Barbell Shrugged - A Comprehensive Guide to Progressive Overload w/ Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Coach Travis Mash - Barbell Shrugged #552

Episode Date: March 1, 2021

In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged: What is progressive overload How is training age related to progressive overload Differences in percentages, RPE, and RIR How to use velocity based training in progressive overload How to ensure you are not hitting plateaus   Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram ———————————————— Diesel Dad Training Programs: http://barbellshrugged.com/dieseldad   Training Programs to Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/34zcGVw   Nutrition Programs to Lose Fat and Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/3eiW8FF   Nutrition and Training Bundles to Save 67%: https://bit.ly/2yaxQxa   Please Support Our Sponsors   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged www.masszymes.com/shruggedfree  - for FREE bottle of BiOptimizers Masszymes

This week on Barbell Shrug, the comprehensive guide to progressive overload. That's right, friends. How to make sure you're always getting bigger, better, stronger, faster, cooler, more awesomer in the gym. What is progressive overload? A very high-level look at the concept of progressive overload. How is your training age related to progressive overload and the things you need to do each step of the way, as well as the differences in percentage work, RPE, and RIR. We also talk about velocity-based training, how that relates to progressive overload,

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My name is Anders Varner. Hanging out with my bro, super bro, Doug Larson. Strongest man in the world, Travis Mash. What up? How we doing, friends? Today on Barbell Shrugged, we're going to be talking about progressive overload, walking you through beginner, intermediate, advanced techniques, the three variables in which you can most likely change in your training to ensure that you are progressing over time,

as well as some of the pitfalls that you're going to run in. And hopefully by the end of this episode, you will have a strategy for the rest of your life to get strong, lean, athletic, super cool, and make sure that the weights keep moving up and that you keep having a better relationship with the barbell. Doug Larson, when we talk about progressive overload,

what is like the highest level understanding and kind of the definition of why progressive overload exists? Yeah, it basically just means doing more than you did last time. That's like the simplest way that I could think about it. If you just do the exact same workout that you've always done, you do the same movements, you do the same number of sets, you do the same number of reps with the same weight, and then you're not getting stronger. Well, why get stronger there's no reason to get stronger you haven't you haven't done a little bit more than you've done in the past and so your body has no reason to adapt to something that's harder and so you're just going to stay the same so you it's it's easy to fall into that into that trap like it sounds so obvious that you should you know add some weight to the bar or do some, do some more volume depending on how high your

volume, your volume is. But if you're a beginner and you, you probably could stand to do some more volume as you get more and more experienced. Uh, but some people just, they don't, they're either, they just don't really understand the fact that they need to do, do a little bit more because they don't truly understand training maybe, or they're scared to add weight for some reason. They're kind of unsure of themselves or insecure or just not confident or don't have a spotter or there's many reasons you might not want to add weight if you're a beginner and you're kind of intimidated by heavy weights on a bar. You think you're going to hurt yourself or whatever it is. There's many reasons why people not really know, not really choose not to,

but just don't choose to do anything where they're, they're intentionally systematically adding weight to the bar or adding more volume over time. Yeah. Mash, when you, I mean you, the, the athletes that you're coaching now and I'm really stoked to talk about kind of like the advanced layers of this because at some point progressive overload it's it's always there but the way that which you go about

doing it on a daily basis on a weekly basis yearly basis is going to shift which we're going to get into at the end of the show but what are some of the things like as far as variables and ways that you're able to implement progressive overload into a training program? I mean, the basics are going to be volume, you know, frequency, intensity. But then as you go, you know, there becomes, I mean, really it comes to data collection, Anders. It's like, you know, am I, if I look at all those three, I just told you, but then you're going to look at also like average intensity. So like if I do X volume and my average intensity is, you know, is like 80%, well then I can keep that same, you know, rep scheme and set scheme. But now if I,

if my average intensity goes to 82 i've progressively overloaded too so like that is a big one and then there's a thing called k value which everyone listening uh can google or we can maybe put a link to it in our in our show notes but the k value is this equation that's like you know when i get to total 300 kilograms at this meet and i do this equation and i figure out that my average intensity was you know x well this um you know now i want to get to 310 this equation will tell me how much i need to average to get to you know to get to 310 and so k value is an awesome one. And then number of optimal lifts, like meaning like how many of my reps were squats? Well, this, this goes to, you know, powerlifting or weightlifting.

So how many of my reps went to squat? How many went to bench? How many went to deadlift? If I'm powerlifting, if I'm weightlifting, how many went to, you know, clean jerks? How many went to snatches? How many went to pull? How many went to squats? And now you'll know where you're spending your time and then you can look at like you know where you're weak and say i should shift that around so those are the advanced that's all the way from easy to super advanced and data collection is the king if you're a coach out there listening yeah i love thinking about progressive overload not only just in lifting weights, but I feel like it applies to everything in life so easily. And like the, I know that this shows about weightlifting, but it's almost

impossible for me to talk about it in just weightlifting terms because it applies to literally everything where it's like what you did yesterday becomes the norm. Your body has adapted to that tomorrow. We're going to have to do something a little bit more challenging. And that can be, there's many ways to make things more challenging. But as you continually do more challenging things, the things that you were doing 10 years ago are very, very simple. They just become habit. They become part of who, you know, the physiological like makeup of your brain and body and muscles and how you act. And then tomorrow we have to go and create new systems and structures and habits to continue to move forward.

Right. I remember being younger and doing like long blocks of just totally linear periodization. Like you're just adding five pounds to the bar every week. How about 10 years? Yeah. How about literally 10 years? Every single bodybuilding program that I followed, every single training program for hockey,

it was always six to eight reps, maybe a five by five, and it was always add five pounds to the bar each week. Then we'd go out six weeks, we'd back it down two weeks and then we'd go out six weeks, we'd back it down two weeks, we'd go out six weeks. It was like, if you,

if I, if I had all of my training logs from 14 to CrossFit, it was always just linear progression, six weeks out, back it down to what the weights were two weeks ago, six weeks out. That was like, if you were to look at like my incline press numbers, it was like that like super basic graph of five pounds a week, 10, eight, six, four, two, or 10, eight, six, four. Like that was just the only way I actually knew how to train that made sense. And that was what all the bodybuilding magazines told you to do.

So that's what I did. But at the end of the day, every single workout that works is progressive overload. Prove me wrong. I mean, eventually I mean, I have to add more volume to something. I have to go heavier.

Like, so just in essence, no matter what you want to do, linear, if you want to do undulating, if you want to do west side, no matter what Louis says, at the end of the day, it's progressive overload. Because if you're not doing more volume or more intensity or something, then guess what? You're not doing anything different. So you're stagnant.

So everything everything in essence is is progressive overload yeah those three that's how my training has been for the last i don't know 10 or 15 years it's been all undulating periodization and or something looks kind of more like conjugate or you know on occasion some more some more across any type things but yeah with that with that comment i was really wanting if you just did like standard linear periodization for for any like long blocks of time uh travis did you do any of that yeah yeah totally like yeah all i did was like i had this chart of every single movement that i would do and i would like keep up with my

10 rms 5 rms 3 rms 1 rms and yeah i would just chip away away, chip away, chip away. That was my program until it stopped working. I never actually even tested 1RMs until CrossFit. Oh, wow. I mean, I think I squatted 315 in high school, but that was purely because my dad really wanted me to squat 315 by the time I graduated high school. So we threw that in at the end of the summer to test, but I maybe squatted for a one RM like five times in the first five,

six years of training. And then once CrossFit showed up, then I was like testing one threes and fives all the time. Um, but that, that amount of training before I even started testing was always in just a very add five pounds to the bar each week add 10 pounds i mean i would have never yeah in the first so i started lifting i was 14 i think when i was 18 i squatted 315 for the first time so

going from never squatting to 315 in four years is like, it's a very linear approach. If you were to lay it out on a week-to-week basis, squatting twice a week for tens, eights, fives, and then, you know, kind of just like building that up. I wish I had all those books because if you were to like go back, kids these days, kids these days. But it would be so awesome to be able to take somebody that's 14 years old right now, and I'm sure you've done this kind of with Morgan and a lot of the guys you coach, and lay out their training program in a Google Drive or in a Google Doc or spreadsheet where you can just take all their squat numbers of the last 10 years. When you met Morgan when he was nine and i guarantee you you could draw like a trend line yeah it would just be this straight line up

but it's every single day of their training and there'd be little fluctuations inside all of it but that trend line would be on a perfectly linear looking approach and it would make so much sense even though that video i made of morgan like it was day one of training him versus like it showed i and what i did is i i put the year and the time of every squat snatch and clean jerk pr you know up from whenever i made this past it was like last summer it was like boom boom yeah it was a straight line just it was crazy to watch it too like how much better it's taking me god it was cool last summer it was like boom boom yeah it was a straight line just it was crazy to watch it too like how much better it's taking you got it was cool yeah it makes so much sense when

you when you look back uh but as athletes we're always like man i've appeared in like six months what's happening as well there's there's there's many many parts of that i actually feel like right now because not right now with my shoulder the way it is, but right now as in the last couple months, I've followed less of a progressive overload approach to training just in that I'm not really trying to get stronger. And I'm trying to just stay strong for a really, really long time. So I hover around what used to be like 80 to 85% effort and it's in a three to eight rep range. But that's because for the first time, really in a long time, I'm really just focused on being strong versus getting stronger, which is a radical shift really in the last 20 years of my life. I can't, I don't know why I have a really

tough time. Mainly. I think one of the biggest problems is, is I was never that great at lifting weights. I was like really good. You were the best in the world. There's a huge difference. I wish I hadn't been there. I don't know what's wrong with me. I, one day you're gonna have the transformation and you're gonna get on instagram be like today i front squad at 3 15 for five and it felt good and someone in the comments is gonna go travis mash has lost it and you're gonna just lose your mind you won't sleep for like a month screw that screw that random bot i'm coming back i just signed signed up for four powerlifting meets.

Man, I know. I'm actually enjoying doing this in preparation for this because for some reason I'm able to mentally not stress out. If weeks get hard, I have no problem going from four to three days of training. Yeah. And it doesn't freak me out. Where back in the day I would be like I'd sacrifice everything I'd probably quit school or drop a class but fuck it I'm out of the thing you know like so now I'm so far so good yeah how pretty

it is behind me it is gorgeous I remember in high school like one of my first and Anderson I think you had a similar experience my first introductions to to doing barbell back squats was was 20 rep back squats i had the super squats book and i had a strength coach who who thought 20 rep back squats were were you know badass and who built toughness and whatever else and uh man i just not fancy at all like super simple every monday i would try to hit a pr on my 20 rep back squat and it was like if i got i remember when i started i was like right around like 155 pounds was about the best i could do and i was like with like a spotter like giving you like four straps like kind of like bumping me through it i probably couldn't even do that much because i'm sure around like rep 14 15 16 i was

getting a little bit of assistance but um you know i'm still learning technique back then it was i was bringing yeah and uh which that's a that's an intense program to jump right into as a brand new person but but it worked out really well for me uh but every week i would just if i got 20 reps the week before i would add five pounds and then maybe i didn't get 20 reps and so i would just keep that weight for the next week and then once i got 20 pounds with that weight then five more pounds got on the bar it was over the course of about a year i added about 100 pounds to my 20 rep back squat yeah i think that's brilliant every monday every monday and i remember walking around school nervous all day like toward the end of that where it's like now now i'm trying to be i'm like fuck

i barely got 235 last week and i gotta do 240. I'm just like walking around nervous all day. But I made massive progress and I put on like 20 pounds of muscle in like a year, year and a half. And all of a sudden sports got really easy. Like football got so much easier being 20 pounds heavier and having an extra 100 pounds on my 200 rep back squat. I'm not sure what my 100 rep max really was and how much that went up, but it probably went up a lot. And football got really easy. Wrestling got really easy.

All of a sudden, like, being stronger, I was like, oh, this is, like, this is fucking magic. I mean, like, if you're a contact sport guy, like, you know, like in those crazy studies I told you guys about, but, like, you know, momentum is nothing but mass times velocity. So it's like, you know, if I can put on weight and not get slower, then I become more and more of a machine on the football field. Like, yeah, just slow. I think the 20 rep, um, 20 rep max squat, uh,

workout is like brilliant. You know, what was the Louis Simmons calls it the repetition method, you know, he puts a name to everything, but like, so like, um But like, you know, just getting really good at that movement. Because squatting, I think, to me, you got to do one movement. I think it should be squats if you're an athlete. So the 20 RM and then just get bigger. I get stronger. Like, if I'm playing my sport and I'm getting bigger in high school,

then you're getting faster. You know, that movement, as long as it's full range of motion, is making you a better athlete 100%. Yeah, I actually get questions from high school kids that listen to the show, and they're like in there pulling one rep max deadlifts. And I'm like, I mean, it's not that you shouldn't. I just feel like there's way better ways to get where you're going and right now creating an environment inside your body in which you are telling your brain it's time to grow you

need to be doing tens i command you to grow get large um but i when i when i see like a high school kid doing like a 1rm i I'm like, man, that's cool. And like it's cool to go and beat your chest. But if you really want to go run somebody over, you got to grow, big man. Get after it. Yeah, who cares about your 125-pound butt deadlifting 225? Bro, gain some weight. Even if you run a three flat 40, which you can't.

I love it. You'd bounce off me like a gnat. Get away. Yeah, you want to go and grow some like man legs. I got a little something behind them. You got to sit under that weight for a long, long time and just sell your body. It's time to grow. When we think about progressive overload, there's kind of like three big variables

on intensity, volume, and frequency and how we actually properly progress those things. I think one of the big areas that people get really get hung up in is always trying to do too much. Like we see this in the CrossFit space all the time where everybody's just trying to get good at everything all at the same time. But how when you realize that there's three big variables, one, just a simple definition to like intensity, volume and frequency, and then choosing one based off your goal of like, how do people go about kind of figuring out the right path to to mixing with those variables um well i mean the definition like volume is means you take your you know the weight of the that's on the bar times how many times you did it times all the sets

and then you take all your exercises add it together and that's your total volume and so um you know every you have to you have to keep it up if you're going to be a good coach you should look at or if you're an athlete it's important that you know what your total volume is you know not not really not as much daily you need it obviously daily but like on a weekly you know monthly yearly level but the intensity is how much weight's on the ball it's just the load the frequency is how often am i doing something and so um you know that is the definitions of those three when when i think about those three i it's not like any of them live in a silo like in a vacuum by themselves but i always think about if your main goal is to get as strong as possible, then intensity needs to be the thing

that you're really focused on and, and adding additional weight to the bar. Um, and this is probably oversimplified because there's a lot of mechanisms in place to hypertrophy, but if your goal is hypertrophy, the, um, amount of volume that you're doing and taking, if you're doing say an RDL and you just want to put on more muscle, well, we should probably be adding a rep a week and we can keep the load the same. If you have to kind of put a training block together in which you're focused on pure hypertrophy, doing an extra rep a week with the same amount of weight is going to give you a good result and you'll be able to see yourself moving forward. The idea of frequency can really be kind of that middle ground of like now you're squatting twice a week and you're going to get stronger. You're still going to be telling your brain. So it doesn't really

matter the frequency on a goal specificity side of things um but when you start to think about intensity and the amount of weight on the bar and the volume i feel like volume has a much better um relationship to hypertrophy on a on an individual training session than um just adding more weight and hitting the same reps i would agree agree. I mean, I think you're dead on, you know, I mean, at the end of the day, you need to know them all, but like, your main goal is, is, um, I believe, I think volume, especially if you want, you know, volume as it pertains to like, you know, faster Twitch fibers, I think, yeah, volume is going to be the key.

I guess you could, you know, there's, you know, you could just Matt, you know, do like a hit training, like high intensity, meaning you do, you know, one or two sets to all out failure. And then, yeah, then maybe you should look at like intensity. But I think if you want really high quality, you know, I think you're 100% right volume. To throw some numbers onto those things, standard numbers for frequency per body part or per movement,

generally you're in between like one three times a week one's like if you're like super advanced and you know how to get yourself really really sore and you do a lot of volume maybe once per week will work for you but that probably won't work for most people like most most beginner and intermediates need a little more frequency than that like squatting once a week is way better than none but but twice a week maybe three times a week uh if you're a week maybe three times a week if you're a weightlifter then you may maybe you're doing you're doing more than that on occasion you might be squatting you know four times a week or you know some people do the squat everyday thing but but by and large like one to three times a week is pretty standard there as far as intensities

like the the classic like textbook range for percentage of wonder at max for for volume and hypertrophy is generally kind of between like 60 and 80 and then strength is kind of 80 plus there's lots of crossover there that's not like an infallible statement like beginners can get stronger on using just 60 and um and you can definitely get hypertrophy you know using 85 or whatever it is so there's there's definitely crossover there um so that was frequency intensity and then as far as volume goes like specified hypertrophy generally the numbers for a number of sets per week per body part is kind of between 10 and 20 for hypertrophy if hypertrophy is not your goal like like we're talking about uh you know andy trains ufc fighters like for you ufc

fighters they have lots of other volume to do but they're not specifically in all cases like looking to grow bigger muscles and so they don't need to they don't need the amount of of time off and recovery um specifically to grow muscle mass that say a bodybuilder does where you're looking for like full complete recovery the ufc fighter is trying to be conditioned and ready to fight and you need recovery for for that for many reasons but uh you don't need to limit yourself to you know 10 to 20 sets for hypertrophy reasons if your if your training goal isn't hypertrophy but most people especially beginners and intermediates like they're just trying to put on muscle mass and get stronger and hypertrophy is an enormous component of that and i think you're you're safe to at least start within that range of 10 to 20 sets per week and then if you find over time that you know 25 sets per week is kind of the the higher end for

you well that's great you can go figure that out but 10 to 20 sets per week is is a good place to start yeah it's good to find out you know who you are like really now at lenore around we're trying to really start to separate people like based on what they need. Like they're like yesterday, for example, Riley's one of our, he's a 67 kilo lifter and he can do like yesterday. Exactly. He tripled five pounds or five kilos. Yeah. He tripled five kilos under his all time best. He literally goes up five kilos and can't do it once. So like, you know, that's a guy who needs to spend a lot of time, like,

actually going heavy. Like, absolute strength is, like, his body, he's very fast. So, like, you know, like, doing speed work or doing, you know, the lighter weights as fast as you can is a waste of time where he needs to learn to, you know, to put the body under, you know, heavy loads. Whereas there's plenty of people on the team, like Ryan, on the other hand, quite the opposite. You know, he needs to spend more time, of people on the team. Like Ryan, on the other hand, quite the opposite. He needs to spend more time with the reps because he's really good

at doing 1RM. So knowing who you are, are you fast and weak? Are you strong and slow? Are you somewhere in between? That's super breaking it down, but knowing who you are would really tell you where you should go and all these variables we're giving you. Yeah. When does progressive overload start to kind of break down? I know it's not that we're never using it, but when you start to realize that you're going to have to shift gears in your approach. And I always think about training age and I wrote a bunch of notes down on

kind of the methodologies that people should be thinking about inside their training age. But kind of in the first couple years, as far as taking those three variables, like how do people know that maybe it's time to start switching up their programming like i mentioned earlier i probably spent 10 years just doing straight up linear periodization but how do people start to realize like it's it i've i've escaped that beginner training age or even early intermediate now it's time to start getting a little creative in in we go about programming? That's a great question. I think a lot of coaches out there need to listen to this advice. It's like the minute you stop, like, you know, you're plateauing three to six months is a great time,

no matter what you're doing, to change. You know, like, I think, you know, like, you'll hear a lot of weightlifting coaches, they'll be like, well, they haven't PR'd in a year, but that's just weightlifting. I mean, that's just weightlifting i mean that's just your shitty coaching because like i and you're doing the same thing now if that's happening and you're trying new things and it's not getting better then you know but you should not just keep doing the exact same thing make a change and try to get the absolute most out of the least so start with you know like doug was saying that was you know brilliant like you know one two or three times a week like whatever you're doing like you know start with the least

amount of dosage and then when that stops change add more and then when you've added what you what you consider to be all the volume possible you know with the frequency and intensity all maxed out then switch everything Greg Knuckles it, I just read it last night as I was going to bed. He was talking about like, when he was at my gym, he was very high frequency, like a Bulgarian approach to powerlifting. And he was one of the first people I saw do that.

And he got super strong and then it stopped. And then he went to more of a traditional, then he went back to more of a traditional, like undulating periodization where, you you know the frequency is a lot less then then that stopped working then he went right back to what he used to do so like it doesn't have to be completely different just different for that moment in time i like the idea that the that the program is the last thing to change and what that means is that if someone stops making progress, instead of just being like, oh, you're not making progress,

let's go revamp your whole program and you've got to spend a bunch of time trying to improve it for whatever reason, before that, you look into that person's life and you try to fix all the other variables that could be contributing to the fact that he's not making progress first before you go rewriting something that may still be pretty dang good. But this person just, for whatever reason, isn't getting enough sleep or their calories are too low to make any real progress.

If you're not putting on muscle mass, well, it's just as likely that you just aren't eating enough food than your program just needs to be totally revamped and you need to jump ship on what you're doing and write something new. And so fix all the other variables first, see if you're still making progress. And then, yeah, sometimes you legitimately definitely need to, to change your training program, but your, your programming is not the only factor to your success. I totally agree. Yeah. You're going to have to kind of figure out there's most likely the weights are just 45 pounds and the bar is 45 pounds but the food going in your mouth is variable every single day the conversations you're having the

amount of sleep you're getting there's so many other factors um the weights just i assume want to be picked up and the weights always want to have more friends on the bar. So they're, they're usually, they're typically, uh, not the problem. And, and I think that's where a lot of people get into trouble is they're looking for the magic solution to, uh, like I gotta get stronger. Let's go find the new coolest program. Right. And you go, well, what about the fact that you've been in a fight in your house for the last three weeks? What about the fact that you haven't eaten a dinner at home?

What about the fact that there's just negativity surrounding you? You're not sleeping. You're sleeping five hours a night and you think it's the program and cleaning up all of that extra mess in your life because the weight's just a 45-pound bar. It has nothing really. It would like to get picked up. So there's a million different things that play into it before you feel like you really need. I got my sick Daredevil shirt on today.

Shout out to Daredevil making it happen. Love them. Love them. Good people. I love this bright red shirt um yeah there's there's just a million factors that go into it that you can live a a much make better decisions outside the gym that will automatically just make you feel like you're you're on the the super secret magic program when really it's just you've cleaned up so many different areas of your life.

And now you can actually effectively go use the program that you already have in your hands. Amen on that comment. So we've talked a little bit about just kind of like the beginner training age. And I put down the variables of intensity, volume, and frequency just because those are really the big three things that people need to be focusing on. But as we start to get more out into some of the intermediate and advanced training ages, there are some components to progressive overload.

And it was kind of fun putting this um putting this little list together because i also believe that there are deeper levels to training that don't always mean you're putting five pounds on the bar because at some point like as you get 37 years old and sound like me, along the way, there's just going to be weeks, days, months in which five pounds on the bar every week just isn't a possibility. Undulating periodization, sure, awesome. But at some point, the increases in load, the increases in frequency, the increases in intent or in volume, they're just not there as fast. And in order to stay motivated and in order to keep moving forward in your training, there has to be almost like a daily goal that you're setting. And I wanted to put these down because there's going to be times where people just can't add weight to the bar. And what are the things that they can focus on

that still show that they're going to be getting better over time and something that they can walk into the gym that is a tangible thing that they can measure and to just prove that everything is moving forward and still have that positive training response, even though it may not be the fact that you've got two more reps with 225, or you may not have gone from 225 to 230 in your back squat, or whatever those numbers are. And part of that is the three that I wrote down are range of motion, the, the time under tension. So a little

bit of, um, like a tempo. And then the big one, I think, especially for people that are focused on hypertrophy in that there's a, a mind muscle connection, um, that I think is really important to having consistency and, and becoming really like a student of the strength game and being able to actually hit muscle groups and finding the real purpose behind the exercise that you're completing. But when you think about range of motion, kind of time under tension, tempos, and then mind-muscle connection, do you guys ever think about that stuff in the idea of idea of progressive overload and and how people are connecting with movements and their body oh absolutely you know

like you can progress with with uh time and attention easily you know or like um if i'm a football player for example like the range of sorry changing the range of motion and focusing on specificity is a great way to, you know, get out of like a plateau rut. And it's a great way to affect performance. And so, yeah, definitely. I think if you look at most collegiate programs that are good, you'll see a shift, you know, to things like, you know, looking at range of motion, like doing the quarter squats. Quarter squats are good, depending, not all the time, like you see people doing it because they think it's a squat. But if I'm wanting to do it.

I call those intentional quarter squats. Right. I did a technique on that, intentional quarter squats. That is brilliant. And specificity-wise, those are going to definitely affect sprinting and jumping probably at that point in your career more so than doing a full range of motion you know squat i would have every time you go to every time you go to jump it's you're basically doing a quarter squat you're

doing a hinge more or less which is basically what a quarter a good quarter squat is yeah right i would add two more to your list too it It would be definitely looking at volume, and I totally blanked out on the second one. I'll remember in a second. I mean, I'm sorry, looking at velocity is what I was trying to say. Velocity is such a new part of the conversation to me. Right. You've got to listen to technology. Yeah, you just need machines to measure it

is the sticking point there for a lot of people. But they're getting cheaper and cheaper. They're getting cheaper. I don't have one. the sticking point there for a lot of people, but they're not that cheap. I think you can get some pretty good ones at 500 now 200. And I think now that they're being competitive with each other, I think it's going to get closer and closer. Like I would love to, for my online, you know, people that coach, I would love to have, you know, velocity be like somehow for every one of them. If I could, it would change.

I think it would change the way online coaching is performed. I think results would go through the roof because then you could be, it's like you're there, you know? So like, yeah, using velocity would definitely be part of that equation too. I'm glad you brought up shorter ranges of motion. I feel like a lot of people, if you're a beginner, like you hear range of motion touted all the time up shorter ranges of motion I feel like a lot of people if you're a beginner like you you hear range of motion touted all the time full range motion and you may have expected us to just talk about doing more and more and more range of motion deeper and deeper squats or

whatever it is but I was on the same page with you I was thinking like oh range of motion for intermediate and advanced that means you're doing board presses and rack pulls and and high box squats and whatever else you're you're trying to intentionally overload compared to the weight that you used to use by using a shorter range of motion so now you can have um you know like super maximal loading and you'll be more likely to have super compensation simply because you like we did rack pulls and we did rack pulls uh with our friends at fit ops it got giant yeah i've never played 405 for 12 ever in my life i've never even thought about it until you throw randy lloyd into the conversation i'm hanging out with all the boys it's like why wouldn't we jump from

225 to 405 there's a picture that colton took when i it has to be the second randy called out 405 the jump the 200 pound jump from 225 to 405 and colton took a picture of me like what the where are we going yeah like this is going to be very unhealthy. Okay, let's go. We can do that. Yeah. I mean, you monsters got 495. Why don't we go to 315 and pull a set of five, and then we can go to 405 or sets of 15. And Randy said, I ain't got time for 315.

All right. You monsters pulled 495 off the rack. I was like, that thing didn't move off pins at all for me. That might as well been a thousand so typical that i can i can pull i can't even make 495 buds but i can pull 405 for 12 12 10 and then a drop set gotta get stronger you're like most weightlifters a lot of weightlifters are terrible at um deadlifts because they expect the minute they apply force to the barbell that it comes off the ground. And deadlifting is not like that.

You got to keep pulling. You got to pull the tightness, the tension out of your body. You got to make your body tense and then pull. Yeah. You don't have to recruit a full 100% of your muscle fibers, too. They recruit in order of size, smallest to largest, and it takes a little bit of your muscle fibers too like they they recruit in order of size smallest to largest and it takes a little bit of time to make that happen a big part of of weightlifting is is trying to is trying to increase the rate of recruitment that's that's how that's how you

increase your uh your rate of force development is by having all the muscles fire at the same time versus one then the next and the next and the next where it takes a long time uh fuck i had a really good point to make and i just i just lost it i remember what i was gonna say you know velocity and then like isometrics too i mean adding these are all like more like save guys anyone listening save all this when stuff stops working it's like i don't go and like okay i'm a brand new person. I've been doing it a year. I'm going to buy the $2,500 velocity machine.

Don't do that. But if you do, use code MASH5. But you shouldn't. Save all this stuff, isometrics, time of attention, all this. Save it until the basic stuff. Well, I think that going the the biggest thing is that when you're in like your beginner stage just getting jacked you may or may not be using a full range of motion but every week whatever you're doing you're getting stronger

and yes you should learn about squatting all the way down you should learn about proper ranges of motion but like try and tell that to 14 year old Anders, get right. Your boy's just getting jacked and I got to go play hockey. I don't care about how long I need to be under the bar. I don't care. I'm just put some more weight on there. The more weight I put on the bar, stronger I am, faster I am, harder I hit people. Awesome. Let's do that. So at some point though, you hit the brick wall and you realize I can't keep going this way. And that's why I think that that intermediate level of training and why I came up with this list is because that intermediate, especially when you start to break down like where are the problems and why am I not getting stronger? Why

am I not progressing in this thing that I'm just banging my head into the wall over and over and over again? And you go, Oh, well maybe I should use some shorter ranges of motion. Maybe I should use more complete ranges of motion. Like maybe I should spend more time under the bar and, and connecting my brain and my body and actually using the right muscle groups.

And I think that those in that intermediate stage of training are, it's, it's kind of like the, Oh, there's a lot more to this story than just banging weights and squatting and easily adding five pounds every week. Like it starts to become a, it's almost like, it's almost like that, like personal development thing where you're like, why can't I get past this place where I'm at? It's like, Oh, I've got to become a, it's almost like, it's almost like that like personal development thing where you're like, why can't I get past this place where I'm at? It's like, oh, I've got to become a better person. We've got to become a better weightlifter in order to progress out of that stage. And it's frustrating because you're not going to be able to add five pounds to the bar every week for the rest of your life. It just doesn't work that way. So then you have to go back and do the problem solving and you go, well, what, where, where am I lacking strength? Well, you never actually sat all the way down and a squat. Okay. So now we've got to get strong in the bottom of

the hole. And how are we going to do that? Well, now there's an entirely new conversation and it's going to require you to back weights down. It's going to require some mobility maybe. There's just a lot of aspects of problem solving to truly learn how to continue to advance in something that you've hit the wall and you don't know where it's at. I really enjoy the idea, especially if your goal is hypertrophy, which it's all of our goals,

whether you are a performance athlete or not. We all want to add muscle and look jacked. But the number of times that I have done, especially in my earlier training, the number of times where I've done a squat just because I was told to do a squat. Nobody told me that I needed to pay attention to my quads. Nobody told me that the burning in my legs was like this, you know, my quads firing and my glutes finishing the reps.

And like there was no mention of muscles. It was just we squat because this is the best way to get strong. So we go do it. And as you start to, you start to stop those simple progressions, 5, 10 pounds a week, and following that linear progression model, these are the things that you start to ask yourself. You go, well, what are the mechanics of squatting? How do I improve that? What are some accessory movements that I can add to make that better?

Is it a mobility problem? And the mind-muscle connection piece really starts to bring a lot of what I love now about training. It's just kind of that soulfulness of being able to actually connect your brain to the muscles, run some diagnostics and make sure everything is moving properly. All your joints are hitting the ranges of motion that they should. But the fact that you're not just going in and just banging weights just to bang weights, but having a conversation with your body and actually being able to properly activate the muscles and feel them while you're doing the reps and doing the work i would say that time and attention and isometrics and the the mind body connection you're talking

about all go together the best way to get that connection is like slowing it down and that's you know you know my weightlifters who you would think you know someone watches like ryan move and you're like oh man that dude knows his body even he has times where there's something off, you know, or Matt, recently Matt Weininger, who we've started fixing. He had a shift going on. He would spin one foot would jump out more. So we did a lot of slowing things down to get better at that. Or, you know, that's the whole reason why you pause, stay on a snatch.

Like if you're getting out of position off the floor, that's why you're going to pause at the knee. So you can start to like understand the position you should be in and the bars at the knee and your strength in the joint at that specific angle. So I would think all those three go together. I mean, what do you think, Doug? Yeah, they all definitely roll together. Like time and attention.

Like if you can, if you have the mind muscle connection, which Ben, I've i've said this on the show before ben picolsky top bodybuilder in the world he basically says when you're a beginner you should be focusing on on just moving the weight like the the external environment like just doing the reps the way it's going up and down you're doing the work is is really kind of where you're at but then as you get more advanced um focusing on the mind-muscle connection and feeling the muscle contract and feeling the muscle working, feeling the squeeze at the top of the movement, et cetera,

is really where you need to be. And with bodybuilding, especially, you're kind of emphasizing the eccentric because you're getting more microtrauma as you're lowering the weight against resistance. And so that's, in many ways, is what bodybuilders use to increase time under tension in a way that isn't just more weight and more reps.

They're intentionally trying to do longer eccentrics to have more time under tension so they can spur hypertrophy. Yeah. Totally. And then this is kind of where we're all at. And it's really hard because the gains happen a lot slower unless you're watching Travis Mash still set PRs with velocity and all that. You have access.

PRs as of late. I don't think I'm ever going to have a true PR anymore. Modern day PR. Yeah. But I think that once you have those ranges of motion dialed in, once you're really able to connect your brain and body and move the muscles that you want, you understand kind of like where the volume and intensity and frequency should be to optimize for your specific body. I think that in the advanced stages of training and really judging, you have to get into some really nitpicky stuff to see growth and increases in strength from week to week or month to month. the RPE reps and reserve conversation comes in and then your ability to like vary tempos and

for specific goal whether it's through eccentrics pause reps but RPE the idea of rate of perceived exertion and and in progressive overload if if 225 for for some reason is a heavy deadlift to you. And, um, over time it becomes much easier. That's, that's a very good indicator that your perceived exertion is down and you're getting stronger. Um, and that may, if, if top end strength is something that doesn't come as naturally to you because you've been training for six, seven, eight, 10, 25 years, and you still want to have some sort of metrics on, on how strong you're getting or what your weekly, um, increases are. I think that's a really good metric to just realizing the accumulation of volume over time is going to allow you to,

um, you know, have exert less energy to lift the same amount of weight, which then you can, um, kind of continually build that, that reserve up as, as you do increase weights going forward.

Um, how, how do you think, uh, applying kind of like reps, reps and reserve, uh, applies to progressive overload um sorry me i think you know definitely like you know progressive overload um over time

i need to i need to progressively overload at a rate of which my body is capable of overloading meaning like you know because if i've been if i've been doing this thing five years, you're at the tip, you're starting to push the body to its tip top. And now you have to take into consideration, you know, stresses of life. Like, you know, if we all just, you know, if we were professional weightlifters, you know, and we got, you know, we had tons of money and we got fed when we needed to be fed, then you could probably stick with percentages your entire life. But like the fact that we're in school or working, or in my case, both and have a bunch of kids, like, like you have to take into consideration, where am I, you know, for the day, but then it gets tricky. If you're going to use RPE and RIR, you do have to really track, you know, volume because if, if I'm doing on a daily basis,

the way I quote, unquote, feel, but you can be careful, because then your volume could drop back, because let's say I'm, I'm being lazy, you know, because that's where the other side of RPE and RIR is, is like, they're subjective, and so, like, you know, I could easily, you know, lie to myself and be like, oh, that's a, that's an eight RPE, when really it's a six you know so like you do have to be really you know do your due diligence in tracking your volume and if you see the volume trending down for a long time then you have a problem because you're not going to get stronger unless your goal is like you you know you know anders is like if i'm just trying to stay strong well then that's different but like if i'm trying to you know actually get better at whatever it is i'm doing yeah you're gonna have to track it in the in the crossfit space people

talk a lot about training versus testing where when crossfit first started kind of like when the ufc first started like when the ufc first started guys just fought each other every day just 10 rpe 100 effort let's just fight every day Your career is going to be short if that's how you choose to go about training. So there are times when you should be going 100%. And there are times when you could be 80, 90% or 70% or whatever it is. So for regarding weightlifting, like look at conjugates. Like you show up, you do something that's, you know, pretty close to a 9 or 10 RPE. You're trying to hit a daily max, whatever that is.

And then, and then for the rest of the session, you're, you're still putting forth a lot of effort, but you're not like, I mean, Travis was, but yeah, you're basically bodybuilding the rest of the day. Or, um, another easy example is like, if you do a five RM at a 10 RPE, and then you do four sets of five at, at whatever your max was, whatever your 5RM was, minus 10%, well, that's not specifically saying reps in reserve, but chances are you could do at minus 10% of whatever your max was. You probably could do one or two more reps,

but you're choosing not to. You're getting in the volume in a way that's not taking you to absolute failure every single time, which over time is going to, you know, you just need enough of enough stimulus to provide growth. You don't need to kill yourself every single time just to make progress. You can make progress without killing yourself. You still got to work hard, but you don't need to kill yourself every time. It's definitely like, if you take two careers, if you take Ed Cohen and you take me, you know, like, like I got strong, you know, I started back to to powerlifting in 2001

and then by 2004 I was the best in the world and then by but by 2006 really if I'm honest with myself I'm done my career is over five years later and like Ed Cohen was like his career was over 15 20 years because he was much wiser in his approach i did what you said totally i'll admit it like i would max out every single day like i had lost my mind and i was insane like speed day became max every day max every day was still max every day so there's no quicker way to get strong guaranteed there you know um there's no way you can change my mind that maximum effort isn't the quickest way to get strong it is you know if you watch if you read anything that you know was a.s prillipin wrote if you want to get strong you got to live in nine percent above that's just fact however

being strategic in your approach to that will keep you in the game like ed cone has been six months six months of every single year doing basically bodybuilding. You know, basically he was in a, what is it, a non-specific comparatively six-month block. And then he would compete twice a year, so it would be 12 weeks, 12 weeks, done. And, like, that career lasted so much longer. Yeah. And I wonder, which I think that's why he's, you know, if you say greatest of all time, yes, because his career

and the number of championships he won is so vast whereas uh but there are people now i would consider that are better than him because they've lifted more because you got like the dude from russia if i can't never remember his name but like he's totally 2300 at 220 raw completely raw and so i'm like he's i mean arguably there's no bat there's no better power pound lifter than that guy ever and so but is he going to do it 15 to 20 years how long can this dude be the best in the world like i do wish and i even ed told me a long time he told me a lot of things that i didn't listen to and i wish i had but you know so yeah be a little bit wise and you'll be great for a lot. Yeah.

Um, Yuri Belkin, by the way, Yuri Belkin. I don't know why I always forget his name. He's a beautiful lifter too. Um, kind of wrapping this thing up with just program considerations for,

for people that are kind of looking for things to Google and ways that they can go about it. And, and we'll be doing full shows kind of on each of these. But in that beginner phase, linear progression, how do you lay out a linear progression model just at the highest level of, you know, what should people be looking for in the simplest terms so they have a place that they can start to implement these ideas. I mean, you know, I do it in 16-week blocks. You know, like you're going to do a transmutation phase,

which is like non-specific hypertrophy. Then you have transmutation, which is like specific hypertrophy. And when I say hypertrophy, it's such a broad term now. All of us now know that hypertrophyivy happens at reps below eight. But I'm saying those are where I'm really focusing on hypergivy and a lot of metabolic stress. But then I go into a realization phase. It's where I'm taking all this mass, extra muscle I've gained, and I'm going to try to now make it specific as far as getting stronger.

And then there's a four-week peak competition phase. And then you just can repeat that. love game and we're trying to you know now make it specific as far as getting stronger and then there's a four week like peak competition phase and then you just can repeat that you know and so like that is the most simple term so go and the way i do it in each block i go two weeks where i'm like the week two is going to be the highest possible volume week three is a deload week four is going to be the higher intensity of the group and so that's it yeah um and then you know kind of moving out of that is probably a little bit more of an undulating periodization um fluctuating yeah fluctuating a lot more in the rep schemes that people are doing um and and playing with a little bit more but um what is what is the the overall principles of undulating periodization and,

and how you can fluctuate volume, intensity, and frequency? I think they're broad, but you know, I think it's still, you know, like, whereas I would do, you know, when I was talking about those transmutation and in the totally accumulation phase, sorry. Like when you look at those phases where i was in my brain i'm thinking you know i'm probably averaging eight to ten reps when i'm learning periodization whereas undulating you might very well still average that it might be slightly less yeah but instead of just doing you know all it's all going to be eight that block you might do a day of eight

you know a day of tens day of sixes and you might even do threes but the overall average is higher than it will be in realization phase whereas realization might be an average of five you know or it might be five in linear realization it might still average that with undulating but it might be a day of fives and then day of threes and a day of ones and then peak you know where i think this is i think where undulating is really good is because a lot of people when they when they peak they're all they're doing three to one reps three to one reps and so they're doing zero opportunity and that's you know if you're not careful you'll start to lose you know some muscle mass that you've built and so you know so then even on those

last four weeks you might still have a day which at least five and then what i do is i might do an amrap with a rep or two reserve on one day just to make sure that i'm keeping them where i built them so that that makes sense absolutely i think uh i think that programming is like the the programming considerations i just wanted to put in here in case and and we'll do you know full shows on all of these methodologies and programming is really like the sweet spot where we can just talk forever but at a minimum if somebody finds this show and and digs in just some things that can guide their way on on how to actually implement the concepts that we have and and one one of those that gets really tricky is kind of on that higher level

where you start talking about actual performance where you're competing in a sport which is where I wanted to bring up just a little bit of the K value and, and how you guys calculate that. And cause that's a really complex way to go about increasing strength. Yeah, the K value, it was, what is the great, he's Asian lifter in Cal, I mean, not lifter, coach. He's a great coach. He's written several books. Takano? Yeah.

No, no, no. Yeah, Takano. That's who I read it from. And so it's really just giving you the value that helps you figure out what average intensity. It's not that, I mean, it's not as hard's it's really just giving you you know this the value that helps you figure out what average intensity it's not that i mean it's not as hard as it might sound it just is like really you're just you're finding out like what what average intensity should be going into the next phase and so it's it's brilliant though because you do have to know because like just increasing volume might not do it.

Because, like, if I, like, say I increase volume, but I'm not going above 60%, I don't think you're going to get stronger. You know, I think you could very well get more hypertrophy like that, but you're not going to get stronger like that. So you need to know what you need to average to take that thing from a 300 total to a 310. You can't just – too many coaches just shoot in the dark. You know, I think if you talk,

like if anyone sat in on a conversation between me and special Arnold and or Kevin Simons, I think you'd be amazed because when you get to that tip top level and you're trying to figure out how do I, you know, get this, you know, like Hunter, how do I get her to, you know, hunter how do i get her to you know snatch more than 100 kilos at 59 kilos like that's not hard man that is like like you really gotta dig deep in all these principles that we've talked about figure out how do i get this girl to go one more kilogram at that point so our conversations will be would probably be like make your eyes roll back in your head because you'd be like what travis bass where can the people find you masterly.com go to walmart

though right help us help the world man yeah right doug larson i'm on instagram doug will see larson i'm anders varner at anders varner we are bar Shrugged at Barbell underscore Shrugged. Make sure you get over to Walmart, San Diego, LA, Palm Springs, and Vegas. We are in stores. And for everyone else, Walmart.com, fat loss, cardio, conditioning, and muscle gain. Our strength program is over there. So Walmart.com for everybody outside of those regions. And for everyone else, BarbellShrugged.com forward slash store.

That is where all of the programs, nutrition, ebooks to make strong people stronger we'll see you guys next week that's a wrap my friends make sure you get over to barbell shrug.com forward slash diesel dad for all the busy dads getting strong lean and athletic without sacrifice and family fatherhood or fitness and make sure you go support our sponsors, Organifi.com forward slash shrugged, save 20% on the green, red and gold juices, as well as our friends at bioptimizers this month,

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