Pavel Tsatsouline: Society Needs More Tough Guys

So what do you spend your time doing these days? Do you spend your time teaching seminars, coaching people, like writing books? What's the... All of the above. So I am staying, I'm working on... I teach on special events for Strong First, which is my company, the School of Strength. So I teach seminars like Strong Endurances, I Can Win and so on. I write books and I do some consulting. But what I really am trying to do is I'm trying to build Strong First, you know, the School of Strength. My vision is that more people want to become stronger and strength will become cool. Strength will become important. And I'd like to see that across decades, really. You don't think strength is cool now? Among a small portion of the population... Do you think that can actually change? I hope so. I don't know. I hope so. Why would it change? Well, we're working on it. Maybe you'll do something about it. Who knows? But you know, a friend of mine said something interesting. Little friend, John. He said, today you have this very small, among young people, very small fraction of the population. This is super tough guys for this competing MMA and so on. These daredevils doing extreme sports and so on. And you have the huge majority who are just sitting doing this or they go and do their little Pilates thing or whatever they do, their little interval session. And I just think society at large needs more just regular tough guys, you know, like the old farmer or somebody like that. And I think that that needs to be more broad. And people need to understand that I hate this word fitness. I just hate that. Because it kind of draws up images of just all sorts of weird equipment and weird exercises and foam rollers and all that stuff, you know. You don't like foam rollers? It's not that I don't like foam rollers. It's a tool just like everything else. Here's a problem. A guy comes in, he spends 45 minutes on some fancy, he calls it movement prep. What the hell is movement prep? And he's sitting around, you know, rolling his butt in the foam roller and then he does some other weird voodoo and, you know, if he's injured and if he got a prescription from his physical therapist or doctor, power to your buddy. But if not, and then finally he's going to spend 10 minutes doing some little nonsense, get his heart rate up and between sets he's going to be updating his profile or whatever. So the foam roller, you've got to, it's got to place. I'm even going to tell you, like even doing any of the corrective work, something that you need to do, you should even separate it from your training. Like don't dishonor the lifting platform by throwing a foam roller on it. Just do it somewhere else. Really? Yeah. Don't dishonor? Don't. But I thought it was just a natural thing to sort of work the kinks out. Go work him out. Just do somewhere else. Just don't do it by the platform, man. And don't ever step over a barbell. That's the most disrespectful thing you can do. Really? Absolutely. You can't step over a barbell? No. In Russia, you get beaten up and thrown out of the gym. Did they beat you up? Absolutely. That seems excessive. You got a respective van. No, you do. And? Stepping over a barbell is disrespectful? Disrespectful. You have to go around it. Of course. Of course. How do I not know this? Well, now you do. I'm trying to think what I do. I'm sure I've stepped over barbells. It will get you in. Nobody ever taught me that barbell will get you? Yeah, it will. Really? It will. Oh, okay.