Barbell Shrugged - Double Days: The Benefits and Drawbacks of High Volume Training w/ Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Coach Travis Mash Barbell Shrugged #587

Episode Date: June 21, 2021

In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged:   How to structure high volume training. How to ensure you are not overtraining. Hypertrophy and accessory work Using RPE to ensure you are not going to burn out Why high volume training may not be the best for your goals   Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram   ————————————————   Diesel Dad Mentorship Application: https://bit.ly/DDMentorshipApp   Diesel Dad Training Programs: http://barbellshrugged.com/dieseldad   Training Programs to Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/34zcGVw   Nutrition Programs to Lose Fat and Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/3eiW8FF   Nutrition and Training Bundles to Save 67%: https://bit.ly/2yaxQxa   Please Support Our Sponsors   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   BiOptimizers Probitotics - Save 10% at bioptimizers.com/shrugged   Garage Gym Equipment and Accessories: https://prxperformance.com/discount/BBS5OFF Save 5% using the coupon code “BBS5OFF”

Shrug family, this week on Barbell Shrug, we're talking about double days, how much volume you can have in your training, benefits and drawbacks of high volume training, how to structure high volume training, how to ensure you are not overtraining hypertrophy and accessory work if you're putting more than one session into a single day, using RPE to ensure that you do not get burnout and why high volume training may not be the best for you achieving your goals. Before we get into the show, I want to thank our friends over at Organifi, as we do every single week, Organifi.com forward slash drug.

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Helps me sleep. Calms me down. I sleep beautifully, even with a brand new kid. Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Bass. Today on Barbell Shrugged, we're talking about how you can program double days and multiple sessions without completely crushing your gains and making sure that you continue to get strong because everybody sometimes throws double days in there. And I feel like that's

likely one of the most over-programmed things. So we're going to help you provide a little bit of structure and understanding if training multiple times a day is in your thing. But, bros, guess what happened this week? I told Doug this earlier this week. Do you know how much of a dad you become when you have a Paw Patrol birthday party in your life? Absolutely. Do you know how much Paw Patrol runs this world, Travis Mash?

I'm well aware. Do you have Paw Patrol conversations in your house? Absolutely. Have you had a Paw Patrol birthday party? Yes, for Bear. Loves Paw Patrol. Which one's his favorite? Yes, Astro. Loves Paw Patrol. Which one's his favorite?

Yes, Astro. That's hysterical. Who's Adelaide's? Sky, the chick that flies in the air. Of course. What's your favorite Paw Patrol, Doug Larson? What's the favorite one in your house? Everest. Really? Yeah, the lesser known of the favorite one in your house? Everest. Really?

Yeah, the lesser known of the group, but she always gets mentioned. I don't know why. Yeah, she crushes. She's ice or snow. Everest is ready to go. I can't believe I know these things. We had – Rose, I have to tell you about this weekend. We had a baby shower on Saturday at my house, which means my whole family, not even like just my family, the whole family, Ashton's family came to town.

We had people staying at our house. We had in-laws. We had like 15 women at our house on Saturday. That's heavy because we got a baby coming in like three weeks. And then, probably right when this thing airs, actually, I'll be in a hospital watching a human. Ha! Come out of my wife. Ha! Scary. Ha! What am I going to do?

There's going to be another creature in my house. I watched it the first time. The second time, I was like, I don't know if I want to fucking do that again. Oh, yeah. Your favorite place is getting massacred. Yeah. It takes a minute to get out. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Stay in there. Gosh. Can we do a C-section? Yeah, I am. I am so. Back it out. Back it out. He's got to develop a really good relationship with the doctor and be like,

can you add in a stitch or two extra? Dude. I saw Adelaide's head go like two inches out, and then the contraction ended, and it just stayed there. I was like, oh my gosh. We have to wait like two and a half to four minutes before we can finish this? It's like the fattest part of your head coming out of the littlest part of your body no just stayed there i was like it was the only time in the whole thing ash is such a savage she's like you don't realize how much of a savage your wife is until she just goes medicine free birthing you're like whoa whoa whoa what is inside you you

crazy serpent like what in the world and then that thing just stayed there just stayed all i could see was like an eyebrow like a little tiny piece of skull coming out it's like the biggest part of the head one of our wives are gonna be so happy that we're talking about their vaginas on the show right now dude Dude, I think that, I don't know. Number two is wild because you kind of know. The first time, I was just so, I had no idea what was about to happen. And then, do you remember Gracie V, AJ's ex-fiance? Yeah, I had a live birth.

Live birth in the hot tub or in the pool in the garage? No doctor. Just her 17-year-old husband. No one called the cops on that one. Is that all still on YouTube? I saw that at one point. It's got to be.

It's got to be on YouTube. My wife showed me. I'm like, I cannot see that. You can't see that stuff no that's how i feel right now we should move on to talking about training yeah seriously guys this is all i'm thinking about these days i have a new baby coming i don't want to do i'm sorry for you i don't i don't go through this. You guys have done it three times. I'm not even remotely prepared for number two.

You will be. You'll figure that mess out. I'm so happy that this is like the main time that we talk to go through all of life's things right now because this is on my brain at least eight hours a day preparing for this big human to show up into the world that's cool man because most on the real most most dads don't think about it and so that's cool that you spend so much time being ready for this new baby that's cool that's what makes you awesome as ready as you can be um br, how do we schedule double days? What is like an appropriate amount of training that someone can actually fit into a day? And how do you structure multiple sessions in a day?

I've totally, totally started this show off in a direction that is almost impossible to come back from. Yeah. I think Travis should actually kick this off. In my mind, two days are mostly reserved for higher level athletes, which is primarily what Travis deals with. Most people that we deal with there, you know,

we're trying to get them to train three to five days a week. So I got plenty to say about it, but Travis has more recent experience. Yeah, I'm actually just to that point before you even get rolling, dude, is I'm like so stoked about it because I feel like I am excited to talk about like just the overall perspective of how many times you should think about training in a day and how that all plays into it because with you coaching olympians um and then us coaching more like health and fitness um i think there's like many different approaches to this of just understanding total training volume and how to structure just movement and strength

throughout your day well let me start by saying what you shouldn't do. A lot of people make the mistake and they go to – they visit Cal Strength and they see Wes Kitts and they'll see that Wes Kitts trains. I think he's up to like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. Nine to ten times a week is what I think he is, maybe a little bit more. And so they're like, well, Wes Kitts does that. I should do that. Two years ago at the CrossFit Games, he was training three times a day. So it's crazy.

So just because Wes does it. What was the event? Was that Pan Ams? Pan Am Games. He just left Pan Am Games in Peru. Took gold. Yeah, killed it. Yeah.

Came way back because he was pretty far down after the snatch. And then came back and destroyed everyone in clean and jerk. It was awesome. Yeah. So, you know, they see what he does, or they go see Rich Froning, and they say, oh, Rich trains four times a day. Whatever. You know, the thing they got to remember is Rich did not start training

four days a week in day one. So the key is this. I hope everyone listening understands the statement I'm about to make. You're going to get, you're trying to get the most out of the least. So it's the least amount of dosage possible to get an effect. So don't try to like, you know, just because you see Colombians, or just because you watch, you know, the Bulgarian, you know, video that we've all seen, you know, don't say I need to train this. You need to train wherever you're at. So like, for example, I say that you're averaging, you know, 7,462 kilograms a day in volume,

then you're probably able to get that much in, you know, that's in a week's time. You're able to get that much in five days in an hour and a half at the most two hours, if you really get after an hour and a half. And now that gets into like, where do we start to scale up? An hour and a half is that sweet window, you know, where, you know, your integral system is still flowing nicely. You know, you're, you're not starting to become too catabolic at that point. I think that's the sweet spot. However, if your volume is getting – if you've gotten to the point where you're going two hours, three hours, at that point consider, you know, breaking it up.

And I would – instead of just going straight to two days, if you're at five days a week, maybe go to six. You know, if you're at six, then go to – you know, then add your first two days. So now you're at seven times. I would definitely leave at least one day a week. Most studies would agree that, you know, one day a week of total rest or at least active recovery is a wise thing. So I, I definitely disagree with the, you know, where the Bulgarians would actually even train on a Sunday. That's, they're going too far. And you got to remember too, another thing to think about is when you're looking at those countries or the old Bulgarians, they're on drugs. And so unless you're going to take steroids, I wouldn't do anything like they're telling you to

do. So. Do you think it's better to do say five days a week with two days that are two a days for a total of seven sessions versus seven days a week? I would think, you know, depending on how you structure it. I would get two know, get two full days off. That would be the way we're going to go. We right now, even, so you got to remember

you have an elite like Ryan who's totaling over, now he's totaled 300, three different times as a 67 kilogram body weight

and he's at five days a week. That's it. And so like, there's no way I'm going to like, you know, listen to somebody, you know, like, look at what Wes Kitts does. Oh, Ryan should be training 10. Why?

You know, if we get steady progress at five days a week, you know, between an hour and a half to two hours, that's where we're at. Because really, you know, when they're in there two hours, 30 minutes is bullshitting around. We all know that. So it's really only an hour, hour and a half of getting after it. So I'm not going to change anything. But now we're at a point.

We are at a point now where it's getting a little bit harder. And the advantage, here's the advantage of going multiple sessions, is an increase in frequency. There's some pretty concrete studies you know the more frequent you are with certain movements to say that if you're struggling with a snatch or struggling with a jerk by adding frequency without you know killing yourself by going two and three hours by doing it multiple sessions there's some pretty good concrete evidence that would say that's a good way to get better at that moment yeah i think that when it comes to crossfit it's so much easier to think about training multiple times in a day because there's so many skills to be working on like i think it's so much easier to think about training multiple times in a day because there's so many skills to be working on. Like I think it's, it would be as a coach, incredibly challenging

programming strength workouts because you've got athletes that are going, their only real speed that they know is heavy and heavy and heavier. So if, if it's not inside 85-90%, they barely consider themselves working. It's not that challenging. You have to get people to really buy into the fact that this is a lot of technique work.

We're just wiring your system. We want you just doing the movement. It doesn't have to be at 100%. We don't have to set PRs twice a day. Being able to just get in, train, build muscle, do the movements really, really well. I think that that is a very challenging piece of being a coach for, for pure Olympic weightlifting or, or even powerlifting to being able to break that up because the mentality behind that where in CrossFit, it's like you have all of these conditioning pieces, especially when it gets into like aerobic capacity work that never really beat you up. They totally suck and they're really boring and you end up trying to play little games with yourself on a rower or on an airdyne. But for the most part, you're just practicing breathing and And you're going to sweat your ass off.

You're going to be breathing really hard. But recovering from it is not really challenging. You kind of recover as soon as you get off the rower and sit down for a little bit and hang out with your friends, drink some sugar, eat a little bit, and you're good to go. It's those long, grueling strength training sessions that you have to really be dialed in onto how, how much volume is going into it.

What's the intensity and, and how you kind of create different movement patterns and, and build out an entire week of training. You would definitely have to look at, uh, if I'm a CrossFitter, I'm definitely going to go into multiple sessions because I'm going to do like a skill and do like your,

whatever gymnastics movement you want to work on, whatever Olympic movement you want to work on. Then you could do some strength and then you could do some, like you said, low intensity, steady state cardio. So that's four sessions right there you could easily do and it would be a fine day and it would be much better because, you know, you don't want to really be working on skills fatigue. So if you like, if you do a hard workout and then hey let's go practice you know handstand push-ups it's probably not a good idea because you're tired and your brain is not going to function properly to learn a new skill so that's what i would do to your point and it's about the adding steady state cardio any any aerobic stuff that you add isn't going to beat you up too much especially if you do it in a kind of a low impact way If you're riding an assault bike versus going for downhill runs, it's not going to beat you up very much at all.

We get questions from the guys in our Diesel Dad program all the time asking if they can do extra cardio. Normal extra cardio, they're going to go for a two- or three-mile jog, or they're going to do a 5K row. It's going to take them 20 or 30 minutes. That doesn't seem to beat people up too much at all. They're not adding any extra lifting. They're probably not going to get very sore. It's not going to burn so many calories that they're not going to get strong. So I'm pretty friendly to adding in little bits of cardio throughout the week

just to a regular mostly strength training program. Well, that's like specifically why I wanted to do this show because you have to really understand where your goals are at. And I love having Travis talk about what these like super elite athletes are doing and how they structure their training. But when it comes to like the people that we're coaching and in general, like fat loss for, for busy dads. And I have taken the approach much more since after kind of stopping the competition phase and just really trying to build GPP and just be healthy of like, recognizing that fitness lives on this like very long spectrum from almost like sitting still

and doing meditation to lifting as heavy as you possibly can and accumulating as many of those tiny pieces throughout the day where one of them might be 20 to 30 minutes of lifting weights really heavy really hard or doing one of the imam aesthetic workouts or or even like the imam strength workout where you're you're hitting it hard for 45 minutes it's it's a little bit higher intensity. You're going to be lifting a little bit heavier, but there's equal, maybe not equal, but there's a large benefit to just being able to pick up the low-hanging fruit and go out and do a small run throughout the day,

to be able to get up and go walk around and not stare at your computer all day. When you expand your mind from thinking that the only thing that's going to be benefiting you and getting you to your goals is that one piece of 30 to 90 minutes that you spend in the gym, lifting weights and just developing strength. You're really only seeing like this tiny piece of the puzzle when fitness should be this lifestyle that you adopt where you're constantly like looking for ways to to get training in even though you don't spend 90 minutes in the gym or you don't have two 90 minute sessions to be hanging out and doing snatch and clean and jerk every day um that that that's that's actually why this, this show like really, uh, in my brain,

why I wanted to do it to, to really understand, like, there are many different goals that you have and you should be training in a way multiple times a day, no matter what, especially if your goal is just fitness and fat loss, right? Like you should be doing stuff all day long to get you closer to that goal because what you actually need is so small and so not taxing on your body. It's just getting up and getting comfortable, forcing the action and being super diligent about getting up and going. Because the muscle that those people need to flex the most is just consistency and practicing forcing the issue. Whereas you've got an elite weightlifters that you don't have to force the issue with them they will go max out on any day at any time and

put two alphas in a room and someone's going to be the strongest and uh you're you're kind of like in the job like much of your job i would, is getting people to slow down and stick to playing the long game versus more, more, more, heavier, heavier, heavier. Yeah, it's easy to get them to do that. I see now where you're coming from on the other end of the spectrum. And I totally agree. Even the studies would agree that as far as like fitness goes, if you're just looking at like guys our age, by adding in those short sessions, not only does it get your, you know, cardio, does it get your, you know, general fitness, general physical preparedness, does that increase? However, it also adds, you know, your brain is going to get a boost. You know, there's a Dr. Rady, you know, he does like, he recommends that people do cardio in the morning to get it going. And then again at noon, it's like he said, it's better than drinking coffee.

However, if you had coffee on top of that noon, you know, like little cardio session, he says, it's like, you know, magic pill, he says. So like, I think that even the science would agree that that's a better way to do it because we're going to take breaks anyway. You're either going to take a break by getting on solitaire or free sale or bullshit with your next door guy in the office next door, or you can go do this and get a boost, make you more creative, get your brain alert so you can have more productive work. So I think there's more than one reason to do that. Yeah, I kind of mentioned the, but these are that thing and adding cardio as a separate session so they got strength training in the morning and then cardio later in the day potentially um travis for people that don't need extra cardio but they just need extra volume do

you like the idea of just kind of keeping like the compound lifts in the morning that they snatch clean and jerk front squat and that's that's the whole session and then they come back later and they do a bunch of assistance work you know whether it's like you know bent rows and bicep curls and whatever else just like single joint assistance work done later in the day you could do one of two ways if you're going you know you can do do exactly what you said you could do skill in the morning so like let's say that someone you know is going to it needs to improve their snatch they can snatch in the morning you know like uh maybe you could do the whole no hook no feet snatch so they're working on a specific part of the snatch they come back and then they can still do the morning, you know, like maybe you could do the whole no hook, no feet snatch. So they're working on a specific part of the snatch. They come back and then they can still do snatching, cleanser, can squatting.

However, you know, if you squat, you know, if you're going to go heavy in the morning, then probably in the evening it's going to be accessories, you know, and you're probably not going to do your skill because you want to do your skill when your body is the freshest and your brain is the freshest. So there's more than one way. You could also in the morning do like, you know, work capacity. So like going in the morning, I do my carries, sled pulls, you know, because number one, that's going to be like active recovery. And number two, it's going to, you know, you're going to get in shape without affecting what you're going to do that evening. So there's three different ways you could actually do it. Yeah. I was actually thinking while you were saying that,

when you get those guys in there, how much – assuming you're kind of like in these big volume-building phases where you've got people doing multiple sessions in a day, do you – if they're doing snatch, clean and jerk, heavy squats in the morning and getting these like big lifts with tons of volume and intensity in the morning, is that second session – do you ever think about just making it super fun? Like we're just going to do some curls. We're going to do some bro stuff. I do.

Yeah. Like things that nobody ever – like they don't normally see in their training. But because you're just trying to accumulate volume, it's like, no bros, today we're doing curls and you're going to crush it. Just go have fun and lift weights. We used to have, what is it? It was shirts off Tuesdays we had last year and it was just, it was just upper body get pump sessions.

And then the boys would flex in the mirrors and see who's the most jacked yeah because i'm also coaching 19 year old kids that want to look good for their significant other they're hunting yeah they're hunting they're hunting and so on the warrior phase right right and if you look at like the chinese man there's you know those dudes are they're killing. They're jacked. And so you might want to do it in a strategic way, so you're doing lateral raises for the shoulders. Dips are one of my favorite because it's just the best.

Dips are going to help. Dips done correctly are going to help the lockout phase of the snatch, the jerk, and just stabilizing the whole torso region. So yes is the answer. We do a ton of the bodybuilding, probably more than most other weightlifting coaches. And we do bodybuilding all the way, even the week of, it's just the week of we're doing things that are like, you know, very low. You know, as far as eccentric loading, mostly, you know,

you're not going to do anything where you're actually lengthening the muscle while under great you know load in the eccentric face yeah when you program those when you program those those sessions like the the overall purpose of them is really just accumulating volume and being under load you're not trying to back squat and, and do heavy, heavy stuff that beats them down. It's just, it's kind of just being in the gym and, and accumulating volume. Yeah. Like GPP, but getting jacked at the same time. Right. You got to be careful for the coaches listening, because like accumulating volume is there's two ways to look at it. There's general physical preparedness and work capacity, which go on a phase. And then there's two ways to look at it there's general physical preparedness and work capacity

which go in a phase and then there's accumulating specific volume so like you know like um if i go in and do curls it's not going to do anything to help me clean and jerk it's going to help me over time build a work capacity to be able to do more and more so there's that part so you got to know you know you're not just you know volume is about volume i only track for example i only track the volume that is specific to weightlifting like snatch clean jerk jerk anything so none of that all that falls under like the the k value that you track right that all of what we do yeah snatching all that is k value and even the volume i don't track even i don't even track the overall volume of, let's say, curls, lateral raises.

I do track – the most non-specific thing I track would be the suitcase deadlifts because it's just so valuable, I believe, in keeping them healthy. I do track that, but that's where it ends. I don't do lateral raises. I don't even track dips. I track military press, push press, anything that could be deemed specific to sport weightlifting. Now, that would change if I'm a strength and conditioning coach

or a CrossFit coach. That would change. It sounds to me like the main session is very sports specific, and then the second session that you'd be doing, this is why it's so challenging because it's all lifting weights. When your sport becomes lifting weights, it's really challenging to not think it's all

linked together. I mean, it is linked together but it's how it's not all directly correlated to snatch and clean and jerk because everybody programs sessions snatch, clean, or snatch, clean, and jerk. You have your high skill movements then you go to strength movements then you go to accessories then wherever you're at you might do conditioning at the end but when you're programming double days out or whatever that volume turns out to be it's like a sport specific session yeah followed

by volume hypertrophy training and then maybe like of like – Maybe. The odds are the closer we get, it will eventually end up like snatch, clean and jerk squat, snatch, clean and jerk squat, snatch, clean and jerk squat. Do you ever think there's a place for volume or not volume for a – like squatting twice in a day? Oh, yeah. That just told you. Yeah, there will be times where we're going to go to snatch, clean and jerk, squat, snatch, clean, jerk, squat, snatch, clean, jerk, squat. Make sure I don't show up for that day.

It'll be like, you know, you definitely don't want to hang around Ryan in that last year, before 2024, because he's going to be an asshole probably because he's going to be dumb. There's not enough food on this planet to get people through sessions like that. But only if I have a plan. I don't know until we'll get there.

I'm not going to get there just because I saw the Bulgarians doing it. I just have the goal over time of getting there. If I see something change or I don't see that this is... If I go to eight sessions a week and I don't see it being optimal, I have no problems going back.

Because right now he's already at a – if he competes right now and hits over 300, he would have been on this Olympic team. So I don't have to get any better with him. I just need to slowly keep him where – you know, like slow progress, keep him healthy, you know, consistent. So it's a whole different ballgame. Yeah. And for anybody that's in the CrossFit space, I think that this is the, this is like a really challenging thing because there are so many things that make you better or that you need to be good at CrossFit and people start throwing in such challenging

workouts multiple times a day. And there's no long-term game plan to that. Um, the most successful athlete we ever, uh, created slash she's a total savage. She won the 40 to 44 age group last year Jen Ryan she has the longest most badass career in CrossFit like of all time I mean she's made it to whatever like the regional is she's made to the games like five or six times won the 40 to 44 last year but if you saw the work ethic and how much training goes into doing that and continually getting better, it's enough to make you realize like you should stop before you start because you're looking at three to four sessions a day. But when you look at those sessions, it's like morning aerobic capacity on a rower, on skierier on something for between 30 to 60 minutes in different intervals you eat you rest you hang out you coach class or whatever you do then you have

a midday strength session and then you hang out and then you come back and you're doing some sort of 15 to 30 minute like skill work session where you're practicing complex gymnastics things you suck at but you're doing it like you were saying earlier with like a like not being tired and then if there are things that you want to do like bodybuilding type movements to fix injuries or or get healthy all that stuff gets done at like four o'clock in the afternoon after you've already trained multiple times in a day and building that volume up through, through the entire year is like the most mentally and physically taxing possible thing that, uh, like it's so gnarly watching somebody train like that to, to get to that level.

Um, and I think people like, it's so easy to look and just be like, oh, I just got a double day because I could do it. But not understanding how that is like partitioned out throughout a day so that you're able to recover, able to get into the next piece, and how focused all these individual pieces are. It's like, it's just just so so taxing on your body and your brain to be able to do that i will say this little nugget for you guys um if there's something out there that you need to get better at in a very specific way even a crossfitter let's

say that what it's you know snatching clean jerking um muscle ups, whatever it is. If there's that one thing that you need to improve on, there's a really cool study that Glenn Penlay was a part of when he was at Kansas years ago in his master's program where they took mice and it was really crazy. They put these mice, they gave them the same volume. They gave one group of mice three days a week of X volume. They gave this group of mice multiple times a day, every day, that equaled the same exact volume as the mice.

And then at the end of it, the mice that did it more frequently, not only did they get stronger than these mice, they had specific hypertrophy. It was much better than these mice. They had specific hypertrophy. It was much better than these mice. My point is that if there's something like, let's say that, like I said earlier, muscle up, whatever it is, doing that more frequently, not only, you know, in your brain are getting better at it, you're probably going to build the muscle fibers, the specific muscle fibers needed for that movement by doing it more frequently even if you

have the same volume that you would have trained it only once or twice or three times a week yeah yeah it's really really tough because when you get into that stuff you realize like the the compat like you have to train all of those movements not just to the place where you're really proficient at them, but training them almost to failure or just below failure multiple times a week. Handstand push-ups, a lot of that stuff is really, uh, what I used to say to people when they asked when I sold the gym of like why I didn't want to do the CrossFit thing anymore. Um, I would just go, well, I just can't coach wall balls anymore, but also I can't do wall balls anymore. If I do another wall ball, I'm going to kill myself because I've done thousands and thousands of throwing the stupid 20-pound ball at this stupid painted target on a wall, and I'm tired of it.

But the people that have that brain that can just sit there and hammer it and still learn something after their 50,000th wall ball are the people that go to the games. Like look at Rich Froning. You want to know how he trains for six hours a day? He just has that work ethic. He has that brain that he can just sit there and do toes to bar forever. And he's still learning how to do toes to bar. If you were to ask him right now, I guarantee you, if you asked him like, Hey, what are you working on in the gym? Like, well, I'm probably trying to continue to develop like his aerobic capacity, stay as strong as he possibly can at the age that he's doing it and find these tiny, tiny little tweaks that make a huge difference and how quickly he can cycle movements and be even cleaner with his with his reps. But the only way to do it is to go from 50 to 100,000 total ball balls that you've done in your life. That's brutal. But actually, even to your career, like when you were at your peak, I would imagine you still were learning a ton about squatting. Yeah. Yeah, I'm still learning.

Yeah. Where like how you sit in the hole, how you're able to descend, like, find that perfect pocket. Like, the more you do it, and if anybody needs any, like, just the ultimate hack to start training barefoot, you'll immediately learn how much you've been, like, handicapping yourself because once you strip away all the gear including your shoes now you start to see where all the stuff is that you need to learn but just thought

about the very thing last night we were the dude is front squatting already and i just had a knee replacement fyi a little break in the action here but yeah so we started talking about barefoot training i told him okay it's not voodoo. I always thought it was some voodoo mess that these dudes were talking about. I'm like, oh, God. You know, the PTs, if you don't know them and you don't, they sound so quacky sometimes. And then I'm like, okay, the barefoot thing actually works.

My bad. Barefoot's amazing. Barefoot everything. Yeah. Be the barefoot person in works. My bad. Barefoot's amazing. Barefoot everything. Yeah. Be the barefoot person in your neighborhood. Yep. That's what rock and bear both train barefoot because I don't want them to develop, you know, bad ankles because they're getting these bull crap shoes on already.

Yeah. Yeah. Especially weightlifting shoes. That's what I'm talking about. Yeah. The way where they raise the heel. Yeah. Wait. Do they make weightlifting shoes for kids? what I'm talking about. Yeah, where they raise the hill. Wait, do they make weightlifting shoes for kids? They do, but my boys...

Stop it! Really? What a tiny, tiny little market. Let's make this shoe for this one six-year-old that's lifting weights right now. We're not going to wear that mess. Not yet. I want them to develop perfect. I want their body to be able to move

through any range of motion you know with just barefoot that's also a thing that i learned about so much watching kids play is like us adults are so boring and we think so little about our capacity like we have to fit into this tiny little box dude adelaide will just get up at whatever time she gets up and she'll just play for like 15 straight hours and in between she's gonna go smash some milk and a chicken nugget and some fruit and you're like and then they just keep going they're not sitting here like oh my total training volume i need to ensure that i'm not playing on my bike for you know more than more than 90 minutes because I might over-train my bike riding. Like, no. Just get up and go play.

Just get up and go. The only thing that stops you from getting up and going for 12 straight hours is because you sit on your ass so much that you don't – then you get tired. It's like, no, just go. Go play. Our lives don't allow it, but force the issue. Figure it out. Figure out how to get up and go play more.

You'll make sure your kids are playing because if they don't, it, but force the issue. Figure it out. Figure out how to get up and go play more. You'll make sure your kids are playing because if they don't, it's going to be... They'll be hard when they're nine and they can't run half a mile. They're going to get theirs in, is my point. They're going to play. Your kids

are going to be like little mountain kids. It's like Johan Blake climbing mountains in Jamaica. They just run around the neighborhood just crushing it. A quick story. This is kind of cool. All that dazzling, you'll like this. I heard a ruckus in the living room, and I walk out there,

and my wife is watching my two boys going at each other. They're wrestling. I was so proud of Drew. She literally made space for them. Let them figure it out. Put a rug down, and they were just wrestling. I was so proud of Drew. She literally made space for them. Let them figure it out. Put a rug down, and they were just wrestling. I mean, they were pouring sweat, and neither one was quitting. I was like, I'm proud of you both.

When's Magnolia jumping in on that? Oh, she was trying, and we're pulling her back. She's wanting to get right in the middle. She's going to be the toughest one. Youngest. Youngest and she's a girl. She'll be fighting her way up the pecking order without a doubt. In fighting, how many times a day does a fighter train at the elite level?

Fighters are MMA. We'll talk about just mma for the moment fighters have a very similar structure to crossfitters like crossfit is instead of mixed martial arts it's just mixed strength sports right right and so yeah just like andrew was saying earlier about crossfit there's so many skills to work on and so many skills to develop like most fighters they're not they're not just in there trying to like, just, you know, put in as much hardcore volume as possible in order to get their fitness as high as possible. Fighting is a very technical skill oriented sport. And you got to know all the intricacies of, of boxing, kickboxing, wrestling, jujitsu, maybe some judo, maybe

some sombo, maybe, maybe some karate. And there's just like like there's a lot to learn there and so there's there's a lot of of strategy and and working on your timing and um you know working on your counters and a lot of that you don't just want to go in and just and just spar hard multiple times a day so you'll spar hard a couple times a week maybe you know maybe like really hard one day a week and then kind of like lighter a couple other days a week or depending on where you're at you know in your training cycle and how long you have until fights and how experienced you are and whatever else uh but yeah that many most rather professional mma fighters i'd say probably training at least 10 sessions a week they probably doubled what is like these days because because they'll do because they do mma

in the morning you know might be like mostly wrestling and jiu-jitsu in the morning. And then in the afternoon, it's like heavy leg session for training. And then the next day, it's mostly kickboxing. And then in the afternoon, it's mostly cardio. And then the next day, they kind of alternate through the different disciplines with strength conditioning being one of those disciplines. And then a couple days a week, it's just full normal MMA. But then I have boxing sparring and kickboxing sparring and jiu-jitsu and wrestling. You can do those live

frequently because you're not going to get hurt in the same way that you are if you're doing full-on MMA or kickboxing. But there's a lot of value for those guys to just do sparring for each of the individual disciplines and then of course, always – Put it all together. Putting it all together at some point, for sure. So, yeah, they train a lot. What about –

What do they do? How often do you think? Like, will they lift weights or, you know? I'd say probably the most common is like two or three days a week. Because, again, you already have so much volume that you need to put in at the MMA gym, doing all the disciplines that most guys can do pretty well with just doing two or three days a week, especially if they don't have to put on a bunch of muscle mass. They're trying to stay in their weight class.

They get a lot of conditioning while wrestling and hitting a heavy bag and all the things they do at practice. They don't need a lot of extra sessions for cardio unless you're just a person who happens to just, for whatever reason, need more cardio just based on your build and your genetics and whatever your background is. But a couple, two or three strength sessions a week, you know, two total body sessions,

or maybe you do like a three-day week, upper, lower, upper, and then next week's lower, upper, lower. That type of thing, that seems to work pretty well. But I actually think, in my experience for me i actually did too much in the way of strength conditioning if i was trying to to optimize my mma career i should have done more mma and less lifting weights right just in my case i'm i'm a unique case because i feel like i'm i'm more a fitness person who does mma than an mma fighter who happens to do fitness

right like there's a lot of passion behind lifting weights and I love doing it. Like I couldn't, I couldn't talk myself out of doing it because I just enjoyed it. And I went to gym at the time, so I was in the gym all day long. So I just like wanted to go play. Yeah. But so I actually probably did a little bit too much. I actually think that's part of the reason that my body's pretty beat up. It's because I was doing way too much strength conditioning for the amount of volume that i was doing with with mma and i was just hurt all the time but i just like couldn't stop

myself because i just love it so much even like right now i'm just like i'm i'm so fucked up all the time from jujitsu but i just like can't i can't not go it's like both my elbows hurt i got a sprained ankle i tore some cartilage in my in my ribs i pulled my groin the other day and it's like i can barely fucking walk but i'm like i'm going to practice tonight this is gonna be awesome what is like the mma skill that uh is like the almost like the the playing is that more jits and wrestling where people just kind of like you can do it as much as you want and practice as much as you want without really hitting like a super high intensity yeah you you can play jiu-jitsu we'll say where you just you just flow rolling you know you're rolling at 50 capacity you're kind of doing like this back and forth give and take game i do move

to you you do move to me yeah i resist you a little bit but i let you do it like you can just flow through many positions jiu-jitsu is phenomenally complicated. There's, there's many, many, many moves and combinations and positions and, and counters and the whole thing. So just getting repetitions of being in all those positions and thinking like, what's, you know, what are the three options that I can do here, depending on how he's specifically positioned in that, um, when we're in that, that, that dynamic, um, you you can you can do that for hours and not be too beat up from it yeah um and i i i like to do that i i love play jujitsu where it's just like the most fun things dude get out there not just do it without really the intensity where you probably would go and tweak something yeah for me it's like it's it's like it's like meditative almost like i've

been doing jujitsu since 2004 i'm i'm competent enough to not really have to think super hard what do i do next like what do i do here like i have i have an established game and i have all the stuff that i also am working on um and that's a good opportunity to practice all this stuff that's fairly new and i always have like the next new thing that i'm working on so i love doing flow rolls because you can do a lot of it and it's super presencing. It's really fun. You're not going to get too tired. You're not going to get hurt. It's, it's just, it's just pure enjoyment from my perspective cause I'm so into it.

Yeah. That's like the kickboxing version of, of wrestling. Jiu Jitsu. Yeah, pretty much. That's like a bro sesh kind of. Yeah. I mean like Thai boxers as an example like thai boxers are are unique it's like one of the most brutal sports that there is like it's like the most aggressive of all the fighting sports like your knees yeah brutal and and in like true muay thai you're not allowed to back up you have to go forward or to score points so if you're backing up then it's like what is this guy doing? In MMA, you run around just forever just trying to not get hit.

But in boxing, it's just trying not to engage. Right. In Thai boxing, you are supposed to stand in front of each other and just kick each other as hard as you can. In clinch, they do that massive – have you ever – Oh, yeah. I know you have. I had a friend of mine put me in that clinch.

I felt my head might pop. I believe martial arts, even though it wasn't 100% everything we're talking about today, I think this is a lot. I see fitness trending that way. I see a lot of guys trying jiu-jitsu, boxing, all for the first

times in their lives because it's new, it's challenging. For me, that's what I'm starting jiu-jitsu with my kids too. Now they're going to take a break from wrestling in the same gym. They'll have kids and parents

at the same time. I'm going to try jiu-jitsu while Rock and Bear are doing jiu-jitsu. I'm pumped. Something brand new for me to do. There it is. Next time we get together, we're rolling. We've got to bring the camera crew. Doug won't break our arms.

Is it called a Jiu-Jitsu studio or a gym? Dojo. The dojo? School. Let's go there. I don't know if I want to. I'm going to get hooked on something new that I just spend all my time doing. I would love to see you guys in combat, where they go.

It's mostly wrestling there, but they have – the owner is an MMA. I train him. He was my first and only MMA guy I've ever coached. He was really good, but then he broke his neck. I'll get you. He was really good, but then he broke his neck. Okay, Jim. He'd slow you down every time. Can't overcome that one. You guys would love his gym.

All it is is jiu-jitsu, Thai boxing, and wrestling. It's beautiful. And they have strong conditioning. Do you find that your kids are really, really strong in comparison? Did you pass strong genes on? Because Drew's not weak either. No, they're very strong. They get in there and they just handle kids that are pretty much their size.

Yeah, and believe it or not, because, you know, Rock is just as good because he's a little bit lankier. But he's super – everyone who's watched him knows he's very strong. He can do pull-ups and he can snatch clean jerk already. He's like a monkey on the bar. So, yeah, he's very good. But him and Bear were going at it. It was so much fun to watch.

Bear is going to look exactly like you with a hint of Drew. He's going to be super strong. I hate to brag on my own kid, but Bear is going to be phenomenally strong. Yeah, he's got that aggression in him already too yeah i hope he doesn't like he's an 18 year old but he's trapped in a five-year-old spot like he's five right body type two he's four he's only four he's only four he's gonna i see that thing behind his eyes it's like he's either gonna go one of two ways i'm hoping it's – You're going to have to direct that attention. Yeah. Because in our family, you know, my brother's in prison and I'm not.

And so like – It's all the same gene. It could have gone either way. All the same gene, right? Positive, Barrett, positive. Stay to the right. This is how we use that thing you have that you were born with. Right.

Little boy. Coach Travis Mash. Mash Elite.com. Go to Mash Elite Performance if you want Instagram. Mash Elite at Twitter if you want to argue. Or watch me argue. That's all we do on Twitter. Way to add to the positivity. Argue with me

in a hot tub, but I don't give a shit what you say. I'll kill you. I'll have a little few drinks in me oh doug larson doug c larson on instagram and and i don't argue with anybody on the internet no doug i feel like that's a fucking terrible idea i'm not even getting involved in that i love it so much i'm andrew Varner. What's that? I love making people look dumb. It's so much fun. It takes too much time.

Not really. Imagine that hot tub without being angry at people. Without going, that guy is just an idiot. I'm going to crush you. But really what I'm doing is laughing so hard in my hot tub. I've laughed so hard at the things i've said to people where i'm crying i'm laughing so hard i popped on uh in the sauna the other day the sauna is just crushing right now first off doug don't update your software and your sauna all right don't do it

good don't don't just ride out the old system forever because as soon as you do the sauna is going to break and you got to call customer service and don't do it. Just do not update. But because it's so freaking hot outside already this year, the sauna is just, it's perfect. Get a little training session, go hop into the hot box. It's up to like 150 degrees super quick because it's like 90 in the garage. uh, I was in there last week and I popped on the Instagram live and my dude, Corey G popped on and did an Instagram live with Corey G just impromptu. One of my favorite humans. Yeah. I was like, I'll stay, I'll stay on Instagram for a little bit longer if I can just kick it with

Corey G on here. And then he just put one of his, his rants on spot or not on Spotify on iTunes. So for 99 cents, I just put one of his rants on Spotify, or not on Spotify, on iTunes. So for 99 cents, you can go listen to Corey G yell into a microphone about working hard. 99 cents? Who's paying for that? I hope he sells a million copies and goes platinum.

Go download Corey G right now. 99 cents, what are you talking about? Plane Thrower, that's the name of his song. He's got a song. He's put a single. And it's 99 cents. 99 cents. And it's 99 cents. It's just Corey G yelling about being jacked and how hard he works. Can anybody go put something up on Spotify?

You know what you should do? Put a story up. I hope this helps Corey go platinum. I want him selling records now. If you go to Instagram and you put a story up and you know how you can put music on it, just search Corey G Flamethrower.

There's your boy right there. Just screaming at people to lunge every day. I'm doing it right now. For real. Take a picture of us on this zoom and then put up Corey G's flamethrower song. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. We are barbell shrugged, barbell underscore shrug. Get over to barbell shrugged.com forward slash diesel dad where all

the busy dads getting strong, lean and athletic without sacrifice of family, fatherhood or fitness and everybody in Palm Springs, LA, San Diego and Vegas. Get over to Walmart. Three programs on the shelves. Friends, we'll see you guys next week. That's a wrap. Make sure you get over to diesel dad mentorship.com for busy dads that want to lose 20, 40 pounds without restrictive diets, crazy supplements, and spending 69 minutes in the gym. Fill out an application. Join our mentorship program today. Also, I want to thank our friends over at Organifi, Organifi.com forward slash shrugged, and our friends at Bioptimizers Magnesium Breakthrough, MagBreakthrough.com forward slash shrugged. Use the code shrug 10 to save 10 friends

we'll see you on wednesday