Barbell Shrugged - 93- How Strong You NEED To Be To Get To CrossFit Regionals

Episode Date: December 4, 2013

What your lifting numbers should look like to be competitive.

Hey, this is Rich Froning. You're listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbellshrugged.com. All right. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. Mike Bledsoe here with Doug Larson, Chris Moore, and CTP behind the camera. It's good to be here. Yes. I'm looking forward to today's topic because we get this question a whole lot. And hopefully we can just say, link the video, and then that'll be it. So how strong you need to be to get the regionals? You have to at least be able to deadlift 1,000 pounds.

1,000 pound deadlift will definitely get you there. Lots of screaming with it, too. Yes. First, make sure to go to barbellstruck.com, sign up for the newsletter, and we'll send you the eight snatch mistakes that you might be making that are keeping you from hitting bigger weights. So it might not just be a strength thing. It might be a technique thing.

Who knows? We're going to be talking about technique in that video. Well, it's probably a mobility thing or a fitness thing. It's probably a technique thing. Who knows? It could be a lot of things, but we're going. Or a fitness thing. It's probably a technique. Who knows? It could be a lot of things. But we're going to address eight of them. It's probably a technique.

A lot of people want it to be technique, I think. Because getting strong is hard. And sometimes people think that technique is just something that will click once. And now they get a PR. Click once. Don't you think it's more like. Strength's like a journey. Isn't it more like there's oftentimes no technique.

And coupled with that, there's oftentimes also no strength. So sort of both things are not there. I think beginners get a lot of bang for their buck from focusing on technique. And so they may get like really strong in the first 12 weeks of training. You know, some like nervous system adaptations come really quick. Just getting organized. Yeah, and then moving better just generally. And then they are working on snatch, and then they start seeing big numbers.

Not big numbers, but start hitting PRs real frequently. But it's based more on their technique than strength. And then when that stops, then the bummer comes. Because now you actually have to get stronger. You did a weightlifting presentation one time where you were talking about the balance between strength mobility and technique and really that's like that's like the magic triad the magic triad for weightlifting strength technique and mobility if you don't have either one of those then it's not gonna work you're never gonna get to where you could be if you had all three of those things handled yeah i think i think especially

with the mobility thing that's the thing that people hate to hear the most i'm like like what do i need to do they like they take this video of the that people hate to hear the most. I'm like, what do I need to do? They take this video of the snatch and they go, what can I improve? I'm like, your ankle mobility. They're like, oh, that is not what I... Is there anything else? I'm like, no, that's it. That's the one thing. I'm sorry. Mobility is definitely the thing that you need

first. If you can't get into a position at all, then you can't do it fast and explosively. You're just going to ingrain all the wrong ways to do it, right? First, you must get in a position. If you're not mobile enough to get in a position, you should have a look. And then you've got to get good in being in that position. Then you've got to be able to go from position to position well.

And then after you get from position to position well, you've got to be strong in each one of those positions. And then you've got to get fast at it. So, mobility first. Mobility first. You just made the chicken and egg thing solved. You just made a provocative big statement. Done.

So we're talking about being strong enough for regionals. What about just being strong enough for the Open? Well, the Open's the interesting thing where, for the most part, most of the movements in the Open, as far as competitive crossfitters go, most of the movements aren't that heavy. If you look at it in comparison to regionals or in comparison to the games or especially other strength sports like competitive weightlifting or competitive powerlifting or strongman, it's all relatively light.

Even if it's 150-pound snatches and that's heavy for you, it's heavy for a lot of people, but 150-pound snatch is not really that heavy overall. So as far as how strong you need to be to just do the workouts where you don't just DNF and say, I can't do that at all. Like some people just can't do a muscle-up, and they just get to the muscle-up part, and they go, oh, can't do it. I'm out.

You need to have some requisite amount of strength, but overall, the amount of strength that you need just to compete in the open isn't that high. But if you want to do well enough to go to regionals then that's a whole different story because all the regionals competitors nowadays are viciously strong and in very good shape and it's very competitive point about that if you're not if you can execute all those things do well in the open and you're not very strong good for you but there's

also the thing by the time you get to the point the cycle when things get heavy you're getting pretty worn out by that point now. Because everything is such a high percentage of your strength level anyway. Yeah, people will say you don't have to be that strong to do well in the open. I mean, the best people that are in the open happen to be pretty strong when they're at regionals. By the time she starts getting hard, you are exhausted. And now everybody is now starting to try. And now you're not going to win.

So while it's true what I just said, you don't have to be that strong just to participate. Yeah. If you want to do well and go to regionals, you definitely have to be very strong. So strength is your foundation for pretty much all movement. You've got to be strong enough to move at all. It's all a strength thing just to be able to move in any movement pattern. To pick up pencils. Yeah.

You have to have a requisite amount of strength to pick up a number two pencil. Right. That's not a cardio thing. That's a strength thing. Picking You have to have a requisite amount of strength to pick up a number two pencil. So you're doing all right. That's not a cardio thing. That's a strength thing. Picking up a pencil is a strength thing. It's not a cardio thing, which is why they train old people for strength because most old people aren't strong enough to do anything that's cardiovascular or taxing. They were cardio fiends in the past anyway.

Well, Dr. Gaffman's got that evidence on strength and basically being alive longer, right? Fuck. I mean, it's as simple as that. Yeah. Leg strength is like one of the number one things that influences your mortality. It was the number one predictor of like having good heart health was leg strength above like any type of blood draws you could do. If you're a 50-year-old man and you're squatting like your body weight for 10, no problem. You got no worries about your capacities.

You're doing all right. So the fallacy is that people think that since the open is mostly light movements and that's mostly a muscular endurance thing, they don't focus on strength as much as they probably should. So what the research basically says on this, and I talked about this in one of our launch videos for the Road to Regionals program,

I think it was launch video two, if you wanna go look at that video. I'm not sure what the link is anymore, actually. I'll put that video out somewhere. We hid it. We hid video out somewhere we hid it this is a puzzle if you can find it you get a prize it's like a golden ticket

so when you think about endurance or muscular endurance you tend to think about lots of repetitions but if you think about doing we'll say a squat with 315 well if you can do 5 reps with that and then you train really hard you get stronger or whatever and now you can do five reps with that and then you train really hard, you get stronger or whatever, and now you can do eight reps with that, your strength endurance, your muscular endurance

with that weight has improved. What the research basically shows is that unless something is less than about 40% of your max, then doing repetitions and practicing with that weight isn't going to help you and isn't going to help you as much rather as simply getting stronger so here as an example if i can if i can squat 300 pounds and 40 of 300 pounds you see me thinking is 120 good job basically pressure mike and i are getting clammy hands like fuck don't ask us what it is uh iphone hit pause on the recording so if in competition, now you have to do squats with 225 pounds, it's going to be better and more beneficial for you to simply try to increase your one rep max and make 225 a lesser percentage of your one rep max. And that's what's going to probably

improve your muscular endurance the most at that weight. If it's not that you can't improve your muscular endurance otherwise, but this is going to be like, you can do both strategies. This is the fastest way there. Yeah. You could practice doing squats with 225 and do lots of high rep squats with 225 and that probably in and of itself, but maybe we'll make your max go up as well. That's a whole nother story. But, but practicing 225 probably isn't the fastest way to get good at doing more squats and have more muscular endurance with that weight. You'd be better off to go from 300 pound squat to 400 pound squat and now 225 feels so much lighter

that you can just do more reps with it. Exactly, and if you do the other way and you're trying a bunch of reps to get good at the reps, like if you know you're gonna be testing something so you're gonna practice that thing over and over again, it gets fatiguing. It's way more fatiguing to try that than just to get stronger.

Yeah, if you put us all in a room, we're gonna bench press and you bench press 600 pounds and I bench press 200 pounds and Mike Branson presses 300 pounds. You're using way more relative resource to do this training and you have less to devote to something else. Yeah. If the weight is 185 pounds and we're going to see who can do the most reps, nobody walks in and goes, well, who has the best muscular endurance? Well, obviously Doug has the best muscular endurance, so he's going to win. They're going to go, no, who's the strongest? Chris is the strongest. So he's going to be able to rock out 185 pounds for 50 reps i'm gonna be able to do four right probably because i'm so sexy god his chest so muscular endurance isn't always a muscular

endurance thing if it's if it's a high percentage of your one rep max then it's more of a relative strength thing so if that if that weight rather is just the bar and it's 45 pounds and now it's 300 pound bench versus a 600 pound bench, well, it doesn't really matter so much because it's so light that now true muscular endurance has a better role and max strength doesn't matter quite as much. And anybody who's like, I did more weight or more reps with an empty bar than you asshole. Like, really? Is that what you're bragging about? Is this what you're bragging about is you're bragging about right here so if you went from 600 to 620 on your bench it probably wouldn't necessarily make you do more reps at a 45 pound barbell for reps you'd be better off practicing and improving your muscle endurance with that weight yeah or with a similar weight it's under 40 percent right because it's

less than 40 percent of your max so 40 isn't a magical number either it's just around there that looks about right where you need to think of me varied from person to person I know when I looked at a lot of studies on like force power and speed and all this stuff it was like the variation between think this was pretty good you go so far as a saying is they're kind of in your head would you think of there that sounds about right for a ratio between like here's what you're gonna be competing with a weight and here's about how far away from that percentage wise you should be like one RM wise.

Like, do you think there's some way to come up with a good like ratio? Like, so you don't know like, Oh, two 25 is on test. Then let me make sure I'd squat 600. Not necessary.

But if you squat 300, yeah, squat more. So it's probably like a certain, we could probably figure that shit out. I do. So I make it super easy. 40% is close to 50%. You could just double it. Yeah. it's 225 do i do i squat 450 okay well i don't so

maybe i should just that's a good cut off you can look at the weights that are being used at regionals and go okay i know exactly you have to be at least like a 400 pound squatter or else you know that that's where you're gonna get the most bang for your buck so like when i'm training people it's like we're waiting till we get to a certain amount of strength and then we're always doing conditioning of course you're not gonna like go just strength train only you don't want to turn into a powerlifter stop spinning right but uh yeah and then once uh once they hit that requisite amount of strength then you start diving and increasing the volume of conditioning and decreasing the amount of volume on the strength.

A lot of times what'll happen is the athlete will start... At first they hate the strength training. They're like, oh, I want to do some conditioning. I like CrossFit because of the variety. I'm going to lose, coach. It's like, well, we need you to improve your press strength, your squat strength, your pull strength, all that stuff. Then when they get that point, they start falling in love with it because they're getting

good at it. People tend to like what they're good at just as they start getting good at being strong not you though right just other people that's right not me just as they start getting good at being strong it's like all right we're gonna shift gears and then like they're almost sad again so it's like you gotta manage like manage athletes and they're like oh i i was really liking the weightlifting i I was like, yeah, but the goal is to be open, right? And they're like, oh, yeah. Does that jive with your point where you're saying how if you have somebody who hasn't quite met that requisite benchmark, like about 400 or whatever,

or whatever it is for a female competitor, until they get there, you're not even ever going to de-emphasize the strength work, right? Yeah, but it depends on the goals of the athlete. No, I want black and white, concrete, yes, no. Tell me when, you know, it depends on the goals of the athlete. Some athletes... No, I want black and white, concrete, yes, no. Tell me when you don't do it. Tell me when you do it. If it were up to me and I didn't care about the feelings

or the psychology of an athlete, then... I thought you didn't care anyway. I care. I care. No, I mean, yeah, you don't ever deemphasize strength until you get there. If the goal is to go to the agents

if people are trying to apply a loose periodization model to this that's sort of inverted because they're not trying to lead up to 1RMs

but they're trying to build it on the back end and get into conditioning they're going to go well I've worked on this all winter this is what it's

going to get right now I've got to shift into this thing which is more reps so people are probably automatically doing that shift thinking they're doing

what they need to be doing. Yeah, if you follow a blog program, that's probably what's happening on an annual basis. So you're wasting most of the year not getting what you need to get out of your training, really. Yeah, you get what you pay for, I guess. Value. So we keep talking about strength, but size and

how big you physically are plays into this too. If you're 145 pounds but you happen to be freaky strong, still getting bigger and being around the average size of a regional's competitor will help you. Because doing a 500-pound deadlift at 150 pounds, even if you can do it, is much more taxing on your body and on your system than doing a 500-pound deadlift

if you weigh 210. Oh, yeah. You can watch guys that have big deadlifts right next to a big guy and they're going rep for rep and you can just tell the smaller guy it's four in pieces.

Same with anything like a sled or anything like that where it's been contested and you may be strong as fuck, but if you're just not physically big, like pushing that prowler

on a rubber surface if you're not just a big person is really not going to be a good time at all for you. You're going to learn the lessons of physics real hard. You're going to learn the lessons of physics real hard. The lesson you teach everybody else, all the fat asses,

the lessons you teach all the fat asses when you're doing your kipping butterfly pull-ups and shit is what you get taught when you put your hands on that big prowler. That's beautiful poetic justice, really. How big do people need to expect to be? You're going to break and then tell them? Man.

Teaser? Yeah. Ha! Oh, yeah, we planned them? Man. Teaser? Yeah. Ha! Oh, yeah, we planned that. Gotcha. All right, guys. When we come back, we'll tell you how big you probably need to be. How big are you?

How big and how strong. That's right. We'll give you very specific numbers. Big and strong. Fan, it's the light. Yeah, it's the middle one. Middle. Oh, yeah.

And we're back. Oh, man. You scared me. We're talking about getting strong for regionals fool we were talking about how big and strong you gotta be Doug the scientist over here Doug sighs you gotta be him no no oh I was referring to Doug and the work he's done he's putting manly though, he's extremely manly. I wish I could be as big and muscular as Doug. That's really what's going on.

But he ran some numbers. He went on to the leaderboard and looked at some profiles. He found out how big and strong you probably should be. This is data. He's got evidence here. He basically looks at, you can't argue with this. If you do,

you can, but you're an asshole. Yeah. Don't argue with it. You're not arguing an opinion. You're just, you're arguing just whatever the data happens to say. So,

uh, I basically went through some of the leaderboard data for, from last year, 2013 and looked at, uh, what I, what I figured to be the bottom 3% of regionals competitors. Because if you can beat the bottom 3%, then maybe that offers you a chance to make it to regionals.

All you have to do is beat the worst people. You don't have to beat the best people, right? So I averaged out for women. So you didn't factor in the best regional athletes here. It's not average of regional athletes. It's an average of the people that are at the bottom of regionals. It's like the threshold. Right.

You cross this, you've got good odds. This is getting you just barely over the line. This would be just a hair there. I want to say something else and then I was like, that's not appropriate. For ladies, the average

height for the bottom 3% was 5'6 and they weighed 140 pounds. So what if they're not tall enough? What do we do then? We give them stilts? Stilts. Maybe high heels for the ladies. Stiletto. Minimal shoes aren't working. We need some high heel crossfit shoes. Stiletto. It's the ratio he's telling you about. You listen to Reebok? Reebok make those crossfit stiletto shoes. Alright so for the strength for the ladies, the average cleaning jerk for the bottom 3% was 169 pounds. Snatch was 133.

Deadlift was 289. Back squat was 238. And they could do 33 unbroken kipping pull-ups. Oh, shit. Wow. That's legit. Ladies, you guys are killing it. Damn.

I don't think I can do that many right now. Good string numbers too, actually. But not unattainable. Most people, you got a shot at this with good programming and dedication and lots of calories. Yeah, this is an average of about 15 to 20 people. So there's probably some fluctuation in there, but this is a rough good idea. It lets you know roughly where you need to be. This is better than what you're thinking now.

Let me put it that way. Yeah. You were probably thinking nothing before. Yeah. I was going to argue. Show me your numbers. Where's your data? For men, the average height was 5'9", 184 pounds.

So it's not a terribly big person, really, compared to a lot of other sports, which is why CrossFit came in, they provided it provided a good awesome sport for all these guys that weren't six five and yeah you gotta be a fit adult male yeah like that's what that's what the size is i'm an inch too short and four pounds too light what are you at right now damn damn damn damn five eight five eight one eight weren't you supposed to be on some sort of bulking thing that totally failed, by the way? I told you it would. Yeah, called out in front of the world.

And everybody made me look like the asshole. I told you, you won't do it. And you didn't. So I win. You're right. I failed. I do have some good excuses. Everybody does.

I've got it rationalized already with a button on top. So I'll get it. I have some really good excuses that we can talk about another at the time he's especially good at rationalizing I know it's just like extra talented I can justify anything rationalization judo that's right so five nine 184 clean jerk was 285 snatch a 228 a deadlift of 465 yeah back squat of 400 and 55 unbroken kipping pull-ups hang on to the bar long enough that it would it would take someone to do 55 pull-ups short coach come on I'm just kidding I think about the guys another good regionals and I think 55 ago yeah they probably do that how many can you how many is a good

competitor doing? I don't know. I would have guessed like 40 or 50. It's probably, it's probably kind of all, all in there somewhere. Was it? Is that an answer? Oh, it's probably just, you know, it's in there. I mean, it's more or less, more or less if you think about it.

Yeah. It's probably, it's probably right. You're on your way to guru status. That's right. We need to. These are fucking good strength numbers, man. Well, you know what we should do? We should tweet Rich Froning and just ask him.

Bro. Bro. How many unbroken pull-ups can you do? Yeah. Tweet him during the show. Yeah. I mean. See what he says.

Bro. What a bro thing to get tweeted. So this is just strength. I mean, these really are super impressive numbers because a lot of these guys are doing these numbers. They're back squatting 400 pounds, but they also can run, I mean, I mean, these really are super impressive numbers because a lot of these guys are, are doing these numbers. They're back squatting 400 pounds, but they also can run, you know,

a five 30 mile. Like to be able to do both of those things is crazy. That's really hard, dude. Like if you're like, probably would not be impressed with that, but a, you're not running like you just said.

And B, even if you're a light power out there, you're way over 200 pounds probably. So it's just 400 pounds for somebody who's 180 pounds is a big deal and doing it oftentimes they're doing that way more than just 400 or one time this is a series of lifts and they're doing all this just running it's really impressive it's hard to manage all that all right so so leading up the open leading up to regionals how can you how can you get to these numbers like what's your training program need to need to look like a lot of people know what CrossFit training

programs look like and they follow a blog program and they go to the gym and they Metcon a lot and whatnot. But to get this strong, you can't just Metcon all the time. What kind of structure do they need to have for their strength program year-round? Year-round? Man, that was a big question.

That was the hint. I thought you were going to say, that's supposed to be year-round. Doug's like, wink, wink. I was like. That was the hint. I thought you were going to say, hey. That's supposed to be year round. Hey, what are you? Doug's like, wink, wink. Oh, oh, I get it. I get it now. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. All right. Yeah. The time to get strong is now. So, really. Do you know what the saying was? Like, there's some. This is not unrelevant.

The saying. Unrelevant. Whatever. If you're in the sun on a hot day, the best time to have planted a tree is 30 years ago. The second best time is right now. That's right. So if you're not strong, it would have been great to be strong last year, but when's the next best time to start working on it?

Today, brother. Right now. 20 years ago? What? I'm confused now. How did that cause such confusion? We're both confused. Go ahead and make your, whatever point you're making.

He's over there texting. He wasn't even listening. That's what I want to know. He dig a hole. All right, so yeah, the best time is now, obviously. But what I would recommend for a lot of people, if the Open is within a few months away, getting stronger now could definitely benefit you,

but more than likely, I wouldn't exactly push somebody that direction. I'm thinking like right after the Open, that's the time to really focus on your strength. Or right now. And I think a big mistake people make is they think that strength comes quicker than it does. All of training works this way, is the fitter you get, the stronger you get

the smaller the gains are going to be from month to month from cycle to cycle and so what I think people should do is right after the Open, right after competing is or right now, is to pick

a 12 week program do a 12 week strength program. You know, do a 12-week strength program, whether it's something you find online or whether it's a coach that's giving it to you, and figure out how you can make that work with some CrossFit conditioning. You obviously don't want to remove all your conditioning, but you want the bulk of your volume.

You need to preserve the conditioning. The emphasis to be on strength. I mean, you should be strength training probably four days a week, squatting a couple days a a couple days about reinforce the point be very careful not to just go mixing yourself have guidance about whether the strength work you're doing is pairing well with the other things you're trying to preserve that's why it's good to have one person writing all the programming instead of taking this guy's strength program don't do that and then stacking with that it's not always a terrible thing. You'll get cancer. You'll get CrossFit cancer if you do that.

Actually, my favorite one, if you want the simplest strength program to pair, it's hard to mess this up. If you want the simplest strength program, it's probably 5-3-1. You can pretty much pair any kind of conditioning with 5-3-1, and you're not going to overdo it. Yeah, because it's not designed to beat you up at all. Right. It's a it's, it's a program. Again,

that's probably, you probably want something more aggressive if you want to go to regionals though. So I say, figure out what it is that you're most weak at. Do a 12 week program dedicated to shoring up those weaknesses and committed completing the 12 weeks people, you know, they say hey i'll

focus on this for a month four weeks six weeks whatever no even if you feel like you got strong enough are you suggesting that people might be impatient when it comes to getting what they want might especially when it comes to training and performance back it up with sources oh that's right everything i see all the time yeah yeah i see this every day so yeah i say you know do 12 weeks focused on getting stronger that thing minimum yeah i say minimum and then retest you know and if you are still not at what we are deeming here to be ballpark what you need the requisite then keep going keep going fucking get back in it start again yeah and so what ends up happening a lot of times

is people will want to focus on strength from the end of the Open until October, November, and they're like, oh, I've got to get conditioning back so I can do the Open this year. They're thinking it's inverted. Rightly so, basically, it's inverted periodization, what we talked about earlier, right, where instead of ramping up to strength result,'re getting really strong and you know you got to

transition in a phase wise approach to where you're trying to get so it's a well-intentioned thing if you're at requisite strength i actually think that's a good idea yeah but if you're not what i'm saying right if you're not you're making a well-intentioned move by trying to go in phases and build towards something but you might just need to be staying where you're at yeah so you gotta you know go after people go for the short-term results you know they're like i want to be good this year so i'm gonna go ahead and just sacrifice all that time spent getting stronger i'm gonna de-emphasize it do conditioning and then be disappointed again this year so all right i feel like when people don't follow a structured strength program year round and they try to do the whole constantly

varied thing for for their strength work that constantly varied is okay i mean it's great for a whole lot of reasons but and it's okay for metcons but for your strength work your strength work shouldn't be as constantly varied as some of your other some of the other stuff that you're doing a good solid strength program you were saying 12 weeks four week blocks eight week blocks 12 week blocks whatever you're gonna do a 12 week block and then another 12 week week block right after that you should be doing strength training pretty much all the time right so you want you want to find out where exactly you lack strength and that should be your focus but you should have a balanced training program all the time where i see people fall short is that they think that just dead lifting and squatting and doing olympic lifts and pressing

is where it's at and then they don't do they do gymnastics movements for pulling they do kipping pull-ups and keeping muscle ups and they don't do heavy weighted pull- then they don't do they do gymnastics movements for pulling they do kipping pull-ups and kipping muscle-ups and they don't do heavy weighted pull-ups they don't do heavy bent rows and for some reason the pulling for strength stuff gets totally left off i see programs that have no heavy pulling upper body pulling vertical or horizontal there's nothing in there at all so that's why you're doing something like one of these very very well established strength programs that's already balanced, everyone already knows that it works, is a great idea to adopt, at least early on. That way you're not missing out on something simply because you didn't even know that it was missing. Yeah, there's strength progressions for the gymnastics movements I like a lot, too.

You're bringing up the upper body pulling and even some upper body pressing, things for handstand push-ups, push-ups, stuff like that, is, you know, away from the open, away from the competition, that's a great time to do the strict, you know, do some slow, strict muscle-ups. Do some slow, strict L pull-ups and stuff like that. Another point I was making, don't be afraid. I got a question about this like a week ago maybe. Someone was asking, he understood strength was terribly important. He watched a lot of the shows

we talk about it and he knew he's like look I know I deadlift like 300 I know I need to deadlift like 4 minimum and he said

I snatch I don't know what it was maybe like 150 I know I've got to get to like 250 or whatever he understood what was the deficit and he showed me

he's like what do you think of this thing I'm going to try and it was well intentioned but it looked like a mix of just everything he could think to do. So it was like clearly a powerlifting component. There was lots of like powerlifting assistance work after the powerlifting component. Like you'd usually see.

Mixed in, there was like a Metcon here and there. And you could see where he had thought like, well, I've got to do my Olympic lifts because I've got to get better. So there was like two days a week where one was snatch and one was clean and jerk. But it was a big stew of all the main strength elements you can do. And it looked like I was like, I told him, look, if you're where you need to be, this is probably OK. But if you need to add a hundred fucking pounds of your snatch and you're not necessarily new to the snatch, then you need a intense espresso shot of focused, really resource intensive fucking snatch work man. I mean it's like

I think you should do snatching just about every fucking day. Maybe some type of variation should be doing snatch pulls. Yeah. Snatch pulls from a deficit. Get with a coach

but you gotta understand you have to work. Behind the neck presses. Like doing a deadlift is not gonna getting 100 pounds in a deadlift is not gonna fix

a snatch problem. You know. No. It's not gonna do it. I know a lot of 500 pound deadlifters can't snatch 200 pounds. I know a lot of powders want to think that's the truth and god damn it, it's not the truth. It doesn't work. Yeah.

If it were only that easy. Yeah, but going back to what Doug was saying with talking about like you should always have a strength program and you know kind of what I was talking about is let the strength program be the emphasis. The main amount of volume. Yeah.

I get you. I'm trying to think of how to talk. Get your coach. Yeah. The majority of your training volume should be strength. Now, once you reach those requisite numbers, it doesn't mean you're going to stop getting stronger. It just means like, hey, move you know maybe 60% of our training from being straight let's move that down to 30% de emphasize and then

what we do what we'll do is we'll okay conditionings now we're gonna take up maybe seven more like 70% of our volume and we're gonna ease back on a strength ease up on the conditioning but then more variation can be done with the strength to them yes that's what you can have you you're at liberties to have more fun and do what you see high level guys doing. And that's the time. And it's funny because yeah, I see guys that are doing their strength training twice a week and they've got like 12 conditioning sessions in. You know, these are guys that definitely they've reached what they've reached requisite strength a long time ago. You see Matt Chan doing that or something. You realize that he's strong as shit. Then he tried this. Okay.

That's the best. so now they're doing this stuff and then they're still hitting PRS on their strength numbers and usually what you're seeing is as they're hitting they're going for a new one right max there's like Oh final one right max they don't do this every week it's like every 12 weeks it's like it's like oh why don't we let's max on back score and just see what happens and that's something that happens like every 12 weeks it's not something that happens like every 12 weeks. It's not something that they're like,

it's not something they're, they're not hitting PRs every week. That's why you can't mimic. You gotta be so careful when it comes to mimicking what anybody's doing. You gotta be very careful in understanding why somebody's doing what they're doing. And if you ask them and they can't really communicate it,

then you especially shouldn't try to do what they're doing. If you can't get a well-reasoned, well-intentioned response, like here's why I'm doing this. Oh, it makes sense. Good, thank you. They should be try to do what they're doing. If you can't get a well-reasoned, well-intentioned response, like, here's why I'm doing this. Oh, it makes sense. Good. Thank you. They should be able to do that.

We talked a little bit on the last episode that we recorded about the answer is always it depends. So we're giving all this advice about getting bigger and getting stronger and all that. But a good example that we discussed before the show was like if Chris Moore, as a 300-pound former powerlifter who has squatted 900 and benched 600 and he's he's been super strong for for 10 or 15 or 20 years now for you to focus on strength is is losing battle you're never going to be good across it by trying to get just a little bit stronger you have other priorities you have other things i am entering i'm announcing now i am entering no i'm not gonna say that i'm entering entering not the open something else I'll find something

I'll find something to enter wink wink yeah so focusing on cardio muscular endurance and Metcon

fitness as opposed to strength is a much better idea for a guy with your background and your experience than focusing on

strength and gaining muscle mass because you don't need to be any bigger you're not trying to gain weight to get to 185 pounds you're fucking 300 pounds um yeah i'm a sexy like a sexy fat matt damon really but i would what would i actually do i think yeah i've

got to work a lot with uh some good gymnastics guys like bring carl in pay him any ransom he wants like carl how do i get off the ground and stay off the ground for long enough not to be a total asshole in this competition like how do I get good at moving my body I would peel back I'd eat a lot less peel back some tissue be a lot smarter with the timing of my carbohydrates that gets really important uh yeah I mean movement quality and learning to get comfortable myself I would probably squat once every two weeks and be totally maintenance mode for that because I'll put all my resource all my everything I had to give to it towards the things i have no capacity in yeah you can build with one heavy triple call good and move on to something yeah i know it's extreme it's extreme example but i realize a lot

of people listen so probably somewhere in the middle where it's like you know either you're you really enjoy strength and you put a little bit too much into that or you really know you don't like to be strong you know you have a weakness there and you're ashamed almost to try to tackle it and give it the time it needs. That's where you probably are. Very few people are fucking dead on perfect right now. You're probably just a little under over. You got to know it's okay to de-emphasize

or really put your weight behind that effort. And really let some of the things be not what you're worried about for a while. People tend to make big swings. And a lot of it has to do with what gym you came from or what coach you were following or whatever. Some guys have this big endurance background. But it's usually strong guys that come to the guy with the endurance background

and end up with really great benefits. And then you have a lot of people with this big conditioning background. They start working with a strength coach. And all of a sudden, things just start clicking. They pair the experience with the new experience. Showing up that weakness is the biggest part like if you have a big strength deficit to get stronger well now you're you're even keel across the place you don't have any big glaring weaknesses that's a good point dude cuz like yeah if I you know the thing I would try to go surround

myself with guys who they were really good at moving yeah they're really good at the things like I are good movement places to train and just get used to being around that all the time what do you guys think is it you think it's harder to does it take longer to get strong enough or is it take longer to get conditions strong enough Jesus I think strong enough to I think I think getting strong getting strong enough to be competitive across it it's kind of a loaded question we're God we're biased we're biased but I do think biased it's crazy but I do think getting strong enough

for most people if I was to average you know like the 10,000 CrossFitters I've ever seen in my whole life I'd say getting stronger is the thing that's going

to take the longest because CrossFit is more of a strength sport than it is an endurance sport there's a huge cardio component to it but if you were to compare CrossFit

to competitive weightlifting or compare CrossFit to marathon running or even the other more extreme ultra endurance sports, on the spectrum, it's not right in the middle. It's closer to the weightlifting than it is to the endurance sports. I've seen people make that point. There's some people out there in the CrossFit world that are really upset that it is that

bias towards show. Those people say, you did lift 300 pounds. What do you expect to be fussing about? It takes longer to get to the strength level that you need for CrossFit because the standard is higher. The standard for strength is higher in CrossFit than the standard for endurance. That's why it takes longer to get there. It's not that getting to a world-class endurance athlete is an easy thing to do. It's incredibly hard.

It's incredibly hard to be a world-class strength athlete, too. It's incredibly hard to be a world-class CrossFitter. But CrossFit is so close to weightlifting compared to ultra-end endurance that the standards are higher, so it takes longer to get there. Yeah, a lot of those CrossFitters are qualifying for American Open for nationals, but they may not be qualifying for the Boston Marathon. Well, now it's almost merging at some point, because now they're testing the basic lifts in the CrossFit games. It's a little faster paced,

but they're doing a meet in those settings. It's crazy. It's beautiful. Sometimes I wish that Whale of the Meats would switch to doing it that way. Like, so-and-so, get on the platform. Right. 10 minutes.

How much can you snatch? Go. We'll give you all the time you want. You've got five minutes. Show us how much you can snatch. That would be fun. I wouldn't be opposed to it. That would be fun.

It would be a really fun meet. That would be fun. Maybe we should run... Should we announce it? I'm going to bring it back up. We've talked about it for over a year. Four platforms side by side and do a meet like that. Shit, it'd be fun.

The Barbell Shrug Weightlifting Total? Yeah, I think it's an appropriate time to bring this up. Yeah, the Barbell Shrug Weightlifting Total. The Barbell Shrug Total. Not the Weightlifting. BS Total. Yeah, Barbell Shrug Total. The BS Total. I forget how this even came up i think we were

like driving in a car like a year ago and i think i was i was talking about i was there well i was i was talking about my favorite two lifts it was my idea it was all my ideas well i was talking about how my two favorite lifts were snatch and back squat and i wish that there was a competition for snatch and back squat. Just for me. Because I think you were talking about competing with a bunch of, you would win a weightlifting meet with a bunch of washed up football players or something. Oh yeah, I was saying that, like I was talking about my snatch being improving or something. I would get killed by anybody who's even remotely competent at weightlifting,

but I can beat the shit out of mostly all ex-beat up power lifters at this lift i mean it made me pretty proud actually all right that's the thing i was like man you know if there was a if there was a competition where i feel like i would do my best it would be like snatch and back squat because i hate the jerk and so i was like we got to talking about, uh, it is a pretty balanced test. I mean, there's a huge speed and athletic component in a snatch and a huge, just raw fucking how strong they're pretty, they're pretty on as far as like what you would find in a weightlifting program. They're on the opposite sides of the spectrum over here.

And then you have like the high technical high speed over here. If you want both those events, you'd be a bad motherfucker in that meet. You would be. Yeah. So, uh, one day, Kendrick Ferris, if you're listening, I want you get your fares come here your bs total kendrick ferris kendrick i got your wallet it probably says bad on it i'm telling you it probably does uh yeah so uh maybe one day we'll hold a meet for the barbell shrug total and oh that'd be fun so we'll hold a meet and we'll have a party to be determined let's have like a smoke machine and strobe lights smoke machine

I was like what kind of smoke oh yeah like a decoration smoke machine I was like oh that'd be interesting meat man

alright guys with that we're gonna sign off make sure oh you check out Chris Moore's new book Way Past Strong

it's gonna be good and you go to barbellshrug.com sign up for the newsletter find out how to improve that snatch. What?

Thanks, guys. Well, that was a really fun one. That was fun. Fuck, it's hot in here. It is. I'm sweating. It's like 75 degrees outside. That was...