The Mindset Forge
In Season Five, The Mindset Forge focuses on helping men between 40 - 60 years old maximized this chapter of life by building strength, discipline, purpose and a proactive mindset.
During Season's one through four, you will fantastic content focused mainly on successful athletes and performing artists who've learned how to show up for the big moments of sports, performance and life.
The Mindset Forge
Fortifying Athlete Health: Iron Neck's Role in Preventing Concussions and Boosting Neck Strength with Mike Jolly
Ever wondered how the resilience of the human neck could be the unsung hero in the battle against sports-related concussions and CTE? That's the revelation Mike Jolly brings to the table with the Iron Neck, a device designed with the well-being of athletes in mind. As a former UCLA football and wrestling enthusiast, Mike shares his compelling journey and the aha-moment that led to the invention that's shaking up strength training. We unravel the science behind neck strength as a critical factor for reducing concussion risk, challenging traditional perspectives on athletic preparation, and revealing how Mike's innovation is carving out space in gyms across the globe for a safer future in sports.
Navigating the intense world of youth sports, we take a sobering look at the long-term impact of underreported concussions and the cultural hurdles that keep young athletes from speaking up. It's a candid discussion, sprinkled with heartfelt anecdotes, that uncovers the widespread implications of head injuries beyond the professional arena. Learn how strengthening often-neglected muscle groups like the neck can offer an armor of protection, and why introducing this regimen is vital across all genders and sports disciplines. The conversation takes a turn towards the kinetic chain connecting neck and core strength, shedding light on societal issues like 'tech neck' and the importance of postural health in our tech-dominated world.
For anyone questioning the relevance of neck strength outside the realm of contact sports, the Iron Neck's story of skepticism to acclaim is a testament to its broader applications. From alleviating pain to improving mobility, Mike and I discuss how embracing a proactive approach to fitness can mitigate the health risks associated with sedentary lifestyles. Parents, coaches, and anyone with a stake in the sports community will find value in this episode, as we highlight the critical nature of protecting the brain and the role of neck strength in a holistic approach to athlete welfare. Join us for an episode that's not only about the mechanics of a groundbreaking device but also a deeper conversation about the future of sports safety and wellness.
For more info on Iron Neck, visit @theironneck
On instagram or http://iron-neck.com/
Email: Barton@bartonguybryan.com
Website: http://bartonguybryan.com
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https://calendly.com/bartbryan/conciergecoachingcall
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all right, I'm here with mike jolly really great to have you and this is a big deal for me because we're here at the iron neck studios. You've flown in uh specifically for some events and things like that that are going on.
Speaker 2:Appreciate you taking the time, mike bart, I'm excited because I've seen you for two years now, you know, working with iron neck and doing all the videos and all the good stuff you're doing on the training, and I finally get to meet you in person.
Speaker 1:So yeah, nice to meet you. This is exciting and you know it's funny. It's like I I joke that I'm the middle-aged, uh, iron neck guy. That's like you know. That relates to the, you know, because I only get text messages from my old friends that are like on instagram and they're 48, 49. And they're like man, I mentioned my neck pain and all of a sudden you're showing up.
Speaker 2:I'm like at least you're not the old old guy, right.
Speaker 1:Right, so, but uh, okay. So, mike, we're going to go all over the place here. You've got a fascinating backstory and how you came upon the idea of iron neck. Uh, but let's, let's talk about just the impact of iron neck neck, but let's, let's talk about just the impact of iron neck. From what I know, you really started iron neck to help people in football playing sports, you know, prevent concussions. Talk about just your, the creation of iron neck. What were you trying to? You know what community you were trying to serve and how that happened so I created our Iron Neck to prevent CTE.
Speaker 2:And chronic traumatic encephalopathy obviously is a terrible brain disease that you can get and it can destroy a life. It has destroyed many lives. It destroyed lives of teammates that I played with at UCLA. So when I started investigating what causes CTE, it was concussions. All the neurosurgeons told me right away it's concussions. If we can prevent concussions, we'll prevent CTE. So my next question to them was well, how do you prevent concussions? And they're like ah, we're not really sure. But one neurosurgeon, dr Robert Cantu from Boston, he was very sure, and him and Ann McKee, both were in the movie Concussion with Will Smith. They were some of the neurosurgeons that were mentioned in that movie. They were convinced that neck strength prevented concussions and they'd already started a three-and-a-half-year study in Colorado of 3,500-plus high school students and girls and guys and every kind of sport. And after the three and a half years was over, robert Cantu told me I guarantee you we will prove that neck strength can help prevent concussions.
Speaker 2:And I was like, okay, logically that made sense to me because I wrestled at UCLA as well as I played football. This was before Title IX killed the wrestling team there and I had a 23-inch neck and I never got concussed and all the other guys were getting concussed. So I was like, okay, that makes sense, big strong neck, you don't get concussed. So I dug into that to figure out why is this? The shock absorber that protects this? Right? And logically, it doesn't make much sense because you know you're getting hit up here. You get hit up here. How does that work? And that was the huge problem. When my wife and I started our you know, united States travel tour with the iron neck for the very first time, strength coaches would look at us like we were absolutely crazy. What are you talking about? Helmets prevent concussions? Well, no, it's actually the next strength, and that three-and-a-half year study that I mentioned proved that for every one pound of neck strength that you can add to your neck, you have a 5% less likely chance of being concussed.
Speaker 2:Now think about that. One pound of neck strength is not a lot of strength to add. I mean, if you wanted to add a pound of strength to your bicep, maybe you work out for two days and hit some biceps really hard. You've added that pound of neck strength and when you work with a high school kid or a college kid, that's never done anything to strengthen their neck before. You can build neck strength really, really fast. And of course we can't say we're concussion proofing anyone, because you know stuff happens. But if you can put 20 pounds of neck strength on a kid's neck, I mean you're getting to that point.
Speaker 2:So when Dr Cantu told me that, that's when I said, okay, there's got to be a better way to strengthen the neck, because I'd been through it in wrestling, right, I mean you've seen the crazy things that wrestlers do. And I did all those crazy things. My neck didn't feel great, of course not. How could it? Bridging and arching and flipping around on your head all the time. So, and then if you go to the football side, they either don't do anything with the neck or they have a big four-way neck machine which doesn't do a lot of neck work because everyone's just moving their body like this, and you're seated too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're seated.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's just it doesn't, you know, correlate well. Or you're out on the football field during warm-ups talking to your buddy and pretending to work each other's necks out, you know, pushing against their leg, pushing against their, you know. And you're talking about what you guys were doing last night and you weren't really working out hard. There was no consistency there. So how do you solve all those problems? Four-way neck takes up a huge footprint in the gym. Right, strength coaches hate things like that. They don't want a big footprint. They're not going to buy new equipment that takes up a big footprint. And how can it be worked into a program so a lot of people can do it at the same time and maybe one strength coach working out? How are we gonna? How are we gonna hit those muscles in the best possible way?
Speaker 2:Right, so I mean you're, you know, you're a trainer, you know all about the human body and you know all the diagonal direction fibers in the neck. Right, they're all set up there to rotate the head tippity-pillaterally. Do all all of this kind of stuff, not this and this. Right, right, you're not getting a full contraction If I do this. My sternocleidomastoid is only contracted halfway Now. Oh, it's contracted the whole entire way, I'm getting a full contraction. Then, when you throw in the fact that 95% of concussions happen from rotary, acceleration, rotary not even when are you going to get a straight shot, just perfect straight shot. It's never going to happen, especially in a football helmet.
Speaker 2:It's always going to be a glancing guard and you yeah, exactly, you don't even know where the blow is coming from, but it's all it's. It's 95 from rotary acceleration. So if we're, if we're going to invent something that's going to take all those factors into account, what do we create? What do we invent? And I was playing on my wife's Pilates table and working with the bands and I had the springs and the bands and I started doing this and rolling around and all of a sudden, wow, that feels kind of good. So that was the impetus behind rotation. Let's figure out some way that we can put something together with consistency with rotation. So to get back to your original question, which I have not forgot, Well, it gets them.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I've heard strength coaches and I've seen it myself is like your body is only as strong as it can decelerate from something. So like, if you jump and you can't decelerate your knee, you're going to go falling on the ground after you land. Same thing with your neck. Yeah, why do we have, why should we have, all these neck muscles? Well, it's so that when we get hit, our neck muscles can actually decelerate that impact that force.
Speaker 1:Right and so. But you know you make the point of like, if we're only moving in these like four cardinal directions, like forward, exactly straight on and exactly to the side, and we don't have any dynamic strength. And so this is what you're probably trying to solve here, you know, strapping on some springs and stuff like that and trying to figure out how that might work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so continue. This is great. Yeah, so that was the impetus. Yeah, my buddies, I mean one guy, mark 2 and A, he played for the Dallas Cowboys Three Super Bowl rings, right, and he was at UCLA. He was in my recruiting class there and he's dead six months after he retired. He had CTE. He was a great family man, well-loved in the community, but he couldn't stand I assume he couldn't stand what was going on inside his brain, just like Junior Seau. Same thing. I mean Junior Seau shot himself in the chest to kill himself, to protect this, so this could be autopsied and so people could understand that ISCTE and the first bullet didn't work. And he picked the gun back up and shot himself again. That's courage. I mean, that's unbelievable courage. But so you know, those are the things that you're looking at and you're like, wow, we have to, we have to prevent this, we have to do something to prevent this. So if we can prevent concussions, we prevent CTE. Let's prevent concussions.
Speaker 2:Neck strength prevents concussions. Best way to strengthen the neck, in my opinion, is iron neck. I don't care how you strengthen the neck, bart, I don't care how you do, just as long as you do, I mean, if you have someone that's going to grab your head and hold it there and rotate it and force it around and you resist, that's a great workout. Then do it. Just do something about it. We were talking before the podcast and and I pointed out that girls' soccer most concussed sport now in America. Now why is that? I mean anatomically, their necks are longer than a male neck and they're thinner, but now they're doing all these sports. In soccer you don't think necessarily as a contact sport. You're not head-butting each other and tackling each other, but there's a lot of contact in soccer and if you're bumping up against somebody shoulder-to-shoulder, running full speed down the field, your head is bouncing around and it's wobbling. So if they fall on the ground they can't keep their head from hitting the turf, this kind of thing.
Speaker 2:But let's talk about why this protects this. So in a brain, rattle is what I call it. The neurologists will call it coup, counter coup. But that's when the brain inside the skull starts bouncing and rattling around and bouncing off the inside of the skull. That causes a concussion and we'll get back to a subconcussive blow in a minute, because that is really important that we understand the difference between a subconcussive blow and a full-on concussion. Full-on concussion. Everyone knows you're concussed, you're pulled out of the game and you're set aside. Now we have all the protocols to get your brain back to a stable state before you're allowed to go back to play, and that's all great.
Speaker 2:My point is let's don't get that far, right. Let's build the neck strength up so you don't get concussed in the first place. So this is the shock absorber. So let's say you know you're a running back and you break through the line of scrimmage. Linebacker comes from the side. You don't even really see him until the last second. You don't even really see him till the last second. He helmet the helmet, contact here hard.
Speaker 2:All of a sudden your head is forced and your, your neck, if it can, starts fighting against that force. It dissipates that force, slows it down, slows it down and dissipates it into your body before your head and neck reach the end of its range of motion. If you can prevent the head and neck hitting that into the range of motion and snapping, you prevent the brain from flying from one side to the other and then rattling. So if I have a big, strong neck, I dissipate the force, dissipate, dissipate and stop it before it snaps. I just prevented a concussion. So if you have a strong neck that can react to those external forces, you've really got half the battle beaten right there. So the other thing is Dr Cantu again proved that in one 80-yard drive in the NFL an offensive lineman can get up to 20 concussions, sub-concussive blows Right, 20 sub-concussive blows in one 80-yard drive. In one, what One 80-yard drive? Think about that 20. So what's a sub-concussive blow?
Speaker 1:So in like multiple downs, just contact after contact, after contact.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, if you don't have a big, strong neck. Every single play an offensive lineman is using this helmet. I mean, I was an O-lineman, this was my weapon. This was a weapon. We used it all of the time just beating people with it.
Speaker 2:And if you don't have a strong neck, it's those little sub-concussive blows. They start adding up and, pretty you know, they add up and they add up and now all of a sudden it counts as a full concussion. They keep adding up and adding up and now it's another full concussion. Those are the ones that. They're the sneaky ones. They're a lot more nefarious than just a regular concussion because you're sat down and you're protected. But even now no one knows you're getting a sub-concussive blow. You don't really even understand that you're getting it or you know it, but you know if you're an offensive lineman, sure you you have. You have felt that before you. You felt a little ringer, you might see a little pots of light, but it's not going to stop you from playing. You didn't get concussed. It's like whatever, shake it off and just keep going it's like whatever, shake it off and just keep going.
Speaker 1:So you know, I think too that that sport, you know it's, it's the mindset, the mentality of, like you know, you know, one of my listeners has a has a kid who's in junior high or high school. When they're playing football and they're, they want to make the team, they want to show coach that they, you know they're not going to be like coach, I think I got slightly concussed, I better pull out.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's not going to happen, no way.
Speaker 1:And it's noble on one sense because you want to see your kid out there being tough and being strong and willing themselves to help the team win.
Speaker 1:But, like you're saying here, unless the body is protected with a strong neck, that those things are going to add up time after time after time and and and create the type of you know situation in high school.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we know about, you know the NFL, and there's so much you know so many stories and studies and that kind of stuff at NFL or even college football. You know, I had an interview a couple years ago with a with a former camp gladiator trainer who was played for the cowboys and he didn't play much but he, he got to the cowboys, earned a spot as a wide receiver for a couple years, played with emmett smith and all those guys and he's 46 years old and he is completely disabled, um, and he can't leave his house, he can't drive, he's just um and he's you know he was able to have the interview but I mean the guy was a shell of himself and he I mean it just from exactly what we're talking about here but he was that guy, he was skinny and short, he was he, he never. He kept saying I should never have made the nfl like I wasn't meant to.
Speaker 1:But I somehow did it and he just wanted so badly to prove that he was worth being on.
Speaker 1:You know one of the greatest football franchises of all time, the cowboys yeah, you know, in their prime yeah, in the in the late 90s and early 2000s and he just willed himself to do it and and you know, 20 years later, here he is, you know, suffering from, you know all that kind of stuff, and he has a daughter and all those things that you know are part of that you know dealing with, you know the rest of his life.
Speaker 1:But it's just, it was very personal me because I know I know Jeff very well and you know such incredible human being before all this kind of started to truly, you know, show up in his life and so, but I think we it's easy for people to see this as a professional football problem or an mma, or you think maybe, like, oh, boxing, like oh, clearly, like these guys are doing these massive combat sports. But going back to your point that, like, the most concussed high school students right now are women playing, you know girls playing soccer and you could throw in field hockey and lacrosse or whatever other sport that they're probably 00.01.10, 00.01.11 and flag football now Parsons sport 00.01.13.
Speaker 1:But you think about it like if I'm a and it's not even like, it's just like, hey, what body parts, do we? Need to be working in the's where their strength, that's where their kick right and they want to protect the ankle and knee joint and hip joints.
Speaker 2:Exactly. They want to protect those joints. They don't want to blow up their ACL. They got to have strong glutes. It's preventative too.
Speaker 1:I mean, yeah, it's performance-driven, but it is preventative but is important is the neck and the whole you know the whole core.
Speaker 2:I mean this is an extension of the core. Yeah, right.
Speaker 1:And I love when people try it and they're like oh my God, I feel my QL, I feel my, you know my core stabilized.
Speaker 2:You're like wow, yeah, it's a whole kinetic chain. Right, you're working it out, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:But that's and out and they're like, oh, that looks so barbaric, or oh, this. And I'm just like, oh, I get it, you put it on your head. It's a little funny. But man, I feel like there's a whole demographic out there that if we can kind of let you know for whether it's high school girls or just women in general, that like hey, this is so important it is you know for, like you talk about your recovery from an injury, whiplash or a drive, you know, car accident tech, snack tech, neck tech neck.
Speaker 2:I mean tech snack. Are you kidding? You mean tech neck, are you kidding? I mean you walk around, that's all you see. Is this now? That's all you see? Right, this head bent over, this increases the weight. Long and weak, long and weak, getting stretched out all of the time. Short and tight, short and tight, right, yeah, no it. It needs to be fixed and the iron neck can do that. And it's funny.
Speaker 2:You mentioned about the girls not wanting the iron neck on their head. What they don't like even more is a strength coach grabbing their head or holding a plate on their head with a towel, you know, or anything like that, or putting their face in a four-way neck machine and pushing it to the side. They won't do that. They won't let someone grab their head. So the iron neck, in my experience, is the only thing here. Here's the skull cap. It's clean. Put it on, put the iron neck on, okay, so they'll sort of go for it, and if you can get them to do it a couple times, then they get it. They feel the difference and they feel stronger and you get a little more confident. An athlete that stands straight up with great posture because the neck is strong. You have that confidence and it radiates and your opponent's like holy shit, this guy's gonna kick my ass Right, because he looks like he's gonna kick my ass.
Speaker 3:Look at his neck. Yeah, look at that giant neck, he's going to headbutt me.
Speaker 2:No, but yeah, it's important that we tech neck, tech snack. Yeah, I mean, it's so important it needs to be worked out.
Speaker 1:Well, I think you know there's so many from the advent of just social media marketing. I think there's a lot of companies out there trying to, like you know, sell that their concept is valuable and that we need, like these, vibrating massagers and there's a lot of like tech out there for fitness and recovery and all that and we all should buy a $6,000,. You know cold plunge and I'm all for cold plunge, but I mean you know, it's like but I love it, just buy a deep freeze.
Speaker 2:buy a deep freeze, it works. You just get a deep freeze.
Speaker 1:I got guys in san clemente in my neighborhood.
Speaker 2:They buy a deep freeze yeah and they do a couple little things to it. They fill with water and it works just fine. Yeah, they don't electrocute themselves, thank goodness we're not. We're not recommending getting a deep freeze for a cold plunge.
Speaker 1:I'm just saying it's, it's out there, right but these are people that won't sleep eight hours a night but they think they're going to recover from sitting in cold water for 15 minutes or whatever. But my point of all that is really to say, like, what I love about iron neck and obviously I I'm I work with you guys, so I'm a little biased, but I do feel like time when you tell your story. It's like god, how many more people need to hear about this, need to like because you're truly the only one out there solving this problem, like solving the problem of trying to strengthen the neck. I mean, I Googled neck devices and after Iron Neck, you see people getting a skull cap and hanging a kettlebell from their head on an inclined bench. There's nothing out there that's really comparable to what y'all are doing.
Speaker 1:We're trying to solve a huge problem here. So it's it's awesome that that you a, you created this and then b that like the word is getting out because you've been able to get into. You know locker rooms that, uh. You know professional football uh. What other sports have you have you been able to kind of connect with on this?
Speaker 2:so I started with pro football. I figured they were the only ones that had enough money, right, so that was my target. But they also it's one owner that has a wallet, so sometimes it's hard to break that wallet open. So college football was like the big start, because colleges have the cash, they have strength coaches that are well-educated through the CSCCA or the NSACSCS and they understand what's going on. And that's where I started. But that start wasn't even easy. I mean you would think, oh, college football, they'd understand this, let's strengthen our neck. So my wife and I worked on this thing. We got it up and running and we went to.
Speaker 2:The very first show was the CSCCA, and that's a college, you know college strength coaches and conditioning association and it's probably the best. I mean, it's like a master's degree in, you know, strength and conditioning. So we went there. We were all excited and you know people. We had our booth, a little aisle, and people were walking down. They were looking at our booth. I got this thing on my head and I'm doing all this weird stuff. They'd never seen this before. They're like what? As soon as they got close enough to interact, they turned their head. They walk on by and they'd be looking at the booth on the other side of the aisle. They didn't want to be associated with us in any way because this was so far out of the norm that we were just nuts, and that I mean upset me. I mean I was thinking, wow, geez, come on guys. I mean I mean you should, you should want to see if this actually works. Yeah, I mean you should want to come over and try it out. So that first day was so disappointing.
Speaker 2:Well, that night a couple of the strength coaches were having a conversation at dinner and Doc Crease, who was the strength coach at Tennessee and Colorado and UCLA and a couple other schools, he was having that conversation, and Ethan was telling him hey, him, hey, doc, there's this guy he goes, I'm looking for, let me go back. So doc crease was looking for a neck strengthening device. He just left ucla and he had a clinic in marina del rey and he wanted something to strengthen necks because he had some wrestlers that he was training, and he asked one of the other strength coaches is there anything out there on the floor strengthens the neck? And jokingly and I'm not going to mention his name, he is a believer in Iron Neck now, though, but jokingly, this guy goes yeah, oh, there's a nut job out there. He's got this thing on his head and it's the craziest thing you ever saw. You should go check it out.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, doc and I were friends when Carl Durrell was head coach. I was helping coach the summer programs for high schools with the college coaches, so Doc and I would work out in the morning. But Doc and I had lost contact after Carl Durrell left and I didn't know that he was the founder of the CSA. If I'd have known that, I'd have been on the phone to him right away. I had no idea.
Speaker 2:So Doc's wandering around trying to find this crazy dude with this thing that's on his head. And I'm standing there and behind me I hear Jolly man, jolly man, jolly man, what are you doing? And I turn around. It's Doc, right, and I'm like Doc, you know, big hug and all that. And he starts looking at my device and of course he tries it out, because Doc has a super open mind and he wants to find out what this is about. Well, this is one of the original founders of the CSCCA. So do you think that any strength coach walked by my booth without stopping and trying out the iron net? Because he sat there all day and made sure they all did right, I love it.
Speaker 2:So I mean that was just so serendipitous. But yeah, I mean that's how that all started, and then I was answering your question. Do you remember what the question was?
Speaker 1:The question is really just like a tea to take you wherever you want to go, we were talking about how we started with football and kind of how you brought iron neck into kind of the professional football space I'm supposed to use my pad, I'm supposed to write those notes down, so I don't, this doesn't happen, but uh this is where you get to mention your you know. You know your, your age I'm 64 there you go you gotta give me a little break I've used I'm 49 a lot for those similar type things.
Speaker 3:One thing Mike hasn't really talked about too much, but in some ways I don't know if you've had that much time to reflect on it because he's got a lot going on but Mike really did come to market with a totally novel device to really do one thing, and that was to protect people. And it's funny because now the the environment of where Iron Neck is is in so many more places than probably you would have thought initially.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 3:And and you know, maybe it's not in every gym yet, but it's in far more people's hands than gyms that are in the US. We've sold to some 80,000 people in the US alone and so much of that now is not even related to concussion prevention. It's to prevent pain or to reduce pain. That's already happened. Prevent pain or to reduce pain that's already happened. Right, and it's kind of this full cycle of. There's this prevention element, which obviously is important because people will fail to proactively prevent things like concussions, things like pinched nerves. But you've also created something that can prevent not just concussions but pain in general of mobility. You talked about range of motion. Maybe you don't need to worry about range of motion because no one's hitting you in the head with a football helmet, but people all over the place are losing range of motion just with age because we have more sedentary lives on our phone, like look at our camera guys right now, look at their, look at their postures. Right now. They're both on their phones looking down and that's just it's not their fault.
Speaker 3:No, this is just what it is what it is. Can I throw out like you're six, four, two.
Speaker 1:So when you're six four, you're looking down at everybody yeah, right, and it's like I like my.
Speaker 3:My chiropractor is like you know. Do you do you?
Speaker 1:have a desk job.
Speaker 1:I'm like no, I'm up on my feet all the time, but I'm always like this the world is happening below me, and so if we're not actively counteracting, whether it's the cell phone or whatever, we're going to end up having a stiff neck. And I know what people do, because, unless somebody is injured and going to a PT and getting accountability and consultation, the likelihood that they're going to just like spontaneously, like use their iron neck or not, even if they don't have an iron neck, do some sort of like rehabilitation. Rehab to develop more range of motion in the neck is probably slim to none. What they're going to do is find a range of motion that doesn't create pain, take ibuprofen and try to get on with life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's exactly right, and their range of motion gets smaller and smaller and their posture may be affected by those types of things. And then at 30, 40, maybe not a big deal If you have a little bit of pain you use one pillow instead of two, because your neck gets tweaked every time you go to sleep pain.
Speaker 2:You use one pillow instead of two because your neck gets tweaked every time you go to sleep?
Speaker 1:yeah, but when you're 60, 70, 80, that becomes your.
Speaker 2:It gets magnified right and each decade you see those.
Speaker 1:You see men and women. I said a lot of men, though I don't know what it is like with the kind of really hunched back kind of their head is. Their entire head is out in front of their face and you know in front of their body and you know in front of their body.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's just, it's only too late at that point. Dentists, dentists, that's how they, that's their posture. Yeah, they spend the whole day bent over, right? Yeah, looking in someone's mouth. So your question was Well, I was just.
Speaker 1:You know we were talking about Well.
Speaker 2:I remember where do we start and where did it go from there. So I and I said we started in the football Right.
Speaker 1:So you had. So I liked this big moment where, like the, the head, you know, the head of the organization came over and basically validated like quit calling this guy a freak show.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he's onto something you all need to come and take notice, yeah, and so continue from there.
Speaker 1:So.
Speaker 2:But the other sports that we went into and, Sam, this is your point, because some of these other sports aren't contact sports, but they're sports that cause neck pain. One of the sports and it is a sport Air Force pilot. We were at the TSAC show and I gave a presentation and an Air Force pilot came over from Luke Air Force Base in Arizona and said, hey, we need these my pilots. Their necks are so jacked up Now they don't get concussions but they pull four Gs at takeoff and when they're in a dogfight and up and around, they're pulling Gs in every possible direction you can imagine, with their head and neck in every possible position you can imagine. I mean their bodies are in a pressure suit. This can't be. This has to be. Look out, you know of the canopy and find enemy fighter craft, right. So this is so jacked up.
Speaker 2:I have never worked with people with worse necks than fighter pilots. It was nuts, formula one racing sure, there's there's crashes, right, and if you have a strong neck it's going to help, you know, prevent a concussion and protect your neck from getting broken and that kind of thing obviously in a crash. But their necks are jacked up too. I mean some of them are going the same way, around a track all the time, One side of their neck just you know, and they've got to get that equaled out.
Speaker 2:So there's a lot of sports that don't have necessarily concussions but have that neck pain. Right, have necessarily concussions but have that neck pain. And yeah, the iron neck slowly evolved into fixing people's neck pain. Here's a great story. You probably know Mike Clark, strength coach. I met him when he was with the Chicago Bears.
Speaker 2:I spoke at the NFL Combine a couple times on neck strength and concussion prevention to the strength coaches and after one of those talks, mike Clark came up to me and he said, okay, and and this is how he walked he couldn't turn his. He just couldn't turn it. And he says okay, mike, I get, it makes sense, it really makes sense. Let me put it on my head, let me try this out. I'm not going to be able to do with the exercises, but I want to see what it feels like, right? So I put it on my head, let me try this out. I'm not going to be able to do the exercises, but I want to see what it feels like. So I put it on his head, he gets it on there. And I said okay, mike, all I want you to do is just do a spin. He said spin. I said pirouette. Okay, he does a pirouette and you know, his face is like hmm, face is like hmm. So do another. One other way, two more. I said now just try to look left and look right. And he's like and bart, I'm not teasing literally within two minutes his range of motion that he hadn't had for years was this much. He's working out the big smile on his face. I've got him doing a bunch of different exercises. He loved the stevie wonder. You know the figure eight. He loved it. He loved that, and you know he I made a good sale of the chicago bears that day because he got it right away. He's like wow, yeah.
Speaker 2:So on, your neck isn't all about strength, not at all. It's about flexibility, it's about range of motion, it's about, uh, breaking up fascia that's been just frozen and locked into place in your neck, elongating those muscles, stretching them out, getting blood flow to those ligaments and tendons. There's 16 different pairs of neck muscles in the neck. Some of them are very, very tiny, but the only way to get it is to take the head and neck through those rotations, uh, you know, and really force that range of motion and the flexibility during those, during those workouts. So that's why now, I mean most of our sales, a great majority of our sales are one-offs to people that have neck problems, and they have neck pain.
Speaker 2:Um, as we talked about earlier, I'm interested now and we're trying to get back out there and say, hey, guys, playing sports, contact sports. This is important. This is why I mean, the NFL's done a good job and major college football's done a good job. Disseminating down. This is how you should tackle. You shouldn't use your head. That's all great stuff, but pro soccer players aren't tackling anybody, no, and they're getting concussed a lot. So there's still more that we have to do, and one of those things is strength in the neck. So, while I'm I'm overjoyed that you know we can fix people's necks and fix their neck pain and, in all of that, and make their lives normal again, which is great, I still want to protect brains.
Speaker 1:Because that was a mission. Yeah, I love that. And what I think is, people, you look at how much money is spent on kids' sports in the United States per year, it's like four or $5 billion for all the like. You know, select sports and clubs and AAU and right Like, parents are willing to spend money on protecting, on the giving their kid the best opportunity. So if this story can, if, if the word can get out that like, hey, whether your kid is a basketball player, field hockey player, soccer player, whatever, like they need, we need to be thinking about that Because I, my whole thing is like you know, I've been a trainer for 17 years. You know core, the idea of core, because I grew up in the 80s. Arnold workouts Nobody said core, that was not a word. You said abs, right, yeah, you said abs oh yeah, right.
Speaker 1:Nobody said core, that was not a word. You said abs, right, yeah, you said abs, oh yeah, right. So the idea of core has really come about 20 to 30 years of that vernacular, that kind of idea of, hey, let's strengthen our core, let's think about not just the six-pack or not just the abdominals, but lateral movement or, you know, rotational movement. I feel like, eventually, that we'll think about the neck in the same way, that eventually, like it won't be a weird thing to see someone at lifetime fitness with the iron neck, you know, warming their neck up because they're going to do plyometrics and squats in their workout and they want to make sure that their core and their neck, or like I see, a see a world.
Speaker 1:That I don't know. Maybe it's five or ten years down the road.
Speaker 2:I'm a member of Lifetime and guess what? The trainers at my Lifetime? They have our necks in there.
Speaker 1:There you go and they use them, so it's not that far off. Well, let's go talk to the South Austin Lifetime Fitness, because it's the third fitness the entire nation really.
Speaker 3:It is packed every single day, no matter what time of the day, which is a little frustrating if you want to get your uh workout, but, my god, they're impacting lives over there well, something you mentioned too, and I don't think that iron neck is in the same category as these saunas or the the cold punches that we see taking off, but there is something acceptable once you connect the dots between what weird things someone is doing and what that means for their identity. So anyone that cold punches is probably taking on a sense of like. I care about recovering. This is why I'm doing this. I'm in a sauna, not because I like to sweat and I don't like the way it makes me look, but like it's healthy for me. I can detox all those things.
Speaker 1:Right, I'm trying to upgrade my lifestyle. Right, I'm doing good things already, and I want to make sure that I'm doing more, and so I'm gonna spend some money on, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:And when the unfortunate reality is, when people see someone using iron neck for the first time, the only thing they can think of is like you, you're, you're strengthening your neck. What a weirdo. And it kind of like stops there, or like a little. What's a big right this is gonna be a challenge with, with the female demographic is they're neck? What a weirdo. And it kind of like stops there, or like who wants a big neck?
Speaker 1:This is going to be a challenge with the female demographic is they're going to. You know it's like, oh, I don't do. You know, like the whole, like I don't want to build bulky muscles, like, yeah, but they can't. I know they can get stronger. I know my wife's a perfect example right.
Speaker 2:She has a little tiny neck. It's stronger than hell.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, because she uses our neck probably just once a week. Sometimes she uses it twice, but she's been using it for a long time. But her neck is strong, yeah, um, and you just got to convince them, guys. You're not going to build a big, bulky neck. You might put a half an inch of circumference on, you're never going to notice it, yeah, but you will notice it out on the field when you're playing or if you have a jacked up neck. It's going to feel a lot better by using it and working it. You know, working out. I mean, I'm all about, you know, solving the problem, not just keep refixing, refixing, refixing like going to a chiropractor and just getting adjusted, adjusted, adjusted, adjusted. Let's fix the problem. Let's strengthen that core, let's strengthen the kinetic chain, let's build the neck muscles up so they're nice and strong, so it doesn't matter if you sleep on a plane funny one time well, and that's so interesting that you say that about iron neck, because you kind of get the the best of both experiences from someone you know.
Speaker 3:One's walking out of a pt feeling totally rejuvenated, like that is a yeah, but in the same way that you just shared about um, mr Clark, like you can have immediate relief in some areas after two minute sessions.
Speaker 3:Now maybe your pain doesn't go from like an eight to a to a two, like the testimonies we heard of, in a week, but it certainly can get there after like four or five months, right. And so I think I think the iron neck does such a good job of being able to mitigate pain over time and then have these big musculature improvements now that you're strengthening something that hasn't been, but because it's not something that is often strengthened you can have these sort of immediate benefits that you feel after using it. A pump, some people call it, or it's just the. I can totally it's almost like a stretch in some ways too.
Speaker 2:I love working out someone for the first time and, bart, you might've I know you've experienced this. They've never had an iron neck on before. They have a little pain, they have a little problem and they use it and they just go wow, I've never felt my neck ever getting worked out. I mean, even with athletes who don't have pain, the first thing they say is, oh my gosh, I've never worked out my neck before ever. This feels great and you know it's just so important to protect the neck.
Speaker 2:Here's a good story, and this is one that I don't share that often. Uh, but uh, joey um bapsen at clemson university I think he was the second college team to buy our necks and this is back when they were 13 pounds. But he bought into it, he got it, he understood it. They had. They had 12 squat racks with iron necks hooked up to them and they used the iron neck. They were faithful at using the iron neck. They went through a whole season at Clemson, won a national title. Not one person missed a game due to a concussion. During that same season, one player missed a game due to a broken neck. He was going across the end zone to catch a ball wide receiver and he smashed into the field goal post Full speed, broke his neck. Joey told me later if he hadn't been using the iron neck he'd be paralyzed or dead. That's up.
Speaker 1:He was using the iron neck in his workouts all the way up until that moment, to that moment, so it wasn't a rehab thing.
Speaker 2:No, no, it was all summer long. They were building, building, building, building. That season they won the national title. No one misses a game due to a concussion. The entire season this kid runs into the goal post at full speed, breaks his neck, but is able to recover, come back and play the next year. That's unbelievable. Yeah, and Joey said, hey, it wasn't for our neck, it would have been a lot worse said, hey, wasn't for our neck, yeah, it had been a lot worse.
Speaker 1:So, well, I just I mean, and just the idea that, a you know it wasn't as bad because his neck was so strong and, b he used it, then it's like he really used it for both. You know, he used it to strengthen his neck and he used it to rehab his neck so that he could get back on the field and help his team. Right, that's incredible. Right, yeah, I mean that's, those are the. Those are the that I think need to be heard about the Iron Neck, because otherwise I think people get a little too confused about like, why this? Do I need this? You know that kind of stuff. It sounds like you've had a couple of big like you know, like Mike Clark come in and kind of like saying, you know, y'all need to think about this, or getting it with the Bears. Talk about the Joe Rogan moment, where you go to Joe's gym before one of his podcasts. I think it was Tom Papa because I was like, why is Tom Papa in this video?
Speaker 1:I know, Tom would be there, he's funny, but I'm like why is Tom in the?
Speaker 2:video, exactly right. So talk about that moment. Yeah, so he was on the podcast that day that day, yeah, and I was there before the podcast, okay, so he showed up when I'm working Joe out, okay, yeah, so that's a good story. So this ties back into Doc Crease. Yeah, so Doc Crease is working out Aaron Pico, who is a Bellator MMA guy really good fighter right now, and Aaron won four state championships in California wrestling championships and he's just a great kid and an amazing wrestler.
Speaker 2:But Doc wanted to get that iron neck for him and the other athletes that he was training in Marina Del Rey. So I came down there and I met with Aaron and Doc and showed him how to use the iron neck. I came back I don't know, three, four months later, walked in and aaron's a very strong guy, but he's not big and you know he's looking up at me and I I come in and I go aaron, how's it? How's it going? How's how's your neck feeling? He goes I mean, he looks at me like I'm gonna rip your head off, kind of a look and he walks over and he goes mike, my head is now a weapon and I'm just like yeah nice, stay right where you are yeah, but you know he's a great mma fighter, so he's training with nick curson in torrance and Nick Kersen's a MMA.
Speaker 2:You know strength and conditioning coach trainer Nick's on the Joe Rogan podcast and Jamie who we're talking about, he's on, he's on the, on the computer, and so Joe's saying, yeah, this is our Jamie right here so, uh, so.
Speaker 2:So Joe asked Nick about neck and neck pain and all that. And he he goes oh, we have this thing we use. He goes I don't know, it's like a Halo thing. He doesn't even remember what the name of it is and we put it on the head and it makes your neck really, really strong and if you have a bad neck, it just fixes it. And Joe's like I want to know what it is. I want to know what it is. So Jamie's looking things up and Halo. And when we originally invented the product, it was named Halo.
Speaker 2:Really, but there was a trademark infringement with some company in Canada that had something called a Halo that had nothing to do with the neck. Anyway, they said we're going to sue you. And we said, yeah, we don't like Halo anyway because it has some bad connotations with the. You know, screw in the head and after you break your neck they call that a Halo, like the girl on the bus, and 16 candles.
Speaker 1:Exactly, yeah, so that was a bad connotation right.
Speaker 2:So my wife came up with the term Iron Neck. Jenny goes why don't we just call it Iron Neck? And I was like, yeah, that's a great name, let's do it. So we switched the name without any problem. So he types in Halo and it pops up and he goes is this it? And you know Nick Kersen looks up and he goes yeah, that's it, that's it. So Rob Sherman, who's our CMO, he immediately starts DMing. You know Joe on Instagram. Hey, you know the inventor and owner of the company. He lives right here in San Clemente and you know he can come and see you and he can give you a workout and give you an iron neck. And Joe got right back to us. I mean, it was pretty quick.
Speaker 2:And so you know, there's always a tipping point in a company. There can be more than one, but our first tipping point for sure was this experience when I went to see Joe, jamie filmed the workout and it's about a two-and-a-half-hour drive from the Valley because he was in the Valley then back to San Clemente by the time. After I worked him out and he loved the Iron Neck and he said things like man, I'd marry this thing.
Speaker 1:I mean, he really got it you can tell Every time he brings it up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, some people get it, some people just get it and he just got it, he just felt it, he just understood it, connected immediately with him. He is built too. He is like a little far-hard man he is. But anyway, by the time I got back to San Clemente, over a million combined views on Instagram and Facebook. Wow.
Speaker 1:Sold out of our next, so Jamie had posted that video.
Speaker 2:Right after I left I guess Wow. And I got back and it was just like guys were calling me. I saw you on Facebook. You're with Joe Rogan. Oh my gosh. You know it was crazy, but we sold out of our necks right away and it sort of got us on the map, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's unbelievable. Yeah, you said facegram. That was great. Facegram I'm 64. There you go, he's on facegram. I'm jet lagged.
Speaker 2:I flew into Austin today. Give me a break here.
Speaker 1:I love it. Facegram Did I really?
Speaker 2:say face cram, oh my gosh, that's awesome.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, I mean that you know those moments are. You know you don't, can't plan those types of things, but when they happen, you know you've got to pivot, you've got to and you know you've. You've had many, many chapters of your life. You know high school wrestling and football talented enough to go to ucla. Was it a football scholarship or was it?
Speaker 1:football scholarship, okay, but you wrestled until title nine kicked out. Wrestling, yeah, um, um. That's a whole nother conversation right there, but uh, but you're ucla, you're playing football and you, you and your friends stumble upon a?
Speaker 1:um, like a graduate one-act play that you decided so because for of you who don't know or haven't Googled Mike Jolly yet, you may not realize that he has an IMDb account of all of his acting from the 80s and 90s. That could be a whole other podcast conversation. Tell me about going in there and auditioning for this and how that acting bug started for you at. You know, back in the it was about 1980 or 1981.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was probably 1981. Okay, I would imagine I think it was a junior, yeah, so, uh, yeah, I was a poli-sci major, okay, and poli-sci shares North campus with theater arts, okay, and I was walking back with a buddy from a poli sci class and there was a big sign want to play auditions today. And they had the time, and it was in that time and my buddy goes let's just go try out. And you know athletes, you know how athletes are. Okay, they're not scared of anything usually, right, you know you're six, four, two, so 280, 290 at that time.
Speaker 2:So let's go try out. So we went in there. It was a William Inge play and I auditioned for a part on Death Row. It was a small part I mean it wasn't like oh, I was the star, no, no, it was like maybe six or seven lines, but it was a really serious, like you know, you're going to be killed tomorrow kind of thing. And I got the part and I loved it and I was like, okay, I got to start doing this. This is really fun.
Speaker 2:And I went into the theater department because, you know, athletes have pre-enrollment, we have scholarships, we can take any class we want. Well, I walk into the theater department and they go you can't take a theater class, you have to be recruited for this. This is a really, really, you know, competitive program. And I went really Okay. So then I went to Chancellor Young, who was a big football fan, and I said, chuck, I'd like to take some theater classes. What do you think he says go back tomorrow. And you know some people are going to hate this story, because you know athletes and all the the perks that they get, so entitled oh yeah, so entitled, right, right.
Speaker 2:So anyway, I go back the next day and the first thing they said was mike, what classes?
Speaker 3:would you like to sign up for?
Speaker 2:so basically I got a minor in theater. Yeah, the only thing I would have had a major, the only thing I couldn't do do was the major plays that you had to participate in, because it conflicted with football, of course, right, so I couldn't do that. But anyway, I got this minor. And then I, I lucked out and got a really good agent. Met this woman at a dinner party and you know, I told her what I was doing and she was like oh, I'm an agent. She gave me her card and jenny raymond, writers and artists I had no idea writers and artists, I had no idea who she was. Everyone in la is an actor or an agent, so you sort of take that with a grain of salt, right. But then I, I go back and I call a buddy who's actually acting and has a good agency and he goes she's one of the best agents in town and I go.
Speaker 2:Really he goes yeah, call her back. I said, okay, I'll call her back. So I was doing Desire Under the Elms, a UCLA play, obviously and there's one scene in Desire Under the Elms where I'm beating up my girlfriend. I mean it's a really, really physical scene where I'm really just beating the shit out of her. And the cool thing when you're doing stage is you have to make it look real. It's not movies where you just break the string and it looks like you punched somebody. None of that stuff. So anyway, I asked her to come in and do this one scene with me and it's about a five-minute long scene.
Speaker 2:So we went into Writers and Artists a week later and they have this big room and they set chairs up in a circle. So they're in a circle, put us right in the middle. We do our scene, theater in the round completely, and it was super intense. I mean she's sobbing and crying and I really just. I mean it's such an intense scene and when it was over, all the chairs have been pushed to the walls, right, I mean they just they just Right.
Speaker 1:The intensity was when it's real, like yeah, oh, yeah, no, that's such an interesting thing about live theater too. It's like when something's really visceral and, like you know, when it's authentically you authentically, somebody's authentically going through a moment on stage, like you know it's uncomfortable it can't like it can be and it because you know, I mean you think about like stanley kowalski and uh in um, what's the street streetcar name desire and one of the one of the one of the scenes is kind of like that a lot of young male actors will play.
Speaker 1:Is is the one where, like you know, he's at the dinner table and he kind of like he's just stewing, stewing. He finally erupts and yeah, like you know, and marlon brando's great performance doing that and all that kind of stuff is is kind of iconic. But but it's this, you know, it's this ability in in theater to kind of like unleash this part of you that that in life we don't.
Speaker 1:That's not something, that's something you bring out like no, usually you temper that, you temper that down and I and I think it's such a, it's such an interesting when you, when you find, you know, like a love for something like acting and and you did a lot of movies and and such but but there's a, I think there's, and I felt this is there's a connection with wanting to kind of like live full out in these moments.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and on stage, that's where you can do it right, and I mean you've done a lot of stage acting, so you understand that, and it can be different every night. That's what's crazy. I mean, based on the chemistry of the actors, I mean it can be a totally different show one night to the next, not worse or not better, but just different.
Speaker 1:And it unravels differently every time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it does, but so they signed me, yeah, and I was like awesome.
Speaker 1:So you went in, did this amazing scene. They were like blown away. And, okay, did the girl you brought in for the scene? Did she get any love? She didn't get any love. No, but she was a great actress too. That would have been a great story if she got picked up too, I know. Yeah, she got signed too.
Speaker 2:She just got the shit beat out of her.
Speaker 3:I got the big job.
Speaker 2:But the funny part is that the first movie part I got was in Creator, and it was a movie with Peter O'Toole as a star and Marilyn Hemingway and David Ogden Stiers, and it was based on chemistry students with their professors and they were all working on their PhDs, but they had this flag football game that they'd always play against each other, these big rivals. So David Ogden Stiers was one professor, peter O'Toole was the other, and they would take all their aggressions out on the football field, right, the flag football. And so Ivan Passer, israeli director, was directing it, didn't know anything about football. So I came in for my audition and you know it went well. I mean, I only had a couple lines. I mean, you know it went well. I mean I only had a couple lines.
Speaker 1:I mean, you know You're happy to be on the set, right? Yeah, I was just happy to be there, right.
Speaker 2:And they hired me. So I walk onto the set and it's at UC Irvine, that's where we were filming. And I walk onto the set and David, the director, ivan, comes up to me. He goes okay, mike, I know nothing about american football, you direct these scenes. No, I'm serious, bart, I'm serious. I've never been on a set in my entire life and it's and this is a major movie production. You know millions and millions of dollars, you direct these scenes. And I went okay, let's go.
Speaker 2:And you know, I'd line people up and we, we I'd diagram plays and we'd run plays and they were working, everything was going. You know, you know really well and and all of that, and it was, it was a fun day. Of course, my genius call I mean this is in the, this is in the script. Meryl hemingway had just gotten her boobs done and so, to distract david ogden stires, she flipped up her top, so he sat there with his mouth wide open looking at them and then she zipped around him and the ball was thrown to her and touchdown, we won. But you know, that's how that goes. But, um, the the worst part of the day, and sort of the best part of the day, was when Peter O'Toole wanted to learn how to throw the American football. So it's my first day on set.
Speaker 1:Right For the audience. Who may not know Peter O'Toole, British actor.
Speaker 2:British yeah, Great British actor, I think two Academy Awards at least right.
Speaker 1:But probably not being cast in a lot of football movies.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, no, no, dramatic never right, but he did play rugby in college, okay. So, uh, you know he had a rugby ball on set and and he wanted to learn how to play, throw the american football, yeah. So I start, you know, teaching him how to throw it and try to get him to throw a spiral, and you know he's not really getting it that well. And then he starts getting a little better and a little better, and the first AD comes over and says hey, we want to start, mr.
Speaker 3:O'Toole.
Speaker 2:And I immediately caught the ball and turned and started walking to go do our scene and Peter said no, no, no, no, let's keep playing. I'm getting this, I'm getting it. We sat there and I'm not joking for 30 minutes while the entire cast and crew watched us play catch.
Speaker 1:It was so uncomfortable. I think Tom Cruise could do that. Tom Cruise could do that. There's a few actors that could pull that off nowadays, but he could back then. Right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And, oh man, I was so nervous I was gonna get fired because I, you know, it wasn't my fault and they knew that and everything went well. Later we filmed a scene up in santa cruz, uh, uc, santa cruz, and they, they flew all the lab assistants up for this final scene where the credits were rolling. So the so it's a sunset scene, and the first day, uh, he didn't want to do it this is a pure tool pure tool.
Speaker 2:They want to do the scene okay so we were there another night clouds weren't quite right yeah, clouds weren't quite right. Let's go with that, so too much kelp.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the second day the same thing happens.
Speaker 2:The third day, the same thing. The fourth day, the same thing happens. The third day the same thing. The fourth day, the same thing. On the fifth day we finally film it. And after we were done he goes did you guys enjoy your week and all that extra pay? He did that just so all of us you know, starting out actors could just get a little extra money for the week. I mean, just a cool guy. But yeah, that was my first part, but it's, you know, it's funny. It was football, yeah, and that's why I got it, because I played football, probably not because I was a good actor at all but you get those experiences and you get to really kind of like sharpen your your skills out there and see the greats you know being I mean because you work with whoopi goldberg and and some other people when you were in Sister Act right.
Speaker 2:I was. I was in Sister Act and that was in Fatal Beauty. Fatal Beauty, yeah, I did. I did Fatal Beauty with her first and then, and then Sister Act second.
Speaker 1:But I want to talk about. You know, and this is a total tangent. So if you're, if you're hoping to get some mindset nugget from this, I would say just, you know, like, go for it. Like he's going, he's, he's a football player, he's, he's poli-sci, and yet, like he finds his passion and he goes for it. And I think you know, I mean we always want to, like, you know, dig into, like, oh, what made someone do this or that? Like, so much of it is just like, hey, I love something, I'm interested in something. Let's see what happens.
Speaker 1:And right until it's no longer a good idea. But I want to talk about three o'clock high right, because I'm, you know, 49 years old, like I remember watching that movie you know, and it's and, uh, you know, if you haven't watched three o'clock high, you can rent it. It's on, you know you can. It's on all the platforms. You can go watch this 90 minutes exactly. It is the best, the most fun.
Speaker 1:You know, roller coaster ride of high school, you know, maybe I mean I would put maybe breakfast club slightly above it, but that's you know yeah, it's a great movie yeah but anyway like you were in that and and you, you didn't have the the main role, but you were one of the like, you know, like the bully to fight the bully guys and and just had this really cool kind of uh, talk about that, because I know, um, you said that, uh what, steven spielberg was the producer on that yeah, talk about being on that movie and just kind of, maybe you know something, that, something interesting from that time. Well, that was that was a.
Speaker 2:Really that was a really fun shoot. Um, the director was really a, a actor's director, and what I mean by that is, you know, he would really work with us. He cared about the actors and getting it all right, so we could actually do a really good job on the scene. It's funny because everyone in that movie that was playing high school we were all between 24 and 27.
Speaker 1:It's like the same as Beverly Hills 90210. All those guys 25 to 30.
Speaker 2:And all of a sudden they were 40 years old doing movies and you're like what he was just on Beverly Hills, 90210, and now he's this old.
Speaker 1:But it's funny. I was watching clips from the movie literally last night, just kind of thinking about this interview, and I'm like, yeah, richard Tyson looks about 27.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, yeah, he does.
Speaker 1:He could have played Jim Morrison. Oh Right, I mean if Al Coomer wasn't so damn good they should have hired Richard. No, you're right, but yeah go ahead.
Speaker 2:So he was the bully.
Speaker 1:right, he's the bully, but an interesting bully because he has a touch issue. You're not allowed to touch him, you can't touch him. But he has this code too, because he gives the money back at the end and honors the. It's not a boring bad guy role, it's more in-depth, for sure.
Speaker 2:But he's not very big.
Speaker 1:Yeah, in real life. In real life, he's not very big, you're 6'4".
Speaker 2:We did all of our scenes and he's on a couple Apple boxes. He's up about this high in all the scenes we did. So it looked like it was a fair fight at least, because otherwise it wouldn't be very believable.
Speaker 1:They would start empathizing with this guy, Like, oh man, you're picking on the big.
Speaker 2:So I'm hired by Mitchell to protect him at 3 o'clock when the bully, richard Tyson is going to go beat him up. And he touched him. I think he touched him in the men's restroom because he was trying to get an interview because he's on the school paper. I mean, if you're going to touch a guy that doesn't like to be touched, you don't do it in the man's restroom literally next to the urinal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like, oh wow, that's just not right at all, but he did so anyway. He hires me and I there's this famous scene in the movie um in the library. And so he hires me out on the football field during a fire drill because he wanted to find me. So he finds me in the fire drill, hires me after the fire drill, I go in and I confront richard tyson and it's funny that richard tyson this like leather jacket it's in the library.
Speaker 1:in the library reading a book, I tried to figure out what book he was reading it would have been funny to know.
Speaker 3:I can't remember.
Speaker 1:Probably like JD Salinger or something like that. But anyway, like you come in.
Speaker 2:So I come in and I say hey look, and you know, we played football against each other when he played football in his previous high school, in his previous high school, and you know we have this confrontation and of course I finish it up with touching him by poking him in the chest. You will not mess with him and he doesn't like that at all.
Speaker 1:So he grabs my, the audience kind of knows in that moment like oh you messed up there, buddy.
Speaker 2:Something bad is going to happen. The same thing in Fatal Beauty. When I called Whoopi Goldberg a bitch, you knew I was gonna get killed right away, right? So so touch, touch, touch grabs my finger, breaks it and then punches me and I fall into the bookcase the first bookcase and it knocks over as I go down and it's just like dominoes all the way around the whole library. And then when the last one falls, you see, you know mitchell's standing there, you know he's been peek. Then when the last one falls, you see Mitchell standing there. He's been peeking through the bookshelves to see the bad guy get beat up and of course that sets up the fight at the end of the show.
Speaker 2:But the funny part was this they built those bookshelves specially so they would all tip over like dominoes, and then they loaded them up with books. The books were so heavy. The cable system that they installed to start the dominoes falling, the bookshelves falling, it would not work. They were yanking on it. They could not get the first bookshelf to move at all.
Speaker 2:And so Phil Gervano is the director and he's a young guy and he's like a Steven Spielberg sort of protege and great director. And I said, hey, phil, I can probably knock that first bookshelf over if you want me to. He goes how are you going to do that? I said, well, I'll start about 20 feet back there, I'll run as fast as as I can and then, right before I get to the camera, I'll jump in the air and I'll flip 180 degrees and I'll go flying into that bookshelf and you just cut to that from the punch.
Speaker 2:He goes you think you can do it? I go. Yeah, I think I can do it. Well, it's a stunt we're going to have to work out. You know, anyway, I got 500 bucks extra to run into the bookshelf. I was like, okay, I've been doing that for free, so I'll run into a bookshelf for $500. But anyway, it worked and you know we knocked it over. And then, of course, the crew had to set it all back up because they needed a second take after lunch. And it's unbelievable, because that's a mess If you watch that scene.
Speaker 3:That was a mess, if you watch that scene.
Speaker 2:That was a mess. It's a great scene they got that done in like an hour and 15 minutes, got the thing back, set back up and then we, we went at it again. But so, yeah, I, I hit that thing and if you watch the clip, uh, you'll see me driving my legs. So, yeah, I got hit and punched out.
Speaker 1:But if you look at my feet, it happens so quick, yeah, in this, and so it's really hard, yeah, you, you don't.
Speaker 2:But if you actually look for it, you go, oh yeah, he's, he's, he's. You know, I'm running as fast as I can backwards into that, into that bookshelf so but yeah, that was, that was. Uh, that was a fun shoot. It was. It was a great movie. Some movie sets are just really fun to be on, just like you know, some stage plays you just have a good group and you know, you've experienced that where you just like to be around those people and other ones aren't the best, yeah.
Speaker 1:Sometimes they're more professional and just feel like people are like they're done, when they're done and they go off. Yeah, but yeah, like I've done, you know, operas and musicals and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:Wait, wait, wait, you've done an opera. Yeah, so I was in. Seriously, I've got to hear your voice. You've done an opera.
Speaker 1:Dum-dim-dum, high floor, ne'er-mo-rose-a Wow. So Cal State, northridge, I was in the opera program because they didn't have a musical theater program and I wanted to sing and act and so I did the opera program. So we did Mare de Figaro, la Boheme, elixir of Love and a bunch of really cool operas, so. So that was kind of the start of my, you know, acting. Singing was actually in the in the world of opera and oh my gosh, that's cool.
Speaker 2:I can't sing a note.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my wife will be the first one to tell you that, so I'm jealous but uh, okay, so we have totally tangented off, but I love see this is this. You know, I mean this is the beautiful thing about life. You know 64 years like you, you're not just a guy that created iron neck, you're a guy that's had many chapters of life you've got. Do you have any grandkids?
Speaker 2:five, five grandkids how many kids uh four four kids, five grandkids.
Speaker 1:Uh, you know, uh, you have a business building commercial hotels.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm in charge of all construction for a hospitality development company, so we build hotels and that's fun.
Speaker 1:And you know. And so the Iron Neck thing when was the impetus to start Iron Neck? How long ago was that? It was 2012. Okay, so in the last you, the last 12 years or so, it's been this new chapter of bringing this out and hitting the pavement, in a sense, getting out to the shows. This is one of those things I think you talked about. People don't know what you're doing, people don't know what it is. You had to just scratch and claw and get in front of enough people people to, I mean, because it's nowadays it's like, whether they understand it or not, like people know what the iron neck is most.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you, if you work out. Yeah, you probably heard of the iron neck, right, you know?
Speaker 1:at this point and they've done a good job at making sure that the algorithm, yeah, is working. Are you kidding these guys? Social media gurus, these guys have done an amazing job it's so funny.
Speaker 2:You know how many people tell me yeah, I, I talked to you about iron neck and all of a sudden, iron neck's popping up on my instagram and facebook.
Speaker 1:I don't know how that happens, but I guess siri's always listening, but it's wonderful for the business, a little creepy for the people that like, because I'll do that all the time, I'll mention something about anything and it's like pops up. I'm like, oh, yeah, there's, there's an advertisement for that exact thing. Right, the new ones? We got a new puppy and yeah, I mean you the puppy ads. Oh, you're training and like the new food that you've got to feed your, your dog, I mean, everything's online. It's just ridiculous. So, but, uh, man, I really honored to have this conversation with you. It's been a lot of fun. What's next for you? I know you're obviously getting out there for Voting Iron Neck and doing the construction stuff, but is there anything in your personal life or something that you're really looking forward to?
Speaker 2:Hanging out with my grandkids. No, I've just got a couple more big hotels. I'm building a Waldorf Astoria in Lake Tahoe.
Speaker 1:South or North?
Speaker 2:Tahoe, it is North Lake Tahoe, so the California side, no, it's the Nevada side. Oh, nevada side, so it's right on state line. Okay, the old Biltmore. We bought that old Biltmore property which is about 13 acres. Okay, we've leveled that and we're going to build a Waldorf Astoria there. Okay, so that last big construction job I want to be sort of finished with that. That's kind of a good one to finish with. Yeah, um, and there's a you know a couple more hotels between now and when.
Speaker 1:That completes right. But uh, yeah, I just you know we have some siren song yeah, for construction done. Put a bow on it right hard to build a uh double tree after the waldorf historia I would never build a double tree.
Speaker 2:I take that back, hilton, I take that back I'm just joking uh, because hilton does own waldorf oh, they do, yeah, they do so.
Speaker 2:We gotta be careful with that. But uh, yeah, we have some stuff with uh iron neck. We have a new product that, um, we've been working on and hopefully sometime in the near future we can come out with that. I think it's going to be widely accepted. It is covered by the same patents we already have with Iron Neck, which is kind of nice. We have three patents on Iron Neck, so we're looking at that and hopefully that will come out here sooner or later.
Speaker 1:Well, man, all the best to you. Obviously, I'm here in Austin helping out wherever I can. We appreciate that, bart? No, seriously, it's so fun.
Speaker 2:But you know what? I'm sitting there in bed going to sleep when I flip on Instagram and there you are. There you are training someone on Iron Neck. And I'm like Bart does a good job. It's just great to finally meet you in person.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this has been something that I've been wanting to do, so really great to have you, you know, especially coming out here to Austin and uh, you know we like to think we're a big deal out here in Austin, texas, but uh, I would love to build a hotel out here in Austin, texas, let's see let's downtown.
Speaker 2:Austin and it just hadn't worked out.
Speaker 1:But yeah, it's, it'd be a great place. There's so many projects in downtown Austin that are going to be built, haven't been built or like in the middle of being built.
Speaker 2:Right, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's like it's crazy.
Speaker 2:Well, with your celebrity connections maybe we can.
Speaker 1:We can leverage some of those celebrity connections and make something happen. Whatever I can do to help. All right All right, hey, thanks, mike. Thank you yeah.
