 What's happening guys, Silent Mike back again back to my roots fast loose rapid-fire q&a follow me Silent Mike with 2k's on instagram if you want to get involved with the questions if you want to get involved with some live stream when i am on twitch link in the description we're doing it a couple times a week when i'm in town come chat hang out we're building a dope community there and if you've been living under a rock mama's boys podcast me and Omar esof itunes stitcher soon to be Spotify soundcloud mama's boys podcast calm check it out right now here we go let's hop into the questions fam do you ever regret not keeping the gym you open and would you ever open another one down the road so for those that don't know i did open a gym in 2010 it was a learning experience i was going to school as coach and basketball i had a lot of different things i was training at another gym i had a lot of different things going on in my life at that time it was a great experience it was a definitely learning experience experience i don't know i definitely don't regret closing it it was time to move on it was time to do new things and that's where i end up a super training that's where i end up where i am today with instagram and youtube and creating content so i'm glad i am where i am it was a stepping stone to where i am now would i open another gym maybe not right now the timing is not right it's not right for my lifestyle or my goals currently but it's definitely been in the back of my head but not now there's a lot of work to open a gym i think a lot of people think and see these successful youtubers or businessmen opening gyms making money and having fun living the dream doing what you love which is awesome but know that it's a lot of work and the business plan for a gym you know on the spectrum of how easy it is is not very easy it's difficult there's a lot of thing to worry about a lot of overhead tools business plan wise not for me lifestyle wise down the road maybe what is the best thing you did as far as treatment when you got your back injury so i talked about my back and injuring it a little bit here and there now i'm not a doctor now i don't have an official diagnosis on myself and i can't officially diagnose you guys um so if you have any back injury i think you need to go to a doctor seek professional help and that being said you have to figure out what's wrong with your back what's wrong with my back is not the same as yours um you know the back is complex there's many different issues i may cause some back pain so chances are we're not going through the same thing but a couple things to look at a couple things i popped in my head when people ask me about their back injury because they see me going through it and struggling with it is one i'm just being raw let's get raw oh baby i like it raw oh baby i like it raw i think that 50 plus percent of you you guys and the people that powerlift or that in the world right now are not injured they have some pain or they're hurt there's a big difference between being injured and being hurt if you're hurt you're kind of beat up it's less chronic it's just kind of cute meaning it's not lasting that long that's just being hurt if you played sports your whole life you know this this is every game you've ever played competitively being injured hopefully doesn't happen that often or to that many people but it does happen that's something that you really have to make a big change in what you're doing maybe your lifestyle maybe your training maybe your form maybe your technique maybe your mobility um or if you're injured injured you know you have to lay on a couch and not go to work kind of thing and definitely seek professional health the reason that i think i had an injury this time opposed to being hurt is i've analyzed with myself and a professional i my technique my programming my movement patterns my tight muscles loose muscles mobility this and that and i couldn't figure out what was wrong so for me who's had some back issues my entire life since eighth grade i've had an issue with my right hip either given out feeling weak locking up on me that i realized for me the best thing was just to take six to eight weeks off and so i did and now i'm feeling good so i really paid attention to my posture i really paid attention to how much sleep i was getting i paid attention to warming up i paid attention to this time my technique which i already felt confident wasn't the issue and my programming paying attention to those things so now building back up into it i am more aware of some kind of warming up and doing a little more unilateral stuff so i say for me the biggest two things are um taking time off and then two doing some unilateral work so i'm doing a little bit of bulgarian split squats and some lunges just to make sure i'm staying even on my hips but for me i think it was just an overuse thing i think it's i don't know if it's a genetic thing or just something from my past so it's probably something i'm going to deal with forever in my powerlifting career and i'm prepared to do so what's the best way to increase bench volume on the infinite off-season program would adding a bench to the squat day work um so i think for the majority of people what we need to worry about when we're programming and what he's talking about is the kaizen infinite off-season it's a free program it's in the description all the time if you want to check it out but they're benched twice a week one's a little bit more volume day one's a little bit more of a basic strength day and it is a custom template for you to play with it's kind of bare bones and you can manipulate how you want with variations of volume etc but i think overall arching programming is what we all need to focus on is what is the amount of volume training frequency all that that i need to do to make the most amount of progress not the other way around not how much volume can i handle to make progress but what's the least amount of volume density frequency i can handle to make progress because then when you do plateau we have somewhere to go i learned this first in music talking about a crescendo a crescendo in music that was cringy i'm sorry but basically if you start here you have nowhere to go you've already hit your ceiling you have nowhere to build up to and that's the same with music you know a lot of times music will start slow and low and then the beat will drop or then a chorus will hit and then it's loud and powerful and it really draws an emotion it makes an effect into the song and that's the same with our training if we already start you know doing 10 sets of 10 on squat seven days a week what are you going to do when you plateau you have no other option other than to do 20 sets of 10 or train double days or something which is just absolutely insane so we want to get away with the minimal amount of training with the most amount of progress right time time is money and we want to use our time uh efficiently in the gym and out of the gym so what i suggest is if you're making progress benching twice a week with three sets of five and then three sets of ton in another day simple as shit keep to that uh and then eventually you know the more advanced you get the more um experience you get the stronger you get we can add another bench day in like you suggested maybe on a squat day you can add in you know a kind of a practice day five sets of three at 65 just for light stuff and then you can build all three up together to get more volume more frequency uh and more intensity heading into a gym what is your favorite candy that doesn't have chocolate in it now i'm not a huge chocolate fan to be honest i like a hint of chocolate and some of my shit so like you guys know i like ice cream so i like some cookies and cream you know which is like Oreo chocolate cookie in my vanilla ice cream or i like a donut like say like a you know custard filled or a crown nut which is like a drizzle of chocolate on top i don't like a chocolate chocolate chocolate donut so chocolate candy isn't my favorite thing although i do love me like a twix or a Reese's right which have that hint of chocolate and then a peanut butter caramel action but i did go candy with no chocolate at all i know i know sour patch kids is the go-to fitness shit but that's probably not my thing maybe a starburst i feel like starburst are a little bit underrated nowadays starburst is the hell of a candy um i don't know i don't eat that much candy considering i love junk food but i'll save for like ice cream or pastries or something but probably starburst if i had to get after it what is your mental approach when it comes to the heaviest set or the set you want to hit a pr but you're tired as hell um you know i think i may not be the the this may sound arrogant i may not be the best to speak about this because one thing i'm always confident in is myself um when it comes to sport or athletic activity one thing i haven't really struggled with is my mentality going towards something or being confident to take the last shot or be confident to make the last play to win the game or take over a game or to hit a pr um i do get a little fired up but that's just part of my process i think that i've talked about this in previous videos you know don't go to the the the guy that bench press 400 without even trying to learn how to bench press go to the guy that bench 315 for five years and had to figure out his way to bench 400 and that's a basic example what we want is obviously a combination of knowledge experience and coaching experience as well as lifting experience to make the best coach or someone just gets it but point being that you know you have to work finding what works for you mentally to get fired up or to be serious or to be cerebral to to to lift the most amount of weight but for me i just started as i began to coach more and more and more and program more and more just became so simple to me that these are just numbers so you know i pulled 600 last uh you know in july and now i want to pull 605 or 610 three months later that that's just five or 10 pounds more and so to keep it that simple in your head uh it becomes a lot less intimidating rather than you think 610 pounds holy moly you know three years ago they only pulled 400 that's fine but as you get stronger as you progress and hopefully if you're doing the correct things to get stronger and progress diet sleep proper programming training technique uh that your strengths going along with the things you're trying to attempt i don't i don't like to attempt weights i don't know i'm not trying to go for a 75 pound pr's just hoping it'll lift that day i go for lists in the gym rep pr's real pr's on the platform or in the gym that i have set myself up to to hit and that's why i talk about programming that's why i talk about lifestyle that's why i talk about having a plan and business life etc so that you build yourself up to these things and you can have confidence because you did the things necessary day after day step after step week after week month after month that these things are just going to happen i've also talked about why that powerlifting is kind of a boring sport to me in that instance where 600 pounds though is going to be 600 pounds if you do the proper things leading up to that and things line up you're going to pull 600 pounds um which kind of takes the excitement out of it