𝕋𝕙𝕚𝕤 𝕚𝕤 𝕨𝕙𝕒𝕥 𝕚𝕥 𝕥𝕒𝕜𝕖𝕤.

I'd rather go too far than not far enough. And I think I uh I like that sentiment with basically all the training, you know, because I think we're all pretty much well freaking aware. The harder you go, the more results that you will freaking get, right?

The harder that you train, the more effective the training is going to be, the better results you're going to get. The only reward that you get from taking it easy is the fact that in the moment it's easier, right? I mean, how much easier would it be for me to sit around and do every set that I just did in this workout at half that intensity or even like 30% that intensity?

And it happens. Like it really pains me to say it and it really hurts for me to see it, but I see junk volume freaking every day, man. You know, and I'm not not everybody has to be a freaking like bodybuilder gym rat freak.

Obviously not. But if you want results and then you basically just catch yourself slacking off and don't do anything about it, then it kind of sounds like you don't really want those results. you know, you know the training style that's going to give you the best results, the one that you go the hardest with.

So, like the logic of like, oh, should I leave four reps in reserve or should I do five reps in reserve or should I do high reps or low reps or high intensity and low frequency or high volume or like dude, I I'm not going to say it doesn't matter, but you could take two guys and give them completely different workouts for 3 months. You give one guy this training routine, give the other guy this training routine. You know who's going to make the freaking most results?

The dude who just trained the hardest and like wanted it the most and wanted to like exert his will onto every set more powerfully than the other guy. And I I know it's it's like it gets into the cheesiness and kind of the corny like the cornball factor of motivation when guys are, you know, doing all the self-help like motivation like hold yourself accountable. But there's a reason why it's corny and cheesy.

It's cuz it gets said so much because it's true. I mean, cliches are cliches because they've got a ton of freaking value. So much so that they get over said and repeated to oblivion, you know?

So, all that's to say is I wouldn't stress it so much as like, okay, should I do a 10-second messory eccentric triple drop set or like dude, pick a weight, go hard, get amped up to some attack on sign opening theme songs, get a pump, and go home, man. You know, and then improve your training slowly from there. I cannot stress this enough.

The more you put into anything in life, the more you're going to get out. Now, for whatever reason, people understand this and they understand that the more you put into building a business, the more you're going to get out of it. The more hours you spend working on anything, the more you are going to get out.

Work pays. Now, for whatever reason, when it comes to bodybuilding and only bodybuilding, everybody has this mentality that you can do too much. It is [ __ ] drives me crazy.

This mentality that somebody somewhere at one time said you can overtrain a muscle and if you overtrain a muscle, it's going to shrink. So, I guess people are going to believe this for the rest of their lives that you can overtrain a muscle. Well, do me a favor and just try it.

Try it. Give it a try. Train chest for three hours.

Do it every week for 3 hours for two or three months straight. And I guarantee you, you are not. Your chest is not going to diminish and shrink away and turn into nothing.

It will only get bigger and stronger. Believe me, the more you put into anything, the more you're going to get out. The longer you train, the more you eat, the more you sleep, the better results you're going to get.

So stoping making excuses. Get out there and do whatever the it takes to reach your [ __ ] goals. It's time to unwrap the potential you can be.

It's within you. It's within every single one of us. And the people that have risen to that level were no different than any one of us.

It says they believed it and they're willing to work theiring ass off to get it. It wasn't about the potential. It wasn't about their genetics.

It wasn't about the perseverance. And it wasn't about being the hardesting worker in the room. That's what got him there.

And it didn't happen overnight. Stop running from the potential of what you can be, guys. It's inside of you.

It's always been there. And I'll never accept mediocre again. I'm always going to give it my 110%.

That's the only thing I can ever say a solid day's work. That's all that will ever find peace in. If you guys do not do that, I promise you, your life will haunt you for the rest of your days.

If there's potential inside of you, which you know it's there, but you're too scared to tell anyone else about it, and you go on and on, get older and older and older and older, and the windows opportunities start to close, and you knew it could have been given birth to, but you never did it. I promise you, it will haunt you. It's a living nightmare, dude.

That fact that you have the ability to do something and you're too weak to turn the key and start the engine on it is a greater disappointment and a greater burden to carry than any of this physical sweat equity or pain in the gym or school or or sacrifice. All that is just nothing compared to a life where you're burdened by regret. Guys, it doesn't matter about the past.

It's today. What are we doing today? Are we going to engage now?

And once we engage, we commit. There's no half commitment. There's no quarter commitment.

There's no third quarter. It's full commitment. Once we engage, it's every day we engage cuz that's the better life.

It's your option though. What are you going to do? You got to have something warm.

You know, you're not meant to just wake up, go to work, come home, and like chill and watch TV cuz you're bored from work and then go to sleep and repeat the process. You got to have more than that. I mean, I don't know about you, but I definitely need more than that.

It just doesn't that's just not something I want to do. Own your life, guys. You have every opportunity.

There's no excuse not to be the hardest mother worker in the room and all your endeavors. School work, the gym, your career, your relationship, your needs attached to it. It's got to mean more than anything.

That's your name is all you got. Don't sell out. You know, you must hope and believe in yourself if you ever want to see what that hope can turn into, that that belief can turn into by doing this every day repetitively.

Those are the measures that lead to the big moments of success that everyone sees in life. No one sees the struggle in here. No one sees the hardship, the early mornings you get up.

No one sees any of that. They just see if your hands raised or not. And if it is, oh, what a great guy.

I wish I could be that guy. I wish I could be that guy. But they're not clapping, wishing they could be you at 5 in the morning when you get out of bed when it's pissing rain outside to come and train for that hand tuby race.

They don't want to be that guy. They just want the glory. And that's the differential of a champion.

This is when you got to do it when nobody's watching. That's when you really got to push it. I've said this before.

If you can't have a good lift without your buddies or you know a bunch of other guys hyping you up then I don't like to an extent I want to say like you know how bad do you want it you know if it's just you don't worry these lifts add up you will get something out of it and not just like something to show off to other people either I was thinking this to myself just if you kind of try to selfanalyze your own motivators what do you think is pushing you harder to to impress other people or to impress yourself. I'm not a psychologist, so I can't really get into it too much deeper than that, but just something to think about. You know, 2 a.

m. not a curses here. I can put an honest day's work in here that more than anyone does in a week and no one sees it cuz it's supposed to be that way.

This is a [ __ ] means to the ends. It's not the ends. All those [ __ ] that come in here with their hair done, the makeup, you know, these guys come in the shirts to be seen.

Missing the point, man. Missing the point. You're not in here to get an achievement.

You're in here to pay your dues. So later in life, you never wonder what if. Champions aren't found on the podium with their hand up.

No, champions are found in the lab studies, the thousands of hours of hard work when no one's watching. That's what makes the will unstoppable. when you're in here and no one else is and you're pushing yourself harder than anybody with no one around.

How you hold yourself in the small things of life build the character winning blocks of the things that we're remembered for. It begins right now with no one looking, man. And how you hold yourself, how you see yourself.

What do you do when no one's watching? I can't tell you how many times I dropped the weight on the floor. dropped the weight, just tossed it off my back, fell down, got up again, and continued the set.

You got to be willing to fail. If you can't fail, what I learned in the gym is you got to go out there and fail. You got to go out there and fall down.

Most people who have won big have failed big. Okay? You know, see, even you know, and what I promised myself as a little boy, I said, I can never leave the gym knowing I have 5% left.

And 5% is magic. It's the magic place where very few people go. You can go there.

I'm giving you permission to go there. We have people behind you. If you fall down and drop the weight on the floor, who cares?

Who cares? But if you make it, I care. I want that.

I want you to fail. And I want you to get up and do it again. The same thing in life is the same thing here.

If you can do this, you can do anything. Anything. Right now, you're 5% away.

5% away from being a champion. I made a promise to this young Tom Platt. I said, "If you're going to do this bodybuilding thing, if it's this important to you, you cannot be a failure.

You cannot leave the gym ever a failure. You have to give it everything you got. And when you think you're done, there's five more reps.

Even when you do five reps, there's probably five more reps yet. " And I and I told myself, I have to give it this much. I just can't be is I can't accept the fact I cannot live with the fact that Tom Platt is a loser.

That disturbs me so much and I hate that statement so much. I will do anything close to death to be a winner. Okay.

So, when I squat 50 reps back in the old days for for 405, I probably had 30 in me. Probably had 25 in me. Somehow by some act of God from a miracle I got 50 reps.

Okay. But it was a belief system that I cannot I cannot live with myself. I cannot look in the mirror.

I can't walk down the street going I'm a failure. I would rather die. I'm serious.

I would rather die than be a failure. Life should not exist. At least for me being a failure.

Go out there and fail. Go out there and fail miserably. Drp the weight on the ground.

Toss the weight. But achieve failure. Achieve failure.

If you can do that, you can also win. If you can fail, you can also win. And all winners have failed.

That's the goal here today. That last 5%. Now, the only place to go from failure is to win.

You have to achieve failure. You have to take it that far. Nobody wants to go that far.

It's too scary. But you know something? I got news for you.

That's where winning is. It always has been. Nothing's changed since the 70s.

Nothing. Except people train not as hard. When you know too much, it's like a child.

A child will do anything. A child will skateboard off of crazy heights and do crazy stuff and do flips. You know, when you get older, you go, "Oh god, I could get hurt.

" Yeah. So you start limiting yourself how far you want to go. But you know you you have to go through this time where you don't go to failure.

You get out of shape so to speak. Only way to get in shape is to get out of shape. The only way to go to failure is not go to failure.

And you know the difference. It's always success follows risk. Success follows risk.

Right now we're like looking for success up here and the risk is like teasing. If if the risk is ever too high and the the success is down here, forget about it. But the risk follows, if the risk follows the opportunity, more opportunity, more risk.

If you don't take that last 5%. It's knock on somebody else's door. I guarantee you there's only a certain window of opportunity for success.

This is your opportunity of a lifetime. Take the 5%. Go the 5% distance.

It's going to be scary as all head. It will drive you to the ground. You'll fail a few times.

You'll fall on your face. Get up. Keep getting up.

Keep getting up. If you don't, you have to be happy for the rest of your life. If you don't take the last 5%.

You have to be happy the rest of your life knowing you went to somebody else's door and knocked on door and you could have been that guy. It's up to you. When you start doubting yourself, that's very dangerous because now what you're basically saying is is that if my plan doesn't work, I have a fallback plan.

I have a plan B. And that means that you start thinking about plan B. And every thought that you put into plan B, you're taking away now that thought and that energy from plan A.

And it's very important to understand that we function better if there is no safety net because plan B becomes a safety net. It says that if I fail then I fall and I get picked up and I have something else there that was that will protect me. And that's not good because people perform better when there's no safety net.

People perform better in sports and everything else if you don't have a plan B. I'm telling you, I've never ever had a plan B. I say I made a full commitment that I'm going to go and be a bodybuilding champion.

I made a full commitment that I'm going to be in America. I made a full commitment that I'm going to get in the show business and I'm going to be a leading man. No matter what it takes, I will do the work.

I would do the work over and over and over until I get it. It is very dangerous to have a plan B because you're cutting yourself off from the chance of really succeeding. And the reason, one of the main reasons why people want to have a plan B is because they are worried about failing.

What is if I fail then I don't have anything else? Well, let me tell you something. Don't be afraid of failing because there's nothing wrong with failing.

You have to fail in order to climb that ladder. There's no one that doesn't fail. What makes you sometimes not be successful is your fear of failure.

And so as soon as you become kind of friends with failure and you say to yourself, wait a minute, Michael Jordan talks about he became the greatest basketball player because he missed his 5,000 shots and he screwed up 280 some games and all of this and that's what made him the greatest basketball player. So it's failure where we learn really the most. And in bodybuilding it's built in that you do the exercise like you say until you fail.

In weightlifting, you go and lift until you fail because that's the only way you know how much you can lift is if you go all out and always lift beyond of what you can lift and then you know exactly what you can do. I I I missed the 500 lb bench press at least 10 times in different competitions. But the 11th time I did it, you know, so I was I didn't feel like I was a failure.

I just felt like I have to to train more and so so I think the key thing is to tell people don't be afraid of failure because it makes you kind of like freeze and not make a move forward. Be friends with that and understand that from failure we can learn more and therefore let's go all out and just feel free of that and not be worried and and and afraid all the time. I've had many movies going in the toilet.

I have lost bodybuilding competitions and powerlifting competitions and all that stuff. So I had my plenty of failures. It's always important to bring that up because people should know that you never will be able to go through life without failures.

Failures make us learn. Uh failures make you stronger. Pain makes you stronger.

And your your mind is no different than the muscle. So the muscle grows uh by you know pushing it and going through pain and so discomfort. Well, the same is with the with your head that if you really want to grow as a person and if you want to get tough, you got to go through pain.

You know, you should not shy away. This is a lot of times the day with the today's youth. You know, when they talk about, you know, the boys are having a problem, the girls having a problem, this has a problem, there's a problem.

Everyone has a problem. It's like they're getting softer and they're not willing anymore to kind of take themselves through this pain period and through the discomfort. Everyone wants to be in com in comfort.

We all lose. We all have lost us. This is okay.

And this is why I say don't be worried about losing because when you're afraid of losing then you get frozen. You get stiff. You're not relaxed.

You got to be in order to perform well in anything if it's in boxing or if it is on your job or with your thinking is only happening when you relax. So relax. It's okay to fail.

Let's just go all out and give it everything that you got. That's what it is all about. So, don't be afraid to fail.

I failed in bodybuilding. I I lost bodybuilding competitions. I lost powerlifting competitions.

I lost weightlifting competitions. I had movies that went in the toilet and that were terrible and got the worst reviews. We all fail.

It's okay. What is not okay is that when you fail, you stay down. Whoever stays down is a loser.

And winners will fail and get up. Fail and get up. Fail and get up.

You always get up. That is a winner. That is a [Music] winner.

If you ask me if I'm stressed half the time, my answer is no. You feel Are you stressed? No, I'm fine.

I feel great. And then if you look at me like, "Do you feel calm? Do you feel at ease?

Do you feel relaxed? " I'd be like, "Fuck no. " So where where am I feeling?

And for some reason stress to me is like numb, but it's stress. So I don't really feel it. And it's typically from not allowing myself to lean into the shitty times, the shitty thoughts, the shitty days, and being able to sit with them and be with them, accept what they are, and process them properly rather than just numbing them.

You open up a broad spectrum of emotion and you build your heart to feel these things. And if you don't have highs, you don't have lows, it doesn't come. If you numb the bad, you numb the good.

And that's kind of where that all came from. So learning to embrace all those things. And the funny thing is when you learn to embrace them, they're way more fleeting than you realize.

To sit on something in your mind for a while, to stress about not want to feel it, lingers for a long period of time. But to just embrace it and to feel it, to cry, to express it to whatever, whatever, however needs to express itself out of you, it happens a lot quicker than you think. And you're able to move through it.

And then when you look back at it, you're like, "That was kind of beautiful. " You know, like people love watching sad movies and crying sometimes and you're sad in the movie, you're like, "Fuck, that was really sad. " But you you go back and you watch another sad movie.

You we like feeling things. We enjoy emotion. It's the human experience is highs and lows.

There is no high without lows. And I think just being able to accept that that there's inevitably going to be [ __ ] times in your life and the more you can lean into them and feel them, the more you can lean into feeling to the high ones as well. And it's just part of the journey.

Kind of like feel like I've accomplished a lot of what my wanted to accomplish. And it's almost like creating new goals in my head that I need to chase after, new difficult tasks that I need to do. And it's partly it's nitpicking how I looked in years past and understanding that I still haven't looked exactly how I want to look and I want to get on stage looking like almost perfect at least once before I retire.

So that kind of edges me to do everything in a little bit better that I wasn't doing properly last year. Like I was talking about I want to peak better. Also just sitting down and like I said picking new goals that it's going to be.

I wanted to win the Olympia. I wanted Olympia twice. I wanted to have the most classic Olympia titles.

I wanted to win it was a perfect score. I had these like goals and I've accomplished all of them now and now it's just like what do you want next? And I really would love to be like remembered as to the end of time as like one of the goats of classic physique and I want to really like leave my legacy on classic physique in the IFBB.

So my goal is to really accomplish that and that's kind of keeping me motivated right now. So I'm trying to put my focus on fine-tuning things, chasing stuff. I tell myself in my head that people I'm competing against are getting better and better and that they're coming up after me and that I need to push myself more and more and just trying to remember why I started all this [ __ ] because I just love competing.

I love bodybuilding and I want to keep improving and being the best version of myself. Over time, you just you build intuition when you can get into a flow state of just trusting yourself to show up as you are. If it's playful, if it's intense, if it's quiet, if it's loud, if it's doubtful, if it's whatever, if it's just who you are and you're not needing to put on any facade and you are able to release that mask and show up in a flow and chest your instincts and act on instinct, I don't think you can be beat.

Sometimes I get in these moments and I'm like, [ __ ] like, is something happening? Am I is something wrong? Like, why am I doing this just to step on stage and compete?

Like, is it worth it? And I get in these head battles like that. And also just learning to not live in fear because anything can happen at any time in your life and if you choose it to do something then do it.

Don't do it and then like stress about doing it or you might as well not be doing it at all cuz I don't want to live my life like that. When you're trying to build confidence about something you're afraid of. Being exposed to the fear helps you overcome that.

But actively choosing to take that fear on head on is actually what it takes. I can't throw a spider at you and not afraid of spiders. You choosing in your own mind to actively go to that spider by yourself makes you actually grow from it.

So you choosing to take power of what little you can when you're feeling like when everything's crumbling around you and you feel powerless and helpless. Well, what can you take control of? You can take control of opening your door and letting that embracing that, you know, leaning into that hard time like I'm going to choose to feel this.

It's here. I didn't choose that, but I'm going to choose to feel it and I have power over the choice of what I feel. And then you take your power back and you can build your confidence from there.

I don't know if about success and failure cuz a lot of people can be lucky and successful but I think a huge thing some people lack others not need more of it but is you need to believe in yourself like absolutely and fully know that you believe in yourself and you need to believe in yourself from things s from doing things such as or having an understanding that if you are doing everything at the best of your ability that's in your control then you know you will be successful from that and then that kind of creates a release of anxiety of the stuff that's out of your control and you just focus on what is in your control. I think all really successful people have a mindset that can detach from whatever their control, whatever [ __ ] might happen or come into your life and only focus on what they can do and doing that at the best of their ability. The concept of living life is just so simple.

You could take the words live your life and expand on that into a million page essay and just do it. But just getting out there and living and experiencing life and doing the things that are difficult and challenging and cause you to grow and to you know if you think of the person that the person that I envy the most and I enjoy being around the most is just that like old wise man who has all these crazy stories who's lived this all this life and it's just like happy to sit on the park bench and talk to random people about what he's done. You know, it's if that's a person I respect, how do I become that person, it's not from doing nothing, it's from doing something.

This year, I've been thinking a lot about the sacrifices that come with success. You know, like nothing comes for free. And I've reflected a lot over the years of how much of my mental peace I've had to sacrifice to accomplish what I've accomplished.

And it's just been a lot of like waking up at 5:00 am going through the day, wake up, weigh myself, weigh my food, do my check-ins in the mirror, like go to the gym, work out, what's wrong with everything. It's just like, am I good enough? Am I being enough?

Am I doing enough to win the Olympia right now? It's all just compared to being Mr Olympia to that level of success. And you know, people talk about what you sacrifice to be great at things, and they normally like, you don't get to go hang out with your friends, you don't get to go party, go egg, go do these things.

But I think for me the biggest sacrifice has just been the my my mental piece. So the goal this year has been trying to find that, maintain it, have the mental peace while also thriving at a high level and seeing how I can do that as as efficiently as possible. And you know, I'd like to be able to say I did so successfully.

It's like people like that kind of really, I guess, kind of inspire me. It's they don't make any excuses. I hate like for me making excuses is just another reason um why you're not going to succeed.

You know, it's it's not it's not a valid reason unless you can't physically enable yourself to train. I you've got, you know, even having no legs, no arms, you know, we've seen all these wonderful stories of people they've they've gone through trauma and they've kind of overcome that and they're very successful in what they do. There's a reason why we're in existence.

I think um like we're sat here because of a reason. We're we're here for something, but we are we're never going to know what that is. You don't need to fully believe it 100%.

You just need like a little percent of self-belief that you could become that and then you know you do other things that will give you a little bit more self-belief. You know, all those things will feed that. It's like the fire we're sitting on.

you know, you need to add fuel to it constantly. And that that's like my self-belief. It's not just I'm not going to sit here and say I've got all the selfbelief in the world because it's been a battle every day.

You know, an excuse is okay. You know, we've accepted it, right? Let's make an excuse why we can't do it.

It's not okay to make an excuse because, you know, I've got not enough time. I've not there's not enough hours in the day to this. I don't like this food.

I don't like this. It's we shouldn't be saying that's okay to make those type of excuses. It's let's not make the excuses.

Let's kind of man up and kind of just move on and get on and do better for ourselves. It's probably always going to haunt me that kind of the self-doubt. You know, it's difficult sometimes because what we're trying to do, you know, you're trying to be the best at something out of everyone in the world.

And like that the the enormity of that fact isn't ever lost in in me. So, I want to be the strongest man in the world. That'sing insane.

You know, it's it's such a a massive task. And sometimes for me, you know, if you get caught up in it, you get caught up in that the awe factor of it. So, that's why it's it's nice to have that team around you that kind of reassure you, kind of give you that cuddle, give you that kind of ability to be grounded and and just come back down and realize that yeah, it's a cool thing to do, but it's well within your grasp.

And that's where the self-belief comes from. And if you've done everything right and it's that perfect life and you nail it, it's like [ __ ] it's like boom, that's my height. It doesn't matter where you're from, it's really about how much you want to succeed in something.

And I think being successful should never or be wanting to be successful, you shouldn't have any of these excuses, you know? It's a a town is just a town, you know. You you're your own person.

So, you've really got to kind of put in that effort and put in that hard work, you know, regardless where you're from. If you're living a life that is just so numb and so monotonous. Every day is the same.

You feel the same. You wake up the same time. And that's fine for some people.

Don't get me wrong. That is that's fine for some people. But if people are saying they're depressed by that life and you're not willing to try anything else, like you're aing maniac.

It's not me that is a maniac for trying like cold water, different plant medicines, sharing groups, breath work, light sound baths, um chanting mantras, you know. Strong man's kind of made me believe I'm more than just another number, you know. It's like being in that working uh for someone else.

You know, you're just a number to that company. But because of Strongman, I'm I'm more than a number. I'm I'm Luke Stoleman, professional strongman.

One of the strongest men in the world.