Barbell Shrugged - 112- CrossFit Powerlifting, Westside Barbell and Louie SImmons w/ AJ Roberts

Episode Date: April 9, 2014

This week on Barbell Shrugged, we interview AJ Roberts, two-time world record holder in the sport of powerlifting and CrossFit powerlifting mastermind. Hey, this is Rich Froning. You're listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbellshrugged.com. How long until you have another baby? Better. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Like two weeks, dude. Holy moly.

Yeah, it's intense, man. I'm not going to lie about that. Scheduled to have a baby when he's out of town. Ooh. Yeah, well, yeah, this Thursday, right? Flying out to Austin. Yeah. Hopefully I get back and that baby's still in that belly.

I get a call on Friday, like, it's happening. She's one centimeter dilated. But the doctor says it's going to be about a week at least. I'm like, ugh. I love how you said that as if we know what one centimeter dilated means. Yeah, Jay said that to me. Once this starts happening, the baby's head starts showing. It's like it starts coming through.

And we're live! Whoa. Let's not blow any minds. How many centimeters do you have? Depends on the lady. He doesn't even know what that means. Just a bunch of guys sitting around talking about babies. Welcome to Barbells Drugged.

I'm Mike Bledsoe with Doug Larson, Chris Moore, and our guest, AJ Roberts. Of course, we've got CTP behind the camera. Today, we're going to be talking about West Side Method, conjugate system method, all that stuff. Every buzzword you've ever heard. That's right. All wrapped up. What else can we fit in there? Max effort, dynamic.

Repetition. Repetition. So if you have any questions about that, we're going to try to clear that up this show, I think. We'll confuse you even more. More than likely confuse you further. So go back and watch the Louie Simmons podcast we did. I don't know what episode that was.

Not that confusing. Yeah, that episode was not confusing at all. Very straightforward, the Louie episode. I'm being sarcastic. Before we go any further, make sure to go to barbellshrug.com, sign up for the newsletter. We'll notify you when we put out podcasts, technique wads, and all sorts of other cool videos so uh aj we invited you out to uh memphis tennessee to crossfit

memphis faction strength conditioning to do a powerlifter was it crossfit powerlifting trainer course yeah i got it right careful on the terminology it's not a cert i've been i've been told i get it you know i call these CrossFit things the wrong thing all the time. I call them certifications or seminars. And then they're like, it's not that. I go, all right, whatever. Hey, man, take it easy. Everyone else thinks it is.

So it was kind of your dream to travel around the world and teach powerlifting. And now it's kind of finally come true. I know. It's crazy. I told Louie when I moved to Westside that, you know, he said, what do you want to do when you grow up? I said, travel the world and teach powerlifting. And he said, they're never going to happen. It's like I've been doing this for 20 years and no one pays me to go around the world.

Until CrossFit came along. And then CrossFit came along and you crazy guys. That's one of the points from the seminar. We now live in a world where people who really geek out and study weightlifting sport of powerlifting i guess some extent things like strongman as well like now there's been this boom in the marketplace i guess people are like you know what this shit is actually really cool they've discovered it they're aware and they now want to learn about it and they recognize you guys as go-to high quality sources for this information it's really an amazing development yeah i think it speaks volumes for the crossfit community as a whole because it's not just the coaches that show

up a lot of times it's uh you know average joes um we've had 60 year old ladies at the seminars and uh it speaks volumes in terms of like how passionate the community is to learn constantly to improve their performance in all areas and so it's really cool for me because you get to talk from everyone who's looking for this for performance down to just be living a better, stronger life. So, um, you know, a lot of times it's, it's crazy to see who's in the crowd and you don't see that in many other areas of the fitness industry. So for all the people that don't know who you are and, and, uh, don't follow powerlifting, maybe give us a little bit of your background and kind of what qualifies you to try to be humble powerlifting workshop uh so um i used to train at west side barbell many people know for four years

and while there i broke the all-time world record at the 308 weight class uh two times um broke it in um 2000 march 2011 and then rebroke it again in August 2011 before the Fin took it back. And then Dave Hoff actually, Westside Barbell, got that record back. And I believe he still holds that record at 308 as well as at 275.

He has a total of 3,005. So he brought that back. But I retired in March 2012 after squatting 1205 and then finished the career with the best lifts, 1205 squat, 910 bench press, and 815 deadlift. In case everybody's going, hold on, let me back up and turn my speakers up a little bit. 1205 pounds, that's not a total, that's just one lift. What was the bench, 910?

910 bench. 910 pounds and a fucking bench press and over 800 pull, 850? 815. Jeez. 815 pull fucking bench press. And over 800 pull. 850? 815. Competed at 308 weight class. I walked around about 320 pounds. So I was a big guy. One of the best bloats I ever saw. I know.

I had a very good shade of purple. Now doing the bodybuilding, we stand up to spray tan and all that fun stuff. But powerlifting, you got to have that shade of purple. You ever done the melatonin injection? I have yet to do that. That sounds so dangerous.

I heard it was completely safe. It may be safer than the tanning bed. So I'd say of all the powerlifters who sort of may be known in the CrossFit community, maybe you're one of the better known, actually, because you kind of made waves because you,

I remember seeing that video of you, you still were pretty big. And I don't know what gym it was, but you went out and you did Fran or something. And there's a video of you, you know, doing cleans. And as a, as a former powerlifter who also is trying to get better at Olympic lifts now, I share the frustration like, shit, I did lift 800 pounds and this is, this 100 kilos, my flexibility's not there. This is frustrating. But you sort of made waves because you made a quick run at at crossfit yeah so um after that after powerlifting i was kind of moping around and trying to lose weight and uh was hanging out with uh dave castro and his wife and um she challenged me to do crossfit and basically called me out on on not wanting to do crossfit so i began

training i was doing it just at a regular gym at first you know and uh lucky enough i know a lot of different athletes a globo gym yeah a globo gym and uh they actually my first ever workout was grace and uh i thought 135 ground overhead would be pretty easy everybody thinks man about nine about nine minutes later i finished and uh proceeded to lie down for about two more hours. But no, I went to think of all this. I went to CrossFit Invictus and worked out with Dave Lipson and we captured that on video. And my fiance, Grace, who edited the video, did a really good job of hiding how hot it was for me. But essentially, as time went on, Dave, keep reducing the amount of reps i had to do on the minute and we added bands in for the pull-ups so um you know it was a very humbling experience

but i'm an extremist anything i do i want to be the best at so started training you know two three hours a day doing the crossfit stuff and did that for eight months competed in the 2013 open managed to finish in the top 20 which sounds a lot cooler than it is when you got 100,000 plus people in it. I don't know, man. I'd say it's pretty good because it was a really quick and abrupt turnaround from what you were doing.

I mean, because you had been, how long before that were you powerlifting? I remember you used to train, when I was competing, I discovered you and started paying attention to what you were doing because you were training out with Brenton,

Washington, right? Because Brenton was one of the best powerlifters I ever knew of, period. Yeah, I trained 10 years powerlifting. And during that time, trained with some of the greatest there was, traveled, moved. I moved from Spokane to – first I moved to Kentucky, finally moved to Columbus, Ohio to be at Westside after learning from Lou for so many years. And really had the privilege to train alongside

some of the best lifters there are and still some of the best lifters there are and I'm privileged now to continue to work with Westside and CrossFit and still train, talk to those guys and help them and after this I'm going to Columbus for the week. So yeah, it's been quite the journey but I'm lucky because of

who I am obviously in working with CrossFit, I get introduced to guys like yourselves and other top CrossFit coaches and athletes. So I kind of shortcut that learning curve quite a bit because I don't have to go through, um, all of that struggle myself. I just look at what they're doing. How many times do they train a day? You know, like, what does it take? What do I need to do? You know, I'm lucky enough to work with guys like Kelly Strett and fly out to San Francisco and get work with him directly. Whereas, you know, I was doing that, and a friend of mine said to me, I got all these problems.

And I'm like, well, you live like 30 minutes. Why don't you just go see Kelly? And they're like, Kelly has like a one-year waiting list. And I'm like, are you for real? So it definitely has – being strong definitely gave me the advantages I have, um, and shortcutted that, that learning curve. And so, I mean, I love CrossFit still, but what happened was essentially the open was a big eye opener for me in terms of what it actually takes to be a CrossFit athlete. And I actually got detrained during the open because I just

physically wasn't able to recover between the workouts. My body was falling apart, ended up busting my knee, had quad issues, and I tore my pec shortly after. And I realized that, like, you know, I'd spent 10 years pretty much moving up and down and not moving much at all. And all of a sudden, I'm in this high-intensity, high-impact sport. You train three different movements as well as you can. Now you're being thrown in an unlimited amount of movements.

And I'm trying to do that. Even in the open, I was still in the 247. So I was still probably 40 pounds overweight. And the body, there's a break point. And most people are smart enough to manage their training back away. And even though I have the knowledge, I have that, I have that like ego and that, you know, meatheadness. Do you have a built in voice in the back of your head? It's like, it's basically Louie's consciousness going, come on, man, fuck this shit.

It's barking at you like a little chihuahua. It's one of those doctors make the worst patients thing. Like what you would recommend someone else do isn't necessarily what you would do. Right. It's just not being able to shut that off. You know, conservative. Take your time. Adapt to this and maybe slow increase.

Be patient. Fuck, I'm going for it. Yeah. For me, it's like right in the deep end. Let's go. And that, you know, that has its negatives. But when I step back after the open and reevaluated, because my goal was always to compete in the actual, in the games, the finals.

It's like, I don't do anything just to do it and that's a blessing and a curse but um if i was going to do crossfit it was i was wanted to be a crossfit athlete and compete and when i stepped back and looked at okay what's it going to take you know and and i started talking to you know the top 10 guys and saying you know what's your lifestyle like how do you live and it's basically like well we own a gym and our job is to train all day we don't do anything at the gym we just train like five six they own it they're not running right and we basically eat sleep work out nothing else and here i am you know four days out of the week on the road for the seminars which i absolutely love um you know having a other uh you know run a company which i love i'm looking at i'm like i got to give all of this up and change everything and it wasn't a case of could i like do i think

i could be an athlete it was a case of my willing to make all those sacrifices having done that for 10 years for powerlifting having gone through what i went through made the sacrifices both of my health and with lifestyle choices, I realized it just wasn't something I wanted to do for the next three to five years just to get to the finals, you know, to be a competitor at the top. Not only do I have to catch those guys, now I have to try to exceed them. And just when you look at it like that and you start breaking it down and you start to see what you have to do, it puts it into perspective.

And, you know, I was like, I'm not willing to go through with that again so uh with the injuries and stuff you know i backed away and uh again was just kind of working out to work out and started gaining weight and got back up to like in the in the high 260s 269 or something like fuck yeah and i'm like good i bet i was like oh man i'm going back the other way so I better do something. And that's when, that's when I just decided to do bodybuilding, um, you know, to have that lifestyle in terms of eating good training, um, and having a purpose. And of course, then I ended up competing for my first show qualifying for nationals. And'll get intense again now i'm second place 33 weeks out from going to nationals but the beautiful thing with all this is is that i've had experience now in a purely strength-based sport a performance-based sport and now i mean you know i guess

physique sport i guess it's the way you look and there's things you can take from each and then there's things that obviously don't carry over. And so as I learn more about each individual thing, I can see the crossover there and can see how it can benefit people. And I think it makes me better as a coach and definitely helps accelerate my athletes and the people I work with results because I can kind of guide them and make them avoid the mistakes I made and things like that. I think that's the thing I'm most proud of about the CrossFit movement is that we all came up in an environment where you compared and you drew contrast between these sports like, well, powerlifting is this and bodybuilding is that thing

and weightlifting is over here and those guys are like that and bodybuilding, fuck those dudes. Everything was like a siloed. I think the most powerful thing you were referencing is the most amazing thing about CrossFit, like it or not, no one's going to deny how effective and amazing the experiment is.

You have all these people just thrown into a pot and all of a sudden they're cooperating and they're mixing methods. And now the focus has switched to how are these things the same? What between them is what gives the results? And once you find the common elements, now you're getting where for the first time

we are producing extraordinarily new different results. Guys who are super fit also being pretty strong. We got a lot of room to improve some things in the strength department, but you're having guys now who can run a long way and then snatch a lot and that's a whole new kind of thing. That's what excites me, man. 13. One thing you mentioned though is you listed different sports and bodybuilding is still

one of those sports. The big word. Yeah, it's still the sport that, like, yeah, like, CrossFooters still, you know, they see anything that resembles bodybuilding, and it's shunned still. Like, you know, powerlifting was brought in. Endurance sports were brought in. You know, weightlifting was probably the first thing that you know everyone was falling all over themselves to get at but bodybuilding is kind of like yeah and i think maybe it has to do with the goal of bodybuilding right and bodybuilding

benefits that could come with that it's the one thing that's not really performance based like at the end result you stand on stage and you present a package and you flex in front of judges and it's in your underwear it's in your banana unless a package and you flex in front of judges. And it's in your underwear. It's in your banana. Unless a package you're presenting. What do you think, judges? Got to have that sock ready. No, I think that the problem is people look at it as what the pros are doing or what the goal is for the end result.

They look at the sport, they're not looking at training. And they miss the process. And a lot of times, we talked about this a lot this weekend, but accessory movements or supplemental movements or corrective exercise, it's all designed to work specific muscles. And the mind-muscle connection is something that is difficult in performance sports because the idea of a performance sport is to use as much muscle as possible in order to move the weight from A to B. The more lift can be a full body lift, the more you're going to lift.

And especially when we look at relative strength and we're looking at, you know, weight you can lift for your body weight, the more muscles we can recruit, the more we'll lift. Well, bodybuilding has, you got the complete reverse of that. The thought process is I need to isolate as much as I can in order to grow that muscle to the fully because I can fully exhaust versus getting a little bit of work in, but then another muscle group taking over when you hit that fatigue. And that totally makes sense unless you have a muscle group that is lagging or is weak or doesn't even activate because another muscle group is so overpowering it.

So then it's about how do you control that and turn that off to bring that weakness up. And the bodybuilding for me has really taught me how to learn to contract and squeeze. And I know, Mike, you had a background in bodybuilding and you said a lot of times, I think. Well, not the sport, but yeah. But you train like a bodybuilder for a long time. And you feel like that's a good base for the Olympic weightlifting. And not the kind of bodybuilder that forgot leg days. You're like a power builder.

I squatted like twice a week. And he flexed in the mirror. I did lots of posing. I guess it's true to say that it's probably improper to like if you look at powerlifting you'd say can it help me crossfit people I think are a little quicker to say well I don't have to wear like a three-ply squat suit in order to see how these methods can help me I can do speed squats and some max effort work I mean I can think of several examples like a Sam being the best I can think of she's doing a lot of wild shit and it's hard to argue that she's training in a way that's

supporting her objectives isn't it proper now to ask the question what can we separate out of bodybuilding and sort of a structured way in a respectful way like you don't have to eat you know mixed vegetables and dry chicken breasts and get up on stage with fake tan to see how those approaches and that discipline can really help you get better like you have glutes that won't fire what could you do well you just mentioned a word which is discipline, which is bodybuilders have more discipline than any other athlete. You find those now, right, AJ?

How many meals did you have? He said how far out his next show is. He said 33 weeks. It's like, who's counting their next competition that's 33 weeks out?

And you ask any athlete and you go, oh, so when's your next competition? They go, oh, maybe next March. He knows it's 33 weeks away. There's a countdown.

Yeah. Preparation's going on now. Right. And that's the thing. I think the discipline. Man, he ate pancakes with me this morning. That's true. Not yet.

Should we not tell Shelby that? No. Those fit right in my macronutrients right there. No, the discipline is something I think that, and even as a powerlifter i look back and i'm like man if i had that discipline on the diet and and that um you know mindset of every meal you put in is having an effect on the body and that has an effect on my performance so i'm looking at it as the meal meals fuel the workouts and you know there was a lot when going into the into the show getting up at 5 a.m going to the gym to do cardio then, you know, there was a lot when going into the, into the show, getting up at 5am,

going to the gym to do cardio, then going, you know, working all day, then going back to the gym to train and do more cardio, having a meal prep, having to do all these things. Very few athletes I meet outside of bodybuilding have that under control.

Sam, you know, you mentioned her, she does, she eats the same thing every single day. She goes to bed at the same time. She gets up at the same time. I at the same time and his wife i think they're very disciplined with the food prep too and i think that's what you're going to see the top athletes and again it's it's we talked a lot about this um in the conversations we've had over the weekend but a lot of the things we do are not necessarily applied in the same way but the thought processes are the same so

eating like the same time every single day thought processes are the same. So eating like the same time every single day, if you're trying to monitor your body and trying to monitor your results, and then you know, okay, today I missed a meal. No wonder why I was weaker in the gym. Your answers are right there on paper versus trying to guess. And a lot of times people will say things like, well, I'm, I'm over-trained and you'll ask them questions and they can't give you answers to them because they have no idea. They't track anything they're not regiment you know if you say well you know how much food did you eat today they have no idea when was the last time you ate uh like i think like six hours ago or something but when you have that discipline and it's routine and it's the key

is the routine um it's very easy to say oh oh, I'm gaining weight. I need to cut out calories or cut out carbohydrates or looking at the diet. Maybe there's a food you're eating that your body's not responding to. What did I change? Oh, I switched from turkey to chicken. Oh, I'm not buying chicken from, like I'm not buying organic chicken, you know, like there's something in the chicken I'm getting from where I'm getting from is probably affecting me. I'm having a reaction to it. You can tell really quickly what foods your body, whether you're carb sensitive, what carbs you're sensitive to, all of these things play into a row. And when you look at performance, it's like, you know, the whole goal is to be optimal everywhere. And that's,

that's what you really can take away from it. Um, it's just that discipline. And I think a lot of athletes in CrossFit is, is a sport that it's interesting because nutrition seems to be a big part of it. But then when you actually start talking to people, they're like, ah, you know, I kind of just eat whatever I want, whenever I want. And you look at it and it's like, could you be better? Not like, how good are you? It's, could you be better? And I think the answer is always going to be yes, because the body needs certain things and it operates better when you know it's in homeostasis so if we're out of whack if i like even alkalinity in terms of like are we drinking

enough water versus other beverages we're drinking a lot we all drink coffee and it's like how much coffee do we drink compared to water and are we alkaline balanced and we don't know unless we're measuring or monitoring and the more we can measure and monitor the less guesswork we have to do the less guesswork we have to do the easier it is to see am i getting off track or i'm on track because the worst thing you can do is a month goes by and you're like man i have no idea why i gained eight pounds this month you know it's like whoa so that's something that's not talked about in the crossword world very often at least from what i can tell can you can you explain that you just mentioned alkalinity twice can you kind of explain what that means yeah i mean everything

is going to take you so your body obviously wants to be balanced it wants to be in homeostasis just mentioned alkalinity twice can you kind of explain what that means yeah i mean everything is going to take you so your body obviously wants to be balanced it wants to be in homeostasis and then with the alkalinity um you're either going to be positive or negative from that and it's based on what food you eat and so certain foods push you one way spike you one way certain foods um you know crash and when you're out of, that's when the body is basically fighting itself. And so anytime you, you take in, you know, excessive sugar, you have that insulin spike, it rushes, it pulls the sugar cause it's trying to balance out as quickly as possible. And so with the, there's different foods and things like that. And there's different charts you can look

up, but it's like the balance is the key and the body always wants to be balanced. And I think, you know, when I was walking around at 320 pounds and eating pretty much see it, eat it diet, like anything goes. I was so out of whack, but the body somehow starts to process that. And you ignore like all of like your body kind of ignores how poisoned it is. It creates ways to somehow shut the brain off or do something. I don't know. You know know i'm not that smart but um i look at it like the body wants to be balanced and when you go too far out of whack it starts to you know try to bring you back down and so if your body's fighting itself recovery is not gonna you know if you're fighting yourself the last thing it's gonna do is worry

about recovering the muscle because it's trying to figure out what's going on in the gut and these are all things you know that play into performance and it's funny because a lot of people they cut certain foods out thinking it's bad the performance goes down it's like well the food's bad you know like i was told that bread is bad and it's like well if bread is not bad unless it's like white bread bought from like the regular store. Like there's not all, not all grains are bad, you know? And so those are the things that depend on what you're eating. It depends on how you feel,

how you feel affects performance. And I think that's what the underlying thing is, is performance. And how do you go to the gym and be maximal or optimal every day when your, your body's so out of whack. And that's the hardest thing I think people struggle with is one day they feel great and then the next day they feel terrible, but they don't know why. You know, they wake up in a bad mood.

They don't know why. Well, if you had ice cream the night before and the next day you're probably going to wake up. I don't know about that. I wake up every Saturday morning for a million fucking bucks. After Vice Friday. Yeah. I think the word I was thinking of when you were describing it is like, and Louis used

obviously the West Side method. I think method is a great word. It's like you get up and you have a certain, it's not necessarily just like programming. It's not necessarily what you're, because that maybe you look at one thing as being the most important thing, but it's everything you do. Is there a flow and a reason? Does it have its place? Are your days sort of consistent?

When something changes, are you able to say, oh, I likely know what caused this unoptimal result, this deviation. I'll have some sense of how to correct it. Or if things aren't going my way, at least I know that this approach isn't working. It's not a random mix of all kinds of shit. Yeah, it's organized chaos. It's a loose set of rules that you're not bound by exercises, sets, reps. You're not bound by the movements. You're bound by concepts and theories. And when you have such loose standards in terms of what that can incorporate, it can really be applied to anything.

And it can be applied outside the gym the rest of the 23 hours as well. And I think that that's what what people miss is that they, when they want programs or they want training advice, it's like, they're looking for exactly what to do. Just tell me what, what exercise I should do. And it's like, well, what I tell you would be different than what I tell you. Cause your body may be different. Your leverages may be different. And so people always want that definitive answer. And that's like, that's like the worst level of service you can provide someone. It's like a disservice to them. It's basically just like, I can just say anything and it may or may not apply to you. And we talked, you know,

10% of people tend, tend to go away and do what they do. And the 90% of like trying to figure it all out and they just want to be told. Problem with that The problem with that is when I tell you what to do, I can't see what's going on in the gym. So if you have a program and I'm not watching your technique, you could be performing the exercise wrong. By the time I get around to watching the technique, it's like two months have gone by, and I'm like, oh, my gosh, you've been doing it like that?

And it really doesn't matter that an expert did the programming. No, I mean, it has no rhyme. It's a program done, a crappy program done with 100% effort and perfect technique is going to outdo the perfect program done with crap effort and terrible technique. You give me a Formula One car and a manual that was written by fucking one of those expert drivers and their coaches and their teams. I'm like, okay, I'll push this button of the 8,000 fucking buttons and I would just immediately crash and burn.

It wouldn't do me much good. Keep him away from the track. There's not a whole lot of guys who lived a big chunk of their life over 300 pounds that can do muscle-ups. You're probably one of the rare exceptions. What are you weighing right now? Right now I'm like 246.

Before the pancakes this month. So you're a 250-pound guy that can do muscle-ups. That's a rare person. Have you ever done a muscle-up having gone over 300 pounds? Well, Doug, it's not as easy as have I done it. I can do...

Do you know any other guys over 300 pounds that have ever dropped down and been able to do muscle-ups? It's a rare person. Maybe John Wellborn. Yeah? Well, John's a freak, but it's a very

It's like a list of like three people maybe I can think of. You're going to have like a hundred people right in now being like screw you guys. I'm 260.

I do muscle ups. You guys should run a content. Send the video in. You can do a muscle up and you're over 250 pounds. I want to see it. You can weigh yourself on video. Send a video in. You can do a muscle-up and you're over 250 pounds. You have to put yourself on video. No shenanigans.

I'll start a 250-plus muscle-up club. And if you're like 6'5 and you're 250, I'm saying, okay, come on, dude. We're looking for some stockiness here. I mean, so for all the guys that are over 300 pounds or have been in the past, and they want to be able to do pull-ups and muscle-ups, what could you tell them that might be able to get them there someday? You know, I'm a very explosive athlete, and I think a lot of that came from the dynamic effort training.

You know, yesterday I PR'd on the seated box jump, 46 1⁄2 inches, which, you know, the two guys jumped higher than me, 50 inches yesterday. And, of course, there's lots of other people who jump higher than that. But 246, you know, a month out from a bodybuilding show i don't really know anyone who's doing that kind of stuff and um it's it's being athletic i think is a big advantage but the other thing is i break down movements everything is broken down so when i was trying to learn the gymnastics stuff um you know i uh we looked at gymnastics ward and looked at what carl was putting out. And it was like,

how do I break these movements down? And then when I understood that the movement pattern, it was like, how do I train the movement pattern? I use bands and to do assisted movements and things like that. And then it was a case of, okay, because I knew I had the strength,

you know, I mean, if I didn't have the strength and what, you know, what was, what's the point in benching and lifting what I did. So I knew the strength was there. It was just a case of stringing the movement pattern together and i think that's what most people do they just jump on the rings they try to do a muscle up and i just broke it

down to its simplest form right from that ground that ground drill where you pop your hips and land on your feet that was the first thing i started working on the minute i could do that it's like i move on to the next thing and i know i was never gonna have a problem locking out from the tricep exercise but getting up there was the big thing and the hardest thing is holding myself in position you know and just above the rings with the the right grip position you know the false grip took a long time to learn but you know that's what I do I look at a move when I break it down and to be honest the only movement I wasn't able to do and still am not able to do is a pistol. And a lot of it is because, you know, my ankle, my knee, my hip individually aren't too junky. But when you put the three together and then I got that upper body trying to balance as well,

it's the one exercise I still can't go through full range of motion. But I got overhead squats. I got cleans. I got jerks, you know. But I would spend two, three hours doing mobility a day. And so, like I said, when I i do something i'm an extremist but i think that's what most people miss is they expect results just from trying the exercise and it's like okay well i'll try again in a month and i'll try and i looked at like i'm gonna do this till i get it and i'm gonna break

it down and i'm gonna train the train you recognize the breaking down and the dissection and the work on the mobility like people forget how that was almost like the a priori training focus. For me, because I had the strength. And I think that's, I talk a lot about every exercise is an assessment exercise. And you can really tell. And the first thing is, okay, is it mobility? Okay. And if it's not mobility, then it's probably strength.

Or it's probably the ability you know stabilization or something but we always start with the mobility and i never used to be like that in powerlifting you know it's like oh my bicep hurts okay just take your hands out a little bit further you know just hide it oh my quad hurts all right just wrap her wrap her knee wrap around it and keep pressure on it it was never fixed the problem it was just work around the problem and it wasn't until i met kelly kelly worked with me and laura phelps and you know laura's pound for pound strongest woman that's ever lived um he worked with us and we both saw ridiculous results from that just from you know freeing up the the scapulas and thoracic and doing stuff like that and all of a sudden you know so

when i was doing doing the um crossfit i understood that basically my limitations were a lot of because I couldn't just move my body in those range of motions, couldn't put my hands up overhead, you know, and it's a combination of pec tightness, you know, first rib, all these different things. And so you have to attack those and you have to attack them every day. I spent 10 years of my life, you know, essentially detraining the athletic ability.

And we always say powerlifters, you know, you're as in shape as you need to be and you're as flexible as you need to be. But in terms of normal, you're so far from it. Right. And you, you teeter that line of injury and health, like that's the powerlifting journey. And all of a sudden now I'm looking at it. I'm like, okay, I should be able to get in this position. And I can't, like there's no reason I can't get in that position. I don't have any like joint or like issues. Like I've never had a severe injury. So it was like,

I'm just my muscle. I'm just that muscle bound or, um, it's not used to moving through that range of motion. And so the minute I understood that it was fixed that. And I think this weekend when we were working on people's bench press technique, you know, there was kids who we put in the right position instantly. Someone had a 35-pound PR. Another person had a 15-pound PR. Another guy had a 10-pound PR. And all of them had zero mobility issues.

So as soon as I showed them how to set up correctly and to activate the legs and to use the legs in the bench press and turn it into more of a push press than just an upper body lift, they get PRs. But then there's other guys who we couldn't put them in the right position. They just don't have the thoracic mobility. They don't have the hip mobility. So their hip flexors are limiting them. So they can't use their legs. They can't squeeze their shoulder blades together. And when you look at that, it's like, okay, now we have to go back and fix that first, then go back to before we bench press. Cause we can't have them bench press like that. And I think's the biggest mistake i see in in all fitness areas not just crossfit it's personal trainers everything is we want people

to do certain exercises and sometimes they can't they just physically can't do it and instead of going back and and making sure they can go through the range of motion we just you know scale the weight or use something lighter for them and and force them through range broken range of motion it just reinforces bad technique bad technique bad technique it's only going to lead to some kind of tendonitis some kind of injury some kind of overuse down the road if you recognize that you're impatient you're just going to keep loading progressively anyway it's just you're going to undo yourself i saw the the example you used over the weekend was if you can't over a squat then you probably should never be doing full snatches you have to be able to do one step and then the next step.

Yeah, and you know, I don't have much of a background of Olympic lifting, but I mean, what's the first thing you learn before the clean, you don't learn to clean and jerk as a first movement pattern, I'm sure, when you show up at the Olympic training center. Nah, I think you always introduce people to squat first.

You gotta squat well. You know, some of that reminded me of uh this is like this prototypical conversation i had with this guy on facebook uh you know he posts like uh i can't overhead squat more than this much it's my shoulders uh what can i do to get more of an overhead squat i'm weak at the bottom of my overhead squat and i watched the video you know he loses ankle mobility knees dive in, chest dives forward, and he's pushing the weight behind him. And his shoulders try to save it.

And his shoulders are in an unnatural position to hold the weight. And he's convinced because he feels it in his shoulders that this is the worst. Like, how do I make my shoulders stronger is the question. If he could just hold on to it. And I said, I was like, I was like, it's not your shoulders. Work on your ankles.

It's like you're working on ankle. Mobility is your number one priority for increasing your overhead squat. And he was like, well, are there any other exercises I can do to make my shoulders stronger? I was like, no, it was like,

you keep doing it like this. You're going to get hurt. Right. Cause if he's, if he's, if you're in the right position, then shoulders aren't gonna feel stressed because they're just a support that's the the overhead squad you're not lifting the barbell up with your shoulders you're just literally in a supportive position and lock out locked position is should be your strongest

position yeah if you're if you're having a hard time with the shoulders and you're in a good position now i'll consider like shoulder strength is an issue but like yeah i think until then i tell a lot of people you know the bottom position of the of squats should all look the same and if your back squat front squat overhead squat all look completely different you got some issues going on because there's no reason you shouldn't be able to be in the same position for every single one of those um squats i mean essentially the only thing that changes is where your hands are the load moves on on the spine but if we move the load and it binds you up somewhere then you got an issue but if we move the load and you can go through full range of motion perfect technique um then then you're a

good athlete and you know it's funny because if you can't do a body weight squat without raising up on your heels or something like that you know people use olympic lifting shoes as a crutch now they put the shoe on you know now oh now i can squat so i'm good they don't ever fix the ankle mobility issue they have and so you know we starts with the with the body weight movement if you can't go through body weight movement let's fix that first before we start trying to load we tend to do it backwards it seems you know we keep loading and then we'll say okay well i'm my numbers aren't going up oh okay now i'll do mobility and it's too late at that point you know i think one of the big epiphanies that some some of the guys had in the

workshop from over the weekend when you were talking about assistance work um and weaknesses was you're not just doing random assistance work you're doing it for a specific purpose you're finding whatever your weakness is on on say the squat whether it's your thoracic spine or your low back or your hamstrings your glutes or or whatever you're finding one specific weakness and then you're putting all of your assistance work towards that one specific weakness can you kind of dig into that topic a little bit and talk about some of the common weaknesses especially for the squat and like the assistance work that you guys do to fix those problems yeah you know i think the greatest thing you can do is look at like the the male anatomy and the female anatomy in terms of um the way they move and you'll notice

most females naturally sit back they open their knees up they load the posterior chain and as a result of that you know phenomenal posterior development yeah that's like the one thing but that's like the one thing in crossfit everyone just wear high heels yeah those what are those uh shoes that the sketches right great shape up i'm gonna get a letter from their head cease and desist or something um no but uh you look at the guys and naturally we don't sit back we're anterior dominant so knees go forward knees collapse because then trying to balance the load and so when you look at uh assessment it's like when we did the glute ham raise and like the females both did glute ham raises without too much difficulty and the males it's like oh my gosh my hamstrings are going to pop off because they're not used to using them, right? By the way, folks,

the GHD is not just for sit-ups and back raises. It's originally intended to do something called glute ham raise. That's right. The H stands for hamstring. That's a great point. So Google, YouTube, glute, what was it? We have a technique.

GHR, yeah. Glute ham raises technique. I thought it was the best exercise. Like if you're, I think if you're a little slow in a deadlift, you can get good at glute hand raises, especially if you can throw a little light band tension over your head and you can get to where you can do them explosively, you're going to get faster off the floor in a deadlift.

It's definitely the exercise that will have the biggest effect quickly on your deadlift and squat, you know, especially for the men because now the hamstrings actually have to fire. And that's the biggest thing is that if you're not using a muscle group, it's going to be lazy. And when we go back, if we do load the body correctly,

we spread the load out over more muscles, which means we lift more weight because they still fire and activate exactly the same, but now they're doing less work. But for some people, some of those muscles aren't firing. Right. And like shoring up that weakness

could mean a lot more weight. For some people, your hamstrings are lazy bitches. Yeah. And not contributing to the team. The reason for that is, is the positioning. And so when you hear people say,

well, you just keep squatting to get stronger at squats. The problem is, if you're always squatting in bad position, your hamstrings and glutes are never going to activate correctly. It's just not going to happen. They're not going to magically turn on because all of a sudden you're like oh i got to squeeze my glutes it's like you're loaded on the on the quads and so they're

going to do as little work as possible because the quads are taking over and that's what people miss it's like this is where all those years of hamstring curls right kind of actually come in handy right and you go the chinese are doing them right now i guess and you go into the the upper body stuff too i talk about this so we do a lot of lockout work you know tricep lockout work because in the bench press you know now there's bench press shirts and things like that it is is essentially like the the lockout strength is the most important in terms of crossfit though where i see everyone missing everything is lockout power you know overhead overhead lifts muscle ups where it was the first thing to go? They don't get, they don't struggle getting up all the rigs. They struggle, struggle locking out. So it's assessing essentially like what

muscle groups need the most work. And when we put the focus there, you know, it strength is really not measured in pounds or in kilograms, whatever it's measured in in time on attention and it's measured in percentages and people forget it's a chain movement like not one muscle group is firing through the whole range of motion with the same force it you transition through range of motion and if you have a muscle that's too weak to take over that's your sticking point and that's where you're going to fail and you're going to keep failing there until you address the sticking point and specifically train that. And it's funny because your weakness will probably always be one of your weaknesses, but it's the quickest way to get stronger because you could, that five pounds, like we had a lady this weekend, she deadlifted,

sumo deadlifted 235. We put 245 and she couldn't get it off the ground but the 235 didn't look that slow but 245 her back wasn't strong enough to hold position so it just completely crippled her now she gets her back stronger i guarantee her legs probably could have done 265 maybe 285 maybe 300 but i don't know until i fix that back issue because that is like that 10 pounds was too much for her back to stay in position and that's the thing that people miss is we don't have to get 50 pounds stronger. We just have to need to fix whatever muscle is limiting us. And we don't know what strength we're going to unlock. And that's why powerlifters, you'll see go meet to meet to meet and jump 20, 30, 40 pounds every meet on their lifts.

It's because that's what they're, you know, if they're focused on the right things, it has the biggest impact. And a lot of Olympic lifters who have this notion they have to do Olympic lifts every single day and they're not focused on strength, which is a big problem I see with Olympic lifting in a lot of places, they'll go away and spend a month not Olympic lifting, come back and PR on their Olympic lifts because they got muscle groups stronger that were limiting them. And when you have a lift that's so technical your technique can be great but as soon as a muscle group can't support or stabilize and you fail the only thing to do is get that muscle group stronger you know once you do boom new probably just not enough assistance work in

a lot of weightlifting programs you think uh and you mentioned uh doing ghrs for for some assistance work for lower body we did x-band walks this weekend uh what are some other assistance work for lower body yeah as you got to imagine most people sit all day so a lot of the times and most of the exercises we want to do a standing moving some exercises can be programmed in to the the daily amraps and wads and things like that but again my big thing with that is is that typically when someone performs the wad it's they're doing it for time and they're trying to go as fast as possible so if you're trying to get them to isolate and contract that could go out the window because they're just trying to go through range of motion you know but for lower you know, we have the reverse hyper, which a lot of people are now using.

That's a phenomenal back glute hamstring developer. But if you don't have a reverse hyper, just hyper extensions are going to be awesome. Back raises are going to be good. Most people don't, you know, we do a lot of abdominal training, but most people don't do any low back training. And so you got to have, everything should be balanced front to back um and uh and then for legs obviously if you have ankle weights really high rep ankle uh leg curls with ankle weights gets into tendon ligament strength is really good um lunges are obviously good step ups bulgarian split squats all of those

things can be played in um and then you got all your variations of like deadlifts and things like that you can do like stiff leg sumos and Russian deadlifts and all those good things good mornings are huge for us a lot of people are scared to do those because you know we're moving through bad range of emotion but they forget that if you're building up and progressing to it

it's not difficult start light don't start with one RM good morning at times exactly people see the guys at Westside doing like 400 600 pounds. I remember when I was first getting into it, Westside had this guy who was 18, gigantic, a black gentleman. He was like 400 pounds. I mean, he could jump over the table.

I forget his name. But he went at Dave. My first meet ever was Dave Tate's National, a 2002 IPA National. Oh, okay, yeah. That's a holiday inn, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You put him at Bed-B-Din. at Dave my first meet ever was Dave Tate's national 2002 IPA national okay yeah that's that's a holiday inn right yeah yeah yeah you might you put my bed in it but uh it was my first meet ever I was like talking to him like wow I've seen you you're pretty strong he's like yeah yeah I'm doing pretty good I might squat like over a thousand go yeah why do you think

like well hit a pretty good good morning a couple weeks ago I did like 805 and a good morning like fucking hell dude yeah I mean I've seen some crazy stuff there Matt Smith you know Big Tim all those guys. But people forget that they just load it up and throw it on there. Like, we're doing back raises, and we got the safety squat bar across our shoulders, and we're doing back raises with 225, 315. So it's all about progression. And people, they don't realize that, like, you have to start somewhere to move forward.

They look at what you're doing, like, I want to start right there. And it's like, you got years. know it took it took me 10 years to get to the level i was at and it'd probably take me another two years to get even close to where i was um i haven't taken two years off you know and you look at dave hoff you know 3,000 five pound total 275 the kid's been that training there since he was 15 i remember beating him he was like it's like a little teenager long hair skinny as hell it's like 11 12 years he's been there yeah and and it's so it's not about it's not about your age it's not about your training experience it's about the consistency like i didn't miss a workout in 10 years like dave doesn't miss work out well

like we don't go on vacations like if it's christmas and it's friday you're in the gym squatting right and that's what people don't get it's like that's our Christmas and it's Friday, you're in the gym squatting, right? And that's what people don't get. It's like, that's our life and it's consistency. And you can't just take time off. You can't just take a week off here, a week off there because you take time off. Then you have to spend time getting strong again. By the time you get strong again, you know, you're a month behind. You do that a couple of times a year, maybe three, four months out of the year, you're not even training because of you're essentially trying to catch back up well i didn't stop 10 years add that up there's no no wonder why i'm better than you you know it's not as i don't think it's rocket science like i don't think it's

that hard like it's just most people aren't willing to do that the guys with the most training sessions are probably going to win absolutely keep it together right not get hurt uh all right let's take a break real quick when we come back back, we'll talk about max effort, dynamic effort, repetition, all that. And actually, AJ told us before the show that he is going to let out the big West Side secret for success. Oh, goodness. That's a teaser. You are now listening to The Break on Barbell Shrugged. Barbell Shrugged.

Break, girl. Barbell Shrugged podcast break shrug break girl barbell shrug podcast break behind the scenes we talk about politics and recipes are we gonna keep this audio for for every break we take every break every break yeah if you're watching the video version right now you'd be watching a technique wad isn't that right though but they could be hearing this for like the hundredth time because we're gonna use it every time i think so sounds like a bad idea watching technique wad would be way cooler than listening to this week ass break so you should go to barbell shrug.com so you can watch the videos uh seeing is believing seeing is cooler and then

cpp also edits in really cool videos and maybe some porn no they probably won't be ctp keep the porn in there people People are going to want to see it. Seriously, you should start watching the video version. No, into the microphone. Lou is going to be Lou, and that's great, man. Yeah, you got to kind of just go with the flow with Lou. Smile and listen. Yeah, I mean, this's like 64, 65.

I lose count. Do you have a really awesome quick Louie story to start off the second segment? Like the funniest, something that would really capture who he is as a guy. I don't know, man. I don't know if I got any PG-13 stories. You can get all. This is an unrated show. Oh, one of the funniest stories.

One of the funniest things that ever happened. So there was a guy who got kicked out of the gym. I'm talking about Louie Simmons. Yeah, Louie Simmons. So Louie and him, he was a good part of the gym, but he always clashed. And him and Louie clashed a lot. And finally Louie said, you know, you can't train here. This is just not working out.

And I guess some stuff was said. I don't know. But anyway, we're training. It's Friday morning. We're training. We're working out, and we had this little kickboxer kid, Danny, who trained there too.

He rose up, and he just got a new car. He got the same car as the guy that got kicked out, and Louis was in a bad mood anyway because it's hard for him. He doesn't feel good a lot. He's in his 60s. His body's always hurting. He gets mad. If he can't train, he gets he, it's hard for him. He doesn't feel good a lot. He's in his 60s. His body's always hurting. He gets mad.

If he can't train, he gets upset because that's all he cares about. He just, he wants to train. He loves it so much. Yeah, yeah. He doesn't want to be a coach. He wants to train, you know, and that's what he loves. And so when he can't, it's hard for him. But he was having a bad day.

He was trying to squat, having a bad day. So he's in his briefs, you know, and you guys have seen his briefs. He puts those little blue things on first and he puts those old canvas like I don't know I ain't never seen those before I think those are like

custom Louie Simmons briefs but one day they'll auction those things off for a lot of money but he so anyway

Danny pulls up and you can see him down through the through the gym and Louie just like something flips in his eye he grabs a plate and he's just like starts running out there he's like if that's if that's the guy i'm gonna smash it he's like he was heated so he gets out there and like little danny gets out of

con louis like cocked up and and it's like the little deer in the headlight looks from danny and it just calms down but you know he's so passionate about stuff. But that's the funniest thing I witnessed, you know. There's a lot of Louis stories of us traveling and things like that. But that sums Louis up in terms of, like, he's so passionate. And it's like the gym to him, I mean, you know, he's big on the samurai stuff, the Book of Five Rings

and Rashida and stuff like that. What was the question? What's your best samurai Luing reference? Kung Fu? Well, no, he just, you know,

a lot of it for him. It's like the honor of a samurai, like literally like when you leave the gym, I really think he expects you to like cut yourself. Like, you know, you're gone like out of there. So,

but for him, it's like a code. It's like an honor, you know? And when you leave, you like, of there so um but uh for him it's like a code it's like an honor you know and when you leave you like you leave the dojo and when you leave the dojo you basically walked away from everything and everyone and um you know there's only myself and one other guy that seems to have left and somehow remained in good graces and and he has good relationships with other guys now uh they mend the bridges and, you know, he becomes friends with them again because you've got a lot of history there. But very few people when they leave will tell Louis they're leaving.

They'll just leave. And I don't know if it's fear of having to face him and tell him that or whether it's just – I don't think it's done in disrespect. I think it's more of they know they're letting him down. They know they're letting the team down. Because you're not walking out on just Louie. You're walking out on Westside Barbell. And that's Louie's big thing.

It's not Louie Simmons. It's Westside Barbell. And you're part of a team. And you're responsible to every team member. So if you miss a workout, it's not him who's affected. It's the whole team. They need you there to spot. they need you there to spot they need you there to load to coach and so when you leave you basically walk out and i mean and and

i went through that you know i walked away and left a team of guys without without a leader and took a few months before you know all that that over, but I did it in the right way. I sat him down and explained to him and left. But even after that, I came back and we talked again about it all, and I explained it all again with a different perspective. And it finally clicked in his head why I left. And we've become exceptionally close since then. But to him, it's like this is life know that's all he knows and all he wants

to know he doesn't go on vacation he doesn't i mean the reason he doesn't we used to do the seminars at west side and the reason we don't do them there anymore is because the crossfit community wanted us to travel and do them you know it's a little bit easier for people to get to but when that happened you know he's i'm not going i got a team to train you know i got stuff to learn and things to do. I can't be running around the country. And somehow he never has a good experience flying, so he dreads getting on airplanes because he just never has good experiences.

But it's not because he doesn't want to work with people. Anyone can go to Westside Barbell. You can't train there permanently, but anyone can go visit. They just have to let him know, and he'll spend days with you. He'll give up all his time and he's never asked for a dime for it. You know, he answers every question that comes in and he used to call people back, but it's a little overwhelmed now. So a lot of times they just do the email thing and he doesn't email, someone reads them and he responds. But, you know, I've never seen a guy care so much about getting people results

and that comes through, you know, so he's very a guy care so much about getting people results. And that comes through, you know. So he's very protective of Westside. He's very protective of the team and the people in the team. And, you know, in essence, he's one guy who's dedicated his life to something. And very few people do that, you know. And so there's craziness there for sure. And he knows it, you know, um, but, uh, at the same time out of that has come some, something phenomenal that I think will, uh, will, will last the test of time.

So he, he's kind of used his unique genius to basically revolutionize the world of strength and specifically the world of powerlifting. So maybe walk us through kind of how he did that. And then what he ended up developing kind of what that system looks like. Yeah. I mean, it all started back, you know know in the end of the 70s and 80s and he had he suffered several injuries broke his back depending on how depending on what story he's telling maybe two three times um when he he broke his back didn't know he broke his back and broke his back again um so he he tells the story i broke my back the second time um but uh you know he he started a bad impression he started looking for different ways to train and that's when he went overseas and saw what the Olympic weightlifters were doing who were

dominating and he said well what are these guys doing those are taking pieces from the Soviets from the Russians from the Bulgarians he just started taking pieces getting his hands on whatever he could and of course a lot of the translation a lot of stuff like that some stuff got lost in translation a little bit but so some definitions and meanings that you know you'll see them and sometimes people say well this means this and this means that but they missed the point it doesn't really matter what the word is you know it's about what came out of it and so he started processing that and essentially came up with the system he has now um but it's been a 30-year evolutionary like evolution you know and it's been tested 30 year evolutionary, like evolution, you know,

and it's been tested and tried and over and over again. And of course, once something happens and it works, you try it again, it works again. Now someone doesn't have to go through all the BS to figure it out. It's like, okay, you need to do this and you'll get this result. And it just works. And a lot of times it doesn't make sense. You know, you're like, well, why do I need to go do this exercise? Like, I don't see how it plays plays into it but it's because he's has the coach's experience i mean he's been doing this longer than i've been alive you know he was lifting before longer before that so when you look at that it's like okay where we're at now is not where it began and you know essentially it's a four-day system uh we go you max out twice a week and then you do

dynamic work twice a week or speed work as a lot of people call it and then you've got repetition effort work in there as well and that combination of those three things combined puts you about 80 of peak performance year-round and then you just need to do a you know four weeks to get ready for a competition and so we're always getting stronger always four weeks weeks out from competing. Yeah, always four weeks out from competing. Whereas a lot of people, you know, they're, oh, I need 12 weeks, I need 18 weeks. And like a lot of our guys will compete and then they won't have the results they want. They can turn around and compete again.

And it just, it's a system that never stops working because, again, it's not a program, you know. And it evolves and things get taken out things get put in it put in um and you know a lot of percentages get lowered a lot of things get changed and so it's difficult for a lot of people to follow because if you go back and start reading his articles that he started writing in the 90s that's when you know after 10 years of of success you know he started national champions in 85, he himself, you know, multiple elite class, class totals. He said, Oh, I better start teaching this stuff. You know, people start asking, people want you to. So he started teaching it back then, you know,

he didn't have a business. He wasn't making money off this stuff. He just started, he wanted to teach and share. He was asked to do that. So he started writing articles and all those articles are online. So you go back, you start reading that stuff and there's a lot of contradiction and stuff, but that's because we're always experimenting. Things are always changing. And even now there's new stuff going on that I, if I didn't call Louis and talk to Louis on a regular basis, go visit, um, I wouldn't know, you know, and I would get my, my seminar would fall behind. And so I have to make that effort because I know things are always changing. And then now, of course,

we've got, you know, Westside's a laboratory. Then Laura and Shane have their gym, which is a laboratory. And then now we're teaching all these other people. Now we have all these gyms around the world

that are doing our system. And so the feedback and everything, it's accelerating the results in which we figure out how to process this for other sports and what's best, what's not best. And usually someone who has a question, it can be answered by someone else who's already had experience not theory not like oh i think this

or i think that and that's what the west side system has become it's just this like it really you know called the conjugate system and it's it's theories and ideas and people have applied it in different ways and had the very similar outcomes and so i always tell people you know when you start learning try to learn from where we're at right now don't question it because you go back of course you can buy all the books and everyone should have the books as reference manuals but what people do is they buy the books they read and they're like oh this book says this percentage so louis must be wrong and it's like no no louis did that percentage and then

realized it didn't work because of this or we didn't recover because of that and so it got tweaked and changed and turned and so a lot of people miss that tweaking along the way to find what's going to stop yeah like well this is what it says so this must be right that book was written 50 years ago you know can you walk us through like a typical week you know uh you know how lower body upper body splits and the max effort and dynamic days. So the system at Westside is Monday is maximum effort, lower body. And that day you basically work up to one rep max. And we only do one rep maxes, um, from, for multiple reasons.

But a lot of people miss that. Like we only work up to one rep maxes and we usually do a squat or a bench, a squat or deadlift variation. So we don't do the main movement so we would never do a full range squat um or or regular deadlift what we do is variations we have bands we have chains we have all the different things you can do in that but it doesn't you can be as complex or as simple as you want you know that's what um the beauty of the system is there's no right or wrong answers just pick something and work up to a max and we throw good mornings in that rotation as well um but you know people who need to build up

obviously aren't going to work up and we never do a one rep max when we do the good morning it's it's like a three or a five um but typically it's a squat or deadlift then we go on and we do our assistant exercises we do between five and seven assists special exercises for the lower body um wednesday so tuesday's off wednesday is a max effort upper body same thing obviously we bench press because that's what we do in competition and we pick a we pick a branch press variation and we'll do a full range a partial range or what's known as the future method where we use a bench press shirt a slingshot or we use reverse bands just to lighten it a little bit and let you feel heavier weight yeah it allows you to lift more weights essentially um which you know obviously has you know the mental effect but also the body learns how to handle those heavy weights but we'll pick one of the one exercise variation work up to

one rep max and then we go on and do five or six um special exercises for the tricep the chest upper back you know all the upper body muscles and you need about 72 hours between workouts and that's that's the layman rule obviously the more in shape you are those roles get blended a little bit um and crossfit's redefining like what we believe like what science has said before crossfit's we've seen redefining that so that's 72 hours between lower lower lower lower right for muscular recovery obviously we know you know cardiovascular that's different um then so friday now so we got monday wednesday now friday is dynamic lower in dynamic lower we're going at percentage we do a three

week wave first week's 50 with 25 band tension or just obviously a 75 straight weight uh second week is 55 with 25 band tension third week is 60 with 25 band tension do the three-week rotation and then we change something for the next rotation all right and we always squat for you keep the same the movement the same for the three week wave and then the next three-week wave would be a different would be a different movement so um for us we box squat so it's like box squat with bands box squat with chains we have different bars we use but it could be as simple as going between a box squat a free squat a front squat um you know close uh close stance back squat wide stance back squat high bar low bar so you could do all those variations without ever changing go flat sold shoe you know olympic shoe and people miss that we don't do that because we have all those tools

um but when you don't have those because we have all those tools um but when you don't have those tools it's about changing something that you when you change something you change where that load is on the spine you change the spinal load what's going to induce a different response we do it for three weeks because after three weeks you don't get any faster so we rotate back through um the percentages again we do the same assistant exercises not the same movements but same muscle groups lower body and then sat Saturday or Sunday, we finished the week off with dynamic effort, upper body. And the, over time, this has changed. We don't do waves on this anymore. We just change weekly. We rotate weekly. We stick to the same percentage every week, 35% straight

weight, 25% band tension, or 60% straight weight if you didn't have bands or chains. And we just rotate the movement every week. So far as we go between, you know, bench press. We always do full range because that's what we do in competition. And dynamic days can be looked at as technique days. We're trying to perfect technique. More good first reps. Right.

So full range movements, but you use bands, you use chains, we use different bars. But for a CrossFit athlete or any performance athlete, really, you're going to mix in overhead presses. You going to mix in um you know incline decline because the bench press is not what you're tested in the bench is a training tool and i think that's what people they get stuck on the the template so we got monday wednesday friday saturday sunday but they think they got a squat they got a bench they got a deadlift and they got to fit all that in and so we'll do um speed deadlifts after on friday sometimes after we squat uh lightweight for reps uh for singles and we always do singles because in competition it always starts from a dead stop you know same with olympic

lifters in competition it always starts from the ground so no touch and go no touch and go but if you're in a sport that allows touch and go crossfitters and you know and athletes it wouldn't really matter because you know they're not tested on that stuff so you got to look at what you're doing what your training purpose is but even if you never squat benched or deadlift the premise is max f a day you work up to one rep maxes dynamic day you do a percentage of repeated effort with perfect form as course you can get to perfect form and uh and then the accessory work is you're addressing your weak points you're addressing the muscle groups that are going to have the biggest impact on your lifts and um you know if if you spent five years training posterior chain and you haven't put much focus on anterior

chain development then you probably should make the switch you know if you never train biceps like although like you're probably not going to end up doing curls and stuff but there's ways to you know activate the biceps the forearms and things like that there's a place like you're probably not going to end up doing curls and stuff, but there's ways to, you know, activate the biceps, the forearms and things like that. There's a place where you're going to bringing up muscle groups will bring up lifts. And so that's really what the focus is. So you can never do the power lifts. You can apply this to strongman. You can apply this to weightlifting and a lot of people have, and that's accelerating now with what's going on. And you see different coaches out there adjusting the system to fit what it is they want to do. And you look at it and it has a very conjugate base to it, but it's just being applied in a

slightly different way. And that's what I love seeing because again, it's not about the movements. It's about those, having those three methods in there, maximal effort, dynamic effort, and repeated effort. You have those three methods in there and you're going to have a solid program, regardless of how you structure and how you put it together. Louie's just put it together the best way he knows, which is four day a week template. So someone could perceivably do this for something like a pull-up. Like if you can't do a body weight pull-up, they could do some type of pull-up variation up to one rep max one day and then do some type of pull-up variation for um you know for fast doubles for 10 sets of doubles every minute on the minute on their dynamic day as an example

exactly and uh you know we do a lot with the plyometric training too we covered that in the seminar same thing we got max effort box jumps and then we got dynamic effort box jumps we can do it goes beyond the barbell movements it goes beyond that um some exercises obviously are too small to do that with, and they're going to fall naturally into dynamic effort curls. Right? Exactly. Well,

maybe it'll be fun. I don't know. Shit. And now I do, but, uh, you know, Oh yeah.

Cause you, you, you also apply some of this to your bodybuilding training, right? So John, John Meadows, um, uh,

he trained with Mike Francois. Mike Francois used to train at Westside. He won the, uh, the Arnold Classic, I think three years in a row. And so they take a lot of the concepts. And of course, again, bodybuilding is not performance-based,

so I don't necessarily have to do splits the way that we do, but I apply the principles of the training. So we have sets where we'll go, work up to like a max six. It's still max effort even though it's six but it's not we're not trying to go for strength so it's a different approach forget like you do a hard 10 rm or something you're doing max effort that's why that's not a light day right

and uh and we use bands we use chains we we we look at creating you know because it adds tension throughout the entire movement um we do iso tension movement which we do stuff like that at west side um and then you know you're gonna know some exercises you turn it on some exercises you don't some exercise you're explosive on so it's taking the principles that louis has popularized and putting it into bodybuilding so although it doesn't look the same there's still the same underlying principles and um you know i you know i i did phenomenally well for my first show kind of messed up the water cut a little bit but overall it's like i'm training in a way that i i know works and i'm comfortable with and so it makes it enjoyable again because i'm not going in there and banging out you know doing machines or you know just doing the typical bodybuilding

stuff i'm taking elements from everywhere and putting it in there and even like cardio like we had high intensity cardio stuff in there um because you know you know walking on treadmill for two hours is brutal so if i could get some done in 30 minutes i'm gonna least fun thing you can do in this world yeah so i had so i jumped on like the aerodyne when i did real stuff and you don't see many bodybuilders doing that and lucky i have access to it you know because i with the gyms that are local but it's about just incorporating stuff and that's what I love about the conjugate system is you can put it into CrossFit you can put it into football you can put it into MMA the strength portion of it never changes everyone needs to be strong there's like I don't think anyone could argue that what

changes is going to be your exercise selection and and the way you build your week out can you explain accommodating resistance and extending your strength curve and kind of who might need to to use that in the crossfit world yeah so if you look at uh like a fighter when the fighter punches or something like they follow through they go through through the movement and when we train when we train with straight weight uh the natural strength curve obviously as the weight gets lighter our body doesn't have to do as much work so when you got a straight weight, the natural strength curve, obviously as the weight gets lighter, our body doesn't have to do as much work. So when you've got a straight weight on there, it's very hard to snap at lockout.

It's very hard to like really be forceful and squeeze and push through. So you're moving really hard or you're moving really fast and pushing really hard through your sticking point and then you're kind of decelerating towards the end of the movement. Well, accommodating resistance also is bands and chains

for the most part. Right. So when you add the bands and the chains now the weight is congruent with your strength curve so as you go down it gets lighter which is where you're weakest and as you come up where you're strongest it gets heavier so now you're straining training the muscle through the full range of motion so now the triceps and everything are doing more work at the end and then the hips and lockout uh if you look back at how the throwers overseas train they do a lot of jump training so they do ballistics and they do the jump squats of course safe wise though like we really don't want to be releasing the barbell from our back and having to catch it or jumping and having to land and absorb the impact you need a coach for that

right the band the bands and chains essentially give you that same impact same effect and so now when you remove those the body is used to firing all the way through the movement okay and so you you basically increase your force production time under tension and that's the carryover you get and so it's not that you don't it's not that you need bands and chains um you know if you can, I think they call it like accelerated compensation training or something where you literally just yell at someone to go faster. That's the whole purpose. It's like to lock. It's fun.

It's a fancy game for yelling at somebody. I like to use matches. Light a fire under their ass. You got to squat up faster. So, so for a lot of people like saying something doesn't give them, you can tell them all day long.

It just doesn't click. You put a band on there, you don't have to say anything. That happens automatically. You're right about that. As soon as they stand up, oh, they're super, they have to be tied up. That band is going to staple them to the ground. And when they go, they have to accelerate through other ways. They're not going to get up and stand up.

Watching somebody squat or bench for the first time with a band is always comical. It's a moment of awareness. Thanks, man. Bench is scary the first time. Someone squats and they, for the first, I mean, I've done it. The first time out, I was like, yo, you get it inside the rack and you lift it up. You're like, okay, this is heavy. And then you take one step and it's like, and you just get whipped all over the place.

Stimulates the hell out of you. And what's really great is especially. Stimulates, that's the right word. Stimulation. Plus, if you've been squatting a lot for a long time and a lot of good weightlifters are so fast explosive so this one they can just keep knocking the squat but i found being a especially being a slow white fat guy my whole life is what i am uh doing the bands was so novel and so fun that i just started squatting harder again and it just renewed my interest in squatting it was so fun to have that novelty to it i think

that's you know the premise of of crossfit is so attractive is because it's constantly varied and the premise of conjugate system is constantly varied um and if you look at the definitions and you put them side by side you really don't know that you wouldn't know that was like the the foundation was different because the the the the more, the, the more you look, the more you realize that they agree on the same things. They're just presenting it in a different way and they're presenting it based on their experience. You know, they're not presenting it based on trying to, you're right, I'm wrong. They're just saying, this is what I've done. And this is the results I've got. Therefore, this is the way, the way I think it should be done.

And it's interesting when you get these coaches together who are in their 50s and their 60s and you start listening to their conversations and very rarely do they disagree on much. They're just, the application is completely different. And so when you have a training system where there's other systems out there that solely squat, bench and deadlift and that have produced results.

And they have, you know, progression. So you do phase one, phase two, phase three, and over, you know, 15, 20 years, you'll go through the entire progression. And it works. They have results. So it's not like it just worked for one person. It actually has results.

The guy's been around a long time. So you have other systems out there. The problem is, is like, who really wants to just squat, bench, and deadlift it like three times a week? Like, I know what I would rather do. I know the environment I'd rather create. And, you know, those types of personalities typically train without music. You know, they're very regimented. They're fine with submaximal loads and just kind of just going through the motions. And they're not any less serious.

They're just different personality. I'm an extremist. I'm a guy who wants to have the music blaring. I want to be going bulls to the wool. And, you know, when you have a system that allows that, you flourish within the system. And I think it's the same type of personality that's attracted to CrossFit. If you walked in a CrossFit gym, right, and they didn't have any music on,

and the workouts were the same you know a week long is gone people would be like what is this you know even even though you can program very basic and you can do the same same uh you could do the same what every day if you just change you know change the time or change change the order you could but and it would have the effect because it's varied even though it's the same it's still varied it would have the effect because it's varied. Even though it's the same, it's still varied. It would have an effect. Your members would be like, what is this? Like, why are we doing the same thing all the time?

It's just the type of personality you are and what you're attracted to. And I think that's why CrossFit and conjugate is such a good system together. I think we start looking at something like Westside. You can build in enough steady progression, but it's balanced always with, hey, look, I'm working my hips. looking at something like Westside, you can build in enough steady progression, but it's balanced always with,

hey, look, I'm working my hips. Do I gotta do the same fucking assistance work for the 15th week in a row, or do I mix it up, or can I get at the same thing? I can get a flavor of the max effort, and I can change it up, but there's a plan. We're building up still, of course,

these four weeks and the course of the year. We're going in a direction. We know what we want out of this. We're looking at our weaknesses. We're building. We're not just sort of throwing something against the wall and seeing year. We're going in a direction we know what we want out of this. We're looking at our weaknesses. We're building. We're not just sort of throwing something against the wall and seeing what sticks.

Which I guess a lot of people think and maybe that's a mistake in CrossFit too. It's like I'll come in and just pick the random fucking thing. Well there's a balance to the randomness. There is the method underlying it. It just feels always fresh and exciting which is why it's so damn fun.

Yeah, I mean it's as loose as you can be but it's backed by you know really science mathematics biomechanics all of the all of the geeky stuff that we love um that most people just don't care about it's it's all there in the writing you can say well it works because of this it works because of that and we can back up everything um the thing that is interesting is is your plan your plan is not what exercises and reps you're going to do your plan is what you exercises and reps you're going to do. Your plan is what the effect you're going to have for the day. And I think that's the difference is just the way the plan is wrote out. And so if I come in and I'm supposed to deadlift

and we're going to do a block pull or a pin pull or something, and I know that I'm going to, you know, my regular deadlift is 800. I'm going to do a block pull and pull 850, 860. I know that's going to be a really big load on my lower back. Well, if my lower back is fatigued and I walk in the gym, I'm not going to do that exercise that day because I know I'm not going to have a good workout. I can change it on the fly and do a squat,

and now I train the legs. The body gets beat up. It doesn't really know how it gets beat up it just know it's got beat up and noah has to recover and change and adapt and so you have that flexibility to listen to your body which i think most people are not in tune with their body they're not listening to i mean it tells you everything you need yeah and a lot of people we talk about the state of flow and most athletes seem to be in the state of flow that's why they don't have they don't have strict training programs they they have a they have something they follow daily but then they do all this other stuff but it's because they're listening

to their body the feedback it's getting them you know if your elbow hurts then it's probably not an idea to do something that's going to stress that elbow you're going to change the exercise but you're still within the plan so you're not varying from the plan so the results you can track you can measure and that's if you can't track and measure it you don't know if you're getting better i think one of the biggest things i've sort of if there's anything i've contributed i say i i reach out and tell people if you're doing something like a set strength program it's a danger when you mix programs together because that's a big concern like i'm gonna do this small love thing i'm'm going to do 5-3-1. I'm going to do whatever.

And this says I need to do a max set of five in the deadlift. And then the CrossFit WOD of the day says this, this, and other. Oh, and max rep deadlifts for time. And they go, oh, okay. And they do both those things without just taking a moment to say, maybe it's not so smart that it's randomly mixed two things together and they're both calling me to crash my back today. I think a lot of times people don't recognize the need for an acute balance to the plan no matter what that plan says you got to be able to say this is probably not the best thing for that i gotta

pick one of these stimuluses or i'm gonna wreck myself right and the biggest thing that i i want to see people move away from is this need that they like i'm gonna go do this program and then i'm gonna go do this program like i don't see the need for that like you can just start out and continue to do the same thing for the rest of your life and um you know that's that's why I struggle like I don't think any programs that are put out there are bad like the person writing them usually has some background usually has some experience usually has some results with clients so I wouldn wouldn't necessarily say the program is bad, but it's limited. And when you spend, so I'm going to spend the next 12 weeks getting strong. I'm going to spend the next 12 weeks being more explosive. I'm going to spend the next 12 weeks getting in shape. What happens is the

other energy systems drop off and then you got to spend another 12 weeks getting that back up. And when you do that, then what you just worked on drops off. And so you're constantly trying to bring everything up. But while you're trying to bring everything up, it's dropping off. Whereas I find with the conjugate system, you're raising everything at the same time. And for some people, when there's one area that is severely behind, they may need to specialize for a short period of time. Like if their strength is that weak, they may need to put their focus on it. But for anyone who's an intermediate or an advanced lifter, like it's not about trying to get one as high as you can immediately.

It's about how do you raise everything simultaneously so that it has an overall effect. And I think people miss that. Like when I broke the world record, I broke it at 28.25. The record was 27.99. But I broke the total record. I didn't break the squat record. I broke it at 28.25. The record was 27.99. But I broke the total record. I didn't break the squat record. I didn't break the bench press record. I didn't break the deadlift record. I broke the total record, which is one of the hardest records you can get. But I didn't do it

by having the biggest individual lifts. I had it by putting the combination together. And that's how you're going to be the best athlete. Rich Frohnen doesn't win the games by coming first in every exercise or every what. He wins the games by being consistent and finishing within the top 10 typically. And then at the end of the day, who's on the podium? And he may win one or two because I mean, he's a phenomenal athlete.

And I think he could win earlier ones if he went all out out but he understands the game and too many people think oh i got to get in the best shape of my life right now and then then like when they do that they neglect something and then oh now i got to get the strong as i possibly could get and they think that that's going to carry over and when it doesn't it kills them so i look at it as a long-term game and you have to almost delayed uh delayed satisfaction you have to understand that it's the end result and where are you trying to go it's not right now and a lot of people are looking at right now and they say i feel really weak so

i'm going to do a specific program to get really strong and then they gain 20 pounds strength's going to go up but then now i got 20 pounds i gotta lose because they stopped doing they stopped doing the conditioning stuff so it's about the balance and um i feel like the conjugate system has that balance and can be applied to performance sports without taking away or needing specific focus and when you can do that you can just continue to do it and you can rotate your stuff through and if you really to, you could do a powerlifting phase, an Olympic lifting phase, a strongman phase. Same rules, different exercises. But you don't have to think, okay, now I need a new program

with new sets and reps and things like that. But I know some people prefer that. They just want to be told. So there's always a need for that. Dropping knowledge. I think you said it all, man. That was just rattling right off. I think you said it all, man. That was just rattling right off. I love it.

Yeah. When you're talking about intermediates and advanced, like most crossers I come in contact with are beginners and they may not even know it, but I usually consider anyone a beginner who hasn't been like weight training, trained for strength for at least two years. Absolutely.

So like a lot of times people go, I want to adopt some advanced training methods i've been in crossfit for eight months it's like you know you're probably not there yet yeah i always i always tell people they say what do you think about like the hopper style stuff and you know almost just like random training and i say works for about a year you know that's the experience i've seen and it works phenomenally people get in the best shape they've ever been in the strength goes up mobility goes up um they really become better athletes and uh but but after that year you hit a big wall you hit a wall and so um again it comes back to well you can you can spend a year we can just start out

on the right foot now it's your choice but most people they don't understand that um you got to have a base you know and what louis famous thing know, try a pyramid is only as tool as the, Doug got asked the question. Did you get it right? Or did we, no, he didn't fucking have any clue what he was saying. What's the height of a pyramid?

How tall is a pyramid? How tall is a pyramid? As wide as its base. How tall is a pyramid? He looked at us and I looked at Doug. I was like, I don't know what the fuck he's talking about. No idea.

I knew cause I'd been asked the question. I got asked a question like two years ago. It was said in a very peculiar way. Yeah. It was the way it was phrased. I made it hard to answer. Yeah. I smiled.

If anyone but Louie said that to me, I'd have been like, what are you talking about? So in essence, if someone comes into CrossFit and their body fat percentage is over 10%, and they're worried about specializing down to specific advanced programs, We're missing the boat there

somewhere because there's still room for improvement on that. And, um, if they're trying to move away from, you know, getting those results and transition to something else, um, you know, we're not leveraging, I guess that beginner benefit and the benefit as a beginner is you get, you get amazing results by doing very very little and it's almost like you should keep it simple stupid like don't add anything in until you need to because if you try to start off with everything where do you go from there that's when things get really like when i like louis always said it's easy to chase because you can just look at other people and say oh what are you doing oh okay like you're strong and like this is where your strengths are i'm really weak there maybe if i train those then i'll get stronger and that's what i did and that's

how i got stronger and so but when you break when i broke the total now it's kind of like no man's land you know and so now i'm kind of like man who all right well what do i do now and like that's when things that you got to start really thinking and so to train for that 1205 squat i changed my max effort days to all squat variations because I was like, I'm focused on the squat. So I did that. And at that competition, my bench went down and my deadlift went down.

So I squatted 1205, my last competition in March 2012. But I benched like 885, which was a lot less than I'd ever benched before. Almost bombed out on the bench press. Squeezed out a third attempt, which was a lot less than I'd ever benched before. Almost bombed out on the bench press. Squeezed out a third attempt, which was exciting for the crowd and terrifying for myself because I was like, man, I'm going to have to do another meet to get this squat count. But then I went to deadlift and I pulled 775. And the thing was, I focused on that squat. And yeah, the squat went up. The other two lifts went down down so my total was less than it had been before and I think that that's the thing you always want to

avoid you know you don't want to go into into a competition thinking oh I'm in better shape and be weaker or I'm stronger and then be out of shape and the one thing I know is is to me strength is the the foundation for everything it's the underlying factor that makes a difference unless you're not in shape. Because if you can't breathe, strength is useless. You don't have strength. The minute you're out of breath, like your body shuts down.

So, you know, you gotta be able to breathe first. And that was my experience with the Open. You know, I saw the workouts on paper and I'm like, man, this is light. I'm like, this is awesome. I'm gonna crush this. And then I forgot that the first like three rounds are like buy-ins. And then the real work gets started, right? And you've got to do 150 burpees before you get into the actual work.

And my strength just went out the window. It was just surviving. So burpees and snatches. The weight kept going up. But I mean, after you've done 100 burpees, yeah, doing a snatch with 185 or 225, like they might otherwise be easy, but not anymore. So that's what separates the men from the boys. And I found out pretty quickly I was still a little boy, you know.

Let me ask you this, AJ. So for a lot of people will hear this, and where the rubber meets the road is that there's a lot of people who are still young in the game. They might be true beginners. They might be people who just aren't strong enough at all for CrossFit. A little bit of a base. But they might get a little way where if they go out and they try to be

like a west side guy on the prom hitting on our rims, well, maybe they need the base more. If you're a little closer to the beginner's side and you have an idea you want to plug this approach in the west side, you know you need to get stronger, do you put a little bit more focus on the repetition? How where how would you adjust it for a guy who just needs more work like he needs to do some more just high bar squats or he needs to pull some reps just to learn and get comfortable with those lists before he adds in too much variation yeah so what i do is

i still have them work up to a one rm but it's not necessarily like the most weight they think they can lift for that day it's just immediately their technique breaks down so we work up to as heavy as they can before technique breaks down okay because they're not they're not intelligent enough um they haven't had enough experience to know that when technique breaks down that's the first sign that the weight the next weight is going to be like risky and they're like oh i can i can lift more and it's like i know you feel like you can lift more and you may be able to with bad technique but we're not going to risk the injury so you shut them down you but you still work them up what you do is you just drop back and you do repetition work with that movement so yeah if we're if we're doing a box squat you know we

work up to the 1rm drop back maybe to 80 and do three sets of five at 80 and they get that training volume in after they've worked up to the one hour. And that can be simple progressive stuff because it works just fine. Right. The variation's there and you got the ME component, the max component, and you're doing the work you need. I like to use Priller-Prince chart, you know, for the optimal sets and reps.

And that way you can move the percentages around and not worry too much about are we doing enough or are we doing, you know, is it going to work? It works and it's proven to work. And a lot of programs, they don't necessarily credit Prillipin's chart, but if you look at their numbers and you start plugging them in,

they fall within the percentages, they fall within the optimal range. I say that chart, for people who don't know, I forget how you spell it. Was it Doug? P-R-I-L-E-P-I-N or something. It's Prillipin. Yeah, so I think it's like Louie's experience.

What people have observed, I guess what Mr. Prillipin observed, is that for most of the time in these ranges, this is about right. You can play with it, but this sets the scope. This gives you a toolkit. And even our numbers, our 12 sets of 2, the 12 sets of 2, 12 sets of 2, and then 10 sets of 2 based on those

percentages. So week 1, week 2, week 3, if you look at it, it's 24 reps, 24 reps between the 75-80% range. And we go, 80% range. And we go to 85% range, we drop down to 20 repetitions. Well, you look on Prilipin's chart, optimal repetitions is 24 in that range and 21 in the other range. And we're at 24 and 20.

So even though our sets and reps are different, we fall right into that range. It's not a coincidence. You know, these things don't just happen to work out. It's not magic. It's not fucking voodoo know, these things don't just happen to work out. It's not magic. It's not fucking voodoo. It's just about right. Pretty loose suggestion.

It's just like, here's some guidelines you might want to look at when programming. All right, let's wrap this show up. What do you got to promote, AJ? We got the powerlifting course. Yeah, the powerlifting course. Best thing is Facebook. We got the powerlifting trainer course on Facebook. It's just, I think it's.com powerlifting course. Best thing is Facebook. We got the powerlifting trainer course on Facebook.

It's just, I think it's.com powerlifting trainer, CrossFit powerlifting trainer course. And then we got Conjugate Strong on Facebook too, which is a group. There's about 1,200 people in it now. And we just, everyone who trains the West Side Method. And we got strength coaches, collegiate college coaches, pro coaches in there, pro athletes in there.

We've got a lot of the top games competitors in there. We've got gyms in there who are doing the program in CrossFit gyms and powerlifting gyms and strongman gyms. And it's just a collective place where basically people can ask questions and get answers. And I thought I was going to have to answer all the questions, but the community itself, by the time I get there, guys from Westside are in that group answering questions. And so it's turned into a pretty vibrant group with a lot of good information that gets dropped there. And a lot of it's just people get confused.

And so they ask a question, it's already been answered, and you can direct them to the Q&A and stuff like that. So that's a really good group. Of course, I'm on Facebook, AJ Roberts, and then westside-blahblah.com for all the West Side stuff. If we want to follow you on Twitter, what's it? AJ Roberts 33.

Instagram, I'm just AJ Roberts. If you want to follow my bodybuilding stuff, most of that's on Instagram. He told a story yesterday where he had a lot of followers on Twitter and made a mistake of just deleting the account. Yeah. Last night I started clearing that up. He used to be famous, and then he deleted his Twitter.

Yeah, I was famous in my own little world. You got to go on and check out probably some of the most impressive before and after pics, I think. The pic, is there one of you in your squat suit, looking very purple and swollen, and then you getting ready to go on stage, or you in that final pose? It's a good testament to discipline, man.

Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, it it's really simple the choice is just are you committed enough it's not it's not whether you can or whether you can't do it it's just are you committed enough and if you if you are committed enough you have to understand what it takes and for me it's like that level of commitment it's just a decision and most people it's it's not like i didn't cheat when i was on my diet it's not like when i was powerlifting like i didn't have days I didn't want to lift, like or days I wanted to skip out on the gym or I did a half-assed workout. Like that stuff happens, but it's about the long-term commitment. And, you know, hopefully people, you know, you got a lot of good listeners and stuff.

And hopefully there's some people out there who are like, you know what? I want to take this seriously and I'm going to do this. And that's all it is, is that decision. And once you make that decision, it's kind of hard to ever go backwards. You're either going to be unhappy or you're going to do what you said you were going to do this. That's all it is, is that decision. Once you make that decision, it's kind of hard to ever go backwards. You're either going to be unhappy or you're going to do what you said you were going to do and be awesome. Commit and make it happen, man. Decide, commit, succeed.

Make sure you go to barbellshrug.com. Check out the website. Sign up for the newsletter. We'll notify you when we post new awesome episodes like this. Later, guys. Thanks, AJ.