 So for those of you interested in the story of how strength training really helps battle cancer, we've interviewed some other people. And one of our favorites is Professor Paul Markle. Now we interviewed him very shortly after he was diagnosed with cancer in episode 199. So you can go back and check that out in episode 199. That's the, I've just been diagnosed with cancer. I've had it for a few weeks and I'm doing everything I can to survive. This is kind of a mental toughness episode. And then we interviewed him again in episode 268. And it was really after he had come through the fire of cancer, but you could tell he was still sort of a shell of his former self. And so while the strength training really helped build up the foundation that he needed to survive it, you could tell it still had really, it had ravaged his body, but he had come through. Welcome to Barbell Logic Rewind. Welcome to the Barbell Logic podcast. I am Scott Hamburg. We have Matt Reynolds with us. And today it is a show with student of the gun radios, Professor Paul Markle. And he is, you know, fighting fixes everything, Paul. Fighting solves everything. That's what it says. He's got the coffee mag that says fighting solves everything and he is fighting a little bit of cancer. And so we thought we would talk to him about what that is like and what training is like for him. First off, Paul, what did you see? So Professor Paul has been training. How long have you been with us at? Oh, let's see, going all the way back to January of, January of 17. So to not quite two and a half years now. Wow, you look great. You feel great. You're super strong. You've set PRs across the board. You called me a few weeks ago and actually Jared sent me a text and an email that said, dad needs to get a hold of you. It's a super emergency. And gave no indication what it was, right? So the first thing I'm thinking is, okay, who's dead? Somebody's dead, right? Jaeger's dead. Somebody is dead. So I was like, don't tell Jared to never do that again. So anyway, we connected. I said, look, we got to talk right now. And you said, I got to do lunch. I said, Paul, I can't function until I figure out what's going on and who's died. And so then you called me and you told me, what? That I have cancer. What kind of cancer you got? It's a cystic squamous cell carcinoma. Basically, it's like P16 positive. Well, it's very short. It's in my neck. We found a lump in my lymph node. Lymph node, salivary gland, they're all like right there next to each other. And there was like a discernible bump and discernible lump there. And I went, and you know, you always think, you know, it's like the old Arnold Schwarzenegger thing with a kindergarten cop. When he says it, it might be a tumor and he's like, it's not the tumor. Well, it was a tumor. And that's a sick irony of it is, you know, everybody jokes about that. Maybe it's a tumor. You know, anybody who's ever had to experience cancer knows that there's no quick cure. There's no quick treatment. There's no fast anything when it comes to that. Then you go to this doctor and that doctor. And you go to for this test and that test and the other test. And then they all get together and they're like, oh, okay, well, you know, and the scariest thing of course is, you know, the interim. You know, in the interim, you know, the doctor's like, we know that that's cancer right there, but we don't know where else in your body it is. It could be in your lungs, your suffocates, your, you know, we don't know. It's in your body and it could be everywhere or nowhere. Right? So then, you know, of course I'm living in Wyoming. So that means I'm commuting an hour and a half, two hours, two and a half hours to, you know, treatment facilities and, well, basically testing facilities in Cheyenne and so forth. So they found out that it's only in my neck. It's nowhere else. It hasn't metastasized in my lungs and my, you know, and everybody says, oh, you're 50 years old. It's, you know, when I say I have cancer, they're like, oh, it's down there. I'm like, no, my butthole and my testicles are fine. Can confirm. By the way, there is an area between those two, you know. Yeah. Well, my, my buttons, my balls are fine. By the way, it's called your taint. A taint, yeah. It taint your butthole and it taint your balls and that's a prostate issue. That's where that, that's where that beautiful prostate lives. But no, you're fine. So everything's in your neck. Yeah. And so the plan is to do what? So then the plan is like, well, are you going to have to have radiation? The way they treat this type of cancer is direct radiation oncology. And I'm learning all the terminology now. Well, you know, I'm living out in the mountains and in search of Wyoming, which is beautiful, but believe it or not, they don't have a cancer treatment facility there. Right. The option was like go to Denver or, you know, some of the place for Salt Lake City, which has a really good cancer treatment center and Jared already lived here. Jared and his wife, Alex already lived here. We already had a satellite office here. So it was really an easy choice to make to come here. But, you know, good doctors are like good attorneys. You don't just get in to see them that day. So I got my recommendation or my referral from the guy in Wyoming. And it took, you know, about three weeks for me to get over here and then to get seen at Huntsman. And then you start that process. And they're like, okay, we want you to talk to this guy. They wanted me to talk to a surgeon because they thought maybe we'll go in and we'll, you know, we'll cut it out. And then they said, no, we don't want to do that because they said, what do you do for a living? And I said, I post a radio show. And I'm like, hmm, we probably don't want to be cutting around your vocal cords. I'm like, yeah, you know, and it's one of those things like, well, if we could just cut it out and then clean it up with radiation, it'd be quicker. But the downside could potentially be permanently altering your voice for life. I was like, hmm, okay. And they said, and so they're like, well, we don't want to, we don't want to do that much surgery in your throat. That would be like smashing a Strativarius. Yeah, I know exactly. They're trying to silence the pimp hand of America. So they're like, well, we don't want to do that. We don't want to do that much invasive surgery in the back of your throat and your neck. So now I'm on radiation. I'm actually on week two, almost done with week two of radiation. And it's what they call the gamma knife, kind of that's what one of the doctors referred to it as. And they take gamma radiation, they take beams and the beams, what it was explaining to me is the beams, the computer knows, I just lay there completely and totally immobile. They strap you down to a board. They put this mask over your head so you can't move at all. It's kind of like a medieval torture thing. And then they shoot you with the beams. And right where the beams touch each other is where the gamma radiation is. And that's right on. And they did PET scans and all that stuff. So they have a real good inside-outside picture of my body. How did, I want to hear more about how you found it. Because- I reached up and I did this. You just reach up and you check your crowded pulse and there was a bump there. I was like, hmm. How big of a bump did it feel like? Like an olive. Ooh. Yeah, there's an olive underneath there. I have charities soap me up every day and just palpate my whole body just looking because I don't want to get cancer. That's what it is. Is that what you do? Checking for lumps. That's right. That's good. That's good. Do you do the same? You turn the favor? No, she'll be fine. Oh, sure, of course. Of course, of course. One of the things that Philip Midkiff and John Wilson and these guys who have come out of cancer, of course, Wilson is still dealing with it. Midkiff has beaten his and he had to go through radiation. He had malignant skin cancer up by his temple on one side of his head. And so he trained all the way through it. I mean, the main reason that we want to have you on the show is because we've talked to these two guys who have been through it on the other side. We haven't really talked to anybody who is in the middle of the fight. And from the very beginning, you and I talked on the phone and you had this attitude. It's like I'm gonna kick the shit out of this cancer and I'm gonna train all the way through it. And you started texting me, you used to do that in the early days, you would text me your PRs. And then it kind of becomes like life is just, and you just train and it kind of becomes a thing you do. Like it's now I'm getting these texts again about your lift in and your kick in cancer's ass. And you've got this motto of fighting solves everything and you're gonna fight the shit out of this cancer. And so I wanted to have you on the show in the early stages of I'm going through radiation. You've done what, eight days, something like that at this point, radiation you have 30 to do, is that right? 32. So you got 22 left and I wanna talk to you again on the back end of this thing and see what your attitude is like. And knowing that you're gonna have, this is gonna be tough six weeks for you, but want to have that testimonial recorded because I think it's important for our listeners to hear, we talk a lot about voluntary hardship and you are being faced with involuntary hardship that you've decided to use it as a method to refine yourself and to fight and to be a mentor or a role model for other people that deal with other hard things. And so sometimes we don't get to choose, but because you chose the thing that was hard and the hard path for the previous decades, I believe that you are better prepared for what you now have to face over the next month. And I'm sure you've talked to your previous guests and clients and so forth. One of the main concerns of all the cancer doctors when they started doing treatment, and that's the sick and twisted thing about cancer, is when normally if you get sick, you feel sick. You're like, I'm sick, something's wrong with me, whatever, I got a disease or I broke something or whatever. You go to the doctor, you go to a hospital and they start giving you treatment and they give you treatment and it makes you feel better. That's how you know you're not sick anymore. Well, it's the exact opposite with cancer. Like you feel okay, like I felt okay. I mean, I knew I had this bump here, but I didn't feel sick or I was nauseous and I didn't have any sweats or whatever. So you don't feel bad until they start treating it. They're like, the more they treat it, like if you had pneumonia, you went to the hospital, the more treatment you got, the better you feel and then eventually you feel really great and they're like, okay, you go home now. And with this, it's the exact opposite. The more they treat it, the worse you feel. It's a sick, twisted irony. But they're one of their main concerns because of that and because you feel worse and you don't wanna eat and so forth is that you're gonna lose muscle mass and people will get physically weak and the radiation and the chemo and so forth. I mean, if you've ever talked to anybody a lot, last time, what's not necessarily the cancer that kills them is their body gets weak to the point where it can't sustain. You know, they're concerned. They're like, maybe I'm gonna make sure you don't lose weight. You know, we don't want you losing muscle mass and then so on and so forth. Probably kind of a good idea before you start the treatment to have some muscle mass on your body. Yeah. You know, that's one thing that I've been doing. You know, I got diagnosed. I got the phone call on February 22nd, but I had never stopped. I went into the gym that day because it was my program day and I did it. And I'll tell you the hardest thing now is I changed the keto diet because there are actually several studies that show that people who are on the ketogenic diet do better in chemo and radiation than those that don't. Yep. So I've been doing that. And it's been a mother fletcher. I'll tell you what, training and then going through the shift over to ketosis and so forth. With no carbohydrates. So here you're doing this. I told Graham, I was like, I did that entire workout with six carbs on board. These, yeah. Yeah. So tell us what the experience of what it feels like. Your undergoing radiation therapy and your training or eight days in. Tell us what that feels like. Well, yeah, they don't work on weekends. They don't work on holidays. So basically you do Monday through Friday treatment and end of the first week, by Friday, I felt like after lunch, I had to have a nap. And I got that. And then they tell you, they're like, look, if you feel tired, sleep. Don't try and muscle through it or whatever. If you feel tired, just sleep because we need you to do that. And so I did and then a few days ago, maybe three, four days ago, I started noticing the dry mouth because the radiation is right there. It's right by your salivary gland and so forth. And it's not doing that any good. So I got kind of a constant yuck mouth now. I take the special, I put the special mints and I rinse my mouth and all that. And it's kind of a pain in the ass. But that's what I've got right now. I feel like I'm good in the morning. And that's what I've talked to other people and they said that that's very common. They sleep all night and they get up and they're good in the morning and I get my treatments early in the morning between eight and nine every day. And I go to work and do whatever, but then by two o'clock, three o'clock in the afternoon, my body's like, hey, we need a nap. So let's go do this. But I haven't missed a training session since I started. I've done my best even when we traveled recently. My son's birthday was two weeks ago, Zachary. We live in Salt Lake, which is only like five, six hours from Las Vegas. So we took him down there because I was about to start treatment anyway. It was like two weeks ago. So I was going to be starting treatment. I knew I wasn't going to travel or do anything. But while I was down there, I went to Average Bros. and I lifted, I lifted the damn Kegel plates that he had. When are you training right now during the day? If you're getting your treatments in the morning, when are you actually lifting? What I normally do is I'll do the treatment and then I'll come here because the gym is here at our office and I'll do that before lunch. You'll train in the mornings, yeah. Because I kind of know my body and I know if I try and wait until the afternoon, it's going to be really hard. Yeah, so then almost the combination, I would assume, of the radiation early and then the training mid-morning leaves you probably pretty not wiped out. You have that nap in the afternoon and hope for kind of a second wind in the evening is the goal, I guess. And I lost, and when I started on keto, it takes a while, I mean, obviously, every human being is different, but it takes a while for your body to process over. And the first week I was on it and I'm like, this is great, this is no big deal at all. And I was lifting heavy weight and squatting heavy weight and I was feeling pretty good about myself. And then, all right, I'll go ahead and miss something. When we moved, we had to basically pack up an entire house, an entire office and everything and move over here. And that was a bit of a stress on the entire family. But I did miss them. I did miss them, but I haven't missed anything since we've been here. And when I got here and we got set up, I was feeling pretty washed out. But I'm feeling better now. I'm feeling better now. And Graham has been great. I told him, and this is the main thing I would tell anybody, is if you're doing a program and you experience something like this, you got to tell your coach. It can help you and make adjustments because it's not like something they've never heard before. Yeah, I think that's one of the deals we learned when we trained Philip Midkiff that was going through this was that we want to keep him strong and we want to avoid the loss of muscle mass as much as we can while you're basically undergoing a treatment that the goal is to kill cells, right? I mean, it kills good cells and bad cells. It's going to kill all this stuff, right? And so if you're not how to tailor that, so for Philip, we moved him from like three sets of five to three sets of three, two sets of three, one set of three with a couple of back offsets of three and he's a little older than you. And so we just experimented with what can he handle and what doesn't drive him into the ground and what allows him to keep either getting stronger or maintaining strength the best you can. And really what you're doing is you're just chasing, you're doing the best you can to either PR or you're chasing, taking weight off the bar as slow as possible, right? As you get sick and lose weight and get more ill from the radiation or even for some people chemotherapy or the combination of both, that you're probably not going to be able to set PRs during that time, but the goal is to be able to take the weight off the bar as slow as possible, not take it off 10 pound plates at a time, but take it off, you know, one pound plates at a time. And so you've done a really good job so far of getting in the gym and keeping your weight heavy and Graham's programmed you well. I peek in on the programming that he's doing for you and then I'm excited to see what it looks like over the next four to six weeks, especially as you get towards the end, you know, and see what your- That's exciting. That's what your mindset is. That's excited to see all this. Well, I mean, here's the deal, man, is that lots of people get this, lots of people get cancer. The reality is that cancer, unfortunately, is a dime a dozen. Yeah. But people who choose to fight the cancer are rare and people who choose to fight the cancer with physical tough things like heavy strength training are almost unheard of. And so we don't have that in the, we don't have much of that in the literature or in real time be able to talk to somebody and go like, hey, this is, we know this is where you are, we have faith that you're gonna beat this thing. And so I think it's important to tell your story about fighting cancer in the midst of it rather than after the fact. Oh, yeah. And, you know, even this facility, I mean, this facility that we did research on it and it's a renowned, you know, facility and if you look up cancer treatment, where I'm at is, it's probably pretty highly regarded. But they have their, the entire medical community, I believe in the United States of America, is A, they're hamstrung by the fear of being sued. So because they're hamstrung by the fear of being sued, they won't endorse or do anything new or different, unfortunately. I mean, I had a dietitian hand me a thing saying I should be eating, you know, I need to maintain my weight. So add peanut butter and tofu and all this stuff to my diet. Soy! I don't think I need, I don't need that estrogen and I don't need soy. And she's like, that's a myth. There's no estrogen and soy. Right. Okay, whatever. And the paper said to avoid red meat because it could cause heart disease. I'm like, sure. What decade did they get this information? What's amazing is how concerned you are right now with heart disease. Right, don't you wish? In the middle of 30 days of radiation, like, hey, listen, we are real concerned that in the middle of the radiation, you could potentially have a heart attack. Like if all the steak you've been eating and you got right down to the last damn day of this radiation and you had a heart attack and died from the steak that you've eaten since the man has eaten since the beginning of time that, you know, don't eat red meat because that'll give you a heart attack in the midst of your radiation. Like, what, you know, yeah, that's it, man. People get, we deal with it all the time, right? And the medical community is they terrify these kids from the very beginning in college. And so, yeah, I love it that you've taken it in your own hands. You're like, look, I'm eating keto. I'm not gonna, like again, we're not certain that that helps, but there's been a fair amount of studies on it. You guys wanna look that up? I think I appointed you to Dom DiAgostino. He's done a lot of studies there. I think Dr. Peter Atias and some stuff there as well in specifically low carb, no carb, ketosis eating for people with cancer and the results seem to be pretty good. And so it certainly isn't going to hurt. And so you drop the carbs, you continue to train, you get your protein in, you do your radiation, you do your training, you get your sleep, you take your naps and you're sort of got a single focus right now, which is fighting this thing and beating the shit out of it. Well, and the, you know, the big thing that I see is we, as Americans, we love to throw slogans on stuff and we like to throw words at things, man. And I've said fighting solves everything for a long time, but when people have cancer, they're like, we're gonna fight this and fight and fight and fight and fight but saying the word fight really doesn't mean anything. It's like, well, what are you actually going to do? What method do you have? And how do you, how do you fight? I mean, obviously, I'm a gun guy and so forth and you can't shoot cancer, right? You can't stab cancer, what do you do? And so I guess the main thing that I would try and pass on to the people is, you know, it doesn't really, I understand there's a mental component but mental and physical go together. And in just saying the words, we're gonna fight this, we're gonna fight it with everything we've got. Well, how, how are we doing that? You know, what are we doing? How are we fighting? And one of the physical manifestations that you can undergo is to actually make yourself be stressed, do that and no one, and that's the thing is I've talked to, I've talked to a surgeon, a chemo doctor, a radiation doctor, I've talked to a nutritionist, I've talked to a physical therapist. I mean, you go through all these consults. Not one single person said, you need to do physical exercise to keep your body strong. Not one. They're like, take naps and eat soy or tofu or whatever. You know, eat lots of peanut butter. But not one person said, you know, it'd probably be a good idea if you got up and did something to strengthen your body. And that's something I asked them. I said, you know, you're talking about you're afraid I'm gonna lose muscle mass. That's your big concern is we don't want you to lose muscle mass, don't want you to lose muscle mass. So like, so what is your solution? All right, so. You got lots of peanut butter and tofu. That'll help. Don't train, eat peanut butter and tofu to be fine. Yes. So more concrete here. You're going for radiation therapy in the morning, Monday through Friday, unless it's a bank holiday because, you know, oncologists take off on bank holidays and say don't work on Memorial Day. I'm off on no radiation on Memorial Day. Well, fortunately, the tumor is off that day too. So that's cool. Yeah. And then you're treating it three times a week. Yeah, I'm on three times a week. Three times a week. So you're just doing like a squat, press, deadlift. The next time you're doing a squat, then press, deadlift. I'm sure Graham, as time goes on here, will alter your programming to make sure that it's work that you can recover from but is keeping you sufficiently stressed. And by golly, you've only got 22 more of these, sir. Yeah. I'm going to plug you because I know how, I think I know how you are. I think I do. There's a GoFundMe for cancer treatment for Professor Paul that our mutual friend, James Jagger, set up because you wouldn't. That's what I heard. Is that true? Yeah, that's true. People need to pay you back. You're a great help to all of your community and even to our community. So if you're interested in helping him, you can go to cancer treatment for Professor Paul on the GoFundMe. You can go to studentofthegun.com and subscribe to all of their content there. Listen to the radio show and go to studentofthegungear.com and go by the operator by Paul's secret friend, Nicholas Orr. That's a book your wife might like, actually. It's on Amazon. It's on Amazon as a Kindle or paperback version. There we go. So you'd have it instantly. That is a right now. It's an action adventure with romance in it. Sounds titillating. That's such a gross word. My wife has asked me to tell you that she would like Mr. Orr to write another. Oh, so she's she's read it. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. In fact, charity was titillated. Yes. Yes. There's an autographed copy of it over here at her desk. Oh, is there? Yes, that's right. She's a big fan. So, you know, have you noticed a difference in your taste budget? Can you taste OK still? Things are starting to taste like Play-Doh. Can you taste on your left side where they're not? I mean, is that is the left side significantly better than the right side? Or at this point, is it all sort of getting dry? And I, like I said, it's because it's affecting the salivary gland. I work really hard to keep my mouth. Yeah, you get those little those little mint things you got to put in your pouch and it kind of makes that gel and keeps your mouth liquefied. Yeah. So yeah, I was going to say, we talk about when we define strength as, you know, the ability to produce force against external resistance. And we talk about how the world uses this term strength. And we often even equate it to people who don't know better. We'll say, oh, he was really strong because he beat cancer. Like that's an actual thing you'll hear people say, right? This idea like he was and what they really mean is like, well, they were mentally tough, right? I love the fact that you're going to beat cancer because you're actually strong. You're not strong because you beat cancer, but a big process of you beating cancer is because you're actually strong because of your ability to produce force against resistance because of your hypertrophy and muscle mass that you have already gained in the years of the trenches of building this up so that you didn't know this thing was coming. No. But then you get the phone call and you go, God, how thankful are you that you've done these things to ready yourself to be ready for the fight, not knowing what that fight was. Like, man, that fight could be any myriad of things. And you've been thrown the fight of cancer and now you get to prove what the strength thing does for you. And yeah. And, you know, when I got that phone call, I literally, not figuratively, not hypothetically, but literally was stronger, physically stronger than I believe I'd ever been in my life. And I've done a lot of things. I've been, you know, some Marine and so forth. And I've been cardiovascularly strong or core strength or whatever. But I mean, actual, when I recorded strength, like I know that I can put X on this bar and I can pick it up off the ground. And I know I can put, I can squat X because I've written it down and I've watched my progress over the years. And I'd never put that much weight on a bar and spotted it before. I never, I didn't even know how to deadlift until I met you. So I'm having to measure it too. But I could literally say that I was physically stronger, you know, in my life than I had been up to that point when I got that phone call. Yeah, that's awesome. Hey man, we love you. Thank you for being part of the family. Thanks for letting your family be part of our family, the greater collective of Barba Logic and we're thankful for you. I'm not excited for the cancer but I am excited to see the journey and the number of lives it's gonna touch and change. And you were going into it with this outlook on life that was still very positive and I'm gonna fight this and I'm gonna work through the battle. And so we told your story sort of in the midst of that, you told your story in the midst of it and things got really hard. I wanna go into that at some point but you are now in recovery and so we said when we did that podcast months ago over half a year ago that we were gonna have you back on the podcast when you were getting back to your old self again and that's you now. And so you've actually written a new book. How many books have you written total? Many. You have no idea? Yes. Yeah, 20-ish. Okay. So you have a new book out called Fighting Solves Everything. It's really a story of your fight through cancer and all of the sort of important things that played into that. Your faith, your strength training, your nutrition, your family support. And so let's go back to where we were in the spring. That's sort of the prequel to this. Back in the spring, you had been diagnosed with cancer and you were just starting your radiation treatments. Give us a quick synopsis there of what kind of cancer did you have? It was a squamous cell carcinoma. Basically it was in the back of my throat. I could base my tongue and so forth. And I discovered it because I reached up and to feel my carotid pulse and I felt a lump. And I was like, hmm, that's kind of weird. And you know what's in that area? You've got your salivary glands and all that jazz. And of course, I thought, well, it'll go away. Or you went to Dr. Google and Dr. Google says you could have been exposed to a virus or bacteria and if it doesn't go away in two weeks, see a doctor. And it didn't go away and I did see a doctor. I didn't just ignore it. And they're like, hmm, this is different. Let's check it out. And you know, fast forward a couple of weeks, I got the news, I was in Laramie, Wyoming and he said it's definitely cancer. And this is what we're gonna do and this is what we can do. And well, first we have to do a full body scan and figure out if it's anywhere else and all that. And then we have to do a biopsy. So we had done all that. They did the biopsy and we realized the type of cancer I had, the primary treatment was direct radiation oncology. Because it had not spread anywhere else. They could only find it there. It was only in my neck throat area, which was the good news. If you're gonna have cancer, that's good news. So he said, well, here's the deal though. You have to go 30 radiation treatments and it's five times a week for six weeks minimum. If that's if they don't have any holidays or breaks because believe it or not, even the cancer fighters at the radiation thing, if it's Fourth of July, they're not working. They're not going. Yeah, so you're just gonna have to come another day. And it ended up being about seven weeks with the various days and so forth. And at the time I was living in Saratoga, Wyoming, beautiful town out in the mountains, 90 minutes with traffic was good and there was no weather to Laramie. Traffic was bad, God knows how long. So we need to call this the battle of Saratoga then. Yeah, that was a serious commute. And he said, you're gonna have to figure out what you're gonna do because commuting round trip to the hospital three hours a day is not gonna cut it. And I said, yeah, obviously it's not gonna cut it. And I didn't realize how many doctors this is, so I was gonna have to have before then. I spent a lot of time at the Huntsman Cancer Research Center here in Salt Lake City. So we ended up in Salt Lake City because that's where Jared lives. And Jared's been here for several years, like three years now. He just moved into a house that had an extra bedroom or like, here's the deal, that has to have cancer treatment. And his house fortunately is like 10 minutes, maybe 15 if traffic is heavy from the hospital. So go team, a favor of God right there. So we basically in a period of six weeks, we packed up an entire house and entire business, everything we owned, put it in trucks and drove it to Salt Lake City and stuck it in storage so that I could start doing cancer treatment. And we mentioned this prior to now, but when you go through that and anybody who's ever had to, it's not just, there's not just one doctor, there's like this whole battery of doctors and specialists and nutritionists and all these people that you have to talk to and consult with in this. And they're like, you're gonna do chemo. And the thing about chemo, they try to convince me to do chemotherapy and I did the research on it. And I did the research on the specific chemical that they wanted to put in me and I discovered that it was horrible. Now most therapy is horrible, but this chemotherapy that they wanted to give me full of heavy metal platinum, which destroys your hearing and chemotherapy can ruin your kidneys and things like that. And you're like, well, you're kind of a stubborn asshole. And well, even the chemo doctor he said, he goes, the type of cancer you have is not curable by chemotherapy. But we still wanna give it to you because we think it may give you a five to 10% better chance of successfully beating this. And I was like, all right, well, for five to 10, let's talk about five to 10%. I'm already strength training and I had been. I was on the ketogenic diet. I got started on that as soon as I got diagnosed. And at the time I was a relatively young guy. I still am, I guess, comparatively. How old are you? I just turned 52. I didn't just turn 52. I turned 52 during my treatment. So I wasn't in bad health. I mean, I was in good health. Pretty strong. And I was pretty strong a year ago. Before I got diagnosed, I hit a personal record squad of 375, which I think is pretty good for an old man. Yeah, real good. You tell me. 51 year old guy. Super old, but you know. Listen, 375 pound squad is pretty good for anybody. It's pretty good for a young man. Yeah, so I mean, I was feeling really strong when I hit this on the day I got the phone call. You know, the doctor called me and he said, I usually don't like to do this over the phone. He was like, rather doing in person, but you're 90 minutes away. So here's the deal. You have cancer. And that's a hell of a phone call. But that day was my scheduled, my program training day. I'm supposed to lift that day. And I did. I went down and I went into the gym and I racked up the weights and got her to the bar. And when I put that bar on my shoulder, there was a little bit of a difference I knew. I was like, I'm not doing this for ego gratification. I'm not doing this so I can look good in a swimsuit. I'm doing this to save my own life. And that's how I approached it the whole time. Yeah, I think that's right. Even for folks that haven't got a diagnosis yet. Like I'm trying to put that stuff in the bank because unless I hit a tree or just die in my sleep, we all get our diagnosis, don't we? At some point in time, yeah. I wanna go back and revisit. You mentioned you had gone on the ketogenic diet. You have a good friend, Dr. Dan from SWAT Fuel. You called him, you called me. I think you called us on the, actually Jared scared the shit out of me. I think I told this story on the previous podcast you run. He was like, call dad right now. It's an emergency. And I was like, oh God, somebody's dead. You're in the tactical industry. So there's a lot of guns involved with you and everyone in your circle of friends. And so I was like, oh my God, what the hell's happened? And so I had a sense of relief to find out that you just had cancer and no one was dead. Yeah, I know what to say. Yeah, but you had told me you had called Dr. Dan and he had suggested that you go on a ketogenic diet. And we're still pretty early in the research on that that the research looks really good for people who have cancer that when they stop eating carbohydrates, it seems to slow or even potentially stop the spread of that cancer. Something about cancer cells feed on carbohydrates, we believe, and all this is still really early. I've talked about this on the podcast before. I think Dr. Dom DiAgostino was one of the leading researchers on that. So you look up some of his stuff, but you were kind of the opinion like, hey, it definitely can't hurt and it might help. So I'm getting off the carbs. Yeah, is that fair? You've got a copy of the book. And if you look in the book, there's a study by Dr. Brian Allen and some of his colleagues at the University of Iowa who did a very intensive research study about the effects of the ketogenic diet on patients who are going through chemo radiation. And these medical papers are really long, but the upshot is the people who did it and dedicated themselves to the keto did 50% better than the people who didn't. That's worth messing with, yeah. Yeah, so even if it's correlation and not causation, it's for you, it was like, look, I'm gonna do everything I can. That was something that was in your control, I guess really is the easy thing to say, right? Like there are certain things you can control here and there are certain things you can't. And one thing you can control is what you put into your body. And so you chose to not put the chemotherapy into your body, which certainly I'm not a doctor, but if I understand correctly, chemotherapy is a systemic drug. Like it's going to affect all of the cells. Yes. Radiation is acute. They put sort of a cone on you, right? And sort of zapped the area, for lack of a better term, they had the cancer with the radiation so that your arms and your legs and your torso didn't receive the radiation, but this area in the back of your throat did. And then you decided like, hey, I'm only gonna put protein and fat in my body. I'm not gonna feed it any carbs. I remember you texting me or calling me about two weeks in, maybe 10 days into that and me like, uh, the workouts are hard. I was like, yeah, you don't have any carbs, right? So that's, I don't even think you had started the radiation yet. And you were, the only major thing you had changed was that you weren't eating carbohydrates. And you're like, dude, the workouts are really hard. And I was like, yeah, they're really hard. You're gonna have to back off your volume. You're just gonna have to do the best you can to maintain. But you stayed with it and you kept training. Yeah, I kept training the whole time. I didn't stop training until they put me in the hospital. Yeah. Because I kind of couldn't. That was actually after we had you on the podcast. And we had you on the podcast, it was still, you were like a 22-year-old teacher in public school who was fresh out of college who was like ambitious and ready to take on the world. And you were like that, I think, with the cancer. And then I don't wanna make this be too Pollyannish. It was, you went through several months where it got really, really hard, right? So how much did you weigh when you got diagnosed with cancer? I had an annual man physical. And matter of fact, I just got a message today reminding me it's time for you to schedule my annual physical. I had an annual physical and I was like, I was like 248. Okay. Yeah. And they're like, oh, you're 248. Let me tell you what, mother-lovers, mother-lovers, I was 248 and strong. And you were the strongest you'd ever been in your life. I was, I was demonstrably. I mean, on paper, you know, not notionally or I feel strong or I think I'm strong, you know, like factually, I was factually stronger than I ever had been in my life. And I just actually texted you the other day, I just passed our three-year anniversary with you. Yeah, you came out to, you came out to Yeager's place. That's right, I was doing some seminars. That's right, I was doing seminars for, strength seminars for tactical guys. And James Yeager had invited you and Jared out and then you guys came out and trained. And it's always interesting, like tactical guys are actually really similar to, to sports guys like basketball players or, you know, other like soccer players, people who are like, they're really into the thing and they recognize that strength training will make them better, but certainly they're gear, right? They want like shiny guns and giant mags and cool first. They're into tactical training second and often like strength training and the sort of mental hardships that sort of like being mentally prepared for the fight is like way down the list. Yeah. And for you and Yeager and a lot of those guys that are kind of in the same community, that mental toughness thing is way up at the top. And so I remember three years ago when we met, you were weak, put you through the seminar, touch out, do the stuff, but you really took to it right away and you, you committed to it and had been training for several years going into the cancer. And when you were diagnosed, you were the strongest probably of your entire life. I mean, I was a United States Marine and I noticed like to be cardiovascularly in shape. When you met me, I was probably in pretty good cardiovascular shape, but I didn't know how, but like most adult men who've never been trained, you just, you watch others and you mimic them. You know, you go to the gym or you see things and you think, okay, I'm going to go into the gym and I'm gonna go to that rack weight area and I'm gonna do what I think I should be doing because I've watched other chimpanzees mimic that exercise. So that's what I do. You're like a chimp watching somebody eat a sandwich and you just do it yourself. So, I mean, that's what most untrained men do. They go into planet fatness and they lift up stuff and then they walk around. And I mean, I understood how to become cardiovascularly strong. I could do several miles on a treadmill or whatever, but I didn't know how to properly squat. I did not know how to, I didn't have no idea how to deadlift, you know, other than just watching people. And, you know, men do ego exercises like curls and benching and that's it. And, you know, and I want you to be proud of me. I finally unlocked the secret of leg drive on the bench. All right. That's it. It only took me this long. It's hard to teach online. It is hard. So, we really, let's get you squashing, right? And you're weighed 248 and you get a diagnosis. You get a ketarific on it. Take some poisonous drugs in the form of chemotherapy. Well, I didn't take any chemo. Oh, you didn't. Well, that's what your radiation, the targeted stuff. Which is still poisonous drugs. Right. They did a silkwood on your neck and it radiated you. Yeah. And what did you weigh at the lowest? I was down to 195. Hold on. I dropped about 50 pounds. That's great, right? And I remember seeing you at 195 and you looked like a sick cancer patient. And yet, and yet, if you had started at 195 and you had gone down to 145, what's that like? Oh, I would have looked like an Auschwitz victim. Well, you might have been dead. I would have looked like a black and white photo from, you know, Birkenau or freaking Söderbohr or something like that. So, this is total speculation, probably. But do you think that there was 53 pounds to be lost from whatever your starting point was or roughly? Because you just couldn't eat because it was your neck. Yeah. What happened is they irradiate your neck. And what they call the machine's nickname is the gamma knife because they're using gamma radiation. And I did not turn into the Hulk, but I'm on my way back. I'm like the mother flesh of Wolverine. So, and I told the doctor that the other day, she's like, oh, you're doing really well. Your progress, so you're coming back. And as I said, yeah, because I'm the mother flesh of Wolverine. Don't forget it. And my wife sits over in the corner and rolls her eyes. And she's like, I don't even know this person. But yeah, I mean, I'm sure I had some body fat on me, but I also had more muscle on me than I ever had in my life. And the sick, ironic, strange thing about this, going into talking to all these professionals is they know that muscle loss is a problem. They know it. And I sent you guys, like a month or so ago, that they just recently, they discovered that maybe we should make or suggest that people who are going through chemo radiation do strength training. Maybe we're thinking, we don't know. We're not sure, but we might wanna do that. You need to be careful. Don't be hasty. Yeah, you know, take it easy, take it easy now. Because they compared, you know, during the original moon launches and the original NASA missions, they compared the muscle atrophy and the problems that astronauts were experiencing. And they looked and they're like, wow, there's a parallel here between what's happening with these astronauts when they go into outer space and the problem they experience with the weightlessness and the muscle atrophy. And it's not just external. It's like even their heart muscle and so forth. So they had to come up with a program to make these astronauts strong and fit because when they sent them out into space, it was gonna affect them negatively from a physical standpoint. And somebody had a light bulb and they're like, wow, that seems just like what happens when we treat people with radiation and chemo. Maybe we might want to tell these people to get on a treadmill and lift some weights and be strong instead of telling them to eat tofu and peanut butter. Because that's the suggestion they gave me. They're like, we don't want you to lose. We're really afraid you're gonna lose muscle mass and that's gonna happen. So you need to change your diet and you need to add things like peanut butter and tofu and mashed potatoes. Really? Yeah, what you need is more soy, sir. Yeah, that's what you need. You need more peanut butter and soy. That's gonna bulk you right up. Their solution to helping you maintain, quote, muscle mass is to fatten you up. Yeah, estrogen is fat. What? So they irradiate, they burn your neck. Yeah. Your esophagus is irritated. Your salivary glands are shut down. You can't salivate dry mouth. Hard to swallow, hard to eat. Pretty much impossible to eat. The reason I was in the hospital, I went and they put me in the hospital first of June. It was like two weeks after I talked to you guys and because I couldn't swallow any, I couldn't swallow water. Oh, one of the great benefits of that treatment is that it affects your immune system and you end up getting essentially thrush, like babies get, you get thrush in infection. So you've got the pain from the irradiated tissue, which doesn't like that. And so it obviously hurts. And then you get an infection on top of that, which makes it hurt even more. Insulting injury. Yeah, it's insulting injury. We had John Wilson on the show, episode 26, long time ago. And John Wilson has been dealing with stage four cancer for about five years now. Yeah. The one who the doctors can't believe he's still there. Yeah, I listen to this, yeah. He's just a big, strong guy and they ramp up his meds from time to time and he's unable to eat, he's nauseous, he struggles with nutrition, but he weight trains as hard as he can when he can and he eats when he can as much as he can and he's been able to fight this very effectively. And so have you. It's a testament, man. Listen, it's you. You're the one lifted up the barbells. Yeah, and that's something that I wrote about in the book is the worst thing you can do, at least in my own opinion, and I'm not an expert on being a cancer patient, although I know more than I did a year ago, is the worst thing you can do is just surrender yourself to the medical industry and say, okay, well, whatever they say to do, I'll just do that. If you ask my wife, she'll tell you that I probably wouldn't be here right now. If I would have just surrendered to the medical community and done what they consider the standard, because all of what I'm talking about, the keto diet and the strength training and so forth, none of that was in their lexicon at all. That's alternative medicine. Yeah, that is like, but what's weird is when Wyoming, people are like, oh, Wyoming's a backwards hillbilly. When I talked to the doctors in Wyoming and I told them like, hey, I'm doing the keto and the cancer doctor in Laramie is like, good, because I was gonna tell you to do that anyway, but you're already doing it, so keep doing it. Good job. I could start like sitting in, I tell a doctor here and they're like, ah, that, that, that. You don't need to go on a diet. You need to listen to what we tell you to do. I'm like, okay. And I was like, I don't think you understand what you're dealing with here. This is the freaking alpha male you're talking to. Any, any residual effects of the treatment? Oh, fortunately, thank the Lord. You know, this is a blessing. My taste buds came back, but my taste buds aren't worthy. My taste buds are essentially the taste buds of a three year old. So a lot of chicken tenders and yeah, well, yeah, anything, nothing spicy, nothing like spicy hot, right? Like imagine you're giving your, giving a piece of spicy pepperoni to a three year old and they put it in their mouth and they spit it. Wow. That's kind of, that's kind of me. It's almost as if like physiologically that my taste buds were wiped out like and they hit the reset and they're regrowing as they're regrowing as if I was, you know, if I was a toddler two or three years old. Yeah, maybe so. So my taste buds are regrowing and redeveloping. I guess you could say. But, and I still get the dry mouth, but not as bad, not nearly as bad, thank the Lord. I can drink coffee. I can tolerate coffee. I couldn't tolerate coffee, which is just terrible. Oh my God, why live? I know, why be alive if you can't drink coffee? But yeah, that and every once in a while, I, you know, I'll get, and the worst thing about coming off of the narcotic pain medicine is the physical withdrawal because there's an actual physical withdrawal because your brain, your mind has gotten used to that. And when it's not there, it doesn't like it. So you think you were a junkie? I mean, you think you had opioid dependency for a time there? Oh, I had a hundred percent opioid dependency. That was, I was on fentanyl and delotted. Oh, wow. You're hardcore, bro. Yeah. Like I was, yeah, when, when that, when I got out of the hospital because of the damage in my throat, that was on like elephant strength, freaking narcotics. And so what's withdrawal from that like? Well, by the way, Matt Reynolds is back. He's wearing a baby blue ribbed pullover Henley. You always mention it when I wear this shirt. Yes, it's, it's lovely. You just look like a big huggy bear. Is that periwinkle? Is that that color? Is that what that is? That's, I could be periwinkle. Only in Springfield, Missouri, do you pay for one gigabit internet and it is so slow that it kicks you off in the middle of a podcast. Somebody downloaded the Ozarks and it messed you up. So that's right. Somebody on Napster. While you were gone, Professor Paul was telling us about being a junkie. Yeah, I heard that. So he was on fentanyl and dilatids, which is, dilated is actual hospital heroin. Yeah. That's really what it is. So what was, what was the withdrawal from that like? Yeah, it's gotta be insane. Did they wing you off? Yeah. When, when they do that, I finished up my, my 30 treat, my 30 radiation treatments and then there's so much damage that they can't even, they didn't even bother to do a CT scan for 90 days. Cause they're like, there's so much damage we could scan you but we don't know what's damage and what's cancer or whatever. So it was, you just gotta go away. And that's a mother flesh right there because they're like, well, we figure we probably got it all, but we don't know. Come back in three months. Just go marinating on that for three months. Right. So I just marinated on it for three months. They literally do no testing. No. No PET scan to even see if. No, cause they say that there's no point in us doing a PET scan because that whole area is inflamed and damaged. Right. Because they're hammering it so hard with radiation, they're not concerned that it's like in your lymph nodes in your armpits or anything, which is maybe one of the next closest sort of like danger zones, right? Yeah. So they're like, well, just, you know, come back. And we did, I did on September 11th, I had my PET scan and the doctor said, he goes, oh, good news, things are looking good. And I said, I don't want to hear things are looking good. I want you to look at me in the face and say, you don't have cancer. Right. And he laughed at me because Dr. Berenlaren used to be and talk to you by me. And he's like, okay, you don't have cancer. Said, all right, that's what I want to hear. Don't give me this in his doctor jive, this in remission, things are looking good. And you know, things are looking good to you and things are looking good to me are not necessarily the thing looking good. I am looking at, as we speak, Paul, I am looking at. So first off, if you follow Paul Markle, M-A-R-K-E-L, Paul is spelled like you spell Paul. I am looking at your first workout back post-radiation. It's July 15th of 19. And you are squatting the empty bar. Coach Graham has you with a tubo. Yeah, everybody loves that. Because you're a tubo, you gotta use a tubo because otherwise your knees go all over the place. You're benching with an empty bar. And it looks like you're deadlifting 10. So you've got 65 pounds on the bar. First workout back. And so you were at a 45 pound squat, a 45 pound bench press, a 65 pound deadlift. And then also 45 pound press, as I can see it a couple of days later here, you do a 45 pound press. What are your weights up to now? So that was July. I just finished in the gym like a half an hour ago. And today's squat was 235. My bench workout was, today was a light bench workout. So I did 157.5 for three by fives. And it was a light deadlift, so it was 225. My heavy deadlift workout on Saturday is going to be 265, so the 200 pound increase. And well today, the 235, I did three by three per day, 235 squats, and that's the heaviest I've been since I came back. When you came back, did you have bad doms, resource? Not really. I mean, the soreness wasn't there. The main thing was like, just convincing my muscles to do the movements correctly again. And that was my primary focus was trying to do the maneuvers, try to do the movements correctly. And remember that, okay, knees, poop over a cliff, feet, and... Poop over a cliff. Yeah. Is that important? That's a coaching cue for you. Yeah, that was one of my cues. Poop over a cliff. That's probably not a bad cue. Hamburg, my experience is for soreness is when somebody comes back from like, obviously this is real bad sickness. And they come back and they go insanely light like Paul did, where he was doing the empty bar. They don't get sore. What I used to find, I can remember that I always had sort of best laid intentions when I was a football coach, high school football coach literally a decade ago, but I was pretty strong. And I would be like, I'm gonna train all through football season and then I wouldn't because you end up working 20-hour days. You come back after two and a half months off. And because strength that detrains so slowly, I might be able to come back and squat 315 on my first day back. 315 for even one set of five. It's not good. It will wreck you for a week if you haven't done it for two and a half months. But an empty barbell, you were just sort of learning the movement again and you've just gone back to a basic linear progression again. Yeah, I went through LP a second time. Yeah, yeah, you're doing great. And we have people do LP after vacations, after layoffs, after hip replacement, after all kinds of stuff. But they typically don't experience the weight loss you experience. So this is like a legit one. Like you got to up your calories. This is like the first time all over again. Yeah, it really is. Yeah, I'm back to 2-11. I'm back to 2-11. I was going to ask. So, okay. Nice effort. Okay. So you've put on almost 20 pounds. Yeah. You look like a different person than you did 18 pounds ago. It's a glorious look, really. Like you look like a healthy 52-year-old guy. It's amazing how... Well, if you go back and look at his Instagram, Paul, you look like a healthy 44-year-old man. Well, you know what I mean. So you sort of upped your postings really over this. You chronicled it well. Yeah. Well, and that's, you know, that's why I wrote the book. You know, the Fighting Solves Everything book. And... Where can people find that? It's on Amazon. It's really hard to find. There's just this little website. It's a niche website called Amazon.com. Started as a book website. Yeah, and they have books there and everything else in the world. No, the book's on Amazon.com as a paperback and it's also a Kindle version. It's an Amazon Prime product. And if you have Kindle Unlimited, you can just download it instantly to your tablet or your phone and read it. I had several long conversations in the phone with Diego in April. And he said, you know, he goes, what do you do? And I said, I do a lot of things. He goes, what do you do? I said, I write. He goes, yeah, you write. He goes, you have to write about this. You have to chronicle this. And I said, I know you're right. I know you are. And then the book, actually, it was written in two timeframes. It was written at the beginning. I started the book when I didn't know how the outcome was going to be, which is unusual. Usually when you write a book, you're like, I know how it's gonna begin. I know how it's gonna end. I know what's gonna be in the middle. Let's go. And when I started it, when I wrote the foreword and everything, I had no idea. So I hadn't started radiation treatment yet. I hadn't experienced any of that. And then I didn't really write it all when I was laid up because quite frankly, one of the evil things with the fentanyl and the narcotic pain medicine is the brain fog. It's hard to focus for long periods of time. And really it's hard to focus or write creatively. But I got out of it and I finished it and we published it. And then there's a lot of bonus material in there. My wife, she's a saint. And she had to come up with all these keto recipes from nowhere. One day we were just cruising along and then the next day I'm like, hey, guess what? We need to have all these keto recipes and we need to try and eat like humans and not just eat chicken breasts every day. And then when I had the tube in, she had to figure out how to keep me healthy through a feeding tube in the hospital. They're like, oh, give them an insurer or boost. You want to kill someone? Give them four meals of boost a day. Boost, huh? Yeah, insurer, yeah. Ensure that you'll die. That's what it insures. Ensure that you're going to crap your pants. That's what it insures. Ensure you're going to have horrible diarrhea. So she had to come up with all these recipes and she just had to do it by trial and error. And that's all in the book. She's got all these blended recipes, which are really wild that would make the most amazing protein shakes. I was reading through this the other day. The blended meal base number four, which is fresh summer squash, zucchini, chicken bone broth, chicken breast, for instance, chicken breast, one slice of beef liver, which is four ounces, like a big slice of beef liver, sausage links, milked walnuts, olive oil, protein powder, and ranch dressing. And she blended it up and fed it with its feeding tube. Yeah. It's so cool. And that's the wonderful thing about a feeding tube is it doesn't matter what it tastes like. It just goes in. That's right. That's true. Have you tried to drink any of these afterwards? No. That'd be a fun like blog post you could make to like just try to blend it and drink all this stuff. Who milks the walnuts? That's what I want to know. Yeah, that's why I was, I literally, Scott, you're wearing off on me. I was like, I want to be a professional milker. I'll start with walnuts and work my way up. They're hiring down here at Tulsa Day Spa. Our milk and walnuts, there you go. I don't know if it was Jared or if it was you or if it was the shipping ogre, but someone sent a copy of Fighting Solves Everything to my wife. And we got that thing about two or three days before Christmas and Charity flopped down on the couch and about three and a half, four hours later stood up and said, I'm done and enjoyed it thoroughly. And then a super enjoyable read. And then I see behind you, one of my wife's favorite books, The Operator by one, Nicholas Orr, who is an author that is published by the student of the gun organization. It's a, it's what I call. We work closely with Nicholas Orr. What, it's what I call a dirty girl novel. Like you guys go outside and play and your mom is reading her dirties right now. No, it's not that bad. It's not that bad. It's an action adventure novel is what it is. But it's got that mommy's lonely kind of adventure in it. And Charity keeps asking for part two in the series. And the professor was telling me that Nicholas is working on that. And she's, she's eager to hear about that. He's a busy guy. He's a busy guy. Yeah. You guys go on Amazon. Professor Paul has Fighting Solves Everything. He's got a bunch of other great books too. Does Fighting Solve Everything? Yes, it does. Yes. Would Nicholas Orr agree with that? No, absolutely. Okay. Fair enough. Yeah, pick it up, pick it up at Amazon. It's a, I don't mean this in a positive way, not a negative way. It's an easy read. It's an, it's, it's actually for being a book about fighting cancer, it's an enjoyable read. It's got a, a happy ending. You know? Yeah, there's that, there's that. Thank you for saying this. He doesn't die. You say nice things about us. And I appreciate that. There's a cool book that is sort of adjacent to Barbell Training where Barbell Training plays a big part of it. Paul, you have lived a life of voluntary hardship so that when you got involuntary hardship handed to you via cancer, you were better able to fight against it. And I think that's a really cool story. Over the years I've started to get some experience with folks that have been Barbell Training and then have to go deal with chemotherapy or radiation or maybe even both. And ain't lost one yet. Nope. Wilson's still kicking. You're good for another 40. My mom, I think it's in June, will be two years ago, got a breast cancer diagnosis. Did chemo and radiation for that came out of that at the same body weight? That's crazy. She came out of it at the same body weight. Yeah. Also had significant tissue removed, came out out with the same body weight. And I think she's squatted a hundred for a triple. And she's a 73-year-old lady. That's awesome. We've had Phillip Midkiff on the, we just had him on the YouTube channel, same thing. And he had cancer was in a slightly different spot. It was in his temple area. The radiation was awfully close. And a lot of like the impact that it has on the area of your face around the cancer was similar to what you went through, Paul. Yeah, that's the thing is you don't, and they kept telling me like when I got the nausea, they're like, well, that's not supposed to happen. I'm like, well, it is happen. Right. And into week three when I was experiencing the pain, they're like, well, you shouldn't be experiencing that much pain yet. And I was like, well, this is the reality of it. Apparently my body isn't enjoying this. But when it comes to the barbell training, and you almost sound like you're some kind of a cultist or whatever, but the fact that there is, if you're gonna live, be alive. Or if you're gonna be alive, live. If you're gonna be alive, live. And whether it's cancer or whether it's some other kind of diagnosis or what have you. But one of the hardest things about it, I believe, and I'm sure other people would say the same thing, is the mental weight on you. And I had a lot of days in the first couple of weeks where you don't wanna have quiet time because when you have quiet time, that reality just sits on you. The uncertainty is the question mark just sits on you. And you're doing it for yourself. You're not doing it for anybody else. It is to actually train. It is to deliberately fight against it. And it's not to surrender to it. Like I said, I'm not an expert on this by any stretch of the imagination, but I know what my experience was. And if I can offer that experience to others. And we've had a pretty vast audience with Student of the Gun. And since my diagnosis and since post treatment and everything, we've got lots of emails and messages and so forth. My dad is going through this. Mom or my uncle or whatever, what is your suggestion? And I'm like, my suggestion is essentially everything that's in that book. And when it comes to fighting, the main thing that I wanna drive home to the audience and everyone else is, fight is an arbitrary word. People say, we get cancer and everyone loves to say, oh, we're gonna fight this and let's, I need you to be strong. I need you to fight. Let's we're gonna fight. Everyone says it. Everyone says, let's, we're gonna fight this. We're gonna fight this together, you know? You all hold hands and you say, we're gonna fight. No one ever tells you how. No one ever says how to fight. Everyone throws the word fight around. We're gonna fight this. How? We're gonna fight this by surrendering to the whims of the medical community. I understand doctors are important. I understand doctors are important. I had some good doctors and good nurses. But the fact of the matter is it's you. It's your body. At the end of the day, they're gonna go home. In fact, they're gonna take off the 4th of July while you- They're gonna take off the 4th of July. They're gonna take off, you know, what Memorial Day or whatever. They're going home. You, if you wanna fight, it has to be you and control what you can control. And that's what I did. I examined the situation and I was like, okay, I'm going to control anything that is within my power to control I'm going to. And that was, you know, with the ketogenic diet that was with the training and that, you know, and so forth. I controlled that. I controlled my environment. Did you guys enjoy the, my little story about the hospital gowns? I did. And how I was not going to wear one? Yes. Because that's what dead people wear. Because when you sit around in a hospital gown, you look like a cancer victim. You surrender. Yeah, you look, you do. You look like a sick person. And somebody probably died in that thing last week anyway. And they tend to the laundry. I didn't wanna wear that crap. And so I didn't wear a suit. I mean, obviously I had to expose my upper chest and everything. I got three tattoos across my, you know, my chest here. So they can line me up in the gamma machine. But, you know, I'm very fortunate and I have a wonderful mother who's a seamstress. And she made me scrub tops out of manly material. I had a US Marine Corps, you know, scrub top. And when I went in there and I was the only one and that here's the sick and strange thing is I was the only one in that cancer ward that didn't sit around looking like a cancer victim. You know, I know I'm doing the knife hand and everything for everybody who can't see on the radio. But if the fact of the matter is, I could control that. If I get cancer, I'm gonna borrow your fatigue scrubs. And I'm gonna wear a helmet. You know, they're gonna have a hard time putting your head in the cage with a helmet on. But maybe you get it somewhere else for your cancer. In your butthole or whatever. That's what I'm gonna get. Yeah, and that's another thing. When you're me, when you're this age and you say cancer, everyone like goes to your nether agents. Like, is it in your butthole or is it in your balls? Or, you know, like, no, neither. Your front buns or your back buns. Yeah, and I was like, neither. And they're like, oh, that's weird. Control what you can control, fight. You're either going to die of a heart attack. You're gonna hit a tree while you're skiing or driving or you're gonna get cancer. You're gonna get Alzheimer's. You know, very few of us get to just die peacefully in our sleep because of old age. So, put that muscle mass in the bank because you're gonna need it. So, go ahead and get started now. Meanwhile, go to studentofthegun.com and you can sign up there. You go to that homepage, there's so much stuff for you to do and have. You can sign up there and get seven training tips that could save your life. You can get a free e-book, go to Amazon. You can go get Fighting Sells Everything, Professor Paul's book about his crusade against his cancer last year and of course, Nicholas Orr's book. Ronald's shoot and I were talking today. We did a little math. Yes. We've been doing this online coaching thing for about how long? About four years? Yeah, you and me four years. Yeah. Everybody else a little over three. Last time I checked, there's about 52 weeks in a year. Yeah, you can talk about how many videos we've seen broken down. Yeah, I think the organization has watched about two and a half million sets. Of lifts? Yep. I think, I did the math the other day. I think we've done just over a million squats alone. Yeah, I believe that's probably right. Over a million squats alone at Barba Logic. 2.5 million sets. Sets, right. Yeah. Paul, you've only had in-person coaching how many times? Just once or a couple of times? A couple of times. I had, well, we did the first one with you. Right with me. And then the summer of 2018, we did our little North American tour and we popped down there and. Came to my house. Yep, and you let me Christian your freaking, your jagged deadlift bar. Has Graham ever coached you in person? No. So you've really only been coached in person a couple of times. All the rest of it's just been online. Yeah, so guys, listen. Arm yourself against this cancer in the hard times to come, because hard times are coming. And go ahead and start weight training it out. And I thought to you what, there's not another organization in the world that has watched more sets and reps than how more people get strong than Barba Logic online coaching. So go do that. If you don't, you just probably have a death wish. Yeah. You know, I was thinking when Paul was saying that his, his doctor and doctors, they're sort of like up in the air about if you should strength train while you're going through chemotherapy and or radiation. You know, they're like, we think maybe you should be doing strength training. But my guess is that every single one of them would say, yeah, you should, before you get cancer, probably real good idea. Yeah, doctors are always wanting you to get healthy. Remember what I told you the other day? Just like one week ago, I went in for my three month, they scoped me and they do the whole, how are you feeling? You know, what are you, how's your pain level? And you gotta, and how's your energy level? You know, how's your energy? And I said, well, my energy levels to the point where I'm, I'm back to training, I'm barbell training. I'm lifting three times a week. And she says, and, and any other exercises, what else are you doing? And I said, I don't think you understand what lifting means. I said, I'm lifting a barbell. And, and my friend in my city goes, and Jeff Kirkham city goes, you should tell her you're taking a brisk walk three times a week and she'd been like, oh, that's good. Yeah, she's really good. Good for you. Good for you. Good for you. Well, guys, thank you for listening. There's another barbologic podcast. There's another guy that has licked cancer because of his, the hardiness he learned in the gym, the muscle mass he put on that frame before the illness struck him and the discipline that he's gotten through. All of his training, by the way, all of the training has contributed probably to your success with this, I bet, Professor. So if you have any questions about what we do or the show or anything that we can help you with, email us at questions at barbell-logic.com. You can also, if you, if yunta, yunta, yunta, that's, that's Oklahoma for, if you would like, you can email experience at barbell-logic.com and we'll, we'll let you take a little test drive of the coaching service and see if we can get you on your way to be in a stronger you. So thank you guys so much for listening and we'll talk to you in, I don't know, three or four days. And so now I'm really excited to give an update on Professor Paul because here he is a year cancer-free and he is hitting PRs at barbell-logic and training and so just wanted to welcome Professor Paul to the show and have some updates there. You're here, by the way, welcome to the show. It was tough, man, it had beat you up but I thought it was really important to bring you back on the show and give an update. How long have you been cancer-free? Well, I got my crazy thing is the anniversary's coming up. My all clean scan, you know, the PET scan where they scan you from, you know, your scalp to your toes and check cancer. My all clean scan was September 11th. Okay, there you go. It's an easy day to remember. So yeah, in two days, it'll be one year. And I didn't even thinking about that until you asked me. It's so wild. And so what's awesome about your story is you're doing pretty good. Yeah, I had to lay off when I was hospitalized, kind of flat on my back and I could not train but I trained all the way up until the point that I was hospitalized. And then when I was released from the hospital, I was pretty weak and I had a feeding tube in and it was all horrible nonsense but after a couple of months, I got back into the gym and I started essentially like an infant with empty bars. I just started back trying to teach my body the forms and so forth. And so it's been amazing to watch. So first off, you trained, you were as strong as you had ever been in your life when you were diagnosed with cancer, right? Correct, absolutely. And then you continued to train for quite some time until you got so sick that you had to be hospitalized, couldn't train. But remember that we've talked about this on the podcast many times before is that strength is the thing that lasts the longest. And so you and I have talked about this off the air. Like the role that the strength training played like you were making deposits into that strength and physical 401K. And then for several months, you were making heavy withdrawals. Like the cancer was making heavy withdrawals but because you had built up that balance so much, you know, it might have saved your life. You lived, you made it through. I think it actually, it 100% did. There was a guy who had the same cancer as me when I was in the hospital. I was not in intensive care. I mean, I was under close care, you know how that is. But there was a guy who had the same cancer as me and he was on life support in intensive care after having gone through the same therapy as I was. And so you got to some point there where you were hospitalized and sick enough that you couldn't train, you trained all the way up to that point. And then I can remember you texting me the video of you squatting on that first day back with the empty bar. You were a shell of your former self. You were this little skinny guy in no hair and you started squatting and you just LP'd in your coach cram. And you've been with us for a long time at Barbell Logic. We just added a tiny little bit, every single workout. And now here you are a year later cancer-free and where are you at now on your strength levels? Dude, I just hit last week or two weeks ago or whatever it was, I just hit a press PR and all-time lifetime press PR. Lifetime press PR. Yeah. Post cancer. How heavy was it? It was 170. 170 and you are, you are not 32. No, I'm 53. 53 years old. What are your other lifts looking like right now? Your post cancer. All my lifts are, I'm getting back to, I haven't tried any PRs with any of the other lifts, but most of my workouts, now I'm in kind of middle intermediate. Graham's moved me intermediate and I'm actually doing a 40 split now. But most of my stuff is getting close to where my workouts were before cancer. Sure. Like for instance, I was, my average squat workouts were in the high twos, low threes. Yep. And now, I'm working, like today I'm gonna do 280. Yep. On the squats. And how about your deadlift? For me, I think I was doing pretty well. My deadlifts, my heavy deadlift workout sessions were in the high threes. Now I'm only actually doing it around three now, but we're also doing like three by threes. We've got more volume. And a lot of volume and supplementing with rows and things like that. So, Awesome. It's funny is the upper came back faster than the lower. Yeah. That is interesting. Well, and some of it, yeah, it's just, those weights are a little lighter. So you'll get to them a little quicker as well. And it takes some time to put some body weight back on, right? Yeah. You look healthy at this point. You look athletic. You don't look like a guy who had cancer a year ago. Yeah, I dropped 50 pounds in two months. So that's a lot. And how much have you put back on? I've put back on 30. Yeah. I'm around 228 now. And that's probably about a good spot for you to be. Yeah. I love your story because it shows the power of strength training, not just to get you through the sickness, but that like, you've come through it on the other side now and you are really basically as strong as you were before cancer. Only now you're probably, mmm, a hundred times more mentally tough than you were then, you know? Yeah. And that really, you know, that's it. It's not just physical. It's mental. You can't separate the two. Also. And when you know that you can do something, you know that you can do it. I love it. So thank you for the updates, sir. You guys can do this. We've talked about it before. Most of us will not get handed this deck of cards as hand, but we will get handed something, you know? You break up with your wife or girlfriend or significant other. You have tragedy in your family. You're hit with COVID or losses of jobs or whatever that is. And this pain into that strength 401K, it is surprising how well it carries over to the other things in life far beyond just the physical. And I think Professor Paul's story is certainly one that shows that as well as John Wilson. So thanks for sharing the story. And if you want to read more about Professor Paul's fight with cancer, he's got a great book on Amazon. You go to Amazon and by fighting solves everything, destroying cancer with faith, nutrition and science by Paul Markle. That's M-A-R-K-E-L. Check it out. It's a great book. He also talks great and says nice things about barbell logic and about us working with him over the last couple of years. And so we're thankful for the shout out that you gave us in the book. And so check that book out and read more about his story of his battle with cancer and how he's come through on the other side. Again, fighting solves everything, destroying cancer with faith, nutrition and science.