Barbell Shrugged - 171- "How You Feel Is A Lie" w/ John Broz

Episode Date: April 1, 2015

Hey, this is Rich Froning. You're listening to Barbell Shrug. For the video version, go to barbellshrug.com. Welcome to Barbell Shrug. I'm Mike Bledsoe. Sitting here with Chris Morris. Got CTP behind the camera. Got Charlotte back there, too. And we're up here in Columbus, Ohio at the Arnold Sports Fest. We're sitting atop the Muscle Farm booth in the Expo Hall. The Expo Hall is the craziest thing on earth. It's madness. This is a little solitude of silence.

Relative silence. We have brought Mr. John Brose here of Average Bros Weightlifting Gym. Yeah, it's Average Bros Gym. Average Bros Gym. Las Vegas, Nevada. At Las Vegas. And bros here of uh average bros uh weightlifting gym average bros gym las vegas nevada and las vegas and uh yeah we came up here so it'd be nice and quiet yeah i was just afraid to come in through the crowd i'd be pissed by the time i got here and then i was on like a dick on the phone yeah yeah nah but i was asking before i was like is it average bros because i'm like i know it's bros but

am i getting it mixed up with the movie? Like, did you come first, or was it the movie? No, we jacked the idea pretty much. It's a dodgeball. It's an awesome movie, but an awesomer gym. You just moved the gym to a new spot, didn't you? Yeah, December, second week of December, we moved to a new location. Now we're right on Las Vegas Boulevard.

Oh, sweet. Yeah. You get a lot of visitors that drop in, and the other locations we've had have been pretty covert. Like, the first one we nicknamed it Area 51 because it was an industrial park, no signs, no address on the building, and even if you gave people directions, they could never find it.

So this one's, like, about as obvious as possible. Is that a tactic to attract better athletes who are hungry? If they can find the fucking place, maybe you believe they'll stick with the training long enough? Well, that wasn't the original reason. I had a business there, but that's a good idea, though. Yeah, so I started reading about y'all's training methods a while back, a few years, maybe a year or two.

I don't know. Yeah, it made a big splash. My whole time is completely warped. My perception of time is completely warped. We referenced it the other day about maybe two or three years. 1957. I think you got really popular when that, I think Brett Contreras put out a squat article,

and then the idea of squatting more frequently, heavier, got really hot. Some people probably have got success. Maybe some people got the wrong idea of it. It was interesting about that article that Brett wrote. He came to my gym and interviewed me for that that like two years prior to that even being released. Oh, wow. It was quite a while before it came out. And he was on his way to New Zealand, I believe, to do like his further edges education.

And he came out and interviewed me. And I had my – it was in the first location still. Yeah. Which was a granite company that I had in Las Vegas. And it was funny, I actually took him with me on an estimate and left him in the car for an hour while I did this estimate. He was late for his flight. He was catching his plane to go to New Zealand that day. Oh, shit.

And he almost missed the plane because I was too long with the customer, which was pretty funny. And then like eight months later, he sent me a rough draft of it. And he'd been so long, he forgot so much, I basically had to redo the whole thing and then send it back to him. Oh, wow. But it was pretty interesting. So I'm glad it finally came out because a lot of people have been exposed to it since then. You want to give everybody just the basics, the core philosophy of how you train your whales, the average bros.

I mean, you got a lot of your ideas. I mean, you roomed with the very famous Bulgarian whale. We can give the high and low of the story to give people some context, but how do you approach how you train your athletes? Well, it started when I was a lot younger. It started when I started lifting when I was a kid. I was 10. And back then, you know, in the 70s, there was magazines

and there was things available, but not very many. And most of the stuff you learn was just through, like folklore, but weightlifting lore, I call it. Yeah. It's like you hear things handed down through generations or anecdotes or traditions and you see people doing certain things. And, you know, it's just like you hear certain things. And for me, a lot, the measure of strength back then was like, hey, how much do you bench? You know? Oh, yeah.

And so everyone was a really good bencher, and I sucked. So I was like, well, I just want to beat these guys. So I just started benching every day. And within a year, I passed everybody up. So instinctively, to me, it just made sense that even when I was sore and I felt terrible, I would still just bench every day. And so fast forward like 20 years when I met my last coach, whose name was Antonio Krastev. He was on the Bulgarian national team for about 13 years. And for people in the audience, this was a very, very seriously strong human being. Yeah, I think there's different ways

you can measure who's great or who's the best. I mean, there's always, everyone has a different perspective. But in the sport of weightlifting, there's always, everyone has their different perspective. But in the sport of weightlifting, your goal is to lift as much weight as possible. And he lifted officially in international competition more than any human being ever has. So, to me, I would say he's the greatest snatcher in the world. What were the best lifts in competition? 216 kilos. The snatch?

Yeah, so 476 pounds. And then in training, he did 222.5, which is 495. So, imagine five wheels and snatch. Yeah, snatch five plates. I always tell people, I see people snatch those kind of weights. I go, that is a fucking really good snatch grip deadlift. Yeah. 500-pound snatch grip deadlift without straps or something is really good.

I mean, that would be a tough deadlift for me. Yeah, much less snatch the fucking thing. It's amazing. Yeah, yeah. What did he clean and jerk? His best was 262. Wow. So, you know, a little under 5 did he clean and jerk? His best was 262. Wow. So, you know,

a little under 5. I love the story you tell about him. Didn't he enter like a, he was retired for a while, entered a strongman competition of some sort just without much effort

at all, just smashed everybody. Well, he trained for powerlifting and, you know, for a while. So he did it and he ended up

squatting 410 like rock bottom. So what is that? 900 something? Jeez. it. He ended up squatting 410, like rock bottom. So what is that? 900 something? He was a strong guy. So I learned a lot from him. So when I first met him he said, hey, we're going to train every day. I was like, ah, cool.

It didn't really take much convincing because instinctively when I was a kid that just was what I did anyways. So I was an easy sell. So for your guys, they squat every day? Well, your guys, they squat every day. Yeah. Well, some guys squat more than every day, if that's possible.

They squat 13 times a week. Yeah. I mean, I think Pat Mendez caught my attention the first time. He was squatting a lot, very often. Yeah, Pat was to the point where he was in his morning workouts. He would squat up to 250 kilos. It was pretty routine. So 550 squat in the morning. Very speedy squats, too.

Yeah, he would squat 250 in the morning, and he would, you know, power snatch, power clean, and then after that in the afternoon, we would snatch, clean and jerk, and squat again to max. And then some days... When you say to max, I mean, is that like... Until you miss. So you squat until you miss? Mm-hmm.

Okay. So you do hit failure? Yeah, but, I mean, the thing about squats when you miss is a lot of times you miss. So you squat until you miss. Mm-hmm. Okay. So you do hit failure. Yeah, but, I mean, the thing about squats when you miss is a lot of times you miss for different reasons because there's so many things you're doing when you squat. I mean, like maybe your back is tired or maybe your legs are tired or maybe you can't hold your positions well or maybe you're just moving too slow. I mean, there's so many things involved with the squat that it's, you know, there's always some weak link in the chain that's going to be the weak link today,

but it may not be the weak link tomorrow. Gotcha. So sometimes you miss for different's, you know, there's always some weak link in the chain that's going to be the weak link today, but it may not be the weak link tomorrow. Gotcha. So sometimes you miss for different reasons, you know, but ultimately, I mean, after a while when they, when people become proficient squatters, then I don't really let them go to that little, you know, the nth degree anymore because they just risk injury when they know how to fight with the weight, which is something you have to learn too. Most people squat, like 95% of the people I see squat don they don't know how to really fight. They miss, but like... As soon as they start straining, they bail or...

Yeah, they don't really know how to truly fight with the weight. Once you learn how to fight with heavy squats, then you have to protect the athlete and make sure they don't get hurt because you don't really need attempts like that to be great, to be a good squatter. You need 90% of that true number, whatever that is, or more, but you don't need that last. Once you cross that threshold, you've got the biggest bang for your buck. You can back off.

The more elite the athlete, maybe the more you need to back off a little bit from those high weights. Once they really, truly learn how to lift, then you have to hold them back a little bit and not really let them. And what happens by the time they develop the mentality that it takes to get to that, then they always want to get to this number. And so it's interesting,

like I noticed that in the beginning when people start lifting, you have to push them and introduce them to what it's like to have to fight with the weights hard and push them hard. And they have to learn how to fight with heavy weight, which is a skill set all in itself. And then they get to a certain point and you almost have to hold them back a little bit to protect them and make sure they don't get hurt. And so that's when you resort like, twos and threes where it's within a range where it's going to benefit them and get the volume at a higher percentage, which can help them get stronger, but not really push them to grind through heavy, heavy singles where you can just risk injury, which there's no point in. And you have your guys working up to a heavy single, double, triple.

Again, it depends on who they are and where they are in the training. Are you doing any drop sets after that, or they just hit that high-intensity number and then call it a day or move on to the next movement? Again, it depends on the athlete. Let's say that somebody is just coming back. I have a guy that's in the gym now. He's just coming back from being gone for a few years,

and he had squatted 200 kilos in the past. So I know he knows how to fight with heavy weight, but it's been a while and he's getting back in shape. So his best squat so far has been 165 kilos. So 365, and he weighs like 132 pounds. Wow. So he squatted, the other day I had him squat 160, which is 352, for 25 singles. Wow, yeah.

So it's a high quality of work. Perfect sets. For him, because he's still learning how to fight with the weight again, still conditioning his body. But then two days later, he squatted 170, which is five kilos more than he had done since he's been back. Did he start back with every day, or did he kind of? Yeah, every day.

Every day. Actually, he's trained twice a day. In the morning workouts, depending on how he feels, I'll let him train a little heavier in the morning. But, again, I just really think it comes down to the bottom line is work equals results. And it's going to take a certain amount of work to reach a certain level.

So the sooner you put that work in, the sooner you get to where you want to be. I think people forget there's not a shortcut to strength if you think that it's more like there's a pile of work. That load needs to be moved from here to there. And that's the reps and the sets you're going to accumulate. It's going to take...

And the sooner you get it done, the sooner you can... Like, Pat's amazing. How long have you been working with Pat? Six years now. Yeah, so over the course of six years of training, I'm assuming brutally hard, and Pat seems like his life, as it should be, if you're going to try to maximize your performance in sport,

you've got to give yourself all the way into it. I mean, he has lived and breathed it for a while. There was times where he took time off, you know, and he needed to make an income because, unfortunately, I couldn't support him. So there was times where he had to go work and took two years off, basically a year and a half, and he got a few jobs to save some money. So he was able to continue his training at the stage we're at now. But he had to prepare himself to set himself up.

Because out of high school, he never really had a job. And he had sponsors that were helping him. But eventually he got to the point where, okay, how am I going to make this next run? So he had to find jobs and work and stuff like that. Fuck, I hate these jobs. All I want to do is pursue the pump, bro. That's all I want to do. But from day one, he bought in pretty much 100%.

He listened to everything I said, and he really made a lot of gains but you know he was 100 all in from the first day you're talking about he was squatting or you know a lot of your guys squat maybe 13 times a week but these are probably people who aren't working 40 plus hour work weeks i mean because of recovery has got to be well i mean like critical there right you know you'd? There's a girl that trains in my gym now. She's not an athlete, never played sports, never did anything physical. Not like a lot of people who come to the gym who have done other things in the past. And when she came to the gym, she squatted like 45 kilos, cleaned like 32. She was pretty weak.

And she weighed like 65 kilos. And she just push-pressed body weight the other day and swatted double body weight. And the whole time she works for the FBI. She's got a full-time job. She was in graduate school. She lives on her own. She works, takes care of herself.

She's super, super busy. She wasn't making excuses for why she couldn't get strong. There was days she'd come in, she was half asleep, falling asleep in the gym, but she'd still do whatever she could. And then I'd just gauge her workouts based on what she could do that day. And here he is two years later, and she's made a ton of progress. It's like sometimes the more important thing is

showing up, keep showing up, keep fighting, even if you have a shitty day, who cares? Keep showing up every day and work on the skills. I had a job a long time ago, and my boss's tagline or his mission statement for his business was consistency is key. And I think that goes for everything in life.

I mean, if you show up every day and you touch the bar, it's a plus. If you don't, it's a minus. So regardless of what you do, you're going to make progress. And people talking about I can't squat every day, I was like, well, of course you can. It doesn't have to be a PR, but there's no way you can't squat the bar today. That's not being max effort. Yeah, it's any effort. I think that's really good advice for, let's say, the average

crosser or somebody. Somebody who would discover you and go, wow, I want to be strong on squat, but can I do this? Well, it doesn't mean you have to squat true max every fucking day. If it meant instead of sitting on your ass all weekend and not working on your underdeveloped squat skills, just doing it with a bar would be a hell of a good, a better option than just sitting around wasting time.

I think that one of the things that you have to think about when you try to motivate yourself is if you remember that every time you touch the bar, it's a plus, and if you don't, it's a negative. It makes it pretty easy to sell yourself on getting up and going to the gym because for most people, that's the hardest part. When you feel like shit, you don't want to go train. But if you go, hey, I'll just go and I'll stretch and I'll maybe just squat the bar today. Look, Doug always says if you at least can get to the gym

and if that counts as your win, then you'll probably just fuck around and end up getting a good workout anyway. You'll get warm, you'll fucking wake up. That's what he says. He's like, just commit to walking inside. After you get inside, you'll do something. Walk inside three days a week first.

See what happens. Yeah, the old saying, once you've begun, you're halfway done. Yeah, that's what she said. It's the same thing with that. You get to the gym, you know you're going to train when you get there, but just getting your ass up and getting there is the hard part sometimes. Absolutely. Did I just kill the moment?

No. I think what you did is you perfectly satisfied that particular question. Did I just kill the moment? No I think I think what you did Is you perfectly satisfied That particular question I think We can be completely honest here And

We're extremely tired We went brain dead It's Sunday afternoon At the Arnold Sports Fest And we've been here Since Wednesday, Thursday Just getting through this crowd Is enough to make you tired

It's a lot of man meat Out there dude A lot of man meat That's for sure a lot of man meat out there. You've got a lot of man meat, that's for sure. A lot of man meat. You were coaching yesterday. How did the athletes do? I had one guy, Angelo, who's a 77 kilo guy, and it was a Pan Am trial, so it's pretty much load it up and go for it because you try to make the team, so you got to do whatever you can. It's not about trying to win this meet. It's about putting up the numbers you need for paying AMS. There's other guys you want to compete against but ultimately it's about just getting to a certain

number. Either if you're by yourself or around 100 people, it doesn't really matter. It's just about getting a certain total. We loaded up numbers that he was capable of making that he's made in training just to see what he could put together today. He lifted 7 kilos more in the snatch than he has ever done before in a meet. 7 kilos? Wow. He snatched 14 ever done before in a meet. 7 kilos.

Yeah. Wow. So he snatched 142, which is, you know, pretty good. 315. And he weighs 170 pounds. Damn. That's good. He's been training about 17 months now. Whoa.

17 months and already putting up those numbers? Yeah. That's legit. Yeah, he's doing pretty good. Yeah. We talked about doing, so right now people think, okay, I come in, that's legit. Yeah, he's doing pretty good. Yeah. We talked about doing, so right now people think, okay, I come in, I hit what I can, I pursue max. How does your approach to train say, these guys are lifting, now it's March.

In the months leading up, do you make any adjustments to how the volume is tapering off to meet and intensity is increasing? Do you do any of the traditional periodization techniques, or is it all just by feel and what can be done that day? You know, people ask me all the time, you know, hey, bros, will you write me a program? Will you help me? But the problem is it's almost like I can't.

And it's unfortunate, but, you know, when people come in the gym, even in person, they're like, hey, help me, show me what to do, write me a program. I'm like, you just have to come in and train. I have to watch you. Because what I try to do is put myself in their shoes you know see how they're feeling ask them every day how you feel and i see how they move and how they're acting and how their attitude is and just everything about it and i try to like put myself in their position and see what it would be like and how i would feel if i was them because i've been in their position before and i think one of my biggest skills is that I remember how I felt, you know, as I was

lifting. Yeah. And how I thought and how curious I was and different things I knew and didn't know. And when I could put myself in their shoes, I'm like, oh, okay. Like, and I can kind of see what they need. So there's different times where, like, for example, Angelo, like, his legs are pretty strong, but he was losing his positions. And I could see he was having a hard time keeping his chest up. So this last

period before this meet, we didn't really work on the lifts as much, but just working on getting his back stronger in certain areas so that we can hold his positions better, which will allow him to lift more weight. And it worked. I mean, he added seven kilos to a snatch in the last, you know, three and a half months, you know. And so it's, everyone's different.

You know, there's not one thing. You know, everyone has strengths and weaknesses. There's no two people the same with the same thing. Well, I think what stood out there is that people can try to take, like, a program or idea they know works maybe for a lot of people. But when you think about just the athlete, if you think about pushing daily work and really trying to increase the intensity, it seems like as you do that, what you need to make that work is a relationship with the athlete. So like you said, you understand how they're experiencing all this work and that's the only way you're going to be able to in a meaningful way sort of adjust exactly what they need.

If you don't know them that well, you're just kind of pushing them against the wall repeatedly and you don't know how they're responding to it. There's people who have come in the gym and they're like, hey, do you mind if I use your gym for Open Gym today? Yeah, no problem. Help yourself. And I watch them train and they're responding to it. Yeah, like there's people who have come in the gym and they're like, hey, do you mind if I use your gym for open gym today? Yeah, no problem. Help yourself, you know? And I watch them train and they're taking attempts that aren't even remotely close to good attempts or even close to making.

And I'll just be curious, you know? I'm always asking questions. I'm pretty open-minded. I'm like, hey, what program are you doing? Why are you taking these attempts? And they'll tell me, well, this is a program. I have to do 80% for these today.

And they're not even close to making them. And if they did, it's just sheer luck if they make them because they look so bad. Yeah. I hate any time there's a percentage on the wall. We say, well, you know, I don't feel good or I feel really great. And whatever that fucking thing says, I'm just going to stick to it without even questioning it. Right.

As if 80% is a magical thing you'd have to hit that day, let's say. Well, that's the problem when people, which most people write programs for people, and they just give them some cookie cutter type plan. I think most people that make progress is simply because they're probably doing more work than they would have because now they're held accountable by somebody else. And if they write their own programs, then it's

very easy to say, well, maybe I should do this instead. And they make changes on the fly instead of staying committed to sticking to the same program. Or if somebody else does it, most people stick to it. And they'll make more progress just simply because they're doing more work than they probably would have done on their own. It doesn't mean it's still the best way to make progress

though. I like to set up a rule for our lifters. Say we are saying go 85%. If you miss, you'd immediately take 5% off the bar. And you hit 80%. If you miss 80%,'d immediately take 5% off the bar. Yeah. And you hit 80. If you miss 80, you go to 75%. Until you hit, now work back up.

What's the point in practicing missing, you know? If it's at 100%, you need to learn how to fight with heavy weight. So there's a time where you have to learn how to miss and you have to learn how to fight with heavy weight. I mean, there's times where in the gym, for example, I had a guy miss a certain weight 22 times the other day. You didn't back it down at all? You just kept it there and just kept hitting it? Yeah, because I could tell that he had the power to make it. I could tell he had the speed to make it. I could tell he had the energy to make it.

But the problem was he was just doing it wrong. And the thing is, at some point, you have to learn how to lift heavy shit. You can't learn how to lift heavy bar if you never touch it. It's kind of like the first time we meet, Mike. You shake my hand. You're like, oh, hey, what's up? Who the fuck is this guy? I don't know. You're a little tentative.

But then the more you see somebody, pretty soon you're like, hey, what's up, man? It's like he becomes your friend. Every time you touch a bar, it's like shaking hands with somebody for the first time. Oh, that's an interesting idea. You touch a bar. You're like, I don't know what this feels like. I'm not sure. And I've seen a trend.

The first time somebody will try a PR, the first time they'll do like a high pull, you know, they won't even attempt to get under it. The next one will be, they'll try to get under to be sort of close. Then the third one, they'll maybe get under it. And then they'll be like, they're selling themselves on the idea that it's okay, that it's safe. But if you never touch that bar, you have no idea what it feels like. And so you're always going to be a little hesitant, not sure, but once you give it a ride and it's close, you like you know what i think i can make this and the next time like the next time i come in i'm gonna make that and you start to sell yourself from the idea and believe it and i think you know in the sport of weightlifting after a while it's not really about technique

after a while it's just simply developing the skill to fight with heavy weight but also overcome these mental hurdles of hey this is 100 this 100, this is 110, oh my God, this is 150, holy shit. Or like in the back squat, you're saying, man, I got four blues on the bar. Oh man. Like in the idea, the idea in your head of squatting 400 pounds is so huge, maybe you got 550 in you.

But you're so fucking scared of it. If you only tried once a week and each time you did it, you were a little scared of it, it'll take you fucking forever to get the courage to go for 550. They did a study where they were putting trash bags over the weights. This is my mentor, Dr. Andy Fry, who's a student under Dr. Mike Stone,

and they did some stuff at the Olympic Training Center. But, yeah, I mean, people forget, like, you can do all the programming in the world. You can know all your physiology and shit. That's great. If you get lost in the weeds, you forget your mind is controlling everything. Everything. You're scared, weak, whatever. But they would just put garbage bags on a bar, test you before, come back, test you again,

put fucking garbage bags over it, not tell you what's on the bar, and just ask you to lift it. Big, black, plastic garbage bags that don't weigh anything. Yeah. And you can't see what weight is on the bar. I'll link to this study in the show notes so people can read it. But long story short, if you're not psyching yourself out, guess what? You tend to make heavier lifts. It's because you're not thinking, I can't do it before you fucking touch it.

It's like when you see people going, like, my role was Paladin, John. I've seen some stuff on Paladin. We have to maybe brainstorm. I like that shit. We'll see. But, oh, fuck. What was the point I was going to make? Tell me.

You were talking about fries, garbage bags. I was going to say something about the deadlift. Oh, fuck. We were talking about garbage bags on the way. Okay. The sleep deprivation. Put itlift. Oh, fuck. We were talking about garbage bags on the way. Okay. The sleep deprivation. Put it together. Oh, God.

Come back to it. Come back to it. His brain just melted. I've never seen that before. I was going to say something. I have seen his brain melt dozens of times. We went to bed at 2 a.m. and got up at, what, fucking 5?

Look, if this was Vegas, I could understand this, but this is Columbus, man. I'm an old man. Look at me. I'm pre-onset dementia. Anyway, when you don't psych yourself out, when you have some courage in the bar, you just repeat this skill of lifting.

And like John's saying, fucking shaking hands with it, the repetition of it makes you start believing that you can. That's the first fucking step, not the mathematics on a whiteboard. Hey, man, what's up? Let's take a break real quick. We'll come back and find out about this secret squat program

you're putting together. This is Tim Ferriss and you were listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbellshrugged.com. Barbell Shrugged is brought to you by you. To learn more about how you can support the show go to barbell shrug.com and sign up for the newsletter and we're back with john bros we're talking about lifting heavy weights yeah over and over and over again yeah just a touch

on what chris was saying before you know but we mentioned about shaking hands with weights you know i think that you know people set their goals too low you know there was mentioned about shaking hands with weights. You know, I think that, you know, people set their goals too low. You know, there was a guy in the gym the other day. He said, I really want to snatch 200 pounds. I go, all right, so that's your goal? He said, yeah. I said, you think you're capable of snatching, like, 265 pounds in your lifetime? He's like, yeah.

I go, well, that's your goal. Now when you get to 200 the first time and you touch it, you're not going to be freaking out because you're going to tell yourself, okay, it's 200, but I need to get to 265. Well, it's kind of like I go to weightlifting meets and I'll be lifting against somebody who's snatching 140. I'm like, it makes my 120 not seem so heavy. I'm like, oh, that guy just, you know, like Jane Tatum just snatched that overhead

in a lower weight class. And it looked kind of easy, so. Yeah, but in my gym, you know, in the first place, all we ever had hanging on the wall was the world records. And I only had videos playing of international lifters from high-level competitions. So you see perspective all the time. And, you know, I remember when Pat snatched 207. You know, our goal for him, when he first came to the gym the first week, I'm like, we need long-term goals. And his goals were to snatch 230 and clean and jerk 270.

And then I changed him to 227, 272 because it's a 500 snatch and a 600 clean and jerk, but the same 500 kilo total. So the day that he made 207 in training, the first thing I said to him was, that's great. We only have 20 kilos to go. You know, always keeping your eye on where you need to be. And then right after that, you try 210. And that's the mindset that makes it a lot easier to overcome those mental hurdles when you have to, you know, it's easier to take that next step when you always keep your eye on where you want to be because it's a lot easier to sell yourself on that. And I think that people, when they set their mind on a certain goal,

most people don't ever achieve their goals. So why not set it really high anyways? Do you think about setting a really high goal? Do you set like maybe a three or six month goal that's shorter? No. Why? No. You just set a long term goal. I mean, you have to set the goal far enough ahead where it makes you strive for

something because along that way you're going to reach your limit but if you don't set the goal past that limit you never find out where that limit is. So you might as well reach far out there. You can't set it unrealistic. Like, if you're a sprinter you're not going to say, hey, I'm going to run a four-second 40. Because that's just not probably humanly possible. But if you said, I'm going to run an 8.5, it might be possible.

Nobody's done it, but it could be done. Yeah. You know, so if that's your goal, then you're going to strive to be that. And at some point, you reach your limit. Maybe it's 10.0. Maybe it's 9.6. Who knows? It's the same thing with lifting.

Like, you have to have a goal. And it's always easier to reach that next step when you don't have to sell yourself every idea. Oh, man, I reached my goal. Okay. And then you have to reformat your brain, like, every single time you hit a goal. It just makes it so much easier. I usually set goals that are easily obtainable.

So you feel good about yourself. So I can just keep setting more goals. Yeah, but then a lot of people are never disappointed that way. But I've never set a lifetime weightlifting goal. Maybe that's what's wrong with me. I mean, if your goal is to lift a certain weight in your life, at some point you have to realize you're going to get to a day where you can't lift heavy weight anymore.

Right. And it's not as far away as you think. Yeah. And so at some point when you're going to get older, people are going to say, hey, what did you lift? You're going to have to give them a set of numbers. And those numbers basically sum up your whole career. And are you going to be satisfied with the numbers you tell somebody?

Yeah. I've never thought that's a good way of looking at why you would want to pack as much training time, if you could, into the shortest time possible, because the clock is fucking ticking. Look, let's say you live to be 80 years old, all right? And you're really done hitting big weights at, let's say, 35 or whatever. Okay, that means for 45 years, people you hey what did you do you have decided whatever whatever do you want to live with that shit for 45 years wouldn't you just rather have a bigger number so when you feel better about what you did well fuck you don't have a lot of time man drop the microphone

in the world of athletics is once you hit 30, it's probably... In most cases, weightlifting is 30, 32. There's guys that have stretched it to 35, but I was being optimistic, but I'm just saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't want to discourage people that are older. Some people have done it, but the point is... I mean, if you show up later in life, you're going to hit your peak later, too. But there's a certain point where you're just not going to happen. Once you start training hard, the clock stops. Well, there's a good, I mean, if you start when you're 40, you're never going to be a world record holder.

Like, that's just never going to happen. You never will get the requisite speed and flexibility. You're going to turn a corner, and that's going to be the end of it. So at some point, that day is going to come. So you have to realize that, hey, I don't have a lot of time. And so if you set a goal, like, what would I be content with when I'm sitting in my rocking chair? What numbers would I be okay with? And once you set a goal like what would i be content with when i'm sitting in my rocking chair what numbers would i be okay with and once you set those numbers then you're like fuck i have to get to these numbers as fast as i can you're applying the urgency i think the

greatest thing you said was about like uh if you're under really you say under really stressful conditions like if somebody's threatening somebody how would you approach squatting then i think i think he was quoting you is that yeah i think, I think so. Am I remembering that right? Yeah. Well, the way the story went a long time ago is people, I think Brett put it in the story and some other people have picked it up, is, you know, you ask people, you know, in normal gym, like in gym lore again, you know, the normal tradition thing handed down from people to people. Hey, you know, I'm going to squat.

I want to be a great squatter. Okay, if you're on an island and you can basically train at your own leisure, eat whatever you like, train whenever you want, you want to hit the biggest numbers you can basically train at your own leisure, eat whatever you like, train whenever you want, and you want to hit the biggest numbers you can, how often would you squat? Most people respond, oh, I'd squat like maybe twice a week. Yeah, how often would you go heavy? Yeah, maybe one of those workouts. You know, you have all the food flowing in.

You're in a tropical situation, like ideal. And you say, okay, here's another situation. You're in Alcatraz. You're locked in a cell that's so short you can't even stand up on a bed you don't even fit on. Right? It's all dark. And all your family and loved ones are in adjacent cells, and they're never allowed out of their cells. You have 30 days to squat a certain amount of weight to put 100 pounds on your squat.

The only time you're allowed out of your cell is to train. Do you think you're going to train twice a week? And as soon as you ask people that question, how often would you train under these circumstances? Well, fuck, I would train every day. Well, why? Well, because I need to. Right. Exactly. That's the emotion you're hunting for, right? Well, it comes down to the difference

between desire and necessity. You know, like, do you want to do something? I want to make a world team. I would like to do this. I want to get the fuck out of here. Like, you need to do this. And when you come from a point of here like you need to do this and when you go come from a point of necessity you need to do something it's hard to beat those people because failure is not an option you know and you don't leave yourself that opportunity so if you look at every situation from

that point of view your whole thought process changes you know so to try to beat somebody that's coming from a country where you have no food and you support yourself or your family's thrown in jail if you don't perform and you're like living in a sleeping on a tempur-pedic and you know like got a sub-zero fridge and you got drinking smoothies every day like how are you going to beat those guys so rob kill or steal something get put in jail squat goes up or just have the mentality when i was younger i used to think man i wish i was on an island i could do nothing but train and realistically i said why do i need to be on an island to have the same mentality? Like, I have the gym.

I have my food. I have even better. I can eat better food when I want. Like, I have all those plus more advantages. Yeah. Like, why don't I just look at it the same way and pretend I'm in that situation? How much better could I be? And it's really just putting your head around a different mindset.

And it changes everything. That's a cool game to play with yourself. That is the whole thing. Weightlifting is a lot things about in your head you know when you look at things differently everything changes you know so that's how the whole thing started you know about being thrown in jail or the whole mentality is just looking at things differently out of a point of necessity versus a point of desire or want do you use that story with your athletes uh frequently or how do you kind of change their perspective? Well, the thing is I'm with them every day.

Yeah. And it's not just one thing, it's many. Like, people that know me know that I love to tell stories, and I got tons of stories. Even people that have been around me for six or seven years, like, I never heard that one before. Like, and there's so many things in life that you can, you know, learn from little situations, you know. Like, even just putting the world records on the wall, and every time somebody does something to the world records reminding them of hey this is the goal like this is humanly possible these guys have done it before so this is the goal like i'm not asking you to do something nobody's ever done before so why can't you do it they did it right and if you make that the

perspective all the time then everything seems insignificant and that's one of the reasons why you know guys have made so much progress in my gym because they'll do a lift and they're like yeah this is nothing they'll go to meets and everyone's like on their nuts like oh man this is so big and they're like what are you talking about like i got a long way to go still right like they're not mindset's huge it's everything it's really it's everything it's everything i mean after six months of lifting people have pretty decent technique at that point i spend more time talking about developing the mindset of being a winner more than even how to lift anymore.

Occasionally, you give them a cue, like, okay, do this, do that. But it's not even really about that after a while. It's about just being a badass in your head. How important do you think training partners are in weightlifting? Because a lot of these people might be on their own, and they're training as hard as they can. In their mind, they're surrounded in an environment where these are good lifts, how important is it to them if they want to really make strong progress to fuck out of that gym

and go to a gym like yours, to now also be immersed in a situation where the standard's already high, and you feel it, and you see what speed looks like, actually. You see what aggressive squats look like. You feel what they, you're in the presence of them. It's obvious what that is. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you can't – you can't.

If you're in a gym and you think a 200-pound snatch is heavy, get the fuck out of there. Well, it's funny. That's my best advice to you. In college, when we were all weightlifting together, all of our numbers were very much alike. And I remember – You're like a fish in an aquarium.

You'll grow to the size of the aquarium. We all had, like, different backgrounds. And after six months of being together, everyone's numbers were pretty much alike. Different weight classes. And then I remember going to the American Open for the first time. And I remember my coach going, you've got to jerk faster. And I saw Kendrick Ferris jerk in the warm-up area. And I go, oh, that fast.

That's what he's talking about. But I couldn't wrap my head around it because I had never seen it live. I had never seen in person somebody move that fast with that much weight. And I go, well, that's what I'm going with. I immediately went and PR'd on pretty much everything because my expectations had changed. Yeah, that was one of the reasons why I played the videos of world-class lifters all day. One day it was funny.

After two years, I put in a video and I said, hey, watch this. Everyone starts laughing. They go, what is this? This is shit. These guys are all over the place.

I go, that's the U.S. Nationals. And they're like, holy shit. These are the guys we have to lift against? And it blew their mind because I had never let them even see that before. They had never been to a meet

and all they ever saw was the Olympics or the World Championships. You know, all the greatest lifters in the world. So you had like TVs up around? Is it in your lobby or just on the old gym i had one small tv now we have a little bigger tv but it's on the wall in the gym and just videos play all the time but it just keeps people you know focused that's an easy tip for coaches to fucking learn yeah this is this is the goal move like demas okay like that's a start and if you

watch him lift and other people, and all the guys eventually all had favorite lifters. Oh, I like Koleski. I like Botev. You know, everyone has their favorite lifters now. Yeah, I used to watch Demas almost every day before I lifted. Well, his Ironman video is, like, the most impressive shit I've ever seen in my life. He's just fucking around and warming up.

Like, casually power cleans, like, what was it, 375 or something? Yeah, just YouTube about P.R.S. Demas. To put it in the rack for the front squats he was going to do, he was so casual about it. I wasn't even a trainer yet. It was an amazing example of speed and precision. And Stephon Botov, you mentioned, I used to talk with Dr. Lawrence here about, we agreed

that was the toughest motherfucker we ever saw just lifting. I don't know if I ever called him missing weights that I was seeing in the Ironman videos and shit. A guy cleaning and jerking 600 pounds or 500 pounds or whatever he was capable of and squatting monstrous weights. When you see that, you can never unsee it if you're a strength athlete. Yeah.

That's why I made such a big deal. Like, why I came to Columbus so much was to get, not to learn secrets, let's say, from a guy like Louie or his coaches, but just to feel what it meant to be pushing for the highest possible level you can push for. It's so important to fucking do. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, it's the only way, really. You can't succeed. People don't win championships by accident. They don't show them and go, holy shit, I won? I was just trying to get 10th place. Yeah, fuck. Wow, this is so cool. Yeah, the people that win, win by design.

They're there to kick ass. When I was at the World Championships last year in Kazakhstan, I got a chance to sit down and talk with Rostami, the 85-kilo Iranian world champion. And I saw him the day before we talked, and I saw him after he won. And I'm like, hey, what did you think of your performance yesterday? He was like, oh, I'm pissed. Like, he was upset. I go, you won.

And he's like, yeah, but that's not why I came here. Like, at the Asian Games, I was ahead, and they made me take my last attempt at a weight I didn't want to take. And then the Chinese guy broke the world record and it pissed me off. I came here to break the world record. In training, I've done 220 many times. Like I'm here to break the world record in a clean jerk. And then my first attempt, blah, blah, blah.

And he goes on talking about what happened in the competition. But ultimately, his goal was to break the world record. So he won the world championships, but he still was not content. And I laughed and thought to myself, I fucking love this guy because this is exactly how you have to be like his goal world records he fell short okay he only won the world championships only okay like this is how it works though yeah like that's just a byproduct of not reaching his goal that was so high it's like people say i want to make the olympic team really what if you fall short? Then what do you get? Nothing.

Right. Hey, why don't you try to figure out how to win? And for sure, you're going to probably make the team. Like, set the goals high, man. You reach for the moon, and you fall short, hit the top of the mountains. You aim for the ground, you don't have relief. Like, you just don't get anywhere. Yeah, rocket science.

Like, push as hard as you fucking can. Yeah, keep your eye on where you want to be ultimately. And most people don't want to think about a lifetime goal because then you have to sit there and really put a number in your head and go, shit, like what number is this? You know, people want to avoid that. But really, you have to put those numbers down. If you want to get somewhere, you need a very clear goal, you know, to get somewhere. It's kind of like I tell the guys in the gym, like when people say, do you have a goal? Well, not really, blah, blah, blah.

I'm like, hey, go to the store. Hurry up. Give me this. Go, go. Well, what store? What do you want? Just fucking go, man. And they're like, whoa, I don't even know where I'm going.

Exactly. If I say go to the store in the corner and grab me this ice cream, and if the store is right there in the corner, and here's the money, and the ice cream's in your first walk in the door, and they give you clear goals, it's very easy to get there and get back. But if I just say fucking push you out the door and say, here, go to the store and get me this, you don't even know where you're going, where it is, what I'm getting. And screaming at them won't help. Yeah.

Just go. All right. And they're running in circles with anxiety, and they have no idea where they're going. Like, this is exactly what training without a goal is like. It's the same. Like, you need direction. You need a very clear goal to get somewhere. Yeah.

You recently got involved with the AWF. Yeah. You want to talk about that at all? There's not much to say. I mean, their first meet was in Las Vegas, and it's in my backyard. So it'd be difficult to not be involved with them. You know, I love weightlifting. And originally when I sat down with John, he had mentioned to me.

That's John Norris. Yeah, he had mentioned to me some of his goals. And, you know, I love the sport, and I think that, I think that our original plan was to do a format that was different than the USA Whale Fishing format, where you could do possibly a clean and jerk first or to have maybe more than three attempts or to give yourself more time between attempts, to do things that don't follow the International Whale Fishing Federation's protocol to make the meet more exciting. And I'm like, yeah, you could make the meet more fun if you're not trying to follow their same template.

And ultimately they said, well, we had already planned the meet going the same rules as the weightlifting meet, and I'm really not keen on that so much. I mean, if you're going to have a different federation, then make it cool. Do a snatch only meet. Let them use straps one day. Who gives a shit? It doesn't matter.

You had a good idea for... I did? To make weightlifting. I think we've had discussions about this. Like, have multiple platforms and say, hey, you got a 10-minute clock. Yeah, I mean, I really... 10-minute clock, see how much you can snatch in 10 minutes, and each person has their own judge. Well, like, you see that... Kind of like CrossFit does.

I'm not saying it's perfect. I mean, CrossFit has all the limitations. But a fun thing is when you see these guys do, like, the rapid-fire ladders of clean and jerks, and you go, well, fuck, that guy just did PR, man. He took a lift every 30 seconds to a minute. And, again, like, challenging these standard rules of what you can do, how much rest is necessary, for example,

how many squats you can take. Well, then how the fuck does this guy spend four days, let's say, running around, swimming, doing all this shit, and then you start clean and jerking, and he does fucking ten attempts in five minutes and sets a PR to clan jerk under those conditions? Like, well, how is that possible? Was it so quick and rapid that you weren't thinking about letting it get in your head? Like, every time you touched it for those three traditional attempts, you psyched yourself out.

But it happens so fast, you fucking surprise yourself. Having different formats, I think, opens it up. Why not fucking experiment? How did the rules change for the IWF at some point? I'm sure there was some country somewhere that started doing it a different way. They've been pretty standard for the last 60 years. I mean, in 72, they dropped the press.

But they went from a three-minute clock to a two-minute clock. They've altered things basically around the Olympic Games. Because the Olympic Games, there's a huge time constraint, huge number of athletes available. They'll change weight classes and time limits based on the games because that's the pinnacle for them. So everything has to follow their protocol.

But if you're having a meet and you want to have it spectator-friendly, have a guy facing each other in a snatch and let it be last man standing. Let the guy use traps. Do snatches second. Do cleaners first. And you can do whatever you want. How about bringing the press back for a meet, just to say, old school version of the way it was.

Snatch, press, clean and press. Literally you can do whatever you want. Actually, I think just doing the clean and jerk before the snatch is novel enough. It would be interesting for me to want to go try it out. I say dead bugs to fatigue then see what their max rep snatch is hardcore so the thing with awf i got involved with them because it was in vegas so it was obviously my backyard so it was like it would have been stupid now too for a while yeah yeah and just a secondly you know like we had originally

talked about doing other things now i don't know if they're still gonna want to branch out and do other you know like change the rules because right now they're sticking pretty much to usa whaling rules which again like if you're gonna have your own separate federation you can do whatever you want and i think they should exploit that you know and if they don't then you know i don't know how it's gonna work out let's plan a meet let's make it as entertaining and different as possible yeah and they should be you can play like music and have guys running out with a cape on and do all kinds of crazy shit. We used to talk about doing a power meet where it's, like,

snatch and back squat or something. Those are, like, my two favorite movements. Like, if I could snatch and back squat, I'd be completely content. I don't have to do the other stuff. Pretty quick, we're getting, like, the powerlifting vibe. But, like, we'll just make up now. There'll be 45 federations, each one with just whatever we prefer. In 10 years' time, it could be

AWF times 5. Little differentiations. I would love the idea of just take a heavy squat and do a snatch. Why can't you have fun and do something different? And making the meet really quick and fast-paced, so more people are going to watch it. You spread the love more. You get more people interested in the sport. Yeah, one of the ideas I had was

doing a wild card. Everybody gets a wild card for the competition. You can use it in the snatch or the clean and jerk. So if you miss an attempt, you're like, I'm going to use my wild card. You can make it really dramatic. Oh, bam. Oh, shit. He's going to use it now.

He wants to go after this guy. That would be really cool. Yeah, but I'm saying you could do shit like that with your own federation. You could do whatever you want. I mean, you can change the weight classes. You could do whatever you want. I mean, you can change the weight classes. You could do whatever you want. I mean,

it's stupid to have a one-off. People do that shit in like, Strawman and CrossFit. Like, every meet I've ever been to for those

meets, event, whatever the fuck you want to call it, they're all different. Everyone's different. Yeah. It's great.

They're combining a USAW meet with a USAPL meet. The big challenge was the weight classes. Yeah. Because they're different. Right.

But if you were doing like an AWF. It wouldn't matter. You could just match the weight classes and it's not a big deal anymore. And so that was why I got involved. Because I was really excited. Because over the years, you know, I love the sport of weightlifting. But there are other things that would make it more entertaining. Because sometimes it is boring to watch.

You know. So there are things that you could make it really spectator friendly. And that's how I was down with doing that. And so we'll see how it goes in the future. Very cool. Yeah. You said you were working on a squat program. So we're at the Muscle Farm booth, and Corey Gregory, he's a fantastic guy.

I got a chance to meet him about six months ago. Came through Vegas with his posse. They came into Vegas for the Olympia. And again, living in Vegas has perks just because it's a tourist destination. And he came into town for the Olympia, and he had saw some of Pat's videos in the Brett Contreras article on T Nation. So he starts squatting every day. And he came into the gym and was like, hey, I want you to help me teach me how to snatch and, you know, talk to you a little bit about the squat every day program. And I started doing it, you know, back in like the mid to late 90s is when I started doing it.

And I used to talk about it on the Internet forums and stuff. People thought I lost my mind somewhere along the way. But whatever. And so he picked it up, and he's really helped me spread the word about squatting every day, making it popular, that people in general are just soft. And everyone's worried about overtraining, but nobody, I wouldn wouldn't say nobody but i would say very few people ever will experience that you know it's more for endurance athletes than the strength athletes and so everyone's worried i'm gonna do too much i'm not gonna be able to cover like how do you know you know so you know

cory came to vegas we talked about the squad every day thing. And so he's been on it. He's like a week away from a year straight. And he did some variations to it. He basically, he's from Ohio like I am, but he's from the Columbus area. I'm from Cleveland. So he got a chance to train with Westside Barbell with Louie Simmons. So he took the conjugate method of taking variations of the squat, like a pause squat, wide squat, box squat, whatever. And he took 11 different variations of squatting it.

Me and Will use front squats and back squats for weightlifting. But he did 11 different variations to keep it more fun and entertaining for himself. So he would do it in rotation every 11 days. We'd try to PR on that same movement again every time he came around in a circle. And so he put together the squat trainer program. And so him and myself flew out to Boise, Idaho, the corporate headquarters of Bodybuilding.com, and we filmed a squat every day trainer. And it basically encompasses his 11 variations that he came up with for the program,

but also talks about mindset, nutrition, recovery, and just the overall idea of squatting every day. And so they're going to release that probably, I think he said, the middle of March, March 16th. Oh, cool. When it comes out, we'll link to it so people can find it easy. Yeah, I saw the final cut on one of the segments, and it's pretty epic, man. Well, I saw a screenshot of you looking very intense, John. Like in a dark brick room with an interrogation light hanging over you

and wearing a fucking skull cap like a fucking prisoner. I was freezing my ass off. Yeah, Alcatraz uh you know prisoner that sounds fantastic yeah we were in idaho and um you know i'm like i'm from cleveland you know so i'm not like afraid to be cold but they found a garage you know that was like an old workshop garage they wanted that type of environment and literally you could see our breath like in the interview and we got there at seven in the morning we're there up to two in the afternoon basically outside all day and it was like 32 degrees that day and so i'm not wearing a winter jacket so i'm in there literally just freezing my ass off so that look you saw was they filmed me at one so i'd already been out there for like seven

no but it was intense you know and i think that the image that's going to come across the message is pretty simple that you have to change your mindset because really what it comes down to to be able to train and squat every day you just you just got to be stronger mentally and i think most people are just they've relied so much on these ansadonal like the traditional things they've heard through the grapevine year after year without ever trying it themselves they just believe what they read is gospel and say okay this guy said i can only do this once a week but but they never tried it, you know, and they never ventured on their own. They used their own to try. And they lived the rest of their life like that too, which is unfortunate.

Yeah. You've got to make yourself happy. You've got to pursue what you fucking want. If you're not prepared to do that, maybe you don't deserve any of that shit, you know. Yeah, and then what ultimately happens when somebody lives their life and they continue to do that their whole life, then it kind of, it's funny because this happened to me actually one time. I was with my coach and, again,

like probably one of the greatest snatchers in the history of the planet. And we're in this gym and I'm really usually detailing my stories. I'll make this one vanilla because I don't want to humiliate or like pinpoint anybody in the story. I was like, oh, I'd love it if you humiliated them. So I'm in the gym training and uh i was on one platform there's another lifter on the platform next to me and we were snatching and between the snatch and cleaners like i was taking a break and the guy in the platform next to me was doing an exercise it's snatch related i guess you could say i don't really want to say what it is that's a whole nother subject but he's doing this exercise

my coach looks at me and goes hey man you go see the exercise that's complete waste of complete waste of time. Why is it a waste of time? So he goes and he tells me like a five minute description of why it's a waste of time. And I'm like, oh, that's great. I mean, I flew off halfway crown of the country to live with this guy for three years and absorb everything I could get because I want to learn as much from this guy as possible because he's been to the top of the mountain. So I'll listen to everything he says. I'll still process it and question things, but of course I'm going to believe them even if it's against my natural beliefs because he's been there. So I said, hey, you know what would be a great idea? You should tell his coach who's sitting right next to me.

You should tell him. Okay. And this guy is a very logical guy. He has an engineering-type mind. He's not an idiot, so you can't write it off that he's a clown. I mean, he's a pretty intelligent guy. I'm like, you should tell him. I think that'd be great.

You should share it. And he's like, I don't want to share it with him. I'm like, why? He goes, because he's not going to believe me. I go, who's not going to believe you? Like, you's a pretty intelligent guy. I'm like, you should tell him. I think that'd be great. You should share it. And he's like, I don't want to share it with him. I'm like, why? He goes, because he's not going to believe me. I go, who's not going to believe you? Like, you're a world champion. Like, I travel around the world to live next to you and listen from you. Like, why would this guy not?

He goes, I've had this happen before. People don't listen. I'm like, why would they not? He goes, I should tell them. So he tells the guy the story and why. And the guy questions him and even asks questions that I didn't even think of. So it furthered my belief that, because he defended his position even better. And so I was like, wow, this is a pretty valid point.

And at the end of the day, when he finished telling the story, the guy had his athlete continue to do the exercise. And he looks at me and he goes, yeah, exactly. And I couldn't understand it. And for years I would sit there and think about that time, and I could never really understand, like, why this guy dismissed it. This resistance to the idea. And I couldn't understand it because it's not like the guy is an idiot.

It just didn't make sense. So for years, I thought about it, and I finally realized why. And when I told somebody why, they said there was a clinical research. The guy was a psychologist who told me, and there is a reason why this happens. And basically what it is is the guy's ego wouldn't allow him to accept that reality that this exercise was a waste because then he has to admit other things. One, that he could have been a better coach. Two, he could have been a better athlete potentially, you know, and that he could have lifted more weight. And it's much easier to say, hey, I trained the

smartest way possible. I did the best I could. You know, I was drug free. I just had bad genetics. You know, like it's easy to point it on intangible than to take responsibility for the fact that maybe you could have been better if you would have just tried a little harder or trained a little differently. And so I think a lot of times people who are logical people reject these really, really good ideas because then they have to admit things to themselves and they just don't want to, you know? So I think that with squatting every day and other things like this, what happens is people don't want to accept this or even try it. They'd rather just stick to their norm because they're like,

nope, you only squat twice a week, and this is the best I could do. I guess I just have bad genetics. It's a lot easier to point on that than saying, you know what, maybe I was just a pussy. Maybe I should have just trained harder. People don't want to admit that, and I think that's a huge problem too we talk about the idea of always coaches and athletes remain uncoachable

not so open minded you just fucking try everything I guess but when somebody says an idea even if you don't necessarily know who they are you gotta fucking carefully think always about what you're doing where you're going and why you're doing it and if you fucked up it's okay to say yeah maybe that wasn't the best idea. I mean, no one's got a perfect approach to anything.

You've got to have the courage to say that shit. Right, but I think, you know, people, there's a lot of disinformation out there as well. So you can't just try everything blindly because you only have one life and you run out of time. You don't have that kind of timeline. So one of the things I think about is like in a factory, for example, when they produce a product and they want a quality control, they don't test every sample of every single thing that comes off the line. They'll take something from the beginning, something from the end and samples in the center. If

everything is 100% consistent, then the batch is probably good. And I think you could do the same thing when you find an author of a subject. If you look at all their information and you sit there and read all their points and you pick five points at random and you research each one and give it a lot of thought and every single one jives with that you instinctively feel is good based on the other information then i would say the majority of their information is probably correct there's no guarantee it's a hundred percent but i would say the majority probably good and then you should probably listen to that person but if you find points like two out of five points like yeah that's bullshit like that doesn't make sense chances are you should really be

skeptical on the rest of the stuff that they say because there's probably other points, you're like, yeah, that's bullshit. Like that doesn't make sense. Chances are you should really be skeptical on the rest of the stuff that they say, because there's probably other points that they're making that you may take as gospel just because they have one really valid point. It doesn't mean everything that came out of their mouth is great. And that's a problem. You know, when people ask me to recommend books, I'm like, yeah, there's a lot of people that have very valid points, but it's hard because I don't think, you know, there's, in my opinion, from things I see, I see people contradict themselves in some of their own writings. And so it's difficult to pick out the difference of what's good and what's bad unless you really know the subject, which is tough. So how do you do it?

Pretty cool. Thanks for joining us. It was fun. I think it's time to wrap it up. Where can they find information about your gym, places you write, things you want people to visit? Well, the biggest thing I'm working on right now is obviously our website for AverageBros.com, and our Twitter and Instagram is at AverageBros. It's spelled with a Z, not an S.

It's like my last name, not like, well, what's up, bro? Which people always mistake all the time. But the website I'm working on now is called learnlifting.com. It's been a process for about four years, and it should be up really, really soon. And on that one, I'm going to put articles and ideas on a blog. And there's also going to be a way to upload videos for video coaching. There potentially might be some sort of personalized programming down the road, but I'm going to try to stay away from that.

There's enough people out there writing programs, and we already covered why. I don't think it's really a great idea for me to do that. But people can always use technique work and watch their videos. So, that's why it can be more about being able to ask questions and get feedback on how you lift the way you look. And also get ideas and other stuff. So, that will be the place to be. Cool. Mike, when can we get up to Vegas?

We're going to come out and train and experience it for ourselves. Yeah. Let's go to summer. Hey, come out to the gym. We've got 12 platforms now with all of the LECO equipment. We've got 20 men's LECO bars and six women's bars. We've got a lot of good

stuff out there. If you're anywhere near Las Vegas, folks, get your ass up. See what real lifting's about, man. Yeah. Raise your standards. I appreciate you guys

having me come down. I know I was dodging you guys for a while. It seemed like it. We made it happen. I'm happy we did, man. It was a pleasure having you on.

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