Barbell Shrugged - 60- Olympic Weightlifting Discussion w/ Justin Thacker

Episode Date: May 15, 2013

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. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. How's it going? I'm your host,

Mike Bledsoe, co-host Doug Larson. That's me. Our guest, Justin Thacker, weightlifting coach and competitor from the Lab Gym. And we have a sub-guest who will remain nameless. He's around here somewhere. I'm coming. Isn't he? Oh, there he is. Is he in the green pool?

He's not in the green pool. We're in the process of getting that pool in order. All right, guys, make sure you go to barbellshrug.com, sign up for our newsletter. Go to the Facebook fan page. Hit the Like button. That way you can get some updates. Also, Twitter, Barbell Shrugged. And what else?

Yeah. So, yeah, make sure you sign up for those things so you can get updates. We're very, very terrible about announcing the stuff that we have going on on the podcast itself. We're doing some live seminars and stuff like that. We have Justin Thacker in town this weekend. He came to town and did a—we shot, what was it, like 15 hours of seminar this weekend? Yeah. 200. 200 hours in seminar this weekend. 200.

200 hours in one weekend. Some days. We stayed up until 11.30. Still filming at 11.30 last night. And we filmed a bunch today. But we may forget to tell you about his product coming out. And you can get it. We might forget to say it on the podcast.

So if you sign up for the newsletter or like us on Facebook, it'll be much more obvious. There's your reason. There you go. Sounds good. Podcast is over. That's all we want to say. Justin, go ahead and give us a little bit of background

about yourself for all the people that didn't see episode 34 which you were also on when we went up to St. Louis to check out the lab gym. Tell us a little bit about yourself for all the people that didn't see episode 34 which you were also on when we went up to St. Louis to check out the lab gym so tell us a little bit about yourself for all the new people well I'm Justin Thacker from St. Louis and scoop a little bit put your face right next to the mic there you go I'm Justin Thacker from St. Louis I am the owner of the lab gym in St. Louis you can check us out at labgym.com but I've been a weightlifter for many years I started in the sport of powerlifting actually about age 10 and got involved in Olympic lifting when I was 17 and pretty much been obsessed with the sport ever since and been a

competitor for a very long time. And recently over the last few years I really got more involved with coaching and I've just worked with everything from crossfitters, Olympic lifters, all sorts of different types. But now the gym is starting to become more involved with seminars and different things of that nature so you might see us in your neighborhood soon. Okay what's your greatest accomplishment as a weightlifter? As a weightlifter I would say well either competing at the Olympic trials in 2004 or perhaps winning medals at the Junior Pan American Games was a big accomplishment to me. Just hitting some you know qualifying or medaling at the Junior Pan American Games was a big accomplishment to me.

Just hitting some, you know, meddling at the national championships was a big deal. But other than that, you know, just being able to compete at a high level for as long as I have. And you're still competing? Yeah, I actually have been out of it for the last two years from a shoulder and a knee injury. But they're starting to mend up. I'm feeling good, and I think I still got some big lefts ahead of me. So maybe hope to be in the American open this year, 2000. What year is it? 2013. Yeah, I think I'll be, that's what I hope to be back.

But these years are sneaking up on me. Right. Been involved for a long time, but I guess definitely looking back at nationals for 2014 and try to make another Olympic trials in 2016 and be a very old man. and that would be four Olympic cycles I've made it through. But hopefully that will come together. That's impressive for weightlifting. It's tough to hang in there for that long without, well, obviously you've gotten injured, but a lot of guys can't hang in there very long. You just accumulate injuries and just more frequently come back.

Right, right. And really the way things have gone, I really feel that I could end at my best. That's the idea. You know, the injuries are putting an interesting twist there, but so many things have come together from programming to being at the right body weight and put the lifts together and strength and all those things. There's a lot of elements that were coming together nicely before the injuries

and just got the best of me and one injury led to the next. And they haven't been able to put that total together, but I still see a lot of promise there. So hopefully I'll end at the top with my best lips. And one of the reasons, I just want to go into this a little bit, one of the reasons we actually are podcasting with Justin and one of the reasons that we pursued him in making a product together, and that's basically when I say a product,

that's going to be a seminar plus some like ebook type stuff that you can go to the barbell shop here in the next few months and purchase that you'll be able to buy that, that product. And it's basically a comprehensive weightlifting guide. And this is not like a, you know, a couple hours, you know, you can sit down for a couple hours and knock out this video. This is like what you did this weekend was like a college course. Like I couldn't believe that you powered all the way through it. Like I've never seen one speak that well for that long ever. I was really, really impressed. But one of the reasons we kind of pursued Justin Thacker and started hanging out with him was because our friend Corey Lones,

who we used to train weightlifting with way back in the day, had moved up to St. Louis, and he had started training with these guys at the lab gym. And he was like, Justin Thacker, these really amazing coach, they're doing some really amazing things here. And I was like, oh, okay, okay, okay. And I think he told me that for probably a year or so. And then finally I got up there to – I was like, we all three,

Doug, me, CTP went up there for the weekend. We podcast with you for episode 34. That was back in, say, October, November. And when we did that, we met you and five minutes later we were podcasting. And during the podcast, I was just like, I felt like we could podcast all night. Like we had a lot, you had a lot to say we could podcast all night like we had a lot you had a lot to say and you know we had a lot going back and forth and uh good chemistry it was a lot of fun uh so we trained one day we got to train that Saturday with you guys I really liked the

facility and the energy at the lab was really cool and so um I think it was about a month later I came back and trained for a whole week without the guys, just by myself. Spent a week, took a traincation. And during that period of time, like, just the stuff you all were doing, I was like, man, we need to get together and do something together because you've put together, like, this really awesome system. You know, I've never seen a coach manage that many athletes that well and have a system for developing athletes from the beginning to the most advanced athletes that are competing at the national level.

So I was just really impressed at how not just like your ability as a coach, but to be able to pass on information. Because I've run into a lot of really great coaches, but like you don't know what's going on in their head. You know, you don't know what they're thinking. And they're just not they're good at communicating with the athlete only, but they're not really good at making you understand why. You've done a really good job of making people understand why. I'm hanging out in the gym and there's just a lot of really good things happening there. I was like, man, you're in this one gym. I think the whole world needs to see what you've got going on. To Mike's point, I really like how you are able to

classify people into beginner, intermediate, and advanced and give them all a training program that really fits their current level can you kind of talk about how you uh how you structure programming for guys at different levels right right so it really comes down to seeing where they're at what their common problems and faults are you know what are their goals with the sport uh they're just trying to you know learn the lifts and compete at the local level or just try not to hurt themselves and things of that nature. So once we classify where they're at, the programming starts to form around them. So how much time can they commit to the sport? If it's going to be three hours a week or three sessions a week, then we've got to be

really reasonable and honest about that. And you're going to be a beginner for a little while. You can't put as many hours per week into your training. So that's all organized accordingly. So they may advance from beginner to intermediate or beyond but that's got to be proven through their movements and what flaws are there and typically a beginner is going to be someone with technical flaws positional problems they can't get into the actual respective positions they need it to be in for the lift and that's the first thing that we got to pass through so once that's technical the technical aspects are

there and they're consistent, then we can start to add on more training. So we're past the rookie stage there of having to just learn how to lift and not hurt yourself. So then we need more tonnage, more strength training type stuff. We need more hours in the week, basically. And that's where we might start to see the intermediate form. They've got their consistent technique.

And they start to work on the other elements. And from there, they may stay in that position for a long time until they really want to step up and put more time in and more days per week and they can handle the lifts like it's no big deal it's coming in it's like tying your shoes shooting hoops or something and they can do snatch and clean jerk at a high intensity very frequently not hurt themselves not be wiped out for a week so that's kind of how I look at where they're at and those three different levels what their their actual goals and ambitions are. But, you know, the beginner could be anyone from master's level, old lifter with bad positions to the junior level lifter who's just trying to

figure out what the hell they're doing. So for the beginners, it's more barbell position type work and then more traditional strength training to get them strong. Right. And then as they become more advanced, it's adding intensity to the actual full lifts. Is that what I heard? Yeah, absolutely. So we're preparing their position so they are competent and ready to go in, say, a front squat receiving position, overhead squat position. It's not going to be a new thing to them when they hit that with speed and aggression with a lot of power. Aggressively, they need to have a tight, organized position or they're going to get hurt. And so ultimately our goal with, say, the younger lifters is to give them good positions, good, you know, if you look at the lifts themselves and the full range of motion, it's a great optimal way to work out any muscle imbalances and total body athletic positions.

So, you know, if they're anterior dominant or something like that, they can't do an overhead squat. Well, we're fixing those problems early on as a youth, and they're going to maintain those as we go. But then as they can handle greater loads, higher intensities, their body's prepared and ready for it. And we don't run the risk of running them to the you know yeah unspoken guests here i've been an employee of uh justin's for over a year now i've helped him with uh all the olympic lifting slash crossfit stuff that he's been building and what makes this impressive is there isn't any specific way that we do start new people as far as just doing DeBarbo. There's no specific way. I'm going to tell you this is what you have to do as a beginner. And what he's incredible at doing is, you know, he can take someone who's never done the lift before and take, you know, what's the priority right now, what do we need to attack,

and get them the results they need because I'm assuming most people in CrossFit right now want results quickly. So we're going to try to help them with, A, positioning and fixing some stuff that's been missing in their training, but, B, obviously we want more weight on the bar. The goal is results. So his ability to kind of accommodate both at the same time has been unbelievable with both just Olympic lifters and CrossFitters from ages 10 to 60. See you. You can keep a job. He has to drink a full beer in between every comment. So he won't be back for like five minutes.

That's exactly how you wanted me to read that, Justin. He'll be back. Cue card. All right, so out of that full 15 hours, probably the two favorite parts on my end was the section where you talked about kind of the biomechanics of the lifts. And you were showing all the different charts and graphs and joint angles and force diagrams and whatnot. That was particularly interesting for me because I learned Olympic weightlifting initially from a guy who was a mechanical engineer. And so being a mechanical engineer he's he's very into things like force diagrams and angles and that's just how this is how he thinks mathematically

and in graphs and whatnot so that was very cool for me to see um and a lot of that really resonates with me and some of the more kind of logical mathematically minded people might really resonate with that too and we even think about doing something like that in fact mike did something like that a while back, which was really good. But you came in and just blew it out of the water. So that was probably my favorite part of the entire presentation. The other part that I really liked was when you went over every single mistake I've ever seen with the snatch, clean, and jerk, front squat, or snatch, clean, and jerk, and back squat. Excuse me.

Talked about how the positioning was incorrect and exactly what to do to fix it. I think a lot of people are going to watch this product and be able to see the flaws that they have and be like, oh, wow, that's what I do. Oh, great, that's how to fix it. I think usually when people talk about making some type of weightlifting product, that's kind of what they're looking for. And so those are kind of my favorite things because they're very applicable.

But you went way beyond that. Like Mike said and you did more of like a course like you you dug into things that most people in the crossword world never even thought about with regard to weightlifting they don't even know it's a problem it's like they don't even know that there should be a question yeah they don't know what they don't say hey this is the question you should be asking and now i'm going to answer it, and they're going. Head explode, yeah. I mean, I think there's something there for a little bit of everybody, you know, at whatever level they might be at,

whatever problem might occur, and that's kind of what I take for my career. You know, I've never reached the peak successfully I'd like to ever have hit as an athlete, and I think as a coach, that's probably where some of those skills came from is just struggling through the lifts, and I think every mistake I, that's probably where some of those skills came from was just struggling through the lifts. And I think every mistake I may have ever made has probably worked in there. So I made them all. I'll say as far as my favorite part goes, the program design.

Because, you know, everyone sits around and says the Bulgarian method, the Russian method, the Cuban method, whatever. And it's like they have no idea what the hell they're talking about but you kind of broke it down by country and even hit poland and then um and uh what i really like about that is like a lot of crossfitters you know they hit they go to like a weightlifting seminar on a weekend and they never talk about program design at all or they you know someone might say this is how I like to do program design. It's very, very simple, you know, or just do what's on my website. You know, that's all they'll say, right? And you broke it down by like, this is how these guys do it.

This is how these guys do it. This is how these guys do it. This is how I do it, but this is why I do it this way, you know? I've studied all these different methods and now I use them to you know put together my program and you kind of explain how you like the program and I find that to be really really helpful because most crossfitters you know that's that's most of our audience I think we probably have a fair amount of weightlifters as well but like you know even if you're you're to find, like, good weightlifting training programs, it can be really tough.

And for CrossFitters, it's like a lot of times they're just hitting the lifts a couple times a week. And if they ever want to invest a lot of time and get really better, they don't know where to start, you know. And you're like, well, you want to do this this many times a week. And, you know, these are the intensities you might want to look at and you know the type of volume depending on where you're at and i thought that you broke it down uh for program design really well so people could kind of like maybe self-administer a little bit i really like that right you know we go through the various levels and look at what the best of the best in the world are doing and there's obviously extremely different uh styles of training philosophies and again like it goes back to there's something for a little bit of everybody.

I've seen amazing world champion lifters do Russian, Bulgarian, blah, blah, blah, everything in between. And it's really, you know, you've got to understand cause and effect. And if you really don't understand – nice, beer, beer. If you don't understand cause and effect, you know, you have no business even talking about – Thanks, mystery guy. Even talking about programming. So it's about really finding what you need and applying it and then realizing what's clutter

and what's messing up with your recovery and programming. That reminds me of something you said. You're your own self. Or you're your own self. You're your own voice. You're you. You're just you. Only you.

Be yourself. You're talking about you're your own experiment. You're always experimenting with yourself. What works, what doesn't work if it doesn't work throw it out you know right stuff like that kind of like the bruce lee philosophy you know just accept what works and there's a few certain things i think you really gotta it has to stay in your programming if you're going to be a weightlifter you got to specialize you got to be specific in the snatch and clean and jerk and then you got to realize what's making you better at the snatch and clean and jerk and put a little bit of this or that in there.

And if it's helping you, great. If it's not and it's wasting your recovery and it's making you feel like crap, then take it out. Pretty simple approach there. But, you know, it can get very complicated from there if you want to get very elite and advanced and take it, you know, to the levels that we're seeing. I also like when you're talking about programming, how you were pointing out the differences in programming that's very kind of drug steroid dependent and programming that isn't. And how when you're on drugs, you can do it like this, but people see those programs, don't even think about everyone on that program that is successful is on drugs.

And they try to copy those programs and they end up hurting themselves. Maybe touch on that. Yeah, I mean, it's a very hard, honest look at, we look at, you know, all the medal counts from day one with Russia, Bulgaria, and even America in there. And, you know, we're still a fourth, and we kind of look at the good, bad, and the ugly of certain practices and perhaps where drugs may have been involved

and why our medal counts are the way they are, why programming is the way they are. And, you know, it's pretty interesting to look at various programs and how they're done, you know, with the same coach that could have been, you know, from a country overseas that even perhaps works in the United States now and things are different. You know, why would you train someone in one country different than another one? I don't know.

Points to one strong direction. Yeah. You've got a coach that's in one country. You bring in the United States and they have to change everything drastically. It's a different plan. Might be something there. Also on that, looking at the percentages of increase in performance with drugs and looking at some of the American lifters and what could be possible

if we were to implement a dirty system. And we did get a really cool chance to make it. He basically said do steroids. Right. If you want to be a world champion, do steroids. It helps. And you can throw your programming out the window then. Throw the rule book out.

Then we got some good comparisons to some guys in the United States who have actually not gotten away with it, and we can look at sort of the differences in performance there and kind of reverse engineer that and see what everyone else might get out of it. Yeah. I also like the point you made about a lot of people say that America just doesn't have the talent because they're pulled into all these other higher paying sports like football, for example. But in wrestling and track and field, we still dominate there. Right.

So why don't we dominate weightlifting? Like if the other kind of niche sports that there's not so much money thrown to the high level athletes aren't hurting, then weightlifting as a sport shouldn't necessarily be hurting either. So that's not really a fair argument. Right. Absolutely. I think even when we were dominant in the 40s, 50s, 60s and won several medals, football is still around. There's still competition for other sports.

It didn't seem to hurt us. Now, for some reason, they're stealing all of our athletes. Not saying that there's not great athletes out there, but the ones we have now are completely sufficient. They're just not playing on the same playing field at the end of the day. As in they're not doing as much drugs. Exactly. I think on the point of the drugs, I was reading something the other day,

and I talked to you a little bit about is, you know, if you see a big – this could be a marker. This doesn't mean that this is not like a – you know, if this then that is definitely not that. Because there's definitely some lifters that I think are clean. They do have that discrepancy, which is your snatch to clean and jerk ratio. And if it's one of those things where your clean and jerk is much higher than your snatch, if that ratio is skewed really heavily towards clean and jerk,

that could be a marker of, you know, being dirty, of using drugs. What typically is that ratio for a clean athlete for a clean athlete well that's i don't know honestly the higher the snatch the better but usually the russian data would be 70 70 to 80 percent of your cleaning jerk but that's 1970s russian uh literature so were those lifters clean or not it depends it's broken down by weight class too so i know what i was looking at was like, I want to say 77 or 85 kilos. I was looking at that because that's where I compete. And like your snatch should be between like 72 and 74 percent.

And then if it's lower than that, you know, that could be drugs could be coming into play. I remember thinking, I haven't calculated this in years and years. Or you just suck at a snatch. Maybe that's it I remember thinking that Pierce Demas' ratio was like 85% snatch to clean jerk He's done about 180.5 I believe and 215 officially

That was one of the things that was Fun to look at was technical efficiency And looking at their max back Squat to their actual lift ratio I believe Demas squats about 335 and Clean and Jerk's 215. There's all these arguments about it. I think it's like 158% efficiency of back squat to Clean and Jerk, whereas all the Russian data would say you should be at least able to Clean and Jerk within 127 to 139% of your

best Clean and Jerk, where he's way on the outside of that. And we've got all these coaches saying, oh, you don't need to squat. You don't need to push your squat And what's happening worldwide as you see all these world these world-class lifters and world champions their percentages it was severely exceeding that You know you've got guys just dominating these huge numbers of squats But you look at the American lifters and their percentages happen to be much tighter for the most part You know mine was a 250 kilo back squat 180 kilo clean and jerk And I was around right right at 138.9%. So it would make you highly efficient.

Yeah, according to the Russian literature, I'm right at the outskirts of what they would accept as efficiency, and Demas was 17% more efficient than him. Yeah, no one who watches videos of Pierce Demas and goes, he sucks, right? What an inefficient lifter. Right, right. That's incredible.

The only thing I can think of is that guy is fucking fast, and he looks really efficient to me, right. That's incredible. The only thing I can think of is that guy is fucking fast. And he looks really efficient to me. Absolutely. That's incredible. Probably one of the most efficient. If you haven't done this before, go ahead and Google Pyrrhus Demos. You can guess on your own how to spell it. I can't spell it off the top of my head.

But training hall tapes or training hall videos. P-Y-R-R-O-S. Thank you. D-Y-M-A-S? D-I-M-O-S. D-E-M-O-S. P-Y-2-R-S, I. Thank you. D-Y-M-A-S? D-I-M-O-S. D-M-O-S. P-Y, two R's, I think. Yeah.

Something like that. He knows something. Good point to look at that. I was waiting for the noise. I thought you were just going to make a series of drunks. So you can look at a lot of these percentages and all that based on country to country, but another thing to separate is none of these lifters look the same. Peter O. picks the bar off the floor.

I'm already drunk. What are we talking? Weightlifting. Your name's Pat. You can see the enormous amount of extension in the third pole with Peter O. Demas. He almost freeze-framed me plenty of time, whereas Chinese lifters and Russians, quick under the bars. You can actually compare percentage efficiency to bag squat,

but I think the smaller, interesting, the smaller the percentage the gap gets, I would consider their actual movements more efficient, and you can start breaking it down that way. Like, well, the way Piro does it, the way Klokoff does it, whatever, isn't as actually efficient compared to these people who have a smaller range. So, you know, the steroid argument's all great, but if further the back squat gets away from the snatch, you can start actually breaking down the movement more

because that's what it all comes down to as far as just throw drugs out the the window is who at the end of the day can do the lift better right you know i guess uh you know another way to look at that is a big back squat's important but it doesn't guarantee you anything you know you still got to be efficient you know and i really like to you know the argument online many people have come across uh the efficiency importance of the back squat by bud charnga and he breaks down Pissarenko, Taranyenko and Unaldyev I believe is how you say his name but Pissarenko would basically be able to clean the back squat 290 and clean and jerk about 262 then you got Unaldyev who'd back squat 455 who missed a 240 clean and then Taranyenko who's got the best clean and jerk

of all time of 266 he could front squat 300 300 for a triple, but he's missed, you know, 260 cleans apparently in competition. Well, of course, it's pretty damn heavy. This is why I wanted to bring Justin in to do a seminar. I don't know what the hell he's talking about. I don't know any of those people. These are three, you know. I recognize some of the names, but I wouldn't be able to let go.

Is this guy's name? These are his lifts? Right. Yeah, you got the history on everybody. Well, you know, so looking at these guys, two of them at least are very legendary super heavyweights. And the argument there is, well, Pissarenko can do 262 clean and jerk with only 290 squat. He's efficient. And that means you don't have to have a big back squat. Well, the reason the guy's a world champion and is amazing is because he's so damn efficient.

He's good at using his speed, his flexibility, his coordination. But that 290 back squat is still incredible, and I don't know too many guys who back squat 290. So I'm sure if he could back squat more, I'm sure he would have tried it, perhaps. It's just that the other guys, when you look at them, in the seminar, we look at good pictures of those three lifters, and the other two are fat bastards. You know, Pissarenko is a ripped piece of steel. He looked like Goldberg as a lifter. He was an athlete.

He was able to be very efficient, you know, like Simonearenko is a ripped piece of steel. It looked like Goldberg is a lifter. He was an athlete. He was able to be very efficient. You know, like Simone Kolecki, who could clean and jerk the same as his best front squat, then great, if you can do that, awesome. But I don't know too many people like that, and I don't think that's an efficiency that you just are going to end up having. Strive to be as efficient as possible. But the other guys, they were best in the world. I think they know what they're doing, so I don't think they're wasting their time squatting,

you know, pushing their numbers up. Teranyenko, at the end of the day, is the winner, even though he had wasted efficiency in leg strength, because he has the best cleaning jerk of all time, and that's the point of the sport. He had a 266-kilo cleaning jerk, but it took him a lot more squat strength, but so be it. I'm sure he was still

working technique. He had no shortage of training. That was his job. We've been talking a lot about squatting, but one of the things you cover, and you listen to some of the guys, we've podcasted with some people, some athletes and coaches, and I'd say the split is probably around

50-50. They don't do pools. They squat a lot and they don't do any pools, but you're a huge proponent of doing pools in your program and uh so is kendrick when we talk to him yeah uh you know and there's you know you look at different countries and some claim to not do any pools or they do uh you know how does that work out with y'all's program well it's the needs and deadlifts too yeah it's it's kind of a needs uh Why are we using exercise? Does it have a point?

You know, like if I've got a world-class lifter who's mastered the lift, there's two ways I would look at this. There's two ways I'd look at that problem. You know, for one, do we need to be specific and peak for competition? Then the pulls may not have much of a point there. It's just extra stress delaying recovery. But early on in a lifter's career, I would say the beginner type uh lifters who need reinforcement who are kind of stuck working on lighter weights and jumping around with it not confident to get under bar they need to feel heavier weight and

build some confidence you know overload that position with correct positions with a little bit more weight so it's all arbitrary we're talking about beginner versus intermediate or advanced kind of styles but then you jump to you know the-class scenario of does this guy need pulls or not. That's a different kind of argument. When we talk about pulls and deadlifts, we're talking about the snatch variation and the deadlift variation. The clean variation. You can go to TechniqueWOD, and I do something on deadlifts and pulls.

You should watch that. No one should say that you're not doing, like, snatch deadlifts. You know what episode that was of Technique Quad? 87? 85? Somewhere in the 80s. I got pissed off because someone was like, snatch deadlift is just snatch grip deadlift.

I'm like, no, it's a snatch deadlift. Not the same. So I made a video. You showed him. Arguing on the internet. Another way to look like a hero. If it's on technique, it's flawless. You can't argue with me now.

There is an important distinction there. Even like Kendrick's program, they're using the snatch deadlift and pushing it with tens, fives, and threes. I don't believe they do too many conventional style pulls where they're actually using it with speed. It's more of a max force kind of exercise. You're talking about reps per set, tens set tens fives and threes yeah yeah and so uh they're using it as an actual deadlift versus an actual pull and exploding through and working on acceleration per se uh whereas other countries are using a little bit of both i use a little bit of both i

use a more of a clean grip deadlift than anything just to get the lifter to feel heavy weight and pull it off the floor uh when there's a time and a place where they're they can pull so much and it's not required and you know there's no need to expend their back and recovery reserves but um you know seeing china and how they do it i think they're the most uh the reckless is not the right term but uh uh very elaborate with how many heavy pulls they do like you've seen a picture of lou deadlifting 290 kilograms who's a 77 kilo world champion uh that's ridiculous i mean even as a conventional deadlift, sumo style, any way you want to do it, that's an enormous deadlift.

How do you say the guy's name? The XU guy? Yeah, X-I-U, X-A-N-G, something like that. I'll never try to say it. I've never heard anyone pronounce it. I just go, that 77-kilo is awesome. Zhu Jiang, something like that. Clear throat.

How do you say it, Pat? See, I said it. Da-da-da-da. Dino. Yeah. I love watching that guy. He looks like he can't do it wrong. Right.

Like, it's fucking perfect every time. He makes it. Yeah, that's mastery. That squat jerk, too. It's insane. It's true mastery. They make it look super easy. He does.

And that's the thing about Asian positions. They're built really well for it. They've got a longer torso, short in the legs and all that, and they're really upright and vertical, and it's just a stand-up, a hip-hop, and they're under. I think that's part of why the deadlift may transfer so well for them, perhaps. But they do heavy deadlifts, all sorts of pulls. They do heavy squats.

They do heavy snatch cleaners. Heavy everything all the time. Yeah, a lot of those guys that have longer torsos, shorter limbs, tend to be bad deadlifters, especially like in the powerlifting world, they tend to be bad deadlifters. Do you think that's why that helps them so much? Because that's their weak link and they're good squatters, so they don't need to squat as much because they're already kind of good at squatting? I think it'll individualize for sure in terms of how much squatting,

but absolutely in terms of the torso. And for one, it's that technique style. I think they're slow or pull off the floor. It's smooth and it's like they're not ripping like a Bulgarian would with max speed and just reckless bang off the hips like a Bulgarian would. Their hips are pretty low. Yeah. The Chinese, it's a real simple – they're standing up and dropping almost.

It's like you don't even know what's going on. And so working that slow, strong pull, keeping the hips down, and that longer torso that they've got to work with keeping tall and upright. It's simply if I can stay erect at the spine, the bar is going to come off the hips and i'm under it's almost like it doesn't matter how heavy the bar is they're fast enough to get under it no matter what it's the non-issue if they can stand up with it then they can clean it yeah you can you can kind of compare them to uh donnie shank over what used to be california strength i believe but everything from 150 kilos to 200 it's the same speed all the way up to the hip.

And I'm like, there's no fucking way this guy is going to do anything with this other than deadlift it. And then he's just under it the same speed. So what I like about the Chinese is they have control of the bar from floor to floor, all the way from the bottom to the hip. And it has nothing to do with them being short or anything. They just practice over and over and over, control control the bar from the knee to the hip, which is where all those pulls are going to come in handy.

And then, obviously, they're strong enough they can reinforce the position. But if you know exactly where the bar is going all the way on the drop, you have 100% efficiency there. Fuck you guys. Everything that happens behind the camera. Yeah, and a little testament to the pools is uh i actually didn't do pools for a long time i was i was you know i just like well i'm pulling every time i do a snatch or a clean and jerk yeah you know that's good enough and i squat a lot you

know squat three four days a week i'm fine and then i went to your place and it was the first time i did like clean deads and forever i was like yeah work up to like a three rep max like you know no technique breakdown i was like yeah i, work up to, like, a three rep max, like, you know, no technique breakdown. I was like, yeah, I'm at another gym. I'll do whatever. I was so sore the next day. And then I actually hurt my knee, like, a month later. So I said, well, I can't squat, but I can do all the pulls I want.

So I started doing, I did a snatch pull, like, Monday. Or, you know, I alternated between snatch and clean pools monday wednesday and then saturday i did clean deadlifts heavy and uh i started doing that and when i came back to squatting like three four weeks later i pr'd my squat and then i pr'd my snatch my cleaning jerk keeping that posture locked in yeah so i've kept i've kept pools in my program ever since then yeah i like talking about body types so we we touched on the long torso short limb lifter a minute ago and especially in the case of the chinese they tend to dominate the lighter weight classes and they tend to be shorter lifters so short guys tend to do very well at the sport itself even the heavyweight guys oftentimes don't don't clear six

foot they're like five nine three fifty right you know like they're huge guys but they're not very tall for guys that have the opposite build to be a good weightlifter if you have a short torso Long limbs if I stand here and like I can like touch my knees right you know I mean if I have super long long arms I might be a good baseball pitcher right, but not necessarily a good weightlifter So if I have length long lanky limbs and a short torso, and I'm you know I'm six five You know what what do you do with those guys? How do you teach those guys to be good weightlifters? They're never going to be world class.

I'm going to send him to Poland and work with Kolecki and the coaches out there. I don't know how he figured out how to use his limbs necessarily. And he's got a lot of – typically I would have thought with a taller guy, I'd try to spread him out a little bit to widen his base up a little bit. You went over this in the seminar, right? Yeah. Is that guy again? Yeah, Simone Kolecki of Poland.

He's 6'2", world champion, very efficient technique. That's what weight? He was 94 kilos. So 207 pounds. Yeah, yeah. So he's done about 180 or so in the snatch. He had the world clean and jerk record around 235-ish, but 220-plus clean and jerk routinely.

So that's just shy of 400 and just shy of 500 pounds for snatch and clean and jerk. Right, right. He's done over 500 even in clean and jerk.. So that's just shy of 400 and just shy of 500 pounds for smash and clean and jerk. He's done over 500 even in clean and jerk. He had the world record for a while, and I think that's what Ilya just broke, actually. With him, though, the thing is he wasn't a strong, huge squatter, like deadlifts, nothing like that. He's just efficient, very athletic, and that's what made him so good. Everyone's going to need a little bit more of this or a little bit of that.

But with him, he's got even what— Is he peeing under your porch? What's going on? Nice little bit more of this or a little bit of that. But with him, you know, he's got even what. Is he peeing under your porch? What's going on? Nice. He's probably set the camera up. Maybe he is. He's got a video of himself peeing back there. I was just joking, but I think he really is.

The CTP came out to take a piss. That's right. Sorry, what were you saying? That was important. I had to time that up. I pooped today. That's right. I really like your shirt, by the way. I was hoping you'd keep that on for the whole rest of the seminar. He has a great shirt that up. I pooped today. That's right. I really like your shirt, by the way.

I was hoping you'd keep that on for the whole rest of the seminar. He has a great shirt that says, I pooped today. It's got a guy on it. It's got a guy that's like, woo. I did it. Okay. Back to more important things. Yeah.

Happy Mother's Day. That's right. The limbs, though, I think, just like I would approach any lifter, first of all, just getting the basics down. You need to know a strong start position. With any lifter, body type, my first goal is you need a strong, proper start position. And we're going to see where you have the best leverage there. They might get more of a vertical shin off the start there. Kolecki used to get very low, and as he came up off the ground, his hips seemed to stay kind of low.

But he'd come up kind of tall, but he kept tight positions ultimately. There was nothing magical about it. He just made it work. He just held tight, rigid positions. It looked like a conventional deadlift. He was under the bar. He's up and wastes no energy. But from there, though, I'd build a strong position at the knee and then at the power position.

And from there, making sure he's got no flexibility problems. The tall guys, it seems like you're real stiff and you can't get in the position or you're just really lanky and uncoordinated. So it's going to be flexibility and stability throughout the whole body. The tall guys usually need more mobility. The guys that have optimum leverage, they can keep a vertical shin almost the entire lift. And so they don't need as much ankle mobility

because they have a vertical shin the whole time. The guys that have the short torso, long limbs, for them to get into a bottom of a squat, they might need twice as much ankle range and motion than the other guys. So mobility tends to be more of a problem for them because they just simply need more of it. What the taller and bigger heavyweight lifters are better at, if you look at actually we both trained with the Brazilian lifter,

Fernando Reyes, what they're all really good at doing is maximizing power and position from the knee. And they're better at controlling the bar off the floor. And you might see a lot of them actually have bad position, position that you wouldn't reinforce their coach at the knee if you pause some of their second and third attempts. But from the knee to the hip, that transition is unbelievable and how efficient they are.

Well, leverage, better snatch to clean kind of guys. And they're using those long limbs to actually kind of have an explosive nice third or third pole second pole finish but we do look at that uh the finish team in the slides there and there's those guys are seven foot tall they've got awesome positions they got it you know this guy's getting super low in his hips he's got a nice long extended spine almost looks like he's trying to do a chinese pull looks a little bit like klecki but he gets he puts it together so of course there there's no flexibility problem ultimately with this guy, but he's able to stay rigid and tight through the whole pull. So that's just good lifting mechanics.

He's a Finnish national team athlete, and he's doing this to support his sports performance capability. So he's not lifting heavy loads, and that's really something I'd tell a tall guy first. You need to learn how to coordinate all that shit. How are you going to keep it tight and keep it together? You know, and that, again, talks about what we said earlier, you know, having good front squats, back squats, positions with the basic lifts first. All right, guys.

Let's take a quick break. Don't laugh at me. We're going to take a quick break, and when we come back, we're going to come up with the five reasons. Justin's going to sing a song. The five things that Justin Packer sees wrong with you when you weightlift. I just made that up. You're telling me what we're going to talk about.

And we're back. I'm Mike Blesser here with Doug Larson, our guest Justin Packer. Oh, weightlifting extraordinaire. Justin just put together the world's very first college course on weightlifting. But seriously, it's basically like a college course for weightlifting. I say the same thing twice for no reason. But this is not like a seminar that someone put together. You're going to be able to sit down

and digest in a single afternoon. You're going to download this video, or not video, but you're going to download this series of videos and e-book type stuff, PDFs and stuff, and you're going to have to,

it'll probably take you like months to get through all of it. And then you'll have to go over again. So this is only for the real geeks out there and the people who really want to get deep all of it. And then you'll have to go over again. So this is only for the like real geeks out there and the people who really want to like get deep into weightlifting. Okay. One of the reasons we did it and, and Justin wanted to do it is because there's nothing like this out there. There's a couple of really good books that are really great resources, but nothing where there's just extensive comprehensive video after video of, you know, if this, then that, and all that kind of stuff.

So he kind of, like, took, you know, everything from the history of weightlifting to, like, how to fix common errors and how to introduce weightlifting to new people. So it is comprehensive. Honestly, I think you have to listen to this product three to five times to really get, like, the full effect. If you listen to it once you're gonna be like damn like now i understand like like the expectation you're gonna have to listen to a second a third a fourth time this is more of like a reference you're gonna listen to it like once a year in order to like

really soak it all in yeah go through the whole thing and then you know as you're coaching or you're trying to learn how to do lifts better yourself you're gonna i see going back into it and just going okay well i know in section nine he was talking about this thing and you're trying to learn how to do lifts better yourself, I see going back into it and just going, okay, well, I know in section nine he was talking about this thing, and you're going to have to go back. We'll try to make it easy to navigate. You're not going to have to remember this and that. I say that. I don't know who's going to set up this navigation.

It'll be caught up in nice digestible chunks. Somebody that has got a much better attention to detail than I do. They'll need a search function for it, I think. Oh, man, that's a good idea. Write that down. Pat, write it down. You haven't taught me how to spell yet. What this is going to accomplish, too,

and both Justin and I have trained numerous actual CrossFit gym owners, and the hardest part about what I crossfit gym owners and the the hardest part about what i'm seeing is all a lot of the crossfit wads and i'm not going to pretend like i know anything about fucking crossfit i don't but from what i see from what i see uh is uh olympic lifts tend to challenge uh most of them because it's not the concept that you're tired doing the movement it's the fact that the movement itself one rep one five reps because it's not the concept that you're tired doing the movement. It's the fact that the movement itself, one rep, one, five reps, whatever, it's complex in itself. And if you're going to be a gym owner, you're going to teach these.

You need to know everything to establish credibility. And people can smell the shit right away if you have no idea what you're talking about with Olympic lifting. And there's not one thing that's not touched in this encyclopedia, if you will. I think it's interesting that you say that because I think that people, the fitness shopper is much more savvy now than they were five years ago. Like five years ago, they could walk in and they could be talking to someone who knows a lot about weightlifting, and they go down the street

to another CrossFit gym and talk to someone who doesn't. And like you say, they couldn't smell the shit really it all sounds the same problem is is there's too many gyms that have coaches and owners that do know what they're talking about now and if you're not one of them yeah now now the the the fitness shopper client whatever they're going to be much more aware and they yeah they are going to be able to smell the shit whereas you used to be able to get away with that you're not going to be able to get away with that in the future the coaches in crossfit are just getting much much better yeah the bar's being raised and the lifter's getting better that the people that are going to gyms to learn this uh the expectations

are higher and and you know the the competitive athletes are as good as national level weight lifters now so yeah the coaches really need more information, more skills, more resources. One weekend seminar on certifications isn't going to cut it. This I would think, you know, there's several sections on this. There's perspective on teaching and learning the lifts, how to program for this and keep it longer. But then there's all kinds of other information that, like you said, it's for the geeks who may not want to know that stuff. We go into the history uh to drugs uh detailed programming across the board so

it's maybe we just call it weightlifting google search in there and there you go maybe that's there it really is an especially good product for coaches like if you're a beginner athlete parts of it will be perfect for you but parts of it you'll be like man like you won't have enough perspective on weightlifting to really soak in all the details because you just you don't know why right why you're even saying those things because those people that are brand new don't know what they don't know, and they don't see the relevance in some of the finer details. So for the coaches, though, that train athletes every day,

and they see these common faults in their athletes, and they spend all day long fixing, tweaking, correcting, and improving athletes on a daily basis, they have perspective, and they can really understand why your details are as good as they are because if you don't know it all looks the same but once you have some perspective you see like when someone who has been doing this their whole life and has dedicated their life to it like you have that you can really see why this product and this advice really is a level beyond some other products that are out there today. Especially like YouTube videos, which range dramatically. Everyone's an expert now.

That's right. You can see the little relevance in some of the smaller pieces. I know when I was a young lifter, I got Arthur Dreschler's Weightlifting Encyclopedia, and it blew me away. I was like, this is the holy grail. It's got everything I ever wanted to know about weightlifting. I read that over and over, and it's been years since I picked it up. And I used it for some references in this. And I'm like, you know, this thing is amazing.

Every time you go through it, you pick something else up. And that's kind of how I feel about this. And, you know, this is just my perspective on it and all the things I've seen and accumulated through my career. That's a very intimidating book for a beginner. Absolutely. It's a full size, like as big as a sheet of paper, eight and a half by 11 or whatever. And it, but it's gotta be, you know, three inches thick, I don't know, 500 pages, maybe something like that really is the encyclopedia

of weightlifting. Yeah. Very tough to get through if you're a beginner, but for advanced guys, it's got everything you ever wanted in it. That book, you can't find it for under $60. So it's not like a book you're going to go pick up for $20. You go on Amazon and you find one used or something. It might be $59. And it's thick and tiny little letters and not a lot of pictures. It's total horseshit. It's a good book and I've never read

all of it, but it sits on my shelf. It's a book for reference. Yeah, no one reads an encyclopedia cover to cover. No normal people. I have. I do that sometimes. I'm so normal Justin Packer here.

So you're in St. Louis. You just affiliated. Yep. We CrossFit. It was like a week ago, yeah. Yeah, just last week. What's the name of the affiliate? Heavy Metal CrossFit.

Heavy Metal CrossFit. No way. That's awesome. I didn't know it yet. Justin Packer loves heavy metal. Rock on. Yeah, and you actually do get CrossFit coaches and just CrossFitters in your area. They may do their CrossFit wads and stuff like that at a box somewhere in St. Louis,

but they come to you specifically for the weightlifting. What do you most commonly see with CrossFit athletes? You know, what do you see and how do you fix them? Or do you just say, hey, unload the bar and we're going to go back to the basics? Like, how do you handle that? What I see first is, you know, I love CrossFitters because of what they're after and, you know, their ambition for getting after it. You know, that's when I see someone else coming in for just weightlifting sake it's all oh I want to perfect this motion with the barbell

and they never want to put any weight on the bar crossfitters are kind of the mere opposite of that uh but so that's what I see is they kind of they'll run themselves in the wall too quick and and what they're not really seeing uh that's a good and bad thing that's some of the best athletes you'll ever find but they their programming concept is so off it's like you do need to practice this on its own more than once a week once a week would be phenomenal if you at least did that but but you know i've worked with uh you know dan davidson went to the games last year is a master's level lifter and she uh you know it was funny she said i can't believe how much it helps to do the snatch on its own once a week i was like you gotta be kidding me like

i do this shit six days a week for an hour at a time and like i still need more work you know so it's like they don't realize specializing in that and treating it in its own art form and its own skill set needs to happen on you know an actual programming so respecting the lift there and that means light loads basic stuff getting simple positions down so you when you go test it it's more mastered and it's a reaction. I see a lot of programs out there, a lot of blog programs. It's like find your 2RM. It's like every time the weightlifting is programmed, it's like a max lift. There's none of this like, you know, find a moderate load, you know, 75%, 80%, and practice hitting that, you know, eight sets of two or something like that.

You don't see that very often. It's usually like, you know, go balls deep or not at all. Right. And they need to go somewhere in between. A lot of people want magic to happen too. I do. Yeah. I love magic.

Watch this magic. Comedy magic. Bam. But the – What? So, but a lot of the programming that Justin implies is it's hard work, and it gets results, bottom line. If you're there and you show up to each workout every day,

you're going to get the same results. But what a lot of CrossFitters come to us for and why they stay with us is that we do structure your program. We have reasons for absolutely everything, and you've got to hold yourself accountable at the end of the day. And that's 100% of the truth at uh the lab is if they're not hitting the numbers we just look back to what happened we everything's recorded on a daily basis and they're like you know shit i fucked up here i didn't i didn't show

up for two weeks when it was hard um and people are looking for just absolute gurus and magic to happen and there isn't it's you got to put the work in to actually get something out of it. And that's what I think most CrossFitters are lacking right now is they're willing to work harder than their wads, but when it comes down to organization and programming to the basic stuff and just getting stronger, there's nothing there. That's actually a really good point. I like how you said there's a reason for everything you do.

That's actually one of the things that I look for when i'm looking for a coach for myself or or if someone asks me you know is this person a good coach or a bad coach if you ask them about their program why is this in there or why is that in there they give you a very good well thought out reason for this is why i put it in there i thought about this put this in there but in your particular situation that's not a good idea and so i did this instead whereas guys that don't have a lot of experience and aren't very really very good coaches they're like uh well and they they kind of hesitate and they're like really not sure why it's in there they know it's a good idea you know you could say put put front squats you know five sets of triples or whatever and they know it's a good idea but they can't really give you this really well thought out rationale for why that specifically is in the program and why they chose that over all the other millions of options that are out there.

And so I like how you said that where you guys know exactly why you put every single minute piece into your programs. You have a rationale for it. Maybe touch on that, like how you guys put together your programs and why you choose the specific things you do, which is a broad question. No, no, it really is part of – Explain your program. Talk about the stuff you know. Well, it's basically why I went into all the background with all the – we looked at probably 12 different countries in the seminar there

and actual pages out of their manuals of why they're training or what they're doing in their training and to understand that philosophy. But that's been the nightmare of my whole career. I've spent probably a decade experimenting with those things and wasting a lot of time. It was good for me as a scientist of, say, weightlifting to really figure out cause and effect and what the hell was I missing, why did I still suck, you know. So that was really educational for me in order to understand, you know, okay, this Romanian program has got a million different things in it.

This Russian program has got all these options. Why are we doing this? And that drove me nuts. And to understand that was just a desperate thing that I needed personally to go to the next day of training and really fully commit to it. But at the end of the day, you learn. You know, why does this error occur? What drill is going to fix that?

What cue might do it? It could be a simple cue. And from there, why is the lifter making it? Is it because their start position sucks or because they're thinking about something else? Are they overcoached or they got too many ideas in their head uh so you see that over and over and over and over you see why people self-destruct you look at it on video uh what are the common problems and you can start to diagnose that and fix it up and that's why i like to use the abc approach that we talk about

i can see i can see immediately what's taking place and what's wrong when we slow things down it's like having a snapshot there and we can fix it immediately and fix's taking place and what's wrong. When we slow things down, it's like having a snapshot there, and we can fix it immediately and fix so many problems. And what I've found really is people start positions, and the way they come off the floor with the bar is the root of 80% or more of the problems. So when they're breaking the part, they're not completely locked into the place they should be. No matter whatever that position might be, they're just not doing it well enough. They're not staying tight.

They're getting loose. They're thinking about killing the bar in that final pull uh when they're in all kinds of awkward positions getting there so it destroys the whole lift from the get-go yeah so we did like a i think it was a four-part series on technique quad for your your weightlifting warm-ups which you call the abcs can you kind of walk us through kind of what's involved in the abcs and why why they're structured the way they are well so it so it starts with some position stretches that lead into the squatting quad sequence there. And the point of this is the common areas I see in Olympic lifting is people have the positions, range of motion, flexibility, first of all, to get in the appropriate start position,

receiving position, the rack positions, and that's the first step you've got to consider. If you can't get in position, do not do the lift. You're going to hurt yourself. So it starts with that, but it's basically an easy part of a warm-up I can get in position but I'm still stiff and tight every day I walk into the gym so it's I use it as a simple warm-up for another lifter might be an assessment diagnostic tool and that's what a coach can use to see is this person ready to lift or not so it starts there but then we go from the squatting quad position which is simply a position with the bar in mid-thigh and we're getting down to a low position that looks like

a start position and from there what we're doing uh the next major problem from not getting position is not getting the bar close to the center of gravity and utilizing the hips so they never find that what we call it the g-spot now after this weekend no one knows where it's at if you watch the seminar you know what the hell i'm talking about big mystery so if they hey hey i found it yeah i know where it's i know where it is. So getting there, they never find that power position from the hips. They never get the power that they're capable of. And they see people doing like, wow, they look so easy and amazing, just like these Chinese guys. And they're never finding that position.

So the squatting quad position, the bar in mid-thigh gets it there easily. And they know what it feels like to do the lift. That's how we teach the actual pull. So from there, they're doing it right every single time from the power position. And when at the same time, they're developing the flexibility at the ankles, knees, hips to pull low from the floor. And they're working on the right center of gravity coming from the midfoot or back more towards the heel. A lot of times people with poor flexibility will fall forward. They're going into the toes and ball of the foot and everything's falling forward.

Their positions further suffer because they're in such a bad position. So that's the second series. Then after that, we start working the bar from the floor in a pausing sequence, or the B series. And that's where we pause at the floor, knee, and hip, and really work on each position and every nook and cranny of the posture of the lifter that might break down. So we're reinforcing the perfect position every single time. And from there, as they start to master it,

we start peeling off some of those layers. And that might be the pauses at the hip and the knee. And then eventually, we start adding layers of speed and put the whole lift together at that point so it goes from positions and problems of range of motion to finding the hip to actually nailing the pieces of the s curve from the floor up and from there they as they could be as they start they go through all the abcs and learn all those positions and that's actually the workout on its own but from there we start to take out more pauses and they become an intermediate lifter and they have to do less and less of that front work and they can start to lift more weights okay so for the audience all the stuff he just said sounded like kind of the

same thing and like this is all just weightlifting stuff then you're probably still a beginner yeah and if it all made total sense and you and you recognize the very intelligent well thought out progression through the lifts and why he made each change as it went along, then you're probably advanced. So if you didn't know, now you know. This should all make perfect sense. Real quick, so when I came to the lab the first time and I was introduced to the ABCs, it was very, very different than the way I was introduced to weightlifting, and it's very, very different than most people are introduced to weightlifting.

Did you pretty much come up with ABCs, or did you adopt some ideas from other people? Like, how did that come to be? That's a great question. Now, I, first of all, I should say, was taught. Because I've been teaching. I introduced it to our weightlifters and they were like, what the fuck is this? And then they started using it and they were like, oh, man, this shit works. Like, it really tightened them up, and now I introduce other people,

and I'm like, I kind of want to give credit where credit's due. It's a Thacker method. Yeah, our six-month muscle gain program right now is doing the ABCs. That's awesome. Some category of them or some amount of them every single day, and it's wearing them out, but it's definitely making them better. You see the difference in their positions. Oh, man, it's instantaneous. It's simple. And it's it's wearing them out but it's definitely making them better you see the difference for the guys that are really doing it man it's it's simple yeah yeah and it's very specific too so it's like they don't feel like okay i gotta work from the hanging the rest of

my life and do these remedial parts with a pipe you know they can actually do most of the lift right away and they at least see it coming together and they realize immediately where their problem is yeah okay i keep fucking up that start position i'm not staying locked in tight and that's why we have that drill still there for them. But really, you know, I learned in various methods, but, you know, ultimately the top-down approach kind of plagued me as well. Like, you know, the common method of working from the top down, the problems I see there is it's nice, it'll work.

We might use it as auxiliary stuff, but we need to build the lift from the floor up. Our goal is to lift the full lift from the floor. And the ABC approach approach does you know it came out of desperation i had a couple lifters that are one particular that just couldn't get it down couldn't remember terminology couldn't remember the difference from a power or a full snatch and all this and so eventually i'm like we're gonna break this down to the most simple level you're gonna pause here you're gonna pause here and you'll pause here and we're gonna start building the lift this way and like almost uh connect the dots kind of a format i was like

holy shit this is brilliant and i did that and was like, I'm teaching everyone this way from now on. I'm so smart. It was by accident. So from there, it just started like, let's see how it goes when we do our on-ramp with this. And I was like, that was the fastest and easiest I've ever seen it come together. And now I can take these pauses out because they've earned it. Where did you get the idea for the quad? Squat and quad.

That's actually something I've seen. Squat and quad? Yeah, squat and quad. I've seen squat and quad, but I've never seen squat and quad into muscle lift squatting quad into yeah the snatch oh yeah the squatting quad yeah that was new to me general position great this is just basically you know stretch i've seen millions of lifters do but uh squat holding you squat down and you put the bar on your legs right on your quads bars right across my quads and you're just hanging out down there and then you go into the position you're not just hanging out i mean you're you're trying to get your back tight like you're gonna

snatch you're not gonna like that's how all weightlifters hang out yeah it's just fine so putting the lift together from there i really can't say where that ever uh came to mind you know i started doing it as a lifter that particular piece several years ago and so that was already there and that was part of my warm-up so I'd go from there Michael okay I'm gonna start putting my snatch together and it just happened to feel good I you know I noticed I really got the bar into the hip better and I just always did it that way and I'm like well I guess you know this position sucks when you're not flexible enough to do that get down there it is absolutely horrendous and that's why

lifters do it to prepare that bottom uh but from there i started feeling you know like if i have so and so do it what happens and uh eventually that evolved to where we actually teach the pull from that position because it's it gets away from having to you're not doing the top down approach where you're building momentum they have to learn to lift from the bottom up and so from there uh we started putting the piece together that pull together it still feels like you're jumping because the way you're standing as you stand on the floor you're like pulling from the bottom but you're not having to worry about the first pull right so it's like setting you up perfectly for you like bypass the double knee bend it puts your knee and your hip angle at the the spot it needs to be in without having to worry about all this shit from right

you can't ever end up in a position where your hips are too high and you're too bent over. You're too toe heavy. Like you end up very upright in a good spot. So when you pull from the floor and fuck it up, you're like, okay, that doesn't feel anything like what I was doing from the quad. Right. Do you get arm bending issues with that with people? If they're gripped soft.

Like they're starting with a bent arm in the snatch position or the clean position? Yeah, so if they're really, if it's overwhelming from the first, they're still like this position is uncomfortable and they don't think about the little pieces there. But when they stand up, yeah, the arms should start bent and go to a straight position like loose ropes, get the hips, and then re-bend again. But that's a common problem but usually pretty fixable.

I see it more in the clean. Let's do a quick demo about what that looks like. Just scoot back. So the bar is across your... He's not in weightlifting shoes. The bar across your your lower thigh right above your knee elite level weightlifter here yeah so the bar's on your knee or your lower thigh and then you're going to stand you're skipping the first pull skipping the transition your arm straightens until there you go the tiki torch tiki torch lifting. This is the best day of my life.

He's in the bottom of the squatting quad. He stands, arms get straight, bar hits contact high, thigh, and then he jumps, pulls, elbows high. What Doug was talking about was you'd come through as you come through here and keep the arms bent. So the arms would have to go straight, hit the hips, then

re-bend. Right. Keeping the arms bent would be a problem. I'm asking, is that a problem for new people? Do they get to a straight arm commonly, automatically, or do they stay in that bent position? In the clean, I see that sometimes. They've got to be cute on that. But in the snatch, usually if their grip is right, it actually gets worked out fine.

And they've just got to slow down the first part of it. If they're thinking about ripping from the early phase of that lift and they're ripping immediately, that's a problem with tempo anyway. So if we just slow them down, then they take that out. So just stand up a little slower, then feel your hip and snap under the bar. So if you're a person at home who's trying this for the first time, you're there with a bent arm. When you stand, you probably want to stand smooth until you get to a straight arm.

Don't go full speed and then go right don't rip your arms out straight elbow and tear your bicep get your chin out of the way you'll you'll lose teeth i don't want any liability with this i've had people do that but the bar stays so much tighter than you're used to you're used to lifting around your knees and your body there and it keeps the way out this is what it feels like when you do a correct lift from the hips actually that brings us to a great topic you ever you ever done anything like that you hit yourself in the chin drop the bar on your head anything like that i got a great video of me on youtube me dropping 287 on my head ouch ouch yeah in a car at the arnold no at the arnold

yeah 2007 i don't know that i've definitely hit my head in training in competition the best thing that's happened is recovering from a clean i farted in front of the whole crowd there and just farted from the whole recovery and it was just like uh rockets out of my but but you know in competition i can't say I've done that. I've definitely seen it happen over and over. But that's, you know, if you look down and that bar's coming right there, it smacks right in the teeth. Dan White's done that twice.

Don't sue us. Hi, Dan. I snatched one time and hit myself in the nose. Dan's a cool dude. Going back to what you're talking about about the arm, Ben, coming from a guy who's terrible at everything. Including in the bedroom. I'm terrible at everything,

but I'm better than most CrossFitters I've seen at these lifts. I'm kind of on your level, but at the same time. Coming out of this position, it's like taking a hang clean. If anybody's in a hang clean or a hand snatch, you can feel the middle pull to the hip a lot better, and it typically fixes it. Now what the squatting quad's going to do is give you that same feeling but kind of out of a bottom position. And because of where the bar sits, there's really no way to screw it up.

You can feel immediately if your hips are kicking up, if your arms are bending, if you're not finishing your pull something drastic is going to feel different and uh when i was first introduced to the squatting quad when i started working at the lab it uh answered a lot of questions that i had about my technique and why am i so terrible now i'm better but i'm still terrible so steroids i think maybe i'm not really sure. He's on steroids now. Steroids are why he's terrible. It's working on everything but my calves.

You got to inject it in the calves, you dummy. Sharks. It's a great reference point for even advanced runners that are maybe having an off day. Because when you go back to the squatting quad, it's going to loosen up anything that you feel is tight, but it's going to answer questions as to, you know, why am I missing easy weight in front? Why am I on my toes today? You know, I usually hit numbers every single day. I'm not hitting these numbers today, but it's a great tool as a reference point

and combined mobility at the same time. So I'm better than everybody in this. So on that timing and speed, though, so not only we talked a lot about finding the hip and getting the right vertical trajectory of the bar but the thing I think I really liked the most out of it was how well it got me to pull under the bar so the bar was tight to my midline center of gravity close to my body here and I was able to feel myself pull down under the bar better it wasn't a jump and desperate uh catch kind of situation it was it really got me pulling under fast the bar better. It wasn't a jump and desperate catch kind of situation. It really got me pulling under fast, kind of like you see the Chinese do.

And that's what I really like, feeling that out. I'm like, I'm going to warm up with this, do as many sets of the squat and quad snatches as I need to until I feel like I'm pulling under with lightning speed. My mobility problems are worked out for the day. I'm feeling speed on the barbell, and it's a night-tight transition from the top of the pull to under to the bottom position Of the lift. Mm-hmm. I want to tell you something that you're probably gonna shock you but first I want to say something else teaser

It's not shocking if you're wondering why we're drinking Budweiser on the show it's because we're now sponsored by Budweiser because uh These guys came down from st. Louis and they think that we don't get Budweiser. It's because these guys came down from St. Louis, and they think that we don't get Budweiser down here. So they brought down, like, two cases of Budweiser. They're like, here you go. So we're just being nice. Hey, those are both St. Louis, Missouri. You're welcome.

If you've heard the commercial. It is actually extra tasty coming from St. Louis. It is. That's a complete and total lie. We got it at Kroger last night. But I got to go back to my shocking thing. Oh, yeah. That's right.

Geez. Man, I was waiting for it. I was so excited. All right, go ahead. So if you go online and you watch. Pat, you got anything to say? If you go online and watch, especially some guys at a muscle driver, what used to be like, and some of the guys that are at Cal Strength, they got that arm bend on that clean.

They row the bar into their hips and toss it up. And I had seen those videos, and I really didn't think about trying it out for myself. I was like, you know, whatever. And then it was funny because when I came and learned the ABCs and I started implementing the ABCs on myself during my warm-up for the clean. I felt a little weird on the clean. On snatch, it feels great, and the clean felt kind of funny.

So I started doing like rowing the bar into my hips, and this was before we sat down with John North. And so I started playing around with doing that during my actual clean, and I could do it with lighter weights, and I progressed it with heavier weights. Now I've turned it into a hip cleaner. So, like, I actually row it in. But what kind of got me even considering doing it was the ABCs, which I know is not your intention at all because you're saying, you know,

let your arms go completely long. But what I do now when I warm up with ABCs is actually I don't let my arms go long. I just keep my arms where they're at, and I just use my shoulders, and I keep my biceps nice and tight, these ginormous biceps, nice and tight. Remind you of anything? I pull it in. Having sex with the barbell? Yeah, that's right.

Oh, yeah. Bang that barbell. Give it a baby. So I pull that barbell in, and what I do, I kind of think of like pulling in the crease of my hip and then popping it up, giving it a baby that's right so pull that barbell in and what i do i kind of think of like pulling in the crease of my hip and then you know popping it up giving a little hump and driving it up and i i feel like my second or third pull transition is just so much tighter because of that and i think that any any disadvantage i might get from pulling the bar like that i'm getting much bigger advantage with the turnover.

Right. And I just feel like I hit the bottom. And it's kind of going back to what you're saying is, you know, your turnover, that third pull is smoother. Right. From training it that way. Yeah. But for me personally, that's what I got out of it.

Right. And, you know, there's not like right and wrong answers because some people are going to do better with that arm pull and other people may not. Yeah. It is a little awkward because you're not allowed to generate the same amount of i know that was shocking right yeah you're not able to generate the same uh vertical momentum there so uh you're forced in this weird position where you got to pull yourself down yeah and uh normally in the normal clean you'd have all this extra build up to cheat that a little bit so it's tightening that up yeah no matter how you get it there and it lets you realize you've got to stay tight and tall and that might be why you feel like the need to bend the that a little bit so it's tightening that up yeah no matter how you get it there and if it lets you realize you've got to stay tight and tall and that might be why you feel

like the need to bend the arms a little bit so I would say you know as long as typically my cue would be the shoulders back back tight none of that stuff can be loose and then we'll see where the slack is and that could be a matter of adjusting your grip a little bit wider or something like that too yeah you know so having very long arms my grip is super wide I put my middle finger on the hash holy cow which is which is wide as shit like wider than anyone i've pretty much ever met yeah and uh i didn't special i've been doing weight lifting for 14 years now and i didn't start even attempting the hip clean until about two months ago so i wouldn't say i'm necessarily like really proficient at it but but you know i catch on quick if you've been doing it for quite some time. So for me, having long arms, it puts me much higher on my hips.

It feels like it's sliding up the thigh, hitting almost like a snatch would. And it's giving me really good leverage for my second pull. But I feel like since I'm bent, I don't have, like, everything locked out straight, shoulders down. You know, like when I do it with straight arms, I almost get like a plyometric effect. My shoulders go down and then it all just whips up and i get slung under the bar faster yeah yeah probably more upright clean yeah yeah yeah and with the hip clean i don't get like slingshotted under the bar like i do when everything's all straight and tight yeah you know elbow straight shoulders down so i'm still kind of playing with the hip clean i'm not sure

if i really like it or not yet yeah i think it's gonna vary from person to person and i know for me once i started doing it my my clean went up eight kilos in like a month wow like when when i was finally able to have the strength to pull it into my hips at my you know close to my one rep max it just my clean just shot straight up my power clean hasn't gone up at all and but my cool my full clean hat so that's telling me you know where you're missing right yeah so like it is this is a beneficial thing for me but it may not you know for most people i think that trying something like you know rowing the bar in your hips and doing that hip clean is something you need to play with after you you know learn how to get like triple extension and

normal stuff first yeah you hit the normal stuff and then start screwing around with that stuff that's advanced i mean you know if you were to try to teach me that when i was first lifting it would have been like a whole nother thing for me to screw up yeah it would probably screw up a lot of our lifters make it simple as possible too because a lot of crossfitters that we train right at the bed have the ability to get the high hip contact with the snatch and the cleans everything's's mid-thigh, it's slow. They don't understand that the movement is exactly the same. I like to freeze frame any great lifter right at the top of their pull

right before they finish, and the snatch and the clean and jerk, the only difference that you see is the grip. That's it. You've got a clean grip or a snatch grip. So really the goal is the fact that the weight is so much heavier in the clean, to have that same exact finish is a harder concept to grasp because it is slower. It's a slower movement to the hip. It's tighter.

The arms are longer. But if you can really get the full extension back and actually finish the pull in a clean like you would a snatch, it requires a lot less thinking. The bar is moving faster. So the goal with teaching these lifts is to have the exact same positions in both lifts. Don't teach the clean and jerk different than the snatch other than the grip.

It is a harder fact to accomplish, but in the long run, it's going to give you a lot more consistency and a lot higher lift. And, you know, once again, I'm just better than everybody in here. I just want to point that out. Actually uh there was a cool thing that you said uh i told mike that i want to make either faction weightlifting or barbara shrug weightlifting shirts that that they say you know faction weightlifting and then on the back all it says is eyes nipples and belly buttons you know i think i think i'll be walking through a grocery store and people like what the fuck does that mean eyes nipples and belly buttons so maybe explain what that means so so basically there's a –

There are things that turn Thacker on. That's right. Yeah, those are my fetishes, eyes, nipples, and belly buttons. Pat's mom. Not appropriate. Well, basically that would be the vertical trajectory you need to make the bar come to to make an appropriate lift. So if it was a clean, you'd be looking at the belly button. For the snatch, it would be nipples. For the jerk, it would be about eye level. So we're looking at an appropriate lift. So if it was a clean, you'd be looking at the belly button. For the snatch, it'd be nipples.

For the jerk, it'd be about eye level. So we're looking at the full lift. And what would be a rough estimate of how high you need to pull the bar in order to make the lift? Yeah, most people think that's pretty low. Like to only pull a clean to your belly button wouldn't be high enough to make a successful lift and be able to get under it in time to catch it and stand up. Right.

You know, especially things like snatches. Like this isn't very high to pull a bar to be able to get into a full overhead squat by the time it drops and you miss it. And then eye level for the jerks is what we're going after, which, again, for most people, they think jerk, they think they're throwing it way up here, not just to eye level. You've got to have a big wide split, and you've got to get low, and you've got to be fast in order to only throw it this high

and be able to get under it. Most people are doing a glorified push press. It's like a push press and a step out. Yeah. Terrible. Anyways, I want to go back to – Or just a step back, which is even worse. You're calling it the ABCs,

but I think we should coin it right now as the Thacker Method. I like that. Because what I want to do, like, you know, when I teach people and I go, oh, this is the ABCs. To you it's the ABCs because it's in your gym and it's your athletes and all that kind of stuff. When I introduce it to other people, I say these are the ABCs. To you it's the ABCs because it's in your gym and it's your athletes and all that kind of stuff. When I introduce it to other people, I say these are the ABCs. I don't want to claim them, so I'll just say it's the Thacker Method.

I stole from Pat. Pat the expert. The Pat Method. You got to go home now. We basically drove him into the ground this weekend. Justin did. Pat was the demo guy for all weekend. He did 10 hours in a row on Saturday.

So I was filming this thing, and the whole time I'm filming, Pat's demoing, and Justin's happy as can be, and Pat's just chilling there. You could just read on his face, like he was done. The minute he walked in. I was thinking of all the ways I'm going to kill us both on the way home. Well, what's great, too, is Justin, after a while, just started making fun of him during the demo.

That's hilarious. Most of these videos that you see, and this is why I love this too, most of these videos that you see about Olympic weightlifters and demonstrations, the demonstrators are all going to be world class, been doing this their whole life. They look great. I look like shit. You can relate to this one. I put up numbers that will be impressive to most CrossFitters, but at the end of the day, I can't do a bodyweight squat

without some type of malfunction going on. I'm tired, I'm tight, I suck at everything. Yeah, fuck you. Malfunction, malfunction. Yeah, just spelled with a Z and the number seven. But so I'm spending basically two hours with a barbell in my hand, and if anybody out there who's tight and does any type of stretch immediately hurts. So actually, on that note, when I watch both of you guys do bodyweight movements,

you both look a little stiff, but your weightlifting in both cases looks really, really good. How much does that little bit of stiffness actually help your lifts as opposed to hurt your lifts? Well, you could say it's tendon strength and things of that nature. It's going to be a little bit faster and it's stronger if it is a little stiff. But that's not to say, hey, don't respect your mobility. But not being inflexible necessarily, just a little stiff. Well, you're flexible enough to get in position. Right.

That's right. That might be just it. Part of it is my acupuncture. If I keep saying you need to get more flexible, it's like, no,, that might be just it. Part of it is- So my acupuncturist keeps saying, you need to get more flexible. I was like, no, it makes me better at squatting. Yeah, that's part of it is, if I did take three days off, a week off from training, I'd probably be pretty loose.

But part of that's just residual stiffness from training as well. And just hammering it out every single day. And so that's a nice part of that movement is I keep hitting it. And actually, I feel horrible the first time I do it, just like everyone else. But as I keep hitting those sets and that progression, I feel good to go and amazing. On days I walk in feeling like dog shit. You feel like that stiffness helps you rebound out of the bottom

and things of that nature? Perhaps. I'm not relying on it. Similar to a squat suit? Yeah, yeah. You could say that. Really? Those tendons are loaded up so many years over heavy loads that

that's an adaptation that I'm sure helps. Beer number two, I can't control myself. I know, right? Graphs. Who's pissing next? Yeah, yeah. I'm going to do it, but I'm not going to leave right here. I'm just going to stay here and do it.

Camera up. Camera up. I feel like that's the end of the show. just ran out of shit to talk about that's right the pitching contest to finish it off right in the pool no we already did that that's why it's that color it's not yellow that's good okay I'll start it off since Mike's not gonna do it one beer and Mike's out so obviously the majority of the conversation today has been about your product, which will be coming out here hopefully in the next two months or so. We've got a lot of stuff on our plate.

We've got some live seminars coming up. We have some regionals events to go to this next weekend. We're going to be at the Southeast Regionals, which by the time this show comes out. Actually, this show coming out, this show will be out a few days before, right? No. Wait. That's right. This show will be out two days before regional starts.

That's right. Yeah, we got it. Okay, okay. Make sure all the weekends are correct. So we'll be at regionals in the southeast this coming weekend. Then we'll also be at the central east coming up here towards the end of regional schedule. What weekend is that? June 7th.

June 7th up in Columbus, Ohio. So we'll be out there. If you see us walking around either regional's event, definitely come up and say hi. We're more than happy to talk to anyone that listens to the show. We're always happy to meet people that appreciate what we do. We also have a couple of live seminars coming up. We'll be down in Florida at the end of the summer.

We'll be at CrossFit Bound, which is Brandon Phillips' gym, coming up here in July. I want to say July 6th Bound, which is Brandon Phillips' gym, coming up here. July 6th and 7th. It'll be Brandon Phillips' gym, CrossFit Bound. It's in Kennesaw. That's right near Atlanta. So if you're in the Atlanta area, check that out. You can go to thebarbellshrug.com and click on Shop Seminars, and you'll see the CrossFit Bound live seminar. You can click on that.

There's an early bird price, so take advantage of the early bird price. If you wait too long, I don't have the dates memorized, it'll go up like $40 or something like that. Do that. Me, Chris, Doug, we're all going to do presentations on our expertise. I'll probably be teaching a little bit of the Thacker method there. Thack Attack Complex. Thack Attack. Oh, no. expertise uh i'll probably be teaching a little bit of the thacker method there uh thack attack complex yeah so uh chris moore's gonna do some uh program design and uh uh like training philosophy and

mentality type stuff uh doug's gonna be doing nutrition mobility uh it's gonna be an all-around great seminar we're gonna have a lot of fun uh so we got that one beginning july in the beginning like august 10 and 11 i think we have cross crossfit siege uh down in miramar florida so if you're in south florida uh check that out and uh we've also been we've also been talking to progenics lately we we start to deal with those guys where if you use the code name shrug just the five word or five letter word shrug not shrugged like the name of the show but s-h-r-u-g then you get 10 off all progenics supplements and and we get a little cut of that as well so you'll save some money you'll help out progenics who's uh you know probably the number one provider of supplements in the crossfit world and then you'll also support the show and we really

appreciate that so from now on we'll be working with proix. And if you're going to buy Progenix anyway, you might as well get 10% off and support the show. So we really appreciate that. What else you got? I already helped you out on yours, and you expect me to do mine? Jingle, jingle. Pets. I'll let Justin go ahead and do your plus. No, I got one real quick.

We put out a lot of content every week, and it's hard to keep up with. So if you're not on our email newsletter, go to barbellshrug.com. Sign up for our email newsletter. We got Technique WOD every week. We post a podcast every week. And then we have our show, The Daily BS, which is fan-answered questions every week. So that's a lot of videos to keep up with. And if you're on our email newsletter,'re going to get it's going to be easier

to keep track of we're putting out like 10 videos a week and so like and there are different parts of the website we're trying to fix that because we suck at websites

we're fitness guys not computer guys but we're good at newsletter emails so sign up for that we just sent out the once a week review

of all the videos that we put out that week all it is is it says hey here's all videos that we put out that week all it is is it says hey here's all the videos we put out this week and has the title of all nine or ten videos that we put out that week just read all the titles click on the ones you want to watch it makes it super easy that way you don't have to check our website every single day necessarily you can just get that weekly review email and it just makes things easier you got anything to plug justin we're

doing a seminar at the lab Gym July 14th on Sunday and we'll be going over ABC's and beyond and kind of working all the technical stuff and working on everything from individuals to coaching and things like that

we're also doing some USAW seminars as well so if you're looking to get USAW certified maybe you want to host one at your gym that's something we can help you out as well

so you can get in contact with me for that do you do level 2's or just level 1's? level 1's right now ok how do they get in contact with you? that. Do you do level twos or just level ones? Level ones right now. Okay. How do they get in contact with you? TheLabGym at gmail.com is my email.

It's T-H-E-L-A-B-G-Y-M at gmail.com. The three easiest words in the English language to spell. Or you can email Pat. T-H-E-J-I-M. Oh, damn. Email Pat at pyrofuckyou.gmail. Then other than that, we do any kind of seminars for Olympic-style weightlifting, whether at your gym or for your staff or things of that nature.

Okay, so if someone wants to have a seminar with you at their place, they can schedule that just by, again, emailing you. Yep, absolutely. And go to our website, too, and just kind of contact us through the inquiry on there. That's labgym.com? Labgym.com. And is that for any level or any experience level? So yeah, it's set up to really

that's the beauty of the ABCs too and our method with that is it can be any level. It can be for CrossFit, it can be for sports performance. We just presented for the NSCA last weekend and it was basically tailored for sports performance so it really is whatever that that organization's for so if it's a CrossFit gym they want to instruct their trainers on how to better teach that's something we can offer if it's their

members who want to get better for WODs we can structure to that as well okay so athletes and coaches of all levels if you want to get better at weightlifting email Justin there you go all right thanks guys all right guys thanks Justin thank you