to testosterone, but who said that's a bad thing, right? Like estrogen is gonna help you metabolize carbs and fats. Estrogen is gonna be something that allows you to recover from, women can statistically utilize higher intensity and higher volume in training the men, right? So wait, here's a sport that's gonna allow us to practice a skill. You can practice a skill at a heavier relative percentage of your strength and recover from it better than a man.  What an interesting fact that I've never heard. Yeah, well, I mean, this is where they outlive men. It's true, I mean, we're more inflammatory. Our bodies just react a little bit differently. Men evolve to be expendable. If you have a society where half of the women died, that society would fail to thrive because a woman can only produce an offspring once every nine months, whereas a man can impregnate an innumerable amount of women in a short period of time. So theoretically, you could eliminate 90% of the men and that society would survive.  Women are just more resilient. They're just generally speaking more resilient. So when it comes to resistance training, they respond very well to high frequency. Now, of course, they gotta be healthy. They gotta be fit. This isn't true for everybody, generally speaking, when they're healthy and they do everything right. Again, in my experience, when I have women train with powerlifting principles for strength, the psychological benefit and the physical benefit, the metabolism boosting, the way that their bodies shape, like I've seen women shape and sculpt their bodies in more favorable ways, according to them, then when they train with more bodybuilding principles or more of the traditional workout principle. I think powerlifting, it's funny because, and again, we're starting to see the tide turn a little bit. I think that's gonna be a sport or at least the principles of training. They're gonna be more popular with women than they will even be with men. Well, anatomically speaking, Jordan, do you think it's easier to actually train a female in powerlifting than it is now? What would you say? So the two major anatomical principles that you worry about, should be aware of with females, just from a structure standpoint, is an increase in q-angle and an increase in carrying angle. Those are, again, these are principles that we can see distributed widely across men, but on the overlapping tails of these two distributions, you're going to see the people with the greatest q-angles, which is the angle in which your femur leaves your pelvis. So it's like women wide hips, narrower stance than the feet and knees. Is this why they have a higher rate of ACL tails in sports? Yeah, because gravity doesn't really care. Gravity is just gonna do one thing. It's gonna pull right to the heart of this place and that's gonna be however we align ourselves through it. Now, when the problem I see with women in powerlifting and coaching and lack of understanding of these morphological differences and these differences in structure, it's like we need to understand that, look, you'll see a higher incidence of ACL rates in female soccer, right? But think of there's being a force being applied. Like if two girls go to kick a ball and there's already an inward trajectory of their femurs, they're gonna be an increased amount of force applied to that ACL, or that medial meniscus or that MCL, right? But when we're dealing with axial loads, it's like, this is the knees out conversation, all over again. Well, it's like, all right, knees out as according to what?  Or this realization that, look, there's knees out and then there's knees not in based off an anatomical neutral. Like this girl's MCL, ACL, medial meniscus have all been formed with the inward trajectory of her femur as she goes from crawling to walking and has been managing compressive forces due to gravity her whole life. So yeah, there is a potential for if knees go in, it could be dangerous, but we need to understand that, look, we see a female's knees going in, but to her, that's neutral, right? Cause her knees in is a resting expression of her increased Q-ank. So that's from a morphological standpoint. It's not harder or easier. It's just something you need to be mindful of. Like if I see two knees go in below parallel, but I'm looking at those knees in the exact same spot they are when that girl is just standing there relative to her hips, I'm not going to superimpose my experience as a six foot tall, 270 pound born male with her experience. Like I'm trying to go inside her mind.  Where it's like, that's where she's used to, right? And that's going to be a safe place for her to lift in. Now if that goes too far and I know knees go in past that anatomical neutral, yeah, we're going to run into some issues. But just as they running into issues if my knees went past my anatomical. So how do you coach a coach on how to keep to look at that then, right? So from what you're saying right now, it's probably more risky for a coach to look at a female and cue the knees out versus a guy probably based off of what you're saying. Yeah, at risky or just you're leaving, you're leaving pounds off the platform if you don't understand that principle. Okay. They'll see that as a technical flaw where it's not a technical flaw. It's a reverting to their default anatomical neutral. They just, people don't see that as a thing. Now, would you say, would you look maybe to the feet pronating or not to give you a giveaway if they're going too much in? Like what would you say? No, you need to assess for base level function through muscles that stabilize the hip and pelvis, right? It's like, if you're looking at this as a squat as a means of assessment of pelvic function or hip function or pelvic stability, your hip stability, you're missing the foe. You'll never see it until it's too late, right?  It's like, you know, we, this isn't, like I said, this is an expression of function, right? So I'll make sure that we go through a screen and progression of unilateral movements to make sure that that stability around the hip and pelvis is where it needs to be to be put under load, right? This is calibrating down range in this analogy. So when I bring it in close, now I know I'm gonna be bullseye every time, right? And because this is where, look, if you have to actually cue the, you know, knees are going way too far in for whoever it is you're back squatting, they shouldn't be back squatting, right? This is quantum physics and you're having to sit there going two plus two. It's like, you need to be able to lay out stones across this river in small increments of skill acquisition. So that should be subconscious. They know in the progression of like, hey, I'm gonna start off someone with a counterbalance squat or a goblet squat. I teach knees out then and I do requisite unilateral stability works. Okay, maybe we focus on stationary lunges and counterbalance squatting. Someone comes to me and like, they're an untrained individual between 30 and 40. That's what we'll start. And it's like, all right, that could be a very short runway. Boom, right there, quick. They nailed it. Everything with stationary lunge locked in that back hip internally rotated, rib cage stays tucked down. They can stay stable through this movement. We're sweet. Counterbalance squat, awesome. Next, what's next? Do you think because of the differences in general differences in anatomy that the sumo, I mean, I know powerlifting women generally sumo pole at a much higher rate than men. Would you say if the average woman's listening right now, she wants a deadlift, she wants to get the value at a deadlifting, is it better for her to go sumo then or do you think conventional is the way to go? So good question. And there's a very fine line to draw from a safety standpoint here because we introduce more sheer force to the spine when we're conventionally deadlift because our torso is gonna be more horizontal on the ground, more parallel to the ground. A sumo deadlift is gonna allow for more upright torso. In doing so, as we bring our torso more upright, when we grab the bar in a sumo stance, we don't have as much flexion in the shoulder, which is great, because that's gonna take our lats out of it. And if we know that a female is gonna have a lesser ability to scale her upper body strength, that lat is gonna be the one muscle that connects our arm to our spine. This is gonna be how we channel force into our lower back. Just as like if I have a male client who can't do a pull-up, he's not doing a deadlift, because we need those lats to be strong enough to buffer at least the force of our body first and foremost before we start loading extra physiologically on a bar. So sumo is favorable for women as it helps tilt the scales and minimize any advantage between gender discrepancies and hormones and fiber typing of muscle fibers and things like that. This is gonna give them, not only an advantage in leveling the playing field, it's also gonna make it safer, because here we have to rely less on these lats which aren't gonna be able to scale in relative strength of body weight to stabilize our spine and more on our obliques, which is something that are gonna be more easily trained to the requisite amount of stability you would need per the body weight of that lifter. So I would say most females, if the goal is, look, you wanna lift as much weight as possible and do it safely, sumo deadlifting will take the need for your lats to be a major player in spinal stability out. They're a major muscle of the upper body, which per the neuroendocrine differences between men and women is not gonna be able to be trained as well. And then that'll help you keep safer as you lift heavier weights. I have a good question for you. You've now referenced twice that you would not have somebody deadlift until they can at least do a body weight pull up as a prerequisite. Can you take me through the major lifts and is there an exercise for each one of those that you would consider a prerequisite before you would do like a bilateral squat, like a, is it a Bulgarian squat or a lunge first? Is that, do you have one for each? Yeah, so I have like a full progression for squatting. And again, it's the idea of like laying those stepping stones out so people can make sure that when we test, when we use the expression of function as the test of function, we're missing the boat, right? Like if you were to sit down and write a test, like I studied history and political science before I got into this nonsense, and one of my tests I had to write was like this 50 page essay, right? So it's like you study for the test and that's the practicing of like the unilateral movements and these prerequisites, but the writing of the test is something totally different. You don't get smarter by writing tests, right? You don't get better at squatting necessarily by, with a caveat. Obviously the skill of squatting comes with it, but to be able to lay out these stones for people so they can acquire these, you know, these base level primary principles, these competencies that'll teach them what it feels like and what muscles to use to make sure that knee stays out. So for me, it's just easy. Squatting progressions are counterbalance, goblet, front, high, then low. And then proceeded by each one of those is stationary lunge, walking lunge, sprinter pose, single leg RDL and hip airplane. Wow, in that order? Yeah, because it's plain specific. Like if I need to low bar squat, right? And I do need to low bar squat. I need to make sure my hips are abducted and externally rotated. I have a broad base in my low bar squat. That's what helps me be so strong in it, right? I'm not gonna low bar squat with my feet close together. That's dumb. It's a longer range of motion that doesn't bode well for anyone. So, but I think, look, can, do I have the mobility to get into that plane? And can I stabilize with the muscles in isolation my hip in that relative position? So a hip airplane, stand on one leg. And then rather than doing like leg swings like you would, like you're warming up to go for a run, put that foot on the ground because that's where you're gonna need it when you're squatting, because that foot's gonna be on the ground. Then open your pelvis up to the same relative. McGill plane, yeah? Hey? A McGill plane? A what? A McGill plane. Is that what it called, a McGill? No, he, yeah. Stu McGill. He calls it something different. Yeah. He just put his name on everything.  He can't just create a monopoly on everything. I thought he did it first. And I'm sure people have been doing this for a long time.  It's like what's Stu McGill. When you guys wouldn't let me call an overhead press, the sal press. Yeah. Yeah. That should be called sal. Calm down, Sal. Yeah, everyone has a Jordan beard right now in this room.   I don't know. I'm a hip-air. Jordan, Jr. beard. Okay, so. But that's what you're talking about. I don't know. I've always regretted it. And now I'm upset. Oh, wow. Can you have said it as like a shallow plane for now? I'm pleased for my... We'll give you the shallow hip thrust.  Don't go there. That's a contentious issue lately. Apparently, that's what I'm doing. No, but it's plane-specific stability. That's what you need. It's plane-specific. Like, I, when I... It's standing up, by the way. Right. Yeah. Okay. Your hip thrust. Oh, okay. No, okay, so I really like this. So this is, I think, and this is really good for their listeners because if you're listening right now and you're like, okay, these guys are starting to get me interested in the pursuit of powerlifting, but yet I'm still, maybe I'm not sure if I'm ready for it. You just listed off a series of great exercises you should do first and get good at before you're probably ready to really do like a good, heavy-loaded bilateral squat. So there's the squat. It'll be a great video series. You talked about the pull-up. You talked about the pull-up for the deadlift. Give me some bench press. What do you have? Bench press is an interesting one, right? Cause there's an obvious difference between the bench press and the squat and the deadlift. We're horizontal and we have external stability from the bench. So the bench press really kind of changes the game and it levels out the playing field a lot in powerlifting, which is great. Like, cause you can be a really good bencher but usually the mechanics and leverages that make you a good bencher. Make your terrible deadlift. Deadlifters like, right. Oh, fuck, the bar is all the way down there now. Shit. How can I bench press this deadlift somehow? So it is good in that sense, but like, I always test people like, okay, when it comes to function of the shoulder, who on this planet gets the most out of their shoulders? Who is the precipice? Who is the epitome of shoulder function? What would you guys say? Like, I got a few people in mind. There's no, like athletes? Like, are we talking about?  Swimmers are up there, I think, yeah. Yeah, well, I'm trying to think who else cause great rotation. Swimming is a great one. Who else would do something like- Volleyball. Up there, yeah.  Baseball, right? I think Randy is like the dude. Randy. He's out there smoking pigeons. Like, that's funny. So I would go too.   It's American. He's throwing a hundred miles an hour. He's 60 feet away from you. By the time he throws that ball, he's 10 feet away from you. Physics is insane. It is, yeah. So it's very impressive. And when it comes to shoulder functions, like, yeah, like Julius Maddox just spent 765 in the gym the other day. Right. So imagine holding that over your face. That's 10 pounds over my max squat, BT dubs, by the way. And, but that's still not impressive as Randy throwing a hundred miles an hour, a hundred and five miles an hour, right? And then another one would be a boxer, right? Like- Sure.  Like Mike Tyson to me is usually someone that I reference a lot. And what is different about the way Randy and Tyson and Fury use their shoulders as opposed to like, say Julius Maddox or how we use the shoulders in powerlifting. What's the difference? And it's connected to their hip. How dynamic the movement is. Yeah. The utilization of the scapula, right?  Shoulder blades down and back. Chest up, chest up, chest up, chest up. Shoulder blades down and back. Like he'd be- So how dynamic you can move it. Right, Tyson would be, you know, he'd probably still be able to murder you, but like he wouldn't be as effective as if he didn't upwardly rotate his scapula, right? When we encourage in the bench press, you know, shoulder blades back, shoulder blades back, shoulder blades back, which is great. Yeah. And I think the offset the potential to mitigate the potential damage of isolating that dysfunctional pattern and dysfunction is like, look, that's not how we use our shoulder blades when we walk, right? Like that's not how our shoulders work. They integrate the, this thoracic rotation with this upward elevation or this upward rotation of the scap and internal rotation. And then the opposite cascade of events happens on extension, right? When we extend, we retract and depress then we extend the shoulder. So there's a lot to it. So I like an exercise like a windmill, like a kettlebell windmill as an adjunct or like a landmine press, something that's going to promote that upward rotation of the scap under load, utilize the serratus anterior, you know, sort of unwind that reciprocal inhibition, rhomboid counteract serratus thing. So anything that promotes the serratus anterior, anything overhead pull-ups or great barbell overhead press if you have the range of motion. Push-ups. Love the windmill for that. And even think of it as a prerequisite to the bench. So the windmill for me is big for a few things because the prerequisite of proper execution all lives and dies with rotation of the thoracic spine, right? We focus a lot on, you know, this global extension and like, oh, you want to fix your shoulders, you extend your upper back, whatever that poor posture, but unilateral rotation of the thoracic spine is integral, right? Like think the thoracic spine kind of moves through like two planes of motion that we really worry about. Like we worry about extension and we worry about rotation. Lateral flexion, not so much, but we have two dimensions at the spine. We have three dimensions at the shoulder. The serratus anterior is this gateway, this portal, this transference of force from two dimensions to three dimensions at the shoulder. So making sure that we can get adequate extension and rotation is a mobility prerequisite to training the stability of the serratus. It's a very economical exercise because it gives you a lot of information. If someone can do this properly, they have the prerequisite extension and rotation to do so. If not, and we see over rotation of the humerus, look, your funneling forces into your rotator cuff, into this glenic humeral joint because we're not moving properly at the thoracic spine. It's a very visceral experience when someone does like, oh, ow, like, yeah, ow, because that needs to move better, right? And that's a whole other conversation about like injury and pain and all that. Now, I would think that that probably is very similar for the overhead press then too. I mean, I would think that the windmill would still fall in that same category. Roughly, but it doesn't have the bilateral rotation prerequisite because like a proper windmill, like when most people do them, I don't know who teaches it, but someone's going around teaching windmills with like, you open up like the one hip and then it's almost like, have you ever seen like the old bank robbery movies like or like an Ocean's Eleven where this is like the laser field? Yeah.  So people are just like, just tilting off to the side like this. It's like, what are you doing? Hinge forward. So you can actually test how much extension and rotation you need.  Look, this connect index finger to index finger, extend and rotate through the thoracic spine and that middle finger up there is due to the rotation. Right. And then that's what I love about like some of the stability drills and a lot of people like, people don't really understand stability as a separate adaptation. They just, oh, strengthen your serratus. Like no, that would be like me trying to get a bigger squat by running a marathon. Two totally different adaptations. The ability to exert force versus resist force is the difference between strength and stability. So it's like, if I can pick an exercise that someone can't do this, it tells me exactly where to point with mobility drills. Oh yeah, easy. Or if on the contrary to streamline my approach, if someone can do this, I don't need to waste my time stretching and rotating and foam rolling. Like it is a moot point that will not help us improve the base level function of the serratus. Then I'm not going to waste time on it. So it's like, I love it. I love the windmill for the bench press because it tells me, well, can we get out of this pattern that we're in? Can we integrate function of the shoulder as the bench press per definition is quote unquote dysfunctional as we flex the humorous on a retracted scab, which is dysfunctional. It's so funny because the windmill is such a old timey strength exercise that nobody did for a long time. And now you're seeing more people do, what about a bent press? That was a huge lift way back in the day with Strongman where they would test themselves by Eugene Sandow doing a bent press with 300 pounds. Do you ever incorporate anything like that? As I deal mostly online, no, but if it's part of a sport and I'm dealing with a Strongman, it's like, look, if you have strong enough lats, your low back is going to be just fine. People, again, it's the base level. People don't realize how much of a stabilizer the lats are, do they? People on the whole don't realize the difference between muscle function and muscle action, right? They only see the body building nomenclature of origin to insertion and they don't see the global utilization of muscles as a dual purpose to stabilize and strengthen, right? So that's like a muscle functions like a- What a mouthful, but what a great point. I know, yeah. Let's rewind that one. This is the only way. There's one- Don't worry, we always put an episode out after your episode where we break everything down again. Don't worry, it's shallow. There's a mouthful. There's one gear. Hey, I've been called that, but no, I'm not going to say it. No, but what a great statement though, we always think about the flexing of the muscle, the building of the muscle, thinking of that way, what about the other functions of that and how important that role is in just overall function of your body and how it moves and how it protects itself. Yeah, and then you can like, I've done this, I mean, the shameless plug that my book's coming out later this year and a lot of that is indexing. Like, look, I think when you Wikipedia something, it should say origin, insertion, innervation, arterial blood supply and function, right? And because right now it's just as it moves from origin to insertion, how does the joint that surrounds or these muscles cross, how do they act? Where it's like, no, no, but how do these muscles act when we walk and breathe?  But it's not like, if we think origin and insertion of this muscle that sort of like starts in our C-spline and attaches onto our upper ribs, it's like, if I moved origin to insertion, I'd be kind of like dropping my head off to the side. It will inherently be sore on most people, at least on like one side, but it's like, they're not spastic. They're not, Sal's not walking around all day doing this twitchy thing. He's not moving it from origin to insertion. I do sometimes, but. He's not over-training or over-utilizing the action. Maybe he's stressed out because he's not in Hawaii anymore. And now he's like breathing into his upper ribs. Damn, I gotta work. Breathing into his, yeah, work. Come on, fellas. Adam's stressing me out like crazy. Let's be serious here, this is work. But it's like the function of those scalenes is to elevate the upper ribs during breast cycle, right? So it's like, every month, the bicep has like an incredible function that the bicep sort of pledged a frat. It was like, oh, it's all show, no go. It's like, really? First thing, I got hit by a Chevy Suburban five years ago. Shout out Santa Clara drivers.  Did you break the truck? We did. The bicep was here, dude. You know that. But the bicep girl. He gets sued from it? Yeah. She was crying. I threw my bike at the car with a torn labor, but probably wasn't the best idea. You hit the wrong guy. But the first thing I did once I got my range of motion back was starting to move bicep curls because I understand the biceps function. It's not just to, you know, fill sleeves and like, you know, pick up chicks and polos. No, there's a huge function and every muscle has one. It's just not many people think to look into index or even more importantly, to train it. Okay, so give me your, so the windmill would not be for overhead press. Tell me what overhead press prereq is then. I would break down into range of motion. Can we move there passively? Like, can we get the extension and thoracic spine, the retraction and depression? Like, I would focus more almost on the strength of the lower trap first, right? Can we actively get into this range? Strength in the lower trap? A big prerequisite in training stability is having the range of motion to get into unstable positions, right? This whole ethos that we build around mobility, stability, strength. It's like, yeah, it's a cool tagline and a hashtag and you could trademark and it looks cool on our website but it's literally, that's the order of operations.  Like, it's not like we're just gonna stretch someone for three weeks and then stabilize them for three weeks and then strengthen them. It's like, no, how do you integrate all this into a coherent and congruent program? Okay, so let's pretend that this person can do like a wall slide, right? Comfortably, full extension, everything and keep their ribs from flaring. We look pretty decent. Would you go straight into overhead pressing or is there, I mean?  Then they're totally stabilized. Can they deal with this little bit of instability in the medium of the bar? On the back end, I'm working on like the four functional subcomponents of the shoulder. Do they need thoracic extension? Do they need to train in early stages retraction and depression of the scab? Or are they late stage? Do they need to train overhead stability of the serratus? We're utilizing a windmill. Are they inhibited or facilitated rather in internal rotation? Do they need to stretch their lats? Do they need to stretch their pecs? Do they need to stretch their delts? Then do they have strength or stability of the posterior shoulder? So the shoulder really breaks down into those four subcomponents. But from a pressing progression, yeah, if I have someone who's relatively detrained and I'm trying to like work on these things on the front end and integrate this approach into an actual exercise, which I think a lot of people go do yoga. It's like, what?  And your dad's like, look, Canadian tire, Canadian tire, shout out Canada. Like Canadian tires around the corner, dad.  He's like, nope, we got a box of spare bulbs over here.   But it's like doing a yoga class to be like sitting there, changing all those bulbs and not plugging it in. It's like, I wanna make some changes in perception of my thoracic spine mobility, my retraction, depression in my scalp, my bias towards internal rotation.  I wanna plug the damn thing in to see if the changes I'm making are working and run a current through it. So I'll do that stuff on the front end like dumbbell floor press, then put them on a bench, a little bit more unstable. Then just go take this adjustable bench and that's the greatest training tool you have. So before I go standing overhead with a bar, I'll go flat on the floor, minimal range of motion, unstable medium, work on the back end mobility stability stuff next week. Oh, boop, up on a bench. The client goes, oh, I'm on a bench now. What's going on here? What's this new shiny red ball out? They see novelty, icy specificity that I go 15 degree incline, greater range of motion. Same weight. Great, they're getting better at the skill. They've adapted one or two weeks there. They show an improvement in their ability to stabilize or an improvement in range of motion on the front end. I just keep putting that thing all the way up to the 90. Then we stand with it. Then I put a barbell in the hand. Oh, excellent. The medium is the message. Another big thing around powerlifting, a big myth, I would say revolves around diet. Now, granted, I think early days powerlifting, you know, you got a lot of big overweight looking people. So people thought, oh, powerlifting diet, there is no diet.  But I know that's not true nowadays. And I know that eating for performance has a lot of potential value for the average person versus just eating for aesthetics, just eating to get lean. What does that look like now? What does it look like to eat for performance when you're looking for strength, when you're trying to build strength? Yeah, I mean, it allows you to really focus in on when and where you're getting your nutrition from. Like, you know, powerlifters back in the day would just smash McDonald's and go lift because powerlifting started with single ply. They got a West Side Barbell Single Multiply. Like, look, you talk to anyone who, like I have a friend named Seth Albertsworth out of Florida. He's a chiropractor soon to graduate and he's probably one of the strongest like single ply lifters in the U.S. right now. But he has to fit his gear. Like he has this suit that's a certain size that's not going to change, right? So the myth of powerlifting and dieting really started from like, look, you're not gonna fit in your squat suit. You're not gonna fit in your bench shirt unless you're 315 pounds, right? So it was really a matter of like economy and calories. Like here you have a guy who's like, the sport's not gonna pay you any money, right?  So I think a lot of that stereotype came with the inception of powerlifting from its early days in multiply and single plot. But I think since, I mean, honestly, it's a Bay Area local that I would say is probably the most responsible for nutrition.  So Dan was like one of my first patients. I practiced out of his gym for four years before I hit the road. He was the first one to like look like a superhero, like an action figure.   Maybe not. Are they gonna set a framework for long term being able to like, continually make progress on this lift that they'll create a net deficit down the road? Absolutely, right? So I think it went just like you just talked about structuring the psychology around your female clients. Like if you can frame it in that way, it's like, look, like here's gonna be our pre-workout meal and it's not just gonna be a carrot stick, right? Like because we need to actually show up and we need to perform. There's an objective pursuit here. In that objective pursuit, they a lot of times you eclipse any subjective goals that may have existed on the front end. Now is eating quote unquote healthy? Is that becoming more of a thing in powerlifting? We're like, okay, I wanna eat things that are unprocessed. I wanna eat more whole natural foods, steaks, ground beefs, rice, vegetables, those types of things. Or is it really just about macros? I think no, cause you can't be. Honestly, I know guys that try and do flexible dieting. Like to me, if I have like pop tarts before I go train, I'm gonna have to, I'll be asleep, right? Like it's like the old polyquin thing. Like if you're insulin sensitive, go eat some pancakes for your sleep in 45 minutes. Just don't eat carbs for breakfast. Like the whole meat and nuts thing. Like I can't be asleep. So going into a training session, I personally feel better with carbs or with protein and fats than my carbs are kind of later in the day, right? So if I'm to go off macros, like I don't think a top end powerlifter can really do well off macros because there's so much more to it. Like food is a drug. Like it's gonna have an effect on your endocrine system. It's gonna have effect on your hormones. It's gonna have an effect on like your neurotransmitter levels. And you wanna talk like that's gonna matter way more. I can crush a pop tart and then like, shotgun a energy drink and catch the sickest bicep pump of all time. Because I don't need to get up. Like I don't really need to get up for it. But like, dude, when there's 350 kilos on your back, it has your undivided attention.  Like it doesn't matter. Like someone could be going through like with a gun and you're like, yeah, well, look, either way, if I don't pay attention to this, I'm probably gonna die anyways. So I should probably focus on this. Like it benefits you to be very receptive and being mindful. But what's gonna drive that mindfulness is a neuroendocrine environment and an environment with like your neurotransmitters that allows for that, right? You can't be foggy or sluggy. Are there any vegan power lifters? Probably not good. I don't know. There's that guy in game changers. Oh, I know. He was strong man. Yeah, but no one. Look, you guys have been around.  I've never seen that guy before in my life. I go to expos all over the world. I know some of the strongest people by first name. And they got some guy from Istanbul, like working out of his mom's farm.  I thought I was being trolled. I was waiting for Ashton Kutcher to walk out of the wood shed.  You know, another myth about powerlifting too is that, you know, cause you're mainly focused on the four main core lifts is that you can't build an incredibly good looking physique. And I think that's something that is slowly getting debunked. I mean, and that because maybe the diet thing, maybe more and more starting to dial the diet.   And the best power lifters right now are the guys and girls that look the best because they know that look, they've acquired the skill in order to improve their weak points. They need to look now back at kind of what probably got them into lifting in the first place. They need to look back at, okay, how do I really train a muscle's action? Cause look, a muscle gets a greater cross-sectional area. That muscle by default has a greater ability to express for it, right? Now we need to integrate that into skill progression. But if you already have that, then it's like, look, taking off season and go through a lot of variations, train a damn bicep curl. And a lot of guys are realizing this and girls are realizing this. So, you know, they're being able to put together, you know, a structured meat prep that looks really well. And also their power lifters year-round now. Like now all of a sudden with sponsorship money and with exposure and personal brands that are built off of their ability to actually perform, they're starting to look at it year-round.  Like we have triple crown, triple crown. Did you come out with that? Wow. God, you're so cultured. So you kind of have like- He just likes to gamble. Yeah. You have your- Or a degenerate degenerate.  It's like my elbow starts like, all right, guess what you're going to do for 10 weeks after a meat?  It's like, what's that? Bicep curls and tricep extensions. Get in the overhead plane, get the length and position of the tricep. Get in the extended plane, get the length and position of the bicep. Work through length tension relationships.  Like, yeah, so you can't get overhead with your tricep extensions.  Use a cable in the early stage. I've seen you more recently in your Instagram incorporating more and more and probably because you're traveling a lot, but also because you meet lots of strength athletes from different modalities. I've seen you incorporating more and more what I would consider to be classic bodybuilder type exercises. What's your favorite like non-powerlifting, just pure bodybuilding movement? Oh, hack squats gotta be up there. Cause like, there's a, I mean, there's a skill to everything.  Like, and there has to be a certain economy in my workout schedule now and with exercise selection and more importantly and most importantly, execution. Cause like, yeah, it's not weird for me to be on a 30 hour flight, right? So it's like, look, I get four days a week. I could maybe train cause that's full.  So a hack squat to me is like, because I've trained the squat to such a degree and such a volume, such an intensity, like I can't tell you how many squats I've done in my life and how many heavy squats I've done.  And just slide. Yeah, just slide, just 100% slide. That to me is probably the most fun cause like it takes the fear out of it. Like I've, in powerlifting like you, you'll get to a point where it's like, that's the main driver.   I'm just whatever I got to do. And so to be able to like, and it's enjoyment. Like it's very fulfilling. Like it's a very, you know, to overcome a fear is very satisfying. But like, you know, just like when you started, it was just kind of grip and rip and there was no thought process to it. Like I've almost come full circle. It's like, I've thought about this. I don't know if I thought about anything else. So then it's like I was 15 years old.   That's my favorite by far. That's awesome. That's poetic dude, thank you. Always a great time with you man. Dude, he's gonna be home man. I can't tell you this enough to see you succeed and do what you're doing makes us so happy because you're communicating the right stuff. So you're doing a great job and we're really, really happy that more and more people are listening to you. So keep it up man. Well, I mean, it's you guys to thank for that. Like, no, it's true man. Like every time you guys- If you sucked, you wouldn't be where you're at. I guess, I guess.  I've been in Hong Kong and Singapore and I'll be in India later this year and I'll be in Pakistan. Like I'm all over the place. It's only the weirdest places. I know where people, how people found me. I was in a locker room in Lebanon. This is right before I saw you guys last. I said, no, I've seen you since Lebanon or no. I don't think it was right before I just kind of laughed. Like I've been on the road ever since. I was in a locker room in Lebanon and it was Lebanon's real. Like it's, it's a Middle East light, but it's a real place. It's a real place. Got it.  Like you just drive through Hezbollah checkpoints. That's like, that's not the police, but they have ARs. So when someone with an AR says anything, you just do it. White dude with sleeve tattoos. Yeah. Beer dude. But I was in a, I was in a change room in Lebanon and this guy like came up to me and was like, hey, like he had this friend who spoke English and was like, oh, like we heard you on mind pop.  Right after that, this dude injected a fedron into his veins. But not the same dude who listened to mind pump. That guy was probably listening to mind pump. But I literally like, this guy comes over with his friend. Like he didn't know who I was, but he was like, oh, like, sorry, like I sort of bother you, but my friend doesn't speak English. But I just want to know that he's like, it's cool to see you. And he heard you and saw your stuff on mind pump. I was like, oh, dude, that's dope. And then looking over his shoulder, this guy's tourniqueting his shoulder with a knee wrap like Ray Charles. And he was like, hold on, hold on, thank you. Well, wait.  Like, can you ask your buddy who speaks or what like Arabic to ask him what he just did? And he walks over to this guy with like an insulin syringe. He just went intervenus. I'm like, this guy's not going to be okay for a long time. And he came over, he's like, oh no, he just like injected a fedron. I was like, I was just wrecking him for a dream. So it's like, you got like the reach you guys have.  Cause you guys see the numbers and, but you know, you'll do some events to feel like that's different. For me, it's visceral.  I just had like four guys with ARs asking me for my passport that weren't the government.   And then just to hear like, but to contrast that, like last time I was here, I told you about the Somalia at one of my favorite restaurants in San Francisco. So here I am in, you know, Gary Danko having a nice fine Michelin Michelin star meal. And this guy comes over, oh sir, drinks on us tonight. So it's like, what a contrast.  Awesome. So big shout out. Well, thanks again for coming on again, bro. Always appreciate it.


wear your PPE folks, that's not what you want to look like or what you want to be doing. Five days ago, I had a scary accident while working on the cabin.  A chemical burn is damaged tissue caused by hazardous substances such as gasoline, paint, paint thinner, strong acids, and even minor chemicals which can cause chemical burns. Luckily for me right now, I can see this lens with both of my eyes. I am so grateful for that. And for that reason, we are making this video to use our influence to share with our audience not only my story and everything we've learned, but the importance of PPE. Staying safe while you're working. I know there are so many people who watch our videos and who are already DIYers or who are inspired to do things themselves. And this is something we haven't really quite talked about. And I do want to take ownership in the fact that it's something that we haven't been diligent about either. And so it's time to talk about it. After many years of DIY renovations and construction, not only on our van where we began, but this cabin over the last few years, just the other day, after weeks of not weeks, 12 days felt like weeks, 12 days of doing the beams. I was in the spare bedroom doing a very small area on the ceiling in megrosement. And I'm going to explain what megrosement is to you. So you have a better idea. It is a very fine coating of cement combined with fine aggregates mixed with water-based liquid polymers and powdered resin polymers. So it is a mixture of chemicals. And we also added paint to give it a color. So I was using that material above my head. I had applied it, came down off the ladder. And as I was coming down, I looked up and splat. I got megrosement in my eye. I was shrieking, screaming like it was more of a shriek. I was absolutely terrified because as soon as it hit my eye, it immediately started burning. And I was trying to figure out how to get myself to the bathroom. If I'm smiling and laughing, that's my way of dealing with things. I'm not actually laughing or smiling about any of this. It was very serious. Trying to figure out how to get it out of my eye. Of course, I wanted to wash it away, but it wasn't just like a paint or anything like that. It was granules in my eye, along with paint. So the cement paint mixture. And Jasmine was helping me at that point to try and get it out as much as we could. And I was splashing my eye. We were able to rinse it. And the burning sensation started to dull. And I sat down, took some time, continued to rinse my eye. And then I carried on with my day. A few hours later, I was looking at my eye and it had gotten much, much more red. The burn was really starting to settle in. And although I was like slightly irritated, I wasn't in any extreme pain at this point. The most pain I had experienced was when the pain initially hit my eye, when the cement initially hit my eye. I think part of the reason why I didn't initially think it was a big deal is because I could still see. However, the redness and the little bit of discomfort I was having was starting to scare me. And so after that research, I did drive myself to the hospital. Luckily for me, when I got there, the emergency room was empty and I got right in and got treated. 10 hours had already passed since this accident had happened. The first thing they did was put in eye drops. It was a numbing sort of eye drop. I think it was to clean the eye and then they put in dye. The dye was able to illuminate the damaged tissue under blue light. So we were right away within seconds able to see the tissue that was damaged. I was able to get a photo. The doctor was nice enough to get a photo for us. And that freaked me right out. Seeing that confirmed I had damaged the tissue on my eye and being so, so close to millimeters to my pupil and my iris and my field of vision. This could have gone very differently. So we did a couple of eye exams and eye tests and once confirmed that the damaged tissue was out of my field of vision. Thankfully, they were able to attach something to my eye for 30 minutes to flush my eyeball. I was then sent home with a prescription for an antibiotic ointment, a cream to apply to my eye for seven days. We're putting the antibiotic ointment in my eye because of my chemical burn. Not funny. Not funny. Serious matter. That's my one. Serious after I left. It's a coping mechanism, everyone. All right, here we go. I'll do it for you. So it's your eye, the eye. Nice. How are you feeling? In general? Well, I guess we can have a mental health check-in too, but like more so your eye. The eye is healing. Like it's uncomfortable. It feels very strange. Like it feels like a bruise, but or like, you know, it's not pain.  It's how I'm describing it or like scratched it. The ointment is weird sometimes gets kind of sticky and then that feels weird. Putting lotion on your eye is kind of weird, but it's fine sometimes. You're seeing my eye five days later and it is healing pretty well. Thankfully, I'm so grateful that it went this way. I can't imagine had it gone differently what I would be saying to you right now. Pretty scary to think about because had the micro cement fallen just millimeters to the left in my field of vision, I could have had permanent eye damage, blindness, or who knows what maybe needed intense surgery or intense rest. Who knows where your PPE folks. It's not what you want to look like or what you want to be doing. Over the years, I would say we've used our PPE, personal protective equipment, things such as gloves, glasses, hard hats, anything to protect yourself from the potential hazard. Or roofing harness. Very sporadically, I think there were times it was more important and then would be times we'd fall off. And what I want to do by making this video is to not only hold us accountable by telling all of you is to make sure that it's consistent. And we do the best we can to learn how to wear the PPE properly, make sure it fits, and we're doing things as safely as we can. We've noticed over the years in the comments a lot of people expressing their concern. And I appreciate that so much. I've even just been looking at the comments recently noticing them coming in a lot more over the last few weeks through our loft and beam renovation. So as time goes on, we are going to do our best to stay safe and show you how we're doing that. If you have any tips yourselves, what you do, if you've ever had an experience like this, feel free to share it in the comments. I think the more we talk about it and acknowledge it and share our experiences, the more importance it will gather. I know some people choose not to wear it at all. Some people are always wearing their PPE and then there's us in the middle with the sporadicness. Regardless, I think there's a lot of reasons why people choose not to wear it. It can be hot, it can be uncomfortable, it can be heavy. So, you know, I just got these really sweet goggles. They're coming in. I got them on Amazon and they are full face goggles, which I'm very excited about. Obviously for different applications, you would use them. Like if I was sanding, it's probably really great to have your eyes entirely covered, right? There's nowhere that dust can get in. Same with a respirator. I've always worn these little masks. I think a respirator would be really great for sanding because it's such fine particles. Anyways, I think the more we dive into it and we learn what works for us, what's the most comfortable, we'll share that with you eventually. I know it's also as simple as tying your hair back, not wearing loose clothing, not wearing jewelry, having a first aid kit on hand. Thank you all for encouraging us to be safer. I hope that we can encourage everyone else out there who may slack like us to work safer, pick it up, put it on and stay safe. I just truly don't think it's worth it. I feel an immense amount of gratefulness to be able to talk to you about this and be able to see out of both of my eyes clearly. I feel healthy and I'm so grateful for that. So the ointment is helping a lot. It's healing well. Thank goodness. I also know that a lot of people will pass off this message as NBD. No big deal, but until it happens to you, it's kind of one of those things that you don't really care about and you just brush it off. I certainly was that person that cared some of the time. Like I said, and I don't know how to make you care more if you're that person, but I hope that you read through the comments and you read from other people's experiences and from mine. Even if I just plant a little seed somewhere in your head that makes you think about it, you know, a little bit more. I'd be happy with that. Thank you all for watching each week. I hope this message goes as far as it can. Share it with a friend, share it with your family, anyone who you know that could possibly need a little bit of a reminder. Love you back.