Barbell Shrugged - Battle of the Sexes: Should Men and Women Train the Same w/ Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Travis Mash - Barbell Shrugged #491

Episode Date: August 3, 2020

In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged:   What are the similarities and differences in training different sexes? How does each sex respond to higher and lower volume. Why women can stay stronger, longer. Emotional and behavioral qualities of men and women. Volume and frequency for men and women. Language and coaching tactics for each sex.  Team and cooperation inside groups.   Anders Varner on Instagram   Doug Larson on Instagram   Coach Travis Mash on Instagram   ————————————————   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   Shadow Creative Studios - Save $200 + Free Consult to start you podcast using code” “Shrugged” at podcast.shadowstud.io   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   www.masszymes.com/shruggedfree  - for FREE bottle of BiOptimizers Masszymes   http://onelink.to/fittogether - Brand New Fitness Social Media App Fittogether   Purchase our favorite Supplements here and use code “Shrugged” to save 20% on your order: https://bit.ly/2K2Qlq4

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like hundreds of people coming and friending me. So fit together on all of your devices. We are going to get into the show. Let's do it. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mass. Today on Barbell Shrugged, we are talking about the training differences and how you can program differently, similarities and differences in training men and women. And I don't know very much about this because I have not been to all of the person that did Brian, who did all the training, went to the OPT courses and came back. And let me tell you something. He was like, man, we're doing it all wrong we need to be writing two different programs one for men one for women and i was like oh man this is so deep for me already

um mainly i don't know a whole ton about how structuring and physiology and anytime i'm coaching them i'm trying to manage personalities i'm the guy that makes the training fun there's a lot of differences that i can talk about in training men and women in that side too but Anytime I'm coaching them, I'm trying to manage personalities. I'm the guy that makes the training fun. There's a lot of differences that I can talk about in training men and women in that side too. That's a huge part. Yeah. That was my main part in the gym, making sure everybody stayed and how we structure that stuff to get them big and strong? Because it is different.

Yes. By and large, I think there's way more similarities than differences. You're going to be doing a lot more stuff the same than you're actually doing different. They're still going to be lifting weights. They're still going to be lifting fairly heavy. The volumes are going to be kind of the same. It's all going to be nuanced little tweaks on something that kind of looks the same. It's not like the women are going to be doing,

like people used to think 20 or 30 years ago, women are going to do all cardio, guys lift weights because they're so different. So women don't need to lift weights and guys don't need to do cardio. That kind of old, overgeneralized is is kind of a thing of the thing of the past you know if you look at crossfit gyms especially like everyone's kind of doing the same thing and everyone's kind of getting pretty good results overall if you're doing crossfit well etc but to your point i think the two big categories to discuss maybe we can go through one category at a time is really the

physiological side of the differences similarities similarities and differences, and then the psychological similarities. Yeah. That's my hood. That's your wheelhouse. That's me. Yeah. Yeah. Travis, you train and have trained some high-level ladies and plenty of high-level men.

What have you found over the years that really is the big difference programming-wise, movement-wise, recovery-wise, physiological? I think you can i mean there's some pretty good studies out there that just says you can women can handle more volume on average than men um i think one one thing you need to take consideration is that uh i feel like you need to like have some higher intensity in there longer meaning like you'll have you'll have this is very common you'll hear someone coaching a girl and they'll be like well man she pr'd on her tens 10 rep squat for example she pr'd on her five rep max squat even pr'd on her three rep then we went to her one rm and it

stayed the same and so like so like that's a very common thing you might hear and so like one thing we started doing is like even when we're doing accumulation, we will do waves. So it'll be instead of just tens, we'll be doing threes and tens. And then starting with like the typical fives, we'll be doing ones and fives. And we do, you know, daily undulating too. So they're going to get the higher intensities way more often, but at a much higher volume. For example, a girl, you know, it'd be nothing to say 90 for two times five for a girl would be no problem for a guy that would be like who yeah difference um yeah but those

are the biggest differences you know that i found is that can you generalize that to just being a relative strength issue like just the higher your relative strength if you deadlift 3x body weight then then you just can't do as many reps at 90 versus if you deadlift 3x body weight then then you just can't do as many reps at 90 percent versus if you deadlift 1x body weight then what now you can do you could do 30 reps with 90 body weight throughout the day and and not be totally destroyed in the same way possibly but then some of these girls like hunter elam man i mean you're talking about a girl who deadlifts you know 400 pounds weighing nothing 100 so like so i i don't know i would say even even a girl who like you know who's relatively strong because you know she's stronger than most

guys yeah um and even like you got hannah my my teenager she's going to be stronger than most guys you know she weighs 121 pounds and she cleans her 209 and she's 16 so like I don't know what do you do Hannah is like a much smaller athlete and then you've got someone like Kendall who's like she'd be my first pick for

athlete if we lined everybody up guys and girls on the fence and we were picking a kickball team I'm picking Kendall first. I don't even need to see her walk. I just go, that girl over there, come with me. We're going to do something great together. Right.

We're going to win the championship. We got this. I don't need to know anything. I just got the best horse in the game right now. When you're thinking about training females, does somebody that's small like Hannah and somebody that's larger, stronger, like bigger frame like Kendall, does that make a big difference in relative strength to kind of like the high or just – I imagine Kendall's top-end strength is just insane because she's just built. But her frame also is able to withstand much higher volumes because she's just a bigger stronger girl you know actually it would be the opposite like even like the smaller people

normally on average can handle way more volume than say the bigger and so like you know except you know in this case you have a difference in biological and training age so therefore they're pretty similar. But if all things were equal, Hannah would probably end up handling more volume. For whatever reason, smaller people just, I don't know the science there, but in my experience, they tend to handle volume way better

than say like, let's say here's apples and apples. You have Ryan and you have Morgan. You know, Morgan is more of a frequency, high intensity, whereas Ryan is more of a volume. I would say it was because he was a CrossFitter, but so was Morgan. They both have very good work capacity. GPP. Yeah, so that's pretty much apples to apples right there. Then it goes into individual, man.

Like even say everything we just said is on average. But then you take each individual and you might find differences in that person, which I'm curious if that has something to do. You know, I've heard from Charles Bulligan or from that camp that maybe that has something to do with their dominant neurotransmitters. So like some people it's acetylcholine and some people it's dopamine and so like depending on what it is that might be the way to train them when adelaide turns 13 and i'm like yo adelaide i got you as far as i can get you you got to go train with coach mash now um what how long does it take? One thing I've noticed is that females have a longevity in sports or in strength that males – females can keep the strength gains going much longer if they stay in the game. out and they just hit this like genetic ceiling uh around 30 32 maybe 34 years old they can still get better at some things but girls can continue to pr and and get significantly stronger over a longer period of time now look at morgan's mom you know you got crystal yeah she's done like 418

deadlift and she's a 42 year old mother and so or she might be i don't know i can tell you her exact age she's 28 twice she's she's in her 40s and she's killing it y'all and like so you gotta say like um the thing there is like you have men you know like i said we peak around that early 20 year old mark on testosterone growth hormone and And then, you know, like it doesn't get higher. It starts to, to, to down a little bit, but then yeah,

around the 30s, there's a pretty big plummet. Whereas a girl's same thing. They peak, but it's so, it's almost like a straight line. Like, even when it goes down,

it's so minimal. So like, so they can just keep getting stronger for much longer. And this new hypertrophy uh article i just read research article like it's very similar you know in hypertrophy alone because because uh it has very little to do with like the hormones that are released while training it has most to do with mechanical tension and all the different aspects of that like it's pretty even like as far as hyperglycemia goes

between a man and a woman but um yeah so like they can keep going for a very long time and weight lifting uh i don't know the exact percentage but until the weight is over your head you know you need a strong back obviously but your legs are such the dominant um group in pulling off the floor outside of clearly keeping stability in the back. But until the weight is actually overhead, you don't really need crazy upper body strength. In fact, you can

overcome having a lot of upper body weakness by having a really good overhead position and speed under the bar. Upper body strength tends to be a very lagging body part for many women. Upper body pressing is a really difficult thing for them to gain. It just takes a long time for that to come through. How do you kind of overcome that in programming and training is it just a volume game and trying to beat genetics as much as possible yeah you definitely

have to hammer their upper body way more uh than you do their lower i mean let me say that again you just have to throw in a lot of upper body and here's why like when i my very first team usa athlete i coached uh it was a female it was rebecca gurdon and that was uh back with muscle driver and all that and she got so strong that her wrist broke simply from the load like it had nothing to do with technique or one bad incident it just got to where she was able to support more than she was capable so that's when i started like i literally doubled the volume the over you know the upper body volume for females and since then i've never had that issue but um it's different doubling is a lot i mean you it's not like you have a month you know yeah back then it was mainly

it wasn't much it was like their jerks was their upper body and so like we put a bunch in. I do a lot of upper body work, even bench pressing, because most – not most, but yeah, a lot of females. Like they're so mobile that there's no stability. And so one thing we did with Hunter is we started bench pressing, and then, you know, the numbers of misses behind went way down. And so like you just got to – that's where, once again, you got to know your people. But on average, a lot of females could could do to stand to do some benching whereas the men probably not because

you know you know if they're tight you know you get the you know the internally rotated humerus you probably shouldn't do that for a guy but for most girls i think it's a great thing well i guess bench pressing too is that do you have the guys doing it as much? Is that still like a focus lift that you go into training blocks with? Only with the guys that are super – that are too mobile. But we normally bench for like four weeks every 20 weeks. So you're only doing bench for – in a way kind of like create stability in the shoulder. Accumulation. We do it for guys you know and then but then they do a lot of push-up weighted push-ups because it's way more

yeah for some reason because you're you're pushing up you're engaging the serratus anterior but when you're bench pressing you're laying down you're kind of just like letting it lengthen it's totally different yeah so like uh and the serratest is so important for like you know scapula stabilization so we do a lot of weighted push-ups um after that that period of and we do a lot of dips so but like benching for guys only normally like four weeks but for girls almost the entire time yeah a lot of times so uh when you look at muscle fibers i don't know if you guys have talked to galpin about this um is there a big difference in the like on average the muscle fiber types of of females to males i don't know doug might do you know that answer like uh well depends which direction you're talking like if you if you compare male muscle fibers to muscle fibers, like in a controlled laboratory setting where you do a max voluntary contraction with a single fiber, they both contract at the same force.

So the fibers are the same. Whether they have the same number of kind of slow twitch and fast twitch to oversimplify how fibers are um i think usually people say that women have slightly more slow twitch than fast twitch but i don't know if that's just a generalization that's people just assume women are slower so they must have a different fiber structure but i actually don't know what the actual research says on it so that's definitely a question to ask, to ask Andy. He did that research. I still think he's, is he allowed it?

You know, he did that at the, uh, you know, it was the 2017 world championships when it was in, uh, California, Anaheim. He did that.

He did a bunch of muscle biopsies of a lot of females. He didn't females and males. So I would love, I went up and actually saw him, uh, and went through the lab and that was the main study that they were doing, but I don't know the results of it. I got the tour of the lab, and there was like nine ladies in there, and they were all working on that specific study. I just don't – I never actually got to the end because we showed up in the middle of it.

Yeah. It would be interesting to see a chart where it was like men trained and untrained, women trained and untrained. And then in each box, so to speak, there's like a percentage breakdown of like the average untrained person has this many type 1s and this many type 2Xs, etc. Like as a percentage of total muscle fibers. But I've never seen a chart like that. But Andy might know where to find something like that there's probably been a meta-analysis that shows kind of the averages right yeah um mash when you write programs out and you start looking at rep ranges from them or

total volume and you're looking at like tens eights sixes or tens f tens, fives, threes, twos, and ones. Right. And the higher percentage they can do for a longer period of time, do you find that it's very difficult, or do you find difficulty in getting those high percentages in the tens and eights to actually transfer into new one rep maxes? Is that transition on working your way down from volume into a peaking cycle dip more more challenging yeah that's why i think it's important to do like daily undulating so like even you know like so when i do a perjury accumulation even though there's you know it's focused on the higher reps there's still going to be a day of like threes or

maybe even one sometimes so depending on the person and so like you're still going to be a day of like threes or maybe even one sometimes. So depending on the person. And so you're still going to have that absolute strength aspect in there. It's just not the priority. So really with the way I do daily undulating periodization, like you never have that traditional linear periodization of tens, fives. You just have a focus of maybe tens and a focus and maybe fives however you're still doing some trip you know especially when you start doing in that five what people traditionally say that five range where it's you know mainly you know strength training transmutation all that so then you're doing uh at that point you're doing some fives threes and ones depending on the day or maybe even on the

same day where we do our ways so you'll do a one rep than a five rep where you're using post activation potentiation yeah so like and that tends to work and like with a female too here's the biggest piece of advice i could give you guys is that like try to if it's a weightlifter if we're talking weightlifting you definitely want to try to peak that squat earlier so like what i've been trying to do is peak it at week eight like when you're eight weeks out from a weightlifting competition, peak the squat six to eight weeks out. And then from there on, you focus on power development with, you know, with obviously the velocity of the squats.

And then you're really focusing on the absolute strength of the snatches and clean and jerks because it just becomes – I had one athlete. She really brought it to my attention. She's like, mentally, this is too much to try to, like like max my squat, max my snatch, max my clean and jerk. So when I, that was like several years ago. So when I switched it, it did work way better to like peak the absolute strength, you know, like the squatting, the pulling earlier, especially for females. And then let them just have to focus emotionally on snatching and clean jerking and that's where what you were talking about earlier emotions that's a big part of like

the men and women differences too yeah uh before we even get into the psychological side of it um when are you as like dialed into like menstrual cycles and peaking them throughout the month and like how how that training volume flows with their cycle i've done plenty of that in the past the problem is is that uh it's not as like it's not as linear as people would say it's not like that on yeah most people would say that on like you know you know the the middle of that cycle is like when you should max out that's when you should go the hardest. But it doesn't work that way for every female.

So what I'm going to do when I get to Lenore Ryan and we have the Omega Wave and the Velocity, I'm going to track each individual female. And then I'm going to plot, you know, like where they tend to be the strongest, where they tend to be, you know, like, you know, the weakest. And then I'll do it. So I'll look at both, the menstrual cycle, what the mega wave is saying, and then what the velocity is saying. And then I will plot after several months of just doing as close to the individual as I can.

I'll start to see. I'm hoping that I will start to see some patterns per individual. So then I'll be able to tell you more. Yeah, because if you put bar speed on there plus whatever percentage they're working at, it's going to give you a pretty accurate reading on a daily basis of where... It'd be really interesting.

I'm actually stoked to see that next year whenever you get that finalized because that would be really cool to see. It's almost like general energy level plus the amount of good hormones going on and then the drop in hormones um dude that's gonna be wild that'll be really cool it's definitely way more for some girls than it is for others you know like i know when i had a maddie sasser like it was you could i mean it was i could have easily and i did program

around you know her cycle because when it was like like a couple days before like she was a solid five or ten percent down so it was a huge difference but like some people you don't see that and so like that's just where you gotta like yeah and see. But I'm hoping to find out. I wonder if there's just a mentality too of – I mean obviously during the cycle, there are hormone fluctuations in the energy and they're cramping and it's – Yeah. I don't really know what it feels like, but it definitely changes things. Um, if a lot of that is just like feeling emotionally or like mentally, physically drained during that time, which like just adds into seeing where the barbell goes and how, and like what their actual performance is when you start measuring that stuff. Yeah. Uh, I can't wait, but you know, and like, also like, I would

love to get the other professors to help me like uh look at like you know ligaments and tendons you know during certain times because you know yeah those last few weeks like you know when they're really fertile like you can get pretty you know the risk of injury can go up so that's where like you know the intensity should probably go down and like the volume can stay higher but like you definitely don't want to risk any kind of injuries at certain points. Well, now that we – when we talk about the menstrual side, we have to talk about the emotional, mental side, training differences in men and women. Man, you coach high-level athletes that are insanely driven to, to be great at something. And that's different than coaching guys.

Like guys, in my experience, guys are really good at team sports. Like we run in packs. Um, and females, the, the running with the pack is a very – it's not very difficult, but it's a different thing.

I feel like the females that I have worked with, especially like a lot of the competitors, there's an internal competitiveness and at times creates a little bit more dissent inside the team because I don't think that they run in packs the same way that guys do. I'm trying to say something. I know what you're saying. I see what you're saying. I see what you're saying. But it's – I feel like men just by design are used to – whether this is from like hunting days, but we always work together. We always play team sports and we've been doing it since we were children. And being on a team and training together with people is a much easier process for males when you're in the gym. Yeah. What are some of the differences, I guess, that you've kind of seen?

We can break down into some more specifics of that. But in coaching the high-level women, have you noticed any big differences? Absolutely. I think it's much easier. Like, if you recruit two girls that are the same weight class, it could be trouble. You know, like, so, like, even at Lenore Ryan, I'm really going to try to focus on, like,

keeping them as separate as possible because of that very thing. Whereas you can get two guys in the same weight class, you know, somebody will establish that they're the dominant, and then it'll be all right. But it can be pretty grueling. It can actually ruin a culture if you're not careful. Especially, think about it, you've got two, anybody that's trying to go for the Olympics.

I've even seen it with men, just not as often, because at the Olympic Training Center, there was a huge divide know when it was still open between like you know the colin burns people and then the vardanian people it was a complete divide in the room because you had these two dudes who were like the top of the pecking order but so it can still happen with men just not as common but females like you know they get super where they hate each other it's like obvious uh and only thing different the only reason they could possibly hate each other is because they're in the same weight class or they're battling to see who's the best.

And they take it, I hate to generalize, because, you know, sometimes it's not the truth. But, like, it appears, you know, based on my experiences, that they seem to, like, take it more personal than, like, guys. I mean, Chris and I, my, one of my best friends, we were in the same weight class and we trained together for years and we're still best friends. And so like, you know, we battled in the gym for sure, but like then it was over, but.

I think you said that much better than I did because I was trying to say the same thing. Um, and that when they are battling for that top spot it's it's a very emotional battle yeah and i think that guys that have played on a baseball team a basketball team they are more comfortable understanding how that role of dominance comes about and the the competition that happens inside the team or inside the locker room, it's just been practiced more. Like it's practiced in your social groups. It's practiced in the gym. It's practiced on the teams.

I just – we have a – males have an easier time with the internal competition and realizing that there's external competition of people that once one to Travis's point, once you establish who the best is like the, all the other guys above and below know their spot in the hierarchy. And then actually things kind of settle down because everyone knows where they belong. It's, it's when, it's when people don't know, am I, am I better or worse than that person that like, that's when like it's really aggressive and competitive. Um, so guys, they're saying guys are generally more accepting of the hierarchy whereas

women kind of have like social socially culturally um they think we're all equal which is you know true in in in many categories like we're all the same people but you can be a better or worse weightlifter based on how much weight you lift yeah but then they were saying that when it comes to when there's not a hierarchy you're not competing for the top spot you know the one varsity position or the one person who's going to go to worlds or whatever it is um if it's a if it's a team sport they tend to be more cooperative and less likely to to try to like steal the show or or get all the attention or be a ball hog like that type of thing where I never pass the ball. I always shoot because I want to be

the one that scores the points because I think I'm better than everybody. They're more likely to be cooperative in a team sport. I want all the girls to know right now that as a coach of females, there is one thing that I cannot handle

and that's females crying. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. If I see you miss a lift or if I see you not get an open score that you want and you start crying, I don't know what to do. I've never seen a guy cry over an open score, but I literally melt inside because I just want to help but then i look at i'm like i gotta go this is my place i don't know what to do um that that part the the emotional part i feel like is a much higher piece in the performance and and how uh how wrapped in like you don't really hear guys too much talking about like uh you know the this like disordered eating or disordered fitnessing like we talk about overtraining and then girls kind of get into like oh well it's really unhealthy for me guys are like yeah i'm just not overtraining i should sleep more yeah

um i'll cut it off a little of themselves. And that's a really difficult thing when you're coaching females to overcome is self-talk that can many times kind of go the opposite way. I feel like we're doing a lot of projections, but all of this stuff comes from working with many females. I could bring all of them in right now and be like oh remember we went through this whole cycle uh where we we learned about talking to ourself in a much healthier way yeah um i i feel like many times the the self-talk gets negative quicker in female populations than it does with the male male competitors they ahead, I'm sorry.

I was going to say, I feel like on average you're right. I've heard many people say that women tend to be more self-critical than men. Actually, referencing kids raising three boys and no girls, someone told me a while back they were saying that when, when guys tend to, when young kids, um, you know, single, single digit age, you know, five, six, seven, eight, 10 year olds, um, or nine year olds, excuse me. Uh, when they get upset, the women, the girls tend to make themselves miserable and guys tend to make everyone else miserable. Women push it inside and guys externalize it and they just cause trouble. They break shit. They hurt

people. Women or girls in this case tend to just get depressed. They get sad. But they don't really hurt anybody. One thing I can say with confidence is definitely at a meet or if a girl you know or like if a

girl's about to go for like a big lift the way that you would communicate to them on average is definitely different um I know I learned that with Rebecca Gordon learned a lot with her she was my very first girl that became really really good but um you know whereas a guy you're like come on you might slap him on the back you you know, like whatever. Like with most females, it's more of like, let's go have fun. Let's laugh about it. Literally with Rebecca, who is very consistent, like she was a great weightlifter. Like by simply in the back room, like laughing, we'd, you know, be listening to music. She'd be dancing.

Like the more chill I was, the more chill she was, the better she performed. When she was about to go out, you've been here before, very low-key, not like, let's go, none of that. It worked quite the opposite. I've definitely found that, too, in the gym with Hannah. Probably my best, as a coach, my proudest accomplishment has been a year ago with Hannah. Like, you know, she had all the tools, but mentally was struggling, you know.

And then, you know, like there was times where I was like, well, maybe I should just let Crystal coach her. And I was just like, man, I don't know what I'm doing with her. And then I decided to try to alter what I do as a coach. And so then the way I communicate with her is so different than everyone else. Like I listen, I'm overly positive. You know, I'm not ultra aggressive. Like when I want her to go up, you know, say that she does a weight and I want her to go up a little bit heavier. Uh, I ask her like, what do you think? And when she says, um, yes, then I'm like, yes. You know, whereas if I just said let's go up, it would be like for some reason,

and she didn't say it, she's not confident, and she would miss or Clark or something. So there's just so many little things. The main thing is just staying very positive, very calm, very encouraging. You've got to listen. And now she's the second best youth female in the entire country. And the only one beating her happens to be in her weight class. She's like, you know, they're both the top two girls and they're killing it. They both hold the American records.

Hannah holds the clean and jerk. The other girl holds the snatch. So you've got two awesome girls in the same weight class. They'll be battling for lots of years to come. I think that took me a long time to realize is just listening many times is just good enough. Yeah. Instead of trying to solve problems. I'm also talking about my marriage.

I'm also talking about everything I've ever dealt with women ever, which is really hard because if like you're in business or you're in the gym or you're anywhere, and in my mind, if you present me a problem, I'm going to try and just be like, okay, well, let's put a rough action plan together to make sure that doesn't happen again. Many times that is actually very frowned upon. All they would like to do is say, I have a problem and I would like to tell you about it and here's why it's a problem. And these are the second and third and fourth darts that I'm throwing at myself because I had one dart thrown at me called a missed lift. And many times, just sitting there – and this is like going back to kind of the crying comment where like they have a problem. They just want to vent it out.

Yeah. They just want to tell you. And you're allowed to just sit there and listen and shut up, which takes someone that likes to talk like me and solve problems a long time to learn when you're coaching females. It takes a long time to just be like, oh, I'm supposed to shut up right now. Not solve the problem. They don't want more things to think about trying to get it all out. Dude, I think you're just discussing like 90% of the world's problems right there. Like guys knowing when to just shut up and be like, oh, let me just hold you and shut your mouth. Like I am the worst at that too.

I'm terrible at it. Me too. Like if there's a problem, I'm like, I'm a coach. My goal is to at that too. I'm terrible at it. Me too. If there's a problem, I'm a coach. My goal is to fix that problem. Shut your mouth is what you should do. Yeah, just sit there. Let them vent. Get it out.

Even if it doesn't make sense. I love when it doesn't make sense because then I'm like – I feel like I'm always getting ready to utter what my solution would be. Yeah. That really isn't a great solution to anybody else's problems. This is me thinking I know how to fix shit. Agreed. Yeah, I feel like another common thing said about females is that they're so much more coachable.

They're more likely to actually listen to what you say, do what you say, not argue with you or think they have this other thing to do that's a better solution definitely and they're and they're not gonna tell you they're gonna go do it just like ah fuck i know i'm doing and i'll just not do the x y and z and i'm gonna go do my own program even though he just wrote me a program yeah all those things i actually found out travis with with ladies that they're just easier and they listen better? 100%. Yeah. Like, definitely, sometimes, some days I'll come in and I'll be like, man, I wish I only coached females. But then you have the thing where they have an emotional day and then I'm like, man, I wish I just coached males.

And then I'll come in and, like, one of them will be going off program. And I'll be like, I wish I coached females. It's just pros and cons. I love coaching both. I think if you're a really good coach and that's really who you are, you'll love coaching both because each present their own set of problems. And because Anders and I are the way we are, we love to overcome and figure out those problems. So really most athletes are nothing but a

really complicated rubik's cube is all they are and you're just trying to like figure one square out at a time so i think that girls have a lot more fun in the gym like guys it turned every day basically turns into an ego battle but when you get like a good group of girls that enjoy training together there's's dance parties. The music is not heavy metal and aggressive rap every single day. I think it's one of the coolest parts about CrossFit. We talk about it a lot of how cool the females are in the sport. And the ability to see really cool girls being really strong and having a lot of fun in the gym really transfers down. And girls are a blast to train with.

I actually love going and just like the day we came and hung out and I was talking shit to Hunter. Hunter just wants to be a gangster in the gym. She just wants to lift all the weights. I'll train with Hunter all the time. I try and train with Kendall whenever I'm home as much as possible just because they're having it's a lot of fun and somebody and I it's impossible when I'm training with a guy not to I have to like check myself and just be like we're just training it's cool even now I'm like I bet I can snatch just like a little bit more are we gonna keep going up are we keep going I'm like I bet I can snatch just like a little bit more are we gonna keep going up are we keep going I'm like I force the other person typically to be like this is where I'm done I'm like okay

now we can have fun me too I asked and now we can back it down and just enjoy ourselves because I don't know how I don't know how far we're gonna take it but I'm not gonna say no first yeah and I just when you train with a guy there's always this weird like who's going to lift the most thing and when i train with girls it's just so much fun i like genuinely enjoy just going in and lifting the same amount of weight as them yeah i love especially when i'm lifting with kendall because it is the same it typically typically is the exact same. I miss Muscle Driver for that reason. Like, you know, we had a good group of girls and boys. And they all, I feel like for some reason, I don't know why,

but like the culture at Muscle Driver was pretty darn good. You had your battles because, you know, people were in the same weight class and stuff like that. But for the most part, everyone would hang out and laugh a lot. You know, you have your have your you know the girls though were competitive um but in a very cool way with each other you know like like they would definitely battle like you know they wouldn't say it and it wouldn't be as obvious as the boys battling because the boys would call each other out and be like yeah cleanser the most today but the girls

would be doing it in a very quiet way but i would see it happening and i would I would, you know, like I had certain relationships like with Rebecca because I started her. I would see when she was doing it. I'd look at her and I'd be like, I see what you're doing. And she'd laugh, you know. So it's just small nuances. But like, you know, but like it's fun. And, you know, sometimes by generalizing we could be wrong because everything that we said could apply to the opposite sometimes you know there could be guys that are like that but we're

talking about you know on average but like uh there's really like doug said at the very beginning it's really a lot more similarities than there are differences it's just that but learning those small nuances will end up being the difference in making them champions. So it's important to know. Yeah, for the most part, we all have to squat, hinge, push, pull, carry, do it in a couple different planes, get really strong, do a lot of volume. And that's stuff like when I was talking about at the very beginning of the show that when Brian came back back from the opt course and like started like really digging into this it's like everybody was on the same like team training program but there would be days where you could split things up um and and have a little bit higher volume be testing different things um we definitely never got into uh tracking cycles and stuff like that as far as differences.

But for the most part, everybody just needs to – figuring out a way to get everybody on the same page in your team, which is something you've done really well and probably poorly. I'd love to hear some of the lessons learned about how the guys and the girls on your team kind of mesh one one question i did want to ask and it's because i've always i've never had a best friend in my life that also wasn't a training partner like that was just like where we all went to work um do most of the guys on your team hang out together outside of the gym and do the girls hang out outside of the gym as well um definitely the guys on your team hang out together outside of the gym and do the girls hang out outside of the gym as well um definitely the guys um the girls have not so much of late which is i'm trying to rectify you'll have there's like pockets like you know they all there's like more of a cliquish type thing um the guys on average don't care they seem to be like uh outside the gym we haven't

had that where... We haven't had a Norrick and Colin Burns thing yet. Everyone kind of knows. You have Ryan and you have Morgan, but they're different weight classes. It's not a big deal. They're both super good. Who's better? Who knows? They're both... They don't

feel a need to prove who's better because they're both really good. We haven't had that. The girls of late in the last year it's been interesting there's been definitely like you know this two or three hang out this two or three hang out you know so like um but but i'm trying to rectify that before going to lenoir ryan like so i try to number one get them to hang out as a team more often and making sure that we're developing that team camaraderie just because we'll be at school. They won't be able to – they'll be there together. So we need to make sure they're getting along.

Dude, you got to get like a frat house but like the weightlifting house. Oh, God. Your boy, I will come back and party hard with them. I'll be ready. I'm going to be really tough on believe it or not like people would not realize this but my goal is to have the highest GPA on campus so like I you know my I'm they're well aware of my expectations now in the classroom too and so they're they have more chances to get kicked off the team because they're doing stupid stuff than they are not lifting well. Man, I wouldn't make that team.

One, I'm not strong enough. Two, GPA is too low. The two metrics of success, I wouldn't have been able to hit them. I've got a few with low GPAs coming into there. I'm just going to teach them how to study. I want to check with their teachers. Got to teach them how to study. I'm going to check with their teachers. You've got to give them a little purpose. I want every single one of my athletes to graduate

and have a job and a life to be successful. I don't want them to graduate and be like, oh, I guess I'll go to Target. I think that if you're a coach and you struggle with some of these things, that probably is the number one conversation that you need to not only have with your competitors

and your teams, but also just with everybody that comes into your gym of defining purpose and figuring out why that athlete is specifically there. Because that is really... If you listen way back, I think it was the CrossFit Games time last year um jen ryan and i who won the masters 40 to 44 age group this year she's like she is the freakiest most like committed badass

of all time like it's so impressive but we had a very emotional show. I cried a lot. Um, just because like, uh, as I was leaving, she was just like the definition of what I was trying to get away from of like over committed to CrossFit like I was and all this. But, um, you know, we, we struggled a lot, um, in our relationship. And it was also, she was like one of my best friends at the time because we lifted and trained and she moved across the country to be on our team and all kinds of stuff. But we struggled a lot just because there was like a, there wasn't a really solid conversation in why and the purpose behind her

training and what she was doing and the moves that she was making that were kind of like seen as descent from the team and separating herself away from the team. But a lot of it was really like we just didn't have real conversations about her specific goals and what she really wanted and what we were doing a lot as a gym is putting the gym's goals ahead of sitting down with her and saying, what do you want out of CrossFit? Like, what is the real thing that you're looking for right now? And instead of having that conversation with her, we did a lot of like, you're going team this year, or you're going to go individual without asking, hey, how would you like to go about this season? How would you like to, you know, show up at regionals? Would

it like, would you like to be an individual and try and give this thing a shot? Or do we want to, you know, try and go to the games and take this team approach? Um, and I think that every coach can probably learn a lot by just, if there is an issue, um, in your gym, or if you're having trouble connecting with males or females in your gym, really just sitting down and creating some sort of emotional intelligence with your athletes and saying like, there's something going on. I need to know the root of it. And we're not, it's anytime there's a problem, it's typically because conversation and communication is just being very ineffective at the time. So if you can sit down and just say like, I don't care what it is.

You just need to tell me where you're going and what you're doing and why I'm not meeting that unmet need. When I said unmet need, I stole that from Doug. That's one of my favorite things that he says. See that? See that? He's got a little smile right now. Usually all negative emotion comes from unmet needs.

That's his line. That's the full quote. And if the coach is not meeting the athlete's needs, that's on the coach. There's a lot of differences between men and women. But in the end, you're working with people, and the similarities between the two are going to outweigh the differences by a ton. So if you are having issues with the personalities and the athletes that are on your team, you as the coach, it's your job to sit down and create some sort of bridge between where that

struggle is, what the root cause of that, what the unmet need is, and then go about creating a relationship to fill that void. Right. Yeah. I think making like scheduling weekly sit-downs with individual athletes. Yeah. And then maybe once a month as a team, you know, go do something, get together, hang out, you know,

but also make that time a time where you all sit down and like flesh things out, you know, as a team. But by doing that, you could avoid a lot of a lot of issues I've had, especially of late. Well, this year, believe it or not, has been awesome, even though we've had COVID. But as far as our team goes, the last year was definitely like some rough times. It mainly came from like, you know, me not dealing with like issues that i knew good and well were there i just didn't want to deal with it so yeah i made so wow doug larson's got paleo pancakes or something going on over there yeah there's a lot of butter on top you see that that's why what are you weighing what are you weighing these days there you go yeah look at that you over 210 on the regular stick of butter on

these pancakes that's how you that's what effective communication looks like when your wife knows that all you really want is a giant stick of Kerrygold for breakfast. Nobody knows that until you effectively communicate with your wife. Look, I understand we're eating delicious pancakes, but the pancake is just a delivery device for me to eat Kerrygold without being judged. That's why Doug texted us, hey, we're going to wrap this up in five minutes. Because there's pancakes already. My wife just brought me

a stick of butter and I'm hungry. Bye. Five minutes, guys. There's a whole stack of pancakes in there for me. Oh, man. Coach Travis, Matt. There's a whole stack of pancakes in there for me. I don't blame him. Oh, man. Coach Travis, Matt.

I tell people all the time, you got to mix one banana, two eggs, mix it up, cook it like pancakes. It's better than regular pancakes. Carragher butter on top. Are you being serious? Kids love it. I love it. Everybody loves it. One banana. One banana.

Mash it up. Two full eggs. Just mash the banana. Put the two. One banana. Mash it up. Two full eggs. Just mash the banana. Put the two eggs on top. Mix it up. And, of course, you can scale that up. I'll put like 16 bananas in a bowl and then just dump a big pile of eggs on top and mix it up. And then just like you're making pancakes, you've got your big spoon and you're just taking the batter, putting it on the pan, cooking like a pancake, flip it over, put it on the plate, and just make a big old stack of them.

I'm about to go to family. I'm about to go to family. It's so good, man. Right now. Right now. It's easy, and it's bananas and eggs. Doug Larson, what's your average weight for the month of May? What was it?

I don't have my phone on me, but I'm pretty consistently about 208 right now. Up 208, 210. Two pounds a month. That's large. I've been putting on the weight. I finished Emom Aesthetics this week, the whole 10 weeks. Oh, sick. I need to go look at the first

day that I started that and now, but I put on a solid, during that 10-week block, I put on a solid during that 10-week block I put on at least a solid six or eight pounds six or seven pounds damn um feel and feel really good yeah got got stronger I feel like I'm in great shape my joints don't aren't bothering me in any particular way yeah overall it's been great man I. I love that program. Awesome. I'm on deload month, which is a show that I have coming up in our queue here to talk about deloads. Coach Travis Mash, you like that segue? They can't wait to come hang out next week.

Mashelete.com, baby. If you want to see some good conversation, go to LinkedIn. I'm shredding a PT on there. What he means is that he's destroying some guy's career. He commented on my video. He did twice.

Twice. He said dumb comments twice. With zero proof. With zero. Dude, you're not allowed to do it twice. You can get away with one. But if you do it twice, and you catch their name twice, game on. He's coming after you. I have shredded this poor guy.

Yeah, that's tough. Doug Larson. Yeah, we do the show about training kids here one of these days. We can talk about all the research that you threw at that guy. You can find me on Instagram at Douglas E. Larson. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. We're Barbell Shrugged at Barbell underscore Shrugged. Make sure you get over to Barbell Shrugged dot com forward slash store because that is where all the training programs, nutrition courses, e-books, and everything you need to make strong people stronger.

We will see you guys next week. That's a wrap, friends. Make sure you get over to Barbell Shrug.com forward slash EMOM. That's where EMOM Aesthetics is at. For all of the efficient, effective, trained to get strong, lean, and athletic without spending 60 to 90 minutes in the gym. Also want to thank our sponsors over at Organifi. Organifi.com forward slash shrug to save 20% on the green, red, and gold juices. Podcast.shadowstude.io for all you cool kids that want to record your conversations and launch a brand new podcast.shadowstude.io for all you cool kids that want to record your conversations

and launch a brand new podcast. Also, our friends at Fit Together, F-I-T-T-O-G-E-T-H-E-R, the Fit Together app is on fire. And we're having a killer check-in challenge giveaway this month. Use the hashtag checkinchallenge, tag me, get into the barbell shrug group. So we have all the cool kids hanging out in one place. And what we can do is if you

win, we're going to give two people six months of their gym membership paid for free. And the runner up is going to get a brand new free Fitbit. That's pretty radical. Friends, we're going to see you on Wednesday.