Do you hold yourself and those around you to a high standard? Joining me on the show this week are a couple of the Rebel crew, Ryan Patrick and Ryan L’Ecuyer. The three of us sit down and unpack the training camp we put on this past weekend at PeakFast Fitness and Sports Training in Erlanger, Kentucky and our big takeaways from the camp. The Rebel Performance training camps are a way for us to bring our remote community of Rebel athletes together for a fun weekend of in-person coaching, training, and getting to know each other.
It’s safe to say that in-person coaching is unlike anything else. Even if you’ve been lifting for over a decade, everyone needs in-person coaching check-ins every three to four weeks. The nuance behind hands on coaching makes a heap of difference, and each attendee was able to take the coaching cues home with them to implement in his/her remote training. Not only was the in-person coaching amazing to witness, but also this idea of collaborating knowledge with like-minded humans was extremely beneficial. We all have so much to bring to the fitness table, and it was great to be able to share and learn with everyone.
We then dive into the importance of being exceptional at the basics. It is likely you haven’t exhausted this adaptation yet, so it’s important to double down and really focus on continuing to crush the basic principles, slowing down, taking in the feedback presented and bringing intention back to training. We close out the episode discussing why we all need to hold ourselves to a higher standard; this is something we have at Rebel Performance. We have a tribe continually looking to push, challenge and lift each other to new heights. Listen in to hear how our training camps are kind of like pumping iron meets animal house meets Tony Stark (the mad scientist part).
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
- [04:15] Brief takeaways from the training camp
- [07:29] How valuable it is to get hands on training
- [11:15] Collaborating knowledge
- [13:25] Being exceptional at the basics
- [17:16] Slowing down and really taking in the feedback
- [21:35] Bringing intention back to training
- [22:00] Gym pet peeves
- [23:04] Embracing the suck
- [23:34] Limiting your phone usage in the gym
- [27:46] Holding yourself to a high standard
James Cerbie: It gets late so early, it gets dark. I don’t know how you watch sports. Yeah, realistically. You just don’t watch any. You’re my dad who just, whenever I’m home, and if it’s Sunday Night Football or Thursday Night Football, and I’m in the kitchen. I look down in the basement. He’s just in his chair, just knocked out. And he’s the only person to date that I’ve seen do this. He has fallen asleep while speaking to me in his chair. I went downstairs in high school, asked him a question, and he started to talk and then just out cold.
Ryan L’Ecuyer: That’s awesome. That’s the goal. I love the East Coast time, man. Most of the time, I never even see the sun for, like, the entire winter. It’s great. Love it. It matches my insides, dark and cold.
James Cerbie: I had a thought there. Oh, no. I was going to say we were making dinner. And so in Salt Lake, I’m used to it being 6:00, we’re cooking dinner, and I can turn Thursday Night Football on because it comes on at 6:00 there. And I was like, oh, I got 2 hours. Thursday Night Football starts 30 minutes before I go to bed. So less football watching for James. No, Kelsey is not perturbed by this. She could care less. She’s a big fan of it.
Ryan Patrick: Eastern time is just terrible for primetime sports.
James Cerbie: The worst is when you’re a kid growing up in high school and all the big games happen on Sunday night. And it’s like, I have to wake up and go to school tomorrow. Why don’t you start this at a reasonable hour, or you always had the teachers that wanted to prove a point. It was always the teachers that were clearly never athletes and still held a grudge from the time that they weren’t an athlete. And so they would always take it out on everybody and be like, sports are dumb, test on Monday.
It’s like, oh, you’re killing me. I got the Super Bowl tonight. I’m not going to study for that thing. Just try to force it down your throat. You have to choose. You better study for this history test tomorrow and not watch the Super Bowl.
Ryan L’Ecuyer: I choose your dad’s technique. I just fall asleep at my desk Monday. I’m taking a siesta and it’s 8 o’clock in the morning.
James Cerbie: There was a kid at our school that fell asleep in a class. This is phenomenal. And the teacher got out a roll of duct tape, and so he fell asleep. Both hands on the desk, head between the hands. Just kind of like laying down like this. And so the teacher goes over with duct tape. He goes underneath the desk and over the top of the heads in hand and then wraps it around a few times. So the kid finally wakes up. He just can’t move. He’s totally taped down. That’s fantastic.
Ryan Patrick: He had to really be out because when you unravel duct tape, it’s very loud.
Ryan L’Ecuyer: Yeah, that should be, like an innate response to wake up to that sound. You’re not supposed to sleep through that. That’s not good.
James Cerbie: Not at all. So let’s dive in. We are going to just debrief the training camp we had in Erlanger Kentucky at Peak Fast Fitness and Sports Training. Ryan, thank you so much for hosting, dude. Gym is amazing. It’s beautiful. You’ve done such a good job with it.
Ryan Patrick: My pleasure.
Brief Takeaways From the Training Camp
James Cerbie: But a short one today. We’re just going to keep it quick, actionable and talk about our biggest takeaways from the weekend, things that hopefully listeners will find useful and helpful and also hopefully make you outrageously jealous that you weren’t there so that you will come to the next one. My first takeaway, and perhaps the most important is, do you even lift? So I had forgotten about Broscience. And I am saddened to admit that I forgot that this YouTube channel existed. And night one, we start talking about this and we break out the Do You Even Lift video, which is probably from, like, 2012, 2013.
And my life is now better with that back in it. That’s my top takeaway. It’s a required watch. And the fact that our weekend wrapped with some random kid stopping us at Chipotle coming up to Meat Daddy, going like, do you even lift?
Ryan L’Ecuyer: You missed the kid with the mullet lat spreading me at the axe throwing event. And then that kid at Chipotle trolling me.
Ryan Patrick: I guess the south just goes hard in the paint, man. I mean, we came at you.
Ryan L’Ecuyer: Yeah, that’s the biggest takeaway that I took is just like, I’m just not that intimidating to other people. Between the kids with the mullets and the Chipotle kids, and then your children calling me Mr. Wilson the whole weekend. First of all, they didn’t address me for, like, two days. And then when they finally did, they called me Mr. Wilson. I guess I got to step up my game. I clearly don’t lift.
James Cerbie: The kid at Chipotle was funny, but the kids at the axe throwing were way more hilarious.
Ryan L’Ecuyer: This is great. Like inside jokes on a podcast are perfect for everybody. I was just hoping so badly that I would be able to have some interaction with these kids because they were just incredible. I mean, is that, like, North Kentucky’s finest there?
James Cerbie: We need to pause.
Ryan Patrick: I think that’s what most people think of when they think of Kentucky.
Ryan L’Ecuyer: They were incredible.
James Cerbie: If you could just envision the most redneck looking high school kid that you can find, like a full blown mullet, nasty tank top, just through and through, crushing the redneck game. That’s probably a description of what these kids were. And it was amazing. I love it.
Ryan L’Ecuyer: When I saw that kid bicep curling his helmet for the Go Kart racing. I was like, I got to figure out how to talk to this guy, and he just came right to me. It was great. Hit me with the lat spread.
James Cerbie: Yeah. And I love that. He just like, he just threw a lat spread on you.
Ryan L’Ecuyer: Didn’t ask for it. That’s what I got.
Ryan Patrick: I mean, let’s be real. A lat spread is not just any pose.
Ryan L’Ecuyer: Yeah. First of all, it’s like my only pose, but it’s like if you come at somebody with a lat spread, you’re in the game, this kid was in it. He knew enough. It wasn’t a bicep shot. That’s standard. The lat spread is like, okay, this kid is doing some homework and also probably not doing a lot of homework.
James Cerbie: He’s probably about 160 pounds, soaking wet.
Ryan L’Ecuyer: He looked pretty good for twelve or 24, whatever he was. I don’t know.
James Cerbie: All right. So outside of the multiple acquaintances in which Ryan was asked, do you even bench? How much do you bench? Do you even lift? And then just random strangers throwing lat spreads at him? Do you lift in a park? Oh, I’m sorry, sir. Do you even lift? I will say my serious takeaway is how valuable it is to get hands on in person coaching. I think that the people in our community, our clients, our athletes, that’s why we put these training camps on for a number of other reasons, right?
Like, we want to get together in person, not be awkward internet friends, be actual in person human friends, share these experiences, turn on some music, lift, have fun, throw down. But a large part of it is just being able to come together and get hands on in person coaching because we’re being honest, almost all of us train by ourselves, right? We just do. And I think that we forget just how valuable it is to have somebody there watching you, coaching, you are cueing, you poking, prodding, moving.
We had what I would consider to be pretty advanced trainees and lifters at the camp. People that have been doing this for eight plus years, and it was still every single movement you could tell that they were so into the fact that I haven’t been coached in so long. I just kind of do it, and we’re saying this and they’re not far off. They’re really good. But those small tweaks and changes, you can see those light bulbs go off in their head like, oh, shit.
This is what I’ve been needing. I’ve been missing this thing. And now this feels way better. This is much better contraction. Or I think a good example was Meat Daddy. I got to figure out a naming system here.
Ryan L’Ecuyer: Well, I think RP and Ryan or MD and Rd would work, but that might get confusing. People might think that we’re doctors or something.
How Valuable it is to Get Hands On Training
James Cerbie: I was going to say, like, a good example of that is there are just so many good examples. The one that really stands out, Ryan, is when you had a really good breakout there with Tyler, and you really hammered squat, bench, dead with him because I can tell you from talking to you, and the next day, he was like, it’s never felt that way before. It’s never felt that good before. The contractions were on point, the movement was on point. I actually felt hamstrings. I actually felt my ass, actually felt abs, actually felt quads.
I didn’t feel back. I don’t know if you guys felt the same way, but especially the group we had. I just felt like they were so into it because they were just so hungry to have that because they never get it.
Ryan L’Ecuyer: Totally.
Ryan Patrick: That’s exactly what I was going to say. A lot of us, I think to your point, train alone. And I think at least inside the Rebel community, it’s kind of we train together alone. So everyone is out there doing stuff. And I like to think that we’re pretty mindful coaches. We’re not just throwing everything but the kitchen sink in our programs. So the movements we did in the gym were not flashy. They were not anything you don’t see a lot of. They were very basic movements, but the intention behind the way that we coached it between their focus in terms of what they were trying to get was exceptional.
And it’s a good reminder to just get that objective eye, to just go back through to some of the basic stuff. And it’s kind of what I tell a lot of my athletes, like the great ones just do the common things uncommonly well. And it’s probably been a long time. And I speak for myself on this that I’ve really had somebody go through that with a fine tooth comb and give me that objective eye, because even though I know and I may coach somebody else, I’m still prone to a lot of the same pitfalls that I think people fall into, right?
Collaborating Knowledge
It’s like knowing it is not enough to prevent me from having the same issues. And I think the coaches that we had were very receptive. I know, James, you and I collaborated. We got Chris Rhoades into a much better position, and there was even a little roadblock that I was having. And you said a couple of things that really just reminded me, you almost get this like, I don’t want to say groupthink where we’re thinking of the same exact stuff, but we almost have this pool of shared knowledge because the guys that were with us attending, they’re very intelligent coaches themselves.
And there’s so many things that we’ve forgotten over the years that you said a few things that just kind of kicked off this cascade where my brain went and pulled these old files, and I was able to kind of pull a lot of that out. So you kind of forget along the way some of the stuff that you have learned in the past, so it’s just infinitely valuable. I think having the right kind of people together who can really collaborate on this stuff and just help everybody elevate their game, so to speak.
Ryan L’Ecuyer: Yes, absolutely. That’s kind of what I was getting at before. I think a lot of times people, just in general, are seeking new information. And a lot of times it’s not that we really need new information. We just need to get better at using what we have. And these types of environments are just incredible for doing that, because we all do have a similar background, but different experiences that can just pull out some different stuff within our knowledge base. It’s like it already makes sense. We have the foundation. That’s one of the main things for me was a couple of takeaways.
The humility that we have in this group is just incredible. We have these coaches that know a ton and know more than any of us in certain realms, and they were all trying to be as good as we can in our craft, and they’re willing to be coached by somebody else. I think that actually, it’s not rare for us because we’re used to seeing that in these types of groups, but it’s probably rare in the industry as a whole and probably just in society as a whole.
Like, no one really likes to be vulnerable in general. So it’s cool to see these people like this is their profession, but they still want to get a different set of eyes on things. So that was a big one for me. It’s just like, I really appreciate the humility involved in this group or that we have in this group. And also it was just how important those fundamentals are in getting to the next step, and that everyone in this group at least had a nice foundation of a lot of the things that we were talking about, which makes it a lot easier to go to that next step of like, they already have the context.
For example, with Tyler, he’s already done a lot of these types of drills. So it all made sense to him. The cue in that was very slight. He just may not have had that with those particular exercises before, but it made sense to him because he’s been there before. So that’s another big thing for me. It’s just like, yeah, just really spend as much time as you need on the foundation and make sure that you understand how to do that because it does build into bigger things in the end.
Being Exceptional at the Basics
James Cerbie: Yes. That was another thing that I thought about a lot after the weekend was just how far you can get by being exceptional at the basics, because you have to think about what did we really go over? Like, the big things we coached. We coached squat, bench dead, super foundational. We coached a one arm row, a chest supported one arm lat pulldown. What are the other big things we hit?
Ryan Patrick: We had cable flies.
James Cerbie: We had a couple of jumping.
Ryan Patrick: Low cable split squat.
James Cerbie: Agility thing. We really coached up split squats. That was a really good one that we hammered, and we have a handful of other movements we hit as well. But we weren’t hitting all of these crazy, fancy exercises. We just figured out, well, how do we do the basics better, even like the advanced people that were there, they still have a lot of room to grow within those exercises and those movements and those protocols. That’s something I just kept coming back to. It doesn’t have to be complicated. We don’t need these fancy exercises with my foot up here, my other foot here, and I got a band over here, and I got a dumbbell over here.
And maybe we just need to figure out how to better execute these core fundamentals, like, if we think about it, when we write programs, I probably don’t go that far outside of, like, a core 40 to 50 exercises, probably. I don’t know. That’s just on top of my head, I have a core of 40 to 50 exercises that we kind of rotate through and cycle, and then we can change how I load it. We can change the tempo on it. I can change sets. I can change reps, like, we have these core patterns, and I think we just have to continue to help people get better at these things, as opposed to worrying about getting new flashy things that probably aren’t contributing or helping. They’re just more confusing than anything else I would imagine.
Ryan L’Ecuyer: I think that’s kind of what I was getting out there with the context of things. It’s probably in there. There’s just other ways to pull it out that we may not have tried just yet. So just like you mentioned, you just mentioned, like, five different variables that you could change within one exercise. And that’s not even to mention, like, just the cueing or the set up. How many things can we really do that we’re going to actually do in the gym, that we’re going to either load or try to actually build some fitness on? It can just get kind of sketchy.
And I think that sometimes people are looking for that. It’s got to be this exercise or something. But when you approach it that way, they’re kind of still left in the dark in a lot of ways where if that one exercise stops working for whatever reason, they have no idea how they even got there. It’s just like this random ass thing that worked for a little while. Anything that you do for a little while is bound to stop working as well at some point.
And if your primary intervention is just picking different exercises, not only you have a learning curve with each one of those, but there’s, like, no foundation on that. So I think that that’s a really big thing for me. It just kind of solidifies a lot of the stuff that we’re doing. It was also really nice that we could all be on the floor at the same time. It’s like we’re all kind of giving the same cues, but maybe just in a different way, and it may just click for something that I say may not register at all, but James or RP goes over there and it’s like, oh, they’re getting exactly what I was trying to get them to do, but it’s all coming from the same or similar lens.
The principles are there. I think that’s like a big thing. You have to have the principles and the methods are kind of not all that important at some point. I may have mixed those two up. I think that’s right, though. Right.
Ryan Patrick: Close enough.
James Cerbie: Yeah, that’s good.
Slowing Down and Really Taking in the Feedback
Ryan Patrick: I think it’s not a lost art, but 5, 10 years ago, this was the nature of the industry. We got together at seminars, and you would have a hands-on day. We would go through a lot of this. Now some of them were huge and you just kind of move around in groups. But there were conferences where you really got into these breakout sessions, and you got this hands-on stuff. But I don’t know that the Internet and Instagram and just the sound bite culture that we get can really transfer that to the execution that somebody is doing and what they’re feeling throughout that exercise, and sometimes just slowing it down a little bit and really getting the feedback throughout that movement, whether it’s a variety of cues or just some minor positional changes that help you execute, it’s going to be infinitely more valuable.
And, James, to your point, the longer I do this, the smaller the pool of potential exercises gets for me, because there are very few things that work very well. And I don’t know that the novelty of switching exercises around is really going to translate to the kind of changes that I need long term. I mean, guys continue to adapt to a back squat for years on end by changing the physiologic demand on rep ranges and volume in those parameters rather than just having this mixed bag of things.
So for the beginner trainer, I think you learn a few things. It’s that intermediate stage where there’s this confused complexity. But if you can bring it back to that, we kind of talked about this at one point, just the elegance of getting simple again, but just understanding it. And I think appreciating a lot of that nuance can really deliver the results at a level that you haven’t done before. And we see this in a number of things like, you guys know that I started taking jujitsu.
Well, I can tell you the higher belts do things better that are just super simple. And I think when it comes to exercise selection, getting that view, it kind of brings you back to this, oh all these things are really good. I just haven’t done them with this kind of focus or done them in this manner.
James Cerbie: Yeah, absolutely. Those are my two biggest takeaways from the weekend, and they’re very tightly related. It’s how powerful the basics are, but that’s tightly, tightly related with your ability to execute the basics at a very high level.
Right. I think you can continue to improve your one arm horizontal row or a chest support of one arm lat pulldown, your squat, your bench, your deadlift, lunge and split squat variations, hamstring curl. There’s always room within these basic movements that are probably going to be the things that get us our biggest return on investment. A good example of this at the camp was when we had someone struggling with split squats like, hey, I’m having a hard time feeling this. It just feels off, and we make a small tweak to the movement.
We’re going to load it here instead of here, and we’re going to hold onto a cable at this arm, and it’s like, bam, that made all the difference in the world. Now we’ve got a really good split squat going on, and now we can get to work. But it’s like those small details are what makes a big difference for people. And we do the best job we can, trying to obviously coach and cue and manage all these things remotely. I think we do a really good job of them, but at the end of the day, there’s always going to be a gap, and we’re never going to be able to fully replicate that in person coaching experience, which is what we’re trying to do with the training camps.
Take our remote team, all of our remote athletes, bring them together in person, so we can actually have these experiences three to four times a year. So when you go back to train by yourself again, you’re dialed in. You had that experience. We’re off and running. That’s kind of where my head was at with this.
Ryan L’Ecuyer: It’s a beautiful model, because I think that people ultimately still get a chance to learn on their own as well. You’re going to give them some input at the camp. You can take a video of it for them. They can go home and study so that they can try to replicate it if they have any problems, then we have a little bit more context to work off of when they send you a video back. And it’s not quite what it was. It just accelerates the process and it just makes it so targeted.
It’s hard to replace that. But I think you still get the best of both worlds and that they are going to have to go back and have to relearn it. And again, like, they’ll hopefully understand the principles better and they’ll be able to figure things out themselves. And that really is how learning takes place. So I think it’s a perfect blend if you can make it work, it’s my favorite way to work with people to have this kind of hybrid model. This thing is perfect.
Ryan Patrick: Yeah, I agree.
James Cerbie: Nice. Any closing thoughts for the people this week other than they all should go watch the do you even live video and you’ll work your way through the flow chart because the answer is going to be no.
Brining Intention Back to Training
Ryan Patrick: I will leave one thing. And I think that everyone just needs to bring some intention back to training by putting cell phones down and focusing on what you’re doing.
Ryan L’Ecuyer: I love that I can talk about that all day. Yes, mostly because I want them to get off the equipment that I want to use, but also.
James Cerbie: That makes me so mad. I’m sitting there waiting for a piece. There’s probably one. There’s probably one of those machines. I’m sitting there some dude just like texting away, looking at Instagram. It’s like, yo, hurry the fuck up. It was also funny. Made me think of this because I went to the gym for the first time here in Knoxville yesterday, and this kid shows up clearly training for powerlifting. So he goes over immediately, grabs a rack and just brings a chair with him.
And so it’s just like he just puts the chair right off in front of the rack in a not very wide walkway. Right? He’s kind of sitting in the walkway. He hits a set of three and then just sits down and he gets out of his phone.
Ryan L’Ecuyer: So this kid must have a pretty long commute because he’s at my gym every week as well. I have to ask him what he does. That’s a huge one. We are being sarcastic in a sense, but I do think that there’s so few moments in life generally right now, especially where it’s like, how often are you just doing one thing? You’re never just doing one thing. Training can be a really great tool for that. You’re just going to focus on this thing. Don’t try to distract yourself from it, fucking eat it.
Embracing the Suck
It’s going to hurt and it’s going to suck. And I think there’s so much to be gained from that. I think that you see a lot of that if you’re looking at the RPE kind of research where you have these people that hit, like, 16 reps more than what they perceived to be their ten rep max, a lot of it has to do with that. They just don’t actually pay attention when they train. They’re literally on a different planet. There is no intention with anything. I think that’s a huge one. I love it. I’ll just piggyback on that one.
Yeah, team. If you do use your phone for training, like our people do with TrainHeroic, or maybe in Google sheets. Whatever it is, use do not disturb. Yes, like a hard do not disturb. Like, I have three people that can get through my do not disturb, and you can’t double call it either, because that’s turned off so three people can get through my do not disturb. And so when it’s time to train, nothing is going to get to me. Granted, my phone stays like that all day.
So it’s like, if I don’t want you to get in touch with me, then you probably have no way of actually getting in touch with me. I think the hard not to disturb is something that every single person needs to implement because your phone is just a giant, massive distraction machine that’s going to send you in 17 different directions. And there’s always going to be people that think they’re going to try to prioritize whatever they think your priority should be for you. It’s like, hey, respond to my text.
Hey, respond to my email. Hey, did you see the social media notification? It’s all noise. None of it really matters. It’s just people trying to prioritize you. Dude, we’re on a walk today, and some older gentleman drove past us. He was trying to find some place. He’s like, yeah, I can’t figure it out. I got this old flip phone and it doesn’t get any maps on it. I’m like, bro, I’m actually jealous of you. I’m thinking of going back to a flip phone.
Yeah, I just have to know how to manage it like it’s here. So I think those are really good tools. One thing I’ll say too. It’s going to be a podcast about phones. Now, we’re not going to get a sponsor from Apple.
James Cerbie: Apple and Verizon
Ryan L’Ecuyer: For the longest time, I used an MP3 player. Like, if you guys have heard of those, but it’s just a little clip in MP3 player. But the thing that I love about that is just like, I can only fit so much music on it, so there’s no choice. It’s just like it’s the playlist. The playlist is just going to go. There’s eight albums on there, and I’ll just keep listening to them until I want to not listen to them anymore, and I had to break down and get some wireless headphones.
So what I do with that now is I just have the same exact thing I just created on Spotify. It’s not even hooked up to the Internet. It doesn’t need to be. And it’s just on my iPad. So just eliminate the need to use your phone. You still use the damn phone. That’s fine. It is very convenient, but just finding ways to just limit the amount of things that you can do while you’re training. It just takes a little bit of discipline.
But honestly, I think it goes a really long way. There’s, like, plenty of research on that just in terms of dopamine and everything and going through social media in between sets or just attention and the amount of the focus that you have. I think that’s a really cool one.
James Cerbie: I think it applies to everything. If you care about being good at something. If you actually want to get better in the gym, if you want to put on muscle, if you want to get stronger, if you want to make progress, if you want to be better at your job, if you want to be better, showing up for the people you care about in your life and your relationships and your family. This rule applies unanimously across the board to all of those things.
Ryan Patrick: Yeah, those screen time reports really smack you in the face at the end of the week.
Holding Yourself to a High Standard
Ryan L’Ecuyer: I just started asking for those from clients as well. And yes, I don’t think they like it. Well, I would also like to say thank you because hopefully they’re listening. Or maybe they’re not. Maybe they got too much of us over the weekend, but for everyone that attended. Let’s see. I’ll go through everybody. Chris, Ben, Skylan, Tyler, Ian. Did I miss anybody else? You guys, thank you. It was such an awesome time to be able to hang out with people, have great conversations, and work hard. It’s super motivating for me to get back in and continue to get better. And it’s just great to be around these types of people. So thank you, guys.
James Cerbie: Yeah. Thank you to everybody that came. Yes. I feel very much the same way I always walk away from those just feeling super energized because they’re just cool people. I wrote an email. It’s going to go out to our people. The timing on when this publishes and that email gets sent. I wrote an email on the flight here to Knoxville from Cincinnati, just reflecting on it because I just love this community so much. And you mentioned earlier, the fact that we just don’t have egos, they’re just cool fucking people that want to get better at life. They want to be stronger. They want to put on more muscle.
And it’s a shame because people just don’t hold themselves to a high standard in society anymore. People do not hold themselves to a high standard, physically, emotionally, mentally, whatever it is, society doesn’t stop doing it. And the thing I love about our community is that it’s not acceptable. We hold each other to a high standard. But it’s not that egotistical thing that you get in, like, high school, right? We’re going to call you on your shit because we know that you have more potential than you’re realizing and you’re dropping the ball, and we want to see you succeed.
We want to see you be better, right? The training camp is a great example. Ben pulled 700, a casual single at 700 pounds, right? But that dude just in and out of it with everybody else, too. That’s what you want. You want the guy who is the Alpha in the room pulling 700 lbs who’s jumping in and helping out and encouraging everybody else there, even if they’re deadlifting, three, four, 500 pounds. That’s what you want. And that’s what I love about the community we have.
That’s what we have right now? That’s hard to find. It’s hard to find those types of people to surround yourself with. So, yeah, thank you.
Ryan Patrick: There’s a really subtle point there, James, that I just want to tag on and, you know, about having high standards. I get really passionate about this stuff too, but there are plenty of people who have high standards in a particular domain of their life. Maybe they’re really great at fitness, but they’re just complete douchebags to their friends and family, or they make a lot of money, but they’re in terrible health. So finding a group of people who on all levels and across all areas of their life are consciously trying to get better is rare.
And I love being a part of this. I’ve been with Rebel since the original Silverback, and I knew right away everyone was different and it’s been different. And I feel like you’ve done a tremendous job cultivating this community to be what it is, so kudos to you.
James Cerbie: Appreciate it, man.
Ryan L’Ecuyer: I think just keep this podcast going for the next 4 hours. The thing that’s cool about it too, is there’s no floor and there’s no ceiling. It’s just like, wherever the hell you are, I don’t care. It’s about effort and it’s about wanting to be better. And so it doesn’t matter. You can be in the same room as Ben. I believe it was 735. It’s been haunting my dreams. And that’s cool.
Like you can be in the same room as that guy and take something from him. And he’ll also take something from you. If you’re the type of person that’s willing to get better. I think that we all just kind of found fitness as the thing that brings us all together. But I think it’s really just our core traits that make us all able to get along and to help each other out. So I think it really doesn’t matter where you’re at. So I just say that because I feel like sometimes people think that they need to be at a certain standard already to be able to participate in this type of stuff.
And that’s not what it’s about whatsoever for me, at least maybe just speaking for myself. But I think it’s really just about effort and humility.
James Cerbie: I like it. We’ll wrap it up. I think that’s a good ending. I don’t think we can end it better than that. Thank you, as always, for tuning in, and we’ll be back next week.
