Barbell Shrugged - 150 - How We (and Diane Fu) Define Progress in the Gym

Episode Date: November 12, 2014

This week on Barbell Shrug, Doug, Mike, and that other guy, Chris, talk about progress. Hey, this is Rich Froning. You're listening to Barbell Shrug. For the video version, go to barbellshrug.com. Are we all recognized in the folly? Are we on the same page, Michael? Probably not. Very rarely, huh? Welcome to Barbell Shrugged.

I'm Mike Bledsoe with Doug Larson, Chris Moore, CTP behind the camera. We have traveled to Phoenix, Arizona to hang out with the guys at Rush Club. If you want to check that out, RushClubNation.com. It's a new style of functional fitness. They fight, though. Heads up, competition. It's a new style of functional fitness. They fight, though. Heads up, competition. That's as far as we'll go into that because it's really confusing. Check it out.

It's so cool. Functional fitness competitions, right? But, yeah, so we're talking about we're going to do a show, just the three of us talking. CTP might jump in about Diane Fu's article that she wrote for The Daily, which The Daily is something that we just started doing a few weeks ago.

Chris, actually, tell everyone about The Daily first. I was trying to think of what else we could do to give people more of what we already do because we do this show once a week every week, which is cool enough, but people want more. So I was trying to think of what the highest value thing we could do is. And a blog is always like a really good idea

uh but i didn't want to do just a blog i want to think how could i really make it uh the same kind of feeling as a show i wanted people to like read it and go feels like barbell shrugged so i knew it was kind of a challenge how do you do that so i saw i said well the most of the content i think i'll just build it around what we do the show show. The best moments are when you phrase a question that comes out of your experience and the idea you have, and you get a great response from the person you ask the question to. And it kicks off some chain of unknown. Neither one of you thought you'd be talking about what you talk about, so it kind of kicks off new ideas. That's sort of the mission statement of the daily is to mix ideas and see what happens.

So I pitched Diane a question. From my perspective, and I thought maybe she was, you know, from her perspective, she wasn't thinking this is what she looked like. But I said, to me, it looks like you are somebody who really, really values as a coach, like doing a better and more beautiful snatch or squat over just doing a heavier one. Like load doesn't seem to be the sole marker of progress for you. It's not the only thing that's important to you. So, Diane, what is? Like, how do you define progress?

I was like, is that? I was like, of course, whenever you do something like this, you go, is that question dumb? Like, you don't have to answer if it's stupid or not. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. But she actually came back and was like, wow, I guess I've never thought of it that way.

So, again, the process of asking questions is really awesome. I do like that style. Now when people email me like, hey, do you mind contributing an article or something? They're like, an article? I'm like, well, if you have something very, very specific you need answered, much more likely to write that. Yeah, so it's like a Socratic process.

Maybe try to draw out what neither one of us thought was there. So that's what we did with that. That's what we tried to do with every post. I think you can kind of feel the honesty. But she laid out, well, I guess I kind of knew it was there, but it turned out to be really, really awesome. So awesome in the fact that, you know, I guess she told me she was going to use that as like her official decoration.

This is what's important to me. She broke it down like the physical, mental, and emotional way she assesses how an athlete matures from basically what she used the metaphor a couple times like a baby which i think works people get like when you're a picture of a newborn calf getting up trembling and like everything is is edgy and jittery and not very refined not very beautiful and then as soon as that calf can get up to full speed and run off and live as a fully functional animal who doesn't need instruction,

that's what she wanted to achieve with her athletes. Was that for her. It wasn't just about mindlessly putting weight on a bar. It was about having them mature at all these dimensions to the point where they could then go off and coach people. They didn't need her anymore. That was the best part of the whole article was the fact that she was trying to get her athletes to the point where they don't need her anymore.

They've surpassed her in some way. And they can even come back and coach her if she's really done her job. And that was actually when I was growing up and I was growing up in Washington with my coach, Mark. That was what he always told me. He was like, I'm trying to get you to where you don't need me anymore. And that is exactly what happened. Like now, Mark calls me for training advice. There's certainly a million things he still does better than me with respect to coaching, but,

but that happened where I, I was able to kind of, um, you know, get away from the homestead and go out on my own into the, into the real world and be just fine on my own without needing him anymore. Yeah. You became a real peers. Like that's, what's really awesome. Right. It's like, uh, him lifting you up to his level was his greatest gift that he could give you. What was the quote she had at the very end? It kind of summarized the whole thing. It was like, first you're standing behind me, and then you're standing next to me, and then eventually you're standing in front of me, or something like that. Yeah, she was

very careful, Diana Levy. She was like, I really love that last sentence. I read between the lines, like, okay, I won't edit the last sentence. She was like, to quote Diane Fu, which is, Diane, it's lovely. Progress to me is an athlete that moves from following behind me to standing next to me to eventually surpassing

me as their coach that's beautiful I mean that's really like the best declaration of what a coach is I could possibly imagine like we can name examples one of them I just heard in a very crazy way coaches who I don't think live that kind of life,

like very boisterous, very self-focused, like that guy who called us all out from Jacksonville. We won't get into that. We can go to John North's podcast for that. There are certain coaching behaviors that aren't so open-minded. And for Diane to say what's most important to me is for athletes to surpass me and leave me behind, that's a brave thing.

It's a brave stance to take if you're a coach, to say what I want important to me is for athletes to surpass me and leave me behind, that's a brave thing. It's a brave stance to take if you're a coach, to say what I want to do is get rid of my clients. That's how I'm successful as a coach is to get everybody out of here. But then also to be so good at that, if you trust that, then people see that. And you're always going to have new talent who wants to constantly come to you because you're doing such a good job prepping people. If you coach anyone for any appreciable amount of time, you'll realize that eventually it's not just about teaching them movement. You're really turning into kind of a life mentor in a way. So I really appreciate the fact that she was looking at it from three different angles where she was looking at their mental, their emotional, and their physical worlds,

and she's trying to develop them in all three capacities. Yeah, people really latch on to the numbers, and the numbers are just like one little part of the pie. What kind of goes into talking about the mental side of things too is i talk to athletes who uh they're like when will i be ready to compete i'm like just compete now like start competing now because that's so much of people put so much emphasis on the lifts how strong how how big their squad is how much their snatch gets up to but how they're going to perform in, training, compared to how they're going to perform on the platform, that's a whole other mental aspect that needs to be trained.

Sure. So you've got to practice to compete and stuff like that. She didn't get into specifically that, but as you're thinking about mental, emotional, physical, people put so much focus on the physical and on movement and getting physically stronger that the mentally strong and the practice of being in the spotlight and stuff like that is something that's neglected way too much.

I'm always curious to see everybody really focuses hard, obviously, on programming and diet. The things that are so important, sleep, and the basic fundamentals are routinely skipped over. The idea of coaching, I think, seeing kind of like a big shift towards where people think that coaching is programming and that is a factor in coaching. But so many people are like, I get a program from my coach

and then I don't have really any conversations about it at all. I just do it, send them videos. Maybe they watch it, maybe they don't have really any conversations about it at all. I just do it, send them videos. Maybe they watch it, maybe they don't. I'm like, you know, I was like, okay, you have a program designer. Let's not call that person a coach. Like your coach is somebody who you're communicating with, you're getting feedback from, and they're helping build you up. And so that's one of the things that like stand out to me a lot of times.

People go, they call this person their coach that gives them like a third of the pie. It's like, well, there's probably some other things that you get a lot more even if you get someone who's not doing the best program design in the world the fact that you have a coach on site helping you out or you're interacting with is going to take you to the next level yeah you wouldn't call someone your teacher just because they wrote you a blog post every day right i mean they're they're an author so you're you're learning from them but they're not necessarily your your teacher like like your school teacher would be your teacher, they're an author in some way. You're learning from them, but they're not necessarily your teacher. Like your school teacher would be your teacher,

where they're there every day interacting with you, giving you information. Them, you know, the student repeating back what they heard and their interpretation of it, and then the teacher correcting there's some interaction there. That's what coaching and teaching is. So you can't just get the written workouts. It's a piece of it, to be sure, and it's really important, but there's so much more to it than that.

You know who's doing a good job of this now is i think the muscle driver crew that's pretty much one of that's like one of our best camps but now you have glenn and don and uh travis does some coaching but what are they doing like if you really look what the job of coaches they're kind of mimicking i guess what like a european coach will do you see those guys kind of just walking around like if you watch kokov's little videos they're not out all the russian videos this training program you have these guys kind of just walking around. Like, if you watch Kokov's little videos and, like, all the Russian videos. They're not out there telling you to do this training program or that training program. You have these guys kind of living amongst the lifters and observing carefully and just getting a sense of what's going on and watching their reactions,

not always just jumping in and saying, all right, add this weight. They're not, like, doing that. They're kind of seeing how they are living, kind of monitoring the conditions. And then they know, like I said, they know about, like, well, maybe the loading is a little high or this, that, and the other. They also know, oh, I had breakfast with him, so I know that his girlfriend loading's a little high or this, that, and the other. But I also know, I had breakfast with him, so I know that his girlfriend broke up a little bit or something.

And like, they know all, they're tied into all these emotions that are also equally as important to be able to regulate. They have too, is the community. Yeah.

You know, people living in the same vicinity of each other. One of the most genius things. Training together every day. Things like that. People are, athletes are pushing each other.

You know, I don't imagine. Some of the best places I've seen where the best athletes are coming out, the coaches aren't cracking the whip. The athletes are pushing each other. There's a genius post one time from Glenn, Glenn Pendlay, who's talking about how his observations from going to Pan Ams and all these meets where big-time coaches and athletes were coming.

The biggest names, the biggest camps were coming, like the South American lifters and Russians and everybody. And he goes, it's interesting to see what they talk about and what they don't. And you see what they do and you see what they don't do. They're all doing a little different things. Some might do more RDLs than the other. Some might squat a little heavier, closer to the competition than the others or whatever.

But he goes, no one's going, that guy's doing a little bit heavier squat. Man, we should. There's none of this, like, what is the secret they're doing? They all understand that's one thing, but all the other factors are so heavily more important. Like all the other lifestyle factors that are also involved. Because they all do similar things. You can get strong with a lot of basic tools and different combinations.

People get really lost on only focusing on looking for secrets and numbers. And you're really missing out on all the other ways. Yeah. I really appreciated when we were recording world-class weightlifting with Justin Thacker. He broke down all the things that all the different countries do, like say China, United States, Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria,

wherever, he broke down all the things that all these countries do that are like the exact same everyone does these things and then he broke another category down where he's saying they for the most part kind of do these things similarly and then there's this little category at the bottom where he said that each country does these things drastically differently and everyone seems to focus on those things that are drastically differently forgetting that like 80 of it really is the same yeah they're focusing on those little details and then when you're trying to to start a program and you're brand spanking new you shouldn't focus on those little details like should i should i do what the russians are

doing should i do what the chinese are doing like just focus on the big picture and what everyone is doing that is the same if you do that stuff you'll get pretty good yeah amazingly good it's amazing with just repetition and fundamentals like i don't know how we how can we make it sexier to get to get around the repetition and fundamentals? Everybody knows that consistency is like the biggest thing that's going to matter most

in strength training. Yeah. And it's doing what you know you should be doing more frequently. Well, I get the question, you know, from people who are like,

should I take, which BCAA supplement should I take? And my response is usually like, well, how much sleep do you get? Yeah. And they go, oh, you know, probably like five to six hours a night. I'm like, BCAAs aren't going to help you. Let's, you know, if you take the same energy you're putting in what you want to take for

supplements and you put that into just getting eight hours of sleep a night, the benefit there is going to outweigh any supplement you could take. The same thing goes with like a guy might be really focused on like, okay, I need to get stronger. So there's options I know of this program versus this one. Try one. Ah, wasn't it? Go for this one.

Ah, wasn't it? That process. You forgot. Oh, fuck. I forgot what I was going to say. What was I going to say? I have no idea what you were going to say, actually. That's why I was letting you say it.

Oh, God. Well, every once in a while, the thought just completely vaporizes out of your mind. Has there ever been a part in the show where I derailed myself? It's just now happening. Oh. Oh, no, no.

Okay, okay. I got it. See, I have to get back on track by trying to say something myself, and then he'll butt right in. See? If we let him just sit there and think on his own,

there's no chance. It was about Diane's focus, the mental point about how an athlete will look all around for the program solution but they'll forget that when they go for a heavy lift,

they're emotionally unstable about it. Oh, yeah. They act immature about it and they miss it when all they need to do is say, what went wrong? Okay, I need to work on that.

They go, I missed it. Why am I not good enough to make the way you're talking about a very different version fidgeting and the new lister's being very fidgety and self not being self-aware being full of self doubt and how as you see that go away and you see them emerge as somebody who can go off and basically run on their own so that's how you know you're doing your job better you feel like that's what you're doing like back in powerlifting when you like slam your head against the barbell and like like try to get like really fucking select up for a lift

where it was that was that a lack of confidence that was just like you trying to get motivated for the lift well one it's the reason why now sometimes i forget things no the point you're making was uh like yeah for competition one of the things i did in front of cameras and stuff because i thought it was necessary i thought the more intense you could get the more you would it would just like correlate with more load on the bar. That's part of the powerlifting culture too, though. It is. It's what I got burned out with in time.

I love it. I respect people who still get fired up about it, but I feel like you can't do that for long. It's very intense, and if you're going to do it, go for it with everything you've got, but it's so redlined all the time, that sport, and everything is pushed to so extreme.

Like where everything can't even push yourself beyond what you can even do. Everything is extreme. That's why after a while I was like I just couldn't get the same amount of enjoyment out of it. So I looked back and go, yeah, I didn't need to slam my head in the bar. What I needed to do was center my breathing. Like we had put another post up on the daily about the power of breathing. Yeah. Breathing deeply into the belly.

Yeah, a guy who was a fan of – That's another about the day is like that guy's a fan of the show chas who wrote it he's been a fan of the barbara buddha stuff i did in the past and he's been just a guy and like the little um mission statement on the page says he trains at thacker's place oh does he lab yeah so he's so i i put out a statement that says like if you got an idea that's cool like we're not gonna publish if you've got an idea that's cool. We're not going to publish it if it's not good.

Let's be fair. But anybody who has a good idea. So you've submitted something and it hasn't been published. I mean it might be skipped.

It might be skipped. Hey we've got a limited amount of time. And by the way it might be good. He just doesn't think it's good.

Yeah. Everyone's more critical of their own work. You've got to take a shot at it. You've got to quickly make some kind of interpretation.

But the declaration is, like, if you get an idea, we want you to join the conversation. This is another way that we, and now everybody can be on Barbell Shrugged, because it's really hard to make it happen from a resource and time perspective and travel. But, like, we can get more people on that blog, and we can help people have their voices be heard.

And they can get their idea out, and they can mix it with, and we don't let anybody just comment, but I want to get more and more comments going on each article. And that engagement, like he had a great article on breathing. So if you're thinking about what really makes a difference in a squat, it's calming and centering your focus. It's ignoring the external stimulus.

It's knowing what positions you need to be in, filling your belly fully and deeply with air, unracking in a certain sequence and taking your time and not sitting down too quickly. There's all these things that need to be there. And if you're all out of control mentally, how can you keep 900 pounds on your back centered? I feel kind of ashamed now that if I could go back

and be a lot more disciplined and do a lot of things I know I should have done, but they weren't quite as fun. It didn't quite get me the same amount of attention. It didn't give me the same kind of hormone rush. What would those things be? Like these, the shouting and the barking is all about ego. It's me being not satisfied with myself

on some level where I got to bark for attention to kind of counterbalance. So at the time I was only pursuing a job I wasn't passionate about and frustrated that it wasn't bringing me happiness. So what else are you going to do? You're going to throw all that passion into lifting. It's like tension in your life.

That's why now I know I can't be a great lifter now anymore. I'm a little bit older and beat up. We all got that thing. But also, it's not, I just don't necessarily, like we're all like 20 years into our training careers. It's hard now to expect PRs on some things. Like you get kind of burned out. But now it's like to know what you got to do.

You got to be really, like to be a good PhD student, to be a good power lifter, weight lifter. The blinders have to be on a little bit, and you've got to really put everything you've got, give all you've got to the barbell. But if you also want to be somebody who's really living a thick, rich life, and you're really exploring and traveling and seeing everything and meeting and engaging different personalities

and doing what we're trying to do with the show now it's hard to then pour more of yourself like at night or something into heavy deadlifts or good mornings versus when i was a bit younger i was so intensely focused on proving myself in academics and prove myself a powerlifting there's only two things a lot of your identity was all wrapped up in it yeah so i needed to show people how strong I was. I didn't know that you could just demonstrate it by being calm and execute. Real strength, of course, is in the midst of an incredible turmoil or a heavy load, you remain calm and crystal clear focused.

That's what's strong and impressive is now to me as a lifter. My best lifts have come under very calm. I mean, if you watch, i'm a very i'm a very calm guy before and after the lifts use your picture on the head on the breathing because you've got yeah i think it's very brave if you actually do that too like to openly say you kind of openly call for calmness of yourself yeah for everybody a lot of people are like come on man let's go let's go all the fucking barking i don't anything. If people are yelling at me, I don't hear it anyway. And you would say that that made that approach versus what you were a little bit more like me in the past.

You probably got a little more fired up before. Yeah, when I was younger, I used to get fired up listening to death metal all the time. You know, jump around. You got fucking adrenal glands like Christmas hams when you're younger. You can just pump out all that emotion. I lifted weights fine then, but it's much better now. Part of it is experience, but really I think the best part of it is the intent of each lift and focusing on getting better every time you lift instead of moving better every time.

What did my foot do? Well, Diane's physical point. Yeah, and talking about that. The coolest example she's got yeah so it's coach woo yeah it's like every time i look was an opportunity to get shanghai he's the singaporean national team coach okay coach woo if you look in the article i've embedded i use the instagrams okay let me officially use this as a platform for making this statement everybody in the community if you look at it and get frustrated because the

pictures are covering text you are using internet Internet Explorer. Please don't do that. You should know better. Join the 21st century. You rascal. Do you have a phone in your pocket that you can touch the screen? Then that's got a browser that will look beautiful with our website. Called Chrome or Firefox. But the Instagram usage is strategic. It highlights the... I want you to go... The whole point is to try to reach out

and find voices that are unique and then put you in contact with them. We're trying to build a network. We're not pushing ads on it. We're not pushing an agenda. We're trying to write a certain kind of thing. Whatever pops up on there is what should be there because the focus isn't making our audience aware

that somebody's great and then showing them where to go to get more. It's little portals into people's worlds like you can you cannot think about anything about training for running like fuck running i would say that being as brash being as brash and as fat as me i would say that in the past yeah all powers would say that but when i got like nate like i could reach out to him and say nate we get along really great i guess i think what kind of question can i pitch like What do I need to know, Nate, if I want to not be a good runner but not hurt myself when I go to run? If I need to maybe be fitter for my own benefit.

How can I apply it to powerlifting? What was up with Will? Yeah, actually, I want to tie together that whole point. Do you have something to say about first? No. Well, Coach, so Diane's last point on the physical elements of getting better. People get really frustrated. Like, well, I can't.

My snatch is not moving upwards. Yeah, they're worried about the weight. Yeah. I go, well, that's only one way to get better at snatching. It's the obvious way. You're not cloaked off yet, and you feel like you notice a difference. Like, I'm weak. Well, okay.

Well, another way to get to there is to come back first. Yeah. And relearn it. Because when you relearn, like, okay, when way to get to there is to come back first. Yeah. Relearn it. Because when you relearn, like, okay, when Diane learns with Coach Wu, Coach Wu has a very unique style with that Asian-Chinese style, like all the pulling mechanics and stuff. It's got a lot of it looks the same, but it's coming from a totally different, like, perspective.

The way they see it and understand it and the way they feel the bar and the way they engage it is, like, not at all really. Like, some of it's bizarre at first. And what Diane loves is, like, getting in there and getting that discovery going and just learning again to pull different ways here's somebody who coaches it and you would say is a master of those lifts, she moves beautifully Diane's a beautiful lifter

and up until this experiment with Coach Wu that she started maybe, it's only been a couple months maybe, maybe a year, she's been interacting with them but she's been working with them more and more recently but to now go back and work so hard at fundamentals for her to be a master is really I think is a powerful statement.

She's not figuring out ways to make things more complicated in her training to get better, which is a typical thing. Add complexity, add intensity, you know, and then squeeze every bit of blood out of the stone. She's going back first, knowing that she can still do that. Once she exhausts all these ways to learn it from as many angles as possible, butt out of the stone. She's going back first, knowing that she can still do that. Like once

she exhausts all these ways to learn it from as many angles as possible, then she can push towards her ultimate peak. You know? Yeah. When we were in San Francisco last time and we were training with Diane, she was talking a lot about how, uh, specifically with her training with coach Wu, one of the things that they focus on is, is doing the lifts with, with minimal tension in your body, like maximum relaxation. Gr relaxation granted you want to have stability and stiffness in places that you need it like you need a very flat stiff spine but everything else in your whole body should be completely relaxed so pulling 100 kilos tense and pulling really hard is not the same as pulling it where you're very relaxed very loose very very

speedy very whippy whereas very it feels very easy so punching is definitely like that throwing a punch very stiff and throwing a punch very loose is not the same punch it's way so when boxers are beginning a lot of times they are very stiff and then you look at pro boxers and they're super loose and super whippy and they're fast and they punch really hard because because they're so fast in a lot of cases and then when when it matters like when they're going to connect sure that they get stiff right at the end of their extension right when they're landing that punch but for for weightlifters i do think that's a good measure of progress can you pull 100 kilos very loose and effortlessly almost like where you're where you are relaxed when you're doing it versus

having to like grit and strain and grind it out like if you can pull 100 kilos where you're grinding it and then a couple months later you can pull it and it feels easy and grind it out. Like if you can pull 100 kilos where you're grinding it and then a couple months later you can pull it and it feels easy and effortless and you're nice and relaxed, that's progress even if there's not any more weight on the bar. And people would think, and they go, I hear you, like that makes sense to people. Maybe they think, but still, Doug, I mean, I don't want to go heavy. I mean, fuck, come on, let's get strong. You definitely should go heavy.

And I think it's good. Maybe it's better to do it at certain times of the year. Like I think I remember, I think I remember in my own history. But there are definitely times in my training, like maybe in the off-season, like after a meet where I was like, well, I'm kind of beat up and tired of lifting heavy. So now I'm on a deliberate focus is lifting. Instead of ramping up, like if I do a four-week wave of squats where I'm like, week one, two, three, I'm going to add 5% to 10% each week and ramp up and then rest.

Usually the weight's going up, but how about keeping the weight the same two three i'm gonna add uh five to ten percent each week and ramp up and then rest usually the way it's going up but um how about keeping the weight the same and then having the the measure of progress be being able to do it faster more relaxed it was more like whip it's kind of hard to quantify that but i knew like i could measure the bar speed in the lab i wanted to but i also knew um like how how long it took me to do the work, how tired I was. I tried to get less and less tired by week three, not more and more loaded. By doing that, I still was able to get stronger because I got more and more efficient. It was a different way to train it, and it worked well for off-seasons.

It didn't involve beating myself up. I felt fantastic. I felt healed. I was still getting better and better and better position every week. One of the cool measurements that I looked at in some study that i can't i can't quote or cite in any way was with respect to athleticism who was the most athletic in the room and they measured a variety of things but one thing they found that that correlated to athleticism that most people would not think of at all wasn't speed of contraction. It was speed of a contracted muscle relaxing.

Right. And that's what made the fastest athletes, especially. And so like when you're, when we're talking about doing a very relaxed lift and you're not stressing and straining and there's not that, that tension throughout your whole body, except for the few places that you need it,

like, like along your spine and like in your grip, for example, when you do your pull and you get to full extension and then you need to pull yourself under the bar, you're not super tense and so you can relax quicker because you're not so tense. You don't keep going in that direction.

Yeah, so I can certainly get under the bar way faster when I'm nice and loose and whippy. I'm very quick like that when I'm not all tense. An additional point to that is, I think it's in Joel Jameson's book he talks about this, is aerobic training helps muscles relax faster. That's the

MMA strength and conditioning book that Joel Jameson wrote. Yeah, I think it's in that book, or I might have heard Joel say it somewhere else, but I'm going to attribute it to him. I think it is Joel. Which is a book that CrossFitters should read, even though it's MMA conditioning, it's conditioning for athletes. Read it. He's a great streaming conditioning coach one of the brightest

and uh yeah we did a show of them he just chose to do mma like he could go do crossfit or something like that he could coach that if he wanted yeah he just chooses mma principles are the same yeah but he's talking about that like just doing likeSD, long, slow distance, doing that type of training. I was like, do LSD? That too. It'll really help you recover and see things differently. But, you know, you got me off. Throw me off.

Let me see. I got you off after talking about LSD. Oh, geez. It's been a long time. We should just take a break. We should just take a break. We should just take a break. Real quick, though. Yeah, he talked about aerobic training.

You can find it. So that's one of those things that can make a strength athlete better is aerobic training. And that's one of those little things people don't think about. They think about, I've only got so much training volume to attribute here. But if you're working on speed and you need that speed of relaxation as a factor, then aerobic training does have a place now. And not just because it's healthy. Right. And anyone hearing that that's thinking like, whoa, like,

he's not saying like do like piles and mountains of aerobic training. He's just saying you can do some aerobic training. He's not talking about seven days a week, two hours a day. I think it's okay like two or three days a week. Probably start off, if you're a weightlifter, twice a week. Row for half an hour. Nice and easy. Yeah, it's easy. two or three days a week. Probably start off, if you're a weightlifter, twice a week. Row for half an hour. Nice and easy. Yeah, it's easy.

You don't need to run because if you're a weightlifter or a powerlifter. It's like adding salt to soup. Running. You can add a little bit at first. Don't add too much. You can't take it out. Don't start like fucking doing a mile run three times a day to recover or something. Yeah, the running thing I'm not a big fan of just because it can pound the knees.

Yeah, you want to do. If you're already doing something that's already hard on them, rowing or an airdyne or something like that can be really good. And nice and easy for like 30 minutes. I was happy to see – I started pinching that. Let's take a break real quick. That's what CTP was recommending.

Oh, I'm never going to do that. And then we'll get to your point because I know everyone's waiting for it. Oh, God. 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.

Did you guys know that there's all the Diet Coke you can drink over there? Oh, my God. And we're back. I don't mean to be the guy drinking a lot of Diet Coke, but I drink a lot of Diet Coke. Chris Moore just realized that being in the green room is actually kind of cool

because then you get unlimited Diet Coke. Is this what it's like to be a rock star? All the fucking Diet Coke you can drink in the green room of a club.

And barbecue. They just brought a barbecue. Now I know what it's like to have been in Van Halen in the 80s. Just like this. Just like this. Bouncing full mountain.

Anything you wanted. Diet Coke. Chicks. I was going to say two things before you cut me off. One was. Let's hear it. I was going to say, the guy who personified the speed of recovery was rich. Like, the ability to shut it down and get over it and move on to the next thing.

I don't think he's so good because he's so his peaks are so high because he's so consistent he gets down off the peak really quick and goes on to the next one really quick

like he goes on to the next hill Tony the Fridge style really quickly athletes you know people have a hard time going to sleep at night and things like that because their nervous system

is so fired up still and so one of the things is like if you can kind of turn that off better like you know through meditation or some other things. Yeah. Then you're going to recover better.

You need a really intense, strong stimulus and you got to get out of it quick. If you recover better every single day or between every single lift, you're going to perform better at each training session or between at each lift. That means that, you know, you're going to be phenomenally better than the next person. The only other thing I want to say, Michael. Go for it. Was that a great point about cardio, dude, was Ron Parsons. I've been talking about Ron a lot

because I was really impressed with his approach. He has a very reasonable approach to training. One of them was, we're not going to beat our guys up with a lot of running and stuff to condition them for fighting. We'll do things like the airdyne bike or the assault bike, maybe.

Is that the assault bike? Like a hardcore airdyne. Punishing. Punishing as hell. What's the climber? What's that called? The Versa climber. The Versa climber. The Versa climber. Like a hardcore air dive. Punishing. Punishing as hell. The climber. What's that called? The Versa climber. The Versa climber.

Versa climber. It's not going to beat you up. Rowers can do it. Prowler won't beat you up too bad either. These are tools that will punish you but

are very kind to you. You'll get sick before you get beat up. Exactly. Leading up to a fight, your biggest concern, your biggest goal is just not to show up

to the fight all fucked up. You want to be injury-free when you get there. It's the same thing with powerlifting, Doug. Like, Louie personally told me, he told me one time, I was asking him all these stupid fucking questions about how to taper. Like, what are this percentage and these ratios of bands and chains and weights? So he's like, the last couple weeks, he just broke it down into saying,

the hay is in the barn. You can only get weaker right now. Yeah. You need to back off. Like your job now is to preserve yourself. Stay safe. Stay safe and preserve yourself. Yeah.

Yeah. So I want to talk a little bit about like what we each think about progress. Like what is your idea of progress, Doug? You know, Diane did a good job breaking it up into three easy to digest categories. I'll probably do the same thing. On my end, instead of going the route of physical, mental, and emotional, I'll step out of just the exercise fitness space. And I'll say, if you want to have a lot of progress and be very successful in life, you can jump into the three big self-help mega niches. You have money and business, financial success,

you have relationship success, and you have health, fitness success, disease-free success. So I really think to be successful and to have progress in every area of your life, you really have to focus on those three things. And so you need to always be learning in every category, not just in health and fitness, but really you should be studying how to make more money

and provide for your family. You need to be studying health, fitness, nutrition, recovery. It's fundamental responsibility of life. You should be owning that skill. Well, if you're not good at those things, your health and fitness stuff will end up falling by the wayside.

It all exists in a balance. If your relationships are financially not doing well. You know who fucking says that better than anybody? Gene Simmons says that better than anybody. He's like, it's your fucking imperative to be good at business because it's your responsibility to provide and do your best. Yeah. Is that hardworking Eastern?

Gene Simmons is the man. I've got to read his new book, Me, Inc. I've read it. I've got it and I lost it, but I've also been reading Paul's book. Paul's is a magnificent book as well. Paul Stanley. Yeah. They get that shit figured out.

We've all become fans of Kiss since we read Gene Simmons' one book. These guys know what's going on. So, yeah, health, wealth, and relationships. Most people don't study those categories holistically. They might study health and fitness, and certainly if you watch the show, you more than likely do. But maybe you really haven't studied money and wealth and how to be a better provider.

Maybe you haven't studied how to be a better friend or a better partner or a better lover. You you haven't studied how to be a better friend or a better partner or a better lover. You should be studying all these things all the time and you got to pursue each one of them individually. You can't just focus on one

and neglect the others. Well, that's what people do though. People go, what should I be doing in my life? I go, I got to pursue a passion. They start like forcing things. They try to push a job. Everything gets out of balance.

They don't preserve. They forget that like you're never going to find what you're meant to do if you're trying to grasp for it. If you focus on the fundamentals, I'm going to be as balanced as possible for a while. Fundamentally understand what money means to me and how much I need to be happy. Fundamentally

understand value and how I can best contribute to others. Not trying to pick a job that pays me money. If you slow down a little bit, if you get good at this stuff, then what you should do becomes the most obvious thing in the world. Like, oh, I could totally do that. Because, like, duh. That's because the fundamentals were nailed.

Right. It's sad that that's not covered in school at all. Never. Most of the things are not. It's like they have math, history, science, all that stuff. And it's like health and relationships are the three things that that's what's required to be happy pretty much. That's why I like that success summit 3.0 that we went to where they covered a variety

of categories. They talked about business and they talked about health and they talked about sexuality and they talked about parenting. It was this broad spectrum of what you would hope education would be. It was all the most important things in life. Exactly. It wasn't just like abstract mathematical concepts and social studies. Like only hacks for business or whatever.

Yeah, it was. Do this to get a score you want. Okay, that doesn't mean anything. Yeah, I'll tell you one thing I've discovered is like in business, you go to like some of these like basic level business conferences, seminars, and you go to this seminar like this is how you get more members or this is how you get more, this is how you get more members or this is how you get more. This is how you make more money.

And that's all good and well. But anyone who does that stuff well and moves to the next level quickly, like pretty quickly, people stop focusing on all the tactics and strategies. They don't worry about money anymore either. Yeah. It moves more towards okay. How can we live fulfilled? And also how can we enable the people around us to live a fulfilled life?

Everything comes out. That's where strength comes from too. If you're happy with yourself and patient with yourself and you can take your time you're not going to rush and you get rest. You pay attention like rejuvenation as much as exertion. Then you become a strong motherfucker. That's how you become a good business person. You focus on value

and what you're doing and if it's still what you want to do, and are you doing it for the right reasons, you become stronger in the best ways. Yeah. Doug, how do you get progress in those areas? Yeah, I was going to say, I suppose that's more my definition of success than progress, but since we don't have much time, we have to wrap this up in the next five minutes, I'm going to turn it over to you. What's your definition of progress?

You know what? I think when it comes to progress, people too often set their, I guess I'll talk about what progress isn't first. And what progress isn't is just trying to follow the crowd. I think a lot of people think that they need to progress in an area that other people think that they call progress. Like people get real wrapped up in the back squat or something like that or the snatch or the clean and jerk. And it's one of those things where like they only want to do really well at that

because they want to win the appreciation or get recognition from others. Or they're just kind of like, well, that's what I'm supposed to progress at and that's where I want progress. And they don't really, I think a lot of times people chase these things for a while and then don't ever sit and go oh is that something is that even a goal for me is that is that a goal I really want to obtain or is it just something I'm

kind of falling in a crowd for so um I heard the definition of authenticity or being authentic is is saying what needs to be said without needing to be right and I feel like this falls in the same category it's doing what needs to be done for your own be said without needing to be right. And I feel like this falls in the same category. It's doing what needs to be done for your own authentic self without needing to be right to be accepted, to be validated by other people. Right, right. That takes time. Yeah, so that's what it's not.

And I think a lot of times people who want progress in an aspect of their life, they first need to sit down and think about what's really important for their progress or where they actually want to make progress. And they need to be selective because you can't progress in all directions equally all the time. So first things first is choose where you want to make progress and then develop, figure

out where you want to be and then work your way backwards from there. And so that's kind of like where i sit with progress and yeah and what diane said you know you got the mental emotional uh physical those things spot on across the board uh you can definitely see when an athlete is lacking in one of those and you can watch them on a platform see how they react to a mislift or lift they make or something like that what they need is not more Chico squats, Soviet Russian programming. We've got about one minute before you guys have to go get on stage, so go for it. Well, I wrote a book on this topic,

so I thought a lot about what progress means to me. What's the name of the book? Progress. It's kind of a code. I recently pulled that stuff back up when I did a daily post called The Progress Toolkit. People can just Google it or go to daily and you'll see it. But I think, for me, what I want out of my own life in business and with my family and in training

is getting better and better, more and more skilled at asking tough questions of myself. Like I laid out in that toolkit questions like things that you should always be asking yourself, sometimes in a serious, reflective way where you can just go off for a weekend maybe and tackle it once every couple months then daily in little ways asking what's my motive like what am i really committed to or not like what is it i don't want now like people stack goals but when's the last time you said okay what in your life can be removed so you can get what you want. That's a huge one. I think your not to-do list is equally important to your to-do list. Yeah, right? This is not my goal list.

It should be just as important as your goal list. Yeah, I did it like – Saying no is important. I go, well, I want to be as strong as possible. I don't think I want to do the power of the thing anymore. It takes a lot of courage to admit that you're not something you were. It wasn't wrong, and now you're not right. It's just that you changed, and you need to just be honest with yourself.

Like you say, well, maybe now what's important to me is I could do a good job at Fran or something. Power authors will look at crosswords and be confused. Like, that's not how you get strong, bro, not knowing that what they want is balance. They just want something different now. It's okay. Change is fine.

So what are you committed to? What is it you don't want? Are you having fun still? Like you pushed hard pushed hard you pushed hard you're getting something back is it what you want like that's the toughest fucking question to ask yourself like is this what i want does it still mean something to me uh yeah really everything we do is a real search for happiness and fulfillment even if we do it in a roundabout way yeah so you're not having fun and you're not feeling fulfilled and why are you doing it sometimes progress is taking something that is really important about that it? Sometimes progress is taking something that is really important to you.

I don't know about that. Sometimes progress is taking something that's really important to you and you care about. You poured a lot of yourself into and you've worked really hard at. You take a fucking knife

to its throat. Like, I had a blog for a long time, for years and years. There was a place where I could refine my voice and get okay with that and get comfortable

putting your voice out for everybody to comment on and the judge. That's a long process of getting used to it. It's a long fucking minute. But at some point you realize,

at some point you realize, at some point you realize, at some point you realize that you can keep doing that to get less and less fulfillment or you can just decide I don't want to do this instead of saying so much

I want to do a good job of encouraging other people to speak. And the courage to cut the throat of the passion project to let something else bloom, that could only happen because I was willing to let something else die strategically. Right. I knew I couldn't keep giving more and more. I had to give better quality effort to the thing that mattered most to me.

Yeah. And so cutting things away and having the courage to do that and admit what you aren't anymore is a good mark of progress to me. Yeah. I remember when the last day that I was ever at college football practice, I played like small D3 college football. So I wasn't like super attached to it, but I wanted to stop playing football and start doing MMA. And I remember the last day that I was ever at practice and I knew like that was the day that I was not going to go back anymore. I was done with it and I was going to do MMA from here on out.

I felt like a quitter. Yeah. Even though that wasn't me. I didn't want to be the football player anymore. I wanted to be an MMA fighter, and I was like, I'm done with it. I still felt like a quitter, and it was really hard to do that. Yeah, you've got to be brave to face it. Go, you know what?

It's okay if I'm something else now. That's hard. You've got to try a few times before you pull it off successfully. Yeah, nothing about it. Progress is tough. Wrap it up. Yeah, wrapping this bad. Progress is tough. Wrap it up. Yeah, wrapping this bad boy up,

make sure to go over to barbellstrug.com. The came? The came. The came. The came. Barbellstrug.com. And sign up for the newsletter.

Make sure to go over to the daily.barbellstrug.com. We're trying to merge these sites. It's going to happen. Hopefully, by the time it's posted, it's already done.

So, what I'm saying won't make any sense, and that's a good thing. For God's sake, go read Diane's article. It's fantastic. Yeah, she crushed it. There's a lot of other good stuff on there. We're going to do a good job of daily getting you more and more good stuff, folks. Stay tuned. Later.

Thank you.