The Road Trip Rants series has reached its third episode and Dave still hasn't reached his destination. In this episode, Dave responds to questions about intra-workout nutrition, pushing training partners who are mentally weak, and living a balanced life.
"Can I eat Reese's (any type) as an intra-workout?"
Reese's isn't exactly what Dave considers good training junk food. They might be good for gaining weight, but if you want something to eat around the workout, you don't want fat. You want straight sugar; you want Skittles. Dave shares a story of old school Westside days when the guys would drink things like Mountain Dew intra-workout just for the carbs, because the sugar seemed to help with strength. There wasn't a lot of special thinking behind this — they just thought it helped, so they did it.
"[What are] some of your favorite ways you've fucked with training partners over the years?"
Busting balls in the gym is the way Dave was taught and it's just the way he believes the gym should be. If there's a training partner that needs to be stronger mentally, Dave is going to give him shit until he gets stronger mentally. This may sound crude, but it has proven effective — Dave even once had a training partner pull an 80-pound deadlift PR after starting a day complaining and saying he wasn't going to have a good session. If you want the people around you to be the strongest they can possibly be, you have to find a way to push them outside of their boundaries so that they either start to believe in themselves or they get pissed off enough that they accomplish something anyway. Dave also shares a bit of the backstory to his time training at Westside and being around Louie, and how this time influenced his mindset about competition among training partners.
"Can there truly be balance when you're at or close to the elite level? If so, what are some ways?"
In Dave's mind, here's the thing to know about a "balanced" life: people have been writing about living a "balanced life" for decades, but no one has figured it out yet. Maybe this means life is just a constant state of different imbalances. Do you even know what balance means? Do you even know what balance means to you? In most cases, this question is really just a matter of how you choose to spend your time. However, if you're an athlete who wants to reach the best of the best in your sport, don't expect to pursue a balanced life and win. There's probably going to be someone who chooses to live an imbalanced life. That person will beat you, and you should't complain about it if you tried to stay "balanced." There's no way that you can have a balanced, structured life and expect to beat someone who is 100% all-in on the sport. It will never happen, because they're going to give absolutely everything in their life to that sport, while you're only giving as much to the sport as you are to other parts of your life. Choosing to or not to place your sport as your first priority in life is entirely up to you, but Dave has a few thoughts on what that means if your sport is powerlifting as opposed to a sport like football or baseball.
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