Barbell Shrugged - Cal Strength and How to Build a World Class Training Facility w/ Dave Spitz, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Coach Travis Mash Barbell Shrugged #600

Episode Date: August 4, 2021

California Strength has dominated the United States Olympic weightlifting landscape, producing numerous National Team Titles, American Records and earning medal recognition on the international stage. CEO and Founder Dave Spitz holds recognition as one of the few USA Weightlifting Senior International Coaches in the country and is a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist.   In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged: Taking a leap of faith to make the Olympics Finding a coach before the internet How to build a program with a winning culture How Wes Kitts is training for the Olympics The Olympic dream and the pursuit of gold   Dave Spitz on Instagram Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram   ————————————————   Diesel Dad Mentorship Application: https://bit.ly/DDMentorshipApp   Diesel Dad Training Programs: http://barbellshrugged.com/dieseldad   Training Programs to Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/34zcGVw   Nutrition Programs to Lose Fat and Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/3eiW8FF   Nutrition and Training Bundles to Save 67%: https://bit.ly/2yaxQxa   Please Support Our Sponsors   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   BiOptimizers Probitotics - Save 10% at bioptimizers.com/shrugged   Garage Gym Equipment and Accessories: https://prxperformance.com/discount/BBS5OFF Save 5% using the coupon code “BBS5OFF”

Shrugged family, it's the Olympics and Team USA is kicking ass in Tokyo right now and it's really cool to watch and one of the athletes that's competing is an old Shrugged listener. Not Shrugged listener, maybe he's a listener. He probably is a listener. He should be a listener. But our old guest Wes Kitts, one of the strongest human beings in the entire planet. If you've never seen that dude lift weights, I highly recommend you tuning in, checking him out. And his coach today, Dave Spitz, the godfather of weightlifting, owner and founder of Cal Strength, is on the show.

And we are talking about him taking his leap of faith, leaving the corporate world, where he had all the money and chasing the barbell to be able to go to the Olympics himself, finding a coach before the internet existed, where he had all the money and chasing the barbell to be able to go to the Olympics himself. Finding a coach before the internet existed where everybody was all connected and it was easy to find coaches and how he was able to get people like imported into the country to help him train. Building a program with the winning culture, how Wes Kitts is training for the Olympics with the five-year quad this year and then his pursuit of the Olympic dream and gold medals.

It's a really cool episode. Dave is, he really is one of the leading brains in this industry, and it's very, very cool to have him on the show, and super grateful. Before we get into the show, we've got to thank our sponsors. Organifi, most of us could use more energy in our day, but caffeine can only do so much at some point we need to look at the root causes of our fatigue it turns out two main factors are low energy and chronic stress and a lack of nutrition organifi creates delicious superfood blends that address both of these

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and use the code SHRUG10 during checkout to save 10%. magbreakthrough.com forward slash shrugged M-A-G-B-R-E-A-K-T-H-R-O-U-G-H.com forward slash shrug. And make sure you use the code shrug10 at checkout. Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrug. I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Best. Today on Barbell Shrug, we are joined by Dave Spitz, owner of California Strength.

You have a big weightlifting competition you're headed to this afternoon with Wes. Where are you? What's the big competition? This afternoon? Isn't that what the email that he's competing? No, we have this other competition coming up in August that's important. We're preparing for that. A fairly important competition. Yeah. He's referred to the Olympics. Yeah, we're going to the Olympics. When do you head to the Olympics? We are leaving here from Northern California and heading to Honolulu on July 12th. We're set up

with a camp with all of USA Weightlifting. We'll train there until about the 28th, I believe. Then we'll head over to Tokyo on the 28th to compete on the 3rd. And then we got to be out within like 24 hours. Wait, so you're going to be – that's a very quick turnaround with time, jet lag. Yeah, but they'll be in Honolulu, so it won't be as bad as you're thinking.

How close is Hawaii to Tokyo? Okay, so we got a three hour time change from here to hawaii yeah and then there's 13 hours from honolulu to tokyo so figure out the circadian rhythm calculations and what we have to do to adjust because you're right it's a super quick turnaround yeah i've always lived by the you know for every hour of time change we need like a day of adjustment and that pretty much you know we've been to tokyo uh and and competed it's it's rough 16 hours just go to tokyo like but i mean we can't do anything about this because you know the

are you know being run in in in a pandemic and so we have to yeah abide by the rules one of my favorite things uh maybe i don't want to go all the way of like all-time favorite things but west said one of my favorite things i've ever heard an athlete say he we were at the crossfit games two years ago yeah and um doing the one-ton challenge that he lifted in and like all the CrossFitters. Their eyes were like beach ball size eyeballs watching him lift all the weights. And he had just won Pan Ams, I want to say. Is that what it was? Like five hours before.

Hopped on a plane and came. I'm pretty sure that was right after Pan Am Games, I think. But he hosted a clinic with caffeine and kilos like the night before, and we all went to the gym to go see it. And you have like some of your people at the clinic that are working on their form. Some of the people are trying to show Wes that he could be their training partners.

Like I'm really strong coming. And he walks up to us and I was like, that dude's going so hard in the paint right now. Does he realize that this is just like a, we're all hanging out lifting weights. He goes, no matter where you're at, someone's got to be the strongest person in the room.

And I went, you have made a whole life out of just that one sentence. When, I guess when you're coaching him leading up to this though, like there has to be this idea of, hey, it's not going to be ideal, but you only get one shot to go stand on the platform at the Olympics. What's like the mindset side of realizing it's not going to be the ideal scenario and preparing him for that?

Yeah, I mean, he hates not having I's dotted and T's crossed. it's not going to be the ideal scenario and preparing him for that. Yeah. I mean, he hates not having I's dotted and T's crossed. He hates not being the best possible shape, you know, and that's what's been so difficult about this whole qualification process. You know, we've got, you know, these 18 months leading up to the 2020 games where we had to sprint around the country, I think think or sprint around the world i think at one point we were in four continents in like six weeks uh it was it was insane so you can't show up to every one of these meets in peak shape you know no chance we we

typically will have two anchor dates in the calendar year that we're preparing for so you know somewhere around you know 20 weeks to train for each one of these big anchor days um give or take and uh and so yeah showing up to the olympics uh not only under this situation where we have to we have to basically fly in adjust inside of four days and compete but also just the fact that you know he was ready to go in august of 2020 yeah and so it's it's essentially we ran a marathon we were done with the marathon and then we have to just tack on like oh guess what you got six more miles so keep going keep going you'll be fine keep spreading i quit yeah so it was uh i mean was, that was the hardest part of this whole thing is like, Oh shit, we've engineered this quad plan for him to peak in 2020 of August.

Now, how do we pivot and, and create something that allows him to heal up enough and then create a high performance plan. I can definitely attest that he was definitely peaked that like, for sure. Like he was getting better and better and better heading into 2020. So I can definitely, you know, attest to what you're saying. Are his current numbers similar to what they were a year ago at the moment?

Are they changed at all? I mean, we are, uh, we're, we're probably off the pace by about 10 kilos on total. Um, but I feel like we've got, we're in such a good groove right now. Like I'm knocking on wood right here because I don't know if you guys saw him. He snatched 75 last weekend. Like he could have snatched 85 that day. So like, we're, we're definitely moving in the right direction. So, you know, my goal for him, you know, like the low, the low benchmark. My goal for him, the low benchmark would be a 400 total. The high benchmark

would be somewhere 405 to 407, something like that. Which I think he'll be ready and in shape to do. How has his mindset been able to stay in the game? We were watching, NBC has all of the highlight reels of

all the qualifying trials and all that stuff. I was trying to explain to my in-laws, like, how hard it is, one, to write a program for four years, and then in the fourth year, now you've got, like you said, that extra six miles, and it's like, I have no idea how to coach an Olympian, but how has his mindset been going into this just to stay in the game the

extra year when you see the kind of the checkered flag at the end and then it's like, oh no, nevermind 365 more days. Yeah. I mean, and, and juxtapose that against like, we're in California, in Northern California, the pandemic hit us particularly hard in terms of like what we were allowed to do. So the gym wasn't even allowed to be open uh so we had this you know i'm stressed out about my business you know on top of the olympics uh and trying to retool all this so you know it's basically like you know we were we were

coming to work every single day like you know the anxiety of when a cop is cruising right behind you you know you could be going 55 out, go with the speed limit. Everything's right. Your registration's paid up. Insurance is paid up. But still there's a, there's this hum of anxiety. You're like channeling him to pull you over. But it's like every fucking day going to work with that level of just low grade anxiety, whether it's who's going to show up today and ticket me, who who is gonna who's gonna come and just hassle us and and did you get any of that oh yeah tons of it dude like like give some examples that's crazy i didn't know this so so the the the county

had their their own you know uh enforcement agencies coming after us uh so the da had its his own you know a group of coming sneaking in the back we had the city um you know we just it was it was it was a nightmare but um to go back to wes you know like comfortably numb was a pink floyd song you remember that like that's pretty much how we both felt about the olympics when we got this it was like we we we broadcasted the idea that you know what like cancellation equals catastrophe but postponement equals opportunity so we're just going to use this time to the best of our ability but we were both in reality like just fucking numb we were so so tired and so just like beaten down at that point it's like for me the olympics has been this dream since 1988 i was born in 77 and 88 i remember being on a trip in hawaii with my folks

and just like being glued to the TV during the summer Olympics, just watching every event and just like being mesmerized by these athletes and wanting so badly to be a part of it. And so, you know, I opted to be a track and field athlete coming out of high school, went to USC and then ultimately, you know, had no shot at the Olympics in 2000. Reinvented myself as a weightlifter years later, and we'll get into that story. Went up to the 2008 Olympics and again, like, you know, came up far shorter than what I thought. But my journey was different in those two experiences.

And so I decided to reinvent myself as a coach. And so now fast forward to 2020, you know, this is my first chance to go to the Olympics and accomplish this lifelong dream. And, uh, and then we get punted a full year. So it's been, it's been, it's been super emotionally charged and, and it's been, uh, it's been a tough road, but I'm happy we're nearing the end. Yeah. I'd love to dig into some of that journey and that transition from athlete to coach. Yeah, for sure.

Who was kind of the first set of athletes that came through? I personally never knew that weightlifting had a team aspect until uh i came across all the videos that i still like to pull up every once in a while of john north and shankle screaming at each other and um like that was the first time i even learned that you could be on a weightlifting team i thought it was just so we were the only crazy ones doing snatch and clean and jerk so finding other people that would train at the same place doing the same thing was just way out there were they the first group of guys that came through cal strength um so they were among the first but uh you know to back up when i graduated from college uh i was done with sports i was like you know what i'm gonna go get a real job. I'm gonna go and

start my life. And so I got invited to participate in this oil and gas company with an older college friend of mine, whose family was big into energy. And so we started a development stage oil and gas company in the LA basin. And we took this thing all the way up to listing on the Toronto Stock Exchange and we made some money. And I parlayed that experience into a private equity career, ended up moving to New York and working on Wall Street for a little while. And then- I never knew any of this, by the way. Yeah. and then ultimately like 2004 rolled around and the games were this was four years removed and I was like 194 pounds

and just like you know super career driven had a hot girlfriend at the time who's now my wife and I I watched the games again in 04 and some of the guys that I'd competed with along the way were kind of like we were still in touch and they were like where are you what are you doing i can't believe you're not here and like i'm rolling around with all the money and private equity and the hot chick yes i'm on a boat that seems yeah keep lifting your weights bud i'm doing it out here i'll sponsor you i was like like it was it was i literally had things set to exactly the dial that I thought I wanted to be at. Like I was, I had accomplished everything I thought I wanted. And lo and behold, sometimes you don't know what you want.

Cause the games rolled around and it was just something inside me. It's like, fuck big difference between regret and disappointment boys. And so it wasn't that I was disappointed in my, in my journey. I regretted my, my, my effort in attaining that goal. So, you know, when you, when you have, when you have an internal mechanism that produces regret, it lingers and festers. And so 2004 rolled around, and I was like, you know what?

I called up my girlfriend. I'm like, I'm going to start training the Olympic lifts. I always loved snatch and clean and jerk because we used those lifts to train for the throws. And so I called up Jim Schmitz after doing a little research on the internet, found out that he was close by. And so I started training in South San Francisco in 2004. And then 2005 rolled around. I was doing some, you know, just volunteer coaching at the local high school

for the throws, helping them with the shot put and discus. This kid cruised out super freak um i mean explosive on explosive i was like you know were your parents athletes he goes oh yeah my dad was an olympic weightlifter for bulgaria so it turned out what a small world of course he was just happens yeah it was named alex krychevchev. And he was basically the first Bulgarian wonder boy that Abhijit produced. And Abhijit built his system on, in some degree, experimenting with Alex in their small town. And so Alex still had a good relationship with Abhijit,

but hadn't seen him in years. So I kind of left gym, started training with Alex. And he was communicating with Abhijit and it turned out that you know we were invited to Bulgaria to go train so jumped on a plane went out there for a couple weeks hung out with with Abhijit who we effectively called uh uncle uh and then I was like it would be great if we could bring him back. And Alex is like, hey, he's interested. He would do that. So I scurried back here, started a 501c3 nonprofit called American Weightlifting.org.

And I wrote visas for Abhijit and for two other Bulgarian weightlifters, Martin Pashov and Nikolai Hristov. Nikolai was a super heavyweight who ultimately snatched 190, clean and jerk 230 here at a local meet, which blew everybody's mind. It's pretty funny. Martin was like a 94 at the time. So I brought these guys over. I rented a house. I funded this operation.

And it was basically me, Abhijjiya martin and nicolai training every day in this four-car garage that i had converted into a training hall what the hell yeah i knew it but just everything i hear yeah that's crazy i mean when i when i say like regret lingers like it fucking was lingering and i was like i'm just gonna push all my chips in and see what happens like what happens if i just what happens if i just go for fucking broke i'm actually super interested because into it just because of social media that story is almost impossible to replicate in that you have to be in the right place at the right time and nobody knows who anyone is when you're bringing those guys over like the ability to even get over there get coaching i mean an insane number of

things it's not just shooting somebody a dm it's like getting lucky being persistent having some internal drive that makes you feel like this is the right thing to do and having you're about to walk away on all this yeah and you're about to walk away on all this yeah and you're about to walk away from your career like that's that's not like like 2021 i feel like there's probably a lot of 19 year old kids that could potentially get close to where that was but not not when there was no social media and the ability to just reach out to the best coaches in the world yeah it was it was it was a like, you know, when we say, like, the universe is organized, like, it's so many things had to happen

to get to this point. It's kind of wild. But you know what? Like, you're right. Handwriting, you know, visa letters and sending them to the Bulgarian consulate, like, and, you know, like, figuring out a reason that Abhijit needed to be here

because all this stuff needed visas. Like it was. I need to get strong. Question mark, baby. Does that work? And then once he got over here, you know, him and Thomas Ayan had this nasty ass feud. And so Hamas put out this APB across all the NGBs saying anybody that trains with Abhijit is in violation.

His methods are banned by the IWF. Anybody training with him could potentially also face a ban. This was like a month after he got here. I'm like, I've spent all this fucking money. Wait, what methods were they referring to? Yeah, one rep max every day. One rep max every day. It's illegal across international

waters. That's ridiculous. That dude is the biggest crook of all, Thomas Ion. You both have heard, we had Ursula on and told us all about that dude. That dude is sending something out on Ivan? Come on, man. That's the most corrupt

man on Earth. I hope that dude dies soon. What was the real underlying motivation there? For what? For that argument. Yeah, what was the underlying motivation? For him saying that he wanted Abhijit out of there. The feud is legendary.

Leave it up to weightlifting to build these like larger than lives superhero type super villain characters where you know Abhijit thought he is like this superhero and Ayan is this super villain like you know with this cackle behind the desk. this is highly speculative but it's been told to me many times Abhijit had

the ability to clean his athletes in a way that didn't make him and the Bulgarian Federation have to pay Aion for protection. From testing positive, he's saying. Bulgaria was skirting a lot of the standard protocol

that Aion had mapped out for winning medals. And so that's where the feud started. And then Tomas tried to, when he couldn't beat Abhijit, he tried to recruit him to coach the Hungarian national team. And when Abhijit refused, that's when the feud kind of exploded. And so when the entire team was popped, the Bulgarian team was popped in, what, 87 or i think just before the 88 games right right you know that's where that's where all of this like sample tampering like all of these all

these like you know allegations came out from the bulgarian federation uh y'all believe in this yeah i have this book i have this book right here where he's literally like featured as like Jesus on the cover of being crucified with a crown. You know, where he's like, he writes a little bit about it too in here. But he's got like everything from like photos of the tampered samples in here. It's kind of funny. It's like Icarus before documentary films. Totally, totally Icarus. Like he's like trying to demonstrate like here's the tops of funny. It's like Icarus before documentary films. Totally, totally Icarus. He's trying to demonstrate, like, here's the tops of these.

It kind of looks the exact same. It kind of does. It's so funny. It's like the exact same method that Rushie used. Just a little bit more new age. So what did you learn from him? I mean, like, what are some of the big points you learned from him? Number one, I learned that success is situational, that I was so fundamentally flawed in my approach, thinking that I could bring over Abhijit, plug him into this 501c3 that I built, and expect him to have any level of success whatsoever right like from

culture to levers that he could pull you know in Bulgaria circa 1980 very different than what he could get done here in the United States so in terms of like the the chemistry he could deploy the the the fear factor that he could create, you know, like, it was a big thing to be a part of the national team. In the 1980s, in communist Bulgaria, that was a brutal form of communism. You know, so if you were on the team, and you got the opportunity to travel and see the West, and you know, like, have some, some individual Liberty being able to live in Sophia. Like that was huge. So if you got kicked off that team, like the, the, the fallout was just tremendous.

So he could get guys to just battle each other and kill each other in training. And that's how you produce very. Sure. Yeah. Stimulus and incentive drive, you know, performance. I mean, as, as we, as we know, and if you take away those things you know, at least as he is accustomed to using them, then he's not, he's not able to have any success. You couldn't take Vince Lombardi out of the,

out of history and plug them into the head of the Green Bay Packers today and expect him to have any success and so I was fundamentally flawed in my thinking uh but number one I learned that success is situational number two I learned that uh you know like a reality distortion field can be a powerful thing so like getting your athletes to believe that they can accomplish something, like truly believe and, and, and get them sold on this vision of what's possible for them is, is so powerful. And Abhijit is so good at looking you in the eye and being like, Travis, you, I know you're only snatching 140 and clean and jerking, you know, 180 right now, but I see it. I see that you can do 180, 230.

I know you can like, and instilling that in your athletes, even though it could be completely bullshit. Warping, warping the world to your own, you know, bending it to your will is something that he was a master of. Wow. I totally agree. Yeah. So those two things. I also learned that old people are fucking nuts.

In Eastern Europe, you are bound to do some crazy ass when you are unleashed in a free society. I furnished this dude with this gorgeous master bedroom, huge view. He slept in the closet every night. Like he, he, he fashioned like a little like hot hut for himself in this walking closet. He refused to sleep on the bed. Cause he thought, you know, in any day somebody's going to come in and break his legs or kill him. You know, and he would like, when he got off the plane,

he gave me a laundry list of supplements that we had to get. It's like, okay, I need this much. I need this much. I need this much. I'm like this. We can't know. You're in the wrong country, bud. We should have gone to Mexico first. United States is the most powerful country on earth. Of course they can, they can, they can get away with this. This is, this is like you could not fathom that we couldn't give our athletes like the best of the best. And then when that, when that didn't work,

like trying to like watch him process this, that like, Oh, these people are literally like, I don't understand why you would compete if you're trying to catch yourself when that's the only way to compete in this sport nobody can compete clean right so why why why would a country even spend a dollar competing when they're trying to catch themselves yeah doing the one thing that they they have to do in order to win that was couldn't connect those dots at all that was actually one of the most interesting parts of that book, The Sport of Steroids, was when Pat was talking about when he went to Brazil and when he met all the international competitors and they were like, why would you do this if you couldn't cheat?

Like this seems like the dumbest sport ever. Like it's, it's so built into what brutal. Yeah. It's such a brutal sport. And in his, in his mind, it wasn't cheating. It was, it was inhumane to get athletes to do this sport the way it had to be done with some sort of adaptogens. So he thought like getting us to try and do this clean was a form of torture that he couldn't buy into and that's coming from one of the meanest people i've ever heard of who you said would scare these boys yeah i mean yeah he definitely was uh he was he was he was a

tough tough son of a bitch but yeah he literally like he couldn't fathom doing that like he felt that was a human rights violation yeah how long did it take before i mean were you adopting his system and then using it on your own athletes and and how long did it i was training alongside i was i was the athlete at that point so i was like so you were the broken one i was like hey you know what like let's let me train alongside these bulgarians with this bulgarian coach and let me see what I can do. And it didn't take long for me to break. I was going to say, how long did it take?

Yeah, how long did it take before you were just like dead? It was a matter of months. I mean, it was like probably eight months, something like that, before I had my full slap tear in my labrum. I had these calcium deposits in my wrist that were just so fucking painful. I could barely snatch, but I was strong. And along the way, I started to recruit American athletes. So, you know, Donnie Shankle being one, I had a good relationship with Glenn Pendlay. So I was, you know, communicating back and forth with him because he was fascinated that

Abhijit was out here and wanted to learn. So when Donnie got kicked out of the OTC, you know, they called me up. And so we invited Donnie out. Jim Moser, James's dad, you know, same thing, you know, wanted James to be exposed to Abhijit. Max Ada called and, you know,ve goff wanted wanted wanted max to experience abajiev and so max donnie james martin nikolai myself abajiev like that's a crazy cast of characters that's a crazy cast and it's like i mean those personalities are so we could have had camera footage of that shit like the john north North Donnie Shankle antics of Cal Strength were nothing compared to what was going on

in that Benicia house at the time. I mean, it was- Let's hear, let's hear some, give an example. Oh, dude, it was, I mean, I remember one day I cruised into the house and it, it was like overwhelmingly hit with the smell of gas. Like what the fuck? Like left the gas on the stove in the house was like passing out on the

couch. It was like, I'm like, what the fuck guys? And he runs to the stove to turn it off well we know like when you turn it off like the pilot goes you know clicks on like the whole thing would have fucking blown up i had to like dive and tackle abuja before he got to the stove and to get everybody out air out he would have blown you all up he would have literally blown us all up i mean it was that bad. Like you literally would have blown the entire house off. Oh, my God. There's another time where I was like in the kitchen, eating breakfast, getting ready for morning session. And Abhijit comes down with like concoctions,

like a purpley pink drink with like some bark and like some leaves floating in it. He's like, drink, drink, drink, drink, drink. I'm like, okay. and i start drinking it and nicolai the big super heavyweight goes and slaps it on my hand he goes no my friend never drink i'm like what do you mean why he said uncle gave it to me he goes he making toilet i'm like what do you mean he doesn't make anything in the fucking toilet he goes go go see i cruise upstairs and uncle is uh in his bedroom standing over the toilet bowl mixing supplements in the toilet bowl to give to us ice okay this is this might have gone too far. Like maybe this experiment should cease.

Yeah. He wanted very badly, he had read some literature on like the stress hormones that are secreted when an animal is starving. So he really wanted a goat to tie up in the backyard that he could starve for a couple of weeks and then we could slaughter the goat and somehow harvest the meat put it in the centrifuge and extract some of these stress hormones and all i could think to myself is we're in fucking suburban like check out our goat we're about to sacrifice out here. A starving goat is going to make? For one kilogram.

What are the neighbors going to think? Like, honey, do you hear that? Like, meh, meh. Starving goat in the backyard in the Venetian California. It's that weightlifting house over there. They got the goat. They were talking about it. They brought it by the HOA.

How long, I guess, kind of like along the way though, you can't obviously run his system on American weightlifters, but like who was the next or when did you start to build your own, own system for, for training people? So, so after I, I kind of came to the conclusion, the Abhijit thing wasn't going to, and it wasn't only not going to work, it was we hit 2006 net worth went from, you know, a substantial amount to like flatline, like, oh, shit, like I need to start working again. Like we we're we're we're we're I just blew through a lot of money. And I was, you know, had my eye on this Bulgarian and this Olympic dream.

And I let my own financial life basically crumble underneath me. Yeah. I was like, fuck, if I'm going to continue to do this, I've got to, I can't continue to fund American weightlifting with, you know, private donations. I've got to make a business out of it. I was about to say that when you started, I guess, coaching other people, it had nothing to do with business at the time. It was purely about let's get people to the Olympics.

Because I think about what you have now of such a great business. Right. It was purely about get me to the Olympics. Let me get this monkey off my back. Yeah. Let me at least try to get this done the right way and see what I'm capable of. And so, like I said, early on, like the journey was so different. My experience between Olympic weightlifting and my run towards

08 and track and field and my run towards 2000 is, you know, regret versus disappointment. Like at the end of the Olympic journey in 08, I was disappointed, but I regretted nothing. Like I, I literally did everything in my power. I literally went to the ends of the earth to make it happen for myself. And so I had no regrets. I had disappointment and that faded away quickly. Right. But in the, in, in, in, in that process, like it's such a powerful learning experience for me that I wanted to share

that with others. so i'm you know calisthenics is built on on the concept of love and gratitude and avoiding regret at all costs so never never regretting what you put into the process for yourself because that's how you look in the mirror at the end of the day and and can sleep at night anything less than that if you're wired like you know we are it's it's just not going to work for you so like you know it's it's an important part of the recipe for being a good human is is understanding those those those differences and then so applying that wisdom to to the kids that we work with here, that was something that became ultimately important to me. What about with Glenn Penlay there?

What were the differences between Glenn Penlay and Ivan? I mean, Glenn was very Soviet-based, right? So, like, Glenn had studied, you know, under Medvedev, and he had, you know, got a master's degree in, in physiology. You know, he did some really great work on tapering and, you know, hormonal response to different styles of taper from exponential to step to linear. And so he brought, you know, Glenn was a, whatever you think or have heard about Glenn Pendlay,

and there was different epochs in his life of functionality. But when I was friends with Glenn back in the day, he was one of the smartest humans that I had ever come across. He really – and he just was passionate about weightlifting. And so he applied a lot of, a lot of Russian tactics, a lot of, a lot of good periodization strategies. And we kind of married our two schools of thought, you know, like the Bulgarian, you know, like, let's, when it's time to get into a realization phase, we are, we are very, very specific in our approach.

And we, we rely heavily on, you know, a competitive supportive environment, because like I said earlier, stimulus is what drives performance. And so, you know, having different levers to pull that weren't necessarily what Abhijit had in Bulgaria, but levers that I could pull here in the United States and using Glenn as, as, as the coach of the, of the weightlifting team at the time. It was a great fit and it produced, it produced a lot of success at a time where, you know, USA weightlifting was, was, was, was incredibly mediocre.

Right. What about now you as a coach, what would you say you lean towards? Would you say you're more like Ivan more like Glenn where it's kind of middle of the road are you totally different of the two no I think I think certainly you could find influences of of both schools in in my programming and then there's you know it's uh and there's there's there's a third that's all my own um you know uh that I've leveraged a lot from my career as an athlete in track and field and what I know about strength and conditioning.

So, you know, I think the Cal Strength program today, it leans in on athleticism probably more than what Ivan did and more than what Glenn did. So, you know, and I really think that the cornerstone of my coaching has been managing the relationship, like, you know, beginner, intermediate, advanced elite, you know, if you have a true athlete development model, your, how you relate to your athlete, each one of these phases of their development is going to be incredibly different. And it's really difficult for coaches to maintain that, that that relationship. And so I think that that's a really important distinction. I mean, what about each? How would you how would

you, you know, a few pointers on each of those? Well, beginner intermediate? Yeah, as a beginner, obviously, you're laying the foundation for a technical model, right? You guys, you have, you have a very, a good dialogue in place about what, what expectations are for your technique, what we, what we're trying to accomplish, you know, what you're trying to do from a tension, tempo, timing, and positional standpoint. And then as you move into an intermediate phase, it's more about, you know, learning to train and learning to,

learning to, to receive the stimulus and, and recover from it and grow. So, you know, being able to, being able to go through a good training program. And then as you get into an advanced athlete, it's learning to compete. So when we go internationally and when we, when we taper you and have expectations for you, like, how do you, how do you go and compete and, and, and, and, you know, we either win or we learn. So, you know, if you didn't, didn't win, like, what did we learn? So taking all that into account. And then once you become an elite

athlete, you know, the, the architecture gets very horizontal and you, you work as a team. And so you're just managing the process of lifting these massive weights. So, you know, managing injury, managing stress of expectations and just, you know, at some point, you know, the student does become the teacher and you have to be able to listen to what your athlete is saying. You know, I take very, very seriously whatever Wes is telling me because he knows his body now. He knows what I expect. He knows what he should expect. And so it's a, it's just an interesting dynamic that, that has to, that has to play out if you're going to continue to, to have good relationships over, over the different phases of their development. I totally agree. Going back to the regret versus disappointment idea. Did that, how was that transition to becoming like not an athlete anymore um is is it is it easier when you know you've put

everything into it and just saying this is the next stage now it's time to go back at it again yes absolutely i mean that's and i think that's the key and that's what you know the universal truth is uh for every athlete is at some point your journey will come to an end, you know, at least as it pertains to competing at the highest levels. Yeah. And so, you know it's important not to be myopic that, you know, they need to have, they need to have you know, other, other things going on that they're interested in. But you know,

in order to move on to those other things it's much easier if you have none of that regret that that's lingering um but i guess in some way like there wouldn't be coaches if you didn't have regret so yeah you got you kind of you got it's almost like a double-edged sword i'm telling i I'm, I'm stamping out the, uh, the next generation of, of potentially, uh, dedicated coaches. Oh yeah. I mean, I, I, that's, that's really challenging to do. I think how, how do you kind of, I guess what excites you? Is it taking someone and building them, you know, after this year into who's the next Olympian or is it building a group of coaches that understand how to create great athletes and actually have those conversations of

becoming great at what you do it's uh I don't know I once I get this monkey off my back once I accomplish this Olympic dream you know and once I once I've actually satisfied this like I don't know how I'm gonna feel and I don't know what I'm gonna want once I've, once I've actually satisfied this, like, I don't know how I'm going to feel. And I don't know what I'm going to want. What I do know is I value relationships over transactions. And so, you know, the cash value of my work with Wes is not going to the Olympics. It's the relationship that we forged, you know, the bond that we've, that we've created is so special and so awesome. It's like, uh, that to me has so much more meaning now as a 44 year old man than, than, than actually going to the Olympics. So, um, so I would definitely seek to, to, to continue to, to, to drive, uh, more

relationships, you know, like, uh, Nathan is doing great right now i feel like we're we're we've bonded um and uh and we're having a good time with him like the girls that are up and coming uh kelly and madison like i'm having a great time you know forging relationships with them so but i would like i would like to get into coaches ed and and help people you know achieve uh because it's really, really important. And I don't think very many people are doing it right. You know, in our architecture, right. In our, what we call decentralized system. Yeah. You said they're not doing it right.

Where do you think they're going wrong at the moment? I think they're not doing enough. So it's, it's one thing to understand how to snatch and clean and jerk. It's another thing to understand how to program those things, those things you can master in, you know, five, six years and be very proficient at, but it's the infrastructure that you utilize to support your athletes in a decentralized model that actually is going to see them through to the finish line. So, so you can't just be a coach in our system. You have to be much more than that in terms of what's on offer at your facility. And so from your recovery and regeneration, you know,

the massage, the, the, the dry needling, the physical therapy, the PRP injections, the, the dry needling, the physical therapy, the PRP injections, the, you know, whatever ortho visits that we need, like having all of these things on dial and being able to bring these resources quickly to bear and being able to cover the costs of those things. Yeah. That's what the athlete has to have. And so you could be the best coach.

You could understand positions and you could understand, you know, you know, bar path and all this good stuff, be a great biomechanics, but you're not going to ever develop an elite athlete without having an infrastructure in place. That's actually really interesting. I, the decentralized model that we run in comparison to basically the rest of the world. Um, we asked i asked phil andrews this same question but do you think that is the most optimal way to create to produce the

best athletes or is having like a a specific way to do it do you feel like that has its benefits as well i know there's no perfect answer answer, but if there was a more structured, centralized way, because then we could sponsor, we don't have to sponsor Cal Strength and you don't have to run some multi seven figure business to be able to get a massage therapist in the gym every day, but having an actual place that they can go where there's a coach and a system with infrastructure built into it to help produce great athletes. Yeah, I mean, I go back and forth with it because, again, I look at the landscape of who's doing the best right now. If you look at C.J. Cummings, what's the most important thing that C.J. has in his arsenal?

It's Ray. It's the relationship that he has with Ray. He would run through walls for that man and Ray would do the same. And so that really is what has, you know, and the same thing with Wes and I, right? Like Wes and I's relationship and what we've done for each other is what is driving the lion's share of his success outside of the infrastructure. I do think that there's probably better ways to create incentives to be able to say, okay, like here, we have our top 10 athletes on the men's and women's side in terms of rankings.

Like we've got to give these people a year of living wage to be able to train and maintain that. We've got to give coaches that are working with these athletes and traveling around the world, you know, spending a month in freaking Germany and Turkmenistan, like, away from business, we have to give them some sort of support mechanism for training these athletes. So I think that, you know, figuring out a more optimal incentive structure where there's more money being devoted towards the high performance is probably, it's probably something they should explore. And I understand that we have to have membership liaison.

We have to have these national competitions. We have to have, you know, a base, but high performance should be carved out of that. So maybe, you know, call throwing out loose numbers, maybe 20% of the total annual budget is going towards specifically high performance, you know, and that's a different animal where, where, you know, numbers maybe 20 of the total annual budget is going towards specifically high performance you know and that's a different animal where where you know equality and you know all these wonderful things that we try to espouse like those kind of those kind of go out the window because high level sports is exclusive by like it is not inclusive it is not at all it's one of those

things where we have to we have to include everybody in the broad and then make sure that the high-performance team has carte blanche to put us in a position to win those. Yeah. I like that. I've always thought that USA Weightlifting could benefit so much from, like, someone like you or one of – well, I don't know of any other entrepreneurial-minded, you know, coach, but, like, someone like you or one of, well, I don't know of any other entrepreneurial minded, you know, coach,

but like someone like you that could go in there and like think like a business, you know, if we're going to do this in, in America, then I feel like then we need someone who thinks American and like, no, nobody's more capitalistic than, than you are, you know, as far as like being able to build, build a business and, and do well with it. So I would love to see, you'll say, well, you can go that direction for the next chapter, you know, post, you know, Phil Andrews. Yeah. I think it's almost like in what you're saying,

it's like, we need to have as many entry points as possible, which is every single CrossFit gym, every single weightlifting gym. If there's a powerlifting gym in your town, it should have bumper plates so people can put the weight over their head. All of the entry points, but by the time you get to a national level or international level, you're no longer just lifting weights. You've got to put food on the table somehow, and there can't be any equality in there because the effort is not equal in what those people are doing. going on within the ngb and it's like you know get all these wonderful emails about you know what we're doing to to hire diversity and inclusion people it's like whoa the athletes are

are not even back to you know we handle earning pre-covid like where are we spending money so that's a little bit of a of of of a of a rub but it's just, I feel like everybody in USA weightlifting is doing their best with what they have right now. And I feel like this is the best team that we fielded. It's the, is it the biggest? I think we talked about this. Not the biggest, not the biggest, not the biggest, but it's nice. Six probably. Yeah. But, but we got a full team because yeah. Nation. So, uh, you know, you know, little different circumstances. This is certainly the – we're trading blows with, you know,

countries that, you know, we used to get owned by. You know, like the idea that Wes is, you know, whatever three-time Pan Am champ and Pan Am Games champ, you know, and Pan Am record holder, like those, those sorts of things a decade ago would have been unheard of, you know, the Cubans and Colombians and S women's kicked our butts. So I'm proud of where, where, where we've, where we've gotten to, but I think there's obviously more chicken on the bone.

I would agree. I think, I think I like the decentralized model as long as they support the decentralized coaches that are succeeding you know if you got a group like Spencer out there who's got three of the Olympians then you need to make sure he's taken care of and that those athletes are taken care of so as long you know it's it's pretty obvious that the same coaches are producing athletes year in and year out and so like you know it's it's a point where it's time to stop being like inclusive that's obvious that coach is producing then this coach gets this so i feel like you know sometimes we try to make it too hard but like you know cal strength year in and year out they're sending people to world championships, to the Pan Ams,

now to the Olympics. So, you know, support them. Give them what they need to be successful. Yeah. And, you know, what we do, we do get a lot from them, you know, from the high-performance funds. You know, like they actually have been very, very generous. And they do have some of the highest stipends across all of

the sports in the olympics but it's just one of those it's one of those things where if you're training weightlifting you literally can't do anything else so you have to be supported with a living wage because you're trying to win an olympic medal there's no you can't be a home depot you know employee and try and try and win an Olympic medal in weightlifting. It's just impossible. That's what the commercial says. The commercial says that you can do it. I saw it.

I almost went to go apply to Home Depot. Like it gave me an edge. Restocking shelves during the day, training for four hours at night. It's got to work. If I understand how to change a sprinkler head, then I can. Let me help you out with some interior design work and go clean and jerk 450. Let me ask you about, you know, because I don't want to miss this opportunity. I don't know if you two know this, but he's also very famous for producing

some of the top draft picks in the NFL year in and year out. So every year around February, he gets a group that's getting ready for the NFL combine, and he does a great job with that. So it would be cool to hear about your philosophy when it comes to those athletes. Mainly that's for me. I'm curious. Yeah. I mean, so, so the one thing about us is we, we don't get the, the typically we don't get first rounders, right. We've had five or six second rounders come through, but more, more, more of what we get is like the, you know, the day three guys,

the fourth through seventh round, maybe a priority free agent. And, you know, if you're going to're gonna if you're gonna select to come and train for the nfl scouting combine at cal strength chances are you want to unlock some additional layers of potential for yourself right the uh the nfl scouting combine uh as it pertains to the nfl draft it's basically like uh you know your access point to the NFL, it's synonymous with maybe like an ACT or SAT score and your GPA. So like, your GPA would be your game film in college, and then your your combined result would be your SAT or ACT score. So it's that quantitative point that that lines up with what the NFL sees on film. And so if we outperform what the NFL sees on film

from an athletic standpoint, maybe they go back to the film room study and maybe improve your grade. And so that's what we've been really good at for the last 12 years is moving people up the draft board or getting people drafted that weren't even combine invites. And so, you know, I am drawn to anything that tests me with an objective truth, like the, like weightlifting, you know, the combine, it's like, it's out there for everyone to see,

you know, you, you can't lie and fabricate a 40 time because anybody can go to the internet and look up exactly what your athlete ran. And so, you know, being accountable to these athletes for the, you know, 10 to 12 weeks that we have them, everything from their nutrition protocols and their, their, their meal prep to their recovery and regeneration to their interview prep to their linear speed and lateral speed, their vertical jump, their broad jump, their bench press rep max. It tests me in a way that I really enjoy. And then the relationships, again, that shake out are so freaking special.

I just got back from Las Vegas two weekends ago. We have our annual retreat where we have another agency that we work with very closely. So we co-sponsor this retreat in Las Vegas and we bring all the athletes out. And so it's like generations of calisthenic combine prep athletes that are and they all have different stories. Just being able to see like, you know, seven, eight generations of athletes that you've helped to achieve a goal and to hear, you know, what the experience meant to them. It's just, again, love and gratitude. Like that weekend is so cool for just, you know, recognizing like everything that, that, that, that the gym has produced. I'd love to get your thoughts kind of on just like the kind of like the current state of coaching and that, you know,

we talked about at the beginning of you, the universal lining and being able to meet all these coaches and bringing them out and just how many weird things have to happen for you to get this base level of education, just to be able to go launch a team and be able to train with the best people. When with access to social media and, and the ability for kind of anyone to become a coach and develop a following and actually be able to influence it, how much of kind of your brain is just I guess in a way stays focused on like I still have to just be great at my job like there's a lot of marketing

channels but in in reality nothing's going to be better than I'm going to the Olympics and winning yeah and so that's I feel like that's been the power of the, of the Cal Strike brand over the last decade and a half is it's like, no matter what you think about us, like we're still at these international meets, we're still producing draft picks. We're still winning Super Bowls. We're still like, and these athletes still trust us. They're the athletes that like us, like our attrition rate is not huge like we have you know a lot of the athletes that leave it's like we have we have a discussion a dialogue like hey you know what maybe you're better served doing something else it's not like it's not like they blow out

of here and wash out and go get another coach right yeah it's one of those things where if they don't they don't succeed here like maybe you just aren't cut out for this sport in particular. But the authenticity component of what cal strength is transmutes onto the internet. And so what you see is what's actually happening here. And that level of authenticity is really important. And in a day and age where, you know, people can be like pundits, professors, you know, they can talk about weightlifting and speak with this expert tone and tenor. But it's like, unless you've actually been in the fire with one of these athletes, unless you've actually like, unless you've been to these bigger competitions and had success and like, it's just, you don't know what you don't know. Yeah. The athletes, a lot of times, and you know,

when we were competing in CrossFit, the athletes that are trying to push that hard, they end up pushing their coach. And that, that's like a really interesting dynamic once you get in those situations because your gen pop person wants to come in, lose some weight, get in shape, improve their life. All the stuff's

great. For the most part, that's going to be paying a lot of the bills in regular gyms. There's an athlete. That's Austin Hooper. That's the Brown tight end fame pro ball, just back from tight end university.

I wish I could give Dave a similar intro to that. My name's Anders. I just am on this microphone a lot. I could definitely talk as long as you'd like. You know what Austin's special? What's that? Austin's special because he's been here since he was 11 years old. There you go. I'm putting in work was 11 years old. There you go. I'm putting in work for a minute now.

There you go. What's your clean and jerk? Clean and jerk is snatch. He only cleans. Don't go above that. I don't need to do all that. I'm watching Wes throw out rounding his pain away and all the guys in the league come by thinking they're strong

and Wes just so in a soon. Picks up too much. We we're gonna go home now you gotta go to the kids room I'm gonna go get my Mercedes and go yeah yeah but I would show Wes my paycheck yeah I hope Wes is like you guys got to go to the NFL room because this is where we lift weights I love it Wes Wes is the best, man. I love his energy in the gym, man. He keeps it going for everybody. I mean, all the lifters here are cool.

That's why. Wes was a good football player in his darn self. I mean, it's amazing. I wouldn't want to get hit by that guy at full speed. Are you kidding me? Yeah. Coach, I'd definitely make a business decision if I see that strong dude in pass. Right?

How does Wes not play in the NFL, actually? Let's talk about that. What? Is he slow? No, not at all. He can't be if he can clean and jerk and move like he does. He ran a 4-4, a verified 4-4. Laser.

Yes. He just – he is – he doesn't have a lot of wiggle. Tips are kind of just fixed. Yeah. I think that's what we just titled the show, Why Weston Kitts Doesn't Have Much Wiggle. He'd be a great kickoff team guy. Like, I don't know, Kitts is a football guy.

Yeah, clearly a terrible athlete. I don't know what he's doing for him. But, yeah, what I wanted to – what athlete has kind of pushed you to become the coach you are? I mean, I assume along the way, but, um, has there anybody specifically kind of shown up and gone, wow, I really that guy right there. Well, I mean, again, like, like talking through like an athlete development model and being

able to maintain relationships all the way through to like their elite status is really, uh, it's a joy, but it's also a little bit of a challenge because the problem set just changes over time. But, you know. Yeah, Dave's more than just my trainer. He's a part-time psychologist. You know, he wears many hats, but I'll say like just being able to work with him and have a relationship I have with him for, well, I've known Dave longer

than I've not known Dave at this point in my life. I'll put it that way. But just being able to be here and just seeing the environment that he creates here and just the type of people he recruits. I mean, if you just put good energy out there, you're going to get people. Von Miller's the world. Like superstars across every sport all want to come here and train. They're all ready to go and just realize what it's all about.

I think that's what makes this place special. Matt, did you just go put a medal on your neck? What? Did you just go put a – what is that? Did I just notice that? We're at the Nationals. I'm at the Nationals. Are you coming?

Boys, I got to go run errands, get training. All right, boss. Dave, are you coming this weekend? Yeah, I got to go run errands, get training. All right, bud. Dave, are you coming this weekend? Yeah, I land on Thursday. Cool. So I got Christian, Madison, and Kelly all working. I have to say my favorite Cal Strength athlete, though, is definitely Nate Diaz.

Right. I have so many thoughts on Nate Diaz. He's an incredible Cal Strength strength athlete although he has trained here he was a man before he ever set foot in here the man and he still retains that title as far as I'm concerned definitely my favorite MMA fighter

of all time I don't care that dude has got his heart is this big you gotta kill that guy you gotta kill him because he just keeps coming what what you see on the media it's like what he is as a human being is so different he's just such a humble nice dude like day in and day out so it looks like a nice guy but you just want to cross him he looks like a nice guy He typically has a broken nose with blood smeared all over the place. But he invited Arizona to his post-party in the whole state.

At no point do I look at Arizona. We're partying. Look at Nate Diaz. I'm like, I wonder if he'd be like the godfather to my kid. He looks like a nice guy. I don't know about all that. As he's punching his own chin, like he always does. Getting ready for fights.

Yo, what all did you guys do with him? I'm actually really interested in this. I did MMA and I do jiu-jitsu concurrently, so I've been watching Nate fight forever, him and his brother. Yeah, I mean, it's very simple for me. A better athlete has the potential to be a better MMA athlete, right? So just focus on symmetry, structural balance, strength, power, you know, athleticism,

just making sure that we've got good mobility and flexibility and, and, you know, it's not, it's not, it's not a complex recipe. You know, it's just one of those things like, you know, the same, the same methodologies we use to keep the football players healthy and the, and the basketball players healthy. Like, you know, the same, the same methodologies we use to keep the, the football players healthy and the, and the basketball players healthy. Like, you know, I don't think it has to be so sports specific, even at the highest levels, you know, because nothing you do in a gym is going to make you a better MMA fighter. You know,

everything you do in the gym can has the potential to make you a better athlete. And then an athlete can better athlete can go and practice, you know, all of those specific skills that make you a better athlete and then an athlete can better athlete can go and practice you know all of those specific skills that make you a better MMA fighter hopefully you're a little more durable and you punch a little harder and yet you can you can absorb a little more force and uh but at the end of the day like we're sport agnostic here and athleticism uh is is the number one thing that we seek to promote. Man, I appreciate you coming on the show today. I've been a big fan for a long time.

I actually really want to know, of all the questions, who's the freakiest freak that's ever walked into Cal Strength? Who? Where you just, like, looked and you went, oh, that guy's totally totally gonna just annihilate people at whatever sport you know like as you know wes is definitely a one-of-one type athlete in terms of like rate of force production and and and his ability to kind of just like manipulate space time to find barbells like he can he can fuck up a pole worse than anybody and and somehow recover uh in the

face of just like crazy low percentage odds of a make but by far and away the freakiest athlete that i've ever seen in real life. Like from just like the fluidity of his movement to like the just exceptional mobility and so much power and so much like – I can't put into words what Von Miller is as an athlete to watch as a coach, like just somebody move this way. It's like a different species. It's like a homo sapien version 2.0. So Von is definitely the, he takes the cake in terms of athleticism. He's 6'3", being able to move like that. Even like the – do you have any NBA guys that come in there?

Jeremy Lin worked with us for quite a while. But I would say, like, every athlete has their own superpower, right? Like, there's, like, the guys that achieve at the highest levels, you know, whether it's, like, if it's austin here it's it's it's his intelligence his understanding of like the craft behind the craft you know the game within the game like all of his release techniques his blocking like he takes that stuff to like the most granular level you could tell but listen to him talk sure if it's zach earth's like zach's commitment to like tactical understanding and under like knowing every defense he's facing and like how to run this route against

this opposition uh what he thinks i'm gonna do and what i'm gonna do to set him up to make this catch in the third quarter you know like, like his tactical understanding. So like every athlete that we work with has a different superpower and, and you can be successful as long as, as long as you have one. Yeah. Awesome. Where can people learn more about you? Cal strength, socials, then you don't have an internet. Yeah, I agree. We try and make it pretty easy, but Instagram Cal underscore strength. We have the barbell one on Instagram. We have a Cal strength, California strength.com, California strength,

YouTube, everything. Just type in weightlifting. Just find us. And the most important part about Cal strength, like if you're in the area, just drop in. It's actually a very friendly, fun place. And we welcome visitors. And if you're a part of our online in it's actually a very friendly fun place and we welcome visitors and uh you know if you're a part of our online team drop-ins are absolutely free so

we just uh we we welcome people coming to check this place out kick the tires chat learn have fun it's awesome beautiful coach travis bash actually.com who are you coaching this week i've got a bunch. A lot of guys from the university. Ryan Grimson. Oh, you got all the boys up this week. The whole team. It's a big one because we're trying to make –

Ryan's trying to make his first senior world team. So we'll see what happens. Nice. Let's go. What's he have to total? 292. He's totaled 302 two weeks in a row. We'll see what happens

unless he shits the bed. I've done my job. He's got to go do his. You can't lift the weights for him. I don't think you could, so that's good. No. Travis might be able to. I'll get total 292

probably. But he's a 67, and I'm a 100-something. Hey, you look still good in shape. You still killing it, the workouts? Yeah, baby. Just never do nothing. That's the tagline now. Yeah, what does your training look like?

I mean, like a couple of years ago, I was just a fat fuck and just feeling down and out. Actually, my problem is I never realized that I was fat while I was hanging out at a bar with this girl. And they were just like chatting it up you know banter banter and she goes oh you're so funny like what do you do for a living they go oh i own a gym and she starts fucking belly laughing like no oh no so i don't represent what i sell okay yes oh she just sees this fat guy that's funny in a bar she doesn't see i thought you were a stand-up comedian up till 4 a.m every day

so uh so i i took it upon myself to kind of build uh uh i think like you did like it just a program that suited what i what i believe and what i've learned So like I've gone from about 250 pounds to 210 pounds and you know, I can still clean and squat and do all that fun stuff. And I just add a little conditioning and, and a lot of functional bodybuilding and I'm enjoying it right now. I hit the ball farther and I'm getting, and, and, and, uh, and my wife likes it better. Yeah, I'm sure she does. Most important part. Yeah. She, we can, we can, we can do it with the Yeah, I'm sure she does. Most important part.

Yeah, we can do it with the lights on now. It's great. You're not as winded. You're not as winded. That's good. Yes, yes. I don't need oxygen. Why is this so tiring?

Are you tired? The 44-year-old life is real. Yeah. Doug Larson, tell the people. Find me on Instagram. Dave, thank you for coming on the show, man. We've all watched your athletes compete for many, many years. Everything that we see from you is really, really inspiring to me.

So thank you for taking the time to be with us today. Yeah, happy to. Just a second, Ben. Watching all the videos from back in the day when I was opening my gym in 2010, it was like, Oh, there's other people out there that like to train hard.

This is, I'm glad that I get to see it. So without ever, uh, meeting you until today, been a big piece of me just realizing that there's, there's some path somewhere that if I, if I work hard enough to find it,

uh, that we might be able to lift weights for the rest of our lives and hang out with our friends and do this thing we love. So I really appreciate it. I'm Anders Varner, at Anders Varner. We are Barbell Shrugged at barbell underscore shrugged. Get over to barbellshrugged.com forward slash diesel dad where you can figure out all the problems Dave just mentioned.

Earning 44, strongly in an athletic without sacrifice and family, fatherhood, or fitness. And if you are in San Diego, LA, la palm springs or vegas get over to walmart we've got three programs on the shelves in the pharmacy friends we'll see you guys next week that's a wrap make sure you get over to barbell shrug.com forward slash diesel dad challenge 21 day commitment cut the crap eat right train hard barbell shrug.com forward slash diesel dad challenge 21 days to cut the crap eat right train hard the. Barbellshrug.com forward slash DieselDadChallenge 21 days to cut the crap, eat right, train hard. The Busy Dad's Guide to Boosting Metabolism, Burning Fat, and Building Muscle.

Also want to thank our friends over at Organifi. Organifi.com forward slash shrugged. Save 20% on the green, red, and gold. As well as our friends at BioptimizersMagBreakthrough.com forward slash shrugged. Use the code shrugged10 at checkout to save 10%. Friends, we'll see you on Wednesday.