Barbell Shrugged - Coaching Philosophy & Strongman Training

Episode Date: December 7, 2016

This week on BARBELL SHRUGGED, we head up to La La Land to kick it at Deuce Gym with Logan Gelbrich. Logan is the owner of Deuce, an open air CrossFit box in the heart of Venice, California. He also leads the CrossFit Strongman Course and is a modern renaissance man when he is not leading the Deuce Gym tribe. In this episode we discuss: How Strongman training can be applied for any level of athlete How to be a master in your specific fitness modality (gymnastics, weightlifting, etc.) while also having a dynamic view on training as a coach How to build a coaching culture that is focused on growth  How to have an intelligent relationship to intensity in your training based on your current level of fitness and lifestyle 

If we strip away the sport side of strongman, its relevance is, in my opinion, as good or greater than any other movements that we see in the gym. There's a very low barrier to entry, low skill level. I can, regardless of who walks through that gate, I feel confident that I can teach them to be very proficient in like a handful of minutes. And then I can load them and have them experience some intensity just a handful of minutes beyond that. So it's like five minutes, you're an expert tire flipper, roughly. Seven minutes, you're under load and you're getting fit right here, right now. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Mike Bledsoe standing here with Doug Larson and Kenny Kane. And we have traveled over to Venice Beach to hang out at a deuce gym with Logan Gilbrick.

And today we're going to be talking about what some strongman implements, just how to be strong in general, what coaches might need to be considering when they're working with clients. And we'll get into a whole other mess of things, I'm sure. Oh, yeah. Have you always been from Venice Beach? Or what brings you here? I'm from like three miles this way.

I was from L.A. and then I went to high school like three miles that way. So we're oddly right in the middle of where it all went down. So, yeah, people think that's weird. They make kids here too, you know. There are babies born in Los Angeles. I don't know what happens. Do they just leave or whatever? People think that's weird.

Westchester, right? Yeah, Westchester right here. It's like up the hill on Lincoln. So what a lot of people don't know, it's like Westchester is like the forgotten everything about the sort of west side of Los Angeles, but the good side about being there, as I've experienced driving with Logan, is that he can navigate better than Waze through of west side of Los Angeles, but the good side about being there, as I've experienced driving with Logan,

is that he can navigate better than Waze through the west side. He knows every little street going from the north side of Santa Monica all the way down to LAX, and it's just by virtue of being a high school kid going back and forth. So, when in California, get in Logan's car. And that skill set on the parallel parking is just money early on. You're like 16 years old in one day, and you're like expert because the parking deal is insane.

It's high school. You have to park on the street. You learn fast. Last time I was here, I got a parking ticket. You did? Unbelievable. Sorry about that. It was all your fault.

Was this something that you, growing up here, like? I was in your car. We had a great lunch with Logan, and it's like, you got a ticket. And I didn't help. The street sweeper got you? Yes. Yeah. So was this something that you, growing up, always knew you wanted to do?

Like, man, I want to start a gym. I want to stay here local and do something unique? Not really. I knew that I wanted to be an entrepreneur one day. I've had a lot of people that I looked up to. The most successful people that I came across as a kid didn't graduate high school. And they were extremely successful and helped the lives of hundreds and thousands of other people. And made all the money that anybody could ever want.

And they created some freedom for themselves. So in the back of my mind entrepreneurship was really exciting but since age like 5 to 23 my purpose was to play baseball so I was an athlete first like pursuing the pros type of thing like exactly always from a young age like you want to play major league baseball yeah exactly and so um along that specific journey I was very fortunate like amazing coaches were just falling into my lap. And so there was a lot of influence there that led to maybe the specifics of what entrepreneurship would look like. But I can say fully that there was a very plan A and no plan B in terms of my approach to life from a very young age and kind of a blessing. You know, I think as long as I could remember, I had one very specific goal that I could

sort of just dump in crazy amounts of work and effort towards. And so that's what it looked like. This sort of came after or through that. So is that how you got into training specifically to play baseball? Exactly right. or through that so is that how you got into training specifically to play baseball exactly right so the only train like it's funny because people always you know i talk a lot about coaching and whatnot i'm like the most reluctant fitness coach on the planet you know like especially and then arriving in the sort of strongman side of things it's like every single other person

except for me was like really biceps and the whole thing. And I just never had a day of that in my life. So all the training I ever did was towards that goal. And I was sort of a late bloomer in that way. I sort of trained. You can't really call it training in high school. But strength and conditioning started for me in college. I was fortunate enough to go to the University of San Diego.

And we had, like I said, insane coaches. Shannon Turley, who's now at Stanford and he's won, I think, two Strength Coach of the Year awards. Amazing technician in the gym who was replaced by Stephon Roche, who's a CrossFit HQ guy. And so just there was some high-level conversations going on, you know, and that's where I learned about CrossFit. And, you know, looking back, University of San Diego, you know,

you don't know it when you're there because you're just trying to hit balls far and throw fast and, you know, get good at your sport. But, you know, it's like, you know like Casey and Natalie Bergner were like assistant coaches, and Roche's there, and Louie's in there, and all these crazy events are held in your backyard, and you kind of don't appreciate it when you don't know. You just don't even know. You don't know what you don't know.

I remember like Freddie Camacho being in there, and we're warming up, and he's looking around, and I didn't know who he was then, but, you know, I literally remember him tapping me, you know, and being like, this place is a CrossFit dream, right? And I'm like, yeah, I guess, you know. I suppose. And it was, man. It was.

So it's very formative. So that sort of bug in my ear was very helpful. But, yeah, the only training I ever did was for this goal, anti-gym rat, not interested in buys and tries and the whole thing. And so a little bit of a weird, I don't know, fitness person now. So during the whole time, were you always super interested in kind of the why behind what you were doing? Why were you doing that exercise versus this exercise?

Why is the programming this way? Or did you show up and train, and then you had an interest in the coaching aspects later? Yeah, I'm a big why guy. For me, there's also two types of a lot of things, but there's two types of baseball players. There's people that are, I think, really plugged into the nuances and try to get as much as they can because they're maybe not that talented.

I was that guy. And then there's the guy that's like just dumb enough. You know, he's like, what? Just see ball, hit ball, you know. I wasn't that guy, you know. So you're right. I'm very geared towards the why. And CrossFit was interesting because it wasn't – it's not what it maybe looks like.

It doesn't necessarily succumb to its stereotype, like how I would describe it. When you ask a question why, whether it's big or small, there was always something behind it. You can dig and dig and dig, especially those early journal kind of articles, and there's always something there. There was some purpose there. So it's sort of, for me,

as someone who's interested in that side more so than the pump, I was interested. So that's sort of how it all started. Nothing wrong with getting a pump every now and again. You're right. Kenny K is all about the pump.

163 pounds of pump. This guy's pure pump.'s your nickname no the pump the pump previous life from here on out yeah so how'd you go from from baseball strength conditioning to like having this this interest in strongman because you teach the strongman search don't you you're right yeah so i i coached the crossfit strongman course through CrossFit. Not a cert? Court? Is that technically a course? No, I guess they're all legal words. Okay. Yeah.

The cert. The one that everybody knows. Okay. And that, too, was on accident. So I was gifted, essentially, the course from my girlfriend, Lindsay. And I went into it thinking that it would be a fun weekend. Fiance. Fiance, bam.

Boom. This happened. Hopefully she doesn't watch this. That's right. You already screwed up. He's been five years as a girlfriend. I said, yes, it's a deal. It's a deal.

So I thought it would be a fun weekend. I thought it would be a fun weekend. I thought it would appeal to my fitness. I mean, when I came into CrossFit, I was, I think, a little asymmetrically developed relative to my peers in terms of strength and generally power athlete bias,

just because of the sport. I never would go out and run 10 miles necessarily, but I would lift a little bit. I felt like the strongman thing would appeal to my strengths and be a fun day, right? And what I couldn't have known going in was that it was way more than that, and that's the reason why it's sort of affected this place.

It's affected how I sort of look at coaching and the value, I think, that the strongman implements provide in terms of general fitness. And that's because there's a utility there that I think is sort of undeniable, right? Like if we're going to consider that, you know, people walk through that gate that are, you know, very, their training age is zero. They're very new. They're looking for some general results if i'm willing to teach them the power clean and teach them uh you know one day maybe a muscle up variation that i should at least consider the lowest hanging fruit i think of training you know and what i observed

over the course of that day and then later you know spent the last several years of my life you know um studying is the fact that uh if we strip away the sport side of strongman its relevance is in my opinion um as good or greater than any other movements that we see in the gym right there's a very low barrier to entry low skill level i can regardless of who walks through that gate i feel confident that i can teach them to be very proficient in like a handful of minutes. And then I can load them and have them experience some intensity just a handful of minutes beyond that. So it's like five minutes, you're an expert tire flipper, roughly. Seven minutes, you're under load and you're getting fit right here, right now.

And I, you know, I think I'm a good coach. But I cannot say that about the stranger that walks in with a lot of other movements. You know, I always joke about in the seminar, you know, the power clean is not that crazy technical if we want to go there. But, you know, 2004, there I am at University of San Diego, and it's probably the first, you know, exposure of the power clean in my life. And I would argue honestly that I didn't open my hips completely in an effort until like the fall of 2009. So that's like five and a half years of like the common fault. We all know that you're going to – like all of us, if we're teaching power clean tomorrow to 20 people in a room,

you're going to bed the night before knowing what you're going to see. I'm just humble enough to realize that if someone was cleaning a sandbag, that would not be the case. And I don't have to be a magician with words. I don't need to be the best coach on the planet. I don't need to take someone through 80 weeks of fundamentals to get them that. They're going to understand that immediately, and that's valuable to me. And so it sort of switched my mind that this is not like some freak show expression of strength for all the people on your block that deadlift 800 pounds.

It's for everyone. And maybe it's better for that, you know, everyone crowd. So that was my experience and it's sort of changed everything yeah i like what you said about being able to provide a certain level of intensity for brand new people like you can have someone do a sandbag carry or push a prowler or or do farmer's walks like pretty heavy like very very new into their training maybe even on the first day do those things heavy and they can walk away feeling like they really did something and but have done it in a very safe setting. Totally. And look, I always have to throw the caveat that I'm not speaking down to the application of higher skill gymnastics and barbell efforts and things like this because I think including those in general programs is key beyond variance. The variance thing is totally legit, and we should grow the spectrum of what you offer in terms of variance. Like the variance thing is totally legit and we should grow the spectrum of what you offer in terms of variance, but

It also teaches a sort of context as well, you know, like this movement thing goes on forever Yeah in every single direction up and down like there's no no one can escape the how far we can go up and how far we can go down in terms of scaling movement and Including those in a general program, I think how far we can go up and how far we can go down in terms of scaling movement. And, um, including those in a general program, I think opens up people's perspective. You know, it's the reason why someone can start this,

you know, at age 10 and do it until they're 110, you know, is because the scope is so big. And if you limit that, you're like, we're just drawing man, Jim,

because simple is better, you know, then fuck man i i i'm just not that excited maybe about fitness but that would just i wouldn't see the big picture man it's like i've been carrying a sandbag for 20 years let's do something different right where do i go from here so yeah would you say your greater connections as you're describing them, came from the greatest connection, like when you first started CrossFit or when you hit Strongman, or was it like the light going off after doing Strongman and getting your first sort of real exposures to it where you realized you could integrate this thing and create that sort of expansive conversation about physicality?

It's hard. You know, I think you can't negate the exposure to CrossFit in the beginning or downplay its importance, even though the strongman thing was so impactful. You know, that's what happens with stages, right? You have to do the earlier stages to even get to the other stages. That's what evolution is, right? And so sort of transcend and include right and so i couldn't have listened to the strongman message without the knowledge of constantly very functional movement on a high intensity and the breadth of that and appreciate the things that i could have appreciated then so

i you know everything is everything i couldn't separate the two but they were perfectly impactful both of them i I really think. Going back to talking about hitting that full hip extension, I think. Did I miss it? I want to go back to that because having coached people on Olympic lifts for like – How long have you been waiting for that? You sat on that for like 10 minutes. I haven't listened to a word since then actually. Going back to being in Venice.

Hip extension, bitches. God damn, Logan. Come on. Gilbush? Logan Gilbush? This parking ticket. What are we doing? Still bitter.

Welcome to Bled-Sopia. Where things happen in ten minutes increments. But it's a great reset for the show. I love it. Yes, hip extension. Oh, God. but it's a great reset for the show so yes hip extension oh god no i remember i mean i've been uh doing or teaching you know clean snatches since 06 yeah and that is like one of the biggest one of the hardest things i think the the time i picked up my first stone yeah i was like oh that's how how the entire posterior chain gets fired up. That's what that feels like.

It's like, oh. Even it beats a heavy deadlift. For sure. With a barbell, it's nice. I can pick up a lot of weight and get it to my hips with a deadlift. But with a stone, I remember trying to get it onto a 50-inch box and just squeezing every muscle from my toes up to my head to make that happen. And if you haven't done that, I think for me, like the nervous system response that I got from that was just everything,

the entire body firing on all cylinders for moments and moments and moments, not just for a split second. Right. I remember sleeping really good that night. No, it's insane. Like the word I sort of end up using a lot is it's very potent, right? Like, you know, all the reps are expensive, and there's a feedback loop that's sort of shorter, right? Like, either I'm an idiot, which is probably true,

or the feedback loop isn't as short if it's going to take me five years to understand true hip extension and be fast in the bar. Now, the feedback loop is instant. Like, you get the memo right away. And, like, human nature is human nature, right? When you're learning something, feedback is important, but we react to the severity of, like, failure. You know, same conversation that usually comes up.

If I'm coaching, you know, you three and you're power cleaning 95 pounds and I see this common fault that we all see, you don't open your hips and receive the bar. I say, hey, Mike, just a little more. I'm giving you something to help you finish your clean. And you're maybe taking that, even if you're the most gnarly growth mindset, ready to learn guy. You're taking that in, but in the back of your mind, you're like, hey, bro,

I don't know if you just saw that, but I just made the hell out of that lift. So we're good, you know? Yeah. Same conversation. You got a sandbag in your hand or you got the stone that you're loading to the platform. When the thing, you fail and you don't get the result, there's an instant feedback loop that you don't like, you know?

And that's bigger than any, this is what I'm saying in terms of being humble as a coach. That's bigger than any words I could tell you. To think that I'm just a motivator that's going to say all these sort of magic things to change your life and fitness is one way to think about being a coach. Or I can just say, you know what, I can be a little bit more choosy in terms of the environment that I put my athlete in and in that environment you will understand hip extension right now and I have to at least consider that is what I'm saying. Yeah I want to dig into more about how you approach athletes or how you advise coaches to approach new athletes when they walk in the gym but before we do that let's take a break.

Cool so you know we talk about nutrition lot, how it's the foundation for performance. And that's that couldn't be any more true. You know, nutrition, you can't out train a bad diet. Once you get your nutrition locked in, you're going to notice so much things different with your training, your ability to recover and your ability to make consistent progress and gains but nutrition is one of those things where a lot of people struggle with how to do it they don't know where to start there's a there's a lot of information out there it's really hard to decipher what's good what's not so great but I'm gonna try my goal in this lesson here is I'm gonna try to break it down for you as simply as possible, give you some takeaways and then a very, very simple prescription

that you can start as your baseline so that you can start optimizing your nutrition and eating for strength. So the first thing I want to talk about is some principles of successful nutrition. And the reason why I'm talking about this first rather than jumping in to the main nitty gritty is because this is the stuff that if you can't commit yourself to do or get right, none of this stuff I'm going to talk about in this video is going to help you at all. So I'm going to start with this first and the main principle the main the first principle I want to talk about is time alright so I want you to ask

yourself right now how willing are you to commit the time and the effort to actually dialing in your nutrition and going through with this because if you're not at least on a scale from 1 to 10 if you are not at least a 9 then you should turn this video off right now I'm telling you right now to turn it off because nothing that I'm going to say in the rest of this video is going to make a difference in your training or in your lifestyle you have got to be willing to put forth that commitment and that time to making nutrition work nutrition takes time to get right it is not going to happen overnight it is going to take you months to get right

anybody who tells you you can get these awesome results in like a few days one they're probably bullshitting you two they're not results that are going to last the ones that were last and the ones that are going to make profound impact on the rest of your life and training are the ones that are going to last. The ones that last and the ones that are going to make profound impact on the rest of your life and training are the ones that are going to take you time to develop. You're going to have to have time to develop those habits. You're going to have to have time to develop the consistency and all that stuff. Your body is going to need time to change. Your body does not like to change. It didn't take you two weeks to get

to where you are. It's not going to take you two weeks to get to where you are. It's not going to take you two weeks to get to where you want to be. So be willing to put in the time and the effort. All right. The next thing is consistency. You hear this a lot and a lot of people throw this around, but this is a huge importance in the factor of successful nutrition. And we're back. And Logan Gelbrich. Gelbrich. Gelbrich. Gelbrich. Nailed it. Nailed it. Three times. Yes. What you guys don't know is that he worked for that 30 minutes before the show.

Gelbrich. I was like imbibing it. I was like crawling around the ground while saying his name. So get it deep inside. In the letters. Can't say I've ever done that. You've never seen me learn. Mike only gets deeper.

So how is it, we were talking a little bit before the show about the application. Like a lot of times coaches get caught up in their specialty. So if they're a weightlifting coach or a strongman coach or a powerlifting coach, it's like every, that's their filter. Every athlete that walks through the door now has to go through my filter. What do you think about that? Look, it's great. Like I, there's this polarity there.

And so the way that we talk about it here in the, we have a coach's prep program where we kind of, that's how people end up coaching here is they have to go through this pretty thorough program. And the way we talk about it is like the irony of both sides, that you have the distinct responsibility of being a master of your craft. And you can extend that beyond just the general CrossFit conversation and into your say your bias right we have like specialty courses here right where coaches are empowered to be the tip of the spear like go deeper than anybody else in the gym in their specific craft we'll say that's their

bias and that's important but I think the the polarity is you need to be that master and be the student of the game and dive in deep and then also recognize that no one cares, really. That's you. And you be you and you go for it because that's important to your thing. But, again, we talked earlier about missing the plot. I've got to realize where this fits in the grand scheme of things, and I can't put that on other people. I can't put that on Susan who's walked in. She's got to get to work in 43 minutes, and she doesn't fucking care. She doesn't even know what the third pole in her clean is, right?

And as a coach, if you want to get really upset with your athletes, you should definitely put everything you know into them, like, immediately and have expectations that they're going to, going to love all the things that you love. If you want to be a really upset coach, that's a great way of going about it. And that's really hard. It's really hard, and I think it just happens a lot. I observe it a lot right now in this arena of fitness where a lot of people are changing their own lives

and they become an authority figure in fitness, we'll say, and they're going for it, as they should. You know, run your race and dive in deep and be a master. Read all the books and change your mind 20 times and watch all the YouTube and all that stuff. But you sound like a lunatic. If you think, if you're putting that in a conversation with someone who's just there to like,

I want to lose this. How many people come to you, I want to lose this. They're not there, man. So the master coach can know that and then be a human and talk to people. Save your big words. Save your big words is huge i think yeah people just want the basics when they come in they want they want to lose fat or they

want to get stronger they want to gain some muscle mass like it's not overly complicated when someone's brand spanking new to to give them some basics to help them hit their goals they don't need all the details and nuances of of every single aspect of weightlifting like we talked about earlier like one of the worst things not worst things but one of the things that i see coaches do that that i i kind of used to do myself but now i've really pulled myself back from is like having a brand new person come in and then you're like okay here's your pvc pipe we're gonna do a whole lot of this yeah jump and stomp like for 45 minutes and i'm like that person doesn't give a fuck about doing that they they're putting some trust in you right now that that that's going to help them get them to where they want to be but once you do that for like 10 minutes and then and then go you know go do

goblet squats or or go you know push the prowler or do something else that's actually going to give them some tangible benefit and then over time they can learn those little details and they can get good at weightlifting if they want to get good weightlifting a lot of people don't they just want to get stronger and be more athletic and be healthier and feel good for the average person. Yeah, and I'm not meaning to put a damper on everybody's potential and just say that that stuff's not important. If people want to go on that journey, you are and can be that resource on that journey. But it's like going to a dinner party. You meet somebody.

It's cooler to find out more as your relationship with that person goes. But if I meet you for the first time, you're like, hey, man, check it out. I went to Harvard. I did this. You're like, shut the fuck up. You know what I mean? Shut the fuck up. Let me find that out on my own terms.

So when you start throwing out, you're using a lot of big words. So a couple questions, a follow-up to what Doug just said. He says, I don't know what they mean. Yeah, this guy hates big words. Dude, I burn books on Friday nights. Coloring books only. Mostly. How do you keep your coaches thinking about that sort of perspective?

Because it's sort of inevitable, I think, in most people's processes. And not to stumble through, because I resonate a lot with that. And I find myself falling into that trap. And I find myself constantly growing and being the same person that you're talking about. And then at the same time, trying to spend the most of the time not in that conversation. So I think it's a dance. It's just an evolution of coaching, perhaps. But how do you, with your team, coach them on that sort of awareness that there's these gaps? And it's very dynamic. That process that you described very succinctly is also very dynamic

because day-to-day that changes. You could have Susan goes, I want to get a little of this. And then three days later, three weeks later, that perspective changes and evolves very quickly. And that's dynamic if you've got people in here doing a variety of programs and GPP program or whatever. So how do you kind of corral that, if you will? Yeah, I mean, so how we do it, I mean, this is definitely not an organization where there's a person, myself or anyone else, that is like telling people how it is. You know, how we sort of evolve in that

thing is, is the language here, uh, facilitates growth. And it's always asking big questions inside of, um, the coaches prep course where we develop coaches, you know, that program doesn't have a start date and an end date. You know, people are, you know, coaches from other gyms will reach out and say, Hey, I'm interested in how you guys run this, you know, how long does it last or whatever? And I go, I don You know, how long does it last or whatever? And I go, how long does it take to make a great coach? Is it six weeks? It's an evolution.

And so we're constantly circling back to that conversation. And it's sort of like an evolution. There's understanding. It's the first maybe layer of learning something. You know, someone teaches you something and you understand it. And then that layer grows. When you can teach that to someone else, it's a higher level of understanding. When you can teach it to someone else more simply,

it's an even higher level of understanding. So the coaches prep course, you know, there's a one day a week we all get together, you know, like you guys know, and have a sit down. All the coaches and all the prospective coaches get in there, and it's sort of a practical. Sometimes they're listening to me talk, but oftentimes they're listening to someone else talk. And now the person who's been in the program a little while

has an increased responsibility to be clear and to explain and teach in a way that the new people can understand. And if they're not being that way, the group, the organism is going to let them know like, Hey man, simple, keep it simple. Like that's the easy thing to do. The easy thing to do is like, you know, talk about all your favorite, uh, you know, 28 syllable words of anatomy and all this stuff. Like that's, that's not cool in here. What's cool in here is can you get that person who doesn't care about what you care about to understand. So it's this sort of looming accountability, I think, that the organization has. And it's hard work, like you said.

And it doesn't stop either. It's very dynamic. It's not like, cool, we got it. Next. We have to refine that. A lot of our comments have been directed at coaches that are coaching beginners. We're talking about how the strongman movements are very simple and they're very safe and we're directing our comments towards people that just have regular clients that want to lose a little bit of body fat, that type of thing.

What about the other end of the spectrum? In your opinion, where do strongman exercises or movements fit in with someone who's more of an intermediate or advanced athlete? Why and how should they incorporate heavy yoke walks and heavy sled drags and etc into their training yeah i think well first of all it depends on their goals and so when you say like an intermediate or advanced athlete i'll sort of assume that we're talking maybe in the crossfit space right and so i think there's this um desire to fill in the gaps in CrossFit. That's largely what it is, right? You have weaknesses and you need to bring up the weaknesses. Very coincidentally, it's helpful I think for the strongman movement, I think very

coincidentally a lot of the weaknesses or gaps that we're seeing naturally in the practice of CrossFit, not the ideology, but in the what you know what we're interpreting CrossFit as and practicing are a lot of things that, you know, Julian talks about, right? So we are accidentally, in a lot of cases, biased towards the kind of phosphagen system because we know we need to be strong where we have strength days, for example. There's no one that's like, oh like oh shit like i should do singles and doubles and threes heavy and then we also are sort of accidentally biased in this oxidative zone because you know amrap 12 go fuck yourself with three movements right you know like that's every other right or go fuck yourself for time four rounds three of three movements, right? And that's great. I'm going to start using that.

GFY. Yeah. Or GFY. Yeah. And so we are responsible for developing and testing all of those energy systems. And beautifully, right there in the middle is this glycolytic issue. Now, some would argue, a lot of the, you know, kind of brilliant minds at CrossFit HQ, and there's science here, but they would argue that there is an intermittent glycolytic effort

that will show up naturally for an intermediate or an advanced athlete inside of 12 minutes of go fuck yourself. However, I am the type of person that says let's let's be very stereotypical in the purpose of our programming and if i want a glycolytic result for example i need to program for exactly that not to where like the fit guy in the room is going to go unbroken is going to experience some of that but where every single person even susan beginner, is going to delve directly into what we call a glycolytic effort. Now, Strongman, if you look at the sport and the general application of it, is that, right? It's 60 seconds, heavy.

Every single effort is, I don't know if I'm going to survive this type of 85% to 90% output thing. And that's a very convenient coincidence, right? And so if that is a glaring issue, then we can very easily take something, strongman, which is in a lot of ways the master of that energy system, and dump it into our training. The other thing is general strength and stability. There's no such thing as being too strong.

No one's ever been too strong, and that is a resource that we can rely on regardless of your goals. And so that bias helps as well. The other thing is we can have glaring weaknesses in terms of our rear chain. So hamstrings, glutes, we need to be stronger there. There's a lot of people getting away with murder on the quad dominant side of things. And on top of that, cherry on top, is if you're going to have a general program and you don't carry things heavy, it just seems like a mismatch of ideologies. So there's a lot of convenient ways I think Strongman fills in some gaps that we see show up.

But I would sort of throw the caveat out that this is not extra or weird or different. You know, when people, uh, critique CrossFit and say it's missing rotation, it's missing this, it's missing that it's missing X, Y, and Z. Those are missing in the interpretation in my, uh, in my perspective, right? Not in the sort of definition of CrossFit, right? Just because, you know, the main site doesn't include skill work or assistance work or whatever doesn't mean it doesn't fit inside the ethos of what this is trying to do. Now, if you look at the description, that could be included.

It's not taught in Level 1 and it's not put on the website, but you could be doing rotational exercises and still be considered crossfit absolutely technically anything could be crossfit with that definition yeah totally they put out there yeah it's just not commonly practiced yeah i think that's a big thing is that the market sort of splits that totally well here's something i don't know if it's gonna blow your minds but it blew my own mind i hope it does is it like you just said every everything can be a CrossFit workout, right? So CrossFit, like the application of CrossFit is never one singular training session. It needs context, right?

Variance. You cannot vary a single day. It is variance because of the context that it's in, right? And so if you don't see that as an opportunity to open up what is possible in your program, then I think you kind of can miss the point a little bit. You know, when people say that's not CrossFit, it's like, well, you're pointing at one moment, one day. CrossFit happens over the length of some amount of time, you know? And so I think that's an opportunity to include things, not just strongman,

but all kinds of things to fill in these gaps. How do you suggest someone program for a group class? Say I'm a coach programming for a whole room of people, and I'm trying to get that glycolytic response. What's a good way to program for that? So the way I like to backdoor into that to where everybody is getting that experience, not just the really fit people, is what we basically know about output and time, 45 seconds, 60 seconds, and then give people enough rest to come back and

send it again. Then it's going to give them the sort of, it's going to dangle the care. It's going to motivate them to put out an effort that is compliant to the glycolytic system. Right. And if I don't do that, then it takes maybe a little more fitness or a little more vote of motivation. Right. We do, you know, if you do, um, 400 repeats or 200 repeats with one-to-one rest, it's like, you've got to be a fit dude to knock out seven of those and still hit the system because what's it turn into?

And I feel bad. It's always Susan. I don't know who Susan is, but Susan's always the beginner. Susan on round seven is no longer in there. She's just, right? She's jogging her best. Right.

She's puking before she gets there. Right. So it's sort of corralling all fitness levels in terms of the work resting. There's other sort of ninja ways to do it to where it looks more. People are very interested, I think, in a workout on the whiteboard looking like CrossFit. So at the seminar, I sort of help people with their creativity. You can throw a longer AMRAP, AMRAP 25 or five rounds of, and you throw in the caveat, you know, 15 unbroken chest-to-bar pull-ups,

30 unbroken kettlebell swings, right, 40 unbroken double-unders. And though on paper that looks like, ah, it's a 25-minute workout, that's oxidative as hell or whatever. You can sort of trick the system with the unbroken caveat to where it feels in the body like a work-rest thing. And it's awful. And so there are little tricks like that. But I think the idea from the programming side

is how can I corral all fitness levels to, whether they like it or not, are going to fall into this I'm married to hard work in a glycolytic type of way and give them the opportunity to rest? How often do you like to do glycolytic work? Maybe on a weekly or monthly basis? So I'm going to give you an answer that you're not going to like. As often as we do everything else.

So our program, I would argue, despite what Instagram looks like or whatever, is not biased towards Strongman. It's not biased towards anything else. We are constantly programming and cross-checking for those biases. So if I was to tell you that we're going to do 20 glycolytic days this month, I would tell you that maybe we have a little bit of a problem in terms of what the program looks like. So it's our view with general goals in a general physical preparedness program

that we are going to cover the spectrum without leaning too heavily on what I think is cool or what Danny thinks is cool or anybody else in the program. So that's a bummer answer, but as much as anything else. Like if you did have 20 glycolytic days, you'd have a hard time getting people to show up. If you're doing them right and people are doing them 100% full effort, like if you're running 400-meter sprints and you're like, no, no, no,

60 seconds or less every rep and you're trying to rest. You were talking one-to-one a second ago, which is not going to happen. But if it's one-to-five or anything like that, still you're going to have a hard time getting people to be excited about that on the 10th, the 15th, or the 20th day of that month. Totally. I'm showing up once a week. Yeah. Totally. And that's a good point, actually.

Look, there's a million ways to do this CrossFit thing to bestow fitness on other people. The view here is we have quite a few people train here. And statistically, over 90% of the people come here just two or three days a week. Now, that might be controversial, I think, in some programs. But, you know, and I'm not saying that doing it a different way is wrong. But we're sort of changing, I think, people's minds about what training is. And when someone sits down with you to join a gym, they're excited in that moment.

They're motivated. And they're usually in that space because it's not working out. No one comes down there like, look, dude, I'm killing it. And I'm fucking dialed right now. And I just want to pay you some money to continue being dialed. Everybody is coming to you because they're like at their own little weird sort of rock bottom, right? And so changing their minds about what this looks like is holding them accountable to something small, two days a week, three days a week. And then if they can show some compliance to a program, then increasing that, but removing the stress and making this an easy place to show up to,

I think gets us a lot of results. We don't sell people an unlimited thing, right? You know, a CrossFitter's calling where they're like, how much is unlimited? And you're like, we don't have that. I don't know what to tell you, you know? And so the reason why I bring that up is our programming is truly constantly varied for that reason.

And because people aren't coming here Monday through Saturday or Monday through Friday, we never have like the Thursday, like mobility day, you know, because shit, what if that's one of your two days a week? Right. And so it's just a mindset thing that I think is important around here. And I guess it's maybe important because we're saying it's important but um that's sort of how we do it well that's something that's like a realization i've seen happen with every coach and it comes down to training age yeah you know age and training age when i was in my 20s i was like i don't understand why people don't show up five or six days a week dumb like i'm like

you're a dummy yeah and the other person's looking at me like I'm a dummy. Totally. And now that I'm 35, I'm like, yeah, I don't want to kill myself five days a week. Like two days a week, I'll go hard. A couple more days, I'm taking care of myself, you know, trying to just keep the wheels from coming off. And the average person walking in the gym is sitting at a desk eight hours a day. So you're asking them to go from here, like sitting at a desk, to like moving at a desk to like moving at a high intensity yeah you think something's not going to break if you keep doing that every day

totally what go ahead oh yeah look and i was going to ask you what you think like one of the things that i think is really interesting watching this whole sort of thing move forward is that people's relationship to intensity and one of the things that you're clarifying, and I think there's some overlap with some of Julian's stuff as well, as far as exposures, intensity, glycolytic exposures. But people get, I feel, over-married to the intensity. And so it's hard to break that mindset to some degree. That's the, in some ways, almost addictive quality to this thing.

Like the way that I've described it before is I feel like the one thing that is so neutralizing about this experience is that you just drop into the moment with intensities up. And that's, that's same for, it doesn't, no matter the ability, people just are there and there's a purity to that.

But then there's also a want to kind of get more and more of that. And it's a question of dosing, but also like, you know, sort of broadening the perspective. Do you find that so far? I mean, I know that you're sort of saying like, look, people come two or three days a week. But how do you kind of like break people into maybe opening up that idea that like, look, like maybe less is better? Yeah, no, it's a problem for sure. I think there's a little self-selecting thing that goes on here. Like the types of people that are attracted to places like this are type A

gnarly killers, you know, and most of you people go, you people, most of you people go to work and you crush it. You know, you went to college and you crushed it and you went to the right fraternity or sorority and you did the right things and you got the right job and then you got the right numbers and you got a promotion. This is your life and you're just checking boxes like a high-performing individual. There needs to be a little bit of a humble zone

when it comes to the training thing because you can't just take that attitude and come in with a training age of 0 one two three four years old and and go for it and it's really an immature mindset you know coming in hot we'll say in into crossfit and so it's it's sort of a top-down thing a little bit you know like like i said i'm sort of the reluctant uh fitness coach at this point you, like working out to reggae. And it's like weird if I train the four days that I intend to train each week. And it's like I'm not doing a whole lot relative, you know, relative to to, you know, my stereotype, we would say, you know.

But there are results there, you know and um so i think it's just a context this place the context here is chill out you know like we made the signs you don't need to work out to kick it it's like everybody just chill out right it's gonna be hard we start the clock it's never not gonna be hard but changing just the environment but there is also a problem in the opposite direction i I would say, with the more advanced people. And so it's like the newbies come in, they're coming in hot. And I don't want to, you know, talk about like the good old days or whatever, like, you know, early days of CrossFit. But intensity is a point of pride in CrossFit.

But now this volume thing is getting sexy, right right to where you see the more advanced athletes and and you know we got some of them here like they uh what's sexy is to do seven pieces throughout the day and you're sort of walking around the gym and like you're there for seven hours and you never really went for it you know and you're sort of accumulating this work and so it's that marriage right in the middle like are we training or not? This is what it should look like. Here's the context. Let's be responsible.

And then let's get the fuck out of here and do something, you know. And so I think there's, again, polarity there. Beginners, they're maybe way too gung-ho. And the advanced athletes, like the sort of wannabe regional thing, it's like, what are we doing? You know, like doing 10 rounds of just 70% effort, accumulating some reps. It's like, I don't know. If you want to make your life about going to the games, then that's one thing.

I think everyone has to discover why they're training. So I think if someone's trying to go to regionals, trying to go to the games, and they're going to spend all day in the gym, I personally don't want to spend more than 90 minutes. I'm like, wow, I put myself inside of a box with a bunch of man-made stuff for 90 minutes, and I just left an office where I was in a box, a bunch of man-made stuff. Maybe we should go outside.

Easy to say when you're in California. For sure. There's definitely certain parts of the country where it's like you're not going to go outside because either, you know, there's a foot of snow outside. Right. Well, but there's a beautiful thing in the performance side of having that goal. Like I don't mean to say that if your goals are to go to regionals or go to the games that you are somehow missing the point and you should spend less time in the gym.

You absolutely need to spend the time in the gym, and you need to get after it. But the beautiful thing there is the accountability of performance. Like if that's your goal, handle it. But don't be the guy who's still not fit, and you're spending eight hours in the gym. Like I'm sort of calling you out. You know what I mean? Like what are we doing? I get that you spend all day in the gym, but why doesn't it look like that on the performance side you're saying they may be spending a lot of time

in the gym expecting result but they're not doing it with the right intention like yeah totally for instance you know like i'm squatting all day i'm doing a bunch of workouts but my ankle ankle mobility sucks it might be more beneficial for me to spend half an hour a day working on my ankles than just like trying to force some squats or working on my rope climbs. Or why are you still not strong? You know what I mean? Like, what are we doing? It's sort of like a show and tell thing going on there.

Right. And, you know, I just think accountability is good for everybody. And so if you're going to say you're doing one thing, then do it. You know? I don't know. Spending eight hours in the gym is weird unless you're going to say you're doing one thing, then do it. You know? I don't know. Spending eight hours in the gym is weird unless you're handling it, you know? Yeah. So.

Oh. My thought. I think we're there. We're there, man. We are there. If someone wanted to find more about you, where do they look? Man, I'm on the internet. We got a blog here that I think is good.

And that's deucegym.com. D-E-U-C-E, gym.com. And then I'm on Instagram and Twitter at Functional Coach, and I'm on Facebook. And you got a book coming out too? That's right. I just got a book. You want to talk about that at all? It's a monster. Yeah, let's get into it.

I mean, it's big. It's not about pushups, you know, sort of about decision making. And I feel compelled that I have to write this thing. And I'm sort of well into it, getting close to the editing phase. I hired a coach who's saving my life. She's my, one of my favorite professors in college. She teaches like leadership and organizational studies at Harvard and is a massive resource for this thing. But it's sort of combining the academia of adult development and real life tangible experience. And the goal is to provide a logical, concrete justification for doing the things that give you purpose, you know, following your dreams,

whether it's your relationships or your career or your lifestyle. And I just, I just see a problem. I just see a lot of people, we have these emotional motivations to go that direction. I'm calling this direction to the right. And then at some point we all concede them and we make sacrifices to the left and we work jobs that we don't want to work and we marry people we don't want to marry and we basically impede our own peak expression. And not that that's awful enough.

We do it and say that it's smarter to do that. Right. We're listening to what other people say. Yeah. The opinions of other people. You know, I don't know. It doesn't always have to be glamorous, but if you want to make music and you're going for it,

at some point it gets hard and you say, you know what, it's smarter for me to hate my life than risk doing that thing. And the, there's a lot there. I mean, the book sort of goes through this entire thing, but the, the, the safety of, of giving that up is perceived safety, right? The risk of going the other way is perceived as well. And, um, and so at the end of the day, you cannot fake it. You cannot work as hard, as long as, you know, you can't practice a deep practice. You're not as resilient to adversity. You're not as committed. You have no opportunity to experience flow. You don't live in an environment that allows for your own conscious development

when you're not doing the things that are tied to your purpose. You just don't. And so it's not a pep talk because those fucking don't work. You know, everybody's said, you know, heard, hey, stay in school, man. Go for it. You know, chase your dreams. We all hear that. But it doesn't work because we think we're being logical when we

say that's nice and all that feeling in my gut but i need to be smart here what i'm saying is you're choosing to be off you're choosing to be a lower expression of yourself to have lower utility for yourself and your community when you do that so it's like it's a little trick of the mind but it's it's gnarly it's hard. What's the timeline? I like the subject matter. That sounds awesome. So the timeline, I'm a little behind, quite honestly, but the timeline was my birthday to finish the first draft, which is December 1st coming up. So we're getting close. You know, I don't know how to do this stuff, how to publish a book. So who knows? 2090 will be done. I don't know. So yeah, chipping away.

I think it's important. I think it's the type of book that you give to other people because I think if you're smart enough to buy it, you don't need it kind of thing. That's where a really cool title comes in handy. You've got to trick them. It's called marketing. Sell them what they want. Give them what they need. There you go. Perfect. I'll give. It's called marketing. Sell them what they want, give them what they need. There you go. Perfect. I'll give it to you for free. Go write. What's

your daily practice with writing? Like right now, like how are you, how are you, how are you handling it? I do not write on Mondays and Wednesdays and I write every other day. Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and then most Sundays I ride my bike to Manati's. It's a coffee shop, one of the best coffee shops on planet Earth in Venice Beach. And I ride my bike there, one, because that's how I commute. But I think this process works for me because it's the one thing I've ever tried that I can't be very agile. I'm in here multitasking like an idiot. You know, I'm like a B-plus on all the things

because I'm doing original nutritional stuff, and then someone's asking me about a deadlift, and then I'm doing an email. And I can do that at a satisfactory rate, but I cannot move that quickly back and forth to the book. So the bike ride is an intentional practice to provide a buffer for the rest of my life right so by the time i get there i'm clear enough to make a contribution

and then i ride back and i can sort of re-enter the life you know so it's hard yeah don't do it or do it i don't know do the hard do the hard thing do it i found that's a i mean when i did stand up all those years that's the one thing. Do it. I found that's a – I mean, when I did stand-up all those years, that's the one thing that did it is I just – two hours every single day for ten years, and then you stand on a mountain of stuff. Yeah. You know, and it just accumulates, and there's only one way to do that, and that's to block everything out and just do it.

Yeah. So if someone wants to check that book out, just keep track of your social feed, and you'll let everybody know. Yeah. At GoWriteBook is the Instagram and Twitter, but I'll be cranking it out. I mean, I'm hurrying. I'm trying. Bleeding all over the keyboard.

So, yeah. Cool. I'll let you all know. You bet. Thanks for coming on the show, Lucas. Thank you. This is crazy, by the way, because I've seen some of my friends on this show, and years ago when you guys first started, I was like,

man, it'd be rad to be on that show one day. And we did it. That was cool. That was awesome. So thank you for having me. You bet. Thanks for coming on. Awesome to have you.

Thanks. Cool.