Hey everybody, welcome to Health Theory. Today's guest is Mark Bell. He's a former pro wrestler

and record holding power lifter who created both Power Magazine and the famous workout

gear, the slingshot. He's also the author of the book War on Carbs and the founder of

the notorious Super Training Gym. Dude, what in the world draws you to powerlifting? I

find it so interesting. It's so intense and demands so much of you. What was it that originally

pulled you in? You know, as a kid, I got into it. Mainly, I mean, my brothers were showing

me some stuff, but was the real driver was. I was throwing around a football one day,

and this guy yells to me, my brother's friend. He told me to throw him the ball. I should

have known better. And so I throw this guy the ball. Sure enough, he turns around,

punts the damn thing into the woods. Never to be found again, my favorite football. And

I just kind of thought at that point, I don't want that to ever happen to me. I don't

ever feel like someone can just do that to me. Just take something from me and just, you

know, kick it into the woods like that. And so it was my goal kind of from that point on.

You can kind of cut to a rocky montage of me training in my garage and doing curls and

push-ups and all that other stuff. But that was enough fire to just kind of get me inspired

even just through that summer. But I was kind of a chubby kid. I was kind of a fat kid.

And so when I went in the gym and started lifting, I was naturally stronger than my friends

who were much smaller. And I think I ended up bench pressing around 235 or 240 pounds.

Wow.

Then, and yeah, my friends were like, oh my god, my cousin was like, you know, I don't

know what that's going to turn into, but you'll probably do that the rest of your life.

And here I am on your show. That is crazy. What I love about that story though is, is

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