50% Facts

A special edition episode. UFC Hall of Famer, and fellow Sacramento gym owner, Urijah Faber joins us. We talk about how sports fit into the hierarchy of human needs, the growth of combat sports in the past several years…and the power of excuses. He also explains how The Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act helps top boxers earn bigger purses than top MMA fighters. Tussana Martdee also joins us to offer...

April’s Q and A episode kicks off with an unplanned behind-the-scenes discussion where we explore the question of sponsored athletes/ambassadors. What do brands like ours really expect to get from sponsoring athletes? How much influence do they really have and how would you measure it? What the difference between awareness advertising and direct response advertising with “promo codes?” How would w...

Bart Kwan is a man with a HUGE platform, so his thoughts on creativity, culture, and social media influence are well…influential. In our second episode with Bart, we broke down these issues, as well as some related questions: Is everyone born creative? Does high-quality production undercut authenticity? Where should the moral line be for influencers in promoting products and ideas? You can find Ba...

Inside the Massenomics gym in Western Northeast South Dakota, an ever-vigilant DVD player spins a copy of the circa 2007 documentary “Power Unlimited” around the clock. Who better to have on deck for a look back at that film than the owners of that very gym? We were excited to have Tommy DeFea and Tanner Baird join us for the crossover event nobody knew they needed: What was their reaction the fir...

(This is the first of two episodes with Bart. The second will appear in a few weeks). The experience of running multiple businesses over zoom calls, and trying to stay in shape while rarely leaving the house, was enough for Bart and his wife Geo to decide they could free themselves and their family from LA life and move to Las Vegas. The plan? To continue to largely operate remotely as much as pos...

The fifth show of any month could literally be about anything. This time it’s a documentary review with our buddy Dean Saddoris. Think of it as meathead movie nerds looking for lessons for our own lives in popular media. The hot Netflix documentary “The Last Blockbuster” is a humorous – and quirky – look at the fall of a business that was a huge cultural institution. Could the business cycle of a...

Time for our monthly swing at your questions. Some of the topics: Who are our favorite Lord of the Rings characters? Which powerlifting bars do we have in our gym? Did Eleiko really start out making waffle irons? Is our gym open to the public? Do you have to be rich to be fashionable? What does it take to grow an online business? What are our long- and short-term goals? Subscribe for updates about...

This started out as a question asked on Mike’s Instagram: What did we learn in starting a gym? It quickly evolved into a larger discussion of the challenges associated with starting any business. We cover some of our previous experiences (this is not our first rodeo) and how they informed our approach to what we’ve been working on for the last year. It’s fair to say that we’ve learned at least as...

In 1977, moviegoers were presented with images of sweaty, oily, and extremely muscular men wearing as little clothing as possible. Many cultural observers believed this was the dawn of what is now a multi-billion-dollar industry as members of the general public started working to make themselves “healthier” and more fit…by pretty much any means available. How did this low-budget documentary featur...

We brought in two of our buddy Dan Stornaiuolo’s hilarious and engaging brothers, Dom and Mike, to give an outsider’s perspective on powerlifting accomplishments – particularly their “little” brother’s lifting. Don and Mike host the Bridge to Bridge Podcast featuring interviews with SF Bay Area sports figures. Both grew up as athletes, so we unpack and contrast training and competition experiences...

We’re setting a new pattern of episodes for the next few months. The final episode of each month will be a Q & A about…whatever you (our audience) want to talk about: previous episodes during the month, business, life, training, health, or whatever. Here are some of the questions we touched on this time: What happens if the Earth speeds up…or slows down? FMK – Cold brew, espresso, and brewed coffe...

Our long-time friend and teammate Marcus Sanadan joins us. We review some old lifting footage from not long after we all met and from his recent meet. Then we take Jonnie Candito’s recent video announcing his break with the USAPL as a jumping-off point for a discussion. We examine what we think is wrong with many current federations, and discuss how they might be addressed: Is it finally time to g...

The HBO documentary “Fake Famous” examines some of the ways that Instagram can be manipulated to create “influencers” with large followings (50-60% of which might just be bots) that advertisers are willing to pay to reach. We talk through our impressions of the doc, and discuss the relationship between the growth of the fitness/lifting community and the rise of social media: Are lifters using some...

Full transparency, the main question is discussed in the last 15 minutes of the show. In part 1, we talk about what we’ve been up to during our production break for the holidays and plans for some future episodes of the show. NOTE: Next week we’re going to discuss the HBO documentary “Fake Famous” (trailer here) and the relationship between the fitness/lifting community and social media. If you’ve...

Our second annual take-a-random-trends-list-and-unpack-it episode. Do trends lists offer any real insight or is it all too obvious? Has the current situation made it basically impossible to predict? We also offer some heartfelt thoughts on how to help the world start to pull its collective dick out of the dirt sometime in 2021. Happy Holidays. See you next year! Subscribe for updates about our new...

The end of the year has us all thinking about changes we want to make: Are there a right way and a wrong way to make New Year’s resolutions? Are you really serious about your goals if you need to wait for a specific time to start working toward them? But first, we had to talk about some pressing current issues: Why do buildings with steam heat get so damn hot? Is Adam Sandler actually funny? Can y...

Strongman is having a moment. More people are watching strongman related content. More people are involved in strongman training now, even if they don’t plan to compete. The bottom line is probably that it’s just fun, but is there more to it? We asked our friend Alan Thrall (owner of Sacramento’s Untamed Strength) to come talk about it and bring national strongman champ Joey Szatmary (owner of The...

Twenty-twenty has brought some major changes to the ways we do…well, almost everything. A recent article at TheAthletic.com highlighted some of these changes and speculated on which of these changes will likely stay in place even after the pandemic has subsided. We unpack this article and reflect on how some of these changes also affect the strength world/fitness/gyms, etc.: Will pro athletes cont...

We invited some successful local trainers/business hours to talk about their approach to training and how they built their business model. Joseph and Nolan Grinstain are two of the three brothers atop Hyperthrive Athletics. Hyperthrive has two locations in the greater Sacramento area. One is dedicated exclusively to athletes (particularly rotational athletes –baseball/softball). At the other, near...

We took on a topic that was posted to the video version of last week’s episode by viewer Mateus Daniel: The topic I'm most interested at the moment is how kids should begin to learn powerlifting: at what age should they start? How often should they train? Can a normal powerlifting coach be their coach? Etc.... We unpacked this topic with some questions of our own: Is it a good idea for kids to JUS...

We turned the tables and asked you a question this week. Was the dropoff in views for fitness and powerlifting videos on YouTube caused by the pandemic and people not being able to film lifts…or was it something else? Has the wave started by raw lifting (and CrossFit) crested? If so, what are people moving on to? Do people really want to get to know lifters in human interest/lifestyle videos or do...

Time for a Q and A episode: The question was “how do I back off powerlifting gradually and get in better shape?” Our answer is why do people feel like they have to decide between being in good shape and lifting heavy? Should you tell your crush Happy Birthday? What are our favorite video games? What is the definition of a deload? And more… Subscribe for updates about our new gym (Third Street Barb...

Our London-based designer, Oliver Munby, joins us to talk about translating the conceptual idea of a brand into the real world. He helped create the overall branding for our new gym and apparel line. Though we didn’t cover it much in the episode, he did a ton of research on our city and our preferences before helping us settle on the look and feel that matched what we had in our heads. Here are so...

Rather than surveying what we’ve learned doing this show so far, our 100th episode is a look back at the last few months of our experience of trying to open a gym…during a pandemic. Here are some of our thoughts: What’s been our biggest challenge so far? What’s been the biggest surprise? Why do we think we have what it takes to be successful AND happy as gym owners? Just how much bullshit is “gett...

While we’re still on a break from producing new episodes, we wanted to reinforce our message that while having discussions about mental health can be difficult, they shouldn’t be avoided. The better we understand the struggles others face, the more comfortable we can be in talking about our own. This episode is an excerpt from Jim’s The Less Than Obvious Podcast (2018) featuring New York Times bes...