Ryan Thompson- KB Athlete, Father, Mustache role model

Kettlebell Drengir Rating Season will commence next year on October 14th. We will be once again at the Athlete Lab in Little Canada, Minnesota for the third annual Twin Cities Kettlebell Open. Registration is now available. The lowest price it will be $60 until December 31st. For those of you brave enough to sign up now, you will be rewarded. Raffle prizes will once again be given to all participants and there will be a cash prize for those who wield the steel with great vigor. Come, fight for your clan, fight for yourself, and may your name forever ring out in the hall of champions. The platform podcast re-tucked coaches, athletes, experts, and real people to learn about their approaches to training, nutrition, mindset, and much more. I'm your host Jordan Kunde-Wright, founder and head coach of the Twin Cities Kettlebell Club. And I'm on a mission to help others build sustainable healthy lifestyles. Before we jump into the episode, I want to remind you that registration is live for the third annual Twin Cities Kettlebell Open on October 14th. Hosted by our friends at the Athlete Lab in Little Canada, Minnesota, and the price is as low as it will be. Just $60 for super-early bird registration from now until January 1st. Just go to our website, twincitieskettlebellclub.com slash TCKBOpen2023 to register. Alright, this week I am welcoming in my friend Ryan Thompson. He is a member of the Twin Cities Kettlebell Club team, and he is also a bit of a unique member because he is somebody who does most of his own programming. And we work together more on technique feedback when he needs it, but he likes to make some of his own programming because he has his own approach to programming, which we have talked about. And we talk about here in this episode, we dive into a little bit about his background as well as his approach to his programming. But the thing that I really wanted to bring him on to talk about was his approach to mindset training, his perspective on negativity, his perspective on doing hard things. And really how he likes to embrace challenging things to improve his performance. I hope you'll find the conversation really useful. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I really enjoy talking to Ryan. He and I clearly get along well, and we have a lot in common. So I hope you guys find the conversation useful. And just as always, I am incredibly grateful that you listen to this podcast, and the best way you could support me is to go ahead and register for the Twin Cities Kettlebell Open for next year, and maybe tell a friend or two. Just go to our website, Twin Cities Kettlebell Club.com for details. Of course, if you haven't already, please be sure to leave a rating and review of the platform podcast in your app of choice, and support my work by supporting our sponsors, whose affiliate links you'll find in the episode notes. And last but not least, if you want help reaching your goals without wasting time, please fill out the coaching interest form linked in the episode notes. I help athletes of all levels using my integrated coaching approach. You can follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube at Twin Cities Kettlebell Club, or email me at Twin Cities Kettlebell Club at gmail.com. Now, that further ado, let's step onto the platform with Ryan Thompson. Alright, welcome into this week's episode of the platform podcast. I am very honored to have in my friend, the man with the stash, Mr. Nordic stash himself, Ryan Thompson. Ryan is one of the athletes of the Twin Cities Kettlebell Club, but we'll talk a little bit about that, about how he trains, but I wanted to invite him onto this podcast because he has a very interesting perspective on doing hard things, as well as many other things. So Ryan, thank you so much for taking the time to join me. Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. Of course, man. So for people that don't know, you are married to Miss Brennan Thompson, who has been multiple guests on the podcast. She's a dietician by trade and training, which we know from having her on. What do you do for your day job? I work in financial services in financial reporting group for a large bank, pretty boring, pretty vanilla stuff. So I've got to find my excitement outside of work and throw these cannonballs and handles around. Pretty boring, but also very stressful. So probably, yeah, there's a lot going on. Maybe, maybe boring is the wrong word for it. Maybe boring, boring to the outside observer, I think, but I think you would probably categorize your job as fairly high stress, or at least I would based on based on what I know. So I wouldn't call it boring. I think you act on me to it after a little bit, a little while. You know, for those that know me, I do get to be a little bit of a junkie of maybe stress and pressure and kind of like being under the gun a little bit. So it fits the personality in that respect. Okay. Well, let's let's do the origin story a little bit. So take, take me back, take me back to young Ryan. How did you grow up? Where did you grow up? What did you do growing up? Like, you know, tell me how you came up. Yeah, so I grew up North Metro, the Twin Cities on a lake. I have two brothers. We're pretty close, you know, outside all the time, running around. You know, through high school, I kind of became a jobier kid. Didn't really have fitness or organized sports, so to speak. So just kind of was aimless there. And then in college. Um, you know, I got into weightlifting and, you know, you read our Schwarzenegger books and say like, oh, yeah, I'm going to be I'm going to be jacked. And this is this is going to be the plan. And you get hurt a couple of times and you decide, maybe this isn't the plan. And so kind of aimless and fast forward. We lived in Georgia. I got into doing some running, gotten into doing some other weightlifting. Eventually found some strong first activities around the tactical strength challenge sets like a deadlift to pull up and a hardstyle snatch. That was my introduction to kettlebells. And I was married to Brenna or we'd been married and she was into that and kind of drug me along. And that's how that started. And it was, it was fun. It was hard. It was kind of a mix of strength and endurance capacity. And I really felt that was those more interesting. So kind of stayed in the vein of, well, strength type of activity, kettlebell activity to just, you know, swings and snatches at the very, very most. And then, you know, pandemic it. And everybody's looking around for something to do. And before that, I was doing an easy strength, you know, Dan John classic, easy strength. Let's have a really good progression. You know, we're probably fast forward a little bit, but I was getting up at four o'clock in the morning and I hit the gym by like four 15 420 425 at the very latest, doing hour gym and us. And, you know, that would include like some easy strength and maybe like some cardio for fat loss and that type of thing. And there was some kettlebell snatching in there. And that was the, you know, what I had into the pandemic it. So I'm looking around and said, you know, what the heck can I do? What am I going to do here. And like everybody else decided, well, let's, let's find one of these, you know, kettlebells and do something there. And the only thing I find was a competition style kettlebell kings and a competition style Vulcan kettlebell, which there's almost nobody made, nobody has a Vulcan kettlebell. They got these really big windows. Yeah, I like, I like that at one time. And then now I'm not a huge fan. But so I got the competition style and then kind of fell into it that way. So the origin story, you know, that was fast. But, you know, it's been around kind of finding my path and trying to figure out what that looks like. Yeah, just like everybody else. Well, I mean, you're crazy, man. I like you, but you're crazy. I mean, you and Brenner are both like up at the, up at the crack of dawn, you know, early early risers, like I'm much more likely to catch you on the backside, like of my day, like at 4 a.m. That I am to be getting up to go work out at 4 a.m. That's, that's crazy. The only time I get up that early is for deer hunting opener. Otherwise, it like you might catch me, like pulling an all night or coding or something or doing something, something weird. But, yeah, that's that, that, that, that in and of itself to me is, is a little different. But, well, you know, before kids, I would be a kind of after work, you know, evening 8 a.m. guy. And there's a lot of, a lot of people in the gym was busy. I always got frustrated with that. And then we had our first son who's for now and about six, seven months old. I wanted to get back into the gym more regularly. And I just kind of find a time. But I found if I woke up early and just drag myself out of bed, I could get to the gym. And there's nobody there. And it was like this, what are people doing here. And I'm going to be one of those people and why not try it. And I stuck with it. And that was the first time where I really started going basically every day to the gym. And because of the routine and just having kind of the absence of additional people, I was able to be really efficient. And now I'm just that guy. I'm, you know, I'm a morning person. Well, in the summer in Minnesota, we don't get a lot of sunlight and time to work outside. So I try to go outside in the afternoon, when I get home from work, you know, occasionally. I also want to make it on Instagram because it's not fish black. And I'm not, you know, we got we got a hashtag for training in dark though. It's it's kettle after dark. Right. And that can be that can be on either side. Like that can be because I was the opposite of you. But I just did it. I just did it the opposite way. Right. I had the same same thing. Right. I've got two young kids, which you know. And I just was like, I can't I can't train in the morning because I used to I used to work. I used to work in a warehouse where I had to be at work at my desk, like, like working at 6 a.m. And so like going to the office at 4 a.m. To work out before work just was not working for me. I kept getting hurt. But I decided, okay, I can I can start training at 9 p.m. or 10 p.m. And that actually worked better for me because my body was warm. And I wasn't as I wasn't as beat up or, you know, so. But I found that that same type of struggle where it was like, where do you find the time? And for for for parents, especially of younger kids, it's kind of like, well, you either got you got the early morning or you got the after the kids go to bed. So I actually started doing my 9 p.m. And I, you know, 9 p.m. 10 p.m. workouts and started hashtagging kettle after dark because all of my videos were like in my garage at 10 o'clock at night. And yeah, I mean, you kind of you kind of do what do what you have to do. And you know, if it works for you, it is nice to have those, especially if you're going to a public gym like those those quiet times when you're like, I run this place. I'm the only one here. I can do whatever I want. This is fantastic. Well, you get to this mode where there's like two or three other guys, you see each other every day. And you kind of know what you're going to do. And there's this usual respect where I felt in the afternoons. There's too many people, you, you set something down and turn around to get a drink of water. It's gone. Yeah, I was in the middle of five sets. And you took my, you took my bells. So now now I'm just in the garage. We got this great shirt. I don't actually, I forget where I got it. But this is garage fit on there. I really love that shirt because it's a crossfit rip, which I'm, you know, people love crossfit. I kind of like it's something it's like the kettlebell sport of barbell world is I like to think about it. There's like this very intense following. But I love my garage fit, you know, activities. I take it outside of the summer though. It's, it's nice to go outside. It's a fresh air, you know, a train with some, you know, some elements. I mean, we got to do it in Minnesota. We got, we got to soak up the good days like that. People are always like, I can't believe you live there. I'm like, you got to be here in the summer. You got to see how great it is in the summer. Like it's, it's awesome. But I think you and I are wired pretty similarly like you go outside even when it's cold. And you'll train outside, you'll train outside when it's cold, just, just because where did that like, where did that I can do hard things or the intentional exposure to hard things? Where did that, where did that come from? Like when did that start for you? Because I'm honestly surprised when you said that you didn't, you didn't play sports in high school. I'm surprised by that because knowing you and knowing how competitive you are as a person, like in your focus and intention, I would have guessed that you were a three sport athlete. Like always, always been super competitive. Like, you know, so that kind of, that kind of surprises me. So when, when did that start for you that like, I can do hard things or intentionally choosing to do hard things. I don't know exactly. I think some of that comes back to maybe being heavier or being overweight when I was younger, like struggling with that and having to overcome it. And, you know, kind of like my body of advice or knowledge is that the power of negativity, power of negativity is a motivator. And that seems really bad. It seems like really bad. You should hang with me for a second. Yeah, we got it. We got to dig into this. The power of negativity. We're going to put it on a shirt. It's two things. I mean, as I like to think about it, it's kind of two things. I mean, I'm really an optimistic guy. So for me, to find motivation, I come back to the power negativity, which is like, I fixate for a short period of time on my failures. Like if I have a goal and I don't meet it, I give myself just a set amount of time to really just wallow in that that and frustration and depression. And then I have to move on. And how long is that period of time? Maybe, you know, a couple of hours at the very most depends. It could be a big thing that's kind of lingering on. But if it's like, let's say I had a goal in a particular lift, and I failed that. I'm going to sit there for 10 by 10 minutes and just say, man, you really suck today, Ryan. You got to, you got to work better on that. So it's like using motivation as fuel or the failure as the fuel to move forward. And then also thinking about like, I've done this before. I've done many things before. And those are real tiny baby steps to say, you know, I was well over 200 pounds. And I got to think about leanest, maybe 180. And that was a different mode of training. And, you know, I was looking pretty jacked at the time. And I thought, this is great. So I've done hard things. And now it's picking you goals and iterating on that. And when you've done more and more and more hard things like, I'll use an example. It's really popular now cold showers cold exposure. If you could do 10 breaths of cold water in a shower, well tomorrow, maybe you could do 11 because you've already done 10. Maybe you could do 12 the next day, 13 and iterating on those baby steps eventually becomes a much more impactful accomplishment. So the power of negativity is just saying, I failed. But there's a lot of life ahead of me. This is a journey. I'm going to learn up from these errors and mistakes and move forward. And then when you do accomplish something that's hard saying, I've done this before. So if I start at that place, the next step isn't that big. I love it. I love it. Yeah, that's a, that's a great, that's a great philosophy. It's a, you're, you're like wallowing it. Statement actually resonates really strongly with me because I actually had a, I had my college football coach, my college head football coach at Luther. He was great. He said, he said 24 hour rule. That's what he gave us. And this was specific to after a game. Right. So you go out, you know, you prepare all week, you prepare all week, you bust your ass, you go out and you try your hardest. And you don't win every game. You know, unless you're, unless you're Trevor Lawrence playing at Clemson or something like you don't, you don't win every game that you play in college because the other teams are good too. Right. And so like, you know, my senior year, we went six and four. We won more than we lost, but we still lost four games. Right. And I like you. Like, you know, I would get pissed about whatever my role was in that loss. Right. Whatever my responsibility was in that loss, I would, I would fixate on that. But he gave us the thing that was cool. And it was for me, it was formative because, you know, as younger, right was he get, he's like, you have permission to feel whatever you're feeling right now. But what you don't have permission to do is allow it to, to affect your preparation for the next game because we have another game to play. So you learn from this experience. You have 24 hours to feel however you're going to feel about it because we don't have practice tomorrow. We don't have film tomorrow. You know, so Sunday was our day of feel however you're going to feel about it and you get 24 hours. And that, that applied win or lose. Right. If we win, you have 24 hours to feel good about yourself and be happy about it. And then come Monday. It's time to get to work. Right. It's over. Move on to that move on to the next thing. And it sounds like you kind of scale scale that approach to like whatever the however big or small the goal is and it's just like, you know, if I just failed to set, okay, I can be pissed about it for five minutes. I went to a competition that I prepared for for six months and I didn't hit the rank that I wanted to hit or whatever then, then I can be pissed about it for a little bit longer. But not no longer than it then it's is the time frame in which it's time to get to work on the next thing. Right. And you use that. You just use that as motivation for for the next thing. That's, I think that's right. Like using it for the next thing. And then, like, when I was growing up, we didn't have a ton of money for extravagances. And once, you know, I wrecked the car on a winter road. And smash the snow, making him a box. And I was, I was beat up about it. And, you know, I got a home is in the garage, my dad comes home. And he's like, well, you know, that sucks. It really sucks. Now we got to fix it. And it was just like, you know, click and maybe you misremember that you focus on like just the message, but it was this, okay, yeah, feel how you're going to feel, but we still have work to do. We still got to go forward and do whatever it is to take care of this because you don't do anything. You can't drop the car. It's got this big fender with wings sticking out of it and everything. So a lot of that was just moving forward and like focusing on having the discipline to move forward. And that's really hard, really hard. And I've been focusing on that for a while now. I've been focusing on like the self control and the discipline aspect of that. And some of that just comes down to doing hard things and, you know, suffering a little bit and making it prove that type of thing. Let's pull the thread on that a little bit. You and I often will, you know, you'll text, you'll message me or whatever on Instagram or text me and sometimes you'll say embrace the suck. Where did, where did, I mean, I know where, I know where I first heard that, but where did that, where did that come from for you? Like when, when did you start taking that as a mantra, like embrace, embracing the suck? I mean, I think I reiterate that. I think that's probably a Jaco thing. He's got this discipline equals freedom, which I'm a big fan of. It's a military, it's a military thing. The Marine, the Marine Corps says it all the time. The Navy SEAL say it all the time. Yeah. So Jaco, Jaco will, like for those of you who don't know, he's got a great podcast form, you know, former Navy SEAL. You know, those all sorts of all sorts of stuff. Yeah. One of the best, like, just discipline motivators out there for some of his new and just go through hard times, like great guy. Um, really impactful to those that are looking for that type of motivation. And, you know, embrace the suck, I think is just to go out there and do it. Um, you know, I, I lifted next to Dave, um, during the Twin City kind of all open. They've seen a shout out to see us. We'll give scenes a shout out. Not that he listens to the podcast. Oh, man, this is the, here's great lift next week. We're going to, we're going to talk about next year. And I'm going to lift next to him. That's, that's going to be my flight schedule if I can twist your arm. I think I can make that happen. Although, Sarah for an arrow club, let's just so we're clear. Sarah for an arrow control. So she's the one you need to bribe slash cajole, whatever. She's, she's the mastermind of the flight schedule. There we go. There we go. But he, he said, like, you know, let's go have fun. And I was like, I'm not here to have fun. I'm here to suffer. I did a 24, a two by 24, five minutes triathlon. And I do. And you were, and you were, you were sick the week before too, right? Like you were, you were, you were super sick before I was sick about eight days beforehand. My training went off for probably a week or so before that. So a solid like two and a half weeks, I was just not where I should be. Although Seabes was sick too. Like he looked like warmed over death when he came for, when he came for weigh-ins, like he was super sick and he looked a little better on, on comp day, but he was, he was super sick too. Sorry. I digress. That's the mental, that's the mental game of like, no, I'm here to do something really hard. And rather than saying like, I'm going to come have fun. I'm going to lift 16s if I'm going to have fun. I'm going to try to do something really hard and see if I could do it. And that, that's more and more of those things I'm trying to seek out. You know, the other day, I was out in a t-shirt was 30 degrees outside in the driveway, lifting my sandbag up and down and doing some, some workout and that's just, man, that was cold, but it's going to get colder. You know, garage gym is going to be 25 degrees here in about a month or so. So it's time to really buck up. Do you, do you blow torch your handles before you, before you start lifting? Yeah, I have been known to do that. Yeah, I have been known to blow torch the handle or maybe set them next to a space heater. But if you're on a pension, you want to, it really does help with the chalk adhesion too. Yeah, with blow torch real quick, don't overdo it and they'll be warm for the set. That is a, that is a hashtag Minnesota hack for people that don't live in cold climates all our all my Texas people are like, what the fuck are you guys talking about? How do you live there? But when it gets a little colder, maybe I'll make a little primer of how to do that, but I love that. There's, you know, you just learn to it, you know, two sweatshirts, my front piece wet pants and just go out there and freeze the death and to get a sweat on. But what I found is, you know, because I'm training in elements, you kind of change your modalities. You have this like seasonality to it. I don't train sport the whole year. Basically, 20 to come out open, riddle struck, those are like competitions where I'm trying to hit a particular rank. And then after that, the rest of the fall is fun, the fun time of the year. I just kind of have some loose programming, so things that I want to hit and then go out there and just, you know, maybe work on technique, whatever and enjoy the weather. You know, swing, swing my caddy in the driveway and make all my neighbors look at me strange, that kind of thing. Shout out to Nate Cameron. Yeah. The caddy, caddy gets a lot of use in the driveway at six o'clock in the morning with people going to work and my neighbors, they're all wondering, how is he doing? Is he training for, you know, the medieval night's game, you know, Renaissance festivals, like that? Dude, I drove past you earlier this week when I was leaving. When you were coming around the curve to go to lunch, I was going to lunch and I saw you in wave. But I don't think you're probably, I was just in the neighborhood dropping off some bells to your neighbor, Michael, who's also on the team. And I don't think you, I don't think you saw me. I was like, I was like, oh, that's Ryan. I recognize the stash from like 100 feet away while driving. I was like, oh, that's got to be Ryan. I saw you. I was taking my four year old home from preschool, so I like, I caught you right at the end of the morning. That was Jordan. Maybe it was Jordan. That had to be Jordan. And then I wondered like, what is he doing this far over? Yeah. So it's good. But anyway, we digress. We do digress. It's okay. People know like, that's fine. It's fine. I do, I'm curious, is there an inflection point? Because in my head, as you're talking about this, you're saying like, you know, I go there to suffer. And like, I choose to, I choose to push to the hard things. I choose to do these things. And it's not fun. But I feel like at a certain point, when you do that enough times, there's a weird toggle that happens in your head where like, you start to enjoy that. As much as like, people start getting addicted to that suck, that, that suffering piece of it, especially in this sport. And I know it's not unique to this sport. Like, you just, there's something that happens. I don't know when it, when exactly it happens. But there's a certain point where like, going and doing an easy workout that's, that's just fun or relaxing is actually harder. Like to get yourself to, to allow yourself to do that, when, when you get kind of addicted to the, to the, to the pain factor and to the, to the doing hard things. Like, I don't know. There's a, like, you start associating that with, with having fun. I don't know if I'm articulate as well. But I love it. I, I love that feeling of, like, walking away from it. I, I really were tired. Like, I really accomplished something. And if I think it's a sense of accomplishment, I would say it's kind of like, you know, runners that hit certain distance goals or maybe not a runner's high, but they, they feel like they're accomplishing something that's measurable and quantifiable. There's maybe less of that in sport because you're competing against yourself or maybe it's just an intuitive day of time and you're not keeping track of the number of reps. But you have a feeling of accomplishment of what I stood the time for three minutes, seven minutes, whatever it is, 10 minutes, and I did it. And that sense of accomplishment, when you're doing something hard or you're, you're pushing yourself on pace, I think that really gives you that kind of aura. Like, you know, this is, this is good. This is really good. If you don't get to deep water, if you don't get to deep water, it feels like you wasted the day. And that's not true. Like, just so I'm clear for every, for everybody. Like, like, that is actually something you need to guard against, especially in this sport for the sake of longevity. Like, you can't always crush yourself every single day. Like, you have to have easy, easy days, medium days and hard days, right. They can't all be hard days. And yet there are times when it's like the easy days feel like you feel like you let yourself off, right. Like you let yourself off the hook or like, you know, like, like, you know, we had the, I had the conversation with Brenna as we were doing the taper before the comp. She was like, that was it. Like, that was, that was all I had. Like, it was so weird. I went to the, I went to the Y and it took me longer to get there and get ready and everything that it took me to do the workout. And I was like, yeah, because I took your workout to, you know, 40% of what we normally do, which is necessary in order to peak at the competition, but it's such a hard thing to like get used to doing. And it's, it's one of those things it's like, once you get to the point where you get used to and addicted to doing the hard thing and taking yourself to deep water, you have to also like find ways to make sure that you understand that not going to the deep water doesn't make it a waste of day. And it was still useful and, you know, there's still value in that because you can't go to the deep water every day. But like, I don't know when it happened for me, but at a certain point, I got addicted to go into deep water. Right. And I feel like if I didn't, if I didn't take myself to the deep end, I didn't really push it. I didn't get, I feel like I don't get better that day. And I know that that's not true. But there's a weird, I don't know, there's, there's a weird flip that switched at some point for me with that. And I think you're, I think you're kind of the same way you got, you got kind of addicted to doing the hard stuff. Yeah, I think particularly when I started sport, I go to deep water every day. And I like to train basically seven days a week and then life gets in the way to get me a day off. That's, that's the way my training modality works. So you get, I was getting into deep water all the time. And then that was getting closer and closer to an injury. So for me, I think because I've got a better handle on doing this for a while, I kind of understand where I'm at mentally and physically, I can avoid that. And the hardest thing for me to do is put time and energy towards kind of the mobility and the rehab. So like Tim Anderson's original strength program, awesome program. I feel so good after I do 45 minutes of original strength. I hate doing it because it's not like, you just, you're crawling and you're not exhausted after words and you don't, you're not lifting heavy weight and you don't, I don't like that. But I know I need to do it. And that's one of the things where during workouts, just to get myself through it, I'll tell myself, like, shoulder the yoke, whatever it is, whatever the obligation is, I wrote this down, I need to, I need to pull this load and make sure that I accomplish where I set up to accomplish. Within reason, obviously, I don't want to overdo it and hurt myself. But, you know, I need to do this so that I can get it hard the next day. And maybe two days later, I'm going to have that heavy jerk set. I mean, I'm working on some heavy jerks lately. And I know that if I don't do the right rehab and mobility, that set is going to be terrible. And I'm going to hate myself because I didn't put in the work two days prior. But I need to really focus in and say, this is where I, this is the money to put the bank today so that I can be better tomorrow. Some of the hard things, the mental game of putting energy where you need to put it. I think, I think we need to do it. We need to do a Thompson series of t-shirts on the website. We've got, we've got, we've got the do hard things, the power of negativity, embrace the suck. And that one might be trademarked. We might not be able to do that one, but the shoulder the yoke. I mean, I think we got a whole, I think we got a whole bunch of, we got a whole bunch of good, good catchphrases. You're a man of catchphrases, I think. I, I guess I have a, I'm a whole list of them. My, my staff at work. See, I have this piece of paper. It's just a regular computer sheet of paper. And it just says three words. This is a, like a mantra of continuous improvement that I've thought about for a long time. And it's ripped off of Greg Plitt, Greg Plitt, a body builder. Used to be Army Ranger. Awesome guy. Like the first inspirational person I really picked up. And for me, it talks about like, you know, defining what, what success you want to have. Everybody's got individual lives. Everybody's tailor made. You know, define what your success looks like, define that purpose, execute on an action, measure a result. And that's, you know, maybe that's a short term goal. Maybe it's a long term goal. But if you iterate on that, you can have whatever life you want to have. And, you know, I focus on a few kind of key personal goals for myself physically and mentally, spiritually. And I found a lot of success with that. And I tell my staff on business things, you know, purpose action result. Like it's just continuous improvement. That's a, it's a very keep it stupid simple kind of approach to it. Like very, like those are three, like anybody can remember three words. Right? Like that. I really, I really like that. But you also touched on, you're talking about kind of three domains, right? What I would call three pillars, right? Where you're talking about physical mental and spiritual are those kind of that your three areas, or do you have more that you that you focus on when you're thinking about goal setting, do you just focus on kind of those three domain areas, or do you, do you branch out, do you branch out further? I think those are kind of a three primary areas that I think about. And, you know, within those things across over, like, you know, I'm a dad, I try to think about like physical mental and spiritual development with my kids. And that's maybe one goal that compliments some of my own individual goals in those categories. So thinking about helping them define what their success looks like in whatever endeavor they've got. They've got, you know, swimming lessons and, you know, we go to church and developing rituals and traditions and habits to make them a good person because they're little people and we're responsible for the development. And boiling it down to something that's in those three pillars, I think you can put a lot of goals in there that everyone's chasing on Instagram or social media or wherever and just iterate on those. It doesn't have to be the end result goal that you're looking for just pick the next step and get to that one and then do it over and over again. Yeah, that's a very, it's a very agile approach to goal setting which I, which I personally really, really love. I actually have a planner that is, like, called scrum for life that I'm working on. It's my own, my own, like, written, like, planner for that, for that exact purpose, because I find it, I find it is helpful to focus on. When you think about, like, time, right, like, of course, you can go more atomic than you can go more atomic than day to day, but, you know, nobody plans their life hour to out world very few people plan their life hour to hour. But, like, almost everybody thinks about what they need to do today, right. And if you can, if you can go top down for your planning and think about what you want to accomplish for the year and then break it down and think about, like, months and then, but then ultimately you have to action around the day. And so, you know, always thinking about how to express those, how to express those things in the daily, you know, like, what's the purpose, what's the action, what's the result from, from each day, right. Like, to paraphrase your, you know, your framework, right. Like, I love that, I love that, that granularity of it, right, because it, because it, it's not overwhelming. It's like, what do I need to do today? What, what, what do I need to do today? I need to do these five things and I always focus on what are my five key strategic things I need to accomplish today. If I accomplish those five things every day, I know I've made progress, right. Like, that's, that, that to me is a good, a good approach. It's, I really, I really like that, that really fast, that fast iteration feedback loop that you're, that you're talking about. I think that's, I think that's really, really productive. How does, how does, how does Brennan like it? Does she, does she live the same way? There's, there's small cycles and big cycles and every big cycle has got a bunch of little cycles in it. So, you know, you can think about it a whole bunch of different ways and, and maybe just before we go to Brennan, but like, and maybe tying into her, like, you don't have to do it all yourself. Like, she doesn't program anything for herself. She outsources it to you and her programming is great for her, not great for me. Like, I, I just, I have a different style and I've been, I think about it a lot that's like one of the things I like to think about that's not work related and it, it's a good outlet for me. So, I have time and attention towards that. She doesn't have the time for it. So, you can outsource it when somebody else, you know, develop the iteration plan for you and be really successful with it. Like, she rushed the twin city kettlebell open. She rushed it. I heard, I heard, I heard a rumor though that you said, yeah, but it was only with AIDS. I think I want to say that half-heartedly. I was very proud of her. I know, I know you were. I know you're just giving her, I know you're just giving her a hard time. Well, I think some of that was because she put the AIDS back in the bed of my truck after she was done. And I was like, well, there's 12 at home. I told her, I told her the same thing as she was walking out with them. I was like, really? You think you need those? Like, you really, you think you're going to be getting any program with those? She's like, well, you never know. I was like, no, you're right. It's good for you to have them. Well, we'll do some lighter days. Like, we were just talking about they won't always be heavy days. They won't always be long sets with 12s. But yeah, I was thinking the same thing goes like that. She really need those. Well, you know, when we, when I started training in sport, I had a 16-a-lencos. And, you know, very unusual window size, bell shape is really bottom heavy, whatever. It was what I could get is what I had available. And I traded those. When she started in sport, she put those in the rack. It's like, I can't even try these. One, they're too heavy and two, they're too big. So, you know, pro kettlebell makes this smaller version. Atlas. Atlas. Yeah. And for like a smaller frame person, they fit perfect. And then, you know, like, we've got this set of 12s. I'm like, I made a big, I loved it. I love pro kettlebells. You know, I love the distribution. I love the story. Shout out to Nikolai. Nikolai Puchla. Yeah. Seattle kettlebell club and pro kettlebells. Yeah, awesome stuff. And I was like, well, now we have a set of 12s. And then, I've been thinking, well, if she gets it, she gets real good at 12s. And, you know, my bell collection of the basement is going to get bigger. And I'm at the find, you know, some new places to store these. Or do something. So, you know, I was a long-grammed one story. I'm excited to hear her advance up and wait as I've been able to do. And it's, it's really cool to see that progression because it's lumpy. And then coming back to the cycles, like kettlebell sport is a lumpy progression. You're with a single weight for a while. And you get proficient at it and then you jump. And that jump is, you know, maybe it's two kilos or four kilos for competition weights. And all of a sudden, you're, you're really working a lot harder. But it's measurable at that point. Yeah. And those, and those, those two kilo and four kilo jumps are they represent different percentages of change. But, you know, the lower you are on the weight classes and the lower you are on the bell weight, like the higher percent of change, a two kilo or four kilo increase represents. So, the jump from eight to 12s is actually about as big of a jump as you'll see in kettlebell sport because if you think about it, like it's a 50% increase to go from eight kilos to 12 kilos. Right? Like that's, that's a massive jump. Whereas when you're going from 28 to 32, that's a much smaller jump. Right? So, as a, as a represented as a, as a percentage. Right? So, it's one of those things that I don't think people fully take into account when they're thinking about their progression as they, as they move up. We all want to get to the heavy weights. You know, everybody want to be master sport and nobody want to lift these heavy ass weights. But, you know, it's, it's one of those things that you need to take into account. Like a four kilo jump is non trivial, especially when you're at the, when you're at the lighter, when you're in a lighter weight class or when you're working with lighter weights, like it's, it's very much a non, a non trivial, a percent of, percent of, of increase. So, we were talking about like, you know, power negativity, goal setting in those three pillars. And like, how do I compare to my, my wife? And I think she's, you know, got a different mentality. Like she, she is not a power negativity person. She's not focusing on negative. And that's, that's fine. Like, you know, I, everyone is wired, everybody's wired a little differently. I like that kind of style of motivation. I think she's looking for more positive reinforcement, kind of like more of the, you know, help me push a lot when, when my back type of motivation, rather than like, you know, run away from the fire. It's, you know, it's doing a glow type of motivation. That's great. Everybody has to find what works for them. And then iterate on their cycles to make progress. Well, that's the, I mean, that's the, the joy of coaching and actually like you're, you're paraphrasing something that Dennis facility has said in our interview when I was asking him like, well, what's the key to unlocking, you know, what's the key to unlocking and developing mindset with your athletes. And he basically said almost exactly what you're just saying is like, we have to figure out what works for you. Right. And it took me, it took me a long time. I'm sensitive, believe it or not, I'm actually a sensitive person. So it took me a long time as an athlete. And this is, I credit, I credit sports for giving me thicker skin because took me a long time as an athlete to be able to take negative feedback in a way to use it as fuel. I used to get, I used to just get, you know, for lack of a better term but hurt about it. And I would, I would get sad, you know, my coach, my coach told me, you know, X, Y, or Z, you know, and it wasn't until I embraced like the, no, I'm going to use it as fuel that I, that I got, that I got better. And it is, it is really important to find that right fit and what and what works for you because like even, even though I can, I, and because I didn't have any choice, I worked with a lot of asshole football coaches. Right. Like I had to, I had to get used to being told that I sucked, you know, I had to get used to, I had to get used to, to responding positively to negative stimulus. I learned that skill but it was painful and hard, but I still very much more enjoyed playing for coaches that were more positive and more upbeat and, and more, you know, raw, raw and very, and very, you know, enthusiastic and coaches that were very subdued or very like, I got, you know, my college offensive line coach is a great example. He's, you know, works for the, for the Green Bay Packers. He, he told me I had a good game twice, twice in, in three years of playing for him. I got two good jobs, you know, so, but those meant, those meant a lot to me, right. And because it, I knew that I earned it, you know, but I had, I had to learn that, that ability, but like finding those, finding those keys that unlock your own individual motivation is, is really, really important. And I think that's one of the things that I enjoy most about coaching is, you know, different approaches. You know, different approaches for different people because, you know, I work with, I work with Brenna a lot. I work with you very sparingly, but that's because that's what works for you, right. Like, you need technique feedback sometimes, and when you have questions, you'll, you'll ask me questions. Otherwise, I just leave you alone because you've got your own, you've got your own way that you like to, you like to do things. So, I'm going to, I'm going to use that as a segue. Tell us a little bit about the Ryan Thompson training methodology. Because, because from the outside looking in, it looks a little bit like a squirrel with a pixie stick that is kind of going from, from, you know, think to think to think to think to think. But I know that there's more, there's more thought that goes into it. But just from the outside, it looks like, okay, it's a little scatter shot. But tell me about your philosophy a little bit. That's probably my, because my Instagram is, you know, basically, like highlights of terribly shot videos of occasional things. I mean, so when I was preparing for competition, it's much more regimented. It's basically triathlon training, three years in a row. So I'll do, you know, jerk, snatch, long cycle, rinse and repeat. And then I wave weight distribution through there. So kind of volume and intensity waves every in a cycle, maybe like a three to seven day cycle, depending. And that could be duration or the way to the bells going up or down, that type of thing. So that, that kind of training cycle for this last season started moral day, roughly, you know, roughly memorial day. Let's, let's put it based on things that people know my birthday made May 27th. Everybody knows that. Yeah, it's coach George's birthdays when that's, that's when it's, that's when it starts. And, you know, I was going for, I was primarily focusing on riddle at the time, the real struck open. Awesome event for my Steve Riddle, really supportive community. First time competing in it, I did it virtually. Are you coming to Canada with me next year? Are we going, are we, are we making, I think I'm going. I'm going. So I think I think you should, I think you guys should plan it. Let's, let's go. We should, we should maybe talk about doing a border battle down in June, with the, the Iowa, Grivic, I forgot his name is. Matt, just, Matt, yeah, just, just just go down there and just take the Twin City kettlebell on club on the road to go. I've been, I've been chatting with them a little bit. Yeah. Anyways, anyways, we plan our, we'll plan our, we'll plan our dual invasion strategy later. So, but no, so that was a, that was a competition that I focused on for approximately three months. And the focus that I was, I was looking forward to, I was, I was hoping to get right to in two by 20 long cycle for 10 minutes. I did that and then I got ranked one just barely. And that was great, but I was focusing on every individual lift, one lift a day. And I just trained basically 70 days in a row. A couple of. Hashtag no days off. Yeah, well, you know, it's beautiful. Minnesota. It was the focus and actually focusing on one lift. I kind of really refined an area of a weak point for me. It was like my warm up routine, kind of like a motivation factor. What do I need to do and get ready to do a lift? So I was really trying to work on that and then work on pacing, which fell apart in competition. You tend to come out hot. I don't know if I've told you that before, but you tend to come out excited. I backed that down to Twin Cities, but for riddle, I was, I was really all over the board. So my focus points were warm up routine, trying to intuitively kind of breathe through my reps and pacing. And I was doing really well with that training cycle. Once that ended, and I hit rank one, which was going to be my goal going into in cities. I kind of rethink and we had a technique session watch try try out one. And that fit with the same training modality. You know, I just bumped up the intensity a little bit, you know, basically moving from 20 is a competition weight to 24 is this competition weight. So adjusted the weight intensity up duration down a little bit. So whereas I might have been focusing on you have seven minute sets in June July, I was focusing on three to five minute sets for five minute track one in this last cycle. And then now it's just a free for all for about a month of whatever I want to do. So I've got a couple of these Vulcan sandbags that I've filled up with, you know, 160 to 200 pounds of sand, depending on where sandbag and I'll carry this up into the driveway more time with the caddy, the caddy rock. And then working on some, you know, just heavier sport technique, trying to get comfortable with the heavier weights with 24s. So I set a 28s that are set of pro kettlebells more comfortable in the rack for me personally and like getting more comfortable with jerk cycles for those. So I might do like five sets of 10 jerks as a training cycle on that day. And I'll, you know, moving into the winter time. What I'll normally do is I'll have a much longer warm up period. But literally and basically. And then, you know, if I'm, if I have a perfect seven day week, three days will be sport specific training shorter sets. So might be in five, two minute sets with a minute rest, two minute rest in between. Or whatever I want to do, snatch or probably just be like three sets because it's a little bit easier when you have a hand switch. And then the other days will be a mobility day where it's just original strength mobility stretching. Two days will be just lifting the heavy sand bag, you know, over yolks or, you know, picks up to shoulder throw over the shoulder type of stuff. I don't know why, but the strong man sandbag type of thing. I was just, I was just going to say you're the skinniest strong man I've ever seen. You love strong, you love strong man training for a guy, for a guy that's six foot and 180 pounds you, you love your sand, you love your strong man training, which is great. I love it. Like I love seeing it. It's, it's, it's, it's really hard. It is. There's, you know, some of these guys up there, you know, lifting like 300 pound bags. I just don't, I don't have the frame for it. I don't have the capacity for it. Something that's, you know, scalable to my, you know, my needs, my weight. Maybe a little more of an endurance bent of just, you know, trying to do more picks or, you know, pick it up and do some funny squats with it, because you can't really squat with sandbag in your lap, or I can't all that well. That type of thing. I think helps translate to some power output for sport. And then I'll have another day that's kind of a catch up, maybe like strength day. What is my weak point? Where's my technique, weak point that I need to work on? And that's, that's kind of the normal routines of three days of sport. A day of mobility, which is a non-negotiable, but I want to make it negotiable. And then, you know, the two days of kind of strong man sandbag, you know, base type of activity. And then one additional, you know, if I get to a type of data work on strength and catch up on anything I'm feeling weak on. You know, I was having a problem like lock out for fixation in jerk. So it's just like grab the 16s or grab the 20s and just focus on boom, boom, boom, lock out. And don't worry about rep count or duration and just work on it that way. Nice. Yeah. So I love, I love how balanced the approach is from like, I think one thing that you that I love about your approach is you do take into account. Your psychological longevity and like making sure that like for as much as for as much as you're about like. You know, and we're talking about like discipline and embracing the suck and those types of things. That doesn't mean that you make yourself do things that you don't like, right? Like you do make yourself do hard things, but you also adjust and be like, hey, I can't just do the same things over and over again, or I'm going to get bored. I'm going to get stagnant. I'm going to neglect these other things. You know, I need to have a diverse like it's an interesting polarity, right? Like you lean into the fact that you need that you need variety and you know that about yourself to keep yourself psychologically interested. But you also know that you like doing hard things, but the hard thing doesn't have to be the same thing all the time. And by keeping it by keeping it varied, you enjoy it more. So it's not so it's not punishing because I think that I think that's a really important balance to strike. It can't be something you end up dreading, right? Like if you end up dreading it, then you're then you're setting yourself up for failure long term. Yeah, well, I think I probably learned that through the hard way. So after the first twin cities, I was like, I'm long cycle, long cycle is the king that's all I'm going to do. So a long cycle like 20 days in a row and or 20 workouts in a row. And at the end of that, my body feels like it's just going to give up on me. There's no diversity here. You're getting over getting close to an overuse injury. So I had to do something different and I love long cycle. It's like the hardest lift. Maybe the easiest to learn because it's somewhat forgiving because you're going at a slower pace. It's also the hardest because if you want to go fast and lift heavy weights, you really got to be dialed in. Yeah, biggest, biggest, biggest amplitude, but also low, lowest, lowest total number of repetitions. So, so least number of cycles, but biggest amplitude and biggest volume. So like there's a, yeah, there's a, there's, there's definitely you can spread out the suffering more, which is great. But you, it definitely taxes your, your engine and your mindset, probably the most of the three. So I had to dial that back. And now, you know, in the kind of off season, we'll call it because I'm not, I'm not planning to do another competition until, you know, end of the spring early summer. I'll do, you know, basic one day of each lift, each sport lift in the, in the off season call it. And then when I get to sport specific training, maybe 12 weeks out, 10 weeks out, something like that. That'll start to run it back up to maybe two days a week. I probably just do long cycles, probably just two days a week, long cycle, jerk day, a snatch day. And maybe Queens is that improvement because I've got some big elbows. I always got to keep, I got to work on particularly when I'm trying to go fast. I really need to get those tightened up when I'm, when I'm trying to hit like a nine, 10 rep of minute pace. Slowest smooth smooth is fast. You can always go faster once you're smooth. That's always, that's always the, that's always the trick bag. Well, I get a little slow enough to be able to go fast. I get a little frustrated, you know, when I was watching Brown a train, and she was, well, she's, she, you know, it did hardstyle before this for a number of years. And snatch is like her exercise. She, she is, man, she's good. She's really good at every single rep. You know, she did 223 reps, I think at Twin Cities. The last one looked like the first one. And, you know, snatch is my worst lift. And I, I really envy when it's, when it looks the same every single time. And I'm getting better with, particularly jerk and someone with long cycle snatch. I've got a long way to go. Snatch is a sickle mistress man. It is a very, very fickle mistress. You have to be very precise. And it takes a lot of reps, takes a lot of precision. It is definitely a very, it is very cyclic. Very precise. It is definitely fickle. It is, it is, but it's also good. It's, you know, I have a sedentary job. So I don't get a lot of cardio. I'm not walking or running all that often. So I look at snatch is kind of a conditioning modality in my training. So I might dial back the weight a little more forgiving, but then just bump up the reps and, you know, you get that kind of conditioning. You know, maybe that, maybe that little euphoria of running that type of thing. And really got, whereas maybe jerk. You can, I can dial it weight up and get my intensity in that fashion. So in the offseason, I'll kind of play around with that little bit more. And then I always end to workouts with some type of, you know, like weighted carry or I made a sled out of some old tires that I waited down and just drag it up and down the street. Like something like that that really just talking about you end, you end every, you end every workout with your appropriate cool down and stretching routine and mobility, right? No, not at all. I told you this is one of the hard things I need to do. I mean, I have been working on some mobility and stretching in workouts, but I also like the last exercise. Yeah, I haven't just busted. Something where you can just go to the wall and, you know, feel like you're doing something work on a pain point, like, you know, some knee mobility, drag it backwards, the knees over toes, guy type of stuff. Yeah, there's all kinds of things you can do to work on that type of stuff. Well, in the summer, waiter walks it. Walk down the street, turn around, walk back with a 24 kilo over my head. You are just really trying to make sure your neighbors think that you are insane. Walking up and down the street with a weight over his head and it's underwear. I don't know what's going on over there. Man, this is not mine. It looks like underwear. Yeah, to them, to them, it's your underwear. Yeah, we're in tight season now. So, um, but there are also people that understand my, you know, one of my neighbors is also member of the Twin Cities kind of clubbers, you know, on the edge, the fringe of the Twin Cities. I know he's in now. He's in now. I just dropped off his bells. That's why I was over there. I dropped off his bells. So he's, yeah, he's in. Yeah, I'll bring him over to the, the pancake and we can have some. He loves it. He'll love it. Honestly, he will love that. Like Michael, Michael's a good friend of mine. He's great. And you'll love him. He's, you know, he's comes from the CrossFit world. He comes from the, you know, the kettlebell sport of barbell. He comes from, he comes from that world, but he's transitioning more to kettlebell sport now just had a new baby. So he's, yeah, he's all about like, what can I do at home that it doesn't require CrossFit box? And yeah, he's, yeah, you'll, you'll, you'll really like Michael. He's, he's well, that's an area that I think is so interesting in the kettlebell sport world. There's, you know, so many people that do CrossFit or that style of workout that, I think if you've really humbled by picking up some kettlebells and trying even a five minute long cycle set or jerk set. And go through the motions. And I think if you try for just one workout, you would be hooked. Well, maybe like me, that would be hooked. See, this is the hardest thing I've ever done. I want to try it again. Yeah. Oh, that was, yeah, that was terrible. I need to do it again. I need to do it again. Or, you know, like when, when Dennis Facilia did the road slingshot challenge and just destroyed everyone. Yeah, I can't remember how many snatches he did. 272, I think, or something like the sum on some ungodly number with a 24 with a 24, you know, who's just, yeah. But when I was in it, when I did the tactical strength challenge with strong first, you know, a number of years ago, there were guys who were really proud of, you know, their, their hunter rep, you know, snatch time. And to think about translating that bend to a 10 minutes set. I think there's a lot of those people that would say, this is hard. I'm going to try it. I'm going to do it again. And I could do it at home. I don't have to do a box. I'm at the, you know, drive anywhere. Maybe the garage is older than ours. That kind of thing. Yeah, I love it. All right. I'm going to, I'm going to be respectful of your time. So I got a couple more questions for you. So I'm, I am curious because you talked about being, you know, an overweight, you know, as a teenager. And I know that you happen to know a dietician pretty, pretty well. So what, what is your approach to nutrition now? And, and how does that, how does that fit into your story, right? Yeah, so that's a good question. So I generally speaking, I mean, I've cleaned up my diet, you know, like meat, eggs, you know, veggies, fruit, that kind of thing. I've tried like a carnivore diet for a period just to see how it went. That wasn't my style. You know, more like ketogenic type of activity. I think it's larger for me about just eating better whole foods. And then I also, most days will intermittent fast. Or my breakfast will be just a protein based breakfast. That works best for me. If I have carbohydrates, just kind of, yeah, like I'm going through mud for the rest of the day. And that's maybe falls in the face of a pretty like glycolytic sport, like kettlebell sport. But I find I get a little boost if I am training in a somewhat depleted state from my carbohydrate intake, and then day competition. I'll eat some dry bananas or figs or something like that. Some type of dried fruit. It's got a lot more fructose in it. And you get that sugar hit and feel like performance bumps up a little bit. I've had a couple of times like what works for me, what do I like, what do I like for a timing perspective. So that's maybe like a just a bio hack to try to pump my performance up and train when I'm a little more depleted because you have traffic on, for example, that last set, that long cycle set where you've already done jerk and snatch, you're feeling depleted regardless of what you get. You could, you know, eat a pound of M&M's and you're that that sugar high is not going to be enough to overcome what just happened. Yeah, that is, that is definitely, I was telling, I was telling one of my friends about my triathlon at Twin Cities kettlebell open, which was not planned, by the way. Nor was the 10 minute snatch that I really planned on only doing one, five minutes set because of, you know, being so close to shoulder surgery, but, you know, I blame, I blame Sarah for narrow for convincing me to do the triathlon. And, you know, we were, when we were lifting, you know, the lifter next to me was a 70 year old doing his first 10 minute snatch set and he was like, hey, if you want to, if you want to go the full 10 minutes, you know. And, you know, when you get that, you get that from a guy who's doing his first, his first 10 minute competition set at 70 years old, you're like, I'm pretty sure I can suck it up and do a 10 minutes set. That last, that last long cycle set, man, I like, it felt like I was using somebody else's hands. I was so sloppy. My technique was all over the place. I banged the bell off of my knee, which I never do that. Like, I never, I never bang my knees anymore. Like, I banged the bell off of my knee and yeah, that, that depletion is, is, is real. Like, especially in, in a one day triathlon, where you're doing all three lifts within a span of a few hours, like, that carbohydrate and glycogen depletion is definitely real. You're, you're less precise. You're just, you're just, you're kind of, you're kind of lifting through a mod a little bit like you said. Like it's definitely, it's definitely hard. Yeah, so I mean, like nutrition, I don't, you know, I don't track like micro nutrients. Really don't track my macros. It's a big focus on just what I'm eating from a food perspective. Overall, you know, my weight's pretty steady right now. Maybe up and down a little bit, you know, everybody has highs and lows. We're going to the holiday season, ever get you a little bit more. Gain season, baby, holiday hypertrophy. We're going to lean into it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I might, I might steal a couple of those workouts. Do it. Do it. So, yeah. You're big, you're a big fan of halos and I am not. So I'm going to drive like this. I'm not, I mean, to call me a fan would be a miss, probably a miss number. I mean, it's one of those like, I do them because I need to. They're, they're hard and, you know, they're much harder than they look. That's the thing. Like when you see people do them smoothly and, you know, you're like, oh, I can, I can do that. That's no big deal. You're just moving a weight around your head and then you, you do a, you do a few of them in the first few, feel fine. And then, but I always, I never prescribed them at less than probably 12 total reps. And right now they're, we're prescribing at 20 and like, you get to that point and you're like, once you get past 12, it's like, holy crap, these are hard. My arms are tired. My core is tired. Like, and like, my shoulders are getting tired. Like, my grip's getting tired. Like, they, they, they definitely sneak up on you a little bit. So, yeah, I definitely, I recommend, I recommend halos, even though not a huge fan of them, but it's the do hard things, do things that suck kind of, kind of endorsement, I guess, for halos. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you got to, you got to do it. It's, it's like Rack Swats for me. I, that, just like, anaconda strength if you're abdominal wall of tightening. That's, I think that's a day in John thing. Yeah, but I went into it as like, oh, I could definitely do 10 with the 24 snow, a deal. Yeah. Yeah, no, it's hard. It's really hard. Those heavy, those heavy, double front squats are, are no joke or heavy goblet squats. Like, yeah, it's, yeah, it's, it's definitely no joke. All right. So, the last question, and normally it's what would be the one tip that you would give to a new lifter, but for you, I'm going to make you, I'm going to make you pick one catchphrase of, of your, of your catchphrase, and it can't be one you've already said. So, so, a, a new catchphrase or of your mantras, right, or your things that you like to, that you like to share, what would be, what would be something that you would, that we, that you would point somebody to as a, as a good piece of advice or a good, good mantra to, to adopt. I don't know if I said this one or not on the podcast, but the one I, the one I always tell people if I have one thing to say is, live your success, whatever it is, just live it, just define your path, what works for you, what your success is, and move on. So, all this noise and, you know, people that are going to criticize you, or maybe, you know, neg on your goals, but, you know, everybody who's succeeded and accomplished anything in life, define what that is for them, and just relentlessly pursuit it, and that's whether that's why they're out where they're at today. I love that, live your success. I'm emphasizing the your part of it, but I love that because I think that's, I think that based on what you said, that's the emphasis, right, is define it for you, because what's going to make you happy and fulfilled is going to be different than what's going to make me happier fulfilled, and I love that that's great. I mean, we have a lot in common, but what you define a success, what I define a success totally different, and if I pursued your goal, that's not going to be very satisfying for me, or not a satisfying as it could be. So, figure out what you want to do and just go do it, and that might involve mistakes, and that's okay. I think the one thing that we're clear on is we're going to take over Canada. Two man, two man army invading Toronto, circa August, you know, twice. We should be able to get more than two. We won't tell them our numbers before we, well, okay, we'll have to, because we'll have to register, but fine. We're coming, we're coming for a team riddle struck, we're going to come have fun, and we're going to, we're going to do hard things on the platform. Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, but also like this is such an awesome community, and I think the podcast here helps cultivate that. I know, like I lived in person at the Twinsie to Canada will open awesome experience, awesome event. You know, there's a new lifters that joined this people that returned, you mentioned, you know, that older gentleman, I think his name was Joe, who did the 10 minutes snatch, killed it. Yeah, he did, he did awesome people were going nuts, and there's, there's not a ton of us there this year, but it's so exciting when a new person steps on the platform and really accomplishes a huge goal, a huge physical accomplishment. And, you know, that was his success in that moment, and it's really invigorating to watch it happen as a spectator and see people succeed. Yeah, absolutely. And well, when you mentioned your how close you are with your brother, like one of my first, like one thing that I noticed the first time you were lifting was how enthused your brother was while you were lifting and how just like he's yelling at you and hollering and like he was so he was so jacked for you last year. You know, he was so he was so pumped for you and like came up and gave you a big hug. It was like awesome job. I was like, oh, that's super cool. Like that, that's awesome. Like that was so cool to see. And then when he said, oh, yeah, this is my brother is like, I get that because my brother, my brother is my best friend. And he lives nearby and like I totally I totally understand that like I love those, I love those moments. Like I live for those moments of seeing seeing people succeed and seeing those seeing those big embraces and those big those big physical accomplishments. And yes, it's just awesome. So, yeah, definitely, definitely highly recommend being there in person because it's a great, it's a great in person experience. And it's not something you can replicate training in your garage on your own. It's great. If that's what you need to do, but if you can make it here, man, I just I highly recommend in person competitions. It's just it's a different vibe. Totally different. Yeah, it is. And you know, that that's my middle brother Troy, who was at the lift a year ago. He had a baby, so he couldn't come this year, but I dropped off a kettlebell for him. That, that Vulcan bell I gave to him, so I'm like, hey, maybe this could be a thing. Maybe you could train in your garage, maybe you could hook up with Jordan, you could get your program and, you know, you got plenty of time. Yeah, and we're doing, we're doing zoom sessions on Saturdays. Now we're doing like one zoom session a week. We'll start, we'll start next, we'll start next week. We're going to be doing one zoom session a week on Saturdays again. So we're trying to build back some of the, the team camaraderie via zoom a little bit because things fell off a little bit post-COVID. And then I had my shoulder surgery and all that. But yeah, we're bringing, we're bringing that back. And for those of us that are local, I'm going to try and start putting together like a monthly session at the athlete lab, too, so that we can go like see each other and get some, get some work in together as well. So we're going to be, there's going to be big things coming in 2023 and pretty, pretty excited about, I'll talk, talk more about those things. But Ryan, thank you so much, man. This is, this has been an awesome chat. You know, you and I can always, we can always wrap for hours. So I appreciate, I appreciate you making the time and, and taking time to come on the podcast. Anything you want to, anything you want to leave with? No, I really appreciate it. I think you cultivate an awesome community, Jordan, and I'm just so appreciative to be a part of it. Thank you very much. I appreciate you too, man, and we'll go do some hard things and have fun, and have fun doing it. So thank you very much, Ryan. We'll talk soon, brother. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this episode of the platform podcast. We'll be back with a new episode soon. Please be sure to leave a rating and review of the platform podcast in your app of choice. Support our work by supporting our affiliates. And of course, if you have questions or you want help reaching your goals, reach out to me. Until next time, thanks for listening.