The Value of Voluntary Hardship with Matt Reynolds of Barbell Logic

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Is there a connection between our spiritual lives and our physical fitness? That's what we're going to talk about today on Conversations with a Calvinist which begins right now.

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Welcome back to Conversations with a Calvinist.

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My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist and today I have on the program with me Matt Reynolds of Barbell Logic.

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Matt has nearly 25 years of experience competing at high level in strength sports and coaching barbell-based strength and conditioning and today his focus is on redefining traditional personal training by creating connections in the online space to give anyone with a smartphone access to a personal professional strength and nutrition coach.

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Matt thank you for coming and being on the program with me today.

01:04

Hey man thanks for having me on the show.

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This is actually a conversation with two Calvinists.

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Yeah that's what I wanted to talk about first is for sure I imagine a lot of folks who know me are going to be very surprised that I'm doing a show about strength and physical fitness but we connected not through the fitness world but through the Christian world.

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You and I both are confessing Calvinists and so that was one of the things that brought us together produced a friendship and what it's done for me is it's benefited me because it's turned me on to your podcast and I have been listening to I've listened to some of yours on nutrition which I think is wonderful.

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I even pointed my wife toward it because it talked about that the ladies that were doing that podcast were talking about how to plan going to the grocery store.

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They said they do two grocery runs a week because they want to keep their produce fresh and that was you know the it was interesting how they talked about planning out your groceries and planning what you're doing.

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It was very helpful.

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I just want to say on a practical level I thought that podcast was very helpful and I listened to some of yours where you were talking with one of the other gentlemen from your company about the benefits of strength training and how someone could do and I don't mean to be taking it away from you but I'm saying these are things I've learned for sure right away you know how somebody could do yoga if they wanted to do stretching or if they could do other exercises but if you do strength training you're getting all of those benefits you're getting you're getting the benefit of cardiovascular you're getting the benefit of of elasticity in your your muscles and strength and and and and and and flexibility and all those things so so I'm really intrigued and as a man who has struggled with my own physical fitness for years even though I'm fairly active I do karate and other things I have still never been able to win the battle of the bulge I'm really interested to talk to you today about that and how you have helped literally thousands of people in your life and so again I thank you for being here and and I'm anxious to hear hear your story yeah well thank you for having me on the show I'm really excited about my my executive assistant first off my original podcast host used to constantly give me a hard time on my podcast the Barbara Lodgett podcast we again we're a we're a strength and fitness podcast we try to stay as I would say a political and a religious as as we can because I'm just trying to get everyone strong and I I do really believe that everyone can benefit by strength training and and physical fitness and often it's the first step towards moving in the direction that that we would want to move in our life not just physically but mentally emotionally socially spiritually as well but he used to constantly give me a hard time about being a Calvinist so he would he would talk about my Puritan work ethic and all of these sorts of things and so as we got ready to to go on a bit of a podcast tour in non-fitness related fields my executive assistant is a great guy he was like I've got to get you on some Calvinist podcasts we can talk about this stuff so what's cool about this is for for people who have followed me for the for years I think we'll get into some topics that I've never talked about on a podcast because again we we try to keep it you know relatively a political and a religious for for that very purpose but I'm excited to talk about some of those things on your on your podcast for sure by the way let me give a couple caveats this is my Chaucer's disclaimer I'm a hotel room I'm at the Holiday Inn Express in Tulsa Oklahoma I'm here on business I walked into my room about 20 minutes ago it was 82 in the room as they do you've all checked it so it's 103 right now yeah 103 straight up in Tulsa we we have run in the Midwest about probably 40 or 45 straight days at 95 or above and I think we're we're pushing two weeks at 100 at three digits and about which is not normal for the Midwest so I have my Jimmy Swagger sweat rag here not a Calvinist I would assume no no Jimmy was not a Calvinist Jimmy was he was a little so if I yeah that's right if I wipe my head that's what's going on I'm sitting right in front of my air conditioner in the window unit and so so we'll see how this so I apologize also the internet might be a little bit it might drag a little bit but I think we'll have a great conversation so yeah I'm excited to talk through I you know probably most of your listeners are going what in the world does this have to do with Calvinism or theology or doctrine and so I'm excited to get into where there is actually I believe some overlap for sure yeah I've been thinking about scripture verses as I was preparing for this interview and I was thinking about how often the Apostle Paul compared the Christian life to exercise he talks about boxing he talks about wrestling he talks about running the race he talks about all of these things that are obviously physical and he even says I don't I don't remember the passage specifically but I remember he even said that there is value in in physical fitness he was talking about how much more value there is in spiritual fitness but that but some value but there is still some value yeah and and and so I know I know how bad it is to feel unfit I know how bad it I know I know how bad it feels to be in a situation where I feel bad all the time and that that does chew on you at a spiritual level when you just don't feel like getting up and doing anything you don't feel like getting up and even reading your bible because you just feel bad sure sure yeah yeah certainly I I think that I I want to be clear to your listeners and again this is me trying I'm I want to try to be as transparent and vulnerable in this as I as I can on the podcast today I I don't believe strength training or fitness is the be-all end-all to things right so my relationship with the lord my relationship my wife uh I've been married for 23 years we have two beautiful daughters that are 17 and 12 those things are more important than strength training and and fitness um I don't believe that um strength training or fitness takes precedence over good doctrine good theology doxology good worship like those things are clearly above and beyond strength training um however we have found that when we when we strength train and I want to talk at some point here shortly about why strength over some of the other things but why fitness say in general if we're at the 30,000 foot view why and how that is a general pursuit of voluntary hardship that causes a refinement in our life of not just the physical like obviously the physical but also will then filter down to the emotional the mental the spiritual if done for the right reason and I also want to be clear um I run a company an online coaching business a private online coaching business with some of the best strength coaches in the world our goal is not to train people and even specifically younger millennials it's not really our demographic to to lift or work out in a gym to take pictures of themselves in swimsuits or bikinis of their you know their abs or their rear ends and post it on social media like that's the opposite of what we're trying to do we're trying to to strength train and pursue fitness because we we are to be good stewards of our bodies just like we're to be good stewards of our finances of our relationships of all of those things and in order to improve our quality of life so this is about a quality of life improvement not about an an egocentric focused on ourselves it's not about you like it's when you we know this you've talked about this on the podcast a lot the gospel is not about you the gospel is about Jesus that's the point right and so when when we can take when we can take a perspective of the fitness is also not about us it's not about us it's about being able to glorify God and glorify the Lord in everything we do and so from our from our pursuit of the nature and character of God which I think is probably one of the highest things we could do our pursuit of good doctrine good theology our studies of of scripture our relationships with our family the picture of the gospel we get with our relationships with our relationship with our wife and in our home our work this is just the next step and I think that for a lot for a lot of people for a lot of Christians it's it's lacking and so I want to be very careful as I come on to not try to put this there are many things that come before this but many of us do while we take time and care to steward our mind well to steward our studies well to steward our relationship with the Lord to steward our relationships with our our family well our wife our our relationships our community and our church well we often sort of let fitness and strength go to the wayside and I think we're called to be good stewards of our bodies and if nothing else it's it causes like as you mentioned a a you'll feel a lot better and that that will not just refine you physically but it will refine you mentally emotionally spiritually as well and we think about like the first century church then they they lived a hard life the life was hard we live a first world not hard life amen most of us are working in cubicles in an office in air condition again as much as my I mean I literally just complained about my room being 82 when it's 103 outside and it's already down I'll look over it's down to 72 net which is still about five degrees too warm for me amen first world problems right and so you know certainly Paul talked about there is some value in some of this hard physical training I think a lot of that comes from this idea of voluntary hardship choosing hard things I don't think they had to choose hard things as much 2000 years ago as we do today our life is easy and it's Netflix and it's DoorDash and it's Uber and it's we just get anything we want within 15 or 20 minutes delivered to our doorstep and so to pursue a hard thing voluntarily I think is very important we know that life is going to throw that God is going to throw things involuntary hardships at us people are going to get sick we're going to get cancer people are going to die there's going to be tragedies someone's going to get COVID maybe it's just as simple as your kid being up all night long sick and you don't get good sleep and so we are not guaranteed to be refined by involuntary hardship which we know we're going to face throughout our life but if we choose things are hard and I don't think strength training is the only thing we can do to choose that that is physically demanding there are a lot I mean I think reading hard books there are books that are very easy to read I think reading very difficult books is a mentally challenging practice that is important as well I think those things refine us and prepare us better for the times that we're going to be thrown into involuntary hardship and that's really what this thing is about and so when we do that we become more resilient to the involuntary hardship and again if and I don't get to talk about this on our podcast but in in giving being able to give glory to God in the voluntary hardship I think it better prepares us to give glory and to glorify God but even in the midst of the tragedy we can say God is enough in that because we can because we've been able to do that involuntary we've prepared ourselves that way and so we're not talking about fleeting happiness here we're not talking about looking great on the beach although like there's nothing wrong with wanting to look better that's fine that's just not the that's not the be all end all that's not the reason we're doing this thing and so to be able to do this and glorify God with our bodies our physical bodies the same way we do with our minds with our souls with our heart I think that's that's the I can't imagine anyone will argue against that absolutely and and to circle back to something that you said you were talking about not being the most important thing I want to say something that impressed me with you and the first time we met we were talking about when we could schedule this podcast and you said you know my evenings are for my family because we were talking about I said well can we do it in the evening you said nope that's for my family and I appreciated that because so many men do put their lives whether especially a businessman like yourself because you're not only you know you're not only a coach you're a man who's running a business it's what said like 80 employees or something you have sure yeah yes sir yeah and so you you're a man who is I'm sure your time is very valuable but you're setting aside time for your family which is also very so I'm now I admire that I appreciate that of you and hearing you say that and like you said it's not the most important thing but it's important and it's certainly what we're wanting to talk about today but yeah absolutely so one of the things I did want to talk to you about because I'm so interested in your story and how you got to where you are is the fact that you are a Calvinist and among Christians obviously we are we are not in the vast majority even though we are growing Calvinism is is on the move and in a lot of churches in fact I spent this past week preaching at a youth camp for a group of Southern Baptists all the pastors there were Calvinist and it was great because they invited me to come and speak and I got to speak to all the kids and I talked about apologetics I talked about presuppositional apologetics and what that means to a group of teenagers it was really great so tell me about you in regard to your faith if I remember correctly you said you're the son of a minister is that correct I am I'm the son of a Southern Baptist pastor I actually lost my dad a couple months ago of Lewy body dementia he was diagnosed with Parkinson's first and that's usually what what occurs and then and then it speeds up and Lewy body dementia for those who aren't aware is sort of imagine the worst combination of Parkinson's and Alzheimer's paired together so you get both the cognitive decline and the physical decline at the same time dad was a great guy loved the Lord loved my mom great marriage great family growing up dirt dirt poor wouldn't trade it for the world thankful that I was raised that way raised as Armenian as it could possibly be I say that so I'll give you a little bit of the background so when I so dad got his dad was a civil engineer very smart very intelligent graduated number one in his class from Missouri what is now Missouri science and technology and went in and got his got his MDiv in seminary in 85 and that was from Memphis which mid-america which I don't know probably not the greatest seminary at the time it was sort of the the hot one I think in the mid-80s and and so I was just raised in Southern Baptist ministry my whole life growing up dad dad pastored at first a very small church outside of West Memphis Arkansas not even West Memphis which is not a great town the town we were in was even worse the middle of the crack epidemic in the mid-80s and so it was a it was a tough upbringing but we you know our family you know loved each other and took care of each other I didn't really know that we were really really poor like deep in poverty until later in life because you know mom made sure we were always clean and had good hand-me-downs and knew how to sew and and so you know I was just sort of raised in that and it was life and so you know we rode bikes and played sports and and I have a younger brother who's three years younger than me we were super close and a sister who's six years younger than me we weren't that close we're very close now but that was life I mean it was just normal I didn't I didn't know anything different and so I do remember my dad saying his first my mom maybe my mom told me this that his first salary full-time salary was eight thousand dollars a year in the mid to late 80s which is yeah that was not much even in the mid-80s and so that's what we lived on and and you know mom mom was a stay-at-home mom I was homeschooled she later became the the secretary administrator for another church my dad pastored and so he pastored around you know eastern Arkansas and northwest Arkansas for years and I remember so I was saved in on August 10th 1993 and you know typical youth camp experience I had been under a tremendous amount of conviction for years where my dad had pastored it was not cool to be a Christian as a kid and I fought it tremendously and I knew I wanted to be but I was so embarrassed about what you know being bullied really as a kid and so so that was my eighth grade year or the summer between my eighth grade year freshman year of high school I was 14 years old you know gave my life to Christ and I look back now and could see how hard I was being pursued that irresistible grace was was deep in me and so I certainly didn't understand that at the time and so I can remember really almost a physical weight physical burden being lifted off me and I'm I'm the least charismatic sort of but I mean it really felt literally like a heavy weight of shackles was on was on me and lifted off off of me when I when I gave my my life to Christ and so you know again it was just that typical sort of you know moralistic deism growing up in in youth group of you know good Christian kids do this and don't do this here's the list of do's and don'ts and I I was the self-righteous elder brother that kept the rules quite well and and you know certainly that was not edifying or glorifying to God to be able to you know just check the things off the list and so later in life and in my marriage I actually married my my high school sweetheart we we met each other in our youth group and she also got saved about the same time we we went through some some marital struggles back in 2008-2009 entirely my my fault some infidelity on on my side and I've told that story even on my podcast before and so I just think it's important to be able to to reach out and share and just be honest about who we are and and how God had has reconciled our marriage because the goodness of the gospel and so I don't mean to interrupt you but that's important for sure for people to hear that because I know of people who've said if we go through this I I'm that that they can't get over that or they can't forgive or they can't find reconciliation the fact that you and your wife did find healing and in the gospel and reconciliation with one another that's a testimony worth sharing I mean obviously sin is ugly and sin is hurtful and sin is painful but the but the forgiveness in the cross and the forgiveness in the gospel is so much more beautiful so thank you for sure it may of course I mean it it makes much of Jesus that's what this thing is about so it's it pains me when people don't want to share their stories because especially if the story makes much of of of Jesus of of who he is and what he did and so whether that story is a story of you know you you were homeless and using black tar heroin or whether you were the self-righteous elder brother and like the the gospel is beautiful regardless of of what into the spectrum you are or anything in between and so so I I really lived that self-righteous elder brother life for for most of my younger years in my teens and in 20s and when I got to be around 30 I I I strayed you know tremendously and this was this is post-salvation so it was it was very hard for me to also kind of work through that even in my own doctrine of why why would I why would I sin at this level you know 15 years after after becoming a Christian and so but but again the gospel redeemed our marriage that's what it and I'm so thankful for to my wife and so thankful for for the Lord for for the way that continued to to just pursue reconciliation my wife didn't give up on me I was I was repentant very very quickly which I think was was helpful for sure and I I can state I wish my wife was even on the podcast to say my our marriage is better than it's ever been ever far better than it was before the infidelity or the struggles and so coming out of that coming out of that and in the midst of the healing we were going to a church I I had been attracted again as a as a child of the 80s a youth pastor in the 90s I was very attracted to the you know to the seeker sensitive church and everything that went along with that I mean it it just seemed cool and oddly enough my dad gave me some books by John MacArthur my dad's not a Calvinist I don't know how because he read everything from John even MacArthur I mean even now I know that he passed but yeah no he never yeah never I mean yes now he is because he's in heaven so now he's definitely a Calvinist so so but yes um no I mean I just you know my dad was one of those guys that would have said he was a three point out of five which I would argue with that they rise and fall on each other I don't know how that occurs so yeah uh you know but people struggle with limited atonement or some of those things and so and I get it I understand I mean so so in the process of first off as a youth pastor I was reading you know I'm reading Rick Warren and Bill Hybels and that sort of stuff and dad's like you know if you want to see kind of the other side of that equation here's John MacArthur and oh my gosh it wrecked me it just wrecked me and um and again I can remember having and I and I did not become a Calvinist immediately upon reading reading MacArthur's books but I mean it just again it just started that process for me and so um and and then in the aftermath of and in the healing of the marriage I was trying to just find anything I could I was trying to I was looking for the best pastors that I knew the best person I I didn't want to just hear good preaching on Sunday morning and at the time we were still even going to more of a secret sensitive type church so I don't know that I was getting really deep um you know deep doctrine or deep preaching or uh you know we we weren't really walking through books of the bible and expositional sort of preaching I was looking for that and so um you know these are relatively the early days of YouTube and the internet and found Piper and and uh Chandler and and Keller and and some of those guys that you know I wouldn't agree with all all of those guys necessarily today but at the time it was just a breath of fresh air for me this sort of discovery of the gospel and Calvinism and and uh we started going to a church that was very reformed and that was a painful process for us to become reformed I mean it was it was really a two to three year process that that was that was painful I mean it was it was you know sort of questioning all of the things that I had been brought up to know about like well you just pray a prayer and ask Jesus into your heart that's what you do except you don't and so and so uh so you know of course and then once your eyes were open to that the gospel became so much more real it just became it was this uh you know sort of an awakening to the gospel I knew enough gospel to get saved I knew enough gospel to be justified but I didn't really understand the gravity of the gospel I don't know and I don't want to be careful I don't know that I will ever fully understand the gravity of the gospel to were glorified but um that that was my story and so really you know saved at 14 but really didn't understand and grasp the gospel till my early 30s and so now I'm in my mid 40s and and God just has continued to bless our our life our relationship it's been interesting to watch my kids my daughters come to know Christ um never knowing anything else I mean they've been raised you know reformed their entire life and so um it's been you know it's been beautiful to watch and beautiful to watch the way we interact on a day-to-day basis understanding the sovereignty of God and and how that is not um bondage it doesn't put us in shackles it frees us you know so many people see it the other way how could a good God send people to hell you're like no we all deserve hell like how amazing is it that God that God chose to rescue some of us thank you like that's that's it and so so really that's my story that's my testimony and you know since then been leadership at church and we just planted a new church a very reformed church we're 1680 I'm a 1689 London Baptist Confession um we we would subscribe to all of that at our church and and it's been a it's just been a blast and so we're currently we actually host our home uh our home church uh the goal certainly is not to be a home church for long but until we grow enough to be able to have the finances to to get a building I I can say with I think relative uh surety that we won't be moving into a strip mall uh and we're looking we're looking for a an old Catholic Episcopalian Methodist Cathedral church that's you know full of 95 year olds that's dying and we're hoping to to buy that one day and and try to do something that's far beyond um us and even this life that's our church is not really about the next two years or five years or 10 years but it's about building something incredible um to glorify God for our grandkids and our great grandkids and you know three four generations down the line so I'm really excited to be a part of that and so super excited about the church that we're at now and and the the group that we have our pastors just I forgot what it was like to go to church on Sunday morning and just get fed with the deepest doctrine and theologians our pastor is so knowledgeable and God is just his hand is all over his preaching and he's just he's able to he doesn't have to preach scared and there's something about walking through walking through Ephesians right now that I just get crushed every every Sunday morning and I love it I've you know I've missed that for years and so it's been really incredible amen and um I'm going to go back to something you said about being our children I think that's valuable but before I do you just said he doesn't have to preach scared and I want I want to tell people what that means because I'm not sure everybody knows I know exactly what you mean but I don't know that everybody does but some preachers live in a in a constant fear of the battle that they're going to face on Monday morning the emails right the phone calls the you know and in fact I recently did a podcast about this about patriotism in the church and how if you say anything against the sacred cow of patriotism the next the Monday morning is going to be rough you're in trouble yeah yeah sure and and so not that I'm anti-patriot I'm a complete patriot but but I do think that you know when we're worshiping worship doesn't come above the gospel that's right exactly right exactly and if you're you know some people will just body slam you and and it is it is it is a wonderful thing and I get to experience this as well so I'm thankful that your pastor does too to get to preach to a group of people who are willing to listen to the gospel willing to be stepped uh you know have their toes stepped on have the have the gospel preached and to be able to not fear that now now they not might not always like it but they're but they know what they know what we're there to do and I'm so that's right I mean I think that a pastor that is scared to talk about sin I mean we sin has to be addressed we got to kill we've got to kill sin and so while absolutely the mercy and the grace of God is incredibly important to to preach that's the joy of the gospel the reality is is that the wrath of God had to be satisfied amen and we can't satisfy it and so um you know the church we had come from the church that planted us was an amazing church we were part of that church for for about a decade but it was not overtly reformed and so the church was really about probably 50 percent reformed and 50 percent not reformed and so there was a little bit of that I can remember the first time I heard my pastor the my current my current pastor who was who was a pastor at my previous church uh he he preached on john 316 and I'd never heard john 316 preached this way right and you know to to understand what for God to love the world actually means not God loved literally every human that ever lived so much that he atoned for the sins on the cross of every single that's not that's not what it says and I watched him preach that sermon and I was just like oh this is so good this is so good but he just got wrecked over it the next morning and so um yeah so we since we've planted and again have a we have a wonderful relationship with our church the church that planted us um and the people of that church love the Lord and I'm excited to sing holy holy holy with every nation tribe and tongue one day uh in glory with them and so but there are there are certainly some doctrinal things that were were not fully aligned on and it's been um it's just been freeing I think to be part of part of a church that is just again not everybody that goes to our church is all in on reform theology or on headship or patriarchy or some of those things that and that's okay because again I I try to remind people who are all in on those things in our church that the process of me becoming reformed to my wife and I become reformed is a three-year painful process this is not something that happens this is part of the sanctification process right and so that we believe that this that justification occurs really at a moment in time but sanctification is the rest of our life and then and then we're never going to get there we become like Jesus when we're glorified after after death and so I think we're called to be patient with people who are trying to pursue the truth and trying to understand the nature and character of God and these deeper these deeper levels of doctrine and theology and and I certainly haven't arrived on any of those things but the places that I feel pretty confident about some of those deep issues of doctrine those didn't come to me overnight those weren't 24-hour issues they were things that I wrestled with and struggled with and so so we've got a lot of patience my wife and I especially with people who are struggling with some of those things like that's okay I mean it's you know so much of what we believe as Calvinists is reformed theology is people who understand you know the difference in the way we're trying to live our life versus what is kind of typical American culture it's it's countercultural it's not the norm not only is it not the norm for the secular world that I think a lot of what we live is not the norm for the for the quote-unquote Christian world and so absolutely people people come to our church and it's it can be a culture shock I mean you know it just the difference the things that we the things that we promote within the family family worship things like that that people say what is that they that you know yeah we do responsive reading and some catechisms and stuff but again we don't put any of those things above the gospel it's not the gospel you know assurance of pardon and and communion every single Sunday we do that as well I love it oh my gosh my favorite thing of the whole week is doing community with my kids yeah I do community with my family I get to I get to break bread and and drink wine with my family and and I'll be honest I you know I didn't know some of this stuff is I've never done communion every single Sunday but there there is a thing that if you take communion seriously the culture of confession that occurs in our church our community we we've had hard conversations but good conversations among other members of our community when we have to make something right with them or they have to make something right with us and that's done every week not once a quarter not hey this is like we don't really it's flippant and we don't take it seriously like no we take it serious yeah and so to be able to go like you know look we had a hard conversation it didn't go very well I didn't handle myself well in this I'm sorry I I don't I want to have unity with you I think that's that's what it's there for and so so those things have just been again a breath of fresh air they're still fairly new for us but they've been incredible and again I I've never had the opportunity to take communion with my family on a week to week basis it's incredible to do that with my kids my my both my kids have been saved in the last couple years during during actually both really during covid and um and both sort of in that time period where churches were getting shut down and weren't able to meet as much and so again it's been really incredible to be able to share that with my family uh every single week now how many children do you have that was gonna this was gonna start two I've got two two girls 17 uh and 12 and uh and again my wife that we've been high school sweethearts and we're best friends for five or six years before we even started dating and we've been together for 23 years and so uh yeah we homeschool our kids we're classical education people my wife and I were actually both educators in the public school system for years okay before we did that you certainly don't become a public school teacher being pro homeschool I would never I'm not again that's another perfect example of something that I'm I wouldn't judge people for you know my sister is a single mom who's got twins she's got to work uh and so walking through some of those things with people just being patient you know I don't want to beat people over the head with you you got to homeschool or you're in sin like that's not like let's walk through why why we choose some of the choices that we make and so um yeah being faithful to be gracious to somebody who doesn't make the same decisions as you as long as this is not a sinful decision as long as they're not in sin that's right that's what it means to be in a family of faith we can we can disagree or we can do things differently and um you know and so that's that's good I agree and our experience has been that for most for most people a lot of this is just ignorance they just don't I mean it was for us we didn't understand we didn't even know that homeschool was an option you just put kids in public school or we didn't even understand really what the role of husbands and wives really were a headship in in home or you know whatever that was and so um same thing I was completely ignorant when I was 17 18 20 years old about reformed theology or Calvin oh man I didn't even know what it was so I didn't want to be judged on it because I didn't know what it was and so and then you learn and then you chew and you you don't just jump on the bandwagon right away and so be able to be patient with that but man yeah we listen I we live such a blessed life we live a dream life I like you said I'm I'm a CEO of a multi-million dollar company at this point um we've got 80 employees my wife said I work from home running an online business I work from home every day so it's actually rare that I'm in a hotel room like this I travel a little bit for business but I'm not going to work at the office eight to five or like most CEOs working you know 6 a.m to to nine nine o'clock at night I get to be home with my family I have to eat every meal with my family breakfast lunch and dinner every single day with my family my wife's a stay-at-home mom she works her butt off at our house she does an incredible job with the household our kids are homeschooled we follow classical education it's tough hard curriculum that we that we do with our kids but we get to take an active role in that and then we get to help teach our kids the things we want them to learn so beyond just the the math and the reading and the science and the history we get to walk through the gospel and finances and macro economics and you know all the teach them skills around the house like that's been an incredible joy in our life to be able to do that as well so I we again don't take that for granted at all every single day it wasn't very long ago that I was a public school teacher making thirty thousand dollars a year and literally digging in our in our couch cushions for enough change to buy dollar double cheeseburgers for double you know double cheeseburger night at mcdonald's yeah my wife and I talk about all the time 29 cent hamburgers that was when we were I don't that's how I know you're older than me so well no I do not remember 29 cent hamburgers but I do remember the dollar double cheeseburger and that and that was and you'd scrounge until you found four bucks yeah so uh you know I I don't know there's a part of me that is a little bit I still am a little bit when when you've found sort of have newfound success in the business world there's a part of me that's still a little bit embarrassed about the success that we've had because it is it is so new it isn't life I don't come from generational money I come from the opposite I come from a family of pastors and and teachers and so that's been that's been hard I mean the first time I think people see our house I'm a little bit I'm a little bit embarrassed when we live in a nice home and I I'm just so used to not having that and so and I worry when people meet me that they're like oh this guy's a rich guy and you're just like whoa you don't understand it's just a couple years ago we couldn't afford mcdonald's to this day I've never had a happy meal in my whole life happy meal were for rich those are for rich kids growing up you know on the rare occasion I got mcdonald's growing up it was the all-american meal no cheese and a water no soda because we couldn't afford the sodas and so again wouldn't trade it for the world so thankful to understand the value of a dollar but yeah there's still a little bit of that that is difficult for us to swallow and to be okay with and so it's also been an honor to be able to be generous and gracious with with our with our money with our ties and offerings and again I I love being able to do those things in a way that you know people don't know that it's us and be able to bless people it's been a lot of fun and so that that part's great but some of the other stuff is still weird to us for sure yeah absolutely talking about you being the son of a pastor one day and I know your time is very valuable and you're busy one day I'd love to just talk to you about what it was like growing up as a pastor's kid but I but we're going to move on now but but that that to me I often wonder what my because I didn't grow up I grew up the son of a of a factory worker my dad worked for metal container he made cans for anheuser-busch for 35 years and so I've been on the factory tour of the anheuser-busch brewery here in Jacksonville several times I've done the same but in St.

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Louis yeah and so that was sort of my life but my my you know we we went to church and my stepmom was instrumental in getting me into church and and through that you know was uh introduced to God and those things and and it was it was a blessing but I I really quick I want I'll say this as I kind of tie up the loose end there um I have a brother and sister a younger brother who's three years younger than me and a sister who's six years younger than me I think all three of us rebelled against what we were what we were raised in uh my sister and brother even to this day are not Christians are I think both would call themselves agnostic and not and not atheists we pray for them every single day um and my wife and I rebelled but in the opposite direction and so I think again I actually think it was integral being part of that sort of very traditional legalistic southern baptist midwest upbringing we rebelled against all that extra junk and and dove deeper into into scripture into the word into the gospel and it was really it was it was for us it was sort of a redis it was the five solas it was you know it was sola scriptura was a huge piece of this and so let's not throw all the extra man-made rules on top of this and so I think we all rebelled out of our and again great parents great dad like again it was just that lifestyle in the 80s and early 90s of being preacher's kids I think they rebelled one way and we rebelled the other way and I'm very thankful that that was our rebellion was a deeper dive into the gospel and so I think a lot of what we believe in our in our doctrine and theology comes out of some of that rebellion out of that um 80s and 90s legalistic southern baptist culture uh and I think my brother and sister did the same they just went a direction I wish they hadn't gone so I'm still very close to both and they know that we talk about it all the time they're still they're no longer hostile to the gospel and so we get a chance to talk through that a lot but certainly for your listeners I would ask for lots of prayer for for them because we're trying to we're trying to just lead that life and model it well and and and walk through the gospel when we can with both of them so amen and we will definitely pray for them and you know my I've told this story before my son is in the air force and he is not yet a believer I always say not yet because of course we pray that God will save him my older daughter is a believer and that's my two oldest I have five and one on the way so we've got congrats yeah thank you and um but but of the two oldest you know I have one believer and one not not not a believer and I know that he's in a condition where he is everything we taught him growing up is being challenged because he's in Germany he's he's surrounded by men in the air force he is not surrounded you know I'm sure he's got good chaplains I know some good chaplains but but but at the same time you know we I'd ask for prayer for that just because you're just like your brother and sister I think about my son you know growing up in a Christian home growing up the son of a preacher man you know I'm the son of a preacher man yeah it's not easy it's not easy no a lot of expectations yeah but it's not you know you're you're called to what you're I mean what are you going to do not be you're called to be a pastor that's right and so that comes with some baggage and comes with some difficulty for the family and again to me being a being reformed being Calvinist there is a there's actually a freedom in that knowing that God is sovereign you know God will God will pursue and so you know and even in the prayers you know what we're really praying is not that God will change his mind about something that's right but that God will align our will with his will and so you're almost praying well God if this is your will and I mean this sort of half like a half joke will you can we speed it up a yeah you're like I don't I don't want my you know you don't want your son and I don't want my brother and sister to to come to know Christ on their deathbed you're like gosh that's a that's the wasted life like gosh you know if if the plan is to save and we believe that it is then God is faithful to do that and you know our prayers that that will come quickly sooner rather than later so well I'm going to totally change gears here because I have I have a lot of questions for you about the strength training stuff and I love the spiritual stuff but I'm just I have so many cure one quick question 12 year old and 17 year old daughter how old were they or are they old enough to be doing the training that you give or do you train them at all I I do um my my wife is a pretty avid trainer uh trains she's not she's not a personal she's not a coach although she got a great eye because she's done this for so long around me um they model it because I mean they do it because mom does it you know they're not super into it I'm not Tiger Woods dad I didn't shove it down their throat I didn't I knew that I would I would have the same rebellion if if I did and so we just modeled it well you know mom did it mom my wife is a beautiful blonde haired blue-eyed feminine soccer mom that's what she looks like and they want to look like her they want to be like her and she's not you know she's had two c-sections and she's not you know the world wouldn't put her on the cover of some you know Cosmo magazine or anything but she she lives an incredible life and she trains and the more she trains and lifts heavy weights which most women think they can't do her body has responded the way she always wanted it to respond to the cardio and the aerobics and things like that and so um yeah very very simply I and I can go back and talk about strength here in a second but but the the simple piece of this is that really anybody can do this uh if kids are prepubescent they're not able to handle strength heavy enough to hurt themselves and the old adage that if you lift heavy you'll stunt your growth is just a complete that's just an old wife's tale uh the force you put on growth plates on hips on knees on ankles etc is far higher on a kid when they run down the road or even play soccer when they run than they could ever do squatting and so nobody ever thinks like oh don't let your kid run because well it's because it just doesn't it's not true and so sometimes people you'll you'll meet a short guy and he'll go well I'm short because I lifted when I was a kid no you're short because because your genetics yeah that's god wanted god wanted you short man sorry sorry bro and so yeah so that's you can start this anytime um you know for kids your kids can't really train we we distinguish between exercise and training exercises and there's nothing wrong with exercise exercise is what you do when you get hot and sweaty and check the thing off the list and there's nothing wrong with that at all especially far better than sitting at home and binging on netflix uh training is working towards a goal and it's a systematic progression of pursuing that goal and so you know a kid that's 10 can't do that and they don't have they don't have the they don't have the um attention span to do that and so for me what we do with our kids and what I would suggest other people do with their kids is just make it fun just make it fun and so teach them how to do the movements teach them how to do the basic barbell lifts let them have fun and when they get bored let them leave it's okay because they can't train so so if that's one exercise today have some fun with it model if they want to do some pull-ups or chin-ups and you know we got chalk they'll put chalk on their hands and they'll do the thing and that's you know they just they'll put it on their face pretend they're Rambo and I mean that's the way to do it we're not again the last thing I want to do is be you know Venus and Serena Williams dad or Tiger Woods dad and this is not the be all end all this is just a thing that we model and so I tell you what I'd love to do I'd love to talk about let me talk about if it's okay with you why strength like why why do we do that over other things because I think that's really important and what is that specifically is that okay yeah and and that's the the podcast that I heard was it was the second in a series that you were doing and it was why strength and and and it it helped I mean open my eyes sure I'm I'm my wife and I've ever since I listened to it I've been talking about the value that I think it would bring to our lives you know my wife my wife was a college softball player so she has an athletic background sure but never anything like what you're talking about sure yeah so so strength if you think about all of the physical attributes you can have physical so strength cardiovascular endurance muscular endurance mobility or flexibility power speed any of those things right so there's there's 10 or 12 of those you could probably come up with strength is the only one that makes all of the other ones better but it's not a two-way street you were starting to you mentioned this at the beginning of the show so if you've never squatted to full depth all the way down and we'll talk about why you should do that here in a minute but let's or you know bench press with full range of motion and anything that's full range of motion you will get stronger but you will also get more mobile or more flexible but it's not a two-way street if you go take yoga class you'll get more mobile but you will not get more strong and for us and for most people today their time is of the essence their time is valuable and so we want the best bang for our buck we want the greatest return on investment for the minimum effective dose that's the point nobody wants to train have to train like a bodybuilder we're not talking to your to your listeners as if that's and no one wants to eat that way either you don't want to eat chicken breast and broccoli all day again we're talking about improving quality of life chicken breast and broccoli is not an improvement quality of life that gets really old really fast right amen training two hours a day three hours a day seven days a week that's not an improvement quality of life and so is there a way that we could train and again just for your listeners understand when i say train i'm just talking about working towards a goal right and some of that maybe is a paradigm shift like you've got to consider yourself an athlete a little bit now our primary demographic that we coach at our business are middle-aged and older people men and women so we're talking about 40s 50s 60s into their 80s we've got we got a bunch of people in their 80s that do this so our 87 my 87 year old lady that i coach who's got a double hip replacement and a knee replacement and all her backs fused together and two inches of her achilles are cut off all those things happened before she met me thank the lord uh she trains she trains she doesn't just exercise she squats and she deadlifts and she bench presses and she presses and so if she does it what's your excuse you can do this right and so that's it so so we train and so if you strength train i want to get the best the biggest bang for my buck you could strength train everybody that's listening to this show who hasn't strength trained in the past can easily strength train for 30 or 40 minutes three times a week and get all the benefit that you need so we're talking about an hour and a half two hours per week everyone has that much time if you say you don't have that much time you're just using it as an excuse right and so what we do is we focus on the big and by the way and strength here's what strength strength is force production that's it now we that strength is a word like the word love that we use in the english i'm sure you've talked about this right you know you've got you know in the greek you've got all these different types fileo and agape and you've got all these different types of love when we just say i love pizza i love my dog i love my wife i love jesus and it's like obviously i don't love jesus the way i love pizza that's different and so strength we often will mistake that as well we'll say you know somebody beat cancer we'll say they're really really strong now they're really mentally tough and that doesn't bother me if somebody says they're strong but we can actually define physiologically we can define strength strength equals force production the person who can produce the most force into the barbell into the floor you know pushing against the floor whatever that is is the most strong very simple that's it so i'm talking physiologically in order to improve strength in the most effective way and thus improve all of the other things as well mobility and cardiovascular endurance and and speed and power and all that stuff which is all those things are functions of strength i want to focus on the biggest most compound lifts which are often the hardest lifts what we do is very simple but it's hard and it's extremely effective so simple plus hard equals effective i want effective i don't want to go do simple and easy but i also don't want to do complicated and hard right i want to do simple simple plus hard it was effective and so we can really focus on four major lifts and that's the squat right which most people know what that is you put the bar on your back squat down come back up and certainly there are lots of sort of nuances on how to do it correctly which i'll talk about here in a minute there's the deadlift which is where we just pick a barbell up off the floor stand up with it not over our head just holding it down by our mid thigh right like picking up just a heavy barbell bench press everybody knows what a bench press is because i read it in high school and an overhead press or just what we call the press what a lot of people would call a military press just overhead so if you're watching on youtube just yep press note yep exactly person overhead those four lifts will get you 90 of the way they're for real so when you most people walk into a gym especially a big box globo gym there are hundreds of machines so i right this is my favorite term uh it's often purple so they have donuts up front purple cobras yeah that's right stay away from those uh anyway you know you walk into the globo gym and they're literally there are an infinite number of exercises you can do there's the free weights there's all the machines there's the cardio stuff there's all the stuff and you don't know where to start and so what we want to do is we want to use exercises that use the most muscle mass per exercise for the greatest range of motion and allow us to use the most weight and thus get the most strong and when we apply those three criteria to the literal infinite number of exercises we end up with four basic exercises that's it squat deadlift bench press press and so if we do those things three times a week or so then that's how we get strong the greatest return on investment for the minimum effective dose when we add a few body weight movements something like a chin up or pull up um and really that's probably it you could do some push-ups you could do some dips you could do some sit-ups as well but some body weight stuff that's literally everything you need to do you don't need to do anything else you don't need to get on a machine at some point you'll want to add some cardio to the equation but in the beginning if you've never done this and you're doing heavy sets of squat and i say heavy we start very conservative i mean we might start with empty bar and just add a little weight each time but if you haven't done that and especially if you're wearing like an apple watch or fitbit or something tell me that's not a cardio exercise a heavy set of five squats will get your heart rate up to 175 it's cardio it won't allow you to run a marathon just squatting heavy but it will give you the best bang for your buck in the shortest amount of time you will completely change your body your strength your physical appearance in about two months so it's a pretty fast return on investment as well and so what we do is what's called linear progression without getting too scientific we take those basic lifts we go in the gym we do them usually for like three sets of five reps so three rounds of five and we add five pounds every time we go so i go in and squat it doesn't matter how conservative you start uh empty barbells 45 pounds you go and you squat the barbell for three sets of five at 45 pounds you come in two days later so you go monday wednesday friday you come in two days later you do 50 pounds come in two days later you're 55 then 60 and 65 and you do that until it stops working it's literally that simple like it's got to be more to it nope but at some point it gets really hard but it never it doesn't get more complicated right and that's all you do that's literally all you do now can you do some additional cardio of course i get up every morning i walk around the neighborhood with my wife we we do a two mile walk it's great quality time we talk about our day we sort of reflect about yesterday first thing we do every morning when we get up what i get up super early just and always have my whole life so i don't i don't even set my alarm i get up early i work at 4 30 or 5 my wife gets up about 6 45 or 7 at the latest we put on our walking shoes and we go walking around the neighborhood the kids get up at 7 30 by the time they get up we're home from our walk and we're ready to start the day it's a great way to start your day and so that's just healthy just being active right but the big bang for your butt comes to those big lifts and so what we've tried to do at our business and again not i told you when we first did our pre-call i don't have anything to sell your clients we put out a ton of content for free we're not a content company we're a service company so we pair people with expert coaches for online coaching and so they get your you get paired with an expert coach that's perfect for you you get your programming on an app on your phone you video yourself lifting you upload it to that app and your coach fully breaks down your technique within 24 hours screen recording all that fun stuff but in the beginning what we really love people to do is just learn more about this stuff right so we have i have an editor-in-chief who's an attorney who's an incredible writer we've got incredible ebooks and articles that you can read all for free we've got a youtube channel on barbell logic that has every how-to video for every exercise so if you're like i don't know how to do a squat safely well we talk about how to do that the long form squat video is like seven minutes long all most of our long form videos are five six seven minutes long but then we also have a series that we call gym shorts kind of a play on words there right and it's how-to videos on every single lift you'd ever want to learn how to do in under 60 seconds so you can literally learn how to do a squat or a deadlift or any of those lifts i'm talking about in under 60 seconds we also have videos on how to start your programming all that sort of stuff so so that's a great place to start i was i don't think i told you this but if somebody's like that's even there's an overwhelming amount of content so you're like i'm over i don't even know where to start here's the place to start we have an ebook called a life of strength ebook and you can go to our website barbell logic.com slash life l-i-f-e barbell logic.com life and you can download the the life of strength ebook just to start to learn more if you're like i don't know where to start where do i where there's no call that action you don't have to put in a credit card there's nothing like that it's just we do this and so that i'm just honest everybody like what's in it for us the more people who consume our content who read and learn about this stuff will understand that we're experts in the field and some of those people will become convert to paying clients that it's that simple right so we're not heavy on sales we're very careful with that stuff not not only that even if somebody is interested in the online coaching your first month is 100 free every single time there's no contract you're like what's the catch no catch you sign up you get paired with a coach it costs you literally nothing it's our job to keep you for a month too that's it our customer service people will walk you through the process for free not do a sales call and just like show you what it's like to interact with the coach to play with the app to to get feedback from coach we do all that stuff for free because we think the stuff we think the service that we offer is great but really the best place to start is just to start learning about this process and then here's the thing and then go do it yeah right you have permission listen you're not going to hurt yourself everybody's seeing all these crazy gym fail videos and crazy crossfit videos here's the crazy thing this isn't this is published data people that lift weights don't hurt themselves like it's one injury in 30,000 hours you're like how can that be i don't know but it's true and so the vast majority of people are performing these lifts incorrectly and they still don't actually hurt themselves you hurt yourself when you drop your keys on the floor and you bend over and you turn and twist at the same time to put your keys and you're ah i hurt my back most people don't actually hurt them back hurt their back lifting weights dead lifting squatting you know and certainly if you take the time to watch a few minutes of video which you should do and take a good stab at your best give it your best shot on how to squat correctly your deadlift correctly those are the lifts that give you the best bang for the buck right but they're also the hardest lift it's way easier to sit down on a machine and just take that selectorized plate take that pin out put it on 30 pounds knock out some reps but you're not really doing anything right and so this is where this comes back to how does it affect our spiritual life well i think we're called to do hard things we're going to choose voluntary hardship a machine is not hard go to the gym and sitting down on a machine if you can read a magazine while you're exercising it is not hard right it should be hard hard makes us better hard is refining it refines us physically emotionally mentally spiritually right so that when that involuntary hardship comes we're better prepared for that and so we we we think i don't think that everybody who trains is virtuous but i think if you're doing it for the right reason i think there's virtue in this i really do i think there's virtue in it and so that's why we do what we do and and for our people who are doing it for the right reason we watch their lives their quality of life get better their physical quality of life their mental their social their social is really bizarre how much it gives you a a healthy dose of confidence not arrogance not arrogance but when you it's scary to put a heavy barbell on your back and squat especially when you've done this for a while and you've worked up fairly heavy and you've got 250 pounds or 300 pounds on the bar and you're like i don't know if i can do this and you get under the bar and you do it you're like wow this i can do this and then it's a little easier to have that uncomfortable conversation with your boss or those uncomfortable is awkward conversations that you don't want to have but it's a cancer if you don't i have to have awkward conversations every day as a ceo of the company and i hate awkward i still hate awkward conversations i'm not a sociopath but every time i have an awkward conversation or every time i do something hard or every time i get under a squat weight that i think might kill me and i do it anyway it makes that awkward conversation a little bit easier the next time and so when i have to talk about infidelity in my marriage from 12 years ago i can better handle that because i've talked about it before or i can better handle it because i've chosen voluntary hardship in other places in my life and so i think that's where this thing comes comes out it's not the gospel it's not your relationship with your wife it's not your relationship with your church community but it absolutely is something i think we can all do and strive to get better at and i think it's something that is not again it's not like justification it's not gonna you're not going to get fit overnight it's it's it's a long-term process that's why we do what we do absolutely well for somebody like me and i'm not asking you to coach me over the podcast because that would be unfair but for somebody to help somebody like me who's you know um middle-aged and overweight and um never ever been a member of a gym ever i've taught karate i've done those things but i've never ever been a member of a gym do you recommend gym membership over getting my own equipment and doing it at home or is that what is your we love home gyms okay we love home gyms we all have home gyms now when covid hit about 60 percent of our clients had home gyms 100 percent of gyms in the whole world got closed down during covid so what are you gonna do so we got you know we thought about what what we could do for people that don't have home gyms so we're like well do you have a dog yep you got 50 pound dog food bags yep then we can do something with that right can you go to lowes and buy tubes of sand like 60 pound tubes of sand for five bucks can you go get a five gallon bucket we had people build squat racks out of four by four pieces by the way i'm i'm not telling you to do this because this is a little janky but they literally went and got five gallon buckets at lowes quick crete four by four posts and put those four by four posts in a five gallon bucket with of quick crete and then put big bolts at the height it would be for a squat or a bench press or whatever and then they found a barbell on craigslist or whatever now we love home gyms home gyms are great i am not a fan of public gyms now listen some people if you're going and you've got a great community and you and it's close or you've got you know you've got a neighborhood gym go to it there's nothing wrong with it at all but gosh it's awfully difficult to make an excuse to not train when your home gym is in your basement or in a spare bedroom or in the garage you can do it with your wife you can do it with your kids you can model it well man i've got a ton of guys talk about church guys it's a great activity for five or six guys that that go to church together to get up at six o'clock in the morning before their family ever wakes up they're not wasting family time before they go to work and go get in an hour lift with their with their brothers in christ you have great conversations talk about theology talk about politics talk about culture and squat heavy and cheer each other on and lift what a great activity to do together like just a an incredible you know again i love there are things that we can do if we do them for the right reason amoral things not immoral not moral i think weight lifting is amoral it's not in and of its nature you know it's not morality but i think we do it for the right reasons i think it can bring us joy i think we can glorify god in it i think you know it's the same way a great cup of coffee for me i mean i love good coffee it literally make it stirs my affections for the lord right like there are things like that in my life that are a more i've actually tried to identify those things what are those things in life that are not inherently like obviously reading reading my bible stirs my affections for the lord like okay duh like obviously but what are those things that are that you do on a daily basis waking up early serves my affections for the lord sleeping in late doesn't staying up late doesn't right so and i think training lifting weights doing those things can absolutely stir my affections for the lord can can glorify god and what i do and can certainly help me steward my body well as well as what a great thing to build relationship community either with other men in the church or for for me i love lifting my wife i love it and she trains the same way i do and of course she's not nearly as strong as i am but for us we go in the gym we work hard together we sweat together we cheer each other on we lift off for each other and spot each other and we love it and a lot of people can't do that they'll you know they'll bicker with their you know they can't it's hard to coach your spouse uh but for us it's worked really really well so for us it's just another one of those things that we do that's quality time it's certainly not the only thing we do that's quality time but it's a great piece of quality time for us now i don't have two-year-olds at home my kids are grown enough that you know we can get an hour alone in the gym and our kids don't need us in an hour and so if you got young kids that doesn't always work but i think it's a great way to do it so i love home gyms i think it's a great way to do it i think i don't worry about the quality of your equipment in the beginning certainly it's like anything else right buy buy once cry once the better stuff you buy it holds its value tremendously well there are a ton of great american manufacturers uh in the united states i'm not sponsored by these people rep fitness rogue fitness some of these companies are titan they're great companies you can but craigslist is great most of us got started going to a garage sale and getting the old you know the old vinyl dip concrete weights at a garage sale for five bucks get it it's fine good place to start right so just don't start and just do bench press and curls like you did when you were 12.

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yeah you got a squat and deadlift that's that's the thing that's going to get the biggest bang for the buck bench press is great curls are fine right so but focus on those big four lifts squat deadlift bench press and press most people don't want to squat and they don't want to deadlift and here's the thing it's not about working legs doing those lifts creates a systemic hormonal release and a systemic stress that your entire body will respond to and adapt to it's a stress recovery adaptation phase and so squats don't just make your legs strong or your legs big it makes your whole body stronger it makes your whole body better it helps release for you you middle-aged guys older guys your testosterone is falling it'll help your testosterone drive up or decline less right and so that those systemic changes that occur are healthy good systemic changes again we don't live hard lifestyles anymore in in first world countries we drive to work in our nice car in our air conditioning and we get our drive through or get our door to actually work in our cubicle and this is something that we can do that it was it was important and healthy and of some value as paul said two thousand years ago how much more value is it today when everything we do is just easy we just live an easy life and so i think choosing the hard way is there's some value to that man i'm i'm i'm very encouraged to hear this and and i mean it it definitely is um and i loved i love what you said about it being it's it's simple and hard and that's right it sounds like a oxymoron or juxtaposition but i get what you're saying it's not it's not complicated but it's still hard that's right it's got to be hard yeah and and and so that that part really intrigues me and the idea of thinking through that i'm really looking forward to watching the videos and and and learning more about it and i and i do have one one more question and i want i want you to speak to this because i think this is more of an emotional barrier than maybe a physical but because i have physical issues you know i have um you know i have uh arthritis in my knees i have a torn meniscus in my left knee from where i had surgery so those are things i would have to work through physically but i think one of the emotional barriers for somebody like myself you know and it's nice you said don't have to go to the gym that's right but still when i get under a barbell and i can't even barely lift the bar yep because you know i don't have the strength in my upper body to lift 45 pounds straight up over my chest or whatever that that can be somewhat demoralizing speak absolutely to that for a minute just for so yeah uh first but both of those both the physical and emotional side people will often before they hire us as coaches they'll often say like well i'm going to go ahead and train like three but it's like the cleaning yourself up before you go to church thing that's that's literally it's the same thing like no this is this is what we do we're professionals right we've seen a million people there's nothing that you can do that a professional hasn't seen already before so i've seen people who can't do a body weight squat it's a great place to start start with a body weight squat literally by the way we have videos for all that stuff too so if you're like i don't have weights yet so i'll just wait till i get my weight so i'll wait till i get barbells there's an entire series on our youtube channel called before barbells but you just do body weight stuff we talk about even how to do modified push-ups modified squats so if you can't do a push-up yeah i can't i cannot do a physical man push-up and i okay but here's what you can do yeah you can do that's right you can do it that way or you can do you can actually do wall push-ups so you can you can actually take a piece of like painter's tape or masking tape put it on the floor and mark it every three inches and then you can put let's say you put your feet two feet from the wall and you can do a push-up against the wall and then you do a set of five set of ten okay i can do that and then you back up three more inches and you because you start vertical and you get more and more horizontal against the wall and eventually you'll be able to do a push-up against the floor so you can titrate any of this stuff up you can do the same thing with the squat what you have to understand is your body adapts very very quickly no matter what your age is like even if you're in your 60s 70s 80s your body will adapt quickly you'll be very surprised it's getting through the first two weeks um i do i do not fully subscribe there's a there's some famous uh you know navy seals and people out there that talk about motivation over discipline motivation over discipline i don't fully subscribe to that like i do think when you're trying to change a habit for the first few weeks yes you have to have motivation over discipline i'm sorry you have to have discipline over motivation i said it wrong you have to have discipline over motivation discipline over motivation but at some point you should be motivated to do the thing right it's even like if you haven't read your bible in a while you're like i'm gonna be disciplined enough to get up every morning read my bible and i'm not really motivated to read my bible but i'm gonna get up and do the thing listen if you're a christian and within a week or two weeks and you're reading your bible and you're being intentional about doing the thing like my experience is within a couple weeks i become motivated to read my bible i'm not it's not about discipline over motivation anymore fitness is the same thing so you just got to you just got to be disciplined for a couple weeks and then the motivation will come and so don't worry about where you start it's never about where you start it's about the process it's not even about for us we're not trying to be competitive athletes not even about where you end it's about the process right and so that's how you get through the middle it doesn't matter restart you set prs personal records you're able to set personal records every day if you can't do a push-up on the floor but you can do a push-up against the wall with your feet two feet away and then a couple days later you're able to do it from two feet six inches away that's a that's a personal record and then three feet away that's a personal record and every time you set a personal record we celebrate that we celebrate that whether that's an empty bar bench press or a 500 pound bench press we celebrate that the same so that's really important one other thing i want to speak to i think it's really important that i'm glad you brought this up everyone listening to this podcast has injuries and they think they can't do a thing i've got a bad back i've got a herniated disc i've got disc degeneration i've got a bad knee i tore a meniscus everybody can train if you don't have an aortic aneurysm then don't train if you have you know you i have trained blind people deaf people people with polio people with one leg people with one arm people with no arms but like again sybil with all the replace you know joint replacements here's the thing when you've got a bad back or bad knees which are the two primary they're bad anything a torn rotator cuff in your shoulder like all of that stuff how was how are supposed to get better doing nothing your back doesn't get more resilient to injury if you just let it atrophy and you get sarcopenia and you just like it just becomes weaker and weaker and weaker it's what i want to do is actually get your back strong if i get the muscles around your spine strong then your spine actually takes less torsion less force less right less moment rotational force it puts less of that negative force on your back because your muscles are able to handle it so i want to i do want to start slow there's no reason to worry about well i can barely even pick up an empty barbell perfect start with empty barbell start with less than the empty barbell start with milk jugs or eight nine pounds right start with that and slowly get your back stronger and what you'll find is that when you get your back strong you'll never hurt your back again because it's not the muscle that's the problem right it's the joints it's the facet joints it's the it's the discs it's the joint in your knee if i make the muscles around the joint around my knee which are primarily my quadriceps if i make my quads on the front and my hamstrings on the back and i make those things strong then it puts less rotational force or torsion on the knee itself people that tear their acl your your anterior cruciate ligament the hamstring literally does the same job as the acl the acl keeps the keeps your shin bone from from moving away from the knee that's what your hamstring does so if your hamstring's strong it protects your acl if your quads are strong it protects your knee if your erectors are strong on your back it protects your spine and so i want to build muscles so that my my joints my back my knees my shoulders are more resilient and less prone to injury not the other way around and that's against common knowledge right and you know again because we live in such a litigious society if you go to your orthopedic surgeon you go to pt pt they're gonna be like don't do anything well how how is my back supposed to get better if i do nothing it doesn't get any better it gets worse so we're gonna go slow we're gonna be very careful we're gonna add a little tiny bit of weight at a time we're gonna start super conservative we're gonna focus on form and we're gonna take our time and slowly get stronger and what you'll find is that two three four six months down the road your back is as healthy as it's ever been you'll be like my back doesn't hurt anymore yep that's that's not that's not the exception to the rule that's the norm people that do this don't hurt anymore if you have rheumatoid arthritis if you have fibromyalgia if you have like i'm telling you it will fix that stuff now again i'm not a doctor i'm not saying it heals i'm saying that if you've got joint problems and you make the muscle around the joint strong the joint hurts less that's just come that's logic right doesn't mean you're going to be perfect doesn't mean you're going to feel like you're 20 again but it certainly will help um support the joints and the places in our body that tend to get injured that's that's the key awesome awesome well i'm i'm like i said i'm encouraged everything i'm hearing i'm looking forward to looking this up and learning more about it i want to ask you one last thing and then i think i'm going to begin to draw us to a close and that is can you share with us just maybe one or two of the success stories that you've seen people who've gone from maybe being hurting or overweight or something people that people that you you know because i know you told me some stuff off air you know lives that you've seen change sure so again talked about sybil sybil's a great example and and i've interviewed her on the podcast again 87 years old we have quite a few podcasts um there's a great podcast i can even look it up we can put it in the show notes i've got a guy i interviewed several years ago his name is john wilson he's a great christian guy um was diagnosed with stage 4 kidney cancer and they said you got three months to live uh he lived eight more years and didn't lose weight didn't lose weight like when you get cancer you actually don't typically you often don't die from the cancer you die because you waste away and so we have we actually have lots of stories of people who have been diagnosed with cancer who've decided i'm not gonna let this thing beat me i'm gonna train through it they trained during chemotherapy during radiation they did what they could to eat their protein and keep their body weight on by the way we've got lots of great nutrition stuff too so great nutrition content again the best place to start is that life of strength ebook because that will help move you in the it gives you a good place to start but we have a tremendous number of stories of people who have had to deal with this this you know abnormality i just interviewed a guy the podcast will come out in the next couple weeks hadn't even come out yet he has debilitating crones he's had his colon removed he has a colostomy bag he's 43 years old he's super strong he squats he deadlifts like and he wasn't strong when he first got this but the problem is his body's not able to really digest food well it's he's he's the opposite of most of us he has a hard time keeping body weight on he gets very skinny um and what he's found is that when he puts on muscle mass he's healthier he has less flare-ups to his crones and so again they're just the simple answer is no matter what you think you can train you can almost always train um gosh we have odella one of my favorite clients we we have a one of my coaches by the way my coaches are all super professional people so we're not talking about personal trainers so odella's coach is a medical doctor who was a emergency trauma surgeon in detroit for the 35 years his name is dr sullivan by the way if you're over 50 years old he has a book called the barbell prescription i don't make you money off that it's for training for people over 50 years old it's about how to do the basic barbellist the barbell prescription he's an incredible doctor like medical doctor that's who my coaches are they're engineers or doctors they're lawyers uh you know i've got a guy who's got a phd in macroeconomics from princeton he's one of my coaches like we're talking about highly educated professional people odella is a lady who's 86 years old who has never had any in-person coaching she just gets online coaching from dr sullivan and she's incredible she squats she deadlifts she bench presses she presses she squats like 160 pounds we got we we we've got a guy who's 97 and deadlifts 200 pounds wow and again i mean he lives in assisted living has been living in assisted living for 20 years and is the most independent he's ever been in his life and so we have story after story after story we have people who've had surgeries and had knees replaced and hips replaced and completely rehab those things and like gosh this feels better than it did when i was 20.