Barbell Shrugged - 56- 3 Tips on How To Gain More Muscle For Hard Gainers

Episode Date: April 17, 2013

This week on Barbell Shrug we give you three quick tips on how to gain more muscle. 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 dot TV.

He's a good speller. Alright, 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, guys.

Doug Larson here with Barbell Shrug. We have Austin Montsevice. Did I say it right? What's up, guys? Yeah, that's right. Close enough. You've been here for two years, and I'm just now getting your name down. Yeah, mine as of two weeks ago at Nationals, Mike still didn't know my name.

Been working out here for two years. It was Montsevice for two years, and now it's Montsevice. Austin Montsev for two years. It was Montse for two years. Now it's Montse Weiss. Chris Moore, obviously. And then David Gross. I almost called you David Moore. Do we have a David Moore in our six-month program? That's your brother's name. I was like, who is that?

So we've got David Gross, who's one of the coaches here at Faction. You've been on the show one other time that got aired, and then one time that didn't get aired from the infamous pool party episode. Yeah, my first time on Barbell Shrugged did not get aired, so thankfully. Our cameraman was out of action.

That was a bit of a disaster. That was kind of your fault for putting him out of commission. Is that right, cameraman? I think I was feeding you the moonshine. I don't know. Peach flavored moonshine, which is deceivably good, but almost poisonously too alcoholic. Yeah.

We should be having round two on the pool party here in the next couple weeks or maybe two months. Hope so. Yeah, the weather just got nice, and it's swimming weather. Yeah. All right, so today we're going to be discussing gaining muscle mass specifically for smaller CrossFit athletes like you used to be before you put on all this muscle mass and now are humongous. Before I got huge.

Before you got huge. As you can see. Huge. That's right. So for everyone that doesn't know you very well, go ahead and give a little bit of your background and tell us a little bit about yourself. Yeah, so I started CrossFit when I was 17.

I was a junior in high school, and my mom actually found it and got our whole family into it. And so that's kind of how I found it. How old are you now, though? I'm 20. Yeah, sorry. So three years. Three years.

It was about this time, actually. It was like March. Now I'm 45. Look how great I look. Yeah. But for about my first year of it, I didn't really do any strength work. Only did like Metcons conditioning because that's what I was good at. So I like to run and like do pull-ups, box jumps, stuff like that.

It's amazing how the smaller guys like to do the things that they're very good at. Just like the fat guys don't like to do gymnastics. Yeah, just squat all the time. Yeah, every 350 pounds you want to bench press. You don't want to pull three pull-ups. It's like you're reading my mind. I know. So, yeah.

And then, yeah, probably after about a year, I started, I guess, being a little bit more interested in getting strong. I'd done a few competitions and had done okay, but, like, it was in the scale division, and I wanted to be able to compete RX, but the weights were always too heavy. So started working out a little bit, lifting a little bit, and then now, yeah, just. So in competition, you wouldn't necessarily be tired.

You just couldn't lift the weight. Yeah, yeah. Like if it was, you know, I have specific memories of events. Like there was an event at actually Faction Games 2010. It was like a heavy for me then, stone to shoulder. I think it was like 65 pounds and pull-ups. And I would pass everyone up on the pull-ups. If you have your body weight, that's a lot to do.

Yeah, exactly. And then the stone would just crush me. And so wads like that. And then if it would be like a 5K run, then I would come in first. But if it was any kind of lifting. How did you do on the obstacle course? I came in third. Was that the heaviest event for that faction game?

Yeah, it was the stone one. In the scale division, I don't remember there being any barbell work. There was some kettlebell stuff, but it wasn't very heavy. Actually, that was the 2010 faction games. I did pretty well. I think I finished third in the scale division. But then a few months later, I did a garage games competition because I was on this CrossFit high or whatever,

and I was like, oh, I'm so garage games competition because I was on like this CrossFit high or whatever. I was like, oh, I'm so good. I finished third in the scale division. And it was a WOD with – it was like 155-pound deadlifts and running. And I did really good at the running, and the deadlifts just absolutely killed me. It was 155 pounds, which shouldn't kill anyone. What was your body weight at the time? I know you're a little bigger now.

Body weight at the time was 140 to 145. Right now – Yeah, so if you do that like – you do that 10 or 15 times, you pick up your body weight or more, that's already pretty fantastic. But some guy who weighs 200 is doing that two or three times more than you. There's no way you can compete. This is not as hard for him. The best example of a sucky, wide, if you're a smaller guy, it sticks out in my mind from the year before last games

where they did the heavy sled push, like the dog sled push like the dog sled yeah push and some of those guys push you see guys like get really psyched up get motivated like spieler somebody and they just lunge and grab the handles and push everything they got and it's nothing happens it's like they're pushing a tree yeah it's like you can move all you want you can be proficient all these lifts and be really really conditioned but if you ain't got a certain amount of ass behind you, you ain't going to do that. Yeah. It's impossible. So what are you up to now body weight wise?

Actually, right now I'm only like 152. So that's not like a huge gain. But just as far as like muscle gain and just overall strength, it's gone up. Yeah. Well, that's not necessarily true though. Your strength numbers have gone up a lot. Yeah, strength numbers have gone up a ton.

When you're a smaller guy, if you gain 10 pounds of muscle. Right right compared to like if i put on 10 pounds it's much more meaningful for you that's 10 pounds is much more valuable yeah so wait what are your current best lists and then move on to david here in a second uh right now um best snatch is 200 pounds so like 93 kilos i think or 91 kilos um clean and jerk i actually just hit 253 pounds at Nationals last weekend, so that was cool. Back squat, 345. Body weight in two-thirds. Clean and jerk? Yeah, roughly.

Yeah. Those are big lifts. Back squat, yeah. Okay, so sorry I cut you off. Oh, sorry. Back squat, 345. Front squat, 300. Shoulder press, 160.

Pressing over body weight. Yeah, pressing over body weight. That's strong. For real. All right, Dave, give us a little bit of your background, too. Yeah, so my background, I'm actually previous military. I did four years in the Navy about four years ago, about four and a half years ago.

Started CrossFit in San Diego. My buddy was like, we were doing Brazilian jiu-jitsu and kickboxing. We were taking some classes at an MMA gym, and he's like, hey, you got to check this thing out. This is what all the fighters are doing. And I think, I can't remember what fighter was doing that, but I was like all into him. Chuck Liddell. Chuck Liddell was doing CrossFit. At the pit.

Yeah, so I was like, I got to try this. And my first WOD was Fran. I was laying on the ground afterwards. I was like, I love this. This is what I want to do. That was my first one, too. How weird. Throughout my Navy career, I taught CrossFit on the ship.

I was on aircraft carrier. And, yeah, I just fell in love with it. Moved back home and got introduced to you guys. And I teach the morning classes here at Faction. So smaller CrossFit athletes and taller, thinner CrossFit athletes kind of are in the same boat where they both could benefit from putting on quite a bit of muscle mass. That's what holds back a lot of the tall, thin guys,

is that they're just plain not strong enough. They're not built to press. They're not built to do Olympic weightlifting in a lot of cases. They've got long limbs, short torso, and they're in their thin. And so you've been focusing a lot lately on also putting on more muscle mass and getting stronger, and you're actually doing the six-month weight gain challenge right now too, right? Yeah, 26 and 26. It's it's your guys program so I decided

to pick it up and we're in a first week now we just so we just finished the first week yep and so far so good it's um it's a big change eating a lot more and high volume lifts so I think after the first two days the first day was find your fiber at max on your back squat. No big deal, right? 5-rep max. Then I turned around and saw it was like four sets of five at 90%. Exactly.

Man. Wrecked sore that first week. Wrecked. The golden ratio for doing lots of work and getting much stronger is going up to something heavy, then backing off that just a little bit and then doing a lot of work right in that 80-90% zone. That's the best way I can think of to be strong. I really like building up to something heavy, then backing off that just a little bit and then doing a lot of work right in that 80% to 90% zone. That's the best way I can think of to be strong. I really like building up to like a five rep max like you were talking about,

just like a daily max. You build up to whatever you can hit for five for that day, going down to 90% like you're talking about and kind of getting that volume in. Yeah, it does two things. It's a better warm-up. Like if you warm up to just that number one the percentage might be wrong because you might be over underestimating what you can

actually do for 90% so invariably the first if you do 5x5 the first couple kind of suck the middle ones great and then they get kind of bad but if you work up to something kind of heavy and step back you have that bit of potentiation you're really getting warmed up so you're starting

and the first set of 5 feels fantastic and I back, you have that bit of potentiation. You're really getting warmed up. So you're starting, and the first set of five feels fantastic. And I think you get a higher quality of work across those sets. I think it's the best thing to do. And every super strong weightlifter I can think of, Olympic weightlifter, that's the base of the squat. Whether it's front squat or back squat, go up

and hit something heavy, then do work at something a little less. I think it's a brilliant approach. Mike's been programming like that. Yeah, I actually like the work sets, the four sets of five afterwards. The first set, like you were saying, the first set feels a little heavy. Second feels better. Third's getting a little faster. You get a feel for the weight.

By the fifth one, a little tired, but you're still holding on. People always think you've got to head in one direction. Like I've got to warm up here, and I start adding weight to the fifth one a little tired but you're yeah you're people people always think you got to head in one direction like i got warm up here and i start adding weight to the bar and then i finish up here and i move on to something else or i go home but no you can work up you can come back down you can start again if things don't go your way you can retool your form and work back up again right you can't be rushed and you can't reduce your program to some like predetermined strict flow. If it ain't working on the first wave, back off a little bit and go back up. That's sort of built into that approach where you hit something to feel where you're at,

then you prescribe off that. Yeah, I think programming like that is really good because it's kind of a good mix between, like, going off of percentages as well as, like, doing more, like, strength by feel, I guess. So a lot of times if you come in, you know, you have to hit certain percentages if they feel heavy or if you have hit them before, but they feel worse today, whatever, it kind of gets in your head. But if you kind of go in with a strength by feel approach where you're going to work up to a heavy set for the day and then do your percentages off of that, it's a little bit of that variance kind of helps you.

That way if you're recovered, you get heavier sets than you normally would. And if you're coming in, you hit a fiverep max that's 20 pounds below what you normally do, then all of your work sets are lowered also. And you can kind of take it easy when you need to take it easy. Speaking of the weight gain challenge, we had a few people who nervously posted that, man, I woke up this morning, I weighed myself. I weigh five pounds less, man, than I weighed last night. What's going on?

Well, you're a living person. Things change. You slept. You don't always drink the same amount of fluid. You don't always eat the same amount, even though you're, regardless of what you think. So there's fluctuation. Over the course of two months, you know what your actual weight is if you measure it. Same with these percentages.

Right. If you just go in and say, I maxed out three weeks ago. My 1RM is 100 kilos. 90% of that is 90, so I'll do that. But that was 100 kilos was your max then. It could be a little more. It could be a little less. So if you have this sort of built-in flexibility and you calibrate and tweak

and you judge what you're capable of today, like even great weightlifters, maybe I can snatch 150 kilos. But maybe two weeks from now, I can only manage like 135 or 130. Who knows why? I didn't sleep well. I don't feel good. I'm a little beat up. So on that day, what percentage should you use?

You should go off what you're capable of. Yeah, for sure. With the expectation that in a week or so you're going to feel great again. That's just what happens. Yeah, there's natural ups and downs. I like that you brought it up with regard to body weight because we end up giving that entire group, everyone that's in the six the six month muscle gain program we gave them an excel sheet that they

can track their body weight every single day and they can plot their body weight on a graph relative to a to a trend line that is set up for 26 pounds in 26 weeks that way they know on a daily basis if they're if they are above or below where they need to be they can see that you know they put their they put their body weight in today and it was 200 pounds and they needed to be 200.3 today and they're down 0.3. And tomorrow they've got to be 200.5. And so tomorrow they know exactly where they need to be. And you get that feedback back every single day.

Most people, they only get feedback every time they weigh themselves, which might only be like once a month in a lot of cases. And you might hit a high or you might hit a low on that day and not really know where you're truly at. It's a good way to see your habits. Yeah. It's like if you see two or three of those low points now stacking up, you start going, okay, what am I actually doing wrong?

This is not a fluctuation. This is me maybe losing my focus on diet. Now, I'm thinking I'm eating well because I've slipped into some sort of automatic morning and afternoon routines. But it could be that, yeah, one serving turned into almost a serving and then it turned into like a half serving because you got a little busy. The next thing you know, you're going downhill. The trend line starts shifting downward.

But seeing your habits on paper is pretty useful. Yeah, I think that graph is very useful because if you click on the second part, yeah, I'm using it now. For the first week, I fluctuated. Like I was up three down two up two down it's like we have the casino yeah exactly exactly but on the second part um if you click on the second portion of the of the excel sheet there's a a bullet graph and it maps points and i think over time that that you know if you're doing everything correctly on your diet and following the program

it's just going to steadily rise if you're out there right now and you're listening to this and you're trying to either gain weight or lose weight graphing your weight is absolutely huge you're going to be up and you're going to be down but you'll be able to see the trend is going up or going down you really know where you're at whenever I have a fight for example if I know that I need

to drop 12 pounds in 6 weeks which is a drastic very fast change Whenever I have a fight, for example, if I know that I need to drop 12 pounds in six weeks, which is a drastic, very fast change, I'll plot where I'm at. I'll plot a straight line all the way down to where I need to be in six weeks, and then I just kind of follow the line. And I always make weight because I always know exactly if I'm on track or not. There's no guesswork. Oh, I thought I was on track for four weeks, and then the last two weeks turns out I'm not on track,

and now I need to lose 10 pounds in two weeks. You just don't set your dot on day one and then hope for the best? Maybe say a few prayers or two? You don't do that? Here we go. Maybe when I was younger I did, and a lot of guys still do that. The older I've gotten, the more precise I've been about it. It's interesting you point out gaining strength can work the same way.

If you're like, okay, I have a goal that in six months from now I want to snatch X kilos. Well, then you kind of know week to week what it will take from going from where you are now to getting to that point. So if you know you're within striking distance as you get two, three, one month out, then you know that the training is working because you're actually measuring. Yeah, the same way with the weight. So this week I may kick ass in the snatch.

A couple days in a row I may suck. But out of those time points, if the general trajectory is going up, you know your training is effective versus people who have a couple bad days and let it discourage them, take their eye off the ball, and they start asking the wrong kind of questions in their training. Like, oh, shit, what's going on? I've got to fix something. So you intervene and change what you're doing,

but oblivious to the fact that you were on your way to getting to your goal. That's a big danger. Right. It takes a big danger. Right. It takes a while. Yeah, it does. I mean, you're a living creature who needs to accumulate effects over time, and that's not an acute thing. It's a chronic thing that happens over months and years.

Not just, oh, I had a shitty workout today, and I'm a pound over on the scale. It means I'm weak and I'm fat. Yeah, inevitably in any training program, you're going to plateau. It makes progress for two weeks, and then you'll see it level off. And then that's when you know, okay, it leveled off. I need to make a change now. And so you know to add another workout drink or an extra meal or just more food per meal or to back off your training

because you're overtraining. You've got to make some adjustment to kind of break through that plateau that now you can keep going up or start going up again, excuse me, because you saw that you weren't making progress, whether it's with strength or your body weight, it's not going to be linear. What about this stuff? You'd like it to be, but it's not going to happen. What about this?

So we always offer recommendations about where you should start, maybe, with your training. Here's some good guidelines. One thing I always think about is maybe load for three weeks and take a week off. Then resume loading on the fifth week. Kind of let that be an up-and-down pattern. But that's just a starting point that works for most people. Lots of people maybe could do with seven weeks, six weeks.

I'm actually playing with a six-week one now in my garage, rocking single dad style this weekend. You know, you got to play with things. Keep momentum going every game. Yeah, and that's exactly how Mike has this program programmed. Yeah, but it could be that some guys two to three weeks would work. If you plot your training out and you try to go for six and you saw your performance went down by four,

or you wanted to go four and you saw that on week three you started getting tired, and every month cycle you see that, man, there's a recurring theme here. That's your cue that you should maybe try to play with a longer or shorter interval and maybe get more out of your training. So there's all kinds of awesome insights that only you can gather if you are willing to collect the data. I think you make a great point there, Chris. Yeah, I've been writing workouts for here at Faction in the mornings,

and I found that following the first week, second week, third week, building up, one, two, three, and then deload the fourth week works very well. But on your sixth week that you were talking about, do you go up for six weeks and then take a week off, or how long is your rest? I'm playing now with my current cycle. I actually worked with this with Dr. Mike Hartman, who's a friend of mine. If you haven't checked out his e-book, Fortis, Dr. Michael Hartman,

it's a great book. We play this idea of doing a block of training for six weeks where you go three sets of five, five sets of five, and then down to triple, so three sets of three, five sets of three. And then I've been doing three singles and then five singles. That's my six-week flow. So by the end, my volume is really down. I can lift really heavy, but I'm so used to lifting heavy

that that's not a concern for me. What beats me up is sets of five. So I get a huge stimulus up front, and I'm almost recovered by the time I'm doing heavy singles. So when I used to do unloading week, my unloading weeks are low volume but still heavy grinding weights. I don't consider weight to be something that tires you out. I consider the volume to be something.

You should never be lifting light, I don't think. That's something I came to in recent years. I used to, when I was powerlifting, my unloading weeks were basically sit on my fat ass and don't do it, but go into the gym and do some some stretching and stuff now i realize i really wasted time there because for me to you know in my prime to do a five or six hundred pound squat wouldn't have fatigued me it would just maintain crucial you know uh adaptations nervous system adaptation that i'd work so hard for

but instead of doing it for multiple sets just doing it one or two times i'm still fully recovered yeah it's keeping it heavy less that's less reps yeah for your d loading yes yeah i agree with that i know uh when mike writes our programming here either for the weightlifting team or more specifically for um our crossfit competition team um we'll go through periods of really high volume and personally me i don't handle um high volume particularly well like for long periods of time so i volume of heavy stuff yeah exactly um i get beat up pretty pretty quickly that's where drugs are handy exactly yeah you don't have you know um so um sometimes for recovery week recovery week excuse me um he'll do like one rep max weighted pull-up or a one rep max something to give us that heavy stimulus but but at the same time,

the volume's low, it's not a lot of reps, and so it's not going to add to your fatigue or anything like that. It helps. Especially to your Olympic lifts. If you're not putting a heavy snatch over your head basically all the time, you're going to start sucking at it really quick. You've got to work and grind. Yeah, that's a lift that you have to practice all the time.

Yeah, don't take a week off from snatching because that week back is going to feel like you just totally lost what you're trying to thought, what you're trying to accomplish. Even if you're just keeping it in your warm-up. I'm going to keep that movement pattern very fresh, top of your mind. You mentioned doing weighted pull-ups, and that's actually one of the things we're going to come back and talk

about on the second half for smaller guys doing weighted versions of gymnastics movements. So before we go into the second half and we talk about these tips for gaining muscle, specifically for for little guys or skinny guys. Sorry, dude. Little skinny guys. Use the L word, bro.

The L word. It ain't cool, man. That's right. What did you tell me the other day? I could call you racist, but I couldn't call you little? Yeah. But you're not racist. We prefer the term gravitationally challenged.

He just likes that term so much he'd rather be called a racist. But he's not racist. Just to put those two together. So before we go into the second half, we're going to make an announcement right now about a contest that we're having here that's going to be going on here for the next two weeks or so. So everyone knows Chris's coined term of coffee, tequila, and barbells. We're going to have a video contest where you can submit a video.

It's got to be two minutes long or less, no longer than two minutes, and you've got to submit it on the Barbell Shrugged Facebook wall. Any creative way you want to combine coffee, tequila, and barbells. Do it safely. Do it safely. We take no responsibility for how you combine those three things. If you decide you want to put coffee and tequila in your workout drink and kill yourself, it's not our fault.

So be responsible, but however you can creatively combine those three things in a funny video, um, how we're going to rank who, who does the best is how many likes you get. So post that video on the barbell shrug Facebook wall. And then whoever gets the most likes on their video is going to win a series of prizes.

So, uh, first place is going to win a gold pack, which is a combination of our three main seminars, which is the Faction Foods Nutrition Course, which now includes Paul Eich's additional seminar. So it's kind of a two-for-one seminar deal with the Faction Foods Nutrition Course. And then they also get maximum mobility and simple strength.

So three seminars if you get first place. We sell that for $367 in the store. So that's a huge value if you can create a funny video. I might even, like, I might even, let's get a bottle of tequila. We'll all sign it and send it to you or something. We'll do something fun, too. We'll come up with something cool. Or a package of coffee.

We'll send it to you with a T-shirt or something. It might be fun to do. Yeah, just like Chris says, stay safe. I'm interested to see how you put all these three items together. Just pay attention to the fact that you have a powerful stimulant and an alcoholic beverage. Don't combine them in large amounts. Just use some common sense.

The first thought I had was what's best in life, coffee, tequila, barbells. You got that? What else do you need? You don't even really have to technically mix these things. It could just be... No, it could be a joke. It could be a cocktail. I don't know.

You're not limited by... Use your imagination to come up with something that's just amazing. They just have to make some type of appearance or be referenced in some way in a video. No more than two minutes, right? Yeah, we want to keep the videos pretty short. So less than two minutes. Two minutes is plenty long to make a video that's punchy and has a little bit of humor in it.

And do they have to go to the Barbell Shrug website and like it from the website? Yeah, you have to post it. Upload it to YouTube and then post the video on the Barbell Shrug Facebook wall. And then on that post, whoever gets the most likes wins. So don't post it to your Facebook wall. Post it to the Barbell Shrug Facebook wall. And then share it on your wall. Share it on your friend's wall.

Tell people to come to our wall and click like. So you've got to promote it yourself. The earlier you do this, the more time you're going to have to get likes. So don't wait. The deadline is April 26th at noon, which is a Friday. So you've got a little less than two weeks to do this. So don't wait until there's one day left and then think you're going to win. Try to do this right now when you hear about this.

Make some phone calls, call some friends, brainstorm some ideas, and grab your iPhone and go film a video and get it up there right away. That way you have time to get the most likes. All right, this is going to be fun. I think so. We're going to have to do something with this. Yeah, I think we'll put CTP in the running. Yeah, he's got a little bit of an edge, but he should be able to compete. All right, guys, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we're going to talk about three big tips for little guys to gain some muscle mass.

Second place and third place. Oh, yeah. Second place is going to get just the food nutrition course, the faction food nutrition course. And then third place is going to get just the food nutrition course, the Faction Foods nutrition course. And then third place is going to get a maximum mobility seminar. So three big prizes for everyone who submits the video. So we'll be back here in two seconds. All right. Cool. Hey, guys, this is Rich Froning, and you're listening to Barbell Shrugs.

For the video version, go to fitter.tv. All right, guys, welcome back uh before we get rolling i want to mention that chris has his live webinar event coming up here on april 21st we decided that we're going to do it at one o'clock in the afternoon we put out a survey and that was the time that worked best for for most people so uh if you have any questions that was that on a saturday uh that's a sunday sunday okay that's right it's a a good thing Chris just figured this out. I was like, oh, shit, man, I've got to be working on a Tuesday afternoon at 1. That's right.

Yeah, Sunday at 1 o'clock. You're going to do a quick presentation on some new stuff that wasn't in the original Simple Strength product. You're doing that if you didn't know that. I was like, all right, dig it. People are going at me confused. Mike was saying you were going to talk about some of the stuff that you spoke on down at the Garage Games. Oh, yeah. So I'm currently wrapping up, if I can get a few times or some sessions to sit down and put the last finishing touches on it.

But that little book project I'm working on is coming together. It's going to be cool. But, yeah, I had some musings on making progress and tweaking and dialing in and adjusting as you move through time. So we'll bring a little bit into the discussion. Something that will probably make it into a second version of Simple Strength as well. I'm thinking ahead, you know, planning some good stuff for the people.

Yeah. And also I encourage you guys to get involved in this question and answer session because if you bring up something I didn't think of and it's a really good idea and we have a good exchange about it, I'll put it in the next version. So you can help me make sure this thing is as good as it could possibly be. Yeah, the more questions and feedback we get, the better the product gets. We can make it exactly what you want. I mean, I'm incredibly charismatic and handsome and sexy, but I don't know everything.

So help me address the things that you want to know about, and I'll tell you. So how do we get access to that? So that is just for the people who have already bought Simple Strength. So everyone on the Simple Strength list will be getting an email that will have the link to that webinar event here in the very near future. It'll probably come out here in the next post on Wednesday. I'll probably send that out like on Friday maybe if this posts on Wednesday, it'll probably, I'll probably send that out like on Friday maybe.

So that'll be about a one-hour event. He'll speak for maybe half the time, and then we'll do a Q&A for the next 30 minutes of that short session. So if you want to be a part of that and you haven't already bought Simple Strength, there's still plenty of time. You can go buy that product and then contribute to the conversation with Chris. And if this is successful, we're going to try and do more of these type of live webinar type events. I think that's what we're going to try and move towards. I like the idea of doing live online events. A lot of value there. Probably a little less formal.

Informal back and forth exchange amongst friends. How about that? Just you, me, and maybe a little tequila. Maybe we'll keep it nice. So we've got that coming up. We got a lot of other stuff coming up. We are editing the Zach Critch Weightlifting Seminar. Hopefully that will be available in the shop here in the very near future.

A couple weeks down the road maybe, Chris? That was a very delayed shake. He's still got a lot to go as far as editing that. Me and David put together a bunch of videos that outline how we run our fundamentals course here at faction so we're putting together a faction fundamentals blueprint where it's basically a completely done for you fundamentals program where we have videos of exactly how we teach that program has all the handouts that you can print up and use for your members so if you're a crossfit coach or or a gym owner and you want to implement a fundamentals course at your place

and you don't want to have to make any of the paperwork, you don't want to have to guess what to say, we have video recordings of us doing the entire 12-session course. So that will be available here in the pretty near future. And then finally we're doing another weightlifting seminar with Justin Thacker coming up where he's coming down to faction. And unlike the Zach Critch weightlifting seminar that we already filmed, which is kind of like weightlifting for CrossFitters,

Justin Thacker's coming down and doing a weightlifting for weightlifters seminar. So we're going to have those weightlifting products both available here in the very near future, one for CrossFitters and one for weightlifters. A little more advanced content in the latter, I guess. Yeah, Zach Critch did a great job outlining technique and coaching squatting and the things that you would learn if you came to a CrossFit gym that that was good at weightlifting. And Justin Thacker is putting a more of an emphasis on not so much for

CrossFitters, but people who want to compete in weightlifting. There's going to be a big programming aspect that we, that we didn't cover in Zach's seminar. So they're, they're both going to have a little bit of a different dynamic. So enough for the moment for promoting all of our stuff. We're going to talk about gaining some weight.

You mentioned earlier doing heavy bodyweight movements was one thing that really helped you because you were already good at gymnastics. Yeah. Bodyweight movements, push-ups and pull-ups. Kipping pull-ups, kipping ring dips, muscle-ups, all that kind of stuff. That's your wheelhouse. Right. Very naturally inclined towards that.

Handstand push-ups. I remember doing a handstand push-up exercise or a WOD with you one time. I can't remember what it was. Did it crush you? It crushed me. Yeah, I was like, that's like the first time I ever worked out with you. You too. Well, you're heavier and you're longer, which is not so well for this movement.

So I'm on like, I don't know. I can't remember how many we had to do, but I'm on like 10 struggling and Austin's like over here. No, we do, you know, living on his hands. Yeah. So, so adding weight to gymnastics movements and also not, not kipping with the gymnastics movements is a great way to help add strength. So, you know, eliminating kipping pull-ups, kipping ring dips, kipping handstand push-ups, doing everything strict for a while is a great way to, to make yourself stronger. And a lot of people kind of forget about that. Yeah, absolutely. Especially in Metcons.

Always trying to do constantly varied functional movements or whatever. And a lot of people will always kip just because that's how you do more work in less time. But it's okay to do strict pull-ups in a Metcon as just one more way to vary your workout. And then it's more kind of biased towards strength and you're not using momentum just on that workout. And a way to get away one more way to vary your workout, and then it's more kind of biased towards strength,

and you're not using momentum just on that workout. And a way to get away from this high rep bias, really, especially that's present with guys who can easily move themselves for lots of reps. I mean, you do what you're inclined to be good at. So if you're 130 pounds, you can do pull-ups for days, you can do pull-ups for days. You're going to be like, well, I don't really want to do them heavy with weight because I'm not as awesome at that.

That's what you need to do. A big guy don't really want to do them heavy with weight because I'm not as awesome at that. That's what you need to do. A big guy is going to want to do things heavy and slow, whereas you could probably benefit from doing the opposite. So it's just a natural tendency people fall into. So what are your favorite ways to make gymnastics movements a little bit harder that have worked for you? First off, weighted pull-ups. Do those.

Meantime, I go through a strength heavy strength cycle or even just I'll throw them into my normal CrossFit programming right now though I'm on a pretty heavy strength cycle so I'm doing weighted pull-ups twice a week one day or excuse me strict pull-ups once a week one of those day or twice a week sorry one of those days is weighted and one of them is just strict for as many reps as I can with no weight. So you kind of get both. So with the weight, what kind of sets and reps do you do? It just kind of varies. If I have a set, if I'm going for maybe a set of five or a set of three,

then I'll use kettlebells and see how heavy I can go. You can do singles too, right? Have you done singles for heavy pull-ups? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just one rep max type. So probably no more than sets of five, really, the gold rule. Triples, fives, and singles. I like to use the same rep scheme that we just talked about,

where you build up to a five rep max for the day, and then you take off 10%, you do 90% for four sets of five. You can't find anything better than that. That's great programming no matter what you're doing. So, Austin, what's the heaviest weighted pull-up that you're doing now? Actually— You can lie. 400 pounds. 400 pounds.

200 pounds. No, I think a few, like a month ago, in a deload cycle that Mike programmed for us, we had to do a one rep max, and I think I got 85 for one. Your weight plus 85. How do you weight that? 85 pounds attached to me.

Do you use kettlebells or do you use dumbbells? Kettlebells. Just because it's easy to loop the chain through the handle. Dumbbells are kind of wonky, and plates are kind of wonky. You can use plates, pinch it between your knees, really kind of whatever you have to use. But kettlebells are kind of ideal. So those weighted ring dips I like a lot more than bar dips,

particularly just because you also have the stabilization aspect of it. So I like that. We just filmed a technique while on ring dips, and one of the things that we put in there was doing weighted ring dips, but instead of putting the weight on your hips, which instead of tilting you forward pulls your hips under and pulls you into hyperextension, I like to put a chain over my neck because that rolls me forward a little bit more

and puts me in a better position. Yeah, that's a good tip, man. When I'm down, I'm still leaning forward just a little bit. If I have it on my hips, it'll pull me forward and pulls you into that terrible shoulder forward. I get pulled forward just with my body weight. It really is so much more comfortable. If you've never tried it before, you've got to try it. Put a chain over your neck.

Just with my body weight, that happens on the rings. I can't stay with my hands. I get teeter-tottered back. I may point out here, people just assume people just assume that oh well the ring dips are so much harder and they are but that doesn't mean just regular old dips are somehow not as good like for you if you could load up even more weight and do just regular dips that's gonna have a huge strength stimulus yeah it'll probably complement your ring dips a lot so people usually think that if you if you do some standard gym exercise it's somehow not as good as the functional cream of the crop stuff you would do in a CrossFit gym.

That's not true. I mean, we talked about this before the show. We kind of brainstormed. But just regular old bar dips, incline presses, and bench pressing. And a big one I think most CrossFitters should do a lot more of, barbell rows, or the way I like to do them, specifically a paused pin lay style row where you're pulling one rep at a time and you're really working on your mechanics to also lend themselves to deadlifting and cleaning well. All these things that are kind of traditional are in many ways traditional for a very good reason. They are staples that have always been around because they work.

So you're talking about pulling the bar off the ground, doing one row, and then putting it back on the ground? Yeah, pausing. The problem with barbell rows usually is that people invariably add weight, and they start ratcheting up higher, higher, higher, and before the end of it they're doing this little pogo thing where they're not really doing a barbell row. And that has absolutely no carryover to deadlifting and cleaning. But if you set up for a barbell row,

just as you are going to do a deadlift or Alternatively a clean they're not the same positions if you don't know that you need to dig into that a little bit You can practice like when I row and I'm gonna be practicing my snatch and I can't really clean But I practice scooping my knees out of the way and keep my back in a steady position as my knees extend and I pull The bar right up into me so I kind of practice the first initial Movement movements I would take if I was gonna snatch. So it's kind of like a deadlift bent row combo. Yeah, but you keep the back over and you row, but you move your knees like you're gonna move them

on other lifts. You don't practice doing something that has nothing to do with any other exercise. So there's still a little carry over. All right. So to demo for the camera. You're picking up off the ground. Yeah, so I'm moving my knees out of the way of the bar. You're going to pick it up off the ground? Yeah.

So I'm moving my knees out of the way of the bar. So I'm not doing this. See, T.P., get my – I'm not doing this. 300 pounds that I can't actually row with good form. You know? All right. And you touch the ground every time. Pause every rep, re-arch, reset the grip.

Yeah, every time. Wow. I dig that. All right, so tip number one basically was a combination of just eliminating momentum from our gymnastic movements or eliminating the kip slash adding weight to gymnastics movements so it's kind of like our the first category whenever you get talking about gaining weight obviously you talk about strength training getting more getting enough sleep and eating enough food so we tried to niche these little nuggets nuggets and pearls nuggets and pearls nuggets So we tried to niche these little nuggets,

nuggets and pearls, nuggets and pearls, nuggets and pearls. Uh, we tried to niche these down a little bit and give some advice that we hadn't really talked about in, in other shows. So the second thing we were going to bring up that you had done before was, um,

waking up in the middle of the night and eating food. Yeah. Like you got term for it. I love it. I believe in the, in the seals, I call them mid rats for midnight rations. I love that show.

That was, that was in the military too. You would, they they would serve they would serve food 24 hours around the clock so you know because you know i worked radar on the ship and you would be up for 12 hours at a time yeah whether it be the first 12 hours or the last 12 hours of the day and mid-rats would be starting from midnight to two or three in the morning. Awesome. Right. Okay, so yeah, a lot of guys are getting into the intermittent fasting where you're just taking more of your day where you're not eating.

This is kind of the opposite. This is taking more of your day where you are eating. You're not taking that 8 or 10-hour chunk of time in the night, in the middle of the night, where you're not getting any food. You're waking up after 4 or 5 hours. Maybe you have a shake sitting on your dresser. Alarm goes off. You roll over. You barely remember it. You crush a shake, and you have a shake sitting on your dresser. Alarm goes off. You roll over.

You barely remember it. You crush a shake, and you go right back to sleep. And for guys that have a lot of trouble just getting enough food in general or they're just not very hungry, they can't eat big meals, this is one more opportunity to get some calories in. And you've done that in the past with pretty good success. Yeah, especially I'm in college right now, so living in a dorm, mini fridge right there in the dorm, super convenient.

Keep some milk, protein powder, and berries around, so I live in a dorm. Mini fridge right there in the dorm, super convenient. Keep some milk, protein, powder, and berries around, whatever you want to make. A little bit of beer. And a shake. Keep it in your mini fridge, and it's right there when you wake up. It's funny. In that situation, there is no such thing as breakfast anymore. Wow.

Because you're never breaking fast ever again if you wake up in the middle of the night and eat two or three times. Yeah, there's no such thing as breakfast. If you wake up in the middle of night and eat two or three times. Yeah. There's no such thing as breakfast. Yeah. Yeah. Fast. Yeah.

I used to do that when I was in college also, and it worked out great. I didn't have any, any, uh, means to cook in my room. And so I would actually, I would powder oatmeal in a coffee grinder with a scoop of protein. And then I would powder flax seeds and put that in there with some cinnamon. And then I would just shake that up with water and it would be there you go it'd be a high calorie meal that was semi-balanced there was carbs fat protein i was trying to get bigger so having a heavy chunk of oats in there i wasn't wasn't really that worried about the time when i was i was playing college football when i was 30 pounds bigger and you're like 20 years old so like gluten is like the last fucking thing you're worried about yeah i mean I mean, there's no gluten in oats unless they're processed in the same package.

You're not on a grains trip at that point in your life. You just want calories. Not worried about it at all at that point, especially if I was going to football practice and lifting weights and doing 10 sessions a week. I wasn't worried about getting fat. I was just trying to keep my size and my strength throughout the season. But it worked out very well, and it was really cheap.

So if you're a guy that is really struggling to get enough calories, then that's a good opportunity to get some calories in the middle of the night. You ever tried that? Yeah, I have, actually. It's tough to wake up for me. Yeah. Not unless I have to really pee, and it's kind of hard to get up. It comes with practice.

I found that after a while, I would just wake up, and I'd look at my counter, and it'd just be gone's kind of hard to get up. It comes with practice. I found that after a while I would just wake up and look at my counter and it would just be gone. I wouldn't remember waking up. I wouldn't remember drinking it. Sleep eating. Yeah. It takes 30 seconds. Yeah, 30 seconds, you're back to sleep.

You're like, did I drink that last night? I did. I think I drank it. It's just like when you drive home and before you knew it you were home and you didn't realize what road you took. It's an automatic process of your brain. Executes the program. That's a really scary habit too.

It's not scary because your brain does it intentionally because it's... If you thought about everything you had to do during the day, you wouldn't have the bandwidth to be able to manage all the facts and stimuli that come in. So your brain does shift automatically into automated patterns. That's why it's a good idea because training can become an automated

pattern as well and eating can become an automated pattern and that's and eating can become an automated pattern. And that's why we do things like collect the data because automated patterns sometimes aren't good because if you don't stay diligent in thinking all the time about what you need, if you just do what you assume you need, you wake up and you realize, oh, I haven't eaten enough protein. I haven't been training as hard as I thought I was.

I haven't been sleeping as much as I thought I was. So those kind of patterns are bad in time. They're good when you're driving because it keeps you from having to fucking think about what you're doing every time but it's bad when you have habits that start forming that you need to break yeah if you're trying to make a change and move forward then you're uh then you have to change something now doug with this shake what how many hours before you wake up or after you go to bed should you should you shoot for this ideal time for the shake i was i always went for four hours i go to sleep four should you shoot for this ideal time for the shake? I always went for four hours.

I'd go to sleep, four hours later I would drink my shake. Right. Assuming I was trying to get it right around eight hours and I was trying to do it right in the middle. There's a lot of debate whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, whether interrupting your sleep cycle is more detrimental than the benefit of drinking the calories, and people go back and forth like that.

For me, I do feel like it helped me get bigger. I wasn't really sleep deprived at the time, so I could sleep. If I need more sleep, I could just go to sleep, but it was just easier to get those extra calories for me at the time. I haven't done much anymore because I'm not trying to be as big as possible. I only did it when I was kind of like peaked out as far as like it's really hard for me to to get any bigger right now so I'll add these midnight meals if you haven't plateaued on getting bigger and you're not kind of already I wouldn't I wouldn't say I was at my genetic potential but her genetic

limits excuse me but I would say that it was starting to get very tough and I was looking for one more thing to make me bust through that plateau like we were talking about earlier because I did I didn't know what else to do at the time and it worked right never stop searching yeah uh see the third thing we were talking about was uh adding in adding in some of the the bodybuilder things that they don't really talk about in the crossfit community like the crossfit community is kind of opening up to a lot of other forms of training, and the bodybuilding approaches are the last thing to come in. They've done strongman weightlifting and some powerlifting.

Bodybuilding's been a slow go. Yeah, pieces of it are starting to filter back in as a – CrossFit bodybuilding cert? The CrossFit bodybuilding cert. First things first, here's how you pick out your pair of Zubaz. Your pants aren't tight and leopard enough. So adding in some of the bodybuilding methods can be a good thing. The reason that they do them is to build extra muscle mass.

So doing things like forced reps or negatives, which negatives are kind of already in the CrossFit world for people that are scaling things like pull-ups, example you know if you do jumping pulls for a long time or banded pull-ups eventually you're going to move on to starting at the top and doing a slow negative and that's that's one of those kind of weeder bodybuilding type principles that that you can apply to a lot of things not just to something like a heavy pull-up you know bench press a whole lot in in crossfit but but a lot of people in the bodybuilding world we do it on occasion, but in the bodybuilding

world, they do a lot of heavy negatives and things like four straps where everyone knows that when you bench press, your buddy's always there to spot you. All you, buddy. All you. They'll kind of give you a little bit of a bump and that can help you get stronger. So if you're doing, back to

the example of pull-ups, if you did a set of three on pull-ups and that was all you could do, it would be okay to have a training partner behind you just to give you a little boost so you could, you know, eke out a fourth and then you could do the negative. And they'd give you a little tiny boost and you could eke out a fifth. It's work you wouldn't otherwise be able to do. Yeah, it's just one more way to add some variation and some new stimulus to your program. You shouldn't be super attached to it, and it's not the end-all, be-all training, but

it's just one more method to give you some new stimulus for growth. We were talking negatives before, I think specifically with a squat, where if you're training for weightlifting and performance, probably the best thing you can do is squat where you're doing fives and singles and triples, but you're getting down pretty quick, and you're getting up as fast as possible. And you're doing that because when you do something like a clean, if you train your squat slow all the time, and you catch a heavy clean rapidly, you're going to drop it. You're never really going to be able to stand up because you haven't learned how to capitalize

on this elastic bounding that happens in the bottom of a heavy snatch or clean. You catch it, there's this big shock, and you should bounce up, ideally. I mean, John talked about that in his lifting on the podcast, where, you know, it right i'm gonna bounce up anyway i ain't worried about that i'm getting stronger so i can pull in better position all right but if we want to get maximize how big we get from the squats and it would be a very good idea as down sets after the quick stuff or as a separate session or as a separate time of the year when you're just focusing on getting bigger to put this more emphasis on the the eccentric part, the lowering part. So instead of going down as fast as you can,

you always come up as fast as you can, but you'd go down a little slow and deliberate and maybe pause at the bottom. So extending the amount of time and making that a little harder and maybe doing a few more sets. So if you did five sets of five where you're going down a little slow and you're coming up as fast as possible, that's going to be very, very, very fatiguing. So you're sort of accentuating the eccentric loading,

which will be very effective. Which one is it, Chris? Whenever you do squats, do you want to focus more of eccentric or concentric loading? So eccentric meaning going down, concentric, fast up. If your primary goal is, look, I need to get some muscle mass, then adding focus to the eccentric is going to help you. For performance, it's always going to be getting down with –

you never want to go down so fast that you can't keep good form. That's silly. If you bounce so fast that the bar pitches forward and you struggle to keep in position, you don't want to do that. But I'd say the faster you can get down and up with keeping good form is probably the better. That's also a way of accentuating the loading because the quicker you go down with a heavy load, the quicker you come up,

the more force you experience during that exercise. Yeah, using the bounce is a skill. Yeah, it is. It's a skill you should train. For years and years, I did my powerlifting squats with a low bar, relatively shallow depth, bent over. So for me to transition to a bouncing style is so hard to learn because it's such a unique – it's like not even the same exercise. People say, oh, high bar versus low bar bar which one should you be doing well they're not

the same exercise they're totally different right so they'll be doing things where you require a bounce with a vertical posture rapidly the best example being weightlifting if you don't train that way you're gonna not get the effect you want you have to it's not even like i think it's retarded even have the conversation if you want to get better to. It's not even like I think it's retarded to even have the conversation. If you want to get better at cleans and snatches, you must squat in a way that looks just like that. Yeah, exactly. If you don't give a shit and you want to do a power-up than me and you just want to be kind of stronger

and you kind of play with the Olympic lifts, then do whatever you want as long as you're squatting. It's not a complicated topic. The more specificity, the better. Yeah, you got to be – that's one thing. The older I get, the more I realize you always hear specificity and you never really exclude it because, like, well, I've got to be – from the day one of, like, strength and conditioning class,

you're taught progression and specificity and dynamic correspondence and all that, which is basically saying if you want to get good doing something where your joints move a certain way, then you better train under load with the joints moving that same way, right? But really, the older I get, the more I realize that it's really super, super specific. Like, if you want to that it's really super, super specific. Like if you want to get good at weightlifting, weightlift all the fucking time. It's simple, but it's not such a simple idea to grasp when you actually try to do it.

Like if you're doing something that looks even slightly different, it could have absolutely no carryover. But the older I get, the more I realize you've got to really be sort of dead on. That's why a lot of weightlifters do what? They front squat and back squat and they snatch and clean and because that's what i'm gonna do and to me i'm gonna move that way yeah so if you're if you're trying to get good at weightlifting specifically then you should train with the bounce that we're talking about but if you're specifically trying to put on some muscle mass then it's okay to slow down be a little more controlled on the eccentric part of the lift not bounce out of the bottom. And specifically, you know, we always talk about training movements, but it's okay to also train muscles.

You're specifically not bouncing and not using momentum just to make those muscles more tired, more fatigued, and to make them sore so you're hopefully broke. That's why a bench press is perfectly fine. There's nothing evil or useless about doing a bench press. The bench press, yeah, you're laying on your back, and that's not so functional. But you're raising your arm,

or you're lowering your arms and raising them under a lot of load. That can make your arms stronger. It has benefits. One thing, adding muscle mass to your upper body. Because people overdo it. Yeah. If you only bench press,

and you do it three times a week, and you do sit-ups and curls and crunches, and you go home, that's all you do, and that's bad. But if it's just one part of your training program, then it's just one more way to get stronger. Yeah. Don't be silly, everybody.

Quit thinking that there's evil, stupid exercise and awesome ones you can never question. You've got to be a little bit more savvy than that. You guys ever done 20-rep squats? Yeah. Not in a while, but boy. That's what we call them. Widow makers.

They're nasty. Yeah, they hurt. We used to do 20-rep back squats, 20-rep front squats back in high school. Yeah. And we call them. Widowmakers. They're nasty. Yeah, they hurt. We used to do 20 rep back squats, 20 rep front squats back in high school. Yeah. And we would do four reps with those. If you're doing 20 rep front squats and someone would be behind you for like – 20 rep front squats? 20 rep front squats.

Oh, Jesus. They're back there just to kind of pick your elbows up on 17, 18, 19. Yeah, that sounds ridiculous. They kind of just pop you through that sticking point, and then you control down like we were talking about. You control down. You don't bounce, and then you control down like we were talking about. You control down. You don't bounce, and then you try to grind it back up, and they just kind of just bump you through that sticking point again.

I've never been so brutally sore in my whole life. Never been so brutally sore. It works for getting big. It helps. Not that I'm so masochistic, but I'm playing with the front squat again after years of just refusing to do it because I fucking hate the front squat. This is a rounded power thing.

Ex-football player guy who loves to be rounded and bent over and kind of folded a little bit. That's where I'm strong and comfortable. To be upright with a load across the shoulders just sucks. I'm committing to it. I'm actually playing with that because making something painful and also keeping the load down a little bit so you can actually learn the movement, but also kind of building the pain tolerance might really benefit me in my quest to now officially own up to the front squat

and do it the way it's supposed to be done. If you're brand new to 20-rep squats, you've never heard of those before, the original way that they were explaining to me was you take what you can do for 10, for a back squat, take your 10-rep max, what you could do 10 reps consecutively without really taking much of a break in between each individual repetition repetition and you just keep the bar on your back until you get

20 so you might do your first eight Without much of a break and then you might hold it on your back take a couple deep breaths Do two more hold on your breath do a couple deep breaths do two more Take five or six breaths do a single five or six breaths do a a single, five or six breaths, do a single, stand up for 10 seconds. Pray to God for mercy. Yeah, exactly. And do another one.

And you just keep it on your back until you get it done. And they are brutal, brutal, brutal sets where it's that unique balance between heavy and high volume at the same time. And that's perfect for getting really, really big. But if you've never tried 20 rep squats, I encourage you to try it. Maybe go a little light the first time because you are going to be brutally sore. And then a week later, add five pounds and do it again. And try that for like six weeks.

Add five pounds, do 20 rep squats. The next week, try to PR by adding five pounds. And you just hold on your back and just don't drop it until you're done. And I would do it, you know, if you're not for time. Yeah, like if you're serious in a CrossFit, maybe you compete a little bit, do it, I guess, in the winter months, a time where you're not really – you know, far away from the Open, far away from the time where you're really working on something specific.

Do it off – do it in your off season, whatever that happens to be. But, yeah, man, if you do that for six weeks, you're going to have an effect from that. You start off being terrible, and by the end of six weeks, you're like, this is not so bad. That is a huge shift in your physical being. that you start off being terrible and by the end of six weeks you're like this is not so bad that is a huge shift in in your physical being like on week one this set for 20 destroyed everything about me on week six wasn't so bad that is huge man that's a big change yeah we used to do that

once once we got kind of accustomed to that volume we we started doing we started trying to match it um on 20 rep rdls'd drop it on the ground. We'd rest five or ten minutes. Then we'd try to go do a set of 20 RDLs with straps on. That was also effective. Nasty sets, though. I hate to even talk about this because it's stupid, but the old German volume training, whatever the shit that is,

but doing ten sets of ten reps at a heavy load. Actually, there was a time. Hell, I may play with that again now that I'm feeling better in my training. But the most fit I ever had been was in football practice. We did 10 by 10 in the offseason to prepare for, like, the combine bench press test. So there was a time when I would do 10 sets of 10 bench press with, like, 275 on the bar, 275 pounds.

So 10 reps, and we would rest like, I would rest like two minutes, sometimes like a minute and a half or even a minute. Just do that. And by the time I could do 10 to 10 with like 245 or 275, that's when I had the best ever performance on my little rep test on the bench. I did 225 for 39 reps one time. That shit can work, but you got to be very careful because it's such a potent stimulus that you go from –

and it helps to be a little younger. You go from feeling like a million bucks in your body alarms to this and adapts to this to throwing yourself right off the rails. So you've got to kind of do it in punchy little four-week blocks. Yeah, you can't do that for the long term. But, look, the bottom line, though, is even if you hear a day like that's stupid, that's something that silly bodybuilders do. Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater.

You don't really know until you pick an appropriate time and play with it to see whether it has a place in your training because even silly things have a pretty good place in some people's training yeah all this stuff is really just tools yeah and you can you can use these little tools for you know for your own for your own goals without trying to be a bodybuilder specifically it's almost as ridiculous as, you know, like if my mom said something like, oh, well, I don't want to eat a bunch of meat because I don't want to look like a bodybuilder. It's like, well, he uses that meat as a tool for one thing

and you're using it as a tool for just general health and that you have completely different training programs. Same thing goes for people who lift stones or train. You're not trying to compete in Atlas Stone meets at Strongman events. You're just trying to get better at lifting a stone. So, you know, a lot of things you could do in here that people accept already it can be argued that that's not incredibly functional but you're doing what will add up into something that makes you

overall just better so even if it's something you do for four weeks once a year that's its place it's a good thing to do at that time so compliment exercises well you'd be like like bench press and rowing or something press rowing they compliment your clean uh yeah i mean for me like for like i got like a pin lay row coupled with like a incline steep incline bench press with like a jerk grip those two things as assistance exercises especially in the off season to help you do CrossFit things better and weightlifting better, they will help you for sure. Right.

You know, even like standing dumbbell presses. Any kind of little variation, anything that's different at the appropriate time is going to really help you a lot. Yeah, things like dumbbell presses kind of fall in the category of like globo gym exercises, but they still can make you plenty strong, and it's okay to throw this in your program here and there, even if they're not going to be in a CrossFit competition. If you think dumbbells are stupid and you're the guy who does a ton of kettlebells

and never thinks they're stupid, I question what the hell you're talking about. They're chunks of weight that you swing and lift. What's the difference? You've been indoctrinated. Yeah, break out of your ruts a little bit, man. Question it. You want to get exercise, clean two heavy dumbbells and do a set of 10 pressing overhead. That's going to destroy you if you're not used to it.

That's hard as hell. Yeah. Or dumbbell and kettlebell thrusters. Oh, God. That's another one of those nasty. Kettlebell thrusters. I did them a couple months ago where I did just one-arm dumbbell thrusters. I'm trying to keep myself in line.

It's very useful. Yeah. Yeah. All right, so we're going to wrap it up right there. So the top three tips that we just talked about, adding weight and or minimizing momentum for your gymnastics movements. Number two, what was number two? Midrats.

That's right, midrats. I love that term. In the middle of the night. All that being said is if you are already eating really good during the day, this is one thing you can add on. If you eat like shit all day long, this is not something you need to worry about. This is a thing to do when you're already doing all the other things right. Almost like a supplement, really.

This is a supplemental meal, we'll say. And then number three, what was it? Oh, not ignoring some of these bodybuilding tools, like focusing on the overloads, doing accentuated eccentric loading, playing with some things like bar dips or weighted dips and incline pressing and stuff like that. Yeah, so opening up the ideas for some of these specialized tools. Yeah, so negatives and force reps or even some of the more global gym type exercises like incline dumbbell press and what have you.

So three great tips. Let's go around the room real quick. If anyone has anything to plug, we'll let you go first while these guys think of something to plug if they have anything to plug. Yeah, I guess now keep your eyes peeled for that email invite to the Simple Strength Seminar Q&A live event. That's going to be pretty fun. And, yeah, just go to the blog, bchrismoreblog.com.

I post some stuff just about every day. You know, join the conversation. David, you got anything? We live in Memphis, come train with David. He's the morning coach here at Faction. Yeah. Get your ass up at 4 a.m. to come in and train. Across Memphis, we start at 5 a.m.

5 a.m., 6 a.m., 9.30. Is your bedtime like two hours from now? Yeah, actually it is. David goes to bed pretty early since he's here at 5 o'clock every morning. What time do you got to get up every day? I go to sleep at 6.30. Oh, really? Or 7.

7 on a late day. And wake up at 3 o'clock. Go to sleep or get in bed? You're asleep by 7? Yes. Wow. I get up at 3 o'clock. Go to sleep or get in bed? You're asleep by 7? Yes. Wow. Then I get up at 3 o'clock. That's more than a routine.

Take a while to get used to. That's very early by any standard. It is. Austin, you got anything? I don't think so. I think I'm good. We've got to get you a blog or something, man. Yeah, something.

You need somewhere that you can rant your thoughts and feelings. Austin M. AustinM.com. What is it? AustinM.com. What is it? AustinM.com. Because no one's going to know the last names. That's right. Nobody can pronounce it anyway.

Keep it to a letter. All right. So don't forget about the contest that we have coming up. Coffee, tequila, barbells. Put them in a video. Post it on the Facebook wall. Do it soon so you can get the most likes possible and you can win those seminars. Also, always go to the newsletter.

Sign up for that. That way we can keep you up to date with all the episodes and all the videos that we post each week. Lately I've been sending out week-in-review emails that has eight or nine of the videos that we post every single week. That way you can stay up to date on everything. So thanks for coming out, guys. Appreciate you being on the show. Thanks for having us. Sweet.

Until next time.