Barbell Shrugged - Ben Johns - The Most Dominant Pickleball Athlete In The World #826

Episode Date: December 3, 2025

In this episode, the world's #1 pickleball player, Ben Johns, joins Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Travis Mash, and Dr. Mike Lane to unpack what it really takes to stay at the top of one of the fastest-growing sports on the planet. Ben walks through the insane travel schedule, the perpetual in-season demands, and the growing physical toll of a sport played in deep athletic stances, high-velocity lateral movements, and multi-hour tournament days. For the past year, Ben has partnered with RAPID Health Optimization to build a data-driven system around sleep, recovery, hydration, nutrition, and personalized strength and conditioning giving him a competitive edge in a sport where consistency and longevity are becoming just as important as pure skill. The team breaks down how RAPID reverse-engineered the physiology of pickleball by analyzing metabolic demands, movement patterns, travel stress, and tournament structure. Ben shares what has changed the most: HRV-driven sleep routines, hydration and electrolyte protocols, rapid-turnaround nutrition systems during six-day competition blocks, and gym programming that prioritizes leg strength, acceleration, deceleration, rotational power, and the ability to repeatedly produce peak output with minimal fatigue. With only an eight-week "off-season" each year, Ben's entire training plan now revolves around precision dosing of fatigue, auto-regulation, and strategic recovery backed by data from Oura, lab analysis (blood, stool, saliva, urine) and the RAPID coaching team. Finally, the conversation moves into the strategic side of dominance: pattern recognition, the metagame of adjustments, and the ability to keep learning in a young sport where the rules of mastery are still being written. Ben explains how having a full-stack performance team allows him to focus on playing, developing new skills, and outlasting opponents who aren't managing sleep, travel, workload, or recovery with the same level of precision. If you want an inside look at how the best player in the world trains, prepares, and stays healthy and how RAPID Health Optimization builds elite longevity systems for professional athletes this episode is a must-listen. Links: Ben Johns on Instagram Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram

Shrug family this week on Barbell Shrugged, the greatest pickleball player of all time, Ben Johns. Yo, what's really cool about this is if you had asked me like a year and a half ago, before I knew Ben and how hard he trains and how much of a meathead he is and how much he values strength, conditioning, and nutrition supplement, all the things that we do. I would have just assumed that pickleball was kind of like a joke sport, but it's not. and when you start to get at the really high levels of this sport that is like the fastest growing sport in the country right now these people are animals they train hard they eat right

they're all in the same kind of click of trying to figure out how to be the best athletes possible knowing that this thing's going to be around a really long time and when we met ben i immediately became the largest fan of benjohn's that could exist like how could cool is it that the number one pickleball player that literally wins, he doesn't just win like men's singles. He wins like men's singles and then he wins men's doubles and then he wins mixed doubles. And then he wins anything and everything that involves pickleball every single weekend.

He is, he dominates the sport. It's because he does so many things right in the background, which is exactly what we are digging into today. And I think you're really going to enjoy the show. As always, make sure get over to rapid health report.com. Dan Garner, Dr. Andy Galpin, free lab lifestyle, performance analysis. You can access that over at rapid health report.com. Friends, let's get into the show. Right on. Welcome to Barwell Shog, Domainers, Doug Larson, Mike Lane.

I was so used to saying Coach Travis Mash right there that I just blacked out a little bit. Mike Lane taking the place for the other strongest man. Ben Johns, the Tiger Woods of pickleball. Dude, you win everything. You actually make Tiger Woods look like such a child. I mean, dude, Tiger Woods in his prime does nothing compared to the number of times that you win. It's insane. Well, thank you.

What an intro. Actually, I need a hype man like you more often. If you need someone on a microphone to get the people going, I'm here for you. Let's go. Yo, we have to talk about really like the last year or so training with us. But I think a lot of people, knowing that pickleball is like the fastest growing. sport in the country right now. And that doesn't even include when you told me that you were the most famous person in

like Vietnam or something. Where'd you go? Yeah, Vietnam was most recent. Vietnam and Malaysia. They really like pickleball there to say the least. Incredible. Who knew? I'd love to hear a little bit of the backstory.

There's probably many people that have heard your name, seen you play, all the good things that are going with a massively growing sport. But how'd you get into pickleball and realize that this was like, a viable path for being a pro athlete. Yeah, no, it was definitely a funny, funny path because I started playing big ball in 2016, which it looked very different back then than it does now. There was no pro tour. There were very few tournaments with even like prize money.

It was a wild, wild west of a sport. But I started playing because I played a lot of tennis and a lot of table tennis growing up. So I was 16, almost 17, where I found the sport. And I just thought it looked like a funny racket sport. I'll give any racket sport to try. Like I'd play nearly all of them just tennis and table tennis primarily. And it looked like a funny blend between those two sports. I was like, hey, I'll give it a go and just see if it's fun.

And it was very addictive and very fun from the get-go. So I happened to be in a good part of the U.S. for pickleball at the time because back in the Northeast where I lived most of the time, there was really no pickleball in 2016, but in South Florida where my parents were at kind of snowbirds in a sense. There was a lot more pickleball there. and the first U.S. Open ever actually took place nearby where we lived in that year of 2016. So I got to play the very first Pickleball U.S. Open ever.

And that was kind of the start of pickleball. And then it eventually transitioned into more and more professional tournaments. In that year, I think I only played like three tournaments because there really just weren't that many available. And it really kind of became mostly more of a professional sport with like a tour and stuff in 2020 when the pro tour started. So that's when I started to play a little more full time. And then I graduated school at the University of Maryland in 2022. And then after that year, I guess you could say, was my very first foray into full-time pickleball mode, training and everything. What is the difference between the first U.S. Open of pickleball and the one that you completed this year?

How many people, like sponsors, it's a completely different world. Yeah. So 2016, I think the total amount of participants in the U.S. Open among all. divisions like amateur divisions, not like pro divisions like everything, which they hold a lot of different for age brackets and skill divisions and all that. But I think attendees were like 700 or something like that. Spectators, I don't even know if you count spectators in a year like that because the spectators are basically the people that come to play, but you could say all and all, call it, call it 700 or a little more than that. And then most recently the world championships in Dallas we played. And I want to say

over the course of the week, they had something like 30,000 spectators, which was, you know, over the course of a week, I guess you have an average over those seven days of, you know, at least a few thousand a day. And the stadium fit probably between two and four thousand people. Yeah. I would be playing if I didn't think that like when I first heard a pickleball from like my mom, I was like, great mom. I'm so stoked.

You've got you moved from racquetball to picketball to pick. pickleball. Like, can't wait to see the people showing up to that competitive. And then you showed up in my life. And I was like, wait a second. When did you actually think, like, this is, like, I'm going to be a real athlete that's, like, training for this sport? Yeah, I would say it. That was definitely a funny transition as well because when we were all just kind of playing tournaments more for fun as a hobby than anything else, it was like rare that anybody was actually doing training, like in practicing.

It was more like, oh, let's go play some games, and that's our practice because it's fun. We'll play some tournaments. That's fun. And then we'll, you know, we'll go out to dinner and have a beer afterwards. Like it was, it was very whatever and very just fun for everybody. So I would say starting in kind of like 2019-ish was where it started to be taking a little more seriously. People started, you know, actually training and practicing multiple hours per day. I was in school, but my brother moved from Florida back to Maryland to kind of train four pickleball with me.

So we'd only practice a couple times a week because I was a little. in school when he was working, but we'd still actually be taking it seriously in terms of, you know, time on the court and practicing things. And 2019 was also when I got my first kind of bigger sponsorship deal that was paying actual money for me to be playing pickleball. So I guess that was kind of the year where we started to take it a little more seriously. And it only got more so since then. And like I said, after I graduated school, it became a very full-time job where it's pretty much practice and training every day and gym time and all that stuff as you normally kind of look at a professional sport.

Did you lift weights throughout high school when you're playing tennis and whatnot? Or was that more of a recent thing? I was always pretty into lifting. I enjoyed going to the gym from, I think I want to say, the age of 14 or 15 onwards. My dad had a decent background in sports and lifting and, you know, kind of dad wisdom of just general stuff that was very helpful for me in kind of my teen years of how to lift productively and safely. So I was always pretty into it. I would say very into it from like ages 16, 17 when I was still playing baseball as well. And I noticed that I can still remember just in the

year being 16 being a lot stronger over the course of one baseball season and just was seeing how much of a difference it made. And that made me like a true believer in like, hey, if you go to the gym, good things happen. And just kind of overall feeling good, playing good, all that stuff. And then that transition into pickleball. So that was kind of my background and lifting and, you know, playing pickleball, which is kind of a new unsolved sport. Nobody really knew,

you know, what kind of gym lifts are going to be good. So I kind of always just stuck to what made my body feel good and the general principles that kind of had been instilled in me, which is, you know, lift pretty heavy, albeit safely and,

you know, go to failure or near failure on the big lifts and focus on big full body lifts, you know, squats, cleans, dead lifts, the important stuff. Mm-hmm. Speaking of lifting weights, Mr. Travis, Travis,

what's up, Travis? Hey, I was wondering why, you know, when he became like a meathead, like, when I learned that we were going to be working with him, you know, I didn't know what to expect. They quickly, like I told you guys on a show a couple times, like, he's quickly become, like, one of my favorites

because he really, like, likes it. It's fun for him. And so most people are just, like, most of these athletes that lift weights, They do it because they have to, but he actually loves it. So it's not what I expected at all. Yeah. Ben, what are your goals training-wise these days?

Well, training, I mostly work with Mass here and Dr. Lane as well. So, I mean, goals-wise, I would say we generally focus on a combination of kind of strength, endurance, agility, what you kind of expect from a pro sport. I'm a big believer in strength. If you're, if you're, especially leg strength, like I am a definitely full body guy, but leg, legs for go, everything else for show, was my mentality. So I love leg day, leg day all day. So kind of squats, deadlifts for strength. And we've added a lot of kind of jumping plyometric base movements with weight for kind of explosiveness.

And then endurance, most recently, we've kind of been on the weighted sled train, which, you know, kind of just grinding it out, that kind of stuff, which I was not as used. used to, but have been enjoying as well. So a lot of legs, a lot of movement-based stuff, and just overall strength building. I was working on the reason I was late, I'm trying to get, he's got an anchor. It's like a cable machine. They got this new thing called a data plate. The Jim Aware came up with to measure the velocity and power. So I'm trying to, already got into the anchor.

I got to get in the data plate. It's just red tape. I just needed. Right now he's coming into his short offseason than he has. So I really want to get it so we can do some testing and also monitor to make sure. You know, like I feel like rotation is always the hardest thing to measure and monitor. You know, we do. You know, you do med ball work.

You do all this cable stuff. But like, are you actually getting better? And so finally we have a way to measure. So I just got to get in that. I mean, if I have to, I'm just going to sit in mind. I just got to know is it working or not, so I can't wait. But it's just somewhere sitting in. If they're listening.

Right. Rotation for power, baby. Rotation for power. Sitting the data plate, man. Come on. Mike Lane, can you expand on kind of your guys' approach to training with Ben over the last year? Dr. Andy Galpin here. As a listener of the show, you've probably heard us talking about the Artae program, which

we're all incredibly proud of. It's a culmination of everything Dan Garland and I have learned over more than two decades of working with some of the world's most elite performers, award-winning athletes, billionaires, musicians, executives, and frankly, anyone who just wanted to be at their absolute best. Artae is not a normal coaching program. It's not just macros on a workout plan. It's not physique transformation and pre-imposed pictures.

Arte is something completely different. Artee is incredibly comprehensive and designed to uncover your unique molecular signature, find your performance anchors, and solve them permanently. You'll be working with not one person, but rather a full team of elite professionals, each with their own special expertise, to maximize precision, accuracy, and effectiveness of your analysis and optimization plan. Artee isn't about treating symptoms or quick fixes. It's about unlocking your full potential and looking, feeling, and performing at your absolute best, physically and mentally, when the stakes are the highest.

To learn more, visit Arteelab.com. That's A-R-E-E-Lab.com. Now, back to the show. Mike Lane, can you expand on kind of your guys as approach to training with Ben over the last year? Yeah, no worries. So initially, we just tried to train him wrong just to see if he'd survive, and then we've been doing it right ever since. No.

So you've got to set the bar low in the beginning. That's the key to having a happy client. Yeah, so it was just e-mom, burpees. We had to be for three hours, and then after you lived, we're like, okay. Law balls. Law balls. I had a hell week. Ben is great to work with, but his sport and his schedule is a nightmare.

So literally the past two years, he's had over 42 events that he's had to travel to, to either compete at, do media or otherwise. And his off-season, bunny years, is literally eight weeks. That's it. We've got eight weeks, and then it involves Thanksgiving, that involves Christmas, and then he goes right back into competing in early January. So he is very much so a perpetually in-season athlete between the PPA tour, the MLP tour, and then everything else he has to do is part of his sponsorships and his businesses.

So it's a matter of he already had a great baseline of strength. So we've kind of been improving his programming over what he was doing previously. And that's the nice thing about his sport is it's so new that it's not like looking at, you know, professional baseball, professional football where you can see those work-to-rest ratios, We can look at how many innings pitched. We can see all that other data to kind of figure out where his fitness needs to be. It's like, yeah, Ben's not wrong when you talk about the amount of training they have to do, the reality of the chaos of the sport.

And then, of course, his tournaments, they run in parallel. So he competes quite frequently in three separate divisions that start off on Tuesdays and end on Sundays. So it's very much so a perpetual in-season with obviously trying to optimize. we can when we have the luxury of two weeks between events or three weeks where we can actually put some solid fatigue on him so he's not bringing that into the events and ben and i were speaking earlier about you know obviously you get that fatigue because he's competing doubles mixed doubles and singles and even just one of them alone we're talking about matches that can last more than an hour yeah yeah think ben how do you on on your end like survive

competing Tuesday through Sunday, traveling as much as you do. Like you're always on the road, sleeping in different bed every night. Like, have you found your own systems and routines to kind of optimize your health and energy while you're in this kind of crazy, chaotic, never ending year? Yeah, for sure. I mean, you said it is, it is a lot of stuff. I think it's a combination of things, you know, preparation. I've always been a huge believer in.

So being as prepared as possible in as many ways as you can is super important. So over the years, I definitely kind of learned stuff that work. for me. And honestly, working in the past year and year and a half with, with Rapid has helped with a number of things as well. So I mean, kind of playing two to three divisions, usually one match of each per day. So two to three matches per day for six days. Like, obviously, that's a long week. So I'd say there's been a ton of things that helped me a lot to kind of get through the week stamina-wise. Sleep, I'd say is the biggest one, honestly. Some of the things that have helped with that with Rapid is, you know, we use the aura ring for tracking. My cut takes a look at all

data each week and kind of what I've been doing well, what I haven't been doing well. So consistent, more consistent bed times and wake up times have helped enormously with sleep and recovery. We got my HRV bumped up, which of course hugely relates to recovery. So that just doing something as simple as that has been huge for each day feeling better. Our hydration protocols, our nutrition, you know, your diet plays a huge role. So being sufficiently hydrated with the right stuff, you know, not just water, electrolytes, that kind of thing. Huge. diet, I feel like in the past year to two years has been really a big change because I'm a, as people that know me well, no, I'm very into food. I love a variety of foods, but during

tournament week, I've gotten down to more of a science of what I can eat and, and feel good and perform on. So just even those three things, if you do those, right, it makes an enormous difference from day to day of feeling, you know, like 90 plus percent on day six rather than sub-70, right? And in our sport, it's sometimes more of an attrition. thing of, you know, we just played four weeks in a row and we're still all trying to play at a high level rather than like who was absolutely playing the best in a given time. It's more about, hey, are you still performing at 90 plus percent? So, yeah, no, it's been a learning process, especially in this past year or two, of trying

to peak my performance despite the travel schedule in the many play days. But I feel like we've done a pretty good job of it. Yeah, I'm actually super curious how you guys manage, like the energy system side of things. Like you you clearly have many matches going on throughout a day with the recovery phases in between. But every time I watch one of those like epic points on Instagram of pickleball, that's a very different energy system that you're going to be recovering from point to point. And whether that's Mike, Travis, Ben, whoever wants to answer that. But that's not an easy equation to solve when you're trying to

program and get somebody dialed in for a tournament over over six days and that many matches. Yeah. So I'll take the first crack at it. That's why one of the things that we're trying to prioritize with Ben when we're away from competitions is just making sure he's got that awesome aerobic base. The better that aerobic base is, the more he's going to avoid going into anaerobic glycolysis for those longer points. And the faster he's going to recover that ATP PCR.

So he is going to be able to, you know, leap like a freak and slam the ball on somebody. and or when he has to sprint up to the front line, obviously, to play the sport. So it's the big issue that we have for him is over those really long tournaments, we've had that conversation of like, it's almost like we just need to get a funnel out and just pound, you know, plain white table sugar because the amount of carbs that he's blowing through and, you know, we're having a conversation. And Ben, you know, how do your legs feel once you're getting into those longer points and you're having to do that real fast change of direction?

And the sport is played in a position that. reminds you of field hockey. Like it's very much so consistently bent over. They're rarely standing up. So it's holding, you know, that knees at 90s isometric for however long the points last. And that's, you know, that's a reason why we punish people with wall sits because they suck. Yeah. And it's really demanding. Sorry, go ahead, Ben. That's actually, uh, I, when you say that, it makes me think, and you said field hockey, which made me immediately think of ice hockey, too, where it's like, sure, these guys can skate like 30 miles an hour, but most of the time, they're just start, stop, start, stop, start, stop, sideways, lateral movements the entire time.

They never actually hit full speed, or do they even get to even half full speed? It's how quick can you get from point A to point B without really ever having, like, getting to an extended position. You're always in that, like, athletic stance. Definitely, definitely. Yeah, I feel like you definitely, more than anything in pickleball, you notice it in your legs first. Like if you're, if you're feeling tired, it's not just bodily fatigue. It's specifically like leg fatigue. And if your legs go, your footwork goes and then your shots go. It's just all a very

big downward spiral. So more than anything, I think having strength and endurance in your legs is just huge for pickleball. You might not even notice how big of a benefit it is until you realize you're in over your head where somebody's playing a tournament. They're like, my legs are just gone. Like, I'm done. I can't, I can't play. Like your performance just goes down the tubes real fast. my brother would always call it the knees and like bending your knees in pickleball and in tennis, which is where it originally came from. He's like, it's just complete magic. It just changes your game entirely.

So as long as you're able to do that throughout a full week, you're going to be playing at a pretty high level. And I think a lot of that, again, just comes down to training and preparation. Like if you put in the work of, you know, you know your legs are going to be fine. You know, your breathing cardio is going to be fine during a whole week and extended points or staying low or running or whatever it is, then you're going to be fine. And if you don't have that going into it, then as soon as you get into that situation, you're going to know when you're out of your depth. I was hoping that we were in his offseason.

I hope to do a lot of the, some of the Caldite stuff, the spring ankle. I don't know if you've ever heard of that, but he's got some pretty good work on the spring ankle. It's not just the ankle if you look at the positions, but it's a lot of isometric work at certain positions at the ankle, but it's also really the knee and the hip. and it's specific to how your foot hits the ground. So I hope to do that, but paired also with, you know, we've talked to Keith Barr before I think on our show, but he's like the big tending guy,

but definitely want to do a lot of protocols to improve elasticity and just the transfer of energy. So if he can get, you know, if that can be, if we can work on those elements, then he gets like passive force, which, you know, then it becomes more of a, like, it's work he doesn't even have to, think about it's way more efficient than something where you got to, you know, think about

producing active force. Mm-hmm. There's all the speed, power, strength, athleticism side of this, but I was asking Mike Lane the other day, like, like, why, and Ben, I'd love your opinion on this, like, why you are as dominant as you are in this sport. And Mike said that you're very good at exploiting the weaknesses of the other players. Like, there's, if someone just isn't good at hitting, you know, low and outside or whatever but that means like that,

then that's where you're going to hit it every time. And you're going to kind of be relentless about that. But in your opinion, like what makes you stand out to the degree that you are the best in the sport? Yeah, I mean, I'd say it comes down to probably for me like three things. One more to, to your note that you were just saying is essentially finding weaknesses.

To me, that all comes down to pattern recognition. And that goes for strengths and weaknesses, both for you and your opponent. So when certain patterns are working for you, when certain patterns are going against you, whether that's a product of you, your opponent, or a combination thereof, just recognizing when a pattern is happening and what it's actually doing and affecting you and your team and points and all that, like it all just comes down to numbers for me.

And then, you know, if you can exploit a weakness and they're not adjusting to it, then, you know, you just hammer away. It's easy. You just repeatedly do that. And then it's kind of what I call a metagame after that, whereas if they are adjusting, that usually opens up some other door and then you hammer it. that one. You see how they adjusted that. How are they trying to hammer you and how are you adjusting? So it's all just kind of like adjustment to adjustment continually as they adjust

and as you adjust. There's so many cool videos of making people squidge and like put their hands up over their head. I love it. That's how I see that part of it. And then the other huge part of it for me is like we said, pickleball is kind of an unsolved game. It's an unsolved sport and everyone's just kind of learning. So really what it comes down to in terms of shots and like, like getting better at Pickleball is how good of a learner are you at developing new things. So whether that's, you know, you're just experimenting and finding new things or you're learning from other players that do certain things better than you. Like you have to be able to adapt and change your game style and add new things continually because everyone's still getting better because nobody's been playing it for that long relative to a very established sport. You know, you got basketball people who've been playing 30, 40 years in their career.

And it's like, yeah, of course, that you're just refining stuff. right? And pick a ball when you, max, you've been playing 10 years. It's like you're still literally adding stuff and learning stuff from from time to time. So that's a huge part of it. And I think the third prong of that is similarly, like I might know pickleball super, super well. But I still, and it's still a bit of a mystery and still a learning process of, you know, what are we doing in the gym to train? How are we training our bodies to be really good at this sport? Because again, like an established sport, it's like football or basketball. I feel like trainers generally know what is going to be most productive for their types of players, right? If you're an offensive line,

and we know what kind of stuff you're going to be doing in the gym, right? Whereas for a pickleball player, we're like, heck, who knows, right? So that's still an experimentation kind of process and a learning process, which is a big reason kind of why I am working with Rapid is just kind of learning how do I be the best version of myself for pickleball, right? So those are kind of the three prongs that I see in pickleball. Yeah. How do you guys manage the kind of the balance between speed, strength, agility,

like all of the different components of a fast-moving racket sport versus what he's kind of talking about where there's like a lineman whose job is to go two feet and hit somebody really hard. Well, it's definitely going to be geared towards speed, you know, like football is like definitely a power sport. So it's a very good balance between strength and speed. But with obviously with pickleball,

it's going to be more like, sprinters or like I don't know anything that's like side to side where speed is involved it's going to definitely be skewed towards speed but you know like there has to be a bet you know you do need certain base levels of strength

which he has though so it's like he's not the typical you know like what I would have thought a pickleball player would be which you know I thought they would not be strong at all but he is so like it's going to be skewed between more power towards speed with some strength

You know. Yeah. And I know we've even talked about specific things of experimentation where we're like, we were working out like my forearms specifically. We were doing some some grit-based stuff. I forget what we call it, kind of the roll, the wrist roller, basically, which invites your forearms on fire at things crazy. So doing specific stuff like that because in pickleball,

we have what we call like a counter punch or just a counter where it's all like, if you're hitting a backhand as a righty, your right forearm is doing most of the work in that sense. So kind of just overloading forearms. and like just experimenting with that and how that has impacted stuff or like working with a huge vat of rice for grip strength same kind of thing where it's very specific to the sport and again it's more of an experimentation process than a definite science but i think we've kind of enjoyed the experimentation process of figuring out what what has been working and what we've been liking but we've had you know we've had sports like you know you got table tennis

and bad men, which are somewhat similar, very fast, you know. And, of course, there's tennis. You're somewhere in the middle of those two. So we have some, you know, things to work off of, but, you know, not exact yet. Well, to elaborate on that point is, you know, one of which you're taking, that's why we take things from other sports and what do you see biomechanically, what are positions he has to get into, get out of, obviously, the work-to-rest ratio. We're using all of those components.

And of course, just the arduousness of his season, you know, it's heavily auto-regulated. We'd rather slightly under-trained him than obviously risk ever overtraining him because he has to play over and over again. So, you know, it's one of those things that we're going to keep iterating to kind of figure out what's going to be the best approach. And, I mean, shoot, Ben constantly teaches us because the technology in the sport's changing. They use, they've had differences. And we've learned the nuances of the actual typical ball and how that change is based upon. Oh, yeah. And then same thing with rackets.

Yeah. And, you know, it's one of those things that we're constantly like, okay, now that this has changed, how do we best optimize Ben? Because, yeah, Ben has got X number of training years in so many different areas that the program we'd give somebody who's just starting off in pickleball is it's going to involve a squat. It's going to involve a single leg movement, but it's not going to be Ben's program. Yeah. Because, you know, you got to have that foundation of strength that he has. And on top of that, we have a single leg movement. we have to optimize his body weight.

So we can't just try to just pack mass on because the sport is so agility heavy that, you know, we're exploring the idea of trying to lean up a little bit. And that already makes things much more difficult, you know, to make sure we walk that line and don't, you know, put more on Ben than what he can recover from. Sure. It's interesting. But I think it's really cool, too, like with Mike when he has to travel and like trying to figure out how to optimize his sleep while he's on the plane.

and like what's the best way to acclimate to, you know, being in Spain now. And then like there was, I feel like there was at one time he was like Spain, China. Like, he was so many. The Asian trip. Yeah. All over the place. I was like, this poor guy. Like, how's you ever going to?

You don't know if he's, if it's morning or evening. Yeah. I remember coming back from that just being jet lagged Asia to Virginia Beach. I grew up. I gosh, all the days spun it together. But from from somewhere in Vietnam, stopped over. over in Korea, then in Atlanta, and then Atlanta at Virginia Beach. I just remember getting there.

I was like in a haze. I was like, I don't know what day it is. I don't know what I have. Play pickleball. But I was actually one of my favorite tournaments of the year. And I think that was mostly due to just good preparation where it's like nobody's going to be perfect after a 15 hour flight. But just because of the prepared work, it was a great tournament.

I ended up playing pretty well. So a lot of it comes down to preparation and sleep. Leap. Little things, too. That British cycling taught us just like little things like the soap that you use. used to wash your hands, you know, like the pillow that they used and the mattresses that they use. It comes down to the little things when you got to schedule like yours.

You know, it's not like we're trying to make you the best. We're trying to keep you the best. That's the hardest thing. You know, like, you know, trying to become the best is way easier than stain at the top. That's the hardest thing in the world. So he does a great job of just maintaining that top. spot. Yeah, at the same time, I feel like therein lies one of the issues of he's the guy that everybody wants to show up to these media events to this. And so it's making sure that like

you've been doing, Ben, which is prioritizing your training, your sport training and everything else. Because obviously, just say no. Yeah. It'd be tough to say no enough. Way to go to your program on this. Yeah, it's something for anybody listening to take home and be comfortable saying no to things. I bet. So it's tough. your top of your game too you try to you know what is it uh okay with the sunshine i guess you know so yeah mm-hmm yeah so you do so you do doubles and mixed doubles so you have teammates like uh to what degree do they have you know they probably don't have like rapid level support most athletes don't but do you are you helping them with their with their training or do they have

their own strength condition coaches and and nutritionists and uh they get their own labs done other places like how do your teammates handle their health it gets wild Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, no, good question. Mostly with my teammates, we mostly are conversing, you know, about pickleball training. That's where we really come together and kind of work together a lot. I feel like we've definitely kind of talked about sleep or nutrition or this and that kind of here and there,

but definitely not as specific or in-depth as you might think. But I do know, mostly I feel like everyone, partners included, does a good job of physically training. I feel like they all train hard. And even though I feel like none of us know truly, you know, what is the best to do? A lot of us make up for it by just, you know, working hard and putting in the time. It's like it's better to do something than nothing, right? Whether you are perfect or not at it.

And then, yeah, I feel like we, for the most part, all kind of done better on nutrition, at least been thinking about it and, you know, realizing, you know, what you put in is what you get out of your food and body and all that. So, yeah, those two parts, I wouldn't say, I don't think people do a lot of nutrition, maybe some blood work. My partner is not that I know of, but certainly when I talk to them about it, I'm usually just like, we all do the training, of course, but I usually talk up sleep, huge and just like if you can get really good sleep, it's just the most important thing in the world.

And then I feel like it depends on the person in terms of like blood work and stuff. I think blood work and all that is very, very productive, but it also depends on is that person that's going, like are they the type of person that likes to see that kind of data and be like, all right, I'm going to make X and Y adjustments because of this stuff in my report, basically, right? Whereas other people are sometimes more feel-based where they're like, you know what, I feel pretty good. I'm going to, I'm going to just, I'm going to wing it, right?

So there's definitely different types of athletes. But I feel like a lot of a lot of pickleball players, partners included are just kind of figuring stuff out as we go along. What about when you just get, you, there are a few of those tournaments. You were just giving some random person. What was that about? It was like, you know, given a random person. Are you talking about MLP events?

Because we play different people in those. Yes, MLP events, yeah. Yes, it's crazy. You play with a team of like four players, basically, two guys and two girls. And you're typically not playing with the same person that you would play with in your regular tour events. So I might play the whole season of PPA events with the same player, which I normally do when I have this year. And then MLP, you're playing with somebody completely different. So that's a wild ride because you're basically having to.

change your game style a little bit, both of you, to adjust to each other on court. And then there's also, you know, personalities involved where just chemistry is different. That one is just a huge game of who can adjust the best in weird conditions, basically. That would be crazy. Just getting a random, like, yeah, teammate. Yeah, it can be fun for some people. It's definitely fun for spectators because they see what's not normal, right? They don't see the same pairing.

They see all different pairings and matchups and stuff. I mean, it would be fun to be paired up with you. I feel like it's a weird. It's more pressure than you think, Travis. It's more pressure than you think. National Championship if you were paired up with him. Yeah, exactly. I was let you do everything and then I win.

It's awesome. Do the heavy lifting. With everybody with you guys all kind of being on the same team talking about the strategies that you're using, nutrition, et cetera, with everybody else that's in the league, do you still feel like, or do you feel like you're getting better faster because you just have this whole team around you? Or is everybody's game kind of increasing at the same time?

In terms of kind of game, I think it again comes down to how well you can learn. So in terms of like actual pickable stuff, it's like the people that are clearly working on new stuff and developing stuff, you'll see huge jumps in their game because Pickleball being the unsulled sport that it is, if you change your game and add a shot or two or refine a shot even like that can make a dramatic difference for you and then it affects your confidence and suddenly you're much better than you were two months ago right so you can see leaps and bounds in that sense there's just like so much meat on the bone right um and then on kind of the the rapid side of it i think those kind of stuff it's

it's almost like those gains and values are more hidden in some sense where it's very obvious on the court at least to our pickleball eyes where we're like oh they changed so and so and that made them a better player right where it's like you don't see that somebody has been had had 90 plus readiness scores and sleep scores for the past two weeks and they're just primed up to just go hammer it and you see them perform and you're like oh my gosh this guy's playing insane and I wonder why it's like that that's a hidden thing right where I feel like it makes a huge difference for me and I feel you know phenomenal at times where people are like oh you seemed you know really on your game that time I was like yeah well you didn't see as why right like all the

work that went into it it's not like you're just always rhymed up at any given time so yeah I I kind of distinguish it as in hidden values and the more obvious values. So personally, I think Rapid does a ton. Nutritionally, sleep-wise, probably the most important, along with training, preparation. And then, you know, you generally get good results because you never have that scenario of, you know, what if I didn't train? So then it's just a what if it's not like you can imagine, all right, what would my results be without all of this hidden stuff behind?

I'd imagine they'd be probably worse. You'd have to think so. But, you know, we'll never really know. it's always a hard thing to evaluate perfectly. But I think it's just, you know, preparation is everything. What's an actual, like, week of, call it, like, the full workload look like for you? Like, hours, even if you're on an off week, hours practicing. I know you've already got to walk through what a week in tournaments looks like,

which is a massive amount. But how many hours on the court, off the court, like, what does it go? What does it take to be a professional pickleballer? Yeah. So I would say a normal training week when I know I don't have anything pressing to get to afterwards, you know, where I'm not moderating what I do based on upcoming tournaments. It looks something like the meat of it. The most important stuff is your training time is usually between two and three hours. That can be it's on court stuff.

It could be one on one, one on two or a foursome of actually playing games and that kind of practice. So on court stuff is one thing, you know, two to three hours. And then your your gym time. I would put at an average of about an hour and a half. That could be before or after I switch up the order sometimes. And then recovery time is super important. So those are kind of the big three on any given training day. Recovery time is usually stretching.

Could be cold plunge, could be sauna. Stretching is the biggest one. And that takes some time as well, you know, call it half an hour. So all in terms of what I consider my training time on a training day, you call it two and a half on core hour and a half in the gym, half hour stretching. You're at four and a half hours of, of,

training time, essentially. And then after that, outside of that, I feel like it's, it's mostly the little stuff adding up. You know, you got your supplementation, you got your nutrition, you got your sleep and all of that. You're almost constantly, you're always thinking about it of how do I optimize this, how am I making sure that I'm hitting these things every day and I'm doing everything right, which partly comes down to your code for minding you. And then it also comes down to holding yourself accountable for all the stuff you need to be doing. but the more little stuff you can add up, just the more it pays off.

And then in terms of days over the week, I'd say those training days, if I'm doing everything, it's usually about five days a week. If you do like two on, one off, is kind of the normal schedule. Is it what? Being a pro athlete's hard.

Yeah. Even in a small sport like pickleball, you might not be competing with the millions and millions that play, you know, soccer, football. but you're still competing with however many of those people there are of, you know, still training like a professional athlete. So the training is very similar to any professional sport, as you might expect.

I'd say it's harder at times. Like, I know professional sports who don't work near as hard as you. Like, you guys are gangsters, in my opinion. Yeah, I think court sports are definitely hard because it takes a toll on your body, just being on hard court that many hours. It definitely beats your body up. Sure. so many tournaments. It's like, you're always competing.

One thing about pickleball, too, is like you guys are always playing in a nice area in that, like, there's no outdoor Minnesota pickleball tournament in January, which also means it's like very similar to golf and that you're outdoors for five, six straight hours in 100 years. Yes, yes, for a weekly basis for like sun protection. Gotting, got a sun protection all day every day. I don't want to be a wrinkled prune by 30. I would imagine, though, that there's a confidence in that, that you just, I would, I would like to believe that there's like an outlasting, just knowing everybody doesn't have like this, this system to get them ready and prepared and on the hydration, nutrition, et cetera, of, like,

you just know you're going to break some of these people down. They just can't, can't do it. Yeah. No, it's definitely an underrated. thing of just like I know as well as anybody exactly the toll it can take on you mentally physically just it wears you down it beats you up it's travel weeks in a row it's on court time and then it's like all right I do have a week off am I just so exhausted that I'm not training now or am I still training and it's always this constant game of attrition so yeah no just having that knowledge of feeling like you're prepared more than anybody else is is huge right it's just like that preparation in of itself is huge, but it's also the confidence of knowing you're prepared, right? Whereas going into a tournament

when you feel like you're not prepared is just the worst feeling. Like it's, it's not good. You know when it's not going to go well, right? So yeah, that's hugely important. And I can remember the days where I was feeling like that, where I was kind of in school training twice a week and I'd show up to a tournament. I'd take a red eye back. And it was just like, it was, it was fun, you know, to just grind like that. But at the same time, it's like, you know, that's not optimal, right? You can, you feel it. You know, you all know it. And I feel like players are good about knowing themselves and knowing when they're not there. And I feel like with pro sports, it's often a question, especially in pickleball where it's, again, less solved. It's like you're constantly in question, like, how do I be better?

And the answer is a lot of the time you don't know, right? You're like, it's not that I wouldn't work hard. It's that you don't know what to work on or how to work on the things you need to work on and how to be at your best, right? So just having somebody to tell you this is how you should do X, Y, and Z to be at your best. That just takes a huge mental load off of, hey, I'll go work hard. I just don't, I, like, I don't want to be the one thinking, how do I go do this? I want to be told, go do X, Y, and Z, and you're going to see the benefits. It's like, that's, that's what easier.

That's a lot of the time why people have coaches and trainers, right? It's to take a load off mentally. Totally. As far as your, your, you mentioned, you just want to be told, is that with all of the coaching, is there, is there like an inquisitive mind behind the science and how these guys lay all that stuff out for you? Or do you just go, okay? Yeah, no, for sure.

I like to be somebody that is told, you know, why are we doing what we're doing? Just for my understanding, for my interest, I definitely like that. For me, it's more peace of mind of like, okay, you're doing this type of training because of this. And that gives you the peace of mind of, okay, I know why I'm doing what I'm doing and why it's going to pay off, right? Some people just need to be pointed at a target and say, go shoot that target, right? And you're going to just see the benefits. They're like, okay, understood. I'll go do that.

I'm somebody that both likes a direction like that, but also the why behind it, which gives me that piece of mind and comfort of, you know, I know exactly why I'm doing this and what the payoff is going to be and the benefit behind it. It just gives you, you know, some satisfaction to know that you're doing the right thing for sure. Right. Like, you don't have time to waste time, you know, like, as business you are, last thing. Times too valuable. So I'm not the perfect soldier of a mindless soldier. I'm a, I'm a soldier that can be told what to do with some reasons as well. Sure. Sure. And that's when part of the joy of working with them, because it's just the simple like, why am I doing that? This is why. Okay, sounds good. It's, I mean, I weak. It's enjoyable. Yeah. There are other

folks that, like, no, you can't make me. It's like, okay, I'm dealing with a petulant child. Here's what we got. And one of the big issues of a sport, and that's kind of the whole thing is, I think every sport when it's new goes through that organic period of time that the solution is work harder. Practice more, more hours on the court, more effort. And that works until we get to that point of now we need to focus on how do we train optimally. So, yeah. I mean, we could train 23 hours a day and you sleep one. I think we know how your performance would go.

But, you know, we're trying to find that what is the best thing, especially again with all the travel things. Now, I'm sorry, Anders, I do have to disagree with nice places. And this is more a dig at my wife's extended family because he did have to do a tournament in Cincinnati. So, you know, it did require going to Ohio. On the flip side, you did get to see like our nicest venue. You got to see the pro lounge that was just immaculate. You should have seen this past weekend. We were all in a tent.

Ben, come on, man. It was my one chance that I could hold it over. Yeah, no. Screw Ohio. I imagine Cincinnati Chili was not on the... It was not on the menu. It was not. Not on the meal plan?

No, sir. He's a dumpling guy. If he gets to find that on the road, that's where he goes. Oh, yeah. Really? Dumblies. Yes. You sent Travis Mash, maybe Mike Lane,

but I know Travis Mash received one of the Ben Johns special Yeah. Pickball paddles. Do you have him actually use it? Was there a video of Mash playing pickleball? I'm using. We actually have a pickleball court here where I work,

you know, at Rise and Door Sports. So I've used it. I'm not going to take a video, me, because that's going to know. I would love to see it. I would show it to just here, but I would show it to the world.

It would ruin his product. No, it would disallow you from going to any of your friends power lifting events from here on out. Any of you hanging out doing little touch shots? I'm a world champion. I can do what I want.

Thank you. You're talking about it is, right? Yeah. So I can play pickleball if I want. So it'll tell me. You need to tell them the story of whenever your chef showed up to play pickleball with some random people with your gear and what happened.

Oh, yeah. I forget what happened in the end. I do remember him telling the story of just like showing up with basically all my stuff just decked out. And he's not a good player. He's like a very much beginner. See, that's exactly. I think he got, yeah, I don't know. I remember now.

Basically, he got invited to the best court, the good high level court because he had all the gear. He looked like a legit player, right? Because he had everything. And he goes over and he's just like, I was just embarrassing myself. Like, I was terrible. And they figured out real fast that I did not belong there. And I felt so bad. I was just cracking up.

This is why I don't want to embarrass, yeah, I don't want to ruin the name. All the gear, no game. It's like white man can't jump. That's me, boy. Right. Ben Johns, tell once this season starts up, one, where can people find you? And then what's 2026 look like for you as far as like the big events and goals? Yeah.

Well, the first tournament of the year in 2026 is mid-January. It's taken place in Palm Desert, California. beautiful location, I might add, just gorgeous place. That entire region is like built to just chill. Oh, it's so good. Yes, correct. It's everything. It's a vacation spot, a retirement spot.

You got golf, pickleball tennis. It's everything. So I'm always happy to go there. The only place being a dude that you can show up and there's lots of dudes, check, you feel like a chick. Yeah. You go down the street and you're like, whoa, this. This is aggressive.

Like the largest community where it feels very aggressive. Yep. So the Masters is in Palm Desert. That's the first term of the year. One of our majors, one of our four big tournaments of the year. It's also an all-whites tournament, kind of like our Wimbledon, basically.

So that's a fun one. So that's where you can find me on the first term of the year. Outside of that, we got 20-some tournaments during the year. So you'll find me all over at a given time. I can always follow on Instagram or come out to a tournament. PPA tours is where we play, and they have all the tournament kind of locations and dates and all that.

So pretty easy to find me at any given one of those. And, you know, pickleball venues are not huge yet. So you can pretty much just walk up to me and find me and just take a picture or just say hi or whatever. So if you come out, please, please say you found me here on this podcast with the boys. You say it's not big, but the number of times I get the open a pickleball franchise and your town in the gram ad it's crazy right yeah the pickleball franchises are opening everywhere because

they've realized that the whole play pickleball have some food have some drinks model works really well with people it's what people like do it's like the new top golf yeah yeah mike lane yep so obviously you can find me uh through rapid and then obviously me at eastern kentucky university i'm not an easy person to find but feel free to shoot me an email Professor. Masterlead.com. So thanks for being on then. I got to hopefully talk to you both in just a minute.

I'm trying to get the, you set this data plate today so I can measure so we can get this going. Because I know this all season will be quick. Yes, sir. You bet. I'm on Instagram, Douglasi Larson. Ben, dude, appreciate you.

Glad you're having a good time here at Rapid, working with Mr. Mike Lane and Travis. smash. We're launching optimal muscle in Austin, Texas right now, where it's our new muscle health and performance program. So you can go to optimumummuscle.com to check that out. And if you're on to do the same program that Ben is on that, that's called our Artae program. You can go to A-R-E-T-E-Lab.com, R-T-A-Lab.com and check it out. There you go. I'm Anders-Barner at Anders-Barner, and we are Barbell shrug to barbell

underscore shrug. And as Doug said, get over to optimal muscle.com. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.