 It's that idea of like could I go out and live in the woods for three straight days with nothing but a pocket knife or something You're like, you know if I told my wife that my wife would be like why would you want to do that? And I'm like that sounds awesome. Are you serious like that sounds and we're just wired different strongman's kind of the same way You see this giant rock. You're like, I wonder if I can pick that up You're listening to barbell logic brought to you by barbell logic online coaching where each week We take a systematic walk through strength training and the refining power of voluntary hardship Welcome to the barbell logic podcast. You're listening to Matt Reynolds. I am here with my buddy longtime. Gosh, dude We've known each other for a long time now Spencer Graham Spencer I met Spencer Spencer actually back in his early college days worked at strong gym and and was a hell of a coach for us and That's kind of how the thing all got started Spencer has since Started his own gym GP athletics and is really the premier the premier gym strength-based gym in Southwest Missouri and really maybe in the Midwest and He just continues to crush it. There's a part of me I probably feel like like I'm excited to watch what you've done Not to take any credit for what you've done. I just think it's really cool to see, you know You were this young college kid many years ago working at strong and watch how you've Really expanded your own business. So so thanks for being on the show This is another one of our Springfield crew a lot of you guys know We've got like Cooper Mitchell from garage gym reviews and we've got a pretty good strength Group of people here in Springfield and so Spencer is one of those important people that you guys haven't met yet It was time for you to meet him. So thanks for being on the show, dude Yeah, man. No problem at all. I appreciate being on the show So what I wanted to talk about today primarily was the fact that we get a lot of questions about how to Bring some strongman training into your programming and with the knowledge that so first first off Most of you guys know that there was a day when I was a lightweight a light heavyweight pro strongman That was back when I was decently strong now. I'm just old and retired and beat up Spencer is an actual competitive strongman in the present And is and is pursuing his pro card right now. And so I wanted to bring him on I just want to have a conversation knowing that most of our listeners were probably Probably not compete in strongman or at least as they start to sort of put their toe into the pool They're like, I don't know. I'm not interested in even considering competing But I'd like to know how to just start some of that stuff because it looks really cool And so I wanted to have a conversation around that today You know, I started I started powerlifting. I think in 97 and still love powerlifting but In by 2005 so after doing it for eight years, I mean, it's just three lifts squat mentioned dead That's it and I was I was kind of bored of just doing that like I was decently strong And you know, I was like guys that have you know strong legs and strong backs are kind of a dime a dozen and so You know, I was never gonna be great really at either sport but I just thought gosh, it'd be cool to Picking up rocks and flipping tires and pulling cars looks cooler to me than just squatting and just deadlifting and things like that And so I made a transition into strongman and I remember in the beginning for me I was like, dude, I don't have any idea how to start this because Jim's most gyms don't have that now and no gyms had it then, you know What did that transition look like for you? and I remember you had just started to kind of get into the strongman world as As we sold strong and and but you've really taken that and expanded tremendously over the last over the last decade or so Yeah, well, that's kind of the cool thing with strongman is You know, if you don't have access to a gym You can still compete in strongman and can still train for strongman because strongman training is only moving odd objects, right? And so, you know, if you have tires at your house If you have ropes if you have anything heavy that you can carry You can start training for strongman and strongman The foundation of it is still going to be your overhead press strong legs with a yogurt squat And your deadlifts. So those are things that we can manipulate in your garage training You're just outside in training to get those same effects to get you ready for strongman And the cool thing about that is is you don't have to be super strong to compete There are different weight classes. There's a bigger variety. There is You know, they have novice classes where you can go in and you're like I just kind of want to get my feet wet because the most the most popular thing I ever hear is I'm not quite ready for strongman I'm not strong enough yet and the issue with that is is Strongman you don't start being, you know, Brian Shaw or Thor you don't start out being that strong But people have the idea that you have to because they're not familiar with strongman corporation and the Federation That allows you to go through that feeder system to get to that top level Yeah, that's great, you know that interesting thing is they didn't have that back when I started like that novice Class I think You may know more about this I think it kind of came out of the Crossfit craze like you had people that had done CrossFit and CrossFit, you know rogue started making some stuff that they would do So you'd start to see things like yolks or you know, what was the was it called the pig? What was the thing they flipped it was like flipping a tire in the CrossFit games, but it wasn't a tire Remember that thing. It was like a big. Oh, I got on that. It's like a big it's a big like Yeah, I mean, but it was basically like a tire flip It was just a giant thing that Rogan had made and so you started to see Crossfitters come in and want to play around with strongman implements and and the reality was back in like 2005 2006 if you weren't Very strong it would have been hard to compete in strongmail like, you know, there was There was you had to do a car deadlift and the car was heavy The car might have been 600 650 pounds for reps and a lot of people couldn't do that And now that they have that novice class, which is the it's that hey Just come out and have fun class I think it's been really awesome that they've done that made that feeder system So that there is like from the people that just want to have a blast on a Saturday and and play with some implements That they've never done before all the way up to your kind of are they still called platinum shows or proams or what? What are the yet? They actually just last year they changed the rules to where you used to be able to get your prokarta platinum shows But there's still only two or three platinum shows a year and at those platinum shows You just have your 231 heavyweights or you're currently pro strongman going for American strongest man They usually combine those And yeah, you're right CrossFit it honestly helped strongman tremendously because back in the day They're you only really only had two weight classes. I mean, it was 231 in under and 231 in above and now because we've had such an influx of CrossFit athletes and just People wanting to strike strongman overall. We've got 181 classes 198 231 265 all the way up And those novice classes so it's just helped us grow the sport of strongman so much Yeah, and pros are still just those two big weight classes. Is that right? There's only still the 105 kilo or 231 and above 105 kilo basically. That's right for pro correct Yeah, so so you started to mention this and you may look at it. You you may sort of Systematically separate all of the kind of strongman training into maybe different categories than I would so I'll tell you what I looked at So there's almost always some sort of overhead press at a strongman event not always But most the time absolutely, but yeah, and it's it's usually but you never know what it's gonna be So it could be an axle. It could be a log. It could be an odd implement. It could be a it could be a stone I mean, it could be a block it could be a one-arm dumbbell press or snatch or Or the circus dumbbell like there's it like you said, it's odd implements It's the kind of stuff you would have seen at the circus in the late 1800s early 1900s these guys that were you know These traveling strongman it was like I don't they're gonna pick heavy stuff up So so there is an overhead press for most of our listeners one of the things I love about that is they they've all been overhead pressing for Years they're just been overhead pressing with a barbell And so it's pretty simple to switch over and start playing with some of those odd implements You know those those empty axles that rogue or any really any the equipment companies sell they're pretty cheap, right? They're basically just schedule 80 pipe and you can start playing with axles and go and go from there And so where where would be the best place to start playing around with overhead press? With odd implements if you were somebody that either just had a garage gym or maybe you train at a decent black iron gym But they don't really have strongman equipment Best places honestly go to your local hardware store Because they're gonna have a bag of sand and bags of dirt Yeah, and those are gonna be the best things for you to start overhead pressing because they're they're not so fixed You know sand moves dirt moves bags bend And they give you that neutral grip pressing and that neutral grip is gonna be beneficial for your log press It's gonna be beneficial for Mauser block presses anything like that Your axle heck you can go to a junkyard and buy no trucks axle and use anything you want really And then inside the gym, you know incline bench press is gonna be super beneficial And you just change variations of that You like a for strongman you like a little higher incline so it's closer to an Overhead press with maybe like a little bit of layback or do you like more of a lower incline? That's a little closer to a bench press I prefer just above 45 degrees. Okay. It's a little bit higher Yeah, absolutely just because we only have a log on your chest and you're trying to keep that center of mass balance You have to lean back more and if you were to just take a straight shot of a picture and then compare it to an incline bench press picture They're almost identical You keep the chest towards the ceiling for as long as possible and you stick your head through at the end You know is it and so it it's almost perfectly mimicking it Yeah, yeah that that makes perfect sense On those sandbags I can remember When I first built my first sandbag that was one of the things I did was I went down to an old Army surplus store about a heavy-duty duffel bag like a canvas duffel bag that was cheap because they're an army surplus I went and bought I went bought tube sand. I think I bought the tube sands, which I think were 50 pounds maybe they're 25 pounds. Anyway, I loaded a bunch of tube sand into a contractor trash bag I taped it all shut with duct tape and then put that big contractor trash bag down in the duffel bag And it held up pretty good. Is that would you still do it that way? Is there a better way than what I did 15 years ago when I was doing this to kind of build your first sandbag press? No, I would do the exact same thing Because those army stores are going to have a bigger variety And they're they're not that expensive And you know, even if it turns out to be a big backpack cut the shoulder straps off You don't want straps on there. You don't want to make it easy So cut the straps off and fill it up with sand and tube sand or anything you can honestly I don't know if you remember this story. I think I've told you the story in the past but back when I was first getting into it I was broke. I mean I was this meant this is 2005 This is before we launched strong and of course strong made exactly no money for the first at least five or six years that we had it Right, so I mean I was broke college kids matter of fact 2005. I can remember I had just started training strongman when my daughter A few weeks before my daughter was born and remember the first time I left for a few hours In her first week of life, by the way, and she is about to turn 16 and start You know and have her own driver's license And so it was like it just doesn't seem like that long ago I can remember so I used to work in the old days. I worked at the the south side ymca here in springfield And I they had a huge Like a huge drainage ditch kind of retaining wall made out of giant Quarry stone. I mean big white limestone query rocks And I called the manager of the of the ymca, which I had no longer worked at but I still knew him Okay, and I was like, hey, there are literally I don't know seven or eight hundred massive Rock query stones that sort of separated the land between the ymca and the soccer fields if you Can think if you know about where that is And what would you think if I loaded up a few of those stones in the back of my truck? And I don't know just took him he was like I'm not going to tell you you can But I'm also not going to tell you you can't and here's what I'll tell you If you come at this time of day at the on this day There probably isn't going to be anybody around to see you and tell you no And so I went I remember my brother and I going out there. We had a great big beach towel We would roll one of those we took one of those rocks up and rolled it on a beach towel We both you know We all picked up the corners and carried on the beach towel and threw it in the through the back of my truck And then we'd have a stone. So we you know, we probably had a stone that weighed Anywhere from maybe 125 to 150 for the smallest and the biggest one was probably 200 pounds a 200 pound stone Even if you're a 300 or near 300 pound presser a 200 pound stone is not a real easy stone to press It'll humble you in a heartbeat Because it's not like holding the barbell No, not at all and Yeah, it's rough and you know, they have the mouser blocks now, but the I mean And what are those are those like big are those like big cinder block type? What's a mouser block? Basically, so a mouser box is just it's I can't believe the exact I can't remember the exact dimensions But it's like eight inches thick and I want to say it's it's 14 inches by 24 inches And it's a big hollow steel box that has a removable side and you can load plates in there Okay, and so basically it made stone loading In pressing easier for athletes, but yeah, they still have Stones that you can have in competitions, you know And and just over the whole shutdown that we were just finally starting to get out of I had a buddy who was training in his backyard. That's all he had was just a big rock You know, I lent him a barbell and a few plates But that that rock was the primary base of his training for strongman training. Yeah There's he was squatting with it. He was picking it up. He was loading it He was probably shoulder in it everything he could do Yeah, okay, so that's overhead press so we can play you can play around the overpress Overhead press those axles are a blast Also, you know back in the day when I started finding something like a like a log was really difficult because there was no rogue Rogue wasn't out yet And of course now you've got all of these played like there's So many companies that make logs logs are cheaper and more accessible than they ever used to be and they're a blast to be able to To press a log and the the standard when I was when I competed and I assume it's kind of similar is Is a 12 inch diameter log? Maybe it's a little bigger. Maybe it's a little smaller But that's going to be in the ballpark And so for our listeners who have thought about Spencer Vincent this that You know with a barbell that center that center of mass or center grabbing a balance point of the barbell being over midfoot That's pretty easy when it's a barbell Because it's 28 millimeters right 28 and a half millimeters But a 12 inch log a third automatically puts that log At least six inches away from your chest or away from your throat And that's why you have to have such a big lean back That's why you were talking about why you have to do the incline press To train that a lot of times because it's the balance is so much harder on the log than it is with a barbell Yeah, no, and you're right logs are more accessible than I've ever been and uh, you know, honestly Rogue has been such a huge supporter of strongman in the sport But you know, you've got these other smaller companies who are busting out logs left and right and that makes it more accessible for You know, you mentioned this earlier strongman is Not a wealthy sport. You're not the strongest in the world You know, it's it's hard to get your hands on implements and things like that So, you know just a few weeks ago if you want to train log just a few weeks ago I was at my family farm and we had cut down a bunch of trees and that's all I had so I had 10 12 foot logs and you know You put those up on your lap you pick them up like a zurcher carry you roll them up to your chest And you start to overhead press them So if you can't get your hands on a log, there's still a lot of things that you can do to manipulate that same movement pattern Here's what's funny about that is like The point of the lift was that in the old days Guys would actually pick up logs like actual trees that have been cut down And they would press the log and then we got into the same We're like, well, we'll make this like metal version of that aluminum versions of logs that are loadable with weights And the funny thing is like full circle. You you're like, well in the middle of covid We didn't have access to actual logs. I was out on the family farm I mean to strongman logs that were built by rogue. So I had to press Actual logs that were cut down out of the woods Which is like the point of the thing in the beginning And it was the most difficult thing I'd ever done You know, there is no warm-up like it you can't take your your 20 or 50 pound warm-ups, man It's like I've got I've got a 90 pound tree limb and I've got a 200 pound log That's right. Well, I guess I'm going to make this jump and see how it goes. Yes, right, right Not exactly incremental increases. So all right, so that's overhead press Then the other thing that I think is almost always in a strongman competition is some form of deadlift So whether it's a deadlift for max whether it's a car deadlift for reps You're picking up. Maybe it's just a super heavy farmers walk, which is similar But you're picking up something heavy Via a deadlift you actually I mean you certainly you can see something Like a version of a squat in a strongman competition But it's not common and that doesn't mean that I think that probably every strongman in the world Squats like that's that's still the king of the lifts because it it just creates the most general strength But is that is that still pretty much the case that there's something heavy that you're going to pick up Off the ground on just about every single strongman competition that you see Yeah, absolutely and they've they've added so many implements to training So, you know like your farmers and your deadlifts are going to be real similar It's side picker front pick. Um, you've got duck walk now power stairs Um, heck you've got sandbag, you know picks and then you run with them So yeah, those are all lifting movements from the ground And so deadlifting as far as gym owners go or home gym owners Just your basic deadlift is going to be super beneficial But if you want to implement that into strongman training, it's going to be the exact same thing It's going to be you know, deadlift for reps in a minute. It's going to be max deadlifts You can do max hold things like that and then Like we had just talked about with the stones pick the stone up and deadlifts as many times as you can Yeah that Strongman implements are laying everywhere people just kind of have to use their imagination and just make it happen Yeah Yeah, so the interesting thing about those deadlifts is that in strongman a lot of times you'll have a Shorter range of motion deadlift. You might have a silver dollar deadlift an 18 inch deadlift like which is you know So it's nine inches shorter than your standard deadlift and that silver dollar deadlift a lot of times is for max But sometimes it's for reps a lot of times those sidehandled deadlifts a farmer's deadlift or a car deadlift So it's a side pick a lot of times that's for reps And so rather than just training in the sort of typical LP style three sets of five or something like that you have to train for strongman both for Super max effort lifting and also super like how many reps can you knock out in 60 seconds? And by the way for our listeners if you have it actually try to deadlift max reps in 60 seconds It's awful like it's not fun No, it's the worst thing in the world That's kind of the cool thing with strongman is not only do you have to be super strong But you have to be athletic and your strength endurance has to be through the roof. Yeah, and people underestimate that Yeah, yeah, the you get to a show It's often the the guy you can see the guys who can recover the fastest, right? They have a super hard event and 15 20 minutes later They're doing another super hard event like how well can your body recover your heart rate drop back down That that kind of core body temperature come back down to a normal place and here we go again And you know, hopefully my body is replenished most of the creatine and the glycogen and I'm ready to roll And so I always love that about strongman. I felt like it was the best of both worlds I felt like I felt and I still feel this way that power lifting tends to be just a little more like it's just Heavy and you don't really have to be an athlete to be a power lifter And I don't mean that in a negative sort of way like I think there's some amazing People who are power lifters who clearly are athletes, right? So it's kind of like baseball Do you have to be an athlete to be a professional baseball player like I don't know are there good athletes in baseball? Oh, yeah, right. So there's some amazing athletes out there In powerlifting, but you only have to be an athlete and then you've got crossfit Where you don't really have to be strong But you really got to be fit like you better you've got an incredible Aerobic base an incredible conditioning base What I love about strongman is it combines the best of those two worlds. You got to be strong And you got to be in an amazing condition Yeah, absolutely. And and with that Being strong and being in really good conditioned is it's going to be one of those things that we take in to Account like rehab and prehab and what are we doing because you're right, you know, uh, just just past january I competed at Platinum plus show autogon platinum plus show and it was a two-day event and we had Six events, but one of the events was mass wrestling, right? So mass wrestling for the listeners who aren't aware of what that is is basically two guys fighting over stick from the floor Yeah, so let let me paint a picture. So you're both so there's like a big I don't know what it is a two by eight or two by ten type board sitting between you and the other guy You're sitting on the floor with your feet sort of straight out in front of you Your feet are pushed up against the board the other guys on the other side of the board With his feet up against the board and then you you're wrestling over a stick. Is that right a rod or something? Is what are you fighting for? It's a little over an inch long. Um dowel rod basically is what it is. I got it So I wrote the side note to this story is is that I have a membership at your gym Which I go at least once every two months and But I was in there I was in there training with you and you were like, hey, I need you to do this this mass wrestling with me And I was like no hashtag not interested And you're like why I was like dude. I'm 41. I'm gonna tear a bicep to this thing like I don't want to Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Not interested. So yeah, so then I watched and then it's funny because One of your primary training partners at the gym is like He has the frame of a of like Brian Shaw. He has that kind of frame He's super tall. I don't know the guy's like six five and he's over way over 300 pounds And he's not fat. He's just a huge huge dude. You're like, all right I guess I'm gonna have to like wrestle him for this thing. Yeah, bro. I'm gonna wrestle this guy and It was it was awful. And yeah, so like and where I was going with that story is, you know, it was best two out of three So You don't compete once you're competing potentially three times So I think it's then you know on sunday when he finally finished the competition I had actually competed like 13 times and I came down with rabdo. So yeah, oh, that's right You got rabdo. I I had never heard of somebody getting rabdo from a strongman competition, but it was two day two day event Really strange and you you came home and what did you just feel like? I don't know like uber fatigued and dehydrated like what how did you know something was wrong? It's like, you know, when you compete in strongman after every competition You feel like you were hit by a bus. It's felt like I was hit by a couple of buses You know, like saturday was really hard to cover because it's hard to eat While you're competing in those days are you know anywhere from six to eight hours long and so monday I came home and I felt fatigued and tired and I wasn't really that sore Tuesday I was still really fatigued and tired and then wednesday I woke up and I was kind of pale and I was real nauseous and so when I went into The doctor clinic I told them what happened and I pretty sure you have rabdo We're going to do a urine analysis and I you're not leaving this clinic until we get an IV and you're down for the next Two hours. Yeah, they pumped me full of IVs and then I went back to work that night And I was actually sitting at the front desk greeting guests as they came in with an IV hooked up It was crazy it is that is crazy So, all right, so you've got so you get your overhead and you can press The idea there is you can press anything find things to press find rocks to press sandbags to press axles Whatever you can find that's heavy The kind of stuff you would have done as a 12 or 13 year old kid out in the woods You know, like hey, I bet I can pick up that log. Hey, I can bet I can pick up that rock That's really what strongman is and so you can start doing those things And really all again and and overhead presses the same situation as deadlift There are overhead presses for max strength and there's overhead presses for as many reps as you can And then sometimes you'll have like an odd implement overhead press medley where you have to do, you know, four or five different movements So like maybe you press a maybe you press a keg and then maybe you press an axel and then you press a log And then and it's whoever gets through the medley the fastest or whoever completes the most odd object So that's really the way most of those overhead presses are set up in strongman In deadlift. It's kind of a similar situation So you can deadlift all kinds of different things you can do just you'll even sometimes still see just a regular normal deadlift Like a powerlifting style deadlift you can usually use straps in strongman and you can hitch in a strongman So it's just like we don't care how you get it up It starts on the ground it has to end with completely locked out hips knees, etc And you know and chest up and there's lots of ways to train for that as well So you can change you can do deficit deadlifts to make the range of motion longer You can do rack pulls to make the range of motion shorter. You can go for max weight. You can go for max reps You can also then pick up those rocks and sort of a deadlift sort of scenario Pick up heavy sandbags pick up heavy kegs pick up things like that Those are all things that you can do And then you get into what I would call like the real athletic stuff Which I I would equate like it's where you have to move And so maybe that's a yoke where you have something on your back And so I mean just imagine picking up essentially imagine picking up way heavier than your max effort Heaviest squat you've ever squatted in your whole life And then running down the street with it as fast as you That's a yoke. That's a yoke right or uh farmers are the same thing So you do a farmers walk So it's like the two heaviest suitcases you ever picked up Heavier than your heaviest deadlift right so I mean I can remember doing Farmers walks at four the heaviest one I've ever done in competition was 400 pounds per hand So it's 800 pounds. Well, I wouldn't an 800 pound deadlifter I'm a 700 pound deadlifter Picking up farmers walks and the handles are a little higher So, you know, you don't have to pick it up from quite as low of a position But you stand up with it And then you run down the street as fast as you can right or you pick up these heavy sandbags And you run down the street and then maybe you load them over a yoke Or maybe you load them on a platform or or you or and then of course the one of the most famous Lifts you have one of the most famous events you have are stones where you just pick up big Stones which might be natural stones, but are more often than not perfectly round spheres Made out of concrete and you load those onto a platform or you load those over a yoke And then you've got tire flips right where you've got it It's basically like the most explosive power clean you've ever done Only it's seven or eight or 900 pounds and you continue to Throw the thing as hard as you can and it falls over and you're exhausted And you got to pick it up and do it again and then again and then again and then again for 75 feet or So everything you can imagine like the worst thing you can do Yeah, and then we're going to compete with it. That's exactly right Then we're going to see who could do it the fastest and then so I remember Yeah, I know you're you're a student of the strongman game too, but I remember back when I was winning my pro card So I've told the story lots of times about Brian Shaw and I won our pro cards the same at the same Competition and back then Brian Shaw weighed between 275 and 295 like he was way under 300 pounds He's not the 450 that he is or was I think he's lost a little bit of weight lately But it wasn't his heyday, right? He's not a Thor nobody was that big and as a matter of fact Phil Pfister had won and was the was the first American to win I think since Bill Kazmaier and this was back about the time I started to compete and so what you would what you saw was You saw a strongman move from those magnets for magnets in years Phil Pfister years of like very athletic the guys were super strong, but they were like mostly athletic to Goliath like of Old Testament biblical proportions dudes And they were like, you know what let's just do the same athletic stuff But let's make it like oh, I don't know 50 percent heavier than it's ever been ever And it just got ridiculous on and that's when I knew like I was stuck in this weird sort of sort of body size that like I needed to be a 265 And they're what there isn't a pro 265 So I'm like I'm gonna have to cut way down and try to make 231s to compete or I got to compete with those guys the Brian Shaw's which at the time was 290 and 6 6 or 6 7 or whatever it was and I looked at that and I was like I'm I could never compete with that Having no idea that that guy was going to put another 150 pounds on To do what they're doing today. And so it got really crazy now. Here's the question For our people who are listening who've never done this like they can play around with those overhead implements and they can play around with the Deadlift what are the best ways to introduce them to these very athletic and I think Way more fun versions of cardio like rather than getting on a on the you know The rogue echo bike, which is a great cardio piece or a rower or whatever Like it's way more fun to do the strongman stuff. Where are great places to start with those? Pick something up heavy and move with it Um, so obviously You're gonna want to learn how to do it first And I'm gonna kind of plug kale back here in starting strongman starting strongman is a platform where you can go And you can learn Absolutely everything you need to about strongman from building your at home implements to just the forms of questions and answers and that's a really good place to start because you're right if You're a power lifter and you're you're moving in a vertical range of motion constantly squat bench and deadlift When you go over to strongman and you have to move in every plane of motion and not only just be Like super strong at it, but you got to make sure you don't get hurt as well otherwise, you're going to be out for a long time and so Going and learning those movements just from youtube's or starting strongman Start super super light technique is going to be absolutely everything because If you waste yourself on technique, you're not going to be able to finish the lift anyways You know if you've got a heavy log clean, let's learn how to pick it up first and then let's learn how to press it We're going to put it into two steps So really starting light And if you have a local strongman show, you know here in missouri We're getting more strongman shows that we have a missouri strongest man I'll get 15 if you're in the area just come watch it You know go watch the local strongman show Or you know a lot of times crossfiddles will add in the most implements on a week And just go check out the crossfit gym and see how they're moving with the implements. Yeah Because that's that you've got to have an idea you can't just go out and be like Oh, this looks like a big heavy rock. I'm gonna pick this up and see how it goes. Yeah, let's you know Injury in strongman is huge And so I highly recommend the listeners going and going kind of research how to move it first. Yeah Yeah, it's amazing that with like there's a tremendous amount like you said of of content That's out there to kind of learn how to do that stuff I I saw probably more bicep terrors than anything else in strongman because of The nature of picking up heavy stones off the floor and you think about it for our for our listeners You think about a 400 pound stone that's on the floor It's not like picking up a 400 pound barbell. It's not even like picking up a 600 pound barbell Which is nine inches off the floor and it's got great grip and you I mean you literally have to bend over And essentially do a straight leg rounded back deadlift with your hands dug deep underneath the stone on the floor And pick that thing up and there's there's the pickup portion where you pick you pick it up You don't bend your elbows at all you pick it up and you stand up with sort of a hip extension and put the thing in your lap And then you get control of it once it's on your lap and you can load it either over a yoke or onto a platform or whatnot I've seen a ton of guys tear biceps on on a stone lift I've seen a ton of guys tear biceps on tire flips for the same reason right That tire flip is nothing more than an explosive clean if you do a clean correctly Your hands your arms your elbows never bend. That's an arm pull right like they don't they don't bend until You finish throwing your hips and then your arms like rope and they just kind of bend and then fling over Well a tire flips kind of the same way if you try to curl a 900 pound tire up That's a great way to tear a bicep And it's not actually 900 pounds right like it the tire actually does weigh 900 pounds But you're not deadlifting 900 pounds because of the physics that the the tire is on an angle slanted And you pick picked the thing up, but it's a hip movement And the the other thing I remember thinking to myself is that strongman taught me was how to be explosive under extreme fatigue Like anybody can be explosive on the first tire flip But how do you be explosive on the 10th tire flip? Right and that's and that's I want to backjack just a little bit just so that listeners have an idea of the atlas stone portion of it. Atlas stones are really only going to be about 60 ish percent of your deadlifts max just to kind of give you an idea of how hard stones are to lift And you're right, you know, it's when you get to that tire and you are on your 10th flip And it's honestly, it's it's your muscles aren't working anymore. It's just your brain telling you and you being Extremely mentally tough to be explosive again. It's it's one of those things where your training carries over in You you practice like you compete and it's Do a rep wait a few seconds do a rep wait a few seconds because oftentimes people just go out there They absolutely waste themselves and the people who do waste themselves and they win in that event Those are elite level athletes who are going to beat you anyway, right? You're gonna get those those one or two outcasts that are just going to dominate And so if you're looking for a decent finish, it's a rep Wait a second wait a rep and everyone's gonna be cheering. Hey like keep going keep going keep going You're like, not really because I still have 50 seconds left. Yeah, that's right Yeah, it's like you've got to completely commit to each rep that you do And so if you and what I've seen a million guys do this They they get two thirds of the way into an event like that like a like a tire flip or like a power stairs Which is imagine a giant rock or a giant anvil or like a giant weight with a hook Imagine the biggest kettlebell you ever saw like a kettlebell that weighs 350 pounds like something like that And you have to pick it up and put it and you have to go up a set of stairs only It's not a set of stairs with a six or seven inch rise like you get on in your house It's a set of stairs with what what are they 12 to? 16 inches or something I mean they vary they start at like 18 inches and they'll go to You know 22 inches for the middle stand like even harder, but then they'll drop it right down to like 20 inches Yeah, so you think about it if you if you approach that as you start getting tired You're like all right. I'm going to pick up this ginormous Kettlebell for all intents and purposes and you're like, I'm just going to try to wiggle it up there. You're dead Instead you got a rest enough to go. Okay. Here we go. Here we go and Boom and you got to go hard and fast right then and be 100 committed to each of those reps and that's So we've talked a lot about over the years on on this podcast about voluntary hardship Right about these ideas that one of the reasons we train is because it refines us as people it's like we choose to do a hard thing that We didn't have to do because it makes us better and then when we when we face something That that is involuntarily hard like we get cancer or like we lose our job in coveted or Or whatever that thing is you're you're better both physically and mentally to be able to fight that thing the thing I love about strongman is I think it is Maybe only second to to crossfit and at least debatable with crossfit. It's the thing that is the most hard Right, like it is hard to fight under a heavy squat as a power lifter when you've never done the squat before and you're terrified Coming up out of the hole you're like, I don't know if I'm going to get this right But it's a whole other deal in strongman to push your body Far beyond what you ever thought it could possibly do Yeah, no, it's it's one of those things that you and I tell everybody this every great athlete Is I'm going to say mentally different Like psychologically you just you think differently, right because you're willing to go the extra step That's what separates the average and the good athletes from the great and the elite And it's that it's that mental ability. It's that mindset of I'm I'm going to die or I'm going to vomit but I'm going to complete this You know, whether it's a course in strongman where you know, it's that heavy yoke, you know at the arnold last year I think it's like 1400 pounds or something like that's unreal, right? Like that that's strongman is no longer um It's no longer really taking Safe precautions when you're lifting it's let's make this dangerous and super hard Right, so that's what's going to separate you and that mental mindset and that focus in order to do so is extremely difficult to obtain Yeah, that's great. Um, yeah, it's interesting that You can't do anything about your physical natural ability, right? Like there are people who are just physical freaks And if that's not you That talent is probably going to be hard work. I mean, unfortunately, that's just the case, right? You're never going to win like no matter how how how hard you train You're never going to be the the world's strongest man in the heavy weights Like you can't like you look at somebody like Thor or Brian Shaw and you're just like I wouldn't made that way, right? But you also have a lot of people that you see that actually not a ton But you'll see guys that are built to have massive frames and they don't have the mental toughness to be champion either And then you'll see people that have that rooty mentality that have the mental toughness that I mean, they're the ones that you want in the in the In the foxhole with you if you go to war like they're mentally tough They just don't have the they the god-given physical abilities The champions have both I think that's the deal, right? You look at somebody like Thor you look at somebody like Shaw or like, you know, or even you look at a guy like Eddie Hall who actually Didn't really have the physical like you look at Eddie Hall compared to a lot of those other guys and He's not even close to the same size as those guys Something about his mental Something about his mental toughness Allowed him to push through by the way a quick quick shout out if you haven't seen uh, Eddie It's called Eddie the strong man. I think on Netflix. It's a great documentary That that follows Eddie Hall before he won the world's strongest man And then he ended up winning for uh for great britain a few years ago And and it was really wild to see because he's he is he is significantly smaller He held the all-time deadlift record. He's hold up held the all-time deadlift record a few times Thor beated a couple weeks ago Um, and the guy's just he's just one of those guys that's mentally mentally tough now. Here's the other thing You said correctly That when you get into uber competitive strongman We throw safety out the window like nobody cares. They're there to see the freaks Pick up the freakiest things and run with them, right? And we've talked about this on the podcast many times as well No one would look at the nfl and be like that's safe. It's not safe You're running your head into people at 45 miles an hour multiple times per game, right? Like that's not that is not it nobody looks at ufc. You're boxing and says it's safe So a big important takeaway for our listeners is this There is a way to train strongman in a way that's relatively safe and really really fun Just like you said starting conservative Starting with weights that you know, you can handle starting with implements You know, you can do correctly watching those videos going and training in a strongman gym Once or twice like even if you have to travel most most major cities at this point have a gym Full of with some strongmen and i'll say this I think strongmen my my experience is that strongmen are some of the nicest human beings on earth They're they are More welcoming than powerlifters who are also tend to be pretty cool people and they love to teach because the There's Technique to every one of these lifts and most people don't know them right like everybody has their own idea Of how to squat or how to bench press But how to do a yoke run Who knows how to do a yoke run only strongmen with the experience that have done the yoke run Right. So there's no like, oh, you know What I love about strongman is it's pretty rare that you'll hear the old adage You know, you'll talk about what you bench press and it's always somebody's like, oh, you know my old uncle bob He one time he bench press 840 pounds in back in the weight room, you know, whatever and you're like you are so full of Shit But in strongman nobody ever says if you're like, oh, I did a 930 pound yoke Nobody's like, oh, you know what uncle bob. He did a 1050 pound yoke. You're like because like people don't do that It's so odd that and for you people that are wanting to go watch if you've ever been to a powerlifting meet Let's just be honest powerlifting meets are awful to watch. They're horrible Yeah, they can get really boring and even powerlifters are going to admit Look, unless you're under the bar competing, it's pretty boring to watch Yeah, so if you're and if you're a family member of a competitive powerlifter You're excited for about nine minutes during a 13 hour day for the nine attempts of your the husband that you're watching That's when you're excited other than that. It's just boring and everybody's squatting If you're not somebody that's really into lifting like squatting 600 pounds versus squatting 800 pounds versus squatting 450 To the average human. It's just all a bunch of weight on a barbell But strongman is a blast because you get to watch people pick up cars You get to watch people pick up huge rocks between the events most of the time if you come out and ask Can I just touch that rock you could like oh my god? This is actually like a 400 pound ball of concrete And so I feel like it makes it a little more real to the general public No, it absolutely does and in it's kind of funny Strongman when you get to an event and the athletes are at the competition It's kind of like your old college days or high school days where you've got something dumb to do And you're like who wants to do it first? Yeah, you know the strongman competition and you're like Uh, you guys know the best way to do this and you're like, well, I did it in training I kind of did this another guy back. I kind of did like this and you just learn you're right Like you go to a strongman competition and they will teach you just in january I mean I've been competing in what six or seven years now And there was an event I had never done before What was it and those guys were like, man, I really recommend it was the duck walk We've gotten a duck walk at our place and I have failed it every single time So explain what that is so they know what a duck walk is Oh man, it's It's like if you were to pick something up really heavy And walk with it between your legs with your arms down at your waist like Again like a like a super heavy kettlebell just again imagine like what what do they tend to weigh 300 pounds something ridiculous Yeah, I think ours at our last competition was our duck walk was 365 pounds So you pick it up and it has to be carried in front of you and you literally waddle side to side as fast as you can For like 25 feet. Yeah, it's like a sumo deadlift that you run with It's exact. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. So if you do that we did we had like a I think it was a 280 or 290 pound farmers for 60 feet Then you pick up the sumo deadlift and you run with it and then at the very end of the course You actually have to put it up on those power stairs where we mentioned earlier with like 18 inches and the 24 inches And then you're done So let's add these three worst most hexing events and put them all together and see how well you do Yeah, I remember that I think the hardest event I've ever had in competition is for at america strongest man in in philly in 2007. We had an event like that We had a 330 or 335 pound farmers per hand Set it down 930 pound yoke set it down and then The worst tire i've ever flipped in my life for 75 feet So after they get you horribly exhausted with essentially non explosive movements like farmers and a yoke aren't really explosive I mean you're they're athletic you pick up something heavy and you're you're moving with it as quickly as you can But it doesn't really require like a high amount of power output. You don't have to go boom Right tire flip you do so you do this like this long farmers this long yoke and then you're like, oh my god Now i've got to flip this horrend all the guys, you know, they'd flip number four They'd throw up in the on the side of the street on the gutter. They'd flip another one It was just it was the the the lactate was awful and uh, and that's what that's what's wrong It is by the way, though If you had the chance to do that Wouldn't you take that over overriding like the echo bike or running the or running the c2 rower and again? I love those machines That's so much more fun I would make myself vomit doing strongman than just getting on a treadmill or an echo bike and doing something like that Or this skier is a skier. It's a terrible I've done a skier one time in my whole life and I was like, that's it. That's all i'm doing. I'll never touch one of those again I ordered one for the gym and I ordered one for the gym Yeah, it's it's uh, so strongman's awesome and the other thing that's nice about it is If you've got a training partner or uh, or several training partners, but at least one you can compete at the cardio You can compete at the conditioning right and it's much harder to compete at conditioning at least in a way that It's hard to get excited about competing against who can row the fastest You know 200 meter rows with 60 seconds in between. You're just like this is not exciting Uh, there's something way more fun to have all these kind of odd objects You got a sandbag and a and a stone like a natural stone and a concrete block and a and to see who can pick them up and run 25 feet with them and load them on a platform as fast as you can so your buddy times Times you on his stopwatch on his phone and then you do the same thing for him and you compete against each other And sometimes you'll get done you'd be like, you know what? I think I can beat that now I can beat your time set it back up do it all over again and it makes conditioning a blast And it's it makes it feel a lot less like work. What work is Is setting up strongman events that sucks. That's the worst part of the whole thing You know, you got to do a yoke or farmers walk and and they've got you know You talk about those farmers walks having 250 or 300 pounds per hand Kind of sucks to set it up. Kind of sucks to do a yoke. What you'll do with a yoke. It's not quite as bad The setup it's the takedown so you get that yoke you put a plate on just like you would on squat You do a run you put another plate on you do a run you put another plate on you do run At some point you've got like eight plates on each side and then you're real exhausted And then you got to clean it all back up and you're like, oh god This is where this is where I was always like, man, if I ever hit it big I would just have people in the gym that were just like plate loaders and unloader But can you please load this you set it up and you're like you get done training and you're exhausted because you've just done the event You're like, oh man, I don't want to take all this back down. Yeah, but And just to backtrack a little bit, you know, you're talking about like how much fun it is To condition the form of strongman and in watching the sport of strongman and it's kind of like a scary movie I think part of the Adrenaline that you get watching and competing is kind of that danger factor You know, because it's it's not common stuff. And so you kind of get excited like Man if this dude moves any faster like he's he's gonna blow a quad Like something is gonna happen if something is gonna happen instead of journaling just over and over and over again And yeah, it just makes it so exciting to watch Yeah, there's there's something Deep inside many of us and I don't know that it's that it's straight up a like I don't know if it's like a A male versus female thing because I've seen some completely badass females do this And I've also seen like some complete pansy males who don't aren't mentally tough enough to do it either but for for me Having this thing that I'm like, I don't know if I can do this and there's also something that's sort of primal and I don't know if masculine's right where but kind of primal about it You're like I want to see if I can do it's that idea of like could I go out and live in the woods for three straight days With nothing but a pocket knife or something you're like, you know If I told my wife that my wife would be like, why would you want to do that? And I'm like that sounds awesome. Are you serious like that sounds and we're just wired different Well straw man's kind of the same way. You see this giant rock. You're like, I wonder if I can pick that up And so there's it's something cool about it, you know, that's just it takes these things And by the way, some of those some of those events and some of the implements can be a little bit expensive But a lot of them are either free or really cheap, right? Like you can get a use tires are free if you've got it if you've got a place that especially if you're in an area Like we are with rock quarries and you got earth mover tires You can show up in your pickup truck They when they have a blowout on one of those tires They the EPA makes them get rid of them because they can't have mosquitoes running around in them and stuff and Spreading all diseases and stuff So a lot of times you can get those tire blowouts or or tires that have torn and they're free Right rocks are free You talked about finding like, you know tractor axles a lot of times you can get for free or for almost nothing You can go to a junkyard and get stuff a lot of times for 15 or 20 bucks You can make a lot of this stuff You don't have to go out and buy the nicest yoke. There is there now I can remember even having we had made a homemade when I first started my yoke Was a homemade cambered bar. I went and bought a bunch of Schedule 80 pipe I cut the pipe down and it was a huge camber like a 24 inch camber I don't know if you remember that old bar that I had and we just put We just welded 90 degree angles on it And while the yoke didn't go all the way down to the floor We could load a bunch of weight of it up and we could still hold onto it on the sides rather than holding onto it Like a barbell would take it out of a rack And we go out and we take it actually out of squat stands and we go run with it And we'd have another set of squat stands down there and we'd run down until we set on the squat stands Well, that's a little more ballsy than running with a yoke because like if something goes back with the yoke You just set the yoke on the ground But if you got 600 pounds on your back on a cambered bar And you go down you're going down with the weight and so but it didn't cost anything That stuff is cheap to tell us around with It is cheap and I when I first got into strongman, I just rented a storage unit And every Saturday I would take all the weights from my home gym when I still live with my parents I'd grab all those weights. I'd go up to the storage unit. I would train and my log was a rectangle I built it out of two by fours with some pipe on the end and pipe in the center And you know, it was the worst thing to clean but cleaning a lot it made cleaning a lot easy My yoke was homemade as well. I made it out of wood and like three inch steel pipe Farmers and frame carry. I just use a basic trap bar I think I think most gym owners probably have or home gym owners probably have a trap bar or some form of fashion of it Yeah, super beneficial in the sport of strongman. There's so many things and it's it's carrying heavy things and You know grip strength is going to be a huge portion of it as well And there's so many things you pick up 245 pound plates that are back to back and start working your grip strength You know, that's going to be the biggest factor when you get to strongman With a lot of those moving movements and medleys It's going to be someone's grip strength. Yeah. Yeah, it's amazing I think back the strongest my back ever was and the strongest my grip ever was Was when I was training strongman and I don't know how often I train grip just To train grip for fun like just the just the nature of Doing heavy farmers walks and things like that a lot of times now we would do farmers walks for hold sometimes Especially the end of farmers walks. It's a great grip exercise But like I didn't really mess around too much like with the captains or crush grippers and and so like I can do those Okay, and I've got kind of small hands and so but I could do but it's not because I train those It's because I train strongman and then my back was the same the the heaviest I could ever deadlift in my life I was obviously deadlifting a lot like actual normal deadlifts But the other thing I was doing is like I don't know that you can get your back stronger If it's already strong decently strong then picking up heavy stones off the ground Like that's so much harder for your back those heavy stones heavy farmers like It's brutal. Yeah, I don't know if there's enough. I don't know if there's I mean strongman aside I don't know if there's another Movement that would even come close to mimicking picking up a 350 pound stone Yeah, you're never more rounded It's the worst it's the worst two-foot deficit you've ever done for a deadlift Yeah, you you could practice uber deficit deadlifts where the bar is right on top of your shoes But it's just not the same It's just not the same as a matter of fact I would think I'm really heavy Zercher off of the floor would probably carry over better Than a super intense deficit like get down literally put the weight on the floor Get underneath it until you're the bars in the crooks of your elbows and then stand up with it That probably is the best mimic for a squat or for up for stones and oh by the way Is there anything you're back? Right, right, right. You just yeah, you've got it It's you're gonna have to straight leg and round it because there's no way to get down there otherwise Is there anything more humbling than the first time you touch atlas stones? You're just like, oh, I don't know. What is it? There'll be like how much is this stone to be like that? It's like 175 pounds You know and you're like, oh girls do this and then you start to pick it up and you're like, oh my god This in fact is awful, you know in powerlifting you have Like you said earlier everybody has their own version of what is the perfect squat bench deadlift and press right? And that happens in strongman as well But the difference is in strongman you have to train Out of movement and when I say that I mean you there is no you can't have perfect form It's like like we were just talking about you like we're gonna get down and we're gonna do a deficit searcher squat Don't round your back because when you go to strongman, you're gonna have your background When you get out of place, you're gonna get hurt. So let's train that way So when that does happen under a heavy load, you don't get injured That's right. Yeah, if you if you train with barbells and you get yourself generally strong We also know that you're generally more resilient and less vulnerable to injury When then you add strongman training to your training to your like all strongmen still do They most strongmen train a lot like power lifters. Plus they do all the strongman events, right? And so they still train like they train the big four lifts and and what not maybe bench press a little less But they do those things well when you add the strongman implements What it does, especially if you do it carefully and like conservatively and still you can almost like linear progress Even your strongman implements what you'll find is once you're two three four six months in on strongman training You're probably the most resilient you've ever been to injury Because now you've had to learn how to pick up with rounded backs and and straight legs and you've learned how to You've had to like run down the street with heavy weight on your back You've had to learn how to have lateral movement, which never happens in powerlifting, right? So things like like you think about that when that heavy yokas on your back or heavy farmers And you're running down the street and it's you know for easy math Let's say it's a thousand pounds, which is a lot and more than what most people do do But it's not a thousand pounds on your back like it is on a squat. It's a thousand pounds on one leg And then it's a thousand pounds on another leg because you're you're running you're walking as fast as you can So it's not like it's a thousand pounds evenly distributed on both legs It's all on the right foot all on the left foot all on the right foot all And that's that's you start thinking about like that isn't that in fact is not healthy And it is it you can become injured, but if you start not at thousand pound yoke runs But you start with 300 pound yoke runs, you know and then slowly start to increase that then you'll be surprised at what I think you'll you'll see your You know the the the tendons and ligaments in your knees in your hips and your ankles your feet strength Your hand strength your back strength like those things all become more resilient as you start to add some of those things to your training And again, then it just makes conditioning a blast Yeah, and and strongman is not a sport that you can necessarily train every day that you can train You know if you train power looking four or five days a week Let's train strongman three to four days a week And we're going to have to take a day in there where it's just Prehab and rehab because you've got to recover You know a lot of times we were set up a training block like Train mondays and wednesdays and then fridays are going to be a prehab and recovery day Like to try and recover from those days and then saturday is going to be our strongman day and when you train strongman You like I just said you don't want to do the implements every single day But you also need to be aware of how you're training on so earlier we mentioned grip strength, you know training grip strength Within a twice within a two week period your forms aren't recovered yet. That's just the way it is. You know, and if you try and be Super explosive and train your react reactive strength with your super heavy training You're not going to get very good results and when if you do do that Because it is possible You got to be very careful on how you do it because reactive strength strength endurance and overall power are very very uh They're similar in certain ways, but they're also very different, you know power and reactive strength are going to be there But now we've got to turn that reactive strength into strength endurance to last those minutes So, you know, you got to be careful on how you train you can't just go in and train strongman Every single day you will get hurt. You have to take into account your recovery for it and what you're training and how you're training Yeah, yeah I know for for most the way you just set that up on on programming is that what most people do is they make they have One day that's like the high impact day and a lot of times that's saturday and it's a lot of times It's saturday because again straw man's kind of a blue color sport A lot of guys work normal kind of they're working monday through friday Your saturday straw man training day is also a longer session again And a lot of that just because it takes a long time to like load up the weights on the farmers and and take Him back off and the same thing on the yoke and set up all your stuff And so a lot of times that really high impact day that's going to take some time to recover from Will happen just one time a week on saturday and then you can do stuff like odd implement overhead presses And it's not really high impact And you still have your squats and you still have your normal deadlifts where you're not bouncing all over the place And it's not super so that way you can set up your training again a lot like actually it reminds me a lot Of what the old york Barbell club guys did out in in york pennsylvania when they were when they were some of the best olympic waylifters in the world They basically train like powerlifters during the week And maybe they would do some power versions of the snatch and the clean But they mostly did their competitive snatch and clean and jerks on saturdays because it was You know it was more explosive more power But also more impact and then they needed the time to recover from that And so you wouldn't typically have a day that you do yoke and another day that you do log and or another day That you do farmers and another day that you power stairs because all of those things are just so high impact That it's actually better to put those kind of on one day Know that you're going to beat yourself up spin the rest of the day it's the weekend So also your calories tend to be higher go have the big barbecue go sit in the pool Spend the rest of your weekend trying to recover and then it's a blast. That's the other thing It's just super fun to do Yeah, that's the thing that you put your strongman training on saturday because the worst thing you can do is get to a competition Be like holy crap. This is heavy, right? So we're going to play with you know percentages at competition and try and mimic it on saturdays But it's very likely it'll take you a week to recover from that saturday So, you know heavy heavy training on your saturdays for all your strongman stuff Monday is going to be a lower body explosive day Go heavy. Wednesday is going to be a lower upper body explosive day not going heavy friday is full for recovery And I think the mindset for whether it's you know beginning to intermediate lifters or People that have been piloting for a long time. It's i'm going to train more or sorry piloters that haven't been training for a long time I'm going to train more and that makes me stronger No, uh, training only breaks down muscle tissue and makes you weaker It's the recovery that makes you stronger, right? And so if you could just have a solution taxing day on a saturday We need that time to recover so that we don't get injured and that we actually get stronger because Saturdays are so taxing. Yeah, you're right. I mean they might be three four five hour training sessions And that's not an average gym session for anybody. Right. Yep. That's good Dude, thanks for being on the show. This has been a blast to get started How can people find you and get ahold of you? What's the easiest way to to find you? Uh, so instagram is gp underscore spencer gram Uh our instagram for our gp page if you go to our gp page We actually have a library where you can learn strongman implement you can learn movements and things like that I'm with the youtube video with my smiling face on it and I get to sit there and talk The website is gp athletics net so you can follow us on our instagram follow us on our website and you'll get information for strongman and powerlifting And then you can also follow me and you can always hit me up if you have questions about strongman training Awesome, if you're in the midwest, especially if you're in Missouri, you should make a trip out to gp athletics It's really it's one of the nicest gyms Um that i've ever seen uh, I don't want to necessarily say that strong gym had a big impact on that One of the things that was great though about you know, we we at strong we You've done a much better job years down the road in what I see in your gym than what we did at strong But hopefully we laid some groundwork in that what you often see is that these hardcore training gyms are uber hardcore And they're dirty and disgusting and gross and they bad customer service And I think one of the things we try to push for it strong was it was a serious gym to train But it was like really clean good customer service things like that And it was the first thing I noticed when I walked into your gym the very first time was like Oh my god, the gym is like it's super it's it's super hardcore and super badass and tons of places to squat And olympic lifting platforms and every piece of equipment you'd ever want in a million years and all of the strongman stuff But it's also really clean really organized great customer service and like that's that's rare That's what's so wild is it's rare So if you're in the midwest you've got to reach out and see this gym come if you're coming through It's also awesome that we've got you know i-44 one of the longest interstates in the whole country runs right through springfield So if you're traveling through lots of people travel through springfield get down and train at the gym for sure Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that Awesome, dude. Thanks for being on the show. You've been listening to another episode of barba logic podcast We love a five star review at itunes or wherever you listen to your podcast You can find us on stitcher. I heart radio Overcast any of those fun places gives a five star review and you can reach out if you have questions for us At questions at barbell hyphen logic.com and we will get to your question on a future show spencer Thanks again for doing the show and we'll see you guys in a couple days. Thanks, man. Appreciate it