Barbell Shrugged - 71- How To Build A CrossFit Garage and Home Gym w/Mike McGoldrick

Episode Date: July 17, 2013

Do you want to have your own garage gym? Are you wondering exactly what you'll need and how to get started? To discover how to build a well rounded garage gym, this episode of the Barbell Shrugged podcast we traveled to South Central regional champion Mike McGoldrick's house to see how he did it. You'll learn what is essential in creating a great garage gym, and how to do it without going broke.

This week on Barbell Shrug, we visit Mike McGoldrick at his home to hang out in his garage gym and talk about how he built it. These bitches ain't walking. Is that off the new Jay-Z album? It's the new Jay Diddy. Jay Diddy. And P-Fuzz. Hello, this is Mike Bledsoe here with Barbell Shrug. Doug Larson and I have traveled with CTP down to fabulous Mississippi

to visit Mike McGoldrick. OB. Mike McGoldrick has basically turned one of his garages into a training facility. So we're going to be talking about how to make your own garage gym. We submitted a bunch of questions. We didn't submit a bunch of questions. We submitted a question on Facebook asking if you have any questions in regard to garage gyms. And we got a bunch of questions. We submitted a question on Facebook asking if you have any questions in regard to garage gems,

and we got a ton of responses. And what we're going to do is we're going to attempt to answer most of these, and we're going to save a lot of them for the end of the show, just so you know. First, make sure to go to barbellshrug.com, sign up for the newsletter. And obviously, if you followed us on Facebook,

you would have seen that we were going to film this show, and you would have been able to submit your own question. But if you didn't followed us on Facebook, you would have seen that we were going to film this show, and you would have been able to submit your own question. But if you didn't like us on Facebook, screw you. So, sorry about that. Episode, what are we on, 71? 71, yeah. Uh-oh. Yeah.

So, we're going to talk about the garage gym, and you, like, McGoldrick is now going to be going to the CrossFit Games. So he's like, I've got to get serious. So I'm going to stop training in gyms so much and train at my house. I'd imagine a big part of that is, like, you train at Faction once a day, and that's cool. But if you're training doubles and triples, you can't. It's 45 minutes to Faction. You can't travel that three times a day. So you had to just make your own facility. Yep. And, um, you know,

just having the flexibility of being able to train whenever I want to, without having to call you guys up or see who's going to be there. And, um, I mean, no gym really, unless you own it, is that flexible? Yeah. Factions hours really aren't built around people training three times a day. Yeah. We're open before and after work, middle of the day, not so much really. We have a noon class, but that's like a more recent thing. You could do it, but you'd have to depend solely on faction schedule. It's open three different times. We have expanded our hours over the years,

but still, if you're training three times a day, it's not good. So tell us a little bit about your gym and kind of what you envisioned and kind of what it turned out to be. Well, a dream of mine was to always have a home gym at this scale. I mean, nothing like this. I never dreamed of having this much. But, you know, I'd always pictured having, you know, space to have a car in my garage with a workbench and then maybe like a pull-up rig hanging from the ceiling with a barbell and a squat rack. But we found this house that actually had an entirely separate two-car garage

that is at the other end of the house. So we, like, went nuts and bought the house. So if you want a garage gym, you have to buy a new house with two garages. No, not the case. But we, I mean, it was just perfect. There's just, the house for the size of what it is, you won't find another one that's got an entirely separate two-car garage. This garage was actually an add-on after the house was built.

The previous owner, I think she was going to, she had some extra family move in, and she was going to try and turn it into like some living space. And just never did. So it's just a garage, a whole separate one sitting on the other side of the house. And, uh, when we saw it, we were like, Oh crap. Yeah. We can turn that into a whole gym. Having two garages is perfect for you. You got your shop where you can do a lot of your woodwork and stuff. You built a ton of stuff that in your house, you built new tables and like little end

tables and all kinds of other stuff too. And then stuff in your gym as well. Yep, yep. Everything worked out. And we can still fit a car in there, too. So we are actually using the garage for one car. That's about it. You talking about here or the other one? No, no, no, the other one.

Who gets to park the car in the garage? Randy does because I have a big truck. You can park a car in here, though. Just move some of the stuff out of the way. Oh, we could, yeah, yeah. We've got plenty of room. No need to, I guess. No interest in putting a car in here. This isn't a garage.

This is a gym. Okay. I like it. Yeah, so that works out pretty well that you happen to be pretty good at woodworking. Like, you made that sweet box right there, which is pretty novel. It can fold, like, a couple different ways.

How many different heights do you have on it? Yeah, that's... I saw the picture of it online. I haven't found plans for it. I might make some. And I'm sure there's a couple of companies that have started making them. But it's like a four-sided box. I mean, it's a four... It's got four different dimensions to jump on sorry there's more than four sides um it's a 36 inch a 30 a 24 and an 18 and you can flip it whichever way you want um all with i think it it was like um a piece of four by eight plywood and then a four by four piece of plywood so not that much lumber just um just got to be able to. You just got to have something that you can cut the plywood straight.

But it's pretty easy to make. It's just, you know, cut the wood straight and nail it in. Yeah. Aside from being super heavy, which might be kind of a pain in the ass at a big gym, you've got a haul box, you know, 40 yards across the room, it's pretty awesome to have. Yeah, you know, in a regular gym setting, it's probably not ideal. But in here, we only need one, and there's not five people jumping at one time. So, you know, my girlfriend and I, we share it.

You know, I mean, if you want, it flips down. You can see on the side, the largest side that flips down, that's the 24-inch side. So two or three people could jump on that at once. It is heavy to move around, but like I said, I'm not using it every day. So moving it once or twice a week is not a big deal. Yeah, and if you're listening to this podcast, you might want to tune in to the video because there's going to be a lot of footage for this particular episode looking at Mike's gym and some of the things that he did that was pretty unique

to work around some issues you might have. So the fortunate thing for Mike is he's really handy. When I envision a gym for myself, I'm like squat rack, bar bumpers, and a set of rings. And then when I look at my ceiling, I'm like, how am I going to do the rings? I have no idea because I am the opposite of handy. So I'm, in my opinion, I'm like, I'll just buy everything. But with you, you were like, well, I think I'll just build this thing. And I'm going, why don't you just buy that and then have it shipped to your house? Like, to me, it just seems like a big waste of time to build it. But for you, I think you might get a little bit of pleasure out of making that stuff. You built a lot of things. What have you built in here? Oh, absolutely. I built the box.

I put up the handstand push-up support. Now, I did that because you see most gyms have, like, whiteboard or they just slap a piece of plywood on the wall, and that wears out over time. We actually put, like, two-by-six supports behind it into the studs. So, like, I mean, you could run up and drop kick it, and it's not going to do anything. Have you tried that? No, I haven't. When, when the games are over, can I try it after this episode?

Yeah, absolutely. I got, I got some padding there for you. I'll need that. Um, you created the window of opportunity. I did. I built a window of opportunity. Oh yeah. Check that out. Everyone should have their own clever. You texted me a picture the other day. I mean, I haven't built anything extraordinary yet. like the box and the parallettes. You know, certain things I didn't want to build because of how much I use them, like the squat rack and pull-up rigs. I don't really want to build that because I'm swinging my body off that. So I wanted something pretty sturdy.

And Rogue, I mean, this is a Rogue rig. Like, for the money, it's absolutely worth it because I can always take this down or I can add on to it. It's not specially made for me, but I can take it down, like I said, and add on to it. Or if I ever move one day, like, it comes apart real easy. And you didn't go with just the squat rack. I mean, you've got the squat rack plus another six feet for that spiel bar. Yeah, I mean, actually I did. It's just a basic, it's called the W4, which is a four foot wall mount, meaning it's four feet wide. So it comes with two uprights and then two six foot wall supports. And then from there, I just bought another bar so I could kind of throw into the,

into the corner and have a spot for my muscle ups. Right. And that's something I wouldn't do in my garage because I use mine to park vehicles in as well. And I personally would want to go with something like just movable X stands. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, they have so many options. One of the coolest, if you're limited on space, one of the coolest things I saw was the yokes that they have now. Some of them have extensions or attachments you can put on

that have a pull-up bar on it. So you just leave the weights on the bottom of the yoke, and then you can do your pull-ups. So that's like a – I think that's a – that's like the middle of the three options you have for a yoke. You get a taller one. You can get a taller one, scoot that section up, and it'll have a pull-up bar on it and do pull-ups on it.

So, I mean – Oh, yeah, that's perfect. And then it's a squat rack. I mean, it's a sled. It's like so many things in one. Super convenient, you know, so like but like, you know, a lot of this is overkill than for what someone who's just trying to maintain fitness training once a day. But I'm in here two or three times a day, you know, six days a week. Like I wanted everything. So you also got some stuff that a lot of gyms don't have, like adjustable dumbbells. Do you ever use those? Yes, I do. I didn't necessarily want an entire rack of dumbbells, so I actually bought those from you guys. It was an extra set you had. They're power racks. They work fine for doing

dumbbell cleans or dumbbell thrusters. Like I said, I'm only using them once or twice a week, so that was a much better option than buying a full set of dumbbells. Yeah, power blocks are nice to have, but you can't use them in a class setting so much. But if you're training on your own for like a home gym, like when I get my own home gym, I'm definitely going to get a set of power blocks. Yeah, way better than having a whole rack because, I mean, it just doesn't take up any space. And, like, I snatch with them and stuff. Like, you can throw them around. Like, they're plenty sturdy.

They're fine. It doesn't look like it, but they are. Yeah, we were pretty lucky that we ended up having two of those for almost nothing. We almost got them for free. Yeah. Um, we actually, uh, funny story. We almost had three of them and then someone basically stole it from us right before we went to go pick them up. Oh, that's right. Wasn't someone in there taking stuff? Yeah. We had bought those from a business that had gone out of business. And right before we went to go pick them up, uh, we were, we were, we were like out looking at the business from a distance and the old employees had heard that we had bought all this stuff and they went there to

collect all everything before we got to go inside to see what was actually in there. And they took one of the sets of power blocks. We, uh, we called the CEO and he was like, they're not supposed to be there right now. So we went over there and we're like,

Oh, thanks for opening it up for us guys. And they were like, son of a bitch. They were super pissed that it got caught. It was shady. I thought we were about to throw down. I was like,

man, these guys are, you could tell they were not happy that we had just gotten over that. My dumbbells. Yeah.

Quick note on that. Yeah, I think we scored between $20,000 and $30,000 of equipment for $500. $500.

And the only reason And you sold those to me? Hey, hey, I'm not a businessman all right obviously you are oh wait i am a business you are a businessman what am i saying yes i tricked you see oh man it's called profit no but i will refer you to the last episode where we talked about business adding to our credibility. Yeah. The, uh,

you know, it was really fortunate, but I think that he actually gave us that deal, um, at such a good price because I think there was some other things going on and he was talking to some other people that had just pissed him off. All right. And he was like,

that was his way of saying, you know, F you to some other people. And we just happened to be his way of saying, you know, F you to some other people. And we just happened to be nice. You know, the interaction we had with the guy was very, you know, cordial and non-confrontational. I think there were some other interactions he had with some other gyms in the area where they didn't get along nearly as well. So being nice can go a long way. Read read what's the name of that book how to win friends and influence people yep it works it was a good book uh so you got some chalkboard

paint too that's that's a must-have in a garage gym yeah you can buy that stuff at lowe's um it's like 20 bucks a can or something i can't remember exactly but 16 bucks a quart yeah i used two of the small courts two of them and i doubled it up and like it's it was plenty how many did you do one or two coats um two cans two coats two coats yeah okay um you know it took me a couple hours to throw it up and you can just have fun with it write stuff up there and i don't want whiteboard because it it just gets dirty and it falls apart after a while starts warping and oh. Oh, yeah. This looks good. And you've named your gym.

I did. Manifest Fitness. It's legit. Thank you. I really like that name. Thank you. I like how you got it chalked up there, too. The Shepherd actually drew that.

He came out last Saturday. Yeah. Very nice. Yeah. Time. Want to hit some questions? Let's do it. I think that's the most interesting part of the whole day.

Yeah, probably. How to sell the idea to the wife. You're not married, so. I'm not, but I have a girlfriend. Don't tell everybody that. I'm not even in a good position to talk about this because she trains, too. So I didn't have to sell her anything. She was like, can I split it with you?

That's perfect. You're in the ideal setting there. I think as long as you can convince the wife that she can still park her vehicle in the garage, that's the way into that. I know that if you make it where your wife has to park outside, that's where you're going to hit some problems, I know, I know that if you, if you put, if you make it where your wife has to park outside there, that's where you're going to hit some, some problems. I think, you know, that and talk about how much more time you'll spend at home. Whereas you get off work, you get to come, you come straight home to her needs.

Nice. Yeah. I mean, you're doing it, you're doing it for her. Make it about, it's all about her. And, uh, so you're a great guy. You're getting off work you know either what was that all right anyways uh so either either you say you train in the morning you know you get up early you're out the door and then you don't have to go to the gym after work you know you've already

got your training done and you can save time to go to work or if you train after work you get off work you come home and you train and you know you save an hour and a half from having to drive to and from a gym or that and you might save money in the long run oh you definitely will like it's you know most most memberships now are 200 plus yep um you know you can pretty much build a gym for a couple grand so just don't tell people that all of our members will start building their own facilities in the garages we'll have no. Not everyone has two two-car garages. That's right. Let's see. Next question. What kind of things can you do to compensate for low ceiling? Things like wall ball, muscle-ups are impossible for me in my garage. Well, let's look at... You got the most legit answer out there. Yeah, look at that. Your ceiling is incredible.

My ceilings are actually like medium height. Like I think they're just under 10 feet, but they're still not high enough to do things like muscle ups or bar muscle ups. You can't press out on anything. Um, so we cut out the drywall. Um, now I wouldn't recommend you doing that yourself. Have someone come out and take a look at it structurally and see what they can remove. But, but really all we did was box this out and hang the rings two or three feet higher. I think I measured the height of where to hang the rings at 12 feet because that's what most of the wall mount rigs are, like what you have at Faction. Oh, what you might see at the Games.

Yeah, well, the Games was 15, but that wasn't an option here. But 12 is what I did, and it's plenty of space. Yeah. You did that yourself, um, it's plenty of space. I mean, yeah, but, uh, you know, that yourself or you had someone come help you. Uh, I had some guys come out and help me cut out the, do the boxing out like professional contractors or you just had some friends that knew how to do it. No, some, well, I didn't hire a company. It's a guy who lives around the corner who owns his own business and he just came over on his own time and helped me with it. Oh, that's great.

Yeah, kind of did it on the side. How did you figure out how to lay this out? What made you decide to stick this in this corner? I mean, did you sit and analyze it and try to save space? Hell yeah. Okay. I mean, that's what I do. Before I can do anything, like build anything, I have to draw it.

Did you put it in CAD? Yes, I did. It was definitely in AutoCAD. McG's a nerd. I had to sketch it up. I wanted to utilize as much space as possible, but also get as many pieces of equipment in here as possible. That's key for building a gym.

A computer-drafted model is essential. Absolutely. No, I mean, that's just how... I did mine on notebook paper. Mine's a business. I mean, i drew everything i drew like where the mops were gonna go on the wall like everything and uh it just helps me lay things out to see better because rogue has so many options online on little rigs yeah that's where i drew them and uh um so what was the, where were we at?

Sorry, I got distracted. How you decide that? How'd you plan the layout? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I started with like the main things I need to do. Like what's the most important thing to have? Like a squat rack and pull-ups. Right.

Right. So I was like, all right, where's the rig going to go? And I just started off with the corner. Then I thought about, all right, what little additions do I want? I want to be able to do like ring dips on it. So I thought, okay, well, I'll need an extended rig. So I had the wall mount. You'll need the six feet. Right. I want to do bar muscle ups too. So I looked at areas about hanging a bar and I thought, no, like the more simple I can do it, like keep it the better. So I saw that Rogue had the spiel bar that

literally just goes on the side of this. And I actually have never seen any rigs set up like this in a corner. So I actually called and asked them if I could do this. And they're like, I mean, sure. It's all compatible. You can do whatever you want. Yeah. So. And how did you bolt that in the ground?

Did you like put a platform down or you just go right in the concrete? The rig. The rig. Yeah. Yes. Hammer drilled into the concrete. Okay concrete anchors cool yeah so i mean me and two two of us put this up it was really easy yeah um and then the you know i just kind of added as i went like a lot of stuff i already had i already had some weights and bumpers and um i mean some barbells and the rower and the airdyne. And, you know, that's actually the expensive stuff. Yeah.

Yeah, the machines are. You got some iron? Yeah, yeah, the iron's cheap. You know, you can probably find people trying to give that stuff away. In Memphis, we pretty much were trying to give it away. It might be harder to come by in other towns, Mike. It just seems like we were trying to get rid of it the yoke i bought because i needed a sled i needed another squat rack and i'll you

know the yoke as well so um i was gonna get an addition on it where you can do pull-ups on it but i didn't really have a knee we have like six pull-up bars here so yeah um how your neighbor's gonna know how strong you are if you don't front squat in the driveway i was walking i had 600 pounds on it the other day doing a workout oh yeah i was walking up down the street and um there's a bunch of construction workers out here working on houses and they were like they talk to you no they never talked to me no one stopped by and said hi yet oh really yeah i'm out here every day garage open well people are fucking intimidated man there's nothing intimidating about me on an airdyne yeah yeah there is because most people don't exercise at all and then you got you like one of the fittest people in the world like just going nuts with your shirt off i'm sure they're

like you're probably way more intimidating than you think you are because when you're airdyne you always get on the ground and roll around like you're dying afterwards. They're probably like, did you see that guy? I'm Diablo. That's right. All right, what do we got next? Lifting platform. Construction, best materials, styles, and their benefits. Weighted frame or bolted to the floor. If you look around this room right here, there's no platform at all.

You can do it all on the rubber. Do you miss not having a wooden platform at all? No, not at all you do it all on the rubber um do you miss not having like a wooden platform at all no not at all um the flat rubber i bought separately than what's textured here it's a little bit more expensive behind the individual pieces but it works just fine i mean right um i'm not an olympic weightlifter i'm you know i don't do it every single day right but i do lift heavy a lot and when it comes time to find the one rms and stuff like that like this works perfectly fine for me um it's no different from the way it used to be at the gym and i've lifted on platforms like you guys had some of

those platforms at the gym and like i mean it really is no difference to me yeah i actually find myself not lift sometimes i lift on rubber sometimes i lift on platforms yeah i probably at my own like if i ever do a garage gym at my house, which I'm sure I'll do eventually, I don't foresee putting a platform in there because it just, it takes up a lot of space. I mean, unless you build it somehow flush into the ground with everything, having the wood. Right.

It's just more headache than needed, you know. Who knows? Maybe a year from now, I'll have, like, four platforms in one room. Yeah. Yeah. And I'll be taking back what I'm saying now now you definitely don't need it in the garage i like lifting on the platform at the gym because it's like this designated space where i know nobody's going to be within a certain amount of feet from me yeah but get out of my way that's right leave

me alone i mean if you're if you're just weightlifting in a garage and you're never putting a car in it sure but if you're trying to do CrossFit and have space for other stuff, then no, it's not really ideal. Rubber matting. DIY versus pre-made, what is better to buy and what is better to make yourself? I think we kind of touched on that a little bit. You made your own box for jumping on. You're building your own jerk box.

Yes, I'm building my own jerk box. And this goes back to if you're handy or not, if you have the tools. You will never catch me if I attempt that. If you've never even built a box, I wouldn't recommend trying to build your own jerk blocks. Because one, I mean, they need to be strong and sturdy and safe. And if you don't have any background in that or any experience, you're probably spending as much money ordering them. I've gone through jerk blocks before, and i've seen other people build them yeah and not only does it have to be extremely durable like don't use wood screws use lag screws

all the way around yeah but the other thing is is it also the precision necessary to have to build something that you have to be able to move around so it has to be like yeah just as precise as it is durable which it's hard to accomplish both of those things. Yeah. Especially with something you're going to take apart and then put back together and take apart again and put back together again. And drop 300 pounds on repeatedly. And each section is going to change spots in the order and all that.

Like have all that put in place where it's going to work every time and last for years is, is probably, it's probably tough. I mean, look, if you like, if you're on an extremely tight budget,

um, like I had to pull from blocks the other day. Use rocks. I just stacked up iron plates and pulled from them. Right. And then when I got the weight overhead, I just walked forward and then dropped it. So, I mean, there's makeshift ways to do it. Now, jerk blocks, you probably don't want to do that.

You have like six feet of plates. Someone's going to die tomorrow. I heard it on the podcast. It was totally sick. For pulling, yeah's there's ways to work around it but jerk blocks i i haven't seen many options other than uh either building your own or just spending the money and like there's a ton of places to buy them online now does rogue have any any scoops that are adjustable that go on the rigs that you can drop onto uh i don't even know we used to have not that i love i used to have those growing up that that were adjustable

that went on like a really half you could drop on yeah something you could drop on they're big they're big we call we call them scoops i don't know what they're called but huh um they're about they're super heavy they're about about this wide and about this long and they have a little bit of a divot and and we could just put them on our half rack not like a rogue drop the plates on it the bumpers hit it yeah the bar doesn't hit it yeah they drop the bumpers on it yeah say tear up the bar huh no i've never seen that cool i'll find a picture of it and i'll put it on oh is it like a plate it's a bit it's a big metal plate that sticks out i've seen a picture of that somewhere but yeah i don't think rogue has this rogue you must make this i'll try to get a picture from mark's gym and i'll edit it into yeah dude if i could attach something to a

rig even say if it was inside i don't know somehow where i could do jerks and it was detachable that would be a game changer for sure because right now we have big giant blocks that we have to like move around and the girls have a hard time moving around yeah what are the scoops called that that the bar sits on that we have that we tie the bands to and whatnot though you can do rack pulls from it you can't really drop on you can't drop on it they're good for like rack pulls but you yeah you're not gonna you don't want to drop a good bar it's probably just a safety rack i mean it's just a removable safety rack i think i think that might be what it's basically what it is i don't know what the actual name is on rogue's site, though. You got a computer in front of you. I know.

I'm taking show notes. Oh, is that what you're doing? Did you think I was just surfing the web? Next question. All right, we'll take a break real quick. Oh, before we go, I want to let the world know that I am friends with Adele Bagzik. Later, buddy. Now they know.

Hey, guys. This is Rich Froning, and you're listening to Barbell Shrugs. For the video version, go to fitter.tv. Two, one, shrug time. Da-do. Welcome back to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Mike Bledsoe here at McGoldrick's. I almost want to say McGoldrick's cabin.

We're not at the cabin right now. We're at his. It felt like we had to drive so far. It felt like we were at your cabin. Doug Larson came down. CTP is obviously here filming again. And I want to bring this up real quick because it is extremely pertinent since we're talking about garage gyms. We just launched the other day something called Movement Mastery. It's basically something, we were thinking about a problem that a lot of people have,

and especially people that have garage gyms because they don't have a coach watching them all the time. And also the other problem might be that you're a coach and maybe you're the best guy in the gym and you need some help maybe analyzing some lifts with maybe some of your clients and stuff like that. So we created a solution to that problem, which is we're calling it Movement Mastery, which is a program that we put together that basically takes a lot of the technique-wad stuff that we've done and it packages it together and you'll get access to a page on barbellstrug.com where it categorizes all the movements that we go over in technique wads and there's actually a progression in there as well. It's listed in progression so it's easy to find.

I think the thing that makes the program so valuable is you get access to a secret Facebook group. It's secret. It's secret. It's a secret Facebook group if you join the program, and you'll get access to that group and can post videos of your technique or the technique of say somebody you're training and then Doug, myself, Chris Moore, a couple of the coaches from Faction. We've got the coaches in on this as well. What we'll do is we'll kind of tell you what drill, say you're needing help on a snatch or something like that. We see that you're having this particular problem. Not only will we just kind of tell you what your problem is, but we'll assign some drills you can do.

If we notice that something in particular isn't happening that's supposed to happen with the snatch, we'll say, hey, you should check out this video and you should do that drill every time you warm up or you should incorporate this in your training somehow or something like this. And this is a really good program. This allows you to follow any blog programming that you want.

Or if somebody is writing a program specifically for you or you're programming for yourself, you obviously might have the programming aspect handled somewhere. But what we're going to do is handle just the movement side of things. So I'm really excited about the program. Doug and I have been kind of putting it together this week mainly doug putting it together me talking about it uh he's like yep but uh yeah anything you want to add to that doug now that pretty much covers it we do the same thing with the six month muscle gain challenge guys and they've gotten a lot of value out of being able to submit videos and get very specific feedback so if you don't have a coach, then this is perfect because you can get some online coaching for relatively cheap.

It's $99 for, for three months in that program. The movement library will be constantly updated. We just filmed a ton of mobility videos the other day. And that's the next thing that I'm going to put in the movement library. So right now everyone emails me and they say, Oh, I wish you guys had a video on this. And I'd be like, well, we have like four videos on that. So they're just, they're not easy enough to find on the blog because you have to sift through one video at a time. So it's just nice to have everything categorized on one single page where it says snatch video, technical odd one, two, three, four, five, six on snatches and on the, on and on and on. So, uh, enough about that. I think, I think we got the, got the point. Uh, check out movement mastery. I'm so excited. I think we got the point. Check out Movement Mastery. I'm so excited, Warren.

Keep talking about it. Come on, Doug. Let me talk about it more. There's Doug's natural segue. I think it's fitter.tv. You need to butter that up better. It's fitter.tv slash products slash movement, I believe, is the page if you want to check that out. There's a little video on there that explains it.

All right, more questions. All right. Doug, you picked this question out. I thought it was really good. Yeah. It was the, if you could purchase three things, basically what would the first three items be? If you were going to do a garage gym and you could only purchase three,

what would be your first three items, Mike? Airdyne. That's one. Good counter. The barbell and plates kind of is one. Yeah, like a barbell set, yeah. Okay, so Airdyne. You got to do some of the barbell without plates. Come one yeah like a barbell set yeah okay so you gotta do some of the barbell without plates come on now i'm just making sure i didn't want like clips to be one thing uh barbell plates and clips that's two and um pull up pull up Okay. First three things. How about you, Doug? Does it vary for you at all?

No, barbell bumpers is definitely the easy one. I probably wouldn't do an airdyne personally first. I'd probably go with rings and a rig. Yeah, Rogue Rig. Rogue Rig, rings, barbell set. Damn. Damn, did I steal yours? Pretty close.

What was yours? Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Rogue yours? Pretty close. Wait, what was yours? Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Rogue rig counts as a squat rack, pull-up bar. I want to use that one. I said pull-up bar. I win. What's yours?

Considering my current situation with my garage, I wouldn't do a rogue rig just because it takes up a lot of space. I would want the convenience of just some H stands. So I would go with the H stands, you know, very mobile. I also don't slam my bar into a rack like an asshole. So I know how to properly set things into a rack. I might be sending a message to some people in the gym.

I don't know. You heathen? So, yeah, you're not an animal. You're a human being. Set your rack. rack i might be sending a message to some people in the gym i don't know you heathen so uh yeah you're not an animal you're a human being set set your rack set your bar into the rack no anyways uh yeah i would do eight stands and then uh a barbell set probably works them or an elico set you know and then uh or or you could replace the works and set and buy an entire gym i'm trying to get worse and send me something i think works and set and buy an entire gym. I'm trying to get works and send me something.

I don't think works and I'd appreciate that. Not that saying is not great. They're awesome. It's my favorite barbell. Yeah. And then, uh, they're very nice barbells. Yeah.

The rings would be my last thing. So I don't know. All right. Quick, quick quiz. If you get a fourth thing, what would it be? Go parallettes.

Go an L box or whatever you want to call that. No, that's not thing, what would it be? Go. Paralettes. Go. An L-box or whatever you want to call that. No, that's not true. I just named what I saw. I don't like pressure. Personally, actually, I'd probably get a safety bar. Oh, yeah. Yeah. The guy who is going to the CrossFit Games doesn't like pressure.

That's right. This is not a good sign. Actually, speaking of barbells, what kind of barbells did you get? There's lots of variety that Rogue offers. Which ones did you pick up? Too much variety. My girlfriend's got the Rogue female bar. I think it's the Rogue bar.

I don't know. Bella bar. Bella bar, sorry. I know what bar your girlfriend has. She already had that one. Her friends actually bought her that one, so that was already here. I bought a crappy old bar from you guys um not really crappy but it's not an it's not nice by any means yeah um and then i bought the

rogue ohio bar i'm a big fan of it i do most of the weightlifting with it um it's got good good knurling feels feels nice feels pretty good i hadn't used that one it's blacked out it looks cool looking cool is the most important thing it was that's really why i bought it all right mike what else we got all right i'm looking for something good uh banded lifting platforms what kind of plates man oh plates i would i would go just bumpers all the way works on bumpers or elico you brought you bought the black ones because they were cheaper yes i did. I bought those bumpers. They have the competition plates, and then they have like the – I think those are the lower end.

Those are like the high-temp bumpers. No, the high-temp ones are made from like that rubber. Those are high-temp over there. Like the used tire ones. I don't know. You don't really – I don't feel like you see those much anymore. But I went with these just because they're extremely economical like they right you could get you i got an entire set of those for like four or five hundred bucks i think yeah with the bar and bumper you're really

gonna get what you pay for yeah like um if you buy high quality like a high price bumper it's gonna last for a long time right and here's the thing like you need high quality bumpers in a gym because people you have weightlifters using it every day like several times a day like i mean i use mine every day but not not as much as a gym would use it so way to justify being cheap mike they these may wear out quicker in a gym setting but these are these are gonna last me a very long time yeah our bumpers at our facility and i'm not gonna six times a day those are the hg rogue bumpers yeah that's right um and six times a day. Those are the HG Rogue bumpers. Yeah, that's right.

And, like, you know, the only thing I'm worried about is, like, the 10s and 15s, but I'm not going to drop from overhead like fundamentals classes do. Right. You know, like, wearing out the 10s and 15s. Yeah, that's the other thing is, like, don't put 10-pound. In my opinion, 10-pound bumpers shouldn't be dropped ever, even if you have, like, 45s and then 10s on the outside. Because 10-pound bumpers,'t be dropped ever, even if you have like 45s and then 10s on the outside. Because 10-pound bumpers, man, they just wear out so fast.

There's no way around it, really. So if there's a 10 on the outside, never drop it? No, I would put iron on there. I'd put a 10-pound iron on there. That's what belongs on there. Duh. Well, what's the bumper for then? It's for people who can't lift more than 10 pounds on each side and i don't know what it's for he's like oh i'm just messing with that

i don't know i know it's i know what you mean like if it were 100% up to me we probably wouldn't even have them well most people that aren't strong enough to like clean it and and have to drop it they're usually so timid anyways that they kind of like set it down it's the assholes who are doing like you know ghost ride the bar yeah i mean they're like into their mech on a throw and they take five steps back like that's me by the way the the thinner the plate the more likely that bar when you ghost ride it's just gonna scoot across the floor and hit your friend. So don't do that. Yeah, the good question here was the banded lifting platforms.

One of the things we've done in the past is I just go to Lowe's and I buy some like shower handles. And if you're going to do a banded, if you want to set up something to band your squats or something, you might need to do like a plywood platform. It makes it where you can screw something up and not be the end of the world. Otherwise, you're need to do like a plywood platform it makes it where you can screw something

up and not and not be the end of the world otherwise you're gonna go into concrete but uh i know that we did at chris moore's gym um and what we did i've done this a few times is build the wood platform for the squat rack and then you just bolt the wood down i know there's some squat racks like the old elite fitness rack that we have you don't need uh handles or anything extra to hook a band to it just because it's got like it's got like little uh a rack going along the bottom and you can use bands with that yeah um what about uh most crossfitters probably don't need to be doing a lot of banded stuff there's a lot of variation you're training already i feel like i've seen a couple of variations too some people stepping on the band with it connected to the bar and doing a deadlifts like that uh-huh oh yeah or using uh dumbbells from a from a squat

rack yeah like like 100 pound dumbbells if you follow my instagram or vine you've probably seen this i'm just saying that is that a no- no, no. I've actually been doing that. You'll see some creative ways to do bands. If you were following my Instagram or Vine, then you'll see that. Chris Moore did one. Me and you did one. We did one.

We did. Daily BS on it? We did a daily BS on this. Daily BS on how to set up for banded deadlifts. Oh, yeah. We did it on banded deadlifts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you wouldn't it on banded deadlifts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you wouldn't want to set up that way for squats. Yes, we did a daily BS on that.

You can go to the website and check that out. We've been using lately the, I couldn't remember what they were called before the break, but they're called safety spotter arms. Oh, yeah. We mount them, we put them upside down and all the way as close to the ground as we can get them. Yeah, put them at the bottom, and then we just tie the bands around the safety spotter arms right out of the rig. And you also need to, you can't just loop it underneath. You might have to double it or something like that because those bands will be just,

if you get to the bottom of the squat, there's going to be too much slack in it. So you got to like, I think I looped it four times the other day. Yeah, we used one of the smallest bands and then looping multiple times how'd you get hurt i was uh band banded squatting with the safety squat arms doing something unsafe here's the thing the safety bar is the least safe yeah in the gym yeah yeah right say that it's like in the strength and conditioning world if there's a the word safety attached to any piece of equipment watch out you're about to get hurt for sure a lot of people are asking about like the diy versus just buying i think it's just personal preference how handy you are i personally get zero satisfaction out of building

things um so like i'm i'm quick to buy because I know that if I'm like, I'm going to build that box, four days later I'll be standing there scratching my head and I'll just be pissed off. And I should have just gone to a website and purchased that thing. Yeah, I'm much more likely to pay for it than try to make something. One of the things I'm going to buy when I do my home gym eventually is I'm going to get the muscle driver jerk blocks, the adjustable. Those look legit.

Doug, there's a website if you can pull it up. I don't remember the name of it, but it's like a do-it-yourself home gym website, and it's got plans for like 30 different things you can use. It would be cool to reference that. What website is it? I don't remember the name of it, but they have good plans for like parallettes and simple plyo boxes and like homemade squat racks out of like four by four posts. Like really cool stuff if you're like literally on a $100 budget to build a gym.

I'll see if I can find it. How little space do you think you could get away with in a garage? Do you think you could like still park your car in here and get away with it? I mean, you could realistically get by with a quarter of the space I have in here. I mean, even if this, say everything had to fit in the rig, like I could back everything into it. I could squat. I could lift.

I mean, I could lift in it, and you could do a lot. And, you know, I'd say 12 by 12. Cool. Yeah. People are asking about different companies. I mean, we could sit and promote a company, but until one sponsors me, I'm not going to overtly say anything. Even though we've been talking about Rogue all day.

Yeah. We've already kind of done that. They're the easy choice. It's tough because Rogue does make some of the best stuff out there. Definitely. It's what's in our gym. It's what's in your garage. One person says, safety when squatting or benching alone without a squat rack. there and it's definitely you know it's what's in our gym it's what's in your your garage one

person says uh when safety when squatting or benching alone without a squat rack what do you do what do you do for squatting safely i feel like i'm giving you a softball question i don't know i mean no uh squat i just i mean if if i know that uh if it's a weight that i might miss i'm prepared to throw it off of my back and jump forward. Just drop it on the ground. Yeah. Just, I mean, use the bumpers. Squat like a weightlifter.

Who gives a shit what kind of plates they are? You should be worried about yourself anyway. So irons, you know, whatever you're squatting with doesn't matter. Like, just know that it's okay to drop it on the ground and save yourself. Yeah. If you've been lifting for a long time, front squat, back squat, either one doesn't matter. If you can't get it, you just step out and it falls on the ground yeah well i think the piece of equipment you were just mentioning too is uh whatever it was called um those safety spotter yeah we use them for the

banded we we make a piece of equipment for safety make it very unsafe but like uh you could set those up to you know close to you know just an inch or two underneath your end range of motion at the bottom. And if you get stuck at the bottom, or even if you get stuck halfway up, you just let it down nice and easy and you shouldn't do any major damage to your bar and you can just set it down in there. I know, I think we're going to try and podcast with Chris Moore in his garage next. And he's got a cool setup too, which I don't, which you could actually do here as well,

the way you have it set up, but it has really heavy duty straps. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've seen that. And so like, and that's another option. Now, if you'd like completely just, you know, drop it, yeah, you could probably mess up, you know, something in the wall, but you should never miss a weight that badly

unless you're just doing something stupid. Right, you own racket, you're just like, like a sack of bricks. Yeah, you made you're just doing something stupid. Right. You're on racket. You're just like, ah! Like a sack of bricks. Yeah, you made a mistake in loading or something. Yeah. Rogue does have a strap safety system, which is similar to what Chris Moore has. Oh, I've seen that. That looks interesting.

Cool. It's a big piece of fabric that catches the bar. All right. I think we're about ready to wrap this up. Well, I was going to tell a story about Rogue real quick. Okay. I took a picture of the gym, and after I had everything set up, I was real excited about it and sent them an email.

I was like, all my stuff's done. My dream home gym. Thank you so much for having such a cool product. Here's a picture of my home gym. And I don't know what I was expecting. I really wasn't expecting anything. I just wanted to kind of share it with them. But, uh, I still felt like mine was like special. Right. And I get people don't do this. So I get an email back and it's, um, I don't remember the lady's name, but she's

like, cool, Mike, you know, we'll put it on the website. And, um, here's the link. And it's, it's pictures of other home gyms. I go to the website and it's it's pictures of other home gems i go to the website there's like 400 pictures and mine's like the very bottom i was like oh thanks you're like oh those all look really cool yeah no i know it was pretty cool i started looking i started i started looking through some of them some of them were pretty awesome i'll bet you you put a lot of money into this thing but probably not like some people have yeah i don't even classify mine as like a a garage gym it's it's a it's a gym like it's a training center right so because people have worked with like way less space and you know they have cars and all kinds of other shit they got to put in there so i was actually fortunate to have all this extra room if you live in America, don't complain.

No, I'm not complaining. No, I'm talking about everyone else. All right, so you've got the games coming up here pretty soon. You've got a couple sponsors that you probably want to thank. Yes, I do. Who's helping you out right now? I want to start off with OPT for providing excellent programming and a great community. They've been a huge support for several years now

and just wanted to say thanks. I just recently signed with Nutraforce Sports. Check them out. They've got some awesome products, a huge, huge selection of supplements because I like to do my own individual dosing. You know, the creatine and beta alanine, depending on what type of session I just finished with. Not many other companies offer all of that. They've got, you know, whey protein, BCAAs. They've got a pre-workout, all the different aminos you can add yourself in,

which I was a big fan of. So I'm real happy to be on board with those guys. They were actually cool enough to send me a bunch of product before I made a decision. And they let me. They said, you know, we want you to try it first and make sure you're happy. So I tried it for, you know, uh, about a month and, uh, liked what I saw. So I went ahead and signed with them and, uh, very happy. They've been, they've been really cool so far. A lot of support there. Um, also picked up a food sponsorship. My first one ever

with, um, a company, uh, they're, they're Boulder brands, but you might've heard them. They're, they're Udi's and Glutino and Earth Balance. They make a bunch of gluten-free food, different options for people trying to look for different things in their diet. So if you're gluten intolerant, they make pizza crust, hot dog buns, hamburger buns. I mean, they make everything. My favorite one. You were really excited. We were inside your kitchen, and you were like, gluten-free Oreos.

Yep. I mean. Those are so good for you. It's got that magic word in it. Are they still called Oreos? No. They're like gluten-free chocolate vanilla cream cookies or something. I don't remember.

But that's made by Glutino. Are they good? See, Glutino I never really heard of. Ooty's, I'm like a huge fan because I eat like 30 sandwiches a week and was so excited when I picked them up. And then they, they were also like, Hey, we have this company or like a sister company, Glutino. And, um, they sent me some of the coupons for their product as well. And I checked it out and I was like, Holy crap, they have some really good food. Do you briefly want to justify why you eat that many sandwiches each week for people that don't know you're that are

new to the show? Cause I'm training like a session per every sandwich i eat how many how many sessions a week do you train uh right now i'm at let's say two six days on two to three times a day so you know 18 sessions a week yeah probably about 15 to 18 sessions a week you usually eat a sandwich a sandwich post-workout not every workout not every workout yeah i mean but that's pretty common for you though yeah i mean i'll eat a lot of sandwiches and um mainly just because of convenience and like i mean when you're training that much like i've got to have variance and i need calories like you it's hard to eat that clean and get that many calories in without starting to add other stuff and pretty impossible some people some people can, and gluten-free is the thing I like

because it just doesn't give me any problems with my stomach. Like if I go crush half a loaf of Wonder Bread, I can tell the difference. Like it bothers me. I'll tell you right now, if I ate as many sandwiches as McG eats a week, I would get fat because I train four to five times a week. So my training volume is probably a quarter of what his is. So don't think this is just an excuse. I can do it.

What? He's not paleo. Blasphemy. No, I mean, I'll wither up. Yeah. Now in the off season, hell yeah, I'll go right back to paleo. I believe in that for healthy lifestyle. Like that's how I feel great when I'm on that.

But when the training volume is high, like I absolutely can't do it and I'll fall apart. Yeah, for sure. All right, Doug. Got anybody else you want to talk about? Yeah. I don't want to leave anyone out. Do you need deodorant sponsorship? No.

Do I need one? No. I want to thank Body Science Compression, BSC. Sent me some cool gear lately. They make some awesome compression gear. They've actually, Ben Kelly, BK Athletics, sent me out a pair of tights that helped with my groin injury. I mean, these suckers are so tight that I had to jump to pull them on, but kept everything in nice.

Don't snatch in them. Do not snatch in them. I clipped myself pretty bad. Did you? Yeah. Immediately, I was like, these feel awesome. And then I snatched, and I was like, took them right off. Went right right back, took them off.

But everything else, they're fantastic. Took them off, applied the ice. But all their compression gear, I'm a big fan of. Their long tights, their arm sleeves, all this stuff works great. So I'm a big fan of their stuff as well. Very cool. Yeah. All right, very cool.

I'm going to talk about that Movement Mastery program again real quick. Go to fitr.tv slash products slash movement. And there's a short video there kind of explaining what's in it. Again, as Mike said earlier, the two main parts of that program is there's a private facebook group where you can submit videos and then we can give you individual specific feedback on exactly how you can improve your technique so if you don't have a coach or if your coach is really good at one aspect of crossfit but maybe not very good at another aspect across it if they have a gymnastics background or an endurance background and their weightlifting really isn't up to par that's definitely our skill is more on the weightlifting side of things. So if you're

interested in improving your weightlifting technique and you don't have a coach for that, then you can take part in that movement mastery program. Mike. That's what I want to talk about. I'm super excited about it. Yeah. Just make sure to get over to barbellshrug.com sign up for the newsletter. We got a lot of stuff going on. More and more things in the pipeline all the time. And what...

Oh, go ahead. Were you going to say something? No, go ahead. Alright, so anyways... Things are going on behind the camera I don't know what to say You're distracting me I'm easily distracted

Anyways Yeah, so make sure you get over there Follow us on Twitter At Barbell Shrugged We're on Instagram You're going to mention Mike's t-shirt? What about it? Mike has a t-shirt coming out

Mike has a t-shirt coming out You guys plug it You're coming to mention Mike's T-shirt? What about it? Mike has a T-shirt coming out. Mike has a T-shirt coming out. You guys plug it. You're coming up with it. I don't. Okay, I'll do it then. The problem is I know that it's happening. I know what it looks like, but I've been left out of all the details. Okay, we'll put a little T-shirt out there.

Busted. We're making a very cool T-shirt for Vermmin goldrick uh with a silverback gorilla on it because he reminds everyone of a silverback gorilla and that'll be coming out pretty soon so keep your eye out for that we should tell the story real quick real quick story yeah the silver the silverback thing came from uh the commercial the local newspaper wrote an article about faction string conditioning they interviewed a bunch of us. They talked to me. They talked to everybody. Made us out to be like a bunch of caveman freaks. And so the woman that wrote the article,

I guess she was in the gym one day and saw McGoldrick. Maybe she didn't even see you. I don't know. I don't know where she got half the stuff in the article from. Yeah, the article was outrageous. She was definitely looking to make

like paleo lifestyle very sensational. The article she was like, or she very sensational the article she was like or she was interviewing she's like so when you go to this cabin um how often do you stay outside and swim and i was like huh she's like you swim up the river and you catch all your food there right i was like what do you think i am yeah but in the article there's a part where she was like and he has the pecs of a silverback gorilla. Yeah, it was like, quote, unquote. I was like, bench press sucks. Yeah, I remember reading that article and being like, oh, my gosh.

I mean, if that much stuff was skewed for that one article, I wonder how much journalists just screw up things all the time. It was pretty funny. Or if that's what outside people really think of us. Yeah, they wonder like how much journalists just screw up things all the time. It was pretty funny. Or if that's what outside people really think of us. Yeah, they're like, we think... It's all totally accurate. That's what Earth people think.

I call them Earth people. Yeah. All right, guys, we have... So what? Oh, it's going to be in Barbell Shrug? Okay. Yeah, so you can, if you want to buy Nick G's t-shirt,

it'll be... Huh? Coming soon. Well, it'll be... Coming soon. Well, it should be up by next week when this posts. You can still go to the fundraiser page and email Ashley. Yeah, so this is posting up next week, so I don't know if that's even going to... Hopefully it's still up. I don't see why it wouldn't still be up. You can go to FactionSC.com and order one of those shirts,

and I think we're going to try and get them up on BarbellStrug.com. So if you go to BarbellStrug.com, click on the shop, we'll have a place in there where you can buy the McGoldrick t-shirt. I know we just had

a couple different versions of his shirt coming out and that's why I was a little confused. I did, I was fully aware we were making shirts. I promise.

All right guys, see you next week. Thanks for having me. Yep, thank you.