 Welcome to Barbell Logic Rewind. Welcome to the Barbell Logic Podcast. I am Scott Hamburg. We have Matt Reynolds here as we always do. And today we have Nick Meyers and Miles Taylor. You guys may have seen him on Instagram. You might have seen him with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Powerlifting Meets. He's an athlete that we wanted to have on here very badly and wanted to have him tell his story. How do they find you on Instagram first? How do we find you guys out there? I think it all started with, so he's gone viral a couple of times, but the biggest one has been the most recent one with his 200 pound deadlift, which was double body weight for him because he's like 100, 99, 100 pounds somewhere around there. And then that just took off in the right people's salt and then it just snowballed. So how do they find that? Is that on you guys' Instagram account or where's the easiest way for our listeners to see it? I posted it. Yep. Okay, awesome. Miles, what's the Instagram? My name is SmilesUnscoreTaylor. Smiles, like Miles. Oh, Smiles, that's right, Smiles. Because if it's not clear to you when you look up Miles' Instagram, why they call him Smiles, the guy is just so excited. That's the thing I love about this is that people that will listen to our show, we all know what it feels like to hit a PR. And I don't know that I've ever seen anybody celebrate in a way that's like pure joy and jubilation the way SmilesTaylor does. And so that's a great nickname for you. Yeah, so a little background, if people don't know Smiles, he has cerebral palsy and is 24. And he's been working with his coach, Nick, here, and has been pulling some big numbers and has pulled in front of Arnold and has got these jubilant PR videos out there and you need to go watch those. And while you were in the bathroom, Matt, I've said, hey, Miles, you guys, you have any trolls, if you said. Tell him what you told me. We do that job. Yeah. He knows what to do and I do. Yeah, they're mainly like in the cesspools of the region of what you like to call Reddit. That's where we got the most trolling. And it's just kind of like you read them and then ignore them because if you give them that interaction, then that's exactly what they're looking for. Yeah. The Reddit trolls might be worse than the YouTube trolls. YouTube is like a bunch of 12-year-old trolls. Reddit is like a bunch of 37-year-old trolls. First question, let's start where we're at, which is, what are your PRs? So you weigh about 9,900 pounds, which is amazing. So you think about that. You got a double bodyweight deadlift, which is amazing. What are your other PRs in some of the other lifts? So 110 squat. Yeah, 110, 110, 115-pound squat. Okay, 110 for squat, which is great. 75 for bench. Yeah, he also hit, he had a bench PR, so we were out with Arnold Classic. Our friends, we communicate with Super Trading a lot, Mark Bell and all those guys, and we went and worked out with them after one of the days was all said and done, and he hit a bench PR out there in Ohio when we were training and hanging out with them. Yeah. Overhead press at 50. Yeah, it's like 60 pounds. You're over repressed. I saw that you're starting to play around with some strongman implements, right? Yeah, a couple weeks ago I did a 83-pound stone. Oh, nice, 83-pound stone. That was cool. There are a few things out there for people that are listening. So I don't, you guys may not know this, I won my pro card in Strongman in 2006, actually at the same show with Brian Shaw, where I won the light heavies and he won the heavies, and he went on to become the world's strongest man numerous times. I went on to run a podcast called Barbaralogic. And so anyway, for those of you guys that don't know, picking up a stone off the ground to me is one of the most humbling, if you've never done it before, it's one of the most humbling things on the planet because you'll be like, man, I can deadlift, 315, 405, 500 pounds, whatever. And then you'll get a stone that is half of your deadlift and you can't break it off the ground. There's nothing to hold onto. It's on the ground. So a Barbell is about nine inches off the floor. You try to pick up that stone and you're just like, nope, it ain't coming. So you pick up a 300-pound stone, you can pick up a 300-pound anything. Like you pick up an 83-pound stone, you're picking up a 83-pound anything. The most, I feel like it's the most primal, functional form of lifting you can do is pick up some sort of stone, concrete, rock, object that you can find. Because you can do that anywhere. Yeah, yeah, I agree. I always wanted to pick up like a 400-pound woman, like Brienne of Tarth. And so that's really why I did stone training because I knew if I could pick up like a 400-pound stone that I could clearly pick up a 400-pound. In her full suit of armor? Or maybe not, because that stone doesn't fight back like she would. That's right, that's right. Well, it's Sir Brienne of Tarth now. That's right, that's right, sir. That's right, Sir Brienne. So I want to know who found who first. So did Miles come to you, Nick? Did you guys know each other ahead of time? And one of the things I think is so cool about this is that, you know, here's what I love about Miles is that even though Miles has CP, he trains. He trains his butt off. Everybody thinks they've got their ailment. Everybody has their thing. Everybody has their bad knees or their bad back or they've got fibromyalgia or they've got whatever. And like, here's Miles out there with CP and he's killing it and setting PRs and hitting big weights in front of Arnold Schwarzenegger. When you think of somebody who has CP, you don't immediately think like, okay, here's a guy or girl who can be a power lifter or somebody who actually does PR. So who had that idea first and decided to start to pursue that? Before the lifting, we were friends since like middle school. We went to high school together. We had a couple of classes together. So we already had that friendship. And he went away to the Army for four years. And we kind of lost touch a little bit. But then he came back from the government and we met up at college. And yeah, I got out of the Army and I was doing my gen eds at the same school. He was taking like graphic design stuff. And I'm like, hey, why don't you come out to the gym and get some action shots? You know, I know you like doing sports and stuff. He's always been into sports. Well, that turned into coming out and taking pictures. You came out and did Maryland's strongest man. And then that turned into me and the owner, Brian Aljrew kind of looked at each other and we're like, we were doing stones, actually. And we're like, how about giving one of these medicine balls to see if you can load it? So a 20-pound medicine ball turned into a 40-pound medicine ball. That turned into a 50. Then that turned into a 70-pound stone. And that turned into dead lifts. And here we are. They have standing. How long ago was that? I know it's been helpful. I know it's been helpful. How helpful has it been? What in a year ago? It's over a year. Like maybe a year and some change. Year and a half at this point. And how helpful has it been? Well, you can answer that. It's been super helpful. So the way it's true, my body works is I have a lack of stability in my muscles. So it just has to be the control, my movements, my coordination, my body. So with listeners, I had to focus on every muscle. And it did me like three or four times to get a certain motion balance. But if I focused my body, focused my mind, and get my muscles to do what I want, it's bad on all cylinders. And I'm able to do things that maybe like a year ago wasn't even possible. I wonder, have you seen an increase or things like everyday things, like just walking or running or doing sports or doing physical things? Have those things become not necessarily easier, but have you seen an increase in the efficiency of your motor patterns on nonlifting things because of your lifting? Yeah, so walking, hiking, I become more confident of one of the business that I wanted to do. I wanted to be a ghost. I told him this like a year ago, I wanted to be able to pull back my compound bow. And a couple months later, I was able to pull back because my shoulders were getting stronger, and I was wanting to go then walking. I mean, even just carrying like a pack of water, my mastability, carrying a pack of water was not impossible for me a year ago. It would have been all over the floor and it would just be everywhere. Now that I've learned to like staple my stuff and take a deep breath and wait, I may be able to focus on stabilize my body, I may be able to walk and carry a pack of water to the oven or the stove or the refrigerator. To put it in perspective, when I first started working with him, there wasn't really a barbell movement of any sort that I couldn't step away from or have my hands on because he would fall over like every time. I could have put money on it. And now like he warms up, gets set up, loads his own bar, may take him a little longer, but he does it all of himself. I typically, there may be one or two reps throughout the workout, whether he's squatting or repressing, then I actually have to keep him from falling over. The other time, the only time touching the bar is like anyone else like hitting muscle failure or things like that on the rep ranges, but I don't really have to spot him that much any more than I would a normal person at this point. It's interesting. I've watched, I mean, I've been a fan for a long time, you miles. And I've watched your videos. It's interesting to watch how the CP is very prevalent in the setup of the lift. And then when he actually starts the lift, it's weird that the motor pattern is set so well. So especially like on the concentric phase of something like a deadlift. So I've watched him, he walks up and sets up and you can see he's sort of struggling to try to get everything to work correctly together. And then when he gets everything lined up, boom, he pulls that thing and it's like he pulls the bar in a straight line. It doesn't jump. I mean, I watch a ton of power lifters who don't deadlift in a straight line as well as miles does. He's able to do that and it's interesting. It's funny that you picked that out because I normally had to explain that to everyone, like how we, like him being patient, getting his body where it needs to be. And then once he finds that bar path, he hits. And or it took a long time of me queuing him into that. Like he gets set, he'd get his brace. I wait till he's steady then I'd say hit or lift and he go. And now like he knows what that feels like. And it took months, it took a year. I mean, it, you know, his setup will never be perfect because cerebral palsy. His knees are gonna cave. His body's gonna do weird things, but you have to work around that. And we recently went down to Hopkins and saw one of the top neurology doctors. Orthopedic doctor in the CP field. And he's like, there's nothing wrong with his body. There's nothing wrong with his spine that he seems healthy as long as you're doing it safe. There's no reason why he can't continue. And he's only gotten stronger. He's only gonna get stronger, but it's refreshing to hear you say that and able to see that. It made me happy at least because he's worked so hard on those little fine-tuned things to get to that point where he can set up on his own without me having to queue him every time. That's the mark of a good lifter, right? Like once you get set, you know that it's right. You know that you're ready, and then you can perform. And you stand in there. And the work of a good coach, right? That you've been able to walk him through that. I assume you've coached other people with the exception of, you just explained the fact that you certainly spotting and kind of keeping your hands on the bars, especially in the beginning was a big change. What other sort of changes have you had to make for queuing him to get the movement pattern correct or in programming him to be able to continue to make progress, what has been different than what you've done in the past with other people who don't have CP? I do, I incorporate a lot more higher up stuff because I notice that he responds better to the higher ups and it's safer because it's not obviously a heavier load. And through that repetition, I notice is what ingrained that patience and like things like deadlift, I keep him from doing now he can do touch and go stuff because he knows what correct is. But for a long time, there's no touch and go. If he had 10 reps, he was stopping, setting up, re-bracing, pulling, stopping, setting up, re-bracing, pulling and through those high rep ranges, that repetition, I think is what really made things click because whenever you learn a new skill, it takes like, what do they say? Like 4,000 hours or something to be like? 10,000 hours to be an expert. Yeah, like, and I just kind of applied that but with reps. So 10,000 hours, let's do 10,000 reps. Yeah, you got more time under tension that way and to like build that motor pattern highway for him. Yep, and what you said about how when he gets under the load, he steadies out and that's something I noticed right away. Like he explained to me, he's like, I can hold a soda can out here and be fine. As soon as he brings that in here to where there's not as much of a load, he's all over the place. So I tried. You talk about the detentions. Yeah, yep. So I tried incorporating more stuff to keep him under tension throughout the whole movement. Yeah, that's good. So what does the programming look like? He trained three days a week, four days a week. What's up now? Three, it's typically three to four days. It's at least three every single week. And the programming is, so I learned all my programming from Brian Alger. That's who owns the gym. That's kind of, he's kind of been my mentor. Without Brian, there's no me. There's no us at Neverstate. He's been teaching me for the past three years about programming and allowing me to do it to myself and allowing me to program members at the gym. And I noticed that power building, the power build he runs has a lot of high rep stuff. So it'll be like 10, eight, six or 12, 10, eight. So I incorporate a lot of those light and medium days. And I took the base, the skeleton of the power build, tweaked it to have more light and medium days to give him what he needed as far as the rep ranges. And because I don't care about the pace. It doesn't matter how long it takes him to hit a PR, but as long as that progression is still there, I see him improving stability-wise and control-wise. That's honestly what I'm looking for. Sure. Do you think what's occurring there is just practice or do you think that there's an adaptation to those rep ranges that's favorable here? I think it's both. I think the biggest one's practice. Practice like you play. He's getting those reps. And because one thing I noticed, we have a lot of female athletes that never stayed in, and Brian will back this 100%, is that one thing I've noticed the difference between men and women is that men do better on those one rep max testing days. Women do better on the three rep max, the five rep max stuff. Like they do much better. They thrive in that high rep range. And he's kind of the same way. So what I did, I think it's mental for him, because when I stopped telling him what was on the bar on max stuff, like the 200-pound deadlift, he had no idea. Yeah, no idea. And he smashed it. So, but when it comes down to the rep stuff, when I get him doing 10, 12 reps, he's like a machine. That makes perfect sense. By the way, we come from different backgrounds and we've really discovered the same thing that men, obviously, blanketed statement here, that in general, men are gonna have better neuromuscular efficiency than women are, right? Just because they have testosterone, even from like in utero, it's just easier to set that motor pattern highway for men. And it just makes sense that a person with CP is gonna have a lower amount, even significantly lower than a typical female of neuromuscular efficiency. And so you have to work more on establishing that motor pattern efficiency, especially if you think about the other end of the spectrum being like a very genetically gifted athlete. So somebody who's gonna have a 36, 37 inch vertical without testing the thing, the kind of guy that goes to the NFL, they can wire that motor pattern, they can set that highway very, very quickly, right? If I've worked in the past with like people who have been gymnasts and they've done gymnastics since they were two, three years old and now they're 17, they have perfect total body awareness. But the interesting thing about that is, is that those people don't make me a better coach because they can just do it right from the beginning. What we love as coaches is to find the people that make us actually have to work and go, okay, well, if I can coach Miles, by the way, you might have better neuromuscular efficiency than Scott Hamburg does. How dare you? So he's on the far left end of the bell curve on the neuromuscular efficiency, athleticism spectrum, and I coach Scott. But no, those guys make me better coaches. And so I think it's clear that you guys have a very symbiotic relationship that Nick, you've helped Miles become a better athlete and a stronger athlete. But I know that you would say that he's helped turn you into a much better coach and not just for him. I'm sure that's carried over into all your other clients as well. Yeah. And people see a gym like ours at Never State and I go, oh, it's just big, strong, big, strong dudes, athletes, like that's not even the case. Like we have a handful of people that are like real competitive in strongman and powerlifting. Everyone else is like, Brian's dad's 64, never really deadlift in his life. And he's like 30 pounds off like a national record. We have soccer moms. We have two people like Katie and Carla who have never done anything in their life. And now they're, they competed in their first strong woman competition last month in the masters and they did amazing. They did amazing, like they set personal records. Like, and it's people like that who make you a better coach that have never done it because you really have to approach it in a different manner than you would with someone who has lifting experience. You have to kind of revamp how you coach because the whole cookie cutter thing does not work. It doesn't. And if that's what you're doing, you're doing it wrong. And I'm not some specialist with CP or some amazing coach, like I just genuinely care. So I try and kind of test the waters. I throw some things out there and see how they respond and adjust accordingly. Like, okay, like kind of process of elimination a little bit. Yeah, I love that the background in your story is that you guys were friends first. That can't be skimmed over, right? Cause I would guess it created an empathy in both of you for each other that you wanted to both, you wanted to see each other succeed. So he wasn't some kid that walked into a gym that you didn't know and you're like, hey, I can capitalize on this and we can become viral. Like that was never, like you're like, this guy's my friend from high school and college and I want to see him succeed. And I'm sure Miles was the same way for you. He watched you probably go through a physical transformation in high school, college, the army and come back and really get into this thing. And you guys, I mean, that's a huge piece of it is that you had your empathetic enough, you cared enough about each other to see each other succeed. Man, that you gotta have that. This is such a long game, you know? And again, you see a lot of the other end of the spectrum these NFL athletes that hire these specialty coaches for six weeks to get them ready for the combine so that they can sign a bigger multimillion dollar deal. There's no empathy there. It's all about money. Even not knowing you from the videos, like the incredible celebrations, like you're just as excited as Miles is. And he runs up and jumps into your arms and you guys, it's such an authentic celebration that I think that's what has resonated with everyone. It's not just that Miles has overcome this neurological disorder, but that he is so truly authentically jubilant about his PR celebration. And you are as well, right? And so they see that connection. I know I saw that, it was a big deal to me. And that's anyone in the gym really, like that's just never safe. And it doesn't matter who's going up for PR, it doesn't matter who is going for what lift. Like when someone's going for their personal best, the entire gym gets involved. And Brian will not miss a lift. I will not miss a lift. We're always there and everyone's attention, that person is the center of attention for the minute that they are attempting this lift. And it doesn't matter if it's a hundred pounds or 700 pounds, like everyone genuinely cares in that moment. Yeah, love it. Your gym is, is it a suburb of Baltimore? Where is it? It's Westminster, it's kind of, it's a world. Oh, it's actually a suburb of Westminster. It's sure over there by Bo and Angie. Okay, so yeah, when you did the Westminster, the USSF meet, the first video that went viral, we're good friends with the owners of- Bo and Angie are awesome. You've been on the podcast. I love Bo and Angie. Yeah, they're great people. So you're actually there in Westminster. So you're about an hour outside of Baltimore. So the downside of that is the vast majority of our listeners probably can't go there. But if you do, you've got a handful of good gyms. I remember when, what was the strongman that used to be out there that died a few years ago? Mike Jenkins. In that area? Yeah, Jenkins. Yeah, his brother used to come to our gym. So, so we're in a very unique situation with how that all worked out. So our gym's on like 19 acres on a farm property. And the owner of the gym was Mike Jenkins' client and Mike Jenkins' first sponsor. So dayfully, he went to America's strongest man with him, went to the Arnold with him. Like that was Mike Jenkins' corner man. And Brian went to high school with them. They're all from the area. Brian went to high school with them. So Brian knew them, they coached. They were personal trainers at Merritt together out here in Eldersburg, I believe. And then Mike Jenkins went on to be Mike Jenkins, you know, one of the fastest rising strongman athletes. And he was on track to be one of the best. And then he died for those people that are listening that don't know he died in his sleep. And that's kind of what spurred Brian to getting into strongman. Cause Mike Jenkins was trying to get him to do it, trying to get him to do it and then didn't do it. So he started, never say he got into strongman and became one that like he, he's one, he's such a brilliant programming mind for this sport. And just strength in general, he's just got the mind for it. And he has projected and embodied everything that Mike Jenkins was with the sport because it was a big, fat, strong man. Well, Mike Jenkins was a big dude, but he can move. If you watch videos of him, he can move. And there's still remnants of him in our gym. Like we have his 1,000 pound tire. We have his Slater Belly set the world record on. And there's a big poster of him with rogue with the stone on the shoulder that's at the gym. And, you know, we have still standing connections from that time. We still talk to Kerry and Brian Shaw as a friend of ours. Brian Shaw's coach, Andy actually trains at our gym. And so it's that initial relationship has spurred something so much bigger. What I love about it is that you guys, blue collar, rural Maryland, had just bred these hardworking dudes and women. This atmosphere has given rise to a tremendous amount of athletes and lifters. If this has happened in 30 years ago, nobody knows who you guys are. And the amazing thing about technology today is that your story can be seen and be inspirational to literally the world, all over the world. So I want to know before we, I was gonna say you got a question, Scott. Yeah, I want to know, I want to know what's next. I was gonna say, what's the next competition? I was, it wasn't one of mine. And I've got an even better question after that. So what's the next competition for you? We had that one in April, but we had all that stuff come up with the Arnold and then going out to Nike headquarters, kind of interrupted training a little bit. So we're kind of just playing that by ear. Miles, do you want to do powerlifting or strongman? Do you want to compete in like a strongman competition? Have you thought about doing a strongman comp? I would love to do a strongman competition someday. That'd be awesome. I'm still trying to work some, I haven't done something in a long time, but I would love to do a strongman competition someday. So you got to meet Arnold and I want to know if his hands are sweaty. You shook his hand. You got to shake Arnold's hand. We haven't got to. What did you notice about shaking Arnold's hand? It's big. It's big. I bet. That's a Jack dude for 72. Yeah. Huge circle of breakfast with him. Breakfast, dinner, dinner. I got to meet him a few years ago with the Arnold. I got lucky and we were at the Arnold and of course, he's just surrounded by everything. You can't really hardly eat unless you're a big star, like Miles is, you don't get to really catch him at the Arnold because he's surrounded by secret service agents. And we went and ate lunch one day. I didn't want to go eat lunch really close to the Arnold because I knew it was just every restaurant around the Arnold would just be packed like crazy. And I didn't think about this. I was just, I don't know, I just wasn't thinking. I got on TripAdvisor. I was looking up great restaurants in the area and five miles away from the Arnold, there was a German sausage house. And I was like, yeah, let's go there. So we had sausage and so it would go through and it was like this massive buffet and they had like 18 or 20 different types of sausage and sauerkraut and kinds of cool stuff. And all of a sudden we started seeing army guys and fatigues show up about 10 minutes after we got there. And I was like, wait a minute, what's going on? And the next thing I knew, Arnold comes in and sits down in the next room over and they give him an entire private room all to himself. And I came in and Arnold posed in a selfie with me. We got a spot with Arnold. So it was a blast out there for sure. So here's my last thing I want to know. We asked about the trolls. You guys have blown up big time. I want to know about, do you have the girls knocking the door down, Miles? You got a bunch of, you got a bunch of students now that want to take you out on dates. Yeah. I've asked you. I've asked people like, will you marry me? Whoa, you got some proposals. You did. Yeah, I did. Yes. I'm choosing wisely. Choose wisely, that's right. You better choose wisely. I've been trying to talk him into a Russian mail order bride, but he's not going for it. Sounds like he can get one without. I know you don't have to. You don't have to buy one. He's got enough suitors. He can just, he can choose wisely. He can duck duck goose. That's right. Well, thank you guys so much for coming on here. You can go find Miles and you should on Instagram at least to go to atsmiles underscore Taylor. He's a T-A-Y-L-O-R kind of Taylor. Also follow their gym, NeverSate, N-E-V-E-R-S-A-T-E. You can follow them on Instagram and they've got YouTube channels and go support these guys in what they do. You can go to theloyalbrand.com and get some smiles swag and support them on what they do. Is there anything else you guys want to promote? I do a YouTube channel as well, whatever we have going on, that's where I put all the content from. So my YouTube channel, my Instagram pretty much the same. My Instagram is at uncle.nick, no K. And then my YouTube channel is just Uncle Nick. It's got that great Russian Eastern block. It's not Nick, it's Nikolai. Yes. Right. My dad was born in Greece actually. So, oh, it's a Greek, it's Greece. Yeah, the spelling's a little different than Russian. My dad was born Nikolai Tantulopolis. And then when he was adopted, it got changed to Michael Myers. So I got Nikolai Tantulopolis. Yeah, yeah. Well, hey, thank you gentlemen so much for the hard work that you do. And I want all of our listeners to go follow these guys. And I want you to, when you guys are on Reddit, if you see somebody trolling this guy, dox them and attack them roundly. We're gonna mobilize the troll patrol and attack these trolls. Hey, what's your excuse? That's my big deal with an episode like this. Like you've got your excuses that you make up for why you can't train, what hurts. Here's a 24 year old kid with cerebral palsy who comes in and kicks ass four days a week in the gym, works harder than you do, sets PRs, you don't have an excuse. You get in the gym. If you're not a quadriplegic, you should be in the gym doing what you can to hit PRs on a daily basis. There's still quadriplegists out there hitting the gym. That's probably true. That's right. Doing those neck raises. Yeah. So no, no, you're exactly right. It's pretty rare that you should have it. It's used to not train. So guys, thank you so much for being great role models for our listeners and for everybody else. Wish you the best of luck. Thank you so much for having us. I wanna have you back on the show in another year and talk about how much the PRs grow and the neuromuscular efficiency get even cleaner and tighter. I think it'd be really cool. Yeah, absolutely. Stay in touch, guys. Thank you.