#97： Physically Cultured With Bert Sorin
Episode Stats
Summary
Sorenex has played a big role in bringing back modern grip training, and we ll discuss why that's so important to your overall physical strength, and what you can do to improve your grip strength. Plus, we ll talk about why a man should be strong, what fitness benchmarks every man should try to strive for, and why grip training is so important.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast so if you played
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college sports or high school sports or if you're a crossfitter or you lift weights on a regular
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basis you might have seen sorenex equipment at your gym besides the power racks bars and weight
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lifting plates they also make a whole slew of functional fitness apparatuses like prowlers
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landmines grip training devices today on the podcast we have the ceo of sorenex bert soren
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he's a big giant man with a great grizzly beard and today we're going to talk about the mission
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of sorenex and helping people become physically cultured and what exactly that means we're going
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to talk about why a man should be strong what fitness benchmarks every man should try to strive
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for and i'll talk about grip training sorenex has played a big role in bringing back modern grip
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training and we'll discuss why that's so important to your overall physical strength and what you can
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do to improve your grip strength and much more great podcasts practical information you can use
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bert soren welcome to the show brett thanks for having me all right so you're uh the ceo right
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of sorenex equipment yes all right uh my father started uh 34 years ago i grew up in it and now i'm
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running the ship yeah can you tell us like i mean i thought it was kind of interesting how your dad
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started it uh because it's one of those american dream job like you know the american dream exemplified
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uh so what's the what's the background on this okay uh 19 and in the 70s uh my father was a weight
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lifter and a shot putter in college and um it was always in the power production sports and um really
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loved it he grew up going to york barbell as a kid and actually jumped on a on a train when he was 12
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over 13 years old to go to the old york picnics with john grimmick and some old athletes like that
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uh so that's kind of where all of this started uh as a young man that that always wanted to live the
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strenuous life himself um so he when he was a kid he didn't read very well so his dad gave him
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uh all the outdoor life magazines and strength magazines and that that allowed him to read more
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and more um and uh that that's kind of what infused that that love into him but fast forward a little
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bit uh he was a coach uh for for athletes and physical education teacher and and um started
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building playgrounds and then started building weightlifting equipment because there was nothing
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else out there that lived up to his standards of what he felt was heavy duty and adjustable and
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safe enough so he's always been kind of da vinci of the uh of weightlifting equipment so built our own
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stuff out of the garage and uh literally it was uh one of those crazy things where he would he would
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coach um coach all day then he would run a weightlifting class for the kids in the evening
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uh to get more more kids fit and then he would take his 1974 land cruiser across town and strap pieces
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of steel on top haul butt back home and uh cut stuff in our garage by hand and just built it up
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and where he would sell one bench or one squat rack and take the money that he made and go down to
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man tool here in our um here in our town and buy one more tool and then just literally built the
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business from the ground up in the garage and until the point where it got big enough where he decided
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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
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it work that's awesome i mean it's crazy that he was teaching weightlifting back in the 70s because
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it i mean i know there's there was like a physical culture movement in america but it didn't seem like
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you know weightlifting was all that big of a deal back then as it is today oh no it was it was i
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wouldn't say taboo it was just very everyone was very uneducated about it uh him coming from the northeast
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where olympic weightlifting was a bigger uh piece uh he came down here to south carolina like i said
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on that scholarship and when he came down here no one everyone still had the the idea of being muscle
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bound and everything like that so he built the first weight room at the university of south carolina
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as a freshman here uh he insisted that he could get he needed to lift weight so he drove back up to
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new jersey and picked up his barbell and came back down and and started the first weightlifting but then
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uh when he had his kindergartners and even fifth graders and all these all these kids he had them
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um lifting weights i have i have pictures of uh kindergartners in 1974 and at 1975 doing full snatches
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with wooden dowels and um and then some clipping from the paper and he was saying kids need to know
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these these movements and triple extension and be able to jump and run and everything like that
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some things that you're kind of seeing in vogue now uh it's kind of funny it's almost 40 years ago he
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was pushing that very hard yeah it's crazy that you would like even just like 10 or 15 years ago the
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idea of kids lifting weights would be like no don't do that that's they'll stunt their growth
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right right and everyone you know everyone told me that in the mid 80s um because we kind of had a
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thing uh what i was taught early on uh kind of was joking but not so joking that you weren't you
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weren't really a soreman until you could deadlift double body weight um and i think the first time
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i did that i was maybe in second or third grade and i remember going to school the next day and it
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happened to be you know what's the greatest moment of your life and i told him how i finally deadlifted
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112 pounds which if you think about i was 56 pounds which is hilarious that at 56 pounds i thought the
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coolest thing ever was deadlifting double body weight um and so but can people say oh you're
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gonna stunt your growth and i turned out to be six three 250 pounds so it worked out it worked out
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all right well speaking of maybe i would have been nine feet tall who knows who knows who knows well
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speaking of deadlifting i thought this was kind of interesting fact i uh heard from the guys at
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atomic athlete is that your dad still i mean how old is your dad just for uh he turned 64 in june
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all right 64 in june so he turned yeah he'll be 65 okay but he has a birthday tradition
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that he does every year still what is that uh he deadlifts 500 pounds that's crazy and um
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and he deadlifted a lot for many many years and and a little over 700 during his competition years
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but um a couple years back we asked him i said how long have you been deadlifting over five he said
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i usually do it about every you know i can always do it every year because i've been doing it since i
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was 15 and so we started thinking i said dang you know let's see if you can make it to 65 and 50
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straight years of deadlifting 500 pounds or more so he made it last year at his birthday and uh and try
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actually tried for a second wrap but it wasn't wasn't quite there but uh he kind of laughed at me he's
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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
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brings up an interesting question i know some of our listeners are older right middle age getting
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in their 50s i mean what and there's this common there's this idea there as you get older you're
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going to get weaker um and your dad has obviously not done that i mean what what has he done
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to maintain his strength uh even into his 60s it's consistency it's consistency and it's doing the
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big movements um you know a lot of folks they'll go in especially as they get older they'll go over
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to the little machines and they'll do little tricep kickbacks all this other stuff but dad has
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squatted benched deadlifted and some of the other big exercises three to four times a week for 50 years
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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
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of folks they they lose um because obviously they're your testosterone is going down and so
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your your muscle quality and density goes down but it really you exacerbate that problem when you go
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away from the muscle and structure building exercises like deadlifts squats presses standing presses
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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
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strong i literally remember dad front squatting a lifetime best at 49 years old wow and so and he'll
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tell you he you know he was his strongest probably in his mid to late 40s and then it started it started
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going down pretty pretty steep at 55 although his you know the numbers are still still good but you know
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you can't outrun father time yeah uh but but staying with the big exercises and you maybe you don't do
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what all the little 20 year olds are doing but staying with the deadlifts the squats and things
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like that are obviously that that's the key to it and and doing it as much as you possibly can not just
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uh not only doing if you could go heavy do it do it do it to whatever level i mean in the
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in the confederate time you know in the old confederate days of the you know early portions
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of our of our country uh they had a lift they called it the health lift and really all it was
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is a deadlift lockout from the mid thigh and the idea was you have a a random amount of weight on
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there some you know three four five hundred pounds six hundred pounds whatever it may be
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and you'd walk up to the bar from a mid thigh and you just pick it up a few times every day
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no specific rep schemes or sets or anything like that but the idea was if you pick that up every
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day it was it would keep you healthy and then really if you think about it it's a brilliant idea
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you're going to work your grip you're going to work your forearms your upper shoulder girdle for
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stability your erectors in your spine your core will stay strong your legs your hips your back
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those are all the things that were needed in that society to be manly or to be strong so it's kind of
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interesting that the deadlift was was once called the health lift the health lift i like that that's
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i never knew that that's really cool okay so uh i your guys's motto over at sorenx is physically
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cultured uh what does it mean uh to be physically cultured and how do you stride to be physically
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cultured you don't really hear that word physical culture anymore right right well that was a bit of
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homage back to uh to the days of i don't really really know how to put good words to it it's really
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a lot of what i'm seeing in your web in your website and in your writings uh cultured as a man
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but physically cultured we'll take it that one step a little bit further um tr used to talk about the
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strenuous life uh to to be uh physically strong to be physically uh plus the stamina or at least worked
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into having stamina uh flexible being able to move being a not not being uh a bodybuilder of sorts or
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or a greek god kind of thing but it's just being able to use that tool of your body um to to do
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whatever your brain can tell it do but the next part about cultured is to know what where the
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exercises came from to know why you do them to know what the muscles do to know how to recover them
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and stimulate them so just to be uh an athlete or or just to do a physical task only is one portion
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of it but to be cultured in that is to live in that realm uh that that honors the strong honors
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the ones in the past but you're still always pushing forward to canoe heights that's that's
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what we feel being physically cultured means that's awesome that's awesome well you speaking of you
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kind of mentioned teddy roosevelt and the strenuous life and being strong and manly i mean why do you
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think it's important for a man to be strong even if he's not an athlete even if he's not law enforcement
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or military why should he be strong well um a few reasons uh if a man is gonna decide to
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have a girlfriend or wife or kids most likely he's going to be the strongest or or if it if the
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crap hits the fan the the light is going to turn to him to be the one who gets them out of it
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uh whether that's pushing your car out of a ditch whether that's moving the uh um moving the washer
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and dryer upstairs in your house whether that's fighting your way out of a bad situation defending
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your life carrying your kids out of a burning house blah blah blah all of those things that
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let's be honest they're going to look to the man to do that um and i really have a hard time
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feeling that i would be ill prepared to do such tasks when called upon uh it's more of a service
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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
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potential to be a father a husband uh a business leader if i'm if i don't have physical and mental
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strength i i will let i will eventually let someone down and uh that just doesn't fit well and i think
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if i have the ability and the testosterone and the the frame that the lord has given me to to build that
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and that you get to the highest potential i can i think that uh that being strong is something you're
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almost obligated to do yeah otherwise otherwise your load falls on someone else's shoulders
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i like that yeah teddy roosevelt talked about uh you need to be able to carry your own pack
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right as a man yeah uh just yeah carry your burden yeah do your part because otherwise it's going to
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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
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i couldn't imagine not being able to uh say if my wife fell or something me not be able to get her
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into safety or my kids or whatever it may be that that would uh it just doesn't doesn't make sense
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especially if i have the opportunity to to be able to do that yeah well on that same topic are there
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you know benchmarks strength benchmarks that you think every man should strive for
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i think probably the simplest um from a judgeability as well as trainability would be that
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two times body weight deadlift um it's something that i think it's not your average strength level
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uh you know many people won't be able to quite get there i think if you train long and hard enough
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and you train seriously i think it could be attained by most uh but you're not going to do it uh casual
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um but by doing i i i have yet to find someone who could deadlift double body weight that wasn't
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strong everywhere it wasn't strong across the board that if i knew that we had to carry lumber or climb
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a tree or chop an axe use an axe to chop wood or all the other crazy things we get ourselves into i've
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rarely found someone that has that level of strength that really isn't good uh at just about everything
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um because that's either meaning you have to have a high level of strength well it's really a high
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level of strength as comparison to body weight which is which is a great balance right yeah all right or
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if you weigh 400 pounds and you have to be super super strong that's rare so you know sore necks is
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is known for their just their their awesome squat racks benches i mean it's just like high quality stuff
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college training facilities across the country use them but are there any other pieces of equipment
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that are unique that have come out of your all's factories sure uh sure well they're probably the
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most seen that people may or may not ever know that we came up with one is called landmine
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and it's a universal joint with somewhat of a pipe on there you shove a bar into it
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and you do a ton of different multi uh planar modalities different movements um a lot of
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companies make them now a lot of kind of kind of hacked off the idea and it's a great and the reason
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why is it's a great piece and the funny part about it was it was never even intended to be a product
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i i built it myself with the help of my dad's inventive mind back in 1999 as a way to help my
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hammer throw training when i was training for the 2000 olympic trials i needed something
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that would bridge the gap between a really good squat and clean and bridge the gap into a rotary
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torso motion that the hammer throw was was needing so the landmine is probably our most favorite
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the second would be what you would consider a crossfit rig that's a multiple uprights connected in
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a thousand different configurations that was also another invention of ours uh for the
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crossfit community uh as well as other tactical communities and even colleges that just uh just
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solve problems and that's really what we're about sorenx we're you know our mission statement is to
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physically culture the world through innovative training solution and that solution might be a
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piece of equipment or it might be uh an application or an idea yeah and besides that i've also read that
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you guys played a kind of a big role in modern grip training um right what's why the focus on grip
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training well um part of being physically cultured like i said is is looking back into history and
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seeing the great ones that came before you and and if they kept really good records at least you could
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test your mettle against some of the greatest of all time and in the mid 80s early to mid 80s my dad
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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
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the 50s but he was uh uh very stout strong strong german fella that uh had a was a really really good
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deadlifter but had an amazingly strong grip i believe still to this day he holds the world record
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at a little over 700 pounds for one one handed deadlift at a body weight of about 265 which is just
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absolutely shocking um so dad got a list of gorner's achievements and a lot of them included thick
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bars and uh a lot of different um hand positioning on bars and so dad tried to replicate some of these
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feats and just see how strong gorner was and if he could beat him on some of these things
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and so in in doing that dad started lifting anvils by the horn and he invented the what they call the
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blob which is a half of a york dumbbell uh old convex head york dumbbell gripping a 50 pounder
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uh gripping it uh with a wide pinch grip and really started playing with uh what are things
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that aren't necessarily very heavy but the shape of them makes them very difficult and uh he went on
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about a 10 year quest of just really understanding how the forearms and hands work and how do you make
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them really really strong uh and became the first person ever to close the number three captain crush
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gripper that was thought to be unclosable by a human and uh kind of cemented his name as the father of
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modern grip training um and so as that happened more and more folks wanted to do grip training and
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and uh we helped him out anytime we could awesome so are there any exercises or pieces of equipment
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that uh a guy who's listening to this podcast can start doing or using today to improve his grip
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sure sure uh two easy ones uh would be uh one would be a plate pinch where you take your olympic lifting
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or your olympic plates you could do uh tens you could do 25s 45s whatever if you could get the old style
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that has the smooth backs to them and you'll put them face to face where the outsides of the plate
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are smooth and you can you set them vertically um and then you smash them together and you you
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basically just take their hand you thumb on one side your fourth your four fingers on the other and
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you pinch them together and try to deadlift them up um world class it would be 245 pound plates 235s
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would be someone of a very strong athlete 225s most pretty strong guys could do uh and then
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obviously you go in your tens and those are pretty easy then you could start doing multiple tens and
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i've seen i've seen dad do six uh 10 pound plates which it's crazy because now it's so wide just
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literally the tip of his uh his uh thumb and then and middle finger were wrapped around the edges but
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those are some things that without a lot of money you could test your grip in different ways and
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really make your grip very very strong and i'm sure you've heard and probably written about uh
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the mark of a strong man is or his hands yeah yeah okay great so uh plate pinches i've done those
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before this would be great and another one one one other quick one are uh you could take your end of
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your olympic barbell which is two inches in diameter load plates and do uh do kind of landmine deadlifts
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with that because now it's going to be a thicker bar on your hands and open your hand up more
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decrease the mechanical advantage that your fingers already have and kind of build that talon-like grip
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those are things that you could do in your garage or basement or just about any gym out there very
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cool um so before we started the podcast you and i were talking about your history you um were actually
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a highland games guy uh for a while um for our listeners aren't familiar can you talk about like what
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highland games are and uh what exactly they entail the highland games are uh an old scottish event uh
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that that goes way back to the days where they were being ruled and they were actually um it was
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illegal for them to uh to exercise or to have weapons back in the day so because they didn't want an
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uprising so what they would do they would have these contests these games of sorts and that would
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they weren't allowed to do military training i'm sorry they were allowed to exercise but they
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weren't allowed to military train so they they came up with these these basically clandestine ways to
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train for strength and stamina by throwing trees throwing rocks throwing hammers and the back in those
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days they're called it was a scottish hammer but it was basically a spherical head sledgehammer all
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things that they have in their agrarian society they would throw uh 56 and 28 pound weights that
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they would use on their scales when they're weighing out different uh crops and things like that and
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that was the way that they trained to get strong um and uh in case that was their way of protecting
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their homeland if the raiders or their own government came in they wanted to be strong enough to uh to
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defend themselves and so hundreds and hundreds of years later those those traditions have kept up in the
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highland games and um there's probably 50 or 60 games around the country every year one of the biggest
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being in san francisco is called the pleasant and highland games i think this is the 150th year of the
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games and it's the longest running athletic event uh that has humans as the athletes besides the
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kentucky derby um that has has been going consistently since through all the world wars and
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everything going has never been canceled and i've had the opportunity to compete there a few times
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and uh it's an awesome awesome event in a few days and probably 30 40 000 people show up and watch a bunch
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of big strong men and women in kilts uh throw trees and rocks and hammers and weights and and yell and scream
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and then go drink some beer basically the most fun thing ever isn't there an event where you like a
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pitchfork and like you like hoist over a yeah yeah that's called a sheath yeah it's a um it's a bag
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it's a burlap sack filled with chopped rope and it's supposed to kind of be like a bale of hay
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obviously they would stick the bale of hay back in the day and as they flip the hay up on the the um
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pile the pile would get higher and higher and higher so obviously you had to throw it higher
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and higher to get your bale of hay to stick on there and back in the old society only the strongest
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and best man could work the longest that day because after a while the pile got too high for
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the lesser men to keep going that's cool yeah i've always wanted to do that they have one here in
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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
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and just realize you gotta block out your calendar after that because you'll probably start throwing
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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
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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
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scientific and and i'll i'll first give the scientific evidence from from what i i've read a
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number of times and uh talked to some athletes and they feel that it's most of the strength coaches i
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speak with they'll try to train about 10 o'clock in the morning and the reason for that is well
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depending on their on their sleep schedule um your your testosterone as a man is the highest in
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the morning as you wake up and so you're trying to feed off of that testosterone and that growth
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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
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