#23 Luke Leaman and Ben Machar

# #23 Luke Leaman and Ben Machar

**Channel:** The Unknown Strength Podcast
**Published:** unknown
**Source:** https://anchor.fm/s/e9df58d8/podcast/play/76342511/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2023-8-25%2F348414085-44100-2-1bf386d951f280c5.mp3

We don't have personalities anymore! all right ladies and gentlemen thank you so much for joining us again on the unknown strength podcast. This is episode number 23. Brenton and I have a couple of very special guests with us today. Number one is Mr. Luke Lehman from Muscle Nerds. How are you doing? Hello, hello. I'm doing well. Excellent. Number two is Mr. Ben Marker from Mark Performance. What's up, Ben? What's going on? All right. You mean special ed. Two special ed guys. Why not? Absolutely. And I'm doing awesome. Thank you, Mac. Well, there you go. Brenton's here as well. I did actually say your name earlier. I appreciate it. so why are we all here together at this table having a podcast episode right now to talk shit and drink whiskey yes indeed sound a bit right brenton i think so i think yeah it's really to expound on some of these uh latest strength training drops you guys have got i heard you guys did some stuff around uh when it's not about the food you've been doing a few seminars and stuff lately so keen to hear about how it's going yeah muscle nerds has been killing it lately so luke tell us what you guys have been up to and why don't we start there it's also been killing me. We're busy. Yeah. So we came in this weekend to do when it's not about the food. It's a, it's a psych, more of a psychology type seminar that we teach for trainers. Right. And so we bring in a trauma counselor from New Zealand who she does early childhood traumas and you know, any, any type of trauma that you might have stuck in your brain that's inhibiting you from getting to your best potential and also inhibiting you from doing what you need to do to get your shit straight. So they deal with a lot of super obese people and really damaged people that have gone through car accidents, mommy-daddy issues, or bullying and isolation. So the whole premise of the seminar is to teach trainers, A, how to have empathy, especially in the strength and conditioning community because it's so alpha male, silverback, gorilla, all that bullshit that it's so performance-orientated that people forget that these are human people with emotions and that sometimes people are fucked up. And people in the industry are fucked up. Most of the trainers that I know got into the industry because they're so damaged and they don't want to deal with their own shit that they didn't say, okay, well, if I can't handle my own shit, I'll go help everyone else. And that's how I'm going to get that dopamine reward kind of center-driven addiction. That's my addiction is just being a workaholic and helping people. Is that some kind of syndrome or phenomenon? Is there a name for that? It's just trauma. Yeah. It's just, it's just, so basically you have a traumatic episode and you don't deal with it and that gets stuck in your brain. It doesn't get filed away. So the way that, uh, Nick Symes, who is our, our kind of resident trauma counselor, the way she talks about it is if you look in a library and you've got all these books laying around that they need to actually go back in the bookshelf. and if you don't put them back in the bookshelf you have all this unresolved baggage that then drives your physiology to self-sabotage so let's say somebody gets stressed out, how are they going to control that stress? They're going to self-medicate whether that's drugs or booze or overeating or over-exercising any number of addictions. It could be anything Isaac loves chronic masturbation, he does that a lot and we had to send him in to get some medical things for his penis because it was rubbed raw yeah so he does one time across that way yeah like from a from a physiological standpoint when you're on when you're a coach and the majority of the people that we deal with is fat loss that's 99.8 percent of the industry and when you're dealing with people that keep binging and keep purging and keep doing all this stuff and over exercising and you're like why can't you get your shit together it has nothing to do with the food and the training it has to do with the fact that these get people in emotional pain and they need help. And unless we teach trainers about it, you don't learn this in your three, four, there are no other courses on the planet. And that's why we made it. So we do a day and a half of kind of some Kumbaya. Let's talk about our feelings. Let's, this is what's happening with trauma. This is where your clients are doing this. And then we do a day and a half of me doing penis jokes to kind of, you know, get the mood back up after everybody's crying for a day and a half. And then I teach the psychology of how emotional trauma then works down the nervous system to create chronic stress and chronic inflammation, which then screws up your ability to process macronutrients correctly or recover correctly or sleep or anything like that. I think it's astounding the transformation that's happened in you as a coach an educator a motivator a teacher from back when we first met in Rhode Island I believe it was probably 2014 Yeah And did he make you cry Very very much so It was a training that made me cry But no you were an alpha dog you were the silverback gorilla, you were that guy much more so than this guy teaching about trauma and how to deal with people's emotions and the baggage. So I think that's really, really remarkable, dude. Thank you. You know, part of it's just kind of having to come into Jesus talk with yourself and saying, man, I've got some shit I need to deal with and then finding the right people and say, fuck, everybody needs to know about this stuff. Everyone's hurting and no one's creating a solution. No one's talking about it. You're not going to train this off and you're not going to diet this off. You have to deal with these unresolved issues or you're going to keep triggering, you're going to keep having issues and you're going to keep going to binging and starving yourself and all this other stuff that's happening and coaches really need to know about it. Fair to say, I'm no expert in this domain and I haven't really seen the stats on it, But I would have a hypothesis that a lot of these people who are obese and overweight, they're aware that the food they're eating is obviously not good for them. And that's why there's that underlying condition, that mental trauma that's leading them to self-sabotage, as you said. Yeah, absolutely. Because it's like the Catholics that whip themselves. It's like they feel the pain. Self-flagellation. Self-flagellation. That's exactly what I'm trying to say. And with the foods, they know it's hurting them. With the cigarettes, with the drugs, with the booze. It's just a perpetual sort of downward spiral. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, most of the people that have these addictive qualities, they don't want that to happen. But if you've ever been, most people have had this happen themselves before. Let's say you have somebody that gets stressed out and they want to get a drink, but they know if they have a drink, they're going to have a problem, right? And that was me. That's been me in the past, like drugs, drinking, sex, whatever. And it's almost like having an out-of-body experience where it's like, okay, I'm really stressed out. I need to deal with this. I can't cope. Okay. I'm going to go get a beer. And you're, you're walking into the garage. I don't need a beer. You open the refrigerator. You're like, I don't need to do this. You're grabbing the beer. I don't have to open. I can put it back. And then you drink that first one. And that first one leads to 12. And you're telling yourself the whole time, dude, you don't have to do this. You can walk away, go to the gym, go do this. And then it just happens. And it happens over and over and over every time you get triggered and you're all alone and you don't know who to talk to. and you can't get out of this rut. And if you don't seek help, you're going to stay in that rut forever. And I guess, you know, you're telling yourself you don't need to do this. You don't need to do this. There's no reasoning with a person in that state. You know what I mean? It's irrational behavior, which kind of needs to be peeled back and you need to get to the actual source of why that behavior is happening. Yeah, right. And so, I mean, when we look at, you know, where humans are built for survival, right? And when you get into a stressed-out state, your brain, your thinking brain is going to shut down. The limbic system is going to take over, right? And that's going to tell you, survive, survive, survive. If I can't survive through coping mechanisms, how can I make this pain go away? Okay? So, okay, let's turn to booze. Let's turn to drugs. Let's turn to sex. Whatever it is. You know, whatever it is that makes you not think about your pain. It turns the volume down a little bit. Absolutely. It just, now you can't hear it. I can't hear you. I'm going to ignore my problems. And they're going to go away eventually. and they don't. Yeah. And a lot of the times they just compound, right? They compound. Because the coping mechanism itself creates all secondary issues, secondary problems. Yeah. And then when you look at the effect this has, there's tons of science on things like lack of community, lack of purpose, hedonistic behavior. You look at people who are socially isolated, people who spend all day being addicted to Facebook because they don't have a good social network. When you look at what happens through the nervous system and through the sympathetic part of that system, It's causing gut issues. It's causing brain issues. It's causing your inability to actually burn fat correctly, right? So you have people where they're doing everything right. They are dieting. They are training. They're doing all this stuff, and they can't sleep. They can't recover. They can't actually burn fat the way they're supposed to, and that's an extreme example, but it does happen. Like for most people, calories in versus calories out. We know that's key, but what we have to realize is there's a lot of other factors that go into those two parts of the equation, and part of that calories out is your mitochondria. And what controls that? Your thyroid. And what controls that? Impulses from the brain. So if you start getting into a stressed out state and your mitochondria start becoming deficient, now you can't get glucose and fat into the cell to be burned appropriately and it gets kicked out as other things. I see. We really got into the weeds there, didn't we? So fair to say, I mean, you mentioned that when you've got psychological stress leading to inflammation that impacts your weight loss, How do you resolve that with some of your clients then who are coming in, obviously they're stressed about the fact that they're overweight and they in this bucket list of problems What your approach there Well the first thing is you got to get educated on what to look for So what we do obviously it not in a trainer wheelhouse to counsel people We can talk or we can listen. What's going on? If you want to tell me, that's fine. You can talk about it and maybe you're the only person that person has to talk to. People come into us and we think we need performance, we need fat loss. You might be the only person in the only three hours that week that that person talks to and actually listens and talks back and actually gives a shit, right? And so the first thing is saying, okay, this person's, you build this trust, and this person's telling you all this stuff. And when I was in my 20s, I would tell people, listen, I'm here to coach you. Shut the fuck up. I don't care if your partner's cheating on you. I don't care if your kid's smoking. I don't give a fuck. Fucking squat. That's the silverback gorilla, right? Yeah. And if I could get a DeLorean and I could go 88 miles an hour and go back in time, I would beat the shit out of myself, right? I would. I'd be like, stop being a fucking dick. Let me tell you what's in your future so you can go ahead and start helping people now instead of waiting 20 years to help people, right? Interesting. I mean, like I had this conversation with Mac once. Like I think invariably when you're a strength coach or a coach or anyone in that sort of coaching role, invariably you become that supporting and nurturing type character in their life. And like, you know, even Mac can attest, like so many times I'll come in the gym, like various times, whether it's in the morning or not, coming from work, coming from home, various issues. And it's hard sometimes when life gets in the way, shit hits you. Come into work, start training with Mac, and he has to deal with me in different moods and different sort of states. And the amount of battles I've had with him, I'm just like, no, I'm just not in the headspace to squat right now. I am going to argue with you for an hour about all the reasons why I can't do it because my headspace is not right. Absolutely. And here's the thing. What coaches have to understand is that physiological state, the psychological state like that then has repercussions downstream. So you come in and that's a nearly driven process. So then you come in and you go, okay, we're going to do three to one wave loading or we're going to do lactate sprints on the bike. And your physiology is not set up to cope with that. Lifting weights in conditioning is fantastic to build stress resilience. And that's the whole point. We're going to get stronger. We're going to build more stress resilience so we can handle heavier weights and more volume later. But if they come in and they're in that state, they're not in a state to recover or perform. they're in a state for maladaptation and into regress instead of progress so at that point it's like what do you do do we not train okay cool so how about this we can go get a coffee and talk cool your job as a coach is one thing get results yeah and sometimes results doesn't mean that we're bashing their dick in the dirt right but then again you know if you're if you're in a an area like if you're you know in cbd and you've got ceos and they expect to be trained okay what do I do because they still want to be thrashed. It's okay. So maybe we think if this is a neurally driven issue, why don't we move to the other end of the strength spectrum? Maybe we do some metabolic work instead, some muscular endurance, strength endurance, and like a submaximal type work. Let's work on some technique stuff with submaximal weights instead of using force, maybe use a little more velocity and technique so that you can limit that neural drive. That way their nervous system calm the fuck down. And then you talk to them about, hey, you really need to lease mode your beast mode. Why don't you go get a massage this week? Go get a rub and tug. Go get in a float tank. Whatever it is you do to relax. So back up a little bit. You mentioned something there. There's a few things, right? So you mentioned this least mode. I want to hear about that before you jump into it again. Something that's stuck with me since one of the first episodes we did in this podcast with yourself and your partner. Yeah, you and Zoe were episodes two and three of this podcast. So this is a pretty meaningful event. We've got a relationship going on. This is a mini anniversary going on right now. It is. Something that's stuck with me. you said and i preach this to everyone because i think it applies to all sports and you can it definitely does you can only train as hard as you can recover that is something that has absolutely stuck me but i was going to get a training philosophy that would definitely tattooed on me that would definitely be in contention you know train hard recover hard so if you're willing to come in and beast yourself out in the gym and beat yourself in life you need to beast mode your least mode which means you have to take the recovery seriously yeah and that's what people don't want to do they'll come in here and they'll train hard four days a week and they're gasping for breath or puking in the bathroom, but then you tell them you should probably go get a massage this week, or you, maybe you need to go talk to a counselor. They go, nah, I don't have fucking time for that. Yeah. Well, you don't have time not to do that. Right. So how about you come in for, you know, 45, 20 minutes, we bash you up and then we do some stretching or maybe I do some yoga with you, or maybe we just talk, or maybe we do some fascial stretch therapy or whatever it is. A lot of coaches only have one thing and they're one tool in their toolbox, which is training. So maybe we learn how to do some assisted partner stretching. And during that time, you're talking to the guy about, okay, let's talk about your food while I stretch you. So you're killing two birds with one stone, or as I like to say, two girls in one cup. So, please don't ever say that again. So for the people listening out there who had some experiences with personal trainers and they got that typical run of the mill experience they go in they get told to do this person appears from a back room with like a printout of exercises and that their personal trainer experience What do people need to look for to get this kind of holistic experience you're talking about? Because it doesn't sound like you're talking just about a personal trainer or just a strength trainer. You're talking about an evolved trainer, an evolved coach, like an educator. Yeah, so the first thing, everybody talks about, oh, they train gym pop, they train gym, listen, everybody trains gym pop. Stop training them like a fucking athlete. Susie Muffintop is not a fucking athlete. Okay. There's things that they're doing. This is why we have program design classes. This is why we have our foundation school, which is all nutritional biochemistry. This is why we do the psychological course, because we're trying to fill the gaps in people's education that no one else is teaching because they're teaching methods. Okay, cool. You do German volume training. You do GBC, you do all this stuff, but why? And no one can explain that because none of the trainers know their biochemistry. They don't know their physiology. They don't know any of that. So they don't actually know what's happening and they can't predict the results, right? What we teach in our program design class is you, at the end of this, you should be able to program for 12 months for a gen pop. And that's not just program 12 months with the training, but also conditioning and nutrition and some supplementation. If that's appropriate, you need to have empathy. You need to know where they are. You need to know where to put them on the continuum, which means you have to have measurements so you can manage these things and understand what they need when they need it and when it's time to take some time off and go on a holiday or go on a lease. There's so much stuff you have to think about. But if you don't understand what's going on at the cellular level, you're just throwing shit at the wall and you're hoping something sticks. And this is what's driving me fucking crazy. But it's always been that way. Literally, as long as I've known this industry, that's the way it's been. Just because something's been that way forever and ever doesn't mean it's the right way or there's not a better way. Absolutely. You're becoming the Uber of our industry. You're the disruptive motherfucker that's really going to put people out of business. And I'm not going to fucking apologize for that. You either evolve or you get left behind. Yeah. And this calls upon, I think, what I leverage in my, you know, as a designer, you talk about understanding the problem before you can actually solve for it. So, I guess what you're talking about is understanding like your clients, again, from that holistic point of view and not just, you know, to get towards that PB in the strength training room, it may not be just lifting more weights. It may be a few other sort of activities and arrangements in your life that you need to take care of to sort of reach that goal. Yeah. There's so many other factors that go into play, right? So I was actually, I had a coach from Adelaide come in and we did some, he's opening a facility and he wants to know what he should do. And I'm not good at business. My business advice is here's the things you don't want to do because this is the shit me and Zoe and I fucked up with. This is what we did. Yeah. And I actually trained him for powerlifting and also for long distance running. So he comes to me and he wants these two completely opposite goals. How do you do this? This is the hybrid athlete shit, the Alex Vieira stuff. It's a guy named Costa. I'm not going to say his last name because he's Greek and there's more consonants than vowels. I can't. And I told him that this morning. I'm like, I've been training you for a while and I've known you for a long time and I still can't say your last name. So you're just like Costa M. That's it. and um you know one thing that kind of a light bulb that went off in my head that people don't know about is when you're getting ready for a powerlifting meet he wants to lift heavy all the way to the meet and i'm like no you need to recover he goes but if i don't keep lifting really heavy i'm not going to i'm not going to feel the weight here and i go no you need to relax you've got to relax you've got to request you have to recover not only your nervous system but your muscular system but you also have to recover the the cell and that's something people don't think about. So we taper off two weeks out, he comes out and he knocks out 15 more kilos on all his lifts because he stepped back and actually let his body recover. People don't think about things like that. So when you're bashing people in the gym, you're not thinking about that nervous system relaxation. You're not talking, you're not thinking about the muscular, you're not thinking then about the emotional, you're not thinking about the cellular. There's a lot of stuff that needs to recover. There's a lot of things to consider. But the thing is no one teaches this stuff. And when you go into the cert three, four, and you go through like, let's look at the muscle fiber. Let's look at the cell. You kind of glaze over all that. And you just try to pass everything because all you want to know is sets reps, time under tension, rest, periodization, just practical. Yeah. Purely practical. And if you learn that first, you're putting the cart before the horse, right? Because you don't know what that stuff is stimulating in the body. And what you're trying to do is feeding your body information to get it to move a certain direction. But if you don't know what that information then stimulates, how are you going to predict where they're going? So when you talk about cell recovery, what do you exactly mean by that? And how do you know when your cell has recovered? Well, you don't. I mean, that's the thing. Unless you have a lab and you're getting tested with all this stuff. But like I showed you guys, this is the lactate scalp. It's a little blue bag with a little prick machine thing. It's an expensive piece of equipment that I bought from North America. And what it does, it tells us where your blood lactate is. By using this, we can tell what's going on in the mitochondria.

When glucose comes in, if you start getting really stressed out and you start getting resistant to energy or losing your metabolic flexibility and you start building a lot of free radicals, your mitochondria is going to go, fuck that. This is causing damage. I can't handle this. And it's going to start kicking glucose out as lactate, and that will rise fasting. So if I see that rising, I understand that what we're doing is probably pushing your metabolism in the wrong direction. So maybe we back off here or back off there and reappropriate what you're doing to regain that so then everything starts flowing correctly. So there are things you can measure. Most trainers aren't going to buy this because it's a $1,000 piece of equipment. And it's not practical. I have it because I do stupid shit like putting implants in the back of my arm to measure my blood glucose. My fingers, I can't even get blood out of my fingers because I take blood ketones, blood glucose. I measure everything. I take my heart rate every day, my HRV, my blood pressure. I basically do a stool analysis when I send pictures of my poop to Isaac. Here's the thing. If anybody listening wants to know if their poop looks okay, take a picture and send it on Messenger to Isaac Davidson. He's seen it all. He's our poop specialist, and he's happy to tell you if your poop is good or not. I actually sent some off for a microbial. I think I sent it off there to actually find out how my gut health's doing. So a couple of weeks away from knowing the results, but I'll make sure I also send that off to Isaac. Just if you could. He'll love it. What's his home address, by the way? I don't think he actually has a home right now. He kind of lives with us, between us, and he's kind of a vagabond to whoever has a couch. So we'll just send our shit to you. No, no, no. I'll forward it on to him. Actually, if you guys have the shit tonight, just shit and just hand it to him. It's good. Something you were touching on about metabolism, the way you talk about it, you're mentioning a few case studies before we jumped onto the podcast. You're talking about metabolism and fixing people's metabolism and you make it sound like it's something that's elastic and fluid and not something that's so set. I guess sort of expand that a little bit with metabolism. Is it something that you've got your metabolism and that's it, that's your metabolism, you respond to that as is or is it something that can be changed, modified, ramped up, down, what? Yeah, absolutely. The metabolism is forever changing and adapting to your environment, Right. So let's say somebody gets super stressed out. That's going to cause downstream issues. Right. You're going to get your peepers are going to dilate. You're going to get tachycardia. You're going to your bronchial tubes are going to open up. There's a lot of things that happen. Right. So when we look at the cell, everything, everything is based on do I feel safe and secure or do I feel threatened? Okay. So in a, in a, in a contemporary, in a historical physical threat situation, you know, a lion jumps out at you, you go, Oh shit. And you either, you've got time to run. Well, yeah, you've got four options. You're going to fight, flight, freeze a facade, right? So traditionally we look at fight or flight. You're either going to try to fight them or you're going to run away. So in that situation, things like your immune system gets jacked up, which creates a lot of inflammation. Stress levels go up. You lose heart rate variability. And then you start really preferentially utilizing glucose for energy because glucose makes really fast energy. Then when you get away, all that stuff goes down. Unfortunately, now we have contemporary social issues. So you have what's called conserved transcriptional response to adversity. So if you are put in a position where you feel threatened, that can have influences on your genome, which then creates transcriptional responses where you're making an inappropriate amount of inflammatory chemicals. And when you do that, you're shoving, shoving, shoving glucose into the cell. When you overload the mitochondria with glucose or with free fatty acids, that creates a lot of free radical damage. So in order for the body to protect yourself, it starts to shut down the mitochondria. then pyruvate can't get into the mitochondria. It gets kicked out as lactate. Then eventually the cell says, okay, how do I fix this? Let's prevent glucose from getting into the cell. Now your glucose starts to rise. Then it says, okay, well, I'm also getting energy from free fatty acids. How do I prevent that? Well, let's direct free fatty acids to other pathways. Now your cholesterol starts to rise. Your LDL rises. Your triglycerides start to rise. Then you have somebody whose biochemistry labs are really fucked up. and then you go talk to somebody you go talk to a doctor and how i've got a pill for that you go talk to a trainer he goes oh doctors are stupid i got a pill for that but they're not actually addressing the problem which is if we can get them to calm the fuck down a lot of that stuff will go away yep but in and of themselves all of those markers say the blood markers and everything they're not the problem they're responses directly to the problem and no one's actually addressing it it's like taking the check engine bulb out of the check engine light not addressing the problem in the engine, right? Yeah, 100%. And let's say I pull that bulb out, right? I pull the fuse out. I don have to now or I put a piece of masking tape over so I don have to see that light Well eventually what going to happen Your fucking engine going to blow You going to rot inside yeah So you can ignore symptoms but you also can just treat the symptoms If you, what you want to do is look at what the higher order thing is that's causing those downstream issues and start working on that. And more often than not, it's in the brain. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. That's okay. Now, why don't we just change gears for a second here, right? Because we can come back to a lot more of this cellular stuff. but I just want to bring Ben into the conversation. Now, I brought my whole team along to your seminar just a week or two ago, strength training for general population. Now, I know you're a big disciple of Luke's over here. You've been through a lot of his material and I constantly see elements of least mode and a lot of Luke's concepts coming through in the way you train me. since you are my fucking powerlifting coach. Hello. Tell me how, just tell us a little bit about how your approach and Luke's approach meld together. How to sum that up in a sentence? Pretty much I do less. Do less? So typically speaking, you'll see a lot of powerlifters, they absolutely thrash themselves with volume and intensity and they just fucking go hard as a hammer, as hard and fast as that. One of my approaches I like is, like the reality is most gen pop have pretty shit technique. Prioritize that. You don't need a heap of load for that. You can keep the volume relatively low and still recover pretty well from it. Like, again, as Luke was saying, like most gen pop people, they don't recover well. So if you get someone training really, really hard and they go in, they train a hard session, they come in again like, oh, I'm tired. It's like, okay, cool. You haven't recovered from the previous session. This session now is up shit creek. Then it becomes a matter of being like, all right, sweet. I don't have to throw a heap at you for it to work. I can give you just enough. And this is kind of where I combine a bit of stuff that I got from Luke, a couple of guys from like Renaissance Periodization. That's Mike Isretel? Yeah. They talk a lot about like, you know, maximum recoverable volume. Yeah. So obviously the most amount of volume you can recover from. But that's a dynamic thing, right? that is fluctuating yeah it sounds like uh like when you get prescribed medicine they talk about the minimum effective dose yeah exactly um so like i like to play around with kind of like the minimal adaptive volume which is the least amount i can give you that's still going to give an adaptation versus like the maximum recoverable volume and then introduce a lot of the stuff that luke talks about like you know the breathing stuff release mode and try and down regulate everybody in that session as well um so as far as like the the seminar that obviously i ran the other week um a lot of that was more so been like cool like focus on the technique side of things manage shit you don't have to thrash people in fact thrashing people is probably going to be you know disadvantageous yeah you'll lose business yeah yeah because people are going to be like well i'm fucked all the time this isn't good for me whereas if you can get someone who comes in like oh i'm tired you know i'm run down i feel fatigued and you're like okay cool we can still get something done so they feel like they've achieved something but actually have them walking out of going oh you know what i actually feel a lot better like i've done a little bit of movement stuff i feel like i've achieved again like progress can be measured in so many different ways whether it's more weight on the bar which again for most people isn't always necessary a lot of the stuff that i do with my guys and obviously with yourself is like practice the technique technique it's a little bit better week by week we can put a little bit more weight on the bar and then just get you to recover as hard as possible yeah it's pretty simple now this is the thing i mean how many times have i come into the studio to train with you absolutely on the fritz nervous system all over the place adrenals just through the roof uh you know what's what's your system of kind of gauging or measuring where i'm at or where any of your clients are because you've got a whole host of people you're working with it depends on what my relationship with him is like like you and i can have a pretty honest conversation you can be like hey man like i feel like a bag of dicks today yeah like as much as i'm in the back in which case ben says well i'll just pop down to the dick store and get you a bag of them oh but i went shopping today yeah um but like i've got like other clients that will come in and they're like oh no no like i have to train today i feel like i have to thrash myself and again going back to what luke was talking about you know people have their coping mechanisms yeah um now like training's the addiction and oh it can be training and food is a huge addiction especially in the fitness industry I don't think anyone who's done a sport or any kind of training, like training for specific goals, generally starts to correlate how fucked and fatigued you are to it being a productive training session. Exactly. And that's a common fallacy. Yeah. So like with some of the people I train, like they'll come in and like I can just like, again, you train someone for long enough, like you pick up on their little tells, you can pick up on little intricacies and be like there something going on today I have some clients they come in like oh how are you today It literally always the first question I ask them And they be like oh yeah I good I'm like, oh God, I can smell bullshit from a mile away. Usually in that session, it's like, all right, cool. We're going to have a technique day where we're going to really dial in, like really, like you make it seem like, oh, we're actually going to be like doing technique work here so that like down the track, there's more payoff. And you just explain to them, like, look, we're going to do some technique work at around about X percent. you give them some arbitrary number and you just, you find a weight where it's like, cool, this isn't moving how it should be. And then when it's not moving how it should be, like, cool, what's going on? This isn't moving how it should be. There's going to be something more to the picture than this. And that's usually when they'll open up and be like, oh, well I've got this going on, I've got that going on, this, this, this, and this. And it's like, okay, cool. Training for us today is maybe not going to be the most beneficial. Let's do some breathing work. Let's down-regulate your nervous system. Let's get you back into a good state. And then they do that and they're like, oh, oh, fuck, I needed that. Yeah. Again. I was just going to say, like, you'll get the A-types and the alphas who won't say it, but when you suggest that, there'll be that part inside their own mind where they'll go, oh, holy fuck, thank God. But even half the time with those people, you have to fucking fight them for it. Yeah. And it's only until you put them in. Well, that's what we talked about with the fight-flight-freezer facade, okay? You put that facade. Yeah, exactly. So it's like they put the facade that I'm the alpha male. Well, fuck you. If you come in the training with me, I'm daddy in the gym, and you're going to do what I say. And you have to set that precedence, the first conversation, so that they know if you come in, I'm going to tell you what you need to do. That's what you're hiring for. But then a lot of people put the facade on where it's like, I'm okay. And you're looking at them going, no, you're not. And they'll come in and they'll come in to see Ben and he'll go, hey, how's it going? Oh, I'm okay. And he can immediately say, something's not right. You're not okay. That's what they're doing. They're protecting themselves by putting up that facade. And then a good coach like Ben will watch their warm-ups and go, those warm-ups don't look crisp. they don't they're kind of slow and then he knows like all right let's watch that first set okay all right look let's back it off we're gonna we're gonna pull some weight off and let's do some positional drills maybe hold the bottom for a few seconds and you know i'm gonna move your technique around and then they're like okay because you know what you're doing that for is to limit that neural load they don't need to know that they don't need to the other fun thing is as well like you put them in positions that like it should be easy for them to hold like in a poor squat in the bottom and they can't. And you're like, okay, cool. There's obviously some struggle here. What happened over the weekend? Any number of factors could be influencing that. My ex-partner contacted me and sent me into a spiral. And it's like, okay, cool. And as you were saying earlier, sometimes the time that they have with you is literally the only time that someone will actually listen and give a fuck about them. As much as people come into the gym like, oh, I'm here to improve myself, half the time people just want someone to fucking listen to them. That's right. They're paying for someone's time for 60 minutes to listen to them. And as you said, improvement isn't just putting 10 kilos on the bar. Exactly. It can literally just be a matter of being like, cool, I've walked out of here feeling better than I walked in. That can be enough for someone to be like, fuck, this person's amazing. So you guys are putting the person back in personal trainer. It should be personal. That's the exact thing I said yesterday. And Isaac's over here laughing because I looked at those guys and I said, listen the way we teach what we do isn't easy it takes it's emotionally i can imagine it's emotionally draining it is but it's also it's like i'm asking these people to understand exercise metabolism and biochemistry and personal relationships and all this stuff but that's professional personal training and we've got to put the personal back in personal training so that's exactly what we say and that's the thing like the end this needs to be a movement where the industry gets this and that needs to be the mantra for every fucking personal trainer going forward is I'm going to get personal, not I'm going to bang on my clients, which is what most trainers think is personal training. Well, I'm going to fuck all my clients. That's different. And that can be another revenue stream for you. Fine. I get that. But the thing is like, we can't give people can things and not look and work on their own physiology because that's professional training, right? You know, from a, from a, from a, a powerlifting perspective to that autonomic tone, if your sympathetic drive is really high, it's going to make you really fucking tight, right? Because you're guarded. Yeah. And then when you look at somebody and they're trying to squat and they can't get the depth and it feels like they're a duckers are going to rip off the pubis that you're looking at. I'm going, okay, maybe we do some, maybe we do a little bit of submaximal work and maybe we work off the blocks. And there was a time last time I had, I had been actually watched my sumo deadlifts and I was like having a really hard time. And he goes, okay, we're going to pull off blocks. And I was pulling off blocks and it felt like my my fricking hips were going to explode. And I didn't realize at the time it's because I was going through a lot of shit, right? He saw that in me, not, we didn't talk about any of that. He, as a coach, he saw that and said, maybe you should pull short range today. And I went, okay, fine. And then it took me months later to be like, wow, I was going through some shit Like he immediately picked up on that And that amazing And that what a good coach does Everything an assessment from the time they walk in the door you watching them walk in to the first tone of their voice When you say, how are you doing to the warmups, then to the first work set. And he picked that up and altered the workout based on how I was feeling emotionally that day. But I think the coaches are, man. But the other thing is about like to be a good coach, like you need to have empathy. If you don't like you're in the wrong fucking business. That's exactly right. You're dealing with people. Well, exactly. Like if you deal with people, like you have to have empathy. If you're one of those people who are like, oh, I fucking hate people, but you're in personal training, like get the fuck out. You're ruining our industry. You're in it for the wrong reasons. Yeah, you're in it for money and you're trying to capitalize on people's insecurities and fears. This is a perfect segue into one of the things I wanted to cover today, which is to follow on from Luke's and our first episode together, which is the state of the personal training industry. And we kind of, we glossed over this a little bit. We touched on it, glossed over it and then moved on. I think we got into more biochemistry, but I really want to go into this because we're in the age now where it's all about these six-figure business coaches, all about your first 100 clients, the fucking Chris Dufays of the industry. No, don't fucking say that name in front of me. Sorry, dude. Sorry. It's all about the ratings. You gave me a couple of glasses of whiskey and now you're ramping me up. I'm sorry. I'm poking the bear. No, the beast out. I've been in this industry a long time. Hello. A long time, over 20 years. 30 years of you when I first started training, right? So here's the thing. These young coaches are getting in. Stop taking sales and marketing classes. Learn how to do a really fucking good job, and you will have a waiting list of people who will want to give you money and their first child and probably a kidney as well. You will be booked out solid. But if you learn how to market and sell from these fucking charlatans, you will be forever lead farming and spending all this money and funnels on these fucking leads and you can't keep a goddamn client more than a few months because you don't know what the fuck you're doing yeah sounds pretty predatory it is predatory and it's fucking pissing me off like you've seen all these young 21 year olds they don't know their ass from a hole in the ground and they're but they look really good with their marketing they're you see in the education industry and they're coming to you they want a solution they want to be they think they're coming to you to be fixed like they've got problems and they need help and they need support yeah they just want systems they don't actually want to learn their craft and you know here's in the back in the day i was telling the story of this weekend too you know i started personal training and it got to a point where it was so easy to become a personal trainer and then it became really people like oh i can just hang around and talk to people and make 50 an hour and you know obviously this is a long fucking time ago and everyone became a personal trainer and i said okay well i'm an i'm an i'm a competitive power lifter. I'm a competitive strong man. I'm now a strength coach because nobody else is calling them that. Then everybody started calling themselves a strength coach. And I would see guys who were fucking 60, 60 kilos soaking wet. They couldn't fucking bench the bar. I'm a strength coach. Motherfucker, you need to get strong before you call yourself that. Now I'm kind of back into being a personal trainer because I'm, I want to make being a personal trainer a good thing again that you're proud to tell people I'm a personal trainer because I'm a professional, I know what the fuck I'm doing and I'm helping a lot of people. I'm guilty of that too, being lost in the wasteland of I don't want to work with general population, I only want to work with my fighters, I only want to do that. And now it's been a full circle thing. I mean, it really is something you need to take pride in because it's the reason we got into this fucking industry in the first place. Most of us got into it to help people. Exactly. As Luke was saying, we're here to help people, whether that's to make ourselves feel better about ourselves are with us to have an impact. It's why we're here. We're not here to help people. What the fuck are you doing here? Exactly. My favorite quote is Zig Ziglar. Help enough people get what they want out of life and eventually you get what you want. And I've done that my entire career. And that's why Muscle Nerds has been so popular with people because we are truly in it to help people. I'm broke as fuck. I put every dollar back into my business. All of my staff, I hate the word employees. I say staff members. all of my staff members make more money than me far more because I don't give a shit about that. I want them to be able to create a life for themselves. I want them to have pride and want to build a career with us. And I want to take care of them. So they take care of our, our clients. And that's what it's all about. Can I just add something onto that? There's a reason why, like, again, like as Michael said, I've been through your course, I've read it, like gone through a lot of your information. There's a reason why I keep coming back. It's because you guys, like every time I come to your course, I'm like, fuck, like these guys literally just want to help people. The kind of thing you can't fake. You can't fake it. We run it like a family. This is a Muscle Nerds fan, man. It's like a gang. You want out, we're going to take you out. You're not allowed to leave our gang unless

really being a turd and then i'm gonna drive you up to north queensland i'm gonna feed you the fucking saltwater crocodiles like you're in it for life and all the internationals listening out there like salt crocodiles in australia are fucking big we've got big alligators in uh in texas and these fucking things here holy shit but this is the thing like and you know what like we we give a shit about every single person like i'm good friends with ben we hang out every time i come here he can call me anytime when he has any any problems you can't say that about a lot of companies and it's true you know his clients can call him at any time his clients can call me if they've got a problem he's he's called me for so i've got this issue can you help me out happy to help that's how it should be we should all be helping each other get somewhere because we work better together than apart and i just get so fucking ramped up about this right it's like If you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together. Exactly. And the thing is, people come back to our courses over and over again because we treat it like a family. You know when you come to my course, you're going to get a hug from every single muscle nerd there. We all hang out together. We all build friendships. We all help each other out. If I've got a palatine question that I can't answer, I'm going to call him. If he's got a biochemistry question he can't answer, he's going to call me. Which is going to be a lot of them. A lot of them. If he has a biomechanics question, he's going to call Isaac. If he wants to know what the best lube is to jack off, he's going to call Isaac. He knows. I know that well and truly. I could have that off the back of my palm. But that's how it should be. People are so amped up to hold their secrets really close to their heart or to go to somebody's seminar and rip off their seminar. You don't have to do that. Just ask. We're willing to help. Ben's willing. Everybody's willing to help each other. The funny thing is as well, these days there is so much information out there. like there's not like with the exception of you guys doing like a few of your courses like a lot of the information is available for everybody like anyone who's like i've got these secret fucking systems that nobody else does it's like bullshit motherfucker like you haven't reinvented the wheel yeah the internet's been around a while well yeah here's the thing i've been around a while so and i've been i've been in the in the physical culture game for a long time and i'm i'm a i study physical history or physical culture history right so when people go with oh this is my method this is my technique mother fuck you like i know where you got that from how arrogant is that it is arrogant it's like if i'm gonna shit if i use a technique i'll be like oh i learned this from sebastian or i learned this from such and such like i'm more than happy to give credit where credit's due like there's not much that in fact like out of everything i do i mean like i take a little bit from here and i take a little bit from there and i kind of make it uniquely my own based on the information i've acquired over my career and like give my special touch to it oh that was nice but the reality is like you know we go to courses we learned we haven't learned that shit like just from fucking nowhere like we've gone out to people we've sought out information i think if anything that sort of exemplifies a level of research and sort of validating techniques as being tried and proven absolutely well let me throw my hat in the ring here i mean last month i was in singapore with phil derue from american top team and dan howard from here in Melbourne, absolute MMA. And we lectured to a bunch of, well, coaches came from all over Asia for Phil's seminar, and Phil was good enough to let us lecture as well. And during my presentation, Phil and Dan, they had some kind of joke, some bet going on, like they had Charles Poliquin's name and Joel Jamison's name up on a whiteboard, and they put a little mark next to each one of them for every single time I reference these two guys that I've learned so much from in my career. And that's one thing I stand by. If you learned something from someone who really pioneered something, fucking acknowledge it. You know what I'm saying? It doesn't cost anything to tell people where you got something from and we all stand on the shoulders of giants. That's right. Charles was my first and biggest mentor. You know, I was his protege at Pollock and Group, right? We had a great relationship, and then we had a falling out. But I still give credit to him for the strength training stuff he taught me. Every time. Yeah, I say some things where if you say things that are factually incorrect in the industry, I'm going to call you out. I've called him out on some things. That doesn't mean I don't care about the guy. I love the guy. And I always, in my seminars, I got this from Charles. This is the best thing he ever taught me. This is the second best thing he ever taught me. I say that type of shit. I think it's really important on this day right now that we honour Charles because, you know, all three of us have learned a lot from him. Brenton, indirectly, has learned a lot from Charles. So, I mean, you know... The godson. You know, what a fucking career. If anyone had a career you would want to emulate, probably without some of the personal attributes but you know he has impacted more people in the personal training and strength conditioning game than anyone else I know of Love the guy or hate the guy, I would not be sitting here and Muscle Nerds would not exist without him. And all the people, all my best friends and closest friends and colleagues, I wouldn't fucking know them. I wouldn't be living in Australia, I'd be in Texas doing something else. Maybe I'd go back into computer programming, I don't know. But when I was 14, I started studying his stuff, everything in muscle media, TMAG, all that. And then eventually I met the guy and we had created a personal relationship. And then I started working for him and all that. And, yeah, like almost every single trainer I know was influenced in some portion by him. And then for the generations coming up, it's important for them to know that even though they've not maybe they've never had experience with them, They're getting that experience through myself, Ben, you, and everyone else that actually got a chance to meet the guy or study his stuff. And he will live on forever and ever. Indeed. Yeah, so we're all indebted to him. And I think it's important that we acknowledge that. 100%. Yeah, totally. There's been a huge wave of stuff on social media since his death about a month ago. and I think I was very careful to not put anything out there because every single person I've ever met in this game put up photos of when they met him and you had a really, really significant one because you were so close to him for a while but I just chose to leave it, leave it alone. I only met him twice in my life. I learnt everything indirectly from him. I thought I'm not going to try and ride this wave. this is important to me, to let the man rest in peace. But, I mean, honestly, what a fucking career. Here's the thing. I lost my father seven weeks before Charles. So in a span of two months, I lost my father. I lost the two most important men, most important mentors I've had in my entire life. And like we talk about when it's not about the food, that's some shit that I had to deal with. And I was doing okay, and then I wasn't doing okay after that happened. And Zoe's, thank God for Zoe because she keeps me grounded and she's seen me like completely devastated from both of those things. But you just move forward and you keep their legacy alive. Yeah, that's important. And what about, can you comment on the stuff that Strength Sensei group is doing now with, is it Carlos? I don't really know what's going on. I wasn't sure what's going to happen. But, you know, he had Carlos and he had Tony Parra and he had a lot of people around him. I think Carlos is still running with it. and yeah, Carlos is amazing. He's amazing. I met him, fuck, I met him, fuck, I don't know, a decade ago and the guy's super knowledgeable and he's, both of those guys are really good guys to kind of keep that movement going. That flame alive. The flame and then also keep evolving it with all the new research. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And they've got a good support system especially in Australia. They've got the guys at Shredder Strengths. They've got Marty and Kelly and they keep that stuff going and that's fantastic. Yeah, absolutely. Charles rest in peace brother Anyone for one of these? I'm just I'm just I'm just You guys are a bad influence This is definitely not a ring This is the first time for me I don't even drink whiskey Ben is cringing because when I walked in the doors He was being given this bottle of whiskey as a gift I think Birthday gift to you Happy birthday mate Thank you, man. Thank you. I'll get you another one on the way to Huxleberger. Done. I think if you give him a few more of these, he'll buy you at least a couple. Well, the kind of... The empathy was just going to pour out. The pre-warm-up to this podcast, I was getting choked out and armbarred for 15 minutes. It was very good to watch. I'm going to have to go get some counselling now. I'm just trying to surface that trauma. I'll give you a hug, Luke. Only if I can smell your beard. Before we get into Brenton and Luke on the mats, let's just raise a glass to Charles. There it is right there, gentlemen. Cheers. Cheers. Don't shoot this one, Isaac. Gentlemen. Now, Brenton, what was it like kicking Luke's ass on the mat just before? It always feels good beating a muscular behemoth, the guy who's poured his entire life into being a physical specimen. Yeah, yeah. Just for me to be able to grasp his life in my hands and just feel like it was for nothing. Well, I tell you, I was at a disadvantage because it's been a very emotional weekend and I've had some, you know, we've been tending to our flock and all this. So I just took it easy on you because, you know, basically I didn't want to die. So my retort to that is I asked you how you doing and I listened to the tone in your voice and how you said it And I thought I going to go easy on this guy today He walks in he like hi and he shakes my hand and I go holy shit he got a grip and he goes oh well I left and I go fuck See, watching you roll with Brent and I was like, fuck, I'm so glad I don't have a gay anymore, but at the same time I'm like, hmm. That does look like fun. Well, here we go back to the stress response. You saw me freeze, and then you saw me try not to shit my pants. That's pretty much what I was doing. That's the facade, right? Yes. Did I tell you about the nickname that they used to give me when I used to do BJJ back in the day? When you did BJs? BJs, yes. Okay. Was it pretty mouth? Have you seen this? Well, the thing is you get the scent of the beard as well. You get the beard smell too. It's delightful. But no, BJJ. There's your extra J. um no bear deer bear deer yes wait wait bear deer yeah i forgot what we're talking about what are you talking about they gave me a nickname bear deer oh bear deer that's your nickname in jiu-jitsu yeah i got lost i got lost in the beard talk i mean i got lost i've been trained by your beard oh you have to smell it i thought that was just a weird side remark but it actually smells delightful it's like a therapy beard it's almost like a weird vapor pen thing or something He just went in for a second sniff This is getting really intense ladies and gentlemen I don't even know if I've ever smelled anyone's beard before It's like gypsy tears and Jesus love There's a name for that Flavor or do you call a smell a flavor I don't know It's tobacco and vanilla right It's the Tom Ford tobacco vanilla beard oil We talk about this all the time Because I have a similar thing but it's about half the price Yeah I love the fact that this is recorded in permanent history. Yeah, you're snipping Ben's beard two times. Britton, you should smell my balls. Yeah, nah. Unless it's got that cinnamon, tobacco, whatever. No, he's washed since then. What if I lie and say it does? There's only one way for you to find out. I think I can consult Mac on this one. So good. This is burning out exactly as I hoped. Well, I think we'll be cracked over the whiskey It was just like doomed for just disaster. But the sweetest disaster. It's wonderful. Yeah. Indeed. What else do we want to talk about? We've got a whole list of bullet points on there, don't we, Brenton? Yeah. So we've covered auto-regulation. We've talked a little bit about the state of the personal training industry. I think we've covered a bit about psychological stress, how it leads to inflammation. We paid homage to Charles. Charles Poliquin. We talked a little bit about when it's not about the food, which fed into obviously the personal training industry and how you're bringing in a trauma counsellor and sort of developing that empathy with clients and metabolism. Mac? Power lifting. Ben, what's up? What's happening? Oh. No. Oh, stop it, you. So currently prepping for Pro Raw at the Arnolds next year. Fantastic. I will be there. It'll be good fun. But yeah, just chipping away week by week, session by session. How much rest are you getting? Are we talking in between sets or in between sessions? All of it. Yes. No, it depends. Like I'm still like 16 weeks out at the moment, so it's nothing too crazy at the moment. No timed rest periods. It's more so just like when I feel recovered, cool, go again. If that set moves like a bag of shit, rest a little bit longer. So question to you, and like you're, yes, you're a trainer and you're a coach and you're aware, you know, you can observe other people. How, I guess, acutely aware of your own sort of shortcomings when it comes to being able to tell yourself, okay, I need to take a rest or not? Do you keep yourself accountable to someone else? So I'm pretty fortunate. Like I've got a bunch of guys that like I train with at PTC in South Melbourne. Deacon. Yeah, Deacs, Demir and a few of the other boys. Like they're all coaches as well. Like they're all very good powerlifters. It's the kind of thing if I go in and I'm moving like a bag of shit, like they're pretty good at going, what's going on? Like you're not moving the way you should be. I mean, like, this is the fun part about coaching myself as well, because I'm pretty switched on to, like, if I'm having a good day, if I'm having a bad day. Sometimes you just need to, like, take your ego aside and be like, you know what, today's just not my day. I'm going to go home, I'm going to eat some food, I'm going to drink a fuckload of water, and I'm going to have a nap. Like, especially being 16 weeks out, if I was going to push now for the sake of trying to satisfy my ego and I hurt myself, that's not fucking good for me. So, like, just going back to coaching myself, like, I obviously know my body pretty well. I know what it likes, what it doesn't like. Volume? Do you like volume, Ben? Upper body, I do. Lower body injuries flare up a little bit, which is... What else flares up? Do you really want to get into that? I just building empathy bro I love it At least smell my beard again I think twice is more than enough the fact that I did it once was kind of weird do you want to do it a third? come on you need one second I'll say no on air Benny's getting so much love right now I'm not going to look at you for like 10 minutes that's what they all say there we go the reason I bring this up is because there was an ungodly amount of volume in one of those one of those programs one of those phases that i saw that you were doing um i remember a conversation with you about it and i remember uh thinking uh that may not be the best thing for you at that particular time so at the time like i was going through quite a bit of like personal stress i had a bunch of shit on my plate i was like you know what like you know we're all as we were saying earlier like we're all human like i'm still a being at the end of the day even though i'm a competitive powerlifter i couldn't handle that yeah it was too much stress on top of the current stress i already had it was just a compounding snowball effect that was actually detrimental sure as opposed to my approach which would have been okay cool like let's go in let's do a little bit again like that whole minimal adaptive volume give me enough that still causes some adaptation but again like if i'm going to go in and i've got a heap of stress going on in my personal life and i go into the gym i'm like fuck i'm actually really anxious being here is it really going to be beneficial the reason i bring this up is because you would you were working online no face-to-face no and i mean the personal was taken out of that that coaching arrangement that's always going to be the case with online training is that takes away the personal aspect of it yeah um however like in terms of like that stress management component like i feel and luke was saying that like it's a it's an element of the industry that i think it's overlooked massively like people be like oh just eat well get enough sleep and you'll be fine it's more than that yeah like are you going and getting your massage work are you gonna go see your physio you get your treatments done like are you doing the stuff that you need to to recover harder than your training like as powerlifters like we all try to push pretty bloody hard especially in the competition like we're like okay cool we want to achieve these numbers we need to push so hard to get into it you know people don't recover to match the training levels like even with the gen pop guys i train you know they all come in they like they see me compete the way that i do they're like oh well i want to do the same but like i say to them like you know how many hours a week you trained like oh maybe three or four i'm like cool i train between sort of 10 and 12 how many hours a week do you spend on recovery and like what do you mean exactly i'm like how many weeks like how many hours a week do you spend on recovery and they're like, oh, I don't know. They come up blank. How many hours a week? Oh, hours. Yep. I'll include massage work, whether it be... Masturbation. Well, that's just a given. That's part of my actually workout routine. How do you think I get forearms like this? I have no grip issues. You never let go. Never. That's a pretty aggressive masturbation. Go hard or go home, Luke. That's what they call choking the chicken. Or go home and go hard. Oh, yeah, that works too. But yeah, like, so... I completely lost my train of thought on that one. I'm just confused. You were talking about rest, and you were talking about how many hours in the week you spend resting. You'll get like jam-packed guys, and again, they might train three hours a week and then wonder why they're not progressing at the rate that you are. It's like, well, I train for three times as many hours a week as you do, and I spend three to five hours a week on recovery work alone. And people are like, well, what do you mean by recovery work? I'm like, cool, like something as simple as stretching. Like how good is stretching for fucking recovery? It's great. It's one of the most underused. We've done that in our sessions. Sell it to me. How good is stretching for recovery? You've smelled my beard, right? Would you like me to chime in here? You can give us an anecdote. Now, Ben and I use an expression, feeling like a bag of dicks. When the nervous system is literally on the fritz, there was one session recently I thought, fuck, I can't not go train. I'm sure there's something I can do, but I'm telling you, my head was somewhere else. My nervous system was on the south pole. Seriously, I was in no shape to train. And Ben did a bit of ART. He held your dick in contraction, pressed on it, and then stretched it. Yes, exactly. Got it. What else do you do? We gained an extra couple of inches, didn't we? It's all about the inches back. That's right. That's right. So it worked, clearly. But no, Ben, we did some stretching. We did a little bit of therapy, a little bit of treatment. We did a bunch of, you know, it was all within that realm.

It was all within, you know, active therapy, treatment. Restorative work. Restorative work. I think, okay, I think they don't want to tell you they were doing the Dutch rudder. Do you know what that is? No. Never heard of the Dutch rudder? Okay, so you grab yourself and then Ben grabs your wrist and he uses your hand to jack yourself off, but he's actually making the motion go. Right, like it's like assisted. Somebody else. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sounds alright. So you can still be heterosexual, but you're facilitating the process of recovery. I'm all about giving. That's it. That's all very restorative. I'm here for personal services. I'm here to help people. I know. Oh, do I know. Oh, yeah. So, Mack, I'm bringing this back around. I'm turning this ship back around. Just so everyone knows, the bottle of whiskey is almost gone. Oh, fuck it. It is, too. It really is. I love like I very rarely look at other people's Instagram stuff but I always watch Ben's because you get a play by play of what's happening but you don't get like all the fucking unicorn skittle fart shit he's like fuck I went in the gym today I did 205 for you know four sets of eight it fucking felt like shit I'm not doing well okay maybe I need to readjust some things like most people would be like yeah I'm crushing shit fuck you no you're not he's completely transparent and honest on his instagram and that's something we need more in the industry but actually the reality is like people don't share like the bad side they only share the positives and the wins they have in life the biggest thing that i always want to try and do is have an impact on people and like cool it's okay not to have a perfect fucking day it's okay to go into the gym feeling like a bag of shit and not be able to finish your workout it doesn't make you less of a human being it just it makes you human get over it i think that's that's just the attribute of your personality. Uh, it's one of the reasons why you and I have been working together for so long because real recognize real and you know, your Instagram page is a beacon for that quality. You know what I mean? Like it is, it's, it's filled with shit sessions. I was going to say, you didn't, well, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, Okay, hold on. Come on. Okay, so there's some... Matt, empathy, bro. Let me back that up. Here's the thing. There may be some shit... Real recognize real. There may be some shit sessions, but he's still the strongest motherfucker table... Motherfucking person at the table right now. Yeah. I mean, I'm looking at his Instagram right now and there is only videos of lifting. So if that's your thing... And my dog. And Matt. You can't forget Matt. There'll be something... I think you've forgotten about your dog in the last few weeks. Please, Ben, let me back that up. Let me back that up and explain myself. go for it when i say that your page is only lifting mostly yeah and within that you've you've captured every bad session that you've done well the thing is like i i address the good stuff as much as i address the bad stuff that's right so if like you know the other week i had um a dealer and i had to hit 205 for eights on my squat they felt real fucking good the following week i had to go in there and hit it for four by five and it felt like a bag of shit like you know in that post I'm pretty sure I'm like, Oh, it felt really fucking heavy. So I still have the work done. It doesn't make me a special snowflake by any means. It just makes me fucking normal. Like people try and glorify themselves. And like the thing, I'm going to go into a bit of a rant here. Let's go. Everyone who's like, Oh yeah. Luke's excited. Yes. People were like, but people will be like, Oh, I'm good. Um, they'll be like, Oh, I'm training for powerlifting. I'm going to fucking war. Like fuck the, Oh, just fuck off. Like you're training in the gym. you're not a fucking special snowflake. You are picking up a piece of fucking metal and putting it back down again. That does not fucking qualify you for anything other than a congratulations. You picked up X. Well done. You can lift a heavy thing. Yeah. It doesn't make you a fucking special snowflake. You know, you get these guys who go out and they actually surf and they actually go to war. None of those motherfuckers like, Oh, I'm going to walk them in the gym. Like you, like, I mean, thank fuck. I've never experienced real war. I hope to God I never do. I've always had that funny, like friends of mine who've been in the military and stuff and they've like always questioned why I go into martial arts and train they're like yeah but it wouldn't you wouldn't be able to do that with like full gear on out in the desert I'm like yeah okay like I never want to go around to those conditions all respect to the people that do it but the other thing as well you go around to those conditions you've got a fucking gun the likelihood of you needing to fucking choke some motherfucker out is so low you shoot them in the head I'm a lover not a fighter exactly like I'll come to you I've really felt the love while you were straining the fuck out of me Hey, I kept you close. That was a very nice cuddle you gave me. Heart to heart. Hey, that's a perfect segue, all right? Luke Lehman now does jiu I do Yeah How far in are we now Total time accumulation and not my travels Probably I don know maybe eight weeks Right This is when you taking it seriously with some consistency? Yeah. I mean, I came into it to take it seriously and to roll it into competition at some point and to basically, on the same track you were at, want to get my black belt someday and you know focusing on becoming the best i can be and you know i i my experiences with judo and japanese jiu-jitsu and the first time i did brazilian jiu-jitsu and i've told you guys this story before last time yeah the last time it was like 15 years ago you know i walk in like okay you know he's gonna lay on the ground you're gonna get in between his legs and i'm going uh what like this is not looking it's not how japanese jiu-jitsu or judo goes and he's like no well this is how we train you're gonna end up on the ground here and so i'm like okay whatever and i think probably a couple of weeks in i had a big guy on top of me we're both sweating we didn't have rash guards back then the nipple his nipple it's nipple gate his nipple pops out goes right in my mouth so i had some other dude sweaty nipple in my mouth my mouth and i freaked out and went fuck this i'm gonna go do more time and then today while we're rolling someone's nipple pops out i thought you were joking did it yeah and it was like sitting like on my left nostril and I start having flashbacks so I'm going to have to go to some trauma counselling now. I thought you were saying, fortunately, a nipple didn't slip. No, your nipple can't. It's a nice nipple, but I don't want it in my mouth. And it was kind of in my nostril. And then I started having flashbacks and I started freaking out, but it didn't matter because I couldn't freak out because then I was getting choked. No, I'm worried because I'm thinking of all the times where I think my nipple didn't slip out and I'm worrying how many awkward situations I've encountered. Look, it's a great strategy. This is the kind of thing we need to roll into your when it's not about the food seminar. Oh, yeah. What about when a nipple slips? When a nipple slips, then, you know, hey, that could be a trigger to drinking a quarter bottle of whiskey like we're doing right now. Yeah, Johnny Walker Gold Label. It was really nice. I'm not a whiskey guy, but this is all right. Likewise. It's gone down quite well. The thing I'm enjoying about the Brazilian jiu-jitsu is in most of the martial arts I've done, your focus is always getting to the next belt. But when you go into Brazilian jiu-jitsu, you see all these white belts and they're all really fucking good and you're like holy shit and that's like when you like you've got one stripe two stripes like when you get your blue belt and they're all like i really don't give a shit like i'm here to get better don't give a fuck about the belts then you roll the fucking guy's a blue belt who's been training five or six years and the guy's just completely mauling you yeah holy shit and then you you learn to start focusing on the art, not the actual reception of some tangible thing like a stripe or a belt. And then you realize, okay, all right, cool. If I get to be a black belt, I get to be a black belt. I know I'm in this for 10 to 15 to 20 years, whatever. Doesn't really matter. It's a journey. It's a journey. It's a whole love the process. And that's what I like. It's a journey and it takes the pressure off and it's just all about like learning to get better and not getting trapped into things. And then it's the mental mathematics of it. It's like engineering. It's like I understand biomechanics and leverage. Okay, now how do I understand the strategy about not letting someone have space, creating a dominant position? What can I do here? If this doesn't work, where do I go? And then making my opponent fuck up because that's what it's all about, making him make a bad mistake that he's going to fucking regret. Baits and traps and problem solving. Now, I just want to give you the opportunity to represent the gym that you're training at now in Brisbane because we chatted briefly off air about it. And it sounds like a really, really cool community, cool little environment to be training in. It is. The guy I'm taking my instruction from is Justin Bennett, and he's competitive. He's a brown belt. He trains out of the Agogé. That's his gym. He used to train out of Arsua. And the guy's amazing. It's not a competitive atmosphere, and that's what kind of turned me off of Brazilian jiu-jitsu before. It's like you go in, and everybody's trying to manhandle each other, and I'm like, man, I want to learn a technique before I ever get competitive, and I want to get good so we don't hurt each other. And he reinforces that of, okay, let's learn the mechanics behind things and let's get really good at feeling and not thinking and moving from one thing to the other with nice fluid motion. And that's kind of more my style because I'm not a small guy. Yeah. And I'm not a weak guy. But with the jiu-jitsu, you want to learn how to finesse it and to be able to move. the technique and the brute strength together. I don't want to force somebody into a submission. I want to make you fuck up. I was going to say, suffice to say, you're actually at a disadvantage when it comes to learning jiu-jitsu because you have a lot of physical attributes that are going to let you power techniques, power moves, get yourself into positions that against a standard person, if they got better technique they going to have to have a significant technique advantage over you to generally sort of out you out you Is that what you found earlier No Oh I found that he was very very powerful and that the reality is that he going to give a lot of white belts and blue belts and even pearl belts trouble off pure physical athleticism. If you can throw someone off you, if you can drag all of them, move them away from you, they still have to work pretty hard to find that opportunity to put you away. Okay, he's fucking lying because I spent the whole time thinking, please don't shit your pants in front of all these people. It was like trying to wrestle a fucking metal pole and then having that metal pole throw you around. He is quite rigid. He's quite powerful and strong, right? And this is the thing. You never know. I convinced Isaac to come. He's got a shit muscle. His muscle tone is shit, but it doesn't matter. I'm flexing right now. That's not fair. I'm only saying that because I'm across a few microphones and he's probably not going to jump across the table. But I tell everybody now, like, look, man, if you want something to go do, like a least mode thing, and it sounds silly for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu to be least mode, but part of least mode is getting a hobby and something that takes your mind away from everything. For me, like motorcycles. I love driving motorcycles because all you can think about is a motorcycle. If you stop thinking about that, you're going to die. Your old man was a bikey, too. He was. And I'm now working on getting his motorcycle over here. Fantastic. I love that. Yeah. And, you know, when I go to jujitsu, the only thing you can think about is jujitsu. And the only thing you think about is protecting yourself and protecting your partner. And you don't have time to think about any of your fucking problems. So you can go and you can just escape for a couple of hours. And Zoe's like, oh, my God, stop telling everybody to go. But people don't understand how fucking powerful it is. And so I convinced Isaac to go the first time. He's like, oh, my God, this is fantastic. Like, it's scary. but I can get on the mat and I can't think about anything else but this. And I think that's a really powerful thing. I'm going to attest to that for someone who used to do BJJ once in a blue moon ago. Literally like you have someone who's trying to like jump around your neck. It forces you to slow down. Yeah. Like it literally forced you just to go stop. Okay. I'm going to assess the situation. Okay. How do I get out of this without getting choked the fuck out? Absolutely. And the real idea is if you peel back and you look at what is the purpose of meditation, like what are you trying to achieve in meditation? It's to actually take a step back, slow down and just observe thoughts really and just like not overthink things. And when you're doing Jiu-Jitsu, the reality is quite often the only thing you have to think about is how do I break this grip off my neck? How do I get his weight off me? Like it's just such a simple thing that brings you back to this sort of primal survival mode where the issues you're experiencing day to day, relationships, jobs, stress, money, finance, all of these things are inconsequential when you have to move a physical weight off you. It also teaches you how to control that stress response because, okay, you end up on the bottom and someone your size or bigger is on top of you and you can't breathe and they're covering your face and you're trying not to give them something to lever into an arm bar or a triangle or whatever. and you have to learn, okay, calm down because getting, getting like crazy and freaked out is not going to help things. And you're going to burn all your energy. So you learn just to, you learn just to frame up and just wait and to just be very patient. And the first few times you roll, it's like one minute in and you're dry heaving and throwing up outside. Then you're like, everyone's like, dude, you got to calm down. So you get on the bottom and you calm down. Now you're rolling for three minutes. Okay. I can do this. And then after a few weeks, you're rolling for 20 or 30 minutes and you're not even tired. And it's like, I now can control my emotional state. I can control that stress response. And then when you're outside of the, outside of your, your club, you're like, okay, what's going on right now is not that big of a deal. I just need to frame and relax and take care of it and look for an opportunity. Yeah, absolutely. And that's the thing. Like, that's beautiful. You touched on about like, fuck, that was good, right? That was good that was good that's fantastic for a guy that's been doing it for how long um the reality is you start to learn to at least be uh attuned to and sensitive to your psychological responses to difficult situations and i always explain this to people like i mean i work in an office i'm a designer so i go into some heavy design heavy office type situations and i always look at as no situation is ever going to be as hard as having someone like with their hand on my throat knee riding me mounting me taking my back and in that moment all i care about is trying to escape that situation nothing in life is ever really as hard as that most of the time in that moment in that moment that's the thing a lot of people who've never experienced jujitsu listening in they're not going to understand just how challenging it is they're not going to understand like how much it's going to test their character to stand up or you know lay down in in this case and and really try and figure this thing out It is such a challenging undertaking and that what I love about it That why my journey has been so back and forth over the years with it but it is a very very serious undertaking and you command respect when you start to get good at it and that's the thing. It's not about the belts, it's not about the grades, it's not about the achievements, but the lifestyle. When you can incorporate that into your lifestyle, so many other things within your life will change with it as you get better at it you get better at coping with different situations definitely i was gonna say when people ask me oh do you think i should do jiu-jitsu you think i'll be good at it i'm like i don't know if you that's inconsequential the reality is i guarantee you that if you stay at it long enough you will be 100 better than the person you were when you walked in the door the first time you won't even be the same person because the reality is in order for you to become better at that and to improve you need to change you need to change how you respond to losing, to failure, to stress, to all these difficult situations. And you won't improve unless you change those qualities about yourself. Yeah. And you and I had a great conversation about this after you taught me some lessons. And it's like, you know, there's no place for ego on the mat because ego gets you hurt. And you learn, we talk about empathy in this podcast. You learn a lot of empathy because you can seriously hurt them or they can seriously hurt you. And when someone's choking the shit out of you and you know it, it won't take much for them to end that shit for you you learn to respect it and then you will learn to respect the other person when you have them in that position it's like okay i'm just gonna go just hard enough to get the choke and then they tap and i'm done and it gives you a lot of respect for not only yourself but other people but human life and empathy and saying okay fuck man i've got all this massive control and power that i can have and it gives you a lot of respect for it absolutely and it's a very humbling process as well and like particularly with any kind of extreme sport you do whether it's weightlifting or jiu-jitsu, it does expose and highlight the very real limitations you have. And that's not a bad thing. Learning the limitations you have and trying to work around those and push those, like learning that you can only lift a certain amount and not letting your ego get in the way and walk in and say, look, I'm going to lift 600 kilos today. It's only going to get you hurt. When we talk about respect, I just want to say this one time. I've got a lot of respect for you, Luke, because when you got onto that mat, I could see in your eyes you had no interest in rolling with Brenton. You tried to talk me out of letting Brenton get on that mat with you, but you stuck with it. There was a good, I reckon, 30 minutes, 30 to 40 minutes that you got your ass handed to you by Brenton for the first maybe 5 to 10, and then you allowed Brenton to show you a few things. And that is the essence of jiu-jitsu. You've got to get your fucking head smashed in first, learn your humility so that those above you can show you what you need to know and that that is that is part of the art you need to lose you need to be the nail before you can be the hammer and so like i've got a lot of respect for what i witnessed there on my you know four by four jigsaw mat in our little studio here tonight look here's the thing you want to learn you roll with a master you roll with somebody who actually knows their craft and yeah you're probably going to get your ass handed to you and you say okay i realize that you know how long you've been training okay i'm making a timeline of how long it's going to take me to get good like that because that's that's what you're searching for that's right and if you're you look for a mentor mentors come in lots of shapes and sizes and they come at different times of your life and i'm saying okay next time in melbourne you know what i'm gonna do we're gonna fucking get on that mat or somewhere else and he's gonna choke the fuck out of me and i'm gonna go okay you're gonna learn more and i'm gonna okay how do i prevent that and what do i do and i'm gonna come back for more and more and more and he's going to choke me out. He's going to arm bar me. He's going to arm a plot of me. He's going to do all this shit to me. And every time I'm going to learn something else, I'm going to take that back with me and I'm going to process that. But if I don't have the humility, if I'm not humble enough to accept that instruction, then I'm not a worthy student. Could not have said it better. Thank you. No. Thank you for allowing me to witness that. Good on you, Brenton, for kicking his ass and teaching him a thing or two. You really fucking enjoyed that, I know. I think we all did. And Isaac over there was losing his shit. He was loving it. He walks in and I'm like, oh, fuck. Here's the grip. He's so much bigger than I imagined. And he comes in like, I've got my Gi stuff in a duffel bag. He's got like the professional backpack. And I'm like, then he walks out. He's got a black belt on, but it's gray. So I'm like, holy shit. I do want to shout out to MMA Fight Story. Gave me that amazing bag. So good deal. Anytime I have the chance to roll with a black belt, I'm going to roll. and I know I'm going to get the shit kicked out of me, but I'm going to learn a lot. Wow, the phone just rang again. That's a first for the Unknown Strength podcast. There's a lot of firsts on this episode. I'll tell you what, the phone's ringing off the hook here at Fitline Personal Training. Are we taking calls tonight? Caller, you're on the line. Do you have questions? Yeah, let's bring it back to like the 90s. No, that's... Look, why don't we start to wrap things up a little bit? It's been...

It's been nearly a couple of hours on here. What have you both got going on, Luke and Ben? Let's start with you, Luke. The rest of this year, it's nearly Christmas time. What's on the horizon? Oh, shit. The next two weekends, result-based training. I'm doing all of their education. Well, some of their education, but for all their places for the next year. So I'll be doing that with them. Then hopefully I can actually play PlayStation and enjoy my wife and my dog and my own bed for a while. And then in January, I get to go to the United States to do a cadaver course. So I get to chop up a dead body. Fuck yeah. Respectfully chop up a dead body. Wait, hang on, hang on. You guys are married now? Well, might as well be. We're going to get married February 2nd, 2020. So I needed a date that was... Then why the fuck are you calling her your wife? Is it the whiskey? No, I've always called her that. Yeah, as long as I've known you, you've always called her that. Yeah, I've always called her that. Ben knows. It's the inevitable. She is. I must have missed that. She is single-handedly the greatest thing that's ever come in my life. And she's my rock and she's everything. Massive respect. So we would be married now, but it's like, hey, you know me. I'm a fucking weirdo and I need a cool fucking date. So I'm like, 0202 2020. Awesome. That's a cool fucking date. Not a bad date. Yeah. So, you know, we're going to do it in New Zealand. And her father is a famous hunter in New Zealand. So we're going to do it at the Deer Stalkers Club because it's free. And we're going to do a pig on the spit. and we're going to do all this stuff and we're going to go out in the bush and tramp around a little bit and maybe shoot some deer to eat and all that stuff. And, you know, if anybody wants to come, you're invited. Yeah, I'll take one of those. All right. Yes. High fives all around. Isaac, Sean, yeah. So that's you. That's you. What about you, Benjamin? Have we got any more seminars to look forward to? This year, no. I've got a couple lined up next year. I've got a few private ones I'm running in-house for a few different gyms. And then probably have one open to the public for early February. Beautiful. That's amazing. And so you're planning on having one per quarter next year? Is that about right? Thereabouts, yeah. Yeah. So you're going to have... It a guesstimation Yeah I like to have sort of like one open to the public every quarter and then sort of fill in weekends here and there with private ones in for gyms Ben needs to do seminars People need to hear what he has to say about powerlifting and his techniques and the stuff he learned from other people and the way he systemizing his stuff More people need to know this because he truly gets it not from just the strength perspective but also from the recovery and all that. And if he ever wants to do one with muscle nerds... I would very much like that. He can talk about squat bench and deadlift, and I'll talk about the biochemistry and stuff. When are we doing this? Whenever you want, baby. Once you sniff the beard. Oh, he's sniffed it plenty of times. Everybody that comes to that gets a cuddle from me and gets to sniff his beard. And a cuddle from me. And they can sniff my balls. Most importantly, I get to sniff my beard. You know, I think I'm almost embarrassed. At the beginning of this podcast, I put out the question, so why the fuck are the four of us sitting around this table again? that is the reason right there right there well now I know yeah because it would be stupid for us not to sit here and talk about this shit absolutely yeah no I mean you've collaborated Luke you've collaborated with a few other coaches in the past with different workshops I think this collaboration with Ben Marker would be a very unique seminar indeed so get your fucking asses into gear and start booking that shit yeah 100% done cool Excellent Brenton What have we got going on For the Well it's nearly fucking Christmas Is this So As if we're going to do any podcasts No no we do We do We have two lined up We have Robert Drysdale coming up Fantastic And then we have You mean Brazilian Jiu Jitsu world beater Robert Drysdale He won at least a few times I don't know He went into the UFC Did a few MA things Won a few things Kind of never lost Coached a few Fucking amazing Is that it I mean How much time we got left Yeah So Robert Drysdale, yes. Robert Drysdale, yes. Very yes. He's an intelligent dude. Really smart guy. Really switched on. And then we have Devin Larratt, arm wrestling world champion. One of the greatest arm wrestlers of all time. Luke, do you know Devin Larratt? I have no idea. Canadian world champion arm wrestler. This dude is one of the masters of psychological warfare when you're two inches away from another guy's face. Does he blow kisses to you? No. he tells you how shit that you know you are and he beats you holy shit Jesus Christ He has arms as long as my legs and he is for my money he is one of the greatest competitors in any sport that I ever seen compete. Very interesting training methodologies as well and he's one of those guys that adds, puts respect back into the, whoa, how did I do that? He puts respect, gives respect back to the bicep curl. When you see him lifting monumental amounts of weight in a bicep curl for a specific sport like that, you see the value in it. Absolutely. So we have that to look forward to here on the Unknown Strength Podcast. But for right now, why don't we call it a night, wrap things up and then open another bottle of whiskey? I don't know. Burgers. Burgers and whiskey. I need some food before we drink more. Fantastic. All right. Well, Luke Lehman, you are the man. thank you so much Ben Market you are my brother thank you Brenton you are also my brother always much love to everybody listening thank you Isaac and Sean for joining us you guys are legends we are out ladies and gentlemen fantastic thanks for having us on again thank you social human you're unsociable social human you're unsociable social human you're unsociable We don't have personalities anymore Look around as we are dedicated We don't have personalities anymore We don't have personalities anymore We don't have personalities anymore Rise and sing the hymn to go and play some more Listen to it You know I screwed it all up Nobody cares, everyone just stares Until this garbage acknowledges The sun is blinding They all will try to leave me with no hope For myself or for the future This city walks through a world of something So show you in your unsociable So show you in your unsociable So show you in your unsociable We don have to let Look around there a reality you can deny We don't have personalities anymore We don't have personalities anymore We don't have personalities anymore The glass is in your hand, so go and play some more We'll be right back. Thank you. Thank you. Mama!