Barbell Shrugged - 138- Neuroscientist & Masters Athlete Steve Platek

Episode Date: August 20, 2014

This week on the Barbell Shrugged podcast we welcome Dr. Steven Platek, Neuroscience Professor, Crossfitter and gym owner, contributor to Power Athlete Radio, and current member of the NPGL’s Miami Surge. Yeah, he’s a busy guy.    Those are impressive credentials, but I actually didn’t know any of it at the start of our interview. I just knew that Steven was a really sharp guy, and yes, he was strong as hell. Earlier that day at the Las Vegas NPGL Combine he absolutely destroyed the deadlift ladder, lifting close to 4,500 pounds in total in less than 60 seconds, and finishing with a lift of 585 pounds. Not bad for a Master’s level Crossfitter, right? Really, it’s amazing. It was no surprise that Miami took him when they had the chance.    There’s a clear niche for Master’s level competitors within this new sport of Grid. No, Steven and most Master’s level athletes simply cannot get away with the super-high training volume that some of his teammates and competitors require in order to make progress. A huge priority has to be placed on recovery, any older competitor who wants to stay in the game and remain strong has to accept that. However, Steven’s vast experience translates to a very high level of skill, especially in strength movements like the deadlift. Other teams in the NPGL should take note, you should have a Master beast on your bench just in case things get really heavy.    Loads of people struggle to make progress in the gym, especially as they age and become more experienced. They have a plan, they work as hard as they can, but at times nothing improves. It’s frustrating, but the answer might be as simple as training less and spending more time on recovery. Just like Steven, back off and consider leveraging your valuable experience instead. Train smarter and more optimally, and you’ll get a superior result. The same thing goes for the manner and mindset with which you lift the barbell. Many lifters assume that you have to be very intense to be very strong. I myself assumed that Steven’s coach had to have been screaming and pushing him from the sidelines during that aforementioned 585 pound deadlift, but actually the opposite was true. His coach’s function was actually to keep Steve more calm and focused as the barbell got heavier and heavier, maintaining an optimal balance between arousal and performance. As Steve explained, this was a classic real world example of theYerkes-Dodson law, which basically states that arousal is a great thing for performance, until there’s too much of it.    If you are an athlete that’s interested in performing optimally, you need to know just how much arousal is necessary for you. Will a little do, or are you a 7-cup of coffee type of person? The very best athletes know just how far to push it, and just how to modulate their sympathetic nervous system response to stress. The result is more fight than flight, you could say. If you find yourself getting far too excited and anxious ahead of training or competition, take note. You are more than likely out of balance. If you can do a better job of controlling that sympathetic response - if you can settle your mind a bit - you’ll perform much better.    If you find that you’re still a little sleepy and groggy after a few cups of coffee, well, maybe you’re Jon North! That guy really loves his stimulants. He also believes 100% in himself, and what he’s capable of lifting, and his purpose. As Steven will also tell you, the mind is unfathomably mysterious and powerful. Your very first step towards success, regardless of what you're training and living for, is to believe in what you’re doing. Call it the placebo effect, call it magic, it doesn’t matter at all. If you can believe 100% in what you’re doing then magical things will happen. Thanks for the reminder, Steve.    You can see hear more from Steven over at Power Athlete Radio. You can also follow him on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.    Cheers,      Chris

This week on Barbell Shrugged, we interview master's level athlete, huge deadlifter, and one of the hosts of Power Athlete Radio, Steve Platek. 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 Chris Moore. And we got CTP behind the camera. We're in Las Vegas, Sin City. Maybe doing some sinful things. Maybe later tonight. Yes, later tonight.

We're at the NPFL Combine. And we have swooped up Mr. Steve Playtech. I was about to be like, Steve. Steve Playtech. Steve Playtech. I was about to be like, Steve. Steve Playtech. Steve Playtech. Power Athlete Radio. And just give us a background because you actually fascinated me when I first met you. I was like, all right, he's associated with CrossFit football.

He likes to lift heavy things. Which we saw yesterday. He looks like he could be a big dumb athlete. But then I found out you're also a neuroscientist. Yeah. Oh, shit. So, yeah, I got my PhD at State University of New York at Albany. Like a decade and a half ago.

So I'm a neuroscience professor. And I got interested in CrossFit. Started a garage gym. That garage gym evolved into CrossFit Gwinnett, which is, I guess, like a real gym. How long ago did you start your box? About five years ago. Okay. Yeah.

I was a biology professor in England at the University of Liverpool for about three years. Oh, shit. Then I moved back to Atlanta, got interested in sort of this functional fitness thing. I actually had hurt my back deadlifting, of all things. One of my buddies said- So you were training before? Yeah. I was training just like gold gym type stuff. And, um, muscle and fitness magazine

workouts. Yeah. Gun show stuff. Hell yeah. And, uh, hurt my back dead lifting, uh, like something dumb, like two 75 and, uh, came back and my buddy was like, um, try this CrossFit thing. It's all about body weight movement. And so at CrossFit.com, what happens is once in a while they put up a 1RM and 1RM deadlift came up and I pulled something like 435 and the rest was history. After that, I affiliated my garage. And after CrossFit, joined with Reebok, I was actually in my office at the college and my cell phone rang and some dude who I still don't know who it is. If you're out there and ring me now, call me. He's like, dude, I'm at your gym. Where are you?

And I was like, you're at my gym. And he's like, yeah, I'm banging on the garage door. I was like, oh, you're at my fucking house. I was like, so then. So apparently what happened was Reebok put up a thing where you could put in a zip code and folks could find your gym. So at that point, I had a two-year-old, and my wife at the time, we're divorced now. I basically said, I need to get out of here. So I partnered up with Kayla Williams. He's a 69-kilo American national champion. Great weightlifter.

Yeah, he's a straight baller. And we moved up to Beaufort, Georgia, so CrossFit Gwinnett is in like a real facility now and been training this way ever since. Oh, I got a buddy who coaches Gwinnett swimming. Oh, is that right? Yeah. That's cool, man.

I didn't even realize it. You said it earlier, and now you're saying it on the microphone, and I go, hey, that's where Lucas coaches swimming. That's cool. Yeah, we just picked up Swim Atlanta. Swim Atlanta is a big team. We're coaching some of their middle schoolers. Oh,'s cool. Yeah, we just picked up Swim Atlanta. Swim Atlanta is a big team. We're coaching some of their middle schoolers. Yeah, yeah. Oh, very cool.

And what's your association with Power Athlete Radio? So, I follow CrossFit football for a long time because it's basically awesome and I need a strength and conditioning program. And the guys on there used to make fun of me because when I initially started talking to Greg Glassman,

he started talking about how everything is variation, and so you need to track that. So what you ate that day, what time you worked out, what the weather was. And so I used to post on there all my results on CrossFit football, and then I'd post things like before, what I ate after, and then the power athlete crew makes fun of me because I used to post the weather, the temperature and the humidity.

And there's a scientist in you. Yeah, so that's it. I was just straight track. I have stacks of workout journals that are just data, just data. But like that stuff affects you. You're a data collector. As a scientist, you collect data

and then you have to analyze it. Do you ever break out the statistical tools or any kind of multivariate analyses and get really, really geeky with something? Have you ever tried? I know that maybe it's not necessary. I did, actually. So I had an undergraduate student at my college.

I teach at Georgia Gwinnett College, which is a small teaching college. Undergraduate student slash bitches. No, I'm just kidding. My girlfriend's right there. Actually, she used to be a student. This interview's got more spicy. So, yeah., uh, six months of crossfit.com results and, and, uh, what I had the student do is track common usernames and, uh, we tracked progress in Fran total, uh, two other workouts. And we, we actually, we didn't publish that in any scientific

journal. We published it in the CrossFit journal. Essentially, you guys get variability around the mean, but it's not surprising people get better, right? People get fitter. It's data-driven. Independent of anything like nutrition or time of day or humidity, people get better when they train these things. Even if the workout comes up once every four months, they get better. We did a little bit of data.

I'm not an exercise science or physiologist by trade. I'm a neuroscientist. The exercise thing is just fun for me. It's a kind of hobby type thing. Yeah. So how'd you get pulled into power athlete? Oh yeah. So, so power athletes. So, um, I was on crossfitfootball.com and, um, really digging their stuff. And so I posted on there, I said, you guys need a podcast. And this guy, Denny Krarowitz, we call him Big Denny K, he's from Chicago, he messaged me and was like, dude, we need to do this. So we contacted Luke Summers at Power Athlete

or CrossFit Football and said, dude, can we do this? And he's like, yeah, sure. Well, obviously he didn't check with John, because we did our first podcast, which was just us talking about Power Athlete stuff, and literally within two hours, Denny and I got emails from John saying,

expect legal documentation from CrossFit Football, CrossFit.com, PowerAthlete.com. Thanks, John Wellborn. I about shit my pants. Oh, God. And then two hours later,

Luke cleared it all up and a little miscommunication there on the first episode of Power Athlete Radio. Since then... You don't want him being married to you. I remember when you guys posted the first one and I think I tuned in and I was like, where's John? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So here's the

thing. John's a busy motherfucker, right? Yes. So we now, when it started, John was really busy and now he's on and I don't know if you guys ever talked to John, but he, I could just be like, play and he just drops knowledge bombs. He's a smart John, but he, I could just be like play and he just drops knowledge bombs. He's a smart dude, a strong, smart dude. And the stuff he says is amazing. So, um, when

he's on, if you can go back and listen to the stuff on nutrition or some of the, um, the training stuff he's trained with and know some of the best people in the, in the industry. So, um, now he's on quite frequently. He's on almost every episode now Unless he's doing something Off site Yeah I've listened to him on Numerous podcasts Well shit y'all were on right Yeah we came on episode 50

Yeah we were 50 years old They just did 60 I think next week we got Wendler And then the week after we got Yeah so then the week after we got China Cho and Freddie. Oh, yeah. Yeah, so that'd be cool. And China's signed, so it'd be fun to have her experience in the MPFL.

She's with San Francisco Fire. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. You've been talking to any of the teams here about signing? So, you know what? Nobody's really talked to me that much. I've been trying to talk to some people, but I think, I mean, I don't know.

One, I'm a master's athlete, and I like to think that the teams are trying to snatch up all the good young talent because you guys have been here all three days, and there's some talent out there on the grid. Oh, yeah. So, you know, maybe they're saving us Masters for last, or maybe I'm just not good enough. I think Masters are a great place for specialists. Yeah. And really, because you're required to have a Masters athlete, I think masters are a great place for specialists. Yeah. And really, because you're required to have a master's athlete.

And most master's athletes can't do the volume. That's the difference between a master's athlete and a younger athlete is the volume. As far as that's where you're maybe not as good. But where you can be better is on the skill base because you have more experience. Yeah. And so an older athlete, and this is just my opinion from like, if I were out there picking and I don't own a team or anything, I would

be, I don't think I'll ever own one, to be honest. But, you know, maybe five years down the road, people are like, you said you weren't going to own a team. Exactly. I'll never say never. Give me a break, everybody. But, you know, I think Masters is a great place to find your specialists and you were like one a few guys that picked up 585 what was it you and like

one other guy yeah and they picked up 585 on a deadlift laughter ladder not only did you pick up 585 but you had already picked up well i forget the weight increments but you already picked up a shit ton of weight so in about about 60 seconds, I started at 315. The increments went up by 30 pounds. So one of my buddies did the math. I think it ended up being like 4,500 pounds in 60 seconds. So it was spicy. As potent of an exercise stimulus as you can possibly.

What weight did you start with? 315. 315. What were the weight increment jumps? 30 pounds. So for those of you at home, what he did was he picked up, he deadlifted 30 pound increments. So 315 and then 345. Is that right? Is that how?

Am I doing math good? Yeah, yeah, yeah. 375, 405. So all the way up as fast as he could until he got 585. And he did it under 60 seconds. Yeah. He basically sprinted from 4 to 4. And the last one, I was like, I don't think Steve's's gonna get this last one i was watching squeezed it out i was like i

didn't believe in you oh thanks bro well when you squeeze that last one you're like but yeah it wasn't i didn't it wasn't that i couldn't believe you couldn't pick up the weight it was because the clock was ticking yeah i was like i don't know if he's gonna be able to like squeeze that last rep out but you did you locked it out just in time. Yeah. You know, I had a great coach. Our coach for that one was, um, Ian Berger and he was with me the whole time that he runs down the sideline and he was telling me, you know, you got, you got 15 seconds and it was like, you got seven seconds. Like, and I was like, Oh man, all right. Just, just gripping a red bit. So I'm not, I know I can pick up 585 any day of the week, but that volume, it's like you spoke about earlier for us masters athletes. It's the volume is hard and the recovery is hard. Um, so, so that's something we

need to keep in mind. And, you know, I'm not, I, I, I partly own a gym, but I have, I have like a day job, you know, I go and teach. You have a real job. I gotta like, I gotta produce papers. Not like as entrepreneurs. I gotta like write papers, write grants and, and like deal with students coming to my office and then I have a three-year-old too. So, you know, I mean, not that I'm complaining.

I wouldn't trade it for the world. Right. But, you know, these are things that maybe the 19, 20, 21-year-old athletes, you know, They don't have to worry about it. I train with a kid

who's awesome and he's going to be on the show sometime in the future. His name is Christian Davila because he's a straight baller, you know, and he like goes to the gym, works out,

takes a two-and-a- a half hour nap, eats six donuts, trains again, eats some more donuts. And I'm like, that's a young man's game. I'm like, bro, if only I was 21, you know? Yeah. You know, a professional athlete should, his day or her day should look like eating, napping, training and playing video games. That's what the Bulgarians did, right? Exactly, man. The Bulgarians did that, right? Like, the Bulgarian weightlifters back in the day, they didn't know if it was light or dark. It was just coach said, wake up, lift, go eat, go sleep.

I'll tell you when you need to wake up and lift again. And incidentally, the reason why most people shouldn't try that, even as sexy as it might seem, like if you have a job and a kid and a family and a life outside of the gym, you shouldn't train like a fucking Bulgarian, probably. I would make a safe guess. By the way, if you want to read, I don't know if you've seen it yet,

there's this new book about Boleski, the Bulgarian weightlifter. It's called The White Prisoner. And you can go... Is that where he talks about the dark days? It covers Boleski's life. From childhood until now.

Is it on Amazon? It just came out. It covers Boevsky's life, like from childhood until current, like now. Nice. And- Is it on Amazon and all that? It's on Amazon. Yeah, it just came out. I'm going to just toot my own horn. I was sent a copy early. Woo-hoo.

Yeah. What did you do, Michael? And it's not very long, but, and I knocked it out in like two days and I was just like, it was a page turner for me. Nice. And I was just like, this, and I don, and I normally don't read people's stories. You don't read that much? He's a mouth breather.

That's right. I do read quite a bit. I listen to audio books a lot. He's a big reader. That's not reading. The fucking scientist said it, man. When I read, it's usually business books or training books. It's business and training books, and that's about it.

And so for me to read somebody's biography, I'm kind of going out on a limb. For me personally, it just doesn't usually interest me. But I was like, this is really fascinating because talking about Bulgarian weightlifting from a Bulgarian journalist who got to, gathered all this information. I was like, holy shit, this is really amazing.

The only thing I didn't like about the book is I don't think they're completely honest on the drug part. They... You gotta also do some drugs. There was, you know, there were aspects... What are you talking about? There were parts in the book where it was like... What are these drugs you speak? But, you know, he's talking about

how the weightlifters were truly surprised when they got... Because Boleski popped a, you know, he's talking about how, like, the weightlifters were, like, truly surprised when they got, because Boleski popped, like, a couple times. Yeah. And he's, like, really, like, the book kind of portrayed it where, like, Boleski

was actually surprised. And I'm like, even if you don't know what you're taking and the coach is just, say, here, take this cup of pills and, oh, we're going to stick

this needle in you, like, He's in the medicine. The coach is called, they call it medicine and they call it medicine, and they call it vitamins, and that's all they call it. They don't tell them what the name of the stuff is, so they can claim ignorance.

But the book was just slightly on the naive side for me, personally. But it didn't completely leave it out. I mean, they called me and said, hey, I was taking medicine. The coach told me to take. It talks about Abijaev and, like, you know, the butcher and, like, and it gets into. You fucking need the medicine. It gets into, like, it gets into the relationship between Boevsky

and Abijayev and just things that, like, you know, I watch the weightlifting. I watch the Bulgarians lift. I hear stories. I hear stories about their training, but I don't get to hear all these back-end stories. So this book is actually pretty good. That's cool, man. I'll check that out.

People should check it out. It's called The White Prisoner. I think you can get it on Amazon now. The White Prisoner. Cool. Maybe something to read between classes. Say what? Something to read between classes. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, it'll be fun. So you teach neuroscience. Do you do any research? I do, actually.

My research isn't even in exercise science. My exercise is in attractiveness. So I look at what happens in the brain when we see hot people. Oh, really? Yeah, dude, yeah. Are you familiar with Jeffrey Miller? So Jeff's a good friend of mine, yeah. Oh, really?

Yeah, yeah. Oh, dude. Yeah, okay. So Jeff is funny, actually. So Jeff on Facebook, he always likes my big deadlift posts. He's always like uh yeah here's our evolutionary psychologist Steve who like deadlifts more than you social psychologists so yeah he's cool yeah very cool you know I think we actually I may have talked

about we talked about that in Atlanta yeah and I brought it up again but it's good for everyone to see I think he's coming out with a new book called matingating? Mate. Or Mate. Mate. His first book was called The Mating Mind. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And writing it with Tucker Max. Him and Tucker Max. Yeah, that's going to be balling.

And Tucker Max wrote, I hope they serve beer in hell. Yeah. You know, I just read about Tucker. I guess he was on the Tangentially Now, Tangentially Speaking podcast.

He told, he is one of three non-fiction authors to of three nonfiction authors to have three nonfiction books, I guess, in a best-selling list all at the same time. It's him and Malcolm Gladwell and somebody else. Oh, wow. That's cool.

And also, you want to toot your own horn again about Tucker? Saying your story was the best story I'd ever heard? I told Tucker Max's story at a party. Somehow we got into my most fucked up story type of thing. I was like, all right, you know, my most fucked up story type of thing. And I was like, all right, I'll tell the most fucked up story

I've got. You know, from back when I was in the Navy and I told this story and he was like, holy shit, that's the most fucked up story I've ever heard.

And this comes from a guy who made a living telling fucked up stories. Absolutely. And I was like, he's like, I was like, I don't tell the story anymore

because I don't like to sensationalize that type of behavior. And that's like, he's like, I was like, I don't tell the story anymore because I don't like to sensationalize that type of behavior. Right. And that's why I don't, I kind of just, I'm trying to make the world a better place at this point.

I wasn't always that way. Yeah. Of course, you know what's going to happen now. Everybody's going to want to hear the story. You know what? If you want to hear the story,

I plan on having storytelling time on my personal podcast, Blitzopia. So just podcast, Blitzopia. So just look up Blitzopia. And I have some, actually half the podcasts are about personal development. So I'm going to mix in some fucked up stories from when I was in the Navy or something like that. That's awesome, dude.

That's awesome. Let's take a break. When we come back, we'll actually talk about Steve. 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.com and sign up for the newsletter.

And we're back with the amazing Steve Platek. Masters athlete, huge deadlifter. Is there anything else you're really good at in CrossFit? Or is the deadlift like, are you a one-trick pony? I mean, I can do all the movements, right? So, like, I mean, my list of weaknesses is shorter. So my snatch isn't very good, but I've got, like, a wingspan of, like, an orangutan. Right, and that's why you pull the house.

That's why I pull the house. And, I mean, I can do all the muscle ups and all that stuff. Out here on the grid at NPFL, basically, like I wanted to win. I hate losing.

Like there's probably nothing I hate more than losing. So I told the coaches right up, like, look, I can go shoulder overhead. I can do muscle ups. I can climb the rope. But these guys are going to go up

faster than me. So like pull shit off the floor. I'm going to be faster than them. Let's win. And so we did pretty well. But yeah, so I'm good at deadlifting. I can clean a little bit and I'm pretty fast on my feet for an old fella. What are you bad at? I'm really bad at snatching. That's my weakness.

That's your big weakness. I mean, really what is this thoracic spine mobility? So like getting down low overhead. For a while I was split snatching. When I was working up to the American Masters, I was split snatching. I split snatched like 102. Nice. Yeah, so it wasn't so bad. And just recently had my shoulders kind of worked out. I've been working

full snatches again and working my way back up. But it's not a pretty movement for me. It's not a pretty movement. But that's to be expected. We had a discussion with Sam Dancer, right, where we were discussing what makes weightlifting ability versus deadlifting ability

and how you try to switch between them or train them at the same time how they don't really jive at all. No. I'm not surprised at all

that you pull a house, but your history and maybe, is it powerlifting and sort of your traditional sports? Have you played football or anything?

No, I played college ice hockey at Rutgers. Yeah, but still, you might have been a little heavy on leaning forward and being rounded. Oh, yeah, yeah. I wanted a desk jockey. I was going to say, he's a researcher. It's not about the sports you play. It's about that sitting at the desk. So it's hard to expect to snatch the house also.

Long arms and that posture. It just doesn't quite work. I was going to ask you before. You had that huge deadlift. And you mentioned the coach running beside you, giving you cues, pushing you to how much time. Do you think you could have done that without that coach there barking at you? I think the coach is barking on the sidelines,

one of those cool factors playing into this competition. Well, and it's not even barking. I mean, Ian Berger from New York Rhymes, he wasn't barking at me. He was actually being like what I couldn't be between my ears, which was calming down my sympathetic nervous system, I'd be amped up like gotta get there gotta get there he was like chill like get to the bar breathe chill Con Porter dude from Australia who probably gonna get picked up because he's a baller was at the end of the first line like and so like I had like

both things coming at me so like Con was getting me stoked and like psyched to pick it up. And Ian was like, get set. Like don't do anything stupid. Don't hurt him. He was really cool about like this is a tryout. Don't hurt yourself because then it doesn't matter if you try out. Like you're not going to make it. So it was like a weird balance between the team saying like, Steve, we know you can do it.

Do it. Like rock it. Pick up the house. And Ian being the smart coach and like realizing, looking at the clock and doing all that stuff that as an athlete, you don't want to think about. So it was really an amazing experience. So you've got this experience being a researcher. You obviously know a thing or two about the nervous system. You read a few articles here and there.

And you have this experience where you've trained for a long time. You have a passion for it. I imagine there's some convergence and crossover have you have you had any let's say really unique insights you've got having this knowledge base this experience that anything you can share the hot tips of uh you know any nervous system hacks or common sense things you've learned in the gym that you've really sort of drawn out of your experience like Like what can we learn from your smart ass when it comes to living? Nothing. No.

So, I mean, the biggest thing in psychology or neuroscience is this thing called the Yerkes-Dodson Law. And you can Google it. It's like one of the most

famous things in psychology. And basically, the effect is this. And you know it. It's what you call like the two beer effect, right? So when I was in England, I played darts.

And I'm terrible at darts. Give me three beers. I'm a at darts. Give me three beers, I'm a little bit better. Give me six beers and you better move out of the way because you're going to get stabbed, right? Hey, I do that with bowling. It's the same thing.

So it's an inverted U-shaped function, right? So when there's low arousal, you're poor. When you're high arousal, you're poor. Right in the middle. And what I like to tell my athletes is you need to learn where that middle is

because for someone like me, it might happen fast. I might need just a little arousal. But for somebody else, they might need like seven cups of coffee and like smacks in the face and smelling salts to jack up to that point. And so that's what I call the sort of intersection of the sympathetic nervous system, which is that fight or flight system, right? Like if a cougar jumped out of the closet, we could fight or flight, right?

And we would all fight because we're ballers, right? I'll trip, Mike, and then I'll run. I'll jump over the balcony here. Yeah, so the key about that is all you got to do is be faster than the slowest guy, right? Yeah. And then, so the intersection between the sympathetic nervous system, this fight or flight,

and the central nervous system, which is the way we think about it. And the central nervous system can influence the sympathetic nervous system, the arousal, right? So think about when you're thinking about asking a girl out or something, right? And I know you're married. Oh, geez.

Right? So if you overthink it, what happens is you walk up and you bumble the shit out of it, right? That's why it's so much easier to pick up chicks when you're married. No comments from the room. My wife is in the room somewhere. Or after a couple beers, right? Or after a couple beers. So being married. Or after a couple beers, right? Or after a couple beers. So being married is like having a couple beers.

I wish. It's more expensive than that, though. Way more expensive than that. Fuckload more expensive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, hey, try to have ex-wives, okay? So, talk about pricey. So, like, that's where I think, like, the athlete,

and the best athletes in the world, I think, can moderate that intersection between overthinking and calming themselves down. And it might be as simple as just a deep breath into the tummy. It might be like you need to sit down and chill. Or like I was talking about earlier, having a coach saying like, yeah, there's a time limit. You're good. Right. And just getting that in the central nervous system can actually influence that fight or flight system to be like, it's the same thing like,

you're all young men at one point, right? And you're getting in a fight, right? And that point when the fight changes from where you're getting your ass kicked to where you're doing the ass kicking, all of a sudden it's like, I could destroy this person because now you're no longer in your head. But when you're on your back and your ass kicked,

all you're thinking about is, I'm fucking getting my ass kicked. You're getting tunnel vision. Yeah, your arousal's going through the roof. You can't even think about throwing a fist. You can't integrate motor programs because your sympathetic nervous system is just saying, you need

to just survive. But when you flip over and you're on top, all of a sudden it's like you're out of your mind. Now you just, everything is automatic. It's like you're in the zone. Now all the training hours kick in and now you just execute the plan. So I think that's what's happening out here actually in the MPFL grid is like you're seeing a lot of athletes that are

good at things and under pressure they're doing them real fast but in the last match the LA Reign and the Philly Founders you saw some faults right because these athletes are CrossFit athletes and they're used to like pacing like knowing where they're at. Now it's a team.

Also not as used to as many rules. As many rules and as many standards and time caps that are so short and people relying on them, right? Here's the big thing. Yeah, you have a fan base, but once you add a team, it's like you're fighting for a family. The past couple days, I'll tell you what, I was on three separate teams across three days with nine other, I didn't have any of the same athletes. And within a matter of minutes,

you become just connected with those athletes. You want to like, you want to bleed with them, sweat with them. You want to see them succeed when they win. You want to pick them up and like cheer for them. So those people in your corner, it's like your family in your corner and you just want to do the best you can. So that pressure now amps up that sympathetic nervous system. You got to get out from between the ears, you know? Wow. Yeah, and another thing is, if you want to understand about arousal levels, is, you know,

some sports require, you know, optimal arousal is higher, where, you know, maybe less motor control is necessary. Powerlifting. So powerlifting, you want, you know, you're snorting torque and then, and then, uh, and golf, you know, everyone's shut the hell up. I'm trying to swing a club here. Yeah. So, you know, has anybody tried nose torque and death metal and golf? I mean, we do have the data that shows it doesn't actually work. Didn't they make a movie about that? Yeah. But I mean, you know, you can even bring it back to weightlifting, the difference between

powerlifting and Olympic lifting. Oh yeah. Right. I mean like Olympic, if you go to a powerlifting meet, they got walking music. You're like rocking ACDC or Danzig. Yeah. Better to rock Danzig. Hell, yeah. Well, though. Oh, hell, yeah. But at a weightlifting meet, it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then quiet, right? Right, yeah. Because it's more, it takes a little more technique. Unless you're John North. Unless you're John North. Unless you're John North, you're a maniac, you scream and yell. It seems to work for him. His curve is way skewed. Way skewed.

There's a lot of things skewed about John North. I've never met John North. Man, is he entertaining. And he's a strong dude and a good lifter, man. I'd love to meet him. But, yeah, he's, I mean, listen, I'm a psychologist. I like to meet interesting folks. He's a good lifter, man. I'd love to meet him. But yeah, he's, I mean, listen, I'm a psychologist. I like to meet interesting folks. He's a good example.

He's a man to be studied. You can say it, all right? So John's not a raw. You're not going to offend him. John's not raw, brutal, strong guy. He's not necessarily a genetically blessed guy, although he's athletic as hell.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think what he benefits from, another angle that you might be able to speak to, is that I think he is passionate and he's athletic as hell. But I think what he benefits from another angle that you might be able to speak to is that I think he is, is passionate and he harnesses that emotion and he believes a hundred percent that if I just give myself to this totally, I can make magical shit happen. And for him it is, even though maybe by some of the numbers, it doesn't make sense. Like he doesn't squat a house, but he can lift weights with people who are much stronger.

So some emotional component that's really fueling his effort. Yeah, no, you're so right. And so like that kind of passion, we see, we see a couple of athletes like that in every sport. And I call it what I like to refer to it as, and this isn't really scientific, it's like prisoner of war effect, right? Like you're captured by the enemy. They feed you like a grain of rice for nine months.

Somehow you don't die because you're like, you're inside your head. I must survive. Right. Or like the soldier who gets shot should be dead, but his guys carrying him out of the jungle are like, dude, you're fine, you're fine, you're fine. Like our brain is so magnificent that it can control our physiology. I think you're right about John. John's got that passion where he's probably not the raw brute strength,

technical guy, but man, he wants it and he wills himself to do it. And, you know, that's another thing psychologically hard to train an athlete to do. Recently we have a guy who just won, just broke an American record in the snatch and won the youth nationals as a 13-year-old. He snatched 76 and got called on a press out clean and jerking 97. He's 13, he's 6'1". Oh, my God. Yeah, like I told his dad, I was like, you better bring a birth certificate.

He's taller than I am. Right. And, uh, but when he started with us, he like, you know, he's like, oh yeah, I'm tired. I feel like I'm a throw up. Like, and this is too hard. And over the year we've been training him, all of a sudden you see that, that switch. All of a sudden now he's hit some lists. He knows he can do it.

He feels he can do it. Even when he misses, he's like, I know I can hit that shit. And I mean, he's 13. He probably doesn't talk like that in front of his dad. So it's amazing. Our ability to will ourselves to do things, you know, you heard the old motto, mind over matter, but there's some truth in that. The reason that, that, that, um, saying sticks around is because there's truth in it. Right. And so I think you're right about John. He, that passion, that desire, that drive, he wants to be the best. And, you know, there's that old cliche where, like, whether you think you can or you can't, you're right.

And I think he thinks he can, and damn, he's doing good. I wonder one day if we'll ever have an actual good explanation for what the fuck is going on, like a placebo effect, you know, a situation where the brain is somehow enforcing some sort of action based on what is interpreting to be true. Yeah. Like, oh, we think we've got this drug, or we think this program is the tits. So let's go ahead and make ourselves really fucking strong. There's some sort of strange action going on between what happens in your muscle and the hormonal cascades and what your brain is perceiving.

It's wild. It's science fiction. I've been reading a little bit about genetic expression. And man, you start thinking about how and why genes express. You're like, what the hell? I'm about to do an experiment here in the next couple of weeks where I'm going to do a fast. Self-experiment. Just to see.

Another experiment on my body where I'm going to do a fast and see if I can measure some type of genetic expression of survival, you know, and upregulation of certain hormones after the fact. These are some things that I'm interested in now. This sounds expensive, man. Who's going to do the upregulation study? It's going to be me. Is there a place down there you can take your blood? Yeah, I fund my own studies with blood work. And then sometimes I just analyze it myself.

Sometimes I ask for someone to look at it. It depends on what we're measuring because some things I just don't know what the hell I'm looking at. Some things like I know, like I have a theory about what might happen. And so I'm going to be looking at very specific things. But just because it may be true for me, but it doesn't mean it's true for somebody else. It's true. And like I like what you're doing, the self-experimentation. I think that's so important for athletes to do, even with their training.

I know certain training programs for me do not work. I'm 40. The volume, the intensity, what have you, even the movements, like going overhead every single day is not good for these old desk jockey shoulders. It's a great program. It works for lots of people. It's not about which one's better. It's just that for you, it's not the right thing.

It's not the right thing. And so the same thing goes with this genetic expression thing. Like my, one of the first things I have to teach my students when I teach genetics is, you know,

you ask them, what are genes? And they're like, oh, it's your DNA. Okay, but what do they do? Dumbfounded faces. We used to think they were like the building blocks,

which breaks my heart. But genes are going on and off all the time. They're not, they're like light switches or more, more, a better analogy time. They're like light switches. Or a better analogy would be they're like a rheostat, like dimmer, right? Dimmer.

Because you eat certain things, you upregulate a gene. You eat different things, you downregulate a gene. But we've got thousands of these genes that are doing things together, working. So it's a factorial design, if you guys know what that means. It's not just 30,000 genes working, but it's 30,000 times 29,000 times 28,000. I mean, it's like millions of combinations. Endlessly complex. And it's also like your dad ate this thing

or had a traumatic event, therefore you have a different expression of your genes. So the thing is, the epigenetics is you could have inherited not only the actual gene for it, but the genetic propensity for the expression of something. This is what we see in moms, right? Oh geez.

So it's like getting complicated. No, I mean, it's really, here's how I like, here's how it works. Simply like, so like,

so mom's got a little, a little fetus in her, right? And mom eats carrots, right? The baby comes out preferring carrots. Why? Because,

because what mom eats is a good predictor for what's happening in the environment. Baby comes out liking chocolate, not carrots. Guess what happens to the baby? Fucking dies. So you inherit a propensity for expression of genes that are going to be beneficial to the previous generation

for your survival and reproductive success. I mean, when all that shit genetics comes down to, it's all about sex, which is why I like it. Yeah. One of the biggest things I've seen in regard to, like one of the stories I've heard in regard to gene expression is a woman is pregnant with a baby, and she is in a harsh environment. Lots of stress.

Things are going on that are out of control. A lot of cortisol all the time, and that's going to cause some genes to express. With the infant, it's going to develop certain parts of the brain more than others, and that child is probably going to grow up to be a little more aggressive. It's going to be much more able to adapt to a situation where it's harsher. Probably going to get more fights growing up. Might not do so well in college. May not be able to hold a relationship. Which I think, how many people do I know who have this problem?

You know what I mean? And then the baby that was born Or that was in the mother's womb And there was a very loving Situation going on The woman was Naturally just good at Staying calm and keeping the cortisol low

And had good habits That baby's going to come out and be a little more even keel Probably get along with our modern society a little bit better. You throw them in a starvation type scenario, they may not do so well. They may not end up being the best soldier in the world. But it just kind of depends on what happens at that point. And sometimes I get to thinking, I'm like, oh man, when we have kids one day, I got to really...

You got to beat her up. You got to beat her up. What kind of baby do we want to make? But I think maybe small doses of different things at different points could be the answer there. It's like, you know, let's have some intense doses of stress, exercise, followed by a nice, healthy recovery. Absolutely. You know, probably the things that are best for most of us. Yeah, and that's kind of what I was saying, too, is, like, the mom's uterus is a predictor for the environment.

And so evolution works in two ways. It either adapts the offspring or it aborts it. So, like, under those harsh, stressful environments of mom, the two options are I better make this baby as fit, biologically fit as possible so it can withstand the harsh environments that mom is telling me is out there. Or I abort it because I can't do that. Like physiologically, we can't make this critter survivable. Right. So let's get rid of it. And we'll try again.

It's that bad. Yeah. It's not worth it. And so those are, I mean, it's like a two choice alternative for evolution, but oftentimes like because we're so hypercaloric, humans can actually circumvent that evolutionary pressure, which is really an interesting thing that we don't see. It has profound effects for what does not get selected against.

Absolutely. It makes humans, it's part of what makes humans a little different is that culture relative to other animals, in which cases abortion is much more common than adaptation to the stressor. So it's more common to lose a baby than it is. Yeah, I mean, like you got a pregnant rat and you shock it all day long. It's still going to pump out a baby.

No, no, no. The rat will probably abort because it's overstressed if you stress it enough. Because the thing about birthing is that it decreases longevity in females. So the more babies you have, the shorter lifespan you have. So women got it bad.

Wow. Women got it bad. Poor ladies. Yeah, so biology needs to temper that relationship in a way that's adaptive for both the female and the production of offspring.

There's no sense in bringing a baby into the world if it's just going to die, right? Right. Because then you've actually ticked off maybe like a unit of longevity

and produced no genetic offspring in the next generation. Evolution is pretty smart. Wow. This week on Barbell Shrugged, we talk about abortion. He's not doing an intentional abortion. We've got to do asterisk seriously. We're talking about the pluses and minuses.

We would call it like a miscarriage. The actual biological cost of if things aren't working out, what would happen if this baby comes into the world? The scientist in him is using terminology that's not common to the layperson. He's talking about miscarriage. All right. We're going to stay with the ethical considerations. Right, right.

We're going to get hate mail. Instant comments. Send it to me. Send it to me. Send it to him. It was all him. We swear. We swear.

Yeah, if you didn't like this episode, all Steve's fault. You can follow me at Instagram. You can go F yourself at gmail.com. Really though, where can we find you? Should we follow you anywhere? I mean, I don't really have anything going on. I got the Power Athlete podcast, Power Athlete Radio

podcast, and I do some stuff on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter. So what's your Instagram handle? Instagram handle is SPLATEK 16. So SPLATIC16. Oh, geez. So what's your Instagram handle? Instagram handle is S-P-L-A-T-E-K One six. So Splatic one six. Oh, geez. Yeah, it's going to be hard

for people to find. We'll promote it through our Twitter or something. I'll put a link to you. I'll put a link to you, man. Cool. Excellent. All right, guys.

Don't forget, go to barbellstrug.com. Sign up for the newsletter and we will send you super cool emails. Cheers. Cheers. Thanks, guys.