Barbell Shrugged - 69- Strength and MetCon Program Design with 3-Time CrossFit Regionals Athlete and Box Owner Mike McElroy

Episode Date: July 3, 2013

On this episode of Barbell Shrugged we are joined by the owner of CrossFit 27:17 Mike McElroy.  

This week on Barbell Shrug, we interview Michael McElroy and talk about program design for CrossFit athletes. Yo, this is CTP and you're listening to the Barbell Shrug Podcast, the number one strength and conditioning podcast for CrossFitter. If you want to check out the video version, which you should, go to Fitter.TV and watch that because it's way cooler than just listening. And how do you spell Fitter.TV there, Mr. Bledsoe? F-I-T-R.TV. He's a good speller. All right, while you're there, definitely go and sign up for the newsletter.

As part of signing up for the newsletter, you'll get a video that Mike made where he shows you the top seven snatch mistakes that you're probably making that are keeping you from hitting that next PR and lifting some big weight. Look at the seminars, tune into the show, and get ready to become a more awesomer version of you. We give you the tools you need to succeed. You become a tool. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged.

I'm Mike Bledsoe here with Chris Moore and Doug Larson. You remember our names. Our guest, Michael McElroy. Did you get that right? That's quite the name now that I say it. I like it. It sounds like you should have been a professional golfer for sure. Oh, yeah.

He's my cousin. Michael McElroy, up on the tee. Roy McElroy. Roy McElroy? Is that true? No. Oh. Oh, dang.

You just shrewd me. You had me there. Michael is the... He does golf. I figured he knew. Michael's the owner and coach at... One of the coaches at CrossFit 2717 down in Jackson, Mississippi. And we're going to be talking a little bit about programming, program design.

I guess that'd be the same thing. Program design and coaching. All that good stuff. Anything that occurs to us, really. It could be anything. Real quick, make sure to go to barbellshrug.com sign up for the newsletter so you can get notified of all the stuff we're doing.

We've got training camps and we have some new video seminars coming out Which are pretty cool The what? The bar Oh, sorry Let me tell the audience what's going on

Take it away I thought he said the Barbell Shrug Funeral Is that what he said? Yeah, because He says I think he's saying that I sound down Well, you are down Because you made the mistake of drinking alcohol last night, and you fell asleep in your car, and you slept there.

So I'm thinking of things that encourage. Don't tell people that. I'm thinking of things that encourage. That was the safest decision at the time. It was. Just sleep in the car. And I'm thinking of things that encourage recovery and positive attitudes and, like, mindfulness,

and none of that fits with sleeping in a car in a bar parking lot. But you did make a good decision. Well, I was tired. Yeah, and your seat was suitable for sleeping. But yeah, you pick it up now, homie. We're officially ignoring our guest. No way. What is new?

Mike, tell us a little bit about yourself, dude. We said that you're the owner and coach at CrossFit 2717, uh give us a little bit of your background and kind of how you got into crossfit yeah so uh like i said dr said earlier i grew up as a golfer so i didn't really have much uh weight training background or anything i got into crossfit about eight years ago um when i was in college somebody showed me the website did angie for the first time you know same old same old which one old. Which one's Angie? 100 pull-ups, 100 push-ups, 100 sit-ups, 100 squats. Pretty vicious.

Squats are the worst part. Eight years of CrossFit? That's a long time to be doing CrossFit. Most people did not find out about CrossFit eight years ago. Yeah, so I started doing it, opened the Sanderson Center at Mississippi State, and I actually came to CrossFit Memphis probably five years ago. How long have I been opening?

Have I been opening that long? Five and a half. Five and a half, yeah. So it was right after y'all been opening. Man, you're right there at the genesis. Yeah, came in there pretty early and just started doing it from there. Did it all the way through college with everybody staring at me.

Started the gym about four and a half years ago. Who's this wacko doing these things? Started the gym about four and a half years ago and out of my parents' garage, been doing it there ever since. You ever kicked out of a Glovo gym About four and a half years ago. Who's this wacko doing these things? Started the gym about four and a half years ago. And out of my parents' garage, been doing it there ever since. You ever kicked out of a Globo gym for working too hard or grunting or doing crazy functional fitness stuff? I got swinging a kettlebell. Get him out of here.

Graham Holberg went down, by the way, behind you. Oh, no. Rich even beat him at this game of hanging on the wall. Hanging on the wall. Sorry, Graham, but it's the truth. I went to Planet Fitness one time and asked if I could do a snatch complex workout. And he looked at me very confused and said, I'm not sure what that is, but there's no deadlifting, no grunting, and no dropping dumbbells. It requires all that.

So I walked out. That's the place where you can't be a numbskull or a meathead, right? They blow a whistle on you. You get the lunk alarm. The lunk alarm. Which one? Planet Fitness. You get free pizzas on Monday.

Free pizza Monday. Stay out in the lobby. What? Why? It's a gym. How much is the membership there? Do we know yet? $10 a month.

Yeah, it's cheap. It's like $9 or $10. We should go join just for the pizzas on Monday. Well, yeah, because a pizza cost you $10. A pizza will cost you $10. I know. That's what I'm saying.

You get four of them in one month. There's just one problem with this. You are a lunk and you're not really loud on the site. But I'm just going to show up.

I'm just going to show up to eat the pizza. Then maybe swim in their pool and go home. Do they have pools? Hey, that's not bad. I don't think they have pools. I don't think they have pools. Yeah, so you tell this poor son of a bitch, look, I'm just going to show up to eat the pizza. Then maybe swim in their pool and go home. Do they have pools? Hey, that's not bad. I don't think they have pools. I don't think they have pools.

Yeah, so you tell this poor son of a bitch, look, I'm going to do a snatch complex. And he goes, hmm, you might as well be speaking in, like, Sanskrit because I don't know what you're talking about. Just don't grunt, bro. Do you tell him, no, I won't, I promise? I just walked out. Oh. That's the only sensible thing to do in that situation. I think we should go get kicked out of Planet Fitness on purpose.

C2P, will you wear a hidden camera? As long as he's there to record it. Oh, yeah. Then it's worth it. We'll go. Where's the nearest one? Do you know? There's one in Jacksonville.

There's one at Hickory Hill, I think. Hickory. South Winchester. Let's go. C2P, mark that down on our calendar. Barbell shrug field trip. We're going to Planet Fitness. Okay.

All right. So continue. Go ahead and tell us a little bit more about your background, kind of how you got into crossfit originally yeah so like i said i just uh somebody showed me the website i was i was um going to work at a camp for a summer and all i had access to was a barbell at the time and i just did the typical bench press um monday wednesday friday legs when i ran which was never and um yeah that's pretty much that part sounds good to me and you'd have like you have a big sporting background growing up you

played golf and then you got off and I was like golf yeah I did work out so office sport or a game it's a sport okay and he told you that pretty matter of fact yeah no I did work out in high school I was playing golf but we did I never did any working out with the school or anything like that. I just, like I said, did bench press, which is not what you need to do for golf. I'm just curious, because usually if you have a sporting background, you're used to some of the pain, like you played football, you ran gassers for basketball practice,

and you're getting across it because you discover this thing that reminds you of what you used to do. So you discover this brand new thing, which was this pain that golf is hard and golf requires all kinds of skill. That's obvious, but you don't feel that. You don't never suffer on the links. Probably need patience, though. That's probably something that has a good crossover

that most crossfitters don't have patience, but I know golf requires a ton of it. Yeah, a ton of patience, which I didn't learn until later on. You're just swinging at balls, huh? That's how life always, by the way, dude, There's a ton of it. Yeah, a ton of patience, which I didn't learn until later on. You're just swinging at balls, huh? That's how life always – by the way, dude, that's how life always happens. You had this great experience, and these obvious lessons never occurred to you until you're done and you can't be good at the thing anymore,

and then it's just left on you to teach other people your lessons so when they hit the prime, they don't have to try to discover it again. I know it kind of sucks that you can never take advantage of your own wisdom, but now as a coach you can at least share it with other dudes. I think there's something to be said for when I came into the sport or when I came into CrossFit, which is not a sport when I came into it. I definitely have a hard time relating to some of the clients that I have now as far as being overweight or whatnot. But I came into CrossFit with a 290 bench press

and a 225 squat and deadlift. Nice. Wow. Pounds. There have been some improvements. Yeah. So I have it written down on my log. My first overhead squat was 95-pound one-rep max overhead squat.

Is that a strength thing or is that a shoulder mobility thing from years of only bench pressing? All of those things, probably. You know what's funny? On another podcast, it was Rogan's podcast, he was giving a spiel for kettlebells. I know tons of dudes who go in the gym and they're squatting like 225 pounds

and they think that's strong. I go, Joe, that's not strong. This is why you need us on your show, man. Then you to lift it then you try to swing 100 pound kettlebell now you know what strength is like nobody who squats 500 pounds thinks your kettlebells are hard that's the problem joe 200 like i said 225 pounds like when you're in high school like man look you squat in two plates bro and now you realize yeah every crossfit girl in our gym could probably do that. That's entry-level stuff, homie. I think a lot of people that get into it and come to my gym that want to compete don't realize they see what I do now.

Just to give a little background on that as far as competing and stuff, I've competed at the last three regionals up to this year. I didn't make it this year, but made it to the three before that. They just come in and see that they may think that i'm just a natural athlete and been doing strength stuff this whole time but um don't realize that i came from that kind of background i have two of my other stats that i like to point out or um first time i did diane i scaled the deadlift not the handstand push-up scaled the deadlift to 185 and did it in like 20 minutes. And then at regionals, last year,

when they had Diane for that first workout, it was 230. And that's eight years later. That's not natural talent. Yeah, it's all hard work is what you're saying. And smart programming, getting on good programs that kind of pointed me in the right direction. That's kind of like McGoldrick. He went from like 13 minutes on Fran, slowly down to sub two. Yeah.

Yeah, my first Fran was like five years. 18 minutes? Yeah. Dang. I've done it under 20. I remember doing Diane, and it was one of those things where, for me, it was like the handstand push-ups were crushing me. And I remember it being like 40 minutes or something like that. Yeah, the handstand push-ups were no me. And I remember it being like 40 minutes or something like that.

Yeah, the handstand push-ups were no problem. That's how bad of an athlete I am. I have a hard time really on any of the CrossFit movements where gravity is involved. Anything where I've got to go against gravity is kind of tough. So you did CrossFit.com for how long? I did CrossFit.com for probably six months. I didn't stay on it very long. didn't really i wasn't ever too crazy about it um i actually did ross training for a while i don't

know if y'all have heard of ross training you may have heard of the fighting yeah yeah i've got he's got two books out um one of them's all body weight one of them incorporates some stuff and it's very similar to crossfit um has a more of a set program though so like on mondays we did um i can't remember it now it's been five years but mondays we did some strength work tuesdays we did work capacity wednesdays we did interval running and it kind of repeated that kind of cycle so i did that every time i've ever looked at his stuff i've always been impressed yeah it's good stuff he's but what would we say that was conjugate it's we're all i mean we're all we're living conjugate lives ladies when you hear it you're gonna you're gonna listen to louis before this show but when you hear that word just understand that all all

you when you hear big words it's all talking about this in simple strength when you hear a big word like conjugate first thing is like russian science and your common sense kicks and you realize i want to be good at things so i'm gonna try to do them all at the same time that's what that word means you're gonna you want to be fit and you want to be kind of strong too but you don't want to compromise speed and everything you just want to work on things together in some way that's copacetic that's what that word means that's what that program is you replace one big word with another big word i did say copacetic let me see everything jives yo copacetic training manual. That's what we need. We need a new book. That'll be the new one.

I'm going to replace the words with this hand sign. Is this complicated? This. Err. Err. You should write a new book on copacetic training. I'll become what I hate most, a guru. Progress part two.

Copacetic training methods. Copacetology. Yeah, but at the same time, you know, with the issues with CrossFit.com coming in, they want to do that, but there's no system to it. So there's at least got to be at least some sort of system to it while you're doing random stuff, working on everything separately at the same time, not just throwing random stuff up there. Yeah, so no, you, Jim, you guys have two different training programs.

You have kind of the regular clients and then the competition athletes, and they both have some type of thought-out, logical, intuitive progression for each one of those. Can you explain how you program for the regular people versus the competition people and what that year cycle looks like? Yeah, with the group classes, we still kind of work around the open as kind of keep us on track as far as what we're working towards and everything like that. But with the group classes, we're a lot more focused on just fitness and wellness and just wanting to live life healthy and not have any injuries and um being able to do kind

of whatever you want to do as opposed to the competition blog is specifically wanting to get ready for the crossfit games which um health and happiness is not involved right health is health is a kind of a back issue. Kind of like our buddy Lorne used to say about weightlifting. Weightlifting is good for you unless you compete in it. CrossFit is kind of the same way. It's good for you unless you compete in it, and then it's not about health anymore.

Jazzercise classes are good for your fitness. Fighting a dude and trying to beat him is not good for your fitness. No. It's about winning, not necessarily about health specifically. Not jazzercise, like kickboxing aerobics jazz aside let us slide what are we talking jazz aside it's just like MMA like some shit I messed up okay I was assuming he was like implanted fitness kickboxing or something I was really in terms of awesomeness of probably right parallel

to each other. I don't know. I mean, if you just make – you give one a better name, is it really any different? I have no idea what Jazzercise is. You dance around. You dance around and get fit and have a good time. Yeah, you dance around and it's jazz.

It's dancing without alcohol, which is awkward. That's what I hear about. Which is always awkward. It's craziness. I get it. Okay. Continue, please. So the group classes, like I said, are geared towards the open as far as just wanting to compete there, give us some tests there,

but more focused on wellness. And when I say focused on wellness, like, for instance, we just finished a 10-week cycle on single leg work to get better at the squat because we got through the open doing a bunch of testers, meaning, you know 10 minute amrap five rounds for time all that kind of classic crossfit stuff which in my opinion is not the healthiest thing um for an individual just an everyday individual so once we finished that you know i could see that a lot of people were not moving properly in the squat and so we broke

that down and did um basically single leg work when in within the 10 weeks we did um two sets or two days we did um front squats once at 65 once at 70 in the whole 10 weeks um the rest of the work was single leg work and we tested retested the squat and everybody's squat went up um so when you mean single leg work specifically what do you guys do uh we did a big category we started with step ups went, went into Bulgarian split squats, rear foot elevated split squats, and then went into lunges, and that was the end of it, and then we retested the squats. So it just got heavier as it went. With step-ups, it's going to be lighter than split squats,

and with split squats, it's going to be lighter than lunges. So how does that transfer over to the squat? What's the benefit there well the benefit there is one you're not loading the spine quite as much um but two you're you're focusing on when you're doing a normal squat with both legs you can easily favor one side of the other um and not really notice it and you wouldn't notice it unless you're looking at yourself from behind and watching your hips or you may not even notice it it then. Until you get on the single leg squat thing, you realize, wow, my left leg is way weaker than my right leg,

which is either, if it hadn't already caused an injury, it's going to cause an injury down the road. So in a situation like that, would you have somebody, if they're doing step-ups, do their weak leg first and then match the reps on their stronger side? Yeah. So if you have a barbell on your back and you've got a box in front of you, you would step up with, say, your right leg is weaker and you only get eight reps,

and then you match it with your left leg to even up the asymmetry? Yeah. Definitely start with the weak leg to even it out, and the other leg is getting fatigued a little bit even if you're not using it. So we always start with the weak leg or weak arm. And the key thing here is you are doing squatting during this. The front squats are preserving the mechanics of the squat. And you're building it.

No, we didn't do any. We did front squats twice during the whole 10 weeks. Oh, I thought you said twice a week you were doing some squatting. No, twice during the whole 10 weeks, which was week 8 and 9. Now, we did do wall balls and some goblet squats and kind of an EMOM. You're still squatting and conditioning. Still squatting and conditioning. You tested the back squat or front squat?

Front squat. I remember reading somebody, I want to say it was Ben Bruno, did a full year of only single leg work and then tried to come back and see how that would affect his squat in the long term. And basically what he found out was that if he was testing himself on high rep squats, then his reps at a certain weight went up because he had trained his legs hard still and got some great muscular endurance.

But for his one RM, it didn't necessarily go up because he wasn't loading his spine. If you do Bulgarian split squats with 150 pounds for sets of 12 for a whole year and all you ever had on your back was that same amount of weight. When you pick up the bar, it's going to feel like shit. You try to put 500 pounds on your back, and your back isn't ready for that. Front squat's different because what's limiting that,

like I know this intimately well, my life sucks when I front squat because I spent so many years, yo, bro, powerlifters. I like to be bent over. I used to like to have the bar lower on my back. I like it every time you say that. Yeah, I like to be bent over. I like to be bent over. You injected the pervy stuff.

You injected me while I was bent over. But I like to be in that position. So for me to crank up from this good morning low bar hip dominant position into trying to be vertical, so your back doesn't have to be strong per se, but you can't deviate from right up and down because you just topple over so in the front squat you probably could take this approach if you're very good at being upright then you're not having to hold your back uh in this little position like for a back squat even if it's a high bar back squat you still have to be a little bit more forward so that makes sense but during this program did you do any let's say heavy deadlifts

uh no we did single leg deadlifts. So no traditional barbell work, basically. Maybe some cleans and stuff, but nothing else. So a lot of crossfiters probably have never done single leg deadlifts. How would you do that? We did it with the clients. We just did a kettlebell. A kettlebell is usually heavy enough.

I mean, we have up to a 97 kettlebell in the gym. So that was usually heavy enough. I think I had maybe one or two people that ended up getting a bar out and loading it up a little bit more. So, is the kettlebell on the ground, you're on one leg, the other leg is behind you, you're hinging at the hips, picking it up,

standing, and then... When you go down, just kind of kick that leg back? Yeah, holding it with both legs. Kind of like an inverted toe touch when you're warming up, stretching type deal.

Back leg goes back, going down, a touch right in front of your toe. You do two hands? Yeah, two hands just to keep it more balanced. Gotcha. I think that would be a fantastic –

one of my favorite exercises ever for building the squat and deadlift is what I call a keystone deadlift. I mean, they do them in pathing circles. I think it came from all the rushing techs. But you can stand on two boxes. You can do it with one leg or stand on two boxes, and you let that kettlebell sink as far between your feet as possible, and you just pop the hips to raise it and do it for like 20 reps it's fantastic you can if you need a guy doing heavier ones you can just

like step on a band and run a band through that handle and that little bit of band tension makes that single leg or double leg kettlebell deadlift thing or swing even a little bit of band tension makes exercise like five times more effective man if you need to add bands to single leg work i like well i mean i like my experience i'm doing to single leg work. I like that. Well, I mean, I like that. In my experience. I'm doing a single leg deadlift. I'm just trying not to fall over. I think you should try it.

Why not? Why not? We'll try everything here. This Friday, Bledsoe and I and TTP are broing out in my garage on Fridays with Squats. Doug, please come over next Friday. It'll be a blast. You bet. I'm going to rig up a single leg banded kettlebell deadlift for you

with the hamstring that is all fucked up. We're going to do that one. I'm going to see how you like it. And I'm going to have you stand on a BOSU ball while you do it. Sounds good. I'll do anything. Obviously, if you saw the Louie Simmons episode, you'll see that I'll do anything. Yeah, I like the single leg stuff, especially like, you know, really far away from competition. It's not, you know, as it gets closer to competition, you want to do things that are more like what you're going to see there. Yeah, and I was actually surprised because the stronger guys I have in the gym, I really wasn't expecting much improvement.

I was thinking this is kind of a maintenance phase. We may not get very much gains, but for the lower end people, this is going to be really good. And it actually helped with both of them. Now, like you said, the guy with the year-long program, I wouldn't see much on the one rep max side of things for that, because it's hard to do really intense

sets with a single leg, you know, like one or two reps at a time. It's hard to get heavy enough for one or two reps. But most of our reps are 4.6. You're scratching a very important thing here, Nat. So your guys had this long... How long was this? Ten weeks. Well, before they did this, how long were they really hitting

all the traditional stuff hard? How long is that duration? It was probably two or three months. Yeah, so think of it this way, ladies and gentlemen at home. When you think about periodization of what you need to be considering, why was this such a good idea for these people?

Well, they have three months of really working really hard and really hitting the barbell hard and trying to move everything forward. They get good success. But the reason why you can't just do everything all the time, you can't spin all your plates all the time forever because you will, you just can't keep that up.

And you have this big cumulative fatigue load you've built up and you get better. But you take a couple weeks, a couple months to do like something like this. And that big effect that big burden you went through still translates through that time and you heal mentally you heal physically and you're still working and the healing and the break coupled with the novel work still allows you to get better and sets you up to then resume and and build upon the hard work you

did before you took the break right like it's a very natural idea like you can't push in one direction forever if you have the courage to say like i'm gonna stop this for a little while try something different the next time around that period will go better for you than if you try to just keep that up all year long that's why you can't go in the gym and do those hard wads forever it works for when you start crossfit for like two months six months maybe you're into it you need to go into this approach where you're in these phases. You can still do all the things at the same time, but certain things will be dialed up, certain things are dialed down. That's something you were saying to us earlier.

You don't just put people on the CrossFit like girl wads or hero wads where they just crush themselves and destroy themselves on a daily basis. You have a little more thought out than that so yeah maybe talk about the differences you know continue to talk about the the year-long macro cycle and how you um incorporate sometimes testing right with the girl wads and the hero wads in there but more how it's it's training focused and not just testing every day yeah so i guess getting into a little bit of my background as far as coaching i've i've done uh both theT assessment and program design courses there. And then I've been training off of his blog for probably about four years ago or three and a half years ago when I started that. And then I got trained by Michael Fitzgerald for about a year and then C.J. Martin for about a year.

So I've kind of learned from some different people at different times. Michael Fitzgerald is James' brother? Michael Fitzgerald is James Michael Fitzgerald James little brother yet right he's still up in Canada he has optimum performance training Canada site so that's kind of my little background so as far as like right now when we're far away from competition we're doing more just kind of classic strength work whether it's single leg work or just classic lifts. Not a ton of reps at a heavy weight,

but just focusing on getting stronger and focusing on the aerobic side of things with what James has called MAP training or Max Aerobic Power Training, where it's a bunch of long intervals. Like I said, not heavy weight, just working on breathing. It doesn't interfere

with the strength stuff really especially low intensity cardio yeah really low intensity cardio work that's not on a treadmill but it's using crossfit workouts so you're still kind of practicing those crossfit uh movements um but you're not just destroying yourself with a ton of kipping pull-ups or a ton of kettlebell swings or a ton of whatever. So keeping the reps and the volume relatively low. So that could be like just a simple example would be like a five-minute at 80% of five hand-release push-ups, 10 rushing kettlebell swings, and 15 step-ups, five minutes of that. Just moving a bunch.

Yeah, just moving a bunch. Moving a bunch. Rest a little bit, and then the next five minutes would be something totally different so you're not smashing the same reps again do you prescribe that similar to the way that James does where where you say do the SWAT at 80% yeah I just people think all cross or work I should be a hundred percent effort all the time but James doesn't do that and a lot of guys are picking that up yeah 95% 80% depending on the day yeah I mean all the if you look at the best guys they're they're doing whether they know it or not they're they're doing that type

of deal um with the classes with the group classes i usually don't use percentages a whole lot i usually try to explain it more they're meaningless with people right they don't they don't know what 80 is they don't know i say 95 for an anaerobic thing and they're like that's all out i'm like it's not quite all out but um it's 95 percent all yeah five percent less than all out that's what you gotta do 90 all out 100 of the time 60 so for the aerobic stuff i'll just say you know moving at a consistent steady effort if we had the same five minute piece here and at the end if we had the same one on both ends you should get the same amount of rounds um so that kind of oh that's that means i have to move slower than all out i like that angle like anytime i explain to people like somebody's like what's what should i use for

this thing this exercise like box squats is a good example what percent should i use should i do this plus this and that percent based on my training no No, man. Work up to a load. And when it starts to feel like you have to really squat hard to make it move fast, and if you don't do that, you move really slow, that's probably a good load, right? Yeah, that makes sense. You won't go too heavy, right? No, because then I'll move too slow if you're doing like speed squats. Yeah.

You don't want to go too light. Why? Because it's really easy because I'm not – yeah, now you get it. There you go. Just pick a load that's hard. Yeah. Not too hard. You don't want to know that feeling if you don't have a lot of experience.

You got to have somebody walk you through it one time. Once you know the feeling, then you get, all right. And then next week, I'll just do a little more, and I'll match the effort. Then the third week, I'll do a little more, and I probably won't – I'll get a little tired then, and I'll go back to the beginning. That's all those waves are. It's like a lot of people don't – It's a logical way to push yourself and back off. If you haven't been lifting for years and years and years,

you don't know what that feels like. People aren't as tuned in to their bodies. Not everybody can be a master of their physical form as we are. We've all been training since we were young, so we've always been tuned in. We spent 15 years fucking everything up. Yeah, but we know how things feel when we do them we know how they we know how things feel when we do them and then you know we get someone in the gym who's 40 years old who's never trained at all so they've been living in this body for 40 years and have never really used

it and now you're asking is this hard and they're like do you tell them that's hard or and they're like, everything is hard. It's really, really strange because we probably have no – our perception of how they feel is completely off. Here's what I see Bledsoe coaching his clients. See, I know it felt hard, but here's your problem. You've been living in that shitty body for 40 years. It's not your fault. You don't know how to use it. Thanks, coach.

So why would someone want to do an 80 effort workout what's the point there yeah i mean the the point there is just so you're not trashing your body kind of like chris was saying you're not when you get done with a 10 minute all out all you can do effort you're smoked you're laying on the ground for 10 or 15 minutes if you did it right um and then but which like you said it works for the first six months to a year maybe as you get into CrossFit. But after that, you're going to hit a stalling out point where you just can't progress anymore. And you have to train that longer time zone, which has to be a lower intensity, to build that aerobic base so that you can handle the shorter stuff and recover from it.

And also, like you said, it doesn't affect the strength stuff and recover from it and also it's not as like he said doesn't affect the strength stuff as much it's not as taxing on just your overall muscles so you can still do the strength work and still feel good after i'd imagine that lets you go slow enough where you can do everything correctly as well yeah like focus on technique slop involved right you practice over i mean what is it other than just practicing doing it right a million times you're getting comfortable going for a long time just repeating. It's almost like a zen activity too. If you sing a kettlebell for an hour,

just as an example, mix other things in, but if you stay moving smooth and consistently for an hour and have the repetition, have your favorite song on, you go to a pretty cool place. That's probably one of the better workouts you can have. You're going to listen to that song for a whole hour? If you play your favorite album, put your favorite album on.

Your favorite one-hour song. There are some one-hour songs. Put any... Look, you're overconfident. Put an album on. What isn't your favorite? Put an album on you dig, you know? An album.

What's the Disney song? Swing that kettlebell until the album stops. You're going to feel fantastic. Just don't be a douche. Mentally, it helps too because if you get used to doing stuff, I've gotten used to doing stuff.

This is before last year's regionals. Getting used to doing stuff for an hour, taking some interval breaks in there and whatnot. You get a seven-minute AMRAP, and you're like, seven minutes? I can do that. You can easily suffer for seven. Do you find that helps new people not go way too hard at the beginning and then crash halfway through the workout as well?

Yeah, and it depends on the person. It's like people who are new to jiu-jitsu. They go, I'm going to jiu-jitsu you. And halfway through, like, oh, fuck, I'm going to die now. You've got to relax, man. Relax. It all depends on the person. It's a bad feeling.

If you have somebody coming from, and this is where the personal side of things come in, if you have somebody coming from an endurance background, then they're not going to know how to dig for seven minutes um if you have somebody coming from a sprint background they're not going to know how to last for 12 minutes um so that's where the individual side of things comes in if you're wanting to compete it it helps to have a coach that's programming specifically for you um because like i have a guy who's who's done a 315 marathon. He got into CrossFit.

And, like, when we were doing the aerobic stuff, it was a breeze. But he couldn't – when we did, like, a test or a seven-minute deal, he would finish and be just fine and not have a great score. He doesn't know how to go fast. He's like, that wasn't that hard. I'm like, you just didn't go hard enough. You didn't go faster. Yeah.

So it depends on the person. It's amazing how – I mean, when you see, here's what you've got to pay attention to. For people out there who are learning and, like, trying to find what really matters in training, you just said that story of, like, the things you aren't basically good at, you've got to dig those things out and develop them while you maintain the best of your ability, things you are good at.

So it's no different than what Louie prescribed. Like, look, I find somebody who's really shitty at reps. I think if I get them better at reps, it's going to help them be better for a powerlifter or a crossfitter who's really good at long reps and duration. If I can just make them more explosive and make them be more explosive with my crazy-ass means, then they're going to be better. It's what McGoldrick had to face where he was a really explosive dude,

super explosive, super aggressive and powerful and forceful. But if you get into a zone where you've got to suffer for long duration, it's foreign territory because that's not what you're inclined to do. And it's what C.J. Martin talked about. These are ideas that with all these different disciplines, it's a central truth. So it's something you should really think hard about. It's obvious to you. And because it's really obvious, intuitive,

people disregard it as being not the most important thing. It's really everything. It's a simple idea and one you must really embrace and understand. Yeah. All right, let's go ahead and take a break real quick. When we come back, let's talk about how you find out, how you can assess whether you're a slow person or a fast person. That should be easy.

Hey, guys, this is Rich Froning, and you're listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to fitter.tv. All right,'re back we're back barbell shrug that's what we are you knew that already baby got michael mcelroy that's it on the microphone on the um yeah so uh we're talking a little bit about uh people being able to push hard some people can go fast and they uh they don't know how to go long. And there's other people that know how to go long, but the moment you ask them to go fast, they just don't know how to push it to that point.

Do you have, like, a quick assessment to figure out, like, where is this person coming from? Yeah, I mean, generally, if it's an exclusive coaching client, like an online client or a personal client in the gym, um, we'll go through some different tests, um, as far as strength or aerobic stuff. If it's a, if it's a group client, then we don't really go through that test because we're not going to get that specific with them. But if it is an individual, uh, client, we'll go through some different testing. Um, most of which I've gotten from, from James and the, um, assessment

and program design, some of which I've just kind James in the assessment and program design, some of which I've just kind of developed on my own. But basically, you can just talk to them and get a little bit of their background, see kind of what their kind of approach on life is and kind of get a lot from that, and then just test them. So if they're coming from an aerobic background, if they're coming from running marathons or triathlons and stuff, chances are they're going to be not really know how to dig in and get into that hurt locker and just stay there.

If they're coming from weightlifting or a sprint background or really not much of anything, then it may be a little different. Usually girls are a little bit – Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Careful what you say, man. Usually girls are a little harder to get – they're a little better at the aerobic stuff. Not as good as digging in and hurting.

Guys are usually the other way around. But there's always a difference there. But simple tests are like for the aerobic side of things, testing a 500-meter row and then testing a 5K row and seeing how their number are relative to each other. Dude, 5K row, the most I've ever done is 2K. I refuse to go over 2K. Your ass, how do you even sit there for that long?

Your ass just goes completely numb. Or a 60-minute row. 60 minutes? Who does that? Do you sit on a pillow for that? I coach that. That's all I'm going to say on that. You've never done that?

No. That's stupid i've done it i did a 2k i did a 2k row at a fat 300 pounds by the way let me point that out and like 740 or seven that that was pretty good but that was not a fun time at all man that was not cool well that's that's where you can really tell a lot of it a lot of it doesn't really it doesn't the time doesn't even matter that much it's what they what they feel like. So if you see a person do a 500-meter row, it may be 212, but if they're laying on the ground for 10 minutes,

that means they know how to dig in. They're just that bad at shape, and they just need to get better at it. But if they row a 150 and they get off and they're like, is that all we're doing today? And you're like, yeah, we're about to do a lot more of that kind of stuff. So a lot of that is just looking at them and seeing how they feel after they do it and how they how they react to the the prescription that's given and seeing if they react this is common sense good coaching carefully observing getting

a feel for what somebody can tolerate what they can't then having that be your direction yeah there's so much more to coaching than just prescribing something and looking at their results on a piece of paper. Oh, I think that's the easiest part of coaching. That's not where the results come from. You can have the most complicated, well-put-together, awesome program in the world and without the other 80%, which is observation and communication and giving somebody to believe in what you're doing. That shit ain't going to work at all.

You might as well just do some cookie-cutter thing off the internet. It'll be the same effectiveness. All these programs that whoever is programming, whether it be whoever the coach is, we won't have to name names. I'd prefer it if you did. You can find all these different programs

and just do them yourself if you don't want the personal touch to it. That's the whole point of hiring a personal coach. It's so that he can look at it and say, this is why you don't want the personal touch to it. And that's the whole point of hiring a personal coach is so that he can look at it and say, all right, this is why you did this, not just this is the score you got, so this is what we're going to do about it. So there's a why behind it.

So for the group coaching, we never really zoomed out all the way and got the whole year-long macro cycle, which is kind of a hard concept if you're not really training for anything specific about why you would even have a macro cycle. So maybe you can touch on that too. But you talk about the 10 weeks for single leg training

and then briefly just kind of go through the whole rest of the year. That way we can see the big picture. Yeah. Well, like you said, it's very hard to approach that year-long approach without having a true goal in mind. And so we kind of go by feel. It may not be the same every year so I didn't I guess probably three months ago I didn't know I was going to do a single leg phase after

the open I just looked at it and shoulders were starting to hurt and hips and stuff were starting to get out so I was obvious when you're in the moment yeah and then now we're going to go through and and obviously some of it still goes into what the client wants. And that's what, you know, again, going back to you can have the best program in the world, but if not what the client wants, they're not going to stick to it, and they're not going to be happy with the results they're getting, even if they are getting results. So now we're going to go into more of an aerobic conditioning phase. We tested an aerobic workout um and then we're gonna you

know retest it after a while i haven't actually laid out the program yet um because this was last week um but we'll go through another six to eight week phase retest a couple different things every time we test we test a few different things even if we weren't training for it just to see where we are see how much we lost see how much we gained if we happen to gain something we weren't trying to all the data so can get is good. So is that a very well-known thing in the gym? Like, hey, for the next eight weeks, we're going to be focusing on this. Monday, we're testing this workout.

In eight weeks, we're going to retest it. That way, everyone's on the same page. Yeah, it's pretty known in the gym. I put it out on the blog. Makes perfect sense. Some people are interested in it. Some people aren't. And I say that it doesn't change anything, whether you're interested in it or not.

Some people ask me about it. Some people say say so we're doing this because of this and that um and some people don't care they come in and get their workout and that's it um but yeah i post on the blog um on the website um at the beginning of the phase uh this is what we're going to be working on you know it's going to be generally set up like this throughout the week um so these are the kind of the day i I usually don't give day specific. If they figure that out, that's fine. The only reason I don't do that is so people don't try to skip certain days that they don't like.

Yeah, I find some athletes try to game the system a little bit. I don't lay it out. You sons of bitches. I'll skip these two days of training so I can do really well on this other day. And the same son of a bitch will be like, I don't have the results I want. We might be testing cumulative fatigue here. How well can you handle the volume of the week leading up? And the same son of a bitch will be like, I don't have the results I want. We might be testing cumulative fatigue here. Yeah. Like, how well can you handle the volume of the week leading up?

And then when they, like, gain a workout, you know, that's what they're doing. Yeah. So I don't lay it out. And I was really more talking about the training weeks leading up to it. So I don't lay out Monday will be strength work or single leg work or Tuesday will be aerobic work or anything like that I don't lay it out that simple just so they don't know specifically if it like I said if they catch on to it then that's fine then if they care enough to catch on they're probably here enough to

keep coming those days so you do have it set up like that you just don't tell them yeah okay yeah well I just told them because they're listening they're probably carrying up to show up like yeah so is that typically how it goes with your strength work like you have some type of set you know maybe not every monday wednesday friday but like you have a set like we squat and then the next day we press and the next day we do olympic stuff or whatever you do yeah there is a generally in whatever phase we're in, it's pretty set as far as Monday is this, Tuesday is this, and so forth. So like this past phase, we did the single leg work and some upper body strength work on Monday, along with some muscle stamina stuff, which is where the squatting came in.

So we would do like a 20-minute, every minute on the minute of 10 goblet squats and three strict pull-ups or something like that. Goblet squats sound way more intense than they are. It sounds like goblet squat. You picture crazy shit when you hear that. Oh, we're just going to cradle a kettlebell. I wish it was more intense. Can I reinvent that exercise to something more extreme? Something more metal, something more hardcore.

I'm going to experiment. You do gargoyle squats. Gargoyle squats with bands tied to your chode make you very angry you'll train so hard makes me think we need some demon bells oh man those things are cool I do want so they're like five times more expensive I think it's every fucking penny is like some I like I like the chimp ones too like any like I get one of those. Primal kettlebells. That makes them just like my tattoo.

The Hanya mask, like demons shapes. Get a close-up of that right there. Yeah, look at that, homie. And every dumbass thinks that's Satan. That's not. Learn you some Japanese tattoo history and some opera, you sons of bitches. I can see why they would think that was Satan. Yeah.

It's got horns. A red face and horns. But that's the uneducated mind making an assumption. You're so stupid. So when you meet somebody and you see some experience, rule number one, don't let your first assumption be the thing you think is the truth, homie. Dig a little deep. Everything is not as it first appears.

Spend all your time studying everything all the time. I didn't say that. Studying all the time. But you said it sounded way less romantic than what I said. But that's no surprise because I'm a romantic soul and you're a lunk. You're a fucking lunk. Sounds a little wrong. Yeah, that's pretty accurate.

I'm just joshing. I love you. You're my homeboy. I hate you. Aw. All right. So what other specific changes do you make for the fitness people versus the competition people? More specifically, we've been talking about fitness people.

Let's go into the competition world a little bit. How do you program for those guys? So generally the same as far as just a broad general aspect. Like right now, we're going through – we still go through different phases. We simplify it during the off-season, which is far away from the open, and then get more into the testers and stuff uh closer to the open um obviously there's a lot more uh weightlifting olympic lifting um for the for the competition people obviously you have to be efficient at that to even

have a chance at competing um a lot more heavy stuff a lot more um heavy stamina stuff so um for me the the one of the biggest things that's missing for crossfitters is understanding that the one rep max is not hugely important uh for crossfit if you if you look across the board no the one rep max a true one rep max is never tested um there's a ladder maybe that you're going through. Oh, it's not true because you're so fatigued. No. By the time Asia Bartow got to 305 last year in the snatch, she had already done like 15 snatches in 15 minutes.

So it's not a true one rep max. So muscle stamina or strength stamina is a very important ability to gain. And then the aerobic side of things, I think, is another thing that's missed that people don't see in the top athletes. There's a huge bias towards pushing hard and getting that classic CrossFit stimulus. You look at Rich Froning's program, and he's doing 30 seconds on, 30 seconds off on the air down every day, every morning or on the rower, doing a ton of aerobic work,

and then he's doing some strength work. And he still looks so handsome. Look at that guy. They say he rows or does Airdyne pretty much every day. Yeah, and people just look at his program and be like, man, his volume is crazy high. And it's like, look at it closer. He's doing some recovery breathing work in the morning

so he can train again in the afternoon. Airdyne in Rome won't beat you up too much too much no you can do that every day yeah and it's not as intense as people think they're not you know what's as intense as you want to make it that's what's beautiful about it you get whatever you want out of it it'll crush you like a fucking gnat if you push hard like those a minute long sprint one is all you need so for the rest of the day you're gonna be trying to recover from that and your quads are gonna lock up like fucking lobsters are pinching your quads the rest of the day. Or you just be cool

on it. Be cool, man. Stretch it out. Just move. Feel your breath. Watch the clock. Get into the rhythm of your hands. Focus on the rhythm and pace. It's a whole other thing. Again, that Z1 work or just the easy breathing work is something that has to be taught to a lot of crossfairs

especially guys. I had a new guy come over to my gym. I'll throw his name out there, Chris Haynes. He knows who he is. I hope so. Who am I? What am I doing? When I tell the story, he'll know who he is.

Makes me think about Derek Zoolander. He came over as a pretty good crossfitter. One of the first one of the earlier workouts he did on the competition blog was 20 minute row at a z1 pace you know conversation pace and he gets off he's like laid out on the ground for the next like 15 minutes and i was like you totally missed the point of that like you're supposed to be wrong yeah you're supposed to stand up awesome that wide you're supposed to stand up and walk over to me and be like that was I got a good sweat in.

He's like, oh, okay. So it took a little while to get him to learn what that meant. And it's just, again, being able to see how they do things and going from there as far as the coaching goes. I forgot where we started with that point, though. Doesn't matter. I don't know either. Actually, you mentioned two things that sound kind of similar.

You mentioned map training and Z1, which kind of sound like the same thing. Is there a difference between those? Yeah, so map training is a little bit higher intensity. It's interval work, so you're still pushing a little bit harder where you can't maintain that pace for 60 minutes, but you're still at an easy breathing. You're still being able to repeat that effort over and over again.

So if it's a three-minute effort, you do it maybe 10 different times, that'd be a lot. But if you do it 10 different times, your three-minute effort still feels, the last one still feels like a little bit harder than the first one, but still a pretty good pace.

Whereas Z1 is just continuous. There's no breaks in between. Z stands for zone. Yeah, zone. Why can't you just fucking say zone one through five why you need all the other acronyms like z1 just sounds cool yeah z1 you know what that is yeah coach we go easy what z2 I know not so easy right what is z18 fucking really tough coach boom you don't need all the other acronyms that's what I I wish you just go you don't need like to say anaerobic complexity zero sum training philosophy just

fucking say go a little like like we got into a little bit with louis with he likes to have 800 definitions of strength right explosive strength absolute strength this that strength this speed strength strength speed like all that i know what it. I studied it for like 10 years of my fucking life. But I'm here to tell you, you can just throw all that shit out because it doesn't make any sense and you don't need it. It just confuses what you're trying to go for. If you just say, everything is this, zone one through zone whatever. Here are the definitions. If I tell you zone three, you're not going too hard, but you're not going very easy.

Make sense? Yeah. Everybody's got it. I wish people would just be more fucking common sense from time to time. Well, I think I'm reading a book right now called. Oh, shit. The art. Tell me all about it.

The Art of Explanation, right? So when you're talking to other coaches and it talks about like people who have a certain level of knowledge, right? So the average athlete, you know, on a scale, you know, from A to Z, they're in A. And if you're talking to someone else who's, like, coaching other coaches, they're probably on the understanding of Z, right? And you probably have the average CrossFit coach, which is maybe an M. We know people who are in that position that aren't Zs.

I'm not going to name names. So, like, if you're talking to other coaches, it's a lot easier to say Z1 or something like that. Now, you tell the average client Z1, it may not be an appropriate use of the term. That's when you should throw that out. You should say, hey, you're going to go nice and easy, conversational pace.

But if I'm talking to another coach, it's actually really nice to be able to talk to Michael here, and he says Z1. I still think it's not necessary. So it's like, but it's super quick, and we can get on with the conversation, and we can actually1 i still think it's not necessary so it's like but it's super quick and we can get on with the conversation and we can actually cover more talking about it a lot so it is good to break it down on the podcast because there's a lot of people listening that don't know what z1 is but if it's just like me michael and doug and you know

we're just sitting here talking and he says z1 you know it shortens it's just like any industry like you go to work and you're at Smith & Nephew and they're using these terminology. If I walk in the room, I have no idea what it's talking about. But if you had to explain it to me the whole time, the meeting just got three hours longer. But here's the thing. Most of the people who are in the room with you who think,

oh yeah, Z1, they don't know what the fuck you're talking about either. They're people who you would assume maybe do. I run into people who would be experts, but even in other realms, I do not use the buzzwords because I still think it's unnecessary. I love my hero of all fucking time, one of them, Richard Feynman. Beautiful man. Read every book he ever read or wrote or was written about him. they're really beautiful but he here's a guy who won the Nobel Prize in physics doing something that's exceedingly complicated I want him try

because I have no capacity to explain this to you but where where did he work on his problems and I'm back with strip club where did who did he explain it to strippers who were asking what he was working on what did he explain you he say look this thing I did it's like a rubber band you know when you stretch over a band and you release it he always had that kind of explanation therefore anybody who walked in the room that makes me think that people the people that give out those nobel prizes are probably dummies oh i can understand that physicist we should give him a prize thing like abramson the same way even if you have physicists in the room when you have a new idea you want to explain to other accomplished

physicists it's probably helpful to at least fold in the same way. Even if you have physicists in the room and you have a new idea you want to explain to other accomplished physicists, it's probably helpful to at least fold in a lot of intuitive things because you're all still humans. And if you can explain things simpler, if you have the option, you should do that. That's actually something that book. Occam's Razor. The choice between two choices. If you choose the more complicated one when you could choose a simpler explanation, that's your mistake. You're making a basic uh fallacy well that book talks a little bit about that too is going back over in simple terms

uh with people who already know what you're talking about we'll get them oh yeah this guy knows what he's talking about they agree yeah so but there's a time and place for everything yeah you guys did a good job explaining the art of explanation. Hey, man. You just blew my mind. So anyways, back to alactic endurance. Back to MAP training or max aerobic power is kind of the difference you were asking about. And the difference is basically the intensity. It's just a little bit higher.

So it could be anything from Z2 to Z4. How many Zs are there? Five. Five Zs. Z5 is so intense, man. If you pick up the ACE certification book, it's got all the Zs in there. But the interval difference...

I think the NSCA book has it too. It kind of goes back to, again, learning what kind of the athlete is. So even if you're working on the aerobic stuff, I could be working on the same aerobic pathway for certain people, but one person, so for Mike, for instance, or we'll take McGoldrick, he probably started with a lot of 30 seconds on, 30 seconds off because he's a lot more explosive.

So that 30 seconds, being able to maintain that started fine. If you have somebody coming from a big aerobic background we may start with 10 minutes on five minutes off because they can maintain that and work them down to the 30 where they're going a little bit more intense um so again it goes back to figuring out what that athlete's like and and building the engine that you're looking for from whatever angle works best same thing with the anaerobic stuff. To peak that aerobic system for the competition, you would start low, 30 seconds all out,

which is obviously different. 30 seconds on the air down like you were talking about. Quads are screaming. 30 seconds all out. 30 seconds at 100% on the air down is a pretty nasty interval. The hardest thing you can do. Working up to where just before competition, you may get to where not on the air done,

but you're going three minutes all out in a cross-fittish workout, rest 10 minutes, repeat that two more times, which we've done some of that in the class. You know, a classic one is row 250. Again, this is an OPT one. It's just what came to my head. Row 250, 15 burpees, 25 kettlebell swings, 15 burpees, row 250. It's about, for the top guys,

it's about 330. And then you rest 10 minutes. I do really well in that kind of shit. Here's what I'm going to do. We're doing that on Friday. Here's what I'm going to do. By the way, let me explain something to the audience. We did a little WOD at the end of our brawl session

that was rounds of 15 second, swing the kettlebell, battle rope, briefly pause, repeat. On Friday you did? Yeah, I felt just fine. If anybody wants to throw down a WOD challenge, that doesn't involve me moving around bars. Take the gymnastic stuff out.

Be fair, because I'm 280 or whatever. Be fair to me. We'll be fair. Keep feet on the ground. I will go with you. We'll lift the same weight. It'll be fair. No, you can scale it up. You can do a proportion of something. I don't give a shit. Give me twice the kettlebell weight, and I'm fine or whatever.

I'll take you on. You pick the wad. Oh, you're going to take twice the kettlebell weight as me, and you're going to keep up? Yeah. Let's do it. Or scale it whatever you want. Whatever you think is fair.

Whatever you think is fair, do it. You get the 26-pound kettlebell. All I ask is that you don't do gymnastic things that I find impossible. Let me keep my feet on the ground, and I'll do whatever you want. It's like playing horse and asking me to dunk. Yeah, it's not going to happen. I will lose. I forfeit now.

I'm done. I cash out my chips. It's not going to happen. Yeah, I picked the wad. Was that a short joke on yourself? Yes. Okay. I'll tell you about that.

For me, I'm not going to do anything muscle-up related. I can't. You win. You got me. You're a bigger man than me, figuratively speaking. That's how it goes. We'll figure something out. We will.

What kind of processes do you have put in place for the online clients does everyone go through the same kind of structured beginning where you uh where you kind of assess where they're at virtually like that that's a hard thing to do when you're not meeting someone face to face what do you have put in place for that yeah generally the first week um is a testing week and obviously you can't figure everything out but just some real basic simple workouts you know a couple of one rep maxes in there um and a couple of conditioning workouts that i know where i want the times to be um and then just getting feedback on that seeing you know asking to post comments as far as how it felt where was the breakdown what caused you to slow

down in this one um why did you miss the lift if it was a you know front squat one rep max why did you lift the lift were you stuck in the bottom were you stuck halfway up so basically just a testing week at the beginning and then and kind of going from there what do you do about like mobility and technique and injuries and things like that the technique stuff is video just video and getting them to send as many videos as they can and respond as quickly as possible using obviously coach's eye to to help critique that i think vine is a good choice for that too because it's so quick and easy it's very fast yeah coach's eye you can you can draw angles and look at bar paths and things like that and slow it down on it too and speak yeah in the background good um and then as far as the mobility goes just tell them if there's specific things that I see in any of their lists from the video,

basically just use MobilityWad as that resource and try to find some links. Why reinvent such a good resource? Yeah, I mean, find some links to those and just send them that. Tell them to do it. You read Supple Leopard? I've started it. I haven't really gotten all the way through it, though. Okay.

It's very good. I'm about 70% the way through with it. Yeah. Great resource. If you haven't read Supple supple leopard out there everyone pick up a copy of that iBooks I can't do regular books anymore iBooks is where it's at oh you don't have a hard copy you have the digital copy I did buy a hard copy but I ended up giving it to to Rob to read and I bought it on iBooks I just I'm more likely to read on iBooks because I can lay in bed with the black background on the white text and kind of dim it down

with the lights off and then I can read in the dark and just turn it off and go to bed. I like that way better than holding a big book when I'm laying in bed. And as you enter your dream land,

the supple upper tones are wrapped around your brain. You assimilate all that beautiful knowledge. I just dream about mobility all night. I do fine. You get more mobile.

I do fine. I do that morning exercise that I've been emailing out to you guys. Masturbation? No. That's not an exercise. It's a ritual. I do this mental exercise for about 20 minutes in the morning, which I've been emailing you guys the results of. It's going to remain a secret to the rest of the world.

I do a mental exercise where I think about our customers and stuff. You're meditating. Yeah. It's kind of like a meditation thing. But no, I do a mental exercise where I think about our customers and stuff. You're meditating. Yeah. It's kind of like a meditation thing. But I find that whatever I was reading before I went to sleep the night before has a huge influence on my perception of what I think people want to hear about and stuff like that and learn about. He's like, I don't know why I told you that, but it's me it's out it made me think about it because you're talking i want you someone said something about like i want to how you're gonna dream about supple leopard i want to have james on the show to talk about my

next day we need to have james moped on the show to delve into those kind of things more often like those little i know he's a little out there i think we'd have a beautiful discussion with a guy about like meditation how that how that all all those angles fold into to how you program and how you, how you apply all that beautiful art to the cold, hard, sharp edges of numbers and prescriptions that, that is only the skeleton of the whole training of you. Like he,

he does a good job for the barbell Buddha. Yeah, that's definitely a man. That's going to be my dream. Once we get the equipment shit figured out and get you get going we'll have him on I know you got Justin Thacker coming down to y'all's place yeah here pretty soon to work on 28th and 9th okay is that is that a seminar to anyone go to yep okay tomorrow we'll have a link up pretty soon and you haven't met him yet is that

right no you saw him on our show and you know he's a good friend of ours yeah which he's really is fantastic for way living so I'm just really excited about for you guys i just like the his approach from what y'all were saying and what he was kind of saying is is learning the ins and out of all the different systems as a and he seems sounds like he has his own approach to it as opposed to just picking up the bulgarian system or picking up the russian system and just kind of implementing that he has the backgrounds and and teaches the lifts differently. And I like the fact that he apparently likes to focus on the basic lifts as far as, I guess, he's talking about squat, deadlift, and basic strength before they move into the weightlifting

side of things. Kind of like focusing on strict pull-ups before kipping pull-ups. Right. It just makes sense. Yeah, he's pretty good about taking knowledge from lots of different sources and compiling it together into his own system. And lot of people are one trick pony they know weightlifting or they know nutrition or they know this or that that dude knows a lot about a bunch of different topics so he can talk very comprehensively about not just fitness or

weightlifting or nutrition he can put it all together and man that guy can answer any question that we've ever thrown at him he's learned how how to see the matrix. There is no spoon. There is no spoon. I can see the code. Between everything, you can see the common elements, how they fit together. If you can do that, if you've got a guy around, you can do that. You should listen to that guy. Here's your friendly neighborhood tip from Chris this week.

Meet a smart person, listen to them. That's the culmination point of this show. Meet somebody who's really smart, you should probably listen to them i mean yeah i mean that's i think that's the as joking aside i think that's where i mean that's what crossfit started around and somehow it's kind of lost that sight and coaches i think coaches are getting better at it definitely but um just learning from resources outside of crossfit there's there's more stuff than crossfit powerlifting crossfit endurance crossfit you know whatever there's more resources out there in the strength conditioning world than just those things and i think that's where if you're looking for a coach seeing if they've

done other stuff other than just crossfit yeah if i if i'd beep i'd say crossfit sometimes guilty of drawing you know putting a fence up around the thing and certain people are on the outside of that fence who have a lot to offer so i would not stop there i would go out and try to explore to see who else has a different take even if it's weightlifting like there's good people in crossfit teach weightlifting there's other people who have different views on it who can can make can add to your understanding if they're outside the little spectrum of what you see in the HQ world, that shouldn't stop you from exploring. A lot of those certifications are really good,

but once an organization gets really big, it usually starts moving really slow too. I think that's what kind of might be happening. That might be why there's a lot of coaches on the outside that they're able to stay very innovative and move really fast. I think CrossFit might be getting a little too big. Don't do no fault of their own. Just the nature of a growing business.

You're this close of getting into a discussion of government and why it sucks. I can feel your mind turning. I had no such thought, and now you've injected it. It's too late. We're now going in. Yeah, just don't bring it back. Our founding fathers, Liberty, Atlas Shrugged and Rhymed, Ron Paul.

Oh, no, what have I done? Well, now I gotta go on a rant. No, no, don't go on a rant. We'll save that for Barbell Buddha. Yes. Friday nights at some time. It's different every week. Stay on your toes. Stay on your toes.

Stay on your toes, folks. All right. That's it. I think we killed it. All right. So, Doug, I'm going to let you go first. Plug something. Plug us.

We got the six-month muscle gain challenge that is starting here on July 8th. And that is basically damn near full at this point. We got a few spots left, and that's it. On what? On the six-month Husky Day Challenge. Where were you? I started thinking about lunch. Okay, never mind.

No, it's full. It's pretty much full at this point? We're done. Okay. But if you want to get in in a few months, we'll be opening up one that's going to start in a few months. Make sure to go in the shop and sign up for that. You can put your email address in, and we'll notify you when the next round comes through.

Yeah, if you go to muscle.barbellstrug.com, then you can put your name on the waiting list for three months from July 8th. So if you listen to this episode in the future, we usually do it about every three months. The next one starts July 8th. Don't listen to it in the past. Three months. Listen in the future. Listen in the future. So three months. The next one starts July 8th. Don't listen to it in the past. Listen in the future. Listen in the future. So three months

later, we'll probably start another one. So if you want to get on that list, go to muscle.barbellstrug.com and you can sign up. As part of putting your name on the list, you'll get a cool video of us kind of telling you how we suggest you structure your meals if you want to eat mostly paleo but also put on some muscle mass in the process.

There you go. All right. Go ahead, Chris. You're next. Be thinking of something. Oh, yeah. I'm going to have just two things. He's got it. He's got it down.

We've now got a little bit of rhythm. We've got the Barbell Buddha podcast going. We had a reboot episode that we shot this last Friday night in my office. It was a blast. We broadcasted it live on Google Hangouts. So next Friday, around that magic witching hour, Memphis time, about 8, 9 p.m., whenever the tequila starts working, we throw out the links. Join us live. Also, I've got the show now submitted to iTunes.

Hopefully that's up and we can share the information for that, like maybe this week. Depends on how slow they are. That's my first plug. Also, go on Barba Buddha Facebook page, like us. You'll see some cool stuff there. It's a little bit like the Barba Shrug page, but a little more of my slant,

the content that'll go up there in my blog post. So stay up to, stay up formed, stay linked. And then I'll start the plug for Progress. The greatest book

anyone ever wrote is Progress by me. Go on Amazon. Definitely the greatest book you've ever written. It is. For sure. It's on iTunes for iPad. It's on Amazon. Definitely the greatest book you've ever written. It is. It's on iTunes for iPad.

It's on Amazon for anything, your Kindle or any app you're running on your iPhone for Kindle. I'm playing with doing a paper edition because I've got some paper copies now for personal consumption and for close friends and stuff. If I can figure out a way to make the cost controllable, if we can find the ratio between what it will cost to print, what it will cost to sell, and all that, I'll make it available on barbobuda.com. But I'm thinking about ways. So be patient with me as I explore how to do that. All right.

All right. I've got a few things. We've got Ryan Moody coming with the Explosive Seminar. He's coming August 10th. It's our gym. That's open for anybody. We've got Justin Thacker coming for the Weightlifting Seminar September 28th and 9th um like i mentioned we got the weightlifting club started now the first weightlifting club in mississippi so if you want some more information on that uh contact us and

then lastly uh personal program design whether you're in the jackson area for personal coaching or um anywhere we can do online coaching just email uh CrossFit2717 at gmail.com. And our website is CrossFit2717.com. So check us out there. Excellent. All right. All right. Make sure if you enjoy this podcast, head over to iTunes.

Give us five stars. Leave a comment. Make it cool. Make sure to go to Facebook and like us there. Like us everywhere. Follow us on Twitter. And make sure to, oh, yeah, we're now using, what's that thing called? Vine, which is super cool.

That's the thing I spend all my day on. Vine is cool, man. Vine's got a lot of potential. I'm addicted to Vine, but you can follow Barbell Shrug Podcast. So that's just at Barbell Shrug Podcast. If you go to your iPhone download the Vine app super cool we're going to post

short six second videos all the time I know all of us are on there personally as well so you'll be able to find us I'm posting about

a video a day but yeah follow us on that Instagram all that stuff so yay yay alright thanks Mike

see you next time