Barbell Shrugged - 53- How to Get Stronger Without Just Barbells and Kettlebells w/ Top Level Strongman Competitors

Episode Date: March 27, 2013

This week on the Barbell Shrugged Podcast we are posting an episode we filmed a few weeks ago when we were at the Arnold.  Mike and Doug sat down with two of the top strongmen competitors in the United States, Steve Trippe and Bret Somerville to discuss their sport and strength. http://www.BarbellShrugged.com

This week on Barbell Shrug we talk to two of the top strongman competitors in the United States about how to get stronger without using just barbells and kettlebells. Yo this is CTP and you're listening to the Barbell Shrug podcast the number one strength and conditioning podcast for CrossFitter. If you want to check out the video version, which you should, go to Fitter.TV and watch that because it's way cooler than just listening. And how do you spell Fitter.TV there, Mr. Bledsoe? F-I-T-R.TV. He's a good speller.

All right, while you're there, definitely go and sign up for the newsletter. As part of signing up for the newsletter, you'll get a video that Mike made where he shows you the top seven snatch mistakes that you're probably making that are keeping you from hitting that next PR and lifting some big weight. 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 all right we're back barbell shrug episode number insert here uh we're not sure because we've been filming podcasts back to back to back out of town with really cool guests so doug and are still here at the Arnold Sports Festival in Columbus, Ohio. We have our guests, Steve Trippi.

Wu-Tang. And Brett Somerville. Somerville. All right. It's on your jacket. I can read it. I just met him like an hour ago. These guys are strongman competitors competing at Worlds.

Brett, you finished 10th, and Steve finished 12th. In the World. Real quick, guys, before we get into the discussion, make sure to go to the Facebook fan page and click Like. Go to barbellshrug.com and enter your name and your email

in the newsletter so we can update you when we have new podcast technique-wise and daily BSs and all that noise. So make sure you take care of that. Go to iTunes, give us five stars because you know you love us. Show the love. And Chris Moore will give you, was it mental hugs? Mind hugs? Virtual hugs. Virtual high fives, something like that. Yeah. Chris Moore's not here today again chris is gonna be back on the episode yeah he's so upset because we've been hanging out with so many cool people and he had to stay home so happens when you have a real job he is pretty

bummed about it all right steve tell us who you are and what you do all right well uh like you guys said my name is steve trippy i uh i'm a competitor in the 175 class of strongman. They call it strongman fitness men's. Just finished up. That's the weight class? Yeah, 175 pounds. Okay. They call it strongman fitness because I guess we're supposed to be fit, you know, be able to tie our shoes as well as be strong. So strongman's not just for people that are 350 pounds? No, there's actually a whole bunch of weight classes. The big ones are the 175s, the 231s, and then heavyweight. But within that, you have other weight classes like under 200, 265 and under, 300 and under. So really just about anyone can do it.

We even have women's classes, and a lot of people don't even know about that. You even let women do it? Yeah, you'd be surprised what some of the women can do. There are some beasts out there. The Women's World Championship for the fitness class was actually this weekend as well. We got to watch some of them compete up on the stage earlier today. You guys competed on Friday and Sunday? Yeah, Friday and Sunday.

I didn't compete on Sunday. I didn't make the cut to go through to Sunday. Brett here did. He just actually finished competing a couple hours ago hey Brett can you tell us about about yourself a little bit and how this weekend went yeah uh name's Brett Somerville uh just got done competing at the Arnold Amateur World Championships uh finished up day one in fifth place and then uh went on to day two which was today had a little bit of a rough day uh topped it off uh as 10th place and uh it's time to go back to the chalkboard and start all over again what's your weight class uh 300 plus what do you weigh uh right now about 320 okay big

boy you don't you look you look like you're maybe like 220 wow thank you yeah i just got done with my spray tanning he's gonna be going on for that for months now i can't believe you said that that's a pretty comfortable weight for you uh is a good good blend between you know being heavy enough where you're strong enough and light enough where you're where you're fit enough to do the medleys and whatnot i think it really depends on the type of show you're doing uh i've been up to 340 uh statically i was definitely strong going into this show i decided to uh crank up the conditioning which uh helped a lot on day one can't complain about that uh day two a little bit you know static strength wasn't there body just wasn't firing

uh you know no excuses but uh you know we'll find the perfect blend sooner or later so most people are probably familiar with strongman just from watching world's strongest man on tv and that's probably the only association they have with the sport for the most part even myself like aside from going on the arnold every once in a while like we had some strongman competitors in our gym for a while but before that that growing up, all I ever saw was world's strongest man. So is the type of stuff that you guys are doing or did this weekend really similar to what we or most people would have seen on TV? Yeah. Yeah. Uh, what, what you see on TV is what we do basically. Uh, you know, the weights are adjusted. Um, there's different, uh, you know, you have

heavier shows, you have lighter shows, but, uh, in a nutshell, yeah, it's basically the same. You know, you're going to pick up a stone, you're going to probably push a truck, and you're going to pick something heavy off the ground. So I know one of the big misconceptions with Strongman is that, you know, obviously from the name they assume that you're big, strong people, and, you know, especially in your case you're a 300-plus pound guy. But they don't realize that conditioning is a huge part of it. I know it's something that Steve talks about that, you know know you have to be in good shape to be a strongman competitor

it's not like powerlifting or weightlifting where every event is like two seconds long or four seconds long you have medleys that last up to a minute long and it's full max effort the whole time you got to actually be in shape i think i think the big misconception too is just you know we sit around eating cheeseburgers and you know know, we do one lift here, one lift there where, you know, the training is a lot more intricate than that. You have to have the conditioning involved. You have to eat a lot of whole foods, but it has to be good foods. You know, you have to eat that lean red meat. You have to eat that rice, the cheese, the whole milk.

You know, you don't want to put the junk calories in your body and uh along with the conditioning and the diet and heavy training uh that's when everything really should be tied up with the bone pretty good what does your nutrition look like uh and is it different in the off season versus you know right before competition i mean you described what your nutrition a little bit there but you can get a little more detail uh for me i'm pretty consistent year round i i want to stay between the five and five thousand seven thousand calories a day uh you know which is usually three you know shakes and you know four meals uh post post training you know you're taking more carbohydrates uh you know more fats good fats peanut butter uh red meat and so forth and uh other than that it's just really trying to eat probably every three to four hours and uh you know drinking a whole lot of water gotta keep the joints lubed up

and uh that's really about it it's pretty basic how about you trippy for uh for me it has to be a little more targeted because i compete in a weight class, like I said, 175s. I'm already pretty close to the top of that. I tend to walk around at about 185. Leading into the Arnold, it was a little different. Leading into other contests, a little different. Like Brett mentioned, it depends contest to contest. For me, I'm a big fan of carb backloading because it allows for a rather flexible diet approach, but it still really helps with my recovery, even if I'm cutting weight.

But, like, leading up to the Arnold, I combined a strong carb backloading plan with, like, carb frontloading. Is that something? Yeah, can you describe what that is? Also, is that what Kiefer describes, or is there— I mean, he wrote a book about carb backloading, which is popular with strongmen and powerlifters right now. Is that an approach you were taking before that or is that a general term used by a lot of strongmen?

It's similar. I've taken a lot from Kiefer. I have his book. I have his Carb Night Solution book. But another guy that does it, I tend to follow his approach because I think it's a little more healthy, I guess, is Jason Ferugia's Renegade Diet is a form of carb backloading. Basically, rather than just pounding in whatever fats you want and pounding in whatever carbs you want,

you try to focus more on vegetables and lean cuts of meat during the day and your steaks and things like that. And then post-workout, you're a little more targeted. You're not just pounding down cheesecake. What are you eating? I'm assuming, from what I know, you're eating a lot of carbs post-training. What do those carbs look like? So a typical day, I'll go through a whole day for you, like on a training day. I tend not to eat breakfast because my work starts pretty early. So I'll go in, I'll work for a little while. My first meal

is usually around nine, 10 o'clock. And it's usually a higher fat meal. I tend to try to get those healthy fats. Basically a lot of lean meats, a lot of protein, all the way up to training. Once I train, the very first thing I do is I have a post-workout shake, and that's my initial source of carbs. Afterwards, it's pretty much like a pasta or a rice or something like that with dinner. I prefer the healthier carbs. I don't eat a lot of sweets except around a contest, but that's just because you need the fast energy.

What do you consider healthier carbs? Like I said, the rices, the pastas, yams, potatoes, things like that. And I know there's issues with calling them healthier because it all depends on your approach to nutrition, but basically the whole foods. And the strongman diet is going to be a lot more whole foods. Like Brett mentioned, you can't just do the general calories for a strongman. Like a powerlifter, as long as they're getting in calories, it's okay. For us, body composition matters a lot more. Is that because you're doing more total work? You say your volume's higher, and that's probably why you need more higher-quality calories?

Are you saying you're better than powerlifters? Not at all. I'm not as strong as a powerlifter. But at the same time, do I think a powerlifter but at the same time do i think a powerlifter could match me for reps well if they if they ate right you know i think that's what it comes down to we have we have a lot of events that are for high reps you know we'll have 60 90 seconds and we have to go all out on a clean impress now doing a clean impress for 90 seconds flat that's tough at a heavy weight. If you're carrying around a lot of extra useless weight that isn't doing anything for you,

it's not going to be good, even if you're a heavyweight competitor. Now, if you're a heavyweight powerlifter, you can get away with that because you only have to do one rep and then waddle into the back room. For the lighter weight classes, first powerlifting and especially Olympic lifting, you'll notice they follow a lot cleaner diets than, say, their heavyweight counterparts. But even our heavyweights and strongmen tend to eat a lot of whole foods. Okay. What would you guys consider to be—here's a question someone asked on Facebook. Which do you think is more important, the physical strength or mental strength, and why?

I mean, because with obviously strong man there's a huge mental component there because it does last longer than just a few seconds i think i think that's uh the mental part of it's actually huge i think you have to go into something knowing it's going to hurt you have to kind of uh i mean what personally happens with me is uh i stroll to implement before i pick up the implement everything gets real quiet get tunnel vision almost see nothing but black until that you know 10 seconds or 60 seconds or 90 seconds is over and then when it's over it all starts coming back to you real slowly you start hearing the crowd you start hearing the music and then it's over and uh that's kind of how you have to go

into it you have to be just as mentally strong as physically strong i think i gotta agree mental um a good example i can give you is a yoke walk you know you can get under 700 pound yoke and you can have the strength to do it but if you start to walk and it waddles and it knocks you over you have to have the mental strength to immediately pick it back up and if you're not mentally strong enough it doesn't matter if you're physically capable of doing it if it knocks you over, you have to have the mental strength to immediately pick it back up. And if you're not mentally strong enough, it doesn't matter if you're physically capable of doing it. If it throws you off for a second or two, that second or two can be the difference between first and fifth. I actually competed in Strongman meets a couple times in 2011. And my background is mostly weightlifting and CrossFit. And one thing I noticed about Strongman that was very different than what I had competed in before

is with CrossFit, you can always do the weights. I mean, if you're a relatively strong guy, none of the weights are going to be so heavy that you can't get a single rep. And in weightlifting, you're choosing the weights that you're going to try to compete at and you're going to lift as much as you can. But you pick what's appropriate for you. But I remember showing up and it was a 650 pound yoke and I had never put 650 pounds on my shoulders before. And it was one of those things where the mental toughness there that was required was different than the other sports. And then you're

like, well, shit, I just have to put, I have to pick this up. And no matter how hard it is, or, yeah, like you say, you get a little bit of a wobble and you start to fall to the side or something like that, like you have to fight it no matter what. You can't choose to go lighter or you can't choose to, like, take a break whenever you want because you've got 60 seconds to get as far as you can.

And the whole time it's crushing you. Yeah. The whole time it's crushing you. The weight, you know, if you've never picked that much up before and that goes down your spine and you're trying to walk, it's a mind fuck, really. Well, you got to have that switch. You know, that's just something I always say.

You have to have that switch, you know. You can be holding babies and kissing babies right up until you get to that implement. Then when you get to that implement, you got to flip that switch and until that event's over with, you know, that's what you just got to do. And you got to grin and bear it, you know. Have you guys ever, I know for me, I encountered a car deadlift where myself plus most of the field couldn't get a single rep.

Have you guys ever encountered something where you're standing there just kind of shaking your head, like the weight's just too heavy? Well, you actually saw me do that this weekend um if you saw i don't know if you caught my medley i know i know um doug caught it yeah we got some photos we'll probably clip it in leading leading up to yeah we had a medley where we had to carry a sandbag carry a 230 keg carry a 250 keg and all this we had to carry up to this wheelbarrow that already had weight on it and then pick the wheelbarrow up and run back. Well, I was watching other competitors go and they were getting to the 250 keg. And by the time they'd run

the first two implements, they were already gassed. So I kind of moved a little slower, took my time with it. But leading up to that, no one had moved the wheelbarrow. Now, I got it, but another example is this past Nationals. We had a car deadlift where they threw, you know, just at the last minute, they were like, oh, let's throw another 200 pounds in the trunk just to make it interesting. And up to my turn, no one had moved it. So I'm sitting there shaking going, well, I got to get at least one rep. Right. I got that one rep, and then that mental toughness strikes in you go well

i got it once i got to get it for another it was a max effort lift for me it was probably a one rep max but i ended up pulling out three reps that's just mental strength i wasn't strong enough to do that i just kept pulling and i'm talking like eight second reps yeah so a car deadlift certainly looks cool for the crowd right it's it's very showy you're lifting a car and that's that's very novel but it's not the same as doing a barbell deadlift no so how is it different explain that to people that don't know uh well i mean for me personally like how i feel i think the car deadlift is great i think it's great for the crowd i think it's even great for competitors because it's something different but you know for me it's uh it's really about that barbell you you got you got a good strong barbell deadlift that's

going to carry over to that easily you know i mean i've encountered plenty of people that could pick up anything with side handles but the second they get up to that barbell you know all of a sudden they grow a vagina and you you just you got to uh i i mean i'm not against it i mean i mean i enjoy it i like i said i think it's great for the crowd but you know uh if you ask me personally i'd rather uh hang with a whole bunch of guys who can pull a lot of weight off the floor of the barbell you know so for the car delif though is it is it being on a pivot where it's not going straight up and down it's kind of rocking at it on an arc is that yeah you can lean back you have to factor in that's a scientific question so i'll leave that

the trip okay with it with it it's exactly like you said it's on a pivot so and it's also locked into a range of motion so whereas with a regular barbell you got to worry about balance and everything on this you don't have to worry about it so you set your feet a little further to get your posterior chain into it and then at the time, as it starts to come off the ground, you can lean back. You start using your quads. It's, in my opinion, more total body than a regular deadlift. It's at least more pressure on all the muscles. So you're going to be leaning back, and you're not going to have to take a step

because you're not going to fall over because it's not going to move. No, as long as your feet are positioned properly. That's actually what a lot of amateur competitors mess up is they don't set their feet properly so that they can lean back. And what happens is as the thing starts going backwards because they set their feet like they would with a regular deadlift, it's out in front of them, and now they're leaning forward instead of leaning backwards.

So they're basically balancing on their toes, and as anyone that lifts knows, you want to drive through the heels yeah i noticed when when i had to go do the the car deadlift i'd never ever done it before it was 100 novel and yeah it was one of those things where like i was adjusting you know you had a 60 second clock to do as many as you could it's like i was constantly moving my feet trying to figure out which one was i was looking at the other guys there's like one other guy in my weight class that could actually move it we're feet trying to figure out which one was i was looking at the other guys there's like one other guy my weight class i could actually move it we're like trying to figure out what he was doing that was different well what he was doing is different he had he had a deadlift suit on so that kind of helped what i'll bring up there is for any listeners he's one of those guys

what's that holy crap oh we're gonna start talking about gear? Oh, my gosh. Oh, no. I'm not going to. I'm just not going to buy gear for one competition. I've never worn gear before. Oh, you're totally wrong. I just don't know. And I've never been interested enough in competing at that level in those sports to learn how to. Because I understand. I've worked with power lifters that

were gear i put it on them you know i helped get it on them and you know all that kind of stuff and i understand that you basically have to learn how to squat again you have to learn how to deadlift like his own separate yeah it's a whole new thing you know it's definitely i've never invested the time in doing it yeah yeah yeah yeah i don't have anything against it it's just oh okay i'm just not gonna yeah i'm not gonna be like oh it's not fair i was like i just didn't i just didn't have anything against it. Oh, okay. I'm just not going to be like, oh, it's not fair. I just didn't have it. But that made a difference. He was one of the guys wearing a suit,

and then the guys that weren't definitely couldn't get it. Couldn't get it, yeah. But if you wanted to win, you should have showed up with a suit for sure. You got to do what you got to do. I don't actually think a suit helps as much on a car deadlift simply because it's more quad dominant pull being side handle. What I will bring up, though, for anyone that's potentially listening to this and they might be interested in strongman is if you're ever in that position, you show up to an event, you haven't done it, ask someone. Strongman competitors, like even my own competition, even the guys that I'm fighting tooth and nail, if I went to them and I said, hey, look, this event's coming up. Can you help me out?

They would stop. They'd give me the shirt off their back. They'd show me everything they could. Strongman's one of those sports that it's really very, very, there's a lot of camaraderie there. You can walk around. You can have never done an event today, on Friday rather. I was missing equipment because I had an hour to pack for this meet

because I got out of work late before my flight. Those sons of bitches. Yeah. I was missing equipment. I'm walking around hey I'm talking to my coach I'm going hey I need Olympic shoes I don't have any and one of the other competitors Brandon McDonald just walks up and he goes hey what size are you you know if we're not going in the same heat we can share my shoes you know if they fit this is this is a guy I'm going to be competing against him and I are going for these top spots he's one of the top competitors in the world he ended up taking third you know and here he is offering me his shoes without me even asking him that's the kind of people most

strong men are so if you're ever in that position just ask there's a couple things that are definite uh definitely gonna happen at a strongman show the camaraderie is amazing and it seems like everyone's got a thick chick. So those are probably the two biggest things. I wouldn't say everyone. Both are a plus. Yeah, yeah, definitely. All right, so take us through the events that you guys did this weekend.

Explain what happened. I know you did really well on some events and not so well on some other events that some things didn't go according to plan. Kind of walk us through the weekend. All right, I'll go through my first four events um because they're quicker than brett's uh i had a 225 two and a quarter inch thick bar clean and press um that's usually a pretty good event for me i'm usually hitting about five or six at 225 it's called the axle the axle yeah um we tend to if you ever want to train for it i recommend uh one and three quarter inch inner diameter pipe just put some collars on it and cut it to seven feet that's how we train um it's usually a pretty good event for me I'm a decent presser because I'm fast and explosive but I was going into the

show with a torn rotator cuff I got my first rep and like I said I didn't have Olympic shoes that fit and I kind of lost my footing, almost broke my knee off. So they didn't count the first wrap. I ended up only getting three, so that set me back. The second event was the yoke walk into a sled push. This is where I really shit the bed. I'm usually really good on yoke. There aren't a lot of people that have ever beaten me on it.

And at the last minute, they changed my lane, changed my yoke to a yoke that wasn't set up for me there's different heights you'll see all the competitors are different different sizes i had to pick up well they normally take your measurement ahead of time it's not like exactly on the spot exactly but they changed mine on the spot they moved me to a different one they didn't have the bolts in tight enough so i picked this thing up late because i just jumped into it as they were saying go and it wasn't tightened. For those of you at home, Trippie's not a big thinker. He's just a doer, so he just jumped right in there. Yeah, well, you know, when Mike Johnson of the ASC is yelling at you,

if your competitor's ready, you know, I know him. If I'm not under that yoke and taking off by the time he blows that whistle, I'm not getting credit for it. He's well known for that. So I just got under it,oke and taking off by the time he blows that whistle. I'm not getting credit for it. He's well known for that. So I just got under it and I just did it. I finished the yoke pretty fast. But by the time I got to the sled push, you know, we got that marbleized floor. It was still wet.

I was just spinning my feet for a few minutes before I finally got set up and moved. It was a 600 pound sled. So the yoke was easy for me, even though it was messed up. The sled cost me some time and that should have been my event that should have been an event i did real well on and like i said i shit the bed third event was an event i hit exactly what i wanted to it was a deadlift medley we had that axle again 435 pounds was our first deadlift Then it was a 585 straight bar. For those of you that don't follow Strongman, that's currently 40 pounds over the NAS, 175 pound class,

conventional deadlift record. It was like 545 or something. So we had a 585 bar, then a 730 frame, basically a side handle deadlift. And then we got to that car deadlift you were talking about. We were supposed to pull it for reps. Well, I didn't have a 5 handle deadlift and then we got to that car deadlift you were talking about we were supposed to pull it for reps well i had a lot of i didn't have a 585 deadlift when the events came out i had to train i went on a deadlift specialization routine to bring my deadlift up for this so i wanted to hit just one rep straight through because i knew that'd be points on the board and i'm not a strong deadlifter i'm one of those guys that's faster than he is strong um you guys talk about you know strength not being the most important thing in strongman. Well, I'm basically, I'm the epitome of that.

I'm not very strong, but I'm fast. I've got good endurance, and I make up for it in technique. Now, so I hit one rep on each of those within the time limit and just called it there. The last event was medley. I'm pretty good at medleys because I have good conditioning. And, uh, you guys saw that you'll put up the video. It was a, uh, I think a 200 pound sandbag. They changed it at the last minute. It was supposed to be a keg, a two 30, a two 30 keg carry, um, to the sled and then a two 50 keg carry to the sled. And then, uh, basically pick the sled or not sled wheelbarrow and then you

pick the wheelbarrow up and you run it across the thing and that was basically my show so i had a pretty good finish on the medley but it wasn't enough to bump me back up to the top spots and only the top four got to go to uh go to day two which was really where my good events were but i had time to train i just didn't make it uh what were the what were the day two events then you made the day two right yeah i mean my day one was a 325 axle uh you know that went as planned uh the yoke was 950 the sled was 700 i think i took second in that overall on the uh on the yoke how far did you get and how much time uh it was a 950 yoke uh he had about an 11 second uh yoke run he doesn't know that but i was timing him yeah i don't know about that but

uh you know that went good overall then uh we had the uh deadlift medley 635 axle 715 barbell 830 frame then the car for reps that went you know i got nine on the car to finish that that was up there and then um the wheelbarrow again that was up there probably top five uh that was you know really good day for day one and uh day two happened and uh it was a uh 210 dumbbell and uh yeah i i wowed the fans with one fucking rep on that Then One rep of what? What do you got to do with it?

You got to clean it and then press it over your head Is it a circus dumbbell? Yeah, yeah, yeah One hand Are you not allowed to use the other hand? Or is it just one hand only? Yeah, just one hand only It's two hands to clean one hand

Yeah, two hands to clean One to press Yeah, so I hit one rep on that, and that was pretty embarrassing. Then we got to the old Husafelt. Ooh. Yeah, that's – I love the Husafelt. Really, that's really –

That's a man-maker right there. No, really, that's a horrible fucking event. I wish – when that started getting used, I was like, that's the worst event ever. Yeah, I'm – You want to talk about mental strength. Yeah. I think that's the one. Yeah, yeah, that's the worst event ever. Yeah. You want to talk about mental strength. Yeah. I think that's the one. Yeah.

Yeah, that is pretty bad. I'd almost want my nuts wrapped in a rubber band and do that. That's the one where our buddy Jay was carrying it and passed out carrying it. He passed out walking. He wasn't breathing. He was walking, and he just passed out. His head didn't hit the ground because he's too big for his head to touch the ground when he's laying on his back. That's true. Actually, I just him uh on facebook right before we posted he

he ran an 1100 pound yoke for 50 feet or something like that which is yeah that dude picks up like big yokes and sprints yeah that's awesome that's awesome what's his name jay jay holder i think i've heard of him he does have a decent yoke yeah he's good yoke so sorry i'm interrupting oh no no no nothing really to interrupt then uh we went to the 410 stone do uh 54 inches and i uh promptly laid a fucking goose egg on that so yeah yeah that was pretty much uh yeah yeah why why do you think that happened it was was a high bar. You know what? There's just really no excuses. My goal was I tore my bicep in January, you know, last January. My goal was to qualify for nationals.

I did that at the seventh-month mark. Then I wanted to qualify at nationals for the Arnold. I did that. Then I just wanted to make it to day two. I thought that was realistic. After what happened day one, I i really thought i had a had a decent shot and then uh day two happened and just absolutely no excuses just body wasn't there and uh had a rough day but uh you know just come back stronger that's about it you know and uh just real quickly i just i i'd

like to thank dion wessels and uh mike johnston and and all the helpers and, you know, everyone else that just, you know, supports the sport. And the competitors were awesome every single one, just real quick, you know. And I think it's, you know, Strongman has come a long, long way since I started. You know, so I definitely like to see that. Yeah, they do a good job putting on events. They put ours on last year for Nationals. Yeah, just they really are they're really precise they're really crisp they're really uh they're real fair too it's hard to come across competitions where it seems like it's fair across

the board i feel like it's pretty fair yeah they they really do it and they have to deal with a lot you know there's a lot a lot a lot on their plate, you know, between equipment moving and everything else. So I just got to give them a little bit of a shout out. And Strongman competitors being so emotional. Yeah. Oh, yeah. We'll be crying with Dionne yelling at us.

Actually, I'm about to get some hand lotion, some tissues, and rent a notebook. Listen to some Lorena McKenna. Yeah, Adele. Oh, there we go. All right, guys, let's take a break. When we come back, we're going to hit up some more of these questions that people posted on Facebook.

Yeah, and I also want to talk a little bit about you guys' actual training when we come back, too. Sounds super cool. Outstanding. Hey, guys, this is Rich Veroning, and you're listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to fitter.tv. All right, we're back. Strong man dudes.

Yeah, so I wanted to hit up some questions. Did you have some questions about training, Doug? Yeah, we went through the events, and we talked earlier about how strongman isn't the same thing as powerlifting. It's not the same thing as weightlifting. It's a completely separate sport. So do you guys train like powerlifters like do you do traditional weight training or do you just do you know do you train just like the events i you know how do you

train what do you do what do you do if you want to be a strongman competitor i've i oh my training has evolved year to year and basically what i found for me that works the best is you know monday is usually a uh a squat day uh wednesday would be an overhead day uh saturday would be some type of events uh i train events a little differently i like to do things uphill uh yoking uphill farming uphill sled drags uphill um i also uh this time around i implemented a lot more conditioning if that meant just picking up a keg and just going the distance i had to go with it that's what i did if it meant running a heavy yoke and then grabbing farmers and going after distance uh that's what i did and uh it's it's really an evolution how you know back in the days of old strong man a lot of

them were just power lifters or really strong olympic lifters bodybuilders even bodybuilders lou ferragno franco colombo the world's strongest man nowadays you can't do that you you know you can't do just five three one or you can't do just the cube method or whatever fancy schmancy thing that's out there. You've got to listen to your body. You'll learn. And, you know, everyone will find their training niche basically. You said you had a squat day and an overhead day and then kind of an event day.

Yeah. On your squat day, are you squatting first, squatting heavy, and then doing more strongman-specific stuff afterward? If I'm out of season, i'll do usually i'll rotate it'll either be a heavy deadlift to like maybe a lighter box squat um you know have that type of rotation uh leading up to this show basically what i was doing is i was trying to do actually conditioning before i even squatted okay so what i do is maybe do some truck pushes you know three four sets then go in there and try to hit you know nothing not a maximum box squat but you know maybe three reps and uh what i do is i try to do about four to five sets of three

reps with that you know something within that 85 you know percent range that wasn't gonna kill me but still keep my hips powerful and stuff like that because you know you got to go yoke on Saturday or you got to do some type of moving event on Saturday so you just it's really just checks and balances about you Steve my training depends on what I'm training for whether I'm training for anything at all I actually have a distinct off season and on season in the off season I I like to do a little more volume. I like to, um, I'll probably hit more accessory work,

trying to hit my weaknesses. Um, pretty much all my training is total body. Strongman's always total body. Uh, there, there was the ultimate total body fitness system. I wouldn't say ultimate.

I mean, that sounds like something I'm working in. I'm working in the shake way. You know, yeah, I'm not, I'm not keeping up with billy blanks here but you know at at the same time like i think you can do an up or lower for strongman i think you can do total body i don't think you can do body part splits anymore there were guys that were for a while and you'll notice those are the ones with the injuries because you can't teach your body to work in isolation and then do a two-day strongman contest that's more about power lifters approach usually is doing a split right more bodybuilding i think you know like

they'll want to hit tricep extensions and then skull crushers and then yeah you know something along those lines you can hit up or lower similar to a west side style you know and do strongman just fine but if all of a sudden you're hitting like six seven different moves for biceps you're teaching your biceps how to work without your back all of a sudden you're gonna tear a bicep you know when we have a lot of bicep intensive events you know um is that what happened to you bro too many bicep curls actually no i you know what you tell you know how did you tear your bicep? I tore my bicep pretty freaky. Most people do it on a tire, an axle, or a stone.

I actually did it on a block press. I was picking up the block. It was a 300-pound block. I went to clean it, and it went from maximum tension to no tension. And, you know, the tear happened. But also, too, like, like you know i learned from that like i haven't curled i haven't done a tricep push down in over a year and you know i learned that to do these full bodies and you know people always want to bring up their cns and you know to do all that you don't want to burn your potty out doing things that are just totally irrelevant to what you're training for.

You need to, you know, if you're going to be doing farmers and stones and keg carriers, your biceps are going to get plenty strong, they're going to get plenty thick, they're going to get plenty big. You know, you shouldn't have to sit there with a 20-pound dumbbell doing preacher curls. Yeah, you got to focus on the things that give you the biggest bang for your buck. Yeah, exactly. We got some questions off Twitter. Yeah. Well, these are off the Facebook fan page, actually.

What is it that you love about what you're doing and what keeps you motivated and coming back for more day after day? For me, I think it's just a battle with myself. I mean, not to sound cliche. It's just I want to beat myself i don't look at competitors lists i don't really comb the internet to see who's doing what i mean yeah yeah i mean sometimes if something really freaky you know i'm gonna youtube that son of a bitch but you know what i mean other than that it's just as long as i'm progressing and i'm getting stronger and my

placings are high that's That's what I care about. And, you know, and also, too, I think what drives me, too, is, like, my brother, my training partners, you know, my family. You know, I don't want to let them down. And, you know, you just – I think that's kind of my approach to things. Motivation. For motivation, for me, I got to say the same thing as brett you know i like to better myself i like to constantly improve but at the same time you know you guys

know me i'm into shiny things i really like metals so it's kind of cool to leave with like a a nice samurai sword or something um what i love about it though is that as you guys know and i've mentioned many times i have i have lifting add i love lifting to death but if i'm doing the same when i was power lifting and doing the same three movements well i hated the bench you know but i didn't even really like the squat that much but okay so there's one movement that i really like and then i'm doing these other two all the time well i got bored doing three movements well in strongman we're doing seven seven movements a contest you know and you don't know what they might be yeah i don't i don't know what those movements might be until three months out some contests and i love this concept it's certain it's certain to uh really gain traction is these blind contests they'll tell you hey

we're gonna pick out of these 15 events show up ready to do anything and then they're gonna pick five of those i like that yeah i i love it because then you see who the real athlete is you don't see who who really oh this guy trained really hard on these five events and got good at them okay cool yeah that's who's going to shine when it's a surprise you know that event that maybe no one has encountered before the athlete's the one that can figure it out the quickest exactly it it brings the athleticism into it and that's really what I love about strongman. There's athleticism, there's endurance, there's cardio, there's pain tolerance. And I'm not a one rep max guy. My one rep max deadlift is around 600 at 175. That might seem

high to a lot of people, but for a strongman competitor, most of them are hitting in the mid sixes. Some of them are hitting close to seven in my weight class you know there's guys out squatting me by a hundred pounds but if they can't move if they're not athletic if they can't adapt to a new event in a matter of weeks i'm gonna beat them it's it's about being well-rounded uh me personally i i hate the one trick pony uh and i've mentioned this to my training partners. You know, you can have one event. Okay, great. You're a great presser.

All right, that's one event. You got four more events or you got, you know, six more events. And, you know, that's what keeps you on top is being able to go into a show and saying, listen, all right, I got six events. Maybe I'm not great at all six, but I'm really good at four or five of them. And that's what's going to carry you, not just I have an amazing overhead or I have an amazing yoke or I'm just a deadlifter. And I think that's what separates the good strong man from the, oh, I'm just going to post a picture on Facebook of me doing my one awesome event.

Yeah. Is there any events or movements that you hate? What's your favorite one, and what's the one you hate the most? I love the circus dumbbell. I've hit over body weight on that. You know, I've hit 185-pound one-arm press. That's legit. That's entirely athleticism, though.

It's, okay, I have to get my whole – when you're holding something, it's uneven on the body. You have to stabilize it, and then you have to throw all your leg power through your core up into that shoulder to throw it up into the air. And then you have to time it just perfectly. So you drop under it in time, lock it out, but you're immediately tight so that you can stand back up with it. That's athleticism.

Core stability on top of that. Exactly. So that's my favorite event. It's probably the one I'm best at. I'd put myself up against anyone in the world in my weight class and in most other weight classes for that event. I also tend to love the yoke. In terms of events I hate, you know, I try not to hate them.

I'm not. He's a lover. Well, as soon as you hate it, you know, it becomes tougher to train it. It's that mental thing. Brett here hates the hosifil. We'll ask him how many times the last training cycle we trained the hosafil stone you know it uh it it becomes really hard to really put your effort 110 into it i guess you know i was never big on farmers um so i tried to hammer those until i got good at them in this event we didn't have a farmer so we had that wheelbarrow. Well, I blew that away.

Yeah, I find that people tend to not like the events they suck at. Yeah, well, that's a thing. Or the opposite. They suck at the events that they hate, which that I think would be even more specific. Well, that's where you separate. You said they hate the events they suck at. I think you're going to suck at whatever you hate. I think it's the opposite.

You're causing effects backwards. I think you're going to suck at whatever you hate. I think it's the opposite. You're causing effects backwards. I get it. Wow. You just don't bounce. Y'all are on the same page. Have another sip of wine. We had a discussion about this the other night. Was it the chicken or the egg that came first?

Genetically speaking, it was the egg because when you first recognize a new species in terms of evolution. Really? You had to go down there. In terms of evolution, they first recognize it when the DNA is completely comprised. So it would be the egg stage. I'm sorry, Mike. We just thought that we had the wrong chicken. We could shut down the internet. We figured everything out.

All right, Mr. Scientist. I know you used to work for a company or interned with a company in Memphis, which is when we met you, that dealt with a lot of low back injuries. Nervasive. They work specifically with athletes on spinal reconstruction surgery. And we got a question on Facebook or Twitter asking about how to train around low back injuries as a strongman competitor, as a strength athlete. And I know you had worked for that company,

and you've also dealt with that as an athlete so kind of talk about how how you came back from a low back injury what your low back injury even was and kind of you know just talk about that whole topic well i blew out my l5 s1 at dinner um i turned sideways and sneezed this was roughly about three weeks after setting the usapL, uh, Pennsylvania state deadlift record in the 148s. I blew my back out sneezing. So, um, lucky. Absolutely. And I attended a lot of rehab, you know, I, I worked with, uh, two different physical therapists that I couldn't really afford. Um, I had MRIs done, you know, and I met with all these guys that said, oh, stay on the stability board, do this, do that. And I tried that for about a year. I started interning right before I interned in Memphis with a company in Virginia. And about halfway through that, I gave up on the physical

therapy. And I said, you know what, my back's always going to hurt in the mornings. I'm just going to have to deal with it. I'm going back to lifting. And what I realized was the stronger my back got, specific, well, I'll say the stronger my trunk got, the entire core musculature, the less my back hurt. And it really came down to stretching the muscles that needed to be stretched. For me, if my hip flexors were tight, my back was arched, and that put even more pressure on it. Yeah, a lot of people have the misconception about, oh, my back feels tight, what can I do to stretch my back? Oh, no, absolutely not. In probably, I want to say up to about 90% of cases, it's the opposite. It's the hip flexors that are tight pulling you into anterior pelvic tilt.

That's going to arch the lower back, and if you have a lower back injury, that's going to put the stress on them. Also, the other side of that is if you have tight hip flexors, if they're tonic tight hip flexors, chances are your glutes aren't firing properly. Well, now your posture is even more screwed up. So for me, it came down to fixing that, which came from, I started squatting again, my hips loosened up and I started stretching my hip flexors again and my hips loosened up. And then I started doing speed again. My hips loosened up, and I started stretching my hip flexors again, and my hips loosened up. And then I started doing speed deadlifts,

and the first thing I could do was really front squats. I couldn't back squat for quite a while. And that brought up my core strength. And as I got better, well, holy shit, my back stopped hurting. A big change. Other than that, the only other big change, and I don't want to jump on the bandwagon i don't know if it's still a bandwagon because this is a few years ago but uh

louis simmons reverse hyper you guys had one of those and if you remember i hit that thing for 20 30 reps every warm-up every workout we still have it outstanding i think that made a big difference if this is coming from one of your lifters working out at Faction, definitely I'm a huge fan of that reverse hyper, both from a strengthening standpoint and a rehab standpoint. But really what it came down to it for me, and I think it does depend on the back injury, is strengthening the muscles that need to be strengthened, specifically the core musculars, the obliques, the TVA, even the rectus to a fair degree. Though most people don't have a weak rectus abdominis if they've been training for a while. Of course, of course, the rectus. We did do a three-part technique WOD on training specifically for core stability

that relates really well to what you're talking about. So if you're in the audience and you're listening to this and you haven't seen that yet, go look that up. We did an anti-rotation, anti-lateral flexion, and anti-extension technique was training specifically for core stability. So we can give you some good examples on kind of what he's talking about. Maybe not the whole picture, but it's a good starter for it. So, Brett, whenever they get to your love-hate movements. I can answer that one for him.

I think we already know that he hates the Hoos. You know, no, I mean, all right, listen. Front-carrying in general. You know, if I have my Achilles heel, it's probably the Hoos. But other than that, like, really everything else, I can't say, hey, I really do like it. I think it's just different challenges, you know. Everything challenges differently.

But, yeah, you know know that's about it i'm really catching a lot of britney spears here with the will i am in the background oh yeah we can hear it but it won't it won't pick it up on oh okay i was just curious picking up some random radio station but nobody else can hear it in the audience cool yeah we actually shut the the podcast down the other night we're like shit this is gonna be on the thing. And it ended up we couldn't even hear it. I'm not complaining, you know, a little pretty and bad, you know. I got a really good question here.

Is there a different approach to training and culture from other countries? Where is the biggest growth in the sport happening? Wow. I think just from what I've seen, I think it used to be the Europeans dominated a lot. America. And now you have the Americans really coming through. I mean, if you look at Worlds or you look about when we go over there, you guys got Jenkins. We got Poundstone.

We got Ortmeier for a while. Shaw. I mean, we've got, you know, up and down. I think the growth in marriage. I've just seen it just from competing for as long as I have, how tough the competition has gotten at nationals or just to qualify for a show. You know, you could usually just kind of walk into a show

and knew, okay, there's my qualifier. Can't do that anymore. Yeah. You know? I think it was a picture of Shaw standing next to Poundstone that I saw on Facebook the other day, and, like, it made Derek Poundstone look like he wasn't even that big. No, Brian Shaw is the world's largest land mammal, so. Oh, yeah.

And, again, he's a very nice, humble guy. So nice. You know, that just goes back to. How big is he, roughly? Well, I don't know if the audience can really, like, zoom in on my quad, but that would basically be, like, one of his – A massive quad, dude. One of his – if you could really see the hamstring separation.

He's wearing pants, and he thinks people can see his quad. That's basically – I mean, I'll roll him up for you guys, you know, but we've got to keep it, like, PG-13. But that's basically the size of his forearm. Yeah, no, Shaw's. He's 4'40", I want to say 6'8". And not fat, not like 4'40", like you'd think. Yeah.

6'8", 440 pounds. What would you say the reason is for a strongman growing in the United States probably more than the other countries? I blame Dion. I think Dion. I really do. I think Dion. for a strongman growing in the United States probably more than the other countries. I blame Dion. I think Dion. I really do.

I think Dion. I think there's a lot more promotions out there. Like, I mean, before, too, you would only have maybe three shows on the East Coast. You know, and that might be it. Now, you'll have three in one weekend. So you think that just having more events is going to... More events because more people are shown the sport. More people are involved in the sport, and that's what it needs.

She has a whole system in place that just breeds competition. I had this jacket that I'm wearing. I had to fight tooth and nail just to earn it. Now, in other countries, they just show up at a Nationals, and if they do okay, hey,'re on team finland and this isn't like a shot at finland or i don't know what the other countries do but for the most part no other country has a you have to qualify for this show and then qualify for that show and then maybe you get an invite to this show and that whole system including our our amateur to pro system, just breeds competition.

And so just to get to that stage, just to get to that Arnold stage for America means you're qualified. If you look at our class, the top four guys were all American. It just makes me curious because, I mean, I love weightlifting, and that's one of the biggest, you know, the USAW is always like, how can we grow the sport? So maybe we should look at a sport like strongman where where it is growing you know yeah i uh yeah so why do you think these

other countries are have strongman like so prevalent like like you mentioned finland norway sweden latvia latvia lithuania like all those countries kind of in that in that same little block of northern Europe seem to gravitate towards strongmen. It's a culture. I actually trained with a guy, Savar Sigurstinsson. He was a, he was, he's a very good friend of Benny Magnusson's. He was over, he was Hofthor's handler here for the Arnold Classic Pro.

He's friends with Stefan Solveig-Peterson, you know, and all of these guys are very tight knit community. Like when I say he knows all three of those guys, I'm not saying, oh, they all train at the same gym. I mean, they would travel hours just to train with each other. And in Iceland, it's a culture. It's a culture of strength. His wife lifts, his kids are already way into lifting weights, you know, and they were raised in America. It's just uh oh we're iceland we're strong you know so at least from that i can give that perspective that it's very important to them to not be physically mediocre they want to see what their bodily limits are i don't think that's the case in america except with athletes most non-athletes don't ever see that perspective yeah all right i want to ask a couple

questions uh from uh gregor i don't know if you guys follow uh all things gym uh but uh he absolutely yeah he's he uh hosts a really awesome blog if you haven't checked it out allthingsgym.com yep all things things yep that that, that word. Yeah, he posts a lot of our stuff. You really are his yang, aren't you, Doug? He asks, how many spare biceps do you travel with? But seriously, would you change something about the sport to reduce these injuries? I guess the bicep injuries? Listen, every sport, every sport has, you know, a thing.

I mean, you know, you have tennis elbow, you have football players with knee problems, you have weightlifters with back problems. I think once you accept that there's certain risks and rewards to everything, I think that's what it's either gonna go or it's not gonna go like you know i've been down that road and i asked the doctor i think five times you know i looked at old training logs did i do something that was totally abnormal or stupid in my training for my bicep to tear and i looked back at and i maybe i could what if a couple things but you know doctor went in there and said it was just it was time it was gonna go you, and I just think that's part of the sport. Shit keeps getting heavier. If you look at the weights they did in World's Strongest Man in the 1970s and then you watch my weight class, the 175s doing weights, we're right up there with them. As shit gets heavier, things get more competitive.

People are going to hurt themselves. Brett said, oh, you know, I tore my bicep on a 310 block press. Well, let that set in. This is a block. It's a steel rectangular-shaped cube. I don't know what the rectangular cube is, but it's that thing. It's awkward. It's ugly.

And it's not something a normal person would see and say, hey, I wonder if I can put this over my head. That's a heavy weight to be putting over your head, and shit's going to go. It's going to happen. At some point, I'll probably tear one of mine. Yeah. But I'm going to compete like it's not until I,

if I let that fear in the back of my mind, I'm not going to train hard enough. So I'm going to train like it's not a possibility until it happens. All right, last question is also from Gregor. Also, how do you feel about the limited number of events in modern strongman competitions compared compared to the creative events of the past limited well yeah i don't think really it's limited at all i think if you're talking about

name 30 right now just i think what he's referring i think what he's referring to is like you know the old days when they would put a backpack full of bricks on your back and tell you to run around the track quick. Or if you saw refrigerators as a yoke. I think like when I saw as they were, you know, they had a wrist rolling. Yeah. Things like that. You know, but I think over time we learned that that phased out because that really wasn't a strong man. That's not proving that you're strong.

You know, running around with 300 pounds on your back in a book bag and going around the track doesn't really do anything now. If you're talking about, you know, picking up a 400-pound pair of Farmers and running with it, that's something a little different. I don't think that it's limited. I think it's how the public views it. It's tough for the public to look at 800 pounds on a barbell and think that's

heavy but if you see a car deadlift the public goes wow that's a car exactly and that's the difference between the athletes and the public and you know that maybe you need a certain level of sensationalism for it to be popular? At the bigger shows, absolutely. You want those keg tosses. You want that wooden log press. You want the car deadlift. You want the things that a person can look at and go, holy shit, that's a log he's pressing overhead.

If I give them a barbell and they walk in and they see that, oh, well, how much does that weigh? Well, sometimes they don't even ask what the weight on our thing is. I did an expo two weeks before Worlds out in Virginia, and there were some bodybuilding guys, there were some CrossFitters, and by the end of the expo, we had guys gathering around, and I was still doing warm-up runs on the yoke. I only had about 5'10 on the yoke, and I did a sprint,

and some guy goes, wow, that's heavy. He had no idea what was on there, but he could look at it, and he could go, wow, that's heavy. He had no idea what was on there, but he could look at it, and he could go, oh, that's heavy. That's a good point. It's the visual appeal. They like seeing kegs getting thrown. They like seeing stuff like that. Maybe that's what he means when he says limited,

is those are the events people see. But in any show, I can go on NAStrongman.com, come to upcoming contests and look through, and every contest will have different events. And if a promoter, if he wanted to promote a show and he wanted a different event, said, hey, I'm going to have this event. Cool. If you invent a new event and you want that to be popular, throw it a show tell someone that's posting a show you know we'll do it if it's a good show and i like the events i'll show up and i'll do it so there there's no standards no which to everyone needs to you know you can't you can only choose from these 20 events and that's it yeah no there there aren't staying as creative as they really desire yeah i

mean personally me i'd like to see you know maybe something a little bit more uh you know maybe wheelbarrow full with some big chested girls side calf pose you know i think that would be a crowd pleaser for the most part um i like where you're going with this yeah you know what i mean but you know you know like steve said it's how the promoter wants to do it, the creativity involved, also, you know, what type of competitor he's going to get for that show. But I think as a whole, man, Strongman is growing huge, and I think it's definitely going places. Cool.

All right, we're going to wrap this one up. I'll give you guys the last word here in a second. Doug, you want to plug? What you'll plug? Yeah, I'll plug Simple Strength since Chris Moore's not here to do it for me Simple Strength is Chris Moore's seminar where he talks about how to get stronger how to program for strength

he even put an extra video on there just the other day talking about how to warm up for a one rep max which was a great addition to that product so if you're interested in Simple Strength and learning about how to get stronger and how to program for strength specifically you can go to barbellstrug.com, click on the shop, click on seminars,

and click on the Simple Strength product and read all about that product for more information. Steve, what do you got, man? You got something to plug? I guess just trainstrongman.com is our home gym. That's where I train at the Morehouse Manor. Anyone in the Raleigh, North Carolina area or ever passing through wants to try some events, you're welcome to join us.

But that's where we post. In the future, we'll be posting instructional videos for anyone that wants to get into the sport. They're going to be very basic. They're not going to be like top-level tips. It'll just be like, hey, you want to learn how to log press? This is how you log press. You want to pick up an Atlas stone?

This is how you do it. Because that's what we find is the biggest issue in Strongman is people don't know how to get started if they don't have a training crew. So if you're interested in that in the future, trainstrongman.com is going to have some stuff. I'm wearing the T-shirt, I guess. Zoom in. Boom.

They're not going to be able to focus on it with this perfect chest here. I don't even bench press. I don't know why I'm saying that. You're so Ripley, it's hard to read the words. Exactly. Those abs really Deep cuts Exactly

Like a road map over here Are you serious? What's up, Ray? You got anything? I just got a few Globalstrongmangym.com Oh, yeah, Hans That's Hans Pierman

Out of New York City He's got great things uh i'd also like to plug joe's driveway that's where it all started up there in new paltz new york and uh you know just like to thank the shop right red meat section and you know boar's head strength boar's head and uh you know the wifey and family and everyone else and all the support and the great competition. That's really about it, man. Excellent. All right, guys, don't forget to go to barbell shrug dot com.

Sign up for the newsletter. Check out the shop. See if you want to. To see what, Mike, what do they want to do in the shop? They might want to get a T-shirt that says barbell shrugged on it. Or you might want to check out some of the seminars in there. There you go. The place has horrible customer service.

That's true. The t-shirts are usually on back order, so they take a little while to get this on. It's funny you bring that up. That's just because we have a lot of people buying t-shirts, which is awesome. That's right. All right, guys, see you later.

Thank you.