The Art of Manliness - #97： Physically Cultured With Bert Sorin

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast so if you played

00:00:20.440 college sports or high school sports or if you're a crossfitter or you lift weights on a regular

00:00:25.080 basis you might have seen sorenex equipment at your gym besides the power racks bars and weight

00:00:31.940 lifting plates they also make a whole slew of functional fitness apparatuses like prowlers 0.91

00:00:37.300 landmines grip training devices today on the podcast we have the ceo of sorenex bert soren

00:00:45.140 he's a big giant man with a great grizzly beard and today we're going to talk about the mission

00:00:50.720 of sorenex and helping people become physically cultured and what exactly that means we're going

00:00:56.440 to talk about why a man should be strong what fitness benchmarks every man should try to strive

00:01:01.820 for and i'll talk about grip training sorenex has played a big role in bringing back modern grip

00:01:07.180 training and we'll discuss why that's so important to your overall physical strength and what you can

00:01:11.600 do to improve your grip strength and much more great podcasts practical information you can use

00:01:17.620 right away in the gym tomorrow let's do this

00:01:20.420 bert soren welcome to the show brett thanks for having me all right so you're uh the ceo right

00:01:29.800 of sorenex equipment yes all right uh my father started uh 34 years ago i grew up in it and now i'm

00:01:38.560 running the ship yeah can you tell us like i mean i thought it was kind of interesting how your dad

00:01:41.980 started it uh because it's one of those american dream job like you know the american dream exemplified

00:01:49.320 uh so what's the what's the background on this okay uh 19 and in the 70s uh my father was a weight

00:01:57.080 lifter and a shot putter in college and um it was always in the power production sports and um really

00:02:04.280 loved it he grew up going to york barbell as a kid and actually jumped on a on a train when he was 12

00:02:10.320 over 13 years old to go to the old york picnics with john grimmick and some old athletes like that

00:02:15.060 uh so that's kind of where all of this started uh as a young man that that always wanted to live the

00:02:22.040 strenuous life himself um so he when he was a kid he didn't read very well so his dad gave him

00:02:27.880 uh all the outdoor life magazines and strength magazines and that that allowed him to read more

00:02:32.920 and more um and uh that that's kind of what infused that that love into him but fast forward a little

00:02:40.500 bit uh he was a coach uh for for athletes and physical education teacher and and um started

00:02:47.720 building playgrounds and then started building weightlifting equipment because there was nothing

00:02:52.240 else out there that lived up to his standards of what he felt was heavy duty and adjustable and

00:02:58.040 safe enough so he's always been kind of da vinci of the uh of weightlifting equipment so built our own

00:03:04.300 stuff out of the garage and uh literally it was uh one of those crazy things where he would he would

00:03:10.260 coach um coach all day then he would run a weightlifting class for the kids in the evening

00:03:15.780 uh to get more more kids fit and then he would take his 1974 land cruiser across town and strap pieces

00:03:23.020 of steel on top haul butt back home and uh cut stuff in our garage by hand and just built it up

00:03:30.420 and where he would sell one bench or one squat rack and take the money that he made and go down to

00:03:34.740 man tool here in our um here in our town and buy one more tool and then just literally built the

00:03:40.740 business from the ground up in the garage and until the point where it got big enough where he decided

00:03:45.320 to quit teaching and go at it make make the big jump and go at it full full time and see if you can make

00:03:51.140 it work that's awesome i mean it's crazy that he was teaching weightlifting back in the 70s because

00:03:56.940 it i mean i know there's there was like a physical culture movement in america but it didn't seem like

00:04:02.880 you know weightlifting was all that big of a deal back then as it is today oh no it was it was i

00:04:10.020 wouldn't say taboo it was just very everyone was very uneducated about it uh him coming from the northeast

00:04:16.200 where olympic weightlifting was a bigger uh piece uh he came down here to south carolina like i said

00:04:23.080 on that scholarship and when he came down here no one everyone still had the the idea of being muscle

00:04:29.640 bound and everything like that so he built the first weight room at the university of south carolina

00:04:34.540 as a freshman here uh he insisted that he could get he needed to lift weight so he drove back up to

00:04:40.200 new jersey and picked up his barbell and came back down and and started the first weightlifting but then

00:04:46.760 uh when he had his kindergartners and even fifth graders and all these all these kids he had them

00:04:52.700 um lifting weights i have i have pictures of uh kindergartners in 1974 and at 1975 doing full snatches

00:05:00.500 with wooden dowels and um and then some clipping from the paper and he was saying kids need to know

00:05:07.200 these these movements and triple extension and be able to jump and run and everything like that

00:05:11.820 some things that you're kind of seeing in vogue now uh it's kind of funny it's almost 40 years ago he

00:05:17.480 was pushing that very hard yeah it's crazy that you would like even just like 10 or 15 years ago the

00:05:23.920 idea of kids lifting weights would be like no don't do that that's they'll stunt their growth 0.96

00:05:28.160 right right and everyone you know everyone told me that in the mid 80s um because we kind of had a

00:05:35.080 thing uh what i was taught early on uh kind of was joking but not so joking that you weren't you

00:05:41.140 weren't really a soreman until you could deadlift double body weight um and i think the first time

00:05:46.160 i did that i was maybe in second or third grade and i remember going to school the next day and it

00:05:52.120 happened to be you know what's the greatest moment of your life and i told him how i finally deadlifted

00:05:56.840 112 pounds which if you think about i was 56 pounds which is hilarious that at 56 pounds i thought the

00:06:03.540 coolest thing ever was deadlifting double body weight um and so but can people say oh you're

00:06:09.820 gonna stunt your growth and i turned out to be six three 250 pounds so it worked out it worked out

00:06:15.700 all right well speaking of maybe i would have been nine feet tall who knows who knows who knows well

00:06:20.560 speaking of deadlifting i thought this was kind of interesting fact i uh heard from the guys at

00:06:24.000 atomic athlete is that your dad still i mean how old is your dad just for uh he turned 64 in june

00:06:31.700 all right 64 in june so he turned yeah he'll be 65 okay but he has a birthday tradition

00:06:38.440 that he does every year still what is that uh he deadlifts 500 pounds that's crazy and um

00:06:45.180 and he deadlifted a lot for many many years and and a little over 700 during his competition years

00:06:51.760 but um a couple years back we asked him i said how long have you been deadlifting over five he said

00:06:58.960 i usually do it about every you know i can always do it every year because i've been doing it since i

00:07:02.680 was 15 and so we started thinking i said dang you know let's see if you can make it to 65 and 50

00:07:09.440 straight years of deadlifting 500 pounds or more so he made it last year at his birthday and uh and try

00:07:16.200 actually tried for a second wrap but it wasn't wasn't quite there but uh he kind of laughed at me he's

00:07:22.220 like man i'm tired of this you got one more year and i'll let you off let you off the hook well that that

00:07:27.060 brings up an interesting question i know some of our listeners are older right middle age getting

00:07:31.160 in their 50s i mean what and there's this common there's this idea there as you get older you're

00:07:36.420 going to get weaker um and your dad has obviously not done that i mean what what has he done

00:07:43.200 to maintain his strength uh even into his 60s it's consistency it's consistency and it's doing the

00:07:52.360 big movements um you know a lot of folks they'll go in especially as they get older they'll go over

00:07:57.480 to the little machines and they'll do little tricep kickbacks all this other stuff but dad has

00:08:03.460 squatted benched deadlifted and some of the other big exercises three to four times a week for 50 years

00:08:11.340 um he's and i just see that and i realize his bone density is still very high uh and that's where a lot

00:08:19.160 of folks they they lose um because obviously they're your testosterone is going down and so

00:08:23.840 your your muscle quality and density goes down but it really you exacerbate that problem when you go

00:08:30.560 away from the muscle and structure building exercises like deadlifts squats presses standing presses

00:08:36.760 things like that um i i pretty much called bs on anyone who says you know i'm like 45 now i can't be

00:08:43.800 strong i literally remember dad front squatting a lifetime best at 49 years old wow and so and he'll

00:08:53.080 tell you he you know he was his strongest probably in his mid to late 40s and then it started it started

00:08:59.240 going down pretty pretty steep at 55 although his you know the numbers are still still good but you know

00:09:06.060 you can't outrun father time yeah uh but but staying with the big exercises and you maybe you don't do

00:09:14.220 what all the little 20 year olds are doing but staying with the deadlifts the squats and things 0.79

00:09:18.540 like that are obviously that that's the key to it and and doing it as much as you possibly can not just

00:09:25.340 uh not only doing if you could go heavy do it do it do it to whatever level i mean in the

00:09:32.080 in the confederate time you know in the old confederate days of the you know early portions

00:09:37.480 of our of our country uh they had a lift they called it the health lift and really all it was

00:09:42.820 is a deadlift lockout from the mid thigh and the idea was you have a a random amount of weight on

00:09:49.740 there some you know three four five hundred pounds six hundred pounds whatever it may be

00:09:53.540 and you'd walk up to the bar from a mid thigh and you just pick it up a few times every day

00:09:58.920 no specific rep schemes or sets or anything like that but the idea was if you pick that up every

00:10:05.300 day it was it would keep you healthy and then really if you think about it it's a brilliant idea

00:10:09.740 you're going to work your grip you're going to work your forearms your upper shoulder girdle for

00:10:14.780 stability your erectors in your spine your core will stay strong your legs your hips your back

00:10:19.720 those are all the things that were needed in that society to be manly or to be strong so it's kind of

00:10:26.360 interesting that the deadlift was was once called the health lift the health lift i like that that's

00:10:30.700 i never knew that that's really cool okay so uh i your guys's motto over at sorenx is physically

00:10:36.520 cultured uh what does it mean uh to be physically cultured and how do you stride to be physically

00:10:43.100 cultured you don't really hear that word physical culture anymore right right well that was a bit of

00:10:48.640 homage back to uh to the days of i don't really really know how to put good words to it it's really

00:10:56.120 a lot of what i'm seeing in your web in your website and in your writings uh cultured as a man

00:11:03.200 but physically cultured we'll take it that one step a little bit further um tr used to talk about the

00:11:10.960 strenuous life uh to to be uh physically strong to be physically uh plus the stamina or at least worked

00:11:18.820 into having stamina uh flexible being able to move being a not not being uh a bodybuilder of sorts or

00:11:27.040 or a greek god kind of thing but it's just being able to use that tool of your body um to to do

00:11:36.080 whatever your brain can tell it do but the next part about cultured is to know what where the

00:11:42.100 exercises came from to know why you do them to know what the muscles do to know how to recover them

00:11:47.760 and stimulate them so just to be uh an athlete or or just to do a physical task only is one portion

00:11:56.300 of it but to be cultured in that is to live in that realm uh that that honors the strong honors

00:12:04.240 the ones in the past but you're still always pushing forward to canoe heights that's that's

00:12:09.280 what we feel being physically cultured means that's awesome that's awesome well you speaking of you

00:12:14.140 kind of mentioned teddy roosevelt and the strenuous life and being strong and manly i mean why do you

00:12:19.000 think it's important for a man to be strong even if he's not an athlete even if he's not law enforcement

00:12:24.780 or military why should he be strong well um a few reasons uh if a man is gonna decide to

00:12:34.220 have a girlfriend or wife or kids most likely he's going to be the strongest or or if it if the

00:12:41.760 crap hits the fan the the light is going to turn to him to be the one who gets them out of it 0.81

00:12:47.560 uh whether that's pushing your car out of a ditch whether that's moving the uh um moving the washer 1.00

00:12:54.300 and dryer upstairs in your house whether that's fighting your way out of a bad situation defending

00:12:59.720 your life carrying your kids out of a burning house blah blah blah all of those things that

00:13:04.200 let's be honest they're going to look to the man to do that um and i really have a hard time

00:13:11.960 feeling that i would be ill prepared to do such tasks when called upon uh it's more of a service

00:13:18.380 mindset it's not of uh i'm so great because i'm strong um i can't be everything i can't reach my

00:13:26.980 potential to be a father a husband uh a business leader if i'm if i don't have physical and mental

00:13:33.720 strength i i will let i will eventually let someone down and uh that just doesn't fit well and i think

00:13:41.160 if i have the ability and the testosterone and the the frame that the lord has given me to to build that

00:13:47.700 and that you get to the highest potential i can i think that uh that being strong is something you're

00:13:53.920 almost obligated to do yeah otherwise otherwise your load falls on someone else's shoulders

00:13:59.280 i like that yeah teddy roosevelt talked about uh you need to be able to carry your own pack

00:14:04.300 right as a man yeah uh just yeah carry your burden yeah do your part because otherwise it's going to

00:14:11.860 it has to go to someone else it has to be defrayed to someone else um i i mean i i just i can't

00:14:18.700 i couldn't imagine not being able to uh say if my wife fell or something me not be able to get her

00:14:26.020 into safety or my kids or whatever it may be that that would uh it just doesn't doesn't make sense

00:14:33.060 especially if i have the opportunity to to be able to do that yeah well on that same topic are there

00:14:39.060 you know benchmarks strength benchmarks that you think every man should strive for

00:14:43.840 i think probably the simplest um from a judgeability as well as trainability would be that

00:14:53.880 two times body weight deadlift um it's something that i think it's not your average strength level

00:15:00.900 uh you know many people won't be able to quite get there i think if you train long and hard enough

00:15:06.760 and you train seriously i think it could be attained by most uh but you're not going to do it uh casual

00:15:13.700 um but by doing i i i have yet to find someone who could deadlift double body weight that wasn't

00:15:20.600 strong everywhere it wasn't strong across the board that if i knew that we had to carry lumber or climb

00:15:28.660 a tree or chop an axe use an axe to chop wood or all the other crazy things we get ourselves into i've

00:15:36.600 rarely found someone that has that level of strength that really isn't good uh at just about everything

00:15:43.200 um because that's either meaning you have to have a high level of strength well it's really a high

00:15:50.840 level of strength as comparison to body weight which is which is a great balance right yeah all right or

00:15:57.240 if you weigh 400 pounds and you have to be super super strong that's rare so you know sore necks is

00:16:03.960 is known for their just their their awesome squat racks benches i mean it's just like high quality stuff

00:16:08.700 college training facilities across the country use them but are there any other pieces of equipment

00:16:13.360 that are unique that have come out of your all's factories sure uh sure well they're probably the

00:16:20.400 most seen that people may or may not ever know that we came up with one is called landmine

00:16:26.040 and it's a universal joint with somewhat of a pipe on there you shove a bar into it

00:16:31.400 and you do a ton of different multi uh planar modalities different movements um a lot of

00:16:39.580 companies make them now a lot of kind of kind of hacked off the idea and it's a great and the reason

00:16:44.960 why is it's a great piece and the funny part about it was it was never even intended to be a product

00:16:50.140 i i built it myself with the help of my dad's inventive mind back in 1999 as a way to help my

00:16:58.660 hammer throw training when i was training for the 2000 olympic trials i needed something

00:17:02.880 that would bridge the gap between a really good squat and clean and bridge the gap into a rotary 0.99

00:17:10.320 torso motion that the hammer throw was was needing so the landmine is probably our most favorite

00:17:16.380 the second would be what you would consider a crossfit rig that's a multiple uprights connected in

00:17:22.880 a thousand different configurations that was also another invention of ours uh for the

00:17:28.640 crossfit community uh as well as other tactical communities and even colleges that just uh just

00:17:34.040 solve problems and that's really what we're about sorenx we're you know our mission statement is to

00:17:38.500 physically culture the world through innovative training solution and that solution might be a

00:17:43.020 piece of equipment or it might be uh an application or an idea yeah and besides that i've also read that

00:17:49.800 you guys played a kind of a big role in modern grip training um right what's why the focus on grip

00:17:56.640 training well um part of being physically cultured like i said is is looking back into history and

00:18:05.400 seeing the great ones that came before you and and if they kept really good records at least you could

00:18:10.380 test your mettle against some of the greatest of all time and in the mid 80s early to mid 80s my dad

00:18:16.260 um was reading a lot about herman gorner who was uh a german strong man in the 20s and 30s and on he died in

00:18:24.360 the 50s but he was uh uh very stout strong strong german fella that uh had a was a really really good

00:18:32.360 deadlifter but had an amazingly strong grip i believe still to this day he holds the world record

00:18:37.360 at a little over 700 pounds for one one handed deadlift at a body weight of about 265 which is just

00:18:43.780 absolutely shocking um so dad got a list of gorner's achievements and a lot of them included thick

00:18:52.480 bars and uh a lot of different um hand positioning on bars and so dad tried to replicate some of these

00:19:01.300 feats and just see how strong gorner was and if he could beat him on some of these things

00:19:05.200 and so in in doing that dad started lifting anvils by the horn and he invented the what they call the

00:19:12.400 blob which is a half of a york dumbbell uh old convex head york dumbbell gripping a 50 pounder

00:19:18.640 uh gripping it uh with a wide pinch grip and really started playing with uh what are things

00:19:25.340 that aren't necessarily very heavy but the shape of them makes them very difficult and uh he went on

00:19:30.700 about a 10 year quest of just really understanding how the forearms and hands work and how do you make

00:19:36.700 them really really strong uh and became the first person ever to close the number three captain crush

00:19:42.820 gripper that was thought to be unclosable by a human and uh kind of cemented his name as the father of

00:19:51.020 modern grip training um and so as that happened more and more folks wanted to do grip training and

00:19:57.480 and uh we helped him out anytime we could awesome so are there any exercises or pieces of equipment

00:20:02.900 that uh a guy who's listening to this podcast can start doing or using today to improve his grip

00:20:08.300 sure sure uh two easy ones uh would be uh one would be a plate pinch where you take your olympic lifting

00:20:16.640 or your olympic plates you could do uh tens you could do 25s 45s whatever if you could get the old style

00:20:23.400 that has the smooth backs to them and you'll put them face to face where the outsides of the plate

00:20:28.400 are smooth and you can you set them vertically um and then you smash them together and you you

00:20:35.280 basically just take their hand you thumb on one side your fourth your four fingers on the other and

00:20:40.240 you pinch them together and try to deadlift them up um world class it would be 245 pound plates 235s

00:20:48.760 would be someone of a very strong athlete 225s most pretty strong guys could do uh and then

00:20:55.800 obviously you go in your tens and those are pretty easy then you could start doing multiple tens and

00:20:59.940 i've seen i've seen dad do six uh 10 pound plates which it's crazy because now it's so wide just

00:21:06.900 literally the tip of his uh his uh thumb and then and middle finger were wrapped around the edges but

00:21:12.800 those are some things that without a lot of money you could test your grip in different ways and

00:21:17.480 really make your grip very very strong and i'm sure you've heard and probably written about uh

00:21:23.480 the mark of a strong man is or his hands yeah yeah okay great so uh plate pinches i've done those

00:21:30.560 before this would be great and another one one one other quick one are uh you could take your end of

00:21:36.440 your olympic barbell which is two inches in diameter load plates and do uh do kind of landmine deadlifts

00:21:42.820 with that because now it's going to be a thicker bar on your hands and open your hand up more

00:21:47.120 decrease the mechanical advantage that your fingers already have and kind of build that talon-like grip

00:21:52.480 those are things that you could do in your garage or basement or just about any gym out there very

00:21:57.220 cool um so before we started the podcast you and i were talking about your history you um were actually

00:22:03.820 a highland games guy uh for a while um for our listeners aren't familiar can you talk about like what

00:22:10.100 highland games are and uh what exactly they entail the highland games are uh an old scottish event uh

00:22:18.700 that that goes way back to the days where they were being ruled and they were actually um it was

00:22:25.100 illegal for them to uh to exercise or to have weapons back in the day so because they didn't want an

00:22:32.140 uprising so what they would do they would have these contests these games of sorts and that would

00:22:38.680 they weren't allowed to do military training i'm sorry they were allowed to exercise but they

00:22:43.280 weren't allowed to military train so they they came up with these these basically clandestine ways to

00:22:49.500 train for strength and stamina by throwing trees throwing rocks throwing hammers and the back in those

00:22:58.320 days they're called it was a scottish hammer but it was basically a spherical head sledgehammer all

00:23:03.320 things that they have in their agrarian society they would throw uh 56 and 28 pound weights that

00:23:09.360 they would use on their scales when they're weighing out different uh crops and things like that and

00:23:15.280 that was the way that they trained to get strong um and uh in case that was their way of protecting

00:23:22.740 their homeland if the raiders or their own government came in they wanted to be strong enough to uh to

00:23:28.240 defend themselves and so hundreds and hundreds of years later those those traditions have kept up in the

00:23:35.440 highland games and um there's probably 50 or 60 games around the country every year one of the biggest

00:23:42.360 being in san francisco is called the pleasant and highland games i think this is the 150th year of the

00:23:48.200 games and it's the longest running athletic event uh that has humans as the athletes besides the

00:23:55.080 kentucky derby um that has has been going consistently since through all the world wars and

00:24:02.400 everything going has never been canceled and i've had the opportunity to compete there a few times

00:24:07.460 and uh it's an awesome awesome event in a few days and probably 30 40 000 people show up and watch a bunch

00:24:14.660 of big strong men and women in kilts uh throw trees and rocks and hammers and weights and and yell and scream

00:24:22.600 and then go drink some beer basically the most fun thing ever isn't there an event where you like a

00:24:27.320 pitchfork and like you like hoist over a yeah yeah that's called a sheath yeah it's a um it's a bag

00:24:34.880 it's a burlap sack filled with chopped rope and it's supposed to kind of be like a bale of hay

00:24:41.180 obviously they would stick the bale of hay back in the day and as they flip the hay up on the the um

00:24:48.660 pile the pile would get higher and higher and higher so obviously you had to throw it higher

00:24:54.200 and higher to get your bale of hay to stick on there and back in the old society only the strongest

00:25:00.220 and best man could work the longest that day because after a while the pile got too high for

00:25:05.440 the lesser men to keep going that's cool yeah i've always wanted to do that they have one here in

00:25:10.760 tulsa haven't haven't been able to do it yet one day it's going to happen you ought to it's it uh

00:25:17.480 and just realize you gotta block out your calendar after that because you'll probably start throwing

00:25:21.900 and you'll probably kill a lot of time yeah i know i did all right so bern i uh went to twitter and i

00:25:29.680 asked for some questions i know there are we have some followers who are fans of your all's products

00:25:34.740 um and here's a few one i got was um when's the best time to work out morning evening or does it really

00:25:42.340 matter right well there's there's anecdotal evidence and there's evidence that uh that is

00:25:50.740 scientific and and i'll i'll first give the scientific evidence from from what i i've read a

00:25:56.380 number of times and uh talked to some athletes and they feel that it's most of the strength coaches i

00:26:03.640 speak with they'll try to train about 10 o'clock in the morning and the reason for that is well

00:26:09.780 depending on their on their sleep schedule um your your testosterone as a man is the highest in

00:26:16.500 the morning as you wake up and so you're trying to feed off of that testosterone and that growth

00:26:23.340 hormone spike early on so you want to train as early as you can during the day but you have to couple

00:26:29.480 that with your your core body temperature and your circulation and your nervous system firing which

00:26:34.880 rarely is ever early in the day as we all know so they feel if you get about three hours of awake

00:26:41.420 time for your body to start heating up and your joints to lubricate that you're basically crossing

00:26:48.440 your highest testosterone and growth hormone with the first time your body is prepared from a

00:26:54.500 temperature and circulatory standpoint uh and you you have yet to burn up a lot of your energy

00:27:00.300 throughout the day your nervous system and uh and glycogen so i know a lot of athletes who will

00:27:06.360 train anywhere between that 9 and 11 period of time makes it kind of nice you get trained you get right

00:27:12.080 off you go right into lunch refuel the system so best case scenario that's probably it uh that being

00:27:19.100 said i have lifted probably 95 of my life at five o'clock p.m and that's more of an anecdotal and

00:27:27.360 cultural thing around here um probably because of my days in college we threw the hammer from two 0.95

00:27:34.020 o'clock till five o'clock or javelin or shot put whatever we were throwing and then we went right

00:27:38.780 to the weight room which tended to be about five o'clock we'd live till seven and then we'd go eat

00:27:43.380 uh when i when i started working full-time we'd work our our full day knock off at five and everyone

00:27:49.160 meet the gym and go at it so i say whichever one works better for you there's the scientific

00:27:55.700 approach and then there's the hey whatever works for you approach i wouldn't train too late though

00:28:00.860 because i think that uh your your nervous system will get in and too much sympathetic there's the

00:28:06.180 fight or flight uh while you're training and it's going to be hard to to downshift into

00:28:11.260 parasympathetic which is going to allow you to sleep uh well and relax and recover and recovery as

00:28:16.980 we all know is the name of the main name of the game when it comes to um strength games yeah i'm

00:28:24.140 learning that i for a while there i was like really over training and wasn't making any progress

00:28:28.620 and now i'm you know it's like working out every day now i'm just three times a week and it's my

00:28:34.840 gains have gotten better right right exactly he who recovers most and fastest wins yeah that is that

00:28:42.700 is the key um that is the key to it all and actually one of my mentors jeff nichols uh who runs

00:28:48.420 virginia high performance um he's been mentoring me on even that next stage of recovery uh and jeff

00:28:55.580 happened to be um not only a deployed and active member of seal team six but was also in charge of

00:29:03.300 a lot of the recovery both mental uh and physical at the teams uh as well as a lot of their exercise

00:29:10.100 pieces so um it's been a blessing to know and to become friends with him to really learn how how

00:29:17.920 the body and the mind works together and different protocols go through to relax the body to achieve

00:29:23.700 maximal recovery um so i want to look him up he's uh way smarter than i am with that awesome um another

00:29:31.480 question we had was someone who had a small space available for uh like a home gym what are like

00:29:38.700 the very basic pieces of equipment you think they should have uh if the guy wants to start like a

00:29:43.800 really small garage gym or even a gym in their little place in their apartment sure absolutely

00:29:50.200 um i'll go from a bang for the buck standpoint uh it's really hard to get around if you really want

00:29:58.160 to get strong and to have some real things happen uh a barbell uh now if you want to lose some weight

00:30:04.180 and become more active and you literally have like zero space get a few kettlebells you could

00:30:09.240 put them under your bed hopefully you don't because you'll probably forget to ever use them

00:30:13.060 uh or they take a very very little space and you can swing a kettlebell just about anywhere and they

00:30:20.440 take a very little space and you could get a lot of stuff done i actually knew a girl that lost 82

00:30:25.000 pounds just by swinging kettlebells no no other cardio no other exercise it was after she had her kids

00:30:31.260 and she put a kettlebell beside her couch and she said anytime the commercials would come on i would

00:30:37.220 just swing the kettlebell through the commercial bricks wow simple um it was pretty pretty wild how

00:30:43.260 well it worked now going back to if i wanted to become brutally strong and go and go towards that

00:30:48.900 goal of a man of lifting double body weight you're going to want a good olympic lifting bar

00:30:54.540 and uh some sort of plates bumper plates are generally um pretty popular because they don't

00:31:01.140 ding up your floor they're a little bit quieter uh so i would say a 300 pound set of bumper plates

00:31:07.080 and a barbell would be my start from that you could get really really strong you'd get 85 percent as

00:31:13.100 strong as you're probably ever going to get um without some without sport specificity thrown in there

00:31:18.940 uh that would be a start the next thing i would get would be some sort of squat rack

00:31:23.260 with a pull-up bar option um because now you could do suspended uh you know relative bodies

00:31:29.760 body weight things like pull-ups uh you could use your prx straps things like that and it's you have

00:31:35.600 an anchor point uh my exact home gym that's pretty much what was in there uh in my old house i didn't

00:31:44.460 have a lot of space in the garage i literally had a rack that took up four feet wide eight feet tall

00:31:50.980 two feet deep and a barbell and i had a thick bar as well and that was that was what uh what i trained

00:31:57.900 on when i couldn't get to the gym and i stayed relatively strong and in shape with very very

00:32:02.780 little space and i would laugh that my entire gym took up eight square feet okay that's not very much

00:32:08.700 space yeah you get it done awesome uh so we had another uh art of manliness reader ask i think

00:32:16.420 he's wanting to start a gym and he's asking what's the realistic cost of equipment to start a gym that

00:32:21.880 supports 20 people oh that's a hard one that's kind of like saying uh how much does a car cost yes

00:32:31.080 um you know it really depends on what what the uh the outcome of training that you're looking for

00:32:39.540 for those 20 people how are they training together at the exact same time are they circuiting

00:32:44.260 i'd hate to even try to answer that yeah um you know five grand ten grand i really don't know it

00:32:54.020 really depends on their their needs their specific needs for that and if it's if you're saying 20 people

00:32:59.520 you're probably thinking of something like a crossfit setup i would guess you know not to use the term

00:33:04.760 crossfit like that's the only thing but at least the listeners will know kind of the idea uh from

00:33:10.840 there you're you're going to need i would say eight to ten barbells kettlebells bumpers some sort of

00:33:16.220 ragging or rigging system um and you're probably are looking in the 10 grand area to to get that

00:33:22.800 you know squared away bare bones yeah that's not that's actually not too bad if you're like

00:33:29.380 trying to start like a small gym small business sure you you could get you could get after i mean

00:33:35.020 again it's not going to be lap of luxury but uh you know people over over calculate and over uh

00:33:43.200 overthink weight training a lot uh it's resistance against a lever arm or a muscle that makes you

00:33:49.420 strong i mean it's it's not that difficult but there there are a heck of a lot of ways to do it wrong

00:33:54.940 but uh but it's pretty simple to do it right all right so what's uh what's in the future of sorenx

00:34:00.680 and where can we learn more about the company and its philosophy sure sure well the future um it's

00:34:06.620 it's it's bright and it's it's fun uh we're actually moving to a new facility we're we're literally

00:34:11.360 moving there as we speak 70 000 square feet uh a manufacturing space made in good old south

00:34:16.980 carolina uh we pride ourselves on american manufacturing and um with that uh a project

00:34:25.280 that's fun for me is the expanded gym space that we're going to have it's going to be open to any

00:34:29.960 athletes who want to come by and train anytime um we want to give back to the community by giving them

00:34:35.880 a safe place to come and learn and to come teach us um and have that open information so that the gym is

00:34:44.180 going to be a fun part but my my baby of it is going to be the museum of physical culture that

00:34:50.620 we're going to have it's going to be the first museum of its kind and and uh the southeast that

00:34:54.820 i know about uh the other one being the stark center of the university of texas uh good friends

00:34:59.500 of ours dan and terry todd are the curators there and um but the museum is going to be a spot where

00:35:06.740 you have um magazines and books for the from the last century on physical training it's going to have

00:35:13.440 um artifacts at different times uh different times of the and areas of the world with strength

00:35:20.000 um 200 year old kettlebells and indian clubs and where you could really come and get your hands on

00:35:26.880 the pieces and take a sabbatical of strength to come check out what that physical culture is all

00:35:31.900 about so those are some some projects i'm excited about besides that it's just always growing the

00:35:38.640 brotherhood of strength uh that how we consider our customer base and uh learn from them and teach

00:35:45.120 teach him as well and um just keep trying to get better yeah that's really what it all boils down to

00:35:50.720 when's the museum slated to open the lifestyle i was gonna uh the museum the museum we're shooting for

00:35:58.100 um late june which will be which is our what we call our summer strong event and it'll be summer

00:36:04.780 strong eight uh this is this will be the eighth year we're doing a june 26 27th weekend and it's

00:36:11.920 our opportunity to give back to our community and and our brotherhood of strength so we bring in some

00:36:17.860 of the best coaches and trainers and athletes strength athletes in the world some of the names that that

00:36:23.940 people read about never get to talk to thankfully we're friends with most of them we'll bring them in

00:36:29.080 and um for very low cost we allow people to to come to summer strong and it's a three-day woodstock of

00:36:36.040 strength and physical culture that everyone gets to hang out and learn and and um and participate

00:36:43.920 and compete we eat a lot of meat um have a couple adult beverages and uh just make friends and network and

00:36:52.260 just get to all sharpen each other's swords and that's that's my uh my my kind of drop dead date

00:36:59.260 that i want to be at a museum i want to unveil it at summer strong that's awesome it sounds great i'll

00:37:03.740 have to make a trip out there it sounds right i'd love to have you here well yes you will be a vip for

00:37:09.280 sure well bert thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure brett it was awesome getting to talk

00:37:16.300 it really is an absolute honor you guys are doing some great stuff and and i i log in a lot

00:37:22.080 i need to learn and always sharpen my my weapon as well thank you sir thank you sir our guest today

00:37:28.600 was bert soren he is the ceo of sorenex and you can find out more about sorenex and their equipment

00:37:33.760 at sorenex.com well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips

00:37:41.040 and advice make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com

00:37:44.800 and i'd really appreciate if you also check out store.artofmanliness.com where you can find

00:37:49.780 art of manliness products again we just launched a journal inspired by benjamin franklin's virtue

00:37:56.240 journal that he developed for himself as a young man it's a way you can track your progress in

00:38:00.620 becoming a better more virtuous man it's pretty cool so go check it out you can't find it anywhere

00:38:05.820 else at store.artofmanliness.com and until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly

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The Art of Manliness - January 18, 2015

#97： Physically Cultured With Bert Sorin

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