Barbell Shrugged - 131- Talking Strength w/ Chad Smith of Juggernaut Training Systems

Episode Date: July 20, 2014

Hey, this is Rich Froning. You're listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbellshrugged.com. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Mike Bledsoe here with Doug Larson and CTP behind the camera. And we traveled to Encinitas, California to hang out and surf and maybe squeeze in some podcasts. Chad Smith has decided to travel down to hang out with us. He drove all the way down from Orange County. Treacherous. Treacherous.

Treacherous drive right here. And was it too bad this morning? No, I was expecting some traffic, but it gave me extra breakfast burrito time. It's an important time. When you're in SoCal, breakfast bur burrito time it's an important time when you're in socal breakfast burritos are where it's at that's uh it'll help you get bigger and you got you're going for the uh you're going for the bloat right now oh yeah since you got a powerlifting meet this weekend so you're just getting as big as possible i i was going to cut to 308s to try and go after

a world record and then realized i like to eat too much so i just gave up on that what are you shooting for a world record total uh one of the specific lifts this well now that i'm lifting at super heavyweight it's just going to be prs but uh yeah in shape for some big prs i think so and and a big and a big very big total yeah what are your lists right now? PR is currently our 905. And it's all raw, just belt and the reps. 905 in the squat, 515 in the bench, 788 in the deadlift. Nice. Yeah.

Those are big numbers. Yeah, so for those of you at home that don't know, Chad, he runs Juggernaut Training Systems. And Juggernaut, I think everyone's probably heard that name. You may have not been to the website, but you should probably check it out. You popped up on my radar for the first time when I read an article in regard to CrossFit. It was like a strength training template for CrossFitters. Just kind of like a suggestion on how to manage strength training while doing

CrossFit and balancing all that. And I think it opened up a lot of people were referencing it and they were asking me about it. And I checked it out. And that was like the first time I was kind of exposed to you on that. When did that come out? Oh, man, that article is almost three years old now at this point. And it just kind of came about from going to one of the CrossFit powerlifting seminar

certifications. I don't know what the word they allow to be used these days. It's always a mystery. But just popped over to one in CrossFit 714 in Orange and kind of helped out Mark Bell and Jesse Burdick when they were still doing them. Oh, cool. And started hearing the people's questions and seeing what they were doing and seeing some flaws in, you know, what it seemed like a lot of the people were doing. So I sort of threw my two cents in. What was kind of the key takeaway from that article? Uh, I think a lot of it and a lot of really what we try and do at Juggernaut is just to make sure that people are examining where the information they're coming, uh, the information they're looking at comes from,

because there's so much, there's so much information out on the internet and, you know, any, anyone who has a website can be an expert and that's a bit of a, a bit of a dangerous thing. So, you know, as the, as the CrossFitters. And that's a bit of a, a bit of a dangerous thing. So, you know, as the, as the CrossFitters, as the CrossFitters look at it, they need to look at what's more similar to their sport. You know, CrossFit is really much more Olympic weightlifting based than powerlifting based. And even if it is powerlifting based, it's much more raw powerlifting based than geared powerlifting base and everyone always say oh juggernaut the bash on gear the bash on west side whatever it is i'm not saying that lifting gear is wrong if you want to do that go for it it's not for me but people need to understand

it's it's a different sport so if you're trying to teach someone how to squat and you're telling them to sit you know back back back back back, and keep this vertical shin angle, well, that's great when you have three layers of canvas to sit back into. But when you don't, it's not the same thing. And there's a reason why, whether it's Andre Milanochav or me, Eric Lillibridge, Brandon Lilly, Dan Green, why the training that we do looks a certain way and our technique looks a certain way, and what those guys do is different.

So that, that was kind of the biggest thing that they just need to take that into consideration. Yeah. I will say this is I remember years ago, that was a big thing with a little bit of a disconnect. Just what you said with the power lifting versus CrossFit is like, you know,

the gear versus non-gear and the technique related to that. But I think since then, I think a lot of the powerlifting world has kind of like opened up to because a lot of powerlifters have gone from gear to raw as well and they've had to change their technique definitely i know a lot of guys like out of west side and stuff but now like they're closer to a high bar and their shins are going forward a little bit and and all that and like i talked to aj roberts about it and uh yeah that you know when he came and did a powerlifting thing at our box,

he was, you know, like, oh, this is, you know, it depends on the person, if you're wearing gear or not. So I think a lot of people opened their eyes to that. And I think that, I mean, you guys started pointing that out, what, a few years ago then, huh? Yeah, probably. I mean, that's kind of been day one when I started writing articles, let's point it out.

Because, you know, I was 19, 20 years old. I'm 27 right now. And, like, reading this stuff, and I didn't realize, like, that they were what geared powerlifting was. I didn't know that it was a thing. They say a squat suit, and I think, like, so it's, like, the thing you wear when you squat, you know. I remember even getting ready to do my first. You thought it was, like, a singlet or something? Yeah, I remember getting ready to do my first powerlifting meet and going to buy a singlet

and being like why does this one cost 50 and this one costs 300 like yeah this one better and uh you know so they just need to be like an asterisk next to it that's like geared powerlifter writing for geared powerlifters yeah yeah not that that's wrong whatever. It's just, it is what it is. And people need to understand that because there's not those asterisks next to it. And people could say, oh, you're naive that you didn't realize that. I'm pretty smart about lifting weights. So if I was naive about it, there's a lot of other people who probably are as well. Well, you're a young guy.

You came along when powerlifting was going through a big change. Certainly. Because, you know, I think it was only three or four years ago when every powerlifter was geared. Yeah. And now, like, raws, a lot of guys left that. I think they kind of

hit their plateau or a peak, and now they're chasing the raw numbers now. Yeah, I mean, probably one of the most notable guys there who's one of our main athletes on Juggernaut is Brandon Lilly, who came out and he had done 26-12 in multi-ply and was a west side guy. And then now he's done 22-37 raw. And even, yeah, he hadn't put his gear on in six months, nine months. And when he hit that 26-12 total, it was all raw training and then he put his gear back on and figured out that he was a lot stronger.

You said earlier that people think that you guys bash on Westside. Is that true or is that just what people say or is that a big confusion or what's the story there? I mean, I think people have so much ownership of the type of training they do and they're passionate about it and I appreciate that because I'm passionate about what I do. And they want to interpret, you know, and they just take everything personally. It's like if I say that box squats and wide stance squats, not the best, not the best way to train the raw squat. And that's the way the Westside does it or the bands and chains aren't the best way to train the raw squat.

I'm not saying that, you know, everyone that does that are like these evil people. It's just, it's lifting weights, you know? Yeah. And you're probably not saying, I'm going to put words

in your mouth for a second, but you're probably not saying that that doesn't work at all. You just think that you have a slightly better way. Is that kind of what you guys are getting at? Yeah, minus slightly.

I mean, it's way better. I mean, you go look at the, look at the raw world records. Like no one, no one has raw world records trains in that style. Maybe out of the whole list,

men's women's with knee wraps, without knee wraps, drug tested, non-drug tested every single weight class, like 200 records. There's like four names on it that are doing that. Yeah. Okay.

Well, I don't know the list, so I'll take your, uh, your it and since i don't i don't follow powerlifting that close okay so so a lot of the crossfit community is is familiar with west side because that's kind of what's what's in that community at the moment but uh what do you guys do that that's different than the west side method if you could kind of break down each different training methodology and kind of show where you guys are better for raw lifters or for people that are training for pure strength for CrossFit

that have no interest in competing in geared powerlifting. You know, I think the CrossFit discussion is a pretty big separate topic in and of itself. But I'll say with CrossFit, and this will kind of lead me into the raw, is that there's so many skills and so many qualities that you need to develop in CrossFit that if you change the bar every week or you change the exercise every week, now you're just increasing that pool of exercises that you need to improve at. But, you know, the sport for them is not squatting. It is not deadlifting. It's not benching. It's all these different things so you need to

pick the lowest cost lowest energy cost lowest time cost exercises to improve you know so if i'm changing exercise every single week every single week plus olympic lifting plus gymnastics all this other stuff you know how are they ever going to actually improve on it like get good enough at those exercises to get a good stimulus out of it. And as the same thing holds true for raw powerlifters and powerlifters in general, I think just strength athletes in general is that if you're a competitive powerlifter, your sport is the squat bench and deadlift the way that you do it in competition, straight bar, no box,

no bands, no chains. And so what we're doing, you know, and everyone who, who writes on Juggernaut, they don't all train the same. They train a little bit different. Greg Panora was the 242's world record holder at Westside. And now he trains Ron. He still does some Westside type stuff. But if you're changing exercise all the time and using this big exercise pool, you don't get to practice your sport. You know, and when your sport is squat, bench, and deadlift, the way it's done in competition,

you need to practice that all the time. It would be like a basketball player, you know, only doing drills. You do all the layup drills you want. You do all the two-on-one, three-on-one weave drills you want. Yeah. That's great. And that can address a part of the sport and specialty bars and bands and chains can address parts of the lift but if you

don't you know if you're a basketball player and you don't play five on five you don't scrimmage then you're not ready to play basketball so you don't like the variety of squat bars and uh bench uh different ways of varying the bench half of the training so like you know on max effort days with that you know they they vary that but they don't really vary the dynamic effort days. So about half the training is practice and the other half is kind of like strength training and then a ton of assistance work, obviously. And so do you advocate like the same amount of assistance work or, you know, I know you're talking about like variety in the squat, but. Yeah. And it's not even that I'm not advocating exercise variety. It's just that the foremost point of the training always has to be the competitive exercise.

So I do exercise variations. But the idea of adaptation and where people are saying, oh, you know, if you don't change exercises more often, you're going to, it's going to lose its stimulus. Well, between the time that I squat 800 and 905, I had 45 squat training sessions. Yeah. the time that I squatted 800 and 905 I had 45 squat training sessions yeah 42 of 45 of them were the squat with the bar where I put it in competition and just plates on the bar got 45 of 45 bench training sessions where the bench with the paws on my chest and 45 of 45 deadlift training sessions were deadlift in my competitive stance from the floor and you you're not like a new to a sport guy so you know I think a lot of times people who are more advanced want that more variety

or need that more variety. But I guess that wasn't the case with you. Well, yeah. And if you look at the best powerlifter in the world, Andrei Melanichev, 2469 and a belt in the reps, his entire training is the squat, bench and deadlift with no assistance work and no variations. Because the better you get at the sport, the less things will transfer over to it. So he needs to use only the most specific.

So if he's the very, and kind of the way, I do seminars and clinics, but every other weekend, once a month, and people come up with this idea a lot. How many exercise variations should I do? And they want to talk about, well, Milanochev does this, and he's the best, so I should do that too. Well, whoever's asking the question at the seminar, you're not Milanochev. I'm not Milanochev. I don't need that much specificity. And then someone who's less qualified as a lifter than I am won't need quite as much specificity as I do. But so the way that I explain it is like a pyramid where Milanochev, or if we're talking weightlifting,

Ilya Ilyin, who's also, you know, Bulgarian system lifter. So he just snatched clean and jerk squat. They're the tip of the pyramid. They're the very top highest qualified best ever. Yeah.

There's very few things that fit on the, on the tip of the pyramid with them. Very few exercises. As you go down that pyramid, the base of it, people who step in the gym for their first day you know you could improve your squat when you when you start lifting day one you could squat you could box squat you could front squat you could leg press you could leg

extension you could hamstring curl you could do a lunge you could just think about squatting and your squat will go up right so many exercises that will improve you then but as you move up in qualification it has to become more specific and more specific. So I use exercise variations, but I think what a lot of people get caught up with who train Westside system is that they, they make the exercise choices too broad. And yeah, it's like cool or sexy or whatever to put a YouTube video up and you got bands and chains and reverse bands and a safety squat bar to a foam box, well, there's a lot of things going on there. My exercise variation, competition squat,

front squat, Olympic squat, pause squat. Yeah. All pretty similar. And the more similar they get, the more specific and higher degree of transfer they're going to have. Yeah, I mean, I get, when I talk to people and we talk about people who are the best in the world,

I usually tell them not to look at the best of the world. Like, because you look at the Bulgarians, people talk about the Bulgarians, but how many weightlifters they burn so that Ilya could be the best. You know what I mean? Like that, that style, you know? Yeah. And, and people get caught up looking at what the best in the world are doing right now. Right.

And. Not how they got there. I was at the Klak of Ilya, billion seminar at Waxman's gym up in LA in December. And everyone wants to ask, Oh, Cloak of how many sets and reps of this do you do? What percentage should I do?

And it's like, don't ask him that. Ask him, Hey, 15 years ago, what did you do? You know, cause that's where they are 20 years ago. What did you do?

And, and that's what they, they need to figure out. And, and Ilya, you know, said it through a translator but he started lifting weights when he was six years old

and he said he was like hyper so his mom would just send him to the weightlifting gym with his brother and again through the translator I would run around the gym and do all the exercises. Now of course that didn't just mean he did whatever he wanted because I don't think little kids in Kazakhstan

and Russia are like allowed to do whatever they want, but seriously doubt it. But you know, he did a very general program. He learned a lot of movement patterns. He did gymnastics and track and field based stuff and swam and ran and did all these body weight exercises. And then as he, he said, by the time that he was 18, he had no relative weaknesses. So all he needed to do then was the competitive lifts and squat. So he started with the base of the pyramid, tons of exercises. And then as he moved up in qualification, the exercise became more and more focused and more and more specific. Yeah. I think, I think people like a guy like that, that

was going to win no matter what, he's going to be a champion, whether he does a highly varied program or not so varied program, or, you know, a very Bulgarian-ish program. And you look at a guy like Klokov, he obviously, it's like he's doing something different every single day, right? Post that on Instagram. So, like, and what these guys say and what they do, especially with the Bulgarians, I don't believe that shit. They're like, oh, I only do front squat, cleans, and snatches.

And then, like, you'll catch, like, a video on we do no pulls. But then you see, like, a video and they're doing pulls, like, video and they're doing pools in the training hall at the Olympics or something. Well, they're full of shit now. I think what they do is the most specific. And Klokov is now a Juggernaut-sponsored athlete. You know he's doing all that variety? Well, you got to look at what he's doing right now. He's not getting ready for a weightlifting meet right now.

He's making a lot of Instagram videos, so a lot of CrossFitters get really pumped on that. Well, it's still two years out, so. Yeah, we'll see if. I mean, that's how training for any competition works. Highly varied. When you're away from a competition, as you get closer to competition, you increase the amount of specific exercises and decrease the amount of variation.

I mean, that's common amongst all strength and conditioning, really. And even as you're looking at, you know, he's doing all these different things like, yeah, he's doing those conditioning workouts with the rowing and whatever, and he does like the circus trick like, you know, squat front raise, snatch front raise moves. But for the most part, every video he posts is like a pause snatch or a snatch from deficit or a snatch a push press or a jerk

overhead squatting hot chicks yeah number one way to raise your testosterone without drugs and to get more instagram followers yeah are you guys on board with doing the the one day heavy one day speed per week you guys do like the heavy uh max effort and the dynamic effort method you guys do it similar yeah personally i don't do that but you know i'm not one to say like like yeah there's a book called the juggernaut method but i don't think the juggernaut method's for everyone i don't think west side's for everyone i don't think the cube method is for everyone five three one whatever it is like i'm an advocate of you need to do what helps you improve. I came from a track and field background.

I was a two-time national champion in the shot put. I don't need to do speed work. I weighed 290 pounds and had a 36-inch vertical and jumped on a 50-inch box. I just squat fast in all my warm-up sets, and I'm fast. But you were doing west side when you were throwing. I did do west side when I was throwing, yeah.

Yeah, so you had a lot of success there. Within the context, yeah, but if I was to go back and do it again, I wouldn't do that. Yeah, so what made you change it? I mean, what moment where you were like, oh, this isn't the best for my training now? I did a lot of box squats,

and then I took the box away and realized I sucked at squatting. Yeah. That was a big part of it. Yeah. Well, you went from gear, geared lifter to raw lifter. I've never lifted in gear. Oh, you never lifted in gear?

No. Okay. So you were box squatting and that transferred over well to say shot put. Yeah. But maybe not to actually being a raw power lifter is what you're saying. Correct. And for the athletes, the training of athletes is a totally different issue. In the shot put ring, there's no squat bar.

So front squat, back squat, box squat, high bar, low bar, I don't care. Get some stimulus for your legs to get stronger. I think the box squat's great for athletes because it doesn't make you sore. It makes you less sore. Right. So it's not going to interfere as much with the rest of your training because... Are you rich for any box squats? If Rich Froning does it.

Is that the trump card? No, I'm just fucking with you. That is one of the best parts about them. I can box squat and it doesn't beat me up very much at all. And that's fantastic because I'm always fucked up. Yeah, so that can be a really a really valuable thing but as you look you know the training of any athlete the only thing that can't be replaced in athletes training is sport practice you want to be you want to be a football player and you have some elbow injury and you can't clean or you know you can't bench you suck

at squatting well you can still be a football player as long as you practice football you know you could still be a crossfitter and box squat because chances are there's never going to be a football player as long as you practice football. You could still be a CrossFitter and box squat because chances are there's never going to be a max squat event in a CrossFit competition. That was in 2007. Not unless we say it on here. Then it'll probably happen. It'll happen.

If we say it's never going to happen, they'll throw it in the open. OC Throwdown had a max squat event. It's never a record. I would say this. Nobody practices squatting more than CrossFitters. Those people, me being one of them, we squat all the time. I mean, it may be an air squat, but, like, you know, in a workout, if you do 300 squats in a workout, that's not uncommon. I don't know any powerlifters that are doing 300 squats in a workout.

No. And I'm not sure, you know, the technique's not all the same. I get that. But like, you know, those guys are getting deep all the time.

So box squat might not be so bad for a crossfitter. Yeah. I would imagine. So they could save their legs. The, you know, squatting is not necessarily

a part of their sport. Right. So they can replace, replace it with other exercises. Yeah, they may get a benefit out of that. Right. So they can replace it with other exercises. Yeah, they may get a benefit out of that. Yeah. But I did bring up the issue of box squatting, low bar squatting, cleans with bands. I know it's something you guys have discussed.

I brought that up at the seminar with Vasily Polovnikov, nine-time Soviet champion. And once i explained like demonstrated to him what they were because he you know i'd say it and he didn't know the response to all three was mostly no no this not good idea i'll tell you this i did the banded power clean and and jerk uh at west side and uh it was extremely novel i was i think the only reason i was able to pull it off is because I'm pretty good at weightlifting. Like anyone who's not pretty good is going to get, well, I had some people that aren't pretty good. Try it. It wasn't pretty. Um, and I, you know,

uh, was it Travis mash coaches me? Like he writes my program right now. And, uh, you know, I do banded pools. I may do some, some you know chain front squats with pauses and stuff like that but yeah that type of training the accommodating resistance is minimal yeah and it's really small and you know i imagine only people who have been weightlifting for a while need to even play around with that uh for a small portion you, like maybe a third of the time type of thing. Oh yeah, I think, you know, even saying need to play around with it. I don't know if need's the right word there.

You don't need to, but why not? Did you get a lot of Instagram followers though? I got a shit ton of Instagram followers. I broke a band. It was all crazy. Because Travis is the only weightlifter of any appreciable qualification that I've seen who's actually spent some time doing that stuff. And this was probably six, seven, eight years ago now when he finished powerlifting and wanted to get back into weightlifting.

And I mean, even he's not going to advocate the way that he was doing it. Oh, yeah. I mean, one of the reasons I'm friends with Travis and a really good dude, and one of the reasons I wanted him in the program for me is because he's the only person I know that has trained at the Olympic Training Center as a weightlifter

and, you know, been a world champion powerlifter. I was like, if anyone knows how to get strong, it's probably Travis. So he's like the guy I trust to do my stuff. Travis is a great guy i got to meet him for the first time actually at sorenx uh summer strong last summer so we'll see him again in about three weeks out there yeah very cool all right so what do you uh what do you propose like you know a crossfitter you know what what is a training program you know and obviously things

are going to change throughout the year as competitions get closer and stuff like that but what do you what do you advocate like CrossFitters do for strength training and how it fits in their program? Find out right after this break. All right, we'll take a break and we'll get that question. This is Andrea Ager and you're listening to Barbell Shrug. For the video version, go to barbellshrug.com. Barbell Shrug is brought to you by you. To learn more about how you can support the show, go to barbellshrug.comcom. Barbellshrugged is brought to you by you. To learn more about how you can support the show,

go to Barbellshrugged.com and sign up for the newsletter. All of strength and conditioning is something I invented. Well done. And we're back. Actually, Doug just said something that was really funny. I think everyone should hear. Say it again. I mean, CrossFit is basically strength and conditioning.

No, not that. I'm just talking about the last part. I mean, you can do that too. No, I mean, that's really what it is. CrossFit is basically strength and conditioning. No, not that. I'm just talking about the last part. I mean, you can do that too. No, I mean, that's really what it is. CrossFit is all strength and conditioning. Basically, what you just said is that nothing is CrossFit depending on how you look at CrossFit, and everything is CrossFit depending on how you look at CrossFit. And defining CrossFit is a very hard thing to do, and people have all these different perspectives.

And so it's kind of a meaningless term, but it means everything at the same time, and it's this weird paradox. Do you want to say what you said, Chad, or do you want to keep that to yourself? I'd say med ball cleans and sumo high pulls, those are uniquely CrossFit. Those are kind of their inventions. And I don't think anyone really uses those in their training. Yeah, I don't even think that Greg Glassman wants to claim those, too, as his own. I haven't seen it on main site in forever. I define CrossFit as competing in Metcons for time.

Yeah. Other than that, it's just strength and conditioning. But that's like specifically what I see as CrossFit. You should be doing a program, not randomly picking something out of a hopper. Competitive exercise for time. And something we hit on earlier is you were talking about CrossFitters and, you know, needing variety and all that kind of stuff

is like, you know what? Most people who are strength training, they need to stick with a specific movement long enough to get good at it. And most people are like,

oh, I've been training for three months. It's like, that, you are not experienced. I'm talking like, maybe two years,

probably five. You know, if you've been training, strength training, not doing, you know, CrossFit.com wads, strength training for five years, probably five. You know, if you've been training shrink training, not doing, you know, CrossFit.com wads,

shrink training for five years like where you're doing squats and presses and all that mess, now you've got experience and now maybe, you know, variety might be something you need

but most people, like, yeah, straight bar, barbell, which most CrossFitters have not been strength training

more than five years. Definitely. So like, you know, straight bar and just doing back squats and front squats and presses, they're probably going to see a big benefit of that. And I usually tell people, don't change anything until you stop seeing progress. People like, they're getting progress and they like, for some reason, they think they're

going to get faster progress if they do something that, you know, called shiny object syndrome. Yeah. It's like shiny object, you know, like, oh, I heard about this new program. I'm going to get faster progress if they do something that you know calls shiny object syndrome yeah it's like shiny object you know like oh i heard about this new program i'm gonna go try it i was like are you still is your squat and your bench still going up maybe you should just keep doing that and everyone wants to change for the sake of changing because the variety but in crossfit there's so much variety in the conditioning you know's, there's strength training exercises in the conditioning that, um, you know, why not let that be a variety for a while? And then maybe, maybe you don't need to change that variety. Like you were saying, barbells so often. And even the changes in variety can be so much smaller, I think, than people give them credit for. It's like, you don't need to go to a

whole new exercise or a whole new bar or whatever. You know, you move your feet two inches wider, two inches closer, move the bar half an inch up your back, half an inch down your back. That's a change in stimulus. You know, that's going to keep you from adapting. Yeah, and one of the things I like to throw in for variety is just single leg work. So I do lunges instead of, you know, squats for, I mean, you always want to squat every week. But if you're squatting twice a week, you know,

make that some lunges or split squats or something like that for a while. You know, that's variety without like totally having to get a new barbell or something like that. And people get a lot of benefits out of that. So what do you see, what do you think is kind of like a good template for CrossFitters to use? Like strength training versus conditioning. Should they be strength training five days a week, three days a week? So, you know, kind of what's your experience with that? Well, kind of a big question there.

Very broad. I'll let you talk for a while. So everyone that comes into CrossFit comes in with a unique athletic background, and they're going to have unique physical skills and traits that accompany that. So if you were to kind of look at, look at them all within a spectrum with the farthest right side of the spectrum being, you know, a pure speed power athlete, like an Olympic weightlifter or a sprinter and the other side of the spectrum being a pure endurance athlete, like a triathlete or a marathon runner, you know, the best crossfitter is going to be somewhere in the middle, maybe a little bit more to the right

side towards the strength side of things. So you need to work towards that middle ground really. So that would be the first thing, because my answer could be totally, if you're a marathon runner or triathlete, you probably need to lift four or five, six days a week and just stay in touch with your aerobic work. Because your aerobic work could get, if you're a good triathlete, your aerobic work could get worse and you'd still be the best at it. That's right. Or if you're a cloak of, you know, dude could not snatch for a year, shows up 2015 CrossFit Games snatch ladder and he still wins. So that's an important thing to consider. The basic template that I use with people is they're squatting three times a week, they're cleaning twice, snatching twice, and doing two days of pressing, upper body work, and gymnastics. And they're doing four real Metcons and two days of either long and slow aerobic work or tempo style, still sub-maximal aerobic work.

I think a big... Tempo style, are you saying intervals? Yeah, intervals like Charlie Francis type of ideas, 60% to 75% intensity for 10 to 40 seconds duration, depending on the actual activity and the person, interspersed with different kind of calisthenic work or real low intensity skill work. Um, but I think a big mistake that people make in their conditioning,

well, one is a just lack of understanding of energy systems of, you know, what is the, what is aerobic capacity training? What is lactic capacity training? What is anaerobic and a lactic power and all that so first you know people need to understand understand that and understand the durations and and output efforts that you know heart rates that encompass each of those things and their training could become much more efficient right there but i actually was writing an article about this idea is that crossfit is always thought of like this as this general sport crossfit competitive crossfit and understand that's the only one I'm talking about. I'm not talking about people just using it because...

For fitness. That just doesn't interest me. You're only interested in competitive CrossFitters. Yeah. Okay. That competitive CrossFit is a sport of specificity. It's just that that target of specificity is a big target. Right.

I'd describe it as like a dartboard, you know, but you don't know where you have to hit on the dartboard. It's just the competition, the crossfit games. You might have to hit handstand walks. Yeah. So the better that you can cover that dartboard, you know, the more evenly that you can cover it, the better. And the more quality training you do, the more darts you get to throw.

You know, the better chance you're going to have to cover it. So what would you consider sloppy training? Lack of a plan, true randomness. You can train for a wide variety and feels unknown and unknowable. Yeah, you still have an idea though. There's only so many things that can be. You do know there's unknown and unknowable. Yeah. You still have an idea though. There's only so many things that can be, you do know there's going to be thrusters guaranteed thrusters

will be in there. Yeah. So I think a problem that, that a lot of people have a mistake they make with their Metcon work is they don't do the same thing often enough. So they, they, they can't track it, you know? So whether, whether you have, whether you have three or six or whatever benchmark WODs or Metcons or whatever that you do, hit one of those every three weeks, every month, every six weeks, just so you know. Because if you never do the same thing, how do you know that you got better at it? It's almost the same idea with always changing exercises. If I don't come back to the same exercise once but every six months, well, how do I know that I'm any better at it?

You might have been on the wrong track for six months. Yeah. Test and retest. Yeah. Yeah. And test and retest, and in between, you've got to build. So you've got to address the components of it, but just have a plan. Progressively overload your conditioning work,

whether that means from, even if you're only doing the same one every month or three weeks or whatever, either do 10 more pounds on it than you did last time. Go for two minutes longer. If it's an AMRAP, go for, try and beat the time, whatever it is. It doesn't have to be fancy. It can be very linear progression, especially for conditioning. Yeah, just continue making some type of progress. Do you guys program for any CrossFit athletes?

Yeah, I do quite a bit of online programming. And then, you know, we don't do the entirety of the programming for any of the sponsored CrossFitters, but it's all kind of collaborative. Who do you guys sponsor? Alyssa Ritchie and Jamie Higia and Reed Worthington. Alyssa got fourth in the Central East? Fourth in the Central East, and Jamie was fifth in SoCal. Okay, so what have you guys done for them specifically?

Well, Alyssa's super new. We added her like a week before Central East, so that was good timing for us. But she went out and performed well and got a lot of new fans because she's just a tiny a tiny person and everyone yeah she is really appreciates that they're like i saw i was giving her a hard time because then they posted her picture on on crossfit's facebook like everyone was commenting like oh you're my hero and stuff and i was like you're the same size as me. So I told her, I was like, everyone's a fan of you because they're the same size.

I was like, they're all eight-year-old girls, but you know, you got a lot of new fans. She killed it. We went to the Central East and watched. She really did a good job. Yeah. So, you know, the stuff that it's been helpful to work with Jamie is like,

when you got a deadlift and you have five 800 pound deadlifters on your team, you learn how to deadlift pretty, pretty well, you know? Yeah. So I have small stuff like that. And,

and read, I do most of the, most of his programming. He chose to go team this year, but he was like, maybe about 38th in the open or something, but it just, uh,

was taking a new job. So tough to get his training all organized. So when you sign these athletes, do you put them through a process of like finding out where their weaknesses are prior to writing the program or how do you handle new athletes? Yeah. The, the online training athletes, and that's not a huge component of my personal business. But, uh, as I was talking about, everyone exists within that spectrum. You just need to find out where they are in that

and what's going to allow you to work towards that. So if you have someone who's super strong, even though my preferred template is squatting three times a week, maybe they only need to squat twice a week. Maybe they only need to squat once a week, and the other day could be dedicated towards just unilateral work or mobility work. We have another crossfitter who we just added, a crossfitter slash powerlifter, a guy named James Townsend,

who you'll know about James Townsend. Even if he doesn't become a great crossfitter, you'll know about him because this dude is a freak. Like, hang power snatch 315. Damn. Jumped on a 64-inch box. He was a wide receiver for the Bears for two years. 44-inch vertical as pro day, ran a 4.30.

He has muscles that don't exist on anatomy charts. And the first time I met James was like six months ago. And he asked about doing his program, and I told him it was kind of the same idea as Klokov, just not to the same degree. I was like, you're so fast. You're so explosive. You're so strong. This is a guy who's six foot, 195 pounds has benched 450 and deadlifted 650.

Yeah. And he's been training for that for like, I mean, benching his whole life because of football, but deadlifting for like six months, maybe. And I was like. Just a freak. Yeah. I was like, we're going to do all the stuff that you hate. Oh yeah. Because you don't need to get're going to do all the stuff that you hate.

Oh, yeah. Because you don't need to get any stronger. You need mobility. He's the most tightly wound spring ever. Football players, man, shoulders and ankles are usually just tore up. Yeah, I got a new football guy I trained for maybe about four years who's switching over to CrossFit as well, and he does not have that issue. Oh, that's good. Exceptional mover.

Lucky, yeah, because most guys, they just, you know, all those hits, and anyone who plays a field sport, usually the ankles get tight, and shoulders are messed up from the hits. I was actually shocked to see how well he moved with it because he'd been off at NFL camps and stuff, and then I'm not a big advocate of the Olympic lifts for non-Olympic lifters, non-crossfitters. Of course, I'd never had this guy snatch before,

so I'd never even really seen him try and do it. So he's just in Nike Freeze, and I was like, do an overhead squat, and just drops down perfect. Has good mobility. Maybe he had a good strength coach growing up or something. I think that's where a lot of football players fall through the cracks on that mobility stuff is like the you know the the football coach at the high school is just advocating like you know terrible

form and then you get to college and no one's really paying attention and then you get the pros and then you know no one's gonna tell you what to do when she gets to the pros yeah i mean just and that whole industry is massive discrepancies in the quality of coaching. I got about 50 athletes who are playing division one football right now. So I see all their programs, you know, programs from 30 different schools and some I'm like, Oh, this is great. And some of them just like, so who did you know to get this job? Yeah, no, that definitely happens, but I don't know. Too bad Chris Moore's not here. He's got stories from high school

and college football where they're, you know, just put more weight on the bar if you're not getting low enough. You need to get lower. Put more weight on the bar. It's like,

holy shit. It's basically, his college career was shitty strength training. Yeah. It was a strength training that hurt him, not the football. Yeah.

Yeah. Unfortunately, that was probably the case for so many of you guys. So, you know, you're a young guy playing football. Put some emphasis on finding a good strength coach. Even, you know, say you don't get to pick, you know, when you're playing, but in the offseason, you can definitely go find, there's somebody out there that understands how to uh, how to move and how to keep you healthy. Yeah. And that whole idea of, of how to move is so big. You know, we have our two main kind of

mobility movement writers on Juggernaut, uh, Ryan Brown and Dr. Quinn Henoch and everyone, a lot of people know Quinn now, cause he's like, he and Kelly kind of butt heads on some stuff. He wrote the supple upper verse of the world and then they were on offline together. But yeah, they do a great job for us. I love the stuff they write. They've helped me a ton personally. I, uh, last June her needed two discs in my back and my entire rehab was information that they gave me about how to breathe. And everyone thinks, oh, of course I know how to breathe. I'm alive. But understanding how to breathe properly to brace a neutral spine position and how simply you can fix all these

mobility issues through improved breathing patterns is a really powerful idea that as more and more people catch onto it, it's going to improve performance across the board for them. I've been hearing a lot of that lately, a lot of the breathing stuff. Sometimes people improving like mobility in a single session with some, uh, you know, they'll test the shoulder, improve their breathing. And next thing you know, they have improved range of motion. Yeah. That was one of the first breathing videos. Uh, just a YouTube video on our channel called breathing 101 and it's ryan taking me through some of these drills it's like a 20 20 degree improvement in and my internal shoulder rotation yeah in 10 seconds so what do they have you do incredible do you have any

examples about how to breathe better uh yeah the the main the main breathing drill that i use, it's kind of like the first thing we teach everyone at clinics and was the main thing that I was doing to take care of my, my low back is laying on the ground, feet flat on the wall. So legs bent at 90 degrees and learning how to brace in a neutral spine position. So basically to press your low back in the ground and like eliminate that arch and then create 360 degrees of pressure from there especially in the squat you know everyone's cued to big air in your belly push your abs out into your belt but as soon as you do that and you're just pushing forward it's putting you into extension in your low back right away where if we can brace in a neutral spine position and get those vertebrae essentially stacked on top of each other, then, you know,

your skeleton is going to support that weight as, you know, God intended it to do rather than, you know, always being an extension here and, and that weight like hanging on your muscles and tendons and ligaments and you never be able to shut those muscles off. You know, guys walk, especially highly trained individuals, explosive individuals live in extension. That anterior pelvic tilt. Yeah. Yeah. I've seen a lot of that. I guys, I actually had a guy messaging me last week.

He's reading a starting strength and he's going through the description of like finding, you know, extending out. And I was like, ah, go for neutral. Like keep the abs tight too. Like, you know, this is through a Facebook message. I'm like trying to keep it as like simple and easy to understand. Like don't go for it, you know, cause the way he was reading it,

you know, he wasn't, he wasn't American. So, uh, he didn't understand the English too well. So, and I'm,

I'm not exactly sure what Ripto's advocating there, uh, the way I read it. But, um, yeah, the, the whole,

like just extending as hard as you can. Yeah. Not a good idea. I've definitely, I've seen improvements in my jerk when I went to more of a much focusing much more on being neutral

than extended. Saw a lot more power development there. So, and I imagine, you know, same for the squat and everything too. Yeah. I mean,

squatting, it's controlling, controlling my breathing and understanding like how that's going to control my midline stability. And my squat is the strongest it's ever been right now. And just the most technically sound and like simple moving. And it's from learning how to breathe. Yeah.

I'm sure everyone listening to the podcast, they're learning how to breathe right now. So earlier you said that a program for CrossFit athletes is a very small piece of what you guys actually do. What else do you guys do? Oh, a lot. We're trying to help better educate the people who want to get stronger and faster and more powerful and healthier across the world. But, you know, our real mission is to, I would say, is to help dot, dot, dot improve. Help powerlifters improve, strongman weightlifters, crossfitters, coaches, trainers, physical therapists. And been able to assemble a team that I'm very proud of and that I'm very confident in their abilities of experts in those unique individual fields and bring them together and give them a platform to, uh, to get their message out there. And I think, you know, more every day,

more and more people are, are hearing that message and, and appreciating it and learning from it. So you guys have, you started like two years ago. Uh, well as the company started almost five years ago and that was really me and another guy named Nate Winkler who, uh, now has moved back to Charleston, South Carolina and, and kind of designed the website. But, uh, it was us training people in person, high school athletes, college athletes. Um, and you know, it was kind of just the time constrictions of life and people who understand you know owning a gym and that kind of thing yeah got tighter and tighter especially as I was trying to compete as an athlete and used to be tracking in the shot put and then simultaneously powerlifting

and strongman it just became tougher and tougher to do so it kind of moved to more of the online stuff. So it's been about two years of this current incarnation of Juggernaut and JTSstrength.com, where we're just bringing on new riders and trying to support more athletes through sponsorships. How many riders do you guys have now? Over 30. It really might be closer to 50. These guys are from powerlifting backgrounds, like mobility expert backgrounds, weightlifting backgrounds. Yeah.

Pretty well-rounded. Across the board. So world-class level powerlifters, guys with top 15 totals, all-time. OTC resident for weightlifting, another guy's Pan Am team. Thomas Lower with you guys, is that right? Samantha Lower, his wife. Thomas did a little bit of riding for us. He does some riding.

Yeah. But probably our most notable weightlifters are Colin Burns, based in Louisville. He was a Pan Am team guy last year. He's a 94-kilo lifter. One of the best snatch in the United States. Donovan Ford, who's an OTC resident, was a world team member last year. Yeah. Anthony Pomponio, who's about to be an OTC resident as well.

He's based here in California. We just had a guy come back from the OTC from doing a certification. He said it's pretty cool there. They got quite the spread for food and stuff. So if someone gets the opportunity there, they can just eat and train. Yeah. Sounds good to me. All right.

We're going to wrap this up. Thanks for joining us, Chad. Anywhere, where should people go to find your stuff? Our website is jtsstrength.com. So there's two S's in a row in that. So that, and then like us on Facebook, Juggernaut Training Systems. I'll fill up your news feed all day. Instagram, YouTube, all the same.

It's just all Juggernaut Training Systems. Sign up for our newsletter. Give you like 200 free pages of squat bench and deadlift info with that. Very cool. And after you sign up for his newsletter, go over to barbellshrug.com and sign up for our newsletter, and we'll share with you ways that you might be able to support our show. Thanks.

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