Barbell Shrugged - BS INTERROGATION SERIES - EP5 We Answer Your Questions!

Episode Date: July 13, 2013

Recording from recent LIVE Q&A w/ the fans

What's up guys, CTP here, and on this episode of the BS Interrogation Series, we're going to play back the audio recording of a recent live Q&A we did with you guys. You had a ton of questions. Mike, Chris, and Doug sat down and rapid-fired answered a whole bunch of them. We do these kind of live Q&A type things all the time, and if you're on our newsletter list, you'll be aware of them. If you're not currently on our newsletter list, make sure you pop over to barbell shrug.com and sign up and you'll be notified anytime we do cool things like this. But for now, um, I think this audio started mid question, um, but you'll be able

to figure it out. So enjoy CrossFit Games. It's written for somebody who is CrossFit Games bound. A lot of blogs are for, you know, the idea is to be for CrossFit bound athletes or CrossFit Games bound athletes and people that have those aspirations. But the OPT function workouts are the only ones that I'm familiar with that program specifically for people who are just trying to be healthier. Yeah, if you're a beginner and you try to do an intermediate to advanced block, you're going to have a really terrible time. There is some time you have to spend cultivating these basic adaptations and taking your time. I can't think of anyone better than that,

and Max certainly knows more than anybody on these topics. Yeah, I think Elrod does a good job of programming, but, again, I think it's only for people who have already learned the skills of snatch, clean and jerk, have a requisite amount of mobility, who also have nailed down muscles and stuff like that. If you don't have those things nailed down, something like the OPT function blog is going to be the best. If you just go to his website, there will be the workout, I mean, good dog blog is what it is. Every day they've got function, ding, will, and she.

So they have four different workouts. And I actually do think that's probably the best one. You can try to follow our website, FactionSC.com, for our regular workouts for that. But, again, that's being written by our coach who is watching our members and knows what equipment we have and all that kind of stuff. So I do think the OBT is the way to go on that one. Hopefully I wasn't too long-winded on that answer, but I wanted you guys to understand

why I thought that was the better one to go at. Question two. Question two. Man, Doug's going to put this on and not even be here. So at the end of this week's podcast, Paul Nobles mentioned that beta-alanine is a supplement that seems to be perfect for CrossFit-style training. Can you guys talk about how it works, its benefits, how you should take, use it, and when you should take it, et cetera, how much?

Yeah, actually, Paul is right. Beta-alanine, I think creatine and beta-alanine are both made for just about any sport in the whole world and for better brain function even. But the beta-alanine is perfect for CrossFit because it allows you to get those extra reps in. When you would normally fail at 12 reps, it will let you get to 14. And that is basically what we're doing when we do CrossFit. We're trying to get more work done and the less you have to break up your reps, the better. Beta-alanine essentially

keeps metabolic acidosis from happening. And what I'm talking about is that burn you feel. What's happening is there's more acid in your muscles and what's happening is it's not allowing the muscle to go through the chemical responses or whatever in order to contract the muscle. So your muscle is actually shutting down from being able to contract. What it does is it keeps that acidosis from happening so quickly and so you can contract a couple more times. That's going to add up over time and you're going to be able to train at a higher level.

As far as how to supplement with it, average dude should probably be taking like six grams a day. You probably want to take it throughout the day, two grams in the morning, two grams before you work out, two grams after you work out. Or I'll try to shut down with tingliness. Yeah, tingliness. Yeah, the only reason you need to spread it out is because the insane tingle factor. So it's like creatine.

It's going to take six to ten weeks to build up in your system. There's no magical reason to take it prior to right before you train or anything like that. It's just six grams a day forever. The same with creatine. It's just six grams a day forever. The same with creatine. It's five grams a day forever. Real quick, I just want to make sure everyone can still hear us okay with Mike and Chris speaking from across the room. Go ahead and type yes into the box if you can still hear us.

All right, Josh is excited. Yeah, Josh. I'll answer your question next. That's right. A lot of enthusiasm. All'll answer your question next. I love enthusiasm. All right, next question. With regard to programming, what are the main changes you make for hard gamers from Derek? I have them actually eat enough.

I go along with that. We can all give a piece on this one. Chris, go ahead and share a piece. Yeah, I mean, I guess for me, I know my history is I would be the opposite of a hard gainer. If I eat what Bledsoe ate, I'd be back up to 350 pounds plus probably really quickly. I just don't have a problem with that. Metabolically inferior to some of the better athletes, I guess, whatever you want to call it.

I guess on the flip side, there are all these people who claim that, you know, look, I can't gain weight no matter what I do. It's really tough. And I would agree that it's really, really hard. I always say it's like twice as hard as losing weight. You just sit there and don't eat it. You want to lose weight. But if you want to gain weight and put on quality muscle, then you have to eat a lot of quality food.

And people say, well, I've tried that. It's sort of like when you hear somebody say, well, I've tried everything to lose weight. And then you see that they're drinking two liters of Pepsi a day. Well, in this case, I'd say you're trying really hard. But if you wrote down what you eat compared to somebody who's a hard gainer and is making progress, you might be eating half of what that person is eating. Do you eat two sweet potatoes and a chunk of meat in the train and have a big shake and before you go to bed, you crush a big smoothie? Well, no, I just have a chicken breast and like a half cup of rice. You're

not eating enough. I don't care if you're full, you feel full, you just, the calories aren't there to give you enough building material to construct this new building you're trying to put together, which is your new body. And there's just nothing there. This can't physically happen unless you get the circle of sense. So I'd say the first thing is having an outside eye, somebody who's experienced, one of us or anybody, to look at your log and say, okay, yeah, you think you're eating a lot, but in actuality, this is not a lot of calories. All right, Mike? Let's see.

From a programming perspective, I think Chris is right on the nutrition side of things. That was nutrition response. A lot of times people agree wholeheartedly. That's one of the reasons we started the six-month muscle gain challenge is because I've been a hard gainer my whole life. A lot of you may not think that. Because you're so huge. Because I'm so jacked.

No, I mean, you know, when I graduated high school. Thank you, Matt. This extra smoking t-shirt is killing me. Don't let it fool you. It's all smoking mirrors. But, you know, when I graduated high school, I was like 135, 140 pounds. And I had to eat my way up to where I am now. But I think a lot of guys, we started a six-month muscle gain program

because people aren't willing to go gain weight long enough. They plan to gain weight for two, three months, and they want to lean back out. Gain weight for two, three months and they want to lean back out. Gain weight for two, three months, lean back out. Everybody's so fucking paranoid about gaining fat. Right, yeah. It's like when you hear a woman say, I want to get stronger and lift weights and all that and grow. I don't want to get big. As if you just fucking touched a barbell and got progress out of just the act of being there.

Yeah. As if it didn't take a whole lot of cumulative effort to make that happen. So you've got to pick, I mean, I think six months is a good amount of time to put on a fair amount of weight so that you can maintain some muscle gain. From a programming perspective, I think a lot of guys are either weak or they're not doing enough hypertrophy training. So I've seen it happen both ways. You've got guys that have been doing the 5 sets of 10

and the bodybuilder protocol. They're doing 4 different exercises, 5 sets of 10, just totally blowing it up on pecs and triceps, the next day back and thighs, and then squats and deads and machines. You've been generous in setting that squat. And I think that's a good way to train to put on size. But then on the flip side, if you're weak and you're doing that, then you may not be strong enough to be pushing around enough weight

in order to cause that hypertrophy. So I think the best way to put on weight for a lot of guys from a programming perspective is to cycle between strength. So, you know, the 1 to 5 rep range and the 6 to 12 rep range. So to kind of cycle back and forth because I think people try to accomplish putting on size one way or the other. First, you have to be strong enough to cause hypertrophy. And then second, you have to be strong enough to cause hypertrophy. And then second, you have to have enough muscle mass to get stronger. So you don't want to stick doing any one protocol

for a long time if you're someone who's considered a hard gainer. I think efficiency is a big thing. I think people get caught in their mind that they will, I've got to get bigger, so I'll do more of the things that I think will make me bigger. So you have guys wasting a bunch of fucking time doing a bunch of different things for a bunch of different sets of reps. Whereas it's probably the most efficient thing to say, look, three days a week, I'm going to do things that load my body like deadlifts and squats. Lots of force, lots of cumulative work, big metabolic response, but not a whole lot of time just digging around

and burning calories and wasting time at the gym. It's like this efficiency. A lot of impulse to the training. So get in there, move a lot of weight a bunch of times efficiently, and then if it's much more than an hour later, wind down and get the hell out of there and resume eating. Do your compound exercises first. You can do it. Squats, presses, and then go and work on the

muscle, any other body parts you want to work on. Yeah, Doug? I'm going to skip my turn on that one and move on to another question just for time's sake. Let's see, Josh says, how can I tell if an athlete has what it takes to be successful in CrossFit? I know there's a lot of variables involved. What are some of the base traits that a guy or girl would like to have to be successful in CrossFit? I know there's a lot of variables involved. What are some of the base traits that a guy or girl would like to have to be successful? If you watch the Max episode,

we talked a little bit about the different animals and good CrossFitters tend to be the buffalo. They're very strong and they have a lot of endurance. They can kind of just go at a moderate pace for a very long time, which in CrossFit, a lot of times that They can kind of just go at a moderate pace for a very long time, which in CrossFit, a lot of times, that's really what you need. If you're going to grind through a 10-minute workout, you're really not ever at a full-speed sprint, but you might need to be able to do 350-pound deadlifts, one deadlift, five-second break, one deadlift, five-second break.

And you might need to be able to do that for three minutes if a walk calls for it. The Buffalo body type really helps with that. Very strong, but you have good endurance at moderate weights at the same time. You're not necessarily an overly fast and explosive athlete, but you're strong with good endurance. Maybe the really light, long-distance endurance stuff like running a 10K isn't your specialty, but you have endurance in those moderate rep ranges and those moderate weights. For 200 to 300 pounds, you can just hammer through, and it doesn't beat you up that bad. You can come back five hours later and do it again. If you have an athlete that can tolerate that beating, so to speak, and then

he can come back and he feels totally fine, he's not wrecked for a couple days, that's a good athlete to eventually probably go to regionals, maybe even compete in the games. I'd add, you have to be really tough to be able to get up the ladder and compete at that regional level. I mean, it just takes being able to embrace the act of suffering to be able to endure that, no matter what physical tools you have. Because, like, McGoldrick is a good example of a guy who's physically, he's made the game, he's reached what he's been working for. But physically, I would call him the most amazingly gifted guy.

He's exceptionally tough, he embraces the suffering, and he's the kind of guy who doesn't think twice about turning his whole life over to his pursuits. For probably years now, that guy has skipped out on social things and rearranged his career and his personal life and everything in order to facilitate long durations of sleep, to get the food he needs when he needs it, and the training he needs it. Everything else in his life moved around to accommodate that. So if you don't have that kind of dedication, you don't think that's within your ability,

then you're not going to be able to do this. I think the willingness to recover is something that most people don't consider. And McGoldrick has that. He is willing to sleep for ten hours and sit around. He's going to go home and sit in a chair and be like, I'm recovered and I'm not training. He probably exerts as much work fucking trying to recover and eat as he does training. He does. He spends a lot of time prepping his meals, making sure that he has enough high-quality food at all times.

He spends as much time cooking as he does training almost. Yeah, so if you're going to do that and you're going to sleep 10 hours a night, guess what? You're not going out to the bar ever. That's a full-time doctor then. There's a lot of guys, I mean, I see some guys high level that do have some mobility issues, but I also see some guys that

they may appear at first glance to be amazing athletes. They can run and come in and deadlift forever and all that kind of stuff, and then you throw them on an overhead squat, and they're kyphotic and their shoulders are internally rotated, and they're fighting just to get a barbell overhead and a decent depth in their squat. Me.

It's me. Yeah. But you also see a lot of foreign military guys that are in that, you know, too much rucking. They end up all hunched over, and now they can't really have squats in their life. They're not just having to look great. I don't know, like, fight against their own mobility.

So I think a lot of times it's not like that you're looking for athletes that have enough mobility, but athletes who are willing to really work on improving that mobility. I know a lot of guys could be, you know, they'd be good at regionals, except for they're never going to invest the time in fixing their shoulders and ankles and hips. So they've got to, you know, sometimes I used to see a guy come in and be like, oh, shit, we didn't, like, turn him into something. And then he'll show up and train his balls off but he fucking won't go home

and stretch. That's a lot of work when it's not something you want to do. Stretching is rather a recovery. It's harder to do than training in my opinion. People say, you know, I've got shoulders that are limiting me from snatch or ankle mobility issues. I have some of that and we all have dealt with that. And you go, what can I do to fix it? You start by saying, okay, well, what are you doing for mobility work? Well, yeah, I stretch.

No, are you spending an hour a night, an hour before training, doing these dedicated drills that feel like a workout in themselves? Are you measuring your progress? Are you trying to get better? Are you driving this improvement of mobility? Or are you just coming in and fucking stretching with a band in five minutes? Well, yeah, okay, I've stretched that thing. Check the box. That doesn't work. It's like if you come to the gym and go, okay, I'm going to do five to five because that makes you strong. And you go, yeah, did that. Magically stronger now. What the hell? Did you fucking slay it

on the barbell because you thought you were going to fucking die? And then go home and collapse on the floor because you've got nothing else to give to your life that day? That's how you make improvements. I think you made a good point that a lot of people want to come in and measure their fitness by how much they improve their friend, but how many people are measuring the range of motion of their external rotation of the shoulder or their T-spine rotation or their ankle mobility, actually measuring that and working towards going from 35% to 45% or something like that.

Mobility is something that can be measured and worked towards and find out if you're making progress. Anyway, we're off on a tangent. We're very off track. That's a good tangent. Surprise! That was a good tangent. That was good.

I wish you guys all off easier than Paul. Do you guys have any recommended resources, books, websites, podcasts for learning more about kinesiology, anatomy, physiology, training, coaching, and other things that will make me a better coach? Yeah, I mean, there's tons of resources out there. You know, still to this day, it's not CrossFit related necessarily, but I still love to read T Nation. Some of it's good and some of it's not good. You have to have a little bit of a filter to find the good stuff,

but I still do like to read T Nation. I still like to read Eric Cressy's stuff whenever he puts stuff out, Tony Jenifor, Mike Robertson. Mike Boyle doesn't like CrossFit, but he still has a lot of perspective on coaching. Fuck that guy. And a lot of CrossFit coaches don't like him. I know his opinion. He does say a lot of very novel things that only make sense after you've been doing this for 15 or 20 or 30 years.

It won't make sense after your first year. You'll think he's an asshole. But after 30 years, I think you'll come back and be like, oh, wow, that guy maybe didn't know what he was talking about. So those are kind of non-CrossFit resources. Eventually, we would like to put out some exercise science and anatomy physiology-focused products. We haven't gotten around to that yet. One thing at a time for that.

KSTAR's new book, Supple Leopard, is very, very good. Also, Brian McKenzie's book, Speed, Power, and Endurance, he lays out the basics for endurance training if that's something that you would like to do. None of it's overly novel or overly complicated, so if you're a person that's brand new to training, he lays it out step by step and makes it very easy to follow. So that's a quality resource. If you're looking for more complex or advanced stuff, a couple of my favorite books in the more advanced world, Muscles, Testing and Functional Posture and Pain, excuse me, that's like a classic physical therapy text. A lot of the mobility stuff that we do came originally from that textbook. So that's a great text. Shirley Sarman stuff, if you want to get really deep into the PT world, into the physiology, biomechanics type

world and rehabilitation world, she has two great texts. That's it for me. You didn't think I was going to ask you. Mike's going to make a program in probably one of these days. Mike doesn't read books. Mike doesn't read books. Actually, he read The Great Gatsby. I think everyone should Google Hagerman, H-A-G-E-R-A, H-A-G-E-R-M-A-N. Google will fix it.

Oh my God. Hagerman and then rowing and.pdf. Google that. It's like seven pages on interval training for rowers specifically, but it's applicable to any type of training. So if you're into the energy system and you're trying to find out how to train different energy systems, it's a good, short, concise guideline on how to do that. You also like Mr. Who.

Yeah, the physical therapy woman's name is Shirley Sarman. I'll go grab her book real quick. Are there good resources? I stopped reading resources a long time ago because I got bored with it. I did read Eight Weeks Out recently. It was pretty good. It kind of depends on where you're coming from. What are you like? I'm in the same boat where, at a certain amount of time, I started realizing that once you get past basic periodization books,

which one that came to my mind was that I really like. I think he's wrong about a lot of stuff, especially about American welding, but Ripoteau's Programming for the Immediate Lifter, that second book he put out, I thought it was really good. In terms of laying out a rationale as to when you progress to more complicated things, how you organize training. Starting Strengthening PE Cells is obviously pretty good. Recently, I think my good friend, Dr. Michael Hartman, put out an e-book, Fortis.

If you search for drhartman.com, I think it's his website. There was a time when I was going to go off and study for my PhD with Mike, which had been a good time. It didn't work out. But, Mike, I don't think there's anybody any more competent with weightlifting and strength training from back in the globe than Dr. Hartman is. He's a great guy. You might have heard his name because he spent a lot of time with Glenn Pinlay

at Midwestern in Texas where they're training down there. I think so. They had a university down there. Mike was doing a lot of research and industry training. He was working with the athletes and working with Glenn. If you ever hear Glenn reference Mike, you'll see that he's highly regarded. I would actually give that book, it's maybe 30 or 50 pages, but very succinct. You can get through it in the evening and learn a lot. He gives a very clear rationale as to why you would pick certain exercises to get stronger

in certain movements. Garrett, I see that you're asking for work on programming, a smart mix of barbell work and gymnastics. I actually don't know of any books that do a good job of teaching you how to mix barbell and gymnastics work together. It's something that occurred to me at one point, and I was like, ah, we should write a book. But guess what? I'm terrible at sitting down and actually putting things together. You can outline a book with the best of them, though. We outlined a whole book in one night. He's trying to tell me that the easy parts are the hard parts. You have to find the hard part. Now this guy's still gonna write.

The outline's the hard part. Chris is much better at writing than we are. Yeah, so on the weightlifting side of things, I think one of the best books I've ever read is Greg Everett's Olympic Weightlifting. Greg knows his shit. If you want to learn how to teach and how to learn the movements better yourself, there is no better book. Programming, the Bob Takano book. Takano, I don't know how you pronounce his name. I like it. It's a book.

I think it's just called Programming. I like that book. It's pretty good. I don't wear sexy names. Yeah, think it's just called Programming. I like that book. It's pretty good. I don't know what a sexy name is. Yeah, but it's to the point. No more sexy than mine. Here, I grabbed a couple books. This is that book, Muscle Testing Functional Posture and Pain.

That's how I got the majority of the mobility stuff that I'm doing. This is that Shirley Sarman book. This is pretty close to muscles as far as how important it is in the physical therapy world right now, especially movement-based physical therapy. Advances in Functional Training, kind of a funny title, but Mike Boyle. It's one of the hottest tricks ever to break up the United States on the cover. Yeah. This truly is, though. It really is advances in functional training. This is not a basics-type book. If you've been doing this for 10 years, then a lot of this stuff will make sense.

If you're brand new to coaching people, then you won't know why it's so good. If you're a beginner and you don't know anything about anatomy and physiology, this is probably the best kinesiology textbook. If you want to learn anatomy and physiology really, really well, this book is phenomenally good. It's crazy good. I've read it more than once. And then finally, Speed, Power, and Endurance, if you haven't seen it. So smart. It is Brian McKenzie's book. A lot of basics, a lot of endurance stuff, cycling and swimming

is included in here, which we don't do a whole lot of, but a great resource if you want to learn more about endurance stuff. And one thing, you're saying being bigger makes it harder to hold a clutch, there's a good website, gymnasticbodies.com. Not gymnastics bodies, but gymnasticbodies.com. Coach Sommer, he wrote a book. I can't remember the name of the book, but you can purchase it on that website.

I have it. I read that book, and it actually really helped me out a whole lot in understanding gymnastics better. CrossFit is really good at programming gymnastics conditioning type stuff but they're not very good. No one programs actually good gymnastics strength stuff and what you're referring to is, you know, a planche. And so one of the things they'll talk about in that book is how to scale gymnastic strength movements like the planche. One way to do that, and there's a progression. And, for instance, the planche, a good way to scale that is just to tuck. And you'll find that for a lot of these things, a lot of these movements in gymnastics,

the way to scale is to tuck. You work out a front lever, tuck. Back lever, tuck. You start making your body smaller, make that lever smaller, shorter, and all of a sudden it gets a little bit easier. And then you can start working on your tuck with a flat back. And then you start easing your knees out there and then extending your legs all the way together. So if you're looking at movements specifically for book or books specifically for movements, weightlifting, the best one is the Greg Everett's book on weightlifting.

And then for gymnastics, gymnasticbodies.com is really good. And Doug is actually pulling up the book right now. There you go. So here's gymnasticbodies.com. I think he may have changed his books. I think he has more books now. So I have the first one that he had written. It looks like he has a couple of new products.

But if you go to gymnasticsbodies.com. There you go. I'm sorry. Go new products, but if you go to gymnastics bodies, there's a book. There you go. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Oh, there you go. So here's the building the gymnastics body book that we have that's really helped us out quite a bit. Again, it's very straightforward.

It gives you some awesome progressions for a lot of the more advanced gymnastics movements, but you'll probably end up only doing the first or second progression for leading up to some of those harder movements. But you can use a lot of that in your regular CrossFit classes if you're a coach or if you're just an athlete and also learn more about gymnastics. I like the gymnastics strength stuff. You know, instead of doing like 60-kidding pull-ups, I'd rather do like some pull-up regressions and lever progressions and stuff like that because and stuff like that because my shoulders feel a shit ton better if I'm doing gymnastic strength work versus just a fuckload of kidding pull-ups or something. How much is a fuckload?

At least 120. What was it? Fuck shit ton? Fuck shit ton. Someone's asking about how many Metcons per week. Sorry, I lost. Hold on. Someone said how many Metcons per week can they expect to do in the six-month muscle gain program?

Right now, we do four Metcons per week in that program. I think that was a pass. Yeah. We do four Metcons per week in that program. I think that was the best. Yeah. We do four Metcons per week in that program. We're training five days a week, and then we Metcon four days a week. So for the most part, Monday, Tuesday, there's heavy training, strength training, and a Metcon. Wednesday is off, and usually there's some type of nutrition homework

and educational-type videos. The Facts and Foods Nutrition Course is a big part of that. And then Thursday, usually it's strength training only with no conditioning. Friday, Saturday, or just like Monday and Tuesday, there's strength and conditioning. And then Sunday, again, it's usually off where there's some type of mobility or nutrition or some type of homework that's easier on your body than the training days. But there's something for you to do all seven days of the week. Five days training, two days off, one day of training is just strength

without doing any conditioning. So four days a week for conditioning, to answer your question. Long story short. Long story short. You're getting value, Dad. That's right. That's right. All right.

Next question. Sorry, give us just a second here. Doug's a good reader and stuff. We got long questions here. He's better at reading than you are at writing books. That's right. I'm not good at anything! I tell you what I am good at, sitting around and thinking.

All right, so Fabian asks, he said that he was about 5'5", 173 pounds when he started CrossFit. He was about 163 pounds, so 10 pounds smaller. He's seen some good gains in strength and positive changes in his body composition. After CrossFit for three months and listening to the show, he realized that he needs to build a very strong strength base. How long should he be focusing on strength? One year, two years, or three years? I would start with six months.

The six-month muscle gain challenge. He's already in the six-month muscle gain challenge. Oh, you're doing a good job. So really the answer is you're never really not going to be focusing on strength. It's a rare person that ends up being too strong who wasn't born pretty damn strong. So in your case, as a person who is a smaller CrossFit athlete, you're 5'5", 170 pounds, you're probably not going to get to the point ever where you're like, well, I can deadlift 650. I probably don't need to worry about my deadlift strength.

It's a very rare problem. Yeah, it's a very rare problem, absolutely. So it tends to be that the best CrossFit athletes right now, the most competitive guys, are freaky strong, and then they add some conditioning onto their freaky strength. No one comes out of the endurance world. They don't come out of running marathons for 10 years, and their endurance is insane,

and then they strength train for three months, and now they're a world-class CrossFitter. But people do come out of powerlifting, strongman, and Olympic weightlifting. And then they add some conditioning for six months. And football now too, yeah. And they are monsters in CrossFit because they're already strong. Strength should be your focus. It's an enduring adaptation. Yeah, I mean, strength takes a long time to get. Endurance, it doesn't take as long to get.

A big part of endurance is just grinding it out. If you have high pain tolerance, then you can keep going in a lot of cases. That's kind of insulting to endurance athletes. Insult them. They deserve to be insulted. You know, every sport is hard when you're getting up to the highest level, and they work damn hard. They really do. But they're not going to be world-class CrossFitters in a couple months.

The guys who come in freaky strong, they can be world-class CrossFitters in six months or a year. So keep focusing on strength forever is the point. You take a kindred Ferris, and he gets bored of weightlifting and goes, oh I'll train for a year for CrossFit so I can do it. It's probably going to be a really interesting experiment. He could. He could train for a year and come in and be a game back. He could probably go on NFL and have done anything he wanted. He was that athletic.

Never think that, oh yeah, I'm strong enough now. Just one more thing. It's going to be multiple year commitment. It's going to be the rest of your life you're going to be working on strength and doing other things. Yeah, the athletes I've seen that are competing at the regional level, even if they weren't doing CrossFit beforehand, whether they've been in CrossFit for years or not, there was at least a two- or three-year period

where they were very focused on strength. Fabian says, I'm in it, Mike. You jerk. I wasn't. Lots of names to remember. No, no, no. I didn't even look at the name. I just saw the question, and then I saw the name afterwards.

Nice cover. Yeah, you covered well. Okay, tips for training. I'm illiterate. Tips for training by yourself at home when you don't have access to CrossFit coaches. Well, if you're by yourself and you don't have any coach or any equipment, obviously we're a resource that you could use for technique. Technique WOD is there for that exact reason,

so you can get better work on your technique and learn while you're at home if you don't have access to a coach. As far as equipment goes, obviously if you don't have a gym or kettlebells or barbells, you're pretty much stuck with bodyweight movements. So if you want to get stronger, then you're basically, you know, to reference this gymnastics book again, you know, gymnastics is fantastic because you can get shitty strong with only bodyweight movements. You know, if you're doing one-arm push-ups and pistols and handstand push-ups

and you're working on planches and all these, you know, crazy things that gymnasts do, you can get very strong without having any equipment whatsoever. So I would focus on getting better gymnastics. Go buy that Gymnastics Body book. You know, reference that website. Go to beastskills.com and check out some of the stuff that that guy has. Beast Skills is a cool website. By the way, right now the only training I'm doing right now is gymnastics.

I have an injured hamstring. I really can't do any lower body. Just last week I started doing overhead squats with an empty barbell. But the last month or so I have been doing nothing but gymnastics. And really all I need in order to do that is a set of rings. All you need is a set of rings, and then that's all you need. So here's bskills.com right here. He has cool tutorials on how to do all this stuff, a lot of hands and stuff, a lot of cool stuff.

If you got a set of rings, then you're pretty much set. Back levers, front levers, flags, if you know what a flag is. The gymnastic bodies. Very cool stuff on these skills. Gymnasticbodies.com, there's a forum and there's a workout of the day that they used to post, but it's archived. It's up that's a pretty good resource if you want to focus on that it's I mean if you guys I

mean a quick question for everybody out there how many people out there are working out on their own and don't have a cross or coach can we do a raise your hand thing or something back I think a pole. Yeah, let's do a pole. Sorry, guys. Never mind. Manage your pole. Yeah.

Never mind. Yeah, just write in the comments. Just right there in the comments say, you know, I train on my own or me or whatever. I'm just curious because I want to know, like, who's listening to us and what you guys might need. Because if you guys need some coaching because you don't have a coach on hand, we might be able to come up with some way where we can analyze movement and program for you guys or something like that. That's kind of how the six-month muscle gain challenge kind of came about. And I noticed a lot of guys are submitting videos on that.

You know, they're shooting videos on the garage. Looks like a lot of you guys train on your own with no coach. If we put together like a Facebook group where we could look at your videos and give you critiques, like we do that for the six-month muscle gain challenge. They get a program and training advice, and then we also look at their technique in the Facebook group and give them advice on what to do to improve their snatches and their cleans and their squats and whatnot. If we had that as a separate service where it was just a Facebook group and you paid a certain amount of money every month to be in that group to ask us questions and send us videos and we were in there on a daily basis to help you out, would that be something

that you guys would want? Okay, we got a lot of people saying yeah. Yeah, okay. Dark South 5 and H.R. was a lot, but whatever. It came right away. Just kidding. Okay, well, we'll talk that over. That might be something we can put together here in the very near future.

Make it free. Garrett was saying, the same guy that asked that original question about training at home, he said, what about learning highly technical movements like snatch and clean and jerk? Again, that's exactly why we do all the technique wads and whatnot, especially

when I first started technique wad, I did a lot of stuff on the progressions for snatches and cleans. If you haven't seen the very first TechniqueWads from a long time ago, the video and the audio quality isn't quite as good. We didn't have quite the production value that we do now. But the progressions and the advice and the technique is unchanged. So we might have a few style differences that have changed since I recorded those original videos, but they'll still, the basics are still the basics and they'll still get you a long way.

Also, like I said, we have that new Zach Critch product coming out where all it is, is teaching the snatch and clean and jerk. So in that, in that training program or in that product, you see a lot of video of our athletes trying the movements and Zach is over there critiquing them. And so you can see, oh, I made that mistake and that's how you fix it. And I do that just like that guy does. And that's how Zach fixed it. So that's something we don't do in TechniqueWOD very often, but it is something that Zach

does in that product. So that's a point of differentiation that might help yes if you do that you film yourself through the list you try to spot what you can spot if you can have somebody to post those videos for and they can review you're getting about as close to you get to option given given that situation so Garrett you want to mix gymnastics with barbell work, but it sounds like you don't want to do the high intensity of CrossFit. Is that true? If that's true, then you're just like me.

Don't be ashamed. Yeah, okay, yes for now. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I wonder if there's even a program out there like that. I mean, it sounds like, I mean, that's kind of like what I do for myself right now, but I don't blog. I don't do a lot of work right now just because of my injury. But, like, when I am doing weightlifting, I do like to do a mix of gymnastics in there as well.

You treat your gymnastics stuff basically like your assistant exercise. You do the lifts, the second portion of the workout devoted to weightlifting. I think they work very well together because we look at the competition and we look at the results and we look at the results and we look at the results and we look at the results and we look at the results and we look at the results and we look at the results and we look at the results and we look at the results and we look at the results and I mean if someone were to come along and program nice even programming, it's something I could do, but I don't know if I would want to do it. I think they work very well together. I don't know how many people are looking for that is what I mean. Yeah, like the training like the Chinese weight-lifting team does, they do things like,

they'll do other lifts on a day off or after the lifts. Not in, your name's already next to it. Yeah, so they'll do things like handstand holds for time, even with weights. Like Ty, you've got to get up to these 25-kilogram weight around your waist, get into a handstand position against the wall and hold it. They'll set a timer for like 20 or 30 minutes and get you to sit there. It's not godly hard, but that kind of stuff can be very effective to help the lifts. Yeah.

Well, most of the gymnastics stuff I choose are things that are going to be better for my weightlifting. I don't do things. So what do you do? I don't do a lot of gymnastics stuff that just can't make me better at gymnastics. I do things like wall runs in order to improve my shoulder stability. Yes, that's way better than doing like dumbbell raises for your shoulders. It's much more practical to using your body. What's a functional movement versus trying to mimic something with a dumbbell? You're going to have to stabilize your what's a functional magnet versus versus trying to mimic something with a dumbbell

you're having to stabilize your whole fucking body yeah that smokes your arms pretty good shoulders feel differently

doing that than anything else yeah let's get back to questions Jack says you guys are the best love the podcast

thanks Jack that was the best question I heard all night let's see I'm a couple months I'm a couple of months That was the best question I heard all night. Let's see. I'm a couple of months new to CrossFit. Same for paleo.

Pretty small dude and want to get stronger. Is paleo not a good choice for me? We've had quite a few episodes on Barbell Strug talking about that exact same thing. So for the most part, to sum it all up, we say that modified paleo is pretty much the best way to go. And that means that 90% of the time you're probably eating paleo, but around your workout, it's okay to eat some denser sources of carbohydrates. It's okay to have a workout drink that has sugar in it, sugar and some type of protein powder. And then after your workout, it's okay to eat some paleo-friendly, denser sources of carbohydrates like rice and sweet potatoes. That'll give you a good growth response that'll help you build muscle mass, and it's just

an easy way to add calories to a paleo diet that people eat paleo because they don't want to be fat and sick, and that's naturally lowering calories, but if you're trying to get big and strong, then those are different goals. So it's good to add some calories, specifically carbohydrates, during and following your workout. So modified paleo is what I call that. I think that as long as you should be shooting to get a gram for every pound of body weight and protein. So if you weigh 200 pounds and you're getting 200 grams of protein a day and you're eating 10 servings of vegetables a day, that's the size of your fist, right? So if I'm eating 10 servings of vegetables and I'm getting 200 grams of protein a day,

then if you want to add other stuff on top of that and it doesn't upset your stomach, go for it. Especially if you're a smaller guy and you probably need to gain some weight or you want to gain some weight, that's the way to go about it. If you want to lean out, just eat that protein, eat those vegetables, and lean out all that starchy stuff. But, yeah, like Doug said, try to add all the extra carbs around your training sessions. I just saw a question about tequila.

That was Barry from Germany. Yeah, sipping tequila. For my margaritas, I think I love using Gornitos. Then for drinking and for drinks, yeah, I mean, fine, very fancy-age tequilas is great. You can afford it. I think it's an Espelon tequila I've had. It's got little skulls around it. The bottle's very cool.

I've shot it and I have, well, it the bottle is very cool I've shot it and I have on accepted and make drinks with I think it's the most balanced high-value tequila you wish what is that that's full on alright let's see the five ways to adjust the paleo diet for high volume CrossFit training is probably a good episode to watch that's episode back to the previous question. Okay. Alright. Back to the... The tequila was stepping on in episode... Black Sheep 2 with Travis? That sounds good.

Hey! What's the... The name of the tequila? Oh, the computer's gonna crash! No! This might be over! What the... It's not even on the PC.

Sorry, I didn't even play the episode. What was the name of the tequila you were thinking of? Anyway, I couldn't see what episode it was, but go find that one. What was the name of the tequila? Leave me that. I'm curious. What was the name of the tequila that Travis... I'm curious. What was the was, but go find that one.

What was the name of the tequila? I'm curious. What was the name of the tequila that Travis had? Well, Travis is sponsored by a tequila company. Yeah, he's sponsored by a tequila company, and when I drank it, it was actually extremely smooth. It was the smoothest tequila I've ever tasted.

You don't remember the name. All we had to do was go back and watch it. Episode with Travis. Episode with Travis Harkey, that's very, very raunchy. So you may not, if you don't watch it with the kids. We got some negative feedback on that, but whatever. It was plenty of stuff. Someone says he's a former minor league baseball strength and conditioning coach and thought that their program was skewed towards not getting someone hurt

as opposed to building more explosive athletes. Do you feel most baseball strength and conditioning programs are too risk-averse? No, not necessarily. As a strength and conditioning coach for any professional sports team, if you're an NFL coach or professional hockey or baseball, those guys are measured by how often their players keep playing, so how often they stay on the field. They're injury prevention guys.

They are not there to make them stronger and more powerful necessarily. So having those guys do snatches and cleans, that's not in their best interest. They will be the one that gets blamed when the athlete gets hurt. So for the most part, it's going to be very conservative training, especially in season. They're trying to just keep the strength those guys already have and keep those guys already have and keep those guys being the Lamborghini athletes that they already are. Those guys, in a lot of cases, especially with the baseball players, they were born throwing 100 miles an hour

in some cases. And so they're just trying to keep them on the field as much as possible. So I wouldn't say they're too risk averse. They do the things they do for a reason, but in some cases, yeah, I think they could make them not quite so risk-averse, and they could put some things in there that could help improve their athleticism, especially on their lower body a little more than they do. Not necessarily our CrossFit topic, but fun to talk about. Let's see. Yeah, we got that CTP and the place to be I got Chris and Doug and Michael B we got a live Q&A we don't do this every day so grab a peanut picker and write down what they say

it's getting way cooler here actually he has a camera camera's right there I was scared I was like what Marge can you burst it in there. Yeah, it is right there. I was scared. I was like, wow, the Marge is going to be bursting in there like a crazy person. Yeah, right? What's up, man? Is there an episode with Mike McGoldrick in the future?

Yeah. We're going to be at the Central East Regionals this weekend. Mike's going to be up there with us. So I'd imagine he'll be on the show here in the near future since he just won the South Central Regionals. Yeah, we've got to make that happen for sure. We'll see. How many grams of protein if you weigh 170 should come from protein powder? 170.

I wouldn't say there's any magic number. I'd say for the most part, you're trying to get all your protein from whole food sources. The only protein powder that you really should be taking in is probably at a time when eating food is totally inconvenient, like during your workout. So for a 170-pound person, I'd say probably about 30 grams of protein or so, 30 to 40 maybe, whatever you take in during your workout, in your workout drink is probably all the protein powder you really need, unless you're in a situation where it's impossible to get any other whole food. You know, if you're an ER surgeon and the only food that you're going to get is

right when you get to work and then 12 hours later after surgery and someone can somehow get you some protein powder that you can slurp through a straw while you happen to walk out and your hands are like this. So there's extreme situations, but for the most part, only during your workout drink is pretty much all the protein powder that you need. If you're at home, eat some real food if at all possible. If you're a competitive athlete or you're a hard gainer, then you might want to – I would shoot for a gram of protein for every pound of body weight, say like 170 grams in whole foods, and then throw powders on top of that.

Like I drink a shake in the morning, one after I train, and then one before bed. But those are like additional calories. That's additional grams of protein on top of like the already, lots of food already eaten. And that's just, you're trying to gain weight right now and stuff like that. So it kind of depends on what your goal is. You've got to set up your gymnastic goals. If you're healthy, if you're just trying to gain weight right now and stuff like that. So it kind of depends on what your goal is. You really just got to be gymnastic goals. If you're healthy, if you're just trying to be healthy,

then, you know, I agree with what Doug said, like the only protein you should probably be consuming is right after you're trained, but, you know, the powdered protein. But if you're fighting for calories, then it's good to, you know, get them in the liquid form, for sure. I saw a crazy question. What is your favorite mythical beast? Mythical?

Yeah. Let me think about it. I would say Kraken. Just wondering if the Muscle Gang Challenge implements a lot of gymnastics movements. I follow a lot of the gymnastics body progressions and enjoy them a lot. For the most part, the Muscle Gain Challenge is a weightlifting-focused program, so all the strength work is, for the most part, going to be centered around improving your snaps, clean and jerk, and squat strength. And then the majority of the gymnastics movements are either done in the Metcon or after the Metcon.

There might be like a cash-out type thing. After the Metcon, you rest five minutes, and then you do five minutes total of something. Handstand wall runs like Mike was talking about, which is where you're in a handstand and you're kind of shifting from one hand to another while you're in a handstand. You're going of shifting from one hand to another while you're in a handstand and you're going like this and you're touching your shoulders. Just put yourself... Handstand dancing.

Handstand dancing, that's right. Google handstand or Google wall runs. Excuse me. But yeah, there's a lot of gymnastics in that program. We try not to make it overly complicated because a lot of people are doing these workouts in their garage. So the gymnastics movements work really well since they are body weight only. So pistols, handstand pushups, we do put a lot of muscle up type work in there. And then lately we've been doing things like L-sits and straddle L-sits, wall runs, cast wall walks. And we're in phase three right now, which actually is a gymnastics-focused phase.

So we're doing a lot more gymnastics now and over the next couple weeks for the currently running program. So the answer is yes, we do do a lot of gymnastics in that program. Question, I'm a new coach making a career move. Would love to hear what you'd like to know when you first started coaching. Is that question about coaching or business? Because I think they're... Yeah, please say coach.

Okay. Jenna, you had a similar question. You were asking about three things that would help, if I can find your other question. While Mike's thinking up an answer for that, the three things that really helped me was, aside from the obvious of coaching athletes, which you'll be doing that all day, is constantly watching videos and educating myself. So I watch a lot of videos and I listen to a lot of audio programs. I read a lot of books too, but video really is the biggest thing for me.

Whenever I'm eating food or taking a break, I always have some video playing in the background that I'm still constantly learning from, even when I'm kind of taking some down time. If I'm driving in my car, I'm listening to audible audio books on nutrition especially. It's hard to do technique work when you're driving around, but nutrition is something you can definitely learn about during your commute. If you're cooking food, you can be listening to an audio book or a podcast on nutrition at the same time. Maximizing the downtime and the time that you don't have to focus really, really hard. When you're cooking a meal, you don't have to focus on the meal so much that you can't also be learning at the same time.

Multitasking, for me, has really helped me gain knowledge over time. And then number two is if you can travel and train with people who are better than you, that is easily the best way to get good very, very quickly. If you have someone who can serve as a mentor to you, and we were talking about Louis Simmons and Chris earlier. The reason Chris is such a phenomenal powerlifter is because he had the best powerlifting coach in the world mentoring him. He'd go all the way up to Columbus, Ohio from Memphis, Tennessee. It's a 10-hour drive just to lift weights with these guys.

Graduate school with no money. So find some guys that are really good and train with them. They're not there to coach you. Just go be a part of the group if possible. All of our athletes that do the best, they just come training right along next to us. They're not there for a class. They're not getting personal training. They are our training partners, and they get better faster than everybody.

Mike? I answered the whole thing. I would jump in and say, you may have actually mentioned it, but the best way to get better at coaching will be to log countless hours coaching. On the front end, you're going to learn all these things, you're going to try to give the best possible advice to people, and you're going to try to do the best job because you're a good coach, but you're going to make plenty of mistakes and then you're going to realize you made those mistakes and then over time you're going to just hone that craft more and more and more and more.

The only way you can do it is just fight. Absolutely. If you're not learning, if you're not doing these things, then you're in the gym coaching people and helping people and learning sort of in the midst of it, in the thick of it. I think that's the only way you're going to get better. It's like when you get better at writing, you do it by doing it. You get better at snatching by snatching. Well, coaching, you've got to immerse yourself in it and live

that. Yeah, becoming a better coach is extremely painful. I look back at how I coached years ago and, you know, it was... You cringe. I cringe. Yeah, I think it's terrible. I look back and I'm like, oh my God, what was I doing? But really, experience is the only way. I definitely went out of my way to train with coaches that have got more experience than I do. I still do that.

I'm constantly – I have to travel in order to do that. We don't live in a town that's got a lot of highly experienced strength coaches, unfortunately. But get outside your comfort zone. Go to places where you know you're not going to be the best and get your ass kicked. That's a great way to learn. The best way to have a better way to be a coach is going and training with coaches who have been doing it longer and who aren't going to be afraid to tell me to change something.

Probably communist country coaches. Right, mostly Russians and Cubans. That's a joke, but it's really true, actually. Yeah, I learned some good stuff from a Cuban coach. They don't know shit about economies, but they know weightlifting. That's right. There's another good question. Let's see.

Any good nutrition audio books? The vegan question. Let's not skip that one. Let me pull up my audio book and have all these guys look for a new question. Yeah, so, Ian, your mom has been a vegan for six years, but she wants to go paleo. Should she slowly reincorporate meat to her diet? Probably. I'm not real familiar with introducing vegans back to meat are going to experience

some discomfort and may not shit right. But there's a, now foods or now sports they make some digestive enzymes. Get those digestive enzymes and take those with your meals. Have her eat those along with meat until her body starts producing those enzymes on her own. I know Rob Wolf was a vegan for a while and anytime he even wants to put on some, he starts taking additional calories to gain weight or something like that, he has to take those as well. So those digestive enzymes are good for people that are reintroducing meat to their diet.

It's also good for people who are gaining weight and are taking in more calories than the body's used to consuming. I guess it's like anything else. I mean, you don't want to go, yeah, right, I see the error of my ways when it comes to meat. Let me go eat a rack of ribs. You probably start off with upping a little bit of the fish and things that you would anticipate being not so harsh. You don't want to start off with a giant steak. You don't want to, you want to slowly build up the time. Start off with a meat of the day if you think that's a reasonable path.

I mean, a smart way. I know Rob, I know that he said that he started off with a rack of ribs and it was the best he'd felt in years. So, yeah. I also think of like episodes of Survivor, the old reality show where they starve, starve, starve. And that's basically what you're doing, you're fucking vegan. And they win a challenge and go, here, a plate of steak and lobster. And they eat it and then I show them editing. They shit their brains out for two days. Their body's just like, what is this?

Yeah, so it eases into things. Nutrition audiobooks? So on the audiobook podcast front, I know one thing that really helped me as far as nutrition and cooking and learning how to cook for myself, this is a nutritional audiobook. It's the TV show Good Eats, which I know Chris how to cook for myself. This is a nutritional audio book. It's the TV show Good Eats, which I know Chris happens to love as well. It's semi-entertaining. If you like food science, which I definitely do,

then they talk about how to cook and then also why things work the way they do, why the sugars work the way they do, which type of fats they're using and why they're good and why they're bad. Some of it can be a little outdated, but it ran for 12 or 15 or I don't know how many years, but a long time. It's entertaining and all brown is the shit. So go watch Good Eats. You can find it on YouTube. There's a YouTube channel called Good Eats Complete that has pretty much almost all the seasons, like 12 of them or so.

So you can watch it on youtube whenever you want uh recently see recently i've read uh or listened to an audio uh salt sugar and fat that was all right wheat belly was good a lot of food science in there two of my favorites um this doesn't sound like a nutrition book but it's called what einstein kept under his hat and that's a that's a food science it's called What Einstein Kept Under His Hat. And that's a food science. It's very similar to Good East. It's a food science, food cooking book.

I wouldn't guess the food book. No, it doesn't sound like a food book, but it's really good and really entertaining. They're not good at any books, that's for sure. Yeah, right. The Vegetarian Myth was very, very good, I thought. They slam vegetarians and vegans pretty bad. Omnivore Dilemma. Omnivore's Dilemma. Omnivore's Dilemma.

That's very good. All Michael Pollan's books are very good. Omnivore's Dilemma is the most long-winded probably out of all of them. That's why it's so excellent. Yeah, it's very good. In Defense of Food is kind of like Cliff's Notes on Omnivore's Dilemma, and it's kind of like non-name brand paleo. He basically says that we developed all these food products, and then we started discovering nutrients, and then we started thinking that we knew what all the nutrients were, and we started eating individual nutrients and having deficiencies, and in the end, if you just

go back and eat real food, you'll be totally fine. Surprise. So it's kind of like non-name brand paleo. So the in- defense of food. By the way, that's why you don't want to eat so much protein powder for that exact reason. Because it doesn't have the things that meat has in it. And a book that everyone should read. It's not a church or a training book.

I Win Friends and Influence People. Do it. That is probably the best book of all time. Look how good you are at these things. I know. I took about half the things in that book, and I threw them out the window. And I kept the other half, because that's how I am, actually. What would be the best vegetables to juice?

I don't care about taste. We just did a daily BS on this not too long ago. But for the most part, what I juice pretty much every day, some type of either collard greens or kale. Always carrots, celery, excuse me, a beet, bok choy. Is it raining? I don't even have a top on mine. It was sunny when they came over here, and now it's pouring ass down rain for some reason. They both rode in their Jeeps with no top on their Jeep.

And now Blood's so screaming screaming so best veggies and juice like I said all those vegetables apples work very well I usually put a little bit of ginger and or turmeric both those you only want to use a small very tiny amount or they can be a little bit overpowering bok choy probably is is my most recent favorite because you get a ton of juice out of bok choy. Cabbage also works very well. Let's see, how do you guys balance training with non-competitive fun type training? A little drunk.

A little wet now, it's all right. Got it fixed? Not really, but whatever. Let's see, how do you guys balance training with non-competitive fun like rock climbing and mountain biking and whatnot? Does recovery ever present a problem? No, not really. I mean, if I'm doing something physically active for fun like rock climbing or mountain biking it's usually you know once or twice a month at the most so I'd say it doesn't really factor in as any of those are really more like active recovery anyway a lot of cases yeah they're sort of the nature yeah usually I'm not pushing myself to the

limit when I'm doing one of those things I might do a hard training session and then go do those afterward. So that doesn't ever seem to be a problem for us. See, balancing drinking into your training. Obviously, if you watch the show, you know, we drink on the show, so obviously we drink. We don't drink a ton. We probably drink maybe one day a week, usually on the show.

We drink on the show, maybe one or two drinks if we're podcasting at nighttime. Usually, we podcast on Sunday mornings. We're not drinking, but if we're out of town, usually it's in the evenings. So we do drink here and there, but usually it's only like one day a week. Usually, I train hard on Saturdays, and then usually we all take Sundays off. So we usually drink on Saturday nights nights and then Sundays we take off. You don't have to be worried about, when you decide to drink I think you should drink hard and have a good time and get all fucked up.

A couple days in a week you get stressed and if drinking a little bit will help you ease and get better rest and take the load off then you do it but you never do anything like this if it begins to take away more than it gives to you. So if you're drinking three nights a week and you're waking up late and you're shitty at work and you're not training so good, then you know you've crossed the threshold. But that's a common sense issue. Gary, a lot of it has to do with personality too. Some people just don't know how to do it in moderation.

Don't be a dick. Yeah. You got to know who you are. If you're an asshole, don't do it. Garrett, you're saying if you are rock climbing three times per week, at that point, that's not just recreational activity. I'd say that's like a sport for you. You have to program around your sport. If I go to MMA three days a week, then I consider myself at that time to be an MMA athlete who does strength and conditioning as a supplement for mixed martial arts.

And I'm not a prospect guy who is doing MMA on the side. So I'd say that put the climbing as the focus of the program and everything around your climbing. If you're doing Monday, Wednesday, Friday climbing, then maybe you climb in the morning and then you can train that night or you just train Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, maybe a light day on Sunday. Just train around that program. I don't know how intense the climbing is for you or what else you're doing. There's a million different situations that we could go into there, but I would just program around those three days. He's tweeting or something. He's tweeting. that we could go into there but I would just program around those three days

he's treating herself he's tweeting Jack says how would you recommend for someone like him who has a his brother is overweight and thinks CrossFit isn't for them due to their physical condition there, uh, he's intimidated and doesn't think CrossFit is something that he can do. Uh, what I would do is I would, I would have that person, you know, for a workout or two, you know, let them work out by themselves where they're not competing against anyone and get, just give them a workout that you know they can do and be successful. One thing that I like, especially for beginners, I did this with my mom, for example, is I gave her an AMRAP where she didn't have to complete any certain amount of anything.

All she has to do is stay alive for 10 minutes, and she did it. Also, I made it where it was a lot of sets with low reps. So if you give someone a workout where it's three bodyweight squats, three angled pushups on the rings or onto a desk or something, and three angled ring rows, then they can do 3-3-3 and take a little breather in between 3-3-3. And if they just survive for 10 minutes, then they did it. If you give them that little taste of success and show them that you can scale for anyone's, theirs in their case, the fact that they're overweight or they're not very strong or whatever,

you can scale for their situation and they have the experience that it's a good workout, it doesn't take very long, and it was fun, then I think you can ease them into it. And then as soon as they're ready, try to put them into someone's fundamentals course where they're doing it with other people who are just like them, who aren't super good athletes, who are all learning it together, and then let them graduate fundamentals together. And that's one thing that's worked very well at our facility is people go through the course together and then they sign up together because at that point they have friends and they're doing it together, they but not all by themselves.

Brilliantly said. Thank you. Nothing bad. And tell them to quit being such a fucking pussy and try. Come on. Wake up, man. You're human. Capture your spirit.

It makes you human. Use your body. Let's sit around getting fat all the time. Well, is that our favorite mental creation? I said a Kraken is pretty good. Cyclops. Cyclops. Unicorn.

Just be Shayna's answer. Do you guys have any tips on improving pike or straddle flexibility? Improving your gymnastics positions like pike and straddle. My favorite for improving flexibility for the straddle position which is where you're sitting with your legs all the way apart is just to lay on your back, put your heels on the wall in front of you with your butt all the way up against the wall and then just let your legs fall down to the side and then you can just hang out in that position, very relaxed and grab it and do pretty much all the work.

For improving the pike position which is basically very similar to sitting on the ground with your feet straight out in front of you and trying to reach out and touch your toes, for that one, just for the sake of your back, I like to stretch one leg at a time. So I would lie on my back in a doorway or something and I would put one heel up. If I'm parallel to the wall, I put one heel up on the wall or one leg is down, one leg is up and I'm stretching my hamstring again with a fairly neutral spine. At some point, you can start stretching where your low back is round. But initially, if you are not very flexible, you want to get most range of motion from your

hamstring and stretching one leg at a time is a better way to do that than just doing the touch your toes type stretching where you're getting a lot of low back flexion. Eventually, that's going to not be very good for your back. So two easy methods there. I hope that made sense. I don't have any pictures. What's the half man, half horse? Like the legs and shit of a horse? Yeah.

That's a, well, you asked me. I can't remember. That's your answer? That's my favorite. I don't even know what it's called. Like Pan? Yeah, it's like the flugels. He was a hot go boy.

Oh, maybe that's my thing. I like that. You can run around in this shit really quick. All right, Chris. This guy says, I'm a power lifter. This is from Anthony. I'm a power lifter, and my deadlifting squat keeps going up every week. Congratulations.

However, my bench isn't going up at all. How can I fix that? Firstly would be if you are really good at squatting and delving, your leverages could be a little less favorable for the bench. In my experience, it was really hard to make them all move at the same time. I would get my bench going

and my squat would feel good and my delving would shift a bit and rotate through. I guess I'd ask you, how heavy are you? What weight class are you in? Anthony, how heavy are you? What weight class are you in? Anthony, what do you weigh? By the way, we're never doing franchise size, Derek. I couldn't even make it to the video.

He's 170. So, yeah, if you have intentions on staying there, then it's going to be really tough. If you're 170 and you want to improve your bench, I'm assuming you're doing training the bench press and you're doing work on the exercise itself, you're doing assistance work like dumbbell pressing, maybe you're doing a little speed work or plyometric push-ups, you're doing a well-reasoned training program. If you're not trying to gain weight, it's going to be a bit of a slow grind if you're

a little bit light, especially if you have long arms. The easiest way for you to get your bench moving while probably not compromising your squat and deadlift too much is going to be just a gain. So if you go up to 185, your bench press is going to automatically move because your under is going to be far more favorable. So assuming you're training in a well-reasoned way, that's going to be the quickest path. If you're just going to the gym one day a week and you're doing five-to-five bench press, that's all you're doing, then adding a bit of variety may help you, especially if you've been doing this for a long time.

So if you add it in on the second day, some plyometric push-ups, some med ball throws, maybe a little touch of speed benching, things like that, a little variety, ring push-ups as an assistance exercise, for example, a little variety to help get it moving. But I'd say the easiest thing to do is gamble away. If you add 10 pounds, your bench is going to blow up quite a bit. You've got to go to 200 pounds, man. 100 seconds pounds is rough to be pressing. There's not a good bench presser in the world who's quite that way.

There's some really strong guys. I mean, there's 20, 255 pound guys who are bench pressing 500 pound big shirt, but they, that's, you gotta be a phenomenal athlete and just naturally really good at pushing it to be able to do that. Maybe have natural short arms to do that through the liner. It's tough exercise. Make your arms shorter. That applies for...

You have a surgical procedure to have you humorous and your anus and arm are short. Alright guys, we're gonna do two more questions. You have a surgical procedure to have you humorous and your age is normal. Sure. All right, guys, we're going to do two more questions. Could you guys give some general programming advice for older athletes as it pertains to workload, rest, program design, days off, et cetera? Right now I'm training about six days a week for an hour, an hour and a half, and I struggle with the amount of stimulus adaptation versus overdoing it and running myself into the ground. Now this is a bit of a projection on my end,

and this isn't necessarily what you're doing, but what I commonly see is that people make very big swings. They're like, oh, I'm training three days a week, and it's not working, so I'm going to go to ten sessions a week and see if that works, and then that's too much, and so they take a whole week off and they don't train at all the next week, and then they come back, and it's very haphazard. So what I would suggest is start with, if you're already training six days a week and you're overdoing it right now,

go to four days a week, which might be a deload week for one week. And then if you feel good, add a fifth day. If you feel good, add that sixth day back on. You can play with how much volume you're doing each day, but you don't need to make big swings. I would make 10% or 20% swings on a week-by-week basis and see how you feel. And then if you're feeling like you're overdoing it, back it off 10%. And that might only mean do the same workout that you did this week, but instead of doing five sets, you do four sets. It might not be this huge change, but make those little tweaks. If you're logging your workouts, it's easy to make those tweaks. So that's a whole nother topic, but

logging your workouts really does let you know actually what you did rather than what you emotionally are projecting that you did do. Is it down to one more question? You bet, Mark. I'm really sorry. The grand finale. The grand finale question. We got one question.

Whose question should we answer? Oh, man. You're going to pick randomly. I'm going to let you pick. Pressure. You don't do well with pressure. That's what I do the best, but I know that I'll just pick my favorite question and I'll ramble on for hours. It's on you, Doug.

You should judge me. John got up there first and said his. I was scrolling through to see if he put a question. Is there anyone? Pick me. All right. All right, Go for it. What's your question?

It might be in here somewhere. We're scrolling through quite a few questions here. That was a military athlete question. Maybe he just said pick me. He doesn't have a question. I don't see it, bro. Yeah. Is there an episode of the Goldberg in the future?

I already answered that. I don't know. I was probably outside. You're wasting everybody's time! AHHHHH! Why don't you have more ladies? That's what I gotta say! Same thing! I wish we had more ladies. Like on the show? Or in general?

Oh, we should have more ladies. Oh, this is from a lady. Well, we like ladies, certainly. If it presents itself, we will have more of them. Jenna, would you like to be on the show? Because if ever we are in the same place, we'll do a show. What should our next tattoo be, I saw? How about, we should put it on that. What's the next tattoo I should get? I saw you make them big and you choose something generic that you care a lot about, not anything specific, and you make it big, bullet-full. Stick it somewhere everybody can see it.

What should your next activity be? This person says, if I want to be big and good at gymnastics, should I bulk up first, then train the movements, or grind? I'm not 100% sure what that means, but I would say if you're trying to be big and be good at gymnastics... Is that Trey? He's grinding. Is that Forever Down? No, I'm just kidding. He likes to grind.

What I would say is that if you're trying to be big and be good at gymnastics, then you basically just gotta accept the fact that you're never gonna be really, really good at gymnastics if you're going to be big. Physics is at hand here. You're not gonna be great at this shit. Yeah, it's just kind of the way of the world. If you want to be good at gymnastics, you have to have a freaky strong upper body. It kind of goes without saying. You're gonna have to find a balance between how big you want your lower half to be. If you want to be really good at weightlifting,

well, you probably won't be really good at gymnastics too unless you're already just a freak. You can be big upper body and be really good at gymnastics and not train your legs very much at all, but if you want to be a good crossfitter, it's probably better to be big on your lower half. There's a whole lot of squatting and pulling from the floor. You've got to have big legs.

You don't have to be that good at gymnastics. You just need to be able to do muscle ups and kipping pull ups which aren't that advanced as far as gymnastics is concerned. I usually try to do gymnastics as you're bulking and then just kind of see what happens. Yeah, there's really no way to know how you're going to respond to that. You could be just fine putting on a little weight and practicing those movements. They could shit the bed. I guess it depends on how good you are when you start this game. I'm using gymnastics to put upper body size on right now, but I'm extremely, I'm scaling things at an extreme level.

If you're competent going into the game, you'll probably be fine. If you suck before you get weight, you're gonna suck hard when you get bigger. That's just the way of the world. True that. Garrett, what do you weigh? One million pounds. They're going to suck hard when you get bigger. That's just the way of the world. True that. Garrett, what do you weigh? One million pounds. Top of the list.

If you're a guy, yeah, if you're 165 pounds, I'd put on the 20 pounds. Garrett says, my question, I guess, is should I gain 20 pounds and take the hit on gymnastics movements or slowly gain size as my strength allows? If you're 165 pounds, you got to put on some weight. You got to get stronger. Even if it's going to kill your gymnastics movements for the time being. It's not a decision. You got to gain weight. Get as strong as you can, upper body and lower body. And if you want to be competitive at CrossFit, you got to be closer to 200 pounds. Yeah. Oh, you're saying he's not concerned about CrossFit. What's your goal? Just being awesome. He just wants to be good at everything. But not CrossFit. You guys are trying to get laid, man.

What are you talking about? Hey, you want to do gymnastics? Well, then don't do anything with a barbell. Do nothing but gymnastics. You're getting bigger. Yeah, if your goal is gymnastics, then what I would do is I would focus on gymnastics, and then as far as your lower body goes, I would do mostly cleans and snatches. I wouldn't squat a whole lot necessarily.

No eccentric work. Cleans and snatches, especially power cleans and power snatches, they're not going to make you grow, but they will help you get stronger and more explosive. They're not going to make your legs that much bigger, though. That's how you can find a balance where you can work on both, but you're not going to have a bigger lower body necessarily. You can make all of your muscular size and strength gains, or not strength, but muscular size gains on your upper body. You won't work on here on the beach. Here's the thing. I know what Garrett wants. Garrett wants the beach body.

I thought he was at the beach. I know what this is. I thought you were going to rip your shirt off. Garrett wants the beach body. I'm going to inform you of something. Chicks do like arms and pecs and abs and all that stuff, but you know what they like even more? My ass. They will take ass over abs every day.

I know. I've had both. On a guy? Mike does curls, Garrett. He's not making fun of you. All right, guys. We're going to shut it down. Thank you for coming

and asking us questions. We had a good time answering them. We'll probably do some more of this in the very near future. So everyone take care. Thanks for watching the show. Y'all are great.

Post to Facebook. We'll answer some more later. Yeah. See y'all. Cheers.