Mission-driven Fitness | Guest Kevin Meier (@purebullfit) - 50% Facts with Silent Mike & Jim McD

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
And we're live right all right. This is Jim and
I am continuing my series of just talking to people
that I want to talk to on this podcast without
I held a lot of agenda beyond that. And I've
got Kevin with me today. Kevin just kind of nutshell

(00:31):
who you are and what you're doing right now.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
I was tempted to go Mike Myers from so I
married an axe murderer, A nutshell. I've been a nutshell.
I'm Kevin. I'm a former marine. I've worked in video
game development before I figured out what I wanted to
do with my life. When a strong man coach by
the name of Scott Brangle from East Coast West Coast

(00:58):
strength Conditioning saved my life. And then I've been since
then passionately pursuing attempting to help folks live longer, better
quality lives through incorporating activity, pushing back against the nonsense
of the fitness industry, learning my lessons from that, you know,
becoming the thing you hate. And now I'm moving forward

(01:18):
attempting to turn my community into a nonprofit organization that
will help people everywhere live longer, better quality lives through
providing low and no cost resources so that they can
do that.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
Actually, before we jump into all of that, let me
ask you the question about low or no. Yeah, there's
always an impulse to be able to provide something at
such minimal costs or no cost. But there's also a
feeling that if somebody doesn't pay just a little bit
for something, you know, like five bucks or whatever, they

(01:54):
don't value it as much. Do you? How do you
feel about that?

Speaker 2 (01:58):
So I think that there are multiple avenues of learning,
and that there are multiple avenues of investment. I have
run into that been coaching for about twelve years now,
since before I actually left Blizzard Entertainment, which is a
funny story we might get into that. And I did

(02:18):
it for free. Initially people didn't value it as much.
I started to charge people valued it more than I
started making decisions based off what is the minimum amount
I can charge to comfortably live doing just this, And
then with the economy the way that it was the time,
how that fluctuates that quickly it became very quickly apparent

(02:39):
that it wasn't an intelligent way to live. When you know,
training is one of the first things people are going
to cut out in anxious times. So I've really. And
I also, you know, when you make something your job,
you love it less. So I can either have a
mission or I can have a job. And I have
elected to take a mission. And my job is to

(03:01):
work at a nonprofit international preparatory school. So I work
with students every day that pays the bills. That makes
me happy. I like those interactions. But going back to
answer the question specifically, getting people, and it's usually on
a one on one basis to be invested effort wise,
goal wise. These things can overcome the not valuing it

(03:24):
because it's free, but it's also one of those things
where if you don't have it and you need it
and you can't afford it, that is the absolute worst
reason on the planet, worst obstacle on the planet. Money
shouldn't never be the one barrier between you and becoming

(03:45):
healthier and getting control of your life and all the
other great things that can come from being more physically active.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
Yeah, no, I would, I would agree with you. I
just like one example kind of from my life is,
you know, back in the st days, there was a
point at which it became free, and to me, that's
that's when the cohesion started to come apart, right because
it was too easy to be involved on a casual

(04:11):
basis and not be there for I mean, but before that,
when people were paying you, there was almost always somebody
to train with who was interested in training with you,
and people would show up to two meets to help out,
you know, spot load judge, and and it became much

(04:32):
harder and you have to start saying, well, to get free,
then you have to be able to to to bring
something else to the table. And and while that was
a good notion, it still just was never quite the
same after that. After the point that it became free,
you know, people just could could drop in and out

(04:53):
for months at a time. And not that that doesn't
happen in the paid world, because I can tell you
it's owning a gym that certainly happens to put the
on hold or whatever or whatever.

Speaker 2 (05:03):
But so I think one of the ways that we
can get past that looking at it from a nonprofit
community point of view instead of a movement that is
also a business sort of thing, is that you can
expect people to contribute into other people's lives. So once
you build connections between people, there's investment and it's reciprocal.

(05:27):
So if I do a go fit yourself challenge, which
is one of the things that I intend to do
and I get I don't know plint numbers out of
thin air, one hundred people to participate in that. They
go through that challenge together, they form bonds, they continue
to support each other. At the end of the day,
it doesn't matter if they are if they have perfect attendance,
because very much part of the lesson is falling off

(05:48):
the wagon and getting back on. Yeah, if you go
through a fitness or a life change, or you change
your body and you don't learn how to fail and
then get back up and continue to go, you didn't
learn all the lessons that you need to that process.

Speaker 1 (06:02):
Yeah, I would agree with that. This type of challenge,
is it more of a strength focus strength and health focus?
Is it? Is it like, is there a weight loss element.

Speaker 2 (06:13):
That you're you're seeing or it's community focused? So what
the community needs at the time will drive what the
challenges are. That's again the beautiful thing about a nonprofit
is that the community owns it. Not the person who's driving,
and not the person who's can you know, making it
all work, Not the board, not any of the rest
of it. The community determines what they need and what

(06:34):
the responsive to. It is my job, and anybody who
decides to get on the train and help me, it
will be our job to flex to what it is
that the community wants to do, because ultimately, if we
can just push the direction into more activity, then so
much is going to solve itself in. I am not
betrothed to a single sport. I don't like bodybuilding. It's

(06:57):
not my thing. I will never want to be a bodybuilder.
But if that is the mechanism through which the most
amount of people are going to get involved and start
moving forward, then I will have an event that helps
them do that, and I will bring in professionals that
will judge and monitor and give advice. If it's powerlifting,
we'll do that. Short of you know, competitive cocaine snorting.

(07:23):
I'm going to go with what the community wants because
what I want at the end of the day is
a healthier community that is less dependent on medical intervention
just to live.

Speaker 1 (07:33):
Yeah, I think that that's you know, And I think
that I've been banging this drum a lot lately, and
I'm trying to reinforce every time I see somebody say
it online that like, it's not a short term commitment
that we're talking about. It's it's not something that you
can do for twelve weeks and then you're done. It's

(07:54):
and it it runs counter to like everything about our
food culture, everything about our our our kind of lack
of exercise culture. You know that. And I haven't personally
experienced this, but people complain about like, oh, I go
to to a family event and I'm not eating everybody

(08:15):
else's food, so they're you know, I brought my own
food because I'm on a particular plan or whatever, and
people criticize or make fun of me or whatever. I've
never experienced that, but I guess it does happen, and
it's just sort of a product of I think it's
like I think it's like guilt and shame on the

(08:35):
on the on the the part of the people who
are who want to complain and want to want to
to other people who are just doing it differently. It's like,
this is just this is just how I need to
do things. I you know, this is no no criticism
of what you're doing. Is just this is what I
need to do for me. You know.

Speaker 2 (08:54):
That's part of it. But part of it is Also,
people need to be more accountable about the level of
adversity that they allowed to be a preventative obstacle in
their life. A couple of difficult conversations a year is
not a good excuse not to be taking care of yourself. Yeah, frankly,

(09:17):
And it's an opportunity instead of like in the one
or two times it's ever happened to me, where I
was making healthy choices and you know, some well meaning
grandma came over to me. It was like, oh, no,
you need to you need this peacan pi, you have
to have your second slice. Well, right now, I've got
this goal that I'm after. And while I really really
enjoyed the little bit that I have, I've really got

(09:38):
to stop now. And then sometimes that's planning seeds. My
mom was egregiously overweight. My mom was five foot four
and almost three hundred pounds until she was seventy seventy one. Yep,
she was walking with a walker. My mom finally got
sick of it. I guess, you know, impending thoughts of

(09:58):
mortality finally got through because sometimes that's what it takes. Rshally,
you need to go on, go on, buddy, And she
said Kevin ad Simelt, so we started to work together.
Mom is now at one hundred and ninety six pounds
as of this morning, just came back from seeing her.
While that is still very heavy for someone who is
five foot four, she doesn't walk with a walker. She

(10:19):
can scoot around for at seventy five years old, for
up to a mile and a half before she really
needs to sit down to rest. She goes to comic
con conventions, dresses, up sells crocheted dragons that she made.
She got one hundred and ten. She'd go into a
comic con the middle of the next month. She will
sell all of those crocheted dragons. She's a little hustler
and she's got energy. And so it's like even with

(10:42):
an incredibly late start, even with an incredibly high number
she was two hundred and seventy one pounds, the difference
can be made once we strip away the excuses that
I was talking about, the judgments, and we get the investment.
For my mom, it took a fear of death to
do it, and unfortunately, that's the level is going to
take for a lot of people. A close call, a

(11:03):
family member dying of a heart attack when they're forty
four years old.

Speaker 1 (11:06):
Things like that.

Speaker 2 (11:08):
I think I may have lost track of the topic conversation.
I've begun to ramble.

Speaker 1 (11:11):
I apologize, No, you know you're not. Actually, I think
you're very much on point, because it's the issues like
what is what drives people? And how do you explain
it to other folks? And it's like, well, you know what,
I feel like that I will not I will not
live out my expected lifespan if I do not make

(11:31):
these changes in my life. And I hope you understand.

Speaker 2 (11:35):
I promised my wife that I would live to one
hundred and five. She came up with that number. I
don't know how I'm going to do it, but I'm
going to try. So I've got to be a little
more on point and a little healthier than other people.
The original goal was ninety seven, but now I've got
to add another Well, I would hope that all your

(11:55):
harms way days are behind you, and then that's it.

Speaker 1 (11:58):
It's more likely that.

Speaker 2 (12:01):
Statistically, I at my best chance of survival right now.

Speaker 1 (12:09):
Yeah, So I guess let's backtrack into origins. You said
you were in the Marines, and what kind of what
time period was that, and what sort of thing were
you facing then?

Speaker 2 (12:24):
So I was in the service for two distinct periods.
I joined originally in two thousand and then my second
day on my first duty station was nine eleven. Things
got very difficult. I thought it was a prank. At first,
I thought they were hazing us. They were not hazing us.
It was a It was a bad deck. But then
I got in two thousand and five in an attempt

(12:45):
to save my first marriage. Spoiler alerted did not work,
and then I came. I went back in in two
thousand and seven. So two thousand and five to two
thousand and seven I was out and then I went
back in. My second period is the impactful period to
me because in the first period I was just working

(13:05):
on aircraft. It was busy and it was hard. But
I wanted to do something, you know, at the time,
to make me feel more like a man. So I
ended up getting a job where I was liaised to
the National Security Agency and we prosecuted the anti narcotic
antic human trafficking mission out of Mexico predominantly, but also

(13:28):
Central and South America. And that was a significant ramp
up in responsibility, scope of mission and from what I
was doing before I went from turning wrenches and making
sure birds flew and landed and fixing them when they
broke to much more, much more important work that unfortunately

(13:53):
exposed me to the worst that human I hasked to offer,
and the reason that my career ended in twenty twelve.
It wasn't because of like I didn't get like shot
by a cartel member or something like that. It was
a dumb freak accident that caused permanent nerve damage on
the left side of my body. We have this thing
in the Marine Coops called MCMAPP. It's the Marine Corps

(14:14):
Martial Arts Program, and we have an hour of sustainment
each week that we have to do. I was an uki,
which if you do a kido or many martial arts,
Japanese martial arts, you know that is the person who
the technique is demonstrated on, and we were demonstrating the
neck crank, which is a pain compliance maneuver, not in

(14:35):
fancy terms. You grab him by the chin in the
back of the head and you turn real hard and
it hurts, so it makes you go in the direction
that you're like, I'm not a small dude. I'm At
the time, I was six y three and two hundred
and nineteen pounds right now, two hundred and seventy.

Speaker 1 (14:54):
And I went down.

Speaker 2 (14:55):
The last thing I remember, kind of comically is when
done correctly was a last thing I heard, and I
woke up in the hospital, so obviously it was not
done correctly. Apparently ruptured six seven in my neck. Yeah, yeah,
causing permanent damage nerve damage in my left arm. I
have about thirty percent reduced sensation there. I have difficulty

(15:17):
holding onto things or letting go of them, both physically
and emotionally. I tried to really that hard about it,
because you know, if we really talk about this, some
of it's gonna get dark. Yeah, you know, I've got
in addition to that, I have for other herniated discs
one of my thoracic spine in three my lumbar spine,

(15:37):
and they're fairly large. If you know anything about herniated discs,
they range from eight millimeters to eleven millimeters. So I've
got a lot of pressure on my psiatic nerve on
the left side.

Speaker 1 (15:46):
So I have.

Speaker 2 (15:47):
Reduced sensation in my left leg as well, and it's
it's quite painful. But because the Marine Corps also took
a kidney. Yeah, I was a heat casualty. My organ
started shutting down and only one of my kidneys came
back online. Oh yeah, that was also during training. Not
even a cool story. We didn't bring enough water and

(16:09):
we went into the buttes in central Texas in the
middle of summer when it was like one hundred and
five degrees and I was hospitalized for dehydration. So I
can't even take pain meds, so I live every single
day in the kind of chronic pain I wouldn't wish
on my worst enemy. And that led into me being

(16:30):
medically retired and moving on to work at Blizard Entertainment,
which is a video game company. But having this massive
impactful mission that I thought was like doing the world
good in retrospect, maybe not as much as I thought,
but this very important mission that only sixty five other
Marines were doing at the time, I had to take

(16:52):
it away, and my purpose and my feeling of capability
I could hardly walk around. All these other stuff caught
up with me, and I started not want to be
on Earth anymore. Some self destructive behavior, some destructive behavior
that hurt people who didn't deserve it, and I was

(17:12):
in a bad place. And that's when I decided. I
got goaded into attending the Blizzard boot Camp, which I
made fun of the name because I went to Marine
Corps recruit training. I promise you, whatever they had, it's.

Speaker 1 (17:23):
Got nothing, got nothing on it. Yeah?

Speaker 2 (17:26):
Nothing. So I show up to this thing and I
can hardly move around, and I tell Scott Brangle, who
I don't even think Blizzard understood who they hired one
of the very competitive, very well known middleweight in strong Man.
He runs California's Strongest Man. Like this guy rubs elbows
with Brian Shaw and Martin Leasy's and like some really

(17:47):
big big names because he runs events that they compete at.
This dude is doing the boot camps for a video
game company. Like that just boggled my mind. It kind
of doesn't track, it doesn't, but he loves doing it,
so he's He holds Blizzard's Strongest Troll every year, where
a bunch of us who buy in work out really hard,

(18:10):
and then he holds a mini strong Man competition to
determine who the strongest at Blizer Entertainment is and the
winningest I cannot even say I am the winningest person.
Oh that's a Renee Coyter equal size to me, very big,
very athletic dude just kept winning over and over and over,
agetting God bless him. We have been in a quiet
competition ever since. Well I know, we follow each other

(18:32):
on Facebook only to see where our lifts are at
right now so that we can compare, because we've never
like chilled and hung out. We're friendly, but it has
always been about like, okay, how much you squad right now,
how much you're deadlifted. But that, yeah, that saved my
life because I went to him and I said, make

(18:53):
a long story short. I said, hey, I'd like to
do some pressing. I really can't do anything with my
lower body. I've got this problem. I've got that problem.
And bless his heart, he's old school. He literally looked
at me and said fuck that camere and he grabbed
me by the ear literally again, and he drug me
over to the squad rack and he assessed my form,
and in three years I went from not being able

(19:14):
to complete one single body weight squat to squatting over
four hundred pound At the time, I've squatted five point forty.
Now as a disabled person, I've overhead pressed two hundred
and fifty five strict press. I've bench pressed four hundred
and twenty five four to fifteen for a pause. I'm
still working on a six hundred pound deadlift. But for

(19:34):
a guy who's can only feel half of his body
and he's got significant spine damage, this man saved my life.
He gave me a purpose. He let me come and
do camps with him. When things got especially hard and
I was no longer in a position to afford the training,
he let me train for free. He just instilled in
me a value of accomplishing big goals by breaking them

(19:58):
down into small, manageable pieces like mesa cycle to microcycle,
and just taught me how to do it. And he
gave me such a love for it that I wanted
to give that feeling to other people. And that is
the feeling that I have been chasing ever since.

Speaker 1 (20:13):
What is the like? Neurologically? How does that? How did
you overcome those things with it? Like just a very
conscious thought of about what the muscles should be doing that?

Speaker 2 (20:25):
Oh, how do I squat not being able to feel
my leg?

Speaker 1 (20:27):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (20:28):
I think about my leg the entire time. It's like
the reverse of a phantom limb. I have it, but
I don't feel it. I don't not have it, but
I feel it, so I have to think about it,
and sometimes I collapse under the weight. That's why I
always use safety bars. I don't use spotters because I
might hurt somebody. In competition, I'm always nervous about it,

(20:50):
and even if I'm doing sub five hundred on a squat,
I will always ask for five people to spot because
I'm competing against able bodied people. I don't want that
to all back on some backspotter and to land on
him and break his legs personal one. So it's real
risk for me and I'm not going to put other
people at risk because of that. But I think about it.

(21:11):
I watch my knee on the way down, and I
watch what it's doing, and I think about what it's
supposed to do. And when I get to the bottom
part of it, I'll be frank with you. I hope,
I hope I stand up.

Speaker 1 (21:24):
That's all of us, really, but yeah, I get.

Speaker 2 (21:28):
But it's been a joy to find out what I'm
capable of. And you usually don't find out what you're
capable of until you don't have any other choice.

Speaker 1 (21:34):
So it was an.

Speaker 2 (21:36):
Important experience for me, and it started the process of
me going from thinking I wanted to die every single day,
defining a reason not to every day, to all these
years later. I mean I just finished a six month
course of extremely intensive PTSD specific therapy, to not wanting

(21:56):
to die, to not thinking that I deserve to not
continuing to exist because somebody has to pay for the
things that happened. Like that was a thought that kept
me alive for a while. As dark as that sounds.

Speaker 1 (22:07):
That's yeah, that is definitely dark. But I get it
the white people sometimes feel that way to listeners.

Speaker 2 (22:14):
I want to be really clear. I am not trying
to wax dramatic. I don't have a flock of eagles
seagulls haircut. You know this is this is not me like, oh,
my pain is so deep.

Speaker 1 (22:27):
I was.

Speaker 2 (22:28):
I went through the ringer and I discovered that my
silence was one of the things that nearly killed me.
So I am open about it so that other people
will be more comfortable talking to me. And that has worked.
So I talk very plainly and very matter of factly
about some of the dark places that have been in
some of the things that I have been through, in
the hope that that will embolden someone else to build
some inertia to get the help that I finally got

(22:48):
that finally made a difference in my life. So that's
that's the only reason I talk about it. I'm not
I don't need anybody's sympathy. I'm doing fine.

Speaker 1 (22:55):
Yeah. I think that people don't understand how prevalent PTSD is,
and it's really a spectrum that's white. That's that's a thing.
Like I didn't really understand it until until my best

(23:15):
friend passed away, and I was like, you know, I
was there with him, like immediately before and then after
he died of cancer and just interactions with his family.
I just kept reliving over and over and over again,
and I still can't if I think about it too much.
And those are not I mean, they were traumatic, but

(23:36):
it wasn't like I was on a battlefield. I wasn't
nobody was shooting at me. I wasn't, you know, I
was in the military hospital, but I was not in
the military. And and it was I mean, six six
months awful, really awful. And then both my parents died
and so I sort of a distraction there was like
you know, uh, and I didn't have as much PTSD

(24:00):
with them, as I did with my best friend doing
but I never really thought about being a candidate for
that before. And just as an aside, I've been recently
been reading about people who do not think visually, so

(24:23):
like if you say apple, they don't picture an apple
in their mind. They may have some other other other
sensation associated with it, but they don't get a visual image.
And apparently those people are less prone to PTSD because
there they don't replicate what it does. Yeah, I was,

(24:45):
I was shocked and then but at the same time like, oh,
light bulb moment with.

Speaker 2 (24:51):
That, it's a rough one and it is a spectrum.
I've served with folks who who were not exposed to
any of the things that I was, that are not
doing as well as I am because we have different
weak points. Sometimes for some folks, I know a lot

(25:12):
of folks that this applies to. It is the sense
of pressure, even if nothing ever happened, that erodes away
at their the resilience, and then they end up having
a perpetual anxiety response. They become hyper vigilant, they become
a gooraphobic.

Speaker 1 (25:27):
It's rough.

Speaker 2 (25:29):
The world sucks, and it sucks a lot more acutely
than the average person, particularly in this country, is aware of.
There are some really ugly and hard truths out there.
And I used to say, and I don't know if
I still believe it entirely, but I used to say,
to experience those things will cost you one of two things,

(25:49):
your sanity or your soul. You have to choose. And
I chose to keep my soul, and I lost my sanity.
Whereas some people are like, no, this is fine, this
is okay, this is the way the world is, I
think they lost their soul because there's no way you
should be able to look at that level of human suffering, brutality,
atrocity and not be moved.

Speaker 1 (26:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:11):
I don't think that's a normal response.

Speaker 1 (26:13):
No, I agree with you. Well, I mean it just
it's a lack of empathy, a lack of being able
to see yourself in somebody else's position and and and
and empathize with that. Yeah. I think that people don't
understand how how depression and anxiety work either, and how

(26:36):
a lot of people will have depressive episodes or anxiety
or whatever. They do not really have a trigger.

Speaker 2 (26:42):
It just it just happens.

Speaker 1 (26:44):
Yeah, Yeah, people, it's something that people don't don't really get.
They expect this like, oh, you know, and like I'm
sure that everyone on the outside of your life as
you have gone through these difficult times, look at you
and don't understand, like, well, this guy seems like he's
got his shit together, and he seems like, you know,

(27:06):
he seems like he's I mean, you're you have a
very like kind of squared away, commanding presence, not just
because you're a big guy, but because you just seem
very level and and people don't understand that there's just
a lot more going on inside that you don't have

(27:27):
control over.

Speaker 2 (27:29):
Yeah, it's a lot of internal screaming and outward calm.
That's like one of the early steps of getting your
shit together, because it wasn't even always that good. Yeah,
now I actually experience the calm that I portray, whereas
up until you're a year and a half ago, that
was definitely not the case. Sometimes people think that I'm

(27:53):
unfriendly in public. It's just that I am experiencing every
single stimulus. The light feels like it's pressure on my skin,
the sound feels like it's beating me up. Uh, And
then people want me to smile and be friendly and
I try. I got a pretty good mask, but it's difficult.
And that's why, like fighting a mission has been so

(28:15):
important for me, because existing is not enough. I am
tired of existing. But if I have a mission, I'll
keep going.

Speaker 1 (28:22):
That makes sense. Well, also, you promise your wife to
you lived one hundred and five for the missions.

Speaker 2 (28:26):
Yeah, because she's a witchy woman, she'll like summon my
spirit back. I'll hear about it. No, there will be
no rest, no crossing over.

Speaker 1 (28:38):
You just just beetlejuicing there. Bro.

Speaker 2 (28:46):
I'm if I do die before she does, which is
what she's really afraid of, I think she will decorate
the house with my bones. And I'm not saying that
to be funny. I think that's actually what she'll do.
She'll find to use for my femurs. My skull will
be bowl or something. She'll put some flowers in it,
you know. My hip bones will hold flowers or whatever
the hell. Like, that's what she does with all the

(29:07):
other bones she collects. And this is a woman who
stops screamed at me early in our relationship. Driving down
the street, she goes stop, I'm like, what's happening? I
think car crash. I think it's something terrible. No, she
saw a rotting coyote carcass on the side of the
road and she wanted it, so she jumped out, grabbed it,
put it in my trunk, and we took it home.

(29:28):
And to this day, eight years later, I keep trash bags,
rubber gloves, and some various tools in the trunk in
case that happens again. And I know, if I ever
get pulled over a copskin, I think I'm a serial
murderer just for the road killed dude.

Speaker 1 (29:44):
That's great.

Speaker 2 (29:44):
That still in my house. She processed that corpse. That
skull is in my house with crystals and flowers and
crab in it.

Speaker 1 (29:52):
This this reminds me a little bit of a story
about my my wife's parents when they were in high
school together. Her mom was trying to do like a
science project about cat's eyeballs, so her her dad went
out and you know, found a.

Speaker 2 (30:13):
Straight cat, found some cat's eyeballs fell off a truck.

Speaker 1 (30:16):
Yeah, exactly exactly. It's like, you know, the things you'll
do to win the love of a good woman or something,
I guess, I mean.

Speaker 2 (30:28):
Gosh, I would try really hard to find an alternative.

Speaker 1 (30:30):
To yeah, well, you know, he didn't have the same
value on small animals that that the rest of us do.
Ever ever, in his entire entire life, he's been gone
for a while. But yeah, it's one of those like
family shakes their head at itch, going, oh man, but

(30:55):
it sounds like your wife would be really taking a
whole like step up on the little like you know,
the little amulet that that people wear with ashes of
loved ones if you barred around the house, that's a
totally different level.

Speaker 2 (31:11):
My ashes, if any part of me is burned up,
and if anyone is responsible for my premature death, will
be used as war paint as she goes on the
old war path. And I'm not making that up. That
is what I was told to my face. I think
it was supposed to be romantic.

Speaker 1 (31:30):
Well in its own way, it's a way yeah, no,
I joke.

Speaker 2 (31:34):
I love I love that woman. I would like to
tell a story about her real quick, if that's okay,
Absolutely all right. So a couple of years ago, November
actually were coming up on a three year anniversary of it,
there was a domestic dispute up the street from my
old apartment, and I talked about it a little bit,

(31:55):
not too specifically. I released a couple of videos saying, hey,
I almost got shot last night, and this is how
I'm dealing with it. We heard someone scream he hit me.
So at midnight or nearer enough, my wife and I
went running down the stairs. I look up the stairs
at her, seeing that she's coming along with me, and
she's got a baseball bat, and I said, call the cops. No,
I said, call the cops, and she grabbed the baseball

(32:17):
bat and I said, you can't call the cops with
the baseball bat. She looked at the bat and then
grabbed her phone and followed. So we go up the
street and there's like eight people. One guy's on the ground.
His foot looks wrong. Apparently that got broken in the altercation.
Some people were drunk at the bar. One tried to
follow the other one home ended up fender bendering them,
and then they pulled. Everybody pulled into the dude's driveway

(32:38):
and the guy that lives there ended up smacking his girlfriend.
Just the short of the story. I didn't know any
of that when I arrived so on my street, in
my neighborhood. I am just a nice guy. Who solves problems,
helps you move stuff into your house. If I see
you've got a moving van outside, I'm going to help
you that kind of thing. So I have, you know,
a little bit of cred. I decided this to spend it,

(33:00):
so I start trying to talk everybody down. Once the
story comes out that the guy had hit his girlfriend,
one of the gentlemen runs in the house, comes outside
with a shotgun and isn't pointing it at the other guy,
the guy who allegedly hit his girlfriend, but he's pointing
at him through me because I'm interposed between them. He's

(33:21):
got it at my back and he's trying to get
around me, and I'm trying to calm him down. The
cops have already been called by this point. In response,
the drunk guy goes into the back of his car
and he pulls out a glock nineteen. I recognize it.
I've seen lots of them, and he racks it and
he starts pointing at the other guy, also once again
through me. So I'm standing between two angry and he
raided people with guns, and I'm trying to talk him down.

(33:43):
So I'm staying calm, and I look at my wife
any other person, let alone a woman who is only
armed with a baseball bat that I know would have
got the fuck out of Dodge. I look over at
her and she is like hunched down, looking at me
intently like a hound dog. She's waiting for me to stay.
Sick them because she's going to attempt to fight two

(34:04):
guys with guns with a baseball bat. That is my wife.
That is who my wife is. That is how down
she is. And in that moment, I knew, like we've
been together for a while, we'd had some difficulties. We
wondered if we were going to stay together. At that point,
that is the moment that I knew this was mine.
This was the one that I wanted. She was down,
she was terrified, but she was down. She was going
to be there with me no matter what happened. So

(34:27):
I eventually resolved the situation before the cops got there
by telling them I turned around the guy with the
shotgun first and I said, the cops are coming. This
is Bengor, Maine. They don't get action. They're not going
to stop and ask questions. They're gonna think, oh god,
I can get a shiny ribbon or an award they're
gonna shoot you because you have a gun, and they
will be able to justifiably shoot you. You are going

(34:48):
to die if you don't calm down. I told the
other kid the same, so they put their weapons away.
The cops arrived. I gave a report of what happened.
Turns out the kid who smacked his girlfriend and had
the clock, he was actually part of there. He was
a probationary officer, so he had gone through like they
knew him by name. They immediately started trying to like
shape like you know what happened. So I said, you know,

(35:11):
he pointed a gun. He says, well, did he point
it at the ground as officer? He pointed it through
me at that gentleman over there. And I had to
like be really specific because I heard them kind of
trying to like couch the conversation to protect their their
probationary officer. I don't know if he's still with them.
I don't know how that worked out, but it did

(35:34):
leave me with serious concerns about the fidelity of the
police force here in Bangormain. And if anybody from Bangormain's
watching this, from the police force, what's the report looked like?
I would love to know.

Speaker 1 (35:46):
Yeah, yeah, no kidding, they're not always bringing their best
let's just say no.

Speaker 2 (35:53):
No, Like, it's an important job. It's very difficult. I
know it's politicized at this point, but I have family
members who were in law enforcement. What I did in
the Marine Corps was adjacent to law enforcement. We helped
the DEA, and you know, we took care of it
on the other side of the border. The DEA took
care of it on this side of the border border patrol.
I know that there are good men and women who

(36:15):
serve in those functions that are doing it for the
right reasons. And it's really hard with the narrative being
that if you are associated all with law enforcement, you're evil.
I don't buy into that. I have practical experience. If
you don't, then I know more than you and you
shouldn't be telling me how to feel. There are some
good people. There are some real crappy people though, too. Yeah,

(36:35):
and they're the bigger problem.

Speaker 1 (36:37):
Yeah, I mean I think it's the power differential.

Speaker 2 (36:41):
Yeah, No, the power dynamic is absolutely it. Like, you
want to tell me that it's legal for you to
date an eighteen year old and you're thirty five years old. Okay,
it's still screwed up. Yeah, it's still met the power dynamic. Oh,
this person also is dependent on you financially. They don't
own anything. Oh, you encourage them not to bother to
get a job or a license. They just stay at home. Yeah,
that's healthy. I don't. I don't trust you anymore. Don't

(37:04):
care if it's technically legal. Dude, you could get me
going on and he's subject. I don't think I have
any other feelings than strong feelings.

Speaker 1 (37:17):
Well, that that's good. That's that. That That means that
you're thinking about a lot of things and and and
giving you yourself a moment to react to them, though
the same way that herschel there is reacting to the toy. Really,
it does have a dolphining effect back there.

Speaker 2 (37:34):
That he has one thought ever, and it is toy.
This is the first thing he wants in the morning,
because we take it away from him to night. This
is this is his only expression of joy. It's the
only way he understands happiness.

Speaker 1 (37:46):
But what you're saying is he's a dog.

Speaker 2 (37:50):
There are benefits to him being simple. He's not even
food motivated. If you put the toy in front of
him and his dinner. He's going for the toy.

Speaker 1 (37:57):
Oh wow.

Speaker 2 (37:58):
If we didn't take it from him, he wouldn't eat.
He's obsessive.

Speaker 1 (38:03):
That's uh, that's some commitment to the bit right there.

Speaker 2 (38:08):
Please.

Speaker 1 (38:10):
Yeah, uh, you are not the only person I've ever
met who is a video game character, but you're I
think the one that has been the most video game characters. Uh.
We you know, we we met in person at at
the Arnold a couple.

Speaker 2 (38:24):
Of years I remember, yeah, and.

Speaker 1 (38:26):
Had had a long and entertaining lunch the group of us,
and you were telling some of those stories, like what
what was your favorite part of that that experience.

Speaker 2 (38:38):
Honestly, my favorite part of that experience of Mike inviting
me out to lunch was how real you guys turned
out to be. Like not everybody that that you have
worked with in your past who has had very successful
careers in the space comes off as authentic or comes
off in the same way that they present themselves like

(39:01):
you guys do. I've always loved that about Mike. I
love to find that he was surrounded by people like him,
like yourself, who were just genuine human beings and recoil
from the facades. And the fakeness and the manufactured everything
that is what we do. It was very, very, very

(39:23):
rewarding for me to see somebody that I wanted to
believe in was actually who he presented himself to be.
I enjoyed that interaction so much. And if there's anything
that any of you guys need, it's like, I'm not
wearing this shirt today because we're talking. I love my
third free Barbell stuff. I love my good Company stuff.

(39:46):
I love what you guys do. I've been following Aviy
now for ever since we met at the Arnold. That
is a real athlete with like a good head on
her shoulders, and she's going to do, you know, great things.
She's going to drag people to success. That's the crap
I love to see. Even if Mike or you, or
or any of the folks uh in the crew never

(40:10):
get any credit for it, each and every life that
you have impacted in a positive way inspired them to
try a little harder, do a little bit more, be
a little bit more authentic. That's an a positive to
the world that you put in there, and I love
that energy. So that was my favorite part. The burger
was also really good.

Speaker 1 (40:27):
I was kind of more more talking about the experience
of being a video game camera.

Speaker 2 (40:32):
I love hearing it.

Speaker 1 (40:33):
I love hearing that that we are we are who
we appear to be. I don't think I have the
energy to not be who I am. The same is true, Mike,
But as you point out, like we have been associated
with people who are not exactly who they appear to be,
and being who we are, we kind of perpetuated that,

(40:57):
not in ourselves, but we we plan formed it. Let's
just say, you know, and and and that's that's just
a thing. It's just you know, it's it's something that
it's a situation I think about a lot, but I
don't really there's nothing not I can not anything I
can really do about it other than just continue to
be myself. And you know, I continue to this show

(41:20):
not because it makes any money, because it doesn't, but
just because it's it's a it's an expression. I've been
doing it for so long. You know, It's like, I
don't know where the stopping point is. I mean, this
show process, this show is coming up on on five
hundred episodes, and and I it's like, well, that could
be a natural stopping point, especially since I'm I'm you know,

(41:43):
holding down the floor by myself. But I'm actually enjoying
these conversations so much that I'll I will probably keep
going even if, like I've I've experienced a couple of
periods where I just needed to, you know, I just
needed to not do a show that week, I was
busy or whatever. And before it was like, you know,
I had somebody that I could just we can just
pull in and just talk about whatever, and that's the show.

(42:05):
And and this takes more effort than that. But like
I said, I'm enjoying it, and I'm I'm very very
carefully picking people that I think will be that I'll
have good conversations with it. I will want to know
what they have to say.

Speaker 2 (42:21):
I choose to take that as a compliment and appreciate it.
Do we answer your question. I think my favorite is
probably the last one. One of the other people that
helps save my life is Jessica Drew Johnson. She's a
cinematic artist at Blizzard Entertainment and her husband is one

(42:42):
of the managers in that department, if not the lead
of the department by this point, but it's hard to tell. Sorry, Seth,
I don't remember, but they make these awesome cinematics for
Blizzard Entertainment games World of Warcraft, StarCraft if one of
the things that they're really famous for is people loved
how much effort goes into the cinematics in between scenes
or at the beginning of the game. So if you're

(43:03):
in the audience out there and you've ever played, or
you've in the last few years have played World of
Warcraft and you were familiar with the black prints, oh,
his name is escaping me. You've seen my face. You've
seen my face every loading screen. Jessica asked if she

(43:23):
could take some pictures of my hair, so I sent
those and then she said, this is for a thing.
The next thing I know, my Facebook profile pick from
that time period is the loading screen of Dragonflight. Right
there in the center, that's my face with a big
hoop earring in it. One of the main NPCs that
sends you on your way and gives you your missions

(43:45):
is the son of the Dragon that you fought in Cataclysm,
and they used my likeness for all the scenes, my
curly hair, my pointed goatee at the time, the whole
nine yards. So that's probably my favorite one, the one
I find most problematic, which I don't know if I
want to admit on here there is a character who

(44:07):
is of a nationality that I am not that. If
you see me, especially with my hair in a bun,
and you look at my face and then you look
at that character's face, you're like, oh shit, that's Kevin.
And I remember having my face drawn by a particular
artist who I will spare you all. I'm not name
you in public, but you took my face and you

(44:28):
made it that character that I should not be because
there is no way I will be confused for that race,
for that character. I'm Scott's Irish and German. If I
say anymore, it will be very obvious what I'm talking about.
But you know, I told you guys mostly in confidence.
But yeah, it's happened a number of times.

Speaker 1 (44:46):
Yeah, yeah, I could get that. How that would be
a little uncomfortable for people to recognize it. And it's
like you didn't. This is not a decision you.

Speaker 2 (44:55):
Made, No, No, I would have shot that down if.

Speaker 1 (44:59):
Anybody nad Yeah, but you'd already like let them have
your likeness, right, So.

Speaker 2 (45:06):
Yep, I was just trying to make friends with the
art department because as a personnel manager. One of the
best things that you can do is have personal relationships
with all the disparate different apartment departments within a large
organization like that. So when you get an outstanding candidate
that doesn't necessarily have a clear fit, you can kind

(45:26):
of like go find a space for them, because some
people are worth investing in even if they don't have
the immediate qualifications on paper. Ali Ann, for instance, I
met at Bliuzcon. It was our convention, and they had
an amazing cosplay. But that's why I started talking to them,

(45:48):
and I turned out they had an amazing passion for
video games. They had managerial experience working at a chain
store that was perfully associated with video games. They understood
how production worked, so I got them in as a tester,
but they quickly moved to producer, and then they moved
to another company, and you know, a senior producer until

(46:11):
unfortunately the toxicity of the video game industry ruined it
for her. Because it's really toxic, it's really bad. I
can tell you from personal experience that the suit brought
against Blizzard Entertainment in twenty nineteen was well deserved, and
they did not cover everything that was problematic there. Everything
they said happened in the suit definitely happened. I witnessed

(46:34):
most of it myself. It was pretty bad. So I'm
glad to be out of that. But I'm also glad
that I had the opportunity because I never would have
met Scott. I never would have fell in love with
this idea of gifting people. You know, the independence and
the power that the self control that comes with physical activity.
How that can help you know your mental health, It

(46:55):
can help you get your life back on track. The
lessons you've learned in Iron can actually be translated, excuse me,
could be translated into basically any other aspect of your life.
It is the simplest place to learn them, is the
lowest stakes place to learn them, But they can be
applied to any other aspect of your life. So I
am grateful for the opportunity to have been there. I
have some great memories and great friends. One bit of

(47:18):
competition for an a, but yeah, it was. It was
ultimately a bad place to work, and I'm glad I'm
no longer there.

Speaker 1 (47:29):
So you're working with kids now, Yeah, And like, what's that?
How did that come about? And what's that like? For you.

Speaker 2 (47:37):
So this kind of fell into my lap. My folks
asked me to move home in twenty eighteen, and I did,
and I was puttering around. I was trying to find
things because I had been working in addiction recovery with
a place called the Orion House where they take folks
in and for up to like a year and a half,
you know, we take them from a you're not allowed

(47:58):
to go anywhere, to help them get a job, help
them develop skills, help them find a place and beat addiction.
And it was really worthwhile. I was really finding a
mission in that. But my mom said I need you,
so I came home, and when I did, I was
kind of puttering around aimlessly. I couldn't really find anything
like that here. I tried, you know, doing in home

(48:19):
care and stuff like that, but nothing was really clicking.
And then just to fill my summer, I asked my dad,
who was a finance director at the nonprofit International Preparatory School,
and he said, well, there's a bunch of stuff that
I need help with. Everybody wears so many hats, you know,
to get it done. My pop is HR finance director

(48:41):
and until very recently was the interim head of school
on top of all of his other responsibilities. And everybody
is like that, every teacher, every staff member has multiple duties.
So I came in and I started renovating the classrooms,
some basic skills that I got. I started doing some
minor electrical work, and then I helped my wife prepare
the dorms for the new kids to come in. And

(49:03):
then that turned into there was a whole group of kids,
and I'm doing it again this year. There was a
old group of kids that live out on a peninsula
that can't get to the school because we can't afford
to pay one hundred and thirty thousand dollars for a
single bus to make two trips a day, and every
year they add twelve to fifteen thousand dollars onto it.

(49:24):
It just got too expensive. So we got a couple
of vans and I go pick them up and that
is about six hours of driving total. Excuse me, that
is four hours of driving total this year. Originally, when
I was doing both sites, it was six to eight
hours driving every day, and then I moved into coaching

(49:47):
five nights a week. That's what I'm doing this year.
I predominantly coach the international students, and the high potential
athletic students. Athletics is not important at our school. It
is the less that you can learn in, like responsibility,
team work, overcoming adversity. Those are the things that matter.

(50:07):
But we don't have like a state competitive like, we
don't have a Class A anything, right, because what we're
getting is academically inclined students who also have an interest
in field hockey or soccer, et cetera. So our football
team is undefeated and they're going into the playoffs, but
they're Class D. So like, we don't even have a
fifty three person team. Okay, we got guys playing both ways.

Speaker 1 (50:33):
Not a lot of subbing going on there. No, it's
fresh off the bench, not so much.

Speaker 2 (50:38):
Our quarterback is also a cornerback. Are one of the
boys who lives with me because I house three of
the students. One of the boys who lives with me
plays JV and varsity and he plays both ways on
JV and varsity.

Speaker 1 (50:52):
Oh my goodness.

Speaker 2 (50:53):
Yeah, he's the nose tackle and he's the left tackle
in both. Well, yeah it's rough, but I love it.
We see we take the kids who really want to learn,
and I get fresh minds. I get receptive people and

(51:14):
the two communities that I have found you can affect
the most with incorporating intelligent you know, physical activity is
young kids and old folks. Those are the two communities
that you make the biggest impact. If you want to
make money, work with athletes, cool, do you That's not
for me. I want to make people's lives better. I

(51:35):
want to see the impact. James Lehman lost over one
hundred pounds and his doctor, not me. I would never
say this. His doctor said, you don't need testosterone treatments anymore.
You know, you've brought your weight into a range where
that's recovered. My friend Tessa, who I've known for many, many,
many years, we got her weight down to the point
her activity up where she no longer needed to take insulin.

(51:58):
Her doctor took her off again. I would never ever
suggest anything like that, right, you know, that's the kind
of impact that I love my mom that I told
you about when we were in the grain room. You know,
her lou going from two hundred and seventy one pounds
to one hundred and ninety six, which is still very overweight,
but she doesn't need a walker anymore. She's independent. She
can go grocery shop for herself if she wanted to.
She goes to comic book conventions. That's the shit I

(52:19):
want to do. That's the stuff that makes you want
to live another day. You know what I'm talking about.

Speaker 1 (52:24):
Yeah, Yeah, especially in the context of everything you said,
that totally makes sense.

Speaker 2 (52:28):
How that would like feed your soul? Dude, I need
a mission. I think I finally found it. I got
so frustrated with the just drivel going on in the
fitness industry. Everybody should know none of these guys are perfect.
So it's not like I'm upset that Mike isratel or
Jeff nipperd are getting drugged down or drug through the mud.

(52:50):
You put yourself out there. This is one of the consequences.
But nobody is perfect. Is this idea that to hyper
scrutinize small mistakes and turn them into just endless streams
of content that's largely disingenuous, especially when the people who
were making that call out content are guilty of the
very same things that they're calling out. I did a

(53:11):
whole I haven't published it. I'm not going to. I
did a whole angry rant response is like, hey, I
took one of the videos of this guy who's calling
out that guy, and I'm going to show in his
video everything that he accused that guy of doing that
he has also done this same thing. We need to
think critically. We need to treat these people as people,
not as idols, not as infallible sources of information. We

(53:31):
should be thinking for ourselves. I was so mad about it,
and then I felt like really crappy. After I finished
making it, I was like, oh, yeah, this is why
I stopped making call out content. Is why I stop that.
I don't want to feel this way all the time.
So I decided to just move in a positive direction instead.
I decided to take my community that you know I've
been nudging along and not really doing much with, and

(53:53):
we're going to become a nonprofit organization dedicated to legitimately
helping people. Not to distinguish myself or act like I'm
sort of saying, because Jim, I gotta tell you, I
am not a great person. I got called a great
person today. I am not a great person. I am
not a particularly good person. I am I'm not even
a reformed asshole. I am an asshole in remission right,

(54:15):
Like the danger of the asshole coming back is real,
and I've got one guard for it. And I've got
a lifetime of mistakes and debt that I will spend
the rest time, the rest of my life, you know,
trying to fix and I will never quite be enough,
and that's okay, but I need to do the work,
so like, I'm just trying to do something good. I

(54:36):
don't think I'm better than these people. I just think
I'm making a better decision right now.

Speaker 1 (54:40):
Yeah, well, I mean I have a hard time seeing
you as the asshole. I can see how people would
would be intimidated just looking at you without you being
an asshole. But I don't know, Like, I mean, people

(55:03):
describe themselves sometimes that way, and their vision of themselves
is not exactly what other people would would see from
the outside or even even you know, Like I don't
know what your dark moments look like when you're interacting
with somebody and you feel like you're being an asshole.
I don't know what that looks like.

Speaker 3 (55:19):
But I mean much more like I have made decisions
in my life that were so selfish that I have
indelibly negatively affected other people's lives.

Speaker 2 (55:32):
I've caused pain that other folks did not deserve and
is not yet resolved. I have betrayed trusts.

Speaker 1 (55:39):
I have.

Speaker 2 (55:42):
Stood by and let things that I knew were wrong happen.
I got some shit to answer for, real shit.

Speaker 1 (55:52):
Yeah, and.

Speaker 2 (55:55):
You know, being in a place where I could look
at that and go, oh, it's just fuel for why
I don't deserve to live where you only get to
live so you can suffer because you're the last one
who cares. Like all of this like really unproductive, emo bullshit.
I need something positive. I need to be the person
that I allowed everybody to think I was by being

(56:18):
like I did good things man like, even when I
was making mistakes like it's people would make excuses for
me that I don't want them to make. That's where
I'm coming from because, like a couple of days ago,
the twenty sixth was the anniversary, the ten year anniversary. Actually,
I looked up my ex wife now saw a girl

(56:42):
standing on the fourth story of a parking garage and
just knew something was wrong. She told me I ran
up there. I ended up pulling my girl off. Her
name's Heather. She has since graduated college. She has a life.
That's a good thing. I felt shitty about it for
years because I didn't deserve to save her because I
was such a piece of shit.

Speaker 1 (57:01):
Oh that's a rough judge, personal judgment on yourself.

Speaker 2 (57:06):
But you know, I'm really convincing to yourself, to myself,
I'm really convincing. So, like all that stuff was, you're
going on in the background, while I was out here
trying to help people, trying to you know, do a
good thing here or there, but I was also still

(57:26):
making really selfish, really damaging decisions in my personal life
that hurt people who don't deserve it. I have failed
people that the people that count on me or were
counting on me the most, And you just you can't
just say I'm sorry. You got to do serious work

(57:48):
to fix it. So when I when I'm sitting here
and I'm saying and now I am a deeply flawed
person who needs a positive mission to keep going so
that I can, you know, do what needs to be done,
I mean exactly that I'm not being hyper on that
attention seeking already the rest of it. As a matter
of fact, if somebody tried to be overly supported from
the outside, I would find it repulsive and recoil from it.

(58:09):
I don't feel sorry for myself. I just take full
accountability for my actions the effect of my actions, and
I am striving to do better. I'm striving to be better.

Speaker 1 (58:19):
That's all I get it. I understand that, like I,
like I said, difficult to see from the outside, but
I totally I see what you're saying from the from
the inside. You were you were comming in the other
day on social media that you're just kind of do
you feel very done with the with the fitness industry?

(58:40):
We touched on it a little bit. If we were
going to fix it, say, we were so motivated to
fix it and so powerful to do so, what would
we do to make it different?

Speaker 2 (58:56):
I think the biggest problem with the fitness industry is
the self interest. That's part. I don't think everybody needs
to be ultruistic, but a mechanism for creating opportunities for
you to profit require most to distinguish themselves against their peers.
So what we see, in effect is we see a
bunch of people saying, no, this doesn't work, No that
doesn't work. You should follow my path, or this guy's

(59:17):
an a hole, or this guy's dishonest, or this guy
you know, the Nipstein and the Israe tail files, and
that's the latest. But it's always something that kind of
angry call out content is not only profitable, it is
intended to make others look bad so that people adopt

(59:39):
your methodology, which you profit from. I think one of
the people who calls that out to really effective extent
is Zach Talander. I think his viewpoint on it is
largely correct. But what needs to change at the end
of the day is quite simple. We need to we
would need to accept and support the idea that almost

(59:59):
everything thing works. You really want to go to war
over high volume verus high intensity?

Speaker 1 (01:00:05):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:00:06):
Are you kidding? The science doesn't say, oh, what's different
this month? You can't trust science. I think people who
are attacking academic or intellectual pursuits to understand the human
body and how it works are being counterproductive to actually
making change, because all science actually has demonstrated to this
point is that the body is exceptionally responsive to stimulus

(01:00:28):
and can it adapt. It can adapt from almost any step.
I think Joel Seedman, doctor Joel Sieedman, his methodology is ridiculous,
over complicated, and largely ineffective. But I promise you if
you do it. If that is the thing, These hyper
complex band exercises where you're balancing on your left foot
on a bowsuit ball and you've got to you know,

(01:00:49):
the kabuki safety squad bar on your shoulders and you're
doing a half rep. The body is so good at
adapting that it will take that stimulus and do something
with it. It will, in my opinion, it won't be
much or optimal, but it'll do something. High volume calistenics,
longer time under tension loaded stretch exercises. We keep coming

(01:01:15):
back with these different research studies that show, oh, well
this actually works, oh within a relative statistical degree of relevance,
Like they're not that much different three to five reps
in reserve. If you're actually three to five reps in
reserve and failure gets similar results. There are use cases
for all of it. So stop pretending your way is

(01:01:37):
right everybody else's way is wrong because you can point
to one damn study or one meta analysis that supports
your current point of view when there are so many
others that don't contradict what your study said, but say
this also works. I love compound movements. I love training
till I have two reps in reserve. I have more

(01:01:59):
lean mass than most people on Earth. I'm not saying
I'm in the best shape. I am saying at six
foot three and two hundred and seventy pounds and like
eighteen percent body fat, I have more physical lean mass
than most people. I did it on point seven grams
of protein because I only have one kidney, and I
have to think about that. I did it without peds.
I am stronger than ninety nine point nine percent of

(01:02:20):
the planet. I did all of that as a disabled person.
It all works. I'm not special. I am not genetically
fortunate except for these cheap bones. But other than that,
the hair's pretty good too. But other than that, I'm
not special. And we don't need to drag everybody else's
ideas down, even naughty Aglar, who is just one of

(01:02:42):
the most toxic people as far as calling others out
and saying that other methodologies are especially injurious. The functional
patterns guy even that to me nonsense. The weird movements
will do something. The real key is the focus should
be on increasing our activity, finding something that we enjoy
enough to consistently do so we will build biological momentum

(01:03:06):
to carry us in our later years, where we are
less independent, we are more frail, and where our body
is going to benefit more from the resilience that we've
spent the previous decades building. That's the long and well
impassioned answer.

Speaker 1 (01:03:20):
I think that part of our issue with the industry
is that it's so difficult to educate people to think
critically about the information that they're given and to choose
the you know that like, as I say, like everything
is really basic and simple. It's just not necessarily easy.

(01:03:42):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:03:42):
That's one of my favorite things.

Speaker 1 (01:03:43):
It's and I mean we you know, Mike and I
took the path of with this show and our other
content of just saying, hey, it's like this, it's not
really like that. You don't really need you know, there's
no need for fear appeals. There's no yeah, there's no
food you're supposed to be scared of. There's no you know,

(01:04:06):
optimal exercise program that works exactly the same for everyone
and ends up with the same outcomes. It's just not
you know, it just it's not like that, and that
is not the popular approach. It's becoming more popular, is
there There are more influencers who are who are. You know,
some of it it's call out and some of it
is just informational. You know. I've known Lane Norton for

(01:04:32):
a long time and immediately and some people are bothered
by the kind of call outs that he does. But
like you know, most of the time he's on point,
so mild.

Speaker 2 (01:04:46):
Yeah in comparison, Yeah, dear God, he'll push back and
he'll do it to comedic effect, and he's actually got
a softer touch that he used to. He used to
be more aggressive about it. I remember what he was
calling out Blaha, who's probably one of the most troubled
and problematic individuals that our industry has ever seen. But

(01:05:10):
if you look back at like what Jason Blaja was claiming,
the reason he made me so angry is because he
was claiming to do the kinds of things and have
the experiences that I actually went through. So he was
making a joke out of having PTSD. He's making a
joke out of you having to work against cartels people
who my identity, along with the identity of ever the

(01:05:32):
marine that was serving with me at the time and
several other services, our identities were leaked to them. Guys
we trained you know, Mexican military that we trained turned
and formed Los Zetas. So they took all the information
about how we do what we do, gave it to
the cartels, became the militant arm of the cartels.

Speaker 1 (01:05:55):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:05:55):
So these people who've seen our faces, know us, know
our methods and methodology are now actually literally the enemy.
And I've got this Jackquad who used to run ice
cream fitness, literally trying to profit from telling fake ass
stories about Yeah he made me mad and yeah, I
compared his face to an unshaped scrotum and his body

(01:06:19):
to a melted Campbell candle. And I met those things
when I said them, But in retrospect, I regret taking
such an aggressive and I know that lane because how
much trouble it was. Regrets how much trouble he went
to in order to fight that battle, because in the
end it didn't change the guy. And as it turns out,
he's deeply, deeply mentally disturbed. He's not okay. So like

(01:06:41):
shitting all over a guy who's not okay, even if
he's saying awful things, doesn't feel good. So I don't know.
I mean, there are people who call it out, but
I don't know that it does any good. Everybody we've
talked about still there, dude.

Speaker 1 (01:06:54):
Yeah, you know, I don't know that he was the
first person to say it, but I've certainly heard Tim
Ferriss say that you can't logic someone out of a
position they didn't logic themselves into. And it's like, there's
no way to explain things to people who don't want
to hear what you're saying in a way that changes

(01:07:16):
their minds. It's unfortunate, but I think it's it's it's true.
And so it's like you've got this division, this like
chasm that people can't cross because people people can't understand
why people on the other side believe what they believe,
and they can't understand, particularly why they can't convince them

(01:07:41):
that the thing that they believe is based on like nothing.

Speaker 2 (01:07:46):
Yeah, well, especially here in the United States, we have
begun to incorporate our worldview and our politics to an
extent into our identity. So it isn't just questioning somebody's politics.
You are attacking them when you push back against their
worldview and things like that. And I found the only
successful way to do it is you can't force it,

(01:08:07):
but you can inspire it. If you get folks to
ask questions, if you get them to start questioning what
they see without using force, then I find a lot
of them come around, and I've had a lot of
success with that when I've tried to. I don't have
a particularly good opinion of Andrew Tate. I think he

(01:08:28):
sends the wrong message. I think that he is grifting impressionable,
insecure young people. He is profiting off of their emotional
under development, and the things that he says, in my opinion,
are not only wrong, they're problematic. But I work with teenagers,

(01:08:48):
and when they bring up Andrew Tate, I used to say,
he is intellectually stunted and emotionally constipated, and I wouldn't
trust him to take out my trash. That didn't convince
any of them question what he was saying. But if
I sat there and I said, yeah, he said such
and such, and that doesn't really make sense to me.

(01:09:08):
I don't think that it's true, and I can't find
any evidence that it's true. But it's weird that he's
actually making a bunch of money from this point of view,
that nobody can prove. Oh, you're just messing with his hustle.
I don't care if somebody's got a hustle, but like,
if they're tricking people, that's just honest, that's just stealing
with your words.

Speaker 1 (01:09:27):
Man.

Speaker 2 (01:09:28):
And if I say that and I maintain myself as
somebody that they respect, the opinion of these kids have
come around. Most of them have come around. They're like, yeah,
I don't really listen to that guy anymore. Man, he
doesn't really like women. Because the kids will say, oh,
women just want your money, women just want that. And
the question I asked them, I don't know, that's not true,
that's dumb, that's misogynist because that doesn't work. What I

(01:09:51):
say is, really, what about your sister? Is she like that?
They're like, well, no, not my sister. Well, okay, do
you know anybody like, do you know anybody who's actually
like that? Can you think of anyone? Pon your mom?
You think your mom's only with the dad for the money.
I've seen your audi, Dude, it's not, it's not. We're

(01:10:11):
in a relationship kind of car brother. And you just say, yeah,
you just if you just point out enough of the flaws,
particularly with young people, they're gonna come around. I think
you know, Michael Jackson, You say that the children are
our future. Yeah, Like, I think Gen Alpha and younger

(01:10:35):
Gen Z are gonna be just fine. They're just fairal enough.
They are questioning everything, they're pushing back against authority. I
think they're gonna be okay. I think my you know,
I'm the end of Gen X and my wife is
a millennial. I think we're fucked. Like we've just got
to deal with the ship sandwich that we were served
and that we continued to serve others. But after us,

(01:10:58):
I think it's gonna be okay.

Speaker 1 (01:11:00):
Well, speaking as a boomer, I have like, no hope
like that, but I'm glad.

Speaker 2 (01:11:03):
That you know you're barely older than me.

Speaker 1 (01:11:07):
No I am. I'm much older than you. Oh yeah,
oh yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:11:13):
I wouldn't have put you older than fifty one. And
I'm not trying to blow smoke eyes.

Speaker 1 (01:11:16):
Yeah, I had eleven years to that, no kidding, no kidding. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:11:20):
I just so one of your workout videos the other day.
So you're moving pretty damn good for sixty two.

Speaker 1 (01:11:25):
Uh yeah, I've gotten back to it. Yeah, for sure.
I had, like, there's a lot of stuff I'm doing
now that I wasn't doing back in the powerlifting days.
I didn't start powerlifting until I was over forty, which
I don't start five. Yeah, I don't necessarily recommend waiting
that long.

Speaker 2 (01:11:39):
But I wouldn't have recurred to me.

Speaker 1 (01:11:44):
I uh, I was just so banged up because I
was you know, it was the geared era and like
you were just like your your nervous system and then
your nerves in particular, like I had shoulder issues. I
had you know, I had anstring issues. I had one
thing or another. FORUM tend to night is like I
can't even begin to tell you. From shirted benching. It

(01:12:07):
was just a nightmare. The time under tension is awful.
It's awful. People don't understand.

Speaker 2 (01:12:12):
I certainly don't. I've never used I've never competed geared
like that. I just I don't think I could.

Speaker 1 (01:12:18):
It was it was bad. I was never comfortable in
a shirt at all. And I never really got that
big a bench press out of it. Either a team
like four fifty something that was the best that I
could do, and that had to be fairly loose so
that I could touch. But I you know, I wasn't
doing like heavy dumbbell work because it hurts too much,

(01:12:38):
and I'm finally at the point where things don't hurt.
And you know that video that you're talking about. We
have three PT professionals in the in our gym as members,
and one of them in particular has been working with me.
He works primarily online, so I felt, like, you know,
shouting him out was a good thing to do. But he,

(01:13:00):
like literally has done the best job of anybody that
I've dealt with in the PT world. And I've dealt
with some people that were pretty good, and I don't
know if maybe my problems were not as complicated this
time as they had been in the past, but it just,
I don't know, it has gotten better and it's getting
better over time, and I'm I'm pleased with that. I

(01:13:26):
had another point, but I've lost it and that that
that just means that I have to have you back
again and we'll talk some more because I've enjoyed this
is a great deal. So if people are so moved
to find you, and I think they should be, where
should they do that?

Speaker 2 (01:13:42):
You can find me on basically any platform by searching
pure bull fit. I know it sounds like something else.

Speaker 1 (01:13:50):
It's like, how did you come upon that that's.

Speaker 2 (01:13:53):
The dude frustration. I kept like looking for something that
wasn't taken, and I started off with one Fit Wonder
and like a bunch of other stuff, and I was like,
this is bullshit. And then I went huh and I
wrote pure bullfit.

Speaker 1 (01:14:05):
And it.

Speaker 2 (01:14:08):
And and what by it? I meant, I've started everything
with a Gmail address. It based everything off of a
Gmail address, and that wasn't taken. And so I started,
you know, I developed started this whole thing about calling
out the bovine fecal matter and the fitness industry, the
bullfit if you will, And then you know, I just
now it's too late to change it. It's it's it's

(01:14:31):
too late, it's been it's been too long. I think
it's due feat.

Speaker 1 (01:14:34):
It's ingrained. Now it's painted on the side of the
building and you won't come off. Uh yeah, Actually, I
do remember. One of the things that I was that
I was going to throw out there because we're talking
about some hypocrisy in the in the fitness industry, is
the number of people in the industry who are calling
her like demonizing seed oils, but at the same time
they're on TRT, which is based in seed oils. That's

(01:14:55):
how they that's how they they formulate the testosterone. It's
great seed oil or cottonseed oil. It's seed oil, and
you're ingesting it in your body. And could that possibly
be any more direct into your into your system other
than just like eating it and having things destroyed in
your in your in your gas rejuices.

Speaker 2 (01:15:14):
I mean, like what anyway I find they don't care
at the end of the day, any of them, any
topic we pick. They don't really care what the truth is.
They care what they can say. They're like, they are
like a narcissist in a relationship. Their goal isn't to
convince you that you're wrong. Their goal is to introduce

(01:15:34):
enough doubt that you have to at least ask yourself
if you are and then they can proceed forward as
if they are correct and you are wrong. And because
you have that doubt, because you have that question, that
keeps you enough on your heels so they can continue
to control you or in the instance of the fitness industry,
and they can continue to line their pockets because you're
willing to try anything. Yeah, because you're afraid, because everybody dies,

(01:15:58):
And that's a terrible thought. I want to live as
long as possible, so, but I also want to be
able to solve all of it in twelve weeks. Oh,
you have a program for that. It's just nine hundred
and ninety nine dollars. You know what I'm worth? Nine
hundred and ninety nine dollars Like that's that's the industry
in a nutshell.

Speaker 1 (01:16:13):
Yeah, no, I agree, one hundred percent.

Speaker 2 (01:16:15):
That was a bad joke.

Speaker 1 (01:16:16):
I'm sorry, all right. I am at DJ mcdane on
the social media. This show is fifty percent of facts.
For percent is a word and fifty is just numbers.
Fifty percent Facts is a speaker Prime Podcast association with
IR Media on the Obscure Celebrity Network. And I will
talk to you next week probably, if not maybe the
weekend

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Mission-driven Fitness | Guest Kevin Meier (@purebullfit)

Episode Transcript

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Mission-driven Fitness | Guest Kevin Meier (@purebullfit)