Barbell Shrugged - Coaching Cues and Barbecues w/ Chad Vaughn & MIke Cerbus - 215

Episode Date: June 22, 2016

This week on Barbell Shrugged, we interview Olympic weightlifters Chad Vaughn and Mike Service, and we talk all about weightlifting cues and barbecues. Hey, this is Rich Froning. You're listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbellshrugged.com. Hey, I see you sitting there, lonely by your keyboard. If you want to, just whip your fingers out, put them on your keys. Type in http://www.barbellshrugged.com. While you're there, swing on over, sign up for the newsletter.

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If I tell you it's wrong, I'm like, yeah, I did something right. I can do it now. Do we do something like Unique New York? Unique New York? Exactly. The rains in Spain stay maced. I fucked it up. I really hope we get into the subject of barbecue.

Coaching cues are cool. I mean, if you lead us there, Chad's probably, he's the Texas guy. He should definitely. I'm the Memphis guy. We'll have a duo. Duo? Duel. A duo?

Yeah, that's quite the challenge right there between those two. Yeah. All right. What's up, guys? Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm your host, Mike McGoldrick, here with Alex Macklin. What up? CTP behind the camera.

And our very special guest today, Chad Vaughn and Mike Service. We're here at Power Monkey Fitness Camp interviewing an entire assortment of coaches, so I was really excited to get these two guys on. So before we jump into that, make sure you head over to www.shrugstrengtetest.com. Sign up for the test. We'll send you some really cool feedback after you take the test, let you know where you might have any imbalances, some weaknesses, some strengths, and then where you could probably improve.

So with that said, who are you guys and why are we talking today? I've got some weightlifters on finally, man. I'm just revving my shit right now. Actually, Chad Vaughn, are you related to a Rick Vaughn? Yeah, he pitched in the majors. Yeah, your uncle? Many years ago, yeah. My older brother, actually, yeah. You did some research, didn't you? I did, yeah, he pitched in the majors. Yeah. Many years ago. Yeah. My older brother actually. Yeah. You did some, you did some research. I did. Yeah. I did. I definitely Wikipedia. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

He, he won some big game one time. It was, you know, kind of a big deal. So yeah. Very cool. But he never played in the Olympics. That's right. And you did, you did twice. Yeah. Twice. So yeah, that's kind of my biggest thing um been olympic lifting for uh probably a little over 20 years now and along the way made the olympics twice uh was able to um win the national championships nine times uh still hold an american record in the clean and jerk 77 kilo class um and uh now just doing a lot of coaching over the last six or seven years uh in the crossfit community and and now um here at power mug camp yeah oh yeah what was your what was your best cleaning jerk uh for the record the record was 190 kilos so it's uh 418 pounds for for those that

don't speak both both languages yeah yeah i was gonna say it was like what was that in pounds because for the crossfit crowd what uh now what weight class were you were you in so 77 kilos is um 169 pounds 169 pounds yeah and you went to the what went to olympics uh 2004 was athens in 2008 was beijing very nice very cool yeah and a bunch of other world teams and international teams as well, right? Yeah, absolutely. I think three times on the Pan American Games team. Yep. Many more Pan Am Championships teams and world championship teams.

And I was able to, you know, grab a couple medals at the Pan American Games and Pan American Championships. Won gold in 2003. Yeah. So you are – he is a decorated, Chad is a decorated. How do you keep up with all that? I know, man. Do you just have like a big giant over your fireplace, like a big giant trophy case?

He's got a little notepad in his pocket. He's actually reading his hand right here. No, I'm just making shit up, right? And now you have a CrossFit gym or a gym that you train uh yeah yeah so uh crossfit syntax actually uh this is um kind of new news to most people but we actually just sold the gym uh we're still part of the community and still doing some uh coaching some crossfit classes there and um but mostly trying to focus in on um more weightlifting classes and um uh our brand von weightlifting in general so yeah which you run with your your wife jody that's correct

which jody runs with her well yeah maybe she runs you run with jody right and really it really it was her you know i've been messing around with you know now i lead the advanced uh trainer course for crossfit but you know traveling around doing my own seminar seminar for many years and and kind of toying with the name von weightlifting and then uh had some uh some barbells and plates made with with that brand name on it and but never really doing anything um like official with it and so she really uh pushed us in that direction and and took it on and definitely uh leading that so she's she's gonna end up having to fire me i know because you know so yeah i think we actually have a set of on plates at hit and run we do yeah because we

filmed we filmed a hit and run so yeah there might be some of your plates might be in a lot of our videos that we have yeah so we got some awesome. So we've got some plugs up in there. Yeah, for sure. Mike, talk to us, man. Yes, sir. Tell us about yourself. Well, you know, we came in hot with Chad's background, so now mine's going to pale in comparison.

You can make up a lot of stuff. I'm going to have to. Junior Panhandle Games. Yeah, I was world junior Panhandle Games champion a couple times. No, I've been lifting a long time too. Chad's significantly older than me. He's kind of like my grandfather. But I've been lifting about 17 years.

I started when I was 12. Got competitive nationally right around when I was like 19, 20. So I competed nationally for over 10 years, medaled at about five national championships, won the American Open in 2011, 2012, I was fortunate enough to be selected to the Pan American team and Olympic qualification team. We were unfortunate enough to only get to send one guy from that team, but did score some points there, so that was pretty cool.

And recently, the last two years, I've really started to just focus on teaching and coaching, working a lot with Power Monkey, and then anytime I get an opportunity to work in the community very cool what uh well yeah what are your totals oh okay best pull my mic up there you go there you go we were trying to take a bite out of what to do my hands now it's all good um yeah so best total um in in my best total competition was 304 kilos so my best lifts were 140 kilo snatch or 308, 170 kilo clean and jerk or 374. Never did them together in a competition.

So that's where the total goes to 304. And you were also a 77 kilo. I was also, yeah, I was Chad's bridesmaid for a lot of competitions. So that's probably the thorn in my heels. I never actually got to beat Chad, but I took second to him about probably six or seven times. Oh, man. And how did you get into lifting? Because I read your background on USA Weightlifting.

I think your bio is up there. How did you get into lifting? I think a lot of people get into it almost. It's like happenstance because it wasn't popular, and it's still gaining popularity. But for myself, my older cousin was a weightlifter. He competed nationally for a while, so I was exposed to it. And then the coach that started me, who actually worked a lot with Chad at some national championships and world championships, Lou DeMarco, was a national caliber lifter, and he was part of USA Weightlifting and one of their board members for a long time.

He was the high school at my school district. Okay. So I had played football all through junior high and college, or not college, but high high school and then he kind of encouraged some of the athletes to come and train with him that's more or less where i fell in love with cool so he was your coach he was yeah he was my coach all through my career lou demarco yeah he's been he's been in the sport for like 250 years he's kind of like yeah kind of like one of the ogs of yeah well you guys are ogs too because you guys were like you were saying, doing weightlifting before it was popular,

you know? So y'all are like the hipster lifters. Yeah, for real. What about you, Chad? Who was your coach? Richard Fleming. I had actually in high school

a young coach move in. It's from a very small town. It had about 1,500 people in it. And my graduating class had, I think, 70, which was a very big class in that town. And so in that small school, I was very lucky that this young coach moved in. And I, you know, specify that he's young because that means at that time he was young enough to be open to the Olympic lifts, you know, because especially in Oklahoma where I was from, it was very much powerlifting, you know, bench, squat, and deadlift, and that was basically, oh, we did do a lot of curls as well, so yeah, yeah, you know, we were good with that,

but that's basically what we did all through junior high and still a lot through the rest of my high school years, but that coach moved in my sophomore year, and he was learning the lifts and teaching us as we went. And then by the time I was a senior after football season, he wanted to take me to a weightlifting competition. I just picked up the lifts really well or really quickly, and I was doing well. And so we went down to the Dallas area and met some guys from Spoon Barbell Club, and I started lifting for them, and I still guys from Spoon Barbell Club and I started lifting for them and

I still lift for Spoon Barbell Club and I will for the rest of my life, you know, and. Oh, loyalty. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So Vaughn Weightlifting, nah. It's Spoon Barbell. But no, I met those guys in particular, a guy by the name of Richard Fleming, who, you know, I definitely have to give him credit for most of what I know. Absolutely. You know, I mean, he taught me the name of Richard Fleming who you know I definitely have to give him credit for most of what I know absolutely you know I mean he taught me the base of everything that I know and then of course I went off through the years and experimented and and and you know came up with some of my own ideas and and and learn from myself and from athletes now that I've been coaching a lot but he definitely if it wasn't for, I don't know that I would have kept going because I was coming out of high school and, and you don't, you know, I, I, some people might know

what they're going to do, but I had no idea what I was going to do. And in fact, I still don't know what I'm going to do, but, but, um, you know, he, he really said some stuff to me that was, that was more meaningful than I realized in the moment. And just basically, you know, um, Hey, you've, you've got potential and, you know, you know hey here's a here's a program for you to do and he stayed in contact with me and kept encouraging me and and so I was uh three hours away in Oklahoma and for the first two years of my career I trained uh on a platform under my parents carport that we had to level and re-level with with gravel so we had to pick it up every week or so and throw some more gravel under there and kind of a a very iffy squat rack and a bar that that you know didn't you know only halfway spent and had very little knurling on it and

and all that kind of thing but i but i tell you what it was during those two years is where i gained you know the most strength i mean yeah I had the most improvement, of course, in those first two years, and I got really strong on that basic equipment. But, yeah, going back to Richard, he's, you know, I actually hear people say it all the time when they say, oh, you were coached by Richard, right? And he is a very underutilized source, you know. And I think a lot of people from the weightlifting community are

because we're all so used to being unknown and so quiet you know um but there is there are a lot of really really knowledgeable uh coaches um uh in in every sport but you know specifically if we're talking about weightlifting and you know so many many people learning more and more about the lifts and trying to do the lifts, man, you don't have to look up where the weightlifting clubs are and try to go learn from the coaches there because you can always learn something because there's so many, there is so much knowledge out there and it's not always going to be all the same, but every time you pick it up, something else, you pick up something new that you can use or for your athletes or for yourself even. So, yeah, I think that's, there's a lot of knowledge out there. Mike, what about you?

Who were, you know, as your coaches, who were some of the biggest influences? And yeah, I mean, absolutely. Like Chad, you know, he started mostly with Richard as being his primary coach. I was really fortunate from age. I was about 11 or 12 the first time I went into Olympic weightlifting gym. And my coach was Lou DeMarco. And at that point, he'd already been in the sport for over 50 or well not over 50 about 50 years at that point um so he started me from age 12 and and he's been my coach up to this day even when I'm still training and competing um I was fortunate enough later on in my career I would uh travel around a lot I think actually the first person I traveled to was Chad when I was about 18 um I was at at one of the meets where um he was trying to break the American record and was just kind of in awe of him. I'm not anymore now that we've gotten to be friends. He hates me.

But I can remember that was kind of one of the moments in my career where I was like, all right, I want to learn some more. I know I've learned a ton from this guy, and I love him to death, and he's always going to be my coach, but I think I can definitely pick some people's brains too. So I kind of actually weaseled in with Jody and was like, hey, what do you guys do? I wouldn't mind coming down and hanging out with you for a while. And the first time I ever really spent any time with them, I flew down

and stayed with them for about 10 days. Oh, yeah. And, uh, he picked me up at the airport. It picked me up at the airport. I can actually remember their daughter Ella at the time was probably like, I don't know, she was under a year old and, uh, she was in the backseat crying a lot. So I ended up having to sit in the backseat and ride from the airport in the backseat of his car. Oh, man. We went straight to the gym and trained from there. But afterwards, I started to get some opportunities to go to Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. So I worked a lot with our national team coach, Zygmunt Smallsers there, learned a lot from him.

And then now you just kind of pick up things as you go from everybody. Right. Right on. I want to ask a little bit about, you know, so we've gotten into the background of you guys, who you've learned from, your coaches, and I want to talk about some of the influence it had on your coaching now, like some of the cues that you've learned,

like specifically more like the differences that you might have from, you know, good cues, bad cues, what works, what doesn't work, like some of the things you've learned over the years and some things that have proven to be the best coaching methods and even simple is like just little like words you say to someone let's talk about those i think and chad will probably be able to you know get real specific on it but i think like before we talk about cues is cues are great um but i think as as coaches and as lifters we've been in the sport for a long time our cues change throughout our career throughout our training cycles even daily sometimes so a cue can be a great opportunity to

get somebody to move correctly but it can also be a great opportunity to simplify the movement to the point where the lifter is not actually understanding what they're doing or why they're doing it um so elbows up elbows up elbows up yeah and and if you want to use an example, heels is a great one. Heels can accomplish something like getting a lifter to draw their knees back and get vertical shins on the first pull, but it can also get them to be a little bit imbalanced and disconnected from the floor. So a lifter understanding how to shift weight maybe towards their heels

but also have their feet completely in contact with the ground is also a very valuable thing. So you can say the cue, but at some point, I would hope that, that a coach and a lifter are also having conversations and understanding how their body's working a little bit better in that sense. Yeah. Yeah. Because I mean, we always hear this debate, like what is a good cue and what is a bad cue? Like, is there such a thing? I don't, I don't think there is a bad cue. If it gets the lifter to accomplish a proper movement and execute a good lift, um, whatever cue gets them to do that

is great. But especially as a coach coach understanding that that cue might not always work so you better understand the function of the lift and the movement of your lifter so when that cue stops working you know how to work through to the next phase and get that to keep working and get them to keep executing correctly yeah yeah i think basically you know like mike saying uh i would agree that there is no bad cue but at the same time every cue is dangerous and that means that you know if you continue trying to execute the same cue over and over and over again for two or three years then you probably have developed a bad habit uh somewhere along the way now for myself to be honest like you know i've gotten to the point

with with my movement to where they are 99% of the time the same and they've been that way for the last three or four years. If I'm going and I feel something weird in my lift or I'm just tired from training hard or whatever, I may have to experiment and change them up a little bit here and there. But definitely by the time I get to the competition, they're pretty much the same. And I think that's where everybody should get. You should get to the point to where your two or three basic cues that you're using are the same. And they cause you to move the same throughout.

But in reality, so many people are more people than not are in development. And they're going to need to reexamine their movement and adjust those cues. Like Mike said, maybe on a daily basis, maybe throughout the same workout. But, you know, in regards to cues being bad or good, I mean, I've always been very open and I always wanted to know why I did certain things. And I learned a lot about, you know, as an athlete, just by asking questions like, you know, i'd ask richard hey um why are we doing this and that and all that stuff and so when i came into coaching um i you know i did come in with some uh general beliefs and and everything else and and that's how i

started teaching and and obviously i think just like everybody starts teaching is, well, I know a lot of Olympic lifters, you know, athletes that are now doing their own seminars and just listening to some of their teachings and everything else. They're basically teaching how they're moving. What works for them. What works for them. What makes sense to them because that's what they know. It's easy for them to teach that. It's easy for them to get people to do that. And I definitely did that same thing. And excuse me, a couple of the cues that, that were kind of going around in, in the community at that time when I first started

were the heels cue and it's still out there a lot and, and, and scoop, you know, from, from the knee up that scooping action. And there are a couple other ones, but there, there was, you know yeah from from the knee uh up that scooping action and there are a couple other ones but there there was you know a group a handful of cues that i just absolutely refused to use i was gonna ask you know do you tell do you tell so i mean and at that point i did and and so i would say i would describe something in like an hour long conversation if I had to just to not use those cues because I saw what it was causing people to do and I saw the future of what it was going to cause them to do. I felt like there are way too many people on their heels. There's still way too many people on their heels. Um, and then at that time, the most common fault was, you know, people

lifting around their knees or just excessively scooping. Um I tell you, along the way, I had to open myself up and change. And what I realized is that the first day that I opened myself up and I did use the heel scoop because finally I was like, you know what? Let's heels. You know what? Let's scoop. You're not doing it. What have I done?

Who am I? And really what I realized is that, especially for a couple of my athletes, I really wasted a lot of their time, and I wasted a lot of my time as a coach trying to get them to do what I wanted by not being open to using those words. And so at that point I learned, I said, you know, hey, any word is free. I mean, for the jerk technique that I teach, I tell people ponytail, you know, and that means that, you know, envision somebody's yanking your ponytail to help you pull your head

back. So, you know, whatever, whatever, yeah, whatever words. Yeah, you did use that yesterday, the ponytail. Yeah, whatever words can get them to accomplish what you want and get them to feel the movement. And then at that point, you might change it. But again, I think it's at the same time you have to understand the individual and know where they're at. And, you know, yes, a lot of people are going to benefit from that heels cue. It's going to be necessary for them just like scoop and just like anything else. I think too Chad and I really are very similar in how we coach in that when we're cueing somebody,

we're trying to get them to accomplish a specific movement So a lot of times you'll you'll dumb down your cues almost too much You're telling somebody you just gotta get under the bar faster And you have to look at your cue and what's your cue telling your athlete to do if you're telling them to get under the bar Faster you're not giving them anything right or if you're saying something like you know what you've been jumping forward just jump back Like that's not again That's like some of those they might be a quick fix or a band-aid and they might be okay in the moment, but we definitely better take a look back.

And a big thing, that's why we're at Power Monkey Fitness is going back to the fundamentals and the basic building blocks of the movements that we're teaching is there's probably an issue somewhere else. So if we're looking at specifically the jerk or the snatch or the clean, dissecting that movement and the pieces of that movement to see where the actual root of the problem is, not just the end result of what you're seeing also. Yeah, I feel like everybody wants to rely on a cue. Like, give me a cue.

If you could just give me one cue that I could leave here, I know I'd be able to PR tomorrow. Right, and it's not the cue. Do it well. You need to go back, like you said, and practice the movement, the fundamentals, the basics, and that way you and practice the movement, the fundamentals, the basics, and that way you can learn the positions and the tempo and the speed and all that. That's where that is.

The cue is just a little reminder. Yeah, and if you take from, if you look at Chad or myself, Chad's been lifting for over 20 years. I'm approaching 20 years lifting. We've invested a lot of time in our own movement patterns, and then we're trying to share a lot of that and what we've learned over the course of it. Um, so pay patience is another huge one that we're constantly trying to preach almost more than a cue is patience and a method and understanding and sticking to something as well. Yeah. Well, but a cue, a cue too should be like, I spend so much time trying to teach people how to focus in. It's, it's a method that I have. It's my personal focus method that I try to, you know, um, you know, spit out there and get people to do, because I feel

like it's very effective. It was very effective with me and very effective with a lot of athletes that I taught it to and also coaches. Um, but the thing about focusing is that you have to understand to move the best you possibly can. You have to tell your body what to do. You can't just go up there and snatch. You know, you have to tell your body what to do. And not only that, whatever you're telling your body to do, you have to feel it. Right. And that's the thing. That's what a cue means.

And it's not just you putting a word in your head. It's you feeling that cue. Yeah. And absolutely, as a coach, I can see over and over again if I'm cueing somebody, even just one cue that I want them to accomplish, I can know if it slipped their mind or if they're not feeling it because it's not being executed. They're not connecting that cue with a movement itself.

Yes. Okay, I'm going to give you maybe two more chances, and if you don't, then that word doesn't mean anything to you. Let me try another one. I'm curious, what is that focus method i'm curious of what what you use to focus yourself like what you said previously oh man well you got two more hours hey it could be as simple as chad's three keys to the perfect yeah yeah well like what's going like what's what's like going through your head before a lift because i know people when you get

out there on that platform you see that bar you you know, you get that almost that calm feeling, but what's kind of going through your head? No, the base of it, I believe, is that there are three main areas that people should focus on. And they're also, I believe, the three main areas of, or the three most common faults, or the three areas where faults stem from. And number one is just tension from the floor especially in crossfit even elite crossfitters if you watch them lift heavy most of them don't even completely lock their back in from the floor and there are lots of reasons that for that that i believe and we won't even get into that because it's another long conversation but you know tension

from the floor if you're using the technique that that most people do that we teach in getting a vertical shin position at the knee, that's a transition position. That's a very important position. So what does that position look like? And I'm going to put some focus on that area as well. So tension, I got a little rhyme here heavy weight, even lightweight, but with the heavy weight specifically, tightening my back from the floor and extending those two specific areas are something that are never going to happen automatically for me. I have to make them happen and I have to do it aggressively and I believe that everybody else does as well. Now, you can get so strong and so good at the transition position that you can kind of let it go a little bit. But the danger in that and not focusing on it and feeling it is developing bad habits.

So you might start to lift with the bar more and more away from your body or lifting around. So I find that that position, when I can get people used to focusing on it and drilling it into their mind where they're feeling it every single rep, it perfects their movement, right? So, you know, basically those three areas and there are a world of different combinations that you can use there, but that's really the biggest thing that, I mean, of course, you know, I teach in every aspect of Olympic lifting, but that's really the biggest thing that I try to get across to people because it's how you put everything together. All these basics that we're teaching, you know, the squat, um, uh, the pool and, and just positions and mobility and all that stuff that we spend so much time on. It means nothing if you don't know how to focus. And, and when you learn to do that and you know, what I like people to understand one is that

that's difficult for a lot of people to do. It's a skill that needs to be developed and practiced and you can do that with, with partial movements can do that with partial movements and other kind of things. But, yeah, I lost my thought there. I was going to ask you to recap those three again. Tension, transition, extension. Yeah. So the tight off the floor, and then when you get to that knees, where the bar is at the knees, you know, over the bar with a vertical shin,

and then a big hard finish at the top yeah and so basically whenever i'm coaching i'm looking at those three areas right and that's when i'm over and over again examining and that's how i coach i go back and forth and trying to perfect those positions right and when they're you know close to being perfected or they're being executed very well then the rest of the lift yeah uh goes really well and that's where you would maybe focus focus the majority of your cues if you were given them. That's the only place I would. If they're doing something wrong on the reception, typically that's because one of those three areas is off. But if they're still doing something wrong,

then we'll do partial movements to try to teach them how to pull under the bar better or something like that and try to let that pull under and that reception be automatic. Yeah. Yes. Very, not very often do I see someone start incorrectly and then correct it along the way. Yeah, that's what I was like going through that pipeline. Yeah. On Chad's cues that the importance of what he was saying is tension off the floor.

And we see so many people not get that is at your transition point. You need to have proper tension. So if you don't have it off the floor, it's really, really hard. And I'd say almost impossible to get it at that transition. And even in your extension point, there's still a very serious part that needs to be have, have proper tension there as well. And it all starts from the floor. Gotcha. And going back to the cues for a second, I want to ask you, like we talked about a mindset kind of approaching the bar and some things like to think about, but like, I want to know exactly what goes through your head for someone who's been doing this for a long time. Do you still have little reminders or little cues that you kind of repeat in your head? Like, what do you tell yourself? You know, and it was interesting

when I first started working a lot more with Chad and coaching with him and I had, you know, been, I guess I hate to say I was studying under Chad, but you know, as an athlete, I would constantly pick Chad's brain about what he was thinking about. And even as an athlete, I always wanted kind of the quick fix. Like, well, how'd you train? Like, what was your training cycle? And it was so much more than that. And when I finally started to see Chad coach and his focus on those pieces and the tension and the transition and the extension started to make sense to me. And I was like, you know, when some of my best training and my best, um, competitions were when I was the most focused and I wasn't necessarily

thinking about the end results, but I was thinking about the pieces of my lift and I was being a much more conscious weightlifter. Um, and a lot of times, so Tommy Kono, um, who just recently passed away, if, if, um, everybody should know who Tommy Kono is, he's probably read his book first thing. Most decorated weightlifter in United States history. Um, I was fortunate enough that my coach was one of his best friends. I got to meet him quite a few times when I went out to Hawaii one time and worked with Tommy. Um, the first thing he told me was when he started his lift, he pretended somebody was going to take a picture before he would start his lift. So that was his cue. He was going to get set, make sure somebody could take a picture and then

he would initiate his pool. That was something that always stuck with me because I would get a little bit of maybe anxiety or anxiousness at the beginning of my lift and I would just want to go. And that really stuck with me when Tommy said that. So, and that was probably halfway through my career and I would really start trying to think that I'd get ready to pull. I go, no, no, no. Somebody's got to take a picture first, get set. And then I'd be there. And then from that point, yeah, I would be focusing on my transition. And to me, I've always had a problem maybe staying over the bar. So I would be concentrating on keeping my shoulders out over the bar. The bar usually stayed very close to my body, so that wasn't as big of an issue.

And then I always think of extension as patience. So I would think pull longer than I needed to pull and pull straighter than I needed to pull. That way I would finish my extension, and then that kind of put the pieces together. Yeah, I have that same issue. I feel impatient. I feel very vulnerable in that position. Like once I'm passing these, I don't feel strong anymore. So I'm like, I got to go now.

But most of the time when I just kind of chill out and actually finish through it, you know, I catch very correctly. It feels very upright and strong. And we were kind of talking about past coaches then with Lou DeMarco that started me. He would always tell me you have to have a relaxed intensity. You have to have a patient intensity. And weightlifting is very much like an oxymoron. You're trying to tell people to relax and get tight at the same time, to be patient but be aggressive at the same time.

And that's where drilling and mastery and having a coach that can help cue you through all those pieces to get you that mastery of those positions. Calibrated violence is what I like to say. Calibrated violence. It could be the name of our band if we all go out on tour. Going back to cues, do you use any type of other type of cues? It sounds like most of the cues you guys use is verbal cues. Do you ever use any visual or tactile?

Very tactile. What about barbecues? So we get into barbecues a lot. I think I would say Chad and I are both very touchy coaches. It's very much that's where when we can segment things and work on pieces of the lift. You mean like hands-on? Yeah, very tactile. So I mean I'm constantly seeing Chad or myself making a lift or pause and then going and

pushing their body into the position and making them hold it so they can feel it as opposed to me just repeatedly telling them where to go, and they're not. No, no, no. No, no, no. It's so much easier sometimes when you're at light weights or you're doing barbell drills to touch somebody and put them into the position they need to be in. Yeah, I've found tactile cues to be way, especially with beginners, because they just don't know the position. They don't know what it feels like.

You've got to put them in there. You can't tell them shoulders over the bar because they'll think their shoulders are over the bar and then they're not. Yeah. What you're telling them, they're already faulting. Right. I've seen a beginner that we were trying to teach, you know, push the knees back, push the knees back. And finally one day she got cracked. She stopped. She goes, I don't know what that means. I don't know what that means. And I was like, oh my God, I'm so sorry. Exactly. Yeah. And you can get, as a coach, you can get ignorant to the fact that you understand what you're trying to get across.

So it makes complete sense to you, and you have to sometimes get outside yourself and put yourself in the student's picture. Like, what are they trying to get across? Yeah, well, I think as coaches, like if you've been around the game, like you said, you forget what it's like to be a beginner. Like you totally, you're just like, well, I've been doing this for a while. You don't understand that you were there too and that you didn't understand.

So you gotta get back down to that level. I would never wanna get Chad on his squat talk podcast that's less than seven hours. But there's another thing Chad told a lot of people is as we've been squatting since we started, when we started teaching, we almost neglected the fact that maybe a lot of people don't even know how to squat correctly.

And that's kind of changed a lot of how we teach too. Do you work with any high-level or advanced lifters at the moment right now that you've had to completely revamp something basic like their squat? I would say that just to make a general example of any elite athlete that I've worked with, either for a day or for a long period of time, there's always something basic that can be gone back to and worked on. In particular with elite CrossFitters, I spend a lot of time, again, teaching them how to focus because I don't feel like – I think a lot of them have developed their own ability to obviously perform and everything else. But

I just see certain things in their movement where I know, okay, you're not really even thinking about that. You may be thinking about something else and executing it very well, but it, you know, again, and then too, there's a lot of mobility issues going on and there are a lot of, um, elite CrossFitters, for example, thatters for example that that are a little imbalanced specifically some posterior dominant some quad dominant and so yeah there's always something basic to go back to there's basic stuff for me as a weightlifter I was very one one of my major strengths was or a couple of my major strengths were overall good mobility and overall balance as an athlete. So upper body, lower body, front, back, and everything else.

But there are definitely a few little things like pull-up strength that I just don't have a lot of that. And that's a weakness as an athlete, a basic that I could go back and focus on to make me better overall. There's a photo of you, I remember, and I think it was in Atlanta. You're in the bottom of a snatch, and your butt is almost on the ground, and your shins are completely vertical. So if you haven't seen it, was it in Atlanta? Do you know which one I'm talking about? Yeah, so that's a lift that I missed.

So what happened was the bar was here, and I had shifted back. I shifted back, you know, just going with the bar. And from that point, if they would have gone another frame, the bar would be here. But another thing, my right leg, it's got a decent amount of mobility, but it has about half the amount of the left one. I was born with a club foot, so I have some lacking flexibility on that right side. So that side

typically is uh not straight but straighter but it was definitely straight in that picture because i missed the lift yeah and i mean going what you're saying that your body type i feel like cues are specific to the individual like a lot of people think that you give a cue to everybody but a cue can be it's got to be you know for that person you know yeah well it's uh specific to the individual but more specific than that is specific to uh what however they're faulting right right so basically a lot of how we queue is just against what what they're doing and their fault and then so you know if if i tell if if if i tell someone um you know, heels, we'll go back to the freaking heels cue, I guess. Yeah, yeah.

Everybody hates that cue. If I tell someone heels because they're not doing anything and I'm trying to get them to move, you know, I'm only going to use that for as long as I need to and then get it out of there and change it. Yeah. Yeah. Let me ask you this. So there's a lot of information out there right now. There's a lot of clinics. One of the biggest things I see with someone who may have been lifting, I would say in the CrossFit world, there's somewhat of like a intermediate advance and I'm even guilty of this. Uh, when you go to a clinic and you learn

cues from someone, it's almost really hard to kind of let go and like really listen because it requires a lot of kind of rebuilding your movement so you know you worked with me yesterday on the snatch and i tried to be extremely open-minded but i could also find myself somewhat resistant because i'm like is it going to fix me right now yeah you know it's like what kind of advice would you have for that for someone who's going to these clinics yeah i think and i think chad and i talk about that a lot um i'm sorry guys yeah i probably should go i got a pt session oh yeah sorry but yeah you guys Yeah, I think Chad and I talk about that a lot. Sorry, guys.

Yeah, I probably should go. I've got a PT session. Oh, yeah. Sorry. But, yeah, you guys keep going. We'll finish with Mike. Thank you, Chad. We appreciate it. Yeah, guys, thank you for having me.

Do you have anything that you want to plug before you leave? Where can we find you? Everybody needs to be going to VonWeightlifting.com. You've got to do it for him. I'll plug it. Yeah, he can plug a lot better he's a conversational wizard not me so no all right but we we do have a new website von weightlifting vonweightlifting.com we have a three four and five day uh a week option um

you can also uh see me on instagram ollie chad o-l-y-c-h-a-d uh try to put you know i don't i'm not on there enough but i do put content up there there every now and then and then you know follow me through Power Monkey Fitness of course come come see me at an advanced trainer trainer course if if you've got your level one and your beginner weightlifting course and you know I think that's a really solid course that you can get a lot out of and and other than that yeah yeah. Awesome. Right on, Chad. Next time you're in Memphis, get you some barbecue. Yeah, we'll get some barbecue.

Thank you for coming on. See you, man. Yeah. Okay, Mike. Always coaching. Yeah. That's pretty awesome. He's got people waiting for him. Yeah, no, you asked about

if you're going, learning from a new coach or learning from a new seminar. And Chad and I, we kind of open with that a lot of times here is we're not telling you that everything you learned in the past was wrong or that everything we're telling you is the end all be all.

But you're obviously here for a reason because you want to learn. So if you're seeking out knowledge, give that knowledge and that new technique some time to settle in. So I like to tell everybody at least give me like six to eight weeks of focusing on something. Don't just think one session or just one week. Give it a small training block and see if it can start to settle in. If at that point you still really don't like it and you don't feel like you're moving better than, than move on. I totally agree. I think if you're, especially for a new lifter, you should be, I think you should try a lot of different things because you don't know what works for you and what doesn't. So, and, and, and even on that,

um, within what you're trying, there's still basic fundamentals of movement patterns that should be correct. And that's one of the coolest experiences of the camp here is that we have so many elite athlete turned coaches that have been specialists for so long. And when we all came together and we started noticing that all of us were teaching very similar and almost identical fundamentals of movement in terms of how to how to safely align your body within the movement how to stack your body and how to move efficiently and smoothly yeah and you have to look at your technique and your and your styles is that what you're trying to accomplish gotcha has anyone ever told you like you should change this and you tried it and found that for myself yeah that was effective yeah absolutely absolutely

um there were there were a lot of misunderstandings and misconceptions that I had even early on in training and actually going and being open-minded. So when I was a younger lifter, like picking Chad's brain just to see what he was thinking about a lot of times, because I knew I wasn't necessarily getting bad coaching or bad cueing, but I wasn't absorbing it maybe correctly and translating it correctly. So it's like anything. Also, when you're working with a coach or a program, trust is a big thing. So you can say a lot of things.

If you don't believe in a program, you're not going to get any better. But if you have a great program and a great coach, it's usually because you believe in it and you trust in it. So that's kind of just that relationship level of whoever you're working with is the belief factor. You know, we've heard that twice this week. We interviewed Dave Durante earlier, and he had brought up that when he went to college and started his gymnastics career in college, his coach was like, your handstand sucks.

Like, where are we doing all that? And he's like, I've been doing this for 13 years. What are you talking about? And it's like, you've got to trust that guy. You know, like, obviously he's been doing this long enough. He's been doing that longer than I've been exercising. Exactly. And someone's going to tell him that he needs to rebuild his handstand.

That'd be like, you know, someone telling you after 20 years of weightlifting like you need to you need to build your squad again yeah yeah you gotta trust that person it's gotta be open-minded yeah and that's just it and and constantly the the open-mindedness essentially we should all be we want to learn we want to move as best as we can we want to share that knowledge so i i tell everybody too when i start ask why So if somebody's giving you a cue, why? It's not disrespectful. It's you're wanting to learn and you're wanting to understand. So to master a movement, you have to understand it. I was actually talking to Chad last night because he was going over the jerk

and he gave me his ponytail cue, which is, I guess I can describe it for the audience, but it's basically pulling your head straight back in the jerk and then pushing your head straight back in the jerk and then pushing your head you know right back to neutral um and what's funny is that i i did that before and i was told by another coach not to do that yeah because it disoriented and i asked him why and then he said well that disorientates you because because i my thought was i need to move my head back out of the way and then he's like no that'll that'll disorientate you and you'll be all off balance so i work to undo that.

But then now I come here and then Chad tells me to do this. And it's like I ask him why. And he says, well, if you think about it, you want the bar to go up, you need to look up. And that's how you need to get your head out of the way. And so I was trying it yesterday. I was like, oh, this feels actually a lot better. Because one of my things was I always used to push the bar away. Yeah, you'll go away.

And that's where you, as a coach, look at a lifter's movement pattern. So if somebody's telling you to stop doing something, like, okay, so I'll stop it, but I want to look and see how I'm moving now. Am I getting another fault or am I developing a bad habit? Then maybe I should go back to it. So if you never try it out, you never know that it may actually be working for you. You know, I brought up this point, but I also want to come at it from another angle because I've had bad experiences with this too, I think.

So in Memphis, like several years ago, we had some Bulgarians come through that were in town with the circus. Very, very, very, very strong guys. Yes. And they were teaching me some lifting technique. Well, they're Bulgarians. Yeah.

So I was like, you're from Bulgaria? Teach me. And they were like, you have hips that go. Hips that go. And by the end of the session, they just had me doing high pulls, like using my hips, but my legs were bleeding. They were like, scrape thigh, scrape thigh. Hips like gold, over and over and over.

And when I left, I was like, I don't know if I can continue to do that. Yeah, and I'll tell everybody, you have to be careful when you're learning too because knowledge overload, like paralysis by analysis. Don't go seeking so much that you're never just learning one thing and building that as well. So, like, I can guarantee those guys probably knew some stuff and they were wanting you to keep the bar close and let your hips propel the bar vertical instead of horizontal. Different things like that. And people try to describe them in different ways so as a beginner you guys would recommend you know being a sponge absorbing being open-minded to a lot of different things now if you are someone who is intermediate advanced like is it is it

helpful to do that still or do you want to kind of pick one person and kind of stick with that style so you don't i think you have to give somebody in a specific style an extended period of time even as a beginner i think bouncing and we see that even in our community of weight, that there's bouncing around from coach to coach can be debilitating for a style, for a technique, for confidence, because you're constantly having to kind of start back over. What about the athlete who's only going to ever do CTP, your residential camera guy?

What about the athlete who's never going to do weightlifting by itself, but they're only going to do it occasionally in Metcons and like a CrossFit class. Do y'all approach it any different for those guys? No, we don't approach it any different in a sense that we believe that the fundamentals and the techniques that we're teaching are the most transferable to every other movement you're going to do. So the way that we teach you how to squat holds true for a wall ball, holds true for an air squat. And then, you know, the way that we teach you how to pull the barbell holds true for how we think you could deadlift most efficiently it holds true for how we think you can do you know metcon weight lifting and when you lift with with perfection you have a mastery you also have the ability to adapt within a workout

and make changes and make some small technical adjustments so maybe you have a couplet that you're working on that's going to blow your lower back out so you want to use your legs a little bit more when you're lifting. When you start to develop a mastery of a skill like the clean or the snatch, you have some adaptations you can make from within. And if you're very proficient in that movement, in the snatch or the clean and jerk, you're less likely to go back to a bad movement pattern when you're fatigued. Exactly.

Or you're going to hold it off as long as possible. Exactly. I'm not going to say it's not going to fall apart. It will. But yeah, it's going to make it less likely to happen. Yeah. Yeah. So what would you give as like maybe one piece of advice for maybe a coach,

like starting off, like coaching weightlifting, like what would you give them? Like what would be your biggest piece of advice? The biggest piece of advice to give a coach. What's your barbecue? Yeah. I would say get some good barbecue and sit down and think about your methods. For a good coach, I would say always be able to answer why.

Okay. If you're giving an athlete an exercise, why are you giving it to them? If you're giving an exercise that's a variation, why? So a lot of people, hey, do you think I should do lifts off of boxes? Well, why do you want to do them off of boxes? I don't know. I saw somebody doing them off of boxes, so it looks like it's a good reason.

Or if you're prescribing them, why are you doing it? Yeah, so as a coach, like, all right, we're going to get on this box cycle. Why? Well, maybe this athlete needs to learn how to develop tension in another way.

They're not doing it off the floor. They're just using the momentum. So a box takes away that initial feel, and they have to develop tension. Right. So a lot of people, and I'm using box as an example because that seems to be a big thing now. Because there is one right here. And there's a box develop tension. Right. So a lot of people, and I'm using boxes as an example because that seems to be a big thing now.

Because there is one right here. And there's a box in front of me. But a lot of people, yeah, I'm getting on boxes because my coach said it's going to make me faster. Well, make me faster still doesn't really tell me anything. Right. Like why is it going to make you faster? Because you're going to develop better tension.

There you go. Maybe you can develop a better position that you can put yourself in without having to find it on your own. Yeah. We need to make a coachescheatsheet.com for for when you didn't want to read a book in high school but the lazy coach who doesn't really want to learn anything but he can answer why. Only weightlifting

and only coaching for dummies, those yellow books. That's a good idea. Honestly, that would be my biggest thing. As an athlete, be willing to ask why and as a coach, be capable of answering why. Those are definitely the two biggest things I would go back to.

Oh, man, thanks. Oh, yeah. Is there anything else you want to add? Can you tell us a little bit about where we can find you, any websites? I'm a gypsy, so I'm always everywhere. Where are you based out of? Currently, I live in Ohio, so a little bit south of Cleveland, Youngstown, Ohio. But I'm 100% with Power Monkey all the time.

So that's usually the easiest way to find me. We're trying to continue to develop and grow our resources and our ability to be educators within the fitness community. So our weightlifting program is constantly growing. Chad is one of our biggest resources. I'm in with the resource. And we've got Vanessa and Jody that are here coaching as well. And even she's not here right now, but Jessica Lucero, who's training for Olympic trials, she's also part of our team.

So we've got a pretty awesome team of weightlifters and weightlifting coaches here. If they want to follow you, do you have an Instagram or Snapchat? It's about as easy as it gets. It's at Mike's service. Nice. Yeah, some cool videos on there. Check them out. Yeah, I try to keep that as kind of an outlet for knowledge and education,

and then, you know, just reaching out to me. You want to see somebody move well, watch his videos. Yeah. There we go. All right, man. Thank you so much for your time. Thanks so much, Mike. We enjoyed it.

This was awesome. All right. Shaka, bro. All right. There we go.