Barbell Shrugged - Coaching is Coaching is Coaching w/ Shane Farmer

Episode Date: February 28, 2018

Shane Farmer is a rowing specialist, a coach, an entrepreneur, a 4-time CrossFit Games athlete, and the founder of Dark Horse Rowing and Dark Horse Academy.   Farmer is known in the CrossFit community as a rowing specialist who has worked with elite CrossFit Games athletes, including 2017 CrossFit Games champion Clair Toomey, Kari Pearce, Lauren Fisher, Garrett Fisher, Sam Dancer, and others.   In this episode, we dive into how to develop your coaching experience and philosophy, how to allow yourself to grow as a coach, shifting your paradigm, and more.   -Mike, Doug and Anders   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------   Please support our partners!   Thrive Market is a proud supporter of us here at Barbell Shrugged.  We very much appreciate all they do with us and we’d love for you to support them in return!  Thrive Market has a special offer for you.  You get $60 of FREE Organic Groceries + Free Shipping and a 30 day trial, click the link below:   https://thrivemarket.com/shrugged   How it works:  Users will get $20 off their first 3 orders of $49 or more + free shipping.  No code is necessary because the discount will be applied at checkout.  Many of you will be going to the store this week anyway, so why not give Thrive Market a try!   Organifi is another great company with whom we’ve chosen to partner.  They offer a premium line of health supplements you can use to optimize your body.  Doug and Mike use their products everyday and highly recommend you give them a try.     If you’d like a discount you can use the code “shrugged” to instantly get 20% off your order, click below to check out their supplements:   https://organifishop.com   ► Subscribe to Barbell Shrugged's Channel Here http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe   📲 🎧 Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher   Barbell Shrugged helps people get better.  Usually in the gym, but outside as well.  In 2012 they posted their first podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since.   Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini.   We're also dedicated to helping affiliate gym owners grow their businesses and better serve their members by providing owners tools and resources like the Barbell Business Podcast.   Find Barbell Shrugged here:   Website: http://www.BarbellShrugged.com Facebook: http://facebook.com/barbellshruggedpodcast Twitter: http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged Instagram: http://instagram.com/barbellshruggedpodcast

It's about so much more than, you know, we keep coming back to this, so much more than the rowing, right? Or the kettlebells or weightlifting or what? It's so much more than that. It's so much more than the gym that you own. It's understanding that impact that you get to have on people, that change that you get to create in somebody's life and how that change really starts to happen and being able to gain that experience and learn from it. I think that's the big piece, right? That being able to learn from that experience, because you could even have an instructor who's a 10-year instructor and is still an instructor. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged.

I'm Mike Bletzer here with Doug Larson. And we got Anders Varner co-hosting again. I'm back. You're back. He's actually doing a good job, so we're going to let him stick around, I think. Thanks, guys. That's a huge pick-me-up to begin the show here. He's actually doing a good job. We're just going to string him along.

And our guest today is Shane Farmer of Dark Horse Rowing. Hey, guys. And we're going to talk about way more than just rowing today. I hope so. It's not just about rowing. It's not about rowing. Yeah. No. At all actually. That's what you told us. That's what I heard. Hardly. Hardly what we heard. Yeah I'm excited about how you how you break through to coaches. So you train a lot of coaches in the sport of rowing and you're in or i guess i don't know if it's a sport of rowing but you're in the functional fitness space yeah a lot of crossfitters stuff like that you know how i'm interested to find out how you get coaches and

athletes to take it seriously because i think it's very uh it doesn't get enough attention it's a million dollar question i know that's true because i look in gyms where people are rowing i'm like oh i know i'm not great but you know yeah and it seems a lot of people that the the more they get into the space and they get the basics handled whether they're in weightlifting or gymnastics or rowing or running they they end up thinking that oh it's all about movement it's all it's all interconnected all movement has fundamental core principles that cross over from one discipline to the other the principles of weightlifting are similar to the principles of gymnastics, but similar to the principles of yoga and CrossFit and weightlifting, a strongman, and on and on and on. So I'd love to get your thoughts

on movement and how you think philosophically about how movement is supposed to be. That's amazing how those ties kind of bind all things together, right? Yeah. Yeah. The more experience you get, the more you see the patterns between things. I'm really excited to figure out how you can take rowing, which isn't really sexy from the start of things. It says who. It is. It's your opinion. And really grow kind of a brand and a business and become a professional coach in something that few people really enjoy doing.

Like your messaging, what you bring behind it you gotta just like get people a little lower every time he says something about you just get a little lower yeah the uh how do you take something that most people look at they're like god i hate that thing and turn it into want a career and become have such a large channel such a large reach and find all the people that are interested in this thing and rowersers specifically. Rowers really hate rowing. Not like rowing rowing, but rowing on the erg. You'll go anywhere. I think I'm doing something.

I don't know. I just had a realization that I've spent so much time rowing on an erg, and I've never actually been on a proper rowing situation. Let's change that. Let's change that. Let's put you on the water. It's life-changing. I'm down.

Let's go do that. That sounds fun. Why are we here? Put the headphones down. Oh, okay. It's life-changing. I'm down. Let's go do that. Let's do it. That sounds fun. Why are we here? Put the headphones down. We're going to go row. All right. Yeah, let's find a time. I love it.

I got a place we can go down in South Bay. Perfect. Done. All right. We're in. All right. Can you tell us, how did you get into rowing? How did you get into coaching?

I stumbled into rowing. That was pure accident. I thought I was going to play baseball in college and missed tryouts. And you slept in? What happened? Yeah, so I transferred schools. I transferred to the University of San Diego and thought I was playing club ball at the school I'd been at before. And I came out, and because I was a transfer, I just didn't know when tryouts were.

I found out the day afterwards and went into the coach's office and said, can I just throw a pitching workout for you? Like, give me a shot. And he gave me the better luck next year talk. Oh, bummer. What'd that feel like? Oh, that was soul crushing. Yeah.

Yeah, bummer. Because I had placed a whole lot of weight on what baseball was going to be to my future. That tends to happen when you're in your late teens, early 20s. Absolutely. Yeah. And I'm from Minnesota, so I came out to San Diego, and my platform was baseball. All of a sudden, it just dropped out from under me.

Yeah. And the guy across the hall from me just happened to be recruited to row, and I told him I had missed tryouts, and he invited me to give it a try, and I just fell in love with it. And the rest is history on the rowing side. And we just had this amazing crew. We all stuck together, went to the national championships, loved the sport, fell in love with it.

And then post-college, I just was missing it. But I was kind of too small to be a heavyweight and too heavy to be a lightweight as far as moving further in my rowing career. Like I wasn't going to go anywhere with that. So I jumped into CrossFit because Crossfit was our strength training for rowing at usd we were starting back at the day like 2006 was when we started crossfitting and um yeah so i i just saw this need as soon as i got into crossfit of holy shit people are really poor at this movement thing when it comes to rowing and so

I kind of kicked off from there started coaching and man it just snowballed started coaching seminars started coaching for concept 2 and crossfit and started picking up athletes and then started dark horse rowing in 2015 and started the dark horse academy this year and things have just really taken off. Now we're coaching Tia Claire Toomey and Carrie Pierce and Lauren Fisher and Garrett Fisher and Sam Dancer, all the Invictus athletes because that's kind of the crowd I connect with as far as athletes go. So, yeah, that's long and the short of it. Amazing.

Yeah, I want to jump into the questions we have for you before we go any further and mention our sponsor of the show, the first one being Organifi. And I was mentioning that before the show, and you said you'd actually spent time with Drew, the founder of Organifi. Yeah, back in the day, right when he was starting FitLife TV. Yeah, right as Drew moved to San Diego. We, like, ran a mutual connection. At that time in my life, I was trying to figure out what i was gonna do and so i was reaching out to everybody i knew and just asking for a connection and drew was the guy

i got connected with and at that you know back then he was just starting to film any video that he could and so we did a couple videos together if you go back in the the fitlife.tv archives you probably find a few videos of me with drew back then. We're going to find those. And if we don't find them, please, someone else go find those videos and send them to us, please. I know there's a barbell mashing one. I feel like there's a mindset one

standing up on some rooftop somewhere. Makes sense. Makes sense after meeting Drew. Yeah. If you don't know what Organifi is, they have a whole product line of supplements. The first thing they start with is a green juice. I drink it every morning now. It comes in really handy, especially when I'm traveling where I can't find organic produce very easily.

Funny how that happens. Funny how that happens. Being in SoCal, a lot of times people are like, oh, you look really lean. I'm like, well, access to good food is is very easy here and i have a friend in st louis he texted me just last night he goes oh my wife and i we just went paleo how do you how do you do it because all the food is so shitty it's like well first you move to southern california it's like all right it's Small investment. It's not easy. So things like what Organifi has and then our other sponsor being Thrive Market,

living in parts of the world or a country where food is not easy to come by, places like Thrive Market allow us to go online and order really high-quality versions of what you might find at your regular grocery store. I'm going to have to give that a try. You have to check it out. Yeah, anything that's in your pantry is likely replaceable with a paleo-friendly version. Solution.

A better option. Yeah, a better option. So you got into rowing. Got into rowing. And what got you started, like coaching? You saw that there was a lot of poor movement into rowing got into rowing and uh what what got you started like coaching you saw that there was a lot of poor movement and rowing i think anyone who's a specialist and what they do uh doug and i were were uh specialists in olympic weightlifting before we got into crossfit and that was actually one of the things that that drew me in on that really

strong too is i i do workout, I look online, and I'm like, oh, I can crush all these fuckers on squats, deadlifts, and cleaning jerks, and especially if there's a snatch, I'm destroying everybody, you know, posting on there. And then everyone just blows by me. So give it five years. But it's interesting to walk in and go, oh. And there's a lot of focus that's been put into things like weightlifting.

And it's for some reason people like, you know, find that as a big sexy way of getting in. Super sexy. But you look at rowing and I see a similar thing happening. And it's gotten better, right? Yeah. It's gotten way better industry-wide. We look in the gyms and people are rowing with better technique. The coaches are coaching with better technique. And there's still a lot of room to grow. Yeah. So

how did you approach that in the first place? I mean, at first I just tried to beat people over the head with it. You know, you sit there and you got to care about rowing for rowing sake. And this is a sport you need to, you know, it's kind of like how weightlifting is when you look at weightlifting for CrossFit. Barbell cycling isn't really weightlifting. It you look at weightlifting for crossfit barbell cycling isn't really weightlifting it's driven for crossfit purposes it's its own thing it's barbell cycling used for the purposes of fitness and so it took me a while to overcome that and change my own mindset and the way that i was talking about it because at a certain point you have to accept that people don't care about the sport of rowing and rowers care about it but anybody else doesn't so that was that pivot of uh of realizing hey man

it's like people don't care people don't care about rowing there's no need to try and beat that beat them over the head with it but we all do share this ability to talk about movement and we all understand how to move well especially coaches and athletes in the you know this functional fitness community that we're in are there things that i can take from what we all already understand and relate that to this movement so that it's more palatable and acceptable and that there's an easier dosage to take that bit by bit can build more of a foundation than what we're doing by preaching rowing, rowing, rowing. And that was really when things started to change. It was as soon as, as soon as I started looking at it as what do we all already understand? How can I put that

together as a, as a puzzle? How can I take all these different pieces and bring them together? How can we take a kettlebell swing and relate that to rowing how can we take a deadlift or the snatch and relate that to rowing and understand that rowing is not a snatch rowing is not a horizontal deadlift but that there are components that are useful for that movement when you started your seminar clearly we you had the kind of the CrossFit side of things. But I think it's a really cool story how you started to attack this. And I think it's a lesson that a lot of coaches can take that face that same situation where they have this skill set, but they don't really know how to tell it to people.

And they want to just beat them overhead and say, you want this like megaphone to scream like, this is important. And then people like i don't really give a shit what you're talking about over there so how do you kind of bridge that gap and i think when you launched uh the crossfit seminar um you're in europe aren't you yeah yeah my very first one was in uh at crossfit le mans in switzerland um and that in that process it's a great place to start anything yeah it was a real rough start but that process of place to start anything yeah it was a real rough start but that process of when you were you were abroad and kind of reaching out to gyms um kind of how was that story and the development of seeing your coaching career taking this this next step yeah it was uh i was on the plane to

switzerland writing the seminar that i had just sold i had i had convinced them to let me come and coach. And as I'm on the plane, I'm like, well, I should probably figure this out. I should probably have some plan. I've got to show up with an idea of how I'm going to run this thing. We've got something in common. I love selling something and then going, how the fuck are we going to deliver that?

That was exactly how it started. Overcommit, people. Overcommit. That's the key to success just take the plunge and then show up just commit to it and then you'll figure it out because you have to and that you know that really i think that first exposure was a very groundbreaking moment because you have to adapt in that coaching atmosphere. You have to be able to see what that person is giving you from an energy standpoint. You can't just blindly throw content

at somebody and just wait until they pick it up. You have to be able to respond and adjust accordingly. And if you aren't open to listening to their physical cues, to what they're telling you, to their energetic cues, what, what do you feel that is happening with them as you're introducing these concepts to them? If you're not open to that, it's very hard to put something forth that people will be able to really pick up. And I think when you're talking about a coach development standpoint, we've got these coaches who want to bring something to the world whatever it may be whether it's weightlifting or rowing or whatever the next thing is you have to be able to adapt and you have to be humble enough to take these these messages that you have in your head and you want to push forward and realize that

it's about the person that's receiving the message not about you being the one delivering the message and I think that is what can help that coach who has something that they want to bring and they're really struggling with with actually getting that out and people listening I think that that skill of a coach adapting to any situation and I think there's one skill of learning to do that with someone one-on-one and being able to do that with five people. Now it doesn't. Now can you do it with 100 people in the room? I think that because there is a point where you can read more and more people

and know what the general crowd is giving you or even if it's just one-on-one. And I think that this evolution in coaching that's happening right now is fairly new. I think some coaches had it before, but when you had a coach that was at a college or in this small town and they had their team, they could just beat people over the head with it because they were the only one talking. But now, you know, you're having to compete for people's attention with social media and there's coaches flying in all over the place doing seminars all the time so you actually have to show up with coming from a place and meeting them exactly where they're at yeah yeah it's a that is a skill and

becoming a coach is so much more than beating people over the head with it and being the only person in your town who can put this content out there as you said there are all all these specialists are aplenty at this point there are you know when i started i was the only one doing it now there are there's still only like seven such a crowded space now it's not really you know really saturated on the um but there's no opportunity never in my wildest dreams do i think there'd be seven of us doing this and and it's so much you know it's so much less about that now it's it's really like who are the coaches that can deliver a really impactful message to people?

Do you leave your clients? Do you leave the athletes? Or if you're me, you're a coach coaching coaches, do you leave these other coaches walking away going, yeah, I actually grasped what we were working on and I feel good about that as opposed to, I feel like I just got slapped across the face with all this information and I have no idea what to do with it now. One of the really cool things that you've developed over at CrossFit Invictus is the rowing club and I think that is a such an awesome step for coaches to get into of

how and finding ways that they can connect with people and bringing you know meeting people where they're at how was how did that process kind of start with you and how can other people start to implement these things into their their coaching careers well number one is you got to be able to test it on yourself i think we could probably all agree on that um you know mike sounds like when you when you introduce something new it's all about testing it on yourself and seeing how it how you react to it and we can probably all attest to that that when you pick up something new when you have something that you want to to coach or teach if you can't display it first in yourself it's very hard to actually put that out and i think a lot of people will go attend that weekend

seminar and then they immediately jump into trying to coach it that's a really rough way of going about it because it's still so fresh yeah you first have to display that within yourself because you have to test it what works what doesn't what are the things that you heard that didn't actually respond well with your body with the way that your mind thinks and how do you then take these concepts put them into your own movement how do you alter them so that it becomes your own thing? I don't expect that when, for example, when I'm training a coach and I ask them for a submission, we always end our courses with a video submission.

They have to submit it to us and we grade that video review. And 80% of people have to redo it a few times because the first time they think that it's just regurgitating information back to us. And that's the furthest thing from what we're looking for in a coach. What we look for in a coach is somebody who takes it, experiments on themselves, that allows them to internalize it, taking that information that they've internalized and then starting to practice it with one athlete, with five athletes does it change how does it evolve as the group grows or as the caliber of the athlete or the client grows can you take that and work with an adaptive

athlete in that that same modality so it's starting on yourself it's beginning the practice with yourself and then it's getting outside your comfort comfort zone. And I think that's something that a lot of coaches struggle with is how do I just ask my wife, can I coach my wife? Can I try and coach my 10-year-old? You know, like that practice can be really valuable for how that comes to, you know, your average 26-year-old male that you end up coaching in the gym. If you can coach that to your 10-year-old, you can coach that to anybody. Because you have to break it down. You have to change the way that that message comes across so i think it's really start on yourself first begin to practice on a small scale allow the scale to grow and then you have to test concepts from there but it has to become yours

you have to own that content you can't just spit out what somebody else has given you i hope there's not another me out there i hope that there's not another coach just doing exactly what i do because it's not theirs i want it to be theirs yeah i think a lot of people start from there you know they find the person they want to follow and it is like oh i'm just going to follow this method i was taught strictly and then i you know i'm going to do this method and this method after a while you find your own. I know that was my process. I think I've witnessed that in a lot of other coaches.

How do you get that maturity to click over? Or do you think it just takes experience? Well, you have to be open enough to allow it to happen. I think a lot of people don't understand that it's just a process of allowing yourself to change and a lot of coaches just see themselves as a coach and nothing but but there's so much it's a loaded question right becoming a coach becomes this emotional exploration with people with your clients the people that come to you they turn to you for so much more than just movement expression they come to you because they want to be around you for other purposes there are so many

intrinsic reasons they may not be able to say out loud so as you are as you are making that space to grow and to be able to go and speak to the people that you want to work with you have to allow yourself to be able to grow you have to be willing to change you have to be willing to listen to whatever's happening around you whether it's somebody verbally telling you something or whether it's just feeling the energy of your space or your gym and and listening to what people are telling you we kind of make the distinction between an instructor and a coach where someone that's just teaching movement here's how you do it you know put your feet there you grip right here good now back and forth up and down go go go that's an instructor you're telling someone

what to do but you don't have like this bond like rapport with that person if you do then maybe you're more of a coach if you care about what they do outside the gym just as much as what they do inside the gym and you're looking at their the totality of their life and you're more of a mentor to them then you're a coach but until you get to that point you're just just an instructor. You're a teacher and there's nothing wrong with being those things, but there's a clear differentiation in my mind between those two. And understanding which one you do better at, I think is actually really important. If you're an instructor, that's like the mental model that just works for you, then maybe you should like just coach seminars. You see people once, you tell them all this cool information, you go on to the next thing. But

if you're a person that like you do really well with forming those relationships, then you want to be in a situation or a setting where you're going to see people over and over and over again, like coaching at a facility where you're going to be there every day. Some of the greatest impacts you can have are those sessions where your client halfway through breaks down in tears, not because of something you said or not because of anything you did, but just because you've reached that level of emotional connection and that just whatever happened that day, there's something happening inside that just finally has to be released and

just call the session and sit there and have a good chat for the next half hour. Those are some of the best growing moments that you can have. Yeah. I find that people can't put their unique spin on things until they truly understand why they're doing what they're doing. And I think the the model i have around that is that knowledge plus experience equals understanding yeah and so if you just go to a seminar and you learn you know you learn sets and reps and uh you know a proper

technique then you have you have knowledge but no experience and so until you get more experience you can't actually like put your little twist on things you're saying that the the coaches that you have do those tests you want them to like give it back to you with their own their own tweaks and their own you know their own spin where you can tell that they actually have really thought it through and they they've made some changes and they have good reasons for those changes those people understand what's going on but it takes a while to get to that point you know maybe maybe up to 10 years to get to that point where like you really truly understand exactly why you're doing what you're doing yeah it's about so much more than you know we keep coming back to this so much more than the rowing right or the kettlebells or weightlifting or what

it's so much more than that it's so much more than the gym that you own it's understanding that impact that you get to have on people that change that you get to create in somebody's life and how that change really starts to happen and being able to gain that experience and learn from it i think that's the big piece right that being able to learn from that experience because you could even have an instructor who's a 10-year instructor and is still an instructor it's being able to internalize that learn from it change from it when you are when you you know you named five six games athletes people operating at a way different level than maybe even what you're seeing on a rowing club every night what are

you kind of taking from those athletes and seeing in their work ethic that really transfers over into everything and the from the coaching side of things to maybe athletes getting better specifically at rowing or whatever their skill set is but um when you sit down with an athlete how are they approaching what they do differently and you start to see some of the holes maybe maybe in the way that they practice um their mentality but how when you sit down with tia claire to me she's doing things very differently than people what what are you what are you learning from those athletes um that are kind of operating at that high level yeah the it seems like the single greatest unifying factor between all of them is their humility to learn it's the athletes who just

don't have the desire to pick up new knowledge and see themselves as good enough yeah they're if you want to grow you have to accept that there's somebody out there that can teach you something whatever that may be and the best clients are the ones who are at that point where they're willing to grow and the same with you know those the highest level athletes right before games this year t was in my garage she came to my house here in san diego dropped into the garage for two hours and we just worked on her movement there was no social media about it there was no there was nothing nothing special it was just a rowing machine in my dirty garage and we were talking about her movement two weeks before she

was about to go to games can't believe you didn't put that on instagram and i really should have marketing mistakes there have been so many like. Talking about business here. He's got a business coach. Yeah, we'll be sitting down later. But that's the stuff that's – I Instagram everything. Breakfast, workouts in my underwear. I'm trying to practice that. Yeah, yeah.

You'll get there. I'll lay for you. That's why stories are so great. You can put fucking anything on there, no matter how mundane, and people are like, cool. Oh, wow. You ate breakfast today. It vanishes 24 hours later. It's no big deal deal you've never happened you never even had those eggs this morning

funny story about stories you guys know kyle maynard yeah yeah yeah uh real small world i woke up to a text message from my dad this morning uh saying i just dropped kyle maynard off at the airport in minneapolis and next thing i know i look look at Kyle Maynard's story and it's a photo with my dad my dad drives limos and he was dropping or town cars and limos and he just happened to have Kyle Maynard as a client and they just happened to start talking in the car and just happened to make the connection because Kyle and I know each other we've been around each other and coach together and um and just happened to make the connection that he was my dad. Kyle grabs a photo of him and posted on his story this morning. That's awesome.

Yeah. Wow. All right. Now you got to go follow Shane so you can make sure you hit those kinds of things. Let's take a break real quick. When we come back, I want to find out actually a little more on the practical side with athletes in the gym. When you walk into the typical box and you see a dozen people rowing, what are the common mistakes and what would you do to repair those?

How are you berating those people in your head? That's what I do. What judgments are you passing immediately? A hundred percent. All right. Thanks for watching the show. If you'd like to learn more about how to improve your snaps clean and jerk, we have a free 55-page e-book you can get at Flightweightlifting.com.

It has sample programming specifically for weightlifting, weightlifting how-to technique videos and other tips on how to improve all of your lifts. Go to Flightweightlifting.com and you can download that e-book for free. Download it now. All right, we're back. Ready. All right. Here we are.

We're back. That was you. Shane, we've been here. All right, we're back. All right. Here we are. We're back. That was you. Shane. We've been here. All right, so we're ready to hear about all the judgments you pass. Yeah. What are the common things that people are overlooking? Because, you know, I know that, you know, if I just got off doing pull-ups and burpees and I hop on an erg and I start pulling, it's probably going to look really shitty.

Yeah. I think probably the biggest paradigm shift people make where you see a big change is that they change their perception of how the movement operates. They see it as a pulling movement when in reality it's a pushing movement. And that change from push to pull creates a really different impact in the way that people use the machine. So imagining that push against the machine or trying to push the machine away creates a really different change in movement.

So that's a big one. And then people also think, you know, we always talk about going faster on the machine and trying to speed up, but speed doesn't come from speed of the system. And people really try to create systemic speed, that systemic speed isn't it doesn't do anything you have to be able to connect to the machine and so prioritizing connection over they're trying to to move themselves faster yeah and they're not considering the whole the whole system correct okay yeah it's you know there's there's no connection they don't have the ability to actually apply force to the handle because they're just trying to move fast instead of being able to apply force the machine measures force acceleration and

distance and so you can if you don't connect none of those three things are registering what tools are you using with the machine to be able to predict that one of the things that i love to do on my own is whatever this the the force curve i guess it is um and you can see where that it dips usually if you have a bad pull when you go from hips to arms so you even called it a pull right oh did i when you push you just said that when you push on the machine learner over here um what. You have all kinds of kids. You were actually the first person that ever taught me the push to pull and I was like, oh, that guy's right.

How do you use what the machine is giving you to kind of teach people the movement patterns and where their inefficiencies are? The force curve is good. It's a bit of an advanced thing. You have to really understand what you're seeing when you look at it. One of the greatest things you can do is simply put somebody into a static catch position,

the front position of the stroke, and just have them hold good position because at the end of the day, most people just don't even know what they're supposed to feel, what a good position feels like. So you put them in a good position and just hold it train that position learn how to be there learn what you're supposed to feel and a lot of people don't want to feel tension at any point on the machine but you need tension if you don't have tension how are you ever supposed to apply anything it's like being under a barbell if you're not if you don't feel tension at some point something is wrong right um so i think

that's a big one is just like stripping everything away getting rid of all the fancy tricks and drills and you just put somebody into a static position it's amazing how much you can learn just being in the right catch um another part is simply slowing them down the slower you can get somebody's movement to go the more they have the ability to think about what they're doing. And that's another issue is you with just the ability to get work done. If you just sit there and spin your wheels, you're still getting work done. And I think that's one of the reasons that people kind of bypass it is

because you can, you can just still do stuff. Um, but if you slow it down, it allows the brain to start connecting to the mind and the body, the brain to connect to the body. and the body the brain to connect to the body and that changes the way that you perceive the movement and you can internalize things that are being told to you so slowing it down is a huge one i was actually just thinking

about what we're going to do for working out after this are we really i wasn't even thinking of questions i was like i was like i was like should like, should we do single leg RDLs with the landmine after we do our speed front squats? And then he looked at me like, you got a question, right? I was like, no. I was still thinking about working out. Which means I'm in the right industry. Staring right through me. Doug, you don't get paid to work out.

You get paid to talk about it. We're doing deadlifts with bands and then speed front squats. And then we're going to do volume on single leg RDLs. And then after that, it's free for all. You can do all the curls you want. I'll do them with you. Curls are good. Because curls are awesome.

You're up, Anders. Hot potato to you. We brought Anders for a reason. We can talk forever. So when we sit down, the future of where you're kind of going with Dark Horse Rowing starts out as this rowing platform. And you actually have found every single rower in the world, right? Yeah, I think we've captured them all. There's a good 15,000, 17,000 people on your YouTube page that watch all this stuff.

So where's kind of the future going with Dark Horse Rowing? The academy that you launched, last time we trained together, you talking uh kind of about this exponential return on your time and your energy and where you want to be spending um just how how are you going to be impacting the world and by training coaches and teaching them these skills that you've learned over the years where's where's the dark horse academy go yeah like the last couple of years have been a real analysis of my life and you spend so much time talking about one thing and and then you become known for that thing and then it was you know you walk into the gym and it's just hey can you take a look at my stroke tell me what's going on it's like no man like yes i can but i've also done a video on everything that i can possibly

like i've scraped the bottom of the barrel as far as creating videos on the movement of rowing like go watch those and after you've watched every video all 150 something of our videos come back and you know talk to me and and we'll see if uh if you've changed at all so the last you know couple years have been this real introspective shift and thinking about where things are going to go and the dark horse academy which is our new platform um this last year we launched a coach's course could i take it was kind of my my step of growth can i take everything that i've learned and that i've been coaching and can i get that to somebody without having to physically stand in front of them because i wanted to be able to reach a greater audience than what i was able

to do by physically attending seminars and clinics around the world and so we launched that in july and it was it blew my mind we've already put like 300 something coaches through it and that's just we've only opened it for two seven day periods in the last whatever since july um seven months and um and so that is really where things are going it's the ability to reach more and more coaches because while i love getting to work with athletes like it's fun i love being on the floor and actually hands-on coaching somebody but i want to have a far greater impact i want to be able to help coaches along i want to be able to help a coach improve the way that they're coaching or the way that they run their gym or the way they structure

their programs and and so that is really where things are going to move is let's let's bring these courses online because if you're a coach in the middle of nowhere you might not have any any clinics or seminars dropping into your region anytime soon but i still want you to be able to access that information so right now i'm on the hunt i'm looking for specialists really um we just worked with one out of australia who's teaching the skier because i don't want to go out and be the specialist for all these things there are people who are already doing it and't want to go out and be the specialist for all these things. There are people who are already doing it, and I want to celebrate those coaches who really are making an impact and be able to bring them in to bring that content out. So the academy is really about growing coaches.

It's about growing the coaching community. It's about spreading knowledge, and that's my passion. So in this process, though, you put this course online. What are some of the beginning stages, even if they're not a part of the course? Like, what should an athlete be looking at when they're trying to make that leap into becoming a coach or from coach to specialist, from coach to now I want to reach thousands of people, millions, whatever it is. How are, what are some of the beginning steps to that process that you guys walk through with your coaches that are going to help someone get to the next level

and really turn coaching, which is really challenging into a career? Go put yourself around the greatest coaches you can find. I think that has been one of the greatest impacts in my coaching career has been being able to be surrounded by amazing people and amazing coaches that I was able to learn from. I didn't just like manifest this and all of a sudden I just became, you know, this coach. I had a lot of people that helped me along the way that were teaching me little lessons that I didn't even know I was learning at the time. And it was an aggregate of all of those coaches that really made me who I am, that built our course, that, I mean, it's built on the backs of others who have kind of paved the path before me. And so that is what we really try to facilitate when I'm working with new coaches is getting them

to practice and put themselves in scenarios where they can fail and grow. I don't think enough people, especially like there's something about a coach where you feel like you have to be perfect. You feel like, you know, because you have clients that are coming to you that you're the one that's supposed to know everything but if you if you aren't willing to screw up in front of a class of 30 and stumble and admit that you're stumbling you can't grow from that you can't walk back to the drawing board and go man that really sucked yeah that felt like shit standing in front of 30 people and not being able to answer that question or explain what what i was really

trying to talk about it's like a stand-up comedian just bombing yeah totally yeah what are we gonna do well you gotta show up tomorrow and try and be funny again yeah yeah you gotta teach some fitness tomorrow's career yeah i was talking to someone last night they were asking me um how to you know how do I have a successful podcast. I'm sitting down with them, and they asked me if I could listen to one of their shows. Did you listen to one of the shows I've done? Give me some critique. I said no.

He's like, you should just listen to your own show. Just listen to you doing it, and it can be the hardest thing to do. It's a lot easier to ask somebody. I think it's easier to ask somebody else for some critique. It's like, oh, what do you think? And they'll not tell you exactly what they think and they make sure you code it and all this. You go back and watch the video of yourself doing a seminar or coaching.

You go, wow, I'm a real fucking asshole. You know, like you're going gonna notice way more than anybody else i i think that's a having the humility to go back and watch yourself or listen yourself is huge there's nothing like catching yourself on video like all of you all of you out there like set up a camera and film your presentation of the class oh yeah and just watch the whole thing The whole grueling experience. The very first time you start recording yourself, your voice goes out away from you all the time. When it comes back at you, you're like, oh, my God. Just that one piece.

Forget the facial expressions. Forget the fact that you're talking back at yourself now, and you hear it come back. You're like, oh, God, how do people listen to me? Why would they do that? I'm just so not used to hearing it um but what so when when they get into this course what can they kind of expect what is what is the process that you've taken because one thing we talk about a lot is there's a lot of strength coaches and a lot of personal trainers when you're 21 to 30 years old there's not that many when you turn 32

yeah a lot of people fade out in this and what separates the coaches that you've come in contact with that are reaching the next level some of the experiences you've learned in getting to the next level of coaching and i mean this you talk about stand-up comedians and whatnot and how many bomb out and there's there's a there's a step that a lot of people miss taking and aren't able to see how are you guys kind of overcoming that process it kind of comes back to what we were talking about earlier internalize scale and then make it your own like those are you kind of have to walk through that process and we we try to craft that every step of the way and you can always tell that the final step of things for us is that video submission test

somebody sends in their video and i can tell within the first 30 seconds if that person has really done the homework that we've given them of first internalizing it then learning to scale it and then really making it their own and in the first 30 seconds i know how that the rest of that 10 minute video is going to go and it plays out true to form almost every single time. And really that is the differentiator between what makes somebody who can take this from being a 25 year old, just doing this because they're not sure what to do now with their lives to a 35 year old. Who's actually making a career out of this in some way, some shape or form. And you have to do that with, with everything that you want to learn,

not just the rowing piece. That's a massive step. I think there's so many people that get into this profession and they have no real plan of what it looks like in 10 years. They just love fitness. They love working out. They love being in the gym. And then all of a sudden life hits them and they realize,

wow, there's no real hope. So getting into a course. Damn. Well, I mean, it's not the hope. There's not no hope. But it's really challenging to get to the next step of the process. And, you know, going from a group class and someone's paying you to all of a sudden it's like, no now I have to find out what I'm actually good at and I think that that's one of the biggest steps that people struggle with is really having that internal kind of debate of like what what am I actually good at what are what

are these like super skills that I can how I can communicate with people and you know what are some of the processes that you guys walk through with with? Is it, you know, to find what they're special at and how they can start to connect with more people? Man, I mean, there's like, you have to internally decide if this is something that you want to invest the rest of your life into. It's very easy to just be, you know, a technician who, who simply regurgitates information. And that has, that has a lifeline that'll run out at a certain point. And it's hard as hell to make it in this industry as a coach and to be able to make a career out of doing this. I mean, it takes somebody truly special to, to graduate beyond being a personal trainer, being know 24-hour fitness running group fitness classes and having a few personal clients here and there to committing to this being what you

want to do and instead of it being a placeholder i think what we what we need to gravitate towards where the discussion really needs to go is how much ownership of you take are you taking of what you are doing are you just passively doing this are you living this just because you're not sure where else to go right now and even if that is your case taking ownership of that and taking stock of how you're delivering that in what you're saying and doing day to day those things can really change if you're willing to accept that is what you're doing if you're even saying you know this is you're doing. If you're even saying, you know, this is only a placeholder for me,

but fuck it. I'm going to be, this is gonna be the best placeholder that it can be. That's a big difference between, uh, I don't know what my future looks like. And I'm just going to kind of do this. I got three clients today and then I can go to the beach.

Yeah, exactly. Nice for a period of time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, uh, earlier you said that uh you've learned many lessons from from many coaches do you have any of those lessons that really stand out as like um real game changers for you where you you learned a lesson and that caused a shift

in your mind of your uh how you view what you do from that point forward single lessons now i like i can't pinpoint a single lesson because i spent so much like as i was as my coaching career started i just was in this i was in a space where we had these amazing coaches coming in day in day out that just almost lived around us. You know, we had Carl Pally would drop in. We would have Kelly Starrett drop in. Coach Bergner was dropping in. And I just got to be surrounded by these people that I was just in awe of.

And watching what they were doing and the way in which they interacted, everybody was different. And you really pick up on that. You watch Carl versus coach Bergner and those are two extremely different platforms for delivering information but I think I guess if if we could distill it down to a single lesson it is the ability to watch learn and take what you believe in from what they're doing and figure out how you are going to use that yourself. You know, I watch Coach Bergner and I would, you know, he's got his yes coach thing. You know, when he asks a question, everybody yells out yes coach when he's coaching.

And like I went and tried it. Like at one of my seminars, I had like tried to have people do that. And it felt so weird for me. And it just like did not come off as right for my style of coaching military background to make that sound real right you know but i watched coach b do i was like well that's i guess that's what you know specialists do and i came away from that day i was like that was so terrible i am never going to do that again did you get your testimony like it kept doing this like yes coach thing yeah but it didn't fit?

Say yes coach, and everyone's like, why? Tell me what to do. Yeah, like, really not genuine, but I had to try that on for size, and I think that's one of those moments where you test it and you fall flat on your face, and you just go, all right, well, I guess that's not the kind of coach i am i guess i'm gonna adjust course and move on from here you know it's like at the beginning you when i first started doing this i would get pissed at people i'd be like why don't you care about this and i would say that and then at like you realize oh like that just makes somebody defensive yeah they don't actually want to listen to what you're saying when you do that. And that was all just me. That was like my, that was my shit that I had

going on. Like I was searching for who I wanted to be. And I had pinpointed myself as the rowing guy at that point. And, and early on in my career, I was like, oh, that's, this is who I am. This is what I'm going to be. And so I want everybody to know me as that. But as soon as I let that go and simply started realizing like, oh, I'm just kind of a shepherd for this information. Like I just get to bring this in my own format at this point in time, at this point in life until the people who happen to, you know, we happen to cross paths and that's just what I get to do at this point.

Like I'm not the rowing guy. I'm just trying to help people understand it a little bit better. I think that that really kind of shifted things yeah all right man where can people find more of your stuff uh dark horse rowing pretty much everything so you know instagram website darkhorserowing.com and uh and we're throwing up a uh a page for you guys to grab some of our content a little maintenance checklist some skier work as well as some rowing work at darkhorseflying.com shrugged nope sounds good go download that

or go to that site do do whatever it takes to get the information yeah read the page and follow the instructions at a minimum we haven't made the page yet we don't know what it says don't rely on me figure it out for yourself you will learn how to clean your erg, which nobody knows how to do. Oh, fuck. Yeah. Clean your erg, please. That was annoying. I don't know how many times I've jumped on a rower somewhere in the world,

and it's just shitty as fuck. Dust comes flying out. Dust, and I feel like I'm going over rocks with my seat. There's like a chunk of something in the wheel. I've gone and cleaned them up myself at other people's gyms. I'm like, how are you people running on this? It's amazing. People really push the content on cleaning your erg when they open.

They're like, if I get the dust particles out, I'll finish in 1,000. It's amazing how many people download that thing right before the open. It's like a one page checklist that we built to be laminated and put on a gym wall for gym owners and coaches. And it's a checklist of when to do it, how often to do it. And right before the open, just

tons of downloads of people wanting to open. After they open, they have a burn pile. It served its purpose. Awesome. Anders, where can people find your stuff? Come and find me at movement-rx.com, strength and rehabilitation programs, shoulder, knee, and low back programs for gym owners, their clients,

and functional fitness athletes trying to be healthy and get back to training. Yep, yep. Doug, what do you got going on? You can follow me, Douglas E. Larson, on Instagram. I also have a website, douglarsonfitness.com, which is kind of like my catch-all site for anything that's not specifically in line with the goals of Barbell Strug at the moment. I have many things in fitness that I want to talk about

and things that I want to make that we don't want to put on Barber's Drug specifically. So I'm putting them on that site. Probably the things that are coming up here in the very near future, I'm going to be doing some seminars. I'm getting back to more in-person interactions with athletes, which I kind of got away from for a little while and I miss it. So I'm going to do some seminars. So go to DougLarsonFitness.com and check out what I've got going on there dope dope and I've got some other stuff going on as well go over to TheBledsoeShow.com got a whole

other podcast covering a lot of different topics it gets weird and you're going to like it also have some upcoming events doing some workshops seminars and some retreats this year I've got an events page on that site you can just check out what's going on. I won't be just staying in San Diego. I'll be traveling all over. So you never know. I might be in your town. And since you love this show so

much, and we know you did because you made it all the way to the end, go over to iTunes, five-star review, positive comment, subscribe, head over to YouTube, do the same thing always cool new videos up you should be watching this if you're just listening trust me do it thanks for coming on the show Shane

yeah absolutely thanks bro thanks for making it all the way to the end of the show if you liked the show which I know you did please go share it on Facebook Instagram

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Do it. Next on Barbell Surgery, we talk to Dr. Mike Gizritel of RP Strength. We talk about maximum recoverable volume and how to get broke at TSA.