Barbell Shrugged - 51- Gaining Strength and Muscle For CrossFit - Barbell Shrugged Podcast EPISODE 51

Episode Date: March 13, 2013

On this episode of the Barbell Shrugged podcast the gang breaks in the new studio talking about how to gain strength and muscle for CrossFit, and at the end during CTP CAM we talk to 2-time CrossFit Games athlete Aja Barto.

This week on Barbell Shrug, we talk about what it takes to get bigger and stronger. Don't forget to go to iTunes. Give us five stars there. Huge. Go to our Facebook fan page and like us. Baby and huge. 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. Budso? 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. Yeah, 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 why isn't those things run like they are now okay all right here we go three two one yeah what what's up yeah mike blitzer here oh yeah this barbell shrug which podcast is this oh wait we only have one podcast um yeah i'm here with chris moore doug larson i know we haven't had keeping that intro we're not we're not starting over yeah we should i don't know we'll just keep going keep that sounds good sounds good we did good let's get over it. This will be the first episode in the last few where we didn't have a guest. So we've decided for it to be just the three of us.

And we're going to crush some content here. We're keeping it intimate between bros. We're drinking a bulletproof coffee. We're having an intimate conversation. We're sharing our knowledge. Stick around for the CTP cam if you want to see how we made our Bulletproof coffee. We're going to play tummy sticks later during the show. Oh, my God.

Google that if you don't know what it is. We're not going to explain it. Tummy sticks. Pole-to-pole action. Sweet. Give a quick rundown on what the Bulletproof coffee is. The Bulletproof coffee. Oh, yeah.

So I've been seeing a little bit of this on Twitter. I gave out a quick recipe suggestion yesterday on the Twitters. Basically, all it is is a good, high-quality coffee. You have to French press it, of course. Then, you're going to add one tablespoon of grass-fed butter and one tablespoon of coconut oil

per cup of coffee. It's quite a bit of fat. Put it in a blender. That's 28 grams of fat per cup yeah off the top of my head it's a lot it's a lot it's a lot make a good amount of calories well and it's all medium chain triglycerides which actually assists and burning fat you let that a key step you make the coffee a very strong version of you make a strong version of the coffee put it in blender uh then you drop in the butter and the coconut oil and some cinnamon blend it make sure

it emulsifies nice it'll make your coffee nice and creamy it'll taste it is very creamy it'll be it'll be a new version of coffee you've never had if you ever had a brevet latte which is a latte made of steamed half and half and coffee it's kind of like that vibe super rich super decadent like a dessert i would say one key tip that little plastic thing on your blender crack that thing open and cover it with a hand towel because you've got hot coffee and an enclosed space and you hit that blender it's going to explode all over your face and that's probably on the short list of things you don't want to happen it's right near the top so don't don't do that be smart face. And that's probably on the short list of things you don't want to happen. It's right near the top.

So don't do that. Be smart. All right. So that's awesome. Today's podcast is going to be brought to you by our weight gain program. So one of the things that we talked about a few episodes ago, Chris and I did a terrible episode about. It wasn't fucking terrible.

It was a bro challenge thing. We were just hanging out. We were just spitting out ideas. We were sharing our knowledge. No, it wasn't terrible terrible it was bro it was a bro challenge thing we were just hanging out we were just spitting out ideas we were sharing our knowledge no it wasn't terrible it was fun uh no but we we talked about putting together a weight gain program we got a lot of feedback from that a lot of people want to do it so we're going to post uh something up on the website where you can sign up for that uh we do not have a name for it yet we've been a lot of people have thrown out a lot of suggestions but nothing that really you know sparks with any of us doug you were talking about you guys so they were good they were but we we gotta find that

that zingy phrase yeah the zingy phrase i don't know nothing that just seemed like it was good to stick doug you're gonna put something up where people can sign up. What's that going to look like? Yeah, by the time this episode comes out, there should be a picture on the sidebar, which is the right side of the screen, basically, on the computer. Of the video? There'll probably be a little bit of text that says, if you want more information about this weight gain program, click here.

And then basically, we'll put you on the list. And one of the first things you'll get as being on that list will be a survey kind of asking you exactly what you want to get out of this program. So we're still piecing together the program. For the most part, we know what it'll be, but we'd like to get as much feedback as possible. That way we can tweak it and modify it and make it exactly what you want it to be. So it's not set in stone quite yet.

It's going to be. It's not set in stone quite yet. It's going to be perfect. It's easier to make it perfect if we get a lot of feedback. So sign up for that list and tell us what you want it to be and we can tweak it. Perfect means it's going to be tailored to the people who are a part of it.

Perfect for me is not perfect for somebody else. It's easy for us to project what other people want but if you just tell us what you want then we can make it exactly we need we need your feedback so um oh yeah what for i'm gonna make an announcement real quick you got an announcement to make have you ever told that story on this show we don't need to go into right now but that's an inside joke for everyone doesn't know i've got an announcement make i have decided because we're gonna be talking about gaining weight and i actually was not thinking about gaining weight this year um i'd say about every

other year i make a big swing and weight and i get real heavy and then i lean back out i do about once every two years i was not gonna do it this year because um i've been competing in weight lifting and i was gonna go to nationals which would be which was supposed to be the first weekend of august and so i was gonna have to stay in the 77 kilo weight class so i didn't have any time to gain weight i was just gonna have to hang out where i was at it's a good strategy yes but usaw um decided to move nationals up a week or a little bit one week sooner, which is the same weekend as Doug's wedding. So now I will not be attending nationals, which actually, I mean,

I wasn't that heartbroken over it. Not that big of a deal because now I'll just prep for the American open. Now what I'm going to do now though, is I'm going to move up a weight class. Oh God. So moving up a weight class means god so moving up a weight class means that i need to be you know the weight class is about 17 it's about 18 pounds heavier than the weight class i've been competing in it's 85 kilos but in order to be competitive as an 85 kilo weightlifter you obviously have to gain make a big swing up you gotta kind of come

down to to get into the 85. Right. You don't want to be like sitting there every day in that zone. Right. So that's 187 pounds. And right now you're in the walk 173. I'm 173 right now. That means I need to walk around. If I'm going to be competitive at 187 pounds,

I need to walk around 192. But if I want to be a relatively lean 192, I probably need to get up to about 205 pounds and then lean out from there. So the goal is to put on 30 pounds by August 1. And then I'm going to lean back out. And then I'm hoping that that's going to put me in a really good spot to be more competitive at the American Open come December. Do you want to walk hand in hand with the Shrugged Nation as they as well venture down this path of hugeness that is correct you're gonna join them you're gonna be right there with them yeah so the goal for this for the six month program is 26

pounds in 26 weeks right it's a six month program and you're trying to go faster than that i'm gonna go 30 pounds in four months so 30 just a show can be done 30 pounds in 16 weeks that's two pounds a week really um and then i'm going to and the importance here is is that i'm gaining the weight with performance in mind you know i'm going to get faster and stronger so i'm going to gain the weight i'm going to go i'm going to overshoot where i really need to be and this is something that i think we need to address uh in regard to the the weight gain program we're going to do is, okay, you may need to be 190 pounds, which means you need to get up to about 205 if you want 190 high-quality pounds. So I'm going to overshoot.

I'm going to go 205 when I really need to be 190, 192, and then I'm going to lean back out from 205. So basically the rest of the episode, we're going to talk about how you're going to lean back out from from 205 uh this is a so basically the rest of the episode we're going to talk about how you're going to do that how how i'll do it and how you guys can do it too so keep in mind this is a long-term plan it is now april what is it what month is this march march it is bulletproof coffee bro it has got me fired up so you feel good but not any smarter but you can't remember what month it is. That's right. Who needs months and time when you've got bulletproof coffee?

Come on now. I've got energy. Energy. All right, so it's March. I am doing this with the intent to be better at something in December. I think all too often people set goals where they're like, Oh, I got to do this in two or three months from now. They set, it's good to have short term goals so that you can knock them out and move towards, you know, where you need to be. I agree that what you're at, the point you're

making is, is really important. I'm going to change it. I'm going to change the point now just to screw with you. No, I can't be screwed with. I'm so fucking malleable, I'm like a ball taffy. Just pull me any which way in your warm hands, and I just go there. I'm going to set goals a month from now, two months from now, three months from now. But the real goal is that come December, I'm going to be more competitive as an athlete. I'm not going to get hung up on things that are two months out.

If I lose my six pack in four months, I'm not going to sit and cry about it. Men don't cry over their abs. I know that by December, my abs will be way better than they are now. Way sexier. Way more Ripley, veiny. You've got to post those profile pictures

to facebook where you're standing sideways with your belly hanging out like the girls do and say like week 12 i might get fat before and after your pregnancy picture uh well i like your goal sounds perfect because of course i'm going through what what have i ever done that's not perfect first off uh how much time do we have no i was gonna to say, I'm going through this project I'm working on, and one of the key things I think in setting a really good goal, no matter what it is, is that the primary goal is just out of reach, and it's a little bit bigger than you can tackle now. So a 30-pound weight goal at your size is a really tough one.

It's not easy to attain, and it's not out of the realm of possibility, and it's just so far out that you've got time to sort of work backwards and come up with manageable chunks. So, yeah, 30 pounds by X date is a lot to put on. And if you think about that, you start going, well, I don't know if I can do it. Now you're starting to lose your momentum. But if you go, okay, this week I've got to put all my focus on just gaining a fraction of that. Doing it this way every day, I'll consume these things,

and every day I'll just focus on this one little step I take. I think it sounds dead on perfect. Yeah, and one thing too is if you want to gain, I just kind of did the math real quick. It's 16 weeks. I've got to do two pounds a week. But in reality, I'll probably put on close to a pound a day or a pound every other day for the first like 10 to 15 days.

And then after that, it's going to become a real grind. Yeah, the second thing about a goal is that because your life is so complicated at times, because there's all these variables spinning around your life that you can't really control, you have to sort of tinker as you step through it. So the plan now will get you going, and the first part will be easy, but you're going to have to sort of take the things you're learning and the challenges you're coming up against and continually tweak them in order to keep marching towards a goal. So as the progress slows, you have to sort of recalibrate and reestablish the key things

you need to do in order to keep the progress going. Exactly. Because then you say, okay, now I have half as much time to get there. I've got this much more time to make up. These things are working. These things are not. So the plan hasn't changed. Yeah.

So, Doug, why is it you think we're talking about CrossFitters gaining weight too? You always make a really good point about being bigger and stronger as a CrossFitter. Can you tell everybody why you think people should be being bigger and stronger as a CrossFitter. Can you tell everybody like why you think people should be getting stronger, bigger and stronger as CrossFitters? I totally can't hear that. Let's finish up the point about the, the weight gain program. Just kind of give a few more of the specifics on when it's going to start and

how it's going to work. And then we'll kind of dig into the rest of the episode, which is where you were leading into. So we're going to, we're trying to do 26 pounds in 26 weeks. It's going to be a six month program and we're going to start monday april 8th right yeah monday april 8th so that's right after the open if i'm not mistaken it's the monday after the open ends so yeah the idea there is that people aren't going to be thinking oh i don't want to do this weight gain program i don't want to

start that right during the open yeah that's probably not the best time to try to put on max poundage. It's right in the middle of a five-week competition. Right. Okay, so it'll start Monday after the Open. It's going to be a heavy weightlifting focus, but primarily we're looking to gain muscle mass. It'll be getting bigger, faster, and stronger. This isn't just about getting fat.

Right. BFS. There will be plenty of power lifts, that type of thing. But really, we're focusing on getting bigger and stronger to improve your Olympic lifts and ultimately to improve your CrossFit ability. But we're going to have just enough conditioning to where you don't lose your CrossFitness, as you like to say. But that won't be the emphasis of the program.

So mostly, it'll be strength training and then a little bit of met conning and intervals here and there just to make sure that you don't lose the the fitness that you already have yeah there'll be some conditioning in there and then we'll also be working in some gymnastic skills so you don't have to worry like hey if i put on 26 pounds am i going to still be able to do a muscle up we're going to try and make sure that you maintain that muscle-up. And maybe, even if you don't have your muscle-up yet, it might be a good opportunity.

You may be gaining weight, and you might actually get your muscle-up while you're doing this because you will be getting stronger. Because you'll become significantly more awesome than you currently are. I mean, if you do any of the programming that we put together, of course you're going to become a better human being. We happen to know what the fuck we're talking about. Let's get on the same page here. We are so smart at this shit,

it's scary to us. I sit and think, I got so many ideas, man. Damn, that makes my spine chill and curl. I feel like it's my responsibility to get it out. Because if I die, I take all this awesome stuff with me.

That's not fair to humanity. And that's why you're writing a book right now. I am writing a book. It's going to be like 20,000 words of me ranting about things I think are important. So you'll love it. Perfect. I don't know what 20,000 words means. I have no idea how long it is.

It's going to be long enough to where it's a book. It's going to be longer than five pages? Yeah. So you don't read books, so that's going to be tough for you. That's true. Okay, so digging back into the question that you were about to ask me or that you did ask me. Yeah, why do people want to gain weight? Why is it going to be a beneficial thing?

So the point that I usually make on that that I've brought up on the show before is that if you're training for strength, then heavy weight turns into moderate weight, and then moderate weight turns into lightweight. And if a weight is lighter, then it's simply just less fatiguing at that same weight. So if you have a 135-pound max overhead press or max thruster, and you have to do 95-pound thrusters for 45 reps, that's pretty heavy relative to your max. But if you can easily thruster 2755 then doing thrusters with 95 pounds is a joke and you can easily do 45 reps unbroken as an example actually this past weekend or this past week with the open 13.1 perfect example of that you know if you could get one single rep at say

165 pounds or 210 pounds on the snatch if you're a guy and for the ladies i want to say it was a hundred you know a hundred pounds and then 120 pounds uh if if you could get just one one lift at that poundage you're gonna create a big separation and i know that i witnessed a lot of people uh in our own facility watching facebook and twitter a lot of people got stuck at that weight. And the competitive CrossFitters, they're going to be able to pick up that 120 pounds or 210 pounds and just snatch it. It separates the men from the boys, so to speak.

Yeah, if you're looking at moderately heavy weights, if you're looking at 225 on a bench press, and I can bench press 400 pounds, and you can bench press 250, then with 225 pounds, I have better endurance because I can do it, say, 12 or 15 times and you can only do it two. It's really not endurance at that point, not true endurance, but what happens is I can simply just do more repetitions than you can

just because it's a lesser percentage of my max. So getting your max as high as possible is usually step one. It's not until something's below about 40% of your max where you actually need to train for true muscular endurance at that point, which means taking that weight and doing repetitions repeatedly to try to improve your muscular endurance. Until it's below 40% of your max, the answer is just to get stronger first and then you can do more reps with it. And you could argue with that, but you'd be wrong because the shit we're talking is physics

argue all you want yeah don't be weak in the corner and that that's also an argument for maybe maybe not individualized programming but programming that that prescribes percentages for conditioning versus just prescribed weight because if you're if your max front squat is only like 175 pounds 95 pound thruster i mean that's in the range of like strength work in my opinion you know and you're doing a ton of reps you know you need to probably do a better job of separating that strength in your conditioning and you're not doing that if if you're if you're the weight you're trying to use when you're doing conditioning is you know 70 of your one rep max yeah lack of strength is the number one reason that people have to scale their workouts like if you're just not strong enough to

do a muscle up it doesn't matter if you have good technique or bad technique you just need to get stronger then all of a sudden a muscle up is not that big of a deal like everyone i know that comes in really strong can just hop up and do a muscle up their very first time even if it looks kind of ugly they can still do it and then the fact that they can do it with bad technique now all you have to do is just make sure they have adequate mobility and give them a little bit of instruction and then a couple days later they they got it down as long as their mobility is not really bad yeah but if someone doesn't have the requisite strength to do a muscle up almost no matter what well it doesn't matter if you teach them technique or it doesn't matter if you cue them and coach them

and they know how to do it or they're putting effort into it. They just need to get stronger. And until they get stronger, there's just nothing they can do about it. Yeah, it seems like the key thing is that there's this ratio of your strength and your movement efficiency, your technique. Like Penlay says when it comes to Olympic lifts, people argue what's more important, strength or technique? Well, obviously it's the optimal blend of both.

You work them both really hard all the time, and the thing you are less good at, you have to put a little bit of emphasis on. It's just a common sense approach. You know what I'm saying? Spitting wisdom. All right, so I think most of our viewers, if they watch this show routinely, they kind of accept that getting bigger and getting stronger is something that needs to happen in the CrossFit world.

The whole CrossFit world is kind of moving in that direction anyhow. Let's kick on to the different methods that people use to get bigger and the different programs they use and the pros and cons of the different programs they use and kind of the pros and cons of each. So people that come out of weightlifting or powerlifting or bodybuilding, they all kind of have a different philosophy as far as how to train and what works for gaining size and what works for getting stronger. You know, powerlifters tend to have the really heavy kind of grinding reps and it's all low rep ranges, doubles and singles, a lot of good mornings. And that's kind of like their style in a lot of cases. Weightlifters have a very similar approach where they're doing doubles and singles, a lot of good mornings. And that's kind of like their style in a lot of cases. Weightlifters have a very similar approach where they're doing doubles and singles,

but they tend to do faster, the quick lifts, the Olympic lifts. I guess the volume's higher. Yeah, they do a lot more. Yeah, the volume, especially at a high percentage of their max, tends to be a lot higher. They do a lot more, 90%, 95%, almost on a daily basis in some cases. And that works well for them and then the bodybuilders have more of a a moderate weight you know 60 or 70 percent of their max you know for for sets of 8 to 12 and that's kind of like the hypertrophy rep ranges and they get they get

bigger and stronger like that and so there's all these different methods and they all work but they all kind of work in a slightly different way so um you know in the crossfit world you know it's it's it's kind of confusing because you have all these different philosophies coming into like this one single sport and new people just don't know what to do all right uh so you know coming out of the powerlifting world and coming out of the weightlifting world um you know what what have you done in the past that's worked for you as far as putting on muscle mass you know like very specific like sets and reps and exercises and all that.

Yeah, obviously I think that the most important things are sort of the big three and pile thing. I mean, if you look at squats, deadlifts, and presses, you're getting their high force, their high load activities, which is already a good thing. Load ranges, yeah, I mean, I guess the money is heavy sets of five, I guess. When you say high force. The load is really high.

Maybe we should talk about what the difference between a high power, high force movement is. What the differentiating factor is between those two. So, powerlifting is a very high force sport where the barbell weights heavy. At the competitive ranges, it moves at a grind. So, compared to a weightlifting match, a powerlifting match, the load is higher. The speed at which it's moving is slower so the power component is reduced good or bad as a match is different

if you add more weight to the bar it's going to be more of a high force yeah high force like weightlifters I guess get into that when they do really heavy pulls and stuff but it's much it's a different weightlifting and powerlifting are like

it's like water polo and swimming it's like the water is in common, but the actual dynamics of the sport are really, really different. They're just not really comparable for some very obvious. And that's the biggest thing is that the physics around the sport are just really different. Yeah, so my view, the thing that's always going to help you put on weight

is like heavy sets of five where you're lowering the bar controlled and you're coming up as fast as possible and you're really having to work really hard. That's always going to work. And I also really like higher volume riffs on the power lifts where you can inject frequency, you can do more sessions per week at lower percentages, or you can do things like I advocate, like in a delt or squat,

you can do lots and lots of sets of a little bit less reps at a solid lower load would do it more so like uh my favorite thing is speed squats speed presses and speed deadlifts for like you know like 8 to 15 sets of 2 to 3 reps the weight's like 70 75 percent something that like every minute on the minute yeah every minute on the minute. Yeah, every minute on the minute. It's like a higher pace. You get more work. If you count up all the weight you lift during a set of 10 sets of three speed pulls, every rep is zingy and fast, but the overall load you're doing,

you're doing many thousands of pounds of load. So that, over time, doing all that work is going to really be advantageous to you. I guess the second component of powerlifting training, which helps you add mass, is the bodybuilding influence with assistance work. So if you do three to five sets of eight to ten reps, kind of like that generic assistance work prescription on things like –

It's generic, but it works. It does. So things like barbell rows. You can do isolation movements. I tend to do it on things. The older I get, the more I see a snatch grip deadlift, rack pulls, barbell rows, or pin lay rows, my favorite, dumbbell pressing, good mornings,

these big multi-joint movements that are close variants, and they make up segments of the competitive lifts, but you do those for more reps, add a little bit lighter load. Those two things are really empowering, what give you size. That's the approach. And it works. There's some really huge power to this. I think the bodybuilding angle is just the assistance work, basically,

for generic prescriptions, but they're missing a lot of the high-force components, which I think makes it not quite as effective for the common guy. What are some good examples of assistance movements that crossfitters don't typically do that they could probably benefit from? I think barbell rows on the big ones. You agree with that? Like there's not a whole lot of rowing and heavy rowing.

We do a lot of that at our gym. Mike programs a lot of barbell rows cause he really liked them. And I think that's a great thing. I think, I think you're totally spot on. There is not enough horizontal pulling in crossfit. There's, there's I think that's a great thing. I think you're totally spot on. There is not enough horizontal pulling in CrossFit. There's rowing on a rower.

There's light, which is very light. There's ring rows for people that don't do pull-ups, but a lot of times high-level CrossFitters don't do a lot of that stuff anymore. Doing more horizontal pulling

is a great idea. I'm confused on why we don't see that on CrossFit.com. The good thing about a barbell row is that it also has a high carryover to deadlifts and clean pulls. You can practice

the exact position you'll be in for your clean. You can work that initial. You can practice getting your knees scooped back so the bar can travel straight up and you move around the bar. You can practice all those initial movements, back posture, and you're also training something and it has direct carryover to making you better in the other lifts. That's what

assistance work should be. It shouldn't be like compared to like a bodybuilder may choose like a lat pulldown or like a chest support a row, which definitely can help you gain mass in the back, but it's only building mass versus a pin lay row or a well-executed barbell row is heavy and a stunt just

like you would do a deadlift or a clean pull. That's what makes it a good assistance exercise that adds size, but also spills over into performance. That's what a bodybuilder and most powerlifters sometimes lose sight of is that your assistance work should be a variant and a builder of what you're going to test yourself in. I mean, I hate to use the word, but functional movement. Fuck you. How dare you speak this?

It is. Functional has become a very cliche throwing around term yeah you got to keep with bosu balls and all that bullshit but like you yeah you you have to think like functional movement is the joints are moving in a manner they're meant to move in a very natural way and that's kind of what you're describing with the assistance work is this is you know move the way the joints are supposed to move don't isolate them with a machine and try to like get the muscle to contract in a way that's never going to happen in a real life scenario everything can have its place like i will spill the beans and tell the shrug nation that you have

been spotted doing knee extensions yes in the wild but you gotta you gotta be able to answer but there's no such thing as an exercise that's bad you gotta say you gotta have an answer i feel like i need to like no i'm gonna say i need to qualify why yeah like so you're saying look i'm here i gotta it was a joint stiffness and just a warm-up you were doing it for no i mean i had to do knee extensions a few weeks ago because i i had a jacked up hamstring. My hamstring just stopped functioning. So here's the thing. You had a very specific answer for why you were doing this thing.

Yeah, I wanted to get some kind of leg work in. I wasn't able to squat. I wasn't able to pull off the floor. So I was like, man, I need to do something to put some weight on my legs even if it's just my quads. Yeah, it could have been a short-term potentiating thing that kind of restored balance and helped your hamstring sort of loosen up. Whatever whatever it is but you had a very specific reason so if your reason for picking an exercise is i want to get huge okay not bad but if you're that's your only answer then you're not really taking a close enough view of why so if it's i can gain

weight i can do a lot of load in this exercise. Good. I will gain mass. Good. It's also an analog or a variant of the thing I want to get better at. If you have two or three answers for why, then you've got a good exercise. Like, okay, I need to gain weight in the chest, gain mass. Okay. I'll do flies. Okay.

What else? Is that going to help you jerk better? Probably not. Okay, well, is there something you can do that's maybe a better choice? Could you do like steep incline presses or something that maybe has a little carryover to the other thing? So while you're getting big, you're also getting better? Oh, I didn't think of that. So you've got to answer the question from a few different ways before you can really drill down and know what you're doing is a good idea.

If you're not prepared to answer the question,, if you can't come up with an answer, that's an answer in and of itself. Like, I can't really think of a good reason, so there's your answer. I do like dumbbell pressing. I don't see that in CrossFit very often. That's not as wrong as just doing a standing overhead dumbbell press.

We do barbell presses all the time. We do kettlebell stuff, but CrossFit doesn't like dumbbells that much. That's what's stupid, because kettlebells, the reason why I don't like kettlebells is there's a mystique because they're fucking Russian and they have a handle that there's something magical about. It's what's stupid because kettlebells, the reason why I don't like kettlebells is there's a mystique because they're fucking Russian

and they have a handle that there's something magical about them. It's just a weight with a handle and that's what a dumbbell is. Like for me, doing overhead stuff with a dumbbell, like dumbbell snatches, is way better than a kettlebell.

Kettlebells are kind of stupid when you're not swinging them. You can do Turkish, yeah, I mean, Turkish getups with a dumbbell are just as good, right? Maybe don't bruise the back of your forearm. Yeah, there's just one more way to load yourself.

Yeah, but what's so unfunctional about, look, okay, CrossFitters, take a pair of 50-pound dumbbells, clean them, and do standing overhead press with them. You're going to have a pretty good all-around core workout. It's going to be hard as shit. Dumbbells, sandbags. They're just implements. There's nothing right or wrong about anything.

So for people that have different levels of experience, a different training age is what we usually call it, how do the different rep ranges influence their ability to gain strength and gain muscle mass? Someone who has one year of experience lifting weights versus five versus ten, how do they want to alter their training? I'm intimately familiar with this because I'm only 32, but my training age in dog years is like 85.

Can anybody else identify with this shit? I've been struggling with the shoulder pain and stuff. I've got it. I'm on top of it again. I think all three of us can at least. Yeah, but I think the thing that changes when you're starting out, just the barbell is so perfect. If you do heavy sets of five

or even 10 reps of barbell exercise, you're just going to make astronomical gains. You're going to feel like a lion. Nothing can stop you. But then the hallmark of why periodization is necessary is because the hallmark of training experience as you get more and more reps of the barbell,

more experience, progress slows, you need more variation. That turns into the need for, more experience, progress slows, you need more variation. That turns into the need for lifting heavy always, of course. So beginners don't need very much variation. You don't need almost any variation. And more advanced people need a lot more variation. Yeah, it's like an inverse relationship.

Let's dig into that a little bit more. So not very much variation means that a beginner can stay on a cycle for like eight weeks and still make progress. Just add a little more weight to the bar every week. If you're doing five by five squats, you can do five by five for eight weeks in a row. Add five pounds each week. Every week, yeah. And you PR every week and you get better.

And advanced people can't do that. And you don't change it until progress slows. So if you can just add weight every week for five months in a row, do it until you can't do it anymore. Pick all the low-hanging fruit. We talk about that in Simple Strength. If you try to interject something fancy you saw another lifter doing,

you're going to sabotage your progress. All you need to do are these dead simple things. So after you have a few years of experience under your belt, maybe an eight-week program is too long, and you plateau before you get to the end of that program. So maybe you can only do a four-week program, and then you've got to switch it up. Yeah.

That's a good – You start spreading out the – you've got to spread out the time you add weight. So instead of every week, maybe it's every other week that becomes ramping up over the course of a month to try to add a couple pounds at the very end. And, of course, the individual sessions may get more intense, but there's got to be more rest, and there's got to be more mixed methods in there. I think one thing that comes along with this is as you get older you can't just do all the barbell work like i think like for crossfits this may even have some direct care but as you get more and more experienced things like strategically selected

assistance exercises that can help build the things that you're going to perform in like people always think that maybe variants of the exercise aren't as useful, but the bottom line is as you get older, you can't grind on the barbell all the time because it's going to fucking eat you alive. It's going to give you joint pain. You're going to have more and more joint pain. You're going to have issues getting the full range of motion.

If you bench, bench, bench, bench, bench for eons and eons, like overhead press and jerk, jerk, jerk, your shoulder's going to start giving out on you. So you have to start mixing things and taking a full range of motion out and having little things that build each segment that becomes more and more common as you get older. You have to take that approach. That and doing small exercises for lots of reps

is just going to make you feel good. It can't just go heavy all the time for years on end. After a couple years or a decade it starts to wear on you you gotta start doing more assistance work or your elbows and your shoulders gonna start getting pretty achy yeah we've all we've all kind of gone through that so so the more advanced people i guess the the easiest example is kind of the conjugate system and and a lot of power lifters at least in the united states you know they they cycled different movements every week or two you

know they might do a good morning with chains one week with a with a straight bar and then the next week they do a giant camera bar and they're doing box squats like they change the movement every single week and that variation actually helps them get progress but beginners that's changing every week is just confusing and doesn't give them enough time to get good at an exercise and yeah the guys who have had success on a who are really capable and aren't over-relying on equipment and aren't playing any games, the guys who have done well on conjugate approaches have years and years and years. I guess the best example I can think of, because he's talked about it openly,

John Wellborn, since he was like 10 years old, has probably been training really hard for football. When he was in high school, he was front squatting 500 pounds. He had years and years and years of awesome, focused programming experience. Then after his playing days, I guess, and into his playing days in like the college, he started messing around with those conjugate approaches, I think.

That's my understanding. And he had loads of awesome success. Yeah. But if you are a young CrossFitter and you go to a CrossFit powerlifting seminar, which has great information, but you start incorporating that a little too soon, you're going to sabotage yourself.

You got to know when the time is right to break out these things. Yeah, I don't know exactly what they teach at the CrossFit powerlifting seminars. I mean, they may be doing, you know, some Texas Method stuff and not just conjugate. I haven't been to it yet. I know a lot of...

For me, the Texas Method is my favorite approach. I know a lot of CrossFit Journal videos. They've been referencing the conjugate method. And one thing I do find with the conjugate method is there's a couple different approaches that you can take with that. So if you're a newer person to training, if you don't have as much training volume, you can still use the conjugate method, but you don't want to change the exercise every week you may spend an entire month on that's actually what i do monday doing a back squat for a month or two um whereas if you go to if you go to west side barbell if you go and train with louis simmons uh his version of the conjugate method i mean he did

develop it so but even he has written some articles where he says hey if you're newer to this stick with the same exercise every monday the same exercise every tuesday thursday and friday um you know every tuesday that month you'll stick with the same exercises but then as you become more advanced you'll have to change it every single Monday. Like this Monday we're doing safety bar. The next Monday we're doing camber. The next Monday we're doing straight bar. And, you know, that's one thing that he talks about is, you know,

exactly what you're talking about is taking the variation out. And one way to do that is probably just stick with back squats for the whole month. I do want to go over what the conjugate method is real quick we can probably segue into to whale as well it's the same thing for a way of the perspective where if you're a beginner weightlifter what should you do you should do full range of motion snatch and clean and jerk you should do squat catches you need to learn these movements and then when you master them master them get really good at it again you can entertain power hang pulls off blocks but why would you pull off a block and get good at that and then try to test your snatch try to catch it

and fall down because you don't know the movement it's the same kind of approach you build the foundation and you go from there yeah so do you want to now you want to talk about your weight lifting angle on on how weightlifters get so damn big in the in the legs? What makes weightlifters so damn successful gaining mass? Yeah, I think in regard to weightlifting, and maybe clear that up a little bit with weightlifting, when we say weightlifting, we're talking about the Olympic lifts. I know a lot of times people get upset when you use the term Olympic lifts, but it must be said because most people are not familiar with it.

That's the name of the fucking sport. It's Olympic weightlifting. Well, not really. It is, isn't it? It's weightlifting. It's weightlifting. Yeah. Only like 0.2% of the population is getting accepted when you call it Olympic lifting.

And those guys are all high-level weightlifters. They're all elite weightlifters. But weightlifting, the sport of weightlifting is snatch and clean and jerk. Capital W. Go to USAW website, USA Weightlifting's website, and they've got a whole Weightlifting 101. If you want to learn how that works, go to that website, check it out. Yeah, one of the things that make, you know, why weightlifters,

what's funny is when I lifted the arnold last week um very successfully i might add you you crushed it bro yeah i did good but he did he did good but uh you know i had some friends that i uh that i don't talk to as much anymore you know i i see them once every couple years you too good for them pretty much now i see him every couple years and some of them saw the videos that posted on Facebook and whatnot. They were like, how did you get your quads to be that size? Why do they look like that? And I'm like, well, technically I'm squatting five days a week.

And they're like, what? I can't squat by maybe once or twice because I get so sore. And the difference between the way that I'm squatting as a weightlifter versus a bodybuilder, which is the typical approach that people take you know they they pick up muscle and fitness or flex magazine and they see that they gotta do five sets of ten and totally destroy themselves on monday and they they walk around like they got something stuck in their ass until thursday um and then they do it again maybe on on Friday, whatever. I mean, I used to, that used to be my protocol. Um, but, uh, with weightlifting, you're squatting five days a week

to those days, you're probably squatting pretty heavy. And then the other three days, you know, uh, the, the squatting might be because you're doing snatches and cleans, you know, it may not be that you're actually putting the bar on your shoulders and and doing squats um i personally like to squat heavy twice a week and do a speed squat another day so i may back squat twice you know they say mondays and saturdays and on wednesdays i'm doing like speed front squats or something like that that's kind of what i'm doing now i mean it changes a lot but um let's throw some numbers on top of both those examples so with the with the bodybuilding example that guy might have done back squats for five sets of 10 and ended up brutally sore yeah well yeah let me yeah i'll talk about what i used to do you start off with back squats do

five sets of 10 on that yeah then i would go do leg extensions i would do five sets of 10 on leg extensions 60 second rest between everything hardcore man then five sets of 10 on on hamstring curls oh yeah then i would go do five sets of 10 on deadlifts yeah so i'm picking i would pick i would pick four to five exercises and i would do five sets of 10 to failure or close to failure and it would just yeah it'd be one of those things where like i was continually sore week after week after week yeah i did that for about a decade. I trained that way for nine years. So then I would do that on, say, Monday.

Tuesday I would come in. I would bench press five sets of ten. Dumbbell press five sets of ten. Incline dumbbell press five sets of ten. Peck deck. Burn it out. This is the kind of shit you can only do when you're young, by the way. This would destroy me. Yeah. It would destroy me now. Five sets of ten on peck deck. Burn it out. This is the kind of shit you can only do when you're young, by the way. This would destroy me.

Yeah. It would destroy me now. Five sets of ten on peck deck. And then I would go on to my triceps. Then I would do tricep press downs. Five sets of ten. Skull crushers. Five sets of ten.

I would take every body part and do like five exercises for ten reps. Five sets of ten for each body part. And I would hit that twice a week. So if I did legs on Monday, I would then do it again on Thursday. I was training two hours a day, six days a week with 60 second breaks in between sets. Sounds smart.

And then, and then, and the thing is, is, you know, my whole goal at the time was to get as big as possible. And, and it was, It's actually kind of interesting because I feel like even though I wasn't training for performance, and then on top of that, I would do that, and then I would go out and run like three to six miles. Like three days a week, and then I would go swimming a couple days a week. It's basically bodybuilding plus endurance, LSD, long, slow distance programming. I'm glad you clarified that.

I would also call it just dumb shit. Dumb shit training. How that benefited me is that got a ton of training volume under my belt. That's probably why I don't benefit from high rep stuff now is because i did a lot of that when i was younger and so that's that is one approach that you can take when you're trying to gain weight that is a definitely a big bodybuilding protocol you're destroying the muscle as much as possible it's not functional for days on end and then you can work it again that's that's one way to do it and then now when

you come back when you come to weightlifting the rep ranges are much shorter i'm talking i don't do i don't i personally don't see a lot of benefit um doing more than three reps like i don't even like doing five by five anymore so um i've been weightlifting since i was 25 so about six seven years now and i've've been doing the shorter rep ranges. And I find that I get a lot of benefit out of, like, sets of two. Like, I do 10 sets of two. And cleans and snatches, also squats, though? Also squats, not just the snatch and the cleans.

Yeah, yeah, the squats. So, like, every once in a while, maybe once in a blue moon, I'll do five sets of five. And as I'm about to do five sets of five, I'm like, I don't even want to do it because I'll do five sets of five across. So to clarify, there's two ways you can approach this, ladies and gentlemen. You can do your five sets. You can warm up up to a weight that's heavy for five and do that five times. That's called sets across.

And it is really brutal to recover from. That's the hardest thing you can do in a gym. Or you can do what I commonly like to do is I warm up so I get to a weight that I can check off and say that works for a set of five so it's pretty light and I go one, two, three, four, five and I hit

the top one that's really, really brutal. It's only one that's really taxing the hell out of me. For me, at my age, I can recover from that. I can make weekly progress, actually, especially now that I'm doing a different kind of squat from my own personal training. But if you're really, really experienced

and you want to do five-by-five at sets across, that's going to be brutally, brutally hard. So there's two ways of approaching it. You've got to play and see what's right for you. And by right for you, I mean if the next week you can perform and add weight to that then five five across is probably okay if mike does five across at 385 or something you probably won't walk the rest of the week it's just too much for you yeah and um in regard to why weightlifting works well now for and for everybody and for myself

is because i am squatting five days a week not Not every day I'm blowing it out. Um, the, the, the, the volume load is not, is not so great that I can't get in the gym the next day and train again, but squatting high, you know, it's high volume over the whole week. Um, and yeah, there's, there's some speed components in there. So where before it was like five to ten it was all grinder now there's days where i'm doing high force lifts you know it's 90 of my runner at max for a double um there's other days where i'm doing say a clean instead which is gonna end up being you know i'm basically pulling from the floor like a deadlift and then i'm also squatting the weight and it's you know 60 to 70 of my, my back squat or something like that.

So I'm getting speed there. I'm going to take a day where I purposely speed squat. Um, and, and that's going to benefit me on, you know, uh, you know, doing a lot of speed work is, is beneficial to me to lift more weight. Yeah. But, um, I think we should, well, let's go ahead and take a break real quick man we've been going for 45 minutes let's take a break real quick when we come back information to share um maybe we yeah i feel like we could probably do a couple shows on this a couple more uh but uh we'll take a break real quick and we'll come back and we'll talk a little bit more about uh how you can get

bigger and stronger yo hey guys this is rich r, and you're listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to fitter.tv. You ready? Alright, so I'm going to pick up where we left off. We talked a little bit about powerlifting, bodybuilding, and weightlifting, and I want to talk a little bit about muscle physiology. From a high level.

Don't get all fancy with it. Some of you are going to get bored right now. Actually, no. We're going to try and keep it nice and chill. Punch it up. I'm just talking a lot today, I feel like. I'm sorry, Doug. I have consumed a mass amount of caffeine.

You're the yappy bitch this time. I feel like I'm vindicated. I'm going to just go with it and uh screw you guys but um so with bodybuilding that protocol i was talking about the five sets of ten just totally blowing it out moderate weights you know you can't do heavy weight for 10 reps you have to make it lighter so the the lighter weights for more repetitions um that's going to cause more more muscle damage. But also the type of physiological muscle changes you're getting there is what we call sarcoplasmic.

And so sarcoplasm in the muscle cell, it's the same as cytoplasm for any other cell. All that is is the fluid in the muscle cell. It's your muscle goo. It's your muscle goo. So if you increase. Right, Doug? Is that the physiological term? Yeah, sarcoplasm is the muscle cell. It's your muscle goo. It's your muscle goo. So if you increase... Right, Doug? Is that the physiological term? Yeah, sarcoplasm is a muscle cell.

Goo. Muscle goo. Goo. Goo. Doug's like... The other stuff in the cell, sure. Yeah, so it's... The stuff that's not contracting,

we'll say for now. Yeah, think about it as just the fluid inside the muscle cell. With the 5 Sets of 10, the bodybuilding protocol, what they're trying to do is maximize the amount of sarcoplasm in the muscle cell. With the 5 sets of 10, the bodybuilding protocol, what they're trying to do is maximize the amount of sarcoplasm in the muscle cell to make it as big as possible. Don't confuse that with fluid outside of the cell,

which would make you look puffy. More fluid in the muscle cell via bodybuilding protocol is going to make you look more muscular. More definition, all that kind of stuff. Puff Daddy is a bad thing here. That's right. So if you do super high volume training, kind of like you're talking about, five sets of 10,

on multiple different movements, you look at a bodybuilder, especially growing up, you look at a bodybuilder and you think, that guy just looks so strong. And he looks very muscular and he's buff and all that. But compared to a high level weightlifter, a high level powerlifter or strongman, the bodybuilder, even though he looks very muscular and he's buff and all that. But compared to a high-level weightlifter, a high-level powerlifter or strongman, the bodybuilder, even though he looks very buff because he's shredded and you can see the muscles,

he's maybe not quite as strong as the world-class powerlifter or the world-class strongman. It doesn't mean he's not strong. If you look at a bodybuilder and he can overhead press 300 pounds, he's still a strong dude. But he might look much stronger than he actually is yeah it's pound for pound to to someone like a professional strength athlete rather than a physique athlete keep in mind that the sarcoplasm is not uh is not contractile tissue like you were talking about um it's you're increasing the amount of fluid but in that fluid is going to be things for like energy so you're actually you are increasing the performance of the muscle to perform it at higher endurance activities so you're training it to do more reps so it's going

to increase that fluid but it's not going to increase the ability for the muscle to contract for for you know really heavy loads so what will so what will what will so you have you have basically two things they're going to make the muscles bigger or more dense. First is that sarcoplasm, which is going to make it bigger. And the other thing is myofibular density. And so that's your actinomycin. And what they do is those are the actual filaments inside the muscle that cause the contraction to happen. Training modes.

The little ratchets. They kind of grab onto each other and then pull like that and it shortens the muscle and there's a contraction. So if you want to maximize strength without maximizing size, the type of protocol you would use would be a weightlifting style protocol, which is lower reps, higher weights. So high speed and high force movements. So weights that are light,

but you're moving at maximum speeds and high force. That means, you know, a weight that you can only get like one to three reps of, and you're really pushing it hard. You're not going to get very much sarcoplasmic build there. You're not going to get a lot of more sarcoplasm in the muscle cell that way. But what you will do is get more myofibular density and that's why these small weight lifters can lift so much weight even though they don't look that big um so those are like two separate sides of the spectrum you have bodybuilders on this side of the spectrum and you have weight lifters on the opposite side of the spectrum because most weight lifters are not trying to put on a lot of weight let's let's let's make a point that's popular fans but let's ask a rhetorical

question why are bears so fucking awesome because they have bones insane myofibular density yeah do not fuck with the bear for the following reasons one obviously it's a bear it'll destroy you but the reasons why are gigantically huge muscles x hundreds of percent more than you have. And then within that muscle, X hundred percent more efficiency. So of the twice as much muscle, there's two or three times the myofibrillar efficiency. And then on the end of that arm that's got all these things, razor sharp claws. Don't fuck with a bear. So Joe Rogan made his point.

He's like, you see that fucking wolf? He's got that werewolf in his studio, like American that fucking wolf he's got that werewolf in his studio like American werewolf he's got a werewolf in his studio I only listen to his show I don't watch it I heard him talking about that

there's a giant werewolf in a corner he goes you see that werewolf yeah it's fucking huge right yeah it's like even but if there was a bear

the bear would fucking destroy the werewolf bears don't fuck with a bear under any circumstances if you see it out in the wild don't go near it it will eat your face off and destroy you

alright so everyone that just heard that and decided that they're never doing anything that's over two reps ever again in their whole life because because if you're only gaining contractile tissue from low reps then why would i even bother to do high reps because it doesn't make me stronger for anyone that just made that assumption um don't don't go too far down that path quite yet so go ahead you'll yeah you notice i talked about bodybuilders and weightlifters but i didn't say anything about powerlifters and this is where like powerlifters especially someone that's doing the conjugate method um kind of is in the middle

so their first exercise of the day is either high speed it's that dynamic effort or it's that max effort um it's that high force or high speed so the first movement that the the movement that they want to get better at which is normally a squat or the press or deadlift right yeah um they'll pick a lower body or upper body movement and they will maximize the speed or the force on that and then they'll spend the rest of the training session you know they'll do uh eight doubles or they'll do uh was it five singles is that how that works i forget uh yeah yeah conjugate method gets kind of funny so then afterwards then they'll pick like three to five exercises and do three to five sets of six to ten

reps two reps short of failure so yeah so yeah the beginning of their session they're looking at increasing myofibular density and the rest of the session is working on having more sarcoplasm if you want to just look at it from a purely muscle physiology perspective so they're getting kind of the best of both worlds and that's why these powerlifters are so freaking big and strong and i think that weightlifters or crossfitters who are doing weightlifting style programming that want to gain weight, such as myself, what I'm going to end up doing is I'm going to still use a weightlifting protocol for getting faster and stronger. But I'm also going to implement more of a bodybuilding or, you know, powerlifting assistance work approach. So what I'll do is I'll add in assistance work after my main lifts in order to build up that muscle size and not just muscle density.

So knowing what the rule of a good assistance exercise is, which ones will you think you'll choose? Well, for right now, I'm going to actually do some single arm, single leg work. Split squats and dumbbell rows and shit? Well, yeah, I'm going to actually do some single arm, single leg work. Split squats and dumbbell rows and shit? Yeah, I'm going to do some dumbbell rows. Especially away from competition, I'll do more single arm, single leg stuff. I'm actually going to do some single leg deadlifts. Good mornings are a really good choice for me.

Glute ham raises are really good choices for me. I do like rear foot elevated Elvish split squats, especially for people that aren't very good about using their glutes. And if you want to basically grow your butt and get stronger hips, then Rupert Elvish split squats are fantastic for that. Nothing makes my glutes sore like those do. So I'll probably do some squats. Nothing pounds my glutes like a good split squat.

That's right. Poundyourass.com. That's probably taken. What about poundmyass.com? That's probably taken as well. Those are high dollar sites. But I do think that everybody can learn from everybody. You know, the bodybuilders could probably improve.

Well, that's why CrossFit's taking off, dude. CrossFit's actually now learning how to incorporate from all these great resources and actually put it together. Like a few years ago, I'd say it was an example of like throwing everything you've got into a soup and just trying to make it work. And now it's like measured approach. It's planned out really well. And guys are really making the most of all these sources to to really improve their performance not to get good at weightlifting and powerlifting but

to take those methods and get better at crossfit it's really starting to come together and it's cool yeah i mean uh crossfit in its infancy uh was nothing it almost seemed like a bunch of random exercises thrown together now there's a lot of people putting together their own version of how to prepare for CrossFit games. Dude, I'd probably be as guilty as anybody of looking back and being like, a couple years ago, I would have said, yeah, this is all silly.

They're mixing stuff. None of these guys are very strong. They're just doing random shit. When I say programming, what they're really meaning is they show up and just pick random shit and put it on a whiteboard and go, AMRAPs this, max weight that.

There's no rhyme or reason. A lot of people still do that. But now there's the emergence of the smart program. So all these little camps that are forming are thinking intelligently and progressively about how you not only just test and beat yourself down, but how you incorporate these things in a smart way and build yourself up. And my opinion now is if you hear somebody say, CrossFitters, X, Y, Z, don't know what the fuck they're doing. They just need a simple weightlifting program. I'm like crossfiters with xyz don't know what the

fuck they're doing they just need a simple weightlifting program like dude i don't think you know what the fuck you're talking about because now i'm seeing like guys like asia and and rich and even the guys like basically everybody who competes at any decent crossfit show now guys who weigh 200 pounds can do all the wads and shit like we always see but can also clean and jerk 350 more and deadlift 500 more now that is shit that's new territory right i think everyone's realized it's new stuff yeah everyone's realizing that constantly varied and random aren't the same thing and they're going towards constantly varied intelligently and not just throwing random shit on the whiteboard every

day they have answers to the to the questions they're not just saying well oh well could we thought it'd be fucking fun that's not a reason that's maybe maybe that was the reason it's not the reason anymore another thing that's happening in schools you know the power lifters used to hate the weightlifters and weightlifters hated the pot the uh power lifters and everyone hated the crossfitters and the crossfitters thought the power lifters were stupid but now it's one of those things where like you know power lifters. We talked to last week, Jesse Burdick. Jesse and I trained together at Westside way back in Arnold Visit when he was fat and I was even fatter.

In 2004 or 2005, we did safety squats. He beat me on the safety squat. He did 600. I did 585. I wish I was there to talk to Jesse. We could catch up on that stuff. He's now part of the CrossFit community, and he's real friendly. He's a super smart guy.

He's got great knowledge about physical training and powerlifting. And I wonder, he sat down when we were sitting with John North, and he's like, would he have sat down with us had CrossFit not existed and kind of brought these groups together? You know what I mean? It kind of informed all groups and informed the weight i mean like you know it kind of informed all groups and informed the weightlifters and the powerlifters hey there's other ways of training too that might be beneficial and i think i think cross is actually helping everyone learn from

everybody else yeah there's a lot of style differences but the crossover is is extreme like everyone everyone has the same goal of getting stronger and being more athletic and just because you have one style that you've grown up with doesn't mean that these other styles can't benefit you i agree i think crossfit is the hub and the wall that's helping to connect all these ideas and you can see it helps the strongman and the weightlifters and the powerlifters all identify through this thing better like you understand why like a weightlifter can go man you know it's super awesome you can deadlift so much and a powerlifter can say well. You can deadlift so much. And a powerlifting can say, well, yeah, I can deadlift this much, but golly, how do you do that jerk thing so well?

Instead of just noticing what the differences are and trying to say why you're superior, now you can appreciate why these guys are so great. So earlier we talked about training age with respect to variation and how often you need to kind of switch things up to keep moving forward and not plateau. So again, with regards to training age we talked about different set and rep protocols if you're brand new you know how does the how does planning sets and reps differ from someone who's

been training for five or ten years well I don't know if it differs all that much I mean you're gonna there's the sets and reps the older I get the more I really don't care I it differs all that much. I mean, you're going to – the sets and reps, the older I get, the more I really don't care. I mean, I'm not going to do sets of 10 to get better from a performance perspective, but I, to great effect, can still use 5x5s. I mean, what changes is – yeah, 5x5 is always good. 3x5 is always good. 3x1s.

I mean, the money ranges don't change. For me, it's all about how often I can add the weight. That's the only thing that shifts for me, from my yeah so as an example if someone comes in into the gym their very first week we're not gonna be like okay well you're doing five sets of heavy singles on your very first day right you're gonna you're gonna give them a different set rep protocol from somebody who's been there for 10 years so and then again as an example there's angle proficiency yeah if you have a high level power lifter like that wants to get stronger and you give that person three sets of eight, well, their deadlift's not going to improve on three sets of eight.

They're not going to go from 600 to 650 on three sets of eight. They have to do doubles and singles heavy because they need that heavy weight, that high muscle tension. And they maybe can't take the sets of five that heavy because they're so strong, they're so efficient that a heavy set of five by five would really destroy them right so you know that that would definitely wear down a high level high level power lifter weight if you do five six five heavy multiple times a week it's just it's too much so

so as a general rule and this is not infallible in any way but you know beginners tend to do better with slightly higher reps and then more advanced people that are already really strong and have a good training age. You know, they've been doing it for five or 10 years. They tend to do really well for pure strength training, you know, sets of three and below. They need heavy doubles and heavy singles to get stronger. You know, once you, you know, once you kind of hit like a, a real PR, you are snatching, you know, body weight and a half at that point, know doing doing sets of five on snatches is probably not going to increase your max you have to do heavy singles and you have to do speed reps with you know 80 and above so if you're not very neuromuscularly efficient which

basically means you're a beginner then doing high rep ranges is still pretty beneficial but as you get more experience and become more efficient you can recruit all your muscle fibers more quickly then you need those lower rep ranges and those higher um higher percentages of your max to keep getting stronger and keep getting more powerful i do want to note that i do prefer a weightlifting style program as a basis for crossfitter for getting bigger and stronger and faster um because of that the the cns the central nervous system training i didn't i didn't really explain that you want to touch on that sure what's what is your brain what does it do my brain controls my body but my body tells my brain things and they have this conversation no No, but so talking about central nervous system training or just nervous system training is

talking about being able to activate a lot of muscles at one time. So the more efficient you become, the more, not only can you activate more muscles at one time, but also activate the right muscles to perform a given movement. And the reason I prefer weightlifting over, say, powerlifting movements for maximum central nervous system stimulation and all that is because you're using your entire body. Not to say that when you do like a low bar box squat or something like that, you're not using your whole body, but you're not organizing all your muscles

into as much of an athletic, concerted effort. When I do a snatch, every single muscle in the body is playing a role, and it has to pick the weight off the floor. Everything has to fire at the right time to get maximum velocity at that bar, at the exact right time. Then I have to pull underneath that bar, and then I have to use my shoulders to uh to catch that bar overhead and then stand up with it you know you're not going to find that type of movement that's why it's one half of the bs total that's

right oh wow we didn't we didn't talk about that yet so here i'll try to get i'll try to give a dumbed down example or like the to simplify what neuromuscular efficiency really means. So say, say each muscle is made up of a bunch of different muscle fibers. And so say one single muscle has 100 muscle fibers in it. And say, if you're a beginner, every second you recruit 10 of those fibers. So the first second you recruit 10, and then 20 and 30, and then 40, it takes you 10 seconds to recruit all 100 muscle fibers, as you become more neuromuscularly efficient and you get stronger in your training age, you've been training for longer and you're becoming more neuromuscularly efficient, you can contract maybe 20 the first second, then 20 the second second. Now it only takes you five seconds to contract all those

muscle fibers. And if you're a super high level weightlifter, maybe that first second, you just contract all 100. And that's what makes you explosive and makes you powerful because you can recruit all your muscle fibers right away. So beginners, they can't contract and recruit all those muscle fibers right away. So doing the high rep ranges tends to help them because they can fatigue those first 10 and then fatigue the next 10 and then fatigue the next 10 over a longer set. And they can fatigue all those muscle fibers. And this isn't 100% accurate the way that i'm saying this but it's a good way to conceptualize it and they can use those higher rep ranges to contract all or fatigue all of those muscle fibers and all those what are called motor units

so a more advanced athlete though can um can contract or excuse me recruit and contract more muscle fibers in a shorter period of time so they don't need that's what they don't need as many reps. I think that's what makes, I'm turning back to my physiology class, is that makes cats so impressive is that in a very split second instant, they recruit everything all at once with maximum efficiency. So a cat can be sitting here and then all of a sudden jump to the roof.

We can actually talk to that ideal. We can talk to Zach Critch about animals and muscle fibers next week. Yeah, he's in veterinary school right now. And we're going to podcast with him probably next week well because he's yeah he's in veterinary school right now and we're gonna podcast with him probably next week and he's gonna be able to he's he he's been talking about muscle physiology of different types of animals we're all just animals man you know animals being yeah so i like the olympic lifts for for building that speed because you simply cannot move it without being fast uh there's definitely ways to build up your nervous system with squats and presses and stuff like that. But I think that's going to play a big role in your training.

But you have to be doing snatches and clean and jerks if you really do want to maximize your athletic potential during strength training. So kind of back to the example that I just gave, if you're, say you're 150 pound guy and you're a beginner and you do the first model that I showed you where you do 10 muscle fibers the first second, then 10 the second second, then 10 the third second. If you go to do something like a max back squat, I mean, how long are you really going to be pressing on that bar before you decide that you can't lift it? You know, only a couple seconds. So say you squat down and then you try to push up and you only push up and you, you know, after three seconds you failed.

Well, that means that you maybe only recruited 30% in this example of the muscle fire as possible. But if you're more neuromuscularly efficient and you push on for three seconds, well, maybe you recruited 60% or 80% or 100 so that's why someone who's who's the same size as another person can be much stronger even with the same amount of muscle mass because they're recruiting all of their muscle quickly as opposed to just a percentage of their muscle quickly and that it's not just with experience but with also uh particular training protocols if you always stick with five sets of ten you probably aren't going to be improving your neuromuscular efficiency that much right and that's also why bodybuilders in some cases aren't as strong as they look because they do slow controlled reps. We didn't talk about this earlier, but say I'm doing, I'm doing pushups and on the way down, I'm moving nice and slow. And that's the part that's breaking down

muscle tissue. When I'm pushing up, it's not necessarily breaking down much muscle tissue. So I don't, I don't get a big growth response on the pushing up part. So I control on the way down, and that causes a lot of tissue breakdown, and that causes a stimulus for growth. But with weightlifting, it's kind of concentric only. It's just the pushing up part, you know, when standing and pulling the weight up to my shoulders or pulling the weight overhead. And so there's not a big growth response to weight lifting in some cases so the guys work on their neuromuscular efficiency without necessarily getting that that sarcoplasmic growth like you were talking about right you got to be a mixture of of show and grow joe grow you know that comes from no that's what's

said about wieners a wiener can be all show or it can be all grow. If you got shoes, you want to be the grower, not just the shower. The shower, the cat's out of the bag initially and then there's no, there's no impressing anybody on the back end.

It's better to say, oh, what? That's not very impressive. All of a sudden, bang, you go. Bam, you impress their back end. So keep that in mind, CrossFitters.

Not all, you don't want to be all show. You want to be a little go. Have I not heard that before? I don't know. Now you've heard it, motherfucker. Okay, so here are some what if questions. What if you want to gain weight? You want to get bigger. You want to get stronger, but you don't want to lose your six

back. We kind of make fun of that sometimes and say, well, just fucking don't worry about it and just get bigger and don't worry about your six back. But what if you really don't? What if you really want to kind of just gain as much muscle as possible, but you don't want to gain very much body fat at all? What do you do? My thought is you move towards the efficiency angle.

You're training the way up in protocol that won't cause a lot of bulkiness, excess non-functional adaptations, and you want to go towards more pruning and making nervous systems as efficient as possible. And then I guess doing just enough of the heavy stuff to improve the contractile quality, but not necessarily going for that sarcoplasmic goo growth we're talking about. So relatively low volume and mostly speed power work. That's what I would say.

I'm going to disagree a little bit. Go ahead. This is a democracy. Your voice matters on this show. Feel free to say whatever you think. I mean, if you're trying to put on a maximum amount of size without losing the six-pack, I think that you're going to have to do a lot more of the high-volume stuff

and try to do as much as possible. You need both. You need as much myofibular and sarcoplasmic growth as possible. His is more of a strength bend without gaining much weight. Yeah, he was describing not gaining weight, but if we're talking about getting as big as possible without losing your six-pack, you're going to have to do a lot of work,

and then you're also going to have to gain weight a lot slower. I do think it's possible to maintain your leanness while getting bigger, but I'm thinking, I seriously think if you're going to do that route, you might be gaining five pounds a year of lean mass. Now, for me... That's a good gain for some people if they've

been in the game for a while i'm not going to do that what i'm going to do is i'm going to gain 30 pounds and put on 15 20 pounds 15 20 pounds i mean the goal is to put on 15 20 pounds of muscle in like seven or eight months well i guess you're hitting at the obvious thing which is what's the diet component if you're if you're trying not to gain it's gonna be, I guess you're hitting at the obvious thing, which is what's the diet component. If you're trying not to gain... It's going to be mostly nutrition-based. If you're trying to preserve your six-pack,

I guess I'm thinking you've got to be careful with the diet. And if you're being careful with the diet, you don't have a big excess of calories, then the training volume

can't be so high because you could beat yourself up. You can't recover from it. There's a balance of more than one thing here. So if you're eating a whole bunch of really awesome, high-quality food,

then I guess the volume can come up. Yeah. But if you're trying to – if you're scared – if you're like saying, well, I'm going to keep my calories really under check, then I think you have to train very, very efficiently because you don't have all the – you don't have the luxury of having all this energy to burn. You're going to end up having shitty performance.

And we don't want shitty performance, do we? No. But, yeah, I mean, if you want to put on the weight you know slowly and maintain that six pack it's just i'm gonna beat you uh the the big swings are where it's at you know the the literature supports that uh my personal experience doug's personal experience chris's personal experience it all supports that you can put on the most muscle mass in the shortest period of time and get it stronger, faster if you make big swings. And that means gaining weight all at once, and that means aggressively leaning out as well.

That being said, every time I've made a big swing, I haven't gotten fat. I just get bigger and stronger. Yeah. I gain a little bit of fat, but not fat where I'm worried about it. I'd say I might go. Barely any, like 3%. Yeah, I naturally walk around like 7% body fat. I may pop up to like 11% or 12% when I'm putting on weight.

Don't play just the tip with this. Go all in. Know what you're saying? That's exactly what I'm saying. That's a good philosophy for life. Balls deep. That's it. I don't know how all guys.

Hashtag balls deep. Hashtag balls deep. Hashtag balls deep. Oh, Jesus. We're just seeing how many people will actually use the hashtag. We're trying to think of shirts for everybody. That'll be on the back of your shirt. Balls. Balls deep.

Balls deep. I like it. You like it balls deep? Goat life, balls deep. That's it. We're getting a list of these things. We've got a lot of t-shirts to make. We've got more questions.

What if I get too big and gymnastics gets much harder? That's a very practical concern. For myself as an example, I used to do all gymnastics stuff. I did gymnastics when I was younger before I was introduced to weightlifting and powerlifting and Olympic lifts and whatnot. All I did was push-ups and pull-ups and dips. I had this little push-up, pull- dip thing in my in my bedroom when i was when i was smaller i went a little when i was a little kid and uh all i did was high volume gymnastics movements that's all i knew and it wasn't necessarily a bad thing but i had i was

diesel upper body and my legs were basically nothing like back when i was 15 years old before i started all this stuff i could i could do 37 dead hang pull-ups with good technique all the way up, all the way down. I had no legs on me, and all I'd ever done was gymnastic stuff. Then I started working with a real strength coach. I started doing 20 rep squats and then followed up with, kind of like you were talking about, three sets of 10 RDLs and three sets of 10 lunges and yada, yada. I gained 25 pounds over the course of eight months when i was about 16 years old and my my pull-ups and my gymnastics for me kind of went to shit because i put on 20 some odd pounds i went from 160 to 185 so you know i wasn't i wasn't really that concerned about it but people are concerned about that in in crossfit because you know if you can only do

two muscle-ups right now and then you put on 20 pounds in your legs that's gonna get harder well what are you gonna do yeah well if you if you keep doing pull-ups two muscle-ups right now and then you put on 20 pounds in your legs, well, what are you going to do? Well, if you keep doing pull-ups and muscle-ups and stuff and L-sits and all that stuff, as you're putting the weight on, you're probably going to be able to maintain it. Now, if you totally neglect it, yeah, it's going to go away because you want your upper body and your gymnastics work to get stronger. We're not just working on getting stronger for weightlifting and that's it. We're going to get stronger as you know, we're not just working on getting stronger for weightlifting. And, and that's it, we're gonna get stronger. Like I know when we do our strength, or a bigger, stronger program for the next six months, the way that's going to look is there's

going to be some gymnastic skills in there. So you don't lose them. You know, if you can do four muscle ups in a row row in six months, I actually think you could be doing more muscle-ups just because you're stronger. Okay? So you don't want to – I think that has more to do with just keeping on doing those movements as you gain the weight. If you put on five pounds in a month and then you didn't do one muscle-up the whole time, yeah, you'll probably lose that muscle-up.

You know, it just got a little bit harder. And you didn't do one muscle-up the whole time, yeah, you'll probably lose that muscle-up. It just got a little bit harder. And you didn't practice it, dummy. Practice is shit you want to keep good at. That's right. It just kind of goes down. So if someone is doing the right things, they're training correctly, they're eating correctly, and they're sleeping correctly, and they're not getting bigger,

well, then what? How do you make adjustments adapt and move beyond a plateau? I mean, you're obviously not eating correctly if you're not gaining weight. And I think you brought this up in your talk. For every training hour you have, you want eight hours of sleep base and then an hour. This is a Doug Larson rule. For every hour you train, you need to sleep that for another hour. So if you train for two hours, you need to sleep ten hours.

Right. Eight hours is the standard. If you have one training session, you add an hour. If you have two training sessions, you add two hours. So if you don't train at all, eight hours of sleep is the standard. If you train one time, nine hours. If you train twice a day, ten hours. If your plan is to gain weight and you're not gaining weight, then you're obviously not doing something right.

It may not be sleep. It may be nutrition. You may just need to throw more carbs in your diet. Everyone's a little bit different. Everyone's physiology is a little bit different. Everyone's got a little bit different muscle mass. That's what you'll learn in this program. Regardless of the advice you're getting from people or the books that you're reading,

if you're not getting the result, then you're not doing it right. You need to make a change. Outcome-based decision-making. If it's not working, then you're not doing it right. You need to make a change. Outcome-based decision-making. If it's not working, then it's not working. That's what helps to have somebody who is not just giving you a generic program, is giving you specialized advice for your situation. Because that's the difference between success and failure. It's what makes you different.

Correct. And I've fallen into that many times in my life where I'm like, I'm doing it right. It's not working, but I don't care. I'm just like, well, I'm doing it right, but it's not working and so I don't make the change because I read the book or I got the lesson from someone who I respect or whatever, but it's not working and I need to change.

That's the trick is that it's one thing I'm big on now is going to go into this book I'm putting together, like a section. I talked about a little bit of the garage games, the idea of combining what you know to be true with your experience.'s like for me i know that many many people have gotten huge deadlifts by pulling heavy sets of five uh once a week they deadlift heavy every week and they do it for a lot of reps so somebody who deadlifts 700 pounds can pull low 600s for sets of five and get really good so for

me i see it over and over again so So I know objectively speaking, that works. So I try and I get terrible results. It's because I have a certain history, a certain experience that must be accounted for, which is completely unique to me. So I've got short arms. I'm a little back dependent. My mechanics aren't so good.

I've got thoracic mobility issues. So all of a sudden, I'm putting a little bit more of a load on my back. And then I have a history of back injuries. So the idea that sets of five are good measured against my subjective experience equals I need a different path if I'm going to be successful. So everything that is a rule that everybody would agree is accurate and true may not apply to you at all or to the lesser extent. You got to have this this tweak and you've got to have interaction with somebody who has some

experience and can walk you through it if you want to get the results thereafter. It's hard to tell beginners to listen to their body. You need help. You need a guiding hand to show you, tell me what your experience has been. I think this is a better way to do this. With time, you begin to see that path

and you can do it yourself, but you need help to get going. True story. That's what old Uncle Chris has to say. All right, let's go ahead and shut it down. Bledsoe's out. He's texting away. You want to shut us down there, team leader? I've got girls texting me pictures of themselves in a Bob Bell shirt.

From California? You liar. You liar! He wishes. No. Okay, cool. All right, we're wrapping this show up! you liar you liar he wishes no um oh okay cool yeah it was time you were checked out i told you to shut it down yeah i'm actually supposed to be meeting somebody in three minutes and i just realized that uh that my keys are not here

so i've got no way to get there so doug, you're going to have to take me. So yeah, just... Good. Oh my gosh. Make sure you guys go to the website and sign up if you want to gain the weight. Dwight, you want me to do your plug? Shut the fuck up. Go to the website.

You're going to see the sidebar, which will direct you to more information about this huge project very soon. Doug, when do you think that's supposed to be? It'll be up by the time this episode is up. It'll be on the right side of the screen on every page of the site on barboswag.com. Mike, what else do you want me to plug for you? Or can you think now?

Yeah, go ahead and plug Simple Strength while he's getting his thoughts together. Yeah, so we're talking a lot about periodization and giving you a lot to chew on but i my opinion is if you can start to see the path for yourself and learn just when it is a good idea to incorporate certain things then i think you are empowered to train much better into programming for yourself so simple strength exposes all these ideas to you but it does it in a very intuitive way so you can say ah that's what conjugate periodization sort of means for me and it's oh for oh, for me, that's when I would add variation. So if you're interested in learning more about that and getting a really good foundation, taking complicated ideas, making them simple, check out Simple Strength.

And also keep your eyes peeled to thechrismoreblog.com because I'm going to be posting more and more little segments and hints at this progress project I'm working on. I don't know when that book will be done, but it should be prepped and ready a little further in the spring, maybe early summer. I'm not going to make it so huge and burdensome we can't get it out to you guys soon. But the basic thing is it's set up from start to beginning

how to put a goal down, how to set milestones, how to rule out what it is you don't want to improve that is not actually as important to you as the other things, how to incorporate feedback from other great people, how to address and recognize and get past limitations, and how to capture that all into a plan. But it's all presented in an entertaining sort of story format. So it'll be a very different kind of project, but I hope you're looking forward to it. And I'll share more information as it starts coming together. That's all I got. Beautiful. So the weight gain program, again, like I said earlier, it's going to be a six-month program.

It's going to be starting up Monday, April 8th, after the Open is over. Earlier when we were talking about training age and experience and how much variation you need, we were saying that beginners might need something like eight weeks and more advanced people might need something like one or two weeks before they switch things up. In this case, we're hitting it right in the middle. We're going to give you four- cycles which basically means you can do the same

stuff for roughly four weeks some of that stuff will be different every day but some of it will be the same for roughly four weeks and then every four weeks you get a new program so what does that come out to you know maybe seven or so programs over the course of that six month period some of the months are longer than four, four weeks. Um, well, that's kind of how it'll be structured. Uh, we'll be giving you pieces of advice and goals kind of along that six month,

six month period time. Uh, and then hopefully as the, as the kind of tagline there implies, you can gain 26 pounds in 26 weeks and get a lot stronger and, uh, have more, more muscly muscles at the end of it. Ain that right mike that's right ain't that right jason

yeah so uh if i'm if we're doing a podcast people quit texting me i get distracted easily you're like a cat yeah with a laser pointer up the wall you just can't take it i i guess i could turn the phone off but anyways um so i'll uh make sure you go to websites after the newsletter so you can be updated on all the new stuff we're doing that way we can uh send you a newsletter when we post this muscle gaining thing and we'll tell you exactly what it is and exactly how to sign up and all that and when my awesome book is ready for you to read that's right you'll get the news before anybody at the end of all that we're gonna have a weight my awesome book is ready for you to read, you'll get the news before anybody. At the end of all that, we're going to have a weightlifting meet.

We're going to do the barbell shrug total, which is a brand new thing. We're introducing it to the world right now. It's snatch and back squat. The barbell shrug total meet. That's right. Snatch and back squat. We might expand on that down the line with some of our future competitions.

But that's going to be the definition of the barbell shrug total. So after the weight game program is over, we'll probably do kind of like the open. We'll do like a barbell shrug total open. That's right. All right, guys. Thanks for tuning in. Don't forget to go to iTunes. Give us five stars.

And go to Facebook and like us there. Peace out. If you do that, submit proof you did it, you'll get a free over-the-pants HGA. Virtual. Virtual over-the the pants HGA virtual