Barbell Shrugged - 864 - Strength and Conditioning Industry Pioneer w/ Dr. Andy Fry

Episode Date: September 16, 2026

This week on Barbell Shrugged, we welcome Dr. Andy Fry to the show. Dr. Fry is a pioneer and legend in the world of strength and conditioning and someone who helped shape my career long before this podcast existed. He served as an advisor and mentor to both me and Dr. Andy Galpin during our early years at the University of Memphis. He's one of the most impressive scientists in the industry, with approximately 300 research papers produced by him and his teams over the years, all dedicated to learning what really works to improve human performance. He's done more than almost anyone on the planet to push the industry forward. He's a true professional, an excellent scientist and educator, an overall great guy, and someone for whom I have an enormous amount of respect. If you're curious about where the science and practice of strength training started and how it has improved and evolved over the years, this episode is for you. Enjoy the show!

This week on Barbell Strug, we welcome Dr. Andy Fry to the show. Dr. Fry is a pioneer and legend in the world of strength and conditioning and someone who helped shape my career long before the podcast existed. He served as an advisor and mentor to both me and Dr. Andy Galpin during our early years at the University of Memphis. He's one of the most impressive scientists in the industry with approximately 300 research papers produced by him and his teams over the years, all dedicated to learning what really works to improve human performance.

He's done more than almost anyone on the planet to push the industry forward. He's a true professional, an excellent scientist and educator, an overall great guy, and someone for whom I have an enormous amount of respect. So if you are curious about where the science and practice of strength training started and how it has improved and evolved over the years, this episode is for you. Enjoy the show. Welcome to Barbell Strug. I'm Doug Larson here with Coach Travis Mash and Dr. Mike Lane.

And today we are honored to have Dr. Andy Frye on the show. Mike, I'm going to turn it over to you. Is it too much to call him a legend in the space? No, I think that might be underselling it. Like, this is of the formative people that have educated me and mentored me, hands down, you know, this is the guy. He is, there are three people that if they call me up and they say they need some me to help them dig a hole in the woods where they need a number two or anything else, I will show up with a shovel and I will not ask what's in the trunk. I'm taking notes, Mike, on that. Oh, I will dig a hole any day of the week.

That's just funny. I'm the only one who has to add him as a professor, right? You've had him, Doug, and so is Mike, right? Yeah, that's right. My life is just not complete. Yeah, so I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Frye real quick, but the quick backstory, me and now Dr. Andy Galpin actually met Dr. Fry at NSA when I was probably 20 years old, something like that.

I'm 42 and that was 23 years ago. And that was actually how I ended up at the University of Memphis. I still live in Memphis by meeting Dr. Frye. at NSA in Vegas and really part of that that conversation really changed like the course of my life. I live in Memphis, Tennessee now in part because of this man right here and met my wife here and started, you know, my first gym here and many, many things. So I'm honored to have you on the show, my friend. Give us your background.

Tell us who you are. You're like a real, a real scientist over here who has really shaped the course of strength and conditioning in America. So again, love having you on the show here. Tell us about yourself. Well, thanks, Doug. I appreciate it. And thanks, Mike and Travis. I can't take credit for you meeting your wife, Doug. That's all you did on your own. But those were fun times. In fact, my whole career has just been fun. So, I mean, it's amazing working in this sector and having the flexibility to do fun stuff, your whole career. And I'm still doing it. You know, I'm retired now from the University of Kansas. I was at Kansas for 18. years and prior to that I was at Memphis for 13 and that's where I met Doug and Andy and as as you guys know our facilities were not fancy and we were in old vintage 1950s unused locker rooms that we converted into a lab and you know so it was not the kind of a it didn't look pretty but it was real effective and a lot of stuff went on there and even the train facility that we cobbled together in that old garage space and then we expand it and next thing you know we've got multiple platforms then we have teams going to collegiate nationals and yeah i mean it just uh it

it evolved over time and that is you know it's a frustration in that it takes that long for that to happen but it's a blessing that you know you had people around you that it did happen and um and then coming to Kansas was awesome because my wife, as some of you guys know, Mary, she also was a professor, and she just retired her area of sports psychology. Well, we both got positions here at Kansas. And at first I was department chair, and I did that for a term, and I really missed the research side of things. And so I went back to the lab. And the last five years of my career, I was part of the Wussai Human Performance Alliance, which was amazing funding to study sport performance,

human performance, and that's the focus. And it's an organization that I'm not involved directly with them since I've retired, but they have substantial funding, they have a focus on sport and human performance. And as a lot of people know, there's not a lot of funding for that time type of work and there's a lot of interest but but we had we had the facility Mike when he studied with me it was just the the space nobody wanted and then we were able to renovate it and

convert it and yeah it was it was really a fantastic time and we had a long leash and and so we still Travis I still I've got data sets that I've got to finish analyzing. We did a project with Derek Krasse. And, you know, of course he runs, you know, has DC blocks. And we did a little project. And he's still very patiently waiting for the data. We've got to crunch. But that's fun stuff. How many how many papers have you put out over your career? Well, it's funny you asked me, because I just had to send out my Vita this morning. I don't know, it's 300 or 330 or something. and then, and then, but you know, but let me, let me say this.

The reason is because of the people around you, 100%, 100%. And, you know, if it's just a person by themselves and because putting out a paper is such a, I mean, it's a lot of work and people don't realize it unless until they do it. And, you know, or people going through and doing a thesis or a dissertation. or something of that nature, that just takes a lot of work to do it well. And I've been really blessed to have people around me that eventually my role became, how can I facilitate it for them? And so you're all part of a team and the productivity, you know,

with two people instead of one, your productivity, I think, more than doubles. You get three, you get four, you get five. You get a substantial group. And it's infectious. And it, you know, the, I don't know, I just had a blast. I know it's, as a student, it's stressful just because, I mean, pressure's on you and grades and deadlines and everything. But I'm real excited when I see where people have gone, like you have Doug and Mike and

others out there. So I forget what the question was, but. How many papers? you put out you. When I think about like your research, like my, my brain automatically jumps to the two-week one-RM over-training study. That's like that's like one of the ones that's like anchored in my mind for like cool research that you've done. Can you briefly tell people about that specific experiment or study? Well, I'll do, I'll back up a little further. Because that line of research started when I was in my doctoral studies. And so I studied with Bill

Kramer. I was his first doctoral student. And at the time, he had just moved to University Connecticut. So I spent one year with him there, and then he moved to Penn State, and I went with him because he was the person I wanted to work with. And during my time there, you know, I forget what the exact initial event was. But the interest in overtraining came from my own experience. My sport in high school and college, my primary sport was wrestling. And I'd love to say my collegiate career ended on a high note. And I did fine, but I didn't, I kind of landed with a dud at the end. And over the years, I've wondered, okay, what happened? And at the time, that's when this whole concept of overtraining started kind of becoming a bigger issue.

And there was a seminal paper that Mike Stone put out. And I'm trying to remember where he was. He might have been at Appalachian State at the time. But that got me thinking about it. And I thought, I wonder if I might have been overtrained at the time. A quick break in the action here to let you know that I've just recently chosen to get back into coaching. And I specifically am looking to coach Masters, Jiu-Jitsu athletes, just like myself.

I've been doing jujitsu for 22 years and strength and conditioning for 30 years. I'm a black belt, of course, and I live that life. I understand exactly what goes into it. I understand what's like to run a family, do jiu-jitsu, try to tie strength and conditioning into it all and all of the ups and downs that come with it from joint pain to busy schedules, to travel, and all the things. So if you are a master's jujitsu athlete and you're looking for some support, I'm happy to give it.

You can DM me on Instagram at Douglas E. Larson. or you can email me, Doug at barbell shrug.com. Happy to help. Back to the show. I wonder if I might have been overtrained at the time. In retrospect, now, after my career, I'm not sure I was necessarily overtrained. I think there were some other factors going on. But that's what got me interested in it.

And so there was a little paper that we put out in the Strength Conditioning Journal on how overtraining is probably different if you're talking in anaerobic activity. than it is where mostly over-training research was, which was and is in endurance sports. And you think of the classic, you know, the marathoner or the, you know, a distance runner, the volume of work these athletes put in is insane. I mean, the mileage.

And about that time, those gentlemen named Manfred Lehman, who has since passed away, tragically. But he was out of the University of Ulm in Germany. He's a cardiologist, but he had quite a team around him, and he was doing some really seminal work on overtraining with endurance athletes. And I think that was a classic paper where he took high-level middle distance runners and had them do some insane volume increasing each week over four weeks. And he was looking at things such as beta receptors. And at the time, you had to look at beta receptors in the red blood cells. And so, I mean, it was pretty cutting edge and they drove these runners down.

And in personal communications with them, you know, he said there were some of their subjects that didn't return to their normal levels for the subsequent year. And he said he would never repeat that study, which is one point. studying over training is insanely difficult because it's almost impossible to catch the athlete that's actually doing it. Because, I mean, you don't know where they started from. You don't know exactly the training program. They're not part of a study. You see them after something that's happened.

And there's some interesting retrospective case studies that are valuable. But, and if you try to simulate it in the lab, which gets to your question, Doug, that's hard because who's going to volunteer to do this? I mean, that it's like, that's a, Mike, Mike would do this. And were you in one of those studies, Doug? Were you in? No, I was not, I was not in it. Yeah, I mean, it really is volunteering to get your ass kicked is what you're, what you're raising your hand to do. Which I find it interesting. It's like, that in itself is like, what is the psychological or the mental makeup or the attitude of the person who they have to be well trained. Well, you can't do this with like the

sport teams at your university because, I mean, the coach would come after you, you know, with a hatchet because you're messing, you're doing bad training. And we've dealt with this when we've tried to publish papers. Reviewers have said, this is not a good training program. And it's like, no kidding, it's not a good training program. It's a bad training program. Now, there's gradations of overtraining. And so there can be stressful training that's done all the time. And it's done on purpose lots of times. Like Travis, the high volume phase.

You may have a block where you are, yeah, we're going to put in a lot of volume. And, you know, in the sport of weightlifting and there's other sports, you can go compete at that time. you just know that your performance is going to be off. And, you know, probably the best example of that is collegiate swimmers. During the Christmas break, they go off and they do some insanely high volume training. At the University of Kansas, the women's team goes south somewhere for like 10 days. They do insane volume.

And they'll compete, you know, right afterwards. And everybody's time is terrible. but they know where they are because they're aiming for down the road. And sports like swimming or weightlifting, you can aim for a target date. And so it's like, I'm not too worried about out here. I want to be here when it comes to the national championship or the qualifying meet, what have you. But in a team sport, that's a little different. You know, most teams aren't good enough where they can just save it for their last game.

You got to get to that last game. Yeah, they got to get there. And so, you know, I realize there are some team, even though a coach won't admit it, we might back off a little bit. Or we might not take next week's opponent quite as seriously, but you run the risk of, yeah, be careful, though, because it may bite you because they. So team sports are a little different. But that gets back again to your question, Doug, that. That series of studies, we had a model that we created that was sometimes we looked at high volumes of training. This was kind of what you were talking about earlier, Travis, volume or intensity because they're both issues.

And some of the first studies we did were out at the Olympic Training Center with the junior national squad. And the coach was at the time was John Thrush. and I love John. He was tremendous because he was part of the research team. He designed the training during these camps. And we worked with the sports science group out there. And the principal investigator was Mike Stone. But Bill Kramer was involved. And it was quite a quite a team. But that was looking at a week of three to four training sessions per day and with the junior national squad. one year it was just a little over a week, pre and post testing around the week. The following year was interesting because it was four or five weeks, starting with that high volume week and then tapering off into actual competitions, which is a different issue. How much of a taper do you need? One week, three weeks, people that compete a lot, they would be in a taper all the time

as opposed to training. But the other end of the spectrum came from a discussion, and I remember. remember, we were sitting in the whirlpool, I think, at the time. So this would have been back 1990 or, I don't know, somewhere around there. And we're out of the training center, and one of the athletes was discussing a training program that their coach had them do that was tons of heavy singles. And I think it was out of Bulgaria. And it's you're hard pressed to find the actual source of this, except we know that some countries had a tendency to do lots of heavy singles and lots heavy singles all the time.

Bulgaria, yeah. The Bulgarian method is famous at this point, yes. Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, one of the questions, I remember at one time, I'm digressing a little here, but how come the Russians and the Bulgarians, who were the two powers at the time, you know, the Bulgarians go up to Max all the time, and the Russians don't go up to Max, etc. etc. Well, if you really dissected those two training programs, they weren't really that

different because one was basing it on competition maxes and one was basing it on whatever the max was for the day. Daily maxes. That's what people don't understand. Exactly. And that's a, that's a key differentiator that gets lost. But we took that protocol and we had several studies that we did, the first one we did, one is when I was still a doc student, it was pilot work. well, let's do a bunch of heavy singles. And let's see how much we can get away with before your 1RM starts coming down. Because if it's really over-training, that means performance is impaired. I may have really stressful training, but if it's not hurting my performance,

it might not be good training, it may not be the best training, but I'm not over-trained. And there's kind of a fuzzy area there in the middle. Our work also, we didn't do free weights. We eventually did, but we did a simulated squat in this machine-type apparatus because we didn't want the gross movement patterns to change because we know, well, when you squat, you know, maybe I'm bending forward more, using more hip today versus, you know, you can adjust your technique. We wanted to control that.

So that gets me to study that you were talking about, Doug, where we did a number of them where we had a protocol where every single day you had to do 10 maximum singles in this squat simulating machine. And if you missed a rep, it didn't count as your 10 and we brought your way down. So it was like doing one rep max every day and then hang there, hang there, and you'd miss on somewhere. and there's, and so the volume is only after a warm-up, it's only 10 reps. What kind of volume is that? But the kicker is, it's 10 really badass reps. You've got to have your head on, great. And, you know, the subject's got really good at grinding through those slow, slow ones.

A beginner can't grind through those slow ones, either mentally or physiologically or, you know, motor unit, recruitment, whatever. But, and it's hard. It's hard mentally. And that's where we look, you know, we're looking at the hormonal responses. We're looking at the catecholamine, your epinephrine response. And my, now I'm talking up Mike's lane, because we talked about a lot of that while you, while you were here.

We started looking at beta receptors, which are where epinephrine go, beta two receptors in skeletal muscles, where they go. And that was tricky trying to look at that stuff. But we saw that that kind of training drove down beta receptors in the muscle. And your body is cranking up the epinephrine. It's kind of like, come on, let's go. But the receptors are going this way. And is going down.

And so it's tough because then you don't want to injure people. That's the other thing. You don't want people to be injured because that's not what we're studying. We're not studying an injury model. We're studying where my physiology is messed up or performance is off. And it takes me too long to recover. And I've screwed it up for the next meet. And if I'm a team sport athlete, I've probably, I can kiss off this season if I really have

overtrained to that extent. That's pretty extreme. but those are fun studies to do but those are a bear. Yeah. I actually did remember roughly the methods that you mentioned, the 10 per day for two weeks. You got a 141RMs over a two-work period. Actually, yes, yeah, successful. I piloted this to potentially do it for my dissertation.

Yeah. And the lab intern made it three days. I got through the two weeks. And I also did speed squats because it was. looking at the power lossage and MASH, you'd appreciate it. My speed squat number dropped by 50% in the first weekend where they hit that velocity threshold. I was, you'd have measured my velocity with a sundial.

I was so slow. That's what we see. Oh, yeah. That's what we see. You know, it's interesting because one of the last things to go is your one RM. Your ability to take a heavy load and grind through it seems to hang in. there and I'll bet my bottom dollar each of you has experienced this you've for what it whether it's your training or I don't know it's you've been moving or

workers overtime at work whatever it is you're just beat up and you're supposed to go in the gym and you know I said for myself okay this is either a jerk day or a snatch day I can't buy a snatch to save my life crap okay Well, let's see how the squats are. I grind through my squats. And, you know, that's not scientific, but it's representative of what we've seen scientifically. That's true.

Yes. Feed is the first thing to go. And on the studies where we've had a sprinting task, which was not in the study you guys are talking about, but we've had something that's simple like a 40-yard sprint, like that for football, that's about the first thing to go. and we've seen that multiple times. And it wasn't because we over sprinted them. We didn't have that as far as the training.

It was just from doing a lot of heavy singles. And we saw up to two-tenths of a second decrease, or slower 40-yard sprint times. And especially at the beginning, the first 10 yards, they lost 0.11 seconds on average. And it's like, if I'm the strength coach, and that's your football player, I say, look, the 1RMs are okay. You know, they're maintaining.

We've seen that we've had some studies. OneRM didn't go down. But the reality is I did screw it up because of that training program, and they were slower. And, you know, you kind of wonder when you watch the post game interviews with coaches, because sometimes you'll hear a coach say, you know, we just didn't have any pop today. We're just a little flat or, I don't know, whatever. and and who know you but you wonder like okay well what what was that prior week like um or uh now you know there could be a lot of things going on but uh speed though is real sensitive

speed power right behind it strength is one of the last things so in a perfect world let's say for all the way lifting coaches out there you know like if you get us all together you're going to have a group of us who are like, we're so pro-intensity, you know, like, we're going to go heavy frequently, you know, and then you're going to have a group over here who would rather do 90% for five singles versus just one heavy, you know, like, like, they're all about the volume and, like, they would care much more about doing 90% for four or five singles versus, like, you know, somebody getting their one RM, which, you know, the sport is is the one right to me the sport is you know every single so like what would you say would be the

most optimal training routine well if i could answer that on Travis uh I'd be a but because I use the phrase that Andy Galpin used in one of his interviews years ago well it depends it depends And it really does, you know, as you're asking the question, I'm thinking of factors. Well, several important factors are, well, what's the training history and the training status of that individual? You know, because it's really easy for someone to start cranking the volume with, you know, however you want to classify a lower level athlete that maybe doesn't have the training history to show they can tolerate. that. And so you look at your top level athletes, like are a lot of the people that you're

familiar with Travis, but then there's a boatload of people that are average or recreational enjoy it. And, but he, you know, your top athletes, it takes a number of years to build up that training capacity. And, but it's still, you can go. Well, here's a quote. I remember going to a conference and hearing this, and I wish I knew who said it. The opening sentence of the presentation was you can train as heavy as you want, as intense as you want, as often as you want, for as much volume as you want, as many days as you want. And then they paused and they said, as long as you allow for recovery. And it's like, okay, that's the $64,000 question there where, okay, how much recovery do you need to have?

And I know after doing work in the world of overtraining, I'd rather err on the side of under training. So then after the meet, you say, you know, I think this athlete had a little more in them. And so maybe we can come, you know, because you've been tracking their volume, however we, volume low, whatever it is. And it's like they have maybe a higher capacity. Now, they might not have a higher capacity for the next training cycle and next me, but you know it's in there. And so you can go surprisingly heavy, but, you know, you can't do it like the studies we did

where you're doing every rep every single day. And that's where I get into some of the training programs where they talk about, now this becomes a hypertrophy issue and say, well, you have to go to failure or near failure. And it's like, well, if you go to failure every single rep, every single set, okay, if I'm a bodybuilder, I can do that because, I mean,

is on the stage. But if I've got to perform, you can't do that. You can't do that. Now, that doesn't mean there are plenty of sets that, like, your athletes, they go to failure because they miss the last rep. Okay. Right. But to make that the end-all be-all, now people who are experienced know that, well, you don't go to failure every single rep. And you don't have to.

I mean, I'm digressing into a different area. but how much you know some of it's going to be up to the individual i think also it may be related to the weight classes because the yeah i agree with that too you go to uh yeah i remember first becoming aware of this looking at the old soviet training logs and stuff and the stuff that uh but charnaga would translate and the old soviet sports yeah and you'd see where uh the training volumes that the heavier lifters were performing, well, it wasn't as much as the lighter weights, the middle weights and the training age is a factor too. So if you are a veteran and have been able to stay around at a high level for, you know, for any period of time, the older you are,

the less volume you need and can tolerate. And that's not just weightlifting. You see that in every sport that has older individuals. Even if they're functioning at national and international levels, a number of years ago, years ago, I used to work at the National Strength Conditioning Association, and they had an article series in their journals called NSCA Journal at the time, and it was a roundtable. And that was a fun article series to work with.

and there was about six or eight master level athletes that were interviewed about their training. And one of them was Nolan Ryan. And he still had like another decade in his career when that came out. So he was already old. But everyone was talking about how their intensity, they do less volume. They don't hit the max intensity as often. And the recovery becomes more and more important. The young buck who's 18 years old, they go out and yeah, I'll do whatever I want.

You know, at some point, you know, the person that's able to stick around a long time learns, okay, I have to bring it down. So I don't know. That's kind of a weeny answer for you, Travis. No, I'm totally agreeing with everything you're saying because even lately, like we as a team, as a team you're saying, have we have taken a different approach. So this will be the first time anyone's hearing this, but a lot of us have gone backwards. So we've gone from, you know, like we've, you know,

when you start, you think you're going to go to five sessions a week to six to seven to eight to nine to ten to 12 to maybe 14, 16 sessions a week. Because you're doing two a days and you're doing all this stuff. And so, and a few of this have taken the first. approach that I'm not going to go past five until the gas stops progressing. And now we even, some of this have gone from five to four and all of a sudden we're seeing a boost upwards. And it's not even that these athletes are old, but their training age is old. Like for example, Ryan Grimsland is he is 23. So he's still very young, you know, obviously, but he's been training in almost a decade with me. And he's incredible. He's been

incredible for a while. So like, so all of a sudden we went backwards, which did. And that would have been like an absolute like no no in the years past. But a few people did that. And several athletes who did it saw the surge. And so I'm with you on everything you just said. And a lot of it does depend on the athlete as well. Yeah. It's a, I mean, there's an art. I mean, there's a science to it without a out, but there's also an art, because you have to take that information and apply it, and that's where, that's a hard part. You know, like when, makes me think of when I, you know, Mike, this is right up your alley, when you teach the strength and conditioning class, and, you know, all right, we're going to write

a program, and we can talk the nuts and bolts, we can talk about all the important decisions and, you know, and Mike's familiar to this. We kind of developed. Lauren Chu and I wrote a textbook to help step people through the process. But to go out doing it in class is one thing, doing it with actual people. And I'm not just a personal trainer. So for a long time, I owned a fitness center. I worked as a personal trainer before that term even existed.

This was back in the late 70s and 80s. and but for as a personal trainer you're not you know performance is important but not but they're not athletes they just want to get fit and feel good and that's fantastic but for athletes they got to be able to perform and and when that becomes a criteria you need to have your you know whatever the program is and whatever kind of periodization or training you need to have it and order so you're giving them the best there's a lot of programs that can work you can do almost anything to have it work but the question is what's the best program right and and then that becomes that's your career if you're in your business where you you know if you don't get the performances

you won't be coaching that group you won't be in l.a in 2028 we know yeah yeah yeah yes It's complicated. When you're working with athletes in the natural progression, is a true novice can't actually give you a real 100%. What they're really giving you is probably more like, you know, 50 to maybe 80% of what their body's capable of. But when you get to a guy like, you know, your athlete, you're coaching mesh,

like he can give you a true 99 to 100%, you know. So every single attempt is a greater percentage of his total capacity. So it makes sense you kind of get to the point where we're overdosing the volume if we back off. we go back to that kind of optimal hermetic stressor because they can simply just put more mileage on the entire system every time they do an attempt. You know, so apologies. I wasn't trying to talk over you, Doug. Well, you know, beginners are so forgiving. You know, if I'm a junior high or high school coach, I can do almost anything. And, you know, I mean, you're going to have some nice results. And it's good. Is it the best program? who knows but I mean it's uh there's so much the ceiling is so high and um and so that that

becomes an issue because all these you know I can I can do a mediocre program but I'll get good results from it I know yeah I get so mad on Twitter or X whatever it's called when you have a high school coach and they're like well I do X and we always get fast and jump higher and I'm like no shit man like your age of athlete you could be you could I could be you know blind deaf and dumb and I can still make them faster like you know I could just throw any program at them and they'll jump higher and run faster because they're newbies and so their neuromuscular system will respond by adapting and getting a little bit better at this movement pattern

but like but what about is your program the most optimal start that person. That's the question. And then, of course, it's hard to answer that. Well, the thing that I throw out there is you're also claiming the fact that that gained four inches in height. Like, how's the program for getting tall it?

Because I'll go for that. If you can give that to me. Exactly. Yeah. And I got stable here now. How'd you do that? This one guy between seventh grade and ninth grade, and he got so much taller.

It had to be my squat program. Sure. And nothing to do. You know, it's funny you mentioned height, Mike, because the data said I was working on this morning, which is very preliminary and stuff, but it's baseball data. And, um, and money ball, money ball. What's, what's interesting is something that any baseball coach will say, no kidding,

you know, man, you're dumb for you're doing research, figure this, but, but the height of the player and is a big contributing factor to, um, in this case, it's called exit velocity. that one of the standard tests for baseball is you put the ball on the T and they hit it as hard as they can right to a radar. And it's a, they use it at, you know, youth showcases and scouts and recruiting coaches, they want to know what's the exit velocity because it is a helpful indicator. And gee, I wonder the big programs like to recruit the six foot two kid

rather than the five foot nine. There's something to it. Now, is it the only thing? Absolutely not. But, you know, and that's why as a parent, you fill out a form for a recruiting form for a college. They want to know what mom and dad did. Did your mom or dad play a sport in high school, in college, after college? How tall are they?

How much to think? You know, my dad's six foot six and he weighs 270 pounds and he played ball at Texas Tech. Oh, boom. juniors probably going up on the list. I haven't seen them yet, but any rate. A few minutes ago, you mentioned personal training in the 70s and 80s. How has the industry changed over the years? Strength and conditioning is a much bigger thing that it was even when I was a kid. How has it changed and evolved over the decades? Wow, I love that question. You know, so my senior year in college,

had to do an internship. So I'd do it at this place called Sweep Left Health Club. And it was a place in Lincoln, Nebraska, and Boyd Epley had helped design it because it was owned by two guys that had played on the 70 and 71 National Championship teams for Tom Osborne. And it was named after their famous play. They had a sports-themed lounge and a restaurant,

but they said, let's open this thing called a health club. And so I did my internship there. And then about the time I graduated, the manager was moving on. And so I lucked out and then, I don't know, a year and a half later, I bought the business. And at the time, well, there's several facets to answering that question. At the time, I was one of four places in a city of about 170,000. Four places where someone who was serious lifting could go.

when I finally sold the business, which helped get me into my master's program financially and stuff, got me started. But I was one of 18. So during that time period, national chain started coming in. And every little time, you know, even some of the competitors were just small operations, but they all cut in. And, you know, I'm a sole proprietor, small operation. And so that made it, made it challenging. But that's representative of, oh, wow, this lifting thing is, you know, not that lifting hadn't existed for a long time, but it's really starting to grow. And I think that is also represented in the world of exercise science and exercise physiology.

You go back in the early histories of that academic discipline. It was cardio. It was VL2 Max. It was cardiovascular adaptation. It was aerobic responses and adaptations and training. That's the roots of it. And about the time the NSA started, which was in the late 70s, and my mentor, Bill Kramer, experienced a lot of this as well as others.

you were an outsider if you were in the exercise science world, but you were focusing on weightlifting and strength training. And that has changed because now it's extremely popular. And it's taken time. The world of strength and conditioning when I was at the national headquarters for the NSA, I remember, I think I was there when they hit 10,000 members. Holy, only 10,000. And we would go to, for example, Texas High School Coaches Convention, which is huge.

You know, one, it's Texas. I had a chance to go last year. It was crazy. Yeah. And we would sell 1% of the membership just at a little old. booth down there and you know everyone coming by yeah you look sure you know it was it was it was growing and it was um on one hand it was in its infancy but um it was at a point where a lot of places to begin to realize we need to have someone that runs the strength program and at the collegiate

level boyd epley was kind of the the the leader in that world and he was in the right place that the right time at Nebraska and the resources and the support from Bob Devaney, the head coach who had won national titles. And in that state, I lived there for a long time, it's football and it's University of Nebraska football. And there's no competing university or sport, even though they have tremendous sports in a lot of areas. in the pro ranks, a lot of it was Alvin Roy and his work. And he came out of the weightlifting world. And I think if I remember he was with the Chargers. I don't know.

There were several big names, but I think Alvin Roy, and there's an award named after him, he was one of the leaders in the pro sport rank and football was the leader. kind of related to that is NSCA was a male-dominated organization. No ifs ands or buts. And I remember working there and hearing that Arizona had hired a female strength coach. What?

No way. Yeah. For football. No. Well, it was the famous Meg Richie, who's now Meg Stone. And it was explained to me that no, she is the real deal, an exceptional international caliber athlete, still holds the NCAA

distance. Still, yes. And can outlift everyone on the Arizona football team. It's like, no way. And it's like, way. And, you know, so that has changed. And so, you know, at all levels, even in the pro ranks. And so that's changed.

The science and the knowledge is, you know, it's a blessing and a curse because there's so much information coming out. How do you stay on top of it? And then how do you filter out? I was going to say the garbage. I shouldn't say garbage. There's so many different opinions and views and there's so much information being put out that it's hard to filter through what is legitimate. and what isn't because now with social media, anyone has a platform. And there's a lot of really good stuff.

And there's also stuff that's like, well, I don't know. And are you doing it for educational purposes? Are you doing it for personal? Hey, listen to me, because I'm only the only smart guy in the room. I was reading some stuff yesterday where someone's explaining, well, it has to be someone smart like me has to explain how to do the programming. And I'm like, okay, that's kind of it. So that's a challenge.

But I don't know. What do you guys think? What do you see? Yeah, I mean, certainly like the rise of the strength coach as a profession. Like, and again, to your point, kind of starting in college and pro sports, but then now it's like, now it's kind of expected that there's a strength coach at any large high school. Like I didn't have a strength coach that that was, I didn't have a strength coach. I was fortunate to have a strength coach in high school, but I didn't, the high school didn't have a strength coach. But that's way more common now.

Like my kids, they're going to lift weights in junior high and high school. And it's kind of assumed at this point. It was not assumed when I was growing up, which I love, of course. Like I want my kids to lift weights, you know, for their entire lives. They live weights with me, but they're going to lift weights with a with a structured program in high school, which I think is fantastic. And that was just not the case when I was growing up. Let me jump on that because you bring up a really good point. So my undergraduate degree is in physical education.

So I didn't come out of biology, physiology. I'm boiling water over a Bunsen burner, my senior year, my undergrad year, that kind of stuff. So my academic trajectory has changed over the years. But as a physical educator, one is it kills me when physical education programs get cut, along with music and art and library resources and all this stuff that is so critical. And, you know, growing up, I grew up in most of my youth in the Northeast. And New York State, you had physical education every day, every single day. And it was required through your senior year.

Well, a lot of places don't have it because I've got to, we need more time in the classroom. So on one hand, I agree with you, Doug, there's a lot of high schools now that have a strength coach. And where our kids went to school, kind of a medium-sized school for where we are out here in Kansas, they had a person that was their strength coach. What I see at some schools is strength and conditioning is replacing physical education. And okay, well, it's good that people are getting some strength and conditioning, but not everyone has to take strength conditioning, you know, the way a lot of schools are set up. And strength and conditioning is not the same thing as physical education.

A good physical education program is more than that. And so it's like, okay, there's a, it's better, it's way better than nothing. And it's, I love that there is a person that actually knows what they're doing and they have a program and it's structured and there's summer programs and there's camps and all that stuff. That's awesome. But, you know, a lot of the kids at most schools won't be in the strength conditioning hall. They won't get anything. And that's just a killer. And, you know, and there's a lot of things you can look at.

Is physical education philosophically, is it of the physical or is it through the physical? And there's philosophical schools of thought. We use physical education to develop a lot of life skills. Or the other side is, well, you need to be physically fit, be able to do your push-ups and sit-ups and run around the field or whatever you want to do. Go hiking, go camping, be physically active. And, you know, and I'm not saying one's good. one's bad, but there are different approaches, but that gets lost completely.

And it's kind of a shame. Yeah, it's a real challenge when it comes to just quality, because I'm sure all of us can think of the great teachers we had, the great PE teachers we had. And unfortunately, I feel based upon my own exposure, that PE is one of those areas that was kind of denigrated. Like, oh, they're just the gym teacher. And it's like, no, it obviously has massive repercussions for the rest of their life.

And same problem with the arts, because let's face it, They're standardized testing for math and English. Like Johnny learned how to read better this year or he didn't. But for the accountability on those sides, like, okay, did we hit a sit-up PR? Did we maintain the same testing modality? You know, it's, and then you obviously have a wide variety of athleticism. We obviously worked their way towards athletes. And we were going to quote Jenny, who we talked with earlier, there's a lot of NARPs out there,

a lot of non-athletic regular people, but getting them to build a good relationship with their body, their movement, and enjoying something. It's like the kid that comes into your, say, Travis, your training facility, they're not a physical specimen. They are not very strong. Can you get them better? Oh, without a doubt. Will they ever go to nationals?

Will they ever place in it? No, but can you make progress? Kind of related to that, the best progress I ever made, with an individual that was not really an athlete of mine, but was not a weightlifter. It was a middle-aged woman that took a strength training class with me. That was from a different culture. And Internet had came from elsewhere in the world and came from a culture where women didn't do physical things. And I think if at the beginning of the class, if I asked this person to bend down and pick up that paper clip,

I'm not sure. That would have been interesting to see how she'd do it because just handling body weight and stuff. And I remember at the end of the class, and I kind of made them do the weightlifting movements. She clean and jerked 22 pounds. I had to go to a hardware store and buy a piece of pipe and, you know, little tiny weights and stuff. And she snatched, I forget, 15 or 17 pounds. but she did it. And I was like, this is by far, you know,

the ability to have the balance, the strength, to get in the positions. And it's like, those are ridiculously lightweights, but not for her. Not for her. And so it's, yeah. And that's the whole thing about sport. I don't care where you are.

You know, that was kind of me. I was nothing special in weightlifting, but man, it's just too much fun and why not? I just had a big talk with our coaches here. I'm the head of sports science at Rise, Indoor Sports. It doesn't matter. It's here in North Carolina, but the Smith coaches under me. And so we had a really big talk. You know, we're always talking about improving these athletes and these studs that we have.

But then I put it in their hands. I said, but what you guys are missing, is this is that every single kid, every single human that comes into contact with you, you have a chance to, when they leave you, that they love fitness for the rest of their lives or not, or you make them hate it. You know, if all you're talking about is being this big time athlete and you don't care about this kid in the corner, that kid end up hating you and hating, they will hate physical fitness, probably. We'll leave for the rest of their lives until maybe they're 47 years old and they get out of, you know,

and they're about to have a heart attack and they try to get in shape. But it's so much more important because how many kids are going to go do one? I have to 1% that you come into contact with. The rest of those kids are moms and dads. They're going to go out there and live lives. And maybe, just maybe, if we started doing more of that, this obesity epidemic in America, maybe we can slow that down just a bit. and like change things if we cared a bit more about the human and you know a little bit less about these great athletes that we work with but and they didn't know what to say and it was cool to see

changes but yeah yeah so where in north carolina are you travis near Winston-salim it's called bermuda run it's like i live in hickory which is you know at the base of the mountain near near bone and but i drive to bermuda run is called but it's right before you get to wait near wake force university so i'm with that state so i used to have family up in uh east of you uh and uh and my son went to school up at chawon university way oh yeah east corner no i know yeah played a couple years up there and yeah yeah where was your family you said east of uh wilson and um Wilson and where else? Maybe it was just Wilson.

Yeah, I know exactly. That's Riley, yeah. It's where the tobs used to play. The Dobbs, that we said? Yeah, that's a summer collegiate, Coastal Plains, Summer Collegiate Baseball. Oh, yeah. The Wilson-Tobbs, they've now moved to new stadiums,

but there's a nice stadium up in Wilson, but that's some good, good pitching collegiate pitching baseball basketball here where I'm at is like well football and basketball but yeah yeah

yeah yeah we're some studs whereas as we as we approach the end of the show here you did 300 papers circling back to science here despite 300 which is a very impressive number

was there any kind of anything kind of like left on the table like like this this one study that you always wanted to get to but never got to or anything undone in your career? Oh, yeah. I mean, a lot. You know, because it never ends. You never have a study.

Mike Lane's laughing in the background over here. Every single project that Mike Lane started, and then let's see, let me make that, no. We have a number of collaborations that are ongoing. That's right. That's right. And so. There's still some good stuff.

I have, you know, it's, I take as much, blame on that now. Now that I'm retired, we can kickstart those again. You know, there's never a study that solves something. You know, say you have a purpose. Can we answer that question? Maybe you get an answer. Maybe you get information that supports a theory or hypothesis or, you know, some school of thought. But it also undoubtedly leads to more questions. And, you know, the favorite question. You know, you guys, some of you've been through this where you're defending a dissertation or a thesis and someone on the committee says, well, what would be your next study or, you know,

on this? And it's like, well, there's a number of things. If you did it over, what would you do different? So, yeah, there are things that I'd like to continue. I really enjoyed doing the over-training work. but it's so difficult. But what I really enjoyed was looking at the underlying mechanisms that are associated with, in that case, decreased performance.

On the other side, sometimes we're looking at, well, how do we improve performance, which is what's typically being asked. Well, how come, how come that person's getting stronger? How come they're getting bigger? What is it that's going on inside the body for it? So now you're really getting at the physiology, which is not always of interest to the end user. If I'm a coach, I may not care that the mTOR signaling protein is being phosphorylated at this site. But I may care that that event is associated with this type of training, which I know can make my athlete get to hear.

And so, you know, being able to bridge that gap and see where no coach is going to go in and write an mTOR program. That's not even going. If I thought we're going to Olympics, I'll write all the endot program. But understanding what is it that's contributing to it? I would like to do more, yes. And I am, and I'm working with some colleagues on, it's. It's early stages on kind of a new paradigm of muscle growth. But I think the sympathetic nervous system is a huge and key player in that whole process,

which hasn't been presented. Everyone talks about muscle damage and they talk about this and they talk about that. They talk about cell swelling and so forth. And it's like, well, it's a complex issue. But what are some things going on? I've done enough endocrinology stuff to know that even though there are people out there that really blare this horn that hormones have nothing to do with nothing. And it's like it drives me nuts because it's not on good science. But it's trying to put those pieces together to show that no, no, it's part of the bigger picture.

And yeah, so there's a lot of projects. I got to ask one more question. Like lately on, you know, on the web, people are debating the super compensation. Like, does it exist? Is it really? People are saying it's not even a thing. What are your thoughts? Well, everyone's entitled to their opinion.

And you know what opinions are like. It's like something else that we all have, yeah. But, you know, I have to force myself. to, you know, I could make a snarky response and I kind of did. But I have to keep my mind open because none of these, very little in the physiology, very little in program design and training programs, very little in football team strategy, I don't care whatever, is carved in stone and it's the end-all be-all. There are a lot of nuances. However, there are models or paradigms. So this gets back to the old Matvev model of volume and intensity.

And there is a line for technique. And I've had people, I've had students. And Doug, you probably know some of them that said, oh, there's no such thing as periodization. And I've never used it in my life and so forth. Well, the reality is you didn't do something that looked like Matt Faev's diagram, but Matt Faev created a model or a paradigm, which is representative of a system.

You can have a periodized program that looks way different than the lines on Matt Faev's graph, and it is periodization. You can have stressful training, adaptation, of rebound effect. That's been done for ages. Think for how long have American football coaches done two a day and three a day practices at the beginning of when you report at the end of summer beginning of fall. But they don't have a game right after.

It's a week or two or three afterwards. And they're not sitting there drawing Matthews' diagram. They know that we've got a good volume of training. and if I do it well and do it correctly, I can be real sharp when that season starts. And they're not building for a peak because it's a team sport, but they're building to be, I need to be in season ready.

Right. And so the fact, and we've seen it too many times where, yes, there is an effect. It's elusive sometimes. And I would say this, both the chapter and Zatsyorsky's third edition book where I got asked to be an author on it. There's a chapter on overtraining that gets at this, but also in the new NSA Essentials text.

They have a new chapter on it on overtraining, overreaching, and recovery. And in there, it kind of shows a variation of Matt Vez, but how come I didn't hit peak performance on that super compensation? The issue may not be, is there super compensation? The issue may be the timing. When did I compete or when did I test? Was it too soon? Was it too late? And I'd lost the fitness.

And, you know, anyone who's competing in a sport like weight lifting or something where there is a target date, I've missed probably a majority of the time I missed. Man, last week's workouts were so awesome. And, man, I just didn't hit anything this week at the meet. Well, it could be a lot of things. So just because they haven't experienced it, they can't show me the data. The data is out there. I believe it 100%.

And it makes sense physiologically. And, you know, it's like, like, you know, the movie, what is it? What's the movie about the agent where he says, show me the money? Oh, Jeremy McGuire. Yeah. Show me the data. Yeah. Show me the data.

I'm happy to show you. And sometimes you have to dig through the literature to find it. But it's, but it's there. But it's a hard one to study. And it is a hard one to want the better the athlete gets, the harder it becomes to hit that perfectly. You know, it just, you know, plus, you know, one thing we had none of us, we haven't really talking about is like,

what are they doing when they're home? at night, you know, like, are they sleeping, getting up? You know, is their girlfriend breaking up with them? Did their mom die? Like, it's like, just because your plan didn't create the super compensation you're after, it doesn't mean it doesn't happen. It just means it didn't, in this case. Well, and one of the, one of the things in these chapters, especially the NSA essentials text, there's a lot of discussion of the allostatic load, which is exactly what you're talking about. What goes on in the training hall? Well, that's important. But good heavens, there's another 22 and a half hours of the day, every single day or whatever the time period is.

You spend most of your time doing other things. So what are all the things that your athlete can do to screw up everything that you've done perfectly? Or if you're the strength coach for a team, what are all the things that the head sport coach can do because you're not coordinated? And you wrote a really good program, but not when everything else gets changed on you. And there's not good communication. So, yeah, it's all good stuff. And that's why, you know, this podcast and everything, this is awesome. Because I remember when this first kicked off, that's been a while.

And I remember, rest of soul, Chris Moore, golly, love the guy. That was a fun time in the lab, golly. Yeah, I miss that guy every day. Yeah, yeah. Me too. Absolutely. All right. We'll wrap it up right there.

Again, Dr. Fry, man, you really did change the course of my life. I'll try to cry by saying this. But I have a great deal of respect for you. I appreciate you. You've done a lot for the world of strength and conditioning. And I appreciate you being here today. Thank you for being here. Well, I'm proud of you guys and of what you guys have done, and thank you very much.

You bet. If people want to connect with you or a little more about your research and anything else that you would like to say here, the floor is yours. Yeah, Google Fry Sports Performance LLC. We got a website, and we also have a presence on LinkedIn and on Instagram that we put a few things out there. and I'm still alive and kicking, doing fun stuff. Yeah, I'd say so. Absolutely. Very cool.

Coach Travis Mash. Machile.com. And for anybody out there who wants to learn more about velocity-based training, like I did at Penn State University, which was awesome, the more advanced techniques and how to implement it, you can email me, Travis at riseendorsports.com. Definitely trying to do more than that. That was so much fun.

Beautiful. Dr. Mike Lane. So I'm also going to have to take a moment to also thank Dr. Fry. And, of course, Dr. Mrs. Fry, Mary, for all the hospitality and everything throughout the years. So it's both their fault and thanks to them that I am who I am. So you can take that both directions depending on. And I've got a lot of great Dr. Fry stories, but one of my more, one of that I did find pretty entertaining is we would meet about weekly. Oh, no, this one's totally safe for work.

And, you know, we meet weekly just kind of like, hey, this is what's going to lab, blah, blah, blah. And there was one of those times, like, I come to his office doors closing here, I'm talking. We're supposed to meet this time. Like, it's an hour later. I checked the door. He's still not there. Two hours later, he finally opens doors. He's like, oh, sorry.

NASA called. They had a problem with one of their training machines. And he talked to me like, yeah, that's a very normal conversation to talk about. No, exactly. Yeah, NASA called me. Yeah, never. Somebody got hurt doing some of the, you know, the isoconetic testing or otherwise or it was on one of their systems and I'm like okay that is a that is definitely not a number of my phone

that didn't happen most days well more than mine all right and I am Doug Larson you can follow me on Instagram at Douglas Lee Larson we are barbell strug you can follow us at barbell underscore shrug and if you want to work with Travis mash Dr. Mike lane Dr. Andy Galpin and the whole team at biomolecular athlete you can go to biomolecular athlete. com friends we'll see you guys next week