Weird and Strong

Joshua Gibson & Max Aita: Evolving the Coaching Landscape in Weightlifting

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:00:02]: Welcome, everybody, back to the weird and strong podcast. I'm your host, Jeremy Grunsteiner. Today I've got Josh Gibson and Max Ada on the podcast, so we've got a twofer. Not usually our format. We usually talk one on one, and I love being able to have multiple voices in the room at the same time. So I'm excited about this. Josh, how you doing, man? Joshua Gibson [00:00:22]: I'm doing very well. It's. It's quite different to be on the other side of the mic. Um, literally, it's the same side, but, you know, this time being interviewed instead of doing the interviewing. So, um, I'm looking forward to the conversation. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:00:35]: Yeah. Very cool and welcoming back. Max, how are you doing today? Max Aita [00:00:38]: Hey, I'm well. I'm doing really well. Um, you know, just, uh, just living the dream. One day closer to death, 1ft in the coffin. You know, that always reminds me kind of stuff. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:00:51]: It always reminds me of, uh, uh, my favorite birthday song of. Are you guys, if you guys are familiar with Aurelio Voltaire, he's kind of a gothy, rocky alternative guy. He's got a birthday song or his happy birthday, my old friend. It seems this horror show will never end. Something about something. You're closer to your last breath. And here's to one day closer to death. Max Aita [00:01:16]: Wow. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:01:17]: Sounds dark. Max Aita [00:01:19]: It really just resonates with me. I feel that. I feel that on a regular basis. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:01:24]: We have to make sure to send that one to max on his birthday whenever that comes up. Max Aita [00:01:28]: Yeah. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:01:29]: As we start, every guest or two guests on this podcast, I've got a weird question for you guys. Are you ready? Joshua Gibson [00:01:35]: I'm ready. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:01:36]: Awesome. Josh, I'm going to start with you. Imagine yourself in a universe where pro wrestling and weightlifting have been combined and merged. You're set to compete, and you have to set yourself a walkout song. What walkout song are you picking for your weightlifting competition? Joshua Gibson [00:01:59]: That's a fantastic question. I love that we're developing alternate, you know, universes in which we operate. This one happens to clash or bring together weightlifting and wrestling. And for my walkout song, you know what? I'm going to make it as predictable as possible, and I'm going to say enter the sandman by Metallica. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:02:24]: Entrez, Sandman. Funny enough. So I just recently retired from my gigging life as a musician, and that was the last song. Last song we played. Joshua Gibson [00:02:36]: Wow. Max Aita [00:02:37]: Yeah. Joshua Gibson [00:02:38]: What a coincidence. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:02:39]: Yeah. Max, how about you? What is your. I know it's been a while since you've even. Since you've been on the competition platform, what song is going to bring you back out? Max Aita [00:02:50]: You know, what even is music? Let's break that down. Let's get down to the actual, the sound waves hitting our eardrums and really think about this. I have no idea. People ask me, well, someone asked me last night, what's your favorite song? And I just don't, I don't have, like, a favorite song. I mean, there's a lot of songs I'll listen to that I like, but I never thought of, like, oh, this is my favorite, or I know what a walkout song would be. Probably it either be, it always be something humorous to me. So, you know, it would probably be, probably be some kind of, I don't know, you know, some super, super bad poppy song from the eighties or like, maybe like a Cindy Lauper, like, you know, true colors or something. Just to be, just to be weird and confusing. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:03:45]: Give people, like, a questioning of who's actually about to come out right. Max Aita [00:03:50]: Well, versus, like, the predictable, you know, Metallica song. It's like everyone's, everyone's going to hear that and they're just going to be tuned out by the time, by the time the chorus comes around. You want someone engaged, you want them really fired up. You want people to hate you. You know, I can't control whether people are going to love me when I walk out, but I can definitely get them to hate me. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:04:10]: Well, it was like I just saw, it was in retrospective of somebody like the macho man who came out to pomp and circumstance where you're like, this is supposed to be like, this is a guy who's wearing a neon cowboy hat and shades and he comes out to this regal tune. It really makes people go, what is actually happening? Max Aita [00:04:30]: Right? And you almost wonder how much of those pro wrestlers, as anything progresses and gets more refined, you get more and more of like the, you know, I'm sure the current batch of pro wrestlers have, like, you know, come up and groom themselves through it and like, they are 100% through and through within the culture. But the old days, it was like, you know, the pro wrestler wasn't a profession. You became something like that. It's like, if you ever listen to, like, a Hulk Hogan's story, it's like he was like a guy who was, you know, doing all his weird shit and, you know, somehow ended up in it. So, like, how much of those guys were just like, it was just a inside joke for them to be everything the way they were, you know? Joshua Gibson [00:05:16]: Well, yeah, yeah. And juxtaposing this to the UFC, you have like, UFC one and it's like a sumo wrestler versus, like, a Brazilian jiu jitsu grappler. And it's like the most nonsensical that, like, what is happening? That's kind of what wrestling was like back in the day with, like, Mick Foley and. Max Aita [00:05:32]: Right. Joshua Gibson [00:05:32]: All these guys where it's just like, pieced together, you know, ragtag rugged. You're, you're throwing people off of like, you know, the top of a cage, onto tacks, on the, on the rink, on the ring, and now it's like, yeah, super groomed, super, like, cosmetic and aesthetic and theatrical. Yeah. Changes a lot. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:05:53]: Yeah, yeah. Whereas you look back, it's like, how much of that were they just making up on the fly? Oh, yeah, most of it, yeah. Or they're like, we're going to figure something out and we're going to make it happen. Max Aita [00:06:02]: Yeah. You know, just like you, you and your buddy just, you know, stripped down to your skivvies, oiled up, grabbing each other's thick, hard, veiny muscles and, you know, just getting next to each other. A couple of bros rubbing nips. You know, maybe the lips touch, maybe it's, you know, maybe it's only 1020 seconds at most, but they did touch. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:06:23]: And you gotta make sure some people, you gotta make sure a whole crowd of other guys is, oh, yeah, lots. Max Aita [00:06:29]: Of men watching us struggle with each other's bodies. Joshua Gibson [00:06:35]: I'm glad this is titled the Weird and Strong podcast because I think Max definitely provides the weird. I'm not sure if he any longer provides the strong, but definitely not one of those criteria. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:06:45]: Yeah, yeah, I think it's. And I appreciate that because it, I mean, it's making me laugh. So, I mean, that's, you know, in my, in my book, that's one of the things that I, I value a lot and value the most. Uh, thinking about into weightlifting, because, you know, ultimately, if you describe weightlifting a bit wrong, you know, we strap on a bunch of spandex, wear some high heels and lift some heavy weights over, over our head with our bros, uh, thinking to, um, the lifters in the world, um, since you both have gone through and had careers as weightlifters and competed, what are some of the things that. Or if you were to start over today or start over from scratch, let's say you're learning as a beginner again, knowing some of the things that you do know, what are the areas that you would focus on now as a beginner versus perhaps where you started from? Joshua Gibson [00:07:41]: Yeah. I mean, my mind instantly jumps to, I would find someone who can help me develop a process for figuring out what works and what doesn't. And I think there are a 1001 ways to make someone better. I mean, we see that through the wide variety of weightlifting coaches and the wide variety of methodologies they use. It's all weightlifting, but the iterations can be pretty stark. And people are still getting better, right? People are still setting. You know, we had Hampton Morris at a world record, and I don't think anyone else trains like him. Like, no one trains equivalent to him. Joshua Gibson [00:08:15]: I would say very few people train equivalent to Olivia Reeves. You go to a local meet and you're going to see a larger diversity of how people train, too. But the thing that really matters to me is, do you have a process by which you can track changes and performance and technique and really how people are taking to the training, and then you can make modifications that make sense. So when I started, I did 1001 different programs and I look back and I think, wow, that one really worked. What worked about it? And it's like, well, did it work because of the program or the time point or, like my stage and my lifting? And that's hard to single in on if you don't have a process that's a bit more strategic, a bit more well thought out, and a bit more, well, um, kind of like understood and documented. So you need good, good record keeping and I think kind of from start to finish, I wish I would have had that laid out so I could look back at trends and pick up on them. And with athletes I coach, that's kind of the big thing is, you know, what, what works, what doesn't, what can we change and then how do we know if the change is happening? Fact. Um, so I would say for people starting out for beginners, intermediates, like, find a process that you can adhere to over a longer period of time, and that's just going to give you good information for future training and then also for understanding what good coaching is. Joshua Gibson [00:09:37]: Also like, totally. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:09:39]: And so, in looking at that, when you're talking about a process, is that primarily in as far as, like the, like, programming, like methodology, or are you looking more at like a, like a. A lower level or more basic approach to this? Of have some way to, like, use a document through like a training journal or something like that so that you have some sort of, some sort of data to work from. Joshua Gibson [00:10:06]: I'd say it can be top down or it can be bottom up. And I think kind of the idea of, like, something is better than nothing. If you just document your training in a journal, you can look back on it. It might be a little tedious. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:10:18]: Mm hmm. Joshua Gibson [00:10:19]: But if you get coaching or you write a program in some sort of data management, like, place where you can manage the data or look at the data, I think it just makes it simple. It makes it simple. You can visualize it, and then you can reflect back on it and, like, click between sheets, click between weeks. Click. Click between, like, training blocks and say, like, wow, we got great results. What did training kind of look like? And then we can pick up on patterns and trends and try and map out what could that look like in the future? And I think so many people get into it, and they don't either don't track their training, don't understand their training, or don't have a process by which training evolves over time. And they're just kind of always looking at different things. Comparing apples to russet potatoes, it's not even apples to oranges. Joshua Gibson [00:11:07]: Right. It's like fruits to vegetables to, you know, to legumes to other things. So I think just having something that's comparable and trackable over time is, like, is tremendous. And that's when my coaching took off. So, as an athlete, your results would be even better. I mean, I just had someone who jerked, uh, he jerked 160 for the first time, and that was, like, a massive lift. And we just kind of had a process for getting there, and we're going to use that same process the next time we jerk 170 or when we do jerk 170. Um, so I think that is incredibly helpful. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:11:38]: Cool. Uh, Max, for you, um, looking back, you know, similar question. What were the things that you, when you got started lifting that you perhaps looking back, say, and maybe that wasn't super helpful, or you got distracted by certain, certain paths. What were those like for you as you started to develop your lifting? Max Aita [00:12:02]: This is a tough question to answer, because, like, when I think back on everything I did, if I did it differently, I might have ended up in a different place today. You know, I may not have become a coach. I may not have done these other things. So, you know, the obvious answer, kind of, to echo what Josh said, is, I would, you know, I didn't. I think I put myself into two camps, or I think people do this, or they have two different types of mentalities. One is which you take a call it a thoughtful approach, a methodical tracking, you know, writing programs, tracking what you're doing, recording, you know, adhering to a principled approach. And then the other is living in the cloud of hopefulness, which is like, I kind of wing it. I go heavy or I go light, and it's easy. Max Aita [00:13:02]: You guys just think it's easy or you think it's too hard or you're, you know. And I think the problem is that there's a belief that those two things can't coexist, that you can't have a training. A training approach that is both intuitive, in which you strike while the iron's hot and you max out a little bit more often, or when you feel good, you go up or you go, quote unquote, off program and having a methodical training process and program where there's sets and reps listed and you have a plan and you execute and, you know, like, those two things can very much coexist. It's just a matter of one, like Josh said, like, being able to actually record and track what you're doing. You know, keeping. Keeping good records of anything you're doing at this complex level is just key. So I would have. I would have done that more and tried to be. Max Aita [00:13:57]: You try to reconcile those two sort of beliefs that those two things are extreme ends of the spectrum, that you can't, you know, you can't do the bulgarian system and, you know, record your training and look at it and see if there's a trend, because God forbid you'd find out that it's stupid, you know, so it's like, I would have. I would have tried to be more in a place that, like, have a plan, but it's okay to. It's definitely okay to, like, push and to push yourself and to drive outside the envelope and, like, try to. Try to move the needle when you can. I think that's just sort of this. Like, it exists in this sphere now of that's how things have to be. It's like you're either one or the other. You're either a nerd or you're, you know, you're just like, it's not hard, dude. Max Aita [00:14:50]: Just do it. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:14:51]: Just camp. Max Aita [00:14:52]: Yeah. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:14:53]: Yeah. We talked a bit about that on the last episode. In looking at that, of, like, having some sort of a process, especially for people who are getting started as lifters or who are very new in their. In learning lifts or in learning how to compete, what are the types of things that you've encountered in working with athletes that have prevented them from finding that process in the past? Max Aita [00:15:22]: I mean, the. For me, the biggest thing is that they just are not. They're not organized in normal stuff. Like, you know, it's funny when you think about dieting. I think dieting is the best example, the best analogy here. It's so easy to not be, to not lose weight. It's so easy. You just, you just eat a little bit too much and you won't lose any weight. Max Aita [00:15:48]: In fact, it's one of the miracles of modern society in that we can largely stave off starvation pretty well. So when you think about dieting, it's like you have to do two things. You have to know exactly how much you've eaten because it's just a purely, like, you know, it's a purely energy in versus energy out kind of thing. Do you know how much you ate then? You know how much, you know approximately what you're going to burn every day. And you can look at a scale and there you go. You can see if it goes up or down, make an adjustment. Some people can't do that. Some people just can't even do that basic thing of like write down everything I eat during the day and count the calories, count the macros, look at it, and then make an adjustment and then repeat the same thing the next day in process. Max Aita [00:16:39]: That is so simple. That's like such a very basic thing. That is the minimum amount of, of, of effort. And it's really hard for a lot of people. Now, granted, there's a lot of psychological stuff around it and there's, you know, whole slew of things there for sure. But the point being, like, just to develop a methodical process, most people struggle with the actual implementation of really simple things. Like, do you write down all of your training? You know, do you film all your lips? I don't know if you guys remember a guy named Martin Rooney who used to work, I don't know if he still does or used to work for Parisi. Bill Parisi, the speed school. Max Aita [00:17:19]: This is like early two thousands. Early two thousands. He came out to Montana and did a little seminar at the university when I was there. And you have to imagine this is probably like 2002 maybe. And, you know, at the time, like, he was like a, I mean, that was like the cutting edge of, of, you know, sports performance stuff. And I remember asking him, like, what would you do? I was a weightlifter. He didn't really know anything about it. I was like, well, how, you know, do you have any suggestions for me? Like, what would you do? And he's like, yeah, you should film every lift you do and you should look at them. Max Aita [00:17:53]: You should track everything. And, like, it was, like, a basic thing, but it was kind of funny because, like, that was 22 years ago, and now we have the technology for these things, yet it's like, even it hasn't changed. Like, people don't write down their training. They don't log anything. They don't, like, look at the other. It's just, like, weird. So I say it's hard to start a process. The biggest thing is just people's literal ability to sit down and do it is the biggest hurdle. Max Aita [00:18:23]: You know, Jeff. Joshua Gibson [00:18:25]: Yeah. And I think, too, the idea of, like, a good coach, basically, is being able to meet someone where they're at and understand what people need. And I think it's kind of a straw man to say, like, well, you would either be only kind of theory heavy and scientific and analytical, or you would be intuitive. That's untrue. It's like, I coach all the time, and I coach in both realms, and you get someone who I start working with, someone who's an endurance athlete, and it's like, you go and it's like, what are we doing today? It's like, oh, we'll do a progression for the lift. We'll do some strength work, we'll do some hypertrophy work, and it's like, I'll kind of come up with it on the spot. But then you have someone who's, like, a really high level strength athlete, and it's much more detailed. But even then, you're in the session with them, and it's like we're doing doubles instead of triples. Joshua Gibson [00:19:18]: Let's push a little bit. Let's modify this. And a lot of it's because a plan that was laid out a day ago, a week ago, a month ago is a day old. A week old, a month old. And you've updated your understanding of the process since then. And it could be small and be very minute changes, but you've updated your prior probabilities of what's going to work since. So you make adjustments as a session unfolds, because basically you're constantly getting new information. So, to Max's point, I kind of reiterate that coaching is a process. Joshua Gibson [00:19:50]: It's a process of, like, capturing data, but it's a process of using new data to inform decision making. And then, um, kind of to your point, I remember Glenn, Glenn Pinley would always say, like, you should log your training, track your training, be methodical about changes. And I think, you know, his perspective was slightly different, but it was that same idea. It's like, if we do, if we change things slowly and, uh, on a smaller scale, we can better understand exactly what's having an effective. That kind of ignores the complexity of existence. But I think it makes sense, and it made sense to him as a coach having his own process. So I think, to Max's point, people struggle largely because it's just something new in general. It's like work you have to do. Joshua Gibson [00:20:38]: It's a behavior you have to decide to do and to make. And that's tough. And it's also tough because it's not just like, train, and then you'll get the results you want. It's like, there's a lot more to it than that. There's training in being thoughtful about your training, making good decisions. It's a much more complete and complex process than just showing up and lifting some weights overhead. And if it were that simple, I mean, it was that simple at one time, but there was just a gross amount of drugs being used. I'm thinking back to the fifties and sixties in the USA now. Joshua Gibson [00:21:15]: It's like, okay, how can we train effectively, train hard, manage fatigue, and do that to reach as close to the top of your abilities as we can, and it's got to be more strategic, more thoughtful on both ends, where it's an involved process. And I think that takes growth and learning from the athlete to be responsible for that and then to be able to execute on it. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:21:41]: Absolutely. And like, when you talked about that, you know, this, this sense of, if I just train and I do the, do the weights that's listed on my program, I should get this result. We, we tend to think very linearly, especially as in the beginner realm, that that's, that's how this works. If I do work, I get result. And especially with the, you know, the extra amounts or, like, the bigger amounts of online programs out there that are really static programs that you buy online, find online for free, whatever that looks like to be able to follow. To your point, Josh, where you talked about, I think I tried a thousand different programs my first year or whatever. It can get very easy to be stuck into that mindset and quit very early, especially if you don't have, if you haven't gone and found yourself a coach to help help you find that ability to make those adjustments or help you discover what that's like. Joshua Gibson [00:22:41]: Um, yeah, could I jump in real quick? Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:22:43]: Yeah, absolutely. Joshua Gibson [00:22:44]: No, that's a great, that's a great point. And I think. I think what's the easiest trap to fall into is you have a proximal, like a proximal effect. And then you use that as, like, an identifying feature. Right. It's like, I didn't get results, therefore I'm not going to get results anymore, or therefore I'm not going to improve, or therefore I'm weak, therefore I'm bad at this. It's like this proximal effect of the program didn't work. Yeah, I've written a lot of programs that fucking suck. Joshua Gibson [00:23:15]: Like, what do you want me to say? It's very true. Like, what do you want me to say? But I've also written programs that have gotten, like, massive prs and, you know, a slew of lifts, and it's taken a lot of time and a lot of work on both ends, but not at one point did I say, you've reached your limit. That's your potential. Like, you're not going to make a PR, but people will tell you that they'll run a program. I didn't make a result. I haven't pr ed in a year. I'm just not going to be able to squat more weight. That's my life now. Joshua Gibson [00:23:43]: Like, I'm confined to this destiny of being a weak sack of, you know, flesh that just roams the earth. It's like, that's not true. That's not true. And then they hit a PR four weeks later, and it's like, you, just, as a coach, you think, this is how I think there's a perfect program. How do I get to that as an athlete? I did the perfect program. I didn't get results. Those are two different, you know, perspectives, and I think a good coach just keeps people on the line or on the hook, so to speak, long enough so they, they can get the results they're working for. And it's realizing that, like, training isn't linear, but it's also additive. Joshua Gibson [00:24:23]: And that, like, if you can do training, that'll build muscle, that'll pay off eventually. I don't know when, but, you know, it's not like we didn't get results, therefore, we're not good or we're not going to be good, and that's it. That's the end of the road. We're done. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:24:36]: Yeah. You create this identity around your last result. Joshua Gibson [00:24:39]: Yeah, that's right. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:24:41]: Yeah. I talk about this with some of my lifters, uh, very often. Is that, well, it's your decision if you want to quit right now or not and make that failure your defining feature. Or you could show up again and give it another whack. Like, um, good friend of mine, we talk about very often that the. The point of the sport is failure, because that's how you know, that's how you know where your capacity is, or that's where you know where your abilities are. And so finding that failure point isn't necessarily a defining feature for us, but it is a. A way for us to figure out how to move forward. Joshua Gibson [00:25:12]: It's data. Right. You're. I mean, as coaches, you're agnostic to it. You're saying that didn't work? That did work. I really don't care why. I mean, I. I have no emotional attachment to the outcome. Joshua Gibson [00:25:23]: I want to know why so I can change the outcome. But, like, you miss a snatch. Like, there's a. There's a great quote from Glenn I actually pulled recently, but it's like, what's the worst thing that can happen if you miss a lift? You drop the barbell in, like, a nuanced caveat. Whatever. But, like, you drop the bar, you pick it up, you try again. That's. I mean, that's the worst outcome. Joshua Gibson [00:25:44]: That's the typical outcome. Um, and it's just good information of, like, oh, but you tend to lift like this when it's too heavy, when it's heavier. You tend to do this when you're really, really fatigued. This is how it expresses itself. So we can use those, like, edges of ability to then help the coaching process. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:26:03]: Absolutely. Max, any thoughts on. Max Aita [00:26:07]: Yeah, I was going to say I disagree with everything Josh said, mostly because Josh said it. No, I would agree 100%. I think it's one of those things that, when you really think about it, it's like in any of these sports, we have certain outcomes, we have desired outcomes. We also have some inputs to that. So we don't necessarily need to watch, we don't need to care about, we don't need to be emotional about the mechanisms and what's happening between input and output. We need to have predictability in that. Hey, when I increase training volume, this lifter builds, you know, gets bigger, or when I increase intensity, this guy gets stronger. And then you have all these. Max Aita [00:27:08]: These kind of objectives you're trying to satisfy. Some of them are, you know, are duality in that they have. There's like, you know, one objective is lifting the most weight possible, and the other side of that coin is not getting hurt. And so you're always just making trade offs in decision making with training. The essence of it just comes down to, how am I best organizing my decision making? And the trade offs I choose to make to satisfy the goal, which is the same for every athlete of, of the person I'm working with, which is lifting more weight. And so you go through and you develop your whole system and methodology just around these trade offs. A great example of this, or the two examples would be like the Russians or the Bulgarians or the, let's say the Americans of the nineties versus the Bulgarians of the nineties. Everyone's presented with the same things in front of them. Max Aita [00:28:12]: Choices, right? Barbells, exercises, sets and reps and all these things. And everybody makes choices that are trade offs one side for the other to try to achieve the biggest result they can. Some of those systems go to extremes, giving eleven year old kids steroids. And some of those systems, don't they compete clean or something? But largely that's all training is as coaches. We're just trying to figure out what the trade offs are first and that's like the most fundamental level. What are the trade offs? Go heavy. More. Go heavy really often. Max Aita [00:28:52]: Okay, well, the risk of getting hurt goes up or fatigue is going to get higher and you might not perform as well. And yeah, it's like just understanding that is the first level. But then after that it's like your quote unquote coaching system and style is just emergent from the trade offs. You make. You just choose different things and like, oh, Josh's style of training and coaching is different than mine. We all have the same choices to make. He just makes, you know, he kind of weights certain things more aggressive or, you know, more aggressively for his own preference. So I, I think that's kind of this like this real fundamental layer of all this that, you know, coaches, new coaches, a lot of coaches just don't think in that they don't see it as, that they see it as like it's a wholly unique and different thing. Max Aita [00:29:39]: Because I think it's different. Right? I do, I do yo yo snatches and this guy does pump snatches. He's a fucking idiot. He has no idea. Those pump snatches, they're just going to, they're going to ruin his QL. And my yo yo snatches, what they do, my yo yo snatches, what they do is they teach the lifter how to be a better person. You know, it's like you're just saying things that you have convinced yourself of your mind that those are true. The reality is that we don't even. Max Aita [00:30:09]: Maybe there's no research on either one of these things. We have no idea what either one of them does, or is. We're just making assumptions. And so you see it as like, this equals that. It's the most common thing. Right. The most common thing in the world is if my squat goes up, my lifts go up. And that's not an untrue statement at face value, but it's like, it's just one of those. Max Aita [00:30:33]: Like, one plus one equals three. See, it's like, that's just. It's just that simple. Guys. Like. And I've just. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:30:38]: See, I put the numbers. Max Aita [00:30:39]: Yeah, the recipe is there. It makes sense, right? It should work. So, yeah, it's a game of trade offs, and it's a game of understanding that you have. You're balancing a lot of decisions with the desired outcome. And there's other things that, you know, potentially, you just, in doing them, have negative impacts on that outcome. So you're always trying to. The idea of optimization is just trying to make a lot of really good decisions in those trade offs such that you end up with a better result than if you'd have made a lot of bad decisions. Yeah. Joshua Gibson [00:31:16]: And I think. Oh, I was just going to say, I recently recorded a podcast on my podcast, the philosophical weightlifting podcast, which is kind of digging a little more into the philosophy of science. And there are two things to Max's point. There's a fallacy called the post hoc ergo propter hoc, which is, since event y followed event x, Y must have been caused by x. Right? So it's a fallacy that's just illogical. And then a quote on that podcast I recorded was, we were talking a bit about free will, as one does, and he was saying that, like, free will is really determined by the affordances that you have. So, like, the decisions you make are made only in light of the decisions you can make. And as a coach, that's really what you're doing. Joshua Gibson [00:32:02]: It's like, what information do I have available? I mean, it's everything. It's athletes, it's equipment, it's location, it's everything. And you're saying, what decisions can I make that constructs my coaching system? I think the best coaches are generally going to have the access to most of the information, right? Most of the information, most of the affordances. That way you can start to decide and say, like, I think this makes sense in the context of a complex environment, which is this athlete in their career, and you have some waiting on each thing. As Max said, we have different program styles. They're converging a bit because, you know that just makes sense to me, but it's like you wait different things. So if you think putting on muscle is important, you're going to do higher volumes more often. If you think more bodybuilding work is important, you're going to put that in at the expense of something else, at the expense of training time. Joshua Gibson [00:32:57]: If you think technique is more important, you might put in more technical variations and, you know, and not do quite as many classic lifts. Um, so it's realizing, like, we all have our rationales, they're all developed on the back of all of the theory, all of the practice, and the integration of all that. So, and then the program's the expression and even that. I told Max, um, I don't remember when we were talking about this, but in reality, the best coaches can execute even if they have different amounts of information or access to different information. It's like your ability to execute on it. And, uh, Ryan Dorris, he was on the podcast, too. He's like a philosophical guy, and, um, he was talking about bodybuilding, and he's like, I know all this bodybuilding theory, and I, I still don't train like, I know I should train based on what I know. Why is that? And it's like, for some reason, there's just a disconnect between the theory, what you know, and your ability to apply it to practice. Joshua Gibson [00:33:55]: And I think as long as you're, you're moving toward better, I mean, you're doing the best you can. I, you never quite get to where it's like, this is a perfect, perfectly written, based on everything program, but it's like, oh, I'm tapering and peaking better, I'm managing volume better, I'm adhering to these basic principles better. Um, so it's, it's easy to be a bad coach, and it's really, really hard to be a good coach. Um, but I think, like, knowing more, trying harder, and just repeatedly, you know, doing that over and over and over, will get you closer there. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:34:32]: Yeah, it's really cool. Uh, the, the one thing that both of you like this, uh, gave me the idea or reminded me of is this concept that I've been considering often lately is we, as humans, lifters, coaches, all of the above. Any other permutation in there is that we have this desire to go towards this optimization, especially now in modern lifestyles. And I look back at some early programs recently that I wrote and looking at, well, how can I optimize to get as many qualities at the same time? I was like, you make that mistake where you're trying to have everything, and the reality is exactly what you guys are talking about. There's these trade offs that you have to make to be able to get the specific qualities that you're looking for or get the intended result. It's like, well, we want to be able to have them look like a bodybuilder and snatch a world record and also have a six minute mile or a four minute mile. The reality is that we're trying to confuse too many things and we're trying to create this optimal human that doesn't exist or this optimal idea, this, this idealistic version of what we think we need versus what's actually reality. Joshua Gibson [00:35:44]: And James Hoffman calls that the blender effect, which is when you're trying to train for everything all at once. You take all the ingredients you have, you throw it into a blender, and then you taste it, and you're like, well, but I had caviar and I had, you know, I don't know what else people like Nutella, like those million. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:36:04]: Million dollar burgers where they, like, wrap it in gold fully and you're like, does it taste like, does it tell it tastes great? Like, not really. It just kind of tastes like a burger, I guess, with a bunch of stuff added to it and. Yeah, whereas, you know, I look back at, you know, my time in software and whatnot and working with people in that regard where they want to have, you know, the priority is this and this and this and this and this. It was like that idea of, well, the priority is all these things. It's really, the priority is nothing because we're so scattered and we're so distracted from where things are. Joshua Gibson [00:36:40]: Yeah, well, I think that takes, that takes being able to have athletes for a long enough period of time to say, I don't have to, like, hit the panic button and do everything all at once. It's like, oh, you're just coming back from a layoff. Let's do some light training. Let's just do high volumes. Let's do like, you know, really technically focused variations. And, yeah, you're not going to be able to go heavy for a while. And, yeah, you're not going to be able to do x, y and z for a while. It's like, we don't need to do it right now. Joshua Gibson [00:37:05]: I don't want you to. I don't. I don't. And, like, I don't know how strongly backed all of the, like, training residual stuff is, where it's like, max strength holds on for this long. You know, muscle size holds on for this long, but, like, if you can at least conceptualize it like that, you can think, we don't need to be as powerful as possible year round. We need to be that at a certain time point. We need to be peaked with that quality at a certain time point. So we can spend some time on the back end doing technique work capacity, hypertrophy, strength, rate of force stuff, and you can see that logical sequence, and it actually makes sense. Joshua Gibson [00:37:39]: Instead of saying like, oh, I'm going to write the perfect program that does everything, as you mentioned. And it's like, by doing everything, you can't allocate enough space and time to any one thing to make a meaningful difference. So, yeah, you're right, you're kind of doing nothing. So it's like, by subtraction you get an improved effect or a better effect. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:37:57]: Yeah, go ahead. Max Aita [00:37:59]: No, no, no. I was going to say to kind of go back to the original question of, like, what would you do differently, I think, and what Josh just said, which is like, you know, we'll have times of higher volume or lower volume, and maybe you're not going to be at the same place all the time. I think the two things I want to say is, one, I think that largely, people get to a place where they achieve some level of success, and then preservation of that success becomes their objective, which is to say, oh, I got to this numbers where I'm doing 110, 130, and if I back off on pushing, if I don't, if I don't snatch 105 every week, I'm not going to feel okay to do 112, right? And coaches get there, too, which is like, if I don't keep my athlete happy or if I don't do this. So you end up at this place where you're kind of largely just one. There's one note being played the entire training year, and you see this all the time. Athletes achieve a certain level, and then they just kind of stay there. And now at the highest level, that would be expected, right. If you're snatching 165 and Clintrick and 200 as a 73, like, I mean, you're the best in the world. Max Aita [00:39:20]: But, like, just maintaining that is enough to be a very, very good weightlifter with a long career, you know, winning. But, like, you know, on the way up, the disruption of ups and downs and modification of training and trying to push the boundary and moving up weight classes. Like, there has to be a. There not has to. It is obvious when I look for, you know, you look at the progression of a top level lifter. It is. Chaotic is the wrong word, but it is, it's. There's a lot of variations happen. Max Aita [00:39:57]: A lot of stuff going on. You know, athletes moving up a weight class, going up and down, getting way stronger, getting bigger, doing things that are moving them outside of that homeostasis to drive them forward. Right. And so that's kind of like, I think that's kind of a good, or an obvious thing. Like the barometer of like, how, how much is somebody just sort of trapped in this holding on to pattern of like, oh, man, I got to just keep them where they're at because if they go, if we do anything different, their numbers are going to go down. And if your numbers go down, that's the worst thing in the world. Now, granted, just doing a bunch of training that makes your numbers go down isn't the goal here. But, yeah, I think there's a lot to be said for people get to a certain point where they've achieved a certain level and they want it to be like, they want it to be a permanent thing. Max Aita [00:40:52]: And the reality is with performance and with sport, it's just not permanent. It's very transitive. It's transitory. It's like, it's very much, you have it for a minute and then it's gone. You know, you have some strength. You peak, you drive the results up and then they, they dissipate. Anytime you see something that doesn't follow the sort of natural laws of the universe, which is that, like, what goes up must come down. You know, I think that was Professor Bugs Bunny that said that. Max Aita [00:41:21]: But it's like, it's like, you know, you have to understand that. And when you become okay with that and you, when you become okay with that because you have confidence in your tools, you have no fear of that situation. You have no fear of like, oh, we're going to go up and down. We're going to get in shape, be out of shape. We're going to push for things because I know that if we follow these principles in training and do good training, we're going to come back up and we're going to be above those levels. When you don't have a good sense of your abilities as a coach or as an athlete and you don't feel you can go from a state of being in shape to out of shape to in shape or work on different qualities, you're going to be trapped in this place where you just try to hold on. And that's when everything gets stagnant. Because you're just, you're clutching those numbers, those lifetime intermediate numbers as hard as you can so that they don't go away because that perfect 111 snatch 121 clean and jerk. Max Aita [00:42:22]: Like, you can't let go of that. We'll never get to the big numbers, right? Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:42:27]: Mm hmm. Yeah. And it, like, becomes that again, that belief about self when we have those. In looking at this from the development as a coach, in being able to bring some of this forward, you know, in looking at what we have for, like, official coaches education in the weightlifting world, because we don't have the same systems that, you know, other countries have as far as coaches education goes, what are the ways that people can start to learn how to figure out how to apply some of these principles to their athletes? How, like, what is that process, what is that process missing now that could be improved? Joshua Gibson [00:43:10]: Yeah. I mean, I think from the outset, it's realizing it's, it's having. This might be a jocko, you know, quote, but it's like a white belt mentality. I don't know who said that, but it's kind of that idea of, like, I think there were points where I thought, I know as much coaching theory as, like, I need to know. And then he realized, like, well, what's the theory founded on? And then you're like, well, I need to understand science. And then you're like, well, what's the science founded on? It's like, I need to understand the philosophy of science. And then you realize, like, oh, there's a lot of layer. There's, there are a lot of layers to this, and it's not necessary to know all of it or know all of them or understand it at any, like, extreme level to be a good coach. Joshua Gibson [00:43:49]: But it's like that sense of having a good grasp on the complexity of it and then being able to make good decisions off of it. It's like, oh, well, this science says. It's like that. Science doesn't say anything. The research, the results suggest, the available data suggests based on a limited sample, so you can just weight that a little more, effectively alter practices you see sufficient. So I think it takes one, like, this immense curiosity from the people who are trying to know as much as possible and then, um, good communication skills on how to hand that down. You know, Max and I obviously have been in the weightlifting powerlifting, strength sport communication education space for what feels like a long time now. And I think for me, it's always, it's always been not dumbing down anything because I feel like to really sell social, whatever, social media. Joshua Gibson [00:44:45]: It should be simple and it should be like things people want to watch. I'm not saying you don't do that, but I'm saying catering explicitly to that is kind of problematic. And then also feeling like the people who are getting into the space, we don't want to overwhelm them with complex information. We don't want to make them have to work. So those two things paired, I think it just waters down the quality of the information and education that comes out. So for me, it's always been, what am I learning? That's what I'm telling whoever I'm talking to. And it's not simple, it's not straightforward, it's not elementary, it's not a 101 class. It can be mechanistic, it can be complex, it can be thought provoking. Joshua Gibson [00:45:27]: But the idea is that if you hear it enough, you're exposed to it enough, it elevates you, and then you're able to elevate more people off the back of that. Um, so I would say we're attempting to do that through, you know, the, the company coachlogic. Um, we, we specifically have a mentorship group where we have on experts in the field of strength, power and performance science. And then we talk about tapering. As you know, Hayden Pritchard has done almost all of the work on tapering and strength sports, specifically weightlifting and powerlifting and maximal strength. He literally talked about all of it. So it's like, what other access are you going to get to the people who are conducting the work? Chris Tabor talked about a situated, eccentric loading. It's like, oh, power and grace uses weight releasers. Joshua Gibson [00:46:13]: Let me ask one of their staff. It's like, you should probably ask the people who are studying it and understand at that level and then start to implement into practice and say, okay, let's use a process based approach to figure out if it works or not. Um, so I think it's, it's, it's one not watering anything down, providing great information, and then saying, how do we connect you with the people who are developing the information and creating it and then give you the skills to understand it? So that's, that's the approach I think should be taken and that we're, we are taking that currently doesn't exist as well outside of the scope of, like, here are the positions of the lift. Do it like this. Here's a basic, like, you know, you start with a medium amount of volume. You start with, you go to a high amount of volume. You deload. And then you test, you know, beyond that stuff. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:47:03]: Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's the. The certification processes of. Here's how to teach a lift. Now go do it and fly a little fishy. Good luck. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's been the most. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:47:19]: What's been the most as you guys have launched this mentorship process and bringing in the scientific advisors, people teaching what they've learned, what's been the most surprising thing that has come through in including all these people into this mentorship group? Joshua Gibson [00:47:37]: What do you think, Max? Max Aita [00:47:41]: That's a good question, I would say. I mean, for me, what's been, I'll say most surprising, but sort of like, the thing that would stand out most is just that there's one I hadn't spent nearly as much time connected to weightlifting research as I am now, especially Josh has kind of been basically my connection to that. But I had a meeting a couple of weeks back with Chris Tabor and Christoph Kipp, and I was asking questions that were like, hey, so, like, what kind of information do we have on, like, the, you know, the muscular actions that occur at each phase of the lift and what's going on? He's like, we don't have any of that. He's like, he's like, there's like, there's, like, five studies. There's, like, five studies maybe that would have something like that. But what you're asking, like, kind of doesn't really exist in any form that we have. And it kind of made me realize one with a mentorship group, like, we have lots of little pieces of information, little. Like, it's like we have a little tiny flashlight. Max Aita [00:48:57]: We can shine the dark and see a thing, and then we're trying to figure out what the thing we're looking at is, and it's become very much more apparent spending this much time around with, you know, more. Much more academic, you know, grounded people, that there's just a lot of. A lot of, like, the it depends answers, but also, like, just a lot of, like, we don't know. We're not sure. We have some evidence that supports this or there's a lot of evidence that supports this being the case. So we're clear on some things. We're clear enough that we can really develop training and coaching around it and other things we may not be wrong about, but we haven't really corroborated it yet. We haven't really found evidence to say that why it's happening or why it works. Max Aita [00:49:52]: So the mentorship group has given me just from that perspective, like a whole much better handle on, like, yeah, there's, there's really a lot of not definitive answers out there. It doesn't mean we're not right. I mean, we've produced everybody. You know, there's people that win competitions, so something is right, you know, like, we can't deny that. But it's like, definitely like, oh, well, what's, you know, what's, what does the research say about this? Well, there's just not a lot, you know, or there's nothing there. So it's like you have to sort of formulate your own thing and kind of go from there. And I think that's kind of the, for me, the most surprising thing. Or not surprising, but the most, like, you know, interesting part of it. Joshua Gibson [00:50:35]: Yeah, I would say that it's kind of to your point about the flashlight analogy or. Yeah, I would say that there's a book by Carl Sagan called the Demon haunted World, and it's science is a candle in the dark or something along those lines. And that's kind of the point. In all scientific disciplines, it's really a small light in a very, very dark room. And because it's a small light, you don't know how, you don't know the dimensions of the room. So you're kind of just like stumbling around and you find things, but you can't put them into context because you're missing, you're missing more information than you could ever understand. Because we're limited by our senses. Our senses only pick up certain sensory information. Joshua Gibson [00:51:23]: There's a whole conversation that extends off of this about like, the expansiveness of what exists. Um, science gives us a slight insight, and I think this is where our pragmatism comes in. Max and I, we're really performance driven. It's like, are you getting better or you're not? What's the outcome we're looking for? We know certain adaptations can contribute to performance. So changes in muscle size, changes in muscle diameter. Right. Um, that's likely going to increase force production. So its probably a good idea to build some muscle if you want to increase your performance potential. Joshua Gibson [00:51:56]: And its like, okay, well, what are the adaptations for maximal strength? You should probably drive those up. What do they look like in practice? Well, its an increase in a, you know, a high intensity or high load set. Okay, so we got a pr in that were probably stronger, and then its like, okay, whats the technical change, the coordination, adaptation? We use, you know, certain constraints to drive that, and then we sequence that into the full lifts. Oh, we snatched a pr. That program worked more than it didn't, you know, because we made. We made progress, and then it's using that again, that iterative process of getting closer to best. But all these studies, all this information, when you kind of unpack what science is, you realize there are tons of limitations. I mean, I read a. Joshua Gibson [00:52:42]: I read a paper, I think it was a review paper by the lead author was Roberts, Mike Roberts. But it was on sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. And it's like, here are studies that show that it could happen, and this is what it is. Here are studies that show that it didn't happen. Why is that the case? Why don't they all show the same thing? And it's like, oh, because of the methods, the measurements, the subjects. Like, there's so many limitations and so many constraints and so many concessions that it's like, let's get closer to better or best. And to Max's point, people are still making progress and still winning championships and competition. So we're not completely wrong. Joshua Gibson [00:53:24]: So we have to define, you know, coaching expertise differently than if we were just basically on purely, you know, an understanding. And Cote and Gilbert have, they did a paper on coaching effectiveness and expertise, and they have, athlete outcomes is one of those criteria. It's like, how are your athletes performing so you can have all the knowledge in the world and then the application of that, what does it do? And I think what we're trying to do is basically merge those two to where people can get results. People can know how to get results, but can we merge them and get better results? And we're just, hey, we're saying, let's triangulate all the information we have and bring that in. I mean, I'm not against, if you give me a paper, you know, some pain science thing that's on rehab, and it talks about, like, load management and load tolerance and training tolerance. And it's like, we should probably have an intro week or a ramping period into higher volumes. We probably shouldn't just be thrown into it. That makes sense to me. Joshua Gibson [00:54:24]: And then if you can take information from, like, skill acquisition and apply it and from whatever biomechanical space and apply it, and you start to piece together what looks like, you know, performance science, and that's basically what's been done, and that's what we're trying to proliferate and educate people on. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:54:41]: I really like that in preparing for this and thinking about the questions I wanted to ask and some of the avenues I wanted to go down. That was very much one of the things that was coming forward for me is exactly what you said of being able to take that pragmatic approach and still be able to look at what is it that we currently understand, knowing that that may change over time, our results are still being driven forward, and our ideas or our understanding of why that worked may change. And that's what's really cool about the scientific process. And looking at that from Max, you've got your years of experience and applied sides of this. And, Josh, your side of the academic side of being able to put those two things together in a way that is still coaching athletes and still driving them forward is really neat and really, really cool. Joshua Gibson [00:55:30]: Well, I think we. I think. I think Max and I got. I don't know. We have, like, different backgrounds, but we've kind of converged to where it's, like, highly, you know, analytic. I don't want to say data driven, but it's like. It's. It's informed. Joshua Gibson [00:55:45]: It's very informed. It's as informed as possible. It's like that curiosity piece is almost as important as anything else. It's like, how do we. How do we get people better results? How do we get people stronger, performing better? Like. Like, the entire process, like, enjoying training, doing well, looking good, all of it. And then it's, you know, and then it's coming from the experiential side of having done it and having worked with coaches, and it's not resting on the laurels of. Yeah, but if you do, it's kind of a common, you know, joke now, but it's like, if you do a Texas method, you'll get results. Joshua Gibson [00:56:20]: It's like, maybe you will. Maybe fucking hate training after you do it because it's awful. And, like, I've done, you know, that whole thing and missed a fifth rep and a pr set of five more times than I can count, and I hated it. That's not fun. Um, at the same weight every time. Uh, so I think what we do is you like experience, theory, curiosity, all these things. You put it into a cauldron, you bubble it up, and then you get coach logic, you get kind of the products that come out of it, and you get our coaching. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:56:52]: That's really cool. Max Aita [00:56:53]: Yeah. I think that, just to reiterate, one point Josh made is curiosity is, like, probably one of the most fundamental cornerstones of being good at anything you do. Because inherently, unless it's something like, something that comes so naturally to you or something that requires no skill, right. You're going to have to try to get better. So as a coach, I can't imagine being a coach and not having a sense of curiosity, how can I get better? How can I do this? How can I do that? And it doesn't necessarily mean that your curiosity is always reading research papers, but if you just believe you figured it out in anything, whatever it is, software development. Right, like you've got to keep pushing yourself outside the box, outside your comfort zone, trying to learn, trying to figure things out more. Like that's just so fundamental to being any kind of successful coach. Joshua Gibson [00:57:58]: Well, if you think about this in the context in which it occurs, which is a pool of coaches, and as that number increases, what you're going to see is that more people are committed to the process and learning more and understanding more, which is what we're seeing. Like, we have people in the mentors, I have a lot of friends in coaching who are like sharp. They're sharp, they want to know more, they're curious, they have like this intense thirst for knowledge, information and applying it and they're, they're crushing it and it's, you realize that like there's a, there's a process of evolution by natural selection and it's like the people who are most fit are going to thrive and the people who aren't, I mean, they're just not going to do well. I mean, and they might, you know, work with a few people and have it as a side hustle, but it's like as the space increases in size, you just have to be better at what you do is you're more well rounded. I mean the people who are in, you know, more popular spaces or bigger spaces, like in medicine, it's like those people have the most freakish cv's and backgrounds and like time just like logging hours in a hospital or wherever and it's like, oh, you have to compete with that because that's the standard now. It's just in coaching, the standards always been floor level. It's like, yeah, do you have a pulse? Well, you're not going to get up off the ground, but maybe you can like, you know, uh, send me a voice note later of like my workout. Um, so I think it's just elevating from that point to, you know, kind of where other professional sports are. Joshua Gibson [00:59:26]: Where we've talked to Aaron Kunanen who works for the Reds, he's the director of applied sports science. They have force plates and pitching mounds. You know, they're looking at every single thing you can look at to say that was a great pitch, it was a home run, it wasn't the pitcher's fault therefore. And they're connecting, you know, they have more data, they're, they're trying to make more sense of it and they're, they're utilizing it differently and I think that's where weightlifting should go if it wants to like become a professional sport, a legitimate sport, but also that's like natural evolution of a sport is to not just kind of be satisfied with like good enough. Jeremy Gruensteiner [01:00:01]: Yeah, wanted to push that next level. A mentor of mine reminds me constantly of ill take curiosity and discipline over inspiration and I forget what the other thing he says. Inspiration and motivation any day. Joshua Gibson [01:00:17]: Yeah, thats great. Jeremy Gruensteiner [01:00:18]: And Im reminded also of something I heard on another podcast in this idea of curiosity and driving yourselves forward, especially as us coaches and being, being curious in that regard is, is to stop thinking like Newton and start thinking more like Darwin. Start thinking about how things became, the way that they became versus what they are, especially for like new coaches. I found myself in that of like, tell me what the answer is so I can learn the answer and I compare it back to my athletes or whatever it is. Tell me how I'm supposed to program instead of like diving into that. How am I supposed to program? How am I supposed to make those decisions? How am I supposed to cultivate what that looks like as a coach. Joshua Gibson [01:01:00]: Yeah, the thing about that is that's hard. That's really hard because the way I've learned and the way Max has learned, I someone's like, I was, you know, showing people how to count cards at a local meet recently and they're like, oh, thanks. Like, I never thought of that. And I'm like, yeah, you know, the first time I had to count, Glenn Pinley was like almost blind and post stroke and I was at the Arnold and he's like, hey, can you come in the back with me? It was like an a session and he just kind of sat in the corner and he was like, here's how you count. And then he just sat there and he was like dead quiet. And I was like, I guess this is like my life now. And I learned, like, I counted and I think I could have made a better decision, but the guy crushed it. And after that, it's like counting it. Joshua Gibson [01:01:43]: A fucking meat is the easiest thing in the world. Like, I don't know why people get super stressed about it. Like, yeah, if you have ten athletes on the same platform, that's hard. But like counting for one person? Are you kidding me? That's the bar. Like, that's real. Max Aita [01:01:56]: The story would have been so much better if they all bombed out. Joshua Gibson [01:02:01]: But that's the thing with this program, is sometimes you get frustrated because it's like there's no stock ready made way of doing anything. It's more so like, hey, here's some force plates, go collect some data. And it's like, what do you mean? It's like, yeah, go figure it out. And thats the process. And thats kind of where you get thrown in with all of this stuff. And I think that doesnt feel great. People want to pay $150 for the solution, but its like you pay $150 for the opportunity to find a solution, not for the solution. And that sucks. Joshua Gibson [01:02:35]: I dont like it either sometimes, but its far more valuable that way than it would be to pay $150 for a pre written program that gets you success. Because then what do you do? You just give that to your athletes and you done. You're done. You retire feet up, you're in Barbados with a, you know, a mai tai on the beach. Like, no, you know, it's a process. And you figure out the fucking process. Max Aita [01:02:56]: Well, you don't want that. Joshua Gibson [01:02:57]: Oh, I mean, that's later, Max. Max Aita [01:03:01]: I was excited. I was like, yeah, that sounds good. No, we don't want. Okay, sign me up. Jeremy Gruensteiner [01:03:06]: Oh, whoops. Yeah. And as you guys. So I'm curious, how did, how did this collaboration of creating this, how did that start? How did that happen? Max Aita [01:03:19]: Josh is. Josh is

Max Aita: Unpacking a Methodical Approach to Coaching

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:00:02]: Welcome, everybody, to another episode of the Weird and strong podcast. I'm your host, Jeremy Gruensteiner. With me today, I've got Max Ada. Max, how you doing today, man? Max Aita [00:00:10]: I'm doing pretty well. Yeah. I'm a little early in the morning, but just getting some work done and having a good time. Yeah. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:00:17]: Sunshiny, California in an early morning. Sounds great. Sounds great. Overall, as we do with everybody on the show, I've got a weird question for you. Are you ready? Max Aita [00:00:28]: Cool. I'm ready. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:00:30]: Okay. Describe the most awkward photo you've ever taken. Max Aita [00:00:36]: Oh, well, okay. Probably not the most awkward, but one of the greatest photos of me ever taken. That would fall into awkward. But it's one of those photos where it's like, when you see it, it totally is. It's hilarious. But there's a meet. We did a power lifting meet. I did. Max Aita [00:00:59]: I didn't compete, but I had a couple lifters compete, and it was at Mark Bell's gym. This is like, God, it's probably, like 13 years ago, and my lifter won the cash prize, right? And so we took a photo of it, like, us kind of hanging out and standing there just kind of joking around, holding the money or something. And, like, a couple days later or whatever, I'm looking at the photo and I'm wearing these pants, these shorts that just happened to, like, drape in in just the right way that, like, my crotch, like, right from my crotch down to where the pocket must have been something in my pocket. It's like this perfectly shaped, like, you know, member that looks like it's, like, it's, like, over a foot long. It's, like, hilarious. Like, it's this, like, you know, ridiculous. Like, and you look at it and it's like, I actually have the photo on my phone. I always joke around my wife, and I always, like, pull it up. Max Aita [00:02:05]: But, yeah, it's like this hilarious looking. Like, when you see it, you're like, oh, my God. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:02:09]: What the hell? Max Aita [00:02:11]: That's got to be the most weird photo of me, for sure. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:02:13]: And you still keep it around? Max Aita [00:02:17]: Oh, yeah, no, I pull it out regularly. I show people on the street, on the subway. I was, you know, hey. Hey, Jason, you might think. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:02:23]: What do you think? Max Aita [00:02:23]: Yeah, you might think I'm a loser, but look at this. So, yeah, that's gotta be it, for sure. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:02:30]: That's. That's a great kickoff to the weird and strong podcast having. I mean, it's not the first time we've gone down that route with, especially with other coaches, because let's be honest. We're all basically 13. Um, yeah. Especially. Especially when it comes to the humor aspect of it. Max Aita [00:02:48]: Oh, sure. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:02:49]: You know, we. We talked a little bit off air of, you know, you growing up in, in Montana, and, like, people who are listening to this are familiar with, uh, the weightlifting community and, uh, familiar with you, you know, have that. That, uh, background of your work with Abhijeev, your work that you've done over. Gosh, what is it? Almost three decades of coaching in the sports, of weightlifting and powerlifting. Max Aita [00:03:11]: Oh, wow. Yeah. Over 20 years, for sure. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:03:14]: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so with that, and, you know, you're. You're affiliated with many known brands and your own gym and your own companies. What's one thing that's unconventional about you that people may not know about? Max Aita [00:03:31]: I don't know if. I don't know if there's anything unconventional. That's hard to. It's hard to answer. I think the. The. Probably the one thing. And it's like, also, I don't know what people. Max Aita [00:03:44]: I don't know what people don't know. Yeah. So it's hard to answer that. But I would say, like, you know, probably the thing that I get, the thing that I probably got most a few years back was, like, this, the bulgarian thing that, like, that's, like, the thing I do, and that's the, like, you know, the essence of everything that's driven my. My coaching or whatever. And I would say it's not, you know, it's certainly not the case. Like, I don't. I've never been, like, this huge proponent of it or done this bulgarian style training with lots of people, but I've always been kind of, like, I would say, known for that or for the squatting stuff. Max Aita [00:04:23]: But I would say the thing that's unconventional is that I feel like my approach to trying to solve these problems is, is a bit different where I see, you know, the problem of trying to get somebody better at lifting or try to improve their performance or try to, you know, trying to produce a champion. Like, is, you know, the approach should be really methodical, and the approach should have some kind of, you know, basically objectivity to it that I think doesn't exist a ton in weightlifting now. I think people, like, like to latch on to. They like to latch on to, like, you know, what's the simplest answer for this? Like, what's the quick factoid? If you look at, like, the general nature of the way people do things now, weightlifting, even at the highest level, the, you know, at the world, you see a lot of just, like, I guess they call it, like, sort of shooting from the hip. Like the, like, methodical approach doesn't. Is not pervasive in my mind. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:05:34]: Okay. Max Aita [00:05:34]: Like, program writing, programming, doing programming, do all that stuff is not pervasive. So I'd say that's sort of my. Where I would say, you know, I fall. And I'm sure a lot of people are like that, too. But that would be the thing is that, you know, it's a little more weird in that way that, like, I would say being more methodical is the sort of element of what I do now. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:05:53]: Sure. And then in that, you know, for the listeners, uh, do you have an example of that, that of what that looks like from being much more methodical versus perhaps some of the things that you've witnessed at maybe a world's level that do have that shooting from the hip feel sense? Max Aita [00:06:09]: I mean. Yeah. So I'd say a good example is, like, a lot of coaches, a lot of people get into this and they, they start with, like, very beginner coaches start with the most obvious stuff they can touch, which is exercises. So you get in the gym and your whole perception, a lot of coaches that have coached for a long time will understand this sort of evolution. But day one, you know, you're a coach. You're just telling people to like, you're. You're throwing cues out and you're like, hey, do this, do that. Like, stay on your. Max Aita [00:06:43]: Stay on your heels or, you know, push with your arms or whatever, and you sort of feel like queuing is like the key to everything. I just find the right cue or I, you know, what's the cue for this? Like, whatever. Then you kind of move to exercises like, oh, I discovered a new movement and we're going to do this exercise. And that's the thing that fixes everything. And then, you know, you kind of graduate to like, oh, you know, it's all about this kind, kind of program, the sets and reps and these things, and that becomes this sort of evolution of like, you know, as you progress as a coach, you sort of latch onto these things whereas, you know, methodical approach would be, you know, taking a first principles approach to the way you do things. So looking at, like, what are the principles that govern the training process? What are the principles that govern coaching, that govern any of these elements and starting from there and building a system that emerges out of those principles. So an example would be like coaching and queuing some of the principles behind that would be like, make sure that your queuing is informative in a way that it actually improves the athletes performance. Or in training programming, make sure that you prioritize the principles of training in order that they're of their importance. Max Aita [00:08:13]: So specificity, overload, fatigue management, so you don't make decisions based on the little thing you found. So a cue sounds great, and it works for a minute. And so you will see coaches build systems around that. Oh, this is the cue that works, or this is how it should feel. And they build it around that. They build their system around that. Like. Like, a good example is like, the leg strength thing, the squat strength thing. Max Aita [00:08:41]: Oh, well, I squatted a lot and my. My lifts went up. So therefore, the program should be built around making your squat bigger. But that violates some principles of training in that, like, it's not necessarily maximizing specificity. Right. So I say all this kind of roundabout in that, like, the methodological approach is one in which you take the principles of training and you build a system that emerges from those principles versus what most people do, or I see a lot is people formulate systems or formulate programs based around sort of, like, you know, gut feelings or intuition that are not necessarily corroborated by principles or evidence or anything. It's just kind of a throw it in the air and let's do it right. And you see this a lot. Max Aita [00:09:34]: You see this at worlds. You see it all the time. Like, a good example would be like, Carlos Nassar before the. Before the Europeans this year, who watched him warm up in a training hall. And, like, a day or two out, he's doing like a 160 hang snatch triple. And he missed one of the reps. And, like, he won. He did great. Max Aita [00:09:59]: He lifted super huge. Like, I would have a hard time sitting there and being like, why did you do that? Like, what was the reason for doing that? And the reason might be it felt good. It felt like I should do it. But it's not really grounded in any kind of, like, principled approach. It's just kind of like, he did it that way. You see the Chinese as well. You know, Chinese will go in and do these super heavy poles, like, a few days before the meet or super heavy squads. Yeah. Max Aita [00:10:27]: And it's not to say it doesn't work. I'm not saying that, like, they don't know what they're doing. I'm just saying they could do stuff that's pointless. Like, they're not immune to that. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:10:36]: Yeah. Max Aita [00:10:37]: And you look at you like, well, one, like, you're not getting any stronger from doing a few singles. And the poll two days before we know that's not happening. Like, that's. That's obvious. Two. Like, does this really make you any better two days later? Is there some potentiating effect? We don't know. Like, is, like, is there really anything to this, or is it just, like, tradition or someone did it or you kind of just do it because you're all so strong that, like, you can get away with it? And so it's like, those kind of things can exist at that level, but they can also exist at many other levels along the way. Lower level coaches, people that are more, you know, whatever, you know, it's just like taking an approach that's not grounded in, like, what are the first principles that we need to evaluate before we do things or that we assess things through versus saying, hey, you know, my coach used to do this with me, and that's why I do them, you know? And, yeah, so, I mean, I would say that's probably the most. Max Aita [00:11:36]: The most obvious explanation of it is that, like, you take some kind of a first principles approach to the way you do things. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:11:41]: And one of the things that came up as you were talking about that is in looking at that sense of when people are looking for that next thing to glom onto, whether they're a coach or an athlete, it's like they're looking for a new type of hammer to hit the same kind of a nail over and over again. But it's like, okay, well, this hammer is just slightly more shiny, or, hey, this one's got different kind of grip, but ultimately it's still a hammer. Um, and the reality is, is that it's actually a screw that you need to turn versus a. Yeah, a nail. Max Aita [00:12:14]: Totally. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:12:15]: Um, and being able to look at that from a. From a perspective. So, in looking at, like, how you developed as a coach, like, what was that path, like for you to learn how to find, you know, to avoid some of that maybe shiny object syndrome as a. As an early coach, um, what was that path, like for you to come to this much more principled approach or meth methodical approach to being a coach? Max Aita [00:12:40]: I mean, I would say it all came from necessity. Like, when I first started coaching, I had a few athletes, and, like, back then, you could kind of do anything and, you know, and, like, with beginners, you can do anything and have success, but back then, there was just so many people just wanting to try crossfitters and everybody. So you would run through a lot of people and learn stuff. As you start doing it professionally or you start doing it on the scale that people are entrusting their future to you, you kind of quickly realize, oh, I have to do a better job. I have to learn more about how to do this well. And so that just kind of, for me, fueled a lot of desire to try to learn and understand what's a better way to do it. What's the, the what? What should I do? What should I not do? How do I be smart about this? And, you know, you tune your coaching style and your, your training to the athletes abilities and goals, right. If somebody shows up to your gym and they work a nine to five and they love weightlifting and they just want to train, but they don't really care about competing or whatever, like, you know, you're not going to necessarily try to maximize everything because you know how hard it is to do with that and recover. Max Aita [00:13:53]: You don't want to burn them out. After a year, someone comes to you and they're like, hey, I've got three years left in the quad. I want to try to qualify for the Olympics. I'm this, this and this capable, and they look like they could do it. Then it's a different approach. Right. You're going to ramp things up, put more priority on that, put more effort into it. But as a coach, when you're learning, you know, it's like, you can't apply that same logic to the brand new person and think that you're gonna do well. Max Aita [00:14:20]: You can't expect that someone who's paying you to train in your gym and get coached by you is gonna be happy maxing out every day or going crazy or pushing super hard, doing tons and tons of volume. Even though it may technically be the right choice, it's, you know, it's just not, it's not the, it's not sustainable. Right. So, you know, largely, experience is the first thing that drives that. Like, you just have to learn, you know, what, what works. And then as you start stripping away the programming or changing things from what I did as an athlete, you know, you started to, I started to realize, like, okay, there's a lot more to, you know, there's a lot more to this that needs to sort of involve discipline and learning and practice versus just kind of, hey, here's the programs, let's all do it. And treat it as like a, you know, a sort of, like, fun time where you're just, everyone's going crazy in the gym, you know, and then also, like, just getting around other people. I wish that I early on, had spent way more time with mentors. Max Aita [00:15:29]: That was a huge problem, a huge short sightedness on my part in that I had a coach and he was a mentor to me. I trained with Abhijeev, I trained with Shaco, I trained with. I was in the gym when Penley was there. I went and worked for juggernaut for a long time. Those guys were all instrumental in learning and being mentors, but I wish I had done more of it and had, I wish I had a mentorship kind of group that was five or six coaches that I knew that I could talk to a lot and learn a lot about and I didn't have that. And I think that kind of, you know, stifled a little bit of progress because a lot of it was something I had to learn on my own. And so I think that, you know, it's information wasn't as available as it is now. So I think that would have been way better for me. Max Aita [00:16:18]: But ultimately it was just that it's, you know, getting around coaches being mentored by people learning and then having to apply it and learning really quickly, like, oh, shit, that program just doesn't work and these people are quitting or these people are getting hurt. You got to find something that works better. And so, yeah, it's like, very quickly you start evolving your training and looking into that. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:16:42]: So you mentioned wishing that you had found a mentorship or, like, more camaraderie with more coaches earlier on. Was there? I've noticed that for myself and I've noticed that with other coaches who are just getting started or who are younger or, um, early on in that path. What do you, like? Do you have any ideas of where that resistance of wanting to even pursue that comes from? Or is there to speak from your experience of why you didn't seek that out earlier? Max Aita [00:17:15]: Uh, I mean, honestly, it was just, it didn't, it didn't exist. I mean, I don't even, I don't even think. I wouldn't even say it exists today in the sense that there's like a. There's no national dialogue. Like, there's no, like, I will say years ago there was a place called go heavy. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:17:32]: This boy, I recall the name, yeah. Max Aita [00:17:36]: Go heavy was like, yeah, this is like, we're talking like 25 years ago now, but, like, there was a sort of a national dialogue there because everybody was getting on there to communicate and it doesn't really happen anymore. And everyone's information is siloed and it's all, it's all information. Now, about training and coaching is, I would say, largely intended as marketing for products, right. As much as people disguise it otherwise or think it's not, it's purely to develop. Either you're putting stuff on the Internet to build a following to then sell something else, or you're putting something on there as a way to bring somebody's attention to your page to. To drive sales. You know, you look at, like, the most popular Instagram accounts with weightlifting, all the Instagram weightlifting people, and it's like, none of it is really, like, educational information. It's just factoids and tidbits. Max Aita [00:18:37]: Try this cue. Don't do this. A 62nd video on why you're a pussy. Because you do, you know, you don't use a hook grip or whatever it is, right? Like, or the. The red, the red x and the green check mark videos, the very black. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:18:52]: And white lack of nuance, especially as a coach. Max Aita [00:18:56]: And it's not really educational. It's informal, it's informative, but it isn't, like, driving further knowledge. It's just stating a fact or stating something. And so, like, there's. I just. There. There was no mentorship group. There was no, like, group of coaches that talked to each other. Max Aita [00:19:13]: Maybe there was and I was unaware of it and I wasn't cool enough to be in it. But, like, I feel like. I feel like that's something that I wish was more, you know, more just obvious that, like, oh, there's like, there's a group of coaches that kind of have, like, a big forum where there's a place where people can share information and it's. It's communicated to everybody and people can ask ideas and it's like, sort of a place for everyone to grow. Granted, it's a sport. Everyone's going to want to hide some of their stuff and kind of, you know, they believe that the way that they do different sets and reps is some magic that no one else does, but, yeah, so, I mean, like, that, if it had been there, I would have totally been on it. Yeah. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:19:55]: And it's interesting to me because, you know, I've been part of other coaching, like, groups, not necessarily officially as mentorship, but like that, hey, let's meet monthly and let's. Yeah, let's talk about what's going on. Allow somebody that space to be able to, like, lay it out when they need some support or be able to ask questions about what everybody else is doing. Max Aita [00:20:20]: Right. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:20:21]: In other areas. But I have. I haven't yet seen that necessarily come up organically in the weightlifting world, as much. Max Aita [00:20:29]: Yeah. And I. You know, it's like. I don't. It's probably because smaller world. It's smaller in. In that sense, but, you know, it's. It's largely, like. Max Aita [00:20:42]: It's largely a. It's a problem, I think, because you end up with, like, you just end up with so much varied information. Like, if you. If you were to sit down. This is one of the things that drives me crazy. If you were to sit down with Greg Everett, Dane Miller, Spencer Arnold, and Will Fleming and Travis Mash, Dave Spitz, and you ask them, what is the name? The different phases of a training cycle in weightlifting, you get fucking different answers across the board, and it's like they're all describing the same thing. They all know how to. They're all great coaches. Max Aita [00:21:26]: It's like Dane's gonna have some dumb terminology he invented. You know, Greg might have, you know, traditional terminology. Dave's got something he took out of bonder Chuck's books. Like. Like, Travis might have invented some words. It's like. It's just, like, you know, and I would probably be in there, too. Like, it's just, like, the reality is, like, there's no common glossary, and, like, this is, like, insane to me that, like, because a lot of it has become proprietary or you're trying to. Max Aita [00:21:54]: You write your book so you want to, like, put your own spin on it when the reality is, like. Like, we need to, like, get on the same page so everybody can understand what the hell they're. They're talking about, you know? You see with exercise names, too, you know, like, what's. What is a pump snatch? What's a yoyo snatch? Are they different? Are the same? You know, what are they? And then you have the other side of that. The other side of that spectrum, which is, like, you know, just naming things exactly as they are. Like the Russians did. Right. You know, it's a snatch, pull, plus hang snatch, pull below the knee, plus hang snatch, pull below the knee, plus hang snatch above. Max Aita [00:22:32]: Like, it's. Yeah, it's like, okay, well, that's just retarded, too. So. Yeah, there's just a lot of. There's a lot of this, like, disconnect between lots of things. There's no common glossary. There's very little, you know, there's very little sort of, like, communication in the sense that, like, everyone's like, hey, let's get on the same page with our terminology, because then we could all benefit from everyone else's knowledge. Absolutely. Max Aita [00:22:57]: Yeah. Why? Because, yeah, there's not a. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:23:00]: There's not an immediate benefit for everybody to necessarily band together to put that level of effort in. And also, you know, it removes the ability for somebody to try to brand a particular exercise even if it had existed beforehand. Max Aita [00:23:14]: Yeah. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:23:14]: You know, I've. Max Aita [00:23:15]: I've. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:23:15]: I've had this conversation back and forth with either coaching mentors of my own, fellow coaches that I've worked with, and even my own lifters, because they do get annoyed sometimes where they're like, do you have to be so literal with the name? I was like, yes, because I may not always be in the room to explain what I mean, and I would rather you understand exactly what I'm looking for versus, uh, trying to figure it out, even though there's a video attached to your program so you know what it's supposed to be, oftentimes you'll look at it and go, yeah, I know what that is, and just do it. And especially when we look at things like being able to get some sort of even longer term data over training effectiveness or try to find some way that we can actually utilize much more than just our coach's brain to understand what's going on, to look at larger data sets and whatnot, we don't have any sort of standardization that makes it really tough. Max Aita [00:24:09]: Totally. So that's kind of like my, that's been a frustration of mine forever. Is this, like, total, like, lack of cohesiveness between things? Right. Exactly what you described. Like, just naming it exactly what it is makes the most sense in that regard. But trying to just establish this idea of a common glossary where everybody understands what the terms are, everyone understands what something is. This has been a thing that has kind of emerged as a big question mark for me in the sense that, where do you go with this? Does it matter in the grand scheme of things, if all you care about is producing your own thing and selling your own products? I guess it not. But if you want to do something that's meaningful for a larger group of people, people like, you'd want to do something to define these things. Max Aita [00:25:12]: Right. To do something, to sort of bring everyone into the same umbrella. It's challenge, you know, that's. You're not going to change anybody, especially if they're making money selling what they're selling. Right. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:25:23]: Yeah. Putting whatever they're putting their name in front of every exercise or whatever. Yeah. Naming a complex after themselves or whatever that looks like, you know, and it was the. We look at periodization as a whole, like, that was what the Soviets did, was standardize things so that everybody had a central point to work from. And not having that maybe authoritarian specificity to force that to happen, it makes it a lot more difficult. Do you think that the decentralization for USA weightlifting has pushed us into more of these corners of nonspecificity? Or has that just always been there? Max Aita [00:26:09]: I think it's. I think it's been around forever. I think people have always kind of named things, different things or created different, you know, different proprietary systems. I think less so in. More so in the US, more so just in the western world, but I think probably even in Europe and whatnot, there was probably some little bit of that sort of individualization, making up names for exercises. I think the decentralization in the US has definitely augmented it. And it's obvious, right? It's like, good example. Like, you write a book and you're going to call things the things you think they should be called because it sounds cool to you or makes sense to you. Max Aita [00:26:55]: It's like there's no, there's no incentive not to. Like, what do you get from not doing that? So that decentralization just kind of, again, like, silos people, where it's like people build out, you know, everything basically around the ideas they have and then try to just create, like, a community around it. And, you know, it's like, it's like, it's almost like different countries, right? Like, oh, you're going to train with this guy. He does this, this and this, and, okay, quit him. Go trans is girl. And she does things totally different and has totally different names and everything. Even though fundamentally you're all doing snatch cleaning, jerk squats and pulls. Like, you know, there's a million different little nuances that make their thing better. Max Aita [00:27:37]: So. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:27:37]: Yeah, yeah, ultimately, yeah, that was, that's been a conversation I've had with others, other coaches, athletes and things. Is that, you know, ultimately it's like, well, what's on the menu today? Well, I bet there's a snatch variation, a clean and jerk variation. Like, it's like, there's. There's only so many things that we honestly can do when the sport is so specific. Max Aita [00:27:56]: Yeah. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:27:56]: You know, if it's something like a crossfit where you have so much variability, that's where things can get really in, like, necessary, more interesting. But, like, that's where things get to be a lot more. You. You play with way more variables than we do in weightlifting or powerlifting or any other real, like, strength sport like that. Max Aita [00:28:13]: Uh, huh? Yeah. And, and, you know, the other reality with all this, too, is that, you know what? What I think it does is it prevents the ability for prevents it becomes. It's not a, it's not a normal thing or it's a typical thing for people to compare programs, right? Like, like, honestly, I have not even seen a piece of software that exists by which you could take two or three waveing programs, plug them in and actually break them down and look at them and say, oh, here's, you know, here's how much volume, intensity, blah, blah, blah. All these things, they just, we don't even, we don't even do that. We just assume that a program is run, it's good or bad based on the results, and then you move on and you rewrite the next thing. There's no learning that takes place. I would be willing to bet that there are very few coaches out there, if any, that actually do true, like a b testing or refinement of their own process and programming from the perspective that they don't just take a program and run it again and again and customize it to a person. Like, let's say I write you your program and you do it, and then once done, I'm like, oh, you made a pr snatch. Max Aita [00:29:35]: Let's run that program again. Or you do it and you're like, you don't make any progress. I'm like, oh, that program's not right. We need to do something totally different now. Let's rewrite and start from scratch, rather than saying, hey, we did this program with you. Let's break it down and look, oh, you know what you did? Only 10% of your total volume was dedicated to snatch. That's probably why you didn't get any better than snatching. Let's rewrite the program and bump that number up or, you know, any number of different things like that. Max Aita [00:30:05]: I don't think that's happening very often. I don't think it happens a lot. I think coaches evolve a program towards something that's successful. And the, the most obvious thing is going to be cranking up the intensity and doing more singles and doing more classic lifts. And so it's like everything kind of ultimately just, like, deviates to that. Like, train harder, go heavier, be more specific, and, you know, you're going to kind of eke out better performances simply because people are, you know, are pushing harder and they're, you know, they're doing more of the things that we know are going to make them better. But there's no refinement there. It's just. Max Aita [00:30:46]: It's just, you know, hey, if the program's not working so well, just make it bigger and harder. Like, just do more of it. Yeah. Versus saying, like, yeah. Have we discovered, like, any kind of, like, more effective methods for teaching or for, you know, for improving different technical errors? Like, yeah, I mean, that's. That's sort of what I think is the reason why there's no need to have common glossary, because it doesn't matter. Every program might as well just be a one off thing that's getting run and then thrown out or running redone or, you know, I'm not saying nobody does this, but it's probably pretty rare, a lot of coaches sitting down and, like, thoughtfully reconstructing the same program and refining the process a lot over and over and over. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:31:32]: But, yeah, well, even looking, you know, you talked about, like, a software component to this or even, like, having a way to retrospectively look at a program outside of what it was, the. The specific result for a specific individual. Um, right. If you are running the same program across multiple individuals. Like, this was something that I. So, me coming from a software background, uh, before I got into weightlifting, um. Cause I did it later in life, uh, is, uh, coming at that from more systematic, like, learning, wanting to have a much more systematic approach and not wanting to be on this shoot from the hip look and feel. Uh, yes, there's some of that that comes through in the teaching aspects, in the. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:32:17]: In person coaching that I do. But as far as, like, the program goes, I was like, I should know, like, where we are in a particular phase and if our. If our focus is on building a better snatch. And, like, to your point, if only 10% of our given volume is snatch reps. Yeah. I don't have a way to actually count that for myself. How do I actually know? I may see the word snatch a lot in my program, but that doesn't necessarily equate to percentage of volume, percentage of reps, relative intensities, absolute, like, any of those measures that, you know, the programming nerds in the room want to know. Max Aita [00:32:53]: So that. That was a big eye opening thing for me. I had two experiences that I would say really crafted my thinking a lot. And these were after I was very strong, was I was already kind of done with powerlifting at the time. Well, the first. The first was I trained with Boris Shako, who was a powerlifting coach who basically co opted the Medvedevs weightlifting training methodology into powerlifting. And that methodology, I would say largely that methodology is built around a few fundamental things. It's built on a principle based, it's principle based system, but it's built around management of training stressors in a way that is, is kind of capitalizing on a lot of principles in a clever way. Max Aita [00:33:45]: But they look at things like, you know, Boris was big on the idea of like you have like this. You're basically like you're constructing your training in a way that you are trying to reach certain targets with say like average intensity and maintain those targets and maintain this consistent application of a training stimulus on an organism or a person and then manipulation of that. Once you're consistent, once that training stimulus is being applied, manipulating that, either increasing in intensity and magnitude or decreasing or, sorry, increasing in volume or just overall training load. When you do this, you can then achieve greater results. And so Medvedev system was kind of built on these ideas of this k value and this sort of like, where's the optimal range for how hard training should be or how heavy it should be? What are the ranges for volume based on different demographic data. And then you take that and you individualize it to a person. But largely your system is based on pretty basic ideas, right? You know, have a consistent average intensity. Slowly drive up the average intensity that the athletes using while maintaining a consistent load and you'll see adaptations. Max Aita [00:35:13]: And what was interesting to me is that's not that method. Nowhere within that method lies this idea that like Medvedev, you know, was like, oh, by the way, squat your face off and, and make your squat go up 50 kilo every, by the way, every six weeks or every, every cycle we got to do a squat program, you know, and like try to put 50 kilos on your squat. Or, you know, by the way, guys, we need to max a max out Friday every few weeks, right? It doesn't mean those things can't exist in that system. But the, the thing that was eye opening to me was like, oh, there's a methodology here that makes sense that is one very sustainable. You could apply this kind of training to people and not be in a place where you're, it's not like the bulgarian system where it's like sustainability and just surviving is one of the hardest parts. You know, it's like, it's a sustainable system and you can replicate it because you know exactly what you're trying to achieve. Yeah, we want to increase the average intensity by four kilos this month. And we know if we do that, we're going to have some positive results. Max Aita [00:36:21]: If we track all these KPI's, we track all this information. We can then make even better choices in the future. That was the first thing was learning from Shaco and seeing that system actually applied. It worked very well in powerlifting because there's so little technical component in powerlifting. You don't have to worry about any noise in the signal. It's just, just, if you do this, you're going to get stronger. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:36:47]: Yeah. Max Aita [00:36:47]: I was the strongest I ever was when I trained with, with Jekyll, when I was doing that, and it was just like, it was awesome. I love that kind of training. The second was, you know, when I, when I basically took that learning and applied it to weightlifters. And that was years later. Then I was coaching a girl, Alyssa Richie, who was, you know, we were going to translate the, the American Open. I think we had just come off of a world championship, and she had a pretty sort of mediocre performance. And, you know, I was rooming with Spencer Arnold in that, on that trip, and we talked a lot, and it was like he was kind of the first coach that I'd saw in way of thing that was really well organized with a lot of data. And this is before he had some, like, velocity tracking stuff he was doing. Max Aita [00:37:36]: But I remember thinking to myself, like, you know, I'm not taking this as seriously as I could from a data standpoint. Like, I need to really track stuff. You know, I looked at what he was doing. I was like, oh, he's like, doing quite a bit of this. Why am I not applying that? You know, this is my profession. Like, I should be. I shouldn't just be writing programs based on principles and sort of like, real broad stroke calculations. I should be, like, tracking everything to a table. Max Aita [00:38:05]: And when I started doing that, it was like, it's like the difference between dieting by feel and dieting with, like, an actual plan. Like, if you don't actually measure out your, you know, your chicken and your rice and your veggies and all this and, like, calculate it. Yeah, you're. You're probably not close to where you think you are. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:38:24]: Yeah. Max Aita [00:38:24]: You know, well, I think the data. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:38:26]: Is even, like, dietitians will get it wrong 50% of the time. So it's a coin flip, even for the people whose job it is to know at a glance what it's like. Max Aita [00:38:36]: Yeah, yeah. And so that was like, this eye opening moment for me was like, okay, when I actually sit down and do this one, the program works way better. Like, my athletes got way, way stronger. Everything improved dramatically. And it was like, like night and day. And it was kind of counterintuitive because I was like, we were training based on the way I wrote the program. I realized, man, we were training too hard, too heavy, too much. And it's not to say you don't train heavy. Max Aita [00:39:05]: That's not what the point was. Like, we were in this weird space where it was, like, too much volume allocated to these, like, 85% range, where it's like this, 80% to 90%, where it's like, it's really heavy and hard, but it's just, it's not well balanced. Like, you're not doing enough volume at the lighter intensities, and you're not reaching these high intensities often enough. So you're training heavily, but you're not really developing the right qualities. Right. So it wasn't. It wasn't, you know, well thought out, but also it allowed me to capitalize on getting a lot more out of my athletes because I knew exactly what we were doing. And, you know, Alyssa's clean and jerk went from, like, 100 kilos, 102, to, like, 107. Max Aita [00:39:54]: And her front squat increased one kilo during that time. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:39:59]: And so. And that wasn't the thing that needed to increase anyways. Max Aita [00:40:02]: And that, to me, was the thing where it was like, oh, like one you don't necessarily like. Squatting is not as. As intensely correlated as we want to believe. It's just not. I've never seen the example of the guy or girl adding a huge amount to their squat. Then suddenly their lifts jump up. Doesn't mean they don't get stronger, and they make prs after the fact, but they definitely have to snatch a clean and jerk in there to reap rewards. But it was just, like, a very eye opening experience for me. Max Aita [00:40:32]: They're like, oh, shit. Okay, data is king here. Like, tracking information, keeping track of data, building a system based around manipulating variables in a subtle way, and maintaining this sort of, like, training process is more important than, you know, like, getting a PR set of five in the squat or maxing your snatch and hitting some pr double or something. Like those things were just not adding up. So that was, like, for me, the moment in my career that I realized there needed to be something very different. I need to approach this from a different way. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:41:10]: Yeah, totally cool. And I think it's interesting that we get onto this topic because this is this topic and this idea of tracking of where you're going and, like, what are you doing with your athletes is ultimately actually, like, how we got to this conversation in the first place because my introduction to Josh was talking about a big spreadsheet data tracking system that I had built way back in 2020. We had jumped on a Zoom call with a bunch of other coaches and talked about things of like, what we were looking at. And so it's, it's fun to come full circle that the actual connection that led us to this podcast is a topic that we ended up talking about anyways. Max Aita [00:41:52]: Yeah, well, so that, that's kind of driven my entire, the last few years of my, my life now is this is, we've been building a, a coaching platform. So we've been developing this software for coaches where, you know, things like, you've seen like true coach and these kind of programs. So we're going to basically, we've built something very similar to this, but it's, it's designed for weightlifting, powerlifting, like Barbell sports, where, you know, we need, we need the ability to track enormous amounts of small data points and take that data and develop meaningful insights from it that a coach can actually use to do things. Cause I was like, you know, something like truecoach when I started remote coaching. Like, I was sending emails and doing whatever, spreadsheet things. And that was insane that you're just an insane person if you do that. You know, it's like, that's not, you know, you're doing twice as much time to get the same result. Foo coach was awesome when I first used it. Max Aita [00:43:00]: It was called Fitbot when I first started using it almost ten years ago. And it was like, this is cool. It's like messaging and all this in one spot, and then you kind of realize like, oh, but there's no data. You can't track any data. It doesn't know anything about what's going on. Sure, there's some crappy workarounds that suck, but like, you know, who are you ultimately? Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:43:19]: You're having to do all that data, data entry yourself or hire a va or whatever that looks like. Max Aita [00:43:24]: Right? Yeah, it's just not worth it. So, so what we're designing, we've built is, I've lucked out in that I found some people. I found a guy who was a machine learning guy for meta and cybersecurity guy, and I explained to him what the vision is here is what we're trying to build. And he was super on board. I lucked out with that. We've hired a bunch of the whole team, the whole development team. We've been building this thing, but it's basically built around the idea that, look, I want to be able to make programming in an easy way, like a true coach, where I can just write down what I want, or I can add sets and build the workouts that, you know, like, maybe you build a workout, you build some training. I want to know what that looks like in the big picture. Max Aita [00:44:14]: I want to know the data about this. How many sets and reps do we have? How much volume? Where is it allocated? What's the intensities? What are the k values? I go, I want to know all this information so that when I go to program for a mom and she's trained three days a week, I still know what we're doing. And it's easy to say, oh, well, the last few weeks, our volume has dropped off a lot. You're not able to make this. That's probably what you do. So let's try and ramp it up or look at somebody who's not making progress and struggling and actually pull insights out of that and say, oh, well, you know, shit, we should probably make some adjustments or should do this or that. And that's, that's, like, largely where I feel like there's just because there's nothing that's easy to use like that. People don't do it. Max Aita [00:45:03]: Yeah, right. You can do the spreadsheet thing, but unless you're a spreadsheet person, you know, where it's like, you, you like spreadsheets or you're comfortable doing it, or you feel confident, like, you know you're gonna do it, you're just not gonna, it's not gonna be a worthwhile thing. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:45:20]: Well, there's gonna be always an inherent limitation there as well, or there's gonna be like, you know, we talked about earlier, is like, I, like, I've had to do many times and was one of the main reasons why I coach very few athletes is that if I want to know what I'm doing or if I want to know what we're like, track those things. I've got to work in two, maybe three systems and figure out how to move that data around and hope that they documented something in the coaching app or, hey, what did we actually do there? Oh, no, we adjusted this on the fly during the day because of whatever was going on. Yeah. And so there's just so many opportunities for human data error of entry, of just manipulation of it, that it's like, okay, it's cool at first, and then you get worn down by it, and it's something that gets by the wayside and you just go back to whatever the old habit was. Max Aita [00:46:15]: Yeah. Well, it's like, spreadsheets, too, are such a, are such a poor system for this because. Yeah, spreadsheets are great for sort of, you know, data entry and, like, simple math. Yeah. Storing data in a way that you can analyze it, you know, rudimentary. Right. They're great for, you know, timetables and, you know, accounts and, and budgets and that kind of thing. When you have, like, a spreadsheet on a phone, like, any coach that's giving their athlete a spreadsheet on a phone should just be drug out to the street and shot. Max Aita [00:46:51]: Like, like, that's the worst fucking experience you can have on a phone is like, your hands are covered in chalk and you thumb through a Google sheet and you're, like, looking and, like, some of these. Some people, some coaches give out sheets that are insane. Like, like, I talked to some people who had a power listing coach who sent them, sent them the Google sheets for their program, and he must have had so many, like, scripts in it and macros and whatever. They just said it would just crash. It was crash. They couldn't even get it. The other thing, the other problem with this is that if you write a program like that and you try to automate things in the sense that you're like, oh, well, now I have the ability to like, well, if they did this weight, we can calculate it down to this. Or you do a top set, it'll take the calculation. Max Aita [00:47:44]: All these things. You just end up kind of making these, like, these pseudo adaptive programs, but they're just deterministic. It's just like, if, else than this. Yeah. And so, yeah, like, ultimately, it's just not a good, it's not a good experience. It doesn't work well. And it's, I think it's stopped people from, it stops coaches from growing. Coaches are now in a place where the technology holds them back from actually, like, really looking at their training systems and looking at their programs and all these things and analyzing and being able to draw conclusions from it. Max Aita [00:48:16]: We're just stuck in a place where it's like, you write a program and you do it and then you kind of make up the difference in coaching. You get in the gym and you push them and change it and yell at them and move it forward, do whatever. Does that actually end up, do those changes you've made throughout that process end up in the program? Like, probably not for most coaches. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:48:35]: Yeah. Or documented in any way that's meaningful for the future? Yeah. Max Aita [00:48:39]: Yeah. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:48:39]: How many things do, how many things have happened in a training session for you as a coach that you don't ever remember. Like, yeah, there are many of them. Or even as an athlete, too. Like, there. There are so many of those things that, or even as a coach looking at. Ultimately, it's hard for us to remember the beginning of last week, much less six weeks ago or six months ago or last year without having some sort of hard data to actually reflect back on. And that's what makes it hard, too, especially from a spreadsheet perspective, where we want to treat a spreadsheet like a database. You need a database to be able to relate that data across in meaningful ways that we're never going to be able to get out of a spreadsheet. Max Aita [00:49:22]: Yeah, we're not. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:49:23]: In a way that most people can actually build. Max Aita [00:49:26]: Yeah, for sure. And I think it's also, like, the other downside that I've seen, like, with Josh in particular, I talked to him about it is like, yeah, he'll write it. He'll build this great spreadsheet or have someone build a forum and it's beautiful and it's like four day a week template and blah, blah. And then what do you do when you get somebody who needs something very different than that? Do you just rebuild the whole spreadsheet? Got to start from scratch. You start from scratch. You do this. So there's just, like, a lot of, like, I highlight these things as they are massive limiters that we don't realize because I had this experience. I had this experience where I was writing programming a certain way that I believe was good and it was not ineffective. Max Aita [00:50:04]: I had national champions doing that, but it was like, oh, shit. When you really sit down and you have all this at your fingertips, you can just do so much better. The resolution you have to look at problems and to diagnose things is so much greater that it makes that process a lot, a lot easier. So, yeah, I mean, like, yeah, that's, like, the biggest area that I feel like in weightlifting is just such a. It just falls so short there. We just don't take it. We don't take it to that level. And so because of that, it feels like we're just not as serious. Max Aita [00:50:37]: You know, we're not doing as well. You look at the good coaches in the US, like, I'd say Spencer is probably the most successful right now, and he has, I mean, he is a very methodical coach. He tracks a lot of stuff. All his coaches do things, you know, I mean, these last spreadsheets, but, like, they very much have a. A methodology that is built around data, right. And using data to inform their decisions. And then, you know, you just kind of go down the ranking list and it's like you start seeing, you know, just more winging it more whatever. Hampton. Max Aita [00:51:08]: Hampton. Right. I mean, they, they have every single, you know, grain of rice is tracked. He's doing well, right. So it's like, I don't think those are. Obviously, correlation doesn't equal causation, but, like, I don't think those are isolated. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:51:24]: They're not accidents, you know, by any way. Max Aita [00:51:26]: Yeah. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:51:26]: By any, any way, you know. Yeah. In looking at that, too. So, thinking about the things that you're working on with this coaching platform, the proliferation of AI systems for programming that do allow for some of that tracking or crafting of a program based off of a very methodical approach, because a machine is much more methodical in that approach than our human coach brains. Where do you see looking into the future of when tools like that become available are much more normal? Where do you see the, where do you see coaches fulfilling? Or where do you see their ability to change and adapt, to drive better results coming from? Max Aita [00:52:11]: I think it's going to come from even further refinement of that. I think that it's like, what we're trying to do is build a system that uses, that leverages technology to. To make coaches more effective. So we have a coaching platform that has excellent data tracking, that uses an LLM to do to sort of give you a natural language explanation as to what's going on. And then we have computer vision components that we've built that will basically be able to help you extract both the kinematics of a lift. So what's going wrong? What is somebody doing during an exercise? And then some kinetic information as well, like, what are velocities and these kind of things. And so with that said, what we're trying to do is extract information from the training process and then hand that to coaches. And they can learn from that and just make, determine, you know, make determinations about what they should change or how they should evolve to make people better. Max Aita [00:53:20]: At the same time, they can do the opposite, which is they can just store the training data of an athlete in the system and then evaluate it later and say, why was this effective? So I think that the next layer of improvement is gonna come from having much more data, much more information for coaches so that they can, they'll learn things from that. The next generation of coaches, hopefully, is much more informed, much more data driven and takes that information and learns new things that we didn't know before. Right. I think that's where it's going to come from. More so than it coming from, like, progress, coming from someone discovering some revolutionary new exercise or doing something just kind of like, oh, I found this super talented kid and we're just going to train him and he gets really strong and there it is, like, just luck. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:54:18]: The same refinement on basically the same cues that we all use. Max Aita [00:54:23]: Yes. Yeah, I said the perfect words. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:54:26]: Yeah. One time. And then I'm going to build a system around that or whatever that is. Max Aita [00:54:31]: The biggest limiter to us making athletes better is that no human being can scream the words reach at a high enough decibel. Like, if we could just get to 126 decibels, it would. Everybody would get 10% stronger. So if we could just have that happen, that's the whole thing. That's what's holding us back. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:54:52]: It's my favorite cue to lift that or to laugh at, rather. I feel like there needs to be, at some national level meet. There needs to be a coach reach off where we actually have the decibel meter to actually see who's got the loudest reach. Max Aita [00:55:10]: Yeah, yeah, I I will. Like, I'll. I'll make a comment now about all that, though, too. Like, I feel like there's a. There's a. It's fun to make fun of it. Yeah, it's fun to, like, like, laugh at it. I do feel like there's this weird. Max Aita [00:55:25]: There's these weird offshoots in the fitness industry where people will. Will see someone do something and then they. They sort of make fun of it, and then they turns into this thing where it's like. Like. Like, the reach thing's a good example. Like, coaches will, like, criticize other coaches for using it or saying something, and it's like. I mean, like, it's not inherently that bad. Like, it's a cue. Max Aita [00:55:49]: Like, it's. No, every cue is dumb, right? Everything we're doing is stupid. We all just think we're not doing something stupid. But it's like this funny thing, because the world is this thing where it's like a person can come up and they can do something, and then as soon as they do something maybe a little weird, or they do. They use a cue like that. They say weird stuff. It's like, now there's, like, this subgroup of people that will mock people for doing that. Like, oh, you're using cues, or, oh, you're using internal cues. Max Aita [00:56:18]: Not external cues, you're, oh, my God, what an idiot. And it's just like, there's always another layer of it where there's, like, mocking of the thing. Yeah. When the reality is, like, you know. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:56:29]: If it works for a person, it works. Max Aita [00:56:31]: Yeah. If Ilya Ilhan's coach was screaming, reach in Kazakh. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:56:35]: Yeah. Max Aita [00:56:35]: And that we found out that, like, would all of the fanboys be like, well, it's actually, like, you know, I mean, that makes sense. Like, it's actually a good cue. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:56:42]: If we translate it more literally, it would actually make more sense. Yeah, yeah, I get that. Whereas, like, well, I think there was, like, even a comment of, like, the translation of Russian of the third phase of the poll of, like, being translated as jump. And it's like, yeah, it makes sense in Russian. And then, like, the argument of, well, is it really a jump? Is it not really a jump? Max Aita [00:57:04]: Yeah, yeah. There's, like, so much of that. Like, there's so much this insane nuance to, like, the, like, I've talked to these coaches, I've talked to these international coaches, and, like, they're not, there's no one sitting there like, abhijeev. If you were to talk to Abhijeev and be like, is it a jump? Is the first pull a push or a pull? You. What the fuck? What the fuck are you talking about? Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:57:28]: Why does that matter? Max Aita [00:57:29]: I don't know what you're saying. You sound. You seem like an idiot. You seem like somebody who's not very strong. Like, it's just, like, hilarious. Like, it's like, it'd be like if you were to, like, if you were to, like, you know, talk to, you know, some, you know, ridiculous. Like, just natural talent, right? You go to what, whatever, you know, who knows? Like, a Dennis Rodman, right? Where it's just, like, this totally raw talent. You're like, you know, when you think about dribbling the ball, you thinking about this? Like, no, man, I'm just doing it. Max Aita [00:58:00]: Like, I think that there was some. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:58:02]: Of that in, like, the nineties as some of the ex soviet bloc athletes started to come around and go around to all the places in the US, and you've got these, you know, weightlifting. The US in particular has a bit of, like, uh, overly intellectualized and, like, what I like to call, like, pinky raised, uh, elitism. Max Aita [00:58:21]: Yeah. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:58:22]: Um, yeah, that comes with it. And it's like, you know, ultimately, it's exactly what we talked about is, like, we're all going to snatch. We're all going to clean and jerk we're going to pull and we're going to squat. There's not that much deviation. And when we can, when we convince ourselves that our, we're so much more clever than that, that's where we start to, like, get in trouble. Max Aita [00:58:40]: Yeah, it's. I think it's like people, people like to fall. They, people want to either make it really simple or really hard. It's like, no, no, it's extremely challenging. Like, every single detail is important and if you don't do this and that's not going to work, and then the other side is like, bro, just train. Just go in the gym and go to buddies. You'll get there. Yeah, just lift heavy, you'll get there. Max Aita [00:59:02]: And it's like neither one of those is entirely true. Like, like all of the, the sort of, like, over analytical people that are, that are fixated on the wrong things, they're not fixated on saying, let me take data, let me learn what's going on. Let me check if that's right. If that's all good, then there's something going on in the gym, in the athlete's head. I got to address that or I can make an adjustment. You know, it's not, data is not magic. It's not going to do anything for you. And then the other side of that coin, which is like, you know, the sort of like telling people how to do things in a way where it's like, you know, stop. Max Aita [00:59:42]: Stop overanalyzing, stop looking at things like you don't need to, you don't need to think about your list. You just gotta train and just do that for five years and you'll figure it out. It's like, it's like that's, that mentality still exists in weightlifting a lot, where it's just kind of the, just get in the gym and do it and you'll get better. I'll relay a little bit of anecdote because a lot of people in weightlifting don't follow powerlifting, but powerlifting used to be like that. Yeah, it was very much these old school guys that would just be like, oh, you know, just, just train. Just. Jeremy Gruensteiner [01:00:18]: Just come in and do five by five. Who cares? Max Aita [01:00:21]: Not even that. Just like it takes ten years to figure it out. You need ten years of training under your belt and then you'll get it and you fast forward. Yeah, and you fast forward to today. And people in powerlifting definitely went this route of much more thoughtful approaches, much more information. People got serious about using data and training and you'll take people. You'll see kids go from nothing to 600 pound squats in such a short time and you see it, you're like, oh, shit. Like, they're doing it really well. Max Aita [01:00:52]: Like, everybody in powerlifting and, you know, everybody, the broad majority of people, the vast majority of people in powerlifting that are coaching at a decent level are very good at it. Better than, I would say, most weightlifting coaches. Jeremy Gruensteiner [01:01:05]: Yeah. Max Aita [01:01:05]: Because they, they just, they evolved a very much more, like, it's a younger crowd. They got in and they applied, you know, intellectual, an intellectual approach to it and they. It's like, it's, I mean, looking at powerlifting now, it's insane. Like, as a, like, you know, squatting and pulling 600, benching 350 at like, you know, like a local meet is like shit. It doesn't mean anything. Yeah, those aren't, those aren't bad numbers, but it's like that, that's not out of this world. Jeremy Gruensteiner [01:01:37]: And like, Ryan back 30 years and people would like jaws on floor. Max Aita [01:01:41]: Oh, yeah, yeah. 600 pound raw squat for somebody under 200 pounds was insane. Jeremy Gruensteiner [01:01:46]: Yeah. Max Aita [01:01:46]: And now it's like, yeah, high school kids do that because everybody got good at training and coaching and so that's where I think we're just not there. No one does that anymore. No one says in USAPL or PA or like the sort of premier drug testing federations, those coaches are not throwing information out there. Like, just train for ten years and you'll figure it out because they know that'd be a waste of time and you'd go nowhere in ten years because you could easily do the wrong things for ten years. Jeremy Gruensteiner [01:02:12]: Well, that's also a hard sell as you, as a coach as well. Like, oh, it's going to take you ten years to figure it out and I'm not actually going to help you figure it out, so. Max Aita [01:02:20]: Well, competition has driven that, too. I mean, there's a market for it. You can make money as a coach now. Like, there's, there's a lot of money in weightlifting and powerlifting compared to the size they are. There's many coaches making a living as a coach, you know, in both sports, and that's. That drives competition. People are going to try to get better and because of that, everybody benefits because suddenly, you know, just getting someone a pr every few training cycles is not enough. People want to exceed, sell and they're going to find coaches that can do it. Max Aita [01:02:50]: And weightlifting, it's still not quite there. The technical element makes a big, a big hurdle for people. But, you know, the fact that you'd still have somebody saying things like, you know, you just got to train. It's just, like, not. It's just not true. Like, you. You should train very smart, use every tool to your advantage to make somebody better understand what you're doing and. And apply, you know, sound training principles to it. Max Aita [01:03:16]: You look at. You look at, like, the training, t

Tristan Gibson's Comeback: Soccer, Surgery, and Mental Strength

For this episode we’re joined by a truly inspiring guest, Tristan Gibson, also known as Captain Orangutan. From being a promising college soccer athlete to enduring a series of life-altering medical issues including a brain cyst, hydrocephalus, and a shunt implantation that led him through intense pain, multiple surgeries, and even a brain stem stroke, Tristan’s journey is nothing short of remarkable. Today, he’ll share how these challenges forced him off the soccer field but set him on a path of mental health coaching and holistic living. We’ll dive into how Tristan coped with his health setbacks by changing his beliefs about depression and anxiety, adjusting his diet, and avoiding medications. He'll also discuss his aspirations to travel the country in an adventure van, live sustainably, and continue spreading his knowledge through his coaching program. So, gear up for an episode filled with stories of resilience, transformation, and the pursuit of freedom and well-being. Join us as Tristan discusses how he turned his darkest moments into opportunities for growth and healing. Connect with Tristan! Instagram: @captain_orangutan [https://www.instagram.com/captain_orangutan/] Website: The Orangutan Way [https://theorangutanway.com/]

Dave Robinson: Coaching, Conduits, and Cosmic Encounters

This episode we're joined by an extraordinary guest, Dave Robinson. In this episode, we delve into Dave's unconventional life journey—from witnessing a surreal extraterrestrial encounter to abandoning a traditional career path in finance for a life fueled by authenticity and passion. We'll explore how pivotal experiences, including a profound supernatural message and the camaraderie in the gym, shaped his path from being a finance professional to a revered story coach. Dave will share his insights on embracing our true selves, the importance of intuitive moments, and the power of self-reflection. From silent helicopters to spaceships, fitness triumphs to health and wellness coaching down in Mexico, Dave's story is a testament to living a life that's not only weird but also exceptionally strong. Buckle up as we embark on this mind-bending journey that challenges our perceptions and encourages us all to live more authentically. Stay tuned, and remember to embrace your own version of being strong, and most importantly... being weird! Connect with Dave! Instagram: @daverobinson.coach [https://www.instagram.com/daverobinson.coach/] Get Coaching: Website [https://www.workyourstories.com/]

John Ryder: Adventures in Navigating the Music and Creative Fields

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:00:01]: Welcome back to the Weird and strong podcast, folks. I am your host, Jeremy Grunsteiner, and we've got an amazing musician that I have had the pleasure to get to know over the past year. We've got John Ryder on the show, the mastermind behind ghost made cellophane and empires of delirium. We talk about his path as a musician, where that has taken him both geographically, musically, and artistically, and also what's coming up for him in the future. So stay tuned, and let's get weird. Welcoming John Ryder to the weird and strong podcast. How you doing, man? John Ryder [00:00:37]: You know, I'm doing great. How you doing? Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:00:39]: I'm doing. I'm doing real well. It's great to see you again. It's been about a month and a half since we've seen each other, and, yeah, I'm glad that you're here. And I have a weird question for you. Are you ready? John Ryder [00:00:53]: Yeah. Shoot. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:00:56]: Is a quesadilla a grilled cheese sandwich? John Ryder [00:01:03]: I would say no. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:01:05]: Okay, fine. John Ryder [00:01:06]: I would say no. I think a grilled cheese sandwich is like brother and sister with, like, a melt. Okay. It's a type of, like, grain breaded material that's different. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:01:20]: Okay. John Ryder [00:01:21]: I feel like. I feel like if you did, like, um, you know, tortilla, it's. It's just a different type of family of grain. Yeah. I think that that's how I would differentiate the two. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:01:34]: Okay. John Ryder [00:01:35]: Yeah. Yeah. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:01:36]: So if you made a grilled cheese sandwich with potato bread, would it still count as a grilled cheese sandwich? John Ryder [00:01:44]: I would say so, yeah. I think it's the. It's the overall, like, end texture of, like, how it's. The bread is, like, risen from, like, bread versus, like, a tortilla. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:01:55]: Sure. So, like, if you made it with a pita, it wouldn't count. It would be. John Ryder [00:02:01]: It'd be closer to the tortilla. Yeah, I feel, yeah. Yeah. I actually, like, low key. Worked in the bakery for, like, three years, so maybe I have a slight bias to that. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:02:14]: But, like, so leavened versus unleavened. And that's the determination for the grilled cheese sandwich for you. John Ryder [00:02:22]: For me? Yeah. What about you? Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:02:27]: Well, this is a complicated question for me, it's like, I would say, yeah, it's a grilled cheese sandwich, but ultimately it's also a salad. John Ryder [00:02:37]: A salad? Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:02:38]: Yeah. John Ryder [00:02:38]: How's it a salad? Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:02:40]: So the definition of a salad, one of the definitions of a salad is any incongruous mixture. John Ryder [00:02:48]: Oh. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:02:49]: So, like, any mixture of ingredients is technically a salad. And so because it's not suspended in liquid, which would be a soup. It means that a quesadilla is a salad. So any of you wanting, wanting to get in your extra salads, just know a KCD is also a salad. Yeah. There's a very fun GitHub repository that talks about this, which is a salad theory. So proposing that all things in the universe are either a super salad based on their suspension in a liquid. So human beings could be postulated as walking soups or walking salads, depending on how you argue the point, based off of their criteria, which is just fun. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:03:39]: Fun thought experiments that people can run and play around with. Like, the definition of words gets real. John Ryder [00:03:46]: Weird in the way it does. Yeah, I'm definitely a soup. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:03:52]: You're definitely a soup. John Ryder [00:03:53]: Yeah. Probably something spicy. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:03:55]: Feeling like a spicy soup today. John Ryder [00:03:57]: Yeah. Yeah. Some spicy ramen. Yeah, for the butthole. I'm just saying. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:04:04]: That's great. Awesome, man. Let's talk more about you. For those that haven't been formally introduced to you, this is your ability to be able to share what makes John weird. What are the ways that you've shown up unconventionally in the world? What does that path look like for you? John Ryder [00:04:28]: Obviously, I'm very much into the music aspect of life, and I feel like, you know, I've kind of came in as an outcast into, like, what? You know, I'm from Minneapolis, but, like, the Minnesota music scene because I spent so much time in Los Angeles and some time up in Fargo, and I kind of came in out of left field with, like, I can video edit, I can, you know, use Photoshop, you know, record most of my own stuff, mix master most of my own stuff, you know, from, like, a omni perspective of, like, what it means to, like, make content as a music creator. And I feel like, you know, it's not a knock on the music scene currently. I do think it's a really good music scene, dare I say, better than the La music scene. But a lot of people are still kind of stuck, you know, in the prehistoric era of music, which is I want to, like, play guitar, and that's it. You know, I want to play drums. That's it. And I feel like if you want to have any kind of success and the music scapegoat nowadays, you have to be able to do a lot of different things, and not just the tech stuff on the back end, but also the social media on the front end and then just to think outside the box. So many metal bands have someone dying in their music video or blood or whatever. John Ryder [00:06:12]: And just thinking outside the box, being willing to take risks. And I think that's kind of where I feel unconventional, because, I mean, if you've heard, you know, like, empires of delirium, it's very much unconventional. It's a bass, vocals, and drums, and then the same thing musically for ghost made cellophane, which is, like, you know, right now, like, hip hop songwriters and, like, any kind of really heavy metals doing well in Minnesota. And it's a more melodic, ambient soundscape, but heavy vibe. And I think just coming in with that different perspective has set me apart in either band that I decide to make a focal point. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:07:01]: That's really cool in looking at that. So you talked about having these different skills, like, just the video editing the Photoshop and then getting used to and being really present on social media, because I noticed that, like, damn, John John's got this figured out, like, sitting there, like, for my own business, sitting and taking notes, even though it's not necessarily promoting music, but, like. Like, taking note of how somebody like you is able to bring that forward. What was that path like for you to learn how to balance all of these different roles or how to start to even just learn how to. How to effectively edit a video or make a social media post? What was that process like for you? John Ryder [00:07:50]: Honestly, it was really interesting. I've always been a huge fan of film, so that was kind of my. That was kind of my path as far as, like, okay, well, you know, I did, like, maybe like, a year and a half of film in college and then, like, a semester of web design and, like, a year of photography and Photoshop. And, like, it was interesting because I. When I took the classes, I wasn't really good at it. And then as I wanted to focus on music and, you know, you probably. I don't know if you've experienced this, but people want to, like, charge you so much money for content. And it's, you know, especially, like, when I lived down in LA, it was just like everybody was just taking advantage of. John Ryder [00:08:41]: There's, like, a stereotype for musicians on LA. It's the person who does. Who knows, like, three guitar chords and has a lot of money. And so that person, you know, it's like, oh, yeah, I'll pay $1,000 for this person to do this photo shoot for me and five, $6,000 for that person to do that video for me. And, you know, for me as a blue collar person, it's not really realistic. So I kind of went through and sucked at it for probably a good two or three years. I went back and looked at photos recently, and I was like, in videos, and I was like, man, using Final cut Pro X and those videos, someone can make a better video now on their phone than, you know, the numerous hours I spent on that one very poorly edited video. So, you know, it's weird for me because I started from a place of, well, it's. John Ryder [00:09:44]: I don't have any other path because I can't afford to pay people to do stuff for me. And then you kind of. When you. When I have done that, you. It's out of your hands. And I could speak about that here in a sec. But, yeah, to be on the flip side of sucking and then having people come up to me and, like, I've had bands locally ask me to, like, film videos for them and. Or do content for them. John Ryder [00:10:11]: And that is encouraging because it tells me that I'm doing something right as far as that aspect, creating something that looks professional, which I think is really important and I think really separates, you know, a band that's going to be a local band with no endpoint versus a band that, you know, could go on tour, you know, and there's exceptions, obviously, but. So that's been really interesting for me. Yeah. And I always ask people. I lean on people, like, you know, I ask Jay a lot of questions, you know? Yeah. But, yeah. Do you want me to expand on that at all or if you'd like. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:10:55]: To, you know, I think that's really great. And, like, the. The lesson that I'm hearing from you on that is something I talk about with people that I work with, and I hear this reinforced for me by, like, the coaches and mentors that I have in my life, as well. Like, yeah, the first time you do something, it's. It's. It's not going to be great or you're going to look back at it and go, ooh, that was woof. But that's the. That's the point of growth, and that's the point of. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:11:26]: Of being able to get better. It's like we have this weird, this, like, strange notion in our head that, like, oh, I can't let anybody see this because I want my first time to be perfect, or I want my first. The first thing I put out to be the most perfect thing ever. It's like, look at. Look at some of, like, your favorite bands or, like, your favorite artists and whatnot, and how many of them really love their, like, first albums. John Ryder [00:11:54]: Like, still, like, a lot of them. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:11:56]: Truly actually love them. And it'd be like, you look at, you know, you look at big, big bands like Metallica and, like, they wrote a lot of their first stuff before they were even 18. Like, it's like, yeah, they still play it and, like, it still hits, but, like, they're so far removed from who they were when they wrote those things. Or, like, the quality of the songwriting or the even looking to somebody like Glenn Danzig, who just wanted to completely have nothing to ever do with the misfits ever again because that was his high school band, of course, he moved on and beyond that. And so I think it's really cool for you to reiterate that it's a process of getting more reps and it's a process of continual improvement that, yes, your first product and your first post or your first video is going to be not as great. And if you keep going, you're going to get to a point like John just talked about where people are going to be asking you, like, hey, how do I do this? Hey, could you help me with this? Would you do bill? Like, would you film a video for me or do my social posts for me? You never know where those things may take you. John Ryder [00:13:02]: Yeah. And it's not just like, at the beginning, you know, of, like, adulthood or life, when people have that struggle. I think, you know, I feel that way anytime you start a new project, you know, especially if it's like something that you never, like, expanded on previously. Like, for me, I kind of grew up listening to, like, pop and punk and hip hop, this weird combination stuff, and never, like, when I first got into music, it was pop punk, and then it became, like, screamo. Everybody says deftones, even though I didn't know who the Deftones were when you recorded the album, like, five years ago. But anyways, but, you know, with the empires of delirium stuff, I never ever wrote music in that genre in my life or saying in that style. And it was really infuriating for me to, like, go up on stage and, like, people who paid hard, their hard earned money to come out and then just not put a performance on that I was happy with. And I feel that way, too. John Ryder [00:14:16]: About ghost made. I feel like it's been really interesting for me because every show we get better and I'm realizing it at a faster pace than I did with empires. But I think that's part of the process of, like, you know, I hadn't touched that band in four years, whatever, basically since I came back from LA. So to pick it back up regardless of what project or adventure you do, you're going to fall flat in your face. If I wanted to go do web design or start a tech company tomorrow, I would probably have a good couple of years of struggling until I could figure out, oh, this is, you know, these are the pieces that I need to know, you know. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:15:03]: Yeah, yeah. That's speaking to something that's really important for, you know, it's a, it's a good reinforcement for me of starting a new business. And we want that, like, overnight success. It's like, keep showing up, keep putting the reps in, you know, the days, the days where you feel like, am I even. Do I even know what I'm doing anymore? Like that self doubt. Those are the days that are golden, especially when you continue going and you're like, there's not that. The path forward is, I have that choice. I can stop. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:15:43]: I could take a break, but I can still keep going. And it's that continual push forward that gets us to that point where, like, you're talking about being able to look back and see the successes or being able to realize that, oh, you know, I've done this with another band already, so I know some of the pitfalls or I know some of the places where I can keep myself focused and keep it moving. And so things move at a much more accelerated pace because you've already done it before. John Ryder [00:16:14]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It just makes life more exciting, you know what I'm saying? Like, going and starting adventures or, like, watching and being a part of something and helping it grow is exciting because, like you said, you could stop, you could take a break, or you could keep going. And if you stop, you don't ever know where it's going to end up at and what experiences you might have, good, bad, or in between. And I've learned definitely in the past where when I've chosen to stop, I've pretty much always regretted, minus college. Yeah. But, yeah. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:17:00]: Cool in looking at this, because you have quite a few creative skills behind what you've been bringing to the world. Were you always a creative kid? Was this something that you were drawn to early on, or is this something that has evolved, like, evolved for you over a longer period of time? John Ryder [00:17:24]: Well, it's kind of twofold. I've always been interested in creative stuff, but I never really did it, and there's multiple factors to it. We were really poor growing up at times. I remember, like, having to ask the teacher to borrow, like, a piece of paper and a pencil and writing and, like, using every corner of that piece of paper because I didn't want to ask for another piece of paper because it was too embarrassing, you know. And so we didn't really get the opportunity when I was younger. And, you know, neither did we have a lot of people in my life that were, you know, creatively adventurous. You know, my brother is. He sings not in bands, but he sing in choir. John Ryder [00:18:20]: And then, you know, whenever there's, like, an event, he's always singing for, like, a wedding or something. And then, you know, my grandma played piano, but I never really got to see her play piano. She just had it in her house. My great grandma, I should say, had it in her house and, like, stopped playing it by the time I was old enough to understand why it was there. You know, that's literally it. I. My mom wasn't a really creative person. She was a single parent with five kids, so didn't really have time for that. John Ryder [00:18:57]: But I was always jealous of the musicians that were around me, you know, like, I wish I could afford to have a guitar or, like, you know, we grew up in Minneapolis, but we moved to Lake Park, Minnesota, which is over by Detroit Lakes. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:19:13]: Oh, yeah. My family, part of my family is from Lake park, so. John Ryder [00:19:16]: Oh, wow. That's crazy. Yeah, yeah. What, what part? Like, are you. Oh, yeah. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:19:22]: So it'd be my mom's. My mom's mom's side. John Ryder [00:19:26]: Okay. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:19:27]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Great. Great grandparents are buried out there, so. Yeah. Been out there times. John Ryder [00:19:35]: Is it the cemetery right outside of, uh, right side town on the left hand side? Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:19:39]: Yep, yep. John Ryder [00:19:40]: Yeah. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:19:41]: The northwest side of town. Yep, yep. John Ryder [00:19:43]: Yeah, yeah, we lived on second street for quite a bit. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:19:46]: Okay. John Ryder [00:19:47]: Yeah. So the main street. Yeah, but. And then we lived out. I think it's county road five. Okay, maybe I'm wrong. The. It's been so long since I've been out there, but, um. John Ryder [00:20:02]: Yeah, there's no music shops over there, you know. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:20:04]: No, you got to travel quite a ways for. To be able to. To get into some of that stuff. Yeah, yeah. John Ryder [00:20:12]: And, like, I mean, Detroit Lakes used to have a music shop and a bookstore. And I remember being probably about 1617, working at Godfather's Pizza and walking across the street and spending my 50, $60 I made on that paycheck for some comic books, you know, and some, like, CDs. Like, that was. That was, like, my step into, like, the creative world. And, you know, I'm old enough and I'm not old, and Jay and I are, you know, the same age. I'm a few months older but, you know, the Internet wasn't always a big thing when I was a kid, and when we did have it was dial up, you know, especially living in a. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:21:01]: In a rural, rural midwestern. It just wasn't small towns. Like, it just wasn't as important versus if you were in a larger city. It's like, oh, that was much earlier adoption of using those tools for business or creativity or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. John Ryder [00:21:20]: And I would say it wasn't until about 20 to 21 that I actually really started to, like, you know, try, like, doing music. I remember, like, I bought my first guitar. It was a blue upper phone Les Paul studio for, like, $329 from Best Buy when we used to sell music here. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:21:43]: Yep. John Ryder [00:21:43]: And, you know, and I. There's a song called one last breath by Creed, and I remember my friend showed me how to play it, and I spent probably five or 6 hours trying to play that intro, and I couldn't figure it out, so that's how terrible I was. But, you know, you start and then you, you know, expand yourself. I think the biggest thing is for me, and I encourage people who are creative to do this, but to go out and travel and, like, see how other places in the country or the world are doing stuff and, like, you're going to grow a lot, you know, because, you know, like, people might think of, like, Minneapolis St. Paul's being a really big area, but, like, you know, there's limitations. And, you know, I feel like we're behind other parts of the country as far as technology goes. And even, like, I remember, like, going to college here and then going out to do a year of college in Los Angeles. And, like, I was like, holy shit. John Ryder [00:22:57]: Like, the textbooks that we're learning from are, like, 15 to 20 years behind, like, what's actually going on right now. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:23:05]: Yeah. John Ryder [00:23:07]: And so. And on top of that, like, most of my classes out there didn't use textbooks. Everything was on your computer. You logged into, like, a server, and it was a lot easier for people to be able to study on, like, an iPad, you know, versus, like, an actual hard copy textbook, you know? And so, you know, I would have never had that growth had it not went out and ventured to some place new, you know? Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:23:33]: Yeah. What was the. What was the driver? Or what was the inspiration to go from the Minneapolis area to study in LA? What drove you there? John Ryder [00:23:47]: It's actually kind of a funny story. So I was going to Minnesota State University, Moorhead, and, you know, I was kind of. I knew I didn't want to be up there you know, Fargo Moorhead for me is just not the place for me. Never really has been my cat loves, but. So I remember going into a professor's office. Doctor Carter was his name, and I sat in the front row for two years in his classes and aced every single class and every single test and in the hallways, he pretended like he didn't know who I was and. But he was just this ego thing and he picked his favorites. And no offense to Doctor Carter, he's a very successful musician in his own right, and a better musician than I could probably ever hope to be, but at least from a traditional standpoint. John Ryder [00:24:50]: But I went to his office one day, and I was considering Texas, actually, because I had relatives in Texas, and I got accepted to the University of Texas in Austin. And I went to his office and I just said, hey, can I borrow, like five minutes of your time? And he's like, sure, you know, and I was like. And I sat down and said, you know, I know you and I have never really seen eye to eye and we've never really had conversations, you know, aside from answering questions in class. And. But I respect you cause you're a brutally honest person. And so I just asked him. I was like, you know, I got accepted to the University of Texas, was considering doing an exchange program and then finishing my college there. What do you think? And then he just kind of sat there, leaned back in his chair, you know, put pen to his, you know, his mouth, and just kind of thinking. John Ryder [00:25:49]: He leans forward and he's like, I think that's the dumbest idea I've ever heard. It's like, I was like, oh. And then he let it pause there for a little bit because he's a big storyteller. And he goes, you know, from what I gather, you don't really care to do traditional music. It's like, no, not really. You know, I mean, I've done film scoring and written for podcasts, but I don't want to be in an orchestra or teacher, so. And he's like, you know, if you go to Texas, I promise you this. Like, you are going to find yourself in the same position that you are here, which from what I gather, is unhappy if you really want to test yourself. John Ryder [00:26:38]: It's like, I taught at, you know, California State University before. You know, it's like, go out to LA, find out if you consume the sharks. You know, you're going to find out really quickly whether or not you have what it takes to have any kind of, you know, career in music and I took that advice. I was just like, all right. And the story goes, is about a one way plane ticket to Los Angeles. I had enough money for three days of staying in a hotel, and if I went beyond the three days, I wouldn't have enough money to put money towards an apartment or room for rent. Like, my budget was literally three days. I didn't work in three days. John Ryder [00:27:30]: I'd be. I'd be taking what money I had left to buy a plane ticket back. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:27:35]: Yep. John Ryder [00:27:35]: Had, like, a. My, not even $800. And so, yeah, plane ticket within three days. Got registered for classes and got a job and found a place to be. And mind you, at that point in time, I didn't even have a car. So to be able to go from, like, lax, you know, and, you know, California State University, North Ridge is deep in the valley, so you're talking 30 something miles from La. Extra. Yeah, deep in the valley. John Ryder [00:28:10]: And to be able to figure out in a city that I never been in, you know, and so it takes a lot of resolve, and most people would probably break. You know, I have siblings who I've tried to encourage to, like, come to the cities and, like, there's just no way, you know, to them, Minneapolis St. Paul is just too big, scary. Way too scary. And I'm just. I mean, it is a scary place. I don't, don't get me wrong, I've never. The only place, and I've been, you know, to New York just twice this year for, you know, good, almost two and a half weeks. John Ryder [00:28:51]: And obviously, like, five and a half years in LA. And Minneapolis is probably one place that I've been where I'm like, I need to watch when I get into my car, I need to make sure I lock stuff, watch around me, like, because I know, and having grown up here, there's a lot of violence here, you know, um, you know, and I've never felt more unsafe than, you know, being here just because I think a lot of people are angry here. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:29:23]: Yeah. John Ryder [00:29:24]: You know? Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:29:25]: Yeah. John Ryder [00:29:26]: So it's a. It's a beautiful, you know, it's a beautiful, ugly thing, you know? And I remember, like, when I went to LA, people were like, why are you so angry all the time? I'm like, I'm trying not to be. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:29:36]: Yeah. You know, we become the reflection of what we surround ourselves with in a lot of ways. And so if you have, you're surrounded by a bunch of angry people, you tend to be a bit of an angry person. John Ryder [00:29:48]: Yeah. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:29:49]: Yeah. There's, like, a. Some interesting, like, I'm going to butcher these things because I don't have them right at my fingertips. But there's research that shows, like, if your best friend's friend is a smoker, you're much more likely to be a smoker, even though you may not even know who that person is. You may have never even talked to them before, but because of that associative effect, because your best friend is subtly influenced by their friend who smokes, and that starts to bring that behavior into you as well. John Ryder [00:30:20]: It's funny that you say that because, like, the older I've gotten, the more, the smaller my circle gets. And, like, I mean, you know, these people, but, you know, like, I'd probably say on a daily or weekly basis, you know, I'll talk to Corey. I'll talk to Chris. Corey, not so much because I know he's traveling right now, but Jay probably almost every other day, you know, my girlfriend Trinity, my mom, like, I'll talk to people who, like, like, will be honest with me slash build me up and, like, inspire me. And, I mean, and I think that's so important because, like, you know, I couldn't imagine being the same person that hung out with, you know, decade later or whatever after high school, hung out with the same people in the same small town, you know, if you want to be creative, if you want to be strong, if you want to be your weirdest self, using some words there, you know, like, find the people who, like, you know, will allow you to do that and kind of, you know, stick. Stick to them, you know what I mean? So it's. Yeah, I think, you know, that's a big part of success, too, is just, you know, knowing we can go to for an honest but, like, slightly cushioned perspective. You know what I mean? Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:31:58]: Yeah. Well, you know, the people, you know, the people that'll give it to you real, you know. And for me, I've been deep in the self development world and consuming a lot of that type of content and just learning a lot of the things, like we, we just talked about. But it's. It's finding the people that will call you forward, the people who will, who will challenge you. Like, one of the coolest parts is, for me, I was meeting with the former owner of the gym that I worked at with last week and was working through some ideas for my own business and some different directions that I want to go with it. And we started talking through one, and she was helping guide me through of asking questions about where I was going with this. And I said, I had two paths, and we were feeling really good about that one. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:32:53]: She said, well, it's the second one. And I tell her the idea. She's like, no, just, no, that's the same thing you've been struggling with right now that hasn't been working for you. This other option is something that's completely different from what you've been struggling with. So, like, why would you believe that doing the exact same thing with just a different, you know, different lipstick on the pig is going to make it less of a pig? Like, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe select the one that isn't a pig speaking in some abstracts here. But, like, being able to have those people in our lives is drastically underrated. People get really, really comfortable in their comfort zones of the people who are going to just tell them, it's just all right, or you'll figure it out. No big deal. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:33:41]: Yeah. And meanwhile, you're still stuck in that space of, well, how you feel stuck in that. It's great to have that cheerleader for you, but having those people that can call you forward or call you on your own bullshit, where you're like, do you really think that's a great idea? Or, hey, I see you actually succeeding in this. Going this direction more versus this direction and being able to, like, point out those things that we don't see for ourselves. Super underrated, super important. John Ryder [00:34:13]: Yeah, I've noticed that a lot with. With my girlfriend. She. I'll be doing a song or, like, working on something, and she'll just be like, oh, I really like that. Or, like. Like, we had rehearsal, and I was just trying something different, and she just, like, was just. I don't like that. That. John Ryder [00:34:35]: No, like. And then she was. I. She had recorded it, and I disagreed with her at the time. Cause, like, nah, like, I was feeling it. And then she went back. I went back and watched the video, and I was like, oh, shit, like, she's right. Like, I was. John Ryder [00:34:49]: So it just didn't make sense at all, you know? So, you know, that's been really nice, especially because, like, we live together, and I get that on, like, a daily basis of encouragement, but, like, perspective, you know? And, yeah, that's. That's been really nice. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:35:08]: Yeah, that's really cool. And also, I would like bringing up something that you had talked about earlier of, like, you know, things perhaps in certain music scenes or certain. Certain groups, really struggling to, like, step outside of that box where, like, everything starts to sound the same, or they're. They're. They're running. It's almost like they're running a play out of a playbook of, like, how to be a band. Like they're following a step by step guide. Everybody starts to sound the same. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:35:39]: Like, I was just watching a video last week with, with Glenn Fricker from Supernatural studios that, you know, everybody uses as far as guitar players go. Everybody uses the same speaker. Everybody wants to use a celestial vintage 30, and then everybody starts sounding exactly the same because that's what's predictable. That's what they know from the records that they like so that they can emulate those. But we end up in the space of everything feeling homogenized and not creative. And to what we've been speaking on, of, like, how much. How much impact has it been for you to surround yourself with musicians and creative people who have very different tastes or very different perspectives? How has that influenced your ability to create or your ability to create something different that isn't quite as mainstream or quite as easily defined? John Ryder [00:36:38]: Honestly, it's been interesting. Like I said, I feel like I grew up listening. If I talk to other hard rock middle musicians or bands in the, in the tri state area, they. A lot of them would probably say certain similar bands that they like or they listen to growing up. And then I'm over here, like, oh, you know, I listen to, like, Michael Jackson and, like, David Bowie, which I think some people might list smashing pumpkins. Like, had such a different. I had to, like, learn how to, like, live within the spectrum of, like, what music is popular now, if that makes sense. And it's been really interesting to ask people, like, does this make sense? Because, like, you know, I feel like I'm writing it from, you know, perspective of someone who, like, you know, loves that type of music and, you know, grew up listening and just adoring soundtrack music, you know. John Ryder [00:37:44]: You know, I love. I love, like, film scores and stuff. So it's been different because, like, for some people, it's like, they look for other people to, like, give them different perspective. For me, I've had that, but I've also had people, like, where I'm like, does this make sense? Because I don't. You know, it's like, I'll use, like, I'll use, like, 30 seconds to Mars, for example. So, like, they came out in early two thousands. And I don't know if you're familiar with, like, the catalog, like, the first album. And I was okay. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:38:18]: I was actually regional director of their street team for the upper, upper midwest. John Ryder [00:38:22]: Oh, wow. That's crazy. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:38:24]: I'm familiar. I'm very familiar with the 30 seconds to Mars. John Ryder [00:38:26]: Okay. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:38:27]: That's the same. Yeah. John Ryder [00:38:29]: So the music that they came out with at the time, there's aspects of stuff that's, you know, similar to other genres. You know, you got a little bit of deftones in there. You got a little bit of, like, butt rock in there. And then obviously, aesthetically, in the early two thousands, they were kind of fitting in with that black eyeliner look. But even from the first album to, like, their most recent album, it's like, they're somewhat similar to, like, what's going on in the music scene right now, but they're so dramatically different. You know, like, if. What is that song? It's like a seven minute song on their first album, Buddha's for Mary. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:39:17]: Oh, yeah. Yep. John Ryder [00:39:18]: Yeah, yeah. Like, that doesn't really, like when that came out. Like, there are not a lot of other bands that sounded like that. You know what I mean? Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:39:28]: Yeah, well, had that, like, it had a bit of what you're talking about of, like, some ambient, soundscape y type stuff, and then just, like, different twists and turns that went along with it well, but it still maintained, like, one melodic through line during the whole thing. But it wasn't your typical, like, four chords, then we get a breakdown and then, like, a sweeping chorus. It was. It was a little bit. It was much more different than what was being brought forward as, like, pop radio or, like. Yeah, popular rock or modern rock, however you want to classify that. John Ryder [00:40:07]: Yeah, so, yeah, I feel like that's been my. Because, like, you know, like, in the earlier stuff, like, a lot of their stuff was, like, chop detuning and, you know, just open five, three more, you know, whatever. And. But that was, like, the similarity that would, like, connect them to what was going on musically, but everything else was different. And, you know, they didn't really grow up listening to, like, they grew up as artists and, like, enjoying all different types of music, not just rock, you know, and so, yeah, there's definitely, like, even, like, you know, for ghost mits elephant, like, in 2024, I want to do, like, a lot more, like, metal core stuff. And, like, just because this is my first, like, official year of playing music, like, in Minnesota ever, which is crazy. And I've noticed, like, what seems to go over a lot more than others and, like, the ambient stuff that we're doing with ghost made with the screaming and stuff, like, some of it went over well, some of it not so much. And I still love to do it, but I was like, I'm going to write two EPs. John Ryder [00:41:17]: One and continuing the journey that I'm on right now, but another that's, like, just straight up, like, hard rock and metal core. And, like, because when we played, like, the one song that would be in that genre, like, mankato, like, was, like, the first time people ever moshed, you know, that was really cool. And then we played the rest of the set, and they just kind of stood there. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:41:40]: Yeah. John Ryder [00:41:41]: So, you know, it's knowing how to, like, cater to your audience, and it's okay to, you know. You know, to sound similar at times because, like, that's what people know. And then sprinkle in some difference, you know, or do something similar that they know but in a different way. Yeah, it's. It's, you know. Yeah, I'm the annoying person that I have a few people that I, like, continuously send shit to, and they're like, this sounds very similar to what you just did, but, like, don't you hear the difference? And they're like, oh, my God, like. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:42:20]: Yeah, all the things that, when we're so close to it that we hear. We hear all the nuance, but the. The person who's on the outside, they don't know quite that difference. It's like, you know, to put it in guitar gear turns terms, it's like, well, I swapped out this. I swapped out my tube screamer for a big muffin and, like, expecting everybody to notice the big difference in my tone. And meanwhile, nobody actually, aside from maybe the couple guitar dorks in the audience, nobody like, oh, it sounds like a distorted guitar either way. Yeah, just, they don't. They don't hear that. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:42:54]: That subtle sonic difference the same way that we do as creators. Like, they don't see the sonic coloration quite the same way, but I think that that's. And I don't think that's what's really cool about having gotten to know you over this past almost a year or so is that I think that that's really cool that you have that ability to notice and pick up what's going on with the audience and be able to be open enough to say, all right, how can I still express myself? How can I still be creative within what I want to do, but, you know, be accessible to the people that I want to have experience what I'm doing? I think it's very easy for artists to say, no, no, no, I'm going to do it exactly only my way. And if they don't like it, then that's something. Well, screw all of them, or that's something that's wrong with them that they don't quite get it or whatever that story that we can tell ourselves is. Hearing you say that of being, being continually in the crafting of the music, like, that's something so cool that I don't hear from very many artists very often. John Ryder [00:44:11]: Thanks, man. It's a, if you want to get there, you got to keep climbing up the mountain, man. You can't like, go up, you know, a thousand feet and be like, oh, yeah, well, you know, I'm just going to wait until the next time I decide to make another, you know, incline. And so, you know, you always, and, you know, like, the people who like to do, like, free soloing or climbing mountains, like, they might go up that same mountain a couple of different ways, find different paths. And, I mean, that was, you know, I think that's the beauty of art is it's ever changing. And that's like, like, for me, like, like, I obviously have empires of delirium, but that's why that's been so quiet so lately. Because, like, it's like, I busted my ass for that band for three years. Film, music videos, threw money at it, developed a sound with a bass guitar that sounds like a guitar, basically. John Ryder [00:45:07]: Royal blood or actually, the first person who showed me the octave thing was Jay with anomic. I was like, how the fuck does she. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:45:16]: Right, which I introduced him how to do that with, with that. Yeah, yeah, there's a whole story in that one because I didn't, I didn't like the drummer he. So I was playing bass for inomic at the time and I didn't really get on with the drummer that we had. And so I was like, you would be better off doing this as a, as a two piece. And so here's how you can do that. John Ryder [00:45:37]: That's funny. Yeah, yeah. So thank you for that inspiration. Years later. Yes. You didn't even know. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:45:44]: Once again, I say what we talked about, that that ripple effect is like, had I not shown him how to do that, you know, you wouldn't have maybe had that, that sonic color, like that sonic paintbrush or crayon box, whichever metaphor you want for it, you wouldn't even had the access to it necessarily. Or maybe you would have stumbled upon it later. But, yeah, it's always fun to see what those ripple effects have and, like, what you are doing and the way that you show up in, in the various music scenes of like, what sorts of ripples and what sorts of people, your performances may influence how they show up. John Ryder [00:46:28]: Yeah. That's. It's really interesting. And, you know, it's. You know, we had, you know, I think when we first officially met you, because I had heard about you, like, a lot in the past, was the July show that we played in St. Paul. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:46:44]: Yep. John Ryder [00:46:45]: And, like, you know, I hadn't played ghost made stuff, and, like I said, four years. Right. Like, we had a month and a half to prep, and I didn't even remember most of the songs. Like, yeah, you know, so we were, like, figuring out as you go, and it wasn't, you know, it wasn't the most polished performance, but it had a beginning and an end that was very, you know, there was an arc to it that's, you know, made a lot of sense for the musical style, and then it was just very, like, cathartic and honest and, like, from that, like, we've gotten. I've been offered probably somewhere between 60 to 80 shows since July. Wow. Which is a lot. And we have. John Ryder [00:47:29]: I can't announce it, but we do have a tour coming up, and I have to figure that part out with the drummer, but I can't officially announce it, but you'll see. Okay, but we. Yeah, we. I've had, you know, I've had to turn down more shows than I've accepted by at least five fold, which is crazy. And only. Only because if it were up to me, I'd be playing every single one of them. But when you're in a band, you got to go with what works for people's schedules, you know, and, you know, but, yeah, we've. Yeah, somewhere between 60 to 80 shows over the course of July, August, and, like, five months, six months. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:48:11]: That's impressive for. For any band. Like, that's. John Ryder [00:48:16]: It's a lot. It was a lot. Yeah, I've had to. It sucks, man. I've had to say, like, just in December alone, probably twelve shows I had to say no to. And I'm very blessed that, like, people think of us and want to have us on a show regardless of how good or bad the performance might be on the last show, you know, because we run a lot of backing tracks and we don't have any monitor system, so we are at. For a while, we were at the mercy of whatever sound engineer was working that bar. And, you know, it's always shown up to bars and venues with no monitors on stage, and I'm like, how the fuck do I hear my backing track? You know? And so I actually went and bought, like, I guess it's, like, 415 inch speakers with tweeters and 312 inch speakers. John Ryder [00:49:14]: And then we use the 15 as monitors. So, like, I just kind of got to the point where I'm like, I can't afford to throw a couple thousand dollars at an in ear rack. But, you know, I've got these really nice, professional, quality pa speakers I could bring with me and use those as monitors. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:49:33]: Yeah. You know, fill in the mix, at least so you know where you are. Yep, yep. John Ryder [00:49:37]: And so, yeah, it's. Yeah, anywhere from no monitors to. We had one venue give us one monitor, and I was like, you know, it just. Performances can vary a lot and. Oh, yeah, you know, I hate it. I hate it because I want to go out there and I want people to be like, wow. Like, they're really polished and they sound amazing, but I'm not willing to wait. Like, you know, like, you see, like you said earlier in the conversation, some people want to wait for the very first experience of when you hear that one song that it's perfect. John Ryder [00:50:11]: And then you didn't have that opportunity to grow because you waited all that time. So I don't want to wait till I have money to buy anything rack. I'd rather go make monitors work and grow, continue to grow as much as I can, you know? Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:50:26]: Yeah. So there's also no guarantee that playing within years is a whole different skill and things, too, of, like, there's no guarantee that it's just going to fix everything for you either. I get to, like, I think it's so cool that you're doing stuff like that because it, you know, it reminds me of, while I'm not. Not an ancient old geezer by any stretch of the imagination, but, like, the. Just the reminders. I'm laughing and smiling because I'm remembering all of those same struggles that you're talking about. In the first band that I really played in, we were doing something very different than everybody else because we had. This is 2004, we had backing tracks. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:51:09]: We had no amps. We were running everything direct through line six pods. So as a bass, we had no drummer because everything was programmed. So as a singer, a guitar player and a bass player, it was cool because we could load everything up and we could tour in a Buick and we didn't have to have a big van. We didn't have to, like, we could do things like have a hotel room because we weren't paying out so much in gas, but showing up to shows and they're like, well, this one speaker, this is the entire PA. You're like, what? Like, those frustrations I remember those very, very, very vividly of what you're talking about and how creative you get with a solution. Like you talked about of bringing along your own monitors to be able to hear these things. And I think that's so cool that you're continually building this way to start and keep going rather than wait for the perfect moment, because that's ultimately where all the magic happens anyways. John Ryder [00:52:14]: Yeah. Yeah. A lot of growth in those imperfect moments. It's like, I don't know, like I. So I got really heavy. We'll talk about, like, strong and stuff, but, you know, I've been like 170, like most of my life up until I would say two and a half years ago. Like, I've gained like 50, 60 pounds and. But the struggle is like going and running 30 minutes on a treadmill. John Ryder [00:52:47]: And, I mean, you're not where you want to be. You're not at the performance that you want to be at or that you're accustomed to, but that 30 minutes of, honestly, for me, it's like the first twelve minutes are like, hell, I fucking hate it. And then the rest of it's smooth sailing, you know? You know, that's, that's a big part of the process of anything, really, which is if you want to, you want to get there, you put in the work, you know? Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:53:18]: Well, it's the. We've talked about this on the podcast many times of, like, it's very easy for us to distill, like, our lives down to, like, checkboxes and, like, accomplishments and things. And reality is that all of the magic and all of the memories come from the time that you're spending doing the work, being on the journey versus all of the big achievements. Because how long does that big achievement, let's say you're on it, you headline a big show. It's like the good feels from that are very small. It's like you get the time doing it and a little bit of the time afterwards, but then it's on to the next one. Onto the next one, because if you just stop there, you're not going to get that next show. And so it's in that continual process of improvement, that continual tweaking, that continual growth that we find all the magic which is in the journey itself. John Ryder [00:54:20]: Yeah, 100%. I did want to say this, though, is again, the weird and strong, having lived other places and I've spent time in Texas and New York and then lived in LA for a long time. And, man, the midwest is a really weird place. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:54:39]: Yeah. John Ryder [00:54:39]: It is not in a negative way, but it's full of a lot of people underground. Like, there's a lot of talented people here. There just need, like, just need to be shown, you know, how to, like, bring that talent out, you know? And I think that's one thing I've appreciated, especially in the last couple of years, which is, like, holy shit. Like, there's a lot of. There's a lot I didn't see here before. And so that's been really, really beautiful. And, you know, every place is kind of weird, but I think the midwest, I mean, when we put that grand fork show, there was a. It was a tater tot dish. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:55:25]: It was a wild rice soup. John Ryder [00:55:27]: Yeah. Wild rice soup. Yeah. That's just. Dude, I've never played a show where they had food like that. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:55:33]: Yeah. Yeah. John Ryder [00:55:34]: I mean. I mean, we did put the 4 July where they had the steak, but, like. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:55:39]: But just to, like, show up and be like, oh, hey there, by the way, there's this nice home cooked meal just waiting in the kitchen for you. John Ryder [00:55:45]: Yeah, that's a beautiful thing. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:55:46]: Yeah. I think I've talked about this on another episode. I've talked about this for years of, like, there's definitely something about northern climates of, like, you know, feeling like you're locked up for six months out of the year to avoid the outside and avoid the weather. That, like, that's where, like, people become so talented. I mean, is it any wonder that, like, Bob Dylan and Prince come from Minnesota? Like, right. You know, they just had time to spend just working on the music? Because if you went outside in February, it's, like, could be a death sentence if you're not prepared. Just like, I'll just stay. I'll just stay inside and play guitar. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:56:29]: Just stay inside and write some songs. Just make that happen. John Ryder [00:56:33]: Yeah, I. Have you seen the shining? Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:56:38]: Yes. John Ryder [00:56:39]: Okay. So my goal in life is to have enough money for music that I can sustain from it. But in the winter months, I mean, granted, unless I have a lot of money and it goes someplace warm in the winter months to. To kind of lock myself up, like, in the shining. Like, yeah, I was there. Kind of secluded from everybody in his own thoughts and going mad. I used to. I used to be an RA at Minnesota State University, and they would pay, you know, resident assistants to stay over Christmas break, and there's, like, nobody on campus. John Ryder [00:57:21]: Yeah, maybe. Maybe a dozen kids, and. But you still had to work the desk and, like, and then you still had to patrol all of the residential buildings and walk and, you know, every once in a while you'll see someone, but like, typically all the lights are out and there's something exciting and like tingling about that feeling of just like almost like post apocalyptic nothingness that you can kind of really be in your own thoughts in a different kind of way. You know what I mean? Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:57:57]: Because you're in your same environment. Yeah, yeah. But it's kind of spooky that way. I loved that. It used to be. It's not like this anymore for sure. Like during big holidays, especially during the summer, downtown Fargo, Moorhead, it would be a ghost town. So like 4 July, like there'd be like two bars open and like nobody there. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:58:20]: Like, those were my favorite. Those were my favorite because it's like even if it was a Saturday night, it would be just a ghost town. And it was interesting to just be able to see that from that lens versus, oh, it's just another Saturday and it's packed full of college kids and they're doing their thing. It's just fun to have that pattern interrupt like you're talking about. John Ryder [00:58:42]: Yeah. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:58:44]: Awesome, man. As we're coming up on our time together, anything, any final thoughts or any pieces of wisdom that you'd like to share with the weird and strong audience? John Ryder [00:58:56]: I'm thinking about that for a sec. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:58:58]: Yeah. John Ryder [00:59:01]: I would say, honestly, just keep grinding and be willing to step outside your box. You know what I mean? I think that that's really important. You know, the more tools you have, the less, you know, like if you want to go hiking, which is, you know, one, you know, like in the mountains in the winter with just like one tool, you bring several. You bring a shovel, you bring, you know, snowshoes, you bring a tent, you bring stuff to light a fire, stuff in case there was emergency flares, like, you know, if you really want to succeed, you know, I'm using this reference because I'm thinking about, it's December and like every December I think about we did 10,000ft in Yosemite. So we like slept on the side of the mountain, which is beautiful in the winter. And I've been thinking about that every, we did it over Christmas, like, I don't know, seven years ago, eight years ago. But, you know, you wouldn't do that journey with just one tool. You would learn multiple tools and, you know, and know how to use them and, you know, I think that, you know, that's, I think in today's climate, that's kind of what you got to do. John Ryder [01:00:24]: And, you know, there's technology that's there and, you know, that's a guide for how to use those tools. Aside from that, check out ghost mid cellophane. Everything except for Spotify at the moment is that we don't have Spotify, which is ironic with everything going on. And then feel free to check out empires of delirium. And I do have a production company called Skeleton Structure Productions that I do do photography and video and stuff like that. Through stuff. Jeremy Gruensteiner [01:00:58]: Awesome. Yeah, we'll have a link to all of that in the show notes for anybody who wants to check those things out, which I would highly recommend. So as we wrap up, thanks, John, so much for jumping on the podcast with me. It's always a pleasure getting to talk to you and I'm so grateful for you willing to jump on and have this conversation. And I'm just grateful for you being you because you are a super rad dude. John Ryder [01:01:24]: Honestly, man, I appreciate you a lot. Cause, like, I feel like you're a very inspiring person to be around. Jeremy Gruensteiner [01:01:30]: Thank you. John Ryder [01:01:31]: And you're doing what's very authentic to who you are. And, you know, I think that we need more people like that. So. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. Jeremy Gruensteiner [01:01:43]: Yeah, awesome. And thank you all for listening to this episode. We appreciate you coming all the way to the end. And as always, folks, stay strong and most importantly, stay weird.