Speaker 1: 0:12

um this is like no no bs um you you like everybody here uh like luke and the team this is really cool like i i don't know i don't know how big luke's ego is and if he tells you guys this but uh you know his his pretty big yeah i know there's always there's always a top three right and they're just constantly competing for that top spot um and and this gym is always up there and there's no surprise right it's just the the community here is fantastic um you can. you can see it in like the obviously in like the the numbers and stuff like that but that's that's all pretty far removed from the people aspect of it and when you walk into the place it's really obvious right the gyms that are doing really well everybody likes each other the coaches care about the members um everybody's happy everybody's having a great time like, You guys, hopefully I'm not ruining it, ruining this for you, but this stuff is like, exceedingly simple. Like, like you could, you could cover your ears, Luke, you could do this at home by yourself. Like it's actually designed to be done by yourself, like with a book and with. YouTube. Um, and I know that sounds really silly to say it, but it's not about that, right? It's about, it's, uh, first of all, I mean, you want to learn how to do things correctly, but really how many times do you hear the same things from your coach on a weekly basis that, you know, you're hearing the same things over and over again, you're screwing up the same things over and over again. Um, but ultimately it's, you know, it's the progress that you're making. It's, it's the changes that it's, that it's, uh, that it's bringing into your life, but probably the most important part of it is the community. We've been talking about that for years. So this, uh, this gym for sure is like the, uh, uh, is, is sort of in, in, in those terms, like a flagship. in terms of like the community and the progress and all that stuff. So, uh, kudos to all you guys. It's awesome. It's very cool. Um, yeah, so I guess Luke, gave my bio, so I don't, I won't go through that. But out of all those things, I think that strength training is the least interesting thing I do. But it's still very cool. Again, mostly because of out of all the things that I've been involved in in my life and all the things that I enjoy, strength training through starting strength is the one that has the broadest applicability and can help the most people. So it's very cool. I'm very fortunate. I feel very lucky to be up here and going through this with you guys. So usually kind of people want to hear technical stuff from me, but it'll be a little bit different. What I want to talk about basically is why this is all important. And these are things that I've been thinking about and talking about for a while. And I know for a lot of you, I'm like the guy on the poster or the guy on the podcast. But there's a lot of things that are happening in the background with this whole company, with starting strength, and then with how we're supporting. members and how we're supporting franchisees. And the more, the more, you know, I've been at this for as I've been coaching for 20 years. Um, I've been in like full time in the starting strength world for, for, uh, over 10 now. And the longer I do this and the more people we get and the more involved we get, it's like everything, everything tends to get simpler in my mind and actually like. more important, you know, in terms of, in terms of what it is that we're doing. Um, if you guys don't realize this, we're the first ones to do, um, barbell training in a retail environment like this. This does not exist. Uh, it will soon. Like I'm sure we'll, we're going to have competitors soon because this is again, uh, compelling and simple and people, people want this. Uh, people are, are in the popular culture. Strength is becoming a thing. Like, you know, your doctors are telling you to, to do resistance training and strength training and stuff now. So, uh, again, um, in terms of, of where we're at, you know, we're kind of the first ones, but, uh, this is a big deal. Like you, you couldn't. just walk into a place and and have racks and barbells and especially not a place like this you know in a retail shopping center you had to go to a a dungeon somewhere or like a uh or a warehouse somewhere in order to get this experience right and then on top of that then you layer in the because it's not about the equipment right it's it's about the equipment for people who enjoy this kind of thing um and seek it out but then you layer the coaching on top of it and this. is just kind of like magic right this is really really cool stuff so um anyway i forgot where i was going with that but um this is the this is what i want to talk about so so better people through doing hard things all right um before i get into that and i uh i tend to talk too much so i'll i'll uh i'll move a little bit quicker here um by the way disregard luke's instructions if you have questions or if you want to if you want to ask me anything um or if you have it you know for some of you guys who like to talk, if you want to say anything please please do i'm uh totally totally open and encourage that so. First, let me just cover some basic things that I think you already know, especially if you train here. And if you don't train here and if you haven't started barbell training, I'll position it in a way that will make sense to you. So one of the things that you always want to be thinking about is what are the fundamental principles at work with anything that I'm doing, right? And I always take the barbell training or any hard physical training and I like to think about how it applies to everything else. Because again, this statement is 100% factual in my mind, right? And not everybody can physically do hard things and I understand that. But for most of us, most of the time, if we're able-bodied, this is one of the aspects of your life that's critically important. And as the world gets more separated and more technologically efficient, I think this becomes more and more important, right? Like we're becoming less and less of who we are. supposed to be as human beings because we've made our lives easier. And that's great, right? But we have to figure out ways to fully develop ourselves. And a big part of that is your physical existence. And I'll talk a bunch more about that in a minute. So yeah, I think this is not an understatement, right? Better people through hard things or hard physical effort. We all sort of automatically, as part of living in a society, in a culture, we're automatically exposed to hard, mental and emotional situations. That's just part of the deal. But we live in a time in history. where you can completely remove yourself from anything physically hard. And that's not good, right? Some of you are here because you've experienced that firsthand, right? And you're here to solve that. So one of the things is the earlier you can catch onto that and the earlier you can get in the middle of it, the better. So I think that's a big part of that. The better, right? So anyway, from a training standpoint. And again, this applies to lots of things. But from a training standpoint, I want you guys to get a couple of important concepts. So there's the general adaptation syndrome, right? And you guys may have heard your coaches talk about this as stress recovery adaptation. So if you look at, if you kind of boil what we're doing down into the simplest version of things is we're applying a stress, you're recovering from that stress, and you're adapting to that stress, right? In the case of this gym, you're doing that in a force production context or a strength context, right? But again, you can expand that thinking out to pretty much anything that you do, right? Anything that you do that puts a stress on you, whether it's physical, mental, or emotional, there's a recovery process, right? There's an initial kind of alarm phase, right? Where your body goes, whoa, what the hell, right? Or your brain or whatever. And then there's a recovery phase, and then you come out stronger, quote unquote, after that, right? So that's the general adaptation syndrome. And then the other one is the... The specific adaptation to impose the man. or the said principle, right? And they're kind of related. And what that means is that whatever adaptation, whatever stress is applied is going to result in an adaptation that's proportional and directly correlated to the stress, right? So in other words, if you, like a sunburn is a perfect example, right? This is actually the example that's in the book. If you're driving, right, and you got the windows down, it's a nice day, probably not here, but somewhere where it's not humid. You got the windows down and the sun's like blaring onto your arm and you burn over here. You don't get a burn over here, right? Or if you're laying on your back, right? And that's a simple example. You know, something in terms of training is like, if you want to be good at marathons, you got to run marathons. If you want to be good at strength training, you got to do strength training. So that's obvious, but somehow people start to blend these things together and forget these very simple concepts, all right? So again, in a broader context, whatever it is that you're trying, improve, You have to apply stress that is directly related to what the improvement is that I'm looking for, right? So stress recovery and adaptation, the SED principle, and one of the things that this program does, because it's easy to get sort of locked into the thinking of like, what. does my squat look like? What does my press look like? You know, my elbows, all these different things that your coaches are talking about. But fundamentally, that's what we're doing. We're applying a stress. Stress, your coaches are telling you to go home and eat and sleep and do the things that you have to do so that you can recover and you can come back an improved physical person, right? So improving and a constant state of upward trajectory in terms of improvement, right? And as you guys know, it's very quick and easy at first, right? Easy is probably not the right word, but it's quick. It is easy. Like from a broader perspective, it is easy. Like it goes very fast and then it slows down. And then it slows way down. And you guys that have been here for two. three, two or three years, you know what that looks like, right? You're not adding weight to the bar every workout. You're not adding weight to the bar every week, maybe not even every month, but there's still value in that process and, and, um, attempting or doing the things that you need to do in order to keep that needle moving up is, is of critical importance. Right. And this is one. of these things where you're like preaching to the choir. Cause you guys under you're here, you understand that. But you know, if you're ever talking to people, um, like how do you just go in and squat, press, bench, and deadlift three days a week for years on end? Um, because it's not about that. It's about everything that comes with that. Right. Which again, we'll get into here in just a minute. All right. Any, uh, any questions that I'll make sense? You guys, you guys have experienced this firsthand, you guys that are training, right? Um, so what this program does.

Speaker 2: 10:49

and what this gym does and what these coaches do. Oh, Oh yeah. Go ahead. Uh, you know, we hear a lot about collecting stress as you progress.

Speaker 1: 11:12

Yeah, like accumulating stress over time. Yeah, so think about it like this. As you're improving and adapting as you're applying this stress to your body, right? So you're moving. It's like think of a graph and a curve that kind of goes like this. So you're moving along that curve in terms of your strength performance. So the situation, whenever people talk about accumulated stress, the situation is just that, like you have sort of separate curves where you have recovery and you have stress. And those are going to meet at some point. And when you first start, those two curves are really far away from each other. And it's really difficult to... apply so much stress that you can't recover from it. And as you start training, this is another reason why this is so significant because it only gets harder. It never gets easier. The longer you're here, the harder it gets. So as those curves are converging, that's where things get more difficult in terms of all of the recovery things, that you have to do outside of the gym. The reality is that nobody, well, there's a couple of you that are under 25 in here, but most of us are grown adults with jobs and not optimal physiologies at this point. So the question is, how do you manage that stress so that you can keep pace? So the accumulated stress in the context of this discussion. or in the context of training is just a thing that you have to manage. You can't not accumulate stress. In fact, accumulating stress is what makes this work. Does that make sense? Am I answering your question.

Speaker 2: 13:02

Where did you find the stress from.

Speaker 1: 13:05

Oh, it's a good question. Yeah, it's the stress from the bar, right? So that's actually what's accumulating. Your response to that stress is going to fluctuate depending on the situation. But to answer your question, it's how your hormones interact. It's how your just general fatigue. It's just wear and tear on your joints. So those are the things you're kind of managing. So there's not like a bucket of stress that you're holding, right? It's more of like a snapshot of what's the current situation, right? Is that helpful? Okay, all right. Nick, that slide will still be there. I saw you hit the phone a couple times.

Speaker 2: 13:53

I want to make sure it's not a fan.

Speaker 1: 13:55

It should be there. Thank you, Luke.

Speaker 2: 13:56

Okay.

Speaker 1: 13:57

If you want to come back here, I can give you. No, I'm just kidding, man. I'll give you a little signal, and then you can hit it. All right. So, okay, stress recovery adaptation. So here's where the discussion is going to get a little bit away from the nuts and bolts of strength training, right? So, again, this only gets harder, right? When you think about your life and you think about your careers and you think about your relationships with people and you think about all these things, things don't really behave this way generally, right? We tend to settle into a comfortable mode with things, and then you ride it out, right? And then things will happen, and then you have to make an adjustment, and it's stressful, and then you kind of settle into a new sort of new normal. You guys remember that term from a few years ago? So you settle into, like, a new normal. Unfortunately. with anything that involves performance, right? So performance is what we're looking for, and then all of the benefits of that performance. are the side benefits, which is what we're here for, like the increased muscle mass, increased health, looking better, all those things, right? But really what we're driving is performance. And when you're driving performance, again, super obvious. If you're pushing performance, you're coming up against harder and harder and harder situations. All the time, right? So just take a second and think about that and think about how profound that is for everything else in your life. Again, we live, most of us live fairly comfortable lives, especially when you compare like us today versus us 50, 100, 200 years ago, you know, or whatever. So that's of profound importance in this scenario because what are the things that you can do in order to put yourself in a performance, a f***ing, Physical performance situation, there's a bunch of things, and I'll talk about them in a minute, but there's always this juggle of like, is it safe? How long can I do it? Can my body handle it, right? So I think one of the best things that human beings can do is fight each other, right? But it's not realistic, right? I mean, it's not safe, right? It can be. Maybe, but also, like, you know, if a guy walks in and he's 68 and he says, I want to feel better and be healthier, like, I'm not going to tell him to go fight. I'm not going to tell him to start boxing or jiu-jitsu. That doesn't make any sense. But we can do that here, right? And we can stress ourselves pretty profoundly in a lot of different ways. Okay. All right, let me move on. So here's something that I've been thinking about and talking about for a while now. I think, and hear me out, okay? Hear me out. Because it might be a little jarring at first. I think that... See, Luke? You're supposed to help me out, man. I think that who we are as people, as human beings, as functioning individuals, is determined by a bunch of things. But I think if we distill it down, there's three important aspects. And I want to thank my friend Ray Gillenwater because we talk about stuff like this all the time. And this was one of our ideas or mine. I don't know. Whatever. It doesn't matter. But it's three things. It's how smart are you? It's how well do you connect to other people? And how connected are you to your physical existence? So just take a second. How smart are you? How well do you connect with people? And how connected are you to your physical existence? Now, obviously, there's situations where if someone's wheelchair-bound or whatever, that doesn't apply. But we're talking just in general. normally. Okay. So when I say, how smart are you? What I mean, what I mean is how, how do you solve problems? Can you think systematically in some way, right? Can you, can you think through a problem and then, uh, making decisions under pressure? All right. Um, how well do you connect with people, building relationships, communicating effectively and, um, contributing to your community? Okay. Um, and those are things that I think, um, most people in some level spend most. of their effort on. They spend most of their, most of their time, whether they realize it or not, right. You're always interacting with people. You're always, uh, in some way challenging yourself, hopefully intellectually, or even just, you know, you're, you're having problems thrown at you all the time. So you're kind of, kind of part of, of living in the world. Right. And the third part, how connected are you to your physical existence? I would say that, you know, there's this joke and the strength, training world. Like, do you even lift bro? You guys have heard this, uh, man. And that's a thing, guys. That's a thing. And when I say, do you even lift? It doesn't have to be lifting. It's like, do you do something hard physically? You can tell there's a difference in the quality of people who challenge themselves physically versus people who don't. And you can see that when you're sitting in a meeting. I don't know if you guys have gone through this. I definitely did. But I remember in my former corporate life just sitting in a meeting and being like, has this guy ever been punched? Has he ever squatted? Has he ever squatted a heavy weight? It's like, dude, you don't understand. You don't understand anything, right? There are hierarchies that exist that are part of our existence, that are part of our DNA, so to speak, that we recognize as human beings. And one of those things is physical capability. And it matters. It matters internally. with other people, you can be super competent on the intelligence side. You can be super. competent on the human connection side. But there's this third sort of factor that always factors in. And it's easy to ignore, right? Again, especially in the world that we live in, it's very easy to ignore. But you'll notice if you pay attention, and I think probably said a better way, because the way I'm saying this kind of sounds a little bit, I don't know, self-serving or kind of shitty. A better way to say it is that the third piece of this, the physical connection part of it, at the very least, it's an enhancer for the other two, right? It's kind of like a booster or a multiplier for those things, all right? And I'm going to try to make an argument for this as we proceed here, all right? So it's your relationship with your body. It's understanding and your understanding and experience with physical challenges. And then probably most important, it's like a deep understanding. of your actual capability. Like, what can your body actually do? And that's what something like barbell training, and that's what something like, that's really, really difficult, like wrestling, you know, or Brazilian jiu-jitsu or something, that's what it exposes you to at a very real, like, very visceral level. Like, there's no bullshit, right? Did you lift the weight or not? Did you do the things that were required of you in order to come in and add five more pounds to the bar? If not, you have, like, you have an objective event that just occurred, like you failed or, you know, your coach took weight off the bar or whatever, but you know whether or not you did what you needed to do, but also, it's not only about that, it's more so, like, you know exactly what your body is capable of, right? And again, I don't think that can be overstated, how important that is, because, you know, to repeat myself again, we live in a world where it's very easy, to... Um, to, to live in these circumstances that completely ignores that aspect of our, of our lives. Um, and once again, I think that as we're going to the future, it, this like, it's really important to me and it's really important to like how I think about my children. And I think, uh, I think moving forward here, I think it's, uh, it's critical that we don't lose that. Right. Cause if, if, uh, like AI and stuff can do everything for us, what are we left with? Right. You get to like, like just be more human and how do you be more human, figure out what you can do. Right. And, and like, be stoked about that. Be really excited about what, what your body can do. And in order to do that, you have to test your limits. So this is a place where you can come in and not only, not only improve your limits, like. very real, like, like you guys have experienced this, but you can also test your limits on a regular basis. Like every time you come in, you're essentially testing your limits. Like what, what can you do? And you're doing it under the guidance of a coach and it's super safe. Like this is one of the safest things you can do. So, um, really, really important stuff, guys. Any questions or comments there while I switch the thing? How do you approach things? You talk about hitting your limits and increasing them. I imagine many of us routinely reach our limit. Yeah. You can't. Yeah. But I think that's some of the greatest growth. you have sometimes is you do that and then later on you come back and you approach it again. No question. Because even within this process, you go through the same sort of cycle, right? Because, again, at the beginning, the gains are easy and you improve very quickly. But then you're going to hit that, you're going to hit this situation again where you're getting close to your limit and you have a decision to make. It's like, is it worth it for me to keep going? Our job is to convince you that it is worth it, right? But you have a job yourself where it's like, is this worthwhile? You know, I always make this, I always kind of put this scenario forward. You guys driving to the gym every day, it can't be a question that you're going to walk in here. Like, you can't be driving and be like, man, it's like black swan hot yoga is over there. I think I might go to hot yoga instead. Like, you know, you got, have all thought that. I know you have. You guys have all thought that. You're like, why the hell am I putting myself through this, right? So you're going through this cycle that I'm talking about over and over again, which again, in my mind, self-serving or not, in my mind, that's super valuable where you're like, because again, even in this context, you still get to a comfort level. and you have to continually push. I think to answer your question though, yeah, everything's going to slow down. Everything gets harder. So what you do at that point is like, and kind of where this becomes a little bit more fun for people is rather than focusing on getting everything better, now that everything is at a higher level, it's time to start picking and choosing. So I'm going to focus on this aspect of it, right? So let me give you an example. Like I want to press X amount of weight, right? Or I want to deadlift X amount of weight. And you can start focusing. on those kind of more micro goals rather than just. The overall goal of getting stronger, right? So that's maybe a trick or that's maybe a way to kind of continue. uh, staying motivated and staying excited about coming into this kind of stuff. Does that, does that answer your question? Okay. Um, all right. So hard physical efforts, the way you do this, right. And I, I mean, I've been, I've been kind of alluding to this without, without saying that exact phrase, but hard physical effort is the only thing or not the only thing, but it's going to be the best way to tap into this aspect of, of connection with your body. All right. Hopefully none of you disagree with that. Um, I mean, we can dream up other ways. Um, I don't know, uh, you know, hiking or yoga or things like that. What, all of these things, all these things, yes, they'll, they'll help you establish a connection with your body. But I think the thing that's, that's critical about something like barbell training is the aspect of the challenge and the aspect of it showing you where your limits are and what your capabilities are. It's humbling, right? It's a humbling experience. And, um, in that, through that humility, you become a better person. and also your tolerance for bullshit goes down. Like, I'm sorry, does it go down or up? It goes, that's actually a good question. I don't know, because it goes up in some ways, but also your tolerance goes way down for, yeah, for people who kind of are living this sort of different lifestyle, you know, that is different from yours. It's not, you know, it's not bad. I think that's probably a good thing, all right? So the other things that you learn from barbell training, and we'll call them systematic advantages. There's my pal there, right there, deadlifting yesterday. So there's the concept of effort and output, right? So, or not the concept, but the relationship between effort and output. I've seen this over and over. Like, this is a thing that people don't realize, until they get under a barbell or they do something really, really hard. It's kind of implied, you know, depending on how successful you are. And generally people that come, of these gyms have achieved some level of success in their lives, obviously, but, uh, but still there's this other aspect of it, the physical side of things where the amount of effort that you put in is directly correlated to the amount of output, the amount of performance that you get. And you know, this, right? You know, this, if you, if you, uh, train consistently, if you eat your protein, try to get as much sleep as possible, what happens to the weight on the bar? You feel better. The weight on the bar goes up and then you improve all of the things that you're here to improve and then vice versa. Right. But again, the BS, um, starts to get eliminated, right? It was like. the excuses go away and there's not many things in our lives that we can not excuse away. Right. It's really easy to make excuses and it's really easy to equivocate and it's really easy to justify, in, in, in one of these, one of these endeavors that's like physically hard that just doesn't exist. Right. Did you lift the weight or not? Did you do the things that you needed to do or not? So, uh, the relationship between effort and output and then another, really important one is the law of diminishing returns. How many times, like how many times in. your life do you get to actually experience in practice the law of diminishing returns? Meaning that, you know, progression is very quick at the beginning and then it gets harder. And then you have to, you have to figure out with the help of your coach and, and you know, the support of the gym, you have to work through that. It's like, things are getting really hard, but I'm going to choose to keep going and I'm going to choose to keep making it harder for myself. Right. Um, um, so again, take that into every other aspect of your life. Doesn't matter what age you are. I. mean, for kids, for teenagers, this is like, this is critical stuff to learn at an early age. And I don't know that there's ever been an easier time to not have to, to not have to do that. Right. And I mean, my kids spend a lot of time in front of computers and stuff. And you know, a lot of kids spend a lot of time in school. We always have spent time sitting in school, but it's really easy. Like Luke, Luke and Megan and I were talking the other night. And I think, I think I mentioned, and something like, like my children have never been bored. I don't think they've ever been bored, right? I remember experiencing boredom quite a bit, but it's really easy to not be bored. So it's like really, what that means is that it's really easy to like do things easily, right? So yeah, the, like let's not wait until it's, until it's, you don't have a choice in order to put yourself through a process like this, right? Again, speaking to the choir, guys. So are we good? Any questions, comments? I think, okay. All right. So let's talk about things you can do. I mean, obviously we're here talking about strength training, okay? But again, the longer you guys are training or even if you're just getting started here, there's always this balance, there's always this thing in your head. Like in the beginning, you guys come in, you start training and you get super excited because you're adding five pounds, you're adding five pounds, you're adding 60 pounds a month. Weight. going up. You're feeling better. You know, two weeks in, you guys are like going into the bathroom and you're like brushing your teeth. You're like, oh man, look at that trap. You know, look at, and you start seeing muscles that aren't there. It's phenomenal. It's great. Right. Um, you know, women too, but, um, the, what happens is as things get hard, this is inevitable. Like what, what starts to happen? You start thinking about, oh, I want to go, like, I think I want to really focus. Sorry, Stan. I really want to focus on pickleball or I really want to focus. I really want to focus on, um, you know, whatever, whatever other thing, you know, running, it doesn't matter, whatever it is. Right. Um, our job is to help you understand, that this, this should fit in with your life, right? So you're going to have other physical. hobbies and you should like the people that lifting is their only thing. There's some of you in here. It's a little weird, like the, the, unless you're a competitor, right? Unless you're a competitor, this, this is, this is your thing. That's, that's one thing. But the people, people who are like, like just hardcore, just come to the gym and lift, those are very rare, actually, right? There's only a handful of those folks in every gym. This serves a lot of times as a vehicle for other physical hobbies, right? So in other words, you start training and you're like, oh man, I can do things. And then you're like, I'm gonna go try this other thing. And then you get excited about that, all right? But once again, self-serving, but this needs to be a part of your life forever. Like once you're in, you're in. You don't, you'll keep your strength, but it also, you know, if you're not consistently stressing yourself, it starts to go backwards, especially as you're getting older, right? So the other thing that happens is like, how many of you guys, you don't have to raise your hand. Just think to yourself. How many times, how many of you guys have said to a coach, I think I need to do something for the old ticker, or I think I need to worry about my cardio, right? So there's this spectrum of activity that human beings can do. And one, On one end is extremely high force production, right? Super, super strong stuff like Luke's doing over there. And on the other end is like specialized cardio stuff, like endurance running, right? Especially like long distance endurance running, 25 mile plus, right? So those are like the two ends of the physical spectrum. Super high force production, which would be something like power lifting. And then ultra marathon might be the other end of it. And everything that we do falls within that spectrum, everything physical that we do. The thing that people don't understand, and I actually have this backwards. I usually like to have strength training on this side. But everything that we do, so let's think of the width of this TV as the spectrum, right? So here's running 100 miles, running 100 miles. And here is a one rep max deadlift on this side, the heaviest thing that you can do. Most of the activities that human beings do or that we care about are from here down. Right? It's from here down. So feel free to argue with me on that. You're not going to win. I'm telling you it's from here down. All right? Once you get past Luke's butt and you start going this way, things become more and more specialized towards the endurance side of things. Right? So you can have a force production specialization, meaning that all aspects of your training are focused on high force production. Or you can have an endurance specialization. And you guys have experiences. Has anybody in the room done or doing long distance cardio, running, swimming, biking, anything like that in here? Have you experienced that if you're training, have you experienced this effect where work down here will affect everything going this way, but work down here does not affect things going that direction? Right? So if you can kind of understand that simple concept, where should we be spending most of our time? It should be down there. Now, if this is your thing, by the way, this is ChatGPT created. Look. It's pretty good, right? All I said was give me marathon runners with skinny legs. I wasn't expecting this. This is great. But if you can sort of grasp that concept, if increasing force production positively improves all of your physical attributes, then we should spend a good portion of time developing that strength, and then we should spend a majority of that time maintaining that strength depending on how far this way you want to go, right? So if you're this person, if marathons are your thing, yeah, you have to do that activity, right? But you also need the force production side of things. And as human beings, we actually don't need this side of it, right? You need enough in order to maintain your cardiorespiratory health and all that kind of stuff. But you guys that have pulled a heavy deadlift set of five, Are you breathing hard at the end of that? Yeah. So outside of that, what else do you need? You probably need to walk, right? You probably need to not get winded when you walk up a flight of stairs. That's not good. But we're not telling you to get so sloppy that you can't walk up a flight of stairs. But you don't also need to go do like stop lifting and go do cardio, right? Does that make sense to everybody? Again, preaching to the choir here. But the force production side of things is what's going to positively affect everything across the board, all right? So strength training and just, I mean, this is obviously silly, right? But just think about the adaptation. Remember what I said at the beginning, specific adaptation to impose demands. So what does high force production give us? It gives us bigger muscles. What does cardio give us? Smaller muscles, right? Yeah, increased cardio. Respiratory efficiency. But ultimately, what is it? If we can get some of... If we get a lot of both down here, why wouldn't we spend more time there, right? And as little as possible over here, right? That's the way to think about it. So barbells give you, or I'm sorry, strength training gives you increased muscles. What do bigger muscles give you? Health, right? Because there's a hormonal component to this, right? There's also all of the benefits of having bigger muscles. Longevity. And when I say longevity, what I mean is just like being able to do the things you want to do for as long as possible, right? Not in terms of like the wellness influencer stuff, you know, that's a separate thing. When I say longevity, I mean just like being able to do whatever you want, whether that's like play with your grandkids or bring the groceries in or, you know, whatever, pickleball, golf, whatever, whatever your thing is, being able to do that for as long as you possibly can, right? And then the other one, which is probably, to be honest, it's probably the number one reason that people start training is appearance, right? It makes... Like bigger muscles make you... look better, right? Bigger muscles is relative, obviously, right? It's going to, you know, some people are going to grow more than others and women are going to grow less than men or. whatever. But in general, more muscle mass means health, longevity, and better appearance, right? I would say that if you go like deep down into like human existence, what appeals to us is going to be capability, right? When you look at somebody, whether somebody looks good or not, fundamentally, you know, whatever the nuances are of those things, fundamentally, it comes. down to capability, you know, whatever that is. So universally, like you guys that want to look better, you guys that want to focus on aesthetics, barbells are the way to do that, right? If you want to be able to do things for as long as possible, getting stronger is the way to do that. And if you want to be healthier, the baseline should be, should just be the way to do that. Increased force production. Um, so with that said, any questions there, folks? Yeah, his legs look just like the marathon guys. So, so yeah, so strength training guys makes you. healthier, more capable and better looking. I think that's the, that's the, uh, easiest way to say it. Right. And, and don't, don't forget that, right. As you, as you're driving to the gym and you're asking yourself, um, I know Luke's going to text me. I know Chris is going to text me when I don't show up, but fuck him. I'm going to go to, I'm not coming today. Uh, just, you know, healthier, more capable, better looking. Are these things that you want? Um, this is, this is the, and not that that doesn't happen everywhere else, but there's, there's always this, this aspect of efficiency that we need to be worried about. Like how, how much effort will it take. doing it somewhere else? Um, and so this is, this is your, your baseline. This is the place to establish that baseline. All right. Um, so just real briefly, you know, uh, if we're going to, if we're, and I'm bringing you on a journey here, right? I'm, I'm telling you things you already know. Strength training is important. Why are barbells the way to do it? Because they're ergonomic, right? Meaning that they're easy to add to your body. When you, when you can add it to your body, it means it doesn't disrupt your movement patterns, much and you can move normally. And therefore your muscles get stressed, uh, maximally and, um, everything just works out really beautifully from, in terms of efficiency. In other words, you can move your body pretty much the way that it is designed to move with a barbell because it's easy to hold onto. It's easy to attach, right? It's easy to hold onto here. And then you can just move. And because you can do that, you can use a bunch of muscle mass. And not only that, you can load it with a bunch of weight and therefore you apply the stress and you can apply a large systemic stress. Like the stress is not just to the individual muscles, it's to the entire body, right? And that's profound in terms of how quickly and how. efficiently you can drive. Adaptation out of yourself in terms of, again, health, longevity, and appearance, okay? And we've already talked about why strength, all right? So the barbell, I mean, you guys see what this place looks like. There's not much else. There's barbells, plates, there's benches, and then there's a few random things over here. Most of you may not even touch this stuff, right? You may have been here for a year or two years and have never messed with that, and you get equal, if not better, benefits out of it, right? Okay, all right, I'm running out of time, so I'm going to move a little quicker here. All right, let me give you guys a couple of things to think about. Strength training serves as the most accessible and disruptive method for improving your physical state. And when I say strength training, I'm specifically barbell-based strength training, all right? So I'm going to say it again because I think it's important. Strength training serves as the most accessible and most disruptive method for improving your physical state. So when I say disruptive, this is... This goes to the stress part of it. You have to disrupt your current state. It's accessible. I mean, just look around the room. Walk into a session, and there's a 10-year-old kid over there, and there's 65-year-olds over here, and there's people who just walked in who can barely squat down to a box, and everybody's doing the thing, and everybody's improving. So it's accessible. Anybody can do it. And improving your physical state is what I talked about at the beginning. Your body likes to be at a constant, comfortable state. That's what we crave. That's what we want because it's generally a good idea. But you have to push. You have to push in some way in order to improve. So strength training serves as the most accessible and most disruptive method to improve your physical state. And when you improve your physical state, you tap into the third thing that I talked about, in terms of intelligence, connection with people. and connection with your body, right? So if you're driving and you're intentionally improving your physical state, you're accessing that third component on a very real, very, very like direct basis every single day, all right? And this is something I learned from, isn't that an awesome picture? Nice job, Lauren. This is something I learned from a guy named Matt Larson. Matt Larson is the father of modern army combatives. He's a BJJ black belt. He runs the combatives program at West Point right now. Very, very smart guy. He's an evolutionary psychologist. Really sharp dude. So, and he talks a lot to veterans, the PTSD stuff. And then he gives these talks to the combatives folks. But anyway, him and I were talking and I realized that it wasn't special. Like he wasn't just giving me this information. He says it all the time. So it's out there. But here's what he said about happiness. How to be. happy. All right. Savoring the moment. Okay. So being present and fully engaged with your current experience. So like that's, that's so blatantly obvious and it's so easy to forget, especially. where in the, in the world that we live in right now, where your attention is divided and split into a million different ways. But number one thing is savoring the moment. You got, there's three components and they all have to work together. All right. Number two is a flow state as often as possible. You guys know what flow state is. So a flow state is like when you're doing something that maybe you don't even particularly enjoy, but you're just fully immersed in it. Right. So it's a, you know, whether it's like a snowboarding or crocheting or whatever, something that you really, really enjoy and it draws your full attention and you're just like in the zone, the zone is a good way to think about it. Right. So the state where you're. completely absorbed in what you're doing, where anxiety disappears and you're operating at your best. And then the third thing is having a sense of mission, working towards a meaningful, meaningful goals that matter to you. So, I mean, Flow state, savoring the moment, having a sense of mission. Savoring the moment probably is the hardest one in this context, right? But the other two, it's like, can you think about anything else when you're in the middle of a heavy squat or you're trying to get through the set of deadlift? I mean, if you do, you're probably going to be unsuccessful, right? So if you're doing the thing and if you're doing it correctly, this is one of the opportunities where all three of these components, you can put them together and you get to experience in them. So the way I look at this list, there's no way to do all three of those things all the time, right? But it's how often can you expose yourself to something that puts you in that mode where you're in a flow state, where you are working towards a goal, right? Every time you walk in here, there's just a... For lack of a better term, there's just like a vibe of everybody trying to improve and be better. And that like... Shared aspect of it is super important because there's plenty of people that train on their own in a garage, myself included, and it's not the same. Like, it's not the same as being, even with being in a gym with people who aren't doing the same thing as you, it's 100% not the same thing. So this is, like, truly special in that regard. But you have a sense of mission, and in here, you have, like, a shared sense of mission because everybody's trying to do the same thing. and we're using the same method. And then, you know, the savoring the moment part, that's kind of on you, but obviously, guys, with barbell training, it puts you in that, it potentially can put you in that situation, three times a week, you know, two times a week, however often you're here. So super cool, but also, if you can experience, and this is one of the things I've kind of learned recently, is if you can experience, if you can have those experiences, by coming to a place like this, it's easier to have those experiences in your normal life, right? In other words, if you don't have a frame of reference for what that feels like, how the hell are you gonna put yourself there, right? So. So, again, super valuable. Questions, comments there? I think that's awesome. You guys should read Matt Larson's stuff. It's usually kind of in the sense of, like, fighting and combat and stuff, but even just for, like, us normal people, it's good. Questions, guys, comments? All right, I'm almost done, I promise. I want to leave you with a couple more quotes, all right? Look at Molly. Pretty cool. All right, I'm going to leave you with a quote. So here's, like, a fight the lust for comfort. This is from a book called The Prophet. And I found this book, like, years and years ago. And I think about this quote all the time. It's really awesome. So I'll give you the long version. Or have you only comfort and the lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house of guests and then becomes a host and then a master. A, and it becomes a tamer and with hook and scourge makes... Puppets of your larger desires. Though its hands are silken, its heart is of iron. It lulls you to sleep, only to stand by your bed and jeer at the dignity of the flesh. It makes mock of your sound senses and lays them in thistle down like fragile vessels. This is the best part. Verily the lust of comfort murders the passion of the soul and then walks grinning in the funeral. Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul and then walks grinning in the funeral. That's awesome. That's really good stuff. So, yeah, it's really hard to force yourself to break out of that comfortable life. And here you have a place where you can come in and not get hurt and be with cool people with a shared experience. And, like, literally just fight the lust for comfort, right? Because, because. It's hard. It's hard to, like, everybody's life is stressful, but zooming out, like, how stressful is it? Like, is it a good stress or is it a bad stress? And when I say good or bad, I mean, like, your day-to-day life is filled with stress, but it's not a stress that makes you better. It's, like, a stress that you just have to deal with because of, like, you have to function and you have to make money and you have to take care of things. But if there's a way that you can stress yourself in a way that improves you, as much time as you can do that, as much effort as you can put into that, it's super valuable, right? Cool? All right. Last quote. This is from Mark Ripto, a guy you might know. And by the way, Keith, I don't know if you guys heard this yet. How long has he been training? Three months? Three months. And he's supposed to deadlift 465. Never deadlifted in his life when he started. Never deadlifted in his life. And then 3. Three months later. He pulled 500, um, like right there. I think it was yesterday. Yeah, it was pretty cool. He looks. like a lumberjack. I think it's, I think it's a lie. There's no way that guy hasn't lifted before. Look at him. But yeah, that's the story. That's the story. He, he did try it. Yeah, right, right. Yeah. Yeah. So he did four 65 and, uh, and I was, and we're like, no, you got to do 500, man. And then, and that flew up, that flew up guy. So anyway, that's a cool picture. Um, this is a great quote from rip. Um, I welcome you to the community of people who have decided that easy will no longer suffice, right? It's beautiful, beautiful, very nice. All right. Okay. That's it. That's all I got. What do you guys got for me? Questions, comments.