Barbell Shrugged - 45- Gaining Lean Muscle Mass For CrossFit

Episode Date: January 30, 2013

On this episode of the Barbell Shrugged podcast, Mike and Chris talk about gaining lean muscle mass: what works, what doesn't, and why it's so important in the world of CrossFit. Like us on Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/BarbellShruggedPodcast Follow us on Twitter - @BarbellShrugged Sign up for our Newsletter - http://www.FITR.tv For Free Video on The Top 7 Snatch Mistakes visit - http://forms.aweber.com/form/14/989039414.htm Want to get stronger?  Watch our strength seminar - http://fitr.tv/collections/seminars/products/simple-strength-seminar Want to gain more mobility? Watch our mobility seminar- http://fitr.tv/collections/seminars/products/maximum-mobility Want to get leaner and increase your energy? Watch our nutrition course- http://fitr.tv/collections/seminars/products/faction-foods-nutrition-course To watch the Barbell Shrugged Podcast visit - http://fitr.tv/blogs/barbell-shrugged For free CrossFit exercise technique videos visit- http://fitr.tv/blogs/fitr-tv For answers to more CrossFit related questions visit- http://fitr.tv/blogs/the-daily-bs

yo this is ctp and you're listening to the barbell shrug podcast the number one strength and conditioning podcast for crossfitter if you want to check out the video version which you should go to fitter.tv and watch that because it's way cooler than just listening. And how do you spell fitter.tv there, Mr. Bledsoe? F-I-T-R.TV. He's a good speller. All right, while you're there, definitely go and sign up for the newsletter. As part of signing up for the newsletter, you'll get a video that Mike made where he shows you the top seven snatch mistakes that you're probably making that are keeping you

from hitting that next PR and lifting some big weight. Look at the seminars, tune into the show, and get ready to become a more awesomer version of you. We give you the tools you need to succeed. You become a tool. This week on Barbell Shrugged, we're talking about... Getting huge.

Getting huge. And we are doing it in Chris Moore's new office. Yes, we are. Welcome to the office of Chris Moore, CTP. Welcome to this week's venue for... Glad you could join us. Barbell Shrugged. This is a gentleman's edition of the podcast.

That's right. We're sipping on our coffee. Amazon, I haven't checked if they have a two-for-one deal on smoking jackets. Nice leather... What do they make them out of? Is it a silk? Is it a suede? Can you get both?

What are the options for smoking jackets? I have no idea. We're going to get a pair. I'll keep a fine assortment of gourmet tobaccos. I'll get pipes that match, and we'll do the show next time with all the proper setup. That's the only way to do it. You got to do it properly. It makes perfect sense.

Do it right or go home. All right. So this week we have myself, Mike Bledsoe, and Chris Moore as your hosts. Shall we say that this brings back warm, fuzzy memories for me? Hopefully it does for you, too. It does. Because how did this show start? Not many people know this because we have some unpublished podcasts that Chris Moore and I did in his office over a year ago, audio only.

And maybe one day we'll release them. Well, they're audio only. They're in my old office. Then they are in the local coffee shop. What's that one over there? Republic. Republic Coffee. So it's us sharing a couple of lattes,

or me sharing a latte, because I don't care about the paleo thing all the time. You having some sort of cup of tea or something. And then your usb microphone you bought that was very advanced for us at the time planted right in the middle just and i don't know what we talked about we just kind of we talked about training ideas but it was it was i think they're pretty good ctb recalls them warm i actually i loaded i loaded him up on his phone form and he listened to him while i delivered pizzas and he goes, this is actually really interesting. I'm like, well, maybe we should...

Should we offer our very lovely, very appreciated fans the chance to, like, if they create a little buzz around those, that we will release them if there's interest? I think we should put them maybe on the Simple Strength as a bonus or something. Oh, snap.

That'd be cool. Alright, guys, let's get this show started. Enough rambling. First, I want to send out a little reminder. If you're on Facebook, which I know most of you are, make sure to go on there and like our fan page. Also, follow us on Twitter. You can find us on Twitter just at BarbellShrug.

And then each of our little handle names are flashed before you. Yeah. During the intro of the sub-channel. CTP will make that happen. Do that so you can get notified anytime we have a new Barbell Shrug episode, daily BSs, new technique wads, and whatever else we have going on. Also, if you could, run over to iTunes for us and give us a five-star rating. A lot of people did that for us last week, and it was fantastic. Thank you so much.

If I was with you now, I would hug you so hard. We're actually in the top 20 for the fitness and nutrition portion of iTunes and top 35 for health in general. In the future when this airs, we could be number one. I will say right now that I think we are number one in the hearts and minds of many. Yeah. If you like the show, go do this for us. We we really appreciate it. The more you help us take over the world, the more cool things we will offer and the faster that will happen. We all together, we're more awesomer than us apart.

Yeah, I just want to thank you guys that have been supporting us so far, and we really do appreciate it. I want to just say thank you for that. Yeah, and people, join the conversation. It's really rewarding and awesome that we can kick up conversations, contribute good information, get good feedback to us. It's splendid and awesome. Yeah, that's probably the highlight of my day now is being able to respond to people on Twitter and Facebook. It's a lot of fun. That and your three-hour afternoon nap is the highlight probably.

Yeah. Because you like your recovery. I do. Do you find that important? I do. I just want to give you guys a little heads up. Chris, myself, and Doug will all be talking at the Garage Games event next month. It's in three weeks now.

By the way, Doug is gone. He's in San Francisco at a conference. What conference will Doug go to? He went to Actualize is what it's called. Is it some kind of like TED Talk? Something like that. It's a week long of filling the brain with good knowledge. Did he convince you to pay for this?

Yeah. God's a good gig. Did it convince you to pay for this? Yeah. God, it's a good gig. I should have gone. So just to give you guys a heads up, if you're at the Garage Games, we actually are, just like we have Maximum Mobility, Simple Strength, and Facts from Food and Nutrition course in the store on Barbell Shrugged website, we're also going to be putting out a business product. So if you run a CrossFit gym,

this is going to be something that's going to help you get new members in the door and get people signed up in your gym. So we're going to be launching that at the Garage Games, and you'll be able to be the first ones to take a peek at it and get your hands on it. Are you also doing a little lecture on business? Yeah, I'll be actually talking about business. So I'll be answering a lot of questions. If I listen to you at the Garage Games, let's assume I'm a novice

and I don't know anything about business, will I leave informed, empowered to succeed, emboldened to my career aspirations? Will I have a five-year plan in my sights? What will I get out of it? All of the above. Convince me that when I'm done, I'm just not going to go bail to the bar. Why should I stick around for you?

Hmm. Well, you will learn something. I'll tell you this. Sold! Sold! I'll be there. If your gym facility is making more than $50,000 a month

you may not learn very much but if it's not making more than $50,000 a month I probably have a nugget that is going to make you some money maybe even two

or three nuggets right maybe a pearl maybe a pearl not just a nugget a pearl I'm trying to think is a gold nugget

worth more than a pearl or I'll sound like an idiot if I disagree with these guys I'm taking my nuggets. Depends on the size, of course, of the nugget or the pearl. It depends on the size of your nuggets. Hashtag. Hashtag nuggets.

Doug's doing some mobility instruction, which if you have ever checked out Doug's perspective on mobility, it's very, there's no one more informed on the topic, and there's no one as sort of smooth with executing than Doug in these realms, I think. Very systematic in his presentation so that there is no holes or gaps left, you know, where you're like, well, I don't really understand that. He filled all the gaps. I always say to people, if Doug could have been like an astrophysicist or a surgeon, he decided to focus on mobility and conditioning things and business things instead. I've actually heard some of our fans refer to Doug as the scientist of the show.

And that makes perfect sense. Now we've had two shows without him, so everyone's gotten dumber. I used to be a real scientist. Used to be. But now look at you. I'm just Chris now. chris now and i should i say i guess i say what i'm doing oh yeah i'm not gonna let too many cats out of my bag or whatever but i i'm gonna discuss where we've come from in this little community of ours the ideas that we

used to embrace and execute some okay most mostly terrible Where we're at now and where we're going, I'm going to share my perspective on how we could get to where we want to go quicker in more of an elegant, refined way that's more rewarding to us in the end. That's going to be the talk. You heard it here first. You will be enlightened.

That's what it sounds like. What I'm telling you is nobody on this planet bullshits like I do. Enlightenment in an hour with Chris Moore. Keeping it zen with your buddy Chris. Zen Chris. I got the belly. I'm already very Buddhist.

Buddha-ist? Buddha-ist. Are we going to talk about anything of value? This is all value. Yeah. All right. So today's episode, we're going to be talking about how to get big and strong. In a novel approach.

Yeah, and there's a reason we want to talk about this. And I've been getting actually a lot of questions on Twitter about it and on Facebook. And a lot of people tend to, a lot of our fans anyway, tend to want to gravitate towards the strength side of things. But they have this fear of losing their conditioning. Or they have a goal. Most people think in their mind like, okay, I've got to get huge because I want to impress chicks. I want to move up to extra large t-shirt. I want to be stronger.

I just preconceived the idea that being big and huge is awesome, which, okay, I'm not going to argue there. But I think the approach hasn't made much progress since the days of us consuming Flex magazine and doing three to five sets of 10 to 15 reps on everything as if that was some sort of magical program. First, day one in the gym. Bench, incline bench, dumbbell shoulder press, dumbbell Arnold press, tricep pushdown, tricep extension, tricep reverse French curls on a BOSU ball, and then all that for five sets of 15 always and forever. Well, okay, training, some ideas could be better. Shoving down your gullet 25 servings of highly sugary weight gainer like we all used to do not the best strategy

uh eating whatever you want like i did in the powerlifting days to get as big as possible which i did to great effect but in hindsight i carried a lot of things i didn't want to carry so much of there's there's a better approach so you know i think our understanding of this is that an experienced, evidence-based, comprehensive approach is really super effective. I think, too, is a lot of times people, they'll start chasing the weight gain goal, and then they'll start to see some of their other things fall off. So if they're doing CrossFit and they're trying to gain weight, and all of a sudden their numbers are falling off on their conditioning, then they freak out and they go back to doing that. And I think that people have a hard time gaining muscle mass and gaining weight in general, first off, in a healthy way because a lot of people just want to cram down more hamburgers in order to gain weight. And there are ways to do it and keeping it semi-paleo and healthy. And then the other thing is maintaining performance.

So I think that a lot of people have an idea of how to gain weight and put on muscle mass, but they end up sacrificing across the spectrum a little too much. And you made a good point that so you can gain a lot of weight quickly and you will get stronger. But you're saying there's health consequences, there's body composition issues. But then I think in performance, yeah, you get a boost,

but the long-term strategy is probably gonna be best for you is if you don't give up on, you know, always refining your mobility. If you do build higher quality body mass with time if you do also keep a lot of balanced activities that keep you healthier for longer i mean in the long term all that adds up to you being more successful anyway then just okay i'm gonna eat like in my my old palatine days uh i knew a guy i knew a guy who ate like at at the local waffle house like three or

four days or three or four times a day. Go in and get pancake, eggs, bacon, go in for lunch, two or three glasses of chocolate milk and then a patty melt for dinner, steak and eggs or something because it's cheap and it's right there and it's super fatty or you go to the McDonald's dot,

you slam two or three bacon, egg and cheese before you train in the morning because calories are calories and I before you train in the morning. Because, you know, I eat calories to calories. I'll just do whatever I want. And it's just like I remember stories of guys ordering two large pizzas like every other day and not getting up from the table until it was all gone. Like those are all strategies that just aren't – they're ill-conceived to begin with, and they just aren't that effective. You know what's funny is I think both you and I have done that. And in the past, I remember I used to eat family-sized mac and cheese right before bed to gain weight. The kind that took like three days to thaw and you microwave them and you put them in the oven and they got all crispy brown.

No, not like that. Just out of the box, putting them boiled up, whatever. Yeah. That's pretty awesome still. Let's be honest. Yeah. So, I mean, we've all been there. We've all done that.

And actually, last year I did an experiment on myself and I actually kept it pretty paleo and gained a good amount of weight. It was the most high-quality weight I've ever gained. I put on a decent amount of muscle mass and size. And then I also got stronger really fast. And it's because I was putting on really high quality weight and not just any weight I could find anyway I wasn't I wasn't focused so much on the weight on the scale which was fun to look at but I was really focused on creating as much high quality mass as possible and I think a lot of people a lot of crossfitters have the goal of one day going to the games or being really competitive. And they may weigh 190 pounds.

They may be 5'8", 5'9". Like, you know, the ideal size Crossfitter, 5'9", 185 to 195 pounds. They're taking a shallow view and just looking at numbers here. Yeah, and it's like, oh, okay, well, I may weigh 185 pounds, but are you 185 pounds of muscle? Look at, you know, are the who go to the crossfit games are these guys 190 pounds and 10 body fat or or 15 body fat no these guys are 195 pounds and you know they're like six seven lean right yeah five six seven percent body fat they're not so here's a big pearl so far in the show.

Keep in mind, on a cursory view, you may be about the same size, but the quality of Rich Froning's body weight, his 190, is a no-yield 190. Yeah, if you're walking around at 190 and your body fat is sitting around 12%, 13%, 14%, then you really probably weigh about 170. That's the curious thing I've noticed. So a lot of CrossFitters don't appreciate, in a true scope of things, just how big Rich may be compared to them in terms of quality, size, and strength. There's a reason why he is clean and jerking what he clean and jerks,

but also efficient enough to go do everything else he does. Skills is a big component, but physically he's more imposing than you would assume. Then from the other side of the coin, in my experience, like the powerlifting, strongman, weightlifting community, it's almost like sport to rib the CrossFit guys being weak, small, underpowered. And actually, you know, that really changed for me when i just observed what went down at the crossfit games and that uh clean ladder so i'm thinking okay here's here's like a guy like rich or dan those other guys they've just done all that stuff they're doing the the little mini triathlon all the competitions that are in between that day and like day three

where the cleaning happens then they start with like almost empty bar and work the way up to some guys cleaned like 365 pounds at that super high quality 200 pound body weight i'm going you know what i don't know many people at all even like fat strong weight elders and powders who may be capable of that fresh that's a really impressive feat so you're really looking at guys who are bigger and much stronger than you you assume they are because i don't know anybody who could could jump into that situation and do as well really yeah strength they've got i mean it's it's really incredible i've had some questions where people are like is this is this good for my weight or is this good is this are these good strength numbers for crossfit i'm like man i you know it's man, the answer is usually it depends, but if you're

not deadlifting over 500 pounds and squatting over 400, and if you can't clean and jerk 315 or snatch 250, 260, you're not going to the CrossFit games anymore. There might be that... You're not going to do all the local competition. There might be those few guys

that they may really be able to burn it on the longer duration stuff, and they're able to do so well there. The freaks on the other side of the spectrum, they might be able to squeak in there, but they're not winning. And dude, who's to say what it's going to be like in another year or two? Because go back in time two or three years, and if you could do a crappy clean with 100 kilos a few times, you weren't that bad strength-wise. Now that's laughable. Yeah, I think that if you want to be competitive, you have to seriously sit back and try to be objective about where you're at in your training

and decide if you need to get stronger or not. And that could possibly mean getting bigger as well. It doesn't have to be. But you have to sit back and go, do I need to get bigger and stronger? And can you get bigger and stronger while doing five Metcons a week? No. No. I mean, you might be able to, but not at the rate you need to.

Do you want to go to the games in 2014 and still do silly Metcons five days a week? You're just trying to have a good time. People want to do Metcons five days a week because they're fun. Here's what I would tell the audience. They need to sit down and really objectively look at their training and do a dedicated strength program for a while. The real tricky thing here is that people don't understand how their own assumptions that they don't even recognize are sort of standing in their way. So we have all these ideas about what it takes to get strong and large, what's too big, what's too large, assumptions about how they're performing themselves. So you got to sort

of break all that down and realize, okay, I need to challenge my preconceived notion about how I need to train, how I need to eat. A big thing I like is that you assume if you want to be big and strong or become a little more toned or muscular, depending on the audience, you think, well, I know the kind of things that big and strong people typically do. I do three sets of 15 on a bunch of stuff. I eat all these extra meals. But that's not necessarily true. You can be plenty strong and prepared for just about anything and gain a lot of mass by doing traditional weightlifting training. A high amount of work, strong explosive lifts, you can become very big and muscular

and have enough strength to be prepared enough to resume Metcon training, maybe better than when you were before. Yeah, I want to go back and clear something up real quick. Metcons aren't exactly silly. They're only silly if you're doing a lot of them and you're trying to get strong. Doug always talks about this.

If you're not very strong and you've got a 315 deadlift for reps ahead of you, it's not a conditioning issue. It's a strength issue. It only takes one of those in an event to throw you off. I've always been really impressed with Doug because he takes that

super, super, still very, very novel idea for how he preps like his fights yeah like you know the typical fighting approach is well i do a bunch of road work i run a bunch i do endless repetitions with the jump rope i do a thousand sit-ups a day and then i also do my fight training which is all that same kind of thing a lot of cardio heavy stuff. Then Doug approaches it. Well, most of the time I'm working on moving better, being mobile, healthy,

and then strength and power is a huge monumental focus. Lots of technique work. And then it really doesn't start drilling more specifically to get sort of really close. Cause you can get into fighting shape a whole hell of a lot quicker than you can develop these strength and power adaptation that takes so damn long. Last.

Here's an idea. Why don't you do some bag work and roll jujitsu hard for your conditioning? I don't know if anyone listening who's done jujitsu and rolled hard, if you've ever rolled hard, that's about... Dude, let me tell you. Roll hard for three minutes. Have I ever told... That's harder than

rolling 500 for time have I ever told the Arnold Classic story of my ventures into mixed martial arts it probably hasn't been since the very beginning of the show maybe most people didn't catch that but I I went from 370 pounds at sort of the peak of my

powerlifting career over a couple months I kind of toned it down like three 30. Like, you know, I think it can be, even then I was like, I don't have to be so big, but then I got fed up with it.

Basically quit all things strength. And then from like November to the end of the next spring, I went from like three 30, three 20, like to two 35. You remember that? I had an extreme weight loss. Then as I started coming back up...

You didn't do it. It wasn't like, oh, I'm going to stop training because I lost weight. You actually utilized a system for losing weight while trying to maintain strength. I had a targeted approach towards when I would eat carbohydrates when I needed them, not all the time. I cut out all the things that...

Eating two bags of popcorn every night before I went to bed. I had very rough ideas. I cut out all the things that like, you know, eating two bags of popcorn every night before I went to bed. Because your guy's popcorn is no fat. I had very, very rough ideas. You did something along the lines of like carb cycling. Yeah, like I had a system where I was really crushing the carbs on days I was training, like 300-something grams of carbs a day, which I think that's about right. That seemed like a lot. I ate like four or five packages of pre-made rice a day with like five packages of tuna.

But that was, it could have been improved a thousand ways. But one thing I did to get away, get my body at rest from powerlifting is I did that Naga meet. So at the Honor Classic, the National, the North American Grappling Association has these really cool big meets. And one of the biggest ones is at the Honor Classic. So I decided I would go in and compete novice. So we all hop in a car and go up there.

I think you guys may have weight lifted. Yeah, we competed in weight lifting that year. We're competing this year too, right, some people? So if you're at the Arnold, go to the Arnold. Let's check out our guys. Yeah, we got a good amount of our team. The Faction Weightlifting Club is competing at the Arnold Classic. There'll be some footage in CTP cam at the end of of the episode all right it's a huge event there's so

many sports you can't even name them one of them is this grappling and it takes up a huge chunk of the hall and there's a lot of people watching a lot of athletes so i i got a wild hair up my butt like okay i'm a novice i haven't done it let me go this big national level competition where everybody with a pair and to getting you know out there and do it is gonna do it there was a lot of people in that show like hundreds of people into this thing it's like a like a you know come come one come all fight for a prize purse or something like who's the toughest wannabe grappler in the room so i did that and i i went out my first uh competitive event was against a very large gentleman i got out there i grabbed him i wrestled him to ground like you know it was a high school

fight i remember like getting underneath i think we have some we have some footage of this somewhere yeah it's i think it's on youtube so i i grabbed this poor guy with my bicep and forearm like right around the top of his head. And I put my arm underneath his armpit and I grabbed like that. And I just squeezed his head into my deltoid with all my strength for like a minute and a half. I remember we were watching him screaming like, no, you're putting it on wrong. And then we realized that you're probably going to just crush his head. We're like, no, keep doing what you're doing.

So he sat there and started flopping like a fish and kind of went numb. And then he tapped out. I was like, oh, wow, I won. I was gasping. And the next guy actually had some skills. I did this, I think it was like three or four rounds of like three minutes of solid wrestling. And then by the end of that, I was more tired.

I'd played college football, high school football my whole life, did a lot of tough drills. I had done wind gates and airdynes and all that stuff. All that stuff, dude. Doing that amount of wrestling just for three-minute blocks like five times, I couldn't do anything for the rest of the day. I've never seen you so tired in my life. It was fantastic.

I was just gasping like a dying fish on the deck. I was just done. It was the hardest memory of anything I've ever done in my frigging life. So, yeah, if you are fit enough to roll with somebody for 30 minutes, you are about as fit as it gets, I think. Most definitely. You don't have any need or desire to have to go out and do five hours of jogging a week. That won't help you at all.

It'll just exhaust the hell out of you when you're feet out. All right. We're going to take a break real quick. When we do come back, we're going to talk about how we propose that you gain weight and hopefully give you something you can use. Check out the Technique WOD.

Hey guys, this is Rich Froning and you're listening to Barbell Shrugs. For the video version, go to fitter.tv. And we're back! That's from something. If you know where that's from, I don't remember tweeting me about it. Sounded like Bill Cosby. Or some SNL skit from a

bygone era. Alright, guys. Real quick, check out our t-shirts. You can go to the website. Go to barbellshrug.com. Click on the shop, and you can score you a sweet Barbell Shrug t-shirt. You'll be the coolest kid in your gym, I promise. You'll get 10 points added to your score just by wearing it. That's right, at least, no matter what it is.

And then make sure to hang out at the end of this. CTP's been putting together some footage of the stuff he collects each week, and he's tacking it on the end of the Barbell Shrugged episode. You can kind of get a peek into our daily lives in the gym and maybe at our homes. Who knows? I don't even know what he's filming anymore. He may have sneak behind-the-scenes footage of me preparing our cheat meal for the week. Might.

This morning, which was fresh French toast made with day-old country bread. So full of yeast and gluten, it was ridiculous. That's a good way to get huge. That'd be a less-than-optimal way to get huge. But clean eating during the week and a carb flood session at the end of the week, a specific strategy. Yes, that can be very good. Some would argue, me included, that it's the way to get huge but clean eating during the week and a carb flood session at the end of the week a specific strategy yes that can be someone argue me included that it's the way to go one thing i want to talk about is uh how it's since i was 15 years old and i started training it's been my goal to put on muscle mass and uh i i don't think i stopped trying to put on muscle mass until the last, say, year or so.

And then I finally kind of got to where I want to be right now. And I struggled my whole life with using different supplements, you know, using these mass gainer ridiculous supplements. I chased the dragon all over the place. I'm sure some of our beloved fans are struggling with chasing that damn dragon right now. Some people, especially the women out there, are like, well, I know how to gain... I don't think their voices are that deep.

They're like, I know how to gain weight. I can eat Twinkies on the couch and I'll put on weight. I hear girls say that all the time. It's like, it's so easy to gain weight. No. It is not easy to gain high quality weight. It is not easy to gain high-quality weight. It is much harder to gain weight than it is to lose weight. I promise you.

People don't believe it. It's true. It's true! Yeah, so we've talked about kind of why it's important, and we're going to talk about how to do it. And some of the things that we've done, we're not going to touch a lot on what was unsuccessful for us. I want to talk a lot about what has been successful. And then me personally, because I've been what's considered a hard gainer. what was unsuccessful for us. I want to talk a lot about what has been successful. Um, and then me personally, because I've been what's considered a hard gainer. Um, and a lot of times what

separates a hard gainer from somebody who gains weight easily is appetite. So there's a lot of variables that go into that. Um, a lot of people just can't really eat that much. I, I'm always, you know, I'm usually full before other people are, but I've learned – I've developed some methods for getting past that. And so if you think you're a hard gainer and if you put yourself in that camp, then you probably are someone who has a hard time, who struggles with putting on high-quality mass. So I've struggled with that pretty much my whole adult life and so my adolescent life. I've always wanted to do it. And so I've done it that pretty much my whole adult life and some of my adolescent life. I've always wanted to do it. And so I've done it the wrong way.

I did it the wrong way for like 12, 13, 14 years. Listen to us now so you don't waste precious, precious years. So I'm going to tell you right now exactly what I did about a year and a half ago that gave me the weight that I wanted really, really fast. Now, this is not something that everybody has the opportunity to do because I own my own business, and I was able to take off 10 days where I didn't get very much work done at all, and I run my own schedule. But I'm just going to tell you guys exactly what I did. That way you can kind of, if you have the type of freedom that I do, then you can kind of – if you have the type of freedom that I do, then you can pursue this.

But if you don't, then you might get some nuggets or pearls out of it. And not to say we don't know ways to adapt it to anybody's schedule to reap the big benefits. Right. This was your experimentation. This is doing it the right way. Yeah, this is something that I did in an ideal environment. I was living like a professional athlete only for 10 days. So in 10 days, and my plan was to go 30 days.

But it was one of those things where... It's kind of like a weird supersize me challenge. It was a little taxing. So what I did was I adopted a training program that was a weightlifting program. That it was higher volume. And one of the benefits from doing higher volume training is not – Lots of reps, lots of sets. Yeah, a lot of sets, a lot of reps.

One of the benefits to doing that type of training is that it breaks down a lot of muscle, causes a lot of hormonal things to happen in your body that cause it to want to grow. The other thing, too, is if you do a lot of work, your appetite will go go up too. So one of the things I did is I actually trained earlier in the day, um, so that I would have a bigger appetite for the rest of the day. So what I would do is I would do a weightlifting program where I was spending about two hours of just lifting, um, pretty intense. And then what I would do, um, is I would immediately go home. what I would do is I would immediately go home so I would drink like a workout shake it was a mix of

whey protein and say waxy maize while I trained I probably consumed 35 grams of protein about 70 grams of carbohydrates while I trained then I would go home and I would get a gallon of raw goat's milk and then masturbate no I did not do that.

You don't masturbate at least twice a day when you're going through a bulking phase? I think that might be beneficial. It gets the stress right out and then you can go right to sleep like a baby. I don't, I'm not sure. I'm not sure. Well, that would probably work, but I didn't document that portion. Hashtag masturbate. Oh my God. All right. I apologize for Chris's behavior. No, I was kind of joking, but, yeah, if you've got stress problems, get after it. Yeah. That'll work.

So what I would do is I would go home immediately, and I gave myself a two-hour window. I made it a competition with myself as to see how fast I could finish a gallon of milk, raw goat's milk, if I could finish it faster than I did the day before. Every day it took me about two hours. So I would sit down at my laptop and I would do my work. I would check my email. I would work on my projects. I would do stuff like that for two hours with a lot of milk in front of me.

I would just pour a glass, drink it, and I would get a whole gallon of milk down and take me about two hours after training. After that, I would take an hour and a half nap. So what I did was I tore my body up. I put it through training that would increase my appetite. Advanced tough, tough training. Yeah, it would cause my testosterone to go up, things like that. Then I would consume milk, which was also going to cause insulin to go up.

All of these hormones, which are anabolic. And the most important thing you're describing is that it's not just, oh, I'm going to drink a gallon of milk a day, which people have heard of before, but it's careful attention to when you're going to try to get that done. Right. I'm not, I wasn't spreading it out throughout the day. I consider doing that, but knowing what I do about physiology and nutrition, it is optimal to do it after you train, if you're wanting to put on muscle mass.

You might get a big result if that milk was drinking, drinking, drunk throughout the day a little bit all midday because that's when your appetite was better, but you trained at night or you trained in the morning. If you drank it right before you went to bed, that same kind of calorie, the same quality, the same amount has a different effect depending on when you consumed it. That's right. It's an important consideration. Yeah. If you train in the morning and you wait until that night to chug that milk, then you're more likely going to put on more fat mass and not as much muscle mass. Yeah. So what I was trying to do is, again, this ideal situation, I would take an hour and a half nap, so an hour and a half to two-hour nap.

And then I would wake up. I would do a little more work. I would drink some green tea. And then I would go to the gym and I would coach for about four hours. I would go home and I would go to bed and I would get eight to nine hours at night. So I was sleeping eight to nine hours a night. I was getting an hour and a half nap in the afternoon. I was drinking a gallon of milk right after training. And I was training about five days a week. And in 10 days I put on 10 pounds. Holy, I didn't know that. Yeah.

Is this the Hujification Project? Yeah. I started something called, yeah, let's not talk about the name of it. So, yeah. Oh, that's a teaser. Was that where I was going to Walmart on a daily basis to buy Nesquik? Yeah. So CTP was actually.

Where did you keep all this goat milk? In my freezer. So you had like just like 20 gallons of goat milk just stored back there? Every week I would drive in and go pick some up. Just fill up the truck with like $200 worth of goat milk? Yeah, it was like $8 a gallon. Yeah, it got expensive quick. My wife was not happy.

The ends justified the means. So I gained 10 pounds, and CTP brought up a funny point. I just thought about that. He reminded me is while I was doing this, and CTP brought up a funny point. I just thought about that. He reminded me. While I was doing this, I was having to alternate. So on some days, I was having to put some chocolate in my milk because it was getting way too taxing to drink a whole gallon of milk every single day. At the end, you were like Ron Burgundy drinking the milk in the hot weather. You're like, this is just a terrible decision.

Your mouth can only take so much dairy depositing. That would be my job. So CTP was interning for a faction at the time. He was CTI. And he was CTI. And so I was like, hey, dude, here's $10. Go to Walmart and go get me some chocolate syrup. And he's like, seriously?

I was like, yeah, that's what you're doing. Go get an intern. So he saved my life a couple times. Yeah, there were days where I would train and then I was drinking the milk while I was coaching. But in that time, I put on 10 pounds in 10 days. And I forget exactly how much my squat went up, but it went up a good bit. I remember my back squat went up like 25 pounds in like two weeks. It just popped right up there.

And it was funny because a lot of the weight I put on was muscular. It was muscle mass. Muscle. But it was funny because I spent 15 years of my life trying to do all these weird, you know, take all these weird supplements and all this stuff, and these crazy bodybuilding training programs. And I feel like when I did that, I was like, oh, this is how you gain weight. This is how you have to do it. And it's not always fun. It's a big challenge. It is very, very hard. I was tired the whole time. But it was 10 pounds in 10 days, which is incredibly fast.

So you could probably have a little more balanced approach that also takes into consideration other competing demands and set a goal that's two weeks, four weeks, two months to actually do it a really effective way. That's what's funny is because it was like how you conduct research. A lot of times you hyperdose in research so that you can get effects in a short period of time. And you are Michael Bledsoe. You don't do anything halfway. What volume did you turn it to? Figuratively speaking.

11. Yes. Turned it to 11. Turned it to 11. Yeah, so I find that some of the most valuable lessons I've ever learned is when I take it to the extreme, kind of like if you ever have to lose weight really fast for weight cutting, you learn some things about how to get leaner fast. That's your focus.

You're going after it as hard as possible. Right. So I took away a lot of pearls or nuggets from that. Nuggets. Pearls and nuggets, bitches. So what ended up happening is I figured out the key things that were necessary to gain weight out of that. So not just that, but you know,

there, you can back off that a little bit and you can have a real job and there are ways that you can put on weight. And you reminded me of, you reminded me of a great nugget that Brian and I, the good Dr. Schilling used to, I said nugget subconscious. I wouldn't even, I wasn't trying to say nugget. We both agreed independently on what one of the most

important things to do. I guess you could even argue in life. It's pretty important, but diet nutrition, what is really important for you to do? Things should either be really low. Like if you're going to take a break, it should be a break. If you're going to rest and recover, you should really rest and recover. If you're going to push things up to try to get some sort of effect, you should really train hard. You should really eat what you need to eat. You should really focus on recovery. The extremes are what give you results.

And pretty much depending on what you need, equal results. If you're beat up and need a break, you need to take a frigging break. If you want to lose weight, you want to get your life sorted, you have to put focus on it. But what the danger is is this bullshit medium zone. If you take a medium approach to training, nutrition, your life, your relationships, anything, you're going to get bullshit medium results. If you're going to go, well, I'm going to try to gain weight, but I'm

going to gain weight, that kind of attitude. If you're going to take a break, but I still want to do some stuff to get a pump. If you're going to train really hard, but I've got this other stuff I'm also focusing on. You're not going to really understand where the high and low are like how do you know you're eating a lot you've really eaten a lot how do you know you've really understood how you put on weight until you've really gotten an effect how are you going to know if you really recover unless you're full it goes on and on until you know where your ends are until you like like the whole hunter s thompson quote said like i i had to push it over the edge so i could understand where the edge was people who never try to find it never get close.

Yeah, absolutely. I don't know how many times I've had guys that were trying to gain weight and they go, man, I eat all the time. I'm like, all right. What are you eating? Fill out a diet log for a single day and they don't even bring it back to me because they go, oh, wait, I wasn't eating as much as I thought. Writing it down made them realize that they weren't trying hard.

Yeah. Like in your life, everything feels like you're doing it really hard. If you ask somebody how they're doing on a Tuesday afternoon, they go, I'm super busy, bro. I'm so busy. Are you that busy? Well, I got up at 7, and I had to be at work by 8, and then I worked till 11. I got like an hour for lunch, and I worked to be at work by eight. And then I worked till 11. I got like an hour for lunch and I worked like five. I had to go to the gym and then go to the store.

I went home. Well, that's just life. You're not busy. Asshole. You're just doing what it takes to, to be a person versus same thing goes for training. Oh,

I'm so I trained so hard. Well, I'm sure it felt hard for you, but then you see a guy who's really getting results. Like then you try to like watch rich or, watch Rich or our buddy Asia train, and you go, oh, Jesus Christ. This guy's ridiculous. But then just by witnessing that thing, just by having the light pulled, shown onto your face, you go, holy shit. And then you go back.

When you train, you go, I got to then you go back when you train you go i gotta turn up a notch and you do even if it's like a little bit more you're already better because you just witnessed an idea that changed your perspective yeah i remember uh perfect example of this is i remember i was training with some guys that were about this as strong as i was for weightlifting the first year i was training i I went to the American Open. And I remember my coach. Big meat hashtag. Yeah, Brian Schilling was my coach at the time.

And he kept on telling me, I need to be faster when I jerk. And I go, I'm going as fast as I can. I'm so fast already. I go to the American Open. I'm watching them in the training hall. And I see how fast they jerk. And I go, oh, that fast. That's what he means. And you weren't – look, you weren't making mistakes.

You weren't fucking up. You weren't being lazy. You were really thinking and trying to move fast. Right. And, you know, what's funny is I went home two days later and I jerked faster than I'd ever had before. Like it went up really fast. It was really easy.

And all I had to do was realize what a fast jerk really looked like and i was like oh i'll do it like that so look if you've got and there may be opportunities to discuss it but if if you are struggling in your situation to gain weight to get results to to lose weight to to reach whatever it is you you want to reach in this case gain what good quality weight and be stronger uh you may honestly feel you're doing everything you can you may really be in a place where you're doing your best but having professional insight and have somebody look at what you're doing and give you some sort of template and have you walk you through steps and show you that look here's your aha moment like you experienced with the bar moving here's

your aha things that's what you need to get that next big jump in your progress. You need the outside eye to see what you cannot see. Yeah, you need objectivity. You should say you need outside eye to see what cannot be seen. But you've got to be objective, you know. People, you cannot look at your own life and be objective. You're going to make excuses. Yeah, you're going to make excuses. Yeah, that's everything. So one of the things we've been discussing here with the Barbell Shrug crew has been discussing is putting together a program for men and women, if you're interested.

It's important for everybody to increase. We say get huge. What we're saying is get real important improvements in your lean body mass that will change your life basically. Yeah. We're talking about putting together a program that will get you bigger and stronger. It's going to last. We want it to – and this is not set in concrete yet. We're kind of just throwing it out there, seeing what kind of feedback we get from you guys and what kind of interest this draws. this to sort of be like a community derived massively influential and powerful thing that

comes together that we interact with the community to get this thing going that's really remarkable yeah we had this grand vision for this could actually be one of my goals was and when we were discussing doing this is putting together a six-month program that helps people gain the muscle mass and strength they need to be competitive in CrossFit. Because kind of like what I talked about earlier is if you do not sit back and really... Did you say donut? If you don't... If you donut do that...

Subliminal message. You will do not be successful. Subliminal message. Do not be successful. Subliminal messages. Yeah. So like if you want to, if you want to keep doing Metcons five days a week and think that you're going to, you're on the fast track to being a CrossFit games athlete, then you're probably,

and you're not strong enough yet. You're probably wrong. What you need to do is step back, take six months, get bigger, get stronger. And what we want to do is put together a program that lasts that long that's going to be – you're going to have a start date and an end date,

and there's going to be coaching along the way to help you out. And you're going to have success. Yeah, you will have success. I think I almost present it as like a call to arms, a dare, that for those of you who have done things, you think you understand what it takes, you're pretty sure you're on the right track, but you're not getting results. We challenge you to take the opportunity to pull

the veil or have the veil pulled from your eyes to see a different path. I think it's going to be a really exciting thing. Y'all did five months of me and I added 150 to my squat. You added 150 to your squat in five months? 150 pounds.

From what you guys told me. Oh, yeah. There you go. There you go. If you want to get huge, if you want to gain 150 pounds in your squat by tomorrow, listen to this show. By the gods, you'll have success. So this is exactly what we're proposing, a six-month program, and there's going to be a private Facebook group. So if you join, you're going to have myself, Doug, or Chris Moore as a coach.

And you are also going to be – there's going to be a lot of people in the Facebook group that are trying to gain weight as well. We're going to give you a training program. And one of the things that I want to kind of talk about with that is we don't want to give you a training program that is going to totally take away from your cross fitness, all right? Or your life or anything. Yeah, you're still going to do conditioning. It's going to be the type of conditioning that's going to not hinder your ability to gain weight and get stronger.

It's going to be the type of conditioning that's going to help you out. There's going to be skill work involved so you don't lose things like muscle-ups and some of those gymnastic stuff. It's going to be a program that's going to promote muscular, not just muscular growth and getting bigger, but it's going to make you stronger. And there's going to make you stronger. And there's going to be an Olympic lifting component, a strong Olympic weightlifting component, so that you're actually improving your weightlifting skills, which most CrossFitters have a hard time getting better at already. So there's going to be a strong weightlifting component to it. It sounds like, and I think the vision is that this is not something that we take off a shelf digitally, figuratively speaking, and hand it to you and you just do.

I think this is a developed, awesome community effort where you're giving awesome information that's been refined and individualized. You're having an experience and you're getting continuous feedback that's sort of fed back into this machine that gets better and better results as time goes on. You'll do your workouts. You'll share your results for your training results back with the coaches. You'll be able to share your training results with the other people that are in the program. Let's see what else. We're going to, at the end of it, I want to, we're going to hold, I think sometime in October. And I want to synchronize this with the end

of the weight gain challenge program or whatever. I want to have the Barbell Shrug Championships at Faction Strength and Conditioning here in Memphis where we're going to have a big weightlifting meet. It's also going to be a last chance to qualify for the American Open.

It's going to be about six weeks before the American Open. Cool. So it's going to be about six weeks before the American Open, and we're going to – It would even be cool to have like a little bit of a – like a CrossFit Open type vibe. I don't know about this topic, but a topic where community people can sort of test and report their outcomes or video of their progress at the beginning and end

just so we can sort of capture and share this in some sort of – What is that doing? Oh oh you didn't know oh my god are we recording over ourselves ctp all right we gotta take a break technical technical issue all right we're back we're back we had a technical issue which really we had two technical issues today. Uh, I apologize. Hopefully you will forgive us. Um, I want to go back real quick. Uh, the program we're talking about implementing, we want it to start right after the open. So it'll be a mid April and it's going to run until about mid October.

Um, so it'll give you enough time to get back in shape for the CrossFit game season 2014. What was the other thing we want to talk about? Oh, yeah, we need to name it. So this is not set in stone. This is a program that we kind of dreamt up. I've seen a lot of questions come in over Twitter and Facebook about gaining weight, but still wanting to stay CrossFit. We think no one can do it as good as we, and no one else has even tried yet.

That's right. So we'll be the first. We'll change lives. That's right. But you have a proposition. So the proposition is we don't know what to name this thing. So we want to put together this program to help you gain weight, be a better CrossFitter, and be bigger and stronger, more robust. But we don't know what to call it.

So if you can, please go to our fan page on Facebook or go to our Twitter. On Twitter. At Barbells Shrugged. Yep. Tweet to us or post on the fan page what you suggest. Here's the Twitter name right here. CTV's going to put the link right now. No, he's nodding no.

He's nodding no. You never take my editorial expertise into consideration. But then again, my name does not include the word producer, so I'm just going to shut up. So we need a name for this. Please submit it. Do we want to? No, I don't know if we should do that. Well, you should probably do what you're thinking.

We should? Yeah. What? The incentive? Yeah. Yeah, offer it. Oh, yeah. You think we should do that. Well, you should probably do what you're thinking. We should? Yeah. What? The incentive? Yeah. Yeah, offer it. Oh, yeah. You think we should?

Yeah. All right. If we even do it. Okay, if we do it. If we pick the name that you suggest, we will put you in the program for free. It'll be a six-month program. And then I will personally make sure that you get a Barbell Shirt t-shirt. And you'll also get the coach of your choice, myself, Chris, or Doug.

Or maybe a little taste of each of us. So if you have any suggestions on what the name should be or if there's something about the program that you'd like to see included, let us know. If this is something that garners a lot of attention, if this is something that you guys really want to have and we get a lot of good feedback on Twitter and Facebook, then we will do it. If we don't get a lot of feedback on it, it might be something like, all right, well, maybe we'll try it again in six months or a year from now. It could be super cool because this could actually be the first of its kind to say we have a community of people who need something. They'll tell us what they need and we'll combine it with our expertise to deliver exactly what you need,

exactly what would help you become a more awesome version of yourself. That's right. Not some generic thing that you think could help you, like this power thing I do, this wheel thing I do, that works for them, and maybe I can co-opt it. No, we're going to build something for you. Yeah, and that's something I don't like about people say, do you like Outlaw or OPT or

CrossFit.com or Faction, our programming? Or even maybe other stuff like doing 5-3-1. What do you like? I'm like, well, it depends on what your goal is. And if your goal is to go to the 2014 games and you aren't deadlifting 500 and you don't clean 315,

then you have got to step back away from those general programs that are all-inclusive fitness because they all are. You may be getting stronger on them, but you will get to where you want to be faster if you dedicate your time to something like this. So what we want to do is provide something like that, have a community aspect to it, so you will have brothers and sisters in arms trying to help you out as you go along. And it should be a little bit of a – I want it to be a community aspect on Facebook

so that people can be like, oh, man, it's so tough. I didn't get my shakedown this morning or something like that. Support and everything built into theown. Yeah. And one of the things I wanted to, I kind of left out is we are going to give you not only training program, but we're going to give you a nutritional changes to make on a regular basis challenges for, you know, eating more food, uh, give you exactly what to eat, what type of food and when to eat it. We're going to give you very, very specific goals. And they're going to be action-oriented goals, things that you can say I did or didn't do that. It's not going to be like, did you gain five pounds today?

It'll be like, you know, did you eat five times a day? And was it these things? And then there will probably be some rest and recovery stuff in there too. If you're not getting enough rest and recovery, it's our job as coaches who are monitoring like the Facebook group or something like that. If you say, Hey, I've only been able to get six hours of sleep the last three nights.

We'll be like, you know what? You should skip training today and focus on eating instead. Or if it's someone who is doing this and this and this, you're like, you know what? Keep it up. It's really hard to make unless somebody is monitoring what's going on.

It gets really hard to do that on your own, man. Yeah. Again, go back to being objective versus subjective. And I was saying, we've got to get our friend at CrossFit Chickasaw to do this. Mr. Frohman, who needs to gain a few pounds still. That's right. Robbie made a good step or two in the right direction, but you should get on this bandwagon. I think.

You should be first in line. Robbie is probably listening right now and sometime in the future. And if not, we'll force him to listen to it. Robbie, do this. Yes, Robbie.

You should be the first one on the Facebook wall with a suggestion, bro. You need to get hugeified. So that's that. So give us your

feedback. Yeah. If it's something you guys are interested in, let us know. On the topic of naming things, you want to pitch because

right now we've been calling our fans something. Oh. And we have another proposition. Two propositions in one show. Man alive. We're going to cause a lot of confusion here. So, yeah, CTP has been in charge of the Barbell Shrug fan page. Doug and I and Doug, Chris, and I get on there as well and do some stuff.

But CTP is the main one on there. He's been using the term Shrugged Nation a little bit on the fan page. But we were kind of thinking. What do you want to be called? We do like the name. I felt like I was stepping on John North's attitude. And we love John. We don't want to step on him.

John North. He's carved out that space. Yeah, we don't want to step up. Yeah, John North. He's carved out that space. Yeah, we don't want to step on your toes. So if you guys have any suggestions on how we should refer to the fans of Barbell Shrug, then let those be known on Twitter and Facebook as well, please. We're a big, awesome, rapidly developing, kick-ass community of awesome people. We need our thing, baby. That's right.

We need our thing. What's that thing going to be? And we have no ideas ourselves. And we're lazy. We're slothful from French toast breakfast today. All right, guys. We're going to wrap this show up. Thanks for tuning in.

We had fun discussing this day, and I look forward to seeing the post on Twitter and Facebook. Later. Shirts have shipped, motherfuckers. Looking for the garage games. Later. Shirts have shipped, motherfuckers. That's right. Looking for the garage games. First batch of shirts have shipped. So we actually sold them all.

So I've got a second batch. So I don't know how long this pre-order thing will go on. High five. Until we like catch up on our inventory. Exactly. Yep.

Until the next time. All right. Enjoy the CTP cam. Shocker, bro. Fade out slowly.