 You're listening to Barbell Logic. This is Matt Reynolds. I'm here with my compadre Scott Hamburg and one of my close friends, Brett McKay. Welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me. So Brett, now you're in upper management of the cult. Now I'm in upper management. We jumped in, man. Right. That's right. No. So yeah, I did the podcast and then a few months later, it was 2015. I asked, Hey, let's do some videos. So I was doing YouTube heavily back then. I don't do it anymore with the site. And I filmed how to squat and my low bar squats sucked. It was terrible. I don't know about that. No, like the wrist were terrible. I know everybody yells about the wrist. Yeah, everyone's like, it's fine. We did deadlift and then I went back and then shoulder press. And then I went back a few months later to do bench press and power clean. Yeah. Yeah. And then after that, I was like, I'm going to start doing this. So I started doing the programming, the, you know, linear progression, novice. But I had to stop because like on the low bar squat, I would just cause my setup was terrible. I would get really bad bicep tendonitis. And it was so bad that I couldn't deadlift. Like I couldn't, like I'd get done with squattings. Like my biceps just they're, they're hurting. Is this normal? I don't know. I guess so. And I would just fight through it. And it got the point. I can't, I can't even pull anymore. So I'd take a break and then I get back to it. And then finally it happened again. I was like, okay, I'm not going to do this anymore. And that's when I got, that's when you reached out to me. And you're just like, Hey, you know, I was just an email that was like, Hey, thanks for the videos that you made. Right. I'm doing online coaching. It's like, I use your videos all the time. Right. The same videos we're talking about. Yeah. Just like, thanks for what you've done. This is cool. Yeah. And you said, Hey, can you help me with my bicep tendonitis? Right. Exactly. I said, Hey, you know, I like this, but I asked you like, do you offer online coaching? Cause like, I think it'd be great if it's like, cause I don't have a coach to look at my form. And I couldn't get that in Tulsa. And you're like, Oh, well actually I do offer online coaching and you should ask. And it's really not the reason that I emailed, although I was super excited when you were the one that reached out and said, I remember sitting at the dining room table and, and tell them, Rachel tell my wife, like, I think Brett McCagey has asked me online coaching. It's just like, who? Right. But who? Yeah, it's fine. Right. And that's, we started working together. So that was what, like November 15, November 2015, we started working together. And my favorite thing about that is that little skinny guy that is in those videos was not the guy that's sitting at the table. Yeah. The first video is I did, I was 185 or 180 ish. And then I went back four months later, cause I'd started eating better. And I got up to 200. I was like, I weigh 200 pounds now. But then when I got on with you, that's when it really started picking up. Sure. Cause you started doing the new church. What did he tell you she weigh? What him? Yeah. I don't, you, you haven't really been like giving me any targets. You're like, I think at one point you're like, if you want to like pull, I need to weigh 245 if I want to pull 600 or something. Yeah. I remember saying stuff like that. I mean, for me, the, the diet drives the progress. You look, yeah, you look like an insect. You look like a praying mantis. And so, uh, and so for me, it was always about, you've got to eat enough to drive the gains. And so from the very beginning, we put you on linear progression, your linear, your actual linear progression wasn't very long because you had done a lot of it already. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing. I wasn't like completely new to barbell training. Cause I think I remember when I posted that video of me doing a bench press, five reps of 225. Sure. People are like, Oh my gosh, like, it's like a newbie and he's like doing this. Like, no, I had like, I barbell trained all through high school doing, you know, whatever programming the strength and conditioning coach gave you at the time. And then I did barbell training on and off since then. So, I mean, I was a novice still, cause I had a linear progression in me, but I did have some training in me, of course, which helped speed things along. Cause yeah, how long was I on linear progression once I started? Probably two months with me, I think. So by the time we got into January of 16, we started to put you on intermediate based program. So some more of a Texas method. And we put you on a, I remember for a while, you actually did a four day split on three days a week, which I'm not crazy about, but at the time I remember you were having like, it was really busy art of manliness. Right. And it was like, I can only get in three days a week. So we basically just alternated upper, lower, upper, lower. Why don't you like the four day, four day in three? Because I don't think it tends to give enough stress to drive adaptation, at least not with a guy that's, that's Brett's age. So you get somebody in their mid thirties you know, on the week that it's two lower body sessions and one upper body session, I think it's fine. But on that next week where it's two upper body sessions and one lower, it just doesn't seem to be enough total stress. And so when I've done that, I still have a few clients that do that on the week that we're like the Wednesday workout is the lower body workout, a hammer them. So they're doing at least two sets of five on deadlift, if not three sets of five on deadlift, because it's just one session that week. And so they're not going to have to do another lower body session until Monday of the following week. So you're talking about a five day layoff. That's what you're doing to me. Well, just hammering me. Well, yeah, you've got advanced programming now. So you have to get hammered. That's that's the deal. So yeah, so let's stay on the body weight thing for a second. So we drove your body weight up to about where you remember like your high at the meat, the high point was like 227 228. Okay. That was the meat. And I you know, one of the things that's been just kind of a joy with working with you is that really from the beginning, you ask questions, but you've you've relinquished control and you trusted me in my in my programming. I mean, I told you when I I mean, I wanted so badly to deadlift 500 pounds, because I'd been chasing that before you for such a long time. And I'd got up to like 465 on my own and then I plateaued. And then I started like, I'm going to find these like special deadlift programs where you do like back extensions. Like it was like weird stuff. And it didn't budge. And then when you came on, I got on with you, I said, I will do whatever you tell me to do. I want a deadlift 500 pounds. Yeah. And I mean, I feel like I have like, I mean, I'll ask questions. I'm curious. Yeah, of course. No, you know, very well, it's not because like, this is dumb, like, why are you having me do that? And get some of that when I know it's probably even like, I don't actually don't get a lot of that. They just don't do it. Like you program it less argumentative. Although, I mean, we, you know, we get some but I'm just curious. The other piece of this is let's certainly don't say this to make you uncomfortable in any way. But as you get these people who are who have a big following online, they tend to not do a great job of following the program, right? It's not even that they are argumentative. They're often not, you know, I think they're busy, they've got this big following, they're doing all this other stuff. And so the program or the linear progression is not that important. And for you, it's funny, you've really kind of adhered to the program with consistency, as well or better than just about every client I have. And so that's really the telltale. It's not about how far you are on the right side of the athletic spectrum, or all those things are cool. And those athletic guys make me look better as a coach. But really what it comes down to is consistency. And you've just been insanely consistent. Yeah, last two years. I love it. I enjoy doing it. I think I've only missed a few workouts and because I was like, super sick. Yep, super sick. And then if I have a vacation, I always tell you like, I'm going to be gone. Let's plan for a D load. Yep, we plan D load weeks. And so, so we got your body weight up to almost 230. Right. And in the process, you know, we've talked about this both on the podcast we've done that I've done with you. And also in some of the articles that we've written, anytime you're gaining weight anytime, you're gaining both muscle and fat. Right. And so what we're trying to do as you gain is you're trying to gain mostly muscle and the least amount of fat possible, but you're obviously gaining some fat. And so at 230, when you were up around 230, you were a little bit uncomfortable with the. I got pudgy. Like my waist got up to like 39 inches, which was the horror. Right. But I mean, from what though, from from 36. It was like 34. I mean, like I was kind of at 34 when I started and then I ramped it up to 39 inches, which was pretty even my wife was like, you're looking, you're not looking good. She's like, you're not looking unhealthy. This is the problem. The hard part with the the program often and certainly some of the negative feedback gets is that it will make people fat. But the interesting thing is, is that you just have to get through that window of strength gains. And while it's there for the taking, you've got to take it, you've got to swing for the fences. And so you did you swung for the fences, we got you big, we got you strong, you crushed your 500 pound deadlift PR, you squatted over 400 pounds, right? You're you're benching over 300 pounds now, you're pressing over 200 pounds. And then over the last several months, maybe the last what about three to four months somewhere in there, we've really tweaked your macros and started pulling back. And you have lost about 15 pounds. Now you're about two 15 ish 214. Yeah, it's more tweak the macros. That's the macronutrients. The macro. Yeah, so micro nutrients would be like calcium, potassium, the macros macros macronutrients. Right. So what we did was we the protein's always going to be high and really kind of depends on the person. But for the most part, we recognize that Brett tended to respond better to a little higher carbs and less fat responds well. No, actually, I got my genome sequence because like we put me on the fat, the high fat thing, right? Because everyone's like, you got to do high facts. That's like the paleo, all that stuff. Like, yeah, of course, look at this guy, he lost lots of body fat by eating lots of fat. And I would do that. And I would just get fat, right? And I would feel like crap. Yep. And they're like, no, you just got to push through, right? There's that that thing. You're gonna feel like crap. You're gonna feel like you have the flu. And I would do that. And then I would just still feel like crap. And I would get fatter. And then I would move to, OK, let's just go to higher carbs. You know, that's the same voice thrall uses for Internet haters. Did you know it? Yeah. Oh, God's raw. And what happened was I felt great and the body fat started coming off. And so, I mean, that's a good that's a good point there. I feel like when it's with, especially with nutrition advice and even fitness advice, everyone's different, right? Just because you see some guy who's promoting Paleo, like it works for him. Sure. Just because it works for him doesn't mean it's going to work for you. Absolutely. And just because high carb works for me doesn't mean it's going to work for you. So that's what's been great about you is like we'll experiment. Yeah. And we'll say let's try this. Take some time to figure out how to get it tweaked to the point that we can really dilate it. Right. And now we've got to dilate it. And it's also why it's important that when you hire a coach, those listeners out there to hire a coach that you stick with them long enough to let them figure it out. And, you know, occasionally we get somebody who will jump from this coach to this and they'll hire this coach and that coach. Well, the problem is I don't care what the coach says. Your very first program from that coach, especially if you're not an absolute novice, it's just a cookie cutter program because they don't know you yet. So now like you're programming now, you're doing advanced programming, but I actually write that programming every week for you because it has to be so tailored to you because I've now figured out exactly what works with you. But that it took a while to get there. Well, it was the same thing with the diet. And so now you're 214, you're as strong as you've ever been in your life and you're lean and you look good. And your waist is down to 33 and a half. Yeah. So the waist is now smaller than it was when he started. Right. Right. But think about this like his erectors are bigger. Right. His abdominal walls bigger. His obliques are bigger. And so the amount of fat that's come off of his midsection is tremendous. So he's now smaller waist than he was when he started, you know, 30 pounds less than this and got him up to 30 dropped him back down at 214. And I look good. Yeah. Very good. What's mama say now? She looks great. You know, she looks, you look strong, you look healthy. Right. But again, there's that. Yeah. I think a lot of people need to understand that you're going to go through that period where you're just going to feel like you're going to look like crap. Yeah. Well, wait a minute. You don't look like crap. I don't know. I looked like crap. I look. My wife said I looked haggard and I just look like a big strong dude. I guess I was kind of I remember I did a video and there was a gut like you could see the gut and it was just like hanging out there because I did a video like what happened? Art of Manliness video. So I stopped doing them and I saw I've been powerlifting and then people were like, dude, you got a gut. And I was like, yeah, it's true. I do have a gut. That's gone. Yeah. We got to do a new video. I mean, a new video. We can do at least one more video. But again, like you have to trust the process. I think it's hard for a lot of people and I feel like I'm a pretty coachable person. Definitely. I think that's come from, you know, playing sports in high school and being able to take feedback like that to get better. So if you've never been coached, you've never played sports that might be hard, right? To take that sort of feedback. We just did a couple of episodes about how to get started with the linear progression. And we talked about, you know, you need this kind of equipment and this is what your first session looks like. And then we broke and we went and ate lunch and we were saying, you know, we need an episode about coachability. Right. You really have to be coachable, you know, even if you just train with your buddies, like you need to listen to those guys. When you're under the bar, you don't know. Right. Exactly. You lose your mind. You're just a hamster when you're under the bar. You've got to listen to the guy. And then if you pay somebody that has a proven track record and you don't listen, that's like, that's almost the definition of insanity, but you are so coachable. That's why you're successful. You know, if you don't miss and you listen to the expert, you just, you're going to get a very predictable outcome. The only thing that's in question is like, how long is it going to take? Right. How long is it going to take to get super strong with a 33 inch waist? I think another aspect that helps you be coachable is I've tried to do this is like, you know, I watch my own videos and I try to like look at, okay, what am I doing wrong? And I'll even tell Matt like, this is what I think is what I'm doing wrong. Yep. Is that right? And then I would be like, let me go over to Scott's house and like have him look at this in real time. So I think you have to take a proactive approach, like take the approach like I'm probably sucking at this more than I think I am. Right. With that in mind, let me do what I can to get better. Right. So that's kind of been my approach. That's good. Yeah. If somebody has an advice for you that doesn't mean you're a fool. It's no, it's no slight, you know, we don't need to have ego in it when we go for help, you know. Right. And it might not, you might not even take the advice, right? Because they might like, OK. Yeah. Yeah. Reynolds told me you need to gain some weight, right? I think I was like 185. I think when I started with you or something like that, maybe 190 or you need to gain some weight. So I got up around 220. It's like, you know, I think you'd do really great at 260. Yes. And I said, no, no. I'd have to get a new car. And like I wouldn't fit in the car anymore. So, you know, I just use my judgment. But it's good. Yeah. It's use your own judgment to get that third eye on you because you might not be seeing something that you don't know about, we do the same thing all the time. The staff will post videos of ourselves to the rest of the staff and say, hey, what does this look like? What am I doing wrong? You know, I had a coach that I coach who was who was getting forward on his toes and I couldn't get him off his toes. I couldn't get him off his toes. And so I reached back, reached out to the staff and said, how do I get this guy off his toes? I've tried this. I've tried. We've tried this in basketball. We tried the box squat. Yeah, on the squat. And we switched them to tempo squats and three second negative eccentric and a three second concentric and it almost instantly the amount of time that he had to think about is actively thought the whole time. Stay on midfoot, stay on midfoot, stay on midfoot. It cleaned it up and I've used tempo squats before, but I've never used tempo squats to get people off their toes. And so it was a thing that we learn essentially doing tempo squat is what finally got me to keep my chest up properly. Right. Yeah, it was a time to think the first thing I do with the vast majority of people come see me for in person as I slow them down. So they go too fast. I get it. They see the really good lifters as your form. And that motor pattern locks in and it's perfect. It can speed up and get a little more rebound, a little more rebound, a little more rebound. The problem is that most people walk in and they try to get all that rebound and the form is a disaster. And so I've got to slow it way down. Do the same thing. The seminar is slow way down. I go down really slow up fast and you're fine. Yeah. So we started when you first hired me. We were walking in with this bicep tendonitis problem. Right. Did we fix it? We did fix it. How? So what it was, it was my set up on the squat. Yeah. So what was happening was the way I was setting up on the squat was to get, I was basically trying to get in a low bar position using a high spar. So I would get under the bar like a high bar squat. Right. And then wristband and then just shove it down my shoulders and then I would kind of crank up my wrist above the bar here. Yeah, it was right right there on both sides. Yep. And I showed you the video of how I set up and you're like, OK, next time just put your wrist on top and then just put yourself in there. Yep. And, you know, it was uncomfortable. Sure. It's like I'm really tight in my shoulders and my chest. But after doing that, it cleared it up because I was no longer doing the cranking thing. Sure. And then also I think by doing, you know, going under and then trying to get up, I don't think I got my wrist all the way on top of the bar. And so I was holding a lot of that weight because what would happen? In your hands anyway. The bicep tendonitis would hit around like when I my squat got up to about 325, 340. Before that it was fine. And I think it's because, you know, I can handle 225 in my hands. Yeah, sure. But after that, it cleared it up. I mean, that's not to say I don't get bicep tendonitis anymore every now and then. It flares up for whatever reason. But that's one thing that you have to learn as a novice lifter or an immediate lifter, like managing the pain and working around the pain. So that's one of the useful things is having to coach, right? You tell me like my biceps are killing me. I don't know if I can work and you're just like, well, ice it, take some Advil, put some with a DMOS. DMSO. DMSO. DMOS with Dom. What is that again? Yeah, there's Dom's. Dom's and there's DMOS. We're talking about dimethyl sulfoxide. You can treat Dom's with DMSO. Right. Yeah, there you go. And then you just put it on there and then, you know, you'll feel a little bit better. It's still good, but you can still do your workout. You can still train. You can still train. That's the thing. And that's the thing. That's the difference between training and exercise. And that's the hard thing for a lot of inner beginner lifters to realize, like, even if you don't feel good, even if you hurt, like, you still have to train. Yep. You might adjust things a little bit, but you still have to train. Yeah, absolutely. We do it all the time. We got an email yesterday. We had a guy that's a relatively new client and he emailed because he'd strained a bicep. And he said, I'm going to take a month off. I need you to freeze my account. Take a month off and not train. You can't squat. You can't deadlift with a strained bicep. Like, and we'll work around the other stuff, right? Like you can probably press with a strained bicep. Like, you know, you can't chin with a strained bicep, right? And you, you know, and you might not be able to bench press. But so we see this all the time. I mean, we've talked about this, like, what injuries do you have to have to absolutely stop training? It's very few fever, broken bones, muscle vultures. Yeah. Yeah. And even like a broken bone in the last 24 hours, sort of broken bone, right? Like if I if I have a broken arm, I'm not going to train for a day or two. But then and I'm not going to press and bench press, but I'm going to figure out how to squat with a safety squat bar. Right. And I'm going to figure out how to one arm Sumo deadlift because which isn't optimal, but it's better than sitting at home and dying, you know, which is the problem. Yeah. I've got a guy with a broken leg that I've got him doing like the seated deadlift. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, it sucks, but what's he going to do? Like he broke his femur, right? You know, right? But I guess where a coach comes in handy, because I think if someone is doing it on their own, they'd be like, well, yeah, I can't. What do I do? What do I do? I'm hurt. I guess I'd be right. But the coach would be like, no, you're fine. You're not going to die. Dirt on it, boy. Right. Like you're going to be OK. Sure. And it's good to have that someone just to push you like that. So that's another thing. So we did intermediate thing. What would you call it? I was doing like a split. Yeah. Four days, four days, split. And then after that, what was it? You had DUP? Is that what you do? Yeah, I think it was DUP. And that was terrible. Yeah. That's you got real strong. That sucked. Yeah. No, I got strong. But that was another thing. It was weird. You didn't block now. What am I doing now? Yeah. I'm going to block. Yeah. This is a version of block. I don't even know. I don't even ask. But the DUP, what I thought was interesting was, and this is where, again, like that where you have to trust the process, trust the coach, was with the deadlifts, there were some days where it was just like, it was really heavy and you're having me do a lot of reps. And I was like, I can't do this. Like I can do one rep or two reps. And you're just like, I have to do five of them and then like two sets of it. Two sets, right? And you're like, no, it's okay. You know, you're not going to get it, but you're eventually going to get it. And I was like, I don't think so. And then, but I'll be darned. Like three weeks later, I was hitting it. I was getting it. So that was weird. I mean, and sure. And, but I was glad when we were done with DUP. The first time anybody goes into advanced programming where they've come out of this idea that like the fatigue process, right? The stress recovery adaptation, that stress, the time that it takes me to go through that entire stress recovery adaptation process goes from every day to weekly. And then you get into this thing where all of a sudden I'm trying to drive up your fatigue for four, five, six weeks in a row and then dissipate it. So that we get enough stress to break home your stasis enough and then allow you to recover to get the needed adaptation, which becomes harder and harder and harder as you become more advanced, right? You can't, at this point, you can't deadlift 535 on Saturday and then do 540 on Monday and then 545 on Wednesday. It's like not possible. So this entire stress recovery adaptation cycle elongates. And the first time somebody's exposed to that where they've never really had to go through several weeks of fatigue buildup, it crushes them. It sucks. I mean, it's more psychologically. Oh, for sure. Not the, I mean, you're tired, but like the psychology, you feel like I should be able to do this. Like I feel fine physically, but then you get down there and you're just like, no, it's not happening. And it happens like workout after workout after workout. You go into the training session already tired. Right. And it beats you down. And I remember there's a few moments, like I remember, you know, I'd write my reports to you and be like, dude, this is just really depressing. Like this is like my fourth workout where I didn't get all the lifts and this sucks. And you'd be like, okay, well, that's when you do things like, oh, let's take a look at your diet and let's tweak that a bit. But yeah, it's so weird. Like the next week, everything's awesome. And I don't, it's just, it's weird. It's the weirdest thing. So what was your bachelor's in? Bachelor degree? Letters at the University of Oklahoma. So that's basic. Like classic. Yeah. So it's just a fancy way of saying to manage degrees. Actually, letters is the very first degree that like medieval universities gave out back in the day. So it was connected with the classics department. So I had to take Latin. I had to take a modern language. I had to study philosophy, literature, history, all that good stuff. So we're in a book club. Actually, all three of us do that. We read kind of the ancient great text of the great books, the great books of Western civilization. Intellectual linear progression. That's right. We do an intellectual linear progression. I wanted to ask you, what has occurred in your own life in the refining process of barbell training? And can you compare that to what you've seen in this intellectual linear progression as well? Having gone through that even as a young man, right? So even at the time that you were in your batch, I assume 19, 20, 21 years old, what does this look like for you? If we pull away from the physical side, what has the barbell training done for you mentally, emotionally, socially? And then how does that look in that kind of big picture of this linear? So emotionally, barbell training can become addictive in a way. It's like you chase numbers and that's, it's kind of scary that I'm like, okay, I've always thought 500, that's it. I'm done. I'll quit, yeah. No, okay, now it's 600 now. Yeah, right. I'm going for 600. And it's like, this is safe. But no, going back to that, we were talking about some stoicism last night, right? The way you master fate is just to accept the burden of fate, right? And barbell training is a lot like that. There's some day you just go in and you know it's gonna be hard, but you still do it. The idea of success in life is just showing up. And that's the same with barbell training. Like you just, you get down there and do the work. It's gonna be, it might be the crappiest workout. You might not even get your list, but you show up because you create that habit. So the next time you go in there and you've created that habit, you'll go in there the next time you do better. So I think, I mean, that was to say that the big picture thing that's what I love about barbell training is that if you just show up in life, if you accept that things are gonna be hard, you can get through it. And I mean, it also shows you that what the human psyche or the human, what a human being is capable of pushing themselves through. We often think we're very fragile. And in a lot of ways we are, right? But it's amazing how fast we can recover from things. You know, we were talking, we were reading the Aeneid. This guy, his city burnt down. He had to carry his dad on his shoulders. His wife died. But this guy was able to push on. He was able to soldier on. I'm sure you guys seen people in your own lives where just tragedy strikes. And you think, man, how can anyone recover from that? But they do. They do. I mean, I think that should give people a lot of hope. No matter where you are, if you had some terrible thing that happened in your life and you think it's just gonna devastate you, it's gonna suck. It's gonna hurt for a while. But I think there's that whole stress, adaptation, recovery thing that happens to us psychologically too. Like you're gonna become stronger in the process. And you're gonna look back and it still might hurt when you think about it, but you're gonna be stronger. You can push yourself further than you thought. So maybe that's another thing you can learn from barbell training. Yeah, I think the barbell training prepares you better for those times in life than for those who haven't done it, right? So I certainly don't wanna call tragedy on my life, but I do feel like I'm better prepared to handle it if I have to, if I am called to do that because of the barbell training that I've done. There was a thread on Reddit last week, Big Earthquakes in Mexico last week. And a guy said, you know, I think the title of the thread was, this is why we train. And there were these earthquakes and the guy lived kind of in the country and like four in the morning, they jump in the truck and drive into town. And the guy spent all day like carrying cases of water and dragging people out of wrecks, you know? And he's like, you know, my dead lifts up in the mid fours for sets now. And you know, I was able to, you know, work for 18 hours doing heavy, heavy work, you know, saving people. And this is why we train. When I had TV, I mean, I still have a TV. I don't have cable or anything, but you watch The Biggest Loser. And you see these people who've never exercised ever and they're doing the most simplest thing and they just be like, oh my gosh, I'm gonna die. This is a terrible, like it wasn't like physiological. Like they were there physiologically. Like the psychology, it wasn't there. Cause they had no clue that they, their body, they could push themselves further than, than, you know, getting off the couch to go get more food or whatever. Barbell training. Just mean to move their food farther and farther. Right. Farther and farther away. Linear progress. Linear progress. But no, what barbell training does, I think exercise in general is like, you get comfortable with being uncomfortable, right? When you have 400 pounds on your shoulders and you're like, this is going to suck. And I feel like I'm going to die, but you know, you're not going to die, right? You can do it. And if you can't get the squad, their safety depends there. But when we did that session a while back ago where I did, I think 375 for a set of four, which was like a rep PR for me. On that fourth rep, I literally thought I was going to die. Like this is the most terrible thing in the world. I mean, as soon as I was done, I just laid down. But like that mental conditioning, I mean, gets you ready for the other things. You realize, yeah, this is terrible right now, but everything's, I'm not going to die. Everything's going to be okay. I want to talk about you turning the TV off. How long you guys been without television? Without cable. Like we have, so we have a TV. We just don't have cable. It's been probably two years. So you realize you're paying what, $150, $170. And you're like, I watched one channel. I watched one TV show. So I was like, why don't I just get Roku and just, so yeah, it's like, we watch, the only TV we watch is American Ninja Warrior. Okay. So we, we, our family loves American Ninja Warrior when we did Downton Abbey last year, watched through that. And that, that's it. Like I, I started watching a man in the high castle. I didn't, I mean, it was okay. I didn't get into it where I wanted to keep going. We got about five, six episodes. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's okay. It wasn't, it wasn't as arresting as Downton Abbey. You always want to know what happened to the Lord Grand. Yeah, we watched it too. I watched every episode of Downton. I don't watch anything. Reynolds is like, have you seen? Oh, nevermind. Don't worry about it. I've never seen anything. I started to ask him. The last movie I saw in a theater was the SpongeBob movie, like 10 years ago. That's terrible. It's the last movie I've ever seen. It's one of my kids. It's like sacrifice work. Yeah, you got to do the kids. It's probably lost more brain cells than had you. I love SpongeBob. But what I am doing, I bought an old school TV antenna. I'm going to put it up. Cause you, if you have cable connections all through your house, you can connect to an antenna, put it on your house, and then use that cable connection to, you know, give TV to all your HD TVs in your house. So I want to do that. Cause like I want to watch a football game every now and then on Saturday. I can't do that right now with the Roku. So that makes sense. So I'm going to do, we watch TV like 1955 here. That's a lot of our TV time has been replaced under barbell. Yeah. We train in the evening, you know, and, you know, we train in the, in the garage. We can see the houses across the street. They've only got the light in the window, you know, cause they're all watching TV and we're out there sweating and grunting. Yeah. I used to think it's a sports fan, huge sports fan. I mean, I was one of these kids that would read the sports Almanac growing up and memorize the stats and yeah, and played, you know, fantasy, everything, fantasy football, baseball, yeah. It was more, it was more about bragging rights with your buddies and stuff. But since the business has grown into, since I think I grew up at some point and realized that my time was more valuable than that. I don't think that sports are immoral or anything. I think they're amoral. Obviously they're not necessarily good or bad. And then there's pieces of sports that I actually really like. But for me, it was one of those deals where I was busy enough that I was gonna train for sure. And I trained with my wife and it's something that my wife and I are able to do together. And then when I have free time in the evenings with my family, if I'm watching sports, I've got two little girls, a wife and two little girls, they don't wanna watch sports. And so I ended up, you know, we don't, and we're the same way. We actually have access to cable TV, but it's only because our internet comes from the same company and it doesn't save us any money to not have cable TV. So I'm basically paying the same price for internet. I would pay the extra to not have it. To not have it? Yeah, I know. It's actually something to think about and yank it anyway. Anyway, it's good. So last piece of this is good. So what, last piece of this is, what do you think draws some of us to this idea of voluntary hardship? Like why were you drawn to that? Both in like intellectually and physically. He loves that shit. I know, I'm a masochist. I don't know. It's more than that. I don't know. It's just, I think it's the way I was raised. My family background, just playing sports and football where you're inculcated in that, like you do hard things because they make you better. That's what I think it comes from. I mean, it's just the way I grew up. And that's what I like. But the funny thing is there's a lot of people I grew up, they did the same thing I did, but they're not really doing that anymore. So I don't know what the difference is. I mean, I don't know. I don't know what the difference maker is. You just got, I mean, at a certain point, it's up to the person. You can do everything you can. Yeah, it sucks though, because I think about it all the time with my own kids. I think about it with the guys that I mentor, the guys in their 20s. And you go like, how do I get these guys to buy? How do I get my own kids to buy into? Like we model this extremely well. It's hard. I think we overestimate, like especially with parenting, like how much influence parenting can have. I think it makes us feel like we're in control, but we're not. I mean, I've seen families where the parents did the exact same thing. One kid turned out fantastic. The other one was just, okay, failure to launch. Predestination. That's right. I mean, it could have been, I mean, because there's so many factors in there. There's their genetics, there's their friends they hung out with, there's the timing of when they were born and the kind of the culture Milu they were surrounded in. So I mean, I think parents need to cut themselves some slack. You know, you realize, okay, you can do the best you can and it might not turn out the way you hope it would turn out. But what do you do? I mean, the only thing you do is just show by example. Sure. And. Well, that's really what you've done with the website, with Art of Mainlandness and with the new launch of The Strenuous Life. That you, I guess, do you think that you're reaching guys now who are already committed to voluntary hardship and then you're giving them a pathway to continue down that road? Or do you think you're actually converting some people who were not wired for voluntary hardship? That's a great, that's a hard question. But with The Strenuous Life, I think it's mainly guys who have been looking for it. Yeah. What we're trying to do with The Strenuous Life. So for people who don't know what it is, we started this thing called The Strenuous Life. It's basically Boy Scouts for Men. They've created badges based around 50 different skills. They have to do an hour of physical activity every day. I don't care what it is. It could be yoga for all that care. I just want people to move their bodies. It's just for the badge. Just for the barbell badge. There's a barbell badge too. But no, there's an hour of physical activity and then like a good deed every day. When you have to check in every day, make sure you did these things. And it's been amazing the feedback we've been getting. It's like, guys, I'm saying, I've been looking for this. I've been wanting to push myself, but I don't have a structure. Yeah. No accountability. No accountability. I don't know what to do. I don't know where to get started. I mean, that's why I love Boy Scouts as a kid. Is you just go in and like, here's the stuff you do. And you do this stuff. You're going to learn some things and you're going to be better. And so that's what we're doing with the Strenuous Life. So I think we are attracting guys who are like, this is what they had an itch. They wanted to scratch. There's a lot of former military guys who are signing up who are like, I miss this sort of thing. So am I getting people who are just like super lazy? Probably not. Maybe the art of, hopefully we do an art of manliness. We'll, you know, convince them otherwise. But I think what I think the goal there is with that stuff, you can't, you can't preach it. I think men don't respond to preaching where you just like get on a, you know, preaching Adam for, you know, blah, blah, blah. This is what you need to do. Like maybe some guys do where you just like, they do all the, they say all the trite things. Like push yourself by like, even as a, as a football player where I'm like, when my coaches did that, I was like, okay, that doesn't, that is an inspirational quotes. Doesn't do it. It doesn't do it for me. Yeah. I remember like the thing my football coach would say, be like, this is like so hard that normal people can't do this. And you guys are going to be so much more successful because you played football. And I was like, I don't think that's necessary. Cause I know a lot of guys here that probably aren't going to be that successful. I know a lot of guys who played football that were successful. They're still talking only about the days they used to play football. Right. Right. That was the highlight of their life. Right. Exactly. I love what you do because for a lot of reasons, but one of the things is there, I don't know, people are becoming more sort of, I don't know, siloed. Right. And there used to be lots of fraternal organizations and lots of outlets for men to be men among each other and help each other. And those things don't exist anymore or they're marginalized and they existed for a reason. And now people don't pay any heed to those older organizations. And there's a big void there to be filled. And you help do that. You reach these people through a medium that they can relate to and kind of feel that need. It's a big deal. Yeah. And that's what I'm hoping that strenuous life does. Cause one of the things we're hoping it does is it gets people together in actual meat space, like, you know, get together. It's like, we're going to do a thing tomorrow. Yeah. Right. And there's, I think, how many five or six guys who are coming? A few more. Yeah. A few more who are going to do some deadlift. And then we're going to go to Ruck. Deadlift. Ruck. Cause I think it's important, like, especially for men and in their 30s and 40s are some of the loneliest people in the world. Yeah. And loneliness, like it hurts not only psychologically, but physically. And it's, I think one of the reasons why you're seeing this opioid thing that's happening in a lot of these, and a lot of, and then a lot of America's that people are just lonely. They're sad. Yeah. And there's no outlet for that anymore. They don't have a place where they can go. So I'm hoping that, you know, the strenuous life can provide, you know, it's not going to solve it obviously, but it's going to help in that area. Yeah. And provide the framework for guys to get together and, and actually do stuff that's valuable together. Right. So as a, it's not just watching sports, watching you guys see the fight. There's nothing wrong with that. It's something that recognizes a call to something greater here and we can actually refine ourselves physically, mentally, emotionally, socially, all these things where, where we're missing out because we, because we're often, most of us are stuck in kind of suburb hell. Right. Where our life is going to soccer practice all the time. Right. You pull the car in the garage, put the door down, then get out. But that's exactly right. Nobody sits on the front porch. Nobody knows their neighbors anymore, right? Right. So air conditioning, central air conditioning gets invented and all of a sudden there's no eaves over hanging eaves. Nobody's out on the front porch or back porch anymore. It's the, you know, our friend Mel Ripley, he went to one of our training days we had here in Tulsa and they had like 40 people show up to train together we weren't, weren't in the clinic or anything. We just threw a weightlifting party essentially. And he called me and he's like, I can't believe how supportive everybody was. Now everybody was, like he brought his, he brought his 14, 15 year old son. Everybody was just cheering his son on, you know, the, there's a guy there that actually, he was just trained at this gym and he came over to me and he said, what's that kid's name? And I said, well, that's, you know, that's a, that's Jacob. And so when Jacob went up to deadlift, that guy was just yelling for him, you know? And I was like, you know, I wish I had that kind of community all the, all the time. I'm like, well, why don't you come and try, you know? Sure. But yeah, people are dying for that. People, it is the thing. It's like, it's so weird. It's like, we've forgotten how to socialize, right? Particularly, I think, you know, 20-somethings, 30-somethings. See, you look back at your parents, I remember my parents, their generation, our grandparents generation, like they would just get together just randomly. Yeah. Let's play bridge. Yeah, bring a castle roll. Bring a castle, like it's, keep it low. And I think, I feel like millennials, particularly they have to have like high expectations of how things should be. It's like, it needs to be awesome because it's going to be on Instagram. Sure. It's going to be on Pinterest. So they have to like make it like cute. And they have to like, it's all this work. So it's so much work. They're like, I'm not even going to do this. When it's just like, you know, just invite some people over to your house, order a pizza, train Bartone, yeah, take the phones, put it face down. That's right. And I think also too, we tend to outsource our socialization or the organization of socializing to companies, right? It's like, I'm going to let this company figure out what we're going to do. Say more about that. Like who would they be? These events that like the mud runs and like it's like, it's super elaborate conferences. Like, I mean, that's how people socialize. Like I'm going to go to a conference, right? Pay money. It's like, you don't need to do that to socialize. You don't need to do that. You can actually just call your neighbor over and you know, crack open a six pack and whatever, that's your thing. When Terry and I first got married, there was a couple in their like 80s that lived on the corner from us. And every Friday, there would be cars out there. And we were taking a walk one day and I could see in the window, they were playing cards. Next Monday evening, I went and banged on the door and I'm like, you guys know how to play bridge? And I'm like, yeah, we have a bridge game every Friday. And so we played bridge with them every Wednesday for years. And people used to do that all the time. You think it's going to be boring but it's actually pretty fun. You play it for like the conversation. You just get there and you just talk and jibber jabber. And that's why I like barbell train. I think if you have a gym in your garage, like that's such a great opportunity to get some people over just like, hey, want a deadlift? And I think most, if you ask most guys that, they're going to like jump at the chance to do that. So we did that. I'm like the leader of the men's group in my church and I need to do an activity cause like they don't really do anything. So I was like, let's just do doughnut, deadlifts and doughnuts. So I bought, you know, two dozen doughnuts. And we had like eight or nine guys show up which is more than- It's not enough doughnuts. It's not enough doughnuts, right. Wouldn't be for us. Cause like I was just deadlift. They were excited to like, oh, I'm going to get the deadlift. Yeah, do something hard. Do something hard. So it doesn't have, I mean, I would encourage you if you all are listening to this. And that's what I love about most of the people who are into strength community, get that. I mean, I love one of the things I love going to the meat just like everyone's just super cool and down to earth. The strength community is not what you see in the online community. The trolls there are much louder than everybody else. If you actually go where strength people are, they're the kindest people you'll ever meet. Because the stronger they are, the more they've gotten their butt kicked and the more they understand what you're doing and they're just the nicest people. They really are. I think the primary target is like, everyone needs to be strong. Yeah. Yeah, it's about strength and health and the refinement that occurs there before aesthetics. Right? And aesthetics comes. I mean, we see it with Brett, right? So, so it's... I do see it. It was all right. Oh, thank you. I could, listen, we met last, was it last week we met for lunch? Yeah. And you got out of the car and I was like, oh my God, look at that guy. He's like jacked and making me blush. No, I mean, it's like... Yeah, you're wearing your strenious life. I was wearing my shorty shorts. Yeah. The shorty shorts. So, aesthetics certainly is part of that. It's a byproduct of this performance increase, but the fitness industry is rife with all these people that all they care about is the aesthetics. And so then, and most people don't know any better, right? That that is what fitness is to them. And so, still there's probably an enormous percentage of your listeners, of your readers, of your website, of kind of like, wait, what are they doing? Like I thought they don't look like a men's health model, like the guy that's on the cover of the magazine. Like, well, you don't understand. That guy didn't eat any food or drink any water for four days and took diuretics and tan and everything just for the photo shoot. He's super not healthy for that photo shoot just so he can look what you think is healthy. They oiled that guy down. He at first, he took a bunch of diuretics and all that stuff, and then they oiled him down. They took those photos. He collapsed and started an IV. Yeah, right, right. For real. Yeah. Like I was talking to a guy, he called me, he wanted training and he said, you know, the Brad pitch or was fight club scene. That's it. I'm like, no, listen. It's not gonna happen. Brad pits, I think he's six foot tall. He looked it up. I think he was six foot tall and he probably weighed. Springfield was already native, by the way. He weighed about 165. He was a bit older for a bit. He probably weighed 165 in that. And, of course, he read the script. They signed the contract. He knew he was gonna shoot the film eight months out. Sure. So they start working. And get paid $18 million. $18 million. So he can sacrifice a little bit of health because he's gonna get paid. Of course. So he starts training for this. And then he knows, okay, Friday we're shooting that scene. So he's taking every drug. He's drinking horse pee. Right. Then he takes all the diuretics. He sweats, he sits in the sun. He does all that stuff. They shoot that scene. They start the IV. He collapses. He collapses. They start an IV because he's dehydrated. And then all the guys watch the movie and go, I wanna look just like that guy. Right. Look how well he performed in the fight in the basement of Fight Club on that scene. In that movie. Wait a minute. And then meanwhile, you got 19-year-old guy. He weighs 231. He squats 115. That's like, man, we just wanna help you get better. Let's not worry about pit. Can we help you get better? And also what I like about it is, I feel like a lot of guys, the reason they don't even get into physical fitness at all is they think it takes too much time. Whenever I post like PRs, they're like, I would love to do that, but I don't have any time. I can't train every day. And I'm like, dude, I train three, maybe four times a week and it's 45 minutes. You need three hours a week. Right. Give me three hours a week. Because that's all it takes. And you don't have to make your whole life around it. And you can have a family and still do it and still get strong. Yeah, I mean like three times a week. It's all I trained. I mean, I guess I'm doing four times a week now. Yeah, but you're also advanced. Right. But when you first start out. It's still not that much time. Right, but it's still not that much. 45 minutes tops. Yeah, right. And if you're not watching TV, if you're not watching TV. You get plenty of time. Yeah, right. You get plenty of time. What's the average person watch TV? It's something, it's still something crazy even though. It's 20 hours a week. Yeah, it's still something insane. Yeah, it's crazy. Like we just added computers to that. I was reading some study about that. Yeah. Dude, thanks for being on the show. No, this was fun. I really appreciate it. Yeah. You've been a hell of a client in spite of you. You've helped us tremendously, but I'm just thankful for the fact that you've just been consistent for two straight years. You know, it's one of those awesome things. Well, look at the guy's bracelet. He's wearing a bracelet. This is do it now. Do it now. It's good. Yeah, I got to get you one of these things. So wait, what's next on the table for me? Well, you've got the meat's coming up. So the meat's coming up the end of October for you. So I like to ask you a question. So, you know, if you go to the meat, you get a total, you're going to qualify for the Nationals in Oakland. Last week of January or something like that? Second week of January. You want to go to Nationals? Yeah, I've already talking about my wife's. We've got friends in San Francisco. So we're tentatively planning together. Are you guys going to go? I'll be there. OK. So if you go, or some of my clients go, I'll go. I'm actually flying home from Hawaii the day before. But what I may do is just book the flight to San Francisco since I'm coming from Hawaii anyway, have my family go on home and I'll stop in San Francisco for the next couple of days and then come home two days later or whatever. That's I certainly can do that. So yeah, well, what we'll do is we'll be cool for you at the meat is that you're going to set three PRs, three individual PRs and a total PR at a weight class lower than you did last time, which is cool. So the weight has finally has gone down. You're leaner, you're stronger. You've got more muscle. All those things have occurred. And because you're stronger, you can set quantifiable things. And so then after the meat, we'll do the same thing that we did last time and we'll have the discussion. Say, OK, where do you want to go now? Well, I think that it's time to do a powerlifting meat down the road, like an actual power like an actual with the benchpress. So my benchpress is terrible, though. It's not that good. I mean, it's it's past 300 pounds. Yeah. So I bet you benchpress 315 by Thanksgiving. That'd be pretty cool, man, because we identified where the weak point is now. Right. So yeah. Well, thanks for being on the show. Thanks for what you've done at Art of Mainlandness and the strenuous life. It's been it's been awesome. We've got such a great crossover appeal, I think. And so I know we've got a ton of our clients that are big Art of Mainlandness fans and we've had a ton of guys sign up from Art of Mainlandness for online coaching. And it's been awesome. No, it's been fun. Thanks. Anything you need to plug? No, Art of Mainlandness. The Strenuous Life.co. .co. Yeah. Yeah. I got the .com finally. The guy finally sold it to me. Nice. But it's .co. Squatter. I'm going with that. So yeah. The Strenuous Life.co. If you want to get into Boy Scouts for Men, right? So earn some badges and do a barbell badge. Do hard things. Yeah, we set that up. So well, this is Barbell Logic. I'm Scott. You can find me on Instagram. I'm at Scott underscore silver strength Reynolds is at Reynolds strong. And we'll talk to you guys in a few days. Thank you.