Why don’t lifters share a bar anymore? Guest: Jacob Ross

Jacob Ross joins Jim to take on the question, “Why do so many lifters resist training in groups in the current age of powerlifting?”  

We also cover Jacob’s time working with the South Sudanese Olympic Basketball team in Paris for the Olympics last year. We also share stories of gym ownership (Jacob owns Be Better Barbell with Tom Kallas outside Chicago). You can find him at @jacob.w.ross on Instagram.

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Check out our gym (Third Street Barbell) at ThirdStreetBarbell.com https://www.thirdstreetbarbell.com/ and subscribe for updates about our apparel line at goodcompanyapparel.com https://3sb.co/! Local memberships and international fresh fits! Get early access to our NEXT DROP!

Check out our podcast website: 50percentfacts.com https://www.50percentfacts.com/

50% Facts is a Spreaker Prime podcast on OCN – the Obscure Celebrity Network.

____

Hosted by Mike Farr (@silentmikke) https://www.instagram.com/silentmikke/ and Jim McDonald (@thejimmcd). https://www.instagram.com/thejimmcd/

Produced by Jim McDonald

Production assistance by Sam McDonald and Sebastian Brambila.

Theme by Aaron Moore. Show art by Joseph Manzo (@jmanzo523)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
Goodness. I have to say, you're Your lighting on that
side is is really quite flattering.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
It's oh, thank you.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
I don't know why, but it's very very natural. I'm
like over lit over here because I'm I'm lighted for
the other cameras and not for the not for the webcam.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
But I've got a window on this side and a
little ring light on this side that's turned down pretty
pretty good. But that's about it.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
That's what it is. Yeah, SeaBASS is nodding, yes, yeah, anyway, so, uh, welcome,
welcome back, thank you, Bross on the line, just just
the two of us today. Mike is still in Parts Unknown.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
Hmmm, he probably thought it was ten pm as well.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
No, No, he's out of town in that town for
I don't know weeks now, probably two weeks, two weeks. Yeah,
So I've been I've been just punting on the podcast.
I've been bringing bringing in a guest, and just talking
to people I want to talk to.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
So gotcha love it. Well, I missed Mike, but I'm
super happy to talk to you.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
So you'll just have to come out here and see Mike.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
That's true, that's true, or you know, like you were saying,
you know, both of you guys make a little road trip.
Do like the Masonomics guys do a little road trip.
You know, hit a few gems, do a few episodes.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
See. The difference between us and and Masonomics is that
their apparel still makes money.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
Damn Well look, yeah, I know.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
I appreciate that. Yeah, I still wear my gear. Sorry what.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
I still wear my gear from you guys. And when
you guys first opened up, you sent me a little
little card that's up in our gym.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
Yeah. Cool. So you and Tom Kallis have be better Barbell.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
Yes we do.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
Yes, we do some alliteration some.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
So yeah, we just hit We just hit one year open. So,
you know, we start our online training business like March
of twenty twenty, right around when covid was, you know,
really starting to rev up there. And that had nothing

(02:45):
to do with the starting of that business. It was
just you know, good timing, I guess on our part
or luck on our part. But you know, after a
few years of that, we started getting people who were asking,
you know, could we ever come see you? Is there
a place that we could train, et cetera, et cetera.
And you know, we'd always talked about maybe doing a gym,

(03:09):
and I was both inspired and a little bit horrified
by you and Mike's story just with the trials and
tribulations of opening a gym. And you know, I just
told Tom was like, for me specifically, it's got to
be a pretty specific application for it to make sense.

(03:29):
It has to be something that's reasonably close to our houses.
And then it has to be you know, affordable. In
the worst case scenario, we can cover you know, rent
essentially on a month a month basis, and we just
have a really expensive home gym. But you know, and
then two and then I guess the third thing would

(03:51):
be could we equip it without you know, to have
to take out some sort of massive loan et cetera,
et cetera, something like that, because for us, us, you know,
it's either it's either you do it like that or
you go the other way, where you do take out
a massive loan, you build a building, and you go
all in on it. And you know, for both of

(04:11):
us in terms of our lives, you know, Tom has
his full time job as alignment, which takes you know,
tons and tons of hours for him, and then for
myself just traveling, I have a full time job working
for a nonprofit. You know, I don't know that if
I made that decision, that'd be a huge career shift

(04:32):
and confident I could do it, but it would just
that would be a massive undertaking. So we found a
building that used to be a lawnmower repair shop. It's
like seven minutes from my house. It's about a minute
and a half from tom Oh wow, And and you
know it's not that big, but literally, we signed the
lease on a Saturday and by Monday morning, we had

(04:56):
everything in there except for a full rack of dumb
that's the only thing we didn't have. So flooring, turf bars, machines,
we had fifty four forty five pound plates between the
two of us. I don't even know how many specialty
bars and all that stuff we had. We had Nautilus
leg curl leg extension, a Nautilus lower pack machine, really

(05:20):
old school like lap pool, down row reverse, all that stuff,
you know, Mono, a couple of power acts platforms. We
just had all that stuff in our houses and so
you know, we we had it all in there by
Monday morning and the landlord lives close by and stopped buying.
He goes, you guys don't fuck around. Said, well, it's

(05:42):
easy to not do that when you have all this
stuff in your house and you just have to transport
it a few minutes away.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
You know.

Speaker 2 (05:48):
Guys came out and helped. Of course, Cam, I don't know,
did you ever meet Cam back in the day. I
did not our buddy Cam. You're fantastic. Yeah, yeah, no,
he's fantastic. So he came out and helped a few
other buddies and yeah, we just got it all moved
in and done, and we're a year into it now
and gosh, I think we we might have just broke

(06:10):
even jeez, you know, it's just you know, but again
first year. Yeah, yeah, I mean that's just the nature
of the business, right, It's not it's not a business
that you're gonna see a massive return in quickly unless
you're really diving hard on the training side. But even

(06:30):
then that's again a whole another conundrum in terms of
work and all that. And also for us, we didn't
set it up to be a massive financial shift shifter
for us, even if it is successful. Just something kind
of like when you buy a house, you know, uh,
you go get like a you know home ech way
loan and you buy a second house to rent out.

(06:51):
You know, you're just hoping to cover your payment on
your mortgage and maybe a little bit extra each month,
so that she's kind of an investment long term. And
for us, it was kind of that idea is could
we have a community and kind of build up what
I think we all fell in love with street training,
you know four, which is the community, right, It's the
people that are around you. There's nothing out really where

(07:13):
we live anything like what we have. And then you know,
could we get our garages back? Which was nice, we
kind of need that. Yeah, Tom Tom for the first
time in his life and that gosh, I don't even
know how Tom old. How old Tom is now thirty
four or something like that, for the first time in
his life, he's parked indoors like this past winter because

(07:36):
he's always had a garage him always, So that was
kind of nice. And then you know, we actually fell
into a little bit of training. We had a local
high school athlete who lives in Tom's neighborhood reach out
via Instagram. We didn't advertise, we didn't even talk about
doing it, and said, would you guys train me? I
saw your website, and Tom and I talked about it, Well,

(08:00):
we'll kind of do a limited run here, you know,
and we accept a very few number of athletes that
we work with. But that's been fun. We have a
really good hockey player. We have a BMX writer who's
really talented softball. Yeah. Actually she was eleven when she
started training with us, which is pretty amazing to have

(08:21):
an eleven year old, you know, girl who wants to
come out to a former lawnmower repair shop and lift
and she is just, oh my gosh, she's so strong,
so talented. She just trapped our deadlifted to forty belt
lists and shrapless and all that stuff. Yeah, it's pretty
good for a lot. Yeah, So it's it's you know,

(08:42):
it's it's been fun, honestly like it. And then you know,
it's been fun. We have start to build that community
that we were hoping for. For me, it gets me
a little bit back into some training on a very
limited level in person, which normally I have to travel
somewhere to do that. So that's kind of fun for me.
It's really fun to work with a few kids. I

(09:03):
like that development and that excitement about the gym is
they're finally you know, seeing weights go up, and you
know that one first kid who started with this is
almost gained thirty pounds and nine months training, and so yeah,
like it's just really cool to see that progress and
that excitement, like you remember that you miss it from
when you were starting out. And you know, of course,

(09:25):
we had our one kind of big issue. We had
a little backup in one of the bathrooms which turned
into an entire septic tank exposure, which turned into an
entire just running of the line. And you know that
was a few grand literally down the toilet to get
all that solt. But other than that, it's been great.

Speaker 3 (09:46):
And that was on you guys, yeah, because unfortunately, when
the landlord got down in there, you know, there was
some stuff flushed down the toilet that shouldn't have been.

Speaker 2 (09:58):
Now, you know, you could argue, and I think probably
logically could have argued that that was maybe who was
ever there before us, because the backup was pretty far
in and maybe just from us having a little bit
higher volume of usage than it did previously. It was
kind of the straw that broke the Campbell's back. Yeah,
but there's no way to prove it, right, So you

(10:19):
know it is what it is. There's something down there
it's not supposed to be there. Well falls back on us,
And to be fair, he was. He was super kind.
He rented his own excavator, pulled the septic tanks or
uncovered himself. Didn't We didn't have to pay for any
of that. We just had to pay for the actual
plumbing and stuff like that. So yeah, he was pretty
fair about it.

Speaker 1 (10:40):
We have not had the giant toilet blow ups here.
We did have a just an astronomical toilet leak for
a while that was difficult to detect. And see, I'm
I am forever like a conspiracy theorist around water meters
because I don't think they're accurate at all. I think

(11:02):
that there's a multiple multiplier in there to make it
look so much worse and be more expensive, Like we
could have filled the entire building with water for the
amount of what they said that we feel like we
could have turned it into a swimming pool, and so
that that it never made sense to me. It had

(11:22):
the inspector come out and look at the the meter
and he's like, oh, it's it's it's working, Like I
can see that it's turning it's like, yeah, it's turning
like five times faster than it's supposed to. But anyway,
it was a it was a battle I lost. However,
I did get fixed and back in the day though,

(11:45):
when when we were in this building with st like
the first year, there was on a meet day the
whole septic system backed up. Well it's supposed to be
connected to sewer, but it did not act like it
was and there was just like it was lifting the
manhole covers full of just just shit.

Speaker 2 (12:06):
Oh my god, it was.

Speaker 1 (12:07):
It was so disgusting, terrible. It was really terrible, really
really bad. And uh yeah, so when we when we
signed the least here, it was like, so the the
septic system is good, right, I mean the sewer or
whatever is everything? Go oh yeah, everything's good, and it's like, well,
we did have other issues with it, but yeah, the
joys of opening a gym at least you guy already

(12:29):
guys already had the equipment because like we did not
obviously we had nothing. We had zero, and we we
had to order it Duram pandemic and it took forever
to get everything that we have. And I'm happy with
this stuff that we have, but goodness, gracious, it was
a challenge.

Speaker 2 (12:49):
Oh, I could imagine. Yeah, I mean, you know, thankfully
we had just been essentially, you know, stockpiling equipment because
when COVID hit that, before that, I would go train somewhere.
I mean, you know, there was times and I think
any strength athlete who's you know, man, maybe this is

(13:11):
too blanket of a statement, who's like really cared about
their strength, has driven distances to train in gyms before. Yeah,
because that's just what you used to do. You would
go find the best people that you could kind of
vibe with, good environment, and you go train there. I
mean I was trained. I used to wake up on
Saturdays and drive like an hour and fifteen minutes one
way to train at the gym called jack And it's

(13:32):
down south of Aurora, a little bit Montgomery. But anyway,
the point is is that, you know, I would just
drive to gyms where it was, drive to Tom's house.
It didn't matter to me. But then when COVID hit
and then shoot almost died, right, you know, I talked
to you guys post that. Yeah, I think a few
months after that it was the last time that I

(13:52):
spoke to you guys. You know, I just said, well,
I don't want to mess around with trying to figure
out gems. And you know here in Illinois things were
shut down for a pretty good amount of time, so
we just start I just started ordering stuff as it
came up Facebook marketplace, you know, friend trying to move
they had some stuff and just kind of piecing it together.
On my end. Tom had more stuff than I did,

(14:14):
for sure, but again between the two of us, it's
like megadesk in the office. You know, we took two
desks and made a megadsk. We made a mega home gym.
So it's worked out well. You know, like the Nautiliss stuff,
it's I mean it's some of the not the first line,
but it's probably the second line of stuff from them.
You know, it's definitely from the seventies. It's old. Wow,

(14:37):
but gosh, that stuff, it just it feels good. Right.
It's chained instead of cables so it doesn't break. The
seats and the leather and all that stuff's in good shape.
It was taken care of. We got it from a
school not far from here that finally upgraded their weight room.
So you can imagine all that stuff had been in

(14:58):
that school and they were just they was given away.
We just did to please somebody come and take it.
And yeah, we said, okay, we'll take it. So we
got a flatbed out there and loaded up a bunch
of stuff, a bunch of stuff from that school. But anyway,
you know, I don't know that some of those machines
have significantly evolved past. You know Arthur Jones design. You

(15:22):
know that Nautilus shell, that that that can that he
invented to kind of even out the resistance curve. I mean,
those machines still feel great. I mean, I have no
issue with him at all. I wish I had a
couple other pieces of it, to be honest. That the
old Natilist dip machine was one of my favorites. The
little stairs you'd walk up on, pat the belt on

(15:42):
and oh, I thought that was so cool. And then
they had the ill tell you which Nilis machine I
hated was the It was a you could do it
dual arm, but it was each one was independent. The
Tricep machine where you put your arms up and then
you'd kind of extend your arms out. It was like
this weird like L shaped pad that you kind of

(16:03):
put your palm into there was nothing to hold on.
I could never get that to feel right. But other
than that, I liked most of the other nutless stuff
pretty well. But anyway, Yeah, no, it's it's it's we
we just figured it out. And yeah, you know there's
some stuff, for sure, we would like to upgrade, as
it makes sense. But everything you need and more is

(16:23):
in there to get strong. It's way more than I
ever had growing up. It's way more than your local
gym has in terms of actual strength equipment. And you know,
Cam just squatted eight seventy five on a mars bar
to a box. Bear need bear shoes or no shoes, barefoot,

(16:43):
like I said, bear knees, not even sleeves. And you
know if he if he's basically hidding any sort of
variation nine hundred pounds fast, it's a good place to train.

Speaker 1 (16:54):
Okay, So how many square feet you have?

Speaker 2 (16:57):
Oh my gosh, I'd have to do the math. It's
not much. Maybe maybe two thousand maybe. Yeah, it's small.

Speaker 1 (17:08):
Yeah, so I can't remember. You haven't been in this building,
have you?

Speaker 2 (17:14):
I have not?

Speaker 1 (17:15):
Yeah, probably probably about the size of our there's a
small side in a large side here. It's probably just
like the small side where s T used to be. Yeah,
it's the whole place.

Speaker 2 (17:25):
I know it from the videos, so it's it's probably
about right. Yeah, And I kind of know where you
guys are. I remember from when I was in Sacramento
last which would have been like two thousand, goodness gracious, eighteen. Yeah,
I think it was around eighteen. It was lose last
year in LA. And I remember when I came to y'all.

(17:45):
Are you still in the same studio? No, were you recorded?

Speaker 1 (17:49):
That's we actually Okay, where the we're in the that's
another story. We're in the middle building that's connected to
the to the gym space. Okay, so there's a I
just remember spot here.

Speaker 2 (18:03):
Oh nice. Yeah. I just remember staying at or going
by Mike's place and then going over to y'all's where
y'all were recording at the time, and I think I
remember Mike pointing out like, oh, that's where st used
to be, like way back in the day. And so
because it's downtown.

Speaker 1 (18:22):
Right, yeah, we're as downtown as we could possibly be.
We're like less than abile from the capitol.

Speaker 2 (18:29):
Yeah, okay, so I kind of roughly remember the area,
but no, I've got to. I mean, it's it's the
same thing that you know, I think we've all been
seeing since COVID hit. Like everybody has some places that
they just stopped going to because COVID disrupted life in
so many different ways. And you know, for me, it
was a career shift in a lot of ways. It
just coincided with Lewall retiring and then that you know,

(18:55):
led into the soundsterday and national team, and then the
Olympic run that we did, which was just incredible, and
you know, it's just changed my life in terms of
the way that I move and when I have time
to move, and then the amount of time I'm gone.
I mean I'm gone from home. The Olympics was two
months travel straight. We did five or six different countries

(19:19):
in two months, you know, and then we have all
the qualifiers, World Cup qualifiers, a World Cup with seven
seven weeks, you have Afro Basket, which is about five
or six weeks. I mean you start adding it up
on top of the nonprofit trips that I take. It's
at least two and a half three months a year.
I'm somewhere else overseas, not even the States, and so

(19:39):
it makes it hard on my end. To say, yeah,
I'm going to go take another you know, five six
days and go somewhere else. Kids are getting bigger and
stuff's going on, and man, it's just changed. It's not bad,
it's just different.

Speaker 1 (19:52):
Yeah. Actually, we did have you on last year to
talk about, like we previewed the Olympic basketball situation with
you last year, and I want to talk more gym stuff,
but let's let's transition over to to basketball for a
little bit. Mike and I and are are our third

(20:15):
who comes into do media reviews. So this Dean, we
watched the the Netflix series on the on USA basketball
and just and and everybody they played, and it was
more whatever. Well, we felt like South Sudan really got
the short shrift in that I don't know if you
watched it, but there was not a lot about Yeah

(20:38):
South Sudan, that's that part sucked.

Speaker 2 (20:41):
Yeah I didn't. I didn't watch it because you know,
I'm not the biggest fan of US. We lost that
warm up game by one point, which was terrible, and
then of course in the actual Olympics we lost by
sixteen or twenty or something like that. I mean, they
never ran away with it, but it was also never
a close game. You know, they were also at full strength,

(21:02):
and hey, Kevin Durant and they just played us like
two weeks before, so they kind of knew what they
were getting themselves into. You know, we wouldn't probably have
not agreed to that friendly game had we known they
would end up in our pool. We agreed to all
that before they did the random drawing and what group
do you end up in? And we ended up in
the worst group by far. I mean, you know, Serbia

(21:26):
and incredible, so talented. You know, they got second I
think at the World Cup, and then they got third
at the Olympics, like they're they're a powerhouse. And then
we got USA, and then we got Puerto Rico, who
also is consistently an Olympic team. You know, a few
NBA players on that roster. They're very very good. So
we got a tough draw. But no, I didn't watch it.

(21:47):
You know, I'm not surprised, Like I don't think people
still really understand, you know that South Sudan's a country.
A some recent political stuff I think has maybe awakened
a couple of people too, just because the name's been
in the news. But they usually just assume it's a
part of Sudan and you're just referring to a region
on an actual country. And then the second part is

(22:10):
I don't think people know how to get a hold
of us in the sense of, like we're so new.
We don't have an office, we don't have a you know,
a publicist, we don't have a we have like a
team manager, but that's the Wall's brother, and he's pretty
much just on ground. Like you know, I'm just trying
to think if I was an outside organization, it's like,

(22:30):
I want to get in touch with you guys, you
kind of would have to have the wall cell phone number,
or you'd have to know somebody like me on the
auxiliary staff and just email me. I guess. I mean,
it's just I don't even know how you would get
a hold of us. And as well, we were pretty
you know, dialed in for the Olympics. We didn't really
have time or space to make a lot of room

(22:53):
for you know, some sort of production or something like that.
And some of that was by choice. But I don't
think they ever and called us that I know of,
and yet I wouldn't know if they did. They never did.

Speaker 1 (23:03):
Yeah, there was it was only game footage that was
that was it. That was that was it period. But
it was disappointing to not see more because it's such
a great story, you know.

Speaker 2 (23:16):
Yeah, I mean, you know, for us to go, you know,
unranked to the Olympics in a full Olympic cycle, so
three and a half four years, you know, it's it's
never been done. I don't think it'll probably ever be
done again. I think that the circumstances of how it
happened are so unique to the people that were playing

(23:37):
and involved in it that you won't see that happen again.
You won't see another country that didn't have a program.
You just happen to have a very benevolent guy who
was world class expert at what he did, who paid
for a couple of years of it, you know, where
the government wouldn't, who just happened to know an incredible
staff of coaches and trainers to come in and do

(23:59):
a job. And then you also have a group of
people who, due to long running civil war and refugee status,
were essentially unknown as an actual you know, cultural group,
Like you know, there's South Sudanese all over the world,
but they've never been represented They've never came together and said, hey,

(24:23):
we are South Sudanese together for this thing. It's never happened.
If you watch any college basketball, you know, there's almost
a South Suanese guy on probably every four or five
teams if you watch a game now, and we're the
first time that anyone's given them an ability to say, hey,
let's come together and play at South Sudanese. You know,
if you've had a national team for a long time,

(24:44):
like Serbia, they I think they gave us a pen
that said one hundred years of Serbian basketball. They've been
playing basketball for one hundred years as a national team.
I mean that is just phenomenal to me. But that's
why they're so good because from the time they're probably
like maybe ten twelve years old, they're playing together every summer.
They know who the guys are. You know, with Jokic

(25:05):
calling Yovich and calling Bagdanovic, Hey, let's all get together
and start camp. And that's the way national teams are
supposed to go. And we just threw together the best
twelve players that we could find who cared and just
something beautiful came out of it. And I just don't
I don't see US an era like that ever brewing
again to be honest and is an incredible story. And

(25:27):
you know, we we had a document We had a
crew following around documenting everything that we were doing. It's
something that Lull also was independently financing. I'm pretty hopeful
that that will get released. They were thinking maybe like
Sundance next year. You know, I don't know if it
will get in, but like that kind of is the

(25:49):
timing side of it, because that footage goes back for
the like pretty much the whole run almost, so that
would be incredible. I don't know how you're gonna fit
it into it like a feature linked film style, Like
it's so much story, but that's happening. And then on
the podcast side, I do know there's and I don't

(26:10):
want to give away anybody's thunder, but there's a gentleman
who is working on a podcast about this story, who
has won a couple of big awards for sports journalism
in podcasting, and he wants to tell this story. And
I've always been working on it. So I don't know
where that project is either. I gave an interview for it,
but if that happens, I think that'll shed some light

(26:30):
on it as well. But it's a story that needs
to be told because it's bigger. You know, it's such
a common saying it's bigger than basketball, it's bigger than football,
it's bigger than whatever the sport is. But this really
is bigger than that. I mean, you have a group
of people who, like I said, you know, disjointed it
in every way you could possibly think of, and came
together and did something that's just insanely hard to do

(26:53):
even under the best circumstances. And you know, I think
the cherry on top is that nobody was paid. We
didn't pay players, we didn't pay coach. It was all
every single bit, which is volunteering for people. And when
do you see world class level achievement in anything just
out of the sake of somebody's heart.

Speaker 1 (27:10):
You don't. You don't. So what's what's the current status
with the with the team? I realized we're we're we're
one year post Olympics.

Speaker 2 (27:22):
So yeah, the machine keeps churning. So it's it's afro
Basket coming up, which is African Championship. They do EuroBasket,
European Championship, they do like an Asian Cup. You know,
I don't know if you it's like the Americas. I'm
sure they do some version of it, just nobody pays
attention to us because we watched the NBA. But I'm

(27:45):
sure there's some version of American Cup. I don't know,
but it's it's the same idea of you have regional
championships that feeds into World Cup qualifying, which lasts about
a year. It's about a year of no major tournament.
You're just playing qualifying tournaments, which is depends on which
group you're in, but four or five and it's still

(28:06):
within your same region or continent. And then from that
you go to World Cup, and then for World Cup
you go to Olympics. So it's the same cycle over
and over and over. Right after the Olympics or the
subsequent years, regional championship or continental championship kind of a
year long qualifying World Cup Olympics. So if we make it,
I'll be out your way.

Speaker 1 (28:27):
Oh yeah, no kidding, Huh. Where the what venues are
they using?

Speaker 2 (28:33):
I have no idea. I don't think they know. I
mean they say they have a plan, but you know,
if anybody spent any time in Los Angeles, it just
makes you shudder to think about how they're gonna pull
off the Olympics.

Speaker 1 (28:45):
Well, I know it's not all just in LA. They've
spread it out over some of it over the state.
It wouldn't be shocking to me if some of it
was even up here, to be honest, I mean the
Bay Area for sure.

Speaker 4 (28:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (28:58):
See best's tinment in here.

Speaker 4 (29:00):
They probably like Seattle or something like that.

Speaker 1 (29:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (29:04):
Yeah, Well, I mean I'm just saying that they should
spread it out if they're smart.

Speaker 1 (29:08):
You know.

Speaker 2 (29:08):
Sometimes the issue with that is, you know, powers that
be kind of get honed in on. You know, it
needs to be here because it says, you know, La Olympics,
Da da da da dah, and we have the space
and the venues, which is true. It's just you can't
just can't get anywhere, you know. I heard that they're
talking about housing the majority of the athletes at the UCLA

(29:30):
campus and I'm like, okay, I know where that is.
We used to practice there. A lot of NBA guys
have practice there in the summer. That's pretty far from
Staples in traffic, right, that's pretty far you know from
you know, maybe like the New where the Clippers are playing,

(29:51):
you know, in traffic, Like I just I just don't
know how they're going to reasonably expect to pull off
that many millions of people coming in unless they do
spread it out. So I'm hopeful that they are.

Speaker 1 (30:04):
Yeah, they Well the last time was what nineteen eighty
four that it was in.

Speaker 2 (30:07):
La Yes, I believe so, yeah, yeah, yeah I was.

Speaker 1 (30:13):
I was a loyal enmayormount before that. And they built
like a brand new gym facility there that was used
for Olympic weightlifting back when we had Olympic weightlifting.

Speaker 2 (30:25):
Nice.

Speaker 1 (30:25):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't know what they're gonna do.
You really can't get around La very quickly at all.
That you can't really change the cadence of the games.
They last, how long they you know, it's prescribed how
long they go on, and so right, I don't know,

(30:45):
you know, I don't know exactly what they're going to do,
but it spreading it as really sort of the only
the only option. And I think that unlike going to
some place like I don't know, Paris or Tokyo or whatever,
where the train rotations a little different situation and the
venues are a little closer together, you can if you're
as as a spectator. If you want to see a

(31:07):
couple of different sports, you can, you could do that.
I do not believe that will be the case in
la I believe that you have to commit to seeing
you know, uh, one sport. You might see preliminary rounds
and you might see metal rounds, or you might only
see one or the other or whatever based on availability.
But I don't think you're gonna be able to bounce

(31:29):
around at all.

Speaker 2 (31:31):
Yeah, you know, people they asked me, well, how was it,
you know, being in Paris for the Olympics, And I'm like,
we weren't in Paris. I wish we were in Paris
and we were in Lil France. And I'm probably butchering
that pronunciation, but that's my Texas accent, how my brain's
uses little little France. But they took a domed soccer

(31:52):
stadium there and they built the most massive black curtain
ever and literally put it right down the middle. It's
wild and on one side they put at whatever the
turf or whatever was down they built a handball court
on top of it, and on the other side they
built a basketball court and so all of the everything

(32:15):
except for the semi final and final games were played
up there and little for just handball and basketball. Everything
else was in Paris. That could be obviously like surfing
and stuff like that, but everything else was in Paris.
And then we were you know, on a high speed train.
It's about it was about an hour ten hour, fifteen
minute train ride to Paris. So we took a train

(32:35):
directly from London because that's where we finished our you know,
pre Olympic games too little directly, and then once we
finished playing all of our you know, we had three games,
we took a high speed train to Paris and I
got on a plane and left. I mean, it's it was.
I went to Juba, I went back to South Sudan
for a celebration. But yeah, I was in Paris for
about three hours at the airport. It would have been

(32:58):
cool to like walk around and see stuff. And you know,
as a coach, you get some access to things. It's
not just you can go into anything, but there is
a system for putting in for tickets. It's different than
what normal people get access to and all that. So
I could have went and saw you know, like speed climbing,
like rock climbing, and you know some other kind of
just funky stuff that I think is fun. But nope,

(33:19):
I was stuck in a little and Well, which was
a beautiful city. It's just there's nothing to do.

Speaker 1 (33:25):
Paris is wonderful. It was cool too because we were in
Paris the year before, so two years ago, so it's
cool to watch it on TV and see, you know,
places we've been and stuff like that. It was that
that part was cool.

Speaker 2 (33:41):
Yeah, But I.

Speaker 1 (33:44):
Mean I I I couldn't imagine that you would actually
have a lot of extra time to do stuff during
the as as a coach or a player or whatever.
I know that like in this in the documentary series,
you see the the US athletes going to different venues
and seeing different things, but not a bunch they really

(34:06):
like the two or three things they did, they shot
a lot of footage.

Speaker 2 (34:09):
Yet let's just say yeah, yeah, no, they didn't do
a lot, but you know, they they were on a
whole different program the rest of us. So they erected
an athlete's village in little because it didn't exist and
it looked like you know, you're watching like et or something.
When they built this like outpost out in the desert.

(34:29):
It was like this like random field and they literally
like put gravel down like ten foot high fencing, had
guys with like submachine gun standing guard. I mean it
was wild because they were worried. You know, there was
some arson stuff on trains right leading up to it,
Like they were worried. Is you know, you want to
keep a body safe. I understand that, but like it
didn't fee. It wasn't like like UCLA campus or you know,

(34:52):
where you kind of come in and modify it. It
was like literally like you felt like almost like you
were in prison like it was. It was like just
kind of a directed for this specifically. And you know,
Giannis tried his best to stay there. He stayed one
night and the next days, sorry, guys, I can't do it.
He just wings out of his own hotel. He's like,
I can't stay here. And then the US they didn't

(35:14):
even try. They stayed somewhere else. I heard they got
a boat.

Speaker 1 (35:17):
Yeah, I had a cruise ship. That was that was yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:22):
Yeah. So so they were moving in a little bit
different way than we were. And I think some of
the guys actually stayed in Paris, to be honest, I
think some stayed there and they just got high speed
trained or a car to take him to Camus.

Speaker 1 (35:35):
I believe that. I believe that.

Speaker 2 (35:37):
Yeah, I mean I would have too, if I had
the option, to be honest, I would have as well.

Speaker 1 (35:41):
Yeah, it's just way out in the middle of no
place with not a thing to do. I didn't realize
that they'd had to build outhlete accommodations. I know they
didn't build any venues, and I don't think California l A.
I don't think. I don't think any new venues are
being built. I think they're all using pre existing stuff,
which is I think the way it should be done,

(36:02):
because yeah, there's just a massive amount of waste to
build facilities in all these places. I don't I I
think the Olympics. I mean, it's cool to go to
other countries and stuff, but I think that like the
most cost effective way forward for the Olympics is for
there to be like an Olympic village in all place

(36:24):
and that's where the Olympics always are.

Speaker 2 (36:26):
Yeap, Yeah, or you know, you do it kind of
what you're saying, like Paris did, and I think it
like you said, LA is doing where just nothing news erected.
I mean you just utilize what's there and if it
doesn't have the infrastructure, and then you know you don't,
You're not able to even submit a bit. It's not
even like okay, we'll get it and then we'll backfill,
like don't know, you have to have it. I remember

(36:48):
reading an article about the Beijing Olympics, which I think
at the time were the most expensive Olympics ever, and
like something like sixty percent of those buildings are just
vacant now that they built the Olympics. I mean they're
just vacant. There's not even being utilized. And actually for
the World Cup, we played two friendly games in China.

(37:09):
It's my first time, you know, and only time so
far that I've been to China, and we were playing
at a stadium that set I think eight thousand, that
had never been used and has been sitting there for
five years. It was any thing timey Olympics wasn't entirely Olympics.
It was just built and somebody had a lot of money.
They built it next to this hotel, just sitting there

(37:29):
and everybody's just content for it to sit there. And
they were sponsored by Peak, which is a Chinese brand
of basketball stuff. They sponsored a couple of medi again
it's actually really nice stuff, to be honest, it's very quality.
And the guy that runs it, you know, if he
could put this way, if he could shift out China,
he would. He can't, there's some walls against that. But

(37:53):
the point is is that he organized this tournament for
some teams that they sponsored, Hey let's just come play
friendly together. And you know, the World Cup was in
the Philippines, so it wasn't far relatively speaking to do that,
and he just found this, you know, this venue that
wasn't far from their headquarters in terms of distance, maybe
forty fifty minutes away. And they were like, we literally

(38:14):
are like going in there and there's like cruiser are
going around like dusting off cobwebs and all this, like yeah,
it's ever been used, just sitting here for five years.
And maybe that was COVID related, I don't know, but
I'm just saying, like the like, what a waste. It's
just incredible.

Speaker 1 (38:32):
That's crazy. Well to shift back to gyms for just
for a moment here, I told you I had like
a topic in mind, and this is something that's been
bugging me and I had a conversation with our gym
manager Kyle about this the other day too, way back
in the day when when I was involved in the

(38:55):
first powerlifting gym that I went to, and then and
then super training, people trained together, like literally people train
together and you would share a bar, and like it was,
especially in the in the st days, it was it
was kind of mandatory because there was really only like

(39:17):
a sixteen hour training training windows for the week. It
was like four hours, four days a week, and you
really couldn't train outside of that, and so there's only
so much equipment, and you have to work with people.
And I see what we have here. We have a
lot of USCPL. We have a lot drug tested lifters period,

(39:40):
and you know, they're kind of in and out at
different times of day for whatever reason, and so many
of them train entirely alone. And I don't think that
any of them would not benefit from training in a
group all the time, especially a relatively consistent group. Because

(40:03):
you talk about like, you know, all of them got coaches,
they're you know, almost all online coaches, not one hundred percent,
and they're like walking around with their phones reading what
they're supposed to do next, and they they get on
a bar and they're on there for a long time,
and no one ever works in with them. And the

(40:24):
real magic of training in a group of people, whether
it's the same group or whether it's you know, just
the people that you know in the gym, is that
you have that many more eyes on you, and some
of those people have a lot of reps. And at
least that's what I experienced back in the day, and
could comment on form or or you know, weight selection

(40:47):
or things that an online coach is having to pull
off of a you know, a form check video or whatever,
and it's just an entirely different thing. And Mike, my
real question is like, I don't have any doubt that
everybody would be better if they trained more that way,
But what the hell happened? And when did it happen?

Speaker 2 (41:13):
That's the question, What the hell? What the hell? Man? Geez,
you know, it's actually a really interesting thought process, And
I would say that as much as we can at
our place, we try to encourage the opposite of that
in that anytime. Let's just say, like I said, we

(41:37):
don't work with a lot of athletes, but let's say
it's like a Monday afternoon, I'm in there training somebody.
I'll have a member say, oh, can I use that.
I'm saying yes one hundred percent of the time every time.
It doesn't matter if I'm on it or not. We
can work together. Like that's just the atmosphere that we
try to promote. If we have, you know, we'll have
a member sometimes, Hey, on Wednesday, I'm going to do
a heavy lift. Do you know if anybody will be

(41:58):
in the gym at four or five? Because we're that small,
like it could just be empty as possible, and I'm like, hey,
you know, let me connect you this guy because he's
normally in there, and you guys can work together or
you can spot each other. Like as much as we can,
we try to promote that it's a community gym that
everybody like you can do what you need to do,
of course, but like that it's appropriate and okay, and

(42:18):
encourage to do it with or around somebody else. Every
Friday night we have Friday Night squat night. And a
good example was his last one we can hit in
that eight seventy five. Tom's brother was graduating from his
residency program in med school, so Tom wasn't able to
be there. I didn't need to lift that day heavy,
so I was, but I was like, hey, I'll show

(42:39):
up because I just know that A, you need a
spot to be safe, and then B, like you said,
just have an eyes on how to move, how to look,
how to feel. Can I take this jump? Can I
not take this jump? You know, I don't know how
you could safely do that on your own. So you know,
I'll give you my two thoughts on it, just off
the top of my head, and I'm sure it's like
everything else, like you'll think about it and come with
something different later. But I would say that that one

(43:02):
side of it is probably that you know, we for
sure have a culture in lifting now of it not
being okay to max out. I don't know how many
times you see on Instagram or whatever social media you
follow where it's like we're building, not testing. And I understand,
I understand it. I get what you're saying. But back

(43:25):
in the day when conjugate was a little was much
more popular, I think gearlifting was more popular, and even
people like the Lily Bridges where like it was like
they would, you know, take three hours to go up
to the heaviest single they could go to, and that
was their training for that day. It was completely acceptable
to try to push weight on a variation or a
main lift on a consistent basis. It wasn't this massive

(43:49):
you know, meso macro cycle, peaking this and that just
for the gym. If you were to go on some
crazy plan like that, it was for meat. But in
the gym you would consistently lift heavy. I mean even
if you back in Arnold's day, you know when you
read some of his stuff, he would say, we'd pick
one body part a week, and we go as heavy
as possible on it. We squat as heavy as we could,
we deadlift as heavy as could, we benches like He's like,

(44:10):
just the body got better when we did that. And
we shifted away from that because I think there's so
much on this prehab mobility, how do I feel based stuff,
And you know, I do some of that training I
have with athletes and I do with some of my clients,
But that's a rabbit hole that you can go down
and not find a good way out of. You know,

(44:32):
we kind of get got into a place is with
the generation of lifters where you know they're like, oh,
this doesn't feel right or that is a little bit sore.
I think I tweaked this or that, and I'm like, yeah,
probably did go lift like like, It's okay. It's okay
to not feel good, it's okay to not be perfect,
it's okay to not have everything. You know, just coalesce

(44:55):
into this optimum flow state that you need to lift
in for the day. You know, you don't have have
to drink your you know, your pairub and free pre
workout and pop us in and get into your mental
state with your mushroom edibles like it's okay, like just
go lift like and and so I think there's a
lot of that culture. And I think the other side,
and it's probably on you know, unfortunately, is probably on

(45:19):
the social media side. It's it's very difficult to film
everything you do if you're lifting with four or five
or six people, because you're not the focus. The person
lifting is the focus, which is you when it's your turn.
But when it's not your turn, you're spotting, you're unloading weights,
like you said, you're paying attention to form. And if
you're in that kind of environment, the only video you're

(45:39):
going to get out of that is whatever your top
set was. You're not going to get all that other
stuff unless you have a cinematographer with you. So I
think there's a lot of that. And I think this
online coaching side too, Like you said, I think that's
huge where you have so many people that are training
with a coach online and they're so nervous or whatever

(46:00):
the word is, just maybe just being amble about it,
where they don't want to deviate from what that person
has them said or what they're supposed to do because
they feel like it's going to mess up this master plan.
And as an online coach, I tell people all the
time what I'm writing for you is a glorified guide
of what you're supposed to do for the day. But
you for sure have free rein to you know, hop

(46:22):
in with somebody else if somebody else is lifting heavy
you know. I'll even say sometimes if I know a
guy or a woman has a heavy lift, like find
someone else to do it with. And maybe you know,
I have you to do a safety squad bar and
they're using a Duffalo bar, Like, fine, use a Dufflo bar.
It doesn't matter. And so anyway, that's kind of I

(46:42):
guess my soapbox. I'll get on about that, but I
don't think it's good for the sport. I don't think
it's good for the lifters as a whole, and I
think it kind of weakens the community because you're not
forming a community.

Speaker 1 (46:57):
Well, here's the thing built on part of what you said. There.
There is such a like preciousness I guess about equipment.
About everybody's got a lift with kilo plates like all
the time for some reason. I understand, Like back back
in the day, there was a kilo plate set for

(47:20):
meats and you didn't list with it. The rest of
the time. It was just it was pound plates and
we did math, you know. I mean, that was just
how it was. The other part of it is that
that's really mystifying to me is that from a community standpoint,
we actually have a very good community and they're very
supportive each of each other, and they lift at the
same time but not together. Is that it's like Toddler's

(47:44):
parallel playing, you know what I mean. Although they will
I mean if someone's if someone's going for a PR
set or whatever, you will get a crowd if there
are enough people in the gym, But there are plenty
of people who lift when there are only three or
four people in the gym during the day, you know,
And that kind of feedback, even if it's just you know,

(48:07):
vocal and people yelling and screaming for you like that's
is important. And I just I don't understand. I don't
get it. And you know, yeah, we've had situations where
where particular equipment was not available due to construction, and

(48:29):
we have members like, oh, well okay, well well you
know we need these this equipment, so we're going to leave.
It's like, why would you do that? Completely mystifies me,
like did you come here to train or or what
I mean? There isn't a piece of equipment out there
that is a frickin' Boeing seven forty seven, and and

(48:52):
I'm going to tell you you need to fly this
cessna instead, you know, I mean, and you don't know
how to do that, or or a Euey helicopter or something.
It's not there is no level of specificity like that
going on. It's all weightlifting equipment. It's all basically the same.
You don't really need a particular bar that's going to
be used in a meat because it's not really going

(49:14):
to bite you in the ass like that, right, And
everybody's just so afraid. And then the point you were
making about coaches that people kind of forget the coaches
work for them, they don't work for the coaches, and
you know, the kind of feedback of, well, I don't
this is not this is not a direction I think
we should go or I have to do something else

(49:36):
because because of time or because of of what's available
or whatever. It's like, don't be afraid to freelize the
program a little bit. For heaven's sakes. It's the world
will not collapse.

Speaker 2 (49:49):
I know, but it is. It's like it's like that
that doom and gloom mentality if things aren't to spec
whether that you're programming your equipment that you're expected to
be on the timing of how all that needs to
go together. I mean, and it's it's a you know,
from a mentality standpoint, it kind of to some extent,
in my opinion, goes against what a really strong lifting

(50:12):
mentality is, which is I'm going to just lift the weight.
I don't care if it's a bar, it's got a
bend in it, if it's a kilo on this side,
a regular plate on that side. That just makes it
more fun. Like like that's a mentality that you kind
of cultivate I think when you just kind of have
a strong mentality, and maybe it's easy for me to
say because I am so predisposed to conjugate and that

(50:34):
it's ingrained to me that variations are good. I've never
seen them be bad for me, by the way, I've
never seen that. I you know, when I used to
compete in powerlifting, I'll never forget my first meat ever.
I pulled six p forty whatever the kilo is on
a deadlift, my very first meat and it's the first

(50:56):
time in my life I touched a deadlift bar ever.
I was just on whatever power bar I had it.
At the gym that I used to work at, we
didn't have any powerlifting equipment. We had power bars and
we had one SSB bar from a lead fts.

Speaker 1 (51:09):
It's it.

Speaker 2 (51:09):
It's only specially equipment that we had. Never touched the
squad bar, never touched the deadlift bar. You know Texas
power Bar, who I like a lot, Like they make
a bench bar, special bench bar, and I'm like, what
the hell do you do with a special bench bar, Like,
I mean again, long I don't know, but I'm just
just like, like, what neuraling do you do different? What

(51:29):
marks you different? Like I don't understand, like it's a
bar for bench And again maybe if you're a world
class binge presser, maybe it matters to you, but for
everybody else beneath that, it's kind of the same thing
with this, I'm not going to compete until I can
you know, win it or what it's like, Well, unless
you're set in a world record, you're technically not as

(51:50):
strong is the best in the world, So everything underneath
that is meaningless in terms of the larger scale. It's
all personal to you. So just go do it if
you want to do it, and I don't do it
if you don't. But just make a decision here, like
like don't don't put off it, put off and put
off because you're just waiting for this magical moment to
come and you're gonna debut yourself to the internet, like

(52:11):
nobody cares. Like, you know, we're just old, Jim, That's
what it is. We're just getting old, man. We're back
in my day and you know, it's just a different generation.

Speaker 3 (52:20):
Like but it is.

Speaker 2 (52:21):
It's right though, It's just we're just old. It's okay.

Speaker 1 (52:23):
I mean you're not even that old, but but but
you you were around when the olds were younger than
they are now.

Speaker 2 (52:33):
No, Yeah, but I mean I am I am. I
like I find myself more and more and more feeling
my age. I don't mean that physically, I feel really
good physically. I just mean that that my opinions on
things and how I speak more and more from this
perspective of I don't necessarily like the way things are going,

(52:53):
and I think they would be better a different way.
I didn't talk like that when I was younger. You know,
I have no interest in hearing new music. I'm not
against it. I just don't care. Don't care. You know,
if I got an hour car drive, I'm gonna listen
to a podcast first, maybe news radio second, and then
third a playlist that I made probably ten years ago

(53:13):
on iTunes, Like those are my choices. Yeah, it's not
whatever else happens to be on just not gonna do
it well.

Speaker 1 (53:19):
Not to put Sea Bass on the spot, but bring
yourself up. He's not gonna be able to see you.
But put yourself on camera here, yes, sir, And what's
your take? Do you do you get where they're coming from?
Or do you get where we're coming from?

Speaker 4 (53:37):
Honestly, I will say that when I was the strongest
is when I was working in with like for example,
Matt and them, Like I would literally train with people
around me that. I mean first they would hype me up.
They're like, all right, you got this, Like this five
hundred pound squad easy. I saw a four eighty five
move like nothing, so five hundred should be easy. I

(53:59):
think people should just work in together, pusn't it saves
more space for other people to work out that. That's
like my main thing where I have seen it too,
where three people on a squad rack they have the
same exact weight, and they're all squating at the same time,
and they're all using their own yeah, and I like
go up to one of them, I'm like, why don't

(54:20):
you just working with that person? And they're like, well,
my my rack height, And I'm like, you can just
switch the rack height.

Speaker 1 (54:26):
Have you been to a meeting?

Speaker 4 (54:27):
Yeah, I'm like, that's what they're made for. And they're like, well,
I just don't want to diserve like the time that
they're gonna take to And I'm just like, what that
makes no sense?

Speaker 1 (54:36):
Yeah, but that makes literally no sense. It speeds, I
mean to a certain extent, it speeds up the cadence
of lifting.

Speaker 4 (54:42):
Yeah, but you can be like, hey, I'm gonna go
in five minutes, right, and take your five minutes exactly.

Speaker 1 (54:47):
Back in the day, I mean back in the day,
it was like three or four frickin hours that you
were you were at the gym. But it wasn't because
any particular lift took so long. It's that like between
exercises you would like, you know, talk about what you're
gonna do next and chat up each other, and that

(55:09):
was the social part of it, you know it. It
doesn't take longer to lift in a group. The lifting part,
the community part does suck up more time, for sure.

Speaker 4 (55:20):
But I will say, yeah, we've had people in here
staying for like five six hours and they're just talking
for like three.

Speaker 1 (55:28):
Yeah, it happens. It happens, and that's fine. I don't
care about that. People can hang out far as they
need to, as long as they're as long as they're
paid up, I don't care.

Speaker 2 (55:36):
Yeah, right, but but you know, like so the interesting
thing too is like sea bass, like what you're talking
about with like the weights, like they're all the same weight,
Like when we squat on Fridays as a group. We
have one model lift. That's it. That's the only adjustable,
quickly adjustable rack we have. We have a Commo rack,
but it's not a compact so you don't have the

(55:56):
levers where you can just pin it and adjust it.
You have to do it kind of old school with
a slide out pin, so you can't do it under
load essentially. And then we have a power rack. Those
are kind of our three rack options that we have.
So we have one modo lift, So in terms of
adjusting the rack or the height of the bar, that's
your only way to do in a group. And we
will have guys when they first start, you know, saying, well,

(56:18):
I'm not squatting eight or nine hundred pounds a day,
And you know what, Cam or Tom and I've never
squatted that squad seven hundred pounds, you know pretty good,
that's not that. But you know what we always tell
them is like, we didn't use to squat this either,
And when we started, we were working out with guys
who were squatting way more than us and it made
us better. So we're all lifting weights anyway. Who cares

(56:39):
if we lift a plate or two off the bar
and pick it up and down and over and over.
That's why there's a group of us. Like, if you're
about to lift, you get ready for your lift. We'll
load the weight. We're lifting weights anyway. If I do
fifteen extra bicep curls picking a forty five from the
floor up to the bar and back down again, heaven forbid,
my arms get a little bit stronger, Like it's not
gonna affect my squad, Like it's just it's just it's

(57:01):
just this. I don't again, I don't. I think it's
this mentality, and I do think it's specific to the
generation behind uh, behind me, of this like isolationism of
like everything kind of stays within you. And again, like
to your point, Jim, you can be social. It's not
like you're necessarily anti social, but it's like everything is
just kind of contained within you. Like your music and

(57:22):
like what you're listening to, Like I want to listen
to my music, I want to do on my equipment,
I want to do what my coach has to say.
And there's just not a lot of room to for
variation of any kind. There's just not a lot of
room for it. And it's it's almost like variation creates
anxiety in those people. It's like, oh, I get anxious
thinking about have to live with somebody else. I get
anxious thinking about not having my thing or doing it

(57:44):
on my time. And it's like, well, that's that's life.

Speaker 1 (57:47):
Like that's okay, it's good still over there. Yeah about
the anxiety part, Yeah, I think that's they just get
like that now.

Speaker 4 (57:56):
Whenever I'm training around people, I just kind of hey,
even if they're racks open, I'm like, hey, can I work.

Speaker 1 (58:01):
In with you? Yeah? And uh sure, And I'm like
I bet, I just I think we I don't know.
I don't know the answer to how to, how to
how to make it different than it is. I don't
I don't started forcing them, just start forcing them. I'm sorry,
you're working in with none of these other rights available
right now? That one is the one that's available.

Speaker 3 (58:20):
Use that.

Speaker 1 (58:21):
Yeah. We had, like we had three monolips in the
in the the sort of peak of the st days
in this building, and people still worked in together. It
was like and it didn't, like you said, it didn't
matter that you had to unload and reload bars. It's
like who cares?

Speaker 3 (58:39):
Who?

Speaker 1 (58:40):
Who cares? Yeah? Unless you do what I did. One
time and pull a plate off forgetting that there was
a quarter in front of it and dropped it right
on my foot. That was bad, But in general it's fine,
you know, in general, it's a good thing.

Speaker 2 (58:58):
Well, we'll see best. I don't know you, and if
you're hanging out with Jim, that means I'd like to
know you. So that's number one. But number two, you
know you can fix this. But just starting a YouTube
channel and just like what's the guy? What's the guy?
Anatotally the janitor lifter guy. So you start your own
YouTube channel where all you do is work, walk up
to people in the gym and ask to work in

(59:18):
with them and just film it. Just see what happens.
I guarantee you it will be a massive hit. The
reactions of people when you just randomly walk up and
say can I work in with you? Like that content
would be incredible.

Speaker 1 (59:28):
It go viral.

Speaker 4 (59:29):
Yeah, you like mic them up, you have like a
conversation literally just like an interview.

Speaker 1 (59:33):
Yeah yeah, but.

Speaker 2 (59:35):
You just walk up. You just ambush them. Sola Bor
and Coencile just walk up to just ambush them, Hey
can I work in with you? And like they're like
doing like seated bicep curls or something like, Yeah, man,
just see what happens. Sure, I'd watch it. I'm just
saying i'd watch it.

Speaker 4 (59:50):
I'd be curious to see that the one viewers.

Speaker 1 (59:53):
That's a pretty good idea. Well, we have grabbed you
for for a good bit now, and I appreciate you
coming on. Where can people find you?

Speaker 2 (01:00:06):
Yeah, you know, I'll just say this. I will go
as long as you guys want to go anytime. Well, well,
I'm just saying this is never This is never a
chore for me. This is never a thing to do
am I to do list for me. This is something
that gives me energy when when you asked me to

(01:00:28):
do this, I'm energized by this. This, This will carry
me through the rest of the day and then some
because we've talked about this before. But you know, you
and Mike are some of the absolute best people I've
met since I've done this, specifically in terms of training
and kind of speaking more on a on a larger
level than just my own gym way back in the day.

(01:00:51):
And there's not enough of our connection and there's not
enough time for it, and so anytime we get to
make it and we have excuse to put it on
a podcast. I'm one hundred percent down for if anybody
will well, I'm just I'm miss being honest. I mean,
it's it's the again you sound old. The older I
get back in my day, The older I get, the

(01:01:15):
more value and importance I have for really good relationships
because you start to understand how rare it is and
you start to appreciate it more. And that's one hundred
percent the case for me and you and Mike are
at the top of that list. So thank you for
having me on. I'll do it as much as you
guys want, as much as your listeners will allow, and

(01:01:38):
then it's really easy find mean, it's just shake up
dot w dot Ross on Instagram. I don't do TikTok,
I don't do anything else. That's the only thing I
do cool.

Speaker 4 (01:01:47):
Says I'm Sebastian underscore brand blon Ig.

Speaker 1 (01:01:51):
I am at aj McDaniel though social media. The show,
it's fifty percent facts for percent is the word and
fifty is just numbers. Fifty percent Facts is a speaker
Prime podcast association with Heart Media on the Obscure Celebrity Network,
and I think Mike's going to be back on the
next episode. We'll see what happens hang on Jacon