Ep. #677: John Welbourn on Pushing & Pulling a Sled for More Stability and Power

Mike: Hey there, and welcome to another episode of Muscle Life. I’m Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today. Now, if you have spent much time in the gym, especially in a CrossFit gym, you’ve probably seen someone pushing a big weighted sled. Across turf or pulling the sled across the turf. And by the end of it, they are gasped, gasping air, and really all I’ve done is just move a bunch of weight from one side of the room to the other.

Why? What are they up to? I mean, there are many people doing many foolish things in gyms. Is this one of them? Well, that is the topic of today’s interview Along. A couple of other quote unquote functional exercises like farmer walks, for example, that my guest John Wellborn says, are well worth the sweat and toil.

Now, who is John Wellborn? Well, he is an X N F L player. He spent nine years in the league as a starter, and now he is the CEO of power. Fleet Incorporated, which is a strength and performance company that specializes in large group training sessions. And John has also worked with many high level athletes over the years and continues to do so.

And John was the architect of the CrossFit football program, which was the. Primary reason CrossFit began focusing on strength and performance. And last but not least, John is a fellow podcaster who was kind enough to have me on his show, which is called Power Athlete Radio. And in this episode, John Nye chat about the Prowler Sled and why it’s good for you and why it can enhance your strength.

And help you build muscle faster, and not by directly stimulating muscle hypertrophy, but by improving your work capacity, by increasing the amount of work that your body and your muscles are able to do in your muscle building workout. And then John also shares some programming tips and talks about why having good conditioning is beneficial for strength training and.

Also, if you like what I’m doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my v i p one-on-one coaching service because my team and I have helped people of all ages and all circumstances lose fat, build muscle, and get into the best shape of their life faster than they ever thought. And we can do the same for you.

We make getting fitter, leaner, and stronger, paint by numbers simple by carefully managing every aspect of your training and your diet for you. Basically, we take out all of the guesswork, so all you have to do is follow the plan and watch your body change day after day, week after week, and month after.

What’s more, we’ve found that people are often missing just one or two crucial pieces of the puzzle, and I bet a shiny shackle, it’s the same with you. You’re probably doing a lot of things right, but dollars to donuts, there’s something you’re not doing correctly or at all that’s giving you the most grief.

Maybe it’s your calories or your macros. Maybe it’s your exercise selection. Maybe it’s your food choices. Maybe you’re not progressively overloading your muscles, or maybe it’s. Else and whatever it is. Here’s what’s important. Once you identify those one or two things you’re missing, once you figure it out, that’s when everything finally clicks.

That’s when you start making serious progress, and that’s exactly what we do for our clients. To learn more, head over to www.buy legion.com. That’s b y legion.com/v p and schedule your free consultation call, which by the way is not a high pressure sales call. It’s really just a discovery call where we get to know you better and see if you’re a good fit for the service.

And if you’re not for any reason, we will be able to share resources that’ll point you in the right direction. So again, if you appreciate my work and if you want to see more, If you also want to finally stop spinning your wheels and make more progress in the next few months than you did in the last few years, check out my v i p coaching [email protected] legion.com/vip.

Hey John, welcome to my podcast, man. Oh, thanks for having me. Yeah, happy to reciprocate. Uh, I think we should open with a question. If Gavin Newsom is allowed to have a dinner party at a three Michelin starred restaurant, are we allowed to have Thanksgiving 

John: or at the French laundry? Did you invite me to go to Thanksgiving at the French Laundry?

Cuz I would totally accept on that. 

Mike: I don’t know. I mean, I’m a peasant, so the rules apply to me. That’s, that’s that problem. That’s what I’ve learned. I can’t be an uppity plebeian, you know? You know, that’s 

John: kind of an interesting piece. I mean, I don’t know how. Dictate to people like what they can do with, I just think it’s such a slippery slope.

And then the problem is, is I kind of imagine g Gavin Newsom being like, well, if they’re starving, you know, they can’t eat bread, let them eat cake. I mean, it’s probably, you know, he’s, I’m not a fan at all of Gavin Newsom. I think he’s a fucking shitty human being, but that’s just me. 

Mike: Well, Californians would agree with you, and I think every day more and more actually 

John: would agree with you.

Yeah, no, I, I betcha they recall his ass. I mean, they should, I mean, they just, I think the blatant kind of disingenuous nature and the things that he’s done are like kind of apprehensible. And you know, the problem is, is people just keep giving him a pass. And I wonder at which point we stopped giving people passe.

And being like, you’re not a good person. Fuck you. It just goes to show that like, you know, people don’t have the ability to have free thought and they just are kind of regurgitating what the media and you know, what their god’s put out to ’em. And without looking at the critical thinking. Yeah. Yeah. It’s 

Mike: an interesting time for sure.

And I think that we are. Seeing, uh, this is a very interesting mass kind of social psychology experiment. I guess you could look at it through that lens. Well, 

John: I, I’m probably similar to you in that like, you know, people are really firm with these party affiliations and I’m like, it all seems like bullshit to me.

Mike: Yeah. I never get the, the how. Much people get their identity tied up with a political party, whether it’s the DNC or the G O p. 

John: I have long said that probably the death of this country will be due to the two-party system. I mean, I’ve always tried to vote third party just so that there would be a voice.

I was kind of actually hoping that when Gary Johnson came in that you know, he could gather five to percent of the vote and start getting a third party candidate. I mean, we haven’t had a legitimate third party candidate since Ross. So, I mean, it, it’s a really kind of unfortunate thing and I think what’s so strange is people are just okay with it and they kind of like associate like, oh, I’m, uh, it just feels so disingenuous that the people that are necessarily leading these two group parties don’t really identify with any of the people that I know.

And so when, when I meet people that strongly identify with it, I’m like, so you identify with Nancy Pelosi who did that amazing, you know, interview in front of her $40,000 subzero fridges, you know, eating $25 a pint fucking ice cream, you know, she was like, 

Mike: I’m here with like a thousand dollars of ice cream.

There were a lot of pints in there. I was like, whoa, this chick likes her ice cream. 

John: Well, I mean, dude, like, that’s like $25 a pint, you know, like a, a Bristol Farms, you know, custom type of shit. But the thing when nobody was talking about was she had. Sub-zero, like the massive commercial sub-zero. Those things are like 20 Gs a piece.

She had that, I was like looking at her kitchen and I was like, holy shit. You know? I mean, just so out of touch with humanity, 

Mike: you know, just on her government salary, you know, you started doing the math, it doesn’t quite add up, 

John: so Congress was pretty sharp in that they basically voted themselves in all these.

Protections. My dad ran for Congress twice and he was a lobbyist in Sacramento. He worked on Pete Wilson’s campaign and then also worked on Richard Nixon’s campaign. So my dad was a lifelong, you know, Republican, uh, was friends with Ronald Reagan. I mean, we had a political fundraiser for Pete Wilson when he was governor of California at our house.

And so my dad was always very interested in politics and thought that’s what he wanted to do. So he unsuccessfully ran for Congress. It was just pretty interesting. And I remember asking him once, I was like, dad, why do you, you know, he, my dad was a sharp dude, trial attorney, you know, could speak. And I asked him, I was like, you know, why do you think that you had two unsuccessful bids for Congress?

He kind of, you know, thought about it and he kind of gave me a little BS and then eventually it kind of like boiled down to, he’s like, I just can’t lie. He goes, it’s such an interesting thing that you have to stand up there as a politician and tell people what they want to hear, not necessarily the truth.

It’s kind of like, you know, you see those commercial or you, you see those memes of like that dog sitting in like a bar and everything’s on fire and he’s like, everything’s fine. Like that’s literally what you have to do. You have to get up there and spin this narrative. That, you know, is disingenuous and a lie.

He’s like, I just can’t get up there and lie and I’m a terror. You know, like it just feels disingenuous when I lie about it. And he’s like, I think to really go to Congress and to do this job, you have to lie to their constituents and tell people what they want to hear. That if they want to hear to drain the swamp, we’re gonna drain the swamp.

You know, if we’re gonna give them free college, let’s give ’em fucking free college. You just have to say, It’s kind of like probably when you’re young at a bar and you’ll just say whatever you can to try to take a girl home. It’s kind of the same analogy, man. I wonder at which point when you whore yourself so many times that you all of a sudden start losing sight of who you are and you’re like, Nancy Pelosi standing in your fucking, you know, a hundred thousand dollars kitchen eating, you know, a thousand dollars worth of ice cream.

You know, talking about we can all get through this together. It’s fucking a load of bullshit. 

Mike: I certainly agree and and have many thoughts that I could share on that, but I think we should just hard segue into something health and fitness related. I think of you, I think of Sal, I think of Mark Rippetoe, a few other people who if we got together, we could probably make, at least we’d be entertaining to us Another podcast that is, About this type of stuff.

And the idea is enticing, 

John: honestly. And have you had Mark Rapto on your podcast? Oh yeah. Yeah. 

Mike: I would say that I count him as a friend. 

John: Yeah. Yeah. No, I’ve known Mark A. Long time. Yeah. We’re, we’re buddies. He is, uh, what I affectionately refer to as a prickly human being. Prickly is a good word, doesn’t he?

Yeah. He’s a prickly human being, so Yeah, no, I’ve known RIP for a long, long time, so I just saw him probably, geez, I must have seen him not a year ago. He was in Austin, so, uh, we drove over and had dinner somewhere. 

Nice. 

Mike: Yeah, I like Mark. I think it’s, it’s interesting because he does have this prickly exterior and, and he comes across.

If you were to hear certain audio snippets or maybe catch little parts of his podcast, maybe he can come across as a. Kind of just brusk and aff, affectionate, unfriendly person, but he’s not that way at all. He really has a heart and he really does care. And my impression is, is I don’t know him as well as you do, but my impression I’ve had a fair amount of interactions with him is like, I genuinely like him.

I think he’s genuinely a good 

John: guy. Rip is, uh, uh, God, I don’t know. I hate to use the term old school, but like, kind of like, kind of reminds me a little bit of how my dad was raised. You know, like, I remember it was funny, we were both in the CrossFit scene and he’s like, these fucking CrossFitters always want to hug me.

He’s like, fucking men don’t hug and shake hands. And I was like, sound like my dad. I was like, man, I, I think I was probably 21 the first time I hugged my dad. So like, he’s a dude. He’s just a funny, funny human being and just a one, one of those rare individuals that you come across that has not had to acquiesce in any way to, you know, what he thinks is right or wrong and was never married, doesn’t have any kids.

You know, runs his gym, sells his books, I mean, has been very, very successful by being kind of independent in a lot of ways. And that’s the probably the type of individual and he’s not gonna change now and like the Me Too generation and this Jim that’s never gonna fucking Mark Rapto if I could turn this thing off before you ask acquiesce.

So I do appreciate. Bad about him. I think people are so willing to bend and to break and, uh, alter and uh, to morph into something else to be, I guess you could say like more mainstream. And I think he’s just been, uh, prickly Texan for his whole life and that’s what he’s got. If you don’t like him, his flavor’s not for everybody, but I joke with 

Mike: people that.

I think I’m a bit of an acquired taste as well, and some people just never acquire a taste for my personality, and I understand. I don’t hold it against 

John: them. Hey, you know what? I would say it’s not for everybody. Well, what 

Mike: may be for maybe not everybody, but for a lot of people is what I wanted to talk to you about.

The primary topic of this podcast, which is, I guess, I’m trying to think actually, how would I classify these? Exercises or movements. Some people would call them functional movements or athletic movements, but stuff like sleds and farmer caries or farmer walks and other exercises that you don’t see many people doing and that many people see people doing and wonder, should I be doing that, like tire flips or is that just a waste of time or is that kind of a CrossFit thing?

No, 

John: I think there’s a ton of value in both pushing sleds and dragging. You know, with a simple Google search, if you Google Louie Simmons Westside Barbell Gpp Louie talks about, and I spent a good deal of time out at Westside Barbell, and I’m friends with Lou. The idea of, you know, being able to push and drag things for conditioning and they, he has a pretty good story about a bunch of finished throwers who were lumberjacks and they used to, you know, cut a tree down, hook it up to a belt and drag it out of the.

Forest and these guys had like incredible capacity to be able to lift some heavy weights. But I, I really like pushing sleds for the fact that there’s really no eccentric load, so you can just push a ton 

Mike: and the point there being so you don’t get much 

John: muscle soreness. Yeah. So I mean, even though you will get sore from pushing sleds, it’s just a really interesting way to push something and not have a ton of eccentric load.

I mean, you gotta think when you sprint, there’s obviously. Pulling and ripping and then eccentric load associated with sprinting and slowing down. So I think there’s a really interesting piece with pushing sleds. I really like dragging sleds too, just for the fact that I think it just, you know, gets a lot of stuff moving and then, you know, you got farmers carries in here and I think the one thing which people have really fucked up, In the training model is not understanding the function of the trunk.

And I use the term trunk over core cuz uh, you know, apples and pears have cores and I don’t want to ever be related to those. I want to have a trunk, like a nice oak tree here, Texas. So what they started kind of realizing or hoping that the trunk had to somehow. You know, be there to show abs or something.

And really what the trunk’s job is to connect upper body to the lower body so that I can effectively drive force through it. So if I’m sprinting and I’m using my arms and I’m using this force, the trunk becomes the, you know, the connector of those and allows me to sprint. Like, I mean, we’ve seen people all the time that, you know, have gotten dramatically stronger when they create more strength and more rigidity in their trunk.

I think movements like farmers caries are really good for challenging that trunk nature. And I think when people think about core trunk training, they really picture a ton of extension inflection. And that isn’t really what our trunk is designed to do. Our trunk is designed to be this kind of isometric contraction.

Mm-hmm. So things like farmers caries, if you pick up something hairy, you have to brace in the upper body, brace the trunk, you know, lock everything down and then move your limbs. And I think that kind of. Isometric contraction and that type of training by overloading in such a way is extremely valuable.

And I think the, you know, legions of legion Legionnaires on, on your program that are in the gym, you know, doing fucking endless crunches and a whole bunch of like flexion ascension of the trunk would probably be greatly advantage. By putting some form of heavy loading, whether that looked like farmer’s caries or just something that involves some form of isometric contraction under load with their trunk.

Yeah, I, 

Mike: I’ve become less and less enamored with core training or AB training as time has gone on, and I personally do, actually none of it at this point. I don’t think that there’s any place for it where I’m at in. Journey, so to speak, which is really, I’m kind of at the end of my genetic rope for muscularity for sure, and for strength, I can get a bit stronger.

Although I’m really just kind of working back to previous prs, which I got around the 3, 4, 5, like three plates on the bench, four on the squat, five on the deadlift, which I’ve said many times I think is a reasonable. Goal to strive toward for men who are natural and who are not genetically gifted, who weren’t always just big and strong, who weren’t like the jacked strong 13 year old when, you know, many years ago.

And so even though with, and, and so in my case, I have good. AB development, I have a strong core and that comes from heavy squats, heavy deadlifts, heavy overhead presses, uh, bench presses, maybe a little bit, but I don’t do any direct ab work because I just don’t see any reason to and with people who are new to lifting.

I’ve come around where I, I used to program. Some abs not too much. A few sets a week maybe, and do some weighted cable crunches. Do something for the rectus abdominus in particular, because this is more for guys than maybe for gals. But guys care about that. And if your core hasn’t really developed, core muscles haven’t developed, especially the rectus abdominus, if those muscles haven’t.

Developed significantly. You can get lean and be kind of underwhelmed with what you see in the mirror. However, now I’ve kind of come around and realized that yeah, that’s true. And maybe we can speed that process up a little bit by doing some core work or some AB work, direct ab work. And if it’s not too much, it probably won’t get in the way of anything.

But how much of a difference will the really be if you just kind of leave it out and just keep on getting stronger, increasing your whole body’s strength? 

John: Probably not much. Well, sometimes the limiting factor can really come down from like, from that lack of rigidity. And I think the analogy I’ve used in terms of the training is like, um, I’ve talked about this on our podcast probably at nauseum years ago.

I was fortunate enough through a buddy of mine to get introduced to like the oldest sword maker in Japan, and I commissioned a, a real Simi sword. So the Fuji family, you know, who’s been making swords for, you know, the Samurai and the Japanese royalty since like 800 a. I ended up getting a sword. It took like 10 years to get, but like, it was pretty amazing.

I had to fly to Japan and like go to their, where they live up in the mountains and like, you know, look at their whole operation, which was just basically some like little homes that these guys have been fabricating swords for, like, you know, for, you know, Samura and other people for, you know, thousand, you know, thousand plus years in the same area.

Mike: That’s been their spot. 

John: So they moved to this little town in the mountains of Japan called Seiki because there was a river that had a ton of iron ore content in it. So they actually catch the iron ore in the river behind the home and then bring that in and smelt that. And like the fucking most amazing process you’ve ever seen, unlike the level of craftsmanship.

But what was amazing was they talked about like folding the sword so they. They hammer it, they cool it, they heat it, they hammer it, they fold it, they fold it and they’ll fold the metal like, you know, thousands of times. But it’s like this heating, hammering, folding, cooling process. And I remember is they were going through this process to sharpen the blade and you know, all, you know, the metallurgy piece.

All I started thinking about was training and the idea of like, you know, how many times you’ve been heavy under a barbell? How many times have you challenged posture, position and movement under load? And you know, and those guys heat. They hammer it, they let it cool. They rinse and repeat, and they’re consistent in how they do it.

They never let the metal sit for too long. They don’t hit it too much. I mean, so there was like this perfect cadence that they had, and over time they fold and make these amazing weapons that are just like, you know, razor sharp and cut and kill everything. And like that analogy for training is like you need time underneath the barbell.

You need to learn to maintain stability under the trunk so that you can effectively load this thing in such a way that you can fold your metal that you can. You can fold it and then you can rinse and repeat and do it the next day, and you can be consistent. So I mean, I, I think, uh, a lot of people when they think about trunk work, they’re, like I said, they’re thinking of crunches and extension inflection.

What I think about trunk is I think about have you maintained or created enough tinsel strength within your trunk so that I can put 500 pounds on my back, stand direct with it, no wobble in my trunk, sit down below parallel and then stand back up with it. Or can I pull five or 600 pounds off the ground, you know, with a nice rigid back that doesn’t.

And the only way you get that is by one, is by training it, and two, by giving yourself enough time and enough opportunity under load that effectively it, it just becomes the outcome. So I I, I think especially a lot of people when they first get into training think like, oh, I have to do all this stuff because of this.

No. What you have to do is you have to follow a smart training model. And you have to fucking do this over and over and over again so that all of a sudden when you get to the end of this journey, you’re like, man, the amount of time I have under the barbell is probably more time than people have driving under their car to the gym.

Totally agree.

Mike: If you like what I’m doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my v i p one-on-one coaching service because my team and I have helped people of all ages and circumstances lose fat, build muscle, and get into the best shape of their life faster than they ever thought possible. And we can do the same for you.

I want to go back to the pushing and pulling of sleds and what type of work is that? Are you looking at that as cardio? Are you looking at that as resistance training volume, so to speak, or just building your, your capacity for effort and for work or, 

John: yeah, so there’s a couple different ways I remember.

Who’s the guy who’s Triple H’S trainer from New Jersey? Joe DeFranco. So I was at a talk, Joe DeFranco did for a lead fts. He trained some combine guys and Joe stood up there and said, I don’t know shit about sprint training, but when we had athletes push really heavy sleds and then immediately transitioned over into a sprint, they sprinted faster.

And so I, I didn’t necessarily. Think that his approach was that scientific, he just found when people pushed something heavy and then went over and and did something fast, that they got faster, which is just classic, you know, French contrast or PAP training. But I think that there is a very real kind of, I guess, strength required.

But I wouldn’t necessarily say that like pushing sleds is what I would call a strength builder. Like if you’re like, I wanna get strong, I’m gonna push a sled. I think there’s other ways to get strong, but I think pushing a sled fits in there. I think you hit it right on the head when you said cap. I think that there is a level of capacity that’s needed to hammer yourself into performance, uh, shape, you know, or the physical shape that you want.

And that comes at a price. And I think, um, you know, if you wanna do a bunch of prowler pushes and make it pretty awful, it’s gonna get you where you want to go. I mean, I’ve never heard anybody push a prowler and be like, that was great. We should do it again tomorrow. You’re like, no, it was fucking 

Mike: awful.

Yeah. Yeah. And that’s something that I’ve done them here and there, but I’ve never consistently done them, so I really can’t. Firsthand about it at all, which is why I was asking. And I guess my follow up question is then how would that look in the way of 

John: programming? What I like to do is normally we’d put, you know, maybe two days a week if we were gonna, let’s say we squatted in, I guess you could say like a lower type of deal, maybe some squatting, some heavy pulling on a Monday, and then maybe some upper body and you know, something more dynamic on a Tuesday, I’d probably put him into like a Wednesday type of situ.

Or if I wanted to do some kind of contrast trading, like post activation potentiation, you could always do something heavy and then push something fast, you know, like a lighter sled. So we’ve done ’em both ways where we’ve overloaded them, where they were super heavy. We’ve done medium ones where we’ve sprinted as fast as we can.

We’ve also done some kind of stuff where you put it on super light and you try to move as fast as you can. So I think it really just kind of fits into the context of the greater training model, but really what you’re training. I think the one thing that kind of gets lost in translation, I think that there’s this kind of like cardio bunny kind of mentality where I’m just gonna like cardio, cardio, cardio.

And then there’s guys on the other side that are like, I don’t wanna do any of that. I just wanna lift heavy weights. Which is fine, but what allows you to recover and allows you to get stronger is having a very, very capable aerobic system. And so there has to be a balance, man. You gotta be, and I wrote an article years ago on Power athlete.

It’s probably my, talk to me, Johnny Blog. Call it, do I need to be in. And what I found is that the higher the G P P, the better shape you were, the faster you recovered in between sets and the more workouts I could get in a week. You gotta be in shape. You don’t need to be like so far on that spectrum that you’re like basically carting your gains away.

But I really believe that there needs to be a balance of conditioning. If you wanna push sleds for conditioning, I would recommend that to anybody. You want to get on and do something, you know, assault bike ish or you know, stair climbers or Jacob’s Ladder or you know, stepmill. I think there’s a very real dose for that, but I think sleds are an important deal, especially for young athletes.

I actually, I 

Mike: wrote an article and recorded a podcast on that topic. I’d have to pull it up to get the exact title, but it was essentially like it was answering the question, should I do cardio if I’m mostly just interested in getting big and strong, basically, and maybe while you’re talking the next time, I’ll pull it up for people who want to go.

And my conclusion was exactly what you just said, that if you wanna perform as well as you can in your resistance training, in your strength training, your weightlifting, then you probably should be doing some cardio. And there are other reasons to do cardio as well. There are health reasons, there are body composition reasons like that is one of the easiest ways to maintain a lower body fat level, for example.

Is more activity. I mean, oh wow. Big surprise. But some people are surprised at how much it actually helps to get that extra calorie burn that comes with cardio. Of course, it makes cutting easier and it also though has this, and particularly in between sets, right? Your ability to just recover. Again, coming back to that work, Capacity and my conclusion and my recommendation was probably a combination is of intensities is best.

So doing some low intensity stuff, some moderate intensity. And I talked about a scale you could use just based on how winded you are. Basically like at moderate intensity. You’re gonna be a bit winded. We wouldn’t be able to sit and chat like this, but we probably would be able to have a conversation. We just have to catch our breath.

It wouldn’t be a very smooth conversation, but we could still talk. And then of course, high intensity is truly like there is no talking, but including some high intensity as well for this purpose, again, of just maximizing performance. In weight lifting, and I wouldn’t do probably more than 30 or 40 minutes a week because it can be a bit rough if you are also lifting heavy weights four to six hours per week and doing some low and moderate intensity cardio.

What are your thoughts on that in terms of the different intensities 

John: as it relates? I think it’s like anything, I think that there’s a like. You know, the law of accommodation, I think, you know, if you train over 90% on the same movements, you know, is what the Russian said. I know Westside Barbell talks about that.

I think the one thing that CrossFit did get right was a little bit of the constantly buried idea of like, especially in conditioning type stuff. Like if you’re gonna get out walk, then I think you need to walk fast. Some days. I think you need to put on a happy vest and walk you. Differences. I think if you walk the same thing, it’s kind of like if you go in and you do the same movements at the same weight, at the same reps scheme, you’ll see a tremendous stall out in your progress.

Having some varying different forms of intensity is pretty sharp, I think. You know, pushing sleds, I think I like the echo in the assault Bikes like versa. Climbers, if I’m gonna do something, I try to change it up. And then create some kind of relative intensity, like set some goals, like if I’m on the assault bike, can I get 300 calories in 20 minutes?

Great. Can I get 300 calories on the Echo bike? And I try to set different goals and. Sometimes, you know, I think that there’s definitely a need for some kind of low to moderate. Like you look at some of the maps of where like, Hey, I’m gonna train within a certain zone in terms of building my aerobic capacity.

But I think other times you gotta just build that overall capacity by trying to set yourself on fire a little bit. I think as long as you are not going in the gym every single day and trying to set yourself on fire, which I think happened in the CrossFit deal and we tested that, and you get home, that’s what happens.

It, uh, it breaks a lot of. Yeah, no, it does it, it breaks a lot of eggs. You know, the age old, you gotta break a lot of eggs to make an omelet. But the problem is, is you start frying people out and I think you start to find some genetic outliers that that stuff works for. But I think being able to vary some intensity and vary the movements and kind of change up and do a whole bunch of different forms of conditioning.

I think the one reason that I’ve really seen why I think a lot of people once struggle in the gym in terms of performance gains, isn’t necessarily from the training aspect. It’s probably from just a lack of. You know, I did a consult with a guy on Tuesday. Pretty strong dude. You know, we were trying to like fix some of his lifts, so we’re zooming in, which is kind of a new tele string deal we’ve been working on.

He’s like, what do you think? I’m like, I think you’re fucking outta shape. I mean, like, you know, I think you need to have more capacity. I think you need to be able to, you know, I. Bang some weights, but I think you gotta be able to add a little bit of aerobic capacity so that you’re not so smoked in between these sets so we can get some higher quality of work.

And I think there’s a real interesting thing where all of a sudden people start getting fatigued and the quality of work goes down. And I think when the quality of the movement deteriorates, you know, I’m kind of a fan of like, Hey, if, if it looks bad, we’re gonna stop. Well, how do you make it look good?

You gotta be in better shape. You have to be in good enough shape to survive your training. And I think if more people looked at it like that, I think they would probably make more and more progress. 

Mike: And for people wondering on that, uh, article and it’s podcast of mine that pulled it up, should you do cardio if you lift weights, question marks, science says yes.

That’s the title, and I don’t remember how long, maybe 20 minutes or so of me talking specifically on this point. And what I can speak to firsthand is, so before covid I would do about an hour of cardio per week. I would do some biking on the weekends when I wasn’t lifting. I would lift weights Monday through Friday, 30 minutes or so of moderate intensity biking.

I’m trying to remember if I did worked in any high intensity stuff, probably not. I, I would really only do that when I was cutting just to burn some more calories. So it was just kind of moderate intensity. And then when the. Down, started the two weeks to flatten the curve. That is now it’s eight months, but we’ve been in and out of lockdown to be fair.

But it was not two weeks to flatten the curve when that started. I no longer was driving to the office, which the gym was in the same complex actually as the office, but I had a little bit of extra time, so I was like, all right, I guess I’ll just, I’ll do some more cardio and I’ll, uh, use that time. I like to, I just hop on my upright bike in my exercise room and I’ll read or listen to a podcast or an interview or, So I started doing a bit more cardio.

I just started doing 25 to 30 minutes a day, just moderate intensity. Again, no high intensity stuff. And I did that for months and I didn’t really change the way I was eating, so I lost about eight or nine pounds of fat, which is expected of course. But I also was a little bit surprised when I got back in the gym and.

Back training the way I was training previously, because at home I was, I, I’m limited. I have dumbbells that go up. I have like some adjustable dumbbells that go up to 90. I have some bands and I can make it work in terms of effective volume, not losing muscle, not losing, maybe potential for strength because I’m not losing muscle.

But of course when I got back under the bar, it was like pretty awkward. However, now that I’m back in the groove and my training, It involves some higher rep, not too high rep. Like the highest rep Mesocycle is sets of 10 on the primary lifts with about 75% on the bar. I think I’d have to look in, in my spreadsheet and what I noticed is those higher rep sets were are now less taxing, just less metabolically, less, uh, cardiovascularly taxing than they were.

Before, and I’m getting back to the weights, so it’s not just because I’m, I came back super weak and that explains it. And I attribute that to just my cardio getting significantly 

John: better. Dude, I will co-sign on that one. Um, a couple years ago we did, one of our programs is called Jack Street on Power Athlete and.

As I was designing that program, we kind of did this kind of like friendly wager with the guys in the office and like all the people that work for us. And so we did a little bit of a challenge and so we kind of drew and some guys had to gain 10% of their body weight and other people had to lose 10% of their body weight.

And we did kind of before and afters and put this program. So we all did a similar program, obviously pick some different nutritional, uh, approaches. The one thing, you know, like the training was going really well, but I wasn’t losing weight the way I thought I was. And you know, if you’re not losing the weight, you think you probably gotta add some.

You know, conditioning in to try to, you know, burn more calories so I could get in that caloric deficit. So I started hitting, like after the workout, just maybe 20, 25 minutes on the step mill, and I was kind of mixing it up on different stuff, you know, I started doing that, you know, 5, 6, 7 days a week and, you know, all of a sudden my weight started coming down and it’s sort of moving the right direction.

And at the time I was kind of, we were working a ton of rep maxes and I always kind of quantify every rep max with like, I’ll cut it back like 20. And do like one set of max reps, not necessarily a window or ask approach, but I always like to kind of like, Hey, if I squat 500 for five, if I cut it back to 80% at max reps, I kind of have an idea of how many reps I should be able to get based off of what, you know.

It’s just kind of a, a checks and balances that I’ve used for years with myself. Yeah. 

Mike: I actually do something similar in the program that’s in the, the. Book of mine that I recently released called Beyond Big, leaner, stronger. So there’s a 16 week macrocycle in the 16th week might actually be a D load.

Either that or that’s week 17, but the last training week of each macrocycle, it involves an am wrap set on the big lifts with 95. Percent just to see what has happened over the last, this is a, you know, four months and then you update your training maxes. And of course you have an inkling along the way because you start to notice that I had put 85% of what was my one rep max at the beginning of this macrocycle on the bar.

And you know, it calls for a set of four and I probably could have gotten seven. That’s a good sign that when you get to that Ann. You’ve probably gotten stronger, but I think that’s a smart way, especially as an experienced and an advanced weightlifter, because when you’re a newbie, it’s easy. You just add weight to the bar every week basically, and you just get stronger, stronger, stronger.

But then as time goes that on, yes, especially after years, it can be very hard to know if anything got any better, unless you tried out now and then. 

John: Yeah, so I mean, I, I started doing these rep maxes and I think like, Deadlift. I remember I went in and I did like a backup set, and I think it was like, I pulled, I think it was like 5 85 for like a set at eight, eight or nine, and then backed it off, I think, whatever, 80%.

So it was 80, 80% of that. I think it was like, yeah, it was, yeah. 

Mike: So 

John: yeah, mid to high force. Yeah, it was like 4, 4 65, 4 70 put on straps, and I think I pulled it for like 20 plus reps. All of a sudden I started kinda like checking these kind of rep totals and all of a sudden I was putting. Four or five reps on every, uh, on like kind of what I’d historically done and all of a sudden started setting some like pretty amazing prs.

And I was laughing at it cuz I’m like, well dude, I’m in caloric restriction. I’m doing a ton of cardio to try to burn and get my body weight down. But I ended up, I think I weighed in like on the final day at like 2 68 or like right around 7% body fatted in the BOD pod. I think I had stopped, uh, maybe like three or four days before I had set like PRS in every single lift I had attempted.

It was one of those things where I completely went back and like had to like revamp the way I looked at building an aerobic base, you know, and then I found a ton of research on like building mitochondrial density and the fact that like, you know, a big wide aerobic base allows you. To give, uh, you know, the same effort on set three or four that you gave on set number one, and really forced me to go back and really understand the value of building an aerobic base, especially in the strength program.

I had always subscribed to this idea that if you just build a massive fucking glycolytic engine by lifting weights and sprinting and moving as fast as you can, That you’d be very, very successful. And I think I was very successful for me in my twenties and thirties when I was in the N F nfl. But all of a sudden when I got outta the NFL and I started, you know, didn’t have the need for that type of glycolytic capacity, all of a sudden lifting heavy weights, being able to get max motor unit recruitment, banging heavyweights, and building, you know, big aerobic base and building of mitochondrial density, uh, became huge.

Huge. And still is a big component in my training. So my deal is like, man, I gotta be in shape anymore and I don’t want to do it. I still gotta. 

Mike: I mean, I notice it has benefited my isolation, my accessory, my body building stuff as well, because I’m starting, let’s see, yeah, every workout of mine these days is starting with one or two big barbell movements, and then I’m doing some accessory stuff around it.

And so I’ve noticed that I perform better on the big movements and they are less draining. So I actually have a bit more gas to give to my isolation stuff. So it’s been interesting. So anybody listening. If you’re not doing much in the way of cardio, I recommend checking out that article that I wrote [email protected].

I have a podcast by the same title. And John, I wanna go quickly back to pushing and pulling sleds and programming. So if people are listening right now and thinking, Okay, you’ve sold me. I’m gonna build my aerobic capacity, and you’ve also sold me on pushing or pulling sleds. I wanna give that a go. You mentioned a few things regarding the programming.

So for example, if you’re gonna do the heavier stuff, give a day of recovery or two, maybe even between your heavy barbell squatting or pulling your heavy, lower body weightlifting and the heavy sleds. If you want to do some lighter, more explosive sleds, you. Work that into maybe the end of a heavy lifting, lower body lifting session.

What though, in the way of distance, or is it time, like what does a set look like of poles or pushes and then how many sets is reasonable? How, how do you think 

John: about those things? One that I really always liked, which I, I called four by four, which was I would do four 20 yard per hour pushes. I spent like, I, whatever the weight I picked, like if I t.

I think it was like four, maybe five or six plates on a prowler. So we pushed that on the high handles, so down for 20 yards, and then it was a rest 30 seconds. And then push it back and you basically rest 30 and you, so you do four pushes. Okay. And then I would rest two, I’d have to look it up as either two or three minutes in between those different bouts and I would get four of those.

So I would just like Hammer four, give myself a longer rest, hammer four. And what I would do is obviously the lower handles, when you look at a Prowler, there’s high handles and there’s low handles on the front. And now it’s kind of set. The low handles are dramatically harder. So it was kind of an interesting one where you kind of have like one, you’re moving faster, the lower ones moving a little slower, moving fast, and so by necessarily just changing handle position, you can kind of change the intensity of the movement.

The limiting factor definitely became the low handles, whereas on the high handles with the push fast. So that was kind of just one of the basic workouts we. We did a lot of ’em too, on the minute. Every 30 seconds, depending on distances. Somewhere in that like 15, 20, 25, maybe max, 30 yards. If you’re pushing a sled longer than 30 yards, the quality and effectively the turnover at what you’re doing is gonna deteriorate.

It’s not 

Mike: hard enough, right? 

John: Yeah. To be able to effectively do it, you wouldn’t be able to put enough on there. So that sweet spot’s right around 15, 20, maybe 25 yards if you can. A heavy prowler of that distance, you will add a lot of metabolic distress in your life. When I, I retired in the NFL in 2009, about that time when I got reached out by CrossFit, I mean we started putting out free programming and I think, like I’ve programmed something like, I forgot.

It’s like we’ve worked with like, you know, tens of thousands of athletes and programmed millions of workouts over the course. And uh, you know, we work with training. To do our programming through their app, and I’ve been able to aggregate all this data. I mean, we’ve had something like 18,000 people go through our programs, you know, and there’s like thousands, tens of thousands of workouts when aggregate that data.

The people that consistently train the longest. When you look at like PRS and this and who’s gotten stronger and everything, it’s the people that train the most consistency or most consistently over the longest period of time have the best progress. Which I know everybody listening is like, well, yeah, fucking, of course.

But like, think about that one. So if you go in the gym and you do something like, I’m gonna fucking burn it down, and you end up putting yourself into such a, a hole that you can’t train for two or three days, and then you get in there and you, you know, recover and the quality of the work is. Opposed from like going in and doing like the minimal effective dose that I can recover and come back the next day and continue to train and then add another effective dose so that I can be the person that consistently trains longest over the longest amount of time.

That is the person that ends up having the greatest experience and the greatest success. So I think with a lot of times people go in the gym and then there’s not getting 

Mike: hurt, right? I mean, if you’re too zealous, then you also raise your chances of getting hurt and then that can put you you out for weeks, months.

Yeah. 

John: You know, you see people like, oh, I went in and destroyed myself in the gym, and then they don’t train. Like I, I had clients like this man, they’d come in like two days a week and wrecked themselves, and I didn’t see ’em for like a week. And I’d be like, I would have you. I would rather you give me less effort and come four days a week than fucking burn your city to the ground and only gimme once a week.

I think with this stuff is there’s a minimal effective dose. Like come in if you never push the sled, you know, load it up, push it 10, 15, 20 yards. Do it a couple times. Make it so it’s hard enough. And then the next thing you come in, do a little bit more. You know, use a progressive overload approach and be smart and be like, Hey, I want to continually do this for 10 weeks and see what happens.

Opposed from coming in once and just annihilating yourself and then never wanting to like go near one or you see one, feel like you’re 

Mike: gonna throw up in your mouth. You know, I think of it’s Jeff Bezos’s thing. I think he used it actually for his blue origin, like it’s their motto, it’s Latin for step by step ferociously.

I think it was a Latin saying, g Daum, fero. I don’t know how to speak Latin. I don’t even know how to pronounce anything, but it just means step by step ferociously. And I just think of that concept as something that I liked when I first came across it, because it’s one of those pithy things that applies to.

Different things, including what we’re talking about here, is like you’re saying, one step at a time and with determination and with intention, but not going so far as to just blow yourself up or you can’t take the next step. 

John: It’s, uh, grad ceir. There you go. The only Latin I remember, ISAR Mori, Tori. And what is that?

Which is, uh, Hail Caesar, those of us about to die salute you, which is what the gladiators would say before they would, you know, walk into the Colosseum into certain death. So it’s the only thing I remember from Latin. 

Mike: We could use a Caesar about. Now, another discussion. He’s just one of my favorite people in history, so I’m biased, 

John: but who, uh, ju Julius Caesar.

Yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, dude, I always wonder, you know, how great an individual must be to have their name echo through time. Like, that’s something I think about a lot. Like when you think of these people, like we were talking earlier about Gangas Khan or you know, Julius Caesar. I mean, like, what’s the effect?

Like what do you have to accomplish for your name to echo through time, you know, is, uh, Jeff Besos accomplishment that, you know, a thousand years from now they’re gonna be talking about Jeff be. You know, is Donald Trump the type of individual who is gonna be forgotten in 10 years? We’re like, fuck that guy.

You know, Calvin Coolidge of, uh, you know, or some lesser known presidents. Everybody remembers, you know, Lincoln, Washington, Kennedy because of these, you know, monumental things that happened while they were in office. And I always wonder if there were other great leaders that aren’t remembered because they didn’t live in interesting times, and there was no great strife.

There was no Cuban missile crisis. There was no Emancipation Proclamation. There was. Declaration of Independence to sign. Like, is that why we remember these great men? Or were they really great men? Or were they just men that made the right decision in the face of, of tyranny? So I don’t know. That’s an interesting piece, you know, and I always hear a lot of this bullshit.

We’re like, you know, history won’t remember this well. And I’m like, fuck history’s written by the victors. So who’s ever in charge is the one that gets to write the history. They’re the ones that remember 

Mike: history. Very true. And to that point, I think you could find some good cases just among US presidents of exactly what you’re saying, of people who were presidents, who were very intelligent, who were very competent, and who actually did a good job.

But because nothing particularly interesting happened in that period. They’re just forgotten. But maybe nothing particularly interesting happened because they were good at their job. Like we didn’t get into any major wars and there was no economic calamity of any kind. Like things just kind of were cruising along.

And what though? Many people, what we don’t see, we see things are okay. What we don’t see is what actually goes into maintaining, okay. Like there could have been, uh, potential catastrophes that didn’t happen because this person made the right choices. 

John: I sometimes wonder, like when you said like, do the right thing.

That’s kind of an interesting piece, like you can only make decisions based off of the information that you have available to you. While I would never advocate for the job of president of the United States, I think you have to probably hoard yourself in co like just scrutiny, and there’s no way anybody would want that job, but.

My only advocacy for that job would be, can you imagine the information that you would have at your fingertips? Can you imagine the information, like the briefings? Like I would just love to like plug in and be like, tell me everything. I want to know what’s happening in Syria. I want to know what’s happening here.

Like, I wanna, 

Mike: well, I mean, you saw that headline, right? That Pentagon. Officials were withholding information from Trump. So I, I totally get what you’re saying. Like it sounds great and interesting, but then at this point you would have to wonder, unless you are on board with the establishment, if you want to call it that, some people would say with the deep state, there are machines, there are apparatuses of government that are running in a certain way and are moving in a certain direction.

And if you’re gonna try to change that, you are not gonna be viewed favorably Trump’s presidency. Been more or less the same, even if he wasn’t Trump and if he would’ve been more of a politician and if he would’ve been a better PR person. But the fact that he wanted to change the way that certain things were going and these things, there’s so much momentum there, 

John: dude.

But the thing is, is, um, Like, I think that there is an intelligent way to navigate this stuff that I think, you know, I mean there’s a lot of Dunning Krueger wi with him and I, you know, narcissistic personality disorder. I mean, like, it’s pretty fascinating to like, you know, just see some of the classic things like the Dunning Krueger.

Like, what do you mean I’m the best at everything? So, I mean, I think there is a little bit of that with. But I think as a intelligent, you know, somebody who’s read Machiavelli’s the Prince numerous times, who was a rhetoric major, I think sitting there and realizing that there is a very real opportunity for the cunning individual that can somehow get in and navigate those circles.

And unfortunately, DC doesn’t like outsiders. That’s why, you know the, you know, they’re probably so happy to get Joe Biden back in there cuz he’s one of the boys, he’s one of the crew. You know, he knows where the bodies are buried and they know where all his are. So I think that there’s a feeling of returning back to normal.

But I think for a guy like Trump as an outsider, he tried to come in and thought that like he could make changes and do this. I, I think you gotta go in there and you gotta play the game and you gotta get in there and see how this whole thing works. But I think the fact that you have people in his cabinet and, and the people that are in the government that weren’t giving him information is indicative of how they didn’t trust him.

You know, I don’t know what was in that. We’re not privy to this stuff, and unfortunately you never know the value of somebody’s presidency, how good or bad it was until many, many years after the fact. People talk about, you know, Obama did this, but lemme fuck Obama. I mean, shit, he’s putting out a ton of memoirs, but then nobody unfortunately wants to remember a lot of the shit, but they’re.

I’m trying to blame all these kids in cages. I’m like, uh, the Obama administration built all those cages. 

Mike: Yeah, I remember the pictures, the famous pictures that were going around were actually from O one of Obama’s. 

John: Well, like, I mean, where was the outrage when Obama was doing that? Well, there wasn’t, it wasn’t an outrage until they needed the outrage.

And I’ll tell you the one thing that I think is the valuable lesson of anybody that wants. Attempt to ascend to something like the President of the United States. You need to have a serious back alley deal with the media. You can’t go in there and kick those people in the teeth and fucking set them on fire and do everything that he did and basically called them out and not expect them to come and try to kill you at every stage.

I mean, if you want to think like the American people didn’t necessarily vote Trump out the US media fucking eviscerated. By running just nothing but negative, negative stuff 24 hours a day. I mean, shit. Even the good stuff he did, like, you know, you hear about the peace deals. I mean, he put together three landmark peace deals and they nominated him for a Nobel Prize.

Shit. You never heard 

Mike: that. Many people don’t even know about that. They’re just confused right now that you’re like, what? What are you talking about? Well, 

John: yeah, because why? Because the media, like the US media fucking. You know, you turn on the tv like, do you ever hear about anything in the Middle East? I mean, dude, when the whole yellow vest riots were going on in Paris, shit, you didn’t hear anything about that here.

The only way you’re gonna get any international to know what’s going on in the international stages, you’re gonna have to look at like the b, bbc, you know, algae. I mean, you’re gonna have to reach out to some other news stations cuz if not, they don’t have anything. You know, which they haven’t for a while.

What are they gonna do? They’re gonna run the Kardashians, or they’re just gonna be like Donald Trump. Like, I’m almost interested, and this is purely just out of like curiosity. Trump loses, Biden comes in, what the fuck is the news gonna talk about? They’re 

Mike: probably already. Worried about that themselves.

Ratings are about to decline precipitously. 

John: I know you’re on the East coast, but like the Como brothers, like, are you fucking kidding me? Like those two dip shits, like, what are those guys? Like What’s, was it Chris Como? That’s the weightlifter 

Mike: as, uh, Tucker Carlson says 

John: he’s the, the Pundant and his brother.

But like those guys, I mean, every single moment, you know, on all these news stations is like painted Trump as the anti-Christ. You know? I mean like the fact, the fact that they’re trying to like remove freedom of speech and yet calling people Nazis, like, I’m just like, this is so confusing to me. Like I was thinking the other day as I was just seeing this, um, you know, endless barrage.

1. I’m just curious to know if Trump leaves, well, 

Mike: maybe he goes and starts his own media company so he can still play the anti-Christ role for them by just trying to grow the MAGA movement. You know what I mean? 

John: They did say that if Trump loses, he’s gonna announce his campaign for 2020, which, or 2024 rather.

I mean realistically, if he was, I didn’t, I didn’t hear that. That’s one of their things. But I think if he was intelligent and was well backed, what he should do is probably step aside, let Biden go start funding and raising money for a Super PAC and you know, continue to be involved in start the 

Mike: media company.

What I read is there were just rumors that if he did that, that Sean Hannity, Laura Ingram, and Tucker Carlson would consider leaving Fox, which would impl. Their ratings even worse than what’s happening right now and go and, and work with Trump. But yeah, I mean you think it would be smarter to do that?

Exactly. Or be play king maker basically, and look for somebody who is, I mean, if you’re just going to be practical, somebody who is younger and somebody who’s well spoken, somebody who has a better understanding of how the political machinations. Work, like how the system actually works, how the bureaucracy of government works and how things actually get done.

And to your point, why you can’t just come in and shit on everything and everyone, and even if you have good ideas, it doesn’t matter because you need buy-in from a lot of people who you’re not gonna like, who you’re gonna have to pretend that you do like them to get anything done. If you. Just a dictator, then yes, it would be a lot easier.

But our system is very inefficient in that way. Yes, and it’s very slow and it’s very complex and there are a lot of things that don’t work, but to make it work, again, that requires I think, a skillset and well, it takes a politician. You need to understand like where the levers are and what they do and where the buttons are and what they do.

And it takes a 

John: politic. And I think what Trump tried to do is, you know, Trump’s a tyrant. I mean, he really is. I mean, and, and I don’t mean that in a bad way, I just mean that, you know, hey, he was, 

Mike: I mean, tyrant is a bit of a word. I mean, it’s almost like he, like as if he’s c e o, like, this is what we’re gonna do.

I want it to happen, 

John: make it happen. So that’s what I mean, like kind of iron like rule with an iron fist and how he ran his company. You know, Hey, this is what we’re doing. This is how we’re going. I’m gonna bring these people 

Mike: in. I mean, to be fair though, that’s probably how you run it. And I, I don’t mean this necessarily as defense of Trump.

I mean, a good c e o ultimately does just say, yeah, this is what we’re doing, and I’m gonna explain to everybody why, and I’m gonna try to get buy-in. But if I 

John: don’t have to ask anybody’s opinion, right? So he’s in a situation where you know, Hey, I’m running this company. These are the deals we’re doing.

This is how it’s gonna go. I don’t fucking acquiesce, I don’t bend. I use that term like he’s running it like a business. He’s in charge. This isn’t a democracy. This is, uh, you know, fucking my way or the highway. And like, you know, a little bit of that tyranny is probably how business effectively runs. But unfortunately, when you go to DC and there’s a big difference between being a politician, a politician’s not a businessman, the ability to, to politic, you know, to glad hand to, you know, win boats and to, and to cut deals and to go there and to not tell everybody.

Think about this, right? So he goes in onto the platform of draining the swamp, that DC has turned into this swamp of humanity with these swamp creatures, and we gotta drain this thing and clean it up. If you’re in DC and he basically paints you the picture, what? Depending on what aisle, if you’re a Republican or a Democrat, instantly fucking I’m in the swamp.

And whether or not you are or not, you don’t want their constituents to know that. I think that there was an easier way to go into this. You know, not trying to burn it to the ground. Like I, I think the only way you’re gonna change the system is from the inside. I think a dude like Dan Crenshaw, I’m a big fan of, you know, he’s a congressman here in, in Houston in Texas, you know, former Navy Seal.

I don’t know if he, he’s the guy that has the eye patch, but SNL made front of super eloquent SEAL team commander. I mean, just a sharp dude and, uh, you know, went to Harvard after grad school. He’s done a good job. I think putting, having a guy like Trump with a pack and having, like you said, starting his own media company, having a pack, you know, having a.

You know that power for that king maker, but unfortunately that’s not Trump. Trump wants to be in the forefront. He wants to be the dude. He really, I don’t think he could. Take a backseat and realize like, you know, the age old Cardinal Richou where true power rest behind the throne kind of a deal. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well 

Mike: put, well put. And I’m sure we could, again, this is the kind of thing we’ll probably just go on for hours and hours about this stuff, but hey, I, I really appreciate you taking the time to do this interview. And if Sal and Mark. I mean, I’ve, I’ve spoke to ’em about, about that idea and they do like it.

So you would definitely be on the roster. I think it could be a lot of fun. 

John: Yeah. Well, let me know. I’m always down. It’d be good. It’d, it’d be fun to do it in person, but it’d always be good on a podcast. Other than you just have to wait for Mark Rip who talks so damn slow. Got that Texas 

Mike: draw and continuously, I’m always, when can I jump in?

I gotta time my interruptions just right, or we’re off to the next tangent, which is great. I mean, I’m the same way. If I, if I don’t consciously pay attention, I will completely hijack a conversation and never shut up. So I totally get it. But hey, let’s wrap up with where people can find you and your podcast and your work, and if there are any new things coming that you want people to know about, or any things that are currently popular that you want people to know 

John: about.

The easiest way to find me is, uh, at John well, I’m on social media. You can find [email protected]. My company is Power Athlete. Our URL and the way you find us is just type in power athlete or to our URL power athlete hq.com. You know, social media power athlete. We do a ton of stuff with, you know, eat the week, be the hammer.

A lot of our taglines we do, we do, uh, a ton of some killer merch, but really where I think we have added a pretty amazing. Deal is with our online programs, four or 5,000 people a day, checking programs around the world. We have a bunch of different archetypes for those programs and uh, you can find all those at Power Athlete.

And we have a pretty detailed, you know, list of all the programs and also, you know, week or two free trial if you want to give it a shot. We do a bunch of new nutrition. We do a podcast, which is Power Athlete Radio. So if you go to your favorite power, Place for podcasts and type in power athlete radio. I think we got like 420 episodes.

Nice. You know, some great guests and have a lot of fun doing it. So yeah, we’re real easy to find. We’re not hiding in any way. And our athlete, which is my company, is based on the idea of ramping up people’s performance and, you know, helping people reach their goals and really just be a more badass human being.

Mike: Awesome man. Love it. And we’ll have to do another one. We’ll have to think of, uh, what’s another topic we can pontificate on, uh, anytime. 

John: Always look forward to it. Thank you. 

Mike: All right. Well, that’s it for this episode. I hope you enjoyed it and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and you don’t mind doing me a favor, please do leave a quick review on iTunes or.

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And that’s it. Thanks again for listening to this episode, and I hope to hear from you soon.