For a long time, I was running from who I am.

You know, I was trying to figure out how to be someone who I'm not, because that was, okay, like, I am this super all-in guy and at the detriment of everything else. And I'm like, that's not how you should be. Like, you can't do that. And so, like, I took a long time away trying to figure out, like, how to not be the person I am. And what I've turned around and realize is that like I have to just embrace who I am and leverage that. And so like I'm, like I can't play a board game with someone for fun. If we're playing, I'm beating you. And if I don't, I'm pissed. And it makes it terrible for family events when you're just trying to have a game of Monopoly. And I'm going, no, you can't go to bed. You know, but what I realize is that

if I can leverage that to my advantage and turn everything into competition, everything into a game,

then it gives me the motivation to show up every day. And what I've learned is to enjoy showing up every day.

It's time to sit down, keep it real, and cut the bullshit.

Welcome to Table Talk.

All right, let's get started.

All right, guys, we're back with another episode of Table Talk. My guest today is AJ Roberts. He was on episode 137 and 252. He's in town because he's going to be competing this weekend's. We'll just jump right off into what are you competing in. Yeah. So it's Rob Frail's putting it on. I think it's called King of a Bench.

And it's an idea he came up with after the Arnold.

You know, they keep changing the format on the main stage for the Arnold to try to make

it more entertaining to the crowd.

They have like, you know, rep challenges, rising bar challenges.

And so he got the idea of what if we did,, ply, multiply, and unlimited all in the same meet.

So he talked about the record keepers.

And they said as long as each division was competed in, they would count each one.

And so he put the meat together and basically invited a bunch of

bench guys to come out. And so I think there's a dozen or so of us going to do that. So we'll

get two benches at each discipline with 30 minutes between it. So unique format, especially as I

hadn't been in multi-ply gear for a long time or single-ply gear for a long time.

And so I'm just going to go have fun and, you know, hopefully put up a big unlimited bench and then just see what I can do at the other two as I haven't really had much time. Well, kind of makes sense because the weight would be ascending. Yeah, yeah. It would hope, right? Yeah. And that's kind of how I've been training, you know, just like instead of trying to figure out each shirt individually, just using it during warmups. And, you know, when I put my shirt on, like, I'm not trying to get strong on that day. So I put it on early, figure out the groove. So when I get the single-ply shirt, I put it on at 135 and how close can I get? I think I got it down to like a three board and then just kept going. and 405 or 455 something like that I was able to touch, you know, like shirt all the way up, not jacked. And I was like, oh, okay. You know, I got it down. And so that day I continued to work up in it to 700 and then, you know, I knew that was about the limit and then just switched out into the unlimited and just kept going. um yeah it's this is it's really i use

different layers anyway normally warming up you know i have a single layer moldy layer triple um so

i'm used to changing the shirts out as you go so i was like yeah it sounds good to me it's a challenge

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