 Look man, it's the new year and you're still sucking. You can't make progress. You can't make gains. You're fat. You're weak. You're ugly. You're broke. And you're single. Pay attention to this fucking video and we'll tell you how to fix all those issues. Unprobably to start on our checklist is why you're not making strength gains or muscular gains. You know, there could be a couple of reasons. Number one, it's not the answer you want, what you're going to hear, but it's going to be patience. It's going to take you a while. Number two, a more applicable one, it's probably a frequency issue. I still see a lot of people squatting once a week or doing arms once a week and you're just doing so much like garbage sets or junk sets. You're just doing curls on curls on curls with no intent, no progression and not getting close enough to failure to do anything, but you're just getting sore for no reason and then waiting another seven days to train them. So when we're talking about strength, we want to practice the lift and the best way to practice it is to do it. If you're a basketball player, golf, you're not golfing one every seven days expecting your stroke to get better, right? We're going to do it multiple times a day even and obviously those sports are different because we don't have external load, but you're going to do it multiple times a day to practice that rhythm. Same with lifting. If we can squat three or four times a week and still progress, eat food, sleep, recover, manage our fatigue with our volume and intensity, now we're going to actually get better at the movement while we're building muscle and neuro, muscular-like activity, so we're getting better at firing our muscles, we're getting better at the skill of it, the coordination of it and we're building muscles are kind of the three ways to get stronger. Now in terms of being fat, I'm not fat, shaming. I know there's a lot of people that are at a higher body fat than they want to be for looks, sex appeal and even health. I mean it's just true. Yeah, there's a percentage of folks that can be real sexy at a higher body fat and there's a small percentage of folks that can still be healthy, but the chances start to go up when you get to be a little bit leaner. And whether it's self-confidence, something we talk about here, the reason I design clothes is for confidence, the reason I lift weights is for confidence, the reason I strive every day to build a routine to get better is for my confidence and I can build on small wins to feel better about myself. The honest truth is if you've already found this video on this channel you know what the fuck to do and you're just not doing it. It doesn't it doesn't feel very good. I'm the same way, right? I gain more weight in this bulk and this off-season strength block than I wanted to, right? And that was just lack of routine, lack of consistency, having two cookies instead of one cookie. Like we all know why until you look in the mirror, you know, you look in the mirror, you tell yourself, all right, I know I overdid it. You can also look in the mirror and say, all right, now I'm not going to not overdo it no more, right? So for me today that's that. I'm going back to more whole foods. I'm not going to eat out no more. I'm going to eat, I'm going to cook most of my meals, no more sweets and shit. Again, yeah, you can flexible diet and there's a percentage of people that can eat one cookie and get shredded. There's also a percentage of us that can't eat one cookie. So we're going to eat 12 cookies and then we ain't going to be lean no more. So for me, no more cookies. Those trigger foods for me are just going out the window. We're back on the grind. So weights don't feel great right now, but we're showing up and we're doing it. Same thing with your diet. So just literally before I came here, I did a little Amazon Fresh deal. I've got all my ground beef for the week. I've got rice at home. I'm going to go home and cook in between meetings. And the same things for you. It's just literally a matter of do you want it? How bad do you want it? Are you going to do it or are you not going to do it? I ain't going to. There's nothing I could say here. There ain't no Cali Muscle Seabomb Bradley Martin video going to make you drop that cookie out of your fucking face. You're the only one putting the cookie in your face. So we're in the middle of the deadlift series. I guess we're near the end of it. Wrapping up the corners. Kind of a roller coaster. A lot of travel, a little bit of weight fluctuations. Stretch is high. Work stress is really high. So that's definitely affecting me. Like today, it's supposed to be 460 to 470 for dub, RPE7. And I probably was in that range seven to eight, but it just took a little bit more energy out of me to get there rather than that should be kind of like a daily thing and easy thing. It's a little disappointing. You know, I was just talking to the team and you look back and you know, I am a little bit older and I just have more stress on my plate and more things on my plate right now. But like, I used to just bury 475 high bar for five, six, seven reps, RPE6, you know, an hour of 460, 470 and everyone else like, Mike, when are you going to compete? I don't compete. It's not like a fire that's within me. So that may be some of the difference now, but I just have other shit going on, man. I got a lot of stresses, a lot of things to take care of, a lot of people to take care of. Every employee and I'm so lucky to have these guys on my team, but that's just like another stress to my plate. Like I got to make sure they eat. I got to make sure everybody's doing good and we're all progressing. And that used to be where I would just wake up and worry about my deadlift. My whole mindset would be, oh, what do I got a deadlift today? So like all the visualization and shit I tell you guys about, I do it, but you can only visualize so much, you only have so much energy you have in back in the day that used to be on my lifting. And now it's on life, it's on my employees, it's on my mother, it's on the people I care about, it's on the businesses. So it just takes the mental toll on me a little bit more than the energy I want to throw at the lifting. I wasn't like super excited to get into a deadlift strength blog, but I knew I needed a break from dieting. And so it was kind of an excuse. I'm still excited to like hit a big deadlift and I think we will. You know, anything over 670 is going to be a win in my book conventional. But after that, we're going to start bodybuilding cut mode. So we're going to go 30 day series, maybe two to three videos a week, more vlog style showing more of my lifestyle on how much fat I can lose in about 30 days. I'm not going to do anything crazy unhealthy. I'm not going to be throwing needles in my arms. We're just going to clean everything up, add a little cardio and see visually and physically what I can do in 30 days. Hopefully you guys tie along with that. That should start in about two, three weeks. So we'll start that off with a new year and then we'll see what happens from there. Probably a little bit of travel. We're heading to the Arnold, I believe. So more vlogs coming in that, but the big series is 30 day, get sure as we might. Question for future avi, but today's avi is going to answer it and then I need you guys to answer it in the comments. So let's say whatever year we're in, let's say 2024 is what I'm predicting. That 500 pound deadlift is just in the pocket, right? It's maybe an RPE 8. You ain't got to overthink it. You've hit it before. You've hit a 500 pound, maybe 501 in comp, right? So you're smashing 500 pounds, squat, bench, deadlift. I don't care, but for you deadlift, for me deadlift, 500 or even less. Let's say you pull 550, right? So 500 is just a day, another day. So today I got six by two. It was supposed to be 500 pounds, but in my head, I'm not throwing the two and a half on, right? Why not? I've been there. Well, why? I've done been there before. But if you've prescribed it, you just have to have a voice across. Why not? Okay, let's just say you're supposed to be around 500. Let's not go, because I agree if the coach says you do it, but let's say you're just supposed to hit something around 500 or it says like 490 to 505 because I feel like some people got to throw that chip on there for the ego. My ego done been there, right? So who cares? Who cares? I don't care either. But some guys will be like, because I'll post it and I'll say 500, 6 by 2, like 495. Oh, that's different too, though. You're being up another topic. But if I'm struggling with it, yeah, man, if I'm throwing, I'll throw 500 into the fucking rafters, right? I'm going to move this so fast. So I said 319 today. I did 319.7 and you're like, oh, did you see my 320? You're like 319. But how did I say it? You mean 319? Yes, because I was being a bitch like YouTube. That's why I was saying it with the sarcasm, because I would have said 3, whatever, 2. You know what I mean? I gave it a voice. Yeah, I would have said 320 also because you squatted 320. I posted it as 319. I didn't hit like 320. I didn't round up. But when I was talking to Mike, I'm like, I know he doesn't care. Someone's saying it's 320. And then I came with sass. I don't care. I came with sass. Because if you smoked it, it's not like if we would have added a pound on your squat, you would have missed it. If I take 495 and I'm fucking, and then I say deadlifted 500, they'd be like, bitch, you didn't. That was 495. Because if 500 was on there, I would have died. That's how my brain works. A window with RPE based. Yeah. Can you round up? I don't know. I think you can round up if you're sub-RPE 9. I think you should round down if you're actually like, you don't give a fuck. Yeah. If it's like you did 495, we'd just be like, oh, that was 490. I'll do that. I'll whip this around and say 315, 6x2. Yeah, you should do that. Easy day. All right, I'll do it. I'll do it right now. Just a little advice. Hopefully some of that makes sense or gets you unstuck in this bullshit, man. New year, new me or something? Something like that. Whatever the kids say. I'm going to finish this workout. I appreciate you guys, man. New videos Monday, Thursday. And we'll see what Seabass got in the works. We might have some shorts on the way. We might be adding a little more frequency to the channel, a little bit more love. So I appreciate you guys a lot, man. We over me. Be a part of something bigger than yourself. So I'm Mike. Catch you in the next one.